vol 46
E D I T O R I A L
S T A F F
Chandler Johnston
Alex Cornell
Jeffrey Mann
Senior Editor
Ebeth Engquist
Luke McCurry
Manisha Banga
Lisa Fu
Claire Morgan
Junior Editor
Molly Golderman
Matthias Wilder
Killian Wyatt
Ronni Hastings
Design Editor
Dylan Hufford
Trevor Lisa
Jianna Justice
Submissions Editor
Keto Kacharava
Cover Art: “Imagine� by Holly Stasco, digital image Design and layouts by Killian Wyatt with additional pages by Ronni Hastings and Matthias Wilder Copyright 2015 All Rights Reserved by individual authors and artists
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To The Reader, The name of our beloved publication, Stillpoint, comes from the second section of “Burnt Norton,” the first poem of T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets. An excerpt of the poem reads:
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance (2.2.1-6).
In the overwhelming expanse of the University of Georgia, finding dialogue and community can be a difficult task for student writers, artists, musicians, and other creators. Stillpoint Literary Magazine fills that space, providing a forum for students to investigate both our peers’ and our own writing since 1967. Stillpoint offers a place of stillness for students hovering between past and future, dancing within the sphere that we call our undergraduate careers. After receiving hundreds of submissions, we have selected the best of UGA’s undergraduate poetry, prose, artwork, and, for the first time, music. As our adolescences morph into adulthood, 2015’s works include themes of past and present romances, banal remembrances of coming-of-age, and dreamy reveries both mystic and concrete. I would like to personally thank all who submitted to Stillpoint this year. Additionally, thanks to all staff members for going through our painstaking review process and to our design editor, Killian Wyatt, for his extraordinary design work in this magazine. With Eliot as our muse, we present the forty-sixth issue of Stillpoint. Happy reading, Chandler Johnston Senior Editor Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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Table of Contents Blankets & Glass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 . . . . . . . . . Jeffrey Mann Kennesaw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . Luke McCurry Carnival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 . . . . . . . . . .Holly Stasco You Broke a Branch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 . . . . . . . Matthias Wilder you only exist in the dark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . . . . . . . . . Jianna Justice Five Stories of Another Kind of Enlightenment . 8 . . . . . . . . . . Jessica Riley “-� . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 . . . . . . . Luke McCurry Figure Study 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 . . . . . . . . Killian Wyatt Spring Break in Key West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 . . . . . . . . . . Trevor Lisa Recipe for Matzo Ball Soup . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 . . . . . . . . . . Josh Jacobs almost friend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 . . . . . . Meredith Brasher The Flower Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 . . . . Orlando B. Pimentel Scranton, PA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 . . . . . . . Hannah Lawless Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 . . . . . . . Mary Hitchings Horrible Dog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 . . . . . . . . Stephen Wack The Mechanism of Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 . . . . . . . Thomas Weigle Summer Camp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 . . . . . . . . . Will Stanier Creation Myths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 . . . . . . . Manisha Banga Beetle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 . . . . . . . . . Holly Stasco Tauroctanous Mystery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 . . . . . . . Thomas Weigle iv
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Hillside at Hurricane Ridge . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 . . . . . . . Charlotte Bleau Mruno Bars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 . . . . . . . . Killian Wyatt Bathroom Blues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 . . . . . . Samantha Lipkin Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 . . . . . . . Mary Hitchings Interlude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 . . . . . . . . Chris Freiburg A Brooding Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 . . . . . . . Joshua Hatfield Time Flies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 . . . . . . . Lauren Leising An Atlas Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 . . . . . . . Manisha Banga Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 . . . . . . . . Killian Wyatt Flavor of the Month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 . . . . . . . . Jianna Justice Delecto (To Love) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 . . . . . . . . . . . Kyle Law Hipster Party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 . . . . . . . . . Elaine Elliot Dew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 . . . . . . . Morgan Curtis Interlocked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 . . . . . . . . Roma Parickh Eating a Pomelo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 . . . . . . . . . I.B. Hopkins Fast Asleeper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 . . . . . . . Mary Hitchings Storge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 . . . . Katherine La Mantia Self Portrait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 . . . . . . . Charlotte Bleau Make Amends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 . . . . . . . . . Jeffrey Mann Professtional, Prophecy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 . . . . . . . . . Jessica Riley Seasonal warnings are now in effect . . . . . . . . 66 . . . . . . . . Claire Morgan Vagabond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 . . . . . . . . Lauren Lesing Telesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 . . . . . . . . . Will Stanier Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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The Flower Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 . . . . Orlando B. Pimentel The Start of the Universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 . . . . . . . . Stephen Wack Claudia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 . . . . . . . . Ariana Simon The Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 . . . . . . . . . Jeffrey Mann Izzy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 . . . . . . . . Ariana Simon Teaching Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 . . . . . . . Matthias Wilder Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 . . . . . . . . . . Josh Jacobs Figure Study 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 . . . . . . . . Killian Wyatt Emotive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 . . . . . . . Joshua Hatfield Lady Clandestine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 . . . . . Chandler Johnston Post-Caution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 . . . . . . . Mary Hitchings Standing Directly in the Shadow . . . . . . . . . 82 . . . . . . . Thomas Weigle Stratigraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 . . . . . . . . . I.B. Hopkins Punxsutawney Phil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 . . . . . . . . . Will Stanier Forest Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 . . . . . . . Joshua Hatfield Line Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 . . . . . . . . Killian Wyatt Speke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 . . . . Katherine La Mantia Parting Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 . . . . . . . . . Katie Googe PLAYLIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102 CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 STILLPOINT STAFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 ABOUT STILLPOINT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 vi
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Blankets & Glass
We are in the throes of each other And our fingertips tap on each other’s glass Attempting to find some weak spot Until we shatter into laughing fits. We wrap each other in cloth And mingle together in shards To stay the cold. Before we broke I had been a single pane Brittle in the descending frost Rattling as the buses passed. If I broke then And, strewn on the sidewalk, I gashed the passersby Instead of being in the cloth haven Chipping your shards You chipping my shards It could have hurt. Clean cuts don’t clot I don’t want to be whole. I’m glad I’m broken. And mingled with other broken things And safe in our cloth wrapping Tapping on each other’s glass.
Jeffrey Mann Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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“Kennesaw ” Luke McCurry
B
arrett Parkway: the ungodly clusterfuck of commercialism; microcosm of America. Chuck-e-Cheese smiles plastered on dead fish faces. Shopping bags and maternity go hand in hand when sucker stained children, wild parentless hyenas, run through the open halls of the mall while mommy
searches for a dress finer than her friends’. Bed Bath and Bullshit stores line the strip, sitting anxious waiting for cars to pull off the eight-lane roadway to indulge in row upon row of knick-knack and trinket. Chili’s and Applebee’s sit across the street from each other and the melting pot resides in the same parking lot as the megaplex. No left turn into the mall during the holiday season. You have to take the loop around to get to the Dillard’s. My people, mushed together, clambering around for the same senseless shit. Unwilling to speak with one another. Afraid to look in each other’s eyes. Littering the town with their ignorance and absence and unacknowledged shame. But thoughts like these are too much to bear because I know sitting there drinking away my 200 dollar a week salary from bussing tables thirty hours a week, but usually twenty five, and looking out over the back yard of this filthy house that I’ve chosen to hold up in, that I am the worst of it all. Living on Marlboro lights and Sailor Jerry I sit in the house all afternoon and complain about you name it, my situation, our situation, the situation, everyone being nothing to everything, asking when the time is going to be right for things to change, but things have always been like this, I think, so I drink because the thought of never being able to evolve out of this monotony is overwhelming, literally makes me shake around
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other people, and most people don’t know what it’s like to shake. Like a dog. Like you’re nothing more than a scared shaking dog waiting to be kicked again. And you know what it’s liked to be kicked in front of other people? Humiliating, so you shake more. How easily your calls for change turn into pathetic pleas for the routine. I can’t wake up anyone except for myself and I guess I am not ready yet. Just drink, just drink, just drink. * The hallway light had been left on. My head hurt, and I laid naked on the futon in the back room. Beside the rail of my bed, my rain drenched shirt and shorts rested with indifference; a halo shaped watermark guarding the perimeter. If my phone was on the bed then it was stuck under a pillow or in-between a cluster of sheets because I couldn’t find it. Purple streaks of light dance across the ceiling as I rub my forehead for the encouragement to rise. Dry caked teeth, broken lips, cold feet - three am; the result of day drinking. My feet swing around onto the floor. Lint, trash, debris, clinging to the inside of my toes, as the gravity and motionlessness of the room seem to unhinge my balance. The door way props my palm. Burning bulb in front of me now is the most abrasively obnoxious light that has ever existed. If I had the power and the lack of judgment I would drive my fist through it. The thought of her smiling at me. Half curled hair nesting on the shoulders of the woman I did not know. She touched my face and said, I love you. I hated her. Everyone was passed out. Beyond the shadows cast in the kitchen by the hallway light laid uninhabited darkness and the blinking of green lights from off the stove. 3:43. Too early to start the day but too late to go back to sleep. I wanted a cigarette and a place to sit. Before reaching my room I made a detour into the bathroom to try to throw up or piss or shit or push out something that would return my body to some sense of normalcy. The mirror first though. Reflections, either reassuring or unsettling, are determined by action, and my actions had led me to be looking at person I could no longer understand nor recognize. Out of shape, purple-eyed, and detached, I looked at myself thinking ‘how could I have thought I was so much better than everyone else,’ but still blaming the situations I threw the thought away, and went to sit on my bed until the sun rose. Sleep now would be impossible. Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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C a r n i v a l / H o lly S ta s c o 35 mm f i lm p h o t o g r a p h Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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You Broke a Branch Matthias Wilder It snapped in the air I tried to breathe easily but noises like that are so hard to digest You yelled back playfully
C’mon slowpoke you’re falling behind
I tried to ignore the wounded tree white wood visible open and exposed; that wasn’t supposed to happen but I could feel you waiting, so I played the follower, focused on you, and continued on the branch broken lost in the underbrush, among thousands of
torn things
I still worry about that one tiny stick which you ran through; which I moved past but you already knew it
already said it
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I was falling behind
you only exist in the dark. Jianna Justice
i’ll break you if you get too close. your smooth baby’s breath, white and silent. breaking the air in between, where i watch and want. sometimes i feel like an old toothbrush. greying, lusterless bristles on bone. shoved in the bottom drawer, pulled out later to clean up your messes. you don’t see me for anything more than what i’m not.
