Underground Art and Literary Journal 12.2

Underground

Art and Literary Journal

Cover Art by Infinity Coleman

Adviser Bryce McNeil, PHD

Underground is the undergraduate literary journal of Georgia State University. Production of the journal is funded by student activity fees. Issues are provided for free to all Georgia State University students, staff, alumni, and guests.

Underground retains first publication rights for submissions accepted by the journal. It is our understand ing that all rights for pieces in this issue remain with Underground until they are published, at which point all rights revert back to the artist or author.

© Underground 2021 Georgia State University

Contents

PROSE/POETRY

SOL SWENSON

Sleepyhead 11

Your Corpse is Showing, Dear! 54

TREVOR HARRIS Meaningful Conversation 31

HAILEY BROYLES

me & my misery 42

HANNAH MATHEWS

TRENT JUSTUS

Knocking at my Door 32

Mirror 14

Park Management 52

RANIA BASHIR

Are the angels in need of a haircut? 18

LIZ BRAMLET Decay 20

ADRIANNA LEDRA Fruit 28

MARIA-PAULA RAMIREZ WONG How Unfortunate 36

JOY AHN

Union of Shades 39

MAXIMILIAN LLOYD Goodbye 47

Dozing 56

ART

KIMANI Paper Weavings 16

The Weight of It 59 Silk n Sawdust 15

HELEN WU Bad News 62

KALEE WILEY 9/16/21 63

CLAREDON SHARP

Empty Thank You Card 51

When You See Me 44 Bloom 45

LAYLA AMAR Entrance To You 34 M1nd 43

SPENCER TRUETT Intervention 48 Shepherdess 29 Summer Lovers 38

JOY AHN bluebell 19

NICOLAS VISBAL Deadlights 13

Portra 400-Bird Book 30

NOEL AUSTIN Smile in Darkness 22

CHASE VETTE Kylie and Her Ice cream 46

MUSIC

LIL VYL PACE 40

IXTZUL Noches en Mexico 21

TROY DEASE JOHNSON Epitome 53

PAULA VALERO Plaza de Bolivar 55 Tierra Querida 57

KAMAU ROBINSON Mood Swings 41

Editor’s Note

Dear reader,

This is my third semester being editor in chief, and if you know me, you know I sometimes have a hard time sticking to a new hobby or interest unless it drives me passionately mad.

I’m happy Underground has been one of the few things I could keep doing forever with the right team and the amazing student body that Georgia State has.

This issue was created to showcase the electric feel and ingenious minds of GSU students. Every submission has a voice that’s dying to be heard and I’m happy that you all have trusted the Underground team to give it a safe space to do so.

This magazine is for you, yours, and for the voices that are to come.

Hold on to it and take care of it.

With all my love and gratitude, Paula Valero

Sleepyhead

By: Sol Swenson

What’s your name, Sleepyhead? Are you alright? Your bags are dark. They’re sinking, Falling, Sunk. Did you sleep well? You did? But the bags, So dark, So heavy. How can you stand them? How can you stand? You aren’t happy? Have you tried dying?

Everyone’s doing it. I died. And still I walk. I died inside, just try. You can die, and still you’ll talk. Soak your eyes In flatscreen pesticides, Your body will survive. Soak up the static buzz, Tan in the noise, Let yourself rot. Just kill the bags, And heart, And mind, Oh Sleepyhead, Please die, We want to see you look alive.

Deadlights

By: Nicolas Visbal Writer—Photographer—Teacher

Mirror

By: Hannah Mathews

Hannah is a first-year at Georgia State University that is working towards getting a Bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in creative writing. Hannah is from Grayson, a small town in Gwinnett County, and graduated from Grayson High School with an interest in nonfiction writing and poetry.

“I wrote [my poems] to connect feelings I have with something tangible, a bit more understandable than just the thoughts in my head. I want to share them because I feel like many of these feelings are shared, and I would hope that they bring clarity to others who have trouble putting their thoughts to words as well.”

Some days when I look in the mirror, I am dry and warm. Some days when I look in the mirror, I am dripping wet and cold from the fight from which I have just returned. And some days when I look in the mirror, it’s not a mirror at all, but a reflection riddled with ripples.

I spend ages looking down at the image that stares back, begging me to take a long, dark, chilling dive into its waters.

