Kiosk 53 by The Kiosk Magazine

THE KIOSK M AGA ZINE

Kiosk is a semi-annual, award-winning art and literature magazine. All art and literature were produced by students at The University of Kansas. Kiosk is compiled and run by students on the Kiosk staff. This 53rd edition of Kiosk studies figures. Here we have forms and faculties, portraits and physiques, silhouettes and sketches and skeletons. Oh, Humanity, make shape. Humans take shape. Go figure.

Thanks The staff of Kiosk 53 would like to thank the Department of English, the School of Architecture, Design and Planning, the Spencer Museum of Art, the Spencer Student Advisory Board and the Student Senate. We would like to extend a special thanks to Jane Hazard, Mainline Printing, Andrea Herstowski, Jeremy Shellhorn, Jeffrey McKee and everyone who submitted work to and supported Kiosk 53.

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Writers

Artists

Dirk Diggler Drew Weidman Garrett Holm Garrett Swearingen Liz Wilson Rachel Sandle Samuel Ramberg Tristan Greeno

Caitlyn Porter Cassie Sterbenz Christian Castillo Courtney Varney Dan Rempel Emmi Murao Evan Jay Warren Evan Brown Grace Pritchett Hanan El Shoubaki Hannah Goolsby Jake Kauffmann Jillian May Josh Boston Kaitlin Obermeyer Katlyn Ballard Sydney Lenz Rhiannon Rosas William Sandiford

Design Staff Adam Henderson Devon McGowan Evan Tarry Ellory Wright Claire Zimmerman

Literature Staff Maxwell Moore

See closing figure numbers for complete attributions.

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Tiny Blue Dot Garrett Swearingen

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Tiny Blue Dot Garrett Swearingen

You were once the gem of the universe,- we were one Your lungs were once filled with drawings- then we crawled out of the shadows to see the light. That instance was the downfall, your lungs were empty and forgotten. Your trachea collapsed with the shaking of your skin while we raped your innocences By repurposing your original beauty- we turned you into frankenstein’s monster. The crystals that line your lungs are mesmerizing and my greed rips the seams- till holes form. Now you can’t breath the life into the land. I want to be the breath of life that you shelter from the cold; Crawl inside and feel the warmth as the lead in your veins pumps beneath my feet. your body’s a temple out of your control, making you a slave to me and my kind. I cannot save you my lovely for i am but one person but plant the seed of knowledge and i shall help set you free. You stay so quiet as your leaded blood pumps rivers out your cuts. They blame you for the destructions but never give you credit. Ignoring how your womb cradled our ancestors as they burrowed in your body. We hide inside strands of hair plucked one by one from your scalp. Blind to how your tears keep rising from the toxins choking you.

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Waiting Room Convocation By Rachel Sandle

In clinical stillnesses, anything can be reduced to its constituents:

lips to speak: these flesh-articulations are careful, restrained—

the fabric of Earth is a patchwork of velvet and liquid satin: separate pieces, dotted with glittering insect exoskins. The fabric of

strangely fertile in the sterile air of terminals and waiting rooms. I know the rooms of the mind are reducible and disparate—a desperate

my own skin is Earth: cracked hands are rock crags, hills of steeply sloped ribs, and the gnarled articulations where two bones meet. Disjoined from its landscape: the body a landscape dis jointed; uttered distinctly. Mind’s landscape is skin: swirled folds of grey matter and whole lobes who cleave like clams’

patchwork held in place by faint lines. I am trying to crystalize these pieces: to articulate constituents: fuse them into speech— I am trying to un-break— make things complete—

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30 Miles from Anywhere Garrett Holm

30 miles from anywhere the orange atmosphere disappeared hours ago as the temperature set with the sun seemingly stranded - the wind gnawing every direction the same every moment the same this is it this wasn’t supposed to be it your eyes and freezing closed this is it they said you couldn’t make it you wouldn’t you shouldn’t 30 miles to anywhere don’t give up - don’t - give - up leaves crackle as you swear this is it the forest illuminates as longing is satisfied those two glorious orbs approach thumb raised in ecstasy the mammoth machine hisses to a stop

