R2!
R2! The River Rat
A student literary journal produced in the Writing and Humanities department at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design fall 2024, vol. 1, no. 1
Masthead
Editor-in-Chief: CJ Scruton
Managing Editor: Ashley Luchinski
Guest Editor: Antonio Vargas-Nieto
Readers:
Emily Blaser
Cheryl Coan
Anna Hillary
Donna Tanzer
Isabelle Von Sturm-Day
Layout and design: CJ Scruton
Cover art: Evan Mar, “untitled”
Nonfiction
anonymous Julia Flock
Fiction
K.L.
Prome Ferrebus
Samantha Westfall
Mason Sevilla
Visual Art
Sophia Lefew
Addison Schilling
Ella K Parris
Emily York
The Corner of Erie and Menomonee
In the Shell of a Life Passed
you are warmly invited to;
Coquivacoa .
The Vulture .
Like Diamonds at Night
Hymn of Hecate
Generations of Snoopy
Toffi and Bear-Bear in Dreamland
Just as Free
Poetry
Sylvia Munoz
Cassie Rapp
Erin Woods
Delaney Regan
Grace Umek
Amber Antonich
Walt Reid Polaris
Jess Leaf Lensmire
Dinner Plans
The Beast Burrows
Time Is a Creek
Somnambulatory
Czarne Porzeczki (Blackcurrant)
bird
you are warmly invited to;
K.L.
Let the cockroaches live.
The skies are blood-red-bone-white-bark-brown painted things. The tundras dance on fire. The tropics freeze their ferny leaves. To the west, earthquakes shake skyscrapers like dice in a game of Roulette. In the East, tsunamis run through all the alleys and parkways police-men in their large heavy suits and big sturdy hats chased the Street-Rat Children out of, as joyful as they could have been.
Let the cockroaches live.
Countries are gone. New ones declare themselves in the evening. They wake up dead by dawn. No one can be trusted. No one can get caught.
Let the cockroaches live.
Rats carry diseases. Cats carry rats in their big sharp knifefilled jaws, quivering whiskers brushing legs and walls and finally the cold, hard ground as they gasp for air because the rats clawed up their lungs on the way down.
Deer eat meat. They gnaw bones down to dust so fine it looks like table-salt.
Deer don’t carry diseases.
Let the cockroaches live.
I’m throwing a party. In this new place, where the sky is painted and countries don’t exist, and all those businessmen in their big stiff suits and sturdy hats have scuttled into their little holes in the ground because there’s a meteor coming, and it’s coming for us.
I’m throwing a party. It’ll be grand, because we’ll find a big house in the Valley Nation, (partly cloudy dead by evening) where there used to be a City of Angels, and we’ll trash it. Hang toilet paper from the ceiling and make faces at it like it’s Fine Art.
Or we’ll find a boat big enough, and we’ll sail it to sea and all forget to bring food and fish for our dinners. The fish are all too-big-too-bubbly-too-chemical, but enough of us have eaten them before. We shouldn’t get too many deaths.
Or we’ll run into the woods.
The woods are still there, for some reason. Ancient woods, with trees older than us. How funny. We never knew how things were older than us, back when.
Those trees are gonna live through this. They’re gonna live through everything. They’re gonna see real, unpainted skies again, you mark me.
But I’m having a party. We’ll have what food people bring, and it’ll be grand, because no-one will bring any food, and I’ll have the forever-aged scotch my dad got me on my twenty-first, back when, because what could be a better time for forever-aged scotch than twenty minutes before The Rebirth?
And I’ll share the forever-scotch, because I don’t drink that type. I never saw the point in escaping like that. And every-one around will get funny and warm and silly, and we’ll kick at the ground and curse the fat-pockets who burrowed away down there like bugs in their little shells, their exoskeletons far-far-far below grass and mud and painted skies.
Let the cockroaches live.
I’m inviting everyone. The people who started a resistance in What Was Formerly Known As New York, that funny little troupe from No Longer Georgia, Them, Him, Her, It. Everyone who knows what-for can come.