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FIVE STORIES OF ANOTHER KIND OF ENLIGHTENMENT J e ss i c a R i l e y
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i.
Measurement,
specifically: time
You count time in cated breath,
healing phrases spoken through (thoroughly) intoxi-
bruises the light’s dim glances across dark, shadowed floors
covered with infinite worth,
glory of the clock hands, measurements in clocktocks, lipticks,
scales, abaci, overt gradients of the first degree.
In fulfilled desires, tonight, the long-awaited moonlight Bears steadily through closed blinds, a cracked bottle in your whiteblind knuckles. In clock fists spinning in stain-tear rounds, proof of the imperial standard of Big Ben through (thorough) ironic pipettes and eudiometers. Pneumatic troughs evaluate your poisonous form, blooms its fist in the air above my head.
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ii.
Accusation,
or:
crime
Once, we gaggled into the bar and eavesdropped through (thorough) tones of birdmen, you were a thief? no. We watch the face sink to ever-present confusion on the beaks of lipsmack. you weren’t a thief? I was robbed, said the man accused. A surprise to the second man, drunken face convinced of ultimate damnation oh. My father had his car stolen once. Volkswagen Carmen Villa. Deathtrap. Good thing. The accused smelled of curry, the second of opulent golden cologne, both of intoxication. Your scent is blood-stained gin, accusing the wrong fist, the jail-bound cage-wrought gaggle of lone birdwomen. I smell it. Freight train, ardor getaway car. Northbound like the Underground. You’re freeing no one , flooding the cities with your own free pong. I see it swirl in city lights. Carnage breath for indigo skies.
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iii.
To the 7th Power,
Generation:
Bureaucracy
Every glimpse of you is research in triangle park, international throng of boldfist Corporation – Wall Street. Play the game. The scent that stings from your breath,lie hunted bank to view the long odds of my body. I departed long ago. You govern politics. Govern me. Hypnotizing wealth in the form of glossy suits, helical access to the capital. The dome architecture, you say, grants its own form of closed ingress. Congress still loves to play. Scent games of empirical degree. You say that
I’m inspiration
when you say it, you brazen hit the concrete in silver-tongued speech, concrete’s in your framework, too affixed for amendment
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iv.
Love, or:
Sex
Like the essence of ardor, a fragrance of steel intoxication cologne in shimmering scarlet glass will never intercede on your behalf. It’s the god heroin prays to, push bone clatter deep. You gasp and bark. I, the friable sex, bend skintight limbs through (thorough) cell curtain. I watch you play with bulletsteel and bladesharp. You finger my skin playfully with scarlet shards and the smoke of birch barkscent holds still in the air, incense shadows glancing across our hollow nude impression. With sophisticated softness in the hands and the sharp scent of breaking glass, metallic memory hovers in heavy brilliance through (thorough) violent years. In your particularly prodigious storm parts, my arm bones shatter obediently into heavenly floodgates awakened to luminous heat. The blind eyes open take what they never knew they had, you desperately take me with a ribbed chord of unity and your watchful fist only unfurling to fingergrab. We don’t speak, orate cantos claw exponentially closer to surface tension
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gasp
v.
:
The Fear
You kneel in placatory bones, paranoia Of the Third Heist Woven in nerve ends and synapses of your steady breath on my small neckspace in the dark this creature fear speaks. This valley of rasping bones. From the nape of my neck you made your descent, keel and capsize, eyes stinging from shudderscent, suspends parallel over the hurtling track, my perpendicular stance, upended in sleeping boats carried out to sea, hearses slumbering on steady surf, hemorrhaging sea – eternally intrudes – sullying our extant reality.
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“–” Luke McCurry
To speak of yourself, How could I begin?
Tear ragged mongrel, Clinging to the kitchen stairs. Summer van, heat radiating, Radios gossip no seatbelt. Puddle faced runt Itching by the playground swing. Buttered popcorn, Coca-Cola, friday’s alone– tearing at your patience. Shattered temptation, echoes of deceit. And here we sit, blame soaked portraits.
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F i g u r e S t u d y 2 / K i ll i a n W yat t c h a r c o a l s t i c k o n n e ws p r i n t
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Spring Break in Key West Trevor Lisa
“My lonesome phallus
is not a vegetable!”
Sky an extension of orange sub-suburban streetlamp glow Rooftop Key West drinking Friends
call me “the champ” because I only wear Champion Brand athletic shorts
We debate breakfast over beers
that are inside
of a UCLA basketball drawstring bag
and Eggs Benedict arrives at the table “Happy Hollandaise!”
Rooftop Key West drinking Friends
singing “Piano Man” substituting our own names in
“And he’s talking with Cooper, who’s still on the pooper/and probably will be for life”
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I am afraid of the water here because my eyes became sort of red and itchy after a few drinks and I was splashing water into my eyes from the hotel sink and what if there’s bacteria in the water or something and I get some sort of corneal ulcer? Rooftop Key West drinking Friends
assure me that my fears are
unfounded because this is America
goddammit and our water speaks English here
and we eat neopolitical ice cream
but root rot nematodes in my eye could possibly destroy my vision and water holds tight because hydrogen doesn’t let any stuff in and but maybe put some of John’s vodka in your eyes because it’s got alcohol and is, like, therefore safe We laugh— and age confines us to our individual responses and I take a long gasoline sip and swallow the breath exhaled by my friends and throw the bottle off the roof. It lands in the sand but I still apologize
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Recipe for Matzo Ball Soup J o sh J a c o b s
1. To prevent baseballs in your soup, you must burn. I think that I was sunburnt for forty years and then infinity. 2. Once burnt, trim your blackened edges, and proudly wear your tattered corners. I wonder how quickly change brews, if I need to let it sit so it absorbs everything properly.
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3. From these former tribes, pick your corner and bury it. Our roots lurch onwards like batter on parchment, paper dolls who rip themselves
6. Take your livelihood and dump it in the pot. Stir until your blood boils. There are songs we sing and fabrics we weave
in poppy-seeded desert wind.
and so many things that
4.
bigger on the inside.
Water your seeds with care; they should never learn how easy it is to drown yourself. My father taught me to swim when I was still afraid to dive and had yet learned to stand on my own.
I think our universe is
Six points on blues notes scatting between triple braided compressions and repressions and an ill-reformed shield are all I know to be home.
5. Your sapling will grow apple seeds and grape vines and salted egg bread and bitter herbs. You will harvest a heavy heart because there are things that cannot be forgotten. I think I want to plant an apple tree on Jupiter, on its sunburnt eye. But a tree is a commitment of five and thirteen years.
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almost fr iend
M e r e d i t h B r a sh e r
do social habits cycle like taste buds? the warmth of my overused computer pairs well with the sting of wine developed electric tangs i want to meet you; i want to learn about the scar that scales your pointer finger, never share a cutting silence and laugh to steal steel eyes without remorse i am not discouraged i can see your face eerily crystalline i saved a seat for you
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T h e F l o w e r P r o j e c t / O r l a n d o B. P i m e n t e l ink and flowers on paper
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S c r a n t o n , PA
if your skin peels, let it— candy floss flakes caught on nettle and weed
with sinews, knees bruised a lick— a lash, a lash a bash— from beneath
toes dipped, cocked hip the moment when my hair slips
H a n n a h L a wl e ss
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C o ll e c t i o n / M a r y H i t c h i n g s pastel on pasted paper
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Horrible Dog Stephen Wack A hybrid dream of love, research, rice & potatoes. Childhood alarm clock reads 1:38 AM. Simultaneously wake-up—or maybe we’ve both yet to fall asleep— a dry dance of midnight tongues & an alignment of congruent anatomy: slide back & forth, back & forth, back & forth… Few words followed by silence followed by blurred steps to the bathroom. Hovering above the toilet in horrible aim as white, fertile ectoplasm drips from my end to float atop the water like a bunch of dead, defeated soldiers. Flush. A fall back upon the bed, she launches from off the other end like a catapult. Footsteps to the bathroom. CLICK when the door locks, & I wonder if she’s in there to do 24
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the same as me— I wonder at the possibility for one of my strayed soldiers, perched sticky upon the toilet seat, to still hold enough strength to up & penetrate her gate… How funny that’d be, considering we both agreed not to have sex tonight. The clock reads 3:52 AM. Hybrid dream. Hybrid dream. Apathy as my future wife cries on the front porch. I step aside to watch a spider wrap up the wings of a trapped bee. Apathy. No feeling, nothing: a past dream come true. Simple. An unopened bottle of three-dollar wine & a torturous inner monologue by Carrie Bradshaw on the infinite conundrums of feeling emotionally tied to someone by some cosmic law, & yet willing to forfeit it all when she doesn’t offer to help clean up after dinner… Our plates: half-empty or half-full?
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An agreement is reached: my mind ain’t right. Racing thoughts, continuous, then all at once: a fifty-two car pile up. A hybrid dream: to be in just one of those fifty-two cars… A pinky promise to see a therapist, I swear. I promise. Medication, I’ll go back on medication. At least then I had an excuse for feeling so little. And when our future kids ask me if it was easy to love mommy I’ll tell them, “yes, yes, the easiest thing in the world.” Invaded by horrible thoughts: Another man’s arm around her. Another man’s mouth on hers. A spider devouring a bee. One less car in the driveway. A more spacious bed space. Another man inside her… No more dried contacts sitting on top my desk in the morning. A loss of a best friend—an only friend. Two toothbrushes, one green one pink, dancing among my bathroom slime: no more… Apathy, yet depression. How so? No more mascara staining my sheets. No more hope for a normal life with someone equally damaged— 26
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two unstable mentalities evening each other out. Horror, a horror. A lack of adequate time. Dress shirts & paychecks & good grades but nothing real. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “It’s O.K.” she says. “No, it’s not,” I say. “I know it’s not,” she says, “but I thought it might make you feel better for me to say it was.” “I’m so sorry,” I say. “Stay the night,” I say. “Stay the rest of my life,” I beg. “I’m a horrible dog! A dog dog dog dog dog dog dog—” I beg. I whine. I sit. I cry. I curl. I sleep. Clock reads 9:03 AM.
