Folio is curated, edited, formatted, designed, and published by SLCC students and Folio editorial staff each fall and spring semester. This edition is intended for free public distribution and is not for sale.
Cover designed by Allison Nash Hutto using photos “Shift” and “Evolve” by Tamra Rachol. Title page photo “Shift” by Tamra Rachol. Decorative divider designed by Allison Nash Hutto.
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All of the SLCC students, faculty, and staff who shared their voices and creations with Folio.
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Recalibrate
re·cal·i·brate | /rē’kalibrāt/ (verb)
To assess, set, or adapt to a situation. To make soulful adjustments, a period of self-reflection.
The ability to take a step back and breathe in possibility. A reexamination of being. Mending one’s wounds and the acceptance of scars. Leaving phantoms behind. Restoring your will to take the next step.
A shift of perspective, a new day. A remedy to self-doubt. A reassessment of expression and self. A chance to live in the world, or hide from it.
While 2020 was a difficult time for many, 2021 has offered time for self-reflection, adjustment, and self-care. A time to recalibrate.
Folio Facuty Advisor: Daniel
Baird
Literary Editor: Amie Schaeffer
Web Editor: Allison Hutto
Marisa Green
Recalibrate
Amie Schaeffer (art by Allison Nash Hutto)
exhale from your lungs the weight that you have carried bring into focus what is viewed from this new lens realigning your own stars
One Voice, One Mind
Paige Schaus (Editors’ choice)
I don’t matter
And I refuse to believe that I can make a difference in the world I realize this may come as a shock, but I have a voice in this world Is a lie
One person cannot make a change
One day I will tell my children, I have my priorities straight because Work and obedience
Is far more important than Striving for change and happiness
I tell you this:
Once upon a time
Individuals stood alone and made the world a better place
But this is not true of my era
People fear judgment and disapproval
Experts tell me
Millions must stand to make a difference I don’t conclude that
One voice, one mind, has the ability to change everything In the future, No one will speak out for change
No longer can it be said that I can make an impact It will be evident I have no power to make a difference It is foolish to presume that I alone matter.
Now read it from the bottom up
Check the Box
Heather Graham
My ballpoint pen hovered over the bright orange paper on the cluttered table in front of me as I paused at the question that was being asked. It was one of those early summer days that felt just a little bit too warm but by mid-July would have felt like heaven. The vibrant green park was alive with celebration. Pop-up tents sat in rows across the grass, guiding the river of revelers past their colorful laughing mouths, selling rainbow flags and crop tops with clever slogans, or providing glossy pamphlets about the services and support that they offered. A steady stream of reds and blues and pale naked skin danced behind me, as the tents and people joyfully mixed and mingled. A lanky blonde with haphazard body paint and a baby blue tutu bumped into me, apologized, calling me “hunny” and excitedly hugged another painted body that was posing and bouncing near me. Their happiness and all the other acts of jubilation and excitement spread through the park like juicy gossip, until it seemed that the entire universe was celebrating too.
It was not my first Pride Festival. I’d spent several other days in a handful of other years over my short lifetime dancing and cheering with the LGBTQ+ community on hot days and rainy days and days that were more about yelling back at the protestors on the corner than singing karaoke with drag queens. I had been a friend and supporter for so long, but it was today, at this Pride Festival, as my pen continued to pause over the volunteer form for the Pride Center, that I wondered if I knew where I fit at all.
I wasn’t confused about the choices listed on the paper. The words were ones that I was familiar with. How do you identify? the paper asked. This seemed like a pretty simple question and one that I had always had a quick answer
for. Straight. Gay. Lesbian. Bisexual. Asexual. Cis. Transgender. Non-binary. Queer. Write-in-your-(very valid)-other-identity-here. I knew all of those words. Terms shared in the places I lurked on Tumblr. Concepts explored in fanfics I perused on Livejournal. Judgment shouted by the pious men outside the festival gates. Platitudes boasted by the self-congratulating allies in all the queer spaces. I knew the shapes and colors. Splashed across bare skin as the hugging pair sashayed back into the waves of jubilation. Stitched-across patched jackets as sun-kissed revelers wove through the fabric of festivity. I knew the sounds. Creating. Recreating. Empowering. Destroying. Defining. I knew the words. I knew what they meant, and I knew why they held such power for everyone in this little park.
Somewhere in the park behind me, the winner of the drag contest was announced and a crowd ignited with cheers. A tanned arm, dripping with purple and yellow yarn bracelets reached in front of me, grasping for their own pen and volunteer form while a short, tattooed flannel-shirted blonde discussed the finer points of “queering contemporary art” with a lanky, rainbow-wigged teenager to the right. A kaleidoscope of color and sounds danced like wildfire in every direction.
My friend Benny suddenly bounced up next to me, excitedly shoving a folded piece of fabric under my nose. Silky white, baby blue, and soft pink hugged symbolically as Benny unfurled the flag and wrapped it around his soft arms like a protective cape. I watched him twirl around, basking for a moment in his new safe cocoon, then dash off to find his older brother, who was somewhere among the colors with a guy whose hand was begging to be held in the safety of the festival. I smiled, hoping that Benny’s flag would make him feel safe from the hurtful words of those who didn’t care to understand. From his dad, who still misgendered him. From his mom who argued that this identity was “just a phase” and criticized Benny’s therapist for encouraging this confusion. From straight men who would tell him that he just needed to “find the right man.” From every conservative woman who told him what bath-
room he is allowed to pee in and from every single person who called him “she” without correction or apology. I hoped this flag would wrap Benny in safety and hope, and let him express himself in the same way that the words and language helped others feel authentic, heard, and validated.
I had grown up in a home where gays were welcome and loved. I had gone to my first lesbian wedding when I was seven and understood, without a doubt, that love is love. I had recited Shakespeare on stage with men who felt more comfortable in dresses and had talked about attractive teen hunks with the half-back of the high school football team. Non-heteronormative was normative in my world. I knew, staring at the checkboxes, that whatever box I chose wasn’t going to make my parents cry. The swift stroke of the pen wasn’t going to make the people dearest to me run away - though it’s the kind of thing that could (and does) happen to a lot of people. The inky x wasn’t going to change the world around me. But it was going to change the world inside of me. It was going to make me feel different. It was going to start a new fresh page in the sloppy book of my life. Maybe now, with this hesitation about checking a simple little box on a neon orange square of paper, it was time to change my story. Maybe this early summer day in this festive green park, dancing in a river of paint and glitter, was the perfect place to wrap up in my own flag and my own identity. I took a deep breath and guided the pen to leave its inky blue kisses on the paper, then stepped back into the river of color, swallowed by hope, and welcomed by potential.
Brittany Nadauld (linocut)
Texture
Is A Language, Too a.n. woodward
I was in the library
On my hands and knees, an army crawl –Soft underbelly dragging on the rough carpet, Fibers under my fingernails, palms dragging Against the bindings, Frantic to find a book with your name on it. Stack to stack to stack to stack With the exit sign bleeding in the distance –Nearly to the cinderblock wall in the back before I realized It wasn’t your name I needed to find It was mine.
The Leaf
Dillon Mueller
Does the leaf think of the tree when it falls? Does it remind itself to write a letter Does it promise to call?
When the leaf is carried by the wind, Does it ever wish to rescind?
To rewind the clock
To relive its days as a simple kin?
Or does the leaf depart?
Thanking the tree as it sputtles to the ground, Thanking it for its nutrients, patience, And its strength ever abound?
And as it decays,
Beginning its departure from this blue dome, Does it think of the futility of the seasons? Or rather Does it think of home?
Up in the branches, Another leaf takes its space
Wrapped in the tree’s embrace, Waiting and waiting Thinking to itself, “There truly is no better place.”
The Black Stag Lee Hirsch
Fables in the Hush of Night
Daniel Baird
Noise spilled out onto the cobbled street—cacophonous music punctuated by the raucous laughter of drunks and barmaids; but she avoided it, avoided them, and drew her worn, dark leather cloak closer about her. She stepped into narrower streets where noise and light were less welcome. Oh! what a delicious smell assailed her nose. She backed up one, two steps to find the recessed door to a tavern where there was just a bit of light peeking out.
She pushed open the heavy door and stepped into the candle-lit room.
“Comin’.” A youngish woman came from a door to the back and adjusted her linen apron. “Here you are dearie.” The woman wiped the imaginary dust off an oak table and pulled a chair for her.
She adjusted her dusky bow and sat slightly sideways where she could see both the entrance and the inner door.
The waitress, if that is what she was, tried to peer under the hooded cloak but only caught the glitter of the candlelight reflected in her guest’s eyes.
“I smelled something delicious.”
“Hey, we are just finishing up our own fare and seeing how you are the only customer the best is for you!” The woman gave up on trying to see who this diminutive person might be and after lingering a bit to note both the dusky bow and fine black leather vambraces, returned to the kitchen. Only a moment and the woman returned with a decent sized bowl of stew, at least for one so small, and some round, brown bread.
After watching the woman disappeared, she slowly broke the bread into smaller pieces and dipped it into the stew.
It was more than what her nose had promised. She could feel her shoulders relax and the tightness in her stomach release. After a few bites she loosened her black chest armor and adjust her arming sword to make eating easier.
Just as she was finishing the woman returned with an older man. “My father wants to know what you think of the stew.”
The man eased himself into the chair across from her. He had an easy smile and clearly enjoyed eating—perhaps he was the chef?
“I suppose it has the merits of not being my own cooking and being better.”
“Ha ha ha!” The father lolled back and forth in his chair as he enjoyed her compliment. Then, “You seem to be a traveler.”
She did not reply.
“I bet you know some tall tales to entertain on such a night as this.”
As she still did not reply he launched into a tale of his own. It was funny and she smiled. She paid for the meal with bit of coin.
But she did not have a chance to get up and leave as the man launched into another wild yarn even funnier than the last. She could not help but let a giggle escape. The man grinned at that but did not stop weaving his story.
Before he finished a boy, not yet a man, came out the door in the back followed by an older woman, probably the wife. They sat nearby and when the father had finished his improbable but highly humorous story the air became heavy with expectation.
She sighed and the smile on the father’s face impossibly
grew bigger.
“As a ranger I have wandered far and seen many a thing I suppose.” She shifted and sipped at the fine amber ale. She sipped again forcing them to wait.
“Have you heard of fearcats? No? They are the top predators wherever they roam, even if there are other monsters in the area.”
“Even Dragons?”
She regarded the astonished face of the young lad. “No, I suppose dragons are far worse.” She could see the lad’s disappointment.
“One fall,” she played with the cup a bit, swirling the amber ale. “One fall I went rather deep in some mountains to hunt deering, they were a bit scarce that year. As I went down what looked to be a deering trail I ran into a man. He and I stared eye-to-eye, I was on my horse—one of the best trained I have ever owned I might add—and he on foot. Now it doesn’t take much to be bigger than me but still, one always is a bit put-off to run into someone that big in the forests.
“I wondered if he would step off the path for me to pass but he just slid his eyes down from mine to appreciate my horse—the prettiest bay I did ever own. So I nodded, left the trail and wound around some trees before returning to the trail. I was relieved he did not follow.” She shrugged a little. Across from her the father still had that immense grin.
“I didn’t get a deering that day so I kept at it and just a few days later I found some fairly fresh tracks. I hopped down from my horse to study them when I became aware that my fine horse suddenly was very intent on something just over my right shoulder. It was that man again, left hand resting easily on his long sword. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was intent on the horse, oh did he look at my fine horse. I thought he was going to say something about how
excellent the points of my horse were or something like that. I stood up and reached around with my one hand to grasp my bow and under my cloak I loosened an arrow with the other.
“Then he shifted his eyes to me, and said, ‘best move on. There is a large ‘cat around. Got a child in a nearby village.’ ”
The younger woman had given her father another mug of the amber ale. The boy, not quite a man, shifted and looked at nowhere in particular, probably thinking the story not very funny.
“I went on with my hunting and even fished a bit, but it was that evening just as the day began to burn with the sunset that my ears were assaulted with the blaring bleating of a goat.
“Why was there a goat up here?” I watched as its bleating grew a bit fainter and it capsized onto the ground, mouth foaming. Some will poison animals like goats and then when the ‘cats come around and eat them the ‘cats are poisoned too. Effective I suppose.” She shrugged and sipped the amber ale again.