Even the faerie-people, who might be real faeries but also might just be pretty. There were a lot of pretty people, Back When. There still are, Now.
If they are faerie-people, they’ll outlive this, too. They’ll watch the cockroaches come out of their burrows, set about making A New World, one where technology is paramount and everyone has little oxygen tanks they carry around in their purses and pockets so they don’t fall because of the smog.
And the faerie-girl who knows me best will live, too. The one with the dark skin and the frizzy-flyaway-fluid hair, who let me whisper candy-words in her ear and gave me her name when I asked. She’ll watch. She’ll be livid, she told me.
But I said to her, I said she should forgive them.
Let the cockroaches live.
I’m hosting a party. An hour before the Rebirth, and every-one’s gonna come.
We haven’t got an RSVP, or anything, but I know they will. I can feel it. In my chemical bones. We’ll do everything I said we would, and then we’ll all sit on a river bank with our empty bottles and funny-silly-sleepy hearts and watch the big dark, fiery secondsun get closer and closer. The world will turn, molten and gold. We’ll whoop and holler and cry and rage at it, at the insects who crawled into their burrows and left us to get swatted at, I know it. That man from What Was Formerly Known As New York, who led the chant
to give every-one a place in the bunker-carapieces, or no-one, he’ll make another speech. A red speech. A blood speech.
I know it.
And a minute or so before the Second Sun, before Rebirth, I’ll hold up my hands for quiet, because I’m hosting, and the host always says something.
My something will be goodbye.
Everyone will be quiet, and sad, but I know that, and I’ll tell them to grab someone, anyone. Tell them something you wanna say. Do something you wanna do with them. Anything good, because them cockroaches down there in their bunker-shell-exoskeletons don’t know good, and that means that this New World, whatever it is, won’t have it.
Let the cockroaches live, I’ll say, because we don’t need to.
And that’ll be the end of my something, and I’ll grab the faerie-girl, who I wish so desperately I’d met different, and I’ll tell her I’ve got nothing to pay her but a kiss, but will she please still keep my memory?
And I’ll kiss that faerie-girl right as the Second Sun burns me up, because there ain’t no better way to go out than with a bang. So yeah. Them cockroaches down in their shells, I say they can have Earth. They can survive. They won’t have gone to my party.
Will you?
DINNER PLANS
Sylvia Munoz when i’m done with my grief i will eat it at a dining table with 30 of my closest acolytes, sharing forks of silver-plated lead pouring red red wine in each other’s mouths staining down our fronts swapping sweetened words on the pour soul laid out on the table honeycomb from hand to hand i will tear chunks fibrous free and press them desperately to the lips of anyone i’ve left barely even tasting in my fervor to share until all’s bones or perhaps, in a locked room lit by no flame i will gorge myself on it gasping, choking guarding careful back to the door so no one can walk in and see
me know the lengths of my disgusting vulnerability scrubbing the proof off the floor, the fumes will burn my eyes and tint my lungs nothing will remain, no one will know my grief will be mine and mine alone until the moment it is gone when my grief has outlived its convenience seeps under doors into rooms of polite conversation staining their shoes as they avert eyes of its terrible redness i will eat it
HYMN OF HECATE
Sophia Lefew
THE BEAST BURROWS
Cassie Rapp
A Beast burrows deep within the warm, wet, and damp soil. An attempt to find a nest, a place where it is safe, it is protected. The soil isn’t made for such things, so it collapses, it cannot retain its shape. The Beast scuttles out, out from the failure of a hovel. Its sickly reddish yellow skin provides no protection, it’s fleshy, yet soft. A softness which will remain unknown, all it wishes for is the guaranteed love and safety. And yet you see it and kick it with all your strength.
TIME IS A CREEK
Erin Woods
Piled high with rocks and twigs And when you stick your feet in You still feel the current rush past Even when blocked.
I lay down in that creek Hoping that maybe My body will block the current Even for a moment But it never does.
GENERATIONS OF SNOOPY
Addison Schilling
SOMNAMBULATORY
Delaney Regan
I am somnambulatory not that I am asleep ¹ but I’m at rest with her. The connection to sleepwalking १ aptly describes the physical intimacy of being here.
