Mosaic Magazine 2015-2016 by Mosaic Magazine

Mosaic Magazine 2016

Dear Reader, Thank you for supporting Mosaic in its 39th year of publication! The 2016 edition is the culmination of another year filled with excitement and hard work and represents The Ohio State University’s finest undergraduate art and literature. Congratulations to all of the authors and artists whose work has been included in Mosaic this year! Aside from continuing to produce a high-quality publication, Mosaic has hosted several exciting events this year, including poetry readings, art workshops, our signature Professor & Protege event, and the Unveiling of Mosaic 2016.

Mosaic’s editorial staff would like to thank the Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University for its generous support of Mosaic and this publication. More information about the Department of English is available at english.osu.edu.

We would like to thank the members of our editorial board, art staff, layout staff, and literature staff for their enthusiasm and consistent devotion to Mosaic. In addition, we would like to express our gratitude to Honors & Scholars, the English Department, and UniPrint. Without them, the success of Mosaic’s events and the high quality of this publication would not have been possible. We would also like to thank our advisors, Angela Taylor and Ruth Friedman, for their support and guidance in all of Mosaic’s endeavors this year. Most importantly, this publication would not be possible without you — our readers, writers, and artists. Mosaic’s mission is to provide a platform for talented undergraduates to publish, share, and improve their work. Thank you for continuing to submit your work and support your fellow artists in the Ohio State undergraduate community by reading Mosaic. We hope that you enjoy this year’s edition of Mosaic and encourage you to get involved next year by joining a staff, submitting your work, and attending our events. For more information about our organization, please visit www.mosaicosu.com, or email us at mosaic.magazine.osu@gmail.com. Sincerely,

Alli Cadle and Bobby Lowery The Editors-in-Chief Mosaic Magazine 2016

Table of Contents

LIT

Our Woods Cloe Watson

LIT

It was my mother who first showed me W.S. Merwin Jeremy Kundtz

ART

Running at Dusk on Naxos Jessica Williams

This is a Poem about a Chicken and How Death Makes Me Want to Vomit Laura Esposto

Search Engine Salvation Brittani Rable

That Night Kate Isaacs

West Pleasant Church Anna Talarico How Many Butterflies? Jeremy Kundtz

For Spring Laura Esposto

Happy Swing Anna Talarico

Sands (A Dream) Paul O’Neill

Capturing da Vinci at London’s National Gallery Jessica Williams

Self-portrait as a bouquet of fake flowers Christian Cholcher

Dreamer Grace Krammer

Blindfolded Dancers in Paris Jessica Williams

Meowch Donna Taja

When Dogs Sleep Cloe Watson

After Guernica Jeremy Kundtz

First Date Dylan Ecker

Medusa Grace Krammer

LIT

ART

Our Woods Cloe Watson

White Lies Laura Esposto

into the fire Grace Krammer

Box Braids (Root of Mindisiac) CMD Chiimeh

Corner in the Morning Anna Talarico

The Mistake Dylan Ecker

Ashes to ashes Brittani Rable

To Little Girls Who Curl Their Hair Laura Esposto

Black kids in Chicago LaNae Plaxico

Kisses Paul O’Neill

Authors and Artists

Mosaic Staff

As girls we would push our way through a small opening behind your condo; to cross into the woods we stepped over wooden planks said by the older neighborhood boys to have hidden fire ants. In the summer we didn’t go there; the bright sun shining front to back through the woods reminded us how small that world was. Instead, lounging on your mother’s queen sized bed we watched Pan’s Labyrinth, laughing at the Oreos hid, melted in our pockets, wishing twisted tree roots would pull us beneath this suburban land where Oreos could become magic mud balls. When the leaves turned orange and your mother, fretting, stuffed gloves over both of our hands, we would race to the woods, tearing off our gloves and coats at the opening, leaving them with the fire ants to prove we were brave before stepping into shadows enlarging the edges of the woods. When we were alone together building, my bulky hands becoming puffy in the cold, your slender ones becoming dusted in rouge, we did not need to know why we found last year’s fortress destroyed; we knew it was coming, the simpers on our faces letting the fairies know we sensed they were hiding. Using the mortar and pestle we had stolen from the shelves of my mother’s home we ground Dogwood and White Ash leaves together, hoping to coax these blue and green meddlers into our new wood home, low and homely, so we could squelch the shiny magic from their bodies, making the woods our own.

