The Aster Review Volume V by The Aster Review

The Aster Review

Volume V

2020 - 2022

The Aster Review A LITERARY & ARTS JOURNAL

Volume V // 2020-2022

Staff Editor-in-Chief Alex Crayon

Senior Editor

Managing Editor

Kelly Chong

Hannah Morris-Voth

Chief Financial Officer Abigail Clarke

Communications Chair MT Anthony

Editorial Board Brennan Clifton Alexa Fuson Getty Hesse Jaylen Jones

Max Kriegel Eleanor Mendelson Bridget Parmenter

Cover Image Cowgirl Vortex by Avery Holmes

Interior Layout and Design Abigail Clarke

University of Oklahoma 630 Parrington Oval Norman, OK 73019

Contents POETRY 07 08 14 17 18 26 31 43 46 60 65 75 76 81

PROSE 20 38 50 68 82

PHOTOGRAPHY 04 10 16 24 32 37 41 45 49 62 67 73

77 Suburban Snow Day | Jewel Thompson 87 Corner Coffeeshop | Jewel Thompson

VISUAL ART 03 06 08 12 15 19 27 28 29 30 34 35 36 42 44 48 59 61 63 64 66 69 70 72 74 78 79 83

Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, As someone with a renowned penchant for overthinking the names of things, I want to use this short space to complicate the name of this magazine. The Aster Review is named after a large purple flower—one which our previous editor-in-chief and resident superhuman Julie Bahr eloquently tied into our last issue’s Editor’s Note. But, recently, I came across a word that, I feel, adds another important layer to our magazine’s name and implicates The Aster’s mission: asterism. An asterism is a small group of stars, often part of a constellation. For example, the Big Dipper is an asterism made up of the seven brightest stars in the Ursa Major constellation. But what do stars and spoons and bears have to do with a student-run literary and arts magazine? As we return to a day-to-day routine that more closely resembles our pre-pandemic habits, we cannot forget the asterisms—the groups of stars—that have helped us navigate the still-ongoing Covid-19 crisis. For me, this editorial board is certainly one of them. And, as an organization, we want to be the stars that can shine the light onto the creative community at OU. Our board is an asterism—our contributors are an asterism—our wonderful parent organization World Literature Today is an asterism— and all these groups of stars, we at The Aster hope, will become a constellation of artists and writers, stretching across our campus and illuminating the creativity that students at OU too often hide from the light. Is it cliché? Very. Is it true? Absolutely. Sharing one’s creative work is an incredibly vulnerable undertaking, so I want to take part of this rambling Editor’s Note to thank all of our contributors—those whose work appears in the pages of this issue, and those whose work did not find a home in this volume of The Aster Review. I appreciate all of you, and I am incredibly proud of all of you—and of the magazine that we’ve curated here, showcasing the diversity and creativity that shines at OU. So, dear reader, bloom like a flower or shine like a star. As we continue to be resilient in the face of the adversity of the last few years, we at The Aster want to remind you that beauty—that writing—that art—that too many em dashes—that all of the wonderful creation present in this magazine began, like a flower, as a seed, or like a star, as a pinprick in the universe. And it grew and grew and grew. I hope that this volume of The Aster Review reminds you, as we start to come back together, as we start to bridge the physical and social gaps created by Covid-19, to cultivate and embrace your asterisms—to shine with those closest to you, to create, and to be together, beautifully.

Alex Crayon

2022

Self Chloe Ulm Screenprint

Borders Jacob Meves

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Hidden Liza Martin Oil on canvas

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like poem

William Elwood Madden

our gazes scrape together softly, like sun-warmed beach stones and the patter of your presence wets the day like rain.

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Best of Poetry

disciple of sappho in four parts Emily Tucker

“Towering is the Lesbian singer compared to those in other lands.” [106] I. Longing sweet silver hair, warmth irradiates from a gleaming slender-ankled girl, who long for me in a “robe colored with saffron” [92] II. Dreaming honey-lipped ancients sing hymns of our holy love flowers in your dress grown from the earth of your mouth has anyone but i ever swallowed soil so sweet? , you bury me in Aphrodite’s lavender robes “I compare you to blond Helen.” [23]

III. Ringing bells scream laughter, breathes the music of our kisses clanging echoes of heaven crashing hands, metallic angels my ear is yours with the rest of me, darling if you’ll have it “Sappho, why ignore Aphroditi rich in blessings?” [133b] IV. Singing my voice an offering, my lyrics embrace coils of smoke drifting between our lips incense of honey and lavender i go hoarse you lovely ursula i, your stolen sappho, fields of lavender “to eros, you burn us.” [38]

Nora, the Submarine Girl Liza Martin Oil on canvas

As Still as the Sea Jordan Lanoue

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Grieving Woman Christy Phelps Ceramic sculpture on granite base

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7:24 a.m., September 20th, 2018

Grace Wu

This morning I breathe in the vapors from my tea and sigh And look over at my sleeping roommate, hoping to categorize and name The swell of warmth in me that rises when I am about to fall asleep, That colors my cheeks, forgives my transgressions— I know it must be love. For now I find love in the most casual instances. It is unobtrusive and patient. In order to name it properly, what I need is to step on the brakes and let myself remember Why falling leaves flirt as they do, why the pavement heats and dries Why the dryness of my parched mouth can be relieved with water, and Why the journey to forgiveness doesn’t need to be grand or sweep Down the stairs and stun me: why I need that forgiveness To be as plain and quiet as the dark days I spent working for it. Yet I think perhaps that love is a thing that actually has and needs no other name. I think the girl who invited me to lunch anytime knows it Better than anyone; but then again, so do the girls Who are earnest and sympathetic and all ears If I ever need help (which I’ve finally sought), And so do the smiles that form from the helping men and women Who find no strangeness in my stumbling oddities. Everyone seems to know what love is even in its elusivity, In its seal-like sleekness, oil the color of honey on cool fingers, And in its nameless mundanity when it is just the soft click of a hall door, And even in its gentle seeping from the faults in their hearts Until it colors all the sleepy views from beyond my neat blinds.

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Woman at Peace Christy Phelps Ceramic sculpture on marble base

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In a Glass

Alayna Weldon

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Dime Veil Hannah Morris-Voth

Shaft of cerise blush, phacelia silt scent soft. Hushed lullabies ease. You dive down river – Pull your wishes out of there: that silver dime veil. Mud chemise, ash tears – a funeral procession for the drowned poet.

