Scribendi 2018 by Scribendi

SCRIBENDI

VOLUME 32

unm Honors College

msc 06 3890 1 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131

Phone: 505-277-7407 Fax: 505-277-4271 Email: scribendi@unm.edu Website: scribendi.unm.edu Printed by Starline Printing, Albuquerque, New Mexico Cover by Josh Lane with revisions by Joshua Rysanek, Tessa Chrisman, and Paul Talley Fonts: Adobe Devanagari, Adobe Kaiti, Emojidex, and Univers Magazine design by Joshua Rysanek, Tessa Chrisman, Paul Talley, Alyssa Aragon, Hyunju Blemel, Heather Brock, and Kelsey Rust Copyright ÂŠ 2018 University of New Mexico Honors College All rights revert to contributors upon publication.

TO FREE SPEECH AND BROKEN RULES

2018 STAFF

Joshua Rysanek editor in chief

Tessa Chrisman managing editor

Paul Talley digital editor

Amaris Ketcham faculty advisor

Alyssa Aragon

Christine Anderson

Hyunju Blemel

Heather Brock

Olivia Comstock

Josh Lane

Ariel Lutnesky

Grace McNealy

Connor Northness

Oluwaseun Oyeku

Indu Roychowdhury

Kelsey Rust

not pictured: office managers Vincent Tafoya and Rowan Roberts

FOREWORD

Joshua Rysanek, editor in chief

hen I was a kid, my dad rented a little adobe house off Canyon Road in Santa Fe where we had a Maltese cat named Sally. She was the first pet I got to name; she was the first pet for whom I felt responsible. I cared for her like any other grade-school kid does for a beloved pet: with clumsy affection and lots of treats. She was what we called an outside cat, free to go in and out of the house. It was normal for her to disappear in the morning after breakfast and not return till after dark for dinner. It wasn’t normal when she started disappearing for days at a time, then showing up just to vanish again after the next meal. Her infrequent visits only made it worse. She wasn’t lost; she chose to leave. I asked my dad why Sally kept abandoning us. He offered little explanation but assured me she’d be back—she had to eat after all. But weeks passed and I saw less and less of Sally. I began to believe I was a failed pet parent, that it was my fault Sally didn’t want to come home. Making this magazine and knowing we must now release it arises a similar unease in me as when I’d watch Sally go, not knowing when and if she’d ever be back. For the past year, everything about this publication—my staff, the art, the work—has been so important to me. I fear that when the magazine leaves our hands, all of those pieces go with it. My dad liked to walk up Canyon Road, passing the sculptures and art galleries, and one day while climbing the hill he saw through a gallery window a painting of a gray cat, which resembled Sally. He brushed it off, but the next day he saw it again and decided to go in for a closer look. Inside he found the cat’s portrait beside another of the same gray cat—and another, he turned—an entire series sharing one model. The series title: The Gallery Cat. In her estrangement, Sally had wooed a group of artists who began painting portraits of her in exchange for treats and belly rubs. Her reputation had earned her a cult following and a bed in many of the galleries on Canyon Road. Suddenly, my loss was a boon. Sally was no longer just my housecat; she had become the gallery cat—gift to the community, magnet of creativity. And I had not failed. Scribendi isn’t a housecat. It’s taken many more than me to labor this collection into print. I’d like to thank the artists and writers—all two-hundred seventy—from whom we collectively received almost five hundred pieces. Without your creativity, our publication would not exist. To the entire staff: I’ve never worked with a group of people of such virtuosic talent. Your kindness and persistence enabled us to succeed. I hope you see a little bit of yourself in each page. To Tessa Chrisman, our managing editor, and Paul Talley, our digital editor: I couldn’t have asked for a better editorial team. With your steadfast leadership and enthusiasm, each day was a step toward our goal. And to Amaris Ketcham, our faculty advisor: I’m forever indebted to you for your wisdom and guidance. Through the ups and downs, you stood by us and believed in every one of us. Each of you has helped make this the most satisfying experience of my life. Now with great pleasure we present to you Scribendi 2018 so the art may have a life of its own and it may breathe that life into its readers, filling their bellies with laughter, their eyes with tears, their hearts with splendor.

CREATIVE NONFICTION 87 1 53

The Chalice of Grace Maria Hiatt Illuminations Keegan Grady Just Keep Laughing Jacqueline Jolley

14 30

VISUAL ART

Reason Jennifer Cummings—wrhc award Suggested Writing Ryan Drendel—staff choice award

PHOTOGRAPHY

63 Curiosity Blizzard Emma Lowe Jadie Adams 28 Dion’s or Death 40 Cotton Candy Coward Donald Roberts Joshua Chang 23 Ghostly Visions 35 Deconstructed Face Shelby Petty Elisabeth Vehling 8 68 Double Knowledge Enfolding Connor Lee-Wen Jennifer Spong 72 Placid and Pink 57 Drip Woman Donald Roberts—wrhc award Elisabeth Vehling 29 Surreality 69 Every Time I Open My Mouth in Public Lara Meintjes—staff choice award Bryson Schritter 79 A Silent Dream 82 Hair Rachel Watson Sarah Manriquez 81 Tanzanian Daze 37 Head and Hand Jon Carrillo Abigail Steffen 60 Mars Kaitlynn Skinner 98 Not Like the Movies Sidney Abernathy 25 PoPo Claire Liu—editors’ choice award 36 To Sheehy Joshua Chang—wrhc award 33 Twilight Zone Kaitlynn Skinner

TABLE OF

OPEN MEDIA

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Drowning Erin Mitchell 32 Just a Little Lost Allison Borgonah 70 This is the Bathroom Lukas Armstrong-Laird—wrhc award

Aviones de Papel (Paper Planes) Carol Stringer 26 中途 (Halfway) Qi’Ang Meng

SHORT FICTION 73

Cordial Cherries Tamara Faour 41 Funeral Gabrielle Zweifel 84 The Generator Nicolena Boucher—wrhc award 66 Ketsui, the Town the Clouds Left Forever Youssef Helmi 99 Star’s Calling Amy Sara Lim

POETRY 24

Blackstrap Molasses Leslie Nuckoles 62 Dry Creek Sonnet Keegan Grady 9 A Few Moments of Convergence Joshua Tise 58 Horrors for Highways Rachel Baxter—wrhc award 46 Incontinence, Depression, and Empathy Abigayle Goldstein 38 Jacking off in the Shower then Feeling Nothing Samuel Slonaker 50 My Daughter’s Ocean Maya Roe—editors’ choice award 83 Rain Dance Amanda Becker 6 Serenity is Shared Jack Ellmer 39 Sieve Savannah Hernandez 103 Under the Dog Star Carolyn Janecek

CONTENTS

live alone, with three other guys. They and I come and go, and on Friday nights we all come home and get drunk. Sometimes other people come and get drunk too. Sometimes we get high. My favorite is when we all get stoned and go stargazing. — Our house is shabby, a little ramshackle place that survives because it’s cheap and close to campus. None of the doors lock. The wallpaper hasn’t changed since 1970. The couches either. There’s an orb-weaver in the garden who’s taken up residence by the raspberry bushes—she’s a big, tawny orange thing with dusty red zigzags across

ILLUMINATIONS Keegan Grady, Montana State University

her back, the kind of spider you admire for its patience. She’s built this web, maybe a foot or two across, that in the mornings is beaded with dew. The water catches light, any-angled light that congregates endlessly through all the droplets. She sits motionless in the center of her web a lot, but even when a fly finds the strands, she seems unhurried. It stops struggling eventually, and then she strolls the gossamer and drinks it dry. — One of my housemates owns a cabin north of where we live; last year we went and stayed for a weekend. You drive up past Three Forks and over Milligan Canyon, and then, when you hit Cardwell, turn north up Highway 69. The highway threads the narrow hills, then opens into the Boulder Valley—the sun was coming down in early-summer honey, dripping down the corduroy lines of the wheat fields. I munched an apple, rolled down the window, and let the sun-drunk breeze in. Aspens crowded the river like white-walled cloisters, and above them reared the distant bony steeples of cottonwood trunks. White-gabled houses broke the stands, spread lawns around them with jack-fence hands. By the lower valley road, a bentwood cross and a statue of the Virgin reposed in leafy shade. — The spider doesn’t seem to mind when I go and read next to her. She sits and waits for wandering flies. Because I live alone, I read poetry. Whitman, Heaney, Larkin, Milton, Neruda. One of my favorites is Rimbaud’s Illuminations, Ashbery’s translation. I like the crenelations of his language; it reminds me of the spider’s horny back.

creative nonfiction

— journey down the Boulder Range. Old Basin, Montana, is a tiny town a little ways past cabins dotted the landscape; the mouths Boulder, where I-15 wends east for a while. It’s of mines grinned dark. We stopped just famous for the Earth Angel Health Mines: they’re as the sun was finally sinking to its lowest, radon baths, which nineteenth-century health when it seemed to speed up, a luminous nuts thought were good for you. Apparently they droplet slipping off the edge of the heavenly cure lupus, which is a nasty ailment—the body dome. I got out and lit a cigarette. Alex shook assaults itself. I did a project on the disease once. her head at me, but I didn’t care—I needed The immune system begins attacking healthy something to smoke. The occasion called tissue—the kidneys, skin, joints, heart, and for it. Behind us was a stand of wind-ripped lungs. It makes a distinctive rash, too, a shape pines, ancient, gnarled, every one of them like moth wings across the face. Never mind—I dead. The constant air had polished them to lit a joint, inhaled, and felt the smoke rack a smooth silver sheen, and now they hunched their glittering corpses against the darkening eastern horizon, their knotholes like eyes drinking in the aureate sundown. A contrail crossed the sky: the jet was a zipper head of light, the rose-gold vapor behind it opened the sunset as it passed. Inhaled. The smoke drifted in subtle through my lungs. I coughed. The Grateful grays before my eyes. Dead came on; I asked Caleb to turn it up. — Hummed to myself: “Set out runnin’ but The spider hears the passages I have trouble with, I take my time, a friend of the devil is a too. Listen to this one: friend of mine…”. Alex turned back to look at me and smiled, her strawberryGraceful son of Pan! Around your forehead blond hair lit like a halo around her heartcrowned with small flowers and berries, your shaped face, her deep-blue sparkling eyes. I eyes, precious spheres, are moving. Spotted with took a hit of the joint. Grinned. Sprawled. I brownish wine lees, your cheeks grow hollow. was completely at ease. Your fangs gleam. Your chest is like a lyre, — jingling sounds circulate between your blond I’ve found that reading poetry aloud is arms. Your heart beats in that belly where the helpful. Somehow, if the tongue wraps around double sex sleeps. Walk at night, gently moving something, the mind will follow. Babies that thigh, that second thigh and that left leg. mouth everything—why not me? So the spider gets some Rimbaud: I look at her and shrug. — No sooner had the notion of the Flood regained By the time we got the fire lit, we were pretty its composure, drunk, and the edible I’d taken earlier was Than a hare paused amid the gorse and trembling writing itself all over my insides. A bottle of bellflowers and said its prayer to the rainbow merlot was circling the group. We careened through the spider’s web. through the woods; we laughed. Alex and I — explored each other’s wine-red mouths by We drove the truck up to the top of the Occidental the fire. Coyotes somewhere began to sing Plateau. Along its sides, Cataract Creek—an irenic songs all through the languid forest, extended waterfall more than a creek—begins its the breezeless night.

BY THE TIME WE GOT THE FIRE LIT, WE WERE PRETTY DRUNK.

creative nonfiction \\ Illuminations

— bastards won’t get in the house. I have schoolwork “I found Rimbaud by accident,” I tell the to attend to, but it’s a gorgeous summer morning, spider. I was reading Annie Dillard, and and the coffee’s hot, and the spider is so still. “I she mentioned him “burning out his brains found a doozy of a poem last night,” I tell her. “I’ll in Paris.” I liked that image. I liked the get to the part you’ll like.” unity of symbols Dillard used—fire was a big one. “Some people call God ‘a fire in the These are the world’s conquerors head,’” I tell the spider. Isn’t that interesting? Seeking their own chemical fortunes; I liked Dillard’s entire essay, actually—“The Sport and comfort travel with them; Death of a Moth.” I liked Virginia Woolf’s They bring education essay with the same title, too. When I was Of the races, classes and animals, aboard this young, I noticed that moths that were dead, or Vessel soon to be so, lost this little patch of dusty hair Repose and vertigo on their backs. That meant the end. I wonder if In diluvial light, the spider knows that. In terrible evenings of study. — — Alex and I broke away from our tongue Alex and I went up the hill to where a single wrapping for a minute. The fire was attracting tree was silhouetted against the brilliant moths then, great gray things that swooped stars. I spread a thick wool blanket, a gift the light and dared the flame. “I wonder what from my parents, on the ground. I lay down. they’re after,” she said, looking at them. Her She straddled me. We mounted our sins hand was playing with my hair, and, really in astride the night. the thick of the high, I felt somehow enlightened. — The world was full of meaning and was arranging The spider seems to want to hear more. itself in swimming patterns across my eyes. The She’s plucking at the web. “All right, all mountains flickered like distant lights. “They’re right,” I say. “Hold on. Let me finish this meditating,” I said. “Did you know nirvana one first.” means ‘a blowing out?’ Buddhism uses a lot of fire rituals. Look at them—they’re like little monks.” One fell into the flames, and Alex gasped. “Poor thing!” I was silent. There was no ritual. That one staggered from the flames, crazed, but alive. It stumbled in slow patterns toward the edge of the fire, collapsed, fell on its back, legs curled up as if in agony; then the heat began to crimp the then hairless edges For from chitchat near the machinery,— of its exoskeleton until the fire reached its blood, flowers, fire, jewels— corpse, and nothing more could be seen. From nervous calculations aboard this fleeing Alex turned and looked at me. Her quiet ship, eyes immolated mine. —You see, rolling like a seawall, beyond the hydraulic engines’ route, — Monstrous, endlessly enlightened,—their supply A balmy Sunday morning. The spider’s of studies;— found herself a moth, judging by the little Themselves hunted in harmonic ecstasy wings below her web. “Good for you,” I say. And the heroism of discovery. We all have to live somehow, and now the

BUT IT’S A GORGEOUS SUMMER MORNING, AND THE COFFEE’S HOT AND THE SPIDER IS SO STILL.

Keegan Grady // creative nonfiction

(The spider’s listening rapt.) Continue:

Road.” She looked at me. I looked back. An owl drifted silent, gray against the dawn. — Since reality was too prickly for my lavish personality,—I found myself nonetheless in my lady’s house, got up as a great blue-gray bird soaring toward the ceiling moldings and dragging my wing through the shadows of the soirée.

Amid amazing meteorological accidents A young couple moves away from the others on the ark, —Is this ancient, pardonable shyness?— And sings and takes up the watch. — I remember looking up at the stars after. (What metaphor should you use for those trembling (Oh, the spider likes that one. She’s sucking on lights? What language nets the constellations?) her fly [or is that a moth?], nodding her eightThey were fireflies, morning dew beading on eyed head in swift, indifferent approval.) spider-silk, hoarfrost on the branches of the — sky. “Look,” I said. “The Summer Triangle.” The interlude finishes. American mantra: back She nuzzled my neck. The lull of my own to work the next morning. The radio sings of war, valved voice thrummed in me, in her. I crimes of passion, wildfire, floods in the South. named the stars: “Altaïr, Deneb, Vega.” She The Boulder Valley sings itself in long lines over laid her head on my shoulder, wrapped the horizon. Alex goes to church on Sunday. I’m the blanket closer against the curve of her outside with the spider, reading my philosophy back. The constellations: “Aquila, the Eagle; of religion textbook. “This is Rowan Williams,” I Cygnus, the Swan; Lyra, the Harp.” A tell the orb-weaver. “Archbishop of Canterbury! silken, arctic silence draped the night; the Important guy. Get this: ‘The soul, the spirit, is not cold earth quivered to a cricket song; the a bit of me, it’s the meaning, or the shape, or the lilac dawn announced itself in a corona on form of my bodily life.’” Another phrase dances the mountaintops. Venus hung high to the across my mind, my tongue; I say it aloud: “‘What east, a single impossible point of light. The will survive of us is love.’ That’s Larkin,” I tell her. morning star—the evening star too. She looks unimpressed. She knows the pattern here. When church gets done, Alex comes over, and then she has to listen to the love-cries, old as Eden, echo through the raspberry thorns, the hollow walls, the moldering wallpaper. Alex’ll spend the night; we’ll both get up and go to school. We’ll both come back and fall into bed. We’ll flood each other with ancient feeling. And when dawn comes in at the curtain edges, we’ll There’s a peculiar post-sex ache, a low, dull fire get up and do it again. The spider knows this that tells you you’ve been somewhere else, and all, so she spins another web; she sends out you’ve been speaking in tongues, and you’ve filament, filament, filament; she expands her been in some kind of ecstasy. The little death, la glinting home; and then she waits, noiseless, petite mort, the French say. But I’m not dead—I’m patient. She watches my gossamered eyes. alive now: reborn, then. Or twice born? I wondered. She fixes her anchors, nets the animal souls Like Dionysus? Like Christ? The stars above were that pass in their flight. She waits in our dancing glacial fire. My hand was playing with a quiet garden, misty with the rains of fall. flaxen length of her hair, softly shining in the early The air is chill, the sun weaker now than a dawn. I began to hum an Irish tune, “On Raglan

THE SWAN BECOMES THE LION, THE HUNTER STALKS THE EASTERN SKY, THE DRAGON CIRCLES NORTH.

creative nonfiction \\ Illuminations

month agoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;winter haunts the corridors of breeze, the wine-red leaves. Above the sky, the stars begin to reel into wintry patterns: the Swan becomes the Lion, the Hunter stalks the eastern sky, the Dragon circles north. The spider settles herself for the coming dark. Her web is tinged with frost. I mutter softly to myself: I stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; gold chains from star to star, and I dance.

Keegan Grady // creative nonfiction

SERENITY IS SHARED Jack Ellmer, Fort Lewis College

This truck holds 770 gallons of water. I know this because I filled it just this morning. 6 am is getting colder now. My breath and coffee steam dance among sideways sunbeams near the open lid of my to go mug. My boots are still cold and squeaky as I walk around the truck, making sure the water tank is closed and the reels of hose won’t come loose and the small engine powering this portable garden hose is full of gas. All is well, and off I go. We bounce down the street water sloshing, brakes squealing, npr fighting with the radio preacher and static. I just want one of these other drivers to notice me, to tear their face out of their screen, to look up and go, “Man, the fuck’s that guy doin’ with all that water?” I know they can’t though. Owing to the white paint, the orange beacon, the city logo on the door I’m invisible. And good thing, too. Because my job this morning is to drive this big-ass truck into this small-ass park and completely obliterate the single sliver of silence the surrounding apartments receive. That magical moment

poetry

—in between the late-night arguments and the early-morning baby-bawling— dies

when I park the truck and start the pump.

Serenity, for me, is small-engine exhaust a cup of coffee and a garden hose. And maybe the price is a few pissed off parents and bawling babies. But I’m invisible, so the tombstone of silence is fourteen well-watered bushes.

poetry

TITLE GOES HERE KNOWLEDGE ENFOLDING digital Connor Lee-Wen, Brigham Young University

photography

A FEW MOMENTS OF CONVERGENCE Joshua Tise, University of New Mexico

THIS IS PERSONAL. 1898: Turn of the century approaches, Turn of the Screw. The first automobile accident and -We ourselves have become a competitor in the worldwide struggle Lewis Carroll has gone on. 1902: A Trip to the Moon, sixteen minutes of silence. Independence, Cuba, Rolling Mill Mine and rolling wheels: seventy-four miles per hour later, a world record. An explosion. Not everyone is able to survive. 1914: The motorcade in Bosnia. Babe Ruth and Charlie Chaplin Making a Living. Fordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s minimum wage: -We want them to have present profits and future prospects nyse closes, another explosion, nyse reopens. -Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I attack

poetry

1916: Battles on everyone’s soil. Zepped: Chaplin’s war effort. Woodrow Wilson’s second shot, bmw’s first revolution on “The Road Not Taken.” 1924: Coolidge, “our radio president.” -They are grimly actual and real, reaching into every household in the land Indian Citizenship Act and official end: American Indian Wars, three hundred and two years. Hubble looks to the stars; we are one of many galaxies. Chrysler Six wheels on. 1939: It’s all happening again. 1945: Sylvester the Cat’s Life with Feathers. Adolf Hitler marries. Eva, wife for one day, Hamburg radio: Suicide. India in the United Nations, World Bank, the death of Henry Ford and birth of cruise control. From here on out. 1950:

-fighting up to his last breath

-We are now nearing the midpoint of the twentieth century

poetry \\ A Few Moments of Convergence

On the ground, 10.5 million cars and automatic transmission: Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel connects us all. Cinderella & Peanuts: Truth or Consequences. Crossing the thirty-eighth parallel: new fight. Old fight. The Church v. Darwin. -the Church does not forbid the doctrine of evolution The Huntsville Times: “Dr. von Braun says rocket flights possible to Moon.” 1969: The Allende meteorite. Traveled, millions of dark years: now burst. Explode over Mexico. One coming. One going.

