D Onion River Review d 2020
d Onion River Review d 2020
river run by Brenna Broderick Kevin Jeter Ariel Wish Emelia Aiken-Hafner Miranda Maiorino Ellen Arvidson
Editors’ Note Another year, another Onion, another opportunity to gather around the blowtorch. This Onion harvest took time and lots of it. We traced ourselves backwards into childhood, flipped through photographs of days gone by, and layered evolution with nostalgia. Every year the Onion tells a new story, and this issue is ripe for the reading. In a complicated time to be alive, this little corner of art and words that we dig up each year is a time to pause and connect with fellow human beings, and all of our places in the world. We present this Onion to you with sincere cultivation. We Onionites did our thing; we sorted through over 250 submissions to piece together what you hold in your greedy little hands now— the 47th Onion. Can you feel the age, the history? Do you smell the stink of the 46 Onions that have come before? We sure do. This year we paid homage to this beautiful thing we’ve been doing, we got sentimental and took ourselves back in time. Reading about childcare and ailing health drove us to contemplate our short precious time here on this spinning planet. It inspired us to consider trading produce with neighbors and start looking at international real estate, or slow down and spend a few extra minutes thinking on our non-dairy product preferences. All in all, we’re definitely going to spend more time building snowmen. There’s something about this year’s issue that reeks of and reads of nostalgia-- maybe that’s the three seniors that have spent their time as St. Mike’s growing and peeling Onions approaching graduation, or maybe it’s a feeling from our submitters-- but 2020 feels like both the beginning and end of something great. This year we encountered tomatoes, storm troopers, mystery primates, and less potato poetry — but more potato art— than usual. We discussed dangerous epidemics and hostile emails, and the murky medical complexities of the pancreas. We read and reread and turned
our heads sideways, we peeled until our eyes watered and the evening became morning. We sustained ourselves on blow pops and navel oranges and compared zesty poems to spicy poems, categorizing between ‘yes’, ‘maybe’ and the newly established, ‘yea sure’. Along the way, there was toe stubbing and some minor power outages, but there were also impromptu haikus and Alliot contraband apples. There were horizons we measured to the degree and more farm animals than we knew what to do with— which is one of our favorite problems to have. In between childhood stories of pet chickens and the fires they sometimes start, we got to know each other a little better and the endearing friendship of the Onion family ripened. We Core Onionites dug in and harvested the earthy creature in your hands; we are Brenna Broderick, Kevin Jeter, Ariel Wish, Emelia AikenHafner, Miranda Maiorino, and Ellen Arvidson. We six didn’t grow this alone and we have a multitude of fellow Onionites to give our thanks to. Each year we spend hours in the Cashman Great Room, sometimes with vitamins and sometimes without. With bagels in our bellies, we sort through our many submissions, each formatted to be read anonymously, and trade opinions and scores. To the auxiliary editors who read, critiqued and offered thoughts, we are grateful to have had you there with us. To Alyssa Bonaro, Ashley DeLeon, Camie Rediker, Josh Weiss, Maddie Walker de Hughes, Connor Thurston— we thank you for being such sweet members of the Onion family. This year we welcomed a new faculty advisor and elected our first gardener-in-chief. We thank Greg Delanty for his hospitality and kindness in stepping into his new role with us. We are also grateful to Kevin Jeter, who stepped from the core team into the publishing role, and helped us format and configure the Onion pages into fruition. His stamp of Kevin Confirmation TM is like thumbprints all over this issue, and we thank him for his wisdom, distraction and spreadsheet magic tricks.
To Summer Drexel & George Goldsworthy of the Printing Services for putting in press this fun Onion thing we kids like to do, we are deeply grateful. We are also immensely grateful the English Department and the Student Government Association. Without their support, this Onion absolutely wouldn’t exist. We are indebted to their generosity. We owe an enormous gratitude, as always, to each creative mind, far and wide, who submitted their work to our little Review. This year, you so graciously brought us into your worlds. You gave us glimpses of your family memories and doctor’s appointments, your car rides and bird sightings— you created beautiful, beautiful things. Without the individual genius of each of you, the Onion would just be a group of students with a love for art, words and bagels. We thank you for giving your beautiful things to us. It is through many minds and hands that we’ve grown this Onion, something new and old and hopefully, ageless. So reader, go forth and do your thing. Really sink your teeth in, read in one sitting or chew your way through slowly. Peel, weep, devour. Mohammed Aziz, the handsome face of this year’s Onion, said, “I’ve read more than 4,000 books, so I’ve lived more than 4,000 lives”. We hope this Onion can grow something within you. Humble Plebeians and forever Onionites, ~ Brenna, Kevin, Ariel, Emelia, Miranda, & Ellen Core Editors 2020
d Onion River Review d 2020 Cover: Stephen Higgins, Mohammed Aziz – The Bookseller digital photograph
Ashley DeLeon, Multiplex. The Issue is Not Black and White / 13 Anna Beach, Distinct Resonance / 14 Jordan Douglas, Matchbox Cars, of Gavin / 16 Miles Butts-Spirito, That Afternoon / 17 Madison Morris, October in a Blur / 18 Buff Lindau, Orion’s Hill / 19 McKenna Poppenga, Untitled / 20 McKenna Poppenga, Untitled / 21 Jordan Douglas, Itty Bitty / 22 Caleb Roman, Seagulls on the Lawn / 23 Dana Scheffler, Untitled / 24 Yan Yan Chen, The Sick Rose / 25 Buff Lindau, Dave Setting Off / 26 Madison Morris, Untitled / 28 Robert Niemi, It / 29 Miles Butts-Spirito, Snowman / 30 Jordyn Fullaway, Copy Cat / 31 Dana Scheffler, Untitled / 32 Connor Thurston, Reptile / 33 Meredith Paulding, why I haven’t submitted to the onion river review / 34
