Writers Magazine 2013

WRITERS S E Ian Clark Enid Spitz E Rebecca Beshoar Beau Borek Andrea Jackle Athena Lathos Taylor Rudow A

Dr. Lars Larson Dr. Genevieve Brassard C I

Nighthawk

by Benjamin Co Writers logo (back cover) designed by Enid Spitz S 2013

Table of Contents E ’ C Joanna Langberg Philip Ellefson Corey Fawcett

4 5 6

Fatherhood How to Make Apricot Pineapple Jam Millennial Breakdown

Talley Carlston Enid Spitz Nastacia Voisin Hannah Robinson Enid Spitz William C. Lawson

9 14 20 26 28 29

Katelin Stanley Nicole Simard Taylor Rudow Wakaba Omi Zach Peters Evan Gabriel Benjamin Co Danniel Lorenz Matarlo Jackie Jeffers Talley Carlston Danniel Lorenz Matarlo Joanna Langberg

32 33 36 41 48 51 57 61 62 64 67 74

Colleen Alpine Laundry II Summer Bee Abre Buddy Fight the Good Fight and Sunday Rituals Naptime cumha a bheith ort Manta Rays Crossed Extensor Reflex at Work Oia Vertigo Idleness 222 NW Couch After Some Rain Untitled CafĂŠ Rouge The Mornings The Boy Who Kept Moving

Ian Clark

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Hope Dorman AJ Davies Deanna Gayomali Alex Dickinson Katelin Stanley Monica Down Derek Porter Megan Lester Monica Solano Molina Jose Huerta Clare Munger Athena Lathos

11 13 19 27 35 40 49 52 63 68 69 71

I

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O! How Beautiful Now Across the Mist of Years!

Mitosis Children of the Old Pine I Think I Shall Obsess Today They Called Him Toad Wolken The Body And the World Walked Through Me Hierra Suitt Mi Madre Half-Asleep, the City Sleepy Contention King City Astronomy

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Alex Dickinson Mason Lindblad Cecilia Brunning Kelsey Weyerbacher Evan Gabriel Mackenzie Parker Hali Thompson Olivia Alsept-Ellis Jeff Makjavich PJ Marcello

12 15 21 30 34 37 44 50 53 58

Ian Clark

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Spring, 2009 The Wall On the Origin of Species And Beyond Fingers and Spit Detritus, Dirigibles, and Dreepin’ Dean I'm Not Suicidal, it's just Monday Broadway CafÊ Foggy Recollections of an Unfortunate Event Trinity

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About the creative contributors Acknowledgments

M .

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“I wish you a wrestling match with your creative muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and madness and foolishness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories...which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love remake the world.”

— Ray Bradbury

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Fatherhood

BY J L

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How to Make Apricot Pineapple Jam B P

E

Armenian dirt, Hawaiian dirt, Indian dirt, fruit powder, and water – i fumble to scoop them up with a knife and spread them on my toast. and when i do this, i do it in remembrance of home, of the gurgling sweet goo in the brass-bottomed pot and the old blue ladle stained brown by years and years of soup, of the banged-up metal funnel and the rubber-rimmed lids bouncing in hot water, of the foam, the soft stuff spooned from the top of the pot for ritz crackers, of the pouring into self-sealing kerr jars and the popping and the turning upside-down and the storing-away downstairs in the dark, dark store room, and of you, walking in the door with one million pounds of apricots in late spring.

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Millennial Breakdown

By C F

Day One I think everyone at this café has a low-grade fever. But I’m going to stay anyway.

If I go home, that means I’ll have to tell my roommate I just quit my job.

She’ll be supportive on the surface, but underneath she’ll be worrying about how I’ll make rent next week. Understandably.

After I tell Nina, I’ll have to tell my dad. That certainly won’t go over well. It’s pretty hard for a twenty-two year old with a history degree to justify quitting her cushy marketing job just because she doesn’t find any meaning in it. “There’s meaning in a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater, isn’t there?” my dad will say, referring to the infamous William Carlos Williams poem. “Didn’t you learn how to assign meaning to anything in those liberal arts classes of yours?” My dad is a smartass.

Day Three I’ve come to this café three times now to look for jobs on my laptop, but to no avail.

