Spires Spring 2023

SPIRES

SPRING 2023

SPIRES

intercollegiate arts & literary magazine

SPRING 2023

Copyright 2023, Spires Magazine

Volume XXVIII Issue II

All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from Spires and the author or artist.

Critics, however, are welcome to quote brief passages by way of criticism and review.

This publication was designed and digitally set into type by Jordan Spector of the class of 2025 at Washington University in St. Louis.

Typefaces used are Kings Caslon, designed by Dalton Maag Design Studio, and Montserrat, designed by Julieta Ulanovsky. Caslon was originally designed by William Caslon.

Spires accepts submissions from undergraduate students around the country. Works were evaluated individually and anonymously. Spires is published biannually and distributed free of charge to the Washington Univeristy community at the end of each semester. All undergraduate art, poetry, prose, drama, song lyric, and digital media submissions (including video and sound art) are welcome for evaluation.

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Staff

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Anna Bankston

Amy Hattori

Hanah Shields

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Alexis Bentz

Lara Briggs

ART EDITOR

Campbell Sharpe

LITERARY EDITOR

Mahtab Chaudhry

LAYOUT EDITOR

Jordan Spector

TREASURER

Jeffrey Camille

PUBLICITY DIRECTOR

Sophia Marlin

EDITORIAL STAFF

Katie Asness

Jeffrey Chi

Kate Gallop

Olivia Most

Lucia Pirone

Caroline Sarris

Yuechen Zhang

Kendra Zhong

Letter from the Editors

Dear Reader,

Our Spring 2023 issue consists of work from talented writers and artists drawn from a smaller submission pool than usual, but still highly competitive in its creative choices and adventurous content. Within days of dispensing the Fall issue on racks across campus, there were few left to find, if only the ones misplaced on a stray library chair from reading or tucked in the elbow of someone passing on campus. Whether you read this issue digitally or in print, we hope that you take more than just a copy, but also the musings and questions our writers and artists have so intimately woven into their work.

We are always impressed with the range of diversity and style Spires submissions achieve, and this semester we are particularly excited to publish a piece satirizing our own university. The foray into comedy has been bold but small in former submission pools. This semester our editorial staff pounced on the opportunity to publish finely-tuned humor alongside unique poetry, like a self-interview, and meta prose in which identity is contemplated through a horse.

This issue excels in large part due to its artwork, and we are grateful our artists let Spires curate this rich gallery. The attention to detail and conceptual innovation present in this round of submissions made the selection process lively, contentious, and overall, a great time. As an editor, there’s nothing better than hearing staff fight over too many good pieces.

On that note, we’d like to thank our excellent editorial staff—for showing up, bringing excitement and joy to our weekly meetings, and pushing us as editors to keep our magazine fresh. Our staff members pursued the highest quality of submissions this semester, promoting the magazine to friends, classmates, and social media followers. It’s been incredible to watch our newest members learn and grow from the expertise and camaraderie of our veteran staff, and we know we are leaving the magazine in great hands.

The three of us have enjoyed leading the magazine over the past two issues and have cherished our time working with the rest of Spires’ staff throughout our undergraduate experience. In the coming year, associate editors Alexis Bentz and Lara Briggs will take over as editors-in-chief of Spires. They have shown incredible dedication to the magazine and staff, and we have no doubt they will show great leadership in composing future issues.

And finally, a huge thank you to you, our readers. We appreciate every online view and every copy picked up from campus newsstands, whether you’re in for a critical reading or a cursory flip. Spires wouldn’t exist without you.

Sincerely,

Anna Bankston, Amy Hattori, and Hanah Shields Editors-in-Chief

Tea Song

The kettle boils in the kitchen, I hear it from the yard. She is up to mill about, put her hands in the washing machine.

To identify what she wants is to offer as much as I can give and hope it is enough. Today, it is mushroom soup and mothering.

When I was young and ill and crying, she laid on me to suffocate the sickness from my body and whispered, ‘Your tears are salty because someone loves you.’

We have spoken about her death three times. She told me, ‘Burn me to a crisp and chuck me in the sea, or set me in a teapot on your mantelpiece—

now go inside, don’t see me like this,’ lighting a cigarette and crouching by the door, make-believing I couldn’t see her. Next, hurricane-drunk and driving too fast, she admitted: ‘my nerves are rubbed raw by the brine in my blood, I can’t feel my feet.’ I asked, ‘It’s in me, too? Sometimes I act just like you.’ ‘No, tesoro, the world just revolves around you.’

