The Sandy River Review Spring 2015 Volume 35, Issue 1
Editor | Audrey Gidman
Assistant Editor | Nathaniel Duggan
The Sandy River Review is published during the Winter, Spring, and Summer in conjunction with Alice James Books and the University of Maine at Farmington Humanities Department. Winter and Spring issues are published online at www.sandyriverreview.com. Summer issues are published online and in print. Each contributor retains the copyright to any submitted material, and it cannot be reproduced without the author’s consent. The editors of The Sandy River Review are solely responsible for its content. Opinions herein do not necessarily reflect those of the editors, the University of Maine at Farmington, or Alice James Books. Submissions to The Sandy River Review are accepted on a rolling basis and may be emailed to srreview@gmail.com. See www.sandyriverreview.com for more details or Like us on Facebook! Persons interested in the position of Assistant Editor may submit letters of interest to srreview@gmail.com or contact the UMF Writers’ Guild. We wish to extend special thanks to the creative writing faculty and students, the members of the UMF Writers’ Guild, and the AJB staff for their continued support. We would also like to thank Shana Youngdahl and Alyssa Neptune for their assistance with copyediting this issue.
Cover Art: Green Wood | Juliet Degree
Table of Contents
Foreword Autobiography of a Deadite | Ron Riekki
1
Explaining the Joke | Zack Peercy
2
Through the Looking Glass | Rebecca Oet
4
What Unknown Fractals | Jordan McNair
5
[i find myself often] | Duncan Gamble
6
Passing Hearts | Jana LaChance
8
In a Station in the Underground | Tim Cresswell
9
1890 | Jennifer Gibson
10
Painbirds VII | Ashley Warren
11
Pain is a Quale by Definition | M. Ann Hull
12
Waiting | Jana LaChance
13
To Manifest | Joshua Cardella
14
Colombia | Robin Reiss
20
Of the North | Juliet Degree
22
Not Thinking it was so with Yellow Flowers | Lyn Lifshin
23
Leaf Insect Camouflage | Jana LaChance
24
susquehanna | William Cordeiro
25
Peacock | Claire Menegatti
26
The Moon & I | Lauren Crosby
27
Contributer’s Notes
Foreword “‘The ovaries of a newborn girl contain up to 400,000 egg cells.’ All my poems are already in me.” —Vera Pavlova
Each passing day I devote to the act and art of writing I am reminded that the art is already in us. We are not all-knowing vessels of secrets or overflowing pools of vast knowledge; we are the bell jars up on the dusty shelf. On rainy days we hold notes, letters, to-do lists. In the sun, we hold lavender lemonade for a young child, and lightning bugs at dusk. We are smooth and cool and welcoming, we artists, we humble containers of water and possibility; carriers of pens, benders of breath. —Audrey Gidman
We do this because the world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning in it.
–Sandra Cisneros, on writing
Flash Fiction
Ron Riekki
Autobiography of a Deadite
My friends wanted to drive to Tennessee for Spring Break. We’d skip the actual Spring Break and instead see if we could find the old cabin filmed in Evil Dead. We got the city online, Morristown, and figured we’d beg the residents once we got there. We found a diner, ate, and started begging. They didn’t know. They pretended they didn’t know. They didn’t answer. They walked by us as if we were ghosts. We were ghosts, ghosts of Michigan. There had been a hundred of us before. We were told that it was gone. What was gone? The house was gone. The owner got sick of people coming, burned it down. What do you mean burned it down? Burned it down burned it down. Why? He got sick of people coming. So no one goes anymore? No. The fire made the house look hellish. They loved it even more. The ashes made more come. They wanted the ash of Ash. They wanted it. They started taking the house. Taking the house? Pieces. Meaning? They took the house. They took bricks and the chimney and wood and any remnant they could find. They took it all. The house is gone. Now there’s nothing to go to. We still begged. They gave the address, although there is no address. They gave the general direction, although there is no general direction. We found it. Thought we found it. Found a place we thought we’d pretend was it. It could have been any area that looked like a place where something was missing. We looked down at the ground. It felt like cemetery. We wanted that. We wanted the slightest touch of horror. We looked around. The woods seemed safe and dangerous, young and stupid, old and dead. 1
