Dear Reader, Thank you for picking up the Spring 2013 issue of SLAM. In designing a theme that would tie these beautiful pieces together, we wanted to convey an overall look and feel that was simple, yet elegant. The embroidered SLAM logo you see on our cover was actually hand-sewn by our very own Erin Johnson, and our graphic designer, Midori Oglesby, created the new symbols and patterns you’ll find hidden among our pages. To all of the talented artists who submitted their work for this issue: thank you. Your brilliant contributions are what keep this magazine thriving. I also would like to thank my wonderful staff who worked so hard to help SLAM achieve great things this semester. Your dedication is astounding. A great amount of gratitude goes out to our advisor, Kelly Wolff, and the entire MAT committee for their advice and guidance along the way. And to our own personal superhero, Chandler: without your wisdom and guidance, this book would never have been possible. These “little bits” are for you. Meghan — you have been the best partner I could have ever hoped for. And to the one who kept me sane throughout this entire process, Erin: your commitment to this magazine has been unparalleled. I am so thankful to have you here to share a muffin (or two) and to ensure beauty in all that we accomplish. I hope you enjoy reading this newest issue of SLAM just as much as we enjoyed putting it together. Sincerely,
Sarah B. Fitzgerald Editor-in-Chief
letter from the editor 2
slam >> copyright 2013 silhouette, a division of emcvt
slam
silhouette literary & art magazine volume 35, issue 2, spring 2013
344 Squires Student Center Blacksburg, Virginia 24061 silhouette@collegemedia.com www.silhouette.collegemedia.com
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table of contents Lots
Emily Blair........................................................................ 6
Composition with Mop
Aubrey Lynch ...................................... 7
Night and Day Figures
Caleb Mathews .................................... 8
Jessica Smyth .................................................. 9
Natural Disaster Self-Portrait
Allison Frazier ..................................................... 10
Digital Radio Frequency Memory Bird
Andrew Kulak.................................................................. 15
The World
Hannah Boutwell.................................................. 16
Up Close
Katie Runnerstrom ................................................. 17
Belles & the Bees
Mason Gottschalk ....................................... 18
The Language of Honeysuckle We Rest in Hypotheticals Frame Your Look
Samantha Bounds ................... 19
Delia Tomlinson ............................. 23
Yelena Djakovic ........................................... 25
Ode for a Freeze on Skid Row
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Tom Minogue ................... 13
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Tom Minogue ......................... 26
legend poetry prose art photography
Black and White Composition
Ashton Graves ..................................................... 28
Nos. 3, 4, 5
Ashton Graves .............................................................. 28
No. 6
I Do Not Like My Morning Self
Sarah Schaefer ..................... 29
Andrew Kulak ...................................................... 30
Pikes Places
Amy Harris .................................................. 33
Falling or Flying
¾ Cup Sugar
Samantha Bounds............................................. 34
Allison Frazier .............................................................. 37
Sisters Sol
Amy Harris ............................ 27
Susan Jihae Ahn ................................................................. 38
Submersion
Sarah Schaefer ..................................................... 39
Making Sure
Samantha Louise Huff ........................................ 40
Mirror on the Wall Sacrifice
Yelena Djakovic........................................ 43
Hannah Boutwell...................................................... 44
River of Glass
Mason Gottschalk ............................................. 45
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Lots
Emily Blair
I ain’t about to tell you Everything. Knowledge is power I once heard… No wonder we stay shackled Between low mountains Cloaked in green We don’t know what we don’t know, A politician’s fantasy A people who made livings Making marks, Unable to write ancient names… Any wonder our lot Is drawn the same Every generation? And why can’t we reap From the ground soaked in our blood Each season… But I ain’t about to tell you Everything.
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Composition with Mop Aubrey Lynch
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Night and Day Figures
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Caleb Mathews
Natural Disaster Jessica Smyth
I once heard a girl say she did not judge a man by how good he looked or how much money he had, but by imagining what he would do in the face of a natural disaster. If nothing was left, for anybody, what he would do? When you have nothing, what can you give? And so she would close her eyes and start to feel the tidal waves wash over her. Start to feel the wind whipping past her, through her. Start to feel the fire, to choke on a heat that evaporated the words off her tongue. Sometimes those men would run like hell without ever looking back. But maybe those were the men who loved too hard to not let go. Rather than keep their love above water, keep their love huddled underground with no hope. Rather than keep their love from being dressed in ash, they would run from hell to keep her memory safe. Because if they were going lose everything, they needed something to take with them to the other side. If they were going to be reincarnated, they needed to preserve the most precious memories to recognize her light in the next life.
