The Virginia Literary Review Fall 2023 edition

VLR

VIRGINIA

LITERARY

REVIEW

Fall 2023 / Volume 46 / Number 1

The Virginia Literary Review Contact Us! www.virginialiteraryreview.com vlreditor@gmail.com Fall 2023 Masthead Editor-in-Chief Isabel O’Connor Production Manager Miriella Jiffar Financial Officer Mia Tan Social Media Manager Anastacia Reynolds Poetry Editors Emma Gorman Mia Tan Maria Rahmouni Anastacia Reynolds Prose Editors Sofia Heartney Stasia Winslow Audrey Cruey Elizabeth Parsons Art Editor Katie Huffman

Founded in 1979, The Virginia Literary Review is the oldest undergraduate-run literary magazine at the University of Virginia. The editorial staff considers literary and visual art submissions from students across colleges and universities in the Commonwealth of Virginia during the first three-quarters of each term.

The VLR is published twice a year in the fall and spring. For more information and to view past issues, please visit our website: www.virginialiteraryreview.com As of Fall 2023, the Virginia Literary Review is a formally Contracted Independent Organization (CIO) at the University of Virginia.

The magazine is not, however, affiliated with the University or any of its departments, and is completely liable for itself, its members, and its activities.

Copyright 2023. No material may be recorded or quoted, other than for review purposes, without the permission of the artists, to whom all rights revert after the first serial publication.

Contents / Fall 2023 Poetry 6 / For Virginia 8 / Curupira 16 / I Have Until The Rain Stops 19 / Skin and Blister 29 / Lyric 34 / look at this 37 / Echoes of Hope in Faraway Kabul 46 / a wandering sestina for-54 / Headed South

Kathleen Firment Marcela Pizzato Reece Steidle Kathleen Firment Lex Page Alice Cormier Samman Akbarzada Bella Stevens Lex Page

Prose 7 / Chicken Soup For The Soul 10 / This Life Is Not After 14 / Sawdust 17 / The Clockmaker 20 / The Fallow Earth 30 / The Swan and The Dishwasher Woman 36 / A Man Afraid of Flowers 38 / The Grave Digger 48 / A Little Nearsighted 55 / Root’s Spread Visual Art Cover / The Descent 12 / Absence: Grief 18 / Pond At Dusk 35 / Finals Week Blues 44 / Traveling Perspectives 52 / In The Fjords

Haylee Ressa Cassie Lipton Angela Sim Will Sheets Graydon Smith Sofia Anderson Omolara Bello Morgan Poole Owen Andrews Graydon Smith Visual Art Kate Funk Michelle Smith Kate Funk Madison Hinton Marianna Vrakas Naheda Nassan

For Virginia bring me your crabapple belles, your turn right on red lovers, oyster shuckers, scarlet breasted birds, bayleaf bass blue bayou crab and salty biscuits indigo neptune sits rugged on a bygone coast sweet shenandoah spruce river shelter daughter of sparkling stars father of fathers fervid in vacant dawn in swallow songs in streams of trout carved into the trunks of feeble dogwoods breathes old chesapeake in chartered referendum and dripping tidewater a lost colony survived on chewing tobacco sipping gunpowder and wondering if liberty and death only saves the statuesque a life’s sentence of being ushered by redlines

6 / VLR

a tyranny of pollinators ringing acoustic limestone sallow barking foxhounds remember the agony which built the land beneath our feet in the old dominion Kathleen Firment

Chicken Soup For The Soul The playlist you can’t open anymore. The one he erased with you. The one named “Haylee’s Chicken Soup” because he knew you needed it. And you did need it. You needed it the day three boys, or men as the news would call them, stepped onto the school bus they would never step off of. You needed it the mornings you cried into your mother’s shoulder and the nights you spent alone with the moon. But now you avoid the burger place in town like an atheist avoids church. You put Post-it notes over the pictures on your bedroom walls. You stare heart pounding at the back of every black Jeep car, the image of him driving away streaming down your cheeks.

Everyone should have their heart broken at least once in their life. Mr. Feiner says this to the class three days before graduation. Maybe some of you already have. But I haven’t. I am young and free and wild enough still that when I think it must break two months later it merely bruises. I don’t need chicken soup because he calls me every Sunday night to hear my voice. I hear his every Tuesday morning on the radio. This next one’s for a girl up in Charlottesville who means the world to me. Kacey Musgraves blasts through my head as I sit in the silent library. You mean the world to me but it’s too hard. It’s too hard to call every Sunday or every other Sunday for that matter. It’s too hard to make it up to that girl in Charlottesville listening to the radio every Tuesday morning.

Your bruises harden and crack. Your chest tightens and you curse Mr. Feiner. You curse the burden that he has given you. The one that seeps into your thoughts as you check the three-month-old mail just to make sure there are no letters in it. The one that follows you home as you drive past Exit 16 at full speed.

Zach Bryan plays in the car as you go by, and you agree that it’s about time you left Austin. So, you stop coming home for the summer and you dread winter breaks. You cut your hair and piece your ears. You see your friends on Sunday nights. You make your own playlists.

What kind of music do you listen to? You smile when the boy at the party asks you this. For once you tell him about the songs you love. Not the ones that play on the radio on Tuesday mornings but the ones you pick for yourself. Mr. Feiner, though you haven’t seen him in years now, smiles too and says I told you so. And just then, the curse is lifted, and the chicken soup expires before your eyes.

Haylee Ressa

7 / VLR

Curupira Curupira - Brazilian mythological creature with backwards feet who lives in the forest and tricks hunters with his footsteps, leading them in circles.

I said I would follow you beyond the river Insanity Guiding me to

Following your footsteps on the grass And I begin Trying to find where you ended

I ran in circles like growth rings Because it wasn’t mine to keep And when you took it back When you just lended me your heart

My mistake was thinking you gave

Til we decomposed on our graves

Because we could never repay it

That instead it gave and gave

That our mistake was to think natured landed You said it was not mine to keep Everytime I picked a flower

Menino malvado

If we had wings

Now I imagine if things would be different You said piriquitos mate for life Onde foi o meu amado?

Now I ask them questions We evolved and forgot to hear

8 / VLR

You told me the trees asked questions Trying to track us down While they ran around in circles

That would keep us warm at night

You would weave it with you orange hair

I would pick up twigs, grass and dirt

We would build a nest together

And I thought maybe that meant

You whistled my name like the sabia

I ran my fingers over your rough skin You said you’d build a house, and we’d have chicken on the yard I said I would follow you beyond the river

*Read backwards Marcela Pizzato

9 / VLR

This Life Is Not After Part I: Death My dreams have once again blurred with reality. The nightmares are a filter that lays upon my life, distorting it, making the truth flicker in and out of consciousness. However, whether I am awake or asleep, it remains that visitors are wandering the streets tonight. Specters that I thought long since gone, poured out of stoppered bottles like fine wine and fluidly moving about the street. Shall I greet them as old friends, or shall I do to them as they deserve?

Forgiveness is not simple, forgiveness is not easy, and I want them to choke on their guilt.

As I watch from the sidewalk, I am haunted, as I often am, by the image of the car embracing my body, blood splattering on the pavement. It all glitters, the road, my broken form, and the smoking car that has gone into a ditch. The ghosts taunt me. You are one of them. You glow fluorescent in front of my eyes, and it reminds me of how I used to see you when you were still here. Beautiful.

Brilliant. I convulse with memories of you, retching up every bloody, gorgeous word you used to say to me. Was it cheap, those nights we had? How could it be when it cost so much? I lurch into the street, tumbling after the ghost of you. I press my hand to your chest, I want to rip out your heartbeat. But then it’s the car, the car for real this time, the flush of metal and the high pitched screech. My vision has gone blue and yellow and green and violet. And for the first time in so, so long, there is silence.

Part II: Heaven And suddenly, I’m somewhere else. Here, mushrooms shine like green stars, and the blue haze of fruit tints the air. Metallic gold buildings extend past leafy foliage and vines creep through the foundations. And there are people, hundreds of them, thousands. They are everyone who ever loved me, even for a second. There are cities full of people who loved me, there are nations. Those who brushed my hand and felt a shock on train station platforms and those who have seen every bit of my body and soul weathered to the bone.

And as the air filled with chatter, it seemed to me as if all our stories ended the right way. And all the forgiveness that needed to be done is done and we can walk into the silver sunlight, smiling. I wanted to run away with all of them, even though heaven is right here, run to some far off land. Just like everyone wants to run away with their lover, to tuck them away and hide them somewhere safe. But I couldn’t do that. Because someone was missing. You weren’t there, and none of those loves matter without you. I know why you’re gone, it’s because there is no forgiveness between you and me. When you poisoned the well and I knocked it 10 / VLR

down for good measure, it was clear that there was no going back to how it was at the beginning.

Then God is making eye contact with me, but I taunt Him, because He can’t control me with fear the way He always controlled everyone else. I’ve always known that I can’t belong here. Known it in my bones since before I even knew the name of Heaven. God is an egomaniac. God is an overprotective mother, she will never let you leave her to find yourself. But we will not turn our eyes from the truth. I say to God, “How is there free will in Heaven if free will is the reason for suffering?” He responds “My child, my darling, you shall know the truth.

And the truth will set you free.”

And I spiral, down, down, because Hell is the truth, the truth is Hell, I have always known this and perhaps this is why I have always sought it out.