Fiction
Zack Peercy
Explaining the Joke
2
“Do you ever have those days when you lay in bed for two hours staring at your door thinking how easy it would be to take off your belt, wedge it in the frame, and hang yourself like Robin Williams did? Me neither.” Sitting across from my counselor always pisses me off. I tell her things like this and she never cracks a smile. When we first met, she asked me to tell her about myself in my own words. So, I told her I was a janitor who solved unfinished math problems on the board after hours. She looked at me like I was crazy, not like I was Will Hunting. She just didn’t get the joke. Today was no different. I thought for awhile about that Robin Williams line, two hours to be exact. Sure, I was staring at my door the whole time, and yes I was undoing and redoing my belt, but the important part is the joke. One of the funniest guys, a king of comedy, hung himself. He was suicidal, too. When I found out it was like catching him with his pants down, which I guess I did because he had taken his belt off. Sometimes my counselor asks why I avoid my feelings and put up walls. I mean, she puts a nice spin on it, a lot more beating around the bush. She’d say, “Do you feel like you’re being honest with your emotions?” Then I’d have to say something like, “I keep trying to be honest with them, but they never let me finish. By then the baby is crying and my mind wanders to my tennis instructor, Jacques.” It’s just kind of shitty, you know? Because I know I’m not being honest with my emotions, I’m well aware I put up walls, and of course I’m avoiding your questions. But why answer them? I think I’m just at this point where I’d rather be emotionally stunted and get in a good laugh instead of admitting that I’m sad and then just being sad. One time she asked me, “What’s your secret? What is so funny?” I had to think about that one. Maybe my secret was that I was bitten and thought that I could be stronger than the virus, but really any minute I was going full zombie. Maybe I kept a girl in a well in my basement where I made her moisturize her skin so I could add it to my suit. I ended up telling her that by day I was a playboy billionaire, but at night I fought crime. Universally recognizable storyline, but not even a
twitch at the corner of her mouth. She wanted the realness, the honestly. She wanted me to explain the joke. But it’s something you really had to experience. Picture me bathed in a spotlight against a brick wall, clunky mic in my hand: Set Up: I lived in the city until my mom moved us in with her new boyfriend in the boonies. This one night, I remember storming out of the house after being called an “artsy fag” for getting cast as the lead in a play, and looking up at the stars. I’d never seen a real night sky before. They were everywhere, all the stars just hanging out in the sky with the expanding darkness. I knew I didn’t, but I thought I could see the curvature of the earth. And it was while looking at the expanse of utter blackness with little pricks of light, I felt so small. There were millions of people looking at the same stars, and millions more who would never acknowledge them, but everyone was trying to burn bright enough to be noticed. Punchline: And the stars would never look back. That was the night the joke was explained to me. It took me awhile, I had to think about it, but I really get it now. When Robin got it, it killed. It’s slaying me, too. I’m still laughing. I’m laughing so fucking hard, there are tears in my eyes.
3
Through the Looking Glass
Rebecca Oet
Poetry
Jordan McNair What Unknown Fractals What unknown colors exist between fractals of light? Summer haze: the way it clings dense with pollen against my darkening skin. Setting sun, meat of sweet potatoes peeled on a Saturday. Blood orange b u r s t i n g on the tongue tender as a fever blister. Faint branches of veins fan themselves, thin as a paper lantern across his eyelids. Cotton buds;
lamb’s fur, soft new, gentle spiral.
