The Wire Harp - 2022

THE 2022

THE 2022

WIRE HARP

WIRE HARP AWARDS

Richard Baldasty taught philosophy and history at SFCC from 1984-2007, and during his tenure, he was regularly published in this journal and contributed significantly to the arts on our campus. Upon his retirement, The Wire Harp honored the spotlight he shone on art by naming our poetry award for him. Each year, The Wire Harp staff selects what we consider the most artistic poem (or this year, two poems) and piece of prose as the recipients of these awards. We also give an award to a photograph and a work of fine art. Each of these four student artists receives a $150 prize, as a result of a generous gift from Richard. We appreciate Richard for supporting students in their creative arts.

ALL SAINTS LUTHERAN

Alexis Hart

I have known the restlessness of sanctuary carpeting. It’s face down, dust across forehead, corner pews, I see the old glory of the Holy Ghosts in Renaissance paintings; unbearable beauty of pigeon feet and wingspan. Immaculate perception of youth sits in my father’s chair, burdened with the taste of artificial red licorice. Incorrigible belief in scripture memorization, the bitter gift of consubstantiation.

And the salvation sweeter than honey, apocryphal in consumption but undeniably honest. Of oak wood and stained glass and red carpet, Wide-eyed gold devotion, dedicated child of the church–Fragile. Holy. And to dust. Returning.

LINOCUT BLEND

Sandra Kunkel

FASCIA Margaret Starry

Mothers weep milk forever feels like hours of pushing until hips split and burn quite frankly spit back at you.

Rising flames

muscle tensing breaking from the effort of nothing you can’t handle says mother ‘look at that baby boy’ can you imagine once just sesame seed slipping in unintended—

Making a home in the deepest fertile space to find. Now mothers take baths. Pressing forearms into stark white bubbles, breaking as you slowly pull away as separation hits the tear begins through fascia inside— as sensitive as— skin when knife enters in and you hear You will feel pressure. Hand brushed swollen stomach as skin split day by day the body outgrows itself shedding snake skin only clean muscle underneath translucence.

What I mean to say is: when your breast engorges to stone you have to push work the tears from your body that cream churned to butter

You will miss this when it ends. The rush and tingle of letting down will never leave your shoulders no matter what pretense of release.

THE LAST ADVENTURE

Kyiah Evans

Pay attention Ana, for when you arrive at the port you must see the man in the uniform. He is the only one who will be able to help.

By the time you return I must be gone. Off on adventure of riches and danger. My work will remain and you, you must slave through the hot coals that burn the backs of men too cowardly to go on their merry way.

Let the breeze dry your sheets on the line outside of your stone built house.

Let the rains nourish the growing sapling before it is cut down and used to burn.

Let the earth give you all the splendor and love that I have, and when we meet again you will give to the earth all of you that remains, and join me in paradise.

WITCH SAINT

Georgia Kettrick

i have watched, through rose colored computer screens, the beatification of a girl my age stained on glass cathedral windows, painted in lipstick on bathroom mirrors from girls fighting wars, and girls winning wars. i see the ghost with the too-quick-tongue (a martyr)

whose faith grew from her mother’s love like palm leaf and iris with calloused hands and ripped tights beholding

unbroken peace at the small, small price of youth

LAVENDER DREAMS

Talia Glass

FORGET ME NOW

Willow Johnson

Today I am a single magpie feather. And yesterday I was the skeleton of a finch. I decide who I am according to the things I dig up from my backyard garden.

My mama bought me a ring, grape garnet, it reminds me of all the ways I’ve been loved. I wear it on my left ring finger which I’m told is connected to the heart by a single vein-I believe that in the same way I believe I’m alive.

Adolescence looms above my head like a storm cloud tearing open, spilling thorns instead of water. If I’m lucky I will wash away like chalk.

The sun is an orange marble in the sky, scorching hot, and I sunburn so easily on my pink bicycle, the one I never had. I ride it to buy flowers that wilt in my tiny fist all the way home. I should stop to think but the world moves so fast when you’re smaller than it.

Back then, I was a dandelion before a breath.

I pour myself out into a teacup. Swirl it around until I settle in patterns that look like something I could live up to. Like all those summers I skinned my fingers on the pavement drawing spirals and flowers and faces. Those days the moon never came up and I believed I could last forever.

I’m older now.

I draw a forget-me-not on the pavement and label it FORGET ME NOW on accident. It’s time I accept I am not a permanent concept.

I am wire bent into the shape of a four leaf clover.

I’m convinced when I sleep my body disappears from my bed and rests in a cherry wood coffin, lined with silk. My friends are so sad to think of me deep in the earth, eye sockets filled with spiders.

I can make any dead thing beautiful. Turn an empty husk into my muse. Except for when it’s myself I find broken on the bright green lawn.

ANGELWASH

Fig DePaolo

Tell me something beautiful from your radio mouth. Something harpstring beautiful ancient song beautiful, mountain sunset simple pure plain and beautiful needle in my belly beautiful. Today I breathe seawater. Today I turn God into flour. Today I write the novel of the turning of the earth, and the moon swings me like it does the sea

Tell me I am not an animal made from the cold dirt and stone of the planet You cannot. The stars love me and my painted nails and dye-damaged hair.

There is a girl in my bones I love it like a bird A thing with feathers I love it like a mother

It sleeps like a dragon, look at my long forked tongue and my beastly sharp teeth put me in a museum and think me beautiful.

I am a creature no one has seen before. I am an omen. An alchemist. A creator. I am a little bit boring anyway I am making a spaceship to get us out of here. Unclassified, in love, unbuttoned made for TV, uncomfortable to look at ungovernable grandiose perhaps delusional I bleed great green rivers and lakes tiny black bugs feast on my calcium

I am an organism in perfect partnership with nature that big blanket over us all. Be angry kiss me paint my hands

in the blood of the universe deep in the pool so still and glassy it looks like skin I am a true story. I am blooming. I am here for you as a warning or a message of hope depending on how holy you know how to become.

JUNG HOYEON

Seyeon Park

A WOMAN IS A WITCH & A WITCH IS A WOMAN

Phoebe Milatz

A woman is a witch and a witch is a woman. Women are host to the Moon, who controls the tides both red and blue. Sun made the first days and Moon made the first nights, so darkness belongs to us, the Daughters of Dusk.

Fear is a thief and a thief is full of fear. Dusk was stolen by greedy frightened hands. Torches lit, false bright spots against the stars of us who they dare to burn. Who will be left when our glowing minds are gone?

A fire is a heart and a heart is on fire. Our whispers thread together on the rattling wind, a growing web, a lesson, a spell. “Stronger together, brighter on fire, may our embers spark ever after!” A collective toothy grin. They called us witches and so witches we became.

UNIVERSE Elizabeth Hart

Blades of grass sprouting dewdrops on their undersides in the fresh morning, the droplets falling to and mixing with the earth.

Speaking of Earth, “God” is thunder and lightning and fire all at once, the perfect storm setting ablaze and destroying entire towns.

He is the trees that provide wood, the land that man signs his name on, and the eraser that destroys it.

Holiness is holding hands and letting go even if you said you never would. Sacred are the rituals of the earth, the crunch of leaves beneath bare feet, the roar of the boat slicing through the waves and signaling the chorus of angels.

I worship the heart-shaped rocks

I find on my walks and the trail of ink behind my pen.

I kneel not on the pew, but among the yew cases lining the library, my knees brushing the floor so I can smell the pages of the ignored books.

I pray to the night sky as I discern between satellite, star, and deity.

I baptize myself in murky waters

of lakes and rivers, never feeling so alive.

God is knowledge and fire

God is rain, God is wood. “God” is misunderstood.

God is getting to know a kitten’s whiskers so well you can remember them even after you’ve buried your oldest friend.

MARIPOSA ESPERANZADA

Tressa Wood

ODE TO CAT Tim Greenup

Oh, little orange log of fur sleeping atop the heater vent, how I admire your complacency, your power to do the same thing day after day after day after day and not mind, not one little cat whisker bit. At 5 a.m. you wake me with your howls for canned meat and I hate you for what you are and what you do. I pick you up and drop you in the garage to howl some more. But an hour later, when I’m ready to be in this world, I am on the kitchen floor rubbing your cold coat warm. Remember, cat, when our home was overrun with cockroaches eating your food and my food, the Frosted Flakes atop the tall shelf? At night we would curl around each other and dream of different lives: me on the couch all day licking myself clean, and you there beside me, petting me, telling yourself that it all — whatever that is — will be okay.

