Kentucky Kernel Literary Edition: April 20, 2023

LITERARY EDITION SPRING 2023

Thursday, April 20, 2023 kentuckykernel

2|home

3|Chapter & Palm Springs

4|Queen of the Ashes & Chained Rock

5|it's okay, i'll protect you forever & Untitled art

6|Mountain top removal in Appalachia

7|invasive species & Vyn

8|to the bone & Untitled art

9|suffer the scarring

10|ducks! & Untitled art

11|A Summer Evening Nashville

12|If i may, i pray & Junk Drawer

13|Untitled art & to my favorite

14|Let's Be Kids Again&Untitledart

15|Islamaphobia & Intimacy

16|Jenna & Rancho Roses

On the Cover: Untitled art by Lucas de Lima | Sophomore, Architecture

HANNAH STANLEY | JUNIOR, MARKETING AND COMMUNICATION

not the house we grew up in or the one we pay rent to every month nor four walls with a roof over head or a bedroom with a door that locks

Not something to stay in or keep you trapped one spot for the rest of your life

A permanent taint to your name following you wherever you go

an expense to never be written off something you can’t claim because it can dissipate in seconds foreclosed and forgotten leased to someone else and no longer called yours

A figment of my imagination never to become reality

until you.

the feeling in between your arms each second I cherish what I wish carried me everywhere I went

the safety of your presence no matter the distance in each word you say in each wall you built to protect me

something so delicate an existence I never had before what I wish to forever keep, never leased to someone else and no longer called mine

an investment not an incidental permanent not rented something to call ours not mine

Chapter

EMILY BURDITT | FRESHMAN, ENGLISH AND PSYCHOLOGY

When I tell people about us, they react. How could they not? With my storytelling weaving us in and out of parked cars, ice cream shops, your leafy green bedroom walls; they find themselves there with us. When they know the end, they’ll be relieved they weren’t. With each turn they react in the ways you should have: shock, delight, spite, and the apologies that leave their lips by “the end” almost make up for the one I never heard from you.

If only their interest and awe could make up for your lack for it was only in the end I learned to separate your fact from my fiction: you were never enraptured by me, taking my morals as gospel and letting me ramble until my throat ran dry and I ran out of things to say. Any story I told you never took up space in your brain, but even without ours to tell, I will have something to say and someone to listen. And so I could say that I don’t need you but I may never really mean it

Palm Springs

Queen of the Ashes

Too often I’ve watched my bridges burn because they let their spark grow too bright

Too often I’ve gotten the best view in the city to watch my city burn

So just call me Queen of the Ashes ‘cause that’s all I’ve got to show for my love

And if you’re the only one still standing Are you a survivor or the villain?

I want my love to burn bright but what if it burned the bright?

Too often I’ve seen the lifelines snap and the beautiful birds hit the rock bottom

Too often I’ve given all I have to a chasm I can’t fill

So I watch the ashes and ashes as we all fall down

I can’t befriend a low burning candle with my own wick running short So I’ll leave your firework display And maybe that will freeze my heart

But I will never again be Queen of the Ashes

Chained Rock

ELIJAH HOWE | GRADUATE STUDENT, STUDIO ART

MARGARET SANSOUCY | FRESHMAN, ENGLISH

it's okay, i'll protect you forever

ANNA ZHENG | FRESHMAN, ART ADMINISTRATION AND DIGITAL MEDIA DESIGN

MARTHA LOWE | JUNIOR, STUDIO ART

It was a cold autumn day, and I am still wondering how I ended up there. I was hiking in the woods, in this beautiful place that shifts your insides. A place that connects with your soul, body, and mind.

Somehow, somewhere along the path the place dissolved into this vast space, no more trees -- only weedy fields. It was obvious that something violent had happened here, something turned the familiar place with familiar sights and smells into a barren, alien-like landscape.

