The Mountain Laurel, Vol. 57, Carnivalesque by The Mountain Laurel

Volume 57

Carnivalesque

Editors’ Note: The Carnivalesque Come and hear the carnie’s call, “Come to the Carnival, one and all!” The Carnival is the place where, sloughing off the confines of society, we can all freely be: be strange, be other, be dark, be human. Mikhail Bakhtin, the Soviet literary critic and writer, formulated the concept of Carnival in his books Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Rabelais and His World, The Dialogic Imagination, and Epic and Novel. The Carnivalesque forms the space that art creates, where discourse is liberated and the participants may enter in and explore the various aspects of human nature, human experience, and human desire. As Bakhtin wrote, “the need and possibility of a complete exit from the present order of life [is the] justification of the carnival license.” The Eccentric Bakhtin’s idea of the Eccentric within the context of Carnival is inspired by the works of French Renaissance humanist and monk, François Rabelais. The Eccentric embodies all that is absurdist, satirical, parodical, and comedic. It is a place where one can be free as themselves, self-aware of their own ridiculousness; it’s where we don’t just laugh at ourselves or others, but at us as a whole. As Bakhtin described it, the eccentric is “a fearlessness without which it would be impossible to approach the world realistically.” The Harmonious The Harmonious manifests realistic fantastica. As in the realm of fairy tales, the Harmonious transforms traditional values and the minutiae of everyday life, leading the ordinary into the extraordinary. A public square atmosphere encourages a gathering of sorts, a place where Romantic values, Transcendentalism, and folkloric aesthetics are contained as a collective. In Bakhtin’s Harmonious, “good ideas take up more space than bad ones, and everything grows bigger.” The Grotesque As with the Eccentric, the Grotesque deviates from all that is normal, socially acceptable, and reasonable. But in the darkness of the Grotesque, everything bends sinister. All laws have loopholes, all luxury is darkly indulgent and self-absorbed, and according to Bakhtin, there is “a rethinking of all fixed categories.” The Grotesque is the idealization of debasement, retrogression, and rebellion. As Tennyson said through King Arthur in The Idylls of the King, “And all whereon I lean’d… / Reels back into the beast, and is no more.” The Absolute The Absolute is what Bakhtin called “the closed epic.” In the realization of humanness and the glorification of realism, the Absolute is the embodiment of potential without the exploration of potential. It is folklore with grit, fairytales without romanticism, and darkness embodied with natural light. It is freedom to be human in all its perfect imperfections. Bakhtin explains that “the epic is walled off by an impenetrable boundary.”

The Mountain Laurel Volume 57

Carnivalesque North Greenville University 2021

P.O. Box 1892 7801 N. Tigerville Rd. Tigerville, SC 29688 (864) 977-7000 www.ngu.edu issuu.com/themountainlaurel

Mission Statement

The purpose of The Mountain Laurel is to produce a collection of prose, poetry, and visual art that is both technically sound in craftsmanship and creative in content. In pursuing this purpose, the goal of The Mountain Laurel is to reflect the creativity of God by exhibiting works that capture universal human experience. The first act of God recorded is the act of creation; The Mountain Laurel strives to demonstrate the creative power with which God has endowed humans. In creating, the Christian artist faces the difficulty of portraying human experience and conveying the truths of Christianity honestly, whether implicitly or explicitly. To do so, the artist must represent not only beauties, but also consequences of the fallen world, including evil actions and behaviors, because evil is part of reality. In the same way, the artist must be consistent with the moral truths of Scripture, which include concepts of a moral universe, struggle between right and wrong, and the flawed nature of both good and evil characters in need of redemption. Embedded within these concepts are moments of grace where a character within the work of art can choose to accept redemption offered, delight in truth and beauty, or empathize with those experiencing suffering and pain. By utilizing these concepts, the artist is able to mirror such stories and poetry as the book of Job, The Psalms, and The Song of Solomon. In short, Christian art is not Christian because it refers to the Bible and teaches morality; it is Christian because it faithfully communicates through artistic media the nature of God, His creation, and the experience of humanity in a world it was not made for. It is this art that we offer to readers of The Mountain Laurel, with our prayer that God will use this publication to encourage, inspire, and restore.

Selection Process The Mountain Laurel student editors and staff evaluated each selection, using a blind judging process in accordance with specific criteria. For literary submissions, staff members looked for creativity, continuity, appropriate use of grammar, prowess in the work’s genre (poetry, fiction, nonfiction), and the writer’s command of the English language. For visual art submissions, staff members not only looked for creativity and diversity but also for the artist’s expertise in capturing an image, the appealing use of color and design, and inner meaning beyond the viewer’s first impression. With all submissions, staff members determined whether the work was suitable according to the standards of North Greenville University. After reading/viewing all submissions, student editors and staff rated each on a scale from 1 to 3. Pieces marked 1 portrayed the best qualities of each genre, while pieces marked 2 or 3 exhibited varying degrees of improvement needed. Selections published are those that received the best marks and required few essential changes.

Staff and Credits Editors Managing Editor: Davis Lisk Poetry Editor: Taylor Rose Elliott Prose Editor: Kimberly Rhine Faculty Advisors Hayley De González (Art) Rachel Roberts (Literature)

The Mountain Laurel Staff Caemon Ashworth Macy Cochran (Fall 2020) Charissa Garcia (Fall 2020) Kasey Abigail Hansen Karson Harsey Lillian Hemingway (Fall 2020) Kyle Jackson Leslie Meyers Aubrianna Nelson Zachary Senter Faith Yeargin (Fall 2020)

JUDGING 2021 Results Pieces honored with first, second, third place or Honorable Mentions were selected for special recognition by judges knowledgeable in their respective fields (photography, traditional media art, poetry, prose). Judges received coded literary or visual art files devoid of artist names and judged according to their own established standards. Award-winning pieces are denoted with an asterisk in the Table of Contents. Poetry

Art

First place: “Angel of Death” by Michael Thomas Second place: “Death Tax” by Michael Thomas Third place: “Contralto—A Ghazal” by Taylor Rose Elliott Honorable Mentions: “Seasonal Elements” by Charissa Garcia “Yamato” by Kimberly Rhyne

First place: Liberty by Abigail Moore Second place: Spider School Drawing by Lauren Renee Drake Third place: Overwhelmed by Hope Yeargin

Prose First place: “Oil and Water” by Macy Cochran Second place: “The Guilty Pleasures of the Homeless” by Taylor Rose Elliott

Honorable Mentions: Coiled Bowl by Tatiana Dolan Sunny by Leslie Meyers Bumblebee Kisses by Faith Yeargin

Judges Poetry judge: Rachel B. Griffis is an assistant professor of English and Director for the Integration of Faith and Learning at Sterling College in central Kansas. She teaches writing and literature courses. She serves as a reviews editor at International Journal of Christianity & Education and is a collaborator at The Liberating Arts. Her writing has appeared in Christianity & Literature, Studies in American Indian Literatures, Christian Scholar’s Review, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and elsewhere. Prose judge: Catherine Jones Payne is the young adult author of Breakwater and Fire Dancer and the executive editor of Quill Pen Editorial. Her editing clients have won Carol and Christy awards, hit the USA Today bestseller list, and appeared on Good Morning America. A Seattle native, she loves the written word, international travel, crashing waves, and good coffee. Her earliest memory involves pulling up a rolling chair to her parents’ old DOS computer—while wearing a tiara, naturally—and tapping out a story of kidnapped princesses. She lives in Greenville, SC with her historian husband, Brendan, and their cats, Mildred, Minerva, and Merlin. Art Judge: Kristin Clardy Vehaun is a photographer located in Clemson, SC, specializing in high school senior, family, and business portraits. She graduated from North Greenville University in 2018, earning a bachelor’s degree in Studio Art, with a concentration in Photography. She enjoys creating portraits for her different clients and telling their story through photos.

Table of Contents Entries marked with an asterisk (*) indicate that a judge’s award has been given. Please refer to page 3 for detailed results.

Mission Statement 2 Selection Process 2 Staff Credits 2 Judging Results 3 Table 3 of Contents Judge Biographies

The Eccentric Art Osteospermum, Lauren Renee Drake Justification, Abigail Moore *Sunny, Leslie Meyers *Bumblebee Kisses, Faith Yeargin My Father’s Gaze, Leslie Meyers Poetry Avant-Garde Lovesong, Davis Lisk Kicking Bricks, Kimberly Rhyne In the Spirit of Halloween, Samuel Elliott Clean Plate, Karson Harsey Ode to Otis, Jennie L. Stevens Electric Blankets Make Me Depressed, Don Paint Hydroponic Experiment #9, Randall C. Blackerby Cannonball, Brendan J. Payne Prose Now You Didn’t Hear This from Me, Kimberly Rhyne Your Heart Rests Here, Kyle Jackson

10 14-15 18 19 20 8 9 9 15 16 16 18 21

11-13 17

The Harmonious Art Untitled, Courtney Hash 27 *Liberty, Abigail Moore 32 Landscape Inspired by Studio Ghibli, Lauren Renee Drake 36 *Coil Bowl, Tatiana Dolan 38 Rebounded, Abigail Moore 39 Brick Wall, Jessica Lee Rascio 43 Poetry Fireflies, Kimberly Rhyne 24 *Seasonal Elements, Charissa Garcia 24 Beauty, Karson Harsey 27 Defeating Cerberus, Taylor Rose Elliott 28-29 Belapsah, Davis Lisk 30-31 Dozens of Daisies, Davis Lisk 31 *Yamato, Kimberly Rhyne 37 Stones Strewn, Karson Harsey 38 Old Order, Karson Harsey 39 Murky Lake, Karson Harsey 40 Belapsasamí asetíamí, Davis Lisk 40 Heavenly Performance, Tayler Marie Brooks 40 His Mind, Karson Harsey 40 I’ll Be Home, Jessica Lee Rascio 41 Ariel, Jennifer Palmer 41 The Fossegrim, Davis Lisk 42 Soul’s Flight, Justin Oates 42 O Gentle Moon, Davis Lisk 43 Prose The Earth Laughs in Flowers, Macy Cochran Time Traveling, Taylor Rose Elliott

25-26 33-35

The Grotesque Art Sunflower, Tayler Brooks *Spider School Drawing, Lauren Renee Drake *Obsession, Abigail Moore *Overwhelmed, Hope Yeargin

The Absolute 47 50-51 54-55 57

Poetry * Contralto—A Ghazal, Taylor Rose Elliott 46 Lost at Land, Dillon Lisk 48 A Vineyard Crown, Aidan Beasley 48 Seed, Karson Harsey 49 Vater Nacht, Davis Lisk 49 This is My Letter to the World, Jennifer Palmer 53 What Must We Do to Bring Back Spring?, Jessica Lee Rascio 54 Ode to the Tattooed, Macy Cochran 56 Bobcat Moan, Randall C. Blackerby 56 August 12; August 19; Since Then, Taylor Rose Elliott 58 *Death Tax, Michael Thomas 59 Prose Golden Walk, Macy Cochran

Art Chaos, Abigail Moore Scatterling, Leslie Meyers Nana, Lauren Renee Drake Imperfectly Right, Jessica Lee Rascio

66-67 77 79 82-83

Poetry *Angel of Death, Michael Thomas Surely, Before, Abby Nix Ne’er Shall I Presume, Abby Nix When She Sat Alone, Abby Gilbert The Street, Michael Thomas Compass, Mary Margaret Flook Fate, Karson Harsey Discernment, Karson Harsey Empathy’s Curse, Lauren Pittman To Live and Die, Charissa Garcia Do it Again, Kimberly Rhyne Sanctification, Charissa Garcia Spheres, Karson Harsey Assurance, Mary Margaret Flook Taste, Karson Harsey Prince Hamlet to Ophelia, Davis Lisk

69 70 71 72-73 78 78 81 81 83 84 84 85 85 86 87 87

Prose *The Guilty Pleasures of the Homeless, Taylor Rose Elliott My Heart, Leslie Meyers The Duffel Bag, Nin G. Ravencroft *Oil and Water, Macy Cochran

62-65 68 74-76 80

Index

I. The Eccentric

“Free of any nihilistic denial…[a] corrective reality.” - Mikhail Bakhtin

Avant-garde Lovesong by Davis Lisk

My hiccough of the ticking onion She is as warmful as the flower-sprouting day Yet hapfully cool as the white-laden year-time When the smallwise flapping thingeys Fly into the low-part for the fourth of the year section And she is looking as the orange floating-up part On the far right map edge Light-thrusting as the Chinese space lanterns Fire-making in the real-big-up Let us go between the tall wood spires Word-swapping what is on our thought-melons My el-shaped joint in hers Forhappening when ticks have done more passing She will grasp my finger-holder As the real pale rain is falling Unfastly down upon the grass on dirt Covered with the big-wood droppings Snap, crackle, pop along the shaven strip in the large twig village Perchancing she shall lift her mouth-dips As we interchange our foot-positions Merely I and the focus of my heat-seeking feelings Merely she and I My hiccough of the ticking onion