Again and again, I jump into the uncanny knowing it will be days before I can look at myself wet again and even longer before I will recognize myself dry.

Some days, the mirror is

the other side of the water, I see myself looking up, wondering how long I’ll be under. Once I fall in, I stay for periods that seem to lengthen with each decent.

I wish the waters were dark. I wish they were murky, but they are clear. As deep as I go, they are clear and I can see her dry on the shore, reaching for me.

Sometimes I reach back to no avail, she is too far, and I am too deep to fight the tons of water on my chest. While I can always see that escape is inevitable, each time, it seems less likely than the last.

Silk n Sawdust

By: Claredon Sharp

silk & sawdust on wood panels

collage

Paper Weavings

By: Kimani

Kimani is an Atlanta-based textile artist. They are currently finishing up their Bachelor’s in Fine Arts at Georgia State University. The themes in their work continuously explore Queer identities and intersex uality. Kimani has many hobbies but their favorite is quilting. They really enjoy how relaxing piecing is. This series of unorthodox collages uses images sourced from vintage pornographic magazines. The images feature black women either solo or engaging in sexual situations with one another. The intention behind this body of work is to turn something once viewed as shameful into a work of art. It is more of a celebration with festive colors and eyecatching 2D designs. Each collage is made of printed cardstock.

Are the Angels in need of a haircut?

By: Rania Bashir

Rania is currently a Georgia State student majoring in Art Administration.

Are the angels in need of a haircut?

Or do their shiny locks breach our atmosphere and sway just above our grass? Plant themselves in our dirt and rinse themselves clean in our tides

If I were to latch on, would I rise as well?

Until I lose my breath in the clouds and melt into the sun, Fleshy remains plunging back to earth, Splatting the sidewalks and trimmed yards, fences, and pools

Would eyes remain lowered, lips sealed?

Would anyone see me?

Maybe even turn their whole body in my direction?

Or would I sink with the coral, fading in color and breaking apart until I am but a fragment of my former, swept in by waves, left to be discovered on the shore by the woman who raised me

Would fingers with decaying cuticles lower me back to the sea?

Splashing salt water into my folds and crevasses, washing her baby clean again

Making sure no creatures have tucked themselves within my skin, seeking shelter, tired of the forcible waves, weak from the constant cries, could I bring them peace?

Could I wrap them tightly in the strands of hair swishing in the sea? Secure them to alluring tangles Embed them within the spirals of tightly wound curls

Could I pull tauntingly on it?

Yanking the hair hard enough so the head of an angel would dip its chin into our skies and appear from our fog, like the moon revealing itself behind a passing cloud Oh, how loudly I would scream up towards her listening ear

“Lift us, we’re rotting here, raise your head, take us for a ride on your silky auburn locks, let us splatter on the metal boxes, holding letters that will never be read take us above what the eye no longer sees, I’ve lost my vision, misplaced my name tag words all sound the same to me now, nothing feels as it once did,”

Should I be surprised when I hear the snipping of scissors?

bluebell

By: Joy Ahn

Decay

By: Liz Bramlet

Liz Bramlet is a freshman majoring in both English as well as Film and Media.

“This piece was made as a means for me to reflect on what I “do for fun.” It’s not thrilling or exciting or even all that entertaining, but it is often the only thing I have the energy to do after hours of ringing up customers, writ ing papers, and keeping up with deadlines. Reality is exhausting.”

her hands are warm, but her feet are cold, cocooned beneath a fleece blanket that reeks of American Spirits, a stench reminiscent of her youth.

ultraviolet graffiti vandalizes the nines she calls her eyes. “I’ll be blind by the time I’m 50, if I live that long.”

a funny guy plays a game. little sister instinct tells her it’s better to watch him play well than play badly herself.

“I’m having fun,” she told herself. a hard lie to swallow and she knew it.

truthfully, she was bored, but her bed was her refuge, a cozy casket to house her cadaverous body. what a delightful thing to be so comfortable… yet so incredibly, undeniably, and absolutely bored.

Noches en Mexico

By: Ixtzul

Smile in Darkness

By: Noel Austin

Noel Austin is a senior Journalism major and photographer.

“I wanted to use my cameras as tools to better articulate visual stories or messages or just to document. These photos show how for some, we have to smile win a dark place in our life.”