A FIRE’S POWER

Caleb Cochran

Fire light is a glow like no other light in this universe. It’s orange turns black, then blue. It dances, casting shadows across the grass and up curling trees. Its movement is unpredictable and never does the same thing twice. It sways, it lunges, it fights, but its sound cracks peacefully filling the silence. The intense movement is calmed It calms the intense movement with its deep glow. A depth that lets you see your feet, your mud-strewn feet. Not horrifying deep like the ocean, like you cannot tell what is below you what is watching you where you will end up. It has a depth of darkness no one can make it out of.

No sense of direction. The ocean has a dark pull, a temptation to sink and never come back, until you see a beacon on the horizon, a lighthouse brightening the night with its reflected light. You know without a doubt this orange angel has no bad intentions. It is alone in the universe and it

only it can save you from the dark depths of the ocean.

I-90

Jaid Ingham-Riley

Do you hear it?

The slow drip of my melting heart into the bowl of your soul only for you to dip your fingers into and watch my love for you solidify on your fingertips.

I’ll embrace you, engrain myself into every dip and dive of your fingerprints, memorizing the patterns that you use to hold onto the things you love and let the ones you don’t slip through.

LUCY Luke Tomkowiak

What is love if not shimmering golden sunlight warming up everything that exists in this dreary universe, even the frosted tips of untrimmed grass that surround my home. What is love if not looking into their eyes and seeing your own reflection as if you’re a being without flaw, unwilling to believe anything else no matter how lowly you actually are.

What is love if not the cold sadness that is felt as you say your parting words with them, knowing that they do not understand what you say, but saying it anyways just in case they do. What is love if not them eating the food that you despise almost more than life itself, with such gusto that it seems impossible to believe. What is love if not holding her in your arms for the first time, her clawing at my chest.

What is love if not Lucy?

Lucy belongs to that group of giant dogs that is the perfect size to eviscerate dog biscuits, but also, able to lay upon you so as to appreciate your company. Lucy is the youngest in the family while simultaneously being the biggest by the largest margin giving her a maturity that she must uphold lest her siblings push her boundaries a little too far.

Lucy has teeth like a shark, cutting into her plush toys that have truly done nothing wrong other than be purchased by a family who loves their little girl a bit too much. Lucy has developed a curiosity not to be mistaken with fearlessness, as if you could hold liquid flames, she would undoubtedly lick your palm, but she is also scared to get down off the bed.

Lucy is a wizard of time, just another title she has earned, for the moment it gets anywhere past 3 o’clock she recognizes and whines for the legendary hour of food is approaching. Lucy will one day leave me all alone, but I fret not. For what would love be if it left once the person is gone?

COERCION Alexa

Tomkowiak

“Paradoxical undressing: when a person is close to freezing, they suddenly feel warm and take off all their clothes.” -Patrick Logan, Frozen Stiff

They say to boil a frog you must place the poor creature in a pot of water and slowly increase the temperature until it’s too hot too late for it to jump out. You must have known this already

You were older, wiser, but not nicer. No, you were not nicer.

Your candy coated words tasted sickeningly sweet as I took every syllable in until the bitter aftertaste

The tips of your fingers, calloused and rough scratched at my skin and everywhere you touched made ice in my bones

Crystallization formed around my edges the cold gnawed at my fingers and my toes

Surely this slight sting was how it’s supposed to feel

I had convinced myself you were the sun That with every ice cold touch, you were melting away the frost

This faux warmth seeped inside of me, seeking refuge in every crevice every joint and every atom until the heat became unbearable

So I shed my layers for you my clothes my skin my muscle my bone layer after layer I was stripped down to my bleeding heart

I had held it out to you on a silver platter You smiled an unnerving grin, all too expectant

Gladly, you took it. Grasped it in your vicious hands and squeezed until the last drop of blood

fell to the floor with a sickening plink

I was nothing, and nothing cannot say no.

ALCHEMY WYLDE

Chad Welch

AGREEABLE

Lorelei Jonason

I was taught to be agreeable. Keep my head down and do as told. Don’t talk back. My mother deferred to my father in the end. I deferred to them both.

When my husband got angry, my agreeableness squeezed me down. It bowed my head, slumped my shoulders, caved me in on myself. When he accused me of being in the wrong, my agreeableness lay on my back like a weight and wrung apology after apology out of me. It minimized me until I was so small that I was barely even there. If I ever dared speak back, his anger grew until he was the entire world. I learned to stay silent. What eventually did us in was me finding my voice. I wasn’t allowed. I tried so hard to speak up, to unknot the agreeableness that had wrapped me up so tight. In no time at all, our home became my prison. Or, better put, I realized it always had been.

It was hard to escape. I spoke back, but he was too practiced at cowing me. On multiple occasions I tried to leave him, only for him to convince me I was the problem. I was just causing trouble where there didn’t need to be any. I should just be agreeable, right?

In the end, I used my agreeableness as a shield. I made up my mind to leave, but knew the leaving had proved too hard in my weakened state. I needed to be stronger. I cloaked myself in my agreeableness, until it was all that could be seen. I hid my true self beneath being agreeable. Let

something new grow beneath the old skin. I let my decision sit deep in my belly, protected until it filled my bones with steel. Only then, when every moment felt ripe with purpose, did I unshroud myself. I packed my agreeableness away like a winter coat. It was no longer the season for it. I spoke my mind. I left my prison.

Being agreeable has two sides. It can make you the favorite pet of someone looking for a pet to groom. It can also conceal you from predators until the time has come to make your move.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR

Lily Thoren

The woman is sitting perched on the edge of the backseat of the cab while the driver examines the bill she had handed him with wide eyes which reminds her of how she had looked at her first copy of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn she had received when she turned eleven and her mother was still alive back when they lived in a tiny drafty apartment down in Queens where men would bang on their doors in the middle of the night and her mother would whisper at them quietly to please leave and I’ve got a child here while she held a kitchen knife in one hand and a cordless telephone in the other. The cab has stopped and she thanks the driver who flashes her a nervous smile with bright teeth almost as loud as the reporters who swarmed her apartment two years ago when the first book had come out and everyone was terribly excited about the twenty one year old girl from Queens who had managed to make a writer of herself.

The driver opens the door and the woman steps out gingerly into the street breathing in the different scents of oil fried dough and body odor and she thinks of how the smells remain the same in the city even if everything else has changed and become more lonely and it gives her comfort to know that something from her childhood still remains now that her mother is good and dead and it seems like the only person who can vouch that she was ever a child is herself and no one has any reason to believe that she is telling the truth because she’s a writer and they are awfully adept at weaving beautiful lies like a spider with their hideous eight eyes sitting atop their silk estate yet they are not so obviously questionable as the politicians you see on TV who smile their manufactured smiles and lie about women and crime as they pretend that behind closed doors they don’t break and bruise their children and screw their secretaries then go to mass on Sundays and arrive early to the office the next morning, the epitome of the perfect American dream.

The woman moves her feet slowly down Northern Boulevard and takes her time looking at the window displays of crappy plastic toys sold for more than their worth and there are red advertising billboards that are too loud for her head and make her temples throb in a way which they haven’t since her mother screamed at her when the good china fell from the tall cabinet and shattered all over covering the floor in sparking pieces of regret. When she was a girl she had hoped that her mother would get quiet as she got older but she only lost the bright blue tint to her eyes and earned nothing in return but a bent spine and stacks of unpaid bills that had past due stamped in big red letters that were never discussed but instead stuffed under couch cushions and behind the refrigerator next to an old Bible that had been gifted to them by an unusually zealous old neighbor who was intent on saving as many souls as possible until he died alone in his apartment from a stroke. It would take weeks for

his body to be found after there were multiple reports about an unbearable odor permeating from his room of course the old neighbor’s cats had cleaned up a good deal of the mess by the time the landlord arrived to check on him but you can’t really blame them, the cat food had run out a few days ago.

