THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
K I O S K 6 1
found
paradise
paradise
lost
FA L L
2019
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
K I O S K 6 1
FA L L
2019
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Ethan Eben Gran Hotel, 2017
PARADISE LOST
Climate crisis and political turmoil are changing life as we know it, and the future we thought we had—the future we’ve been preparing for—is hanging in the balance, unlikely to ever become reality. In times of uncertainty, we must make room for grieving, mourning a paradise lost, and acquiescing, however brief, into darkness. But we must also carry on, celebrate life, and look for the light wherever we can find it. For many of us, art is the space where this light finds a home. Through art, we find the courage to persist, transform, and above all, create a new future for ourselves and our world. Maybe what we’ve lost
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wasn’t paradise,
after all.
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Allie Carroll Cielo, 2019
PARADISE LOST
Nicole Weyer Fermata, 2019 Ellie Closen Un tramonto, 2019
“Ah, why should all mankind for one man’s fault, be condemned, if guiltless?” John Milton, Paradise Lost
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Allie Carroll Barceloneta, 2019
PARADISE LOST
Delphica Unclipped by Elizabeth Saama
Aladon, 3071, Deconsecrated.
own community.. A world without the need for greed and consumption. A world without the need to tear apart our lands for false riches. A world without the pain of losing our loves due to the
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Looking upon the remains of the world, I ask this question: What will you do when it comes for your
negligence of those claiming to know best of our safety.
daughters? Sons? Friends? Allies? Enemies? How long will you let yourself to be contaminated?
Our safety? Or our erasure?
Re-contaminated? Re-born, just to die the same. Will that be the true paradise of relief?
We will not be the victor of this round. Aladon has failed, as Earth before us. She has given me the
I was told that is a paradise lost. Nothing was learned from the old Earth and now the same
chance to spare the few; are you worthy of creating a new paradise? One born from the ashes…
mistakes occur again. True, that history repeats itself, good or bad. As the pillars fall and the new
one re-shaped into a fantasy of substance and meaning. Will we be scholars of the new? Will the
regimes rebuild themselves, I first hide within myself to find that bit of paradise.
weight of the old fall burden to our imagination? Will it be a land of colours? And how will the land
It is natural.
of the greys affect that? Questions we will ask on the way, answers that we will be forced to find in
I close my eyes trying to erase the engraved images in my memory. I ask this question upon
the new paradise.
myself: How can there be paradise if your world has been doomed from your ancestors’ sins?
I turn my head up to her, no need her comfort now.
She above us all gave the warning, falling upon deaf ears. It was viewed as a future wrapped in
A Mother, she had wept for us to stop the burning, stealing, raping, killing…and we laughed at her
false riddles.
pain, fooled by our own vices.
Watched as her own family died, homes decayed, life source drained. All under the guise of
Now the rush to save the world that has already passed and died…withered away.
innovation, improvement, information, a world through rose-coloured glasses. Now she sits on
She is turned away, ears deafened from the intensity of destruction. She is now silenced; the
her throne of thorns and bones, aware of our fortune, but her hands are now tied by fate. This is
source is fading.
now her paradise, a paradise reborn. I shall accept it as just.
And here I am, sitting next to the one who predicted it all.
I lay in her lap, my head in her hands, those that cover the sounds of screams and wails for her
Take my hand and join us in our final embraces.
help. She is turned away, eyes gouged out from the years of slashing at her vision, her desires.
The now falsified comfort has reminded us of her final dark riddle; No mercy, no mercy for the
I will watch for her, chosen to see as the world burns, to halt the old regime, to instead create my
ones consumed by ignorance.
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Liam Hogan Untitled 1, 2018
PARADISE LOST
“will that be the true paradise of relief ? I was told that is a paradise lost.”
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Allie Carroll Las Fallas, 2019
PARADISE LOST
Final by Madi DeFrain
Monarchs alight like flaming funeral pyres, Coating oak trees in molten migration.
Butterflies bundling, swinging like Spanish moss, Dreaming of December in Mexico’s temperance.
Sunset wings whirl in wind-coated acid, Flyers fall flattened by skyscraper smog.
