Pathos - Winter - 21/22

Greetings, fellow reader.

Another term has come and gone and with it the changing of the seasons. The darkness of winter has been shed and we are now able to begin to sense the warmth of the sun and the light of its glow. Be sure to cherish the times we find ourselves in the dark. For it is in these moments that we are able to reflect and imagine. These quiet moments allow us the space to feel; to learn; to understand.

We are able to illustrate vividly on the blank black canvas of darkness. So use it to paint a picture; to tell a story; to dream.

I hope that we all can look forward to our moments in the dark. I hope that we can appreciate what the dark has to offer. For when the light comes, and it always does, we’ll be ready for it.

I look forward to seeing you all just as much as I look forward to spring – very much, indeed.

Thank you for sharing your time with us at Pathos.

Thank you to the wonderful creatives and visionaries that are apart of this community and who share their work with us. Best of luck to you this next term.

See you around,

Bret Steggell Editor-in-chief Steggell Zatlin terM

Until the Sunrises, Can I Be With You 2 The Ballet 3

To Nowhere, from Heartland: A Letter to The Midwest 4 Our House 5

Plum Fingers 6

Chew 7

Lovers Break The Sky 8

Ego Goes for a Stroll 9 She’s Keeping Track

Jealousy as a Broken Basket 11

Covertly

Naps

The 19

Drill Spirits 20

A Skeletal Society 21

The White Devil Took My Virginity 22

Bag It and Tag 23

The Great American Game 23

La Ragazza 24

Colors in Motion 26

Snow Globes 27

Who Holds Birds 28

front cover: verendrye, north dakota, from heartland: a letter to the midwest will boechler

back cover: liminal, from heartland: a letter to the midwest will boechler

UNTIL THE SUNRISES, CAN I BE WITH YOU Rose Hutcheson

When second homes turn into a beautiful holiday in Rome. When heartbreak turns to rose-tinted glasses of champagne.

Gut-wrenching sobs and self-destructive habits turn to swaying hips, and my head on your shoulder.

The sun rises and it all disappears again.

But with the moon, the magic trickles in. And once again we are together.

In my dreams, in the stars, the astral realm.

Trickling down the windowpane, rain falls. With each pitter patter, the magic trickles in.

Do you think of me when the tides turn?

Do you think of me in the soft glow of a waxing moon?

Or not at all. If not it’s alright.

Because we still have the night. Us dreamers.

When the impossible is possible, And up is down.

Until the sunrises, can I be with you?

In the kaleidoscope of alternate universes, can we play? I’ll even let you win the first couple games.

Life is lilac and glazed but when the morning comes, it is clear and blue.

Neither is better than the other, just different.

I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. All I ask is until the sunrise, can I be with you?

THE BALLET Aspen Hansen

I cried at the ballet today I don’t know why.

Maidens in cloud white dresses Laced the empty space With their silken limbs.

Men in their bodies Like statues possessed Burned away gravity.

It was all twirl and melt, Scatter and trickle, Weave and soar.

There was no slouch, No cower, No second guess.

All moved brightly, Proudly in the miracle Of their bodies.

There are some moments so full of blessings We cannot gather them all...

Take the body, Take all its mechanisms of prayer,

Take the stage, ripe with dancing For the eyes to harvest,

Take the darkness beneath it, Warm and strung with stillness,

Take the distance between a broken heart and an open one, See how we cross it With a single leap, How we anoint ourselves With the tiny mirror inside a single tear.

To Nowhere, from Heartland: A Letter to The Midwest

Will Boechler Photography

OUR HOUSE. Alex Engelhardt

Let’s take a step into my mind— I’ll welcome you into this house. Let’s open every room, air it all out; step into each one, and soak it all in—

a thousand lifetimes are about to begin.

This time I say my heart is too sore—

But what is life if not loving for? —what is life if not loving for?

Let’s take a walk in the woods and dig our fingers into the dirt, forget all the times we’ve ever been hurt. Open a bottle of wine and stumble onto the floor, I want this fire today and forevermore.

Built ourselves a new life and took it for a spin, today I want to dance till our legs cave in.

And tomorrow we will open our hearts till we can’t stand the pain... I feel you close when it starts to rain.

Let’s stomp our feet with the thunder, cheer for the storm’s ambition, shout at the wind and challenge its aggression.

Let me gaze into those eyes that swallow me up, soften my heart until you know you’re enough.

‘Cause what is life if not loving for? —what is life if not loving for?

PLUM FINGERS Alex Engelhardt

Sticky little plum fingers grab onto the trees, climb on up onto their branches and scrape their little knees...

