THE OREGON VOICE ART ISSUE: 2016

EDITORS’ NOTE Thank you being the thing that makes me interesting, my extra-curricular-and-then-some, my living room dance floor, my costume box, my napping spot, my badge of honor—thanks for making me believe I was capable and I had a real place to belong—for reminding me that everyone deserves this—thanks for being my “we,” my hard work, my fuck this, my let’s keep going, my witty e-newsletter alter-ego, my corner of the world, my community, my collaborators, my friends. I am grateful, grateful, grateful and no longer worried about that sounding stupid. Call me up next year, I’ll be thinking of y’all —

Here are our cave paintings, please no flash photography — Hallie

STAFF editor in chief art director managing editor multimedia director publisher

Isabel Zacharias Hallie Frost Emma Burke Derek Chesnut Celia Easton Koehler

cover art digital photography

1 4-5

Ted Kessler Derek Chesnut

digital illustration

6

Stephen Park

prose poem

7

Hallie Frost

poem

8

Annalee Nock

9 - 10

(H)iram

prose poem

11

Zoë Mays

charcoal illustration

12

Kellen Thayer

pen & ink illustration

13

Emma Haskins

oil & gouache painting

14 - 15

watercolor illustration

16

Anna Baldwin

mixed media illustration

17

Anna Baldwin

Miró Merrill

poems

18 - 19

Isabel Zacharias

cyanotypes

20-21

Hallie Frost

charcoal illustration

22

Miró Merrill

prose poem

23

Erin Satterthwaite

poem

24

Maya Tims

poem

25

Ruby O’Connor

film photography

26

Katie Winkleman

film photography

27

Matisse Coxen

mixed media illustration

28

Katie Nock

poem

29

Anonymous

film photography

30 - 31

Miles Shepard

c o n t e n t s

wheat paste mural

4

Derek Chesnut

Stephen Park

I V. Hallie Frost

We’ll hold beer bottles in the crook of our knees and look at old Facebook photo albums we published in eighth grade, devoid of a conscious Internet presence. I will shower while you make toast before bed. Turning off the light and crossing the room, you render a familiar melody on the boards of the floor, each creaking with individual use.

The next morning you will fresh squeeze orange juice and work on a conceptual piece that explores this fruit.

In the other room, I will work on my short story series about people who are involved in a class action lawsuit against a manufacturer of leisure footwear. We will meet in the living room at 2:30pm and eat stale pretzels and watch blonde people go into the Starbucks and never come out. We’ll draw the contours of each other’s faces without looking at the paper while the iHome plays the acoustic musings of a young man with a needle in his arm.

We will put on shoes and walk to the Indian food place next to the Domino’s and guarded by a freeway—it is dark and damp inside. We will sit on the same side of the booth in the back and support each other’s weight. We will order a couple of sides for economic purposes—the mango chutney and garlic naan—and stay for two hours drinking water. The hostess and busboy talk behind their hands while I study a painting of a yellowing Taj Mahal and think about all the pictures taken of paintings drawn of monuments to dead women, and you’ll drag your fingers through a pile of salt.

After dinner we will walk to the overpass and I will blur my eyes until the rushing headlights and taillights become white and red streams pointing North. You will pick a cigarette off the ground and threaten to smoke it. Around 11:30 we will be standing in a convenience store and I will lament how 50 Cent is losing money with every purchase of Vitamin Water as we run our hot little hands over the glass freezer doors. Studying wine on the bottom shelf, I’ll say, “It’s too bright! I feel insane!” and you will bet that wine varieties are named for ecological regions of Europe and I will disagree that it must be varieties of Grape but you might be right that those grapes derive their names from said regions and when you reach down I will kiss the center of your back above the sweat stain so lightly you wonder if it was my hand or mouth. In the parking lot, you will grab the back of my neck just hard enough that my face tilts up, and I will look at you unconcerned.

On the couch later, we will talk about Antarctica and Alaska and space tourism and listen to a woman who was killed by her lover through the iHome. At 4:30am when it is the darkest, you will say into my stomach that you are asleep. I will have drunk the remains of the wine bottle washed down with the cold coffee sitting on the table and I will wonder about my first friend ever who had Strawberry Milk and Cable at her house and whether her parents got divorced. You will breathe through your mouth and I will plan to fill in the potholes on 19th with ceramic plates, made in China, broken in a rage.

