the
WIRE HARP 2017
The Wire Harp SPOK A NE FA LLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE 2107 Creative Arts Magazine
2017 Wire Harp Staff GRAPHIC ARTS EDITOR Jacquelyn Barnes LITERARY EDITOR Laura Stephenson LITERARY STAFF Reese Avery, Katie Rose Fowler, Ryan Hatten, Luke Roe, Macey Schallert GRAPHIC ARTS ADVISOR Doug Crabtree LITERARY ADVISORS Laura Read, Connie Wasem Scott SPECIAL THANKS Richard Baldasty, Heather McKenzie, Shelli Cockle, Linda Beane-Boose, Carl Richardson, Becky Turner
Cover and Interior Design by Jacquelyn Barnes
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Dedication The Wire Harp staff is pleased to dedicate this issue to Alexis Nelson and Tom Versteeg on the occasion of their retirements. Alexis Nelson has been an English instructor at SFCC since 1989. She’s been a faithful supporter of The Wire Harp all these years, and we honor her for founding the Wire Harp Lit Live! CCS Foundation fund in 2009, in support of bringing a poet of national repute to campus each year. Tom Versteeg has been an English instructor at SFCC since 1994. Ever a faithful supporter of The Harp, Tom has been a frequent contributor to The Harp, which is always enriched when his poems appear, as we hope they will for many years to come. Thank you both for the many years of service you’ve provided the college, our students, and The Wire Harp.
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Table of Contents POETRY Let Her Be Red . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Unspoken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Hannah Ortiz
Jenny Hong
We Clip Our Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Things My Ex-Husband Told Me . . . . 64
Blake Grimes
Samantha Verhei
Tell Uncle Vonnegut He Was Right. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Our House Has a Broom* . . . . . . . . . 70 Jenny Hong
Katie Corigliano
The Technicolor Bird Garden, or How I Became a Feminist Bitch . . . 73
Seasonal Depression Hits Like a Brick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Olivia Nemec
Stephen Roberts
To Touch Her. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Thin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Allyson Gwiazda
Jadin Wilbur
touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
When Anxiety Fights Dreams . . . . . . 21
Anna Cartee
Pria Dalrymple
Summers in Manito . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Asylum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Austin Hall
Elizabeth Smith
Dandelion Paint. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Of My Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Elizabeth Smith
Luke Roe
Marginalia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
On History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Katie Corigliano
Drew Trower
Tales of the Brave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Ryan Hatten
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PROSE Dave. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Edith for Breakfast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Jack Anderson
Richard Baldasty
Mirror of the Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Pearl of the Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Katie Rose Fowler
Richard Baldasty
Our Human Minds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Cassette People* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Sarah Levering
Reese Avery
The Discoverie of the Witches’ Kitchen or How to Make a Hell‑Broth Boil and Bubble . . . . . . . 38
Wretched. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Laura Stephenson
The Bench Downtown. . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Monica Leeds Stenzel
Jim Yockey
*Baldasty Award Winner
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FINE ART She Hunts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Hope Hughes
Michael Haynes
Night Rider. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Breakthrough. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Ryan French
Jacquelyn Barnes
Two Face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Behind the Scenes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Hailee Borden
Ryan French
[Nose]*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Salty Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Ethan Cope
Hailee Borden
The Blind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Transformation of Clay . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Ethan Cope
Savanna Shafer
Wolf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Skull. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Nicolas Murphy
Nicolas Murphy
Heaven’s Boat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Stairway to…. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Christine Bennett
Amanda Hutchins
What Dreams May Come. . . . . . . . . . 23
Selbstmord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Hailee Borden
Ethan Cope
Marriage Horizon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Animal Music. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Jonathan David Holmes
Teresa Mendoza-Embry
What a Nice Day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Crowtopus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Aleya Hoffmaster Orloff
Hope Hughes
I’ll Bring the Burger, You Bring the Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Savanna Shafer
Hugh Russell
Worm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Border. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Michael Haynes
Michael Haynes
Venice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Unleashed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Ryan French
Christine Bennett
Under (cover) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Michael Haynes
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PHOTOGRAPHY Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Elizabeth Smith
Jadyn Avena
Cowboy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Alicia Dunavan
Jadyn Avena
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Small Town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Christian Skok
Alicia Dunavan
Dreamcatcher. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
People’s Park—Fall 2016. . . . . . . . . . . 79
Michael Nutkowitz
Selina Gilchrist
Eyes of Beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Collin Masteller
Jadyn Avena
Ice on Chain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Erica Stark
Dan Davis
Hands* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Urbanscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Erica Stark
Erica Stark
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Gonzaga on Its Last Day of 2016. . . . . 95
Sarah Barnts
Michael Nutkowitz
Party Bus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Michael Nutkowitz
Jadyn Avena
Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Pondering the Future . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Sarah Barnts
Alicia Dunavan
*Baldasty Award Winner
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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 as the recipient of this award. We also honor a work of prose, a photograph, and a work of fine art. Each of these four student artists receives a $100 prize, as a result of a generous gift from Richard. We appreciate Richard for supporting students in their creative arts.
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Hope Hughes
She Hunts
1
Hannah Ortiz
Let Her Be Red like the hearts she takes and the rules you find yourself breaking. Her fingers forever stained from raspberries and rose thorns and not enough love. Her picture pressed in silver hung around your neck, settling on your chest. Lipstick you plan to smear, bitter coffee swirled with sweet honey. Let her be red and you be you.
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Elizabeth Smith
Untitled
3
Ryan French
Night Rider
4
Blake Grimes
We Clip Our Words and paint within the silence.
and you’ve created something less
They are nothing you can show off
than the way people sidestare the poured
in the buildings downtown—
wax man with seven colors next to sketches.
who wants to stop
All you did was project some words,
and admire a collection of words?
like everyone does every day. We don’t use paintbrushes to buy a soda
Too many of them and you create the need
or wood shavings to arrange our sentences
for taking time, and who has that?
when we’re pressed for time
Better to look at an eagle
or struggling to maintain calm.
on a diner wall (the cook is fat and white, steam grease like looms, weaving.
Words are like water,
$255 for a picture of a woman
always around whether you need them or not,
with a cat. Too few words
but not always easy to find.
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Alicia Dunavan
Cowboy
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Christian Skok
Untitled
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Katie Corigliano
Tell Uncle Vonnegut He Was Right When I was a kid, I thought that Perfect was my Barbie, blonde hair, cinched waist, little pointed feet for those little Perfect heels, or the models I saw on the shelves at the grocery store, flawless smiles, shimmery hair. Until I read about the Beats and the philosophy of Andy Warhol. Then Perfect turned into nothing but a definition in the dictionary I stopped wearing my retainer because I thought a crooked smile better matched my crooked soul. Perfect became the boy with the eyes that danced when he smiled, the boy who could do no wrong by me, but never did anything right for me either, except lie still while I produced the heartbeat on the monitor.