Kicking Bricks By Kimberly Rhyne

oh kicking bricks, oh kicking bricks oh how I love to kick these bricks I do not like to pick up sticks but I do love to kick some bricks this rectangle I want to thwump I will not go around this lump I will not flee, I will not jump I want to make this brick go thump the bricks that all the people tread they may be clay, concrete, or lead they may be grey or brown or red but either way, I’ll kick them dead oh kicking bricks, oh kicking bricks I don’t know why I kick these bricks I don’t kick rocks or grass or sticks but I do love to kick some bricks

In the Spirit of Halloween by Samuel Elliott

Yo, Nike, get your logo off my voodoo doll. I don’t need your standard stamp of approval on My arm like a haunted pseudo-tattoo that’s scrawled All over me, something’s crawling all over me Tell me, if something moves y-you saw it right? I’m not so sure what has got a hold of me. Who can stop this rooster’s bock In this madhouse of a cuckoo clock? I’m so lost I don’t know who to call…it’s two o’clock. There are no ghosts locked in my closet, Just several skeletons locked in a monsterous vault of safety deposits. Before the ghosts flew through walls I used to draw them all on sheets, Then hung them in the hallway with cords and strings, a few bottles of keys, and an ensemble of feet. The necks of the bottles would always swallow the hook so easily, I never bothered to think Those strings in-voke all chords’ auras-Site for sore ice, Sockets in sync And can’t blink, But the broken melody stripped away from the vessel alleviates the longest of shrieks Caused by the streaks on their field of vision Widening the fissures, stopping the leak Of tiers, A broken dam being Without a single sense, Stripped sinkholes, a bottomless deep, Solitude black signal impenetrable, Barrier blocking the streets, Red droplets of ink… Wow, after this I think I need to talk to a shrink.…

Osteospermum Lauren Renee Drake Colored Pencil 10

ACT I (Scene 1) (Setting: Queen Freya’s royal chambers. There is a bed, a futon, and two tall wardrobes. The bed is a canopy bed with purple drapes falling over the bedposts. Some clothes are sitting around on the floor, the bed is unmade, and there is a pile of trash in the corner. Queen Freya sits on her bed, while her lady-in-waiting Griselda sits on the futon, kicking around a couple piles of clothes.) FREYA: Why hasn’t the maid come by in a while? I have far too much running the kingdom to do to pick up my own clothes.

Now You Didn’t Hear This From Me, But W Stands For Women And Witches If You Know What I Mean, Or How the Turns Table by Kimberly Rhyne

GRISELDA: She’s probably still gathering all the latest gossip. (Kicking a shirt.) But she really should come check on the room. Your fiancé Duke Frankenshire will be stopping by any moment, and there’s still trash in the corner. FREYA: (Sharply) If Duke Frankenshire is coming, then I’m glad the maid is busy. Maybe if he sees the room like this, he’ll break off the engagement already. I don’t know how to get rid of him. GRISELDA: (Teasingly) Maybe you can chop off his head! Like you did to Olga Volkolga, God rest her soul.

Dramatis Personae (Act I Scene I): Queen Freya Goosekiller, the misunderstood queen of Rosenstern Griselda Griselda :), Queen Freya’s capricious lady in waiting Ulysses Katydid, Queen Freya’s royal advisor Howard the Guard, captain of the royal guard Vitolino, the court jester Mildly Inconvenienced But Not Super Angry About It Because Like It’s Okay Gus, the treasurer and Queen Freya’s secret lover Grennabien, the chief maid Edmund Sneed, son of Earl Sneed and Veronica’s lover Lady Veronica Tussleweed, lady of the court and Edmund’s lover Robert Frankenshire, Queen Freya’s fiancé

FREYA: (Throwing a pillow at Griselda.) Those baseless rumors are driving me crazy! I can’t even walk the hallways of my own castle without someone stumbling over themselves trying to apologize to me for some imaginary offense. Who even told people I cut heads off? That Olga Volkolga was an exception. GRISELDA: I think it would make you more interesting, Your Majesty. FREYA: Ha, ha. You’re full of silly ideas, Griselda. Now about my fiancé… GRISELDA: (Standing) I just remembered, I really should go check on the cats in the Cat Sanctuary. Oh bother. Those pesky cats, always needing my attention.

FREYA: Don’t just leave! I need advice! GRISELDA: (Hurrying out of the room, in a hurried tone.) Oh gracious me! I really do need to leave the premises right now immediately, good luck with your problems Your Majesty, bye! FREYA: (Throwing another pillow after her.) Get back here! You are the worst lady in waiting ever! (GRISELDA speedwalks out of the room just as GRENNABIEN enters. GRENNABIEN looks curiously after GRISELDA then looks around QUEEN FREYA’S room.) GRENNABIEN: This room is a disaster, Your Majesty! I’m not going to clean all of this by myself! Where did Griselda run off to…? FREYA: Oh, don’t even bother with the room, Grennabien. Is Duke Frankenshire coming today? GRENNABIEN: (Excitedly, taking a seat on the futon.) Oh, oh, I’m so glad you asked! I’ve been talking with the other staff all day. You know Howard the Guard, right? FREYA: Of course. GRENNABIEN: Well, he said he saw Duke Frankenshire enter the castle without bowing to the portraits of your mother and father, God rest their souls! And what’s more, Howard says that while he was escorting Duke Frankenshire up to his guest chambers to prepare to meet you, the Duke sneezed without covering his mouth! And what’s more, Vitolino – the court jester, you know him… FREYA: (Exasperatedly) Yes, Grennabien, I know my own jester. GRENNABIEN: Well, he told this hilarious joke about – (Pauses to laugh; through laughter) I-I’m sorry! I’m thinking of it again – it was so good! So funny! Wait, wait… FREYA: Vitolino can tell me this joke himself later. What did the Duke do?

GRENNABIEN: (Laughing over the sound of FREYA finishing her last line, holding up a finger.) Hold on – ! (QUEEN FREYA waits impatiently for GRENNABIEN to finish laughing, though at some point she begins to chuckle as well.) FREYA: The Duke, Grennabien? GRENNABIEN: Right! Right, the Duke...what about the Duke…? FREYA: The Duke did something offensive to the jester? GRENNABIEN: Right! That Duke! He didn’t laugh! He didn’t even chuckle! Vitolino wasted such a good joke on that good-for-nothing Duke! Howard even chimed in with a joke of his own, and it made all of us attendants laugh for so long! That’s why I was late, you see. I couldn’t clean your room while I was still laughing so hard. FREYA: Isn’t there anything I can do to make him break off the engagement? I didn’t even choose him. It was that darned advisor who arranged this marriage. “For the good of Rosenstern!” What does he know about running a country, anyway?! GRENNABIEN: (Cheerfully) Nothing! He earned this position through political lobbying. And because he’s the only one who applied. FREYA: Well, I ought to fire him. Lady Veronica would be a good advisor. GRENNABIEN: I’m afraid Lady Veronica is out of commission right now. She and Earl Sneed’s son are on another one of their breaks. FREYA: Of course they are! I keep telling her that Edmund is trouble. His poetry is hard to understand. GRENNABIEN: I don’t get either of their poems, to be honest with you, Your Majesty. FREYA: What about Gus? I bet he would make a good

advisor. GRENNABIEN: Do you mean Avoidant Of Chores Gus, Slightly Put-Off Gus, or Mildly Inconvenienced But Not Super Angry About It Because Like It’s Okay Gus? FREYA: The latter. We really should change his name… GRENNABIEN: He’s currently employed in the treasury, Your Majesty. You would have to find a new treasurer to replace him. I hear Slightly Put-Off Gus is good with numbers too! FREYA: If my brother were still in the kingdom, he could take over that job easily. I guess it’s too much to ask for a new treasurer to just waltz through the door… (Silence. QUEEN FREYA watches the door expectantly. GRENNABIEN looks around the room as if trying to find what she’s looking for.)

FREYA: I’m inclined to agree with Howard. (Standing) I’m guessing there’s no chance you’ll let the Duke greet me in this filthy room? So maybe he’ll decide I’d make a terrible housewife and leave me alone? HOWARD: Oh, Your Majesty! Queens don’t have to be good housewives. You’re silly. ULYSSES: Your only job is to govern the kingdom and boss servants around! GRENNABIEN: Would you like me to clean the room after all, Your Majesty? FREYA: Sure, why not...thank you, Grennabien. Let’s go meet that Duke so I can chase him out quickly. HOWARD: (Offering his arm to FREYA) Allow us to escort you, Your Majesty.

GRENNABIEN: ...Is...is something the matter, or –

(Exeunt FREYA, HOWARD, and ULYSSES.)

(The door flies open. GRENNABIEN shrieks in alarm and nearly falls off the futon.)

GRENNABIEN: (Surveying the room.) ...Nope. No. This is way too much work. Griselda?! Griselda, where are you?!

FREYA: (Excitedly) Oh! (HOWARD THE GUARD stands in the doorway. With him is ULYSSES.) FREYA: (Dejectedly) Oh. It’s just you two. HOWARD: Your Majesty, Duke Frankenshire is waiting in the throne room to see you. Before you go, you should know he didn’t laugh at Vitolino and I’s joke. GRENNABIEN: I told her. He’s a wretch. ULYSSES: Oh, don’t be so harsh on him. It probably wasn’t a very good joke. That’s probably why he didn’t laugh. You should hire a new jester, Your Majesty. HOWARD: (Glaring at ULYSSES.) Or maybe some people just don’t understand comedy.

Clean Plate

by Karson Harsey No stain, a clean plate Clean plate, white and bare, no food Bound to be stained more

Justification Abigail Moore Watercolor

Ode to Otis

by Jennie L. Stevens Author’s note: The elevator in the library was made by the Otis Elevator Company, hence the title “Ode to Otis.” On November 9, 2020, the elevator caught fire and is now inoperable. If you were in or near the library for the next several days, you would have noticed the distinct odor that resulted.

You had your ups and downs. You were kinda quirky, too, But you gave us a lift when you could And let us down easy, too. So we raise a glass to Otis, Our friend through thick and thin What will we do without Otis? Oh, what a stink we are in! RIP Otis ca. 1972-2020

Electric Blankets Make Me Depressed by Don Paint Electric blankets make me depressed. I don’t want to get up; I don’t want to get dressed. I don’t know why I am so stressed, But electric blankets make me depressed. Electric blankets make me depressed. You’re the reason why I passed the test. Strange, I care no more, no less. Still, electric blankets make me depressed. Electric blankets make me depressed. Comforted I am, but still a mess. Why? I don’t know. I can never guess As to why electric blankets make me depressed. Electric blankets make me depressed. No need for checkers, no need for chess. Although I think you are the best, Electric blankets make me depressed.

Your Heart Rests Here by Kyle Jackson

I died. Not an unusual occurrence. I often die, and my dreams end. But this time, my death was only the beginning. When I awoke, I found myself in a rather large airplane. The plane had a glass floor, and I was alone in the cabin. I looked down and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was the Earth, but not the one I remembered. Vast forests sprung up from the ground and covered everything, causing the land to appear green. Animals wandered around foraging and living in harmony with one another. I saw lions, elephants, rabbits, and dodo birds. Any animal that was extinct breathed once more. I saw behemoths roam the land, and leviathans reclaimed the waters. In the center of everything was a large temple with smoke rising out of the top. As I marveled at this strange, new world, the plane arrived at its destination. I stepped out of the plane and turned around to get a better look at the Earth, but a brick wall materialized out of thin air. The words: “your heart rests here” were etched into the brick. I turned around and saw that I was in an airport terminal of sorts. There I saw many familiar faces: my friends, teachers, classmates, and family. Although, for an airport terminal, it was hushed. The people stood in a line facing forward in complete silence. The only sound was the scuffling of boots on the white tile floor. The airport was surprisingly clean and sunlight filtered in through large overhead windows. As I got closer to the front of the line, I noticed people behind a counter directing traffic and typing on computers. I saw two paths, though not many people were heading to the right. I left my place in line and started heading down the path. After I broke out of line, several of the employees stared at me and started whispering amongst themselves. “Does he know?” “Why does he have the letter X?” Self-consciously I glanced down to see a red-letter X appearing on my left chest just over my white hospital gown. I paid the strange mark no more attention.