A fall at Stonewall. Vito’s film reels and reeling.

In the streets, automobile acquisitions: Volkswagen and nsu. Fiat and Lancia and Ferrari.

1977: Voyager’s golden record.

-One small step One giant leap

-Gay power! -the anger was just enormous

-It was at that moment the scene became explosive

-We hope someday to join a community of galactic civilizations

Joshua Tise // poetry

Pontiac Phoenix and Triumph Sprint. Racing toward two endpoints in space: Music of the Spheres. Volcanoes, Earthquake, Thunder Wind, Rain, Surf Crickets, Frogs Birds, Hyena, Elephant Chimpanzee The First Tools Mud Pots Fire, Speech Kiss, Mother and Child Footsteps, Heartbeat, Laughter Herding Sheep, Blacksmith, Sawing Horse and Cart Train Morse Code, Ships Tractor, Riveter Tractor, Bus, Auto F-111 Flyby, Saturn V Liftoff Wild Dog Tame Dog Life Signs, Pulsar. 1995: Prodigy and the World Wide Web. One hundred thousand customers. O.J. Simpson’s trial of the century, replayed footage of Ford Bronco chase, Thirty-six million cars worldwide. One hundred million watch, Boris Yeltsin: Clinton: 722 discharged into The Celluloid Closet.

poetry \\ A Few Moments of Convergence

-not guilty of the crime

-Do you think O.J. did it? -don’t ask don’t tell

2000: Y2K and doomsday averted. New Year’s Eve celebrations. Google, now with ads. 9,238,200,000 searches, Bush v. Gore

Ford Escape. America Online and Time Warner, Monopoly 2000: Millennium Edition.

218,421,906 United States residents.

-I strongly disagree with the court’s decision I accept it it’s time for me to go

-we humbly ask forgiveness especially in the second millennium -an objective collective responsibility

2008: Ten millionth Wikipedia article, Iran’s space center, Phoenix to Mars. Canada’s apology. -The Government of Canada now recognizes it was wrong -a new dawn we are all part of one garment of destiny Ten thousand scientists’ Large Hadron Collider, global financial crisis, Dow Jones down 370 points. -How did we reach this point? Automotive industry crisis and Dodge Journey. Kia Soul and Ford Fiesta. -setbacks and false starts -it belongs to you

Joshua Tise // poetry

h, well, that makes sense now. Why wouldn’t you start with that?” It’s a refrain I’ve heard too many times. For example, when I tell the story of my parents paying the difference for me to buy a 2014 Corolla instead of the 2013 model. Or when I exclaim, seemingly out of nowhere, “Oh shit, it’s Friday the thirteenth, isn’t it? I should call my mom and check in.” Then, that look. The cloying sympathy I never asked for, wanted, or needed. “How crazy,” their eyes say. There’s an inherent condescension there, an assumption that an “irrational” fear of thirteen must mean that my mom isn’t intelligent. Never mind that she

WRHC

REASON completes logic puzzles in her spare time or that when she was a computer programmer, her boss would come to her with an offering of a Pepsi and a problem only she could solve. So I rationalize. I spill over with the backstory in almost compulsive defense. Sometimes I’m venomous. “Well,” I practically spit at them, “it’s actually because…” Sometimes I’m a soft, doting daughter. “Well,” I practically whisper, hushed tone, gentle, “it’s actually because…” I hate myself every time I drag out her tragedy for someone else’s approval. Why do I need to control a narrative that isn’t even my own? Can’t I just let her have an oddity without justification? “I understand now,” they’ll often add after I explain why. Because they couldn’t understand without the gory details. It’s the “why” that’s key. (Why is she like that? Why are you like this? Why can’t you both just calm down for once?) Without a reason, superstition— however often repeated throughout history—is anomaly, or worse, madness. With reason, it’s just logic gone too far, and that can be rationalized. Well, you can have the rationalizations, but please, don’t expect reason to follow. 13 Superstitious avoidance of thirteen is often traced back to the Last Supper, at which Christ and His twelve disciples— thirteen total—were in attendance. However, a similar Norse myth in which thirteen attendants at a dinner leads to death and disaster precedes the Last Supper, making

creative nonfiction

this the likely origin of the superstition. A contradiction: thirteen represents Satan for the Cabalist and the Virgin Mary for the Christian.

AWARD

My dad is driving my family back from a dinner out. It’s dark enough to need headlights but not dark enough for it to feel like night yet. Realizing the car is low on gas, he pulls into the nearest station and drives through to pump thirteen. In the back seat with my brother, I can hear my mom ask my dad something in a hushed tone. He asks, full volume, why she has made this mysterious request. Her reply is loud enough to hear this time; she asks him to think about

Jennifer Cummings University of Arizona the number of the gas pump. “Jesus, Brenda,” he says, but he’s already pulling over to pump fourteen. We are again out for dinner, and my dad is signing the check when my mom looks over at the tip and reminds him, gently, to think about the number. A discussion ensues about whether the tip should be upped to fourteen or lowered to twelve. My mom remembers working as a waitress, so they settle on fourteen. On a family vacation in a supposedly haunted hotel in California, my mom and I check in at the desk next to the old-fashioned elevator— complete with an actual elevator attendant—and a stairwell with a red chair where some have claimed to have seen a ghost. We’ve been assigned room 113. I watch as my mom reaches for the keys, then hesitates, hand halfway to its destination. “Actually,” she says, “is there any way we could switch?” She explains to the clerk that she’s not comfortable staying in a room numbered thirteen, and they are surprisingly sympathetic. (This room is not even considered haunted.) I am a child in the closest thing I have to a holy place—a library. My favorite library has a medieval kingdom at its center, with the carpet pattern mimicking a moat and a bridge leading over it to a castle that serves as a reading room. Behind the castle, there are stacks of books so numerous I could never hope to read them all, but I do plan to try. By the time my mom retrieves me, I’m holding a stack of books so tall I have to balance it with my chin. When we go to check out, however, she realizes I grabbed thirteen books. “Either put one back or go find another book. Do it quickly, though. We have errands after this.” I run to grab another book.

creative nonfiction

In this same library, I find a book on the brain. One heart and hear my slow breath. I stare at passage describes the biological underpinnings of the photos hanging across from my bed. going to a movie theater. Your eyes must dart across The girl in these photos is exuberant. She the screen to piece together an image too large to is waving from the back of a pickup truck view in one glance, and this image travels through in Cambodia, holding up a hatchet to cut the optic nerve to be interpreted in the primary sugarcane for elephants. She is clinking visual cortex. Even the simple motion of grabbing champagne with her father in Hawaii. She is popcorn requires perception of smell, relaying alive. She is not me. (Is she?) of information by the thalamus, decisions made For years, I avoided antidepressants. in the prefrontal cortex, and, finally, movement. My great-grandmother was dependent on Everything is under precise control. psychiatric medication, so my mom was wary when I was offered a diagnosis of depression. (Interestingly, this diagnosis came at the age of thirteen.) Besides, I was worried that depression was essential to my intelligence. I clung to it because, although the bliss of a label didn’t arrive until thirteen, I’d been feeling this way for Also in the book, there’s a list of phobias, as long as I could remember. I’d also been smart for as long as I could remember, so I felt confident including triskaidekaphobia—the fear of thirteen. I read this section at my that the two were inherently linked. grandma’s apartment while the rest of the It was the week I spent lying in bed, hardly able family plays cards. My grandma reads the to move, when I decided the sacrifice wasn’t worth page over my shoulder and looks at my it. From the grave, I emailed a psychiatrist. mom, laughing. “That’s you, Brenda.” The 11 family laughs and my mom politely smiles, lest she be told to lighten up. She tells me Because ten represents completion and purity, later that sometimes she’d prefer not to eleven, being one beyond ten, represents smile through jokes at her expense. extravagance and sin. Some spiritualists see 12 eleven, especially in repetition, such as the time 11:11, as a message from a higher being, possibly a Twelve acts as a symbol of both spiritual and warning to “wake up.” physical sustenance, as Jesus broke twelve breads at the Last Supper. Christ had twelve Get up. disciples, but there were twelve plagues of Egypt. Get up. The number can also represent sacrifice to Get up. attain knowledge. Each time I get caught in this loop—staring at my ceiling, feeling static in my limbs but Sufferers of Cotard’s delusion believe themselves not being able to convince them to move— to be dead, going so far as to forgo food since they my own thoughts abandon me. I tend to get believe they have no need for it. Unlike them, I bits of poetry stuck in my head like songs. know I’m alive, although I’m not sure how I feel Trying to convince my soul to come back about that. I can look down and see that my skin into my body and just move, goddamn is not rotting off my body. I know my organs are it. I almost always return to Margaret not liquefying, as I can still feel the beating of my Atwood’s “Up.”

I KNOW I’M ALIVE, ALTHOUGH I’M NOT SURE HOW I FEEL ABOUT THAT.

creative nonfiction \\ Reason

need a good memory. What if that day came and I’d already spoiled them all with synaptic rewiring? If I found myself starting to recall these cherished memories, I would hit my legs with closed fists, repeat nonsense syllables, scream inside my And the final, head—anything to drown out the thought and protect the memory. I chastised myself every Who is it, exactly, you have needed time I had to undertake these rituals. I should all these years to forgive? have had control. I should have been better. When I was thirteen, I had my first kiss. My (Often, I forgive myself and stay in bed.) immediate thought: “Keep this safe.” And when I daydreamed and found my mind 10 wandering to that moment, I’d have to repeat my rituals. I’d consciously remind myself not Ten contains zero, a symbol of nothingness, and to taint the memory’s purity, horrified by the one, a symbol for creation. Mayans considered thought that if I kept recklessly recalling, I it representative of the cycle of life and death, would lose the sharpness around the edges and theologists claim ten as a perfect number of the images in my mind: The sound of my as it contains the creation (zero) and the created friends laughing at the scandalous dare my (one). Pythagoras claimed that ten represented friend and I had been given. Her swimsuit. the whole of human knowledge and was thus the (Was it white? Blue? I know it was a light, purest, holiest number. soft color.) Her face through the fog of the steam room where we were hiding out Many fear contamination in the form of disease; I from my friend’s parents, who were out fear the contamination of my memories. Around by the condo complex’s pool. Her face—I the age of eight, I read in a Time special on the brain see it as a composite of how she looks now, that memories deteriorate each time we recall my hazy memories of how she looked then, them. Biologically speaking, memories are stored photos of her, and likely some confabulation as engrams, or memory traces. These are the to round it out. physical locations of memory in the connections between neurons. When you recall a memory, these neurons fire. Sometimes, such as with studying, the connections, and by extension the memory, strengthen with repetition. Other times, the memory is open to rewiring, and details get muddled. Confabulation is Today, I hardly remember the kiss. Of course, another common fault in memory, wherein that hardly matters. empty spaces of a memory get filled in with plausible, but false, information. Our brains 9 are more prone to this when we review a memory continuously. Nine is sacred in both Greece and Egypt, the latter In what I thought was a logical step, I of which used it as the name of the Mountain of decided to ration my favorite memories the Sun. The number also represents love and from then on in hopes of keeping them philanthropy, and numerologists claim those pure. I reasoned that one day I would really born on this day are particularly inclined toward Pretend the house is on fire and you must run or burn. No, that one’s useless. It’s never worked before.

I FEAR THE CONTAMINATION OF MY MEMORIES.

Jennifer Cummings // creative nonfiction

humanitarianism. However, Jesus died on his ninth hour on the cross.

The sun’s light takes eight minutes to reach the earth, and turned sideways, eight I stand in my bathroom clasping my arms together, becomes the symbol for infinity. Pythagoreans worried that if I let go, I’ll set the bathtub on fire. called it “little holy number.” Buddha’s ashes My hands twitch, aching to douse the tub in were, according to legend, spread in eight rubbing alcohol, throw a match, and watch it portions. There are eight parts of speech: verb, burn. In my mind it is already on fire; there is noun, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, nothing I can do to stop it. conjunction, and interjection. My mom gave me the term “intrusive thoughts.” I was sitting on the floor of her Verb: to reach. Noun: infinity. Adjective: holy. bedroom, sobbing, while she asked me over Adverb: sideways. Pronoun: it. Preposition: in. and over what was wrong. “I feel like I’m Conjunction: and. Interjection: Jesus Christ!

IF I FEEL DISTRESSED, IT’S NOT THE TRUTH.

7 Seven brings good fortune. The seventh son is lucky, and the seventh son of a seventh son is luckier still. A less commonly held superstition posits that each person’s mind and body will be entirely replaced every seven years. In Christianity seven is the number of purification and penitence. There are seven deadly sins, seven heavenly virtues, seven notes in a musical scale, and seven colors in a rainbow.

going to die,” I said. “I know it’s going to happen. I’m going to die if I let myself go to sleep.” She stroked my hair and let me cry, telling me that she gets these thoughts too, and that just because I have the thought doesn’t mean it will happen. Real intuition feels calm; if I’m panicking about the thought, I can trust I was young and carelessly left a compact mirror that it’s not the truth. lying on the floor. My mother stepped on it, and it I do not want to die, but it doesn’t stop shattered. I remember the look of absolute horror my brain from flooding me with images on her face, and how, when I saw her start to cry, I of my veins opening up, my skin on fire. I tried to comfort her like she’d always done for me. do not want my family to die, but all of my “It’ll be okay, Mom,” I said. “It’s just a worst thoughts remind me that they are superstition.” mortal, that any wrong move could end all of “Seven years,” she muttered. She asked to be our lives in an instant. I do not want to kill alone until she could look those seven years in either, but when my mind sends me flashes the face, or else find some way to undo them. of stab wounds and snapped necks, it’s hard Years later, my dad broke a mirror he was to convince myself that I’m not as bad as any transporting to my new apartment. We murderer. My mom’s words come back to me bought a replacement, and this mirror, too, in these moments. If I feel distressed, it’s not fell off my wall and shattered. My mom, the truth. I rub my wrists until the static leaves, consulting over text from home, instructed and I clasp my hands until I can remind myself my dad to count to 777 on the drive home. that intrusive thoughts are not actions I would The same charm will not work twice, she actually want to carry out. (Often it doesn’t help said, so I’d have to count to seventy-seven the guilt, but I still try.)

creative nonfiction \\ Reason

seven times. When I asked if she found would drive my brother and me to school in an suv this online, she was almost appalled by and pass out orange slices at his soccer games—that the suggestion. This superstition was my brothers and I may not have even existed had homegrown. (I wonder if after she broke fate not intervened to keep her alive. my mirror, she sat in her room counting to Some numbers have clear meaning according to some multiple of seven.) my mom. Thirteen is obviously the worst (despite “I’m glad it’s from her,” my dad says. “I the fact that it can represent the Virgin Mary), trust it more that way.” and seven is obviously the best (despite the seven Shallow pools in the courtyards of years of bad luck brought by a broken mirror). Six, Pompeian houses acted as mirrors, and however, is uncertain. The leftover Catholic in tossing a pebble into the reflection brought her feels an aversion to 666, the Devil’s number, the same misfortune we attribute to broken but in her youth, her family had six people. mirrors today. The superstition could also be Five of her original family members remain a result of the use of mirrors by magicians to after her brother died. He had a kidney determine the fate of the ill, or to a belief that disease throughout childhood and couldn’t a reflection in a mirror is a person’s soul. (How drink alcohol until he got his transplant. would the shattering of a soul feel?) He was the good child, the contrast to my I kept the broken mirror in my closet for nearly mom’s wildness. And they were absolutely a month before I was so unsettled by my fractured inseparable. Their names even matched: reflection that I finally threw it out. My mom, who Brenda and Brian. Until, after his kidney protested so strongly against me keeping my broken transplant, he went out drinking and compact when I said it could still work, would be decided to drive afterward. The car accident horrified by the bad luck I invited upon myself, even was reported in all the local papers. after she lent me the use of her lucky number. It was Friday the thirteenth. When she first told me the story after 6 I asked why too many times, she said she had always felt like it should have been her. An imperfect number, six is sin, evil, and Satan in She said she saw her brother in a dream the Bible. By contrast, six is servitude in Hebraic law, once, though, and he told her that was how as there are six days of work and slaves serve masters his story was meant to end. And hers wasn’t for six years. Buddhists have six transcendent yet complete. virtues, and Mass consists of six main parts.

HOW WOULD THE SHATTERING OF A SOUL FEEL?

During her Catholic upbringing, my mom was taught by nuns who would send her home with harsh red ruler marks on her hands. She stood in Mass every day, even once fainting during 5 a particularly long service, and learned to fear an eternity in Hell. She also learned that if she were to be damned it would be her fault. Representing divine grace, five was considered perfect by the Mayans. Jesus had five wounds on the Despite this, she was the problem child of the cross. The Torah has five books. Buddhists follow family during her youth, drinking, partying, and almost dying on more than one occasion. five commandments. Islam has five pillars. Despite its holiness, the number can also act as a symbol for When she’s told me these stories, it’s hard to the limits of human control over the universe. believe that this is the same woman who

Jennifer Cummings // creative nonfiction

4 Deep in the internet, I discovered the Mandela effect—shared false (“alternate,” a Mandela effect believer would correct me) memories. Four can represent the cross and its four points. In Japan, however, the number four Many believers claim that they result from is spoken as little as possible, because it is the switching of a soul from one universe to pronounced the same way as the word for another. I remembered a childhood cartoon, death. There will be four horsemen of the the Berenstein Bears. This spelling was never apocalypse, but the Hebraic name for God correct; it was always Berenstain. has four letters. Mandela effects are often alterations in spelling such as this. Do you remember I pray almost like it’s a sin—in the dark, door Sketchers? Well, in this universe it’s Skechers. closed, silent, hoping no one walks in and sees Others are images. Picture a human skull. me with my hands clasped together. Some part What do you see where the eyes should be? of me must believe that this is one irrationality Empty holes, perhaps? In fact, skulls have too far. (Admitting any belief in God requires bone-forming eye sockets with a only a gap sincerity—I cannot make a joke of it as I do with for passage of the optic nerve. universe-switching bears.) God almost seems I read up on the topic, feeling sick to my like a ghost to me, and I worry about what He sees stomach and shaky. My memories were when He watches me. My mom was raised with contaminated the moment I read about a fear and tried to shelter me from it, but I managed meaningless single-letter change to the to find it on my own. name of cartoon bears whose show I barely Still, sinner that I am, when the panic rises, I watched. I couldn’t even trust that my can’t help but to pray, begging God to forgive me universe hadn’t changed. The posts began for my hesitance. with a logical foundation, describing how quantum physics allows for particles to 3 be in two places at once and recounting Schrödinger’s cat. This is logical. Applying The Holy Trinity consists of the Father, the Son, and that logic to explain why the name of the Holy Spirit. Existence also comes in three: birth, cartoon bears “changed” is not, although life, death. At Jesus’s birth, He was offered three that has never stopped anyone. gifts by three wise men. In His life, He faced three great temptations in the desert. In His death, three hours of darkness engulfed the Earth in the final hours of His time on the cross. I find a message board post that details I have a legacy that I prefer to ignore: three a way to tell if you switched universes. It generations of women on my mother’s requires a series of complex steps to convert side have, at one point or another, been the record of Wikipedia in its entirety at a hospitalized, or, at the very least, have come specific moment to a letter, which becomes the close. My great-grandmother took Valium letter of your universe. You put it on a Post-it her entire life for an anxiety she couldn’t (“You are here, in Universe B.”) and look at it shake. (I do not actually know if she was every day. Remember it. If one day you wake up ever hospitalized and do not want to ask.) and suddenly you’re in Universe C, you’ll know My grandmother was hospitalized something changed. I consider it, but my mom against her will by her husband and her talks me down.