“I was just about to make up my mind to leave when my horse’s ears flicked and suddenly he was nervous. He snuffled and swung his ears around. There wasn’t a breath of wind. All was still except the pitiful sounds of the goat. I shifted left in my saddle and there it was, almost as big as my horse, biggest ‘cat I’d ever seen. It was crouched low in the undergrowth of the trees and if it had been paying attention to the goat, it certainly was now fixated on me. I tightened my grip on the reins and wondered what to do. I just about made up my mind to ease the horse back while keeping my eye on the cat when I noticed another set of eyes just a bit further in the forest. It was that man again, crouched in the brush. Was he laughing at me? Couldn’t see the lower half of his face. But I just had started to ease my horse back—” WHAM! She banged her fist hard against the table and her listeners jumped— “and the ‘cat
sprung and in one two bounds it had clamped its jaws on the neck of my horse. I rolled to the right landing on my feet and bringing up my bow and emptied my entire quiver into that ‘cat but it didn’t even notice, just kept that death grip on my horse as it first faltered, knelt, then lay down as it suffocated. Didn’t occur to me to try an arrow into its eye or such, no I just like a fool emptied the entire quiver into the neck not even leaving an arrow over and that monstrous ‘cat didn’t even notice and while I was a standing there rooted in my spot not even smart enough to run up comes the man with big strides and he straddles the back of the ‘cat and with hands wrapped around the grip he raised that long sword high above his head then drove it straight down right into the back of the ‘cats head.” She turned the cup around in her hand looking for amber ale that wasn’t there.
“The goat was dead, my horse was dead, and the ‘cat was dead. But I wasn’t so I suppose there is something in that.”
She stood up, nodded to the father, and walked back out into the dark, narrow street.
Ballad of Rain
Dillon Mueller
Stuck underneath the tin roof The ballad of rain continues Tip tap, tip tap, Incessantly repeating.
How long will this storm stay?
I heard you wonder aloud While a blinding light Emanated from a dark cloud.
As long as it needs, Replies the drunken vagrant ‘Til it replenishes the crops, Then, it packs up its bags and leaves.
Why must the wind chill me to the bone?
I heard a boy mutter to himself As he waits in the shade until it is fair enough to return home.
The cold sows the strongest seeds Replies the old weary vagrant If it was always warm, Gardens would be overwhelmed with weeds.
Why must I drudge on?
An exasperated businessman lets out a cry If this continues on, surely, I will die!
That, I cannot say Says the wise vagrant with a sigh But to find the answer, You must continue to give living a try.
I approach the old vagrant Old man, I ask, My sense of wonder obviously high, How in the world did you become so wise?
Foolish boy, he says And lets out a humorous sigh You of all people should know, That all but one of those were lies.
Drift Away
Tamra Rachol
In Puddles
Heather Graham
You wrote me prose about the rain and now when it storms I can’t seem to think about anything else. I think of your marmalade words, your cotton-candy smile and the comfortable melodies of you.
I think about the smell of rain and the chemistry of it. plant oils and coffee soil and splitting of atmospheric chemicals that form a scent. A moment.
The chemical refrain of tuned orchestration and composition.
This weather between us is waltzing in puddles and humming with the showers. Chemistry. Electricity. The dulcet cadence of a drizzle or a downpour.
Raindrops flooding our worlds with possibility and the pitter-patter song of “what could be.”
Winter Wolf Sarah Dye (crochet blanket)
Once, Somewhere
Isabella Prada
A man is running through the woods. He doesn’t know where he is going or why he is running, he just knows that he needs to run. The lack of air is hurting his lungs and twigs are scratching his face—and his arms, and his legs—as he presses through the dense woods. It is dark. He can barely see a few feet in front of him, but he doesn’t stop. There are sounds around him. He swears he hears a scream. There’s the howling of the wind in his ears saying he won’t make it. Owls hooting taunting him. Faster, faster, faster. Someone laughs and whispers, he is not going to make it.
“I am going to make it,” he breathlessly says to the faceless voice.
Now he’s able to see. He’s not leaping over fallen tree trunks anymore. He’s now running downhill in a meadow. It is bright and scorching hot. The sweat is making his clothes stick to his body and he’s suffocating.
The ground is wet, there is a splash every time his bare feet hit the soaked grass. Splash, splash, splash.
Another giggle and a small voice says, he’s not going to make it. The insult makes him go faster and he falls on his face and tastes the ground. More laughs behind.
The scenery changes again. He’s not in a meadow anymore, he’s running through water, but he can’t see anything. Darkness surrounds him but he keeps on running even though he still doesn’t know where he is going.
The path changes. He’s in front of an enormous white stone building. There are steps leading up to the large entrance. He lowers his pace, now he walks. Habit makes him try to be as quiet as possible; he’s in a museum. In the lobby there are signs guiding him to an exhibition to the right. The statues’ faces seem to mock him too, one of them whispers, he might make it.
A woman in a white robe stands in front of him.
“You are almost there,” she says. She looks young but something about her makes him think she is not, not at all.
“Almost where? Where am I going?” he asks in a daze.
“You’ll know when you get there.” Her voice sounds smooth and light and at the same time not, not at all. She points with her arm towards the direction of a door. It’s clear he needs to go now, or he will not make it.
He heeds the young but old woman and goes to the door. This time he finds himself walking through winter woods, the cold ground sending sharp shards of pain up his legs, but he keeps going. I will make it; he says to himself. In his path, he sees purple flowers stubbornly growing out of frozen ground. Strange.
The path is clear now and he can see where it’s leading. There’s a cottage. Warm lights emanate from the windows and there’s a chimney spitting smoke. Someone’s home. His bare feet are numb, they are probably staining the snow in red. The thought of a warm place and food gives him a little solace.
He stands in front of the door and he hears voices saying; he made it. I told you he would. No, you didn’t, you said he wouldn’t. Shut up. Then silence.
“Come in,” a voice beckons from inside the home.
As soon as he crosses the threshold his eyes immediately search for her around the place. Right in front of him, there is an enormous fireplace, kind of discordant compared to the small size of the cottage. There are also two massive chairs in front of the fire, and she’s sitting in one of them.
“It took you long enough,” she says without turning around, but he can hear the smile in her voice.
He walks around the chair and kneels in front of her. Grabbing her face he says, “I haven’t seen you for a whole day and this is how you greet me?” he clicks his tongue in fake disappointment but before he can say something else, she leans forward and kisses him.
Her lips are cold on his, in fact, everywhere where they are touching feels cold. He thinks he might hear sizzling where they touch because of how hot his skin is in comparison. He’s used to it though. He’s used to only seeing her at night when his sleeping mind takes him directly to her as if it knows that’s the only thing he begs during his waking hour. And it is, it’s just that he doesn’t know what it is that he’s longing for. During the day, the only thing in his mind is the end of the day when he can finally fall into slumber. He longs for something, but he doesn’t know what it is, and it hurts him so bad to reach out for something with no name, no face, no shape, and especially when the longing is difficult to ignore.
Yet the painful and confusing route to her makes it all worth it when he can finally let out her name in between breaths when he’s kissing her.
“I loathe and treasure the moment this glorious curse was placed upon us,” he says while putting her soft hair behind her ear. He has never seen anyone more beautiful than her—and he has seen more lifetimes than anyone could count.
“I loathe whoever decided that we could live apart and see each other only at night, and only in your dreams at that. What a beast.” She frowns. Her silvery gaze doesn’t dare to move from his eyes, and his body refuses to move in fear the mirage will vanish, as it often tends to do.
The owls that were mocking him on his chase to her now sit on windowsills watching. He can also hear some other animals scurrying around trying to get a peek at them. The wind is serenading them in the back and the crackling of the fire sounds like a ticking clock reminding them of the passing time, the night stops as if daring it to go faster. They talk for what seems like hours.
He tells her about everything he witnesses under his incandescent light. He tells her about the endless laugh of a running child behind his dad, and the cries of when it’s time to go inside. He tells her of the mom who finally saw her daughter dance with no worries in mind. He tells her
about the people who like to swim in sun-warmed lakes, and about sly kisses under the trees’ shade. He tells her about people’s warm embraces and about their promises for the next time. He tells her about the man who died with no one to bid him goodbye. And about all the wars people wage with prideful hatred in their hearts. He tells her about how there are some who beg for the night to come, just like he does, and some who beg him not to go.
She tells him of what people do under her soft light. She talks to him about other love stories, just like theirs, happening on borrowed time. She tells him about how they cry to her for a sign, for a lie, to justify their forbidden nights. She tells him of slow dances and shy smiles. She tells him of loud cries and crushing hearts. She tells him of beautiful lights and of the chilling dark. She tells him about how some believe life it’s a little more bearable under her silver light. There’s a smirk on her face when she says that part. Le lune, la luna, the moon! They sing to her and call her by many other names.
“They love you, huh?” He asks, not bothering to hide his smile.
She hums yes and closes her eyes. How ironic how beautiful she looks right before the light.
“Don’t go yet,” he cries.
He’ll forget her again, someone sighs.
The Third Floor
Ariana Weinstein
(Trigger warning: domestic violence)
Living on the top level of an apartment complex makes for less noise in the quiet hours of the night, but when you’ve got a newborn baby girl, the level you’re on becomes irrelevant. I am again awoken by the screams of an uncomfortable infant but this time I’m frustrated, it’s been four months I’ve been single-handedly taking care of her with no help.
I’m tired but I quietly drag myself out of bed and slide across the carpet into the other room without waking up the beast I lay beside. If he wakes up there is a very likely chance that I will not be sleeping in the bed again tonight. There is also the likelihood I won’t be sleeping at all or that I don’t wake up to see tomorrow.
The nightly routine of rocking her with a bottle isn’t working... colic, I assume. Her cries only become unsettling when I hear the bear-heavy footsteps of the devil approaching. Wiping his groggy eyes, the monster says, “What’s wrong with her?”
“I’m not sure I think she has a stomachache.”
He stops rubbing his eyes and looks at me so intensely I can feel his glare even though I’m looking down at my screaming daughter.
“Are you mad at me?” he asks.
I say, “No” and stand to rock and shush the baby, mimicking the womb. I can tell something has upset him, but he exits to the patio for a cigarette and I’m able to console the baby and lay her down before he comes back inside.
When he turns the corner, he has that look on his face just
before he explodes, and I’m prepared for the blows. He tells me he knows I’m mad at him and to stop lying about it. I don’t respond at all, but he works himself into a frenzy anyway. He grabs me by the throat (I’m used to this) but this time he picks me up off the floor. I flail my feet and pry my fingers into his hands to get air and I see spots before he drops me. Sometimes it’s over just like that, which I always hope for. He goes away and I find myself in the bathroom, checking my throat.
After I wipe my tears and thank God my daughter has slept through the noise. I open the door to head back to bed, but the monster meets me in the hallway to confront me about another thing he swears I was lying about and before I can deny it, he pushes me. He shoves me over and over and when I reach the bathroom door; he shoves me all the way into the tub. I land my back on the acrylic soap holder and the shower curtain rod falls on my head.
Please don’t continue. Please just walk away. Please let me get out of this curtain and see nobody standing over me. Please make it stop.
She’s crying again. This is the night I know I cannot stay here any longer. This is the last night on the third floor.
Dear Warden
Tamra Rachol
Death of a Woodpecker
Olivia Chase
“History may have therefore sown the seeds for the prevalence of alcohol abuse in North American indigenous populations. Early demand, with no regulation and strong encouragement, may have contributed to a “tradition” of heavy alcohol use passed down from generation to generation, which has led to the current high level of alcohol-related problems.”*
Fred Beauvais, Ph.D
Heaven in my homelands is referred to as the place we go to dance forever. One day a Natinixwe woman asked Woodpecker if he would accept the honor of stepping into that eternal dance ground, and he bobbed his head yes. And since that day we adorn our traditional headdresses with scarlet woodpecker scalps.
I hadn’t yet learned this story the morning we drove to bury his ashes. It was a brisk day and fog clung between trees as the sun continued to rise above us. I stared out the windshield as we wound through the trees. I couldn’t rid myself of the realization that I had done this before. I’d lost my grandmother and now my uncle to the same pattern of addiction. I looked to my father in the driver’s seat, wondering if he might shed a tear for his brother, or if this sting had become familiar since the passing of his mother. But he said nothing.