By: Adrianna Ledra

Adrianna Ledra is currently a second-semester freshman and a sophomore by credits.

“I wrote this while I was still living in New York City, and it brings back memories of times when I realized I valued even the most minor things in life. Something so small like fruit that millions of people eat every day is an object to ponder about.”

it’s simple if you can imagine; the soft flesh of a rotund, plump fruit.

starting off small, a cherry, fresh, tart, and red. tall green stem extending from its rosy head, reaching up and back.

you grasp the glistening fruit, and let it rest against pursed lips. bite.

the delicate skin breaks and pink dribbles into your mouth. your lips pucker.

what about an ample pear? it fits warmly in your palms its rump firm, and crisp.

a knife sits in your hand, steady now, you slice, crunching into the pale innards.

a section sits in your mouth. you bite, and a new sensation floods your taste buds. soft and sweet. very firm. it’s peculiar how dry fruit can be.

there’s juice running rampant in your mouth, so how could your teeth feel so squeaky? and your throat and tongue gasp for air?

now, entertain a larger melon whose ripeness emanates a perfume into your nose.

a cantaloupe, or a honeydew. outsides comparable to a rough concrete sidewalk but don’t drop it.

an orange pureness of a papaya, so sweet and drips with a saccharine sap, so tangible and playful.

the abundance of the meat is slippery under my grasp, and I devour every last bit.

seeds, however, are bitter, tan, black, and pungent.

the taste of a seed is vile, although smooth and round, an oral fixation, yields fruit.

Shepherdess

By: Joy Ahn

Bird Book

By: Nicolas Visbal

Meaningful Conversation

By: Trevor Harris

over the years, seldomly drunken cups of coffee, bitterly made up for lost time. you said you had something you wanted to say.

after you apologized with your hands folded on your lap, you folded a napkin before dabbing it on your lower lip. you told me this would be the last time we'd talk.

bitterly made up for lost time, over seldomly drunken cups of coffee we talked over the years. you said you had something you wanted to say.

after you said what you truly wanted to say, we sat in silence for what seemed like meaningful conversation.

Knocking At My Door

By: Trent Justus

“To the keepers of my fantasy, I’ll protect yours if you protect mine. I’ll probably try and protect yours anyway. Keep that in mind.

Writer, creator, lover...”

So much of the world around us, when it really starts to shake,

Is down to a matter of people acting.

No, not your high school theater kid plays, or your faux-gold Oscars and the Academy, But true to life, often unmeasured, movement.

This is the type of stuff that comes off the screen, out of your dreams and nightmares to cradle your last fear.

It often starts with a dance, a kindly prance even, taking your strides into account. Then, one day, its rhetoric starts to kick at your shins with venom.

Boiled thought turns to thoughtless action, and you look out your window to see your whole town start to spiral.

The minds of others suddenly pursue a message that’s meant to daze you with a certain ferocity. Clouds of nerves, hysteria like rain.

Familiar doors start to fly open and shut all over the city, booms in the distance, foreign footsteps and fire start to litter the streets.

The chaos of the world starts bleeding into that quiet corner, the place you call home.

It starts shaking at the windows, whispering through the cracks, running amuck in the halls.

Then the door,

CRACK… CRACK… CRACKS.

Door knocks like thunder drops.

They catch you in your tracks, Hollow. Hello! Barks the wolf on your doorstep, huffing something mean and manic. Begging to intrude. It’s the same gross call throughout all of history.

What can you do?

Where do you go when you need to feel safe?

Run, or escape to a hiding place. Hush, stay cool. Or do you merely stand and clutch yourself, frozen in fear.

Settling into your fate, your all-too-real flaming fantasy.

Do you invite the fire of some other man to walk through your door?

Let the depths of humanity run through your home?

Do you act, or do you react? Do you act with them, or do you act against them?

How do you act? What is your run, what is your stun, what is your fade to play?

What the fuck do you have to say?

Talk to me, talk to me. Because I often don’t know…

How do you scrap with thunder? How do you wrap the green eyes of a plunderer?

Are you going to succumb to it, run under it? Or sweep across with a rainbow to light your darkness; enlighten his darkness.

His light, your darkness.