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T he M echanism O f F light The king’s jaw sits above a roiling mess of muscles. It imagines itself apart but we know better because we slither through it. What it means to say we say instead we don’t know. We motion and maintain but gargoyles growl out in the rain. Wear worries on the walls, clinging to the wet bricks when we speak the name it tried to keep for itself, but we know what we heard. It recalls itself at the retirement home when it sat up high and arcane and gargoyles grow loud, out in the rain.
Thomas Weigle
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Summer Camp Ugly girl pretty birdcage glasses allergic to cheese; let me hear the siren and see your sports bra fill with water. Venus in the lake fishing bowling balls with her feet. She’s California to Texas, Ohio, New York. After graduation, I’ll learn the statistics: every footstep, how many, how loud the bang. After graduation, I’ll work on farms like Van Gogh, like he walked to and from on the day he died.
W i ll S t a n i e r
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creation myths M a n i sh a B a n g a -1 perhaps there is a ceaseless energy to longitudinal gods – masterminds who created humanity in their ennui, licked their wrists to perfume them, made mountains in sandboxes the way little girls leave blocks scattered across the floor, bright and careless I imagine the oldest god created ink in a fit of rage, smothered suns until they burned out. I imagine the ghosts came to her and showed her the damage, warned her of the power of her creation. to rid herself of it, she gave it to human beings, she passed on the curse. -30
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2 I imagine the youngest god wears dark red lipstick and the oldest god berates her for it. I imagine she sucks lollipops with obscenity and fucks the other gods, the ones with pretty eyelashes and dark lips like hers. the youngest god created vibrators in a fit of boredom. -3 the middle god, like all middle children, feels very ordinary. she wears beautiful long dresses that cover her knees, but one day the youngest god gets hold of her and hands her a tube of purple lipstick. she wears it when she’s alone and laughs very loud now. the oldest god tells everyone that she finds it grating, but last week she was found smiling behind her dark-skinned hand.
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B e e t l e / H o lly S ta s c o graphite on paper
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T a u r o c ta n o u s M y s t e ry Thomas Weigle
Parading Venus blushing to the sea, a trampled blooming venom under shoe. We stick a point and softly drain the slow blood dripping from the paint, a clutch of feathers spilling through the barricade and gushing to the sea. Cascading upwards silly ceiling feelers, Ciciliancy Mithraic with arrhythmia. An aging matador, the blind Mars, to the funeral resigned. Secreted creep still casts for them yet failed to catch that rising sunward stealer who struggled with his brother in the bathtub, whose skin was slick and fell around his ankles exposing churning underneath that which he knew deep in his teeth. A frailing thread of bile and rancor then stood upright. The other helped him wash up.
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H i lls i d e
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Hurricane Ridge / Charlotte Bleau
f i lm p h o t o g r a p h
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M r u n o B a r s / K i ll i a n W yat t cut paper on bristol board
Bathroom Blues
E
Samantha Lipkin
xhaling a funnel of smoke against the streaked white wall, instantly it curls and pushes flat into a blossoming ring before dissipating into nothingness. Watching the particles blend back into the stale air around me, I lean back against the cold, cheap, glossy plastic of the tub, legs still criss-crossed and bunching up the soft cotton of my shorts on the scarred surface of the linoleum. The edges curling up at one corner and cat food speckled about the rest, everything about the cramped space of the apartment bathroom felt inadequate. But it didn’t always. The fan drones on and on ceaselessly groaning above me and echoing about the spotted walls, capturing stray bits of smoke and issuing it safely outside. I think of the “not always” as I draw another hit from the crackling pipe lighting up and smooth in my hand. My head leans back against the flaccid, shifting shower curtain with eyes closed, exhaling another plume of smoke.
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Hands flat against the smooth, slippery wall of the shower, losing grip with
every ragged breath, I lost myself in the moment of me and you. Me and you. You and I. Your hands. The indent of my hips. Laughing and giggles as we slid past each other and tried not to pull down the plastic curtains sticking to us. As long as those curtains were up then the water raining down on us was okay, and the whole world was within those thin, straining barriers. Was there music? Sometimes, but there was always music with you and I. Like that night I fell asleep on the couch in your studio to the rhythm of your voice and that same trickle of beats. “Do you wanna get…” and it was gone. The steam of the shower and the heat from our bodies mingled with the haze in my mind. Another drag, another exhale. But this time I’m outside the door, bare feet on the carpet and a hesitant hand pushing the door aside. The pitter patter of water in the shower kept the beat that always surrounded you. Bashful and shy I crawled into the small space of the bathroom as you were hidden away behind the curtain and fog, there to break the news that I was about to violate the sanctity of our relationship as it had never been violated before. After a multitude of giggling promises made in earnest, I sat on the toilet and lolled death threats into the shower stall to keep you from peeking. You told me how it would never be the same, and you were joking. There was a flush of the toilet, and it was gone. Cold and sterile it sat before me now, a reminder that I was spinning down. Puff and pass? No one to pass to. A smudged, wilted, but fancily wrapped ornament on the toilet one night, a birthday or a holiday, you cracked the door ever so lightly and joked about how I’d caught nasties from our cat, the nastiest of the nasty. She lay curved against my side or annoyingly perched on my back as I told stories to the porcelain bowl about my night. A wet wash cloth here, a can of Diet Pepsi upon request, you left me to deal with my sins in private the way you knew I preferred, ready to come back to you after the purge. So much unlike the night I sat shaking perpendicular to where I sit now, back shoved against the flimsy door, crying in a heap while you begged me to come out on the other side. The demons were back, this time I swallowed too many and couldn’t get them out. Like all of this trapped in my head to be replayed again and again when the haze kicks in and my eyes gloss over, sitting in the dingy bathroom left to house my vices. You told me how it would never be the same, and I believed you. Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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E c o n o m y / M a ry H i tch i n g s pastel
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Interlude Chris Freiburg
I
don’t remember what I said when we all heard that Steven Maloney was dead. It was at a get-together a few years after college, during those interminable years of youth that are only possible to identify much later in life. Jack read it online somewhere, and I remember it sort of slipped out along with the pretzel crumbs
that didn’t make it down his throat. We absorbed the information, independently, and returned to our homes late that night to try to continue with our lives. I was never great friends with Maloney. He hung with a different crowd while we were in school and I think he went off to play baseball for a private college up north. It didn’t work out: he dropped out after a year, I had heard. I thought it was a girlfriend issue, but somebody also said he was mixed up in too many drugs. A few days after we heard the news, I saw his father at a gas station. I recognized him immediately from some school function over the years where parents were invited: probably a play from elementary school. He looked much older than I remembered as he filled the tank, paid, and drove off. There was a mess of baseball stickers on the back of the car that I couldn’t clearly make out. Several weeks later I told my old college roommate about Maloney. I was visiting him at a lake house that his parents used to own about a two hour’s drive out from the city. Bill was doing well: his years of number crunching and resume scrutiny had paid off with a formidable financial career. His parents had recently retired and moved south, so Bill inherited the lake house. -It’s the way of the world, he told me. Bill strode in from the kitchen with a drink in hand. -Some people win, some lose. It’s like the Salinger guy said, about the bananafish. They swim into a hole and some don’t make it out.” I didn’t bother correcting him. None of the bananafish made it out because they all grew too fat.
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-Quit thinkin’ about it, besides the ole’ ball and chain is bringing a friend with her later tonight and I don’t want you bumming everyone out. He winked. -Let’s go down to the water, I’ve got a new fly-rod and the sun is about to set. Those big brown trout aren’t going to catch themselves. Bill fished for about half an hour as I watched the river move with the current, undulating where the rocks jutted out from the earth. He caught two trout quickly and after looking them over, unhooked and threw them back in the water. -Fosters’ getting married, did you see that? I hadn’t. -Don’t ask me how. That guy had a new one every week. Remember the Swedish one with those freaky eyes? They should have had her committed. Pretty sure she stole his car for a week after he ended it and wouldn’t answer his calls. They found it smashed up and graffitied in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot. His laugh dissipated across the water as I sipped my beer. -You couldn’t make that shit up if you tried! Bill’s girlfriend arrived just as things were getting going. The music was blaring and the counter was losing space from empty beer cans. I had been poorly imitating someone from school with an unusual accident when I turned around to find Tori and a smaller girl with wavy black hair looking amused. -Oh don’t stop, Charlie, you were getting to the best part. -Bay-bay! Come over here and give daddy some love, Bill called from the couch where he had been observing my performance. -Charlie this is Luna, I told her all about you on the way up. -Luna, like the moon? I said stupidly. -Don’t worry he get’s funnier, she told Luna. -Be-be-be babe! Bill was making a tragic face with his arms spread wide apart. -Oh I’m coming, she hopped on the couch and wrapped herself around him. Luna and I stared awkwardly. -So what do you do, Charlie? Luna asked, turning towards me. She had a soft face and dark eyes that reminded me of a girl I had a fling with a long time ago. -I’m in between jobs, I lied. My voice sounded odd. -Tori said you played music? -Oh, right. Yea I’m on all the major radio stations... just dropped a platinum album. 40
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-Oh! Which radio stations? She didn’t get it. -He’s a jazz musician, remember, Tori piped up from the couch, where she and Bill were locked together. -Yea, remember that stuff your grandparents listened too? Bill joked. -Oh stop it, she lightly slapped the man cradling her. -You know he’s good. -He’s the best, the ultimate, the king of the blues! Bill was now standing up with his beer raised, apparently forgetting his earlier sarcasm. -To being the best, he cried. -Alright, we need a drink. She snatched up Luna’s arm and together they disappeared into the kitchen. We played cards as the night decayed into playful chaos. There were drinking games, where each card meant a personal task of varying degrees of absurdity...Bill, slapping down the five of clubs and duly declaring a new rule for the table: -No more God damn cursing! Tori’s three of hearts had her twirling around the room as Bill keeled over in fits of laughter... somebody else leaped up like a chimpanzee while the crowd hooted and hollered. A drink fell over at one point, which sent the party scrambling incoherently for paper towels. I kept forgetting the rules. It was all terribly amusing. Luna sat beside me during our game. She was quicker then I realized and had a little twitch on her upper lip when she grew excited. I watched her walk to the kitchen and back several times. Our game finally disintegrated and Bill and Tori snuck off to the master bedroom. Alone with Luna, it was clear what was expected of me. I had had too much to drink and knew it wouldn’t work...she must have found another room as I nodded off on the couch with a drink in my hand... Bill called me the next day asking why I left so early. He wanted to take the boat out, and besides, it was kind of funny, he said. Also, Tori was sick all morning, he didn’t have anyone to fish with. The weeks that followed were uneventful. I had dinner with my parents, who didn’t live far from me, one evening. My dad asked me how my piece was going; it was an arrangement that seemed to never end. I started the damn thing years ago and now it didn’t remotely resemble the original piece of music. The problem was Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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that each time I came back to it, I wanted to add something different. By then, I had forgotten all about Steven Maloney, who had killed himself, as it turned out. There was history of depression in his family. His chances weren’t great, even with all that athletic ability. But then I saw his father again, unexpectedly, at a show downtown where I played. It was a gig I had every Thursday as part of the house band for a local jazz club. The Blue Bounce, though, was slowly going under and the owner, a short European-looking man who sweated constantly, could always be found scurrying around his office under a fortress of receipts and papers that must have indicated pending failure. He told us that pretty soon he couldn’t pay us anymore and we had better find something else to do. I showed up at The Blue Bounce around 7 o’clock for sound check, as usual. We ran a few standards...Paul Desmond... Duke….Monk…Our drummer, a younger guy who joined up recently kept losing time on “Take Five” because he wasn’t used to the irregular beat. Willie, who could hardly walk but blasted the trumpet so loudly he didn’t need a microphone, asked the new drummer if he needed a bib. Willie played in a traveling big band in the late 50s and kept the Thursday gigs so that he stayed sharp. I sat at the piano in the corner. A thin dinner crowd floated in around 8 o’clock and a few faces appeared in the front section closer to the stage. Two servers drifted back and forth out of the kitchen as a quiet chatter lingered around the room. The music was okay. The drummer was late on two hits and Willie shot him looks after both misses. It was late in the set when I saw Maloney’s father wander in. In the months that I played that club, I saw a few neighbors and an old classmate or two come around: but I had never seen that man in there before. A big guy, who was always enthusiastic about his son’s sports teams, he didn’t seem like the jazz type— if there even was such a thing. I have no clue what brought him in. Maybe it was to hide from the things he had already known and was used to. He sat in a booth towards the back next to a group of two rambunctious young couples who left before the show was even over, giggling to each other as they spilled out the door. I felt him from across the room as we started the latest version of my unfinished piece. ody as the bassist and I kept rhythm. We caught a groove. Solos now. Willie first, of 42
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course. Some whoops from the crowd…. and saxophone! Oh what a run! Willie was grinning, showing off what few teeth he had left. Drum break... cha cha, ba dum, POP! Back to the main head. My turn. Remember the arc, remember the solo arc! I recalled an old music teacher standing over me and shouting. Start small, build, expand the range, dynamics! Remember! You’re almost there, almost, keep building, building, now let it all out! I looked up to see Maloney’s father staring right at me with unfathomable eyes and a little smile, and I forgot every jazz lesson I ever had. The notes flew out of me as I ran the fingers across the keys. With my head reared back and my eyes shut tight, I could feel the heat of the stage lights illuminating the figure of a young man, conscious, for the first time, that his work was complete.
