Volume10

2016 Selected and Edited by Sandy Bolis Crystal Bonano

Isabelle Cavazos Maria Dones Hannah Lay Mariana Samuda Donna Walker

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Advised by: Ira Sukrungruang Cover Photo by: Michelle Calicchio Design & Layout by: Isabelle Cavazos Sponsored by: USF Student Government USF College of Arts & Sciences USF Council of Undergraduate Research

thread Literary Inquiry is an undergraduate literary journal staffed by student editors. We strive to publish the best undergraduate writing and 2-D artwork that the University of South Florida has to offer. Submissions are accepted from all genres within these categories: short fiction, nonfiction, flash fiction, literary criticism, and poetry.

Learn more about thread at: threadusf.jimdo.com facebook.com/threadUSF Copyright thread 2016 All rights reserved and revert to authors and artists on publication.

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Contents Editor’s Note

6

An Ode to Michelangelo Sarah Harder

8

You’re a Great Guy, Jack Barnes!

Brennen Daniel

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I Saw the Word Pray Nathan Meuwissen

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Not Much of a Swimmer Damian Dimock

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Wild Pitch Frank Nunez

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Lessons in Flight Sarah Harder

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Transformation of War Poetry from Victorian Epics to Modern Truths Kristen Reidy

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At Least Here He is Loved Marly DiFruscio

37

It’s Raging Inside of Me Angelique Carrier

39

The Puppet’s Dance Mahu Kamal

40

Breakthrough Kayla Arias

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Contents

4

42

Saeva Generosum Mahu Kamal

43

In No Particular Order, A Series of Sleepless Nights Jerico Lenk

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Undecided Brennen Daniel

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drunk Courtney Clute

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No V c ncy Amanda Hill

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Fake IDs Ash Alonzo

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birthplace Yvelisse Bonano Pena

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Right to Travel Sarah Harder

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The Standoff Simeon Overbo

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Hansel & Gretel on a Day Trip Jerico Lenk

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Art Kids—Class of 2012 Mahu Kamal

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Something Borrowed, Something Blue Grace Hussain

Contents curls Courtney Clute

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He Knows the Familiarity Brennen Daniel

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Now That Last Shaft of Sunset Sarah Harder

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And Back Ash Alonzo

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Undercurrent Crystina Falero

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Am I Holding Myself Wrong?

Damian Dimock

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Why I Smoke Cigarettes Victoria Royal

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Editor’s Note The other day, I asked my best friend, “What do you think when you hear the word ‘thread’?” She was wearing a Batman T-shirt and flowy pants.

“A grandmother sewing,” she replied, “and book-bindings, and cats’ cradles, and that time we wanted to be grunge, so we tied strings around our wrists.”

She’s the adventurous, midnight-beach-hunting, let’s-sit-on-arooftop-and-eat-Taco-Bell kind of best friend. She’s a photographer who isn’t afraid to sneak into foreign refugee camps to spend time with the families. “Because every family deserves to have their picture taken,” she says. Of course her “thread” is airy and light.

Last night in the library, I asked a stranger the same question. He thought hard for a while.

“I don’t know,” he said, “clothing-factories, sweatshops, labor.”

I tried to ask why and how and tell me your story, but all I got was, “You haven’t seen the things I’ve seen, kid.” And he said it with some kind of old-man-smile, despite being only a few years older than me.

And these days, I find myself on that same library floor by the window, a half-complete to-do list by my side, and an unfinished poem stained with old coffee, and I think, “I’m hanging in there by a thread.”

And I wish for a grandmother to sew it all back together, to bind my spine like some kind of antique book.

And when I consider us—students who write—I see us sitting on the floors of the world, searching for our stories, our voices, trying to weave and break and tie them all together. It’s a beautiful and terrible process.

We find the lightness of our lives, the whimsy—the times we stargazed on a trampoline in the middle of the woods. But at the same time, we labor for our writing, and it’s painful—a sweatshop somewhere.

So this is thread, the journal that happened after we lived, and hurt, and wrote it all down.

Sandy

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An Ode to Michelangelo Sarah Harder

He scrunches bodies in contour lines, grafts skin to marble, chiseling at his veins and tendons to shave faith for plaster-cast stone shells. To worship a grip: dust a craned neck, coiled spine, donated blood. His hands loosely craft David’s, the rolling thumb joint, palm scratches, finger crevices. Let sand mock time, whittling flesh to a smooth point.

David, not Goliath, is confined, pinned naked in rock, carved pupils that won’t bow to blink; so who won? Sling stitched to taut skin, foot arches crested inward; death won’t shroud his craven eyes. Damn the sculptor’s fingers, coaxing the stiff, with mallets, to linger.

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You’re A Great Guy, Jack Barnes!

Brennen Daniel

In the mornings, Jack liked to peruse the local park outside his apartment building. A routine built to ease his anxiety; he hadn’t felt like himself. Three weeks went by without contact from his family and friends, and he began to confirm his suspicions since before he left home—he was neither significant nor missed by anyone.

It was a temperate morning, but particularly brighter compared to others since his arrival to Burlington. He wasn’t a morning person, either.

So, with heavy shoulders, he proceeded along—making a mental note of the unwanted, unwarranted sunlight droning on him. He cursed his hot cup of black coffee, the adequate representation of his mood, a sweltering mistake for his journey.

He sprawled out along the allotment as an impotent solar flare, drained from change, empty of the answers he thought would come. He reminisced among the city ambiance—mechanics and construction. The noises stabbed the fabric of his skin with the redundant soundwaves of life. He rolled over into the shade of a small oak. Dewy blades of crabgrass pierced into his eyelids and insects buzzed all around; he laid face down in the world of continual light and sound. The yin to the overcoming yang society.

Nearby, the construction of a building distracted his thoughts.

Instruments of different shapes and sizes clanked, hissed, whistled, and wheezed. They filled the atmosphere, enveloping him. He stared at the structure. Cool sweat released from his pores as steam spewed out from the building’s labor. It stood incomplete, but accepting to the renovation fabricating the solitude of its prior glory. He felt as hollow as the facade before him, desecrated of solace, but as society found value from the old complex, he too contemplated if the same can be done to him.

“They’re putting it back together, aren’t they?” an old man asked. He took a seat next to Jack.

Jack turned to acknowledge the man next to him, “I suppose.”

“It’s amazing! Beautiful, really.”

“What is?”

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The old man extended an arm towards the structure. “You haven’t figured it out yet?”

“Figured out what?”

The old man laughed. Jack couldn’t help but squeeze a nervous laugh out as well. He didn’t know why they were laughing, but it felt polite.

The morning sunlight began to slither off the ceiling of the construction zone onto their bodies. It cut through the shade of his oak shield. The speckles of light exposed them. Jack looked over at the old man. Wrinkles dominated his features. Each with a journey and tale carved another roadway into his face, each connected to his eyes. Prominent eyes bestowed an unspoken restfulness. The old man imitated a chaotic peace.

“You’re a great guy,” the old man said. “Say, what’s your name?”

“Jack,” he said softly, “Jack Barnes.”

The old man grabbed his hand. “You’re a great guy, Jack Barnes,” his grip was firm, energetic in his shake. He released Jack, exclaiming with his arms in the air, “You haven’t figured it out yet?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

The old man placed his arm around Jack’s shoulder, his breath smelt of stale coffee, “We’re all beautiful people, in many different ways. You know, just the other day, this guy, John, well, I call him Johnny, he sits right here yesterday. You know what he says to me?”

“Can’t say I care to—” “This guy, Johnny, he says he was in some sort of rut. So I says, Johnny, what makes you feel so rutty? And he says he can’t find no peace of mind around all this city hustle. You wanna know what I say?”

“Sure.”

“I says, city hustle? You’re in Burlington, Johnny boy! You want peace of mind you might as well run away to Canada.”

“And what did he say?”

“He says, ‘which way?’ And once I pointed north he got up and starting walking toward Canada.” He froze on the thought. “S’pose he’s up by Milton by now.”

Jack watched the old man’s face contort with a bright smile. The smile demanded vicarious attention, and Jack obliged; he studied each wrinkle as they changed and turned into unknown destinations. He dwelled on his age and pondered the life choices that brought the man to him. He wondered how the man could smile so deeply at a stranger.

The old man released his arm from Jack’s shoulder and covered his face. Jack took this moment to close his eyes and listened to the

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construction and nature collide around him. For a minute, everything felt extravagant and pure.

“You’re such a great guy.” The old man whimpered. “Sitting here.

Appreciating life.”

Jack opened his eyes to witness a new man completely broken, slouched as tears slid down a face of canals and levees—a flood of uncontrollable damage and horror. Bewildered, Jack placed a hand onto the man’s jagged burlap jacket to comfort him. Relatable sensations of dread struck him. Memories, fond and devastating, whirled around the two; different vassals of discomfort and joy, together they entwined between the men and levitated them into exhilarated content.

“Appreciating life? I just want to start over, find some of that peace of mind you were talking about.” Jack looked down at his coffee. “Simplicity, the devastating path to Canada”.

The old man regenerated posture. His features glistened with different lights as the sun dried his canvas. He hummed a show tune. The sound of continual construction and throttle created an epiphany Jack had never felt before. He turned his sight and witnessed various insects find choreography between the frail old man and himself. They fluttered sporadically in the air, each landed randomly in the man’s silver hair, his fragile ligaments, and his tattered clothing. The act of nature left the two in a vacuole of non-happenings.

The man laughed, “Can you hear me now?”

Jack gazed once again at the vast sky above the building; the clouds and birds and horizon all blended into rebirth. It was a new day. He embraced another vapid engorgement of fresh air.

“Yeah, I think so,” Jack said before getting to his feet. He left without another word, walking without direction.

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I Saw the Word Pray Nathan Meuwissen

Ochered light fills the scratches on the pane, seething railways moan of metal, cacophonous clacking receding to a clinking bitter whine. What drunken grief? what quiet crib?

51st, heading uptown.

Volleys of pangs scour the jawline, flickering, flashing lights strike the glass: penetrating headlight pupils, sanguine skidding, nerve to rapid rail, gnawing tin foil, teeth ground on slate: 103rd approaching.

Jaundice in the walls, voices lost in the echo, breathless corridors rimmed with regret and high voltage wound like a ribbon into electricity: Charon continues down town, the two passing at high speed leaving silhouettes: paper cut-out people blackened by the burned-out bulbs.

Carved in haste, P, desperate digs on the side of the seat, lines out of line, a fruitless longing: what orphaned child? what mother’s brave boy? what irreparable damage? White paint drowns defacement.

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Ink on a page, cuts on an arm, pleas based in futility. Faceless appendages cramp and crowd without ever knowing: what knotted stomach? what breathless plea? what will I do without you?

R, A, scratched in plastic.

Pelham, way uptown, end of the line.

Why? sweep the shavings, disembark: fluorescent light fixtures illuminate the empty platform, shrill groans bellow back in the tunnels, playing the requiem of the long ride home.

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Not Much of a Swimmer Samuel Ellis

Treading water, anxious and afraid, in open oceans. Shark infested swimming pools distract from things, from dreams, that shoulda coulda been.

On pause and lost in salty dream, I struggle against hurricane-winds to understand my love for air.

Wrestle with Poseidon to realize: I am the old man, now submitting to an undertow, while suffocating under the surface of a blood-pumped tea infused—lemon & wild roses. Clawing open the ocean for a final breath to pull me awake where I smile, wave like an idiot, and pray to the god of second chances.

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Wild Pitch Frank Nunez

I played baseball my whole life. I was never good at anything else.

School was boring, and I never saw myself sitting in some cubicle wasting away like a nobody. I was a pitcher. A damn good one at that, good enough to get the attention of Coach Dawson from the Silverbacks of the American Independent League after my senior year of high school.

The AIL was unaffiliated with Major League Baseball. It was a semiprofessional league where old major leaguers went to die and leftover draft picks went to brush up on their skills and hope for another shot at the bigs.

