Volume 5
vol. 005
STAFF MEMBERS
McKinley Dirks - Editor-in-Chief William Newton - Associate Editor & Poetry Editor Rachael Oatman - Marketing Editor & Prose Editor Kat Shaneck - Events Director & Web Designer Nattilie Kirby - Graphic Designer & Visual Arts Editor Cole Blagg - Social Media Manager Lydia Wood - Assistant Director of Events Danny Friesen - Assistant Editor of Marketing Finn Burchfiel - Assistant Visionary Director Ali Jargo - Assistant Social Media Manager
Kaleigh Sumpter - Assistant Graphic Designer Diego Flores - Visionary Assistant Megan Whitmore - Visionary Assistant Morgen Cloud - Visionary Assistant Morgan Bojie - Marketing Assistant Rachel Thompson - Marketing Assistant Ellie Nelson - Events Assistant Elisa Chan - Events Assistant Adam Goff - Events Assistant
Untitled #2, Sue Artiga
UNDONE Julia Bottoms
Undone It was the moment when the flip switched And the flutterby butter flied. And the stop clocked. And we began to wonder whether the weather would determine whether we puffed stackets or stacked puffets. It was the moment when the shot gun started the watch stop And the watched stop ran with the run. The pinks went cheek And the waters eyed the ground. Strains muscled, spasms lunged. In the closed mind’s eye Fiction roomed the enter And the run unfictioned. The lost winner wondered when Wicked Winter won. And the lost winner under went. Bobbling hadly and sored bruisly, The won loser lined finish. The flip switched And the invert treed. The hounder pamered And the dred ripped. Won loser and lost winner. Undone.
Color Study Woman, Maggie House
THE BEAR STICK Joseph Deitzer
A
hike in the woods is the best antidote to the common mental afflictions of the Western world. Often, the more weather the better. Frozen ground and sheets of snow, oppressive heat and dangerous winds siphon spirits––melting the impurities out like a block of gold in the furnace. There was a layer of snow on the ground––a thin blanket under which the earth couldn’t quite keep warm. We brought our hound, Copper, who fumbled around, smelling everything so much you’d think she’d hyperventilate (can dogs do that?). Her red ears bounced up and down. As she ran ahead, I noticed her weird quirk, making it look like she ran sideways. I bought the dog for $275-worth of birthday money after reading Where the Red Fern Grows seven times, followed by three months of begging my parents for a Redbone Coonhound. We bought her off a Mennonite woman near Lancaster. As it turns out, I was never a companion to Copper like I was to Dan and Little Ann of the book, who were closer to intelligent beings than dogs. On the other hand, Copper once ate a bar of soap, then my sister’s razor, and survived. My dad and I made our way up the mountain, in the Appalachian country of Pennsylvania. Halfway up my, dad took me into an abandoned train tunnel. He told me a gravity train of coal used to pass through back it in the 1800s. The coal found in our mountains was anthracite coal, which could burn hotter and longer than any coal. The coal was dense because our mountains are the oldest. The city of Scranton boomed when demand for coal was at its peak—when our Welsh ancestors died digging it until no one burned coal anymore. Now it was just an echoing cavern and its ground a slick sheet of ice. It wasn’t far––you could easily see the light at the other end. Copper’s nails tickticked on the ice, the sound magnified by the walls of the cavern. “HELL-ooo,” I tested. My voice boomed. In an amplified whisper, my dad said, “Isn’t this neat?” I hoped our hound wouldn’t howl because icicles the size of house beams dangled above us. The rotted wooden supports at the opening made me wonder if too much sound could bring the whole tunnel down around us. Soon, though, we slid and crunched our way to the other side of the tunnel, breathing easier. The trees grew smaller and giant sandstone boulders emerged from the ground, thrown helter-skelter by invisible giants. The ground was covered in red, barren alpine bushes. Copper strode just ahead of us while we walked, wagging her stiff tail and looking back to see if we were coming every few yards. At the top of the mountain the trees disappeared, and we walked past an old brick fireplace sitting in a low ditch protected from the wind by sparse vegetation. Next to it, someone left neat stacks of dry wood for the next hiker who came by. “We should eat lunch there when we come back.” Mother Nature, Kristin Arft
THE BEAR STICK
“Sounds good.” As we walked, my dad pointed to a coyote’s track with his walking stick for me to notice. He walked by a white pine and plucked some of its needles. He turned around and pressed a few into my palm without saying a word. They were to suck on for flavor while we walked–– something my dad taught me a long time ago. The taste reminded me of Christmas presents under the tree. At the top of the mountain there was a cliff, probably cut into the mountain by highway explosives, that went down hundreds of feet. At the bottom we could see cars on the twisting road without being close enough to hear their engines.