5
Poetry
Duncan Gamble
[i find myself often]
i find myself often in strangers’ arms dreaming of nothing which is not the truth which is that i am dreaming of you and dreaming less often of you who are wrapped in warm fields smelling of summer laughing and spinning and falling in whatever sentimental flower which is not the truth which is that i have stopped writing and dream less often of beautiful things which are forgotten in old pages and envelopes quiet and tender and haunting in a beaten drawer which is not the truth which is that i am forgetting your voice and forgetting less often small and cherished details in hazy strange arms kissing and whispering and bewildered by whatever drifting lover which is not the truth which is that you are missing from me and dreaming less often of me who is trapped in memories smelling of cardamom waiting and whispering and dreaming in a dozen golden envelopes because we find ourselves often 6
in strangers’ arms dreaming of nothing which is not the truth
7
Passing Hearts
Jana LaChance
Poetry
Tim Cresswell
In a Station in the Underground
Out of the underground, hot from the crowds. Streetlights mirrored in the storefront, rainbow in the oil, rain snaking down a Perspex screen. Don’t speak to me of rivers, salmon leaping falls, a forest’s bluebell haze or granite scoured by ice. A woman weaves against the flow heading home her face a full moon.
9
1890
Jennifer Gibson
Poetry
Painbirds VII
Ashley Warren
Sun-browned skin, bottle sweating freedom beads, colors colors laughing birds. Got the news— “she has Parkinson’s…” Ask a travelling doctor, “what’s worse—that or Alzheimer’s?” THAT, etc. etc. Big picture. Too many turisimo vans away to see it so I picture Michael J. Fox on TV—limbs and eyes dancing—accompanied by some dark shadow slicing away all rhythm and poise. It’s summer when I meet this new mother version—It’s home and green and the air sticks to fear. A sad orchestra echoes each laugh. She gets drunk with me, listens to my stories while the shoulder jerks to an angry violin. Everything is smaller—shrinking like forgotten fruit—but she listens and I wonder what dances are to come. I wonder if her neck will get sore and how long we have before the freedom and orchestral strings are broken.
11
Poetry
M. Ann Hull
Pain is a Quale by Definition
Tell the doctors it begins as a pin inside you: its seraphim uncountable, its silence palpable. Tell the doctors it grows as roses: bushes of buds bursting their bruising faces then a bramble of thorn blooming ‘til leaf arms rip, wrapping their own stem shoulders, rocking slowly in a wind no one else seems to notice. Say you’re devoid of petals, say it picks up pace like nails clicking the tick tock punch of an old-timey typewriter, punctuates practically with yelling bells when the paper reaches its edge of space, when a line of asterisks has been pushed like little black stars in the white, unrolling sky. The doctors’ examine the invisible with flashlight eyes, mouths pursed as if paid by pinches of metal in their molars until you taste nickel, until you say fine, five on the scale as if it were only notes drilled down the keys of your spine & the piano were perfectly fine being played with a buzzard’s beak that only last night was tearing up cotton ball corpses of mice.
12
Waiting
Jana LaChance
Fiction
Joshua Cardella
To Manifest
Greg is told by his friend and roommate, Neil, that simply thinking about what he wants can lead him to getting it. Greg doesn’t believe Neil, wants to tell him that the mantras and the platitudes are bullshit, but instead nods at him, trying his best to force a smile. Greg decides to take a nap on the sofa. Greg is unhappy. Greg is unhappy. Greg is unhappy. This is what Greg thinks about during the day. He thinks about his unhappiness between bites of a bagel sandwich he purchased at the gas station. He thinks about it as he rinses off the slime of raw chicken from in between the webbing of his fingers. He thinks about it as he drags a comb through his greasy, blonde hair in preparation for a blind date with a woman from Neil’s Pilates class. Greg slams the door shut behind him when he gets home, prompting Neil to tell him to relax, and that whatever it was that was bothering him could be solved by thinking about the good still to come in the days to follow. Greg tells Neil that he will try harder to do this, even though Greg knows that Neil knows that Greg is not letting his happiness properly marinate. When Neil asks if something went wrong on the date, Greg tells Neil that the date went well, and that he fucked her in the bathroom. When Neil asks if they made plans to go out again, Greg tells Neil that she practically begged him to call her. Greg lies to Neil most every day, even though he doesn’t mean to. Neil pats Greg on the shoulder and says something about happiness manifesting itself from within Greg’s thoughts. Neil doesn’t know that all Greg thinks about is steering his ’96 Honda head-on into a guardrail and letting his body careen like a dove through the windshield. Neil goes to bed at 11:30, leaving Greg to watch TV in the dark of the living room, infomercials about marginally absorbent sponges slapping at the screen as if trying to clean the monitor from the inside out. A man with a trimmed goatee screams at Greg through the television screen. Greg tries to press the power button on the remote but instead shuts off the cable, leaving the TV screen distorted with the moaning static of black and grey pixels. Greg mutes the TV and shuts his eyes.