These thoughts were interrupted as I shifted my eyes back to the road, instantly speechless as I witnessed a redscalped woodpecker land elegantly on the road before us. I could say nothing in my shock, and suddenly we rolled right over its image. I twisted my body to peer out the back
window, and stuttered my speech as I forced out, “I- I think you just ran over a woodpecker.”
My father lurched in his seat, but he didn’t stop driving. We had to be down with the others to bury my uncle in ten minutes. “Are you serious?”
I nodded, feeling lightheaded in both awe and horror. It didn’t make a sound, not even a bump as we passed over its body.
I tried to put the shock aside as we made it down to the clearing with the rest of them.
The ceremony was short. The tears flooded out of my face as my aunt prayed through her own, in our traditional language. Half of him was laid to rest in the old village of our people. The other half was buried beside his mother.
On the way back we stopped on the side of the road to inspect the bird’s corpse. I held its broken body in my hands. And as I turned away, I caught a glimpse of my father standing over it, his eyes cast down, and I thought I saw them dripping. “I’m sorry,” I heard him whisper. If those were tears dripping from his face, then they are the only ones I’ve seen him shed.
Since that day I think of my uncle when I see woodpeckers. I think of my grandmother when I see hummingbirds, like the ones engraved on her headstone. This cycle is being passed down the family line the way I wish our language could have been. Bottles asked many in my family if they’d like to dance forever. On these forgotten reservations, these people who have lost so much over so many lifetimes are tired, and they bob their heads far too often. With all the weight and the mourning I feel every day as an Indigenous person in this country, I wonder what things in this life might ask me if I would like to dance forever. All I know is that today I am not ready to bob my head yes.
*Beauvais, F. (1998). American Indians and alcohol. Alcohol health and research world. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6761887/.
Heat Ana Holt (Editors’ choice) (watercolor)
Self-Help and Arson
Kelsee Starr
I bought a book today
The title called to me under the aisle sign. I didn’t know why I’d been beckoned to it until I opened the first page.
I read a book today one I’d read a thousand times before. The pages are now well worn evidence of the life I’ve led. I don’t know how I end up in these words again but the author does, that’s why they wrote it.
I burned a book today one I’ll never need again though I’ve had it at my side for years. Years of loving someone who doesn’t deserve it trying to fix me instead of loving myself first. I’ve found myself through the lines of this book and that lead someone to find me he held the lighter and my hand as I let go of the book.
I built a bridge today
The book I’d read a thousand times told me to. I asked the man on floor two out for coffee.
I crossed a bridge today one I hadn’t before meeting him. He’s made me feel safe enough to open up and the truth came out with the tears.
I don’t know how I’ve kept it all together for so long but it’s out and he is here to help carry it all.
I burned a bridge today
one I only built halfway and trusted him to meet me in the middle. He was the first person I’d been totally open to before I was even honest with myself and he used my trust and love against me. I should have known better but I can’t reread the book that he burned I drop the match and watch his wooden lies light with ease.
I bought a book today.
The Parts of Me
Amie Schaeffer
I am a misdiagnosis
A should have been
A supposed to be A “Get your affairs in order” statistic
I am the white spot on an MRI
A gray matter explanation
An invisible disability
A side glance from your eye
I am spinal taps IV’s
Marionette limbs and Samples of brain tissue
I am the what ifs
The could have beens
And the nagging reminder I’m not going anywhere soon
An Accessible Future
Christine Miller
On the way to the pediatrician’s office, I thought to myself, “They will listen this time. Something isn’t right and I will make sure I am heard.” I was trying to convince myself that this would be the day the doctor would finally see what I saw. My three-year-old daughter, Brooklyn, had sort of a funny walk. She clenched her left hand into a fist and held it by her face whenever she was mobile. She also had an odd foot placement with each step which made her limp slightly and was the cause of her many trips and falls to the ground.
After voicing my concerns to several prior pediatricians, our current doctor finally saw it. Dr. Hansen stated that she wanted us to see a specialist and gave us a referral to be seen for ‘gait abnormality’. On our way home I still couldn’t believe it, my concerns were heard and validated for the first time since I had noticed that something was off. The feeling I experienced for the two years that I was pushed aside and ignored, I would later decide, was mother’s intuition.
“Brooklyn Miller,” called a nurse, it was our turn to be seen. We followed her back into a hallway with a scale and height indicator on the wall and took Brooklyn’s measurements. We then followed her into a large room where we discussed the reason for our visit. The room was cold and lit by the usual bright fluorescent lights that hospitals are built with. It was very quiet after the nurse left us, besides the noises coming from my nervous and terrified daughter. She has seen so many doctors and hospital rooms in her short life that you think she would be used to it, but that was not the case. Tears were rolling down her cheeks and she was pressed so closely against my body that I almost forgot how cold I was. I pointed to the wall across from us that had been painted with a mural from the Disney movie
“Look, baby, it’s Maui. Let’s sing his song together.”
After singing a couple of lines, she seemed to forget where we were and climbed out of my lap starting to dance. Just then the doctor came in, Brooklyn jumped right back into my lap and buried her face in my chest. He sat down and started with his examinations; watching Brooklyn walk, run, and move around while asking me questions about her. He turned his body toward me and spoke.
“I know you came in today with concerns of a gait abnormality. But I am actually seeing signs of something called Cerebral Palsy. I’d like to schedule a brain MRI and then you can go over the results with our Neurologist...”
My heart sank into the pit of my stomach and my brain was so overwhelmed with questions and confusion that I could hardly hear the rest of the doctor’s explanation. As a mother it is devastating to look at your child and not have any idea what their future will hold, knowing there isn’t much you can do to help. I was looking at my little girl now trying not to cry, thinking about all the hardships she will have to face.
Knowing very well after researching childhood disabilities that it will be a fight, a quote I had read by Andrew Purlang came to mind, “Physical limitation and blocked opportunities are not unavoidable consequences of having disabilities. They are products of ableist beliefs about disability, and failure to take steps to ensure equal access and opportunity.” Is this the kind of life and future I can expect for my child?
Tuba’s Day at the Symphony
Daniel Baird (art by Risa)
Bright light of a sudden wakes me from my slumber. I yawn and arise from my black case assembling myself.
Blinking and stretching Check the valves, adjust the pitch.
Already others prepare, I find my way to the back. Before I sat in front, but someone complained they couldn’t see.
Sing rumbling like thunder, levers working, tubes vibrating.
Oh, the joy of music!
Then silence— we are all intent on the baton.
Soft at first, then firmer, I create the foundation. Chords emerge from the air, my throat hums the tonic.
Leaning to the left light dazzles off my brass skin.
In my excited state, I dribble a bit on the floor. My hunger cannot be satiated,
I must create sound!
I bellow the notes written on parchment.
The conductor signals. I rest, panting and shaking while the oboe sings the melody up to the flute.
Now the violins whisper and gossip together.
The ‘cellos chatter at the nonsense of the violins. Trumpets begin to laugh sharp and high.
Enough of their nonsense! My reared head calls loud and long.
The basses regard me sideways, a clarinet titters at me. Was it a mistake, too early? No, the conductor smiles.
The trombones, I notice are creating harmony on my notes.
The aloof harp takes advantage of the fighting between the violins and French horns to steal the melody.
Everybody begins to complain--such insolence.
Furiously waving, the conductor settles us all bring the whole to harmony
and conclusion. The bassoon nods his head he liked my double contra F.
On my way through the crowd the basses are serious (as usual) the flutes giggle at the outrageous trumpets I exchange hellos with timpani.
Back to my case where I clean my tubes then settle down, close the lid to dream of the joy of music!
An Unquenchable Thirst
a.n. woodward
It’s 5 a.m. and the fog would be, as Sandburg says, creeping in on little cat feet, somewhere less dry, somewhere else. This, though, is the desert. I am a desert.
Water lives a secret life under the soil. Scientists may peel back the layers like the reluctant petals of the night-blooming cereus; hydrogen this, oxygen that but ask anyone who has ever been in the ocean if the job is complete. Water lives a secret life, but no, not here.
It’s a high desert. Evergreens and aspens stretch eternally for the stars, and granite has wrested hard-won space from the dust. Those mountains build bedrooms for the sturdy roots of spurge and cosmos, columbine. Bathtubs for the glaciers, laundry chutes to transport the deeply packed snow, melted into a thundering force, into the valley below.
I said there was no water here. There is water here, but it’s not free to roam. It’s locked up tight
a current-less currency. Those who have water here wield power.
We once played house with a vast ocean, but it slipped away until nothing was left but salt— bright, sharp, a persevering preservative. What remains are the knees and elbows of the world, parched and resilient.
The rain bounces off the ground. The earth dries before ever truly tasting the wet. The dust is a mournful king, a reluctant ruler of his sovereign lands.
This is a desert. I am a desert. Beautiful, fierce, hardy heart, brittle bones. A stingy sponge, a most ungenerous host; you will find no nourishment here.
Tried and Failed. Blocked.
Jess Mohammed
Ring, ring!
My heart was racing. Calling the doctor’s office is the worst. I had been contemplating making this call for months.
“Maybe I should hang up and try another day,” I thought. I wasn’t sure if this was something I was ready to pursue anyway. Since I came out as non-binary, I had been mulling over the idea of taking testosterone.
Ring, ring!
Nervous thoughts filled my head. I knew that many trans people have delayed or ruled out certain gender-affirming care options because of cost.* I remembered trans friends rallying to raise donations for their $10,000 transition surgeries. Surgery wasn’t on my wish list, but hormones were, and I didn’t know how much those cost. Probably a lot. I doubt my transphobic parents would pay, and God knows if insurance would even accept my request.
“Hello, Dr. Luiknaar’s office. How can I help you?” A polite-ish voice said on the other end.
I stumbled out of my nerve-driven daydream, “Ohhi! Ummm, I’d like to make an appointment with Dr. Luikenaar.”
“Okay, what are you wanting to see her for?”
I could feel my heart thumping against my chest, “Uh… hormone treatment.”
“We usually see women for hormone treatment who are menopausal. Are you menopausal?”
I rolled my eyes knowing I’d get misgendered. “Uhhh, no. *Chung, L. (2021). “Accessing Gender Affirming Care from the Margins: Comparing the Strategies of Transgender People Pre-1980 to Non-Binary People Today”. UC Berkeley: Library. Retrieved from https:// escholarship.org/uc/item/6nz7x674
I’m not a woman. I’m non-binary. I’m wanting a consultation for starting testosterone.”
The receptionist on the other end paused. “I see. Well then let’s get you set up for an appointment!”
Relief flushed over me as we set up the rest of the appointment. We had a date, time, and all the information I needed to see this doctor. I was feeling proud for making this call despite all the nerves I had leading up to the call. All good. Until they asked for my credit card and a $100 deposit.
“A deposit? For a doctor’s appointment?!” I asked with disbelief.
“Yeah, we just have a lot of people making consultation appointments and then canceling or not showing up. The deposit will be refunded after the appointment. Are you able to do that?”
Lady, are you serious?? I live in a rent-controlled apartment working 50 hours a week just to get by.
“Uhhhh wow. No, I don’t have $100 to drop on a deposit. That was a surprise,” tears started to fill my eyes.
“Okay, well give us a call back when you are able to make the deposit. Sorry about that.”
Shakily I said, “Ummm, okay. Thank you. Bye.”
This was the highest recommended doctor for trans healthcare under my insurance. I was shocked that they even had a deposit because trans people are twice as likely to be living in poverty than the general population.* That $100 was needed for groceries, for gas, for utility payments.
I was back at the start. At least now I knew I’d have more than just the barrier of ignorance to keep me from gender-affirming medical care.
*Fellow, J. (2016) “Transgender People are Facing Incredibly High Rates of Poverty.” National Women’s Law Center. Retrieved from https://nwlc.org/blog/income-security-is-elusive-for-many-transgender-people-according-to-u-s-transgender-survey/
The Vision of Death
Kate Summers
Nestled in the pocket of blackness under a massive pine tree, I could smell the spicy sap as my face pressed against the rough tree bark. I was drifting out of consciousness into the dreamy red behind my eyelids, falling farther and farther into the ebb of nothing. With a shudder, I jolted back, clinging onto any hope of survival—I pulled my frozen body out onto the trail. The blizzard was nothing like what it had been but still whirling around me. My best chance was to head North; I fumbled for my compass. Stumbling through the forest for what felt like hours, I saw a light. Gasping with disbelief, I continued towards it; this must be a vision in my cold delirium, I thought. I soon found myself standing on the front porch of a small log cabin knocking on the door. A woman opened it, the light from within framing her as if she were an angel.
