Spokane Falls Community College
2021
Creative Arts Magazine
for Lindsy, 1996-2020 The 2021 Wire Harp Staff dedicates this issue to Lindsy Kay Callahan, an SFCC alumna whose story, “All the Way to His Ears,” was published in our 2016 issue and won that year’s Baldasty Award for Prose. Lindsy went on to pursue her love of creative writing at EWU and sadly died young before she could write all the many stories she had inside her.
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.
Poetry Night Stay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Margaret Starry Oregon, August 2020. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Alexis Hart Summer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Jessica Briscoe Egg Salad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Lily Thoren Modes of Musical Thought. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Clay Sanchez Dear friend. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Willow Johnson Salvage Me. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Oran M. Bordwell You can’t stand, age twelve, on land like that, and feel nothing . . . 33 Brittan Hart Reoccurring Sunset. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Taffney Ross Love’s Lie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Clay Sanchez Supplication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Kyle Caprye clementine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Ollie Fisher
* Denotes Award Winner
How I Became the Glorious Mr.Dot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Danielle Logan My Last Spring in Broken Arrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Riley VanZee On the Dark Days. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Jaid Ingham-Riley Bees. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Willow Johnson Buried Treasure/Buried Trash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Oran M. Bordwell Grandpa’s Hands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Brittany Jennings Girl Museum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Willow Johnson in violence or resistance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Margaret Starry His Smile Kills Me. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Indra Allen Small Things. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Kyle Caprye Grandfather, 1943. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Mayah LaSol I Met My Baby in a Birdhouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Riley VanZee Speed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Jaid Ingham-Riley
* Denotes Award Winner
*
2 A.M. at the Ghost’s Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Lily Thoren Quietude. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 S. Isaac Cody
*
Sestina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Alexis Hart
Non-Fiction
*
A Ukulele at a Funeral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Justin Timmons The Meaning of Jack. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Jessica Briscoe
Fine Art Breonna. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Devon Martinez Foam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Sarah Wilson Boombox. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Sarah Wilson Avocados. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Daniel Diaz Guitar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Amanda Frost The Ying to My Yang. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Kathryn Snyder Denotes Award Winner
*
Sugar Skull . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Danielle Logan Old Man by the Sea 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Jeremy Bartlow Nightmare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Kylie Carpenter Billie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Kylie Carpenter Boys Will Be Boys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Dakota Coon Covid-19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Chad Welch Magnolia Illustration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Madison Rada Life Within Suicide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Alayna St. Pierre Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Rylei Weekly Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Vanessa Graham
*
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Kat Thomas Cute. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Madison Gord Don’t. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Devon Martinez
* Denotes Award Winner
Year of the Rat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Kathryn Snyder Untitled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Vanessa Graham Blue Jay Breakfast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Kat Thomas Day Dreamer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Gabrielle Archuleta In House Editorial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Madison rada
Photography In the Shadows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Kelsey Lersbak
*
Grey with Red . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Darlene lawson Winter Kissed Web. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Aimee Morris At Rest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Margaret Starry Leaves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Gabrielle Archuleta Hide and Seek. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Aimee Morris
* Denotes Award Winner
Poetry
Night Stay Margaret Starry
white peep holes and etched moldings traced thousands of times over by hands running, running fingertips feeling ridges and reeling at the intimacy with-of all others who have repeated the intricacies of those I war with phones that have no dial tones the maids haven’t come round for days living in dry hotel rooms, robed bodies and never being able to will myself out the door patterned walls consume in cornflower blue and cream fleur-de-lis and no one seems to be able to push the time knocking on doors from the inside – thump, thump, thumping – those echoed hollows ringing, crawling into dirty sheets with familiar strangers.
11
The Wire Harp
Breonna Devon Martinez
Poetry
Oregon, August 2020
Alexis Hart
We run into the ocean and I hold her arm tight to keep her by my side. Luminescent algae sparks up against our bare legs when we move, scatters out in small ripples beneath our feet. I remember how she has talked about wanting to die so I point them out to her as if to say, look how we are alive
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Foam
Sarah Wilson
Poetry
Summer Jessica Briscoe
Electric dirty-blond sand rests between wrinkled toes drying in the clean yellow sun; towels twisting like knotted palm trunks wrap around bobbing white and tan bellies gently bristling and reddening in the heat; cinnamon legs stir the edges of the frothy blue ocean as its smelling salts awaken the senses, so refreshed, alive; bottled emotions rocket out floating red speedboats as engines roar, eagerly slicing soft white waves into loops of foam; the sea slumbers loudly, dozily waving in and out with a hello or maybe a goodbye, I don’t know, I say nothing; breathing in the minty late-morning, I fish for flip flops, brushing specks of golden sand from cinnamon limbs; electric pink and white jellyfish bodies lying sleepily upon lazy lounge chairs and soft beach blankets slowly brown in the early-noon sun rays beaming with a prickly orange smile.
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The Wire Harp
Boombox Sarah Wilson
Poetry
Egg Salad Lily Thoren
I write music the same way that I do everything, quickly with passion that fizzles out like the candles on a birthday cake. Drenched in spit and fake niceties that everyone is required to bring for the birthday girl. I wish I could say that writing feels like a puzzle and that the next word hangs in front of me as I try to figure out where it fits but really it is me vomiting egg salad onto a screen and hoping that some of it doesn’t smell. I am eighteen and have never been kissed and I wish that bothered me but really I just wish I could get it out of the way because I have too much to do and don’t have any time to waste on roses or popped cherries. I’m sure that I offend nearly everyone in some way. Maybe I should care but today is a good hair day and I don’t mind the cold stares because they warm my soul. I love the way that wool feels on my skin because it feels itchy and awful but it looks lovely, and I like to mix the beautiful with the awful because having two good things seems a bit presumptuous and I’m not one to push my luck. It is getting cold outside, soon it will be Christmas and we will all pretend to be happy like children pretend make believe, or like adults pretend to know anything.
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The Wire Harp
Avocados Daniel Diaz
Poetry
Modes of Musical Thought Clay Sanchez
Ionian filling you up like water in a glass. Yellow sounds of the sky dance into your ears. Continuing on with a smile. Dorian leaving you questioning. An orange melody to those you call home. Excited to start anew. Lydian giving you a second chance. Choirs of red bringing a rejuvenation to the soul. Nervous, but willing. Mixolydian chasing you into the circus. Green rhythmic whispers
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The Wire Harp
speaking in the day. Joyful to be scared. Mixolydian chasing you into the circus. Green rhythmic whispers speaking in the day. Joyful to be scared. Aeolian filling your eyes with water. Sounds of a purple child are sad and lonely, like a lamp post shining in the dark. Eyes bleed the color of the depressed. Locrian surrounding your body. Contorted blue music singing from the piano. Alone, you can’t do anything. ...But something’s missing. The Phrygian murderer is nowhere to be seen. What has happened to that music of the mind?