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A B r o o d i n g S c e n e / J o sh u a H at f i e l d b a ll p o i n t p e n , w at e r c o l o r , g e l p e n , a c r y l i c i n k Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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Time Flies / Lauren Leising d i g i ta l i m a g e
An Atlas Set
Here is the break in civility, timidity;
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here is the godless moment, victorious ash from the last cigarette resting in the dips of your collarbone, lungs sweet and clear and shaking with the inadequacy of language; tattoo of a crown on your wrist scratched off with sandpaper, hands shaking, shaking. You grasp a stone carving, a figurine of an old idol with these trembling fingers, press it against your forehead, of
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breathe deep, lungs rattling, delicate dance of air in your chest, your chest like a small cave with old gods painted on its insides, these angry, forgotten gods waging petty wars in your body, your temple. - Entrenched in your body is the vital knowledge, the taste— taste to excavate a ghost town, town shapeless descent embedded nails in twin beds perhaps without twins Do you find a body in your bed or loneliness underneath— singing lips singed by fire please preemptively accept— fear inadequacy, feel inadequacy oblivion. Thoughts of Atlas, shoulders aching, droplets of rain, perspiration down his spine, he and earth as one, he and the earth inseparable, he and the earth inexorably in love
M a n i sh a B a n g a
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B at t l e sh i p / K i ll i a n W yat t micron on bristol Board
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o r o v la
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Jia
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you liked them pretty so i tried to look nice. you liked them smart so i read your favorite books twice. you liked them loved so i loved all night. you liked them for a while so i was gone before light.
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Delecto (To Love)
I labor in the labyrinth Of Blood and soil To pick the black flower From Pens and needles Where root becomes rot And apple turns to ash Drown me with liquor On the lips of lilies For I dare not gaze Upon the red-eyed orchid
Kyle Law
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Hipster Party I would like to taste it but not fully consume it is all I hear amongst the drowned out conversations The punch sits in a large plastic box that once contained floral patterned keds, acid-wash skinny jeans, and cat eyed shirts The band is experimental, what else would you expect at this gathering where a kid is strumming music notes on a girl’s bare sleeve A digital camera is carried among the crowd capturing scenes of wafted cigarette smoke I would like to taste it but not fully consume it
E l a i n e E ll i o t
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Dew the leafless trees litter the horizon disguising the mountains as hills as the sunset eats it all up into absolute blackness until the street lights turn on one by one and the sky is lit by a thousand countless stars distant signs of life twinkling and telling me messages from outer space twinkling and telling me i am a distant drop of water in an empty waterless world
Morgan Curtis
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Interlocked / Roma Parickh p o ly u r e t h a n e , i n d i a i​ n k , a n d
a cry l i c
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Eating a Pomelo Eating a pomelo (product of California) in the metric quiet of this Friday morning with my feet situated as blunt watchmen over this agape window, neither the infrequent din of pickups headed into town nor the smooch of rind disavowing from the fruit have diverted my thoughts from you. A V or rather a W of blackbirds in miniature are crossing in the brilliant sky, crying sympathy for every morning that I’ve spent remembering the brush of you—beneath that painted mask you hate so good—and falling, falling away from this window sill. Your flushed face and mellifluous touch crush me against this morning, this alphabet of birdsounds and Asian fruitstand companionship, this lingering tableau toward reprisal.
I.B. Hopkins
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F a s t A sl e e p e r / M a r y H i t c h i n g s pastel
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Storge Katherine La Mantia
L
inda always wanted to call Selene. Her husband stopped her. “Don’t bother her all the time,” Rob said. “She hates it when we do that.” She did hate it when they did that. Or when Linda did it, at least, because she was always the first to crack under the pressure and pick up the phone. Selene would give her one-
word responses, yawning and casual and affectedly bored, trying to push her off the call. Sometimes Linda asked one question too much, and Selene would get sharp with her. Linda would apologize. Selene would hang up the phone without a “love you.” She couldn’t remember a recent phone conversation they’d had that went well. Linda used to think she wouldn’t fall prey to empty nest syndrome. She didn’t want to be taking care of kids and teenagers forever, after all. That’s why she’d only had one. It might be nice, she thought, not having to worry about making dinner for three or attending those terrible booster club meetings or always checking up on Selene to make sure she’d submitted her application materials for various colleges and scholarships. She could focus on her hobbies more. She and Rob could go out to dates and get drunk. They could have sex in the middle of the afternoon. In the middle of the living room, if they wanted, though Rob found that a bit distasteful. But they never seemed to have the afternoons off together, and Rob’s tolerance for
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alcohol had greatly decreased with age. Rob got home about an hour and a half after she did, and Linda thought there was never a silence so complete as the one she had to endure in the time before his return. “You should go out, meet people and get some friends,” Selene said in a rare moment of candor. Linda could hear that her daughter was moving around, multitasking. Linda sat curled up in the upholstered armchair that Rob hated, but she thought was a nice statement piece. She stared through the sliding glass backdoor at a possum roaming around the top of her fence. Selene tried to play with a possum once when she was five. She thought it was cute and went chasing after it. Linda ran and caught her beneath the arms, hoisting her up and bringing her back to the house. “No, no. We don’t touch those.” “Why not?” “Because they might have rabies and make you sick.” “Oh we haven’t had a case of rabies around here in years, Linda.” “Daddy says it’s okay.” “Daddy’s wrong.” “Daddy’s never wrong.” “Sometimes Daddy can be wrong. Everyone can be wrong.” Linda knew that Selene thought she was wrong a lot of the time. “Well where am I supposed to go for things like that, Selene?” Something clanged in the background on Selene’s end. Maybe she was in the kitchen, getting ready for dinner. Linda heard her daughter let out a little sigh and could picture her shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t know, Mom. Just find something that’s going on on Friday night and... go. Without Dad, I guess. If couples go out, they only meet other couples.” “Well, may—” “Hey Mom, I’ve gotta go, okay? Bye.” Silence. Phones didn’t even make that “click” sound anymore to hang up on someone. It just went quiet, and you were left there to falter for a moment before you realized you were alone. Linda still held the phone to her ear, the screen gone dark. The possum had scrambled over to a neighbor’s fence, out of view. She hoped Selene’s voice would reappear on the other line, apologizing for an accidental hang up. She wanted to ask Selene where she went on Friday nights to make friends. Did she have friends? Good friends? In second grade, Linda was worried Selene would never have friends. She kept to herself all the time. Sure, she went to birthday parties where the parent invited the whole class, but she always asked to leave early, feigning stomachaches. When she picked her up from school, she was always waiting alone with a book. Linda would have made an appointment with Selene’s teacher had there not been a new girl, Holly, who Selene took to almost immediately. Linda liked Holly just fine—she and Selene stayed fast friends until they went off to Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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college—but some part of her felt a pang of jealousy that Selene’s friends gave her another outlet for intimacy, taking away from their own tenuous connection. Linda stayed curled on the chair, clutching the phone, until the sounds of the garage door opening signaled Rob’s arrival. *** They ate Chinese food out of the containers in the living room, Linda on the floor and Rob on the couch. The Real Housewives of Orange County played on the television. It was a shared guilty pleasure. Selene called it “exploitative wealth-worship trash.” They watched scripted shows on Netflix when she came over. “I called Selene today,” Linda said as one of the blondes started screaming at the brunette. She could never get their names straight; they all looked the same. “Oh yeah?” he said in between forkfuls of lo mein. “Is she alright?” Selene had given her the same answer she always gave. “She’s fine,” Linda said. Rob nodded, the same nod he always gave. “Busy.” Another nod. The housewife fight started getting physical. A producer stepped in: teaser trailer gold. “She thinks we should start going out on Fridays. Separately. Apparently couples going out are lame and only attract other lame couples.” “She didn’t say ‘lame.’ Saying ‘lame’ is lame now.” Rob always knew what was and wasn’t lame, what Selene’s generation was up to. His phone was full of apps Selene recommended. He downloaded Tinder once before he realized what it was. Selene had to help him delete it. Linda used too many emojis. Rob and Selene made fun of her. “Well she didn’t say it, but it’s pretty much what she meant,” Linda said. She didn’t really understand why couples couldn’t go out together. Selene made it sound like the world was full of boring couples waiting to attach themselves to you like leeches. Did they count as a leeching couple if they went out together, or was it only other people? Maybe it was like that phrase: no one snowflake thinks they caused the avalanche or you’re not the snowflake, you’re the avalanche or every avalanche is made of single snowflakes. Something like that. Something like that where you never think you’re part of the problem, but just by thinking so, you become the problem. Somehow, eating Chinese food and watching The Real Housewives, she and Rob were the problem. “Where would we go, though? Where do married forty year-olds go on Friday nights?” She conceived of a club split down the middle like junior high dances, boys on one side and girls on the other, each mingling with 58
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their own sex while their spouse was on the other side, the invisible threads connecting them tangling in the mix of people. Rob shrugged. She didn’t see him, but she felt him shrug in the invisible displacement of air. That’s where Selene got it. “I don’t know,” he said. “We can Google it.” The Real Housewives went to a commercial break: a shampoo ad featuring a girl Selene’s age, vaguely ethnic with supershiny chestnut hair, laughing and running through a field, letting herself be chased by her male counterpart. The setting sun shone through her cotton dress, setting off the silhouette of her legs. A female voice and jangly indie guitar played as the boy caught up with her, a band that Linda figured must be popular, or if they weren’t, soon would be. Early winter darkness had come without them noticing, and they watched the ad in silence, their faces turned blue by the light of the television. *** In bed that night, Linda thought she saw Selene in the threshold. She was seven, and her hair was still a bright blonde. Selene always came up with an excuse to crawl into bed between Linda and Rob in the middle of the night. Linda found it hard to say no, especially in winter. She smiled and opened her mouth to call her over, but no sound came out. And then it was Selene, wide-hipped and leggy, hair darkened with age. She gave Linda a coy smile, turned tail, and ran. Linda chased her, calling out for her to come back. A watery sun shone through her cotton dress. A boy Linda hadn’t seen before caught up to Selene before her, capturing her in a pair of sculpted arms. They kissed. Linda tripped and fell, lying among the flowers. “Mommy,” she heard young Selene say from somewhere far off. Linda’s eyes were swimming with light and vertigo, bleached by the brightness of the sky. “Mommy, my room is scary in the dark.” Come here, she heard herself say without moving her mouth. Come here. We can fix it in the morning.