I PRAY ALMOST LIKE IT’S A SIN.

creative nonfiction \\ Reason

mom after she threatened divorce. When a memory to fade for once, all the details clung she became catatonic, they signed a waiver stubbornly to my synapses.) to give her electroshock therapy. My mom Over time, the cause (adrenal gland malfunction) doesn’t remember this happening, but she was found. The mirror was mended. My mom told does remember that she and her brothers me once, on a late-night drive when conversation spent a year or so split up and living with wandered from the mundane to the philosophical, other family members. Before, my mom was that maybe each generation can improve upon a talkative toddler. After she spent a year away the last. That I’m more aware than she was at from Brian, with whom she was already close, my age. That maybe I’ll be okay. family members say she was never the same. I don’t know of all my mom’s hospitalizations, only that she was a troubled youth who transformed into a loving mom who makes personalized family cookbooks. Then, that year. We only ever refer to it like this, and no one has 2 any trouble remembering which year we mean. The second I saw my dad’s black truck in the school’s pick-up line instead of my mom’s suv, I This is Jesus’s number in the Trinity. It can act as a symbol for separation or duality, knew something was wrong. His teary eyes also antagonism or charity. Man thinks in gave it away, especially since he, trying to be a dichotomies, and opposition often comes typical patriarch, never cries. Later that day, he in two parts: life/death, left/right, east/west, tried to lighten the mood with a movie so stupid good/evil, day/night, up/down. it was funny and takeout food. He also offered me a bet of twenty dollars if I would jump into the My dad sometimes calls me by my mom’s freezing pool. I did, welcoming the jolt of cold name when he’s trying to calm me down. water on my skin. “Jesus, Brenda,” he’ll say. Then he’ll correct It was a Friday, but it wasn’t the thirteenth. himself, adding that we’re so similar when My mom had spent days in bed before we get worked up like that. this, with our cat keeping watch over her. The I received the wisdom of both my mother morning before her hospitalization, my dad and my father—a mother who locates all brought my brother and me into her room the smallest details and painstakingly finds to hug her goodbye before we left for school, meaning in them, and a father who can see and we all tried to ignore the subtle smell a solution before most people even finish of sweat in the room and the oiliness of my considering the problem. I combine the dark mom’s hair. Watching her was like staring at humor of my father (My mom has tried to my reflection in a shattered mirror, and all I tame it in both of us, to no avail.) and the could do was resign myself to the luck lost. concern of my mother. When we walked out of my usually pristine “The only people I care about,” my dad tells me, household, we passed dishes piled up in “are you, your younger brother, your mom, and the sink, crumpled blankets on the couch your older brother. Everyone else can think what in the living room, and empty cups in the they want—I wouldn’t shed a tear if I never spoke bedrooms. I took photos of the quiet chaos to any of them again. It would break my heart if for my photography class but couldn’t bear any of you didn’t want to be around me, though. to cement the memory by having them That’s all that matters.” He’s said it many times, a developed. (Of course, when I wanted

WE ALL TRIED TO IGNORE THE SUBTLE SMELL OF SWEAT IN THE ROOM.

Jennifer Cummings // creative nonfiction

reminder to both my mom and me that we don’t have to subject ourselves to the whims of the world. We all tend to balance each other out—and thank God, because I don’t know how any of us would hold up on our own. 1 God is one in the Holy Trinity, and thus the number is that of the Creator and the whole of His creation. It is a beginning, and it comes before all else. Unlike other digits, one is written the same in every language. My psychiatrist tells me I have an unusually high number of symptoms for someone who didn’t take psychiatric medication until I was twenty. I don’t have the energy to explain that I don’t believe I have more symptoms than anyone else, just that I catalogue them more faithfully. Because if I don’t label my thoughts, name my oddities, explain away the strangeness inherent in this life, how can I make it mean something? The universal language is why. But for us, there’s often no answer. 0 The Bible does not include the number zero and ancient Egyptians had no symbol for it. It is nothingness waiting to become— something out of nothing. It is the purity of meaning and the emptiness of chaos. Start. End. Start. End. And so on in a perfect circle.

creative nonfiction \\ Reason

GHOSTLY TITLE GOES VISIONS HERE digital Shelby Petty, University of Californiaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Irvine

photography

BLACKSTRAP MOLASSES Leslie Nuckoles, Southern Oregon University

Give me that spoon. As if bitter-yellow will fill the hole where my lungs used to be I can’t breathe anymore. Turn that bottle upside down. My blood is screaming at me rusty iron tarnished copper maybe then you will learn to run. I crave the sweetness that will eat holes in my heart till the blood runs out sticky-thick between my fingers. Turn out the light so I can’t see your body tempting me. I can’t help myself I keep coming back for sugar. I saw my reflection in the glass last night my soul has turned molasses black.

poetry

EDITORS’ CHOICE AWARD

TITLE GOES POPO HERE oil, 18"×20" Claire Liu, University of Southern California

visual art

中途

Qi’Ang Meng, University of Pittsburgh

我听到秋夜大尾巴的孤独溜过青草树根底下脱落的孤独击缶轻歌戴在手腕上的孤独报了整点我乘着结实的孤独旅行昏昏欲睡我合起满纸方正的孤独向远山微笑披上孤独走在旋风中我抬起脸让婵娟的孤独照在眉头我把辛辣的孤独酌入杯中与灯对饮我按下播放键让悠扬的孤独在镜子里回荡

foreign language

HALFWAY

Qiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Ang Meng, University of Pittsburgh

I hear in the night of autumn a loneliness with a big tail sneaking off the grass down to the treeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s roots the fallen loneliness singing to the percussion. The loneliness wrapped on my wrist tells the hour. I am traveling on a solid loneliness a drowsy terminal, then I close the book of lined loneliness and smile at the distant hills. I put on the loneliness and walk into the gale, I raise my face to the bright loneliness shining on my brows. I pour the spicy loneliness into the goblet toasting the dim lamp. I hit the play button to let continuous loneliness reverberate inside the mirror.

foreign language

DIONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S OR DEATH TITLE GOES HERE digital Donald Roberts, University of New Mexico

photography

TITLESURREALITY GOES HERE digital Bryson Schritter, University of New Mexico

photography

don’t want to do anything but besides that I’m not sure what to do it is on my way to the point where I’m not sure what to do it is on the point where I’m not sure what to do it is on the point….” —iOS 10.3.3

There’s a Holy Trinity always watching me, and the Word becomes flesh1 whenever my thumbs affirm it. In September of 2014, iOS 8 introduced predictive text into my iPod touch, and since then—despite broken screens and on-again, off-again relationships with social media—my big data has followed me, has learned from me, has grown like me.

STAFF CHOICE

SUGGESTED Apple calls it QuickType,2 and it studies me so that it can give me its three best guesses to what I’ll type next. The line above the qwerty line on my keyboard features three innocuous gray rectangles with holy white words. Before I begin typing, it offers a start to another one of my narcissistic texts: “I | I’m | Yeah.” Once I start typing, my options change with every word and every letter, and every day it gets better, learning how I write to my girlfriend and my mother, my coach, my brother—even my introspective Notes app. Apple claims typing as we know it might soon be a thing of the past. I’m not afraid of Apple breaking its promise anytime soon: “Your conversation data is kept only on your device, so it’s always private.” I think they proved themselves during their backdoor battles. But I fear for the future when I think of the past—of Mary Shelley scholars who write essays after reading her diary.3 I think of big data and worry about great poets who write drafts in their phones. I’m afraid of ghosts. I can’t remember sending a text with my ex-girlfriend’s name in over three years (at least an iPod ago). But her name is still there, in the middle of my screen, every time I happen to type its first three letters. That’s annoying, not scary; my current girlfriend had to go to her settings and untoggle QuickType altogether after her boyfriend had passed, and she couldn’t type “k” without seeing him again. But turning things off isn’t a tragedy. I just worry; we never predict which words we will want to forget. I’m afraid of iconography. Apple’s iOS 10 took things further and taught its ai to identify when an emoji could be substituted for a noun or a phrase. For example, if I

creative nonfiction

Ryan Drendel

AWARD

type “I love you,” QuickType offers to replace it with “ .” I don’t know if “ ” equals “I love you,” or if Apple suggesting emojis could create a hybrid, alphabetichieroglyphic language, or if such a language is even a bad thing. But I remember learning to type4 with orange sleeves covering the keys, and I wonder how it will be, to be born with a new device that tells you how to write. I’m afraid of its influence. For now, the code is descriptivist (It only learns from my habits and suggests that I keep them.), but as ai improves, will it become prescriptivist? Will we even be able to notice? The only thing we know is that ai will improve. Oscar Schwartz talks

WRITING

Missouri Southern State University

at TEDx Youth at Sydney5 about programs that can already write poetry— with an asterisk. People have made programs that produce poetry that has been chosen by people to seem more human than poetry samples from Gertrude Stein or William Blake. But these programs can’t write poetry. At least for now, he says, they can only make models of poetry from the samples we give them. “The computer is a mirror that reflects any idea of the human we teach it.” So I go into my Notes app, and let my “i” do the talking. I tap my gray Father’s left shoulder again and again, watching it write who He thinks I am, and someone comes spinning out in black letters, into cycles of uncertainty. It is at the point where I’m not sure what to do. And it is, it really is, forever. Suggested Reading 1. John 1:14. Berean Study Bible. Biblehub. biblehub.com/john/1- 14.htm 2. iOS9. Quicktype. Apple, 2018. apple.com/my/ios/whats-new/quicktype/ 3. Shelley, Mary. The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1 and 2. The Project Gutenburg eBook, 2011. gutenberg.org/files/37955/37955-h/37955-h.htm 4. Type to Learn. Sunburst Digital, 2018. typetolearn.sunburst.com 5. Schwartz, Oscar. Can a Computer Write Poetry? TEDxYouth@Sydney, 2015. ted.com/talks/oscar_schwartz_can_a_computer_ write_poetry/transcript#t-578267

creative nonfiction

TITLE GOES HERE JUST A LITTLE LOST watercolor and digital Allison Borgonah, University of Coloradoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Denver

open media

TWILIGHT TITLE GOES ZONE HERE

charcoal, chalk pastel, and graphite on paper, 11"Ă&#x2014;17" Kaitlynn Skinner, Metropolitan State University of Denver

visual art

DECONSTRUCTED TITLE GOES HERE FACE acrylic, digital Elisabeth Vehling, University of Southern California

visual art

TITLE GOES HERE WRHC AWARD TO SHEEHY acrylic and oil, 18"×24" Joshua Chang, University of Nevada—Reno

visual art

HEAD GOES AND HAND TITLE HERE clay Jon Carrillo, Westminster College

visual art

JACKING OFF IN THE SHOWER THEN FEELING NOTHING Samuel Slonaker, University of Arizona

oh, weird. it’s almost like the first and only thought that beat from your dusty head’s bed past your ear’s drum in to your document of daily desires was a task to be secret, and wet. and, once you decided how does my wrist relax in the most (un)focused conflation of squeeze and contortion, lightening, tightening,

poetry

SIEVE

Savannah Hernandez, University of Arizona

quieting the soft slurping of his dinner it hurts your ears you say too much sauce he says too much of anything is a bad thing he says you leave

sauce in your bowl in the sink now he goes to bed you go to bed of dandelion seeds stuck to your fingers yellow cold and swimming

you dream you wake

but it is winter he asks have you always been like this girl as lightbox daydream too much of anything is a bad thing he says he leaves

in spring he skins you your body feels like yell oh you swallow and swallow they take your stomach and the pretty words flee you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t but write his name over and over

poetry

TITLE GOES HERE COTTON CANDY COWARD colored pencil, 18"×24" Joshua Chang, University of Nevada—Reno

visual art

n my dreams, I often find myself standing barefoot on soft grass. I don’t know where I am, but the place is familiar, and I feel comfortable there. I wear a soft white dress, and a gentle breeze swirls my long hair around my face. A woman whose features I never can seem to remember approaches me and tells me in a warm voice that I look beautiful. I open my eyes to weak sunlight, waking from one of those lovely dreams and stretch languidly in the sheets. I turn on my side and stare through sleep-heavy lids at the black dress hanging on the door of the hotel closet. It’s a plain garment with long sleeves, a round collar, and a trim of white lace around the bottom of the skirt that stops

FUNERAL

Gabrielle Zweifel, University of Utah just above my knees. I bought it only two days ago, and I know it looks nice. I considered wearing something looser, something less youthful looking, something less flattering. It might be for the best if I did. But I want her to see me as I am today; I want her to see me in that dress. I sit up slowly, toss back the blanket, and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. My bare feet brush the scratchy, cheap carpeting colored a dull forest green. I stand and make my way over to the bathroom. I pass through my usual morning routine almost thoughtlessly, brushing my teeth, washing my face, cleaning up, and getting ready for the day. I grab one of the bottles of prescription pills on the counter and pop off the lid. I swallow a pill with a sip of water. Next I open the other bottle, withdraw a tablet, and place it under my tongue, allowing it to dissolve as I go back into the bedroom to get dressed. I open the top drawer of the hotel dresser where I’ve stored my underwear. I run my hand over the soft row of bras, and I’m tempted to choose the one covered in fine white and pink lace. But I know the pattern will show through the fitted black dress, so I choose a plain one with a smooth surface and hook it on. Next, I unzip my new dress and slip into it. I examine myself in the full-length mirror. Yes, it still looks nice. I go back to the bathroom. I run a comb through my long, smooth, dark hair and spend several long minutes applying my makeup. I choose a light, peachy-pink eye shadow, almost undetectable on my lids, and a similar color for my lips. I don’t want to look glamorous or flashy today. I want to look soft and natural like I do in my dreams. When I’m finished, I stare at myself in the mirror and trace

short fiction

the outline of my face with one finger. I his eyes widen. “Holy shit, are those real? Can I was lucky to be born with a small frame touch them?” I swat his hand away, my cheeks and androgynous features; it doesn’t take flaming as I look around the room to make sure much for me to look pretty. nobody heard him. When I am finally satisfied with my I’m saved from any further humiliation when appearance, I slip on some black stockings another familiar face comes into my view. He and a pair of low black heels. I grab a black looks like David and me, but older, with streaks coat and my car keys and head out the door. of gray in his black hair and permanent lines The drive to the funeral home doesn’t in his forehead. He smiles at me, crinkling the take long. The town is as small and plain as I heavy bags under his eyes. “Hi, honey.” remember and doesn’t appear to have grown “Hi, Dad.” I return his hug while David looks much since I left. The lot of the funeral home is on, his eyes seeming to darken. largely empty, and I have no difficulty parking Dad turns to David next, but he doesn’t hug him. He just holds out his hand and gives David’s hand a firm shake. “Son.” David nods his head, and I swear he grimaces again when Dad turns back to me. “I’m glad you made it. I was afraid you’d change your mind.” I look past him to the near the door of the brick building. It’s a two-story casket at the front of the room. structure, with a dark brown roof and the look of “I had to be here.” Dad smiles again, one of those colonial-style buildings you might see though the way his mouth creases at the on the East Coast. A sign out front with her name edges betrays his sadness. on it directs me where to go. “She would’ve wanted you here.” We I walk inside and follow another sign into a room both know that isn’t true, and I think we that looks a lot like the interior of a church. Rows both know that I didn’t have to be here of wooden pews are placed on either side of a long because I’m a good child who pays her wine-red carpet that leads to a raised dais at the respects. I had to be here because Mom front of the room. On that dais, surrounded by never saw me in a dress. And if there’s an bouquets of white flowers, is an open casket. afterlife, she won’t be watching over me after I don’t have long to look at the person inside this. She was vain, though, and I believe that it before my vision is blocked by a face that’s if she could view her own funeral, she would. startlingly similar to the way mine looks This might be my only chance for her to see me without makeup. Only this face is framed the way I look in my dreams. So I had to come. by short hair, and the body it belongs to is A pastor mounts the steps at the front of wearing a dark suit. the room, and Dad drags David and me to the “Kyle! You actually came,” David says. I raise front pew. I sit down and fold my hands in my an eyebrow and wait. David blinks. His breath lap as the pastor begins to speak. I don’t listen smells like cheap liquor. “Oh, sorry. Kelly.” to his words. I know they’ll be lies. Funerals “You’re drunk,” I accuse, my voice flat. always try to paint the dead person as a saint He grimaces. and a loss to the world. “Well, what did you expect? Mom gets I stare at Mom in her casket, knowing she was bulldozed by some crackhead in a pickup neither of those things. I stare at her and know and you want me to show up to her funeral that I don’t care at all. I don’t care how she died, sober?” His gaze drops to my chest, and though it must’ve been painful, and I don’t care

HIS GAZE DROPS TO MY CHEST, AND HIS EYES WIDEN.

short fiction \\ Funeral

that gaze. So I’d stared back at her, and I that she’s gone. Even though my eyes are stinging don’t know how long we sat there before and her face is beginning to blur in front of me, I Dad spoke up. know that I don’t care. “Say something to your daughter.” His I remember the way she used to dance with me voice was quiet, timid. He’d never really when I was small. I wanted to be like those pretty been able to stand up to her. Mom’s eyes women in humongous ball gowns on TV. Mom narrowed just a little, and her lips pressed didn’t know that, though. She thought I was into a thin red line, and I knew what she was looking at the men in fine suits who danced with going to say before she said it. them, and, oh, wasn’t it precious how her little “I don’t have a daughter.” That was the last boy wanted to be a proper gentleman? She’d time I saw her. have me stand on her feet and then we’d dance I feel a hand on my shoulder, and it tugs around the room, twirling and sidestepping. I me out of my memories. Dad is looking at me, used to laugh so much when she did that. I used telling me it’s time to go see her. The pastor is to smile, not understanding why it mattered done talking, and now we need to walk up to the that she thought I wanted to be a gentleman. casket and see Mom properly. The ladies on TV seemed to dance the same I follow him and David up the steps. I wait steps as the men, after all, and I knew if I while the men in front of me “pay their respects.” practiced with Mom enough I’d look just as David just stares at Mom with that same grimace pretty as them one day. on his face. He walks away. Dad goes next and Eventually the pastor shuts up, and Dad touches Mom’s hair. I think the gesture is meant to stands from his seat. Neither David nor I be tender, but he looks too relieved for me to believe wanted to speak today, but Dad knew that that. When he finally walks away, I take his place. he, at least, had to. He ascends the three The mortician really went all out on Mom. She steps to the podium. He straightens his loved makeup when she was alive, but I don’t think tie. He takes a deep breath, and then he begins to speak. I make an effort to listen to his speech, at least, but before long my mind is wandering again. Dad looks sad, I think, but he’s not crying. You’d expect a husband to cry at his wife’s funeral, wouldn’t you? But he doesn’t. He gets through his whole speech without shedding a tear. He returns to his seat amidst I ever saw her wear this much. Then again, she weak, half-hearted applause. An older woman died from a head-on collision with a truck takes his place. A friend of Mom’s. I think her twice the size of her own car. Maybe all that name is Victoria. She’s already crying. makeup was merely necessity. I glance at Dad. He gives me another one of They curled her hair, too, and I frown at that. those pained smiles. David notices. He frowns. I I’m sure they only wanted her to look nice, turn my gaze back to Mom. I remember what she but no one in our family has curly hair. I’m said to me when I told her I was going to live my sure Mom would have wanted to resemble life as a woman, the way I had in my head since her children as much as possible today—or I was a child. She stared at me in silence, the way David, at least. Suddenly those dark curls she had whenever I’d done something wrong as a make me angry, so angry I clench my teeth kid and refused to admit it. But I wasn’t wrong this and nearly slam the casket closed so no time, and I’d been determined not to bow under

I USED TO SMILE, NOT UNDERSTANDING WHY IT MATTERED THAT SHE THOUGHT I WANTED TO BE A GENTLEMAN.