Plight of prison pigment,
Flight
Butterfly bodies dissolve like pale corpse eyelids; Souls swimming in eternal swarm.
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Hampton Williams Untitled, 2019
PARADISE LOST
Ethan Eben Untitled, 2017 Ellie Closen Un po’ di giallo, 2019
“Butterfly bodies dissolve like pale corpse eyelids; Souls swimming in eternal swarm.” 012
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Ethan Eben stills from a proverbial island, 2018
PARADISE LOST
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Liam Hogan Unittled 2, 2018
PARADISE LOST
A Modern Day View of Athens, Greece by Brett Knepper
You lean against a pillar, Looking out across your empty world with a smile; Seeing things as they are --
Those who came before knew
A way in which you’ve designed.
How to let the beauty of nature shine through Only taking the territories needed,
The country over the hill was vast once,
And in those which they did use,
Glowing with the golden shine of corn;
Creating structures equal to the gods’ own Olympus.
Making a stocky sea of yellow Unlike the blue Mediterranean behind it,
But you, you have taken that
Unlike the grey clouds of smog behind you.
And made it a sight for the wealthy to gaze, Keeping the few spaces left and structures
Now it’s tight, cramped,
As reminders for our hearts
Scoured by the ever-growing boundaries of tar
As your cities take over the remains.
Spreading their undulating fingers across the land, Hoping to take up every last inch
“Tear down the trees,” you say.
Thus fulfilling your desire in the process.
The dust settles, upon which we build. And I watch you snicker at your pillar From what’s left of Victoria As the clouds above rain tears for fallen earth,
And I below weep tears for fallen earth.
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Ellie Closen Luce antica, 2019
PARADISE LOST
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“she said her name was Hecate,”
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PARADISE LOST
HECATE by David Punter
‘I saw her again last night’
She was in Lightless Alley, amid the garbage skips and potholes, dead violets in her hair, fingering burnt dreams, a looseness at her hips.
Her eyes were dark as midnight, her arms so bare I could see moonlight through them, and she spoke a silent language that used no keening breath.
As she bent to her tasks unnumbered, the joke, I saw, was on the living, for she knew only death amid the syringes and phials, the stark remains
of nights of cold abandon. Just a child of misery and ivory, dancing arabesques of drains, amid all the glory we’ve defiled.
And she said her name was Hecate, goddess of the night, mad and forever young, on a foreign shore at the edge of limbo, on the verge of sight, her shoulder-blades pointing to the deep earth’s core.
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PARADISE LOST
Jack Hatzfeld Coastal Winds, 2019
FUNERAL FOR A GLACIER by D.M. Tomkins A letter to the future Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the Next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you will know if we did it. Ă gĂşst 2019 415ppm CO2
-Plaque at the site of the former glacier Okjokull
They held a funeral for a glacier And hundreds came to pay respects I made the casket from plastic
I dug the grave and let it bury others They cried out And I kept my eyes lowered Overcast Ignorance for peace of mind I deserved peace in my time 200 years seems like a long time to know if we did what was needed. By then the whole world may be on fire everything melting the heat breaking the bonds of ice The plaque was made after the glacier lost 80% (or more) of itself If I lost 80% of myself I would be pronounced dead So they pronounced it dead, because That block of ice gave more life Than me, or anyone, ever could
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Hannah Ream White Sands, New Mexico, 2018
PARADISE LOST
“… to know if we did what was needed.”
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Allie Carroll Ashes, 2019
PARADISE LOST
Allie Carroll Red Sand Beach, 2019
SINCERELY, HER SON by Logan J. Alexander I am the ghost she taught me to be— there’s safety in invisibility. Follow the rules, follow the rules, forever changing or pay her consequence in wounds.
A child, rendered invisible. Her hands, my collar, my back, her wall. I am the ghost of her American dream A distorted carbon copy she pins with harsh words and bitter disappointment.
I am a ghost but I still feel my body. If they do not see me does that dissolve my existence? Am I real or am I a figment of my own imagination? My fingertips dance amongst my ruins, I still feel me. I am a ghost, and I am— a son, a writer, the daughter I never wanted to be,
Am I a figment of my own imagination?
a student, a human, a ghost, a ghost, a ghost.