The major leagues was where every ballplayer from Little League to us semi-pro players wanted to be. I heard stories from guys who’d been to the show. Fancy hotels, stadiums the size of cities, clean uniforms, your own bat with your name carved into it. It seemed surreal. But what they didn’t tell you are the pitchers with godlike breaking stuff and hitters who belt five-hundred-foot homers. They reminded us that we were nothing but cannon fodder for the fans and the baseball higher-ups who looked at us as equipment in constant need of replacing.

It was the second week of the season. Coach Dawson, a former Minor League first baseman for the Twins Organization and pain in the ass, decided it would be a good idea to have an inter-squad game to brush up on our mechanics. We needed to improve our “baseball smarts,” as he put it. I liked to arrive at the field before anybody else. It was quiet and calm, and no one bothered me. The other guys could get on my nerves.

They didn’t seem to take the game as seriously as me. I didn’t want their indifference to rub off on me. It was a cool morning. The blades of grass were crisp and wet from the evening’s rain as I stretched before the game.

The rest of the team began to show. I watched Graham Oley, our newbie shortstop, eat a bucket of fried chicken on the dugout bench because the last time he ate fried chicken, he went four for four.

Ballplayers have odd pre-game rituals catering to their superstitions. The game was about an hour away when Bryce emerged from the dugout with this wide Cheshire Cat grin that made you want to laugh or strangle him.

Sometimes I couldn’t tell the two emotions apart. Barely stepping foot onto the field, Coach Dawson berated him for being late. He made him

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run ten laps around the field, followed by one hundred push-ups.

“Nice of you to finally show up,” I said as he finished his last push-up.

“It’s called being fashionably late, Paul.”

“I’m sure Coach Dawson appreciated it,” I said.

“He’s a teddy bear.”

“Aren’t you going to warm up?” I asked.

“Warm up? Ha!” Bryce remained lying on the grass, yelling at our new right fielder to stop being so lazy. Bryce could have been the most lethargic ballplayer in the independent league, but he sure didn’t play that way. Last year he led the league in homers and RBIs, and in this young season, he was set to repeat. Scouts drooled over him. He had it all.

Speed, power, finesse; it came easily to him. To him, the game was effortless. I had to work twice as hard, and it didn’t make a difference to the scouts or to Coach Dawson, who bumped me to the third spot in the starting rotation.

I finally convinced Bryce to warm up with me, my arm getting nice and loose before I would throw in the bullpen. I loved hearing the pop of the mitt from the leather ball hitting the palm of the glove. It felt right and good, just like baseball should be. We finished warmups by doing wind sprints. I ran until my legs burned, but I could never beat Bryce.

“Come on, old man, faster!” he said without losing his breath. I was five years his senior. Twenty-eight is young, but in the baseball world, I was already considered an old man. We had played together for two seasons. Coach wanted me to be his mentor since he thought I would be a good “role model” and show him the ropes.

I hated the idea. I had my own game to worry about. I wasn’t a coach, I was a ballplayer, and at one point, the best in the AIL until he came along. Bryce thought we were friends, if that’s what you want to call it. I was out of breath when we finished. “Don’t have a heart attack on me,” Bryce said.

“Shut up,” I panted.

Coach Dawson called for me to meet him in the visitor’s dugout.

He waited by the water fountain, working on the lineup sheet on his clipboard. “How’s your arm?” He asked.

“Feels good. I’m about to throw some bullpen now,” I said.

“You’ll start today, but I’m limiting you to two innings,” he said, still focused on the lineup sheet.

“Why?”

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“I’m starting Hanley Friday against Newark.”

“I thought I was starting?”

“You gave up nine runs against them in our home opener. Besides, I want to give Hanley more innings. He’s showing promise.”

I waited for him to say something else. Dawson kept working on the lineup sheet like I didn’t even exist. He looked up at me, surprised I was still in his presence. “There something else I can help you with?”

“I can beat Newark. I know I’ve struggled a bit since last season. It’s just a slump. I can beat them.”

Dawson tossed the clipboard on the wooden dugout bench, whose blue paint was beginning to flake. “You’re a good pitcher, Paul. But good isn’t enough. I want to squeeze all the baseball I can out of you ‘til there’s nothing left. You can still help this team, but I have to give the younger guys their shot. I’m sorry.”

I nodded like a complete fool, accepting my fate and sheer mediocrity. I felt like a piece of used equipment. No matter how hard I worked, it didn’t seem to matter. Bryce emerged from behind me. “Hey, catch is waiting for you by the bullpen,” he said, gliding his hand across my lower back a little longer than expected. A sudden jolt of anger raced through my entire body. My skin crawled when his hand grazed the cotton of my uniform. I shoved Bryce’s hand away, knocking him back a step.

“Whoa, what’s your deal?” Bryce said, shocked.

I began to feel I was losing my sense of self. The game slipping through my fingers. I had to regain my composure. I put on this fake smile and playfully punched him on the shoulder. “Sorry. Adrenaline.”

“Save that for Newark,” Bryce said with a wink.

I couldn’t tell if he was joking. I laughed, putting on my mask to hide myself from him. God did he get underneath my skin.

“Bryce, you’re with team B. Go to the home dugout,” Coach Dawson said, reading out the lineup for the A and B squads.

“Save your best stuff for me, will ya? Give me that curve you always tell me about,” Bryce said before he trotted to the home dugout.

It wasn’t the best day to play baseball. The weather turned cold and overcast, and the infield was still wet. Some of the guys raked up the infield, shuffling the dirt around until it was acceptable enough for us to play in. I warmed up in the bullpen. My arm felt great. The ball jumped off my hand, popping the mitt of the catcher, who smiled behind his mask

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when I gave him the heat.

Team A batted first. I sat in the dugout, my head sunk underneath the neck of my windbreaker as I watched us go three and out in the first inning. Not even a hit, let alone a run. The story of my semi-professional career. I took off my windbreaker and approached the mound. My cleats dug deep into it, splashing bits of dirt above its coarse surface. Bryce was batting third. I saw him in the batter’s circle taking some practice cuts while Graham Oley led off the first inning. I threw a changeup followed by a slider and curve. Nothing but offspeed. He couldn’t touch me. So much for the fried chicken.

Juan Santana, our aging but still resilient first baseman, was up. He still was quick around the bases and had a decent bat for a guy who just recovered from a torn ACL last season. I threw him an inside fastball. He hit a lazy pop fly to the right fielder for out number two.

Bryce strolled to the batter’s box as if he had nothing else better to do. He yawned when he reached the right side of the plate, taking a few practice swings before he got in his stance. I pulled down the lid of my hat to hide my eyes. The catcher went through the signals. I nodded for a fastball and threw a strike. Bryce stepped out of the batter’s box and took a few more practice swings before re-entering, kicking the dirt. My next pitch was a curve, low and outside for a ball.

“A curve that didn’t curve,” Bryce yelled. I smiled as catch threw back the ball, rubbing it with my hands, feeling the red stitched grooves run through my fingers. Bryce liked to crowd the plate. I hated that. My nails dug into the baseball’s leathery flesh.

I don’t remember seeing his face after I delivered the pitch. It shot to home plate with shear velocity and precision. I remember the silence that ensued before both dugouts rushed to Bryce as he lay on the ground.

I stood on the mound and watched the commotion from my little sanctuary ninety feet away. Coach Dawson motioned for more trainers and yelled for an ambulance. I approached home plate to take a closer look. Nobody seemed to notice I was looking over their shoulders as I watched the trainers work on Bryce’s bloody face. His nose was broken and his left eye swollen shut. His head lay in a pool of blood.

“Everybody, get the hell back!” Dawson yelled as the paramedics came. I stepped back and observed them plop his unconscious body on the stretcher and whisk him away.

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§

I debated visiting Bryce at the hospital because, frankly, I didn’t like them. The smell alone was enough to keep anyone away. Something about the smell of death was too sobering of a reminder that I was mortal. I heard plenty of rumors. Like how Bryce had a giant hole in his face and that he was going to have to eat through a straw for the rest of his life. Or, my favorite, that he was all disfigured, and the nurses were too scared to check up on him because of how grotesque his face looked.

The only one who gave me any reliable information on Bryce’s condition was Coach Dawson, who said he was in stable condition but needed several rounds of surgery to fix his face.

I lost my last two games. Coach asked me to meet him in his office, which was nothing more than an ‘80s-looking office desk with a framed photo of him posing in his Twins uniform and stacks of scouting reports and sports clippings from the local paper. His old first baseman’s mitt sat on top of some cardboard boxes behind his desk. He reclined on his leather chair and grabbed a can of Skoal chewing tobacco from his desk drawer. He shoved a wad of it in his mouth, spitting some of it back out into an empty Gatorade bottle that sat on his desk.

“Rough game today,” he said with a dribble of tobacco juice running down his mouth.

“I could have used the run support,” I said.

Dawson nodded while the contents of the Gatorade bottle swished side to side every time he raised the bottle to spit in it.

“Blaming the team is not the kind of answer I was hoping for out of you, Paul. You’re 0 and 3 this season, and that’s not because of lack of run support,” Dawson said, wiping the tobacco from his mouth. “Are you still thinking about what happened?”

“I don’t know what you mean?” I said.

“Oh come on, enough with this tough guy act. Something like that can get even the best pitchers rattled up. I’ve seen it a thousand times.”

“I’m all right.”

“Don’t you think you should talk about it?”

I picked up the framed photo from his desk to find a much younger version of Coach Dawson smiling with a Louisville Slugger resting on his shoulder.

“No,” I said, putting back the photo.

Dawson gave this nostalgic look when he took the picture from his desk and admired himself during his glory days. I thought the guy was

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going to cry, except all I got was a grin. “I’ve been in this game for a long time. Longer than I ever expected. I’ve coached plenty of guys like you who wanted to be the next Derek Jeter. But baseball, it’s a funny game.

Eventually, we all have to hang up the cleats, Paul. Not everyone is cut out to play in the Majors.”

“But Bryce is, I suppose,” I replied.

“We’re not talking about Bryce right now. We’re talking about you.”

I leaned over Coach Dawson’s desk with my clenched fists pressed against it. “Are you cutting me? Well, are you?”

“I think you are getting ahead of yourself, Paul.”

“I know what this is,” I said as Coach Dawson cocked his head in confusion. “You just have this ax to grind because you were never good enough to play in the Majors. Isn’t that right? You spent your whole career in the Minors, and you have to take it out on everyone else who reminds you that you were never good enough.”

Coach Dawson lowered his gaze and fiddled with his fingers.

“Son, you were a hell of a pitcher once, but somewhere down the line you suddenly got this sense of entitlement, thinking that somebody owes you something, like I don’t know, a Major League contract. But a sense of entitlement is the kiss of death in this business. And to answer your question, I wasn’t considering it, but you did a great job changing my mind. Get out of my office.”

There I was. Standing in his office, feeling like that old, dusty first baseman’s mitt. I left his office, cleaned out my locker, and never looked back. § It was just as I suspected when I entered the hospital where Bryce was staying after his latest round of surgery. It smelled of body odor and disinfectant, which made me nauseated. I asked the receptionist for Bryce’s room number. A nurse with thick rimmed glasses, a gap between her front teeth and a slight wobble to her step escorted me.

We found Bryce sleeping when we arrived at his room, filled with multicolored balloons and Get Well cards taped to the wall behind his bed. The nurse left. My eyes followed her to the room across from us.

It contained a man who appeared to be no older than me with brown mopped hair and pimples on his face, talking to himself while the nurse

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leaned his head to adjust his pillow. That seemed to set him off; he began laughing maniacally even after the nurse left. His bed faced the doorway to Bryce’s room. He didn’t appear to notice I was looking at him from across the hall.

“All of us have souls, but none of us have a say in it,” he said, giggling.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. His madness fascinated me as he continued having an entire conversation with himself.

“He does that a lot,” Bryce said as I turned to find him wide awake.

“Drives me nuts. The nurse has to give him meds just to quiet him down.

I always hear his parents and the nurses argue on what to do with him.

The sooner I get out of here, the better.”

His face wasn’t grotesque or disfigured like the other guys suggested.

It was still a bit swollen from all the surgery, but he appeared far better than what I was expecting.

“You look well,” I said.

“Considering some asshole decided to throw a fastball at my face,” Bryce replied.

“What do the doctors say?” I asked.

