Sisyphus

Sisyphus Spring ’23

Cover: Abominable, print by Leo Hahn

Inside Front Cover: Younger, paint pens by Jesse Heater

Masthead: pen and ink by Alex Deiters

Inside Back Cover: Chief Standing Bear, digital by Alex Deiters

Back Cover: acrylic by Nolan Meara

3 Topiary Society, poetry by Conner Leahy

4 photograph by Max Grellner

5 Day 2, prose by Andrew Hunt

6 Smiles, Tears, and Tobacco, prose by Mattie Peretz

7 photograph by Andrew Hunt

8 photograph by Jack Auer

9 Despair, poetry by Cody Cox

10 Where I’m From, poetry by Paul Thibodeau

11 photograph by Luke Thibodeau ’16

12 Streetball, by Cal Kreuter

13 mixed media, by Jonathan Hulsen

14 watercolor by Max Marnatti

15 mosquito with a rose, poetry by Frankie Ferrara

16 Slovak Gnome, colored pencil by Alex Deiters

17 Terminal, fiction by River Simpson, SJ

21 Garbage, acrylic by Kam Lal

22 ChatGPT Writes “On the Limits of AI,” poetry by Frank Corley

23 I Eat Brains, print by Leo Hahn

24 watercolors by John Bytnar

24 The Mirror, poetry by Paddy Jones

25 Colorless, poetry by Alex Preusser

25 watercolor by Max Marnatti

26 A Guide to the Local Music Scene, comic by Jude Reed

30 Morning After the Encounter, by Cody Cox

31 Lunatic, Lover, Poet, poetry by Alex Preusser

32 Greatest Hits Blues, lyrics by Frank Kovarik

33 photograph by Max Grellner

34 atomic Theory, poetry by Paul Thibodeau

35 Sliced Pears, pastel by Kam Lal

36-37 photograph by Max Grellner

38 That Which Makes Us Vile, drama by Will Blaisdell

39 Lizards, marker by Jesse Heater

40 Dragons, marker by Jesse Heater

41 photograph by Max Grellner

42 Up On Reflection, poetry by Frank Corley

43 photograph by Patrick Zarrick

44 The Other Side of No, lyrics by Frank Kovarik

45 King Gizzard, watercolor by Leo Hahn

46 photograph by Patrick Zarrick

47 Little Star, prose by Paddy Jones

48 photograph by Max Grellner

49 The Observer Effect, poetry by Frank Corley

51 Squally Shore, digital by Jesse Heater

52 “All the Time in the World”: An Imagined Fragment of Dante’s Paradiso, by John Bytnar

53 Blight Lords Call, poetry by Carson Leahy

53 Gordian Knot, anonymous poetry

54 photograph by Tristan Kujawa

55 Hero’s Kiss, poetry by Cody Cox

56 The Missing Ingredient, poetry by Gavin Simon

56 photograph by Max Grellner

57 The Great What If, poetry by Paddy Jones

57 Blacula, print by Leo Hahn

58 Starbucks sandwiches are actually pretty good, poetry by Alex Brinkman

59 VI, poetry by Frank Corley

60 The Herald, poetry by Carson Leahy

61 Bridge of Doom, acrylic by Kam Lal

62 It’s My Party, Right?, prose by Andrew Hunt

64 The Love I Miss, poetry by Steven HlawnCeu

65 Self-Portrait, pencil by Leo Hahn

66 And Still I’ll Walk, poetry by Paddy Jones

67 Bagel Delight, poetry by Michael Safar

67 photograph by Andrew Hunt

68 Australopithecus, colored pencil by Alex Deiters

69 Pointillism, poetry by Frank Corley

70 photograph by Jack Auer

71 Las Flores de la Primavera Ardiente, poetry by River Simpson, SJ

71 The Flowers of the Fiery Spring, thematic translation by River Simpson, SJ

72 knot flying, poetry by Alex Preusser

Topiary Society

Conner Leahy

A withered tree fell, Its branches thin, The roots shriveled, With bark soft as skin.

Soon flocked the beetles and mites, And bugs, roaches, and sporophyte, A gathering that would soon suffice, communities anew for all of time.

Out from dirt and pine. A life and world of order… Too rank for humans.

Max Grellner

Photograph

Day 2 Andrew Hunt

Journal Entry: Day 2 of the SLUH Kino Border Initiative Trip in Nogales, Arizona

Today we attended Mass at a nearby town named Arivaca, with a population of less than a thousand. During the Mass, as we received Communion, a man with a booming voice stepped up to the choir area and started singing. I had heard him singing along in the back of the small church earlier. His loud, demanding voice was hard to miss.

As he sang, his notes were imperfect. The organ’s notes stumbled dissonantly by his side. Technically, the music was a mess. But I made myself see it as something beautiful—maybe out of pity or boredom, if nothing else. I thought of what Ms. Cordia had told the group the night before: things can be beautiful without being pretty.

“Peace is flowing like a river,” he sang, and I imagined tears, family hugs, old friends.

After the Mass, I spoke with a woman in the back of the church named Sue (“Super Sue,” her friends called her, for all the work she did for the parish). I had all but forgotten about the unique singer and whatever story I had dreamt up about his song. But she told me about this man. His name was Don.

He was a medic in the Vietnam War. So he was on the helicopters and they’d come in and pick up injured soldiers. And as they carried them to medical stations, Don sang them that song he sang at Communion today: “Peace is flowing like a river.”

And so people came up to him years after the war and told him, “You saved my life. Just by singing me that song.”

Struck, I recalled hearing him during Communion. With a smile, I realized I didn’t have to force myself to think that song was beautiful. The story of love, hope, and life was already there. Maybe I had felt it.

It was beautiful. I just hadn’t yet known why.

Smiles, Tears, and Tobacco

Mattie Peretz

Iwas five years old atop the kitchen counter in my underwear showing off to Dad my rendition of Chuck Berry’s patented “Duck Walk” as his deafening voice boomed along with the Godfather of Rock n’ Roll about his V-8 Ford shooting past his lover’s coupé de ville. The diverse orchestra of cheerful maracas, drums, tambourines, and slap bass filled the room as Dad smiled his pearly whites and clapped along with the rhythm. All was good.

Eleven years later, I was jolted awake by the hurricane wind stinging my ears. Even after Dad flicked out his fifth cigarette of the trip, the harsh smell of smoke still lingered in the truck. As he rolled the window back up and the whirring winds ceased, the car returned to its sullen atmosphere. I rubbed my crusty eyes and determined that being woken again by the blasts of air when Dad jettisoned another piece of his new habit was not a suitable way to spend another four hours of open road around us. So I took my headphones off: the playlist that Mark made for me quickly faded as I dropped my headphones into my lap. That’s when I heard it: nothing.

Dad kept his eyes locked on the road, clicked open the middle compartment of the truck that separated the two of us, and fished out another Marlboro before delicately wrapping his lips around the device he’d strongly warned me against. While maintaining the same empty gaze and his left arm locked on the steering wheel, he reached for the lighter he’d thrown on the dash after his last cigarette. He lit the end of it and returned to his

attentive but dead stare ahead. He must’ve noticed me watching him, and he muttered in his gravelly voice the same thing he would tell me when we saw old people smoking on the street, “Don’t smoke, kid.” But all I could see was the falling ash off the tip of the hypocrisy that was coming out of Dad’s mouth. Silence settled back into the truck. All I could think about was how mad I was at Dad, not because I cared whether he smoked or not, but because all my life he had been this role model. He was the man who nursed me through algebra in eighth grade, pulling my seventy-five up to a ninety-one, the man who taught me how to read, and who wouldn’t read me bedtime stories after the age of six instead making me come into his room to read “Goodnight House, Goodnight Mouse” so I could practice. But now he was nothing but a walking contradiction. He could help me through the death of my guinea pig but not of my grandmother? Didn’t he know I loved her too? Didn’t he know I was hurting?