I SAW A TERRIBLE

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I Saw a Terrible Crash Tristan Greeno

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I saw a terrible crash Out of body I was there Watching it happen Like the man on the TV I saw him shoot himself Every time I saw myself crash The smell of blown airbags Pieces of glass in my teeth I Cut teeth Still finding them in my shoes On these tender feet Weeks later Like my first kiss I swell Like sitting in the bitch seat Between two fat fuckers Swollen On a plane back home I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t breathe Swallowing my mind I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sit still I grabbed on To the leg next to my leg And I closed my eyes But I was never good at closing my eyes

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A Rebirth of Sorts Liz Wilson

Pitiful whines. A body aching to fly, trapped. Wings crumpled, fragile Bones splintered. Convulsing in the dirt, It is swallowed down By the earth. The Worms that it once Hunted slither over its corpse. A spot of green, The ground shifts, Something new sprouts. Roots furrow deep, Stem hardens to trunk, The leaves change. From each branch, Feathers hang, white In the summer, black in fall. Underneath, At its base, lay The avian remains.

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Let’s Call Her...Anna Garrett Holm

It’s that certain smile Where her mouth isn’t quite closed Where you can see her teeth Biting down, Like she’s about to say Exactly What I’ve been Waiting for.. It’s that certain smile When you can see it in her eyes When her cheek bone raise When you know that it’s real Just brush the hair from Your faceso that the world Can seeThat certain smile It’s that certain smile

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That wasn’t meant for me, And I know that, but Pretending helps For awhile a It’s that certain smile That’s bigger than me And I have to accept that Because whether it’s for Me or not, it’s Exactly What The World’s Been Waiting for..

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Moon Poem Dirk Diggler

I question my incisors and the size of my thighs in the mirror. It takes an acute ocular capacity but sometimes when its just right at night the moon spits rays of white noise. The moon looks good in hosiery. The moon is sexy. Imagine I dress the moon up in lingerie and then we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have sex we eat cheese and crackers and a pear and drink vodka in the kitchen.

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A Fantasy Down at Balley Park Wil Kenney

Max and Tracey held hands and walked the track down at Balley Park every Sunday and every other Wednesday provided the weather was decent. Their metric for ‘decent weather’ fluctuated and, if anyone had bothered to ask, they wouldn’t have gotten a straight answer. Max and Tracey walked around three times and then sat at the bench on the side of the pond furthest from the parking lot to feed the ducks and watch the elementary school children collect leaves on their field trips. They held each other’s hand tight the whole time. The corps of engineers had excavated Balley Pond in the early part of the century. When he was young Max climbed a tree to watch their mechanical cranes and their pendulant hooks. The dirt came up shovel-by-shovel, bucket-by-bucket, until the Balley property that the county repossessed was morphed into Balley Pond. Then the Shriners donated a swing set, which made Balley Pond a de facto park. The city refused to call it a park until the seventies for some under-the-table political reason that dissolved when Mary Sue Jackson got voted the first female mayor of Tecumseh. Then, when Max had long since grown up and busied himself holding Tracey’s hand, Balley Park got put in a book somewhere as a historical landmark.

“Weather’s good today,” one of them would say, floating it out for the other to digest. A reassuring squeeze and then: “I only wore my windbreaker today. That wind chill sneaks in right here. I’m about to start shivering. It’s not good and it’s not bad.” A long time for the response. There was no real rush unless bridge club got bumped up. “I wore a sweater. If those clouds would just move off maybe we could warm up. The trees keep shrugging too. That’s a nasty wind.” A ‘hm’ of acknowledgment. If there was a science to their discussion of the weather metric, only they knew its theories. If nothing else, it didn’t seem to matter who thought the weather good or bad. They weren’t looking to convince or enlighten. They only wanted to make small sounds that meant something to the one whose hand they were holding. — Max was still driving when Tracey got moved to Fallen Oaks assisted living and started picking her up on the way down to Balley Park, even though it was hardly a two-minute walk. She teetered through the nursing home’s automatic sliding doors and waved him down. He let his Volvo idle and got out to help her into the seat. Burly aides on break watched and

