Alayda Flick
Brendan Knapsack
Sophia Taylor
A Tendon Between Hearts | 7 in the backseat | 8
Lights of Madrid | 11 Strange Faces | 21
When Rain Turned Bad | 14 Mulier Mori | 17
Colchuck Church | 18
Kris Aban
Trai Mitchell
Vincent Torrijos
New Unclassified Subject | 26
Specters | 28 - 29
Weather of War | 30
Upon the Towers | 42
Presley Hinkle
Leila Alshoroogi
Mia Morgan
Scattered Faces | 32
Die Hard | 35 Candid and Done Up | 37
a mother grief | 39
Mustafa O. Artisan Samantha Gerken
Volition serves to elevate the creative capacity of the Mason community by fostering freedom of expression across diverse mediums. | Cover Reflection | 5
Catalina Munoz
Kris Aban
Sandy Creek | 3
Amigos | 6 Rainy | 15 Waiting On You | 33 trust me | 9 i think it's best we head home, no shopping today | 31
Asharee Davis
Wonder | 10
The view | 22 - 23 Time to Relax | 41
Vincent Blackwell
Chrys Sotos
White Rabbit | 12 IBite | 36 iseeyou | 38
The Arcade | 13 The Cathedral | 19 Nobody Ever Looks Up | 43
Isabella Graham
Adella Bailey
Mel Nguyen
Headless for All of Eternity | 16
Deeper and Deeper | 20 A Royal Portrait | 24 Investigation | 25
Spotlight | 27 Jeju | 40
Stephanie Concepion
WEARING DEATH | 34
Volition’s goal is to continue to amplify the inspiring voices of George Mason University. We are each on an individual life path that we are lucky enough to overlap with others. Along the way, we experience life in a way so deeply human and carnal that often the only way to make sense of it is to put it into art. We all want to grasp on to everything that happens to us, and we want to know that it has happened to someone else. This is why we write, we paint, we take photographs.
This has been an overwhelming autumn. One that the Volition family shares with you. We have all experienced grief, uncertainty, and trepidation. We saw reflections in this when we sat down to put together this volume of Volition. There was heaviness in this air, in your words and in your art. There were, however, also several reminders that we are all experiencing the same world. Though we experience it differently at times, it reigns true that we all wake up to the same Sun, we pick petals off the same flowers, and we walk on the same soil. I’d like to think that many of you will read this volume at the same time, strangers everywhere except in these pages. I may never meet some of you, but we now have something in common. I extend an arm of love and gratitude to you.
For this, on behalf of the Volition team, I’d like to thank our contributors. Your art and your writing is what makes our volume. Thank you for sharing your raw humanity, and your lively experience. On behalf of the Editorial Team and myself, we’d like to extend our gratitude to the entire staff at Student Media GMU for their unwavering support. I’d like to personally express my gratitude for my wonderful team at Volition. Who inspires me, keeps me in awe, and makes me love what I do. I’d like to thank our faculty advisor Jason Hartsel who pushed me when I needed to be pushed and whose faith keeps me motivated.
I’d also like to personally dedicate this volume of Volition to Gale Tyree, a woman who filled every room she walked into with brilliant light, the warmest love, and a melodic laughter she never lost until her very end. Her memory keeps me moving forward, aspiring to reflect her light to put this volume together for you.
Here you hold Volume 37 of Volition. I hope one day you and I are both enjoying this volume at the same time, with a warm drink in one hand, and a sparkling feeling in our chests, in awe of the humanity in this volume. We are thrilled to give you this volume and we thank you for your support.
Natalia Romero Executive Editor
As Volition’s Prose and Poetry Editor, I have had the joy of reading and sharing the beautiful, honest, creative words of the diverse students of George Mason. Each semester, I am in awe of the art my fellow students create and the images they bring to life with their language. Their poems and stories create colorful tapestries of their lives, their joys, their imaginations, their sorrows.
I believe poetry and prose have the ability to connect us all. Each story and each poem contain a little bit of those who wrote it, their soul and their mind. You can find a piece of yourself in the words of another or discover a new way of viewing the world. At their very core, stories and poetry bring us joy, comfort, laughter, and entertainment.