And now, when her body is peppered with x-rays, she spits out their medicine like she spat on me. She called me weeks ago:

‘I am lonely and frail, stay for just a night, I beg of you.’

Her head wrapped in gauze; her fingers could not reach to grab. She sips soup and sleeps off the medicine and I cannot take my eyes off the kitchen window.

‘Why is she making tea on so hot an afternoon?’

OLIVIA VELANOVA NEW YORK UNIVERSITY ‘26

UNTITLEDHELENIVES

WASHU IN ST.LOUIS‘26

ACRYLIC & COLOREDPENCIL

frozen dinners

i’m thinking about when my mom and i went to Safeway to pick up frozen dinners.

and we rented some movie that my six-year-old mind wanted to absorb.

i don’t have many memories of that time but i do remember renting that specific movie and returning it the next day. and i remember watching it in the TV room with just my mom and i. come to think of it i don’t know where my dad or my sister were. but that didn’t matter.

i got to pick the movie and i got to pick my meal.

another memory is of my sister and my mom and me

at the Safeway again picking up frozen dinners.

and there’s one with a big brownie pictured on the cardboard outside and my sister or my mom points it out.

big honking brownie is they phrase she uses either my sister or my mom.

big honking brownie.

and we laugh so hard that a woman in the aisle comments on it. we my sister my mom and me still bring it up. we laugh.

now alone in my room i eat frozen dinners.

and it’s partially because i’m a late eater which is really because my dad is a late eater and he was the cook.

and it’s also because i know what i’m going to get and i know how it’ll taste.

and it’s also because i can microwave the meal myself and put on an episode of some pointless comedy and laugh and eat and burn my mouth.

and it’s also because frozen dinners taste good.

i think memories delude you

FRANCISCO LUCCA WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS ‘25

Cut From the Same Cloth

Quoniam with Jockey Up

There is a man on a horse. There is a man on a horse, and neither of them seem overly happy with this arrangement. Both are stiff, limbs bent at harsh and correct angles, perhaps theirs is a new partnership. Horse: unaccustomed to the weight of the man on his back, and man unaccustomed to the horse below. They’ve just begun their dance as the horse raises his hoof from the ground. Shifting with the small action, from stationary to movement. We are left to wonder how they will flow together across the dim countryside behind them, if they will slip into that familiar motion, or stay stiffly removed from one another, space created by the upward angle of the jockey’s back, and the swiftness the horse moves with, as if attempting to dislodge its unwanted rider.

And there is a dynamic between them. They are not an equal couple here, their arrangement is one of power and distinction. The jockey controls the horse, crop in hand. There is no room for conversation, if he could speak, the horse would have to navigate the bit in his mouth before even thinking of raising complaint.

Behind them the world is dark. Sunlight peels across a strip of dry, yellow grass, but is swallowed by the thick clouds that cast the horizon in grays and browns. The only other spot of sunlight falls on the rider. He’s outlined in a warm, red shadow, which flattens the folds of his clothes and edges of his features. This warm light also touches the edges of the horse, his fur shining in a higher relief than the jockey. Every muscular edge of the animal is kissed with this light. He looks glossy, healthy, more show pony than racehorse. Presumably, the clouds who rise in plumes from the phthalo trees will soon transit across the sun, cutting the warmth away from both the figures and the earth itself. We have only moments left of this perfect illumination of the subjects, already the shadow of horse and rider, (conjoined), has been swallowed by the hungry clouds above.

There have been horses as long as there have been people. At least in art. The French cave paintings in Lascaux show a loud, robust series of lines covered over in a fine source of pigment, coloring its mane red. Some of the

oldest known figurative art has been molded into the horse. First, the human representation, then, the horse.

Horses have been a reluctant helper of humanity, a reliable beast of burden, and a fascination of artists. If a painter needs to symbolize a figure in a position of power? Put him on a horse. From Grecco-Roman life through the Renaissance, in all corners of the world there are pictures of horses. In 1887, the first “animation” was created: a run cycle of a horse. Animal Locomotion is 36 separate scientific photographs of a jockey and stead in black and white photo plates. And it started as a bet.

