Pathos - Winter - 22/23

Within these pages you will find works that will resonate with you. You’ll realize that each one of us possess the ability to offer something unique, whether it is by the stroke of the pen, the flicker of a lens, or the wave of a brush. We all can create something of value – for ourselves and for others. There are amazing people here that make up our PSU community. Those that see the world differently, feel intimately, and think deeply. Who have the courage to share their perspectives with the world. Witnessing the creativity, thought, and compassion of those who send their works to our literary magazine fills me with hope for the future. You will be the ones who will impact our world the most. You are the ones who look outwards at the world around us and internalize it. Reflecting on how it makes you feel. You then express outwards. A constant flow of experience and expression. From this alchemical dance, you are formulating wisdom.

Keep it up.

Bret Steggell Editor-in-Chief

KelSey ZuBerBuehler Creative Director

It’s been an absolute pleasure in witnessing the creativity that this community has to offer. There are wonderful people all around us who truly care.

I wish to announce that this will be my last issue with Pathos, and my final note. The torch is being passed on to our new Editor in Chief, Stephanie Gresham. I know that Pathos will be in great hands, and that she will do a fantastic job.

I wish to say thank you to those I worked alongside with: Kelsey, Camden, Ana, Emily, and Clover. You all were so amazing to work with, and it was a pleasure to work with you all.

For you, reader, it was a pleasure to serve you. I loved seeing the works shared with us every day. It will be something that I will appreciate for a long time.

So, keep it up. Keep creating, keep exploring, keep feeling, keep dancing.

I’ll be rooting for you all. Take care.

I’ll see you around,

Bret Steggell Editor-in-Chief

editorial team

Stephanie greSham & Clover gullanS Copy Editors

Camden BeneSh Social Media Manager

A QUIET LOVE

Eva Sheehan

The way your quiet father sang “Across the Universe” back in 2005 and now you hear the poured melody in coffee shops and you’re transposed to the leather back seat of a jetta It’s love squeezed out skinny to fit in the cracked leather and push out cigarette smoke every time you sit down.

Whispered in the finger drums on the top of the drivers wheel and the two dice that hung from the rear-view mirror to songs like, “Take the Long Way Home” and “Funeral for a Friend”. He said, “I want you to play this on the piano for me”.

With a quiet parent, you remember everything they ever told you. Like when he told you music is a time machine. And now, “Gone” by the Head and The Heart is lost in the drive home from Thanksgiving dinner when you and him were the only ones singing along and the violin solo was the loudest it’s ever been in your ears. Memories hold deeper emotion than words ever did and you wonder if he ever wondered why you didn’t say anything.

ADOLESCENCE AT 23

Devon

I think i think i think time is changing me

Fast and frenetic fast and furious i never knew i was in love Until a different me got up and held me

I grew

I used to believe in chance encounters, fate touching my soul like a cloth

I was a napkin at the dinner table

6 pm school nights

what is your mind’s dream

Does your heart know?

California’s mission was never to hug me or hold me or please me

I plead with love to teach me more again

More and more love

I beg for love to teach me again

To keep me coming home

I swept the doorstep for me this time

TO WANT March

how human we are to want and want and want without stopping i find myself indulging in all my yearning thoughts

i want to make music and so i find a sunny moment in the day to sing in like a spotlight, i want to love and so i fill my noons with laughter and joy on the phone, i want to cry and so i read the saddest memories and listen to the saddest music. i fill my notebooks with all my wanting, every time i think “oh i want you i want you i want you” i write it down to make it permanent.

and a thousand years from now the stars will remember every little wish i made, and the millions of wishes before those, and they’ll think “oh how human they all were with all their wanting” but the secret is that loving and wanting and indulgence and needing and savoring were thought of because we looked at everything the world had to offer and said “oh i want you i want you i want you”

YOUR HAND IN FRONT OF YOUR MOUTH

Bambi Moss

Why cover our mouths when we yawn?

To keep ghosts in? Out?

Do we feel shame in our exhaustion?

Our exhaust?

Is it the teeth?

Yellow.

Damaged. Or perhaps, too white? Too clean. Clean bones.

Maybe it’s how your mouth resembles the inside of your chest.

Soft.

Red.

Wet. (breath)

Heaving.

HELL-O GAOL-O

Dale

Anderson

233 i find it hard to believe you are leaving, or rather that i am leaving.

two blocks is not very far, but it is an endless gulf for you. unmoving decaying bin, cradle, stepping stone. when i think of you i think of ants

cat-cut walls clawed up freeing the truth from plaster the truth that we aren’t, weren’t good for one another you with every-day garbage-day leafblower-day party-upstairs-day beat-me-down-with-bass-to-the-face-and-lock-me-away-day i have not slept well in months and now i write poems of apartments not really apartments but gaols but people but lovers but i find it easy to spew about you 233 a catalyst for shit-talking and cat-cutting rusted trampoline

we are all built on foundations like these stare at the sun and when your eyes are crisp and crackable learn to squint take your time love the lovers just for love and breath please breathe now run it’s only two blocks.