To sleep with another is a vulnerability incomparable. At rest here my soul is bared, I am unguarded, As I wander.
Laying beside me and on me and within me
She accompanies me while I dream २ The pillow below my head And the blanket that engulfs me
Even on the tallest hill I am nestled here
Surrounded by stone lace and mossy ribbons ३ As I lay with her we explore each other
As my feet and body gets to know the brute surfaces of her curves I walk the rounds ²
Repetitive steps spiraling ৩ My mind and hers intertwine
I have loved before ४
Rocky terrain and unique plants I’m reminded of my childhood companion ³ Long left behind in all but my dreams
Disconnection as my body operates allows for Intersection land and lady intertwine ৫
New familiarity grows like vines of ivy ⁴
From my childhood sleep when she gave me ୫
Dreams of cascading hills and cliffs
Small white houses with colorful doors
Whipping wind in my hair
To now as I grow into a mature adult
Complexities of independence ⁵
Afforestation of personality ⁶
The scars that mark our being
The crashing of her rocky shores and The rolling of her rocky hills lulls me.
Even as I walk with scrapes, burns and bruises
I am Somnambulatory. ୩
HEAD NOTES
¹ Adj. Carried out while sleepwalking or going through the motions. Rebecca Solnit, The Book Of Migrations
१ There is a state of meditation that sets in when walking, while it is not sleepwalking there is a removal of consciousness not negative in nature. Often I find myself in the front of groups, not always guiding, but transiting to this integrated mind space and walking not leading. Just walking.
२ Since being with her there has been a frenetic energy that I can’t get away from. When I go outside leaving her alone, when I sleep I just awaken the energy and connection even stronger.
३ When the stone walls perfectly follows the curve of the hill it gives the effect of lace trim, especially right when the sun sets, silhouettes of stone and history appear.
² “... making ‘rounds’. These are usually two sets of five each, —the first on the causeway round the well, and the second on a wider circle ‘sunwise’. The devotees take off their shoes,as stockings, and hats, and start for the well by repeating the prescribed prayers.”T.J. Westropp, Folklore of Clare, pg. 55
৩ On Inis mor we came across a round that was marked by small stones. Walking the looping spiral like so many before cast us all into a mental hypnosis. We couldn’t break the ritual steps but surely we didn’t understand them.
४ My childhood classroom was the Forty Acre Rock. Walking that landscape set within me a curiosity and established my permanent connection to the earth we are on. It’s been years since I’ve been back, only the haze of my memories of the love I once held remains. Your first love establishes every single one that follows. The flowers and plants there, grow in the little pockets of water set aside by the rock, they are barely connected. People were a lot crueler to this first love of mine, leaving tire marks and names upon her skin. Her stones and
flowers are reflected in my memory here, why can’t people care for pretty things. It’s like it’s a spent basic resource that everybody must clamor over for, lest it runs out, yet those don’t care for it and ensure it doesn’t.
³ Forty Acre Rock Nature Preserve is a similar landscape of stone and protected flora. The 2,267 acres of biodiversity only holds an ironic 14 acres of dimpled granite that cup handfuls of water for her protected microhabitats. Illegal graffiti and four wheelers has left a substantial amount of damage, it leaves her forgotten for her own good from ecotourism campaigns. SC Picture Project, https://www.scpictureproject.org/lancaster-county/forty-acre-rock.html
৫ A lot of my writing while being here has been focus on the separation of my being, her, and the land. I think though that more suitably though those divisions are not important, getting to know her spirit lets me learn more about myself. As I learn and grow here every one of my interactions with her change, informed by every intertwining of thought that preceded it. There’s no use untangling the two of us.