Prior to 1887, the commonly held belief about the horse was that when it ran, its legs would lift completely from the ground. At least for a second, or perhaps half a second. This was known as the Galloping Horse problem. And it’s perfectly illustrated in paintings such as “The 1821 Derby at Epsom” by Théodore Géricault. Four horses run side by side, each stretched out in this leaping motion, like dogs, their bodies tight with the race. But if that’s not to your liking, search “incorrect horse paintings” and there’s sure to be one that appeals to you. Horses run so fast it’s impossible for the human eye to understand their motion cycle. They’re reduced to equine blurs, a confusion of legs. So it makes sense for artists to adapt this concept into that of the dog, a similarly large animal with a familiar gait. The only issue: the horse’s spines don’t bend when they run.

These horses have names. The horses who posed for Muybridge’s photos were called Sallie Gardner and Annie G. The horse in “Quoniam with Jockey Up” has no name. Or, he can be easily given any name the audience decides for him. The horse, nameless, can be a stand in for anything, or anyone you want. The jockey also acts in a similar way. They have become blank canvases for the viewer, objects in your own narrative. In the limpid eyes of the horse, you’re left to define your own humanity, an auger searching through paintthick entrails.

The horse in “Quoniam with Jockey Up,” while painted in 1840, is resolutely correct. His legs are poised and jointed at all the right angles, from all

edges, all planes of viewership, he is Horse. Except for his face. The horse in “Quoniam with Jockey Up,” has a disproportionately small head, with deep, wet eyes and a doglike nose. If you excuse the personification, he looks unhappy to be a horse. Or perhaps unhappy with his situation, with the state of the world at large, perhaps he is just hungry, and has no way to communicate that need to the figure on his back. He’s hemmed in, lacking the traditionally human traits which would allow for him to convey his own feelings. His greyhound countenance is turned from the viewer, the only confrontation springing from the lipid edges of his single, damning eye. Melancholia and rider, poised together and yet separate. There is almost a chiaroscuro effect on the subjects, a residual from the 1500s. The sharpness of the shadows on the figure, and the blurred fur on the horse.

The horse wants me to run. He draws me in with himself, brushstroke-lit eyes flashing from canvas out to gallery space. He is the drawing of a bow and arrow, the tightness of the string pulled back. He is the drawing of muscles, bunched under skin under fur, prepared to push at any moment from the confines of their space. But he cannot run. I must run for him. There are no reins about my neck, no metal tang of a bit between my lips. He is confined, and I am free. And he’s egging me on with the flick of that bright, white hoof. His shadow, flattened against the ground, a third animal in this painting of animals, perhaps more spectral then the others, but no less tangible against the green cast grass.

There are many paintings of horses at the VMFA. In fact, there is a whole sporting gallery. A plaque sits beside the entrance, guarded by a posse of bronze horses. This is the Mellon collection, donated by Paul Mellon. The plaque describes eighty-four separate paintings (two of which are of small and shabby looking dogs): A Sporting Vision. Among these paintings are the works of Alfred De Dreux, who,

in my artistic expertise, can paint very average looking horses. All of his horses are correct. They run like horses, look like horses, even his spotty pencil sketches draw out the pure equine from toned paper. But the horse in my painting is not correct. He is disproportional, his head is too small for himself, he is not shaped in the right way. Yet he acts clearly like a horse, with a rider perched along his bony spine, his legs pawing at the sodded ground. Does holding himself as a horse make him a horse?

I have never fit fully into my body. That’s a lie. I have always fit too well. I am at home here. I am distinctly aware of the extensions of myself. How far out my limbs can travel, how fast I’m able to run. I can hold my breath for 2.5 minutes, I can do a pull-up and a half. While I don’t consider myself in the context of “athletic,” I’ve remained in sports most of my life.

Twelve years old, tubing down the semi-rapids in the smoky mountains. I’m comfortable in water, and had no qualms experiencing the slow adrenaline that came with the rush of the rapids. Our party was comprised of me and my cousin, with the rest of our twin families wading around us as we played. On the right, we were hemmed in by bluffs, cliff rising rockily above us, spattered in the greens of the summer sun, lichen and moss dripping from outcrops higher and higher as we craned our necks. To the right, the bank sank gently beside us, sand coiled between small speckled rocks and snail shells. And in the middle the river pushed forward, catching us in sun jeweled palms only to toss us, half gently, to one side or the other.