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Self Portrait / Charlotte Bleau chalk pastel
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Make Amends Music
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and
Lyrics
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Jeffrey Mann
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Professtional, Prophecy J e ss i c a R i l e y And, god. You were the one who told me not to be, so English.
You swear blind there is no weight in the words,
take the cards you’re dealt.
Were you not my best teacher? Supreme Incomparable Unsurpassed;
to words that sting you were master, king,
Abba, Bible Belt Sugary Southern woe Euphemism King
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Father, God.
_________________________________________________________________
“English aint no professtion
Doctr Lawyr Bartendr, hell. Fuck, goddamn. What are you, girl?
like your mom, bitch.
Have a drink. Don’t be so uptight. You’re just like her.
You ain’t nothin, always usin words like that’ll
make you money.” Barks “Nothin. Have a drink.
Damn, girl.
You got pretty. That’ll make you somethin. Better than them words youre always usin. Yeah, You got looks, Have a drink. And don’t talk so much.”
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Claire Morgan
Seasonal warnings are now in effect tangerine dream like a hotel hairdryer. somewhere between a rock and a Hard Rock Cafe. taking vitamins? breathing benzene in? try textbook depression folding square paper razors edging your internal oven. big hunk of horror at the hot lunch corner. alive like a sponge. soap, a rope, clean carve—follicle to flank. big account at the first sperm bank. terror meets tapas in this all new epicurean experience. yogurt lids where everyone wins, and the 40 MOST HEINOUS HOLOCAUSTS IN HUMAN HISTORY. #41 is a mystery.
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Lauren Leising
Vagabond Feet run cold on crackling leaves In between birches standing erect. The sun stands still as it watches her dart In between sentries guarding centuries. Clad in winter worries and silver spoons She runs from snakes and wolves Snakes and wolves with their payments of compliments for what? What do they want? To stop her in a tangle In a mad subjection to the very thing she fears. A naivete that threatens to quell Her thinking heart. So she keeps running, at least Until coils drag her blindly backward Justifying childish forgetfulness. Left in limbo A vagabond.
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Telesis
If I could stop getting high long enough to write a poem – maybe maybe maybe. Hemingway got blue, blew his brains out. Amelia Earhart cried on a short wave radio. Orpheus, try to get gone maybe bring a change of socks; record of pubic hair: used bird’s nest ugly mistletoe. The only tree left on Earth at ten and two grown out of the bank.
W i ll S t a n i e r
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Maybe she crashed or maybe it was the Japanese.
T h e F l o w e r P r o j e c t / O r l a n d o B. P i m e n t e l ink and flowers on paper
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The Start of
…I
awoke to the feel of detachment, both mind and body. I must’ve fallen asleep bleeding. I peeled myself from off my sheets, like a band-aid applied to a fresh wound. Dots of blood sprayed along my back as some red, vio-
lent galaxy—bloody gashes resembling the spinning tails of rushing comets… dripping, twinkling stars carved deep by fingernails in my skin. It was a masterpiece of creation. The start of the universe. The painful, sloppy consequences of a drunken big bang. I think the secret of life was revealed to me in that instant, and yet I lost it immediately amongst a mental inquiry of known sex positions: 1) You on top. 2) You on all fours. 3) Us sliding along the carpet, heads pounding into dresser legs, sweat soaked skin picking up lint and dog hair like a Roomba. 4) Me on top. It was a mess, a beautiful mess. Sometimes I feel compelled, such as now, to compare searching for a woman’s g-spot to that of blindly out-stretching your arm as far as you can behind the living room couch in hopes of making that glorious unconscious connection—yes, yes, I’ve found it, here’s the T.V. remote!—for you just know it must be there waiting for you to make contact with it somewhere, and surely you’ll reach it if you can just keep stretching and wagging around that arm of yours in that mysterious dark…
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the Universe Stephen Wack
My temples were squeezing at my brain like two magnetic trash compactors. I got up to drink some water. On my trek to the bathroom I caught sight of a hideous figure—what appeared to be a lukewarm corpse, with all the blotchiness of life pumping solely along his neck and shoulder blades. “Poor kid…” I said aloud before walking away, but stopped short when his lips mocked at mine. “Poor kid,” he said right back. “Yeah? That’s quite a look you’ve got there,” I said. “Yeah? That’s quite a look you’ve got there,” he said right back. I gave him a quick slap across his horrid face, and hurt my fingers as they bent back against the bathroom mirror. I held them automatically, as a comfort to myself, and looked back at my reflection once more. Smiling, I found myself still thirsty, and bent down to drink directly from the filthy faucet like a careless creature. I crawled back into bed, flipping over my pillow to the bloodless/cool side. Her foot touched against mine and the urges came back. It was 5:23 AM. A thought occurred to me: I am bloody. I am in love. I am nothing more than an animal, and that’s okay. Then I was out like a light, sleeping like a baby, Zzz….
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Claudia / Ariana Simon d i g i ta l p h o t o g r a p h
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The Moon Jeffrey Mann I was sitting in the tepid water Holding my limp dick like a lit cigarette When the fucking moon fell from the sky Into my bed. I heard the orb whispering: “I’m ready” So I emerged, toweled off And gently tongued the craters. It’s dust tasted sickly sweet. And every time I lapped some up There seemed be new dust In its place. He rolled over Happy with his choice of venue Creaking the bed springs And giggling. When she was done She fell asleep on my mattress, And I snuck out Leading a trail of kerosene. When I opened the door they stirred a little And whispered ‘thank you.’ And I lit the match and left. Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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Izzy / Ariana Simon d i g i ta l p h o t o g r a p h
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Teaching Faces Matthias Wilder From my mother,
the lines etched in her skin
saying ‘I cherish you’
the curves of her cheeks
the scratches at the edges of her eyes
From my father,
the colors blended in his face
whispering ‘I care for you’
the reds of his forehead
the shadows on the rim of his jaw
My parents taught love like a sign language
They are in my smiles
They are in my side-long glances
They are in my blushes
But also,
in tracts of water that cascade
below the angry red of my sclera
in v-shaped ridges that form
above the soft brown of my brows
in flecks of glistening light that float
in the hollow black of my pupils
I love
through the faces they taught me I live
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Magic Slain, they say Jesus turned blood into wine, but all I see is more blood. It drips from emboldened tip, pooling silver en pointe a star. Uncontrolled blue, the sky billows, wrapped around your Self and clings like an autonomous vine to a soured sweet face.
J o sh J a c o b s
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F i g u r e S t u d y 1 / K i ll i a n W yat t c h a r c o a l s t i c k o n n e ws p r i n t
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E m o t i v e / J o sh u a H at f i e l d g o u a c h e a n d w at e r c o l o r
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Lady Clandestine I gained overnight a fight that is not mine— la lucha— a calamus morning struggle fills all dips and ire failures, segmented in missed opportunities and white worm stretch marks. A needle pops the womb in nine ways I will never gain the satisfaction of complete human all because I wear a Cinderella evening gown and now war a battalion that I can claim but refuse. Give up your little girl ways.