I could feel the cool breeze on my neck. I did not give it a second thought and continued climbing the hill. I wanted to see how vast this man-made extraterrestrial space was. I could feel the sense of anticipation that was building in me with each step I took upwards. If you have ever climbed,

Mountain top removal in Appalachia

ZAHRA DANESHVAR | GRADUATE STUDENT, DESIGN

you know how exciting it is to realize that soon you will be at the top of a mountain or hill. As I was taking my last steps toward the crest of the hill, I noticed that something was different about this place. I reached the top, but it looked almost the same as the weedy field down the hill. Could it be possible that I reached the top of the hill without noticing and then climbed down again? Or maybe I was in a time loop; started with the vast weedy field, climbed the hill, and again another vast weedy hill.

I was puzzled, looked down on the lower hill to make sure that I was not in the same space as before. As I looked from the flat top of the hill, I could see the previous vast weedy field, and beyond that was the

beautiful mountains covered with trees.

I was surrounded by an alien-like yellow field that was ringed with waves of trees. I was standing in the middle of a yellow dot in a green page. It was indeed a space in the middle of a place. A sudden strong wind made me close my eyes and shield my face. I heard a surprising sound from behind. It was the sound of a cloth fluttering in the wind. I turned around and right in the middle of this field, was a tiny two-story structure with walls of curtains. I walked toward it with a lot of questions in my head: what is it? Why is it there? Is there someone or something behind the curtains? Can I go inside? Should I go inside?

As I walked closer, the details

of the structure became more visible. There were tiny lights embedded in the curtains and whenever a breeze fluttered them, it looked like little fireflies that were dancing to the music of the wind. A stronger breeze moved the curtains, and I could see that there was red neon lighting the interior of the structure. I reached out and touched the fabric. The fabric had little glowing strings woven into it. I pulled the curtain aside and stepped inside. The exposed metal structure was highlighted with red neon stripes. The feeling was similar to an alleyway you might happen upon in Tokyo, dead ending into a tiny, neon basement bar. I could feel the

excitement that was building up inside me. I was in a hybrid box. A solid structure with soft envelope.

Something that I did not notice before stepping in, was that there was a glass box inside the hybrid box.

So, there I was, standing inside one box but outside another. I was surrounded by dancing curtains and in front of me was a sliding glass door. I looked up and saw a cork ceiling twenty feet above the ground. I took a step further and hold the rectangular steel handle of the glass door and slide it open. I stepped in and saw a set of stairs leading down below the barren landscape.

It was a nesting doll, a place embedded in a dark box, inside of a glass box, within a hybrid structural box further embedded into a weedy space surrounded by a woody place. The nested layers radiated outward from my body, all connected, all tied to one another.

invasive species

CARTER SKAGGS | SENIOR, JOURNALISM

my roots sprawl through the bluegrass like flourishing lime green kudzu strings, those devouring long things eating up land in a mean streak. i’m the fallen leaves from the tulip trees, thick goldenrod-colored dust gathered from bunches of yellow fluff. i run through the streams of the river Red, i dig into the skins of dogs as ticks from evergreens; it is me who whistles through your wind chimes during september windstreams. i show up bilirubin bruisin’ contusions on the smooth front-ends of a child’s shin, them darling rascals gushing through thrush like freshly bulldozed gravel roads for newly curbed suburban summertime blurs; those little red freshwater pearl cluster-bumps oozing puss—oily leaves shaped like cardinal feet (i’m the sticky residue dripping from canker tree wounds, too). it is i who travels through the chitter and chatter of scattered city slickbacked slackers, through freckles splattered on a small kid’s cheek i speak in sheets of limestone shelves showing through shallow creeks, or a fog rolling along the horizon like hot breath on a window pane, huddles of people in a blizzard all screaming my name—i’m there, i’m there, i’m there.