14
Greg sits in his bed and watches a tree branch skitter against the unplugged air conditioner hanging from his window. The scratching sound emanating from this is enough to almost drown out the dull thrum of white noise. Greg cups his ears and rocks back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The tree branch mimics his swaying in measured creaks. Greg realizes that he can’t remember the last time he slept for more than two hours. The lightbulb in the periwinkle lamp on his nightstand flickers and the shadow of Greg’s shoulders cast on the wall in front of him look like the wings of a moth. Greg is watching the woman from Neil’s Pilates class poke steak particles from her molars and swallow the loose fragments that free themselves from the yellowing crags. She tells Greg that she is into, like really into, homeopathic remedies. Greg wants to ask if she really thinks that spreading Algae Extract on the bags under her eyes will actually make her look like she isn’t so damn haggard, but instead nods his head. Greg vigorously rubs the pad of his thumb down the blunt side of the butter knife that is peaking out from the lip of his salad plate. Greg mentions that he occasionally takes too much Tylenol, usually on purpose. She doesn’t respond, transfixed with the process of cleaning her canines like a self-obsessed dentist scouring for plaque. Greg can hear the scratching of the fork against her teeth. The metallic squeal and the sound of conversation from the other tables melts together until he can’t separate them, their clashing becoming static. Greg presses a palm against his right ear and shuts his eyes. Greg empties a spoiled jug of “from concentrate” orange juice into the sink and lets it collect in the drain like a small, orange pool, sticking his hand in the liquid every few seconds to prod the stopper. Neil enters the kitchen, glances at the wasted juice, and says something to Greg about remembering to buy more tomorrow. Greg nods as he flips the handle of the faucet up, allowing scalding water to rinse off the bubbles of froth and pulp. Greg files down a number two pencil until the shavings cover the desk of his cubicle and the pencil itself is just a nub. He blows the bits of yellow, curly wood from his Great Gatsby mousepad and grabs a second pencil from the brown coffee mug sitting precariously close to the edge of his desk. When his boss comes over to ask about Greg’s most recent sales, all Greg hears is a dull thrum, like white noise vibrating through the chalky walls of his cubicle. Greg nods at his boss and
15
sighs through his nose. Neil walks into the kitchen, pours himself a tall glass of orange juice, and asks Greg if he would like to attend the next self-help session that Neil is giving on Saturday. Greg looks at Neil, at his small, sunken eyes that are practically begging him to attend; at his too-tight button down shirt that ripples across his midsection; at his frizzy, black hair; at the way Neil holds the orange juice like a shield in his left hand; at his never-ceasing, never-fading, always full-toothed smile. Greg sucks in his stomach, exhales for longer than he needs to, and says yes. Neil pumps his right fist and takes a long gulp of the juice. His eyes bulge as he lurches for the sink, spitting out the mouthful of liquid. Neil drops a stack of multicolored books onto the center of the coffee table in front of Greg. The book on top displays a picture of a Ferrari. The book beneath that is about the bahamas, a trip Greg once mentioned to Neil that he wanted to take. The book on the bottom is covered in a pattern of varying forms of American currency, the blurb on its front guaranteeing to help manage finances and accrue wealth. Greg looks at Neil, whose smile is as wide as Greg has ever seen it, and asks what the books are for. Neil tells Greg that they are to help him manifest his happiness, and that reading them will place the potent seed of desire in Greg’s mind. Greg is silent, but slowly nods his head. Neil smiles even wider and asks if Greg likes them. Greg allows his chin to bob more vigorously. Neil claps his hands and places them on Greg’s shoulders. He tells Greg that all of the things the books promise are possible if Greg just takes the time to believe.