After gathering our magic just before dark, the aging light would guide us to a white patch of flowers, where we read, our hands grown together over a dragon spell book, chanting, waiting for the orange and purple clouds to roll into fire. I am older now. After visiting home you tell me things you can’t believe as you say them: the leaflet opening of our woods can’t be seen from your bedroom window anymore, the trees behind our closed portal are being churned through gravel little by little, and your mother’s T cells are low. It is fall again and we walk to the hospital, our gloved hands separate and responsible. I look at your made up face, red and brown in places that used to be pale, and I love you. I love you because you don’t need my hand to help you with the why, because we, like our woods rest on the clink of fire— the molten of the graveling— a similar red to the sun.

It was my mother who first showed me W.S. Merwin

Running at Dusk on Naxos Jessica Williams

Jeremy Kundtz

She did not try to meet my eyes. I felt suddenly that it was all she could do to just keep breathing. Her focus slipped away, flowed past me, and her eyes closed softly, humming, alive. I think she was crying. I think she needed that freedom. So I sat there next to her, a child on the bank of a river. Alone. No one but me to forget the clouds and the dew on the grass. Her hands were exploring one another in the freezing stillness of that idle afternoon, and the sun shone through the skylight and shadows existed only to make the light real, but it was not warm and only dying, deciduous, Ohio trees were crisp and sharp. Soon, coming frost would find us, and I would have waited until then for my mom to lay the mossy stone weight of this sadness down to rest in the meandering wake of her memory, but finally, she looked at me, tears marooned on her cheeks. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I am so glad I stayed. I am so glad I am here to forget these clouds with you.â&#x20AC;?

This is a Poem about a Chicken and How Death Makes Me Want to Vomit Laura Esposto

Search Engine Salvation Brittani Rable

In the darkness there is the sound of my breathing and the laser-red lines that cut through the emptiness.

Life had always been ignoble, a small bloated body propped against the edge of a picnic table. Laying under the warm January sun twisted bones met a rubber neck at an angle no divine creator could have imagined. It was probably a bad fall, my grandfather said, The ground will be too frozen to dig her a proper grave. We’ll have to move her so the animals don’t get too close to the house. I picked her up by the feet, feathered burial shroud snagging on overgrown wild-rose bushes. I decided that she was the heaviest thing I had carried.

Nevermind that I’ll have to be up in a few hours, sleep has found other beds to lie in. My body is alone, the solid weight pressing down into memory foam, thrumming, operating slowly, like a small stream bubbling its way softly over rocks and roots, ribs and sinew, meandering along a path that shepherds along life, and yet, the artistry of this is nothing. And the small divets on the backs of my thighs are everything. The soft pudge of my stomach selfishly demands my attention. The fleshy backs of my arms sway at too quick a movement, dancing to the beat of a song that I hate. And my thighs spend too much time together in a relationship that I have deemed toxic. I cannot fathom that there is beauty in these unpleasant imperfections, denied the right to be retouched. If I wake my phone from its carefree slumbering in a desperate summoning and put my faith in Google, body confidence, will I find my peace of mind?

I was told she was not worth burying. So laid her down in a way that maybe, upon first sight, the coyotes will conclude that she is just sleeping. Her head tucked into into the crease of a root.

Three black cats marched behind me, their tails waving, prayer flags in an impromptu funeral procession. I left her at the feet of an oak torn down by lightning 20 years ago. Not everything must die quietly.

That Night Kate Isaacs

What were you thinking when you left that day? With the baby crying, and your mother crying. The way that man and your mother screamed at each other, you knew it was going to get bad. He’d broken a glass already, when he flipped the coffee table. You saw how close it landed to the baby. I remember when you were young and it was your father drinking, swinging the fists, screaming the words. I remember how you would sit in the corner and put your hands over your eyes. Palm to pupil. As if to say, I can’t see it so it can’t be real. Last Tuesday their fighting kept you up late. It was the third time this month that the cops had been called. The strange men in blue uniform walked around the house as if it were theirs. One of them, a heavy set man, had made rude comments about the empty wrappers lying around, the baby toys, the dirty plates, and the half drank beer cans. He had called the house disgusting as he looked directly at your mother. Why didn’t you defend her? Why did you just stand there staring down at your shoes? The next day in school there was a pop quiz on the book you never finished reading. You laid your head on your desk and you closed your eyes. If I can’t see it then it can’t be real. You wrote nothing on the paper, not a word, not your name, not a single letter. You didn’t pass it forward, someone grabbed it from your desk, and you let them. The same way you let that boy touch you at the party. When you walked out of the house that day you circled the block twice. Then you walked over to his house, and you smoked skunk weed in a basement so thick with fog you couldn’t find the walls. And then he and his friends wanted to go to the party. And you asked to come along because you did not want to go home. You must have thought about them then, your mother and your little brother. But maybe you thought more on the party, maybe you thought more about that older boy whose lips curled up into a smile every time your eyes met. At the party you drank and drank and drank. You gave your father a run for his money that night. You saw flashes of rooms and faces, everything began to blur. You found yourself back in the basement, not remembering how you got there. You found yourself puking into a trash can. You and that boy were alone. He held your hair back as your stomach emptied. He handed you the stained glass pipe to smoke and finally the vomiting stopped.