I retreated back to the safety of my headphones, but the song had switched. What had been the distorted bass of Lil Wayne’s “6 Foot 7 Foot” was now the playful barber shop piano of Tom T. Hall’s “Little Lady Preacher.” The playlist had finished and the next song on our family’s shared music library just so happened to be the same music I was trying to distance myself from. At that very moment I thought back to Dad picking me up from school when I was in the first grade: he played the entirety of

some John Prine album as we drove around every surrounding neighborhood at least twice. Once my eight-year-old self realized that we weren’t getting home anytime soon, I asked him, “Dad, where are we going?” He just closed his eyes and said, “Just listen.”

I didn’t have the knowledge at the time to know that his company had just been bought out and Dad would be without a job for months to come, but he sang every word to every song in that album. That calm before the storm, where no sounds were heard but the soft plucking of the acoustic guitar, and the coal company of Muhlenberg, Kentucky. When we finally got home, Dad closed the door to his Nissan Titan, and that was the last time I’d heard John Prine.

I deleted the playlist of teenage conformity that I so desperately was trying to like, refreshing my library and scrolling around through guys like leather-faced George Jones and botoxed Kenny Rogers. Then I saw John Prine. This was the Rock n’ Roll Prine of late ’70s, though, not the singer-songwriter Prine of the early ’70s. After listening to just a few minutes of Pink Cadillac and having to look at his stupid goatee, it hit me why Dad never played Prine anymore. It was because his later stuff sucks! So I kept scrolling, begging to find which album Dad had played all those years ago, and as I listened briefly to the opening of each album, nothing sounded even remotely close to the simple sound I remembered from that fateful day. I listened to at least one song from each album, and that’s when I got to the last album in his discography. Sporting a smiling, mullet-wearing cowboy from Illinois, I prayed for peace and plugged my phone into the auxiliary cable.

Prine’s raspy voice poured into the car’s stereo, and before I could even look over at Dad’s reaction, he was already reaching for the volume dial and softly turned it clockwise. The playlist’s shuffle went with “Paradise,” a story about how Paradise, Kentucky,

the birthplace of the narrator’s grandparents, was bought by a coal company and stripped of God’s green beauty.

Dad’s normal singing voice was booming at its best and husky at its worst, but when he heard Prine he looked dead at me, with the face of a child who had just dropped his mother’s china. With the guilt of the man who had been living a lie. He’d been crying, I thought, and just as I sat up to turn the music down out of fear I had aggravated him, he opened his mouth, smiled right at me and turned back to the road, and with the voice of a child who’d just dropped his mother’s china, he sang along with Prine. Eventually I learned enough of the chorus to add my own tears as I felt the guilt of not considering what Dad had gone through when we all watched them lower Gemma

Andrew Hunt

Photograph

Dee’s casket into the ground, and so our voices broke in terrible, tear-filled harmony.

As “Paradise” faded out, Dad turned down the stereo, cleared his throat in his usual loud demeanor and gave me an order:

“When God’s done with me, play some Prine and spread my ashes in whatever Kentucky river you can find.” He looked at me as if to ask if I would accept his mission. I gave him a glance back in the affirmative, and he

smiled as big a smile as he could as the tears mixed with the Skoal on his teeth. I knew right then and there that I was sitting next to the best man I’d ever met. I opened my mouth for the first time in the entire trip.

“Play some good shit, old man.”

Dad fulfilled my order, just as I plan to follow his, and for the next four hours, we howled Dixie past miles of cows and corn. Not all was good, but all was right.

Jack Auer

Photograph

Despair Cody Cox

A small, dark pit slipped into the bed

Invading the body during the middle of the night

The pit gently pushed through internal organs

Taking meticulous care to not damage a single one And gleefully sidled up to the heart

The heart

Kind and compassionate creature that it was Allowed the pit to attach itself

To its warm pulsing flesh

Believing that after a while

It would pass on

The blush of the glowing heart deepened And the body around it grew

Although

The heart stuttered just a bit

When it felt the cold pain

Of ugly diseased mandibles

Burrowing into its warm center.

The pit grew colder, larger, deeper

As the heart matured into adolescence

The child began to wilt

And the pit’s toxins softly and sweetly spread

Becoming deepest crevasses of death

The pit was ready

And in an instant

The velvety black creature

Swallowed the feeble and delicate heart that had nurtured it

And left the body behind

Hanging from a rope

Fashioned with diseased self hatred

Slithering away to find its next victim

Where I’m From

Paul Thibodeau

I am from bay windows, from asphalt scrapes and oven burns. I am from old, rotting tree houses swarmed with cicadas and carpenter bees. I am from her chocolate vine, her cherry blossoms that bloomed the sweetest pink under April skies.

I am from 2:38 and 11:11, from black cats and sidewalk cracks. I am from dusty spotlights and lowered curtains, from the end of the second act. I am from tear-stained pillows, sixth-birthday cards, and taped-up mirrors.

I am from his record player and her tapestries empty alleyways and lonely garden sheds. I am from the backseat of my grandma’s car, from ghosts peeking out of window panes.

Wildflowers bloom across my bare feet, the once-green hill now covered in purple and yellow hues. Here, the songs I sang as a child spill out from my open mouth. I am from these melodies, from these delicate flowers beneath me.

Luke Thibodeau ’16

Photograph

Streetball

Cal Kreuter

Holcombe Rucker Park, Harlem. Streetball capital of the world. At 155th St. Station I rise out of the darkness, the smell of urine and marijuana clogging my sinuses. An old Hispanic woman sells ice cream on the sidewalk curb. “Ice cream, popsicles,” she shouts. Two children catapult from strollers and run toward the hunched figure. I cross the street

A motorbike speeds in front of us, engine revving like a lawn mower, popping wheelies.

A cop leans on his car. I see the sign. HOLCOMBE RUCKER PARK. Rap music crescendos from a speaker. Cigarette butts and dead oak leaves scatter the court like playing cards. Shoes scuff the grainy asphalt court. Two players fight for a rebound And from the jumbled battle one comes up victorious laying it into the hoop where the shredded net hangs by a thread. I sit down on a rusted metal bench and unzip my backpack, removing my leather-torn basketball, feeling its deep grooves with my fingertips. I gaze onto the court with anticipation. “I got next.”

Mixed Media

Jack Hulsen

mosquito with a rose

Frankie Ferrara

i lift up the sleeves of my unfiltered aura letting air finally tame its flamboyancy and you took that as your light to gaze into you suck out my ego

balancing out the blood you’ve let out of yourself

With my sweaty hand over it, i hold my deepest feelings for you your scars heal as they transfer to my heart for that is what keeps you coming back my mysterious nectar that you think you’ve tasted before me gives you power. my confection in the hallway so complete and discreet yet addicted to the art on my outdoor disposition

Is it the season of you

Or my sweetness in the summer?

Leaving my legs numb so I don’t fly away spotted with scabs that plan on healing, ones you’ll be most interested in feeling I pick and play with it,

and the petal of loving me not falls in the abyss of overgrown weed

The bare bosom of rose leftover

Unveiled to the real world

No longer smothered around fumes of conditional love but I grasp tightly on the stem fisting my fingers as I feel the thorns break my skin i aspire the feeling.

where pain starts to feel like something i earn in return for male validated love you’ve found your way past my repellent the only thing to protect me from your infectious bite and i’ve tried looking through your bug-eyed lenses but all i see is a world discolored

Is this why you can’t see me?

Why you leave me here to burn in the sun as I wait for you to bloom again? a mosquito with a rose. don’t you know not to hold something you can’t carry?

Alex Deiters

Colored Pencil

Slovak Gnome

Terminal River Simpson, SJ

Sitting quietly beneath a lackluster sun on a crumbling concrete bench, an old man waited alone for a bus that never came. The bus is late today. It’s always late.… Where am I going again … ah, yes! Emily’s graduation. She’s graduating today. I haven’t seen her since she was fourteen. How old is she now … twenty-two? She must be twenty-two.