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The pounding on the screen in Perfect timing with the pounding in my heart. Ten little fingers, ten little toes, ten little pounds of squishy crying fat lying on my stomach. Perfect became my unmade bed, sheets crumpled and thrown to the side, window open, rain pouring. Books strewn across the rumpled comforter when there were piles of dishes in the sink to be done, beautiful arrangements of food I carry to diners on cracked plates with mismatched silverware. Sleepy, wine-induced 3 a.m. conversations about God behind the Baby Bar. The scar on my forehead, the one I waited years for so I could have a story to tell, the smeared makeup of my neighbor who keeps going back to the boy with matches because she wants to piece back together his broken Perfection. Perfect became the daffodils I brought you in the bright blue cup while you sat on the floor playing me sweet melodies
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as I smoked American Spirits on your couch enjoying the view of the flowers and you. Perfect is me repeating to myself, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is” Perfect is the rundown house around the corner with the paint chips falling like hail stones, the yard unattended, wild, free.
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Michael Nutkowitz
Dreamcatcher
11
Hailee Borden
Two Face
12
Stephen Roberts
Seasonal Depression Hits Like a Brick I walked through a field three Fridays ago, made for the path marked by saplings, where there were once three perfect yellow sweaters, now in tatters, the scars across dandelion faces, as they bare their abrasive fangs, teeth falling from their open mouths.
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Ethan Cope
[Nose] Baldasty Fine Art Award Winner
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Jack Anderson
Dave
I
woke today to a gurgling coming from my living room. I sighed and put my head back
in my pillow, groaning wearily. Dave was back, and it was way too early to be dealing with him again. Slowly, I crawled out of bed, arming myself with the baseball bat I kept
nearby. I didn’t even bother getting dressed. I walked out of the bedroom, through the living room, ignoring the slime on the walls and floor, and into the adjoined kitchen, right to the coffee maker. It was set to begin brewing a few minutes before I woke, so I wouldn’t have to wait for that black elixir. I poured myself a cup and drained half of it down my gullet. Now I could deal with Dave. I set the cup down on the coffee table in the living room, and Dave promptly dropped a clump of clear goo onto it. My favorite mug, too. I closed my eyes and sighed before looking at the ceiling. “Hey Dave,” I said, deciding to start simple. I don’t know why I’d decided to call this writhing, slug-like mass Dave. But the name had stuck, kind of like how Dave was stuck to the ceiling. Dave hissed at me, his mouth opening somewhere in the middle of this purple blob we called a body. His mouth was lined with human-like teeth, with sharp blades on the inside of his mouth like a living garbage disposal. Several of the orange splotches on his body opened, revealing beady green eyes. And from a couple of the yellow splotches, long, slimy tentacles sprouted, flopping limply below. One loosened and landed on my shoulder. It was cold and wet and felt like an eel. I shuddered, brushing it off with the bat.
“Dave, this is the third time this month, man.” Dave gargled again, and a battery dropped from his maw, landing on the slime-coated mug. Bits of plastic fell with it. “Dave, please don’t tell me you ate my remote.” Dave hissed again, sounding slightly ashamed. What lie was I going to have to tell Xfinity to get a new remote? “You come in here unannounced, you start making a massive mess, and you’re gonna make me late to work.” He growled angrily in response. I sighed. “Dave, I’m gonna
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have to call the Galactic Patrol again.” I didn’t want to at all, but they told me to call them if Dave ever showed up again. They were a bureaucratic nightmare. I knew for a fact that Kalborzok would hold me here for a few hours, giving me more briefs on how to safely deal with Zabogerans, have me fill out paperwork—apparently a galactic constant—and then fill out an entirely new stack when I invariably screwed up somewhere because I can barely read or write Bulloran. My bluff worked. Dave shrieked, retracted his tentacles, and oozed along the ceiling to a broken window, where he sprouted two tentacles, fastened them to either side of the pane, and sling-shotted himself forward and away. I stood there for a few minutes, absorbing what I had just witnessed. Then I shook my head and walked into the bathroom to start my shower. I was going to be late.
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Ethan Cope
The Blind
17
Jadin Wilbur
Thin You were cellophane tossed by currents in wet air, a holographic silk caught in thorns, your words saccharine dripping from lips like dew and wax, drying in my hair. Overgrown, you were roots I walk through, drowning in weeds and petrichor, you were marble counter tops, superfluous, in a house of paper and cold wind. Your hands fall through mine like sand dunes that sway with the plates and glaciers too hot to hold.
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Collin Masteller
Eyes of Beauty
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Nicolas Murphy
Wolf
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Pria Dalrymple
When Anxiety Fights Dreams I wake up suddenly at 8 a.m. when
How come the color blue
the details of a murder fly out of my ears
doesn’t leave the brain alone?
and the waterfalls tear up
Going to sleep is suddenly dangerous.
my cerebral cortex
That’s when the ox run across
but I’m finally free from finishing
the plain that causes the earthquake
that god-damned torta de lengua
which may be why people develop stutters.
who was threatening to kill me.
However this doesn’t stop that mad man
Maybe as the water flows, the birds
who committed a murder inside my skull
in the sky grow faster and then
and maybe that’s why.
somehow bees buzz louder.
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Christine Bennett
Heaven’s Boat
22
Hailee Borden
What Dreams May Come
23
Jonathan David Holmes
Marriage Horizon
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Elizabeth Smith
Asylum The angry waves cram themselves into the dark tide pools and the spring moon wavers as the viscous coffee seeps through the cracks of my cerulean mug. The songbird mutters pernicious remarks at me underneath his breath but my quill scratches over his incessant screeching, its billowing wisps of midnight ink prevailing over his whirring fragrance of toxic violets. I run up the tapestried stairs my bare feet pounding, puncturing the carpet’s silence. Why does the secret room at the top change every time? The robbers tap sinisterly on the complacent windows while I cower underneath thick white pillows.
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Erica Stark
Ice on Chain
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Katie Rose Fowler
Mirror of the Mind It’s this house that made me miss her. I can still see the beautiful part of her, sometimes. Sometimes it’s when the light shines through the windows, when the coffee steam floats—that is when I see her. How she used to be. I force myself to hide the sun behind the window shades, so I can’t hear her laugh. I want to hear her laugh but I don’t because I broke it. I broke her laugh—I squeezed it until it shattered and the shards pierced my flesh…. Her flesh. I kept the pieces. Sometimes, when the sun shines through the window, I hold up a shattered piece of her laugh to the light. For a moment—a brief moment—I can see her laugh again, dancing on the walls like rainbows. I tried to catch those rainbows once, but I ended up with my fist through the wall. The same wall that her laugh once touched. I keep the pieces of her laugh with the rest of the shards of glass. Some of it is still intact, and sometimes I match the pieces together end-to-end, so she can be whole again. The sun doesn’t shine much. Mostly it rains. The beautiful part of her loved the rain, that same rain that wallows in potholes, condensing into puddles. Sometimes I try to break the puddles, but the water doesn’t shatter like she did. I hate the rain, I hate the puddles, so I jump in the potholes. I kick the water I spit on it I curse it with my shaking voice. When I look into the puddles, sometimes I see her. But she doesn’t smile. She cries.