I stood looking into
the gray horizon heavy with snowflakes. I was filled with wonder, like a small boy in the center of his own snow globe. I took my backpack off, sprawled out on my belly, and army-crawled to the edge until my chin peaked over. My dad did the same, careful not to slip on the icy ground. “Looks like a long way down,” my dad offered. My body warmth turned the snow to water while I laid on my stomach. It melted past my layers of clothing until my legs were wet. Copper’s excited howl suddenly pierced through the chilled air. She was a trained raccoon hunter, and the familiar sound told us she had an animal trapped. Curious and a bit excited, my dad and I strode towards the sound. We found her, butt sticking out of a hole, squeezed into a square space half the size of a microwave. There was a hole about the same size on the other end of
the boulder. Copper alternated between the two, trying to get whatever was inside. Her howl was muffled under the rock. My dad and I were looking to try and see what was inside but with no luck. Maybe we could get it out and see a good chase? There was only room for one of us to guard the second exit, so my dad stood there with his large staff on top of the boulder, like Moses striking water from the rock, poised for battle. I sat a bit off in the distance, hoping to witness all the excitement, when and if whatever animal was stuck in the hole emerged. Finally, a black mass of fur came in view of the hole, and my dad shoved the stick in with all his might. Black? I thought, what kind of animal around here has black fur? After he poked the mass, a giant bear head with a brown snout popped like a weasel out of its hole. With instant fear and regret, my dad jumped off the boulder and ran up the hill toward me, yelling, “SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!” Shocked, and with adrenaline pumping through my veins, I reached for the bear mace my mom made us pack on my belt, pointing it past my dad. At the top was a plastic safety I had never cared to learn how to take off. My dad was an Elder at our church. He hadn’t drunk a drop of alcohol for 20 years–– as long as us kids were around. He’s a man’s man. Principled. He likes to play rough and enjoys action films over dramas or my mom’s Hallmark movies. He promotes will-power and hard work. My dad also has a playful side that made our family dinners an event, having us kids rolling on the floor laughing with something as stupid as his purple elephant jokes. And, up to this point, I had never heard him utter a curse once in my life. “I can’t get it off!” I yelled, fumbling with the small piece of white plastic. Down by the boulder, we heard my dog yelp. The bear emerged where Copper was–– on the opposite end of the boulder where his head poked out. The bear, dopey from being awakened from its winter slumber, trotted off, followed by our incessant, barking hound. I never did get the safety off the bear mace. “Copper! Copper! No! Come, Copper!” my dad yelled and ran after her with aggression.
My King Lives, Katelyn Johnson
Icarus Falling, Jessica Thompson
Was she going to get herself killed? Was she hurt already? Out of character for Copper on a hot trail, she came back when called, scared, not knowing what she got herself into. With our dog on the leash, we had a moment to catch our breath. We looked at each other, made eye contact for a minute, and belly laughed. “What just happened?!” I said. We checked Copper over. She just had a small cut on her right paw. As we made our way back to the fire pit to calm down and have some lunch, my dad said, “No one’s going to believe us.”
she had the first grandchild––my niece Amalda. She loves the bear story and makes her “Opa” tell it over and over, then chases him around with the bear stick.
“We’ll know,” I said, “And we have your stick. The bear stick. How many people in the world can say they poked a wild bear with a stick?” On our way back down the mountain, we saw bear tracks larger than my boot-print crisscrossing our path to the car. My dad thought he might be waiting for us when we arrived, leaning against the dented hood of our truck with both taillights smashed and tires slashed, smoking a big cigar and asking us to choose our punishment, sharpened claws poised on one hand, Tommy-gun in the other. When we arrived home, we told our story first to my mom, then over and over— at dinner parties, church events, and to friendly neighbors. Story became legend, and somewhere along the way we lost the bear stick. We found another stave down by a local river we called the bear stick, about four feet long and gnawed off on both ends by a beaver who neatly chewed off its bark. One Christmas, my dad wood burned “The Bear Stick” into its flesh and decorated it on both ends with leather string. We placed it on the mantle for as long as we lived in that house. My parents moved away from the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania and closer to my sister’s place in Kansas City when All Dogs Go to Heaven, Kyle Blair
Cranes, Ashton Rail Herrington
Frog in Moonlight, Maggie House
GRIEF, Caroline House
p e t e r
B I B L I C A L METANARRATIVE A bouquet of pressed,
I gave her over the years, themselves now just a memory of life, makes a book of its own between the yellowed pages.
It is our gloss, a few pedantic footnotes, to the story of everything.
s p a u l d i n g
long-dead flowers
Strawberry Study, Maggie House
ON WATCHING MY GRANDMOTHER HARVEST TOMATOES Luke Travis
Just outside of Hot Springs, Arkansas, An old woman reveals black soil With a rusted red spade. She, the heiress Of zucchini squash and tomato and men Mean as snakes. There is no loneliness like hers. Bare feet swallowed in fire Ants, neck bent towards the earth, lips muttering Wordless to God. Who else could deliver her? I watch this work from behind a bottle tree, Unmerciful and stiff as the bald sun above us. She turns to me and, right where her left breast should lie, Is only a wound seeping blood to the garden below. I should take the tools, cradle her neck, and wash The vicious ants from her skin. But I am young. And I need it this way.
RELAPSE RE
In the fridge, behind leftovers and a pint of milk, Dad tucks in his bottles of Coors Lite He hopes we do not notice the old piss stench in his breath when he spends a subtle ten
minutes in the garage, “checking the tools” that are in the shed so he can sneak more booze
Madison Hatfield
Splash of Color, Kristin Arft
into his blood, not ready to confront our biting tongues, held down and hushed by teeth and misplaced grace, wishing away the time-worn two-step of his drunken sway. It’s just one drink, we tell ourselves yet again, cursing the beer as it pours down the drain.