I once heard a boy say, “It is hard to stay on the same page when you are talking through letters.” After six months of reading in between her lines, I know when you see her you will hear your own voice slip from her tongue, clumsy with her heavy words. Because that’s all you’ve known. And when you kiss, your lips will slip past each other as if they’ve never met, having forgotten how to hold on to one another. Give them time, they will remember. When she talks to me, she uses the words eternity, forever, but she says them in a whisper with her hands cupped in her lap, catching them as they fall to put them in her pocket and save them for someone else. I once heard myself say, “Just don’t go.” It was quiet, and you were sleeping, but as it slept-walked off of my tongue, I could feel it. Stepping without inhibition until that moment when the ground beneath it disappeared. It was scrambling to crawl back in, hanging on to taste buds that didn’t yet recognize its honesty.
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Self-Portrait
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Allison Frazier
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“The last few months, I’ve been obsessed with ghosts of memories, songs, and people usually left to float in the backs of our minds. If you go to the Drillfield at 3 A.M. on a Tuesday morning, the lucidity with which you can see your life and the lives of those that came before you is harrowing. Recreating that plunge into the mind is something I’ve attempted here in poetic space, while at the same time not losing the reader (entirely).”
editor’s choice
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Digital Radio Frequency Memory Tom Minogue
[on pool tiles a veneer of fine sand] [reflexive] dive night swimming [in] winter [under] bahrain [sky] dad plays the beach boys mom floats on two foam noodles turn/unturn the log-jammed history of thought she didn’t read computer monitor pixels like I do skyscrapers of manama in a fistful of cardamom — steel girders dissipate into scent, my father’s mask crosses suez and panama canals singing “I know there’s an answer” on an oil spewing giant cruising the wine dark, under the deck he calls back to clark new jersey his ghost visits sometimes when he/I march we become “keep your back straight make eye contact when you shake” ghosts are typical [time] anomalies, he and I march to the same count beyond suspicious [time] in turns ghostly/alive. i am weary/wary/silent on god, G-O-D, eminent gratifier of ghosts, E-G-O foremost jammer between the thought and twitch, for the benefit of mr. freud I use a stick to mark letters of displacement in wet pavement by my high school in yokosuka volume thirty five >> issue two
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[I live in america for the ďŹ rst time when I am sixteen] [I pop to uniformed attention and salute four years later in san antonio] [I sleep when niigata snow dunes are my pillow] too many bands of gigahertz too wide we have seen the bottom of the deepest frequency and it is doubly dark. dad asks my ghost if it digs pet sounds [I snap the lock tight on the gate to the pool] Note: DRFM jamming is when an incoming radio signal is deconstructed by an opposing signal, which mirrors, reconstructs, and counteracts the incoming frequency.
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Bird
Andrew Kulak
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The World
Up Close
So here it is, the sun and the moon the hard packed ice of the mountain peak and the deep suocating ocean where only a bubble from a desperate cry reaches the surface. The forest begs forgiveness, dark enclaves of deadfall creep from the ground, ferreting bears and wildcats further into the shadows. The haggard desert coughs for water, one tiny drop. One moment of relief from the beating ďŹ sts and hard glare that never stops. You came to me and said this is the world, the call from heaven is no more than a whisper of blurred truths and masked lies. Demons tear at the esh for the chance to inhabit the soul. But a green stem and yellow petals push out from underneath the snow, if only to breathe the thin air and be trampled.
Katie Runnerstrom
Hannah Boutwell
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Belles and the Bees
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Mason Gottschalk
The Language of Honeysuckle Samantha Bounds
The language of the honeysuckle is playful. There are twelve words for summer, four for bare feet, and the word “test” and its synonyms don’t appear even once. There are over one-hundred words for rain that cover everything from fat rain to muddy-toes rain to sun-still-shining rain. The building heat of June slows the words of the honeysuckle, dragging them out like honey across a homemade biscuit or a Louisiana drawl, gentle and quiet. Its words blending together like so many grandfathers steadily and deliberately rocking on the front porch discussing the weather or how the Nats are playing, while granddaughters turn the bursting pastels of hydrangeas into palaces or beauty parlors and grandsons convert the woods into a battleground and sticks into swords. The honeysuckle has twenty-two words for innocence and twenty-two more for wisdom. The language of the honeysuckle is filled with the sweet bite of an exploding watermelon. It is a language of wonder and new experiences. It defines the bursting firework that dazzled the bashful boy and gave him the courage to scoot across the bench another six inches, and it hid the delicate blush that spread across his cheeks when she held his hand for the first time. It is a language that holds the secrets of heavy July afternoons and knows the marvel that is a first kiss.
