Voices from 9th Street

Voices from 9th Street 2014

LITERARY ARTS DEPARTMENT

PITTSBURGH CAPA 6 - 12 A CREATIVE & PERFORMING ARTS MAGNET

Voices from 9th Street

2014

LITERARY ARTS DEPARTMENT

PITTSBURGH CAPA 6 - 12 A CREATIVE & PERFORMING ARTS MAGNET

Voices from 9th Street

2014 LITERARY ARTS DEPARTMENT PITTSBURGH CAPA 6 - 12 A CREATIVE & PERFORMING ARTS MAGNET

Copyright 2014 Pittsburgh CAPA 6 - 12 Pittsburgh, PA The copyright to individual pieces remains the property of each author.

Reproduction in any form by any means without specific written permission from the individual authors is prohibited.

For copies or inquires: Pittsburgh CAPA 6 -12 Mara Cregan, Literary Arts Chair 111 Ninth Street Pittsburgh, PA 15222 412 338 0374 Ms. Melissa Pearlman, Principal

The Literary Arts Program at Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12 is a seven-year, intensive course of study in creative writing, one of a dozen nationwide. Here at Pittsburgh CAPA, students with a love of writing and a commitment to achievement have opportunities to pursue their passion that are unavailable virtually anyplace else. Our young writers explore every literary genre: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama. Each year, working with specialists in every genre, they take increasingly advanced courses, as they work to create a broad and sophisticated writing portfolio.

But Pittsburgh CAPA Literary Artists don’t simply write. They edit; they publish; they perform. They use their writing to connect themselves to the larger world, the world beyond our school’s walls. In their classes and in special collaborative projects literary artists explore mythology, literature, history, and many other art forms. They also connect themselves to one another, forming a community of writers that encourages and sustains their imaginative work.

Literary Artists have collaborated with Carnegie Mellon University Writers, Chatham University Creative Writers, The Warhol Museum, The Mattress Factory, The Carnegie Museums, New Works Festival, Saltworks Theatre Company, and the City Theatre as well as with the dance, visual arts, instrumental and theatre departments at Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12.

Pittsburgh CAPA’s Literary Arts program prepares students to achieve in many fields.

Alumni of our program have gone on to study writing, anthropology, film, history, education and other disciplines at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Michigan, Vassar University, Yale, Trinity College in Dublin, Smth College, Bard College, Temple University, Beloit College, Antioch, Sarah Lawrence, Carlow College, the University of Pittsburgh, and other fine schools.

Our writers are recognized nationally and throughout the region. In 2010, a literary artist was awarded the Scholastic Portfolio Award in Writing. In 2007, a literary artist was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts by Department of Education. CAPA writers have also been awarded major prizes. The winners of Carnegie Mellon University Martin Luther King Jr. Writing Awards, The Pittsburgh Public Schools Power of the Pen Awards, the City Theatre Young Playwrights Festival, Pittsburgh New Works Children’s Festival and the Heinz Endowment High School Writing Awards have all been literary artists.

We may be the youngest program at Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12, but we’re already writing our own place in CAPA history.

Mara Cregan, Department Chair Kathleen Donnelly, Dramatic Writing

Zachary Harris, Poetrty Kristin Kovacic, Poetry Maureen McGranaghan, Dramatic Writing Jess Server, Nonfiction Sarah Shotland, Fiction

LEVEL FOUR

TABLE OF CONTENTS Shakeria Carter

Look at Me Mayah El-Dehaibi

Exodus Molting Donovan Grey

A Year Ago at Mama Ross Sandwich Shop

Ode to Snow Leopard and His Tattoos Perhaps Tyler Hudson

Max Von Sydow (Re: The Seventh Seal)

Four Forty-Six Blues

Garcia Lorca Drew Lee

You Know Better Zakiyyah Madyun

The Three of Us + Me is an Unlucky Number

Never the Least Jayne May-Stein

Eloise

Cemetery Walk Abbie Maynard

Excerpt from Estelle’s

Lindsay McParlane

Breakfast of Champions

Domitius Enobarbus Melissa Nelson

Russia 1910 Anna Nix

Baby Alexis Royall

Brickhouse

When in Rome Lily Schwartz

Carrick Boy

When Brookline Began to Depress Me

Perry County Anita Trimbur

Moline Cole Weber

Foot Caught in an Open Door Policy

LOOK AT ME

by Shakeria Carter Look at me With my eyes that cry for hope Beyond my people And your people.

Look at me Breaking down for you and your little brother to Reach stars that have never been reached, After all; the skies not the limit when there’s footprints on the moon.

Look at me Bleeding with hope that one day you’ll walk a different path than me, making more out of your self with a wanting heart.

Look at me Needing and begging for your acceptance Into a world that you don’t know can be so cruel and two-faced.

Now look at you, quiet and innocent Vulnerable to your sister’s word Who doesn’t know a damn herself.

You listen intently, sure to catch every breath.

And pause, you’ve taken her word but fail To realize that the truth that she speaks May never be the truth.

You are quick to love

But slow to use your wisdom.

Look at me I am here for you Learn from me I have been there.

Walk with me one day Talk with me one day, I will show you where you can go in life.

Straight Face, Silent Tears

by Shakeria Carter

Sometimes the truth is better to be left silent but I couldn’t resist myself. I knew that I had to free myself.

To this day I remember those petrifying lights; sucked what was left of my life, And through all of the endless crimes I began to feel the guilt.

I could see that I disappointed you, Momma.

I haven’t been able to apologize to you Momma, but I am sorry. Everything was supposed to be left silent.

I’m being swallowed by the guilt, I can barely recognize myself And I remember when you told me to keep my head out of crime but I guess it’s just becoming a part of my life.

Life you’d say, life is what you make of it. Well I’m listening now Momma, I was never built to engage in any crimes But I guess those words should be left silent.

I tried to look at myself and all I could see was the face of guilt.

My shining has left to an empty, chilling feeling of guilt, like I haven’t been living my own life, like I’ve been lying to myself.

Help me, Momma.

My lawyer says that I should remain silent, but I know in my heart that I should come clean for the victims of these crimes.

I know it isn’t possible to take back those crimes, but I thought I’d be able to shake the guiltlike if I left them in the closet, they’d remain silent.

Everybody should stand clear of me, I took someone’s life.

What went wrong with me, Momma?

I can’t find myself.

I’m lying to myself trying to convince myself of my innocence but I know I did the crime.

Who do you believe, Momma?

I never meant to hurt you, don’t hand onto my guilt.

I’m trying to hold on for dear life but I can’t keep the truth silent.

Somehow I allow myself to get eaten by this guilt And I know this crime isn’t going to drag for life but I can sense your sorrow and I don’t want you to remain silent.

EXODUS

by Mayah El-Dehaibi

During the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) there was a mass exodus of one million people from Lebanon.

After two thousand/four hundred/two hundred years of Sunni Muslims/Ottomans/Palestinians and friends against Jews/Christians/Syrians/Shiite Muslims/Israelis and friends and friends of fist against fist of fist against sword of sword against sword of fist against fist and sword of fist and musket against mercenary and mine of drone against village of warfare permeating bedrock and defiling skies of warfare in trenches, embedded in the skin like glass shards, in the marrow, in the magma, in the placenta in the dollar, on the sidewalk, in the post office, in the airport, in the box office, in the airwaves, on the Early Show on the Late Late Show, neatly packaged in my World History textbook that offended me with its descriptive verbs (Israelis reasoned, Palestinians refused), firmly in the cerebella of white people in the comments page, (I don’t know much about it, but/Israelis aren’t being great about it but the Palestinians aren’t angels either/Arab masses are expert in killing each other/How many times from history has the arabs sought to destroy Israel yet they live mightily till this day/Still Think There Is No Sexism In Islam?/ It is natural to die when you are the aggressor/ open a multiple theater WAR OF ATTRITION & LIBERATION/ IsraHELL/towelhead/Zionist/masses serve as target practice for/We need a buffer zone,

a no-man’s-land) After nineteen years in Lebanon, my dad left his family’s farm as Maamoun El-Dehaibi about to be drafted into the air force, and arrived in Arizona to gradually arrive at Matt Dehaibi, General Manager of Carlisle, PA’s Cracker Barrel.

MOLTING

by Mayah El-Dehaibi It must start with an itch, skin crawling, a thickness of skin around the knees and elbows, a darkening of the neck and knuckles, overall yellowing of the complexion forming a scab of the bacteria inside My mom got married at eighteen, tensing her back like last year’s jacket after eighteen years of being juggled, collateral on paper, another mouth eating biscuits, someone to wear the hand-me-downs, help split wood, crack down the middle with the wedge wielding her father’s machete during summer days to clear her path through the Carolinian back woods stripping the vines from between trees, leveling weeds molting starts from beneath the skin stretching outwards with the strength of every muscle every weak thread stretching, coiling and tearing jaw clenching, molars crumbling then an eleven-year-old on the cross-country Greyhound bus She wore the same socks for a week and told me horror stories about it later, about how she had to peel them off with the skin from her soles her own trenchfoot story, her battle scars hidden from view

It must get itchy and flecks of it come off in discs, easy, comfortable periodical fingernail biting trimming off split ends exfoliation with pumice and white sands, sugar scrubs shiny bathroom tools with rust freckles a blemish on pressure from both sides My dad flew over and didn’t go back home for several years, patches coming off at the chest He cast off four aunts, he sent student loans back home He left but he wasn’t good at leaving

a tooth hanging by a thread He kept what he needed and left the rest hazy, He shaved and shaped his mustache, leaving his cheeks scratchy and whiskered.

My dad cast off his appendix and showed us the scar On his visits he brings a black bag with razors, tweezers, scissors, nail clippers stiff brush bristles, polishing, draining, flushing. steel wool and the blunt edge of a knife for scraping away the top layer acetone and salicylic acid dissolve the surface a thundering cough sending up some poisoned piece of your throat You’re sore without it, scratchy but unburdened I make things disposable because if they were around only for me then that’s their own original flaw.

I’m tossing chords and uttered phrases into the garbage disposer collecting optical glass and tortoiseshell plastic with flypaper swallowing papercut blood into my vacuum

hauling chimney bricks to the city dump daintily dropping stilt wood and kinked yarn into the incinerator page after page after page into hell, atoms scrambled, burnt to a crisp, ashes liquefied because my parents can agree with their history their fine lines and forehead crinkles went into the purge nothing feels so fresh as a close shave a clean workspace, selfish and sustained.

A YEAR AGO AT MAMA ROSS SANDWICH SHOP

by Donovan Grey

A year ago I sat at the bar At midnight And sipped slowly On sour coffee, While around me Boys rough as sandpaper Told war stories, In free verse.

A year ago There was dust.

A year ago There was false love.

A year ago There was a moth Tattooed on Nates chest, And it reminded us How short life was.

We called him mothman And he bought me sour coffee.

Mama Ross often stood outside, Smoking menthol cigarettes And asking about the baby; And I, with my sandpaper boys Who smoked non-menthol And ate meat rare stumbling in After midnight, decay on our breath, Dirt on our feet, and hate in our souls: Our virgin souls, still pure as albino deer.

A week ago I sat at the bar At midnight, And stared at Sour coffee他 Around me sandpaper boys Rough as cotton Told bedroom stories In free verse.

ODE TO SNOW LEOPARD AND HIS TATTOOS

by Donovan Grey

As a baby He must have cradled me In arms of colored skin, And bounced me On a knee Riddled with cobwebs And comic book heroes.

Their faces often stretch, They lose their bodies In the folds of his stomach As he sleeps.

When finally, I was so tall That he could no longer hold me, I would clasp onto his fingers, And do flips on his chest.

And when I was too large for that He lifted me above his head, And the iron heart on his neck And strode across our tile floor.

I, on the shoulder of painted giants,

Craned to see how tall I would grow.

In the summer, foul air Escapes the cracks of his boots And fills the house with an iron stench.

He is a tall man, and thick, Like the steel that sheaths his toes.

Like the faces on his arms that move and curl, Like waves, or carnival slides; An angel falling from heaven The wickedest man in the galaxy A jolly roger, covered by the silver surfer.

He is as grown as a child.

He told me to wander the streets, And so I grew to know them.

He told me to never lie, And I did, but never to him.

He told me to paint, to draw; And I sang his songs And wrote out his awful prose.

And when the hair on his head Begins to crawl out of his skull I will paint out his life, and Recite his epitaph through iron and soot.

PERHAPS

by Donovan Grey Perhaps, It is the blowing nature Of the leave;

Or a fire you feel When the crowd Is all chanting your name.

That-that pushes you on.

Into the realm of confidence, And out of melancholy.

It could be: Building cars, Or painting pictures Or eating food Or maybe something a little more Raw; Emotional, Love, Sex, Marriage, Twenty years later, Your anniversary, China is traditional.

Maybe you spend your days Building model trains, Or flying kites in the backyard With the kids, Grandkids; Reminisce on when you liked The Beatles.

Crush on Paul McCartney.

Rock music was on the walls While boys down the block Blasted Biggie from a book box And were grinning ear-to-ear.

Their papa listened to jazz And the beats of the world.

Mama listens to indie-rock And wears dashikis Because she still has pride And holds her head high

And don’t let those corner boys Tell her she’s less for listening to “white people music” But who don’t like music?

Sweet sweet sound Smooth like satin But pounding like heavy rain.

Trees Rights Fights The boys are getting all riled up on monster trucks and Broadway musicals.

Cant wait till they can cut suits Outa card board and crash out On the couch watching Modern cinema.

Drama, Comedy, Romance, Passion.

Keeps us going.

Keeps our heads straight And our hearts warm And out blood a-flowin.

Keeps us as us, One is one, You are you.

Cuz you have the passions.

So do what you want to

MAX VON SYDOW (RE: THE SEVENTH SEAL)

by Tyler Hudson

“We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster’s whim and the purest ideal.”

—Ingmar Bergman Antonius has two left feet; the danse macabre is thus uncomfortable.

He plants his feet in the soil, because the fibers of his bones are long and proud…and slow to uncoil from unnoticeable hearts, hearts which swim in themselves and leave behind little ripples that wish to be reeds—wish, as he himself wishes, to become.

But even the tallest cannot write with the ink of space, only watch it jet like Moorish blood over the great palms of Sweden, only think of it as an unattainable grey that—if loved, if

fathomed—could yield every color suggested by the infinities that unfold as Death places his final rook.

FOUR FORTY-SIX BLUES

by Tyler Hudson

The object of every act of growth is rust, and so rust unfurls from the scab and flies towards the riverbank, where await 446 skeletons with searing blue smiles and spongy yellow potted souls and traffic sounding in endless numbers through the cataracts of fog.

GARCÍA LORCA

by Tyler Hudson

…taught me how to sing with a whip,

but like the whipped. …taught me how to tie

intimacy to intricacy. …taught me that insects can darken

both the soil and the sea. …taught me that hunting and gathering both

involve coral. …taught me how to see

and how to sleep. …taught me what to see

and where to sleep. …taught me that the color blue

is the color of gazing. …taught me

that I need a belt. …taught me what to do with the spindles

that lie about in caves. …taught me how to ask the hollows

to eat and drink. …taught me how to knead cities,

even though they are brittle. …taught me the proper way

to allow the conjurer to work.

…taught me how to paint with circumstance. …taught me how to weep and realize gardens. …taught me how to wound with passionate swipes. …taught me how to recover the sacred petals of myself. …taught me height as a journey. …taught me to swim in the ecstasy of drowning. …taught me vengeance at three a.m. …taught me to drink in the parlor of the moon. …taught me, with copper fingers,

how to play. …taught me, with blue sunshine,

how to clear the road. …taught me the way to illness,

and what to do when there isn’t a way back. …taught me the integrity

of surrender.

YOU KNOW BETTER

by Drew Lee

In the Bible you placed in my trusting hands at age thirteen held the words that I was supposed to live by. My life lied within those thin, delicate pages; at least that’s what you thought. At that age, religion wasn’t something I thought about, especially since my parents, who are both Baptist Christians, didn’t force it upon me.

Sure they went to church nearly every Sunday, and sure they resolved all of their problems through Christ, but I never felt pressured into doing that, too. But each time I visited, which was usually once a month, you’d always ask if I’d been reading my Bible. I’d hit you with the same, recycled excuse and tell you that I haven’t had time lately.

“There’s no such thing as ‘no time’ when it comes to God,” you’d say.

I rolled my eyes on each and every occasion. I knew it was wrong to lie to your face, but it would be worse to say that I didn’t live by the golden scriptures in that book. You put the Bible high on a pedestal and I couldn’t succumb to the standards you expected me to. Reading the Bible and going to church automatically made me a good person in your eyes. But I never did either one, which made you push me into something I knew nothing about.

“A relationship with God is the ticket to happiness, you know,” you’d say.

I’d giggle nonchalantly and say okay Auntie. I never had the confidence to tell you that I wasn’t interested in reading the Bible because, in your eyes, nonbelievers were bad. But it wasn’t about being a nonbeliever because I wasn’t; it was a matter of finding myself and what I believed in.

The polished lavender book sat still on top of my pinewood 6-drawer chest, unmoved and untouched. Except for on the nights where I opened it seeking answers for my now meaningless problems. That book has sat there through the laughs I shared with friends at my first slumber party when I turned fourteen. Through the late night phone calls when I was supposed to be asleep at age sixteen.

And through the endless tears I shed when you died last summer.

The night after your funeral I let those same tears drop on the pages of that dusty Bible, the only tangible memory I had left of you.

Through cloudy eyes, I looked for you in each word I read, but didn’t fully comprehend. I wanted to hear your voice say asking me if I was reading the Bible. And I wanted a relationship with God so that I could be happy. But as I frantically flipped through those pages, I realized that I couldn’t find you. You weren’t there and you weren’t coming back. Guilt filled my body from my cold toes all the way to my bloodshot eyes. If I had listened to you I would be able to put my sorrow of your loss into God’s hands. I would be able to heal and be at peace with myself. But since I ignored you, I was left lost and broken.

I read my Bible nearly every day after you died. I searched for who I was religiously and spiritually, but it was only to bring me closer to you. Other than my attempts to be with you, I had no other motive to read the Bible. The one that I walked past for three years without touching, the one that indirectly heard all of my problems, the one that I used to simply refer to as just a book. And then it registered in my head that my “faith” was artificial. If you were still here I’d go about my daily routine without flashing a glance towards that Bible. I would be solving my problems by simply believing that everything happens for a reason. And instead of dwelling on things I couldn’t change, including myself, I would be making you proud

of the person I chose to be.

THE THREE OF US + ME IS AN UNLUCKY NUMBER

by Zakiyyah Madyun

they’re less like sisters than occasional spirit guides. i stumble upon old possessions and whisper, “thank you, great ancestors, for these gifts. i will neither bring dishonor on your Destiny’s Child mixtape nor your bellbottom Mudd Jeans”. i like to think they left these things behind for me to find, but had there been room for twelve pairs of Timberlands and an old Abercrombie tank top they’d have been shoved in a box and packed away in a coat closet in somebody’s new house, somebody’s new life, someplace away from me. you don’t have to tell me i’m the black sheep. i get it, ok. they don’t give a damn about that one song at the end of that one album that i listened to and somersaulted over for three monthsno, dammit, it’s not their style. i’m not their style (but really, who’s style am I...[or ought I to be?]) sometimes, i fantasize we’d call each other sis, hang out by the orange julius in the mall and gossip about the quarterback who’d never in a million years ask us to prom but then i’m likei’ll just take this dilapidated pink blazer you left me and enjoy the rest of my teenage years in sisterly solitude it’s totally whatever sometimes, i wish someone had stuck around to give me bad dating advice and help me dye my hair red in the bathroom sink, ruining my favorite t-shirt so we could sit around watching Full House reruns and I could say something like

“Remember that time you helped me dye my hair red in the bathroom sink, ruining my favorite t-shirt? Hilarious!” and we’d laugh or something but instead I’m stuck here with your 5th grade Valentines and your middle school hand-me-downs, sitting on the carpet where you spilled grape juice once when you were eleven and it never, ever, washed out.

I grew up to the traces of decades that you left behind.

Maybe that’s why I’m so mixed up.

NEVER THE LEAST

by Zakiyyah Madyun

her fraction of devotion is stronger than another’s hundred percent. and if you add up the pieces over time you get a surplus. it’s like she’s here. it feels like I am too. we ask each other to trudge through various conditions for burnt toast in a downtown booth. we ask each other for yawns and sleepy eyes and solidarity. I take the early bus, I yawn, I trudge, for solidarity. it happens again. eight. seven a.m, six thirty. no, earlier. it needs to be earlier. sometimes we drive. each time the car is a new make and model. the cranberry compact becomes a black chevrolet with a sunroof but it feels the same. she’s still the one pulling u-turns and picking up tickets like spare change, I’m still clinging onto shotgun, hoping I’m the last stop and never the leastour closed road excursions are less rebellious with permission but we take what we can get. I’ve never been behind the wheel and I could care less, I’m more present in the passenger seat, and I like it. wrapping my frozen fingers around the frosty glass of a milkshake,

we’ve been here before. same seats, same sticky table, silverware, and when the waitress walks over, we order the usual. they know our faces and never our names. I’m used to that, I like that she’s used to it too. we’re used to each other but it isn’t exhausting. sometimes it’s like she’s barely there. sometimes it’s like she’s barely there, but when she is it’s like she never left. she’s too clever, she’s too smart to be absorbed, sponged up, locked at the hip. locked to anything. this is the way we go. we pay the bill, and I’d rather she drive figure eights across the parking lot then take me home, but she does, she always does, because it’s a one stop show

ELOISE

by Jayne May-Stein She cocks the barrel; head of a dog when you ask “whose a good boy?�

His leg raises, threatening to end the life, growing in her stomach like a rose bush in spring.

She stands in front of the jury, their eyes degrading and cold.

The blast rings off the walls, church bells on Christmas day Blood spatters the ground, caking it with the scream of the woman not responsible of the act, bruises on her back like angry soldiers tramping on her skin unmercifully. She stands in front of the jury, her eyes boring right back into theirs, degrading and cold.

Yet their expressions remain the same, they grudgingly allow her to walk into the light of day, the freedom of a murderous threat flowing off their bodies like colorful streamers on a Polish holiday.

As she walks to her home, daughter on her right arm she looks back at her beloved, her eyes no longer degrading and cold.

CEMETERY WALK

by Jayne May-Stein

All I see anymore when I come to you is a red sky

and vines climbing your stony, hard features but you never groan or complain when I walk through your lonesome cold trails.

You breathe a deadly silence into my soul and all I can feel is deadly nightshade growing in the pit of my stomach, the fear of being followed makes me stretch my neck back but you comfort me with the sight of only darkness, no figures coming after me, their undead fingers reaching out for my shoulders.

I dodge all the headstones, knowing the disrespect that it would show you if I were to be careless.

In the summertime, I avoid your wildflowers growing in the grass, my footsteps becoming controlled and eventually graceful.

You breathe a sigh of relief when I sing or talk to you your only response is the twinkling of fireflies exploding in the air like microscopic fireworks or lanterns for fairies that wander through the grass on a cold winter night.

I wrap dandelions with a blade of grass and leave it on my favorite grave that reads “Elford� and not even a

time of birth or death. You reward me with a glimpse of a doe and her young dipping their legs into fields of tired, long grass as they run for cover.

I lie in your fields, the light mist of spring air dappling my cheeks like sunlight on leaves that trace a lime green onto the ground.

I play with the roots of your trees and stare at your clouds, giving them names in my head and whispering to you how much you mean to me. you don’t respond in the day time usually you sit next to me and watch me while keeping an eye on the rest of the land within your rusting black gates.

EXCERPT FROM ESTELLE’S

by Abbie Maynard

Her hair was pulled back and tied with a bow, though a few stray pieces hung down and swept her shoulders. The picture was close up, so Isaac could only see from her waist up. Isaac then realized her name was stitched into the shirt in cursive on the left side, Estelle. Her shirt was coming untucked from her pants, rising above her belly button, and curving around her petite figure. Her thin arms held up the dollar bill and pressed it slightly against her cheeks.

There was a glow in her light eyes, like this could have possibly been the happiest moment of her life. Isaac saw a familiar-looking counter and cash register behind Estelle’s shoulder and realized the picture was taken in the diner, in the exact spot where he had first walked in and saw Helena and Ruthie struggling to open the almost empty register.

“Oh, she’s long gone. I never even got to meet ‘er. Helena won’t tell me what happened, said it isn’t important. All I know is that one day Helena woke up and her Auntie told her she was in charge of this place.”

“What about a husband-slash-father figure?” Isaac couldn’t help but notice her naked hands and fingers, not cluttered with any jewelry.

“Nah, she never married. Helena told me she never found someone who could keep up with ‘er.”

Isaac glanced at the picture on the wall once more while Ruthie poured more no longer steaming coffee into his cup. Estelle’s eyes looked directly into Isaac’s, fixed, like she was challenging him to a staring contest. Daring him to look away first.

Her gaze enchanted him. Her eyes told stories on their own.

They were the first thing he noticed when he looked at the picture.

They were huge and almond-shaped, pushing themselves out of her sockets, eyelids stretched so far back they might have fallen back into her skull, like a skeleton. Her eyes could burn bridges and sign declarations. She had the kind of fire-y spark that Isaac wished he had, the kind that Lisa had tried so hard to press into him.

Whatever it was about Isaac, Lisa tried to improve it at one point or another—dancing, weight, body image, conversational skills, hobbies, anything. The dance lessons stop when Lisa tore a ligament in her right ankle. Isaac’s monthly doctor’s office visits for cholesterol tests resulted in piling bills and untouched Tupperware containers filled with leafy green stacked in the fridge, soon forgotten about behind the liters of soda. The only thing the social skills class gave Isaac was more time with people who couldn’t form sentences on their own and severely autistic people his age. Isaac and Lisa couldn’t find a hobby they both could do together without Isaac being forced to sleep on the couch by himself for the next two nights.

Lisa often compared Isaac to a six-year-old—naïve, yet lethargic and oblivious. Their relationship was similar to mother and child, in the way that she was always signing him up for group activities he didn’t want to participate in them, and the majority of their conversations took place on the car ride to and from these places.

Dinner conversations were cut short with Lisa hibernating in her room with a paper bowl of cold spaghetti and a glass of wine, leaving Isaac alone with the dishes and competing TV volumes with Lisa’s set upstairs.

“I mean, who could blame ‘em?” Ruthie continued, “This place was poppin’ back when it first opened. Helena told me when she was younger and just started working, they’d have lines out the door on Sunday mornings right as church let out. They got picnic ta-

bles but people just kept coming! Everyone came in here before and after a long day at the beach. Oh, she made the best eggs I heard. She made strawberry milkshakes ‘n dippy eggs go together. Man, what I would give to have some of those eggs.” Isaac glanced down at his plate with a grimace. Ruthie must have picked up on this because she then added, “Course, these aren’t the same eggs.”

“Hm, you don’t say. Wonder what her secret was?” Isaac asked, holding the edge of the plate between his fingers and shaking it around, causing the yolk to break completely and soak into the burnt toast.

Half cup of milk per egg, I didn’t think it was that hard, really, a voice came, swift and tickled his ear like a gust of wind.

“What was that?” Isaac looked around.

“Her secret? For the eggs? Dunno, beats me. She never told a soul what her secret was. Poor Harry, our chef, can’t even come close.”

“No, no. Did you say something about adding milk?” Isaac asked.

“I can bring some milk out for you if ya’d like? Skim or 2%?”

“No, for the eggs I mean. For making them?”

“To put on your eggs? Honey, I don’t know about that one.

We may have some ketchup or hot sauce in the back I can bring out for you? Is that what you’re looking for?”

“No, did you… I thought I heard—never mind. No ketchup for me. Thank you, though.”

Ruthie looked at him with an eyebrow raised and walked over to the cash register, shaking her head as she went.

Boy, she must think you’re crazy. She sure is something, though.

“What? Who said that? Where’s that coming from?”

It’s me.

“Hello?”

“You alright, dear?” Ruthie called from the counter, nail file in hand.

“Am I the only person here?” “’Sides for me, Helena, and Harry in the back.” Ruthie said with pursed lips.

“Really? I could have sworn I heard someone talking?”

I told you, it’s me. Sitting across from you. Can’t you see me?

“See! There it was again, can you hear it?” Isaac exclaimed.

“I think they’re starting their Sunday morning volleyball tournament, maybe that’s what you hear. Those boys sure can get pretty loud.” Ruthie nodded towards the door, where Isaac could see a small white ball glinting in the sun, soaring above his line of view above the booth in front of him and disappearing below it, only to bounce up a few moments later followed by a chorus of yelps.

“No, there’s someone else here in here. I heard.”

“Helena told me not to admit this to customers, ‘cause she’s scared it’ll drive ‘em out, but you’re the third customer we’ve had all week.”

“What?”

“Yeah, place doesn’t really attract business like it used to.

People don’t like to wake before noon on the weekend and go to a restaurant that’s as old as their mother. This place really isn’t the same without Estelle,” Ruthie shook her head as she backed away into the kitchen.

I can see that. What happened here?

“Who are you?” Isaac asked, almost in a whisper, as he ducked out of the view of Ruthie.

Estelle, of course.

“As in…” Isaac trailed off, pointing to the photo on the wall.

Yessir, that’d be me.

“No way, she’s been gone for…”

About fifteen years. Sixteen in October.

“No, this is crazy,” Isaac stumbled out of the booth and towards the door. Just as he was leaving, the bell on the door rang and Ruthie came out.

“Where’re ya goin? You don’t want your food?” She asked, nail file still in hand.

“No, I, uh, I’ll be back. I just have to, uh clear my head.”

Isaac came out of the diner and was immediately blinded by the morning sun. Something’s not right here. What’s going on?

What voices were in his head? And why did they sound eerily similar to Lisa’s?

Isaac shuffled down the boardwalk, a fast-pace close to a jog, until he ended up at the deserted lifeguard chair he stood at this morning. Isaac wasn’t functioning properly, and this had been a pattern. Ever since him and Lisa split, nothing’s been right. It hasn’t been as severe as Isaac imagining voices around him.

It’s been the small things, like setting an extra place at the dinner table. Ordering mushrooms and black olives on only half of the pizza because Lisa preferred plain cheese. Making sure the new episodes of her favorite TV shows were recording on DVR because she’d want to watch them when she got home. When he’d call in for messages on their home phone, he realized that she changed the voicemail greeting to ‘Isaac Springer and Lisa Craft.’ Isaac’s tried to call her, ask why she changed it so soon. And couldn’t they wait to change it until they had come to a formal, joint decision? At least something written down on paper? But she hasn’t answered any of

the times his name popped up on her caller ID. Not at 12:30, because that’s when Isaac knew Lisa took her lunch break everyday, or between 5:00 and 5:30 when she’d be done with dinner and about to start editing papers again for work, until she fell asleep with her glasses still perched on the edge of her nose and a pen poised in her right hand and a highlighter in her left.

But lately, it’s been Isaac waking up in the queen size bed at the hotel and realizing he’s alone. He panics at first, wondering why he’s alone and not even seeing the indent of Lisa next to him. After a few moments is when he remembers that he went to bed alone, just like he had the night before and the night before that for almost three months.

Isaac forgot about the voice in the diner and moved further along the boardwalk looking for something else to eat, something with a little more substance. He brushed the voice aside and reasoned that the overpowering odor of coffee grinds had just gotten to his head. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Isaac slept that night with Lisa’s voice cooing in his head. Only it wasn’t Lisa’s body the voice was coming from, it was vaguely familiar and looked a bit like the woman in the photograph at the diner. He only would hear the voice moments before he’d wake up, singing to him, as if they were in the next room, humming to themselves as they went to the bathroom or got a midnight snack.

But each time he woke up in the middle of the night, Isaac was alone. As soon as his eyes closed, the voice appeared in his ear. Her voice seeped through the vents in the walls and crawled into the bed next to him. He could feel her breath on the back of his neck, inching closer and closer until the only separating the two were the small hairs that had just begun to grow back and trail down the back of

his t-shirt. He imagined her brown hair falling from the bow tied at the back of her head. They tickled his cheeks from her space, where Isaac imagined her hovering inches above his nose.