“That I can forget about this season. I should be okay for next year after my face heals up. I still got scouts calling, even after all this mess.

Can you believe that? Even getting hit in the face.”

I nodded and looked out the open blinds of the window with the view of the hospital parking lot.

“I heard Coach cut you.”

“How did you hear about that?” I snapped.

“It’s called a cell phone, Paul. Besides, some of the guys visit. What happened?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” I said.

“What are you going to do?”

“Maybe try Japan if it doesn’t work out here,” I said.

“Dawson can be a dick,” Bryce said, adjusting himself on the bed.

“Say, could you close the blinds? I want to see the Yankee game, and I can’t watch with the glare.”

I closed the blinds. Bryce turned on the TV to the Yankee-Royals game. “I think I could see myself in pinstripes,” Bryce said, stretching his legs.

I stood in front of the bed, blocking his view of the TV. “What are you doing?” Bryce said.

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“There’s something I need to tell you, Bryce.”

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, and you can save it. I don’t want to hear about it,” Bryce said.

“I think you should,” I stressed.

“No, I don’t. I know what all this has been doing to you, Paul. You don’t need to apologize to me. Accidents happen. It’s the risk we take when we play this sport. You’re a good pitcher, no matter what Coach Dawson thinks.”

I took the remote from the table beside the bed and shut the TV off.

“Not a Yankees fan, I take it?” Bryce said.

“What if I told you it wasn’t an accident.”

Bryce grabbed the remote and turned the TV back on. “Funny. Do you mind if I watch the game now?”

I took the remote away and shut the TV off. “Did you hear what I just said?”

“Okay. It’s a joke. I get it. Ha-ha.”

“You think I’m joking?” I said.

“Maybe you should be taking one of my sedatives,” Bryce said.

“I’m not joking, Bryce.”

His Cheshire Cat grin disappeared as he met the scowl on my face.

“You’re not making any sense.”

“Well, let me clarify myself. That day wasn’t an accident. You know why? I meant to hit you, Bryce. I threw that damn ball right at your head.

It was so easy, I didn’t even think twice about it.”

“This isn’t funny anymore.”

“It wasn’t an accident,” I said.

“Stop it!” Bryce urged.

“Do you understand now?”

“Enough.”

“Tell me you understand.”

“I said stop!”

I could see he was shivering underneath his bed sheets. I couldn’t tell if it was from fear or anger. I appreciated it either way.

“Why?” “Because I hate you, Bryce. I hate everything you stand for. You don’t deserve to wear a uniform. You don’t know what it’s like to work hard for something. I should be the one the scouts are looking at, not you!” I said.

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His lips quivered as he tried to say something. I turned him into an emotional wreck in a matter of seconds. It felt so satisfying.

“Weren’t we friends?”

I laughed at him. “You’re so naive.”

“Weren’t we?” he pleaded.

I replied with a shrug. The nurse with the funny walk returned with Bryce’s dinner, which looked like Salisbury steak, but could have been mistaken for dog food.

“You two are quiet. I would imagine you have plenty of catching up to do. This boy hasn’t been able to stop talking about you since he got here,” the nurse said to me.

Bryce grimaced at me and the dog food as I stepped out into the hallway to leave. When I turned, I found the patient across the hall staring at me with large dilated eyes and his mouth hanging open.

“Savage,” he said to me as I left the hallway and walked away from that horrible place.

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Lessons in Flight Sarah Harder

Dear Icarus: Let me wash away the wrath of a king, your childhood twisted into a single room, days spent on the windowsill ledge tracing escape routes through my labyrinth until I strapped you to a wooden bird frame and offered you the sky.

Dear Icarus: Let me dismember recollections of your watery tomb, the opposable thumbs that traced your face, collision with skin.

I told you to wish upon a dandelion, beware sun petals, and melted wax. Hold in scrambled breath, count to fifteen and exhale. But you blew too long, too high.

Dear Icarus: Let my teeth and meshed lips elongate into keratin, sift away human DNA. I planted a feather in cartilage: dredged bone marrow, twisted penny-sized crevices in my carven shoulder blades, sewed the incision. This time my spine will curl completely, for hybrids like us can be plucked clean of our plumage and left as offerings to Poseidon.

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Dear Icarus: Let the wind become my deity and I will atone for my sins, fearing mud and all children, boys like you who dreamed of flight, trailing clouds, joining a flock, until my wing-bindings slip and I join you in the sea.

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Transformation of War Poetry from Victorian Epics to Modern Truths Kristen Reidy Technological advancements in the twentieth century drastically changed the methods of war from the primitive tactics of the Victorian era to the mass destruction of modern warfare. The vigor of the cavalry and close-range rifles, which fared well due to the overwhelming strength of the British army in past military campaigns, yielded to the power of long-range artillery. As technology became more expansive, opposing forces began to rival one another in militant strength, leading to longer battles and higher death tolls. The introduction of chemical, biological, and nuclear weaponry during the Great War decimated generations, with over 37 million military and civilian casualties, and left the European landscape haunted and scarred. Minds torn apart by shell shock and the remnants of the carnage in the trenches left no agency for the people to escape the memories. Art became an outlet for the anger and the pain, and was a method of rebellion and recovery.

Joseph Conrad states in his “Preface” to The Nigger of the “Narcissus” that it is the “task of the artist” to seek the “truth” in these moments of life and to “make you hear, to make you feel . . . to make you see” (Conrad xl). During times of war, it is difficult for the artist to find these truths and offer them to his or her audience. War bombards the senses. People become numb to violence and grief as it happens all around them, and patriotism becomes pervasive. War poetry paradoxically represents Conrad’s sensual expression and exposes human suffering. It is finding a balance between life and death that poses the most difficulty for poets (Kendall, “Introduction” 2). This conflict has led to the creation of works that explore the complexity of the human condition in accompaniment with destruction. Despite its challenges, war poetry, according to Fran Brearton in “A War on Friendship: Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon,” was necessary for “survival” (216). In a time where nothing seems to make sense, poetry offers the audience, as well as the artist, some semblance of consciousness in a time of mass disassociation. This paper

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will examine the stylistic and thematic changes within Victorian and Modernist poetry in response to the elevated brutality of war. As warfare grew more impersonal and the people became more disconnected from reality, poetry became more individualized and communal with a shared desire for the “truths.”

Lord Alfred Tennyson was one of the first of the Victorian poets to show signs of disillusionment with English imperialism after the outset of the Crimean War of the mid-1800s. Leading up to the conflict, after forty years of “cankerous” peace, the English nation was just itching for a war (Markovits 483). Tennyson’s dissonance with his nation was sparked by the terrible “blunder” of the Battle of Balaclava in 1854 (Tennyson 134, Tennyson line 12 ). The Crimean War was the first war where the British army was accompanied by painters and reporters and the first to be captured on camera. With these new witnesses, the citizens of England were given the truths of war free of government mandate. Increased media exposure allowed the public to see this “military holocaust” in full light and challenged the Victorian poet to seek patriotism amidst the tragedy (Markovits 485). With “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Tennyson attempts to explore the madness of English society in its glorification of war:

Was there a man dismay’d?

Not tho’ the soldier knew

Some one had blunder’d:

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred...

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred! (Tennyson 134, Tennyson lines 10-17, 53-55) While seemingly patriotic and in support of the men’s “noble” sacrifice, Tennyson’s focus on the soldiers is a jab that the worn out, pro-war English aristocracy is no longer fit to rule. According to Stefanie Markovits in “Giving Voice to the Crimean War: Tennyson’s ‘Charge’ and Maud’s Battle-Song,” Tennyson was “always acutely aware” of his

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audience, using “The Charge of the Light Brigade” as an outlet to speak directly to the soldiers (484). The lyrical nature of the work served as a memorial to the “noble six hundred.” Tennyson focused on honoring the men lost as individuals, not as a loss to the cause, and expressed guilt that such a “blunder” had cost these men their lives in service to a “diseased” nation (Markovits 494). In spite of his anger and confusion, Tennyson retained “trust in the larger hope” that his people and his government could save themselves from their madness, as exemplified with his addition of the closing stanza in Maud: “we are noble still / and myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind” (Pite 49).

While still preserving the formal and lyrical structure—littered with rhetoric and illusion—of Victorian poetry, Tennyson’s Crimean War poetry attempted to comprehend the “messy historical truth” of a seemingly pointless war (Markovits 485). Tennyson is often accused of warmongering; though, given the history, he was more likely doing his best while working within the conventions of his imperial culture.

Like a large number of the British public, he felt disillusioned by the aristocracy’s apparent need for violence after the European nations had just recently reached a level of peace. Tennyson subjected his works to multiple accounts of pre- and post-editing, hoping to gain control and understanding over this newly exposed violence as well as his own internal conflicts (Markovits 483). Considering his position as poet laureate, this political and psychological disorientation was a trigger for even greater poetic transformations. Still, only receiving information regarding these war horrors through periodicals, Tennyson, like most poets of the time, was protected from the full front of war.

Despite also being a noncombatant, Thomas Hardy expressed his disdain for war more clearly than Tennyson and, in turn, provided another push away from war glorification. Hardy focused instead on the realities of what the men faced on the battlefield and in their return home with the trauma of taking lives and the loss of their sense of self.

According to Matthew Bevis in his essay “Fighting Talk: Victorian War Poetry,” in war it is not “victim or victor”; rather, they are one and the same (31). Settled on the edge of modern warfare, the Boer War of 1899 was the bloodiest and most expensive war the Victorian military had faced (Bevis 29). Although he only received second-hand information about the war from reporters actually on scene, the strength of Hardy’s Boer War poetry stemmed from his own personal grief after the death of

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two beloved friends to suicide at the hands of the public’s “psychological need” for heroism (Pite 39). His style of writing asked the public to question and discuss the war rather than merely accept the propaganda thrown at them by both pro-war politics and literature, such as Algernon Swineburn’s “The Transvaal,” which encouraged England, using graphic imagery, to “scourge [those] dogs” and “strike” the enemy down (Pite 3940, Swineburn lines 15-16).

As seen in “Departure,” Hardy excludes individual blame and instead places an emphasis on war fever as a worldwide epidemic. By expanding the viewpoint, Hardy pushes readers to consider the concept of war as a whole and thus prompts them to reflect on their own participation in this perpetual cycle of violence. Hardy offers no mention of the actual fighting the soldiers endure; rather, he focuses more on the psychological sufferings of the people and engages the reader to see war as more than just a military battle:

Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails,

Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men

To seeming words that ask and ask again:

“How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels

Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,

That are as puppets in a playing hand?

When shall the saner softer polities

Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land,

And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand

Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?” (Hardy 80, Hardy lines 5-14) The men are “blondslave” to their “Godlike” nations which “ask and ask again” for them to endure more and more violence and to put up their lives for “wroth reasonings.” The soldiers no longer charge the battlefield, but “tramp” like “puppets” as they can only “dream” of an end to the “severance” from themselves and of their families left behind. The desire for home and the effect of war on those left behind in the soldier’s search for glory is a theme present throughout much of Hardy’s war poetry.

However, while there is suffering in engaging in war, there is also harm in not participating at all, as “war became the intoxicating and terrifying reminder of what you had failed to achieve in your civilian life” (Pite 38).

This pressure to be extraordinary as a civilian and a soldier only further

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served to prolong the brutality and madness.

War persisted. Growing more violent and cruel, it continued to engulf and devastate nations. Pushed to the brink of total collapse, the world ultimately fell into the tragedy that was The Great War. Unlike Tennyson and Hardy, Wilfred Owen’s direct involvement with the brutalities of World War I and relative obscurity in the public eye allowed him to be far more explicit in his anger and even show hostility towards prominent Victorian poets (Kendall 57). After the mass public discontent following the graphic publications of the late Victorian wars, England seemed to have changed its mind about allowing civilian knowledge of the battlefield and began to censor media distribution. This type of “sanitized propaganda” prompted the World War I poets to adopt different methods of expressing to the public the horrors they experienced without access to visual representation (Kendall 147). Owen used this lack of concrete imagery to his advantage to produce some seemingly unimaginable scenes that yielded more power and emotion than a photograph ever could.