Swing off into the water and hope they’ve learned to swim, for they have forgotten all the lessons daddy taught them.

As they sink down to the lake bottom bed their little heads will not be filled with dread...

For it is an easy passage to heaven when you’re already dead.

CHEW

Sonia Comstock hot sugar stretches into taffy that gums between my teeth and sticks cakes into the corners of my cheeks reverberates like grape kool-aid and metal cough syrup and hot flesh trying to chew out sticky rubber tears at my lips and hurts grinds jaw bones into dust cut out the corners of my mouth pull pliers down the sides of my tongue burn out my throat with lidocaine sterilize every inch carve up my rotted cavities and chomp down.

LOVERS BREAK THE SKY Domîno Monet

Tell me the story of when we learned love. Not the word. When we fell into it, no parachute, fearless. Tell me how small it looked from so, so far. How we thought we would die when we stopped falling. How the sky like a blanket of silk wrapped you up like a scar. How there was no pain, no legacy of sorrow falling with you. And with the moon so close, you opened your hands and they were filled with lilac chalk. Tell me what it was like, falling through constellation after constellation, to hold a star so close and fragile in your softly cupped hands, a moth mid-flutter. Tell me how tender was the moan of wind that whipped your black braids across your blood-rushed cheeks as we fell and fell and fell so long we forgot the importance of naming the moment. How untethered and giggle-rich, we fell into the wordless roar of love like we invented it, like we invented every cloud, every inch of bludgeoned blue, we broke on the way down.

EGO GOES FOR A STROLL Alex Engelhardt

I don’t know if you’e ready to witness, ‘cause it’s hard for me not to shine. But it would be an injustice to hide this face of mine.

So I go out and walk around, with the silly little people on the street— Look up from the ground! I’m the one you want to meet!

I’m the main character of this movie— Yes! You all are just extras.

The orchestra swells, and I twirl around in my boots and hat. Everyone is watching like, Who is that?

Ooh la la, look at me now. The audience cheers as I take a bow... See all those people you’ve overgrown? I am the most beautiful one you’ll ever know.

She’s Keeping Track

Sophia Stoker Analog collage

JEALOUSY AS A BROKEN BASKET Kimberly Diamond

From here I see small circles Spider Eyes the tiniest amount of everyone else

A collective truth from the puzzle I make from broken bits and slimy bobs

They are to me at night and put on you in day

How do boxes place pressure on feelings when the weather changes from across the street?

With so much air passing through I have yet to learn how to breathe so I suffocate myself into comfort

Inside my broken box of fiendish circles

I exist heavenly magic

Inside my nest of vibrations the tornado of splinters make for good bedding

A room for one so the walls don’t fall

I see truth from the lens of my broken rattan all gouged with hardened memory scavenged from trash nets high atop poles

littered with illusion

COVERTLY SELF-RIGHTEOUS Christina Mata

“Give a man a reputation as an early riser, and that man can sleep till noon”— Mark Twain

though ironic that liberty be preached from a cage, it is so much better received. if i choose to favor the morning, but sleep through it, am i pious with insincerity?

i bloomed into a series of missed opportunities, perhaps disagreeable with a life stemming from linearity.

one’s own purpose, though unexplainable to me, proves to be no harm to my ability to perfectly allude to anyone with such ease

if i influence on a bed of lies, there is only one to which i can despise— my own thought process and what i choose to disguise

[SCENE THIRTY-NINE] Kurtis Matthew Russell

Let me not to your bones, reveal myself. What whispers in the marrow, whispers in the marrow, a mezuzah addressed to Methuselah,

you were never meant to live this long and what a shame that is.

And you will never last, though you were my first.

Here was God in your life for a brief while. Here was the cruelty that brought you a smile.

If I could give you my blood and it would help I would be drained and flattened.

If we knew what risks we took before greeting this black wall

our goodbyes would not be as necessary and our hospitality would not turn to grief.

Your eyes would never darken and I could always watch your heart

beat out its frantic prayer. This life was never holy, nor long at all.

It became new with every light that passed across our flesh.

There will never be a lack of dying, and when the Earth decides to take you back, like a lover long forgotten and neglected, it will not be for a lack of trying.