The woman’s warm hands pulled me inside, helping me into a chair near the fireplace. She flitted away, pulling a thick patch blanket from a wooden chest at the foot of a large bed frame. She gently wrapped it around my quivering shoulders before walking to the fireplace. The flickering light of the fire played across her rosy face as she stooped over it, pouring a steaming liquid from the kettle hanging in the small stone fireplace.
“Here, drink this,” she said as she offered me the cup she had just filled. As I sat there, the warmth of the mug steeped through my frozen fingers, my eyes shifted around the cabin, landing on a photo of a small child with delicate golden hair hanging next to the bed.
My gaze broke as she sat in the rocking chair next to me, saying, “You’re right lucky to be alive with the storm as it is. You must be very far from home.” I could only nod as my lips were still weighed shut with the numbness of frost. As I sipped the hearty broth I’d been supplied, I could feel the
warmth of it coursing down to my bones; my strength was slowly returning.
What felt like hours passed before my cracked lips parted, and I said, “I do appreciate your kindness, lucky to have chanced upon this cabin, ma’am.”
She turned to me, saying, “You can call me Rose; might I ask your name?”
I replied, “Alfred ma’am, I mean Rose.” It was eerie the familiarity I felt to Rose, the same name as my mother who had died giving birth to me 24 years ago. As I stared back at the flickering fire, I couldn’t help but feel a strange pain in my heart.
Rose stood up next to me; looking down into my eyes, she said, “Why are you out here all alone?”
I sighed, not remembering as I said, “I don’t know where I came from, and I don’t know if I have anywhere to go.” As I looked at her, Rose’s face began warping, stretching into the grin I had seen on my father’s face many times as he beat me, shifting again into the pinched tearful look that was permanently etched on my grandmother’s face.
“Who are you? Where is this place” I cried out. She replied, “Hush, Hush, now you’re here. There isn’t anything to worry about here.” Her supple arms wrapped themselves around my body, enveloping me in darkness.
Spring of 1890 was a celebrated time after the bleakness of the winter before. The season of the gold rush had started bringing many travelers into the town of Kesling. One such group of travelers was on their way to the town of gold in hopes of hitting it big. Trudging through the mountain terrain, they stopped off the side of the trail to set up camp for the night. One man noted an exceptionally tall pine, what a beast of a tree, he thought, his face turning down as he noticed a slumped figure at the base of it. Walking towards it, he could make out the ghastly pale face of a now thawed and rotting corpse, “Poor bas-
tard,” he whispered to himself. “James,” he called to one of his companions, “come help me bury this fella, fresh out of luck he must have been.” Packing up the following day, they left behind a shallow grave with a cross made of pine twigs lashed together.
Birds chirped as the sun streamed down over this small nod to the humanity of the men that set Alfred in his last resting place. Though nameless to them, they could empathize with his suffering and the cruel end he was chanced.
Raven
Dillon Mueller
How do you settle With the rising sun?
When the needs of many Outweigh the needs of one?
How do you reconcile With forging on?
Knowing that in this game, You are just a meaningless pawn?
How do you live With the end?
So plain in sight, There’s no one it can’t offend?
How do you plan a future?
So uncertain, So unknown, That it just makes the past a blur?
How do you kindle a will to thrive? Within this muck-ridden world, Having to harm others Just to survive?
Is there any way out of this? Is there any way out of this? Is there any way out of this?
There is but one answer
One intelligible prayer Spoken by a boy, At the stroke of midnight.
The moon hangs above, But no light reaches his eyes. For his eyes had forgotten The comfort of celestial beings long ago.
All that’s left, All there ever was, Is vast, dank, insurmountable grief. Brought on by the stroke of midnight and the creaks from the ceiling fan. Tears should form now, As they always do. Yet, nothing to that avail Is ever produced.
Grief takes the form of a raven and swallows him whole. Nothing remains.
The moon follows its path as always. And, like clockwork, the sun begins to rise again, Spilling light into the room, Where the Raven, Now in the shape of the boy, Sits bedside.
Throwing on a shirt, The raven looks outside towards the sun, And curses his luck He always preferred the rain.
Willful Blindness
Allison
Nash Hutto (pen, ink, markers)
The Coldest Season
Abigail Cianciolo
As I open my eyes, I look out my window and see the spewing colors of red, orange, and yellow covering the trees. Usually, this would make me feel warm and happy inside; it’s my
favorite season, but this time it was different. The world feels gray and dull.
I reluctantly pull myself out of bed and begin to pull myself together for the first day at the new school. I look out my window and see a group of strangers standing by the bus stop, as I move closer the feeling of dullness grows. The days grow colder, I feel my personality slipping, not only that but
everything I enjoyed slipping away from me. Weeks have gone by, and this feeling continues and grows. I’m drowning in these feelings...the mix of my new school, new people, and a home that doesn’t feel like home. I can’t stop sleeping, I feel numb and hopeless.
I wake up to the sound of my alarm, I need to go to school but I can’t bring myself out of bed. I fall back asleep. I wake up to my phone ringing and in my doze.
I answer, “Hello?”
And from the other side I hear my mother angrily ask, “Why aren’t you at school?”
I reply impulsively, “I’m sick, I feel nauseous, and I have a headache. I can’t go, mom.”
She replies, “You need to go to school, you’ve been missing too much.”
I’m not sick and I know she’s right, but it feels impossible to get up and go to school, let alone anywhere. I once
again doze off; I don’t wake up until 5 p.m. when my mom gets home. How did I sleep all day and night yet still feel like I can’t wake up? I’m not myself. I think to myself, how do I make this stop? What am I supposed to do?
Open Letter From a Muslim Girl to Americans
Sheila Turjouk
Dear Americans,
Since 9/11 you treat Muslims differently. For example, if Muslims put on their Islamic clothes and walk in the street, they will be scared because everyone will look at them in different ways. Even before 9/11 Muslims have been discriminated against in America. I am just worried about Muslim families and what they are going to experience in these situations, specifically young kids. The way you think about Muslims is different than the way you think about non-Muslims. I think you need to travel outside the USA to see the world and then you can better understand other cultures.
Personally, I have been to many different countries. There, I can practice my religion and culture without any fear. On the other hand, I have been in American for 8 years and I don’t feel like I can practice my religion and my culture here. It is crazy because I am a US citizen and I am scared to practice my religion. In America, the constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion, so in my understanding that is not a lack of education from you, that is discrimination against other cultures. I am a college student and I have had these experiences throughout high school and college. Sometimes at school American students asked me, “What are you wearing?” “Is it hot?” “Why are you wearing the hijab?”
There should more classes or clubs that teach about the religion of Islam and everything within this religion so people can have a better understanding of it. This would change Americans’ or non-Muslims’ lack of education toward Muslims. If you had a better understanding of my religion there wouldn’t be as much discrimination against
my religion or other beliefs as well. Also if you understood why I wear my headscarf you wouldn’t have to ask me why.
In my experience, being asked about the way I cover my hair and getting too many questions made me not want to wear the headscarf anymore. This is something that needs to be controlled and my message is that we are all created equal and we shouldn’t be treated differently based on what one group did that was bad. Not all Muslims are terrorists and not all Muslims are bad. Something that I want to spark in you is that Muslims should be treated equally in this society.
Sincerely, A Muslim girl.
Home Allison Nash Hutto (pen, ink, gauche, razor blade)
The Definition
Patricia Salgado
(Trigger warning: sexual assault)
Don’t tell her to cover up more
Because her safest bet is staying home
Because on the streets, they like to roam
Looking for fresh meat to chew
Chewing until there’s more than skin that’s shown
She’s walking up across the street
And she’s wondering what they’re looking at
As she sways from feet to stumbling feet
And he’s telling her she looks too sweet
After that, she’s turned all sour
And no matter how much she showers
She scrubs and scrubs ‘til it’s all gone
But the time turned from minutes to hours
And she has no idea what’s going on
Before it all, she loved the stars
But all she sees in them are discolored scars
And she no longer goes out at night
Because while she was under those strobe lights
He told her he would make her feel right
But in the end, she recites:
“It’s supposed to be okay now
They’re telling me I got no right
It’s supposed to be okay now
It’s supposed to be okay now”
She doesn’t know what else to chant now
“It’s the definition of a lady
To be so sweet, or oh so savory
But she’ll be thrown away soon
If she’s over spiced Or causes cavities”
He doesn’t know what she has to chant now
Because lust is hungry
Wanting more
Growing pains
Cause mental sores
And she doesn’t know what to do now
She isn’t sure where to go now
Here and there
Pointing fingers
Here and there
The memory lingers
All they have to do is see her
And that’s enough to not believe her
Despite all the proof and claims behind her
Yet they won’t stay and listen to her
Why won’t they stay and listen to her?
It was welcomed
Was it not?
Her appearance proves it so Don’t let it deteriorate, waste, Rot-
Don’t let it
When did we start using “it”?
Since she was branded as property
And He gave himself silent ownership.
So, she screams
And she grieves
For a lost innocence
And she seems
To not recognize
Her own self in the mirror
So, she can’t help but to fear her
And wonders where she went that night
Where did I end up?
Where did he take me?
Where did I end up?
Someone help me
I’ve lost myself among it all
Wore too little, showed too much
I’ve disappeared among a catcall.
Adieu Tamra Rachol
Back In Time
Jimmie Puzey
Woodland Regal David Hubert
Weightless David Hubert
Unspoken Truths
Ethan Eldred
As I left the building there was a whirring in the back of my head like being in a desolate laundromat and listening to the washers run in the distance.
“Rebecca? You there honey?” My mom’s voice rang out from the phone snapping me back to the moment.
“I — uhm.” I cleared my throat in an attempt to talk but I felt my throat tighten its grip. “Cameron fired me.”
“What? Why?”
“He said I never followed guidelines and quoted something I had written over a year ago. How fair is that?” I could feel my shirt sticking to my skin as the beads of sweat trickled down my back.
“You always were a little too honest in your writing but you were the only honest one. What all did he say?”
“He said that I was a good writer and that I should go back to my roots and that it’s best to take time away.” I racked my brain for all the details but the thrumming in my head was shaking the memories of the past hour’s break apart.
“How about you come to the house this weekend that way I can help sort things out even if it means you moving back in.”
I felt a slimy sensation slither its way across me at the thought of moving back in with my mother.
“No it’s —I need to sort out everything.“
“Ooh what about trying to go back to that research project?”
“It wasn’t research, I just had a blog.”
“Hey, you used to love writing there. I remember your dad was the first story you got. Oh man, you used to tell his stories to everyone. You always used to it to help people, spreading their stories no matter how it sounded.”
I felt nausea building in my gut at his mention, but mom loved talking about him. “Dad had some good ones, especially while being in Osaka.”
“He and his buddies got into all kinds of trouble there.” I found my knuckles whitening as I struggled to keep them from swerving off the road.
“I guess but I don’t know. I just… this was everything.”
“Look all I’m saying is that you have something to go back to at least.”
“Yeah but sometimes sitting in a shitty job is better than a job that doesn’t even cover a single bill.”
“You know that I am more than happy to help you with money. That place doesn’t recognize talent even it sat right on its lap.” I could hear the venom dripping from the words. “Plus you always told me about how the place was based on lies and deception.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that I would be better off without that place but even so that was my source of income. It paid the bills and kept me comfortable.
“As much as I bitched mom, I loved the nature of what I did. I like to believe my work wasn’t all based on lies. I tried to be a decent person and look where it got me.”
“You have to realize the bad you’re leaving behind.”
“Yeah, but you also have to deal with the bad to get to the marrow of life.” I made the turn onto my driveway. “I just need some time. I want to figure this out.” I parked the car and set my head on the steering wheel where I could feel the static in my head wanting to lull me to turn my car
back on and drive it downtown like a snake charming its prey.
“You sure you’re okay?” My mom asked but I held my breath as I could hear in the background sounds of the ocean and birds ever so distant, but they were there nonetheless.
“Yeah… Mom, where are you?”
“Oh…Me and uh…Eric are out running errands.” Always a new bachelor every week with her and no honesty.
“How about dinner tonight?” I tried to lay my trap for her, but it wasn’t worth the time anymore.