Guitar
Amanda Frost
Non-fiction
Prose Award Winner
A Ukulele at a Funeral
Justin Timmons
I bought this ukulele for a funeral. I had hardly known the dead man, and he had been nearly dead the whole time I had hardly known him. His Christian name was Maynard, I do not remember his surname and perhaps I never learned it, and the way I had come to meet him was very complex. Although I thought I had bought the instrument for a girl, in the end it was actually for myself, but in a way that made sense to me at the time it was hers. Maynard had been a devoutly religious man; his humble funeral was held at his local church. He had served a two-year service mission to prosthelytize his religion to the people of Hawaii, and this is where Maynard had learned to play the ukulele. When he returned home he proposed to and married his high school sweetheart Carol; a sharp, stern woman who was not one to suffer fools. For such a prim woman to marry the class
21 The Wire Harp
clown was surprising to all who knew them. If you’d have asked Maynard, before the dementia set in, how such a jubilant man such as himself had been able to woo such a solemn woman he’d have told you “It was the uke, first time I played that thing for her was the first time I’d seen that woman smile since high school!” If you’d have asked Carol about this, she would have told you, “I met Maynard in high school.” The ukulele is an inherently funny instrument. It’s smaller than a guitar and has a lilting, inoffensive voice that has difficulty being taken seriously. Even its name is somewhat difficult to say with a straight face. It is oftentimes first picked up as a joke, and when you realize that the humor isn’t worth the effort it usually finds its way to the closet, nestled up cozily with the lawn darts or a box of exercise DVDs. I had acquired one as a young teenager, as I had somewhat of a proclivity towards music. I eventually learned to suss out a few chords, and soon I could fool people into thinking that I could play the instrument well enough.
Other than our amateur musicianship, Maynard and I shared little in common. Our acquaintanceship existed merely due to the fact that families are sometimes incomplete by themselves and will find strays to take in. Not stray cats in this instance--Carol couldn’t stand the creatures--but stray humans. Damaged humans seeking asylum behind the walls of those living with a surplus of love and safety. Their home was a modestly-sized brick house on a corner lot, with a large porch where they would once sit during warm summer evenings. It sat adjacent to a wellmanicured city park and had a beautifully well kempt back yard including a carefully maintained vegetable garden. Carol would make soup with her harvests, often making two separate pots at once every three months; one vast silver kettle setting upon her stovetop was always potato chowder and the other would be made from whatever bounty had been grown out back. Maynard’s soup would keep him occupied, and he had a hard time remembering the names of all the people introduced to him. He cared little who stayed and who went in his house.
I wasn’t one of these strays, but the lover of a particularly wounded stray named Isabelle, who boarded here for a time I’m not even sure how she met them. Only that she sought and coveted the safety that Maynard and Carol had spent their lives building into the walls of this home. Carol would dote on Isabelle, but not coddle her. She took care never to bargain, as that seemed cruel, but Carol would make it clear that there was no free ride. “Why don’t you mow the lawn?” Carol would instruct when she woke Isabelle up in the morning at 7:30 sharp, barging in to gather laundry from the day before. “Grab some breakfast on your way out.” “After you clean up, you can drive me to get groceries and push the buggy through the store for me,” she would say as Isabelle finished mowing. “We’ll buy some frozen pizza for lunch” “Tomorrow after breakfast you can pull weeds,” she’d say during dinner, which was always given with no charge as she believed civil dinners raised civil families.
Non-fiction
Isabelle would come straight over from school on Fridays and would do her homework at the table. Once every so often she would spend hours helping Carol set up her meticulous house decorations: small figurines and curios pertaining to the seasons were rotated between the attic and display on every flat surface you could find in the house. Hand-knit doilies of fall colors, Christmas green and red, or easter pastels cradled the heavier curios to protect the beautiful wooden furniture and coffee tables that they perched upon. Isabelle would stay until Sunday so she could take Carol to church after which the two would return home and read scripture aloud in Maynard’s bedroom until his bedtime at 8:00. They would embrace, and without saying a word Isabelle would trek out to her mother Sarah’s waiting car to be taken to the house where she would spend the rest of her week hiding from her father, Samuel. Samuel had been savagely violent when Isabelle was young, brutalizing her brothers for the slightest transgression. He was never violent towards her, and in fact mostly ignored her existence, but would callously scream obscenity-laden insults at her and her sister when he did take notice of them. However, having found sobriety when
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The Wire Harp
Isabelle was in her early teens, he began to try and make up for lost time. He would take her on what he called their “dates.” Sometimes it would be horseback riding and let her go first along the trail on her horse in front of him so he could stare at her. He would take her to the movies to rest his hand on her thigh for the duration of the film. Sometimes he would take her to lavish dinners and buy her beautiful dresses and jewelry to wear on such evenings. She relished in the attention of a father that had long been distant and was thrilled that he had vanquished his demons and replaced his horrid vice with her. He became more and more affectionate with her, often offering to rub her back after dance practice. Sometimes his hands would find themselves in inappropriate places, silently unhooking her bra during one particularly long massage. While these things did not seem more than odd at the time, they one day culminated into something heinous. One morning, after falling asleep to the TV on the living room couch, Isabelle was awoken by someone gently touching her arm. It was pitch black, and very early in
the morning. She feigned sleep as the person she now realized was her father slowly took her hand and used it to satisfy himself. Silent tears fell down her cheeks as the first man that she had ever met in this world violated and used her.
It was her 15th birthday that morning.