DREAMING, SAVANNAH G R E E N
FOR RENT, K Y L E B L A I R UNTITLED, S U E ARTIGA
PAT RO N S A I N T M A R Y , KRISTIN A R F T
LUNCH T
Ali Jargo
here is a lot at stake on the first day of kindergarten. You must carefully color inside the lines, tie your shoes in the public eye, and count backwards from ten with ease. It’s key to make a good first impression. After all, these are the people you will be spending the rest of your life with. You make it through craft time with only a little glitter glue on your shirt. You only get tagged twice at recess. Your teacher called your picture “gold-star worthy” in front of the whole class. Everything seems to be going your way. The one thing you forget to consider, however, is the importance of what happens in that short, seemingly irrelevant gap between spelling and nap time. How could you have known that it was lunchtime—something you have already mastered in your lengthy five years of life— that truly solidifies one’s reputation? It all relies on whatever is tucked inside that monogrammed, pink lunchbox, fresh from last week’s back-to-school shelf at Walmart. Unveiling its contents is putting your very soul on the sticky, brown table—raw and vulnerable for everyone to see—and that mushy, brown apple with fish sticks is not going to cut it. You debrief your mother on what will be done differently for tomorrow—watch her pack it if you must. You can’t take chances. She tells you, “You’re being dramatic, sweetheart.” You tell her she doesn’t understand. Make a mental note not to bite your string cheese. Pull it apart even if your mom says it’s unsanitary. And, if she packs fruit snacks, that means you can share; if someone offers to trade, then you’ve really won. You don’t even like peanut butter and jelly, but everyone else seems to, so, when it hits eleven ‘o’clock (although you still can’t tell time), PB&J is a welcome sight between butterfly-shaped ice packs. Once you are old enough to pretend that you pack your own lunch, you are sure to tell your mom to fill your trendy, middle-school lunch bag (boxes are for babies), with only items that give the impression you don’t have authority figures. Make sure to request any sugary cereal (“name-brand of course. I can’t believe you would even ask, Mom”) and a box of fruit roll-ups. Vegetables? You wouldn’t be caught dead eating any of those, and, as far as your friends know, you never have. Your mom might be on that health kick right now, but no one has to know. Capri Suns are acceptable, and extra
points if you reinflate the package to trick your friends that it’s still full of juice. Go-gurts work well for this trick too, but remind your mom to buy the pack with Hannah Montana on the box, although any Disney channel icon will do. Freshman year is just like kindergarten again, the social tendencies and acceptable behaviors yet unknown to you and your friends. The stakes are higher this time, with future boyfriends and volleyball team captains watching your every move the minute your trendy Nikes step into the humid gymnasium. You have microwave privileges now, but pay close attention to the curb appeal of your Sunday leftovers since you will have to carry the Tupperware across the cafeteria for every clique and club to examine. The smell is also crucial, as burnt popcorn and old sushi can cling to your breath like smoke does to your odd math teacher. If you want immediate attention, bring takeout to lunch. A greasy burger and fries are a magnet more powerful than answers to the PSATs. Chick-fil-A is a guaranteed success, but anything that looks more appealing than microwaved ramen will do the trick. Stay away from Burger King though—their food is definitely not more impressive than noodles in a Styrofoam cup. If you’re not confident you can fulfill any of these requirements, it is always better to go hungry. Your friends might pity you, and a lack of lunch is a great excuse for your mother if you happen to fail a test later in the day. Eventually you will grow up and go to college (and suddenly find your mother’s cooking extremely appealing). One day you will probably even get a job. You might bring your lunch to work—make sure to hide it inside the community fridge with an aggressive sticky note. You will eat pasta salad because the receptionist heard from the manager that it’s the boss’s favorite. Maybe, if you’re lucky, one day you will be the boss, and you’ll never know for sure if it was because of the pasta salad. You will have enough money to eat out and have groceries delivered to the porch. The butterflies that come before the food in your stomach have flown away for good. You order expensive sushi, chuckle at burnt popcorn, even eat vegetables in public. You are more worried about your cholesterol levels than the approval of your peers. You will never again feel the humidity of that gymnasium, and you can only hope you came to realize that everyone else hated peanut butter and jelly too.
HER, Katie Johnson
R HE A
Rhea, Sue Artiga
All my knowledge of the world rests in Grandpa’s $1 Crossword books cozied beside his routine of 9 p.m. Best Choice chocolate ice-cream. Sister’s scrunched-up nose breathes right below my eyes as though having just said, “Well, if it isn’t the prettiest princess!” to the little girl in her Sunday dress. Once, ballads whined from the dust caked fiddle, tuning stubborn pegs and paradoxes out of Mother’s bedtime stories I still hum each night. I’m in a new city, knowledge crammed, locked in this box I rent. Siren screens of Instagram models wail you’d look prettier in her Sunday’s dressed like best choice noses scrunched into paper balls under my bed, whining ballads into beats of the routine 9 p.m. ice spat streets I cross into words, pegging the paradox although my steps echo alone, I am the product of choirs. Almost as though my entire existence has just been a set list of small encores to the people and things I have loved.
Julianne Petersen
THE ENCORES
L A KOLIVIA E TCHOATE EI
“T
he grass rustled in the wind. A robin flew overhead, a worm in its mouth to feed to its hungry children. The sun peeked over the horizon, the first of its rays shimmering in the air. A few field mice scurried through the grass toward their nest, which lay beneath the roots of a zinnia bush. The purple blossoms waved as the mice bumped against the stalks in their haste to get home. Something was approaching. “A girl appeared, silhouetted in the sunrise. She walked slowly across the meadow, seeming to have appeared straight from the sun itself. She raised her arms above her head, spinning in a slow circle. As if on cue, the stalks of all the flowering plants lifted, pointing their buds toward the sun. As she spun, the flowers slowly began to open their petals. The girl stopped spinning and looked around her, smiling at the flowers reaching for the sun. She began to walk, touching a flower here, a grass stalk there, and those that she touched trembled. The sun passed through the water droplets left by her touch, casting rainbows through the air. “As soon as the girl had gone, the meadow came to life. The mice scampered out from beneath the zinnia bush and climbed up the stalks. They balanced precariously on the stems of the flowers, their little tongues eager to taste the dew left by the girl. The birds flew from their nests, wheeling overhead before diving to taste a little of the water droplets on the grass. Grasshoppers, crickets, dragonflies, and bugs of all sorts emerged from their hiding places, and they, too, alighted on grass stalks to enjoy the dew. “Within moments, the dew was gone, and the animals scattered, the momentary truce ended. The meadow hummed with life. People appeared, holding scythes and knives. As they began to cut the grass, they raised their voices in jubilant song: ‘All praise be to Maia, who brings us work to do and food for our livestock! Every day we reap the grass to make hay, and every day the grass that we previously cut has grown back more beautiful and bounteous than before. All praise be to Maia!’ “In the evening, the people left, taking with them the bounty of their harvest. The next morning, Maia appeared once more, the dew from her hands feeding the small animals of the meadow, grass springing up beneath her feet for the people to harvest. This is why the meadow is sacred to the people of Ojobi. For it is only in this meadow that Maia comes to bring good fortune upon us.” I open my eyes a crack. Tired though I am, I have one question that I want answered. “But where does Maia come from? Does she really come from the sun?” My grandmother smiles at me in the darkness. “She does. There is a path that Maia uses to get from her home, the sun, to ours. Only she can use it. Many of our people have tried to find it, and all have failed. Maia does not wish to be followed.” “Maybe, maybe one day I can find it.” I whisper and close my eyes in sleep.