“Sorry honey I won’t be home tonight, I’m taking Eric out to dinner. WE can do it when I see you this weekend.” I felt a fire burning hotter and hotter slowly becoming a deep burning flame that sank deeper into the void that was my stomach.
“How long have you known Eric?”
“This is my life. I am gonna live it how I want, so it doesn’t matter.” At this moment I felt the thrumming changing and morphing into a headache deep inside the crevices of my brain and the phone began slowly slipping from my grasp.
“You’re more than welcome to stay with us if you need to honey. I even can lend you some money and we can figure out the details later.”
“Thanks but I’ll figure it out.”
I had no more fight in me for today and just with a lot in general I had found those reserves of energy empty and barren like the vastness of space.
“Okay… I love you, sweetie.” Without another thought towards our relationship, I hung up on her. I knew she meant well but I couldn’t take the dishonesty between us anymore. She wasn’t even willing to tell me she was out
of town and never tells me anything about the people she decides to take home.
As everything settled down, my hand began to shake, and I was barely able to put my phone down before my throat finally constricted and the tears began to flow down my cheeks. My shoulders began to convulse with rapid movement as my spine slipped out from beneath me collapsing me onto the steering wheel.
It started out as a whisper, a familiar lullaby in my head beginning again and kept building up in my head as time seemed to slow down. Whispers in my head screamed with an unspoken volume telling me to go downtown. That I would be okay and that the pains would slip away with the easy-to-swallow tonic. I bit down on my tongue as the tears kept coming trying to distract myself from the cacophony of the lullaby. I finally found my hands back on my keys and the car started with a venomous purr and slithered out of my driveway.
I found my way to the downtown area barely able to focus on driving. Time was skipping forward and backward all at once, past, and present clashing together like magnets on opposite ends were coming together to crush me in the clutches of time. I eventually parked the car and began just walking. Lights blasted from above as the lights of the open bars, restaurants, and clubs bustled with people. The lights shimmered like broken pieces of individual glass across the gray cement.
I stopped when I couldn’t hear any voices from anybody, and I found myself in front of a bar. Looking into the window a different version of me stared directly back, a neon green and purple version of me stared back. The angular jawline I had was there in front of me, the one my dad had given me. Anger rose inside of me as the memories of him rose up like a revolution wanting change but I entered the bar deciding to finally push them back.
The few sporadic people left in the bar I saw reflected from the mirrors lining behind the bar like a mirage. I went
straight to the last safe haven I had and took up fortification on the stool farthest from everyone.
“What can I get yah?”
“Just a gin and tonic will do.”
“Did yah want to start a tab or just one?” A familiar static sensation rose in my gut asking to open a tab.
“Just the one will do,” smiling as I forced that urging sensation down telling myself it would just be this one and that’s it. I had more self-control than I thought.
The bartender moved with the grace of a dancer who was performing for their one thousandth time on the show floor. This is what it’s like for someone who has found what they love, they hold themselves differently from everybody else. Whether it be tall and broad like a great tree reaching for the heavens or small and coiled like a snake waiting to strike. Something just changes and we know something has just by looking at them.
“Here yah are. Also, kitchens closed down, but we got the usual bar snacks left for the night.”
“That’s alright, just here for the one.”
The bartender hung around just a few moments longer wanting to say something else but eventually moved away with a heavy sounding exhale. Reminds me of when in middle school, kids would wait to talk to their crush and bail at the last second shoulders slumped over in defeat. I couldn’t help but admire the way even men who tower over my small frame act like children more than I do. But I wasn ’t any better, was I?
I let out my own heavy exhale at the question and turned my attention to the drink in front of me. The bubbles on the surface burst like artillery on a battlefield drenching the glass’s rim with liquid. I could smell the mint and lime mingling even just sitting in front of me. My heart started beating the inside of my ribcage wanting to get out. I
looked into the glass and breathed in harder than I had before, finding underneath the swirling mint and the radiant citrus was the gin that laid underneath like a pit covered by leaves and twigs waiting for an innocent to fall into its trap.
The gin invited me in as the old friend it had been. A silent whisper deep in the crevices of my mind beckoned me to turn my back on the gin, but I knew I needed to let my nerves cool off and this helped me do so. As I rose the glass to my mouth again, I felt my body threatening me and as it got closer the static began to rise with my feet and into my knees.
The glass shattered as every nerve in my body seemed to fire at once as the static rose past my hips and blasted past my heart extending to the tips of my fingers. My heart hammered. Hands started to shake uncontrollably. Rapid breaths turning more rapid. Blood hammered in my ears. I tried focusing on my reflection in the mirror but that began to distort, was my vision going?
“You alright there?” The bartender was in front of me with eyes flicking from me to the phone mounted on the wall.
“To be honest? No.” I attempted to take a deep breath in, but my ribcage refused. “Just give me a moment.” What was going on? Why was I starting to lose it? I kept asking myself questions and as I did, I felt the static getting worse and worse until the world around me went silent. This wasn’t a suspenseful horror silence, a surreal silence, or even the kind of silence that happens when waiting for bad news. This was a silence that seemed to exist outside of everything, even across the vast void of space.
The bartender was still standing in front of me, his mouth making noise and making shapes, but nothing seemed to come from it all. I felt my throat moving as I spilled the details of the day to this complete stranger. When all was said, he grabbed the gin and pushed it away from me.
“How long have yah been sober?”
“What?”
“It’s not rocket science kiddo. I work in a bar. I’ve seen many alcoholics throw it all down the drain. How long then?”
I was too drunk on my emotions to stop myself from spilling everything to him. “Three years.”
“Whiskey was the amber gem that brought resolve to my soul and that resolve made me prideful enough to ruin my family, marriage, job. I heard a man say that to me once as he sipped on his sixth whiskey that night. Made me think of my role as a bartender.”
“You have a business to run and we’re your best customers,” I flashed my best grin knowing my eyes were puffed and bloodshot from the way they burned.
“That yah are right, I’ve made thousands from just one alcoholic but don’t mean its right to do that. I grappled with myself for many nights, tossing and turning watching events replay over and over.” The bartender was standing straighter cheeks flushed with red.
“I… I… How did you do it?” I leaned forward more intrigued in my emotional drunk state.
“I made a call for yah so I stuck to it. So let me ask you, why don’t you go back to that blog of yours if it’s so important to you?”
“Because people aren’t interested in stories that have no cohesion besides me trying to outline an invisible map to find the connections.”
“Stories always have an underlying connection and sometimes it’s a trust exercise between the inside of yourself and your gut. What is everything telling you to do?”
“To do it. I don’t want to, but I know I should.” I could feel the universe coming back into focus now. The static and bile had all subsided back to unnoticeable levels along with my senses.
“How about this, you can repay me for saving you by telling one of my many stories? Best nature of the job, I collect stories from everyone who wanders in. I’ll even include a soda water and lime whenever you come back if you keep telling these stories and trying to connect the invisible lines of them all?”
I let the question mull over me as I just watched this odd bartender standing in front of me. The mirrors distorted the back of the man but in combination of the fluorescent lights gave the man wings on his back. I felt like an eager child at four in the morning on Christmas day waiting for his parents to say he can come downstairs.
“I guess I will give it a shot again.”
Now is What’s Important
Bailee Jessop
I think we get confused sometimes In fact, I know we do The curious mind trying to find something exciting, something new
I think we try too hard to understand Too hard to comprehend Who, what, when? Why? How? I think we forget to live in the now
I think we try too hard to please Worrying about what he thinks, and she thinks And who’s watching anyway?
I think we forget that it’s okay not to be okay To live it every day by day
Some Must Pull and Some Must Push Ana Holt (acrylic
on canvas)
Behind Me, Only Green
Will Stamp
Shortly after arriving in Salt Lake City, still riding the giddy momentum of relocating to a new time zone and eager to pick up a new hobby, I tackle some woodworking projects. Nothing particularly special comes of my efforts—a couple shelves and a kitchen table I try to discourage guests from examining too closely—but my inexperience and learn-as-I-go attitude mean myriad trips to and from Home Depot.
I’ve never enjoyed visiting Home Depot. It’s packed to the ceiling with building supplies and housing fixtures, and for someone like me who, frankly, sucks at tools, it’s really only ever served as a warehouse-sized reminder that I am not a Real Man. The interior of the Home Depot on 21st is no different from the rest.
To the unobservant, neither is the outside. Emerging from the store, carrying a 100-pack of what is undoubtedly the wrong screw, I’m greeted by a vast parking lot crammed full of F-150’s and CRV’s and P90X’s and a McDonald’s. Beyond the four-way intersection and Carl’s Jr. is another huge lot for the shoppers of Best Buy and Discount Guns & Ammo. But only a few miles beyond that stand the mighty Wasatch Mountains, massive and noble, a reminder of the sheer scope of nature, and I can’t help but pause for a moment of admiration, remarking to nobody in particular, “Sheesh, aren’t they incredible?”
“Eh, I don’t even notice ’em.” Some dope walks by with his stupid planks of stupid wood. I wanna knock his dumb hat off and grip his cheeks and shake them like his head’s a big bowl of gloppy oatmeal and force him to face the natural skyline. “Then notice them!” I growl. Only he’s already packed up his boards and driven off.
It’s confounding to me how one could be so blind to such
an inspired landscape, but then again, my own appreciation for nature is a very recent development. In fact, it really only began to burgeon a few weeks prior, before I’d ever stepped inside that Home Depot or even heard of the Wasatch mountains.
* * *
We set out early, the peaks of the Adirondacks dipped in creamsicle sunlight across Lake Champlain, our guts tight with excitement and hope and fear. Our two little overpacked Chevys—me in front, towing a U-Haul trailer, and Chelsea right behind, kayaks shoddily mounted to her roof—chug down Route 7, a drive we’ve made hundreds of times but will probably never make again, caravaning to our new life.
We’re headed to Utah. It may as well be Mars, as far as we’re concerned. We’re Vermonters, after all, used to the modest beauty of the Green Mountains, quaint country stores with wood floors bowed by age, and long, miserable winters that never seem to end. Vermont’s certainly not without its charms, drawing crowds of leaf-peepers each autumn, skiers in the winter months, and maple syrup harvesters in spring. But it’s too cold for me, too small and too familiar. It’s wonderful for someone seeking a quiet, cozy existence, but the state has had considerable trouble convincing its younger population to stick around, and it’s not all that hard to figure out why: It’s just not happenin’.
So here we are on this hopeful July morning, barreling toward the unknown.
Our ignorance is part of the fun. Neither of us has spent much time out west, nor have we ever set foot in a desert, and we can’t help but feel excited to experience an entirely new biome. Not to mention Utah’s mountains, the utter enormity of which put Vermont’s to shame. Though, truth be told, I’m not much of an outdoorsman and have never been super gung-ho about, say, hiking. Who wants to go look at a bunch of trees? Years ago, Moms would drag me out on hikes despite my protests, and I’d trudge along
behind her, head down, taking out my resentment on the poor dandelions that dared hang over the edge of our trail. That tepid bond with hiking never really evolved. Perhaps the novelty of the American frontier will spark a change of heart.
But first, we have 2,500 miles to cover. Amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties and all that.
The scenery doesn’t change much over the first several hours as we cross the width of New York. Trees act as a natural barrier between the highway and the real world, though they fail to obscure the towering Ford and Chevy and Chrysler signs that mark each car lot we pass. They also fail to keep wildlife away from the 80-mph traffic. Bloated deer and flattened raccoons join the blown-out tires that line the road. Such an indignity. Isn’t someone in charge of removing those?
At hour 8, as we pass through the northwestern tip of Pennsylvania, we finally get to experience the unfamiliar. Chels and I, embracing long-hauler tradition, have chosen to communicate via walkie-talkie. Mine crackles.
“Look at the horses!” she cries.
“Look at the wagons!” I reply.
Look at these weirdos, I think.
We’ve found ourselves in Amish country. It’s startling to see a horse and buggy, especially riding along a state highway, and we get a huge kick out of it. Naturally, we turn our heads and gawk at the people within. They wear traditional garb, though some have given in to the heat and shed their vests or shawls. One young man has stripped down to his pants and undershirt. He looks pretty hunky. We like him.
I wonder whether the horses resent having to pull these folks around. Do they roll their eyes each time a car whiz-
zes by? “Couldn’t you get around in one of those?” I wonder if they regard roadkill with horror, or even realize cars are to blame. Dead animals do always seem to be on the side of the road; whether they were dragged there or were carried by their own momentum is unclear to me, but they lie directly in the horses’ path. Maybe these steeds think one of their equine compatriots is responsible. “Damn! Ginger musta been zoomin’!”