7

T H I N G S I WO U L D R AT H E R H AV E AT T H E E N D S O F M Y A R M S I N S T E A D O F H A N D S Annalee Nock chainsaws fire double hands bat claws guns entire trees your favorite drink a plug and a socket feet cool wires nintendo controllers the hands of my father something that can’t bruise something that won’t leave behind dirt something that doesn’t have a “drop” function something that can’t hit send the ocean dahlia bouquets your hips

8

(H)iram

(H)iram

10

Love in Five Acts Zoë Mays Today Amanda—my Amanda—ran into Amanda—your Amanda—with Rob (Chrissy’s Rob) at the new Hungarian food cart by the post office under the bridge. A partially cloudy summer day where light falls carelessly in slabs, my beautiful Amanda described it, and Amanda—your Amanda, and Rob eating Hungarian food in the dirt. My Amanda was passing by. Just thought you should know how your Amanda is spending her allowance.

There’s something awfully Lady Macbeth about Amanda—“your Amanda”—you tell me and I don’t know what to say. Something sinister, plotting, I wouldn’t put it past her to kill me in my sleep. I would put it past her, I say, I’d put it right past her. The day she tackled your Thomas at the church barbecue just as neatly as Sex in the City tackled breast cancer she had thought from behind that he was Richard—not your Richard, Chrissy’s Richard (not Rob’s Chrissy)—who had made my Bernadette cry, and she hadn’t plotted it—search her room I swear—she merely allowed her animal protective instincts to overcome her better judgment and if she was rationed a touch too much testosterone in the womb, then what of it, it will do her good in the business world.

And better Lady Macbeth than the dopey Thane of Cawdor himself, to whom Amanda—your Amanda—bears an eerie resemblance. Has no one ever told you that before? No one’s ever told you she’s got the attitude of a wine-drunk tyrant, and the breath of one too? Funny.

And Amanda—my Amanda— is no brute, anyway, she is a refined and politically informed intellectual. Did you see on the news the woman who held up that book of poetry at the Trump rally? Well Amanda—my Amanda—just finished that very book—Citizen it’s called—and had lots of intelligent things to say about my and her father’s catastrophically unexamined white privilege and does Amanda—your Amanda—have anything to say about American race relations? Does she speak like a thesis? I’ll bet she thinks Donald Trump is cute, I’ll bet he’s just her type.

What do you mean our Amandas are spending too much time together? Since when did they spend any time together at all? Is your Amanda trying to get fresh with my Amanda? What about Rob— Chrissy’s Rob? I suppose he always was a little light in his loafers. You think my Amanda is getting fresh with your Amanda?

Your Amanda eats Hungarian food with Donald Trump in the dirt! My Amanda has opinions about what Virginia Woolf would think of the Fast and the Furious film series in light of the tenacity of the misogynistic Beat Generation in the modern canon! What would our Amandas talk about? Shakespeare?

Kellen Thayer

E

Emma Haskins

13

14

Mirรณ Merrill

Anna Baldwin

16

Isabel Zacharias

Always a Storm Coming Soon

Good storm stories don’t end in the basement. The man stresses this with his hands, fingers widespread in air. He whispers because Father Dan is still making the rounds — The meat of the story should be feet sweeping back in the wind and arms latched around the black catalpa you loved, says man. Charleston or Fifth Street? He smiles and says Charleston— we laugh because he’s got no clue how tornados become.

The sky tries to keep its priorities clear. Rain for harvest, sun for harvest. Storm for nothing, or what? Father Dan can’t hear us. The clouds building out beyond the God-forsaken stained glass are just as night-quiet. Listen, glass is fragile. Deaf and dumb.

So are clouds. They can’t understand. Do you get it, Father Dan? The man says, The best stories scare ya. Mouthful of communion bread, stage whispering that the one with you clutching the tree is okay. But a great story ends with you dead in the street.

He hands me the bread and the wine and we eat.