The aspect of adrenaline was driven home not by the white soft dips of the rapids, but by the snaking of the river out of view. At the edge of our quiet campsite was a waterfall, small, but swift and viscous. This danger I flirted with, but always pulled myself back at the last minute, pushing my orange innertube away from the current and into the safety of the shallows. It was a game, the risk higher than reward,

and soon my cousin (two years younger than me and eager to prove himself) caught on. Only as he drifted closer to the bend, he didn’t stop.

In a breath of horrible calm, a stillness in the sunlight, my father lunged into the river, breaking the six or so yards to my cousin’s innertube and took hold of one of the plastic handles before it could drift out of view. There was a pause, and then laughter settled back over us all.

This is not my memory, not really. I watched passively from the side, either too frozen by the moment itself, or simply unable to offer assistance. It wouldn’t have been me lost that day if disaster occurred. But it’s my memory in its aftermath. Under the dappled trees, while my cousins and I returned, under admonishment, to the water, my uncle took my mother aside and told her that I was “very young, and very in tune with my body in space.”

And I always have been. But that feeling has grown as I have grown. I came out to my friends as non-binary two Fourth of Julys ago, while we gathered Trump signs from the neighborhood to throw into our already blazing fire pit. I came out to my mother two weeks ago. I am horselike, but not a horse. I am human shaped, but I don’t fit nicely into the eurocentric conceptualization of human, which relies fully on gender norms. I am othered in my body, in my self image, in my existence, while being painfully aware of myself. Of course, none of it is awkward. I carry myself within years of female socialization. I cannot understand the complex social hierarchies of a male childhood. There are gestures I’m unfamiliar with, a language I’m too old to learn. I carry myself like a girl, talk like a girl, and am often perceived as one outside of the climate-like bubble of radical acceptance that comes with a liberal space like art college.

For the most part, this doesn’t bother me, but it’s hard not to feel like an ill-fitting jumble. A horse with the head of the dog. In and out of my body, all at once.

The horse is my body, the jockey, a reluctant witness, is myself. They will flow together across the countryside, sometimes they will fall, sometimes they will be disconnected and then reconnect again.

Ophelia

GRACE DEMBA

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS ‘25 OIL ON CANVAS

ME,

Quirky Old Woman

Rickety old white house tucked just inside of the edge, Smell of mothballs hit before the scream of the front porch door, Quirky old woman arguing with her dog in the orchard over nonsense, Cotton nightdress hanging onto her in rags.

Never quite understood why you ate brains in your eggs on Saturday mornings, Why you chose a sunflower head for loves me, loves me not, Your rationale behind playing with venomous snakes on the weekend, The endless rows of pickled beets, dilly beans, and apple butter in the basement.

I have not forgotten you sending me alone into the depths down, down, down the dark backless steps to the clay-bottomed floor that disappeared into the abyss while I pawed through the air like a lost puppy trying to find the beaded pull chain that frantic hands so easily miss that was attached to the one bare light bulb in the middle of the room that would surely save me from the monsters skulking about in the gloom. Yet, I survived to eat your four-layer coconut cake with banana filling for dessert.

I also haven’t forgotten the names of the trees by their leaves, How funny ticks look when you put them in a jar of vinegar, To abstain from using red candles in the window because it means something bad, That mountain oysters aren’t dug up and don’t come from the ocean.

Backwoods Bible stomper kicking up dirt as you walk, Singing hymns and laughing at Grandpa for choking on his pills, Caught killing squirrels in the summertime with a sawed-off shotgun, Quirky old woman, you sure knew how to make a laugh come loose.

In which I interview myself, quite pretentiously

Have you ever fallen?

There are apples in my grandfather’s orchard. We used to climb the highest branches, arms stretching up to reach the sweetest fruit.

What is poetry?

Poetry is bread.

What have you lost?

A ring. My old coat. Two blue glasses and a decorative plate. Friends. A chair, in the last move. Words, many of them. A framed picture of a red poppy. Strangers. Train tickets, when I needed them most. My voice. I’m here now.

What do you have left to learn?

How to lose like trees lose their leaves. How to be alone, though I’ve heard it’s like riding a bike. Unfortunately, a great number of languages. How to love life like a burnt child loves fire. How tomatoes grow from black and silent earth. How to get along with house centipedes.

What is poetry?

Poetry is a fish who wishes to become the sea.

Where do you go when you dream?

I am eating an apple. My knees are bleeding. Everything is so beautiful.