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The Move Grace Wu

This house is shadowed prints, squares from picture frames, nails screwed in and out, streaks from adhesives. This is where we once shut windows and held children never did anything about innocent crayon trails looked at chipped marble countertops and sighed. Now damp circles from flowerpots are stubborn on windowsills, settlements of dust hidden under furniture lay smug on carpets. Our gazes linger on doorknobs, repainted walls, window panes that rattled in the wind, slow-spinning fans. This is where we opened doors and released our youth remembered layers of sleep and well-loved laughter listened to past voices in still nights and cried. Now water rings blotch on the ceiling and in our dilated pupils, buried towers of memories sit quiet and accepting within yellowed pictures. Today is the day we fold ourselves into boxes, pack our trinkets and loose edges into new vehicles. The movers stack us and our belongings one by one, wall to wall while our hearts expand, filling the emptied rooms until we round the corner and the house is out of sight. Until our chests deflate with our goodbyes, and all of the words we have spilled and all of the ones we wished we had said during the wasted years now curling out from our old home.

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Still Life with Split Composition Alyssa Campbell Acrylic on paper

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Dear Cabool Alex Crayon

Dear Cabool, I was a young boy who visited you once a year at Thanksgivingtime. Each time I visited you, Cabool, I felt a bit younger, a bit more helpless, a bit more aware of your strange and sedated magnetism. You were a proud-of-the-Confederate-flag town whose breath tasted like cigarette smoke and peeling paint and empty churches. You crouched in the hills of Southeastern Missouri and provided lonely people a quaint, quiet place to die. Your latent malaise reached from the cracks in your aging asphalt and curled its fingers around my neck whenever I crossed your ghostly borders. Then that sluggish dread curdled in my stomach and climbed up my throat and my parents turned the minivan onto that crumbling street and we approached that house. Cabool, you were always just that house to me. That dusty-white brick, that flaking-green trim, that long-winding driveway. That square, untrimmed hedge wrapping the house like a slumbering python. That looming doorway with flower pot sentinels. That gold doorknocker rubbed silver with time. That peculiar gravity which funneled me toward the door, which screamed at me not to take another step. That’s all you ever were to me, Cabool. That house. You were my grandparents’ house then my grandfather’s house then nowhere. On the couch there were fish pillows. Two of them, one burnt orange and one juniper green. I don’t remember what kind of fish they were, but my grandfather told me once, sometime. Funny, the things I remember and forget about you, Cabool. I remember stepping into that house—the first thing I saw was the piano. A faded upright piano with dull-white keys and a bench whose cushion slumped, weathered by disuse. I used 20

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to sit there, at the piano. There was never any sheet music. I banged on the keys and flittered my fingers up and down discordant scales, until a gruff New York voice yelled at me from the kitchen. So I stopped. And when I started playing again, years later, I learned the right notes. But the piano was gone by then. I don’t think beautiful music would have penetrated your desiccating heart, Cabool. You would have opened your maw wide and swallowed each note as you swallowed every other beautiful thing which dared enter your domain. I can hear the notes now—spiraling into silence—quieter and quieter and quieter and—gone. I’m glad I never played for you, Cabool. I’ll keep that music for myself. I remember the Raggedy Ann doll perched in the cubby-hole beside the boxy television. Its mop of red hair stuck up wildly, as though struck by lightning. Its round black eyes peered into the living room, where I sat with my mother and my father and my grandfather and my grandmother; then my mother and my father and my grandfather; then my father and my grandfather. Then no one. I wonder if Raggedy Ann is still there, still watching over you, Cabool. Surely you both heard the voices—two policemen in the room—a Kansas City sergeant and a retired New York lieutenant who would soon die before his son could outrank him—my grandfather lounging in that damned cracked-brown leather recliner with those plastic tubes reaching into his nostrils like living, searching tendrils, and my father sitting on the couch beside those fish pillows, those damned fish pillows. My grandfather sunk further into that recliner while he talked tough to his son who was by now fifty years old. He told my father to be harder on me, told him that I could use a smack upside the head once in a while. Then he turned to me and told me with the last words he ever spoke to my ears: “You need to eat more, Alex. And if you’re ever in a fight, step on the other guy’s toes and punch him in the nose. The bleeding,” he said. “The bleeding will distract him enough for you to take him out.” I think he got this advice from you, Cabool. For this is what you did to people—you disoriented them; you grabbed ahold of them; you took them out—out to pasture, out of sight. I remember that my grandfather left meat scraps out for your crows. He carved a shallow pit into your ground, Cabool, at the edge of your sparse forest which marked the end of that house’s backyard. He dropped the undevoured fatty flesh into that pit Volume V

ringed with rusty corrugated metal, that pit where the crows quickly descended to feast on those things which we did not ourselves consume. Sometimes I felt like the meat in that pit. How much of me, how much of my family, did you consume, Cabool? I remember the dog but not its name—Jemima, maybe—I think it was Jemima—a nervous phantom who flitted around the house and yipped with mourning because Jemima outlived her, my grandmother; the dog was all that was left besides the lingering smell of cigarettes and the now-empty seat at the Thanksgiving table. Sometimes I think that my grandfather wanted to feed Jemima to the crows. Sometimes I think he did. Or did he feed Jemima to you, Cabool? Did he toss that dog down your gullet, into your down-home black hole which takes and takes and never gives but to feed the weedy cemetery? One visit, Jemima was gone. That’s all I know for sure. I remember the fragile, faery sound of the wind chimes on the covered porch; I remember the cold wind at the edge of your forest; I remember gathering your fallen branches with my father for his father. The oxygen tank inside that house scraped the wooden floor in discordant harmony with my grandfather’s wheezing, labored breaths. My grandmother had long since passed. I remember asking, “Why don’t we visit Grandpa very often?” and hearing in my father’s hushed response that undercurrent of fear which stung his voice whenever he spoke of his father—and—under that a regret—a sincere hope not to be like his father—not to become him—I recognize it, because I hear it in my voice too. Cabool, what did your voice sound like? Your Siren song lured so many away, away and away and away, into your tiny town and down that crumbing street and into that house until they became nowhere, too. I remember the books—so many beautiful books—leatherbound and golden-lettered and packed into wooden shelves in that house—which I discovered in the infancy of my passion for literature. I wanted to take one, I remember. I wanted to take one away from you, Cabool. But my father told me not to touch them. He told me it was important for them to stay together. He looked at my mother, then. I think he did. Cabool, did you know how easily you rip and tear and separate? You were the first crack in an earthquake. You liked to begin and watch others end. You were not New York, not the land of my grandparents’ 22