Gabrielle Zweifel // short fiction

one will ever see them, so no one else can out. Dad had never told me he loved me before. He’d ever see how wrong Mom looks right now. never told David either. Dad liked to say things like I turn away. I’m done looking at her. I’ll he was raised in a tough household—he was a “real never look at her again. man,” and real men just didn’t say things like “I I descend the steps and sit back down love you” to their sons. I was always a girl, but Dad in my seat while the rest of the attendants couldn’t say he loved me until I looked like one. file up to see the contents of the casket. I wonder if that’s why I still drink cheap liquor Dad pats my knee comfortingly, and David when Dad says “I love you,” and why David still turns his head away. I wonder if I should say drinks it when he doesn’t. something to him. I haven’t talked to him Finally, the line of people waiting to stare at a much since I came out. dead woman like she’s some kind of rare, exotic David was okay with it when I told him. object ends. The pastor says something about In fact he told me he should’ve known, given God and Heaven and eternal peace and closes how willing I was to let him put me in princess the casket, and that’s good, because if I have dresses and paint my nails when we were little. to avoid looking at Mom and her fake, curled I’d thought when he said that, things would hair for a minute longer I’m going to take her stay the same between us. But they didn’t. Mom from that dais and bury her myself. stopped loving me when I told her I was a girl, The pastor informs everyone that there’s and David stopped loving me when I told Dad. food in the next room, and we’re all going to Dad didn’t act angry like Mom or indifferent break for lunch before we take Mom out to like David. He was happy. He was surprised, he the cemetery to put her in the ground. The told me, but strangely glad. “Don’t get me wrong, people in the pews stand, and so do I. Dad I care about you and David both,” he said, “but I takes my arm, and suddenly I can’t stand always was disappointed I only had sons. I always it. I can’t stand the way he’s looking at me, wanted a daughter too.” And then he smiled at me, with a sympathy he never would’ve shown and I thought I could never be happier than I was to his son. I can’t stand to see that grimace in that moment. on David’s face anymore. I can’t stand the memory of Mom in that casket in too much makeup and her hair all wrong and I just. Can’t. Stand it. I tell Dad I’m not hungry and pull my arm away. I tell them to go on without me, that I need some time to myself, but I’ll be there for the burial. Dad and David let me go. I walk away, out the doors of the funeral home and A few weeks later, Dad invited David and into the cemetery. My heels sink into the grass me out to dinner. The night was pleasant; as I make my way through the tombstones. I everyone was getting along. Then Dad took can see a freshly dug grave ahead of me, not yet me home—I was staying in my own little filled, with a sleek new headstone at the front apartment by then since Mom had kicked of it. I stop in front of that grave, and read the me out of the house. And when I got out of inscription on the stone. the car, Dad told me he loved me. David It has Mom’s full name, the date she was didn’t even say goodnight. born, the date she died, and below that it simply I went back to my room, got drunk on reads, “Loving wife and mother.” Generic. I’m flavored vodka, and cried until I passed not surprised Dad didn’t bother to come up with

I WENT BACK TO MY ROOM, GOT DRUNK ON FLAVORED VODKA, AND CRIED UNTIL I PASSED OUT.

short fiction \\ Funeral

something original. Words like the ones on Momâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stone reflect on all of us, I think. They make us sound like an everyday family who had an everyday response to the death of one of its members. The picture those words paint is a lie, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pretty. So I guess I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mind them. I sit down on the grass and dangle my legs over the edge of the burial pit. The sun is right above my head now, rays strong and bright. I close my eyes and run my hand over her tombstone, tracing the letters of her name.

Gabrielle Zweifel // short fiction

INCONTINENCE, DEPRESSION, AND EMPATHY Abigayle Goldstein, University of New Mexico

September 12: sitting on a stool at the counter writing the same words over and over because no other words come Waste of time waste of time waste of time waste of time waste of time waste of time waste of time My body is a well and these things run deep run deep run deep My body is a well but I am not well On the thirteenth I slept through three alarms and remembered something I read about the desire to stay in bed being all about ungraspable sadness but I’m not sure I would diagnose myself with depression Is it depression? I grew up in a church that told me joy is my choice I was unsettled by some sketches of hollowed faces and snakes with the heads of penises and I tried to convince myself the drawings weren’t my own by attributing them to a friend Longfellow wrote: “Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not” I wrote: “Blood flowing in constant streams spells release” and I was not talking about therapeutic bloodletting but thought it was funny that I was joking about getting my period because I’m actually terrified of getting pregnant Are TriNessa and depression related? “Was the earth put here to nourish human loneliness?” I meditate on my favorite author’s melancholy musings as I think about the corrosion of my relationship with my mother and how it maybe relates to the Oedipal philosophy of Jacques Lacan that we’re covering in English theory “Synchronicity,” Ani says and she is the best thing that has happened to me in a long time

poetry

Despite my best efforts and contrary evidence I still feel like there is some insurmountable distance between me and others—this week I can and will blame it on pms On the fifteenth the love of my life took me out on a date and I cried over a very expensive steak After he paid the bill, he took me by the hand and led me to the garden and we danced in the twilight and there was no color no color on the flowers no color but I felt his breath at my ear and there was no color and I cried and he held me and there was no color As a child I loved to read Brian Jacques because I imagined all animals could talk when I wasn’t looking and now I cast back to words of wisdom written in the voice of a squirrel: “Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also” We danced and my tears watered the gray flowers in a gloomy garden and there was love hot against my ear and my tears and my tears The Latin: in omnia paratus etched next to a little yellow daisy I drew on my mother’s wrist and she loves yellow I wish I knew how to live by that little adage Yellow curtains paper paint flowers vases and birds, three in a row, tattooed on her skin and she sings “every little thing gonna be all right” The incredibly loud plastic wrap on my menstrual pads is bright yellow and I’ve been wearing them as panty liners daily because something is wrong with me and the doctors won’t listen and I am a woman and feminist theory and synchronicity I cried in Mass because I crossed myself at the wrong time Virginia Woolf writes: “Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness from melancholy” My love came home at the end of the night and laid his head in my lap and sometimes I think it’s not a knife blade but a whole day and miles keeping his tangled hair from my fingertips My fingertips my fingertips my fingertips desperately need the wrinkles around his eyes to trace and his lines his lines so I can anchor myself to this life

poetry

I take Ani’s elbow to anchor myself to this life I don’t want to rely on somebody else to find meaning in life Is it okay to cry? “Want to know how I handle stress? I get day drunk,” a friend tells me and my heart hurts for all the reasons everybody has to find ways to cope Depression is guilt is guilt is guilt is guilt is guilt is guilt is guilt is guilt is guilt is jios uofisjdf jal guiltdkjflkjlsdjlkfjlsjfklaf is guilt djflak yaiwogodjlkj aoiweojflsk I don’t have any good reasons needljato cope hfdskhlkf ajfkaweujgv dja to klsdjf djfklajsdf ljkluaw eitu lgjdlkjlkjwqoiue dlf On the nineteenth I order extra pickles on my sandwich and enjoy every bite and I see kdfjaljfewiou fldskja jfoiweuf ldjsl a rabbit in the grass in front of Johnson gym and find catharsis in painting and sing along to Johnny Cash and notice the sunset is especially red and drink a too-sweet tea dkjslaf jekldsfjalejrioatldjks hwa eoij and laugh at Ani trying to eat her noodles with chopsticks and sit on my love’s lap and jflksda dtioahwedglskj flkawjeojdlksj everything is okay jdslkfaj aiowetghlkvdj;loa[wehkln alsj djslakfaeuwoihksdlkgajwelkjl It’s hard to know what kind of day it’s going to be because, according to Saint-Exupéry, jfglkawejglaw l of tears” “It’s so mysterious,jkltwj the land I spend two hours explaining Louis Althusser to him and relating all the theories to my dkjflkjlsdjlkfjlsjfklaf jios uofisjdf jal personal and I get really excited and then I write a manifesto djflaklife yaiwogodjlkj aoiweojflsk

hfdskhlkf ajfkaweujgv dja klsdjf lja I believe I believe I believe I believe djfklajsdf ljkluaw eitu lgjdlkjlkjwqoiue dlf kdfjaljfewiou fldskjamy jfoiweuf Prayer is when I profess beliefldjsl that God is real and he is one part of a Holy Trinity and Jesus was a socialist hippy and the Ghost part of the three talks to me quietly but when we jekldsfjalejrioatldjks hwa eoij and we get to the part about “one holy catholic are dkjslaf chanting chanting the Nicene Creed dtioahwedglskj flkawjeojdlksj andjflksda apostolic Church” I leave out the Catholic part because it hurts my feelings that they jdslkfaj won’t let meaiowetghlkvdj;loa[wehkln take part in the Eucharist alsj djslakfaeuwoihksdlkgajwelkjl Exclusive, elitist—Ijkltwj cry and jfglkawejglaw l hope my love standing next to me doesn’t see and I kneel and rise and respond and sing and kneel and rise and kneel and rise and leave and the sunshine outside the church hurts my eyes and he marks the sign of the cross in holy water between my eyes and his eyes are kind are kind even though I’m sure their eyes are on me, judgement heavy on my shoulders and the stained glass is yellow and the roses are yellow and my eyes are heavy Prayer is the fact that I was late to Mass because he and I were having our own spiritual experience

poetry \\ Incontinence, Depression, and Empathy

Skin sweat love prayer sin skin warmth tattooed skin and kisses Prayer is the letter I write to my parents that they will probably never read that is my confession— Our president inappropriately used the phrase “sons of bitches” in an official speech like his mic was a phone and the words were a tweet condemning black athletes bending the knee but he insists there were fine men among Confederateflag-waving neo-Nazis Liberal - brainwashed - liberal - fool - liberal - alcoholic - liberal - Catholic - liberal - idealist - liberal - snowflake - liberal - Marxist piece of shit At the end of the night on the twenty-seventh I lie in bed next to him and his hand rests right there on my hip and there is no color in the room and his eyes are gray instead of blue-gray instead of blue and I stare at the ceiling and pray he does not look at me and Plath gives me the words: “I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I’d cry for a week” I think but don’t speak never speak don’t speak if you speak you will choke to death on the sadness you’ve been hiding in your throat, little girl Am I depressed? My mother asks how my day has been and she is sitting on the couch in the last slanted light of the sunset and she is sweet and lovely and hurts me and I love her and hurt her and I cry and she cries and we hurt and cry and hurt Ani asks how my day has been and her voice lilts and my spirits lift and I realize it’s only been a few hours since I saw her last but it feels like ages My love asks how my day has been and it is okay that I’m not ready yet—I’m never ready yet; will I ever be ready yet?—because he is all forehead kisses and patience and I place a hand on his knee and tell him I don’t know don’t know I still haven’t figured anything out yet

Abigayle Goldstein // poetry

EDITORS’ CHOICE AWARD

MY DAUGHTER’S OCEAN Maya Roe, College of the Atlantic

I thought she was sleeping. Her soft chubby hand slack in mine and her dream-breaths sounding through the darkening room like waves on a shore. The orange light fell through the dust motes and across a young face, already stained as her mother’s by the sun of a wild childhood spent in the brittle summer grasses of California. With slow practiced motion, I slide from the sheets and turn for the door. Then turn back slowly as she rolls toward me. Green eyes wide and dreamless awake and curious as the day she left the ocean of my body. “Tell me again,” she demands, “how the crabs walked.” I settle into memory, curling my body around my toddler ecologist, whose first word was “pine,” whose fingernails are stained with crescents of red Sierra oil.

poetry

“When I first tried to hold one it scurried sideways up the arm of my wetsuit,” I explain, running my fingers up her arm and to the soft blond hairs at the back of her neck. She giggles, “Why couldn’t you catch it, Mama?” In the silence after her question, I roll backward off the dive boat, and into the Pacific. I equalize and descend into memory, breaths steady to conserve my limited oxygen, a prayer to stay in the cold ocean of my youth as long as the present permits. I am six meters down now, trying to move fast enough, trying to catch this crab, to hold it for my daughter, but I am inexperienced, and my dexterity is impaired. When I surface again, I tell her about the chitons, the sea stars, and the nudibranches that still cling to the substrate of memory. I tell her about the anemones the size of sunflowers, who shrank from my touch like a young boy brushed by the one he loves.

poetry

Her eyelids begin to droop. She whispers with sleep on her lips, “I wish I saw them.” I softly agree, as she drifts away. “Me too.” I breathe out the dying sun of this impossibly warm November day, drowning in responsibility. “Mama did everything she could,” I justify, “but everything I could was not enough.” I was inexperienced, my dexterity impaired, so I watched the ocean I love silently dissolve and fade. Though I vowed to protect this place as I stared at the velvet burgundy anemone the size of a dinner plate, somehow, I am trapped in a terrifying present. Somehow, I sit beside my sleeping daughter, knowing that I allowed her ocean to be stolen from her. Tonight her goodnight kiss is a prayer for forgiveness. Saline as sorrow, or amniotic fluid, or the sea.

poetry \\ My Daughter’s Ocean

ere’s how the memory goes: It’s a hot summer night in Texas and you’re twelve years old and you are lying in bed listening to music. You just had a fight with your mother—your mother who you are living with for the first time since you were four or five years old, since you’ve lived with your dad after your parents divorced. You are lying in bed, and she storms in and she throws a Pizza Hut pizza at you, at your bed, and it’s everywhere now. She’s angry because the pizza had toppings you didn’t like, and so you didn’t want to eat it. But she is poor, and the pizza was all she could afford, probably for days, and she insisted you couldn’t go to bed without eating something, and you know in her way she’s doing this because she cares, really. You still think that she’s the one in the wrong, but, then again, you are a biased source.

JUST KEEP LAUGHING Jacqueline Jolley, University of Utah

It is six months later, and you’ve moved back in with your dad and your siblings in Utah, and you are happier here. You are at the mall food court after buying a birthday gift for your nephew, and you are recounting this story of The Great Pizza Throwing to your family, and they are shocked to hear that your mother did this to you, but they are laughing, and you’re laughing too. It’s just so, so funny. And you’ve forgotten how horrible it felt, how you cried as you tried to clean it up so you could go to sleep, and how, hours later, your mother woke you up crying and apologizing, and you hugged her even though you didn’t believe her apology. Or rather, you believed that she was sorry, but you did not believe that she wouldn’t act out in the same way again. But she was crying, “I’m a bad mother; I know you hate me,” and you felt the need to reassure her that this wasn’t the case; she was a great mother and you loved her, and this was not the first or last time she would do this. Now here’s a joke that is told in your family: It’s not particularly funny—one of those in-jokes that sticks around more to remind you of a shared experience, a shared trauma, than to actually bring any humor. Still, you all laugh whenever it’s told. Here’s how to do it: The first step is you have to be eating a pumpkin pie, or sometimes another flavor, or even cake works as a substitute. Eating sets the preferable scene, but sometimes all you need is to have a pie or cake within your field of vision, no eating required. Then, the viewer (either of the dessert or the dessert eating, whichever

creative nonfiction

stampede of anger. You can’t remember applies) will stand up straight, put one hand on their most of what she says specifically as she hip, and raise the other in an accusatory point, and screams at you—the memory offers no they will shout, “Eat your pie!” in a voice that is real clarity of events—but instead there meant to sound angry, but instead you can hear is a clarity of emotion. You remember the laughter as they do it. The listener will then being scared, terrified. You remember your pretend to eat it quickly, in terror, as if their life mother’s face being all red, and in your depended on it, but they will end up laughing too. memory her mouth seems to be opening And there is no harm meant in this joke, and you wider than you know is possible as she shouts, don’t resent your family for telling it, but every and in your peripherals your siblings watch time that joke is told and you and your siblings the event unfold in complete silence, too and your dad are all laughing, you can’t help frightened to do anything else. But inside this but think of where it came from. memory is the source of your family’s favorite in-joke, the one phrase you remember with absolute clarity: “Eat your pie!” And she’s raising her hand as she says this, so you do. You eat it quickly, with your head down as you desperately wipe the tears from your eyes, and the next thing you remember is your siblings comforting you in Here’s how the memory goes: You are the living room while your parents shout at each young, very young, but you can’t remember other in the kitchen. the precise age. It’s one of those episodic It is a year after your mother threw a pizza at you. memories that feels like it just appears You and your siblings are visiting her in Texas, and in your brain as you remember your you are all laughing as you recount the story of the childhood, with no context around pumpkin pie fiasco from your childhood. It’s almost it—just a hazy scene that drifts in your like you’ve all tricked yourselves into finding it consciousness. Your mother brings home a funny. After all, devoid of context, a phrase like “eat store-bought pumpkin pie for dinner, and your pie” shouted in unbridled rage is just too, too you and your siblings are as excited as one funny. And you’re all laughing, but it seems as if, at would expect from a group of children being the same time, your mother realizes that it is not told they get dessert for dinner, and you all funny, not really, and she is justifying her actions. eat it happily. The next day, for dinner, your mother once again gives each of you a slice “It was all we had to eat,” she tells you. “I just wanted you to eat.” And you all nod your heads, of pumpkin pie, now a bit drier, but none of you complain as you eat. And the next day, because this is understandable. It’s reasonable. And you still think that she was in the wrong, once again, your mother gives you pumpkin pie for dinner. By now, the already low-quality but can you blame a person for acting out confection is dry and hard and tasteless, and under extreme duress? And as you’re thinking you refuse to eat it. You start crying, because this, developing this new sympathy for her you’re at that age where everything even mildly situation, she begins crying. She’s pleading, “I upsetting leads to tears. And, in hindsight, maybe know you all think I’m a bad mother. I’m not you were acting spoiled, maybe you should have a bad mother. Please don’t think that.” And just eaten your dinner, but, then again, you can’t you have no more time to think about if she really expect a small child to act rationally. was wrong or right; instead, you all have to But what’s important is what comes after. You comfort her. She cries, and your brothers refuse to eat, and suddenly, your mother is a and you spend the next hour reassuring her

I KNOW YOU ALL THINK I’M A BAD MOTHER. I’M NOT A BAD MOTHER.

creative nonfiction \\ Just Keep Laughing

that she is not a bad mother—really, you’d You are twenty years old, and you’re eating lunch never think that. You love her. She’s not like at your dorm before your next class, and she calls her mother, who screamed and fought and you. Happiness, dread, anger, guilt, answer. She hit her. Really, she’s nothing like that. begins her small talk, asking you about how You are seventeen now, and you have not school is going and if your psychology classes are seen your mother since Texas, four years ago. interesting, and you’ve lost track of how many She has since moved to Florida, even further times you’ve had to remind her that you switched away from you, though she talks often about out of being a psychology major after your first buying a house in her hometown in Ohio. year of college. Her memory is going due to the You are sitting in your living room doing brain tumor she’s had for years now, and you homework when she calls you on the phone. try not to think about how you can actually Every time your mother calls you, there is a see her memory getting worse over time. The quick flash of several opposing emotions: you’re brain tumor will kill her eventually, maybe happy to hear from her, but you dread talking soon. It killed her mother before her, and, in to her, and there’s always a quiet anger you feel one of life’s strange coincidences, it killed her whenever she tries to talk to you, and this anger father too, and there are decent odds it will and dread fills you with guilt over how you treat kill you too someday. It shouldn’t be killing the one who birthed you and helped raise you. This her as fast as it is, but alcohol makes it worse, all passes in an instant and you answer the phone and your mother will not stop drinking, and begin the useless, repetitive small talk that is no matter how much you insist. But you the entirety of your relationship. On this occasion, gently remind her once again that you she has news from her therapist. She tells you she’s are a linguistics major now, and she asks been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, you to explain some of your classes to her, and she laughs as she jokes, “I guess you have a crazy and she talks about how interesting it all mom! Now we know how you kids ended up the seems and how proud she is of you. When way that you all did.” You laugh at her joke, and you you hang up you feel like crying because don’t mention that you know she was diagnosed you miss her so much, but at the same time, many years ago, and you briefly wonder why she’s a part of you hates her for not having been suddenly decided to tell you now. a better mother to you, for the abandonment You’ve looked up this disorder, and you and the shouting and the guilt trips. You’re know its symptoms: frantic efforts to avoid still not sure if it’s right for you to think this. real or imagined abandonment, intense and erratic moods, problems controlling anger, distorted and insecure self-image, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and, your personal favorite, a pattern of unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often swinging from extreme closeness It is Thursday night and you are sitting in and love to extreme dislike or anger. And it’s the kitchen with your roommates, and you’re funny how much you think of your mother all laughing as you discuss the events of the day. when you read these symptoms. You wonder, You usually feel so happy when you are hanging suddenly, if there’s any research into the out with them. But your heart isn’t really in it this effects of being raised by a person with this time, because you are thinking about your mother. disorder. You decide not to look it up. You You’ve been thinking about her a lot lately, which is think you already know the answer anyway. strange for you, as you usually push any thought of

THE BRAIN TUMOR WILL KILL HER EVENTUALLY, MAYBE SOON.