16
Neil is wearing a fitted suit and standing behind a brown podium, trying his best to look tall despite clearly standing on his tippy toes. Greg knows that Neil does this because he saw Neil posing the same way in the body mirror before they left for the meeting. Greg looks around the conference room at the other men, all of them slouching in their chairs, all of them with tired eyes and thick, calloused fingers. They are waiting for their lives to change. Greg wonders if any change will occur from the glut of inspirational platitudes that Neil has prepared. The zest with which Neil fires them off borders on remarkable, and he holds the audience in rapt attention. Greg thinks, if he squints, that he can almost see the foam of the microphone quivering from the onslaught of positivity. Neil begins his lecture by dis-
cussing his theory of manifestation. Neil tells the audience that life will not wait for them if they refuse to chase it. He tells them that creating happiness is as easy as letting themselves envision it inside themselves. He tells them that it is within them to be happy and positive. Greg blocks the words out, instead concentrating on the gentle shush of the ceiling fan. Neil smiles wider, and the men start applauding. Greg is wondering if this is what Neil thinks about, if this is the result of Neil’s manifestation, if this is the world that Neil has created. Greg walks into the bookstore with an armful of books and drops them on the counter next to a bespectacled teenage girl wearing a nametag that says “Maggie.” Greg requests to return them, and is told that he can only get store credit for purchases made with a credit card. Greg decides to browse the aisles. Greg scans the section about health and the human anatomy and steps around an employee who is slowly shoving medical textbooks onto a creaky shelf. He settles on a book about pancreatic cancer, saying to himself that if Neil is right, maybe this book can kill him. Greg tucks the book under his arm and asks the employee stocking the shelves if he knows if they have journals in stock. Greg buys a $45 leather-bound journal from the bookstore. On the inside cover of the journal, Greg begins to write. He write his name, followed by his date of birth. Beneath this, he jots down his mother’s phone number, pausing briefly to wonder if the number was necessary, or if it would be on record. Greg runs his thumb down the spine of the journal, the sound of the friction almost seeming to hush the static of the bookstore’s vents. Greg presses scan on his radio, letting the stations flip through themselves in order to find something to accompany the blaring honks of the traffic jam. The first station is nothing but static, as well as the second, and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. Nothing but static, Greg thinks to himself, and begins changing the stations manually. Every station is static. Every station is static. Every fucking station is static. Greg punches the power button and the radio shuts off. The static keeps buzzing in his ears. Greg scribbles a note down in a journal he had just begun keeping. Neil notices the journal and asks what Greg is writing. Greg says it is a dream journal, and that he is trying to remember his last
17
night’s nightmare. Neil asks if it is helping him manifest his happiness. Greg nods, even though he is currently writing line six of a particularly melancholy suicide note, one that begins with the words: “I apologize for any inconvenience that this might cause.” Neil tells Greg that there are two types of people in the world: Positives, and Negatives. Neil asks Greg which type he wants to be. Greg tells Neil that he wants to be more positive. Neil points at his own head, taps his finger against his temple, and tells Greg to make it happen. Greg thinks about Neil driving a Ferrari as it careens off the side of a cliff. The noise is worse today. It stings the insides of Greg’s ears, and when he plugs them it only gets louder, trapping the vibrations in his brain. Greg shakes off the sound, steadies himself with his left hand against the sink, and pours the spoiled “from concentrate” orange juice into the clogged drain. Neil asks Greg why he is reading a book about pancreatic cancer, and Greg too quickly responds with the word, “Curiosity.” Neil frowns like a child whose Barbie just snapped in half. Greg slams his fist down on the dinner table, the white table cloth contracting with the blow. She stops picking her teeth and stares at Greg instead, her pupils contracting with what he assumes is genuine fear. He slams his fist again, then again, then again. The fourth slam connects with Greg’s plate, sending shards of white glass across the restaurant. The air between them is stale with the scent of overpriced beef. Their waiter, a small, thin man holding a pitcher of tap water, watches the woman as the woman watches Greg watch her. Greg stands up, places three crumpled bills on the table, and grabs his coat. Greg presses his right cheek against the cool window of a taxi, letting the vibration of the road mask the hum of static playing on repeat in his head. The glare of the streetlights burn Greg’s eyes, and he clenches his lids shut.
