The Monster Issue by Paperfinger

Paperfinger

April 2014

The Monster Issue

Paperfinger

April 2014

The Monster Issue

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Feature

Megan Kovak

26 Poetry

28 Stephanie Erdman 30 Kristiane Weeks 34 Lois Goh Short 36 Michelle Clark stories

20 22

by Kristiane Weeks

Chasing Storms

Stephanie Erdman

FEATURE

Written by Kristiane Weeks

t was inevitable. Megan Kovak was the first Art School student I met while attending Flagler, and she really has left an impression on me. Besides listening to her sing at small shows around St. Augustine, I loved seeing Megan’s paintings, her favorite medium, “with oils. Although painting and drawing are my staples, I love pretty much every medium I’ve tried. I really like welding and using metal for sculptures, and I’ve also been highly interested in sound art as well, and combining the two (like I did for my BFA show at Flager College). Photography and video art are also high up on the list of medium loves.” Megan is a skilled artist because she really has succeeded with expression through every medium she’s laid hands on. “Art school

kind of forces that upon you I think, with required classes for mediums you’re not used to. I love that though, I think stepping outside of your comfort zone in art making can produce the most beautiful accidents in some cases.” Anyone can appreciate her downto-earth creations, her dedication to every piece she creates because her inspirations come from, basically, her life. Megan shared how her father “used to be an artist, so growing up I was just surrounded by it - and obviously, when you’re young, your parents are you’re heroes, and I thought his drawings were absolutely amazing and I wanted to be just as good as he was. I think I was about 5 when I first saw his drawings and I started to draw. Then growing up I always strived to get better and better, and made sure I was the class

artist in every grade in elementary school, and that I took all of the art electives I could in high school. After homework I would experiment with oil paints and stink up the whole house with the smell. Art kind of zones me out and is a useful meditation for me.” But Megan also spoke about something personally touching, “In high school I had a lot of people I know commit suicide, and myself as well as many people i surround myself with constantly have this overbearing sense of depression, so lately I’ve been doing this “contemplating suicide” series of paintings. And I think I paint it mostly for people that are going through that, for a sense of connection and not feeling so alone. So they know there are others out there that feel the same way and that struggle through the same daily 13

obstacles.” Her familial ties and emotional memories show through her rustic Pennsylvania-like pieces and raw subjects.

As for her future, the possibilities seem endless. Megan was sure in expressing her confidence “in every medium I’ve used so far, except watercolor - which I will be forced But her pieces also show her inspirations; “Mathew Cerletty is a to get comfortable with during this huge inspiration to me because he’s tattoo apprenticeship, so I think a phenomenal figure painter with that’s exciting. Lately I’ve been drawing with micron pens and a dark, cynical twist that I like to try to add in my paintings as well. prisma colored pencils a lot for my tattoo apprenticeship. I’m getting I love when artists can play with more comfortable with that and I the paint as paint (if that makes sense) and create beautiful figures think my drawings have drastically in bizarre environments - showing improved from it. Actually, now the visual colliding with the mental. that I think about it, even having a tattoo apprenticeship is stepping There’s nothing more satisfying to me than seeing an equal amount of outside of my comfort zone. It’s an skill and content in a painting, and entirely different experience for me as an artist and so far I’m loving to me, Mathew Cerletty does just every minute of it.” that. I really love drawing figures because of all of the colors that you can make in flesh, so naturally, I’m Tattoo apprenticeship? “I’m very extremely drawn to figure painters.” excited to be adding tattooing to

my list of favorite mediums. This whole journey has been a matter of acceptance, respect, and proving myself as a devoted artist to the other artists that are teaching me, and I couldn’t be more happy with the results and feedback I’ve received.” There really are no limits for this girl. www.megankovak.wordpress.com.

Stephanie Erdman

van could only have been three and I was seven. My mother woke us in the middle of the night. As she scooped my brother into her arms, she handed me a pile of blankets. “Lorna, we have to go to the basement. I’ll be right behind you.” I did as I was told, hurrying toward the basement steps.

street, through the neighbor’s front yard, and straight up the street. The trees that used to line the street were lying on their sides and one was split right up the middle. The cars that had been parked along the curb were pushed together at the end of the block and you could see the bellies of some that were thrown aside with their tires in the air like the legs of giant dead bugs.

Looking back now, I imagine that the house was quieter than usual or more ominous in some other way. I remember what it felt like huddled in the corner of the cold basement on the cement floor underneath the blankets we kept on the end of the sofa. Evan and I were whispering, playing fort but Momma was just listening, sitting there stiff. “Shh. Here it comes. Listen.” I didn’t know what we were listening for but Evan and I both stopped talking. Then, we heard it; the sound of the biggest train any of us had ever heard. We could hear the roaring of the train and something that sounded like knuckles cracking.

Storms have always terrified me. When I got my first apartment, right after college, I had paid extra on my deposit to ensure that I got a basement apartment. When I had saved enough to buy my first house, I took out an extra loan to have a steel safe-room built in a basement closet. The moment the thunder started, I would begin to fight the urge to run down the creaky basement stairs. The uncontrollable nature of the weather and the strength is frightening.

Evan doesn’t even remember that night but he became fascinated with nature at the age of five. He was the kid with the ant farm and the chemistry set. Throughout The train sound came closer, so middle school and high school, he close that we couldn’t hear each was a science fair champion. The other. Suddenly, the small window logic of life and why it happens across the basement exploded in. the way it does drew him in but Evan screamed at the noise but I it was the science of weather that couldn’t make a sound. Momma he enjoyed most. I think from that gathered us up and put herself on moment in the basement he knew top of us. The basement went quiet. what he wanted to do with his life: he wanted to study storms. He When we came out of the flew through courses in biology, basement the next morning, the chemistry, and meteorology. Evan neighborhood was torn apart. got his degree in three years and The tornado had cut its own road went on to get a Master’s Degree. through our backyard, across the My brother Evan chases storms.

