Sink Hollow Issue 16 by Sink Hollow Undergraduate Literary Journal

S i n K H o ll o W

Issue XVI

Editors Note Dear Reader, During the three years I’ve been with Sink Hollow, I have never ceased to marvel at the thematic harmony each of our issues embodies. Our contributors, hailing from across the country and globe, work across genres to explore the intricacies of human experiences, yet when we arrange their work across our pages, a shared focus always emerges. The pieces featured in this latest edition are no exception. Together, they investigate the tensions between that which is difficult to discern, the censored and lost, and that which lies open, the naked and vulnerable. As you sink into Issue XVI, we invite you to contemplate how these artists unveil the taut strings binding our experiences, our contradictions. They harmoniously reveal what it means to be human. Jay Paine Editor in Chief

CONTENTS

Untitled 1

Driving Home

Cira Mesubed

Luke Koesters

Home Web

Orchids at Night

Niell

Anna McIllece Mary Lentz

Donald Patten

Young Poets Nude Donald Pasmore

Keep Me Searching for a Heart of Gold Matthew McCain

Reflected Aynslee Mattson

Rabit Hunting Sunflower Rosales

Consume

Room 313

Terra Hedgecock

Shane O’Callaghan

BFC5FD80-5832-4E25-9B773C0817389F9D Carolyn Watson

28FD716E-1395-4271-A52D-BA2C831B12A5 Carolyn Watson

Dazzle Elaine Liu

Resisting the Pull Terra Hedgecock

5 21

Connected

Hercules

Mary Lentz

Faris Allahham

Bridget Donald Patten

Comfort

Terra Hedgecock

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Biographies

Staff

Inflicted Cira Mesubed

Untitled 1 Cira Mesubed

Driving Home Luke Koesters

Power lines dice prairies into bite-sized plots. Bird flu is in the air as farmers ready their trifles inside silos stacked with layers, rocks then chickens then manure then rocks then chickens then manure. They melt it, fearing it’s all rotten. Inside, the car’s cabin reeks of motor oil seeping out a man’s pores, a man whose calloused palms vice the wheel until his knuckle skin splits open and night bleeds out onto a single lane highway. His choked groans sound like he’s chewing on ground and roadkill he passes. Earth heaves with him, releasing pent up broods of locusts, gestating long before the man knew where to get calloused palms. Or how a little graveyard outside his childhood backyard, filled with neighbors and family, offers nothing. He returns to pay a visit to his father’s tree, the one where they would hang rifled foxes to empty and dry. He returns to ask the soil if they are square yet.

Home Web Anna McIllece

Orchids at Night Mary Lentz

Neill Donald Patten

Young Poets Nude Donald Pasmore

It was different, we were all naked, letting the chill air harden nipples and shrink scrotums—:for those who had testicles:—it was like smelling your grandmother bake cookies. Or a supportive comment: I loved seeing that. Nudity is celebration, uncomfortable. I hate eyes that slither. Everyone was naked, not so bad. Before, words were like an attack, targeted at physical flaws. Nuclear warfare hit a small area, spread under the mushroom till organs thrashed, flailed, died, disrupting the mechanical tick of process. Not this time, praise and gentle caresses exploded into a cloud of ecstasy and fumes, a natural high shaking ethicwords from my pink, squishy membrane onto the page. There were prettier people, or people who accentuated their features. There’s no better reason for sex than poetry someone whispered in me. True (but not now) beauty points beyond us—kiss my mind.

Keep Me Searching for a Heart of Gold Matthew McCain

Reflected Aynslee Mattson

Rabbit Hunting Sunflower Rosales

I think a man will always be equated with a Hunter in my injured mind, and I will always be the little-raped-girl running away from men who compliment my outfit, or notice the shape of my body, or partake in the freedom of my hair, not knowing erasure is what I crave most. I once had a cousin who got a pet bunny to own for his birthday, who later escaped and got run over by a car. Everyone forgot his name and the color of his fur because no one ever wants to admit these kinds of violences happen to beautiful creatures all the time in the savage wild. I won’t tell my mother I got raped; I don’t know the Spanish word for it, and I can’t imagine how to translate sodomy or consent, and I can’t redefine male for her, hoping it becomes a thing that is equated with evil. I want to tell everyone when I’m having a bad day, that there’s a reason my brain is always two steps behind: she doesn’t know how to cope anymore without things like being called a good girl, or the precise graze of his hand. Once at a dinner party a man cooked me the meat of a goat,