Miguel Barreiro Perez, icecold / 36 Emily Derrick, Timeless / 37 Madison Moore, Untitled / 38 Cameron Rediker, Carried Away / 39 Peter Dickerson, Winooski / 40 Rachel Proctor, Untitled / 41 Emelia Aiken-Hafner, pixel / 42 Alexandra Schafer, Cedar’s / 43 Madison Morris, Untitled / 44 Emily Derrick, Overnight: Room 621 / 45 Diana Marchessault, Blood / 46 Amanda Nelson, Three Downy Woodpeckers / 48 Emily Majewski, Juicy / 49 Hannah Wilmot, Who are you? / 50 Bennet Sage, Milk Week / 51 Trevien Stanger, These Trees Destroy Apathy / 52 Ryan Boyd, Beach House / 54 Allison Croce, 303 square feet / 55 Nicholas Lemon, Center Pond at Sunset / 56 Alex Dugas, Chainsaw Story / 57 Ivory Blanchette, -ship / 58 Madeline Walker de Hughes, Phases / 59 Marta Perez Fernandez, God’s Own Junkyard 1 / 60 Marta Perez Fernandez, God’s Own Junkyard 2 / 61 Megan Ahearn, THREE POTATO FOUR / 62 Jordyn Fullaway, Loose change / 63 Katherine Chamberlain, A Day at Home in Kampala / 64
B. Broderick, Manifesto / 65 Lily Stumpf, Miyama Roof and Sky / 66 Annabelle Elvidge, Sleepy Spinach / 67 B. Broderick, Tourism Season / 68 Miles Butts-Spirito, Stormy of Tetons / 69 Margaret Daley, Untitled / 70 Carmen Isabell, Agua / 71 Talia Perrea, Untitled / 72 Elizabeth Lopez, Hot Sauce / 73 Emelia Aiken-Hafner, Somewhere in Colorado / 74 Buff Lindau, Mystery Hegemony / 75 Miles Butts-Spirito, Infinity in Arches National Park / 76 Elizabeth Moore, Pine Meadow Lane, August / 77 Katherine Chamberlain, Walking Through Kyambura / 78 Rosemary Marr, The Great(best) Adventure / 79 Core Editor Bios / 82 Contributors’ Notes / 87 Acknowledgements / 94 About the Cover / 95
Back cover: B. Brenna Broderick, Bradford
“He says I’m a regular onion! I keep him busy peeling away the layers.”
~ Ray Bradbury
Multiplex. The Issue is Not Black and White Ashley DeLeon
digitalized mixed media
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Distinct Resonance Anna Beach At times I would like to know the simple magnificence of the crow flying toward the rising sun, somewhere between the deliberate reach of dark branches and pink smudges of young clouds, her feathery wings hugging the winter air beneath her belly. Surely she wonders why we resist living between here and the horizon, why we insist on being saved from ourselves and why, of all things, we still distrust the present tense. And suddenly I’m aware that the same living air fills our lungs, that it is infused with the fluency of sky with snow, sun with wood, wing with wind.
Do we not rise to the same sun and hear the same chapel bells, and witness the same wild, necessary awakening of the old cornfields? I may not see all the particular names and connections - yet but I do hear the distinct resonance, and the more I learn the more I remember that I, too, am an expression of this place, and that I do indeed know its simple magnificence.
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Matchbox Cars of Gavin Jordan Douglas
hand applied silver gelatin emulsion on watercolor paper
That Afternoon Miles Butts-Spirito They stood around the island in the middle of their kitchen, her hands pressed against the smooth cool marble, his wrapped around his can of Budweiser. That afternoon they stood together in the kitchen and they talked about nothing. She spoke and he could feel the vibrations moving in the space between them as sure as his own heartbeat. He licked his lips and gently ran his thumb along the side of the can and felt the moisture of condensation. For a moment, he glanced at her face but she was looking at her hands so he followed her gaze there, too. The left pointer finger tapped a rhythm softly into the table as the right thumb made slow, absentminded circles, and he watched. For another moment he felt self conscious, and alone. He directed his attention to the refrigerator, plastered with years of holiday cards, letters, photos of the kids, and then to the kitchen clock, seemingly frozen in place as the afternoon trickled on into infinity and she spoke and he listened. He avoided her eyes, afraid that she might see something in him that he did not want to show, what it was he did not know but he felt afraid, and so avoided her eyes. The patterns in the smooth marble table seemed too polished, too clean, they hid their years well, they did not show the passing of time that he knew they must feel because he felt it too. He felt old and he wondered if she did as well, though he knew better than to ask, and he remained silent and ran his thumb across his can. He looked at his knuckles, wrinkled, and swirled his drink but felt no desire to take a sip. They stood there together, he and her, and eventually she fell silent and looked at him but his eyes were on his drink so she followed them down and the object of their gaze was one and the same, the can of Budweiser. The silence was loud in the kitchen. The silence echoed and pressed and pulled, a pressure he felt but was not sure if she did. For a moment he wanted to speak, he wanted to ask a question, he wanted to know if she still loved him the same but the question was buried in years and silence and his throat was tight and he did not speak. They stood there together that afternoon, by the island in the middle of the kitchen, until by some unspoken agreement they retired to the living room and he stoked the fire and she read the newspaper.
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October in a Blur Madison Morris
35mm film photograph
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Orion’s Hill Buff Lindau Wide spread arms stretch forth to claim the empyrean, stalwart legs stand firm lording over our speck of Earth. His brilliant three-star belt, the shining dagger thrusting deep into the air we breathe on a clear spring night Orion rides tall, unmoved by earthly matters, villain, lumbering, useless giant, fraud of a presence, leering from on high disporting his monumental self, heaven’s barbarian, clad in bright stars. Walking up the hill, I remember that big-hearted beautiful girl, her face smiling from the pages of the paper till they found her killer. Her cell phone dead. Her judgment flawed. Her sweetness to blame. Picked up on this hill for her last ride. Orion watched, cared nothing, yet displays himself, brazen, while the taint of murder lurks in dark patches past the school where my two went. Full of bravado and fake protection, Orion’s sky-filling presence reigns mindless, an affront to our small plight on Earth— yet glorious, still, mammoth amongst all the stars.