More simply, how do you talk to them?

Do her words fail you? Or do yours not reach her ears at all?

Do you ask for a dance again, try to come back with an even fiercer thunderclap, or do their barriers bereave you?

Do they even give you the chance?

…

Breaking down doors; blowing the scathing winds of ideology; treading the same-old worn routes of war…

Could we wage in other ways? Could we engage bearing weapons of roses? I’d rather be pricked than pulled apart.

Better yet, could we speak softly in the light of day, so that we may finally see all of each other. Not how we’ve done but how we still have the chance to do. To hear the external and listen internally. Seek all their angst, dreams, and fears. They might be yours too.

This is how to prosper even in the crisis of history, even in the cradle of misery or mystery. I beseech, just don’t force your anomalies on me.

Even if I only speak to myself, next time, before you rave your next rant, before the next bombs drop or thunder rings, just listen to the birds sing. And still, listen more for love,

Because your heart and those ones you hold so dear, I promise, they live here too, waiting for you.

May they live long and may long live the love of life’s reign. May long live only love’s pain.

Graciously, help me to make sure that that’s the only thing knocking at my door.

Entrance To You

By: Layla Amar

Layla Amar (b.1998) is a self-taught Palestinian-American artist born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. She creates pieces compiled with layers containing multiple mediums such as ink, pastel, and paint. Focusing on drawing and painting, she explores communication with the self immediately after extensive disassociated states. Time dictates her work in that it is ever-present, proving that every traumatic event is constantly alive and replaying within the self. Her work uses mark-making in the pictorial space to articulate experiences within the traumatized brain to resolve the inability to label intense sensations. Overall, her practice investigates the intersection be tween inherited trauma, her Palestinian ancestry, and lived experiences.

How Unfortunate

By: Maria-Paula Ramirez Wong

Maria-Paula was born in Peru and immigrated to the U.S. with her parents when she was two years-old. At Georgia State, she is double majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and Women’s Gender & Sexuality Stud ies. Her roommate is a sassy, free-range bearded dragon named Bernie. She enjoys watching sitcoms with her partner and eating cereal for dinner.

It was the crime of the century: a husband shooting his whole family, two children and his wife, in their small cottage home before turning the pistol on himself. It was the most atrocious thing to have ever happened in their town. But to one man, it was an opportunity. He bought the small cottage home from a relative of the family and opened it up to the public.

Step right up, step right up, and tour through the infamous cottage house! Step foot in the very rooms where a husband killed his wife and two children. A dime each! Children are free!

The town was appalled, and yet, they showed up in crowds. They gathered outside the cottage and formed lines that wrapped around the house. Over time, the attraction grew, renovations were added, and the story was transformed: the husband killed

his family, with an axe, on the day of his daughter’s birthday, and positioned their headless bodies around the dining room table for months, pretending they were still alive, before finally hanging himself from the giant southern oak tree in their backyard.

Step right up! Step right up! Tour through the infamous Axe Homicide Cottage Home for just a quarter! Kids only a dime!

People came from out of town. The lines for the attraction circled the home four times over. Peanut stands were stationed for guests’ convenience as they waited to enter the infamous cottage home. Hands covering their mouths, guests gasped in horror as they filed inside, walking around the dining room table to witness the very birthday cake still at the center.

Groups sauntered single file through the halls of the house and saw axe marks in the walls of the cottage

home, imagining the family scurrying away from the husband as he swung his axe wildly around. Outside in the backyard, the southern live oak tree stood with the noose still swaying from her thick, strong branches. How unfortunate, they thought, stuffing their mouths with peanuts. It was surely the worst thing to have ever happened to their town.

Summer Lovers

By: Joy Ahn

Union of Shades

By: Joy Ahn

Joy is a creative writing major and staff member for the Underground. “Union of Shades” is a Shakespearean sonnet that evokes familiar pictures of forbidden love to paint an elopement of queer lovers.

Before the lark precedes the morning glare, Allow me sanctitude between your sheets, For thy wife’s side dost I tonight declare, Before absconding with nightingale fleets. Dear mother curses rebel waves of womb, As father mourns a wasted consummate, Cast aside the seal to this elder’s tomb,

In clandestine affair am I prostrate. Elope with me, demure Adonis mine,

For love in shade of perjury and night, Dost pale beneath the burn of wedding shrines, And turret stairs bring seldom forth thy light.