Then he began touching you and you tried to get up, but he pulled you back. You tried again but he is pulled you in pushing his weight on top of you. You said nothing, you sank back into the couch, and you closed your eyes. The next morning you walked home on wobbly legs. You stumbled and you had to stop for fear of getting sick yet again. You leaned against a brick wall as your own school bus rolled past without you. Around the corner your front yard featured a new decoration. A plastic yellow ribbon stretched between the two dying trees, and across the front door. You walked straight forward struggling to keep that yellow out of your peripheral vision. Inside the house is quiet. The television that had been perpetually left on as a matter of course, was off. Your mother had always insisted on leaving the television on, even if nobody was in the room. She said it was because the sound calmed her nerves, that she couldn’t stand the silence. Why wouldn’t you look at the empty screen? Were you afraid to see it shattered and broken? As you walked down the hallway you looked up at the ceiling, at the cobwebs and the layer of dust on a long dead light bulb. You had to look up. It was the only way to not see the blood splatter. In the bathroom you closed the door. You mechanically walked up to the sink. You splashed cold water on your face. You looked up and I looked up and we did not recognize one another anymore. So you grabbed a nearby towel and you covered the mirror.

How Many Butterflies?

West Pleasant Church

Jeremy Kundtz

Anna Talarico

Patti— I, too, think today I will be a poet, tomorrow a wild detective, a Hemmingway in waiting.

with coffee steam and my breath and my faith

I will wait forever, because no sentence is truly sacred, and a poem only happy

in finding a fragile facsimile of god quiet enough to be held

at one hundred lines. Patti, the final line is listless in the dust clouds,

in the heavy dry of morning with clouds and no rain, though lively enough to fly

is dancing in uneven layers of sunrise, the flood of morning I cannot hold, but that washes

in the small of clasped hands

me as I sit, absentmindedly tracing trails atop my palms— into every corner of memory, light flooded sky of imagination. Patti, the perfect line, you have shown me, is like the perfect cup of coffee,

that need to open, need to be closed long enough for a hundredth line to live. Patti—how many butterflies died in your sweating palms? How did you never give up?

steaming somewhere in the blue city of Morocco, or locked behind a blue door in Mexico, maybe. I long less for the hiding than the forgotten—a song too simple to be imagined, like a small flower under a small rock on a mountain that belongs to no one. Patti, I wait in cafes with pianos and paintings of pianos. There are no names nor doors. No music. Just waiting words. The lips of the wind are cloudless Mexican skies, rainless Moroccan mornings kissing the dry of your face and mine. I smell small flowers lingering everywhere, softly

When Dogs Sleep

LIT

Cloe Watson

When she is curled beside my hips on nights when rain is heard outside our nest, her hair Warming the skin exposed in sleep, her face Pointing away from mine to watch the dark, A light, tanning these cheeks, now pale, to brown Takes me into my youth where, small, I sit Backseat feeling the car pull me into Sleep, the ancient engine humming, quiet. The world: a Jeep beneath my little form, The night shading monsters too slow to stop me here, my mother too. Tired, I sleep. I stand in sand again, my suit now spent and sagging loose from scooting in and out of waves. My tongue is blue because of time I use to roll candies along my teeth. I’m younger still. Alone and calm, I play. The world is: water, burning light on thighs Unlotioned, and monsters wading below The depth of waves I floated, singing loud. When she is curled beside my hips, she whines In her sleep. I watch. The rain, hushed, now stops.