New, Katelyn Johnson
Any responsible family has a week’s supply of canned goods in the back of the pantry and a friend with a generator, both essential for the following weeks of salvaged smorgasbord for dinner. To avoid the humidity coating skin like chocolate pudding, we pull back the rugs from the tastefully stained and freshly sealed concrete slabs of our homes. Most people don’t have carpet in their homes anyway since it’s cheaper to just stain the slab a deep-brownish blood color once you’re done building. Plus, it hides the red-dirt from our gravel driveway that slides off our shoes when we walk in the door. We cancel school and clean up the yards of neighbors we love and old people we’ve never met. We invent games combining Canasta cards, Seven-Up-Set-Back dominos, and random Sorry dice. We tell stories about the fourlittle-children-on-the-farm. And we create family traditions, like grill pizza. Roz, my great-aunt and the queen of improvisation, invented the grill pizza in the Hurricane of ’08, Ike. We would coat tortillas in some sort of sauce and shredded, thawing ingredients from the powerless refrigerator, topped with cheese, wrapped in foil, and thrown on the grill to cook until everything runs together. Paired with whatever new game my Uncle JT has brought back from Germany, grill pizza and board games are sure signs of either a family reunion or a devastating hurricane. The only distinction is whether or not there’s electricity in the house. I was four when I first heard the guy on KTRE (Mimi called him a “meat-eee-ur-ah-lo-jist”) talk about “a category five hurricane blowing strong into the gulf with expected thunderstorms and winds up to sixty-five miles per hour.” Pa was sitting in his poofy, purple (it used to be grey, but the fabric was worn down from months of
C L A I R E J O H N S O N
HURRICANES
H U R R ICA NES D O N ’ T STO P EAST TEXAS.
watching the Astros lose every single game) recliner that someone from the church had donated to the parsonage when their mother died. “Pa?” “Huh?” he grunted. I could never quite remember which ear Pa was more deaf in. Driving rice combines had destroyed his hearing long before I came along. Doctors said he would have been deaf if the hurricane of ’72 hadn’t come and smashed Hampshire, TX, washing all of the family equipment and rice crops into the nasty brown Gulf of Mexico. After that he got into preaching. That Hurricane didn’t stop him, then. Instead he went back to school at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and worked as a pastor at two different churches on the Gulf of Mexico, making the 62.4-mile trek every Sunday morning to the two churches: LaBelle Baptist Church in Hampshire, and Smith Point Baptist Church in Anahuac. Of course, serving communities that butted up against the ocean meant my grandfather’s time working with devastation caused by hurricanes was far from over. “The Hurricane is expected to make landfall on Sunday, first reaching the shore spanning from Galveston to New Orleans, and then traveling upward towards East Texas, causing heavy rainfall to our local Nacogdoches and Angelina counties, as well as Harris County,” the staticky box TV crackled. Pa got up and went to the magnetic hurricane tracker hanging on the wall behind the pillow fort I’d built out of the plasticky, University-of-Texas, burnt-orange seat cushions from the old wicker couch my dad and mom had sat on during the beginning stages of their twenty-five-year marriage. I took the opportunity to steal Pa’s chair. “Claire,” he said as he moved the small triangle magnets from where I’d smushed them near goldenrod banana-colored Cuba to the white with black speckled background of the Gulf of Mexico. “Come over yonder and look at this.”