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I try to catch her tears, but as soon as my fingertips touch the puddle, the ripples take her away. I scream. I hate the rain because it reminds me of her. The beautiful part of her used to dance in the rain. The house is usually dark. I like it dark. On cold nights, I creep into the kitchen quietly, silently so I don’t make a sound. Sometimes there is just enough moonlight that I can see my reflection on the knife, the big knife I keep on the table. But the reflection reminds me of her. Then I miss her laugh and I miss her smile and I remember the rainbows we couldn’t catch, and the glass of her that I keep the pieces to. The pieces. Up the stairs I creep, itching to hold the glass in my hands, the glass of her laugh. The stairs creak wildly under my feet and the sound reminds me of her scream, her scream that I caught and saved in the glass. I am running now, tearing through the hallway, watching the gnarled wallpaper as it mocks me. It is so quiet—I can hear my breath—my hand is on the doorknob now. Her doorknob. I twist it like the way she used to twist my wrist and with a vile, untamed shriek the door opens. I can hear my breath. Quiet, silent, like whispers I creep in through the shadows. A smile snakes across my face when I see the looking glass—the perfect, spotless shards of her. The pieces lie—so lifeless—but so full of her life in a mound on the floor, where I had cried so many times, where I had scooped up the bits and pieces together in my hands, trying to mend them.
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But I can’t. There are just some things that can’t be mended. Sometimes, through the mirror, I can see her. Holding the shards, I look up into the cracked pane of glass, separating her from me. And I see her. She is there. Gently, so gently, like whispers in the dark, I reach up to touch the glass. She touches the glass too. We smile because all the pieces are back together: the beautiful part of her stuck in the glass, and the dark part—I always carry that close to me so it will be safe. We are finally together again. And, both looking through the glass, we laugh at the ugliness of it all.
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Aleya Hoffmaster Orloff
What a Nice Day
30
Hugh Russell
I’ll Bring the Burger, You Bring the Color
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Erica Stark
Hands Baldasty Photography Award Winner
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Luke Roe
Of My Name In the bathroom the plug has been pulled from the drain and the warm, silk water has been pulled from the body and the body is naked in the tub holding its knees trying to quell the nausea and trying to silence the bruises on the walls and the bruises on the walls are keeping the cold on the windows the windows which don’t have names and the cold out the windows is held by the black and the black does not have eyes only followers and the followers burn and they burn and they burn without any say what truly murderous lives they must have what else among the black is of my name and calling? O to think of how wonderful everything looks through the bottom of a cold dark glass at the end of a drain‌.
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Michael Haynes
Border
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Sarah Levering
T
Our Human Minds here are never monsters in our closets or under our beds. The wind that knocks the drooping Christmas lights against the house is the tapping of bony nails of demons waiting to enter the wooden frame that shelters you. The air vent shoot-
ing up heat is the misty steam coming from the fiery coals of hell. Then the cold that nips your nose and pricks your fingers, making them red and raw, is the breath of dark cloaked creatures. Each puff from their tar-covered lungs can fill a room with shivering, frosty bites of winter. The dark, oh so many afraid of the dark‌or what lurks within. It’s a world of its own varied beasts. Why do we hide within our sheets when all these things are harmless? All our monsters are in our heads.
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Christine Bennett
Unleashed
36
Sarah Barnts
Untitled
37
Monica Leeds Stenzel
The Discoverie of the Witches’ Kitchen or How to Make a Hell‑Broth Boil and Bubble
A
popular image of witches often includes a horrifying clutch of women, stewing and mixing at a vast cauldron, perhaps even calling out their Shakespearian ingredients, like a sick-minded television celebrity chef: “‘Fillet of a fenny snake/
In the cauldron boil and bake;/ Eye of newt, and toe of frog,/ Wool of bat, and tongue of dog…’ let simmer for twenty minutes, stirring occasionally, and serve over fresh rigatoni!”
This culinary concept of cooking witches, it turns out, predates Shakespeare. Many scholars, such as Garry Wills, believe that The Bard found inspiration for the three witches in his play Macbeth in the 1584 witchcraft treatise, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, by Reginald Scot. Scot lived the genteel country life in Kent, but after a mass execution of “witches” close to his home, he collected the false accusations against witches into his treatise in an attempt to stop the torture and killing of women for reasons that were “absurd, supernaturall, and impossible.” Among the most gratuitous claims imputed to witches, a number involve these culinary mavens’ use and abuse of food, as well as concoctions of potions, poisons, and poultices they made to work their supposed “evils.” One of the more powerful feats attributed to witches in the 16th century was the destruction or theft of grain on an industrial scale. The majority of the British population derived their sustenance from grains, largely consuming porridges and gruels, boiled in milk, if possible. The failure or theft of a crop meant hunger and possible starvation for many. When this happened, Scot noticed the blame invariably landed on witches for the withered or spoiled crops, with some accusations alleging women even switched grain seeds from one
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field to another, even while they were growing in the ground. He found this pathetically amusing, writing that— If they could transfer corne (as is affirmed) from their neighbors field into their owne, none of them would be poore, none other should be rich. Similarly, cows and their creamy creations apparently fell victim to witchy wiles as well. Many felt that the witches worked their evil magic to “bewitch, infect, and kill kine [cows], and drie up the milke” of their own, while the witches’ cows gave a surplus of milk. Considered even more dastardly than killing the cow (judging by the frequency of complaint in The Discoverie, wicked women were accused of preventing the formation of butter. Catastrophic to any gastronome, the lack of butter was often mentioned in the same sentences as massive crop failure and baby-killing. Fortunately, Scot includes detailed instructions for making a charm that would locate the women who cursed any particular cow, to whit— Put a paire of breeches upon the cowes head, and beate hir out of the pasture with a good cudgell upon a [F]ridaie, and she will runne right to the witches doore, and strike thereat with hir hornes. Mr. Scot makes no guarantee this process will work, even suggesting it may be a bit silly. These spells and curses deal directly with the food sources for the rest of the population, though witches could whip up more than just cursed food. What of a potent brew that helped one inspire love in one case, or a desired disinterest in another? “Love cups,” as these potions were called, might include such tantalizing ingredients as— ... the haire growing in the nethermost part of a woolves taile, a woolves yard, a little fish called Remora, the braine of a cat, of a newt, or of a lizzard: the bone of a greene frog, the flesh thereof being consumed with pismers or ants; the left bone whereof ingendereth (as they saie) love; the bone on the right side, hate.