MY IDEAL LIFE

Samantha Hope Boulgarides

my ideal life is like feeling sunshine through opaque curtains. My ideal life is waking up and knowing my family is safe. It is writing about the good times more than the bad times. My ideal life is waving to me as it dangles from a parachute 300 feet in the air. My ideal life has clean clothes to wear and doesn’t cry after they get off

the phone with their mom. It doesn’t cry because they get to see their mom and not just hear them. My ideal life is bleeding blue ink onto a page I haven’t had the strength to reread in years. My ideal life is holding the hand of every person I meet leaving little fingerprints of blue and black ink overlapping to make a heart.

Digital Photograph.

Cannon Beach

andre cruz

TRAFFIC LAWS

Gordon Graham

there are two roads out of Oceanside, but only one road in. The north highway used to lead to Bay Ocean and Garibaldi, but now it leads only to the tree where the ashes of my mother’s family are scattered.

Rain falls hard on the Oregon coast, races eagerly down porous hills to rejoin the northern Pacific, and little by little the rain drags those hills down with it. For decades civil engineers would dutifully repair the road every time it washed out, but eventually they got the message: man was not meant to drive north out of Oceanside. The road was blocked and left to the care of the forest.

Five friends and I pile out of our cars near the metal gate, carrying bows, arrows, a yellow target bag, and a stuffed owl. We spread out our gear, string up the target on one of the bows and carry it on two of our shoulders. At ground level, the air is brisk and still. Just above the treetops, I watch shredded clouds race along in the wind, whining in my ears like hunting dogs. We bypass the gate, and head up the lost road.

The rain that killed the highway was not violent. It didn’t bury the asphalt beneath ten tons of coastal mud, or split it like kindling across one knee and send it spilling into the sea. Instead, the road is plastic, warped, shaped by the shifting hillside instead of the principles of sound design. Here and there broad shelves of asphalt are calved off and sliding downslope, but only at the hillside edge. The blacktop feels soft under my feet where it is piled on infirm earth. I wonder where

are the people now who first surveyed this stretch of forest for the highway. How did they envision this place transformed in their own image? On the uphill side, sweet pea pools have formed, alive with water bugs and salamanders and frogs who, like fungus on a nurse log, thrive in this brief window of infrastructural decay.

Within a mile, the cold pacific waves are hammering against the coves. The sound is titanic: I feel it in the diaphragm, or at the back of the throat where salt and bitter pine collects, rumbling like a threat. Ravens give storm-cloud croaks, and the water drops collecting on the embankment make pinball machine tones. The roadway is dense with noise, packed with life, compacted like strata of deposited soil weighed down with rain.

About a mile in, we set up the target at a hairpin turn, right where the road forks. Some of us have been shooting for years, and others are trying it for the first time today. I demonstrate how to string my bow and hand it to a friend I met two days ago. A friend I’ve known since fifth grade goes over traffic laws: nobody crosses the yellow line until all the bows are on the ground. Nobody picks up their bow until he calls clear. If he sees anyone coming up the road, shooting stops immediately. We’re all here to keep one another safe.

The bowstrings chuckle. Loose arrowheads buzz as they cross the road, and the dry thwacks on target leap away through black-green foliage, bounding over spiderweb trees. Out here, the difference

between a deer and a human being is slighter than ever—we’re standing on proof that we can’t tame the landscape any more than they can.

Learning archery can be frustrating for people who are already strong. It uses unusual muscles, not the biceps or the shoulders or the core, but the back, between the shoulder blades. I’ve seen big guys used to feats of strength sputter and fume at how unnatural it feels. You’ve got everything you need, though. A bow is a beautiful machine, purpose built for the human animal. It just takes a while to remember that those muscles are there.

I’m not shooting more than a flight or two today. Instead, I sit on a cracked concrete block behind the firing line, watching the road getting borne away. The woods don’t know what a road is, so the highway’s just more stone to be rolled downhill, ambitions and illusions and all. My attention keeps drifting to the sign that marks the fork, which reads simply “In Memory of Walt Gile”. That fork runs off a hundred feet through the woods and straight over a cliff that overlooks the Tillamook Bay.

Not far from here, there’s another memorial, unmarked at the end of a trail I can’t find on any map: a Sitka Spruce almost a hundred and fifty feet tall. If you stand at its base and look up, it rises before you like a broad road into the sky, until its top vanishes where it was struck by lightning. Around its

base is my mother’s family: her aunt, her mother, and her brother. Within a few years of one another, they found their ways here, where rain falls heavy and life grows thick. There’s no physical trace of them at all, but they’re there because I know they are. I know that they’re together.

Twenty flights of arrows later, my friends and I are finished. We conduct a final search for missing arrows, unstring our bows, and start trekking back. Evening is falling, and it’s colder than ever, and the road ahead is far from sure. In the twilight, we’re nothing but a handful of animals skulking along a heap of rotting stone, carrying sharp sticks and shivering in the damp. We’re not worried, though. We’re social animals— and we all know the traffic laws.

Cold Water

andre cruz Digital Photograph.