Golden, Katelyn Johnson
Nature’s Labrynth, Kristin Arft
Untitled #1, Katelyn Johnson
“What’re you doing?” I asked, grabbing at the magnets with my grubby hands. “I’m tracking the hurricanes, see?” He aligned the triangles to show the predicted flow of the hurricane from mid-Atlantic to landfall, updating the trajectory with the information from KTRE. We tracked it past landfall, watched Weather Channel meteorologist Jim Cantore report on footage of devastated communities, and put on our tall rainboots to go help the older people in our church clean up their yards from all the sicks and limbs that had fallen during the gale force winds. When I was seven-almost-eight, the power went out during Hurricane Katrina for two weeks. Since we were homeschooled, however, Explode-the-Code grammar and History of the World didn’t stop just because there was no light. My dad’s lawn business he ran on the side of teaching science and coaching football always picked up during hurricane season. Funny how home destruction would bring blessings in the form of extra dollars in the family food envelope to make our grocery budget actually last the thirty days of the month needed. All the buildings around town, even the Ol’ General Store downtown and Java Jacks Coffee House that looked like an abandoned observatory boarded up the windows, strapped down the tables, and stopped serving the city fuel of blueberry pancakes and locally roasted coffee beans. The town opened up the fairground barn storage, and Walmart, and Grace Bible Church, and First Baptist Church, and Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church, and the SFA charter school, and the SFA basketball coliseum, and every other open space to house hurricane refugees (mostly from Winnie and Fannett and Clear Lake and New Orleans) and whatever belongings the refugees could fit in their haphazardly packed vehicles. Our mismatched candles burned out within two or three days, but the combinations of thawing frozen items we turned into meals, cooked solely on the single burner attached to the propane stove, supplemented with the ready-to-eat, just-add-water mash from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) lasted until the power came on nine days later. Somehow, just a few ounces of H2O could turn powder into hot barbeque beef and frozen chocolate ice cream. Mimi and Pa got power back a lot faster, since Lufkin is bigger than Nacogdoches, so we made the hour drive to their house to stay until Deep East
Texas Electric Co-op could turn our lights and fridge and AC back on. They’d moved from the parsonage a few years before since Pa was diagnosed with Lymphoma and was too weak to continue preaching, so I wasn’t quite sure where the hurricane tracker had ended up. Pa went out to the back shop to get the fourwheeler out for the cousins and me since it was perfect mudding conditions. He opened his office in the shop to get the key hidden far above grandkid eyes, as I snuck around Pa and into the office. I glanced around and found the map I’d forgotten was missing. “Pa! It’s the hurricane tracker.” I exclaimed. “Oh, uh, yeah. You can take it over yonder if you want.” I pulled the magnetic map off the wall and darted into the kitchen. “Mom, look!” “Oh! That’s so cool, Claire! Pa helped me track ‘em when I was your age, too. Maybe you can show the younger kids. It could help them to understand what’s about to happen to their house.” “Okay!” I said as I grabbed a cup of Kool-Aid and went to rally the young’uns. We spent the rest of the afternoon plotting out the trail of hurricanes both current and only imagined. When Hurricane Harvey careened into the gulf coast during September ’17, I was nineteen and in my third year of college at John Brown University in Arkansas, seven hours from home. Hampshire was one of the first towns to get wiped. I knew it was hurricane season, I knew that it was a bad year, but I didn’t pay attention. Pa had passed away three years before, leaving the hurricane tracker with the magnets permanently fixated from Hurricane season ’12. My other great-aunt and great-uncle lost everything in their house, maxing out their insurance claim for both possessions and housing damages. When I called mom, though, I had one question after all the formalities of “how are Nonna and Poppa?” and “is anyone hurt?” and “what can I do?” “Hey Mom?” “Yeah?” “Can you find the hurricane tracker? That’s what Pa would want. There’s something about little magnets that help make sense of all this floody mess. I can’t do anything from Arkansas right now, but we can track the Hurricane.”
Keys, Matthew Campbell
N
RYAN K E E S
CRESCENT M O O N
ightbirds whistled their first call, cheering as the sun dipped below the horizon. “Hurry up, Yui,” called a young boy as he climbed out onto the roof, the clattering of metal following him. “Be careful with the telescope,” admonished Yui to her younger brother, Cass. “We’re gonna miss it,” he shouted back, setting up the little, refracting telescope, already gazing at the universe, adjusting the knobs to get the best image he could. “Don’t worry, we’ll see it,” encouraged Yui as she stepped out onto their roof. “We won’t see this ever again. We’ll be dead.” Cass threw one of his arms up to the skies. With a chuckle, Yui laid back against the roof, gazing at the starlight, peppering the night sky. “There’s gonna be more missions.” “But not another first one.” Cass gave a firm “hmph” as he continued to fiddle with the telescope. Yui was grateful she lived on the Plateau, away from the cities, cars, and sirens. Here, the stars sparkled like gemstones, and the constellations were simply vibrant. Yui gave a jubilant smile as her eyes drifted to her favorite thing in the sky. She painted her finger up the sky, landing on star Aquilae, or, as the ancients called her, Altair. She reached out, fingers spread, tenderly closing her hand, filling it with starlight and drawing it close. With a smile she opened her hand, blowing the starlight back into the sky. “Can you help me get this focused?” asked Cass, almost whining. “Neptune’s still blurry.” “Of course.” Yui gazed through the eyepiece at the fuzzy, blue ball. “You need a high magnification lens.” She pulled the lens out and grabbed the higher power one, sliding it into the telescope before peering back out into outer space. “There we go. Neptune’s nice and visible now,” she told Cass. “You can almost see Triton.” “Lemme see,” cheered Cass, his smile brighter than starlight, as he pushed Yui out of the way. “Oh, wow!” he called out. “That’s so cool. I can see Triton.” Yui smiled and leaned back against the roof, letting Cass gawk at the two far off bodies. “Kids, here it comes,” called their mom from down in the house. Cass pulled the telescope away and quickly swapped it out for a much wider lens.
Yui grabbed the best binoculars she had and focused on the band of solid starlight. With a flash of metal, it came into view, the little ship skimmed the edge, the rings not even budging a bit. Even from down on the surface, that shot looked close. There it was, man’s first ring shot. Now that little ship would be headed back around the globe, getting ready to land on a massive chunk of rock called Pan. Yui pulled her binoculars down and laid back, sighing in bliss at the sky above, the stars blinking, and the rings. Oh, those rings. A million, billion jewels dancing in the sun, glittering in a cosmic masterpiece of chaotic harmony. Yui wondered if there was an Earth out there without rings. She hoped not. She prayed that at least they had a moon to gaze at and shoot for, to romance about. With starlight in her hands and ringdust in her pocket, Yui couldn’t help but wonder what such a night with a crescent moon would be like.
