Stillwater 2016

STILLWATER LITERARY MAGAZINE 2015-2016

FROM THE CANAL BY TYLER MACRI

THE

E D I TO R S Aimee McManus

Emma Sheinbaum

Charles Hess

Alexis Powell

Amanda Ramsey

Erik Caswell Erika Walsh

Courtney Ravelo

Jasmine Gayle

Rachel Drachman

Jared Povanda Irene Yeh

Justin Le

Gabriella DeGennaro Grace Rychwalski

Marisa Wherry

Robert Hummel

Derek Marinaro

Gabe Sylvester

Arlana Shikongo

Kai Nealis

Nighttrain Schickele

Kimberly Nicolas Brenna Williams

Jill Weisman

Katie Marks

Editor-in-Chief

Assistant Editor-in-Chief, Nonfiction Editor Assistant Editor-in-Chief, Fiction Editor Director of Promotions & Events Director of Social Media

Senior Copyeditor, Assistant Poetry Editor Copyeditor, Assistant Poetry Editor Copyeditor Copyeditor

Lead Nonfiction Editor Lead Nonfiction Editor Nonfiction Editor Nonfiction Editor

Lead Fiction Editor Fiction Editor Fiction Editor Poetry Editor Poetry Editor Poetry Editor

Art & Photography Editor Art & Photography Editor

Video Essay Editor, Art & Photography Editor Web Editor

Layout Editor Layout Editor

Faculty Advisor

A NOT E F RO M T H E

EDITORS When I came to Ithaca College as a freshman, Stillwater was very much on my periphery - something shadowy and mysterious, vaguely intimidating and seemingly out of my reach. Stillwater was the cool kid I had a crush on, the one in the leather jacket who skipped calculus to write poetry and chain smoke.

I deeply admired its contributors, its staff, and the integrity of the work it produced. So I was, naturally, over the moon when I found out I’d be able to have a hand in creating Stillwater. And as I became familiar with the staff I found a space that was no longer mysterious and vaguely intimidating (but, I promise you, still very cool), but rather cozy, warm, welcoming. I have been met with open arms by a group of profoundly talented writers, thinkers, and artists. For this, I am endlessly grateful.

This very same team of artists has worked tirelessly to ensure that this is not a static collection of art and writing, but rather a dynamic, breathing thing, one which has grown legs and started walking around on its own. This magazine contains failures and victories, recently deceased birds and freshly birthed butterflies, and murdered husbands and golden retrievers alike. We are excited to have pieces which contrast so sharply and yet which all seem to be, in some way, in conversation with one another. So thank you to the writers, photographers, and artists who have so generously shared their work with us. It seems obvious but it should be articulated anyway: none of us would be here without you.

This year we also wanted to become more inclusive of multimedia works, and have opened up a category for video essay submissions (spearheaded by Nighttrain Schickele). Unfortunately, we can’t publish the winning video essays in our paper magazine (if only! How cool would that be?), but we encourage you to visit www.icstillwater.com to view the winning submissions, Kai Nealis’ “Jewish Girls and Nice Jackets,” Tyler Macri’s “Grandfather’s Gun,” and Jacob Schaffel-Scherrer’s “The Bridge.”

I would like also to say, quickly, that I am thankful, infinitely, to all of my editors and staff, who have kept me sane, who have said yes even when I’m sure they likely wanted to say no, who have sat on the floor of a Smiddy classroom with me to arrange and rearrange the entire magazine laid out in manuscript pages, who have dedicated an inconceivable amount of time, passion, and love to this magazine. A special shout out to our layout editors, Brenna Williams and Jill Weisman, who have brought this vision to fruition and made it look stunning in the process. And thank you, so much, to Katie Marks, our faculty advisor, who has plied us with pizza and kept us on course with her thoughtfulness and her generous support throughout this entire process.

I would like, lastly, to thank everyone who has submitted. I encourage you to keep submitting, to keep testing the murky depths of your creative capacities, to keep writing and creating. We received somewhere around two hundred submissions, and it is a gift to have had to make so many difficult decisions.

Read on, Aimee McManus Editor-in-Chief

TA BL E OF

CONTENTS What Men Have Told Me by Khin Chan Myae Maung

Poetry..................................................................................................................................................... 6 Baby Teeth by Emma Sheinbaum

Poetry..................................................................................................................................................... 8 Sway by Joseph Heiland

Nonfiction.............................................................................................................................................. 9 Veteran by Nighttrain Schickele

Nonfiction.............................................................................................................................................. 14 Walk Up Gulliver Street by Nick Rocco

Fiction.................................................................................................................................................... 18 When I Got Home, It Was Empty by Christian Cassidy-Amstutz

Poetry..................................................................................................................................................... 21 War Poems on the Underground by Rocco Praderio

Nonfiction.............................................................................................................................................. 22 Stress by Gabriella Billadeau

Fiction.................................................................................................................................................... 28 Golden Dog by Sawyer Hitchcock

Poetry..................................................................................................................................................... 30 Twelve Days of Heaven by Alena Chekanov

Nonfiction.............................................................................................................................................. 31 Skinny Arms, Strong Arms by Alena Chekanov

Poetry..................................................................................................................................................... 35 Persephone is when by Alexa Salvato

Poetry..................................................................................................................................................... 37 I Feel Mortality Surround Me by Kecia Romiel

Poetry..................................................................................................................................................... 40 How To Avoid Breaking Your Mother’s Heart by Erika Walsh

Nonfiction.............................................................................................................................................. 41 Coc(k)oon by Timothy Swenarton

Nonfiction.............................................................................................................................................. 52 That Will Be That by Amanda Boyle

Poetry..................................................................................................................................................... 57 Making Up Excuses by Nighttrain Schickele Poetry..................................................................................................................................................... 58

What Men Have Told Me

by Khin Chan Myae Maung

A man grabbed my arm in a busy market place.

His hand shook me, then invited me with a smile; “Eat this lychee.” He said “It’s flesh is ripe, the juice sweet and the pit— not bitter. Unlike any other.”

So I took it as he placed it in my open palm.

On the flesh where its stem should have been, poked out a young larvae, the color of cream and milk wriggling free from the deep seed.

It continued to squirm on to the translucent flesh, and bathe in the sweet nectar that wet my hand.

And so I turned to the man, bracing his hand over my arm to slowly press his cheek and whisper— “I’ll take all of it.”

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by Lily Harir

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Baby Teeth

by Emma Sheinbaum

Baby teeth grow through gums only

tapping against the permanent tooth behind it every time I breathed

to fall out, to make room for more permanent things, but I

in and Mommy said it was disgusting, but that didn’t make it any less scary to let it

only want good things to be permanent things. I

disconnect from my mouth. “It’s just there, it’s already

never let mine go, I would make them stay, even if

gone, it’s just there,” she said until she couldn’t take

only by a thread of tissue. I lost my first tooth in first

looking at me anymore, until I could barely even hold onto

grade, in a cupcake, and it was by accident. Mommy

it anymore; she plucked it, its root snapped like a guitar string, I heard

pulled the rest out, and I made her use numbing cream

it hum but couldn’t feel it even though Mommy refused

so I wouldn’t have to feel it, even though they were already

to use the numbing cream—“There is nothing to numb.

detached, just a little hollow tombstone, a baby tooth shell ready to be shattered

See? It’s already dead.”

by the permanent tooth forcing its way in. My first front tooth was completely grown in while its baby placeholder was still hanging on by a single string of root. I stopped eating in case it fell out, I could feel it Stillwater Magazine

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Sway

by Joseph Heiland

and so they would say it over and over in their minds and aloud, and that soon even the others would find themselves saying it, believing it to be true. They knew this would happen, perhaps was already happening, and so they spoke in whispers, unsure if releasing the thoughts into the world somehow weakened their resolve to remember. As though the man they had called father and husband were some rock caught in the mud of a riverbed, smoothed more and more by the current until his face sank unto itself and was lost in the stream.

After a moment, Sarah appeared at the top of the steps. Sunlight peered through the curtain behind the couch and bathed the living room in scarlet. Our eyes met. A thin line of tears coursed down her face and bent along her cheeks. She tried to smile but sobbed instead. A shudder passed from her neck to her shoulders and spine, flowing over her like electricity through a conductor and running harmlessly into the ground. I opened the screen and stepped inside, moving toward her with my arms outstretched. She fell into them, her forehead nestling into my shoulder. Her arms tried to wrap around my back but could not.

She pressed her knuckles into my chest.

“I just,” she said. She lifted her head to look at me. “He just.”

I kissed her cheek and pulled away, licking my lips of the salt from her tears. “I know,” I said. “I know.” And we stood, unmoving. Gemini sniffed my ankle. Clawed at my toes. *** Three years had passed. Dense clouds obscured already-dim moonlight. Wind blew

It was thirteen hours after he died. Gemini’s paws beat the floor just beyond the screen.

She scratched at the wood and circled back, pacing up and down the entrance stairs. Her fur was loose, barely clinging to the skin. It fell in clumps when snagged by the sharp edges of the coffee table or the cotton of her polyester bedding. Whenever Sarah smoothed the graying dog’s coat, individual strands caught beneath her nails and were flicked away, piling on the floor, patiently awaiting the vacuum’s pull.

The dog had heard the doorbell from her spot below the couch and jolted upright, her ears perking up for a split second before she processed the noise and came racing around the bend. She whined with her snout clenched shut, unable to contain herself from excitement but aware that, for some reason, it wasn’t right to bark or cry.

Those on the couch above her had been talking in whispers that were not brimming with the joy she was used to. They spoke without voice, words passing through teeth but only barely.

More than once they had to repeat themselves— muttering something about how he laughed or the way his cheeks rose when he smiled or how they couldn’t believe they were saying all of these things as though they were in the past.

Aware that years down the line they would try to say similar things but would find that the more days and months and years came between them and this moment the looser each thread would become in their memories. That eventually someone would say something that wasn’t exactly true, but that the others wouldn’t correct, 9

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The wind swelled. Sarah raised a hand to keep her hat from flying off. She turned and made a face at me. Her eyes were wide, her lips tightly rounded. She chuckled under her breath. “Woo!” she laughed. “Close one.”