“He’s one of those, is he?” “He isn’t marked like most of them.” Still unfazed by their gossip, I continued to follow the arrows. I was about to enter an escalator that looked like it would possibly take me to the ground floor, but a man put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me away from the stairs. I didn’t look up to see the man’s face, but he steered me towards the line again. This time I was behind the line watching other people get sorted. However, no one paid us any attention. It was as if they couldn’t see us. We entered a narrow hallway with seven stanchions. As we walked, each rope opened without either of us touching them. We passed the crimson, white, purple, yellow, silver, and even a solid gold stanchion that fell down as we passed. Finally, we arrived at the end of the hallway, where only a black stanchion remained. The rope on this one did not fall down as the others had. It seemed almost sentient in its refusal to fall. “Do you believe this one will fall like the others?” the man asked. I thought for only a moment before I had my answer. “Yes.” The rope blew away like thick, black soot. I turned to thank the man, but he was gone. I stepped forward, and suddenly I was no longer at the airport terminal. I found myself in an endless room filled with brilliant, white light. I tried covering my eyes from the blinding light, but it was no use. I fell down with my face on the floor. Eventually, the harsh light subsided, or maybe my eyes adjusted, and I saw that I was not alone in what appeared to be a throne room. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of winged creatures were all around me, and though they had no faces, they were singing joyfully. I turned to the center of the room, and I saw the light source. An entity of pure light appeared to sit on the throne. Suddenly, my chest burned with a searing pain. It felt as though my very heart was on fire. I knew in that instant that I was done for. As the creatures continued to sing, I glanced around the throne room as best as I could, trying to take it all in. The light became bright again, and I woke up to the sun streaming in my room. The sunlight formed the letter X on my floor. I had many dreams before but none as real as this. All I could do was reflect on everything I had seen.

Hydroponic Experiment Number Nine by Randall C. Blackerby

I ripped you from the soil where you germinated, Placed you in a flask, sterile and graduated, Containing nutrient potions of my design, As I play at the science of botany. Crassula Ovata. So feminine and green; bloated leaves nurture life. With delicate trunk and tentacled roots, Clinging to the hills of Kwa-Zulu Natal In the season of starry blooms. Crassula Ovata.

Sunny

Leslie Meyers Digital Photography

Your ancestors uprooted for wealthy Europeans. Over decades, devolved and devaluated, Bred in rows of little green pots, then Sold like cheap charms. Crassula Ovata. You resisted the liquid at first, arid veldt dame. Slowly, you acquiesce to my desire As your roots mutate to survive For my amusement. Crassula Ovata.

Bumblebee Kisses Faith Yeargin Digital Illustration

My Father’s Gaze

Leslie Meyers Digital Photography

Cannonball

by Brendan J. Payne

I am an eye, perfectly round, heavy and smooth, a lidless pupil dilated by untold days in the belly of a wooden whale until, with only a few tired beams of sun lighting through the cargo bay grate, I grew blind, reduced to a single point of dark. I lie in wait to take revenge upon the world that banished me to this floating prison. I sigh in hope to fly from my cave into the sun and melt into it, and there be born again. I am a shell of what I was: child of Light, a flaming iris, red as the sun’s blood, born in a river of fire, for a time unbound by a single form and enjoying the company of salamanders, chimeras, and phoenixes, my brothers. All the world was in my burning eye, full of angelic radiance, until we fell into the mold. We no longer played with fire innocently, nor basked in the warmth of brotherhood, but grew cold and hardhearted, each a world unto oneself. I feel no fear as warm hands put me in a vessel of iron that whispers of my liberation. I reel in joy as fire breathes me out into the air, and now I see the sun! I can see again!

I am the world, taking in everything at once – sky above, ships about, sea below, tall masts, St. George’s cross on a triangular ribbon waving in the breeze, the Spanish standard on another one, and over there a tricolor, blue, white, red. Each ship sends many of my vengeful iron kin to shatter and splinter ships in their blind rage even as they begin to see and think of peace instead, but all are spinning at such a dizzying rate, a confusion that matches the battle’s gunpowdered cacophony, they cannot think, cannot stop now. The fuse has been lit, the shot fired, and I cannot think about what I am doing. I have waited so long for escape, and now is my chance. After an eternity – or was it a fraction of a second? – of thinking, I crash into a couple of crew of the enemy ship with a hail of splinters, screams, and blood. I am damnation, a self-contained hell of rage hurtling through the air, looking back at the devastation I have wrecked upon the world in a moment of violence. I am stained with blood of the men whose bodies I have broken in my enraged passion. I look up and long to join the sun and be purified by fire, born again! But I fall into the depths with a splash and in my watery tomb grow a shroud of moss. I grow blind once more, a point of dark, now in a blank infinity. Yet though I cannot see, a single thought resounds through my iron core with each silent second: I am an eye. I am an I

II. The Harmonious

“Fantasy is a natural human activity.” - J. R. R. Tolkein

Fireflies

Seasonal Elements

dedicated to “Fam” you are my lights

Water Buds burst into bloom. Brooks babble, grass grows, bees buzz. At last! Spring has sprung.

By Kimberly Rhyne

sparking, sparkling fireflies lending me their light precious friends and words they send to get me through the night screaming out these angry shouts with these unwanted tears searching eyes find shining lights that chase away my fears “we’re here,” they cry, and I believe in every word they say laughing lips and little bits of comfort in the fray here among the fireflies I know I’m safe and warm reaching hands ’mid sinking sands change feelings into form twinkling, blinking fireflies flashing gentle lights listening ears and loving peers and everything’s all right

by Charissa Garcia

Fire Warm, sweet, summer nights, fireflies and flames alike, spark, dance, and ignite. Earth Copper, crimson, gold. Kaleidoscope of burning, falling, foliage. Air Soft and silent drifts. Visible oxygen puffs. Warm toes in wool socks.

The Earth Laughs in Flowers by Macy Cochran

Mrs. Burch died in her sleep after living for one-hundred and two years. During her lifetime, she had survived the Great Depression, experienced the backlash of every twentieth century war, and barely missed the Titanic. She used to move around on a walker, but her mind ran marathons. Her thin fingers once played Chopin on her piano, and even her mistakes sounded like music. Though her body failed her daily, my wonderous neighbor fed life to her gardens every morning she crept out of bed. Easter Sunday her house was empty and dark, locked by the key of her caretaker. The car had been removed, and the shades inside prevented light from creeping in. Her piano had been arranged upon purchase that it be returned to the shop once Mrs. Burch died. For weeks, nobody went in or out the door, in front or behind her house. Except me. I made my way down the stairs that led off her porch and entered the garden. It burst with the life of glorious, overwhelming webs of lush green vines. They hung in heavy strings from the looming pines and shingle roof. Her house was tucked into the corner of the woods under a canopy of wide oak branches. Behind it, dirt paths carved their way through Mountain Laurel and blood red Knock-Out Roses. Up from the ground popped scattered Lilies in or-

ange and yellow dots, sending warm, sweet scents twirling around me. I stepped onto the dirt pathway that preceded down a short hill, landing me in an intersection of more verging trails. I walked straight—all of them circled in on each other, so I knew I would not get lost. Under the trees, moisture thickened the air. Its musty odor stuck to me and wrapped me in an earthy blanket. My attention shot upward to the clinks of a windchime somewhere above me. I followed the angelic sound, diverging from my path and taking one to my right. The shrubs started to change from their dense forest bushes to pale, airy strings. A scene of jade and brick appeared before me. Bushes that had been taller than I drooped to the ground in short stems. My slow steps became softened by the moss that stretched over the brick walkway, almost like a welcome mat inviting me to Mrs. Burch’s backdoor. Though the air was stagnant, the petite butterfly windchime sang in a wind of its own. Close as I was, the music it delivered seemed to have grown lighter in sound. I believed, on some level, the windchime was the garden’s last opportunity to hear Mrs. Burch’s life again through music: a lullaby kissing her flowers goodbye. I pressed my face to the glass of her back door and peered inside. Clay pots sat on the concrete floor and on cheap shelves in the dark. The variation of deep and bright leafy vines intermingled with each other, knotting all the

way down the wall. Only a woman like Mrs. Burch could grow a dozen healthy plants in a basement with hardly any natural light. I turned to walk away but stopped at the sight of her black wall lantern. A sparkling wet web, home to a microscopic, pale spider, almost frightened me out of my skin, but I stayed and watched the insect weaving his broken web. How easy it would have been to remove the spider from existence, but I chose not to: he belonged there more than I did. The bricks disappeared as I walked up the trail, opening to a gravel semi-circle. A pair of white, iron chairs and a single little table sat against the edge of the gravel that bordered glossy Magnolia trees. Rocks crunched under my feet with each step until I took a seat. Despite the cold iron pressed against my legs and barely fitting between the arms of the gnome-sized chair, I took a moment to look around me. Mrs. Burch’s life still gleamed behind her home. Light burst through the branches above in pale beams. They offered wide rings of illumination like nightlights in the day. The songs from the windchime must have flowed a different direction; here, every noise seemed to have

quieted down. It was as if Mrs. Burch’s flowers had their heads bowed in mourning, the bugs and leaves silenced in farewell. Beside me, a skinny vine had slithered up and attached itself to the tree. I plucked a purple flower from it and placed it in the center of my palm. The petals began to weaken already, drooping, dying in my hand. I touched my fingertip to a petal, feeling its flawless velvet skin. Later, I would press it between the pages of my Bible. I stood to leave. It was Easter, after all, and dinner would be starting soon. Back on the path, daylight became brighter, warming my flesh as if I had been in a dark, wet cave this entire time. The trail opened, the bushes stopped, and no more flowers bloomed. The air no longer smelled like mist but crispy pine needles and dry mulch. I shot onto flat ground on the other side of the front yard. Then I stopped. A concrete plaque with brown words painted on it rested against a tree stump. “The Earth laughs in flowers,” it said. Perhaps the garden had not been mourning. Rather, it was laughing in remembrance of Mrs. Burch, at her joy and at her life.

Untitled

Courtney Hash Ceramic with Florals

Beauty

by Karson Harsey Love as a flower Buds, blossoms, slowly, surely Time brings much beauty

Defeating Cerberus by Taylor Rose Elliott

BUT TELL ME TO WHICH YOU DARE TO VENTURE THUS SO FAR FROM THE WIDE HEAVEN OF JOY TO WHICH YOUR THOUGHTS YEARN BACK FROM THIS ABYSS1 I. The hush of the clouds, purple and pink In spring the autumn leaves blow away one by one The hush of the birds, telling me it is not my turn to speak I look, wondering, which could it be? The King or the Christ? Which one made each shining green blade one by one So soft, a silver hush blowing in the wind And so sharp, I keep my feet under me on my bench I keep my feet under me, sedentary and sore and splintering I wonder if I am watched by the King or the Christ It seems today the world is Swooning2 In the sweltering helter skelter, we fall off the tree one by one Except I am not a leaf and it is not my turn to speak, And I float, is it the El Shaddai or the Rabbi? To which I should cry out for the chlorophyll, to cover my shame But I am too afraid to believe the testament could be this good for me But I am tired of paying to fill up my box of sugar pills, week after week The cost is low, the pain slows, but I don’t feel anything anymore at night Who is it I cry to, El Shaddai or the Rabbi? WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE SO CRUSHED WITH PAIN? THEY ARE THE BAND OF ANGELS WHO KNEW NOT TO SIDE WITH GOD OR REBEL AGAINST HIM.3

1 Canto II, The Inferno 2 Dante’s emotional reaction to Hell in The Inferno 3 Canto I, The Inferno

II. The hush of the rain patting my back, is it the Third Circle4 we’ve reached? The weight of the sky when I remember such thing as eternity The hush of my lover’s swooning weep, reminding me to let God Speak And I look, but my eyes are too wet to see So I feel with my fingers, soft whet blades one by one So real; on this earth I’ve beautiful love, but I am getting nothing done. There are snakes growing around my ribcage and there’s no room For either of our hands if we are both shaking, selfish, and scared The hush of the clouds seem to cry ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE5 III. Over the hush, the words against me have been thought and spoken And over the hush, a new Master of Masters reminds me what light looks like The weight of the sky holds me down so I can see, what Trying looks like Past the purple clouds, the craved Poet’s suicides, the spreading disease So I can feel something so real I am freed from my flesh’s fickle feeling So real, doubtless love lights a candle in my chest, I need no pity now that in mercy I am beginning And until I can go on, I will keep on singing Maybe one of the Poets has finally learned Reverence Thus I began

LOOK TO ME AND LOOK THROUGH ME—CAN I BE WORTHY?6

4 Third Circle of Hell in Inferno Canto VI associated with gluttony and Cerberus the three-headed dog 5 Canto III, The Inferno 6 Canto II, The Inferno

Belapsah

by Davis Lisk

The cosmic egg came time to hatch, release The water, land, and endless sky, and cease The wond’ring of the gods who dwell in high And loftiest Adhlohin. By and by The lords of sky forgot the world that came Of shell and yoke and white, thus left their claim To Halë lord of surf and silt and sea. Then Halë, loathing land and leah, was free To fill the earth with frothing wave and flood The highest hill in swell and line the mud Along the ocean’s floor. The rain he bore Across the mounds and many a mellow moor. But Halë was as old as time and lay Upon a bed of cotton lilies; they Were where the haughty god his linens donned And passed from Ólë to the great beyond. Now Halë had a son and heir who stood To claim the restless sea, but not he could, At least not then, for he had journeyed far To catch the firebird past yonder star And thus was unawares his father died. But one in hallowèd Adlohin spied The barren world and in his heart rejoiced But left his rapture inward and unvoiced And slipped beyond the fragile silken veil Of gusty glass and entered int’ the gale And fluttered downward lightly as a leaf. E’er onward downward tumbled he, the thief