Part III: Hell So I fall through the skies like a comet. I hit the earth and the mountains make indentations into my lungs, the water cuts into my skin like a scalpel cutting clay. And then I fall not down, but some other direction entirely.

There is no color but it is not black, there is no noise but I hear the echo of the world in my hands. This is nothingness. This is Hell, not the fire and brimstone of the pit I was raised to fear but this nothing, universes of nothing all lined up next to each other. Worse than the nothing is that there is no one. I am completely alone, and that’s the one feeling I thought I understood on earth but now that aloneness is reverberating through my skull and I can’t breathe but I can’t die.

I screamed to you that I’m sorry. I screamed that you’re shrapnel in my chest, you’re digging into my flesh but I won’t rip you out because the pain is a reminder that you were there. I scream names at you, call you hypocrite, coward, selfish, vindictive, cruel. I also call you lover, beautiful, passionate, and somehow those words hurt just as much. But no one hears me, because there is just... nothing. Nonetheless, I spread my heart like jam over my hands to block out the noise. I ask, after all the years, and all the pain, and all the joy, what is left for me here? I searched for you in the dark for ten billion billion years, but I couldn’t find you. Then suddenly, I knew that I would never find you again. And suddenly I forgot what I was looking for in the first place. The deafening silence just became... quiet. I realize, this was a nightmare after all. So I wake up. To face a different kind of Heaven and Hell, the kind that’s less forgiving than those of my nightmares. Because this life is not after, it is. I get out of bed, brush my teeth, and move on.

Cassie Lipton 11 / VLR

12 / VLR

13 / VLR

Sawdust If someone asked what I remember about my father, I’d say the volume of his voice, what it sounded like when it was raised. Once, he yelled that my camisole was hanging too low. He yelled at my little brother for picking out scallions. He shouted in broken English, his shouting more a cluster of words than a chain; there were times my mother had to translate in between. I remember those meals shared here and there, a six-one man sitting in his briefs at our wooden dinner table. The one that splintered underneath.

I remember my father was preoccupied. An accountant who largely served the Korean community. My father knew the names of his clients’ favorite restaurants offhand, but he didn’t know which cabinet the frying pan was in. He didn’t know I had screaming matches with my piano teacher every Thursday, and even if he did, he wouldn’t have gotten the jokes we made behind her back.

My father was more familiar with the taste of soju, the imprint it made on people’s tongues. He knew the voices of young women who worked at his go-to bars; he had a scar on his forehead from drinking with his clients until three in the morning and collapsing on our driveway afterwards. That day, our closet had a smell of sweet perfume that tickled my throat. Sticky hairspray that gave me headaches.

My mother said she tried to leave. Two weeks after my sixteenth birthday, she demanded a divorce. My father bought roses for two days, he was home by seven for a week straight. During that interval, he learned how to cook his own rice and make kimchi stew.

My father said he knew where to draw the line, that he had people relying on him. He told my mother he couldn’t eliminate opportunities, that he was busy carving a life so we could carve our own. There wasn’t a Korean in the county that didn’t know his name. It was printed on Korean newspaper ads, it was disseminated through Korean churches (which, in turn, led to more drinking).

It didn’t matter whether he spoke English or grew up in a different country. It didn’t have to matter, not when he was outside the house.

14 / VLR

I remember learning Korean my senior year. At first, I couldn’t tell the difference it made in our relationship. My father had reverted to stumbling in after sunrise four times a week, and he continued to smell like the people he couldn’t reject. But there were smaller things. He brought birthday cards to his room so we didn’t have to pick them off the floor. When my mother was out, he called me instead.

Learning Korean was an accomplishment I knew not to emphasize around friends, more of a skill you’d flaunt in front of the family. I started speaking Korean at Christmas dinners in front of cousins who didn’t know how to. I laughed when my uncle ranted about my grandpa living in Seoul, randomly walking into women’s clothing stores.

Each Christmas, colored with words only half of us understood, I grew closer to the knowing half. We drowned in the clanks of soju bottles hitting shot glasses.

We watched steam turn into beads of sweat on each other’s foreheads, we felt the warmth of drenched bean sprouts filling our mouths. The taste that reminded my drunk, cloud haired father of the home he still remembered. Home that never hurt me the way it hurt him, home that swelled inside a person day by day.

My father, who immigrated to the U.S. at the age of twenty two, who accused my English speaking mother of monopolizing me. Who yelled racism, racism after my fourth-grade history teacher giggled at one of his questions on parent-teacher night.

I don’t know how he felt about me, but that’s not something you ask your father. I didn’t ask him whether it was pride or gratitude. Maybe unconditional love. Love lifted onto our shoulders as soon as a child is born. When my father packed his bag a year after my college graduation, he hunched in front of our door, balancing so much of the past, so much grief.

My father always looked that way.

Angela Sim 15 / VLR

I Have Until The Rain Stops Take me back to the lake When I knew what I wanted And life’s intricate strings were tied in neat bows on our scuffed converse Take me back to the lake Where I lazed in the sun With you by my side The wind at my back And nothing in front of me but possibility Take me back to the lake That one night When we hurried back to shore before the clouds broke I remember it rained Lightning split the sky Thunder shook you in my arms The very lake seemed to open up Leading all the way down And even the massive trees bent to the force of a God I don’t believe in We sat on the porch and I told you it was the Perfect Writing Storm Well it’s been raining ever since The sky still splits But you’ve long since gotten up and gone inside Thunder has rattled the window frame More strongly since you left I used to fear that storm Wonder what would strike me first Inspiration or lightning And whether it would ever end But now I’m afraid of when it does When I have to put pencil to paper I’m afraid of what words will form I still sit on the porch of the house by the lake I don’t have to go home just yet I have until the rain stops Reece Steidle

16 / VLR

The Clockmaker I love my workshop. I love the -tick- tables strewn with the corpses of failed projects and works in progress, their innards lying inert, interspersed with implements of -tick- repair and alteration. Bird-beak pliers prepare to pick -tickthrough the carrion like a crow, yet only I know my way through the gore. I am a battle-heartened -tick-, world-weary -tick-, field medic, surveying the remnants of a metallic massacre.

I love the shelves upon shelves of -tick tick- masterpieces protruding from the walls, their round, welcoming faces beaming with joy. They are the -ticklucky ones, the survivors of the wanton slaughter on my workbench. I love the -tick tick- sweet song they sing to me, the lovely lullaby that works its way, tick tick ticking into my ears, my brain, my soul.

I love the stalwart bulb that burns -tick- on the ceiling, its resilient rays shimmering on my greasy hands -tick-. My bloody hands -tick tick-. It is my sun, yet it is greater than the sun for it does not abandon me for half the -tickday. If I wished, my sun would be eternal. When was the last time I saw the sun, that cowardly star, perpetually running from its celestial sister? Has it changed in the past hours -tick-? Days -tick-? Weeks -tick-? I decide to see the sun.

I wish my songbirds -tick-, my children -tick tick-, my loves -tick tick-, goodbye for now and go to see the sun. The door -tick tick- creaks closed behind me. I hear the beautiful -tick tick tick- song of my children reach a -tick tickcrescendo. My workshop door swings shut and my eardrums implode.

The silence roars, a guttural, primal, scream. I am assaulted by the deafening hush. The sun has already fled, a goddamn coward still, and the quiet song of the night shrieks in my ears. The peaceful wail of crickets is unbearable, a stiletto in my brain. I cannot hear my children over the tumult. Where are my children?

I cannot hear their metronomic song over the uproarious tranquility. Where are my children?

The door creaks again, barely audible over the caterwauling of the open air. I collapse, my workshop walls calmly keeping the cacophony at bay. And I -tick tick- hear them. My children -tick tick tick- serenade me, their affectionate embrace of a song louder than I’ve heard before, as if to say -tick tick- “We missed you” and -tick tick- “We’re glad you’re back”. My -tick- steady sun smiles down on me, stinging my eyes, but it is not the cause of my -tick tick- tears.

Sprawled on the floor, sun on my face, I let my -tick tick- children sing me to sleep.

Will Sheets 17 / VLR

18 / VLR

Skin and Blister Happy hospital, cold-kneed skin-and-bone sister.

Needle-pricking fingers sister. Palm reading manifesto sister.

Takes up too much space, sticky caramel apple sister.

Poison in my oatmeal, salad shaker, fax machine, shamrock in my shoe sister.

Left the fridge open, spoiled dinner sister.

Junkyard booster seat. Dimming switch in my eyelids sister.

Lick your lips and bite your tongue. Chapstick on a busted taste bud sister.

I’ll let you wonder if blood still pumps to my lungs. White-hearted sister.

Eat your heart out and pound on the pavement, bloody-legged sister Open wound, deep cut sister. Seared my skin on a curling iron sister.

Skim milk, lean beef, low-fat. No love sister.

Who am I trying to look pretty for this time, sister?

Fire ant on a picnic blanket sister. Ointment on a bite.

Cosmic aunt. String of pearls on a tree trunk neck sister.

Drool on her neck, dirt on her face. Lush and literate sister.

Lapdog luxury. Get yourself an armchair therapist, sister.

Spit in a fishbowl, acid in a pool, itchy scalp sister.

You count the stars, I’ll never stop calling you sister.