THE PORTUGUESE POETS CALL IT SAUDADE

Nick

Gatlin

but english isn’t so precise. it’s like[...]the way moonlight reflects on water, or how her torso arched forward when she laughed. sometimes between sleep and wake i see it again:the Great Big Quilt that sews the world together—all the clouds wear it;and the squirrels, they wear it (you wore it:like a veil over the ocean, contouring itself around your back)[...]and when we held the sky in our arms, i wore it: “look at the stars in the water,” i said; “i didn’t know there were so many stars.”

NESTING TIME

Hunter Burr

My mother told me

When I was young

I’d nested under the covers

Pressing my little feet against her calf to warm

I was once four years

time enough to live and grow and walk

Nested in the covers

And warming up from the cold

How time holds itself in places

Ever moving

Placing roots in memory

In the person, place, or thing it inhabits

I wish the space for time in our vessels was not so small I want to hide time like Easter eggs in my favorite places strangers may find them and I can live forever

I want to give it as a gift, a petit four

Four years

Le petit

A little

More time

To nest

CUT YOUR HAIR C.

Cooper

Been having this recurring dream where I cut off all my hair again, and in the dream I’m always running late for something but I’m not sure what it is. Haven’t gotten that far yet. And I try to look in the mirror. But it’s a blur. And for a second I know I’m dreaming. But I think I don’t really want to know that, so I forget. And I rub my eyes, and I tell myself I don’t have time to be looking in the mirror. I must be drunk, I’m going to drive drunk again. And I tell myself I’d better sober up and catch my breath because I can’t afford to crash this car, and I know it’s important that I get where I’m going, wherever it is. I always make it to the car, and I’m standing by the driver’s side door, keys in my hand, and I start running my fingers through my hair, wondering why I can’t just leave myself alone. And it’s funny because in the dream it’s my hair, but I know, really, it’s a memory of yours, the way it felt to run my fingers through your short curls the summer you let me cut your hair because I had already cut mine.

THE CREATION OF SISTERHOOD

Rebecca Day

she held a knife to my belly. Move and I’ll stab you, she said.

I had to have been six or seven. Any older, and it wouldn’t have been those knives. Any older, and we wouldn’t have been standing in front of that dishwasher, unloading those dishes.

For those seconds that I was still, time turned inside out. I knew I would return again and again to this moment.

How must it have been to be ten and have a new stepdad and a baby sister all at once? How must it have been to be a part of a couple—a single mother and daughter, with a sometimes there dad and a dog, Daisy—and have an accident made permanent? An accident with two parents with matching last names. How must it have been to turn your playroom into a nursery?

The knife was a steak knife. I wasn’t old enough to use those knives yet and thought if I touched one I’d wind up without a finger. I stood still and held my breath and sucked in.

Beauty hurts, she’d say as she yanked a round, spiky brush through my hair. I’d be poked and prodded, my baby teeth yanked out and beauty marks drawn on. Sometimes I’d be Madonna in her cone bra (though mine was made of construction paper), and sometimes I’d be pinned into old cheer uniforms. Other times I’d have a stuffed shirt and miniskirt, looking like a 6 year old Pretty Woman extra. I hated when it hurt, but I loved the attention. Or, rather, I loved to be included. This was around the time I started pulling my hair out.

I had short hair, a bob, because it was more manageable that way. I wanted long hair, hair like my sister’s and hair like my best friend in school had—hers was so long that when she pulled it taught she could sit on it. We were a cute inseparable duo, but it was she who got all the compliments and me whose name was often forgotten. I overheard my mother talking about my need for a haircut and I tried to protest, but she said it must be done. I started twirling and pulling my hair. The beautiful women in TV and movies were always playing with their hair—wasn’t this the same thing? If I pulled enough out, maybe I wouldn’t need a cut? If beauty hurts, mustn’t the inverse also be true? If I hurt, surely I am beautiful.

She held the knife to my belly and I looked down in shock. There was a little dimple where the tip poked my tummy. I looked up expecting to see safety, family, but saw only ice.

Beauty hurts is a catchphrase used to shush, to quiet the tears. The hurt is normal and expected if you are to be beautiful and exceptional and accepted.

She put the knife in the drawer and laughed. I must have cried, or I cried out in distress. The fear was real, and it was clear. And she laughed. She laughed at me.

A sister complicates things, but a doll?

A doll is what you make her. A doll smiles and twirls and stays where you put her. A doll has no fear and does not talk back. A doll is never in on the joke. A doll does not have creativity, she is created.

Move, and I’ll stab you. Sucking in my tummy, holding my breath. Existing on a pedestal. Always dressed up, never as myself.

Wired Break

raul cueto osorio Digital Photograph.

THE ALASKAN BARTENDER Sarah

Samms

The bartender pours my last drink. She asks me, “What brought you to the last frontier in the first place?” Fixing together words that make me think. I say, “To leave my sadness behind. You see, she hasn’t been so kind. I’m here to leave my sadness somewhere beautiful. So that she can find happiness too.”

LEFT SIDE ATAXIA (CLUMSY VOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS)

Bambi Moss

My arms holding tight, trying, to touch, feel, stroke but I can only give you half I can only give half of everything you help me hold your shaft for me, for my shaking hand

small. clumsy.