Of this young world not as yet weaned from need Of hallowed touch, a barren plot indeed! The sky of ancient frost was bitter cold And blew about in hectic colours bold And soft and rich and pale. On down he sailed Unto that lithe and liquid sea and nailed His magic beechan wand within the deep And in the still below the swirling sweep Of wild winding wind began to stir The water, slowly first and then a whirr Until the sea was fathoms high with swell And from its pitch black stomach rose the land Again to see the sun and meet the sea with sand. And Lúvan looked upon the earth, his earth, And in his heart were flooding waves of mirth. Out from his soul his spirit spake, “What-ho! I hardly had imagined bliss like this, I trow. I have no greater wish but that I be A dweller here throughout eternity, So let me live upon the strand and peer Int’ diamond waters dancing there and here.” And so he spied an isle of golden sand And finding it to be the best did land Upon its silent shores and walked about And made a home of leaves and boughs and out Beyond his window sat a comely shapèd birch That lay a throw of stone away; the perch Too far to touch the lissome limbs of grey. So on a day i’ th’ morn, he strayed away From home and hearth unto that stately tree, And walked on past the blooms where every bee Was buzzing in the warm and spritely air. And when he neared the birch with solemn care He saw its form to be that of a lass, So mild, wild, fair and sleek as glass And with his hands he peeled away the bark And underneath he found the maiden-lark,

Dozens of Daisies

by Davis Lisk

And next his mouth was left agape; he spake Not for a mighty span, but aft did make These words: “O Lord Rethmagel, father mine, What hast thou given me?” Next she did sign, The birchen maid, with finger to her lips, And thus did Lúvan grant a kiss, eclipse Of all the world around in name of glee, And she walked with him from the pièd tree. Then loose was laid the lark-maid’s mouth And sang a song of seas unto the south And whirlwinds in the west and to the north A citadel to nature and thus forth The eve of morn up in the east. Anon She sang another song of how upon The mind of Díl the notion sprang to hold Her there within that birch till she waxed old Or someone came to be the King of Sky And marry her, the Queen of Earth. Then nigh Upon their heads a bird of white did twirl And in a flash of lightning did unfurl Its guise and was for them to see the King Of Space, Rethmagel, in his hand a ring And round his neck another on a cord, And with a voice like silver thunder roared, “Let Lúvan, O my precious son, be wed To Díl’s, the sleep god’s, daughter as they’re led, If it is well to both of them to be Thus laced as one, throughout eternity.” So thus, with no dissent, the two were one And on a certain day brought forth a son And named him then Waledelw, for his eyes Were brighter than the stars of all the skies. His mother, named Hillajo by her man, Was overcome with joy as e’er one can And lifted up a melody of song To which creation ever sings along.

Dozens of daisies don her tresses My fingers feeling to set each flower Gold as the sunlight lesses In the glist’ning golden hour And bright and brave the brow she bears And vivid verdant eyes she keeps I hurry my hands through the depths of her hairs And drop daisy-blossoms down in the deeps Let us lie by the lullaby shore And leer at the long-lolling ships Till the daylight is tatteredly wore And the moonlight shines bright on her lips Let her hold here her head on my shoulder And flash fierce her fiery green eyes Shall she love yet when we are older And my brow is bright and wise? Ay, let her love me now For what I say is some swift dream And barren of blossoms lies her blonde brow That glows in golden gleam The spectral spring of hollow hopes Lies in the heart and holds on tight Then tumbles towards the feet of slopes And leaves the love within to night A dozen daisies all a phantom Naught but nightshade dressed as light No love-goddess glad to grant ’em Sings to me from such a height And yet in yonder dream-lit beach We sit against the gladsome sea And seems the sun within our reach And well-wishing weather, she welcomes me

Liberty

Abigail Moore Watercolor

Time Travelling Candide’s The Best of All Possible [Jobs] by Taylor Rose Elliott

She pours coffee in the yellow kitchen, bright and almost sunny, even though it is cloudy outside. As she stirs in the cream, she splashes it onto the paperwork she was reading and laughs at herself. She hears him waking up in the bedroom. The gray countertop is stacked with file folders, neatly tabbed and clipped. The names on them mean everything, but somehow they don’t hurt her to read; in her youth those names would have brought her down more than she could ever understand. I wish I could have told her it wouldn’t have to be that way forever. Under last night’s reading on the coffee table, there are strewn manuscripts, sticky notes and paperclipped coffee shop napkins. Maybe the manuscripts have been read by some big publisher, and maybe they haven’t. I can’t tell that just by looking at them now. But I’m glad to see that she is still writing, and there are manuscripts put together at all. Some of the notes on that coffee table look like they belong to someone else. Some of the books look well worn, but unfamiliar, even like something she would never pick for herself. And they are carefully bookmarked instead of

dog-eared. She didn’t end up with that drummer who liked math after all. I wish I could have told her then, when I knew her, that it was going to be okay – even when drummer boy picked the worst time to leave. Out of all times, he chose the time when she had no one left. But I wish I could tell her that just because she had no one doesn’t mean she had nothing. She woke up that morning beside the first boy to teach her how to look in his eyes without flinching. She walks back into the soft-lit room, where he is still buried under the comforter. She hands him a cup of coffee, a thank you, because he brought hers yesterday when she had a bad night, and as he sits up she slides back under his arm, fully dressed. She wants to dwell in that light for a moment before she leaves for work. When she walks out the door to leave for work, it’s deliberate and slow; it’s intentional. A few years before in the place she used to live, she’d often fallen down the stairs in her haste to leave. Now, she takes the time to scratch the cat, Simon, under his chin. When she puts on her sweater, her ring gets caught on the wool. She picks up her keys,

her briefcase, and she walks out of the door. In less than a minute she comes running back in, and he walks out of the bedroom and hands her a purple umbrella, kissing her on the cheek. He holds the wriggling black cat in his arms, steadying himself while the kitten runs around his feet while she steps out into the rain again. She walks to work, or maybe since it’s raining she drives. Maybe she decides to take a subway or a train. But she listens to music the whole time, or maybe if she’s on the subway she sings in her head and tries to think about all the reasons to be kind that day. She holds down her skirt as she steps over the grate, and she still wears the same shoes that she used to before she had to grow up. No use changing what is still functional, he told her, as she mulled over a pair of heels before her first day. So in the new job her worn Dr. Martens stayed. Her workplace smells like new paint and old wood. It’s small, but there are a lot of windows, and sometimes in between patients she walks out of her office just to sit in a waiting room chair and look out the big window, where you can see the tops of the old buildings and the rooftop cafés and balconies where the students will study or the restaurants will serve people at round tables. The secretary nods to her while she talks politely on the phone, tapping her pen at the top of the schedule to let her know that, as often, her first patient cancelled again. So she walks into her office, a pang of disappointment in her chest that never weakens even though this patient cancels regularly. So she goes into her office and writes an email to the scared man, trying to

paint yellow sunshine and love in-between every professionalized bit of jargon. And the next patient comes in and then another: a teenage boy who always wears a Patriots cap because he keeps pulling out his hair; an old woman who carries around an urn. She forgot her lunch—she’s still as forgetful as she used to be—so she walks across the street to a coffee shop that’s not her favorite but has a good espresso and orders a cappuccino and a roll while she rereads a book with a broken spine. The next patient has red hair and reminds her of her sister, and every Monday, as she gazes at the scars on her arm and the lines on her collarbone, she had to remind herself not to connect the two. Not to reach over and grab her hand and squeeze it, like she did her sister. As she hands the teenage girl a tissue and watches her smear her mascara, she still looks into her kohl-smeared eyes and sees her sister’s, green seafoam and deep blue. But still, she writes her notes and calls her Mom in between patients. She doesn’t tell her mom what happened. But the redhead girl’s mom killed herself, so she takes solace in her mom’s voice, scolding her about being late with her taxes. On the way home, he calls, his voice unfocused and slow, and says he will be home late; he is in his office writing and playing, and he doesn’t think he will run out of words anytime soon. She pictures his hair, falling toward his face as he is bent over in front of his desk lamp and the keyboard clicking or his pen scratching. She smiles at

picturing this, the furrowing of his brow, those little glances he’d steal out the window between every paragraph. I don’t know what he is writing or working on, but it seems like she is proud if it, of him. It is not worth her getting lonely over, either. I wish I could have told her a few years ago that there was such a smile, like this one, that wouldn’t hurt. She went home with plans to cook dinner, but instead burned potatoes on the stove, because by the time they had begun to cook she was engrossed in her papers on the coffee table. There’s and they’re’s and too’s and two’s and inversion and conjunctions. The light faded over the words on the table and, by the time she heard the door slam closed, the cat was curled in her lap, and she had begun to read slower and slower. They ended up eating cereal at the kitchen counter, laughing while they tried to get the cat to eat the food she burnt. Eventually the counter was cleared and the coffee was poured, and they sat at the table and talked about what they had created or done or finished that day. She told him about the redhead girl, and he didn’t mind that she had talked about it so many times before. They sat on the concrete steps, and in her talking she had let her coffee go cold, as she always did. So she replaced the mug for his hands, and they just talked about the moon and the song she used to sing when she first learned how to play the guitar. She fell asleep with the cat sleeping on the hollow of her back, on the right side of the bed, and he took off her glasses, took the book off her chest, and put them on the bedside table. She woke up in the middle of the night as she always did, but it didn’t worry her as much as it

used to. I remember the way she used to be, and it doesn’t surprise me that her life ended up this way. It doesn’t surprise anyone that she’s a writer, a counselor, that her job is to understand people and to teach people to understand. It doesn’t surprise anyone that she married someone like him, finally falling into his arms after much trial and tribulation and doubt. It doesn’t surprise anyone that her life is good and that she is happy and that she stayed so free and young and wandered through all the school and internships and underestimation. But I think it would have surprised her, 10 years ago, as she spent her days floating in between hands that were rough and hands that were so soft they let her go, as she floated between warm, big beds and cold, tiny ones. As she looked into the future the way she picked at her skin and tried to make sense of constellations she had not yet learned, or learned to find. As she tried to hide old scars but still made new ones. But I can only hope that these ten years later have been forgetful, and healing, and soft enough to let her grow kind and believing again.

Landscape Inspired by Studio Ghibli Lauren Renee Drake Acrylic

Yamato

by Kimberly Rhyne watch the blossoms bloom capture moments in a scene fore they disappear caterpillar grows into delicate maiden spreading silky wings warm us, bathed in gold sun sinks down behind the peaks goddess, bless your sons jikan to ningen (time and humans) ga subarashikute hen (are wonderful and strange) zentai-tekina, (overall,) chikyuu no inochi ga (the earth’s life is) hakanakute kirei (fleeting and beautiful.) Amaterasu bless your people on the ground send your holy light fly, my daughter, fly be not trapped by spider’s web seek out winged love soft, pink petals float gently to the busy streets trampled underfoot

Coil Bowl Tatiana Dolan Ceramic

Stones Strewn by Karson Harsey

Stones strewn all about Striking seeds and trees alike The mountain stands strong

Rebounded Abigail Moore Watercolor

Old Order

by Karson Harsey

Trumpets blare, stars flare The earth quakes as angels spake The old order breaks

Murky Lake

by Karson Harsey The lake stays murky Clearing up in small portions ‘Til all is made clear

Heavenly Performance by Tayler Brooks

He holds the world in the palm of his hands. The curtain rises, displaying the magnificent cast. Twinkling stars illuminate the stage of creation with radiance. The creatures progress in a classical carousel. The orchestra fills the stage with music, As the angels sing the notes to the sweet melody. Galaxies spin and twirl in a whimsical dance, While the moon does a waltz to the foot-tapping choreography. The celestial bodies shower a cascade of applause to the performers. The sun rises slowly, Closing the curtain on the heavenly performance.

Belapsasamí asetíamí / In the Sunrise of the World by Davis Lisk

Sereni, révítí, o wilë delwema Hisili estor o irë vesendë Tentelos belapsasamí asetíamí Telwi lúvanamí lúvë – sí i Serenor walelë ma som asúra Gintor grálamí – sevondar kentos. Stars, flowers, and lights profound These are, with their sisters Dancing in the sunrise of the world, Things of the high heaven – there they Burn sore bright like oil Flashing in a pan – flame of white.

His Mind

by Karson Harsey

His mind forsees all Syllable, motion, intents Each earth’d cave is known

I’ll Be Home

by Jessica Lee Rascio Oh, for the gentle salty breeze Carrying the glam’rous stories of price fixed evenings With red sand between her toes. Stories of old whispering through the ancient trees, Ghosts that have been here before, dancing her reprise.