The woman steps away from the display of smiling plastic toys no doubt made in a sweatshop somewhere where the rivers runs red with dye and starts to walk further down the street when she hears her name being called out from behind her and she turns around to see a tiny blond girl in faded oversized clothing that hangs loosely on her narrow frame the way a fur coat would rest on the shoulders of a bird and her face has a semblance of beauty but there is something tired in her eyes and her forehead is scrunched tightly in unspoken anxiety and she notices that the girl’s arms are holding a small child on her hip and she bounces him as a mess of snot and tears run down his ruddy face.

“Do you remember me? It’s Eileen, from Stuyvesant High School? I know it’s been a while, how have you been?”

She regards Eileen with a mixture of cold curiosity and remembers the first time she saw her she had had perfect pink lips and bouncing curls and threw her head back laughing at a joke a boy named Marcus told her while she grabbed her books from her locker and then she had looked and the woman and her eyes had moved up and down her body in a way that made her feel horribly small and like everything about her was wrong. They had been paired up together in chemistry and Eileen had generously let her do all the work while she passed notes written in pink ink with hearts dotting the i’s to Marcus and laughed loudly with her friends while occasionally pausing to run her fingers through that perfect blonde hair and whisper comments about their teacher Mr. Hammond’s receding hairline or about the rumors that he was cheating on his wife with the principle Miss. Walski and that they had been having sex in his classroom during the Friday morning assemblies because that was the only time they could be alone and they knew it was true because some senior had seen Mr. Hammond undressing Miss. Walski on his desk through the keyhole.

“Of course I remember you Eileen. I’ve been good, very busy with the book tour of course.”

“Oh! Yes I read it, it was great, really. I had no idea you could write, I’m surprised you didn’t tell me. We were so close after all.”

Eileen touched the woman’s arm and she recoiled quickly and took a few steps back but Eileen

hardly noticed but instead began to drone on about her awful son and how he was supposedly quite smart and talented for a child his age and much more advanced than any other two year olds which she didn’t believe any more than she believed the lie that Eileen had made up about poor Mr. Hammond who was later fired and divorced by his wife of fifteen years when a certain anonymous letter showed up in their mailbox describing in detail the story that had been circulating the school for weeks prior. Eileen’s hair was dull and uncombed and the veins in her eyes were the same color as the shade of lipstick that she had worn when she had invited her over to a party which surprised the woman but she had excitedly picked out a cotton blouse that felt light and airy and looked more grown up than her unfortunately bright graphic t-shirts and had chattered giddily to her mother the whole car ride there until she stood silently on Eileen’s doorstep before she mustered up the courage to press the doorbell and a tall boy with golden tanned skin and two long rows of teeth swung open the door and ushered her inside like a scolded child and the woman stared at the beautiful house covered in golden trim and marble countertops as the giddiness in her chest sunk into her stomach and twisted into something ugly. Eileen smiled at her as she entered and handed her something strong smelling in a clear plastic cup and urged her to empty it and she refilled it again and again until the room had started to sway and something warm spread through her body that made her feel better than she had ever felt before and beautiful Eileen grabbed her hand and brought her to a group of her friends sitting in a circle and explained that they were playing something called seven minutes in heaven and the woman and the boy with the golden tan and perfect teeth were chosen to go into a closet and do whatever they wanted so the woman had been blindfolded and shoved into the closet and told to wait for just a moment while the boy got ready and so the woman had sat and waited until hushed giggling turned silent and her legs felt cramped from sitting too long.

“Are you listening to anything I’m saying?”

“What’s that? Yes, I’m sorry I’m a million miles away right now.”

When the woman had finally removed her blind fold and opened the closet door the house was dark and horribly quiet like her mother laying on that stone slab so long ago now smelling of decay and embalming fluid and both times she was dreadfully alone but in the house she called out for Eileen but there was no answer only the drip of the kitchen faucet so she stumbled through the black rooms until she finally found the door and stood in the front yard staring at the stars painted in the sky, bitterly aware of how they were never lonely and then she walked the five miles down the highway past screeching horns and overly friendly men in pickup trucks to arrive home covered in dust and

tears and on Monday she had planned to approach Eileen only to have her bare her teeth coldly at her and ask why she left the party so early when it was only starting to get fun.

It was starting to rain now, and Eileen clutches her child closer to her and frowns at the sky with her pink lips and says how she better get going and how it’s long past Georgie’s bedtime but that they should get coffee soon to chat and the woman is reminded of the aching pull she has been feeling that brought her back home and how she might curb its hunger for just a moment with a yes but instead the woman smiles deftly and offers a vague response about the busy schedule of her book tour but she sees something in Eileen’s face falter and she looks down at her faded clothes and then back at the woman’s smartly tailored skirt and little red heels and lets out a hushed goodbye and walks quickly down the lane, holding little Georgie in her arms as his blotchy face rests on her chest but just before she turns the corner she whips around and the two women stare at each other and for a moment they are back at that party in a dark house but it seems even more quiet than before but she can see on Eileen’s face that she knows that this is what it must have felt like to be on the other side of the closet door and the woman sees that she knows and the bitterness of unsaid things hangs in the air between them until Eileen snaps away and hurries down the street her blond curls hanging limply in the rain.

COLORS OF BLACK AND WHITE

Angelina Korsun

BELLINGHAM

McKenna Hoffman

I knew I wanted to be a genius. Answers to everything and only open doors. My mother said knowledge will take you anywhere.

So I checked the right boxes and packed the right bags and found myself in a 16ft x 16ft concrete room. Mildew. Stale. But you can’t light candles.

Always wear shoes in the shower. Never leave your door unlocked. Slide your card three times a day. Gym. Class. Meal hall.

One day I found the smoke bench. I met him there too.

I thought he’d taste like honey and flowers. He didn’t.

I thought his skin would be soft and untouched. It wasn’t.

He burned me with every kiss and pricked himself daily to feel something.

My life became cloudy and foreign and why are there needles in the bathroom?

I wasn’t a genius.

The doors were closing. Slide your card three times a day? Wait when was the last time I slid my card? Where was my card?

I began to taste like him. I washed the burn down but pushed a little too hard and I hate hearing my mother cry.

A lot of nice people helped me get home after that.

MY MOTHER

Lokas-Finnley Asher

Was beautiful even though most of this world would say she was just another Overweight American

Who had 3 out of control children before the age of 25

Let me tell you something okay, my mother wasn’t the greatest In fact, before she died, I had wished death upon her

She was a terrible person as far as I was concerned

That wasn’t completely true

Growing up was hard and honestly it still is

I’m a middle child and for all you other middle children out there you know What its like to be too young to go out for coffee with your mom and older sister

And too old to go to Chuck E. Cheese’s with your dad and younger brother

See from birth to about 10 my family was middle class

We had a nanny on weekends and for after school

My stepdad had a job and life was good and I was happy

Life is not a happy thing

My mother

Was my best friend

I looked forward to folding laundry with her and talking about my problems

I liked our late-night trips to WinCo

Just to get a shit ton of candy

The last 3 years have been the hardest of my life

Now don’t get me wrong I know that life will get harder

I’ll have 1,000 more shitstorms thrown my way

Since my mother died, I can’t help but feel

It’s all my fault

If my dad hadn’t gotten in a car accident and broke both his wrist

Lost his job

Went back into a spiral of drugs and addiction

Maybe my mother would still be alive

I lost my house because of my dad’s addiction to drugs

I lost my brother because of a family that convinced him our family was the worst place for him to be I lost my sister because she was convinced by my homophobic grandmother me being A trans male

With a girlfriend

Is an abomination to

“Our Lord Jesus Christ”

I lost my mother to a drunk driver who ran her and 2 others over in a Safeway parking lot

Most importantly I’ve lost myself

I have flashbacks to when I was 12

I remember being upset I didn’t start my period until I was 15

I remember being so hungry we had to go to WinCo just to Steal our breakfast for the next morning

I remember praying to God for help

Screaming at him

For taking you away

She was 41

That’s middle aged

Sure, she used drugs

She stole to keep her and her children alive

She wasn’t even the greatest human being

She was a good mom

She kept us feed and clean

She kept us healthy

And if anyone in this world deserved a second chance

She did

My mother was beautiful Funny Smart Amazing

And God had no right to take her away from me

Before I turned 18

Before I graduated high school

Before she turned 80

Before I came home to her

Before I had the chance to forgive her for all the bad things she had done I love my mother more than anything

Do you want to know the last thing she ever said to me was?