Jacqueline Jolley // creative nonfiction

your mother from your mind as soon as it appears. You’ve been thinking about how she’s dying, her health is getting worse, and she could die at any time, and you haven’t seen her since you were thirteen. You’ve been thinking about all the trauma you’ve endured due to having her as your mother, due to her reckless behavior and her reckless boyfriends and her mood swings. You’ve been thinking about how she was abused and she is mentally ill and she has been poor your whole life and maybe she just needed help, and she could have been so much better. And you’ve been thinking about how unfair it is that you blame yourself and your siblings for not helping her enough. And a part of you feels like maybe when she dies you’ll finally feel better, you’ll have some closure, but another part of you knows that you’ll just feel worse. You are pulled back into the conversation with your roommates as one of them tells a joke about some boy in her class, and it’s so, so funny, and you can’t stop laughing. You’re laughing and having fun and somewhere in Ohio your mother is slowly dying and whatever you do, you can’t stop laughing.

creative nonfiction \\ Just Keep Laughing

DRIP WOMAN TITLE GOES HERE acrylic, 8"Ã&#x2014;5.5" Elisabeth Vehling, University of Southern California

visual art

WRHC AWARD

HORRORS FOR HIGHWAYS Rachel Baxter, University of Nevada—Las Vegas

We have been walking for days It has been miles since we have been able to talk Our words are stuck in the heavy air between us like flies that have stopped struggling against The amber The sun has stopped feeling like caramel dripping over your skin and mine And started to feel like corrosive acid Straight to the bone Even the cicadas have stopped their shrill hum And chosen instead to drop their hollow husks at our feet Our heels are dirty and bloody Smeared with ash and gravel And our bloody footprints stretch back for miles But we don’t care There is no one left to follow us on our way to the violent edge of the world We are bleeding our despair into the unforgiving earth as supplication You stopped breathing after a week I have had to kiss your cracked lips just to keep you walking with me It will not be enough Soon you will turn gray and stop bleeding, too I tear apart trash piles on the street like a raccoon The best I save for you a rotten peach a burning-hot can of soda it will not be enough Sometimes we hear wolves howling or maybe it’s just the wind I have taken to making conversation with you You always loved wolves, didn’t you Maybe we will meet them and they will make you pack leader You still look forward, unblinking, trudging onward It’s not you, it’s only the momentum The sky hasn’t been blue for a while now

poetry

It has been brown and orange and green, like a nasty bruise That won’t fade The stars are long gone Their divinity had the good sense not to come near us A few days ago we came across a bridge crumbled in the middle You and I had to crawl over the broken rocks and pile them up to get to the other side I think that was where I lost you I think I lost you among the rubble It’s too late to go back now I found a dirty quarter glinting in the sun a few bloody steps ago I thought it was just a large shard of mica But when we got closer I picked it up and put it in my mouth When I kissed you next I slipped it under your tongue Just a small sliver, I hoped, that might help you get where you were going Even if you went there without me I’m not in the aftermath. I wish—but I don’t have that luxury. A snake started winding its way up my right leg Its smooth cool scales the only relief from the heat Feeling its flesh so close to mine reminds me purpose still runs through my body Just as much as the weariness does I look over at you, your cracked lips, your raw skin, your red feet Let’s stop. Let’s just sit down. You can rest now, I tell you You don’t listen still moving forward I pull you to me Sit you and me down, backs against the ledge of the overpass We finally stop moving for the first time in a month And instead of searching for the world’s edge We look up at the absent stars and wait for it to come to us

poetry

MARSGOES HERE TITLE oil pastel and digital, 10"Ă&#x2014;10" Kaitlynn Skinner, Metropolitan State University of Denver

visual art

BLIZZARD TITLE GOES HERE

watercolor, 12"Ã&#x2014;12" Jadie Adams, Westminster College

visual art

DRY CREEK SONNET Keegan Grady, Montana State University

Bony corrugations: cottonwood trunk. Apples, plum trees on the hill, and currants where Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d glut come June. Tomatoes ripening on the vine, strawberries near the railroad ties, but always run back to the cottonwoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shimmering embrace with the spoils. There, feast. The leaves a chattering song, long cotton shreds a-dance across the evening light. The hum of summer nights: crickets in the siding, whitetail deer sidling to the haystack, fox kits tripping through the field. Let this night bruise like berries in the hedge, tattoo across my tongue and leave me harvest moon silent. Let old speech bud and flourish in my hush.

poetry

CURIOSITY TITLE GOES HERE

digital Emma Lowe, Snow College

photography

TITLE DROWNING GOES HERE printed photographs on paper Erin Mitchell, University of New Mexico

open media

nd we’re never coming back, the clouds said, but we just danced in their rain and planted our crops. It was only when we woke up and saw the blue sky stretching infinitely in every direction that my wife first laughed, “Fools. Everything for granted.” They’ll be back, the rest of us said. Changing of the seasons. We remained hopeful until the harvest came and the fruits of our labor were dead stalks and thirsting soil. “My grandpappy would’ve cursed the sky till it wept like a coward,” one joked. We tried to laugh.

KETSUI, THE TOWN THE CLOUDS LEFT FOREVER Youssef Helmi, Florida State University

With no crops, my family took to eating years-old grain stored in molding barrels. Supper was whatever my wife made with water, salt, and oats. “Daddy, where’d they go?” my daughter said, thin and tired, hair once as fiery as the sun now the color of a shirt washed too many times. “Away.” “Are they coming back?” Her curiosity was as vast as the sky. “Of course, dear,” I said. “They always have.” My wife laughed mirthlessly. “Everyone says that about their lovers, mothers, or brothers until they don’t.” “This is sturdy land and so are its people,” I said. “Our forefathers survived harsher.” “If they could provide so much, dig up their bones for food,” she barked. “Ask them how to keep your family fed.” “We must leave,” she said. “If not for yourself, then for your daughter, coward.” “This is our home, her home,” I said. “We have history and respect here.” “This waste is no home,” she said, leaving me to sleep on a cot in the dining room for that night and every other. It was my daughter’s coughing that woke me to find her beside my cot. “I can’t sleep,” she said. “Tell me a story, please?” I pulled her close and hummed in her ear. “There was once a boy with razors for fingers, and he was the unhappiest boy in the world. Everything he touched was torn to shreds—his clothes, his books, even his first dog.”

short fiction

The boy stayed unhappy for a long time and never got his happy ending, because who does? I didn’t get to that part of the story. She was fast asleep, so I finished humming my song to no one in particular— not her, not me, not the empty, black sky. My daughter, born sickly, deteriorated in the following weeks. Her voice became brittle, as did her body. Her hair was the hue of trampled dirt. She stopped asking so many questions and spent more time gazing at the sky, lost. “Water,” my wife said. “To bathe her.” The river had run dry, so I went to the town’s well, which grew more parched each day. After an hour’s labor, I returned and found the house as empty of life as it had been of laughter since the clouds left. There was a note in my wife’s hand: Gone with some of the others. I’d say where, but you won’t come. I told her you couldn’t love her as much as you loved what you dreamt for her. Their names are Deborah and Erin, and I wait for them. I wait for the clouds to bring back my dreams and for my family to return to live those dreams. There are others who wait with me, and like dogs we stand outside, licking the air for moisture or hope. We know the clouds are gone, but we’re afraid—afraid to accept, leave, change. We’re afraid to admit we drove them away. I hate how beautiful and blue the sky is here.

short fiction

TITLE GOES HERE DOUBLE acrylic on gesso, 4"Ã&#x2014;4" Jennifer Spong, Dixie State University

visual art

STAFF CHOICE AWARD

EVERY TIME I OPEN TITLE GOES HERE MY MOUTH IN PUBLIC ink and watercolor on paper, 11"Ã&#x2014;14" Lara Meintjes, Long Beach City College visual art

THIS IS

WRHC AWARD

video Lukas Armstrong-Laird, Montana State University

open media

THE BATHROOM

“This is the Bathroom” explores the most intimate moments in a lesser-known and often overlooked setting in video—the bathroom. Following a young man in his bathroom provides glimpses of what we often interpret as monotonous and, at times, uncomfortable tasks. Nonetheless, the professional cinematography creates a dynamic exploration of human intimacy and vulnerability. The monochromatic snapshots in this film weave a story that expresses raw, mature situations that are often unnoticed in life’s everyday chaos. VISIT SCRIBENDI.UNM.EDU TO WATCH THE VIDEO.

open media

WRHC AWARD

TITLE GOES HERE PLACID AND PINK digital Donald Roberts, University of New Mexico

photography

veryone in the little town of Kirk agreed that the hat with the ornamental cherries was the sweetest thing to grace a mannequin’s head in Mr. Dilly’s hat shop window. That was why it was so absurd that Helen Burgman—of all people—should wear it. “The cherries will turn black on that frosty girl’s head before the week is out,” said Mindy Rhine with a sigh. Mr. Dilly agreed that the hat’s aesthetic was completely spoiled by having to sit on Helen’s head. “I’ll buy it off you. You can use the money to buy a nice, sensible hat that suits her better,” offered Helen’s Aunt Lily to Helen’s mother, Mrs. Burgman.

CORDIAL CHERRIES Tamara Faour, University of Northern Colorado

Mrs. Burgman, however, listened to these hints and complaints with irritating tranquility. “Helen is going to work in Big Caper for the winter,” she said. “She ought to have something fine to wear for calling and parties.” “Calling? Helen never calls on anybody!” protested Ida May Porter. Helen didn’t call on anybody, and she didn’t much care for the hat, either. It was somewhat satisfying, however, to affront all the gossipers of Kirk, so she didn’t complain. She figured she could always get rid of it when she got to Big Caper, and no one would know any better. Helen was nineteen years old and a reputed spinster. “That girl has enough ice in her to keep most men away,” declared Ida May with passion. Truth be told, Helen was quite pretty. Her steely eyes, even now, sometimes expressed the particular sweetness that had once radiated from their soft lashes. Her hair slipped out of nearly everything she put it in but was silky smooth and nutty brown. On top of this, she had the prettiest mouth that anyone had seen in Kirk for a long time. “Like cherries,” Aunt Lily had said. Sam Leehart had once tried to kiss her over the bough of the Burgman cherry tree during the cherry harvest. That was a couple years ago now, though, and Helen had shoved him so hard that he’d fallen off his ladder and been lain up with a broken ankle for the last few weeks before he set off for Big Caper. So that had been the end of that.

short fiction

But Helen was too sour to be married, with a stiff “thank you,” whisked into the building anyway. The sharp edge of ambition had where her uncle’s office was. redone her face, drawing the pink from She did not see Sam again all that dreary fall, her cheeks and dulling the starriness of her nor did she sell the cherry hat. At first, she was eyes to a hard glint. She was going to the city, too busy learning her new duties. Then she was where all the other independent, important, so preoccupied with each day that she forgot. and smart people went. She didn’t want a Working for her uncle was hard. She made just sweetheart to hold her back. enough to pay for cab fare, rent, and food. In between she mostly slept, ate, or walked about the streets. Big Caper was hard, too: a city of glassy windows and polished faces that one couldn’t see into. They were business people, the people of Big Caper. They didn’t have time for her. Helen would never have admitted it as she sat stiffly before her typewriter or walked with her chin defiantly raised through the So off she went to Big Caper in her ornamental streets, but she was lonely. Her uncle was also cherry hat. She would’ve left it on that first train, a businessman and most of the time forgot but in those days it was not proper to go about that he was her uncle at all. As to her old without your hat. She hoped to find a shop where acquaintances of Kirk, she’d treated them she could sell the funny item and buy a more with far too much disdain to expect letters sensible hat. However, it was unexpectedly raining from anyone but her own mother. These when Helen arrived in Big Caper, and by the time she received fairly regularly, though she Helen had found her uncle’s office and ridden a did not open them. No, she never opened cab to the apartment he’d procured for her, both them but buried them all under her pillow, her hat and her spirits were too dampened to a denial of her own hunger for home. Still, be advertised in any hat shop. So she took it off, on some particularly dark nights, she’d slip hung it on the small hat hook on the wall, and her hand around the flat parcels and clutch went to bed. them like a lifeline. She even wrote a letter The next morning, the hat was so wrinkled back once. And she looked forward—almost and sorry looking that Helen was determined to unwittingly—to Christmas, when she would leave it on the first cab she rode, proper or not. be allowed to return to Kirk for a week. Almost as soon as she stepped out, however, a The holidays came in a blast of twinkling voice called after her. ice and foggy breath. Before she left, Helen’s “Miss!” it said. “You left your hat!” uncle held a Christmas party for social Helen turned to coldly deny that it was her networking and invited Helen to come. Her hat, only to fall back in astonishment. The hat, which was in a rather dilapidated state, she man was Sam Leehart! trimmed with a fresh ribbon, and she managed He was bigger and broader than she’d to get a string of cheap pearls to go with her remembered, and his eyes were older and best dress. Even so, when she stood at last beside graver. But there could be no doubt. her uncle, her flinty eyes daring anyone to say “Miss Burgman!” said Sam, recognition anything that remotely resembled small talk, she clicking in his bright eyes. felt small and unequal to the event. Helen, angry to be caught off guard, It was a candy party. The best candy factory had snatched the hat, which he extended, and, brought in boxes of chocolates, which had been

SHE’D SLIP HER HAND AROUND THE FLAT PARCELS AND CLUTCH THEM LIKE A LIFELINE.

short fiction \\ Cordial Cherries

fixed up on crystalware and set on a long table. nice smile and asked good questions, and before Helen knew it, she had told him After standing proudly near the wall, speaking to a more than she had told anybody in four couple guests who spoke to her, and watching the months, and the platter was heaped high. meandering crowd about the table, Helen, who “Here,” said Sam, pushing two cordial preferred food to people any day, slipped down cherries into her hand. “I can’t make these to the kitchen. A couple factory workers in blue fit. You take them. Are you going home for overalls were moving in and out of the kitchen the holidays?” with pretty boxes of cordial cherries, which they “Yes,” said Helen, a little breathlessly. unpacked onto empty plates brought by the maids. Helen swallowed hard as she watched “Tomorrow. For five days.” “That’s good. I wish I could get off, too. They the plump chocolates roll onto a large platter. won’t let me until sometime in January. Say She was very hungry, and she loved cordial hello to the cherry tree, would you?” cherries best of the chocolate confections. Helen was in the cab home to her apartment When both of the men had left the kitchen before she remembered she’d left her hat—the for more boxes, Helen snatched a handful of hat with the ornamental cherries—on the cherries and popped one into her mouth. countertop in her uncle’s huge kitchen. By that Helen retreated to the wall and closed her time it was too late. She went home without it— eyes, savoring the delicious richness of the and she did say hello to the cherry tree and to her candies. Perhaps it was because she looked mother and to her mother’s holiday cherry pie. She so very sweet and happy for a moment was surprised how happy she was to see them all that one of the factory workers stopped to and to sit at the old piano and curl up by the old glance at her as he entered with a box in his hands. The glance turned into a stare, fire. What was more, she had a mild cold, and it was a relief not to go to work. By the time she stepped and he addressed her. back on the train for Big Caper, it was a bad cold “Miss Burgman? How do you do?” and steadily getting worse. Helen, having thought that no one was in the room, came very close to choking on her second cordial cherry. When she had enough air to look up (after the factory worker had pumped her on the back a couple times), she was not at all consoled to see that he was none other than Sam Leehart. “Miss Burgman!” he repeated. “Are you all right?”

SHE HAD LONGED FOR A GOOD CONVERSATION FOR SO LONG THAT THE INVITATION WAS IRRESISTIBLE.

“I’m as well as can be expected after nearly There is nothing like the gloom and bite of choking to death,” snapped the humiliated a big city in winter to encourage illness. Mrs. Helen, turning to leave. Burgman no doubt knew this, for it was not “Don’t be angry with me, Miss Burgman. Please two weeks later when there came a knock on don’t. I haven’t seen anyone from Kirk in some Helen’s door late in the evening. Helen, red months. How are you? What brings you here?” eyed and raw nosed, opened the door with a Poor Helen. She had longed for a good conversation for so long that the invitation was tissue in one hand. She blinked in surprise. irresistible. She tried to be as stiff as she could to It was Sam Leehart, a bottle under one arm. him, but before long, she had set her wilted hat on “I’m sorry to disturb you,” said the young the countertop and set about helping him stack the man, timidly. “Your mother asked me to chocolates on the fancy crystal plate. Sam had a bring you this.”

Tamara Faour // short fiction

He held out the bottle, which read Sam replied: Medicinal Cherry Cordial. Thanks. “Thank you,” said Helen, hoarsely, too sick The exchange continued for another month. to be angry that Sam should see her watery Helen couldn’t eat all the cordial cherries Sam left eyes and pink nose. “I thought you were the her, but she didn’t ask him to stop sending them. post.” She found children to give them to in the park As she took the bottle, she broke into a and left them as gifts on desks at work. Her face stream of deep, rattling coughs that shook began to glow with new life and vigor, and she her shoulders and made her shift her weight was always thinking what she might leave for against the door frame. She straightened. him in return—a scarf, a hat, a rose, what else? “I’m sorry. I can’t invite you in.” Then, one cool Wednesday evening in March, “Never mind,” said Sam, looking concerned. she opened the door to find only a note on the “You just drink up that cordial, hear?” mat. It said: Helen did and, after a few days, began to feel Meet me by the lamppost downstairs at 7:00 better. It was the Wednesday evening after Sam if you’d like a stroll. had brought the cordial that Helen found a little PS: I will bring chocolate. box of cordial cherries on the door mat. On the Helen told herself she oughtn’t go, that it box was a piece of colored paper scrawled with would interfere with work tomorrow if she the hasty words: did. But her hat was already on, and her feet Get well soon. were already on the stairs. Helen stowed away the chocolates, surprised and He was waiting by the lamppost, just as grateful for the gift. She was even more surprised, he’d said, with the box of chocolates in his however, upon returning home the next Wednesday chilled hands and her muffler around his to another small box awaiting her. The note read: neck. His eyes, which were watery with Are you better yet? cold, looked relieved to see her. “There you are,” he said. “How do you do, Miss Burgman?” She was fine, and she thought it splendid to take his arm, though she didn’t tell him so exactly. She told him about her winter instead, about working in her uncle’s office, the dreary faces in the streets, and giving out the cordial cherries. He told her about working The next Wednesday, she left a note of her own: in the candy factory, all the places he liked to Quite well. Thank you for the cherries. eat, and what he missed about home. The answering note said nothing but: They went for strolls every Wednesday. I’m glad. Sometimes he brought the cordial cherries. “I’m glad.” They were simple words, but they Sometimes he didn’t. It didn’t matter to Helen made Helen glad too. Her cheeks took on a anymore, so long as he came and wore the things flush they’d been missing for a couple years, she’d made him and offered her his arm. Spring and after bringing the box of cordial cherries was coming; soon the parks were in bloom. Sam in, she went to buy knitting needles and yarn. pointed to the blossoms one evening in April. Next Wednesday she put out a muffler “The cherry trees are blooming at home.” with a note saying: “Yes,” said Helen, blushing. Stay warm. “Will you go back in the summer?”

SHE THOUGHT IT SPLENDID TO TAKE HIS ARM, THOUGH SHE DIDN’T TELL HIM SO EXACTLY.

short fiction \\ Cordial Cherries

and offered his arm. Helen noticed that “If I can get the time off.” his hands trembled a little as they let go of “Come in July. Then you can pick cherries.” the chocolates. It was the walk after that when Sam told Helen he’d “Where shall we go?” he asked, quit his job and was going back to Kirk to work on uncertainly. his father’s farm. “Are there cherries on the tree?” “Come in July,” he pressed. “Please come.” Helen said perhaps she would. Then she went home and cried. She was angry at Sam for leaving. No—she was angry at him for not taking her with him! But she’d swallowed her tears by the next Wednesday. He’d been kind to her, but perhaps he’d meant nothing by it. Perhaps she hadn’t meant anything, either. After all, she hadn’t “Yes.” wanted to be married. “We’ll pick some for Mother. Perhaps she can Helen went out that evening to the chocolate make a pie.” factory and bought cordial cherries. The next They walked together down to the cherry tree. morning, she handed them out at the office as They picked enough cherries to fill Helen’s strict, she had done in the past. The small cherries black umbrella. Helen was just starting to get had gained her popularity in her building, down from the old ladder when Sam stopped her. and she found she could now talk to many “Wait. I’d nearly forgot….” people with ease. “I won’t be miserable,” she persuaded He fumbled around in his large, bulging pocket herself, sitting at her desk. “I’ll continue and pulled out an old, weathered something. An old, working. I’ll take on new commissions. weathered something with ornamental cherries That’s what I wanted anyway.” sticking out of its top and a fresh new ribbon. He held it out to her. With all the new offers of work Helen “It’s yours. You left it in the kitchen at Christmas. received, May and June passed quickly. Her mother wrote, asking when she would visit, I’m so glad, you know. I brought it to your mother, and then she sent me to you with the cordial. I’d but Helen didn’t ask her uncle about time never have found out where you lived otherwise.” off. Her mother wrote again. Helen bought Helen took the hat, a little shyly, and put it on, herself a summer city dress and worked more battered though it was. Sam thought she looked feverishly than ever. splendid, though he didn’t say so exactly. What Then, one day, a telegram came from Kirk: he did say was: Meet at station July 4. Will bring chocolate. Helen was working on an important review. “Do you remember when we were here last?” Nevertheless, she packed up and boarded a train. Helen blushed. When she arrived at the station, Sam was “You were abominably rude,” she said. waiting with a box of chocolates in his hands “I was rude,” agreed Sam. “I went about it and a smile on his face. He was red from a couple completely the wrong way.” months of sun, and his overalls were worn and “You did. But I would’ve pushed you out of stained and bulged in one pocket. He looked strong, the tree even if you’d proposed to me first.” kind, and simple, and she wondered why there Sam took her hands over the bough. wasn’t anything like him among her ambitions. “Will you push me out of the tree if I He gave her the chocolates, picked up her bag, propose to you now?”