Ariel

by Jennifer Palmer

Broken red clay coastlines, Sparkling ocean reflecting memory’s keepsake, She danced in the water, wandering your rugged shore; She lingered pen in hand ruminating maturity’s new confines, An endless stretch of bridge across the troubled waters, an endless stretch of time.

One, singular mistake – a spot of refusal that led me here. Trapped, released, and trapped again. So here I stand at your command, and yet My heart makes one demand. Consuming thirst No drink can quell, for yet I durst to flee This living hell – of your own making, sir.

Hand in hand she walks Dianna down the rugged shore, The Bipolar tide daily alt’ring the landscape in her eyes, Ever-changing yet forever immortalized, Years torn and broken the past restored, And yet again she stands before the open door.

She never meant for life to circle back to this, Fearing the inescapable cycle that never seems to end. It tells her she was just running. How could I be running? I thought I’d escaped, yet to deny this land the truth I’d be remiss; Still you have my pledge. I will return to reminisce.

Faster, farther, longer, harder – Atlas himself could be no stronger than my two feet that tread the dawn, the deep, and all creation’s song. There I’ve been, and there I’ve gone for you, dear sir, I’ve played the pawn.

For though your magic holds me fast to each, Your whim, it will not last. My lord, my liege, Take arms, make siege against my will, but know: The show I give you has an end in sight.

For as long as the sun shines upon the land, I shall persevere. All we see is light.

When I am free, free as the sky ’neath me, free to dance and to dash with the air and the sea, I shall be as the wind, beyond constraints of time... Dear, naïve girl – listen, go take your brave new world and let me take mine.

Soul’s Flight by Justin Oates

An elvish beauty shining in starlight, Lonely and wretched, sobbing in skies bright, Crying to heaven, mourning in moonlight, Pale in the soft breeze, cloaked now in full-fright, Remembering daggers in dawn and in twilight, That severed her home, stole then as love might, Joy from within, reserved for old love’s sight, Replaced with fears that each were her last night, Consuming her days, rigid young soul’s blight, ’Til freedom be found, peace in a soul’s flight.

The Fossegrim by Davis Lisk

Booming wall of falling water Roaring wall of rushing glass All of this is his domain He is wise, a king of knowing Mighty on the fiddle, strumming, humming Running out in rolling ripples Sing, O sing, the river’s song The lulling chorus of the lake That deeply delving melody Flowing through the cattails, Lined along the riverbank, Gently swaying to the picking, plucking Pricking of the lucky lyre

Brick Wall

Oh Gentle MooN

Jessica Lee Rascio Marker

by Davis Lisk

O gentle moon, I prithee light The lonesome realm of this to-night. O raven black, let not thy caw Wake sleeping babe, don’t scratch or claw. O owl wise, a-hunting cease And give to mice a night of peace.

III. The Grotesque “I always wanted to know what it was like to be wicked, and actually…it turns out not to be all that much fun.” - Guy de Maupassant

Contralto - A Ghazal by Taylor Rose Elliott

In the room, the women, they came and they went, Draping themselves over chairs, over mouths, over men Keeping cigars in the gun drawer till the moment when, Boys can be boys, gin will be gin, men can be men. All of us take notion emotions as law every now and again, Dancing on rooftops, bending over pool tables, chatting up the men. All of us, gloveless and alone, want a walk home, every now and again, But I fear they know I’m no good, maybe we lost the last of the lying gentlemen. Still in the room the women, they came again and again, Draping myself over the mantle like a clock, screaming, I’m done with men Biting off the tips of cigars, crashing new cars, then the rain starts falling amen Falling like a drum on the roof of the heads of three-piece business men. Tonight, I might crawl into a coffin with just my split ends and my fountain pen While God grows shade trees over His meadows over Our ashes, over the heads of His men To get stronger, to start over, over and over and over again Sinning to win, screaming could we be more than useless, mortal men? The placebo addiction, the act of saying yes, over and over and over again; You know you’re no good, hearing no, and no, again, and again, from the men. When it all burns down, pick my jewelry from the ash for the next of kin, Whoever that is to keep it out of the hands of the mortuary men When I get lost in the sound, please remember the years when I sang like a carolina wren, The years we waltzed around the battlefield, closing eyelids for the murdered men. Before her 27th year, before the love addiction and 416mg blood Infatuation, I was Amy Winehouse, 25 with raven wings, singing shadows over these music men. Promise me, when our rants are relapsed and I remain a slumped and sloppy omen, That you’ll pretend we won, disappeared into the sun, the first ever unmedicated men.

Sunflower

Tayler Brooks Digital Photography 47

Lost at Land by Dillon Lisk

“The sun! If only we could find the sun!” All hope seems to have dripped out of his words, for too thick was the fog that clang so close. The night was scarcely worse than this, the brightness came on every side at once: though everywhere, as good as not at all. I hesitate to say we should despair, but numbness would a better solace be than hope that’s shattered every dawn. How many days impossible to tell, how many miles inland is the same; only the number lost can be recalled. How foolish we once were! “At last! Sweet solid ground” we shouted then, but ocean had been kinder then than now. I write this more to see if it is real, than with the hope that one will one day find this sad account of my sick frame of mind. If you now read this, look not here for hope, but had I any left, I’d leave some here, to ease your slow march downward into hell.

A Vineyard Crown1 by Aidan Beasley

Hush, come in then, not there, here. Yes, may I take your hat and coat? Poor heavy-handed prince of pages. Let me wipe and smooth the wordy wires From your withered and fermented Frame of mind, Brush and sweep, watch them glide Downward as you drift up Into your velvet vineyard. Hush, my prince, Don’t let her Anesthetize Your call to arms. I’ll smash the banshee where she stands, To see you Beautiful. Hush and wail, ignite, prevail, Let me place a vineyard crown Upon your brow and Kiss you with my iron lips Asleep, you saint, you earthly image Rest in Peace, I never miss.

1 From the perspective of the title character in Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda

Gabler.

Vater Nacht / Father Night

by Davis Lisk

Seed

by Karson Harsey Agony to blood Swords and clubs tear the tree down Only to plant seed

Die Muse murmeln in heiße Missgunst; Wahr, wahr, sie sieden In Sehnsucht sein als mein Mädchen. Sie ist mehr Muse als alle ihre Kunst. Sie gibt mein Herz lieden Singen im Sommer, schöne Liedchen. Mein Hand hält eine Feder Gedichte Gestalten der Liebe für dich, Mein schöne Schätzchen, Leben und Luft, Wunderbarer Wind von wütendem Schimmer. Lächel, meine Liebe, für mich; Ring reicher als der Rabe ruft Der kniet wie Klopfen der Vater Nacht Und ich solo weine sacht. The muses mumble in hot resentment; Truly, truly, they are seething With longing after my maiden. She is more muse than all of their art. She giveth to my heart songs Sung in summer, pretty little songlets. My hand holdeth a feather To shape poems for thee, My beautiful darling, my life and air, Wonderful wind of furious shimmer. Smile, my love, for me; Ring richer than the raven’s call, Which kneels as Father Night is knocking, And I, alone, weep softly. 49

Spider SchoOl Drawing Lauren Renee Drake Colored Pencil 50

Golden Walk by Macy Cochran

Breathing had been difficult for all of us, not just my aunt. Each day that her lungs worsened from COPD was another day the family felt more and more out of breath. Alex, her twelve-year-old daughter, suffered the most. “I don’t think I will ever smile again,” she’d said between the walls of a white hospital bathroom. Alex’s mother died at midnight on the morning of October sixth. The last breath she inhaled was light and quick, two hours previous to my house resonating with a dreadful ring in the middle of the night. Isn’t that always when people die, in the loneliest time of night, the silence, and the stillness? My eyes flickered open at the first ring. Mom was the one who answered; she had been expecting a midnight call that stated her sister had passed. The ceiling was flat and open above me and just plain enough to stare at while I listened for words of confirmation to come from my mom’s room. “She’s gone.” No goodbye, no “I’m sorry,” no “How was she?” Just the beep of the call ending. Perhaps Mom had said more, but her first two words floated around me like snowflakes and absorbed into my head. She’s gone. Alex slept with me that night in my bed. Her eyelids remained motionless and rested; her lips parted ever so slightly. I watched her in her very last moments of peace before chaos. She would wake up only once more in the mindset of having a mother. 52

Upon hearing the news from my mom at bedside the next morning, Alex simply nodded and smiled. We took a walk up the road, just the two of us in our dark green coats and breezy swirls of hair. I wondered if she could see the beauty in that clean, brittle autumn morning. The leaves fell in golden streaks to the empty road below. Detachment had never looked so mystical. Death had never looked so stunning. Alex’s youthful glow that engulfed her only yesterday had melted into a shallow presence and a thin face. Her depth of childhood innocence had fled. She was a grown-up now. She just didn’t know it yet. Piercingly loud silence settled in the gap between our tiny bodies while new words kept reappearing in my head: Aren’t you going to cry, Alex? Cry, for God’s sake. Cry. My eyes were so dry they burned for moisture, but our tears never came. We just kept walking and sucking on caramel hard candy, the shiny gold wrappers tumbling out of our pockets and dancing with the leaves in the wind. It was almost like a root had been ripped out of Alex’s life and left a gaping hole. The void severed her and me, leaving a splintered line that would prickle at the flesh that tried to move against the grain. Her expression was plain and unresponsive, like a porcelain doll that kids aren’t allowed to play with. In the days following our golden walk through raining trees, nothing I offered Alex was enough to comfort her. She had separated herself from me completely. I felt like she and I were falling together down the void. I can still sigh at the times I reached to save her. But she refused me, rejecting my compassion and phone calls. The void was hers. All I could do was watch her fall through it. Finally, she disappeared from my life, and I could no longer hear her voice or see her face or stretch any farther for her. And she pretended that she couldn’t hear me or the voicemails or the knocks on her door. No matter, though. The void pulled us all down just a little. Everyone is still waiting at the surface for when she reappears.

This Is My Letter To the World by Jennifer Palmer

This is my letter to the world. To the ones who laughed, to the ones who mocked, to the ones who tore at the seams of my dreams… I pity you. To those who cut me down, bit by bit… I pity you. I’m no Messiah, but I forgive you. Absolutely almost. I never said I was perfect. Despite your absinthe recollections, I never uttered those words.

What Must We Do to Bring Back Spring? by Jessica Lee Rascio

Stormy clouds of winter give way to soft spring rain; Green buds and flowers bloom, As we learn to walk again. Yet something here feels wrong; this new life seems misplaced. Resurrected brokenness, Threaded through spring’s embrace. Searching for some answer amidst the cold gray skies. Quench this fire on the roof; Heaven knows I’ve tried. Will there be another spring again? Only time can tell. We fall, we rise, we carry on… To yesterday, Farewell.

Obsession

Abigail Moore Watercolor 55

Ode to the Tattooed by Macy Cochran

O, the children too young for tattoos Of the women forced bald And the men born of Jews, The failure of humanity henceforth forgotten Should not have been buried alive With you, the ones left and rotten. It’s to be remembered or else killed twice, Chambered, angered, and blistered Nude skin sculpted of ice. Survivors, lean in closely, hear me, my dears: A young girl said, “People are good at heart,” But your words are different, drenched with tears. With few of you left, honored may you be: Permanent black marks and scars, don’t hide Them, they symbolize your dignity, And everything they murdered shall live on: Your aptitude for life, candor in speech, A legacy preserved long after you’ve gone.

Bobcat Moan

by Randall C. Blackerby When I was a boy long ago, we rocked at night On our porch, listening to an eerie hollow cry Like a terrified woman in the distance. ‘It’s a bobcat,’ said Grandpa, ‘made its den by the creek,’ Warning the children to ‘play far away from the woods.’ Reflecting eyes caught in torchlight, My father took aim as it vaulted over the stream. The rifle report echoed in the cool still air. A painful scream punctuated the dusk As the wounded cat bounded away in the void. Time passed, until one day Old Man Bryant called Because he knew they were looking For some evidence of its demise. At the foot of a pine tree, he found the remains Where his dogs delivered the coup de grace. I walked with my father to meet the old man. He took us to the tree, then opened a crumpled paper sack, Reached inside and pulled out the oblong skull, With baleful eye sockets and curved saber teeth from jutting jaw, Dried sanguine stains merged in aged ivory. ‘It can’t hurt you now,’ mother said, sensing my dread As she tucked me in tight. But I dreamed that night Of the primitive feline skull screaming from its den, Under the rooted ancient oak where it nursed as a babe.