“Strange Meeting” embodies Owen’s pity towards war and its endless nature as two enemy soldiers meet in Hell. For them, death offers relief from the eternal war of life:

“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”

“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,

The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

Was my life also...

And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,

And of my weeping something had been left,

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,

That pity of war, the pity war distilled. (Owen 149, Owen lines 14-17, 21-25) Owen’s use of pararhyme such as “years” and “yours” and “laughed” and “left” rejects the lyrical and polished essence of Victorian poetry. In acting against the traditional pure rhyme, he creates discomfort in the reader and disrupts any possible connection between the dying soldiers and the sheltered civilians. When read aloud, his poems themselves embody the struggles of the front lines versus the ease and pleasantness of home (Kendall 54). Additionally, his repetition of words such as “grieves” and

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“pity” indicate a lack of hope for salvation, for both friend and foe, even in death. For Owen, his truths about the war became the feelings of soldiers dying and witnessing men dying in the most horrific manner with no apparent end. Even with a lyrical piece such as “I saw his round mouth’s crimson,” Owen is still able to shock the audience into feeling these horrors:

I saw his round mouth’s crimson deepen as it fell,

Like a sun, in his last deep hour;

Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,

Clouding, half gleam, half glower,

And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.

And in his eyes

The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,

In different skies. (Kendall 62, Owen lines 1-8) The traditional use of perfect rhyme, such as “fell” and “farewell” and “eyes” and “skies” and peaceful imagery of a falling sun may seem uncharacteristic of Owen; however, his manipulation of this mythical language employed by the Victorian poets to describe the moment of death of a young soldier eradicates any pleasant familiarity the words may have previously held. This distortion of the norm throws the reader into a state of discomfort. The work also brings up a question of faith.

Christianity was the dominant religion of England during the time and was utilized by the state to recruit men to war as a calling to God. Owen rebelled against this evangelical language and employed pagan ideologies, reconnecting the dying soldier to the natural world. As he dies, so does the “sun,” the “heavens,” and the “stars” (Kendall 63). Stylistically, the poetry of the Victorian era was conditioned to be formal and aesthetically perfect; thus, readers would come to expect the poems to follow applied rhyming schemes and exude Romantic language (Markovits 485). Owen’s modernism is shown through his application of both pararhyme and pure rhyme, as well as realistic and Romantic language among his poems by placing the readers outside of their norm and engaging them to react.

Though the impact of his words is held in high regard, Owen is often criticized that his writing is, according to Donald Davie, “incompetent” and lacks the “technical mastery” to be considered historic (Kendall 47).

Whether his variety is a product of his lack of higher education or due to the traumas he experienced on the battlefront—traumas that cannot be confined to Davie’s rules of “the art”—Owen’s war poetry stands alone in its significance (Kendall 47). Furthermore, these judgments don’t hold

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much weight in light of Owen’s “Preface,” to a collection of poems that was set to be published 1918, which states:

This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet

fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or land, nor

anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or

power, except War.

I am not concerned with Poetry.

My subject is War, and the pity of War.

The Poetry is in the pity. (Kendall 48, Owen lines 1-6) Owen’s concern is not with the poetry itself, but the impact of the poetry on the people: how they will react to his words and not how the words appear aesthetically. This assertion embodies a fundamental aspect of modernist writing, an attack on the Romantic ideals of the past generations. Owen’s statement also echoes T.S. Eliot’s statement in “East Coker” that “the poetry does not matter” (Kendall 49). Fulfilling Conrad’s task, the poetic aesthetic of his writing is only secondhand to the “urgency” to expose the truths of war that had been left untouched by the Victorian poets before him (Kendall 49). His adaptation of well-known Romantic imagery and symbolism contrasts against the graphic nature of his experience as a soldier and only further served to disconnect him from a society that inflicted so much suffering upon its own people.

A soldier himself, Siegfried Sassoon was a mentor and dear friend to Wilfred Owen and encouraged him to embrace his experiences in the trenches, to hold nothing back in his writing, and to tell only the absolute truth of war. Despite his influence on Owen’s emergence into realism, Sassoon’s work still retained much of the “aesthetic idealism” and lyrical essence of Victorian poetics (Brearton 213). In his piece “Mad Jack: Siegfried Sassoon at War & Peace,” Peter Quinn calls Sassoon a “man of contradictions” (22). Sheltered most of his life in his country home and then further in his service in the war—always on leave for injures or stationed far from the front lines—Sassoon’s exposure to the social instability of war was moderate compared to that of Owen’s (Crane 69).

Finding himself “caught between conflicting forces in himself as poet and soldier,” Sassoon struggled to move forward with the modernist progression (Brearton 221, 225).

Sassoon’s adherence to the traditional is most prevalent in the years preceding his military service. In “Absolution,” the first poem in his collection The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, published in 1917, Sassoon embraced the call to war enthusiastically and employed the use

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of bright imagery and the collective “we” in his assurance that “war is our scourge...fighting for our freedom, we are free” (Sassoon 11, Sassoon lines 3-4). Sassoon was not ignorant to the “horror of wounds and anger” (5); rather, he saw the importance of war to be much greater, referring to the processes of war as shining and “golden” (8). He had assurance that the pain of “loss . . . must pass” and that happiness is sure to come about from the “claimed...heritage of heart” and newfound brotherhood of the nation (6, 11). Despite also being of the same collection, “A Letter Home,” written as a elegy for David Thomas, a love lost to the war, presents a much harsher reflection on the casualties that come with achieving the “freedom” he had previously rallied for (Brearton 213):

Bones are smashed and buried quick.

Yet, through stunning battle storms,

All the while I watch the spark

Lit to guide me; for I know

Dreams will triumph, though the dark

Scowls above me where I go.

You can hear me; you can mingle

Radiant folly with my jingle.

War’s a joke for me and you

While we know such dreams are true! (Sassoon 40, Sassoon lines 65-74) As an attempt to find solace in the midst of such a tragic loss and the horror of “bones [smashing]” and “dark [scowling] above,” the narrator paints the illusion of battle as “stunning” and “radiant.” However, it is only in dreams that the narrator can find this light. In conformity with the classic Victorian fantasy, the narrator rejects the reality and is adamant that “such dreams are true.” Sassoon’s use of “I” and “you” before shifting back to the collective “we” exemplifies the beginning of his conflict between his own disillusionment and his need/want for communal understanding.

As Sassoon was sent onto the battlefield and experienced the horrors of war firsthand, his self-isolation and separation from his nation only grew. In his next collection of poems, Counter-Attack and Other Poems, published 1918, Sassoon continued to create another world for himself.

His desire to escape from his reality is evident in “Sick Leave”:

When I’m asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm,

They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead...

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In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;

And while the dawn begins with slashing rain

I think of the Battalion in the mud.

‘When are you going out to them again?

Are they not still your brothers through our blood?’

(Sassoon 85, Sassoon lines 1-2, 9-13) Echoing his words of brotherhood from “Absolution,” though now spoken with irony and disdain, Sassoon longs for the solidarity of his dreams. Although they are filled with the ghosts of “the homeless ones, the noiseless dead,” he is “lulled and warm,” whereas awake he is “unfriended” and tormented by thoughts of the soldiers left behind while he is in “bitter safety.” Though gone is his use of “we,” Sassoon retains a level of idealism and fairy-tale-like desire for a dream world rather than facing reality. Sassoon’s disdain for life outside the battlefield continues in “Does It Matter?” Deviating from his use of ambiguous imagery, Sassoon outwardly expresses his anger and contempt towards the public view of war. While many would think the tragedy of the soldier’s debilitation to be unquestionable, his repetition of “does it matter?” (Sassoon 77, Sasson lines 1,6) that this soldier has lost his legs, his sight, and his mind exemplifies the warped mentality of the British nation that it does not matter at all, “For they know that you’ve fought for your country / And no one will worry a bit” (Sassoon 78, Sassoon lines 14-15). In contrast to the initial glorification of the soldier used to incite these young men to offer up their lives, this public indifference towards the returning soldiers provoked Sassoon’s shift towards modernism.

Though Sassoon suffered with his isolation, his use of Victorian prose accompanied by modern tones removed a sense of comfort for the reader.

Without this security, Conrad’s “task” is fulfilled, and the audience is engaged to ask questions and to seek the truth. This “refusal of comfort,” according to Meg Crane in her piece “Siegfried Sassoon: A Solitary Witness,” was one of the most important lessons Sassoon passed on to Owen (69). Unfortunately, despite his anti-war poetics and substantial influence on Owen, Sassoon felt greatly “marginalized by modernism” (Brearton 225). His practice of the traditional lyrical style and ambiguous imagery held a sense of nostalgia for the “home” of pre-war Europe and the Victorian Romantics that were often scorned by many modernist poets, including Owen (Brearton 214). Despite feeling a separation from the era, Sassoon’s influence on war poetry’s modernist transformation is

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still significant and further represents poetry’s gradual change between the eras.

War poetry’s transition into modernism was typically not as aggressive or striking as Owen’s famous rebellion; rather, it developed in stages away from “imperial delusions” and into “sober realism” (Pite 35).

Beginning with Tennyson and Hardy, poets faced a crisis between duty to self, the people, and the crown. The increased exposure to the violence and carnage of warfare shook the Victorian poets’ understanding of unconditional patriotism, and the heroic and holy idealism surrounding war began to fall to hesitation and cynicism. Mass disillusionment coupled with the collapse into the Great War ignited the rebellion into modernism. Many poets, such as Sassoon and Owen, who were immersed in the death and destruction of war diverged from their predecessor’s devotion to state ideologies. Gone were the triumphant, mythical poetics of the Victorian wars and, in their place, arose the abhorrent realism of modernism. Experimentation with new writing mechanisms, such as multiple changes in rhyming schemes and language, left audiences uncertain, yet aware of the world around them. This awakening was founded upon the poets’ refusal to continue to support an abusive aristocracy and their desire to establish respect for the ordinary man.

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Works Cited Bevis, Matthew. “Fighting Talk: Victorian War Poetry.” The Oxford Handbook of

British and Irish War Poetry. Ed. Tim Kendall. New York: Oxford U.

Press, 2007. 7-33. EBSCOhost. Web. 18 Apr. 2015.

Brearton, Fran. “A War on Friendship: Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon.” The

Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry. Ed. Tim Kendall.

New York: Oxford U. Press, 2007. 7-33. EBSCOhost. Web. 18 Apr. 2015.

Conrad, Joseph. The Nigger Of The “Narcissus:” A Tale Of The Sea. New York:

Harper & Brothers, 1951. Print. 23 Mar. 2016.

Crane, Meg. “Siegfried Sassoon: A Solitary Witness.” The Use of English 65.3

(2014): 65-75. EBSCOhost. Web. 30 Dec. 2015.

Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928. Collected Poems of Thomas Hardy: With a Portrait.

London: Macmillan, 1930. Literature Online. Web. 23 March 2016.

Kendall, Tim. Modern English War Poetry. New York: Oxford U. Press, 2006.

Print. 9 Apr. 2015.

“Introduction.” The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry. Ed. Tim

Kendall. New York: Oxford U. Press, 2007. 1-3. EBSCOhost.

Web. 18 Apr. 2015.

Markovits, Stefanie. “Giving Voice to the Crimean War: Tennyson’s ‘Charge’ and

Maud’s Battle-Song.” Victorian Poetry 47.3 (2009): 481-504. Academic

Search Premier. Web. 9 Apr. 2015.

Owen, Wilfred, 1893-1918. The Complete Poems and Fragments. Ed. Jon

Stallworthy. Vol. 1. London: Oxford University Press--Chatto

& Windus--The Hogarth Press, 1983. Literature Online. Web. 23 March 2016 Pite, Ralph. “’Graver Things...Braver Things’: Hardy War Poetry.” The Oxford

Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry. Ed. Tim Kendall. New York:

Oxford U. Press, 2007. 7-33. EBSCOhost. Web. 18 Apr. 2015.

Quinn, Peter. “Mad Jack: Siegfried Sassoon at War & Peace.” Commonwealth

141.14 (2014): 22-27. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Dec. 2015.

Sassoon, Siegfried, 1886-1967. Collected Poems 1908-1956. London: Faber and

Faber, 1984. Literature Online. Web. 23 March. 2015.

