The Road Trip issue by Paperfinger

Paperfinger

February 2014

The Road Trip Issue

Paperfinger

February 2014

The Road Trip Issue

Get Featured! Think youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got what it takes? Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re always looking for more artists to feature and more writers. Email us at jessicafrickdesigns@gmail.com to submit your poem, short story or to tell us about an artist you think deserves to be featured. Like us on facebook and follow us on twitter for updates and to be alerted the first friday of every month so you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t miss an issue! Looking for advertising space? Email us at jessicafrickdesigns@gmail.com for pricing information.

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Danielle Harris Photography

32 Poetry

34Caroline Hoadley - BIO 36 Caroline Hoadley 38Marcia Vojcsik Short 40Pauline Thier stories 46 Stephanie Erdman Ball of Sunshine 48 Stephanie Foreman Kristiane Weeks

26 28

FEATURE

“My goal as an artist is to have people walk away with a piece of me”

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I have a love for things that are broken down and neglectedâ&#x20AC;?

Growing up In Pennsylvania I always had a unique way of viewing the world. I thought and saw things differently than my peers. What was strange or unknown to others intrigued me a great deal, instead of playing outside I was inside drawing or painting; anything that I could physically make with my hands was exciting and thrilled me. Then one day I picked up a camera for the first time when I was a freshman in high school and I was never the same. Taking pictures of everything would be an understatement. By the time I was a sophomore in high school I had gone through two computersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; hard drives from the amount of images I had accumulated. When it was

time to decide how I wanted to spend the rest of my life it was a no brainer, create images. So thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what I am in the process of doing. Currently attending Savannah College of Art and Design pursing my love of photography and fashion. At the young age of 22 I am constantly on the move getting inspired by the places I go and the people I encounter. I have a love for things that are broken down and neglected; I want to give them a second chance at being something beautiful. I also love to create emotion with my images. Whether it is a feeling of joy or an uncomfortable chill, I want people to feel when they look at my work. I believe in creating images not taking them. I freeze time for one

moment and have it forever. Recently I have been combining my love for fashion and photography. I would say my work is in between fine art and contemporary. Behind every image there is a concept and a reason. I never create images just to take a pretty photograph; each image has a piece of me in it that I want the viewer to carry away with them. I want the viewer to get caught up in what they see. My goal as an artist is to have people walk away with a piece of me.

-Danielle Harris

Kristiane Weeks Jordan Patricks could tell there was something different in her mother’s smile. Rose’s permanent syrupysweet smile looked a little more viscous than usual, dripping down at the sides; the bronze glimmer in her eye was burned out. Dinner ran as it usually did, Jordan’s fifteen year old sister Mallory hogged the potatoes and Ryan, their father, sat at the head of the table, silently looking over the bills and finances for the family pearl diving business. Rose sat, tossing over her peas, her smile slowly dripped lower at a painfully slow pace, like a volcano slowly oozing its way down the side of the rocks, turning every natural fiber to ashes. Dinner ended with groans of contentment and clinking of dishware into the sink. “We’ll have that pie later,” Mallory commented. Jordan nudged her arm lightly. “I second that,” she concurred. Their hair swung as they collided, waves of brown hair clashing

together.

she silently moved.

From the family room, stout and sorrowful tweets were heard. Jordan passed through the kitchen to the dimmer family room, and walked up to a standing dome cage. The black curved bars encompassed a puffy yellow canary.

“How was your day, Mom?” Jordan asked, putting some Tupperware-clad left-overs in the fridge. Jordan turned, and watched her mother take a spoon and drop it into the depth of the dirty water. She dropped another in, and didn’t pluck either of them back out of the murky depths.

Five years ago, Rose had bought the little flicker of sunlight for herself, as a pick-me-up for the loss of her father, her only remaining family outside of her husband and daughters. The pearl business was hers to look over, a highly stressful job that needed a little relief and light. The canary was perched, as Jordan lowered her gave to the cage, and chirping loudly.

“It was long,” Rose sighed. She turned to face Jordan, the smile gently sauntering from Rose’s face. “Did you close her curtain?” Rose began to head for the family room. “She’s only hungry, you know.” Rose got to feed out of a close-by cherry wood cabinet, and opened the cage door. The bird hopped down onto the floor of the cage, Jordan pulled the black cage and swept it’s wings up, like a curtain over the bird, and soon fluttering stroke of a paintbrush, it stopped singing it’s sad song. to Rose’s finger. Behind Rose and Jordan went back in the kitchen. Jordan, Ryan slunk over to the Her mother was at the sink, rinsing over-stuffed couch and lifted the off the dishes, and then clanking remote. A click was heard, and in them quietly into the dishwasher. a moment, the room was splashed Her pellucid, blue-veined fingers with white. The canary gained a lifted and set the dishes delicately. snowy, ghostly hue, and Jordan Her thing frame under her shock could further see the vacancy filling of short blond hair shook lightly as her mother’s face. She stood in the 29

glare of the TV’s light like a fresh phantom who just recently left the body.