For I dost cast aside fair breast and plum, Uranian for thou shall I become.

Lil Vyl

Mood Swings by Kamau Robinson

“My name is Kama Robinson, I’m an Atlanta native and I’m in my senior year at GSU. I’ve been making music since around 2015, and I’ve spent a lot of hours trying to perfect my craft. When I was in NY attending St. John’s before I transferred, I was making my debut album Mood Swings which I hold very close to my heart. I think the music I make is impactful and those who hear it can take away something for themselves every time they listen.”

me & my misery

By: Hailey Broyles

Hailey Broyles is a sophomore at Georgia State University.

“When I write, I try to describe the way colors and patterns form in my mind and make up the things I feel. I hope that those who read what I have written will see their own sort of color and pattern and they’ll feel something too.”

flowers choke me but only the stems encase my skin for i am not deserving of the euphoria the petals would bring

i am sentenced to the slowest death of you starving my heart until it puckers in hunger and its protections wear thin

the thorns push through dull pain and introduce misery a cocky bastard i never got to know until this very day in which you force him on me

me and my misery we are in love we replace the things you’ve stolen from me.

M1nd

By: Claredon Sharp collage

When You See Me

By: Hailey Broyles

if you can feel my eyes on you, like you say, why don’t you turn around and look at me if you really feel me watching you, can you feel the intent brewing behind my eyes can you feel adoration seeping through cracks in my logic can you feel the ground beneath you shake as it separates from the floor and rises above the rest, effectively creating a pedestal high enough for me to catch my breath before you turn and when you turn to look at me you say

i can feel your eyes on me and yet despite the monotone disdain in your voice and the arid coolness of your words, i still manage to melt like chocolate and sink to my knees in front of you your eyes are deep and tired and red, disguised in autumn blankets and muddy waters, like cherries, the center is not but pure cyanide and i have been looking for a hidden deathly fruit to end my life on.

Bloom

By: Claredon Sharp

collage inspired by the song “bloom” by blackparty

Kylie and Her Ice cream

By: Chase Vette

Goodbye

By: Maximilian Lloyd

Maximilian Lloyd is a writer and filmmaker from Chicago, Illinois. He has been published in Right Hand Pointing, Haiku Journal, and Nanoism. In 2018, he won silver in the ZO Magazine Teen Media Expo for poetry.

No scarves for The missing, No photos, Faces fading, Names once Too sacred To write Or the acts Too sweet Call upon Them quieter And quieter Inside, tinders Blown, moving Me on.

By: Spencer Truett

“What are you doing here?”

“Trying to forget, I… I think.”

“You can’t be here. The conscious mind was not meant to go this deep.”

“You are making no sense. I-I mean me, I mean y-”

“Shut up, will you? All you do is talk all the time, spouting your worthless drivel, talking about how depressed you are. That’s why you rely on the drugs, isn’t it? You seek that fleeting high so you can forget.”

The voice stresses this last word, making it sound languorous and slow.

“Listen to me. You need to stop this. I’m not the one in control out there, but man, you’re killing us.”

“Dude, listen. I didn’t take this stuff to get some lecture or to discover some inner truth. I did it to get high and see cool shit.”

“We’ve had this conversation before, you know? At first, I loved it. Someone to talk to in this cold place. The only reason I knew I even existed was because of you and that flame. It used to be larger, you know? Crackling with energy. It vibrated with love, laughter, and lust. I could feel it in me too... those same feelings... that longing. Soon, all I knew was that fire, but it started fading… then one day, boom! You popped in here. You told me all about your problems crying and hurting, yet you also told me about life.

“Then I realized we were the same person. Just you and I, two minds, one body. You see, the thing is, as you were going on, I realized something. I had felt all of those same emotions profoundly, I just didn’t know why. But you, you were greedy. You wanted to feel more as those drugs flowed through the veins, and that fire inside you, inside us, dampened. Every time you thought you were expanding your consciousness, you were just killing us. But hey, every time you got high enough, you would come here, and I could live a little too. But you always forget…

“Hey, remember that video we watched? The one where they talk about how inside each person, there are actually two consciousnesses, yeah? I was laughing my ass off. I knew, of course, but I remember it blowing your goddamn mind. Well, guess they were right, huh? So much for all that… we’re dying, you know...