Unseasonably cold weather ruled that bleak day in October. Unprepared, the old man shivered as the tumultuous fall breeze pierced his ragged coat. The wind’s picking up. I hope the bus comes soon. He rubbed his cold, gloveless hands together and blew into them for warmth. His soft, moist breath condensed into little droplets on his hands. He then brushed them off slowly onto his worn scarf. Emily knitted this for me. She’ll be sad if I’m late. Recently darned with patches of fresh black yarn, the faded remnants of the original material poorly contrasted with the new fibers.

From up the lane, a fastidious young man came walking down the sidewalk towards the bench. Each step and shift of gait precisely achieved the end he desired it to accomplish. In the fading sunlight, his polished bald head and horn-rimmed glasses shimmered iridescently. Finally nearing the old man, he asked cursorily, “John, how are you? May I sit down?” He rested his hand firmly on John’s shoulder. The fingers deftly tightened until achieving a viselike grip that ostensibly would not accept no for an answer.

John winced and responded idiomatically, “Hmm … I suppose—it’s a free country…” He looks familiar, but how does he know my name?

An old Navy buddy? Maybe he knows when the bus will be here. Melancholically, he added, “Do you know when the bus will be here?”

Releasing his grip, the young man took his seat and regarded little the relief of tension on John’s face before hollowly commenting, “Thank you, and no, John. I do not know when the bus will be here. Have you been waiting long?”

John glanced down at his watch and pondered for a moment. Tick, tick, tick, where’s the tock? It hasn’t tocked in years. “Ten minutes … twenty minutes? No … fifteen minutes, I think.” Pointing to his watch, he lamented, “The blasted thing’s broken.” The watch in fact worked perfectly. It had been over two hours since John sat down.

Frowning, the young man pulled out a small, efficient notepad from his coat pocket. After quickly scribbling something on it, he stood up firmly and looked wearily behind him for a moment. Tucking the notepad away in an austere manner, he commented, “Well, don’t wait too long today, John. It’s getting cold. When it gets too cold for you, go Home.” He strode away as quickly as he came.

John faintly nodded. Good riddance. I don’t like him. It’s not that cold. Besides, I have places to be … where again? Yes, Emily. Emily’s birthday party! It’s today. That’s right. Turning … ah, fourteen. I can’t be late. She’s expecting me. Where’s that blasted bus?

Suddenly, a small squirrel scampered up to John. Greeting the mangy thing, he chirped, “Hello, little fella. What do you got there?” Its nimble fingers clutched a

tiny walnut partially blackened by the damp earth from which it was plucked. Hmm … that won’t fill him up for very long. I think I got something. John’s blotchy and wrinkled hands began searching his numerous pockets full of various curios for a remedy. Ah, here it is. They don’t want me having these. Producing a crumbly, stale macadamia nut cookie from his breast pocket, John offered it to the squirrel, “Here you go. This will get you through the winter better than any nut.”

Sniffing suspiciously, the squirrel neared John habitually, dropped its nut, and snatched the cookie from his hand before scurrying away to a nearby maple tree. Its withered leaves littered the ground in a forlorn mosaic of fall desiccation. Greedy little bugge.… Not even a thank you. Not like my Emily. She was raised right. Never sassed me even when I embarrassed her at her graduation. John eyed the squirrel gleefully as it fruitlessly bit into the hardened mass that could have once been described as edible. Serves him right, rushing off like that.

The wind blew again more harshly than before. His bones ached from the cold and his arthritic joints creaked out of place as he shivered convulsively. Where’s that blasted bus!? It has to be here soon … I hope. Leaves scraped here and there under the purposeless direction of the fall breeze. With their raucous sound lifting his hopes, John stared down the broken up and weed-infested asphalt street. He saw no bus, but he could not miss the profile of the middle-aged woman garbed in a sterile white dress headed swiftly towards him. A large tartan blanket billowed in her muscular varicose arms. He scowled instinctively and turned away.

“Mr. Epstein,” the woman started, “Do you know what time it is?”

John checked his watch. “No.” It was 6:03pm.

“Mr. Epstein, it’s 6:01pm.” Her watch was off. “It’s time to go Home.”

“The bus will be here any minute.”

“Mr. Epstein, the bus stops running at 6:00. It says so right on the sign.”

John’s eyes darted over quickly to the faded sign. He read in large print, Meadowbrook Express Terminal: runs 9:00am to 6:00pm daily. He argued, “It does not say that.… Besides, the bus will be here any minute. I have to see Emily. It’s her graduation. Leave me alone.”

The pallid woman knitted her eyebrows, “Mr. Epstein, I insist…”

“No!” His arms folded resolutely across his chest.

Accustomed to his defiance, she smirked then said authoritatively, “Mr. Epstein, if you won’t go Home, here, take this blanket. It’s getting colder” and draped it gently across his legs.

He struggled to resist her. I’m not a child. I didn’t serve thirty years in the Navy for this. But his efforts proved futile and after ceasing his protestations, he replied blandly to the woman, “Thank you, ma’am.” His hands feebly readjusted the blanket across his lap. Hmm … warm. She always warms them up in the dryer just for me.

She remonstrated with him, “Remember, Mr. Epstein. When it gets too cold, go Home.”

“I’ll do what I want,” John spat. “I want to see Emily. The bus will be here any minute. I must see her.” He shooed the woman away with a bat of his hand that fell uselessly atop his lap.

With an exasperated breath, the harried woman mouthed to herself, “Every time…” She then pulled out her cell phone and walked away dialing a number.

I don’t want this blanket. Why doesn’t anybody let me do what I want anymore? They don’t let me water the plants; they don’t let me have my cookies. I don’t like it. I don’t want to go “Home.” I haven’t been home in years.… Where’s that little fellow got to? He scanned around wistfully for

the squirrel. It had curled up in its nest far away from the bitter wind and setting sun after having unceremoniously dropped the old man’s gift.

Hawk must have gotten him… Emily loved birds. All sorts: red ones, blue ones… I got her a bird for her last birthday. That big screeching parakeet. She loved it. John exclaimed, “I forgot her birthday card!” How foolish of me. I knew I was forgetting something. I have to get her a card— simply have to... Let’s see, something funny: “Here’s your degree and a life of debt.” She’ll like that. He chuckled, but the cold air sent him into a coughing fit.

John sat in silence. He listened in despair to his ears’ empty ringing bouncing around his head. It never stops. It will never go away … not until I’m dead at least; but even then… He happened to notice his watch, which always ticked but never tocked. It is getting late, maybe I should go Home.… No, I have to see Emily. The bus will be here any minute. That woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I won’t leave here until that bus comes.… It won’t come, will it? John’s downcast eyes inwardly lingered on the squirrel’s discarded nut. They watered in the chilly breeze but could not muster even enough moisture to produce one solitary tear.

A dim silhouette appeared on the horizon. With increasingly rapidity, it neared John. John perceived the shadow, but with its proportions stretched out by the setting sun, he could not recognize its shape. What’s coming now? I want to be left alone. I want Emily. Distraught, he did not even dare hope that it was a bus.

It stopped.

It spoke. “Crazy man, what are you still doing out here? It’s freezing!”

That voice… so familiar. Who is that? John looked up quizzically. A short, bright-eyed woman with coiffured locks affectionately met his gaze. Her fall coat rested sweetly and delicately around her trim frame just as

a gossamer veil drapes a bride’s crown. Her voice radiated warmth. “Come on,” she said, “Do you want to come inside? I can make you hot chocolate—with little peppermint marshmallows. I know it’s still your favorite.” She sat down next to the old man and held his hands frigid from the cold.

Why is she touching me? Ohh, that’s warm. Who is she? Do I know her? Should I know her? I do like hot chocolate, but how does she know about the marshmallows? Maybe I can… “No, I am staying here. Leave me alone. I am waiting for the bus; my granddaughter’s turning fourteen today, and I still need to get her a card.” He let go of her hands and turned away.

