SKIRMISHER 2019-2020
SKIRMISHER 2019-2020
Skirmisher Staff Editors In Chief Campbell Leonard Sylvia Carter-Smith
Student Editors Aviva Nathan Mateo Sella Ian Day Atlas Power Charlotte Thompson Fionnuala Moore Jude Wallach Lilia Holladay Sarah Boyle
Design and Production Editor Becky Anderson Faculty Advisor Leslie Smith
Special Thanks To Paper Tiger
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Table of Contents 6
Collin Alsop, ‘22, Digital Photo
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Sophia Froehlich-Gerke, ‘23, Freestyle Poem
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Bettina Broyles, ‘20, Freestyle Poem
Cooper Francis, ‘23, Silver Gelatin Print Bess McAlpin, ‘21, Silver Gelatin Print
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Atlas Power, ‘22, Freestyle Poem
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Hakan Gurler-Hatch, ‘22, Silver Gelatin Print
12 14 15 16 17 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 34 35 37 38 39 40
Alexandra Walpin, ‘23, Freestyle Poem
Atlas Power, ‘22, Charcoal Sketch on Paper
Andrew Lehman, ‘22, Cavalier-Inspired Light Lyric Poem Angelina Miller, ‘20, Historical Fiction Lola Kark, ‘23, Digital Photo
Max Shapiro, ‘23, Silver Gelatin Print Aviva Nathan, ‘23, Short Story
Ajax Noe, ‘21, Siver Gelatin Print
Emma Tsosie, ‘21, Digital Drawing
Campbell Leonard, ‘20, Narrative Nonfiction Eitan Mor, ‘22, Digital Photo Series
Charlotte Thompson, ‘22, Horror Narrative Cody Babcock, ‘20, Digital Photo
Grace Vivian, ‘22, Silver Gelatin Print Laine Redman, ‘22, Freeform Poem
Comfort “Coco” Randolph, ‘21, Silver Gelatin Photogram Emma Lawrence, ‘20, Manifesto Poem
Jude Wallach, ‘21, Mixed Media Sculpture with Digital Collage Overlay Emma Meyers, ‘23, Satirical Short Story
Sherab “Shay Shay” Namchak, ‘21, Silver Gelatin Print Sterling Wheeler, ‘23, Digital Photo
Evin Axelrod, ‘22, Iambic Pentamenter Poem Margaret Tambke, ‘21, Oil Painting
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Tucker Hastings, ‘20, Black and White Film
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Alec Hardy, ‘23, Silver Gelatin Print
42 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 57 58 59 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 69 70 71 72 73 74 75
Fionnuala Moore, ‘23, Historical Vignette Lucy Amarel, ‘23, Digital Photo Jack Entwisle, ‘23, Short Story
Revely Rothschild, ‘21, Pen on Paper Sketch Victoria “Tori” Gossum, ‘20, Poem Sam Cooper, ‘21, Poem
Liam Mooney, ‘23, Silver Gelatin Print AJ Kurth, ‘21, Digital Photo
Lillia Holladay, ‘23, Short Vignette Dessa Monat, ‘23, Digital Photo
Mahko Haozous, ‘22, Horror Short Story Asher Nathan, ‘23, Digital Photo
Miles Thompson, ‘21, Collagraph Mateo Perez, ‘20, Short Story
Abbie Francis, ‘20, Black and White Film Leyla Sharples, ‘20, Ceramic Sculptures Mateo Sella, ‘20, Freeform Poem
Sophia Koolpe, ‘20, Personal Narrative
Hunter Gutierrez, ‘21, Silver Gelatin Print Maddox England, ‘21, Digital Photo Sarah Boyle, ‘22, Vignette Series
Sylvia Carter-Smith, ‘20, Found Object Collagraph Vickie Hsin, ‘20, Silver Gelatin Print
Sylvia Carter-Smith, ‘20, Personal Narrative Tabatha Hirsch, ‘20, Song Lyrics
Iris Teague, ‘23, Silver Gelatin Print
Noquisi Christian-Smith, ‘20, Silver Gelatin Print Sydney Manningham, ‘20, Freeform Letter
Cover Photo: Collin Alsop, ‘22, Digital Photo
Illustrations by Sylvia Carter-Smith and Campbell Leonard 4
The New Voice and New Vision awards are granted to two artists who are submitting to the Skirmisher for the first time, show promise as an up-and-coming writer and visual artist, and whose submissions are stellar.
The Skirmisher Staff would like to commend the following students for their achievements in creative expression within the mediums of writing and visual art :
Recipients: New Vision Award: Alec Hardy, ‘22, Shadowboy New Voice Award: Jack Entwisle, ‘23, A Red Scarf
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Winter’s Reflection Collin Alsop
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Throw Me Long Bettina Broyles
Poetry is a silly thing
running around me dancing in circles
it comes within my grasp for a second
forming sweet water lilies out of slippery thoughts am I dreaming am I awake
or a little bit of both
mindless thoughts come skipping like stones through the elegant arches of my rotted mind are they mine
or do I pick them from the small stars in the sky carrying them like a bouquet of wishing coins tossing them into a bottomless well
hoping something will be thrown back
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The Shadows Sophia Froehlich-Gerke
The moon is bright
The shadows of her mind
The trees dance with immeasurable mirth
And coldly slit her throat
Tonight it is blinding
Their leaves making the light glimmer The animals cry with hope
Dancing with an old, familiar love The stars smile down at you
And twinkle with a message of joy With no melancholy in the air
Take the moon
Let her blood run silver And red in the streets
They let the wolves and tigers loose And let them consume
And tear her hope to pieces
The world soothes your worries
The shadows of her mind
The world is bright and glowing
The ones she released
For on this glorious night
And yet,
Her world is dark
Her world is hidden
And her world is dancing With malicious shadows The wolves howl with Insatiable hunger
The trees shrink in fear And she does as well
As she hears the tigers coming
As she feels her hope dwindling Being consumed by the world
Greedily drinking in her despair
She cannot find the eyes of her youth The eyes that would see
The moon and her dazzling smile 8
The ones she created
And the ones she can’t stop Now that they are free
Now that her hope is gone
Now that she can’t summon the courage To trap them
To encase them in a prison Outside of her mind
Now that they have made Her mind their home Made her mind Her prison.
Mountain View Cooper Francis
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Untitled Bess McAlpin
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Wilting Roses Atlas Power
I do not know what to write of . . . I wish to write of roses,
Specifically the wilted roses That I have in my room.
However, it is not fitting just right.
Perhaps this is because my mind is stuck on you, And the words that flew From your fingers,
And landed upon my screen.
Still yet, my mind is focused on another, Someone that makes me smile. I like smiling.
And I hope you do, too, And I hope one day You’ll smile again,
Because you are worth it.
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The Wrong Note Alexandra Walpin
Fourth finger goes to G, not A, and the left-hand gets lost because her hands have started to shake.
She pictures herself in front of an audience and wonders how she can fix this disaster before it is time to perform. Blurry notes run before her eyes as she scans the music, searching for where she went wrong.
She notes absentmindedly that hot tears are running down her cheeks, and she tries to brush them away before beginning again.
Faster. Again.
Faster.
She pounds the keys in pure fury and fear.
The girl is locked into a pattern, unable to go slower.
She can barely remember what the music sounded like when it wasn’t this blazing speed, when it wasn’t full of slips and mistakes and anger.
She can’t stop herself from going again and again and again, faster and faster and faster.