Man Cave

CATHERINE CHUNG

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS ‘26

ACRYLIC, GESSOED COLLAGE, RECYCLED MAGAZINES

Tyler Durden and I Sit Down for Brunch

with lines from Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club

And I ask Tyler, Can I come to fight club?

Tyler says, fight club is for men. He orders a bloody mary and four eggs over easy.

You don’t understand, I tell Tyler. I’m like you. My father fucked me up and if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God and I know no one is coming to save me so I’d like to hit someone about it, please. And I’m not hungry. The waiter leaves. You can’t get what you want by asking for it, Tyler says.

You did. I want you to hit me as hard as you can.

Tyler has a black-bruised cheek and excess blood pooled in his eye socket in the shape of a scythe. How did your father fuck you up, Tyler asks.

He hit me.

Hit him back.

I have. I was seventeen. In the laundry room, my father poured bleach in while I was loading my delicates, lacy underwear I bought at the mall with my paycheck so I could pretend to be a girl instead of the manifestation of rage he made me to be. I socked him in the stomach. He didn’t flinch. He smacked the back of my head and black snow fell behind my eyes until my lingerie disintegrated.

I don’t tell Tyler this. I say, He’s too big. I need practice on fight club’s smaller guys.

You went to class this morning, Tyler says. He kicks my backpack under the laminate table. He says, I ran fight club. I oversaw fifty fights. I fought two guys. I took a canine tooth to the stomach. What makes you think you can handle that?

After the most important man hurts you, a copy of a copy of a copy, it’s impossible not to see how every man has the same five fingers that curl into a fist and the same wide palm.

Tyler says, You can’t be more than five foot three.

His eggs arrive with his drink. He pokes their yolks like busting an optic nerve, and the runny insides pool before Tyler picks up his plate, angles it over his glass, and the yolk drips into his bloody mary. The substances separate, layers of ochre and red like somebody’s insides. Look, he says, you want to be your father, because your father was invincible to you. But nobody’s the center of fight club except the two men fighting. Not your daddy, not your existential crises. Women don’t need fight club. If you want bruises, marry someone who’ll give them to you.

Years ago on my parents’ front porch, in the rocking chairs that needed to be painted, I told my mother about my father’s violence. She looked out at the knee-high grass and said, Do you know what my father did to me? He came back from Vietnam, and you can’t imagine what he brought with him. This is what men are. You find the best one you can, and it gets a little better with each generation. Why can’t we be like them? I asked her. Because without women, she said, there would be no one to show a little tenderness.

But I’m failing my mother. I say, I don’t want to be my father. I want to beat him. I daydream of cracking men’s skulls on the concrete. I say, Tyler, you’re just another man. Finally, Tyler says, a threat. Something worth my time. I say, I learned to fight by watching the fist come toward me. But you can only learn by observation for so long.

I push my seat back to stand. Tyler shoves the table away from himself so it nails me in the stomach. I keel over, hair in my face, and dry heave. He kicks me under the table in the hollow beneath my knees. The checkered floor tile tastes of salt and grease, like french fries, or writhing bodies.

Tyler looks down at me, chewing his egg whites. He doesn’t help me up, but he doesn’t keep me down.

For a second I see my father’s wide face, and I understand: indifference. He could be fighting anyone. This isn’t about me. Before I left home, I hit my little brother. When he came into my bedroom without knocking, changed the TV channel, put his fingers in my bag of chips. Like kids holding hands beside a playground slide to share an electric shock, the pain ran through me and into him.

Tyler opens his fist over his head. Same wide palm. He says, Should I get the check?

Fights go on as long as they have to.

Tyler leans in. No, that’s your problem. Here’s why you can’t come to fight club. You don’t want to fight. I knocked you down, and you fell like you’d been waiting for it. You want all the guys in their forties, fifties, men with kids, you want them to see a little girl at fight club and drop their fists. You want them to prove they’re not all bad. You want a hug.

How tight could they squeeze, I say from the ground, voice cracking. Could they break me open? Could I gag on blood until it drowns the child screaming inside me? Could I resurrect as an innocent body?

If my father went to fight club, I say, blinking rapidly, would he not have hit me?

KELSIE BENNETT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY ‘24

Socke the Cat: The Myth, the Legend…the Man?

Picture this: it’s the fall semester of 2012. Finals week is in full swing at Washington University in St. Louis. A lone student, a boy whose name is now lost to time, is overwhelmed by the stress of his work. Tensions are high. Options present themselves before him: drop out of college, run away to California, join a motorcycle gang. However, one solution he hadn’t expected presents itself, in the form of another fellow student who is, unbeknownst to him, a closet magic-user. This boy would soon find himself irreversibly transformed.