She asked me if I loved her

The last words I ever heard my mother say were “do you love me”

Do you know what it feels like to have your mother and best friend think that you don’t love them as they lay dying in a hospital

It hurts

Deep in your soul and for every moment

I’m alive I’m going to show this world that I am the Beautiful Smart

Funny

Person my mother raised me to be

And amazing

Because my mother will not be remembered except by those who know her

So, I’ll remember her

Good and bad

And this world will remember me

I wrote that back in 2017

It has now been

4 years

1460 days

Far too many hours

Minutes And seconds

Since she left this world and moved into the next I have said before that I don’t believe in death simply you move into the next universe

This doesn’t mean her absence isn’t felt

When I graduated high school after 3 long extra years

I felt it

When me and my first serious relationship broke up I felt it

When I feel sad or alone

She is all I can think about Wishing she was here

I can’t remember her face without a photo

Her voice has been gone since the day she died

Sometimes it haunts my dreams

I wake wanting

No

Praying to a god that I don’t believe in to go back to sleep

Just to hear her voice one last time

I don’t care if it’s a nightmare

I don’t care if she’s screaming at me or calling me names

I just want to hear her voice

My memories of her get foggy as the days go by

As the moments fade past

As her ghost fades into the mist

It feels like I’m losing you all over again

It is getting harder

So much harder

To remember how she said “I love you”

What it felt like to be wrapped in her arms

Feeling her heart pound in her chest as I sobbed into it

All the small precious moments that faded by too fast

If I had known I would never hear your voice

Feel the warmth of your body as it held me in my worst nights

I would have held those moments for much longer

My life has changed so much

She’s been gone for almost 5 years

I was finally able to bring myself to go see her ashes

I know it took me a long time and for that

I’m so sorry

Its hurts

I still can’t bring myself to forgive her

I can’t say that it’s all okay

I know she didn’t get a chance to make it right

And it’s been such a long time to hold this pain

It won’t go away

Her words haunt me

Her emotional abuse still rings in my mind and plays itself in my head like a movie

When I sleep it comes to life?

I can finally see her face again

Hear her voice

When I start to wake her face blurs and I try so desperately to grab a hold of her as I feel myself break free of my dreams

I miss her

Everyday the pain has gotten easier but the memories

Of pain never fade

I hate her

So much

For all the pain and misery

For leaving me

Leaving us

I didn’t care that I was mad at her

That she had hurt me in unfixable ways

That her words sting like venom

I wanted to see her there

With balloons and flowers

And a huge dumb smile

As I walked across that stage and got my diploma

I wanted you to shout

“that’s my boy”

Run up and hug

I could put my hand on my head

And say

“Mom, stop, you’re embarrassing me” I need you back

Life is so much more painful without you

Being an adult is hard

With you not here to guide me

I’m not sure what to do

Rest in peace With love

Your son Lokas-Finnley

QUILLS TO SKIN

Raydean Blakley

It’s interesting, being someone who is trying to bury the way I was raised Behind a wall of education and hard won habits

There’s more lessons I learned from my family I want to forget Than ones I would ever want to pass on

It’s something I have noticed, that there are two kinds of people Those that spend their youth preparing for adulthood

And those whose adulthood is spent erasing the signs of their past

For me, in an effort to raise myself, deny my parents the privilege I collect teachers

Sometimes I mean a human with that name tag

Sometimes but more often not

And usually, I consider the thing teachers give me

How I learned the lesson, as opposed to them

I’m not sure people can actually give knowledge to others

I think they pass it along like a firefly, and see if their students can catch

There was a woman once, who I suppose was a teacher

I still hear her voice when someone says the word ‘Pretty’

Pretty is an insult

Because whenever someone did something stupid she would say You are SO pretty

Was it her who taught me the things I walked away with Or were her words little bees that followed me

And buzzed their own lessons in my ear

There is a woman who I found because I wanted to learn Her voice isn’t around when I use her lessons

But there is the memory of this annoying video

Pet Milk

I didn’t know the name until that poem told me it

And told, told, told

Mouthy ASMR that haunts me whenever I have coffee

I watch the swirl of white in brown and consider giving up creamer

Because I just really hate that name, Pet Milk

Somewhere, I hope there is still a man

I hope I’m not the only one still using his name

This was a case where I had no quarrel defining him as a teacher

But he definitely did

I’m not sure I remember his voice or words

I might have made them up, along with a laugh that makes me shiver He taught me about sunlight, and wind in the trees

And how to be okay after you extend your hand, and it comes back bloody He didn’t teach me what a magpie was

I remember the nicknames I gave them better than I remember Right, those are called… Mocking birds? Jays? They are corvids, that I know

Magpie, that’s the ticket, and I always lose it

He doesn’t remind me, Google does

The problem with all of that,

The wonderful nonsense I let cloud the view of what I’m growing

Like fallen leaves and cherry blossom petals of knowledge

Is I don’t like teachers

Not when they are a person, I love the person

But eventually it gets time to learn to fly

And too often something about what they taught me goes wrong

Gets warped by the goo in the chrysalis

The best teachers can’t talk, like books, and forests, and oceans, And the ugly beautiful sights of people-watching in your favourite part of town

To be a real teacher, a person has to also show who they are

When you want to tuck yesterday into the person you are trying to become It’s easier if your teacher is no one, has nothing to show

That way, you can take the lesson without anything else clinging to it

But I suppose, sometimes learning comes with dust or mud you have to brush off

And sometimes, someone passes you a lesson that sheds glitter all over the carpet

Frankie Benka

THIS HOUSE FLIES HOME

Alexis Hart

Grounded again, I’m nauseous in the living room on a Saturday afternoon, back for a day and a half and the sickness has already set in.

In a new city I observe light through leaves like holidays. While in her house my mother tidies up, I teach myself to pray again, break through the boarded up windows of this haunted house –– God willing,

I will begin my reconstruction at the front door. This house is haunted but I tell my ghosts, you are welcome here.

I will invite them in as if my mother’s eyes are not on my back; yes, these hand-me-downs are heavy but I’ve not spent time building thick skin for nothing.

I wear them like a badge of honor. I will clear out these cobwebs, put them on display. May they mean something to someone other than me.

FOR PLANET JUPITER, MY GIANT

Fig DePaolo

On the top floor of the empty building I left my life in a brown paper bag along with handfuls of red red cherry tomatoes. I felt a liquid hunger pour through every empty inch of me, my tongue was heavy and beautiful. Up here, my city looks like how I feel and even though I like that, I know one day my patience for grief will run out and by then there will be nothing else left to focus on.

Now I am the negative space around the hummingbird boy-heart. My girl-heart is a birdcage. All wedding photos and popped buttons. A great worry of mine is that I won’t know love when it happens to me.

So I am always vigilant and interrogative. Suspicious of any beautiful moments.

And my little brother is still curled in my bed and I realize I don’t know how to live here with the lights on. This body is the only thing I understand. Unlike my ancestors those beautiful uncles and aunts— wanting, for me, is not the issue. Today it is the rage of all possibilities tomorrow, it is the nothingness. The best poems I write

are about eating or being eaten.

VANILLA Lily Thoren

In September I will bake you a cake and whisper I love you into the batter as I watch it bubble in the oven and rise. But it is a silent whisper, and you will smile and take a bite, and I will hate myself for never learning to be loud.

AGORAPHOBIC

Alexa Tomkowiak

We share pleasantries through our bright little screens I flirt with you you flirt with me but when it comes time I won’t make any plans

My heart sinks to my feet with a dull thud

Once you lay your mesmerizing eyes on me the flirtatious words will die on your tongue

What has it been? since you’ve seen me last 10, 20, 30 pounds? How many pairs of jeans have I grown out of since you last thought I was pretty? How many new spots have adorned my face since the last time you saw it without a filter on? Did you like my hair long? I can’t recall It’s short now

I’ll deny and protest meeting in person in fear of your inevitable reaction until slowly

you begin to drift away I’ll let you I can’t discern how you reason my constant rejection Possibly it’s that I’m not interested maybe you think I’m rude Or is fading away from me as easy for you as it was for all the others?

Truly, I can’t bring myself to care when I know the fear of you knowing the size of my waistband, you counting the blemishes on my skin, you seeing the real me, will hold me tighter than you ever could

I AM ANUBIS

Raydean Blakley

I believe in gods

When someone speaks, and it comforts a hurt

They can’t see

I doubt

When I open my mouth

And what tumbles out

Shows theirs

SQUID GAME

Seyeon Park

AM I ENOUGH?

