Tea Volume 25 by Tea Literary & Arts Magazine

TEA XXV

Est. 1995 2023

Tea

Foreword

Tea 25 was designed, produced, and edited solely by University of Florida undergraduate students. The opinions expressed are those of our contributors and do not necessarily represent those of the editors, staff, faculty, administrators, or trustees of the University of Florida.

Copyright 2023 by Tea Literary & Arts Magazine at the University of Florida. Tea has been given permission from the contributing students to reproduce the content of this magazine for use in physical and digital publishing, social media, and any other reasonable academic uses. Submissions are welcome from all University of Florida undergraduate students. Funded by Student Government.

More information can be found at www.tealitmag.com.

Editor in Chief

Julia Fuentes

Art Editor

Lydia Mayhood

Design Editor

Julia Cooper

Photography Editors

Zoya Mukherjee (Fall)

Daniela Bendo (Spring)

Poetry Editor

Gina Crespo

Prose Editor

Preslie Price

Art Staff

Alita Casillas

Roxie Faye

Mary Hanson

Ian Jackson

Luna Parra

Desi Roch

Ayla Santos

Staff

Photography Staff

Mary Kate Farell

Sarah Henry

Anna McFarland

Hannah Williams

Design Staff

Roxie Faye (Spring)

Sarah Garfield

Campbell Johnson

Haritha Kakani

Poetry Staff

Wesli Avidan

Sofia Bringas Correa

Ansley Burtch

Sofia Galvan

Nikki Kershner

Sophie Miller

Bernardo Montás

Laura Newman Kendra Westmoreland

Prose Staff

Adriana Beltrano

Sam Bullard

Sarah Douglas

Eluney Gonzalez

Chloe Grant

Ella McIver

Ashley Patriquin

Jocelyn Rawson

Helena Small

Blackbird Prize for Poetry

Winner: “Vermin” by Eddie Bonilla

The shortlisted poems are a harsh bunch, and in the best way. It’s high time for a new generation of rebels and disaffected. (Gone are the times young was synonymous with carefree.) As Brecht had it, in his poem ‘An die Nachgeborenen’ (‘To Those Born Later’): ‘Truly, I live in dark times!/ The guileless word is folly. A smooth forehead/ Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs/ Has simply not yet had/ The terrible news.’

Two are convincing adaptations of the Vallejo/ Justice classic ‘I will die…’ The others are fraught, anxious, perturbed. All had something. I especially liked the confiding ‘Persuasion’ and ‘Considering Sound’, the freer of the ‘Black Stone, White Stone’ versions, which to me had something of Weldon Kees. My winner, though, is the furious logomachic chant called ‘Vermin’:

‘dull-eyed abundant advertisements claim they’re understanding me, or championed me, could pamper me, if I deigned them stomp their stamp on me, but I was oversigilized.’

But congratulations to all. Bonne continuance.

-Michael Hofmann, Professor, Poet of One Lark, One Horse, and this year’s Poetry Prize judge.

Palmetto Prize for Prose

Winner: “Farther than Where I Started”

by Alec Kissoondyal

Like its protagonist, “Farther Than Where I Started” is equal parts understated and unhesitating. Propelled by the author’s impressive sense for the fractal rhythms of sentence, detail, image, and narrative, the story hits you like a bullet. What kills you, though, isn’t the flashy percussion of first impact, but the gurgling ambiguity of exsanguination. Reason and language fail, leaving you defenseless against the primacy of sensation: the “psychedelic smear” of the landscape, the “obsidian spear” of the asphalt, and the “pop” the narrator can’t quite call a gunshot. Indeed, there’s so much the narrator never gets to say, and so much—their husband, their stolen hotel Bible, themself—that they never get to understand. In “Farther Than Where I Started,” this is the real horror: that our lives are too short for us to figure them out.

-James Eschrich, former Tea Prose Editor, PhD candidate, and this year’s Prose Prize judge.

Ghost Orchid Prize for Photography

Winner: “Find Me in the Shadows 1”

by Bailey McDonald

When I view Find Me In The Shadows, my eye immediately goes to work - bouncing around the photograph and the multiple exposures it took to form it.

I enjoy the tension in the contrast that only the black-and-white medium can afford. It is balanced nicely with the calmness of clouds and predictability of power lines.

The inclusion of a human element - or the illusion of one - draws a connection between the photograph and the viewer. The piece is sophisticated and thought provoking. The multiple layers leave me with questions - as great art should.

-Daron Dean, practicioner of photojournalism and this year’s Photography Award judge.

Almond Blossom Prize for Art

Winner: “Votive Tree” by

Rosemary Matthews

Votive Tree floats in a liminal space that allows us to travel between realism and abstraction. We are never fully planted in one or the other, which is what makes this piece so dynamic. This piece serves as object, body, and landscape all at once. Even though the composition is symmetrical, Votive Tree has movement through mark making which has the potential to elicit strong feelings or memory. It has notes of painters Cicely Brown and Joan Mitchell. The conversation between warms of the reds, yellow and oranges and the cools of the blues and purples gives this piece a wonderful sense of depth. Votive Tree itself is an offering, giving us a beautiful array form, color, and emotion.

-Antoine Williams, interdiscipinary artist, UF Professor of Drawing and this year’s Art Award judge.