THE SINGER Christina Mata

i am vexed with the notion that light travels faster than sound for i have found amity in and around the reverberation of applause

not for the accolade, but in pursuit of a moment.

the exact point of time the audience becomes a mirror parallel lines connecting by the wash of a chord

euphoric moments swept up in a pitch, resonant as they leave my lips

open to interpretation my voice holistically me a fixation to be understood only a fool will chase

i revel in the shared confusion with child-like ferocity. dreading the ring of the last overtone before the applause

NAPS FOR BEES

Kimberly Diamond

We enter unencumbered fluidity With the permission of nights concession We walk inside walled and waiting, no air in porous hands

A pushed sound to walls un-edged A scratched greeting singing songs from old familiars A walk on backs of those who’ve sung before A touch so soft a hug changes meaning A kiss completely in lines

The suction of tempered sand Euphoric when the garden provides no relief Cut layered seepage running down to meet with smells unsung A cacophony is screamed in the pith of the juicy orb

Spin me inside your solid form

It has begun

THE TIMID AND THE TORTURED SOUL Spencer Garfield

Shall the great Eye of Hathor view our distortions and revisions of the Feminine Divine? Will the broken dreams of an actress be sized up to her potential, as one sizes her breasts through cups? Not to fill each sticky theater seat but rather to please her slimy director. The shy parts of me are seen when I sit in the back of a classroom, as if I were a bird who clipped her own wings. (She did that to herself, you know.)

To be a Jacqueline or a Marilyn, the timid or the tortured soul? A supplicant to her hand which clutches at her neck—breathing and ascending is a privilege, not a right.

To be the timid, whose greatest nightmare became her life’s work— appeasing the droves of those who sneer at her behind closed doors. They reject the dazzling charm she ensnares them with, for they cannot remember a First Lady who stirred the loins so effectively, so gracefully… She bewitched them. Though she yearned for the quiet in the countryside, it was the hand which brought her forth to the crowds, who itched for a glimpse of her glimmer.

To be the tortured soul who could never outrun her demons, despite a career with legs of its own. She was the bombshell who shattered the earth, yet held captive by the dank and dark corners of her mind. The same ones whose hands are wet point their finger at her, conflating the “changing times” of sexual media to her and her alone—casting stones which have been used to build our castles. And oh, how tall your castles are! The same hand whose grip called the neck of the glamorous and timid silenced the beautiful, magnificent, tortured soul. And oh, how wobbly his castle is.

I weep for the Jacquelines and Marilyns, whose ravage beauty could not be looked past, whose fierce arousal burned the earth, whose influence brought forth the treacherous hypocrisy of our kind—Hathor has judged us mercilessly, and thus the timid and tortured soul lays to rest. Her evil eye can see our unchanged ways, and shall reap destruction upon us that has since gathered.

CROWS ABOVE THE BREEZEWAY SONNET LA Dickens

What Murder of Birds congregate above? The passive herds of humans roam below. Must harsh cause crowd the cooing dove? Must students toward murders of crows go? The cluster of trees buried within town provide a space where flocks can now set down. The foolish few who wander beneath. With gust a toss their lunch remnants bequeath to the menacing murder crows in the trees, who grasp the lost fries from a pile of trash and rise once more to ride the cities breeze. To writhe once more in-flight fighting crows thrash. Yet undisturbed the humans walk below. Of murder done by crows, they do not know.

THE NECKLACE (FORM INSPIRED BY “THE BLUE DRESS” BY SAEED JONES) Aspen Hansen

This necklace of mine that holds the ash of you inside it is a fossil Is a gem is a song I remember but not well enough to sing is a broken bridge, Is oil in the water is light in the water is a rippled reflection Is a cocoon is a secret is a perfect sand dollar in my hands, Is a treasure is rainbows through eyelashes is all I have left of your hands, Is a pillowcase covered in clouds is the water that swallowed you Is a grasshopper is my brightest longing is a locked door, Is my T-shirt full of blueberries is where I want to be sometimes Is a nightmare is part of me dead is a belly laugh is a scar, Is shame is a flower before it flowers is pride is a baby blanket Is root-bound is river-bound is home-bound is grief-bound, Is the red swing-set you built for me is a whirlpool is a scrap of sun, Is not really you is all of you is forever Is an unfinished poem

Drill SpiritS

Devon Xavier Williams

A rotund, bulbous creature, clad in a large pair of goggles and nothing more, runs through a desert. It is afraid for its life, run out of its home by sinister invaders from another world. Its primitive brain is far too simplistic to understand why its opponents are after it—all it knows is that they are dangerous, not to be trusted and that they are under orders to kill it and its friends on sight.