Tennyson, Alfred. “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” The Golden Treasury of

the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language. Ed. Francis

Turner Palgrave. London: Macmillan and Co, 1897. Literature Online.

Web 23 March 2016.

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At Least Here He is Loved After Adam Scheffler Marly DiFruscio

My fiancé’s kitten is speckled and petite and lonely and smells during the day like Mango-Peach markers.

She loves him more than I can love anyone in a theorem of love that I search for—she lies on the floor.

As he works she makes strange sounds: swallowings, gaggings, chirpings, purrings like the pulsing-heat of the world, like the empty cat-tails of the world in its love of the ponds and of catching feathers. My fiancé is very loud and very torrid like the Everglades and some people think he is humid and bubbly just like it.

But his kitten knows better, she knows he is loud like avalanches as he calculates equations tapping them loudly with his fingers, thinking in the numbers he has heard of distant cold and love; loudly as lead scratches down the overdone numbers in the snow with its revulsion of salt and softening.

I have listened carefully to the kitten. I have taken the kitten’s secret about him. I have figured it out.

He is loud and so he measures cryptic numbers and I am quiet and so I fumble through long books rushing through paragraphs quickly to look up at him as lovingly and desolately as the kitten perhaps never as lovingly as the kitten who unlike me has nothing to explain who does not read books except the floor-books that aid in the jump, the ceiling, the scratch, the sleep.

Sick of the kitten, I have had too much also of books, bathetic, filled with unanswered whining, I think of my hair which is too brittle like pine needles I send my fingers through it like a mockingbird and feel sad but curious, and wonder if I want to die. But sometimes

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he tells me he likes my legs and I take him into my lap and feel for once superior to the kitten.

Before this cat he had another cat I never met, a tuxedo, who was not at all lonely who swallowed his adolescence eagerly like a mudstained cockroach and brought it back covered with sleek fur, sleek saliva of evening and died; and now she is only a picture in a silver frame on the top of his desk as he works. It makes me think of all I can’t see: the long list of movies he gave me how they existed all my life and some before it and his answers right now invisible to him too like the idea of a mushroom to all the roots underneath their tangled whispers and yawns: how their caps are stained blue or green as an egg’s shell in April, grow wide as the trunk of an oak, unless the ground goes on forever unbroken—but there he is at least, loved. Watched by the cat who is dead, watched by the kitten who smells of markers and is alive watched by me, who is sick of books and of life too but is alive and glad to look at him, at the tiny scars on his cheeks where stress, oils, hormones lay waste in his youth, to sit one day loudly in the rush and fury of solving before the three of us who cannot help, who wait in stiffness and shiftings for him to turn around and speak gently our names.

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It’s Raging Inside of Me by Angelique Carrier Digital

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The Puppet’s Dance by Mahu Kamal Photograph

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Breakthrough by Kayla Arias Acrylic ink

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Saeva Generosum by Mahu Kamal Scratchboard

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In No Particular Order, A Series of Sleepless Nights Jerico Lenk

the sky breaks around the moon i hate you you said say something that tastes like the truth her lips moved on mine like two cold slabs of meat you said just do me one favor, because i’m not there to—

punch the bitch in the face for me your love moves in me like an animal hot day, fresh water, i jumped from the bridge to prove something you punched him in the face then cried in the backseat of a cop car crunch of glass cool night, rushing train, i jumped on the tracks just to prove it to you cigarette sparks popped off the pavement like a sparkler on the fourth of july crunch of gravel we swam half naked in the moonlight and the algae glowed below us at your brother’s on the fourth of july, we shoot roman candles the way they tell you not to who knows who else has been under these hotel sheets and i cry we slept half naked and miserable, our skin sticking to the air mattress you: you are like driving home in the fog at two a.m. blasting classic rock they don’t know what we’ve done under their sheets and i laugh but you don’t and you:

you are denny’s at two a.m., snorting, kicking footsie and wasted stare-downs say something to make me leave but you can’t and sunrise breaks the sky open

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Undecided Brennen Daniel

I cannot say what made the moment significant as I stared outside a small window into the dreary foothills of Scandinavia. The warm notes of the morning sun ashen the overcast sky, and a dull pain pulsed through my temples strengthened by the glow outside. I was on edge, shaken by the rattle of the rusted window frame.

The air in the cabin was stale with a hint of vomit. The seats felt smooth, a wool finish, sickened with the slight crust of some prior passerby. The booze cart hadn’t been around since midnight, and I had stopped counting the hours since.

“Breakfast?” A soft voice carried through the cabin door.

I slid the metal door open to welcome a train attendant. She was quaint, but unmistakably beautiful with long blonde hair and a sly smile; the gleam in her eyes did little to mask the exhaustion weighing on her shoulders. She carried with her a cart of fruits, coffee, and assorted teas.

“Do you have any whiskey?”

She appeared confused at first, but then revealed a small bottle of Jägermeister. The sight of it made my brain flinch. I needed to cure this hangover.

“So, you don’t have whiskey?”

“Beer, wine, or aperitif.”

“Aperitif?”

“Yes, Jägermeister.”

I looked at my watch and back at the attendant. “And what would I do with Jägermeister at seven in the morning?”

“What you’d do with whiskey?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’ll take a coffee, too.”

She poured the coffee and handed me the bottle before closing the door. I unscrewed the cap and poured its contents into the hot coffee. The warmth of the cup brought life into my hands, a familiar purpose. Not long ago I spent my time barricaded in an art room creating a sculpture portfolio to submit to art school; I aspired to be an artist. I’d spend most my day molding raw materials into images from my imagination, and I used this expression to escape into a gentler world.

I sipped on my coffee and gagged. The bitterness from the Jäger

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reminded me of my homeward distaste. This was my second trip abroad since I graduated high school. I gave up my aspirations for art for the rush of being a drifter with the companionship of strangers—the only side effect being an alcoholic.

I began to think about a phone call I had with my mother weeks ago in Ghent. She had again stressed the importance of higher education. I would be the first in my family to attend college, and I had been putting it off for two years now.

“I love you,” she repeated, “but I can’t help but think that if you don’t decide your future now, you never will.”

Her tone made me uneasy, and now, weeks later, I struggled to overcome the feeling as I scratched at the dried vomit on the seat. With each flake I flicked from my fingernails, I thought about what my life has built up to now. I thought about the productive days in the art room with my portfolio, the sense of action, the idea of direction. I knew I could go home and finish what I started, to pursue art, but the turns in my gut felt as unsure as the day I graduated—a forbidden romance with the unknown. Maybe mom was right, but my heightened addiction to oblivion embraced me.

“I’m not ready to go home.” I murmured. No one around to hear me. Uncertainty swerved in my thoughts as the wheels screeched along the train tracks. An epiphany of white noise compelled me to grab my backpack as the world decelerated into another vacant countryside station.

I exited the train and walked down the platform. Each step distracted me from the bigger questions in my head. From behind the station the sun eradicated the obsidian morning horizon. The light ignited the remnants of the North Sea coastline, and I was soon overwhelmed by the freedom of filthy saltwater—fortitude found in forgotten doubt. I turned toward the train one last time as it was engulfed by fluorescence. I wouldn’t be going home yet. I still haven’t failed myself.

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drunk

After A. Van Jordan Courtney Clute drunk (↓) adj. 1. being in a temporary state in which one’s physical and mental faculties are impaired by an excess of alcoholic drink; intoxicated.

As in, my mother is messily drunk. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she says, pours more from a bottomless bottle, and sips. The grapey poison enters her mouth, screws her tongue. It slides down her throat and spews slurred speech. Then it warms her blood, loosens her limbs, and reaches her liquid stomach. The stomach empties—detoxes to a sober state. 2. Overcome or dominated by a strong feeling or emotion. As when, I’m drunk with rage after cleaning up after my mother one too many times. I scrub puke from the car’s back seat and I feel the roles reverse. I punch the car door, drunk with rage, drunk with fear, drunk enough to shake my mother from sleep and scream, “What’s wrong with you?” Drunk with the idea that one day she’d quit, but she’s too drunk with immaturity. 3. v. past participle and nonstandard simple past tense of drink. As when, my mother drunk the warm water I forced down her throat, like feeding a baby her bottle. She lay in bed; the sheets roped around her body, her hair a knotted mess, her diamond studded dress strap hanging off her shoulder, her bloodshot, watery eyes closed. I stayed and watched her sleep.

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No V c ncy Amanda Hill

The wind nipped at my spotted rosy cheeks as I paced alongside the shabby ‘70s-shag-rug-colored motel. My steps were cautious because the cement was covered in a layer of sleek ice; not thick enough to be sturdy, but not thin enough to force my cherry red stilettos into penetrating its surface. I was well accustomed to the weather, seeing as the majority of my job involved lingering outside of dingy buildings similar to this one, but I was not used to waiting. Forty minutes late, I thought. No one has ever kept me waiting longer than fifteen. I could smell the drugstore perfume wearing away under my faux fur jacket and being replaced with my own sweat. Thinking back, I never understood the appeal to others of that ethanolic vanilla, but it seemed to unanimously be a crowd pleaser.

I was starting to get restless. Counting the thirty-seven steps it took me to walk the span of the side of the building was getting boring and I can specifically remember thinking I could only survive staring at the flickering neon “V C NCY” for another five minutes before scaling the sign and repairing it myself.

My head whirled around in response to the tired chugging of yet another nearly obsolete vehicle. The only cars my clients ever drove were cheap and likely stolen, so I didn’t figure this would be any different. I partially opened my jacket to reveal a corset, despite the wind gusts, in an attempt to signal to this man that I was the one he was looking for. My gesture was received by a perplexed look and a vulgar holler.

“Hello there, sweetie. You’re lookin’ for some work, I reckon? Well, all right!”

“Only if you’re a Mr. Cliff Hayes.”

“Not me, but from where I’m standing, I sure wish I was.” ​I responded with a wave from my favorite finger and continued pacing. I was in no mood to be harassed by Jethro McRedneck, but I noted that he had entered room 215 just in case my client failed to show.

I considered sitting on the curb, but my fishnets had a nasty tendency of getting stuck to ice and tearing. Probably because of how sweaty I got when I was anxious.

A rose-gold-colored BMW pulled into the parking lot and it ran so quietly that I wouldn’t have even noticed it, had I not been facing the

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entrance. The windows were so black that looking inside was like trying to find an end to the night sky. Countless paranoid thoughts began racing through my mind once his left turn signal indicated that he was headed my way.

Was this a sting? Even worse, was this a boss? I considered running to the lobby, but soon discarded the idea because it was obvious the driver had already seen me, and I thought maybe he would appreciate my dedication. He was approaching almost comically slow because of the speed bumps barricading his path. This heightened my anxiety, granting me yet another reason to hate speed bumps; as though anyone needed more to justify their hatred of them.

I was feeling nauseous. This could have been attributed to the fact that the vending machine lunch I had was expired, but more likely it was just because I was nervous. Men who drove BMW’s had no business fraternizing with women like me besides to satisfy their own internal self-righteous God complex, ultimately ending in our demise in one way or another. I wished he would just shoot me or arrest me because the suspense was even worse to me than both of those combined.

He parked directly in front of where I was standing, and when his door opened, I called, “Cliff…uh, Mr. Cliff…Hayes?”

“Yes ma’am. That’d be me.” ​I ventured closer to him, looking like a scared antelope trying not to wake a den of lions. As soon as I was a step away from him, I tripped on the jagged mushy asphalt and fell right into him.

“Ma’am,” he started, removing his white sunglasses and securing them onto the white jacket unbuttoned just enough that it revealed a hairless chest.

“Do you know me? Recognize me?” ​I studied the young man in front of me. Thick, dark hair.

Exaggeratedly orange skin except for rosy cheeks sprinkled with flecks of cinnamon. Smooth fresh skin around his dark eyes that bled down into a soft nose. Flashy all-white outfit complete with matching leather boots. His entire demeanor screamed, “My dad’s a country club member who can afford Macy’s,” and I was sure I had never even been within even twelve feet of a man like him.

“Listen, I’m really not sure what you want from me, since it’s clearly not what I’m selling.” I impressed myself with the sudden surge of confidence I was able to exude.

