Green Blotter 2022 by Lebanon Valley College

Green Blotter 2022

Green Blotter is produced by the Green Blotter Literary Society of Lebanon Valley College, Annville, Pennsylvania. Submissions are accepted year round. Green Blotter is published yearly in a print magazine and is archived on the following website. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit: www.lvc.edu/greenblotter

GREEN BLOTTER EDITORS

FACULTY ADVISOR

Managing

Gillian Wenhold ’24

Art

Lauren Swisher ’22

Poetry

Marah Hoffman ’22

Holly M. Wendt

Leila May ’22 Prose

Lauren Walters ’22 Asst. Isaac Fox ’24 Asst. Joshua Hildebrand ’22

Design

Kayleigh Johnson ’22

Media

Brianna (Bri) Eberly ’22

READER BOARD Bethany Zatto ’22 Annie Steinfelt ’24 Angelica Fraine ’23 Jordan Bennett ’22 Deidre Deischer-Eddy ’23 Lindsay Keiser ’24 ii

CONTENTS Here Be Dragons Isabelle Hutchinson 1 Touching Heart Marah Hoffman 2 Starlings Megan Bisco 3 I am Not the Only Ghost Here Marah Hoffman 4 Great Grandmother Portrait Caitlyn Kline 6 My Sister Calls My Bedroom Grandma-Chic Marah Hoffman 7 Houma, LA Sophia Ivey 8 A Letter to My Mother Saya Shamdasani 10 Elephants in the Sky Tula Singer 11 Untitled Isaac Fox 20 A Selfish Votive Zoe Aldrich 21 A Glimpse of Autumn Christopher Tai 23 Portrait of a Friendship Elliot Kingston 25 Untitled Isaac Fox 29 The Baseball Bat Sarah Inouye 30 How to Escape Sadie Giggis 33 Miss Alaska Deborah Brown 35 Skull Still Life Caitlyn Kline 37 cicada shells Madeline Ragsdale 38 Sightseeing Isabel Campbell 43 Mortal Love Marah Hoffman 44 Owego, NY Sophia Ivey 45 Nude Still Life Caitlyn Kline 47 AUTOEROTIC Cameron Heisey 48 Self Portrait Caitlyn Kline 57 To the Young Man Crying in a Backstage Dressing Room Isabelle Hutchinson 58 Waking up Alone Aubade Joshua (Josh) Hildebrand 60 Lucy Isabelle Hutchinson 61 The woman as: a fuckable thing an undead, dead thing Gabrielle E. Capone 62 Absolute Zero Emma Jo Richmond 67 Untitled Isaac Fox 68 The Squirrel Isabelle Hutchinson 69 The Forest Symphony Emma Gottfield 70 The Passage of Time Isabel Campbell 71 Gathering Moss Gabe King 72 Lowkey Luke Burrows 79 Last Exit at Route 27 Jan Wozniak 80 One Nation Divided Under God Caitlyn Kline 82 Workaholic Woolgathering Jan Wozniak 83 Up in Flames Isabel Campbell 85 I Say I am a Poet Isabelle Hutchinson 86 Alumina, or a Potter-Mother’s Wisdom Jocelyn Saunders 87 Emerald Isabelle Hutchinson 89 Five Ways of Viewing Art Jacob Voelker 90

iii

Dear Reader, With seniors comprising much of our editorial staff, 2022 feels like a near-normal bookend after three years of uncertainty. Last year, we wrote about how we found our footing in the creative amid sterile, technological discourse. This year, for the first time since 2019, we were able to eat bagels and drink orange juice on a Sunday morning as we layed out our final manuscript. Completing the process, we found joy in the art—and in each other. As we looked at the rudimentary outline of our newest issue, we understood how fortunate we are. Far too many literary magazines succumbed under the weight of the pandemic, and we feel particularly privileged to endure, to create pages of vibrant color and life. The very existence of Green Blotter is a gift. We have learned not to take anything for granted, especially the power of creativity. These pieces explore the influence of family–even long after we’ve left home and the footprints of childhood are only marks in dirt roads–the intersections of love and sex, and the power of art in a political landscape. The progression of our issue, from embarking and becoming to reincarnation after darkness to rumination on the process of creation, resembles our undergraduate experience. To our rising editorial staff, we hope the work we have done to sustain the magazine through difficult times provides support for you long into the future. In moments of crisis when it may feel difficult to find your footing, remember that creativity, besides being an escape, can also be a tether.

Sincerely, The Editors

Here Be Dragons Isabelle Hutchinson

I am on the last train in the world. The engine is an angry roar, but it is consistent. Maybe all homes are transient, like those autumned leaves deserting their trees outside my window. If someone was beside me, I might chat with her, but like Whitman and the Welsh word hiraeth, I am untranslatable. Hiraeth means nostalgia for a home that no longer is, or maybe never was, it is impossible to tell sometimes. It’s funny how the English took everything from Wales, except that one word that might help me out right now, but of course, no one was thinking of a girl on a train when there were worlds to be conquered. I know what it is to lose because I too am a country. I have only a compass to guide me and I need to find true north. I’ve heard they used to write here be dragons on ancient maps in the places where all human knowledge ceased. Those maps may be all gone by now, but the dragons do not sleep. I will have to get off at the next stop, or the next after that, but everything outside this train is here be dragons. I’m opening the door, but the roar is all I hear.

Touching Heart Marah Hoffman

Our feet are tired. A sweet, shared tired. All-day manufactured soles have pressed against our feet as we walked from the Reading Terminal Market and its deli of draped limbs and market of exotic fruits, to Macy’s, to the homeless man singing an aria on the street corner—his crystal sound swirling with the exhaust, to the Franklin Institute where the butterflies seemed to surf our breath— their paper wings a different art than the hard statues, to the Macy’s again and its kindness of a public restroom, finally to Nom Wah. The hostess calls us friends. “Sit down, friends. I will get you some tea.” Jasmine. Aromatic and warm. We hold the four-ounce mugs close to our thawing chests. Nom Wah translates to touching heart. It is our tradition to finish a day in Philadelphia with Dim Sum. Mom has the esteemed privilege of choosing our courses. They are small and savory—hence, the Sum in Dim Sum. She orders all our usuals. First are my favorite, the pork buns, so airy it feels like my teeth are puncturing clouds. Then shrimp shumai which we let swim in soy sauce before taking slow bites. Next the sticky rice. I pull a clump of it apart with my fingers until I discover the heart—a trove of pork and sauce. Dad tells me I have “no concept of germs,” that my hands have been everywhere today, and this is true, but I don’t care. Hunger has me tripping back in time to the habits of a child, though I am twenty-one, and it is something to relish. Even he sees the joy of it as he chastises me with a slight smile. I wonder how long we will do this. How many more times he will parent me as we collectively sink into the cushioned seats of Nom Wah after an exhausting day of adventure, before I am doing so with my own family. I see my future family now as vapors—or are they steam rising from the silver dishes— materializing from in front of my chest, taking their place next to me. I hear them make the same approving “mmmm” sounds, see them use the same sauces my parents first spooned onto my dumplings when I was four. I understand they will be a natural extension, a newly opened chamber of the same heart.

Starlings Megan Bisco Love should feel as if we are starlings Predicting each other’s movement Absent of collisions Formation of lustrous alluring patterns Accumulating through the infinite skies. Absolute and immense invasions of Faith, Trust, and Serenity That continues to grow exponentially, With each passing season.

I am Not the Only Ghost Here Marah Hoffman

My most imprinted memories, selfishly, involve gift-giving. It is as if my hippocampus is only concerned with a positive self-image. I remember all the candles I gave my Grammy: a crumbly blueberry-pie-shaped candle, a vanilla cupcake-shaped candle, a shiny red apple-shaped candle, a Yankee candle promising the smell of the sea. Every time I saw a candle, especially one shaped like food, I would think of her and beg my parents for the seven or eight dollars necessary, already imagining her wrinkled hand searching through the white tissue paper, the patient smile of her thin lips. Her house smelled like candles. All of them at once or one standout scent, depending on the day. Spices if I had to choose, like a coffee shop on September first. Her taste in decor was ornate, natural. My oldest cousin, Shan, painted all the tiles above her gas stove—my favorite a smiling sun amid a freckled indigo background. There was wicker everywhere. My mother now complains about this wicker-fixation; our dim garage is full of her treasures, oceans of slick tan waves. Through the portal of my memory, I walk into her guest bathroom where the woven basket of toys must still be. I spent what seemed hours playing as I pruned. Perhaps if you shook Baby Alive, water would still trickle from the holes in her perfect feet. There are ribbons in the top right drawer: silk, opaque, polka dot, stripe. Grammy ties them in my pigtails while I sit on a wicker stool, the enormous cream towel puddling around my tiny frame, and she tells me again how she was first chair violin in St. Matt’s Orchestra. Her Daddy told her she couldn’t make it, but she did. Still keeping up with that flute? she asks. Yep! I am not the only ghost here. My Aunt Amy is eternally sixteen racing into the basement to tell her siblings the van is packed until her head collides with the upper beam on repeat. The beam is solid oak. I have seen pictures of the bruising. Her otherwise smooth forehead reminded me of old fruit—rotten yellow, electric blue. Sometimes I imagine she got downstairs. And found my daddy on the carpet with his other brother and sister making a Lincoln log tower like I used to, on the same

carpet where I sat. And they would all pile up in the van and sing Stevie Nicks songs. Aunt Amy wouldn’t have to go to the ER. They wouldn’t have to call up Uncle Tom at the boy scout camp and tell him to give up their tents. Aunt Amy wouldn’t die in a car accident at 45. I take a roll call, and they’re all present. But suddenly it isn’t me calling, “Ross, Amy, Lori, Billy.” It is my father. He would relish the task more than I. Five years since he has seen Ross. Five since Amy. She’d been traveling up to our cabin in the mountains to grieve Ross’s death when something—bright sunbeams, a sudden blink, a headache—caused her to swerve and flip right from I-96 to heaven’s gate. Ross’s death involved less blood, more starch, antiseptic-smelling hospital rooms. Our last image of him is barely recognizable. He had a Ph.D. in biochemistry, but in his last moments, he only hummed and rubbed his pointer finger against his thumb, hearing a small sound unique to his ears. He had stopped taking the pills keeping the AIDS at bay. Again, the catalyst is a mystery. It should be little shock then that their stepfather, my Pop, committed suicide soon afterward. My Grammy heard the gunshot from the shed as she prepared pork and sauerkraut. It was New Year’s Day. He didn’t want to celebrate a year he could not bear to finish. I talk about Grammy as if she is gone too. But she isn’t. Her body sits in her wicker rocking chair in Elmcroft, but her mind is with her lost children, unable to be summoned by us. The doctors speculate grief sped up the deterioration. My father didn’t get to say goodbye to any of them. Grammy was the worst. She had to move in with us, and we watched her leave us swiftly. I used to receive handmade cards with crisp two-dollar bills on my birthdays. But she watched the festivities of my sixteenth with vague confusion and annoyance. “What are all these little ladies doing here, Billy? I’m tired.” So, in my last moments on this earth, I won’t imagine my own home, but instead the childhood dwelling of my father where I spent so many of my own childhood hours. I will deck it for him. Infuse it for him with all the sweetness I can still conjure with the thought of a pie-shaped candle. And then I will pad through the thin halls to see his siblings all safe there. His mother finally at home. I will tuck them in and kiss their foreheads. I will whisper to Grammy, “Still keeping up with that violin?” Then, when they wake, their bodies will be young again and move with all the vigor of a tape on rewind.

Great Grandmother Portrait Caitlyn Kline

My Sister Calls My Bedroom Grandma-Chic Marah Hoffman

Needlepoints hang in ornate frames above my light switch. Like their lost makers, meticulous grandmothers with soft hands, they hang above the clouds. I am their portal to waking. Here is a room of vintage bonnets and just the right amount of moss on copper. I sidestep the idea that death filled the shelves of Goodwill with my beloved decor. Instead, I consider myself a galvanizing force—my craft a scythe with a rewind button. I will learn to crochet. Read the essays of Michael De Montagne and the cursive notes in the margins. Will pin postcards and portraits to my corkboard. Others ask, “Don’t you want the space to feel yours?” But what could be more mine than a fellow human’s handiwork, than the art I aspire to emulate? When they ask what I do, I will say, “Make habit of touching light in an old room.”