and I told him I liked it: “it tastes like chicken,” because how do you tell him, “actually, this is fucking disgusting”? I don’t imagine eating a bunny would be a primitive thing, more like the need to survive. Somewhere a cavewoman lives in a society where they have not yet invented the word assault, so she will smear the blood he conjured up on the walls of her prehistoric canvas and a male archaeologist will call it a beautiful thing, eons later. I want to be the girls in the movies— those that dress up like a playboy-mansion-extra on Halloween, and find empowerment in places where men pound against drunk girls’ breasts like drums. But everytime he looks at me in skirts or dresses, now, I feel shame, then go home and change.

Consume Terra Hedgecock

Room 313 Shane O’Callaghan

When I was young, maybe eight, my mum and I drove three hours in the freezing cold and pounding rain towards Dartford, London. The storm had been raging for nearly ten hours now, every few minutes a bright crack splintered through the sky and a low rumble sounded. On the drive up, I had imagined the home smelling old and dusty something unique, the smell of finality I suppose. As we arrived, my mum grasped my hand lightly and explained to me again that James had already entered late-stage dementia, that he required around-the-clock care and not to panic if I saw tubes or nurses around him. Images of a half-man-half-machine person entered my mind, some kind of monster from my night terrors. A horrible being who was hardly human anymore, kept alive only by machinery. The panic must have shown on my face but my mum remained calm. I have realised only in memory that she held tears in her eyes and how strong she must have been to fight them and keep them from falling. I glanced toward the home. There was one lone light in the darkness. One black lantern hung lowly from a lintel, covering the top third of the door. When we entered from the lashing rain of the storm, we were not greeted by the smell of an old abandoned building or rot. Instead, lilac flowers sat on a small table in the corner and emanated a pleasant scent around the room. My panic began to slowly subside. The fear had left and I thought only of how happy people here were. Families sat or slept in large brown sofas in the common room and most of what I heard was laughter. I could still hear the storm raging outside. Heavy curtains muffled the sounds of heavy rain pelting against glass windows. A nice young man approached my mum and me, a forced smile pressed across his face. He addressed my mum by name and they exchanged pleasantries. Room three-hundred-and-thirteen was on the second floor. The door stood tall and menacing. A golden sign hung from the black door. James Carey, In Residence Patient. Room: 313 Alzheimer’s There it stood. His condition. His tombstone for the living. Even I thought that it was reductive, placing that on his sign. It was a part of him now, almost a third name. My mum took in a short breath and the nurse knocked. The voice of an older lady allowed us entrance. She stood by a lone window, the storm had escalated to hail now. A loud clattering sounded against the thin veil of glass, flashes of lightning splin

21 tering the sky. The nurse was happily plump with a white overcoat and curled red hair that touched her shoulders. As she turned she wore a pursed, unblinking smile across her face and stood tall over a man who was sunken in his chair. The male nurse nodded politely and the two nurses left. My mother and I approached. There were no visible tubes on the man and he looked clean. He was not a machine. There was a smell of diffused incense, the same smell mass has during that first service after shrove tuesday. James was smaller than I had imagined, his eyes were as grey as the storm clouds outside, and his hands were shrivelled. He was just a man. His hair was not yet white, there still was what my grandfather refers to in my family as the ‘Carey black’ hair on his head. My mother introduced me. “My son,” He whispered, a soft hand reaching out for mine, “How have you been, Boy?” A large smile graced his face. Shane, my namesake, Jame’s son, had been visiting frequently. James glowed, he had been touched by an angel. His stature straightened and he was as big as I expected him to look. I could see him now, a man, six foot four, who had biceps as big as his head and a large, solid chest. I had always imagined him as a man who could lift a car. And now, he was. James was nine feet tall in that chair. Any grey hair faded from view leaving only ‘Carey Black’ hair. He was the hurley player so many had cheered for. He is the man who could puck a sliotar from one goal and reach the other before the ball. This man could have pulled a train of people across Ireland. This was the father of my namesake, not that meek old man. I looked to my mum for reassurance. She just nodded her head gently. Reaching out, I took his hand carefully. The rain hitting against the window became more quiet. I didn’t understand at the time why my Mum allowed him to think that I was his son. I thought then that it was deception and dishonesty. Even still I did not move. Sometimes in those moments some force guides your actions even if you don’t understand them. I didn’t realise that for him I was his son, I was that lantern hanging lowly from the lintel of his home. That once he found his light, he would be let in from the storm, even just for a moment. Any decent person would allow another to enter their house to escape the storm outside. Could he still hear the storm outside muffled by heavy curtains? Could he still hear the heavy rain pelting against the glass windows? I hope that for a moment he thought only of his family, of the times he enjoyed with them. I hope he thought of that small fishing village he grew up in and the fans cheering him and the team on as he saved that last point in the sixtieth minute. I hope he thought of that small house in the village that he once lived in with his brothers and sisters. I just hope the storm stopped. I hope I was his escape.