There are too many distractions, both virtual and not. One of the baristas looks like the guy from Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, so there’s that. Of course, the internet rabbit holes are a huge problem as well. I keep googling stuff like “job search tips,” and an hour and a half later find myself reading about Peter Jackson’s massive weight loss on one of those websites that has links to articles titled “10 Things Every Woman is Doing Wrong In Bed.” The café is called Hattie’s, a mawkishly quirky name that does an excellent job of attracting similarly natured customers. Even though Hattie probably isn’t a real person, I can imagine her perfectly: jet black bangs cut well above her eyebrows, a tattoo of some flora or fauna on the back of her neck, and a forty dollar vintage apron for her to wipe her espresso -stained hands on. Perhaps she plays the ukulele mediocrely in a band called “The Weird Sisters.” At least she has a job.

Day Six Drinking so much coffee is definitely having an effect on me. I refill my sixteen ounce thermos four or five times throughout the day, and sometimes I get a mocha as well. When I get home, I’m so wired I can’t fall asleep until four. But I don’t want Nina to know I’m unemployed, so I pretend to be sleeping in my room while I’m really browsing the internet or watching something on Netflix with my headphones on. Three

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and a half hours later I drag myself out of bed so she thinks I’m going to work.

Day Eight At Hattie’s, I oscillate between obnoxiously social and viciously withdrawn.

Sometimes, after having my eyes glued to my laptop for hours, I have to bring myself back to the real world. I’ll try to start a conversation with the person closest to me even if they’re obviously working. “What are you working on?” I’ll ask. “Oh, it’s really not that interesting.” Then we’ll sit in silence for a few moments while they pretend to type and try not to make eye contact with me. “Hey,” I’ll say. “I’m talking to you!”

But at times, it goes the other way. Yesterday a middle-aged man in a poncho approached me. “Hello. I’m a Reiki master. Have you ever heard of Reiki?” The man went on and on about how I should let him train me because I look like I have “powerful healing abilities.” I sat there, nodding and smiling, until I suddenly felt very angry. “Do you ever shut up?”

I snapped.

Day Nine I’ve applied to twelve jobs now. Among them: litter patrol at the zoo, sales associate at Zumiez, and CEO of Oregon Public Broadcasting.

When I read about the OPB CEO resigning, I thought of a poster in the bathroom of my fourth grade portable. “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you will land among the stars,” it said. I sent in my resume and two forged letters of recommendation: one from my former academic adviser and the other from my fourth grade teacher.

Day Ten This afternoon, I overheard the hot barista saying to his coworker that he wished he had all the time in the world like I did.

I scoffed, gathered my things, and walked over to him. “You don’t know me. I could be writing the next great American novel over here.” The caffeine made my voice shake.

I stormed out of the café and walked furiously around the block three, eight, twenty times. Then I decided to walk the ten miles home.

Day Eleven I was too sore from walking home to get out of bed this morning. I didn’t want to go back to Hattie’s any way. “I think I’m getting sick,” I told Nina this morning. “I’m just going to stay home today and try to nip this one in the bud.”

Around noon, I dragged myself to the local bookstore. I found a book about what job you should have based on your Myers Briggs personality type. Mine was an INFP. “Consider a career in writing, counseling/ social work, teaching, psychology, psychiatry, music, or religious work,” it told me. All of those options sounded quite meaningful to me. I fixat-

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d on the last suggestion and fantasized about being the most successful wandering Buddhist ascetic the world had ever seen. I decided to start meditating when I got home.

Day Twenty The meditating actually helped me sleep. This morning I felt energized enough to bus down to Hattie’s and apologize the hot barista.

“My sanity has just been hanging on a thread since I quit my job,” I said.

“Well, we have an opening here if you’re interested,” he told me. “Unless you’re too busy writing the next great American novel.”

I accepted the offer.

Day Twenty-one I didn’t notice this during my ten-day coffee binge, but there are actually quite a few Hattie’s customers that stay here on their laptops for hours.

One of them, a thirty-something year old man that always wears a beret and leaves his poor terrier tethered to a table outside, stopped me to show me a front page Reddit post today.

“Have you seen this? Someone applied to be CEO of OPB and sent in a letter of recommendation from their fourth grade teacher.”

“People are pathetic,” I said, wiping my hands on my apron.

Day Twenty-five Ian likes my new haircut: a bob with short bangs. It shows off the new moon and stars tattoo I got on the back of my neck.

“I’ve been feeling really good lately,” I told Ian this morning. “Like I can get a lot of stuff done. I wonder how hard it is to get certified by the Green Business Bureau?”

Day Thirty I stayed late last night, re-decorating the café and making a sign for our new compost bin, but I don’t feel tired at all. (The bin was my idea. “It will help us reduce our carbon footprint!” I told the manager earlier that week.)

I know it doesn’t say so in the Myers Briggs book, but I think I would be really good at managing a coffee shop.

I think I could be the best Hattie’s employee in the world.