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Assuming a customer could choke down that savory stew, she or he still had to keep track of which was the “loving left bone” versus the “hateful right one.” Though he describes a score of such concoctions, Scot warns his readers that these alleged witches’ first concern may be neither love nor hate, so much as their own imminent death: [I]ndeed [these] are meere poisons, bereaving some of the benefit of the braine…. The craft of intentionally making poisons, called veneficium, also bubbles through Scot’s pages. He cites Livy, St. Augustine, and Horace as experts on the history of femme fatales who, apparently, invented poison, and for whom it continues to serve as the weapon of choice. Mostly, Scot mentions the inclusions of snake venom, scorpion venom, or perhaps “a little arsenicke” as handy ingredients for witches to work their “mischeefs.” Of course, no meal is complete without a sweet finish, and what is sweeter than a baby? One of the frequent and horrific accusations against witches was that they roast, boil, and otherwise cook infants in order to eat them. Scot makes much of this topic, in response to witchmongers, such as Heinrich Kramer, author of the Malleus Malificarum, and Dean Bodin, of De la Démonomanie des Sorciers, who frequently accuse women of such acts. And these women supposedly implemented a kind of quality control, or gradation system for these supposed boiled babies. Children were to be unbaptized, and, hopefully, the results of either a prostitutive or incestuous tryst. After securing the highest grade baby, there were a few different preparation options. Witches could— ... boile infants (after they have murthered them unbaptised) until their flesh be made potable. or … cut their children in peeces, fill their pots with their bloud; then burne they the carcases, and mingle the ashes therewith, and so preserve the same for magicall purposes.
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or combine the whole process into one long weekend of bulk cooking, with some homemade cosmetics, as well: … if there be anie children unbaptised, or not garded with the signe of the crosse, or orizons; then the witches may and doo catch them from their mothers sides in the night, or out of their cradles, or otherwise kill them with their ceremonies; and after buriall steale them out of their graves, and seeth them in a caldron, untill their flesh be made potable. Of the thickest whereof they make ointments, whereby they ride in the aire; but the thinner potion they put into flaggons, whereof whosoever drinketh, observing certeine ceremonies, immediatlie becommeth a maister or rather a mistresse in that practise and facultie. To say the very least, such accusations were to prove that witches lived an inverted, or backwards life. Good mothers issue children into the world; they do not gobble them up. Humans value their children as the image of God, and a vessel for the Holy Spirit; they do not eat their young, like wild beasts. Mr. Scot, however, believed none of it, replying— This is untrue, incredible, and impossible…. I beleeve never an honest man in England nor in France, will affirme that he hath seene any of these persons, that are said to be witches, do so. While Scot collected these descriptions from witch hunting “manuals” in order to emphasize their ridiculous nature, his Discoverie of Witchcraft, sadly had the opposite effect. Not that Britons mistook his new English language treatise for a cookbook, but they believed Scot’s examples were true, rather than his argument. After the publication of the Discoverie, witch hunting accelerated in Britain, partially prompted by a direct rebuttal from King James (yes, that King James). In particular, the stewing and savory topics scandalized and
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frightened many people, moving them to accuse, torture, and kill thousands of women for impossible crimes. These wicked concoctions still feed our imaginations, and prove the best way to someone’s heart is to turn their stomach.
42
Drew Trower
On History Once, the only emotion I would attach to history was apathy. But now I know too much and struggle with the frantic, crisis-inducing dilemma that wonders if history is a feeling itself, one you come close to touching in chalkdust from blackboard erasers, clapped together by uninterested kids. But dust flees as time does, kissing your knuckles, never taking your hand. History is, dare I say, most prominently felt where Death has reigned. It is there in Dachau in the form of some thousand held breaths that slither down your throat like muddy ropes, begging to be released in a final scream that has been held too long. But tightrope silence is adhered to, and if history tries to take your hand here, it brushes your neck instead,
43
sends a dying whimper down your spine. I miss my aforementioned apathy. History is an infuriatingly impossible feeling. Perhaps that is why we romanticize the subject-do palace walls recall flaws made by the hands of Renaissance painters, or were they as untouchably perfect as the gods they created? Back and back, before ancient hands committed memories to stone, what words were crafted for the wind to carry, which we will never know? History is a grandfather clock, looming at the edge of peripheral vision, almost dismissible but for the eerie way it watches and how its hands collect the seconds.
44
Michael Haynes
Under (cover)
45
Ryan Hatten
Tales of the Brave is what they wish for
how the public
the fearless
demands a story
or maybe the foolish
of heroes
those we all dream to be I reveal the screams I tell how
how they all
the brave among us
sound the same
burn away only ash and bone remain
every time they cheer
I speak of stench how burning flesh and hair linger during the night televisions glow news anchors report the spreading fires
46
Michael Haynes
Untitled
47
Jacquelyn Barnes
Breakthrough
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Michael Nutkowitz
Party Bus
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Richard Baldasty
Edith for Breakfast Like coffee with bites of rich custard and intimations of aromatic wood and gingerbread. Between dives, the shark remembers Edith. Let’s just say she reached her life expectancy one day snorkeling off the Bahamas. Her husband, a Buddhist who meditates every morning, took up weight training and soon remarried someone much younger. Left the children, messy teens, to the authorities. “It’s amazing, a wonderful shock,” he jokes, he notes. “The chance to completely redo the way to live.” Edith for breakfast. Better than cereal.
50
Richard Baldasty
Pearl of the Levant Much has been written about the author you’re researching. Surely he was not alone rendering the unspeakable spoken. Tough exterior, tender heart. Many are the absurdities sizzling at the stake, endless the what-ifs barbecued in all this. He died in bitter obscurity: language was not enough. Beautiful unexpected creativity, bumps all over nature. A thing of great price, a pearl of the Levant. He had to pay for it. Take good notes. Fail not proper attribution. He may be gone, but his estate never sleeps. Rumors abound. Contract killers, maybe some real, revenge even pretend plagiarism.