We carry on.
Eventually, anticipation gives way to fatigue. The double yellow lines remain constant, as does the intake of caffeine. Driving is hard.
We stop for a day and stay with Moms in Wisconsin. I show Chels around downtown Madison and we visit the zoo, where the animals seek refuge in the shade. The polar bear cools down in his personal pool, and I find it strangely encouraging that an arctic creature can withstand this heat. Polar bears are considered a vulnerable species due to the warming of their habitat, but this guy’s a hotel robe and piña colada away from being on vacation. It’s a goofy image, and it helps me feel better about buying tickets to a prison—oops! I mean zoo—to see an animal that may be extinct in a few years.
We’re back on the road again before we know it, marveling at the flatness of Iowa and Nebraska, the endless fields of soybeans and corn. Power lines, which appear to accompany virtually every road in America, offer the only evidence of a Y-axis. We pass a beef farm, the cattle packed tightly in their corrals, listless in the mud and shit. Towns seem fewer and further between, but the corpses of mangled animals still consistently dot the road’s edge. There are stretches of interstate so straight we lose sight of it in the distance, and we begin to wonder if we’ll ever get there.
Finally we cross into Wyoming, and the sweeping desert prairie tells us we’re officially in The West. We stop at a
rest station and find a short trail that takes us on a loop through tall, dry grasses and yucca plants and succulents I’ve never seen before. I keep my eyes peeled for snakes and lizards, eager to spot some wildlife among the exotic flora. Where was this sense of curiosity and wonder in Vermont? Was I depriving myself of a secret passion as I neglected the fields and forests back home? Or maybe something within me shifted, a reckoning in my relationship to The Wild, as I surveyed the country east to west. Regardless, I don’t ever want to leave this rest stop.
Of course, we can’t stay forever. Chelsea, the voice of reason, wants to get to our waiting apartment before dark, so we head back to the cars and drive on.
Hours later, after crossing the Utah border and navigating through the Wasatch Range, we emerge from the mountains and are finally greeted with a view of the Salt Lake Valley.
In 1847, Brigham Young and his Mormon cohorts looked over this same land, so awed by the gorgeous mountains and the Great Salt Lake they decided to call it their home, establishing Salt Lake City, the mecca of Mormonism. They were, no doubt, also tremendously relieved to be done trekking westward through the relentless and rugged terrain.
I share their relief, but the view has changed. The mountains further west are still inspiring, though I’ll come to learn they’re privately owned by a mining company and not accessible to the public. The lake is still there, but considerably smaller and shallower, shrinking by the year. The original settlement of Salt Lake has expanded into the vastness of the valley, and now, more than 170 years later, there’s hardly an acre that remains undeveloped. It’s impressive, really, how completely we humans have dominated the landscape, and part of me looks forward to visiting the big box stores and fast food chains that were culturally discouraged in Vermont. This is what I wanted,
after all. To go where there were people, where life was bigger and more ripe for opportunity. Right?
But part of me is horrified. My god. The sprawl.
No matter. I’m here now, along with all my crap. And down in that valley, among the strip malls and subdivisions and factories and rat’s nest highways, is my new home.
X’ed out Stars
Heather Graham
Source: Stars by Heather Graham. Published in Folio: “Peregrinations” (Fall 2016) p. 44.
Evolve Tamra Rachol (background photo)
Fairy Skirts Misty Shaw
Scent (from Tales of Callisto)
Felicia McFall
Orbiting in the orbits in a space of spaciousness the moon Callisto whirled. The planet’s shell was a weather-worn mast with defiant craters. Underneath a primordial sea flowed. A sea too vast to know or see. Yet man had colonized here after the great extinction on Earth not knowing what life forms would be encountered if any at all.
In a remote underwater facility below deck, Mikos reads poetry from ancient Earth. He watches the words form and shadow on the wall in his habitation room:
Last Spring 2200 Anonymous (records lost)
The wild rose had webbed away Her scent released—released again A closing Greek chorus of sweet perfume With harmony—and grace—and love
I let my nose rapture in it A cloud of spring and forgotten dreams Lemon balm and Bergamot danced Wild Sandalwood played percussion
The shy Ambrette stepped forward earth-covered and limbs resting She sang a single note one last time
Like a cruel tyrannical master
Hot smog shoved in cracking his long whip
Silencing the song in jealousy
The petals receding and recoiled— withered
Mikos inhaled deeply trying to smell something, anything. His biosphere reads
“Optimum sanitation. Circulation system cleansed of impurities. Oxygen level normal.”
He knew the importance of sanitation. A plaque commemorated the engineer who had built the first sanitation sanctum and survivors who had isolated themselves there despite protests. They had survived the virus that had killed the rest of the population. Since then, natural smells were considered dangerous or at least not recommended.
Mikos spoke into the void of the room:
“Computer—generate rose smell.”
“Generating rose smell—archive RhNUDX1.”
An acrid odor began to fill the room. He covered his nose trying to block the smell
“Computer—stop generating simulation.” Mikos tried to clear his throat as the last stickiness of the smell filtered away.
He knew this was not the smell of poets; the way romance could linger in a room. The way springtime could be once more....
In the next few days, Mikos became obsessed with smelling anything organic. He smelled his bed. He smelled his chair. He smelled the Nutribars. It all smelled antiseptic—a smell that reminded him of hospitals.
He stopped friends before their daily body cleansing.
“Hey, Marit. Let me smell you.”
“What?”
“Just your arm or fingers, it won’t take long.”
She stared at him dazed as he reached for her arm and
inhaled deeply.
“Weirdo,” she said, retracting her arm and walking away. Nothing
Every moment Mikos thought and dreamt about roses. He could name their cultivars and subgenera; “Hulthemia, Hesperrhodos, Platyrhodon, Rosa,” he chanted. “Hulthemia, Hesperrhodos, Platyrhodon, Rosa.”
Archive images of roses filled his room until finally, he needed tactual holographs. Electron beam lithography was installed for “personal research”. Reaching out he could touch a single dewdrop dripping down a single red rosebud or stand under a rose trellis in Le romantique Parc de Bagatelle, Paris, France, Earth circa 2000.
Then he noticed it, a small petal drifting past his portal. Quickly, he blinked trying to shake off the image until another floated by and then another and then another. Slowly like in an underwater ballet, two perfectly formed pink roses streamed past his window. Delicately and in unison the roses twirled a final arabesque before continuing on.
He had heard about these illusions. They were called the Valhallen lights. The light from the planet’s surface would creep through the cracks of the crater shining on the water to create a sort of light show something like the old Aurora Borealis on earth. Widows would see their husband’s apparitions. Burning bushes would emerge with an answer to a prayer. He closed his eyes but still saw the pink roses in their perfect symmetry, their petals slightly upturned as if they were offering him salutations.
Suddenly over the intercoms. “Beep, beep, beep” (silence). “Beep, beep, beep” (silence).
“Attention all residents. Attention all residents. Stay in cabins and disengage filters.” (silence) “I repeat. Stay in cabins and disengage filters. Security has been breached.”
A distinguished grey-haired gentleman appeared on screen in Mikos’ room.
Below his image it reads:
Dr. Dado Breton, Harbor Engineer for Callisto fleets and operation.
“Announcement from the United Callisto Observatory. A Calliston life form has been found. ” An assistant with a small pink rose in his hand steps forward allowing the camera to focus on the flower and fill the residents’ screens.
“Please disengage your filters until all machinery and filters can be cleared. We have determined that the lifeform has entered into the commemoration room fuselage possibly through the landing entry. It appears to be a bulk mass of some kind of flowering plant life. We think that it is the first natural life-form developed or evolved in the era of terraforming. It is most probably a hybrid of dispelled organic material and microbial life that has existed on Callisto for billions of years. The lifeform resembles a popular flower once grown on earth.”
Mikos’ heart was racing. He gripped his legs trying to stay in place following instructions. He rocked back and forth until finally, he burst out of his chair and out of his room and down a maze of hallways.
Unexpectedly, Mikos was strong. He was fast. He thought of his rose and shot through barricades and electric impulse binders meant to stop intruders.
He burst into the room
There they were— the roses.
They stood there like debutantes waiting for a dance but too afraid to ask.
Their gentle extremities were draped over the plaque of commemorations, their soft tendrils splayed against the names of the survivors. It was almost as if all these years— all these centuries—the names had been beckoning them back. They had been waiting for their ageless perfume and unequaled scent.
Across the room he saw her, the rose that had drifted past his window. She was as enchanting as he had remembered. He slowly walked towards her trying not to startle her any further. Onlookers saw almost imperceptibly the small rose turning herself towards Miko to meet his adoring gaze.
Mikos’ nose sunk deeply into its soft pillowy center—and then he knew. He could taste the lemon candy his grandmother saved for him. He could smell his father’s spicey beard after work. He felt his mother’s hugs of liquid vanilla and the safe aroma of jasmine tea. He cradled the rose and let the cloud of its scents encompass him in a lovely dream.
And then...
The scent of all the flowers was released in one abundant wave. The room stopped and inhaled as if they had all finally heard a full orchestra play a beautiful melody. As if understanding a proclamation of love, they rushed towards the flowers and smelled them deeply and wholly
beside Mikos.
Each had found a rose—a rose that reminded them of distant summers in the fields, fallen petals on a bridesmaid dress, or the simple songs of children playing. The leaves were green and new again and their hearts beat faster for it.
Miko crept away from the crowd letting them swarm around their newfound loves —their own enchantment— their own magic. In a singular procession, he and his cradled rose walked towards his room.
There he found a glass of water and placed his blushing pink rose in it.
It seemed to look at him as if to ask a question but then proclaimed its beauty instead.
Mikos began to write as the perfume of the rose encased him.
The first rose of Callisto.
I dreamt of you my sweet pink rose A rumor of exquisiteness A whisper of sweet memories earth days, mirth days, birthdays
Has silence now regained a throne Of lemony sweets and cinnamon swirls? Or have I just found a ringing bell Thru soft turned velvet petals?
To find the beauty in the night That crept up on a gentle boy I turn into a honeybee And buzz away. . . away, away. . .
Taste (from Tales of Callisto)
Felicia McFall
Orbiting in the orbits in a space of spaciousness the moon Callisto whirled. The planet’s shell was a weather-worn mast with defiant craters. Underneath a primordial sea flowed. A sea too vast to know or see. Yet man had colonized here after the great extinction on Earth not knowing what life forms would be encountered if any at all.
In the center of the medical facility, two recipients await a controversial tongue transplant. Abelo and Kane are prepped and in position for the surgery. Their mouths have been fastened open as fixed receptacles for their new body part.
Abelo is a proletarian who has lived his entire life with his “unfortunate” tongue. He remembered being bullied as a small child, being forced to open his mouth, and then ridiculed. He was called grey slug mouth throughout school. Abelo rarely spoke, afraid someone might catch a glimpse of “it.” He was small even today because of his inability to eat. Whenever he put anything inside his mouth, he felt nauseated and usually vomited. After 20 years a doctor finally diagnosed Abelo properly. He was having a gustatory reflex. Put in antiquated terms, he was tasting. He soon became a celebrity and put on a televised showcase circuit as the only living human with taste buds. He was asked to put various things in his mouth and describe them to the audience. Even though his doctor had given him medication to prevent vomiting he still had to mentally prepare for each disgusting taste each interview might bring.
He looked forward to the procedure and never having to gag again before eating. He could be like everyone else. Cyril Kane was from an upper-echelon upbringing. A
mark of the elite was to have elaborately tattooed tongues. Without taste buds, the tongue was beautifully pink and robust. It was able to develop gentle curves like a fine piece of sculpture. The best tongue tattooers or tongal artists created exquisite art on this appendage especially if paid well by those like the Kanes. It was said that the more beautiful the tongue the more eloquent a speaker. Kane’s tongue tattoo was a beautiful butterfly or papillon to show tribute to the long-lost papillae. Cyril’s tongue was considered to be one of the best examples of tongal art on Castillo.
For as long as Cyril could remember, meals were flawlessly prepared. The family partook in various synthesized versions of impeccable meals from Earth days. Although they could not taste them, they still enjoyed the texture and presentation. More and more Kane found himself in the food preparation room and soon became an expert. His advice sought over the entire globe of Callisto. Kane’s dream was to finally be able to taste food again so they could have their “the intended effect.” The transplant was a means to fulfill that dream.