Kyiah Evans

Listen to my next words, tomorrow I will be gone and nothing Save the wonders of mystery Will remain. I had Hoped that within this Black dash that encompasses Every heartbeat, every Breath that I may come to Find what it is they call Love, the one thing we Die for, Fight for, Burn from the very center of my Core for. Listen to my words that Speak true, breathing life into a World vacuuming my soul from my Lungs. The dark Embraces as arid Poison replaces life, you will Fight for your place upon broken Steps to a marble Palace. The fear rising Within your chest as you Hesitantly stumble to your Judgment.

Frankie Benka

* Baldasty Award Winner

SAD

Phoebe Milatz

Each winter I watch my soul

Leave my body.

That unreliable sneak.

I see where you’re going!

Oh, yes I do!

Off to imagine you’re basking under the sun!

Off to swim in rivers that never freeze!

Off to skies that always remain stubbornly blue! How predictable.

There she goes again, Seeking warmth

While my body is left here

In the fog and mist

Beneath a gray sky

Standing next to a river that will always freeze.

I try to call her back to me.

Please, I beg.

My soul looks me up and down

Wondering why she should bother. And in the gathering dusk of 3:30pm, I can’t blame her.

A CONCERT

Charlie Muroya

Imagine you’re in a room full of light. Not white light, but lights that are blue, red, purple, green. And only in the very corner of the room is there even a pinch of dimness. You try to close your eyes, but find that the thin flesh of your eyelids provide no protection.

Now imagine that the room is full of noise. Indescribable, booming noise. Almost like a song in a language you can’t comprehend, played on instruments you couldn’t pronounce. A noise that is allconsuming and so loud you can’t hear your thoughts, and it feels as though your ears are full of bees.

Finally, imagine that you are not alone in this room. That it is packed to the brim with people you don’t recognize as fellow humans. People with faces distorted by light and voices unhearable. People who are smiling as brightly as the light, and shouting as loud as the noise. People who chose to be in the room, and are loving it.

There was a reason you came to the room once, but now it’s irrelevant because whatever it was doesn’t seem worth it anymore. You are trapped, and confused, and alone. And if there is a door it is hidden very well.

That is where I am now. That is my reality, instead of a mere idle wander. And I don’t know if I will ever find a way out. And I am so sorry you’ve happened to join me here, if only for a moment. Perhaps when you find the exit, you can come back and tell me where it is.

Or perhaps you are one of the people who have come here on purpose. In which case I implore you to tell me why. Why can you enjoy this and I cannot? What could be so wrong with me?

Maybe, maybe there is nothing wrong with me at all. Maybe we are no different. Maybe, I just need to try harder. The longer I stay here, the more time I have to appreciate the noise, and maybe I can decipher it at some point. Maybe with a little effort, I can join the people in their pleasure. That would be nice, and ideal, and simple, wouldn’t it?

I try to grin. A sickly grin, that would scare a child. My skin is sizzling like a piece of bacon, my muscles popping with frustration like hot oil. This is too hard, I’m not strong enough. My words can’t reach your ears even though I try with all my might to get the words past the lump in my throat. I feel like a fish, dragged out of my river and thrown upon the hot rocks. Why did I come here, why did I ever think I could survive without water, surrounded by hungry bears who will just not, stop, screaming.

And yet, it is still a long way from home. And the door is hidden. And I cannot speak, because no one can hear me. And I could not even comprehend their answers if they did manage to hear me. Truly, this is my hell on earth and you are but a devilish bystander here to watch me suffer. Eternity is too broad a term. And I am too small a subject.

I was foolish for trying, foolish for coming, foolish for searching for an exit, and foolish for introducing you to me. There is no reason for all this suffering to be heard, to be imagined. It was better when this page was back in its bottle. Thrashing about in the open sea. Sometimes it is better to be silent and lost than it is to be known. To be heard. To have to recount your story. To have to explain why you are different.

I think, I remember the reason why I am here now. And, I can’t decide whether it is all worth it. Truly who should come first? All of the people, or one little bottle in a big room full of pleasure, lights, and noise?

The people are shouting. You are shouting in my ear and it feels like a toothbrush full of sand, brushing and scraping the canal of my ear. I am happy you are happy. Maybe next time, I can join you. But not this time, not now. I’ve already ruined this time too much to enjoy it. I can only hope it’ll be better next time. Because what is life if it is not opportunities to be happy? I hope you are happy. I hope I’m not just imagining that you’re happy for my sake. That I am not just projecting happiness onto you in an effort to make this worth it. That I have not ruined this for you as I’ve ruined it for myself. If you are happy, then it will be okay.

And again, the sizzling comes for me. As much as I want you to be happy, anger coats my throat in a sickening concoction. I wonder if it was worth it to you, to have me here. If it wouldn’t have been better for all of us if I’d never come. The anger tastes like something that should be shared. Would that make me feel better? If everyone was suffering with me? Would being joined make any of this better? Should misery be shared, is loneliness my real trouble? I can’t tell, not while in this room. But the child inside of me hopes that that isn’t the answer.

He wants to be selfless, the child. He wants to be loved. He wants you to be grateful that I am suffering for you. He wants you to be happy eternally. He wants to be alone in his suffering. Even if that means suffering alone. Please forgive me, dear reader and dear child and dear people. Forgive me for wishing harm on you, even if just in contemplation. That is the message that I wish to be heard.

Thank you, for being here. For listening to this opened bottle. You have been a reprieve in this room. I’d like to call you a friend, because I believe I’ll be seeing you again. So next time, please. Don’t be a stranger. Don’t leave me alone. If only I am to suffer, then allow me to tell you about it again. Because the room you live in is soft, and dark, and comforting. And I’d like to join you. If only for a moment.

LAST PUFF

Summer Skognes

VICES

Jaid Ingham-Riley

I want to float in the air, bending around elasticity and logic.

I want to glide, swimming in swirls through your throat, diving into the hidden cavern of your lungs labeled – for your eyes only.

Let me crawl through your bloodstream, clinging to your veins with every slow beat of your heart.

I’ll pour honey onto your brain, smoothing your thoughts in every crease, and every crevice, hidden beneath your skull.

I’ll burn, I’ll boil, I’ll crumble. I’ll do whatever it takes to numb you.

MYGRAIN

Karli Petruso

You first emerged in the soil of my head when I was 17. To be chosen as a host filled me with a satisfaction I had never quite felt before. Your seed embedded itself and your roots took hold behind my eyes. I could feel you, could you feel me?

At first it was a game we played, something like hide and seek. You hiding and me always seeking. When I’d find you, you’d escape from my grasp and return to another hiding spot. The game would start over and over. You would allow me no rest and depended solely on my energy to fuel your growth. The more we played the more you grew. I was proud in a way. You were mine and you were growing.

The next stage of your maturing was tilling, the most painful for me to feel. You started gaining strength and no longer needed me to play with you. As your shoots spread across my skull, I would lose motivation to continue. You paralyzed my body of voluntary movement. SLEEP. That’s all I wanted and the only thing you would allow me. Our relationship felt like it was dwindling. You had all the control; it was your game to play and of course, you were winning.

You quickly pollinated, taking only three days to do so. I was impressed to say the least. As the temperatures rose outside you pushed harder and harder to stay inside. This was “your season” to avoid and mine to embrace. We argued back and forth a lot and it always ended in a fit of rage on your part. That’s something you never quite learned to control, your anger. Anything from a certain movement or a change in surroundings would set you off. I was always your prey.

You’d pick on my weaknesses, turning everything I once loved into dread. I secretly yearned for the attention you gave me. When I felt alone you were always right there with me. We were a part of each other and that’s what made our relationship toxic.

Although I still had a desire for you deep down, you continued to shut me out. You no longer wanted my identity to be shown, only yours. With each invitation or event coming up, you would allow the excitement and anticipation to rise, then quickly shut it down with the crush of your fist. You were growing harder to please, my spirit diminishing with every opinion you shut down. I tried prying you open, you wouldn’t budge. I tried denting you and again no reaction. You were stone face with no care for my emotions whatsoever. I was locked out.