I met her for the first time several months after this when I was 17. She told me the whole story while we sat on Maynard’s porch, watching the cars go by. I would sit on the stairs and play my ukulele while she laid her head on my back with her arms around my waist. She would tell me these awful things, and I would dutifully and solemnly listen. She told me how after three hellish weeks of guilt and disgust she finally worked up the courage to tell her mother, and explained that instead of calling the police, Sarah had sent her to live with Carol for the rest of the summer. Sarah and Samuel would try to fix their relationship, and during the months that school was in session she would only stay the weekends at Carol’s so as to assuage any possible temptation. They did not tell Carol the truth, but simply explained that there was a “Family crisis” and Carol, not being the type to pry, was quietly thrilled
at the prospect and said yes through a humble smile to taking on a new live-in granddaughter. And so it was, summer passed and fall came. Every weekend entailed the same ritual of raking leaves into bags on Friday; mowing and groceries on Saturday; church, embrace, and goodbye on Sunday, leaving Carol to knit late into the night. As she knitted, she would watch the muted TV, and listen intently to Maynard’s breathing until she fell asleep in her recliner. She had not slept in her bed for years, not since she and Maynard had shared a bedroom. One Sunday night just as she began to drift into sleep she was jolted awake by a sudden silence, and she realized that Maynard’s breathing had stopped. She knew that his hospice nurse would come in a few hours as scheduled, but until then she knelt by his bed into the early grey morning sobbing into the duvet. Weeping and praying while she kissed his hand and held it tightly to her face. She remembered the way he had made her laugh, and how eerily similar it felt to her heavy sobs. The next week was gloomy chaos. Several things had been chosen in advance:
Non-fiction
the venue, the food, Maynard had even picked his own casket years ago: a simple, knotted pine box. Even though her children and her grandchildren arrived the very next day, she was adamant about performing all of the planning. “Do things yourself you don’t want screwed up,” She said when offered help by her sister and oversaw every minor detail like the flowers and programs. Despite the tragic feeling, Maynard had chosen an opportune time to pass. Months before, his grandson David had returned from his own two-year religious service mission and had been able to see Maynard one last time. When David arrived three days before the funeral, Carol asked him if he would sing for the service, saying that she had the perfect partner to make it a duet. And so she introduced the grandson of her womb to the granddaughter of her heart, and thought about how nice their last name sounded being spoken after the name Isabelle. David was charming and polite, insufferably so. Handsome and tall, his blonde hair even matched perfectly with Isabelle’s cornsilk curls. Carol never did anything without purpose, and she rarely missed an opportunity. She heard wedding bells in her mind and thought of the sacred covenants
25 The Wire Harp
with god she had made with her late husband the day they had married. She had no qualms with me, it was merely business. She thought I was a smart enough boy, but David was reverent with perfectly coiffed hair and bare face. My long hair fell in front of my eyes, I rarely shaved, and reverence was not yet a word in my vocabulary. That night I left the duet of singers as they giggled and rehearsed together in the church, and I would be lying if I said I did not resent David. As I drove home, mumbling and bitter, Sarah called me. Jealousy is a strange bedfellow, and Sarah was a jealous woman. Resentment and pain can twist a damaged mind, but they also sharpen its emotions. Perhaps it was shame, or strangely and most disturbingly, maybe it was a foul disgust she had gleaned over the course of the whole ordeal. A husband she would do anything to please was seduced by an unwitting temptress, who even bore her mother’s straw hair and sparkling eyes of blue. Sarah did not care about who dated her daughter at this point, she just wanted to hurt Carol to make her pain someone else’s. Sarah remembered that I
had played ukulele, and she asked if I would accompany the duet, who happened to be singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which sounded beautiful when accompanied by the ukulele. Maynard had loved Judy Garland. My ego blushed. I said yes, and that very night made a trip to the local music shop to purchase the very best ukulele I could afford, as mine was decorated with stickers and so lacking the required modesty for a funeral. The next day when the news was broken that I would be playing, Isabelle was ecstatic. Carol was less than thrilled but realized that by saying no her intentions would be revealed, and thus relented. Armed with a printout of the chord progression and the lyrics I sat and memorized the song. While I was thrilled with my quick results, my formally trained musical partners were less than impressed with my less than experienced ability. David would become frustrated when I fell out of rhythm, scoffed when I hit a sour note, and eventually he decided it would be best if they practiced a cappella while I perfected the song at home that night. I seethed but relented and again retired home while they stayed late into the night at the church.
The next morning, there was a “family only” religious ceremony that I was not invited to. I began to wonder if I was actually invited to perform, or if this was their kind way of asking me to butt out. When they took a lunch break, Isabelle called me and assured me that I was still very much expected to perform with them. She told me if they did not let me play, she would refuse to sing. This bolstered my confidence, up until the moment that I walked into that quiet building the next day holding my funny-sounding, fourstringed instrument. I sat on a pew with the stupid thing in my lap for hours during the other memorial services. Our performance was the last item on the program. Hymns, prayers, tears, and a general sense of relief were shared for poor Maynard when finally, the musical number was announced: “Two of Maynard’s grandchildren will now perform a duet, with musical accompaniment.” We three stood, and quietly made our way to the front of the room and
Non-fiction
began to play. I was surprised at how well I did, but it was far from perfect. The faces were what tripped me up, a collective debate of the definition of sacrilege carried on silently among them as I kept rhythm poorly with no percussion to navigate me through the mediocrity. The singers’ performance was exquisite. I don’t know why I expected applause, but the dead silence finally punctuated a feeling that had crept upon me as the day had unfolded: I should not have been here. This adorable postcard performance had only been tainted by the mismatched ukulelist, dressed in loose-fitting black slacks and a wrinkled button shirt cinched with a skinny, lopsided tie, which looked even sillier next to David’s neatly pressed suit, and Isabelle’s flowing black dress. As the service transitioned everyone stood, the casket was carried to an adjacent room and while they shuffled across the hall the family stood in a line, thanking each of them for coming. They received hugs and well wishes. David and Isabelle were showered with praise, and only one man shook my hand during the whole ordeal to say, “Great, really.” When all had assembled within this room, densely packed around the casket,
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they opened it to reveal the stuffed body of Maynard and all who wished were allowed to say goodbye. This was the first time I had seen a dead body, and I expect never to forget the image of a dead Maynard, who had been made up to look healthier than he had when he had been breathing. In the end the whole procession gathered in the gymnasium of the church, tables and chairs had been set up to accommodate the crowd. Two long folding tables lined with potatoes, casseroles, salads, and rolls were slowly picked over. As the two singers made their rounds thanking everyone for their attendance, I helped put away chairs. Soon the event was completely over, and the majority of attendees left, possibly never to think of Maynard again. Carol sat in a white plastic chair, never speaking a word other than to thank the crowd for coming. In the end, David and Isabelle did not get married; I think Carol’s plot was, honestly, just a bit too obvious. As years passed and things changed, we tried our best to make it work:
tumultuously and painfully so. Eventually, she moved in with me, but that was most likely a mistake. There was too much pain for children like us to deal with, and we had no idea what to do with it all. We would end up throwing it back and forth at each other, saying things we didn’t mean. It all had so much more power than we could have comprehended. The bitterness planted itself between us, and our relationship finally came to its inevitable end. As time passed, the bitterness became less pungent. We caught up, apologized, and used the closure to form a stiff but pleasant friendship. We would check in: we had become different people with familiar bones, and that familiarity felt comforting. I soon found myself living in a new town, and our pleasantries continued. Isabelle told me she would come visit one day and that I could show her around. I told her all the restaurants and bars I could take her to, and that whenever she was in the area to let me know. Two weeks later, as I sat under the summer sun and gently swaying oak trees, I received the news. Isabelle had taken her life the night before. Her funeral was to be held in the same church that Maynard’s had been.