I miss your legs

their sway in the shape

of a sickle sloughing grain,

away, away —

across the April snowfield not yet melted by spring’s rain,

something good enough to say —

our passing trains at end of day,

I’ll miss

you or not, but

Love’s breath saying Stay,

and swaying limbs now

gone Away —

not you, but our

belief in what we were —

I miss

Forever — not the thing

that is forever,

but the word its sound

in words —

O how

and in our ever Spring

like any season

could never have stayed still

Isabel Zacharias

or not your legs,

but the thing

that was your legs,

I miss its low O rumbled

from your throat,

Carnate & Incarcnate

in Someday, Limb, in Love,

Incarnate —

19

20

Hallie Frost

Mirรณ Merrill

Untitled Erin Satterthwaite

I hugged my knees and gently dug my feet into the sand as I looked out to the ocean’s horizon. I listened to the waves crash against the rocks in a powerful, cathartic motion. I felt the mist of the sea gently brush my face. Wow, just look at me, I am completely alone. It is very romantic that I am alone. It’s good to be alone sometimes. I have so much clarity, so much time to think. I could think of something beautiful maybe. The sunset filled the sky with a warm pink and orange color that filled me with nostalgia and melancholy. My eyes are squinty because of the sun. That last thought was less beautiful than the first. This moment would make for a great Instagram…but of course I can’t Instagram in this moment of solitude. But if I were to, Sarah would probably notice and wonder what I’m up to. Maybe just a quick Snapchat story. OK, it’s posted. This is great.

Why don’t I do this more often? Just get in my car and drive…well, actually, I don’t have a car, I took the Muni here, but I looked out the window of the bus very dreamily. I hope someone was looking at me and thought, “I wonder what that guy is thinking, I bet his thoughts are beautiful”. But now, here I am, accompanied only by my muses. Maybe someone will walk by. I don’t see anyone in the distance, but hypothetically, if someone were to walk by, they would bare witness to this introspective moment. Maybe a writer would walk by and see me, a mysterious, stolid figure, looking out to the sunset with no distinguishable emotion. They would have to write about me. Maybe this writer would publish my likeness in their collection of short stories and I would be nameless but immortalized in this literature, and my image would be remembered for years—generations— to come, and I would be remembered as the intellectual, the dreamer that I am, and everyone would know, forever.

23

The Slugs Maya Tims

I wake to slug trails all over my room, Slithering in through the crack in my door, they leave Their sticky fuck you’s everywhere they wander.

They perimeter my table, my shoes, my courage Always disappearing by daylight— I suspect they crawl underneath my bed to die— I suspect I cannot smell their death in this house full of it— Each day they become more cocky in their infestation.

I cannot help but admire their choice of bedrooms.

How spot-on do the slugs know that they are?

I am waiting for the morning I wake to a slimy Outline of my body, Find them nesting in my mouth.

24

Nostalgia Ruby O’Connor

I am living in your house, feeding your mother.

Feeding your mother handfuls from under the table as she licks the bitter varnish of its legs. Her sharp teeth scrape my cuticles.

This is no different than last year or the year before. We close windows against the sound of trains, watch clouds turn to sun in the afternoon.

Some summers were different, longer, but now all seasons are too-mild Februaries.

When you return, she might squeeze her asparagus body out between the chairs.

But more likely, her face will rotate as you turn to her, closed lips hiding ruined gums red from scraping wood.

25

Katie Winkleman

26

Matisse Coxen

27

Katie Nock

28

LITTLE GROSS POEM Anonymous

He thinks it’s gross when I chew on his toenails.

But I gotta do it, it’s the only way To know more about him than anyone else!

Even those who say they have loved him more, They loved him more and he loved them much, much more, But I bet they never ate his scabs.

I eat his nails, suck his toothpaste out of the tube.

I gnaw on his ear wax, I spit on his pillow, I collect the hairs he leaves in my bed and make them Into thimbles for all of my fingers.

He thinks this is so, so gross.

He thinks it’s gross but he keeps coming back, Leaving more hair and spit and sweat, Preserving the dents my knees make in his mattress.

He doesn’t understand that chewing his toenails will stop People saying, “I heard he really gets around.”

Others love him but he only lets me take his Blood and guts.

Sometimes I get tired of smelling his smells, Or drinking his insides, but I gotta do it!

He doesn’t understand that swallowing his sweat Makes everything else he does okay.

If, between bites of toe jam, I say, “This ain’t gross!”

It means the things he does to me, The things much ickier than licking his eyeballs , Or sniffing his armpits or snorting his sleepy tears, Aren’t gross either!

They’re just things you do For somebody when You love them.

MIles Shepard

OREGON VOICE ART ISSUE

VOL. XXVI ISSUE 4