Houma, LA Sophia Ivey Red beans & rice Buttered bread A chickens’ breasts. A white plate An hour difference, Schedules set For central time, Houses on stilts. Thick beads Of sweat Soft gray Hats And dew On my second father’s whiskey glass. Kids with full cheeks Bellowing cackles And dads with permanent sleeves That kiss Their son’s peach-blonde curls, And a papa who chases him

Around the white Table clothes. Salt thrown over the shoulder. Black strays under trailers. Tarot cards read under crosses. And a steel clothes hanger. Pink tile bathrooms No showerheads, Blinds, Or carpet. Grass that grows Too thick, A sky howling In smoldering orange And whimpering In a pastel pale pink. A house on the west side Of Houma Captures these echoes And that’s why, My second mother says, The floorboards creak– Because they are muttering Our secrets and jokes and joys To one another.

A Letter to My Mother Saya Shamdasani

Dear Mom,

I am sorry that I let the boys at school obliterate me until all that was left were broken nothings and paper cuts. Mom, I am so sorry that after Jack told me he didn’t do my type, I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror for a week. Dear Mom, I am sorry that I drowned myself in sunscreen in the winter to make my skin lighter because all that I could hear in my head was that Jack didn’t do my type. Mom, I am sorry that I asked you to stop dressing, talking, smelling, acting, being so Indian. Mom, I am sorry that I hid from our type. Because you walked through fire to place the world before my eyes and the charcoal stains on your bare feet are a reminder that this life is a gift. And to waste it would be to waste the fresh mangos you used to cut up in the summer and the soft kisses you used to place on my shoulder. And to waste all that would be to waste the soil that churns beneath our feet and the sun that paints our skin. And dear Mom, I don’t want to waste all that.

Dear Jack,

I love our type.

Elephants in the Sky Tula Singer

i. elephants in the sky Elephants were marching in the sky. They were marching sadly, severely, they were headed towards the sun. The sun was a small red coin of fire. Pia Pavese lay on the grass, regarding the herd; a flame tree bowed over her and the garden. At the zoo, the elephants were always locked behind bars, locked with a key. She didn’t have that key. The guard had it. He wore it on his belt, which jiggled. Once, she’d asked him what the elephants had done to end up like that, like delinquents. He’d only shrugged and clumped coarsely away. She’d also asked the elephants as they stood collectively like mountains in front of the sea, but none knew the answer to their terrible fate. Wind stirred: a stand-in ghost. It came from the ocean, just like Pia Pavese. The grass was parched and it quivered under her legs. The flame tree quivered too, and a premature bud drifted down to her nose, completely composed. She flicked it away—it smelled of nothing, it smelled of air. Pia Pavese bit into another watermelon, spit a seed into the grass. She had learned never to swallow the black seeds, or else a melon tree would grow in her belly. There were eight elephants. Vittoria Tadeo was on her way to buy milk at the distillery. “Is that you, Pia Pavese? Why are you in the garden? Didn’t you know that scorpions are drawn to still, dark corners?” “I am counting the elephants in the sky.” “Elephants?”

“The elephants that march in the sky.” “Those are not elephants! They are clouds!” “Clouds don’t take long steps in the sky. Clouds don’t play or eat watermelons.” Vittoria Tadeo laughed the laugh of a fat woman. “All right. But you better watch out for the scorpions…if they sting you, you’ll lose all sense of touch for at least fifty-eight days. Tell your mother to save me a case of rice!” Inside, Mama was pouring a pale lager into the arroz con pollo. A pepper caught fire on the stove and the red skin went black as coal. And the windows were open, and the doors were open, and the ingredients were everywhere, and María de León, who lived five and a half blocks away, inhaled the hot beer, cilantro, and roasted pepper, and asked her cat Changó why she’d never learned to cook like that, then swallowed down another fermented prune, or at least, that’s what it said on the box. So Mama cooked, and Tía Paloma sat on the stool by the kitchen door, the one that led to the cobblestone alley where milkweeds busted in the cracks. She smoked her cigarette of the day: a temporary temptation. Once the sun had reached the crown of the sky, Pia Pavese’s family began arriving in threes. They were coming for lunch. The cousins sat in the shade. Tía Paloma sat with them, and spoke of the cashapona tree which had appeared across the street only a few months before—el árbol que camina. She said it had walked all the way from Dolphin Plaza, moving to the light of night. Pia Pavese thought that the tree would be gone by the full moon. Tía Paloma scratched her head of ash and tickled a cousin who was trying to rob a square of chocolate. “Not yet,” she said. “The chocolate is for later.” Chocolate always came from the watchmaker’s son. He travelled abroad every other week and never once forgot to sneak back this sort of delicacy. The chocolate melted in the shade.

Arroz con pollo was served on the porch, and the table was swarmed by hands of varied colors and sizes as they all reached for the ladle at once. Heels clicked on the white and red tiles, voices clicked together, too, waves were absorbed in the west. Only six people sat around the table; the rest ate on the grass and on the swings and on the plastic chairs that leaned against the house. Neighbors gushed in from the kitchen door as Tía Paloma yearned a second cigarette. The dish was yellow, it tasted yellow. Pia Pavese ate two servings and remembered how it tingled her tongue to lick a marble in the heat. Music played with the wind and roses. In that precise moment, a snarl tore the breeze and two beaming red eyes blinked within the bushes: it was the drunken monster, again. Pia Pavese soared into the house, the cousins followed. They screamed, daunted, hiding in the closet, under the bed, behind the curtains, and even in the kitchen cupboard. Martha—the oldest of them all—refused to be a part of such nonsense. She said that they were only running from the pink plumerias that bloomed in the bushes; monsters didn’t exist. The children were so busy hiding that they missed out on the chocolate; Mama, Tío Ricardo, Tía Paloma, Tía Rocío, Anastasia Colina, and Lela had devoured it quicker than tigers. The incident caused much of an uproar among the younger members of the family. Tía Paloma promised to take them out for plum ice in the evening. As the afternoon chilled, Pia Pavese returned to the sky. The elephants were still marching. She wanted to fly to the ether and ask them why they hadn’t come down to play. Tía Paloma explained that they were on their way to the City of Amber, and could not be held up. The cousins pointed sharply to the sky and spread their eyes like leather pockets.“Lion! The lion will eat the elephants. The lion will gobble them up!” The lion shadowed the elephants in the sky, then sauntered away.

ii. jazz

Thelonious Monk was playing in the shadows of the café. There were a lot of people inside, and the waiters were standing in corners, talking politics. Pia Pavese’s café con leche cooled on the table—now it tasted gray. At home, the coffee was bittersweet, with milk froth and cinnamon and a pinch of salt. It was certainly the water. Pia Pavese was with friends. They were first-class. They wore chokers, blood nail polish, and denim skirts. Some even had tattoos on their ankles, hidden under their socks. Pia Pavese listened to the conversation. They were reviewing Mario Bahía’s new album, the songs they’d liked, the ones they hadn’t. They were complaining about Ms. Urabo and the paper she had assigned on the metamorphosis of perception, they were complaining about the sun. Pia Pavese pushed her coffee further away and got up to buy a pastry. She asked her friends to guard her bag, but they didn’t hear her. At the counter, she couldn’t decide between the cloud cake and the anise cookie. The waiter said the cloud cake was more popular, but she chose the anise cookie instead. It tasted of New Year’s Eve at home, when they would burn the hay doll in the center of the city and throw eggs at the fourway intersection in the road and eat twelve grapes for fortune. It tasted of geometric tiles, of the flame tree that guarded the yard. It tasted of black scorpions, which Tía Paloma would always end up killing with the water boiling on the stove, while everybody else climbed onto sofas and stools and tables, frantic. Pia Pavese had been sculpted into a new school, into a new city. She’d learned the language and the people, and she had friends. Her friends were as chill as they were confusing. Sometimes they talked too much about things that didn’t matter, like Paulo’s new Volkswagen, and played games she didn’t understand, like the one where they would go around in a circle and rate each other from one to twelve, or the other one where they would drink cheap rum until they couldn’t say one lemon two lemons three lemons. But they taught her many things, too. They taught her to always confirm that the person you are kissing has their eyes closed, they taught her which end of the cigarette to put in your mouth, they taught her how to get a taxi at night. They even taught her how to make sangría without wine, although she wasn’t sure she trusted the recipe. At first, Pia Pavese would walk to school along the promenade, but then the sea was gray and

trapped, the sea was sad. She’d begun walking through the city streets instead. The streets smelled of sewers and buses and old food, but the sea smelled worse: the sea smelled of death, of boats and plastic and gasoline. Pia Pavese had not returned home in four hundred and eighty-eight days, and now the rattle of the dominos at dusk or the rain tapping on the road like rice or the peacocks eating bread crumbs outside the bakery had assembled in her head as a fantastical empire. And here, where the streets were black, where the pigeons were scared of the people, she was an indefinite visitor. She missed her city. She missed her trees, her ocean, her aunt. Tía Paloma wore a necklace with a grain of rice that had her name on it. Pia Pavese’s friends said they liked her blue earrings. Pia Pavese liked them because they were the color of the sea, but her friends liked them because they matched her dress. She would have told them about the ocean in her home city, about how the water protects you and takes you to shore when you’re too far out, about the unicorn fish and the stars that had peeled from the sky several eras before, about how the sand sucks black-hearted people inside, and leaves them there to rot among the spiky shells. Then they complained about Thelonious. They thought his music was dry and abstract. They didn’t think it was music if you couldn’t sing along, and Pia Pavese nodded too. The instruments confessed to each other in a noble argument. Thelonious strolled over and whispered in her ear. He had a voice of rocks.

iii. mémoire de daisen-in Pia Pavese’s young cousin Alarica called from home, again. She liked to hear about Pia Pavese’s adventures overseas, she liked to tell her about her own adventures, too. They never talked for very long, though, because Pia Pavese worried about money, and after just a few minutes, the international calls would just get too expensive.

Alarica asked about winter. Her neighbor had told her that when it got really really cold, the stars cracked. Their shatters dropped all the way from the sky and melted on the city. Pia Pavese explained that snow was just water that had frozen in the clouds. Then Alarica asked about the lake, if it really was sweeter than chocolate milk; that’s what her school book had said, that lake water was sweet. She asked if people drank it when they went swimming. Pia Pavese told her no, no it wasn’t that type of sweet, and naturally nobody drank it—lakes were made from ice and streams that dripped from mountain peaks. Alarica also asked about the skyscrapers. She asked how they could build towers that were so tall they touched the clouds. “That’s only a name,” said Pia Pavese. “They don’t really reach that high.” Pia Pavese asked about home, although they were running out of minutes. She asked about school, friends, and old neighbors. She thought that Tía Paloma should quit smoking and finally find herself a job. Her little cousin told her about the house she had built in the yard for the fairies. She had made the roofs with the moss that grew on the rocks, and the walls with sticks she had found in the woods, and the hammocks with old corn husks from dinner. And she’d made the bowls with mamoncillo shells, and the salad plates with flat pebbles from the ocean, and the tables with bark, and the chairs with shells. And she’d made a splendid meal with red berries and honey, and the following day, she’d found that the little houses and tables had all been knocked over, which was the fairies’ way of indicating that they had enjoyed the offerings. Pia Pavese laughed and explained that the wind was fierce in the night, it had struck them to the ground. Pia Pavese gazed in the mirror while Alarica went on. She was yellow and bushy the way a lion is yellow and bushy. She wore citric roses—a foreign perfume. Her eyes were round and fragile, they fell in the corners. Her lips were white. For a moment, she couldn’t recognize herself in the mirror. When they hung up, she realized she had forgotten to ask about the sea.

iv. the sea

“Do you remember how green the sea would get just before winter?” Tía Paloma breathed heat over her shoulder. Her throat still carried sambuka and her skin, sweat and tobacco and apple cider vinegar. “No, I don’t remember,” said Pia Pavese. “I was just thinking about the clouds from when I was a little girl.” “I am actually dead, you know.” “I am here for your funeral.” “Black never has been my color. I would have preferred a dark purple or green theme.” “By the way, we found a bouquet of dry flowers under your bed. What do you want with them?” “The milkweeds? Those flowers are so ugly. I never found them very appealing, aesthetically. Why do you think I hid them under the bed?” “Should I tell them to throw them away, then?” “No! Hide them under your bed. They are filled with secrets. I used to pick them in the alley behind your kitchen.” Pia Pavese picked up a fat shell and hid it in a pocket. Tía Paloma had named these shells “telephones of the sea.” Now she was dead. According to the malady experts, she’d been watering the snake plants when all of a sudden, a gust of wind had pierced the window over the sink; she had never been prone to illness, and she certainly hadn’t taken a fall to the head—rather, they came to the conclusion that the wind had taken her breath with it. Pia Pavese had sent her aunt countless letters that never arrived. The postal system was corrupted ever since the old spinsters from Calle del Tieso had begun hoarding the mail. This malfunction only came to her attention upon returning; she thought Tía Paloma had died knowing everything about who she had become. How she would study physics in the fall at one of the most

prominent academies in the country. How she had travelled to places where vultures hovered over the water and where lakes chill at the foot of a mountain that gets lost on its way up to the sky. How her first kiss had tasted like the sun, how she’d fallen in love, out of love, and in love again. How she’d graduated with the highest notes in the institution, how she’d written about time in a nonlinear form, and how hundreds of people had read her work. “I am sad to be back.” The moon settled like a scorpion, then stirred the coolness. “I’m sad to be back and I hadn’t wanted to come, not even for you. You are dead now.” “Yes, I am.” “I am sad to be a visitor. I struggle to grab a taxi off the street, or negotiate melons at the market. I no longer enjoy fried milk, mamey smoothies, not even plum ice. Now the ocean is warmer than before.” Tía Paloma spread her lips, her teeth were yellow. “Under the flame tree, I took naps. And I had a recurring dream. In the dream, I woke up. I floated to the moon. I grabbed a star, and grabbed two stars, they hung in the blackness, then melted in my tongue. They tasted bitter and good, bitter like a grapefruit. Do you remember, tía, how you would serve us the grapefruit? With honey? We wouldn’t eat it. We wouldn’t eat it otherwise. We ate it with the honey, I liked it with honey.” Waves expired on the sand, pebbles rolled with it. “I always thought the clouds were elephants. I thought that the ocean played with me when I swam in the coast, that the grass was an orchestra. I used to taste tulips when I drank water. I don’t know what tulips taste like…they don’t have a taste. What is their taste? I used to lie under the trees with Eliza, and we would watch the clouds. We thought they were elephants. We thought they were going away, to nowhere, or somewhere, to the sun.”