She could no longer carry the burden that she had been given much too early. The gravity crushed her, and when her soul had been beaten down and suffocated after years and years of this great depth, her body followed. She could no longer stand the pain, so she returned it to its original benefactor. Only none were spared, and all who knew her received a piece of this grief. A sour bequeathal that sticks like choking phlegm. I now have known this ukulele longer than I had known her, and for that reason I don’t think I will ever part with it. I often ask myself the same question I did on that cold somber day of Maynard’s funeral: should I have been there? I contemplate my role in the great tragedy and ask myself if I had stood in the way of fate as it was meant to be. The result of it all is a beautiful instrument worth more in meaning than its weight in gold. When I think of it all too much, its wooden curves will find their way into my hands. So sweetly it sings, as if to weep with me.
Poetry
Dear friend, Willow Johnson
You asked me to write about what’s important and speak my mind when I please because you like the way I think about things. I’ll tell you about the cliffside at the end of the world where I shouted I love you into the wind, hoping to hear the echo or nothing at all. I weave between the rocks and leave them names, thoughts like lanterns between branches. There are never fires in the oak, no matter how I wish for them. When I close my eyes I still see planets. Planets red and spinning or a softer sort of being. I repeat the sound of all the galaxies I know and it makes me feel so small. I’ve memorized the shapes of stars, despite their struggle to shine. I swear one day I’ll hold a spark to them until they burn and those flames will be maps above the cottage I spend my summers in, drafting letters made of myself, sealing each with wax and flowers, mailing them off to a hole in the sand. There are a million different ways to love somebody and I intend to try them all. Below the hills I can see the ocean and the sea creatures. I wonder if they’re happy.
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The Ying to My Yang Kathryn Snyder
Poetry
Salvage Me Oran M. Bordwell
Lift my bones from this bedroom, carry them out under the arrowhead formations of geese as they stretch across the sky. I have not searched to see that motion in weeks. I seldom look upwards; I don’t wonder at the stars like I used to, so lift me up by the fibers between my joints. Pack me like a briefcase close to bursting, then lock away this epiphany so that I can pretend to unsee it: this vision, the remedy, that empty divide between my shallow chest’s soft beat and the pull of a colder, future heart. The truth seeps through and squanders these sights. When I die, donate all that I am to the world. Don’t allow these bones to lie here unloved, take them up and form them into someone new: let my corpse be the salvation of another’s body. Give whatever remains of me to someone younger, someone in need. See them grow and stretch their arms out to embrace a cold winter pole or the solid trunk of an old tree. Do not let me lie here stiff and unuseful: carve out all you can of my marrow until there is nothing left of me but me.
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SUGAR SKULL Danielle Logan
Poetry
You can’t stand, age twelve, on land like that, and feel nothing
Brittan Hart
I grew up on the edge of the scar the glacier made moving on. We gathered, neighborly, at the Hangman’s Gulch Overlook to watch the sunset one night in the summer. No one thought of ice or origin, not with the loose dirt and heavy air and buzz off the highway. We were just happy to see the sun disappear. On the edge, I, age twelve, stood over brown pines and ospreys. Opposite me, the cross in Greenwood Memorial Cemetery loomed, lit up by the light leaving. Six hundred feet below us, the Spokane River absorbed Hangman’s Creek. I made sure everybody knew they couldn’t swim there, in the junction. Until the sun was gone, Hangman’s Creek was just a sliver of the sky, deep and shimmering. But as the shadows of the river birch grew, it became a mess of shallow water and sharp rocks. I, teetering on the edge, grew still. The pines, young and brown as they were, remembered those men: young, and brown as they were, swinging.
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Old Man by the Sea 2 Jeremy Bartlow
Poetry
Reoccurring Sunset Taffney Ross
I sit on a rock, glancing down at the water below, realizing how high up I am. The summer air warm on my skin, watching the sun set before me, the bright glow, colors changing, painting the sky with oranges, pinks, yellows, blues and purples until it all disappears. I sit with him on the tailgate of his white Jeep, staring into the open field in front of me, watching the sun set. His hand reaches out to touch mine. I turn to face him, his eyes look hollow, he speaks, my heart freezes like time has stopped in the moment, yet the colors still change around me, oranges, pinks, yellows, blues and purples. And I know that like the sun, he will be gone.
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In The Shadows Kelsey Lersbak
Poetry
Love’s Lie Clay Sanchez
The idea of love is magnificent. People chase it blindly, even though they don’t really know what it feels like. You’re on the road that leads to love. There are many different twists and turns trying to pull you off, yet you continue to follow faithfully. The horizon is beautiful. Vibrant reds and yellows and oranges as the sun is coming up. You’re almost there. Just a few more steps. The landscape has trees with healthy green leaves. The grass is vivid. Suddenly, it turns night. The trees are all dead, the grass is yellow, and the sky is empty of stars and moon. It’s dark. You were never near the end. You are back at the beginning.
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Nightmare Kylie Carpenter
Poetry
Supplication Kyle Caprye
“I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” ~T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland Let me believe for a moment that my mind can do many things, that it can soar throughout pages and create worlds controlled by strings. Let me believe that my future will come with momentous applause, and that my few strengths will outweigh all of my errors, and my flaws. Let me do this, just once, and I’ll never ask anything again. Not for me, nor my family. Not for a stranger, nor a friend.
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If you let me do this, I won’t despise the day we meet. I will live until that moment. I will live until I must sleep. But you won’t grant me this, I fear. You’ve done nothing for me before. I know, it must be difficult having so many you adore. You make me dream of a desert where a grand empire sits and rusts, where the sand swallows what we make, where what we make returns to dust. So here I sit, and there you sit apart, except for my one plea. Will you remind me of those vast, trunkless legs? Will you let me be?
Billie
Kylie Carpenter
Poetry
clementine Ollie Fisher
I’ve torn off your skin to reveal the beads of innards so many times that it’s habit for me to do so with surgical precision make a perfect spiral as I read your poems in a sunny car because I left early so I could avoid the paradoxical loneliness of my occupied apartment
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Boys Will Be Boys Dakota Coon
Poetry
How I Became the Glorious Mr.Dot
-after Robert Gregory Danielle Logan
for I, am the Glorious Mr.Dot! A pluviophile who makes one smile with their frolicking corium, adding decorum, to this bitter lane. Strutting down the street, with ugly glances meet, my vibrant dancing skin! For I, am the glorious Mr.Dot!