18
Greg is told by his therapist that he is letting himself get stuck inside his own head. She tells him that he needs to experience life, really get out there and make something happen. Her first suggestion is to go out on a date, since he had admitted that, despite his loneliness, the prospect of dating instilled a sense of dread in his very being. Greg thinks of women he could take out, and realizes the only woman that he speaks to on a daily basis is his boss’s secretary. Greg decides that he will ask Neil if he can set him up with one of the women from his Pilates class, the ones with the firm thighs and tight, sinewy calves. Greg thinks about what he wants the last line of his suicide note to say. He wants to write something about how he tried and failed to manifest happiness, something as honest as he can think to say, something about how he is going crazy and can’t stop the static buzzing in his brain. Instead, he decides to lie. Greg writes, on the third page of a $45 leather-bound journal, that he has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, and that he had made the decision to end his life because of this earth-shattering news. Greg thinks this is sufficient, and knows, with absolute confidence, that it is a better excuse to kill himself than a sound he can’t stop hearing, a sound he can’t stop hearing, a sound he can’t stop hearing, a sound he will never stop hearing.
19
Poetry
Robin Reiss
Colombia
Mountains like ruddy knuckles caked in mud, scuffed in grass stains. Here, roads peel into the sides of hills like a fingernail scraping whitely through, dried blood cracking on the fringe. This is the land of God’s manic episode; he thought he could do anything,
so he did,
throwing the land like a clay pot, smashing the piñata of his skull to spill species like rain. Then, with the forgetful exhale of a waning high, he folded his massive hands, lay down his earthy head, and let himself moss sleepily over, pools of aquamarine water collecting in the webs of his fingers 20
like forgotten teacups in the mounds of a hoarder’s basement.
21
Of the North
Juliet Degree
Poetry
Lyn Lifshin
NOT THINKING IT WAS SO WITH YELLOW FLOWERS
At night I dreamed that same dream the one full of muscles and thighs that aren’t you and later the fear came back crossing into Mexico tho at first when I woke up I thought it wasn’t true the air was so bright and yellow flowers were falling from the pepper tree like suns
Editor’s Choice Award Winner
23
Insect Leaf Camouflage
Jana LaChance
Nonfiction
William Cordeiro
Susquehanna
Over the pony-truss bridge, just a trellis of rust-flakes, chug-up a steep grade to Rattlesnake Road, then set your odometer. 2.8 miles, half-way through the curve, a dirt trail veers off near some brush. Up the path, we’ve lived in the remodeled church for most of a month, whitewashed with a porch around back. One leftover old pew is stuffed up in the mildewy belltower. Spare key in the cinderblock doorstop where a spider, a barn-funnel or hacklemesh weaver, once laced its void snug. Our view from the yard: shoulders of foothills, a patchwork of farmland, blue fog over-floating the valley. In the afternoon mizzle, the hills ghost away, each level’s new primer of gesso. Whole mountains silhouette, thin as some membrane. A finch scissors the fence, its song’s sizzle and catchall around us. A woodchuck bellies back under its shed, skirting the gutterditch, which houseflies lobber above like so much dizzying guesswork. When it clears, we trot down to the neighbor’s to scratch ears of their goats. The bobbling, piebald goose-things with red faces, heads bubbling with warts, called Muscovy ducks, filch spillover apples the piglets have snuffled. Dew licks at our ankles on overgrown coltsfoot; we’re tickled by sedge-grass and lashes of dogbane. We inhale fetor and methane, cut hay and clover, a faint scent from the after-rain’s ozone. I’ve stepped on a bolus of mushroom, big as a baseball, which poofs out a cloud of black spoors. They’re lost to the breeze amid