I am honored to play a part in sharing these pieces with you. Each one was carefully selected by our wonderful Volition team, and I hope you love them just as much as we do. I hope you find enjoyment and solace among the words, or maybe even the inspiration to create your own.
Erin Zellner Poetry and Prose Editor
As the Art and Photography Editor, my time with the team has been an incredible journey of growth and inspiration. As both a photographer and artist with a passion for promoting the club, seeing the incredible work submitted by our talented students has been truly rewarding. This role has been a dream come true, and it has helped shape me into the artist I aspire to be. I’m proud to witness the evolution of our team and the increasing quality of the submissions we receive. To all the amazing artists, whether your work is a passion or a hobby, I encourage you to keep pushing your artistic talents and share them with our community. Raising awareness of the arts across our school is a legacy I hope to leave behind as I prepare to graduate and join the ranks of Mason alumni.
I’d like to extend my deepest gratitude to my entire team for this opportunity, and I look forward to seeing our magazine come to life. It’s all about showcasing the incredible art created by talented students and celebrating their creativity. Thank you for your hard work and dedication, and for sharing your passion with us all.
Trisha Dahal
Art and Photography Editor
My bitter, bleeding hold over your broken bones. Two lives stolen and resold to make convenient clones. You plummet into my palms; my blood boiling over yours Gold is rusting to bronze; the weathered necklaces we wore.
We’ll lose each other tonight.
We’ll lose each other tonight.
Death won’t keep you close because I found you first.
Even our assailant knows my hands cannot be coerced. Your tall, tender hold is coming down with me. We’re going down together. Down together. Together.
| Alayda Flick
You are a stubborn man. Your pout tastes like pop rocks on my tongue. Shocks, sparks, supernovas on our lips, in our eyes. Our skin smells like smoke. Sweating, simmering, soothing, frozen gasoline in your hands, making meteors out of my moles; you singe me into motion, and you still won’t believe it. Your hands never get old. They’ve warmed up to me, and become part of the blaze I’ve set into the stars. The moon’s covered in dust. Look up.
| Alayda Flick
The lights of Madrid shine bright, Amidst a dark and stormy night. A night where no one could find any sleep, As they prayed the lord their souls to keep.
The streets are filled with rats and rain, Trying to escape from both laughter and pain. Hiding away in dust covered rooms, That shall now be known as dust covered tombs.
Left outside the swords all rust, A casualty of a matadors lust. For there are no more bulls to fight, In this city that shines so bright.
This storm isn’t soon to pass, So struggle on down to mass And pray for the day with no more rain, Cause then you will find the soul of Spain.
| Brendan Knapsack
The ever growing red circle stain mocking Baby-lips Pungent and poignant, an indoctrination
The Something like time and long hair, Puckering. Here I am sad with my dreaded family, Peaches fell over my skin as leaves She wanted Lovely with whispered things, floating
The supernatural circles... My circle stain Around me on my face... Hungry and ashamed, winedrunk Sweet pomegranate ring Winedark and whining, the morning
Widowed while mourning and I, bound Wanting, anything Felt like nothing but empty sea.
Into bed; praying to lay somewhere I wanted; Here, I am as morbid and jail-like as
A mattress. Home away from voices; Bloody lips? Black shelled urchin, pointing,
Stuck like redness to the hallway and Damn it The eggshell paint cracked and bled like
The winter skin, where the
Lost woman, The fuming cold. The heated, smoking. Holes appeared in the walls and in Your Thighs, burn marks or paper scrolls
My first tattoo, plump Was nothing compared to I wanted Black blood Belonging in bowls, not on fingertips. Stained glasses to ignore the light. Following the rain Is it really supposed to snow?
| Sophia Taylor
On Sunday, I saw pink orchids on the grave. Busy and breaking with ivy. The orchids blushed against the sullen green and gray. For a moment, I felt a rush of heartache on my skin. I, entirely the same as the rotted cof in. Swaying downwards into antiquity, my body swelled with August air.