First Date

Dylan Ecker

I tell her, yes, I am in love with the sour, grainy apples that lay uncared for in orchards. Yes, I pick up the folded pieces of paper left under piles of wet leaves: trigonometry homework done by god knows who and a sticky note asking to take the trash out. I tell her, yes, I am in love with the way rain sweeps a chapstick into the storm drain. I bought an umbrella but it broke. Yes, I killed a raccoon. Its plumsized skull squashed beneath the tires. The blood erupts like a blender with its lid not tight enough: bubbling, maroon. I tell her, yes, I am in love with minutelong porn clips. The tightly shot glimpses of naked limbs and lemon square bedsheets, unmade and ruffled. Yes, I taught myself the art of Taekwondo to chop a honeydew by hand. I tell her, yes, I’m nervous. Aren’t we all? Blossoms waiting for the next storm. Yes, that’s why I am in love, I tell her. The cloudless sky becomes a hurling downpour letting go: a river slowly forms, the hosta bed dismantles, jasmine tangles with legumes and plum tomatoes float like small canoes lost in zucchini seedling flumes. It’s not love—

it’s a radar map blinking, a chance of hail later in the evening, maybe some light snow, but no accumulation.

For Spring

LIT

Laura Esposto

ART

Happy Swing Anna Talarico

My father keeps his wives’ bodies in our backyard. They are here to help you, he reminds. When it storms, I trip on bones gnawing out through mud, Their jaws lounging open, vacant birdbaths collecting rain. They are here to help you, he reminds me, A new mother for every hazy season is a gift. Their jaws lounging open, my own vacant birdbath collecting rain. Only until the novelty dulls do they depart. A new mother for every hazy season is a gift, I’ve been told. I use their skulls to trap frogs from Cooper’s pond, Only until the novelty dulls do they dare part. By winter I have enough ribs to build myself a castle. I use their skulls to trap frogs from Cooper’s pond. Neighborhood boys claw their squirming bodies and smash them against rocks. But by winter I have enough ribs to build myself a castle, I will stand guard and let no man enter.

Sands (A Dream)

LIT

Paul O’Neill

It’s a resteraunt called the H-Block. The tables were arranged in the shape of an H. There was a long bar at the back end of the room, shielding the kitchen from view, and on the wall hung a picture of Bobby. In big, black letters the ceiling was painted. “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” No one is laughing yet. People sat at their seats in the quiet and stared at bare plates. This is where she asked to meet. “I keep having this dream,” she said. She was fidgeting with an empty glass. A waiter walkedby, naked, covered only in a blanket, shitting on the floor. His legs moved like scissors. They chopped the air and from it dropped the excrement. “I don’t understand it, or why it keeps happening. I chipped my tooth on granola and now it keeps happening, every time I sleep.” The shit smelled of the isles to the east. “I’m sitting at a table and I’m going to eat. I haven’t eaten in a long time.” The empty plates had small cracks in their faces. The light in the H-Block was poor. “So I’m simply starving, you know? My stomach is screaming, just screaming, begging me to eat, and I’m finally about to. And it feels so good. I can almost taste the bread, like the meal is right around the corner.” She used to have darker hair, redder hair, but she dyed it brown yesterday. She took great pains to hide the roots and imitate a natural color. “Finally, I have the bread in my hands. It’s hard as a brick, you could make walls out of stale bread like this, but I think, no matter, I have my teeth, and this is why I have teeth. What teeth are for.” The glass tipped over and she returned it to its upright position, embarassed. She was the only one talking in the resteraunt. Some people muttered in Gaeilge, inaudible. “I’m about to bite the loaf, but as I’m raising it to my mouth, it starts to go wrong.” She raised her hands to her lower jaw. There was a pleading in her eyes. “My teeth start to crumble. They start to break, to crack, like they’re made of plaster or something. So many cracks. And you can hear