Pink Disco, Ashton Rail Herrington
CRIMSON MEMORIES DREW JANZEN
T he sun beat down on the one-armed man as he leaned over to heave a crate of crab traps from the fishing boat that had just docked at the wharf. It
was almost noon, and the heat was relentless. Sweat slipped down his brow and dripped off his nose, staining the barnacled dock. Whatever moisture hit the wood was quickly sucked dry by the punishing heat. The one-armed man paused to wipe his brow. His hand was thick, calloused, and sported a frightening array of scars. He looked up to see the red-flushed face of the fish-man inches from his own. “If I’d wanted to sit ‘ere all day waiting for someone to unload my boat, I would’ve called me wife. At least she would’ve looked pretty doin’ it!” His words echoed across the wharfs. The one-armed man muttered an apology under his breath and began to move the crab traps with urgency. The fish-man proceeded to yell at both of the man’s mates, his voice booming across the wharf. The one-armed man bit back a curse. He glanced over at one of his mates. “Fish-men are all the same. Ugly with foul mouths.” His mate nodded sagely. “Ugly wives too. I tried, not my type.” He grabbed another trap and added it to the pile. “But I ain’t gonna cause no riot s’long’s he pays me tab.” The one-armed man shrugged. “S’pose so.” As he set his crate down, his eyes caught a glimpse of the calm sea beyond the confines of the wharf. The waves were just cresting, their delicate white tips flying toward the shore like sea bound gulls. The ocean’s roar entranced him. His arm dropped to his side, pausing its work. A small sigh escaped him, bygone memories rippling through his mind. Memories of the days out at sea. He could feel the breeze. Smell the salt water. He could almost feel… WHACK! The one-armed man’s knees buckled, and he fell hard. Scurrying to his feet he found the old fish-man scowling at him, a thick oar gripped in his hands. With a furious look plastered on his face, the man spouted a string of abuse that curled the dock workers’ ears and scared the very devil off the wharf. A moment later, after he had caught his breath, the oar-wielder gave his victim a more direct tongue lashing. “You ain’t gettin’ paid to jus’ stand there! I’ve met your type b’fore! You’re nothin’ but a lazy cripple livin’ off the kindness of men like me!” He jabbed a fat thumb toward himself. “You ain’t worth the air you’re breathin’! You’d better be thankful my wife’s a religious woman, oth’wise I’d beat you til you was nothin’ but black and blue!” The man sucked in a breath, his face now a bright shade of red. He shot one more glare at the one-armed cripple. “Now get back to work!” The fish-man concluded by hocking up a gob of yellow phlegm at the
Living Water, Rachel Norwood
one-armed man’s feet and stepping back to oversee the unloading, leaning on his oar threateningly. The cripple turned his back on the fish-man, and, after feeling the tender lump on his scalp, proceeded to unload crab traps for another quarter hour until the boat was left empty, its contents stacked on the wharf. The man and his mates turned to the fish-man, their chests heaving, calloused hands at their sides. The fish-man reached his grimy trouser pocket and pulled out two gold coins and a silver dollar. He handed the golds to the one-armed man’s mates, who walked away, grinning with thoughts of the night ahead. “Folks like you don’ even deserve to live. Urchins is all you are.” The cripple turned to face the fishman, his brow furrowed. The fish-man looked at him, at the disgusted look on his face. “A one-armed urchin at that.” He slapped the silver piece into the cripple’s remaining hand. “Off with you, I’ve got crabs to sell.” The fishman spat and sauntered off the wharf. The one-armed man watched him leave in disgust. Piece of scum. He absentmindedly touched the stump of his left arm. A twinge of pain shot through his absent wrist. It seemed like only yesterday he had two strong arms. He sighed once again and slipped the small coin into his weather-beaten trousers. Better some than none, he liked to say. P’rhaps the fish-man was right, I’m a good for nothin’, he wondered. The one-armed man ambled off the wharf, his head down. He walked with a sailor’s swagger, his legs a little bowed. The streets were crowded with disembarking sailors, haggling fish-men, and shouting sellers of all sorts. After a few turns down second-rate alleyways, he sauntered over to Mari’s Pub. Muscling his way through the throng, the cripple pushed his way inside. The air was thick with the smell of sour beer and charred fish. He didn’t mind. The owner was kind enough. She had pity on the lowly and had offered the man some work as a bartender. After weaving his way through the eating hall, the one-armed man slipped behind the counter and relieved the bartender on duty. Over the course of the next few hours, he broke up a dozen fights, filled a barrel full of drinks, and handed out too many bottles of liquid courage to count. By the time his shift was finished, his shirt
sported a few more stains than before, mostly from tipsy dock workers or sailors flinging around full bottles of ale or rum. His voice was hoarse from shouting out over the row to tell someone to shut their gob or to stop throwing ale around. Someone was always throwing ale around. But after a few, long hours, he was finally relieved and stepped outside. Slowly the one-armed man made his way back out onto the wharf. He sighed and looked out onto the water. The sun was beginning to set over the deserted docks. All the men had either sailed away on the outgoing tide or were inside a pub drinking with their mates. Gazing out onto the water, the cripple sat down the wharf’s edge, his legs dangling a foot or so from the water. He sat still, reminiscing. He could still feel the wind in his hair and the spray on his face. The deck rolling beneath his feet and the tiller in his hands. He remembered the slapping of the white canvas sails and the crew running about, climbing the rat lines and trimming the sails. The waves pounded against the bow and ran off the sides. He remembered his crew calling to him. Captain… captain. His two strong arms gripped the tiller and steered the great ship wherever he thought best. Oh, those days… The memories trickled through the one-armed man’s mind like sand through and hourglass. But also something worse. He remembered the last few days he had spent on the sea. It was dusk and the wind had begun to pick up. He was on the tiller when Jonah, his first mate, called up to him. “Capn’, we mus’ jibe starboard. That storm’s acomin’, and we’d bes’ be head’n for land.” But the captain, intoxicated by the wind and the waves, dismissed Jonah and continued on into the night. No storm was stronger than he. Not long after the sun had gone down, the wind began to howl. The waves transformed into mountains of water, seething with foam. They pounded his ship and she floundered, dead in the water. Rain had begun. It poured down in blinding sheets. Water flooded the deck, and the ship began to go under. The crew raced to the rowboats, screaming for mercy. They didn’t even make it across the deck. Looming over the ship, a great mass of water, slammed down on them and threw the crew overboard. Over the sound of the wind the captain heard Jonah’s final scream. A wave grabbed the captain and began to thrust him into the water when