As each recipient waited mouths open with their gaping hole to be filled—they wondered what the delay was. They were told the transplant would be quick and easy and they would be in and out in an hour. Their eyes questioned the various assistants who milled in and out of the room hydrating them epidermally and making them comfortable.
A short, rather unassuming man entered the room with a clipboard.
“Good afternoon, I am Dr. Kafka, the head of the transplant division at Callisto’s Medical Center,” he said apologetically. “ Something has come to our attention that we need to discuss before we continue with the transplant process. We realize that you can’t speak of course so we are supplying you with keyboards as a means to communicate with us.”
Keyboards were placed in front of Abelo and Cyril.
“When your tongues were removed simultaneously to have the cross-bit transplant there were some interesting findings.” He hesitated a moment before continuing as if he was not sure what to say.
“I suggest you tell us immediately why we have been waiting almost an hour for an operation that will only take ten minutes,” Cyril punched out on his keyboard impatiently.
“Well, it seems that your tongues are entities in their own right—that is they are autonomous. They can think, feel and physically experience outside of your bodies.’’
As silence fell upon the room, an assistant wheeled in a cage that held the two tongues. The grey tongue appeared scared as it huddled into the corner of the cage, The other tongue fully fledged in color stood in the center of the cage, the wings of its tattooed butterfly arched in defiance.
“Umm, so that leaves us with a dilemma,” he said clearing his throat. “If we proceed with the transplant as planned, we violate the sanction of liberty or the right for any found species to thrive.”
“That’s ridiculous,” typed Cyril. “That isn’t a found species, that’s my tongue!”
“It WAS your tongue. Now it is a self-entitled entity. It has a heart, mind and soul just like you and I.”
Dr. Kafka looked at Abelo whose eyes were fixed on the two tongues and said softly.
“What do you think of all this Abelo?”
“Well,” he typed slowly, “What do the tongues want?”
“Thank you for asking Abelo. We, that is the team and I think… ” he was glancing at the cage as well. “They both want to go back into mouths again.”
“I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that Cyril,” Kafta continued. “Your tongue wants to go ahead with the transplant for the sake of the future of culinary arts.” Cyril’s tongue stood upright and proud almost saluting, “Going into Abelo’s mouth and Grey Tongue into Cyril’s”
“So, what’s the problem?” Cyril retorted.
“Grey Tongue wants to go back into Abelo’s mouth. He said he likes it in there even though he always gets vile things spread on him.”
Cyril’s tongue, Papillon points angrily at Grey Tongue causing him to retreat further into the corner.
Abelo looked at Grey Tongue alone and vulnerable, wanting to comfort him somehow. Grey Tongue still wanted him despite all the bullying in school and those terrible interviews.
“Maybe I don’t want to be like everyone else after all, ‘’ Abelo thought. Grey Tongue somehow heard him.
“I want a Grey Tongue too,” Abelo found himself typing. Grey Tongue edged away from the corner a bit and seemed to be braver.
“This is absurd!” Cyril typed. “We had an agreement. If you choose to not honor the agreement and that means all of you,” Cyril’s stern eyes fell on Abelo and Grey Tongue, “I can safely say that you are considering some considerable time in export isolation. My lawyers will see to that. I’m sure we can think of some interesting ways to make use of your isolation time in some of our labs.”
All parties in the room knew that Cyril could make good on his word. His family owned half the facilities on Callisto and were used to getting what they wanted.
Hearing this, Grey Tongue tried to lunge out of the cage as Abelo reached for him before they were anesthetized and prepped for the transplant.
Abelo and Cyril would meet over the years with their infamous tongues. They would say it was to be able to catch
up on each other’s progress but secretly it was an excuse to get a glimpse of their old tongues. Papillon’s colors were becoming blurred and faded and Grey Tongue was like a doting old grandfather waiting for Abelo to return.
Abelo had become a fine speaker. He fought for equality abolishing isolation exile and the use of Callistans in labs. Tongues were beginning to receive rights as well. They were thought of as Siamese twins attached to their recipients but having sanctity. Some Callistans would remove their tongues rather than give them rights, but most realized the synchronicity and dual life they shared with tongues.
Unfortunately, Cyril never was able to create food with taste that could be enjoyed. Since all food and flavors were synthetically created with no connection to organic food, they could only taste like what they were created from— recycled materials and organic waste. Abelo’s doctor eventually approached him and gave him the same medication that Abelo had received.
Cyril seemed smaller to Abelo as he approached him in his chair sipping tea. Glad to see Abelo, Grey Tongue shot out between Cyril’s lips intermittingly.
“You know, I still can’t get him to behave when we see you,” Cyril smiled wryly.
“That’s okay,” Abelo said extending Papillon out of his mouth so Cyril could see him
“Still beautiful as ever,” Cyril said with admiration.
Abelo sat beside Cyril as old friends do after years of conversations not needing to say anything as they passed time together.
Cyril took another sip of tea, Abelo recognized the familiar cringe as his lips pursed slightly.
“How’s the tea?” Abelo asked?
“Well, it’s hot,” and they all chuckled softly nodding their heads.
Connections Risa
Lullaby For My Gobi
Chloe Hawkins
You are a million years old, a porcelain face with a sunshine chipped nose.
You are a midsummer day, dandelion puffs bloom around as you lay.
I found a four-leafed clover, whose charms I will hold forever closer.
Art by Chloe Hawkins
Recalibrating Myself Matty Ox
Entering the Unknown
Alvaro Nicolia
Beyond the prodigious and corroded entrance, a faint harmonic chime announces the genesis of the day. My heart quivers, my anxiety grows, and unbearable panic overwhelms me, holding my mind and body captive. My homeroom emerges from my emotional paralysis. I study the faces present: blue eyes, brown eyes; blonde, brunette. As I search for a welcoming expression, I see only indifference. English words and phrases everywhere, misunderstood by a naive thirteen-year-old Latino boy. I enter the unknown like Jason did as he sought out the Golden Fleece, but unlike Jason, I lack the strength and cunningness to prevail over the condescending privilege that pervades the institution. My once mundane life is exchanged for an invincible unknown.
Tempus
Kaitlyn Spencer
(Trigger
warning: child abuse)
As if time suddenly slowed down, she watched in slow motion as the plastic cup of water fell to the floor with a clatter. The room that was usually warm and inviting, quickly became cold and filled with dread. She could hear the shadow but couldn’t see him yet. She knew what was coming. The banging came loud, starting in the laundry room and moving into the living room. She held her little brother who was trembling in her arms. There was nowhere to hide, if they tried it would only make it worse when it found them. She wished her mother was home and not at work, she could save them. The banging got louder, and the room grew hot with the shadow’s rage.
Her eyes brimmed with tears, but she had to stay strong for her brother. If she was to crack, they would both be hurt. Finally, the shadow came into view, black like an abyss and angry. It smelled like stale cigarette smoke and sweat. The girl steeled herself, all signs of life and joy left her eyes and were replaced by a blank stare. The monster roared at her and gripped both of her slim arms that were wrapped tightly around her brother. Dull pain radiated up her biceps as the thing jerked the two back and forth as spit landed on her face as it continued to scream its rage.
A sob ripped from her brother’s throat which only made the shadow angrier, but she still held the smaller boy tighter to her chest. As fear was still gripping her heart she stayed still, not a tear to be seen as she stared directly at the shadow face. Icy gray eyes filled with anger and rage stared back at her. She gave her younger brother a small squeeze as if to say, ‘it’s almost over’. Soon they would be able to take refuge in her bedroom and would be safe while they wait for their mother to return home.
“Quit crying damn it! You’re fine!” The shadow boomed but it sounded different from before.
Slowly the shadow turned into a man with slicked-back brown hair with a widow’s peak and face red with anger. A man who should be the beacon of safety, someone who you always felt protected by. A man who should be called ‘dad’ instead of a shadow that emanated rage.
“Do you understand me!?” He shouted and jerked her again, more spit spattering on her face.
“Yes sir,” she said firmly and held her blank stare to his angry one.
“Go to your room!” he spat and finally released her shoulders.
Once he turned to leave, a sneer formed on her face and a single tear ran down her cheek. She quickly shoved her brother into her bedroom before closing the door and snuggling under the covers trying to soothe both herself but also her sobbing baby brother.
“It’s okay, mommy will be home soon. It’s okay, we’re okay,” she said softly, voice wavering, as she snuggled her brother into her chest. As they lay there with the blanket pulled over their small bodies, she wondered what they did to cause this outburst.
A simple plastic water cup falling off the counter shouldn’t have caused this punishment, right? As the adrenaline finally left both of their bodies the two children drifted off to sleep, still waiting for the glorious moment when their mom finally returned home.
Golden End Diego Smythe
10-7
Zachary Smith
It was raining. It was dark. I could see nothing save for the silhouette on the ground in flashes of loud light. She laid motionless. Of course, she did. She was dead and had been for a while. I stood under the easement of the garage to this house I’d never been to. Just staring. The grass was half mown. An elderly lady mowing the grass in 100-degree heat. Nobody knew that she had gone down. Nobody was there to help her. She was alone in the pitch-black, only visible when the sky was angry.
“Hey, want to get some coffee?” asked Mark. “Sure,” I replied.
We said our goodbyes to the officers and firemen and gave our condolences to the family on our way out. We ran to the ambulance, the blue and red lights mixing with the rain. We quickly put the stretcher in the back, not worrying about how wet it was. We’d dry it at the station. I jumped in the passenger seat and my partner started driving.
“At least we’re getting some rain,” said Mark. “Of course, now it’s too much.”
“It would be nice if the rain actually meant cooler weather rather than a bazillion percent increase in humidity,” I replied.
Texas summers are brutal. Rain was always welcomed but didn’t help the temperature. Humidity on top of humidity. Just standing outside in the shade brought about dehydration from sweating. My uniform was damp, but not from the downpour.
The rain was unrelenting. I just stared out the window. I could see nothing except when the night sky lit the ground in bright white.
Nothing.
I could see nothing.
I felt nothing.
We stopped at a 7-11. Convenience stores are the cafeteria of EMS. Constant access to coffee is pretty much a requirement when working 24-hour plus shifts. I walked up to pay for my coffee and heard the same thing I’ve heard my entire career.
“You guys must see some pretty crazy stuff, what’s the worst thing you’ve seen?!” asked the cashier.
Everyone asks that question.
Everyday.
Every shift.
Ten minutes ago, I was standing in pure darkness, pouring rain, next to a body that I couldn’t see unless the lightning struck. It was windy, loud, dark. It was fairly ominous, to be honest. Most people seem to expect some horrific tale of death and destruction. But that’s not the worst thing I’ve seen and that isn’t what I would tell her. Maybe she would think pronouncing a person dead standing in the middle of a thunderstorm was cool or crazy, maybe not. The truth is the worst thing I have ever seen is the consistent, blatant, and negligent mistreatment of the elderly population by healthcare professionals in this country in general. But that doesn’t make for a good story, does it? People want gore, blood, guts. Shootings and stabbings, crazy car crashes. I’ve seen all those things a billion times. But they didn’t faze me anymore.
I always politely just say, “Yeah, we do. . . .”
We went back to the station. My partner went inside. I decided to dry off the stretcher, then I sat on the front bumper of the ambulance. The bay door was open. The rain still pounding the city. For once you couldn’t hear the cicadas, which were usually deafening.
I continued to stare. I wasn’t really thinking of anything at first. Just sipping my coffee. Then I realized that I was thinking of nothing. Which I never do. There was that feeling again. Nothing.
I remembered what we had just done. Pronounce an old lady dead in her backyard, in a thunderstorm. Family crying, neighbors consoling. It was tragic…for them. And I know the feeling, most people do. I lost my mother a few years ago. I remember the grief. But I had none that night. Not even empathy. I always have empathy. Or at least sympathy. But I just didn’t care. And maybe that’s not the right way to put it, but I just didn’t feel anything about the whole call in general. I wasn’t sad, I didn’t feel sorry for the family, it was just a thing I did. Run of the mill EMS stuff. For me, one of the important things about working in EMS was empathy. We really do see all sorts of crazy shit. And not just gore and mayhem, but child abuse, sex trafficking victims, and sheer violence. Empathy was always important in those situations. I always wanted to put myself in my patient’s situation and try to be there with them. I know I never could really get there, but I always wanted to try, to help them, and maybe they would connect with me and forget about the tragic event for just a moment. But now I had a different emotion. Apathy.