The creature watches in the shadows, in its subterranean home, as a giant metal man scans through the caves for it. The creature has observed the metal man slaughter all of its friends. It tunnels through the dirt above, aware that it is being followed. It could stay behind to fight the metal man. It has no weapon, but it could knock it over and crush it to death with the weight of its massive body. But what good would that accomplish? The metal men are not infallible. They could be destroyed. But they never. Stop. Coming.

A rumbling shook through the cave. The creature hopes that its mechanical opponent is crushed to death, but even its animalistic instinct knows that will not be true. The subterranean world that they called their home is far from the most stable. Dig in the wrong sections, and you are liable to get trapped in a cave-in, a quirk of the environment that the metal men were ready and willing to exploit at any possible opportunity. Indeed, it finds a lizard, squashed flat under the weight of a giant boulder. They are their protectors, using their flaming breath to incinerate all intruders to their caves. But they could not protect them from the metal men.

It is an overwhelming vivacious sound of terror. Children screaming and mothers crying, running in a dazed panic towards an exit, as a harsh sound of metallic footsteps rings out through the cave. Large mining robots are sent down into the caves, with genocide and pillaging of fruit as their singular objectives. They are equipped with a strange weapon, attacking by firing a harpoon into the creatures and inflating them until they burst, their insides violently rupturing on the cave floor.

*Dig Dug — Insert Coin to Start*

A SKELETAL SOCIETY Ryan S

You’re killing us, throwing a glamour over the shadow of a person, a sheen of light over a skeleton. Lighting a candle inside our throats, waiting to burn anything on its way down, a fiery force regurgitating the only morsel of life we attempt to cling to.

What happens when that wax drips down? What happens when my throat is so clogged with wax and emptiness that I can tolerate nothing but an absence of sustenance?

What happens when I turn into this shell of a person who once was, so animated so lively now only a sparkling skeleton shining with the approval of the world, barren of the life it once held within? You’re killing us. Sincerely, a Skeletal Member of Society.

THE WHITE DEVIL TOOK MY VIRGINITY Carter Silago

Growing up hearing stories

Of a time before the white man A time before the moon When the world was complete There was a Greyhound station It was the summer of 2013 I met you at the wrong time I didn’t have to sell my soul

You were already in me Caught up in my feelings I was fantasizing about you leaving me Guessing it was something fun Or hoping it was anything An awkward rollercoaster Riding to far off destinations You tore apart my wings Spit in my mouth White boy witchcraft We played a game

In the house I grew up in Someone is calling my name

BAG IT AND TAG IT Annar Amram

I take a gander through the aisle walking towards the back where the milk will stay fresh a while. Still, I check the tag; the pretty rose of kelly green not really alive. At home I’ll crack it open, let sour, what’s inside

The store is full of dying things, some already dead; bright red boxes advertising pastries marked as fresh, an open space of juicy gems, pure and untouched rind. The break cannot be hemmed again. Fruit, from branch, had died.

You pay twelve bucks for the corpses; tangerines, peppers, miles from Georgian groves of oranges, to feed the smoker for a pre-cut ‘n bled brisket.

THE GREAT AMERICAN GAME Jevin Morris

Our national pastime, if nothing else, is mourning fathers who’ve long since martyred themselves on cheap scratch-offs and expired milk, who’ve worn their hands to the bone tapping the tops of cigarette boxes, and bruised their soles stepping on the gas pedal driving away from us.

LA RAGAZZA Emily D’Antonio

She sat in her room

A light faintly glowing Just enough to illuminate The blank surface in front of her

Her eyes peered out the window The world streaming past her Cars down the street The ants on the pavement

Her paintbrush makes contact Habitually moving Illustrating the scenes Of the lives she sees

The man on the bench with a phone by his ear The woman on the corner with her hand in the air

The children in the park within the motion of swings

The pigeons on the sidewalk with their ruffled wings

The outside world was a place well known Shown through drawings precariously strewn Depicting the stories of past lives lived Interpreted through her warped window

She knows their routines

7:00 the man in the black suit hails the cab 10:00 the greyed lady and pug cross the street 12:00 the mother and child enter the park

She designs stories in her head The best of her ability portraying The lives of the people below Whom she pretends to know

She is constantly watching time pass by In her chair trapped in a daze Not missing a moment Every second captured

She knows everyone Yet is known to none Never leaving Only revealed by the paint on the floor The stories she creates From vacant memories Painting a life she longs to live Instead of the one she does

COLORS IN MOTION Rose Hutcheson

Deep yellow made her sparkle the most. Dark forest green made his eyes glisten.

The gentle hues of pink made the sunset feel heartbreakingly fleeting, never again would I see you in the same tint of pink.