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birth, not the land of movement and light and rudeness and potential. You were a place to languish and perish and not make a sound. You were all quietness and faux-peace, just a façade for the creeping certainty that those who lived in Cabool never ever left. I remember I remember I remember. What, Cabool, have I forgotten about you? I have one of the fish pillows, now. It’s in my closet and its name is Robert. That was my grandfather’s name. Its eyes are glassy and dead and I don’t think I want it in my closet anymore. I haven’t been to see you in a while, Cabool. I don’t think I’ll ever come back. No longer yours, Alex

Volume V

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Sean Harrison Alayna Weldon

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Waterfall

William Elwood Madden

I remember middle school atomic structure addiction. It was a fun little fling until I learned how knowledge is only a door opened to a hallway, at the end of which lies another door. Eight years later, I’m still wandering. And they call it derealization but it hits like a realization. Like when you realize you’re in the movie theater instead of in the movie. Like when the windshield becomes the mouth of a consciousness that swallows. Consciousness a flimsy origami hungry for no reason. The brain, its hands creasing consciousness as told by written instruction in the instruction book. What I wouldn’t give to read the instruction book. The instruction book a door. Everything, on its hinges. I am slamming surge against the surface (moments) buckle, froth disgorging– when I sing I am pleading for something unshakeable to break, heaving onto. (does the waterfall rejoice, dominating the lake, or does it beg not to drown so invariably ?)

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Oh No, Shapes! Alyssa Campbell MIxed media with gouache, pen, and watercolor

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Sleeping with the Fishes Alyssa Campbell Mixed media with acrylic paint, gouache, pen, ink, and collage

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Best of Visual Art

Actions Have Consequences Ryan Godfrey Embroidery on face masks

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Demons Chloe Ulm Mixed media with graphite, ink, colored pencil, and gel pen

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Social Anxiety William Elwood Madden

Inside my chest there’s a grassfireful of live cicadas. Can you hear them burning? Oh god, if only a scream could empty. Then I would be the translucent husk clinging to your awning, nothing left of me but love.

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Natural Contemplation

Best of Photography Chris Fisher

HEALING GARDEN CONCEPT Peyton Kroh

The goal of the healing garden is to create a retreat from the outside world. Connections with nature can help reduce stress, healing the body and mind. This healing garden’s form takes inspiration from brain wave patterns: the stream at the entrance to the garden takes the form of more jagged gamma waves and eventually relaxes into the easier shapes of theta or delta waves. The spaces of the garden also correspond to the wave pattern, transitioning from spaces for activity and socializing to quieter, private and contemplative spaces such as a sensory garden.

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WICHITA ROCK GARDEN Peyton Kroh

This conceptual garden design was inspired by the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Oklahoma and is intended to be a pocket of native Oklahoma landscape. Its basic form was influenced by the changes in elevation at the actual Wichita mountains, in this case on a much smaller scale. The garden’s shape is formed by gabion wall encircled “mountains” which provide levels to climb, sit and play.

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More than Mona Grayson Wise Digital drawing

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Natural Frame Jewel Thompson

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A Glimmering Uncertainty Hannah Morris-Voth

Christmas, 1969 Everyone’s gone home now, or to bed—the small narrow beds called freedom, enveloped in blankets that make a joke of warmth. Light filters in through the still-open curtains. Curtains stolen from some back alley shop, but they’re nice, elegant, wine-red and rather thick. The girl’s champagne glasses standing on the windowsill bend the streetlight, he sees the faint trace of lipstick on them—bright red, burgundy, pink… Not from Biba, but masquerading as such. There’s no money for such things. Not even for heat. David shivers, the night settling around him, cold and empty. The party had been a gas, great fun and all, and yet, still there in some part of him, was a horrible gaping. Some great chasm between him and everyone else. And he couldn’t cross it. Not all night, not for hours, even as the wine and spirits kept flowing, as he drank and drank and drank… He wraps his thin fingers, his sinewy arms, around his legs, grasping his knees. Curled in on himself on the ratty couch, he listens to the traffic outside—not much, not at this time of night and with the holidays. Everyone’s at home, with family. Perhaps still up or perhaps sleeping peacefully, comfortable around those they love, who care. A tear comes trickling down his cheek and he brushes it away. He doesn’t want to cry. He only wants to sit here, in the silence, and escape into the darkness. Loneliness is a strange comfort itself, the tight hug of a familiar friend, and isolation even a better one. No worries then. No watching oneself, no worrying about being found out. Found out to be a fraud—in everything, really, because there’s not one thing he hasn’t lied about, is there? Love and family and talent. A real poseur he has become, isn’t that so? But—no… and no, and no.

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A drink? Something to cloud the mind? He shivers again, winter’s fingers tracing over his narrow spine, his elvish neck, that fairy face. His feet are bare and nearly frozen, but he’s not getting up. He won’t get up, caught here in the night’s shadow. There were lovely presents tonight, too. Fashionable jewellery, scarves, all that. New guitar picks and drumming sticks for Roger—in a storybook they’d all come out like some galant marching band, wouldn’t they? The girl’s becoming pretty dolls and all of them coming down the town’s cobbled streets, cheeks red and eyes merry… Maybe it’ll come true, one of these days—a year, two years, five. He’ll find a girl he likes, truly likes, and kissing her won’t feel as if he’s tearing himself to bits, as if he’s on the cliff-edge of absolute destruction. Wishes and wishes and wishes. His birthday is a long way off and they haven’t any candles to blow out. The most he can do is form a resolution—less than a week to the New Year, a couple of days left to indulge his vice. And then—sworn off. No more. He’ll be different, better, normal. His breath catches and he feels sick. His head is spinning. The darkness even seems to be glimmering. Just the tears, only weeping. No one can see here, but that doesn’t make it better. Only more familiar. Isn’t this how it always is? For him, there is no lasting happiness—somewhere there’s a reminder of his inadequacy, his constant failing, and then he’s shattered all over again. Light breaks into the thick black, startling him, as a bedroom door opens and closes. Feet padding… a step he recognises now, after hearing it so often. He tried to nestle further into shadow. He’s gone out, that’s it, isn’t even home… please don’t see – “David, you still up? David?” Roger’s voice is a whisper, carefully quiet enough to not wake the others, but it’s edged with something. Worry, perhaps? Annoyance—more likely. “Yes, love. Couldn’t sleep.” His voice is steady, thank Heaven. No tears to be heard here, no throat tight with hurt and fear. Volume V