Overwhelmed

Hope Yeargin Acrylic

August 12; August 19; Since then by Taylor Rose Elliott

In the landscape of these gray days, the overbearing darkness hangs heavy-A darkness with no yields. Darkness must have yields I think about it every day. Weighed down with invisible thoughts that are never penned on any page Rehearsed speeches I’ll never actually make, And, with my calloused hands, I crush everything I’ve made: My legacy, intertwined with a history I’ve earned; My songs, my voice cracks, my poems, Time has won Weighing me down with cups of coffee and books in a foreign language. In the cities inside my mind I stand on the highest, brightest ledge, My shoes abandoned in that café, where we learned to stare. Feet, cut and bleeding, I may be stumbling but I’m not scared anymore. My painted, dirty hands, lifted high, calluses exposed in the sun. Your eyes, the mud green of the ground and the water in the sky, Burned unto the back of my hand and the heart of my mind, Lifted into the emptiness of your favorite rainy days, The swings where I used to mess up your hair, We took it day by day, the rain and the sun layered like sweaters and tee shirts, But it’s only August, and the sun leaves for days.

Now I buy my coffee, and I never make it at home. I wear my shirts as loose as your noose; I want to get lost inside, by myself. I lace my boots as tight as my collarbones As tight as we laced our fingers, then. Now, my chest heaving like an opera singer Expel the passion into breath, never to run out. Like her, just know that I I live my life to remember outgrown love and worn out songs, And it would take my whole life to destroy all of our art you left And you won’t even take it back. But still, I rise and rise, but Somehow you skipped all the stairs without falling. But me, In all my car wrecks and failed skateboard tricks And theatre stunts and vocal runs gone wrong. Stumbling haunts me as I keep climbing, my young stiffened bones Creaking in August’s sweating cold. For me, Cold-blooded and tired, there’s so much more winter to weather, Whether it’s at your house on the hill, or our house far from home, Or a twin bed with two comforters, all alone.

Death Tax

by Michael Thomas I wonder if there were lawyers in the room Where Melchizedek died. We’ll never know, of course, Under whose jurisdiction his Pentateuch Was divided among the next of kin. Of all his law we have only the letter, Of his lineage, only a parable, Jagged as the Gospel’s four faces. In the same manner, I am in that room. I am a parable From whom the Death Tax Has already been taken.

IV. The Absolute “Knowledge of the world means dissolving into the solidity of the world.” - Italo Calvino

The Guilty Pleasures of the Homeless by Taylor Rose Elliott

I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I think my liver is diseased. Then again, I don’t know a thing about my illness; I’m not even sure what hurts. -Dostoyevsky’s Notes From the Underground (Christmas 2018) He was homeless for a few months at one point, sleeping in a borrowed van or maybe someone’s apartment. Homeless in Charleston by the rising seas, playing drums with a band that practiced in a storage unit; it was too cold, though, for him to live in there with the guitars. I could tease him about his wandering for a while, joke that he is a true romantic now, but I know that then he didn’t even believe in love. Or maybe he just hadn’t felt it yet; there’s no way to know the difference now. On the boardwalk, somewhere around Christmas day, he gave up and left that town, along with the piano he didn’t even play. He still brings it up sometimes; he is still disappointed in himself, saying that leaving his piano was a waste of money and time. That was a year or so ago. Then he was twenty-two, living in a wooden house that felt as if it was nestled in the woods, even though it was only a hundred feet from the road. There were drafty, dreary unfinished rooms in the back that were almost underground, and I begged him to let me paint murals on the blank, dirty walls. He didn’t even turn on the 62

heat here until I started coming over every day, because he knows I’m always cold, but I would never let anyone lend me a jacket. Then, on Christmas, under a xeroxed picture of mistletoe, he told me that he might believe, now, in love. I told him I wanted to, but I couldn’t let myself make anything of it. But we kissed on the porch on that unusually warm Christmas, and I told him that I’d go on this ride down with him anyhow. I tried to cover those unfinished walls with every beautiful thing I could think of, and I hoped that, when his ears started ringing and his eyes grew sore, I left him with some goodness to think about. He kept telling me that I’m the best, most beautiful thing he has, and I felt the same way. The problem is, it was hard for me to believe that not everyone will grow tired of me eventually. I reminded him so many times that first month that I am a mess and I usually can’t surrender my hands, or my mouth, and I don’t know if I have any feeling left to give at all. I told him I have a habit of disbelieving, I have these terrible habits of getting scared that everyone I love hates me and forgetting how to breathe, forgetting the light switch is right in front of me. I kept reminding him I can’t always be here, and my hands aren’t always warm; I kept apologizing for taking the time he needs to sleep with all the

words I’m remembering. But he just rubs my wrists to calm me down, and assures me he is a strong man who can do without. He plays the drums, he works with his hands, for work he crawls underground beneath the houses almost as much as he stands. While we held hands in our coffee shop, I looked at the dust on his knees, and I imagined a dark, murky place with only the punk bands inside his head to keep him company. Once, he didn’t eat meat for months, as I haven’t for years, just because he knew that it was something he could do; now it’s something he did. Maybe it was for me. But yet he tells himself it’s okay to be okay with never waking up someday; sometimes he asks me why humans want things if they are sinful, after I told him it wasn’t okay to make a habit of hating anything, especially himself. It’s not okay to deprive yourself just to see what happens. But he kept telling me it was okay. He will keep convincing the world he is strong enough to go without. He worked late and he stayed up later, even when I wasn’t on the phone to live in his ear. He believed I loved him, and I think now maybe I did, as he did too. And one cold day under six blankets I asked him why there were little blades hidden in his bedside table, his kitchen, all over his house, blades silver and shiny and many sided like the

green blue of his eyes and the gray in his smile. I thought we’d both left it all behind. And I asked him if he thought he would ever be happy again and if there were such a thing as eternal happiness. I asked him if he had been taking his medicine; I asked him if I were the right person to be moving things around in his house and his life. Even today, sometimes I feel as if I need to fix everything, all at once; so I rearranged everything for him in a way that seemed fixed in my eyes. I think he knew this is one of my things I worry about; he knew I’ll follow people down if I think I can save them. So he just told me again that he is a strong man, he is a caring man, as long as he has money and strong hands and love, these other things, he can do without. Still scared, always scared, I swallow pills as my throat closes. I know I will feel better—I know they will make me clean and empty inside—they will not heal me, but they will force my body to forget fighting for now. I knew then that he wouldn’t stay, because I was too young and brave. I know he stopped taking the pills because it’s hard for him to believe that anything that changes his chemistry could be better than “staying strong” and “going without.” If he’s sad then he’s meant to be sad, right? But the blades left scars when he was thirteen; I ask him, “Is that not change?” But as I complain he said, “When it rains 63

it is meant to rain,” and so we stay inside and watch horror movies all day instead of getting a sunburn, and scraping our knees falling off our skateboards. And we pretend our thirteens were different. And that we were not still the same. So, in our times inside, he kissed my head and asked me why I worry so much, why my hands shake. He said against my pressed lips, “Babe, of course everything’s gonna be okay. You need to sleep, you need to forget, this is not a healthy state you’re in. You can’t go without peace,” he said. He said that everyone else is not my responsibility. He forgot to put up lights for Christmas and then left the door open after I left; I convinced myself it’s just going to have to be okay that the cat ran away. “There’s no need to get a new one because it will leave too.” That’s what he said in his gray thermal shirt, pressed against my cheek as I traced his tattoo with my finger. He changed the subject, looked down at the tree on his arm, and he said he was going to get an X inked over the roots of it. He said it was meant to represent the feeling of that empty wandering that he would never be able to explain. I asked him, “But why would you take the roots away?” He was homeless; half by choice. He wanted to see what it would feel like, and he didn’t care anymore. I told him that’s not a healthy feeling, and he said to me that pain is almost better than happiness; it feels good when

something good happens on its own. But “if you let it slip, if you give into the inertia of that hole in the ground, under the roots under the fall leaves, if you fall just to see what is at the bottom it will only get worse,” I told him, only in my notebook. Sometimes when I looked at the gold amongst the green in his eyes, I thought about how I lied, and I let the sunlight shining through the green branches let me forget. I realized I was a liar somewhere amongst the x-acto knife in my painting kit, amongst my three houses and zero homes, somewhere amongst the baby pink constellations I’ve crafted so intentionally and carelessly on the palest part of my arm. So, realizing my sin, I told him that I understand why he wanted to be homeless, because sometimes I wallowed too, but that we needed to start believing now, remember the belief we had once before: joy, God, goodness, and sleep, and talking to his mother; these are not things he should force himself to do without just to prove something. He is a builder, he is so competent with his hands, he builds houses every day late into the night. I reminded him, he’ll never be homeless again, and he stole my hand back from my tracing of the scars on his hands, and he brought it to his lips. “I never fixed the clock,” he said. “But that’s just because you want to trick me to stay,” I said

to hear him laugh. But then I reminded him we needed money, and I needed to get a degree, play guitar, and read. Naps can’t last forever, and when we woke up we would be bored with nothing to do; when I’m bored for too long it feels like I am trapped underground, like those mines I explored once in Georgia, and the air is so thick I can’t breathe enough to even walk out of there. He just squeezes my hand and tells me I’m really pessimistic for someone who’s always reminding him of belief. I remind him again of the things he shouldn’t go without. My mother asked me what he did before he came back to this town, and I wasn’t sure how much I should tell her. Can I trust her because she put me to sleep once? Or am I justified a lie because she left on the night of my senior prom and left that hideous ugly purple bed empty. Am I justified a lie because she left me crying outside her bedroom door for years as she waged with my father war upon war? I remember once she told me that she hated that house the first time she saw it, but she didn’t have the heart to say, but the day I came into it, it became a mansion, a crystal mansion, and I knew then that I might have been the reason she grit her teeth and stayed for a while. But I also started to wonder in which battle or war did she decide the house wasn’t beautiful anymore; in which fight did I start to fade? Was I the one who caused it—I did—and how long did she have to pretend she still had reasons to stay? I sit here, sorry, making sure I am sorry enough to feel sad

again. She probably left because I was strong enough to go without, right? But in my strength, did I make her weak? Now, it’s hard for me to imagine a beautiful crystal house or light at all when I visit the fist holes in the wall and the big bed and the tear-stained floors. Then, it was enough just to kill time, to go back to his house and in his hands and his misunderstanding of happiness and my fighting determination to go without it, and try to blur the complications of this anxious attachment with something I refuse to classify. I joked at 3am that maybe now I’m just as homeless as him. He laughs that concerned, boyish laugh, which is what I wanted to distract me, even if just for a moment. As long as I don’t start believing that it’s mine to keep. I know I might just have to start believing myself, sometime, one of these days, because every time I begin to believe it feels wonderful, but then I get scared and can’t decide whether or not it’s worth it to continue. But, it’s okay to be homeless for a few months, right? I know—we need to know—there is an “old enough now” to decide when to start listening to therapists, taking our meds to stop following thoughts down. But floating around is the sign of these young times, right? There is water here, but while I try to figure out which one is safe to drink, I can be a strong woman and go without. I am young, strong, afraid to be homeless, knowing it’ll hurt me, but telling myself that it’s a good time to do things that I’m afraid of. 65

Chaos

Abigail Moore Watercolor 67

My Heart

by Leslie Meyers I left my heart in Africa. I left it for safekeeping in the smiling eyes of my father, the gentle caress of my mother, the joyful laughter of my little brother, and the soft yet strong arms of my big brother. I left it there, and all that remains is a void where it used to lie thriving. I venture past airport security, stopping every few seconds to wave and express my love to the huddled pieces of my once beating heart. I step through the body scanner and peel myself begrudgingly from their view. No longer able to see them, numbness radiates from the empty hollow in my chest. I maneuver through the crowded airport with a sharp, pulsating pain grabbing at my throat. Finally, I find my gate number and sit down in a sad looking black chair nearby. People rush to and fro around me, but I don’t notice. I can’t notice. All I can do is focus on the vacancy inside me. It should hurt—it should be exuding an overwhelming pain that encases my person—but it doesn’t. Without my heart I should not be able to be alive. Yet here I am, breathing and blinking and defying everything science has taught me. A child sitting across the room starts to cry; his mother picks him up and wraps her arms protectively around him. The little boy quickly quiets down. Mentally, I remember what it felt like to be safe in my own precious mother’s arms. Though I can no longer feel envy and longing in my heart, I dwell on what it was like when I could. Suddenly, an attendant at a desk starts calling groups of people to enter the boarding line for our plane. I am struck with the truth that I am about to be inside the metal beast that promises to carry me farther and farther away from my heart and those that are carrying it home with them. How am I supposed to be all right with this? How am I supposed to get on that plane? Finally, my group gets called, and I shakily stand up and clutch the handle of my carry-on suitcase. I must place one foot in front of the other, I must move, I must get into line behind the other passengers. Too soon it is my turn to hand my ticket and passport to the lady at the doorway to the dimly lit portal into my uncertain future. 68

I hesitatingly step through and continue down the bridge to the airplane. My heart should be breaking into hundreds of pieces right now—I should be leaving littered shards of it all along the boarding bridge—but that doesn’t occur. I make my way onto the airplane and sit down in my seat. Soon, we are going to take off and zoom above the clouds towards New York. The thought of going back to that cold, lonely state overwhelms my mind. Tears should be flooding down my cheeks and congregating on my chin, but how can I cry if I can’t feel? Half of me wishes I hadn’t left my heart behind me, so that I would be able to feel what I am supposed to feel, but the other half of me is glad I am leaving without it. It would be harder to face the cruelty of returning to my school with it intact and beating loudly inside my chest. The plane begins to rev into action and we proceed to speed down the runway. The plane then lifts off the ground and starts to glide higher and higher into the air. As my Africa grows smaller and smaller to my view, I grow more and more aware of how utterly alone I am in this aircraft crowded with humans. Without my heart I am unable to be encouraged by the feeling of my family’s love. Love is the most precious commodity and the thing that no one can thrive without; I have been blessed to hold an abundance of it within my heart, but I left my heart in Africa. Without it, I now venture forth through the sky, toward the unknown. My unknown looms before me as empty as the cavern in my chest where my heart used to lie.