SAM WAS WAITING WITH A BOX OF CHOCOLATES IN HIS HANDS AND A SMILE ON HIS FACE.

Tamara Faour // short fiction

A couple weeks later, Sam and Helen were married. It was done beside the cherry tree, and Mrs. Burgman made a ruby-red pie just for the occasion. Helen had written and told her uncle that she wouldn’t be able to work for the rest of the summer, possibly longer—but she did not seem to mind this. In fact, as she walked down the aisle arm in arm with her new husband, her eyes looked so starry and her mouth so very cherry-like that most of the town wondered what she’d done in town to improve herself so very much. Of course, she told them that she’d eaten cordial cherries, but the idea that sweets are unhealthy is too deeply fixed into the minds of most people for them to believe such liberal nonsense. Nonsense or no nonsense, that little bonny hat, that sweet little cap with ornamental cherries on it which had once seemed so unlikely a fit for her sallow face, was perched upon her soft, wispy head. And everyone had to agree it suited her exactly.

short fiction \\ Cordial Cherries

A SILENT DREAM digital, 11"×16.5" Sarah Manriquez, University of Alaska—Fairbanks

photography

TANZANIAN DAZE digital Abigail Steffen, University of Alaskaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Fairbanks

photography

HAIR ink on paper Rachel Watson, Columbia College

visual art

RAIN DANCE

Amanda Becker, University of Arizona

I i want to lie in bed and watch the rain with you just two in blue sheets your steady hammer heart both lullaby and alarm clock II the power flickers out and we rediscover fire like our cavemen fathers we breathe, breathe, breathe lightning exhale inhale: a thunderous, quaking warmth III raindrop teeth clatter against tin roof we breathe just two in blue tick.

poetry

t didn’t rain anymore. It hadn’t rained for years, and that’s why we had to go away. There was no hope or future left for us in the Above Ground, and there was no one to blame for it but ourselves. We failed to heed the words of our grandparents and greatgrandparents when they warned us of what pride could do to a people. Like naïve children, we were convinced we knew best; we disregarded the wisdom of those who had come before us, and now we were forced to reap the rewards of our arrogance. We should have listened. We knew that then because of the rain.

WRHC

THE And the children. I was only eleven when my father handed my six-year-old brother to me and told me I must leave with the other kids. He said they were going to take us away to a safe place where the sky was blue and the poppies were red and there were lights that hung in the sky that were not powered by the Generator. I knew, of course, that he was lying. The sky was gray—it had always been. Sometimes the kids in the schoolyard would make up these fantastical tales about a sky that could be a million different colors splattered across a vast canvas, a mixture of vibrant hues so beautiful it could not be duplicated by any work of man. As wonderful as these stories sounded, I could not allow such juvenile fantasies to linger in my mind. I had a responsibility to my father and my brother, even though the latter was much too young to understand the cross I carried. I knew he was lying because the color red shaded one thing and one thing alone—I had seen enough of it to last me a lifetime. I hated the color. I hated all that it represented and all that it meant. If there were more red things where we were going, to hell with it. I would take no part in it. I had made a promise to my mother. I knew I would see the color red more and more in the future, but I had no intention of seeking it out for myself. It would come in its own time. I knew he was lying because there is no such thing as light. The Generator is not a source of light. The Generator creates nothing—it only takes. It takes our energy, our resources, our families—all so that it may take away the darkness. If there truly were lights that hung in the

short fiction

Nicolena Boucher

AWARD

sky, they did not care enough to shine for us. They were takers, of that I was certain. But when my father looked at me, holding my brother and me close, I could not bring myself to tell him I knew the truth. He had such hope that we would make it out. I could see it in his eyes. The faith he had in me was immeasurable and unreasonable. I knew my promises to him were futile, but I could not hold my tongue. I knew my words would calm him, reassure him of our fates. I promised to protect my brother, as I always had. I promised we would be safe; I promised we would think of him and Mother often.

GENERATOR

Montana State University

And I promised, one day, when all of this was over, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d see him again. I did not tell him I knew the truth. My father smiled sadly and ruffled my hair. I knew he never expected to see either of us again, but that was okay, because at least we would be safe. He had to stay behind until he could afford his own ticket and follow us to the place where the sky was blue and the poppies were red and lights hung in the sky. My father was a giver, and the givers were rare. They would give and give and give until they had nothing left to give. Most people were takers. We all wanted to escape this hell. But it was only the givers who chose to remain behind. Mother had already gone on ahead, I told my brother as we stepped off the platform and into the metallic pod. Mother was already there, and soon we would see her again. My brother was delighted; oh, how he had missed Mother! He asked me if she had traveled in a pod like ours to get there, but I told him, no, she had not. Mother had ridden on the wings of an angel. He asked why we couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ride on an angelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wings too, but I told him to hush, instead pointing to my father, who was trying to hide his tears as he waved us goodbye next to the other parents waving to their children in the pod as we pulled silently away from the platform. The pod picked up speed but never made a sound. The silent rush of the buildings passing us by almost lulled me into a false sense of security. I wanted so desperately to be whisked away, but a nagging, lingering notion persisted in the back of my mind.

short fiction

It was only I who knew the truth, only I As the railway led us farther and farther from who knew where we were going. the heart of town, I watched the lights powered But it was my cross to bear, and it was by the Generator fade into blackness. I looked one I couldn’t bring myself to lay upon the forward, forcing down the panicky fear that had shoulders of the gleeful children around me. been threatening to explode out of me since we left I took note of the way the windows were the station and hoping against all hope that I was airtight and sealed shut. The sleek finish wrong, and we really were on the way to the place on the seats was modern enough, but they where the sky is blue and the poppies are red and provided more in the way of practicality than the lights that hang in the sky are not powered comfort. They were water resistant and worn, by the Generator. as though they were routinely subjected to heavy cleaning. The floor was peppered with miniscule holes, the ideal size for thorough ventilation of the compartment or drainage should one of the passengers spill a beverage. The walls and ceiling were plain and bare, with a reflective metallic coating like the rest of the pod. In some spots, the metal was so polished you could see reflections of the souls who rode in the compartment before you. I noticed how elated each person in my compartment was. They had never been in a pod before! Just wait until their friends at school heard about this marvelous adventure! There were sounds of laughter and squeals of delight. Just wait until they saw their mothers and fathers again—how they couldn’t wait to tell them about all they’d seen. An older blond boy and an older brunette girl even started dancing in the middle of the compartment. The other kids circled around them, singing off-key the old tunes passed down through their families over the years. They were not very graceful, often stepping on the other’s foot or crashing into an observer. But no one seemed to mind, because they did not know the truth. I urged my brother to go join the fun; I did not want him to miss out on this precious moment. I watched the faces passing by. It was custom to stop and raise a weary hand in salute to those on the pod. There were some who were surprised to see we were all children, but most watched us pass with a morose and sympathetic understanding.

short fiction \\ The Generator

ormon chapels are mass-produced from a common set of design blueprints, and any observant Latterday Saint can quickly identify the period of a chapel’s construction with only a few moments’ observation. I was baptized and confirmed at the customary age of eight in a 1970s-era Maryland stake center, a type of meetinghouse with offices for regional leaders and administrators. Before my family moved to Zion (or, for gentile readers, Utah), we traded the old stake center in for a new, smaller, modern-style chapel where my father presided as bishop.

THE CHALICE OF GRACE Maria Hiatt, University of Utah

At the outskirts of a Salt Lake City suburb, there is a particular building in the latter style, modern and austere. With a few tweaks, it might have been any other Mormon chapel. Mormons are world-class in our ability to doze off while sitting upright, and this building’s cushioned pews are as amenable to napping as any others. Hymns is the same green, pipe organ– adorned book of tunes sung to music from a pipe organ only twice each year. There is no cross. Church leaders—all men—sit on the dais on the right, as in any other Mormon chapel. But this is not any other Mormon chapel. The lighting is harsh and artificial, even clinical. The sanctuary is reminiscent of an aging hospital chapel soaked in years of despair and fear. This is not a space for raising your voice in praise; this is a funerary space for the living, where young spirits are broken. It has no “Visitors Welcome” sign, not that the building is on a road where it might be seen by any potential visitors. There is no “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” carved in stone anywhere on the building’s exterior. Every member of the congregation on church records is a minor, with assigned leadership from other units. Perhaps most notably, parishioners cannot leave, unless they can scale a chainlink fence without detection. And, as I came to call it, the “Jesus Painting.” I have no other name for it. I do not know the name of the artist, though it was certainly a commissioned piece. The Jesus Painting is imposing and hangs above the pulpit, casting a shadow upon a congregation of sinners. It is difficult not to stare at the Jesus Painting, presumably as intended. Jesus looks just as he does in most Mormon depictions, a tall white man with blue eyes and light brown hair, dressed in crimson robes.

creative nonfiction

*** He is surrounded by adolescents: some kneeling, The red lcd digits on my alarm clock, a gift others standing, all wearing color-coded uniforms. from my mother upon entering junior high The first time I saw it, my first thought was: That school, read 6:00 exactly when I awoke to is so fucked up. Of course, it was all so fucked up. the front door of the house creaking open. *** I am not a light sleeper, but somewhere, I sometimes darkly joke that all of this would’ve somehow, my body knew what was about to been unnecessary had my parents just been happen. I was familiar with the broad strokes patient. After all, most of their objectives had been of the story I was about to live. There was a met. Belief in the Christian God, check. Weekly dull pocketknife with my younger brother’s church attendance, check. Most important, name carved into the handle on my bedside heterosexual marriage, check—at the right table; he got it when he became a Boy Scout at 1 age to boot. The venue was wrong, I suppose, age twelve. The past several days, I had noticed but it’s still sometimes difficult to believe how possessions disappearing from my bedroom: a close I came to an ideal from which I couldn’t water bottle, a dusty childhood trophy, a busted feel more alienated. I believe in the Christian early-model smartphone that still worked on God, but I’ve fallen into doctrinal error. I park Wi-Fi, the busted razor blade cartridge I used myself in a pew every Sunday, but I join my to punish my body for its betrayal of the divine voice in song with apostates from the “only plan of happiness while I prayed to be made clean. true and living church upon the face of the Paranoid, I was equipped when the time came. The Earth.”2 I married a man, but as the untold knife in my fist, I slid my hand beneath the pillow, number of gay Mormon men who’ve been rested my head, and closed my eyes. The bedroom promised that heterosexual marriage door opened, and the light flicked on. would cure their diseased souls know, I would say that I shouldn’t have brought a knife to wedding bells cannot erase the biological a gun fight, but it was more like bringing a knife to reality of sexual attraction. I remain a two-guys-with-a-combined-weight-over-threebisexual and, worse, theologically queer. times-my-own fight. I could not have expected my plan to work, and I would later learn that I was far from the first to try to resist my “pick up.” Like the other young men and women who fought the abductors, I quickly found myself restrained in the back of a tan late-2000s Chevy Suburban, though not before screaming loud enough to Many gay Mormons come out to reactions wake the whole neighborhood. Going quietly of fear, shock, and disgust. Bisexual Mormons into the night has never been my style. often have a different yet unsettling reception: From the moment I heard whispering in the perverse relief. “Thank heavens! I thought you foyer that bitterly cold morning, I understood were going to say you were gay!” is a common why my judgement day had come to pass. Years response. The church condemns gay Mormons later, however, the church softened its rhetoric. to divine rejection or a loveless life, but bisexuals My parents’ vocal homophobia became taboo, have a chance at sneaking into heaven. That was and they refused to admit the truth of their not, however, my reception. Over the next year, I intentions. Similar institutions typically would be carted off to numerous therapists, each of whom would dutifully inform my parents that, no, obfuscate and carefully avoid an obligation to reveal information to their coerced they could not make me straight. But when crazy clients, even after they become adults. homophobic meets crazy rich, a cure can be found!

I REMAIN BISEXUAL AND, WORSE, THEOLOGICALLY QUEER.

creative nonfiction \\ The Chalice of Grace

Fortunately for me, my parents arranged I could not know this in the moment. I say, “in the for some questionable reimbursement moment,” but it would be inaccurate to characterize by the insurance company, transforming eight months without reprieve as a moment. I did many documents into medical records not understand what it would mean, years later, subject to disclosure to former patients to feel the indent left in my shin, a branding at under federal law. It often isn’t so clear for once removed from my experience by time and adolescents placed in other institutions, but deeply connected to it. After all, it is doubtful my intake paperwork was handed over and that any two victims are struck in exactly the included proof: an “Initial Problem List.” same way. As time passes by, I pick up the Here is the checklist of my sins, as recorded shards of myself and begin to meticulously by my parents on February 9, 2012: low activity catalogue my experiences and those of others, level, quarrelsome, poor peer relationships, desperate to impart order to senseless memories denies mistakes/blames others, ungovernable, a loner, tells frequent lies, manipulative, own sexual identity, poor family relationships, and temper tantrums. Most are true to varying extents, but one is important above the others: “own sexual identity,” a term for sexual orientation that perfectly captures the severe discomfort it invokes for Celestial Kingdom-bound parents such as mine. It implies a sexual and bodily of abuse. I learn vocabulary to articulate autonomy, a freedom of desire that is incompatible what happened, terms such as “conversion with the belief that sexual desire exists only to bring therapy” and “corrective rape.” I gather more spirits in wait to their second estate. Notes hundreds of pages of documents—police from my time there confirm the centrality of my reports, court filings, my own clinical files, queer identity to the motivations for my placement. consumer complaints, drips of misplaced In a May 2012 staff note, my “bisexual issues” are information online—and spend countless described as “the big issues which have been long nights poring over them, suspended affecting the family.” in a time long past. You cannot put together Trauma shatters our conceptions of linear, a dropped china bowl. But you can remake causal time and the coherent, integrated self. For the broken pieces into a new mosaic once you an event to become a trauma, it must exceed your catalogue the source material. psychological or physical capacity; it must break This is where I found God’s hate for me, but you. The slow-moving trauma of inescapable eternal separation from a family who already emotional and psychological abuse creeps into put me through hell is a hollow threat. Though your self-understanding until the landscape invited to the celestial dinner table, I left my of your identity is scorched earth, requiring forever family as a promise forever unfulfilled. years of reclamation before anything fruitful This is also where I radicalized against the can grow again. Physical abuse transgresses empty promises of political and religious the boundaries of personhood, permanently incrementalism. During my stay, I learned that alienating its victim from their own the Supreme Court’s decision in Hollingsworth body with the scars left behind. The v. Perry had brought marriage equality to my reverberations of sexual abuse never quite cousins in California, but the victory held little for leave you, injecting doubt into every love an adolescent who couldn’t see the light at the end and fear into every attraction. of the tunnel. How long I fought and how much I

AFTER ALL, IT IS DOUBTFUL THAT ANY TWO VICTIMS ARE STRUCK IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY.

Maria Hiatt // creative nonfiction

The doctrine first taught to me left no room for me. What is the divine design of a presiding father and nurturing mother4 when your desire transcends the categories *** given? My presence in Zion stained the In this tabernacle isolated not by chainlink fence purity of the heterosexual sacred story, and but by the majesty of the mountainous creation of my desire transgressed prescriptive modes the Wasatch Front, I am weeping. I lean toward of relationality and community. Six women Matthew and point at the box of tissues a few are named across the 239 chapters of the feet away on the cracked concrete floor. “I don’t Book of Mormon,5 a sacred story told without know what’s happening. I’m not a crier, let alone me, at least through the textual lens provided a happy crier.” The pure white cloth that once by the prophets of Mormonism. And if the covered communion—sacrament, as I called eternal polygamy of my forebears is a necessary it—is replaced with a rainbow. The blessing component of the Gospel, I wanted no part of over communion is the same prayer once the promised exaltation and eternal life. 3 reserved for pimply adolescent boys, now For decades, queer Mormons chased after delivered by a woman. I receive the bread and theological crumbs, arguing that the church’s wine from one of the forefathers of today’s doctrine is somehow affirming of transgender queer Mormons and ex-Mormons, a former identity despite the policy of excommunication leader in the defunct gay Mormon church. for those individuals, and that an obscure historical Alienation from the divine had been a practice, the law of adoption, is a backdoor to single continuous thread running through permissible same-gender marriages. I read the tea all my encounters with faith, a seemingly leaves from Temple Square for far too long, praying endless string now unraveled. The tradition for a mere inch of breathing room. Over and over of my birth placed many barriers between again, my hopes were dashed as the walls closed me, a broken-hearted queer girl, and God. in on me. Tired of doctrinal consolation prizes, I An ecclesiastical hierarchy mediated my know that my birth did not signal a declining world, as many of my loved ones were recently taught by their ecclesiastical leaders,6 and that we are not “called to confess and repent of such attitudes and practices.”7 lost for the right to love without regard to gender, all to satisfy the eternal hope for heterosexuality in marriage and to hold the temple-approved dress.

OVER AND OVER AGAIN, MY HOPES WERE DASHED AS THE WALLS CLOSED IN ON ME.

*** I am snapped away from my tearful thoughts by the clanging sounds of metal folding chairs worthiness to interface with the divine, issuing scooting back millimeters as congregants stand for the final hymn of our communion permits for particular forms of worship known as “recommends.” The marginalization of grace service in the mountains. I sob my way through the familiar words, Is there one insidiously implanted constant doubts that I was unclean, dirtied by a sinful sexuality, cursed by who feels unworthy? Is there one who feels whatever soup of genetics, prenatal hormones, abused?... because finally, I do feel worthy. I know that the sacred story not only has epigenetics, and other circumstances left me this space for me, it is about me and for me, as way. Rejecting the Trinitarian God displaced the Jesus, as God journeying with us through the valley much as any other. By the end of the hymn, of the shadow of death. It was looking through a I have given up any pretense that I can sing through my tears. As is tradition, we glass darkly, twice over.

creative nonfiction \\ The Chalice of Grace

remain standing for the prayer of sending forth. As is untraditional, at least for me, I wipe my tears as Joshua stands and speaks to and for a God in whom I finally see my own reflection, created in Her image.8 Endnotes 1.

In the early 1990s, when my parents married, 45 percent of Mormon women wed by their twentieth birthdays. In the late 2010s, I met my statistical fate six months after my nineteenth birthday, just like my mother. Bahr, Stephen J. “Social Characteristics.” The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1992. eom.byu.edu/index.php/Social_ Characteristics 2. Doctrine and Covenants 1:30 (lds). The Doctrine and Covenants is a book of Latterday Saint scripture. Denominations within the Latter-day Saint movement publish distinct versions with differing content and versification, denoted here parenthetically. 3. Doctrine and Covenants 20:75-79 (lds) 4. The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, 1995. lds.org/topics/family-proclamation 5. There are 239 chapters in the lds edition of the Book of Mormon. Other denominations use different versification schemes. Bowen, Donna Lee, and Camille S. Williams. “Women in the Book of Mormon.” The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1992. eom.byu.edu/index.php/Women_in_the_ Book_of_Mormon 6. Oaks, Dallin. “The Plan and the Proclamation.” October 2017 General Conference, 2017. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. lds.org/general-conference/2017 7. Doctrine and Covenants 163:7c (CofC). 8. Genesis 1:27–28.