fern shadow, wood-rot, off in a tangle of bramble and nettles. Vast iotas of insects carom through the gloam. Bumblebees golden the understory. You tip-toe the pond bank, fingering cattails, wobbling their nobby-nubbed toppers. A startled chorus line of what must be a hundred groggy bullfrogs hunker there, all getting one leg up, skreek-hiccup-eek each away, plop plop-plop, under the water, scuttling off logs into scum. Down in what passes for town, drunks saddle their riding lawnmowers to the one lonely bar while their bone-dry, overgrown yards wilt stiff in the last nick of sun. Past dragonflies and clots of pollywog spawn, water-striders hover the brackish soak of the marsh. Trucks kick up thick dust on the hilly dirt roads; stars shatter down steep, steepled hills delivered to dusk. And the river smears away every image limning its mirror, bleary and syrupy with blisters. And dark begins, and we listen. 25
Peacock Claire Menegatti
Poetry
Lauren Crosby The Moon & I
The Moon and I spooned once he made me swear to jesus himself that I would never tell no dirt roads or chord progressions I promised but you see The Moon he don’t believe in promises I almost kissed The Sun with my Moon-promising lips she told me I was in no state to receive kisses like this I agreed but you see The Sun she don’t sign contracts
27
[for we knew eternity by the silence it brings]
void:
then scudding rain.
—D.A. Powell
Contributors’ Notes
Juliet Degree is a Vermont native artist. She is a Photography major at Lesley University College of Art and Design (formally the Art Institute of Boston). She has previously been published in the Sandy River Review. She has also been published in the first volume of Maps for Teeth magazine, Taking In, and on The Quiet Life photography page. She has been featured in three shows this year, including a show of BFA photography work. She is currently working as a darkroom lab assistant. She resides in Brighton, Massachusetts. Lauren Crosby is a student at the University of Maine Farmington. She enjoys Cat Stevens, cutting pictures out of magazines, and leaving.
J a n a L a C h a n c e graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art, Illustration and a Concentration in English from Rhode Island School of Design in 2008, as well as a Master’s degree in Fine Art, Illustration in 2011 from Savannah College of Art and Design. Since graduating, she has worked as a freelance illustrator and exhibited work in her local area. She grew up in New Hampshire near the New England coastline and art filled villages such as Portsmouth. Jana finds inspiration through literature, nature, and finding approaches to paint and illustrate conceptual ideas.
Rebecca Oet is a student from Solon, Ohio. She enjoys reading, writing short stories and poetry, and of course, taking pictures. Rebecca is a national silver medalist in the 2015 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and has won multiple awards for her writing and photography. She often fantasizes about growing wings and flying through the air.
W illiam C ordeiro received his MFA and Ph.D. from Cornell University. His work appears or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Cortland Review, Crab Orchard Review, CutBank Online, Drunken Boat, Fourteen Hills, Harpur Palate, Phoebe, and elsewhere. He is grateful for residencies from ART 342, Blue Mountain Center, Ora Lerman Trust, Petrified Forest National Park, and Risley AIR at Cornell. He lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he is a faculty member in the Honors Program at Northern Arizona University. Lyn Lifshin is has published over 130 books and chapbooks including 3 from Black Sparrow Press: Cold Comfort, Before It’s Light and Another Woman Who Looks Like Me. Recent books include Ballroom; All the Poets Who Have Touched Me, Living and Dead; All True, Especially The Lies; Light At the End: The Jesus Poems; Katrina; Mirrors; Persphone; Lost In The Fog; Knife Edge; & Absinthe: The Tango Poems. Visit her website: www.lynlifshin.com.