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Colleen B T

C

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O! How Beautiful Now Across the Mist of Years!

B I C

and in the white cottages and the smoking chimneys and the ridges of the old stone walls running up the spine of the hills and in the way the fields of heather unfurled the red sails of their leaves against the whiskeydark rafters of heaven and the tanks rolled into Londonderry at 3 o’clock in the morning. The tanks rolled into Londonderry when the sun was still asleep and when all the world was still asleep and when the paratroopers forced down the doors of the Catholics and the walls of rioting teenagers and when the tear gas exploded and when the tear gas exploded over the heads of the women and the children and once someone told me that in everything there was an endlessness.

There was an endlessness in the rifles glinting in the rain and the shots ringing out in the darkened slums of the Bogside and oh how

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Mitosis B H D

Like the most basic building blocks of life, my life has duplicated all its parts.

Everything was singular.

But life is not stagnant and it divided, leaving me with two of everything.

Two beds in two rooms Two keys to two doors Two addresses to two mailboxes Two cities in two states One life, but two homes

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Spring, 2009 B A D

There’s a photograph sitting in the bottom of an old cigar box I keep in my closet. My dad took that photo when I was sitting cross-legged in the back of my Subaru Outback on a sleeping bag with my rucksack lying next to me. It was springtime during my senior year of high school and soon I’d be headed up to Alaska to work for the whole summer and make a bunch of cash. I never made all that money, but it doesn’t matter.

My dad took that photo of me after he’d lost his job and my mother couldn’t sell any more houses when the market crashed and soon we lost our own house. My car is parked in front of my Aunt’s place where my dad stayed for most of that year, even after he finally got a new job.

She lived only about six miles from my school but I couldn’t stay there; I’m deathly allergic to cats. My lungs swell up and I can’t breath. It’s really horrible, and my Aunt had three cats. My mother, my little sister and brother went to live with grandma on the other side of town, but I couldn’t stay there either because we really didn’t have enough money for me to be driving those twenty miles across town twice a day.

I tried riding my bike to school and showering in the locker room and sleeping on the couch at Grandma’s, but the couch was too short anyways. So I lied to my mom (who I really hope isn’t reading this now), telling her I would sleep at a friends house or stay with my dad, and instead I just parked that old Subaru in the back of the school parking lot Monday morning and slept there through the week. Every morning I’d wake up as the sunrise took the night’s chill out of the car and I’d see light seeping in through window fog. I’d pop the trunk, crawl out and eat something out of my weekly bag of groceries as my visible breath rose in front of me. The ground crunched when I walked.

I parked next to a patch of woods and the birds laughed at me from the trees, but I was Huck Finn, Thoreau, Sal Paradise. The gypsy hobo vagabond monk of the Great Recession of 2008. Some nights were cold, and sometimes I’d hear a noise that sounded like footsteps and pull the sleeping bag up over my face and keep one eye open.

In that photo, though, I’m sitting there after my dad made some joke about my long hair and I’m leaning back and I’m laughing. He is too. I’m looking just above and to the right of the camera. I don’t know what I’m looking at, but I’m thinking about Alaska.

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Children of the Old Pine B AJ D

We are the children of the old pine Count us by our rings Voices through needles and Branches sing Smiles tween rusting canopy shine We are the youth of stormy nights Laughing thunder claps Rolling over hill and plains Eyes bright in lightning lapse Back to black for the best sights We are those taken under owl’s wings Taught to fly with arms out flung Pitching through air like sap Sticking to freedom cloud clung Dewy dawn greeted by winded howl’s ring We are the raindrops heaven falling Angels blessed, earth sent Splashing against stone and leaves Caressing souls from nature went Missing, soothing the lost with our calling We are the cubs learning our mother’s way Rambling through bushes and briar Scratching away city’s scars Freeing from traps, cemented mire Our body’s soil for our mother’s love in may

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Alpine Laundry II B E S

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The Wall B M L

Jack sat on the edge of the wall, staring out over the valley, barely making out the tall hills through the fog. It was dark outside but for the streetlights, and there were several inches of snow on the ground. Beyond his normal clothes he wore only a thin hoodie, but he did not feel the cold. He took a long drag of his cigarette, then crushed it beneath his feet as he let the smoke out his mouth. Below him the river flowed silently, and the fog flowed silently over it in turn. Looking up, Jack could see the clouds flying past at a remarkable speed, the moonlight flickering in and out of existence like a dying flame. Every once in a while he could see a star so very far away in the sky.