Chandler Johnston
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P o s t -C a u t i o n / M a r y H i t c h i n g s graphite and chalk Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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STANDING DIRECTLY IN THE SHADOW Thomas Weigle SCENE ONE. ON A STREET RULED WITH HOUSES. A little background, if you’re interested: most of the upper class on Earth live off-planet, generally on space stations, some on small moon settlements. Space flight from Earth has been privatized and is now handled by small companies who send astronauts on exploration missions in order to gain fame, money, and upward mobility to eventually leave Earth. A small boy kicks a red ball in the yard of a house. VOICEOVER Trajectory stable. CUT TO: VIEW OF OUTER SPACE VOICEOVER Engine running okay... The spaceship appears small in the distance. VOICEOVER Gravity obviously normal... The spaceship is larger. A “ding!” is heard. VOICEOVER Microwave works... 82
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CUT TO: INTERIOR OF SPACESHIP Inside the control room, there are two ASTRONAUTS. One (1) is sitting, reading from a computer monitor. The other one (2) taking some kind of space food out of microwave. ASTRONAUT 2 What does the other monitor say? ASTRONAUT 1 It hasn’t changed. Of course it hasn’t changed. We would have noticed something. ASTRONAUT 2 Hey, I’m just making sure. SCENE TWO. INSIDE A DEAD BUILDING. Two weeks earlier. ASTRONAUT 1 is meeting with the somewhat disreputable company that will launch the spaceship. It’s run by three people: JIM, JERRY, and JULIA. ASTRONAUT 1 is a last-minute replacement for ASTRONAUT 2’s usual partner, who has gone missing. ASTRONAUT 2 and his normal partner are the two astronauts usually used by this company for its exploration projects. The meeting is taking place in a basement room dominated by a large desk, behind which sits JERRY, fidgeting with a pen. There’s a radiator in the corner with steam rising from it. ASTRONAUT 1 sits on the opposite side of the desk from JERRY. JERRY stares at the pen in his hand and places it between his teeth, chewing idly. Suddenly noticing ASTRONAUT 1, JERRY takes the pen between two fingers on his left hand. JERRY Thanks for coming on such short notice. I understand this is your first flight with Astronaut 2. And of course it’s your first flight in our newest spacecraft, well, it is only a prototype, but if you’re experienced, I think you’ll get the hang of it soon enough. JIM enters from an adjacent room. JERRY chews on his pen before speaking again. JERRY And our personal compatibility test hasn’t failed us yet, so if you’re worrying about that, well, don’t. And, um, you launch in five hours, so Jim, our chief engineer here, will walk you through the flight controls. Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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JIM Come with me, please. JIM leads ASTRONAUT 1 into the room from which he entered. The camera follows them, leaving JERRY behind his desk. He has bitten through the plastic casing of his pen, causing ink to dribble down his chin. JIM Have a seat. Now, Jerry isn’t really a technical person, so he doesn’t actually know this, but there are no flight controls. Your flight information is set at the launch site. Your responsibilities consist of making sure everything is running smoothly and fixing anything if it breaks. ASTRONAUT 1 Why does this flight need both me and the other guy? JIM In case one of you becomes incapacitated. ASTRONAUT 1 It’s that dangerous? JIM Well, we don’t really know. But we’ve found that our flights run more smoothly with two pilots. We also took extra precautions since this spacecraft is, after all, only a prototype. JULIA enters from another adjacent room (not JERRY’s room). JIM Julia will brief you on the computer controls. JULIA Hello! JULIA leads ASTRONAUT 1 into the next room. As the camera leaves him, JIM puts a pair of headphones on his ears. In JULIA’s room, there’s a diagram of the computer on a blackboard. JULIA Jim doesn’t actually know this, but the computer will basically fix anything if it breaks, automatically. Feel free to sit down, by the way! ASTRONAUT 1 sits. JULIA Anyway, there are replacements and backups for everything in the storage 84
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compartment in case anything needs to be physically repaired. We have to be careful since it’s just a prototype, you know? If you need to replace something, the computer will walk you through it. She indicates part of the computer diagram showing the monitor. JULIA Your job is to make sure the computer is running okay, which you can tell by this green light here. My ten-year-old daughter can do it so I’m sure you’ll be fine! ASTRONAUT 1 Why does this flight need both of us as pilots, then? Jim said JULIA Well, I don’t know what Jim told you, but the computer needs two different bio-signatures in order to start up. Security feature. Basically makes sure no one can steal it before we need it to take off. ASTRONAUT 1 ponders that for a few seconds. JULIA That’s right! It only needs people to start it up. Pretty efficient, hmmm? JERRY opens the door, the lower half of his face still stained with ink. JIM can still be seen wearing his headphones at his desk in the background. JULIA Also, we like having you guys on board because all of our unmanned flights have been horrible disasters. Good luck! JERRY Astro Boy, I need to talk to you for a minute. JERRY and ASTRONAUT 1 exit JULIA’s room, walking through JIM’s room. JIM is unaware of their presence. ASTRONAUT 1 opens his mouth to speak, and JERRY sharply hushes him. JERRY Shh! Wait until we’re back in my room. They return to JERRY’s room and sit down. JERRY’s pen is nowhere in sight. JERRY Okay, listen. Jim and Julia don’t know this, but you’re not just testing the prototype, and you’re not just exploring. You have another mission, a highly important mission. I can’t tell you what it is, because I actually don’t know what it is, but here. He hands ASTRONAUT 1 a disk. JERRY hurriedly packs all the papers on his Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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desk into his briefcase. JERRY It’s on here, so just put this in the computer after you take off. It’ll tell you once you get to your destination. I have another meeting, if you’ll please excuse me... ASTRONAUT 1 Wait a second! What’s the deal with all the secrecy? Who paid for this mission? JERRY Sorry, no time! JERRY dashes out through a door that leads directly to the outside, not into JIM’s room. ASTRONAUT 1 is left by himself at the desk, the leaking radiator gently whistling in the background. SCENE THREE. IN SPACE. The ASTRONAUTS are in the spaceship in space. They are in the control room. There is one window that takes up almost an entire wall. The spaceship is above Mars. There are two personal computers. There is a CONTROL PANEL covered with gauges, dials, buttons, etc. The ASTRONAUTS are 75 days into their flight, 200 million miles from their starting point in New Mexico. They are sitting opposite each other at a table, each eating a glop of food substance. They chew each bite deliberately and thoughtfully. ASTRONAUT 2 Hmmmm... I’m calling it... Champagne oysters with tarragon. ASTRONAUT 1 Really? It seems more like grilled amberjack in orange butter almond sauce to me. ASTRONAUT 2 I wish we could at least have a menu or a robot waitress or something. I don’t trust food that I don’t know what it’s made of. ASTRONAUT 1 What else are we going to eat? Besides, you don’t know what most of your food is made of on the planet anyway. ASTRONAUT 2 gets up to pour himself a cup of coffee. ASTRONAUT 2 We might as well be eating dog food for all we know. 86
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Brief silence. ASTRONAUT 2 Actually, I’d know if we were eating dog food. I ate dog food a few times. Longer silence, like a slimy blanket. FLASHBACK Astronaut 2 is eleven years old. In front of his mom’s house, he is attacked without warning by a large stray dog. The dog thrashes and knocks him to the ground. Astronaut 2 squirms and tries to escape, but the dog is on him, licking his ears and face. He opens his mouth to wail and the dog bites his tongue. His mom opens the door and the dog instantly targets her, but is friendly and docile towards her. Astronaut 2 lies on the lawn as Mom takes pity on the dog and decides to adopt him in an unusual burst of spontaneous charity. A few days later, Mom pours dinner for Odin. As she is lovingly talking to the new pet and stroking his face with her hands, Astronaut 2 scrambles out from his hiding place under the table. He begins stuffing dog food in his mouth. He’s eaten about half the bowl when Odin barrels up against him and knocks him back under the table, so that Mom never notices his attempt at an extra dinner. FLASHBACK ENDS ASTRONAUT 2 After he learned to respect me, we got along pretty well. ASTRONAUT 2 sips his coffee. SCENE FOUR. IN SPACE. The ASTRONAUTS are playing Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots. They are in the gym, which is populated mainly with unrecognizable complicated exercise machines. The gym also has a transparent wall open to space. They are above Neptune. ASTRONAUT 2 Die, scum! ASTRONAUT 1 This is the only exercise I get anymore. ASTRONAUT 2 Will you shut the fuck up about yourself for one goddamn minute? ASTRONAUT 1 I know he’s just mad because I’m winning. ASTRONAUT 2 signals for a time out and exits to the bathroom. He leaves Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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the door open to piss. ASTRONAUT 1 watches the reflection of ASTRONAUT 2’s face in the mirror. FLASHBACK Astronaut 1, twelve years old, and his friend Lizzy are racing remote control planes. They’re running along the railroad, up on the hill. Astronaut 1 trips over a dog laying on his side. The dog has recently been hit by the train. The children get him up and set his broken leg in a splint. ASTRONAUT 1 What should we do with him? LIZZY He can’t walk unless we help him. We have to help him. ASTRONAUT 1 Okay, well, then I get to keep him. LIZZY As long as I get to name him. Lizzy is lost in contemplation for a few seconds, then struck by inspiration. LIZZY Sparky! Astronaut 1 shuffles around in the gravel while Lizzy feeds Sparky half of the sandwich that she had in her backpack. Sparky walks with them, stumbling every few steps. Astronaut 1 has to repeatedly stop and help him up. As the sky grows darker, the shambling trio arrives at Lizzy’s house, where she’s called inside for dinner. Astronaut 1 walks back home with Sparky, helping the dog when he stumbles, until they’re on the bridge crossing the river. There, Sparky collapses and is breathing heavily, unable to get back up. Astronaut 1 turns his head away and the camera follows him, so that Sparky is off screen and we can only hear him coughing and then stopping. At night, Astronaut 1 slumps into the backyard carrying Sparky over his shoulder. He stops, sinks to his knees, and lets Sparky slip off him onto the ground. He pauses for a second, then opens the toolshed and takes out a shovel. FLASHBACK ENDS ASTRONAUT 2 has returned from the bathroom but isn’t in the mood for Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots anymore.