Claire Menegatti lives and works from her home in LA, California. She graduated in 2010 from CSULB with her BFA in Illustration. Her greatest skills are in the traditional methods of creating, particularly with oils, watercolors, and inks. Her work has a feminine, delicate, and organic aesthetic. The figure, and the idea of life is exhibited in all of her work. She has been exhibiting in Southern California since 2006. She is a freelance designer and illustrator: www.menegattiart.com
Jordan McNair is a twenty-two year old Creative Writing and English major at the University of Maine Farmington. She is someone who likes to turn over the earth in her hand, and hold warm stones of citrine and obsidian in her palms. She enjoys the quiet serenity of Sunday mornings.
Tim Cresswell is a geographer and poet who has been widely published in poetry magazines in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the USA and Canada including The Moth, the Rialto, the North, Magma, Poetry Wales, Agenda, Envoi, Riddlefence and The Kudzu House Quarterly. His first collection, Soil, was published by Penned in the Margins (London) in July 2013. His second poetry book, Fence, is being published by Penned in the Margins in 2015. He is also the author of five books in cultural geography.
M. Ann Hull has published work in 32 Poems, Barrow Street, BOXCAR Poetry Review, Fugue, Mid-American Review, Passages North, and Quarterly West, amongst others, and has been awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize. A former poetry editor of Black Warrior Review, she holds an MFA from the University of Alabama.
Duncan Gamble is a poet of Vermont originally from Burlington, raised in the small nowhere of Arlington, and now at UVM as a neuroscience student. When he is away from “home” (his parents’ house in Arlington) he misses the gardens, his dog, and his kitchen; when he is home, he writes letters on a 1950s Royal, poems into leatherbound journals, and is in the constant act of renovating his childhood home and himself. He would be glad of your writing him or stalking him in the Zuckerbergian hinterlands of the internet. Zack Peercy writes because he doesn’t believe he can do anything else. He apologizes, profusely, for that thing he did and hopes that you will one day forgive him. He will be a future contributor to McSweeney’s, University of Hell Press, One Story, and Atticus Books. Through that last statement, he hopes to be held accountable for his actions. He is a student at the University of Maine Farmington.
R on R iekki ’ s books include U.P.: a novel, The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (2014 Michigan Notable Book), and Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=501D0-3479#.VKZ4kmTF-PU. His play “Carol” was in The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2012, The First Real Halloween was best sci-fi/fantasy screenplay for the 2014 International Family Film Festival, and his story “The Family Jewel” was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2015. Ashley Warren’s “Painbirds” is part of a series inspired by Ginsberg’s “Kaddish” and explores her mother’s battle with Parkinson’s Disease as well as other themes of truth and memory, sickness and decay. She is a Minnesota native and currently live in Long Beach, CA. Her poems have appeared in several print and online publications including Convergence Magazine, Hiram Poetry Review, Santa Clara Review, Old Red Kimono, Red River Review and Roanoke Review.
Jennifer Gibson is a visual artist based in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. Her work has a narrative quality that has recently brought her into the realm of book illustration. She studied drawing and painting at Carnegie Mellon, and has exhibited her work in Pittsburgh, PA, Ithaca, NY, Binghamton, NY, and Toronto, Canada. Some of her favorite artists include Remedios Varo, Shaun Tan, Arthur Rackham, Andy Warhol, Dr. Suess, Kathe Kollwitz, El Greco, Remy Charlip, her niece Laurel, and her nephew Elijah.
Robin Reiss is a twenty-something from Massachusetts who graduated from Westfield State University with a degree in English literature. Her writing also appears or is forthcoming in Winter Tangerine Review, Bop Dead City, Futures Trading, Melancholy Hyperbole, and The Sigma Tau Delta Review. In her free time she may be found reading, balancing things on her head, and generally fretting over the future.
J oshua C ardella is a senior Creative Writing and English double major at UMF. In his spare time, Josh tries his best to not think about the amount of student loans he has yet to pay off. Josh plans to pursue a PhD in English after graduation, and hopes to one day become a college professor.
Editors’ Notes
Editor Audrey Gidman has a belief system made of syllables, sound, and dirt. She really likes mountains, trees, licorice tea, and yoga.
Assistant Editor Nathaniel Duggan enjoys writing, reading, and leaning stoically against objects. His poetry is forthcoming in Rust+Moth.