It was dead quiet save for the faint callings of some creature of the night down in the thin woods below. He was alone, so very alone. The few fleeting thoughts that drifted through his mind included dreams of exploring more beyond the wall. He had scaled to the top of the eight foot tall concrete fence, but he dared not go farther. There was a loosely enforced law about going over the wall, but policing the area was unnecessary; the industry down below on the riverbanks was enough to deter most, including Jack. Those who ventured down were killed, or so he heard. The rules changed on the other side of the wall.

He always came to this spot when he needed to think. The same spot every time. Sometimes when he felt lonely he would sit and wait for a like-minded soul to come join him, but no one ever did. Everyone was too busy drowning themselves in drink, sitting in their rooms with their friends discussing trivial topics, or working on things that could probably wait another day. Occasionally he would come during the day, but in the dead of night, it just felt different. Everything was silent and still, and the world seemed vast. The river valley was dotted with lights from the industrial campuses; some were a rich orange, others a cool blue. The river and its shores seemed to be alive as boats noiselessly glided across the water and cranes effortlessly dipped into nothingness only to return with precious cargo in their grasp. The orange lights were fire dancing through the valley, and the blue lights were the hot base of the flames.

Faint red lights flashed from the top of the hills on a trio of towers whose purpose Jack could only wonder at. Truth be told, Jack did not really know the purpose of any of the things he was seeing. The factories down below had no names attached to them. They were simply referred to as “The Industry�. Perhaps they were important, perhaps not.

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And the river, all the river did was flow to the ocean. The Industry poured what it wanted into the waters and let them flow out. Jack had never been to the ocean. He imagined staring out over it to be much different than when he stared out over the valley. Here there were landmarks, and distant hills that were really not all that distant. His field of vision was limited, and he liked it that way. Looking out at the ocean would be endless. No hills or mountains, just infinite water to become lost in. He did not need to become lost, he already felt lost enough.

He always came to this spot to think, but he never really thought. He just stared out into the nothingness until he felt satisfied or his body couldn’t handle the cold anymore. There was no true sign that he was done, he would always just climb down from the concrete wall when it felt like it was time. It was not yet time.

Last year he had had a relationship end at this spot. He had spent the entire night walking around with his girlfriend and finally, after sitting staring at this view for the better part of an hour, he was able to say the words to end it. It crossed his mind that maybe that was why he kept coming back. But he knew that it wasn’t. He had chosen this spot of all places to end the relationship because it was comfortable, otherwise he never would have returned time after time. A little part of him did wish that a like-minded girl would show up when he was out here thinking, and that things could come full circle; a relationship ended at this spot and one would start in the same spot. But no one came, for any reason at all, much less a romantic encounter.

Jack was a dreamer, and he knew it.

He knew nothing would happen at this spot, his favorite spot to go when he was alone. He went there when he felt lonely, but he only ended up being just as lonely as he had already been. What was the solace he sought? Some sort of invisible force drew him to this place. He would look to the sky, and find no signs. He would look to the hills, the river, the dirt, the wall, and find no signs. Whatever the force was, it was truly invisible, and truly unknown. He had stopped trying to discover it long ago and had learned to accept that this was the place he went when he needed to, and nothing more. It was never somewhere he went when he was happy or having fun, it was only reserved for times of loneliness, sadness, and hopelessness, and yet staring out over the fog -covered valley did not seem to have any obvious effect. Perhaps it was soothing, but not so much that it made him happy again. Or perhaps the fresh air, the fiery lights, and the silence of night cleared his mind enough that if he was not happy, he was at least neutral and at ease.

And the wall. It was a border between the known and the unknown, which somehow was comforting. The known world would become un-

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comfortable, so Jack would come to the wall, which would set him back to normal, yet not fully comfortable. Nothing seemed to make him fully comfortable.

His thought process led him to a dangerous choice, but before he could second-guess himself, his heart took over his mind, and he was on the other side of the wall. He stood still for a moment, processing what he had just done, feet firmly planted in the snow. He looked back up; this side of the wall sloped downward so rapidly there was no way he would be able to climb back up at the same spot he had jumped down at. He began trudging his way down the hill, toward the lights, the noises, the river. The Industry.

Jack’s shoes dug into the snow, and his socks quickly became soaked, as every misstep took his leg down into the white sheet farther than he had intended. He was practically tumbling down the slope, its gradient propelling him faster than he would have liked in a landscape so unfamiliar, but the river loomed ahead. It seemed even wider close up; much more threatening than when he had sat so high above it. He had been a king on a throne overlooking his domain, but now he was on the same level as the river. Two industrial complexes flanked an open field, which he made a beeline for. He would see the river on its own level soon enough.