An average day, city people walking, talking, drinking coffee, disconcerted by the rain,
Be careful, now don’t look, my darling! Their indignation turned fascination, by my startling sparkling pigmentation!
I take joy as they swivel and sway in my direction, their monotonous expressions broken, torn off and changed an outburst, a cry, in shock in surprise
The ordinary rain, washes away pain, as it would seem, people can’t help but beam, at my dotted skin of stain.
I walk confidently, unhindered, unbothered, my briefcase in hand, I uplift my chin and let them in on this little secret of mine,
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Wrinkles replaced with dimples, as they gasp and clamor to see my color popping pimples, for a tiny fee. With every drop that pitter patters on my skin, colors from within, bubbles burst upon the surface.
Every city’s the same, they know me by name! And I can’t blame them for wanting to see a walking painting, abstract n’ shifting, uplifting, On every rainy day, you know there’ll be hell to pay, if you don’t believe, or come out and see how I became the most glorious Mr. Dot.
likened to a children’s book.
Covid-19 Chad Welch
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Grey With Red Darlene Lawson
Award Winner
Poetry
My Last Spring in Broken Arrow Riley VanZee
Running through a maze of sidewalks and streets, boxy houses and yellow green yards along the cul de sacs. My course lit by streetlights and the rising sun peaking over roofs of households much happier than mine. The earth is flat and the air is thick with a sharp wind and a coming rain hanging in the air. If I kept putting one foot in front of the other on the ground over and over again I could keep running until I was far away past the playground away from the thick trees good for playing hide and seek, and the hidden drainage ditch, which after years I imagined was a marsh I could hide from monsters in.
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After an hour of going I could be passing windows of boutiques I’ve wandered into, never bought anything, and always felt guilty. Then, if my pace was steady and I had enough in me, my path may take me by the school with hallways crowded like the inside of a wasp nest and so large it feels like the building is swallowing me alive. But instead I turn and run back home everyday until I don’t and now there’s nothing but unhappy memories for me in Broken Arrow.
Magnolia Illustration Madison Rada
Poetry
On the Dark Days
-after “On The Back Porch” by Dorianne Laux Jaid Ingham-Riley
The devil calls for me, singing her sweet songs, grabbing me by the hair, pulling me in. She holds me. Caressing my veins with her hands, slowly taking my breath away. It’s not all bad, sleeping in a concrete jungle. The bitterness of winter winds remind me I’m still alive, playing hide-and-seek in abandoned buildings. I wander home. I see my family, sat at the dinner table, a new woman in my place. I see the plates that my grandmother gave me, and my daughter’s report card taped to the fridge. I want to stay here forever. Staring at my old life through the front window, I wonder what my sheets would feel like on my skin, until the clouds roll in, and the devil calls me back to her.
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Life Within Suicide Alayna St. Pierre
Poetry
Bees
-after Zachary Schomburg Willow Johnson On Sunday evening I met a man who told me I had bees living in my chest making honeycombs in my eye sockets, he could see the honey dripping from my fingernails and eyelashes. I asked him if he would please leave me alone. That night I carved myself out like a Halloween pumpkin, scooped out the bees and honey into the bathroom sink. I saw the honey drip in amber waterfalls through my hair, sticky puddles forming on the drainboard,
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watched the little yellow bodies fall dead down the drain, the few that survived left buzzing in my hands, a vibration. Almost like a phone call from God or the Queen, more than likely a warning. Then, all at once their tiny stingers found homes in my palms.
Winter Kissed Web Aimee Morris
Poetry
Buried Treasure/ Buried Trash
I cannot escape my fate—my time plundered, wasted, cast away. I’m covering my pain with pretty words: for whose sake do I write these, hers or mine?
Oran M. Bordwell
No matter. She will never read them, they’ll be drowned out in this downpour— washed away into the deep. Saturated by doubt, doomed to dissolve.
It’s a bunch of crumpled up emotions stuffed inside this little shell: shaped by the sea, these grains of sand were dragged along by selfish currents.
When my time comes, and she’s gone away— when I dive back into the churning maw— I’ll stop feeling again and this luster will be sealed away for good.
Down below, through and through, I felt them harden within: stones inside me, the labored growing—only suffering seems to give us purpose.
That’s okay. I don’t need her anyway. The sun doesn’t care if the oyster loves her, for everyone misses her when she leaves them— but my, how these pearls yearn to shine.
The last time I saw the sun she hit me on the shoulder playfully, and passed on by without a word, but with a smile. The rain that falls daily now soils this life on land, because while I rose from the foaming tides I found my salvation in her radiance.
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Untitled Rylei Weekly
Poetry
Grandpa’s Hands Brittany Jennings
Silent in their wisdom, scripted with their past, thorough in their tan yet not typical of a hard-working man, but gentle, soft, and leathery. I wish he knew, how I loved those hands, attached to that beloved man who made magic with pots and pans, and who loved me ever so greatly. I wish I could tell, how long I would stare, at those contrasting veins of blue protruding like mountains, cascading like rivers, tangled like vines. How I wish I could say, what I often had thought, while my fingers drew on those hands of his, so different from mine, mesmerized by what time defines -“Grandpa, I love everything about you.”
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Untitled
Vanessa Graham
Non-fiction
The Meaning of Jack Jessica Briscoe
jack1/(jăk)/dʒæk/ 1. (noun): A man or fellow; in the U.S., a generic name addressed to an unknown stranger. Let me introduce you to my grandpa, Jack. Grandpa Jack was a Grand Father to his children, and a Grand Pa to me and my brother. Grandpa was the heart of his family. He was all heart. 1. Origin of Jack1: Word Origin: C14: from Old French jaque, of uncertain origin; from Middle English Jakke, possibly from Old French Jacques, from Late Lat in Iacōbus; Jacob. 2. A police officer- “The jack pulled me over for no reason.” He grew up in the state of Ohio with a loving father, Ossie Bowsher, who was a sheriff, but was later thrust into an abusive family situation at the hands of his wicked stepmother, a woman ironically named Grace.
1. During the Middle Ages, Jack was so common it was used as a general term for a ‘boy’; in England, it is applied contemptuously to anyone (especially of the lower classes); “smallness.” 2. Jack: verb: (transitive)- to punish a person for some supposed offence by hanging without a trial: “jack someone around; informal: cause someone problems, especially by acting unfairly. 3. Lumberjack. 4. jack rafter: having a height or length less than others in a structure; cripple.
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His stepmother made him eat outside on the back porch like a dog. When he got sick with pneumonia, she made him chop wood instead of going to school. This caused him to have a weak heart for the rest of his life.