Sophie Miller

Storm

Chalk Pastel & Charcoal on Paper, 18” x 24”

Letter from the Editor

Dear Readers, Students, Professors, Mom, and Others,

This issue marks the magazine’s 25th anniversary, Tea as the longest-running undergraduate literary magazine at the University. A look into our archives marks every yearly change. Tea’s issues 2 to 16 were created in conjunction with the English Society, Issues 12 and 13 showcased black-and-white images of the issue’s staffers, and in issues 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13, there were no Editor in Chief letters whatsoever, so I can’t imagine what I am doing writing one here. (Humbug, because the Design Editor said so.) We were once funded by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, we once had awards funded by the Honors College and the English Department. (If you won the Palmetto Prize for Prose from 2012 to 2019, your name would have been engraved into a plaque placed on the fourth floor of Turlington. Imagine that.) But relationships come and pass, establishments come and pass, people come and pass. Even the idea of Tea changes with each staff. One year we were java-jiving, the next we were ‘hardcore espresso sipping trombone blues on a sunday afternoon.’ This year I’d call us academia-core, frog dancing tired tea sippers.

On looking back, there is so much I wanted Tea to become in one year; there were so many high hopes, let downs, and surprises. But it is time to pass the baton and see what Tea becomes without me and other graduating staff. Tea will live on and embody what the student body requires of it. This year we were an outlet for reflection, of students’ close relationships with their lovers, their mothers, their selves and bodies. It’s a beautiful issue.

Tea currently funds all our prizes, and this year we are awarding visual submissions for the first time in Tea history. These are the Almond Blossom Prize for Art and the Ghost Orchid Prize for Photography. Our editors named these prizes, and they also created an incredible issue. You can’t imagine all that happens behind the curtains. You would be impressed.

J.P. Fuentes, Editor in Chief.

Daniela Bendo - Demon Host (pg. 5)

Eddie Bonilla - Vermin (pg. 40)

Ansley Burtch - Mourners (pg. 4), Considering Sound (pg. 57)

Kayla Conde - Harbinger (pg. 31)

Maria Raya Contreras - “Tener el agua tan cerca y no poderla beber” (cover, pg. 58)

Gina Crespo - Binocolo (pg. 30), Medusa (pg. 53)

Jason DeHart - Persuasion (pg. 51)

Mary Kate Farell - Raspberry is Ripest in July (pg. 32)

Anastasia Godfrey - Suburban (pg. 37)

Eluney Gonzalez - These Nights (pgs. 47-48)

Laurie Griffith - Red (pgs. 6-8), Green Eyed Girl pgs. (15-16)

Ian Jackson - Unsigned List (pgs. 37-38), Ave Maria (Russian Doll #3) (pg. 41), Valley Floor (Industrial Rainforest #3) (pg. 44)

Nikki Kershner - We Choose to Go to the Moon (pgs. 24-26)

Alec Kissoondyal - Farther Than Where I Started (pgs. 13-14)

Sava Kunik - Hedgehogs (pg. 9), Devil’s Night, 1984 (pg. 45), Reverse Postcard (pg. 52)

Julia Martin - Safe in Your Arms (pg. 21), Mom’s Closet (pg. 22), Center of the Galaxy (pg. 23)

Rosemary Matthews - Empathy Bath (pg. 27), Votive Tree (pg. 28)

Evie Meckley - Chapter 5: Conservation of Energy (pgs. 1-2)

Bailey McDonald - Find Me in the Shadows (pg. 43)

Jocelyn Rawson - A Letter to My Mother’s Mother (pg. 20)

Lauren Merchi Sanchez - Padme (pg. 39), Giselle Series (pgs. 49-50)

Ayla Santos - Breathe Closer to Me (pg. 46)

Stephanie Seraphin - when things get bad again: an index (pgs. 54-56)

Primrose Tanachaiwiwat - COME BACK (pg. 3)

Makena Winch - The Waves (pgs. 33-36)

Megan Wisniewski - Antithesis of Decay (pg. 29)

Nadia Wooten - Unremembered (pg. 17), Postcard Series (pg. 18)

Isabel Yianilos - Horsewife Series (pgs. 10-12)

Karen Zhang - nÜ ér (pg. 19) ˆ

Chapter 5: Conservation of Energy

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain the law of conservation of energy.

• Describe common forms of energy.

• Recognize real-world applications of energy conservation.

• Accept that energy is never lost, even if its form is changed forever, even if you can never get it back.

You may already be familiar with the concept that energy is neither created nor destroyed but rather changes between its many forms. This is called the law of conservation of energy, and it is a cornerstone of our understanding of the physical world.

Imagine a ball released at the top of a U-shaped ramp. The ball will come to an inevitable rest, as its energy is “lost” as heat and sound. This makes intuitive sense. If an outside force is applied, more energy transfers to the ball as work done on it, and the ball continues moving; but the ball will always come to a halt once more. Eventually, there will be nothing to perform work on the ball, and it will never move again.

This, too, intuitively makes sense. Now, consider a human life.

Along with thermal energy, important forms of energy include chemical, radiant, electrical, and sound energy. Chemical energy is stored in chemical bonds; for example, there is chemical energy stored in the sourdough bread your mother always baked herself, and in the sandwiches she would fix from it for you, even after you’d long since grown old enough to assemble your own. There is also chemical energy in the gasoline that an ambulance burns. Radiant energy is stored energy we receive from the sun. This includes all energy on the electromagnetic spectrum, such as visible light, ultraviolet radiation, and the gamma rays apologetic doctors use to detect malignant tumors. Electrical energy is what powered

the bleak hospital lights and the monitors hooked to her prone body. Sound energy is what beat a salvo against your eardrums when the steady beeping flattened into a single, dead tone.