I use to pick up small things to entertain the others laughter rings as pennies slip between my fingertips bells jingling on my cap

I feel left a limb possessed, I feel ghosts in my fingers and I can’t curl my toes even when we fuck

Leitmotif Cityscape 1

shelby morGan Digital Photograph.

Leitmotif Cityscape 2

shelby morGan Digital Photograph.

THE IRON SEA

TK-Sorainu

what was beinG called a ‘mass human extinction event’ was happening on our coast. As if the planet itself was angry, thousands of watercrafts were swallowed up by the sea, and massive raging creatures we had never seen before surfaced and fought over their human prey.

Something in me felt this was a reckoning we had coming for centuries, what with everything we kept taking from the Earth and never giving back. The world was shocked, and I just stood atop the dunes wondering, why are you so shocked? The planet is alive, and one day it was bound to make itself known.

The news said there were no survivors, so I knew my older brother had well and truly been lost to the Event. He had been out there that day, and, in the days since, he hadn’t returned.

A grim emotionless mask fell over my family as we waited out the Event. No one talked about him.

As things eased up, the tide that had taken the lives of thousands suddenly left in one fell swoop, and the ocean vomited years and years of debris onto the shore, a history of human disaster and war on display. We waited for the all-clear from the armed forces and scientists scrambling to figure out how this phenomenon occurred. Once we had it, we began the search for my brother’s body, though no one spoke of it aloud.

After the first week, it became clear to everyone searching, and to all the scientists, that there were no bodies to be found. Not even a bone was spotted; all signs of blood

and flesh had washed away.

Not even clothing was left, only other objects, so we resigned ourselves to look for anything identifiably my brother’s instead.

The grief hasn’t hit me yet; I haven’t let it.

Instead I will myself to be fascinated by the sheer age of the objects thrown onto the shore, to be entranced by the horrific beauty that was the mile wide strip of ocean-now-sand being quickly given the moniker of ‘The Iron Sea.’ A fitting name with how the thrashed up and exposed sand coagulated with extremely high concentrations of oxidized iron sediment, crystalizing it together.

Collectors and greedy history mongers scour the sea of deteriorating metal waste, unwilling to see the message for what it was, and instead treating it as a ‘great discovery.’ I feel sick watching them crawl in the debris, ignoring the fact that they are walking right through thousands of people’s last moments on this Earth.

Eventually we stop searching, but what I can’t understand is why my mum seems so calm about it all. She’s lost a child, and from the way she worries over all of us on a daily basis, she should be a right mess. She’s not happy per se, but not really unhappy either. I wonder if it’s maybe a kind of shock which hasn’t worn away yet, and care for her the best I can as I watch quietly and wait for her to fall apart.

Instead, of all things, the unthinkable happens.

I walk into the kitchen one night, thinking of getting something small to eat,

and there standing across from Mum at the counter, is my brother.

They’re speaking quietly, neither very grimly nor animatedly, and he hasn’t noticed me standing there. Then he turns his head and spots me, and just casually smiles a bit, saying “hey,” as if we hadn’t just seen each other for the first time in the month since the Event.

He turns back to Mum for a few seconds, then seems to realize I haven’t moved or spoken at all, and walks over to me.

I can’t bring myself to look away from his face, and I can feel tears welling up in my eyes, but no words will form around the massive lump in my throat.

Some sort of realization dawns on his face, and he turns his head back to say something to Mum, but I can’t make myself understand anything past the fact that he’s standing right there in front of me, alive.

Standing there like the war we unwittingly waged against our planet wasn’t righteously spitting in the faces of our arrogance just then.

SUN’S TRUE PURPOSE

Micheal Asher

the time has come again for the changing of the set. The foliage once used to block the sun’s attention must now leave, but only for a while. That’s okay, the summer is leaving soon as well. Like the casual friend who often talks too loudly at backyard dinners, and who convinced us that staying a bit longer than was comfortable made perfect sense, but has now taken a gig across the world. Sadly, that fiery friend will soon be preoccupied with moving into their new place and likely lose track of time because they must acquaint themselves with another cast. The warmth of their presence will taper away slowly like the fading harmonics of a pitchfork, the absence forever holding space somewhere inside a dream within a dream. What time remains to indulge ourselves in the show’s eloquent monologue never seems enough. Then, one day, the search for that connection comes up empty.

So, as trees change color and sheets of clouds stretch snugly across the stages once painted azure to match the rivers and the oceans, once all those encores will have ended, the sun’s absence will be mourned for a time, but then a breeze will come rushing past. Rustling in the distance hints that the wind has begun to dance around behind the curtains, gathering courage, pacing nervously. Then it claims the dais as its own, and is accompanied by the

percussionists, who are gathering in the wings wielding rain’s melancholy cadence. One thing is certain, this will be a raucous arena very soon.