1. Jack: small wooden rod in the mechanism of a harpsichord, spinet, or virginal rising when the key is depressed and causes the attached plectrum to strike the string. 2. “Jacks” in Music: Jack Teagarden, U.S. jazz trombonist and singer. 3. GRANDPA: (Latvian): “Opis.”
Grandpa’s family was very musical. Each member played an instrument and they often performed together at family gatherings. I’ve been told they were very good. They could have created their own opus.
1. “Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming. We’re finally on our own.” – “Ohio;” Song, CSN&Y. 2. “On one’s jack (jones)” - British rhyming slang: “On one’s own.” 3. Jack: coat of armor from canvas or leather and metal, worn by foot soldiers in medieval times. 4. Playing card bearing the picture of a soldier or servant.
Jack had a very hard life. He left his home in Ohio as a young teen to escape his abusive stepmom and joined the army, even though he was underage. They couldn’t check these kinds of things for sure back then.
1. Pre-migratory young male salmon; any of several carangid fishes (“jack crevalle”). 2. The name Jack was so common in the Middle Ages, it became a gener ic term for a man. 3. Jak, jackfruit-edible fruit-reproductive body of a seed plant, especially one having sweet flesh.
He met my grandma in the ‘50s. Her first husband died after falling from a building he was working on. Everything would scare her. She had four children already. Her name was, fittingly, Darlene. She was his “darling.” My grandpa married her and they had two more children-the last being my mom. My aunts and uncles tell me grandpa loved them all the same. He often worked
Non-fiction
two jobs to pump enough funds into his family, all living within a cramped home in Southern California. His heart grew larger; his home grew smaller.
1. Jack: verb: to increase in amount. Also used with up: boost, hike, jump, to bring up, raise up. 2. Childhood: Jack and Jill, Jack Sprat, Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Jack Horner. 3. “Jacks” (verb): a children’s game consisting of small metal objects tossed with a rubber ball.
All the kids in the neighborhood loved Jack because he always made time to play outdoor games with them. They would knock on the door and ask my grandma, “Mrs. Bowsher, can Jack come out and play with us?”
1. Jack- Sports: small ball players aim at in lawn bowling; a pin used in some games of bowling. 2. Jack Bowls: lawn bowling game played with wooden balls that rolled at a jack. 3. Jack: one of four face cards I a deck bearing a picture of a young prince.
My grandpa was an amazing roller-skater and dancer and won awards for his bowling skills in his older years. He also played a lot of cards with our neighbors and relatives after he retired, especially Gin Rummy and Poker. I don’t know if he played Blackjack. They did play the lotto, ; but they never won the jackpot.
1. Jack: (verb): to take to task. 2. One who does odd or heavy jobs. 3. One who works with their hands, engaged in manual labor, working a manual trade; servant; laborer: early 18th-century: survives in cheapjack, lumberjack, steeplejack. Informal: salt, tar. 4. Steeplejack: builds/maintains tall structures. 5. Jack Truss: trusses sup porting a hip roof.
Grandpa was a strong man. He was in the service. He worked hard at many jobs, such as roofing and construction, and as a janitor. They eventually left California and moved to Washington where he became janitor at University City High School in Spokane Valley. All the teenagers
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there loved him. He put his heart into all he did. Later he opened his own janitorial business. He was never one to jack around on the job . 1. Jack: money (noun): “I figured it would be an easy way to make some jack (1859+).” Money was always tight. Grandma worked odd jobs as a waitress or babysitter until the children were grown. When he wasn’t working, grandpa was working on a little orange rental home they retired in out in Tum Tum, Washington.
1. Jack: a cigarette: “Hey, could I get a jack?” 2. Bumper Jack: for lifting a vehicle by the bumper.
When he wasn’t working on the rental house, he worked on the lawn, or their big blue boat of a car sheltered under the tin carport where we’d find grandma’s discarded cigarette butts littering the ground and “pretend smoke” them.
1. Jack: Informal: to boost the morale of; encourage (usually followed by “up”). 2. Idiom: “Every man jack:” “They presented a formidable opposition, every man jack of them.” 3. Jack is a top name across the English-speaking world, and the #1 name in Scotland and Ireland. 4. Rhymes with Grandpa: Ha ha.
Grandpa made everyone laugh with his clever banter, witty remarks, and jokes. I loved Grandpa, and so did everybody in the whole, entire world. And if you didn’t, well, then you didn’t know Jack.
1. Jack: a sweet, sensitive, adorable guy: Jack Dawson, character in Titanic= “He’s a real Jack.” Still a favorite for novel, TV, movie characters, including 24’s Jack Bauer, Lost’s Jack Shepard and 30 Rock‘s Jack Donaghy. 2. Dads especially seem to like Jack. 3. Actor: Jack Lemmon.
Non-fiction
My father looked to my grandpa as his own father-figure. Our whole close-knit neighborhood congregated together at Grandma and Grandpa’s house to watch movies on their Laser Disk machine. Popular ones with grandpa were films like On Golden Pond and Chariots of Fire. I personally would have rather watched Star Wars though. 1. Rhymes with Grandpa: Wah-wah. My grandpa liked watching Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven, always crying at the end of the show. He had a tender heart. We always joked he had to keep his box of Kleenex next to his chair when he watched tv. He used to adore old spaghetti westerns like Gunsmoke and Bonanza, and reading western novels by Louis L’Amour. He laughed heartily. He cried.
1. Cracker Jack: a person particularly noteworthy for their ability, deserving of admiration. 2. An ordinary man: “He had that world-weary look of a working Jack who’d seen everything.”
He was a hero in our family’s eyes. He was self-sacrificial. He should have been given a purple heart. He was tired a lot. He wore a frown sometimes, but I never saw it.
1. First Known Use of Grandpa- 1883: grandfather, gramps, granddad, granddaddy, grandpa. 2. a. “Tum Tum”- Native American terminology for “heart beat.” b. Area named for the onomatopoeia word for the sound the river or lake makes, like a heart beating. c. Tum Tum, Washington. 3. Jack & Jill: Cockney rhyming slang for “till” (i.e. cash register).
Grandpa often gave me and my brother a small handful of pennies and dimes, even a quarter or two, telling us to buy candy at “The Store,” across the highway from their house in Tum Tum. A weary smile weakly crossed his lips as he sat in his recliner, tobacco pipe in hand, watching us dutifully from the large picture window overlooking Long Lake. We sprinted down the
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grassy slope of the front yard, skipping along the freshly tarred highway edge down to The Store, entering with a clang of tin bells announcing we had come for The Candy. We excitedly exited with giant fistfuls of red licorice to fill our tum tums with; other times we’d fish a handful of slithery, technicolored gummy worms from the worn-out plastic bins. Our nostrils filled with patches of grass and fishy seaweed wafting in the blazing summer heat as we returned, enthusiastically presenting tired Grandpa with our edible treasures. He looked on “impressed” with our grand assortment of perishable wares.