Untitled McKenna Poppenga
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Untitled McKenna Poppenga
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Itty Bitty Jordan Douglas
silver gelatin analog photograph
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Seagulls on the Lawn Caleb Roman A small flock of seagulls Has landed on the lawn Before the library. They have caught my attention From returning my book. I have never seen Birds pant. Little drops reflect The hot summer day As they collect and fall below Their pink, wet tongues. Their throats keep a rhythm While both eyes keep their focus; Looking, always looking, to all sides. They look at me, and other passing things, But never at each other. Why would they? They don’t try To hide their open mouths As we might. Their attention is caught By more threatening things. Vigilant, with eyes to me, and mouths, ignored, dripping.
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Untitled Dana Scheffler
digital photograph
The Sick Rose Yan Yan Chen “琰琰，你回来啦” (1). She never changed since she had my company. I still remember the red roses on the table next to her photo. 奶奶 (2) told me the roses had been eating by the worms, and she was wondering when the roses would break away the worms. I was standing there, seeing the worms on the roses, their greedy look made me hate bitterly and fear mortally. I looked at the roses with watering eyes, but the roses told me: “别担心我, 你要记得好好学习” (3). Her smile is frozen. The roses only left a broken petal, the worms left finally without apologizes.
(1): “Yanyan, you are back” (2): grandma (3): “Don’t worry about me, remember to pay attention to your schoolwork”
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Dave setting off Buff Lindau A chill in the air signals fall’s familiar start of school and there sits Dave, eager, anxious, gearing up for a leap into the unknown without school or a cadre of friends to anchor his days and nights for the first time in his young life. Dave about to take his degree, leave behind the zapper, the couch, the short-order-cooking jobs, give up skis and soccer cleats, carousing with college mates, and take the plunge into grown-up city life. Glancing in his room, I’m caught by the vibe of someone just out of reach, gone, but hovering still in the books, posters, sneakers, baseball cards, bar mitzvah scroll, college notebooks dotted with drawings and notes, “Will this class ever end?” Over all looms the coming silence, and me, missing his jokes and pokes, his “You might be the devil” accusations, his quick-step tap dance to the music, while sniffing out what’s for dinner. He’s educated, shod, washed and shorn, ready to cut loose.
Can I stop imagining him losing his wallet, credit card, cell phone? His luggage could get lost with his first-ever new suit. He could get lost. The other one out West held by his lab work, Sending handmade pottery home for gifts— His blue-eyed sweetness. And now this one’s green eyes, Leaving too.
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Untitled Madison Morris
oil on canvas
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It Robert Niemi Suddenly, it shoves the tiller man aside And takes over the wheelhouse Just like that Making its presence felt With a burning sensation In the gut, A taste of tin in the mouth Things don’t work as they should It’s in charge now And it’s calling all the shots Like Minnesota Fats on an expert, epic run Of the table And it calmly schools you on Your new vocabulary: ERCP, CBD stent, adenocarcinoma, Folfirinox, CA 19-9, Margins, Whipple Procedure And a new set of concepts, Which are the old concepts: Dread, finitude, extinction I’m wide awake among the sleepwalkers, Transfigured
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Snowman Miles Butts-Spirito
color film
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Copy Cat Jordyn Fullaway A child’s fingers patter the floor, hiding behind a chair, while the hasty tapping of typing echoes from a computer in the corner. Outside, leaves whirl in the wind and silently slap the street and rain raps windshields and wars with wipers on cars passing the curb by the window, with a spider, bothered by the spatter of water on her web, because a fly flew free, to flee the flood, and began to bug the typing hands, now swatting at air, mimicking the kitten battling the fingers tap tap tapping on the floor.
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Untitled Dana Scheffler
digital photograph
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Reptile Connor Thurston There is a scaly-skin man in my pool. His hands are webbed and slippery. A tongue burns my lungs with acidic saliva. By the water filter, worms wriggle to a tune. I struggle in an ocean, chlorine-filled and crystal blue. Fire is inside of me, submerged completely, There are phantom hands in the deep end. Animate rusty chains slither in the shallow, try to drag me down. Last breath in my own backyard.
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why I haven’t submitted anything to the onion river review Meredith Paulding maybe next year, I say maybe once I have something happier to share art comes from struggle, my dad says. Like van gogh. he has built an art studio in my old room. the light is good but it goes unused. the easel sits, empty. he has three and a half dollars in his wallet he seems to know what he is talking about and who am I to argue? I never make anything happy impersonal? but all writing is personal, that’s the point I write, write, write. like I cannot stand to do anything else. I cannot stand to write. “Sorry, I can’t go,” I say. “I’m writing, can’t lose the flow.” I am creating and, how could that be bad? I look at years of songs, notebooks, sketchbooks. it is bad. I am tired and anxious and tired of being anxious. “maybe I will change” maybe maybe maybe do all artists feel this way? maybe how can anyone tell? this is not something to share, to put on display I am already on display I will change tomorrow. I have had this conversation before. I will not. if I do not change something now, I will just... remain. “Oh, that’s good,” I say. I will put it in my next story. ghost story?