Kathleen Firment

19 / VLR

The Fallow Earth Beneath the feet of these explorers, there was something soft and green. A sample of this particularly hardy carbon-based plant was collected and stowed away in one of many temperature controlled bins. They pressed onward, traveling quickly in their scout vehicles and noted the destruction everywhere. What we would have called “Geiger counters”, they had no specific name for, nor did it measure radiation in rads; nevertheless, it told them that this place was a dangerous one. Travel was quick as lightning and they covered much ground, but they rarely stopped in this barren wasteland. All that was found were chunks of scrap metal on black stone pathways that had long since stopped being interesting.

Few plants were seen, fewer animals. Some beetles lived, and so too did a few hardy insects like cockroaches. Each specimen was examined with polite curiosity, labeled, and gently placed into a sample container.

They had now spent several lunar cycles on this dull blue planet. When they had arrived, the water had excited them, but analysis from space had revealed it to be so hot and acidic that almost nothing larger than bacteria could dwell in it. So they turned their attention to the land. They began their search with the Eastern hemisphere, being careful to note the existence of mountains, craters, shorelines. The coldest reaches of the Arctic and what little ice remained there was recorded. A few pine trees survived and barely stood, half-alive in their thick, ashy atmosphere. Samples were taken. They had no way of knowing they set foot on Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania, and Australia because there was no one left to tell them.

Asia was the most devastated. In parts of China, North Korea, and India, there were sections that were too dangerous to go even with the ample protections that they had brought from the radiation. Not that there was anything to see in such places anymore. Mostly they compiled a topographical map with the data that they collected. Mountains remained untouched, stripped of all life. Any attempt at a compendium about the life that had obviously once lived here was bare-bones at best, totally nonexistent at worst. Fossils were found after some extraction in certain parts of the world, but none were from a period more recent than a few million years- there was nothing to explain this devastation.

In certain isolated parts of Europe, there remained concrete monstrosities that greatly perplexed these researchers. The presence of them suggested that macrofauna had not only existed in this world, but that it had been intelligent.

Large stone stacks were found in various places, sometimes in the forms of ruined statues or the remnants of cathedral buttresses, but more often they were just brick walls. Underground bunkers were occasionally discovered, and these were the first truly fascinating finds. In many of them, there were scraps of cloth 20 / VLR

and paper with some written language printed on them, though it was impossible to know what the words meant without further analysis. It definitively proved, however, that something much more intelligent than trees and beetles had once stood on this earth. In these bunkers, there were beds, luxury items, clothes, nonperishables, and toiletries, all of which had obviously been manufactured en masse. Yet these items were small and rare- the factories that must have produced these things were now gone, and so were most of the items themselves.

Everything found was documented as it was, and then taken back for further study.

Africa was a comparatively better spot to look. The vast expanses of the Sahara remained relatively untouched, and the sand dunes had spread since mankind had gone. The dunes had enveloped most of the north and all the way down to central Africa. Perhaps the sand had flooded the buildings of the mysteriously intelligent creatures, and they would be found upon serious excavation.

It was safe to say that they would turn up plenty of good artifacts in the coming years if they continued to search here. As it was currently, however, there was little but sand and ruins to study. They traveled south and found less sand, but more ruins. Even this place, so far separated from the clustered settlements to the north, in Europe, had not survived. On the island of Madagascar, the land was mostly wild, with little evidence that a single explosive had detonated anywhere near it. The topography was unique, and breathtaking. But the land was barren all the same: the sky, filled with ash, had blocked out the life-giving sun.

Poison water dropped from gorgeous falls, spilling into basins that gave succor only to the dead. Nothing remained alive, and they simply noted this in their reports.

Then they came to the Western hemisphere, hoping that they would be more lucky there. Again, they began at the Arctic circle, and again they were disappointed. Canada no longer recognizably existed, and much of Alaska was flooded completely. They noted the presence of mountains and rivers, then continued south. Along the coasts of America, nothing remained. No beetles, cockroaches, or grass called that land home; no fish swam near its shores. “It might be ten thousand years or more before this land will support animal life in any complex capacity.” they noted in their strange language.

The gentle curves of Appalachians were described, then the flatness of the Great Plains, then the sharp peaks of the Rockies. In the west, there was an oddity: some of the roughest terrain that they had observed. To the south there was the Grand Canyon, mostly untouched, which still bore some tourist signs.

There were no longer donkeys or flying squirrels in the area, but the topography was so complex that it took days to record in its entirety. A Native Reservation still existed, mostly untouched physically, but victims of ash all the same. They passed over it after a cursory examination.

21 / VLR

Of more note was the area that had once been the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The topography was so convoluted that they had to ditch most of their gear and go on foot. Dozens of slot canyons led to narrower and narrower passes, and avalanches threatened them at every turn. As they penetrated deeper into the wild vale, life was more abundant by far, and fish even swam in some of the mountain streams. They were greatly excited by their apparent good luck, and collected many samples. As they continued, the flora and fauna became more and more impressive, culminating in a small forest of fir, redwoods, and cedar trees. There were a number of smaller mammals that they sampled extensively as well: they took hair, urine, and feces samples as often as they could. In addition, there was the first evidence of man that was not made of stone. Wooden weirs had been placed into the water, and it was quickly postulated that they must have been used to gather the fish from the streams. Soon they discovered snares that had been made for rabbits as well. But perhaps here a digression from these details of explorations ought to be taken.

These visitors were not transient, as one might expect; they were not tourists. They came with the serious goal of studying this strange new world; It was something to be solved, weighed, and measured. They had sent every single message that they could send to the blue rock when they discovered it. None were answered. The look of these beings are of no consequence- imagine them with green antennas, or tentacles in lieu of feet, or a spiny thorax: it makes no difference. No human ever saw them, anyway. Only know that they were not that much unlike ourselves, at least in the ways that counted. Like all intelligent beings, they possessed a certain yearning curiosity, and they often made foolish mistakes just as any human is liable to do. But they were not a warlike people, unlike ourselves- they had not descended from pack animals. Should they have found man active when they arrived, they would only have parlayed, never conquered. If man insisted on violence, then they surely would have died and sent no one else to this solar system again. Yet the emotions and existence of these creatures were not totally alien. One could recognize sympathy, compassion, and especially inquisitiveness in the way that they presented themselves. They had a natural instinct to heal the sick and to explore with great gusto. And their plight as a species was not so different from humans- like us, they were unique. On their world they were the only species with strong intelligence and the ability to reason. And in all their travels they had not yet found anyone like themselves, no creatures able to talk, read, learn, or challenge them.

These creatures also had the presence of mind necessary to understand their loneliness. It was much discussed in their literature, religion, and politics, for they did have all three. To us, their versions would be totally incomprehensible, even if we could understand their language. Again, here it becomes impossible to describe because there is no paradigm on which to describe them. Due to 22 / VLR

their different physiologies and natural temperaments, they had formed a culture so unlike any human-made one that its intricacies are almost inexplicable.

All that is known of and that they were capable of tremendous feats of creation. them is that they were certainly smart, them is that they were certainly smart, and that they were capable of tremendous feats of creation. They had their own systems of mathematics, literature, cuisine, artwork, and sculpture. In this most critical respect, they were very much like us.

But back to the scouts and their work. Having ditched their more sensitive, delicate equipment at the edge of the last few slot canyons, they had no way of traveling quickly through this fertile land, and the sun was setting soon.

With no other options, they made camp. For shelter, they found a cave- it had once been called Morning Glory cave when there were people to call it anythingwhich they scanned for biological lifeforms. To their disappointment, they found nothing particularly large or interesting in the form of carbon-based animals.

Weird, multi-legged bugs crawled along the walls and the floors of their cave, and the standing water that was found in every corner was rancid, but at least not radioactive. It was a hospitable environment, but not ideal. With reverse osmosis and iodinization, they purified enough water for themselves, and studied the lifeforms in the rest. Microscopic bacteria fed on the small algaes in the water, but there were no fish, unlike the moving water from the river outside the cave.

Their suits would protect them from the cold conditions, and they could survive for up to several weeks without food. With their needs taken care of, they decided to explore. Exploring an unknown cave system had dangers that these explorers were unaware of, but the ground that they stood on was more solid than some other cave systems in North America, and they were in no real peril of suddenly dropping into a crevice and dying like rats. It turned out to not be a cave system, but an isolated pocket that included a number of smaller rooms, some only just large enough to admit a person. Standing water was the rule rather than the exception, and the biodiversity was nothing extraordinary; all that they found was a slight variant of the algae and bacteria, and a collection of tetrapodal reptilians that had sticky pads on their feet for clinging to the cave’s walls. Nothing was larger than a small rabbit. They soon lost interest after examining a few rooms, but a particularly dark area in the corner of one attracted the attention of a researcher. He scanned the area thermally and found no heat signatures or life signs, but with his delta-band emission tool he detected a structural weakness in the cave wall at that area.

Upon closer examination, he found this to be a hollow, wooden space that had been painted and textured to resemble the rock around it. He knocked on it, and the sound reverberated into some unseen cavity. With their strange method of communication that would be unrecognizable as such by a human, he gath23 / VLR

ered his comrades with him so that they could explore this together. With careful precision, they used their excavation tools to remove the wood. At the highest power, they could use these magnetic drills to cut through solid diamond, but that might damage whatever was inside. When they had determined that the air inside was clean enough for them to breathe, they stepped through the threshold and lit their soft lights.