I watch the weather on television and I wonder where Evan is. There’s a picture of him standing in the science lab bed of his big, black pickup truck in his rain suit sitting on my coffee table. He calls me after every successful chase and tells me what it was like. “Lorna, you couldn’t imagine… the rain was blowing horizontally and the hail was knocking against the roof of the truck. We drove alongside the funnel for a full three miles! We got some of the best video we’ve ever capture.” “Oh my god, Evan, are you alright?” “We’re all fine. Don’t be such a spaz. You know how many safety precautions we take.” He was right, I shouldn’t be worried. He knew all about what he was doing and I didn’t. Still, whenever he told me these things, all I could think about was the little boy in fire truck pajamas. I guess he would always be that same strange, little boy to me. “Are you still there, Lor?” “Yeah, just thinking. Did I tell you about the new sofa?” “I don’t think you did.” “I bought a new sofa.” That sounded really exciting compared to chasing a tornado. “Exciting, huh?” He laughs. We talk for a little while longer about when he’s coming home.

hypergraphia hypergraphia- n. (hye-purr-graf-eeuh) a condition in which a person feels an overwhelming compulsion to write taking the form of journalling, creative writing, or copying text. May be associated with temporal lobe epilepsy and schizophrenia or certain brain injuries. 1. an attempt to create order through labelling, to banish recurrent thought, to log the bothersome noises that keep you awake at night when the neighbors and other sanepeople are asleep, also, 2. a restlessness, primarily of fine muscles in the hands and fingers; an endless breathing of mind 3. obsessed, never knowing what to say or when, regretting what has been and building it a memorial 4. an impetus; lack of order, confusion, hypnotized by the appearance of letters as keys are pressed Related: hypergraphic- adj. (hye-purr-graf-ick) describing a person who suffers from hypergraphia or related conditions, a compulsive writer. 1. one trying to recreate the love of words, the affairs of booksâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; rusted. Stranded in the thick feel of old paper, broken bindings with visible stitches, the yellow of animal pastes 2. the speaker of the typewriterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cryptic Russian, the resonance and voice differing with surfaces, knowing them all; toucher of the primal mechanisms of language 3. one who understand the need for every decision to be the right decision in each moment 4. a woman, fearing the intimacies of silverfish, as she builds a house of bookcases, her renewing optimism See: logophilia- n., logophiliac- adj., SYLVIA PLATH 29

Eating the Afterbirth One day, in a freezing burst, a sunlit highway, it was time to head north first, the mother took a long time eating the afterbirth and then the other way around balances always discover a way

delicacy in this Midwestern Down to Earth place I finally found you but you aren’t from around here like we are why why does the carton need to say Made with love, St. Augustine and atrophy plagues dried strawberries.

to balance out so we said goodbye children we left behind ones we would never meet phantom pains we didn’t look back we didn’t need to states above Florida were much warmer, peeking tulips permeated the treeline soon we fell into a Blue Beard lull months go by then “Did you notice where these strawberries came from?” dehydrated gems, 31

Fog in the Fields Low fog glides between uncountable rows of quivering stalks she used to weave through. Before she and I learned thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no return, no more early morning walks in a wet field. Thick, smooth husks wall us out before we see a cutter bar gnashing its teeth across crops, separating stalks from roots, severing before we learn that Hoosiers grow from our fields, sprout from soft soil, a shiny green turning, forming kernel crowns raked by wanting hands. We yell warnings, but harvesters come for gold inside the strong wall. Not before we can stop black scythes pushing. Scraping. Snap crinkling stalks, shrieking in the fog keeps us from returning again.

Contra Why doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t every day feel like the only spring day we drove endlessly around the island smoking packs of cigarettes, stopping for ice cream, drinks, stopping for cigarettes, singing into salt air we ended up on the pier that night dark purple, soft roars swirling, shining ocean We joked we would never have to part you could never forget me we would jump off the pier instead, jump into the abyss, waves rumbling, disappear together why canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t every instant feel like that instant I almost took your hand, reached into the stars let the thick unknowing cradle us sweep us down the Atlantic 33

Before you visit from work Perhaps you shouldn’t visit me today. The lady in the bed across from me just died today. I wish they would close the curtains, I wish they would clear her body. It’s never a good day for corpses and I don’t thank God it’s Friday. The days just weave into one unending day and I cannot sleep, I cannot eat and damn it, I need to use the bathroom. It’s always a strange feeling when you’re served with your rice, your chicken, some soup and you try to eat it while facing death. I don’t really like chicken and I don’t really like this. So my dear, how was your day at work today?

Pig Don’t go Bacon my heart. It is fragile 35

Indictment History has shown we are our own devils. The cankered root of our own torment and disgrace. We wake, red eyed and breathless at the sight of ourselves, needle fanged specters blithely robed in the scarlet of guilty blood. We, now, hating ourselves because we loved ourselves most. Some hopeful among us, with rose colored minds, preach we are our own redemption. But who can claim to be good? Fellow wretch, I call your flaw, it is arrogance. We, more varlet than victim, the most loving among us are cheats, unmitigated liars and louses with secret hearts of shame. What good are our dictums? Leave that axiom where it lies, it will not hide you. Rouge never prettied the whore. May we spit out the pearl, and tear the rings in our noses. We, beastly cannibals, gorging our muddy bellies with our brother’s flesh and our own swill.

Untitled I heard the voices calling Mara Mara and I answered with a sharp tooth smile “you knew me?” 37

Thank you to all my incredible writers! Think youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got what it takes to write something for us? Submit your stories and poems to jessicafrickdesigns@gmail