sometimes I write characters inspired by real people. a friend, someone on the street. when I write about myself I am always the ghost
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icecold Miguel Barreiro Perez
digital photograph
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Timeless Emily Derrick “I snapped” was all she said at first. Terribly troubling, truly. But then she kept typing... typing... t y p i n g . . . t y p i n g . . . Trapped! twistedly tongue-tied to tens upon tens of tethering tensionfilled thoughts. to twenty tainted tantalizing ticks and tocks of tippa-tappa tip-taps, tipping , tip - tapping , a - tip and a - tap away ’til tectonics of time t ee ter and t o t t er
and
t u
m b l e
a s t r a y
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Untitled Madison Moore
35mm film photograph
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Carried Away Cameron Rediker I once had an orchid named Stella Who reminded me of pink diner waitresses. You know the waitresses, the older ones, Who wear pink uniforms with white aprons tied in the front? The waitresses who zoom around on roller skates And tap tap tap their nails on the counter when you take too long to order? Yes, Stella was a waitress flower. She had three sets of leaves that stuck up and then Cascaded down the side of her pot. Her pot was gray- but beigey gray, not the other kind. Gray, the color of certain eggshells when they aren’t in the right lighting. Eggs get too orange when you hold them up to a light To be this specific shade of gray. I removed Stella from her gray pot on the day I loved her too much. I decided to appreciate her diner waitress flowers. Stella’s flowers were fine, pink as always, But her leaves were brown and drooping. I loved Stella too much and Got carried away with showing my appreciation.
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Winooski Peter Dickerson
digital photograph
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Untitled Rachel Proctor
digital photograph
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pixel Emelia Aiken-Hafner
photoshop
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Cedar’s Alexandra Schafer Hummus, shared. Pineapple & jalapenos a place not yet seen. Sinatra on the record player, small bites, shared When did we all stop playing? Now we play a different kind of dress-up. Spend a lot of time tongue-tied. Honey, share the hummus.
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Untitled Madison Morris
oil on canvas
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Overnight: Room 621 Emily Derrick I couldn’t help but wonder if you could somehow sense my silent curiosity as to who you are? (just the basics) how you’re doing? (just in general) what you think of me? (if it ever crossed your mind) and the tempting urge to ask “So, what are you in for?” as if we were prisoners rather than patients.
Don’t worry, I’ll let you draw the curtain back when you’re ready.
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Blood Diana Marchessault There is blood in my hands, thick and dark. It’s not that bright crimson red you see in horror movies, where the victim runs screaming, leaving bright red handprints on the white walls of an abandoned house. It’s clotted, viscous, and sticks between my fingers. As I spread my hands across my thighs, strands of it spread knuckle to knuckle. These strands, like glue, never break. I have searched for the origin of the blood, but have never found the source. I have no visible wound. I simply put my hands upon my chest and the blood is there, trickling slowly. It oozes from a disguised wound that only I know exists. It’s only in the dark that I can’t see the blood. At night when I lay in bed, I only feel its warmth. I used to try washing it away, scrubbing myself in the shower until my skin was translucent and raw. I would wait for the water to run clear, but it never would. The blood would remain, caked into thick half-moons beneath my fingernails. As if my body were a sieve, the blood would continue to trickle slowly. Trailing down my throat, the taste of metal would bubble up on my tongue. I would try swallowing it down, but it would just collect in my stomach, making me feel sick. The blood could adapt like that; it’d move from one place to another if I tried to wash it away or swallow it down. I’d want to vomit it up, but all that would come up was that thick blood. It always came back. Even now, I can feel it dripping down my chest, droplets falling on the ground as I walk. It leaves a sign that I am here; I am alive; my heart is beating. I let myself sit in it at night now. We coexist, and I let it envelop me until all the world is red. If I don’t fight it, my pulse slows. I’m beginning to feel like I am just a shadow of who I once was; I leave an impression on no one. I am merely an anonymous source leaving dark red silhouettes everywhere I go: red smears on pavement and inky droplets leading to nowhere.
My only reprieve was when I met you; the blood finally thinned from that thick ooze. I could feel the blood race through my veins. It was new and exhilarating to feel the rapidity of my pulse, and I tried to keep pace with it. That old blood dried, and I began to feel whole again. But it was only a temporary fix. You eventually showed me that you were bleeding, too. When we parted ways, I saw it. It originated in the center of your chest, evident in the Rorschach stain that was spreading slowly as you spoke. You embraced me, and the hug was wet. But as you got up to walk away, I looked up at you and the stain began to disappear. I wanted to pull you back by the collar; I wanted an explanation. I wanted to know why you had suddenly stopped bleeding whilst I sat there like a leaking faucet. It was only after you exited the room, when I looked down at my hands, that I realized where your blood had gone: it was in my hands, soaking through my clothes, and dribbling down my throat. Since you left, my pulse has slowed again. My feet feel heavy as I step, fighting the stagnation. At night, I sit in a pool of my own blood, wondering if some of it might be yours, and wondering how long this might last.
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Three Downy Woodpeckers Amanda Nelson
ink on paper
Juicy Emily Majewski
digital photograph
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Who are you? Hannah Wilmot
digital photograph
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Milk Week: a story of satisfaction Bennet Sage Last week’s milk is teetering on falling into a trap of: Is this still reliable? At the bottom of the fridge awaits its trusted replacement. This week’s milk is different. It sits on the bottom shelf, awaiting its trusted position. Last week’s milk was smaller, and was always warm upon acquisition. Last week’s milk was gone before it was had; a swift transition from stability to instability. This week’s milk is different and has just the most peculiar hew about it. It sits at the bottom of the fridge where it awaits its trusted position. This week’s milk is blue and white opposed to last week’s milk that was yellow and orange. Yellow and orange stress me out, yuck! Blue and white are the colors of dedication and reliability. Last week’s milk was smaller, more quiet than this week’s milk; and for me, quiet is always followed by despair. This week’s milk is loud and ready for action. Last week’s milk was warm oat milk from a shelf that was covered in dust. This week’s milk came from the refrigerated section where the house of Mx. Cold Oat Milk sits, not too high, not too low, but well, you know… and its bigger.