1. “No sabe ni papa:” (Spanish)- expression: “He hasn’t got a clue.”
One time I snuck some of Grandpa’s golf tees from a cardboard box, even though I was told not to, and “played golf.”
1. “No oyó ni papa:” (Spanish)- expression: “He didn’t hear a thing.”
Grandpa scolded me and told me he knew I had taken them. I had no clue how he knew.
1. Double Jack: sledgehammer with two heads.
He must have eyes in the back of his head, I thought. I thought he must be an angel.
1. Jack: device to turn a spit. 2. wooden brace fastened to a scenic unit on a stage to prop it up.
My grandpa had a bad heart. He had to go to the hospital a lot, which was a place that they “fixed” you and made you feel better when you were sick, and then sent you home.
Non-fiction
1. Jack: electrical device: connector socket created for insertion of a plug; female socket with two or more terminals to receive a male plug (jackplug) which makes or breaks the circuit/s. From what I am told, my grandfather was the first person in the U.S. to have triple bypass heart surgery performed on them. He was a vet, so the Veterans’ hospital operated on him. It was successful, for a while.
1. “Jacked Up:” injured. 2. wooden wedge for cleaving rock. 3. Tool for exerting pressure/ lifting.
One night he went to The Veteran’s Hospital, “The VA,” again for his heart, to “mend it” once more.
1. Grandpa: (Italian): Nonno.
He never came home.
1. Jack is short for “Hijack.”
I never got to say goodbye. He passed away that night. It was Valentine’s Day. (Bye, Jack.)
1. Rhymes with Grandpa: “cheetah.” 2. Sports: Jack Edward Bowsher: champion racecar driver.
Maybe Grandpa’s heart raced like a jackrabbit in those final moments, up to cheetah speeds, palpitating and galloping in hard tum tums in his chest.
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1. Clock Jack: Mechanical figure that strikes a bell on a clock. 2.Jack: British informal: give up or stop doing something, especially a job.
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His heart finally stopped with a grand pop. He was finally able to sleep deeply. He was only fifty-four. I was only nine. Grandma cried a lot. She was more scared than ever.
1. Jack Crosstree: pair of crosstrees at the head of a topgallant mast. 2. “Jack Up:” lift, raise, elevate, bring up- raise from a lower to a higher position: “Raise your hand,” “Lift a load.”
I knew he went to Heaven. He was a good soul.
1. Jack Crosstree: used to support a royal mast and spread the royal shrouds. 2. Jack: banner, banneret, pennon, pennant, ensign, color, standard, streamer, flag.
Everyone in the whole entire wide world went to his funeral. I ate an entire bag of pork rinds and watched people from “The Vet” put a flag on his casket and bury him. He had a good heart. An amazing heart. A purple heart.
1. Jack: falconry; the male of a kestrel, hobby, or especially of a merlin.
I thought he’d finally gotten his wings.
1. Jack: (adjective): Austral, slang: tired/fed up. 2. Jack: English Meaning: “God is gracious.”
My mom had a dream one night of grandpa on the gurney at the VA hospital. She was begging him to come back. He said to her, “Let me go-- I’m tired. I want to go home to Heaven now. It’s so peaceful here.”
1. Grandpa: (Latvian): “Opaps.”
Non-fiction
About two months later, while riding in the backseat of my neighbor’s red Isuzu, I heard Whitney Houston singing “The Greatest Love of All” and I realized he wasn’t coming back from the hospital, and he had died. I cried for the first time since he died. I got a lesson in love, life, and death from grandpa and Whitney Houston at the age of nine. 1. Jack: connecting device in an electrical circuit designed for the insertion of a plug: a telephone. I wished I could call him up and talk to him sometimes.
1. Jack: to lift, elevate, encourage, to bring up, to raise up. 2. Jess (noun): a leather strap attached to the tarsus (lower shank, next to the toes) of a hawk.
I grew up like a restless dandelion swaying carelessly in grandpa’s sloping, grassy front lawn. It took me years to see he was the humble, dusty soil, the man of the earth, who rooted me in, nourished me, helped to raise me up.
1. Jack: female fitting in an electric circuit used with a plug to connect with another circuit. 2. Rhymes with Grandpa: “Viva” (Italian/Spanish): to express good will/approval; also “Long Live.”
Jack was, is, and will always be, my grandpa. I don’t know that he ever did earn a purple heart for his formal national service, but his purple heart was earned in my eyes for his life-service, now beating down within my own bone, blood and heart, flowing forth from deep within my own river of life, within my very own tum tum.
1. The Meaning of “Jack”:
Jack is a noun; Jack is a verb. Jack was a noun, Jack was a verb, with many meanings and various definitions to many people. He was an object of our family’s affection. Jack was, and is, the genuine article.
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At Rest
Margaret Starry
Poetry
Girl Museum Willow Johnson
In this corner of the world a girl made of glass and pine and petals grows on branches bare from winter. Like plums and peaches, or other fruits with stones for hearts that beat like the rattle of sycamore seeds, the sound of a space between minutes in a bookstore parking lot where she is an organ of this city. An eye or lung or another shapeless mound of clay and blood. Unaware yet what her existence means.
On canvas she becomes a place where life and death share names and we become a doorway, bomb shelter, graveyard. We see her from the outside in. We see her only how we want to. This is another story where she is alluring and dangerous as the magpies with her voice that call out to us from an abandoned warehouse. What profound disaster we choose to walk into. In the last room, a drawing of the sun inside a lantern. She will be a beginning.
Her body is a museum of moments. A gallery stretched out in the veins along her limbs. On this wall, the portrait of a girl touched by dawn and moonlight. A glimpse of a girl obscured by time who believes a painting of the ocean holds as much power as the pull of waves from the shore. She calls this one The Middle of Summer, A Collage of Ghosts She’s Been in Love With. Shadows with thorns for teeth and chests full of things that could kill her. To us, a hole in the heart feels right. A hole in the heart can feel like home.
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Untitled Kat Thomas
Award Winner
Poetry
in violence or resistance Margaret Starry
tarot cards turned upside down, gemstones of watchful tiger’s eyes, and an auspicious nature so awful ladders must always be avoided – a black cat says it all. it’s said protection calls for trinities: Catholic combatants – medals of: St. David of Wales (feast day of my birth month), St. Dula (sign of chastity and martyr), St. Dionysia (covered in blood, but never cast into darkness). What about before the cross – those four points marking sacrifice the sign repeated by hands stirring over and over like the seasons turning, one into the other? What of the ankh tattooed on my left low hip – a Jezebel impression. holy preceding talisman. rounded curve of cross invokes a space so open
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as to invite a questioning – what of body made apotropaic? Thighs, breasts, shoulders, arch of neck natural combat, an offering. I watched the needle mingle blood and ink into heretic scripture.