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Mall Hakan Gurler-Hatch
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Skeleboi Atlas Power
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The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place Andrew Lehman
A warning to Howard Carter Based on Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”
The grave’s a fine and private place
A thousand slaves have built my space My face is gold and lapis bright
It gleams throughout immortal night My tomb is like the sea, deep blue A tide of wealth ensnaring you You come to kill eternal rest
To breach and steal with fame your quest But know that you will risk a curse
of pain, or sickness, death, or worse A fortune rare is prized it’s true Yet life itself enriches you
So make your choice: to spare or gut But if you plunder, fear the Tut
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Ladybugs and Calipillars Angelina Miller
During the 1940s and 50s, the use of chemicals and pesticides grew as part of technological advancements that came out of
World War II. It wasn’t uncommon to see large groups of people, often refugees or troops, dousing themselves in DDT to deter malaria-carrying mosquitoes because the long-term health consequences had not been researched to modern standards. This vignette is the creative response portion of a Modern American History research project on the effects of DDT and Rachel Carson’s pivotal book, Silent Spring.
Rosie peeks around the wide leaves, hiding between the closely-sewn corn stalks. She hears a rustling and sees the
tops of the corn shivering and swaying until soon the noise is right by her; she can hear his clumsy footsteps and see him stumbling along in his carefree way.
Later, she will peek from behind her mama’s nicest black dress, looking up at the sorry faces of the fancy-shoed, glossy-
eyed church goin’ folk. Following the sounds of each footstep up to the face that they belonged to, hoping that one of those footsteps would belong to him.
“Found ya!” she yells.
~~~
He turns and tries to hide behind the wilting, brown walls of cornsilk, but she is too fast. She reaches for her little
brother until she has a good grip on the back of his shirt, bringing him down to the ground with her. “Gotcha!”
They giggle, and then he tries to push her away so that they can race back to the house. She holds on tight. That is one
of her specialties; she can hold on tight and never let go.
Later, she will try to hold on; she will try to keep him with her, but she won’t be strong enough. Tears will flow down her cheeks as they take her brother, draped in a sheet, out into the truck. They will drive away down the dirt driveway between the two fields where they played hide-and-seek. But for now, she is scrambling to get up from the damp soil before him. ~~~
He isn’t very good at hide-and-seek, especially in the fields, because he is scared of crawlers. Rosie is the tougher one,
and she doesn’t mind the bugs as long as she has a place to hide or to run through. The cornfield is perfect. Still trying to keep her brother from beating her to the house, Rosie notices a ladybug on a leaf just above her knee. Pop says ladybugs are good
because they eat the aphids. Them ladybugs must not have been doing their job lately because Pop seems stressed. Earlier in the month, he and Mama were talking to a man in a big truck about a new kind of magic that helps the ladybugs do their job. Rosie grabs the spotted insect and holds it in front of her brother’s face.
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Apis Lola Kark
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“Eeeeek!” he yelps, letting go of her.
The little, red beetle has given her an opportunity to get a headstart to the house. She can see the edge of the field
where the corn stops, a wall of stalks that meet the blue sky at a steep angle. Rosie holds her hands in front of her, pulling back leaves and protecting her face. She whooshes past a final blur of cornstalks, and emerges from the edge of the field. She turns around and looks back at the neat rows from which she just came, waiting in silence for him to come running out. A quiver, a rustle, the whisper of swaying stalks, then, he is there.
“That wasn’t fair,” he says coughing a little in between breaths, “I thought it was a calipillar, and you know I don’t like
Later, she will stand in front of those fields, and the grey November wind will blow across the dried corn tassels. She
them crawly ones.”
will watch each tiny movement in the corn stalks, waiting for the slight quiver to turn into a big rustling. She will wait for him to burst through that last row of corn, but he never will.
~~~
The fields are the only place she ever gets to see “snow.” Just as the panting hide-and-seekers are walking up the steps
of the front porch, a crop duster drops snow on the neighboring fields, but the wind blows the wispy flakes across property lines. Rosie runs to catch the dancing, white specks, her brother close at her heels.
They could even catch the flakes on their tongues, the bitter powder melting away on their rosy, pink flesh. The snow
lands gently on their heads, floating down until it finds its resting place on their matching, sometimes-knotted-sometimes-al-
most-presentable red hair. They hear the sweet-honey voice of their Mama calling them in for dinner, and they race back again, kicking up dirt behind them. Mama stops them in the doorway, takes one look at them, and frowns.
“I told you two not to go chasin’ after them planes.” She looks them up and down again, tellin’ them to go wash their
hands and “get that sticky stuff off.” She doesn’t have to tell them twice; her thin lips had delivered the same scolding many times before.
Rosie beats him to the bathroom, and washes her hands, rubbing off the warm snow and dirt. Then she skips into the
“That was some mighty fast ‘washin’” she teases.
dining room to get “the good spot” at the table. He follows soon after in an attempt to steal it back from her.
In the end, he settles for the wobbly chair on the other side of the table, wiggling from side to side between mouthfuls
of casserole.
Later, she will sit at the dining room table alone. She will look past the empty, wooden chair and out the window to
the still and quiet cornfields, the same fields she used to think were the perfect place for hide-and-seek. Now, they were only a reminder of the ladybugs that used to live among the stalks, who used to dance in the fields, who, like Pop always said, used to protect them.
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Boots in Snow Max Shapiro
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Insect Dance Aviva Nathan
The music washes up on low tide. It is a slow, melodious song that seems to be made by the gossamer wings of
insects. On these wings, she arrives. Sinew alongside tissue, tissue adorning muscle, muscle clinging to bone. With arms
poised overhead, her small stature elongated by her pointed feet, she spills onto the dimly lit stage as though by accident. The
audience, a collection of people who are compelled to fumble with too-big-limbs and clumsy hands, stare with fervent hunger. The girl weaves a figure eight in a bourrée, seemingly hovering above the stage. She throws herself into an assemblé, landing with a plié into fifth position, and in turn the music shifts.
The song is no longer the whisper of insect wings but the cacophony of cicadas in July. The girl collapses, her
appendages folding beneath her torso. She crawls across the floor, hands out and head down. She is starkly naked. Vulnerable. She pauses as if to let the audience stick a finger in her fragility. Tempted by the offer, they do.
The audience extends a collective index finger. It’s there! Between her shoulder blades! The finger grazes the girl’s back,
probing for weakness. Confusion. Now an entire hand. Patting her down. Her translucent skin and defenseless position are
misleading. The hand recoils. It was just a ruse: phoenix-like, she rises. Her hips thrust upwards supported by pointed toes, her spine gradually elongates and, last of all her head, crowned by a blonde bun, comes upright. Her gaze has calcified and
the audience becomes aware that she is no longer dancing for them, that she was never dancing for them. The putrid smell of something saccharine like an apple left to ferment invades the auditorium. While the dancer never explicitly made any
promises, they still feel short-changed. The audience arrived in lavish regalia, tickets in hand, to experience vicariously. Instead, there is no boundary between the stage and the ascending rows of seats facing it.
The rustle of wings. A dry cough. The preening of feathers. The cicadas have drowned out, the heat of July has left,
and in its absence, the swampy tip-toe of dragonflies arrive. They applaud her with mirth. Her body, once mistaken for a small
vessel, now blankets the entire stage. The girl’s tight bun has come undone. Her eyes have pinched shut in the disquiet. And the audience is confident they can see the tangible energy she has begun to stir up. It billows around her and takes the place of a
partner. The pair begins a pas de deux. The energy lifts her effortlessly, evoking a desire the audience stored between their ribs and in the crawlspace under their organs. To be held. To have a body worthy of being held.
The energy and the girl are entwined. Their movements overlap until there is one body on stage fulfilling the
movements of two entities. The girl’s limbs appear to be pulling her in different directions. She is suspended for longer
than seems possible in a tour en l’air and lands abruptly, with her muscles visibly pulsating. She does not pause to relish the
accomplishment, nor does she pause to let the audience slow their ragged breathing. Instead, she flings herself into a grande jeté.