Mechanical energy is also often “lost” as sound energy, analogous to its “loss” as thermal energy. Consider a walking, talking human whose presence warmed the world. Eventually, all of her forward motion will get used up in the words she speaks and the warmth she brings, and she will stop moving. Doctors may do work on her, but eventually, even that energy will be “lost.” A word on perpetual motion machines: they are impossible.

However, the “lost” energy is not destroyed. That is the point of the law. So the warmth of the human is not gone; it is still shaking your atoms and the atoms of fresh sourdough in the oven. The voice of the human is not gone because air molecules are still vibrating with the energy she’d used to displace them. The human is not gone, no matter what the heart monitor says, because the radiant energy that bounced off her that last day at the beach is still carrying her memory out into the vastness of space, out along the sparking neural pathways of the universe. If you were in another galaxy and trained your telescope on Earth, you would still see her, walking and talking and warm because those photons took so very long to reach you. But even then, caught and inverted in the lens of your telescope, scattering like billiard balls into the black, that energy is not destroyed. It is merely repurposed into something we can’t think to detect.

That is all “loss” is: the observable becoming unobservable.

Do not think of it as destruction because it is not destruction. Nothing is ever truly destroyed, and thus nothing is ever truly gone. She is not gone. She is only “lost,” and it is easy to find her: in the warmth of your own buzzing molecules, in the photons rapping against your eyes like her fist on your bedroom door, waking you up to the light.

In the next chapter, we will discuss the conservation of momentum and how to keep going.

COME BACK

Pen on Paper

Mourners

You write that you’re alone now. From the room with shrouded mirrors, you watch the garden; your mother’s greyhounds blur, two white streaks against the drowsy sky, keening through her clover patch.

You strew moth-eaten clothes over the bed and sleep there, the smell of lavender faintly rising, a ratty nightdress curled like a lover at your side. I know you will not stay in that house— you ask me whether I want to repossess the dogs.

I see people on the street below, small-bodied under the towering ginkgos, and I think I see you looking up at my window, your face round as a child’s. I understand that I have been waiting for you to visit.

As you cross to my building, stepping on leaves shaped like Japanese fans, you turn your head; and I realize that this person does not have your nose or mouth. I remember what you confessed, covering your eyes— that you prayed to be left alone.

Demon Host

Digital Photography

Daniela Bendo

Red

Ishould have worn different shoes. I kick at the gravel drive, sending rocks skittering down the slope in a cascade of noise. Dust rises in a swelling cloud, lit up like silver glitter in the glare of headlights. I hold my breath as another car rumbles by, rocks crunching beneath well worn tires. Unlike my old Converse, the vehicle has no trouble climbing the low hill and crawling toward the house atop it.

I have absolutely no idea where they’re going to park, but I keep my mouth shut and my head down. For all I know, that’s our host’s boyfriend, and he’s got a designated spot in the driveway marked by white spray paint. Besides, I’m not about to bring it up to my companions. Tall, blonde, and wearing oversized tie dye t-shirts, the volleyball girls pick their way up the hill with surprising dexterity, the buckles of their Birkenstocks flashing like fish scales. They occasionally hop up on their toes, skipping ahead like they can’t feel the ground. When I rush to keep up, they laugh.

I don’t know why I’m following them, but when the first girl crooked her finger at me and beckoned with red acrylic nails, my feet moved of their own accord. They are pretty, shiny and know where they’re going. How could I refuse?

We climb the driveway, round the house, and bypass the front door entirely. There are no lights on the side of the cedar house, but a bonfire has been erected next to a burgundy Ford 4x4, painting the boys on the tailgate in garish shadows.

I know them. I watched them wrestle last night from behind my friend’s elbow as she snapped dozens upon dozens of pictures.

One of them turns and smiles at me. He cocks his head, and the shadows paint a pair of curved, black horns in his curls. I blink. The smoke swirls around his head, and they vanish. Just in time for another boy, a track runner, to take a running leap over the bonfire.

Laurie Griffith

The girls dissolve into giggles, and the teenagers around the fire holler, toasting him with brown Twisted Teas and crystal blue Gatorade bottles that definitely do not contain what the packaging says. The boy’s left pants leg is smoking, flames licking up from his shoe in a growing conflagration. He barks a curse, and the fire is at his knee before his long-fingered hand puts it out.

I take an instinctive step closer, but what can I do?

The boy sees me and laughs, turning on his heel to jump again. His long legs carry him easily over the tiny inferno a second time, and the firelight illuminates his slender form for half a second before the shadows swallow him whole.

I squint. His jeans are torn, but his skin is creamy and white, unmarked by embers.

Relief eases the tension from my clenched muscles, only for it to be replaced by a pounding vibration that rattles my ribcage and sends tingles into my toes. I jump, pulling my black sweater back up onto my shoulders.

Behind me, the house has come to life. Bass reverberates from the basement, shaking the glass panes of the sliding doors and intermingling with the cheers and shouts of the partygoers. A red strobe light flashes, illuminating dozens of bodies pressed together, writhing, like the many arms of some giant beast, chomping at the bit to draw me into a hug I’ll never unwind from. A girl leads her boyfriend inside, long hair swishing like a tail in her wake, wholly unconcerned.

