Sequel: 2022-2023

2022-2023

SEQUEL 2022-2023

Editors

Hannah Curtis, Leo Hoyt, Elliot Magalhaes, and Hazel Morgan-Fine

Editorial Layout

Esther Escalante and Bethany Lachona

Faculty Advisor

Jeremy Griffin

Sequel would like to thank Dennis Moore ’72 for his generous support of the publication.

Sequel would like to thank the Simpson College Departments of English, Graphic Design, Office of Marketing and Strategic Communications, and Nayeli Mejia for their assistance with this publication.

The content in Sequel is not representative of the opinions of Simpson College. Content is the sole responsibility of each author/artist. Subject matter may be sensitive to some readers.

701 North C. Street

Indianola, IA 50125

www.simpson.edu

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FICTION

Dear God,

This is to let you know that I am breaking up with you. This decision was not an easy one to make, but I feel it’s what is best for both of us. For me. And no, it’s not me; it’s you. They say the truth will set you free so, I’m freeing myself from your lies, and since you’re always talking about how “just” you are, I think it’s only “just” that you answer me this:

Where is my baby sister? She was too young to feel pain, to meet death. Too young to cause strain on my family and friends. I was too young to feel loss, to hear cries, to see my mother with tears in her eyes. They say, “God is good,” and “He is faithful,” but where was this “faithful” God when my mom, who was faithful to the word, faithfully got on her knees day in and day out?

Our God who art in heaven: you’re in heaven with your angels, watching over us with some popcorn because for you, some of us are just a good movie with a pinch of salt. You betrayed me. You betrayed our trust, and I now realize the foolishness in trusting in something you can’t see. Because you never really know when it will sneak up on you and take away the people you love the most.

Hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come: what kind of king claims to love his kingdom, kisses his kids with his invaluable breath, then turns his back on them? Allowing evil to steal, kill, and destroy? It makes sense to me why Judas betrayed you with a kiss. That is how backstabbing works in the kingdom.

I’ve already made up my mind. It’s not your will be done, it’s mine.

Give us this day our daily bread: ask the kid on the street corner what that prayer means to him. He’ll probably tell you it’s a little bit about breadcrumbs and a whole lot of hopelessness. Because for him, daily bread doesn’t come every day. You talk about the blood of Jesus and the body of Christ and how it was freely given so we could freely receive life in its most abundant form. Yet, innocent kids are still dying because their breakfast times are their dinner times, and that’s the only time their throats see anything other than poverty; and you still have the audacity to tell me, “Ask and it shall be given.”

You once told me that forgiveness of trespasses strengthens relationships; and I know you’re still punishing me for Eve’s transgressions but for how long will I have to see my mother’s tears fall? How do you think it makes me feel to see her call those we call family and to see her suffer at the hands of those who were meant to make her happy? And don’t tell me everything happens for a reason when many families are together, and I can’t even look at my own.

Lead us not into temptation. I struggle to pray with my eyes closed because all I see when my eyes are closed is their eyes. How loud did I have to scream to silence my mother’s pain? How many tears do I have to cry to quench my brother’s thirst?

Lord, how do you choose your soldiers? I won’t ask you to deliver us from evil, because you created it, so you can have it all. The kingdom, the power, the glory forever and ever.

BE STILL.

Be still and know that I am God. I can’t say I’m surprised; I saw this coming. I’ve seen how you don’t even look at me the same anymore; the way you cancel our dates. Somewhere in between your busy life and worship of self, I’ve become a once-a-week thing, twice-onSunday, thrice-in front of people, four times when you really need something.

I’ve seen it in your eyes, how your mind drifts off when you’re supposedly spending time with me. In fact, until today, I don’t remember when we last spoke for longer than one minute and twenty seconds. What a bittersweet tragedy that the one time you’re giving me quality time is to tell me that we are out of time. And no, it’s not me; it’s you.

You get on your knees and ask for my will to be done, yet you won’t let me take the wheel. There’s no room for both you and me at the altar of your heart; for me to bless your family when you’re stuck on unforgiveness, to heal the pain of your past when you chose victimization. There’s no room to give you this day your daily bread when you won’t acknowledge that I’m your sole provider of those breadcrumbs down to the very breath your lungs thrive on.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all you need will be added unto you. That is, seek first MY face before the works of MY hands. Thirst first for me before the satisfaction I bring. That is SEEK ME. And if anyone wishes to come after me, he needs to deny himself. Take up his cross and follow me.

Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. I need you to trust me, to have some faith in me even if it’s just the size of a mustard seed; that’s all it took to part the Red Sea. Have the faith of the blind men, who fixed their blind eyes on an invisible God, who saw me before their eyes could see. Seeing is believing is a lie. Believing is seeing. When you feel your cross is too heavy for you to bear, remember Job; stripped of everything that was true to him, his family, his wealth, his health. A man with everything reduced to a man with nothing, yet he held onto me with blisters in his hands. Remember Abraham, Hannah, and Sarah. Do not lose heart for you are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not abandoned. Struck down, but not defeated.

Remember the cross. Greater love hath no man than this; that a man would lay down his life for his friends. The enemy is already defeated! Tell your brother, tell your sister, the parable of the prodigal son! Tell them my heart breaks each day the sun goes down without them coming back home; my heart bleeds wasted time, I’m relentless in my pursuit of their heart. I will not give up on them, and the only way to get back on their feet is to get on their knees. Tell them my grace surpasses bad decisions in a broken relationship; tell them I love him, I love her.

You asked how I choose my soldiers. I knitted you together in your mother’s womb, molded you into a star, and stars are specifically designed to shine in the darkness. So, shine. I do not make mistakes. Whatever was supposed to kill you, didn’t, and what doesn’t kill you knows who you belong to.

So, tell your story and use it to uplift others. Do not be afraid. My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in your weakness. Boast in your weakness; rejoice in your hardships, persecutions, and difficulties. For when you are weak, then you are strong.

Today, whatever you decide, may your wandering never wonder about my deep love for you. May you be aware that it is complete and unconditional. May you be aware that none of what you did yesterday, none of what you say today, none of who you’ll become tomorrow will change that. May you be aware that my son’s death on the cross, the only lifegiving death, was so you could experience all of my love for you. May you be aware that the entire kingdom, the power, the glory forever and ever means nothing to me if I am not gaining your heart. And may you be aware that your sister is happy, and she’s waiting right here for you. She’s waiting…they’re waiting. They’re ALL waiting for you to come home.

Esther Escalante

Tracks of the Past

Suicide has come knocking at my door tonight. It creeps through my family like a virus, picking us off one by one. I have prepared for this day for months. With my bag packed and hidden in my closet. I had hoped I could shield myself for longer than I have. That my mask would hold until the weather was warmer. I’m thirteen, and it’s February in Iowa, and we are in the middle of a blizzard, but now as the pounding on the door grows louder and louder, my only options are to open the door or flee through my window into the bitter cold.

I pulled the heavy duffle bag out of my closet and set it on the bed. I opened it to quickly check the contents one last time. Toothbrush, spare clothes, fire-starting materials, my lantern, and about $36 in cash. I grabbed my hoodie and threw it on. I know I should put on my heavy winter coat, but it will hinder my escape, and I am headed for warmer horizons. I shove my feet into my tennis shoes, grab my Walkman, and stuff it into my hoodie pocket. I opened the window and was immediately hit in the face by an icy blast of wind. I grabbed the duffel and tossed it out my first-floor window. I turned back and took in my room once more. I hope this is the last time I will see this place. It was a bittersweet moment. The house hadn’t felt like home for a long time. Honestly, I don’t know if it ever has, but still, there was a twinge of sorrow before following my bag out of the window and into the snow.

A foot and a half of snow was already on the ground, and it was still coming down thick. I looked around; it was dark. 11:30 at night, the heavy snow falling made it eerily silent. I could hear everything and nothing at all. My childhood home is on Railroad Street, and I was never far from the train tracks. I spent many days watching the trains roll through, hoping to find myself on one someday. The trains were the only thing that ever truly left town. It was only a matter of time before someone who had fled through conventional means would return. The trains, however, didn’t have to return, and they never stopped here. If I could find my way onto one, maybe I could also leave this place for good. I took a deep breath of that ice-cold air and knew my mind was made. I was running away from home. I grabbed my bag and heaved it over my shoulder. Leaving the window open, I turned and walked toward the tracks, away from that house and the virus within.

Tyler Love

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“There is another world, but it is in this one.”

—W.B. Yeats

“When we are not sure, we are alive.”

—Graham Greene like

the chocolate hills

She wakes. The grass is not real. Her dandelions are not as soft as she imagines actual ones to be, but they blow even better, a man-made breeze blowing tiny white particles as they drift in perfect unison and land with grace. And the delicacy with which she blows on the pappi is so easy, soft unspoken vows that shall be kept until forgotten.

Vast. She cannot see the entirety of the world because this is the world. Mounds and mounds and mounds and mounds of green. All painted on the walls.

She wakes. The grass is real. The dandelions grow crooked but sway gently, surrounded by small, yellow, unripened versions of themselves. When she blows, several pappi stubbornly stick to the seed head. There is no breeze until after they’ve already danced their way to the ground, and they lie serene upon the grass until blown elsewhere.

Vast. She can see the entirety of the world.