Isaac…I came to visit you. You remember me, right? How could you forget?

He squeezed his eyes tighter and turned away from the voice onto his other side.

I know you can hear me. I just want to talk. Get to know you.

You intrigue me, you know.

Isaac shook his head and sat up. Keeping his eyes set on the ground, where there would be no chance of his eyes grazing across something he didn’t want to see, Isaac walked to the bathroom. He turned on the shower water and the sink water to get rid of the white noise. He soaked the cream towel draped over the rod on the back of the bathroom door with hot, scalding water. Without waiting for the towel to cool down, Isaac made his way back to his bed and put the scalding towel over his eyes. It was painful. But that way Isaac could focus his senses on the burning sensations on his cheekbones and not on hearing. What little he could make out consisted on the running water from the shower. Slowly, the voice droned out.

Why are you ignoring me?...

Don’t you want to talk….

Hello?...

Isaac…

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

by Lindsay McParlane

The day she made blueberry pancakes I spilled blueberry juice on my shirt and it left one, small dot just above my bellybutton that looked like a cerulean moon.

She laughed the way she usually did, silent with her eyes squinting, and I thought back to the years that we would come home from school and have a peanut butter snack waiting on the table for us.

I saved her letters in the ceramic vase that she made and hated and they are crinkled and worn and the pencil is fading away, slowly becoming light smudges of ash.

I know that in the summer the ride was scary and that in the end her necklace hung from the side mirror, swaying back and forth in smooth motions.

I don’t regret the blueberry stain because it reminds me of breakfast which then makes me think about the day it happened, and I’m happy her last meal was chocolate chip pancakes with syrup drizzling down the sides in languid, amber movements because that is a good meal and a delicious one at that.

DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS

by Lindsay McParlane

—The Spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; But a broken spirit who can bear?

He is dying of a broken heart.

The day I met him he was already incredibly weak but he disguised the murmur so well that when everything took a turn for the worse I could hardly tell that his body was hurting so badly.

I know that things are hard and that when someone is missing the warmth of another person next to them the world seems to become a little more lonely each day, but he must fix his heart for all our sakes so our hearts don’t break too.

RUSSIA 1910

by Melissa Nelson In Russia 1910, a wind runs, dances, skips, tendrils of breeze swinging stubby fingertips flick and prod the Neva which rumbles in reply.

Thick, dark, foul smoke wraps deathly arms around workers and their children, grumbles low warnings.

Water pales, brown to white, gives way.

Ice seizes, contorts, and cracks.

Misery does not ever leave, it never even lies dormant or takes a hiatus, it only thickens and swells and crushes the lungs and soul The monochrome quietly digs its heels into the sky and the clouds and the sun and the walls and pulls, and in no time there is nothing

at all but no one sees as my forerunners slip into America.

BABY

by Anna Nix Hey baby, where you goin’?

Cherry down to the collar bones at eight, as dad chastises my braless chest.

The next day I cage them in a polyester-cotton blend, printed with the eggshell eyes of tweety bird.

I’ll take you anywhere you need to go, sugar Thirteen, trees stir the stars, vision is yellow as the first boyfriend (ex) fondles buttons and fumbling syllables fall from my tongue.

No. Just get in the car baby.

No. I say in Ella’s brother’s bedroom. Strangers to him, I keep still as the blonde boy ripples the pools swelling under my skin.

Don’t be upset baby I turn my back to him and go to sleep.

You got a place to go?

One day, Dad says,

you will meet a nice man, who buys you a big red house and fills your womb with perfumed blonde babies.

Isn’t that what you want.

The same red truck circles the block for hours only to stop on the curb I sit on.

C’mon in baby.

BRICKHOUSE

by Alexis Royall

the cherry burns, the throat burns, do not inhale. keep it in your mouth and enjoy; let the smoke swirl around your uvula, squeeze between your teeth, occupy your cavities, irritate your gums. exhale. relax. evaporate behind the thick cigar smoke. talk only of “the old days.” talk only of Donut and Grape Juice and Smurf and everyone else whose birth names were lost in the AKA’s. talk only of the day--this day--when a dream was chased, when the Continental Smoke Shop became the New Continental Smoke Shop and college educations finally came into use.

Talk only of these things on this day, when food is chaperoned around the smoggy store and ashtrays are filled and emptied and humidor shelves are restocked. use the full shelves to attract interest. always ask “have you smoked before?” “strong or mild?” “price range?” call them “friend” but only if you mean it. tell them about Kristoff Corojo Limitada, use your hands to illustrate the woody, leathery, spicy flavor. then mention Montecristo White Label, it’s not as strong as the Romeo Y Julieta, but tell them it doesn’t need to be. don’t forget Oliva Series V. correct them politely when they call it Series Five--

common mistake.

If they’re not sold, move to the other humidor, make sure the customer knows this one is special, and then bring out Brickhouse. say it’s spicy, bring your hands to chest level and squeeze the air as if you’re holding an orange in each, look up to the right as if searching for a word, say “earthy.” move to the cash register. once they’re gone, sit back down. move your feet across the worn carpet, smile to yourself, and disappear back into the smoke.

WHEN IN ROME

by Alexis Royall

This isn’t what I wanted when I said I wanted Rome.

The trees ache from dead weight and clouds hang low, beaten by the sun, heavy from the earth’s perspiration.

This isn’t what I wanted when I said I wanted Rome; I wanted ancient buildings crumbling in on themselves romantically.

I wanted a flock of doves to swoop effortlessly, stone fountains following them with cartoonish blue water at the climax of my self-discovery.

I wanted crescent moons, cobblestone roads, polished marble.

When I said I wantd Rome I didn’t know what Rome could be: the watermelon capital of the world, the home of Bojangles’ Famous Chicken ‘n Biscuits.

I didn’t know the streets were frequented by militant spirits; that the trees wore people like a charm bracelet— each new charm another man guilty of the ultimate crime: being black.

I didn’t know my family tree would take me back to one in Rome—roots deeply planted in Blood-soaked soil.

Didn’t know those circling birds were singing my family’s death song.

Didn’t know that some of that blood would become mine.

I wonder if on that Independence Day, 1935 He looked up at the stars as the thick men with thick arms slung that thick rope around his neck and thought of me, thought that someday I’d be looking at the same stars, asking these questions.

I wonder if, when his feet left the ground, he felt like he could fly.

I wonder if this is what he wanted when he asked for Rome— if he asked for it at all.

CARRICK BOY Lily Schwartz

His buzzed head sprung out the window splitting the traffic air in half when we passed women in clunky heels on each corner.

He sucked a lung full of polluted wind into his mouth breathlessly screaming it smells like cigarettes and garbage.

I Miss This Home.

Head bouncing against the window repetitively, I watched the tires imprint on every old Boulevard brick when my hot red cheeks were smeared against the glass, bumping.

The car wiggled to a stop as street lights painted my body gold before I lost sight of the boy.

I watched his buzzed scalp and baggy black clothes dissolve into sharp bushes city steps melted by Pittsburgh salt and the street lights I thought only God changed.

The next time I see the boy emerge from the throat of the city steps he’ll be lost and red eyed, his pupils and iris crawling back inside his head.

Carrick Boy’s smoke-cologne wrinkled clothes

and tattooed soul creep back into my basement where he resides shooting at a cracked screen, kicking empty pill bottles away from his ankles pale from last night’s street lights.

WHEN BROOKLINE BEGAN TO DEPRESS ME Lily Schwartz

I was 16 when a man kissed me on my back porch.

My elbows met at his hipbones and however many times he told me I was beautiful didn’t matter because I was intensely afraid he didn’t love me.

I pulled him in by the belt when we kissed at the bottom of my street.

But we were no longer pecking outside when I dragged myself through a tunnel and three hills to show up at his door on a Tuesday.

When he was seemingly dead and naked with his back to me I was still with the content and familiar feeling of bedsprings digging in my spine.

Every noon I spent there I read an upside down comic sign that always made me cry.

I wouldn’t show up to his house less than twice a week with morning shower wet hair and a half smile. After four hours of putting hands on each other he’d turn his back to me, and I’d stare at the Jademan comic poster on his ceiling.

Before he woke for work I stopped crying and we both put pants on and parted ways outside his unwieldy, forbidden front door. It took a year of hopping hills, walking tunnels, peeling clothes off, and hurting his left hand on my bra buckle before I realized Brookline depressed me.

PERRY COUNTY Lily Schwartz

I didn’t want to stay with you.

It wasn’t because you’re a stripper or that the house was encased in moths or that your father was rotting in your living room.

I didn’t stay that following Tuesday because for the first time in my life I felt dirty and uncomfortable while marinating in your atmosphere.

And when my dad slid 20$ into my hand as he nodded and left through the moaning door I felt like a baby alone in a sandbox for the first time.

MOLINE

by Anita Trimbur They eat meat once a month and walk seven miles to plow the fields.

Bruno, short and barrel chested.

My grandfather, smiling with stained teeth.

They leave before sun-up, before hair-thin cracks split the clay, before the soft olive leaves warm.

They labor from birth until an underwhelming retirement years later. They work the earth even when they leave Moline-they furrow the ground for the Water Company, pouring concrete in favor of seed.

They sow themselves a city life, but keep gardens in the tiny plots behind their houses, where the tomatoes have a view of the alley out back, and the neighbors’ fat dogs that choke on their own collars.

Bruno carried a fig sapling in the lining of his coat--carried it from Moline to Ellis Island,--and grows it as tall as his house.

Every winter, he buries the fig tree, wraps it in tarp like a burial cloth.

It pretends to feel the warmth of mild, Italian winters where the olive trees still warm come midday.

My grandfather picks pears off the ground.

He wears his wife-beater and white socks

that are too tall. He fills his bucket with black, rotten pears, and goes into his kitchen to eat them.

He eats as though he is starved, as though captive to Moline where they eat meat only once a month, and walk seven miles to fields, instead of two pear trees out back, instead of a job at the Water Company, instead of a bitter, icy winter.

They know that in Moline, their fig tree would know December from above a grave.

FOOT CAUGHT IN AN OPEN DOOR POLICY

by Cole Weber

Asking questions.

Does dead romance become a corpse?

She attempts to convince me of her politics of mathematics (previous addition, recent division) and the mineral touch of loveless love.

The serpent hides in Christmas gifts.

She has already made her bed and told me to be home for the holidays.

I get lost in my own labyrinth of verbiage.

I find my fear, my fetal terror, in the confrontation.

I rip my foot away, trapped in the door.

I rip away the bandage, stall scab protrusion and attempt to heal a new way.

I rip in half.

LEVEL THREE

TABLE OF CONTENTS Anne Amundson

Thou Shalt Face the Terrible Dogfish Ra’naa Billingsley

Yarmulke Kenzie Bruce

The 27 Madeline Colker

Child Vanished While Playing in the Snow Taylor Fife

The Amish’s Simpler Dinner Brenna Gallagher

Papua New Guinea Sweat Jessica Ignasky

Floored Entwined Taylor Johnson

The Experiment Jazmyne Kenney

The Elephant

We Only Eat Breakfast Together

Mollie March-Steinman

Aftermath

After the Dinner Rush Alexis Payne

Blind Sinning Drew Praskovich

Holy Innocents Matty Smith

Baby Detox April Yoder

Nesters

THOU SHALT FACE THE TERRIBLE DOGFISH

by Anne Amundson

They painted the whales on the walls in 1993, one of the renovations. They painted murals in all the nurseries— clouds filled with delivery storks and bluejays in the 0-1 room; a green jungle rife with monkeys and giraffes; a zoo for the 1-3-year-olds; an underwater spectacle for the 3-5-year-olds, with guppies and seahorse and whales. The whales were horrifying, black and blue, as if they had barely won a boxing match with a ram, and towering over the modest children. One of the beasts, the largest and most terrifying of all, lips pulled back into a snarl, displayed jagged rows upon rows of teeth. His mouth alone was as large as one of the 5-year-old boys who so feared the murals. The caregivers wondered what the point of the underwater villains was, and there was much talk of painting over them, but nobody could work up the motivation or courage to approach the seascape.

There was only one boy known not to fear the monstrous whales. His name was Giacomo Collodi, though most people simply called him Jim. His parents were Italian immigrants who spent an obscene number of hours praying silently in the sanctuary, leaving their child in the care of whichever poor young woman happened to be in the nursery at their chosen times. He would often spend hours at a time, simply sitting in front of the murals, speaking quietly in Italian.

Some thought that maybe he came from a bad home, maybe that’s why his parents prayed so much; others thought that he was psychopathic, but either way, he was dangerous. He repeatedly had to have a caretaker assigned to just keeping other children away

from him. If they got too close, he would snap and hit them, or scream until they backed away, in tears and afraid.

The most formidable part of the whole ordeal was the reaction of the other kids. In response to his blatant violence, other kids became angrier, taking on some of his worst mannerisms and traits, exhibiting the same rage that he was overflowing with. They began fighting back, clouting him with the same force he hit them with. Brawls ensued, a blur of screams and kicks and miniature fists punching soft, bruising little cheeks. The nursery workers did their best to tear the young 3-5 year olds apart, but even they feared Jim and the whales.

On occasion, the brawls kept going until a child, never Jim, retreated, simply because they didn’t want to get too close to the whales they so feared. As people learned about these brawls, they began to keep their children out of the nursery, some even leaving the church.

Jokes flew around, people claiming that the boys and girls involved belonged on Pleasure Island, or that they would get coal in their stockings that year.

The only boy who never got involved was the only boy who could win. His name was Frankie, and he was at least as sizeable as the boy he would be up against. But he was too kind to engage Jim. His mother and father had instilled a strong moral code into his very being, he obeyed even the most insignificant of commands.

The worst fights always took place right in front of the most frightening whale, which the children had dubbed “The Monster.”

As the fights continually got more and more out of hand, so did the rumors about the whale. Kids began claiming that if you got too close, the whale would suck you in and chew you up, spitting you out as nothing but a mass of saliva and fear. Few children had the audacity to pick on Jim while he was speaking with The Monster.

Soon, Frankie was the only one left unscathed. Everyone was

confident that he could end this if he tried. He resisted for weeks, not wanting to get into any sort of a predicament with either Jim or his parents, who would not support any sort of fighting. But one day, a girl by the name of Josie shoved him, right into Jim. With this, Jim decided he had had enough. He drove the first punch, a punch that nearly threw his powerful little shoulder out of its socket.

As the fight carried on, the boys edged closer and closer to The Monster, until they had each other pinned, only about an inch away from the jaws of the horrifying whale.

You could argue that Frankie won the war.

He got ahold of Giacomo Collodi’s bicep, and with all the strength he could muster, shoved his opponent against the wall, right into the throat of The Monster.

The Monster’s lips closed. Jim was gone.

YARMULKE

by Ra’naa Billingsley A story found on the back of a lost book titled, Instant Father So, I’m walking down the cobble stone road and my eyes roll over unto this tiny bean sack, which I just simply have to retrieve. I call it a bean sack because it looked like it would hold beans. It’s a grainy mustard yellow thing, with a white embroidered border. Suddenly, this chubby little lad runs up, sweat soaking his necks and cheeks as Rosy as the Riveter.

“What have you lad?”

“That’s my Yarmulke sir!” he squeaks in his little mousy voice.

“Yarmulke you call it? This here, boy, is a bean sack. Bye now, lad.”

Tears well up in his plump, round eyes, but he remains silent because he knows he hasn’t the slightest chance of winning this one.

“Good day now,” I repeat to him.

“It’s a hat. I wear it upon my head.”

“It’s definitely a bean sack, lad.”

“A hat” he states furiously.

“You pulling my leg about this bean sack. Ay, lad?”

“No, sir.”

I sat for a moment and then as if a light bulb was lit above my head, it came to me.

“Do you have a father lad?”

“No sir.”

“I’ve come up with a plan.”

“Yes?”

“I’ll be your new father and you’ll be my plump round delusional new son. I’ll place the beans on your head and place the bean sack over top.”

“A bean sack hat, sir? He questioned hesitantly.

“No more sir, just father now,” “A bean sack hat, father?”

“Yes, just so that” And I placed a bean from my jacket pocket atop my plump, new son’s head and we sauntered into the sunset.

THE 27

by Kenzie Bruce (Interior of a bus. There is a driver at the front, facing the audience. Lights go up on LIONEL who is siting by himself, staring out the window and sipping from a coffee thermos. He jolts forward slightly and the audience hears the sound of the bus doors opening. WILSON walks onto the stage. Looks quizzically at the bus driver as he lifts his wallet. Shaking his head, he walks swiftly to the middle of the bus and sits down next to LIONEL.) Hey, Lionel.

WILSON

(Beat.)

Man I’m beat today, too many things going on at work. Ya know?

(Short beat.)

How is it going with you?

(Beat, Lionel takes a sip from his thermos and looks out the window.)

It was so cold this morning I had to put on my extra heavy jacket. At least it warmed up as the day went on, though the bank is always cold. What was your day like?

(Beat, Lionel looks at Wilson.)

You know, my day was so long today. Constant customers up until the last minute! I couldn’t believe some of the things they requested of me. One woman wanted to close her safe deposit box, just to open another further into the vault. Some bull shit about it not being safe near the door. Who thinks like that?

(Lionel looks out the window without answering and takes a slow drink from his thermos.)

Man I just need something different from all of this.

(Beat, Wilson’s smile falters and he begins to fool around with his tie absentmindedly. He looks up quickly and grabs Lionel’s arm as he talks.)

Did you notice we have a different bus driver today? Because I am

pretty sure this is the first time in 5 years that Rich hasn’t driven us home. There’s some large woman sitting in his chair. I didn’t catch her name, but it’s so odd. Rich has been driving the 27 for years!

Who thought he would ever leave. Well maybe he retired. Just plain out there. Rich should be driving the bus. I mean some things just shouldn’t change, you know what I mean?

(Still looking out the window, Lionel shrugs. Wilson grabs Lionel’s shoulder as Lionel is taking a drink, making Lionel turn his head and sputter slightly.)

Look, there’s the Coffee Bean.

(Wilson points out the window.)

That’s what started it all between us, remember? I had just begun working at the bank and decided it would save me money to take the bus instead of buying a car. The first day I met you I asked something like; “Do you know where the Coffee Bean is?” And you, being you, just didn’t want to answer my question. I know it was so out of the blue. You just happened to be there at the right time, in the right place. It had been such a long day I just wanted to get a nice iced Mocha Latte. Twenty minutes you sat there in silence, while I waited for an answer. Then you had to get off and I was still sitting there. You asked me to move and I said; “Nope, do you know where the Coffee Bean is?” And we started arguing, you seemed in such a crappy mood, but I kept pushing your buttons, and eventually you told me where to get off. If I remember right you even told me the wrong stop! Ha! I was only 26 then, now look at me 33 and still riding.

LIONEL It’s been a long time.

(Lionel looks back out the window taking a slightly longer drink from his thermos.)

WILSON And you know what, The only change is that I got promoted twice. Well because of it I now wear a better suit, but nothing has changed, not even the bus driver, until today.

(Beat.)

You know what? We should do something different, something new and exciting to get out of our boring old lives. I know that you haven’t been getting out much the last couple months. We should go out tonight, the last time we did was, well, never.

(Laughs for a moment, Lionel give’s him a stern look and takes another drink and doesn’t say anything.

Lionel picks up a newspaper from beside his seat and tries to read it.)

You know, life always gives us these twists and turns and constant barrage of crap to deal with. Why not change some things? We always have this stupid routine: day in, day out, weekends and weekdays, just passing us by without a care. Why don’t we ever do something different? Take another bus home, go to a ball game, go skydiving- just something completely ridiculous!?

(Wilson stops for a moment.)

Lionel, you still in there?

(Wilson punches Lionel’s shoulder, sees he is reading a paper and not paying attention. Wilson pulls the newspaper away from Lionel.)

Come on Lionel listen, I think I’m onto something. Maybe Rich is out there right now doing crazy things; skydiving out of a plane with his wife, maybe taking a cruise along the Caribbean coastline, or just relaxing on a day off. Who knows, but he decided to do something different. Reminds me of Justin, from the bank. This one day he just didn’t show up to work. He hadn’t called in sick, hadn’t said anything about not being able to come in that day, he just wasn’t there. Anyway it turned out that he and his girlfriend spontaneously went to Vegas and got married and he had just forgotten to call in. How great for him right?! But you know I had to follow protocol and, long story short, I fired him later that day. Oh well, I bet he found a better job. He was probably bored and wanted a change anyways. I mean he does have a wife to steal away his time now.

(Long pause, and the bus shifts slightly. The sound of a stop being requested is heard. The bus begins to slow. Three people walk down the middle of the seats and walk off the bus, flashing their passes.

A few more people get on to replace them. Wilson picks up a briefcase that is beside him on the floor and ruffles through it, then sets it back down.)

You know you listen too much; you should try and talk more.

Don’t get me wrong-I appreciate that you care, and that you let me ramble on and on about these stupid trivial things, but you don’t talk enough. Come on Lionel; let me hear you complain for once.

What has been going wrong at your job? The ladies aggravating you like they do me at the bank?

(Laughs, Lionel give’s him a disgusted look and takes another long drink from his coffee. Wilson ignores him.)

At the bank, some of the women who come in, oh man Lionel, you would get a kick out of the way they dress. I had a woman stomp her way up to the counter of one of my clerks and begin to badger him about how her account was doing this and not doing that and being run by a terrible banking staff; the usual exasperations. But when I was called over to settle the situation, I am not joking here, the woman was wearing a completely leopard print outfit. Leopard, Lionel, leopard skin! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had to hold myself back from bursting a gasket; it was just hilarious. Anything like that ever happen to you at your job? What do you do again? I can’t seem to remember you ever telling me actually.

I’m a sales clerk.

LIONEL

WILSON (Hesitantly) Oh yeah that’s right. Where do you work?

(Lionel looks at Wilson silently, shaking his head he picks up the paper again. Wilson continues talking.)

Well if you are selling anything you must have seen some interesting outfits on the women who need things sold to them. So how about it, any interesting outfits around your work?

(Beat, another shake of the bus, and some shuffling of the passengers. Wilson pulls the paper down

again.)

Right, well no need to tell so much. Oh yeah! Another thing, this morning, oh I wish you had been there, this morning I was just sitting minding my own business when this guy comes up to me and is just reeking. I mean he completely smelled like crap! It was as if he had just walked out of a sewer, and then bathed in manure. Well anyway, he comes up to me and has the audacity to ask if I could move my bag so that he could sit. Ridiculous right!? Like I would let someone that disgusting contaminate where I was going to have to sit for another 20 minutes. Ha, I just ignored him and waited for him to keep walking to the back of the bus.

Yeah, how nice of you.

LIONEL

WILSON (Ignoring Lionel’s comment.)

See, I shouldn’t have to deal with that interruption in my mornings.

I just want the routine of getting up, making my morning brew, and heading to work on a quiet bus ride. Is that too much to ask?

Routine is good for some things; keeping me happy in the morning especially. It’s after all that work that we really need to break from it, right? It seems like we all get stuck doing the same old thing all day.

(Sighs quietly) The same old thing…

LIONEL

WILSON (Moves closer to try and hear Lionel, and pokes his arm.)

What was that? I couldn’t hear you.

(Lionel doesn’t respond and Wilson shrugs it off and continues to talk.)

I mean, I have my afternoon routine with you and all, but god, it just seems terribly depressing whenever I think about it.

(Long beat. Chatter from the back of the bus is heard. Taking a long drink from his thermos Lionel looks back out the window. Wilson taps Lionel’s shoulder.)

Why are you being so quiet today? You usually say at least something by now. I know you never complain to me about anything, but you usually say something. Come on don’t hold out on me today. When you’re so quiet it makes me nervous Lionel. Lionel are you even hearing anything I say?

(Lionel ignores Wilson.)

Ugh. Alright Lionel, have it your way. No need to complain about whatever is on your mind to your friend of 7 years now. No need at all.

(Wilson leans back in his chair and reaches down for his briefcase again. He pulls it onto his lap and begins to pull out a book. Then he changes his mind and closes the briefcase back up.)

Hey, you know, you still haven’t given me an answer about coming out tonight.

(A brief beat) Come on, there’s no harm in coming out with me just once. I’m not gonna let you off this bus until you agree to come do something tonight! We are going to go to a movie, alright? I know a great theater just off of Brillow. I’ve heard they have the best films in town.

No.

LIONEL

WILSON No? No what? You won’t come out tonight? Well I told you, I won’t let you off of the bus until you decide to come out with me. We both need a little change, just like Rich. We need to pull ourselves out of these boring lives and have some excitement. I have to deal with the same idiots at work 6 days a week. They are always screwing something up for me; giving someone the wrong amount of money, leaving a safety deposit box open, drinking on the job! Just, for Christ’s sake, they should at least be secretive

about it, but no of course they don’t care in the least. So you must have someone like that at your work. Some idiot to complain about, or a slight aggravation. A reason to change this tedious repetition of our days. Even if it is just for an hour.

None.

LIONEL (Lionel looks at Wilson) (Lionel turns back away. He takes a deep drink from his coffee. Wilson punches Lionel hard in the arm making Lionel spill some coffee.)

WILSON That is such bullshit! Damn it Lionel, I am attempting to be a good friend here. You seem all lost in your mind today or something, because you’re just disregarding everything I say.

(Beat, Wilson looks past Lionel out the window and points outside. Lionel brushes himself off and try’s to dry were the coffee was spilled.)

We could even just get a pastry at the bakery on Birch Street; it isn’t far from here. We could talk and you could find that one thing you need to complain about.

(Wilson notices Lionel wiping up the coffee.)

Ugh, sorry I didn’t mean to do that. Let me help you.

(Wilson reaches with a handkerchief to help. Lionel pushes Wilsons hand away and looks angrily at him, Long beat.)

Ok, ok, sorry Lionel.

(Short beat.)

Hey, do you remember the day that I came on the bus, sat down next to you, and just broke down? Of course you do, I complained for the entire ride about how terrible my life was going. My girlfriend of 3 years had just left me the night before, and work was tearing my hope for a promotion apart. You sat there and listened and cared enough to say something to me. “It will all get better, you will be happier soon enough.”

(Wilson looks happy for a moment, there is a pause)

I don’t know why, but I believed you. I went back into work the next day and eventually I did get that promotion, just like you said.

LIONEL I don’t recall saying anything.

WILSON Oh stop joking, of course you do. I remember your words exactly, no need to be modest.

LIONEL No, you’re wrong. I never gave you any consolation.

WILSON You just don’t remember is all. Don’t worry about it.

(The bus jolts to a stop and the sound of the doors opening comes to the audience. Someone walks past Lionel and Wilson. There’s a break in the talking.)

I never actually get a break. I get home and I continue to worry about everything from the day. That small filing error that has to get fixed, the minute details of if I closed everything up correctly at the end of the day, even that remark I made to Helen about her dress. It almost looked like she was wearing a trash bag. It isn’t my fault the dress was unflattering. Well, actually it was just plain ugly, so someone had to say something and I, unfortunately, had to be that person. She ran away crying and all, but oh well. The truth hurts.

(Beat, Wilson shuffles in his seat and Lionel coughs.

Wilson scans the bus quickly. Wilson taps Lionel’s shoulder and points behind him.)

Do you see that woman; she’s back about three rows? She’s wearing almost the exact same dress that Helen was. At least she wears it better. You know what else, that woman has been taking this same bus, every weekday. I have seen her get on at the same exact stop every day, at the same time. But she’s gotten older, more ragged, more out of tune with the life she once flourished in. I would bet you she stays up late at night worrying about the slightest

things just like I do. It’s what we all do.

(Beat) So what do you say Lionel? Have we ended up stuck in this rut of routine, or are we still able to make our way out? Let’s go on some crazy adventure!

(Wilson is getting excited and gesturing wildly at Lionel and shaking his shoulders.)

Come on Lionel! Let’s forget about our jobs and boring lives for a day and actually live! It doesn’t even matter what we do, just something crazy!

LIONEL (Lionel shrugs him off and tries to drink more of his coffee, but realizes that he finished it. He slams the cup down on the window sill and looks at Lionel.)

No, I don’t really care to come with you Wilson. Now please leave me alone so I can think in peace for once.

WILSON Come on Lionel. What is there to think about? The decision has already been made for you; you’re coming with me. We are going to have the time of our lives. It’s exactly what we both need; so don’t fight me about it anymore. I bet we could convince the woman back there to get out of her day to day drudgery. Maybe drag her to the movies or out to coffee. What do you think?

LIONEL I think you should go pound your problems into her head instead of mine. Do you really want to know what I think, Wilson, do you?

Well I think that once in a while you need to take a moment and step back from what you’re saying and actually listen to yourself talk. Your life is just so difficult because you work every day. Your job isn’t exciting enough for you; well it’s not exciting for me to hear about it either! That woman back there, who you attempted to make such a great example out of, just started on the bus 2 weeks ago. You obviously don’t pay attention to the people around you.

WILSON I don’t think it’s that. People have just become so interchangeable.

I didn’t even realize the other woman had stopped coming. I just replaced her with someone new. That’s exactly why we should leave this standard day for something exciting, maybe we could go out and join a bowling league, or we could…

LIONEL God, will you shut up!? A bowling league, that’s the best you can come up with? You just keep trying to rope me in with these idiotic ideas of yours. I do not want to go bowling; I do not want to go out for a drink with you. I just want to continue along my own path and have you get out of mine.

WILSON (Attempts to interject) Lionel I was just trying…

LIONEL (Lionel’s voice slowly gets louder as the monologue goes on.)

Yes, yes I know what you were trying to do. You know, I would have begun to take a different bus, but then you would have found your way onto that one too, wouldn’t you? Because you need someone to listen to your fantasies and to the endless idiocy that you to shout out all the time!

(Lionel stops talking for a moment and Wilson looks taken aback. There is a long beat while Lionel fixes his clothes and Wilson shuffles in his seat.)

WILSON I’m sorry Lionel. I didn’t know. You should have told me about all of this, I am your fri…

LIONEL You are not my friend Wilson. Really, Wilson, do you think that just because I have listened to you for so long that we are friends?

We are not friends; you are an aggravation that I have learned to

deal with.

(As Wilson talks Lionel pulls the cord on his right side, and stands up. The stop request is sounded.

Lionel cuts Wilson off.)

LIONEL (Continues) Do you know how irritating it gets when someone just goes on and on? No, you wouldn’t. You don’t even have a plan for what you will do, and yet you think I will just come along with you, really.

Of course you didn’t know, you were too busy worrying about your own life to think about anybody else’s. Maybe my life sucks, maybe I am horribly depressed, and maybe I hate everyone. But you wouldn’t even be able to figure that out. You don’t pay attention to anyone but yourself Wilson; all those little aggravations occur in my life too, just like you said. But the thing is, I have bigger aggravations. I have been stuck in this dead end job for years, even after tragedy struck, and I will stick to it until I die.

WILSON (Wilson grimaces, but doesn’t give up) Let me get off with you, we can just go and have dinner somewhere, or even just get a coffee at the Coffee Bean up the road.

You seem like you need someone to talk to about all of this. Just let me walk with you so you can talk.

LIONEL You want me to talk? Fine, 3 years ago my wife and I got in an argument about me getting home late from work. I told her I was just closing a deal with a customer, but she just got angrier and angrier.

I just couldn’t believe it and stormed out of the room. We both woke up angry, and we didn’t say anything to each other. While I was waiting at my stop, she swerved to miss a deer and wrapped herself around a tree.

(Wilson has a shocked look upon his face and opens

his mouth, but Lionel interjects.)

So you may think that your life is hard to deal with, but mine is oh so much harder to live with. So no, I do not want to take part in your experiment of breaking routine. I want my routine to stay the way it is, easy, so that I don’t have to think about the next day.

(Wilson has a shocked look upon his face and opens his mouth, but Lionel interjects.)

No, I don’t want your pity, and I do not want you coming with me.

Just sit back down. This is my stop. I have to get off.

(Wilson stands up, picking up his briefcase and moves into the aisle. He puts his hand on Lionel’s shoulder, as he is about to pass him. Lionel shrugs him off. Lionel turns away from a dumbstruck Wilson and showing his pass to the driver, gets off the bus. The rest of the passengers get off as well except for Wilson and the Woman. Wilson sighs audibly, while looking out the window. Wilson perks up like he has thought of something. Silently he stands up and walks towards the back of the bus and approaches the woman he was motioning to earlier.)