BFC5FD80-5832-4E25-9B773C0817389F9D Carloyn Watson

28FD716E-1395-4271-A52D-BA2C831B12A5 Carolyn Watson

Dazzle Elaine Liu

: I hide behind the kitchen door, watching mom grab the fish how she would my forearm. It flops pliant like a rubber hose, the way I do when I get tired of fighting back. I pop an eye out of orbit, the slimy, succulent pearl ricocheting in my bowl. Father sucks marrow out the spiny arm of a fin and says don’t you dare put that in your mouth. His oily hand spiders over hers and I turn my eyes down, too young to know where the light of God lives. (Love, I suppose, looks something like : What he tells me after is that he loves me. It got out of hand. He was only stressed and I happened to be the best surrogate for his father. I just happened to be there. I just happened to step into the spilled bowels of his love. So much love it was dazzling, so much love I could barely see it at all. (apr. 13, 2016: mom’s in a foul mood, she tells me I have his eyes and I hate : At thirteen I learn that you can take your eyes off something and it will no longer be there. Look away from your father for too long and he’s showing another woman the love dying in his dry hands. Look away from your mother for too long and all the family pictures are dissected at their midlines, bloodied brown like spleens harvested from a whale. (he poached, he butchered, cast a net around my neck : My dress is a slick lilac, petal-stripped and crossed at the ribs. Some blinding web of lights over me, rippling surface above a dead body of water. I can’t see her but I can feel her gaze on me. Then through me. She sighs the way someone would survey a hotel room before going this will do, I guess. This is the best I can get. At homecoming I try to kiss a boy but my canines end up pressed against his eyelids. I try to kiss a boy but he doesn’t even look at me. (My mom, who is always there, says what a sight, what a sight. You should see yourself. : Let me describe romance. Some body is on the couch, head tilted back and mouth gaping, lips going pop, pop, pop. A trout in my bowl, my chopsticks poised at their gill. Some body is washed up on the couch and my fingers are around their neck. Nothing is getting out of hand anymore. I strip off my clothes like a fish peeling off its scale. I ask “like what you see?” and tighten my grip.

Resisting the Pull Terra Hedgecock

Connected

Mary Lentz

Hercules Faris Allahham

Seared skin. That nauseating stench Shrieking from Linen-wrapped flesh. What would it take for a man to kill Himself, bridled By unbridled passions? and Would a man impregnated in That blood run? A funeral pyre; Juno agrees. All to rid all but That god in him.

Bridget Donald Patten

Com

Terra He

mfort

edgecock

BIOGRAPHIES ART Cira Mesubed

Cira Mesubed is an undergraduate student at Eastern Oregon University. Their art practice revolves around themes of identity, expression and discovery. They enjoy reading, painting and working in the studio with various furry friends.

Anna McIllece

Anna McIllece is a 20-year-old undergraduate student in the BYU Bachelor of Arts program. Much of her work stems from her home in Alaska, and her family who currently resides there. She shows particular interest in high contrast paintings, nature, pop culture and film, but branches out into digital art, collage and fabric crafting in other projects. Having a background in many parts across the country, McIllece has learned from experienced artists and mentors in Florida, Alabama, Washington and Alaska. McIllece has a piece titled “Nadia” in the the Polk Museum of Art’s (FL) permanent collection from a 2019 Creative Youth Exhibition, as well as a piece titled “Peggy” displayed in the Anchorage Museum in early 2022. Most recently, she is proud to have her painting “Set Ablaze”, from this edition, be featured in the BYU Art Department Annual Student Exhibition.