The room they found themselves in was totally unlike the rest of the cave.

There was no standing water, and in fact the floor was completely dry. Instead of cold, porous rock, there were planks of wood underfoot. The room’s walls were decorated with a rectangle of colored cloth, old road signs, and thousands of neat rows of tally marks. What was most interesting, however, was what they found in the center of the room. Although they had previously found artifacts that contained bits of human script, they had never before seen anything like this. It was a pile of books, up to the ceiling in height and arranged in a large pyramid. They began to look through them curiously, and found that all of them were handwritten on bound pieces of paper, with the same handwriting on each. The paper itself was very rough and certainly not industrial. All of these visitors were, of course, ignorant to the meaning of these paper objects, but they could plainly tell that they had been made meticulously, and they knew that the language of humans was able to be written because they had seen fragments of it on destroyed billboards, signs, and the like. It was now a top priority to move all of the books they had found to their ship to analyze them. Before they did that, however, they finished exploring the room.

The cloth on the wall was hand-dyed and made of plant fibers, and it contained a vertical stripe embroidered with an interlocking pattern, and two uneven horizontal stripes next to it- red and green, in that order. In the future, they would determine that this was the Belarusian flag from reading the note that the previous owner had left. For the moment they only observed it with curiosity, taking a picture for later. There was another section of the room that they had not explored, in the corner. This particular area was blocked off with four drapes, hung on rails like shower curtains. When they swept this away, they found a human corpse, mostly decayed, lying on a small bed with a long note balanced on top of the ribcage. If their species had developed olfactory sensors, they would have cringed away from this corner in an instant, but their sense of smell was quite primitive.

For a moment they said nothing, only looked down at this former man in silence. Everything else dead they had seen were bones or simply ash; this was the first complete skeleton that they had stumbled upon, and it had much more meat than anything else they had found. Finally they fell into their normal pattern: photographing, sampling, and taking all they could without destroying anything they considered to be important. As soon as this was done, they began the 24 / VLR

work of transporting all of the books that they had found back to their ship. One of them gingerly removed the note for further inspection.

For the next few months, they explored the magnificent canyons and mountains that they found themselves in. It took weeks to chart the topography alone, much less the massive species diversity that lived within it. Eventually they realized that the job they had set out on was rapidly becoming a much more involved one, and they decided to simply mark this planet for further study and move on with the information they had gathered. It had turned into a tremendously interesting planet, and they were sorry to have to leave it. At least the books were there to remind them of their trip, and to occupy their current thoughts as they traveled.

They had analyzed thousands of pages of what was written- manually entering millions of characters in the process- before they had made some semblance of the languages that they saw written down. They, too, had an alphabet with a fixed number of characters that could be combined to form words that had inherent meaning. This made it somewhat possible for direct translations to exist- in a manner of speaking- from their language to the human one. After much effort, combinations and permutations, and simple brute-force computation, they cracked the code and began to read. Many of the titles to them appeared to be gibberish at a glance. There was Anna Karenina and War and Peace

by Tolstoy; Jude the Obscure and Tess of d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy; The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, and many hundreds more. The titles and contents of these novels had been written in the language that they would learn to be ‘Belarusian’. When they had cracked the code of this language, they decided to apply what they had learned of the language to the note that they had found on the dead man. It read: “I do not know if there is any hope that any person will ever see these words, but I write to them with great hope. My home country is Belarus, and I studied at Moscow State University. Currently, I am a professor of literature there, with a specialty in Russian literature. That is, if there is a Moscow State University anymore, and if I am still tenured. If you are interested in what has happened to this whole mad world, I cannot tell you. When I took my sabbatical, I decided to do so in the United States, to see the National Parks. Upon visiting Zion National Park, I decided to stay for a while and camp. In my years in military service, I had always enjoyed the rough living. Here, there are beautiful, wide open vistas, fresh water pools, and excellent wildlife all around. In my previous life, I was a solitary man by choice. Now I continue that life against my wishes. I have subsisted on this land for the past fifteen years, since the bombs fell.

“A day before I planned to move on towards Yosemite, the ground shook like a bad earthquake and clouds of ash blocked out the sun. I had the fortune to 25 / VLR

find myself near this cave when this happened, and I dove to the deepest place in it for fear of my life. I am no stranger to radiation- a number of my family members were horribly affected by the Chernobyl meltdown many years ago, and- I pray to God that they live- they may still suffer today. Besides a brother and many cousins, I have no other immediate family. I am a widower. Zion was supposed to be a meditative trip for me. And I have had more time to meditate than I ever would have dreamed. I waited in this cave until I was close to starving and my tablets of iodine ran low. When I emerged, it was as if to a nightmare. Ash coated nearly every surface, and the streams were full of dead fish. Closer to the center of the park, however, there was a curiously untouched center of cleanliness. Some larger fauna still survived, nearly all of the plant life was fine, and the water was at least visibly clear. On a mound in the fork of a stream that I nicknamed ‘Caterpillar Hill’ because it swarms with the creatures, you will find the base that I set up years ago. It is rudimentary and may not look like much, but it kept me safe and dry for months. When I gathered my strength again, I journeyed to the edge of the park and looked for any signs of life.

“Little had changed since I had first stepped out of my cave, but I was hopeful that the wilderness would overtake itself again. To a certain degree, I believe it has. Sometimes, in years past, I would wish that I were the last man on Earth. People used to bother me so much, the way they’d bump into me on the street, chew with their mouths open, and have badly behaved children that wail in restaurants and airplanes. Now there’s nothing I wouldn’t give to hear the sound of another person’s voice. In my first year, I was certain that an airlift would come for me everyday: once I heard a thunderstorm in the distance and thought it was a helicopter and nearly fainted from joy. But there was no one.

There still is no one. I don’t know why I’m writing this. I doubt anyone will come here for decades, at least. Maybe it’ll be centuries before I’m found in this side room. Or I won’t be found at all. Possibly there is no one left to find me. I have no idea the fate of the rest of the world outside my park. I ventured out several times in the second and third years that I lived here, and the ash was so thick that it choked me, and when I returned I became violently ill. If there are still people out there, they are not close to the park. I have given up on trying to contact whatever outside world still remains.

“For the last six months, I have had a hacking cough, and something feels wrong on the inside. Lung problem. It’s fine. If you have any desire to, do not weep for me. I am the last, pathetic holdout of a species that was unable to restrain its bloodlust in the end. The last man on Earth, choking from ash and dying from cancer. I guess that’s a fitting end to us. I have no real legacy, no children, no wife, no community. But I have made one fitting contribution to my people, I have sustained myself through these years in one lonely act to remember the others. It is small, but it was all I could give. All of it can be found in this 26 / VLR

room.

“When I gave up hope that I would be rescued, I thought back to my life before all this, and what I had loved. Books, history. That was my answer. It terrified me to think that some of these works of art would disappear because of a little thing like nuclear war. I decided to preserve them, as best as I could. As soon as I worked out how to make paper from wood pulp and ink from animal char, I began to write. I made thousands of sheets of paper at once, then ran out, then made more, then ran out again. In the cold months, when I could not go outside for fear of freezing to death, I would sometimes write from the moment the sun rose to the instant before it reached total darkness. Among these books you will find classic works of literature, as best as I could remember them, as well as many histories of various nations and empires. I had no materials to consult, and the only book here that was not rewritten by me is my copy of the Bible, well-annotated and of far better quality than any book I produced.

“Also included is my autobiography, because I believe that even beyond the grave I may get some comfort from someone else knowing how I lived and why I did the things that I did. Even though in many ways it was a dull and uninteresting existence to the impartial observer, I am hardly impartial. To me, it was the most important thing that there ever was. Growing up with my brother and family, finding a career that fit me, having the only woman I ever loved die before her time, and experiencing this unending loneliness- it would be the worst sort of yarn unless it was mine. I wrote it for myself. At times like this, I have hope for some future that is bigger and brighter than me. Maybe out there humanity is only cowering in some bunker, waiting to emerge so that the world can be taken back once again. Maybe there is truly no one out there, and I have done all this for nothing. But it wasn’t for nothing, was it? I did it for me, and for the memory of the many dead. I did it because, cruel though we were to each other, the faint glimmer of all that is good in humanity has been my solace for all these years. We were born of nothing, and we may have gone back to nothing, but in the time between we have left a jewel of cosmic preciousness to be remembered by, unable to be wiped away by atomic bombs. At least, I hope so.

“My birthday has passed on a barren, unforgiving Earth fifteen times now.

I will not mind if there is not a sixteenth. It has become much harder to travel now, to stand upright, and even to breathe. I’m not long for this world. Soon I will see my friends again, hear their voices and feel their touches. Or I will experience nothing for the rest of all time. Either option appeals to me, and I look forward to both paradise and a sleep without dreams. The shadows are getting longer, and it is becoming hard to write.

-Alexei Bolkonsky Michailivitch June 3rd, 1984- October 10th, 2049.”

27 / VLR

When they had read this they stood in solemn silence, and for once took no new notes on their findings. They felt, for the first time in their very long memories, an intense emotional disquiet. All of them pitied this poor creature beyond belief, but there was nothing that they could do for him now, certainly.

They looked back at the blue marble that was now falling far behind them and thought of a thousand things, but none of them lessened what they felt in that instant. As it faded from view, they picked up each handmade book carefully- almost reverently- and began to translate them, and to learn from them the depth and breadth of human emotion and history, a parting gift from a doomed species.