“Ah, well, goodnight.” A pause. The shuffle of feet. Perhaps Roger would… “Night, dear.” The door shuts, the light is extinguished. The dark glimmers again. Nearer and nearer. Strange things can emerge from a night like this—phantoms, ghosts, the disturbing, convincing white wisps of air. A cigarette nicked and lit—a slight glow, the wreath of smoke. Only imagination, he hasn’t even a fag to keep him warm. The night drags on, on and on. His mind stills itself, and bits of imagery come—a drawing, a painting, works of art. Then music, a chord progression, a stray lyric. He doesn’t write anything down. Nothing materialises in the hours that pass. Nothing needs to, though. Only the reassurance of silence, of being unbothered. He can weep, if he wishes, or he can sigh, or he can do nothing at all. Some time, he opens the curtain and the streetlight floods in. The room is grey now and the shadows have more contrast. His heart is heavy, his soul darkened. There’s truth in feeling it so acutely, in not covering it over with the fanciful flights of daily life. Hurting is fine, now. For a few hours it isn’t something to run from, it’s something to embrace. The dawn joins the artificial light—a black sky turning royal blue, then lavender. Some deity swirling his coat across the heavens. Something like that. We are but at the mercy of some power rolling the dice. It could end tomorrow, or in a few hours, the sun exploding just as someone’s clock chimes the work-weary nine a.m. Unsteady yourself, only for a moment, and slip into uncertainty. How long have you got? How long… and then, how long?

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Keeping Dry Jewel Thompson

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Meteor Shower

Alondra Perez Acrylic on canvas

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It's a Riot! Corbin Shaffer

These tragedies are my history I feel you, tumbling down through my irises As bloodshot comets shoot fires over Lawrence, Kansas Our spines intertwine and crumble into concrete Our lungs, coated with asbestos dust choke on the words of our grandfathers I hate that we live here together Forced to share the same arteries as they spill over the plains Suckling off the flesh of the Cherokee You flash your sardonic grin Granite teeth gnash and grind the dreams of a million young souls into a new dust bowl Swallow my memories Rob me of my morals Make me a junkie to my own god Strip me clean of all my sorrows Blend me together, with struggling hands of broken nails and cut knuckles Let’s clean the linoleum floors with our saliva Show me your velvet muscles I love the sound they make as they crush your bruised, crackled skin Let us rejoice and sing of riots on our own shores Tell me when you can’t love me anymore Kiss me please So our flesh can stitch together With yellowed ooze And shattered, coffee-stained sockets As we claw the dirt towards a new world order Screaming I love ya, doomed spunk!

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Half Price Drinks from 2-4 Ryan Godfrey Embroidery with Styrofoam and plastic

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Written in the Stars Jacob Meves

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The Heart of Heart Mountain PK Kaya I. A sandy-haired, freckle faced boy in my class does not think history should affect politics in the contemporary age. The next breath I take in is quick; it slips like a serpent sliding unbeknownst into its faithful, underground nest. II. Calloused, caramel colored palms

peel the webbing off an orange.

Pass a slice to my back car seat As we wait in a school parking lot. Pop it between teeth. Bite down.

The action is sweeter than words.

III. My father speaks his love in the ziplocs of homemade mochi, cheese sandwiches, grapes, and pocky he hands over before a journey. No explanation necessary, except for, “I packed some sandwiches. They’re in your bag. Drive safe.” He professes his love in his iconic, sarcastic, one-word replies. In the folded laundry I find immaculately packed in my overnight bags; prepared for their journey back to the cacophony of crumbs, plastic bags, and dirty towels that is my dorm.

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IV. The “emotionless Asian Father” stereotype is not true for me.

Not fully, not wholly, as it is for many.

My father is the voice of the Heart Mountain grandchildren. He is austerity and love, hope and resilience.

Preservation.

He, in his calloused hands and observant eyes, In his set jaw and bright mind is the echoed heart

of all the sansei.

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Sofía

Liza Martin Oil on canvas

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Dunes Jacob Meves

Got Your Nose Best of Prose Alex Crayon

Prologue: The First Two Sentences Introduce the Conflict Martin decided that the de-nosing hadn’t been altogether horrible. After all, being immobilized for hours while a mechanized nail-file slowly scraped his nose from his face had given him ample time to consider his current predicament. Part One: Some Necessary Contextual Information Martin resided within the walled metropolis-state of Lirtson, where citizens’ entire livelihoods depended on a single sociopolitical criterion: SchnozRank. Each denizen of Lirtson received their SchnozRank based solely on the perceived quality and beauty of their nose. The Lirtson elites had elegant noses of no particular definition; those whose snouts grew unintelligibly otherwise were considered the dregs of this nose-centric (and at times, nose-tantric) society. God-King Steve the Olfactorius ruled Lirtson with benevolent power and the occasional sudden, state-sanctioned execution. His infallible authority sprung from his Nose of Legend—perfect, immaculate, magnificent, and impossible to behold by mortals—which always ranked #1 in SchnozRank. Rumors occasionally surfaced that the God-King’s nose was somehow flawed, that someone else had attained the rank of #1; but these blasphemies were quickly snuffed out by the Enforcement Squad, who protected the realm of Lirtson and its ancient, immutable traditions. They displayed the hacked-off noses of these anti-state actors on street corners. “But these noses never last long, though,” Martin interjected as the mechanized nail-file slowly backed away from his bloodied face. “Black market dealers filch these lonely snouts from their displays and smuggle them outside the Tall Wall, where the Noseless live. I’m hoping to buy one myself, to save face.” Before his de-nosing, Martin had enjoyed a comfortable upper-class life. His SchnozRank had been #76,668 out of a possible 667,437. He had lived in a large home on the wealthier side of Lirtson and far from the Round Door, the portal to that cesspool of disgrace where the Noseless squatted in squalor. He had married a woman named Patricia, whose SchnozRank was 50