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Clandestine, conďŹ dential, covert, safe are the furtive kisses hidden among the climbing vines. Buttery yellow petals release a fragrant mist that trails through the trees and along freshly painted fence lines until childhood is far behind us, its sweet embrace still clinging to our skin like the evening dew. The language of the honeysuckle is eternal and ever-changing. It has words that are only known when toes are smothered in river mud and the night is illuminated by lightning bugs. The words hum with the chirping crickets and croaking frogs in a rhythm that is only heard on the dying nights of August. The honeysuckle knows the password of the night, the word is somewhere between lightning and stars, or maybe, halfway between twilight and dawn, but no one can know for certain. My guess, the word lies somewhere in between you and me and our interwoven ďŹ ngers, laced together like the climbing vines, or the buds before they bloom.
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“This story is a juxtaposition of the positive and negative truths I’ve encountered throughout my life. I believe in the ability to filter through the constant influx of information we receive and find our own subjective truths. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, ‘I feel and think as much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.’”
editor’s choice
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We Rest In Hypotheticals Delia Tomlinson
We rest in hypotheticals and what-could-have-beens. We wonder if we had taken that kiss, stepped into that airplane, never looked back. What could have been. What could have been. This is what we have. Cold mornings in empty beds, shitty coffee, and snowflakes in our hair. A routine that wears us to the bone and no comfort to come home to. Our vices a product of our search for God knows what. We look in the mirror and wonder how we made it through the day, how we managed to pull ourselves out of bed. We inhale smoke, we crush up pills, we drag blades across our skin just to feel okay and remind ourselves that we are human. We wonder what could have been while parents of lost children pull photographs from the ruin, knowing what once was, acutely aware but drenched in unfathomable numbness. Oxygen is forced into a patient’s lungs by a nurse who doesn’t know where her
family will go to escape the violence of water and wind penetrating the city, and we wonder if it’s worth it to leave our beds today. Flood waters and gusts of painful wind have washed away all some once knew while we waste our days in apathy. We forget these things. We forget that we are the dust from the stars and if the stars are humble enough to come down from the galaxies and become our cells then we can set aside our heavy hearts and love each other. We are the droplets of water pooling around mason jars of lemonade, and we are the shiny black blocks of earth and past lives we insist on burning to fuel our greedy desires. Remember the moments you felt most alive. Feel your first real kiss, your first love, the first time he didn’t have to hold his hand over your mouth so his parents wouldn’t hear you and the first time it felt like making love. The first time you volume thirty five >> issue two
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got caught and wanted to die and the first time he told you he hated every part of you. Remember when you found yourself at the top of a mountain and knew the trees and earth and sky were a part of you and you were a part of them. The sun sinks behind the rolling mountaintops and the moonlight reflects on the clouds like chandeliers, every exhale into the cold autumn air a manifestation of hope rising toward ethereal darkness. One day the sky will be your sanctuary, the stars lighting the path like rose petals to the altar, a marriage to the universe’s constancy. Virginia’s stones lie across the altar, and our hearts of hurt and joy and ecstasy
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and pain pour out across them like vomit the night we swore we’d never drink again. We will share the sky with men who lost their homes and hearts and women who screamed “stop” but he didn’t listen, he never listened. Infants whose first few soft whimpers faded to silence and found peace in the earth far too soon. Perspective encompasses our souls as our bodies become flowers in the wedding bouquet, shells on the ocean floor, clouds in the bluest sky against the brilliance of summer’s death and winter’s birth. We will know that our shitty coffee and empty beds were blessings, and our cries of despair belong to the stars that carry us home.