“Yes…the sun…” “Do you know where all my letters went?” “No, but I have them now.” Tía Paloma kissed her shoulder. She walked through the black sea. Her head sunk into the water. Mama had prepared a coconut ceviche, and as Pia Pavese walked back, the mint and the lemon took hold of the air. She thought about the elephants. About her aunt, about the sea. Her aunt was dead. The shell was in her pocket, it was rough and pink. She pressed the crevice to her ear and a note curled inside: it was the bottom of the sea.

Untitled Isaac Fox

A Selfish Votive Zoe Aldrich The candles burn And they keep burning And the doubt blossoms Outward from my breast While the rot spreads From my ribcage Along the lines of the cross Backwards from holy ghost To son, to my head where The father rests and recoils The wax drips and hardens like my fist sets like my jaw when they say Sorry for your loss As if it will start any of our hearts again As if it will open his eyes again As if it would’ve given me the courage To meet them, instead of fixing on carpet Fighting tears as he rasps The last words I’ll hear fall from his lips I turn my back and plead to the heavens

The lighter is cold Sits heavy in my hand As memories slip under The growing mold of my mind The poison of unanswered prayers Choking out the miracles My soul begs for so foolishly Proof that someone is listening But how can there be When his ashes have settled And the flame is still lit

A Glimpse of Autumn Christopher Tai

The sky blazes red before dinner. A cool breeze filters through, rattling the barren trees and sifting the golden leaves that cover the earth. I can feel it even beneath my heavy winter coat, my fleece sweatshirt. It is a gentle nudge of chill. It is a solemn reminder of the dark days to come, and it is also a final envoy from the bright ones that have passed. I kick around the wood chips on the ground, seamlessly turning over what to little feet had been a sprawling terrain. They are insignificant to me now, save that they remind me of my youthful days, my energetic haze. I pick one up out of curiosity and fling it as far as I can. The wind brings it right back. With my gloved hand, I trace the green metal slide from the top to the bottom, where a puddle of grimy water mulls. How many times it winds, my fingers can count, but only the fruitful event of falling could have told to kids. At the top of the playground, through the bastions and the sky-reaching spires, I see the line that should have been waiting behind the slide. On Fridays especially, I would stand there, eagerly counting the heads in front of me, waiting for it to dwindle to zero. We would wait even when our cheeks turned red, and our mouths began to numb. And we would slide on a most daring act even when we knew that gelid rainwater awaited our rears at the bottom. The metal bites at my hand, so I remove it from the slide. I pass under the bars from which we would swing, evoking a bestial cry every time we grabbed hold of the next. It was pinpointed concentration, utmost determination that guided us across those bars, which threatened the end if we dropped. The kids on the other side would cheer me on, but the kids behind were anxious to see me fall, if only so that they could get on quicker.

Meanwhile, in limbo I would dance, seeing only the bar in front of me, regarding only my tiny muscles that strained in agony. As I cross beneath them now, I reach up and take hold of the bar, which shudders in complete submission, rooted by my body that was rooted to the ground. I relinquish my grip and move on. Within that short span of time, I have traversed the grounds that were once my habitat for half the day, the cause for my anticipation, an endearing symbol of hope. For a split second, I glance sideways to stare at the swing set rocking ever so slightly under the gale, creating a churning noise as it undulates. Every time it went up, I would squirm uncontrollably. Every time it came down, it was as if the world was collapsing in. And we would be so audacious that we would try to conquer fate. We would liberate ourselves momentarily from the controlling grasp of gravity, leaping for the pale moon above like a fettered bird. And when we came crashing down, we would hop back on our feet, and try again. As they depart from the wooden crumbs, my boots crunch the frosted green grass tinted yellow from the onset of death. I rummage through my pockets for my keys and click until I hear that beep. I run across the lot to the source of the sound, determined to escape from the cold.

Portrait of a Friendship (2014-2018) Elliot Kingston

I. Eggshell (WD-300) Couldn’t ever see, even glimpse an eggshell uncrack’d. All that membrane hidden inside. Eggshells’ interior lives must be so lonely. All that tension. All that blonde hair. Eggshells sometimes (I’ve found)

pre-empt their own breaking. That small lonely soul trapped, all that tension. All those silk strings, fishing line, love with hooks. I. Night Blooming Jasmine (YL-W10) Canvases to wreck, clay shards mingling with ashes in that last brutal summer, on mercifully dark summer asphalt. Chickens come to roost. All colors at once— every pain at once— culminate in white. Those nights spent awake,

shivering with white, waiting for the end, that razor sharp white. II. Ivory Palace (PPU10-14) Cup this secret close on your palms—quickly— before it escapes. Red is innocent. Red’s been framed for years, right out of the gate, right off the start line. Right from the murder. White’s the real violence, white’s the one that aches. I could never see a perfect blankness and not ruin it. No, not ever I. IV. Ultra Pure White (UPW) I used to keep myself awake staring into incandescent

bulbs, blindingly. Pure light crept in the space behind my eyes til dawn, curled up in me. Teen girls make the best scrimshanders. Whale tooth, boy bone best friends’ necklace. Her hands, always so lithe. Just right for carving me. I loved us best brutal.

Untitled Isaac Fox

The Baseball Bat Sarah Inouye

From the very beginning Helen had made it clear to me how much she hated baseball. It was probably why our friendship started in the first place. I had an affinity for passionate people and she had an affinity for being a passionate person. She was either loved or hated. There was nothing moderate about her existence. To me it seemed easier to love her, not only because I knew she was unbreakable, callus and grittier than me but because that grit in her fight also translated to the grit in her love. Our friendship was enduring, dedicated. She cared about every single thing I said as long as I cared about what she said in return. She was stubborn in her own beliefs but was receptive to me. The ferocity of her love fostered the ferocity of mine. I adored the weakest parts of her, the tenderness, as much as I adored her protective strength. All who Helen loved, loved to be loved by her. Sometimes she would offhandedly say that she was having a good day and I would tease her by bringing up baseball. We had a fiery back and forth and I liked to egg her on. “It’s a piece of shit sport,” she would say, “it requires no physical exercise. It’s boring to watch. It’s pathetic. The worship of that idiotic goddamn American pastime just irks me,” and so on. Then she met her first boyfriend. A baseball player. His name was Jacob. It seemed like he treated Helen well, though she didn’t give me much insight into their relationship. He was a spectacularly average kid with creepy snake fingers, that seemed to have minds of their own, and a bizarre fascination with the thing that Helen found the most pathetic. I didn’t understand anything about their relationship but it went on throughout the summer until late in August. I supposed, like anyone in Helen’s life, he must have earned her trust and affections. I knew she would have never been loose handed with her love, especially when it came to a baseball player. Helen and I didn’t spend much time together that summer. I was busy and she was busy, life sweeping us up into its arms, throwing us through the glimmer and bustle of adolescence. She

would shoot me the occasional text and we would go see a movie or go on a hike. Once or twice we went to the local museum and looked at modern art, which Helen seemed to think was just as pathetic as baseball, but even so she followed me to the art anyway and would stand pretending to speculate pieces she found no beauty in. When I asked her what she thought she would give me an honest and non-sarcastic answer and it was impossible not to love her for caring about me so deeply. For caring about the things that I cared about. She went to Jacob’s baseball games too, trying her very hardest not to turn away from the game to occupy herself with something she deemed more interesting. Good relationships were one of the few things that weren’t beneath Helen. She expected loyalty and if you gave it to her, she’d give it unflinchingly in return. Everything about her was firm and everything about her cared, you couldn’t help wanting to be in her life despite her vulgarity and stubborn nature. I wasn’t actually there when it happened but it did make news in our little town and in several towns over. It was late August. Jacob and his friends were messing around on one of the recreational baseball fields in the town. When I imagined the incident, the day was cooling off in the way that only hot summers can do, where the air is still warm but twilight has arrived. I picture the sky, all pink and luminous above the baseball players. I can see the dust collecting on the bottoms of their pants and more than anything I can feel the zeal. The catharsis. The evening belongs to us. The summer belongs to us. Everything is ours. I know the stupidity that follows zeal. The thoughts that follow it, the darker ones: Nothing matters because everything is in our palms. We could hurt someone. We could really hurt someone. I’m sure the whole thing was incredibly beautiful. I’m told there was a bird’s nest in one of the trees off to the right side of the field. Doves are an odd species of bird that keep nesting well into fall, a symbol of love. I wonder if they knew that. I wonder if they knew that doves are a symbol of love. I know Helen knew. My first thought when they told me that Helen had attacked Jacob was that Helen finally snapped and her hatred for baseball took over. It was a stupid and cynical thought that came out of mild but not complete disbelief. I’m sure it would have made Helen laugh. Of course that wasn’t what happened. The little nest of eggs that had been waiting patiently in one of the trees at the

baseball field was taken down from its perch by one of the boys and brought to the ground. Four chicks. Jacob, in all of his jeering laughter, brought down his baseball bat on the nest anyway. Helen saw. Helen saw everything. I imagine her in all of her strength running over to them and seeing what her boyfriend had done. The boyfriend that she trusted and maybe possibly could have loved. They say she ripped the baseball bat out of his hands and beat the shit out of him. I imagine her thinking of all the times she had watched him slam balls across the field, all the times she had waited around for him at his games when she could have been doing homework. I imagine her regretting having dug her nails into him so tightly. I imagine her trust falling out of her pockets. I imagine the convulsion of love becoming hatred. One of Jacob’s friends said that she had been crying when she hit him, like those dead little baby birds were god or her own children. Like those little birds were the only babies in the world. He said they were eventually able to pull her off of Jacob and push her down onto the grass where she howled, traumatized by what she had done. Traumatized by the death of the baby doves. Someone called an ambulance and then the police. Two bodies were removed from the baseball field. One alive and screaming. The other was also alive, blind with pain and silent. Weeks passed. Interlocking friend groups asked questions, started rumors, begged for answers. Some of Helen’s friends and allies left her side, others waited to hear what she had to say. The high school buzzed and prespired and lacked dignity, filled itself with indulgence. Interviews were conducted with everyone who had been involved. Articles followed quickly after. Jacob took his time to heal in the hospital, though he refused to interview saying that he was in too much pain, though I doubt that was what it was at all. Once in the quiet aftermath of a day in October I walked by the baseball fields and saw that someone had nailed up a wooden birdhouse on the branch where a dove’s nest had been.

How to Escape Sadie Giddis 1.

Let your hands graze that white, capricious

popcorn ceiling, although your fingertips may find its abrasiveness unnerving, and think again of the asbestos itching for a chance to fill your lungs. 2.

Pick up your thick cotton bag, distended

by items your younger self packed: a faded ibuprofen bottle, a roughly patterned knife, corrugated blade and all, and your breath, which flees your mouth when he speaks, his low voice like rum splashing in a mug, stolen coins clattering inside a knapsack, massive skull and crossbones fluttering in the wind. 3.