Vyn

MARTHA MCHANEY | SENIOR, ART HISTORY, VISUAL STUDIES AND ARTS ADMINISTRATION

to the bone

KARRINGTON GARLAND | SENIOR, JOURNALISM

abuelita doesn’t understand why my mother & i eat to the bone,

how we nibble into the chicken, pecking like birds into the softened meat til we uncover the muddy porcelain lying dead in our earth toned hands white smooth twigs collected onto our plates like tiny trophies

abuelita doesn’t peck at cartilage, grows offended when asked why her teeth don’t cut deep enough, why she leaves flecks of chicken flesh scattered atop the carcass, little shreds of unspooled carnage teeth marks, halfmoons unfinished

uncomplete devouring unfurled onto her plate

maybe it’s her mouth thick tongued suitable enough to coax the invisible wounds on our napes into fruition her subtle power in words, they spill out her mouth dead silent stale in the air above our heads it’s her heavy sadness adorning our tiny temples static & vibrant & potent, curling out of her wilting browning orifice cyclical utterance of a vague mind heated over by palpable sadness

you know, she cries when we leave right?

time tumbling out of the cracks of her leathery hands, she only knows how to cook & clean & hoard her love into empty plots of land left for her children & their children she’s building generational wealth between her tears, her memories & the vacant land of Leigh Acres, which my mother & i will never build upon so many humid memories are buried in the fertile ground of this neighborhood, so many empty echoes to my mother’s past life as a girl & to my abuelitas early days of frenzied motherhood,

hoarding her love into the barren spaces left in the halls of my mother’s childhood home a couple plots away from our new land there is only so much time before we too are nothing but colorless bones buried under someone else’s home

OLIVIA BROOKS | SOPHOMORE, PSYCHOLOGY AND STUDIO ART

The door was open, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go in. He was frozen outside the door. The fireman’s childhood home. Ablaze. He had always admired its beauty and hoped to own it someday. That hope was dead now, burned to death.

He mustered the courage to walk through the door. This was his job. He signed up for this. The owners weren’t home when this happened; he wondered who would tell them - tell them their beautiful house is gone.

Inside, his heart broke. The walls he had run his hand along every day suffered the scarring of third-degree burns to its beautiful wallpaper skin. The worn mahogany banister had flames dancing around it, climbing the wall to reach the new family’s pictures.

In the living room, his younger self runs around the couch with his brothers, leaping over cushions, dodging fake bulletschildlike laughter louder than the crackling of the flames.

And then, screaming. A desperate cry for help tumbles down the stairs, crashing into him. The burning stairs creak, threatening to break as he walks up them. The higher

suf fer the scarring

HAILEY MARTIN | FRESHMAN, ENGLISH

in the house he goes, the hotter, the thicker, the air gets.

Through the smoke at the top of the stairs, the fireman sees him and his brothers running between their bedrooms, jumping over flames, passing through smoke, giggling with excitement at a new challenge. The noise pulls him back into reality: it’s not his giggling brothers, it’s cries for help from a child. He opens the doors of his brothers’ bedrooms, searching for the sound, as he walks down the hall. But when he reaches his old room, the door is open. And through it, he could hear the sound clearly. Weeping and choking on the air, the fireman heard a child in his room. On the door, he sees the name of who the room now belongs to: Zachary.

A boy in train pajamas sits on the bed, back to the door, looking out the window. His blanket is pulled up to his face and his knees pulled up to his chest. Zachary’s shoulders shook as he cried silently, hiding tears from a nonexistent crowd, and he wondered if Zachary’s father had told him the same thing his dad did: Real men don’t cry, leave that job to the women in the house. Was this room Zachary’s safe haven too? In words, in tears, in screams into pillows, into his room, the fireman had

released the emotions repressed by his family. He knew he should help the boy. But he had cried enough tears and felt enough pain in this room. Could he take any more of it?

It didn’t matter how he felt. He had to save this boy. Could he live with himself if he didn’t?

“Zachary?” the fireman asked. Turning his head, Zachary looked at him fearfully.

“I’m here to help you,” he says, “to get you to safety,” extending a hand to the boy. Zachary stretches to be picked up and the fireman carries him out. But then, Zachary cries out.

“Go back, go back fireman! I need my blankie!”

“Zachary, it’s not safe, we have to go, now.”