Frame Your Look
Yelena Djakovic
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Ode For a Freeze on Skid Row Tom Minogue
Ice paralyzed sidewalks, Hell’s evening temperature is exact: Negative ten degrees Fahrenheit encroaches the low in each tenement. Two year old wonders at icicles hanging from the rafters. Inside the freeze mom is always seventeen, and her blood pumps quickly, she is crystal fallen from windowsills toward drunks traversing their way to the corner store. She drops through night and my aorta, floats away from the reach of a hobo can fire into tachycardia drifts of snow. Flakes rest on my heavy arms. She urges me back inside, “put on a jacket, leave the chill alone.” Go steady my cardiac pitch and throttle. When you melt, promise me you’ll melt slow
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Black and White Composition
Amy Harris
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Nos. 3, 4, 5
Ashton Graves
No. 6
Ashton Graves
I Do Not Like My Morning Self Sarah Schaefer
I do not like my morning self this Christmas, I awoke to bells sleigh bells, real ones from the sleigh my great-grandfather drove through prairie snow, strong strong left hand coiled in the reigns strong because he lost his right strong because it was him, Randall bull-like, bull-headed, bull-bodied my grandmother was ringing the bells she yelled, “Santa was here! Santa came!” I am much too old for Santa, but of course, so is she I do not like my morning self I think I yelled, something about waiting until nine, it was seven-thirty, I was trying to dream, to get enough so I could be pleasant, but still I returned to dreams of snow and new blue coats and men later we joked about the bells, she didn’t hear me yell, much too old for Santa
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Pikes Places
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Andrew Kulak
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“My paintings are created in a way that is reactive. I start with a few marks of color and work the piece until it reaches a state that needs no more change. Though many may see abstract imagery, I feel that everyone who sees it gathers their own unique and true definition of what the piece is meant to portray.”
editor’s choice
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Falling or Flying
Amy Harris
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¾ Cup Sugar Samantha Bounds
You sat across the counter once, brown sugar eyes dancing towards me as you recalled some story from your day. ¾ cup brown sugar Warm, and inviting, with a smell fleck on your right eye that screamed imperfection. It was my favorite, the only eye freckle I knew. You hated them, “Muddy,” you would say as you took another swig of Bud Heavy, a man’s beer. 1 stick of butter and ½ cup Crisco “What is John Keats!” you would shout out before I could, your voice, gleeful, like a child. Alex Trebek always backed up your answers and you always swore that if you ever got on the show you’d win. 1 tsp. vanilla Your sleeved rolled up to your elbows, your tie loose, exhausted after a long day, swung lazily from your neck—a child swinging aimlessly, resting on the last rung on the monkey bars— I can imagine you at that age, carelessly dangling, innocent and naïve high above the world. 34
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1 tsp. baking soda The phone rings, electrified, your hand reaches it before I do, your fingers gently cradling the receiver. My questioning eyes reach yours, you hold up your hand— one finger— one minute. The hinge moans as you shut the door— you never did fix it. 1 tsp. salt My head bowed, my lashes wet, my empty tears slide from the corners of my eyes, down my nose, into the bowl— one at a time, never together. 2 eggs “Shhhh, it’s alright,” you coo, but you’re crying too as you touch me, fearfully as if I’m a plate— the one in the cupboard that has a crack but we can’t throw away. “They’re you’re favorite flower,” you’d say, with that devilish faded frat-boy smile, “we can’t throw it away. According to the doctor there is nothing more that he can do, nothing more that we can do— nothing more that I can do. I pull away from you and I stand silent and watch your heart crumble, piece by piece falls to the floor as your stone walls fall. volume thirty five >> issue two
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2 ¼ cups flour Flecks of orange paint grip your beard and sprinkle across the Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt I bought you in college. I lean against the doorway, silently watching you stand alone among the tarps. The guest room isn’t blue anymore. Preheat oven to 350° and stir in chocolate chips Four cardboard boxes, two duffle bags, and the living room TV stare at me from the hall. I cannot see them— I only see the plate. It finally cracked. The pattern of tiger lilies smile sadly in my direction— knowing all too well that it will never be put back together again. Bake 7-8 minutes or until cookies turn a golden brown Alex Trebek and I are alone tonight stealing bites of cookie dough in between questions. I am the only player and I’ll be back again tomorrow and all the tomorrows after. Serve and enjoy Brown and molten, the semi-sweetness comes in waves gently burning my tongue.