Wince at the bile taunting your throat, so

journey to a grubby gas station set ablaze with neon signs, where a middle-aged woman greets you unceremoniously at checkout, her hair darker than a single thought.

Think that she could

be your mother, but her mouth reflects a lifetime of droll thank-you’s, so take your bag of sour gummy bears and leave,

wishing instead, childishly, you could clamber over the counter littered with crumpled receipts and loose cigarettes, and leap into her wary arms.

Miss Alaska Deborah Brown Maybe if I wasn’t born with eyes matching my mother’s, scanning rooms for disaster, for red flags in men’s laughter, and if I didn’t find gray clouds in each silver line, and make nooses of Christmas lights, then I could have weathered the 4pm darkness beside you, burn the ships, live with winter, I’m in, dreams swallowed and chased with the hard lemonade we drank at the beach, where we threw the watermelon carcass to the waves, threw my life to the breeze. Maybe I could have stayed, and aged beside ghosts, could have prayed to the god I no longer believe in, that you’ll never start to become someone who hates me. The world’s big, and I’m scared to bet on myself, if I build on you, I could be something else, somebody else, in someone else’s family, and bring you your plates, and pray you don’t change, and I could paint trees in the green of your eyes, find daylight in your smile, find something to write in the flowers you plant to keep me outside.

Maybe I could have found common ground with your family, too close to mine, but it’s fine, I’ll be fine. Maybe I could have found happiness in the cold, and grow old in the arms of a love I’m too scared to let go. How can I carry the course of my future, in these little hands, blue fingers too cold to pull triggers? it’s nice to believe I’ll find someone to be, out here among people much more like me, but here in the dark, I wonder if I made a mistake by leaving the place by your side. Maybe I could have become someone who belonged there, maybe I could have become Miss Alaska and lived there, and found some way that I could have survived, and I’ll never know because I never tried.

Skull Still Life Caitlyn Kline

cicada shells Madeline Ragsdale it was the summer of screaming and little bodies piled up in the streets or the outlines of bodies, or sleeves, shed in the name of growth how delicate they crunched under little children’s little shoes trudging through gutters lined with the refuse of reincarnation, still perfectly curled in fetal position, eyes empty, abdomen, clinging claws and you plucked them up ecstatic brought them home to your mother, who shuddered in her green kitchen but let you keep them anyway it wasn’t the summer she was dying and I think the cats still lived or maybe your father dug a hole in the backyard while you cried in confusion and pet dead flesh the air was sugary light on skin, you wore it over baggy t-shirts, over baggy shorts over early bleeding, over newly feathered legs and they called you a tomboy, despite all your hair at the doctor’s office shoeless back pressed against the wall the nurse said you’d never grow taller: god made you this way at those words your body wrapped tight around you, all hope of metamorphosis lost this is where I leave you, my uneasy exoskeleton of baby fat

you weren’t wild by nature but wild by want wild by infection, the things you did you’d never do alone during that summer of caged freedom where nothing mattered at all, at all, and nothing screamed in the trees smoke filled the honda, do you remember how it clung to your hair and clothes for days the way she dragged her cigarette, held between pointer and thumb how blue poured from his mouth caught in afternoon sunlight and everyone thought they were in love you thought you were a witch back then or maybe the summer before and laid curses on those that undertipped you while waitressing wishing them red lights, parking tickets, sprained ankles little bits of bad luck you wore a 1940s style uniform, stockings, slip resistant shoes when you quit you threw your uniform into the depths of the closet to rot, I could still find it maybe, if I looked that summer hung heavy on you, dripped off your bones gathered thick on the belly and hips, shivered in an attempted molt you split yourself sternum to groin willing from your stomach a body seething longer, thinner, new this is where I leave you, crawling gory half in half out of the mess the neon light devoured skin paper thin and crackling caught in strobe

you froze again, again, zoopraxiscope of a girl writhing in frantic motion as each captured flash of form trailed behind you into the empty club’s glittering void I imagine them suspended there still, like shells of cicadas long gone in the lost dimensions of nighttime where everything shimmers pearlescent you spilled your guts on bathroom floors as an offering to slack-eyed girls with half familiar faces whose names all sounded alike, who traded you stranger’s secrets in place of their own and said they liked your hair in silk slips, in short skirts, in black tights, in knit sweaters you were a paper doll peeling at the edges and stained from spilled drinks, spotted in burn marks do you remember red wine vomit curling up your stomach while you rode the bus at seven in the morning away from the blissfully unretained you thought you could throw yourself up regurgitate an ectoplasmic ball of unworthy insides to flush away, forgotten this is where I leave you, a wriggling butterfly pinned alive it was the summer the apartment was trying to eat you, it had teeth sprouted from the ceiling

it had jaws slowly descending, inch by inch, day by day and there was no leaving gray walls, gray carpets pungent with dust mold grew from our skin as fur does dusky purple mottled, you looked so beastly scowling at yourself in the bathroom mirror all dolled up with nowhere to go but crazy crazy grimy ghostly going out of your gourd, what madness I remember, an endless warehouse maze of abandoned boys in black behind closed doors filling the air with razored sound, a room blue with smoke, and the girls were laughing and the girls were bleaching their hair and the girls were singing on the roof the house was hot with all our exhalations and somewhere in their buzzing breathing you found euphoria, the time to weep this is where I leave you, my tear-soaked remnants of slough across the street the letters read U REMO FOOD MARKET flickering red and green light into our bedroom, my bedroom, yours and mixed amid the sound of the city sighing you hear it, so faint that strange familiar song that slips inside our bone marrow, sibiliating, our skull, collapsing

how shall I slip you off, or you slip me, or must I come crawling up your throat, like a disgruntled parasite too fat for her host to feed skin stretching, skin splitting, skin shucking off you wished to wait for warmth, but I had other plans and somehow here beneath snow the steady undulating chirp begins to build do you hear the cicadas calling? it is molting season, and you’ve felt this before this is where I leave you.

Sightseeing Isabel Campbell

Mortal Love Marah Hoffman

Fourteen years old, I sent God letters. Sometimes suggesting that He put the thought of me in your sleep seeped brain. I imagined the colors he would stir into your subconscious: scarlet, rose, amber, gold. How slowly I would take on the hues of womanhood. At eighteen, still just your friend, I asked what you were thinking. You said, “Your lips.” You admitted I made you confused about love. And the only thing that unconfused you were your dreams. Me—an ardent yellow light amid vapors in the piss-smelling alley behind your Philadelphia home. My palm in yours on the peach Delaware shore. I hadn’t known I was being listened to till you told me about your dreaming. It convinced me of the existence of the divine. On our fourth anniversary, I told you to dream me the aftermath of our inevitable marriage. An aftermath where the shrapnel isn’t made of my satin bridal gown and your optimism. Something tangy and tangible. Tell me every detail, so I may intrude in your unconscious mind. Like I did your heart. But I won’t return the favor. Because you would see dolphins stranded and mermaids slain on our old beach. And if you were to ask for explanation, I’d say, “So quick bright things come to confusion.”

Owego, NY (part 1) Sophia Ivey You said the flies that swarmed my car were an omen— Owego, New York, mid-June, we drove up to the cemetery at the top of Evergreen Mountain. —“Did you know Mary Shelley lost her virginity on top of her mother’s grave?” —“That’s fucked” We left a mini bottle of Fireball at Sa Sa Na Loft’s memorial and I picked wildflowers and spread them while you aimed pennies at her head. Skipping over graves and throwing pebbles over the mountain, you asked if I liked you enough to have sex; I shrugged and we walked to the car, horse flies swam in the air above my white impala— it was night and you scared the shit out of me with your eager smile

–“The last time I saw this many horse flies was at my grandpa’s farm, when all the cows got sick after the 2011 flood” We smoked the cigarettes you stole from your mom and threw the buds at Sa Sa Na Loft— Bad omens weren’t hard to find.

Nude Still Life Caitlyn Kline

AUTOEROTIC Cameron Heisey

Barren, leafless branches pried at the low winter sky. The Young Woman stood by her tree, watching. The thin blue plastic bag rustled in her hand. A sharp crackle of leaves brought her attention outward—she saw The Young Man approaching anonymously. Hat drawn low about his face, he posted up beside a distant tree of his own. She leaned back and slid down the scratchy, rigid trunk to sit at its base. A desolate breeze chilled her skin as she brought her pants to her ankles, flesh rising, cold undulating across bare skin. The Young Man unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his shirt as she slid the thin plastic over her head, tucking the edges into her shirt collar for a flimsy seal. The warm moisture of her breath clung to the inside of the bag, weakly expanding and contracting tighter with every inhalation. Through the cloudy aqua filter, she saw The Young Man drop his pants and wrap his leather belt about his neck, pulling both ends tight behind. He began to masturbate, and she followed suit. Her oxygen dwindled as her effort increased, barely making out The Young Man tightening his grip on his belt, posture craning backward, fighting his own resistance. She could only just discern the quiet effort of his strained breath before he faded from all awareness and all she heard was her own, desperately smothered by the crinkly, waxy tastelessness of the bag. Wispy plastic constricting tight around her face, utterly drained of oxygen, The Young Woman felt the daze seeping into her head, wrist working violently against the brink of consciousness. She could feel her veins surging in her temples and neck, eyes lolling up into her head as the faint visage of The Young Man spasmed once, twice, three times into shrouded refraction and out of her consciousness completely before falling against his tree for support. The ecstatic warmth of her climax roused a blissful last surge of willpower—nerves in her

legs throbbing with heat, the electric high of endorphin rush teasing her up against the barrier of the unconscious—at last tearing the bag across her face to breathe again. Rushing arctic air frosted her lungs and dizzied her head more wickedly than before as she lapped it up, drunk on lurid pleasure. By the time her body came down from the exuberance of her orgasm, reality resurfaced and The Young Man had pulled his pants back on, already buckling his belt as he walked off the way he came. ... They stood awkwardly, hand in hand before the front door. She saw her warped reflection in the door’s decorated glasswork. Her Boyfriend reached out to ring the doorbell, noticed her stiffness. “Anxious?” He knew the answer. “A little.” He squeezed The Young Woman’s hand. “They’ll love you.” Flamboyant figures gestured obscurely beyond the glass. Her Boyfriend’s parents answered the door in an assault of enthusiasm. Her Boyfriend’s Mother, a tiny, fiery charge of joy, enveloped The Young Woman in a sweeping hug while His Father, tall in a lovingly washed sweater vest, threw a playful punch to his son’s shoulder. Oh my word, look at you, sweetie! You are gorgeous! I’m so happy to meet you finally! His Father beamed. I’m proud of you, kiddo. I can already tell she’s too good for you. ... They had sex on Her Boyfriend’s bed after his parents had decided to step out to give them

some space. Don’t do anything an ordained minister wouldn’t do while we’re gone, kids! His Father threw back on his way out the door. His Mother responded in kind: Oh my god, you— and the front door closed. Her Boyfriend was on top, taking care to be gentle and receptive. His breath a steady ebb, his thrusts methodical, commentary hushed and sparse. Is this good? Like that? You’re beautiful. The Young Woman affirmed him, watching the black shadows of leaves outside fragment through venetian blinds. Slashed and split apart, those shadows looked mysterious and ineffable, formless motion without destination, particular energies in cycle with the inertias of themselves. Self-consciously selfless lovemaking. She felt his breath on her neck, in her ear, a kiss on her cheek. Those shadows felt remote. Like out in the woods. She dreamed she felt cold wind, that steady firmness at her back, sliding her body down its length, roughness tearing at her shirt— ... She moaned through the bag. Head thrown back, dead trees shot up around her in silent vigil. She tore a hole in the bag, chilled blood rushing to her head in a cold flood, gauzy daze drowning out the wind. The Young Man had already turned away. He sauntered off the way he had come, automatically sliding his belt back through the loops of his pants when she felt a vibration at her ankle, disturbing her solipsistic quiet. Huffing, she leaned forward to wrestle her phone from her pocket, watching his back as he walked away, seeing nothing but trees. Breathless: “Hello?”