it, too. You can hear it like ice breaking.” She winced. “And suddenly it’s like sand is pouring out of my mouth. I’m sitting there with this bread in my hands and my teeth are rushing out of my gums. White sands tumbling out of the sockets and onto the table.” Stomachs used to grumble in the H-Block, but they’ve since shrunken. Her breath was audible as she described the scene. “I’m just left there. Hunger in my belly, sand in my lap, and my stomach is still aching.” When Bobby died, Tehran gave the middle finger to the British embassy. What would they do for her? “I keep having that dream over and over. I have it so much now that I don’t know if it’ll ever end.” They called some thugs martyrs and labeled some martyrs thugs. There were those who fought for freedom and those who fought for themselves while freedom cried around them. “It’s worth describing, but it hurts. Living with an empty mouth.” The H-Block didn’t make any money because they didn’t sell anything. But they stayed open. “My stomach barren, but my hands full, you know?” She looked at the plate before her and closed her eyes to mourn. Bobby kept smiling behind the bar. It was painted on and it allowed him to keep smiling, even in his sleep. She ran her finger over the face of the plate. She paused to feel each crack and held her mouth open. The words moved in the fashion of a whisper: vulnerable, meek, tasting of woe. “With the bread I cannot break.”

Capturing da Vinci at London’s National Gallery Jessica Williams

ART

Self-portrait as a bouquet of fake flowers Christian Cholcher

I have seen many a wedding and many a funeral, baptisms, and church dinners where the Lady’s Sisterhood dusts off my toxic purple orchid blooms, frozen in a mire of so many holidays and baby showers: call me when you need me. I reach up for the old paneled ceilings in the beige sitting room of Rossi and Sons Funeral Home. I am put out reflexively on dining room tables, because fresh picked is just too complicated, but Aunt Sylvie will always snicker and say real flowers are better. I wish I had a middle finger. I have felt many people caress my petals in fleeting, lovelorn reaches, then leave me at the end of the night to be cooped up in the hall closet with the coats and the sewing box no one has used in a decade. I’ll always be there, to brighten the space with my red cloth carnations, and the sense that nothing changes. I’m around.

ART

Dreamer

Grace Krammer

Blindfolded Flash Dancers in Paris Jessica Williams

Meowch Donna Taja

The Witch’s Council heard a far knock, unfurled the curtain to Wanda Warlock. “I want to join your club,” said she, “I’ve got the magic, bub, you’ll see!”

red wand he tossed, said, “Band back and accost!” Thus did she magic, just before the clique.

And with a twirl and a swish, and a whirl and a wish, conjured a tall lizard, green slime, a ball of light; procured a small wizard, mean mime, and doll of might!

Turned on her heel, yearned, “Now what’s your feel?” “Still a loser, a creep, a freak! Never one of us, the chic!

“I hold tons a spell, and potions as well! All you have to do, is let me join you!”

Get out, get out!” sounded their shout. Wanda flew in a zoom, and away hid in her room.

The Witches said, “Not quite, when you look a fraught fright! Tatty shoes and crooked clothes, ratty hair and a hooked nose,

Until a stroll in the morn, spotted the council forlorn! Muddy blouse shreds, shattered glass, broken door, bloody mouse heads, scattered grass, yolk on floor!

pocks and warts on your face, walks and smarts with no grace, ancient wand and bereft hat, you want us to accept that?!”

And the Witches? Oh, the Witches! Some were newts and hogs, others were mutes and frogs,

Wanda flung off in tears, to her bungalow by the piers, where waited her cat Jory, who stated, “I know the story.”

britches and dresses in scratches, witches in messes and patches, crying in moans, “why”-ing in groans.

And out danced a robe of silk, a fancy hat white as milk, shiny shoes fit for a witch, finely crafted stitch by stitch.

Warlock filled with surprise, her shock milled in her eyes; while lurking by the tree line, sat smirking a lithe feline.

All by Jory’s rich claws! And next applied those paws, dark arts upon sordid face; scars, warts, and frizz he did erase,

After Guernica Jeremy Kundtz

Medusa Grace Krammer

and there must have been a moment when everything started to look awfully like La Tomatina. Tomatoes, a flurry of flying tomatoes, a pother of peaches, plums and pears jumping adrift in red air, red grapes and their seeds and their painfully peeled skins vaulting about vivaciously with the tomatoes and the bustle of warm bodies losing their warmth in a cold red river of red tomato guts and blood. Guts and blood flooded the streets that Sunday. Silence exploded, was all that was left behind. After the explosions, Nothing. Only peeled skins, and tomatoes, dusting the acrid air.