Socke the cat provides both a comforting and mysterious character to many students who frequent the campus of Washington University in St. Louis. A learned accomplice of mine, (accomplice to what is not specifically relevant in this case) Dr. Alex Herzig describes to me the information which they have garnered concerning this polarizing figure: “Socke lives with Trevor Sangrey in Lien,” he describes during a conversation in December. “Or at least, that’s what they told me.” However, is Socke merely a regular cat? Or is there something more at play here?

The magical, fae, and the otherwise mythological, while highly visible in media and storytelling, are not as often scientifically considered. Much of this is due to the pervasive amount of misinformation presented about these people, whom I will largely refer to as “magicusers”. There is even a small sect of “non-believers” in magic (Gomez 14). However, the “coming out” of certain celebrities in the past few years as wizards, including Nick Jonas, has led to an increased visibility of magic-users as a whole. Along with this has been an increase in the amount of scholarly endeavors, including those by the aforementioned Jonas brother. He writes, “Only few people can use magic and are secretive about it, so it’s hard to learn about. I intend to break this silence... I will illustrate that our secrecy is due to years of oppression on the basis of our magic, such as witch trials, and not shame” (271). I believe that magic was used in 2012 on Washington University’s

campus, and it was used to turn a student into Socke the cat. Due to the controversial nature of magic and the recent rise in advocacy for its users, it may be considered taboo to assert the claim that Socke may have been a former human transformed by a witch or other magicuser. Washington University then employed assistance to cover up this possible PR disaster with the use of their staff; the aforementioned Dr. Herzig comments, “If someone on campus was turned into a cat, Trevor [Sangrey] would take care of them. They’re kind enough.” Despite its accidental nature, I do not see Socke’s transformation as a problem to fix. On the contrary, I believe that Socke fully enjoys his new status. It is well-known that witches often have had the power to turn humans into animals. While the animal in question is stereotypically a frog, there have been other animals used in pop culture as well, such as the pig in the case of the Greek myth of Circe (Miller 192).

“Transformation magic is more common than you would think,” says Jimberly Wimberly, leading expert in transformative magical research; “Any animal you see on the street could be a formerly human person. Young witches and wizards will often accidentally use transformation magic on others when stressed, and due to the lack of common knowledge and study on the subject, they don’t know how to turn these people back” (314). It is probable that the stress of finals could have led a young magic-user to lash out with magic on accident. But how can we form the conclusion that Socke is, indeed, a former human being?

Socke displays an affinity for human behaviors. “He steals our food,” Lynn Yuan, top Sam Fox student1, reports. “I saw some students leading him into a dorm with Cheetos. I don’t even know why he wants those.” That incident can be dismissed as the simple-minded behaviors of a pet. However, there are more damning reports as well. “I saw him walking upright, on his hind legs,” Chancellor Martin said in an

1 “I actually am straight,” Yuan also reports, despite my not asking. They were “just letting me know,” they add.

interview unprompted; “There is just something not right with that cat.” More students2 on campus agree: “I saw him open a door once. It was freaky as shit” (McKinney).

Additionally, there is much to envy about the life of a campus cat. Socke is routinely showered in affection, beloved by students, free to go where he desires, and well cared for. In a post made on October 29th, 2021, Socke is pictured being caressed by a student with the caption “Socke says pet me my loyal subjects”. Such is an accurate descriptor. As a campus pet, Socke is now freed from the deadlines and graduation requirements other students must chase (Grey 11).

No one has yet been brave enough to assert the obvious: Socke was formerly a student of Washington University who has since been transformed into a cat. I have outlined both the surprisingly common phenomenon of young magic-users transforming other people into animals, and the high probability that Socke formerly was a human based on behavior. We must continue to recognize the presence of casual magic and further study this elusive subject as a whole.

Additionally: “I saw him crocheting”, another student says, but also “He was rummaging through the trash. But that’s a normal cat thing” (Sherlock).