Her Boyfriend. “Hey! What’s going on?— You out of breath?” Why call now? “Yeah, yeah. Finishing up a workout.” “Okay. Well, I get off early in about an hour. Wanna hang out?” The Young Man was farther away. Fully clothed again, adjusting the hat on his head. Disappearing into the trees, blurring into the cloudy gray of the woods—as if he had never been there at all. She felt something rumble in her at his question. “Sure, yeah.” He sounded clueless, so happy. “Okay cool. I’ll just head over to yours and we can figure things out?” No movement around her, only the chilly desolation of an overcast winter dream. “Sure…” ... They drove at sunset. Dim heat and light smeared through cloud cover, and the window glass was ice on her skin. She leaned her forehead against it, felt her brain vibrating in her skull, the pulses of friction thrusting into her arms and hands and fingers. Strange, tingling flashes—severed circuits finding connection. Her Boyfriend smiled at her and his grip on the steering wheel tightened, thick veins bulging from the pressure. He felt the firing force of the axle spin in his palms, the smooth rubber curves of the wheel under his hands, the clammy sweat slick left from his heat. He adjusted himself. Later, when he made The Young Woman jump and laugh by opening her window on the frigid sweep of highway air, her hair blowing in a somehow graceful suspense beneath the edges of her fluffy knit hat, smile like moonlight eclipsing the gray-orange spears of the sun, she looked at the curvature of his face. The tight, rough bend of his jaw. The fluid musculature of his neck and bowing sweep of his lips. She followed the arch of his eyebrow and saw a small, faint vein pulsing at his temple. She remembered his call, and their car pulled off the highway into the oncoming night.

... In a blank, empty church parking lot, The Young Woman straddled Her Boyfriend in the backseat. Her hips worked against the blast of the car heater, sex stopping and starting to readjust in the small hatchback. He craned his head and neck up against the door to see her, and she placed a hand against the icy window. From the outside, it almost looked as if gentle steam rose from her palm up the glass, snaking between her fingers. He watched her face against the orange glare of the overhead light in the backseat. He could see where her hat, long since removed, had matted her hair with slick warmth. A small sweat shine like highlighter graced the angular thrust of her cheekbone in the light and she stopped moving on top of him. He found her face in half-silhouette: one sparkling eye visible in the glow, the other lost in darkness. Behind her, the parking lot streetlight cast a cool electric radiance on the car windows. She looked like a backlit secret. “Are you okay? Something wrong?” She pushed loose strands of hair out of her eyes. “No, it’s—” She looked down at him for a long second, wondering. Would you? “Would you choke me?” Confusion ruffled across Her Boyfriend’s forehead. “What?” “Could you just, like, lightly choke me? Would you be into that?” He sat up slightly, holding onto her, keeping her steady. He still felt warm inside her. “I, yeah, okay. I just don’t want to hurt you.” She smiled and put a hand on his face, gingerly patting in reassurance. “You won’t, don’t worry. I’ll tell you.” The Young Woman lifted his right hand slowly to her throat and started to ride him again. She let out a soft moan under the tightness of his grip, watching out the window at the white light glare. “Harder.” Her Boyfriend nodded. “Okay.” He squeezed a bit harder. No. “Here, harder.” One hand against the window, with the other she grabbed his right hand

and squeezed for him, forcing the tightness up against the ridge of her neck, pushing against the vein clusters and tendons to each side. She felt his palm against her windpipe. He was holding back. “Are you sure?” Bucking fluidly on top of him, she imagined out the window a familiar, obscure shape. As though from the fog of the dark, The Young Man stood in lamplight, hat low about his face. He was watching them through the car window, with long, slender fingers unclasping the buttons of his shirt, his isolation blowing ghost wind across her bare legs. “Yes, harder.” Her Boyfriend heard her moaning, felt the current of her motion strengthen. He squeezed her neck harder, the furious rush of blood flushing her face. She gasped, his strong hand closed vicelike around her throat, smooth palm snuffing, comforting, commanding, encouraging the flow of her small sputtering, bursting breaths. Her thoughts felt lighter and she looked away from the window, down to Her Boyfriend’s face for the first time. There was something soft in it, strange confusion glowing in that warm orange streak of light. She moved her hand to his forearm, feeling the stiff cords of muscle and effort, and for one fragment of a moment the movement of her hips and his found the nervous, nascent awakenings of a perfect harmony. She broke from his matching stare and out the window saw The Young Man’s belt falling to his feet and— ... No. No. No… Fuck. She felt her orgasm slipping away, like dream memory. Chasing, chasing, chasing, gone. Frustrated and wrist afire, she threw her head back against the tree trunk, ignoring the pain. Eyes up, she looked along its length, the most subtle of curves casting its shape on a microbend on its rise into the gray slate sky. Am I ever really here?

Her bag was tight around her face, plastic vacuuming into her mouth with each angry breath. She tore the bag off her head and out of her sweater collar, fist falling heavy to the ground. Breathing was cold and hard, like the ground beneath her bare bottom. She shuddered at the chill. She heard fainter breath. Her eyes dropped back down—it was The Young Man’s. His head was tilted back, staring up like she had been. He steadied himself against the tree with one arm while the other worked furiously below his waist. His belt hung limp around his neck. A fashionable, form-fitting flannel shirt had draped off his square shoulders and clung to his wrists, bouncing with his frantic rhythm. She looked at him like a mirage and his head dropped down to look at her. The Young Woman saw it clearly: the flashing strain of green eyes beneath the brim of the hat, the jaw and sharp nose and cropped blonde beard and strong cheekbones. The Young Man was attractive and petrified, absently real for the first time. After that millisecond linkage of eye contact, his face contorted in abject fear and he threw himself behind his tree. A moment later he darted off into the woods in a furious, almost comical sprint, holding up his waistband while shirt and belt flapped from his shoulders. She watched him run and felt sick. More lonely than before. The Young Woman slipped her pants back up her legs and listened to the quiet footsteps pounding off into nothing. ... Leaving the woods, The Young Woman heard movement far off and looked for him. Instead, she saw two teenagers, probably mid-to-late high school: a boy and a girl, his hand in hers, following her lead. She turned to him in a playful spin and leapt into his arms. They kissed and he fell back against a tree from the force of her. They laughed, and went on their way deeper in. The Young Woman watched them go, and left. ... They were walking together along the streets of her comfortable, boring neighborhood.

Her Boyfriend held her hand and swung them as they walked and talked. They talked about anything, nothing—mainly just so each could hear the voice of the other. It had rained earlier and the street was alive with a lovely fog, yellow lamps aglow overhead in blooming clouds of diffuse. The fog wisped and twirled in on itself with their walking, a flat cloudfront drifting patiently across the sky. It was cold and damp, but The Young Woman seemed not to notice or care. Neither did Her Boyfriend. He was talking about secrets when her focus settled on his grip. She squeezed his hand to feel him squeeze back, and he did so without a thought. That slightest force, perfectly calibrated and applied; that force she knew could choke and cascade her along the cradle of lucidity, vision fading and throat tightening as she passionately rocks her hips against the dying light and feels the strength of him in their connection, most clearly when they release and his hand falls from her throat in seething pleasure and the entire world blossoms more vividly than ever before, as though the veil of sentience had been lifted and re-gifted in the same instant. And then she looked to his face, saw the glimmer of his every syllable breathed out into open air, and wrapped her arm in his. ... She could imagine herself by the tree when they burst into Her Boyfriend’s bedroom. He clumsily threw the door closed behind them and lifted her in a spin as they kissed, running a hand beneath her shirt to feel the sensual gliding arch of her lower back. The Young Woman’s feet hit the floor and she shoved Her Boyfriend back to sit on the edge of his bed. She grabbed his neck tentatively. When she squeezed, bringing her hand up right beneath his chin and lifting his face to look at her, he grabbed her almost viciously and brought her closer to him, hands wandering. The chill of the breeze through the cold wood waved through her ears as she pushed him to his back, hand still firmly squeezing his throat. She fell on top of him and, holding a long violent kiss, felt Her Boyfriend’s hand slide over her throat in kind. Every muscle in his arm tensed with force and her sight went black for the slightest instant before he was there under her again, feeling

the frenetic riptides of blood rifling through her neck. Her Boyfriend’s other hand was taking off his belt and she felt that waxy plastic vacuum on her tongue. In a concentrated instant of molecular intuition, Her Boyfriend wrapped his belt around his throat as she ripped at her own and did the same. She straddled his lap as he sat up to stare into her. She stared back, and together they pulled their belts taut behind their necks, thrusting and bucking against their own force. The Young Woman imagined herself sliding down that thick tree, unable to breathe as they each choked themselves; saw that field of dead trees and watched the shape of Her Boyfriend approach from beyond the pale of physical space. She could see herself sitting there as he crouched down in front of her, both naked and alone, together in the cavernous wild. The plastic bag would be gone and Her Boyfriend would seize her neck, throttling her against the tree trunk. And she would reach out with both hands and hold closed his mouth and nose and there they would sit, in the primal, ecstatic departure of individual experience. Sat on Her Boyfriend’s lap, his free hand guiding the movement of her lower back against his own tide, insatiably grasping at her soft sparkling flesh, The Young Woman had stopped thinking almost entirely. Trees and lone winds dissolved to flurrying bokeh and Her Boyfriend saw the most attendant vacancy in her eyes, locked onto his as though motion-tracked. Again, their rhythms aligned to prolonged perfection, and they moved in tandem as one. No selfless or selfish or self-consciousness. No effort or strain or individuality. Her Boyfriend saw her face patterned by slats of moonlight through the blinds and, without thinking, reached around and grabbed hold of The Young Woman’s belt around her neck, pulling fiercely for her. And in flowing simultaneous motion, she grabbed hold of Her Boyfriend’s and did the same. Starlight seemed to drift down the walls, the floor and ceiling fell away and together they had apocalyptic sex in the deep night of fading consciousness, eye to eye, breath to breath, pulling closer against each other’s pressure as they fucked, each holding the other’s life in their hands.

Self Portrait Caitlyn Kline

TO THE YOUNG MAN CRYING IN A BACKSTAGE DRESSING ROOM Isabelle Hutchinson After Kim Addonizio

Under hot white lights lining the ceiling, and condemning, ever-present mirrors, you sit across from your reflection. Hand poised, just barely touching your bottom lip, swelling like a rosebud. Maybe it’s because last night you lay with a man hoping to find your salvation, only to find empty, strangling sheets and in the wreckage he left, you read your horoscope from a dimming phone with a battery of 15% and for the thousandth time wonder why you’re a Taurus when you feel like a Capricorn. Good things are coming your way. But, you are losing faith in the stars. Because, each day, you wake to an unmended hole in the cavern of your chest as you watch your dreams grow stale. Is that why you throw back shots, suck on paper laced with acid, or kiss strangers?

Maybe it’s all those reasons (or none), why a tear like an icicle along my roof in winter trickles down that fine line of your cheekbone. I understand. I could tell you about all the times I hid in bathrooms, wiped scratchy paper towels on burning skin, stared at red eyes until they turned white. But, how can I? You are only a boy I saw in flashes, a portrait painted from a carelessly dripped story told over a scorching iron and starch. It was for a moment, only, but I think I saw your soul. I hope you know it was beautiful.

Waking up alone Aubade Josh Hildebrand In my midnight room where hole-punched curtains scatter light like stars I turn over, ruffling calm cotton tasting the chill of space on my pillow– embracing the lone silence beside me. Though I’ve never shared an orbit, I imagine it’s like Mercury soaring up there, so close to the sun a delicate combustion bond– like waking in a supernova explosion of warmth and whispers attached by a tangled tether of arms and legs that prevent me from wandering too far.