51
Ryan French
Behind the Scenes
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Reese Avery
Cassette People Baldasty Prose Award Winner
W
hen I was still in elementary school, my neighbors had owned a large German Shepherd with a cut along his left ear. I would pass their house every day to and from school, and wave at him from the other side of the chain-link fence. The
dog would spring around on his hind legs as I passed, barking and gnarling endlessly. I always thought he must’ve had something against me, but I got used to not knowing what it was. I was eleven when it finally bit me. It was summer, and the distorted swirls of heat rose
from the sidewalk as I was making my way home. The gate had been left open somehow, and I didn’t notice when I came around the corner. It leapt out of thin air, tearing and crushing my hand beneath its jaws. A glimpse of war shone behind its eyes. I still have a large scar across my left palm. I suppose it doesn’t work the way it should anymore. I can ball my hand, but not tightly. I used to be able to make a fist. My parents said I was a lot more reserved after that. My neighbors never left their gate open again. They paid for my medical bills, but I guess the guilt stayed with them. About a month later, they had a garage sale. When my parents and I went over, I spent the whole time staring at this large cardboard box, filled to the brim with cassette tapes. My neighbors let me take it, free of charge, along with a plug-in cassette player they had never used. I spent the rest of that summer listening to the hum of the tape being strung through the machine. When school started again, I split the entire collection between me and my friends. During lunch, we would trade tapes with each other, and talk about the sounds of Jim Morrison or the Plastic Ono Band. My cousin used to love all this. He treated life like it was an adventure, and he was the hero. He stood nearly six feet high by the time we were in middle school, his baggy, red hoodie draping down his back like a cape.
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After school, he and I would scour the town for pawn shops and thrift stores, getting our hands on any cassettes we could find. Cassettes were just a part of childhood. It was never easy to feel alone back then. But after all, it was only elementary school. Some people seem to have their own atmospheres. The first girl I ever dated was that way. Red hair brushed down along her shoulders, always flowing downwind when she walked. In many ways, I thought she was a wild bird just learning how to be human. She was covered in constellations of brown freckles that ran all across her face and arms. The first time we met, she kissed me. I was a freshman, but she was a few grades older than me. I was with my cousin and a group of our classmates that day, and she was a mutual friend who just happened to be tagging along. We had all gone to a park in the West Central neighborhood. The place was surprisingly vast, with a wide river that cut the forested area in two. It was fall, and the fiery leaves were sprinkling themselves from their branches into the river. I watched as they drifted softly towards the sea. We were skipping school, meandering wildly through the grotto and dipping our bare feet in the current. My cousin shot me looks with a crooked smile, his red hoodie bouncing across his lanky shoulders as he walked. He had decided he wanted to tell everybody the story about how I scarred my hand. He always cracked too many jokes whenever he told it. I used to think it was too distracting. So everyone sat back while I recited the tale. I was almost to the end of the story, in the middle of the part where the doctor was giving me stitches, when she grabbed my chin and turned it towards her. She pressed her lips against mine. I held my eyes open and stared at her dotted forehead. We had sex not long after that, and in our kind of circle that was what made it official. My cousin bought me a pack of cigarettes as congratulations. I didn’t smoke any until the first night her and I got drunk together, and I guess I’ve been a regular smoker since then.
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She kissed and hugged me more times than I can count. She was always trying to show affection when I didn’t want to. And I never wanted to when we were in public. Other than that we were a respectful couple. We had our moments of unhinged attraction—times where we just closed our eyes and fell in love again. After sex, we would lie on the bed and listen to music together, the smell of fermented skin lingering in the air. She used to stroke my hand so gently, then. We never borrowed each other’s things, but when we broke up she stole a few cassettes from my room. I had left my window open that day while I was at work, and she came by when I wasn’t home. I don’t leave my window open much anymore. I moved away from home a few years after that. I studied general at a university in Boston, living in a second-floor studio apartment right next to the Charles River. The weather was about the same in Boston, just along with everything else. From my window, I would watch the winter breeze make love with the city as it passed through. Snow fell soothingly for long periods of time, blanketing the pavement thoroughly, as if to hide it from something. Wrapped in a bed sheet, I could usually get away with smoking at my window without it bothering anybody (or at least without them noticing, anyway). On weekends, a homeless man and his dog used to camp out below my room, on the sidewalk. He would always plug a cassette player into an outlet in the wall, listening to acoustic tapes while he panhandled. The dog was only a terrier, but I never left the building on weekends because of it. It didn’t bother me much though, after I got used to the way things were. The man had good taste in music. I usually went through a whole pack on Saturdays. I got a call from my cousin. Him and his fiancée were touring the east coast and would be passing through Massachusetts later that evening. I invited them to stay overnight, cleaning up my apartment and laying some blankets on the floor for them to sleep on. I was sure it would be comfortable enough.
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After they dropped off their things at my apartment, I took them out to Chinese food. It was a small shack of a place, just on the border of East Boston. The building had cracks all over it, between the wooden sides and the rotting shingles. Steam jutted endlessly from every crack and hole, swirling into the chilled air and disappearing like a memory. It seemed like a family business. The grandkids handled the tables while the adults stayed in the kitchen, dodging flaming pans and shouting to each other. Flocks of noodles flew through the air, landing magically onto their plates. The food was cheap, but it tasted gourmet. We helped ourselves to a booth in the back, near the heater. When the boy came to our table, we all ordered drinks. Beers, I think. When he finished scribbling down our orders, he thanked us and headed back to the kitchen. “School?” My cousin asked me. I pulled myself out of my head and nodded, watching the dull outline of my cousin in the corner of my eye. “So how is it?” He pressed. His hoodie was absent, replaced by a grey suit jacket that cut off at the wrists of his long arms. “It’s about what you would expect.” I wandered around the subject for a bit. None of it was interesting. I kept waiting for my cousin to crack a joke. There were plenty of pauses for him to make some jabs at me. He didn’t. We got our food, eating in silence for the most part. Occasionally, he would pause to talk about plans with his new in-laws or how our family was doing. He never said it, but he missed everyone we left back home. I could tell. He ended up moving back within the next few years. “Work?” “It’s fine,” I said. “Well have you been up to anything special?” I thought for a moment.
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“Not particularly.” I looked at my reflection in the glare of the window, but my eyes fell out of focus after a moment. I gazed at the endless push of the traffic outside. He started ranting about his job. It was in some corporate office, but it seemed to give him some sense of stability and promises of retirement. He had apparently met his fiancée there. She was unlike any women I had seen him with before. The dim lighting shined off her rosy cheeks, as if they were made of glass. She got pregnant not long after that. My cousin always told me their son was conceived on the floor of my apartment in Boston, later that same night. They had shoved against each other quietly beneath the covers, while I muttered in my sleep through the door of the neighboring room. He only ever told the story of his son’s conception a few times, but it was always a funny story, at least. My cousin suffered a stroke when he was thirty-seven. He had treated his body like a trash can for most of his life up to that point. The only things that I ever saw entering his system were fat and salt. Despite all this, he worked fifty hours a week. He was always in motion back then. But he slowed down a bit after a blister inside his skull finally burst. The doctors told his wife it was an aneurism. He had been getting dressed for work, when he felt like he had been shot in the back of the head. His wife knew better, and took him to the ER. I flew into town the day after I heard. His wife was handling the paperwork and their son was in school. The washed-out curtains and walls of his medical room made me feel weighted and slow. I had brought our old cassette player for him. I knew he needed it. In his sleep, he mumbled to himself about money and greyhound races, and with every tone of the monitor, the dogs raced faster across his dreams.