For a moment, she seemed discouraged but recovered quickly. “Well, it’s your lucky day then, Grandpa! It’s me, Emily!” She gently caressed his face and stared into his milky, blue eyes. Nurse Chatham had told her to be patient.

John retorted, “You’re not Emily,” and brushed her away.

She tightly held her breath. Her eyes winced discreetly behind a porcelain smile. “Yes, Grandpa. It’s me. I’m Emily… Remember, you gave me that big blue parakeet for my last birthday?” She said so hopefully, desperately searching for an ounce of recognition. Nothing.

She can’t be Emily. Emily’s so young. She’s too old. Who is she? I don’t trust her. John responded violently. “NO! You’re not Emily. Not my sweet, little Emily. Go away. Get away.” This time with what little strength he had, he pushed her away. His arms crossed themselves defensively as he stared angrily to the pavement.

Emily’s resolve finally flagged, and she burst into tears. It had been getting worse each time. Dr. Boswell said this would happen. She thought she had years left with her grandfather; it had only been months. As her visible distress worsened, John felt awkwardly at fault and slowly turned his gaze to her.

I didn’t mean to make her cry. Why is she crying?

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.… Where’s that hot chocolate you were talking about? You seem like a nice girl. I can see Emily tomorrow.”

Comforted by at least the enduring humanity of her grandfather, Emily silently swiped her tears away with her coat sleeve and collected herself. With strained and increasingly personal detachment, she directed, “Come now…, Mr. Epstein. It’s time for dinner. Come with me, and I can get you that nice, warm hot chocolate.”

John acquiesced, “Okay, let’s go. I’ll just see Emily tomorrow. The bus will surely come then, won’t it?”

“Yes, Mr. Epstein, I am sure it will.” Bereaved of who her grandfather once was, Emily lovingly helped to his feet the old man who had taken his place. She held him as tenderly close as she dared, only so close as would befit a stranger’s relation to him, and guided him gently across the well-manicured but rarelytouched lawn of the Meadowbrook Home for the Elderly’s back entrance. Cheering no one, perpetually blooming plastic plants lined every windowsill. While neither Emily nor John said a word, play actor smiles accompanied each of their faces to bolster the resolve of its counterpart, if for different reasons.

The bald man and the terse woman waited for them at the door. The bald man spoke, “Don’t worry, Emily. Nurse Chatham will take him from here.”

With a clinging guilt, Emily slowly handed over her grandfather into the tendrilled grasp of Nurse Chatham, but John protested, “No, I want to stay with … with … her.”

With ease, Nurse Chatham briskly led a dissenting Mr. Epstein away for a belated dinner.

Emily’s heart wrenched within her throughout this oft-repeated pitiable display. On this occasion, however, she refrained from following and comforting her grandfather; it usually led only to worse protests later. Only recently had Emily begun following Nurse Chatham’s advice to hold off, but she was right that it had gotten easier each time—the thought curdled in her stomach. Swallowing a sigh, Emily then asked the bald man, “Dr. Boswell, how long was he out there today?”

Once they were out of earshot, Dr. Boswell confided, “A little over two hours— you’d be amazed at how many times that little bus stop trick stopped him from just wandering off. He went there right after you left. I’m sorry we had to call you again, Emily.”

She acquiesced, “It’s okay. He needs me … or Emily, I guess …”

With a deadeye smile, Dr. Boswell chattered, “Keep hope, Emily, he may have forgotten you today, but he may remember you tomorrow. He has years before it’s terminal.” Emily replied, “Yes, years …”

Kam Lal

Acrylic GarbaGe

ChatGPT Writes

“On The Limits of AI”

Frank Corley

Ask me about being bullied on the playground. Don’t ask me about watching my brother get shot. Ask me about my first kiss, But don’t ask me why it made me feel dirty.

Ask me about watching fireworks on July Fourth. Don’t ask me about being an American. Ask me whether I ever doubt myself, But don’t ask me why.

Ask me if I’d submit to the Turing Test. Don’t ask me about cheating on an exam for a friend. Ask me to prove the Infinitude of the Primes, But don’t ask me if my mother’s love for me is finite.

Ask me to open the pod bay door. Don’t ask me why I’m claustrophobic. Ask me about Cohen’s Method of Forcing, But don’t ask me if this sentence is false.

Ask me if the solution is true. Don’t ask me where outside the system the solution lies. Don’t ask me if I’m aware of my own existence. Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry.

Watercolors

The Mirror

Paddy Jones

I’m sixteen and forty-five at the same time, An honest Christian and an unrepentant heathen, A genuine lover and an ungrateful exploiter, I’ve read every book, and no books, Gone everywhere but seen nothing, I’ve witnessed humanity and brutality all in the same moment, Seen beggars give and givers take, I’ve seen clowns weep and morticians smile, Seen the sun set over castles and tents, I’ve been surrounded and lonely, I’ve been solo and satisfied, I’ve felt attraction’s sweet embrace and rejection’s cold shoulder, Sipped the sweet nectar of rapture and gulped the bitter spirit of misery, I’ve heard the harmonious symphony of angels, and the dissonant choir of demons, Felt the freedom of the wind and the confinement of the tollbooth, I’ve been engulfed in never-ceasing light and swallowed by ink-black darkness, The highs are high, and the lows are low, The sun sets hard and fast, and takes its time to rise in the morning, The days are short, but the night seems never-ending.

John Bytnar

Colorless

Alex Preusser

A single rose clutched in her hand drips crimson, a solemn reminder that she lies lifeless, the warmth of her flesh leached of its bronze, and the heart of her lover left passionless. Offered no solace by the sun’s rays golden, he lies alone in their bed, thoughtless but the image of her eyes gleaming emerald and the raging nightmares relentless. The shadows encircle his eyes a deep ocean, in their consuming fury boundless tipping back his feverish mind into the wine, the whining ache of his chest pleasureless. Lost to the wind is his troubled lover, but nevertheless he waits, yearning for the bend of light behind the clouds.

Max Marnatti

Watercolor

Morning After the Encounter

Cody Cox

The throaty call of Xanax haunts my sleep

Then I wake drink inky grounds and whet my hunger for emotion

Steel chorus clangs at 6:30 A.M.

“Time to leave,” I think, and I shiver with this lack of feeling.

But my life has been reduced to a statistic a scholarship to commercialize my skin for a stereotype for your convenience

a job to be boxed into someday because my hair is “unprofessional.”

What aspects of me are most appealing to you?

My music?

My body?

My clothes?

My culture?

My names?

I have a lot of names.

Am I Suspect? Thug? Criminal? Faggot? Wetback? Nigger?

Is that why the officer told me I “looked threatening”?

A rail-thin, anxiety-ridden student in a wet cardigan and slacks.

I got a ticket for speeding.

Am I the monster under your bed?

How does my ancestry, my brown skin, put you on edge?

Do you feel panic creeping in your bones like I do?

Is that gun you finger nervously your Xanax?

How will I be like my brothers and sisters?

Will I rise from ashes?

Or will I die a victim?

Will you live with my blood on your hands?

Lunatic, Lover, Poet

Alex Preusser

The delicate tendrils of his mind fray at the edges under the constant threat of a brutal snap pushing to the cavernous gap the sensations of the heart that pledges.

Her tender heartstrings will snap with one more tug, the weight of her affection sinking and the air around her neck shrinking as the noose fits to her throat just snug.

Will thou ever truly know when thou art lost in thy mind and not in the revels? Is it better to be lost in delusion, surrounded by devils, or lose thyself to the demons thou let in?

In the end, disregard those myriad devils that leave thee maimed, for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed.