Twisting from his arms, Zachary jumps down and runs into his bedroom.

“No, come back!” the fireman yells, reaching for him. Just as Zachary reaches for his blanket, the burned-through floor gives way and pulls him down.

Crashing, crying.

Falling into the flames below. He only wanted his blanket.

As the fireman saw this, the breath left his lungs. He stumbled down the stairs. Gasping for air. Screaming for help.

LUCAS DE LIMA | SOPHOMORE, ARCHITECTURE

ducks!

KENDALL STATON | SENIOR, JOURNALISM

A Summer Evening Nashville

The hot Tennessee sun rays seared into the asphalt on Broadway. A little girl with blonde pig-tails tied with pink bows held her mother’s hand as they waited for the crosswalk to turn.

Walk Sign is on, an automated male voice said firmly and began its countdown. She and her mother took a step onto the pavement along with several other strangers. Her ruffled dress blew in the summer breeze as she tried to jump from one white stripe to the next.

“Come on, honey.” Her mother said, pulling her arm slightly.

“Where are we going, Mommy?” She asked inquisitively, but her mother didn’t respond. They stepped onto the sidewalk and turned left. She was surrounded by new things she had never seen before: buildings that touched the sky, women in fancy dresses, and these strange buses with loud music and people dancing on them.

One was passing them now, one of these vehicles, and she watched the people on it through the large openings that were held together by rails. The bus had mostly women, one of them reminded her of her mother, though her mother didn’t own any clothes that looked like that.

There was one man on the bus and he was wearing a police officer’s uniform. The little girl wondered what those women did to get into trouble, until he started unbuttoning his shirt and dancing strangely in front of them. The little

girl watched, confused and embarrassed, why was the officer removing his clothes? She was glad when the bus turned left at the next street, because she didn’t like watching the man and those women, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

At the next intersection, her mother pulled her arm to the right to go down a new street. It was here where she saw the most amazing, beautiful person she had ever seen. The woman was as tall as a building, her deep brown skin glittering under the sun. She had legs that stretched for miles and they were clad in rainbow sequins, in fact, her whole body was covered in rainbow sequins, except her exposed arms, which were muscular and decorated with inky black swirls.

She had bright blonde hair, like her own, but it reached the clouds in tight curls.

The woman was walking towards them on the sidewalk and when her mother saw her, she gripped the little girl’s hand tighter and pulled her behind her, as if to hide her.

“Mommy, stop!” She shouted, pulling free from her grip, just when then woman was in front of them. The woman stopped in her tracks to avoid running into her. The little girl looked up at the woman, the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, like a princess or a unicorn, and the woman looked down at her.

“You better be careful and listen to your Momma now,” the woman said to her in a deep voice. The little girl was too mesmerized to say

anything back, so she just stared at the woman and smiled sheepishly.

“Come on! Now!” Her mother snapped, yanking her by her hand, she bent down to get on

the same level as the little girl. “Don’t you ever pull away from me again.”

The little girl just hung her head and nodded. Her mother stood up and pulled her daughter along with her. The little girl kept her eyes on the ground until she heard police sirens coming from behind them. Both of them turned at the alert. The car was pulled up by the sidewalk where they had just been and where the woman was now. The woman stood there with her hands up as the officers approached her.

“Come on,” her mother said again, pulling the little girl away from the scene. But she kept turning back, watching the officers pin the woman against the car and put her in handcuffs— they turned a corner and the little girl couldn’t see what happened next.

When they made it to their car, the little girl asked her mother why the police officers took that woman away.

“He shouldn’t be dressed like that, not in public. It’s not appropriate.” Her mother replied. The little girl was confused, she didn’t know why it mattered if the woman was a “he” or a “she,” she just thought they looked beautiful.