“You’re right. I don’t want what you’re selling. I just want to talk to you.”

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”I won’t tell you who I work for, so you can go right ahead and skip that step. Just book me right now.”

He chuckled, and I could feel my cheeks flush with embarrassed anger. He wasn’t a cop, not a competing pimp, I decided. Just a pompous rich kid amusing himself by making a mockery of me. I turned to walk away, in a desperate attempt to preserve whatever dignity remained in me.

As I took my first step in the opposite direction, the boy meekly called, “No, mom... Don’t leave.”

I froze, and not because it was thirty degrees outside. Without facing him, I replied, “Wrong whore. I have no children.”

Proceeding to the second floor of the motel in pursuit of McRedneck’s room, I concluded it was better for my boy to think his mother was anybody other than me. I lit a cigarette and leaned on the off-white, mold-coated balcony outside of room 215. I did the right thing, I mused.

I could have never given him a BMW. Hell, an age fifteen high school dropout wouldn’t have even been able to feed him.

I extinguished my cigarette and knocked on the door.

At least he has my freckles.

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Fake IDs Ash Alonzo

“shout out to all the super nice drunk girls I’ve met in bar bathrooms, hope you’re doing well and I miss you all” – tumblr post Tonight I’m anyone I want to be.

Tonight I’m the life of the party.

Double fisting drinks and dancing on tabletops, doling out kisses like candy and downing candy out of expensive mini Ziplocs.

Tonight I’m the mysterious stranger slouching, over the corner of the sticky bar, promising a night you’ll never forget with someone whose name you’ll never learn.

Tonight I’m: the honorary member of an acapella group girl painting everyone’s nails mint green cowboy riding the bedroom door on its hinges visiting-significant-other one with the weed the beer pong champion birthday/promotion/accepted celebrant girl with the bleeding foot, sliced open by a stiletto dancer sharing a bottle with DJ spinning solitary in the corner the hungry guy that ate an entire loaf of bread random that stole two bottles angry drunk that punched the sliding glass door slurring mess that puked in the stairwell not sober but somber one who spent the party crying on the patio.

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Tonight I’m meeting someone on the bathroom counter, in line for the toilet, mixing drinks at the makeshift bar, lending a cigarette, borrowing a light, taking a breather down the hall, tightrope-walking the double yellow lines.

Tonight I’m mourning the memories that won’t last, here then gone like the patio furniture that one time, thrown off the balcony and lost to the night.

Tonight I’m saving our memories in pictures and poems, repetition preserves and protects long after we’ve passed out of each other’s lives.

Tonight I’m anyone I want to be.

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birthplace

Yvelisse Bonano Pena my mother gave birth to me in an unfamiliar blizzard. she smelled of palm trees and mumbled lullabies under her breath while she held me in her arms. her birthplace is my motherland. her Spanish sticks to my tongue, echoes in my ears, and, no matter where I go, i will always be the product of her homeland. i will always be asked where i am from even though I am claimed by this country of the “free.” always asked what languages my tongue speaks. tan skin viewed foreign. lack of accent criticized. in her broken English and with love, mother warns me to be careful of this “united” country.

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Right to Travel Sarah Harder

is scrawled on tattered cardboard.

Calling for water and free passage, they are labeled: refugee (for when a mother’s cradle can’t screen in immunity), illegal immigrant (yet they braid their arms between barbed wire, hoisting children over chain-link fences), displaced (water seeping through skin, lungs reject brine, flailing limbs hunt for sand). It paints their skin, grime budding like forgotten stubble, tattooing faces, sewn on with tear gas and pepper spray until they become categorized, and stamped processed (stripping away nationality like soiled gauze), extracting ethnicity from politics.

Bits of Syria lie next to crinkled plastic bottles, puddles of Afghanistan carved into asphalt. Blankets are embroidered with white grains of salt, evaporated sweat, outlining their migration to strangers; advice on train routes, bus numbers, and closed borders are traded down the line by word of mouth.

Their low hanging eyelids accuse bystanders: Europe, your humanity is lost.

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The Standoff Simeon Overbo

“Jeremy, we’re ready,” Mister Stenton’s voice accompanied the hand on my shoulder. Out of habit, I reached for my cellphone to check the time, only to remember it had been dead for weeks because of the power outage. I shook the sleep from my head and looked around. The others had geared up, ready for the day’s patrol. It was something we started after the second hurricane blocked most major roads in the southern half of the state. Captain MacIntyre, the leader of our little hunting-party-slashpatrol, figured it wouldn’t be much longer before looters started showing up. Being the go-getter that he was, he encouraged a proactive solution, namely, us marching through the woods on a daily basis.

“Think we’ll run across anybody today?” Gary asked. Mister Stenton shook his head.

“Let’s hope not.” Captain MacIntyre stood up. “Not many people outside of town seem to have kept their humanity.”

The others had already started to form a line when I fell in step behind Nick, shouldering my rifle the way he showed me. He had point duty first, which meant that he lead the line. Of everyone in the group, he and his brother Gary were probably the most suited to the role. A handful of the others served as policemen, but he and his brother Gary had actually been infantrymen. Nick had been deployed somewhere in Afghanistan, had actually fought house to house.

“Anything I should do when it’s my turn in front?” I asked.

“Just keep your head on a swivel and be ready to shoot at a moment’s notice,” he answered. I was a little disappointed. From what I knew about him, I figured he had to have more advice. Maybe I wasn’t ready for it.

Who knew?

I watched him as we wove through the woods to see if there was anything specific that I could mimic when it was my turn to be point.

The only thing I really noticed, though, was that with the heat, the forest seemed to shimmer in the distance, the way air does over asphalt.

“Make sure to drink,” Mister Stenton reminded us. I took a big gulp from my canteen and felt better almost immediately.

The first shift went by quickly. We stopped, I walked up, and Nick took his place farther back. We’d already cleared three rabbits and a pair

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of squirrels from the snare lines. Gary killed them and set them in a sling to carry so we could cook them when we got back to town.

I took another pull from my canteen. We all took a seat to rest, thankful for the occasional breeze. Captain MacIntyre called from somewhere in the middle of the line, “Ready to move when you are, Jeremy.”

I nodded, more to myself than to him, and set off again. As the trail started to fade, I noticed that some of the others had fanned out to either side behind me. I remembered Mister Stenton’s instructions to stay in sight of at least two others of the group at all times and tried not to move ahead too quickly.

A second later, it started. The first thing I heard was Mister Stenton shouting, “Drop the weapon!”

I flinched, as though someone had punched me in the gut, and almost let go of the rifle. Another voice, one I didn’t know, screamed back, “Get on the ground!”

Then I saw the other’s face. Not someone I recognized. Off to the right I saw another man burst through the woods, also armed. Before I knew it, another man appeared in front of me, his weapon only a few feet from my face.

“Drop the weapon or I drop you!” he screamed. Every instinct in my body told me to surrender, but I could hear Mister Stenton and Captain MacIntyre shouting back at their opponents, and that gave me the guts to hold on. Two more men burst out of the brush on either side of my opponent and I couldn’t help but think it was over then and there.

I couldn’t have run if I wanted to. My body wouldn’t move, wouldn’t respond.

All I could think was that this was a band of raiders or looters, exactly what our little hunting-party-slash-patrol was meant to confront and deal with, and that I wasn’t ready to “deal” with anyone.

Thankfully, Gary and Nick moved up on either side of me. Each looked at once calm and ready to tear the throat out of a grizzly bear.

Gary had his rifle trained on the man to the left; Nick had a line on the one to the right. Each of them started shouting too.

By now, at least ten people that I knew of were aiming at each other, and everyone was shouting. The entire forest seemed swallowed up in an angry chorus of yelling and screaming for various people to get on the ground or drop their weapon.

Every second that ticked by got more tense, if that was possible, and I

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could feel my chest thumping so hard I thought it was trying to explode.

Sweat rolled into my eye and I flinched a little. The man in front of me noticed and almost fired his gun.

Finally, a different shout managed to rise above the rest. “Everyone shut up!” I recognized it as Captain MacIntyre’s voice. One or two people on either side let their voices die down for a moment and then started shouting again.

“I said can it!” MacIntyre’s voice thundered. This time even louder.

Mister Stenton and Gary stopped shouting and the man in front of me stopped for a moment, looking over in the captain’s direction with a perplexed expression for a half second, before returning his gaze to me.

I took advantage of the moment to readjust my aim, but my hands were shaking. Another voice joined in, not one of ours. “Enough!” Several more voices quieted down.

“Everyone! That means you too, Nick!” MacIntyre boomed again.

Nick let his current scream die in his throat, and for a few seconds, the forest was filled only with the sounds of insects and distant birds.

Captain MacIntyre spoke again, “Okay, listen, we’re native to these parts, and we don’t know who you are. From what I can see here, each of us has at least six men with lines on each other. All it’ll take is one idiot shooting off a round and all those people die. I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like an awful lot of folks to lose in one day.” He paused, as though waiting for a reply, but none came.

By now I noticed that various members of the other group had started stealing glances in the captain’s direction. “Keep eyes on your target, Foxton,” Nick cautioned me. I tried to steady my aim and refocused on the man in front of me.

Captain MacIntyre resumed, “Look, I don’t know what you want, but I think we can all get out of this without wasting ammo, friends, or food.

How about we back up, nice and slow, you back up, nice and slow, and we both go back the way we came?”

My heart leapt. Maybe there was a chance that all of us would get out of here alive. The man in front of me blew a mosquito from his face.

At last the answer came. “That sounds fine, ‘cept that we’re moving north.”

Any chance of a purely peaceful resolution seemed to evaporate with those words. Our town, or what was left of it, was almost due north of where we were now. Gary shifted slightly and I realized I’d let my focus

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drift again. I began to wonder who would break first. Probably not Gary, Nick, Mister Stenton, or Captain MacIntyre. I didn’t know the others well enough to say. Then the thought hit that I might lose it.

I’d never fought, much less killed anyone before, and the prospect terrified me. Mister Stenton had given me some basic pointers on aiming and control of the rifle, but we hadn’t had the luxury of actual target practice with more than a few rounds thanks to the scarcity of ammo.

I thought of Lena back in town. I thought about how in a few hours she’d start worrying about whether we’d make it back, how I might never again feel the soft press of her lips, hear her melodic laughter...I swallowed, mouth dry. Thankfully, Captain MacIntyre’s voice broke my train of thought. “All right. Where are you headed?”

“North,” the voice replied. Given the man’s tone, I couldn’t help but think that he was holding something back. Captain MacIntyre coughed.

Maybe he sensed it too.

“Any chance you’d be willing to go east or west a few miles first?”

“That’s an awful lotta extra hiking and we’re pretty low on food, so... no.”

“I thought not. Okay, so it looks like we’re both stuck here until we come to an agreement or someone snaps.”

“Looks that way.”

The cicadas’ buzzing seemed to grow louder and I felt sweat trickling down my back. Now, with no one talking, all I could pay attention to was the man standing in front of me with a rifle leveled at my skull. I could see every bead of sweat forming on his forehead, every fleck of dirt on his gun. His fingernails were cracked and dirty.

I imagined what it would look like if someone shot right now. In short order, our skeletons would be picked clean by ants and rats and bears.

For a few minutes, the thought consumed me. How would Lena know what had happened? Would they have enough people to send out a search party? Would they even find us?

Seconds ticked by for what felt like hours. At last the voice on the other side spoke up again. “Tell you what, ya give us whatever food and water you’re carrying, plus whatever ammo isn’t in your guns, we’ll take that detour.”

It was a trap. Had to be.

“And then you’ll track us until we’re dehydrated and pick us off without any problems,” Nick countered.

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“Water’s not negotiable,” Captain MacIntyre agreed.

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

“In fact, to make sure we’re all thinking clearly, how about everyone takes a good gulp right now?”

“And then y’all shoot us,” the other returned. “I don’t think so.”

“All right,” MacIntyre offered. “I’ll go first. Then you.”

“Spivey, can you see their speaker?”

“Yep, he just took a chug,” a new voice answered.

“All right,” the leader answered. “Here’s how we do it: two at a time, one o’ each side.”