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#2325 at the time of their marriage. His family had commended his meteoric climb up the societal ladder before Patricia had fallen down the stairs; her SchnozRank plummeted along with her, and her broken nose dropped her SchnozRank to #266,437. Reconstructive surgery repaired her nose and her reputation somewhat, but her SchnozRank was irreparably damaged. At the weekly NoScan at City Hall, the Examiners poked and prodded and detected the silicone which had restored her nose’s graceful slope. Martin, along with every citizen of Lirtson, had displayed his SchnozRank on his left wrist. A small screen implanted just below the skin had displayed the bright square identification number like a shining tattoo. The SchnozRank updated itself with every birth and death, injury and surgery, accident and purposeful removal in Lirtston. It was common for a Lirtsonite to have their SchnozRank fluctuate in a range of up to 1,000 ranking spots throughout their lifetime. Now, Martin’s screen was dark. His SchnozRank—along with every right and privilege afforded him as a citizen of Lirtson—had disappeared. He had been deemed a threat to national security for an Unspecified Crime; the Enforcement Squad had done their vague duty and brought him to the bowels of the National Prison for Corrective Treatment. Instead of hurried, hacking removal, Martin had received the special, torturous treatment given to upper-class subversives: The Deluxe Package. His fine nose had been slowly grated off so that it could not be sold to, and sewn onto, a Noseless. “They’re—we’re—like the Untouchables in the real-world Indian caste system,” Martin explained. He staggered toward the heavy wooden door where a prison guard waited to escort him from the torture-chamber. Blood dripped from the smoothly chafed center of his face. “But, reader, normal human society does not exist within the walls of Lirtson. Whether that is a convenient fictional device employed by the author or a harsh reality of totalitarian rule is yours to decide.” Part Two: A Conversation with No Relevance to the Plot Martin and the prison guard walked side-by-side in silence. The long, dim tunnel seemed to stretch for eternity, the darkness interrupted only by the occasional scented candle lit along the Volume V

passageway. “Hey, Voldemort,” the prison guard said, failing to stifle a giggle. “Need a tissue?” “Yeah, actually, I do,” Martin replied, pointing to the blood still coating his face. “And nobody in this society knows who Voldemort is. Remember, this is a story where pop-culture references are out of place. We just established that. You’ll confuse the reader.” “Oh. Sorry. That joke normally lands.” He scratched his head before continuing. “Uh, hey, stupid Noseless guy!” “You must be able to do better than that.” The prison guard opened his mouth to deliver a new and cutting verbal barb, but found himself incapable. “I can’t.” Martin shrugged. “Well, don’t worry. It’s just a reflection of the author’s lack of humorous range. It seems he felt compelled to include that Harry Potter reference but could not find an appropriate place to do so.” “Oh. Thanks, I guess.” “No worries. Forced humor is bad humor.” The prison guard nodded at Martin’s sage advice, and the two men continued their journey through the tunnels without another remark. Soon, they emerged from the dark labyrinthine passages and beheld the metropolis-state of Lirtson in its bustling urban glory. Part Three: Some Exposition to Get from Here to There Martin shuffled alone through Lirtson. Hundreds of skyscrapers reached toward the sky like skyscrapers. The streets which wound between the towering buildings turned right and left and right again. There were many, various types of people with many, various types of noses. “Such a bland, faceless city,” Martin added. “Would you imagine the details for me, reader? The author decided to be quite lazy here.” 52

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He walked away from his former home—his wife and young children would surely scream at his newfound ugliness and reject him for his lack of SchnozRank—and toward the edge of the metropolis-state, where the towering Tall Wall rose from the ground like an ancient bulwark built to resist the uncivilized hordes. “The term ‘uncivilized’ is really a misnomer,” Martin said, “but the motivation of a government to maintain its vice-grip on power knows no ideological bounds. This will be revealed, reader, as we continue through this story.” He then looked down at his left wrist, whose nakedness shocked him. The familiar glowing numbers of his SchnozRank had disappeared, but they still haunted his skin with their memory. “Like a palimpsest in my brain,” Martin added. “The author really likes that word and wanted to include it.” As he neared the edge of Lirtson, the Tall Wall loomed from beyond the horizon and seemed to shrink the sky; soon Martin was close enough to need to crane his neck almost vertically to glimpse a sliver of blue. At the base of the Tall Wall, a small windowed guardhouse squatted at the head of a long, snaking line of Noseless, who tromped slowly toward the Round Door—the only entrance to and exit from Lirtson. Martin joined the line. Some Noseless were elderly and stooped; some were tall and lanky; some were short and rotund; some were bleary-eyed, teary-eyed children who clung to the hands of their Noseless parents and continually, disbelievingly grasped at the air where their noses used to be. After a considerable waiting period, Martin arrived at the window. A small mustached man with a nose of no particular consequence sat inside the guardhouse. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles and, on his chest, a blue-and-white sticker proudly proclaimed: Hello! My Name is Charon. Martin pointed to the sticker. “That’s a bit on-the-nose, isn’t it?” “Perhaps,” Charon monotoned, “but at least I still have one.” He tapped a small screen on the cramped desk in the guardhouse and then punched the glass divider, which shuddered with the impact. “Approved. Nostril entry granted. Never come back.” “What? Entry into what nostril? I don’t have those anymore.” Volume V

Martin paused, affronted. “You didn’t need to add insult to injury.” “But I did,” Charon deadpanned. “And I liked it. Next!” The next Noseless in line shoved Martin away from the guardhouse and toward the Tall Wall, where the Round Door was slowly creaking open to allow him to exit Lirtson, to leave behind all that he had ever known. Martin stepped through the door. On the other side of the wall, a bright neon sign displayed curled, cursive letters: Welcome to the Crappy Town of Nostril! You’re exiled here forever! “How cheery,” Martin said. “Thanks, author. You really know how to make a character smile.” Part Four: A Conversation with Relevance to the Plot Martin wandered the cobblestone streets of Nostril and was perturbed to find that most of the residents of the Noseless community outside Lirtson did, in fact, have noses—though not noses of their own biologic origin. Surgical scars contoured the replacement noses of the Nostrilites, but these substitute snouts never quite matched the rest of their faces. After roaming uncertainly around Nostril for an appropriate amount of time, he discovered Jeb’s Holistic NoseJebs. The shop was little more than a short wooden shack whose sign hung crookedly over the door and whose window-displays were stacked with jars of pickled noses. “I think this is a place sufficiently creepy to be of use, reader. Let’s find out.” Martin entered the shop. Mirrors covered the walls inside. Jeb was a stout man with a truly horrific nose—long and beaked and colorfully pustuled—and he hunched behind the splintered counter, where he arranged a line of freshly chopped-off noses. None were particularly attractive, and all would have precipitously lowered Martin’s former SchnozRank. “You’re in luck,” Jeb said. “Some of these are still warm. Makes them easier to attach.” 54