“You’re a goof,” I said, shaking my head. We kept walking. *** Four days after he died.

It was raining, and we were in need of cleansing. We sat on the couch, listening as chatter floated in from the patio. Photo albums were piled on the coffee table. Gemini’s head rested at my feet. Every half hour the phone rang, and every half hour Sarah’s mother sprang from wherever she had been to snatch it up, mumbling into the speaker about life insurance and funeral costs and every other thing she wished her children wouldn’t have to hear.

And every hour someone new rapped their knuckles on the screen door, platters of lasagna and salad and dinner rolls cradled in their arms.

Those close to the family did not wait to be let in, simply shifting the platter to their weak arm, fumbling with the handle, and stepping up and into the foyer. Soft eyes awaited them, devoid of tears yet glittering.

Soon it became a burden—all of that food.

One refrigerator filled, and then two. And then it had to be turned away. (More so in gesture than speech.) “Thank you so much for thinking of us,” Sarah’s mother would say, smiling. Her head tilted on its axis. “Everyone’s been so helpful.

Really, thank you.”

But there was tension in her voice. A way of spacing the words that erected a wall between herself and the dear-family friend at the bottom of the stairs. Everyone else has been so helpful, that space said, so you don’t have to be.

Speech from the patio aside, all was quiet.

So quiet that someone made a joke (more to themselves than to the others) about how it felt like we were in a graveyard. “Oh, well,” they

towards the lake, pushing us into the center of the road as cars skidded by. We clung to each other, arms linked, our weight held back against the incline. The only light came from scattered street lamps that burned mutedly, a steady stream of snowflakes migrating past.

Sarah crossed her arms, wrapping her fingers around her sides to try and quell the chattering in her ribs. “What did she say the address was, again?”

I unzipped my jacket enough to reach into my breast pocket. I pulled out my phone, pressing the home button with my thumb and breathing hot air onto the screen.

“It died,” I said, rubbing my fingers together.

We surveyed the area. Tall, thin houses ran along both sides of the street—colorless, save those few painted by the street lamps. “But it was definitely around here. It has to be one of these.” We continued on, squinting at each mailbox, praying that the right house would reveal itself to us.

Sarah stopped suddenly, tugging at my wrist with one hand, clutching my chin with the other.

She raised an eyebrow and lifted onto her toes.

We kissed, wind beating our cheeks. I breathed in through my nose and felt the sting of cold air as it passed through my nostrils. “I love you,” she said, breathing out. Our mouths came apart, and she rested her temple against my neck. The heat from our bodies blended together until equilibrium was reached and it no longer mattered where one person’s skin ended and the other’s began.

I closed my eyes, bent on sensing everything there was to sense in that moment. I noted the tender cartilage of my ears and the sound of branches rocking in the wind and the tremendous silence of our kiss amid all of that noise and motion. When the silence passed, she released her grip on my wrist and stepped back. She stood there, smiling up at me, and then turned back toward the road. I followed behind, making sure to place my feet in the prints left by her boots, leaving one set where there should have been two.

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said, embarrassed, shifting in their seat. They let out a forgiving sigh, and then someone put a CD into the stereo system and turned up the volume.

After that, it was easier to be sad. Knowing that we didn’t need to come up with all of the feeling ourselves in order to feel. A certain ease in nodding our heads to piano chords that seemed to resonate from the earth itself. Blanketing the room in harmonies that almost made us forget why it had been so quiet in the first place. We talked for a little while about the future—how senior year of high school was only a few weeks away, and how Sarah and I needed to start thinking about things like college applications and how we would manage long-distance.

Rain continued to fall. Steadily tapping the roof with droplets that gave rhythm to the air.

It was raining and piano music was playing and at some point Sarah raised herself up from the couch and said to me, “Let’s go outside,” and I didn’t say Sarah, it’s raining, but just, “Okay,” and we went. Without shoes to cover our feet or jackets to cover our still-raw hearts, we stood on the driveway, holding each other. And Sarah’s tears were washed away by the rain as we danced under the weeping sky.

We ran along the side of the house to the back yard, clutching hands and feeling everything.

How the cold, wet grass clung to our heels as we bound up the hill. The cheery whistle of birds hidden in the trees that trilled almost in spite of the rain and wind. The way Sarah’s hand felt in mine as I twirled her around, and how she giggled when I went for the dip but almost dropped her into the mud.

And then we jumped into the pool with our clothes still on, and I lifted her into my arms, and we kissed but mostly we just swayed. Swayed because the water was cold and we needed to warm up, but also because the occasion called for it. Swayed because it felt right at the time and because we had become vessels for something deeper than ourselves that was just then taking form.

The clouds parted and the pool water danced in the sunlight as raindrops washed the sky. Not in sheets but in lines that fell and were breathed in by the dirt. A rainbow leapt over the clouds, and Sarah looked at it for a long while before turning to face me. “Joey,” she said. “I think he just made it to Heaven.” And she smiled so helplessly that I tried to swallow but choked. I must have made a face because she laughed and then I laughed and then there was no stopping us.

We laughed as the water curved around us and knew that we were laughing for her dad but also for ourselves.

A monarch butterfly drew loops in the air and perched on the pool ledge to our right. I planted my feet, anchoring us to the spot. We pressed our cheeks together and watched as the butterfly fluttered its wings to beat off moisture. It flew away and we followed its path to the trees lining her yard until the orange and black were lost amid fallen pine needles. The rain fell harder and we took in as much air as we could possibly hold and submerged our heads beneath the surface of the water, opening our eyes to the sting of chlorine and keeping them open. We looked up at the surface and marveled as rainy needles dyed the turpentine like paint drops splattered on canvas.

We came up, gasping but lighter. Our hair and our clothes wet. Our eyes burning as tears worked to flush away the chemicals.

Sarah climbed the ladder and shook out her hair and tugged the soaking shirt from her chest.

She scanned the yard for more butterflies but, finding none, looked at me instead. How much I wish she’d seen one—how glad I am she didn’t.

Her mother opened the back door and Gemini raced through the gap to meet us. She barked in the open air and her voice echoed back and forth in that space between the trees and the house.

It was high-pitched but full, gladly interrupting the rainfall that pulsed lightly against the roof and the grill we had forgotten to cover and every other solid thing within earshot.

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We went inside and wiped our feet clean of grass. Sarah’s mother handed us towels and we

ran them through our sopping hair. Gemini came in and shook out her coat. She felt our smiles and danced around the living room, overcome by the urge to play. We watched as she looped around the kitchen and couldn’t help but smile at her relief. When she was finished, the entire house was damp and covered with fur, but no one seemed to care.

Sarah was happy for a little while but soon fell back into sorrow. It wrapped around her neck and cut the circulation from her fingers when she wasn’t careful, always waiting for her head to droop so as to pull it down further still. When she laughed it had no choice but to loosen its grip, and so for weeks I spoke as though laughter was the only air pure enough to breathe in. But it wasn’t always enough, and still isn’t enough.

And so I watch her eyes and listen to her voice as words turn into sobs. Hoping that, when all else fails, my silence won’t.

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Amongst the Ruin by Isaak van der Meulen

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Veteran

by Nighttrain Schickele

I was under heavy enemy-fire behind a eucalyptus tree. The bullets were breaking into blue and orange paste as they smacked the other side of the bark. The pellets whizzed by my ears. The plastic visor on my mask was fogging up and sweat was dripping into my eye. I tasted the dirt in the air. You could see the dust puffing up from the ground where the bullets landed, whirling in the sunstroke. Paintballing was an adrenaline rush.

“Fall back,” someone screamed. I thought I had to be in a war to hear that. But this was war; a paint war; a simulated war. It felt dangerous. Real.

The enemy came running out of the trees, blazing their paintball-guns and screaming too. I ran deeper into the woodland, firing behind my back when my friend tripped on a log. I dropped to the ground with him where we laid on our backs together. The forest was a storm of firecrackers.

The heat was horrid. We waited until the cracking stopped.

“Should we go?” I half whispered. My friend cocked his head up to check the front. We started to run. Then we were shot in the back.

During the car ride home, we couldn’t shut up about that battle. “That was awesome,” we said.

Cold soda cooled the insides of our legs. Our parents were driving. We weren’t even sixteen yet. *** Sometimes, when I meet machismo sort of people—the kind of people who admire Julius Caesar and Sun Tsu, the kind of people who look at me queerly when I can’t name famous quarterStillwater Magazine

backs—I tell them that I play paintball. Although I’ve only gone paintballing some six odd weekends in junior high, the military sport made me feel like a veteran, or some version of one at least.

I have a few distant cousins who read Tom Clancy novels. They call America the modern Rome. They know about my tap dancing recitals. They know I sing in a choir. But paintballing is what they ask me about—the art of war. There’s little pride in gentle things, but there’s honor in aggression.

There’s honor in paintball.

I cannot die in paintball. I cannot kill anyone in paintball. Yet, paintball perpetuates the identity of a warrior, an identity I’ve never wanted. I don’t want to be a veteran. True veterans live with scars that cannot wash away. Scars that make them wish they were not veterans.

My cousin called me one night. I was too young to tell that he was a little drunk. He lived in Jackson, Colorado—an oil town with a bar and a few mining pits. I’ve only seen Danny a few times in my life.

“Hey Nighttrain,” I noticed that he wasn’t used to saying my name, but I was happy he called. His voice was coarse and affable. He sounded like a young father, but Danny had no children or lover.

How ya doin’ man?” he said.

“Good! Busy and stuff. Getting ready for this tap recital thing.”

“Huh, yeah cool. Hey is your mom home?” *

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I remember meeting Danny in Denver when I was nine years old and a bit chubby. I had long, blond hair, a round belly and some geeky sandals.

I hugged him when we met and I hugged him when we said goodbye. I’d never heard my mom referred to as “Aunt Gail.” Something about that attracted me to Danny. On a restaurant’s patio he sipped a beer. The sun was orange. Mom went to

“Yeah,” he said, like he was thinking it over.

“No, yeah, I’ve been in a few firefights.” Danny told me about the bullet that shattered a window near his buddy’s head. The two of them squatted for an hour, waiting for backup, sweating behind some sheet metal.