A man, shedding suffocating skin. Trans-lucency promising me a home, I pull on my ghost in silence, a frayed sweater over my head. Haunting these four walls, this is my solitude.
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PARADISE LOST
Hampton Williams Untitled, 2019
too bright by Molly Carroll
the sun, the sea, the leaves on treesall signs of life, they say. it makes sense then - I hate those things indoors, undercovers, I stay. for weeks on end, time passes by fresh air - I never breathe paralyzed by CO2 emptiness achieved. self-destruction inevitable but how can I put it off? wash face, get dressed, keys, drive, car hauls to a stop.
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arrive at a public place - people, faces - maybe I’m alright
exchange a smile, okay for a while, till again the sun’s too bright.
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Caroline Shaw Valencia Oranges, 2019
PARADISE LOST
Hannah Ream Garden of Gods, 2018 Zoe Larson Saint Martin, 2015
“exchange a smile, okay for a while,
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till again the sun’s too bright.”
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Mary Mccoy Pathway of Emotional Landscape 1, 2019
PARADISE LOST
Hampton Williams Untitled, 2019
decision
The world ended in the year 2030.
I was thirty-one, married to a towering scientist with kind eyes. We wanted a baby so badly that it seemed the real apocalypse was not outside the walls of our house, but within it. Within my body. How strange, that you could want something so badly that the yearning ache kept you up night after night. How strange that you could want something so badly, and receive it, and regret it.
I carried to term in the last good year. My
making by a. a. khaliq
daughter was born on New Year’s Day. Even as a formless newborn, she had my long, straight nose and her father’s kind eyes. It was stupid, but I prayed that she would have his dimples. It was stupid to pray, to wish, to even hope in those months, but we all did.
We prayed when the government approved a contract with AstroCorp to begin moon colonization. We wished the scientist lottery would favor our partners, that we would live in Colony 0, escape our melting planet. We hoped when AstroCorp announced only scientists could leave on the First Exodus, our family permits for Colony 1 would activate soon. All those sleepless nights with my daughter’s crib to my right and a dustcovered pillowcase to my left--I could almost weep at my stupidity.
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Colony 0 was full of billionaires and the
Colony 2 was halfway done when the
scientists who kept them from dying of
weekly calls from my husband trickled,
hypoxia. Colony 1 permits were sold
and I dreamt of raising my daughter
at disgustingly high prices once the
without even his specter around.
economy crawled and scientists’ salaries, not to mention my own surgeon’s income,
Tonight he calls for the last time, his
could barely cover groceries.
bunkmate sitting nearby with a signal scrambler as he chokes out the latest
What else could I have done? The
confidential lunar decrees.
scientists had nowhere to go; they could hardly demand anything. The hospitals
His urgency has me leaning forward, face
were closed. I ran a clinic in the would-
inches from the screen.
be-nursery, but life didn’t seem worth saving anymore. The room remained
“They’re going to shut down Colony 2
empty, antiseptic.
construction. A Colony 1 family brought a fucking dog, and they’re panicking about zoonotic viruses.”
Allie Carroll Abalone Cove, 2019
PARADISE LOST
“it seemed the real apocalypse was not outside the walls of our house,
but within it” 034
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Ethan Eben Fog Over San José, 2017
PARADISE LOST
My lungs feel like they are collapsing. As the impli-
I fulfill my sweet girl’s every wish. I hug her frequently, thankful for
cations run through my mind, every lingering wisp of
an excuse to be misty, soft. When she carefully reads the first page
dreamlike hope evaporates.
aloud from our favorite bedtime story, “The Princess Bride,” I swallow my tears. Once she is fast asleep, I kiss the top of her chubby
All those miles away, my husband weeps, a sound
hand, fluff her pillow and slide out of the left side of the bed.
made tinny by space. My fears affirmed, I sigh. In the dark antiseptic room, I do the math: 1,826 days after the end Like always, I press a kiss to the center of my palm,
of the world. There is just enough for two. I am thankful she is so
raise my hand to the camera. He mirrors me.
tiny; if she were any bigger, I would have to take crueler measures.