White Lies

into the fire Grace Krammer

Laura Esposto

There is no great truth but death and spit and what we chose to rub

the bright lights and discover that you were translucent all along. No great truth but the fact

into each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wounds when the rivers ran thick and yellow;

that you were never one with roots to break through but the foundation to be built upon:

Before anyone had a chance to sell hellfire from a saran wrapped van

that death and spit, all great lies, need to survive.

on the side of 101; I mean, no great truth but the ancestors hollowing out our bodies with abalone shells, scraping petrified livers from their finger nails

no ears to hear the crows that scold her her heart a stone, her mind, a boulder. washboard backbone still as marble nude and weak as barren soul. luster of grey and speckled ember her body ignites at the glimpse of a flame. stone-cracked, limp clay, of this she was formed. smoke swims among trees that kiss her bones

to sail your wooden chest across the great sea to prevent day break from ever touching us, and there is no great reason for the cut on your lip except for the boy who swallowed you whole, spat you back out like no great truth except Zeus clawing his way back up the throat of his father and no greater lie than Jesus deciding he did not want to kill after all; there is no great truth but that which we needed to see straight in front of us, raise your hand against

Box Braids (Root of Mindisiac) CMD Chiimeh

Braids, beads, medallions and box braids, she styling with weed strained leaves and I’m sniffing her powderness. With a whiff in, I’m left powerless to her weed strained weaves but she’s beautiful with and without them. Lifted in bloom this flower is but whom shall tell her different? The world is different now. She’s in the bathroom for hours like Zora Howard, telling me “I [may] have bi-racial hair Combs run freely through my fine breezy Just to the part, the most you can make [but] until it gets to the back and breaks” It takes time to style to a video and she’s posted to show. I’d remember that dot com could always get more of you than I do. You just cut your braids now you miss being Badu to fellas in love, calling you names. Now you seeing the ways the same brothers had changed their attention to ladies with a range of extensions to their waist and don’t get me wrong, these gorgeous beauties were vivid queens. Most guys could agree exclaiming “Cutie could get anything, anytime.” Every time that I think, it’s the same to me but each strand of hair grows differently like her body, in a tiny spring-like helix and like a tree when I read its rings coiled in your hair, it tells it all. I heard and saw her style changes and guys here were gone, parted like an afro at the corner. Maybe that made Love a new girl and before her, they had been used to anything Pantene Pro-V. Now you only a foreigner to old generations. Contrary to complaints, it reaches back further than our generation, this well translated adaption age of hating the self. Twisted, you don’t know who to trust when all eyes on you but their judging themselves.

Trust it, you known it

Swelled up, her mustarded beauty and made it known when though there was no need to disclose what didn’t ever need to be shown. What mighty means to be shown when it knows its glory shines through fogs of it all? I can see it through a few cloths, cotton clothes you bought. Her hair like wool rests around your neck like a scarf. And like a scarf, you’re not your hair nor your skin but truly only a soul that lives so deep within instead another extension of your being. Flaunt it how you define and not how others see but how you treat it. Don’t let them lead you into

believing it’s not naturally refined. Gracefully but in elegance you’re blind and I’m blind on the shadiest of days you still there. To face away from the sun is the only way your eyes cannot be caught by its fullness. No other piece of starlet needed to brighten its glory. Clouds can’t cover its color nor shroud the cloud of shame you may bring, represented like a scarlet letter returned to self. Despite my neglection, you illuminated everything around me that my eyes can see like the world shall acknowledge you when I do not. Nourished by exfoliation through your light richness. You are Royal Three Parts, a Bob, the Braids, Twists, and a Coin Head Cap tight like these common packed fists the center for Black and this track rooted within, I have felt a disiac where only royalty passed maternally. King and queens reacted to certain textures solely a goddess should have. Not to say next to hers was something lesser but that the cycle of vision has switched, less flipped than tricked now that the eye should see. It’s that refinement I had mentioned in the beginning. As in the end, he tells her: “Meet me by the lake, said bring a towel wrapped around you, don’t know if your hair wets. Say you’re proud to and ask me if I’m there yet” She laid down to rest with brutes and was weighed down with lapis. Granted, if honestly it’s what your truth is and this is what you’re true to then rock it until the hips touch your end, remembering that it’s the head that fits the mind, not the hair that fits the face. When thinking of your image, I praise your embracing of liability to more than just you, Root of Mindisiac. Yes, root you are but the mind, the body, and vision is yours. Claim it You alone set the sight of the sun and control the image of everything lesser [Braids, Beads, Medallions] Braids, beads, medallions made from Georgetown Historic. I’m in love with this stallion, the way that girl gets ignored by bros, I can’t understand. Man, her hair moves like flower leaves in response to the sun, reaching for its direction. Flower leaves lifted with nothing but life or hang like fruit trees might.