Lucy Isabelle Hutchinson

The woman as: a fuckable thing an undead, dead thing Gabrielle E. Capone

The sand is hot on the soles of my feet. I like the way it warms my skin—almost, but not quite burning it. It feels nice to be touched somewhere so private. I grew up and suddenly, touch could only ever be sexual. I didn’t and still don’t understand why we must have “private” parts or why we teach kids about the “good” or “naughty” things their bodies can do when they are still too young to understand what exactly that might mean. It was the men who taught me what my body was or wasn’t worth, and how it could change within a second if I were to make an incorrect move, cheapening myself. I have asked myself many times, “Who was I before I was beautiful?” I have never been able to come up with an answer—if anything, the original question allows for more to spawn, “What was I before I was beautiful, and could I ever get back to that?” There is a time in a girl’s life when she is most concerned with being a fuckable thing, and if you are not desired you might as well be dead. My friend Annabel is dead. I don’t know that I could even call her that—a friend. They found her body folded up in a suitcase. And I don’t want you to think that she isn’t really my friend because she’s dead or anything like that, but because I hadn’t seen her since we were in elementary school and even then, we had only met once or twice by accident on the beach by my aunt’s summer house. And I think what’s bothering me most about her death, which is an incredibly selfish thought to even have, is that if I were to have found that suitcase, I wouldn’t have recognized Annabel. I would not have seen the corpse and wept for a friend or a girl whose grandmother had fed me and let me eat on the plastic covered sofa in her sunroom, but as a woman afraid of my inevitable fate. I would’ve called the police with a shaky voice and choked

back the urge to say, “It’s so sad, it’s so sad the way girls are being murdered like sport nowadays.” My aunt said the house would be free this week, that she and uncle Jimmy had to stay in Massachusetts for a wedding. So, this morning I woke up in their bed in a sort of trance that made me feel both unconscious and static in my skin. I was awake, but only in the physical way and the only thing driving me into movement was a survival instinct which demanded I walk, not drive, to Williams Beach where Lucy almost drowned so many years ago. Lucy who taught me that I could love someone more than myself, that my body didn’t have to be sexual to be savored—that sex could be soft and patient, that there’d be someone out there who wanted me alive, with a mouth wet with life. And of course, Lucy didn’t actually drown—she’d ironically join the Navy just a few months after the incident but even now, I still think about it. I had brought her here to show her what childhood looked like on me, a vain desire of mine—to be seen as young, which to women had always meant beautiful and again, I am asking myself who or what I was before I was taught to care about beauty. But god, those awful few seconds where Lucy bobbed up and down in the waves like some dead thing. I swear, I would’ve thrown myself in right next to her if she didn’t float back up. What would be the point then, to live without her? They’d have to fish our bodies out together, that’s what I know. The sand has begun to scald my feet, no longer hot but scorching. I want to move, but can’t—I’m not ready to go for a swim and I’m not ready to walk back to the house. When I was a little girl, I hated the sand—I wished there could be such a thing as a sandless beach and my brother would say, “That’s what the ocean is for.” Ezekiel loved the sand. He’d dig for hours, building castles or whole towns and sometimes, I would run through them afterwards—destroying everything he’d built. We’d fight, screaming at each other until we were both in tears. But Zeke would get back on his knees, with his little red face, and start working again. My brother has never been afraid of beginning, it’s something that comes easy to him. He was always the leader. As soon as we got to the beach, my brother would take off in a sprint, taking the longest possible route to the water—zigging and zagging across the shore, leaving small footprints behind. And despite the

grainy clouds he’d kick up, I would run after him—coughing and squinting in his dust storm. It seems that, my whole life, I’ve been following men. The sky is a single pale shade of blue today. I dig my feet deeper into the burning sand, savoring its sharpness and thinking of the ways it’s making my skin softer. I can feel the salt inside of my nose before I can taste it in my mouth. The ocean has a way of settling into your body like that, it’s not enough to smell it—you need to be completely covered in it. The wind blows sand upwards at me. I close my eyes, the sky disappears from view, and I press forward until my feet find the darker, damp muck and eventually, until the water laps at my skin. The current moves sideways against my ankles, splitting into thin streams around my body like branches, or maybe I’m the tree and the wispy currents are roots. I laugh and it sounds foreign, like it came from someone else and I cast a nervous glance around the beach. I am the only one here. I laugh again and this time it is familiar. My feet sink into the ocean’s fleshy floor and I pretend that the water and I are toying with each other. We push and pull at one another the way kids do when there is no game at hand except the one that is invisible to the adults—what is so often mistaken for mischief or poor behavior, but is really just the extension of friendship in its simplest form. A game which has no name, but exists to say, “Would you like to be friends? I’m looking for someone to play with, and you look kind.” My favorite part of going to the beach as a girl was the people I would meet. How many boys would let me borrow their boogie boards, how many girls would help bury my small body in the shore? How many Annabels did I befriend and love, if not briefly, and how many of them are dead? Everything is so much easier when you’re small. I know that childhood is a lonely thing, but there is no word for that yet—not like when you’re older and have shed those last few years of smallness and know what it is to feel unworthy of love, even—if not especially, platonic love. Now, it’s all too easy to name your loneliness, it’s something you’re familiar with—and your childhood friend is dead, and Lucy is on a ship somewhere in a different sea, and Ezekiel is too busy being an adult to play with you anymore.

Panic builds in my chest. My heart speeds up and my breath catches and now, the salt is in my lungs. I do not want to be a tree. I do not want to plant myself in one place or let the ocean swallow me whole, even though sometimes that sounds nice. I trudge forward until the water settles around my waist. Like the sand on the soles of my feet, this feels nice—to be touched by something that doesn’t want to fuck me, to be held by something that could kill me if it wanted to, and still not feel afraid of it. I walk until I can’t walk anymore and my legs float up behind me. And then, all I have to do is swim. The water is cold and clean—I like the way my skin looks underneath it, unblemished and glossy. I twist and kick, putting my head below the waves and letting the salt get stuck in my hair. I don’t even care that it burns my eyes to keep them open, I do it anyway. There’s nothing I can bear to miss, no single crab or piece of driftwood that I can spare. They’re all so beautiful that it brings me to tears, and as I break the surface I am gasping for air. I am wiping water from my face and it’s unclear what is from the ocean and what is coming from my eyes, but this doesn’t bother me. And I’m wailing so loudly that I wonder if the fish will come check on me, or if the sharks will swim away as fast as they can because they’re not sure what to do with such big emotions. I don’t know how to stop crying, it feels too good coming out of my body and in this way, crying is a sort of fuckable thing—like beautiful girls or dead girls or Lucy who almost drowned here. I want to scream, I want to yell, “Look! Look what I can make, what I can shed for the world—how I can be something other than my beauty. I can be miserable and still matter, with an ugly, flushed face and smudged eyes and sadness weeping out of my body.” I swim until the sun feels shy and hides itself behind the horizon. On my way back to shore, I take my time—a leisurely backstroke guides me to the shallow water where I pause and exhale as if to say, “I’m done now. I’ve cried and it’s over, and my friend isn’t coming back. And it’ll pass.” With the last of my strength, I get out of the ocean and throw myself onto the sand, loudly panting. The sand is cool on my back, and still rough enough to make me softer. It’s been feeling like life too has ground me into something mousier, more fearful. I wish I hadn’t let the men tell me what I

needed to be to matter, but that was then. I cannot change it. It is too dark to see in front of me, but I can hear the tide coming in. I listen to the waves build and deflate as they hit the shoreline. I will the water to meet my body, flush under me and pull me back out. I think of Lucy. I want to tell Lucy that I’m glad she didn’t die, that if it had to be a girl I’ve loved then I’m glad it was Annabel. Or that if anyone needs to drown at this beach, it’ll be me. And I know this is wrong, but it’s how I feel and I cannot change it. And I’m thinking of all the men who’ve touched me, or fucked me, and feeling self conscious about my mind, because it is so often an ugly place. But Lucy made her way into my body, my head, and my chest. She had seen it all—everything that was gross or warped or cruel, and she loved me in spite of it all. My whole life, I’ve only ever wanted to be beautiful. I think what I need, what we all need, is to be loved in spite of it all.

Absolute Zero Emma Jo Richmond Universe’s depths: The realm of endless darkness Wander under a black sky Void of stars and void of light Nothing moves or stirs For even the smallest atom Lies in undying stasis. The fields of time and space Whisper songs of darkness To drifting planets Where time has lost all meaning. Dance along the curves of the cosmos Feel her primordial cry: A promise— As trillions of years drift on All of space-time must one day Return to Absolute Zero.

Untitled Isaac Fox

THE SQUIRREL Isabelle Hutchinson I look up, hoping to find God, but only find you, curled against a biting winter wisp and balanced on a tree branch. You are far from divine, but you will do. Tell me. How does a heart convalesce, exactly? I have a pocketful of communal heartbreak, and questions are only fun if you don’t need the answer. Tell me, does happy taste like vanilla or vodka? It’s been so long. My tongue has amnesia. So, let this be my prayer: teach me how to curl against a bitter wind, and teach me how to light a hearth in my chest. Let there be light.

The Forest Symphony Emma Gottfield The stage is set Lit by blinking fireflies Spiraled branches twist To reach the twilight moon Up they go Down to a four count beat One Beating heart of fluorescent hummingbirds Drum of the forest Two Baritone frogs Belt out the harmony Three Melody weaves through the trees Carrying the cicadas’ string quartet Four The star nestles her way out of her cocoon Pirouetting on the wind, She leaps across the stage But disappears before the final bow

The Passage of Time Isabel Campbell

Gathering Moss Gabe King

He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. —James Joyce

The rooftop of Union Station St. Louis’s headhouse burns a most magnificent crimson at the golden hour. A series of darkly gleaming arches umbrella the entryways and the clock tower that protrudes sharply from its western end seems to stretch itself upwards forever. The limestone facade has visibly aged, not into ruin but into a stately elegance found in all great, old buildings. Upon its grand opening in 1894, it was the world’s busiest rail station, moving more people and more freight than any other. Its construction coincided with the closing of the West, as brick by brick and tie by tie, the American empire spread itself to the coast. Now here at the seat of that invasion, we built this gargantuan tribute to our own decadence; shrouded under the grandest train shed anywhere on Earth. It is grand and beautiful and endlessly indulgent. I sat across Market Street, in front of a Carl Milles sculpture entitled Meeting of the Waters, its name a reference to the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers that define the city’s sprawl. I was in town to see The Rolling Stones. And having done an appropriate amount of pregaming in the bar of the Pear Tree Inn, I set out across St. Louis’s downtown, toward the dome in search of Rock n’ Roll hedonism. The weather was perfect, with the sun dropping low in the sky to my back, spreading an orange grow all the way around the horizon. The sign in front of a bank informed me that it was 88 degrees out, but the sharp breeze coming down the street and the rare lack of humidity made it all feel warm and pleasant.

Swaggering my way down the street, I passed the Stifle Opera House with all its pomp and circumstance. The massive stone Greco-Roman columns mark a distinction from the gothic architecture of St. Louis’ other landmarks. In 1978, with the popular music landscape shifting underneath them, The Stones staved off obsolescence here, playing a classic, stripped down set to rapturous reviews. They focused not on extravagance that night, playing the music without added fanfare; a concert, not necessarily a performance. That summer night, enraged Rock n’ Roll fans, left outside without tickets, rioted on the street. However, because the controlling arm of authority is never too far away (the police headquarters are still only a block away) cops soon flooded the theater’s entryway, an army of billy clubs and toothy bloodhounds. They had outgrown even this grand venue. I had gone to see Bob Dylan roughly two years prior, at the Capital Theater in downtown Kansas City. The esteemed folk laureate, clad from head to town in black, appeared on stage at exactly 8:00pm, not a second early, not a second late. He played for exactly one hour then left without encore. He didn’t say a word that was not read off a teleprompter off the front of the stage, no jokes, no crowd work, nothing. That night, Dylan seemed irrevocably muted, a far cry from the freewheelin’ troubadour who commanded the Hawks to “play it fucking loud” in defiance of the Newport crowd’s unrelenting jeers. No, that night Dylan was a man collecting a check. He satisfied the contract between performer and audience but did no more. And walking eastward, deeper into St. Louis’ metropolitan underbelly, the specter of this past disappointment began to dampen my mood. A man stood on the street corner, outside the downtown Hooters on the corner of Chestnut and 7th. He was wearing a tattered sleeveless t-shirt and a pair of patched canvas work pants. He was struggling to crush a can of cheap, domestic beer beneath his boot heel, his aim impaired by his stupor. At this point I had run into a mob of middle aged Stones’ fans ambling across downtown St. Louis, and as we stopped on the street corner, held in place by the authoritarian stop light, the man on the corner took a long drag from his cigarette.