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These Trees Destroy Apathy Trevien Stanger In the 1930’s, Woody Guthrie roamed the country. One morning, somewhere in America, he painted black text on his guitar-body in wide, loping letters. It read: “This Machine Kills Fascists.” In 2014, I roamed my watershed. One morning, somewhere in Vermont, in the dust on my work truck, I wrote out: “These Trees Destroy Apathy.” Pulling up to the riverbank, I unloaded those trees, aiming to plant them beside this hurricane-ravaged river. When you plant a tree beside a damaged river, you begin by digging a hole. The shovel, as it slices into the soil, goes flit, cruck, shuck. Lifting the newly-loosened dirt, you turn the shovel-head with an uncoiling wrist– the soil lands next to the hole, ka-shhhh. When the hole appears deep enough to accept a small tree, put the shovel down. Grab a baby bare-root tree. This cotton-wood is about one year old– it’s light as a wisp, flexible as a wrist, and long as a shotgun. Some day it will fire seeds like cottony buck-shot, scattering life across these denuded fields. Hold it in your hand. On one end, the roots and rootlets. These are a rich, earthy-brown, and smell of the garden after a rain. You run a hand through the gnarled strands like a brush through uncombed hair. The roots have been bound for ease of travel– tease them open some. Once planted in the dirt, these roots must spread out unhindered. These roots will go deeper than you can dig, and they will likely keep digging long after you have been dug. Toward the other end, the tree’s girth tapers to a warted nub. Below the tip you observe a few new branches bumped up and a few stems forked out. Out on the terminus of each twig, study the tightly packed buds as botanical knuckles– anticipate the hand of leaves ready to wave from within. Further down the shaft, the tensile strength stiffens, and there you clasp, between thumb and a few dirty fingers, the spot where soil will meet trunk for as long as this tree shall live.
Kneeling before your freshly-dug hole, you lower the tree into the dark cavity with one hand and begin to back-fill excavated dirt with the other. You hold it steady. You pack the final fistfuls of humus most carefully. With the hole filled and the tree upright, you loosen your grasp, but slowly at first, like a parent riding beside a bike-riding child. Finally, convinced the tree will remain standing, you let go. Stand up. The tree stands to your knee. A hush falls upon your world– field, stream, human, and tree. What has just transpired? The potential for a thousand forests has been loaded into nature’s living machine– you just pressed “play.” Out of this comes a recollection– that our hands can heal just as surely as they can harm– and you’re helping to smooth one of our scars. This story shim-mers in its unexpected break– you’ve hacked the story, removed the malicious humans, and re-placed them with folks like you. Folks who cease obsessing with the ending. Folks who are ready-ing the grounds for a different beginning. • Guthrie’s machine may not have killed fascism, but the songs it spun remain woven into this land. Be it fascism, or buccaneer capitalism, or just a stunted human evolution– whatever is at work in this warming world, our own apathy might be the final straw that breaks Nature’s back. Maybe we can be forgiven for our apathy, for our banking on an abstract hope, because we’ve largely lost the songs that say otherwise. You pick up your shovel and lean on it. This tool, like its excavator and back-hoe cousins, hums in your hand like a Faustian talisman– these tools can destroy in days what other Nature took millennia to create. But these tools can also initiate what will take mere minutes, and-also many mil-lennia, to fully flower. And you, upright hominid, now walk with this power. How could there be time for apathy at this golden, greening, vivifying hour?
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Beach House Ryan Boyd
35mm film photograph
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303 square feet Allison Croce Boxes are packed and I cannot wait to not see my coffee pot as I fall asleep, new space will be better for counting sheep. All and all, times were good here, and rent was never late. I’ll laugh about the times I left my key in the gate. I walk the space doing a careful sweep, moving on is bittersweet; and isn’t cheap. I cannot believe it’s finally the moving date. Farewell to cramped but cozy.
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Center Pond at Sunset Nicholas Lemon
digital
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Chainsaw Story Alex Dugas It’s a monday morning, on a scaffold, in a barn, in February. We’re forty feet off the floor, headlamps bent over a rotted beam, when he sums up the difference between us. You love the feel of a book in your hands, he tells me. And I don’t. He fires up the chainsaw and noses his way into the oak while I plug my ears and wonder what shitty movie he got that line from. He guns it, drops a wedge from the underside to cut the tension, then throws the chain-brake and clarifies that he’s more, I dunno, hands-on. That, and it’s a waste of trees. Before I can respond he revs it again and, coming in from the top this time, chops the beam in two. And, just like that, all bets are off. He cuts the engine, and we listen, heads cocked, as in the aftermath of a mining blast, to the silence of six hundred pounds of soggy timber tempting the long drop down. And it seems wrong, somehow, that a tiny pair of braces should hold it back. Wrong that I still expect them to. Wrong that I’ve never been so angry in my life. He rips the pull cord, throttles the chain back into spin, and lays on the wood one last time. And I want to shout, through the cackle and snarl of the powerhead, that what I love the feel of is a hammer in my hands, and boots on my feet, and dirt up my nose. That I could hold and hew the matter of my days as well as anyone else. I could make the sawdust spew, and the mortar slop, and the paint splatter until my bones go slack. The difference between us, I want to say, so loud that even I can hear it, is that I need to know that when all has come to pass, there will still be a story to tell. To pin the crumbling world between my palms and pray to something sturdier than myself, something that can never be killed, cleaved, encompassed.
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-ship Ivory Blanchette
acryclic on wood with collage
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Phases Madeline Walker de Hughes Your deep amber eyes trap me always. Cocoa powder scatters your cheeks and nose, where you were blessed by the Sun’s gaze. You encase me as the golden light rose. I pause, fossilized in your arms for days within our nest of bed linens and clothes. I’m grasping a moment that never stays, your listless eyes say what my mind knows. I am part of a cycle, a brief phase. Silver and new to fit among your rows, a resin collection sure to amaze. Your light still reaches over me; my world slows. beguiled in your flaxen atmosphere, i’m ensnared in endless sphere
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God’s Own Junkyard 1 Marta Perez Fernandez
digital photograph
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God’s Own Junkyard 2 Marta Perez Fernandez
digital photograph
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THREE POTATO FOUR Megan Ahearn
digital photograph
Loose change Jordyn Fullaway The contents of my purse scatter as I scramble for coins. They say change is good, until they’re in line behind a person paying in pennies.