Maria Hiatt // creative nonfiction

usana me manda a mi cuarto. Como siempre, los viernes a esta hora me siento en mi cama a hacer aviones de papel. Pronto comenzará el sonido de la tele a todo volumen en la sala, por eso ya cerré la puerta. Poder hacer un avión a la perfección no es cualquier tarea, hay que escoger el papel perfecto, debe tener la menor cantidad de arrugas posible pero tampoco debe ser muy rígido, así es más fácil que los dobleces se deshagan. Puedo pasarme horas plegando los papeles de mi cuarto, lo hago hasta quedarme dormido. Eso es bueno, porque los viernes Susana se queda hasta tarde

AVIONES DE PAPEL Carol Stringer

discutiendo con papá y hacen mucho ruido, pero he aprendido a ignorarlos. No hay mejor forma de pasar el tiempo que haciendo aviones de papel. Papá llega todos los viernes unas horas antes de comer, y en lo que esperamos, me deja contarle sobre mi semana, aunque yo sé que se aburre, pero siempre me pregunta sobre la escuela y si me porto bien. Mañana despertará tarde e irá al mercado para comprar el mandado de la semana. Esta vez le hice un avión especial y tendré que apurarme para dárselo, porque en cuanto regresa, irá por su chamarra para volver a salir, y de ahí, ya no sé a qué hora regresará; los domingos vuelve a trabajar al medio día, y no lo veré hasta el siguiente viernes. Sin duda es un modelo espectacular, a las alas les hice unos dobleces extra para que sea más aerodinámico, es más, lo acabo de probar, y debo admitir que es uno de mis mejores ejemplares. II —¡Edgar, es hora de irnos! Me está hablando Susana, me dijo que quería llevarme hoy al parque, pero yo no quiero ir con ella, siempre me habla con una voz temblorosa y cuando me abraza, lo hace con tal fuerza que siento que me desmayo. —¡Ponte tus zapatos, hace sol!... ¡Hay que apurarnos! —¡Ya voy! No puedo encontrar mi zapato izquierdo, no está debajo de mi cama, ni en el ropero. La escucho subir, al menos hoy parece estar de buenas. —Edgar ¿qué sucede?, ¿por qué tardas tanto? —Creo que perdí uno de mis zapatos. —¿Hablas del que está detrás de la llanta de tu bicicleta?

foreign language

usana sends me to my room. Every Friday night at about this time I sit on my bed and I make paper planes. Soon the loud sound of the TV blasting through the house will start; that’s why I’ve already closed the door. Making the perfect airplane is no simple task. One must pick the right paper with the least number of crinkles, but at the same time it can’t be too stiff—that would make the creases more prone to unfolding. I can spend hours folding paper in my room; I even do it until I fall asleep. It’s good in a way, because on Fridays Susana and Dad argue

PAPER PLANES University of New Mexico

until late in the night, and they make a lot of noise, but I’ve learned to ignore them. There is no better way to spend time than to make paper planes. Every Friday Dad gets home a few hours before lunchtime, and while we wait, he lets me tell him about my week, even though I know it bores him. He always asks me about school and if I’ve behaved myself. Tomorrow he’ll sleep in and then go to the market to buy supplies for the week. This time I’ve made him a special plane, and I’ll have to hurry up to give it to him. As soon as he gets back from shopping he´ll get his jacket, only to leave once again, and then I won’t know when he’ll come back. On Sundays he heads off back to work at noon, and after that I won’t see him until next Friday. It is without a doubt a wonderful model. I added some extra folds on its wings to make it more aerodynamic. I’ve even tried it myself, and I must admit, it is one of my best. II “Edgar, it’s time to go!” Susana is calling me. She wants to take me to the park today, but I don’t want to go with her. She always talks with a trembling voice, and when she hugs me, her grip is so strong I feel like I might pass out. “Put your shoes on; it’s a sunny day today! We better hurry up!” “I’m coming!” I can’t find my left shoe. It’s not under the bed or in the closet. I hear her coming upstairs; at least she seems to be in a good mood. “Edgar, what’s the matter? Why are you taking so long?” “I think I lost one of my shoes.” “You mean the one that’s behind the tire of your bicycle? I can see it. Why don’t you take it out today? It’s been a while since you’ve used your bike.”

foreign language

Ahí lo veo. ¿Por qué no la sacas ahora? que ella llama “hotcakes,” dice que es el único buen Hace tiempo que no usas tu bicicleta. invento de los americanos. Me gusta mucho Alina, —No. tiene los ojos azules y cabello oscuro que le llega Es cierto, me gusta mucho sentir cómo hasta la cintura. Habla un poco extraño porque el viento frío corre por mi playera y jala viene de Polonia, donde me ha contado que hace mi cabello hacia atrás. Siento que estoy mucho frío, y donde la gente nunca sonríe y se piloteando uno de mis aviones. Pero tiene queja de todo, como Susana. Siempre tiene con tiempo que empezó a oxidarse, la pintura ella unos dulces que no he podido encontrar en azul se esconde bajo manchas marrones y ningún otro lugar, y por eso le pido que me dé polvorientas. Además, los frenos ya casi no uno más. Nunca lo hace. funcionan, como la luz de mi recámara, y Alina me recuerda a mi mamá, es hermosa y a menos que los apriete muy fuerte, salgo muy amable, y su risa podría llenar a un pueblo volando cuando paro. de felicidad. Por otra parte, Susana la odia, Finalmente llegamos al parque y mientras jamás le habla cuando viene, y la mirada que corro entre los arbustos, Susana se queda le dirige con esos puntos negros que tiene por mirando al horizonte con su risita patética. ojos, podría cortar una lámina de acero. Ocasionalmente voltea a verme y me enseña su Me siento junto a papá antes de que se sonrisa con ese hueco feo entre los dientes, pero vaya porque no siempre está por la mañana una vez sentada, del pecho hacia abajo queda los domingos. De hecho, es extraño que totalmente inmóvil. Tiene la piel de un tono gris haya llegado temprano y que haya traído apagado, los ojos están sumidos en dos cuevas, y a Alina. Normalmente, cuando ella viene, sin importarle el clima, usa su bufanda negra para llega como a las diez o una hora antes de esconder su cuello y haciéndola parecer una tortuga. que papá tenga que irse. Cuando regresamos me prepara un baño y me —Termina de comer, necesitas desayunar hace de cenar. Antes de dormir, hace la única bien para estar fuerte. cosa que no odio de ella. De vez en cuando, saca —Pero ya no tengo hambre, papá. del fondo de su armario un pequeño libro viejo —Hmmm…y yo que te iba a enseñar cómo arreglar la tubería del lavabo para que pudieras ayudar cuando no estoy, pero ya veo que aún estás muy chico, te faltan algunos años. —¡No papá! Mira…ya terminé, quiero aprender. y polvoriento con las hojas amarillas y me lee —Está bien, muchacho, ve por la caja de un poema, o dos, si son cortos. Son las únicas herramientas. veces en que la voz se vuelve dulce y firme, las Pero como siempre, Susana tiene que arruinar manos no le tiemblan y los ojos se iluminan. todo. Aún cree que soy muy niño. Sus poemas hablan de criaturas misteriosas y —No creo que sea una buena idea, David, las lugares lejanos, y me hacen tener muy buenos herramientas son peligrosas, y sus manos no sueños, además, cuando lee, no puede pueden ni si quiera agarrar bien un martillo. llenarme de besos ni llorar. Solo somos su —Déjalo, Susana, es importante que aprenda a voz y yo, en una aventura fantástica. ser hombre, luego le enseñaré a arreglar su bicicleta, ya tiene tiempo que necesita una reparación. III —¡Ja, su bicicleta! Claro, ¿por qué no le cuentas Cuando despierto, veo que Alina está en la cómo llegó a descomponerse?, ¿por qué no le cuentas cocina, preparándonos aquellos panecillos

SOLO SOMOS SU VOZ Y YO, EN UNA AVENTURA FANTÁSTICA.

foreign language \\ Aviones de Papel

“No.” Alina reminds me of Mom. She’s beautiful It is true, though. I love to feel the cold wind and kind, and the sound of her laugh could rushing through my T-shirt and how it pulls my cheer up a village. On the other hand, Susana hair back. It makes me feel as if I’m piloting one of hates Alina. Susana never speaks to her when my planes. But it’s been a while since it’s started she’s around, and the look Susana’s black to rust, brown dusty spots hiding the blue paint beady eyes give her could cut through steel. underneath. Plus, the brakes don’t really work I sit next to Dad before he leaves, since he’s anymore (like the light in my room), and unless not always here on Sunday mornings; in fact, I jam them really hard, stopping is a rough trip. it’s almost odd he got home early and brought We finally make it to the park, and while Alina along. Normally when she comes, they I run through the bushes, Susana just stares arrive at about ten o’clock or an hour before into space with that pathetic smile of hers. Dad has to leave again. Occasionally, she turns to check on me and she shows me her smile with that ugly hole between her teeth. But once she is seated, she is completely immobile from the waist down. Her skin is dull and gray, her eyes are hiding in two dark caves, and regardless of the weather, she wears her black scarf to hide her neck, making her look like a turtle. Once we get back, she gets my bath ready “Finish up eating, you need to have a good and makes me dinner. And right before breakfast to be strong.” going to bed she does the one thing I don’t “But I’m not really hungry anymore, Dad.” hate. She takes a small dusty poetry book “Hmmm… I was going to show you how to fix with yellowed pages out of her closet, and the sink so you could take care of it when I’m not she reads me a poem (or two if they’re short). around, but now I see that you’re still too young; This is the only time her voice is sweet and you need a few more years of growing.” firm, her hands don’t tremble, and her eyes “That’s not true! Look, I’m done. I want to learn.” light up. Her poems tell the tales of magical “Okay, buddy. Go get the tool box.” creatures and faraway lands. The poems But just like clockwork, Susana has to ruin it. make me have the best of dreams, and while She still thinks I’m a kid. she’s reading, she can’t kiss me or cry. It’s just “I don’t think it’s a good idea, David. Tools can her voice and me on a fantastic adventure. be dangerous, and his hands can barely hold a hammer up.” III “Let him be, Susana. It’s important for him When I wake up, I notice Alina is in the kitchen to learn to be a man. Later on, I can show him making those pastries she calls “hotcakes,” the how to fix that bike. It’s been in need of repair one and only good American invention (or so she for a while now.” says). I like Alina very much. She has big blue eyes “Ha, his bike! Sure, why don’t you tell him and a curtain of dark hair that goes down to her how that came to be? Why not tell him about waist. She speaks a bit oddly because she comes the time you threw it against the wall and from Poland where it is always cold and people never then made me move the couch to hide the smile and they complain about everything, just like dent? And since we’re already at it, how about Susana. She always brings along these rare candies I telling him about how you threw his planes haven’t been able to find in stores, so I always ask her away? Listen to yourself! You sound like—” to give me just one more. She never does.

I LOVE TO FEEL THE COLD WIND RUSHING THROUGH MY T-SHIRT AND HOW IT PULLS MY HAIR BACK.

Carol Stringer // short fiction

—No, Edgar, tu padre es peligroso, mira, esto es lo de la vez que la lanzaste contra la pared y que me ha hecho. me hiciste mover el sillón para que no se Se ha quitado la gruesa bufanda que siempre viera el hoyo que dejaste? Y ya que estamos tiene portada, tiene el cuello lleno de marcas en eso, ¿por qué no le cuentas de cuando moradas y amarillas, se sube la blusa para tiraste sus aviones? Escúchate, pareces… descubrir el estómago, y las marcas son todavía —¡No me hables así, Susana! Ése sillón más grandes ahí. que moviste, lo tienes gracias a mi trabajo —Esos te los hiciste tú, solo quieres engañarme duro y constante, yo podría dejarlos sin para que me vaya contigo y no vuelva a ver a Alina. dinero e irme, pero esas no son las acciones —¿Por qué dices eso? Soy tu madre, y solo de un hombre recto. quiero… —¿Quieres hablar de rectitud? Te vas a —Tú no eres mi mamá, ella desapareció hace trabajar lo más lejos posible, solo ves a tu muchos años, tú no me quieres, tú solo estás hijo unas horas a la semana, un día entero si celosa. —Edgar… —¡No! Yo quiero irme con papá y Alina. —Edgar, por favor, vamos a irnos a un mejor lugar, vamos a volar en un avión, en uno de verdad. —¡No! Vete tú, lejos ¡y no regreses! tenemos suerte, sales a jugar cartas con tus amigos —Edgar, por favor… y pierdes demasiado dinero, traes a mujeres Me ha agarrado de la mano. extrañas a mi casa… —¡Suéltame! —¡No metas a Alina en esto! Ella no es un extraño, Me zafo de ella y corro lo más rápido ella es…. posible para escaparme de ella, bajo las Mientras ellos dos discuten, Alina va a la ventana escaleras y salgo de la casa, pero ella me de la sala, la abre y prende un cigarrillo. Los ignora está siguiendo; sigo corriendo, empieza a completamente como yo, los dos sabemos que ver acercarse cada vez más, llego a la esquina cómo ladra el perro del vecino es más interesante. y cruzo la calle; ella viene gritando mi IV nombre y está a solo unos metros atrás. De Papá y Alina se fueron hace unas horas y, desde repente, veo que alguien viene corriendo en entonces, Susana se la ha pasado llorando en nuestra dirección. Es papá, y en cuanto me su cuarto. No es novedad, suele hacer eso los reconoce, para. domingos por la tarde, pero esta vez lleva un par —¡Edgar, no! ¡No te acerques a él! de horas así. Seguramente está celosa de Alina, —¡Papá papá! es muy bella y papá y yo la queremos mucho. Me acerco cada vez más y veo que empieza a Sí, debe ser eso, otro más de sus caprichos. De sonreír. repente, escucho que se para y momentos —¡Edgar, no! después oigo sus pasos acercarse a mi puerta; Siento una mano sobre el hombro, me ha la abre y con los ojos rojos e hinchados me dice: alcanzado, pero logro librarme. Sigo corriendo —Edgar, tenemos que irnos. sin ver atrás, mientras él saca algo de su bolsillo. V Su sonrisa enseña los dientes, apunta y dispara. —Por favor entiende, tu padre no es quien

POR FAVOR ENTIENDE, TU PADRE NO ES QUIEN TÚ CREES.

tú crees. —Mi papá se preocupa por mi y me quiere enseñar muchas cosas.

foreign language \\ Aviones de Papel

“Don’t talk to me like that, Susana! That couch “You’re not my mom. She disappeared you had to move—you have that thanks to my hard years ago. You don’t even like me. You’re work. I could just leave both of you penniless, but just jealous.” those wouldn’t be the actions of a righteous man.” “Edgar—” “So, you want to talk about righteousness? You “No! I want to go with Dad and Alina.” go to work as far away as possible; you barely see “Edgar, please, we’re going to go off to your son a few hours a week, a day if we’re lucky; a better place. We’ll even get to fly in an you stay out late playing cards and lose way too airplane, a real one.” “No! You go away—far away. And don’t ever much money; you bring strange women home—” “Don’t bring Alina into this! She’s no stranger, come back!” she’s….” “Edgar, please—” She grabs me by the hand. While they keep going at it, Alina walks over “Let go of me!” to the living room window to open it and light I escape her grip and run away from her as fast a cigarette. She ignores them completely, just as I can. I go down the stairs and exit the house, like me. We both know that watching the but she´s still following me. I keep on running, neighbor’s dog is way more entertaining. and she keeps getting closer and closer. I get to IV the corner and cross the street. She’s screaming Alina and Dad left a few hours ago, and since out my name, and now she’s only a few meters then Susana has been crying in her room. behind. I see someone else running towards us. It’s It is no novelty—she tends to do so on Dad, and when he recognizes me, he stops. Sunday afternoons—but this time it’s been “Edgar, no! Don’t get any closer to him!” going on for hours. She’s probably jealous “Dad! Dad!” of Alina; she is very pretty, and Dad and I’m getting closer and I see a smile on his face. I love her. Yeah, it’s probably just jealousy, “Edgar, no!” another one of her whims. I suddenly hear her coming up the stairs. Moments later, I hear her footsteps coming closer to my door. She opens it, and with red puffy eyes she says: “We need to leave, Edgar.”

SHE THEN RAISES HER BLOUSE, REVEALING EVEN BIGGER BRUISES.

V “Please understand; your father isn’t who you I feel a hand on my shoulder; she’s caught think he is.” up to me but I manage to break free. I keep “My dad actually cares about me and wants running without looking back. Meanwhile, he to show me tons of new things.” takes something out of his back pocket. He “No, Edgar, your father is a dangerous man; shows his toothy grin, aims, and shoots. look at what he’s done to me.” She’s taken off her thick scarf that she’s always had attached to her. Her neck is covered in yellow and purple spots. She then raises her blouse, revealing even bigger bruises. “You did that to yourself; you only want to trick me into leaving with you so I can’t see Alina anymore.” “Why do you say that? I’m your mother. I only want what’s—”

Carol Stringer // short fiction

NOT LIKE THE MOVIES pen and ink on tonal paper, 12"Ã&#x2014;18" Sidney Abernathy, University of New Mexico

visual art

randfather sat the boy down with a piping hot mug of cocoa in front of the blazing fire in his sea cottage. It was Tristan’s thirteenth birthday, and Grandfather had promised he’d tell the story of Star’s Calling. It was every boy’s and girl’s rite of passage to hear the story, and Tristan had been eager to hear it as soon as he’d been able to speak. The fire logs cast moving shadows on the walls of the sea cottage as Grandfather took a seat in the armchair with the plaid blanket draped over it. Tristan sat cross-legged in front of him on the floor. “Lovely night for a mug of cocoa,” Grandfather said, grabbing a spoonful of sugar from the sugar jar on his side table. “Perfect night for a Star’s Calling story.”

STAR’S CALLING Amy Sara Lim, Chapman University

“Was it just like this on your Star’s Calling night?” Tristan asked. He put the cocoa to his lips but could barely taste it—not because Grandfather’s cocoa wasn’t richer than any in the Northern Hemisphere, but because Tristan’s tongue seemed to have gone numb with excitement. The sea outside could be heard faintly, giving the night a restless air. “It was blazing hot on my Star’s Calling night, my boy,” Grandfather said. “I was born in midsummer.” Tristan nodded and took another sip of his cocoa. Any second now, he would find out the truth about love and life and the stars. He waited for Grandfather to pull out an old piece of parchment or a journal, maybe. How could he remember the story of Star’s Calling just off the top of his head? Grandfather took the plaid blanket and draped it across his legs. Tristan knew it had belonged to Grandmother and then her daughter—his mother. But after she drowned in a boating accident when he was only five, Grandfather had taken it back. He’d said it helped remind him that the two most important women in his life would always be with him in his heart. “It’s been eight years since Lydia’s calling,” Grandfather said, patting his hand over the blanket. “And twenty-five since your Grandmother’s calling.” Tristan felt his chest beat extra fast, but said nothing. Grandfather continued, “Tristan, do you know how the stars and planets work?” Tristan recounted all that he knew from his academy lessons—that the stars and planets were brilliant bursts of light in the sky, that they moved across the sky in

short fiction

formation—and all about the equinoxes Grandfather inclined his head. “Indeed it is about and solstices. that, but it is about so much more—so much more Grandfather took a sip of cocoa and that I had to start with the theories of old Pythagoras. pushed his horn-rimmed glasses further I have a book on them if you want to—” up his nose. “Ah, yes, but how about the Tristan vehemently shook his head. harmony of spheres?” “Ah, well then, I guess you’ll have to be patient “What does this have to do with Star’s and listen to my story. Take another sip of your Calling?” Tristan asked, getting impatient. cocoa before it gets cold. “The heavens are music, my boy, and we spend our whole lives writing songs. We each have our Star’s Song inside of us.” “But why?” Tristan asked. He and every child he’d ever known had been working on this project known as Star’s Song, but he never fully understood why. Every child in the academy had to learn multiple instruments. Grandfather chuckled and pointed to the Some played piano, violin, trumpet, or flute. harpsichord in the corner of the room. It sat with Others played instruments like the triangle, its spindly ebony legs propped against the wall. the drums, or the xylophone. The teachers “You enjoy music, don’t you?” Tristan nodded. never told him what to play, just how to “Harmonic intervals. They come from the planets.” play the instruments. He was supposed to “No, they come from the pattern of keys you press be listening for something he created that on the—” felt right, but he wasn’t sure what felt right. Grandfather’s mouth twitched at the side. “Yes, but “You weren’t alive, but your grandmother why do you press the keys you press? Because of an and I used to play music on nights like ancient secret of intervals and harmony of spheres.” these. We were both lucky enough to have Grandfather began to tell him of the harmony discovered our Star’s Song years ago, in of spheres. At first, Tristan’s mind couldn’t make academy. I was practicing the harpsichord sense of it all. “Harmonies,” Grandfather said, one day, like I always did during lunch, “were created by the divine art of mathematics. because I didn’t have many friends—and Mathematics indicated that harmonies were I heard this sweet flute tone floating over to all about proportions. The Earth is a sphere, me through the hall. As we kept playing, I the planets are spheres, and their perfect realized that every note we played, whether it proportional distances from each other create was in unison or staggered, was sweet.” intervals, which create harmonies.” Tristan’s eyes widened. “They harmonized.” “Old Pythagoras,” Grandfather said, putting Grandfather smiled. “Yes, my boy, our Star’s a finger up in the air. “He was the one who Songs harmonized. I remember I kept hoping taught us that the planets and their distances the person playing the flute was still there after from one another create the eight-tone our song ended. My shoes nearly fell off my feet octave. Music, the heavens, the stars—all as I raced down that hallway. I nearly got scolded of it is connected.” by the headmaster, mind you, but there she was.” “Grandfather…,” Tristan said, unsure if Grandfather’s eyes glossed over as he looked into the Star’s Calling story had even started yet. the crackling fire as if he could see her there. “Sitting “I thought you said Star’s Calling was about in that gilded wooden chair, her long fingers delicate who I needed to look for in my life.” over the flute in her hands, her blue dress, her eyes.”