Tens of millions of miles away, by the banks of a river once known as the Tigris, in a land that had once borne the human race like a cradle: a small, green shoot of an olive tree rose from blackened soil…and stayed.

Graydon Smith

28 / VLR

Lyric They say Mercury invented the lyre like this: bare hands scooping out tortoise flesh, cleaving warm guts from the shell-bone, divine heat boiling blood and bones to czernina and brown stock, transforming her in the black sear of the sublime, leaving only shell and gut-string behind.

Have you ever seen a body burn? Do you know which parts melt and which parts combust, the boiling point of blood, the phase diagram of a muscle?

They say Mercury made music from guts.

They also say God loves you. When you hear His hymns, the songs of praise played on organs, Remember: you were born to be consumed.

Lex Page

29 / VLR

The Swan and The Dishwasher Woman I got a mysterious email from someone named ‘S’ the other day. It was strange. Didn’t sound like anyone I’d ever met before. I was tempted to send it to spam but then I read it. And maybe I’ve been feeling a bit bored lately. Yeah, that’s what I think made me do it. Go through with it, I mean.

Rose, Come meet me at the café on the corner of Pope Street by your apartment.

It’s not a far walk, so meeting at night won’t be a problem. 9 o’clock, if you’d please. I’ll be wearing a blue sundress. I have something for you that I think you’d like. -S That’s all the email said. Curious, right? Who goes out wearing a sundress at night on the cusp of autumn? It’s been cool but the air tinges with a promise of cold.

Besides this fact, I was most concerned with how this S knew my address. I didn’t know about any café on Pope Street because Pope Street was residential. Just houses and houses and a glimpse of small businesses on the horizon. I drove past the corner of Pope Street almost every day on my way to work and there was, I’m certain, no café.

I think that’s what made me go. I had to see for myself if this was some piece of magic or just a cruel, worrying prank.

I had to wear a sweater that night, walking to the corner of Pope Street. I could have driven, but the email specified a walk, so I felt inclined to play by S’s rules.

It was awkward, walking at night in the city. I’ve always been afraid of it and there’s this feeling in the air when I do. That feeling of being watched. A set of eyes always follows.

The café was just called ‘The Café.’ Nothing fancy. Nothing special. It shouted “this is all I am. A café.” And it fit the part. Warm lighting. Small interior. Little cherry wood tables and unstable chairs with ripped cushions. It was here tonight, this café. I knew that once I left, it’d be gone.

S was waiting where she said she’d be, little blue sundress and all. She looked ready to put on a sunhat, kick off her sandals, and run along the beach, if there was a beach here. Her brown hair came down to her shoulders in a cascade of bright, bouncy curls, and, having curly hair myself, I could tell it was just washed.

Her deep eyes locked with mine and she smiled shyly, crossing her legs and shoving her hands under her thighs. For such an intimidating email, she did 30 / VLR

not look the part of the sender. She recognized me, though. That made her unsettling and, silently, she nodded to the seat across from her. I didn’t bother to order anything. She had a coffee sitting in what would be my spot. Nothing was set out for herself.

“Hello,” she said when I approached her.

“Hi,” I said back and slowly sank into my seat.

We didn’t talk for a while. Just sat and looked at our hands. I took a sip of my coffee. It was bad. Watery. Seemed like the barista didn’t know what coffee was supposed to taste like.

“I’d like to tell you a story,” S said finally.

I set my coffee down firmly, “Is that so?”

“Yes. I think it’s very important. You should hear me out.”

And she began.

S said her name was Swan and to keep that in mind as she told her story. She used to work in a restaurant called The Garden. It was a quiet place, she said. She waitressed. Wore all black and put on her best smile. The job was just alright. Didn’t pay well and the hours were atrocious but it was experience. Something to put on her resume.

There was a dishwasher woman who worked with her. Very short. Neat, straight hair. Tan skin. Looked at least fifteen years older than Swan. For a long time, the two of them didn’t talk. Just smiled when they passed each other. If Swan was carrying any dirty dishes when they crossed paths, the dishwasher woman would open her arms for them. Swan would hand them over.

It was one day that a couple came into the restaurant and at the end of their meal, the man proposed. Swan’s first thought was that this was the most ridiculous place to propose. The Garden was crowded and loud that night and while mildly expensive, far from fancy. All the other customers hushed and when the woman said yes, cheered. It was a lively event. A happy one.

When Swan viewed it, something in her chest crumpled up and dropped. For a moment she stopped breathing. Then, she ran. Ran to the outdoor cooler and sat down on the floor. The chill dried up her eyes and turned her ribs to ice so she could ignore that feeling: the knowing that something important was missing, something everyone else in that restaurant had that swelled and lit aflame at the sight of love.

The dishwasher woman stepped into the cooler just as Swan curled up into a ball on the cooler floor. It was strange that the dishwasher woman would be there considering her job did not have her going in the cooler for anything.

A weight was felt next to Swan.

“I’ve always wanted to ask your name,” Swan said because they would have to talk now.

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“It’s Delphine,” the dishwasher woman answered.

“Huh. Pretty.”

“Can I lay down with you?” Delphine asked.

“If you want.”

The dishwasher woman lowered herself to the ground so her face lined up with Swan’s. Their eyes met, black on brown, crashing like waves, one against the other.

“You are missing something,” Delphine said, a whisper that felt like wind.

“Yes, I’ve figured that much out,” Swan was close to a sob.

“I’m not talking about that. Well, maybe I am. But not in the way you think.”

Swan rolled over onto her back, “I feel so ugly. Monstrous.”

“Because you don’t think you love?”

“Is it obvious? I wasn’t trying to be obvious.”

“No. It’s not obvious. But I’ve seen you.”

“Oh. I look at you too, I guess. That’s embarrassing to admit.”

Delphine laughed and rolled over, joining Swan in looking at the steel ceiling. “No. That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what?” Swan asked.

“I see you.”

Swan was silent. She wanted to hear more.

“I hear your heart beat in your chest. Alive and hungry and human. I hear it love.”

“What do I love?” Swan asked because she needed the answer.

“Oh. You know what you love. You will always love it. This romanticized life of non-romance you live. You are like a dog. Loving the ordinary. Mostly, I think you love the sun.”

The Swan wet her cheeks.

“I was sent to talk to you. It’s like a duty. Something I have to do,” Delphine said.

Swan nodded. Delphine stood.

“You should try wearing a dress more often. You’ll find you really like it.”

Swan never saw the dishwasher woman again. She never went back to The Garden to know if she was still there. She knew she had something to do. Something big, larger than life, but not larger than love.

“Why tell me this?” I asked S when she finished talking, grin on her face and eyes watery.

“Because you confine yourself to those ill-fitting jeans and we really look a lot alike,” she said.

I left. Offered her some money for the coffee she ordered me. I didn’t look back at the café to see if it was still there because I knew it wasn’t. And this thing 32 / VLR

in my chest felt cold like Swan’s icy ribs felt cold and I knew something was going to burst if I didn’t get home soon.

And burst it did. Felt like my whole chest was swelling. Swelling with the unbearable pain of knowing that you are not ugly. You’re just a curly-haired girl that doesn’t want to get engaged.

Sofia Anderson

33 / VLR

look at this look at this the neighbors are dancing and twirling in princess dresses. it’s sunny and raining at the same time. the screen porch has a mist around it and through a speaker, my father plays music which holds the porch in place – floating above the ground. he tells me to run out here run out here right now there’s something to witness. how the little girls are in the muddy tall grass of the empty garden bed and the music from the porch is effervescent floating to the girls and they are spinning and spinning with their arms back and their necks up surrendering hearts to sun shower. so, we watch them as their laughter slows and they fall backwards, synchronized eyelids closing as dad’s music swirls around them, mixing with the haze of rain. laying in the garden, the girls breathe deeply in a way that invites me and my father to breathe deeply, invites the rain to slow, invites the sun to dim, invites the realization that if i grow i am going to get so old.

Alice Cormier

34 / VLR

35 / VLR

A Man Afraid of Flowers Although the kid was only little, Dave didn’t much like looking him in the eye because the tiny things, dark and reflective as a car’s bodyshell, reminded him of what little he could remember about his own mother—the kid’s nan—and he was hopeful the boy would turn out a lot less bitchy than Dave’s dad always said she was and, although the kid was only little, Dave hoped he’d grow up big and a bit less skinny than he turned out so despite stopping with the hugs at somewhere around age nine he would always, with gruff affection, tell the kid to finish his plate, the meat and the vegetables, so he wouldn’t starve himself trying to fit into his sister’s dress, and the kid, although he was only little, seemed to get it just fine when Dave muttered or shouted slurs at the television, like when the main guy started crying or chose peace, because he probably knew Dave was doing it for him so that he understood the rules before he did something to warrant being called one of the many names for failed men since, although the kid was only little, Dave wanted him to get the difference between men and females and how a guy should fear losing the privilege to call himself a man like a woman fears breaking a nail or turning thirty.

Omolara Bello

36 / VLR

Echoes of hope in faraway Kabul Would I ever make it far, far away?

Far, far away From seeing bleeding notebooks Piled slippers adhered to school walls The epitome of a slaughterhouse Would I ever make it far, far away?

Far, far away From hearing a man bargaining The price of his children To feed his malnourished infant Would I ever make it far, far away?