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The audience’s body has begun to shake, first a small tremor, now an audible rattling of bones as it attempts to keep
Katydid Ajax Noe
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pace. Over this clatter, the clamor of July cicadas has returned, and with it, the scuttle of beetles. Far off, a bush cricket’s
strained mating call is audible. The legs of a centipede rival a xylophone’s resounding notes. The katydids drone, “Katy did,
Katy didn’t” accusatorily. And underneath these layers of sound, the dragonfly’s hum continues. The girl attempts a fouetté, but midway through the turn, her body jerks into a pirouette. She is at the mercy of a myriad of music, the energy she unearthed.
At the end of the performance, the clapping is perfunctory. A symbolic gesture. The girl leaves the stage hastily, as
though to disregard everything the audience has borne witness to. Her arms wrap around her midriff as she leaves; her head
turns just once to take in the audience. Aloof, she holds on to the evocation of the dance like a child’s hand. The dissonance of the insects fades until one could only hear it by pressing an attentive ear to the wooden slats of the stage.
The audience sits for a breath, then another. Greedily, the audience gulps the air. Finally, it disassembles into a woman
who promptly picks up her toddler. Into a foreign couple who briskly pull on their winter coats. Into a young girl and her
brother whose clammy hands join as they look for their parents. Into an old man who, despite having lost his glasses, exits the theatre and walks into traffic to hail a cab.
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Flowergirl Emma Tsosie
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Where Do You See Yourself Against this Vast Desert and Endless Sky? Campbell Leonard
“It looks like we’re walking on the moon,” said my sister through labored breaths. We craned our necks upwards as
we continued the last hundred yards to the summit of Kitchen Mesa, an arduous and rewarding hike on the property of Ghost Ranch. The granite under our feet was blank white and grainy, steadily rising into the sky. “More like we’re walking to the
moon,” I said, starting to walk faster to see what awaited us beyond the moon-granite. That expansive land and endless sky
have always been central to my family’s connection to New Mexico. My parents were the first Leonards to come to this high
desert, and I was the first Leonard born here. Raised on mountaintops and down in the arroyos, I chased rabbits and scraped
sand out from under my fingernails. New Mexican earth is more a part of me than it is of my family members, and my parents
call me their “New Mexico native.” I have no New Mexican heritage or legacy to follow, no blood bond with this land except for the seventeen years that I have spent with the cacti and horny toads that I now consider my own.
But what right do I have to consider this place mine? It’s not as though I rise at dawn every day to cultivate a few acres
of New Mexican farmland and spend my entire life getting to know every stump and gopher hole. How do I define myself in this setting? A transplant, a resident, a local, or something else?
Recently, I lived in a place very different from here, where both the land and the sky are small, where trees are so tall
and thick that they blot out the stars and the rolling hills don’t allow for views to neighboring states. It was there that I learned how many people, snowfalls, wars, and stories make up a place. The land asks us to listen to the trees and the trout in the river because they will tell us the stories of those who have come before us, and only then does our own story become a part of the land’s. To me, that is what it means to truly own a place: to know its other stories and to understand that mine is just one of
many. We all choose to call things that mean something to us “our own,” because taking ownership of something makes it real, makes it feel closer.
That is the fantasy, the naiveté of ownership that I have created for myself. Perhaps what makes this fantasy so com-
pelling is the region where it has spread like a disease, where people from all walks of life have been trapped like flies in a spi-
der’s web. It is the fantasy that has harmed not those who are cast under its spell, but those who were here on the mesas and in the canyons to begin with. It was among these juniper trees and down along the Rio Grande that hundreds became enchanted and found their respective paths. Their stories, separate yet intertwined with those from centuries past, are still whispered in the rivers and woodlands. These are the places where I’ve always known I could find my own story.
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Series Eitan Mor
A Kiss of Snow
A Secret Place
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Reflections Charlotte Thompson
His dewy face cracks a smile. It hasn’t felt right without the syrupy weight slathered delicately across it, colonizing
his pores one by one. He has always loved the process of getting ready. The therapeutic feel of the delicate bristles smashing
color into his face would linger on his warm cheeks throughout his whole performance. He looks closer. There is a happy man beneath his masterpiece. He feels proud; a revival of the forgotten.
A whiff of peanuts, fried food, and pure sugar creates an audience with chewing, crunching, and slurping people
giggling and judging. The very thought of it burns in his temples and chokes at his throat. It’s now or never. His fingers hastily sink into a bright red circle and anxiously place it on his nose. His heart races with delight as he catches a glimpse of the finished look. He is about to spread a disease throughout the crowd called a smile.
The yellow lighting of backstage mirror lights flashes in his eyes as he switches over to the white toned spotlight that
gives color to the grey people waiting for him. He nearly trips over his comically large shoes as he walks into it. He glances at the crowd. Fear reflects in their eyes. Insecurity nips at his smile. He pushes away his confusion. The show must go on.
His petite sidekick comes on stage and asks for a haircut. He nods and pulls out a chainsaw. Laughter is driven into his
ears until a fear-struck voice yells out, “Killer clown!” The bigger picture takes over. Time stops; there’s only chaos. A hurricane has blown through the crowd, and only a handful of survivors remain. His breath gets heavier, and his brain fills with fog. His body moves away with his soul dragging behind.
The distorted roar of the chainsaw echoes through his mind like a ghost with unfinished business. He stares into the
mirror, noticing its smudges and cracks. His eyes wander to his face. The crimson paint overdrawing his lips into a smile feels
inherently wrong. His masterpiece fades into a chromatic mess as it dampens with salty agony, courtesy of his murky eyes. He struggles to find the soul underneath; it feels as though the paint is melting into his skin. Maybe they were right to scream.
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Scintillating Consumerism Cody Babcock
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Rising Grace Vivian
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Untitled Laine Redman
This place feels as if someone’s always got your back, and that wholeness is just another
Someone who’s been here might want to relate it to Narnia.
normal.
You may live here some of the time, floating in a cotton-candy pool and seeing the haze
of drifting away,
back into the place where you’ve come to know yourself as imperfect, and begin to see
Maybe next time, you’ll bring something or someone back to this place and relive the
the horrors. peace
again.
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Flowers Coco Randolph
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My Feminist Manifesto Emma Lawrence
1. My Declaration of Independence
I hold my truths to be
That all people were created equal.
Acknowledged and respected. And among our so-called unalienable
rights is
Bestowed upon us by our mothers, who carried us in their bodies.
And in turn, received the worst of it.
Life.
Who gave us life.
I hold my truths to be
Empowered and true.
That no woman should walk this earth as a Second-class citizen.
That no woman should have to trod
in the ingrained footsteps of men, who conquered the land that was rightfully hers. I hold my truths.
I hold them in my body but they
hold my body captive with their laws. Their regulations of my body.
Their regulation of my power.
Regulating my feminism with the insistence that my power never become so great as to wrest away their own
strength.
By doing this, perpetuating a system that suppresses my power, suppresses my empowerment.
Empowered feels like a gathering of strength. A joining in arms.
Empowered smells like sweat and asphalt and my mother’s clothes.
Empowered.
Empowered looks like muscles tensing under skin.
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Empowered sounds like mind power pouring out through words,
Words I express to emphasize the seemingly
Words I express to the world, saying that I deserve to take up space in it.
Self-evident Truth.
That all people were created equal.
That I should be treated
Equally.
2. My Femininity
My femininity is borne from the long and powerful maternal lineage of my family.
And how did she, in turn, raise me?
How did my grandmother raise my mother?
Is tradition more important than progress?
Can the two be integrated?
On what principles will I raise my own daughter?
If she asks me what it means to be a woman,
What will I say?
I think of ancient feminine
Icons
Like La Virgen de Guadalupe and Cihuacoatl, Aztec goddesses of motherhood and fertility,
Symbols for motherhood.
Protectors of humanity.