WILSON (Wilson smiles at the woman) Is this seat taken?

(The women smiles at him and moves her bag. He sits down beside her.)

WOMAN What were you and that other man arguing about?

WILSON Oh just how dreary life is, you know I follow the same routine every day…

(END)

CHILD VANISHED WHILE PLAYING IN THE SNOW

by Madeline Colker

Jesus I am sorry.

If this is my cross then this I carry with fear of tomorrow.

Then this I carry with dust across my shoulders.

Sometimes I see her shadow. Hanging from trees. Under the porch.

But oh how I wish it had been the neighbor’s daughter. I miss tying her pink shoelaces.

Take me instead. She wasn’t supposed to be out that night.

And it was a raw snow, with a harsh wind that moved it across the ground like the desert. Take me instead. Her coat wasn’t warm enough. Take me instead.

I wear three sweaters. I will never get warm again.

I miss cutting her pale fingernails. I miss that moment when I allowed her to go outside. I blame the neighbors.

And sometimes I hold out my arms and hope she’ll run into them. I’ll fold my arms and she will be there, and though my eyes are closed I will know her shape and her warmth and her breath. Her arms will wrap around my cold body and there will be snow dusting her eyelashes and her frozen hair.

I have taken off all the sweaters. I blame myself.

The furnace has broken. Take me instead. The basement has flooded. Take me instead. The pipes have frozen. Take me instead.

THE AMISH’S SIMPLER DINNER

by Taylor Fife

It is a Sunday evening and the sky is turns darker as we travel through the windy, back-country roads. It seems as if we have been on this old road for several months. My mom is nestled in the driver’s seat, her hands clenching the steering wheel, her eyes blood-shot and pupils fully dilated. And for the rest of us, we are sweating cocoa butter, our bodies glued together in the backseat; this is exhausting. Our stomachs do backwards cartwheels. We are starving.

We keep whining, Are we there yet? Are we there now? Are we close? Mom’s shoulders hunch up higher and higher in response to our unrelenting calls. She finally tells us where we are going, and we become suddenly hesitant. None of us have ever been this far out; we are 99 miles from the last gas pump. Her trusting eyes reflect back at us through the rear-view mirror. We stare back at her. She is an adventurous soul and we are along for the ride. I am still uneasy and with every passing mile I feel like Laura Ingles Wilder as we travel further and further into the country.

We drive up to the prairie— an eerie, deserted little town welcomes us with a freshly painted arch; Smicksburg, Pennsylvania. The grey cobblestone road shakes us from the inside out, gurgling our growling stomachs. I peer out the window and a white man waves back at me. He is wearing dusty overalls and no shoes with a red rubber band wrapped around the bottom of his braided beard. A bone-thin dog stands next to him on three legs. We travel further down the road, next to horses and carriages and the smell that follows behind them is quite unpleasant. There is a little girl sitting in the carriage seat and her cheeks are beet-red and smiling

as her father allows her to crack the whip. We drive further up the road and our eyes widen as we follow each of the dilapidated shacks that resemble homes. Small town stores line the edges of the muddy road, giving off an air of hostility. Wicker-rocking chairs line the porches and the invisible winds rock them back and forth. Where has she taken us? The car suddenly stops in front of a restaurant on 105 South Main Road. A sign in the window reads, Thee Village Eating House.

The place is small and painted in a glossy, white coat. The door is large and wooden with carvings of deer and pine trees lining its frame. We get out of the car doubtfully and uneasily, although Mom runs quickly towards the door.

Our first steps inside are breathtakingly refreshing.

It smells like sweet almonds and salted-caramel syrup. We are greeted warmly by two Amish women and given a table towards the back of the restaurant. Inside the restaurant is a small gift shop, The Village Sampler. We see fudge, kitchen gadgets, heritage lace and Yankee Candles as we pass by. A fire is glowing bright; its flames are gravitational. We huddle around it in awe. The menu is titled The Amish’s Simpler Dinner and is filled with traditional, home- cooked meals. My mouth drools as I read down the papyrus paper: fried chicken rolled in seasoned bread crumbs, mashed potatoes smothered in white gravy, thick Amish noodles, moist stuffing, buttery peas, slightly salted coleslaw, and assortments of farm fresh fruits. The breakfast is even more tantalizing with warm quiches and soufflÊs. On the next page, there are gourmet desserts: baked, powdered sugar breads, apple dumplings and sugary pies with every fruit filling one can imagine. I feel as if I am suddenly full just by reading the menu. A family walks in and takes the table next to us.

They wave and the man with the braided beard tips his hat to me.

I wave back this time. I order everything I believe my belly can hold—country-fried steak and steamed green beans, dumpling soup in cream of chicken, and a spring salad drenched in lemon balsamic. The first bite makes my tongue numb and tingly. I chew slow, tasting each spice. The flavor is zesty and sweet; I’ve never tasted a meal like this one. The salad dressing is rich and peppery. The ribeye steak is softly marinated and tender to cut. The meal tastes so delicious it should be forbidden. By the last bite, I have forgotten where I am.

The dishes are cleared away and I am now sitting with little Amish kids on dark-cherry oak floorboards. We’re all messy from accidental spills of white milk and giddy from the cranberry-orange cookie crumbs that are crusted to the corners of our mouths. The restaurant’s lime-green paint and the pungency of soft country air has overwhelmed me. Through the kitchen doors, I see the chef— a pale, fragile woman dressed in all white. Her hair is tucked away in a black, cotton cap that is tied in a neat bow around her chin. I like how she moves as she stirs in the metal pot, clanking the sides with a heavy spoon in one hand and sprinkling in salt and pepper with the other. I like the way she slices the tomatoes, plopping them in one by one and letting the water bubble up and simmer down. The adults have gathered around the chipped, wooden table as they wait on refills of freshly-brewed sweet, black teas. Our stomachs are full and our shirts bust at the seams. They overlap onto the table and rest there, fulfilled. A glazed, golden turkey is roasting in the rotisserie and our noses are filled with herbs and spices. Our bodies are warm and engulfed by heat. Outside, it’s raining in little droplets, and the restaurant’s bay windows are cracked. An aroma of settled rain and damp rocks wafts in through the cracks and mixes with the pungent smell of pine and burning sycamore. In the distance, over the sound

of mouths munching, there is a faint sound of the lake tide crashing, splendidly soothing.

When it is time to leave—we don’t want to. Our stomachs are too heavy to carry back home. I am laid back in a rocking chair and my eyes are half closed. It’s amazing what good food will do to you. Three hours ago, I was afraid to step one foot out of the car.

Thee Village Eating House lays in a patch of dried field grass at the center of Smicksburg, and it is now my favorite place on Earth.

Life around here is slow and easy, like warm food traveling down my throat. I have found a deep love for this place, and there is no love more sincere than the love of food. Bittersweet, I get inside the car. As we travel back through the windy country roads, I stare out the back window at the disappearing restaurant. I briefly consider becoming Amish.

PAPUA NEW GUINEANS

by Brenna Gallagher

2 Her brother was born with all his toes but only nine fingers. Though Elaine has escaped the womb for over a year, her parents decide it is appropriate for her to donate one to her younger brother. An artist must thrive in this family, they were taking bets.

6 After entering kindergarten Elaine has trouble making friends due to her missing finger. Elaine decides to reenact scenes from the movie A Clockwork Orange, which she watched a week earlier while hiding behind the couch as her babysitter made out with her boyfriend.

She picks up a yardstick and bashes in two student’s knees. Her teacher suggests a talk with a psychiatrist but her parents decided to cut back on sugar.

10 Introduced to geography, Elaine becomes obsessed with the country Papua New Guinea and the Guinea Pig People. One oral presentation and an unnecessary amount of eye-rolls prove that Guinea Pig People do not in fact exist.

16 Elaine goes on her first date with a boy named Stanley. After their group bowling date concludes, he leans into kiss her in the side alley besides Schwab Lanes. Never having kissed someone before, Elaine begins to suck on his tongue. Stanley suddenly remembers his strict curfew and runs off.

20 Elaine meets a girl who enjoys having her tongue sucked on and makes her back sweat when she talks. She takes her on a date to the aquarium and they witness a mother piranha eat two of her children.

They then proceed to fool around behind the gift shop.

25 In a surge of cosmic revelation, Elaine has Pluto tattooed under her left breast.

26 Deeply regrets the Pluto tattoo under her left breast.

30 Elaine gets a job at a local co-op but is fired a week after wearing a handmedown fur vest from her aunt, a long time enemy of PETA. After she realizing the fur is real, she leaves it in the woods near her house with the mentality that leaving things where you stole them from canceled out the sin of ever doing it in the first place.

35 Elaine’s brother, Guy, did indeed become an artist and hosts an opening of his own gallery. The whole family crowds over hor d’oeuvres and compliments Elaine on her selflessness. They ask her what life was like from the perspective of someone with custom-made gloves.

She shrugs.

40 Elaine writes a 27 page memoir/illustration book about a talking mouse trying to find a block of cheese after she had already chewed through the wires providing light to the basement; she titles it Mice Pays the Price.

45 Mice Pays the Price becomes a best seller among children books.

TV rights are signed, a book tour takes place. Unfortunately, Elaine’s brother also pursues a career synchronized roller skating and goes on a country wide tour. Elaine’s success is overlooked. She begins seeing her Editor romantically.

47 Elaine begins to see Editor’s wife behind Editor’s back.

8 months later Editor discovers affair and Mice Pays the Price sales tumble that year. Editor’s wife’s prenup comes in handy and she and Elaine move into a two-bedroom home outside of the city.

50 Elaine attends her mother’s funeral wearing hoop earrings and a leather miniskirt. Her father shakes Editor’s Wife’s hands and thanks her for being such a good friend. Editor’s wife smears her lipstick by biting her teeth.

59 Elaine receives awful news of her brother suffers a bear trap accident and loses his left foot. Elaine’s mother contacts her in hopes Elaine would be willing to donate her own, Guy’s career is just taking off.

Elaine ignores the message on her answering machine and retires to Papua New Guinea. She writes cookbook reviews and takes hikes twice a week in hope of discovering Guinea Pig People. She makes necklaces for her partner and swims naked every night.

SWEAT

by Brenna Gallagher This job has a really low pay and really strange hours but I enjoy being around people. I love people but people don’t love me.

Not many people touch me but I touch a lot of clothes and I think they are a lot softer than the bodies they cover. Not softer than my mother though, she was an angel.

A kind family from Singapore hired me to work in their dry cleaners as long as I don’t let people see me touching their clothes.

I wash, dry, and fold the garments. But don’t think that’s not a lot, more goes into it than you’d expect.

I pick up each article of clothing and squeeze, trying to feel

who was last in it: a father, a cousin, a lover. Sometimes I imagine me lifting up a skirt and underneath will be a person who will switch skins with me.

I pick up a bra and squeeze the cups. I feel a woman of tender love. I check the tag, 34 FF. I didn’t know they come that big.

Next, a sweater with elbow patches and a hole in the back. I hope they don’t think I did that. I don’t wanna lose Mr. Koh money, he has two daughters that sing. They practice in the apartment above on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I listen sometimes but I don’t think they know that. It makes evenings go a little quicker. I wish they’d come down more often.

The fabric is itchy. Someone awful must own this sweater, someone whose skin is sandpaper and can’t itch. I imagine their eyes as marbles and I start to sweat so I throw it in the washer and count to seven before picking up the next thing: a plain white t shirt.

V neck. I smell perfume. Lavender.

My knees go weak. My mouth waters.

I lift up the sleeves and smell the yellow stain under them.

She was working out and sprayed herself in the locker-room. I’ll bet ten bucks on it, twenty maybe. It was a tiny shirt for a tiny girl but it was a little stretchy. I couldn’t help myself. I hear the buttons on my shirt hit the ground and the shirt is over my face and then my shoulders and now it’s squeezing my stomach. I know this’ll stretch it out but a little extra soap and another ten minutes in the dryer, and it should be back to normal. I spin around and there I am in the reflection of a silver pole holding up clothes. God I am so beautiful.

FLOORED

by Jessica Ignasky Characters: Flo- elderly woman with a lot of spunk Lindsey- owns a cupcake shop, an undiagnosed hypochondriac Ben- bland and sarcastic, works for Lindsey Chris- over enthusiastic, works for Kelly Kelly- attractive and competitive, owns a cupcake shop (Setting: The elevator inside a run down Holiday Inn Hotel. At rise CHRIS and KELLY files onto the elevator mid conversation. FLO and LINDSEY move to the right to give them space, BEN tries to hide behind his newspaper.)

CHRIS I’m so nervous for this interview! What if they don’t have the right fondant! That’s happened before. Remember the whole Cooking Channel fiasco in ’09?

KELLY We’ll be fine. This is Food Network, Chris. They’re culinary geniuses.

(Notices BEN.) Wait…Chris, do you smell something?

(Tries motioning towards BEN.) CHRIS Yes, it’s floral. It smells fantastic, which one of you ladies is wearing— KELLY No Chris, a rat! Do you smell a rat?

What…

CHRIS

KELLY (Throws BEN’S newspaper to the ground.)

A rat! Ben, what are you doing here, are you trying to get to the interview before us?

Ben?

CHRIS

BEN (To FLO who is beside the control panel.)

Uh…excuse me, can you press the first floor?

KELLY You can’t get out of this! You know what this would mean to Chris and I! You used to be a part of this!

(FLO presses the elevator button, there is a ding but suddenly the car jolts to a stop. LINDSEY falls into the back wall and KELLY falls into her; CHRIS waves his arms around and FLO falls into BEN.) LINDSEY Ouch, I think I broke my arm!

BEN

What just happened?!

(Looks down at FLO who is stroking his suit.)

Also, what are you doing?

FLO Hmm? This is very nice. Expensive. Reminds me of my husband.

(BEN slowly steps away from her.)

KELLY (Rubbing her head and looking at LINDSEY.) Oh my god...Chris, do you know who this is?

CHRIS Lindsey! What are you and Ben doing here?

LINDSEY Chris, don’t talk to me. I shattered my eardrum.

BEN We’re going to the Cupcake Wars audition.

(Beat.)

Okay I can’t take myself seriously when I say that.

FLO Oh! I watch that with my grandson. There are a lot of attractive men on that show. I’d like to see you on television.

(Nudges BEN.) KELLY Why would you do this to me? It was bad enough when you left us for Lindsey. Ugh you’re the last person I want to be trapped on an elevator with.

BEN I didn’t leave you Kelly, you told me to leave.

KELLY Well I really meant that you should stay.

BEN How would I ever have known that?!

KELLY It doesn’t matter now. You’re going to win and Lindsey’s going to get another thing she doesn’t deserve. Just look at her!

(Points to LINDSEY who is on the ground clutching her stomach.)

LINDSEY What. My spleen was ruptured.

KELLY Her spleen was ruptured? What even is that Ben? BEN She needs me Kelly; I’ve realized that after working with her. She needs me more than you ever will.

CHRIS You know this is just so inspiring…I can’t do it. Guys. We have to get out of here!

KELLY How? We should just stay here. That way none of us can win.

No, not a good idea!

BEN

LINDSEY Guys, I’m pretty sure my appendix just burst, this is not a joke!

There’s a 99.9% chance I’m going to die if we stay here.

KELLY (Ignoring LINDSEY.) You just want to rub it in my face! You want to stand in your fancy little shop right across the street from me and hold up your fancy little trophy!

BEN Kelly. I thought you would’ve known. Do you know who else is auditioning?

Er…no?

KELLY

BEN

Kevin.

KELLY

What.

No…

(In disbelief.)

CHRIS

LINDSEY He gave me food poisoning! Second hand food poisoning! His food does not deserve to be on television.

FLO Excuse me, young man. What’s the matter with this Kevin? Does he look like you? That’s crime in itself. He’s going to steal someone’s heart away.

(BEN backs away slowly.)

BEN Kevin is another cupcake shop owner, but he sells gluten free cupcakes, which everyone loves for some reason.

KELLY He almost put us out of business last year. Damn you Kevin and your delicious gluten free food!

CHRIS He just makes me so angry, imagine him winning and his face being everywhere with his crusty slogan underneath it. “Gluten is good. Gluten is love,” who says that, what a jerk!

(Starts pounding angrily on the walls, LINDSEY screams.)

BEN Chris! Stop you’re scaring her! There has to be another way!

(CHRIS stops.)

LINDSEY The walls are closing in on me, I can feel them! Can you feel them getting closer?

(Grabs KELLY’S foot.)

Ew you little troll get off!

KELLY

LINDSEY You’re the troll! You and your ugly yellow bakery! Whenever I look across the street I feel sick! Oh…oh god I feel it coming on now.

(Heaves forward.)

KELLY People love yellow it reminds them of sunshine!

BEN Stop fighting I’m trying to call 911!

(Shakes phone.)

Huh…that’s weird. I don’t have any service.

It’s the government.

Excuse me?

FLO BEN

FLO They don’t want you to escape because they put you here.

CHRIS Oh! I know why we don’t have service. This is the weird place in the building.

How do you know that?

BEN

CHRIS I looked up all this information about this hotel before we came here. I thought it’d be good to know about where we’re staying and let me tell you, I learned a lot. I mean a lot. This place is crazy. I’m not sure how I feel about sleeping here.

(Slowly.)

What kind of secrets, Chris?

BEN

CHRIS Well supposedly they use horsemeat in their food, they have hidden cameras in every room and someone died in an elevator. You know I thought we’d be getting better treatment from the show, I mean really— Someone died?!

KELLY

CHRIS Kelly I told you this story on the ride here, weren’t you listening?

It’s just superstition.

LINDSEY I bet they died right here. I can feel them.

BEN (From the panel, sarcastically.)

Oh! Look what I found! A call button. Let’s try this out.

(Presses button.)

Hello? Is anyone there? This elevator’s either broken or faulty and we’d really like to get out of here.

(Beat. There is silence.)

KELLY Shouldn’t they say something? Like, “Sure thing! Help is on the way in the form of hunky firefighters.”

FLO This one’s hunky enough, wouldn’t you say so?

(Motions to BEN.) What do you want from me?!

Love.

BEN FLO

KELLY No one answered us! We’re trapped!

Kelly we’ve been trapped!

CHRIS

KELLY I just keep getting visions of Kevin…and a society filled with gluten free cupcakes that I hate to love.

LINDSEY Hey everyone I know you don’t like me but there’s something I have to share with you all.

(Struggles to stand.)

I’ve noticed that there’s this bruise on my arm that keeps getting blacker and blacker and I’ve come to the conclusion that I have the black plague.

BEN Lindsey! Can’t you be normal for once?

LINDSEY This isn’t a normal situation, Ben. I can’t stand you!

BEN

LINDSEY I can’t stand either because I hit my leg off something when I fell and I think it’s broken!

(Sits down angrily.)

KELLY Stop fighting! We all have to work together to get out of here. If help isn’t coming then we have to help ourselves.

FLO What a rotten day. All I wanted was a nice bowl of oatmeal and some bacon.

CHRIS Oh, you were going to breakfast? Are you staying here?

FLO No. I live here. Stop being so nosy.

CHRIS Oh geez sorry lady…watch out for the horsemeat unless you’re already infected.

LINDSEY I’m infected. With the plague.

KELLY Enough! I can’t spend another minute in here with any of you!

Neither can I!

BEN

CHRIS Well…what do you want us to do?

Jump.

KELLY

LINDSEY No, no you stick that idea right back where it came from no way are you jumping on this thing while I’m in here.

BEN No…it could work. Maybe the elevator is just stuck.

Could be worth a shot.

CHRIS

LINDSEY Think of this kind old woman! She didn’t ask for any of this!

FLO I don’t mind I do a daily zumba class.

BEN Lindsey, do it with us. Do you want to be stuck in here forever?

This could be our chance.

LINDSEY I guess…but watch where you’re jumping I don’t want anyone stepping on my toes.

(She stands up.)

KELLY Everyone ready? One, two, three, jump!

(Everyone jumps.)

Is it working?

BEN KELLY

Try pushing a button.

(BEN pushes a floor button, there is a ding.)

We did it!

(KELLY high fives CHRIS.)

The attractive one saved us!

FLO

INTERCOM V.O. Sorry about that folks, we fixed the problem and the elevator should be up and running again.

CHRIS Well that was a let down I thought we actually did something.

LINDSEY You know I’m pretty sure one of you stepped on my toes after I specifically told you not too. So rude.

BEN (From the control panel.)

Wait…when did the elevator stop?

KELLY Just a little while after we got on, why?

BEN Something weird is going on…

CHRIS Is it the ghost of that person who died in here?

LINDSEY Do you have the plague? I may have accidentally given it to you… oh god. Oh Ben I am so sorry.

BEN No…it was you! You’re the reason why the elevator stopped.

(Points at FLO.) Wow, Ben! Way out of line!

CHRIS

FLO You’re only saying this because you’re scared to say you love me.

BEN I know it was you! You pressed the emergency stop button it’s the only explanation. But why?

FLO Oh well my hand might’ve slipped I’m sometimes very shaky.

I won’t buy it.

BEN

KELLY Ben, leave her alone she hasn’t done anything wrong except get onto an elevator with you.

BEN She was on here before Lindsey and I got on! She knows something!

LINDSEY Ben you’re being ridiculous. I’m always freaking out but I’d never accuse an old lady. Ugh, what’s wrong with you?

FLO It’s alright I know he didn’t mean any harm.

(There’s a ding from the elevator.)

LINDSEY Fresh air! Oh thank god my lungs were closing in on me!

(Exits elevator, runs offstage.)

BEN And now I’m off to audition for a cupcake show…I really need to reconsider my life choices.

(Exits elevator.)

Hey, Ben! Wait!

What?

(Stops.)

KELLY BEN

KELLY I know there are hard feelings between us but good luck.

Er, thanks?

BEN (Exits stage.)

What was all that about?

CHRIS

KELLY Well it’s either them or Kevin if we don’t win. Let’s be real here Chris, would we seriously cheer on Kevin?

CHRIS Oh goodness, no. What a terrible person.

(Walks off elevator, exits stage.)

KELLY Well, I hope you enjoy your breakfast ma’am.

FLO Oh, thank you dear. Good luck on your bakery dance show competition.

Yeah totally.

KELLY (Gives a confused laugh, shakes her head.)

(Exits elevator, walks offstage.)

FLO (Steps off of elevator, talking to herself.)

What a terrible idea for a show. I hope they aren’t serious. Those poor, poor children. They all think I’m a fragile old woman, telling me to “enjoy my breakfast.”

(She laughs to herself.)

The only smart one was that Ben...oh but if he wasn’t the ugliest man I’ve ever laid eyes on in my life. He almost figured me out.

I’ve been doing this for years and no one’s ever caught me.

(Paces around.)

Hmm…that breakfast is smelling delicious…oh what’s the harm.

I’ll go and have some. I can always find more strangers to have fun with later.

(Exits elevator, walks offstage.)

(End scene, BLACKOUT.)

ENTWINED

by Jessica Ignasky

I found it in the vacuum cleaner. I found it knotted into the carpet, the dark strands adhering themselves to the floor as if they’d been glued down. I found it on the curtains, floating with the thin layers of fabric as they sighed in the air.

It was winter when she left and somehow it had gotten into the ornament boxes, tying itself around the maroon bulbs, dancing along their tiny snowflake decals. I dropped each of them into the trash bin because I couldn’t allow myself to waste so much time unraveling it from underneath the hooks, but the pieces still managed to fly away into other parts of the house, mocking me.

There were clumps of it in the shower, and they would swirl around in the stream of water from the faucet. I prayed that it would

disappear, maybe there would be some miracle and all of it would leave at once, but nothing is that easy. It was a constant in my life that I couldn’t break.

It weighed down on my life heavily. I couldn’t go to work because it knotted itself onto my clothes. I ruined my dress pants with endless lint rollers trying to be rid of it, but it would always find a way back. I couldn’t eat because it would sneak its way into my food and get wrapped around my lungs if I tried to swallow it.

I couldn’t sleep at night because I felt it climbing across the covers like a map of veins across a body.

I was sick of looking at it; sick of letting it consume me. I wanted it gone, I wanted to find her and shave her head so no one else would ever go through this but I had forgotten what she looked like. She was nothing but a blurry image; the only thing I thought of when I looked for her was her hair.

That’s what kept me from going after her. It was all I had left. I didn’t have memories or mismatched socks, I didn’t even have a worn out sweatshirt that smelled like her. I had pieces of her that moved around the house as she would, sporadic yet with this grace that seemed to come from nowhere. It was beautiful, but it was sad. I don’t understand how one person could lose so much of themselves and still be alive.

THE EXPERIMENT

by Taylor Johnson Kim We sat around the coffee table silent. Four empty mugs, merchandise from various Broadway musicals left rings on the stained glass.

“So who wants more coffee?” Joe said, breaking the silence.

He stands up, nervously rubbing his hands on his trousers.

“Have you got any tea?” I say looking up. Joe nods, and escapes into the kitchen.

It’s been like this for a while. After about three minutes of silence, someone awkwardly breaks it, hoping to avoid the lingering question in the room. The blank labeled VHS tape sat at the top center of the table. No one can tear their eyes off it.

Fred’s enthusiasm startles Rose. “Well we’re gonna have to talk about it eventually.”

“What do you want to do, Fred?” Rose has tears in her eyes, a crumbled mascara stained tissue in her hands.

“I’m just gonna say what everyone in this room is thinking!”, Joe enters, sitting my steaming tea in front of her. “We can’t just sit around waiting for the tape to watch itself!”

Rose cradles her head with her hands. “I don’t think I can watch.”

“You know what--”, Fred snatches the tape, and jams it in the slot. “He was my best friend, the least you can do is honor him with the respect of knowing.” Fiddling with the remote, the static, clears into an image.

I covered my eyes, scared of what was about to be on the little TV, “Oh god…”.

Rose

As the tape started my heart rate increased. We all had known what happened, but seeing it. On Kim’s little Toshiba, Dan’s living room came into focus. The camera was placed in the top corner of the room. The doorknob unlocked and turned. Dan entered, tossing his bag on the couch near the door. He sits down, and flips through The New Yorker. A dark figure creeps behind the couch, from his kitchen. It looks like any other scene from a horror film that you’d crack up with friends. I took side glances at everyone in the room.

Everyone had a flinched face like someone about to hit them. The stranger didn’t waste anytime. Thrusting Dan’s kitchen ware steak knife into his neck, blood spurted from his neck, like puncturing a garbage bag. Spattering more and more with every puncture. I felt bile rise up in my throat, and looked away. I couldn’t do it.

Fred

I had to stay strong. For the sake of everyone else in the room. I’m the idiot who thrust the tape in the slot, I couldn’t look away now. With every cut, Dan’s screams became harder to hear.

His throat clogging with his own blood, he started to gag. Oh god... why did I do this. I forced my eyes to stay open to the minute he lay motionless on his couch. The New Yorker was still gripped in his hands. Dammit Dan. Joe

Rose and Kim had left the room in hysterics, muttering how they couldn’t stand to see the life erase from him. Fred stood up slowly, and ejected the tape. He noisily tossed the tape onto the coffee table. He walked into his kitchen and grabbed the baseball

bat hanging on the hook near the entrance. Calmly, he walked back over, and disappeared behind a frenzy of rage. Crushing the tape, the plastic was scattered on the floor. Fred didn’t stop. Breaking through the glass of the table Kim and Rose came back startled.

“Fred no! Fred what are you doing?” yelled Kim.

“You’re ruined the table!” Rose reached for his shoulders but Kim held her back.

Through the yelling and screaming and more destroying, I stayed on the couch, absentmindedly sipping my coffee. Hopefully in time, things would get better. Somehow.

THE ELEPHANT

by Jazmyne Kenney

Jim invited me to a Christmas party last week. Which was a surprise because Jim and I had only spoken once and that was when I asked him why he rubbed his nose so often and he said it was because the space heater made it run, a lot. I accepted his answer because his lips were blue so he wasn’t lying. I had said to Jim that I didn’t attend large parties. He said that it would just be the people from floor 15. I said floor 15 is pretty big. He said that he’d be there and he’d buy me lunch for a week if I can came. I wanted to say no because he kept wiping his nose. I just wanted to give him a tissue and say: Jim, just blow it. Instead I said sure. Obviously I am not good at making decisions for myself.

Mostly because Jim will be buying my lunch for a week, I attend the party. While stammering through a simple hello Mr. Bickerstaff goes to the front of the room and announces that he would like to make a toast. I am stuck standing in the very front right in the middle. Standing in the middle of the crowds always makes me nervous. It makes people think I want to talk to them or I become the center of attention. Mr. Bickerstaff begins his toast. He says something like, “I’m so happy to be here with you all” and makes a joke like, “I hope my wife doesn’t hear about his night”. The rest of his speech I don’t pay attention to because of the mole on his face just below his bottom lip is throbbing. It is brown and three tinier moles orbit it like it has it’s own gravitational force. I try to move back just inch because maybe the further away I am I will not feel so close to his face. Instead I bump into to Jim who is standing directly behind me. I say, I’m sorry, and I feel like I am feel heads turn in my direction the more I move. With each word that he says his mole

seems like it is going to hop off of his face and onto my blouse. I look around and everyone is holding their champagne glasses in the air with warm smiles and all I can do is pull more on my skirt, tugging it further down.

I don’t know if I am distracting everyone or if they are just as fixated on his mole as I am. I can feel Jim smiling at me from behind and I want him to stop. I want him to see the mole and not me so that he will move back too. Emily, a woman that works on a cubical over from me is even closer but she is not pulling on her skirt like I am and she is looking at Mr. Bickerstaff directly in the eye. She starts to laugh hysterically and I realize everyone is, and so I do too, but it comes out harsh and a couple seconds too late. Jim puts one of his hands on my hip and rubs it. It feels like we have been standing here for hours and I am growing exponentially like I am filling up every single space in the room. I feel like Mr. Bickerstaff is talking about me now. He is describing every thing wrong on my body to the audience in the room and I am a marveling museum exhibit. Everyone will not stop looking at me, the elephant in the room, with each movement I shake the walls, and the floor and Jim can barely keep his hand sturdy on my hip. The crowd disperses, slowly moving into their own conversations, Jim, stands in front of me, he smiles, I throw up directly onto his shirt.

WE ONLY EAT BREAKFAST TOGETHER

by Jazmyne Kenney

I am always too polite. I suffer from what my mom likes to call, “why don’t you ever open your mouth and say no” syndrome.

Having this undesirable trait, I try my hardest to make sure that I don’t offend or make anyone feel uncomfortable. I do this most of-

ten with people I don’t know and my dad.

When I was little my dad would pop in and out of my life and I really didn’t understand why. It was just one of those inherent things that I learned not to question. Every time he came back he has re-invented himself, preaching about how he is going to start taking me to church every Sunday because my mom never does and maybe I could even sing in the choir, or that he is going to start his own gym somewhere on the Hill and make enough money to pay my way through college. Most recently he wants to write a novel or a memoir. The thing that never changes is the first thing we do: have breakfast at a little diner on the Northside called Lindos.

Each time we go, it is an early Saturday afternoon, cloudy and slow, no matter what the season. On the way to Lindos we sit in the car, not saying too much because I don’t know what to say and the music is too loud. We listen to CD’s he has obviously burned himself, because of the strange mix of music ranging from early Laurynn Hill to Hip-Hop, contemporary gospel to DMX, and smooth jazz instrumentals. There is never a time when I am not uncomfortable. The thing is, I have never liked Lindos. Unlike most people, I don’t care for breakfast food unless it is from Pamela’s or homemade by my mom. My whole life could pass by without me eating another pancake or scrambled eggs and I wouldn’t even notice. Lindos breakfast I will only eat if I am sitting across the table from my dad.

We normally don’t choose the breakfast buffet, instead order off the menu. I get the one-armed bandit: one pancake, two pieces of bacon, one egg, and an option of toast. I’m too afraid to tell him that I hate it. I hate the thin pancake; the lack of sweetness makes it taste like basic white bread and it smells like a sock heated in the microwave. I am not a fan of syrup, but I create an ocean of Mrs.