Your power was intimidating but something that only fueled the fire within me to fight back. There had to be a way to crack you open, to return to the once careful seed that only longed for attention and energy. There had to be a way. I couldn’t lose you. After all we had been through, how could you just

up and take full control? You were hungry for energy and authority, and I couldn’t take it any longer. So, I did what had to be done. I fought back with a mix of prescriptions hoping that one would finally harvest you from your stem up.

The search took a few months until I finally found your kryptonite, Umbrelvy. The other medicines had weakened you so that all that needed to be done was the final cut. The control became mine again and you returned to your original form of that careful seed. You were done, but not gone. You still took rest in the back of my mind, entangling your new roots on the top of my spine.

I’m glad you’re not gone forever. Afterall, you are MY grain.

I’M GLAD TO SAY

Alexa Tomkowiak

CANCER SEASON

Willow Johnson

somewhere in the sky the sun shifts into the constellation of a crab. it’s my birthday again and I’m left wanting. so I dip a chalice under the surface of the pool to resurface myself, float among glow sticks, light the night on neon-fire. I cover up a hole in my chest with a party dress, too tight no curve left behind.

I leave glitter on every chair, on the sidewalk-- crystal concrete. string me up like a disco ball. I’ve never been invited to one but I know how to party; loud music I don’t even like, lemonade shot – non-alcoholic.

I am confident I can do this right. I assume you taste like clove cigarettes, a punch bowl, spoon dripping rainbow sherbet, and a heart full of blood.

I want you on my doorstep fluorescent and smoking, fading light like a half-burned out star.

I want to feel how desert sand strokes bare limbs.

I want

to know what a late night drive with you feels like; city lights, the slope of distant mountains, my hands deep in the pockets of your coat; my beating heart in those folds wrenched out like teeth. I’m sure nobody’s ever held me like this a metaphorical harness of hands. this is not lust, I’ve never craved the touch of anyone. all those stars strung up in the sky just for me us? there’s so much to want.

DEAR POEM

Luke Tomkowiak

Wake up School

Deer

That damn deer

Get home

The sound of my shoes

Stomping

Through the door is only

Silenced

By the sound of dogs

Rampaging

In glee at the return of a friend

I put on a happy face

Like a clown

To make sure

My canine friends don’t worry over me

I saunter

To my abode

And peer out the glass on the wall

And there he is again

Not being there for any reason

Yet he is there, nonetheless

The deer then walks away Again

For no particular reason

SOS PACKAGING

Mikael Leighty

WELCOME TO SUMMER GHOST

Kaitlin Creeger

Deep in the night, the sound ricochets through the cold, crisp air, and Erin does not see it. He has been waiting all night for a train, to see the speed such a beast could perform; and one does not miss the event of a lifetime. Erin strains his ears, trying to hear, the fog as thick as custard soup turning to mold.

Fog exists in summer, deep in Elwood Town. Locals call it the Summer Ghost; Erin’s the only one to see a ghost, and it was never in the fog. Too cliché, but locals make up stories, scare the tourists, tourists that look like deflated clowns, wearing tired, chipped face-masks—very few come year-round; Elwood Town is nearly forgotten. All tourists, locals, fear the fog.

In the middle of the night, Erin woke to the sound of a horn, and followed the glaring noise, willing to see the train no one sees. Goosebumps riled up his forearms, like chilled hands touching his skin, like the kiss of decaying lips, like spiders crawling over one another to break down rotting organs for dinner. Everyone knows there are no train tracks in Elwood; there is no need in seclusion.

Silence fills Erin as he sits on the edge of a murky pond. Not even croaking of a bullfrog is heard. The wind has died, grasshoppers stay mute. The impending desire worsens. He swears this spot—this very spot—the train was loudest. Loudest beyond the pond.

Erin can’t go into the pond, He cannot swim. There is nothing beyond the pond, except the dangerous rapids. And no one wants to mention the one-time a kid drowned, following the Summer Ghost. Erin shivers. He is doing exactly as his sister did. Yet, Erin knows not to go into the pond. Because of the rapids? No, because monsters lurk in the dark abyss, where even tadpoles are snatched for a snack. Monsters only children can see with razor-sharp teeth and black kaleidoscope eyes…

Deep in the distance, hovers an obscure white light. It flickers in and out of sight like someone’s waving a hand in front of it. Like the fog tries eating it but fails to succeed. It shines bright and strong, a fire swallowing the world. Erin’s hands, feet go numb, wet—he is up to his neck in frigid water, halfway through the pond, heading towards the light. He stops, not wanting to end up like his sister; the warnings from Mother filling his undeveloped brain like Sirens screeching to be heard.

Erin does not want to die. Erin does not want to disobey the only family he has left. The blaring of the horn beckons, like scratchy voices whispering for help. Paddling with twig arms, barely afloat, the light of the Summer Ghost vanishes in a blink of an eye and the world grows silent like a dead heart, drumming life into nothing, not even into Erin.

But the Summer Ghost is waiting. Wherever it is, it won’t wait for long, and Erin swims awkwardly, like a newborn chick, unaware of direction, until a beam of light appears, and the sound of wailing, injured cats fill the air. Kicking harder, gulping in gales of oxygen, Erin dips under the water, the ground giving way. His body slams into sharp rocks, fog obscuring the rocks that prey on human flesh, rocks with gleaming red eyes, rocks like a black hole, thousands of skinless hands reaching for their next victim—

The only sound Erin hears is the rushing water clogging his ears. The rapids are in cahoots with the rocks, demanding payment of his blood. Erin breaches the surface, choking, his body crashing into a boulder, one untouched by monsters—he grabs hold, scraping hands across the wet, gray mass. Struggling, arms shaking like a leaf blowing in the wind, he hauls himself onto the rock.

The rushing of water soothes with its dull roar. Deep within the silver woods, beyond, a slender beast is wrapped in black silk, pumping out voluminous white clouds. Golden words, scribbled across the train cars in thick scratches, scratches Erin squints to read, reveals signatures of not-forgotten children.

SOGGY SOCKS

Samuel Ortega

Puddles overflow in the streets causing cars to become makeshift boats trudging along down the foggy roads. I splash around in my boots, green frogs that protect my feet from the rain, though I still manage to fill them up. Regardless of the atmosphere, it feels comforting like a cool breeze in a desolate desert.

I see dogs that are soaking wet, trying to shake off the downpour, getting muddier by the second. That’s going to be hell to clean up. A squirrel carries her young, one of the only signs of color amongst grays. They are half-drowned, fully gone.

The puddles are their liquid graves, their new home.

I try not to think about that. It’s a splishy-splashy day, not a lesson in mortality.

STRINGS AT DAWN

Summer Skognes

FORGOTTEN FRIEND

Taiyanna Pereira

The forgotten doll lay still and waiting. All night it stays, the ground dirtying her face and dress with brown scuffs, remembering a time when she was warm in the embrace of her child, warm and safe. You see the flashbacks like a time-lapse of when you were hand in hand, your dresses mismatched, bows upon your heads, accompanied by silly lace socks you knew she secretly hated. Matching freckles dotted your noses, the same color locks grew from both of your heads. Now the doll lies under the oak where you left her, your sweet touch no longer the same. The anticipation of your return is gone. Her joints, now eroded with rocks and dirt, almost make her part of the ground itself, she wonders if her child will get older while she stays the same. She lies still, thinking of small hands brushing her soft curls to perfection, thinking of nights when you clutched her plastic body, a soft tremble in your child-hands like if you held her tight enough you’d be safe from the world. The doll imagines being back in those small, thin arms, listening to your heartbeat. She can almost hear it now: thump thump thump

A LIST OF THINGS I’D SAY TO THE LONG BRANCH WHALE IF SHE COULD HEAR ME

Alexis Hart

1. You remind me of an orange.

2. I was surprised to find that your bones are porous.

3. You remind me of the shame of having to ask the kid in class who you’ve sat next to for nearly a month now, Hey, what’s your name again?

4. I looked up your Latin name and could not figure out how to say it.

5. You remind me of an orange. Or rather the insides of one.

6. My nails ripped into flesh, split it open; bitter pith stuck beneath my fingernails. I want to suck it out; savor the marrow. I want to punch you in your non-existent teeth, follow straight through to your ribcage. Bold of you to expose it like this when I am here to fantasize about destroying it.

7. They say you are–You are what? Six feet under? Upside down, reascending? Backward evolution? I am begging you, answer with words I understand. Someone split you open, carved you out with fingernails and hands bloodied. They say you starved.