⁴ The vines of Ivy covering the ground in Ireland is more evidence of English interference in the landscape. Yet they find themselves at home here. Roots in between every nook and cranny, so intertwined with the ruins and native trees. Contrary to popular belief, Ivy does not suck nutrients from whatever it covers, the harm it does is purely in its presence and root system, grabbing on to something not structurally sound results in both falling. Ireland’s Wildlife, https://irelandswildlife.com/ivy-hedera-helix/
୫ I had a recurring dream in my childhood of me on the top of a cliff overlooking the crashing sea, white houses lined the fields of vision. Matching the curves and concaves of the equally white sea foam. Nature being so foreboding that it’s comforting would settle into my bones. Perhaps I could be just as powerful, terrifying, vaste, welcoming, and beautiful.
⁵ Ireland’s fight for independence has been messy, from religion and England, so many complexities. I can’t help but relate that to the new adultness I’m still experiencing. How do you carve away autonomy for the first time? I, like Ireland, often had to fight the intense drive to return to some semblance of dependency. It’s hard to war within yourself for something that can be so much harder but it’s a necessity to exist and so worth fighting for. Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/Irish-War-of-Independence
⁶ “Afforestation, the creation of new forests, is still at the top of Ireland’s environmental agenda… Afforestation is now subject to strict environmental regulations due to biodiversity considerations. Planting the wrong species of trees or cultivating the wrong area would endanger the balance of the ecosystem, which would in turn lead to the extinction of more vulnerable species and the multiplication of others.” Oh how that pertains to my current self structuring my personality and constant striving to be my most authentic self. Marjan Shokouhi, https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesirlandaises.6812
୩ I get lost in myself often. I become nonhuman in the sense that my being goes so far inside my own head that I am removed from my humanity of complex thought. It typically takes days to get her back so catching her before she wanders off path is the only way to prevent that. Sometimes it is inescapable as she gets so exhausted she just can’t stand at the forefront. She swears it’ll just take a second to get her breath back then she’ll catch back up. Recently I’ve put so much effort into not defaulting to that. I just want to experience life. Here though it’s been different. She still wants to wander and follow my mental will of the wisps but instead it’s like my body takes a step forward. Rather than a forced default there’s a coexistence of my dual consciousness that has taken shape here. Both are able to operate in the small space of my head each taking a step back when it’s necessary for the alternate expert to take charge. Letting them both rest and recharge.
TOFFI AND BEAR-BEAR IN DREAMLAND
Ella K Parris
COQUIVACOA
Prome Ferrebus
Honorable Mention for the River Rat Prize in Prose
There is a town at the edge of a great lake.
A boy tells his teacher to slow his pace as they walk side by side. He is barefoot but does not feel the ground beneath him. He can only think of the scorching heat and the heavy stench of rain that has not dropped for weeks. The back of his neck is drenched in sweat and he swats at a bug near his right knee.
His teacher tells him he ought to be faster if he does not want to be left behind. The old man wears a rag atop his head that shields the sun only partly. His shoes are made of leather and they fall apart as he walks, even though his wife had them fixed three times. He opens the book that was lodged beneath his arm and begins to read out loud.
The lake is vast and its mouth opens and swallows the salty waters of the Atlantic.
It is rich in the way the masters of the house wish it to be. They take their coffee with two sugars in the early hours of the morning, when the dogs in the backyard have just awoken and they do not remember the whippings yet. It is not rich enough to feed the dogs.
The boy and his teacher sit on a ledge that looks out into the rhythm of the waves. The air is lighter here. It holds the scent of salt and
summer heat without the weight of impending rain. The boy scrapes the sidewalk idly with his nails, which have grown long.
“How many are there, masters?”
“There are many masters in this world. You and me, we are not like them.”
The boy hums. He looks into the lake and wants to launch himself into its waters. He wants to let it swallow him whole. His mother used to speak of this lake in its lovelier days, before the men with broken accents settled on their coasts.
When the master of the house is done feasting he will throw his dogs a bone. The animal does not see that it holds no meat. He is happy that his master gives him anything at all.
The waters of the lake will darken. They will be filled with spilled riches more precious than gold. Riches that move the world.
“What are they like?”
His teacher does not look at him. His eyes are pointed at the line between the water and the sky. He scratches the beginnings of his beard and taps the cover of the book in a steady beat.
“They are tall. They are sullen.”
The boy recognizes the rhythm. It has been played for him many times before.