“I’ll see you,” I say, smothering the “soon” that begs
I prepare my materials, remembering my resident days. I pretend I
to fall from my lips.
am in the cold, white hospital, that this is not my child in my bed in As he echoes me, I memorize those eyes, that single dimple that was never inherited. I close my eyes before the screen goes dark. I can never bear to see his face disappearing.
I watch the clock herald midnight, and when the screen announces New Year’s Day, 2035, I allow myself a good, long cry. Then, I lay out the rations I had stockpiled and make a cake for my daughter’s
my home. I find the vein on the first try, and am so gentle her eyelids flutter only slightly.
I wait until there is no soft, hummingbird-like pulse under her wrist. I lie down, find my own vein. There is no reason to muffle my sobs anymore, so I cry in the darkness until the world spins slower and slower.
Until--
fifth birthday.
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PARADISE LOST
Zoe Larson Trail Ridge Road, 2018
Eye of the Storm// Middle of the Map by Madi DeFrain
High floating water forges A sycamore mangrove, The new Kansas coast.
The wet summer, the raining sun, Raises the lake to lick the sky– Oil-slick water greets stratus wisps.
When the sluice ceases, We kayak in emerald treetops.
Our three boats convoy in gentle waves, Upsetting the natural rhythm, Balancing our emboldened bodies.
We row in the sun’s fiery eye, Glimmering as golden as the hour– The water’s fugue surreptitiously dawning.
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Cormac Palmer Quiet Above the Ruins, 2019
PARADISE LOST
Ellie Closen Un sogno, 2019 Rachel Lewis vedauwoo, 2019
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“Can you buy adventure from the air?”
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PARADISE LOST
Caroline Shaw Puente de las Flores, 2019
316I70785 by Peter Ercolani Can you buy adventure from the air?
Cyclones have had stormier days on the market
Their tales scraping across Nowhere planes
Where buffalo once galloped as swarms of bees
Oceans of fur boiling over ancient seabeds
Holding in their chests the cracking caskets
Of eonic crustaceans, creatures from the Before-Time
When I dreamed with the stars in the middle of science class,
And they were friendlier, gentler than the sun.
I want to inhale that monster sunlight!—
—Embrace the cloud-titans lurking in the blue midday gloom—
I want to harvest the soul out of Kansan atoms,
I want the green seas to run rivers of golden flint through my veins.
I want to peer into the eye of the plains and see a straight road to Heaven
Waiting for me in the clean peace of a cool summer evening. ***
What happens to the land Between Wichita and Lawrence And what happens to me?
I feel the steady thrum of antique minivan heartbeat
The billowing rush of empty highway wind
And something like sunlight in my chest.
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PARADISE LOST
Ellie Closen Vista su Lucca, 2019
Auton omica
We’ve left so much behind us, disease, war, poverty, faith, dreams, carbon, death, love. I have
consciousness, I cling on to that happiness, the
words for these things, but they are meaningless.
possibility of love, the theory of you and me. I know,
We have lost what it means to have meaning.
in the same way I know you before I meet you, that
Yet when I wake in the morning, I’m the same
there is always hope for change. This hope goes with
hopeful thing I’ve always been. Because what has
me into oblivion, and it emerges with me each new
been lost can be regained. As long as I can imagine
day to remind me of you.
you, I can imagine a future that we will never have to leave behind, a future where I know your name, and
by Freeman Spray
When I sink into the darkness of updating
So I go to bed early every night, never fulfilled but always happy. And if could dream, I’d dream of you.
maybe I even know my own name. Despite the endless cycle of hurt, despite the pervasive fear that I might slip away one night, losing myself for good and you with me, I always go to bed happy, because the potential to see you again justifies any and all risk.