I take a step toward it. Then another.

Come inside, the mosh pit seems to croon, in between the silky voices of Rod Wave and SZA. I square my shoulders. I will soon, I think.

I throw a glance over my shoulder toward the gravel drive. I didn’t expect the head cheerleader’s basement to look like the gates of Hell.

A warm rush of heat envelopes my body the moment I cross the threshold, and my pulse begins to pound with the beat pulsing from the speakers. It’s oddly hypnotic, the bob and weave of bodies all around me, the dexterous, clawed fingers filling cups and bottles with god knows what, and the vapor clouds blooming like rotten flowers from the corners. I think I’m smiling. I know

I laugh.

My host, a dark-haired, red-lipped beauty, presses a plastic bottle into my hand.

Even my Gatorade is red. I take a sip, and it burns on the way down, a sugary poison that shuts the door behind me, locking me in. I tilt my head back, letting the light paint my world carmine, and become one with the crowd of bodies. Song after song, dance after dance, screamed lyric after screamed lyric. A boy puts his hand on my hip, and his fingers are covered in so many silver rings they’re nearly completely metal. Or maybe his skin is iron and rust? A girl takes my hands in hers and we lift them together. She tilts her head back, and her necklaces carve lines into her throat, horizontal like gills.

She lifts a red cup to my lips. This time I don’t cough, but I do stumble.

The world tilts on its axis, and somewhere between the wall and the floor my fingers untangle from hers. My footprints are chalky smears on the carpeted floor. How funny. In this light, they’re red too.

Something solid hits my shoulder, and I tip sideways. The room spins, but I don’t make it to the safety of solid ground. Strong hands grip my biceps, and I stop. I blink, and a face swims into view.

Oh. I definitely know him.

The fullback arches a dark eyebrow, his red-tinted eyes sparkling. He cocks his head, and the chain at his neck glimmers. I think I laugh again, then grab his elbows back. A smirk carves up his face, all brown skin, dimples, and coy glee. He’s pretty. Have his teeth always been this white and sharp?

“I’m sorry,” He murmurs.

What an odd thing to say.

“You’re fine.” My mouth is filled with cotton. He jerks his head at the door—when did it come back?—and steers me toward it. His hands are warm. Too warm. I take a step, then another, and gravel crunches beneath my feet.

Dust wells up again, silver and pretty and choking.

I suck it in, laughing.

By the edge of the house, another girl crooks her finger at me, beckoning.

Sava Kunik

Hedgehogs

Vratnica, Macedonia

My son’s tractor, the airborne grasses, our neighbor’s mandolin; today, the whole village is in motion. Rainbow trout flash like fireworks. A dust devil fills a vacant lot. The day I die will be like today.

The stray Šarplaninac, unnamed, lopes by. I sit where men boast loudly behind their veils of tobacco smoke. Hedgehogs borrow our plums. Our grapes ferment themselves. Today, the whole village moves past me.

Sava Kunik is dead. The tractor idles in the overgrown grasses. The neighbor reaches for her mandolin. Children kick dust in the empty street. In the garden, a hedgehog rejects the plums.

Horsewife 2

Charcoal, 18” x 20”

Horsewife 1

Charcoal, 18” x 20”

Farther Than Where I Started

Palmetto Prize for Prose Winner

Idrive east across the Nevada desert with the windows down. The cool dawn air soothes my swollen cheek. The sky turns purple, then ripens to scarlet lined with gold. The blacktop stretches miles ahead and narrows to a single point on the horizon, an obsidian spear tip plunged into the heart of the rising Sun. Morning bleeds in, revealing the sand, shrubs, and jagged, rust-red mountains on both sides of the road. Daylight splashes across the Gideons Bible on the dashboard. I’ve never been a believer, but I figured there’s no harm in keeping it around. Just in case. I stole it from the motel room where I spent last night, but all things considered, stealing is the least harmful commandment I’ve broken within the past twenty-four hours.

By noon, heat waves distort the desert into a rippling psychedelic smear. Obscure shapes bend and waver in the distance, then congeal into a town of red brick buildings as I get closer. I drive through the main street, past the local barbershop and drugstore, and pull into a gas station attached to a Tex-Mex restaurant. I get out of the minivan and refill the tank. My husband and I thought the van was a good investment when we were expecting a child a few years back. It was a boy. Stillborn.

My husband blamed me for losing our son. He brought it up whenever we argued and turned the smallest disagreements into a reminder of my deepest trauma, like he did yesterday during a dispute over the thermostat. He shouted at me as he cracked his knuckles. Pop. Pop. Pop.

The smell of cooked meat spills from the restaurant, and my stomach growls. The last thing I ate was a Clark bar from the motel vending machine, which I threw up minutes later. I enter the restaurant and sit at a table by the window. I order a burrito. The server’s eyes linger on my bruised face as she scribbles down my order.

I stare out the window while I wait for my food. A young couple walks down the street holding hands, and I think of my husband. He called me every name in the book, but yesterday

was the first time he’d hit me. He froze after it happened, and I retreated to the bedroom. When I returned, his eyes flickered to the gun I held. He started to say something—maybe a curse or an apology—but when he took a step toward me, I didn’t wait to find out which it was. Pop.