Sterling silver and fragile mind
War-girl weeps at night, She carves herself under the candlelight, Muttering prayers to the fireflies
God knows I’ve tried, Bare lips mutter bonsoir, amen
Virginity against the satin pillow
Red whines stain the hallway
Echoing as ghosts in the childhood Home, is shrouded in midnight
I watch her soaking under the sea
Wafting around the black water
Sullen and silent like a grieving swan.
Bleeding and wet, a messy communion
Fasting on saltwater and silver
Tangled and ruined in wounds: She will never wear white.
| Sophia Taylor
Pear-diamond rain catching
The color August
Holding on tight to the windshield
Soft vivarium of blushing in the backseat
Dilutes the summer welling under my skin
Halfway through the air
Sunrise stains your eyes
Becoming a monocle of beauty; Devouring my heart nice and slow
Citrus and sugar rimmed heart ache
You are my favorite cathedral:
Worn and glimmering with prayers and faith
Stained glass eyes shaking like a savior
Divine but unholy
You and I share the same shade of blueIn your gaze I am wilting like all sacred flowers do
Aching on the west of the Enchantments, Praying to you with sun-sliced
Soiled commandments.
| Sophia Taylor
O’ the strange faces Stretch out to the wasteland. Could we be friends? Could we be brothers? For I am one of you. A lost soul, Wandering hungry and cold Searching for eternity. Maybe we shall meet again someday, And be strangers no more.
| Brendan Knapsack
You have been contained; Welcome to your new home. Where the world can see you, but you cannot, even through such thick, transparent glass. You are not like us; Containment was imminent for something like you. With your prickly skin, fuzzy and woven together, like a dragon that does not exist. Yet here you are. You must be put to several tests; This is to ensure you are not a danger to the world. Even with your small, innocent, and beady eyes, we cannot afford to have you roam. So please, make yourself as comfortable down there to make this process as simple and clean as pos si ble.
| Kris Aban
I always saw a specter on my Sunday strolls. Lights from his desktop leaped through his open window and painted the path purple, green, and red. The reflection of some game sprung off the specter’s spectacles and sharply shined in my eyes. His breathing was coarse and hurried as he muttered Mandarin profanities with each exhale. Day in and day out he rotted in his room, gaming on his desktop from before dawn to beyond dusk. He probably never saw me, and if he did, he’d never react, and I hardly saw him, not for who he is, anyways. That’s what makes him a specter.
There’s nothing special about a specter. I’ve been across the world and I’ve seen them everywhere. Sometimes they’re a lanky loner looming on the sidelines of a sandbox, their lips loosely parsed as they try and fail to say something to win others’ attention. Other times they’re roosting in the rear of a classroom, their glance gliding left and right to see if anyone dares approach. I recall coming across one in a pub in Dublin, the lad leaning on the wall beside a booth and his mouth moving from the desire to speak. The urge was anxiously self-suppressed each time, and he never got a word in. You can quite quickly spot a specter anywhere, our world’s overflowing with them.
The most troublesome task when searching for specters is figuring out what they look like. They aren’t translucent wraiths wading in and out of walls, and they aren’t grotesque ghouls crawling out of coffins. They’re just another person. They can be tall or short, wide or slim, dark-haired or light-haired, and so on. They’re so plain, so perfectly unimpressive, that you’ve probably passed by plenty over just the last week. As I said, there’s far too many in this world.
So how do you find one? Well, asking won’t do you any good. Suppose you stalk up on a so-called specter and ask “are you dead?” they’ll probably prod at their own skin and, upon finding they didn’t poke right through, propose “probably not.” That’s to be expected, and, in the off-chance you’ve come across a certifiable corpse, you’ve got a bigger burden than I can help you with. Specters are not deceased on a biological basis, but they are decisively dead. They are dead to the world, shifting like shadows along streetsides and appearing like apparitions anywhere people possess. Specters are always alone, that’s what cleaves them from the waking world of the living.