The costume designers are already changing the wardrobes for the next show. Short shirts have now been covered by cardigans and smartly fashioned jackets, while the squeaking of new boots have begun to replace the clip-clapping footsteps of mostly naked feet. But not all the flesh will remain covered, not always, so where the fans have painted tributes onto their bodies, those memories remain as gifts to be shared with lovers new and old. They are seen walking, barely speaking, in dimlit streets littered with colorful leaflets haphazardly scattered there to announce the grand eventuality that is surely soon to come. Awaiting them is the opening of a new season, which always has and surely will always change the mood’s melody. Hand finds hand or holds the small of the back. And as eye catches eye, soul grabs soul, and then the space between both becomes incrementally less as it fills with warm mischief. This is the sun’s eager substitute. This place is where the sun’s true purpose is revealed to the world. The beauty in all of this is found once we realize that it is during moments like these that people truly begin to feel the fall.

Berry Good Driver

dottie baGby Mixed Media.

A DIVINE COMEDY

Kline

an image is meaningless without context: three young men lie awake, (Full bed, no quilt or cover, Cramped, they fit.) grey light filters through an open window, a neighbor waters his garden. five a.m. and night eats color.

69 is cyclical, it falls into itself like a circle, it is Cancer, and Gemini, a pair.

a painting in Paris: Dante and Virgil, (They look on, displeased. They are background.)

two pornstars wrestle on ruddy stone, it is gay, and it is horny;

the bottom is bent into a backward C, pursed buttocks supporting the top’s strong muscular knee, bottom’s legs are gently crossed, foot over Achillean calf, top’s left hand on bottom’s strained bare ribs, caressing the writhing darkness.

top holds bottom’s arm; plants hidden teeth on bottom’s soft flush neck.

(there’s no makeup in Hell.)

(“night eats color,” and “caressing the writhing darkness,” borrowed from “Backside,” by Chika Sagawa, 1911-1936)

(he told me they tried to recreate the painting in our bed.) In numerology, 69 is balance— harmony.

(Lying prone, inert in thought, I counted my breaths.)

EL HOMBRE Y LA LIEBRE

Andrei Brauner Guzmán

esa noche, bajo la luna caprichosa, el campo adquirióv un silencio siniestro. Lo único que se escuchaba era el soplo del viento que llevaba consigo los escombros recolectados del vasto paisaje. En medio del inmenso vacío, un hombre conducía por un camino de tierra que cruzaba el desierto. Tenía una cruz atada a un collar de cuentas que colgaba del espejo de su camioneta, que estaba descolorida y vieja tras años de manejar hacia y desde las minas. En la radio sonaban las canciones antiguas que escuchaba en su infancia, una etapa de vida ya casi olvidada, si no fuera por los dulces recuerdos que las melodías evocaban. Las herramientas rebotaban en el asiento detrás con cada tope en el camino. Con su prisa, generaba nieblas de polvo que le seguían por millas y solo eran arrastradas por el viento.

El hombre estaba pasando por una curva ciega que estaba escondida entre una cadena montañosa cuando, de la nada, apareció una liebre en medio del camino. Pisó el freno y apretó el volante, preparándose para chocar. Las llantas de la camioneta resbalaron con el polvo en el suelo, haciendo que diera vueltas hasta detenerse. Alterado, el hombre salió de la camioneta, y se sorprendió al ver que ahí se quedaba la liebre. El animal lo veía de lado, extraño e inmóvil. El minero miró a su alrededor y observó como los picos se cruzaban en la distancia, formando una ‘v’en el cielo. La cadena montañosa,

poblada escasamente de arbustos y cactus, guiaba el ojo al justo lugar donde permanecía la liebre. Su presencia suscitaba un pavor escalofriante como si fuera veneno, comenzando a surtir efecto.

Una curiosidad morbosa comenzó a invadir al hombre que lo atraía hacia el animal cuando, de repente, sonó una voz áspera, como una bolsa de baratijas, sacudiendo con disonancia.

- ¿Me conoces? - inquirió.

La voz emitía de la pequeña liebre que se encontraba solo unos metros delante de él. El minero se fijó en la trompa del extraño espécimen, esperando que dijera algo para confirmar que no estaba alucinando.

Volvió a preguntar, - ¿Será que me conoces? - El hombre abrió los labios para contestar, y con la voz temblando dijo -¿Eres El Diablo?- El animal retorció su cara y sacó una carcajada perturbadora del hocico.

-La gente llama ‘El Diablo’ a todo lo que no entiende - dijo - Se equivocan en pensar que el caos es maligno. En realidad, es el guardián del destino. -

- ¿Entonces, sería mi destino estar aquí esta noche? - preguntó el hombre.

- Sí, el destino te llevó a mí porque representas algo que lo tenemos todoscontestó la liebre.

- ¿Y qué sería eso? - preguntó el hombre.

- Representas a ti mismo, y en eso, a toda la humanidad. - le contestó Dios.

Leitmotif Cityscape 3

shelby morGan

Digital Photograph.

BREAKING BOUNDARIES — NOT “INDIAN ENOUGH”

LeeAnn Rooney

Identifiable shapes and figures, Neutral and passive.

We anticipate and accept these as Native American art, with ceremonies, moccasins, and yes feathers.

Sioux War Dance

Herded like sheep, No individualism, stay in your box.

Horses and men circle ‘round, Stay in your lane, look the part, paint Indian-ish

Sioux Ceremonial

Calvary is here; wagons and flags, and Death for

man, woman and child.

Guns aligned point toward skin, bare.