“Really? Wow, that’s crazy,” I said. “Hey, if you don’t want to talk about this or something that’s cool. I was just curious—” “No, this is good Nighttrain. Yeah, no, it’s good to talk about it.” I realized this wasn’t an average conversation for Danny. I stopped pacing the room and listened. * I remember seeing Danny in Wyoming one summer. His arm was in a cast at the time. Mom told me that he got it at his homecoming party. I asked her what happened but Mom said “shh” as we walked towards Danny in the parking lot. Mom became Aunt Gail and hugged him.

I asked Danny if he was scared to go back again. It would be Afghanistan next.

“No, this is good for me. This is a good thing.”

Danny had heard enough from his friends and family about the army being dangerous. He knew what he had signed up for. I kept giving him hugs like Aunt Gail had until Danny pursed his lips and said, “How bout’ a handshake?” He gave me a strong one through the shoulders with his good arm, as if he was teaching me how to shake like a man. * Danny’s phone call was from Colorado. He was on leave, recovering from a rifle that had backfired into his shoulder. I could tell by the flow of his voice that this phone call wasn’t going to end anytime soon. I didn’t even need to ask him questions anymore—he just kept talking.

In this story, there was a man, a bad man, an enemy, with information. There was intelligence, Danny said, that the man, the enemy, was in a house up the hill. Danny’s regiment combed up the wheat grass when a dog started to bark.

the bathroom so I could have a few moments alone with my cousin. I asked Danny what kind of guns he used in boot camp.

“So like, Aye Kay forty sevens?” I asked.

“No, we don’t really use those anymore.” Danny always said “no” before his sentences. His beer was long finished. “No, M-16’s, mainly. Yeah, no — AK-47’s are old now.” * When I picked up the phone, years later, he was asking for Aunt Gail.

“Hey is your mom home?”

Gail was out. But I asked him how he was doing anyway. I felt guilty that I hadn’t spoken with him in so long. He was in his late twenties, and he’d been back from a long tour in Iraq and Afghanistan for almost eight months. I was sixteen now, practicing my electric guitar upstairs and practicing tap steps in my socks. But I didn’t tell him that.

I guess I was scared of Danny, Mr. Iraqi Freedom, seeing me as some sort of pansy, so I asked him about war. I asked about his Iraqi stories, and he gladly told me. The Iraqi villagers—you should have seen it—loved Danny and all the other American soldiers. They adored them, Danny said.

And when they packed up their Humvees to leave, the villagers would cry in the road.

“You should have seen it, Nighttrain.” I gave him lots of wows and reallys and said that’s crazy.

But truthfully, I wanted to say goodbye. I had other things to do that evening.

“Have you…wow. Did you ever fire your… your weapon? Did people ever fire at you?”

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father, was a pro-war oil driller. Aunt Gail, my mother, was an environmental activist from San Francisco.

If our parents had mingled differently before Danny and I were born, Danny would be on the west coast, applying to liberal arts schools, playing electric guitar, tap dancing, shooting his friends with paint balls in the California eucalyptus.

And I, Nighttrain, would sit with my little cousin on a porch before I was shipped off, explaining how the army “was good for me.” I would return after two years in Iraq and throw my arm into a window at my homecoming party, losing half my blood on the front lawn. I’d recover and drink and drink to recover. Go back to the sands again to fight, possibly kill. Return to my oil town in Colorado, reminisce Desert Storm, empty bottles on the table, refills. Stand on my barstool and yell, “Long Live George Bush.” Get a DUI. Declined from a new job. Think it’s all over. Think that I’d failed. I’d be waiting to get shipped out again, waiting to fight for freedom again. And one night, alone in my room, after calling all my folks and no one picking up, I’d become a casualty of war.

“So we shot the dog…” Danny continued the story, but I couldn’t pay attention. The phone was getting hot on my ear and I wanted to hang up.

“Why did you shoot the dog?” I made sure not to sound angry or appalled. In fact, I asked it coldly—chuckled as if someone had goofed, like he put orange juice in his cereal. Why’d you shoot the dog, silly?

“It was blowing our cover. So, we surrounded the house…” It was just a dog, I guess. Collateral damage in the cost of saving lives, I guess. But it was taking life, right? Dog life? I persisted once more, asking if it was necessary to shoot the dog— “Look, I don’t know why the dog is the issue here,” he said with the same friendly snicker I had given him. Danny had much more to say, but I only picked up bits and pieces. Dogs…kids with guns…IEDs. Perhaps I was not old enough to understand.

Perhaps I’d been getting soft with tap dancing and boys’ chorus while soldiers were crawling behind rocks, bleeding from their legs. “And I’ll tell you, it wasn’t pretty, you know,” he said. I tried to imagine Danny’s heat and sweat and adrenaline beneath the blue-white glare of the desert’s wartorn sky. I wondered if the dust whirled in the sun rays when bullets landed in the ground, if his gunfights were like a storm of firecrackers. Sixteen years old, soda, weekend playdate. *** There’s a picture of Danny and me sitting on a bed with a comic book. I’m leaning into his shoulder in silk pajamas trying to read the same comicpanels. We look very alike, wearing oval glasses, immersed in what is probably Spider-Man. I’m describing this picture because it’s before Danny joined the army, and we both like super heroes.

But the cousin who called me years later was a different Danny. An older Danny I didn’t want to know.

I wonder where I would be if I was Danny, and Danny me. Our blood was the same but our parents were very different. Uncle Marty, Danny’s Stillwater Magazine

The paper programs for the church’s memorial service had a pencil-sketched forest printed onto them. I didn’t know that Danny could draw. I grazed Danny’s forest with my finger as an officer read his eulogy. Honorary suppressing-fire this, bravery recognition that. All of Danny’s good will had been invested in the national cause. Here I am, wishing he had stayed home and painted or written. Maybe Danny wanted his friends and family to enlist in the army and to fight for freedom, everywhere. Maybe to Danny, my good will was in the wrong place. I thought how the universe might have put Danny sitting where I was, head down in the pews, my eyes following the little river in Danny’s forest on the program. I didn’t know that Danny was an artist.

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When the floor opened up for those who wanted to share any memories, no one left their seats because no one knew what to say, except for one of Danny’s friends. He was the only person behind the podium, I remember, to speak without mentioning the military. He said that Danny arrived in his truck, once. Showed up when his friends weren’t expecting him.

“That was a thing Danny did, no phone call or anything. Sometimes, he’d just show up.”

There was so much more to share, but we were scared—scared of standing at the podium and trying to make light of this.

Last year, I visited the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. Thousands, millions, of veterans could have been in my place. Veterans who are dying from invisible wounds, bleeding quickly. I cannot stop the bleeding. I’m still living, still loved by a few, leaning on a fencepost, whispering apologies into the ground. I cannot blame what happened on anyone but everyone, including myself, for not calling Danny more often.

58,286 others, chiseled into the slick granite in D.C., each one Daniel Granica. Not even the same war. Didn’t even die in combat. Why didn’t he just draw?

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Walk Up Gulliver Street

by Nick Rocco

As I walked along, I did my best to avoid the cracks opening up the sidewalks — step on a crack, break your mother’s back. Childishly, I tiptoed over each gap in the pavement. Mother dealt with enough in her life; let her rest quietly. The road repair crew feebly tried to fill the fractures with tar, but the sun had different plans, pouring down heat that made the tar so warm it bubbled and pooled out, covering the road in a dense, black mask.

Every few years brought a bounty of tremors.

The quakes shook Gulliver’s houses clean of their shingles and broke in their windows. It brought forth potholes large enough to swim in. It made all our silverware rattle in the cupboard. Mom’s solution was to hold them down with duct tape.

They’ve been that way since. As years passed, the intensity of the tremors only grew. Fear must’ve taken the tenants hostage — countless residents packed up their things and migrated south. They must have been too afraid to come back, couldn’t stand the trembling; their houses have been empty ever since. One year, in an attempt to bring their owners back, a few of the houses set themselves on fire. The town, however, just let them burn.

Now, they’re boarded up with plywood so the cop that does his rounds won’t catch them crying, not that he really cares.

Farther down the road I met a crow perched on a fence. His eyes were black and sunken, and he stared at me. I stared back. His dusky wings shimmered in the sun. How nice it must be to just fly away, whenever you want. Does he choke on

Gulliver had matured fast. Its road sign had become timeworn with rust, turned all shades of brown and crawled through its letters like ivy. The letters melted from the heat of the sun. It teetered back and forth, reminiscent of the way mother used to lull me to sleep in our rocking chair, swaying with the wind that wouldn’t let it rest. You could see it hanging by a mere thread of twisted metal — my fingers itched to cut it loose.

This had once been a thriving street, where the wheels of cars caressed the road, where animals yelped proudly and bounced against leashes of their amicable neighbors, and flowers giggled from the tickle of soft winds. On a special occasion chili-stands lined the way for the annual Heat Race, an anticipated festival adorned with an abundance of zany flavor combinations, pursuing the bravest of tongues. My father would take me there every year. We’d taste test every bowl until our tongues went numb. He would buy me different flavors of pop, pour them into plastic cups and shuffle them like Thimblerig; I’d guess which ones they were by the way my burps smelt. One time, the pop and chili did a tango in my stomach, and I decorated Mrs. McCarrb’s viburnums. She really was such a pleasant woman; she chucked a bowl of chili at me and screeched at my father as we ran away.

That was the last time I laughed too hard.

He’s long gone now. Off to God knows where.

Last view I got was of the silhouette of his car against the setting sun right before he turned left and disappeared, swallowed by the sphere of glowing yellow as he dipped over the horizon.

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the clouds he passes through? Does he swallow them, making his body grow heavy until the sheer weight sends him spiraling down, never to walk the sky again?

Three months after my ninth birthday, my father took me Upland hunting. How my blood would turn hot as the gun recoiled in my hand.

The smell of gunpowder would lick my nostril; an aroma tart like the yellow apples mother picked, budding on the depressed tree that sulked behind our house. My hands would tingle as our copper retriever dashed off, yelping into the brush — here is where I grew numb to the sound of gunshots.

We would bring the catch home, pluck the feathers and empty the bodies. If I were lucky, father would clip the wings and give them to me to play with; I’d run around the house and jump across furniture flapping my arms.