This is the world. Mounds and mounds and mounds and mounds of green. The trees are scattered in the valleys between the peaks, branches bumpy and rough—if she

She lies, then stands, in a world of smoothly shaped round hills. Plastic leaves hang and create saturated, dark shadows on the ground, branches symmetrical and evenly distributed. The painted blue sky hovers, brightly lit, a ceiling constructed with the utmost care. The trees may be fake, but the fake trees are real.

How, she wonders, is this crafted world so beautiful, so artificially authentic, such a pristine example of the best aspects of nature. Beauty without the price of time. Without death.

There is a door handle peeking at her, seemingly floating in the space where the walls end but have the illusion of forever. She steps outside, into another world of hills, and sees that her own is really a white building, concrete and sturdy and—

Oh, how horrid the ground looks! The grass is so dull, and patches of dirt taint the greenish-brown landscape. Her lime-hued, peaceful hill is now an imperfect, blemished vision, profoundly difficult to observe. The real world is so fake, so unconsumable, so difficult to appreciate.

could touch them—with irregular patterns, making the hills appear all the more organic. She stands; a hill, muted green and uneven ground. The world is full of asymmetrical balance.

The sky’s clouds break apart, filling the sky, veiling and unveiling the sun. Effortless.

She breathes, doesn’t always understand what she observes, but it evokes interest in its unpredictability. Unsure; alive.

Only one piece of this world is man- made: a white building, its placement almost startling and its presence clearly estranged from the organic material around it. There is a door just as white and plain as the rest of it, and when she enters she almost recoils.

The grass is not grass, but she wishes it were. It’s so intense, so much. The colors are overstimulating. The temperature stays the same, no clouds to shield from a sun’s glare, no too-bright sun to provide any extra warmth at all, too comfortable to really appreciate the coolness of the breeze, which overwhelms her in its consistency.

The morning is bleak, and she chooses to close the door she’d barely stepped out of, now back in the comfort of chosen reality.

She steps back outside and is calm.

Natural; real.

Nayeli Mejia

Ring for Service

In streamed the morning sunlight from the reading room’s large bay window. As the light filtered through the dust floating in the air, iridescent as the light caught onto the small forms, it created a scene that was almost spectral. Tiny particles dancing along, moving throughout the room of their own accord. The dust made its way around, landing on the books which lined the room of ceiling to floor shelves with moving ladders clinging to the sides for the top shelves. Dust landing on the armchair sitting contently in the corner, and the old rolltop oak writing desk with its roll stop open with a smattering of papers scattered all around.

The dust found its way into the small nooks and crannies, boxes and holes, cups and saucers, bins and curtains. The room was vast and rather large as was the rest of the house. Used as a boarding house for travelers coming in from out of town to stop by quickly; many entered with a sigh of the wonder which such a building held. It was older and held the usual qualities which come with old and antique houses, but this building had a unique quality of its own. One could not simply quite explain what this certain quality was, but it was almost as though the building contained a life of its own. As though pictures would move in their frames when turned away, or a creaking sound emanating from the hallway on the third floor. The birds on the plastered wallpaper moving about and flying away, or the way some small trinkets appeared to go missing, only to return in a different spot than they were originally located. Most people assured themselve s this was merely a trick of the light or the wind blowing the curtains back. But what many people did not know was that the house truly did possess its own quality of being. If only one could imagine the secrets the old boarding house of Picket Lane really did contain.

Katie Robey

POETRY

Stencil on a Street

Jordan Courtney

If I made my bones busking from Boston to San Bernardino until dusk when The tire dust doesn’t seem to settle would you Still look down upon me and make mental note of Every mark to make sure it is neither scar nor Needle poke remnant to retain my worthiness?

Of your park benches too painful for Peter from accounting but Palatial for poor Herman hurt too many times to count on Fingers falling off from frostbite last winter when the Willow on the mural of West Carver avenue was A waypoint for wandering wills wading the sea Uneasy and rising with red and blue staggered rhythms Rising to scare and send the pilgrimage stumbling but Somebody will still slip through with their Scroll on the tongue

Fossil fuel and concrete stench in the summer stuck to the Nose so long it lost its edge and like your god I know it is still there But I no longer process it like Professor Proctor pondering the world but Waiting for it to click is the call for cobwebs to come and Calcify like the body and eventually bend to the point of Snapping like the will and the fingers forced to stop the faceplant after Tripping but that’s just about all I do these days when the Dead eyes above the dais speak about the uncertain to the Apoplectic ones hurling towards the sun and the streetcorner

Katie Christensen

When I’m in pain, I feel compelled to write. I feel it like you feel nausea when you sit by a basin. I feel it like it’s imminent, and I’m desperate for it to leave.

I feel it as I lie here, motionless. As the words for each line, each stanza bounce off of each other and into the inside of my skull, leaving calluses from their repetition.