Works Cited catsofwashu. “Socke says pet me my loyal subjects.” Instagram, October 29 2021, https://www.instagram. com/p/CVnju9HpQ9h/?utm_medium=copy_link • Herzig, Alex. Personal interview. 10 December 2021. • Gomez, Selena. “Wizards: Fact or Fiction?” New Scientific Journal, vol. 23, no. 7, May 2017, pp. 10–22. search.ebscohost.com/wizardsaretheyreal.aspx?site=ehost-live&scope=site. • Grey, Gandalf the. “Why I’m Fleeing into the Woods as an Animal: My Magical Escape from Middle Earth.” Gandalf’s Ganders, vol. 2, no. 13, May 2020, pp 1-100. • Yuan, Lynn. Personal interview. 9 December 2021.

• Jonas, Nick et al. “Magic in the Modern Era: The New Rising From Secrecy.” Wizards of Iowa Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 2, Date of Publication, pp. 269-281. search.ebscohost.com/ magicallink.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=122805484&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

• Sherlock, Ella. Interview with Chancellor Martin on the State of Admissions. Late Night with Ella Sherlock, ABC, WABC, 9 November 2021. • Sherlock, Ella. Personal interview. 13 December 2021. • McKinney, Hope. Personal interview. 12 December 2021. • Miller, Madeline. Circe. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2018.

• Wimberly, Jimberly et al. “The Overlooked Art of Animal Transformation.” Magic Monthly, vol. 40, no. 1, January 2019, pp 300-356.

VIRGIL GODSIL WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS ‘25

standing, just barely holding on to the pieces of myself I still remember firm, in nothing but my resolve, there is but a single thought on my mind I have to kiss him

how wonderful, to think Queer and mean Quenched

drink him in, like two parts lemonade, one part everclear burning, make this flame and this faith indistinguishable, running down my lips, across my collarbones for just a moment, I become beast, consuming

how wonderful, to think Gay and mean God

consume me in his hands I am putty hoping to be shaped in his likeness that my first breath will be his make me anew in this holy place the rock on which you will build your church

how wonderful, to think Lust and mean Love

and

JEBRON PERKINS WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS ‘24

he deems my mouth in some stranger’s mouth necessary

I know not of good and evil only of passion of pride

the pursuit of something worth losing

after Danez Smith’s “The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar”

Rainy Bus Stop in Bucheon

DAVID PARK WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS ‘26 PHOTOGRAPHY

Eggshells

a sad soft monster was shaped out of the clay of me. i think one day i will untangle myself but for now i am a knot. i have nowhere to put it down so it builds up makes me round and blue in the face. i dab it with a napkin ‘til it’s all soaked up then wrap it in darty eyes and an awkward smile. i hate the dishonesty of it but it’s compulsive i apologize for that too. i think we all need to be honest. honesty was never taught very well to me. mostly guilt and shame and a feeling of being so small i’m not even there. it erupts in a flow of words down a mountain of pent-up something. lots of questions bubbling but afraid to melt. sorry. sorry. sorry. don’t look at me like that. don’t look at me. stop looking at me. these are mundane questions. these are silly questions. these are normal questions. normal human things are scary sometimes. we’re hungry animals anyway. we eat each other.

KIARA BLANZ NEW YORK UNIVERSITY ‘24

A Day at the Beach

Shoebox / Shot Glass

The room is the size of a generous shoebox. He and I are neatly sidled next to each other. We are coins in a slot machine, cattle in a cattle car. There is someone calling my name and the sensation that my hand is wrapped around something, only slightly, only perceptibly. And this becomes true because there is in fact a small green shot glass in my hand. His eyes follow me as I bleed into the walls of the room. The shot in my hand, fluorescent and smoky and sour. I imagine it turned to powder. But it won’t turn to powder, it will slip down my throat. I cough as it goes down because it burns in my nostrils, because I insist on making a spectacle of disliking cheap alcohol. The lights have been turned low and music streams from an adjacent room. But it is music from another time, music that cannot be placed. The rhythms are looping like liquid mercury. In the space of a second, I think how strange it is that the word fugue can describe both music and insanity. At the same time it occurred to me that the soundwaves were floating buoyantly in the air, and nobody here was speaking. The words were dead man’s fingers, clawing at my throat. The unspeaking dialogue was garbled underwater, submerged in the foggy liquid of the shot glass. These nights are nothing but cafeteria politics. A script has been passed around except it’s all in a different language, or it’s gibberish, or it’s a series of anagrams. And everyone laughs on cue and smiles at us baring their teeth as if we weren’t insufferable, as if they loved us. I take a break and glance in the mirror. My eyes see themselves reflected back, but they are not my eyes, they are gems caught in a kaleidoscope. The room is a dizzying chiasmus of orange and green. When the alcohol goes straight to my head it is impossible to think of a single intelligent or humorous thing to say so I regurgitate the same old teases. Why don’t we bring kickbacks back. I explained the history of quinine to him because I was drinking tonic water after all. I would say that we were all drinking the kool aid, except in this case it would be more accurate to say that we were all drinking the quinine. Oh so laconically. The sentiment is there all the same. He caught my kaleidoscope eyes from across the room. He thought I was smiling but really I was frowning with my lips upturned. And now I realize I was wrong. The room wasn’t the size of a generous shoebox, it was the size of a shot glass.