Greatest Hits Blues

Frank Kovarik

A pound of cherries soon enough Becomes a bowl of pits

A lifetime’s work gets boiled down Into the Greatest Hits

A bushel’s worth of apples Ends up as a bunch of cores

A season’s worth of baseball games Is just a list of scores

Time cracks open our lives

And spits them out like empty husks And the wind will blow us all away like ashes and like dust

Some day you and I Will both be gone, my dear There won’t be a trace Of either of us here

Table scraps are what remains Of a delicious meal

The remnants of that juicy orange? A torn and bitter peel

And seven billion human beings

Taking breath today

Will be seven billion skeletons No matter what they say

And the decades of our existence Will be nothing but a blur Our descendents won’t know or even care About who we were

So take a look around at everything That won’t be missed Don’t worry; get happy Here’s the final twist:

You might as well enjoy this blink Of an eye when you exist And while you’re at it, come on over here Darling, and knock me a kiss

Max Grellner

Photograph

atomic Theory

Paul Thibodeau

i am filled with empty space. and no matter how hard they try, despite their tubes and rays and sheets of golden foil, they will never comprehend how small i feel.

there is something in you, though, that excites me, sets me off balance. i can tell that you see me, and in a single moment, i feel bigger. I feel the buzzing, the energy, and I know we are preparing to bond. In my head, all I want is to give all of myself up to you. And you tell me that we can share, actually, because you are sweet and kind and don’t ask for too much. You tell me that I need things too. But what if I tell you that you could never truly touch me? That I am scared of what would happen if we collided? Or if you would push past the shells that surround me and be disappointed by the

cluster i am?

Worse, what would happen if you threw yourself at me without warning? Tried to toe the line between fusion and fission? Would I collapse in on myself, or would I split open, my ruined self leaving us both in pieces?

for now i will stay isolated with myself. if you come and break my bonds, then maybe i will be pulled to you. but i warn you, for i do not know the power of my unstable heart.

Kam Lal Pastel

SlIced PearS

That Which Makes Us Vile

Will Blaisdell

(Two apparitions, one the head of a man missing an eye with swirling horns that rise upward without a body, and the other a giant with a small, snow-white owl on his shoulder and gashes on his head, sit with a shaman in an open pasture near a stone obelisk. The rain from the day still trickles from the sky, and a mist hovers among the grasses.)

SHAMAN: (To the apparitions) Oh, see that man. A passerby, perhaps? Hmm. No, he wanders away from town, towards the fog. (To the giant, Jötun) I’m curious, find what Tyr has in store for this man.

JÖTUN: He proceeds to… Helheim. The empty bodies and husks of the damned. His soul meandering around, just as he is doing now, among the others in some dreary parade.

MIMIR: I pity the man. He strides away from civilization. Let me confront his thought. (Closes his eye as light shines from the other socket). ’Twas a warlord, and a man of many losses on the field. He seeks...you, shaman, to make his mind gray and bleek, free of memories of war.

SHAMAN: Old friends, your powers still amaze me. Yet I feel we must intervene on this man’s fortune. Shall we?

(She pulls out a mortar and pestle, and a piece of a cracked mirror, along with an assortment of ingredients from Jötun’s belt. The shaman places the tools out on a purple blanket in front of her and stares at the mirror, revealing the man's point of view from his eyes. Mimir rises above them both and opens his mouth, emanating a wind that clears the immediate haze.)

Come a warrior, nay, a soldier!

Dost the soldier feel the torture.

Oh, purge the pain of yonder days

The deaths soon gone a’ misty haze

Charréd skin, a titan repose

Fleece of sheep, a pasture yet froze

Chip of axe from giant’s clash (Jötun rubs the owl in response)

Feather of phoenix, born from ash

Fog of land from which nothing chimes. All lost; the land of Nifelheim.

Rune from land guarded of three sage. And flaskéd wind from tempest rage.

Mix an’a mash, to grind to paste, To paste to powder with brisk haste. The leg of locust, hoof of mule, The eye of Mimir…(looks back at eyeless apparition) what a fool.

Mix an’a mash, powder to dust

Ah, you see the color of rust

Quick now, quick now pound it with stone

Grind till dust, yes, dust all alone

Coat with sap, bless’d be Yggdrasil

Back to dust we go again till

Glossed and caked, see sparks of light shine

Now smash our grains, till cloud is mine

(The burgundy dust cloud swirls around, up into the air, and towards the man. The dust creates graphic images of the following in front of the man)

Look there, look up, all gray as smog

But here I go, oh turn the cog

Jesse

You see in th’ smoke, the one you loved See through her chest a sword was shoved

Axe in his side, cling to your breast Hand torn apart, fade to the rest

Another come to give regards, Arrow to temple, four score yards

What sad, no, what sorrowful man

To see the pain in th’ dusty clan Oh Valhalla, dost not forfeit Oh yes, oh right, you would forg’t?

You come to lose thy soul, quite so You call to me, oh what a show

To be a warrior, crowned with bones

But be a soldier, swarmed in moans

The soul of the damnéd descends

But they hath fought, so make amends

To forget the time, lose it all

Eye of Odin give way the hall

Return home, you face the fire

Find those friends atop the pyre

Don’t purge the pain of yonder days

You are the soldier, give them praise.

(The mirror shatters and the dust cloud swirls in the sky and becomes a part of the obelisk in its cracks, creating a flat surface. Upon settling, the dust emanates a green radiance that consumes the obelisk. The light disappears, leaving the obelisk dormant and a lustrous obsidian black.)

SHAMAN: Oh well, the spell’d, had I persisted any longer, completely persuaded the man to return home. Least he saw the dust. Shall we observe the path which he takes?

(They see the man pause in place and break down in tears on the hill, falling to his knees, but he soon takes to his feet and exits back whence he came.)

MIMIR: You never cease to amaze me, Shaman.. However I have one question. (Jötun and Shaman turn to him, quizzically.) Your art, Shaman, is above those of many. So why not persuade him and gift him his fate immediately?

(Jötun gazes at the man returning home)

JÖTUN: It’s about choice, Mimir. The choice to remember his trauma or forget his trifles. What would make him a soldier? The good heartedness of holding those who’ve passed in memory. What defines the warrior? The vile decision to eject valiance and efforts.

SHAMAN: Oh Mimir, you know much, and

MIMIR: Why do you look at me with suspicious mockery? Won’t you remember the man and the trial you went through in order to save him from an indisputably horrific fate.

JÖTUN: You see Mimir, Shaman did not manipulate the host of the spell. She gave the man a chance to redeem his mistakes. What is worse than someone who forgets their brutality and ignores it in pride? One who pushes those who’ve lost to forget is the one worse than a warrior.

MIMIR: I see. My apologies, Shaman. Your intelligence surpasses mine, although my mind grows foggy in this state. Our time is always precious, but I must concede to Midgard, for your magic cannot keep the dead from inhabiting the mortal realms for long. I must go. Farewell!

(He fades from sight. The Shaman and Jötun sit in silence on the pasture and stare blankly at the reflective obelisk.)

Jesse

to question me is quite unseemly of you. No, that’s not it … out of character, perhaps. But to speak for our giant friend, a warrior fights for war, a soldier fights for life. In the eyes of a warrior, death is the reward and praise from the people, is it not? They forget those who’ve perished. But a soldier … a soldier remembers which has been killed, by him or other, and he the lever which is pressured by the weight of these deaths

MIMIR: But that hasn’t answered my question.

SHAMAN: Mmm. I see. Wouldn’t that make me worse than a warrior, wise Mimir?

Shaman: Jötun, how do you know the contrasts of a soldier and a warrior? You don’t seem like the giant to be interested in warfare.

JÖTUN: I can’t imagine I would be.

SHAMAN: Then why did you nudge your owl when I mentioned your axe? To the eye, it was merely a gesture of pleasure for an animal. But to a friend, it’s a gesture that comforts and consoles the soul, in which they may be stressed. You’ve seen war.