They say “fear is the mind killer,” and that could be considered true if you’re willing to bend it a bit. Put simply, fear itself won’t kill you, otherwise we’d all be six feet under. Between each of us is a field of fear, one that we poke and penetrate whenever we connect with other people. It’s this lovely link that lets us live through the most dire of days, and makes the stunning sunrises of new dawns ever more gorgeous. Without it, one is left in a sea of sorrows with only the occasional offal to latch on to. Life ceases to be a journey
| Trai Mitchell
of triumphs and tribulations and instead becomes a feral fight for sustenance, with one limping along lifelesslyuntil their body joins their mind in death. But the specter cannot push past the veil of terror that stands between them and others. Some are too timid to take a swing at it, whereas others may try to tear it down, only to abandon their action the moment it becomes inconvenient. They are then rendered recluses, gliding like ghosts just beyond the borders of others’ connections. At this stage, it takes Samson-like strength for specters to restore their standing in society.
Maybe another anecdote will aid you in spotting specters. I’ll set the scene: you’re in a club meeting mulling over plans and ideas for the next event. All the while, you see a silhouette sliding left and right just beyond the window between the classroom and hallway. Left and right, left and right, left and right, he goes, speaking not a syllable but still slinking side to side all the same. This isn’t uncommon. He’s manifested at many meetings, and each time he either sits as far away as possible from everyone or lurks just outside moving left and right, left and right. Sometimes, he speaks; not in person, though. His presence haunts the club group chat with his skill for starting squabbles over minor matters, his frustration bubbling and boiling over. Fury flies freely from his keyboard whenever someone even slightly disagrees with him, yet when his input is asked during meetings, his lips are sealed. Such a specter has better luck ripping at the region between people behind a screen, but is still powerless to pierce the veil when it unfolds in front of his face.
How about another example? The most horrible haunt I’ve encountered was a boy no older than fifteen. He’d probed and prodded the veil between him and others plenty of times, but dreadful and dire disasters had slowly weaned him away from the world, turning the thin field into a steely shield he could not surpass. It took him far too long to see what had slunk away. When it finally caught up with him, all he could conjure was mournful misery. Days stretched unto decades, moments materialised as multiple millennia, and the southern sun scorched his skin as he lamented what was lost, and what never was. Terror seized him as he fought the field separating him from others, sometimes barely breaking through, and other times faltering under the fear of failure. It would take him many moons to overcome the absolute terror, to restore what once was.
I still have photos of him from that time. At any time I can take a look at his plain, grey eyes and his softly swirling hair. His features aren’t unusual or unsettling, but looking at him inspires only horror in my heart. I think I know why:
His eyes are mine,
His hair is mine,
And if those belong to me, then the burdens he bore must also be mine.
Hail of Arrows: Strike down thy foe, Feed a nation with one bow Hunt your game, refuse to play For harvest looks quite sparse today
Flurry of Swords: Against thy might Create by day, destroy by night We conquer thee, leave us alone. By your mercy, make our home.
Thunder of Canons: Keep foes at bay Your shocks let sick live to pray With thy fury, beck and call Need not compete, destroy them all
Rain of bullets: From above, A couple fights for guilty love, An infant screams, afraid no more, Whether weather, weathered war.
| Vincent Torrijos
i think it's best we head home, no shopping today | Kris Aban | Acrylic Mixed Media
I was sixteen when I learned how to do it. My mother stood in the backyard when the skin shifted across her body. The woman I knew as my mother was suddenly our neighbor. She told me I could do it, too, I just had to give up a memory.
In college, I tore myself apart as I moved from dorm to dorm getting to know faces I wouldn’t remember the next day. After spending the summer at home, I dropped out and moved to the city.
I had only been there since September when I met Clarissa. She was everything I wasn’t, Funny; Beautiful; Driven. We had one date, then four after that. Within a month, I moved in, and within a year, we were engaged.
We were having Thanksgiving with her parents; I forgot her mother’s name at least seven times.
After Christmas, I couldn’t remember what my parents looked like anymore. In March, I met someone. Her name was Emily. She lived a state away and was gorgeous. I knew Clarissa would like her too.
Within a few months, I couldn’t recognize who was in the mirror and Clarissa stayed with her sister. My phone was filled with someone else’s life, but I knew this would make her happy.
It was almost Halloween when I got a text from my phone:
“Tessa’s, at 8 o’clock, meet me there?”