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Sisters
Allison Frazier
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Sol
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Susan Jihae Ahn
Submersion Sarah Schaefer
I am Dustin Hoffman without the wet suit I stand at the bottom of the pool with my toes barely grazing the chalky floor my skin gleams in rose art turquoise I feel rippling bristles across my legs, arms, lips my mouth is sealed against the current I am limp. I do not fight. I stand looking forward to the blankness the sagging ropes and ladder are more significant than you who float only inches above you who got me this goddamn pool to begin with and who will do nothing more than drift almost close enough to touch and pretend not to see what I offer I can’t see you now you can’t make me lose myself in public I won’t watch or hear our secret scene that plays and plays, projected across my eyelids moments before I sleep, pulling me from everything to be in this pool you are not significant if I cannot see you
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Making Sure
Samantha Louise Huff
Make sure the baby’s down for his nap, then watch for the Talberts to leave for work. Once they’ve left, take the pieces of meat in the trash bag and put them in the rusty blue wheelbarrow out by the storage building. Grab the shovel. Heft the wooden handles of the wheelbarrow and push the load down the path through the woods around the house. The creek is far enough away, and the ground will be soft enough—even in this scorching heat that’s been baking the ground and killing the grass recently. Dig down a few feet near the blackberry bushes. Make sure the bag can’t be found by accident. Throw it down into the hole and pack the dirt back in. Take that log rotting away nearby and drag it over the fresh dirt where you’ve dug. Don’t think about the bugs, and maggots, and spiders living in it, thriving off death and hastening decay. Wash your shoes and hands off in the cool water running through the creek bed. Then take a deep breath and go back to the house. Put a pot on for lunch and mix 40
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the baby’s formula into a bottle to heat up in the microwave for when he wakes up. Sit there at the table while you wait for the water to boil. Read your magazine about fun summer crafts sure to brighten up any home. Remember that it was never bright, not with his shadow filling up the corners. No, don’t think about that. Flip through the thin pages and consider ordering that specialty crockpot on page 47. Go and chop up the golden potatoes you bought at the supermarket and put them in the boiling water. Think about how good they’ll taste mashed with pepper and butter. Rinse the knife off in the sink and put it in the rack to dry. Don’t let yourself think that, no matter how many times it’s washed, you’ll never un-see the red dripping down the blade to the floor, smearing across white linoleum that now smells of bleach and lemons. No, eat your potatoes and wait for the baby to wake up. Remember that he’ll never grow up fearing that man’s steps against the front porch. That he’ll never stand shaking in the living room hoping the night’s gambling has gone well. Nor will he know a nagging chill when shadows stretch out from the forest and cast their darkness over the house. He’ll only know how sharp the cutting knife is as it carves the ham at Christmastime and the warmth of sharing a meal with a loved one on a peaceful, Alabama evening.
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“Venice. People might only see the gondolas, but I look beyond that. I see the mirrors that help them make their way through the channels each day. Not only do these simple mirrors serve people on a daily basis, but they also add authentic beauty to the timeworn walls of the city.”
editor’s choice
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Mirror on the Wall
Yelena Djakovic
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Sacrifice
Hannah Boutwell
Under the house my father built exists a well with tainted water. Sulfur flows through the liquid without a hint or indication that the clear cool pool causes an overwhelming gag from the bitter swig. I go there sometimes to the rural log cabin built with muscle, persistence, and a flask filled with a liquid, much stronger than the sulfur water that ran through the veins of the dense stained wood, power washed and primed, glossed and coated. Set on two-hundred acres of cyclical land showing no scars like those that accumulate on the grain. Scars from bees, rain, and the rot that digs deep into lumber, alongside those scars that force their way in, showing no visible signs, no dark circles of blood and regret. I watch the cabin, see the tiny cross nailed to the chimney and wonder if my father sacrificed himself, if his blood taints the water running through its pipes. I wonder if we took this house and beat him with it until he no longer existed outside of this grain, this well.
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River of Glass
Mason Gottschalk
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staff Sarah Fitzgerald editor-in-chief
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Meghan McDonald
Midori Olglesby
business manager
graphic designer
Shelby Ward
Erin Johnson
poetry editor
graphic design/special events
Christine Aker
Katlyn Griffin
photography editor
prose editor
Matt Schmitt
Gabriella Jacobsen
promotions director
art editor
Libby Howe
Carly Kuchova
promotions assistant
public relations editor
Curtis Stanford
Hilary Andreas
assistant poetry editor
assistant prose editor
Kathy Spicknall
Meg Selby
distributions manager
assistant photography editor
Sarah Groat
Kayla Franco
alumni relations chair
graphic design
Darien Foster
Janai Rau
webmaster
graphic design
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index Ahn, Susan Jihae 38 Blair, Emily 6 Bounds, Samantha 19, 34 Boutwell, Hannah 16, 44 Djakovic, Yelena 23, 43 Frazier, Allison 10, 37 Gottschalk, Mason 18, 45 Graves, Ashton 28 Harris, Amy 27, 33 Huff, Samantha Louise 40 Kulak, Andrew 15, 30 Lynch, Aubrey 7 Mathews, Caleb 8 Minogue, Tom 13, 26 Runnerstrom, Katie 17 Schaefer, Sarah 29, 39 Smyth, Jessica 9 Tomlinson, Delia 23
Printing: Franklin Graphics Printing Nashville, Tennessee Typefaces: Adobe Garamond Pro Trade Gothic LT Std
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silhouette literary & art magazine volume 35, issue 2, spring 2013 52
slam >> spring twenty thirteen