Donald Patten

Donald Patten is an undergraduate student in the studio arts program at the University of Maine at Augusta. As an artist, he produces oil paintings and graphic novels. Artworks of his have been exhibited in galleries across the Mid-Coast region of Maine.

Matthew McCain

Matthew McCain is a published author and fine artist. 3 of his novels have reached the top #10 on Amazon Kindle Unlimited and his artwork is in multiple countries. He’s currently represented by the Bilotta Gallery in Florida.

Aynslee Mattson

Aynslee Mattson is an undergraduate at Utah State University studying Art Education. Their work, while spanning medium and subject matter, most currently explores local landscapes and the visual abstraction of nature.

Terra Hedgecock

Terra Hedgecock is a North Carolina painter and printmaker who is attending East Carolina University. There she is obtaining a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Arts with a concentration in Painting. Her most recent body of work is an exploration of her personal struggles with mental illness and physical disability. In these pieces she frequently utilizes self-portraiture

Carolyn Watson

Carolyn Watson is an undergraduate student at Arizona State University. She takes whatever she can find and gives it new life through her artwork. Her pieces include a variety of materials such as recycled plastic, candle wax, and many other miscellaneous items. She uses these materials across multiple mediums, with a particular focus on mixing the traditional and nontraditional. Watson has always been drawn to the items in life that are deemed useless. Ultimately, she may not use materials with their intended purpose in mind, but through her work, they can take on a new meaning. Her inspiration comes from her personal experience and observations, particularly the darker elements of life. Watson thinks of herself as a storyteller, but instead of words, she uses whatever she can find to tell her story.

Mary Lentz

Mary Lentz is an undergraduate student at the University of South Carolina Aiken, majoring in Art and English. She loves painting, photography, writing, tennis, and hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Poetry Luke Koesters

Luke Koesters is a queer, Asian-American poet from the University of Nebraska Omaha’s Writer’s Workshop. Here, he serves as the poetry editor for institution’s literary magazine, 13th Floor. He enjoys bookbinding and running a youth camp at Lake Cunningham in the summer.

Donald Pasmore

Donald Pasmore is an undergraduate student at Salisbury University who has poems published or forthcoming in Third Wednesday, The Broadkill Review, The Shore, and The Inflectionist Review. His other interests include philosophy, tabletop games, and amateur woodworking.

Sunflower Rosales

Sunflower Rosales (She/They) is a poetess, Beyoncé superfan, and current undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Elaine Liu

Elaine Liu is a third year undergraduate student studying at Colby College in Maine studying Neuroscience and English. She especially loves writing autobiographical poems, working with defamiliarized images, and hoarding books.

Faris Allahham

Faris Allahham is a poet and student from Danville, Kentucky. He currently attends the University of Kentucky studying biology and Arabic, and he will soon attend medical school in the fall of 2024. He enjoys reading both poetry and fiction, listening to music, working out, and playing with his cat.

Nonfiction Shane O’Callaghan

Shane O’Callaghan is a freshman studying creative writing and psychology at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, MT. He is from Eastbourne, England, and has a deep passion for both writing and playing football.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

STAFF

Jay Paine

FICTION

Editors: Ashleigh Sabin & Chase Petersen Advisor: Charles Waugh Readers: Gregory Dille, Melissa Cook, Chloe Scheve, & Caden Taylor.

NONFICTION

Editor: Amber McCuen Advisor: Russ Beck Readers: Eli Moss, Eliza Oscarson, Will Clark, & Zada Stephens.

POETRY

Editor: McKinlee Armstrong Advisor: Britt Allen Readers: Jay Paine, Preston Waddoups, Noelani Hadfield, Kj Anderson, & Emmalynn Erard.

DESIGN + ART

Editor: Kj Anderson Advisor: Robb Kunz

Inflicted Cira Mesubed