The whirring of machinery was louder down here, and much sharper than up above, where it had echoed across the valley back and forth before finally reaching Jack’s ears. The snowfield ended abruptly, giving way to a vast expanse of water. The river seemed so much larger now that he was looking at it horizontally. He was in awe. Yet he still didn’t feel better. Even surrounded by the flashing lights, ambiguous factories, and the immense river he felt the same as he did when he sat far above them. He stood there, gazing out over the water, at the tall hills beyond, watching his breath release in a quickly dispersing cloud. There was nothing.

In the distance he heard the faint sound of hounds barking and men yelling. Probably just something going on at one of the factories, he thought. But then he turned around and saw a pair of dogs bounding toward him, with three men close behind. There was nowhere to run, with the river behind him and the industrial complexes on either side.

Jack tensed, his mind no longer focused on finding peace but on preserving his life. It was true; no one who went down the hill came back alive.

One of the hounds, murder in its eyes and foam at its mouth lunged for him, and he raised his arm to cover his face. A set of resilient teeth clamped down on his arm, punching through the thin sweatshirt and

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drawing blood. He grunted, clenching his teeth together, and tried to shake the dog off, but it was latched on tight. He faltered in the snow, and his face was in the river. Frigid water riddled with vile chemicals splashed onto his face and washed in through his mouth and nose. He coughed, and tried to shake the dog off, rolling over. Suddenly the dog let go, and he was overcome with relief. Jack stood up, blood and water dripping from his body, and he tried to stumble back to shore.

BANG! Something tore through Jack’s skin and lodged in his chest. When he looked up, one of the distant men had a rifle pointed at him. Jack coughed up blood, and then fell backwards. Eyes wide open, he landed on his back in the river water, lying there motionless until the current lifted him and carried his body away. And now he felt happy, comfortable.

Now that the river was carrying him down a prescribed path and he had a definite direction for the short remainder of his life, he felt the least lost that he had ever felt in his life. Soon he would be in the ocean, a place that only minutes before he had feared. And now he welcomed it, for there was finally a route to follow, and the wide ocean was his journey’s destination, and he knew this for certain.

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I Think I Shall Obsess Today

BY D G

I think I shall obsess today Over some movie star I think I shall drool today Over Martin Flynn DiCapricorn Or Wish I was Meryl Aubrey Lynn With her porcelain, gorgeous skin Wish I had a million dollars Plus a million gold and silver bars And I would buy a sleek, swift, sea-worthy yacht With gold anchors, pink, embroidered, linen sails I would buy a marble, marvelous, mansion With designer welcome mats and pedigreed cats Oh! I would be gloriously tan, blond, and thin And Hollywood, Paris, New York, Milan would tell me when I would be curvaceous, ebony-haired, and pale, What to eat, what to say, what to wear, But, Then I’d blink— the glitter and glamour would fade, Returned to the gloss of the magazine page...

The only place where Meryl Aubrey Lynn Has gorgeous, porcelain, perfect, skin

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Summer Bee B N V

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On the Origin of Species B C B

Are you ready?”

What a stupid question, Sophie thought, as she stood up from the overused chair. No, of course I’m not ready. I don’t want to be ready. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want this to happen. She knew that her aunt meant well, as Sophie pushed her long blonde hair out of her face. But everything in Sophie’s being still hurt. She slapped on the unfamiliar, fake smile she’d been pasting on for everyone the past week. “Let’s go.”

She followed her aunt down the long hallway. Sophie would have felt swallowed by the hallway’s immense size and copious amount of white paint stuck to its walls if it weren’t for the paintings that lined the walls. Sophie studied them as she walked behind her aunt. The style of the paintings indicated that they had all been done by the same artist. Each painting was of a different Native American. Their tan faces were framed by black braids with turquoise beads and feathers weaved into the strands of their hair. Dark eyes stared emptily back at Sophie. Sophie instantly hated every painting. It was not because they were ugly or of poor quality but simply because she had to see them.

They had reached the elevator. Sophie watched her aunt carefully press the button to go up. A chunk of her golden hair fell back forward onto her right shoulder. The hair felt heavy, like it was pulling her down. She shoved it further out of her face as the elevator slowly pushed open.