Then I think of the feminine icons of the past century like Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Doris Day.
I wonder why over time, our society has etched into the facade of femininity
Hieroglyphs of compliance, a standard of unattainable beauty.
She should be polite.
Quiet.
Obedient.
But women continue to prove them wrong.
So, daughter, I will teach you to be
1.
Proud, of every inch of your body and your being.
2. Kind and generous, but never compliant.
3. Loud. Constantly questioning. Never accepting things the way others might want you to.
4. Confident in your sexuality. Assertive about your own needs, and never remaining silent for the sake of likeability
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or ease.
5. A mother, if you want to be. Allowing that to be an aspect of your femininity and not its defining trait.
6. A peacemaker, but not afraid to shake things up. Committed to building a world that is peaceful because it is just and fair, not peaceful for a lack of conflict or confrontation.
7. A woman. Defined by your authentic identity. Defined on your own terms. Never defined by any relationship to a man.
8. Loved. I hope that you are loved and that you love in return. With whomever you choose. Daughter, you are femininity. And you matter.
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Window Washer Jude Wallach
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My Ecuadorian Lover Emma Meyers
It seems unfair that there should be cool nerds. Or conventionally attractive nerds. And yet somehow, there are
nerds that are both. There was a whole hoard of them. Utter film nerds, the directors and writers of international awardwinning films (be it tiny festivals, or in my case, the application process, which I constantly had to remind people was an
accomplishment), who also acted disinterested in class and skateboarded around New York City. No one teaches themselves how to use shutter speed and the 180-degree axis and drink alcohol from a brown paper bag. On their skateboard.
My film class also included a group of girls simply blown away to be in America. They spent their days filming stunning
scenes, illegally, on the steps of museums. Then there were the male international travelers. The Russian twins, who were,
unsurprisingly Russian, and twins. And my Ecuadorian Lover, who, unsurprisingly was neither Ecuadorian nor my lover, as I am not a divorced woman in my fifties who says words like “lover.” Just a child with a father who was thrilled that I had
brought up the same boy twice in one conversation. Thus the nickname. But I don’t even think it was a crush, just a friend and a boy simultaneously.
Anyway, he was Argentinian and had an exotic name. Not an Argentinian, or even Ecuadorian sounding name, but a
truly interesting one, that started with a “Z.” His sister’s name was Ella. There were also my friends, whose parents were like
a version of my grandma with the volume turned way up, in that they insisted they should be the ones to walk the red carpet
with their child. Additionally, they felt the need to announce to everyone within walking, hearing, or seeing-distance that they were Jewish.
At the end of the camp, we had a film screening. The room was full of teens and preteens giving poorly delivered,
backhanded compliments. The notes my film received were “are you okay?” “Like no, seriously, dude, you good?” I think they were just trying to say my film sucked, although the teacher took me outside to say “no one will be proud of their film.” This
seemed rude, oddly reassuring, but also, not what I was promised. On the first day, the course was self-described as a coveted
film class that would spit out students better than Quentin Tarantino. (Turns out the teacher just hated Quentin Tarantino.) Or as my dad called it, “summer camp.”
Someone actually described my film to me straight, but I forgave him for being an ass upon learning his last name
was Hoessein. And his first name rhymed with Hoessein. Zorian’s film was very hippy-like. And involved prerecorded birds
chirping like their lives depended on it and one of the Russians chucking his phone into a pier trashcan, just barely holding on
by a finger. And then the whole class exchanged phone numbers. I tend to put every number I’m ever given into my phone and
am shocked to find other people don’t save space in their phone for people they haven’t spoken to since 2013. But I really only paid attention to the numbers of my friends and my Ecuadorian Lover.
After taking the subway down Rector and to Houston, writing, and watching Netflix, but most importantly burning time until it 35
felt non-stalkery to text him. My Ecuadorian Lover. I think I lasted about 90 minutes before texting Zukhan. “Hi,” I typed eagerly, “it’s Emma from camp.” Now, here lies the rub. It’s a very American thing to only speak one language. Everyone who was from outside the county spoke at least two. He spoke mostly Spanish, but Zartashan’s English was likely better than mine. But over text it went like this:
Me: Hi! It’s Emma, from film camp!
Zeynanan: Yes.
Okay, I thought, maybe it’s a yes, I know you, yes I know you from film camp. So I sent a second message.
Me: when do you head back home?
Zenackentan: Yes.
Alright now, I thought, this, this here, this isn’t fair, buddy. “Yes” is not the correct answer to when do you head back home.
I know you now know I like you, and I know you’re not interested, but I still deserve an answer in an intelligible language I speak, even though it is on me for not being at least bilingual. A few months later, he sent me a text, it was one word. If you hadn’t already guessed it was “hi.”
It’s taken most of my self-control not to reply with “Yes.”
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Recycled Water Shay Shay Namchak
37
Help! Sterling Wheeler
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The Girl at the St. John’s Coffee Shop Evin Axelrod
The room was filled with tables, kids, and chairs. I noticed a girl who seemed very fair,
A girl with curly brown and yellow hair
Although I watched her I tried not to stare
She wore a simple black school outfit choice. White crystal glasses rounded to a point.
Black hoodie, crop top striped in green and white.
The jeans with weird rolled cuffs were blue and light. She tapped her foot while wearing shiny boots. What she said on her phone was a dispute? What’s she doing in her chair with a pen?
What did she think about, could it be men?
When her phone rang she flicked back her long hair. Who could it be? The thought (she?) could not bear.
Her eyes got bright as she looked through the room. Was the call from someone else in the gloom?
Maybe her friend with the long and glossy hair? Maybe her teacher whose class was not fair? She went outside at once to take the call.
We might not know the answer; that is all.
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The Nun Margaret Tambke
40
Balancing Tucker Hastings
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Under the Giant’s Shadow Fionnuala Moore
“He doesn’t know I’m here.”
The sentence seeps into her bloodstream and settles itself all over her body. Royal violet and shimmering courage are branded across her give-away chest. Thousands of women. Thousands of fears. She struggles under midnight-made charcoal-black letters. Her heart skips at every dangerously familiar profile. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”
The man would bring their daughter. Bring her to show how barbaric these half-women are, and how lucky she is that her mother isn’t in that savage crowd of manly, unsexed animals. And yet, here she is.
Protected by a gate that only men seem to be able to open, the white giant casts a chilling shadow. But still, she pollutes the
male ground with her hesitant footsteps.
….
It fights back. Summons its forces from their drunken hiding, the sour smell still fresh on their lazy-day blazers. It suffocates her.
The snakes have been tread upon. But women have no rattle. Women have no venom. Elizabeth stops. Standing on the dirty pavement, flimsy cloth sash choking her. The giant with the magical gate looms.
The man’s stare is filled with promises of blood and bruises. She wishes to disappear under the soles of shined black shoes. But she stays up, only resisting because of Alice’s wide eyes and beaming smile.
She could flee. Flee to her husband and to safety. Apologize for her hope. Apologize for the foolish letters she believed in. Or she could fight. Turn her back on safety. Pursue with the knowledge of a whip, a hand, in the obscured creases of her comfortable prison. Boots on the pavement. Rising towards strength.
She shatters him with her blinding letters: VOTES FOR WOMEN
42
Shadowboy Alec Hardy Recipiant of the New Vision Award
43
Window Lucy Amarel
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A Red Scarf Jack Entwisle Recipient of the New Voice Award
The door shuts. His feet catch the grey light, as the carpet reaches up and steals the very sound from his footsteps.
Drifting upwards, the smell of paper, ink, and well-ironed clothes. A few words are tossed back and forth across the room.
Then the first thoughts come, then the voices, “Give it to her.” “Clara would like it, right?” “Yes, of course she would.” “But before she always seemed beautiful without it, do you think that could still be true?” “But before you didn’t know about it.” “But-” “Look, do you love her or do you not?” “Yes, I love her.” “Then give it to her, she will love it.”