Butterworth on my plate to give it the slightest amount of flavor. I say nothing about how the bacon is not cooked enough and limp like wet noodles.

If we didn’t order off the menu I don’t know if I could bare even walking through the front door of Lindos. The buffet is the saddest looking excuse for breakfast anyone could picture. From the non-cohesive containers full of eggs, grits, and home fries, packed into the smallest corner of the room to the paper dry undercooked eggs spilling over onto the plastic floral table cover.

There are only two waitresses, so predictably the place is always packed and the service is always slow. Because we don’t talk much it seems like waiting for our food takes an especially long time. In the meal I get the eggs are almost bearable, but the yoke is always too runny, and ends up mixing with the syrup, making me add more salt and pepper to the egg. The product of these two create a sweet-and-salted taste that leaves me disoriented. I enjoy the toast with butter and strawberry jelly, it is the only thing that gets me through the meal.

We discuss my grades and how my mom is doing. I try to find the right words to ask where he has been and why. Instead I focus on the water stains that cover my silver wear. I wonder how many people have eaten here, and the nauseating intimacy of sharing barely cleaned utensils with a complete stranger. My Dad gorges on a giant plate of scrambled cheese eggs, steak, and potatoes with a side of runny grits and burnt toast. I can tell that he enjoys it here and it’s what makes him comfortable.

I let him do all the talking and answer when he asks me questions because mostly what he cares about is me and how I’m doing. Ordinarily I feel stifled when people dominate conversation with me, but with my dad I enjoy my peaceful silence. I indulge

him making my mundane life sound more exciting and productive, anything that will make him proud. Between choked down bites of bacon on white toast slathered in jelly and trying to get the waitresses attention for a glass of water I realize why I continue to let him take me to Lindos. Coming here has little to do with my inability to reject his offer but more to do with the fact that I just like to see him happy.

In the car he says, “Thank you princess, I really appreciate you coming out with me, I don’t get to see you often�. I say goodbye and wonder when will be the next time we get together. I think of how he always calls me his princess. Although he has never had enough to provide me the world on a sliver platter, under the fluorescent lighting having conversation on ripped red leather chairs he is my king.

AFTERMATH

by Mollie March-Steinman I. Maxi

My brother Max is eight years older than me. He folds in on himself like a wilted lily when he cries. He has smoky, circle-rimmed eyes that inspired classmates to call him “raccoon,” and broad Olympic shoulders. They hunch a little, because Max has always been Atlas; we also have hereditary back problems. He is passionate about everything: mysterious white dwarfs and nebulas, the complexities of ancient history, the delicious cadences of Arabic dialects.

When Max first came home from a semester abroad in Morocco, all he could taste was sand from wild camel rides. To remedy this, he washed his tongue, and ours, with spices. His breath always smelled like thick curry, and the skin of his palms slowly turned orange from the abundance of peppers and carrots he sliced. He brewed thick, overpowering bean stews that made my dad breathe fire; he cooked chickpeas in oils and dark flavors until they turned brown and dried them on a paper towel by the window; our kitchen was potent with homemade cheeses, rising bread, and roasted garlic until he returned to school. Years later, he still holds spice jars to my nose and makes me guess what they are— sweet crimson saffron, pungent flakes of basil and oregano, and his favorite, the sharp, overpowering cumin. I’m usually wrong.

In the summer of 2007, right before I started 6th grade, my parents appointed Max as my babysitter, with the intention of him acting as my personal fitness trainer as well. I was fat. It was official, because my parents got a letter from the school nurse. Summer is supposed to be filled with seedless, juicy watermelon, mildly warm

swimming pools, broken-in flip-flops, and barbecue. Mine consisted of daylong hikes, raw, peeling sunburns, and reliably tender muscles. The highlights were our in-between workout meals, which were unusual, but gratifying. He fried thin vegetarian burgers in the skillet, made from black, refried, and garbanzo beans. He presented them to me in pita pockets, squirted with coils of mustard. He kept me hydrated, with frequent stops to Rite Aid for Powerade, or the Northumberland vending machine for soda if we only had a couple quarters. Max and I always got Fresca, because it was so crisp and left our teeth tingling.

On the rare occasion we were invited to a cookout, I piled my paper plate high with hot dogs and cheeseburgers and dinner rolls and corn on the cob and of course, fresh watermelon. Max always shot me a sidelong glance, threatening the two-minute drills and aching abs to come, and I sadly left my food unfinished. We didn’t indulge much, but our lapses included cocoa-dusted peanut butter balls (homemade, of course), mixed nuts, nut butter, wasabi peas, frozen grapes, and seaweed paper—basically all the weird stuff Max thrived on. We were used to an unconventionally healthy diet, having grown up with our Weight Watchers enthusiast mom, where bread was risqué, butter was scandalous, and Doritos were practically a sin. So it’s not a surprise that one sundrenched day in July, when we were all sitting outside enjoying Woody’s rare, chocolate birthday cake topped with buttercream icing, Max decided it was a prime opportunity to torment me. He bullied me onto a splintery bench, and ordered me to do “dips”. With legs outstretched so my heels touched the patio and elbows supporting me on the bench, I slowly lowered myself to the ground. “Pick it up, turtle! You’re not trying. Just because it’s Woody’s birthday doesn’t mean you can be lazy!” I heaved myself up again, wheezing, increasing my pace

as directed, muscles screaming as they expanded. I could sense the thick, sweet frosting roiling the acid in my stomach, the cake melting and decomposing back into batter, and I was going too fast, and the sun scorched the back of my neck, and…I projectile vomited, all over the back porch. And so culminated the torturous summer adventure of ’07.

For a much better birthday—I think I was turning twelve— Max surprised me with a five-course, homemade meal. His hazel eyes warmed as I walked into the dining room and squealed. The table was adorned with fresh flowers from Trader Joes. I sat with my parents as Max presented his masterpieces. The first course was French onion soup, cheese dripping from the sides of the bowl and translucent onions swimming happily in rich broth; the second, small wooden bowls filled with juicy red tomatoes stuffed with silky, rubbery mushrooms and diced green peppers. He offered two main courses: rich, melt-in-your-mouth salmon topped with Greek yogurt and chives, and tender, lean beef fillets bathed in a dark sesame seed sauce. Dessert was grilled pineapple drizzled decoratively with warm chocolate. It embodied our relationship so well—sweet, bold, seasonal. He beamed at me while I ate, this goofy, pure, eye-crinkling happiness budding on his cheeks; and the candles flickered drowsily, and Etta Fitzgerald purred softly on the record player; and my parents were holding hands; and I have never been so overwhelmed with love.

II. Gigi

Gigi, my beautiful angel. Gigi, of the severe nose and voluminous gray pompadour and eyes as twinkly and blue and knowing as Dumbledore’s. Her glasses were as brittle as her arms. She was tough and stubborn as spikes on a pineapple rind, but her skin was

always puckered with peachy bruises. She’s dead now. I can’t think of her pretty eyes sinking in her skull or her slender fingers decomposing so I just think about death the way she did. I imagine her drinking tea daintily with a white-bearded God, lounging around on pristine clouds, wings neatly folded, a ceaseless and toothy smile on her lips.

She wore Champion canvas shoes every day, and they always looked fresh, never scuffing. Each morning she sat on the edge of my bed and stroked my hair until I woke up. She rolled my socks and stockings so they could fit over my toes, and always dressed me in bright colors and pigtails. Her passions included Irish Catholicism, hot air balloons, Nora Roberts books, peacocks, chocolate covered pretzels, and myself. I was her baby doll, and she spoiled me rotten. We walked down the block to Frick Park Market and ate lunch on the little whicker chairs. She’d give me money to pick something out and pay the cashier, since I was so grown up. I always chose mini white powdered donuts.

Our picnics were famous. We’d pack a basket full of honeydew, watermelon, strawberries, egg salad sandwiches, crab cakes, brownies, cookies, cream puffs and chocolate éclairs. Then we’d head over to Frick Park, and settle down on some benches near the Bowling Green to watch the game. We had our best conversations there, though most of them were silent. We sucked on honeysuckle stems, searched for four leaf clovers, and watched the wild antics of animals in the park. We talked about the sky. She taught me how to identify cumulous, cirrus and stratus clouds.

Whenever I got sick, Gigi would make the tenderest grilled cheese in the world, crisped to a burnt gold and seeping with warmth.

She cut them into strips to dip in homemade tomato soup. Gigi never ate much, though. She’d have one mug filled with tomato soup and

another filled with Lipton green tea, and alternated sips between them. We watched movies on the snug basement couch, all tucked in under one of my mom’s thick quilts. We loved old movies dearly; I idolized Marilyn Monroe, for her soft flighty voice so similar to my own, and the gentle sway of her hips. Gigi loved Lauren Bacall for her smoky confidence and sultry eyes. We adored Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, especially, and marveled at her serene, fresh-faced beauty for hours. One summer, we watched every single Hitchcock film, playing Rear Window over and over again to admire Grace.

But whenever I stayed home sick from school, I would beg Gigi to put on Sabrina. We revered Audrey Hepburn’s classic charm and slender, milk-white neck that gave her a swan-like grace; but I watched it for Humphrey Bogart, who I thought was as handsome as my grandpa. Gigi never complained, only smiled when I asked to see the same movie five times in a row. She sang “Moon River” to me in her gentle, wavery voice, and when I requested that the blankets cover my shoulders, she complied immediately. Even when I decided all I wanted was Lion King for two months straight, she’d plant a big kiss on my head and pop in the VHS without hesitation.

I miss her mannerisms, her positivity, her exceedingly lame holiday sweaters with the bad jokes on them. In October, she adorned herself with neon orange pumpkins and wide-mouthed ghosts saying things like, “Don’t forget that you’re BOOtiful!” For Christmas and Saint Patrick’s Day, she draped herself with vibrant greens, and wore buttons with little reindeer or sayings like “Kiss me, I’m Irish!”

She was the cutest freaking lady I’ve ever known. My parents were at work all the time, one set of grandparents was estranged and the other lived in New York, and Gigi was the only consistent source of affection I had. Whenever I wanted a hug, she was already reaching toward me with arms outstretched.

I remember when she revealed her true Christian self, after keeping it politely understated for so long. She brought me to St. Bede Parish and sat me down in a room full of melting candles to watch her pray. I remember how it felt to dip my fingers in the warm-wet wax and let it dry in claw-like shells, only to peel it off later in the car. I remember how her wrinkles seemed to smooth with the intensity of her concentration, how her lips trembled silently with desire for fulfillment, hands clasped with taut knuckles, frail body tight as if trying to protect her butterfly soul from escaping through her cracks. This is how I know that whenever I am rotting to soil and nourishing earthworms, Gigi will still be mighty, still be purposeful, still be, somewhere, because she is too tangible to die, too important to decay, too brilliant to be anything but an angel.

AFTER THE DINNER RUSH

by Mollie March-Steinman

“It’s only 20 blocks,” Woody says with ease, because he often walks the length of NYC in the summer, when the trees are thick with humid leaves and the sidewalks teeming with feet. They talk about things that make me uncomfortable—like how a man fired his pistol straight into the air when they were walking next to him, how gun shots and sirens are predictable at 3 a.m., waking them, interrupting their warm security. My brothers add that they are lucky, even living in Harlem, with hip-hop blooming from open windows and uncensored conversations and rhythm gripping you without warning. They are lucky because they are white. This is what makes me uncomfortable. We graze over the topic of privilege lightly, with just the flats of our teeth, so as not to offend, and move on to safer

discussions.

Max points out an elusive joint with steps leading down to the door and simple letters spelling out Tokubei 86. He asks if I’m up for Japanese. I say hell yes, because I haven’t had it in forever and I’m not in the mood to worry about calories. The smell greets me right away, a sweet mixture of hot rice and fish, and we are led to an intimate table with soft chairs. The waiter is cute, with a genuine smile and kind eyes, and he keeps our glasses filled. Max gives his signature smirk when he sees me staring, and orders barley tea for all of us. “They make it in-house, you know, and brew the miso too,” he adds.

Everything feels lovely here. The lights are dim and there is a low buzz of conversation, but no music, which feels more authentic. Max and Woody go on for a few minutes about how amazing the pickles were last time, and I listen to other conversations. Someone is talking about jasmine rice versus wild rice while toying with a fancy scarf. A couple is arguing the way people do in the honeymoon phase—the woman doesn’t want the man to pay, but he feels obligated. I don’t see it lasting more than a month.

Our food arrives, heat tendrils rising from the platters our waiter so gallantly balances. I got the uniquely-made miso soup: tender seaweed strips, silky bites of tofu, little morsels of green scallion, and a light saltiness that bursts on my taste buds. Max devours his pickled chayote and nappa with relish, while Woody attacks a crispy tempura confection. It is gone all too soon, and we sadly scrape up savory residue with our fingernails.

There is a quiet buzz of anticipation on our lips as we wait for more food. I can hear it in our restless chatter, our twitchy body language, the way Woody keeps bouncing his knee and glancing expectantly towards the window of the open kitchen, where the chef

handles five pans at once without pausing to wipe his sweaty brow.

All of the ice in my water has melted. Max shoots spitballs at me through his straw and I kick him under the table. The waiter returns with another mountain of dishes and pours our tea with charm.

My long-awaited salad smells mildly fishy, but the tuna is fresh and red and my chopsticks slice through it easily, while the rich avocado wedges melt on my tongue. Woody has twelve pieces of thick sushi. Max is eating something spicy and vegetarian. We all scoop up scraps from one another’s plates without asking. They let me pay the check (with money from our Dad), and we poach handfuls of pink and green mints from a complimentary jar. Woody lets me hold his hand as we walk back toward Harlem, which hasn’t happened since I was little and makes me feel a sunlit glow at 10 p.m.

The streetlights feel soft and feather-like on my eyes and dust sleep on my lids. Woody leads me into Insomnia Cookies, and buys me a huge double chocolate cookie for a dollar-fifty. I sink my teeth into the warm, yielding sweetness and melt with delight. The richest taste of creamy chocolate floods my mouth, and I have to sit on the ground to savor it. Max and Woody join me with a bagful of soft, fresh pastries and a pint of cold, crisp milk. We sit there until they are nothing but crumbs, in silence but for the hum of city traffic, and drown the pure cloy of homemade cookies with milk, togetherness, and late-night serenity.

BLIND

by Alexis Payne Characters Audrey, 32 years old, wife of Grayson, housewife, once a journalist Grayson, 33 years old, husband of Audrey, doctor (A plane. The stage is minimalistic and should impose an ominous air. At lights up both characters are evidently and visibly shaken about something.)

AUDREY (anxiously) God… (beat) We must be on the news. You think the girls know?

GRAYSON I don’t know, Aud. AUDREY We would have landed by now.

GRAYSON I’m aware.

AUDREY (beat) When we get home I have to make casserole for the PTSA meeting.

That’s next Thursday. You’re coming, right Grayson? (beat) I ironed your shirt for the wedding. And I put in three ties just in case you wanted options.

GRAYSON Okay Audrey.

AUDREY I made sure the girls did their homework before we left.

(He nods absentmindedly.)

I picked up Brooke’s prescription and put it on the dining room table. Lana’ll be able to find it, don’t you think? (beat) You packed the girls’ lunches right?

GRAYSON What?

AUDREY Their lunches for tomorrow. Brooke likes peanut butter. Rachel likes ham. And you have to put the jelly just right on the bread or she won’t even eat it.

GRAYSON I know.

AUDREY And you told Lana that Rachel can’t play with Ms. Rupert’s dog?

He bites sometimes and it’s dangerous.

GRAYSON I know.

AUDREY (beat) Did you lock the door?

GRAYSON We’re over a lake.

(looking out the window)

AUDREY Cut it out Grayson. Did you lock the door?

GRAYSON You think it’d be better to fall in the water or crash on dry land?

AUDREY Grayson! Did you lock the front door?

GRAYSON I did.

AUDREY God. That’s all I asked. (beat) PILOT Please remain seated. Remain calm. This is your pilot.— It is important that we comply with all— GRAYSON (beat) You think the water’s cold?

(Audrey closes her eyes and grasps the arms of her seat.)

AUDREY I wish you’d stop.

GRAYSON Aud— AUDREY No don’t Aud me. We have two daughters at home.

GRAYSON I know that.

AUDREY I don’t think you understand what it means.

GRAYSON Of course I understand.

AUDREY Really? If you understood you would be at every one of Rachel’s dance recitals. You would take Saturdays off to help Brooke with her braille. You’re never even home to see their faces.

GRAYSON Don’t start this now.

AUDREY You work so much that you forget to take your blind daughter to a doctor’s appointment.

GRAYSON Let it go Audrey. It was two months ago.

AUDREY I’m not going to let you refuse to support our kids like you’ve never supported me.

GRAYSON I support you all the time.

AUDREY I wanted to be editor-in-chief. I didn’t want to just be a damn housewife.

GRAYSON We have more important things to think about now.

AUDREY Like what? There’s nothing more important than our kids.

GRAYSON Like the fact that we’re on a hijacked plane!

AUDREY

(beat) We’re in America. We live in a civilized country.

GRAYSON And an uncivilized world.

AUDREY You can’t just expect that we’re going to die. If you do that there’s nothing left between us and what’s below.

GRAYSON I prepare for and expect the worst. That’s the only way to live.

AUDREY It’s like you’ve just handed over your body and told them to do what they will.

GRAYSON I have. The moment you stepped on this plane you did the same. If they want to crash this thing into the lake or in a building they will.

There’s nothing you can do about it.

AUDREY I’ll scream Grayson. I’ll scream until my throat is raw, until pigs fly, until the world ends if I have to. I’ll be damned if I lie down and let someone bomb me out of this world.

GRAYSON We’re nothing but atoms here. Nature and circumstance does what it wants with us and all we can do is accept it.

AUDREY You’re a doctor for god sakes! Your job is to save lives.

GRAYSON You think I have any say in whether or not a baby lives or a man dies from cancer? Do you think I’m the great omniscient being who decides whether or not a single mother can be saved after a car accident? My daughter was born blind. You think I had any say in that?

AUDREY Grayson— GRAYSON Things happen. People die. Those men in the cockpit want something and unless they get it we’re as good as ashes. We’re not living in one of the girls’ storybooks.

AUDREY That doesn’t mean we can’t hope.

GRAYSON For what Audrey? When every day is the same thing, there’s nothing left to hope for. We do our jobs, we make money, and we go home.

We never actually affect a thing.

AUDREY No. We can’t just give up. We can’t just accept that all life is work and work and death.

GRAYSON That’s what it is.

AUDREY Maybe if you were home every once in a while you’d understand.

GRAYSON If I was home?

AUDREY Like the smile on Brooke’s face when I pick her up from school. Or the way that Rachel still draws stick figures with their legs coming out of their heads.

GRAYSON I don’t know what you want from me Audrey.

AUDREY I want you to pay attention. I want to you to fight even though you might lose. I want you to scream even though you think it won’t accomplish anything at all. I want you to see a future in Brooke. I want you to tell her she’s beautiful so no one else can ever tell her anything different. (beat) GRAYSON Right now we’re on a plane that’s been hijacked. There’s nothing we can do here besides try our best to breathe. I just wish you’d understand.

AUDREY Understand what exactly?

GRAYSON How helpless we are. How infinite all of this is.

AUDREY What is me understanding that going to accomplish?

GRAYSON It’ll give you peace.

AUDREY Peace? Every five minutes there’s another announcement to remind me where the hell I am. My daughters’ faces keep flashing across my vision and I’m trying to remember if I told Lana that Rachel’s allergic to peanut butter. Where is the peace in that Grayson?

(Beat. He doesn’t answer.)

You know your daughters think you’re a hero? They think you go off to work everyday and make people happy.

GRAYSON Rarely.

AUDREY That’s what they believe. Last week Rachel told me that she wants to grow up and be a nurse because “nurses get to use fancy ‘telescopes’ and save people just like Daddy.” And you know what Brooke told me? Brooke told me that no one in the world has bigger hands than her father. I asked her what she meant and she said that your hands remind her of the bowls. Your hands remind her of bowls at the soup kitchen. (beat) Every night when you’re on call Rachel asks if you’re out saving rabbits from extinction….don’t ask me where she got that from… it’s beyond me. But Grayson. Can’t you see them?

(He is staring at his hands. Beat) GRAYSON I’m not a hero Audrey.

HIJACKER Ladies and Gentlemen, you all must remain seated and quiet so that no one gets hurt. We have a bomb on board. I repeat, we have a bomb!

GRAYSON

(long beat) I’m sorry. (beat) AUDREY

(She begins taking off her seatbelt.)

I’m doing something, with your support or not. There’s enough people on this plane to rush that cockpit and stop them.

GRAYSON Aud… (beat) What if this is it?

AUDREY Then it’s it, Gray.

GRAYSON And we’ll all just die with our mouths open?

AUDREY It’s better than dying with them closed.

GRAYSON (beat) So what do we do?

AUDREY We scream. (beat. They both look at each other and grab hands. They stand together. BLACKOUT)

SINNING

by Alexis Payne 65. His blond hair exploded from his scalp at odd and petrifying angles. Throat raw from so much screaming, tiny fists florid from all the time they were clenched, he was not a cute baby.

19. Their feet were stained russet from the dust, as was their hair and the clothes that clung grossly to their bodies from the sweat.

The Arizona sun beat on their cheeks. They could hardly taste water without the simultaneous swig of red earth.

29. They kissed and their lips burned together. They jumped in the river and let the tide cool crimson welts.

32. Have we sinned John? Isn’t it a sin John?

Quietly, with their legs intertwined on the bank, they breathed together.

27. They slipped bites of baked potato between their lips and let slathers of butter slide across their tongues. Her mother clucked contemptuously. A boy sat at her table without even the decency to pick the dust from beneath his nails.

What do you do John?

I write.

69. She names the baby Jesus, not after the Son of God, but because she likes the way the name tastes on her tongue.

47. His station wagon resembles a beast growling outside her window as she barrels down the stairs, and throws open the door. The sun breathes like a bird on her face, playing around her eyes, and she laughs, holding her hat to her head, hitching her skirt above her knees.

John! John! It’s snowing John! In New York! It’s snowing! Drive me to New York, John! I want to see the snow.

52. The Arizona road seems perpetual and she leans on his shoulder and traces a heart in his free hand. She lets her lips graze the place between his shoulder and his neck. Her head is heavy and her lips stick like wet sand.

Oh John. Let’s get out of this heat. Let’s go far, far away.

The broken trees bend into the road, their bodies crooked like fingers plagued with arthritis. She sticks her head out the sunroof and screams.

70. The baby becomes object that sits on the floor with broken old toys and sucks its thumb.

John? New York is cold without you? My fingers feel like ice.

HOLY INNOCENTS

by Drew Praskovich

During the Avian Flu epidemic, there was a mass genocide of birds. Young boys took slingshots to the streets, parading the sidewalks with pigeons. The men went to the woods, rifles in arm, their hunting dogs with scarred ears by their heels, and flushed the foliage until the only thing that covered the local newspapers were photos of men holding turkeys, chickens, ruffed grouse, pheasants, chickadees, and crows. The laws were even changed to make the mockingbird stop singing.

The most important job was left in the hands of the women.

While their daughters starved their caged birds, the housewives, the matriarchs, the jezebels, and the nuns foouht the war on the home front. All babies born during that time were infected from the white storks that delivered them to doorsteps. They would all meet together over pamphlets and cucumber sandwiches and say, “What are we going to do about the children?” The infancy mortality skyrocketed. “What are we going to do about the children?” Some suggested getting their tubes tied, others celibacy, the few birth control. “What are we going to do about the children?”

The majority however thought science was the answer.

“Let’s take out the middle man!” The women, young, old, rich, poor, chaste, and free began celebrating the vogue idea of the test tube baby. Why did they need a bird to deliver them babies when science could do it for them? All of them left the meeting deciding on names for their test tube babies. Out of them, the most popular was Rachel.

The white storks, out of work with no income, all began falling from the sky. Their empty baby bindles tried but were

unsuccessful as parachutes. Soon, all the women had bellies full of science. It was empowering, holding life in their hands for once.

But, something was off. They scheduled another meeting to discuss the issue of not being delivered a baby. “Sure we can have a doctor deliver our baby, but what about the surprise of opening your door expecting mail or milk cartons and seeing a baby?” Again, they decided on science.

After giving birth, the doctors would clean the babies, apply eye drops to prevent gonorrhea, and the mothers would give the babies names and hold them for a few moments. Balloon strings were tied around their ankles, only after realizing tying string around your neck can often lead to asphyxiation, and whole maternity wings were led into parking lots. They would hold their little helium babes in bloody hospital gowns and let go of the fruit of their wombs. From there they watched them turn into little stars and drove home as childless mothers. It often only took hours or days, but once the balloons got too high in the atmosphere they would pop. Attached to those fat little baby ankles were return addresses so when they fell, they could be delivered home on doorsteps.

Surprisingly, Buffalo became America’s baby capital. A rumor spread that it had something to do with the prevailing easterly winds and/or global warming. A small baby postal service was established in downtown Buffalo. Little Rachels were shipped all throughout the country, their birth certificates doubling as receipts.

Couples would check their doorsteps every morning (except on Sundays) to see if their own babe would be home. It came as quite a shock when lovers began opening their doors to twins.

A final town meeting was called. “What do we do with the twins?”

The minutes from the meeting were translated into a One-child

policy. If twins happened to arrive on the front stoop, the parents must pick which one offspring to keep. The other would remain nameless and shipped back to Buffalo using a return address. A meeting was never called to address what to do after the extra child was shipped backed to Buffalo.

BABY DETOX

by Matty Smith

1. Love is Bleaching Sheets.

I found that album of you yesterday, sitting cross-legged in your underwear, finger to the camera, and F U on your lips. Hands for your mother, mouth for your father you were telling me. Those sour words shot darts into my doorframe and two years later they’re still dripping on the floor.

2. Love is Crucifying Children.

Listening to you sing the alphabet, nose to my solar plexus and fingers in my blue jean belt loops, as if a spoonful of baby was warm and humming softly in my womb - as if you have given me one. I listened to you again today, through the tape recorder with the lemon tree stickers. I meant to accidently drop it into the lake but every time I tried the water was frozen.

3. Love is on a Video Screen Captured clearly, was you, sprawled out on the church floor, scratching the scarlet, sacred carpet and thinking. I asked you to tell me what you loved. I wanted you to look into the video camera and say my name. But you said the grass and I wanted to spill weed killer into the water pipes. I asked you what else and you told me the sun.

I thought about using bubble gum to stretch me from earth and stick me to the moon so I could aim and extinguish that star. What else do you love I begged, and you sat up, “the beach”. And I sent bombs from my brain to burst on every coastline. The video camera drops there, and I remember feeling your knees on either side of me and saying that you loved me, I tried not to implode from the stomach

out; I let you love me, because you said you did.

4. Love is Splintered Cabinets.

I was picking broken wood from my palms – finally. I had been dreading the kitchen but I stepped inside today; with the sheets and photographs, with the voice recorder and lemon tree stickers, with the video camera and socks with the church carpet clinging to their wool, and with my splinters .I am going to feel dirty now, purchasing pregnancy tests from corner convenient stores. I am going to feel heavy, wandering down the aisles picking out baby names. A permanent bee sting in my throat.

NESTERS

by April Yoder

CHARACTERS Camilla-a 27-year-old woman, whimsical and imaginative, hates being held down by responsibilities Matt-a 27-year-old man, down to earth, calm but easily set off in a downward spiral, dated Camilla in college NOTE: Every time there is a noise from upstairs, Matt’s voice gets lower, then get progressively louder until the next noise, as if he is worried about waking someone, but then forgets about it.

(Setting: the basement of a house. There’s a worn couch, an old dresser, and a table with a set of chairs. If possible, there should be a window or something to represent a window stage right. MATT enters from stage right and climbs in through the window, trying to be as silent as possible, but struggling. Once he’s in, he looks around a bit, reminiscing. He bends down and starts feeling around on the carpet, looking for something. When he’s under the table, CAMILLA, being more agile, easily crawls in through the window and stands behind Matt.)

CAMILLA

Hey.

(Matt abruptly lifts his head and hits it on the table above him.)

Ow! Jesus!

(Sees Camilla.)

Ca—Camilla?

What are you looking for?

MATT

CAMILLA

MATT I—I was just…what are you doing here?

CAMILLA I come here every year. What are you looking for?

MATT Keep it down; you’ll wake up the owners. Wait, you break into some person’s house every year?

CAMILLA First of all, she’s a deep sleeper. Trust me I’ve been much noisier before. Second, this isn’t just some person’s house. This is our house.

(Sits down on the couch and crosses her legs.)

MATT No. It’s not. It’s been ten years since we lived here.

CAMILLA You don’t get it, Matt. This will always be our house.

(Beat) And, third, I don’t break in every year. I only did that because I saw you doing it. Usually, I just look.

You just…look?

MATT

CAMILLA Every year, I come here on this day and I look into the windows and I can see us…

(Gets up and pulls Matt by his hands into the middle of the room where they stand, facing each other.) …standing right here in this basement. Right where we met. Today.

Nine years ago.

(She turns away and points to a spot downstage. Laughs a little.)

And Jillian and Mark were standing there, remember? And they said they felt the whole room heat up like we were combusting.

They said we had real chemistry, remember?

Yeah…I remember.

MATT

CAMILLA Matt, you would not believe the woman who’s lived here since we left. You’d cringe.

MATT I’m sure I would. I really should just go.

CAMILLA

She’s this Asian lady.

(Paces as if this is the best story ever told.)

She looks at everything the way you used to look at me. Remember? Like you need to fix me. I saw her during the open house.

(Deliberately) She got down on her tiny hands and knees, put her tiny plastic nose down to the floor, and sniffed the carpet.

(Laughs) If only she knew what we did on that carpet.

MATT (Laughs) I bet she’d melt the nose right off her face.

CAMILLA I bet she has a closet of noses in her bedroom and every morning she picks one out to match her outfit.

MATT I bet she keeps an extra one in her purse in case the one she’s wearing pops off when she sneezes.

(They both laugh.)

Like old times, huh?

CAMILLA Yeah.

(Picks up one of Matt’s hands and holds it in both of hers.)

Like old times.

MATT

(Removes his hand.)

That’s not what I meant.

(Goes over to the dresser and begins looking through the drawers.)

CAMILLA Come on, Matt. You didn’t forget about me already, did you? How could you get over these stormy green eyes? Remember what you used to tell me? Looking at me, it was like getting caught in the rain.

I’m not here for you.

MATT

CAMILLA Don’t pretend there wasn’t a different reason you came here besides some sappy sentimental crap. You came all the way from Chicago.

MATT You’re right. I came for the alumni celebration. It’s our class this year. You know, fifth anniversary of our graduation?

Oh. Yeah, I got the email.

CAMILLA

MATT I realized it was also the anniversary of…you know. And I remembered that there was something here. Somewhere. So, I made a

stop. I’m starting to think it was a mistake.

I just thought—

CAMILLA

MATT I know what you thought. Not everything is about you, Camilla.

CAMILLA That’s not what you used to say.

(Matt slams a drawer shut. There’s a creaking sound from above them. They pause.)

We’re not dating anymore.

MATT

CAMILLA I know that. But we could still work. Didn’t you ever imagine what life would be like if things turned out differently?

MATT But they didn’t, ok? And what about the five years we spent in two different states, living two completely separate lives? Do you think if we still worked any of that would have happened?

CAMILLA (Angry) You know that didn’t have anything to do with whether we worked or not. You didn’t even try.

MATT I tried! I tried for four years. The way you loved me, it was so intense. I couldn’t live up to that.

You left me behind!

CAMILLA

MATT I wanted something better. I had to get out of this place.

CAMILLA But you’re back. And you’re here with me. Doesn’t that mean something?

MATT It’s just a coincidence.

(Starts feeling around on the carpet and searching all around the room.)

CAMILLA You have a girlfriend, don’t you?

(Beat) A wife?

(Beat) No? I bet you want one.

(Matt pauses) Oh, Matt, still looking for the one? You’re not getting any younger.

MATT I know. It feels like every second I spend running, I’m wasting my life. I’m done running.

CAMILLA Running is good for your heart.

(Sits back on his feet.)