Far, far away From touching the glowing screen With trembling hands Bracing for another bad news Would I ever make it far, far away Far, far away From the girl who asks me What am I to my country Because I feel like a slave Would I ever make it far, far away?

Far, far away From empathizing with crippled souls Dwelling in a God-forsaken land Wishing to be Far, far away From it all Samman Akbarzada

37 / VLR

The Grave Digger Hot for October. Sam sat in his car, watching the procession with the air-conditioning on. A week from now, it’d be November, and here it was, pushing eighty - ready to break it, too, in about an hour. Maybe those scientists up in Washington were right. Maybe the world was burning. It just didn’t make sense.

Been fifty the rest of the month. Be fifty again in about a week or so. He thought about sweating to death and the world around him ending in turmoil as the preacher read final rites. Sam lowered the window, thinking if maybe he heard some of the gospel, he’d think everything would be all right. He might have, too, if he wasn’t so damn far Away.

Earlier that morning, he’d dug the hole the people were crowded around.

The name on the tombstone that sat before it he didn’t recognize. He thought he might have heard the man’s name before, but he wasn’t too sure. Forty-eight years old. Heart attack, way he’d understood it. Hell of a way to go. But, Sam thought, maybe that would be all right - it just hitting you. His preferred way was sleep, but in a way, it wasn’t. Not knowing you were going to die was scary.

Knowing it and then having the plug pulled seemed at least a little better, facing it and all, knowing that you weren’t going to be able to listen to your favorite song or watch your favorite movie again. But what did he know? He wasn’t even drinking age yet.

He sipped some of his Coke and let the heat gather around him, let the seat of his pants stick to his legs. There wasn’t much he could do. Soon, though, he knew, the people would disperse. Then, there was something he could do - the job he was paid to do. The job he’d somehow taken on. Most people his age went to college, partied. That kind of thing. Not him. He was too stupid and too shy for any of that. He dug graves. How macabre.

The preacher said, “Amen,” and that was all. The people up ahead, past the small gate, spoke to one another, cried some. The dead man’s son stood beside the dead man’s wife. Their eyes were locked on the casket buried in the ground before them. The boy couldn’t be more than eleven. Hell of a thing for an elevenyear-old boy, Sam thought, a death like that. Grandparent, sure, that was normal.

Not a parent.

Minutes passed, and people left. Some looked at Sam in his car, wondering just who the hell he was. Jim had told him not to come early, but what did he know? Sam had things to do, like go home, like sit, like waste. Friends? What friends? Dates? What dates?

The graveyard was small, but so was the lot the cars parked in, if you can even call it that. It was just a little patch of gravel that sat beside the highway. The graveyard was an open pasture of dying green covered in yellow leaves. A fenced 38 / VLR

field that belonged to a farm sat beside it. Down the hill, it housed cows, which sometimes he’d hear while digging, their groans and grunts what he would imagine the dead would sound like were they to rise. The church was across the road.

Brethren. Sam didn’t go to it, but Jim did.

Once he turned eighteen and didn’t have any semblance of his future, Jim had come by, friends with his father, and said if he needed work, he had something for him. As the woman and the boy came his way, the last to leave besides the preacher, Jim knew his work was about to begin. He looked down as the woman and boy passed. He felt the boy’s eyes on him but didn’t look up. He waited until he heard their vehicle starting and leaving, their wheels crunching on gravel, before getting out.

There was something about the air. Though warm, it wasn’t as warm as what the temperature said it was. Sure, it was hot, but in the air, mixed, was the chill of the respective season. He opened his trunk and took out his shovel. Behind him, the car holding the widowed wife and the fatherless son sped on. Sam watched it as it drove away. He closed the trunk and made his way up the hill toward the preacher.

“How’s it, father?”

The preacher looked at him. “As fine as one can be at a funeral.”

Sam came to a stop beside the holy man. “You know him?”

“A little bit, yes. Knew his father. Good man.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes, Sam. Worked at the mill, back when it was still open.”

“I never knew him. Never knew any of them.”

The preacher stayed quiet.

“Hot out here, ain’t it?”

“Yes, it’s quite warm.”

“Heck of a time to be alive, this weather and all.”

“All in the Lord’s hands, Sam.” “Yeah.”

“You think any about what I was talking to you about last time?”

Sam looked at the preacher. He shook his head. The preacher nodded.

Clapped him on the shoulder. “My door’s always open.”

“I know, father.”

“Goodbye, Sam. Safe travels.”

“You too, father.”

Sam watched as the preacher trekked down to his car. He felt sympathy for the old man. Wouldn’t be soon before he’d be digging a hole for him. Before then, he hoped to see the father and give himself over to the religion. One day, maybe. Sam shook his head and moved to the pile of dirt nearby. He rolled the sleeves of his shirt, raised the shovel, and stuck it in. Already, he was sweating.

39 / VLR

Alone in the graveyard, cars passing by, he covered the casket. Soon, the slick green top of it was nothing but dirt. Sam stopped once he couldn’t see it.

Down there beneath it, that man. Donald Laurie, according to the tombstone.

Dead as could be, remains that would sit there for eternity, falling apart, becoming nothing. All he’d be too, forever and ever. Not able to do a damn thing. He wouldn’t see the future, wouldn’t have a damn clue about it, in fact. Sam had dabbled in agnosticism, even dabbled in atheism, but he believed in God. And he hoped that God had an afterlife in store for his children and hoped that this Donald Laurie was up there, still living on, just as he hoped he would be when it came his time to pay the piper. It was easy believing in God. It was hard believing in Heaven.

But that was enough thinking. Already, his shirt was sticking to him just as his pants had been earlier. Sam threw the shovel into the pile and brought it back. It was about as bad as summertime. Well, maybe not as bad. Nothing was as bad as that. At least he didn’t have to keep a cooler nearby filled with water while he dug. Didn’t have to take his shirt off, either, which he only did on the days it was hotter than Hades. Even still, he wouldn’t mind it at a tad less hot.

Dirt piling, he tried not to think of the man in the hole. He tried not to not to think of those he covered, ever. When he’d first gotten the job, he’d done that - dug and filled the hole of a little boy who had succumbed to cancer. He’d started at three that day and ended at eight. All because of an hour break in between, in which he’d cried in the shadow of a tree. He wouldn’t tell anybody that.

No. That was an item he’d carry with him to his own hole - unless, somewhere along the way, he changed his mind and decided to become dust, which he figured he might.

If there was one thing he hoped, besides there being a life after death, it was that Donald Laurie hadn’t wasted his time alive, just as he had been doing his whole life. That was the worst thing one could do, he figured. One shot at life.

That’s all you got. Shouldn’t waste it. And that’s what Sam did every day of his life. So much he hadn’t done that so many others had. Oh, Sam, he thought, you dumb bastard, you’re breaking your cardinal role, just keep shoveling. Please.

For your own sake. So he did.

By the time he was to about the fifth foot, he had the top of his shirt unbuttoned. The sun was sinking, as was the temperature, though a putrid humidity remained. He didn’t have but close to thirty minutes to an hour left, depending on how quick he moved. Completing his work, a surge of energy usually hit him, and he worked like Hercules. It was around then, when this surge kicked in, and he had almost completed his job, that he heard the car turn in. He watched it, concentration broke. Aw shit, he thought. When people came to visit while he was working, he quit shoveling and took a break. People visiting loved ones didn’t want to hear or see someone filling in a grave. Even Jim had told him that.

40 / VLR

A woman stepped out of the car. Sam couldn’t see her much because of the sun reflecting off her windshield. She wore slacks and a blue top. Wayfarer sunglasses, too, if he was right. He had a pair of them, but only because Tom Cruise had worn them.

The woman headed his way. Sam looked down at the ground, glancing up from time to time as he leaned against the shovel. She inched closer and closer.

Not to any other grave but to the one he was standing at. Looking at the hole in the ground, her shadow loomed. He looked up at her. Older, she had pale skin, brown hair, and high cheekbones. Sam would’ve thought she looked great if he wasn’t working. Death permeated his thoughts.

“I’ll move if you want to be alone, ma’am.”

“Oh, no. You’re fine,” she said. “I just wanted to stop by.”

“Funeral was a couple of hours ago.”

“I know.”

Sam nodded. “You know him?”

“Would I be here if I hadn’t?”

Sam nodded. He would’ve hit himself if she weren’t around.

The woman picked up on this. “I worked with him up in the city.” She twirled her wedding ring.

“I never knew him.”

“He was a good man.” ”What I hear.”

She cocked her head south. “I live up there.”

“Why you were late?”

“No.” A gust of wind.

Sam readjusted his grip on the shovel. “Reckon he’s... Reckon he’s up in... A better place, now. Heaven, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“You believe in all that?”

“I guess.”

Another gust. Harder.

The woman looked at him. “You can keep digging, if you want. You don’t have to stop just because of me.”

“You sure?” ”Wouldn’t want you working late. Sure you got places to be at your age.”

“Ma’am, I got nowhere to go.”

She nodded. Sam threw the shovel into the mound and filled what remained of the hole. His perspiration, gone stagnant by then, etched into the lines of his skin, came forth once more. The woman provided shade as he completed 41 / VLR

his job, which he appreciated. He felt her eyes on him. When done, he stopped and looked at her. He waited for her to say something.