“Mallory! Get up!” Jordan flicked the switch and Mallory appeared in the same fluorescent glow, her auburn waves rose and sank around her shoulders and face as she sat up. Her green-gray eyes sparkled with wonder and fright. “Something’s wrong.”

“Girls,” a cop cut in, before Ryan could speak to his daughters. “When was the last time you saw “I’ve got homework, thanks for your mother?” The search crew was dinner,” Jordan couldn’t be around out into the town and the outskirts, her mother anymore. She looked where the cornfields shook dryly, like a skeleton, lost in the family particularly to the north. Jordan room. Jordan left her parents and and Mallory ran throughout the headed upstairs to her room. house, crying, and confusedly The two stomped down the well-lit looking for more clues. But there The rest of the night was quiet, stairs, into the decaying cream was nothing. Everything had been and the house slept silently into the lights of the dining room, the family as it had the night before. darkest hours. room, the kitchen. An early-bird witness said the The sirens woke Jordan up before “JORDAN!” Mallory’s high squeal greyhound bus had pulled up at her alarm could, at a brisk and struck from the connecting laundry the dawn of the day down the chilly six in the morning. The room, and Jordan sprung to the street from the Patricks’ house. whaling paired with the frenzy of corner of the kitchen, and fell into She trotted onto it, the familiar red and blue tore through Jordan’s the laundry room, where her sister molasses-like smile sticking to the blackened eyelids, and woke in her stood at the window, the steady red corners of her sagging mouth, a a sense of wrongness. and blue droned across her face. neighbor witnessed. No one knew “Dad’s talking to the police.” where she went, or if she would Jordan stumbled and dashed out ever come back. Rose was gone of bed, knocking over her clock, Jordan didn’t feel herself tear past before Ryan was awake. There and fumbled for her doorknob, Mallory, but suddenly she was were no words, no note, no missing tumbling out the door. All of the at her tall, lanky father’s side. artifacts, except for the black-veiled lights were on and her parents’ Two police cars sat in the yard, birdcage was empty. bedroom door was gaping open, the crowded by the walking dead of entire house glared the fluorescent the surrounding neighbors and white of a funeral parlor, screaming neighborhood-feeders. Three cops the wakefulness across the hallway were talking to Ryan, and his and down the stairs, except for hollow eyes sank into the coalMallory’s door, which was still stained rims of his sockets, the smugly closed. Jordan flew across life was sucked from his face, and the hall, and walked into Mallory’s he beheld his daughters, agony black room. engulfing his facial features. 31

I’I’ve been told by people who run frequently that they experience a Runner’s High; a post workout surge of endorphin’s that denotes being sweaty and tired. I have only experienced the latter symptoms from running, but when thinking about when and why I write, I realized that there must be a Writers High that moves one beyond resignation. Writers toil across a mental page, weary pen in weary hand, trying to muster speed and inspiration during the transfer from thought to page. We build an Ark in the desert, carefully assembling the pieces while praying for rain. We face the Giant of the blank page with a sling of small ideas grasped in hand. Writing is a struggle of many failures and many successes. I cannot recall the first time wobbly steps became running, just as I cannot recall when putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys) became the strangest combination of toil and joy. Writing is a sensational burden. I would not wish for any other occupation that can frustrate and excite, enrage and calm, or so perfectly pair black with white. I write poems from details and memory; from both feeling and absence. I write to tell stories that show beauty, truth, and loss. I write for the high. There is no greater feeling than bearing a limp for wrestling an Angel. -Caroline Hoadley

Hunter Middle School The lounge is stifling. Students peer through the barred window on the door, attracted to the smell of pizza like flies to a corpse. The latex gloves are tight over my damp fingers. I serve lunch to adults whose grim faces make their ID Badges look like caricatures. The Assistant Principle sits in the corner, head bowed, speaking to a Police officer in low tones. A dull buzz comes from the overhead fluorescent, making the side salads look limp and wilted. The teachers here spend their days making copies and casting out demons.

What Would Hitchcock Say? Shadows pass overhead; I squint against the sun and see a flock of long-winged birds, black and mottled brown, flying in the clear sky. A hawk swoops down, talons splayed, it tucks it’s wings and divesplucking a Morning Dove from it’s perch on a branch, the hawk screams at the sun, taking it’s prey out of sight. The rest of the birds turn and swoop around me, circling, talons splayedBlinking, I sit up. The fan lazily turns, throwing shadows on the ceiling. The house is silent and hot, even though the sun has long since set.