I dashed at him, waved my hands over my head and howled at the top of my lungs. The crow bound into the sky and screeched back at me, unable to back down from the screaming match that undertook. With a fair swoop, he streaked off into the sky, while I bellowed out a last scream in the hope that it would ride the wind, reach him and tell him, “Thanks for playing.” *** My hands massaged a scar that rides from my shoulder down to the arc of my elbow. The soles of my black shoes crunched patches of lawn grass turned a sickening yellow. The bird feeder lay blackened and broken in the fetal position. A “For Sale” sign trembled in the wind, hoping to signal a family that won’t come. The wooden steps, warped from heat, groaned underneath my weight.

As I neared the porch walls the decay became strikingly clear: cut and split, its wooden planks sunken and afraid of their neighbors. I cupped my eyes like binoculars and peered in through the single-hung window, careful not to cut my hands on its fractured glass.

Dust incases every inch of flooring like an exoskeleton. Patches of light burst through

openings in the boarded up windows.

I can hear it all.

The sizzle of ham on the stove and the snap of my father’s newspaper. How he’d mumble to himself, words uneager to leave his lips. The wheels of my miniature red tour bus skidding across the table, knocking cups onto their sides and drenching the hardwood floor.

How mother would screech and her hands hit hard. How the leaves snapped as they scorched in the backyard. How the fowl would coo as the clock struck double-zeroes on the hour, peek out and take in the world, before it darted back inside.

The pheasant necks snap on the cutting board.

Mother’s hoarse cough as she sweats over the stove. The bathroom sink’s relentless drip.

How my breath, rapid and uneasy, bounced off the threaded sheets. How I’d hide underneath my bed, as mother’s and father’s voices grew louder.

Muffled crashes as father’s raised hands hurled plates. Mom’s voice grows louder still, heavy thumps against walls. My fists turn white as they clench the sheets hard — don’t move, don’t speak, don’t even breathe.

The crow comes back. He’s stalking me.

The fermenting smell of mildew stands heavy in the air — I can taste it with every breath. It makes my stomach coil, but unfurnishes my mind.

My body unwinds into the high-back rocking chair, back and forth I swing, refusing to lift my head. My hands caress its surface, peppered with spray paint and wood stains; the chip is still there from when I tripped and bit into the armrest. Back and forth I rock, watching the rot and decay of what I used to call home. Gulliver’s empty street harbors ghosts with brittle bones who’ve turned to dust, carried off by the wind. Streetlights flicker like lightning bugs, the cusp of their last breaths.

Roads seem to swallow themselves whole, but here I live with a violent sea. Before me you crumble, yet I hold your pain?

Why are you so close to freedom?

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Vertigo by Michael Petit

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When I Got Home

by Christian Cassidy-Amstutz

The end of the world had to be at rush hour with me stuck in it, of course.

The last ten minutes, slowly inching forward, were for nothing.

Although, with the world being over, everything was for nothing.

Some jarring pop song continues to play on the radio, oblivious that every circumstance that led to its creation simultaneously vanished.

I find my foot tapping in time with the beat. No one left to listen, but me, my toes.

Maybe it’s just that they’re itchy, itchin’ to scratch the gas, press the pedal to the metal, as they say. Roar away, down two-lane highways flanked by blood, American deserts, pop tunes jiving in my ears. Instead, I’m stuck behind a silver Chevy Venture the hint of a children’s car seat peeking at me from the rear window.

The melody of the radio singer drowning in the static of the speakers.

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War Poems on the Underground

by Rocco Praderio

They say the first iteration of the London Underground was a disaster. Engineers and planners carved wide tunnels for dirty steam engines to weave themselves into the central portions of the city. They say the exhaust from the engines would fill stations with a thick haze, only cut by the screeching sounds of metal wheels on rail and the slow, eventual movement of departing trains. Apparently it was almost unbearable to make it from King’s Cross to Baker Street, only one stop away from each other at the time. In its first iteration, it seemed like an idea that was unlikely to succeed, that perhaps underground railways were not destined to become a thing of the future.

On July 7th, 2005, three organic peroxidebased bombs were detonated on three separate trains on the London Underground network.

Two of the bombs exploded on the Circle Line, one between Liverpool Street and Aldgate, and the other at Edgware Road. The third on a Piccadilly line train, travelling from King’s Cross to Russell Square. 52 people were killed and over 700 were injured. To this day it is considered the UK’s 9/11. When you search the event online you can find thousands of photos of the wrecked train cars.

Shattered glass. Twisted black metal. Reflective vests.

You can also find photos of surviving civilians trapped on the affected trains. They cover their mouths with their shirtsleeves in order to breathe through accumulating smoke.

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The next Circle Line service via High Street Kensington and Victoria is now approaching platform three. I lean over the thick yellow line that indicates the end of the platform and see the glowing amber headlights of an oncoming train.

As always, the Circle Line is moving slowly, lazily screeching up to the platform as if no one in London has anywhere to be today.

The train is clean and white, with accents of dark blue and red that originate from the iconic Underground logo. The doors slide open with a clean and uniform thud. I step onto the car and sit down on an unstained padded seat and put my headphones in. There is ample room for my elbows and knees, and I’m even able to lean my head back slightly to relax on the ride to class.

As the Circle Line lethargically twists its way through tunnels and outcroppings, my journey is dotted with polite updates and reminders. The next stop is Bayswater. This is Bayswater. Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.

This is a Circle Line service via Victoria and Embankment.

I think back to the dirty subways in Boston, the only trains like this I knew growing up, and consider how flawed they are in comparison to the ones here in London. I imagine running my index finger along the paint treatment of a train in Boston and can barely stomach what nasty growth would accrue on my fingertip.

Grey soot and sawdust with a greased undertone.

As I wait for my short commute to end, an Underground employee in a shirt, tie, and 22

sweater-vest comes by to pick up stray newspapers and trash with a grabber. Sometimes, life is charmed in London.

depressing. The conventional quiet (and sometimes silence) of packed British subway cars only added to the haunting memory of these besieged poets.

Edward Thomas, Ivor Gurney, Siegfried Sassoon, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Georg Trakl, Guillaume Apollinaire. 1914-1918.

That October The Sun, a well-read British newspaper, published an issue with a Muslim woman on the front. Her head is wrapped in a hijab made of the UK flag, and the headline reads: “UNITED AGAINST I.S.: As police swoop on first suspected Islamic terror cell in UK, The Sun urges Brits of all faiths to stand up to extremists.”

What appears to be a progressive image quickly came under criticism by the British Islamic community; do British Muslim women need to wear a Union Jack on their head to prove they’re not in support of an Islamic state?

They say Islamophobia is worse in the UK than in the US. Despite being a more integrated country than America, British culture has never been kind to its Muslims. There is a long history of economic segregation of Muslims and rampant distrust in their loyalty to the British nation. After events like 7/7 and 9/11, this prejudiced distrust has only marinated. Maybe it’s because the British Isles are closer to the Middle East. Maybe it’s because the British have always fought immigration, trying to preserve precious space on their temperate archipelago. The latter seems to get more traction. The British have been known to hide their prejudices behind a false desire to preserve “space.”

The motivation behind the 7/7 bombings was loud but vague. Although all of the bombers were killed in the process, two of them released video statements describing why they were committing the attacks. It’s sadly a familiar story—surgical obedience to the Islamic religion and rules—

When it opened in 1863 the Underground, known then as the Metropolitan Railway, essentially originated the idea of modern urban transit.

Long before giant systems like New York City’s were even being constructed, the Metropolitan Railway was blazing the trail of public transport and restructuring the modern city. It makes sense that it all happened in London; the British Empire was one of the most influential colonial and political powers on Earth, after all.

* * * In the fall of 2014, while I was living in London, the entire United Kingdom was celebrating the 100th anniversary of British involvement in World War One. Poppies, the universal symbol of remembrance, weighed heavily on every businessman’s lapel and every taxi’s front grille.

A sort of somber patriotism hung itself on the city. I think it would have felt different in America. The British people have a way of being more reserved when remembering war—they won’t glorify it quite as much as Americans.

888,246 ceramic poppies poured out of the small castle windows of the Tower of London and into its dried moat, each representing a British fatality from the war. Images of falling poppies were projected onto the goldenrod body of Parliament’s Elizabeth Tower, just below the unmistakable clock face of Big Ben. The humble red flowers served as great asterisks on these treasured historical landmarks.

Another, more subtle memorial project called “War Poems on the Underground” replaced the usual overheard advertisements in Underground cars with the poetry of WWI soldiers and veterans. I remember thinking the installation was refreshingly literary, but understandably 23

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taken completely overboard. These men didn’t believe the British people cared for the lives of Muslims across the world, and saw the British government as an oppressive elected force that directly conflicted with their beliefs. Angered by continual British military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, they must have decided it was enough. They must have truly believed it was time to teach the British Empire the dangers of their wide-reaching influence.

But these bombers were extremists. They could only represent their own twisted beliefs, not those of the entire Muslim community.

There had been whisperings about a possible attack on London almost 9 months before 7/7.

Newsweek, The Guardian, and CBS all contributed in some way to possible stories about danger to London in the coming months. It’s even said that British police warned the Israeli embassy in London mere minutes prior to the attack that there was a threat of terrorism in the capitol that day. 3 bombs. 52 deaths. Over 700 injuries. You have to wonder how many people outside of the four bombers knew these attacks were coming.

At least how many had an idea? *

*

Transport for London, taking blame for the delay that morning. The crisp white posters were hung on several walls in the station, all in the familiar and consistent Transport for London font.

Somehow, this seemed a unique experience, at least a distinctly British one. I think as an American I never expect an apology.

The Tube also seems to lack many socioeconomic borders. I was always astounded at the different types of people on the train.

People who seemed to be carrying all of their possessions with them, and people who carried crisp designer shopping bags full of overpriced merchandise. It wasn’t uncommon to hear several languages while on the Tube, words flying across the cars and colliding into a multicultural murmur. It seemed that everyone rode the Tube in London, regardless of class, race, or economic status.

Maybe it was unfamiliar because of my American suburban upbringing, but I always felt like there was a special sort of confluence that happened on the lines of the Underground.