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A Day at Home in Kampala Katherine Chamberlain
digital photograph
Manifesto B. Broderick Replace all the mirrors in the house with the paintings you made in elementary school. Or copies of the federalist papers. Or recipes for autumn soup. (six cups butternut squash, steamed & mashed) Let your pores grow in wild, stop taming your own beastliness. Write a bad poem, write a few. Sit in the bath until your fingers turn to rice paper, shrivel. (two cans coconut milk, two cups broth) Look at houses for sale in France, Michigan a town in Cape Cod, a city in Finland. Pick one out, and why not? Move in. (coriander, nutmeg, white pepper— to taste) Buy bean sprouts for the window sill and a yellow couch and a wicker chair. (serve with too much bread and an early bedtime)
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Miyama Roof and Sky Lily Stumpf
digital photograph
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Sleepy Spinach Annabelle Elvidge I sunk deeper into the hole I called home a wave of sleepiness falling over me it felt good to rest, to not be pushed into my peers from an external force I could finally be alone the whispers of the night howled in the wind ancient secrets of the land made their way to me It is almost time; prepare for this journey; soak it all up It felt like moments later when something warm found its way into my home what was this sensation? I could feel myself wanting to move to expand to grow I could hear the murmuring of those I had met before being given this home light found its way into the constituents of my dwelling and something wet trickled onto me We were waking up.
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Tourism Season B. Broderick I am not the girl in the pictures anymore. With her salt sun blonde joke-telling. With her hydrangea front porch Sunday. I was her once, for a minute. Now I am dry, veiny, starched denim. Now I am calendar pages forgotten to flip. Now I am the last motel still open. I was once the orange peels in the sand, the dune grass the sweaty shoulders the bare feet. I was sunburn white wine game of poker, always winning until the last round, then losing it all. Now I am the interstate at night. Now I drink the coffee even when its gone cold. Now I start to dial then hang up, I don’t deal in. I stare at the painting of sailboats in the dentist office and for a minute, I am July tangerine noon.
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Stormy of Tetons Miles Butts-Spirito
digital photograph
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Untitled Margaret Daley
Agua Carmen Isabell Rain fills my stomach. I cut it open and out came a tsunami. A flood littered of sorrow. I am not pristine or gentle I am not a pebble in a pond. I’ll tear my own house down and pierce my dimples with teardrops all just to find dry land.
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Untitled Talia Perrea
digital photograph
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Hot Sauce Elizabeth Lopez You were spicy, I knew all the ingredients inside you, the sight of you made my mouth water.
Somewhere in Colorado Emelia Aiken-Hafner
digital photograph, photoshop
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Mystery Hegemony Buff Lindau Orphaned at twelve, my dad, when his mother died. His alcoholic father no factor, it seems. Grandparents—called Ma’-ma and Pa’-pa— took him to China (his ivory-tiger souvenir stood mute on the shelf through my childhood years). Those dignified Victorians who peer stern-faced from a really large photo, became the parents, I guess, them and McBurney Prep in lower Manhattan and Aunt Bertha Cone’s Blowing Rock estate for summers with his horse called Lucky. About them all, we know little. As the fourth child, I saw him carry on with gusto— high-flown tastes, NYC at the Waldorf for deals and always good manners. Always a well-tied tie. One business and then another, never losing heart: photo-copying before xerox, plastics—that was big, chemicals. The stolid, keep-moving, post-war, robust fifties and sixties. He lodged us in the big white house up the hill where she gardened and cooked to a fare-thee-well. We knew flush times and South Carolina summer heat. He’d bound up the stairs to kiss mother and get served endless gourmet meals. We took him to the airport for business trips when air travel was rare. A man on a mission who loved his wife and his family—but was not distracted by it all. Did he take up all the room, breath all the air from our growing up? Or did he just blindly try to make it possible?
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Infinity in Arches National Park Miles Butts-Spirito
digital photograph
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Pine Meadow Lane, August Elizabeth Moore My neighbor and I have been passing zucchini back and forth over the fence with increasing aggression He tells me He has enough zucchini already Too much in fact He’s drowning in it I tell him There’s no such thing as too much zucchini The other night I stuffed his mailbox full I fit twelve zucchinis in there It’s a pretty big mailbox I didn’t leave a note He knows they’re from me I heard him swearing on the street the next day cradling twelve zucchinis in his arms Last night I opened a package at my front door And hundreds of tiny tomatoes tumbled around my welcome mat This time there was a note Unsigned But it’s from him I know In big bold black Sharpie There’s no such thing as too many fuckin’ tomatoes
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Walking Through Kyambura Katherine Chamberlain
digital photograph
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The Great(best) Adventure Rosemary Marr Somewhere, in the cusp of two broken ideologies, a young woman holds onto her newborn. She makes a vow amidst a field of corn. Her words would be carried from her tongue to a new world grasped in the hands of Zephyr. Her home was decimated, a cemetery of history. But her baby would not drown under the dirt brought in by another regimes’ feet. He would breathe across oceans, on rooftops, in the basements of oil tankers and homes lit by a lone candle. If his respiration slowed she would force oxygen into his lungs until they expanded like carnival balloons. He would not die before her. He would not die at all.