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Martin tried to scrunch his nose in disgust but was dismayed to remember that his face could no longer make such an expression. “That’s awfully grotesque. Whose noses are these?” “Who cares? You need a new one, don’tcha?” “Well, yes. Clearly.” “Then pick one, kid. And don’t worry, you don’t have to look at it when it’s on your face. Just stay away from mirrors.” Jeb laughed and motioned to the walls of the shop. Martin nodded with obvious discomfort and began to inspect the noses on display. “What an awful decision, reader,” Martin whispered. “Whose nose am I abducting? Who was expelled from the comfort of Lirtson when their unbecoming nose was taken from their face?” Jeb exaggeratedly rolled his eyes. “Don’t act like you’re the GodKing searching for new ways to convince his subjects that he’s actually holy. Nobody’s H-O-L-Y and everybody’s H-O-L-E-Y. We’re all the same and we all have good noses to sell. That’s all you need to know—and all you need to nose.” “That’s blasphemy!” Martin pivoted toward the door. “Not here in Nostril,” Jeb said with a knowing grin. “Things aren’t all backward here like they are in Lirtson.” Martin turned sharply back to Jeb. “Besides spelling, what do you mean?” “Well,” Jeb said, “Lirtson is all you’ve ever known, kid. The rest of the world is mighty different. Here in Nostril, we know the truth of things: Your nose doesn’t have anything to do with your worth as a person. Not a thing.” “You sound like a conspiracy theorist,” Martin said unevenly. “You’d lose your nose for saying that in Lirtson.” “How do you think I ended up in Nostril?” Jeb returned to meticulously arranging the new stock of noses. “Uncomfortable truths with the ability to strip a tyranny of its power are the most dangerous thing to a man like God-King Steve the Olfactorius. Volume V

You already believe me, kid. I can hear the apprehension in your voice. You know your life was stolen from you. And for what? Why? Why cling to this fantasy of Lirtson as a place where nothing bad happens when all the bad stuff happened to you?” “I—I can’t. I have to. I don’t know.” “The God-King lied to you,” Jeb said in a low, comforting voice. “He lied to everyone. He needs to pay for that.” Martin laced his fingers into his hair and squeezed his eyes shut. “This is all just so sudden and different and weird. You’ve destroyed my worldview, and it feels like a bomb just exploded in my brain. What do I do? What can I do? Does the God-King trick everyone and hurt so many people just so he can stay in power?” “Yep, that about covers it,” Jeb said with a smile. “Welcome to the proletariat, you bourgeoisie scum. Now that you see the way things are, let’s do something about changing them.” “How?” “You have to go back,” Jeb said. “You have to take the God-King down.” Martin nodded solemnly before looking confusedly at Jeb. “Wait a second. Why am I trusting you, a crusty, shady nose-vendor?” “Because the author put me here,” Jeb replied. “That’s enough for you.” “Huh, it is. I suppose I truly am subject to the author’s whims. Why not try to overthrow the author instead of the God-King?” “Let’s stay realistic, kid. Focus on the fictional totalitarian despot, and then you can think about confronting our actual yet simultaneously fictional God. Fake deity first, real-ish deity second.” “Right. Okay. What do we do?” “Take a picture of his nose with this.” Jeb handed Martin an iPhone. “Then post it on the convenient and user-friendly social media site Snoot for everyone to see. It’s not as perfect a nose as 56

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the God-King leads people to believe.” “What do you mean?” “I’ve seen it, kid. I used to be the understudy of the understudy of the God-King’s chauffeur—this will be useful later. But I saw God-King Steve the Olfactorius once, and his Nose of Legend is legendarily revolting.” Martin gasped. “If you were going to convince me of Lirtson’s governmental illegitimacy, you might have led with that.” He stared down at the smooth metallic rectangle—it really was a sexy device. “This photo will undermine the entire societal system!” “Seeing the true colors of most governmental officials usually does that. Look at The Wizard of Oz. He wasn’t actually green!” “True, but we need to stop referencing things from the real world. The reader must be quite confused.” Jeb shrugged. “Tell that to the author. He clearly wants to make some sort of real-world point with this story.” “Indeed,” Martin mused, holding up a particularly bent nose to his face and recoiling at his reflection. “That would mean that, for this story to come to its logical conclusion, I would have to confront God-King Steve the Olfactorius and expose his nose as a fraud.” “That sentence alone proves that this story is anything but logical.” Jeb tossed Martin a fresh nose, which Martin expertly dodged. “Weekly food fights were nationally mandated in Lirtson schools,” Martin mentioned as an aside. Jeb frowned. “But yes, infiltrating the Palace of the Holy Proboscis and verbally dueling the most powerful man in this fictional universe does seem to be your only course of action.” “How do I get a new nose? I have no way to pay you.” “Don’t worry, kid. I’ll get you fixed up for free.” Jeb grinned diaVolume V

bolically. “Just make sure to bring me the God-King’s dripping, severed head so I can rip his nose off myself.” “Uh…” “Or just expose his lies. That works too.” Part Five: A Time-Skip of Unspecified Length Through a series of clandestine maneuvers which will not be chronicled here, Martin re-entered Lirtson through the Round Door, disguised as the understudy to the understudy of the God-King’s personal chauffeur. Soon afterward, these two men met their untimely, simultaneous demise in a tragic head-on car wreck. “How ironic and convenient and potentially interesting,” Martin added. “If only the author was not so lazy as to omit multiple essential scenes.” And so Martin became the God-King’s driver. His new nose looked almost natural; only a faint white line traced the downslope of the bridge, and the nostrils sagged just enough to hide the curved scars beneath them. His SchnozRank display had been restored and showed the glowing, unchanging number 413,253—a sufficiently low SchnozRank for a commoner like a chauffeur. In order to find that singularly appropriate nose for Martin’s undercover mission, Jeb’s Holistic NoseJebs gained some fortunate collateral damage—an armful of new noses. “Still warm,” Jeb crooned. He stood on the stoop of his shop and cradled the bloodied sack of new noses as though it were an infant. “Still warm, still warm. Lovely for sewing onto your face. Come on in and get a NoseJeb! Still warm, still warm…” Part Six: An Anticlimactic Ending Provoked by a Now-Past Deadline One day, Martin found himself quietly driving God-King Steve the Olfactorius through the streets of Lirtson. “Let’s just go for a drive, Marty,” the God-King had said. “I want some quiet time away from the palace.” Until this point in his tenure as chauffeur—and, obviously, up to this point in the story—Martin had never gotten a chance 58