It’s one of the ways that public transport brings us together. Instead of sequestering yourself to the isolation of a private car you get to see different faces, hear different languages, and feel a genuine connection to the other residents of your city. The most crowded subway car sends the most pure message of different people living and working together.

When contemplating the 7/7 bombings, I kept coming back to the same question: why bomb the subway trains? As with many of life’s big questions, I found the core of my answer on the Wikipedia page of the 7/7 bombings under the subtitle Victims. It reads: “All but one of the 52 victims had been residents in London during the attacks and were from a diverse range of backgrounds. Among those killed were several foreign-born British

*

In its current form, the London Underground is an impressive public transport system. Spanning 270 stations, 250 miles of track, and serving 1.23 billion passengers a year, the Underground is the 3rd longest subway system in the world.

Although it is smaller and slower than the systems of New York, Seoul, and Paris, anyone who has spent time in London can attest to the network’s shocking cleanliness and efficiency.

One busy morning during my stint in London I was delayed fifteen minutes due to unexpected track maintenance on the deep-level Bakerloo Line. By the time I re-entered a Tube station to get myself home for the night, there were written apologies from the president of Stillwater Magazine

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nationals, foreign exchange students, parents, and one British couple of 14 years. Their ages ranged from 20 to 60 years old.”

Obviously, the London Underground is not the universal symbol for over-controlling British power. If this takedown was about power it would have made more sense to bomb the houses of Parliament, or St. Paul’s Cathedral, or one of the city’s stark glass skyscrapers. All of these buildings in London could stand for the modern British government, industry, and society that the extremist bombers had come to resent. But this passage was integral to my understanding of why they bombed the trains.

The strict diversity of the people affected by bombing three subway trains had to be a part of the message. London is considered the most ethnically diverse city in Europe—an impressive variety of people from different places and backgrounds have made the ancient Roman city their home. On the surface, London is a prime example of a huge Western capitol that has “progressed” to the point of total integration. My guess is that these bombers specifically targeted the people on the Underground to shatter this illusion.

Even in a city where the most diverse strains of people all ride the subway together, there remains lurking unrest.

But that unrest doesn’t live on the clean streets of London—it writhes thousands of miles away from the white row houses, red telephone booths, and softly falling rain. In Iraq and Afghanistan there are British troops attempting to control people who may not necessarily agree with them. Despite what the diverse subway cars of London say, there is still a massive disconnect between the idea of cultural integration and the reality of it in our world today. These bombers simply wanted to expose this disconnect, and bring the world back to reality. Their attacks rang violently across the Globe saying, “Things are

still not okay here.”

I think Americans inevitably compare 7/7 to 9/11. I’m not sure there’s much value in comparing and contrasting the devastating events, but I think it is important to identify the basic differences. When planes flew into the World Trade Center towers, they became a brash and basic symbol for the takedown of American power. The two goliath towers were a physical and figurative triumph of American industry, culture, and global influence. As they collapsed into their own footprints, so did the security of America. 7/7 didn’t have quite the same effect.

I’ve begun to understand that Americans and Britons fear differently. Terrorism for me was a high security office tower filled with corporate and military officials falling to the ground. To a Brit, terrorism was being blown to pieces while commuting on one of the cleanest public transit systems in the world. When I’m home at my small college in the US I watch intently as campus cops ride by on bicycles with pistols on their hips. At Tube stations in London the police officers carry nothing but nightsticks. A lot of things in London felt the same as they did in America— fear was not one of them. * * * I’m standing in the middle of a Circle Line train on my way home. The car is not crowded, but as we make our stops the usual ebb and flow of passengers has required me to shift several times. This is Edgware Road, change here for the District Line. This is one of the stations that was bombed on 7/7. I am blissfully ignorant that not even 10 years ago some of the stops I visit everyday were decimated by homemade bombs. To my left stand two British businessmen in tightly cut suits. On the seats behind them, I see a Middle Eastern woman collect her small children as they slowly toddle about the car. Two drunk Canadian girls stumble onto the train in a flurry of laugh25

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ter. They wear large camping backpacks and are heaving for breath.

“Hey! We wanna go to where the Beatles took their picture, can anyone help us?” one of the girls announces in a thick accent.

I quietly turn the other way and choose to ignore my North American sisters, leaving the two trendy businessmen to respond. You get to a point living in London where you start to mute your American-ness—it becomes a habit. The two men politely direct the bumbling girls to where they should get off and which line they should transfer too. Right before they leave the train they thank the businessmen.

“Wow, thanks guys, we really appreciate the help.”

This is Paddington. Change here for the District, Bakerloo, and Hammersmith & City Lines.

Her friend chimes in, “And to think you hear about British people being unfriendly, eh?”

The two girls barely make it through the closing door as it gives its final beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep. The doors slam with their uniform thud, seemingly airtight.

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Syd’s Fishes by Tyler Macri

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Stress

by Gabriella Billadeau bread was fresh everyday and that the linens were always clean for a guest that never came. No one wanted to come if my father would be around.

Maybe it was stress that had me toyin’ with Dave’s food, but I think it had somethin’ to do with the way he yelled at me all the time. I think at some point his yelling turned the voice in my head into a yeller too. I could yell at myself for not foldin’ a shirt right on the third try or for missin’ some dirt in the corners of my kitchen floor.

I yelled at me for everything, till one day I was showerin’, shavin’ my legs and knicked the back of my knee. And damn did that hurt! Well now I was washing my own blood down the shower drain and then I started to yell at myself until I realized, Maeve, what the hell are you doing, yellin’ at yourself like some type of crazy? And I had a really good laugh as I finished shavin’ and washin’ my hair.

That same night I decided to make Dave the first of a whole bunch of chocolate mousse pies. I did the expected, whippin’ the cream and meltin’ the chocolate, but then I added a little somethin’ special just for him. Told him I was tryin’ to make somethin’ my Ma always made. I had a good laugh about that much later, cause dumb ol’ Dave never knew Ma well enough to know she wasn’t quite that brave.

But so I make him these pies and he eats ‘em all up, like the fat piggy he is. He ate every bite of every pie and then always wondered why he was gettin’ sick later that night, trying not to fill his draws with my chocolate pie. I could hear him shoutin’ in pain, his body sweatin’ and lurchin’ until it was out. It took the poor bastard almost a month, but eventually he got the right mind to ask

I been told that stress is what makes my husband act crazy. That he does not know what he is doin’ when he is yellin’ at me, throwin’ my shit ‘round, or threatenin’ me or himself if I should get the right mind to leave. Stress must be a mighty powerful thing.

I think it is, cause maybe that’s why I even got myself into this bad situation to begin with.

A young woman with a new baby and no man to support her. No, my baby’s father decided he had enough when we started to see my belly bloat and then my father simply couldn’t allow a pretty, little whore like me to stay under his roof. Always seemed curious to me how it was his house, when it was Ma who swept it.

Stress and a young baby and no home, well that’s the recipe for a lot of awful things. My awful thing is called Dave and he loves me with all his heart. It ain’t a very big one, but it is a heart and so I guess that should mean somethin’ to me.

Dave and I, we started goin’ together right ‘round the time my baby was just starting to crawl and Dave gave us a place to stay and food to eat so for a while Dave was alright. He was even alright to me when I found my baby dead one morning in his crib. Sweet thing had SIDS the doctor said and I told myself God loved him too much and that he needed to go sooner than expected. Dave agreed with me and so then Dave was better than alright.

He was real good to me.

But it’s been years since my sweet baby went and now I’m still with Dave. But Dave ain’t too good no more. Nah, Dave, he likes to yell. I been told that stress’ll do that to ya, and I agree. Stress can kill ya, and I know it because it happened to my Ma. Poor lady just wanted to make sure the Stillwater Magazine

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I think my Ma was there with me in that second, and for every time my father hit her and for every time she tried to get away and came back for me, we hit Dave in the head with that pan until he let go of my wrist and fell to the floor.

I didn’t stop to check on him, or grab a bag, or nothin’. This wasn’t some type of daring scheme I had planned out in the middle of some late night.

This was me and my yelling head voice havin’ a good laugh and poor, dumb Dave was gon’ be the point of my laugh, since I always made him laugh before this moment.

So I walked out of my kitchen and out of my house, into the darkness and onto the road. I had my pan in hand and no shoes on. I walked down the road and crossed the bridge Dave promised to jump from and I laughed real loud about my quick, witty response. I mean, wow, that was a good one, huh?

But I didn’t jump. I just kept walkin’ until I got to Ms. Chatenwel’s place about an hour later. She was shocked to see me and said so a whole lot, but I didn’t say nothin’. When she pulled me inside her sittin’ room, she calls it a parlor because she married well and then divorced even better, she saw the pan and then she covered her mouth and I started to laugh again.

She sat me down on her scratchy pink sofa and whispered a little prayer to me, the way she always did at church when I was growin’ up. Then she smiled for a moment before walkin’ over to the phone. She dialed the police first and then Martin Mahoney, Attorney at Law. He’s one of those guys you see on TV commercials everyday for about a year so that you memorize their commercial tune.

I think his was somethin’ like “Martin, dun dun dun na na na dun, Mahoney, dun dun dun na na na, Attorney at Law.” Funny how I remember that still.

Anyways, she called him too and the police arrived just a few minutes later.

“Stress,” Ms. Chatenwel told them. “It had to be stress.”

me if I wanted a bite, and I told him I was watching my figure.

Dumb Dave knew better than to believe a girl who always had her dessert.

And so Dave yelled at me, cussin’ and shoutin’ about how I’m nothin’, a worthless, childless bitch. Oh, yeah, Dave got out all his yellin’ but I didn’t listen to him this time. I just went about my ways cleanin’ my kitchen and washin’ our dishes.

This drove him straight crazy and he grabbed me by the waist and looked me dead in the eye.

“Maeve, I don’t know what’s got into you, but don’t you go doin’ somethin’ crazy now.”

I stared back at him, doin’ my very best not to laugh in his big, dumb face. And he could see me tryin’ not to do so. So he grabbed onto my hips tighter and whispered to me.

“If you leave me, Maeve, I’ll walk myself down the road there and throw myself off that bridge. I’ll just walk on out and jump clear off.

And I’ll only think a’ you when I do it.”