chuckled about it while they smoked cigarettes. “Hey, guy,” they’d say. “Hey, guy. Home by ten, ok?” And Max would grit his teeth and lift his hat to them as he shambled back around to the driver’s seat. “Don’t try any funny business!” the aides called after as the Volvo creaked into gear and puttered out of the lot. Max wore his hats when the clouds hung low and the winter cold nipped at their cheeks. He wore his hats when the sun beat down and sweat pooled in the loose flab on his neck. He had a whole closet of Dobbs in varying states of repair and a vintage Stetson that he reserved for special occasions that never came. Jan Trink walked her dogs down at the park most afternoons and it was one of Max’s nicer hats that caught her eye. He looked like a retired president. The old couple sat with their hands cupped on the seat of the bench between them. They weren’t talking, which seemed odd. They were both letting their gazes wander, like two lazy eyes of the same head. Jan yanked her dachshund Smarmy out of the grass and then walked over to the bench. She entangled Smarmy’s leash up tight around her wrist so he wouldn’t startle the seniors. “You’re so cute together,” she said. Jan worked as a producer at Channel Seven public access. Her profile of the children’s rec league team captained by the Down’s syndrome child had received a formal recognition from the Office of the Governor and a W. Tecumseh Sherman Public Service Award from the city. The soccer team lost in the first round of the local tournament. The captain sprained his ankle in the eighth minute. “I’m sorry?” Tracey said. Max bristled at newcomers, especially at the park. He tightened his grip on Tracey’s fingers, which squeezed his back. The woman with the dachshund simpered. Her bun was drawn back so tight that her forehead was marble smooth. “What did you say?” “I’m Jan Trink,” Jan said. She held a limp hand out and then let it fall to her side when it went unshaken. Her fingernails were painted in alternating hot pink and electric blue colors. “I’m over at Channel Seven and we’re profiling for a special that’s airing this Christmas. You two are just so,” she kissed the tips of her fingers, “adorable. Would you be interested? Ten minutes on the digi-recorder and then maybe you could come into the studio one evening for no more than an hour. We just need some basic footage. Oh, this is just perfect!” She produced a thin handheld from her waistband, jammed into the sweaty gap for just such an

occasion. A pale green light glimmered at the tip. Jan Trink pressed a button and the light flickered to red. “How long have you two been together?” Jan said. Tracey turned and looked up the length of the track. It ran around Balley pond right up to the bank and at the sharper corners Tracey always took Max under the arm in case he started to lose his footing. Hips snapped like cooked wishbones anymore. Tracey came home from Girl Scout camp in the summer of ’61 with three new scars on her knee and a taste for Fritos. On the third night a raccoon climbed up into the tent with her and sat at the base of her bed, munching through the crinkly lining of the foil bag. Tracey awoke in a panic and swatted at the bandito mammal with her Girl Scout manual until it bit her. The fury that had rocked the third tent in Oak Shield Campsite calmed. The raccoon was young. She could see its youth in the fluffy fur on its cheeks, the short and alert whiskers. Two youngsters stared each other down at half past two in the morning. Her Scout Leader hissed about bedtimes and smacked the plated heels of her boots together. The raccoon scurried out through a gap in the front flaps. Tracey told no one about that bite. She lay up at night for the rest of the summer imagining her vision clouding over with red and all the violence she might be driven to commit. On the first day of fifth grade, wracked with nerves, she skipped mathematics and walked down to Balley Pond. She waded out into the water to wait for the inevitable. She sat in the shallows while, a mile away, her classmates recited the times tables they’d known by heart for years. The diseased fury never came. All she ever got from that bite was wet jeans and a craving for Fritos. “Well I haven’t said yes yet, now have I?” Tracey said. Jan Trink deflated. She gave Max’s hand another squeeze and cleared her throat. “We aren’t too keen on just talking to anyone who might ask.” “Oh, I guess you misunderstand,” Jan said, reassembling her composure and smiling a bit wider. “I work for Channel Seven so—“ “No. I understand.” Tracey hadn’t raised her voice in six and a half months. The woman at the bakery had followed her out to the car and stood in front of her windshield with her hands on her hips, scolding her about line etiquette and frozen cakes and her son’s half birthday and a million other travesties with which Tracey had no business. Tracey sat in her car long after the woman ran out of steam and went back inside to finish ordering her peppermint ice cream cake. Tracey sucked in her breath and screamed at the shiny logo on her steering wheel until her throat