She opened her mouth. Closed it. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Go ahead. No law to my recollection says you can’t smoke in a graveyard.”

The woman reached into her purse and pulled out an unopened pack of Marlboros. She frantically ripped off the plastic. It fell, the wind taking the clear sheet. She reached for it. “Shit,” she said as it blew away. She turned to Sam. “Sorry.” ”Don’t worry about it.”

“I haven’t smoked in years,” she said as she stuck a cancer stick in her lip.

As she lit it, Sam said, “You must’ve known him really well.”

Exhaling, “We were close. You could say that, yeah.” She looked at Sam. “What’s your name?”

“Sam.” “Judith.”

“Nice to meet you, Judith.”

“Nice to meet you, Sam.” Sam looked up at the sky. “You think the world’s burning like those people up in Washington say it is?”

Judith looked at him. “I think it is, yes.”

“Hell of a thing to think.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

Sam looked at the dirt. “Reckon that’s that, ma’am. I can leave you alone, now, if you’d like.”

“No, I’d like you to stay.”

“Okay.”

He stood beside her. Both looked at the dirt.

“How long will it take for the grass to come in?”

“Not too long. About two weeks.”

“Not soon enough.”

“I’m just telling you the facts, ma’am.” ”You think Heaven is a fact?”

He thought about it for a second. “Yeah, I do.”

“Nice thought, isn’t it?”

“Better than the ones you think.”

Judith laughed. “You got me there, kid.”

They looked at each other. Judith nodded, took one last look at the tombstone, and headed back where she came from. Backing out, Sam thought he saw her wave to him. Strange woman, he thought, an idea of how she really knew the man sprouting. He patted the ground some and called it a day. Shovel by the handle, he began for the lot, thinking about what he’d do the rest of his day. Stop 42 / VLR

by the gas station. Get a drink. Maybe go to the local grocery. See if he could run into Carol Heathrow. Sure, she’d gained a few pounds since high school, and sure, he didn’t really even like her because of how she’d treated him back in the day, but at least she’d say something to him. At least, he thought she would.

Hell, though, he’d been there ten times now and still hadn’t run into her. Sam threw the shovel in the trunk, got behind the wheel, and cut the air on. He drove away, Don Williams blaring, not thinking of his waste of life or the big sleep that awaited him and the rest of man, but Carol Heathrow, who, if memory served, did not find him particularly attractive. Which he wasn’t, of course.

November couldn’t come quicker. Maybe then it’d be a little colder. Maybe then it’d be a little warmer, too.

Morgan Poole

43 / VLR

44 / VLR

45 / VLR

a wandering sestina for — in catatonic crumbling world-destroying dreams you come to me, a figment, fragmented: replaying constantly the shape of your words seeping in your noxious knocking kiss wanting the smell of your skin on my breath & your verdant eyes to martyr me. “you wore me down,” syntax so swallowing & skull shattering, dreams of you enveloping me, held by your breath, delusions of desire clipped & fragmented into paranormal touch, the ghost of your kiss on the nape of my neck, a loss for words. my stomach swells at the your harsh words, a nothingness cast upon your dominance of me, our hanging hollow kiss trailing me, & in my dreams i beg you to pull me in once more, to feel me, fragmented yet whole, human, reciprocating your every breath. muscles move & make meaning as your breath follows my spine, tongue along my neck and your words in my ear and on my lips, desire fragmented by pertinent prodding points– oh deliver me outside this moment & into something greater, of dreams, a world in which you love me beyond my kiss. & i remember the first feeling of your kiss: promises broken, love-making, guiding breath to take me to another side, fulfilling dreams from a younger and naiver me, her words, the catalyst for your wanting me, now thrown back & mourned & fragmented. my soul shattered, embodiment fragmented, thrown into a version of reality in which my kissless state is a result of your disinterest in me, spurring & branding me, becoming livestock, exhausting every breath 46 / VLR

i have remaining to spit up useless words, bloodied & bruised, recurring in my restless dreams. & you are fragmented, still– a figure in my dreams, a harrowing kiss, a touch, a frame in which your words move me to you, yearning endlessly, giving you my last breath.

Bella Stevens

47 / VLR

A Little Nearsighted Your alarm clock wakes you up at 7 AM. That’s good. You weren’t awake already to tell it to shut up, and it wasn’t beeping next to a bed that had long since been abandoned. You get up and almost trip over a pillow that you’d pushed off of your bed in the middle of the night. Leaving the pillow on the floor, you go to the kitchen to find your breakfast. There’s a half-ripe bunch of bananas sitting on the counter, and a couple of boxes of cereal on the shelves.

You make eye contact with a toucan on one of the boxes before going to grab a cup of yogurt resting in the door of your fridge. You sit down at the kitchen table and turn on your phone. There are a couple of notifications from the night, mostly from some of those automated email subscriptions that you get when you make an account for something online and forget to uncheck the box that tells them not to annoy you. There’s a text message asking if you’re still up to meeting at that place on 14th street at 6 tonight. You respond yes, tacking on one of those little smiley faces made up of a colon and a right parenthesis mark.

You eat your yogurt and watch a couple of videos that YouTube had been telling you to watch. The cup is empty, and you throw it at the trash can from across the room. You miss, so you need to get up, pick it up, and drop it in instead. This isn’t nearly as cool. You go upstairs, pull off your pajamas, put on a tank top and gym shorts, and brush your teeth. There isn’t anything else for you to do here, and your alarm clock is telling you that it’s 8:24, so you slide into your shoes and close the front door behind you.

As you turn the familiar corners, and the sun beats down on your bare shoulders and neck. Maybe you should just bite the bullet and buy a bicycle already. It’d probably save time. There’s an orange sign up ahead on the sidewalk that says ‘ROAD WORK AHEAD’. “I sure hope it does,” you think. You smile to yourself. You’ve passed ‘ROAD WORK AHEAD’ signs like this so many times before, and you’ve thought to yourself ‘I sure hope it does’ every single time. You think that you heard that one on the internet at some point, but at this point, it’s an inside joke that you share with yourself. Your feet start to hurt.

You get to work at 8:56, 4 minutes before you’re contractually obligated to be there. No customers have shown up yet, nobody wants to be here this early.

Nobody needs to be here this early. The arcade machines are lightless, and the Mascot stands dormant on stage. Most of the other staff aren’t here yet, but you wave to the other employee on this shift as he walks through the door. His resume lists his job as “entertainer”, and so does yours, but you hesitate to think of yourself as that when, most of the time, your actual job is something closer to “waste management”. There are about six trash bags that the evening shift didn’t bother to take from the kitchen on their way out, so you shoulder two of them and start making your way to the dumpster. You kick open the back door and 48 / VLR

toss the bags into the dumpster. The door automatically locks as it closes behind you, which reminds you that you left your keys in the kitchen next to the other four trash bags. You make your way past the backs of storefronts so that you can go back in through the front door. The alley smells like bricks and broken glass.

It’s two in the afternoon. You know this because a pastel clock with googly eyes and a handlebar mustache tells you that it is. You walk out into the party and wave an oversized glove at the anticipation in the room. Some of the kids fist bump you, and some of their parents take photos. Some of the kids stay glued to their seats. You remember when you were a kid, and you did the exact same thing, since you were terrified of the faceless person moving within that suit. You remind yourself that the kids that are high fiving you right now only care about the Mascot, and that makes things a little bit easier. The arcade machines are flashing vividly. The music is blaring.

You see yourself dancing on the stage. Except it isn’t you. It’s wearing the same suit, but it isn’t sweaty, it isn’t clumsy, and it isn’t tearing through the soles of its shoes because it doesn’t need to walk to work every day. The fact that you can walk and that it cannot is the only reason that you even have your job in the first place. As you leave the party, it stays on the stage. It is still dancing.

It’s 5:04. Your shift ended 4 minutes ago, but you stayed to help clean up vomit that had been left in a ball pit. Why couldn’t this kid have just found somewhere to puke that would’ve been easier to clean? Bits of lukewarm pizza are buried far beneath piles of plastic technicolor balls. You pass by the evening shift on your way out of the door. You want to tell them to throw out any trash bags that they have left before they leave later that night, but you don’t have the time to get into that right now, and you can just do it for them in the morning anyway. You start to jog back home, and then you break into a run. You want to give yourself time to shower and change clothes before you head out for dinner.

You think about how weird of a concept time is. It’s like how colors are, it’d be really damn hard to explain colors to a blind person. These are the kinds of things you think about while running. You trip over a crack running parallel through the sidewalk, scraping your elbows. You’re a little nearsighted, so you didn’t see it coming, waiting to catch the toe of your right shoe. Your mom said that she can book an appointment with the optometrist to get a prescription for glasses the next time that she’s home. That might be a while from now.

You’re sitting at a table outside of the Italian place. It’s 5:58, so you haven’t ordered anything yet. You’ve been on dates a couple of times before, but you’re still a bit nervous. You remind yourself about how people say it’s better to just be yourself with this sort of thing, but you’re not really sure what they mean by that.