My burrito arrives with a side of chips and salsa. I stare at the salsa, pulpy and blood-red, flecked with diced onions, the color of bone and brain matter, and suddenly I’m not hungry anymore. I ask for the check. I pay and take the road out of town northward.

By afternoon, I cross the state line into Utah, and by nightfall, I’ve passed Salt Lake City, bound for Wyoming and beyond. My headlights punch through the darkness and reflect off exit signs and mile markers, but I don’t pay them any mind. I don’t care where I’m going as long as it’s farther than where I started.

I’m so lost in thought that I don’t notice the police cruiser on the roadside until I pass by, going well over the speed limit. My heart crashes against my ribs, and the familiar, steely taste of fear floods my mouth. I glance at my rearview, waiting for the flashing red and blue lights, but the cruiser doesn’t move.

For the next several minutes, I drive five miles under the speed limit, gripping the steering wheel so tight it hurts. I keep going until I spot a vacant rest area. I pull into the parking lot and get out. I look over my shoulder, half expecting to see a fleet of police cars bearing down on me. Still nothing.

I lean against the van’s warm hood, trembling from the adrenaline, and think about the Bible on the dashboard. I wonder if it was a moment of grace or a stroke of dumb luck that I didn’t get pulled over. I conclude there’s not much difference between the two. The side of my face suddenly aches, and I’m startled by my own laughter. It ripples through the shadows and echoes off the dark corners of the lot until it sounds like it’s coming from everywhere except myself.

Green Eyed Girl

The shop’s southern plantation home exterior morphed into a Roman cathedral the moment my feet hit the polished stone floor. Tuscan columns ringed the circular showroom, walls stamped with bolts of gauze, mirrors gilded in gold, and gowns of all colors hanging like crooked eyelashes. My sister stands on a pedestal, perched delicately on bare feet like a muse for the Birth of Venus.

She has wrapped herself in emerald green and the landscape of fabric rolls and swells, hilly and uneven, like the Scottish highlands our ancestors once called home, as it pushes against

her swelling torso. Slumped against the far wall, invisible to my mother’s green eyes, I slouch — a smear of a specter. I lift my chin. I should have been a poltergeist.

Botticelli did not paint me. I am sculpted. Hewn from skin like polished marble, the slopes of my shoulders and thighs cord into flawless muscle. My green is that of palm fronds tossed in a hurricane.

Only because you run until your legs give out, the other ghosts sneer. Only because your lips are stained with the tang of mint gum, and your fingernails bloodied from teeth with nothing to chew.

My chains must rattle, for she meets my eyes in the mirror. Color be damned, two of us will be stunning, but only one will be happy. I grit my teeth. Finally, she looks at the price tag.

Unremembered

Digital Photography

Nadia Wooten

Karen Zhang

my mother is always holding a knife when i see her, and in my dreams she’s killed me twice. a starved, weak thing, i am —

we cry together, a madness inherited, screaming into the palms of our hands. i want her to love me, or leave me, except my mother doesn’t beg “please,” she holds a knife, and she doesn’t say “love,” she cuts me fruit, and it tastes like a cold moon in mid-autumn, or bittermelon, condensed into

the most unlovable parts of me, sliced so thin you could almost see through it.

A Letter to My Mother’s Mother

Ido not know your name. Your daughter has few stories to share, few pictures to show. Still, I felt your presence on those nights where she wept over the memories she kept to herself. I saw you in her tears on the days that I spoke those naive words.

“Leave me alone.”

“I don’t need you.”

“I don’t love you.”

In the years of my youth, your daughter and I would fight with a passion that silenced the house. I look back and suspect I was simply fulfilling a tradition of desperate mothers and sharptongued daughters. I imagine that you also heard those harsh words, spoken so blindly.

I wonder if she ever regrets it, as I would so deeply regret it. I wonder if I will ever know the pain she felt when she heard you were gone. I think of your daughter at the age of eighteen, feeling alone in the world without her mom. I wonder how I could be so ungrateful.

Yet I feel a sting when I arrive at the home that is no longer mine. The home that would grow silent with our anger so many years ago. The home where she loved me through it all. I feel her loss when I remember those words that I wish she would take back.

“Get out.”

“If that’s how you feel...”

“...don’t come back.”

And I wonder if she regrets it, as I so deeply do. Mother of my mother, I do not know your name. I think she is scared to say it. She misses you.

Julia Martin

Center of the Galaxy

Digital Art

We Choose to Go to the Moon

TheA/C was broken, so I left my bedroom window cracked overnight. It wasn’t usually a problem until yesterday, when an amorphous little alien slipped down between the layers of Earth’s atmosphere and slithered through the gap. Sometime before the sun came up, the alien slimed up my nose and into my brain—or so I assume. I only noticed when my alarm chirped, and instead of being inside my body, I was hanging over it.

The alien in my body turned off the alarm, tangled himself in the sheets, and tripped out of bed. He examined his (my?) fingers, then pulled off my threadbare socks and examined his (our?) toes. I tried to shout, but I’d been made good as a ghost. If the alien was aware of my presence, he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he peered into the mirror, leaning so close his nose smudged the glass. Over his shoulder, I had no reflection. All I could do was watch as he touched my face enough that I knew it would incite a future acne flare. He gaped at each eyebrow like a miracle.