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A Fantasy Down at Balley Park Wil Kenney

went numb. Then she went home. She left her baguette in the car. It molded in its paper sack until her niece came up from Calloway City to help her move to the retirement community. The violence of her infection took a lifetime to emerge. “We just aren’t interested in talking right now,” Tracey said. Max dipped his chin in agreement. A man in a spandex jumpsuit walked past. His Chihuahua investigated the dachshund’s rear end. Jan huffed and jerked on the leash. Jan’s phone dinged. The man kept on power walking, his elbows jutting with every step. Max groaned and Tracey took him under the arm. He pulled his hat low and they muttered in the shade between their faces. Jan couldn’t help but coo. Tracey looked up at the pitying sound. Max pushed the brim of his hat even lower until only his chin was visible. “We’ll be going now.” Tracey lifted them both up and they moved down the Eastern edge of the park a few minutes earlier than usual. Max could barely keep his weight. His unsteadiness nearly knocked them clean over into the grime of Balley Pond, the waters where Tracey once failed to cleanse herself and Max watched long-limbed mechanical monsters do slow battle. — Max and Tracey’s walks became less frequent after that. When Max drove by to pick her up he avoided the front drive where the aides took their breaks. He waited in a parking spot near the rear of the lot with his hands folded in his lap and his head bowed. He kept the A/C off until she got to the car and on the cold days his breath came in feeble puffs. Tracey searched for his VW’s scratched silver bumper. When she found it she paused at the passenger side door to watch him. In meditation or prayer, he looked peaceful enough, a rare enough sight these days. When the children came running past their bench, Max recoiled. He jolted when a squirrel zipped past their field of view. Tracey stopped bringing her baguettes to rip up and feed to the ducks because the patter of their webbed feet put him on edge. Their discussions of weather grew briefer and briefer until they stopped altogether. Max still shivered on cloudy days, still wore his hats, and still held Tracey’s hand. Max held her hand even harder than he once did. His grasp became desperate rather than loving.

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But as bucolic scenes unfold their vivid tapestries, gregarious street corners murmur a boisterous bravado. Behind the illusory looking glass of store front windows; the eyeless gaze of mannequins as they dance without motion, wear the threads born from spindles. They remain still in apprehension, awaiting the intrigue of luxurious lovelies to pass with their swanky gems and pearls

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But as Bucolic Scenes Unfold Drew Weidman

that glint the lambency of street lamp sensibility, and the clicky clack taps of stilt shoes that tower upward the figure of perfidious relics; with their billfolds falling about the way in the wake of concrete plazas and glassy ornaments, which ting and ring by the bidding of bells: Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a constant holiday in the city.

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Field Study Rachel Sandle

I remember tripping through the caves of you, avoiding saying I was moving. The continental plates are moving too, but we were never monumental—not tectonic. Although I did dream of finding all each other’s faults, converging—grinding— rock against hot rock. But only dream. Instead I scaled your chest and face, that steep, impassive edifice, and cut my fingertips on crevices and spat dry dirt. Your ribcage was so— cavernous. I could never fathom the depth of the cleft below your neck or the ridges of your clavicles.

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I always wondered who would slide below if our plates converged— would one of us emerge, or both— could we still fold our layers of sediment together?

We would never have made mountains or shaken Earth. Your stalactite teeth were weak; exposure has eroded the hollows of my cheeks. I remember chipping at your limestone eyes, not saying I was moving. I didn’t drink from your underwater streams. I didn’t touch anything. I wanted to shout and shake—to wake up the bats that hang from the roof of your mouth.