JÖTUN: (Goes to pet the bird) I have, yes. I am not fond of war any longer, considering my current state. (A small breath that mimics a chortle comes from his mouth.). But I had fought. And death has taught me a morsel as well. Should I have remained alive, you would still

see me alive and a commander of the giant race, through death and carnage. Tyr had another plan. Death caught up to me, and led me to be a soldier, one for my ancestors to the gates of the afterlife.

SHAMAN: (Chuckles) You know more than our own Mimir. I thank you, Jötun. I shall call upon thee once the graces of Hel bless me with the power to bring you back. I will find a way.

JÖTUN: (Jötun begins to fade) I see. I believe you to be more of a soldier than you realize.

Oh. And one last query; warriors may forget and soldiers remember. But in the end, wouldn’t you say the atrocities come to terrorize them both regardless? (Dissipates).

SHAMAN: (Takes to her feet) Dost the soldier fear the torture, the deaths soon gone a misty haze, see the spell I knew to conjure, for one day, I’ll learn to raise.

(The Shaman exits, leaving the instruments to conduct her spell at the obelisk. The snow white owl lands on the obelisk, waiting for the return of the three.)

Max Grellner

Photograph

Up On Reflection

Frank Corley

I walk up the path, along the East Stream. At the Grand Entrance, where the Columbus statue stood Until yesterday A young woman, posing with her phone, stands by the Empty pedestal.

“There’s a White man walking up to me,” She says into her phone. I motion to her, pantomime taking a picture. “He’s gonna take my picture. I’ll call you right back.”

She stands at the foot of the Stone pedestal. I take her phone, back up, get lower, so The emptiness, the absence of Imperialist oppressor Frames her smiling face.

She walks away, phone again to her ear. “Yeah, this old White man just walked Up to me and took my picture By the Columbus statue. Except The statue’s not there anymore. Just the stone…thing.”

I climb up, pulling myself By my bootstraps. Put myself on a pedestal. So to complete my idol worship, I take out my phone. She’s gone now, Walking away.

Buddhists have a way of meditating Which allows them to make an Objective examination of their own identity. We have selfies.

With arms not long enough to Provide that objective view, I reach and twist to see Myself, the stone, the empty top. It will have to do.

<<Click>>

The New Oppressor

Patrick Zarrick

Photograph

The Other Side of No

Frank Kovarik

The hard thing about sales is that everytime he fails He has to start all over, more or less. That means picking up the phone or knocking on a door alone And most likely hearing anything but yes.

And back when he was in school, he wasn’t very cool, And his attempts at love were never a success. He’d hesitate to take a chance at kindling romance ’Cause women always told him anything but yes.

The other side of Yes is No.

If you’re always stopped, you’ll never go. And after you have fallen far behind, You’re tempted to just say “Well, never mind.”

He filled out an application to extend his education Though his grades weren’t anything that would impress. Upon receiving the rejection, he added it to his collection Of responses saying anything but yes.

And his prayers to the Almighty were always neat and tidy, And he rarely had all that much to confess. But even though he did his best, it seemed the Lord was unimpressed And that He would never grant him his request.

The other side of Yes is No.

If you’re always stopped, you’ll never go. And after you have fallen far behind, You’re tempted to just say “Well, never mind.”

Though his existence seemed infernal, as they say, hope springs eternal. Even in the face of things that could depress, Instead of giving up and dying, he chose to keep on trying, Hoping someday soon someone would answer yes.

And indeed it came to pass on a summer day at last That he met a woman in a summer dress, And she saw his broken soul and she desired to make it whole And like Molly Bloom she said Yes I will Yes.

The other side of No is Yes. When you’ll hear it might be anybody’s guess. And though you’ve fallen far behind, If you don’t give up the grind, There’s a chance that life will finally acquiesce, And that happiness will finally say yes.

Patrick Zarrick

Photograph

Little Star

Paddy Jones

Never before had I seen such a star. It shone bright, spreading its warm light throughout the dark recesses of the heavens. It wasn’t the biggest star in the sky, but its radiating glow made it seem to burn brighter than the sun itself. For some time, I would stare up at that star for hours at a time, simply admiring its beautiful light. I became infatuated by the little star. It didn’t take long, however, no, not long at all. Soon, I began to notice only the small size of the star. I seemed to disregard its warm glow and instead spent my time searching the night sky for the biggest, most grandiose star I could find. I spent countless hours scanning deep into the ink-black sky in search of the largest star up there. There was a problem however. No matter how grand a fireball I found, nothing compared to the mesmerizing shimmer of that little star. And so I now spend my days once again searching. Not for the biggest star anymore—but for that little star. For in my search for one better, I lost the warm glow of the bright little star.

Max Grellner

Photograph

The Observer Effect

Frank Corley

“There are always two people in every picture,” said Ansel Adams.

“The photographer and the viewer.”

To take the temperature of an object, it must be touched with a thermometer, Thereby either warming it up or cooling it down.

To measure the air pressure in a tire, a little air must be released, Thereby decreasing the air pressure in the tire.

Does taking someone’s photograph Steal a little bit of their soul? Remove some of them from them, And leave it on the negative?

Is an actor affected by the presence of an audience? Does being watched change the performance?

Or are actors always aware of being observed By a Third Eye? Are they always onstage?

What about you? Are you subject to the quantum effects? Is your path changed by the presence of an observer? Does measuring you change who you are?

Or what if . . .

You are both the observer And the observed?

The photographer, the viewer, and the subject??

What effect might I have upon myself By observing my own actions?

Self-reference, that abstract, mathematical notion Takes on a more concrete, practical air When considered this way.

Reflection. Intentionality.

An examen was originally The tongue of a balance The vertical needle which Leaned one way or the other.

I wonder, Is the mass on a balance Affected by measuring it? Does the examen tilt too far one way? Or the other?

Is our examen of consciousness, Our two minutes of reflection, Changed by the doing of it?

Are we better, just because we asked ourselves If we are?

Jesse Heater

Digital

Squally Shore

“All the time in the world”: An Imagined Fragment of Dante’s Paradiso

John Bytnar

The lights around me joined chorally, bringing Praise to God. Lauda Sion Salvatorem did their Voices demand, of the Lamb’s flesh they were singing.

“Oh wise and gentle master, you who have great care For my feeble mind, hear my question. Why do the souls choose the hymn they now blare?”

“The hymn they sing calls to mind their holy progression, Nourished by continuous viaticum did they Transform their slow wills to have great obsession.

Obsessed now with holy things, no longer did they stray But remained on course to feast their starved soul With the Bridegroom on His infinite wedding day.”

“O sage, now I realize these saints had but one goal, The goal I often flee, excusing my spirit By thinking salvation is in my own control.

Am I not too young to fear it, The Death that decides where we spend eternity? Surely I still have time before my life I quit.”

Blight Lords Call

Carson Leahy

Come my brother! Bathe your soul in glorious rot

In the pestilence of death may your life truly begin The complexion of infection welcomes all in its shadow

The flies and maggots act as standard bearers for the revolution of finality

No longer shall battle scars and glory marks be the symbols of honor

Now the only honor is found within the sores and boils of the wretched Scoff at the foolish lords who cover their imperfections with polished pauldrons

They know nothing of veracity or beauty or luxury

For the only luxury we embrace

Is that of knowing we all share the same resting place

The dirt. The mud.

Gordian Knot Anonymous

A while back I heard about a myth of a conqueror in a foreign land

Who came across a knot, the hardest to unravel in the world.

Faced with the intricacies that left many baffled and defeated, He drew his sword and slew so many men. This, like most things, made me think of you.

How you cut through the knot of my tied tongue.

Quick to bicker and beef, but slowed to a creep when mentioning love, Causing red hot passion to spill from my mouth in an endless flow

In my heart you won a conquest, a war of love.