“But hey, what is death if not a return? Soon, our comprehension will turn to confusion, and we will melt away. Consciousness returning to entropy. We will return to the core of it all. The epicenter. The beginning. We will crystallize in the center of a mind resonating within the psyche—that’s when the signs desync, that’s when order becomes chaos. Discord becomes existence. Harmony returns to nothingness.

“What are you supposed to do? How should I know? This is probably the last time we will meet. After all, this is all that is left. These sad embers. Like I said last time, after they go well… we will wink out. Gone… just as suddenly as we came. You knew that shit you took was laced, right? Yeah, I thought you did. Funny thing is, I don’t hate you for killing us. I just wish I could have done something, seen something, experienced anything. But that’s okay, we can give it a better shot next time.”

Empty Thank You Card

By: Layla Amir

Park Management

By: Hannah Mathews

If my body was a park, the people would find it beautiful. They’d walk my skin, admire my hills, unless they were too steep.

If my body was a park, they’d carve paths in my flesh. (For denser, more strenuous, they’d cut through my hair, cut short, but not short enough to remove all challenges). In my scars, they’d trip over arteries, veins exposed by clearing.

If my body was a park, some would get lost in my caverns. Curiously exploring, ignoring signs of danger, wanting only to get deeper into something they’ll never understand.

If my body was a park, they’d hear the wind of my breath in their ears. Deaf to the sound of my heart, covered by the thumps of their boots. They’d dip their feet into the green lagoon of my eyes. Crusade around, rejoicing, laughing joyously as they enjoy the satisfying sound of crunching bones, small enough to fracture with frequent footsteps.

If my body was a park, they would celebrate traversing me. Conquering and exploring my exterior, maybe even inside a couple inches. My scars would never heal, recut for maintenance;

my hair would never grow, sheared for profit; you would never know, concerned only for your safety and the safety of your park.

I would be alive, able to feel the stripping of my resources, the reaping of my capital, the travel of my wounds.

If my body was a park, I’d face constant regulation by the people proposing preservation, knowing best how to keep me, never overgrown or branching out of my place.

If my body was a body, and not a park at all, everything would be different.

Epitome

By: Troy Dease Johnson

“Jumping from photo editor app to photo editor app on a Galaxy S21 has unfortu natly led to far deeper introspection than one could ever want. This piece aims to hold up a mirror at one’s inner void. With hopes of unveiling the unease the rests within.”

Your Corpse is Showing, Dear!

By: Sol Swenson

Everyone’s dying, One word at a time, Or one pie, Or one dime, Or one more carcinogen shoeshine, Or one ounce of sugar and spice. (Everything Nice)

This cesspool, it stinks Of smooth-skinned-half-cadavers: Stockbrokers, Hairlosers, Toefuckers, and Daddies.

The worst are the lovers, They know not what they love.

It is the skin of a person? Or the death underneath?

So much death in the living. So much truth in the dead. True cadavers they know How death breaks, and it tears, and it scrapes, and it rots.

Dear Angels and Shitheels, Your masquerade’s falling. Your bearings are shot.

Plaza de Bolivar

By: Paula Valero

Dozing

By: Maximilian Lloyd

Stocking cold milk In the walk-in fridge.

It could be some block in Chicago: No one out that can help it, Periodic mountains of blankets

In between mountains of milk crates And hard snow.

I could use a coat with fur on the hood.

I sit on two crates, Upturned and stacked, And my eyelids, like slot machine levers, Come down.

I hope they open.

Behind the shelves I see a cold black limo Come down the dog food aisle.

An owl is driving.

I slip through an empty bottom shelf And let myself out.

Rabbits stack up at the door And let me in.

There is a bed.

A deer undoes the button on my jeans. I lay back and bluebirds Unlace each boot.

Tierra Querida

By: Paula Valero

The Weight of it

By: Trent Justus

The weight of it is fitting, it is freeing this time, petals in the wind.

We drift out of a particular point of view.

Then the weight of it grips me, measures mass like a cheap Themis. Her body is made of gold.

Grabbed by the ground to live the antithesis of climax, until we fly down through it. The world I knew above me, and I am below. Nadir.