Bleached Bone I buried you in the marsh mud; setting a stone from the jetty above your head. The waves break quietly at your feet, mirroring the gray sky along the curved shore. The wind ruffles at my back, rushing through the brown reeds and wrinkling the water before disappearing. The white gulls rise and cry your name in a hundred broken voices, wheeling above the salty ground. They vanish as the tide changes, but your name still rings from all the hollows of overturned shells. 37

The Brief Period During Which I Gave Up I stopped. It had been a year since I admired the stars, I stopped looking upward content with the sound of my lonesome foot falls, my body curled like the perpetual question mark. I stopped crinkling my eyes when I smiled or interrupting the funeral procession of thought with day dreams. I stopped breathing poetry, art, or beautiful things. I blackened my eyes and darkened my wardrobe. I stopped going to bed early, eating my vegetables, reading. My home, my anchor. My words, my drought. I stopped looking outside my own head to see what I would find. It had been a year since I admired the stars. I stopped.

Hand-me-down Town Your eyeballs left echoes I hear even now – dark streets tease me with your imagined anecdotes. Our soles are one – treading tandem cobblestones, admiring the architecture. The church? You probably stood where I stand – probably gazed with awe – probably drank at this ate at that hole in the wall place. I know you did. You’re here right now with me. 39

Heart like fire “It was her that gave the strength to me.” –Skellig (Skellig by David Almond) If we could all be together in that one place where we may find love, art and joy. Why together? Because everybody needs balance to keep them in that world. In between. Let’s be each other ‘s bridges. Strengthen, enlighten and help each other get there. We all have been there before. When our hearts were still like fire. 41

Habitual “Typical.” –Mina (Skellig by David Almond) Don’t be typical. Different is not wrong— it is enlightenment. Certainty is typical. Let go. See where not knowing takes you. Negative capability is a positive. Not being able to identify, explain is needed when wanting to be an artist. Break the habit and not know. You will find joy. 42

Ossification “”It is linked to another process,” she said, “by which the mind too, becomes inflexible. It becomes hard as bone. It is no longer a mind. It is a lump of bone wrapped in a wall of stone. This process is ossification.”” –Mina (Skellig by David Almond) Beware! There is a process creeping into the crevices of your being. It will blind you. Shut you out of the supernatural world. It will close off your channels of communication. Keep the fire burning to stop the mind from stiffening. Numbing. Petrifying. Once the process is completed. There is no way back.

The opposite of ordinary “”Extraordinary,” she whispered.” –Mina (Skellig by David Almond) I don’t think he is that much different at all. He has wings. So did I. He can fly. So could I. But still we call Skellig extraordinary because we are lost. We flew from one world to the next. Skipping the middle. Our wings did not survive. 45

Klorofill 1. I have scrubbed the poetry out of my hands my bones are filled with smoke from cartons of indifferent cigarettes. There is no exploit left where dreams melt in late neon burn or early morning television. Rooted anonymity or vines that cloy close or fear to try or not enough when arms that circle are sometimes just the crescent moon. I am burnt and paint-splattered, a rusted lightning rod in extremes but straight and always lost on unfamiliar streets herring-boned with flashing streetlights after 4 a.m. And what choices? Monochromatic follow where decisions wander and raise cardboard with reclaimed board to call â&#x20AC;&#x153;sanctuaryâ&#x20AC;? here amid the fruit flies and almost-lawn. To mow down and pretend for three days or the next rain; pane the windows with words between and carpets feigning photosynthesis in daylight. 47

2. I hide my splinters from you窶電eep in my skin & afraid of the pain of absence removal, preferring to let them root deep in my bones to regenerate fingers to feed off my blood, just as I do, to spread deep and making room for itself a welcome invasion. Like music possession burning the shards of books I have collected and places where I have dreamed my future for instant need of water. I am always thirsty now. Gallons of water to cool the summer in my organs to soften the soil around my toes my skin like birch paper and leaves palm up in breezes before the rain. 49

There is a strong feeling of introspection when school is in session. I am not sure if other people feel it but it grows within me like a plague. We are all academic, all thinkers but are we all world connectors? I feel the thoughts, pounding to get out, clawing my skull in an attempt to break free. I want to learn everything, figuring everyone out. My brain picks victims, it always has, I just did not realize it before. Perhaps this is a form of puzzle. We speak of social literacy. i learned that before any other type of literacy. They say this can be a form of poetry, poetry with a lower case p. I have heard the rumors, floating though the stacks and i wonder have you as well? Punctuation rules and grammar have always been a must but now i wonder, are they as important as they appear, poets think not…but I am not a poet, just a dabbler in the vague. A safe place for dangerous ideas.

Thank you to all my incredible writers! Think you’ve got what it takes to write something for us? Submit your stories and poems to jessicafrickdesigns@gmail ALL IMAGES PROVIDED BY DANIELLE HARRIS PHOTOGRAPHY. FOR MORE INFORMATION YOU CAN CONTACT HER AT DHUR91@GMAIL.COKM