The alien got into the shower. I’d forgotten to take one the day before. I mostly averted my gaze; I seldom felt ownership over the tilt of my shoulders or the spare spot at the crown of my head, and now even less so. The alien read each ingredient on the shampoo bottle. He laughed as he drank from the showerhead. Afterward, he ate a room temperature Pop-Tart and shoveled a pile of wrinkled clothes into the dryer, then put them on and hugged himself, marveling at how warm they felt against his new body. One more Pop-Tart and he was out the door, locking my apartment behind him.

At the bus stop, he pet a lady’s dog unprompted, and squealed with joy when it licked hishand. He spent the bus ride looking at people’s shoes or watching them drink coffee from Styrofoam cups, as if this dirty city bus were a museum and each passenger a fleeting piece of art. He got off at my office building.

Nikki Kershner

This raised some concern—how long had the extraterrestrial been watching me, to know about my dryer and my bus route and the appropriate time to clock in?—but I mostly felt relief, because I’d already been late to work twice this week.

My job is mostly spreadsheets, which the alien seemed adequately versed in. At the staff meeting, he examined how everyone held their pen and attempted each method in turn. No one asked his opinion on the topic at hand, but he smiled and nodded anyway. Afterward, he checked my inbox; my mom emailed a video of a deaf baby trying on hearing aids for the first time. The alien watched it four times, tears streaming down his face. I can’t remember the last time thatbody cried. Over the cubicle walls, co-workers gossiped and leaned across desks and made evening plans. I was never included, so no one included the alien. Normally it didn’t bother me, but seeing it from above caused my phantom heart to turn in on itself. The alien didn’t mind, though. He waved at everyone. They waved back with varying levels of enthusiasm.

During lunch break, someone brought sandwiches for our department, and the alien swung his feet as he ate. He picked out the onions, somehow knowing I was allergic. Later, he wandered the parking lot and pressed his palm to the hoods of sleeping cars, feeling how the sun cooked them. He crouched to examine the scrappy dandelions growing by the sidewalk, his fingertips gentle when counting the petals.

I expected him to take the bus home after work, as I usually did, but instead he walked to the nearby grocery store. An old woman squeezed avocados, searching for a ripe one, and the alien copied her, holding each one to the light. A tank of live lobsters bubbled by the seafood counter, and the alien peered through the glass, waving at their twitching antennas. I was worried he would break my bank trying to experience Earth food, but he settled on a single banana.

He peeled the banana as he walked, sometimes stopping to read store signs or observe pedestrians fidgeting at crosswalks. He plucked an abandoned newspaper from the curb and sat outside a restaurant to complete the sudoku.

Rain piddled from the overcast sky—it had rained every afternoon that week, but the alien hadn’t brought my umbrella. He stretched a hand from the awning and watched water collect in the creases of his palm. Thunder murmured, too distant to be of any concern. Cars crashed through puddles, their headlights like spilled butter.

He resumed walking, and within a few minutes his hair pasted wet to his forehead. With an ache, I realized he was heading to the bridge spanning the river. He stopped in the middle and grasped the rail, tipping his face up to meet the rain. I’d only stopped on the bridge once before. At that moment, I’d been consumed by the height of the drop and the depth of the slow, chugging water below.

Now, the alien looked toward the horizon, and I followed his gaze, suddenly desperate to see what he saw. Far away, the dripping city skyline was made of mist. Waves of rain sighed over it again and again. A single boat drifted in the river, toylike; the sailor had taken down the sail, leaving an empty mast to weather the warm summer storm.

The alien smiled and leaned forward, but it was only to feel the wind blush against his cheek.

At my apartment, he cleaned the crusted dishes piled in the sink and put my bed sheets in the wash. He microwaved leftovers and watched movie trailers on my computer. When the sheets were done, he put them back on the bed, climbed in, and went to sleep.

This morning, I’m alone in my body. I close the window and go to take a shower, where I laugh and drink from the showerhead, pretending that it’s rain.

Rosemary Matthews

Empathy Bath

Oil on Canvas, 2022, 18” x 24”

Rosemary Matthews

Votive Tree Oil on Canvas, 2022, 18” x 24”

Almond Blossom Prize for Art Winner

The Antithesis of Decay

Under the fog of a cat-eyed moon, light whispers through the canopy of leaves, rendering the forest a land metallic and lush. Its wiles slide off the slopes of the mushroom caps curled fast asleep beneath their headdresses, in dream. Revelry beckons them through the haze — only a matter of time. The first one stirs, skin combed with honey, gills threaded beneath. She preens her face to the sky, stars as pupils in nocturnal eyes. A toe descends into the soil. She pirouettes on fresh rot. Her cap a pendulum with every twirl. More noses twitch, lips part with yawns carved from expectation. The ringless awake on undulating limbs. Steady, the night dawns.

Binocolo

Digital Photography

Harbinger

Cowboys in business suits shaded their eyes from the rain and the sun as you wrote to me, urban melancholy speckling Houston’s southern charm. Ambivalent about the change,

you didn’t know if you’d fit the Western air, but magnolias seemed less dead than Spanish moss, and big-city life trumped the one we briefly shared, wrapping ourselves in gray bed sheets on mornings when the sun felt so small it barely broke through slanted shades. As I pondered your email, I imagined you still asleep under sheets that smelled like me instead of you. Your face was older in the shade of thunderstorms through the blinds. We’ve come to learn magnolias die too, but not in daydreams, not yours, not mine.