I’m tired, Camilla.

MATT

CAMILLA And you think a family will give you rest?

(Sits next to him on the floor.)

Do you even know what kind of responsibilities come with that? It weighs you down, Matt.

MATT What do you know about family?

I have a daughter.

CAMILLA MATT

(Stuttering) Wh—when…is she…how…how old— CAMILLA She’s not yours.

(Stands up and walks toward couch.)

It was some guy. Four years ago. You know, typical one-nightstand story.

(Sits down.)

“I don’t even know his name,” blah, blah, blah.

MATT God. Camilla, only a year after we— CAMILLA I know, alright? My life’s been hell. I don’t need another get-yourlife-together speech. I was broken, Matt. You broke me.

MATT

(Stands up.)

What about your daughter? Don’t you love her?

CAMILLA

(Beat) She wets her pants, Matt. Like all the time. And her doctor prescribed this medicine. But I have to go to her school everyday at lunch and make her go to the bathroom and give her the meds and then come back later to pick her up. Do you know how difficult it is to go back and forth from work everyday? I spend all my money on gas. And when we get home I have to help her with homework

because she’s just not smart. I keep telling myself she gets it from whatever dumbass impregnated me, but how can I know? And I have to make dinner every night. I don’t know how to cook. Do you know how many boxes of Ramen noodles we go through every week? A lot. And my daughter is going to be fat because you broke me and I wasn’t ready, Matt. I wasn’t ready for you to leave.

MATT

(Sits down next to her.)

Where is she now?

At a friend’s house.

CAMILLA MATT

(Looks at his watch.)

It’s 10:30. Shouldn’t you have picked her up by now?

Yeah.

You don’t care.

CAMILLA MATT CAMILLA

I care.

(Beat) I just can’t do it anymore, Matt. I saw you climbing in the window and I thought maybe that was a good enough excuse to take a night off.

MATT Camilla, this isn’t some college class you can skip if you don’t feel like going.

CAMILLA She’s with another adult. It’s not like I left her alone at home.

MATT

(Stands up.)

It doesn’t matter! You don’t get it; you have a daughter. You have someone to love and take are of and you just push her away. Do you know what I’d give to have what you have?

CAMILLA So what’s stopping you? Take those healthy little sperm of yours and cook one up for yourself!

MATT With who? Some random girl at the bar I don’t even care to learn the name of? I’m not like you!

(Beat. Camilla looks hurt. They hear more creaking from upstairs. They pause.)

I’m sorry.

(Goes back to searching around the room.)

CAMILLA My daughter can’t even eat without me. She can’t even take a bath without me helping her. She gets so excited when it’s bath time; she does this little dance and sings her “Bath Time Song.”

(Smiles a little.)

Remember the song I made up to keep you company while you cooked? It’s like that. Everyday she reminds me more of me. And the more I realize she needs me. I’ve never felt needed, Matt. Not even by you.

So, you do love her.

MATT CAMILLA

I don’t know.

(Beat) Let me help you.

(Gets down on the floor and starts helping him.)

MATT You’re not the only one who isn’t happy, you know. A Masters in business and I find myself filing papers for a law firm. I gave up everything I had here to go to Chicago. And I hate it there. I hate the trains, I hate the people, I even hate the pizza. Through all the years I was getting my degree, I made one friend: Sylvia. Then, I dated her.

CAMILLA Why did you really come here?

What do you mean?

MATT

CAMILLA It’s not here, Matt. Whatever you’re looking for, you know it’s not here. This isn’t even the same carpet. Why did you really come here?

It was a ring.

What was a ring?

MATT CAMILLA

MATT What I’m looking for. It was a ring I bought back in college.

Nothing special, just a little gold band. I think I bought it at Target, actually.

CAMILLA (Laughs) Target? What, Wal-Mart didn’t have a good enough selection?

MATT We were in college, alright? I didn’t exactly have the money to go to Jared.

CAMILLA Oh, I know. Remember the month we spent living off of Cheetos?

It was for you.

The ring?

Yeah.

MATT CAMILLA MATT

CAMILLA Y—you were going to propose?

MATT Sort of. It was just a commitment thing, you know? I just wanted something permanent.

CAMILLA What happened? Why did you hide it?

MATT It was our anniversary. Two years. And we went down to the river and this couple was getting married. And I said maybe that could be us one day. And you said we don’t need marriage, Matt. It’s just confirmation; we don’t need that. All we need is love, you said.

And you started singing. That freaked me out. That really freaked me out because I needed confirmation. How could you be so much more confident in us? I thought I was missing something. So, I hid the ring, and told myself I’d take it out once I figured out what I was missing. But I never did. And by the time I left, I’d forgotten about it. When I started dating Sylvia, I remembered, and then I couldn’t stop thinking about that ring, hidden somewhere in this house. I kept talking to Sylvia about it—and you—like I was obsessed or something. She thought I still had feelings for you, so she ended it. And I realized, you can’t just cut off something you’ve

invested so much of your life into. You have to sew up those ends.

I just thought finding this ring, maybe getting rid of it, would close it up. Then, maybe I could get on with my life.

CAMILLA Maybe there’s a reason you can’t stop thinking about it, Matt.

(Beat) I need you, Matt. We need you.

I know. I know.

MATT

CAMILLA Emmy just—she just needs someone else. Someone else besides me.

Her name is Emmy?

MATT

CAMILLA Yeah, I thought I told you. It’s after my— Your grandmother, I know.

MATT

CAMILLA

(Scoots closer to him.)

You said you need to stop running.

I know.

MATT (They stare at each other for a long moment. Camilla’s phone rings. She gestures “one minute” to Matt with her finger and gets up to answer it. More creaking is heard from upstairs. Matt looks worried.)

CAMILLA Hello? Yeah. I—I know. Jesus.

(Walks so that her back is facing Matt. Talks quieter. Matt makes his way to the window.)

Okay. Okay. Thanks.

MATT

Like old times.

(Climbs out of the window.)

CAMILLA Tell her I’m sorry.

(Hangs up.)

Emmy had an accident. Her friend’s mom gave her pants to change into.

(Starts to cry.)

I just thought, maybe after all this, she’d just go on her own. I can’t do this forever. I can’t—Matt?

(She looks around, but he’s gone. Footsteps are heard and a light goes on. BLACKOUT. END SCENE.)

LEVEL TWO

TABLE OF CONTENTS Ahmir Allen Phantasmagorical Maya Best

Dinner with Magritte Spring Jessica Britten

Letters to a False God Laura Condon

To the Man Who Made Me Madi Custer

Tony Vernon C/0 Kraft Foods Group Inc. Muriel D’Alessandro

To the P.W.S.O.P.P. on Liberty Ave. Clara Dregalla

Haunted Sam Eppinger

Ars Poetica (Sweet Poetry) Dylan Fletcher

On the Torment of Saint Anthony Hannah Geisler

[ breath ]

Tyra Jamison

Ars Poetica: Melody Virtue Chris Kraemer

Beetle Letters (To the King Beetle) Isaac Monroe

This Poem is Only About Work Curran O’Neill

Iesha Olatunjii Cream Midnight Eden Petri

Hyper Realistic Jacob Richards Monopoly Emily Schwager

The Sin of the Calf Lanie Wester Cantaloupes

PHANTASMAGORICAL

by Ahmir Allen

My mind swells with a terrible magic whenever my eyes shut. Everything is headless. Rats race around chasing runaway hams.

I think that constitutes a nightmare. Night terrors like phantoms swing from the ceiling, loom over my mind, they hang patiently, I know they are just waiting. To close my eyes is to fall for their trap.

To fall for their trap is to fall into a lost, loveless wonderland. It is vast and dark and cold. A thousand rusted trains could not cross the land moving on a thousand rusted rails.

I’d rather not return to that void. So, although I may turn off the lamp, make no mistake. I will stay awake until I cannot last.

DINNER WITH MAGRITTE

by Maya Best

In response to Rene Magritte’s “The Portrait” Take me to your kitchen Where toast is crafted from concrete squares, where You slice Romneya poppies into eggs with the tips Of your sewing scissors.

Take me, Magritte, to the pantry where You top ice cream cones in fluorescent light bulbs, Form cheese with dry sponges, And sliver earthworms into spaghetti. Tell me About apples who wear sunglasses and read newspapers, French fries who tap dance on rooftops, cupcakes who watch Reality TV in queen sized beds.

Magritte, the ham molded into the moon Bares a soul, But the eye never blinks.

It would surely win this staring contest.

The knife and fork stand perfectly aligned (Spoon took a vacation).

You serve me, Magritte And I slouch on your table, My back pressed to the window As I take a sip From your bottle, a hooded figure Full of midnight liquid.

I pucker my lips at my reflection In the water glass and finger the ham, Poking its eye with the tip of my knife.

But only you can see me, Magritte And you dream of me while you sleep.

Imagine the teeth marks in your ham, The lipsticks stains on the glass,

The eye disappearing between my lips.

SPRING

by Maya Best 1.

Some say a robin’s shriek Are the first words of spring, no more than Baby’s cackle on March 21st As she knocks the applesauce from my hands.

She’s lost one of her rain boots again; The one shaded in ladybugs like the kinds That threw parties on the windows Of that old cathedral down the street.

Father used to say the ghosts probably Went there to worship spiders Hugging cracks between the walls.

There’s nothing there now, save a lonely organ Playing tunes to itself under the crucifix.

I remember when my father used to stare Through ageing eyes As he stood in that doorway watching The boys hurl stones At the robins, their pleading croaks The final breaths of spring.

That was no place to pray.

2.

On rainy days, Baby leaps into puddles, Droplets splattering her cheeks.

There’s a pout painted onto her lips As she drags her feet to the bus stop.

And when I reach for her hand to Cross the street, she pulls away.

“I’m too old for holding hands, Daddy!”

3.

Never question the silence of things, The way the leaves swirl down tornado waves To reach the ground, or How the past seems to melt Into photographs of you. I remember When we used to jump into conversations.

There was never a frown on that porcelain face, Baby.

But now, your teeth are zipped In secrets you’ve kept from me. I’m lost In the makeup you slap onto your eyes. Whatever happened To that baby who used to wail all night, Who never knew the meaning of silence?

4.

The streets in this city are crawling In bodies that dream in the doorways of these empty shops.

I used to fear the darkness Of those stretching alleyways sprinkled In cigarettes, but recently I’ve barely even paid attention to the socks On my feet, mismatched. I’ve forgotten The feel of your hair, your whisper Through the telephone, All those nights you would phone, your voice Trying hard not to quiver. Sometimes When I walk through these streets, treading Upon the footsteps of millions, I can hear you In the throats of birds, and I remember How we used to play, how You would dance through These streets and I never seemed to notice The sullen sky or The problems in this world.

LETTERS TO A FALSE GOD

by Jessica Britten

“There’s 7 billion, 46 million people on the planet and most of us have the audacity to think we matter” –George Watsky Dear George, You were there for everyone else. I cried for them all while my dad begged you in whispers, and you melted into the crowds of people, and you dove from the balconies, and pretended like the world consisted of somebodies.

You left me with cold copies and ignorant earth.

Somehow you made 4am into something selfish. I was losing lessons I was willing to learn.

I had no songs to sing, while you were serenading the scum, and were packing his bags, and became his love letters for her, and you made me lose someone I never had.

You wrapped every lesson I ever needed up in an empty inbox.

You painted San Fran diamond sidewalks empty gold, and I needed you!

You were there for the mutilated, and kissed their filthy trigger fingers, and spat on birthday wishes, and you made me desire the life of a passenger.

You were the only one that reminded me how to smile; you drowned out slamming doors…

You didn’t have to make the water thicker or make the bottom seem so far.

You didn’t have to give them boats of Titanic shards! Your silence made sinking inevitable.

You gave me more with empty hands than I ever would have thought.

You taught me that every hero dies, and that I will always love the traitors, never love cardboard cutouts, or dream of cardboard castles.

You showed me how it feels grasping at ghosts, and how much you can doubt, and just how much that hurts.

I hope you never write your idols.

With Love, The Girl That Will Never Learns

TO THE MAN WHO MADE ME

by Laura Condon

“He watched Nico with satisfaction, as if he’d identified the exact spot for his next arrow to make a clean kill.”

- Rick Riordan, House of Hades Dear Mr. Riordan,

As son of Hades, I take my gruesome dinners with the god of death. Yet you, I am sure, set your table with the blood of those I have loved most.

Years have I spent with your whispers tingling at the back of my neck.

My life has been built up solely to fit your design, solely for you to tear it all back down.

Dear Mr. Riordan, will you ever find satisfaction in my anguish? I have been through Hell and back because you said it was needed of me.

I have lied and fought and starved and lost, because you hold them as you hold me.

Dear Mr. Riordan, Apollo’s fingers play me at your command, plucking and pinching until I sing to your tune.

Every love I’ve had, has been stolen by you, replaced

with one who will never – can never – love me in return.

You, in your Athenian wisdom, know that this is this best way to control me Dear Mr. Riordan, I am your plot device, your token character, your underdog, and nothing more.

Without you, I wouldn’t exist.

Without me, you wouldn’t have a touching subplot.

It seems, Mr. Riordan, that we’ve reached an impasse.

TONY VERNON C/O KRAFT FOODS GROUP INC.

by Madi Custer

In response to the European Union asking the US and Canada to rename food items that contain names of characteristically European places. Parmesan cheese, Black Forest ham and Greek yogurt were just some of the foods that Europe asked to be renamed.

Dear Sir: I hope you know you really have yourself in a pickle (A Kraft Brand Claussen Kosher Dill, to be precise!).

All Europe wants is their cheese back.

Is that so much to ask?

It shouldn’t be such a tall order to rename feta cheese to something like “feta-style” cheese, or to call the Parmesan that comes in the tall green container something else.

I have come up with some ideas: “Parmesan Style.”

“Similar to Parmesan, But Not.” “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Parmesan!”

What do you think of these?

I think the last one is particularly clever and original, don’t you?

Anyway, all I’m trying to say here is that I think Europe is in the right.

Take a look at Canada. Canada’s got it good. Canada is fine.

You know what else Canada has?

Generic cheese names.

Why can’t we be more like Canada?

Every American would be bilingual, because don’tchaknow that EVERYONE speaks French AND American in Canada.

I guess it’s good that we don’t have polar bears roaming the streets, though.

I hear that’s quite a problem in Toronto.

Anyway, all I’m trying to say, Sir, is that when Europe asks for something as simple as the names of their cheese back, I think we should give

them the names.

Simple as that!

Well, I’m off to enjoy my Kraft Brand Jell-O topped with Kraft Brand Cool-Whip.

I hope you have just a lovely day!

Sincerely, Your Mother Ms. Mathilda Vernon PS: Do you think they celebrate the 4th of July in Canada?

George Washington sailed across the Saskatchewan River, right?

TO THE P.W.S.O.P.P. ON LIBERTY AVE.

by Muriel D’Alessandro

To the People Who Stand Outside the Planed Parented on Liberty Ave, While there is a horde of thoughts rampaging around in my mind, I have selected a limited few from the pool to present to you.

Nobody stepping off the 87M, or the P1, or the 39, at 6:42am is pleased to be saluted by those giant 4 x 2.5 grimy pictures, dirty arrows that scream with blood letters BABY KILLER! as they shuffle through the faded gold crescent painted on the sidewalk to hold you back.

And nobody wants your handouts thrust in their face, the dusty smell of it the faded lettering and the copyright symbol that shows it was printed in 1998.

Please, update your material.

And nobody hates you because you hate Abortion.

We despise the way that you take your beliefs, trying to stuff them down our throats, having us swallow it like bitter medicine the same way mama would, and we better save those poor babies souls, or we’re goin’ to hell!

Dear P.W.S.O.P.P. on Liberty Ave, Your faces remain stone as the tear streaked ones of women pass.

Sympathy, is not in your repertoire.

You say you stand before that old stone building in the name of Christ,

verses of sacred text stretched across your signs.

But was not your Christ the most caring Of them all?

Just a thought.

I hope you take this into consideration.

Sincerely, A passer by.

HAUNTED

by Clara Dregalla after “Tethered” by Amy Cutler I feel your hands overlap mine, pushing heavily into the hot water, scalding me, mangling me.

How am I going to get the dishes done with you haunting me?

Pots and pans rise like polished stones and the house becomes a cemetery.

It’s been like this for weeks.

You whistle on the edge of the kettle, you drum on the old, clanking radiator, you climb to the top of the dogwood and scrape the dirty windowpanes.

When I move, I feel your dress brush my knees.

Your hair is getting tangled around my neck, braids hanging like the remains of old tire swings that were too exhausted to hold a problem child like us.

I visited your grave under the Hudson, but you didn’t float to Heaven like I’d hopedInstead, you filled the entire river, drowning frogs and scouring rocks into knives.

We were all afraid to swim for days, the current sure to bash us against daggers we couldn’t see well enough to dodge, and carry our remains all the way to Albany.

Everyone else thought you were the mad spiral of green water, but I knew youI knew you to be the moss clinging, desperate, to heavy rocks studded with trilobites, young and slimy, panicked. Maybe I dived, maybe I fell, but my dress billowed out in the current,

tangling around muddy sticks and water snakes.

Tethered to the bottom, I was mummified in algae, heavy and alive.

You fill the cracks between the floorboards, you scare the raccoons out from beneath the porch.

You’re terrified of emptiness, terrified of abandoned woodpeckers’ nests and the void between atoms.

You could get lost in the spaces between your fingers, so you grow like a vine.

I try to pick up a dirty plate but our parallel hands are too clumsy and it shatters, adding more pebbles to the monstrous cairn that is swallowing our sad, grey house.

ARS POETICA (SWEET POETRY)

by Sam Eppinger

The molasses jar was left on the kitchen counter half closed because forgotten sweetness left unappreciated hardened the edges.

I drizzle it over my head drips into my ears Too slowly Sticky and brown.

I am in the house of my Grandparents who live half an hour trains ride away From New York.

Ten hours away, there was a drone in my head during the trek.

I think it was a result of boredom, or dread.

My Granddad is in the den.

Where their wallpaper is a funky yellow floral.

Very Retro. the TV is on. Loud. the TV is on. Turned to a golf game. Typical.

In the den, His blood in tubes, His cancer beeping.

His body a potato sack of waterlogged blighted spuds. the black Leaks out when he Smiles at me eating a banana, peanut butter, and molasses sandwich.

What a sweet potato.

What a lovely sweet potato.

The beeping is exponentially growing.

The molasses makes the TV quiet.

Almost silent And the world’s tinted thick brown.

I think I’m okay now.

ON THE TORMENT OF SAINT ANTHONY

by Dylan Fletcher

In the time of Machiavelli and Michelangelo, the ten forgotten souls had a maid named Paola.

As a newborn, they had weaseled through cracks in the walls of her room.

They poured malice into her through a basin.

They taught her to be a bridge.

They would disguise her with compassion and beauty, and send her to find those who preached against them.

They were weary of men like Saint Anthony, who had resisted them years ago.

He’d stared vacantly at passing trade ships and talked of seashells.

She ensured that others did not lead by example.

She treated her charges with respect.

She polished their brimstone chairs with phlegm.

She kept their bowls overflowing with lamb blood.

She poured her grief into their scabbed palms.

Then she refilled each palm.

Again and again.

When they sent her “upstairs” to find souls to tempt, she cowered at the sunlight and stared at fresh fruit until it shriveled.

She burned with fury at the men they asked for.

If they resisted her masters’ will, the hurt in their bloodshot eyes would have broken the heart that they had ripped from her.

[ BREATH ]

by Hannah Geisler

Slowly I seep from your parted lips, fogging up windows in the back of your truck and tickling goose flesh on your thighs.

Repetitive. Reliable.

The insides of your body pulsate to a smooth rhythm; dogs hear your blood humming, interrupting the soft serenity of your flesh.

I still recall the day we met, just seconds after your birth. I bet your mother was anxious, afraid I wouldn’t show; but I did. I came soaring in, slamming doors and immersing myself within you, waltzing with your miniscule lungs that trembled like the broken wings of a butterfly.

From that day forward I have been a trusted companion, reviving you with each moment as you decay before my very eyes.

But careful now beloved, one day you’ll stand, unable to catch me, and I unable to return.

ARS POETICA: MELODY

by Tyra Jamison

Sometimes when I hear my voice it sounds plain.

Bare and dry as scraped chalkboard. I only bully myself to thinking in songs because I’ve never heard my loved ones speak plainly.

Their voices sound as beautiful as the earliest poems; the murmuring of emcee against the rhythm’s throat, pulse pumping deeper than bass, deeper than heart beats, colorful harmonies threaded through belligerent words, stitching intricacy over my little ears.

I fell in love with words the way you begin to admire the way someone’s soul compliments their eyes, the way they wrap their beauty around them, zip it up their chest like a leather jacket, force it onto their fingers like chunky quirky rings, paint their lips with it, smudge plain declarations with glitter catching in the sunlight like butterfly wings.

After adorning my eyes with these rose-petaled lashes, I began to bedazzle my voice with words that tickled my clumsy lips into a smile. A habit formed.

My tiny ears grew into my big head and I heard new songs.

Dope dopamine transmitters sewn from headphone to voice to voice.

Beauty became routine, statements in songs that I spritzed on my neck. Whenever I sang these songs, I became a walking orchestra,

a breathing composition.

VIRTUE

by Tyra Jamison If they didn’t wait for you to become your best person, If they didn’t wait for the mistake to register in your brain, for something to change, for you to grow into yourself, if someone rushed your confessions your chaos your faults from your calloused lips, If they didn’t believe that you could rise above the errors that shifted your stomach like an emotional virus, like a tapeworm, a sullen, sickening feeling… where do you think you would be?

BEETLE LETTERS (TO THE KING BEETLE)

by Chris Kraemer

Dear King, take a walk outside your soda can castle. Do you realize what happens out here?

I hope you do. Fire burns deep into our homes where we have hidden our babies.

We leave behind burnt dregs of wing. We crawl to the well, seeking relief, only to be blocked by wooden fences that support your rule and crumble our houses. What more can you want?

Wood covered thoraxes block our way by your command.

Acorn shrouded faces smirk as we are crushed beneath copper legs.

Dear King, have you ever been North?

It’s very cold. The fire doesn’t burn us. We freeze instead. Frost covers carapace and dulls the movement of our bones.

There is no warmth to be found. Does your hand reach as far as the North? Can it touch to the peaks that barely scrape the sky?

We escape from fire only to find ice.

Dear King, how does the soda can castle get water? We went to an ocean.

Brilliantly blue. Echoing softly through the sand was a song of death. There we found nothing but sorrow.

Sand-covered bones sprang to life.

Our horns snapped.

The ocean watched With contempt. The dead bodies of our friends

were eaten by a tide of blue horses.

Have you ever been to the sea?

Dear King, where are you? Do you still live in that old soda can castle? Have you left?

We are hungry. They are hungry.

Your subjects starve for you. Our wings are charred, our bodies frozen, our horns snapped.

Crushed underneath copper legs and eaten for fun, will we survive? Is there any way?

So, King. What do you do when your kingdom dies?

THIS POEM IS ONLY ABOUT WORK

by Isaac Monroe

Wednesday night shifts at the Green Pepper pass like the cooling of magma. I cling my eyes to the clean and insatiable hands of the man at table 11 as I fill his cup with lukewarm water. I ask him and his delicately thin girlfriend if there is anything else I can do for them. The man forces his eyes to the wall behind me; eye contact hangs over us a heavy and panting discomfort. “I’d prefer hot water.” He says, his voice so small, folded perfectly into a note he gives me in silence. You’re pathetic. I leave the table in a raincloud of “right away”s. I get a mug and fill it with hot water. I imagine pouring until the mug overflows and the whole kitchen gets pissed and yells and yells until the hot water is higher than all of our mouths and we all get soggy and scolded and depleted. I bring him back his water as he touches his Iphone with passion and intent and his girlfriend blankly watches the TV flash images of beautiful Korean women molding half-hearted words into bars of gold and candy. I chase after something to chase and am given nothing.

I drift around the lounge and then the bistro like a much-expected ghost delivering hauntings to all of the little boys and girls of the restraint spreading smiles and cheer and wonderment only to close up at 10:30 and return to my cave in the basement. I am utterly purposeless. I reach for my phone only to remember my boss has insisted on taking, he says that I’m to detached. I tell him that he is ridiculous and that the Green Pepper is the blood in my veins. I tell him my passion for my job is hotter than burning phosphorus, hotter than the sun, hotter than all the entrees with red peppers next to their names on the menus. I tell him anything to get him off

of my back so I can wipe down table six in peace. Sometimes I think my boss is a toddler who is good at stilt walking. Sometimes I think my boss is an invention of apple. Sometimes I think my boss is just stuffed with BeBimBop, veins full of chili sauce, his heart a delicious hunk of marinated beef. I can see him now his words are bowls of rice. To top it all of one golden over easy egg for a brain. I think I think about my boss to much. He has taught me how to work the register and how to wipe down the table with my regrets. Rub it off. Wipe yourself away in military circles of ammonia. He has taught me how to lock the doors tight while I’m still inside. I ask about the customers and he touches my face so so gently. “It’s only you, you, YOU.” I close my eyes. A bell rings out. My legs chase after it. If only you could see me– tie bouncing on my neck, marching into a kitchen filled with people who stand taller than me. My eyes are empty. Somewhere far away so are your arms. Somewhere in the clutter of my skull a single mother is being evicted from her home. Somewhere a few blocks down from that my dreams are paying there bills at a mask shop. When I give people there food I give them myself. I leave my brain in a steaming stone bowl on their table. I think that’s the only reason I like the job, the ability to disappear into a world of nameless faces. the deep and endless pit of the unknown and the unknowing.

Why haven’t you come by my work yet? When the days get slow I can see you walking through the front door radiating jubilance. I’ll stifle my laughter and get you a menu and sit you close to the waiters podium so we can bitch and act content until 9:30 when I have to take off my tie and mop the sheen of spilled side soups off of the

floor. You can stay even then and I would insist my boss leave his complaints to himself. You’ll ask me how I’m doing and I’ll say “you know” and I’ll mop the words I should have said right off the floor at your feet. I’ll ask if you liked the food and you’ll say “no really, how are you doing” and I’ll try to shrug but I imagine at that point the weight of your presence being to much for my shoulders to support. We’ll walk to the bus stop together and cough up the words we have pinned down in our throats for too long and soon our shadows will start to feel like shadows again. Now I take some plates into David and then go to where cups are crying for my hands. I look for myself in the cups but there is only a necktie. I panic and run for the bathroom mirror.

There is nothing. I have vanished into thin air; I stare at the empty bathroom. I stare. I stare. I stare. Where did I go? I look at the mirror and it is empty. Empty like my eyes. Like your arms. Like everyone’s cups. I have disappeared and table 6, 11 and 13 all need refills. I haven’t even finished drying the dishes yet. Who will get their water? Who will take the check and get them their boxes? I am invisible.

I’m gonna get fired for sure.

Hiero

In response to “Human Head” by unknown artist.

by Curran O’Neill He shook midnight from his body like sand caught in between the folds of his skin.

If his mouth should open, surely he’d choke on the milk and honey of his words, shining with something lost.

Underneath his limestone complexion is bandaged vanilla bean skin.

Cold and wrinkly, he was tucked into bed without a kiss goodnight.

For years he was surrounded by gold and prayers to Osiris that hung heavy at the top of his grave like sleeping bats.

In this lonely underworld, his only visitors were grave robbers, they shoved his alabaster skin open like scarab wings separating his head from his body.

They stuffed themselves with gold and jewels and left without a kiss goodnight.

He sent shooting stars to Isis, begging that she take her paper wings and gather the dust from his broken body to make him whole again.

Babee

by Curran O’Neill To the homegirl who liked to wear her hair up high, the pitter/patter of yo/eyes still leaves me breathless.

In summer yo/words fell like mangoes off yo/tongue, Babee, you sure got it good, you said. Thinking of rain.

But I could never hold your attention for long. You were swollen from the ache in your back, Seven long years of dragging feet to mountain peaks to bear yo/fruit. Sleep was a luxury you could not afford.

Still, rockets dance in yo/eyes with wild tails of orange and red. Babee, you sure got it good, you said. Thinking of stars.

Let Autumn drape you in her shawl. The explosions in yo/heart are deaf—a two headed snake.

And the holes in yo/clothes are heavy. Mother Mary will only suck you dry.

Babee, you sure got it good, you said.

Aroma Therapy

by Curran O’Neill

Spine carved from melon rinds, Mommy poured liquid moon that smelled like peppermint on my back to eas the pain.

Under the dark bruises in my skin werewolves howled. They sharpened their teeth on my bones and laughed at Mommy’s stories of the circus. Clare drooled hymns on her pillow.

Sticky goo that

shined in starlight, it swam like jellyfish in deep blue.

Daddy white-knuckled my tears ‘cuz he knew nothing he could do would take the sad away. The smell of peppermint lingers to the TV set. So sweet it burns, burns so much its sweet.

I would never be sure.

The Girls of my Youth

by Curran O’Neill

The girls of my youth were a fantasy. Holding my hand through dark alleys with cheeks that grew bright as sparklers.

They spun me around on shag carpeting to the heartbeat of their broken records, filling my lungs with marshmallow fluff, sweet and suffocating.

Under the covers we pressed our cold feet against one another’s thighs and talked about the boys, who laughed at us in the dark somewhere far off and cold.

Jumping off swing sets trying to break bones and bloom bruises; we braided one another’s hair in concentrated beats.

We wore crowns of smog and glittered ourselves like opals, buying one another hotdogs and kissing cheeks. Past laughing headstones they spat heavy like sap.

Tucking away remains in shiny boxes the color of peaches. At night we sat in silence watching the moon, our tears melting with the snow.

Bitter emptiness dripping from our brows, smashing pumpkins and setting off rockets only made us smile for so long.

Popping bubbles with our noses and screaming, “Roxanne!” through paper windows. Setting my underpants on fire and undressing luna.

Underneath doily covered tables hiding sticky knees trying to muffle our laughter, Mother always saw right through us.

Squishing my goose bumps like bubble wrap reciting quotes under quivering trees. They told me I was beautiful.

They bloomed in front of me like a valentine without hesitance, shrieking ghosts caught on loose nails from the window screen, laughing at empty.

Fluorescent lights x-rayed our bodies revealing neon bone, which we covered with blinking stars—milky Sundays.

In reverence, as strands of hair in a locket I wore their memory.

Bat wings drawing against whispers of clouds, melting sky fading orange. A puddle of sugar.

Like a roll of film burning spots on screen, magic vanishing act.

The butterflies breathing nostalgia drop dead in my stomach.

All that is left is longing and the vapor of lost things. A pistol birthing smoke, calling out to mother. Because I love them, I love them, I loved them.

cream

by Iesha Olatunjii Can’t wait until the it’s time for the kids in the summer time hear the music tones that bring them out to see me vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, pistachio, peanut butter soft serve ice cream and you my sugar cone friend always blocks my momentary fun because the kids need to carry me in something.

Don’t be an ice cream cry baby, you melt, you make a mess without me, you are sticky, and you can’t stand alone.

We the sugar cone has to always bail you out.

Look sugar cone, I’ve got ice cream class I am rich with butter, sugar, cream, color, special favors, that cause mouths to droll for more and more.

Stop bragging; just stop...

I am the world wide champion of cones.

I hold the world record for holding you ice cream, without me you would drip all over everybody and everything.

I am more than ice cream, I am the wealthiest billionaire seller all over the world, and there are special ice cream elves that work every day to see that my flavor is premium, smooth and pretty colors.

Must you always be the top I am a sugar cone, who can resist me I’m brown sugar, waffled, I am a cup, a bowl, and a cone.

No one even wants you in the summer time without me. Believe me I’m a great treat that cool the lips, from afar I appear as the ninth wonder of the world, boy am I good.

Good you don’t know good.

When you sit inside me I am the tenth wonder of the world, no one can out-class that...

Peace my ice cream sister, peace my sugar cone brother, one thing we can both attest to is that we are both gooood together

and separate. But what the heck we are the bomb.dot.com

MIDNIGHT

by Iesha Olatunjii

Have you ever eaten grapes, after midnight?

In your underpants as your stomach screams for more.