Angel of Death by Michael Thomas

I drove past a woman in a dust mask Meandering in the field beside her house. The way her gardener’s hat Gathered shadows from the setting sun, She could’ve been the Angel of Death Awaiting some sanguine metaphor to expel her. It was mid-July and steamy with old rain, The Angel of Death tending her crape myrtles And searching the brambles beneath a fencepost For wild blackberries or oregano.

Surely, Before by Abby Nix

Surely, I’ve seen the grandeur of mountains, Felt rain trickle down my skin, Painted with colors from the sky’s palette onto the canvas of my mind. Surely, I’ve experienced these things. But, I ask, have you? Have you seen the Mountain tops curving with the earth? Have you felt warm and cozy in a downpour from above? Have you felt at home, outside, with the one you love? Have you remembered, in a moment, to soak up every second? I’ve learned this lesson that I may teach to you, For what you think is not real at all Until you’ve stood there, frozen With the one you love, Senses heightened, Worldview enlightened. Surely, before you have experienced life, Surely, hereafter you shall know how it feels to be alive.

Ne’er Shall I Presume I Know by Abby Nix

Ne’er shall I presume I know, Nor shall I desire so. Nigh lie I and ponder Whatever shall I wonder. Ah, alas, I shall mind drift. Always, shall I, stay curious. Bemused, “shall I speak?” Beseech ye, shall I, what lies beneath the widow’s peak? Barter, shall you, this cognitive commodity? “Blaspheme!” Shout they, “What ghastly oddity!” Still, I will ask “Sister, what is that?” Mysterious, find I, blissful ignorance. Moreover, find I, sinful arrogance Much, find I, dismay in such selfishness. Mistakenly, I find, myself dissecting the mind’s abyss. Clarify, will you, this reasoning of old? Create, you will, knowledge to which I’ll hold. Deceased, do I, want to find myself oblivious? Dauntless, do I, extinguish this flaming wish? Dare, do I, assume your reason? Don’t, or I, will be entrapped in a cerebral prison. Ne’er shall I presume I know, Nor shall I desire so.

When She Sat Alone by Abby Gilbert

The artist is gone now The time is come The last page is written And the cover is shut The artist with those words With the paintbrush and canvas Has packed up his heart And moved to new stanzas So Mona Lisa now sits In her new-given frame That smile once bright Now fades from her face New beauty and new scenes Are etched upon her heart New beauty, new scenes When seen close many are scars “Stay gone!” She tells her artist “Good riddance” calls her pride “This newness wasn’t wanted Remove it before it dries!” 72

Alas, Lisa cannot change it No matter how hard she tries As she cries out and struggles It hardens before her eyes

So here Lisa sat Stunned and ashamed That her heart was so hard And her artist unjustly blamed

“Why?” She now demands Why would this artist be commissioned? Who with any kindness Would give him this permission?

“O Master, please renew, Take your paintbrush and my heart Build on this new foundation Make me a new work of art”

“Was it you?” her voice called As her face turned to the master Was it you who let him in And gave rein to this disaster?”

And so He began The Master with paint Strokes of new redemption Made beauty from the pain

“Yes, my darling girl” The Master then exclaimed “It was me who let him in. He is not the one to blame”

So here Lisa sits A slow process now started As her heart’s being healed Now open, less guarded

“You see, I saw some dark places In your firmly set heart I saw some hard places That needed taking apart.

The artist’s gone now None know where he’ll go Who his new muse will be She shall never know

He was the artist, The man that I used To alter your heart To leave me more room

But she can’t help but thank That past artist of hers The man with his paintbrush And talent with words

The choice is now yours Tell me what will you do? Will you stay hardened and hurt? Or, gently releasing, renew?”

The words that gave dreams Then the pangs and the sting Words that in the end, Drew her to her King 73

The Duffel Bag by Nin G. Ravencroft

When I was young, I kept a duffel bag in my closet. I used that duffel bag whenever my pesky emotions grew too heavy. I struggled with feeling envious of my two sisters, who always seemed to be so much funnier than me, so much smarter, so much prettier, or so much more beloved by my mother. Although deep down I knew my family loved me, there was a feeling of disconnect. I sometimes felt like I didn’t belong in my family. I felt like I was unwanted and unloved, and, if I were to disappear, the rest of the family would be happy to see me go. That was where the duffel bag came in. I would go upstairs to my bedroom, throw clothes into the bag, and make plans to run away from home. My neighbors the Gowens liked me, and I loved their daughter Katie like she was my own sister. They would take me in, wouldn’t they? What about my dear friend Joelle across the street? Surely she would accept me. I could find a new family I fit in with more. That was the thought process, but it never got that far. My mother, loving and patient, would always find me before I had even left the room. She would talk to me while I sobbed over my duffel bag and assure me I still belonged. She reminded me I was still loved. I didn’t need to run away; I didn’t need the duffel bag. I already had a home, 74

and I had no need to leave it. Over time, I lost the duffel bag. I can’t remember what happened to it. Physically, it is gone; mentally, I have carried that duffel bag for twenty-two long years. It is no longer a physical bag. It is no longer a container for clothes, a makeshift suitcase that barely had enough room for one day’s worth of supplies. It is not even always connected to my desire to run away from home—at least not in a literal sense. It carries emotions, now. It carries feelings I’m too ashamed to admit. It carries guilt I attribute to myself instead of my friends, because I can’t bear the idea that sometimes people I love and feel safe with can make mistakes. It carries the envy that resurfaces every so often, the depression I have tricked myself into thinking is now entirely dealt with, and the anger I refuse to let show even in little ways. It’s a desire to run away from a truly safe space. That duffel bag is an out, a way I can escape having to face my own emotions within a place I can call “home.” It’s an attempt to stop others from having to deal with my issues, even my issues with them. If I keep the duffel bag zipped, I can maintain that environment of pleasantness by confining those negative feelings to internal expression. I can run away from vulnerability and from having to admit I’m

not perfect. In its own way, the duffel bag is still my tool for running away from home. Over the years, the duffel bag has gotten so heavy I can no longer take a step. It weighs me down, making it impossible to escape the quicksand of depression and keeping me from proceeding more than one baby step at a time. It carries whispers of phrases I now consider friends: “You’re not good enough. Everyone will hate you if they know. You can’t say no. You have to be the good friend. You have to be ‘the nice one.’” I am tired. I am tired spiritually, emotionally, and physically. I pull the duffel bag off my shoulder. There are scars there, now, rashes and reddened scratches in the skin from where the weight of the duffel bag has been digging into my shoulder all these years. My back and knees are aching from trying to carry burdens that were never mine to carry. I unzip the duffel bag. One by one, I begin to remove the burdens. Here is my grief over a lost friend from years ago. I used to ask whether I could have saved him, but now I understand he was too far gone to want saving. I play our song in my mind. It feels lighter now.

Here I place resentment towards a former friend whom I now realize was an abuser. I think back on the good memories we had together and the fun I had in homes his memory tainted. They were good homes; I wish I could go back to them. They, too, can be removed from the duffel bag. It’s okay to let go of things that made you happy. Out comes my festering envy towards my online friends, all of whom seem to have personal projects they devote their time to. I have no such project, but I do have friends. I think it’s natural for friends to be envious of each other every once in a while; the important part is we still celebrate each other’s accomplishments all the same. I am proud of my friends. Envious but proud. I remove all the difficulties with dating and relationships I’ve faced over the years. They all seem to be coming to a head now. For many years, I convinced myself I’m not good enough to date. I’m too emotional, too self-conscious, too paranoid. Unloading the bag makes this burden feel lighter. Maybe I am ready, but only under God’s guidance. There’s someone I think I have romantic feelings for. I take those feelings out and tuck them in my pocket to hand over later. Along with this tangle of romance is some discomfort. I work to untangle it from the other emotions. It is more delicate than the rest, and yet more liable to cause harm. 75

I wonder who is ultimately hurting more when I continue to carry it around. I wonder if it will cause worse pain if I ignore it. There is a wound on my hand when I remove it from the duffel bag. One of my best friends has left similar wounds before. I never wanted to tell him, because it felt like admitting I was too sensitive for criticism. I decide to tell him about the wound, since I know he’ll patch it up. That’s the good thing about best friends. There are chains in the duffel bag, attached to books and pencils and the keys of a computer. I place them next to the other loads. I always loved writing. It was fun, it gave me an escape and a sense of joy. Did I stifle myself by making my expectations too grand? Maybe it’s okay for writing to just be a hobby. I don’t need these chains. I remove a wad of guilt from the bag. It’s emblazoned with the Twitter emblem and it comes with voices asking me for more money and more attention and more retweets and more effort. I have none left to give, and I fear the cries for help flooding into my direct messages are actually the snickers of a ring of scam artists as they watch me take the bait every time. Unfounded, perhaps, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. I think I should learn how to say no. Finally, I pull out the heaviest burden of all. It pops and crackles as if alive, and I remove the collar and leash I had 76

kept on it so I could call it back when it got too far on its brief outings. My resentment towards my family is free to go find a new home somewhere that isn’t mine. I love my family, but they don’t understand how I work. They put too much pressure on me whether they mean to or not. Because they’re the most important people in my life, I hold myself to higher standards around them. They’re convinced they know best about how I should handle my other burdens. I don’t think they know this in itself added another burden. There is one load I do not remove from the bag. A spiritual hunger lingers in the corner, as if afraid I’ll toss it out too. I feed it with scraps of advice from chapel services and spiritual mentors. It can stay, a reminder of my desire and my need to walk in constant pursuit of God. He has a home for me, and I long to find it. The bag feels lighter now. This time, it is my Father, not my mother, who leads me by the hand back to where I am safe and loved. He knows where I need to be. It’s time to go back home.

Scatterling

Leslie Meyers Digital Photography

The Street

by Michael Thomas We’ll never walk this street again. The cars’ sharpened faces Dull with age before too long As I will from impatience. I’ll revisit our old coffee bar And peer into the door, To see, although it’s been closed for years, Her at her register. There already is a house I haven’t seen in years Whose eyes won’t see out of my eyes Again, or anymore. On a street miles away, The window where a friend’s Smile caught a rakish wave Of light is boarded shut. My friends, I wish I’d been aware Of the last words we said. They passed us on their way, like cars On an unwelcome street.

Compass

by Mary Margaret Flook

If only a compass could tell me the direction in which to go— North, South, East, West— How can I know which way is best? God, that’s all I have to say, Been asking You to show the way. If only You could write it in the sky, Perhaps I’d know whether I’m meant to fly Or be a teacher like my dreams as a child, Or be a missionary somewhere wild, Perhaps a coach inspiring athletes, My life, an adventure Of endless possibility. I like to write, LORD. Maybe that’s what I’m meant to do. Perhaps, as simple as writing about You. But is that enough? Enough to make an imprint. LORD, I think I want to be sent. So how will I know which way to go? For a compass points always to the same pole. LORD, what is my North, my life role?