He sits down. The snakeskin briefcase slithers its way onto his lap. More words are tossed back and forth across the
desk. Slowly the serpent on his lap coerces his hands closer until with a snap, it opens. A moment passes, a glint in his eye,
then the red scarf is measured, cut, sized, dyed, straightened, and tailored to perfection. All in the blink of an eye, all between one life and the next. He looks at her for a while, and then, as the briefcase is guiding his hands to click the final lock, he sees
something. It had fallen out of her hands in her sheer amazement about the red scarf. It was a newspaper. As he picks it up, the headline catches his eye: “Bombs fall in Europe.” He reads the headline a few more times before a smile cracks its way across his lips, and in that silent room a whisper flows through the cold, dead air: “Bombs.”
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Insurgent Revely Rothschild
46
Secondhand Sadness Tori Gossum
on brisk wednesday evenings i take strolls down her spine,
each step taken carefully to produce the perfect impression, because we both know too much impression becomes synonymous to trauma.
over the phone she tells me her back aches but she misses me. she doesn’t tell me much about her early years, maybe because she doesn’t have the desire, or maybe because she knows her tragedies will never be able to be put into words
i think a part of her wonders if resting her grief on my shoulders would transmit into me, like a fatal affliction.
she was forgotten by her father, and her mother, and her brother, so she learns to forget herself too.
she doesn’t want me to know about the strangling, the shoving, and the shouting. instead she tells me about the time she stole two eggs from her mother’s fridge because she thought they would hatch overnight, and how her mother scolded her in the morning.
her body is still shattered on the cold floors of the house she lived in when she was seven, where her father told her he loved her, before wrapping his hands around her neck. i am certain her soul remains there, when
i tell her i love her, before wrapping my arms around her, and watch as she caves into herself.
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My Grandfather’s Shoes Sam Cooper
A rich tobacco brown and I can see him, towering above me, crisp in his white shirt and trousers, his thick brown shoes
polished to a high shine. He is 6’6”, and I am five, and when he reaches down for me I watch the glossy brown shoes fall away
and I go up and up, into his arms that are strong and sinewy, not my mother’s arms, not my father’s arms, not the arms of my older sisters who smell like lip gloss and sweet things. They are his arms, the color of dusty earth, and from his arms, I look down on his brown laced shoes, tobacco brown polished to a high shine, and they are an entire world below.
48
Bike Liam Mooney
49
Untitled AJ Kurth
50
Her Crimson Innocence Lilia Holladay
Husband. At that despicable word, a shudder eats its way through her that has nothing to do with the moonlit air
wafting through the particles of dancing pearly drapery. Nothing could be worse in this world, she thought. At that, her head
whips around to pierce a crumpled lump. Only hours earlier his sour, ale-stained pant stifled her as the bed rocked, and the silk clung to sweaty bodies. Her pupils accuse, her fair features hard as stone, no, hard as crystal. Vengeful but doubtful.
In its rightful place, her sapphire eyes gently settle on the lantern. As murk extinguishes the lanternlight, worn fingers
run through her sun-like head. Disheveled. Earlier. Precise. An exhale, her breath warm, balmy and full of despair. An inhale,
her breath like the winter on a blue moon; cold, biting, full of resolve. Adalgisa, she coaches her anguish, remember. A furtive glance, an uncertain gaze. A full-blown, eagle-eyed glare at the shy bedside table containing the unthinkable. It had never received so much accusing attention in its quiet life of dutiful serving.
Her bare feet pad silently, her silk gown mildly tickling the raw floor. The scraping pull, a rasping screech, a wince. Her
sapphire-colored orbs widen and the reflecting glint of silver shines like a beacon. The bulk not at all bothersome, comparable to a juvenile falcon. Customized for her spindly, capable hands. A metallic and floral aroma washes over her, rinsing away any leftover apprehension. She is a leopard stalking down her oblivious prey. No, scratch that. The prey is hunting the predator.
The hunted is weary of her cowering. His warm curls sway in the wind of his rancid breath, malicious eyes are placid,
for now. Her raging love fuels her scorching hatred. The innocent dagger, above her head it sits. Poised. Ready. Billowing sleeves seductively reveal her tensed arms. Ready. With a chilling passion, she strikes. Innocence plummets into creamy flesh. Crimson
satin, sickly sweet. Her sapphires do not falter. The predator’s eyes, a gasp of shock, then anguish, then beautiful emptiness. I’m coming Piera.
51
Arroyo Truck Dessa Monat
52
Scissors Mahko Haozous Winner of the Spooky Skirmisher Submission Competition
Selene didn’t want to go down to the basement, especially not on Halloween. There were spiders down there, and she
loathed spiders. Abhorred them. It had nothing to do with fear, she simply thought that no animal had the right to have that many legs. Selene hypothesized that spiders had stolen their legs from the snakes and the worms.
Anyway, Selene didn’t want to go down to the basement. She wasn’t a stupid girl—she knew what kind of story this
was. She was not going to be a spooky story told around the campfire: The little girl who went into the basement of her new
house and was never seen again, devoured by some sort of Thing. Still, no matter how much she protested, her parents told her, that “no matter how scared she was of the cellar, it didn’t change the fact that the fire needed wood and . . . ” they even had the
gall to say that they knew “it was hard to move, and they’d all have to adjust,'' as if this was some kind of two-bit horror movie!
Selene went to gather her battle armor, which she stored deep at the bottom of the toybox she no longer used. A
flashlight with fresh batteries (obviously), a pair of rusty iron scissors (her weapon), a bag of marbles (a distraction), a granola bar (sustenance in case she got lost), and a sweater. She slung the scissors in her belt loop, tied her jacket around her waist, and went down to the basement. Every step ringing out her doom, she was sure, she climbed down the stairs, unlocked the basement door, and stepped past the threshold. Immediately she knew she had made a mistake. Selene wasn’t prepared enough, wasn’t brave enough, resourceful enough. She wasn’t enough.
-
The flashlight beam carved its way through the coal-dark black-black of the basement, but only encountered cobwebs.
Nothing new, nothing well crafted, but still, cobwebs. The stairway was certainly too long, just as Selene knew it would be.
Every step rang out in the midnight-no-light, like a clarion call to her location. She tried to be quieter. Nothing much changed, it was as if the stairs themselves were committed to betraying her, but there was no going back now. She knew enough about horror stories to know that once you were in one, to get out you had to go straight through. She continued down the stairs.
Eventually, her foot hit the floor, which, mercifully, still felt like cold cement. Sliding the flare of the flashlight through the air, she no longer saw anything. It was as though the house above her had left, wandered off, and left her staring up at an empty
night sky. A whisper slid into Selene’s ear. It was a strange, high voice like a harp string being scraped. It said, “The weave is all, child. The weave is all.”
Selene screamed, and we, as observers, must not begrudge her for it.
The scream seemed to fill the room, large as it was, with a kind of life. A movement in the darkcoldness that had not
-
been there before. The flashlight clattered to the floor, and the beam danced erratically in the dust-filled air. It decided to fall
upon a figure. For a moment, Selene thought it was a blob of webbing, roughly shaped like a person, but then it began to move. 53
A woman, hair piled high atop her head in a style that might have been fashionable three years ago, wearing a man’s business
suit, smiling a smile far too wide for her face, and wielding a caliper shambled towards Selene. “Hello little girl . . . ” Selene was silent. The woman drew closer, and Selene could see strange stains on her jacket. Spiderwebs glistened in her hair. Suddenly, Selene’s bag of marbles and her pair of scissors felt small, useless. She had been expecting sickly sweet perversions of her parents and siblings, or enormous spiders, but certainly not insane, predatory women, nakedly displaying their evilness.