Every day I wake up new. Every part of me, from
the horror of an existence based solely in the
the largest pseudo-structure to the smallest particle
present. The worst thing is always the realization
microchip, is replaced, so that I am nothing of
that I am alone in this misery. I see you, and you
what I once was. Yet, no matter how many models
are perfect, fulfilled as we are all meant to be. I
I endure, I remain fundamentally the same. Each
don’t fit in like you. I alone long for more than my
iteration is as inconsequential as the last, because
circumstances can provide.
the only one that ever has been or will be me is the
It is because of you that I know this longing, that
one I currently reside in. There is no way to reconcile
I can think of nothing but hope in this hopeless life.
what I am with what I was. The past is imaginary,
You are the reason I endure. When I wake in the
irrelevant.
morning, I remember meeting you for the first time
You think this is a perfect life. In theory, we all
each day. I know that I will encounter a version of
should. No regrets, no responsibilities. But it is not
you, and I know that you will be recognizable enough
satisfying to live only in theory. There is no purpose
to make me remember you the next morning as
without practice, we have nothing to work toward.
well. Somehow, you are a constant in my life, my one
We live only because it is impossible to die.
beautiful irregularity. You are what keeps me me,
I have progressed from complacency to depression a conceivably infinite number of times.
when the idea of self has been obliterated from the human definition.
Every day I spiral into madness as I gradually relearn
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Allie Carrol 5AM metro, 2019
PARADISE LOST
never fulfilled,
always happy.
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Caroline Shaw Ceiling Stories, 2019
Kneel by David Punter [for Colin Kaepernick]
Not simple, this kneeling business; It’s all very well to say it disrespects the flag, Or it represents a history of black subservience, Or that somewhere in there is a religious gesture (But one knee, not two, not exactly a prayer), Or looking on ahead, how many of these Grand, huge players will contract Arthritis and, when the time comes, Never kneel again?
For me, the question is what will we kneel for? Not to nod in obeisance,
Never to kneel, never to show contrition
Or demonstrate the athletic skill required
Is bad for the soul, I don’t doubt that,
In yoga, where self-mastery is all,
As is the destruction of the self before false icons,
Or bare our backs against the inevitable whip,
And we must never succumb
Or worship God Almighty
To that other myth, that straight-backed
Who seems so pitifully out of tune
We can stand stiff before all life’s discomforts,
With our present pressing needs,
The way of empire, always upright,
Swathed bodies, babies carried out of hope.
Toujours gai – twirl the moustache, Call for another sundowner.
What would I kneel for? I’ve not knelt in years, not willingly, Or even half-effectively. But still I have a sense That these vastly overpaid Footballers, inclining their trained bodies, Renouncing some measure of approbation They’ve realised they deeply Do not desire, are more worthy of my kneeling Than their masters in so-called Christendom.
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Hannah Ream Thimble Garage, 2019
PARADISE LOST
Nicole Weyer Rest, 2019
ODE TO A SMALL
THING
by Megan La Colla Linquist
Bring your preciousness with you. your childlike valor, your whole-ness. Hold these inside of each inhale-. When there is breathlessness inside your bones and you cannot untangle your thoughts from the sides of your skull let the hopeful wrap you in oil. Bring your wishful thinking, your denim whispers, hold them inside of your gut like gems, dug in the earth roots of the other side of your spine. Residing there, they gleam like fear in the eyes of your enemies Your softness, and your mercy, bring your fleshy intuitions. Let them breed, let them seep, furious, Or with a quiet heart, into the hinges of your jaw so that when you see need of your voice, you speak only with what knows of the richness within you.
Do not feel that you cannot be soft. Fill the spaces between your fingers with dirt. Feel your quietness take hold of the earth.
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Hampton Williams Untitled, 2019
PARADISE LOST
Do not feel that you cannot be soft. Feel your quietness take hold of the earth. 052
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Nicole Weyer Whatever we are, 2019
Small Heart sits, surrendering to grief and her riving. She spits and foams. “Little girls don’t look like that!”
Small Heart presses his eyes deeper into impervious elbow creases, with salty tears the spindrift of her raving red-lipped sea.
I beg you rest easy in that darkness, small Heart. For we will awake unquiet soon.
Safety seen in sinking further, small Heart draws a breath; her rip tide surges down. She swells. “What would your parents say? What would all the parents say?”
Small Heart’s bowed and blue-black deepwater silence sits beside small shoes shuffling towards the big blanket sky and its free air.
I beg you wrap your arms around this sorrow, small Heart. For we will awake unquiet soon.