Because the taste, is so ecstatic? Have you ever eaten midnight after grapes?

In your stomach as your underpants scream for more.

Because the ecstatic is the taste?

HYPER REALISTIC

by Eden Petri

We’ll visit crowded cities: Stay in cheap motels and watch The Star Wars Trilogy. We’ll recite poetry in the streets, stand in stale air—you and I—and no one else will matter. We’ll make a list of all the places we’ve been, scratch them off like word searches; then dream ourselves to sleep.

But I’ll wake up to find you crying, and when I ask you what’s wrong, you’ll slap me, call me a liar, and storm out. Later your mother will call, tell me you’re home and remind me you’re hysterical.

She’ll apologize and say, “That girl don’t live in reality,” and I’ll tell her I never asked for reality, I asked for peaches.

MONOPOLY

by Jacob Richards South America glowed like an avocado.

—Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

A plasticine kitchen sits in the basement of my house. I flick on the light and hot photons stream from the waxy chandelier.

In the center of the kitchen sits a five-legged oak table and on the table sits an rustic fruit bowl and in the bowl the continents are having a conference: asia is accusing antarctica of cheating in Monopoly and north america is counting all the money it is missing.

I take a bite out of australia but it is dry and salty [the ocean can have that effect on the palette] and I need a drink so I walk over to my new(!) high-tech(!!) refrigerator and grab a glass of whatever comes out of the automatic nozzle.

The fifth leg of the kitchen table splits and cracks the concrete and maybe this is World War three-point-oh because maybe europe got out of jail free and maybe south america became bankrupt.

The kitchen is slowly melting into puddles of refrigerator-plastic and trash-can-plastic and the chandelier falls to the ground in one thick drop.

The continents are turning into plastic fruit.

Tangerine-africa and grannysmith-asia call my name but I step inside my now-deformed refrigerator.

The sticky incandescent light bulb drips into my eyes as I watch the peel of banana-russia start dripping into the bottom of the fruit bowl.

OCD

by Shayla Salamacha I sit there for hours, quietly. The only sound is the cutting of my nails.

I stare at them, they stare back coldly.

They are uneven and lopsided; if they could walk they would walk with limps.

Everything must be symmetrical.

I paint them anyways.

They scream at me through their blue paint.

Blue is bold, it highlights their imperfections.

I wipe the polish off.

Nail clippers come back out.

Still, they are relentlessly uneven.

I paint them anyways.

Silver glares in the light, and it looks as if it’s shining on the parts that just aren’t quite like the rest.

I scrape the polish off like the gum under tables.

Nail file comes out.

It feels like running

my nails down a chalkboard.

They scream, and throb.

My body cringes, and my skin tightens.

I look at them again.

They sigh of disproportionateness.

I paint them anyways.

Something sorrowful‌ black!

They all get black!

I stare down at my nails.

My gooey black nail polish frowns at me.

They are just going to have to frown at me until next time.

THE SIN OF THE CALF

by Emily Schwager I am enervated.

I, who cut each individual finger off and handed them to you in a diamond enclosed box, with stumps for ears and plastic replacing my teeth and eyes.

And you, who nailed bricks to my feet, knowing that if you dropped me on a muddy sidewalk, I would sit there to offer a clean path across.

(I welcome the opportunity!)

I burned my wrists dipping you in molten aureate: my own personal golden calf.

And after I put up with so god damn much, condoning years of countless lies and attention seeking falsehoods, you took it upon yourself to thieve from the very people who worship you and then christened yourself a coquette.

(When you split your tongue in two, ordering one side to tell the truth and the other to lie, I only saw one side.)

You, you are not sad, you are obsessed with the idea of it, with the image of sadness.

You are a basket, and every morning you fill yourself with new assets, new identities, new stories and so forth.

(Now you tell me that I am a rose,

and I wonder if you have branded yourself a thorn or a belladonna or possibly not a flower at all.)

My rage has subdued to an acidic sadness; you have robbed me of more than earrings these past few years, and I am through with allowing you to drain me.

I am disappointed. Disappointed in myself and the way I let myself be asphyxiated, that despite your actions I can’t help wanting to give you redemption.

(Why am I so weak?)

I have removed the bricks you attached to my feet; I have destroyed you, golden calf.

You fake god, you imposter.

Please, stop reciting your self-degrading pity paragraphs that lack sincerity and remorse and confession.

You need to admit your faults, you need to break your kneecaps for me this time.

I am tired of worshipping you.

CANTALOUPES

by Lanie Wester

Momma cuts three crescents of the cardinal moon with a pout And calls me into the kitchen. My eyes slant Across the marble counter into the bowl, a coupe Of celestial music makers trumpeting a zesty peal, And for once my mouth doesn’t taste of salt.

Our eyes reflect across its crystal sheath, resembling opals.

Momma says it was grown in asteroid gardens in space, but I can’t Help but wonder how it ended up here on Styrofoam plates.

She says she found them in a field, detached from luminescent vines, pent Up beneath cutting blades of grass. Their scraped skin pale, Like milky water. She brought them home for us to eat.

LEVEL ONE

TABLE OF CONTENTS Zainab Adisa

Do You Remember Cavan Bonner

Repair Lily Buchanan

Looking at Jaws Irina Bucur

Two-Faced: American Beauty Dante Caliguiri

Cul-De-Sac of Seclusion

The Meaning of Life: Song of Myself

Their Father’s Pens Victoria Cheng

Mystery of the World’s Most-Kised Woman Leah DeFlitch

A Youthful Senior Citizen Elsa Eckenrode

Human: Song of Myself Zada Fels

3347 1/2 (Clyde’s Girl)

Jayne Juffe

Get Out Gracie Kon

13 Ways to Look at Light Arwen Kozak

An Enumeration Ruthanne Pilarski

13 Ways of Looking at Algebra Warrior Caylyn Smiley-Jones

13 Different Ways of Looking at a Bicycle Rebecca Stanton

Neighborhood Taylor Szczepaniuk

My Addiction of Spending Money Amanda Talbot

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Color

DO YOU REMEMBER

by Zainab Adisa

“A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands, How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is anymore than he.” ~ Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” 1 I remember the lilac lavender scent of my wishes coming true.

And the bumpy road, that would reach out and collect my tears, laughter and complaints.

I can see them now, my past words and actions falling to the warm ground heated by the soft rays of the sun, slamming against the bricks of my present.

The hush of accents and the multilingual whispers, softly fill in around me.

The foreign words such as, buongiorno and merci, or gute nacht which I have learned is German for good night pound against my ears day and night.

But even the words I don’t understand fill me with the utmost content.

And I re-call to belong is only the art of curiosity.

2 I’ll shut my eyes tight to my surroundings, but I don’t know how long they’ll stay closed.

I don’t want my fear of our jubilation to disappear.

So instead, I’ll embrace the shallow reflection that comes through the tinted glass.

And the blinds won’t stay closed any longer.

We’ll get caught in the sprinklers that life poured itself into and celebrate the fact that our ring of stories has just began and has yet to end.

The wild brush of trees will strew its leaves as we throw our steps along its branches and our laces will tie the impression of our satisfaction.

3 And at last I can ask, do you remember?

When we stayed up all night until the fire we built and the candles we lit around it in tribute to our emotions were the only lights we saw.

Our eyes stayed open until the moon finally came out and our memories filtered around the flickering candles.

The sparks went out into the open air and the melody of our tears burst and I can remember the tune of our lasting friendship.

REPAIR

by Cavan Bonner 1.

I sit, looking at the vast curve of this hull from my spot on the steel ground.

The metal here shines especially bright, the harsh lights from above outline the spot where I sit in a deathly still shadow.

Too far, too open, no place to hide, confining.

I wonder when someone next will sit here, at this exact same spot, how many years from this day.

2.

Place me here, at this little dip in the floor that has grown so shiny.

I want to go to sleep, right here, where I have been resentful, only wishing to breathe new air.

Maybe you won’t know my name by the time we come to a dead stop in nowhere, but you will forever see this dip that shines a bit brighter than the other hundreds of square feet.

My gray-neon-yellow overalls made it that way, I would squirm uncomfortably as I took my nap, curl up and piece together with my eyes every

detail of this work of art.

I would let the clockwork sounds be my lullaby, as I surveyed my surroundings yet another time, that is my single contribution to this history.

LOOKING AT JAWS

by Lily Buchanan

Words From My Jaw: I’m obsessive compulsive digressive depression. Wedding dresses caught on fire escapes, the luminescent coalescent descend into grace. Grace braided into brink floors and gray scale clouds. The love culture is a vulture, proportionally dilating paper thin expectations, suffering suffocation on whitewash walls. The convalescent rips, the hips, the tips, the lips, they insist (to be kissed).

Notes on the Movie: The theme song plays on repeat in my (my my oh my) SHARK HEAD Words From My Jaw: And oh, this is petty isn’t it? I trusted you and look at you, you don’t even bother to leave footprints. And the clues you left are misguided bridges to an odyssey but I don’t understand why the stain glass blocks out daylight. He vows we won’t miss the turn but I am sure we did, right next to the cigar factory. And sign here, don’t wait! But I hesitate.

The Skeletal System ( Hammer) : A child’s skull looks like the antagonist of a nightmare.

Words From My Jaw : The modern composition established long ago, the irresistible art of Victorian wallpaper. Why is it that I crave organization with an inconsistent zeal? New next door neighbors got the green grass, got all that fake childhood motivation.

There was a point where pen caps were the extent of my frustration but now the ex-cons coming chasing after me.

Jawbreakers: Just a thought: Someone should map the trajectory of punched out teeth.

Words From My Jaw: The essence of flawless is based in a single work; phantom

memories created by the tumor that is you, created by you.

And I have poised you with that virtual cocktail again and again. You persist with the heart of an optimist. Diagonal snowflakes sometimes create the nation of hate that can’t help but escalate, and it’s all for you.

People: The products of the jaw are both horrifying and enchanting.

Electrocuting.

Words From My Jaw: The oppressive doctrines- a degree that rakes the small of my mutilated back. And these primary routines that should feel the pain but don’t (can’t). And maybe that pessimistic acknowledgement just knocked that glass over, it wasn’t water inside, but acid.

Men: The jaws of men are either terrifying or fascinating.

Words From My Jaw: Big ideas become secret dreams after 6.217 months.

A Comment: Only the bottom jaw can move and it does so valiantly.

Words From My Jaw: It’s turned to relief by the insane belief that everything is perfection, because frankly, dear sir, the very idea of an untarnished piece of wood is an idolized idiocy. The posterity will be a horrendous monstrosity, considering the rate at which we are undeniably following.

TWO-FACED: AMERICAN BEAUTY

by Irina Bucur

Light is unforgiving.

It sits between the shards, revealing the curves on our faces; baring nakedness, meat—bending what should not glisten.

I am beautiful on one side and one side only.

We speak in two lies, half-truths— I asked the doctor if he would cut my other self but he would not remove it (nothing was sharp enough).

When it comes to needles and chisels, it knows the drills.

It breathes half-forgotten atrocities against my ear, and in return I torture and torture and torture it; I have perfected the art of those shrill shrieks, sharpened my blade well enough that it glides so prettily on repugnant flesh.

Hollywood would pay us in dirty gold for my exact scissors, a monster blown across headlines stretched deeper and deeper into the folds of my skin.

By morning I do not recognize myself.

I count the hours of hidden mirrors, cold bedsheets, dreaming once in a while of one reflection, a woman holding me, of beauty.

CUL-DE-SAC OF SECLUSION

by Dante Caliguiri

Down here where I live we call it The Run there is much to see and much to tell.

Always a good place to start, our given place for congregation!

A small concrete conference area where my friends and I discuss the days.

Right next to it is our large field full of green grass, new trees, and many weeds (dandelions, crabgrass, plantains, and Canada thistle).

It feels so strange, to have the parkway right up there, hearing cars all day and night, to see wildlife and city life shoved together in the same image. Look to one side you see nature. Look to the other you see buildings, you see people destroying what they try to harmonize with.

But away with those thoughts, let’s go to the woods!

Thicks of trees with dark brown boughs and leaves changing from green to orange to brown, until they fall upon the ground.

Bright houses decorate this place, some complementing nature, (soft greens, dark browns) others go against (bright yellows and reds), all look rather nice.

Our steep hill goes down to the entrance, we’ve used it for many things, like sledding down in lush white snow or falling down on scooters.

Often time it’s mighty nice, living down her in makeshift seclusion,

I think you’ll think the same.

THE MEANING OF LIFE: SONG OF MYSELF

by Dante Caliguiri

The world and us all are to be rejoiced! I see myself in all of you, Therefore I am to be rejoiced. We should celebrate each other The way we do ourselves, grow our relations with the world As a whole.

Around me the wind blows, the trees move, the animals run and loaf and hunt.

Plants and people grow. They live and love and die.

I celebrate these things.

For I know they will come to me, I will experience them And feel them with those in this vast Ever expanding universe.

Linger not in fear of thy future, But in the joy of today.

Be happy, be healthy. Have fun, be irresponsible.

With responsibility comes restrictions, Which life is without in the right eyes.

Live through me and with me. Feel what I feel, I shall do the same with you.

Believe in something.

Beliefs get us through the long maze.

Whether it be one God or many, a Creator, a Destroyer.

All are true in open eyes, all are true in mine.

I celebrate these for they have meaning.

Though I know not what it is, It shall be revealed to all.

I ramble on at times. This seems one of those times.

Ideas spread across the page, some stay, Many leave.

Thoughts in order my not are.

Read them as you will, Snaphipse is found in the most scrambled of messages.

I celebrate the fact that I think, Or think that I think, as may be the will of some greater power Or our power, no one can be sure.

I celebrate that I feel, Emotions are what write these poems.

I celebrate that I read, For reading is where I find inspiration And open my world to others.

I celebrate life and its beauty, It is all he people, nature, buildings.

It IS everything!

Have you celebrated yourself? Looked yourself in the reflection of life?

Have you analyzed your meaning, gotten at yourself, For others to change?

Have you felt proud that you read, And analyze others for long?

Have you found happiness in the non-meaning of a song?

THEIR FATHER’S PENS

by Dante Caliguiri

Characters Holden, a 26 year old writer. Older brother to Jonah.

Jonah, a 22 year old. Younger brother of Holden, and collector of many things.

Sarah, 60 year old mother to Holden and Jonah.

Setting: Sarah’s house, the living room. In the center is a coffee table, on it the wooden box holding the pen and pencil set.

Scene 1 HOLDEN Look, you weren’t even that close to Dad. You never knew him like I did!

JONAH Here we go again with this. Always the same old thing with you, (mimicking Holden) Dad and I were SO close. Nothing someone like you would understand, Jonah. (talking normal again) God, you’re so full of yourself!

HOLDEN (grabs the box, waves it at Jonah) Here, if they mean so much to you, just take ‘em! (walks over to Jonah, holding up box) Really, take them and just go.

JONAH Oh now, why the sudden change of heart? I can’t just walk away without any struggle, you know that. (takes box, lays it on the table) Let’s fight a little more. Give the, er, audience, a show.

HOLDEN Audience? What are talking a- I get it. Another one your classic jabs at my writing, eh?

JONAH Are you always this clever, or is it just the script?

HOLDEN Okay, you can quite being stupid.

JONAH No, no. I’m serious. Trying to use reverse psychology to keep the pens yourself? Detecting my deceptive joke about your career?

You know, you might be this generations great detective! Another, shall I say, Mr. Holmes? This may be your true calling, you know, no more pesky editors, no more long, thoughtless, lonely nighHOLDEN SHUT UP! Can you just quit for a, for a minute? Ugh, this is all over a little pen and pencil! (stops. Thinks for a moment) Wait, maybe. Maybe this is what Dad wanted us to do. He knew we’d fight, we always fought!

JONAH Come on, really? Over something as small as this? You have got to be joking.

HOLDEN Think about it! As kids, all he saw us do was fight over things.

Toys, the TV, girls, everything! In the end, he knew this would either dissolve the family or our problems, and right now it seems like it’ll be the former.

JONAH That’s crazy. Ruin the family? Why would he do that?

HOLDEN I didn’t say those were his intentions! Just, well, possibilities.

SARAH

(offstage) Would you boys like some tea?

No, Mother!

HOLDEN and JONAH

HOLDEN Come on, now. We have to stop and just think this through.

JONAH (absentmindedly) You know, I might actually like some tea.

Would you pay attention?

HOLDEN

JONAH Wha-? Oh, yeah, yeah. So, I should keep the set. My collection’s been looking for something new.

HOLDEN Your collection? My God, not all this. You have what, five ‘special’ pens and pencils on a shelf in your apartment?

JONAH I’ll have you know, in the past year I’ve gotten ten new fountain pens, along with a couple vintage mechanicals.

HOLDEN Yeah, okay, I uh, guess it has credibility? Let’s just say that’s a valid reason for argument’s sake.

JONAH It most certainly is! More so than having it just sit on YOUR shelf for... Inspiration.

HOLDEN I suppose you’re right. So, neither of us really has a reason to keep them. But come on! You just found an interest a few years ago.

I’ve enjoyed writing my whole life!

JONAH Hey, just because I recently started keeping them doesn’t mean I had no interest. I’ll have you know, when we were kids I would practically obsess over each and every pencil I had.

HOLDEN That’s just because you couldn’t figure out how the got the lead in there! Those were just regular yellow pencil!

You gotta start somewhere…

JONAH

HOLDEN Alright, alright. How about we just have Mom decide? She’s good at being impartial, and by the looks of our rhetoric, we could really use a judge.

JONAH Sure, that sounds agreeable. MOM, GET IN HERE! HOLDEN I was just going to get her, butI’m an innovator, okay?

Yes, dears?

JONAH

SARAH (enters from stage right)

JONAH We need you to settle something for usHOLDEN Dad’s pen set. He left it for us to decide. As you could probably hear, we were having some trouble.

SARAH Oh, is that what you two were yelling about? I thought it was another one of your girlfriends.

Mom, we both have wives!

JONAH

SARAH Yes, but you never can see how those’ll turn out.

HOLDEN Spare us the relationship advice, please? Can you just choose who gets it?

SARAH Alright then. I get to keep them.

JONAH Oh, well that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to- WHAT?!

SARAH I said that I get to keep them. I loved your father for 30 years, and he always had these pens. They clearly mean more to me than to either of you, if you have to bicker.

HOLDEN But Mom! He left them to us!

SARAH No, he left them for you to decide. Anyways, he’s gone now, what’s it matter?

But-

JONAH

SARAH No ‘buts’. I made my mind, now make yours. There is no use argu-

ing with me.

HOLDEN It’s just, we didn’t think that would happen so fast. You always do that, Mom! SARAH Don’t raise your voice at me! Now, you to should just find something else to do with your time. Leave me to my articles, now, if you can. (exits stage right) JONAH (looking at game shelf) So, how about we play a game of Battleship, then?

HOLDEN Yeah, I remember that! It was mine from my 9th birthday!

JONAH What are you talking about? I got it on Christmas when I was 6. (the two begin grabbing at the box as the curtains close) (Scene ends)

MYSTERY OF THE WORLD’S MOSTKISSED WOMAN

by Victoria Cheng

Resusci Anne they call me, Resusci Anne and Rescue Anne –the CPR mannequin with the face of an anonymous drowned French girl.

My expression is but my own.

So many mouths and lips, all shapes and sizes, have graced and harassed my own.

A thousand hands and fingers have held my rubber face and pinched my pliable nose to let me breathe again.

My life has been saved a countless number of times.

Every kiss is a bitter reminder that I am reflecting L’Inconnue de la Seine.

Why must I live in her shadow?

I do not wish to be saved under another’s visage.

Do not rescue me with your kisses.

A YOUTHFUL SENIOR CITIZEN

by Leah DeFlitch

Walking down the street I see cesspools in the toddlers’ irises, the girl, (she likes to walk with her palms stuffed in her mouth then her hands are stuffed in her pockets) and the trees are like blonde bombshells. A placid blow of bandaged yellow and red, the color of my grandmothers skin.

I twist my limbs on the trunk and swallow bugs because I’d rather not extend into the subconscious junctions to explain to adults. They will say condescendingly, “Stop eating the bugs.”

So much to say into the tree trunk but it always concludes with I love you.

Old people who are probably older than Saturn have a purpose but I don’t.

They spend their Sundays with the parlor TV set and the static and wafers circling their mouth like a drainpipe, they look like a ghost behind the wool curtain. I spend my time sucking down honeysuckle and playing with the grass on our front lawn. It’s hard enough growing up but it’s even harder counting the ways I tried and failed to.

HUMAN: SONG OF MYSELF

by Elsa Eckenrode i i celebrate myself, and sing myself. my memory is fleeting in tidal waves but i can’t control water. i have never once thought about drowning myself, let alone swimming, i don’t think it’s beautiful, although some people beg to disagree. the ants told me about life in the sea, i’ve spent 2 years listening to them. they have come to trust me, and they told me their secrets. when they asked about human society i told them we are like airplanes, we glide until the energy is zapped from our bones because to the world, we too are birds. here i am, flying away from my problems to a planet where i mean something besides a loyal wife, a loving mother, a caring friend. i don’t want to find myself carved into society’s idea of “perfection.” i am incoherent to the universe, it disagrees with the simple fact that i refuse to be picture perfect. i’m not miss blond hair, blue eyes, and i’m learning to not be ashamed of who i have become, it’s difficult, but i don’t think there’s anything wrong with being or not being beautiful. and no matter how hard i try to tell the ants that humans aren’t superficial, they do not believe me, maybe because they can tell i don’t even believe my own words, they say “come on, elsa, try a little harder.” they remind me the facts in my head are opinions in the real world,

and that i am not quite ready for the real world. ii i wear the scars of answers that had no questions, i live in yesterday’s t-shirt because tomorrow’s one will probably be much too different and absorb my personality completely. i carry the hearts of the elderly who tried so hard to beat sadness and ailment. i hold the teeth of children in my hands, they match the white of my eyes, these stunning pearls caress the past. i think they are hopeful and distinctive behind my stark pupils, they dilate uncontrollably when i think about the future and who i may be at age 30, i am hopeful, i am hopeful, i am hopeful, and i know this because i carved it into stone 500 times so that the very thought would stay engraved into my otherwise eradicated vocabulary. iii i’ve been finding beautiful notes scrawled into the trees, they say i will be the owl at night time, and the artist at hand is the moon cradling the stars, they say that my fragile disposition is about to burst if i don’t watch for what my parents warned me about when i was 10, i’m still trying to remember what i forgot to write down. i’m not emily dickinson, hiding in the shadows of curtains in my room, a reclusive character who desires to be nobody. i want to be somebody, not to anybody or everybody, but to another person who can leave dents in my head without concussing my mind.

i really want to be myself, whoever that is, and i try to see myself through e.e.cummings and little letters, but don’t call me a copycat until i’m e.r.eckenrode just because i look up to somebody who other somebodies find inspirational. charles bukowski has left his talent of changing poets over the years in someone else’s hands, i don’t know their name, but it’s certainly not me. it’s someone revolutionary and undiscovered, but they figured out how to run along with the trains on the train tracks, and i’m trying to run with them, trying to catch up and write expert writing that can transform the lives of other human beings. whatever you think a human being is, anyway.

3347 ½ (CLYDE’S GIRL)

by Zada Fels

1 she wonders aimlessly around town; she is a deer in the headlights. there is no point to her this is a lonely life at best. only in Dallas, she is sleeping softly. she says it was because he made her feel like she was made out of sinking stars, a dream-like existence of skin and flesh. someday, she says, that will sizzle and shimmer into nothingness. but then she finds him. clyde meets her at a friend’s house. they drink chocolate and swap their hots for homicide. they were smittenthe ending was inevitable.

2 she has decided she will be a desert sun. a public enemy, buck and blanche along for the ride. cigars and guns begin to become a regular. she writes to pass the time before she leaves. then, onto Joplin. it was serene- a brief fever of peacefulness until the liquor and card games became too much and she fled. the next few months would be Minnesotadreams, Darwin and Grand Theft Auto.

this time, there are no hesitations. in Wellington, she burns her legs. by 34’, they have made it to Louisiana. on the back roads, they are shot to death. she felt it all.

GET OUT

by Jayne Juffe

There was so much chatter; I couldn’t block it out like I usually could. The buzzing of their voices mulled into a sea of white noise. It was like all of the noise drilled into one special spot in my right temple. I didn’t want to be associated with them, but I sat so close to them, it was obvious I was traveling with them. My eyes were locked between my left hand on my knee and the other clutched on the cold metal pole. I didn’t know the man I was sitting next to, though it felt like I should have, seeing that I knew most of the people on the bus. He had dark skin with little lumps of baby fat still on his face, even though he looked older than twenty. There were other strangers mingled in the mob of students. They kept to themselves for the most part.

The noise kept building around me. Twitches started to erupt from me, and I wanted to cover my ears and scream for everyone to evaporate. Three students at my left were borderline shouting.

A young African-American woman of twenty-two started to speak.

Yelling was a better word for it. I was seated parallel to the large windows, the woman sitting adjacent to my left and beside the three loudest students. She spewed a trail of colorful language that filled the whole bus in a matter of seconds. She kept shouting at us, at me, for being too loud because she was in the middle of a phone call. More voices coincided with hers, making it even louder. One thought occurred among the commotion, I need to get out of here.

Her words had gotten more heated as a man intervened. He was a bulky man, definitely stronger than any of us combined. The man was tall with a thick grey mustache set on his lip. At least six students separated the man and the woman. I could see the anger

build up in her eyes as my classmates ceased to shut their mouths.

Instead, they started talking back to her. What a silly thing to do. I need to get out of here. My teacher stood in front of me, keeping a eye on the woman who hadn’t stopped yelling at us. He had interjected once or twice, but he was no help at all. I wanted to get up and move before anything else happened, but panic and an invisible shield trapped me. The woman spat out insults to the man on the other side of the bus. The young man to my right tried to lighten the mood, making everyone laugh.

For a moment, it seems quiet. I stand up just as the young woman did with her hand balled into a fist. With a swift throw, her fist collided with my back and the bus broke into an uproar. Her voice drowned out my small whimper. I nearly fall to the ground and barely see that another student crying. She was cradling her right cheek with her friends swarming her. I need to get out of here.

A fight erupted just meters from where I stood, and I sprinted away as fast as I could. Her voice vibrated through the glass, people from the next stop could hear her. She had gotten off at the same stop with us, almost sprinting from the bus and the newly formed crowd of people.

The winter air stung the small of my back where she had left an imprint. I got out.

13 WAYS TO LOOK AT LIGHT

by Gracie Kon

I. You really can’t look at A light It will hurt your eyes.

II. A light can be anything you Want it to be.

It can be a lion on the prowl, Bright autumn foliage, And even a cup of hot tea.

Anything From the depths of The imagination.

III. Even blindness has a light.

IV. Guess what Is at The end Of even The darkest Tunnel.

V. The family sits at the Table.

The light sits with Them.

VI. The light gives way to shadows.

Without light, there would be no Shadows.

Without shadows, there would be no Life.

It is not like we would be shrouded in Darkness.

Without light, who knows what else would cease to exist?

It would be the total absence of everything.

VII. You would think dark Would be death, If light Was life.

But there is light in death.

Like the clouds, A dark side and a light side Things are meant to happen.

VIII. What is that sound?

That high-pitched noise, Unmistakably coming from the Lamp.

Louder, louder, louder.

POP! That light bulb burst.

IX. Light is a blanket.

It warms you.

It makes you smile.

I am covered in light.

X. Candle light

Moves around, It flickers.

Then the wick runs out and POOF! But it gets relit again.

XI. The light dances along The wet pavement In movements not known To mortals.

XII. The light…

It burns…

You close your eyes, But it just slices through your eyelids.

Too much light…

XIII. Eyes close forever.

Or do they?

Eyes open.

They see the light.

And the mouth grins Full knowingly they will Never really open their eyes again…

AN ENUMERATION

by Arwen Kozak

I. I think I’m supposed to give you points for trying, your rag tag, true, blue, gone too soon & there goes my restrain, my practice: all those hours in front of the mirror: poise, frame, posture: roll your shoulders back, keep your feet flat.

Just let these stiff windows fall open & out, emergency exit: quick, I need to leave, please, I whisper inside my head & don’t expect you to understand: marginalization, motrin, asprin, migraine: I am missing you.

II. I don’t understand this love of hands: fundamentally & substantially, this global obsession with operations: your thumbs pushing mine away & we began the destruction of my compliance: delete my nonresponsiveness & I feel your accidental brutality fresh and candid.

III. Just here, there, where my proximal sensations fall distal to my wrists: all these fragile moments I cradle in folded playing cards: your ruined skin, the plastic bottle that we left floating & disgusted: your eyes as they opened: here we say we saw each other but know:

there wasn’t really a moment, we just want something concrete to cling to.

Yes: these monsters that I fear are gone with you yet: I hope this isn’t eternal.

IV. The first duty of love is not to listen, it is to hold: forever I would have my head on your shoulder and listen to the sounds I catch from here: content, collapsed: created from the bare existence of this time, these moments: this internal collision of lungs and heart: my need for air and my wish to remain silent and comatose.

V. My dear, I would hide you from my scrutiny but I know already: you can read me more than I will ever, ever, ever give you credit for & I’m sorry but these are facts: not figures of those dancers, runners, players you strive after: this endless cycle of your own perfection: yet I abhor perfection, in its purest, profoundest manner it is unreachable: to be avoided & to disappoint.

13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT ALBEGRA

by Ruthanne Pilarski

1.

The shape of my smile is a lopsided parabola of X2 .

2.

Concurrent numbers morph into lines meeting at the corner of a2 and b2 and sharing a civilized handshake before breaking apart dramatically and never crossing again.

3.

Radicals shelter distressed numbers accompanied by miniature roots which, even though they are written in subscript —like an after thought— they somehow dictate everything.

4.

Exponents are the outcasts, lonely on the other side of indestructible parenthetical barriers.

They are angry hawks with fiery eyes slicing through preconceived knowledge.

5.

Colors pulse behind the wall of my skull.

The lights burn my eyes and the scent of rainy hair and Friday’s mints shatters the fragile cartilage in my nose like the system of equations shatters my pencil and then my hand and soon,

all of me is broken.

6.

The purple tinge of the overhead light makes my nerves twitch and I cant focus on expansion boxes and distributive methods because the temperature fluctuates like cubic graphs.

7.

Dry erase markers squeak out polynomial equations and I scream my hatred in a whisper to the girl next to me with a knitted pink sweater on and thick brown hair that reminds me of campfires and stony rivers.

8.

I smash 130$ worth of grey calculator buttons until a jumbled combination of numbers, letters, and symbols appears and my eyelids are heavy with the weight of characters that don’t belong together.

9.

They say we need balance: Equal values on both sides of the small parallel lines and wouldn’t it be great if life worked like that?

10.

I wish I could just subtract or add or divide or multiply this or that and we could have equality.

11.

I prefer outcome over process.

An answer so simple, a journey complex.

Climb over the steep arch of number 2’s back and risk the jump between the two spokes of 11 and tightrope across the ledge of number 5.

12.

Stop.

Make it all stop.

13.

If math was a star algebra would be its explosion.

WARRIOR

by Ruthanne Pilarski The pump beside the door stands weak like a crumbled terra cotta soldier.

When we push our thin hands down on the rusty handle the cries of the wounded echo off the trees.

Pap’s in the field out back, poking at logs in the broken fire pit.

His callused hands transformed this cabin so that we could spend sweaty summer nights in the loft with nails above our heads and ants crawling up our legs.

He tells us stories about the war and I can see the pride in his eyes.

He stands like the pump, battered, yet eternally powerful.

Time works in mysterious ways they say and the strength

has come and gone.

What was once clean water flowing from the spout is now a stale orange and brown.

And we can’t bear to watch as our protector weeps in his solitude, paint peeling from his starved mouth.

So we follow the road, dust clouds rising up like sorrow from his empty bed.

We clear the heavy haze with splashes from the rain puddles and we trudge on, with warrior painted on our faces.

Our sneakers slide down muddy banks, descending to the edge of the stream.

We fill up our jugs with the tears of the souls who sacrificed themselves to the sky.

We fill up our jugs with the sweat of valiance that fell as my grandfather became a hero.