The woman drew even closer, snatched Selene’s face in one hand, and swung the caliper directly at Selene’s eye. She
would have blinked, but another set of fingers held her eye open as the woman pressed the caliper directly to her face. Selene was paralyzed. The woman began to speak in a strange singsong way.
“Oh, what a lovely addition to the collection! I have no brown eyes from children, and such a scared child too . . . ” as
she spoke, she opened her jacket and pulled out a gleaming scalpel. “Oh, don’t be so deliciously excited, dear; it won’t hurt; all I have to do is disconnect the extraocular muscles from the sclera; then it’ll just pop out.” Selene felt her hands shaking so much that the scissors were clinking at her waist. “Well, it will only hurt if you struggle, but I’m a scalpel virtuoso, and almost all of
my patients are very happy with their eye removals.” Selene felt her hands close around the scissors. The jacket fell to the floor.
“Oh, how nice of you to cover the floor; there’s usually so much blood everywhere it takes hours to clean.” The scalpel glinted in the light from the forgotten flashlight.
Selene’s hand jerked up through the air, and she felt the scissors pierce the woman’s eye. It felt like stabbing into
a rotten grape. Clear, viscous liquid flowed from the woman’s face, dripped down the handles of the scissors, and covered
Selene’s hands. The voice-like-a-scratched-harp-string whispered into her ear again, saying “Oh, excellent. Clever girl. You will work wonders here,” and Selene and the woman collapsed to the floor together. -
Selene opens her eyes. Somehow, she doesn’t scream, even after realizing that she’s just killed a woman. Somehow she
doesn’t scream after she realizes that her head is still in the grip of the woman’s hand, fingers sliding all across the entire back
of her head, looping around to hold it in place, fingers still holding open her eye. Somehow, she doesn’t scream when she peels
the fingers away from her face, and they come away with sticky strings like cobwebs trailing from them. Somehow, Selene only begins to scream when she sees The Market.
The gates are smithed of black iron, whorling into the air like ink poured into water, and the doors themselves are
molded to appear as if they were made of gauze. The handles are curved needles poked into the gauze. Selene opens the gates without so much as a scratchwhisper against the floor. She abandons her scissors. It’s too disgustingrotesque for her to even
think about touching the woman again, and so Selene never notices the thin threads stretching away from the woman’s limbs into the darkness.
-
Selene enters the gates and is immediately beset by a cornucopia of sounds and scents, many of them unpleasant. The
vendors, sitting at their trestle tables, hawk wares from every country in the world and quite a few that aren’t. A bespectacled man sits behind a booth labelled Disinformation that seemed to be selling bottles filled with different colors and textures of
54
smoke. He screams at passers-by with an almost animalistic screech.
“Fine lies, get your best quality lies right here!” He sounds desperate, pleading, and when he sees Selene, he brandishes
a bottle filled with comforting blue smoke directly in her face. “You, girlie, look like you need a large dose of ‘everything will be fine,’ very cheap, only a drop of blood and a hair from your head!”
Selene ignores him and realizes only after she walks away that he wasn’t quite right. His eyes were slightly too small,
too birdblack beetle-shiny, his limbs slightly too short, and his teeth too white. He was like a model of a kindly old man made by someone who hadn’t seen a kindly old man in a long time. She continues to walk through the market that literally seeps an aura
of predator-carnivore. Selene walks past the men hawking their limb-removal services, and the women blinking at least six sets of eyes seductively at her. Carefully avoiding the spiders that skitter-scamper across her path like tiny rats, Selene continues to walk through the market, towards the enormous pile of webs in the distance.
What seems like hours later, she finally reaches the webcastle. After having spent so long lurking on the horizon like
a cat waiting to pounce, the castle didn’t seem to quite know how to behave now that it was in the foreground. Selene walks
boldly up to the large, imposing doors, black and shiny as a spider’s eye, and goes to knock on them. They swing aside without a sound before she even touches them.
A small girl stands behind them and speaks in that scratched-harp-string voice, “Oh, how wonderful! I’m so glad you came!” -
The little girl takes Selene’s hand, and another arm unfolds out of her to slowly slide the door shut. Selene and the girl
“My name’s The Needle, and I just know that we’ll be great friends.”
walk down the stone hall, bricks as certain as doom.
The Needle and Selene enter an enormous room that looks like it might once have been a fashionable lounge if it
hadn’t been submerged in the Sargasso Sea for at least ten years. All the furniture is just broken enough to be unable to be sat
upon. The Needle walks to the center of the room and holds her arms wide. Hundreds of other arms, each branching into tens
of hands, unfold out of her body. The arms arrange themselves into a comfortable-looking throne, which The Needle sits down upon. She opens her tiny mouth, and that scratched-harp-string-voice issues forth.
“Now, The Scissors. We can stop pretending to each other, true? Then, why don’t you just pledge your allegiance and
your scissors to me, and we can begin to kill.” An arm slides towards Selene, proffering her very own pair of rusty iron scissors, handles first. Selene doesn’t understand.
“Wait, The Needle, I don’t want to kill people.”
“Well, The Scissors, I don’t see that you have any other choice. I know triage isn’t my strong suit, but ever since you
stepped across my threshold, you’ve had one option.”
At this, The Needle spreads her hundreds of fingers all at once and a diagram of a tree appears between them. All the
“You have only one choice. You will pledge your allegiance to me, and use your scissors to snip out of existence those
branches are cut off, and only one spiraling path remains. that I designate.”
55
Selene’s body moves on its own, lunging across the room, poised to cut The Needle’s head off her shoulders. The
“Ah-ah-ah, The Scissors. You should know that I’ve stitched my life to that
The Scissors knows that there is only one thing that she can do. She would not kill people.
scissors clang against a tiny silver sewing needle, held aloft by one of The Needle’s million arms. of your parents and little brother. If you kill me, you kill them.”
She reaches deep into the weave that makes up the entire world and finds her own thread. With a single snap of rusty
blades, The Scissors ceases to exist entirely. Entirely.
The Scissors’ parents and brother had never had a girl named Selene in their family.
The Needle curses softly but is not terribly upset. There will be others. There were always others.
There will be others, and not all of them will be as good with scissors.
56
Consumer Culture Asher Nathan
57
Existential Crisis Miles Thompson
Existential Crisis
58
Melting Snow Mateo Perez
Marquis takes off his glasses, rubbing the lens with the rough surface of his sweater, trying to remove the dew that has
been pooling for the past fifteen minutes. The blue sky has decided that it doesn’t like today, and it has fled westward. Marquis
notes the subtle sound of the rain; something you wouldn’t notice unless there were millions of raindrops falling down making a splash as they hit concrete bottom. The chain-link fence he is propped up against creaks like it, too, is tired of the cold.
Unfiltered, his eyes stare blankly into the opaque glow of the city, and he stands, switching between his natural vision and the lens.
Lights parade the night air, dancing softly and ever so subtly, wisps feeling their way through the vertical and
horizontal streaks of black that cut through the sky. Soaking into the background, they vacillate between being the kind of light that dapples, like the moonlight, and the sharp coruscating kind that can only be made by human neon. The lights are shifting, but Marquis is being shifty in another way. His coat pocket hides a powder innocent like snow, but corrupting like a needle.
The light bends around a black figure in the distance; he pushes the glasses closer to his face, making sure they’re not
going to ditch him. When he can see the dark fur coat, he knows it is Saun for sure, round face with blue eyes that gleam in the night, though they aren’t lit up. He exchanges no pleasantries; his emotions are tied down to the bottom of his being, and he is
rigid and firm. The ghastly light of a taxi splashes him in the face as he hands the powder to Saun, and his hands begin to shake as the light closes around the dark figure he just gave the powder to.