Now this here broke me, I mean this fool thought he gon’ come into my kitchen and grab onta me and tell me he would die without me?

I put my hands on my hips then and whispered back.

“Dave, if you walk down to that bridge, stand up on the ledge and ask me to stop you, I’ll walk right up and push you myself.”

I let out a laugh I didn’t know was comin’ and boy, did Dave hate me right then and there. His face got all ugly right quick, and he grabbed my left wrist. I turned myself around to my dishes rack and I grabbed the only gift my Ma could ever give me.

I grabbed that big frying pan, still wet from the sink and womped Dave right in the face. I didn’t hit him too hard, since I didn’t know I was gonna be hittin’ him anyways, and he took a moment to stand still and stare at me. But then clenched my wrist tight and I knew I was in for it, so again I swung that pan and batted him in the head.

I didn’t want to hurt him, not really, and I didn’t want him to bleed, or die, or nothin’. But 29

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Golden Dog

by Sawyer Hitchcock

I was running — Eyes open and large to the slanting sun enchanting the blueness and the green. (it was only an hour ago!)

I was running and feeling the soles Of my feet rebounding elastic against the street: the hard hard concrete.

Smooth and whole, strong, complete: a rhythm, strong along the street.

And there on a driveway: a golden dog!

An old dog he seems, and so golden!

Long long drifts of yellow hair sift soft waves along his strong back.

He sits upright — But so loose! and dangling pink tongue all aslack in panting wag. . .

Grand and aloof: a yellow mass relaxed, Spilling on sure haunches like a golden puddle.

Such a heavy beast: panting and surveying: sagging and still: still, at his ease.

I was running and I saw him! — He turned to watch me as I passed, panting.

He only moved his yellow head.

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Twelve Days of Heaven

by Alena Chekanov

“It’s like Romeo and Juliet,” Daisy tells me, showing me a slideshow on her laptop of a swallowtail butterfly with wings like vaulted, stained glass cathedrals. She taps the touch screen of the laptop violently, enough to shift the whole thing. The next photo shows the swallowtail resting on an ashy brown chrysalis.

“I thought this chrysalis was dead. See that color? I tried to let this butterfly go, but she wouldn’t go. I took her outside, but she just kept coming back, and when I took her back in, all she did was sit on this chrysalis. I couldn’t make this up — it was like her long lost love or something.” A video appears of the chrysalis swinging violently. The swallowtail bats it with its spindly arms, like a boxer with some strange, animated punching bag.

I feel myself smile from the outside, as if I can’t control it. I can’t really place it, but there’s stinging inside me. Daisy replays the video twice more, and I watch, completely absorbed.

“She waited for him to come out and finally he did. I thought he was dead but he just camouflaged to that branch. And then they sat outside together. I swear — they were like holding hands.” In the next picture the two butterflies rest on a leafy branch with two skinny arms clasped together, Daisy’s garden in the background. Their wings, a vibrant yellow, tremble in the breeze. “They just sat there.”

They’re ethereal. Angelic in their momentary lifespan. Yet, I can’t shake the feeling that

they’re somehow tragically human. Days pass before I can unravel my initial reaction to this, but the feeling in my gut had been a mixture of jealousy and anger. Sure, bring your loved one to life, enjoy your simple and immediately reciprocated relationship. Sure, mate for life. You get only twelve days to live, but they’re twelve days of heaven.

Bring your loved one to life: Daisy cuts hair, but doesn’t advertise. And she never does students, she tells me just before she cuts my hair. Her clients are older friends, but for whatever reason, she decided to extend her business to me and my empty pockets. Her salon is a cozy side room with a swivel chair in front of a large mirror. There are bookshelves lined with European cook books against the wall, next to a window which opens to her garden. The butterfly terrarium guards the door, the butterflies inside, feebly testing their wings.

“Jim and I moved to Ithaca 23 years ago, and most of my clients followed me here,” Daisy begins, completely unsolicited. She chatters cheerfully about her husband, her old boyfriend, another client, Mona, who has been to Disneyland six years in a row, the heroin addict she had to fire, and just about everything I never would have opened up about. She speaks to my reflection in the mirror, our eyes meeting periodically.

With the symmetry of the bookshelves and windows behind us, we look like a poster for a Wes Anderson movie.

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old? If my mother died, I’d probably be the one to explain it to my little sisters. What would I say? ‘Mom’s in heaven, now’ doesn’t seem gentle enough. Of course, there’s nothing gentle about death.

“She just keeps asking ‘where’s mommy?’ and they keep making up excuses but like, it’s been six days now, you know?”

I’ve only met Daisy days ago, a random encounter on the street involving her overly friendly dogs, but she doesn’t feel like a stranger. She admitted that she trusted me, too, after our first conversation. And now she’s all but adopted me.

An empty bowl of homemade potato leek soup sits on the counter beside me. I consider staying here forever.

“Cooking, hair, and butterflies,” she states, shearing locks of blonde which pattern the floor beneath us, “Those are my loves.”

“How do you even start hatching butterflies?”

I prompt. I imagine a secret society you’re born into, the responsibility of an endangered species resting on your shoulders.

“Well I always tell people — and this was probably when I decided to start monarch watch — I had a caterpillar chrysalis in a terrarium right here,” She taps the sink with her scissors, “When I was cutting Helen’s hair. Remember Helen?”

Helen was the woman whose funeral was tomorrow, and who Daisy mentioned on the phone when she moved my appointment up a day. I nod.

“I was literally cutting her hair when the butterfly came out and I just shouted, ‘Oh my God!’ and she thought I had messed up her hair, but we both watched, right there, the butterfly came out.” She shakes her head solemnly. “And we both said it was the most beautiful thing we’d ever seen.”

She continues snipping away at my hair.

“Actually, tomorrow, that funeral. It’s going to suck. It’s really a sad thing. Helen’s pretty young, I mean her daughter’s only three. They haven’t told her yet. That her mommy’s dead.”

I don’t know how to respond. Luckily, Daisy keeps chattering on. I think of my own mother with a sting of homesickness. I can’t even think of who would tell the girl about her mom. It doesn’t seem like the father’s in the picture. And how do you even explain death to a three year Stillwater Magazine

Simple and immediately reciprocated: The first time a boy told me “I love you,” I was in the unfortunate position of sitting across from him in my bed and feeling absolutely nothing. We had known each other for a little over a year, but had only gotten to know each other less than a week ago, and because of this, I didn’t believe him. In fact, I thought it a little bit ridiculous, and more than a little bit embarrassing.

“I’ve known you like six days, but honestly…

I love people very quickly.” I was looking down at my hands when he said this. I watched him take them out of my lap, but my gaze didn’t shift.

“And I don’t want to scare you even more, but I want to be honest. And I can say that I’m in love with you.”

“I’m not scared.” I didn’t have to look at him to tell this wasn’t the right answer. I felt a rush of guilt; I could imagine how humiliating it would be in his position. He spent the next hour trying to convince me to let him woo me. I could tell he was close to tears. I wish he would have waited until we knew each other better, I thought to myself. I wanted to say it out loud, but I knew if I did, he’d promise me something ridiculous and then we’d both have to deal with enormous pressure. Controlling someone with hope just seemed sub-human, even more so than refusing to look at a person when they spill their feelings.

He watched me for a while and eventually left in silence. Afterwards, I finished my homework 32

and fell asleep, trying to stop myself from thinking anything.

She’s very reserved. Quiet and simple. She’s the kind of person who you go to school with for years before you actually realize they’re there. But inside, she’s the wisest, most beautiful person. She doesn’t pretend to have life all figured out, but I think she’s closer to that truth than anyone else on earth. She’s incredibly stable for someone who grew up in a country of corruption and hatred, within a subculture of persecuted Christians.

She’s questioning and growing every day, and that’s what really hurt the most when I opened that closet. Because if anyone deserves a perfect life, it’s her. But if she doesn’t even feel comfortable in her own bedroom, then I don’t know if love is a realistic dream.

Looking at all her clothes, cramped, yet somehow tidy in that doll-sized closet, I realized that love could be a problem. It can confine you and hold you back. It’s not the savior that Hollywood sells. It’s unknowable, changing and growing invisibly. Something far more complex than Disney can explain to a child in 90 minutes.

I asked my mom about it later, and all she said was, “If you truly love, you have to love with sorrow.”

“I actually was doing Monarch Watch for a long time,” Daisy arranges some papers in my lap; numbers and letters next to dates that I assume have to do with tagging. “But the program really only kicked in — it was years ago. I don’t know if you were even born yet. The monarchs have to fly down to Mexico to breed — and here’s the problem. In Mexico there’s a lot of things going on. The loggers, they’re cutting the trees down. But the forest’s keeping the butterflies warm.”

Daisy runs a brush through my hair, again and again. In the mirror, her expression is one of

Mate for life: A year ago, I had a month or so off from school for Christmas break, which I slowly spent trying to furnish my repurposed old room without my parents noticing. Towards the end of my break I ventured into the guest room to root through the closet for more of my old stuff. Instead of the usual storage, I found the closet filled with my mother’s clothes. I don’t know how I didn’t notice that my mom was living in the guest room, but I must have stood there for a good five minutes before I pieced it together.

It stung, but more than that, the idea that I felt anything bothered me. Like I didn’t have a right to react. Like I was cheated out of a crisis.

I thought that since my parents didn’t split up in middle school when everyone else’s parents did, I was somehow in the clear. Now, this was just a sad and quiet fact of life that had nothing to do with me, and I didn’t get any perks like free meltdown passes or an emo phase.

“We never had time to get to know each other,” my mom would later tell me. They married at twenty, just after the Soviet Union broke apart, and arrived in America just in time to discover they knew nothing about each other. My mom nurses retirees and cooks. My dad builds houses and fixes cars.

I guess I knew my parents weren’t happy for a long time. I just always assumed they were different because they were Russian. They never went on dates or teased each other or fell asleep on the couch together. They were more like business partners than romantic partners.

And I always felt like I knew my mom better than my dad did.

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pity; eyebrows raised and lips hinting at a slight frown.

“All of a sudden, they cut it all open and the cold air went in, killed millions and millions of butterflies. They froze to death. They did a study during Monarch Watch, and I think they had a hundred eggs, and they have so many predators like within one hour, there was only one egg left. So one egg was going to be one caterpillar.