We return to our leader, still limping hopelessly beside the wooden stairs and we present it with the droplets of hope by laying them down on his cracked concrete podium proving the strength of our loyalty as strong as the oak trees that enclose us.

13 DIFFERENT WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BICYCLE

by Caylyn Smiley-Jones

I. The only noise in the morning mist was the cracking of the spokes of a bicycle like aged joints under pressure.

II. At first, the bicycle attacked the boy.

Over time, it would become his stallion and the handlebars would become the perch of his dearest flame.

III. Time slowed in the summer torridity, but a bicycle cannot be slowed.

IV. He rode to the warehouse on his bicycle.

His shiny wheels had mutated into a slum of rust.

V. I could not hear the flowing wires or the grinding chains.

But I could hear mountains.

I could feel asphalt in my knees, black sweat in my palms, and swelling in my fingers.

VI. Spiraling upward into the atmosphere, as if it had wings.

I could never escape such a magnificent bicycle.

Instead, I painted over it.

VII. I refused to believe I could tumble from those blue handlebars.

Of course, my back pocket snagged on the gear shifter of that awful bike.

A classic, somewhat comical victory for your Canondale.

Every Atlas tires of his burden.

VIII. A swift strike of lightning splits the street.

No injuries.

IX. The police officer grabbed the man and stuffed him into the basket.

The bicycle might as well have been a dunce hat of the force.

X. The albatross only lands once a year.

Of course the bicycle is envious.

XI. My father had four children.

Two sons, a daughter, and a bicycle.

He claimed there was a special place in hell for bicycle thieves.

XII. Surfing online auctions.

No visions of shiny paint or fresh, new wheels.

Only thin tolerance for the scrap metal rotting in the garage.

XIII. Sometimes, I spin wheels to preserve the environment.

Others, I crave the pulse of power in my legs.

The thrill of self-sustained flight is usually enough when reality cannot satisfy.

NEIGHBORHOOD

by Rebecca Stanton

I shuffle up the large hill my feet heavy with exhaustion.

School is over, my next task is to scale the mountain to get home.

I must trek up Black Street past cars that have been sitting in the street for years.

They await the tow trucks that will take them away.

The tow trucks that will hook a chain to their jaws and spin their wheels one last time.

Spin the wheels.

The wheels of this neighborhood haven’t spun for decades.

The axels are rusty and caught zoom past the small trees, whose eyes are halfway shut.

Illness, exhaustion, I do not know.

Heads are held down, don’t look up.

The clouds hang low teasing the pavement with tickling fingers.

MY ADDICTION OF SPENDING MONEY

by Taylor Szczepaniuk

I have an addiction.

I’m as stubborn as a camel, I do as I please.

When I have money, it burns a hole through my pocket.

I can’t help myself; the magnet on the “cuteness” pulls me in.

I spend, and spend, and spend.

I’m as rich as a penny, I’m blind, a bat in the light.

I just buy things, And impulse that I’m not proud to have I have fallen through a trapdoor of sales Lost in a tunnel of no money.

Some day I’ll be as smart as Einstein, Learning my wants not my needs.

The pinkness and the music of Victoria Secret…

It pulls me in like a child in a candy shop.

The manikin wearing the new fashions, I have to have them.

Right then. No waiting. Now. Nordstrom.

New things, new happenings, and new sales, Always on the shelves, calling my name.

Taylor!

Charlotte Russe, Welcomes me in, Displaying heels that I must have.

30 dollars a pair, I buy 3.

My money slowly spirals down the drain.

I have a horrible habit.

I’m like the queen of England I demand.

I’m working on it.

I remembered something

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT COLOR

by Amanda Talbot thirteenth Red is in me, Bending its stream of invariant shades Into my cheeks. twelfth Blue blankets the sky.

Tomorrow is hidden in its Vast being. eleventh The color of green: Green holds the trees’ leaves.

I would like it to be the color tangent to heaven, Dividing it from hell, Could green be The verge of either fate Religion deems is appropriate? tenth I stop first. You then must stop too Or we both suffer the consequences.

The red lights created that law. ninth What makes rabbits diverse Are their overpowering red wine eyes.

That, and blank-canvas-white fur

Or their brown spots. eighth I don’t like to think of coffee as brown.

To me, it’s dark black Like my bedroom and my mind, With white hot sun Lightening it. seventh I am not afraid of the dark. Why wouldn’t I be?

I am not afraid of my imagination or where it could take me.

It might direct me to failure.

I am not terrified of gray.

Lightening does not frighten me. sixth Pink is for girls.

Blue is for boys.

The archaic “cooties” era Still defines this generation, But I disagree with the law of color.

Blue is not, in fact, for boys But for those who appreciate art. fifth Magenta: how do I define it?

Is stating that it was my sister’s favorite color A legitimate answer? fourth In my spare time,

Not that I have any, I assume Venus is yellow.

Or is it blue? third His sweater is purple, He being the man on his way to work, Riding the trolley. I watch from my seat in the back, Where I am a camera, catching everything. second I have a friend who counts the yellow tiles on the floor.

I am not terrified by the exuberant shade of yellow.

I am not terrified by recovery.

Yesterday does not alter my expectations of tomorrow. first Gray sulks behind my eyes.

I’m sure I mean this nonliterally.

GRADE EIGHT

TABLE OF CONTENTS Ryan Andrews

Neighborhood Fire Maisha Baton Lists Weston Custer

Moon Drops Suhail Graraibeh

Retrospect: Inspired by Munch’s The Scream Dominique Green Broken Jessica Kunkel

Singed Relationships Caroline Molin

War Chyna McClendon

This is the End for Me Bridgette O’Neil

Lunchroom Ciara Sing

To Whom it May Concern: Whomever it May Be

William Thayer

Eyes Isabella Victoria

It Isn’t Ending

NEIGHBORHOOD FIRE

by Ryan Andrews

There are a lot of hot days in the summer.

I remember hearing the splash of water from Moore Pool, the “cool” place to be, at least that’s what I thought.

I remember summer of 2013.

I always went swimming, splishing and splashing my younger brothers.

I remember participating in peculiar pool games, that made absolutely no sense, but, we had fun doing it so what’s the point?

Another place I remember is the baseball field and the basketball court. I think I was there more than I was swimming. “Brookline Memorial Park” always read the sign when my mother drives her minivan past to find a parking spot for the basketball game.

Inside the gym where the court is, all you heard was the loud buzzing noise every time a team shoots a basket.

The lights flashed revealing the next even number, normally.

Shoes scuffing, and sweat flying is what I can hear.

Also the occasional complaint from the other teams parents.

Yes Barbara, we all realize that you’re upset your son was “pushed”.

I remember the hill by the batting cages, and the wall where “wall ball, but ball, but ball EXTREME, etc.” would be played. The hill is probably still muddy, but as soon as it recovers from the sliding, slipping, and scoring of the game, baseball season will start up again, and the hill will just get more muddy than before.

I remember the baseball field, otherwise know as “the big field� where my brother plays. The crack of baseball on those metal bats just fuels the fire of the competition.

Everyone is always warm in my neighborhood.

LISTS

by Maisha Baton Things that fall apart: paper in water, sugar cubes in my morning coffee, the aspirin that dissolves in my stomach and my understanding of the world that’s slowly falling apart.

Things that go places: Cars, quickly into new cities.

Children, into the cookie jar, and my mind, that’s slowly going crazy.

Things that yell: people, when they get upset, people at a concert, the voices in my head.

Things that cry: people when they miss someone they loved.

People with “dust in their eye,� and I, for help.

Things that I miss: Sanity.

MOON DROPS

by Weston Custer

Skip and clap and jump Summers were always so bouncy here Like fireflies zooming around in a Mason Jar. Dirty hands and scrappy shoes beating the pavement Grass stains Popsicles And the moon.

Morning episodes of Scooby Doo And late bubblegum nights with friends and music.

Staring at the stars Wishing for the ghosts we once knew And that our tears would run dry.

When we were too tired to play We watched the raindrops race down windows And the grass blades wave in the wind.

You always liked blowing bubbles and watching me Sprinting around the yard trying to pop them all.

Days full of skinned knees Red cheeks Tennis balls and bike rides.

Nights full of flashlights and sheet forts.

Summer was like a candle Burning bright in a small child’s hands Until the wax is all gone And so were we.

with more empathy.

We think deeper, and our battle wounds become more visible.

This makes us feel like this means something.

Everything is a sign, somehow.

And all we think about is what we lost in the battle.

Still we sit inside, watching the world pass us by, thinking about the pain and sadness from the war, and how the things we humans judge is that physical is worse then mental.

We realize that the things we are inside is what we laugh at every day of our lives.

The truth is not a single one of us wants to admit that we die a little, every day, like those who served for our country, we all fight back.

There’s a war that goes on forever, even after it’s over.

This war is even more difficult then it sounds, worse than words.

And we fight it forever, there are veterans still fighting.

The truth is that war is terrorizing us internally.

We never come in the same way we come out, and some of us don’t come out at all.

And the last truth is that your physical self is alone.

We and our thoughts don’t get along.

RETROSPECT: INSPIRED BY MUNCH’S THE SCREAM

by Suhail Gharaibeh

Tar-colored water swims, gliding and rushing between nature’s walls, is acrid, like concentrated coffee.

Far behind, a mental asylum, cross pointing to heaven, a kill shelter for lunatics.

This splintery bridge is slippery, the wood soaked with rain.

I’m taken back.

I’m alone, my parents are far ahead, I’m standing on this bridge, a figure approaches.

She lights a cigarette, places it between her candy apple lips.

I look down at the waters of the Seine, and I swear that I see Javert’s body tumbling in the frigid waters.

She turns her head to me, her thick, heavy, false eyelashes curl and flutter in the wind.

She exhales smoke, leaning her elbows on the stone of the bridge, folding her arms into the fur of her coat.

She takes a long, slow drag from her slim cigarette, this strange French Audrey Hepburn.

She lets the smoke pour from her nose and mouth, creates a nebula of tar and tobacco.

With a couple more breaths of smoke, the woman flicks the cigarette into the black water.

I look into the painting, and find myself in Oslo and Paris at the same time,

I find myself with the beautiful stranger on the Pont Neuf.

Looking out onto the twisted skyline, the sky turns blood red.

The water fills with toxins,

the city becomes ghostly: buildings dark and tall, cobbled streets shine with rain, Â dark clouds move furiously to reveal the crimson sun. Â And ringing loudly, throbbing in my ears, is the scream of nature.

BROKEN

by Dominique Green This piece was inspired by the sculpture Fresh Happiness by Ipreble.

As human beings, We cannot afford to forget who we are.

But yet we become closer everyday, We become closer to losing ourselves.

We strip away who we are, With gilt, pain, frustration, life, age, With the purist of, pressure.

Sometimes I doubt that losing yourself really matters anymore.

You know with all this talk about Yolo, But what you probably don’t know, Is that your time on earth is so low.

Does it matter that just this month, I have seen so many tears on your face, That I can still see were your tears made their mark on you.

I looked for the sculpture that will remind me of you.

I looked for the sculpture that smelt of bitter copper Like the blood that runs threw your veins.

I look for the one that is not just hurt on the inside, But the one that looks just as bad on the outside.

I look for the one that has lost sight of them selves.

When I found the best one that represents you, It was ripped up.

It looks like its skin was shaved off.

Its mouth is gone, Most of its nose is gone, The only thing that can possibly tell you, What he is feeling is his eyes,

But you don’t need his eyes to tell that he is hurting, Inside and out.

This is how I picture you every time I see you And I know it is hurting you.

I wish you hadn’t done this, But you did.

I wish you would try to put your self together again, Because I know you have the strength to, So if you trust in me, I will trust I you.

SINGED RELATIONSHIPS

by Jessica Kunkel

Smoke pouring into his lungs life draining from his eyes during his sleepless nights.

He said I was the only family he cared about, and I did not detect the deception.

There was no place for him in our tyrannical home.

The chemicals he used maybe he wanted to lose himself, or maybe he wanted to find himself in the midst of it all.

I watched him slowly blacken his lungs.

We die everyday and yet he pushes it further to feel something that I could never imagine, that I could never explain.

Maybe rapture in its strangest form.

Reaching reaching I am trying to retrieve him from the dark place, the free place in which he resides.

The abyss, holding him captive, dragging him farther and farther under creating his home in the shadows, the light climbing farther away.

Or is it.

Smoke is choking me, mauling my nostrils, slithering down my throat, pressing its cold wiry hands into my neck, scorching, searing. my eyes watering, stinging, with air contaminated wind blowing away his sanity.

Singed relationships like the burnt blanket wrapped around your shoulders.

I never liked the twisting, turning, intangible smoke.

The War

by Caroline Molin Shuttering, shaking, crashing into tables, screaming.

People running with one arm, never getting to say “I love you.”

And so we lock ourselves inside because the outside is too dangerous.

Wars chase us to collide.

When they chase us, we don’t want to go.

But we’re angry people.

We fight back.

We kick each other down.

We’re only kicking ourselves, from the inside out.

We’re kicking ourselves out.

Suddenly we’re not ourselves.

We have turned into each other, and that is what kills us.

We don’t play teams anymore, everyone now wants to win.

Now our dreams are louder and more violent,

with more empathy.

We think deeper, and our battle wounds become more visible.

This makes us feel like this means something.

Everything is a sign, somehow.

And all we think about is what we lost in the battle.

Still we sit inside, watching the world pass us by, thinking about the pain and sadness from the war, and how the things we humans judge is that physical is worse then mental.

We realize that the things we are inside is what we laugh at every day of our lives.

The truth is not a single one of us wants to admit that we die a little, every day, like those who served for our country, we all fight back.

There’s a war that goes on forever, even after it’s over.

This war is even more difficult then it sounds, worse than words.

And we fight it forever, there are veterans still fighting.

The truth is that war is terrorizing us internally.

We never come in the same way we come out, and some of us don’t come out at all.

And the last truth is that your physical self is alone.

We and our thoughts don’t get along.

THIS IS THE END FOR ME

by Chyna McClendon

This was inspired by the Holocaust era for the suffering people They are shouting and yelling demands We are all thrown into this horrible place.

We don’t understand why we are here They have placed us in these ghettos They said we were going somewhere better They lied. They give us no respect.

We have done nothing wrong We are only people trying to survive in this world.

It seems like there is no hope left for us all 55,000 of us have been transported here.

It is crowded and there is no room.

This place is filthy Nothing is sanitary Hundreds of people die everyday.

We all waste away in this horrible place People smuggle food to feed to their families We are not allowed to leave we are like caged animals Waiting to be slaughtered If we do then our lives will end This placed is horrible People are dying We need food We are humans not animals Terezin is going to kill us all.

We don’t understand why this happened We have done nothing wrong to deserve this The people in here are starving The living conditions are absurd 7 people are in one room

The room cannot hold this many I cannot stand his anymore I am just a poor Jewish girl.

I was not made to go through this torture This journal I have is keeping me sane Some of us want to break out of this place We were discussing it today At midnight we go It is that time.

We are almost out when we hear voices They shout we run I crouch behind a wall hoping not to be found I take my last breath as someone spots me I bid you journal one last good bye Take‌

LUNCHROOM

by Bridgette O’Neil

“You can’t sit with us.”

The most popular people in school won’t let you sit with them.

Go figure.

As you sadly walk away you ponder to yourself, “What’s so great about that middle table?”

You shuffle towards the back of the room and you see more tables full of people.

You see a group of girls sitting at a table directly behind the middle one.

You begin to request if you may sit there, but you realize that all they’re doing is fangirling over the football players.

So you turn around.

You keep shuffling towards a column of tables behind them.

You percieve a rundown red table with two boys and two girls.

There’s an empty seat.

You race over but before you can say anything: “Sorry this seat’s reserved.”

A scowl forms on your face and you keep on walking.

You begin to pace, and your eyes dart all around the room.

More kids are sitting in tables with their friends and you’re stuck still searching for one.

The blue, white, and red tables are becoming even more full.

You sight empty tables in the very back, but you really were hoping you wouldn’t have to sit by yourself.

But still you doddle to the back of the room.

You slide a metal chair back and you slowly sit down.

And you sit there.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Then your hear a loud commotion and another group of kids start filing in.

Two girls and a boy walk up to you and sit down.

Just like that.

And then somehow, you start a conversation.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: WHOMEVER IT MAY BE

by Ciara Sing

Inspired by Winslow Homer’s Gulf Stream I’m sitting on the Clipper looking at the helpless man contemplating his own death.

I watch in curiosity.

How could a black man be ready to give his life so easily?

Sharks surround him yet he’s so content.

He sees the blood but yet he’s not disgusted.

He’s at peace.

Reminiscing waiting for death to conceal him.

I want to scream, call him weak, say only a coward would hide from his fears.

Tell him he shouldn’t give up so easy and everything else my father beats into my ear during our midnight conversations by the fire.

But would he listen to me if half of the time I don’t even listen to myself?

I fear for him.

I fear that if he gives up something precious will be lost.

Something that we can’t replace.

He’ll be another black man that proves society’s judgments.

I don’t want to have shame for part of my ethnicity’s history.

I don’t want to be him, surrounded by sharks at peace with failure.

I don’t want to be the person my dad looks at in disgust.

EYES

by William Thayer Inspired by Nighthawks by Edward Hopper Why does he sit alone? the man, whispering soundly.

Lies skittering across his sandpaper mind.

Why does he do this to himself? his ragdoll skin burning away against the percolation of coffee, his paper lungs sinking in the haze of alien smog.

How can he live like this?

His words fade away like he did.

He is lost amongst the night, scarlet dresses lacerating his very being, wounds cut deeper than words and stares cut deeper than wounds.

Why don’t they care?

Stares are like lights, refracting from every angle, averted gazes become a labyrinth of heartless drones, masquerading in a labyrinth of reflections.

What is he?

His eyes are sickled and glossy. they have no end they are as empty as his grin and as hollow as

his world.

He is as evanescent as the morning mist blaring with resplendent eyes piercing his body.

What has he become?

The man who sits alone Amongst the shadows, is a monster.

His mind is a wasteland his word, ephemeral.

He is the behemoth, He is a sliver man.

He is empty Empty like his eyes.

Empty like the man who stares back, who stares through him, when I stare through the mirror.

IT ISN’T ENDING

by Isabella Victoria

I crouch and cower.

Lost inside of a blanket that I yank over myself every time it strikes.

I scream and shiver, they say there is nothing they can do.

It will be over soon.

It strikes and it strikes and it strikes and it isn’t ending and I wail, burying my face into the musty cushions below me.

A pause.

The eye of the storm.

I breathe in, then exhale as my chest rises and falls to the continuous drum beat on my roof.

The cymbals crack and my head begins to spin again. I know it is not over.

When will it be over?

When will the room stop spinning?

When will it be okay?

They say be ready, it’s coming soon.

The last boom of the storm and they tell me that I will be okay.

My eyes red, my cheeks red.

Red from fear and red from tears.

Fear that there won’t be a tomorrow.

Fear that the wind strong and swooping will blow us away like the paper thin leaves blowing around in tornado.

The pain in my head flares as I cry louder.

They hold me tight.

Tighter and tighter so that the wind can’t blow me away.

There is nothing left to do but wait.

GRADE SEVEN

TABLE OF CONTENTS Madeline Bain Pink Tess Buchanan

Stingray Bay Julia Coblin

Forest Paradise Louise Finnstrom

Blue Cars and Eggbeaters Zoe Fuller

More Than Rebecca Glickman

Not Quite Summer Lillian Hosken

Beyond Sandcastles Jora Hritz

Soaring Kalin Jeffers

Future Brianna Kline Costa

The Stars are Alive

Mohammed Laswad

Dreadful on One Side Zoe Magley

42 Minutes Katarina Mondor

Lake

PINK

by Madeline Bain That night was gold.

The way her dress shimmered, the sugar crystals lining the edge of the glass, the earrings strung carelessly across her face.

That night sparkled.

The silver mascara dotting her vision, a ring resting in the grass, a dream scattered among the stars.

That night whispered.

Thoughts caught onto the wind, peach lip-gloss floated in the pool, a lone girl, explored.

That night was magical.

Her bare feet splashed the silky water, her gold earrings lost under the dirt, the way the trees protected her.

That night danced.

Her light smile hugged the newborn clouds, her rose blush scarf flew with the breeze, the way her diamond eyes closed.

That night was pink.

STINGRAY BAY

by Tess Buchanan

I sit at the edge of the dock, watching the ospreys fly by headed to their nests on top of telephone poles.

Everything is settling down for the night.

The cool, rippling surface is lapping at the rocks on the shore.

Sounds of the ocean stirring fills the eerie silence.

Somewhere deep under the old wooden planks lives a stingray.

He doesn’t want to be seen, only coming out at night.

So I wait.

I wait until the stars have come up above the horizon.

I wait until the moon is glowing gently against my pale skin.

Slowly, I inch my way to the end of the dock.

The stingray emerges, its back skimming the surface, not daring to come up any farther.

The stars reflect off of him, leaving a trail of light up his long whip-like tail His backbone glistens from the cold salty water.

He sails away, leaving only ripples of his presence behind.

I stand up, turning around and once again I am enveloped in silence.

FOREST PARADISE

by Julia Coblin

There’s a small universe in the forest.

By the gleaming lake side, about a mile North lies a creek.

There is a stream connecting them.

A doorway, stitching it’s way through the maroon sand, patches of woodland between them.

Shielded by the veil of green and wooden walls.

It’s a tiny paradise.

A small victory for nature.

A moment of triumph.

From the gaps in the dripping leaves at the top, all that can be seen is a dim glistening.

All is silent, except a faint buzzing.

A bumblebee flying above, transfixed on the bubbly surface.

It’s to perfect to be real.

Like a robotic world of wax.

Forest paradise.

BLUE CARS AND EGGBEATERS

by Louise Finnstrom

Seated on stains, last year’s sand (likely, many before that), and penguins, a blanket that only sees the light of day when here, the most marvelous sidewalk from reality.

Almost makes the other 358 days a year, cringed as it’s squeezed into the trunk of our car next to more important un-important things, completely worth it, don’t you think?

One week, in an embedded heaven of wisp, grain, and let’s not forget, that consistently un polished, yet sweltingly hopeful, blue car, on the road, next to this sidewalk, parked at a bent angle for eternity as it covers up the potholes.

Anyone, who enters can take the wheel.

Nearby Lucy’s working on her latest masterpiece,

digging holes, canals, and kingdoms.

I seek the other world with irises stilled like the flesh sloped between your eyebrows, and remember why I’m waiting: Because I want the moment to be perfect.

Out there is the kingdom I thrive.

I’m tossed a flimsy plastic bag, but deli meat, and over-endured, tart sauce won’t do.

I’m never hungry here, but I know when I reach the cottage, I’ll be craving Dr. Pepper and mac and cheese with ham bits.

Jimmy’s five star meal.

My poor dad is struggling to catch our insane, hyperactive umbrella, and keep it in the ground.

My mom lays comfortable in a long, island print, swimsuit cover up, reading what I’m guessing might be yet another giant autobiography on the teaching of kids across the world.

My brother’s waiting too.

Reeling out water with his focus.

I know we’re thinking the same thing.

My heart swirls, and yearns for my home. “ I’m going in.”

GPS? Un-needed.

I kick through, it’s like a never-ending puddle, filled with the strangest, cutest, most alive little things.

Rippled cutouts, auditioning view.

That one to my left in particular, not huge, but it’ll work.

I pace myself, then slip through, like a banana attempting a dive, failing, with my arms, fish-faced in front of me.

And I’m under then, before thinking about it, I’m out.

Born where no hospital could find me.

And the sun beats on my arms in a whippy miff of eggbeater.

And there’s no way to describe it.

MORE THAN

by Zoe Fuller

This poem is written about the painting Faces and Phases by Zanele Maholi.

Empty words drape over their shoulders, empty words fall out of their mouths.

Empty words swirl in their minds, everything empty.

Their eyes speak empty words, words empty with forgiveness and strength.

Their shoulders held high, speak empty words of hope.

Their mouths speak empty words of sorrow and truth.

Their empty words refract upon mine.

Our empty words mix.

Emptiness fills my head.

The words whisper their thoughts in my ear, telling me stories.

My stories aren’t the same.

Their clothes, hair, sholders, eyes, speak millions of words, speak millions of empty words.

Empty words are these women.

Wait.

This is all wrong.

These women are more than words.

These women are more than just empty words.

More than stories, or pictures, or thoughts.

These women are strength, independence, the truth.

These women are something different.

Something better than words.

I stand proud for these women.

NOT QUITE SUMMER

by Rebecca Glickman

Dad hauls the luggage out to the trunk this chilly Saturday morning.

Our flight lands, I am forced to take off my Uggs, and throw on some Havianas.

I kick back on this humid Florida day.

Lounge by the cerulean pool, suns rays gleaming in my eyes.

Tortoise sunglasses stuck to my pale face.

Cruising down Old 41, passing stores I wish I could go into.

And yet I am ecstatic, for my Airboat ride on the everglades: The alligators need some company.

And I can’t wait for the shopping.

For the outlets; the Coconut Point mall.

Maybe I should have brought a bigger suitcase.

And Christmas comes, no shops open, Tarpon Bay is the only restaurant

at the huge Hyatt with waterslides and marvelous raspberry smoothies.

Our huge feast gramma makes on Christmas day; following the screening of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

The whole family sits together, talking about anything but the holiday that our family doesn’t celebrate.

The last days we squeeze in some things: Congo river mini golf, taking a walk by the gates of our grandmas community looking for “blue”— the guard that never came back.

Dad’s famous eggs and ham, fresh right off the stove.

Scrambled eggs; wrinkly and warm.

A little cheese and salt, and you have yourself perfection.

Going to Barefoot Beach: the loveliest waters of all.

Driving the road with the huge mansions, millions of dollars a piece.

It’s finally time to go, head back to Pittsburgh with our warm clothes, and cold, snowy weather, because its not quite summer.

BEYOND SANDCASTLES

by Lillian Hosken

We dip into the ocean tide, that catches the sun like sprite.

Salty foam fizzles to the surface; tiny bubbles glimmer in the light, tinting the sand baby blue.

We wade into the sea, and breathe in the warm summer air as water pools around our stomachs, then our shoulders, then our chins, until you dive into the whippy waves.

I dive, too.

Silver fish glint below us, weaving between twisted red coral.

Mossy green crabs scuttle across the reedy sand, plum colored urchins dot the scenery below, and parrotfish munch on the grainy rocks.

Crowds of tropical fish swim by: a flowing river of color, too bountiful to separate.

In a mystical coral kingdom.

When the sun brushes the horizon, we make our way back to the beach, our skin, raw from the salt.

Our hair dripping, curly and tangled, we run to our parents, who wrap our faded towels around us.

We tell them what we’ve seen; about the underwater world.

And under the newly risen crescent moon,

we describe the magic.

SOARING

by Jora Hritz

On Coral Street there is a house.

The middle one.

Behind the school.

With the flower boxes and dead bushes out front.

Behind the house is a yard.

In the yard there is a girl.

She is flying.

Dancing around in the warm and sunny air.

She lies down under the tree.

The leaves have veins and the bark on the tree is wrinkled.

It is her tree.

She looks into the sky and sees the marvelous sun, gleaming into her eyes.

Its rays are feeding the grass that her toes are wiggled into.

It feeds the flowers planted perfectly into the dirt.

She closes her eyes, listening.

Sparrows are chirping.

Kids across the street at the park are laughing, having a great time.

She stands up and hops onto the wall holding the garden together.

She walks across it like a balance beam.

Arms out in airplane position.

Step carefully.

Walk slowly.

Hopping off the wall with perfectly pointed toes, she runs and does a cartwheel.

She is a falcon.

Soaring through the air.

Because of a yard with crisp, green grass, red flowers, and the clear blue sky with tiny clouds.

FUTURE

by Kalin Jeffers Walking is an art you can enjoy for free. There is so much to be thought, so much to be heard.

And I will walk and listen to the whistling of the wind and the birds. The birds, how I pity them.

They spend their days scavenging for sticks. Their whole lives leading up to a few baby birds and a dull brown nest.

They have wings.

They can fly wherever they want.

Yet they choose to stay in the same place and nest, pop out a few eggs and live the rest of their boring lives.

Why must they do this?

Where are the wrinkles that choose to fly? The ones that end their life with tired wings and a mind full of memories?

I will have a bird.

A big one who craves rush, who is addicted to adrenaline.

He will be resting his wings from years of flying.

He will have so much to show for his short life.

He won’t have a nest.

He won’t have 3 baby birds just learning how to fly.

All he has is his past and his future.

THE STARS ARE ALIVE

by Brianna Kline Costa

A poem is as complex as you make it, as beautiful

and alive as the poet wished it to be.

A poem is but an idea

before it is molded like soft clay

and lit up like Christmas lights.

These ideas hang

like stars in the sky It’s a poet’s job to work for it to reach up and take it

and breath life into its unformed and unmoving body.

Ha! the common misconception that one must wait for darkness.

No, I go fishing for stars in broad daylight. when the sunlight stretches out

in every direction bright stars blend with a soft blue sky.

I throw my pole into a glassy day, and the stars bite the careless thoughts that I tie to my hook.

Just because they’re invisible just because your suspecting naked eye can’t see the star I gently cradle in soft hands doesn’t mean that its not there.

Every star I catch,

every star I hold, every star that flops—still alive—in my hands, and gasps for air

I wait to feel its message the idea that shines inside just under the skin.

I hold it up to my ear hear it’s beating heart; it whispers its story, then

I willingly release it with exhilaration throw it back into a warm sky

with a heart-felt splash Stars shine brightest when they’re let free.

New poets try to trap them in a small glass aquarium,

staring at them.

Hoping pressing fingers against the glass

with provide you with a feeble answer.

Some even have the audacity to cook them over a flame and pick through the meat, tear through the bone.

Imagine! eating a poem.

No, catch and release.

Stars shine brightest when they’re let free.

The moon takes trips, it doesn’t always sit in the sky.

Every night it stands polite and new, and every morning, wanders off to the other half.

But stars wait patient as an eager dog.

Wait for light to recede and their shine to pierce the darkness.

I’ve always wondered this: Why is it people only notice stars when the dark swallows the sun and the constellations shine brightest?

DREADFUL ON ONE SIDE

by Mohammed Laswad

Gale winds turn into dreary hurricanes whose power is stronger than a snake, who’s poison is viscous like the flame of a dreary place, he**.

On the other side, aqua pervades through the springs where the meadow is always quiet in harmony.

Now I see shattering skulls, imagining of dead human parts. grotesque swamps on dirty marshes.

On the other side I see robins tweeting, poodles sleeping, the way earth was meant to be.

I see trees that are stable blades of grass that are endless, like eternal paradise.

Suddenly, I see people dying one by one like a spiral.

I shake one person and yell wake up please! he’s gone forever.

Though comes peace in this world, there is always pain that starts overcoming.

when one is born, one dies. it is the cycle of life that’s endless.

42 MINUTES

by Zoe Magley

If you were to drill a hole straight through the Earth and jump in, it would take approximately forty-two minutes and twelve seconds to reach the other side.

When you left me it took me years to erase your laughter from my mind, and scrub your voice off my walls.

And even now, I’m not sure I wanted to.

We went to Stone Harbor one summer: we brought a hospital bed into the living room just for you.

It wasn’t meant to last: so they drove you to Pittsburgh in a car cramped with sorrow.

I remember sitting upon faded brown chairs, in a room that screamed misery.

I never looked up because I didn’t see

you.

It couldn’t have been you.

Because your skin isn’t pale and hanging like a cloak around your bones.

Your hair doesn’t wilt on the plateau of your forehead.

Your face never had wrinkles.

The aunt I knew had deep brown eyes like caves reaching into the depths of the Earth.

The aunt I knew had a smile that seemingly reached the end of the stars.

She wasn’t part of a parallel world, where cold, cracking fingers replace beating hearts.

I always watched the clock when I was with you.

I remember counting the seconds until monotone suspended the hollow silence we lingered in.

Losing you, shredded the ties between families: too many memories holding on to a fraying string that wasn’t strong enough to support our heaving shoulders.

Cancer, in a way, strengthened and broke you, whereas it only tore our hearts.