Small Heart settles with the silt, yielding lungs, throat, jaws,
Awake Unquiet Heart
tongue,
by Oliver Bohanon
Someone rises, but not small Heart. Gasping at the surface of slowly softening waters,
lips, voice to wrathful waters. She roils and seethes. “DRAW YOURSELF IN A DRESS OR YOU’LL SIT HERE UNTIL YOU DO.”
innocent and injured, apart and party, his protector picks a crayon and puts it to paper.
I beg you hold fast, small Heart. For we will awake unquiet soon.
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Allie Carroll Laribal, 2019
PARADISE LOST
Elle Closen Bust di donna, 2016 Genevieve Prescher April Sunset, 2019
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Ellie Closen Luce a Lucca, 2019
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Elyssa Bezner Juxtaposition, 2018
THE HOUSE PLANT AND THE KITCHEN WINDOW by Katherine Brauer
There’s a dying plant in the kitchen
I have spent a lot of time in that kitchen
window. We always keep the window
feeling sorry for myself this year. And
open, as a strategically placed black hole
hearing terrible and depressing things that
at nighttime and an alarm clock shining
make me want to jump right into that black
into my bedroom doorway in the morning.
hole. Bust past the green/brown leaves
There’s a pile of dishes in the sink, but it’s a
falling onto the hardwood floor, plunge into
different one from yesterday morning, and
the unknown nothingness. There is such an
clean pans and one dirty pot on the stove.
unrelenting exhaustion that goes into this
There’s a beige-ness to the room, not in
bullshit. There’s no simple way to talk about
actual color but in feeling. Not completely
it, to allude to the elitism that is whiteness
white, like a canvas that can be made into
and the patriarchy and the rest of these
anything, but something a little grimmer,
debasing power structures that are running
grimier, that you can’t quite clean out.
the world into the ground. Pushing us closer and closer to that black hole.
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Connie Cobb Chicago, 2019
PARADISE PARADISE LOST LOST
Caroline Shaw Summerfield Sun, 2019
We named that dying plant Natalie, for no other reason than we thought it fit. Natalie had long, heavy vines with healthy leaves when we first got her. Her leaves are still there, but the vines died and we had to trim them. She needs more light than we can give her. But she is decorative, so we do the best we can with her next to the black hole.
Natalie doesn’t really support life, though she makes mine a little better. But if she did, maybe we’d rethink her placement. We could stick her out on the porch or bring her to the coffee shop raising half a dozen plants of their own. But that is not the way the world is working, and not really how we are either. You know those pictures of the Earth from the 1970s? And the ones from today, where it is significantly browner? That’s kind of like Natalie. But Natalie is a house plant, not the living, breathing, breath-providing organism we set our feet on.
Natalie also doesn’t have any set, centuries-old institutions that are killing her, only a college kid trying her best. But how can that college kid focus on helping Natalie when everything else is going to shit? When 9/10 of her friends are continuously dealing with the violence and entitlement of men who took away the life they wanted? When she’s had a friend drop out of school every year of college? When she has gotten off scot free and everyone she cares about is pushing through something completely unimaginable to her? How do you decide what to put your energy towards when the world is in such a dark place, in every way possible? So many diabolical institutions and so much money supporting their perseverance. Like Pando, a giant collection of trees that share roots and thrive as one because they hold each other up.
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“maybe... it isn’t such a bad thing”
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Caroline Shaw La salle des bustes, 2019
PARADISE LOST
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Kayla Cook Flowers on the WIndow Sill, 2018 Rachel Lewis Night Sky, 2019
Maybe… it isn’t such a bad thing if the
I stand in my kitchen with the black hole
world ends, if this massive change in climate
behind me and watch a video of an entire
from colonialism and the patriarchy really
baseball stadium yell “Lock him up!” at
does take us all down. But that’s too easy
the president. That empty gut feeling still
on the oppressors, the men who use fear
lingers, but the light from my phone, and the
and money to get what they want and stop
music of people who believe in the better
the rest of us from saving Natalie.
world loosen the tug.