Tristan Kujawa

Photograph

Hero’s Kiss Cody Cox

There was an odd and hidden jewel of devotion formed when the pink bandaids on your skinned knee bumped my leg, fictional pixelated conquest converting into true radiance as you squall louder than any brooding shift of sky outside, whipping your wild spines of green-blonde and black still smelling like sinuous ribbons of chlorine tablet foam. Downpour had fallen like the sudden tipping of a pitcher, pool and opalescent tile snaring your foot as we scrambled inside. I was too late to catch all of you, weeping spackled scrape instant and blaring. I carried you under a haze of adrenaline, perhaps unnecessarily, With less gallant and more stumbling than my imagined fantasy. But now, heartbeat quickening as the tv screen flashes, “YOU WIN,” in a spark of heroic brilliance, a moment of boldness spurred by a gem newly formed, I bestow my heart upon you, Asking if you wouldn’t kiss me, please. Smiling, your soft and full lips possess me, Tasting like an abundant secret, The acid sweetness and bitter warmth of your mouth Holding all the life of the newly clear summer’s twilight. And for a brief lifetime, reality is a strong hand around my waist, And another cupping my flushed cheek.

The Missing Ingredient

Gavin Simon

I feel the hearts of my ancestors through the Searing, Sizzling, Savory Frutti di Mare steaming from the salty Sicilian shores.

My mom cooks it every once in a while, Reviving centuries of history through the power of her pan. I gaze at the plate in front of me and feel it all.

As the limitless line of linguine noodles from Napoli coat the dish, As the arrabbiata sauce layers the oysters of Lazio, And the clams of Cagliari provide the plate with perfect propriety, I feel it all.

I’ve been to many cities that served me the coveted Frutti di Mare. Chicago, Boston, New York, and even Rome. But they all lack the ingredient that makes me feel at home.

Max Grellner Photograph

The Great What If Paddy Jones

Amidst those thoughts that dance within my mind Are feelings I have no power to forget, This weight that hangs so heavy, undefined, Submerging my mind in its dark regret.

This darkness haunts me day and night, This phantom pain echoes throughout my soul, The chance i missed, the wrong i cannot right, A constant burden, a weighty toll.

Oh, to only turn back the clock, Disrupt the course that led me to this fate, To seize the key that breaks the lock, To lift this burden, this crippling weight.

Through this constant longing, my heart goes stiff, For nothing is as strong as the great what if.

Leo Hahn

Airport Love, they call it. I can’t tell you how many videos I’ve seen talking about Airport Love.

Like it’s something we all get to feel And laugh at, its perplexity and ill-timing

Unfettered by its celebration of passive love, That it romanticizes sardonic objectification, Or perpetuates choice based on a first glance. No one should want Airport Love.

But here I am. A Terminal Two Starbucks, Waiting on a breakfast sandwich With black coffee.

And thinking of this critique with a smirk on my face, I judge a busied women Whom I’d give half my sandwich.

Soon my name will be called. Letting me escape down the lonely concourse, To eat my breakfast sandwich. Which, actually, is pretty good.

Starbucks sandwiches are actually pretty good

Alex Brinkman

VI Frank Corley

I heard a sermon once in which the priest argued that We can not solve our own problems here on Earth. We must go outside of Earth, outside our system Appeal to God, or Christ, for solutions.

I asked him afterward if he had studied mathematical logic. I told him that Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem said that Any system sufficiently complex to include arithmetic Must contain sentences within its own language

Not provable within the system. The proof must lie outside the language. Self-reference is a necessary condition for complexity, For being sufficiently powerful, in a sense, to be interesting.

Magritte’s art, Borges’s writing, Bach’s fugues, Mandelbrot’s Set— All contain references to themselves within the work itself. Awareness of one’s own existence separates the animals, To be self-aware, to be sentient, is to be human.

At birth, we enter into a symmetry, a duality, An involuntary mirror world; we are doomed to reflect, Doomed to self-reference. We are compelled To try to solve our own problems within our system.

God save us.

The Herald

Carson Leahy

From lands between the mountainsides

Where thistle lie and whistle by In the wastes of inky loch

Near spatterdock where herons stalk

Out of the pool a figure loomed

With feather plume, from Hydros’ womb

Behold him, clad in amethyst

A pacifist, a classicist

He sought to seek the somber calls

Of empty halls, and petty squalls of yesteryear

He danced and leapt through dreary homes

Of ancient bone, and cobblestone that men revered

There he met a ferryman

Who carried him to Paramin

He saw the soft and subtle groves

Of olive cloves and covered coves

He witnessed wrath and ridicule

The joy he felt was minuscule

Time runs thin, he began to walk

Back to wastes of inky loch

Near gray reed stalks where mallards dock

In glassy pool the herald slept

And wept for secrets sparsely kept

brIdGe of doom

Kam Lal

Acrylic

It’s My Party, Right?

Andrew Hunt

In the long run, all I ever wanted to do was make my parents happy. We all do, right? But I guess I forgot. That cake just looked so good.

When I was seven years old, I was obsessed with Skylanders— a Wii video game which uses plastic toys placed on a plastic portal to “teleport” them into the game. And one day, I had a brilliant idea.

“Daddy, can we have a Skylanders party?” I asked. I could see it now— the beginning of a long and glorious social life. Playing tag in the yard with all of my friends. Bragging about how good I was at Skylanders. Eating a big vanilla cake. It would be a dream come true. I knew my parents would make it happen for me.

“Sure!” he said.

So the date was set. Family friends and neighbors were invited. My mom made a cake.

On the day of, it was five o’clock, and everyone would arrive in half an hour. Time for me to add the finishing touch. The fat, round vanilla cake sat alone on the patio arranged with tables and chairs, overlooking our lush, dark-green yard. I galloped down our back stairs, holding a plastic purple Skylanders dragon delicately in my hand. I squished it down smack-dab on top of the cake’s thick white icing.

My older brother David jogged down the back door steps to join me and admire the cake, its scrumptious yellow filling, its icing crusted with sugar. Our parents had strictly told us: “Don’t eat the cake until the party starts.” I didn’t know why— it was just

the rules. David usually obeyed our parents, but he said what we were both thinking.

“It looks so good. Mommy and Daddy won’t know if we eat some.”

I looked at him with intrigue. He was eight. He was my role model. So he must know better. And like a devious lawyer, he won me over with his argument.

“Yeah, I guess not.”

They wouldn’t know. How could they?

Glancing around, we each carefully grabbed a chunk of cake, licking the irresistible sugar clean off of our fingers. Grinning, I couldn’t help but take a little more, and David did too.

Suddenly, we heard the back screen door squeak open at the top of the steps. Turning, we saw our younger brother Brendan, only four years old, planted in the doorway wearing neon shorts hanging down to his knees.

“I thought you’re not supposed to be eating the cake yet!” he softly whined.

We were caught. I looked up at David, lost for a response.

“Hide! Hide!” he whispered through a mischievous smile, tapping me quickly to go.

We dashed around the patio chairs and through the sloping green grass, laughing naughtily. It felt good to follow his orders, to be included with him—it was just a game to us. We vaulted on our skinny legs into the mesh of ivy and trees that mark the edge of the property, perching ourselves behind a stump where we would have some cover.

As we crouched, we squinted from our shaded cover to see Brendan, far away, run outside with my mom and dad close behind. The two adults, dressed in church clothes ready to welcome the neighbors, carefully observed the scene. Brendan pointed to us in the woods.

“David and Andrew! Come back!” my mom shouted.

“David and Andrew! Come back!” my mom shouted.

My face fell. The game was over.

As if we had been arrested, David and I ashamedly emerged from the foliage. As we reluctantly neared the patio, the disappointed faces of my parents came into full view. My face grew hot with shame and embarrassment.

“Did you guys eat some of the cake?” my dad said sternly. He paused. “What did we tell you?”

I looked down and shuffled my feet. David did the same.

“Don’t eat the cake before the party,” my dad answered. “Andrew, this was your party and you ruined it for yourself. Go inside.”

Slowly, we walked over to the stairs in unison, and I softly stomped up the steps— my eyes glued to my feet and stinging with tears.