The world in color is so beautiful.

To see you in different colors and backgrounds is such a joy. Who knew that you could look so entrancing from the contrast of a terracotta-colored wall behind you?

In my mind, I hope it’s just a really beautiful brick wall, even though I know it’s just you.

Is love seeing someone in all the colors? Or is it loving how different they are in each?

Even in the bleak slate gray of concrete, some shine.

I want you to see me in a different color.

But even in a tangerine dress that screams to look, you never seem to notice a difference.

Sometimes I think it’s a gift I was given to see so much beauty and vibrance in everything, but sometimes it feels like a curse, because will anyone ever see the colors of me?

But I take solace in the knowledge of how many strangers I admire. To see a soul in motion, mixing with colors and the pigments of movement and landscape.

I just can’t help but stare at the beauty that is color in motion.

So, though I will never be witness to it, I can feel the motion in my heart and feel moved, whether it is seen or not.

SNOW GLOBES

Annar Amram

June multiplied like nesting dolls. I watched it open to double, triple in the heat wave mirage, a twinkling kaleidoscope Colors of lit-up theme parks’ melting cotton candy that fizzes in your mouth Jarring patterns, hypnotic swirls, swinging hips, dancing lashes Sunscreen’s sharpened knife-smell stabs the sky until I sneeze; a loud sound I inherited from my first father I open my eyes that I inherited from my first mom, to a fifth of rum divided, reverse slurp poured into ten drinks, all of them mine The lake pulls back its Kool-Aid blue lips to reveal the sun-bleached tree stump teeth The floor is lava Bare brown feet blister slaps on sweltering asphalt. I run through the striped shimmers from the chipped pink paint on my wooden doorstep to my cool concrete neighbor’s, the neighbor with rocket pops and neon animals bobbing in the pool The dog sheds like crazy. She flaps her ears at a dizzying speed, my favorite sound, when she shakes off her soft fawn tufts. She grumbles like I don’t already know it’s triple digits today I don’t think she remembers when we were bathed in the shy glow of a wavering fire. How I manhandled the logs into place. How I crinkled up the news in my practiced hands. Mossy wet wood hissed and protested. Sparks reached up and out, and rain sheeted from the sky and into our skin Now, there isn’t a single cloud in the sky Or when clouds expanded like desperate lungs full of water and sealed above us like a dome Now the sky is the rounded, taut skin of an airship, and there’s no fear of it bursting Or when leaves crunched dry and vocal beneath our feet. Wind wrestled the white ash tree fangs. Trees evacuated the forests in the jagged lightning seppuku in ear-splitting sonic booms that had her howling Now, I would kill for a teeth-chattering breeze to push my hair out of my eyes and tuck it behind my ear or a wind that would flop my dog’s ears up into the air Or when there were no engine mumbles or tyres tread through puddles to whip up waves Now, even the cars sweat, drinking straight from the whining hose Or when the sky held nothing but lightless gray. Its silver linings were past our horizons

Now, we try to remember the ancestral chants to bring cold weather I don’t think we thought to make any.

WHO HOLDS BIRDS Jevin Morris

You said:

“Who’s ever held a bird in their hand other than those who’ve known the ways to kill the bird?” I know:

The people stopped in the middle of a sidewalk just to honk back at a geese arrow in the cold, watching their breath rise to meet them.

The old men in ponds whose best friends are mallards and handfuls of bread.

The starving magicians who’ve held birds like secrets, with one last chance to wow the audience.

The falconers who know they can’t take the gloves off when they clock out and head home.

The oak trees that hold up robin eggs to the light, checking them for watermarks, or to offer them to some abstract bird god.

The couples hoping for eggs, seated on their last piece of pumice, holding hands and praying for it to hatch.

The abstract bird god, shaping each perfect amber egg with a ceramic duty, eternally at the wheel, perfecting their craft.

The guy selling insurance with the emu in the ads, hoping that today will be the day he finally convinces someone of their own mortality.

The people surviving others, their hands reaching the clouds, waiting for a dove they’ve never seen to flap down and rest.

Those with an open birdcage, more birdseed each birdday to give away.

Me, thinking this bird poem is the best thing I’ve come up with, hoping you’re collecting my bits of eggshell to piece back together.

You, thinking the bird thing got out of hand near the fifth stanza, politely gathering the shards of shell to return them to me and wash the yolk off your hands afterward.

And other birds when they hold hands: waffle style, not pancake, not shying away from the intimacy, not bristling at the challenge. Feeding their youth together.

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