“They sing songs of love. They sing songs of freedom. Their lord is our lord, and they preach in his name, but they do not preach in our tongue.”
He stays silent for a long time. The wind picks up strength. He wants to taste the salt. He thinks that maybe the water will have it, as it has so much.
“I hate their tongue.”
Slowly, and surely, all animals descend to madness. It is in their nature, it is in their blood. The dogs tear into each other. They do not taste, they only seek flesh.
The master will not stand it. He will not allow this to happen in his own backyard. He shoots them both, and returns to his porch with his cigarette still lit.
The lake should have burned them when they first arrived. It should have used the strength of its steady lightning to charge its waters. It should have swallowed the masters as they leaned further to drink from its riches.
THE VULTURE
Samantha Westfall
The world around me is still as I stand and look out at the dry rocky landscape ahead. It is a beautiful day as far as temperature goes, but the world seems so lifeless and dead. In a way, I guess it is. A pandemic had swept across the world leaving nothing but chaos and death in its wake. But that was months ago. Now all that’s left is the deadly spores and stench of decay in the air.
I turn my head to look at Bronco, my dun gelding. He stands with his neck level with his back and completely at ease beside me. My hand comes up and strokes his neck. The viral spores only affect humans, so at least I’d never have to fear losing my companion to it. I let out a sigh, my breath sounding muffled beneath the tactical respirator mask I’m wearing. Bronco shifts his weight as I place my hands on his back. I take hold of a handful of his mane at his wither and swing my leg up and over his back, then give a small click of my mouth to start him moving forward. The rough terrain could be challenging or even hazardous for someone unfamiliar with it, but Bronco and I grew up on this land. He knows exactly where to step and can move swiftly across the rocky ground.
We make our way towards the nearby town which is a fair amount of minutes away. Once there, I slow his pace as we meander through the town. It’s completely silent aside from the crinkling of papers in the breeze and the scrounging around of various animals. I dismount Bronco and walk into an abandoned convenience store knowing he won’t wander far. The bell over the glass doors of the entrance jingles as I push it open. My stomach churns as I can still smell the souring meat and produce through the mask. Shit. It gets worse every time, I think quietly to myself as I walk the isles. But I’m ripped out of my thoughts as a sound draws my attention elsewhere. My head snaps up and I look from side to side. I get a glimpse of a form moving away from my view. The handmade hunting knife I keep on my hip finds itself in my right hand as I move cautiously in the direction of the movement. Turning down the pharmaceutical aisle I’m brought to an abrupt stop. There he is. The young man is crouched, facing the shelves with his arms resting on his knees, but his head is turned toward me. His deep gray eyes peer up at me intensely, piercing right through my soul. He almost reminds me of a dog with his hackles up... no... not a dog... more like... a vulture. He has a bandana tied around the base of his head, covering his mouth and nose. His hair is long and unkempt, which adds to the wild look about him. For what feels like an eternity we just stare at each other in utter silence. Neither of us speak.
LIKE DIAMONDS AT NIGHT Mason Sevilla
THE CORNER OF ERIE AND MENOMONEE
anonymous
I went through a phase. It was promiscuous and exciting, but lacking in romance, and satisfaction. I was lonely and insecure, so naturally I turned to men for validation. I wish I could take credit for the conclusion of this phase, but it happened by dumb luck. I should say, that the beginning of the conclusion happened by dumb luck, the rest has been a lot of work.
While my mind is rarely occupied with specific memories or faces from the “phase,” one night remains prominent. The other character in this story was memorable, in all the wrong ways, but memorable nonetheless. We’ll call him Gary for the sake of anonymity.
I was in the car with Gary, the smells of sweat and sex stagnant in the air: consequences of my latest actions. I was conflicted when he rolled down the window. It relieved me of my odorous guilt but now every car and pedestrian we passed could hear Gary blasting hip-hop, singing along with a country twang to words better left to the artist. He kept looking at me while he sang, expectantly. It made me sick to see my desperation for approval reflected in the face of a man I was beginning to hate. Turning away from him, I looked at the clock in the dashboard and then out the window, running the numbers, and attempting to determine if I would have enough time to shower before work.