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to spend time alone with the God-King, let alone see his face. God-King Steve the Olfactorius perpetually wore a brown paper bag over his head. The bag had two round eye-holes and a larger, oval-shaped hole for his mouth. Where his Nose of Legend would be was an immaculately detailed drawing of the ever-uncertain ideal Lirtsonite nose. Now, in the back seat of the Royal Sedan, the God-King lifted the paper bag over his head and dropped it onto the floor. Martin glanced up at the rearview mirror and saw the God-King’s face for the first time: in the center of his face, two squinted holes peered out from a flat, raw, discolored patch of skin where his nose should have been. God-King Steve the Olfactorius was a Noseless. Martin slammed the breaks in shock, veritably stunned at this heretofore unimaginable revelation. “I can’t believe it, reader! Who possibly could have seen that coming?” God-King Steve the Olfactorius had just enough time to yelp as though he were about to die before he shot between the frontseat headrests and crashed through the windshield onto the pavement. Martin gripped the steering wheel tightly and stared at the unmoving body of the God-King. “I wonder why he trusted me like that,” Martin pondered aloud. “Did he know I was once among the nameless dregs of Lirtsonite society? Did he, in a moment of vulnerability, choose to confide in me his most guarded secret, his greatest private shame?” Martin shook his head and sped forward, bumping and crunching over the God-King’s body. “Who cares? Screw that guy. He got my nose.” Epilogue: Preparation for the Inevitable and Commercially Necessary Sequel Martin brought the drawing of the Nose of Legend to Jeb, who stapled the paper bag above the door to his shop. Martin then retired in Nostril to a quiet life of balancing the ever-growing budget of Jeb’s Holistic NoseJebs, now a wildly successful tourist-destination-slash-nose-emporium; painting landscapes and fruit bowls; and bumping from bar to nightclub during the occasional riotous night of booze-fuelled debauchery. Volume V

“Finally,” Martin said. “This story has been exhausting to participate in. I can’t imagine, reader, what a terrible drag it must have been to read. And to the author—we have had our differences in the space of this short narrative—I think I can speak for both of us when I say that I’m ready for this story to end.” “But Martin,” the author disagreed, finally deigning to enter the story, “we must prepare for a sequel. No matter how exhausting the story, there is always a sequel. Always. To make another anachronistic reference, just look at Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. No matter the quality or demand, the story must continue forever and into oblivion.” “No! I refuse to be a cog in this capitalist storytelling machine!” Martin screamed and ran away—away from Lirtson and Nostril—away from the story—away from his benevolent creator and author of his story. How rude. And so the story ended.

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Morning Alarm Alyssa Campbell Mixed media with gouache, pen, ink, and collage

Volume V

The Sacrificial Doe Lily Taylor

seeds suffocate in dense earth breaking themselves open for the sake of new life nature’s beauty requires sacrifice the crows live off the diseased flesh of the deer lost to sudden hemor¬¬rhage she dropped under a tree she once used for shade limbs stiff and eyes glazed it wasn’t the thought of death that frightened me but what remains when we are gone the swollen tongue that lolled on the forest floor and the hole under her tail so enlarged by bloat that i could see the maggots feasting on the intestines a pollock of blue purple and red unlike the stag my grandfather dragged behind us whose exploded foreleg from my poor shot left a trail of sinew and blood the doe would remain on this land fertilizing the earth beneath the willow tree where she fell when her heart stopped beating and the forest came to life to welcome her into death and when her bones are stripped clean and bleached by the sun she may be called mother by the flowers and weeds that will stand tall between her ribs

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Blood Orange Avery Holmes CMYK Screenprint

Volume V

ghosties havin a good time Daniel Pfaff

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Dream Rig, Kiddo Alyssa Campbell Mixed media with acrylic, pen, ink, and collage

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April 26, 2019 Nikole Humphries Ink

Phreatic Eruption (For Violet) Lily Taylor

there was a time i understood volcanoes the glory of eruption obfuscated the danger of swift and searing avalanche molten rock had never burned my skin but now i am dull like the heat of the sun as the earth tilts away from her you wonder what you’ve done to deserve a wife who would rather clean the kitchen than fall into bed and accept your embrace my fingers are cracked from the bleach and the countertops gleam in the light still i will not leave them to come touch you my heart fell into the toilet bowl last year you slept while i scrubbed away the blood

Volume V

In the Produce Aisle

Trevor Tidwell Acrylic

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The Man Grace Nguyen

Volume V

Wart Getty Hesse

She stands in line for hours, days, or possibly weeks. It is hot out. Sweat weighs on her clothes. Hawkers thrust cool water bottles into the hands of penitents and demand payment. The sun glares such that she dares not look up, or down on the scorching white marble path, but only forward, to the line that winds for miles. At first in her mind she urges the line forward, begs it forward, but soon she stops. Soon she forgets why she is there, or for that matter where she is from. She is in the line, she is of the line. She takes to staring at the man in front of her. He wears a white suit, once crisp, that has wilted as time goes on. The backs of his hands are smooth. He has not spoken once, not that she has heard. He seems utterly patient. She never sees his face but imagines it to be handsome, dashing, like that of an Old Hollywood movie star. But what she stares at the most is the wart on the back of his neck. It is red as if from blushing. If she bit it off, would pus ooze out? Blood? Nothing at all? She begins to wonder what the wart would taste like. After a time she decides: like a clear mountain spring. She shuffles closer to him, so her nose almost brushes his nape. He smells of sweat and unwashed leather. She bares her teeth experimentally, feeling how it would be to chomp down. At last she does. She bites. The taste—salty, oceanlike—disappoints her. She spits it out.