Corner in the Morning Anna Talarico

The Mistake Dylan Ecker

This is a new poem by my classmate. She has been working on it for a few days. It’s titled, “The Mistake.” It’s about a boy in a sleeping bag. The night is Christmas Eve. He wakes when he hears the sound of hooves. Through the dark wood, the boy sees a man holding reins as if he is holding a promise— his hands are without gloves. His palms are chipped and red. His fingers squeeze the leather straps. His face seems tired. The man does not notice the boy lying prone, watching. Wind lifts snow from the branches. The man leaves. The boy looks at the sky. Then, a glow between the clouds, and an angel appears holding an owl. This is God, the angel says. Hoot, God says. Hoot, hoot (these two “hoots” appear on separate lines, perhaps to indicate certainty, or love, the things most poems impart after you read them too many times). Here is where she thinks her poem falls apart. The angel is just a leaf. The man never left. In fact, he is coming for the boy with an axe. Many miles away, the boy’s family gathers to say a prayer for their lost son. An owl slams into the kitchen window and lands in a recently baked apple pie. Hoot, hoot (this time on the same line). The boy’s father grabs a lamp and swings— porcelain shatters against the owl’s head and soon its body is limp and lying in a mess of nutmeg and diced apples. No one knows what to say. There is the sound of hooves outside. I tell her the poem is great the way it is. She keeps searching for a word better than “hoot.”

Ashes to ashes Brittani Rable

To Little Girls Who Curl Their Hair Laura Esposto

The dusky smell of smoke lingering in the garage clings in my nose like rain drops on the car window those afternoons you drove me, in silence, to the doctor or to softball practice, 100.5 classic rock on the radio because that’s just how we are, no words needed. Until you told me once, twice, that you have lived your life, you’ve done your duty. You’re ready to die. But as I lie in bed this morning and listen to you cough as you ready for work, each pertussis is a page written by you, torn in half, kindling for the pyre that I know will come much sooner than it should. I am not ready. With every wheezing laugh that collects breath, I see your years crumbling like the ashes in your tray and I wonder how many of them we will have left to share because you are not a phoenix and you will not rise. You are dust and will stay as such. And with every stub that burns out the smoke grows thicker, sticking in my throat like the chalk I used to color the driveway with that has since been rinsed away and I wish that I could color your blackboard lungs into something new. I am afraid to balance these wheels alone.

I’m sorry, you will be small in a world where there is neither snow nor stars but night, as milky as a pond, is the constant. Asked to lunge forward, then step into focus, bones open and soaked with fog when the matchstick woods are far too near and you are only a visitor. You’ll learn what it takes to sew a dewy mouth shut, to hold your legs cross so blood does not encrust the thick white linen strangers slip beneath you. You will be too young and placed on a stool in your red party dress; mouths with no teeth tell you that to sit unworded and poised is the only way it does not hurt. but night, as milky as a pond, is the constant.

Black kids in Chicago

Kisses Paul O’Neill

LaNae Plaxico

an erasure of The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket by Yasunari Kawayaba At the base of the neighborhood, Children heard the cutting of color, Red and green and red. Each with their hearts and minds, Unusually beautiful, Beautiful wide-eyed shapes cut Red. Like dark children, Precious and intelligent, Cut red and green And red.

The end’s embers glowing orange, A flame peppered with ash -The filter between folded fingers Of my idol, two years older, Us both without our wits. Surrendered to Jack, we watched Our brains bounce in booze While he dragged off a Turkish Royal.

From him to my hand, I looked To inspect his handiwork: A lipstick smear like no other. The red of it screamed to him, Shouted out into the night, “I will adore you Even on the pyre.”

His whisper carried on white smoke-Can I burn your hand? A request foriegn and fueled by drink, I thought not of the scar, only him, my love. I reached out for him, to answer With a gentle fist, and the face of Slim cancer kissed me deeply. Its hot tongue licked my skin And the layers leapt back, Burnt to a ring of raw red Round a pale crater flushed of color. The burn matched the white Of my gritted teeth. He watched me under the flame: Man burning boy. From my hand, He lifted the cigarette, and from Its filter he pulled clouds. They moved to his lungs From a sky singed with me. He tasted rot. Whiskey Charged up his throat. His body shook around the railing And his guts fell to the earth. He dropped the Royal. I watched It smolder; I watched him shudder.