“One from each side at a time you mean?” the captain asked.

“Yes.” “Sounds good to me.”

Nick gave a tiny shake of his head. I didn’t know why, but he didn’t like the idea.

“Our own little Cold War,” Gary muttered under his breath.

Nick nodded to that.

Their dislike of the idea didn’t change anything though, because next it was Gary’s turn to drink. He and the man across from him eyed each other as they took their time reaching for their canteens. That was when I first noticed that the other man was far dirtier than any of us. For that matter, so was my opponent. Even the ring on his left hand seemed coated in grime.

Each of the people on the other side that I could see was wearing some kind of backpack, and several had clothes hanging out of them, but none of them were even a little bit clean. They looked like they’d been hiking through the woods every day since the storms. For all I knew, they had been.

The man currently drinking on the other side looked like he’d been bodybuilding for his whole life, and I breathed a silent prayer of thanks that my man looked more like a toothpick.

“Done,” Gary announced, almost in perfect time with the other man.

My opponent reached for a steel flask at his waist with one hand, keeping his rifle as steady as he could with the other. I realized that it was my turn on our side and tried to do the same. My gun swayed wildly for a second as my tired hand slipped on the grip, and I felt the trigger compress ever so little. For a second, I thought it was all over. I thought the thing would go off in my hands. The other man, whose aim was

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steadier, would put a bullet through my head and everyone would die right there.

Somehow, the weapon didn’t fire and I regained my grip. The other man took a sip from his flask as I got the lid off mine and started raising it. He finished first, but waited until I eased my water bottle back down to say “done.” Nick went next; his free hand went to his water with a measured ease, and I found myself wondering how he stayed so steady. In the back of my head, I knew it was because he had done this before. He’d stared down the sights at another man—men—and pulled the trigger.

“Done,” he announced. The man across from him licked his lips.

“Done,” he croaked.

The next pair finished their drink without incident. I couldn’t see Captain MacIntyre, but I could only assume that whoever had a shot at him took a drink next.

“Okay, everyone’s good? Anyone need something to eat?” MacIntyre’s voice pushed through the drone of cicadas.

“We’re already low on food, hoss,” the other leader replied.

Captain MacIntyre grunted. “Maybe we should all sit down, same way we took our drinks. I’m sure you’re as tired as we are.” I was thankful for the suggestion. Even with the sling, my arms burned from holding the rifle for so long.

“Watch your tone,” the man across from me warned.

“Talking down to a man ain’t the way to get him to do what you want,” the other leader agreed, “but you can sit down.”

Nick didn’t wait to be asked before sinking to one knee with the same deliberation he’d used to grab his canteen earlier. “Better to shoot from,” he muttered, so quiet I was surprised I could understand him at all.

Gary and his opponent knelt down next, and I followed suit as the men opposite both Nick and myself found seats on the damp forest floor.

After a few minutes, the rest of the two parties started to take their seats as well.

I found a palmetto stump in front of me and rested the barrel of my gun on that to give my arm a break. Somehow, just getting water and sitting down helped take the edge off. Even Nick seemed to have relaxed.

As if to further soothe the situation, a light breeze picked up, stirring the forest into a gentle applause.

We all sat for what felt like forever. Two men decided to lower their guns while the rest found places to rest them. The cooler air brushed my face, and I could feel some energy returning.

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“How about we try negotiating that departure again?” MacIntyre sounded as optimistic as ever.

“What are you offering?” the other leader asked.

“We’ve got three rabbits and two squirrels.”

“And you want us to move with only that to supply us?” Given the edge in the man’s voice, I guessed he had no intention of settling for so little.

“Yes I do,” MacIntyre answered.

“You gon’ tell me ya not carrying anything else?”

“Nothing we can spare.”

“Y’all are townsfolk, right?”

MacIntyre waited a moment before responding. “Yup. And a good bit of the town is armed too.” It was something of a bluff. Only four of the people in town that had guns weren’t with us on patrol.

“How ‘bout showers?” The question shocked me. Did he really think we had running water? The thought of running water made me notice that I had to pee.

“There’s a river about a mile west of here,” MacIntyre explained.

“Really? Then why aren’t you willing to part with your water?”

“I don’t like dysentery,” Nick answered.

“You tell us to get water from the river, but you won’t drink it yourself?” the other challenged.

“Gotta boil it first,” MacIntyre answered, “Just don’t wanna do that when someone else is trudging through our woods armed.”

“Right.”

Like the previous times, this negotiation was going nowhere.

“We’ll be fine, Jeremy,” Gary assured me. I realized my hand was shaking again. Getting back to Lena meant keeping my cool. To calm myself, I took a brief glance at the trees, only to realize the forest had started to get darker.

It wasn’t dusk yet, so darker skies meant cloud cover. Cloud cover that dark meant one thing: rain. Was another storm on its way? In answer I heard the first ticks of rain in the tops of the trees. The smell of earth and decaying leaves reached my nose a minute later as the drops began to penetrate the forest floor.

The man in front of me shifted again, and I thought I noticed his teammate squirming as well. A few drops of water hit my scalp and rolled down my neck. For a minute, I thought this would be the breaking point.

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For twelve men, no more, all with guns pointed at each other, sitting on the uncomfortable forest floor, sweaty, hungry, thirsty, and already tired, rain would be it.

Then I realized that the rain, while unpleasant at first, actually relieved one of the worst things we’d been going through that morning: the heat. I could feel my own mood evening out without a conscious effort. Yes, I was still petrified, the man across from me still had his finger on the trigger, but the removal of the heat took with it much anger and discomfort.

“Boss, I gotta piss.”

I couldn’t see the new speaker, but his words bolstered the hope I’d been given by the sudden rainstorm.

“Me too,” the man in front of me stated matter-of-factly.

“I’m guessing by now, a good chunk of us need to go,” Captain MacIntyre suggested. “You want to do that one by one, or can we just let this whole thing fizzle out and go our separate ways?”

The rain kept up a steady drum as we waited for a response. At last the other side’s leader gave his answer.

“You give us those rabbits y’all offered, you got a deal.”

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Hansel & Gretel on a Day Trip Jerico Lenk

suppose your father were a bird roosting on a telephone wire between dirty tennis shoes knotted at the tongues, not a butterfly like the band-aid on the bite marks of industrial staples in bare little baby feet but a beady-eyed bird watching pretzel stick cigarettes plucked from a refurbished crayon box, breakfast pastries trailing fairy dust crumbs through the cherry sweet stench of gasoline as baby feet with chigger bites from running on tippy-toes like wild west indians ran so they wouldn’t be heard sidle on tiptoe around broken bottles and gas station litter to hold up some sticky crust in offering to the sleek oil-spill kind of bird who would rather pick through dumpsters on his own.

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Art Kids—Class of 2012 Mahu Kamal

We were blue kids jazzing motley canvases, ecstasy in every stroke.

Paint pumped in veins with nothing to loose we harpooned audiences— Monet them in red for green.

Shower us smiles and oohhss and aaahhhsss!

Music balked— half dance we left paint smeared clothes in Laundromats.

Half-washed brushes— Half-said goodbye to the kids they should remember.

Babel of voices echoing through white walls— chanting…

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Something Borrowed, Something Blue Grace Hussain Layers upon layers of white tulle shroud the young lady’s legs. Her torso is a sea of lace and embroidery. The gown is old, by far older than she is. She had borrowed it from a friend whose grandmother had worn it. The dress had been the one certainty in her wedding. As a little girl, and even as she grew into a woman, the flowers, groom, tables, guests, and every other conceivable thing had been a mystery. Only the dress had been a certainty. Peeking out of the bottom are a pair of Victorianstyle boots. She had purchased them from a consignment store not two months ago. Her hair is done up in a braid on top of her head. The blond twists are entwined with silver vines and leaves. Yes, she is a beautiful bride.

I run my fingers over the blue welt forming on her neck. It really is too bad she won’t be making an appearance at her wedding. Lovingly, I fix her makeup, which was smeared in the struggle. I lay her out on the hotel room bed, perfect and pure in every way. I place a blood red rose on her chest and stroke her cheek one last time before striding across the thick, warm carpet toward the door. With a click, the door locks behind me as I go back to my room.

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curls

After A. Van Jordan Courtney Clute curls (ξ) n. coils or ringlets of hair. As in, my curls define me. At the grocery store—“My, my, what I’d do for those curls!” at the airport—“You have such lovely curls,” when I meet someone—“Are those curls natural?”

I wonder, what about my eyes, my laugh, the way I care too much? My curtain of curls hides a spectacle of speech, a show of teeth, a dazzling performance of jokes. My curls can suffocate; can clog my monologue before it reaches my tongue. The audience is caught in the curls—knotted and wound in the poufy springs and swirls, lost in a matted mess, unable to open the show behind it. How can one watch a performance when the curtain is closed? But what if they’re finally able to pry into the show and are disappointed? Will they throw rotten tomatoes instead of roses? So I keep the curtain closed and let that be the main event.

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He Knows the Familiarity Brennen Daniel

He finds himself sprawled on a sticky, damp concrete floor. A single light bulb illuminates the steel doors that line the walls around him. The light flickers, casting shadows on the rough ground beneath.

Nausea overwhelms him as a splitting jolt jumps through his arm, up his spine, and against his cerebral receptors. Horror and confusion ravage him as he stares at the gnarled stub of his missing hand. He questions why he’s in his current situation, but only for a moment, as tears stream down his face. Around him the room pulsates, expanding in and out. He pushes himself up with his remaining limb, rushing to the door in front of him.

He is covered in blood. His hand slips, struggling to turn the knob of the metallic gate. He begins to scream. There isn’t a sound.

Only a dream. He awakes in the frustrated condensation of sweat and tears. A violent storm outside startles him to the comfort of his filthy living room. He holds his left hand in front of his face in bewilderment.

Isolated from reality, he lays on a torn apart couch, only to leave time to time to restock a collection of open wine bottles smothering his coffee table—drinking straight from the bottle to avoid dishes. There is only a single light source from the bleakness of a corner lamp. On the floor, light reflects from aluminum beer cans and a slow revolving loop spins from a ceiling fan. He shifts his attention from his hand to the fan occasionally.

He takes a swig from an open wine bottle beside him. It’s sour from age. The red poison tears his throat as he forces the liquid down. He clenches his eyes to the burning desire and stares back at his hand. He contemplates the dream he just awoken from and realizes it’s the first time he has dreamt in weeks.

Heavy knocks startle him. He looks to the door for validity. The unpredictable white noise of rain and thunder rolls through louder, accompanying more impatient strikes against his building.

“Yeah, hold on!”

He worms his way off the couch onto his feet and places the wine bottle among its comrades.

“Always in the evening with this guy,” he mumbles.

He places his hand gently on to the doorknob, creeping the gates of

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hell open, “listen, man, it’s late,” and sees nothing but the world of terror heard from inside his sanctuary. He freezes. Frightened by nature or what demons could have managed to find themselves in—he looks back inside. The peripheral of someone, or something, rests among the mess beside his couch and coffee table. A gust blows the door against its hinges.

He stares at the figure, a woman, alarmed. Only during eye contact does he recognize her. Heavy dark brown curls fall over her smooth pale complexion as black and white floral outlines bleed through her dress onto her skin. The dress hovers over her dangling bare feet. She sits with her legs crossed, a pack of cigarettes resting on her lap. She takes one out, tossing the pack aside within the abyss of alcoholic clutter.

“Hey, Dirk,” she says, lighting a cigarette daintily in her mouth.

Within a motion she drags it and glides thick smoke from her nostrils and mouth. She looks at the clutter of bottles and cans, moving her finger around the orifices, and picks up the bottle of wine he had been drinking from before.

“It looks like you already started the party. Did you plan on offering your little sweetheart a drink or—” “What the hell are you doing here, Julie?” He exhales his words in anxiety.

Julie smiles at him, taking another long drag from her cigarette.

“I guess I’ll just help myself then, huh?” She takes a swig from the bottle and coughs a little bit of the red sludge back up in displeasure.

“Foul,” she struggles to articulate, “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

He sits in the love seat adjacent to her and glances at the pack of cigarettes on the table.