This compulsion, I feel it sitting inside my chest- clasped tight and squeezing.

I feel it spread down into my legs- they move, as if they have a mind of their own. I feel it as the words to the line I’d thought of several minutes (or hours) -at this point, who knows?- ago do somersaults behind my eyes and across the bridge of my nose, which bleeds and leaves clots made of equal portions my slippery, sporadic thoughts and red blood cells on my pillowcase, making stains that, though one day I will try, I’ll never be able to fully remove from existence.

When I’m in pain, I feel compelled to write. As if I had a pen in my hand, I could write my next book. An epic. One of the truth, of my real thoughts, about how it feels to be in pain and feel compelled to write. Of how it feels to sit and wait for the bags of liquid attached to you by a needle and hollow plastic thread to be empty, only to be replaced by another to try and make you better. But it only works for a moment, so you come home, and you’re in pain again, and you feel compelled to write.

When I’m in pain, as I am now, I feel compelled to write. But I don’t have a pen at the moment, nor a notebook or even a book to read that I could scrawl notes on in the margins. The lights are off, music is playing, the fan is on, and I am in bed, yet again. In pain, feeling compelled to write.

Outlets

Tyler Love

Outlets and inlets

dams to keep it in spillways overflowing here is where I begin at the helm overwhelmed not sure where to turn as my eyes begin to burn holding back the tears fractured by my fears the first time I’ve written in years head full of doubt screaming to get out

The Little Spoon

Tyler Love

The Big Spoon that’s what I am every night my whole life it’s what I was taught what society expects the male protects we are the big spoon the guardian at night holding our loved ones close so they feel safe knowing our place never wondering what it could be like in their place I remember though the first time you gifted me with knowing what it’s like to be the little spoon not the date nor the time but the way it made me feel initially uncomfortable as it was not my place having never felt this embrace but as I lay there I felt at ease as it swept over me warmth and love and I felt safe in a way I never believed I could I think everyone should feel if but just once the security of being The Little Spoon

Here it is, the moment where it all started

before my hair turns brown and his gray

as my skin lightens and his grows tan from

outside work, ambition reaching high

like the leaves of a yucca plant

did you predict the way I would place you

with a magnet on my fridge, in a photo frame, my screensaver,

because you’ve managed to capture the love in five by seven inches

Nayeli Mejia

that has remained since you were taken with an old, well-used camera

and in every photo we have he is holding me the same way

his yucca-grip callused and leathery but pliable,

and fingers curl and droop around me like it is not yucca but rather

peony petals curling in, meeting in the middle

the birth certificate an oath,

and this is after he has signed the contract,

“I love you” on the line where they wrote my name.

Season of Showing Skin

Nayeli Mejia

summer sex has nothing on the feeling of snow seeping into frozen pores opening the window at seven degrees to let sheets cool shaking hands on each other’s waists; sensual breeze in this season of showing skin

Unfinished

Dennis Moore

Because life is a journey that moves so quickly, time may not allow me to

“Regret”

Katie Robey

I regret the line of thought towards anxiety.

My regret, a belief that needles a line into the threads and folds of my memories and thought.

God Doesn’t Eat at Applebee’s

Allie Tubbs

Sat at the end of a sticky Applebee’s table. My family’s boisterous laughter bouncing off the walls.

Lazy smiles stretched across faces as stomachs lowly grumbled. But those smiles slowly slipped from eyes and faces.

A chilling shadow draped the table as footsteps sluggishly approached. An aged hand gripped my shoulder with yellow jagged nails. Dark purple veins shone brightly through thin translucent skin. Taut skin contrasted sharply with sunken eyes.

My body froze as if my blood turned to concrete. My family exchanged exasperated glances because this happened too often. My mom’s body fell with a heavy sigh and my brother’s eyes rolled in his head. But my heart got trapped in my throat as warm breath whispered in my ear.

“May I pray for you?” the figure croaked. “We have a woman at our church.”

“Her arms have been Healed.”

“Maybe we can do the same” “for you?”

A quaky “sure” fell from my lips. That must have been enough for the figure as they slowly slinked away determined that their prayers would be the magic elixir. But I would have said anything.

I would have told the figure anything to make them go away. To make them stop believing that I needed to be healed. To make them stop believing that their God made me wrong. To make them stop believing that prayer could fix my pain.

I would have said anything. Because I don’t believe that my God made me wrong. Because I don’t believe that I was born into a body that wasn’t meant for me. Because I don’t believe that my God eats at Applebee’s.

ART

Moth and Butterfly

Nayeli Mejia

Blue Warp Speed

Jared Oosterhuis

Half Leaf

Jared Oosterhuis

Katie Robey