That was something I did not want to feel in the medical field. It had been there for a while, but now I was just realizing it. I no longer had the desire to go out of my way. I would rather take the path of least resistance when it came to patient care. Just doing my job, not really reaching out to people.
I was apathetic to empathy. I was an emotion to an emotion. How could that be? Maybe the lightning that night was the light bulb turning on in my head that I needed. Maybe this had been years in the making? Had I not been caring about what I do? Have people noticed this? If they
have, did they tell me? Did anyone know? She knew.
“You’re not happy,” my wife said.
“No?” I replied.
“I can see you losing your faith in this. Do you even want to go to work? Do you even care about what you do? What’s the point if you’re not happy with what you do?” she said.
“You’re right, I’m not happy,” I said.
18 years. Thousands of calls. Over a million miles driven. People saved…more lost.
10-7, out of service.
Simpler Days
Alex Royal
Isn’t it strange, how those were the days when all of our stress about success was repressed at our request. Tests were stressless and sex was breathless.
We would wonder, without worry and we were never in a hurry. Just barely staying alive, somehow, that was when we thrived.
And we were living We took time for granted Regretted our choices
But that’s how we planned it
But we didn’t realize that the memories in our eyes had the power to control our perspective of the world.
The future wasn’t a concern until we were forced to learn that these memories are painful.
flamma rotam
Luis Chavez (Editors’ choice)
Satan’s Mistress
Amie Schaeffer
Dixie Deluca was wild in her day, a real spit-fire, although you’d never guess it.
She sat as she did every day in that same over-stuffed brown love seat, that carried the smell of a decade of smoking.
She worked mechanically at her massive jig-saw puzzles, thousands of pieces scattered on the old, stained coffee table, at her feet on the lime and yellow shag carpet, and on her lap supported in the stretch of paisley moo-moo that hung like a hammock between her knees.
Entranced — she held each piece between her thumb and forefinger, rolling it, rocking it, feeling every cardboard curve and edge before she gave it a home on the table with the others.
Dixie was as overstuffed as the sofa she sat on. Her hair was greasy, like a string mop that rested awkwardly on her head. Strands stuck to her moist skin, her cheeks, and her ears. The tattoos that covered her arms were stretched and warped. Grey-green images that looked as if they bled together like paintings left in the rain.
For as long as I can remember, her breathing has always been loud and labored. In recent years, a raspy wheeze and cough had joined the chorus. With each piece of the puzzle she placed, a heavy grunt would follow.
“Unnff…” Dixie’s grunts were slow and weighted as she reached to the far corner to place a pale blue piece to complete a small portion of sky.
“The Grand Canyon this time,” I said as I walked through a curtain of smoke.
“That’s nice.” She had a passion for American landmarks. Her first puzzle was the Statue of Liberty. She went on to the St. Louis Arch, Sears Tower, Mount Rushmore, etc. Slowly making her way west.
Dixie looked up with effort. “Robert! Come, give your mother a hug now, Robbie.” She removed the pieces from her lap, set them on the table, and began an effort at hoisting herself up.
“Don’t get up ma,” I said handing her a box, the smell of cigarettes and perspiration choked me. “I am only here to drop this off.” I could hear the cardboard pieces shuffle together and apart as the box exchanged hands. She held the box with both hands, arms stretched out, studying the box.
“It’s the Golden Gate Bridge, you know, in San Francisco. 1500 pieces,” I explained.
She gave a small smile, “Thank you, that’s real nice. You’re a good kid, Robert.”
She lit a new cigarette with the one she had just finished. I leaned over to her, wrapped my arms around her broad shoulders. Her cheek was cold and clammy and as I slowly pulled away from the mass that was my mother; a strand of her wet, sticky hair clung to the stubble on my cheek.
I was my mother’s only visitor at the “Shady Haven Mobile Park” complex and her only company besides her calico cat which had tripled its size since I’d given it to her a few years ago on her 47th birthday. She named him Bastard. It was a horribly small and dingy place. It had a small living room, in which she did all her living, a little yellow and brown kitchen area, and a small bathroom. It also had a tiny room to be used as a bedroom, but she never slept there instead choosing the sofa.
I have come across a small number of pictures of my mother in her “past life.” I say past life because I can’t
reconcile how the girl in those photographs and the woman that is my mother are connected. The pictures depict a happy person, a small person. Her companions are usually large men with beards and bandanas. She used to tell me stories of motorcycles and bars. You could point at any one of her dozens of tattoos and she will tell you the day, place, and the drink of choice that night. What encouraged her metamorphous— I never knew. I have never physically seen her as a person of average weight. I never knew her as this tall, thin image frozen in time.
When I was a child, we lived in a small house. My house was on the path of most of the other neighborhood kids as they walked to our school, Pine Brook Elementary. As they walked by my home they would point and whisper. Some of the boys in my class would dare each other to sneak up to our front window and peek at her assembling her gigantic puzzles. They called her The Monster, Marshmallow Man, and The Blob.
Danny and Denny McCoy were a pair of redheaded, freckled-faced twins that lived two doors down. They coined the name “Son of The Blob” for me when we were in second grade. They would get the whole class to chant it whenever Mrs. Elkin left the room.
I would steal thick, colored paper tablets from my classroom and stuff them into my superman backpack when Mrs. Elkin wasn’t paying attention. I would come home and at night while Dixie Deluca smoked cigarettes and put together worlds she wished she could see, I drew. I drew in a frenzy. Pictures of houses, dogs, and spaceships. I would give them to my mother as tokens of affection. I would plead with her to hang them on the large window that showed her off like a freak show. And she did. She hung them as she knew best, picture by picture, fitting them together like the pieces of her never-ending puzzles. The colored paper covered the entire window like stained glass. The colors were absorbed by our warped wood floor. Sometimes, when my mother decided to take a puzzle
break, I would grab the orange bean bag chair from my bedroom and place it on the wood floor in front of the window. I would lay on my back, stretch out all of my scrawny limbs and let my body catch the colors. Like a warm blanket, my skin was fragmented in color like a patchwork quilt, and it elated me.
Within two days, mom had made her way two-thirds across the Golden Gate Bridge. I could see her, the tall, thin girl that was hidden in her current body. She had a smoke in one hand, a beer in the other. She would wear a leather jacket, scripted with “Satan’s Mistress” across the back. She would walk across that bridge, full of confidence, contemplating her next tattoo.
She was still in the same place, wearing the same thing when I arrived that morning. I liked to check up on her before I headed to work. I brought her another box, filled with the pieces of a new adventure.
“Good morning, ma.” I set the new box next to her on the couch. “The Eiffel Tower, Le Paris”
“How did I get so lucky, kid?” She said smiling. She reached forward to place another piece. She looked as if she were going to collapse and suffocate beneath her weight. I noticed she had brought out her clock radio and set it on top of a finished portion of the bridge, next to her ashtray. A Simon and Garfunkle song began to play. She began to nod her head side to side and close her eyes at certain lines as if she had a deep understanding and connection with the two then-young singers. “They’ve all gone to look for America…” the radio declared, as she completed another section.
“I’ve got to get to work, I’ll be by around 6:30, 7:00. I’ll bring something from the restaurant. We’ll have dinner together, just me, you and Bastard,” I jested as I was already halfway out of the screen door. I flashed her a quick grin and added, “It’ll be fun. See you tonight ma.”
My shift at the diner was long but good. We were unusual-
ly busy, and I was constantly cooking up the orders, so the time flew. I packed us both grilled chicken fillets, biscuits, and macaroni salad, even though I knew she preferred a bacon cheeseburger. I skipped on our famous peach cobbler and opted for the oatmeal cookies instead.
As I drove to ma’s I wondered if she had successfully completed her journey across the Golden Gate Bridge, if she felt the wind on her face, the pavement beneath her feet. I pulled into the gravel drive away about 6:45. I was surprised when I approached the door that I could still hear the oldie station blaring. I went in and ma was slumped over, her face was covered by her hair, resting on the completed golden gate bridge. I set the bagged dinners on the floor and went over to my mother. I tried to set her upright with little success. I held her face in my hand, it was cold in my palm. I could almost see the girl from the photographs, taking off her sunglasses, looking across the San Francisco Bay, preparing for her next journey.
Miss Dixie Deluca; Satan’s mistress.
Two Shades of Each Color
Chris Palmer
Colors make our world so bright
They fill it through the day and night
Flames of red bring searing heat
Sing crimson birds a song so sweet
Black the smoke hangs so bleak
Onyx a gem both dark and sleek
White upon the land is cold
Tulip a flower beautiful and bold
Blue the people despondent and sad
The site of water, makes the thirsty glad
Green the gas so toxic and flowing
Lush the forest alive and growing
Each tint can bring both bad or true
It’s up to us to define its hue
Millennial Haiku
Mic Gillespie
A generation grew as the world fell apart. Yes, sad. Anyway . . .
Saturday Morning Jams
Mitchell Osorio
Rolling out of bed at 5:30 AM on a Saturday to go rabbit hunting is not the ideal morning to start off a day. Especially after a forty-hour work week followed by an eventful Friday night with friends, where time seemed to be against my plans for the following day.
With four hours of sleep and a pop tart in my system, I hop in the inviting cushion of the passenger seat of my brother’s warm truck. Picking up our two friends, Jake and Maddy, along the way. They obviously have the recommended amount of sleep, followed by an unnecessary amount of energy for a groggy morning.
We drive out on the empty highway to our desolated destination, with my thoughts of sleep and regret conflicting with the soon to be made memories. As we arrive, we get out of the truck and embrace the blistering cold of an early September morning.
My brother helps me load my gun while also reminding me where the safety is, as if it was my first time using my own gun. I hold in my laugh knowing that it’s second nature for him to always remind me the responsibility I hold in my hands.
I’d rather deal with the constant reminder of safety than become another firearm death in Utah, because of my negligence. With a 12.8 death rate in 2019*, safety could be the deciding factor of becoming a part of the 410 people who lost their lives to a firearm in that year.
Scanning over the terrain in front of you every second and being able to have a fast quick draw is the key to rabbit hunting. Or else you’ll find yourself at the end of the day with just wasted ammunition shot into the dirt.
Walking out into the open land with nothing but low-cut
shrubs and sage brush we take our different flanks and hope for the blurry sprint of a small animal to cross our path. I have no luck of such in the first hour. But I hear distant gunshots and my brother’s faint yell of “I got one!” I am eager to pull the trigger and continue to scan with high hopes.
Within the next hour I eventually end up seeing about five rabbits, only in my view for about two seconds, but still not quick enough to let out an announcement. I begin to question my choice of sacrificing sleep and the winner of tortoise and the hare.
Right as I’m about to give it up and take a little break to replenish my low energy levels, I see one. But this time not running. Instead, the rabbit was sitting still about 25 yards ahead of me. I quickly line him up in my scope and ease down on the trigger. Preparing for the punch into my shoulder. Then, nothing.
I press down on the trigger hastily three or four more times but still nothing. My gun has jammed, and the rabbit is nowhere to be seen anymore.
After ten minutes of angrily trying to discard the bullet, I make my way over to my brother for assistance. Whenever I need any help with firearms, he always seems to figure out the problem. With just a simple slam of the butt of the gun on the ground he is able to get it unjammed within seconds.
The rest of our time consists of shooting bottles and clay pigeons out of the air, hoping it would fill the void of not landing any shots. We pack up the truck and head back. With thoughts of my bed comforting my mind.
*“Stats of the States—Firearm Mortality.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 7 Jan. 2021, www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroo sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm
Change Me
Heather Graham
Change me and how I see this world around. Revise the ways I love and grow and deal with loss and ache, despair, defeat, breakdown with hope and love, delight and space to heal. Transform the paths we’ve walked so long alone. Follow and lead and walk beside from now until the end. Into the vast unknown. through ups and downs and highs and lows, I vow. Give me your hands to squeeze and heart to hold Give me your dreams and thoughts. I’ll give you mine. Take my hopes and love and soul to enfold me into hugs and safe embrace. Entwine. Change me. Love me. Be the stars in my sky. Always the best of us both - you and I.
Thank you to all past and current Folio artists, writers, musicians, dancers, photographers, activists, and more for trusting Folio with your creations!