something stopped him. He glanced over to see his left arm caught in the rigging and felt the weight of the ship pulling him under. The captain managed a single breath before he was forced under. He fought to free himself from the rigging. The knots over his arm were too tight and the cording too strong to cut through before he drowned, so the captain, chest convulsing, drew his rigging knife and struck down on his arm, freeing himself from the ship as it fell away into the depths. By some miracle, the captain survived. He still didn’t understand how. After the storm passed, he removed his shirt and tied it to the stump of his wretched arm to curb the bleeding and clung to a piece of driftwood for two days until a trading vessel, en route to Port Bay, drifted past, and he was pulled aboard. For the next month the captain searched feverishly for his crew. He asked any vessels coming in or going out if they had seen anyone, but he always received the same answer. Out of his crew of thirty, only he had survived. Not even their bodies were recovered. A tear slipped off his face, rippling the water beneath the wharf. The one-armed man continued to gaze out onto the waves, allowing his tears to flow. Ever since that day, he hadn’t been able to bear going back out onto the waves. The pain was too great. Even if he could, no captain would ever accept a one-armed sailor. So he stayed here on the wharfs of Port Bay, working to forget his pain and move on. But like the twinges in his absent wrist, the memories never left. They had become a part of him. At night he still dreamed of sailing. In his dreams he had two strong arms, and he stood atop a huge stone gazing out onto a sea of crimson clouds. And sailing on those clouds was a crimson ship with a dozen sails. It rode the waves and birds flew with it. It was beautiful. The one-armed man stood up from the jetty and walked back into town as the sun finally sank below the horizon waves, just as his ship had slipped beneath the waters all those years before.
Rush, Sue Artiga
Cleansing myself as one would after sin; scrubbing to rinse off his lingering gaze. The power of his presence alone, unwelcome yet undisputed; I have no say in this—no say at all. Like Adam reaching for the apple, in temptation, submits; his sin of looking upon myself, a married woman. Objectified, yet unable to object, I rinse. What else can I do? He who was a calculated pawn in the King’s great gambit becomes a lost memory of the past. A mourning period interrupted with an unrefusable offer; my finger, once again occupied by a reminder of my station. Blessed with an heir, yet cursed with a reminder of what I once had, what was to be taken from me. Now my bath serves as a baptism— a daily purification of the King’s own taste of the apple and so I rinse. What else can I do?
Kendelle Williams
BATHSHEBA
Forbidden Fruit, Sarah Gayler
Grandpa’s holding Grandma’s hand, sorting it from Kings to Ace. The kitchen table is set with orange juice in wine glasses and the dripping, sticking syrup jar. Grandma Irene spins in cycles like white linen and fireflies that could have been—should have been—city lights. Her knowledge of the world trapped in $1 crosswords leading to small-town crossroads, she’s always tending to the tasks at hand: church casseroles, wrinkles in button-ups, flyaway hairs on the heads of flyaway children— until suddenly Grandpa’s forgotten-in-the-basement black-and-white VHS is shoved in some cold cement corner, and she’s unboxing her screen full of commercialized color and reaching for magazines and a touch more of red blush and sworn off creek camping and fishing and Grandma’s hand plays the Ace. We at the table shake our heads and call her a cheat.
GRANDMA’S HAND Julianne Petersen
MORNING COUNTRY ROAD
Morning Country Road, Peter Pohle
Lights in the Water, Kristin Arft
with her children asleep in their beds,
M A D I S O N H AT F I E L D
inside my cousin’s home
A F T E R B E D T I M E
A shot of aged whiskey for the dead
whispering crude jokes to quench our tears. Inside my cousin’s home, where her children don’t know quite yet, we whisper anything but his name to quench our tears, making certain no little ears overhear. Still asleep, the children don’t know that they will never see him again, so we make certain no little ears overhear, dreading to tell them that life just ends. They will never see him again but we, still like children, don’t want to tell them life just ends because we never learned how. We are still just kids, though our throats burn, mourning the way we learned how: shots of aged whiskey for the dead. Let There Be Light, Maggie House
Peaceful in Nature, Kristin Arft
Goat’s Eye View, Faith Brown
BEATRICE STAGED J u l i a n n e
P e t e r s e n
Again, the wind-stroked Aeolian lyre is leashed to the stage, singing stranger’s songs. Couch creatures file into the audience, analyzing their pet, comparing treats. Center stage, she becomes their Beatrice: a missed life’s look-alike lover too young. “Shame I wasn’t born twenty years ago,” says a man as his wife laughs at his joke. She’s divine online, kenneled in thumbnails and all-knowing comment sections and throat sore encores through the monitors that lie at her covered feet, crowd pleased, algorithmic trick: falling while she flies. Couch creatures cross bridges such as age gaps, boundaries, tuning her strings flat for keys they play best. For there are no minor rules in music, only figures to impress.
Backstroke, Bethany Burks
julianne petersen Despite our class-of-nine school, the Baptist church fell short. Algebra taught in the janitor’s closet, ruler always marking attendance and distance from our knees to our skirts. And it never quite fit Ryan. His polo one-size-too-small, hung on his scare-crow frame, long rants of loneliness spent on shooter games and outbursts in Discord chains, claims that I was the only other human in our school of robots. “This is the reason girls do better in schools now,” griped our English teacher, but Ryan’s hand was raised only to reach his face, thinking that blemished skin like his meant getting picked on—like a car alarm at sunset no one bothered to watch but stopped to curse the sound, anyways. His cadence clattered—a comment section in all-caps, thoughts spread across old tabs, group chats gathering strangers he shared long nights with, braving their too-small robot worlds. When our final year came, our class of eight was one-too-small for Ryan. He left before our caps touched the sky. Unwashed hair now buzzed and grades reporting the way his form lied on foreign hot desert sand, singing “Dulce et decorum est!” —the size of men had finally found its fit on Ryan.