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ASTRONAUT 2 Jeezus, I’m tired. I’ll see you in a few hours. ASTRONAUT 2 heads to his bedroom. ASTRONAUT 1 I think he’s only tired because I’m winning. SCENE FIVE. IN SPACE. The two ASTRONAUTS are in the dimly lit storage section of the spaceship. ASTRONAUT 2 is opening all the drawers of a file cabinet, slamming each shut as he finds them all, in turn, to be empty. ASTRONAUT 2 I swear I could find my way around here two months ago, and now I have to find the damn map every time I want to take a walk! How does it keep getting lost, anyway? ASTRONAUT 1 I don’t get how it can be hard for you to remember where everything is. Everything fits together so well, the way this place is designed. I haven’t gotten lost once. We see a detailed cross-section diagram of the spaceship, explaining how all the parts fit together. The small silhouettes of the astronauts can be seen in the storage section. voiceover – astronaut 2 Yeah, but who designed it, anyway? The small astronaut figures appear to find the map and climb out of the storage section. View of the spaceship returns to normal, where we can just see the interior. ASTRONAUT 2 returns to his bedroom to take his space suit out of the closet. He puts it on over his clothes. Then he walks out of his bedroom, through the control room, through the gym, to the airlock. He opens the airlock and steps out into space, attaching his tether cable as he walks, then floats. FLASHBACK A month has passed since Astronaut 2’s mom adopted Odin. Astronaut 2 is still wary of the dog. It’s noon and Odin is sleeping restlessly under the table in the living room, formerly Astronaut 2’s hiding spot. Astronaut 2 creeps around the table, taking care not to wake him. The boy puts food, a flashlight, and a Zippo lighter in his backStillpoint Literary Magazine
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pack. He picks up his sleeping bag, opens the door, and steps outside. It’s late afternoon now. The door opens and Odin rushes outside, running circles in the front yard, then dashing over to the trees. He’s excited to look for Astronaut 2. Astronaut 2 is waiting for him where the trees clear out a little. He’s set a trap: a net spread on the ground attached to a pulley looped over a tree branch. Odin runs over the net, but before Astronaut 2 can respond, escapes after being momentarily tangled. He leaps at the trembling boy, who falls to the ground and picks up a rock. He hits Odin in the eye, allowing him to escape and scramble to his feet. Odin snarls. The boy lunges and strikes Odin again, and then a third time. He looks around the clearing. He walks toward his backpack, and collapses on the ground next to it. He rolls over, opens it, and produces a sandwich, which he bites into with gusto. Then he looks up to see the twelve-year-old Astronaut 1 looking at him. FLASHBACK ENDS ASTRONAUT 1 is shaking ASTRONAUT 2, still in his space suit, by the shoulders. ASTRONAUT 1 Wake up! Wake up! What the hell is wrong with you? ASTRONAUT 2 What? What - why are you hitting me? ASTRONAUT 1 We lost power somehow. The spaceship just stopped working. You lost your oxygen supply, and then you lost consciousness, and I had to get you inside. This is it. We’re here. ASTRONAUT 2 What? Where? ASTRONAUT 1 Look. Look! We see, through the control room’s window, a bizarre fleshy LIVING THING floating in space. It has a mouth, and wings, and claws - individual parts recognizable to humans, but not arranged by any discernible pattern. ASTRONAUT 1 This is our secret mission. The one that gets revealed to us when we reach our destination. 90
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ASTRONAUT 2 So what are we supposed to do? ASTRONAUT 1 Well, we have no power. All we can do is wait for our instructions to be shown to us. ASTRONAUT 2 If we have no power, how can you breathe without a space suit? ASTRONAUT 1 What? FLASHBACK Both astronaut boys are walking with Sparky after leaving Lizzy’s house. They support Sparky until he finally gives up and lays down on the bridge. Astronaut 1 stands silent and still except for the movement of his head and shoulders. Astronaut 2 picks Sparky up in his arms, holding the dog’s body to his chest. He throws the body into the river, where it is swept out of sight. The sun sets as the two humans slowly walk home. Behind them, the sidewalk crumbles away where they’ve stepped, so that the boys are constantly several steps ahead of a cliff edge advancing toward them. FLASHBACK ENDS ASTRONAUT 2 frantically searches around the control room for some clue as to what’s going on. ASTRONAUT 1 walks toward the airlock. ASTRONAUT 2 looks under the CONTROL PANEL and finds that it has come unplugged from the wall. He plugs it back in, and power is restored to the spaceship. He looks up to see that ASTRONAUT 1 has stepped out into space without a space suit. ASTRONAUT 2 is stunned into silence for a moment, then runs to the airlock, shouting out of it. ASTRONAUT 2 Hey, wait! The thing just came unplugged! You don’t have to go out to fix it! ASTRONAUT 1 is floating in space, still alive, and laughing. ASTRONAUT 2 is stuck on the spaceship, which resumed its course when he plugged the CONTROL PANEL back in. The spaceship now takes ASTRONAUT 2 away from where ASTRONAUT 1 is left floating. He floats, and the unexplainable LIVING THING floats next to him. END Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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Stratigraphy I.B. Hopkins
Three women live in these boxes: Mothers all, yes, Sisters, daughters, diaries, aunts, Bits of paper, pieces of receipts, Landowners, Tax records, church bulletins, Dingy lace and photographs Who never meant to be developed— What’s in a box Of women I never knew? Lesson on navigating an irrelevant century? No. Nothing So bold. But peeling secrets does require A quiet fury. It’s a shoulder pad underneath carbonpaper On top of personal checks, all in a Samsonite suitcase with a powderblue A-line skirt. No law of superposition here.
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I want to let you loose! Want to trap you here. Your weight could crush me if I’m reckless—— There is no map through your murk; Your stillness is terrifying, and the breeze— The breeze again is not enough. Women I never met are Receding from me, Hurrying the ink from their Honors History notebooks to fade. Blank as a headstone, Hungry as the Dash.
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Punxsutawney Phil
W i ll S t a n i e r
B A N G ! little puddle a gunshot warped passing dull, a watery echo inside Monday rain slick neighborhoods.
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F o r e s t S p i r i t / J o sh u a H at f i e l d pen and ink Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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L i n e E x e r c i s e / K i ll i a n W yat t micron on bristol board
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Lips formed into little boats
Speke Katherine La Mantia
You take one oar and give me the other and we climb in together in the hollow of your cupid’s bow Up and down on undulating currents a tributary too small for a map leading to a river no one ever named I don’t know the source but you once said everything flows into the ocean
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Parting Words Katie Googe
The Old Woman sat on the front porch in an old, well-worn rocking chair that creaked slightly as she moved languidly back and forth. The glass of iced tea that sat on the low table next to her was covered in minute drops of condensation that looked refreshingly cool in the hot summer sun. A dry breeze rustled the brown weeds still choking out an existence in the cracked red earth. She exhaled slowly and took a sip from the glass, never ceasing her rocking. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back slightly. A young boy appeared on the dirt road in front of her, shaking and shivering and dripping wet. The fear in his eyes was evident. The Old Woman winced momentarily. It was no more than a brief intake of breath, nothing that the boy would ever notice. She contained herself and smiled kindly down at the boy, waiting for him to speak. “Where am I?” The boy’s voice shook as he tried to look her in the eyes. “Here,” the Old Woman responded calmly. “Where’s here?” The boy looked around. The landscape was empty. There were no animals, no trees, no signs of life. Just the big white house with the wide front porch, the dirt road, a few dying weeds, and the intolerably hot sun. Again the Old Woman shut her eyes. She took a long, deep breath and said, “Don’t worry. You’re safe now. But since I am here and so are you, why don’t you come sit with me and talk a while?” She gestured to the rocking chair on the other side of the table that now contained two glasses of tea. 98
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The boy mounted the stairs to the porch, still hesitant as he studied the Old Woman’s wrinkled face. He sat in the chair and took the glass that she handed him. She stared at the boy for a minute and the boy gazed back, taking a sip of the tea. “I’m here now. What do you want to talk about?” “Patience, my dear, first, tell me your name.” “John.” “That’s a nice name.” “Thank you.” The boy’s face scrunched up in confusion. “What’s your name?” The Old Woman sighed. “It’s not important. I am old, and names seem to lose meaning when you’re the only one to remember them. You may call me ‘grandmother.’ It’s easier.” The boy nodded. “How old are you?” “How high can you count?” “I can count to 100!” The boy beamed. “I’m older than that.” The boy looked stunned. “But that’s not important either. I am old and tired. Now, tell me about yourself. Do you have parents?” The boy seemed about to protest her dismissal, but his expression changed as if he were trying to remember something that happened in a dream. He began slowly, “I do have parents. I have a mom and a dad.” The memories seemed to come back to him as he recited them. “My father was going to take me to the woods today. We were resting by the well. He told me to go over to the edge and... and then my father looked over at me. And I was scared. And he reached out and... and now... I’m here.” The Old Woman stifled a gasp. After all these years, when children told her stories like that- she thought she’d be used to them by now, but she still wasn’t. She never had children of her own, of course, but she never understood how parents couldShe calmed herself and turned back to John. “Ah, well tell me, how old are you? “Nine.” “Tell me about your friends, what do you like to do?” The Old Woman smiled and sank back into her chair as the boy rambled, chattering on and on about his life, his friends, his opinions, how he felt about chores. She listened patiently, the lines about her eyes deepening as she smiled at the boy. She never interrupted, but when he forgot something, or seemed to drift off into memory, she would turn to him and ask him a simple question that he would Stillpoint Literary Magazine
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answer before moving on to some other topic. He told her everything that he knew, and they sat in the chairs, sipping iced tea that never ran out, as the sun sank in the sky. Just as the sun was turning the red ground gold, the boy finished his story. He had nothing left to say, and she did not press him. They sat for a time in the still air with no sound but the creaking of the rocking chairs. The sky turned from orange to purple and finally to a black-blue just a shade deeper than the bruises on the boy’s wrists. The stars appeared one by one in the sky. Finally, the Old Woman turned to the boy and looked deep into his eyes. “It is time, darling.” “But...” “Come, now, it is time to leave. Everyone must.” “Yes, grandmother.” “Come here, my child.” She took the boy in her arms and held him tight. She kissed him on the forehead and held him at arms length. “You must go.” “But where should I go, grandmother? I do not know the way.” “Now sweet, you see the road you came from?” The Old Woman pointed to the road that the boy had appeared on. The boy nodded. “Just follow that until you reach the sunset.” “But, grandmother, the road ends just after where I appeared.” “Not anymore.” The Old Woman rose out of her chair on her arthritic limbs as the boy shuffled off her porch towards the last rays of sun in the west. She raised her hand in parting as the boy gave a shy wave. She stood watching him trudge off into the distance until she could see him no more. When both the sun and the boy finally disappeared, Death sank down into her chair, stared at the glass of ice tea that had finally been emptied, dropped her beautiful, old face into her vein-crossed hands, and sobbed.