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I watched their son for them over the next few months. I used my cousin’s car to take him to and from his preschool, when they needed me to. It took me a while to realize that he was my nephew, in a way. I woke up one morning to the sound of him screaming. It took me a moment to adjust to the drunk of sleep. I watched the light shine softly through the hovering dust. I heard scurrying below the floorboards. His room was directly below mine. It was six thirty, and his mother had already left for work. When I came into his room, he was clutching his left hand, and blood was seeping out from his palms and dripping onto the floor. I was hesitant to take him to the hospital, mostly because I didn’t want to contribute to the harsh mountain of bills that was already crushing his family. But it looked like he needed stitches. He had woken up in an anxious rush and knocked his bedside lamp onto the floor. He cut himself trying to put the pieces of the bulb back together. After the hospital, and nine stitches later, I took him to a park. It was a still morning and I thought he might feel better after getting some fresh air. When I asked him if he was hungry, he just shook his head. I remember it being warm that day. The sun shone on the dewed grass as we walked along the riverside path, holding hands. He caressed my scarred palm with his tiny fingers as we moved. Every few moments, I would look down at him. He held his bandaged fist close to his face, watching it, waiting for it to do something. He was a just a child. We stopped below a willow tree, along a curled bend of the river. He let go of my hand and stared down at the gentle ripple of the current. Everything was oddly still. The thrum of a new season had dotted the forest with fresh flowers. I was home, but as the sun reflected off the water, images of faraway Boston shined into my mind. I looked at the tree. It was gnarled in a way that made it seem stunted, half-grown. The light green leaves held tightly to their whip-like branches. I had made love under this tree once. It was in high school, with the red-haired girl. She and I had been walking this path together, late at night. We had kissed, and eventually that led to sex. As we were shuffling our
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clothes back on, we realized that she had lost a sandal, presumably in the river. She held my hand, while I walked her home, barefoot. I looked down at my nephew. He didn’t know it then, but his mother was filing for bankruptcy and his father would be coming home the next week to live off of disability for the rest of his life. In his boredom, my nephew was pivoting his foot in the grass, listening as the plants wretched and tore beneath his shoe. I realized I didn’t even remember his name. I put my arm around his shoulder and brought him closer to me. He was looking down at his hand, cradling a cassette tape in his palm, its black shell glistening in the sun. I could hear a familiar hum in my ears, and a living aura seemed to be conjuring itself all around. It mesmerized me. “Dog,” he said, pointing to the sheet of moving water in front of him. I looked down and saw a dark brown catfish nestled on the floor of the riverbed, leisurely swimming to keep up with the pace of the current. It almost seemed as if it wasn’t moving. He looked up at me. A search for validation shone behind his eyes. I nodded. “That’s right,” I said to him.
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Sarah Barnts
Untitled
60
Jadyn Avena
Untitled
61
Jenny Hong
Unspoken A cold black tea once exhaling warmth, turned bitter, lying idle. She drank every last bit and washed the cup. Some Schwarzenegger action film was on. She pressed the red button on the remote and cleared the ashtray. She pulled out her phone and left her daughter a message: there’s soup warming in the pot. She imagined the little screen brightening with a reply, a bedroom large enough to stretch her arms. She pulled off her work pants and slipped on her nightdress. Stains and lint, still comforting.
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Jadyn Avena
Untitled
63
Samantha Verhei
Things My Ex-Husband Told Me Stop! Don’t touch that,
What did you burn this time?
I don’t want to have to fit it.
Can you stop cooking that smells?
Must you always drop things?
Is that the smoke alarm or your timer?
You’re such a Klutz.
Let’s just order pizza.
Why don’t you have more confidence? Don’t yell at me! Your voice is grating.
This is not my fault!
Was there a point to that joke?
You pushed me into this!
Sorry, wasn’t listening.
You know you’re wrong!
I’ve heard all this before. Why are you so quiet all the time?
Why are you always apologizing? I don’t know
What is on your face? You look like a clown! Wearing makeup is just deceiving people. You’re wearing that….. Why do you always look down?
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Hailee Borden
Salty Expressions
65
Savanna Shafer
Transformation of Clay
66
Laura Stephenson
Wretched I am poor. I was not always poor. I was raised to be surrounded by space: too-tall ceilings and an acre of yard inside a cast-iron fence. The house I grew up in always seemed to me more of a museum surrounded by a prison yard, but my parents paid a lot of money for it. I was raised to separate myself from the wretched people of the world. Tattoos? Drugs? Bad neighborhood? I was taught to shun you, you hopeless people who brought your situation on yourselves. Lazy, fallen sinners. I used to believe it. Used to be completely convinced. We needed a big, cast-iron fence to keep you out of our lives. You were sick, and you’d spread your sickness to us if we let you. I never really wanted to be on the same side of metal bars as my parents. At first I only saw their cruelty in their treatment of me. Frequent, hour-long lectures. Staring at me if I passed out from an anxiety attack. I would come to, and they’d be just where they had been, arms crossed. I felt no love from them. Once my mother was two hours late picking me up from school. Never answered her phone when I called. When she arrived, I asked where she’d been. Her response was a clipped: I’m here now, aren’t I? I was a teenager when my father took me aside and said we’d grown apart. I thought: when had we been close? He wanted to make more time for me. Every week, I had a free pass to interrupt whatever he was doing, and he would spend fifteen minutes with me. Thanks, Dad. I only need fifteen minutes a week. That makes us close. I don’t recall my parents ever having friends over. I’m sure they didn’t have any. Sometimes they would speak of the people they worked with between themselves. Usually it ended in complaints of their coworkers’ inadequacies. A few times they took me to work, and I met these incompetent losers. They had jars of candy on their desks for the silly
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children who would run around pestering them. My mother didn’t. I don’t remember my father’s desk. I do remember drawing, over and over again, a big snarling house grabbing me and dragging me into its mouth. I captioned it “my house is not my home.” I remember calling my friends’ parents “mom” and “dad,” at first as a joke, but progressively more desperately. I always felt like the wrong piece in the puzzle of our family, always grated against the edges, longing to pop out of the spot I’d been wrongly forced into. And eventually I did. I left. They were scandalized. How could I abandon my family that loved me so much? I got married to a man I loved and they loathed. Had a child, then another. My parents let me know how hurt they were by this. They would pay for my college if only I would move back to be with “my family.” I am poor. My husband and I live in a bad neighborhood. We have been screwed over by employer after employer and landlord after landlord. My parents say it hurts them deeply, seeing me and my children living in poverty. Meanwhile, I have had friends over. I have accumulated board games to play with my husband and my friends. Slowly, slowly, because board games are expensive. Friends come over regularly. Alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana are used socially. My children both say that their parents and their sibling are their favorite people in all the world. I have a tattoo of a line of scripture on my shoulder and a tattoo of my husband’s name over my heart. My husband has a tattoo ring because he’s allergic to metal. He has a tattoo of the letter H because he’s quirky and ridiculous and deep. He is never clean-shaven like all respectable men ought to be. I am poor—as far as money goes.