“Mick Jagger has got everybody coming out for the night!” he proclaimed, his exclamation accompanied by a cloud of smoke. I had not paid him a second thought as we approached the intersection, but now I craned my neck to make eye contact. I nodded in approval. “Mick Jagger!” the man repeated, “That’s one legendary motherfucker! Mick Jagger!” At this point it was clear to me. This man was no drunken corner vagrant; he was a herald announcing the arrival of a most awesome god. A rock god, and perhaps the most supreme among that pantheon. Not a benevolent god, but a debaucherous one. It was He who pushed the sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll lifestyle to the very limits, who on a strung-out, twisted bender somewhere along the line must have laughed in the face of Death himself. He who famously looked upon the Devil not with terror or even envy but pity. The Devil was a small-timer. Satan did not have His knowledge of earthly sin and vice; of flesh and wine. He was in fact one legendary motherfucker. “Mick Jagger!” He repeated again. “Mick Jagger!” The proclamation was fanfare, like the sharp brass tones of a royal horn line. What reservations I had dissipated in the face of the herald’s recurrent announcement. The mass of pilgrims, all sporting the classic lips and tongue logo, lurched slowly along down the street. The stadium in question is currently known as the Dome at America’s Center, although it’s been known as the Edward Jones Dome or the Transworld Dome over the years. It was constructed in the late 1990s in the hope of seducing an oh-so-lucrative NFL franchise back to the city. After 21 seasons of pro football that averaged out to an uninspiring .422 winning percentage, the now Los Angeles Rams packed up shop and left for the coast. Westward, like the men and women who once hustled across Union Station’s great hall late for a train. The stadium now sits largely abandoned. It has also fallen into near disrepair. The concourse displays appear unchanged since the building’s opening, with faded paint and missing letters. Every surface is sticky as if a thick layer of cola and piss covers the entire venue. Peppered throughout are hints as to its past such as a sign on the lower level that still reads: “Welcome to the Edward Jones

Dome, Home of the St. Louis Rams.” I passed under this sign on my way to my seat. Section 128. Seat Q24. I sat down next to a pair of late-middle aged women. They wore matching blue fleece vests and Rolling Stones baseball caps that I had seen advertised in the concourse. My first impression was that they both looked like Hillary Clinton. They promptly informed me that they were sisters and had traveled from Phoenix and Minneapolis, respectively. I never caught their names. “I’m very excited,” I told Minneapolis, the sister sitting closest to me. “This is your first time seeing them?” she asked. I’m always a big hit at these concerts. The vast majority of attendees are either die-hard fans from the bands’ imperial periods or middle aged newcomers looking to break the quiet desperation of their lives, both of whom get a kick out of my youth. It’s a little patronizing. “Yes,” I responded, “This is a big deal for me, I’m a big fan.” This was and remains the truth. I love the Stones. “Ours too. She bought tickets and called me in Minnesota and told me we’re going to St. Louis,” Minneapolis responded. Phoenix craned her neck in our direction at her mention. She was clearly the older sibling, or at least the one in charge. “I want to go see everyone before they die,” she shouted across her sister. “We went to go see Elton John and Paul Simon before COVID.” She was right to think this. Just months before the tour, the Rolling Stones’ longtime drummer Charlie Watts had died. This was the band’s first public concert since. After living through habitual heroin usage, alcoholism, throat cancer, and maintaining a working relationship with Keith Richards, Watts finally passed away of old age. The Stones had once laughed in the face of Death, but he is ever persistent. And as the rock and roll pantheon began to thin out, I had adopted a similar self-imposed mission. “Me too. Last concert I went to was Bob Dylan, Springsteen before that.”

After a cloying and overlong opening set, the Stones were nowhere to be found. I was OK with this, figuring that being fashionably late was just part of the Rock n’ Roll experience. An army of roadies all dressed in black flew around the stage, which was lit by a row of massive, vertically oriented screens that stretched all the way up to the dome’s rafters. Every ruler needs a procession and His entourage were busying themselves preparing the venue for his arrival. Checking a microphone here, tuning a guitar there, dissonantly tapping the drum kit; the details of the preshow only built anticipation for their arrival. An hour and a half after the advertised downbeat, a man with a comically thick English accent approached the microphone that was situated at the front and center of the stage. “Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome to the stage, the world’s greatest Rock and Roll band: The Rolling Stones!” It was like a dream. Everything was turned way up and slowed way down so that even the people in the cheap seats could keep up. The sound of them was overwhelming. A turgid cacophony; without relent until the very end. They were the loudest things I had ever heard. Too loud, in fact, like the band was determined to beat us all into submission. Something was terribly wrong. It shouldn’t sound like this, like slow shrieking metal invading the palisade of my consciousness. The ballads were ear splitting, the anthems incomprehensible so. The new drummer, Steve Jordan, pummeled the kit, a blistering flash of limbs and sticks. His efforts were to no avail, there was no rhythm to the roar. So much noise coming at you for so long, you can only take so much. It didn’t sound so much like music at a point, just thundering, deafening noise that hit me with the blunt force of a very large truck again and again and again, never leaving first gear, determined to emphasize every painful tread of its tires. It was horribly unmusical, all sound, no fury. The machines on stage spit excessive plums of fog into the stadium. The screens projected their hues into the mist, igniting the mist into hellish shades of orange and yellow and red. He pranced and twirled in slow motion. An exhausting display; the aluminum bleachers ringing at every howl and screech, enough to raddle the molars in the back of your mouth. It just seemed

sad to see an old man strain himself like this. Still choking out the lyrics with as much vigor as He could muster, His eyes glued to the teleprompter off the front of the stage. He removed his gaudy rhinestone-adorned jacket, all protruding ribs and hunched shoulders. In between numbers He took big gulps from a water bottle, clinging to every swallow as if his very life depended on it. A momentary reprieve from the exhaustion. Death was coming for him after all. An obnoxiously drunk couple consisting of a middle aged man still clinging to what was left of his hair danced with a young, curly haired woman many years his junior. He had what was an oddly muscular physique for a man of his age, as if he had spent a great deal of time preening himself in order to keep up with his junior partner. They stumbled across rows of attendees, bumping and grinding their way up and down section Q. Passing by me, they wafted fumes of cheap perfume, cheap beer, stale sweat, hair grease, and bad pot in their wake. So this is what has become of the mighty Rolling Stones. A blown-out show for peacocking middle-aged Adonises and their mistresses. I took the train back uptown, too twisted to navigate the pitch black streets and, having blown all my cash on marked-up stadium beer, too broke to hail a cab. I got off by myself at Union Station. The interior of the train shed has been co-opted into a sort of budget amusement park. The rod-iron canopy that hangs over the place has been adored with gaudy, neon-colored lights and a flashing fluorescent sign off to the side advertises a cheap aquarium. A restaurant with the facade of a fairground tent boasts on its marquee that “A Historic Icon Has Never Felt So Modern!” The grand hall, situated at the center of the headhouse, is now the lobby of a Marriott branded hotel. A ferris wheel sits just outside the canopy with another sign that boasts of its size in comparison to the Statue of Liberty. All of a sudden Lady Liberty didn’t seem so impressive. I staggered around the open air train shed for a good forty-five minutes trying to find an exit

that wasn’t barricaded off. I kept thinking that someone must be coming to arrest me, detain me, or at least ask me what the hell I was doing, piss drunk and wandering around Union Station at one in the morning. Somewhere deep within the recesses of my brain I thought that getting detained for public intoxication inside a cultural landmark would at least provide me with the Rock n’ Roll story I was deprived of at the concert. I eventually hopped a fence and I was free. Unbeknownst to me until I had thrown myself over the barricade, a cop was sitting at the end of the street, close enough to take in the spectacle. He totally ignored me as I walked past. There was no riot this time, no threat to authority, just me. 1978 was a long time ago indeed. I eventually found my way back to the Pear Tree Inn. After ascending the sloped hill on which Market Street was paved, I turned back around. I gazed out at the St. Louis’s skyline, the towering skyscrapers all lit up against the night sky, with the imperial Arch at the very edge of the horizon. That’s when it struck me: Here I was at the Gateway to the West, looking back east.

Low Key Luke Burrows

Last Exit at Route 27 Jan Wozniak An early debut & quick to rise some drank, some smoked, some snorted hell—some even injected. Like wing’d birds taking flight soaring higher & higher— the rock gods of the 27 Club utter their incendiary anthems to the generations before them. Quick to rise & early to fall some dosed, some drowned, some dropped the hammer hell—some even just shut down. With meteoric rise, comes meteoric fall Newton’s Third Law apparently applies— not only to physics, but to manic-depression as well. Like the astronomical objects they signify these stars that shine, do— inevitably burn out. & in the fervent fires of the manic limelight that—

scorches their wings & in so doing marks the tragic descent of the Icarian free-falling inferno of gossip, of tabloids & scandals that scar the already fragile spirits, who— in purgatoried disorder, travel unaccompanied through all-too-familiar desolate depressive states on self-medicated desert highways mapped in blood & bone until— they abruptly discover, lying dead ahead their Last Exit untimely marked— at Route 27.

One Nation Divided Under God Caitlyn Kline

Workaholic Woolgathering Jan Wozniak

With a thud, Cal opens his eyes to a sight as welcoming as a collaborative piece by Bosch, Bacon, & Beksiński as massive armies of faceless figures in business suits stand gauntly like Giacomettian statues, marching in synchronicity beneath the yellow atmosphere. Having skipped breakfast, zombielike they hurl themselves onto the conveyer belt sidewalks of the morning madness, chanting “productivity, productivity, productivity” only to be swallowed up by the doorways of menacing corporate skyscrapers & towers that swell & expand as they gluttonously digest the energy of their dedicated employees– who, with Gatsbian green light willingly sacrifice themselves in hopes of bigger homes, prettier spouses, more expensive cars & the pièce de resistance–the opportunity to retire early (of course, that’s merely an illusory end, as the most honourable death for the workaholic being karōshi) & with the noble lies of self-help & productivity gurus, buy my book & discover how you too can become both happy & free preaching paired down instructions such as “discover your passion” & “work hard” & “inevitably you’ll find

everlasting prosperity.” So, like dogs chasing tails, the desperate souls rush—no time for idleness, bound to the Ixionian wheel spinning endlessly work, sleep, work, sleep—the ad absurdum song plays, echoing away within their little thought caves, as the enslaved & work-crazed dance about to imperceptible threads held by the Great Capitalist Puppeteers high above & beyond the reach of the anthill proletariat masses with their unnatural green eyes glowing in the heaps of nuclear waste, their shadow puppet hands gracefully dance against their carbon colognes & nicotine-stained skies the siren call of factories fills the immensity of space with thunderous symphonies of machinery that chew & churn & spew future food for landfills & oil-drenched ocean shores with trash piles of discarded metals & plastics that stand heaven-high, a modern Tower of Babel to honor the ingenuity & unquenchable thirst of human excess— excess that willingly offers up the fruits of nature as burnt offerings to the endless furnaces of fabrication & the Hephaestion hammer.

Up in Flames Isabel Campbell

I say I am a poet Isabelle Hutchinson I say I am a poet, but I am such a liar. My metaphors are wet kindling that start no fire. I will not lie, I am a fraud. Watch: I cannot conjure a world on a whim. I envy God, and his medium: majestic breath and a curving rib, lost piece from an ivory dome, that cathedral in which the heart beats its wings. That’s creation. I only scribble to the rhythm of a metronome. I’ll always want more than I can ever have. I wait at the bus stop, watch for the words. Time melts in my pocket. The pen and ink are my only certainties. I stand at the brink of creation. A world is birthing. The kindling catches a spark.

Alumina, or A Potter-Mother’s Wisdom Jocelyn Saunders Once I have washed this clay from my hands, would you raise a toast for this home I’ve fashioned? From kaolin and bone ash, I sculpted a dream’s dying light—drawing its febrile, glazed eye into my palms’ wellspring, a haven for this amorphous mass, this ouroboros liminality.

In the firing kiln, I was sintered: porcelain skin crazed and carbonized. I poured lacquer, gold-shocked, into crack and crevice, one-and-all. I marvel at this gamut-run, Kintsugi canvas of myself: imperfect, heavenly body.

Today, you are greenware: untested and malleable, but my hands will teach yours the secrets

of my potter’s wheel. Then, my son, would you raise a toast for me? For I will have given you the very tools to shape the warmth or the winter, the feast or the famine, heedless of which throws its leaden weight upon your heart in rush or requiem.

Emerald Isabelle Hutchinson

Five Ways of Viewing Art Jacob Voelker

As a Monolith

The way you generally like art but wonder when your art history major girlfriend will get her fill. Really, how much time can you spend in a museum before all the pieces start to look the same?

II.

As a Means to an End

Art is seldom praised for its functionality and pragmatism. Quite the opposite, in fact—critics of art (not to be confused with art critics, who unnecessarily dislike art for different reasons) are quick to ridicule creative expression for its reputation as a leading cause of moving back in with your parents at twenty-six. The lack of social mobility experienced by artists is cited in an attempt to emphasize the insignificance of their work. Of all the flawed rhetoric to be sifted through in the comments section of an Instagram post, perhaps the most alarming is the unilateral definition of function—for something to serve a function, it must in some way promote financial prosperity and allow the individual to ascend the social ladder. This inseparable association between what we make and what we make (physically and fiscally, respectively) is the foundation of several arguments made by critics of art and is why said critics are doomed to lives of emotional turmoil and an unrealized ability to self-analyze. I’m kidding about that last part, but art serves as means to ends that don’t involve an influx of wealth. A defining characteristic of art is its ambiguity, its openness to interpretation. This is often used at the individual level when discussing the thematic intricacies of a particular piece, but the broader concept of art is a very personal thing, as personal as experience itself. What might this

look like? A young girl cartooning a sunset because she remembered that her mother once called one beautiful. Or a seventeen-year-old scribbling song lyrics into a spiral notebook to get out his frustrations with his dad and the world. Or an older couple slow dancing to the same song that played first at their senior prom night and then their wedding night. Or the woman who paints portraits of her late husband and hangs them around their four-bedroom house to make it feel less empty and more like the home it once was. Art is functional. Art serves purpose. To discover what it will serve for you, you must let it.