Cute
Madison Gorder
Poetry
His Smile Kills Me Indra Allen
We are the only species that reveals our teeth out of love, from utter joy, with the urge to impress. In contrast to a predator, threatening its enemies, and alerting their prey. How the thrill of gazing upon my lover’s smile is dualistic at heart, one of adoration and adrenaline in equal measure. This facial movement the sign of pure acceptance in all I do brightening my darkest days those corners lifted when my soul is too heavy. Yet. Those jaws carry daggers worthy of a wolf’s bloodied gums as the forest warrior’s fine weapons, perfect for stabbing into a sickly deer’s trembling flesh. Her herd long gone, they left this pitiful prey to her fate. Knowing the wolf would smell such weakness eventually. That kiss of death given from starving desperation lingering long enough to taste the last breath.
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It must feel good to be hungered for. Though the doe doesn’t agree. Her blood is pouring, muscles scouring for a chance to sprint but as the white shanks stab and grab each pang of pain proves the desire worthless. With one drop later and she’s gone. As I am in turn from the world swept away to another plane. When he gazes down with those petrifying pearls.
Don’t
Devon Martinez
Poetry
Small Things
Kyle Caprye
How serene it is to watch a cat sleep, dreaming of hunts in woods deep and dark. So tightly they curl upon themselves, yet so elegantly they rest, like fog curling around a house on a cool fall day. How strange it is to think as the things they hunt: terrified and afraid of this gentle mound, hiding from its fluff and whiskers. But so do the cats fear a dark wood, where wind screeches through trees. So do they fear claws glinting in moonlight. A cat dreaming may catch a bird with ease, crushing its neck before ever giving itself away. But a cat waking must err to caution, lest the bird, nocturnal and fierce, carry them screaming into the night.
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Year of the Rat kathryn Snyder
Poetry
Grandfather, 1943 Mayah LaSol
The black and white photo is a portrait of a handsome man with a thin face and dark hair. He is dressed in a military uniform and cap, though I’m not sure that’s why he stands so straight. His mouth isn’t smiling but it’s obvious from his eyes that this isn’t the look most often on his face. There’s a sense of déjà vu in the shape of his face, a sense of longing wrapped delicately around his shoulders. If I trace my fingers across my brow, carve a trail down my cheekbones, lift my hands to cup my jaw, then will I know what it is like to be this man?
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Untitled
Vanessa Graham
Poetry
I Met My Baby in a Birdhouse -after Robert Gregory Riley VanZee I met my baby in a birdhouse when I was blue like the lights shining through us We were in the right place for the sky above us to burst like skin off a grape I reached my hand out just in time to catch him like a galloping goodbye horse He brought me music, playing “Strawberry Blonde” and “After my First Love/Late Spring” And if I’d ask how fast a heart can travel he’d bring me the moon as the answer
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Blue Jay Breakfast Kat Thomas
Poetry
Speed
Jaid Ingham-Riley My mother is dying, gasping her last plea. Inaudibly she cries, mourning, the inevitable collapse of her last desperate whim. Cast aside I crumble, watching the failure of her maternity creep up on her: a hunter and its prey. Singeing her brittle bones to ash, and taking every moral along with it. But never mind, her departure is not accompanied by sorrow, for her womanhood will remain after my mother dies.
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Hide And Seek Aimee Morris
Poetry
Baldasty Poetry Award Winner
2 A.M. at the Ghost’s Museum Lily Thoren
Jenny’s tweed jacket rubs and itches against my skin maybe I should leave her alone but her breath smells like cinnamon and I’m intoxicated by the movement of her thumb as she rubs the worn cover of a book whose name I cannot pronounce. Her skin is pale in the lamplight and the circles under her eyes grow darker as she falls deeper and deeper exhaustion looks lovely on her.
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We sit alone in the mausoleum of stone faces gently whispering and urging her to go on and holds her hand as they stroke the hair out of her face. They really love her no matter what anyone says. It is almost two fifteen now and Jenny grows cold. I wish I could offer her back her jacket but that was so many years ago and I don’t think that she remembers who I am. Oh well maybe she will go to sleep and never wake up so then I will not feel so lonely.
Day Dreamer Gabrielle Archuleta
Poetry
Quietude S Isaac Cody
No. This is a serene kind of quietude which caresses all the world with conspicuous fervor, gently lulling the Butterflies and the Larks, who
Butterflies float lazily above that broad sea of Candytuft sprawling before mama’s house The summer heat, thick as honey saturates the world in tranquility – Not that solemn type of silence which gripped the crisp autumn air as my friend and I watched a turkey stagger around his farm, headless butchered for Thanksgiving – Nor that salient stillness either which thrust itself upon my family like a vast, rampaging avalanche in the wake of our dog Missy fading too soon out of this life –
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whisper sweet nothings in the trees.
Leaves
Gabrielle Archuleta
Poetry
Baldasty Poetry Award Winner
Sestina
for my great-grandparents Jack and Audrey Hall Jenkins Alexis Hart Jack, I see your hands before the rest of you. In California, catching sunlight in bottles, you dive into the lake and come up with your eyes closed and laughing. You pull yourself out and we sit until the shadows are within our reach. You pick up our daughter and she tries to reach you as you spin her around in our backyard, her hands grasping at the air. Her laughter echoes and I sit and bathe in the California sun. In a few years, she’ll slam the front door closed and leave you. In the mornings you are gone before the house is awake and I reach and find the bed empty, the door closed. In my nightmares, I push my hands into the mattress as if it were California itself, splitting it open to find you where you always sit.
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At church on Sunday we all sit and sing. You have a voice that echoes through California and reaches the tallest mountains where it rattles like a tin can through God’s hands and into the hallways like those doors were never closed. Some nights when the doors are closed, I find you crying and I tell you to sit and you say your hands still smell like gunpowder no matter how much you wash them. And I want to reach inside you and pull you back from Germany to California. California, where I find you drunk again after work closed. I keep out of your reach by going to the backyard. I sit next to the pool you dug with nothing more than a shovel and your hands. It’s always been you and when we sit side-by-side, I reach for your hands.
In House Editorial Madison Rada
2021 Wire Harp Staff Graphic Arts Editor: Ksenia Akimova Literary Editor: Willow Johnson Literary Staff:
Indra Allen Kyle Caprye Alexis Hart Jaid Ingham-Riley Clay Sanchez Summer Skognes Lily Thoren
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, Erik Sohner, and Becky Turner