We were driving from Marquette to MIAD, his campus to mine. I had spent the night in his apartment decorated with political flags and empty liquor bottles, his most dabbled hobby the staple of his interior design. He had been drunk, and I had bought a ride there. His first comment to me was that I was taller than he had expected, but he liked it because at least he wasn’t “literally looking down at me.” I’d known it was a bad idea but loneliness made me stupid, not unlike most other college students who have been indefinitely separated from their families and childhood friends.
Following Gary’s warm welcome, we talked for less than an hour before he kissed me mid-sentence. I played along, as I had learned to do, and eventually, I followed him from the couch to his bedroom. My one act of dissent occurred when I insisted he wear a condom. He whined as I lay on my back, my hands covering my naked body. He agreed eventually, and ran through his apartment,
naked, scrounging a condom that he complained was “too tight.” He seemed to enjoy himself anyway.
I learned later, at a different hookup, from another Marquette student, that Marquette is one of the least sexually healthy campuses in the country. I didn’t make him wear a condom. I suppose we were both rather liberal.
In the car, Gary’s saying something about the street we’re driving down: that he was mugged there. He had so many devastating stories like this. Some people are like that, collecting tragedies. I empathize with most of them.
“So I got a concealed carry,” he’s saying.
“Excuse me, what?” I should’ve been paying attention. He smiles at me, rubbing his chin. His smile makes me cringe, he seemingly hasn’t flossed in years. He’s talking again, about security and masculinity as he drops me off on the corner of Erie and Menomonee, right outside my dorm. I step out onto the pavement, not meeting his eyes as I say goodbye, and his red car disappears around the corner before I can unlock the front door.
I have said plenty of terrible things about Gary but the truth is that I had disliked myself a lot more than I had disliked him. Gary wasn’t a bad person. He loved his mom and his sister, and he was intelligent. He was exactly what he had been raised to be. Our night together was simply a product of our respective patriarchal brainwashing.
It’s been two years, but that night and morning remain crisp in my mind. It isn’t Gary that I think about but everything that night seemed to bring to light. Everything had felt disappointingly familiar then. Now, I desperately rake those moments for meaning. Gary’s comment about his gun glares at me. After he was threatened by someone with a gun, he wanted one too. He decided he would’ve felt safer if he’d had one. I want to understand what he was feeling, but I can’t. Even now, after I’ve had a gun pointed at me too.
This story is more recent and separate from the phase, though I can draw so many parallels.
I was mugged in Catalano Square by a man with a gun.
In comparison to my experience with Gary, my experience with this man was so impersonal. In the same way it is difficult to write about, it is difficult to be angry.
I remember the man’s eyes, the only part of his face I could see, and I wonder what tragic stories he could share. I wonder if he flossed regularly.
I was mostly compliant with the man just as I was with Gary. I had my small rebellion, too: I wouldn’t hand over my
backpack and laptop, only the thick wad of cash in my wallet. But still, in both situations, I lost something more than that money. In both, I lost self-respect and, in both, my sense of safety.
I didn’t think of Gary when I walked out of MIAD the night I was mugged. I didn’t think of him when I passed the corner of Erie and Menomonee. I didn’t think of him, or the man with the gun. Now, I think about both.
Have you ever heard that people, subconsciously or consciously, want to make others feel the same that they do? Gary felt scared, and powerless after he was mugged. Then, he wanted the power to inflict that feeling on anyone who made him question himself again.
I was scared, in that moment, and in others more frequently now but I refuse to live scared. It didn’t become a part of me in the way that made me want to inflict it onto others. Things happen to people without meaning or reflection. Not everything defines the way we see ourselves. We can choose that.
I let Gary define me, and make me feel stupid and unimportant. But if a man with a gun doesn’t make me weak for the rest of my life, an asshole who fucked me shouldn’t make me a whore. These stories are true but are only a part of my coming of age in Milwaukee. There are sad chapters in happy books. I suppose I have been collecting my own tragedies, but allow me to clarify that my story also continues in vastly hopeful directions. Gary and the man who held a gun to me are just two streets in this city. I happened to pass the corner of fuckboys and muggers, but I’ve been down so many other streets too.