8. I want to celebrate your body like I celebrate oranges but I’m finding it hard when your bones are stuck up inside of me.

COLORFUL CREATURE

Talia Glass

ENVY

Luke Tomkowiak

You sit, staring out the window, wondering when life will start to change. Your passion, that fire forgotten, replaced with feeble nothingness. You glance at the glass where a single drop treads slowly until it reaches the end of its path. The drop lives with no regrets, no concern over its inevitable demise into oblivion. You let fear forever force you from happiness.

You get up from the chair and catch your reflection in the transparent mirror. Are those tears you see, or simply more drops headed towards their doom? Whatever it is, it’s time to move on, as time doesn’t stop for anyone. Even if the window shatters, the world outside doesn’t change. Who cares about one broken window?

You walk outside, only to realize that the window hasn’t changed either.

THE OFFERING

Fig DePaolo

There was a time, when I was younger and didn’t have much to worry about, when I became addicted to disaster. This was when I lived east, far from the sea, and took the bus everywhere because I was too afraid to learn how to drive. I had a little TV that I’d picked up off the sidewalk, adorned unceremoniously with a paper sign that read, in slanting capital letters: FREE STILL WORKS. I tore the sign off when I got home and left it on the coffee table where it stayed until I moved out.

I used it to watch the news. On days I didn’t work until the afternoon, I would wake up early, open the curtains and sit on the floor with my back pressed to the side of the red sofa which I had acquired in a similar fashion to the TV. I would stare and stare at CNN, and imagine every horrible thing that could happen to me, natural or unnatural, unprecedented or otherwise, gas leak or house fire or shooting or flood, car accident, earthquake, piano falling from five stories up.

To calm down, I would imagine myself melting into my carpet. I would imagine an alien abduction, a big column of white light shining into my apartment, picking me up and dragging me effortlessly through the ceiling and into the belly of a big retro flying saucer, where nothing could touch me anymore, and there would be nothing to worry about. Really, I just wanted to choose how I would go. The clamoring myriad of dangers that life presented me were all the more terrifying for their vastness.

Back then I worked all sorts of hours at a gas station in the middle of town. Usually, I was the only employee there, because the owner wanted nothing to do with it, and practically begged me to take my own set of keys too soon after I started. In there it was like time had taken a vacation. It was a whole different environment from anywhere else. The windows were all plastered with advertisements and promotions and warnings to minors trying to buy tobacco, so I was all crowded in by the buzz of fluorescents and the fridges in the back. I decided that a gas station was a transient place, where people came to reluctantly pause for necessities before continuing on with their lives. My fate, then, to stay there for eight or nine hours on end, was one that no human was meant to have.

I read sometimes, newspapers to soothe my misfortune addiction, or beaten-up novels from the library that I would steal from the perpetual pile my then-boyfriend kept by his bed, only the one on the right, though, the ones he had already finished. But all these stories, even the true ones, just felt so far away. There was something about my TV that gave me intimacy with the horrors that ravaged the world always. I could really only read when I was feeling particularly strong and independent.

Mostly I just watched people drive up through the one eye-level crack in the pictures on the window. I watched them cross their arms and tap their feet while their cars filled up. I watched them look around at nothing and then at nothing some more, chew on their nails, spin their keyrings around their index fingers. I felt sometimes like the ghost of that gas station. Or, on generous days, like the guardian angel.

Many distractions like these were not afforded to me when I worked the night shift. Customers were even rarer, and not even many cars rushed by on the arterial road outside. I just stared at the linoleum floor, or made faces at the laminated sign warning people to smile because they were on camera. I never made any faces at the camera itself, though; in fact I avoided eye contact with it like it was a tiny, metal-and-plastic Medusa.

One night it began to rain heavily while I stood my lonely sentry. I watched water quickly begin to pool blurrily in the dips and valleys of the parking lot, and I watched the wobbling reflections of streetlights in the dark asphalt road.

I didn’t see the woman come in. I looked up when I heard the ringing of the bell above the door, and there she was, with her long, blond-gray hair in her face, almost leaning over the counter. She was thin, wearing a scoop-necked maroon shirt under two coats, a short black one and a brown one that swept past her knees. Her nails were long and manicured, painted pale peachy pink.

I didn’t say anything. I normally would have some customer service congeniality spilling from my mouth automatically. But I was tongue tied, in a sticky, uncomfortable, too-literal sense. I tried to bring words from my brain to my mouth, but they got confused along the way and fell, in a heavy pile, on the place where my throat opened and my tongue began.

She stared at me for a while before speaking. Her voice made me feel like a fairy tale. I mean, as if I was about to sign away my freedom, or my hair, or my firstborn child. “Hello, sir or madam,” she said. She looked right in my eyes and I couldn’t look away.

“I understand you may feel your days are numbered. I am here to help!” She opened a big, soft handbag that she had hung on her shoulder, and pulled out a stack of clean white papers. She set them on the counter, and, in one practiced motion, spun them around so they faced me. On the first one, about halfway down the page, was a big color image of a rural road, faded yellow line bisecting it

into infinity. Long, deep green grass bent forward from both sides to touch it, fading into dense, even greener pine trees. Under the picture sprawled tight, black script, too tiny to read. She nodded at me, then went back to digging in her bag.

“You can look through the rest of them,” she said, head down.

I leaned closer over them. I wasn’t possessed, or hypnotized or anything, but I felt like I was being pulled through water. Like my legs were floating behind me, and my arms were out, and I was a little bit helpless, but getting where I needed to be.

All the rest of the pages were similar to the first one. Half-blank, stark white and straight-edged. All had a picture of an empty road. Most of the roads cut through seeming wilderness, green on all sides, or desert, sometimes cliffs climbed straight up like the sides of a bowl. Some were surrounded by farmland, some were empty suburban intersections, corners of green lawns visible across the border of cracked sidewalks.

There were also plenty of aerial shots of highways. These were the most disorienting. It felt like a free-fall to look at them, those gut-wrenching engineering triumphs, yellow lines crisscrossing and blurring into each other like snakes. Sometimes I watched news stories about new highways being built. They were always presented as being positive to neutral developments, but they always made me feel a little crazy. They felt like a symptom of a big, fast world, one that I didn’t sign up for.

I stared and stared at the first few pictures, then I squinted down at the text, trying to decipher it. The ink was so small that I couldn’t even tell if it was English, so I soon gave up, and just stared at each image like I was trying to find an answer engraved in some far away asphalt.

The woman stood there, still, as I looked. When I raised my head again to her, she smiled, and her teeth were big and white, maybe flashing a little in the cloying light. Her eyes kept looking right into me, and then surfacing to my face. It was all disconcerting. But I know now that back then I was living in a constant state of discomfort, which was more than a little self-imposed. This meant that my threshold was high, and it was hard to differentiate when something new came into my nervous system.

“I have an exciting proposal for you. I do hope you’ll consider.”

The next day I took off from work. I sat on the scratchy wall-to-wall carpet in my apartment with the curtains closed, and I drank water and watched the news. After a while I couldn’t even concentrate on the TV, and just watched the colors dance on the wall, and the only sign that time was passing at all was the little analogue clock I had bought from a thrift store and hung on the wall. I had to fix it. It was two minutes slow.

The next day, I walked to the park, empty because it was a Monday and too cold and early for any homeschoolers or truants to be out. I sat at a picnic table, the flimsy kind covered in chipped green paint, and I read a book about homes, flipping the pages I had already read like an instrument, over and over in my left hand. After a while of this, when I was so near the end that the book was distractingly unbalanced in my hands, Gabriel walked up behind me and laid a hand on my shoulder.

Gabriel was my boyfriend. We had known each other for more than five years, through the spot in our lives where it felt like we had grown up together. We had been together off and on through those years. Most of the time, when we broke up, it was because we were both such solitary, passive people that we would just drift apart, like a piece of music that went quiet and came back again. We always seemed to magnet back to each other before long, especially because we were, I think, each other’s only real friend. In that town, when you were like we were, you held on to whoever you found that could understand.

He was smaller than me, but very strong, because he had grown up on a farm and now worked in construction. One of my favorite parts of him were his big, rough hands. They were mesmerizing. People who made things, physical things, were marvels to me. Gabriel was, in my mind, Atlas, holding up the sky. Except he wasn’t cursed to do it; he just did, because that was who he was.