It was going to turn to the chrysalis, and then to the butterfly. You try to get them to the butterfly stage–that’s the hard part. In the caterpillar stage, they’re bird food.”

She walks off into the next room, carrying her laptop out with her, talking all the way down the hallway.

“The numbers are down so bad. The predators, the pesticides, the milkweed, the loggers…”

In the mirror behind me, the butterflies cling to the mesh underside of the terrarium lid, blissfully unaware. Daisy will release them later that day. Day one of twelve.

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Sk inny Arms, Strong Arms

by Alena Chekanov

Clinging to my father’s back as we fly home Houses, blurred, melting from my eyes Blinking, I can see them sharp again, One moment more before they swim

He props the motorcycle up, Metal obeying strong arms, And makes me climb back on As if the nightmare didn’t happen

The fierce tremor of the motorcycle Swallowing oil and screaming up the street

You did this to me, I sit in the kitchen Sorting the dust from the blood from the skin

Reminds me of the waves.

You did this to me, coughing sea and sand and trust I clutch his shoulder The beach, my father, that summer I was six Shaking, furiously shaking The way I learned to tame the ocean under skinny arms Raging at the waves which tried to kidnap me Reaching through heartless currents For the father who seemed small and weak He laughs, and says, “I did it.”

Among leaping giants.

And carries me home.

I drove alone today, Today I fell, My skin is broken Weeping blood from blood-soaked limbs.

The monster lurched to toss me overboard, Growling, Hellhound Branding me with pain and street Trees fighting the sky as I’m dragged away There’s nothing behind my eyes as I give in When the waves buried me My father was there To pull me out, laughing He said, “You did it” As I coughed and cried.

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by Tyla Pink

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persephone is when

by Alexa Salvato

no mother wants her daughter sent to a sunless world persephone is when you hide in the corner of your favorite 10-year-old’s bedroom for half a yeaxr until you feel ready to go the underworld is inside you it won’t leave until you feed it 6 pomegranate seeds and curl your own inside light around your darkness like a cat twisting around her frigid tail until she warms it up again persephone is filling your belly with warm mint when it feels too full instead of emptying it out because you need to stomach your own satisfaction even if it’s unholy persephone is the goddess of springtime almost always dormant because spring only thrives for a short time persephone needs another’s love a mother’s or another’s to protect her from the enveloping darkness a too tight serpent spiraling around her insides persephone rises more consistently than jesus christ and all the prophets persephone has hit the bottom so you know she can recover 37

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Window by Kourtney Selak Stillwater Magazine

I Feel Mortality Surround Me

by Kecia Romiel

When I was thirteen, I experienced Death.

But the experience ended and I went home basking in the glory of my coolness.

At fourteen, I finally ate at the cool kids table thinking, Yeah, I could live like this. Dear God, don’t let this day end.

I think I was happy.

I was cooler than the cool kids because I knew things.

Death walked me home everyday, and he reminded me of my mom, which reminded me of Cancer and that reminded me of that article I read about breast cancer being hereditary and I thought about getting checked out at age thirteen and a half and wondered if my older sister would do the same.

I try to imagine how people die.

I mean, the second before they go.

I always picture the same thing, Someone’s lying flat on their back, their eyes are closed and they’re fast asleep, like my grandfather.

They said he just passed in his sleep. They said he was a smoker.

I can see him choking on his own breath. and then I wondered who, from the living, finds the dead?

I can see my mother sleeping, Death sitting next to her bedside.

He was smoking a cigarette and lookin’ cool ‘cause he’s seen things. He knew things. and then I wondered what you had to have done to piss off God. I was cooler than him because I had experienced death. and Death was on my speed dial.

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How to Avoid Breaking Your Mother’s Heart

by Erika Walsh

THINGS YOU MAY NEED: bird feathers, pancake mix (just add water), active tear ducts, an ounce of humility, frog eggs, a vast array of coping mechanisms, a bicycle (with or without training wheels), at least three psychotherapists, nursery rhymes, a few sweet halftruths, a knob to turn the volume down, a quiet place to sit and wait. in love. Write about warm biscuits, and falling off of your bicycle, and the pet worms that you kept in a parmesan cheese container filled with dirt--until she ultimately made you get rid of them--no! No. Make something up. Say that they escaped, the worms. Do not mention her.

FIRST, less than a year after she divorces your father, when she digs up old pictures of herself from 10, 20, 30 years ago, do not say, “It’s strange to think you’ll never look the same way that you used to.” She will be sensitive. She will think that you are saying that she is no longer beautiful. Say to her: No, that’s not what I meant.

Remind her that she is still that person. Draw pictures of her with orange bits of sun gleaming at the corners of her mouth.

When she tells you that her father, who has been dead for over thirty years, spoke to her last night, in a dream (but it was real, it was really him), do not let even the slightest bit of skepticism show.

Ask her how he’s doing. Say, “Tell him I said hi,” and mean it. Ask her what his voice sounded like.

Ask her to tell you the story about how he once sang at Carnegie Hall, and about how he would whistle to the birds and they would answer. Never say, “I’ve heard that story before.” When she sees a red cardinal and whispers, “It’s him,” nod your head and say, “He’s beautiful.”

When she reads you her poetry, do not suggest ways she can improve on it. Hold her hand and say, “Thank you.” Tell her she’s inspired you.

Have some tears in your eyes, if you can.

TIP: If you have difficulty producing tears of sentimentality, try squeezing your eyelids together as hard as possible until you see red.

Maybe wiggle your contacts around a little. Think about the look on her face the last time you said something unkind.

TIP: When she asks you to place your palms on the sacred remains of a dead tree, dubbed Inspiration Stump, do not say, “This is stupid.

I don’t feel anything.” Close your eyes. Hum a little. Tell her that you can feel all of the energy in the forest. Tell her that you can feel her father’s hand on your shoulder.

WARNING: Do not write about your mother.

Don’t do it. Do not.

TIP: If you are having trouble thinking of other things to write about, try composing a sonnet that explores the hollow spaces inside of bird bones.

Write about all of the times you thought you were

When she tells you that she wishes you would spend more time with her, spend more time with 41

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her. Suggest activities to do together. She loves the zoo, even if you might think that all of those cages are cruel. Ask her if she’d like to go to the zoo.

Ask her to go bike riding with you. Ask her to watch that movie she keeps talking about, the one she can’t remember the title of.

TIP: Don’t try to be funny. Don’t use this as an opportunity to educate your baby sisters about the cruelties of the meat industry. Just stick with, “The cow goes moo.” You don’t want the kids to wake up crying. You want your mother to sleep soundly.

You want the teakettle to cool.

TIP: Keep the conversation light when you’re hanging out. Do not talk about how depressed you may or may not be, or how scared you are that if you keep staying alive something bad is going to happen (but if you die something worse, probably), or how there’s this strange ache in the center of your chest that persists every time you go outside (it’s actually happening right now, that ache). Ask her if she has any Advil. Smile and say you feel better now, don’t worry, it was just a headache, how was your day?

When you are unkind to your body, do not tell her about the pain inside of it. If you absolutely feel that you must tell her because something red stains your lips, and drips down your chin, do not resist her reaction. Bow your head. Be humble. Tell your mother, “I want to get better.”

WARNING: Never say that any of this was her fault.

WARNING: Do not let her see you in an ambulance.

WARNING: When she gets remarried, do not tell her that you hate her new husband.

WARNING: Get better before it is too late. Do not let it become too late.

When she hands you some strange trinket— a ceramic fairy reading a book, or a voodoo doll with hearts for eyes, or a scarf embroidered with chubby kittens, or a neon orange dream-catcher that reeks of cultural appropriation— and says that it reminded her of you and she wants you to have it, take it. Say, “Thank you.” Do not say, “I don’t have room for any more clutter.” Instead, say, “That’s exactly what I was looking for.”

TIP: When you hear her crying, knock on her door. Sit at the edge of her bed. Fold your hands together like you’re kneeling at the altar. Tell her that she has done enough. Tell her that there is no more pain. Tell her that it is over now. You don’t have to worry. It was just a bad dream. Go back to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.

When you read this to her, count the tears that slide into the hollows of her cheeks. When you get to ten, close your eyes. Remember the tadpoles you found once. How small they were. How you held their slimy new bodies in the cups of your palms. How you wanted to keep them but your mother said, “They already have a mommy. She will miss them,” and you didn’t want her to miss them. Count the tadpoles. When you get to ten, open your eyes.

WARNING: Do not laugh at her.

When she fears that she may be ill, place a hand on her forehead. Brew her up some green tea with honey and cinnamon. Run a washcloth under hot water and drape it over her shoulders. Insist that she lie down and get some rest. Cook dinner for the family: chocolate-chip pancakes with eggs for protein. Read the babies their bedtime stories and kiss them goodnight.

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by Grace Robreson

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Cows in a Field by Emily Renne

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Clean by Michael Petit

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Night Glance by Michael Petit

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Body by Natasha Brower

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Ephemeral by MaryBeth Cooper

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Old Friends by Mary Beth Cooper

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by Lily Harir

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Coc(k)oon

by Timothy Swenar ton

The two of us were crumbled in leather chairs next to one another. Gatorade had stained our teeth an opaque, community swimming pool blue.

We’d finished the Austin Powers movie that had Beyoncé in it.

“I’d fuck her,” he said.

“Oh,” I paused. “Me too.”

He picked his Toshiba off the floor with one arm. I knew how heavy it was and acted as if I didn’t notice his difficulty in plopping it on his lap. As he pricked the screen open, the new light illuminated his face. Acne stood like red contours growing across the map of his lower jaw. A few presses on the keyboard and triumphantly he turned the screen toward me. A golden triangle of cloth covered each of the pop star’s nipples. The boy next to me ran his finger around the outline of her breasts. I reached over and pressed the screen shut.

“That’s not right,” I said. His laugh was a bullet: loud, fast, and scathing.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen tits.” His eyes were widening, like he was on the cusp of some grand discovery.

He laughed again. His caterpillar fingers typed four letters. P-O-R-N. Inside me, this was both a beginning and an end.