One hundred and forty-five dollars is what he made. Its verdant green color has been soaking in the rain and stings
his hand as the life from it fades away. His stomach has been aching since the breakfast he hadn’t eaten in the morning and
the dinner before that, and the pizza place on ninth calls his name. Each step down the street gets heavier and heavier under
the weight of the dark sky, and he is reminded of the Greek myth of Atlas he had read in a book somewhere, the figure he now shares a likeness to as a result of his monumental mistakes.
His sister–Mavis Mave they called her–and their parents had had such high hopes for him. “I wanted to be a doctor,
not a dealer,” he thinks to himself as he gets closer to his destination. Lost in his melancholic meandering, he hears a jazzy song bounce through the air, and he can’t help but stare at a boombox sitting on the window of an apartment two stories up. The rain has stopped coming down, and now he can hear the words clearly:
Can I kick it? To all the people who can Quest like A Tribe does Before this, did you really know what life was? Comprehend to the track, for it’s why, cuz Getting measures on the tip of the vibers Rock and roll to the beat of the funk fuzz
59
Wipe your feet really good on the rhythm rug If you feel the urge to freak, do the jitterbug
Come and spread your arms if you really need a hug Afrocentric living is a big shrug
A life filled with (fun) that’s what I love
“Me, too . . . , ” Marquis thinks to himself as he continues to walk. The words won’t leave his thoughts, and he doesn’t want them to. He had found something to hold onto in his sea of loneliness; he wasn’t going to drown.
60
Salt Abbie Francis
61
Ceramic Series Leyla Sharples
Peapod
Peach
62
Bon Appétit Mateo Sella
Tamarind-Glazed Black Bass with Coconut-Herb Salad The Eyeballs are still there; I hope they can’t see the pimple on my forehead. Crunchy Pickle Salad
Don’t use all that dill to hide the fact that those are definitely still cucumbers. Put them back in the jar.
Grains in Herby Buttermilk Savory Cereal. The spoon is gonna fall out of the bowl.
Stuffed Cabbage with Lemony Rice and Sumac What the Hell
Pasta with Brown Butter, Whole Lemon, and Parm Even the Rind?
63
Rebel Girl, You are the Queen of My World Sophia Koolpe
When I was little, I didn’t want to be a feminist because being a feminist meant that I was unattractive and that boys
wouldn’t like me and that I would be alone for the rest of my life. I grew in dirt that was watered with Barbie dolls who didn’t
look like me and teen magazines with unattainably skinny models and tips on how to look beautiful for boys, and it was “real” life, so I grew to reach that life which blocked the sun from me. The commercial market fed lies to girls like me because our
society only allows certain girls to succeed. And I spent countless years crying to the world to change the way I look, and why
can’t I be pretty, and why can’t I be skinny, and why can’t I be them, because it seemed to me that only the pretty ones, and only the skinny ones, and only the perfect ones had a life worth living. I ate it all up without thinking, and I let it infect my dirt, so I grew in the dirt that embedded disease in me.
Then I began to grow into success, and I know this because boys began to look at me and sometimes talk to me, and
my mom told me when boys were checking me out, and my confidence boomed because I had the male approval that I was
taught to eat—but I didn’t know how to digest it. And I knew that when those boys grew up with the lies of supermodels and
Hollywood women, it didn’t limit them to what they could be; instead, it taught them to see girls as objects. When Max told me and my twin that he would fuck us, and when Jaden said I looked beautiful in my bikini, I was confused because I had never been seen as an attractive object. I think I liked the feeling, so I learned then that to talk to a boy was to lead him on. I wore
tight shirts and laughed at boys’ jokes and tried to talk to them so that I would catch the sought-after male attention that made me feel valued as I had been taught.
Despite this, I was still excluded from the all-boys’ clubhouse. They turned their backs when I sat with them, and when
I tried to like the things that they liked and say the things they said, I was shoved out. Exclusion became the mangled spines of girl jealousy that permeates all of us. Sometimes, girls were allowed one foot inside the door of the glorified club. I saw
those girls as having something that I didn’t and being someone I could never be. I hated those girls for doing something that I couldn’t do. I liked to think that they hated me because I wasn’t them. I liked to think that it proved my point that we could never be friends, even though I secretly longed to be.
Thus, I hated myself. I hated everyone around me; I felt I was not valued because I am not perfect. I grew defensive
My feelings are not new to girls; Kathleen Hanna felt the same way and decided to do something about it. So begins the
thorns, but they also cut me and left me with scars.
punk feminist Riot Grrrl movement where girls could scream for their rights, and for their frustrations at being a girl and for
their voices to be heard. And I learned that I can be a feminist, and a punk rocker, and a princess, and I can be whoever the hell I want to be. I can love myself. And that is enough.
I listen to “Double Dare Ya,” and I know that my approval comes from myself. I read a ’zine about a girl who feels
excluded and wishes she was someone else, and I know that I am not alone. I try to love people for who they are. So begins the journey of spitting out diseased dirt and uprooting and growing again. 64
Untitled Hunter Gutierrez
65
Ronda, Spain Maddox England
66
The Day the Books Lived Sarah Boyle
The decrepit floor was her bed. Curious books lined the shelves, hoping for a glimpse at the sleeper.
She slept like a doll, one whose owner spent her fortune on a lovely porcelain thing with mustard corkscrew hair and aquama-
rine eyes, then had nothing left for proper clothes . . . or a house. Also, her owner proceeded to leave her out in the dust until all but her eyes lost their luster and began to crumble. What a waste of youth.
A Dream of Milk and Honey
Lucille let the steam warm her throat. Not that it needed it. They were striving to be proper ladies (the kind that thrive in the strangling embrace of a corset), but she could feel sweat colonizing her mother’s well-fed neck.
At a glance upward, something changed. A rainbow of water-colored patches on a bed of salad, hills that were not rolling but dancing, a fairytale-giant sky . . .
Suddenly she was infinite kilometers and a least a million years away. Arms unsheathed; wardrobe unfettering. Her ribbon a wilted flower, but nobody to swing the chastising finger.
A Victorian yell told her to accept reality. She raced her mother’s critical gaze back into her seat then watched the woman drown Earl Gray in milk then repopulate the teacup with a continent of honey. The apocalypse passed her weapons. Lucy took them, but the mild-mannered deity that she was, merely spooned honey into the Earl’s mouth. ~*~
Waking up was a bitter reproach. Unsatisfied, the child chauffeured Mrs. Book home, then selected her blackberry-hided aunt to be the next companion.
This story was dark, wrong. And it was captivating in a way things rarely are. In that sleep, doll turned to puppet. A Dream of Silk and Quiet . . . the violent kind.
Time was not a concept but an entity parading through the darkness with its marching band.
Our Talented Musicians:
Hope and hopelessness slapped a rhythm that drove the band. Pain’s trumpet trilled: loud, unavoidable.
Restlessness was not supposed to stand out on piccolo, but it was persistent. 67
Fear’s trombone was unadorned yet constant.
Loneliness twirled countless batons. Though silent, it made the performance. Inhumanity: the proud conductor.
It hung by silk threads.
Something turned. Her arm moved. Another shift brought her leg forward. An angered firefly was held too close to her splintered face: a threat.
Slick dread broke the silence. “Maaaaary,” a pause, “it’s time to perform.” ~*~
There were no stories after that. Paper fell inanimate as The End belted abuse.
Her bright eyes had hardly opened by the time the dirt settled. A door banged. A girl stood, dusted off, and walked away. The books never saw her again.