III.

As What Dictators Fear

R. Alan Brooks always loved comic books. As a young black kid from the South, he was taught to blend in to avoid catching the attention of the wrong neighbor on the wrong day. Even so, Brooks had a difficult time suppressing his passion for comics. It was a part of who he was. A friend’s father, who cared very deeply for Brooks, sat him down one day in his living room and “set him straight,” Brooks recounts in his Ted Talk. His friend’s father told Brooks that, while it’s great he loves comic books, he needs to start thinking about a serious career that will take care of him and his family. Brooks, who grew up to own a real estate agency, hated it and closed the agency to pursue his dream of being a graphic novelist. Around the time of the 2016 election, as hate crime numbers spiked and overt racism became increasingly apparent, activists responded. While many of his friends took to the streets on Capitol Hill to protest for their lives, Brooks stayed back and started writing a comic book, during which he asks himself, Is this silly? Vain?

On a trip to Europe to clear his head, Brooks sat down for coffee with the owner of a comic-book store owner in Berlin. The owner reflects on his favorite childhood superhero, Captain America, and

how he missed out on certain issues that were banned in Germany. These were the issues in which Captain America was fighting Nazis. Brooks makes a connection to Nazi Germany where Hitler burned books and paintings he labeled “degenerative art” and realized that art has power, despite his insecurities about the impact and importance of his work. He realized that art creates social and political change across the world, inspires the members of a group to address the inequities and injustices within. Art, he realized, is what dictators fear. Brooks returned home and finished a graphic novel that addresses the sociopolitical issues he was passionate about, specifically police brutality. The Burning Metronome, a supernatural fantasy that analogizes the issues he faces in reality, was widely received by the world and landed him a position teaching in an MFA program. Most notably, Brooks reflects, was the conversation he had with a man who told Brooks that his graphic novel made him rethink the way he does his job. That man was a police officer. What place does art have in democracy? In maintaining its integrity.

IV.

As an End Itself

On the subject of means and ends, who determines which is which? Who is to decide that one thing is a means to reach some end, and decide another is an end you must reach by some means? What stops something from being both? Aristotle, apropos of means and ends, poses the question: Are there any means that are purely means and nothing else? Inversely, is there an end that does not serve as a means to anything else, or in other words, an ultimate end? Art is functional, and art serves purpose. But must it? Must we pull out the paints in hopes of creating a masterpiece? Must we wield the pen to write something others will read? Sing a song that will bring an audience to their feet, perhaps even tears? Read a poem to learn something about ourselves, or write one to make something of ourselves?

Art that does any of those things is wonderful. Equally wonderful is art created with no intention, or more accurately, art created with the sole intention of creation—art for the sake of itself. Of course, there will often be a purpose served. You may feel something, satisfaction with your work or maybe anger with its inspiration. You may receive validation from those around you that comment on the precision of your strokes or the beauty of your language. But one can make art without those goals, or any others, in mind.

Part of identifying the ultimate, Aristotelian end for yourself is rejecting its inverse. To view art, and all other things, as ends themselves is to appreciate fully each moment for what it is. Understanding this fundament lets you see art in the final way,

As Everything

On your walk, watch that bee circle the same marigold seven times before flying off, only to return moments later. When at work, take note of the feint squeak from the bathroom door that echoes the walls surrounding your desk with each opening. Recognize the monotony and take comfort in consistency. In the waiting room at the doctor’s office, revel in your discomfort. Become acutely aware of your physiological response to your environment. Feel every contraction of every contractable muscle, forcefully swallow the last drops of saliva in your arid mouth. Wait to eat your homemade oatmeal. Let it consume you first. Treat the scars on your body the way you do streaks on a canvas, as part of the picture, part of the story.

Each time you throw change into the Rainy-Day Jar, smile quietly because you know there are too many rainy days to ever save up enough nickels for anything more than a coffee from the cafe across the street. When a rainy day comes, appreciate the trip to the cafe and its short but frantic nature because you still don’t own an umbrella. Let yourself be awestruck by the intricacies of chemistry. Experiment with different artists and genres, but always return to your favorite song, just as the bee did the marigold. Take note of the world around you. Accept the art it has to give.

CONTRIBUTERS Zoe Aldrich is a freshman majoring in Creative Writing at Truman State University. When not studying, she can be found haunting diners and inventing complex lives for campus squirrels. This is her first publication, and she is thrilled to be featured alongside these talented creators. Megan Bisco is a senior at Lebanon Valley College and is going to attend Widener University Commonwealth Law School in Fall 2022. Deborah Brown is an undergraduate student at Berea College, where she is majoring in Psychology and minoring in Sociology and Creative Writing. She has been passionate about writing for as long as she can remember and is always excited to experiment with new forms and ideas. In addition to her love for creating prose, poetry, and song lyrics, she also enjoys her job as a writing consultant for her college. Her work has also been published by The Blue Route. Luke Burrows is a senior Actuarial Science and Analytical Finance double major at LVC. Isabel Campbell is a third-year Creative Arts Major and Social Justice Civic Engagement Minor at Lebanon Valley College. She enjoys creating art primarily through photography, sculpture, and mixed media. She uses these mediums to create works of art that are thought-provoking as well as visually appealing for her audiences. After college, she hopes to combine her Major and Minor by creating artwork that engages with community and social justice issues. Gabrielle Capone is a Junior at New York University. She is studying English and Creative Writing, and plans to pursue a career in teaching. As a child, Gabrielle could either be found watching the film Muppets Take Manhattan, or surrounded by a stack of books– her favorite being The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. The young poet says, “Hi mom!”

Isaac Fox is a student at Lebanon Valley College, where he majors in English and creative writing. He spends his free time reading and writing things that aren’t assigned, shooting pictures, and playing the clarinet. His fiction has appeared in Rune Bear and Heart of Flesh magazines, and he writes book reviews for Green Blotter’s blog. You can find him on Twitter at @IsaacFo80415188 Sadie Giddis is a sophomore at the University of Florida double-majoring in English and Psychology with a minor in Spanish. She enjoys reading, writing, thrift-shopping, and yoga. Currently, Sadie plans to pursue a career in law or counseling psychology. This is her first poem ever published. Emma Gottfried is a senior at Truman State University where she is pursuing degrees in both Biology and Justice Systems along with a minor in Forensic Science. She enjoys writing and painting in her free time. This is her first published piece. Cameron Heisey is a senior Creative Writing student at LVC. He doesn’t like autobiography. He really only cares about film, filmmaking, and Taylor Swift, and he’ll be sure to tell you so. Godwilling, they’ll continue to play a very prominent role in his future. Joshua (Josh) Hildebrand is a senior English & Creative Writing double major at Lebanon Valley College. In his spare time, he enjoys exploring the cosmos with a dysfunctional cast of lovable characters. He is currently taking a break from interstellar travel to pen his debut novel. Marah Hoffman is a senior double major in English and creative writing at Lebanon Valley College. Within her campus’s lively literary community, she is a writing tutor, mentor for prospective and new students, co-poetry editor for Green Blotter, and president of her college’s International English Honors Society chapter. Marah enjoys reading classic and contemporary

literature. She has written poetry since she was twelve but has lately found herself wandering the realm of creative nonfiction, particularly personal essays. Besides being a bookworm, Marah is an avid runner. She is a member of LVC’s cross country and track teams. When Marah graduates, she hopes to find a position that allows her to continue pursuing her passion for books. Isabelle Hutchinson is a senior at Ohio Northern University where she studies Creative Writing and Professional Writing. Her work has appeared in Polaris and is forthcoming in The Oakland Arts Review. When she isn’t writing or contemplating life’s many mysteries, she is probably spending time with her two cats. She is originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Sarah Inouye is a sophomore at the University of Iowa studying English and Creative writing, but she is a local to the San Francisco Bay Area. She is currently a poetry editor for New Moon Magazine and earthwords: the undergraduate literary review. Sophia Ivey is a recent graduate of Florida State University. She received a major in English Literature, Media, and Culture and a minor in Religion Studies. She plans to go on to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing in August at one of her dream schools. In the meanwhile, she is enjoying her time working as a Social Media Manager for a local Marketing Firm, and spending time with her cat Frankie. Gabriel King is a writer and senior undergraduate student at Northwest Missouri State University studying History and Literature. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri. Caitlyn V. Kline is a sophomore Creative Arts major at LVC who has won multiple awards for her art, from district art shows in her home town to getting her art in the Washington D.C. capitol. Kline has experience with all mediums, and enjoys admiring both weather and art as a student and a hobbyist.

Elliot O’Rourke (he/they) is an art history and religion undergraduate at Coe College, Iowa. His work explores themes of haunting and what we do with the past. He is inspired by Anne Carson and Hafiz. Madeline Ragsdale is a senior English major with a focus in Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Emma Richmond is a seeker of life’s adventures and a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her passions include writing fantasy and sci-fi stories, creating poetry, painting, building computers, and following her dreams in every form they take. She is interested in discovering all that she can learn in the glorious quest of life. Jocelyn Saunders is a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh where he is double majoring in Classics and English Writing. A bright-eyed transplant to the humanities from an intended course of becoming a pharmacist, if he is not translating Latin poetry or steadfastly memorizing Greek verb forms, you can find him daydreaming. Saya Shamdasani is a freshman at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. She is passionate about the written word, social justice, and education policy. Tula Jiménez Singer is a Cuban-American writer currently studying at Northeastern University after spending her high school years in Havana. You can read her work on The Teen Magazine, Reedsy, Write the World, The Weight Journal, Indigo Literary Journal, and her blog “El Cuarto de Tula,” among others. She wants her pieces to be a slice of her life—filled with jazz, oceans, identity crises, and chocolate. She writes because she cannot let it go.

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Christopher Tai is an undergraduate freshman at Rutgers University in New Brunswick studying Creative Writing as well as Computer Science. He was born in Montgomery, New Jersey, and has lived there for his entire life. Growing up, he has always been fascinated by stories and the power they hold to bring excitement and meaning into even the most mundane periods of life. He writes in order to capture the emotions that cannot be described by a single word or sentence, and he wrote “A Glimpse of Autumn” as a reflection on growing up and leaving childhood behind. Jacob Voelker is a second year student at the University of Pittsburgh majoring in Neuroscience and History and Philosophy of Science. He appreciates the intersection of science, medicine, and the humanities. He’s also a big fan of hiking, and more generally being in nature no matter the context. Jan Alexander Wozniak (he/him) is a Canadian poet, short story writer, and scholar residing in Toronto, whose practice focuses on challenging traditional narrative and poetic structures, as well as our conception of mental health and social and political action. As a neurodivergent thinker, Jan is particularly interested in capturing the experiences of living with ASD and ADHD. He is currently a third-year undergraduate student in psychology at Ryerson University and plans on pursuing clinical and counseling psychology upon graduating. Jan has been published by The Rush, Intersect, Aletheia, and ADDitude Magazine, and has forthcoming works in The Chimes, Intersect, Spectrum, and JIRIRI.

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Green Blotter 2022

Articles inside

Alumina, or a Potter-Mother’s Wisdom Jocelyn Saunders

Five Ways of Viewing Art Jacob Voelker

I Say I am a Poet Isabelle Hutchinson

Workaholic Woolgathering Jan Wozniak

Last Exit at Route 27 Jan Wozniak

The Squirrel Isabelle Hutchinson

Gathering Moss Gabe King

Absolute Zero Emma Jo Richmond

To the Young Man Crying in a Backstage Dressing Room Isabelle Hutchinson

The woman as: a fuckable thing an undead, dead thing Gabrielle E. Capone

Owego, NY Sophia Ivey

AUTOEROTIC Cameron Heisey

How to Escape Sadie Giggis

Mortal Love Marah Hoffman

The Baseball Bat Sarah Inouye

cicada shells Madeline Ragsdale

A Glimpse of Autumn Christopher Tai

Starlings Megan Bisco

A Selfish Votive Zoe Aldrich

Houma, LA Sophia Ivey

Elephants in the Sky Tula Singer

Here Be Dragons Isabelle Hutchinson

Touching Heart Marah Hoffman

I am Not the Only Ghost Here Marah Hoffman

My Sister Calls My Bedroom Grandma-Chic Marah Hoffman