Wounded Knee Massacre

Break free from the confines of your assumed identity — Indian — Artist

They stole from us, but never your self-expression. Freedom; take it, embrace it, declare you!

Swirls of orange, red and gray, With foot and hand and face.

The spirit will take hold and transport you. Stories from grandmother. He Comes From Fire

Honor the Buffalo, thirty days, A turtle drum to beat Yellow — life

Believe it, live it, create it.

Evil Spirit of the Buffalo Dance

Transition to Abstract, Angular shapes and saturated color, This is Dakota Modern, This is Oscar Howe.

Let the viewer feel, see, experience, take joy. smile, cry, laugh, love, hope, and remember.

LeeAnn Rooney

Stimulus — Space — Response

Space is the time to engage your brain, thoughtfulness reaps — rewards. Don’t let free thoughts from mind to tongue throw shit at the fan, thud, enjoy the power of the pause, 1,2,3. A few breaths, taken, consider what was said, construct your thoughts, transform words into intended meaning, speak when ready. Quiet, pivotal moments reveal all. With verbal response comes… responsibility, accountability, choice on each day, with each word said, be reflective self-realization follows — actualization, introspection, acknowledgment. Exist powerful!

A powerful capacity drives us to a long and silent space, a better place, solicitous, and with intent.

Our stories are about how we choose to respond, what we respond with and what is said. Forever saved, absolute, never reordered, pen on paper, web and chat. Time lags, like — wind altering a path. …use creative zest freely, but more importantly, use care abundantly. Our ending is ours to tell and to relinquish.

DAVID LeeAnn Rooney

His father called him ‘Diabach’

The guttural sound of the ‘ach’

Like a growl and a roar amalgamated, Toughen him up – his dad said.

David’s big smile brought laughter.

Buck teeth and more freckles, Than seems possible on one face, Topped with strawberry colored straw.

Hand-carved stick in hand

Waving it around the house and shouting

“Let the dogs bark Sancho.

It is a sign that we are on track!”

Hidalgo or Don Quixote, Either role acceptable — David played them well.

Monty Python obsession came next, “It’s just a flesh wound.”

No arm, like no soul, More than a flesh wound.

But as luck and faith would have it, The Church and society said no To all of his passions, No to the tomfoolery, to innocent joy, the role-play. A wife, three children, and a job, All acceptable, All responsibilities

— Satire and silly laughter, not so.

He bought the hibachi

From a nearby store and Into his room, alone he went, he sat, The dark blanket of depression enveloped him, and he Turned the knob and waited.

For bliss

“Because the maddest thing a man can do in this life is let himself die.”

Self Portrait

andre cruz Digital Photograph.

A STATE OF MIND H

Mars

I fill time overturned regain and I will balking

I reclamate into material

fulfill time

in my

I am constant

to be more

I turn over restore flourish at predesign recreate I fill time

I overfill the glass leave me in ways not resigned to ravel unravel fulfill time

time and again and restart unattended intended redesign making the unmade I overfill time and again unmoored

on your skin

test the heat

reach in

ready to rise

to the touch

inconsistency capillary action of an active mind filling the vacuum when not otherwise occupied my mind is always on like an Aga a simmer not far from a boil warm

A PLACE NOT AS TENDER

H Mars

it is like a bird who never lands. She flies in a graceful arc downward but does not alight, instead she stretches back into the sky. I explain, imaginary numbers give us a way to describe where she would land if she did. It is complex, this blend of real and imagined. This idea of rest when one does not. I pretend to rest to put down, but I do not do forgiveness well. The product of the imaginary can yield something real. I hold onto this. ***

The water has receded in the ditches and the greenways. This a 48 hour reprieve a coastal haunt a getaway. You are sleeping and I am walking in the morning calm. The cattails are shedding and the pussy willows are starting to bud. Traveling the roadways because the tide is too high, I pause to shake the stone in my shoe to a place that is not as tender. ***

I have never not expected to bury you to write the obituary to identify the body. This belief fueled our wedding date, the births of our children, the way we weave forward. With the cancer I thought perhaps our roles might reverse, but they simply cut more away and declared me cured. No change to warp or weft. I wend onward. ***

I watch the dunlins, dozens of white

bellies bright above the sand. They race in concert up and down following the rhythm of the waves, tiny beaks probing, heads bobbing in time. They trill and with a shuffling of wings take flight in perfect unison to land again a score of paces away. What is the collective noun for sandpipers? A Beauty? A Comfort? A Joy? ***

At New Years I am asked to list something to let go and something to attain. I am thirteen in my refusal. I will hold what I carry. The arbitrary turn of the year does not dictate what I reach for. I need no artificial urging to add to my load, I fill my plate well enough alone. I resent the empty gesture the tone-deaf call to join the chorus of resolutions. I am resolute, resolved, and unrestrained in my contempt. ***

Walking the beach accompanied by the waves, tide withdrawn, embraced by the shush and purr, it begins to rain. A gentle pap-pap-pap making circles on the wet sand. Not enough to raise my hood or close my coat, instead I tilt my head to feel the soft kisses on my face. They remind me I am loved. My children recognize my walk from a distance. The gait, the swing from the hip, the frame of my shoulders, the way I hold purpose in my stride. I am here to travel. I have places to go.