Photography, 35 mm

Raspberry is Ripest in July

Mary Kate Farrell

The Waves

Hehad meant to wave back, had thought to raise his arm in that minimally fraternal gesture, and had even jerked his shoulder forward to begin the motion. It would have been his first wave in months. Well, his first to a friend, anyway. He had waved to cousins and aunts, grandpas and uncles, houses and boats, cities and countries, as is customary of a summer break. On top of that, he had let his feet dangle over the cliffs of Dover, had gotten into a shouting contest with his father for the first time, had fallen into the white waters of Banff, and spit out with spiteful haste. Confidence had not miraculously blossomed within him. He knew he was not an entirely new person, not by any means. But had there been nothing? No change at all? His final year of college was a night, a day, and another night away, and he had not hoped to extinguish the flames of his social anxiety—only to cool down their burn a little.

Yet he could not bring himself to do something as simple as a wave to Jack that Saturday morning. His jerk of the shoulder and twist of the left cheek at best communicated a hurried attempt at acknowledgment and, at worst, showed a nervous twitch interrupted by a fierce coffee-induced cramp of the abdomen. And though he knew it to be a mix of both, what Jack had interpreted it as, oh, that was the worry.

His first instinct was to call Mom. She’d tell him what he wanted to hear. She’d throw in the right number of platitudes, assurances, and cutesy nicknames (her new one was Lovely, as in: ‘give me a kiss, Lovely,’ ‘Lovely, bring me some toilet paper,’ ‘you’re going to make a great therapist, Lovely’). It was virtually a reflex now: touch the uvula and you’ll gag, hit your knee and it’ll jerk, embarrass yourself and you’ll be on the phone with Mom before you know it. It was foolproof, too. She knew him too well not to ease his worries. But the case of beer sitting in shotgun had stalled his motions. Yes, that morning went: a beer run, a quick tour around campus, a fit of sneezes, and a swallowing of Allegra

pills; it was a smooth, subconscious series of motions that unraveled his Saturday before him like a neat, orderly line of yarn. To go home and cut the yarn as he entered his apartment door, to be free of the ties of the outside, had seemed not a likelihood but an inevitability. He usually hated being here, in what his kid sister referred to as ‘College Town,’ but so far so good. Up to the point of throwing his head back to swallow those Allegra pills, anyway. As his head turned from the heavens to the earth and his eyes moved from the car’s ceiling to the road in front of it, a face met his own. And that made all the difference.

Prosopagnosia was a bit of a stretch; few faces back home ever evaded his memory. Few faces had ever lost the names attached to them before he came to university. In high school, he had held great prejudice against teachers who still forgot his name in week three; only a propensity for laziness and blockishness could explain these failures, for he sucked up names and faces with great ease in those days. If his sixteen-year-old self had seen this happen, oh, who knows what he would’ve said? ‘You forgot your roommate’s name from freshman year? The one you lived with for nine months of quarantine? He said he’d invite you to his wedding, for God’s sake, even hinted at making you a groomsman! And you can’t remember his name?’ No, his name came to him now. Jack Finnegan Walker. 5’11. Favorite food: Neapolitan ice cream. Favorite show: Bones. Favorite Celebrity: Shaq. Regarding Jack Walker lore, he ranked within the 99th percentile.

So how was it, when the Allegra went down his throat and his eyes back to the road, he could not remember his friend’s name for the life of him? Dunbar’s number said he fit comfortably within the range of friendships he ought to possess (though, with the inclusion of fictional characters, Jack likely floated around the border—maybe even on the outside of it). To call out to Jack was his first instinct, rolling down the window his first thought. Halfway down, before his mind could recollect the boy’s name, his vocal cords took aim; a croak of saliva was all they could elicit. Standing beside his bike, right hand draped lazily over the handlebar, stretching a slow, methodical stretch, Jack looked no less Jack than he had ever before. Yet the mind had drawn a blank, and the overly eager vocal cords were forced to cough out a series of phonemes far from those of the English language, much less his freshman roommate’s name.

His next thought was to roll the window up and take off. Panic tightened his chest, embarrassment reddened already ruddy cheeks. No, this was not his first time doing this: he had done it to that sorority girl from his biology lab, mistook Sarah for Sierra. He had done this to his freshman RA a handful of times, too: calls of Frank, Forrest, and Phillip had all berated the poor guy’s back throughout that awkward first year. The RA’s name would not even come to him now, for whatever silhouette of a mark he had left in his memory would forever be overshadowed by the embarrassment their interactions bred. Jack did not fit in this category of vague intimacy, though: he knew Jack, knew him well, or at least well enough to remember his name, he thought. Embarrassment was the norm for these interactions, but it did not get the slightest foothold in his chest before shame began bursting at its seams. Without checking his surroundings or mirrors, he put the car in reverse, ran the university stop sign, and attempted to speed through the pedestrian-littered path as though it were a cop-less freeway. Then, by what he was convinced was the universe’s will to punish him as swiftly and fittingly as his digression permitted, he was forced to slam his foot on the brakes for a student two steps into the crosswalk.