THE HEAVENS ARE MUSIC, MY BOY, AND WE SPEND OUR WHOLE LIVES WRITING SONGS.

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short fiction \\ Star’s Calling

long sip of his cocoa to avoid the question. Grandfather’s eyes looked big and bright, the way “She died. She had her Star’s Calling. they often were when he stared into the night sky. “And this is where I tell you why it’s called “Have you found your Star’s Song yet?” he asked a Star’s Calling, although you may have Tristan. Tristan’s fingers twisted around his sweater. figured it out already,” Grandfather said. “No.” Tristan put his mug down on the floor. “We “You have plenty of time. I didn’t find mine till I are made of stardust. The stuff that makes up was nearly eighteen. Your mother didn’t find hers the stars,” he said, his hands flitting in the till she was twenty, but my goodness, when she air as if pointing out stars in the sky, “is in did, her violin piece was exquisite. Your father our own bodies.” He put a hand to his chest. was a lucky man.” “But I have to find mine soon, right?” Tristan “When we die, or have our Star’s Calling, we return to the star that bore us. And the myth asked. “I have to find my Star’s Song so that I is that the night we return to that star, our can find the harmonizing one? What if I end Star’s Song plays, though we could never hear it up like Aunt Sophie who never found her because space is a vacuum.” Star’s Song?” The thoughts were starting to gather in Grandfather’s eyes twinkled. “I have a Tristan’s mind, and he had the sudden urge to feeling you’ll find one.” cry. He could feel the stiffening of his nose and Tristan was quiet, but his mind was the beads of tears already forming in his eyes. He reeling. It was clear—the person whose might’ve only been five, but he remembered well Star’s Song harmonized with yours was the night that his father had come home with his the person you were supposed to spend hands on his head and his clothes torn and wet. the rest of your life with. It made him He sensed it about twenty minutes before, when he want to hop on the sloped cushion chair could’ve sworn that the wind was playing the tune in front of Grandfather’s harpsichord and of his mother’s violin Star’s Song. He knew what his start composing immediately. Time was grandfather was saying was true. running, running too quickly. Aunt Sophie was nearly fifty and lived alone in her sea cottage. Tristan didn’t want to be like that. “It’s better to be without a Star’s Song than to be with one that doesn’t harmonize with your own,” Grandfather said, as if he could hear Tristan’s thoughts. By now, Grandfather had put his mug down on the side table and was leaning forward to regard Tristan’s slight “Is my father going to be trillions of stars panic. “You can be with someone who doesn’t apart from her star?” Tristan asked. “And what have a Star’s Song to complement yours. Plenty of me?” of people do it, though not many.” Grandfather took the plaid blanket “Why? Is it because they don’t love each other?” from his lap and gently wrapped it around Grandfather looked grim. “No, my boy, anyone can fall in love if given the time and opportunity. Tristan’s shoulders. “Your father and mother had complementary Star’s Songs. No, it’s because when it’s their Star’s Calling, Their stars are in the same solar system. A they’ll be trillions of stars apart for certain and binary solar system to be exact. And your never see each other again. star will be right next to theirs. Children “Do you know what happened to your mother after form perfect intervals with their parents. the boating accident, Tristan?” Tristan took an extra

DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR MOTHER AFTER THE BOATING ACCIDENT, TRISTAN?

Amy Sara Lim // short fiction

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The universe works in familial patterns. translated up into space where Grandmother lay You have nothing to fear, my boy.” on her star, listening to her love play her the song Tristan wiped his face on the blanket. It that had fused them together when they were so smelled like hickory smoke and the days young. he spent with his father on the beach before “I hope when I find my Star’s Song,” said Tristan, his mother had been killed in the storm so moved by his Grandfather’s playing that he felt that wrecked the boat. He was still unable to the tears brim in his eyes again, but this time out of speak. happiness, “that my girl will play her Star’s Song Grandfather noticed his silence and got up for me, and I’ll find her. How will I know if it’s to move to the misshapen harpsichord seat. really her?” With fingers that were wrinkled and stiff with Grandfather smiled. “You’ll know, my boy. old age in some places, he pressed down on the You’ll just feel it.” keys he’d played many years ago to harmonize with the girl in the blue dress he would follow up into space. Tristan got up, moved to the bay windows, and sat there, looking out at the sea and the night sky as Grandfather’s music drifted over to him slowly and then all at once. The melody was beautiful and simple. A little too simple, for it felt incomplete, and Tristan knew it was because there was supposed to be a flute gliding over it. “Look!” he said, caught by something he’d seen in the sky. “That star, over there, below the moon! It’s burning so brightly; I can barely look at it!” Grandfather smiled to himself but did not move to the window. “She can hear me, my boy,” he said, tears falling down his wrinkled face. “And she’s singing her Star’s Song, too. We just can’t hear it.” Tristan got up from the window and scrambled over to his grandfather at the harpsichord. Grandmother was out there; she was the star burning most brightly tonight, and neither he nor his grandfather could hear her. “If we take the harpsichord outside, maybe we’ll be able to hear it.” His Grandfather played the last few bars of his Star’s Song. “We don’t need to hear it. We feel it.” And Grandfather was right. From the armchair, Tristan watched Grandfather’s whole body move toward the harpsichord, pressing down on each key as if he knew that the intervals he played were being

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UNDER THE DOG STAR Carolyn Janecek, Westminster College

Relief and regret live in our pores. Summer is coming home to fever dreams of childhood, forced to remember how we sweat through the sheets, pant like dogs. Whoever we were in winter will not last; we know we will be forced back. Because a dog never forgets a scent. Summer smells: sweat-musk, blue-raspberry, grandmaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s banana-crĂ¨me, nylon swimsuits, aerosol-tanner, aloe for inevitable burns. Skin peels back summer simulacra. This is not a holy season, not a coming of age. Summer lolls its tongue through canine teeth. Remember how home felt like a muzzle? Memory swelters; know that dogs cannot sweat. A closed mouth foams over, rabid.

poetry

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AFTERWORD

Amaris Ketcham, faculty advisor

couple years ago, I went to visit my brother in Japan. I knew one Japanese word before I went: konnichiwa. During my two weeks there, I heard another word so often that I learned it well: dame. I would start to stand or sit or drink or touch or wander and suddenly, someone would yell at me, exasperated, “Dame, dame, dame!” Don’t, don’t, don’t! In my bumbling Western way, I started to learn a lot of rules, and I started to think about rules. From the minute we begin to comprehend language, we learn rules. Don’t put that in your mouth. Don’t touch the stovetop. Don’t stick out your tongue at your grandmother. The rules only grow more complicated the older we get. Don’t use that fork for your salad. Don’t put glass in the recycling. Don’t follow an ambulance within three seconds distance. Sure, some rules we need to function well as a society. Other rules beg to be bent or even broken. This second class of rules is more akin to a set of accepted standards. They are there to guide you in making something acceptable. Maybe you want to make yourself acceptable in another country. Maybe you want your writing or your art to be acceptable. Maybe you want your magazine to be acceptable. But there’s a difference between creating something acceptable and making a masterpiece. In the arts, you want to start learning the rules as well as when, how, and why to break them. As jazz composer Charles Mingus once said, “You can’t improvise off nothing, man.” There are lots of rules to make designs acceptable. Don’t use a lot of reverse text. Don’t use angled columns that might hinder readability. Don’t break the spread! And whatever you do, don’t use Comic Sans. Dame, dame, dame! You will see in this year’s edition, we broke a lot of rules. Some weren’t even really rules, but standards we’d inherited from previous staffs and their preferences. Funny how one person’s preference can seem to become a rule over time. And yet, this year’s staff voted unanimously for this bold design, which has never happened before. Don’t worry—we did not use Comic Sans. A wonderfully fearless, daring, and skilled editorial staff led these rule breakers. These three editors have been a great team, willing to go the extra mile to fulfill their duties and to best assist the staff in learning small press management, graphic design, arts and literature assessment, copyediting, and of course, Adobe InDesign. Josh Rysanek, the editor in chief, is an elegant writer and breathtaking designer who never fails to be thoughtful, encouraging everyone to take it to the next level. Tessa Chrisman, the managing editor, is a natural leader with an enviable ability to organize anything in a better way. Hers is a wonderful balance of an analytical and creative mind. Paul Talley, the digital editor, effuses a quiet charm, gentle leadership, and attentiveness to both the needs of the staff and the production of the magazine. Without them, this magazine wouldn’t be what you hold in your hands. I’m sure they’d join me in reminding you to break a rule every once in a while.

CONTRIBUTORS Sidney Abernathy // University of New Mexico Sidney is an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico, currently studying English and philosophy. Her extracurricular pursuits include creating visual art, reading, dancing, and playing the ukulele.

Jadie Adams // Westminster College

Not Like the Movies p. 98

Jadie Adams is a senior at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. She studies math, physics, and computer science. But when she is not up to her ears in numbers and logic, she enjoys making art and writing poetry. Her creativity is greatly inspired by the Wasatch Mountains she grew up exploring. Blizzard p. 61

Lukas Armstrong-Laird // Montana State University

Born and raised in Vermont, Lukas is currently a senior studying film at Montana State University. This is the Bathroom—wrhc award p. 70

Rachel Baxter // University of Nevada—Las Vegas Rachel Baxter is a full-time student, classicist, dog/cat lover, and poet. She spends her free time trying (and failing) to consume responsible amounts of caffeine, filling her journals, and falling in love with dead languages over and over again. Horrors for Highways—wrhc award p. 58

Amanda Becker // University of Arizona

Amanda is a third-year student at the University of Arizona Honors College studying English, ecology, and evolutionary biology. She loves Harry Potter books, Batman movies, and writing in her free time. Rain Dance p. 83

Allison Borgonah // University of Colorado—Denver

Allison is currently studying sciences at the University of Colorado—Denver. She has not decided a major, but she hopes to declare one soon. Her interests include biology and animation, and she aspires to create an animated film or comic franchise in the future. Just a Little Lost p. 32

Nicolena Boucher // Montana State University—Bozeman

Nicolena Boucher is an English major in her sophomore year at Montana State University. On a normal day, you will find her in the library trying to study but probably daydreaming. She enjoys reading, petting dogs, and marching with the Spirit of the West Marching Band. The Generator—wrhc award p. 84

Jon Carrillo // Westminster College

Jon Carrillo is a psychology and philosophy double major from Westminster College. He has many hobbies including writing poetry, short stories, and essays, and sculpting. Head and Hand p. 37

Joshua Chang // University of Nevada—Reno

Joshua Chang uses painting as a way to connect to his groovy grandma whom he never got to meet. Growing up in Las Vegas meant he was never far away from a thriving art scene that ranged from fellow students to professionals—shout out to Mabel, Delgado, and Kurt. Cotton Candy Coward p. 40 To Sheehy—wrhc award p. 36

Jennifer Cummings // University of Arizona

Jennifer Cummings is a student at the University of Arizona Honors College studying French language and literature with a minor in creative nonfiction. She enjoys reading, writing, and baking. In the future she hopes to be a librarian or archivist. Reason—wrhc award p. 14

Ryan Drendel // Missouri Southern State University Ryan Drendel studies English and Spanish at Missouri Southern State University, where he edits the university literary magazine Bordertown. He also competes on the Missouri Southern cross country and track teams. Ryan listens to Julien Baker when he writes. Suggested Writing—staff choice award p. 30

Jack Ellmer // Fort Lewis College

Jack Ellmer is in his second year at Fort Lewis College and is majoring in writing. He believes his purpose in life is to inspire wonder and eat really good street food. Serenity is Shared p. 6

Tamara Faour // University of Northern Colorado

Tamara E. Faour is pursuing an English degree at the University of Northern Colorado. The eldest of seven children, she passes her days catching butterflies, cracking rocks, and sharpening her pencil. Cordial Cherries p. 73

Abigayle Goldstein // University of New Mexico

Abigayle Goldstein is a senior at the University of New Mexico studying English literature and language with the goal of teaching multilingual students in the New Mexico public school system. She has always been passionate about writing and wants to share her work and passion with others. Incontinence, Depression, and Empathy p. 46

Keegan Grady // Montana State University

Keegan Grady was born and raised in Belgrade, Montana—a place he’s still enamored with. He was lucky to be raised by parents with excellent taste. Dry Creek Sonnet p. 62 Illuminations p. 1

Youssef Helmi // Florida State University

Youssef Helmi is a junior at Florida State University where he studies creative writing, political science, and Arabic. His work has been featured in Cleaver. When not writing, he enjoys powerlifting, watching Studio Ghibli films, and musing over the musical merits of death metal. Ketsui, The Town the Clouds Left Forever p. 66

Savannah Hernandez // University of Arizona

Savannah is a junior at the University of Arizona studying creative writing and psychology. She enjoys writing poetry and short fiction. Sieve p. 39

Maria Hiatt // University of Utah

Maria Hiatt is a student studying political science at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where she is an activist for animal rights and against lgbt conversion therapy. The Chalice of Grace p. 87

Carolyn Janecek // Westminster College

Carolyn Janecek is a student at Westminster College studying English and philosophy. She is the managing editor of the literary magazine Ellipsis. She works as a consultant at the Westminster College Writing Center and volunteers as an honors peer mentor. Under the Dog Star p. 103

Jacqueline Jolley // University of Utah

Jackie is a junior studying linguistics, Russian, and psychology at the University of Utah. She is the youngest of five siblings and a first-generation college student. Just Keep Laughing p. 53

Connor Lee-Wen // Brigham Young University

After moving to Utah and picking up his first “real” camera, Connor found photography to be a meditative art that allowed him to live in the present. When he is not studying economics or spending time with his fiancé, Connor can be found walking around campus, camera in hand, ready for anything he comes across. Knowledge Enfolding p. 8

Amy Sara Lim // Chapman University

Amy Sara Lim is an all-around artist who is constantly creating herself. In her spare time, she listens to music while stuck in LA traffic. Star’s Calling p. 99

Claire Liu // University of Southern California Claire is a freshman at the University of Southern California as an international relations and economics double major. She started painting in middle school and is passionate about anything art and design related. In her free time, she enjoys listening to music, reading, playing soccer, and sleeping. PoPo—editors’ choice award p. 25

Emma Lowe // Snow College

Emma Lowe is a person who prefers her full name, fights for the rights of herself and others, and wears too many pairs of mom jeans that do not fit her correctly. She enjoys travel, the art of public speaking, and capturing the moments of her life with cameras. Curiosity p. 63

Sarah Manriquez // University of Alaska—Fairbanks

Sarah is an art major with a concentration in photography and is pursuing a bachelor of fine arts at the University of Alaska—Fairbanks. She was born in Carson City, Nevada and raised in Honduras on the island of Roatán. Traveling, culture, and language have been large parts of her life. A Silent Dream p. 79

Lara Meintjes // Long Beach City College

Lara Lee Meintjes is a South African and American artist and anthropology student currently living in glorious Long Beach, California. She has inky fingers and peculiar hair. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Latin American Art and in group and solo shows on four continents and counting. Every Time I Open My Mouth in Public—staff choice award p. 69

Qi’Ang Meng // University of Pittsburgh

Qi’Ang Meng is currently a sophomore undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. He is both the author and the translator of the poem. 中途 (Halfway) p. 26

Erin Mitchell // University of New Mexico

Erin Mitchell is currently a second-year business student at the University of New Mexico. She enjoys photography, music, and making memories. Drowning p. 65

Leslie Nuckoles // Southern Oregon University

Leslie grew up in the Columbia River Gorge and is grateful to have been surrounded by beautiful people and beautiful places ever since. She is currently studying pre-physical therapy at Southern Oregon University. Blackstrap Molasses p. 24

Shelby Petty // University of California—Irvine

Shelby loves to be in nature, and one of her favorite hobbies is photography. When she is not busy with classes or playing for the uc—Irvine women’s soccer team, she enjoys surfing, hiking, and skiing. Shelby is majoring in business economics and hopes to work in the finance industry. Ghostly Visions p. 23

Donald Roberts // University of New Mexico

Incredibly mediocre. Future architect. Photography in the present. Placid and Pink—wrhc award

Maya Roe // College of the Atlantic

p. 72

Dion’s or Death

p. 28

Maya Roe was raised in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and currently lives on Mount Desert Island. She enjoys swimming in the ocean at night, making apple pie from scratch, and finding books of poetry at thrift stores. My Daughter’s Ocean—editors’ choice award p. 50

Bryson Schritter // University of New Mexico

Bryson is an undeclared junior at the University of New Mexico. He has a persisting passion for spreading laughter and amusement. Though very personable, he opts to express his more complex outlooks and ideas through his art and writing. Surreality p. 29

Kaitlynn Skinner // Metropolitan State University of Denver Kate is currently an undergraduate seeking a degree in chemistry with a concentration in criminalistics. She wants to pursue a career in a multidisciplinary science—such as cosmochemistry—or work in the field as a forensic scientist. She is also interested in charcoal illustration, acrylic painting, and playing music. Twilight Zone p. 33 Mars p. 60

Samuel Slonaker // University of Arizona

He knits. He writes. He does lab work. He has no idea what comes next. Maybe he’ll get his septum pierced. Jacking off in the Shower then Feeling Nothing p. 38

Jennifer Spong // Dixie State University

As a kid, Jennifer thought she would grow up to be an artist, a nomadic farmer, and/or an astrophysicist. As an adult, Jennifer is more confused than ever. Double p. 68

Abigail Steffen // University of Alaska—Fairbanks

Abigail was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago before moving to Fairbanks, Alaska for her studies. Abigail has always been passionate about photography and its ability to capture a moment. She hopes to use her photography to bring to light the effects of climate change to a wide audience. Tanzanian Daze p. 81

Carol Stringer // University of New Mexico

Carol Stringer was born and raised in the city of Xalapa, Mexico. She is currently a music major at the University of New Mexico and soon to be a major in languages. Reading has always been an important part of her life, but only recently has she begun writing prose and short stories daily. Aviones de Papel (Paper Planes) p. 92

Joshua Tise // University of New Mexico

Josh Tise is a lifelong resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is inspired by the versatility of language, haunted by pop culture, and is excited to use writing to explore places of contradiction and darkness—as long as there’s a flashlight handy. A Few Moments of Convergence p. 9

Elisabeth Vehling // University of Southern California

Elisabeth is double majoring in neuroscience and philosophy and intends to double minor in communication design and consumer behavior. In addition to painting, she enjoys writing poetry, composing music, and playing club beach volleyball. Elisabeth is originally from San Jose, California. Deconstructed Face p. 35 Drip Woman p. 57

Rachel Watson // Columbia College

Rachel Watson is a current studio art major and computer science minor at Columbia College. They hope to go into graphic design after graduation. Hair p. 82

Gabrielle Zweifel // University of Utah

Gabrielle grew up in rural southern Utah, and now attends the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. An upcoming junior, she is majoring in English and Asian studies with hopes to write creative fiction for a living someday. Funeral p. 41

Scribendi faculty advisor: Amaris Ketcham wrhc literature judges, University of Nevadaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Las Vegas:

Jaclyn Costello Heather Lusty Maria Jerinic-Pravica

wrhc art judges, University of New Mexico:

Michael Cook Megan Jacobs Noah McLaurine

Western Regional Honors Council (wrhc) National Collegiate Honors Council (nchc) Dr. Gregory Lanier, Dean of the unm Honors College

SPECIAL unm Honors College faculty unm Honors College staff

unm Honors Alumni Association

Foreign language copy editors, University of New Mexico: Santiago Vaquera-Vasquez Xiang He Scribendi office managers: Vincent Tafoya Rowan Roberts Teambuilding workshop leader: Danielle Gilliam Starline Printing representative: Rebecca Maher Julia Gilroy Tarynn Weeks

The John and Eunice Davidson Fund Our fellow campus publications: Best Student Essays Conceptions Southwest The Daily Lobo Our generous silent auction donors: Michael Aranda, Santa Fe Olive Oil Okmi Blemel Cullen Boardman Mick Burson Chic J. Designs Leslie Donovan Kara Filipas Sheena Gonzales Shana Hack, Moon Rabbit Toys

THANKS Keif Henley Megan Jacobs Deborah Jennings, Uptown Lamps and Shades Jinja Bar & Bistro Mr. Jun, Kitch Cleaners Lea Kelley Lauren (Aja Lopez) Lensic Performing Arts Center Antonette Martinez Bob Montoya Zainab Oyeku Brian Polgar, Doodletâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Carlos Ramirez, Visit Taos Stephanny Rodriguez Adam Roybal, unm Championship Golf Course Jamie Rust Angela M. Walters Kate Wheeler, Savory Spice Shop Astrid Tuttle Winegar

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