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Sybil Chloe Ulm Screenprint

Volume V

Psychogeography of OU Campus, 1&2 Mario Ramirez-Arrazola Drawing on paper edited on Photoshop

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Volume V

Free to Dance Christy Phelps Bronze cast sculpture

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Sticks in Water Daniel Pfaff

Volume V

Pursuit in the Snow

Brennan Clifton Mixed media with pen, paint, marker, and colored pencil

Swiss Army Standard Avery Stevens

An image, sticking whether I to it or it to me is of a young boy in Scout uniform. Plump, he sits at a campout – handkerchief tight, too short, restricting blood flow and oxygen to his head – buzz cut, brown, ill-fitting as his belt – snapped snug about his waist, flesh spilled over in no unordinary way. Isolated – whether crouched behind tree or stone, or remnants of an abandoned home, where, in wooden chair or on wooden stool, bent over, knees resting elbows, one unfurled – out straight, sagged, lazy. At the end of that, unbent – in hand, rests a whittled-out ideal of a man chiseled, by Swiss Army standards, multifunctioning beauty and brute. But this tool in the hand of our adolescent artisan makes its truest mark above the whittled head, as life’s rain escapes veins, cool and steady from the blade.

Volume V

cat aspirations Grace Wu

someday when i’m old i’ll be wrinkled, rocking-chair ready, snoozing with my grandchild coloring on the carpet, blinds open, comforting TV drone. under the autumn sun i will aspire to be the cat curled round itself, like soft risen bread sleeping in its own satisfaction. unbothered by harmless six-legged lives climbing so determinedly around our kitchen sink. the cat does not agonize over stray skips of litter on the floor. it does not fear rain, or unremovable stains. it does not think of getting old, it remembers its soul-shape even as it loses its spry limbs and sleek youthfulness. before time carries me over the threshold of my ending, i should learn from its feline wisdom. i should slink the tendons in my stiff legs, lay in the sun, and feel the revolution of shadows on my eyelids, perfect dynamic laziness. that way, when i’m old, i shall retain my playful crackling sparks of humor. i shall forget and knock into table’s edges, mapping beautiful yellow bruises that i will luckily not live to see fade away. like the fat house cat whose whole life has been lived in couch-comforting routine, i shall think of nothing but the coolness of water on my parched lips. of the slow settling ache in my once-hardy joints and protesting muscles. the cat claims its identity in the favorite shape it has molded into a cushion on the floor. and i will sit in my rocking chair, old and heaven-ready, worn-down imprint of my years. my grandchild will be weaving images with colors i cannot see and a suppleness my aged nerves can no longer achieve. and i, a dozing housecat, a quietly powdering peach, will sit folded into my faded self. whistling with the blinds open, sunlight streaming, static noise comforting me in the ever-impossible yet miraculous passage of time.

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Suburban Snow Day Jewel Thompson

Volume V

Cowgirl Vortex Avery Holmes Screenprint

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Born to the Purple Chloe Ulm Screenprint

Volume V

Corner Coffeeshop Jewel Thompson

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Morning Walk Grace Wu Post nightmare, I am giddy darkness walking into darkness. My feet do not yet know of the soreness that they will face at the end of the day; the birds have not yet decided to sweep across my vision and fling tears into my eyes from their sheer numbers. The light from the street lamps comforts me. It feels late and early all at once, the wind pushing me, pulling at my hands and my loose and eager hair. I don’t even notice the earth spinning itself towards the light until gaps of blueness enter the horizon and begin waking the grass, the trees. There is little to no violet and orange glory this morning. There has been precious little in-between from the sleeping night and the breaking of dawn. Instead the changes have come gradually, the wind rising, tugging clouds eagerly across the slow, slow and youthful gray-blue sky that seems so sure of itself. I feel like gently calloused hands and fingers. I feel like water and the quiet circular rippling of ponds, like an early-rising bird with a delicate looping neck, like the gracefulness of acceptance, of a quiet love. I feel small in the settling cold, strengthening warmth: a good small. A good sort of peaceful insignificance. Today the sun has decided to be humble with its smiles. It has decided to doze in its endless layers of comfort, letting the wide currents of air rock it and its blankets to wherever the moon’s and oceans’ pull will bring them. So today I have decided to be humble with my chaos. I have decided to hold myself in my tangled mind, letting the spider, weaver of words, cocoon me in sleep to wherever the day’s arc will lead me, guide me, just like the wind guides the clouds to their gradual fearless dissipation. Outside the window there is a playful and mysterious humidity. There are my dreams, wisps in the condensed air, assuredly seeking the same gradual blue that chases itself to where the wind blows, where the grass bows, where the sun nods its briefly tamed head, and where the birds that twist and burn tears into my eyes momentarily sit and wait to bring me peace and slow but sure serenity.

Volume V

An undoing Nicole Jelosek

I watch the rain come down: freezing before it lands. It weighs down the tree branches and they sag til their tips touch the ground. Just when you start to think they might make it out unscathed, the weight of just one more droplet of falling ice lands and they snap. Cascading towards the ground with none of the grace or delicacy of the leaves they lost in the fall; they demand to be heard, to be seen, to be felt. They take out fences, and cars, and rooftops. They scare children and their pets when they crash. They knock down power lines and leave families in the cold. This. This is the way I will go out. Screaming and kicking and hitting. In the spring you will “ooh” and “aah” at my blossoms. In the summer you will find comfort in the cool of the shade beneath me. In the fall you will marvel at my changing. But by the time the winter comes and I have shed all that I have ever been. When I am stripped down bare. You will find no beauty left when you look at me, but you will look at me. You will stare. Eyes stuck open, glued to the window. You will curse my name and pray to any God who will listen that I blow the other way. You will not ask for a soft place for me to land but that the hard place isn’t your own.

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Gemini Liza Martin Oil on canvas

Acknowledgments Volume V of The Aster Review was made possible by generous financial contributions from OU’s Student Government Association and World Literature Today. We cannot thank you enough for believing in our vision! Thank you to the staff at World Literature Today for lending us your conference room and unending support. Thank you to the editorial board for all your effort getting this journal together–and to Julie without whom we probably would not have this journal today... I’ve been on The Aster for all five years of my college career and 5/6 of its career. Nothing has been as steady and long-lasting as this in my OU experience. It means so much. Thank you.

Abigail Clarke

2022

To the writers, artists, editors, and readers who have made The Aster Review beautiful since the beginning, and to all those who we've still to meet in the years to come.