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Nicolas Murphy
Skull
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Jenny Hong
Our House Has a Broom Baldasty Poetry Award Winner
Lunch was
Our house has a broom, its handle
fried rice with eggs,
is a bundle of bamboo sticks.
potatoes, chicken,
That day it lay against the wall,
beans and lady fingers.
too visible.
An assortment of leftovers, the chef’s style.
If I were a wizard, I’d grab the broom from his hand,
I always talked with my mouth full
and fly out the kitchen window.
as a child; there’s no joy
But I was just
chewing in silence.
me. I stood there obediently.
I was sharing an anecdote
Three purple strikes
about a homeroom teacher
slashed across the calves.
named Snow White. I must have said it a little too loud, for the tired man sleeping in the next room arose and thundered, Who’s talking? Oh-oh, someone’s boiling.
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Amanda Hutchins
Stairway to…
71
Ethan Cope
Selbstmord
72
Olivia Nemec
The Technicolor Bird Garden, or How I Became a Feminist Bitch I was a girl, coated in soft, down feathers, long before I was a woman with sharp fangs or hell, before I was even a woman with a spine. I was weak. Some people are afraid to admit that, afraid to expose the soft pink underbelly of who they once were, but not me, I was fragile, a small China doll on a high shelf just teetering on the precipice of shattering. But one day I woke up, and on that morning, I discovered a single peacock feather among my downy fluff. It’s bright feathers like these that earn you names like bitch or whore. It’s bright feathers like these that make people whisper about how loud you are. But I was proud of my feather, I thought it was beautiful, and I wanted more. Maybe it’s the determination I got from my mother or the unyielding stubbornness I got from my father, but before I knew it, I was no longer a girl. I had molted all my downy grey feathers and I was finally, a full grown, technicolor peacock.
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Teresa Mendoza-Embry
Animal Music
74
Hope Hughes
Crowtopus
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Allyson Gwiazda
To Touch Her I had never seen a woman
I try to forget her,
dressed up as a clown.
pointing to the pink
Her face paint glistens
cotton candy being spun.
in the light of the moist
The lacy spindles flutter
summer heat.
to one another until they form into their soft, frail accumulation.
I needed to touch her My mouth waters skin and see that she was real.
as I picture the sweet, delicate
My sticky, pudgy young fingers
floss dissolve
reach out to graze her cheek
the second it meets my lips.
wanting to feel the drips of her drooping smile melt
My father shakes his head,
and trail down to my wrist. instead buys me a hot dog. I inch closer, shaking
But all I can smell is the stench of one swelling in the greasy,
in anticipation.
reused water and
My father smacks my hand before I meet the dewy temptress.
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my stomach turns. He tells me that if I don’t eat it, I will be hungry for the rest of our time at the fair. That if all I have is candy floss, I will never be full.
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Alicia Dunavan
Small Town
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Selina Gilchrist
People’s Park—Fall 2016
79
Jim Yockey
The Bench Downtown
S
he was wandering around downtown. She wasn’t in school anymore, didn’t have a family or even a boyfriend, didn’t have many bills, and wasn’t working today.
There wasn’t much to worry about lately. Also, there wasn’t much to do. This
wasn’t the first time she had come down here just to wander. Whenever she had time and money in her pocket, she’d look for things around here to divert her attention. She hoped this would not be the last time she visited downtown for recreation, but it was getting old fast. She noticed a man nearby, sitting on a bench in the park. He seemed relatively well off; he didn’t look like a hobo, but she found it strange that every time she went downtown, he was sitting there, on that bench, doing nothing. She decided to ask him about it. “Hey. Why are you always sitting on that bench?” she asked. “I don’t have much of a choice. I’m glued here,” he replied. That made sense. “Why are you glued to a bench?” “It’s a very long story, and you wouldn’t find it very interesting,” he spoke cheerfully. “No, it sounds very interesting; tell me. I have pretty low standards for entertainment.” “Well, I’m glued here for love.” “That doesn’t make much sense. Is it because you love this bench?” “Well, no.” “It must be because you love glue, right?” “No, it’s not that.” “Well, tell me the story.” “Do you believe in true love?” “Not really, but I’ll suspend my disbelief.”
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“There’s a person out there, a gal, who is more important to me than anything else in the world. I met her here, while I was sitting on this bench, and as I got to know her, I felt as though our souls were knit together. She’s… the most wonderful person in the world.” “I really doubt that, but okay. Where’s the glue come in?” “When I told her how I felt about her, she said she didn’t believe me.” “Huh.” “She said that I didn’t really need her much, and I cared too much about myself.” “Hmmm…” “So, you see, to prove her wrong, I’ve glued myself to this bench.” “What?” “As a sign of my love, devotion, and reliance on her, I’m waiting here for her to come back, and unglue me from this bench. Then, she will know my love for her is true, and I will know that she really cares about me.” “I see. How long have you been waiting here?” “Nine days.” “You must be pretty hungry, right?” “Well, yes.” “That was a pretty corny story, but I think you at least deserve a burger for your devotion. I have some money and I’ll get you one.” “No, I can’t have myself troubling you.” “It’s fine, really. You’re the most entertaining thing I’ve seen in, well, since, I dunno, but you’re a pretty interesting guy.” “Thank you.” “Don’t mention it.” So she walked to a nearby restaurant and bought a hamburger. Thinking about giving it to that starving, lovelorn bench-glued guy made it feel a tad less overpriced. When she brought it back, he was sitting there just the same as usual. Glued to the park bench.