The moment we stepped into our sunlit family room, my brother and I simultaneously went to the brown couch by the windows, its leather warm from the summer sun, and started bawling. Why didn’t I just not eat the cake? Why did I always have to mess things up? Why did I let my parents down? Everything was ruined. Warm, salty tears poured down my face, my brother sobbing similarly by my side. I felt his warm breath on my face. We knelt leaning on the upper edge of the couch, facing the windows and looking out on the grass, squirrels, and setting sun through blurry eyes— both of us too ashamed to look at each other.

The screen door cracked open to our left and we stifled our cries.

“Stay in here for ten minutes and think about what you just did,” my dad said.

So we cried more. And more. We cried for ten minutes, then twenty minutes. David dried his tears and got up.

“I’m going outside,” he said.

The deadline was up, I realized. We were free to go outside! I walked over to the left windows and looked outside, wiping my eyes. I had lost track of time—the party had started. The cake we had eaten was lit with my Spyro action figure planted haphazardly in the middle. The parents enjoyed drinks and laughs on the patio. All my neighborhood friends laughed and ran carelessly around the yard.

And I was missing out. Did they forget about me? I started this party! Another lump formed in my throat. No, they didn’t. At this point, it was my choice not to join them. So I lay back down on the couch and cried more. I couldn’t go out now. It was too late. I didn’t deserve to, anyway.

After another five minutes, The screen door squeaked softly open again..

“You should come outside,” my dad said in a hushed voice.

Red-eyed, I glanced up towards him, my hair messy and face wet.

“It’s your party, and you’re missing out.”

“Nooo,” I wailed. He left.

I looked out again at the people. It was my party, but I wasn’t there. So I cried more. For the final time, five minutes later, the door opened.

“Really, Andrew. It’s almost over. Just come outside.” His voice was deeper, as when he got mad at us.

His sternness alerted me, and I was driven out of my self-pity. I got up, wiping away my tears. The time for sadness was not now, because there was a party to go to.

My party. My favorite video game. My friends.

But more importantly, there was a parent holding the door open for me, worried for his kid and just hoping to see another smile on his face now.

I walked dazed to the door, and went outside.

The Love I Miss

Steven HlawnCeu

My heart feels so aching, My mind feels so sorry, And I feel like giving up on me, Because I keep falling in love— Even though I want someone else, Someone so specific, Someone I want, The girl who showed me love, Like no one else, Someone I met, but now miss, But I keep falling in love…with someone new, I hate these infatuations, I hate myself, I want someone specific, I want who I miss, I wish I could just see her, to free me from this, Missing someone who . . . made me feel like this, I wanna forget her, but sometimes I don’t, I don’t know how to free me, I want to know how she feels about this, I wonder if she’s fine, I wonder if she’s with a guy, I wonder if she still has that smile, And I wonder if she’s still kind, Does she still look the same, but older, more mature? Maybe she’s okay…yet I wish I could see her for a while, Just standing still—and giving me that smile. Her golden curled hair, and her cheesy style, The girl I love, yet the one whom I miss, someone so specific, someone I can’t resist. Her golden curled hair, and her cheesy style, The one on my list, and the only one there, for being the only one … I really miss.

And Still I’ll Walk

Paddy Jones

I’m headed for a road out of here, they don’t believe in me, but I’ll still walk, They say that the road is rough and uneven, and still I walk, They say the road has no shade from the sun’s overwhelming glow, and still I walk, They say there is no water on this desolate road, and still I walk, They say there are few other travelers on this road, and still I walk, They say the road becomes ink black at night, devoid of warmth, and still I walk, They say there are no maps of this road, and still I walk, They say people like me don’t get to see the end of the road, and still I walk, I don’t know where the road is going, or how long it’ll take to get there, but still I walk.

Patrick Zarrick

Photograph

Bagel Delight Michael

Safar

Each morning, I savor your sun-kissed crust, A tender heart that warms me with a touch. The hole that splits your golden crust Is like a portal to a world of flavor and lust.

Aromas of yeast enchant my senses, The scent that comes from every curve and crevice, Fills my soul with joy and my stomach with happiness. With gentle care, I halve for toasting, You’re transformed with a hiss, now crispy and roasting, A smear of cream cheese on your steaming top, Rests on your surface pleading for life.

As I take a bite, the flavors pop, A culinary firework, pure and bright. I savor each bite, relish every moment, Exquisite taste fills me with delight.

Andrew Hunt

Photograph

Alex Deiters

Colored Pencil

Pointillism

Frank Corley

When mosaics are made, tiny bits of glass are set into a wall or ceiling. Any one of them is meaningless by itself, but together the small differences in color and size of each piece create a beautiful, complex, full work of art. Each piece lends its uniqueness to the collective task of the group: the creation of the whole, in which the individuals are lost. Standing on the floor, looking at the acres of beauty, the mosaics seem to twinkle. No, they do twinkle; why? After the artist sets the tile of glass into the cement which holds it, they lightly tap the glass, so that it is tilted in one direction or another. The mosaic is not a smooth surface, not at all. It is uneven, irregular, bumpy. Each tile goes in its own direction. This irregularity causes the true beauty of the mosaic art: light which hits the mosaic scatters in all directions. The result is a twinkling, dazzling, sparkling show of light across the wall of images. Each vast picture, each huge scene, each monumental icon is lit up precisely because of the uniqueness of each of its tiny parts.

You are the light of the world. But can an individual candle Penetrate the darkness of night by itself? Join your lights together to create A brilliant illumination for this world.

You are lens and you are mirror; Focus the light, reflect the light.

You are the salt of the earth. But can an individual grain of salt Season even one single french fry? A single grain of salt is a perfect cube, Made to fit together with many more grains, as Pixels on a screen individually mean little; Together, they create a complex image.

Together, the mosaics might span several acres, Comprise nearly fifty million individual tiles: Like salt crystals, like votive candles, like pixels on a screen, Pointillist photons, bombarding the eye.

Discrete quanta, like Richardson’s computers, They come together to create something which evokes awe.

Like us.

Jack Auer

Photograph

Las Flores de la Primavera Ardiente

River Simpson, SJ

Primavera siempre empieza con lluvia y barro, pero aquella primavera empezó con fuego y rayos. Nadie sabe cómo, pero las flores aquel año fueron del calor y colores del sol. Cuando el viento correría a través de sus pétalos radiantes, ellas lucieron como unos bailarines amorosos de rojos y naranjas ardiendo con el alma de creación misma. Las pobres abejas, aquella primavera, no pudieron permanecer por largo en sus flores por el intenso calor de los pétalos, y además, como magio, la miel de las abejas olió a humo y ámbar. Pero, como todas las primaveras, esta primavera extraña término también. Las flores murieron y la gente las olvido, pero yo aún recuerdo cuando la miel que probé supo como el fuego en mi corazón.

The Flowers of the Fiery Spring

River Simpson, SJ

Thematic Translation

Spring always begins with rain and mud, but that spring began with fire and lighting. No one knows how, but the flowers that year gave off both the heat and colors of the sun. When the wind would course through their radiant petals, they shimmered like amorous red and orange dancers blazing with the soul of creation itself. The poor bees that spring could not remain for long on their blossoms because of the intense heat of those petals, and also, like magic, the bees’ honey smelt of smoke and amber. But, like all springs, this strange spring also ended. The flowers died and the people forgot, but I still remember when the honey once tasted like the fire in my heart.

knot flying

Alex Preusser

meticulously twisting and training the threads of my history each and every moment i seize and weave until it starts to take shape my hands are not alone in their quest to lace my end together knitting this twisted mass into a neat little knot

just air beneath my feet and for a moment i feel like i may be soaring the joy in my heart pouring forth from within to make me think that i may not break

i stop midair jolting as the knot finds its target my breath leaving never to return but to return is to find yet again my despair and so i stay forever in flight