Blood rushed to my cheeks, and I spent the next thirty minutes throwing my hair up and doing my makeup. I had gotten quite good by then.
I stepped out of the taxi and found myself giddy from the eyes of others on me. I never knew I could feel so good in my own skin. Even when it had shifted more than I’d ever admit.
A moment later, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned.
My heart skipped a beat.
“Hey Emily, it’s so good to see you!”
I smiled wide and said, “Yeah you too, Clarissa!”
| Presley Hinkle
And when i die, will they powder my nose, paint my lips red, glue lashes to my eyes, a resemblance of the beauty that killed me? Or will i be face down in the dirt with all my other pretty women?
| Leila Alshoroogi
i take peace in how silent i am, how long i can go before i break my vow, how much i can do without my tongue?
if not for my tongue, i may have more grace, i may be more well behaved, i may be a better woman.
if not for my tongue, how would i know the burning sensation of vitriol, how would i know the sweetness of a curse on my lips, how would i feel shame afterwards?
i take peace in how silent i am, for now i have learned my lesson and on my burnt tongue rests candied shame.
| Leila Alshoroogi
i wonder if i ever looked at my nannies like i would look at my mother (the birth one). if my eyes ever whispered are you my Mother? if hers ever answered.
◊
mothers and fathers and others grieve for their daughters and sons and others. but what makes my grief?
a mother grief; a daughter grief; an other grief; unlike any grief i’ve known. it snuck up on me; wriggling and writhing, beneath my ribs.
i’ve never really wept for what i never had. i don’t think i wanted to admit what it felt to me.
how would they know? how would anyone know?
| Mia Morgan
Time to Relax | Asharee Davis | Digital Photography
Upon an ivory tower a child peered
Down below to those pioneers
Building up, he watched in toe
On his tower, his parents built long ago
Of snow, of stone, of dirt, of glass
Their towers rose, some slow some fast
Each made a tower of their own
Then on that tower, build their home
Each segment grew at differing paces
Each person would climb up to different places
Yet they all knew that when their tower was done
It’d converge with another as two became one
The child asked his father, great carver of white
Why some tried so hard for so little height
While others do nothing, yet somehow still soar
Up to altitudes like never before
“Some try their best because it's all that they can
Some don't try, let life take their hand.
Some never try, and some never stop
But when their towers are finished, they’re all at the top
“Look to the structure at your feet
Look to the supports under your seat
See the tape, the nails, and glues
Tis not a tower of ivory, but wood and screws”
The child admired those covered in sweat
Who‘d try to learn, who’d never rest
And he disliked of all the people most
| Vincent Torrijos
Who’d do nothing and simply coast
One day he sat to watch them stir
And it dawned on him how far they were
He peeked at the base of his own home
To see the height at which it’d grown
The child, now a man, had come of age
To build his own tower, upon his home stage
Yet to stand with those people, he knew was a must
Would require effort, leaving them in the dust
Faced with this dilemma, he simply idled
Unaware of the height his air tower spiraled
And when it had settled where he would make his home
He saw he was left, truly, all alone
Nobody Ever Looks Up | Chrys Sotos | Digital Photography
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VOLITION MIGHT JUST BE THE RIGHT PLACE FOR YOU
There are four major teams that make up Volition: Art & Photography, Poetry & Prose, Graphic Design, and PR & Social Media. If you would like to gain experience in any of these areas, Volition is a great place to start. We offer positions for volunteer staff, peer reviewers, and student leadership in each section. For more information on how to apply, visit volition.gmu.edu
Executive Editor
Natalia Romero
Faculty Advisor
Jason Hartsel
Prose & Poetry
Prose & Poetry Editor
Erin Zellner
Art & Photography
Art & Photography Editor
Trisha Dahal
Graphic Design
Graphic Design Chair
Anna Simakova
Student Media
Professional Staff
Kathryn Mangus, Director
David S. Carroll, Associate Director
Sariya Scribner
Nawaal Nackerdien
Kat Benson
Gabrielle Hoover
Nawaal Nackerdien
Kat Benson