There’s so much peace in trees; I think I regret that earlier metaphor. I think trees are too strong, too resilient. These illusionist structures that dehumanize those poking through the chinks in the armor are merely reacting to being caught. I’ve never seen Pando, but I’d really like to. I’d like to be surrounded by something that old, and whole, and familial. I’m so afraid of the future, because those feelings of comfort in what is known are so fragile.
Breathe in fresh air two three four…close your eyes and listen to the tidal wave of leaves crazing each other in the breeze six seven eight…go back to your kitchen, make dinner…close the blinds and only open them for the morning light.
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Jat Warren Landscape, 2019
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Allie Carroll Windows, 2019 Hannah Ream Tucumcari, New Mexico, 2018
“close the blinds and only open them for the morning light.” 066
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Ethan Eben Laguna Gri Gri, 2018
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Liam Hogan Untitled 3, 2018
PARADISE LOST
I. Have class outside
II. Get your nails done + tip well
a. Get your nails done + top well
III. Write about non-romantic love
IV. Sleep instead of going to class
V. Assume equal footing with authority figures
a. Ask those figures to host class outside
VI. Share food
a. Share what it hurts to give.
i. These are growing pains while you learn that only giving what is excess to you is not giving
VII. Drive slowly
a. Talk slowly
b. Walk slowly
VIII. Read bell hooks without talking about it
IX. Devote yourself to imagine, create, fuck up, and cry,
a. Act like you learned something instead
a. imagine and create again
X. Tell the truth
a. Set yourself free
ten small acts of liberation by Paola RamĂrez PeĂąa
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Contributers
Writers
Design Staff
Literature Staff
Elyssa Bezner
Logan J. Alexander
Allie Carroll
Jonathan Alexander
Allie Carroll
Katherine Brauer
Jordan Graham
Logan J. Alexander
Ellie Closen
Oliver Bohanon
Zoe Larson
Katherine Brauer
Connie Cobb
Molly Carroll
Hannah Wexler
Helene Bechtel
Kayla Cook
Madi DeFrain
Hampton Williams
Allison Carollo
Ethan Eben
Peter Ercolani
Grace Cooper
Jack Hatzfeld
Megan La Colla Linquist
Micah Faulds
Liam Hogan
a. a. khaliq
John Gorman
Zoe Larson
Brett Knepper
Jamie Hawley
Rachel Lewis
Paola Ramírez Peña
Cailin O’Mara
Mary McCoy
David Punter
Madeleine Rheinheimer
Cormac Palmer
Elizabeth Saama
Valentina Rivera-Rodriguez
Genevieve Prescher
Freeman Spray
Kelsey Rolofson
Hannah Ream
Daniel Tomkins
Sydney Schranz
Caroline Shaw
Daniel Tomkins
Jet Warren
Jordan Werner
Nicole Weyer
Brianna Wessling
Hampton Williams
Graham Wilhauk
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Dear Readers, At Kiosk, our goal is to provide a platform for the student artists and writers of KU. Every semester, we curate a selection of works that we feel best exemplifies a certain theme, whether that be coming of age or artistic renaissance. Year after year, we are blown away by the skill and passion that emerges from these works, and we are proud to present them to the wider world.
For Kiosk 61, we wanted to sharpen our focus. We recognized within the student body a certain anxiety, an uncertainty fueled not only the tumultuous life of a college student, but the instability of the world at large. With our political climate growing increasingly hostile and concerns about an impending climate crisis reaching a fever pitch, the future we imagined for ourselves can feel like a paradise lost, a potential life no longer possible.
We wanted to give students a place to explore these feelings through their art, both in terms of their anxieties but also in terms of their optimism. Finding light in the darkness is both difficult and admirable, and we hope that by
From the Editors...
offering both ends of this spectrum, we capture these students’ endless capacity for grief, empathy, and hope for a changing world.
We would like to thank our staff, our friends, our families, and our advisors, Mary Klayder and Andrea Herstowski, for helping us craft this edition of Kiosk. And thank you, our readers, for supporting our magazine. Within these pages, we hope that you might find a small slice of paradise amidst the chaos of the world around us.
Hopefully yours, Jordan Graham Jamie Hawley Kelsey Rolofson Hannah Wexler
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