Derek slid the laptop in front of me, and finally turned the TV to something besides the Austin Powers title screen, which had shouted “GROOVY BABY” for the last fifteen minutes.

The video was full screen. It wasn’t playing, but the thumbnail showed an over-muscled man shoving his penis into a screaming woman, her jaw locked into a permanent screech. I couldn’t Stillwater Magazine

tell if her expression held pain or pleasure. A squeak escaped my mousey mouth and I covered my eyes. It was my first time seeing any genitals besides my own. After a moment, my fingers parted slightly. My gaze drifted to the man’s hand; how it gripped the woman so tightly you could see the skin around his grasp going white with pressure. Derek tapped me on the shoulder and motioned to the door behind us that led to the playroom.

“I wouldn’t be mad if you took care of your business.”

With no idea what he could be talking about, I carried the laptop through the doors and dutifully pressed play. I heard him change the TV to a cartoon in the other room. We were twelve.

-It took me a week to get my own computer.

“I want a laptop,” I said.

My father answered in between bites of a meatball sub. “Why?” “Derek has one.”

My father nodded and finished his sandwich. I jangled his keys in anticipation.

Then, we were in a painfully tiny RadioShack that seemed more pop-up tech shop than established retailer. My father let me pick the one I wanted. I ran my hands over all the keyboards, feeling the plateaus of each button, imagining the words I would type.

The Toshiba came from the same litter as Derek’s. I slapped a Pokemon sticker on the front so we would know: this was mine.

A nightly ritual began. Lights off. My bedroom’s overhead fan was set to spaceship 52

liftoff speeds. Two tissues slid underneath the edge of the laptop, to keep them from floating away.

Derek’s recommended website required a name and password. After typing my info and logging in, a pop up window flashed WELCOME TIM in sparkly letters. Underneath my name, a woman sat naked, her fingers inside her vagina. It reminded me of a video game achievement, a reward. I jammed the red X in the corner of the window, already out of breath.

For two weeks, I watched the same video he’d shown me at the sleepover. It was the story of a cheating wife. After sneaking out of her home, she arrives at the man’s door. He opens it and tears her clothes to shreds while they still desperately cling to her body. The woman looks unsurprised. He is already inside her by the four-minute mark. Rags of cloth dangle and sway as he penetrates her, over and over. The two don’t share a single word.

Soon, the stories and people changed, but the action stayed the same. Here a woman with darker skin. There a man whose chest was covered in hair. Here a woman with slightly smaller breasts. There a man painted with tattoos.

Like some twisted fortune teller, I knew their fated sex futures before they did.

I consumed and was consumed. Somewhere in between the role of subservient victim and total dominator, I lost myself. This new boy was insatiably hungry. He sported the beginnings of facial hair. Outside his room, he picked a role for every woman he met. Would Suzy be the cheating wife? Would Danielle be the staged rape victim?

Would Jessica be the dominatrix? Life outside the frame of his computer screen was fake. He grinned less. He stopped talking at dinner. He wasn’t careful.

--

Black Sex! Click here for Lesbian Sex! Click here for Gay Sex! Gay sex? The picture underneath showed two naked men kissing. I shut the laptop and pushed it off the bed, not caring for the clanking sound it made as it connected with my room’s wooden floor. While I stared unblinking at the ceiling, the tissues danced to the hum of the fan.

It’d be weeks before I’d return. My brain had tied the photo of two men to its epicenter. What had I felt pull inside my chest?

-My parents had the basement redone when I was small. The cement floor became a patterned brown rug that all the basement bugs could camouflage themselves against. Bare walls got a spray tan. My parents’ marriage certificate hung from one wall, and on its opposite a painting from my father’s childhood home. In it, a snowy town celebrated its day off. Multitudes of children ran through the blanketed streets, their coats each a different shade, their faces all the same. My father and his siblings all found themselves in the photo.

I couldn’t remember which one he was.

I took the stairs down two at a time. At the bottom, my toes gripped into the textured carpet. It stuck up and if I ran fast enough the fabric felt like stiff grass. My laptop lived here most of the day. It emitted a low rumble when it was shut, vocalizing its own longing. We were both waiting for the other to give us a purpose.

As I turned the corner, I saw my father on our bile green couch, scrolling through my Internet history. The Toshiba, with half a Pokemon sticker still stuck on, now a traitor. I tasted metal and gulped.

The website was divided into categories with corresponding pictures below the links. Click here for Sex! Click here for Group Sex! Click here for

“Is there something you want to tell me?” he asked, without looking up from the screen.

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asked a question, I had to process my response first. Determine if it could relate me in any fraction to those men in gay porn. Filter it.

Respond. A girl at school asked if I’d be her Valentine and I almost smacked her. Instead I said yes.

-I struck a deal with myself. If I could be straight during the day, then I could allow myself a video’s duration to be gay.

There was a separation though. Their plastic bodies like my sister’s childhood Ken dolls, polished and posing, and my sheen-less skin looking more scale than shine. In the mirror, I grabbed at my pecs and waist and hips and collarbones and hair. Skin stretched white from the pressure. I imagined that if I were a superhero, I would be able to rip the fat off my body and hurl it as pure energy at my foes. What was left behind would be muscle and everyone would see.

-I dreamt that I lay suspended inside a cocoon.

And through its filmy skin, I could see the silhouette of cocks all bulging, thrusting, cumming, and waiting, always waiting for emergence.

-I cried after I came. So much so that I began wondering how much fluid my body could produce before it shriveled into a raisin-like husk.

There were times when I thought about adding my blood into the mixture. A stolen kitchen knife waited in my bedside drawer with my iPod. A tired father never noticed its absence. Huddled next to my bed naked, I pressed the blunt edge of the knife against my forearm. Goosebumps ran along my surprised skin. It was an innocent feeling, like a snowflake on an exposed tongue. The ramshackle of nerves that made my body vibrate when men fucked stopped the pointed edge before it met my skin.

--

He let out a labored sigh, as if he were afraid that’s what I’d say. He faced me. The dark circles under his eyes are black half moons. Our eyes don’t meet.

“You know, I can’t even imagine what I would have done at your age. With the Internet you have everything.”

“No.” “I found a lot of porn, Tim. And I mean a lot a lot.”

“It’s not mine.” I tried a laugh. “It’s Derek’s.

He always wants to borrow it.”

“The gay stuff?”

“I’m not gay. I’m not gay, Dad.” “Alright, you’re not gay.” He closed the laptop gently.

“I’m not gay.” I repeated myself again and again. After nine or ten times, he left me down there, the laptop now gone with him. My routine, my pleasure, my purpose, all gone. Hanging off the side of the couch, I saw my father’s painting upside down. I watched the children as they ran through upturned streets, looking to grab onto anything to keep from falling into the sky.

-A shirtless man sat on his couch as he casually watched TV. His muscles appeared metallic, shiny and activated. The camera panned to outside his home where another man, dressed to look like a typical burglar, attempted to break in. He lifted a window open and shimmied inside feet first. Much to the burglar’s dismay, he climbed inside the window across from the shirtless man. The two began to talk. I skipped ahead.

Their mouths met and my internal battery was charged. After the tissues had been used and disposed, the fan lowered, and the iPod put away, my fingers clicked the window lock out of place. I waited.

-The next few months were hazy. Every conversation required me to overthink. If I was Stillwater Magazine

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Years pass between my fingertips like water, tangible but impossible to grasp. There are days when I feel older than my father. Days where he turns to me and says from behind his glass of red wine, “You need to work on putting yourself out there.”

Then, there are days I feel as if I’ve never left Derek’s playroom. The rainbow-striped wallpaper still pastel. The air-hockey table dented along its side. Teddy bears with their nametags in protective plastic sleeves. Barbie dolls in feather-dusted houses. Superhero bandaids strewn along the rug.

Train sets that spun if I flipped a switch.

Nintendo64 controllers with their wires wrapped around themselves like coiled snakes. A laptop with a man and a woman on the screen. And Derek sits just outside the door, waiting to hear what I’ve done.

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Left Brained by Grace Clauss

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That Will Be That

by Amanda Boyle

On a hot day in spring at dusk, one of your mom’s loaves of bread in hand you swept her off the porch to the place in the creek where we all swim.

By the light of the moon you breathe in her milky skin as she drinks up your eyes: You both give your hearts with the seal of a kiss.

This time you put your pants on the branch with her dress before you pushed her in and they dance on the warm south wind.

You try to use some old dead man’s poem and big words to tell her how she makes your blood rush and mind swoon but she grins coos, Hush. For once hold your breath and tongue.

And on your backs you float and search for shapes among the stars as you hold hands so you don’t drift away. You both don’t want this to end but it will.

Her Pa will say, his skin is too dark and he is too dumb for you and your Pa will say fear in his mouth, Boys like you don’t love or think they have the chance to marry girls like her.

And that will be that.

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Making Up Excuses

by Nighttrain Schickele

I saw a dead bird today, perfect. Not broken at all. It was on the trail, legs crooked upwards, its wings to its sides, perfect for a matchbox coffin.

I think it is because I was the first to find it, the first to not step on it, and to scoop it into my fingers, that I was chosen to find him.

It must have hit the cafeteria window above and died instantly. I picked up the bird as a passing group of students walked in silence. A girl said, “aw.”

I was the first to spot this bird, 11:30am, October 31st, 2015. I felt honored.

Felt I was chosen to pick him up, to brush his feathers, gently, and to walk with him.

He fit in my palm. His tail wing was the color of sand being soaked in the ocean with little, white spots like shards of sand dollars. But that’s enough.

It was a dead bird, and it was not living when I moved its head with my thumbs so that it could look at me like a human, its eyes open.

I knew my father had passed fifteen years to this day, Halloween. I wanted to draw a connection to him and to this dead bird I was taking into the trees.

I placed him aside a thin tree trunk and covered his body, but not his face, with an orange leaf. There were gum wrappers and plastic bags hooked on twigs.

And I like to think that messages enjoy hiding within coincidences like these, as if I, out of anyone else that morning, was chosen to bury him.

But I’m just one of many, constantly making up excuses to see the ones I love through a dead bird. And now I feel sad about what I have written—

If I had been wiser, I would have buried the bird to bury the bird, and let old ashes lay where they’ve already been scattered, once.

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