“Says the one smoking American Spirits. Since when do you smoke, anyway?”

“Well, I figured any smokes will kill you, but at least these will make you feel like it.”

“Such a disgusting habit.”

“I’m afraid you and I both know there are plenty of other things that can make you feel disgusting, love.” Julie looks into his stale blue eyes.

“Aren’t you curious why I’m here?”

“I suppose that’s going through my mind right now.” He grabs the bottle from her hands to drink. “But then again, there’s a lot going through my head.”

The two sit in silence staring at each other in dead air. She releases a

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smile, sending an electrical bliss through his reflexes. He flinches at her gaze. It has been a long time since he has seen such a beautiful smile on such an aesthetic woman. It speaks nothing but despair—her pity, his regret.

“Oh, cut the shit, Jules. What do you want? You don’t return my calls for months and now—” “And the coward shows his true colors at last,” she exclaims. “You know avoiding the inevitable, that’s something, but—” “But what? I’ve been waiting for anything to tell me that I can be regular again, that we can go back to the way we were, but you and I both know it can’t happen.”

“Oh, spare me.” She puts out her butt in an open bottle and lights another. “Haven’t you ever stepped outside to breathe? A minute to contemplate what you already had and lost?”

“Not everything is so black and white, you know.” He inspects Julie and sighs, “I haven’t felt right, how can I feel—” “And there you go again. You made your decision, and I made mine.

Besides, we both know about Maria.”

He rubs his eyes to concentrate on Julie. “Wait, how do you—” “Who really needs to cut the shit now? You think that you went to Spain and I got dumber?” She inhales. “Adulter.”

Dirk studies her. Her demeanor is cold, it chills the air around him.

“I’m not proud of myself. Impulse, if we can call it something, got the better of me”.

“And impulse left me alone after an unimpressive ‘fuck session,’ didn’t it? Bravo, Dirk.”

His voice raises, “I don’t get this. Why are you here? What do you want from me?”

“To admit it.”

“Admit what? That I’ve repented?” He drinks from the bottle, catching the ash and cigarette bud in his mouth before spitting up. “Fuck.” He chases the distaste with the remains of a different bottle. “Two long months, months of running away from myself, running away from you, learning to overcome suffering with salvation. Learning how to forgive myself—” She laughs. “You’re pathetic. Do you really believe yourself at this point, love?”

He slams his fist against the table, knocking over some of the bottles.

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“So what do you want me to say then, Jules? That these past few months I haven’t been thinking about you? That one day you’ll come back and everything will be back to normal? This idealistic, naive thought that it’ll just be me and you again, right? Just Dirk and Julie? Do you want me to admit that I made a mistake? I know I made a damn mistake—” “You tell me. After all, there isn’t a Dirk and Julie anymore. There will only be memories.” She sprawls herself out on the couch and exhales smokes. “Last I checked, it could be Dirk and Maria, right?” She puts her cigarette out on the coffee table and laughs. “You don’t know what you want anymore.”

He begins to cry. The same anxiety of his dream sweeps over him again as he quivers his sentiment. “It’s not that.”

“Then what was it, love? You knew the consequences of your choices.”

He looks down at his left hand. His whole body is shaking. “I just wish we could still be friends.”

“And why is that? After all—” “Right. Memories are forever.” He looks back to Julie, but she’s gone.

The shadow of the loop circles the room around and around until the knotted rope falls in the place she had been. He looks at the intricacy of each knot, the art of his noose, and back at his hand. It all feels numb to him: the bottle guided by the despair within himself, the light illuminating his angst, and the tremble of his non-dominant hand. He lays down on his couch to stare at his hand, thinking about his dream. A part of himself, lost forever from his decisions. He looks to his left hand and ponders all he has lost. He looks to his right hand and sees what he still has.

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Now That Last Shaft of Sunset

Title after “Big Finish” by Kimberly Johnson

Sarah Harder harvests her scooping thighs and protruding breast bone, unraveled finger joints; singed skin scatters from her hull.

She cauterizes torn sinews, lets her body whorl beneath snapping flame.

Pretend it isn’t turning to rind as daylight teases her gaze from the husked form she dared own, name.

Watch it revert to a carcass, a breathing corpse. Before she ambled into night, before the sun lay across the horizon and stars claimed their own and she was baptized a Salem Witch-how to disinfect a burn when the coarse wooden benches she testified on, polished slick with truth, babbling hysterics, prods her calves with slivers.

And her neighbors’ children, the ones she carried

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from their wombs, blemish every word, paint her as the devil’s consort, cry out

blasphemer, conjurer, demon.

For God would save the innocent they said. She would have, too, before the Trials, before when they were just mites, back when this sunset was not her last.

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And Back Ash Alonzo

I “Sorry I’m late—my dealer’s going out of town this weekend and tonight was the only time she could meet me before she left,” the reporter explained around the Camel dangling from his mouth. He yanked a yellow legal pad and water bottle out of his messenger bag, tossing them onto the sticker-covered, rickety table in the “VIP Lounge.” A sticky, black couch took up about a third of the small room, with the table shoved up against the opposite wall. I stood behind Reggie, my fingers nervously running through chord progressions on the back of her chair.

“It’s not a problem, really,” Reggie enthused as the reporter dropped into the chair opposite her. “Thank you for coming and for thinking of us for your article!”

“You can thank Modern Lullaby for canceling their interview last minute,” the reporter laughed again. I shot a look of disbelief at Reggie, whose genuine smile tightened into the grin-and-bear-it smile that all musicians quickly learn when they enter the business. Looking up from where he was digging through his bag, the reporter asked, “Do either of you have a pen I could borrow?”

II “Sorry,” I apologized with an embarrassed smile to the reporter. I put the carton of milk in the refrigerator, leaving the nonperishables on the kitchen counter to be stowed away later.

“No, no it’s fine,” the reporter assured me with a grin, lowering her iPad from where she had been taking photos of me receiving the fans at the kitchen door. “How often do your fans bring you groceries, and when did that start?”

“Um, just before our single made it onto the charts, I think?” Reggie said, looking at me for confirmation. I nodded as I re-assumed my seat on our couch, and she continued, “Our fans read an interview where we mentioned that all we ate were the candies that they gave us at our gigs

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and stuff, and I guess they felt bad for us starving artists.”

The reporter gave a small laugh, dictating Reggie’s answer while asking, “Do they bring groceries to your gigs at the clubs, too?”

“Yeah,” I responded sheepishly. “Our regular venues are great—they set up a table for the fans to leave their gifts so they can enjoy the shows.”

“This will be your first stadium tour, right? Opening for Regency?”

“Yes, we’re very...nervous,” Reggie confirmed with a small, excited smile. “But the guys in Regency are great. They’ve been showing us the ropes during rehearsals and stuff.”

The reporter turned to me with an apologetic smile. “I have to ask—is there any truth to the rumors about you and the bassist from Regency?”

I tried to control my smile from completely taking over my face. “Um, no comment.”

III “Sorry,” Reggie interrupted, shooting me an apologetic glance. “We’re not discussing Regency in interviews.”

“I had to ask,” the Billboard reporter acquiesced with a genial smile, holding her hands up. “How about we move on to your plans for the new year. Is it true you collaborated with Stevie Nicks for one of the tracks on your upcoming album?”

“Yes,” I enthused. I’d learned that the only way to divert attention from a scandal was to present a new topic that would generate the same amount of hits. “We met her when we went to LA for the first time, actually, and we’ve been wanting to jam with her for some time.”

“Is she going to put in a guest appearance during your next tour, then?” I saw the reporter’s eyes light up at the chance to break the story.

“We would love to have her on stage with us, of course,” Reggie said.

“But everything is still very much up in the air right now as far as our next tour goes. Right now we’re just focusing on putting out another album for our fans.”

“There’s been an interesting lack of promotion concerning your next album and tour.Why the radio silence?”

“Our next album is going to be very...raw,” Reggie supplied with a vague wave of her hand.

“Like the surprise acoustic set you did at The Grove last month?”

The reporter turned back to me with a pointed look. Over her shoulder, I

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saw my PR agent/babysitter look up from her conversation with the label manager to shoot me a warning look, drawing a crudité across her throat in a totally subtle gesture. “You caused quite a stir when you dedicated your performance to the ‘capitalist slaughterhouse that is the music industry,’ as you put it.”

“Um, yeah, our fans love authenticity,” I hedged with a tight smile.

“And your complaints about stadium show ticket prices being a model of the ‘disproportionate economic distribution’ in America?” she continued. Reggie hid her smirk, taking a sip from her cold-pressed juice.

“I believe you called them an ‘extortion of the working class’.”

“Oh, that. Well,” I hedged, pushing my hair back. “I mean it’s true, isn’t it?” Even without looking away from the reporter’s surprised face, I could feel the collective attention of the green room focus on me—other performers, management, record heads, and Meet & Greet winners alike. “If you’re farther than a level away from the stage, you’re essentially paying hundreds of dollars to watch the show on a huge TV or on the phone of the person in front of you.” Screams echoed down the hall and drifted into the green room as an assistant rushed out the door.

“So you’re saying you wish less people would come to your shows?” the reporter asked, and I could see her workshopping sensationalist article titles in her head.

“I mean, I guess it’s to be expected when your fan base grows—more people want to see the shows, you need bigger venues,” I acquiesced. “But even on this side of the stage...I dunno, I just feel like there’s so much you don’t get to see or be a part of. When we go home for vacation, we still hang out with the staff from the venues we performed at when we were just starting out. But with these big concert halls and stadiums or whatever, we only meet a small fraction of the staff and all the people that make our shows possible.”

Reggie rolled her eyes at the reporter conspiratorially. “He just thinks the solution to every problem is a worldwide culling.”

“Show me one problem that wouldn’t be better if we weren’t overpopulating the Earth,” I shot back, accepting a sparkling water from a stagehand with a smile.

“Sounds like you’re getting a little tired of the limelight,” the reporter commented casually.

I glanced at the recorder sitting between us on the black, glass table.

Its red light blinked steadily back at me. “Something like that,” I smiled,

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equally casually.

IV “Sorry I fucked up the riff on ‘12 Guys You Meet Through Tinder,’” I pant, following Reggie into the lounge.

She tosses me a bottle of water, rolling her eyes. “You were fine.Great actually. I haven’t seen you that alive on stage in a while.”

I chug half of the lukewarm water before flopping bonelessly onto the sticky, black couch with a laugh. “Haven’t felt this alive in a while.”

“Hey.” I look up to see Reggie smiling down at her combat boots, sitting on top of the sticker-covered, rickety table. “Are you happy?”

I feel my grin stretch all the way across my face as my eyes slide closed, crossing my arms behind my head.

“Yeah.”

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Undercurrent Crystina Falero

Your body is a vessel, outdated sailcloth pulled taut against weathered mahogany, a jagged figure-eight noose around your neck. I watch you in the sun, follow the curve of your shoulder, watch your hands tighten bowlines around my wrists, watch the tides mar your face. I’ve been told that I’m eclipsed from the outside, that I coast the surface of love like the Umpqua Dunes by dusk. I’ve been told that I sail smooth waters by eyes alone, that only a body can make me scream. You lit me like kerosene, locked a finger-laced anchor to my throat, you pulled me from the whitecaps to your depth, and they say I only see the body.

I saw your undercurrent smile and your salted skin, all of your sun flares that collapsed to the seabed. The bruised-purple hue of the ocean is the darkness in your smile, and they say I only see the body.

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Am I Holding Myself Wrong?

Damian Dimock

“Be. Here. Now.” echoes between my ears, sung in surround sound, a mantra, a song the DJ spins. Drag and drop nostalgia induced time travel: a musical k-hole. a backdoor programmed into primate wet-ware netting that I am tangled in.

What symbol on the schematic represents longing, neglected years now dusted in gold. Until the tumblers line up just right.

Open. Eject. Away we go— Candy cane swing set that always houses a family of wasps. Arms scrape against rusted bolts and chipped weathered paint. I run inside.

Swollen skin cooled under mom’s homemade baking soda paste magic—whatever—it is it just works.

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Why I Smoke Cigarettes Victoria Royal

the ash reminds me to burn the smoke reminds me to rise

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thanks for reading!

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