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PLAYLIST “Make Amends,” Jeffrey Mann “Heavenly Bodies,” Hairy Confucius “7 Poems by CD Skehan,” Richard Hunsinger
Lee Turner, speaker
“A Short Biography,” Monique Osorio “Canadian Tuxedo,” Wieuca “Nine Stories on J.D. Salinger,” Richard Hunsinger
Corin Rogers, flute
Kathryn Koopman, clarinet
Megan Li, violin
Noah Johnson, cello
Scott Davis, percussion
Monique Osorio, piano
“shallow end,” boy toys “Walmart Macky D’s,” Hairy Confucius “Dulce Voces Le Cantaban,” Monique Osorio “stations of the cross,” Richard Hunsinger
Scott Davis, Richard Hunsinger, Alec Livaditis, Jacob Parr, percussion
Available online at stillpointuga.com
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CONTRIBUTORS Manisha Banga is a second-year classical culture and English major and Stillpoint junior editor from Duluth. Banga is a walking disaster, and she’ll talk your ear off about Greek mythology any time. Every time. Charlotte Bleau is a first-year potential English and studio art major from Atlanta. Bleau is particular about people and things. boy toys is a bummer-dream-pop duo from Athens. Meredith Brasher is a first-year political science and English major from Atlanta. Brasher considers herself fairly lost, but does know that she likes Sylvia Plath, fried okra, and hopes to find a way to write and make money for it. Morgan Curtis is a third-year English major from Macon. She loves ancient Greek plays. Go Sophocles! Elaine Elliott is a fourth-year English and history major from Midland, Michigan. After graduation, Elliott plans to pursue a career in publishing. Her environment and travels have always been her main inspiration. Chris Freiberg is a fifth-year English and journalism major from Norcross. Freiberg has a sharp interest in good fiction and good music. Katie Googe is a second-year comparative literature and romance languages major from Athens. Googe is an incredibly busy nerd whose love for all things humanities occasionally spills over into creative writing. Hairy Confucius is a rapper currently residing in Athens, GA who self-identifies as “silly with intentionality,” being influenced in equal parts by Donald Barthelme and Rich Homie Quan. You can hear more of his music at hairyconfucius.bandcamp.com.
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Joshua Hatfield is a first-year unspecified art major from Bonaire. Hatfield is an artist; he has no idea what to do with his life. He prefers to work in several mediums—pen and ink, graphite, watercolor, charcoal, and wire. Mary Hitchings is a second-year studio art major from Lookout Mountain. Hitchings has a passion for creating things even when she has no idea what she’s doing. She is currently working in several mediums she has never attempted such as clay and metal, but her enthusiasm for painting and drawing remains constant. I. B. Hopkins is a third-year English and theatre major from Gainesville. Hopkins writes plays, musicals, and dabbles in poetry—all with major emphases on folkloric themes and cleavages in Americana. Richard Hunsinger is a fourth-year guitar performance and music composition major from Springdale, Virginia. He is a musician attending the University of Georgia. Josh Jacobs is a third-year English and mass media arts major from Marietta. He is a stay-at-home dad in training and strong proponent of shower-writing and licorice as brain food. Chandler Johnston is a fourth-year English, Spanish, and women’s studies major and Stillpoint senior editor from Atlanta. She likes to write about lady things. Jianna Justice is first-year English and mass media arts major and Stillpoint staff member from Atlanta. Justice wholeheartedly wishes her passions lay in a more lucrative field. Katherine La Mantia is a third-year comparative literature and English major from Grovetown. La Mantia is on the first leg of her journey to Vega, about to enter hypersleep. She could be the savior of humanity, but no one thought to ask. She’s looking forward to a change of scenery. Kyle Law is a fourth-year English major from Statesboro. Law loves to write. He considers pain the advocate of progression and art its medium.
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Hannah Lawless is a second-year English major and studio art minor from Grayson. Lawless is the social media director for Spoken Word UGA and the Art Managing Editor for Mandala Journal. You can find more of her work at hannahrlawless.tumblr.com. Lauren Leising is a first-year journalism major from Clemson, South Carolina. Leising is an adventurer in training and a writer in practice. Samantha Lipkin is a fourth-year classical culture and English major from Mt. Airy. Lipkin has been writing poetry and short stories from the time she could form at least semi-coherent sentences, encouraged by her mother who instilled in her a love for books at a very young age. Trevor Lisa is a third-year English major and Stillpoint submissions editor from Newtown, Pennsylvania. Lisa used to have “critical thinking” listed as a skill on his Linkedin profile, but he has since removed it. Jeffrey Mann is a second-year music theory major and Stillpoint staff member from Sandy Springs. He writes poetry in his spare time and composes loop-based pop music under the moniker of Big White Ghost. Luke McCurry is a fourth-year English and international affairs major and Stillpoint staff member from Canton. McCurry will be graduating from UGA in December 2015. Claire Morgan is a fourth-year English major and Stillpoint staff member from Macon. Morgan is a barefooted adventure-seeker with a sizable collection of bad thrift store art. Monique Osorio is a second-year music composition and psychology major from Buford. Osorio loves music, people, and words. Creating makes her heart happy. Roma Parikh is a first-year international affairs major from Marietta. Parikh is most commonly associated with tomatoes or Rome. She loves all things traveling, reading, writing, and adrenaline rushes—a life carried out with sarcasm and feminism.
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Orlando B. Pimentel is a second-year advertising major and studio art minor from Franklin. Pimentel had been practicing art as a hobby all his life before college, but it wasn’t until spring 2014 that he decided to pursue art academically. Jessica Riley is a first-year English education major from Woodstock. A quiet, albeit funny, writer, student, and Christian, Jessica wants to be a teacher. Ariana Simon is a first-year undeclared major from Snellville. Simon is an INFJ, musician, artist, and champion pizza-consumer. Will Stanier is a fourth-year English major from Newnan. Stanier is a poet attending the University of Georgia. Holly Stasco is a fourth-year scientific illustration major from Richmond Hill. Making art has been a part of Stasco’s life ever since she could hold a crayon. Her scientific illustration work captures the minute details, whereas her personal artwork tends to have abstract qualities with a hint of reality. Stephen Wack is a fifth-year psychology major from Alpharetta. Wack is considered by some a genius, deemed by all a degenerate. Thomas Weigle is a third-year comparative literature major from Los Angeles, California. Weigle is a human who has been living for twenty years, which sounds like a really long time, but actually isn’t. Wieuca is a loud and noisy band comprised of four strapping young gentlemen in Athens. You can find more of their music at wieuca.bandcamp.com. Matthias Wilder is a first-year computer science and English major and Stillpoint staff member from Powder Springs. Wilder is an aspiring writer who hopes for future job security as well. Killian Wyatt is a second-year publication management major, English and studio art minor, and Stillpoint design editor from Atlanta. Painting is his specialty.
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STILLPOINT STAFF Manisha Banga, junior editor, is a second-year classical culture and English major from Duluth. Banga is a die-hard proponent of adverbs. Seriously, don’t fight her on this. Alex Cornell is many things. English major, fourth year at that. He also enjoys communicating through the lost art of haiku. [Cornell hails from Sugar Hill.] Ebeth Engquist is a fourth-year English with music business certificate major from Alpharetta. Engquist is an Italian food enthusiast. She enjoys Sorkinese dialogue and musicals. Lisa Fu is a first-year economics and journalism major from Alpharetta. She is talkative, melodramatic, and prone to quarter-life crises. Molly Golderman is a fourth-year art history and classical culture major from St. Simons Island. Writer, journalist, traveler, and yogi, she continues to challenge the daily grind. Ronni Hastings is a fourth-year mass media arts and management major from Marietta. Dylan Hufford is a third-year international affairs and English major from Senoia. Chandler Johnston, senior editor, is a fourth-year English, Spanish, and women’s studies major from Atlanta. How Johnston will combine these majors is a FAQ in her life to which she replies, “We shall see.” She enjoys bell hooks, Chicana literature, Latin American film, and Twizzlers.
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Jianna Justice is a first-year English and mass media arts major from Atlanta. Justice wholeheartedly wishes her passions lay in a more lucrative field. Keto Kacharava is a first-year mass media arts major from Tbilisi, Georgia, and not this Georgia, the other Georgia. Yes, there is another Georgia. Her favorite works include Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, (Margot Tenenbaum is her soul sister), and anything by Gustav Klimt or Jim Morrison. Trevor Lisa, submissions editor, is a third-year English major from Newtown, Pennsylvania. He used to have “critical thinking” listed as a skill on his LinkedIn profile, but he has since removed it. Jeffrey Mann is a second-year music theory with music business certificate major from Sandy Springs. He writes poetry and songs and stuff. Luke McCurry is a fourth-year English and international affairs major from Canton. Claire Morgan is a fourth-year English major from Macon. Morgan is a barefooted adventure-seeker with a sizable collection of bad thrift store art. Matthias Wilder is a first-year computer science, English, and mathematics major from Powder Springs. Wilder is an aspiring writer who hopes for future job security as well. He intends to be a part of Stillpoint for all four years at UGA, so he looks forward to reading all your submissions for years to come. Killian Wyatt, design editor, is a second-year publication management major and English and studio art minor from Atlanta. He is experimenting with facial hair for the first time.
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About Stillpoint Since 1967, Stillpoint Literary Magazine has served as a forum for undergraduate writers and visual artists at the University of Georgia. The pieces featured in the 2015 issue of Stillpoint were selected from a pool of blind submissions. Names were omitted during selection and staff members did not judge their own work. This issue was arranged by the Design Editor with the help of the Stillpoint staff and others using Abode InDesign CC on a MacBook Pro. The type is set in the Metallophile Sp8, Minion Pro, Pigeon, and Thonburi.
Acknowledgments Stillpoint would like to thank the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, the English Department, the Creative Writing Program, and the UGA Central Duplicating Service. Additional thanks is due to the Franklin College Fee Allocation Committee. We thank you all for this opportunity to share the student voice. We’d like to extend a special thank you to Candee Bradbury, Undergraduate Administrative Coordinator Laurie Norris, Dr. Jed Rasula, Creative Wrting Coordinator Jordana Rich, and Dr. Andrew Zawacki for their help throughout the year. Finally, thank you to everyone who submitted work, attended an event, or read this magazine.
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For more information stillpointuga.com uga.stillpoint@gmail.com twitter: @uga_stillpoint facebook: Stillpoint Literary Magazine at UGA
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