This is a part of the truth but not all of it.
PASSED DOWN
Grace Umek
Honorable Mention for the River Rat Prize in Poetry
My grandfather’s bathroom floor Is sticky from his Piss,
Missing the toilet bowl And splashing a bullseye Onto the circle tiles.
Throughout my mother’s Childhood
He called her a whore, And now he calls me fat when she brings me over To play on the thin, Worn out carpet.
EPICAC
Amber Antonich
it’s two weeks until I put in my two weeks each hand weakly waters down bleach blue detergent wasted in the washing machine drained worth dirtying every clean thing
last ditch effort dumped posthumously scooper scraping the bottom family loser tossed in the cycle for a newer legacy worth less than dust, washed away sooner
waves of minimum wage wrappers dawn over green microfiber in its clover cave plates trash like my credit card coaster keeps me dry in a broken sober haze
scarred soles severed on all shoe seams plod through machine wet dreams glue puddles of terrycloth revenue streams outlive all the work routines I drew
I punched in blocking skidding dead feet knees dragging keep down the dryer heat head tripping harvesting red lint meat dry heaved from gloves wet and sweat bled
I spat up stupid thread clotted veins cords dripping with rotted brainsnot weeping like a child over mopheads hanged still hitching on severed ties draincaught
metal pulse choking tea colored cancer shameful motor churning panted sputters throat boiling leaking piss covered slander flooding errors that could never be recovered
not heeding the tide hazard dismissed on the eve of my final shift starting arid bones ache for a last parting gift embracing empty bucket swift and guarding
drain drawl garbling final janitor goodbyes cursing the detergent supply store for what I couldn’t right in my amateur tries grains of guilt I should’ve conserved more
erupted sludge swept tears taste silty shoved out the door a defunct waste at least that mocking shell will succeed me the manager had it quickly replaced
Emily York
FEBRUARY
Walt Reid
Winner of the River Rat Prize in Poetry
Here we are in winter again. I’m sure you know snow is white because it reflects light, scattering it in its tiny particles, flattering the sun as its mirror. Nearer to you could not have been so cold, but I’ve been told nothing in the absence between us. So I guess prismatic light into the gap, trying to map the way out of my own heart, only to depart like a leaf in spring, freezing, destined to fall for you again. What a pain curiosity is when missing reciprocity. So what? I was the one who cut it off. Better for me, I thought, not considering that in the shivering discomfort of that pearl gray slushy day you might simply forget about me. I regret, I confess, you probably don’t have a clue who this letter is addressed to every poor, cold soul lost in bright light without a shadow to bestow them shape in such white, white snow.
Julia Flock
IN THE SHELL OF A LIFE PASSED
Winner of the River Rat Prize in Prose
CZARNE PORZECZKI (BLACKCURRANT)
Polaris
Giants towering, their shadows lapping at my face
Tart blackcurrant dripping down beaks and feathers
The branch crown immortalize the burning red sun
The weeds picked away revealing bone
Hot pavement now clawing up my hill
Underbelly exposed and picked apart
The skittering branches silenced by metal Sun blinding, fenced in the sky
Where did my little fish pond go?
Why do only mosquitoes crawl lazily out of there?
bird watching or people watching ?
Jess Leaf Lensmire with a friend, with discoveries. a found tree, one who tilted over and with a generosity of a final decision— chose to be still, and a home, and chair and leaving little bits of bark on anything, anyone, who spends time with them. i think about this, and contemplate the bits of people whether burrs or wishes (the fluffy seeds) are with me, with us now. with the same friend with which we met the tree— our friend lives by a fire station, the alarms are different to the train horn that i grew up with, yes i am familiar with sirens, i have in fact spent time listening the point being, i enjoy sounding the alarm of soft laughs that seem to reflect the felted texture of the moss who listens. the alarm of meeting, then the treat of knowing, the fear of impermanence.
i’ll come get you— said a someone over a crackling phone line on some friday night, it’s my turn to