If i may, i pray

JAZMIN ROSE | JUNIOR, WRD AND ENGLISH

i pray one day you can be yourself. you can play dice, and not lose your life. pray you can lay in your own bed, and not be in your head about who may come in, and steal you and rob your future kin, of a father. because they didn’t bother, because they saw your skin, oh i pray this wouldn’t happen. i pray your locked hair, gold teeth, and peoples urge to stare, doesn’t make you go instinct, the black male species, left rare.

i pray that this happens no more, but i am sore because i know by time i finish reading this there will be more, and more, black boys gone. and i cannot do anything but better love, appreciate, uplift, and allow the men in my life to be free, careless, fun, naive, innocent. because i may be the only one who views them that way. but i will continue to view them so, if i May, so this I pray.

Junk Drawer

to my favorite

RAYLEIGH DEATON | SENIOR, COMMUNICATION AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

i didn’t know how comfortable life with another could be. sweetness and sweetness and sweetness.

you are a haven a home a sanctuary.

to be understood fully is a gift unrivaled.

the world is large and vast but small when with the one with whom i belong.

you are my everything and my heart and my song.

words flow like music and laughter soars like a melody when time passes with you.

time passes and we grow. changing. it is altogether lovely.

you are altogether lovely.

to be yours is heaven.

ISABELLA LEE | JUNIOR, DIGITAL DESIGN

Let's Be Kids Again

AVA WEECE | JUNIOR, ENGLISH

“Mama, I’m looking for treasure,” Teddy says, with a determined squinting of his eyes. He has short wiry hair and large eyes, like his father. His mother, Alice, looks up from the dishes and sighs.

“Treasure?”

Teddy nods and fishes a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket.

“I buried it last week so it would stay hidden and I made this map but now I wanna dig for it to make money to buy blue laces for my shoes since everyone at school says you run faster if you have blue laces,” he blurts out breathlessly, all while waving the map and pulling on rain boots.

Alice holds back a giggle and runs her fingers through her hair. He’s always up to something. “Where are you going to look for it? Your dad

will be home soon, maybe he can help.”

Teddy points out the window. “I buried it out there! And Dad can’t help since everyone knows that adults can’t see the treasure,” he says, making a “Duh!” expression and reaching for the doorknob.

“Ok, you can look for your treasure, but you’re only allowed to dig three holes!” Alice warns. “Only three, do you understand? We’re having company over next week and I don’t want the yard to look messy.” She gives him a stern but kind glance, and he salutes her before stamping out the door.

Alice laughs to herself as the door closes and goes back to the sink. Looking out the window, she sees Teddy stab the ground with his shovel and lean into it like he was trying to move

a small elephant. Three holes won’t be bad. Besides, it gives me an excuse to plant the new flowers I got last week. She puts the last dishes away in the cabinets and looks for a spoon to stir her coffee. Before she can find one, she hears tires climbing up the wet concrete and the low rumble of the garage.

For the complete short story, visit our website:

JESSE MILLER | SENIOR, DIGITAL MEDIA AND DESIGN

Islamophobia

AKHIRA MAHAL | MFA, ENGLISH

We cover our heads to shield ourselves from fire, from damnation of a nation that believe we cover and cower from bombs that we send, but the only threat is the one sent from them. The message that terror only comes from lips of a foreign land, and Arabic is the language of the devil’s heathens. As-salamu alaikum is not a saying of doom— it’s a Muslim’s way of saying peace be with you

But we’re still taken out, one by one, out of our homes, away from our freedom. They tell us go back to where you came— but this is the land I was born and raised. Here I can raise my hands in praise of a flag, yet I’m investigated when I praise all that God has granted?

I strip myself bare for thirty days straight— No grudges. No food. No water. No hate— only praying five times a day on my knees, yet I’m still accused of plotting and asked may I search you please?

I am not the media’s twisted portrayal of what you see on tv. I am a human being.

MARTHA MCHANEY | SENIOR, ART HISTORY, VISUAL STUDIES AND ARTS ADMINISTRATION

Rancho Roses

ABBEY CUTRER | SOPHOMORE, JOURNALISM

JENNA

MARTHA MCHANEY | SENIOR, ART HISTORY, VISUAL STUDIES AND ARTS ADMINISTRATION