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“Peace n’ beets” ~ anonymous
Core Editor Bios Brenna Broderick is here for now. She won’t be for long, soon she’ll be somewhere else. And then she’ll be there. Wherever she goes, she’ll always have things to say and she’s glad to know there will always be an Onien with an e to listen. Kevin Jeter has spent the past four years on the Onion. From his first year as an auxiliary editor, peeling his way into the Core for his sophomore and junior year, and finally becoming the Gardener-in-Chief in his final year. Although he was not in the nitty and gritty of choosing the pieces to preserve the values of anonymity and non-bias selection, he tried to cultivate thought behind the reasons and the shape of the 2020 Onion. He would like to give special thanks to the submitters of this year’s publication, the auxiliary editors, the Core Editors, and Summer Drexel – without everyone coming together, there would be nothing to garden. Ariel Wish has dreamed of being a writer/editor ever since she was a little girl, and is very grateful for her time working with the Onion. She loves collecting more books than she can read, playing piano, the smell of spring, camping (in tents, never cabins), kayaking, English classes, and animals that have no concept of personal space. She gets shaky when she drinks too much coffee, but has survived college through her addiction to chocolate. A senior at Saint Michael’s, Ariel is growing increasingly sentimental about this being her last year helping produce an Onion, and would like to thank all the editors and contributors, as well as the St. Mike’s English Department for fostering her love for the written word. Emelia Aiken-Hafner lives at Sloane and can be found there into the wee morning hours hunched over an art piece. She is a double major in art and environmental studies, so when she is not covered in hot glue and paint she is outside. If stranded on a remote island, she would not be able to live without a tennis ball. This is her first year on core and has loved every minute of it.
Miranda Maiorino is a current sophomore majoring in Media Studies, Journalism and Digital Arts, along with a Business minor. When she isn’t running around the academic buildings like a chicken with its head cut off or coaching her fellow peers in the Writing Center, she’s most likely shopping for best deals on leather jackets (no matter the season), creating non-stop to her favorite playlists, and, of course, missing her beloved kitties. This is Miranda’s first year as a core editor for the Onion, and would like to thank all of the writers, artists, and her fellow editors for making the experience worthwhile. Ellen Arvidson is a junior English major originally from Connecticut, but is currently on the other side of the pond. Although she wasn’t able to be at the sessions this year, she still helped guide the Onion to fruition through her careful comments and scores sent in. Her first year on the Onion has been nothing but delightful and she is excited to help guide the publication in her final year at St. Mike’s.
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Contributors Notes Megan Ahearn is a senior Economics major at Saint Michael’s College and hails from New Jersey.
Miguel Barreiro Perez, senior from Spain, double major of International relations and sociology/anthropology likes to play rugby and chill. Anna Beach is a student of the natural world. She is currently exploring how to wield words and meander mazes of meaning.
Ivory Blanchette is a Senior Psychology major and Art minor from Lancaster NH. Her love of abstract art and desire to understand the human experience fule her art.
Ryan Boyd is a Business major and MJD minor from Mashpee, MA.
Miles Butts-Spirito is a senior History major at Saint Michael’s College and a Vermont native.
Katherine Chamberlain has been avid about photography since she was old enough to hold a camera. Today she has a poetry book published (The Art of Feeling -Poems of emergence) with her own photography as the cover.
Yan Yan Chen is a sophomore English major at Saint Michael’s College.
Allison Croce is a senior Religious Studies major at Saint Michael’s College.
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Margaret Daley is a senior Fine Arts major at Saint Michael’s College.
Ashley DeLeon is a sophomore exploratory major at Saint Michael’s College.
Emily Derrick is actually three chubby cats stacked up in a trench coat disguised as a sophomore English major. How they managed to learn the art of poetry remains a mystery.
Peter Dickerson is a senior Fine Arts major at Saint Michael’s College.
Jordan Douglas teaches both Darkroom and Digital Photography at St. Mike’s and at Champlain College. “Matchbox Cars” is an homage to his younger brother Gavin, who died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 2017. “Itty Bitty” was captured with Jordan’s beloved plastic Holga film camera.
Alex Dugas is a wandering writer, carpenter, and martial artist from New Hampshire.
Annabelle Elvidge is from Yarmouth, Maine. She has a passion for the natural world and loves to hike, paddleboard, run, and grow food!
Jordyn Fullaway is a neuroscience major and philosophy minor graduating in May 2020. She has a wide array of hobbies including but not limited to playing the piano, singing, painting, spending time outdoors, and writing.
Stephen Higgins wishes he was in Morocco.
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Carmen Isabell is a 19 year old Vermont native and loves to write poetry in her free time. She is a sophomore studying environmental studies and spanish, and is also a part of the Saint Michael’s dance team.
Nick Lemon (Class of 2014 and former Core Editor) works at UVM Police and volunteers with Essex Rescue. He dabbles with all sorts of things in his spare time, including digital graphics apparently? You can follow the artistic kerfuffle on Insta: @circlebirch_graphics
Buff Lindau retired in 2014 after some 35 years as Marketing Director at Saint Michael’s, but continues to be in love with the place. Congrats to the Onion River editors who have persevered!
Elizabeth Lopez is a senior Pschology major at Saint Michael’s College. Emily Majewski is a sophomore Media, Journalism, Digital Arts major at Saint Michael’s College from Connecticut.
Diana Marchessault is an SMC alum and former Core Editor of the Onion River Review. She now lives on the other end of the country in Portland, OR. She likes to find creepy ways to write about deeply personal things, though she promises she’s not really all that creepy (or so she thinks).
Rosemary Marr is a first year exploratory major at Saint Michael’s College.
Elly Moore’s favorite farm season starts mid-summer when the zucchini sprouts and gardeners everywhere get suddenly overwhelmed by produce for a whole magical zucchini-filled month. She is happy to help ease their vegetable burdens anytime. And she sends love back to the Onion, always.
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Madison Moore graduated from Saint Michael’s College in 2019 majoring in Business Administration.
Madison Morris is a senior Biology Major with a Chemistry and Art Minor. Likes include: horses, lakes, sandwiches, and sunlight. Dislikes include: cloudy days, traffic, and caterpillars.