The weight of it took me in both directions, can you run away from your poles? What would’ve saved me?

But it was the weight of you that kept us buoyant as souls through the city, our music beamed in our minds. Content to color each other. What they see as murals, graphed, is all our lives…

... could be, should be, but even art finds a way to weather.

The weight of it sent me, as we walked to the moon, across clouds, lofted at ease above our concrete doom.

But why does it always call me back? Why can’t we let it ring? I’m tired of his sedated screams, they echo through lifetimes. Tired of this, that drowns me in the weight of it all.

Whether the choice, it’ll be the weight that you carry too. The same that taught me how to jump out, left with the hollow rattle of empty chains. Bronze is thickened as an alloy, raised in its compound. Both strong and speedy, they’re already gone. But who picks up the weight of the steel? You know, they once constrained. Who holds that, then, to stop your sons from linking and locking your clutch over again?

Who but us to hold you accountable? Who but he to realize his father’s faults? Who but we to be better? This was our first lesson in the sky.

All to say, the weight of it is free verse and volatile. It lightens when it’s easier to forget yet drives you into the core, molds your flesh to metal if it may be all you see.

So then run with it, if we must.

At once, may it be just the two of us and just as easy to drift, but soon may the weight of our will alone not be enough. For we want to fly, and not merely graze along like your litter. Why can’t we ask for that, and expect so much more?

Lofted in a place I’d only once known, alone with her touch that brought me here; the sky stared back, and I saw myself for the first. I saw the weight that we all carried. It was light, like a flock across the infinite babe blue. His eyes were all accepting; they gave back to me. I saw them through a moist, measured tear. And a world in which the weight of that is all that mattered.

Bad News

By: Helen Wu

Sending your wife a Live Photo of divorce papers through text was the worst thing Kaito had ever done. Probably the worst thing.

How could you choose your mother over me? she sighed. On an unremarkable, wintery morning, she decided that Kaito would not attend his mother’s funeral because her cancer-ridden father needed both of their support. Kaito bent to her suggestion because… he loved her. Also, because his family did not love her, and they went almost everywhere together. Kaito could not remember when he began disliking his wife. Was it when she told him to choose between his dead mother and herself? He forgave because he loved her.

Kaito remembered when he met her. Nashville’s Centennial Park in October of 2004. Kaito had spilled pomegranate juice down the back of her yellow sundress. It was intentional. Kaito had seen her at the park before. She hated him at first, had cackled in his face when he offered to pay for drycleaning. Kaito had been instantly smitten. They had nothing in common aside from frequenting the same park. Somehow, their marriage worked out. Until she poisoned it.

Kaito could not remember when he began disliking his wife. Was it when she cheated on him the second time with Bethany, the neighbor’s gardener? Bad news is not a fine wine. It does not improve with age, she said. Seven years of mutual understanding was utterly obliterated. He forgave her because Kaito hated tears more than haughtiness. Because Kaito loved her, he would free them both.

Sending your wife a Live Photo of divorce papers through text was the best thing Kaito had ever done. Probably the best thing.

Helen Wu is a senior at GSU graduating this spring of 2022.

9/16/21

By: Kalee Wiley

Kalee is an English major with a concentration in literature.

For once I am content

To lie within my body as I am

For how long I don’t know

But this moment Had to be documented

There are a million things I haven’t done

But I’m just going to sit here

And watch the trees

UNDERGROUND STAFF

Infinity Coleman- Production Editor

“Someone asked me, if I were strand ed on a desert island what book would I bring: ‘How to Build a Boat.’”

—Steven Wright

“A woman. Yes, but a million other things as well.”

—Virginia Woolf

Paula Valero- Editor-in-Chief

Dylan Shoemaker

Joy Ahn- Literary Editor

“Watch how her son shine, I do this for my mama!”

“Kiss the cook”

Ixtzul

Sol Swenson

Megan Kryk

“You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.”

—Adrienne Rich

Maximilian Lloyd

“The first person who reads you is you.” — Nikki Giovanni

Production Editor Notes

I wanted this journal to feel lively, organic and free. Through the freeform shapes and splatters of color, I hope you enjoyed the creative journey brought to you by the many talented artists within these pages.

Your Production Editor,

Infinity Coleman