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Sylvia Carter-Smith Leon the Leaflion
69
Silver Juniper Vickie Hsin
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The River Sylvia Carter-Smith
I must’ve been five or six years old, floating down the Río Grande in a yellow canoe, wearing my wide-brimmed blue
sun hat with the little white flowers, on one of the rivertrips that my family used to take when my father was alive. I remember feeling the orange nylon of my life jacket pressing against my skin as I gripped my miniature wooden paddle, my eyes swollen from salt cedar pollen but wide with wonder. I drank it all in, watching the riverbank, observing as the salt cedar’s heavily sweet-scented, pink blossoms draped themselves among desert willow and cliff swallow mud-nests.
Ever since I was a little girl, my love for plants has grounded me in the New Mexican landscape. I am the girl who stops
to point out rabbitbrush, agave, and Apache plumes. My knowledge of different species and botanical identification stems
from my mother’s love of plants; she worked for a period of time as an organic vegetable farmer. To this day, I seek to gain meaningful experience in everything I do and am grateful for the respect for nature that my parents instilled in me.
As a pale, Jewish girl with family and familial origins miles away from New Mexico, my roots in this state may not be
deep, but they have grown strong. Despite my desire to move elsewhere, away from the dust, the brown, and the nothingness,
the more I think about leaving the only place I have ever lived, the more I realize how little “nothingness” there really is. Every
juniper tree, still green in the winter months, every orange globemallow that blooms in the heat of early fall, and every stubbly stucco wall reminds me of the beauty of the place where I have grown up. My home state is rich in persistent plants. It is the
place where my parents met, the place where my father died; it is the home of the river that has impacted my life in so many ways.
The Río Grande river is the center of my connection to New Mexico. Its nourishing water ran through the drip
irrigation tubing on the farm that my mother co-founded in the Española Valley. Its surface buoyed and spun my father’s rafts,
kayaks, and canoes as he guided tours down the Río when he first moved to New Mexico and caught his body when he jumped to his death from the Taos Gorge Bridge. Its waters cut through the Southwest, just as its waters have cut through my life. In many ways, I am like the river itself. The cyclical and flowing nature of the healing process is like the waters of the river.
Volunteering as a grief facilitator at the support center that I attended as a child has been a crucial part of my healing
cycle. Through working with grieving children, I have developed the belief that every person has an innate ability to heal
oneself and that healing is not a linear process. Just like the Rio Grande, grief is fluvial; dealing with the death of a parent
and coming full circle to help those who are experiencing similar emotions has allowed me to reflect on and understand the grieving process with a nuanced and restorative perspective.
The river can take, and it can cleanse; most importantly, though, it can heal. In the desert of New Mexico, people
have always gathered by and lived near rivers for survival. I know now that I do not have to stay close to the river anymore;
I am excited to go to a place of abundant lushness, where my desert self’s appreciation for fresh-mowed grass, rain puddles, and deciduous trees will be sustained. Instead of the quiet whispers of the Río Grande, I will find and listen to new rivers of inspiration, including rooted peers to learn from, enriching communities to join, and lively and flourishing conversations between classes.
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In the Movement Standing Still Tabatha Hirsch
Capo on 2
That it’s okay
Waking up hurts me in the worst way
When our country
Bm Am Em C Em G My life is now a fading dream
A dollhouse I’m leaving for a day
They say don’t worry, but how can’t I Lost its way
But can’t escape my bloodstream
The more I know the more I realize that I don’t
EM G C EM
Trying to wake up from a dream that won’t
And I’m so sorry, and I don’t deserve To be reassured That it’s okay
AM G C G
They say don’t worry, but how can’t I
And maybe I never will
I’m in the movement standing still Em G C
I realize my privilege and forget my race
The deep advantage in disregarding my place
When our country
Existence has been an unchallenged right
Em G Em C EM G C
Fictional protagonist pale like me
Lost its way
The more I know the more I realize that I don’t And maybe I never will
Resisted but I never was scared for my life
Never second-guessing whitewashed history
Trying to wake up from a dream that won’t
But now I know now I see
My world is lifted up and handed to me
Trying to wake up from a dream that won’t
What do I do now with all this beauty
still
I’m in the movement standing still
It rests softly on the backs of others
Now that I know this beauty suffers
And I’m so sorry, and I don’t deserve To be reassured 72
Maybe I’m not blind but I’ve always been free
I’m in the movement standing
Fallen Hero Iris Teague
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Resistance Noquisi Christian-Smith
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This is for You Sydney Manningham
I was going to write this as a letter, to the politicians who “lead me” and to the reporters who “educate me,” but then
I felt like I would be held back by fear from being able to fully express myself, because that’s what you do: you scare me for
the future and stability of this country, when you should be exciting me and encouraging me. I am going to leave the “you” to
whom I am writing this for, open. You are my president, you are my local news channel TV anchor, you are my journalist from the New Yorker, you are my reporter from Fox, you are my candidates for the 2020 elections, you are my congressmen, you
are my senators, you are anyone and everyone who feeds into the unproductive ways of the government and media—because you are not doing me, the country, or the world justice. So, for the sake of my desire to be fully open, I am going to talk to you,
reporters and politicians, as if you were listening, and maybe you will, but for right now, I will not structure it as such, because you instill fear in me. And then I begin to question, are you instilling fear in me, or am I allowing you to do so? And I ask, am I putting the blame on myself because that’s how you have trained me to feel? Guilty? I am going to choose to take the route of being proactive and taking the blame for you because I can no longer sit and wait for you to act, so I suppose my generation
and I will have to do it for you. But here comes the inevitable: more questions. Is my generation with me? I see the kids in my class, and the adults in my life, fuel the partisan agendas that you have created and continue to support. You all continue to
undermine social justice issues by politicizing them and by producing biased coverage and fake news. Immigration has become clickbait rather than the human rights crisis that it is. Latin American immigrants are not being treated like humans, but all
you care about is that uneducated American voters associate pro-immigration with Democrats and destructive immigration
policies with Republicans. But thanks to you, Americans have confused political parties with political philosophies. Liberalism and conservatism show your opinion on social issues and views, whereas being Democratic or Republican displays how
you think the American government should run. But yet again, thanks to you, kids my age think Republicans are racists and
Democrats are socialists. I sit in class, and I see the blatant inability for the so-called progressive generation to listen. We are all so wrapped up in our biases and opinions because you continue to use our hate for one another to your advantage. You
continue to divide us with both your “build the wall” campaign speech and your incorrect spiel that the crisis at the border
is solely the president’s fault . . . as if immigrants haven’t been treated awfully for decades under presidents of both political
parties. The unlawful treatment of refugees and immigrants at our border is an issue of universal human rights, not for United States citizens to politically debate over the dinner table in their five thousand-square-foot colonial style house or their three hundred-square-foot studio apartment. I hate to generalize you all, because some of you are good, but your salary and your
livelihood come from a system of distrust and injustice. Until I, as a woman, see myself properly represented in the positions of utmost power in the government, you are failing. Until immigration is treated as a civil rights emergency rather than as a political commodity to get more voter support, you are failing. Until it is realized that unless your people are native to this
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land—you are all immigrants, and you cannot alienate people coming to find a better life in the United States, just as so many of your ancestors did—you are failing. Until I can read a news article without having the uncommon education that I must
question the possible bias, you are failing. Until entire races are not constantly generalized as terrorists or drug dealers or
prostitutes or criminals for the sake of media, entertainment, and political agendas, you are failing. You are failing until you
decide to fail no longer. I have chosen not to fail myself any longer. I have chosen to educate myself because my school and my government and my media are not educating me. I have chosen to register as Independent because both the Democrats and the Republicans have good and bad things to bring to the table, and I would much rather be on a team that highlights both
the good, rather than settle for flaws of one. I have decided to educate myself on the constant propaganda and bias that is put in front of me every day in the media. I have decided to educate myself on how to recognize my white privilege so as to not
continue the racist system of our country. But most importantly, I have decided to listen, and it’s about time that you decide to do the same.
— Sydney Manningham, emphasizing that these are also the thoughts of my generation
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