I laid my cheek on his hand but continued to read, not looking up because I knew he was reading over my shoulder. When I finished the book, I closed it and sighed.

“What sort of day are you having?” he asked. His voice was soft and deep. Sometimes my thoughts were in that voice.

I stood up and looked at him, tucked the book in my left hand to my chest and hooked the fingers of my right into the pocket of his old tan coat. He smiled a little bit. Fondly, I thought. “Yeah, alright,” he said.

Gabriel drove and I curled up in the passenger seat. His loud old truck had manual transmission, and he drove it like a movie character might handle his spaceship or his horse. I had mastered the art of looking out the front window and also at him out of the corner of my eye.

“A woman came into the gas station Saturday night,” I told him. He was listening, though he didn’t say anything. He kept his eyes fixed on the road, but I could feel, as one can, his attention on me. I told him about the woman, and about the papers, the pictures of the roads.

“Not a dream?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No. After I had looked at all the pictures, she put a ballpoint pen on top of the papers. And she asked me if I wanted immortality.”

I looked at him straight on as we both let the words hang in the air, feeling the breath of them circling in the cab of the truck. His eyebrows raised, he asked, “What did you say?”

I laughed, but tiredly. “I said no!” What kind of life would that be? Not any kind of life, I don’t think. Anyone addicted to disaster can tell you: endings are the only real thing in the world. They are a tether. We would all be floating through space, aimless, without them.

“But then,” I went on, quietly, “she asked me if there was anything else I wanted. Anything about myself I would like to change.”

Gabriel glanced at me for a second at this. His hands were at ten and two on the wheel as we hurtled through the country, and we could have been in one of the pictures.

When she had asked me this, I stood there for a long time, thinking. I was almost worried that she would leave, but I knew she wouldn’t. I stared down at the first picture, ran my eyes over the text at the bottom of it.

In that gas station, late at night, tired and unsettled, so many unsatisfactory things teemed in my head, like a school of tiny fish, fast through the blue sea. I thought about how afraid I was, all the time, wandering through my life so afraid that it felt like my skin was too tight. I thought about all the terrible things I had seen in the light of my little TV, insurmountable horrors, more than could be counted. I thought and thought.

“After a while,” I said to Gabriel, “I asked her for--”

He stopped abruptly, and we both gasped, upper bodies like an avalanche forward. Three deer, a mother and two nearly full-grown juveniles, bounded across the road. We both watched in silence until they were gone.

Still stopped there, the world deathly silent except for the wind through the trees, going on with its business no matter what happened, Gabriel looked at me, and our faces were turned towards each other like two sunflowers without the sun. I took out a piece of paper from my pocket, creased where it was folded into quarters. I unfolded it and smoothed it on my knees. It was almost the same as all the rest, a color image followed by tight lines of unreadable text. But instead of a road cutting across the asymmetrical waves of green and brown, there was a river.

The world turned and got older than it ever had been. Some things that were there were gone now, but a lot was still the same, and in the cracks between the memories of the old sprouted green and better things. Me and Gabriel sat there, looking.

SOMETIMES I WONDER IF I’M ALIVE AT ALL Willow Johnson

I will admit I have gone to restaurants alone to feel something.

Arranged water glasses around the table as if I was surrounded by a crowd of people. I am surrounded by a crowd of ghosts. I leave a message on my old flip phone to my mother. My own form of divination.

Plastic button tea leaves. White letter tarot cards. She doesn’t answer.

Who was it that painted Nighthawks ? I feel I should remember, I don’t.

Names, in my mind, are fog. Blue smoke. Red dress. Midnight.

Through the window, the moon looks like a raw chunk of selenite. Shimmering. Fragile. I imagine it crumbling and wonder if anyone would miss it.

There is one other person in this diner. A stranger. A king in a paper crown upon his red leather booth. He wears his solitude like crimson robes. I know, in some unspoken ways, he is familiar with loss. I want to tell him: we aren’t lonely, we’re paused. Soon,

we’ll go back to living.

Just before close, the booths are sepulchers. It’s sad that we’re still here alone. And maybe one of us will set off to find a bar. A song whistled in an empty street. I hope someone is listening.

Space has always consumed me. I feel more like the man in the hat with his back turned to the spectator and not at all like the woman with the red hair who sticks out like a bloody thumb among the dull surroundings.

I should be that woman.

HOME AGAIN

Lily Thoren

Words used to stem out of my fingertips, the way that blood blossoms out my chest when I dream but now letters are flat and my words are far too slow.

I still go to church and it hurts me that sometimes I don’t hate it as much as I used to. I will never believe in God in the way that you don’t believe in cruelty.

I miss the feeling of the bitter ocean on my toes and how I ran into Oregon waters again and again until my lips turned blue and sand filled my pockets.

I spend money like I am dying next year unaware that most people live on and I’m not sure which one is more unlucky but my dollar bills are meaningless now.

Words out of my mouth are too quiet and I long for once to be too loud but whispers are more comfortable and yelling is such an expensive habit.

I’ll wait for the leaves in Arizona to turn red and then I will go back home where my parents will kiss me and hold me in their arms warm with disappointment.

A FLOWER FOR DAN

Raydean Blakley

Sometimes, I think writers are the saddest people in existence

As in, having an existence that is sad, not being the most sad while existing Thin line maybe...

It’s a whole thing, isn’t it? The tortured artist

The woesom poet, the destitute author

I usually don’t buy into it, I think everyone is miserable Writers just… make a habit of putting it on paper

So no, I don’t believe in the tortured artist But sometimes, I think becoming a writer is the worst thing I ever did to myself

See, writers don’t care about the truth

What’s real and what isn’t, couldn’t matter less Doesn’t matter at all, in the right circumstances

We deal in the esoteric, the alienating We will do whatever desperate thing it takes, to make a reader feel what we want

Being a bit of a narcissist hasn’t hurt me though No, what hurts is how good I am at typing the word love

All the ways I’ve described the moon

Or hearing my favourite song come on in the grocery store

It’s a despicable thing, to make someone live through what they don’t know And I do it to myself all the time

I’m a writer

I write about love and fate and being able to laugh

Being able to cry until you’ve shed all your tears, and have to laugh about it

So even though I know how well I lie

I still have to believe in all those things

The rub of it, is how long can you look into a mirror

Never touching the things you draw in the fogged up reflection

Before you start to wonder if you never lied in the first place?

It’s possibly that maybe writers aren’t all that sad, just ones like me

It’s common sense for it to hurt

When I can make all these beautiful things

And like children, they outgrow me

I am left behind, still wondering if I am capable of love

But I’m a writer

A sad existence

I know how to take things that are hard to look at Say to myself

Isn’t it just wonderful?

VENETIAN MASK

OCTOBER BREEZE

Lokas-Finnley Asher

I’ve never seen the sunset on the ocean I’m sure it’s beautiful

Pink, purples, and blues the golden yellows

No clouds as the sun says its goodnight to the sea

I miss you every day –

Life hasn’t been the same since you said your goodbye

There were no colors that night dullgrayalone

The blues, purples, and pinks those beautiful golden rays a warm October breeze

Goodbye, beautiful

FALL HARBINGER

Chad Welch

2022 WIRE HARP STAFF PRODUCTION NOTES

Graphic Arts Editor:

Jakob Paoli

Asst Graphic Arts Editor: Holden Sinclair

Literary Editor: Willow Johnson

Literary Staff: Fig DePaolo

Georgia Kettrick

Summer Skognes

Alexa Tomkowiak

Fiona Whitver

Graphic Arts Advisor: John Mujica

Literary Advisors:

Laura Read and Connie Wasem Scott

Special Thanks: Richard Baldasty, Heather

McKenzie, Shelli Cockle, Linda

Beane-Boose, Anna Gonzales, Carl Richardson, Becky Turner, Erik Sohner, Lawton

Print Production:

Printed on HP 10000

digital printer

Paper:

Cover: 100# Satin Cover

Text: 100# Satin Text

Ink Color & Treatment:

Cover: 4/4 Color process with satin aqueous touch coating and black foil.

Text: 4/4 color

process throughout

HP Indigo Liquid

Electronik technology

Bindery:

PUR Perfect

Typefaces:

Monsterrat

Bebas Neue

Abril Display

Griffon

Printer:

Lawton

4111 E Mission Ave.

Spokane, WA 99202

lawtonprinting.com