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He didn’t eat ravenously, but politely, even though he must have been starving. “You seem to be holding up pretty well,” she noted. “Well, that’s because of my deep love for my beloved. It sustains me even in trials.” “That sounds useful, but it probably isn’t worth it.” “Why would you say that?” “Well, it’s your ‘deep love’ that got you into this trial in the first place. If your love was a bit shallower, you wouldn’t be glued to a bench.” “It’s not all bad,” he said. “Really? Do you enjoy sitting on this bench?” “Well, not really. It’s pretty uncomfortable.” “Do good things happen to you while you sit here?” “Sometimes, but not very often. Mostly, I get harassed by homeless people and small children.” “What’s ‘not so bad’ about it, then?” “Well, I’m still alive, and I’m still in love.” “Yeah, but you could be still alive and in love anywhere else, and it’d be a lot more enjoyable, right?” “I guess so.” They talked for a bit longer, and then she had to leave. But before she did, she bought him an umbrella and some dinner. She felt it was the least she could do. She came back again the next day, after church, and he was there, just the same. When talking to him, things were the same as usual. They talked and she bought him lunch and dinner, just like the previous day. The next few weeks proceeded in much the similar fashion. He didn’t seem to grow more tired and hopeless, as she would expect. He was still filled with the energy and hope of his “true love.” He wasn’t all that bad for company, and talking and eating with him was more fun than staying indoors and playing video games for hours. They started to play cards and board games, and she even brought her laptop a few times to show him some movies and
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TV shows. However, she started to become frustrated by his ridiculous and cheesy concept of “true love” and “devotion.” It seemed to her that his girlfriend (if she even was his girlfriend) wasn’t all that great of a person to be devoted to. The man was a bit delusional, but he was, deep down, a nice and kindhearted guy who didn’t deserve to be glued to a park bench. Of course, that part was his fault. There was one day, though, that when she came he seemed very sad, although he tried to hide it. He seemed quite a bit different than he had before. There was still that flame burning within him, but its accompanying energy and hope were gone. He appeared to have been crying recently. “Hey, what happened?” she asked. He didn’t say anything. “Well, something obviously happened. You look terrible.” “Yeah, something happened.” “What?” “I suppose I should tell you.” “Okay, even if I, deep down, really didn’t care, I deserve to know because of all the time and money I’ve spent keeping you alive.” “Okay, I’ll tell you. But, I’m not really feeling very well, as you can see.” “Yeah, I know.” “The person I love…” “Yes?” “She came here, and talked to me.” “Uh-huh.” “And she said…” “She said what?” “She said she’s dating someone else.” “Ok.”
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“Did you hear what I said?” “Yup.” “She said I wasn’t doing enough for her, and that I didn’t even really like her, and stuff like that.” “Well, that’s that.” “But, I’m hoping that she’ll change her mind, so I’m going to keep waiting here.” “What? Why?” “Because I love her, and she means a lot to me.” “You can love her all you want, but you have to realize she’ll never love you back. And frankly, you should just forget about her.” “I can’t.” “Well, you will eventually.” “Sitting on this bench, eating the food you gave me, talking to you, and being attacked by stray dogs… that’s all I’ve known for the past three weeks of my life. I don’t know how I can go back to ordinary living.” “What size pants do you wear?” “Um… 38 inches? Why?” “Hmmm…” And then she walked away. She returned with a cheap pair of pants from the mall. She set them on the bench beside him. “I’m going to turn around, you’re going to wriggle out of those pants you glued to the bench, and then you’re going to put on this pair.” “Well, alright.” She turned around. It took quite a bit longer than expected, but eventually he called out and she turned around. There he was, standing there, in a new pair of pants. His old pair was still perfect, glued to the bench, as though there was still someone sitting in them.
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“These pants on the bench will serve as a memorial,” she proclaimed, “to a deep, deep love, and a boatload of money, that was lost.” “Well, I guess I know better, now. It was a bad decision.” “They were both bad decisions.” “What now, then?” “Let’s meet again sometime soon. Maybe somewhere other than downtown, though. I’m getting tired of it.”
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Savanna Shafer
Untitled
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Jadyn Avena
Untitled
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Anna Cartee
touch sharing glances across the store full of busy people unaware of our eyes locked, the deep blue-green pulls me to you while you disappear. walking past me you brush by quietly. without a word your body touches mine purposefully, my heart jumps entirely sure that our similar souls intertwine. in the car, cigarette on your lip we drive aimlessly in the darkness together, listening to Hot Chip while smiling and talking, just us standing in the road, we embrace, your chin in my hair.
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Michael Haynes
Worm
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Dan Davis
Untitled
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Austin Hall
Summers in Manito Beneath reflections that dance
Would they wish,
on the glass pond,
if they could,
speckled koi dart aimlessly
to smell the pollen in the air?
in the shadowed depths.
To taste the cool breeze
We watch and wonder what secrets they could share.
against sunburned lips?
If they could, for only a moment,
Fish may never know
walk the park path,
the warmth of silver clouds,
skip under wooden arches
pierced by golden rays,
that lead to rows of rainbow petals,
but I will never know
would they hear the rustle of leaves
how a flower looks
as the wind whispers
from beneath sapphire waves.
songs of summer into oak ears? Or are they happy in their own domain, hidden from emerald grass in timeless fields?
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Elizabeth Smith
Dandelion Paint I sit outside
But all we conjured up
my fingers playing with
was a dirty, watered-down
the sunshine-yellow dandelions
yellow potion
and suddenly I see and the earthy smell my siblings
of crushed flowers
and me years ago
coated our small
holding a plastic cup like a cauldron
fingertips
mixing the crushed yellow flowers with water trying to create yellow paint
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Ryan French
Venice
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Erica Stark
Urbanscape
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Michael Nutkowitz
Gonzaga on Its Last Day of 2016
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Katie Corigliano
Marginalia for Billy Collins Sometimes the notes in the margins scream volumes more than the tiny black script— proof of reality outside the stories. Those days in the book store where my only friends were the Amelie soundtrack, Yann Tiersen meshing with the smell of wet pavement outside the back door and the dusty aroma of old books, a scent I could never find elsewhere. Most of the books are used, old volumes no one cares about other than to collect. But sometimes I would find remnants of the owners before the book touched my dust-covered fingers. They come in copies of beaten books from the 1940’s beautiful cursive, barely legible from years of sitting untouched on a shelf To My Dear So and So they say Happy Birthday, darling. May this book bring you as much joy as it has me. All my love,
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Aunt Marilyn November 17, 1946 A date from a time I hadn’t existed. I’ll never forget the capital letters in a copy of Blue Gold, a college student’s angry words underneath a paragraph about the water crisis around the globe, FUCK YOUR CORPORATIONS, THESE ARE PEOPLE TOO. And in the back of Danny the Dinosaur stick figures drawn by a clumsy child, dirty, illegible scrawl Why did daddy leave us? taking me back to when I was a child, flashbacks I wish I couldn’t relate to. Sometimes it was the lack of words in the margins. When the white border is blank, there are other things the chocolate fingerprint ghosts left from the person so absorbed they forgot to wipe their hands before turning the page. Or when you begin to cry, tears falling like the raindrops outside onto the pages only to find them falling on a tear stain from a previous owner. You both died at the hands of a paperback. Yet the one I think of most often, is the one I wrote myself for the boy who looked at me the way I imagined Gatsby looked at Daisy. On the fortieth page of my favorite book
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in a permanent pen I hoped would last forever next to my favorite line Capote ever wrote— Thanks for being my real life Tiffany’s –K
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Jadyn Avena
Untitled
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Alicia Dunavan
Pondering the Future
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FEATURING BALDASTY AWARD WINNERS Jenny Hong Poetry Reese Avery Prose Ethan Cope Fine Art Erica Stark Photography
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