Sophie and her aunt entered the elevator. Her aunt pressed the number eight. As the doors were about to close, a balding man with glasses and a crooked, black tie jostled his way in and selected the number four. Sophie stared at the back of his head where his black hair was starting to disappear. The dark strands were numerous towards the base of his head, but ceased rather abruptly halfway up. Sophie believed that maybe if she stared long enough, at this one spot, on this stranger’s head, between a forest of hair and a desert of skin, she could make time stop and not have to be here anymore. Perhaps she could dissolve into the metal elevator walls, ceasing to exist. Not die, just not be. That sounded really good right now. This thought quickly vanished as the elevator dinged to announce the arrival of the fourth floor. Sophie watched the man walk away and sighed as the elevator doors closed.

Her aunt turned to look at her. “You okay, sweetie?”

Fake smile, check. Sophie was getting quite skilled at putting it on so fast. “Yeah,” she lied.

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The elevator reached the eighth floor, and Sophie’s heart began thumping faster. Sophie had never been there before. She wished she could keep it that way, but she knew that she would be here a lot over the next few months.

If she makes it that far. The thought unwelcomingly sprung into Sophie’s mind. A knot twisted in her chest and she stared at her feet while following her aunt. She found it helpful not to directly look at her surroundings.

They had reached the correct room. The door was propped open, but you could only see the edge of the bed from the outside. Her aunt walked in, and Sophie followed.

“Julie, we’re here!” her aunt announced far too cheerily. Sophie held her breath as she walked inside the room and was greeted by her mother’s face.

Both a feeling of relief and a feeling of dread arose in Sophie. She was relieved to see her mother; she had not realized how much she had missed her and wanted to see her until she finally met her gaze. But an undeniably large amount of horror rose inside Sophie as she looked at the face that she wished wasn’t her mother’s.

Her mother was secured in bed. She wore a pale teal dressing gown. Her shoulder length hair was still there. But it wasn’t the bags under her eyes or the paleness of her skin that Sophie had been stunned to see. Her mother’s left eye was outlined in harsh purple and black and yellow smudges. It looked like five seconds before they entered the room someone punched her mother in the face. The bruises didn’t stop there, either. More were sprinkled all over both of her mother’s arms in various sizes and colors, and although her legs were covered by stiff white blankets, Sophie did not doubt that bruises had bloomed all over her mother’s legs.

Sophie knew that her mother had not been victim to some random act of violence. She correctly guessed that it had something to do with the leukemia and her mother’s drop in red blood cell count or something. Even though her mother was a biology teacher, Sophie despised science and was ignorant of the science behind her mother’s illness. However, her hatred of science was only half the reason she could not explain something like her mother’s bruises. Sophie found that not absorbing and even ignoring the small details behind her mother’s cancer made it easier for all the chaos that came with it to feel less real.

“Sof,” Her mother smiled at her and tried to stretch out her arms, but it was obviously hard for her to move. Sophie awkwardly pushed through and gave her mother a hug. “I’m so glad you’re here,” her mother said into her ear. “I’ve missed you, honey.”

This time, Sophie disregarded her fake smile and put on a real

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one. “Hi, Mom.” Sophie sat in a chair from across her mother’s bed. She found it hard to stop looking at her mother. Sophie had been deprived from seeing her for a week, and she could not resist drinking in the sight of the person she loved most in the world. She was so scared that if she took her eyes off her, even for a moment, Sophie would lose her. But her inability to tear her gaze from her mom also made it feel like her heart would burst from sadness, disbelief, and exhaustion. Immense fatigue spilled all over her mother’s face and body, and Sophie resisted the urge to cry.

“How have you been, Sophie?” her mother croaked, as she struggled to sit up. “It’s pretty weird here, huh?

Before Sophie could answer, her aunt chimed in. “Julie, you shouldn’t sit up. You need to get as much rest as possible.”

Her mother rolled her eyes. “I’ll sit up if I want to. I want to talk to my daughter.”

Sophie grinned at her mother’s insistence to talk to her. Her mom’s spirit of persistence and determination had not been extinguished yet, and that gave Sophie hope. Sophie opened her mouth to finally be able to talk to her mother like everything was normal, like they were sitting in the family room at home watching The Big Bang Theory and everything was fine and no one was sick and the most pressing issue of the moment was Sophie’s math test on Thursday. But before Sophie could answer her mother, Debbie and Cindy strolled in.

“Julie! How are you?” Her mother’s two best friends from high school wore stretched out smiles and matching knitted maroon hats. Debbie pulled a third hat out from her purse. “We have one for you, too!”

The disappointment hit Sophie so hard that had she been standing, she may have crumbled to the ground. Would she ever get the chance to simply talk to her mother like a normal teenager? This question was immediately answered as Debbie and Cindy launched into an animated conversation with her mother.