The Size of Men
Do I Dare, Savannah Green
Anne of the River, Jessica Thompson
SUBMITTERS Ashton Rail Herrington
Ashton is a bright and colorful portrait and wedding photographer, who loves all things vintage and unique. She graduated from JBU in 2016 and resides locally in NWA.
Bethany Burks
Bethany is a Wedding and Portrait photographer, who loves capturing other people’s special moments.
Caroline House
Caroline is a sophomore biology major and an amateur art devotee.
Faith Brown
Faith is a senior biology major. Caring for God’s creatures is her passion, and she loves to capture them in photos.
Jessica Thompson
Jessica is a Siloam native and JBU grad, who loves to create art in all kinds of forms. She works in traditional and digital illustration, jewelry making, fluid art, 3D printing and sculpture, and some woodworking. She loves using and growing the gifts God has given her to show the beauty of His creation. Katelyn is a current fine art/illustration major and graphic design minor at John Brown University. As an artist, Katelyn hopes to invite people into a space where faith and art can coexist.
Katelyn Johnson Kristin Arft
Kristin is an art student and a lover of photography.
Kyle Blair
Kyle is an illustrator, printmaker, and designer known for his bright colors, wild characters, and cheeky humor. Apart from his fine art and freelance illustration work, Kyle also works as a Creative Director in Northwest Arkansas, where he lives with his wife and his pup named Goose.
Maggie House
Maggie is a senior majoring in art/illustration. She loves reading, baking, and wiener dogs.
Matthew Campbell
Matthew is 20 years old and is a junior integrated marketing communications major from Bentonville, Arkansas.
Peter Pohle
Peter was born in Germany, and has been teaching art at JBU since 2001.
Rachel Norwood
Rachel is a freshman studying family & human services and Spanish, with a minor in art/illustration. She enjoys using art to represent the little moments of life and reminding us to stop and think about the incredible world we live in.
Sarah Gayler
Sarah is senior graphic design major, born and raised in Texas. She has a love for creativity, adventures, and deep conversations.
Sue Artiga
Sue is a black & white photographer based in Northwest Arkansas and a native of El Salvador, Central America. She has always been passionate about photography, picking up her first camera at 12 years old and hasn’t stopped taking pictures since. Currently, she is working on her B. S. in photography with a minor in graphic design at John Brown University.
Savannah Green
Savannah is a sophomore photography major. She loves photographing in vibrant color and high contrast without heavy edits, only small enhancements to bring out more of the beauty God has created.
Ali Jargo
Ali is a freshman English major with a minor in digital cinema. She enjoys talking about the enneagram, playing ukulele, and spending her life savings on thrifting.
Drew Janzen
Drew is Rwandan at heart with a Kansan soul. He loves to run, bike, and throw plastic frisbees at metal baskets for fun.
Olivia Choate
Olivia is an MK from the Solomon Islands. She has always loved creating fictional characters and enjoys sharing her stories with her friends. Laughing is her favorite pastime.
Ryan Kees
Ryan is a first year biology major with a passion for writing, reading and story telling, and an interest in music, mythology, culture, and creating stories that simply take others on a journey, wherever that trail may lead.
Claire Johnson
Claire is the Associate Director of Admissions at JBU and is an alumna of both the English and Bible department (‘19). She worked on staff with Shards of Light as an undergrad student, but this is her first submission to the journal. She loves hot tea, birthdays, correcting comma placements, and swapping stories with people she meets.
Joseph Deitzer
Joseph is an avid hiker, cook, reader, and writer. He lives in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, with his wife, Victoria, and his cat, Monkey. Joseph is a full-time student at JBU, where he majors in English and creative writing, with hopes to graduate in spring of 2024.
Julia Bottoms
Julia hails from the great state of Louisiana, home of jambalaya, crawfish, and everything else cajun. When she’s not knee-deep in her nursing studies, she loves exploring the beautiful outdoors, enjoying tea with a friend, or pretending to train for the olympics in the WLHC pool. Missions, science, and theology are her passions.
Julianne Petersen
Julianne is an English major at John Brown University. She enjoys writing songs and poetry and hopes to one day run a country’s official Twitter so that she can unfollow other countries in times of political turmoil.
Kendelle Williams
Kendelle is an English turned Spanish major, with a heart for country house novels and big books that she pretends to comprehend. She has enjoyed writing her whole life, but taking Dr. Gambill’s Intro to Creative Writing class helped her to discover her love for poetry and putting her feelings into words.
Luke Travis
Luke is a cranky old man with knees to match. Enjoys beating birds to the sunrise, baking cookies for philosophy club, and Brutalist 70’s architecture. He supposes he enjoys the letter “B,” too.
Madison Hatfield
Madison is a senior English and theatre student who hopes to pursue theatrical studies in some form after graduation. She loves discussing beauty, truth, and art and how they coincide with one another.
Peter Spaulding
Peter is a graduate student at Marquette University and Assistant Editor at Renascence Journal. He has published poems with Portage Magazine, Ekstasis, and elsewhere. He is a husband of Erin and a father of Mary, and they live in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where they enjoy long walks.
Shards of Light seeks to celebrate exemplary original work from students, alumni, and faculty in a legitimate art and literary journal to foster a creative community throughout John Brown University.