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America, I bought a domain main its dirkdiggler.org America, all my blood and cum is acetate. I buy a pickle from a vending machine for .75 cents, America, and eat it while I run my car through the wash. America, why are your libraries full of deer? I wished goodbye to mother with a blood-curdling yelp and sold myself like a rag to the Valley. Me Todd Scotty and Reed went to see Scarface at the Glendale movie theatre and I cried. America, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never done heroin but I have smoked methamphetamine. America, I robbed a single mother. I only took her jewelry and didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hurt her but still. America, I stood outside the movie theater and wiped snot from my eyes. Sit still and drink the moon up like a tonic.

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Allen Ginsberg - AMERICA (music by tom waits) Dirk Diggler, 1983

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Back to Back Dirk Diggler, 2015

I think how come there is never beef in poetry. I call John Berryman a nugget head and give the finger to Kalamazoo. Edgar Allen Poe was a gutter punk Ted Berrigan looked like chowder on a spoon. Very important and very pretentious. I cry for seven days my tears become Fresca. I bless up the game then shatter into an ether. I crap out a turd. Here, its a poem.

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Figures

F.1—Kaitlyn Obermeyer, All Seeing Eye, Digital Photography, 2015, 2500x3750 px. F.2—Emmi Murao, Lying Figure, Charcoal & Conte, 2012, 18x24 in.

F.9—Emmi Murao, Contorted Figure, Charcoal, 2012, 18x24 in. F.10—Grace Pritchett, David, Digital Photography, 2015, 6480x4320 pixels

F.11—Josh Boston, Animal F.3— Caitlyn Porter, Closed, Skull, Ink and spray paint, Archival Ink Jet Print, 2015, 2015, 12x9 in. 4x5 in. F.12— William Sandiford, F.4— Caitlyn Porter, Covered, Undo Man, (Multiexposed) Archival Ink Jet Print, 2015, Photo printed on high gloss 4x5 in. paper, 2014, 35x46 in. F.5—Cassie Sterbenz, Untitled, Screenprint, 2015, 8x8 in.

F.13—Jake Kauffmann, Figure Study Detail, Oil, 2014, 4x4 ft.

F.6—Dan Rempel, Head Anatomy Study, Oil based clay over foam armature, 2015, 12.5”x5.75”x8.75”

F.14—Katlyn Ballard, Light Painting Sculpture, Photography, 2015, 2800x3672 pixels

F.7—Hannah Goolsby, Stepping into Space, 2, Photography, 2011, 8.3”x5.8” F.8—Hanan El Shoubaki, Untitled, Relief print, 2013, 11.25x15 in.

F.15— Sydney Lenz, Distortion, 1 , Photography, 2015

F.16— Sydney Lenz, Distortion, 2 , Photography, 2015

F.25—Rhiannon Rosas, Perfectly Imperfect, Cyanotype, 2015

F.17— Courtnet Varney, Untitled, Large Format Photography, 2015, 8.5x11 in.

F.26— Christian Castillo, Trapped, Charcoal, 2015, 18x24 in.

F.18— Evan Jay Warren, VI, 35mm Color film, 2013 F.19—Ann Marie Cochran, Lazy Evening, Oil painting, 2014, 30x40 in. F.20— Evan Jay Warren, IV, 35mm color film, 2013 F.21— Evan Brown, Unease, Charcoal, 2014, 15x12 in. F.22— Evan Jay Warren, V, 35mm color film, 2013 F.23—Morgan Sevart, The Maid of Orleans, Leather and copper, 2014, 12x6x6 in.

F.27— Christian Castillo, Lost, Charcoal, 2015, 18x24 in. F.28— Jillian May, Mirror Head, Photography, 2014 F.29—Hannah Goolsby, Man’s Past, Photography, 2010, 8.3x5.4 in. F.30— Caitlyn Porter, Exposed, Archival Ink Jet Print, 2015, 4x5 in. F.31— Evan Jay Warren, I, 35mm color film, 2013 F.32— Christian Castillo, Ashamed, Watercolor, 2015, 11x11 in.

F.24— Jake Kauffmann, Fanatic, Aluminum, steel wire, flag, 2014, 2x2x1 ft. 50

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