Sophie studied the room. There was a small TV in the corner and a large window with a view of the parking structure. “One nurse said she’s seen people been shot on the top level,” Sophie heard her mother tell Debbie and Cindy. Several cards lined across the window sill, cards with pictures of bouquets of flowers, teddy bears, and cartoon sunshines. Get Well Soon! Thinking of You. Heard You Could Use Some Sunshine. Sophie had the sudden urge to smack the cards down like dominos.

As the minutes went by, Sophie could see the energy dwindling out of her mother. “I think,” her mom said after a while, “I need to go to the bathroom.”

Aunt Marie helped her mom stand up and enter the bathroom that

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was next to her mom’s bed, shutting the door behind her. Debbie and Cindy questioned Sophie about school for a few minutes, when Aunt Marie stuck her head out of the door. “Deb, Cindy, could you guys come in here a second?” She turned to Sophie with a soft, reassuring smile. “We’re almost done, sweetie.”

As they all disappeared into the bathroom, Sophie noticed another card standing on the window sill she hadn’t seen before. It had a picture of a brown and white guinea pig peeking out of a flower pot. The creature looked identical to a guinea pig Sophie had briefly six years ago, when she was ten.

Sophie’s mom adopted all sorts of pets due to her position as a high school biology teacher. Students would regularly donate animals they couldn’t care for anymore. Six years ago, a student donated a pregnant guinea pig named Buttercup. Sophie was thrilled when her babies were born: three little pure white balls of fluff and one white and brown swirled baby, the only girl, who Sophie had immediately named Lucy. Lucy was the runt of the litter, and she was significantly smaller than her brothers. Sophie had cuddled and loved that baby guinea pig instantly. She was horrified when two days after she was born, Sophie peeked into the cage and found Lucy dead.

“Why did Lucy have to die?” Sophie had sobbed into her mother’s arms. “It’s not fair!”

Sophie’s mother hugged her tight and ran her fingers through Sophie’s hair. “I know, honey. It’s so sad.”

Sophie sniffled into her mother’s shoulder. “It’s because she was too small, wasn’t it?”

“Being small didn’t help, but that’s not the reason why.” Sophie’s mom pulled away to wipe her daughter’s tears gently with her thumb. “Lucy didn’t make it because she couldn’t adapt to her surroundings to survive. It’s like Charles Darwin said. The strongest ones are the ones who can best adapt to change.”

Sophie hadn’t understood at all what her mother meant then. But now she did.

Suddenly, everyone emerged from the bathroom, supporting Sophie’s mother. When Sophie saw her mother again, she could hardly be surprised, but the sight still stung. Her hair, which was the same blonde shade as Sophie’s and had previously just reached her shoulders, now was harshly and hastily chopped short.

“I just need to rest,” her mother gasped as she pulled back the covers and collapsed into bed. Her eyes fell shut. Sophie approached the bed, gingerly touching her mother’s hand. Eyelids fluttered open, and at the sight of Sophie, her mother whispered, “Sof honey. I love you. I’ll see

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you soon, okay?” Her eyes closed again, drifting asleep.

Sophie nodded and rubbed a thumb over her mother’s soft hand. “Bye, Mom,” she whispered. Then she turned to her aunt. “I’ll wait outside.”

Sophie exited the room into the empty hallway. Her chest felt heavy, her hair was in the way, and she just wanted everything to be normal again.

Sophie took a deep breath and shoved her hands into her coat pocket. She felt something small and thin in her left pocket. Puzzled, Sophie pulled out the mysterious object. It was a hair band. She instinctively gathered her long blonde hair on top of her head and secured it with the hair band.

Sophie did not want to be ready. She hated all of this. But she knew she had to be ready. She had to be, or she would not survive.

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Abre B H R

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They Called Him Toad

By Alex Dickinson Along the canal up the 101.

Sleepy towns: Kamilche, Lilliwaup, others I can’t pronounce. Passing massive, gnarled trees embracing road which I’ve never seen dry.

Mist lingers on dark green Hills across the water.

Dark comes without warning.

No idea where sun Hides in thick white clouds.

Coming to manhood as he Is losing his. Starts slow, But signs of death coming More and more often like Contractions before birth.

He’s ferociously Holding on, clenching its Coattails: strength and rigor Pulling from his fingers Until he can’t at all.

I’ve never seen him cry.

Once his eyes sheened over, The day I had to stop Working I sat, a mossed log, Bawled, dog-like, for hours.

In his house, like he asked, He lies there, rice paper Skin draped over his cheeks Closed eyes, look to the sky.

I love yah like hell kiddos To me he’s stronger now, Seeming weak and helpless, Love in death’s grasp.