Nana

Lauren Renee Drake Acrylic

Oil and Water by Macy Cochran

I walk to the canvas in the empty room. Below me, a gray city resides. I’m a painter, you see. So I pour everything from the inside of me onto the canvas and disguise it with browns and greens and yellows to represent the sunlight coming through the trees. They are all abstract, meant only to be seen by those who can see. And there is a speck of black, but most would mistake it for an unintentional splatter of the wrong color. They wouldn’t find a black-haired girl running. Even I don’t know where she’s running. The artist doesn’t know everything about what she paints. The watercolors are a feeling. The oils are a memory. Oil is thick enough to hide the real image, though, whether it is a sprint to a train or an escape from authority. They line my walls, the art just abstract enough to keep the recollection at a distance. People never really enter my door, but if they do, they complement the art even though I know they don’t truly understand. I kept my paintings from Harold; I didn’t want him to see what my life was like before he came along. Deep in my chest, I’d felt a mixture of desire and fear that he would understand what lay behind the oils. He knew me better than I gave him credit for, yet I was the one he adopted. I catch dull flashbacks of the orphanage, the blackhaired girl who I met in school, the dreams I had of a home to go back to like she did every day. I try not to think of her name because it haunts me when I do. But finally, some level of peace settles over my broken soul when I remember being adopted by Harold, her father. He had black hair just like his daughter did. His other daughter had blonde hair. Me. The black-haired girl and I had been together for so long that, when I told her I was planning on running away from the orphanage, she refused to allow it. Harold took me in before I made my escape. Every day, she went back into the arms of her father. I wrapped my arms around myself when I fell asleep at night. “You finally have a home,” she had told me. “A father. Me—a sister. He’s your family, too.” 80

I responded, “My last family didn’t want me.” Ever since I was an orphan and she was an elementary school girl, we were practically wild animals. We could handle the highest trees, the coldest nights, and the roughest waters until the night we climbed out of Harold’s window and chased each other to the river down the hill. We dove into the water that prickled my legs with ice, and we kicked against the current. Each time we played in the river, a sense of freedom came back and washed the present away. But the moon wasn’t out that night. The water was just a black, gushing flood from the rainfall a day earlier. I don’t remember my last words to her. I just hope she was alive enough under that dark water to hear me screaming her name. It’s been years. Just a heartbeat ago. Sometimes when I’m bathing, I sink my head in the water and close my eyes. I wonder each time what it would be like to inhale. Just once. Just to see what it’s like to have water-filled lungs. To simply not breathe. I would spit it up, maybe cough it onto the floor or back into the tub. One single gasp. But I can never make myself. Can’t even snort a single drop up my nose. I can only sit there submerged, all things muffled under the foggy water. And like a failure, I step out of the tub each time. My sister’s black hair sometimes bleeds into my oils and spreads across my canvases. This time, I avoid the color black. I paint a girl, one with long blonde hair and green eyes. Nobody can see her eyes but me, though—her back is to us. She is painting. Her canvas overlooks a city, just a blur of gray from here. I make sure to keep the background dull and watered down. This is no oil, no image, no flashback. It is a feeling. It is captivity. The girl in the picture is a painter, you see. She is the result of a battered brush in the hands of an angry artist. She is the knot in my throat that I have swallowed every day. Her voice has been the one in my nightmares for so many years, now. Ten, to be exact. Just a heartbeat ago. The girl who punishes herself with fear and loneliness cannot break free from her internal prison. She is trapped behind the watercolors, drowned and dried into the white canvas walls. She can never escape. I will sleep with my arms wrapped around me tonight.

Discernment by Karson Harsey

Right, wrong, good, evil Wisdom says it’s not simple Discernment is key

Fate

by Karson Harsey Seeds don’t always sprout Fate, so with time, hides from sight Accept your effort

Empathy’s Curse by Lauren Pittman

I don’t envy those who make bad choices, but I pity them when I shouldn’t. My bleeding heart falls victim to their voices. I wash my hands in their pain, forgetting they picked their paths when I offered to show them the way. I delve into their madness and take the burdens from their back. Headfirst, I fall into the abyss, still unsure of which is worse – floating through this world alone? Or drowning in empathy’s curse?

Imperfectly Right

Jessica Lee Rascio Digital Photography 83

Do It Again

by Kimberly Rhyne I face the rising sun and feel its heat again But, as quickly as it came, I lost it again. I thought the night had finally ended, but I’ve found That darkness tends to linger—I’ve been hit again. The forms it takes are varied and many, I see One’s a rabid dog, and I’ve been bitten again. I’m fighting on ‘cause giving in’s not my style; I’m clinging to a rope so I don’t slip again. This fog, this quicksand, drags me deep into the dark, And I’m left asking, can I ever leave this pit again? Will I ever fully heal? Could I heal these scars on my heart? Or am I doomed to suffer and submit again? I fought it twice now, so I know that I can win, But now that there’s a third strike, can I win again? God, where are You? What do I have to learn in this? Are You asking me to cling to You instead of quit again? I’m crying out for deliverance, but I know That first I have to choose to commit again. I sing that “God is good!” and “He can heal!” But I feel like such a hypocrite again. I’ll take these pills to try and dull the enemy, But despite the numbness, I feel unfit again. “Just try harder.” “You don’t want it enough.” “Make a choice.” These words like knives make me feel like an idiot again, Yet in the midst of this, I hear a still, small voice Begging me not to give up—the fuse is lit again. “My child, I’m here—come home. Don’t you understand I’ve already won this battle? Now come watch me do it again.” 84

To Live and Die

Sanctification

Though the world is full of sorrow and pain, God has not left us to guess at our end; We know to live is Christ and to die, gain.

Fraught with fighting, battle-torn and bleeding, externally even-tempered and poised, while passionate struggles stir silently beneath the surface.

by Charissa Garcia

Fierce trials beset us, darkness remains, Yet we’re reminded He will us defend, Though the world is full of sorrow and pain. When we slide back and sin appears to reign, We turn to Him who alone makes amends. We know to live is Christ and to die; gain. Through valleys and shadows, One still remains, The Friend who sticks closer than any friend, Though the world is full of sorrow and pain. Temptations abound, yet I must abstain, Trials come calling, on this I depend: We know to live is Christ and to die; gain. Remembering this as my steadfast claim, Despite what the culture seeks to pretend; Though the world is full of sorrow and pain, We know to live is Christ and to die; gain.

by Charissa Garcia

The Enemy without prods the enemy within, whetting wild and wicked wishes, coaxing corruption and cruelty. Captured, dragging me deeper into despair’s dungeon. Bombarded with betrayal, battered and bruised, oft overwhelmed by obnoxious orders which knock me to my knees. Faced with failing flesh, O wretched man that I am! Does deliverance dare deliver? Tempting trials turn me towards the triumphant, crucified Christ, who offers now no condemnation.

Spheres

by Karson Harsey Nothing’s new on earth One’s small sphere freshens things old Some spheres stale away

Assurance

by Mary Margaret Flook My heart just hurts, Lord, I don’t understand How I will get through this; It’s beyond the scope of my plans. Years of battling just to be sure of one hope, God, I have not walked completely away; Simply in your hand I want to stay. No pastor nor teacher could give me that peace. No counselor nor parent could reassure my heart, For only before God I’ll stand, when I surely do part. They don’t understand; in my mind it’s not that easy. So only on the cross, I simply rest in Thee. I have no words to pray, My heart beyond the fight. My strength is weak; my heart is broken; I just want to be sure of my only Hope. Have no other option, No one else to go to. So, I set my weight, my very life, on Christ alone. There is nothing else that I can do. For if I am, indeed, too far gone, I have no living purpose. My life a breeze Of empty seas, And I am left dirty. God, I know you’ve seen every time I’ve come to You, The tears I’ve cried And questions why; You simply won’t grant me peace. Been times I’ve been way over it all, Forget the whole thing, Maybe just let me fall. Yet, I cannot stay there very long, For there is no hope in any wrong. 86

Over and over again I pray, “God please come in,” Waiting for the feeling; that assurance within, When you’re the only one to confide in. Our world, you see, has gotten it all wrong. My hope of salvation is not a date of the past. It’s not an experience that has washed away. It’s the living Jesus, the hope that lasts. For when I doubt a decision I made, I question my own doings that saved. So, Instead I look back years ago, To a cross where you died and an empty grave, For that is how I am truly saved. There you find the hope for your weary soul. The questions you have are just an empty hole. The doubt may linger for a long while, Yet each day I will look to Your trial. The one thing you’ve told me to do countless times, It’s always only been to trust in you. God I pray I’m not too late, too far gone, Cause I rest my soul, my hope, in You. You’ve given me so many chances in the past, LORD, I hope that I’m not too late, Not beyond Your grasp. Once again, I lean all that I am, My fear, my sins, My lost hopes within, My weakness, doubt, Apathy, drought, My insecurity, and everything else, LORD, I lay down, need You to carry the weight. My eternity can’t be a debate. I rest in You by grace through faith.

Prince Hamlet to Ophelia

by Davis Lisk

When they saw thee afar off They took thy form to be an island Floating along that serpentine mirror That captured the world of waking As a dream. Thou canst not awaken now. As I sit in the new fallen snow, Looking upon a linen silhouette, I ask the ones digging thy grave Wherefore one so glorious good as thou Is not welcome into heaven. Floating like a melody of spring, With a crown of pansies in thy hair, Like any song worth singing at all, It left the mortal world to wander Until the end of remembrance and beyond As our doorway to the Faerie realm was sinking Like Atlantis long ago.

Taste

by Karson Harsey Taste sweet fruit and bread Witness the riches of sight No mere existence

Index Beasley, Aidan—Interdisciplinary Studies, Senior 48 Blackerby, Randall C.—Guest Contributor (NGU Staff) 18, 56 Brooks, Tayler—Criminal Justice, Sophomore 40, 47 Cochran, Macy—English, Senior 25-26, 52, 56, 80 Dolan, Tatiana—Christian Studies, Junior 38 Drake, Lauren Renee—undecided, Freshman 10, 36, 50-51, 79 Elliott, Samuel—Interdisciplinary Studies, Junior 9 Elliott, Taylor Rose—Psychology, Junior 28-29, 33-35, 46, 58, 62-65 Flook, Mary Margaret—Undecided, Freshman 78, 86 Garcia, Charissa—English, Senior 24, 84, 85 Gilbert, Abby—Musical Theatre, Senior 72-73 Harsey, Karson—Digital Media, Sophomore 15, 27, 38, 39, 40, 49, 81, 85, 87 Hash, Courtney—Mass Communications, Senior 27 Jackson, Kyle—English Language Arts Secondary Education, Sophomore 17 Lisk, Davis—Interdisciplinary Studies, Senior 8, 30-31, 40, 42, 43, 49, 87 Lisk, Dillon—Guest Contributor 48 Meyers, Leslie—Interdisciplinary Studies, Junior 19, 20, 68, 77 Moore, Abigail—Studio Art, Senior 14-15, 32, 39, 54-55, 66-67 Nix, Abby—Broadcast Media, Sophomore 70, 71 Oates, Justin—Guest Contributor (NGU Alumnus) 42 Paint, Don—Accounting, Senior 16 Palmer, Jennifer—Guest Contributor (NGU Staff) 41, 53 Payne, Brendan J.—Guest Contributor (NGU Faculty) 21 Pittman, Lauren—Psychology, Senior 83 Rascio, Jessica Lee—Marketing, Senior 41, 43, 54, 82-83 Ravencroft, Nin G.—Guest Contributor 74-76 Rhyne, Kimberly—English, Junior 9, 11-13, 24, 37, 84 Stevens, Jennie L.—Guest Contributor (NGU Staff) 16 Thomas, Michael—Interdisciplinary Studies, Senior 59, 69, 78 Yeargin, Faith—Psychology, Senior 19 Yeargin, Hope—Youth Ministry, Sophomore 57

The Mountain Laurel 2021 Sponsors: College of Communication and Fine Arts, Art Department, North Greenville University College of Humanities and Sciences, English Department, North Greenville University

Colophon: Fonts: Georgia 10 pt, 12 pt; DK High Tea pt, 80 pt, 36 pt, 18 pt Pages: 8.5” by 8.5” 88 pages: 32 4/4 80# satin, 56 1/1 80# Satin Cover Stock: 120# Silk Cover Binding: Perfect Bind and trim Cover: 4/1 + Soft Touch Laminate Cover art: Digital Illustration (Procreate) by Marissa Nelson Divider Page Art: The Eccentric - Digital Illustration by Marissa Nelson The Harmonious - Digital Illustration by Marissa Nelson The Grotesque - Digital Illustration by Marissa Nelson The Absolute - Digital Illustration by Marissa Nelson Printing: Printing Partners, Indianapolis, IN Copyright 2021 by North Greenville University All rights reserved by the individual authors and artists

North Greenville University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. Contact the Commission on Colleges at 1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, Georgia 30033-4097, or call 404-679-4500 for questions about the accreditation of North Greenville University.

The Mountain Laurel, Vol. 57, Carnivalesque

Articles inside

When She Sat Alone, Abby Gilbert

Assurance, Mary Margaret Flook

Oil and Water, Macy Cochran

Index

The Duffel Bag, Nin G. Ravencroft

Ne’er Shall I Presume, Abby Nix

Surely, Before, Abby Nix

Angel of Death, Michael Thomas

This is My Letter to the World, Jennifer Palmer What Must We Do to Bring Back Spring?,

*The Guilty Pleasures of the Homeless, Taylor Rose Elliott

Death Tax, Michael Thomas

August 12; August 19; Since Then, Taylor Rose Elliott

Golden Walk, Macy Cochran

My Heart, Leslie Meyers

Contralto—A Ghazal, Taylor Rose Elliott

Your Heart Rests Here, Kyle Jackson

Defeating Cerberus, Taylor Rose Elliott

Cannonball, Brendan J. Payne

Kimberly Rhyne

The Earth Laughs in Flowers, Macy Cochran

Yamato, Kimberly Rhyne

Avant-Garde Lovesong, Davis Lisk

Time Traveling, Taylor Rose Elliott