Jack flinched. He foolishly waved him on. Halfway through the crosswalk, Jack thought he recognized the face behind the wheel, waved at it with warmth and familiarity. From the driver’s seat, he returned the gesture with a jerk of the shoulder, an elevation of the hand to chin height, and then a swift collapse of the limb as shame pulled the entirety of his body deeper into the driver’s seat. Jack looked at him funny for a second, nose contracted, lips tucked in, likely thinking he mistook the face behind the wheel for another, then quickly walked off the crosswalk. The whole ordeal took about three seconds. He had been sitting in the car for twenty minutes and counting now, the afterimage of Jack’s figure burned into his retinas.

His mother had been a speed-dial away as he pulled into the driveway.

But he had left his phone underneath the beer case, and its proximity forced another wave of shame to come over him. It stacked itself clumsily atop the initial shame much like a mind-boggling Tetris move, and soon he felt its final block stuck firmly within his windpipe, forcing fits of thin, exaggerated breaths that took in air with a cruel frugality.

It had been his first beer run ever, for he had turned 21 four days ago. He did not want to pair this memory with the weakness he was currently exhibiting. Social anxiety was a thing of his elementary days, and even then, throughout those messy adolescent years, he’d called Mom only a handful of times to calm his nerves. Yet he had already phoned her the night before, when he had been a muddled mess in need of sorting due to the mighty challenges of deciding what class he might drop and figuring out which parking spot decal he might buy. He felt weak. Beyond weak. Marissa had been talking about raising children together the other day; how could he take care of someone entirely reliant on him when he couldn’t even take care of himself? With all this in mind, he left his phone beneath the beers, closed his eyes, and tightened every voluntary muscle in his body, praying the dark, tight existence might throw him a pitiful Hail Mary, be it a bout of retrograde amnesia or moderate internal organ failure.

Then his phone buzzed and he scooped it up. Someone had texted him.

“Saw you on campus today, good seeing you again! Would you want to go bowling or something sometime this week? Meant to ask earlier but I was in a rush to the bathroom, had too much coffee this morning lol.” An emoticon of a boy waving concluded the message.

And so, within that parked car, a miracle occurred as shame and anxiety bore the beautiful child of relief. His Saturday morning had somehow been salvaged.

Unsigned List

1. Tell people your real age.

2. Tell your parents that you changed your major two semesters ago. Bright Futures was less than thrilled.

3. Quit buying DVDs. You have enough, and your roommates are starting to get worried.

4. Pay off that speeding ticket before it brings down your credit score.

5. Start saving for a house. Homeowners don’t have loud upstairs neighbors

6. Why aren’t you satisfied with your girlfriend? Ask your friends; they have plenty to say about your love life.

7. Don’t listen to your friends. What do they know about love?

8. Stop trying to read Moby Dick. The whale kills Captain Ahab and his crew. Watch Jaws instead.

9. Get your friends to buy you a vape. They’re better at convincing the guy behind the counter that nineteen is legal enough.

10. Get into the family storage unit and find your homemade time capsule. You hid it four years ago, and you’ve honestly forgotten what’s in it.

11. Floss every day. Not with your tongue or fingers.

12. Tell your girlfriend how you feel. If you don’t break up with her now, you’ll be a forty-something in a dead-end marriage with kids you don’t want — with kids you never want.

13. Stop telling people about the time you were chased down by the sheriff’s department in North Carolina. It’s not as quirky as you think. People have started to think you’re a drug dealer.

14. Commit to talking with people. With human people. Stop quietly sitting in the corner listening to your music.

15. Go into your desk and pull out the photo album. Look through it. Pick your ten favorite pictures and remember a time when you were actually happy.

16. Start cooking again. Sandwiches and frozen meals can only take you so far.

17. Start smiling more. People get unnerved when you just look at them. They think you’re either angry or depressed and telling people you have Resting Bitch Face doesn’t help.

18. Get new underwear. The only pairs you have left are full of holes. Buy some from Walmart; no need to get the expensive brand.

19. Stop telling people you name your banana bread before consumption. The Division of Student Life notified your therapist. He has a lot of questions.

20. Showers are an everyday occurrence, not a biweekly event.

21. The microwave isn’t your friend. Remind yourself about the time you almost burned down your parents’ house.

22. Soap is not deodorant. Mint gum is not toothpaste.

23. Look into buying a dishwasher. Spit-shining doesn’t save as much time as you thought.

24. Get free condoms from the Student Health Center. Stare at the woman behind the counter as you do it. Look her in the eye. Who is she to judge?

25. Stop drinking. Both by yourself and when you’re with friends. You’ve been enjoying it a little too much.

26. Appreciate your straight posture, your growing hair, and your hazel eyes that people confuse for brown.

27. Practice abstinence. You aren’t ready to raise a child; they would probably grow up to be the next Son of Sam.

Padme

Photography, Canon AE-1 using Kodak Ultramax 400

Vermin

Blackbird Prize for Poetry Winner

I feel estranged — so strange those days were burdened like St. Anthony. I bore the weight of all my sins: drugs, demons, & misanthropy on half-waked rides — the RTS to 13th and Delancey street dull-eyed abundant advertisements claim they’re understanding me, or championed me, could pamper me, if I deigned them stomp their stamp on me but I was oversigilized. I was already branded, see: the enmossed roots, and gnarled fruit plucked post-harvest off my family tree. All icons of decay, my own conveyed in them, synecdoche relayed — clearly displayed to me all dawning providentially Tho’ God was dead, that death may die after leagues & aeons strange & I saw my vulgarity with clarity... now as I stumble by like a can on the street my prayers are the scuffing sound of soul on concrete.