The way you see it, it’s better to take time to learn what not to do, because if you keep doing that, someday you’ll know exactly what you’re doing. Life can be a process of elimination. * * * 49 / VLR

I see you sitting at the table with the umbrella and take the seat across from you. I tell you that it’s good seeing you again, my July has been a bit boring so far. You say that you’re happy to see me again too. We’re both a bit glad this is happening at all. It was painfully obvious that you liked me all of senior year, and I know your friends had been telling you to talk to me since December, but you couldn’t find the words to talk about anything other than homework and tests until June. I ask you about how your summer has been, and you start telling me about your job as an entertainer at the mascot place down the street. I think that’s pretty cool, since I’d gone there growing up, and you tell me that you did too. We didn’t know each other when we were that young, but I wonder if we had ever happened to share that space. Maybe we’d played Skee-Ball together. Or maybe one of the claw machines. Neither of us is thinking about this out loud. I wouldn’t have minded if you did. The waiter asks us what drinks we want.

You ask me about how my summer’s been going, and I tell you about how my college orientation went. You won’t have one of those until August, but you listen to me and smile. My college is up by Boston, and yours is just outside of DC. We don’t talk about that, and I don’t want to talk about it. I ask you about how your mom is doing, since I talked to her for a few minutes at graduation and she was nice to me. You tell me that she was called back to the base in Okinawa until November. She has more work to do, and you’re old enough to stay in the apartment alone now. The waiter comes back with water for you and pink lemonade for me. You change the subject. We’re walking under the streetlights now. You’re looking at the ground, and you fix your hair because one strand is hanging off to the side and you don’t want it to fall over your eye. I think it’s cute, but you don’t know that because I don’t say it is. You would know so much more if you had ever learned to talk without using words.

We pass an orange sign on the sidewalk. It says ‘ROAD WORK AHEAD’.

“Road work ahead?” you say. “I sure hope it does.” I laugh. It’s a little bit of a giggle at first, but it gets away from me. I look over at you, and you’re smiling. I can’t tell if you’re looking at me or the sign. *** You’re looking at the sign because you don’t want to look at me, and you don’t want to look at me because your feet hurt, and if you look at me then you’d force yourself to walk for longer than you should. Maybe a minute or so later you glance at my hand. You do it again, and then you put your fingers around mine.

You glance up at my face and I smile. You tighten your grip a little bit, since you feel like you know what you’re doing now.

* * * 50 / VLR

We’re back at my house, a few steps away from the porch. I thank you for walking me home, and you tell me that it’s the least you could do. You say that we should spend more time together, because tonight was great, and you’ve loved spending time with me. I agree with you. Summer won’t last much longer. We look at each other for a moment. You let go of my hand and hug me. It’s a little bit awkward, but I appreciate it. You tell me that you hope I have a good night, and you turn around and walk home. *** As you pass under the streetlights, you pull up Google Maps because you’re not really sure how to get back to your apartment right now. After you find your way back, you pull your pajamas back on, brush your teeth, slump into your bed, and put on your headphones. You want to listen to a song that hasn’t been written yet. You want to write this song, but you don’t know how to write music, and learning that would take time. You sit in silence for a couple of minutes and forget to start playing any music. You pick your pillow up off of the floor and turn off the lamp. Your alarm clock says that it’s 10:42. Then it says that it’s 11:23, 12:34. You get up and go to the bathroom. The clock in the hall says it’s 1:26. As you look at a streetlight through a gap in your blinds, you’re tired enough to let sleep in through your half open bedroom door.

Owen Andrews

51 / VLR

52 / VLR

53 / VLR

Headed South Migratory patterns passed down the thin, brittle branches of your family tree landed you here, six-hundred miles away from the one arbor that ever held you without condition, the homing destination of a desperate and rebellious act of flight. Everyone is asking you what you want now. Merciless leg bouncing under the fluorescent overhead lights in a room with a taunting clock across from you and an aged-yellow tissue box in the middle of a circle of chairs, your answer: you want space. You stop returning to your nest before midnight, dreading the mold on your nightstand blooming in yet-undiscovered colors against the white dishes. You substitute coffee for meat, unable to face the raw red, marbled sinews of that necessary and nourishing violence we call food.

You slip into euphemisms for death, politely. Everyone is asking you what you need, in voices that sound just like hers: loud, insistent, heavy and bruising, but tender like labor-worn fingers brushing your over-sensitive sides, combing your prickly-pear hair, like tea delivered on a sickbed, like a car parked in front of the house where so much has happened that cannot be named, in the car where the seats burn your backside and your cheeks taste like salt, taste like spelt flour cookies, like her leather couch, like lattes every morning and new winter boots, like I’m worried about you.

You’ve stopped calling home.

You knew all along that distance couldn’t fix this. It was human of you to try.

Lex Page 54 / VLR

Root’s Spread The tree has stood, stands, will stand. Nobody planted it. It was a big magnolia, surrounded by pines. It was the kind with waxy cuticles and meaty white flowers, and it had been standing fifty years when someone went and built a packed-dirt road next to it, and it was thirty more years till they made it gravel.

The magnolia gave shade and sitting-branches better than any other tree, so it was no surprise when an older toddler with denim coveralls and curious, searching eyes came for a picnic with his mother. They played, ate sandwiches, and sat down together. “When I’m growed up, I’m gonna own this tree.” The boy confided, and scratched a piece of bark off. “Grown up.” His mother corrected, and they left their picnic soon after.

Years wasn’t the way the tree counted- there were wet seasons and dry seasons, hot and cold, but it had been a long time before that boy came back, with a girl in tow. They were into late adolescence, near physical maturity but still a long way from men and women. Now the boy had something of his mother in him, in the way his nose arched and hair curled, but those curious, searching eyes had grown sharper and calculating. The tree stood over the couple and watched as they shielded themselves from the road’s view and fumbled stickily for half an hour, scraping their naked backs on bark and magnolia fruit. When they were finished, the boy took out a knife and carved a heart and initials into the tree’s flesh. “When I come back, I reckon I’ll buy the land around here- it’ll be worth something good, one day, once I get it cleared off.” But his hand wasn’t on the ground; he was holding a branch as he spoke.

It wasn’t much longer, only a few cycles of the seasons, till the boy was back again, this time with men. They set up some equipment, put some stakes in the land, and shook hands, talking all the while. Before the end of the season, a drainage ditch had been dug, a driveway was being laid out, and wood was being carted up the driveway. Every tree was cut down on the land, except one. “It frames the driveway,” he said. “Leave the magnolia.” And later, when no one was around, he scratched out the heart he had carved, leaving a blank, white space on the trunk. A season later, with the house built and the magnolia flowers blooming, he brought a woman home- a different one than last time. She was young and rosy, and she plucked a leaf off the magnolia as she walked up the driveway, chattering with the boy, the man, all the while. He didn’t seem to hear, and the tree cast its shadow over him as he looked back at the woman, eyes still calculating, measuring, weighing.

Soon the house had grown larger, the property had grown around it, and all the roads were asphalt. The woman had her arms around her big belly now, and she led a small child down the driveway on walks. Hedges lined the 55 / VLR

property, and the tree looked small, quaint on this land that it had once dominated, crowded out with development. The man came home late or not at all, and the woman lost her rosiness and happiness with time, sagging against the weight of repeated days. From its height, the tree saw the rare times the man took his children out to play. Once he had brought them down to the tree to play andwhen they appeared bored- scolded them harshly and asked them to climb and keep climbing till they cried and begged for him to let them stop. He pretended not to hear and yelled that they had better keep climbing. When the woman came down to stop him, he yelled at her too and threw a handful of leaves, making her flinch. That night, he spent a long time by the tree, weeping and talking to himself incessantly, drinking and cursing, till the morning began to break and he stumbled up the road to his home. There were no more trips to the tree for a long time.

The house people were quiet and removed. Few visitors, fewer laughs.

Every year, stakes were laid down farther and farther, and the property expanded while the people shrank. There were two boys and a girl in that house, and none of them played on the magnolia. When they went off to college there was no great stir, except that the woman left a season after the last child did, taking her things with her. The man began to resemble his mother again, this time in the age around his eyes and the joints that only carried him with creaking effort.

And the eyes were no longer so calculating; they had lost that quality and no longer suggested anything but glassy indifference. There were no more women or children, and the tree saw him less and less as he worked all day and slept all night in that big, empty house behind the wilting hedges.

So many seasons passed even the tree began to grow winded. The man’s body, once fat with middle-age, became thin so fast his clothes hung off him like sheets on a clothesline. He no longer walked down to the driveway at all, instead driving a hundred feet from his garage to pick up the mail. A young woman in scrubs lived with him in the house. Cars with different license plates showed up with solemn passengers who only stayed for an afternoon. Stakes went up on the land again, dividing it up to be sold. Asphalt driveways were poured for the houses of new owners every day. Finally there was only the little strip of land left with a grotesquely large house sitting on it, like a bear crouched on a hummingbird. The last time the tree saw him when he was still a man, he was carried out in his wheelchair, a vestigial appendage of the seat. He kissed the smooth space where he had cut off the bark and he cried, and they took him back to the house when he began coughing too hard to breathe.

It wasn’t even half a season before the land shrank more, until almost none of it was staked as the man’s, not even the house. All that was marked as his was a little area around the magnolia. The next time the man came out, he was not a man. The makeup and suit he wore made him look like a prop, and he no longer 56 / VLR

resembled his mother at all. He did not look indifferent, angry, calculating, or even curious. His eyelids were glued shut, and they chucked him into a hole at the magnolia’s feet, the only area now staked out for him being about six feet long and half that wide. The tree cast its shadow on him, swaddled his little box with its roots, cracked it, and ate him.

Graydon Smith

57 / VLR

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