EXIT WOMB AFTER “HYDRANGEAS ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER LYS” BY EMILE CLAUS (1898)

Grace Lawrence

brown sugar trees canopied the river hydrangeas gleamed in the sunlight slivers under the wood-planked bridge the blood sipped on the stream waywardly

fallopian tubes limp to the whims of the stream above a small voice what is that is she dying?—scurried creak. silence. ripples. exhal

limp below the navel—its power seemingly diminished blood pooled around, staining the thighs without an exit wound— the reflection of the hydrangeas smeared in wine

their colors seeping into one another as if bloomed through oil—

the small voice silent but for the splashing of a clothed skin fighting through water the woman and womb suckling on the earth canopied by passersby

Who let the little boy in that water? That water is disgusting - get out! What is wrong with her? ruining the river…

she lays there—untouched by time covered in beige leaves—kissed by a sun glow memorialized—cheeks of an infant’s first scream

blush the river in a winding red, wisps of foliage and soft-spoken words echo shhh…. don’t wake it

Hydrangeas on the Banks of the River Lys

emile claus

Oil Painting, 1898.

INCOMPLETE SENTENCE

Ryan Goderez

a week after my mother died we buried my brother in the backyard. He stood watching in his ragged jeans and one of his shirts from high school while we dug up a patch of yellowing grass and turned it until it was dark rich dirt speckled with rocks, then he laid himself down with a tired sigh and let us cover him, every part except his face.

Afterwards the rest of us, my father and sister and her husband and I, gathered in the living room and ate watermelon with the AC on and watched the news, letting the ads play even though it was pre-recorded. I’d washed my hands, but I kept finding grains of dirt caught under my fingernails and spent the evening picking them clean. I became so focused on scraping under my nails that I went too far and pressed into skin that wasn’t used to being touched and a shooting feeling of something that wasn’t quite painful went through my belly button. After that I sat on my hands so I wouldn’t keep doing that to myself.

We went to bed early, all of us, my sister and her husband taking the guest room and me on the couch because even though I’d lost my job I hadn’t moved in, not really. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep so I put on my mother’s sandals which were too big for my feet and went into the backyard to visit my brother. He was awake, too, eyes open to the sliver of moon that hovered low over the roof of the house, and what I took for shadow on his face turned out to be a light layer of dirt that had blown loose and covered his skin. I wanted to reach out and brush it from

his cheeks but we weren’t used to touching like that, so intimately, so I asked him if he was sure he wouldn’t come back inside. He shook his head, a slow rocking back and forth, and then his body sunk a bit lower into the ground, the earth undulating in a swallowing motion, and then coming to a stop. I stood watch for a while, then went inside and threw out the shoes.

Over the weekend a family friend, which meant a friend of my parents that remembered me from when I was a child, stopped by with some tupperwares of food and an intense desire to talk. My father had gone back into the office even though it was Saturday, playing catch up, he said, so I was the only one home other than my brother. We sat in the kitchen and drank tea and she told me I was just like she remembered me being, which I suppose was meant as a compliment but who wants to feel like they’ve never changed since childhood, and whenever she asked if I remembered something I said no, sorry, no, sorry, until it became uncomfortable so I lied and said yes of course, yes of course.

Later, after she left and I grew bored with wandering through the house searching for nothing in particular, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and sat down at the kitchen table, where my father had left his laptop open from the night before. It didn’t feel like snooping to rest my finger on the touchpad and watch the screen light up, thinking I would pull up something to watch. Instead, I found an email draft open on his computer, ending on the words when my wife followed by

a blinking cursor. I watched the black line jump in and out of existence for a while, then finished my cereal and turned the laptop off.

At some point the weather cooled, though I can’t say I noticed the change in seasons until there were already leaves coming off the trees, which unlike in poems looked mostly brown and wilted and sad, and during the times I sat outside with my brother, who hadn’t bothered to talk much in the last few weeks, I would pile the loose yellow caterpillar-eaten leaves around his face so that his breathing rippled through the dry plant matter, made them tumble and swirl for a moment before settling back down around his chest. Occasionally I crumbled one into a fine powder in my palm and blew on it the way my mother taught me to blow eyelashes from my fingers, though I didn’t make a wish. When I grew bored of that game I ate an apple, spitting the seeds over the mound of dirt he was buried in and seeing how far they would go.

Let me try, he said, his eyes cracking open against the low autumn sunlight, so I turned the apple around and held it to his mouth so he could bite down. He took a seed between his teeth and the shiny black of it sitting there made me think about poison coming in such small doses that you could eat a bucketful before you noticed, and then he spat it as far as he could, which

was past his feet. Afterwards I noticed a trail of apple juice, or maybe spit, was dripping down to his beard, but I didn’t tell him.

For Halloween I joined my sister and her husband and their kids for trickor-treating. The kids decided I had to wear something even though I had thought myself too old for costumes, so they dressed me in a white sheet which they’d cut holes out of to make a ghost before anyone had realized that they were destroying a perfectly good bedsheet, and after the family argument and ensuing tears and finally the build up again to having fun and candy I called my father and asked him if he was coming, but he said he was too tired and didn’t have the energy.