Amanda Nelson is a Vermont Artist from White River Junction. Her work bases around the nature of Vermont.
Bob Niemi is a Professor of English at Saint Michael’s College. He has become one of the most prolific scholars in the English Department and the College. Though quiet and modest, Bob works with ferocious dedication, discipline, and intellectual passion. His acumen as a literary critic is grounded in humanistic values and social justice.
Meredith Paulding would like the thank the Academy... Merry is a junior at Saint Michael’s College. She enjoys laughing at her own jokes, starting arguments over whether hot dogs are tacos or not, and spending quality time with her 87 carefully curated Spotify playlists.
Marta Perez Fernandez likes to believe she lives in the ambiguously created space between dreaming and reality. She actually lives in Edinburgh, where she is finishing grad school this year.
Talia Perrea has a love for photography and capturing the beauty of the world.
McKenna Poppenga is a junior Fine Arts major at Saint Michael’s College.
Rachel Proctor is currently serving with AmeriCorps as an Environmental Educator and graduated from Saint Michael’s in 2017.
Camie Rediker is a life-long Vermonter majoring in Neuroscience. She can tell you exactly which types of cheese contain lactose but never immediately knows what day of the week it is.
Caleb Roman is a senior Fine Arts major at Saint Michael’s College.
Bennet Sage is a senior Philosophy major at Saint Michael’s College.
Alexandra Schafer is a first year exploratory major at Saint Michael’s College.
Dana Scheffler graduated Saint Michael’s College in 2018 with a double major in Biology and Environmental Science.
Trevien Stanger is an Instructor of Environmental Studies at Saint Michael’s College. His area of expertise lies in Evironmetnal Writing, Ecological Restoration, Wilderness Ethics, and Environmental Justice.
Lily Stumpf is a junior Physics major at Saint Michael’s College.
Connor Thurston is a junior English major at Saint Michael’s College.
Madeline Walker de Hughes is a wave sliding Chica from South Jersey. She loves Vermont, but can’t wait to get back to the “wooder.”
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Hannah Wilmot from Massachusetts but currently traveling Europe on the weekends during my study abroad experience in Barcelona, Spain.
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The Onion River Review would like to thank: Greg Delanty, for his hospitality, attentiveness, zest, and most of all his time. Summer Drexel and George Goldsworthy of Printing Services, for their technological dexterity, and ever-dependable assembling skills. The English Department, for their fiscal and creative support. The Student Association. Our team of auxiliary editors for their honest advice and indispensable engagement: Camie Rediker, Alyssa Bonaro, Ashley DeLeon, Josh Weiss, Maddie Walker de Hughes, and Connor Thurston. And finally, as always, thank you to all the faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members who submit their work, and take the time to read. You let us bloom and make us what we are.
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About the Cover The cover image of the year’s Onion, titled, “Mohammed Aziz - The Bookseller,” is a photo taken by St. Mike’s student Stephen Higgins during his time as a photojournalist student in Morocco. It was shot using a Panasonic GH4 camera, and submitted to the Onion with the caption, “‘I’ll be here till everyone can read,’ Aziz said. ‘I’ve read more than 4,000 books, so I’ve lived more than 4,000 lives. Everyone should have that chance.’ Perched in his five-by-five-foot bookshop, Mohammed Aziz reads quietly for 12 hours each day, stopping only to eat, smoke, and pray five times. The devout 71-year-old has been selling his collection of books for more than 43 years from the same booth, which sits modestly on a busy medina street in Rabat, Morocco.” Additionally, Stephen said, “This picture serves to remind me why I travel. Each day I walked down the busy market street. The booksellers shop was just one of many along the way, yet, for some reason, I was most curious to hear his story. He didn’t act like the other shopkeepers, whose laughter and chatter could be heard echoing throughout the city walls at all hours of the day. Instead, Aziz sat quietly, eyes unflinching from the Qur’an resting on his crossed legs. I understand that I was no different than the thousands of other tourists who had stopped to admire his book collection throughout the years. Yet immersing oneself into another culture is best done through conversation and I was determined to have one with Mohammed Aziz, the bookseller. “My writing partner, Anton, decided to tell the story of this solitary bookseller and I was fortunate enough to provide the pictures which accompanied the captivating piece. So, after weeks of observing him in passing, I finally conversed with the bookseller. I first talked to Aziz without a camera, hoping to create a rapport with him. The next time around he agreed, not without hesitation, to a few pictures. The sun was getting low and the call to prayer would be coming soon. I snapped a few
wide shots, but really wanted a portrait. I leaned in close, asked him to sit forward and grabbed the shot. Moments later the call to prayer echoed throughout the city. Aziz stood up, closed the rickety wooden doors of his shop, shook my hand, and disappeared into the crowd as he headed to the mosque.�
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Bradford B. Broderick Four hours in the family SUV brings us to an icy left turn and a long drive up the mountain.The cows hardly look up, even as we wave to them, greet them emphatically. Our parents in the front seat, a Johnny Cash CD in the stereo. Sometimes the Phantom of the Opera, sometimes Carole King. His big blue pickup truck parked in front of the barn. The front door propped open by a heavy copper beetle, the carpet damp from wet snow boots. In the summer, the clotheslines swung and the sheets billowed like rain clouds. Little glass ornaments hung from suction cups on the porch door, they rattled when we ran back and forth. Lawn chairs that made the backs of our legs sticky, a fly trap in an empty margarine jar. We play the organ with clumsy fingers on the keys and thick carpeting between our toes— not caring that we can’t read the sheet music. We spend hours thumbing through the shelves of old records, smelling the musty card-stock. Julie Andrews, Live at Carnegie Hall! And with ginger fingers, we hold the old film cameras like fresh peaches. Let him tell us about the auctions, the aperture, the soul of these creatures. We are children, we are hungry. Eager to devour the shadows of years past we can find here.