Authors and Artists CMD Chiimeh

Jeremy Kundtz

This poem is from a 44 poem poetry book I had written a year ago as a sort of long letter to Black Liberation Army activist, Assata Shakur, also known by some as late rapper, Tupac Shakur’s aunt. I admire the Black sovereignty ideals and lessons that she taught as do I admire her writing ability in both her poetry and her autobiography book. In my 44 poems, I elaborated on parts of her story and teachings as well as shared some of the parallels between everything her and the society she had seeked asylum away from.

Poetry allows me to stop time and wander about in my memories. I revel the rare and the mundane. I believe that ephemeral is a pretty word that does no justice to the passage of a life, so I write, looking for the words that do.

Christian Cholcher I am a third year English student concentrating in Creative Writing. I write mainly prose and poetry, and I am submitting five poems to the magazine. These poems are included in a collection I am compiling called “Let the War Speak” and one comes from another collection called “The Zodiac Cycle” (none have been published yet, I just compile them for my own benefit). They are mostly prose poems and persona poems.

Dylan Ecker I like to play basketball. I am so good at basketball. I am the best at basketball. I will be in the NBA next year. I will be playing basketball in the NBA. Wow.

Laura Esposto I am currently an Undergraduate English Major with a concentration in Creative Writing. Having grown up both in San Francisco and on my reservation in Iowa, I spend a lot of my time writing about those two societal cultural differences. My writing is usually of the surrealist nature and hopefully can be enjoyed by other people besides myself!

Kate Isaacs Kate Isaacs writes under the pen name Kate E Lore. She has been published in Daton City Paper, Dayton Most Metro, and Panopolyzine.

Grace Krammer Grace is a freshman student studying pre-nursing at the Ohio State University. She’s a busy girl who plays lacrosse and volunteers. She also enjoys writing poetry, taking pictures, watching movies, and hanging out with her friends.

Paul O’Neill

I met Deborah Eisenberg once. Well, almost. I stood right in front of her to shake Wallace Shawn’s hand. I didn’t realize that she was Deborah Eisenberg until after the fact.

LaNae Plaxico

My work seeks to expose the lives of those who may be forgotten so that their voices will never be lost or silenced. My works yearns to be judged, debated, and appreciated. It is meant to spark a larger discussion about the things some in society want to quiet.

Brittani Rable

Brittani Rable, originally from Lima, Ohio, is a graduating English major with a Creative Writing minor at The Ohio State University. She is a previously unpublished poet and has an interest in writers ranging from Charles Bukowski to Lord Alfred Tennyson. She also prefers more jelly than peanut butter on her PB&Js, has an alarming preoccupation with drinking coffee, and really likes dinosaurs.

Donna Taja

I am an English major who occasionally tries to write legible and interesting things. Unfortunately, this does not extend to bios. Is that good enough? Eh, whatever.

Anna Talarico

Anna Talarico is a History of Art and French Major from Charlotte, North Carolina. She uses photography as a way to experience the world around her and to understand how even the smallest of moments can be beautiful. This is her third contribution to Mosaic Magazine.

Cloe Watson

I’m Cloe and I’m a second year, who recently got admitted into the creative writing major. My main interest concerning creative writing is poetry. My poetry is usually on the darker side, but I try to add something sweet in each one— a shining bit of humanity maybe. My ultimate goal is to get an MFA, but if all fails I hope to always write poetry.

Jessica Williams

Mosaic Staff Editors-in-Chief Bobby Lowery Alli Cadle Literature Editors Christina Szuch Kory Smith

Layout Editors Andrea Oh Daniel Thomas

Art Directors Alejandra Timmins

Treasurer Amanda Gaglione

Literature Staff Amanda Gaglione Shelby Stoddart Ciru Wainaina Malerie Holte Shannon Connelly Liz Lyle Savannah Steamer Megan Wagner

Art Staff Katie Shipman Jordan Matthiass Kati Catipon Caroline Creed Michaela Cunningham Anne Hohler Layout Staff Brandon Muschlitz

Get involved with Mosaic Magazine Apply for a staff or editorial position, come to our poetry readings, participate in a workshop, attend Professor & Protege, or submit your work for publication!

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Special Thanks to Our Advisors Angela Taylor Ruth Friedman

Cover Photo by Jessica Williams