Nightmares exist in reality too: the virus the predator, and you the prey.

For when is a monster not a monster?

See, there are reasons why we don’t drill through the Earth, and there are reasons, why I never want to believe you’re gone.

Both are just too complicated to fit over morning breakfast.

LAKE

by Katarina Mondor Open your eyes.

A large lake lies in front of you.

After taking your uncle’s van To the beach, You and your cousins rush out of the car.

Immediately greeted by the cool splash of water.

You put on your goggles and plunge in.

Your cousin passes a floating football.

You throw it back to him, purposely hitting the water so it makes a large splash.

You float on your back, enjoying the cold water and the silence it brings.

You all go into shore.

Time for popsicles!

After the drippy treat, you go back into the water, where you take cover because you know your brother will wrestle you.

After everyone has decided they are done, it is time to go home, where, at your Uncle’s house, Aunt Linda has prepared a nice dinner of juicy hot dogs and sweet sugar cookies.

Then you drive to the hotel

and make a silent procession to your average room where after a shower you quickly snooze because your parents turned on Charlie Rose.

GRADE SIX

TABLE OF CONTENTS Maddie Figas

Where I’m From Laura Kelly

Aquamarine

Where I’m From Thalia King

13 Ways of Looking at Bean

Where I’m From Lexy Lott

Where I’m From

I was Meant to be a City Girl Caroline Marchl

13 Ways of Looking at Mr. Fox

Where I’m From Lizzie Petrus

Adventures Through the Sky Eric Rohrer

Where I’m From

Poetry Is Like…

Emiliano Siegert-Wilkinson

Where I’m From

Wordless Pursuit

Cassandra Skweres Nature

13 Ways of Looking at a Cat Jacob Voelker

Perfection Gone Wrong

WHERE I’M FROM

by Maddie Figas

I’m from big old houses and green Ikea swing sets.

From overflowing book shelves, clogged up fireplaces in every room, and the promise to have planters overflowing with flowers in the summer, but only weeds in the fall.

I am from cold nights and early mornings at the soccer field.

From set corner kicks and throw ins down the line.

I’m also from daily chores and knowing every line in Disney movies.

I am from the buckeyes under the big tree at my old school.

From tag games and organized clubs on the playground.

I’m from hidden money in Easter eggs and green tea bags.

From Follow the yellow brick road and When you wish upon a star, your dreams will come true.

From dads work on snow days and mom taking me home from school when I’m sick.

I am from Kiddy Land at Kennywood and from winning fish at the fair.

From piano lessons to softball practice to fùtsol games.

I’m from plastic spy gear, littlest pet shop, and the silkscreen station at the Children’s Museum.

From Pez figures and snow globes.

From things piled high in my attic room.

I am from the Laurel Highlands

and its quick flowing stream with crawfish, turtles, and a chance to catch a fish.

From stray dogs and a never-ending variety of mushrooms popping up from the ground.

But I am also from the city, With bright street lights and thick telephone poles.

I’m from the Flats of the Southside and the mountains of Lin Run. From sidewalks and muddy shorelines.

From frozen yogurt and grilled cheese made over the camp fire.

I am from two grandmas, one grandpa, one mom, one dad, and a sister.

AQUAMARINE

by Laura Kelly

Lay back, the ground a soft pillow for your head Breath in, Breath out, Feel, Feel the golden earth against your body, Listen to the aquamarine sway left and right, lightly hitting land.

The sky a brilliant orange as a star sets on the horizon.

Breath in, Breath out, Listen, listen to the animals scuttle across the path, claws scraping the damp land, and into a small hole the size of my fist, somewhere.

The sound of birds calling, sweeping across the pink sky.

Breath in, Breath out, Wade in a blanket, the beautiful clear aquamarine as it wraps you in a cool grasp.

Clear aquamarine, so clear that you can see the millions of colors, dancing amongst the citizens in the hidden kingdom.

You immerse yourself deeper and deeper, climbing toward the soft carpet sinking away toward the bottom ever so slowly.

Then higher and higher until you emerge into the light and inhale a breath of salty air.

Breath in, Breath out Float on your back across the surface, farther and farther into nowhere.

For now you are alone but there is nowhere else you could imagine being at this very moment, but on your aquamarine blanket floating into oblivion while looking at the stars and the glorious shimmering moon.

Breath in, Breath out, Listen.

WHERE I’M FROM

by Laura Kelly

I am from bright, red shutters that are always open.

From creaky, green Ikea swings, the smell of fresh air, and flowers on a summer day.

I am from a stuffed animal rabbit swinging from the chandelier.

(Left and right, swinging until my 6 foot 2 father reaches carefully over the edge of the stairs and carefully hands it back to my little brother’s tiny hands).

I am from watching the storms hit from the cement porch and tasting the cold air as the lightning ignites the sky like the 4th of July fireworks while my Pappap rocks me until I fall asleep in his arms.

I’m from echoes in an empty room, from the dishwasher humming in the background.

I’m from pancake nights and attitude checks, from the house with the green shutters and sitting on the radiator as if it was a seat with my Swiss Miss reading a book while watching the snowflakes

drift ever so slowly.

I’m from the summer sun descending below the hills, from watching my dad climb into the trampoline and launch us to the moon while my mom reads her book and sips her lemonade.

From bike riding and hiking, from saying goodbye and saying hello.

I’m from crossing the river from skyscrapers and streetlights, into cobblestone streets and a towering cathedral.

I’m from cars and trucks, from trains and planes, from a small room, to a big room, to a medium-sized room, I’m from swinging on a wooden swing set, while the sun starts to go down, the cool air hitting my arms, and I kick off my shoes mid-flight, and swing as high as the moon.

So high, I can touch the leaves on our neighbor’s tree (first with my feet, then with my fingers), so I pull a single leaf off as proof.

I consider myself from a lot of places, because I ended up calling a lot of places home.

I call myself lucky because of this, while most people have only have one home.

It has its ups and downs, but hey, what doesn’t?

13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT BEAN

by Thalia King

I Some see big, brown eyes and say “what huge eyes you have!”

But I see the way you shine with light from the inside that shows on the outside.

II White as a field of freshly fallen snow and your crown of little black ears and the black spots all down your back.

III Whenever I walk into the room you perk up and say “what did I do?” well… who was it who chewed the huge hole in the back of the couch? don’t act all innocent.

IV I wonder why when many people see you, they see only how cute you are.

Cute.

Such a boring word.

Unable to live up to the expectations you set.

You are not cute.

So I wonder why they all see you that way.

You are unique and amazing, but that’s not all you will ever be.

V

You perk up your head when it’s time to eat like that’s all you ever do.

And sometimes I wonder do rabbits think?

What do they think about?

What do you think about?

VI They say dog is man’s best friend.

Well, if that is true, bunny is girl’s best friend.

VII You are my baby beanie bunny and you burrow deep into your bunny blanket just like you burrow deep into our hearts.

VIII Never let your bunny outside unless it is 57-80 degrees.

Those are the rules.

But what if your bunny wants to go out when it is 56 degrees?

It’s not going to kill her Is it?

IX Your daily lap around the living room contains zipping around the chest, back behind the green chair, (there you stay till I shoo you out) then back around the red chair, around the chest, and to the green chair again (it’s probably best if I just stay here to shoo you out)

X Some people think bunnies hop.

You don’t.

You run.

Some people think bunnies have cottonballs for tails.

You don’t.

It’s more like a baby deer’s tail.

Some people think bunnies eat carrots.

No. Bunnies can’t eat carrots.

XI I remember the house I made for you from old boxes and duck tape.

We called it the pot just so we could say “where’s Bean?” “in the pot.”

XII You have been there for everything.

And not just the small stuff.

New Year’s Eve you kept me awake And on Halloween you went trick-or-treating with me You were there on Christmas Day, the Forth of July, and my birthday.

And you were there every time my mom didn’t know what to make for dinner and my dad would look at you hungrily and say “how about rabbit stew?”

XIII I love the way your little nose twitches and never ever stops but, most importantly, I love you.

You are so loving,

so sweet, like curling up in a warm blanket with a little cloud at your side.

WHERE I’M FROM

by Thalia King

I am from chocolate cake that makes the house smell like a bakery on a hot summer day, and the bacon every once in a while.

I’m from the maple in my backyard and the kids who play there with their tents and princess castlesour yard is command center.

I am from the Dogwood and how its trunk split into 3 just like my sisters and me.

I am from cheese fondue on Christmas Eve and Swedish tea ring on Christmas day.

I am from Cincinnati chili on Halloween (even though my family is not from Cincinnati) no wonder I don’t get much candy.

I can’t stay away for long the chili tastes too good.

I’m from “Make your bed” and “Feed the bunny” to “Do your homework.”

I’m from how, every Christmas afternoon, after the presents are all opened (followed-of course-by shrieks of joy) we leave the mess behind, get in the car,

and go to grandma’s house, where she always has something sweet waiting for us apple dumplings, pumpkin pie, cookies whatever it is, its always homemade.

I’m from pasta with cheese sauce that I make it’s the one thing I can call my own.

But what do you expect?

I live in a family with two little sisters I’m from everything coming in packs of 3.

Even the dogwood in the yard.

I’m used to it.

WHERE I’M FROM

by Lexy Lott

I’m from the sudden ice-cold squirts of Shaley’s water gun, and baby Jake’s goofy grin as he tries to learn to crawl.

From the Lego tower that Caden and I made from without directions but came tragically tumbling down when we attempted to build it up taller.

I’m from boots in the winter that I kick up against the door to get the snow off and huge, orange beach towels in the summer.

I’m from my aching legs, tired treading as I watch my friend gracefully dive to the bottom of the pool like a mermaid.

But I’m also from the purple beanbag with the tearing seams where The Fault in Our Stars sits, marked up and highlighted.

I’m from watching 80s movies with my mom and always wondering what Bastian cries out the window in The Never Ending Story.

I’m from the familiar jingle of Jeopardy and the sugar cookies baking in the oven, the sugar cookies that aren’t perfectly circular like they were supposed to be, but tasted wonderful anyways.

I’m from the creek in the backyard with the little, wooden bridge leading to the other side where I pick up rocks and throw them into the greenish water.

I’m from Gemini Theater, the memories of running through my lines for the millionth time before I go out there and give Snow White the best Sneezer the Dwarf sneeze I could possibly give.

I’m from Wicked, Nightmare Before Christmas, and all the little green turtle figurines that sit on my nightstand and desk.

I’m from snowboarding down the hill and going farther than I ever have before.

From thousands of memories, good and bad, super glued to the back of my brain.

I’m from my stepmom’s hand-me-down Nikes that are sitting by the front door with the light blue laces and the splats of paint and dirt, each spot with its own little story.

I’m from outside of the box, where I like to try to do my thinking.

From the damp, droopy eyes and melancholy faces of my family when my dog died, them my hermit crabs, then my turtle.

I’m from a box in my brai of jumbled memories and feelings that I didn’t know I had until I stopped and simply thought.

I WAS MEANT TO BE A CITY GIRL

by Lexy Lott

I emerged from the shadows of the trees and gaped at the huge flower field in front of me. I had seen many photos of fields of wildflowers before, but I had never actually been able to experience the beauty that one holds. I entered the meadow, the many colors mesmerizing me with every glance. The flowers tickled my hands as I walked deeper into the field. I breathed in the warm, summertime air and listened to the chirping birds and the buzzing bees.

“Why have I never been to the country before?” I wondered, skipping through the field. Then I realized why. I was a city girl.

The last time I had been to the country, I was only two, so of course I don’t remember anything about it. We were visiting my grandparents for a week. It was our last day here.

Drowsy from the sun’s light and warmth, I lay down on my back, the tall grass brushing against my legs and arms. I watched the shifting clouds roll around in the sky. It did not take long for the

sweet-smelling meadow breeze to lull me to sleep.

I opened my eyes and a giant raindrop smacked me on the forehead. I sat up, very confused. How much time had passed? The once clear blue sky had turned to a dark green. The rain turned to ice, hitting the ground at every speed and every direction. I was scared. The warm summer breeze had transformed into a cold, harsh wind that sounded like a train engine. But I knew that there were no tracks anywhere near here.

I realized that these frightening signs could only have one meaning, so I stood up and ran and ran for as long and far as I could, looking for shelter. I came to a very steep hill, but kept running, the cold wind hitting me in the face as I climbed. At the top, I looked down and saw what appeared to be a large gully. I started down, but then I tripped over a rock on the ground and my walk down the hill turned into a roll. I finally got to the bottom, taking shelter in the gully, but my knees were scraped and I had a pounding headache. I rolled up into a tight ball and cupped my hands over my head, hoping to survive the coming tornado.

“Why did I come to the country?” I wondered, wishing for the safety of my city home.

I waited in the gully for the hit. Here I was, a fourteen yearold girl weeping like a three year-old. My parents didn’t even know where I was. Then, I felt a sudden rush of relief. (Of course it was very small. After all, I was about to get hit by a tornado.) Thank god I hadn’t brought my little sister, Phoebe. She was only seven. The horrifying winds would have swooped her up in a second.

I sat there, awaiting my fate. After what seemed like an hour, (though it was probably only about five minutes.) I realized that my decision was stupid. Waiting to be killed by a tornado. That

was my plan? What was I thinking? I had to get out of this gully and at least try to live.

I climbed out of the deep, ditch-like hole. I was wet, muddy, and my knees were covered with blood. I looked around. It was chaos. There was debris flying everywhere. It was surprising to see that the wonderful flower field was now nothing. Just then, I heard the train engine wind again and I turned around, scared for my life.

Then, I saw something big, round, and dark hurdling towards me. I felt a big thump. The next thing I knew the whole world around me was black.

I opened my eyes and I was lying on the couch. My family was huddled around me.

“What happened?” I said.

“Oh Margaret, honey. We were so worried. You weren’t home when you said you would be. When we heard that roaring wind, your father and I went out searching for you,” my mom said.

“We were scared because you weren’t here. We thought the big storm ate you up,” Phoebe told me.

“We found you in a big ditch at the bottom of a hill. You were out cold. You were scraped up pretty bad, too. You had bloody knees and a giant bump on your head,” exclaimed my dad.

I put my hand on my head, rubbing the huge, egg-shaped bump. I went to feel my bloody knees, but my parents must have seen them before I woke up, because they were covered in BandAids.

“What about the tornado?” I said, still confused. That’s when I realized we were in the basement.

“It blew over about an hour ago. Luckily, nothing was destroyed,” said my grandma, Rosie. She seemed not to be very worried about the tornado that had just passed by, so I knew she must

have experienced a worse one before.

I slumped down on the moist basement couch. I was exhausted. I put the ice pack on my head and closed my eyes. Before I fell asleep, I murmured one little sentence.

“I don’t like the country.”

13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT MR. FOX

by Caroline Marchl

I A kid’s movie, just pointless animation, with poop and fart jokes, perfect for a kid’s undeveloped mind.

II This is not a kid’s movie, there is smoking and ideas that aren’t fit, for a child’s undeveloped mind.

Not to mention the soundtrack for people who are scraping their middle age mark.

III It sits on the shelf, dark out now.

There is nothing to do, Mr. Fox awaits, its yellow box shining against, all the boring black ones.

IV Mr. Fox is like the nature channel, it’s an inside look into the daily lives of animals.

In all seriousness it could be perfectly true.

V You open the box, you wish to find the DVD, but all that’s left, is that place to put that donut shaped disc.

Sometimes Mr. Fox is tedious.

VI

Mr. Fox is a checking point for sanity, if you can fully understand it, the words, the music, the story, the reasons, the references, the Wes Anderson way, then it seems that you’ll be just ok enough to live.

VII Mr. Fox is like a lullaby, soft voices and soft sounds.

Gently making you eyes close, until all you hear are the faint ramblings of fake foxes VIII I wonder why people prefer animations with lovable characters, and a predictable plot.

It’s no fun that way.

I wonder why people prefer animations that have jokes meant for immature 10 year old boys.

IX I don’t see it anymore, being sold.

I don’t see it in the movie section of Target, or in the unorganized part of Rite Aid, where the horror films are mixed in with kid movies, and where you can most likely find a crumpled bag of Doritos in the mix.

X Through every movie based on book, you’ll find that every book will surpass the movie.

Well, not this one.

XI Brown eyes, orange fur, brown coat with patches on the elbows, a sickly shabby rundown clip on tail, in the place of where it used to be fully attached.

Looks nothing like George Clooney.

XII Cradled in a blanket, never coming out.

I’m watching how their fur moves.

Shhhh!

I’m picking out what actors these are.

XIII The funny thing about Mr. Fox is, I don’t know if he’ll ever wisen up.

I have no idea if it’s happy or sad.

There is no way of knowing, I don’t think I’ll ever figure it out.

WHERE I’M FROM

by Caroline Marchl

I am from the blaring TV in the next room, turned up to volume 45 for the guy whose ears haven’t been right in a while.

I am from strumming from my brother’s room, from silent strokes to screeching pedals that make you cringe.

I am from the kitchen, every plate, cup, and fork.

Clambering about, sounding as if something would break, and I’d hear that cry of distress coming from the next room over.

I am from fur strewn across the carpet, from cat vomit retched onto the floor I am from cluttered places, from lost items, magical disappearing homework, and scrambles to find them.

I’m from juicy meat doubled with mashed potatoes, green beans on the side.

From eggs benedict to melted apricot brie.

I’m from banana pepper pizza on nights when we’re all exhausted, when we fall asleep just thinking about moving.

I don’t like thinking about the past, it makes me squirm to recall it.

Thinking what might happen in the future makes me feel like thousands of butterflies are in my stomach, and that I might some day float away.

I am from memories, every action, image, and mark.

ADVENTURES THROUGH THE SKY

by Lizzie Petrus

Inspired by Carnegie International Joseph Yoakum’s drawings.

When young, an eye for detail I had; rivers, houses, and blue skies above.

Tip of the purple pastel, highlighting far off sunsets.

A blue felt tip marker, adding dark aqua squiggles and lines to the river laying in between pointy green shrubs.

Dark yellows and tans and reds that birthed the canyons.

On the bottom, under the sand I found a seashell that I put to my ear.

But I did not hear an ocean breeze flowing.

I heard directions, channeling my soul; explaining how to draw an exquisite image.

I listened, then I drew beautiful, crystal blue wavy waters and high mountains, covered in snow.

In the very middle of my picture were those large gray stone arches, and secret wooden doors.

In that very piece were those blue river waters, and small white sail ships.

It is hard for some to understand, but I was sucked through my latest drawing.

I was transported through, into another of my master pieces,

next to a wisdom tree filled up wit knowledge, and juicy fresh ripe fruits, that could be laid in an assortment, on your dinning room table.

And now, future inventions, museumswhich my artwork is in. someone is right in front of my artwork, breathing on my adventures.

I once scraped pastels across white canvases, those whirls and whisks of softly colored on strokes of vibrant color leading to such beautiful and magical places.

Thought I’d keep them forever, pass each picture down to my sons.

I could teach them too, my secrets through special art lessons.

But that’s changed now.

Millions of dollars are being traded all for these paintings.

With tat rich fortune, I could have had more.

No, not more, enough food, education, a steady householda place for my adventures to settle down for the evening.

I hope someone understands what they really are, really mean.

They’re not a page ripped out of a coloring book.

They’re artwork, and they are, my adventures.

WHERE I’M FROM

by Eric Rohrer

Inspired by George Ella Lyon’s Where I’m From I am from sidewalks, my own road scaled to my size, my own canvas, rainbow chalk in my hand, my own footrace track, leading to the library, and toy store, and ice cream shops.

I am from begging, And only receiving “When you’re older” “Not right now” or “Ask your father” I am from five dollars a leaf bag, And “Shovel the walk!”

I am from ditches, holes in my backyard, patchy grass and a broken swing set.

I am from climbing trees in shorts, The pain of the bark against my legs, But not caring, only seeking to reach the top, Disregarding the long, white scratches running up my leg.

Magnificent trees reaching up, Grasping up to the the cloudy Pittsburgh weather.

I am from that tree, the poor tree When it succumbed to the massive weight, The weight of snow piling up on it, It’s arms shooting sideways in a futile attempt to right itself.

I am from that moment, My all-natural jungle gym swept onto its side.

I am from curry, Asian spices and scents, delicacies my dad made special for us.

I am from pumpkin waffles, their smell the best alarm clock, me stumbling down the stairs to breakfast.

I am from my house, full of my family, food, and fun.

These are what raised me, these wonders, these moments, these shaped my life into what it is today.

POETRY IS LIKE...

by Eric Rohrer

Inspired by Al Mahmud’s Poetry Is Like This Poetry is a familiar thing, a ham and cheese sandwich waiting for you every day, made by my mother, awaiting me from school.

The birds I watched every day in the backyard, the squirrels scampering up the trees playing chase.

Trying to be “cool” with my older siblings in the basement.

Playing in the yard with a soccer ball, Doing chores for money, only to waste at the toy store down the street.

Poetry is a mystical thing, like the leaves falling from the trees.

Strolling in the deep, leafy woods with my family, not talking, just enjoying the gorgeous afternoon.

Striding down my street, turning left and passing all the bright, inviting stores, but not going in.

Sitting on the porch and imagining fantastic creatures in the back yard, instead of the squirrels and birds.

Poetry is routine,

going to school every day, soccer or basketball practice six days a week.

Sunday school, rehearsal every day.

Our life is in order, everything in place.

Clocks and calendars control us, words, stanzas, requirements. spelling, lines, metaphors, similes, figures of speech, rhythm.

Poetry really isn’t different at all, from each day, each year and our lives.

WHERE I’M FROM

by Emiliano Siegert-Wilkinson

I am from the first taste of eggnog in the New Year, from hot dogs and onions with juice flowing like waterfalls on the plate.

I’m from beaches to snowballs (The weirdest weather change felt by me).

I’m from the oak tree whose thousand leaves sway in the wind and whose trunk stands firm as a mother bear protecting her cub.

I’m from Spanish tortillas and 3d glasses, From Europeans and the North and South Americas.

I’m from spelling bees, brain battles, and the cacophony of minds.

But I can’t go Sunday, mum has work.

I’m from bookworms, sleep-ins waking up at eight.

On Saturday.

I’m from some different ones that’s all I’ve got to say I’m from Keith, from sea breeze and cold winds.

I’m from corn on the cob and hamburgers, from a man sprinting away from icy waters in the Himalayas.

I stare at the ceiling “Remember this, remember that.”

I’m from remembering.

Places to go, places to stay.

“Hmm” I can’t wait.

WORDLESS PURSUIT

by Emiliano Siegert-Wilkinson

My brother wields his vertebrae back scratcher.

He bought it from a gator’s back. Wow. It’s H2O rolling on and off the surface of this Earth, it swallows up the thing that makes fortresses that get washed away like a stain on my shirt.

Swimming Liquid surrounds me, regulars at this place leaping through the sky, this is their turf.

All the people laughing, moving, around ‘round me.

Just let the joy flow like the H2O. In the air A scent lies there.

Snickers™, Some layers forgotten.

No chocolate, Nor mousse,

just one little bite of Snickers™.

Bumming out in the heat.

But how about that itch your the back, I got something for that.

It’s pretty sweet, Just like today.

NATURE

by Cassandra Skweres I came out of the shadow of the tall prickly trees and saw the marvelous field in front of me. I had seen pictures of fields with wildflowers before, but I never walked in one. I entered the meadow and strolled slowly through the blue and white flowers, their soft yet gentle petals touching my rough hands. I breathed in the fresh air and heard the sounds of buzzing bees and the wind breezing through the small cuts of grass all around me.

“Why have I never been to the country before?” I wondered, as I walked deep into the never ending field of bursting brightness.

I have always lived in New York, a big city that had been my home since I was born. When my parents died, Aunt May, my mom’s sister, took me in and had been watching me ever since. When she heard that my grand pap was very ill, she had to come back to her country home and visit him. So that is why I was here, in the country, wondering how come I never wanted to leave New York when I had the chance before.

Drowsy from the hot sun and its warmth, I found a spot to lie down upon, covered all around with flowers. The cool breeze and heat soon lulled me into a sweet slumber of time.

I dreamed of flying in the baby blue sky and yet to see something? I stopped and looked. I didn’t have too much time because it was coming at my direction, three hundred mph. It through something sharp at me and missed. Then it through something huge and it flicked me like a target. All of a sudden I hit the ground and everything was pitch black. Was I dreaming?

Drops of hot water hitting my head awakened me. I sat up confused. How much time had past? The sky had turned from a

lovable blue to a mysterious and dangerous black and gold color.

The wind sounded like a train engine, though there were no tracks nearby – to what I know of.

Realizing these signs only meant something bad was going to happen, I went to the bottom of a hill and lay in a gully, hoping that I would dramatically survive the bursting tornado that came in my direction.

“Why did I come out to this absurd country?” I wondered, wishing for the hope and safety of my wonderful city home.

ONE HOUR LATER “I am a 14-year-old girl who never came out to the country, for one, I never expected to have a tornado pop up at me and make me hide in a gully for an hour or so. My Aunt May says that I can stand anything, but I don’t think she meant a tornado, in that matter.

The one thing that she did to make me calm was her rushing her smooth hands into my red, knotty hair. But she isn’t here so it is making me more and more nervous and frightened,” I thought.

All of a sudden, my Aunt May comes out of the prickly trees and yells, “Dorothy, Dorothy. Where are you Dorothy?”

“Aunt May, I’m right here, in the ditch.”

I was so glad when I saw her. I felt like I was going to light up. I ran into Aunt May’s arms like a lightning bolt. “Aunt May!” “Darling”, she said, her face lights up at the sight of me. I had known Aunt May too well that she had never, and I mean NEVER lit her face up before. Half of the time she didn’t even care about me or what I do every time I walk out of the house – even if it was from going to the market to buy bread - to stealing money from the town bank. It is unusual, so I am curious in figuring out the mystery and finding a way out of this storm. “ Oh, darling. Once that tornado hit I have been crazy looking for you. Are you all right?” she said.

“ Yes, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?” “ Well, the storm dear, the storm. Come on, let’s get you in the cellar before the storm hits bad.”

By the time we got to the house the tornado was right up our backs. It was as if it was trying to beat us in a race that ended at the cellar. I kept on screaming, “Aunt May run. Just run, run, and run. Don’t look back.” Aunt May and I were running for our lives, straight to the door. We beat the tornado but that was the least of our worries. We ran down the stairs like lightning. We fell a couple of times but we got downstairs in no worry. All of a sudden nothing hit the house. Aunt May and I were amazed. It was as if the nature stopped itself before it reached. The Lord gave us hope and for me, I was eternally grateful.

13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A CAT

by Cassandra Skweres

Inspired by Wallace Steven I The long thin grass lay, covering the earth galore, only showing one thing, A cat.

II He gestures to his friendly birds, a lovely hello, and sorrow goodbye.

III He jumps around with excitement, never wanting to go.

He is a very small kangaroo.

IV A puppy and a dog are one.

A puppy and a dog and a cat are one.

V You see a shining light, hid by the dark, feeling sad, never wanting to come back again.

He sees it as a sign, greater things are coming.

VI He becomes hungry, with wiggly worms wobbling around his precious petite paws.

VII He lay on my bed, on my pink, fuzzy bed (in which he adores dearly).

He is as weird as a clown, why honk the horn when nonsense is intolerable?

VIII He looks at me, with eyes so bold as the sea, with fur as bright as a sunset and sunrise.

Which beauty is more, which is less?

IX Daytime comes back to him, stripping his eyes from mine,

telling him to go outside, and have an adventure.

X He rolls in the grass, flying free.

Like a bird, catching the wind with his wings.

Never did I see such a thing, to fly and never let go.

XI His bright orange fur brightens the sky, swaying back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

The gray sky opens to his wonderful spirit, never going back to gray, but blue.

XII Children come to play along, petting him galore.

He purrs and purrs and purrs, to the lovely sound of affection, and attention.

XIII He sleeps with me at night, at the bottom of my bed.

Sweet and sound, for him is he to fall asleep.

PERFECTION GONE WRONG

by Jacob Voelker

As I left the shadow of the trees, I noticed the field for the first time. I had seen these kinds of places before, but only in mere photographs. Never before had I experienced walking through them.

The meadow lured me in, as I walked through the variety of different flowers, from roses to daisies, and even laurels. The petals sifted through my delicate fingers. The air was so pure, I realized, taking a breath.

“Why have I not been to the country before?” I asked myself as I wandered deeper and deeper into the mystical field. I knew exactly why. I was a city girl, raised by a city mom and a city dad in the big city of New York. I never got along with my parents. They hated me, or so I thought. And I had a right to think that. They never say hi to me. We get into arguments all the time. I hated them too.

But I had a grandmother who lived in Kansas. She loved me.

Well, at least, the last time I saw her, when I was seven. My parents never visited her. Too far away, they explained to me. But when I turned eighteen, I knew I had to pay her a visit long overdue. I saved up the money to buy all the expenses, which include the train tickets and food. Then, one night when my parents were really busy one evening, I snuck out. And that is what landed me here, in this beautiful field far away from any city.

Drowsy from the sun’s warmth, I found a spot to lie down upon. The breeze and heat soon took over and lured me into a deep slumber.

I woke to the sound of raindrops pelting against my shivering body, unaware of the time. How long had I been resting? The once baby-blue sky turned a sickish green, rain shattered like ice as

it made contact with the cold, hard, unforgiving ground. The wind imitated a freight train, although there was not a set of tracks in sight. Realizing these signs could only mean one thing, I raced to the bottom of the hill and dove into a ditch, preparing myself for the tornado that was sure to come.

As I crouched down, my adrenaline pumping, I regretted my decision to come to the country.

I’m really homesick now, I thought. Great, just great. There’s a tornado that’s sure to strike, and I’m stuck in a stupid ditch. How did I get myself into this mess?

I could feel a strong wind coming, blowing my sleek blond hair back. Although the tornado was yet to be seen, I could feel an evil presence in the air. I thought about my parents. Did they know about the tornado? Why didn’t I just listen to them and not sneak away. I remember the song my mother always used to sing to me before I went to bed.

“Go to sleep, my little Melody, Go to sleep, as one. Because when you wake up, you’ll be greeted by the morning sun!” That was before she hated me.

I never knew I could miss someone so much until I wonder about my mother, even though I never wanted her around. As I thought about her, I saw something in the corner of my eye. I hesitated to look. I’m scared of what I’ll see, but I force myself to turn my head just enough to see the mile high tornado coming toward me at a pace that would make cheetahs lose their breath. I considered running for it for about a millisecond, but then shoved away. If I ran, it’ll sweep me up for sure. At the ditch, I’ll at least have the safety of the ditch over my head. I decided to stay in the ditch.

So I closed my eyes, balled up, and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited some more. But nothing happened. The sound faded away. I felt almost bored, which was saying a lot, consider-

ing what should’ve happened to me. I got up slowly, and made my way to the top of the ditch. When I saw the field, I gasped. It was destroyed. Everything gone.

There was a big path, right down the field, of torn-up dirt.

But when I realized what had happened, I ran back to Grandma’s house. What I saw was extraordinary. The tornado had been in a path headed directly for the ditch I’d been laying in. It would have been a certain death for me. But, not as much as 50 feet away, the tornado took a full 90 degree turn. For a second I was relieved. The tornado had missed me. I survived! But when I realized what direction the tornado was going in, I wished that it had hit me. I bolted all the way to the house, following the path of the tornado, which, to my suspicions, never changed its coarse again. When I got to the house, I took one look and collapsed to my knees, sobbing. “No,” I said. “No, no, NO!” The house was destroyed. That old frail, petite little cabin of Grandma’s couldn’t withstand a light rain, much less a tornado. My dear old grandmother, who would never hurt a fly, was now buried under the thousands of pounds of wood that made up her log cabin. And I cried. And cried. And cried. I felt powerless. I couldn’t save my grandmother from a tragic death. When I got home to the city, I had no clue what do. How could I face my mother after I snuck away? How could I tell her what happened?

I thought of different ways to tell my mom about the tornado and running away and what I’d done. But how could I? I walked through the front door, and was getting strangled.

Wait, no, that was a hug. When I was released from the tight grasp, my mom look at me sympathetically. And I felt better. Way better.

So I guess something good came out of this after all.