My nephew was a pirate and pulled his plastic sword on all the neighbors, hands up! holding it like a gun. My niece was a wolf and after each gift of candy she would lift it up into the air above her head and howl at the moon in victory. Whenever the others got far enough ahead I pulled the sheet down from my head to give myself a chance to breathe.

When the snow came it buried my brother deeper, and I stopped bothering to visit him in the backyard. The cold would take care of him, one way or the other, I reasoned, and somewhere in the frozen dirt he was probably having the time of his life. Anyways, we shoveled paths in the yard and covered his mound of dirt with as much snow as

we could to make a sledding hill, which my niece and nephew and their friends went down while screaming and laughing and then trudged back up, snow-pant fattened legs sinking knee deep into the snow. Sometimes they made snow angels down at the bottom of the hill where it flattened out, and sometimes I would join them and say look, right here, you’re probably next to your uncle if you lie down here. But then my nephew wanted to know if my brother might be putting treasure in the hill and could they dig it up, and I told them to go back inside before they froze.

I was pretty sure my brother wasn’t doing anything at all, let alone leaving presents around, buried in ice.

For Hanukkah we lit three-plus-one mismatched candles because it had taken a few days to get everyone together, then put the snaggle-toothed Channukiot in the back window instead of the front so my brother could see the tiny, flickering flames. Over dinner my father began to cry, the silent kind of tears that eat up boxes of tissues and go nowhere, and my sister asked her children if they knew why he was crying, and why this year was different, why tonight was different. Wrong holiday, they said. Asking questions is for passover.

Later I found chocolate coins scattered across the place where my brother was buried, glints of gold foil beginning to freeze to the ground. There were two coins over his eyes, and I wondered if whoever had put them there knew about the old traditions and the river styx. I considered it morbid so I took the coins off of his face

and ate the chocolate from inside.

My father couldn’t be bothered to build fires, to haul in logs, to cook dinner. Sometimes I put on his boots and a pair of cobwebbed work gloves and dragged wood in by myself, but most of the time we relied on the duller and more efficient gas heating system. I stayed up past midnight most nights, slept in until the house was empty, shared take out over the kitchen table, and occasionally borrowed the car to visit friends. My father was either losing weight or gaining it, I wasn’t sure, and the bags of salad I kept insisting he buy went rotten in the fridge.

In spring the snow melted and sank into the dirt and made mud, and eventually I could see the place my brother was buried by the way the grass was growing, and then it rained and I could see his face again, too. I had to wear rain boots because of the mud, but I came and crouched down next to him and asked him how he was doing. He blinked, and I noticed there was dirt caught in his eyelashes, and smudges of it on his face that made me think of smokey eye make up. The outline of his limbs was almost visible in the way the dirt was gathered around him, but mostly it was just the same as a grave except for his face.

I’m leaving, I told him. He looked at me and I wasn’t sure he understood. I mean, I’m moving out. He nodded at me, and let out a sigh that made eddies in the dirt on his chin, and then he closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything for a long time, so I got up and left.

The Orb

jimena enciso menchaca Gouache Painting.

A CUP BRIMMING WITH SUMMER

Makenzie Hodges-French

The sun shines for everyone. In its resplendent glow, bathing our voices, our movements in honey-summer I hear the song in people’s conversations. They swirl around our buzzing hostel. Like butterflies startled out of the bushes of sea glass-hued dorms, in the morning, int’l travelers gather around the flowers of our hostel’s communal room airy and spacious, worn couches. Scents of ylang-ylang, jasmine and neroli.

The hush in the pauses. Somebody made butternut squash brunch. They’re bringing it outside now. And one voice stands out, part of a musical chord, yours. I see the orange slice of your smile, intimating warmer movements.

The sun glances off the crystal in your eyes and on your summer’s jacket –tossing light spots around us, playfully dancing malakino. Your cream canvas bomber jacket and my Crystal bow choker Could set off our adventure, will we travel together everywhere?

Your home, my home base, but for now, they set the summer sun to sparkling. Your crystal fangs glimmer when you smile.

I’m not afraid of them, nor of the height you reach when you unfold, because these light spots follow us.

An aura of malakino wings, but – fluffy like your summer’s jacket. I see you, my man. When you met me, you stepped off, dancing, off the crescent moon. It was simply an int’l chocolate café, but time slowed, we got swept up in play. You showed me your art book, sticking up out of your satchel. You painted your postcards, sent one to me. You’ve got a magyk soul, sun-surfer. Let’s ride that summer sun into the next journey, but it’s happening now. Comes in this adventure’s timeline. When our tea lattés finally come, we pivot our conversations, unfold, and the voices around us spiral, dancing and echoing prisms of communal movements. With cups brimming with Malak Roses, we ride the summer sun to a Malak tea garden party in our hostel patio. The voices here are sweeter, honey-drenched I want to play with you, dance in the glow of our eternal summer They give us rosé gummy bears and candied orange wedges for our tea lattés. I want to cut the fruit of my life on your crystal fangs.

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