VIOLET E. COOPER WASHINGTON UNIVERSTIY IN ST. LOUIS ‘25

pearls for hades

mom wore clip-on earrings to her wedding. i told a friend the other day in passing that it was a bad omen. she said, make a poem out of that. so here i am writing about those pearls mom bore into holy matrimony, ears red as a blushing bride. she still has her creased wedding albums and dad’s old camera and ID. they never were in love, that much i know; enough hurt makes you miss a person, i’m sure, but she was so beautiful that day preening under the studio light a Chinese country girl in a Western wedding dress. dad looked seconds away from boarding a hearse. mom’s earrings dulled to unremarkable specks in the background where someone was mourning.

GUIYING (ANGEL) ZHONG UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC ‘23

who Am I?

CHANDRA PHENPIMON

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS ‘25

SPRAY PAINT AND ACRYLIC ON WOOD

I Am a Heritage Speaker

of the adorned expressions so bitterly tasted. The grunts and sighs that leave the matriarch's mouth, gulped down, bumping the ridges of my throat to be regurgitated as lack of respect.

Long, disappointing breaths release from our mouths. Her air ruffles strands of hair across my face Further concealing the tear that drips off my nose and muffles the sobs verbalized through the gasping attack

I am a heritage speaker: Understand “Your father is right” when spoken by the matriarch always intonates

“Do not contradict the patriarch”

My forehead has left indentations in the dirt. Bequeathed at the King’s feet, held there by her calloused hands.

I. am a heritage speaker. the wind cackles through my open window heavy with the burden of trauma

Carried down from generational speeches of my foremothers And spewed by the speckled spit flying from the matriarch's mouth

Let your imagination float in relief through the current of the breeze Wind must eventually calm; there is always a tree that remains standing against the storm. let me be: The Last Heritage Speaker.

i am eve in the garden. my mother cuts me apples as a way of saying i’m sorry.

to me she is odysseus, he for which odyssey was named, odyssey like the one my mother undertook when she crossed the sea: but unlike him she never came home, raised a daughter whose mother tongue isn’t her mother’s tongue, a gulf unnavigable by any ship, wider than any ocean.

if my mother is odysseus, then sometimes i am sappho, she whose homeland gives us the word lesbian

she who compared the girls she loved to apples. i think of the pride flag stuffed in my closet. i don’t know the chinese word for lesbian.

so maybe the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but it still fell, bruised as it landed— christians will call this original sin, immigrant daughters call it intergenerational trauma— either way, the apple will never return to the branch.

under my mother’s gaze i feel flayed apart, a honeycrisp and a potato peeler. i call her mother instead of mom because when i was little i thought i would spite her, the tree doesn’t choose when the apple falls, but the apple doesn’t know that, only sees itself bruised, and tries to bruise the tree back.

so mostly,

i am eve in the garden.

the house piles with mandarin oranges around the new year, because in china, the word for orange sounds like gold.

this is what the oranges mean: i wish you every blessing.

i love you.

i’m sorry.

this year, my mother reaches across the kitchen table, offers me half— four orange petals in her wrinkled hands.

i accept.

i taste juice like liquid sunshine.

i think of gold. i think of girls. i think of odysseys. i think of apples. i open my mouth and say, “mom, i’m gay.”

sometimes the snake is benevolent, sometimes the god is forgiving. sometimes odysseus finds a harbor, and at one time, sappho had a mom, too.

so for our purposes, we may compare apples and oranges. fruits across two eras: fruits, in two senses. fruits, like we have always existed in both tenses, a vehicle of love between two cultures, two times, representative of a love between two people that was different.

i am eve in the garden, and let me say, eating of the fruit is worth it, because afterwards eden will stay.

SOPHIE LIN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS ‘26