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Buddy B E S

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Fight the Good Fight and Sunday Rituals B W

C. L

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And Beyond B K W

"Kelsey, why are people mean sometimes, even though they know it's bad to be mean?"

I rubbed my hand over my face, taking a deep breath. In a series of relentless questions, it seemed that my nephew, Lewis had a neverending curiosity. At first it was cute. We'd covered God, why people poop and Legos. Not to mention naming every mammal we passed including all bird species and why the sky was blue. I felt like we'd covered a lot of ground already. While some questions were definitely easier than others, many of them were complicated to try to phrase in a way that a four-year-old could understand. "But, why?" seemed to follow every freaking thing I said and I had finally resorted to the famous "mom" tactic: Because I said so. “Lew, why do you think you do things sometimes that you know you shouldn't do?" I asked, deciding to turn the tables while I drove around a pot-hole, looking up to see his little eyebrows furrowed in an attempt to figure out the questions of life in the rear view mirror. “I...I think that sometimes I do bad things because I forget that I might hurt somebody else when I'm being bad," he said, stuttering and fumbling to put into words the explanation I couldn't formulate. “ looked up again from the winding dirt road to look at his face in the mirror. My little Lew sat staring out the window, with his eyebrows screwed up in concern, lips pursed. Staring ahead at the road, I was tired after three hours of driving, pulling a jet-ski behind my parent's Subaru in order to reach the lake and a weekend of water and beer and sunshine and fun. Of course, it had been a unanimous group decision that Lewis would ride with me, while everyone else broke up into vehicles to pull the campers, the boat and the pontoon. My little guy wouldn't let me out of his sight - not even long enough to go into the boy's bathroom at the gas station with his Papa instead of me. It was a level of separation anxiety for the books. Not that I did much to stop it, because I didn't see him nearly as much as I'd like. He was spoiled when he was around me. He knew it and I knew it, but we understood each other.

There were rules and manners - he was sure to remember them. Or else... And he's a good kid. He really is. I know I might just say that because I'm biased and all that, but seriously. He has a great heart and he is curious to learn. Who wouldn't love a kid like that? “Lewis," I said, smiling at him as he looked up at me in the mirror, "I

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think you're right. And don't you think that's probably why people are mean even though they know it's bad?"

"Maybe," he said, frowning, "Or else they're just big dumb bullies.

Right, Kelsey?"

"You're right, Lew," I laughed, shaking my head at the cloud of dust I had caught up to.

We drove in silence for a whopping two, maybe three minutes, before I heard him take a deep breath, ready to ask again. Shit.

"Kelsey?"

"What, Lew?" "I love you."

"I love you too, Bubba. To infinity..."

"AND BEYOND!" he yelled, throwing his fist into the air, while I did the same in the front seat.

Goddamn, I love that kid.

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Naptime B K S

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cumha a bheith ort B N S

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Fingers and Spit B E G

12:00 pm I hail a cab and get in. Once sheltered from swarming street life, I take a long breath. Hanging from a string on the rearview mirror is a small triangular ornament, each side with a different photo of Morocco’s king, Mohammed VI. “La Gare,” I announce my destination.

The driver is a young man with sleeked black hair and an anxious smile. He pulls into traffic and begins the bumpy, downward progression towards the sea. Cars practically sideswipe us. His seatbelt hangs untouched at his shoulder. Apparently there is no passenger seatbelt. I catch one side of Mohammed VI sitting in his famous stoic stare in the all gray djellaba. Then I catch the anxious eyes of the cabby, the gap in between his huge porcelain teeth.

“Pourquoi allez-vous a la gare?” the cabby asks about my destination.

“Je ne parle pas français,” I respond I do not speak French. “¿Hablas español?”

I say no. He instantly begins speaking in Spanish anyway, to which I can only give a look of defeat. He is discouraged we cannot talk. He breaks into Arabic, waiving his hands in a flurry as if concocting a potion above the steering wheel. At a corner we pass a tall, white-stone mosque, which is dedicated to Mohammed VI and thus, one of the most famous in Tangier. With a finger he points to the temple half hidden by palm trees that protrude from the stone court.

“Allah,” he says. “Allahu Akbar.”

The phrase instantly transports me back to Tunisia, where I often heard the romantic crackling of the Muezzin calling prayers five times a day.

“Allahu Akbar,” I repeat from memory.

His face lights up with laughter, as if rejoicing while we barrel down Blvd Mohammed V. Wetting his fingers with his tongue, he reaches across the center console and draws a familiar cross in the dust on the dashboard.

He pauses to explain himself before abruptly crossing it out with more spit, shaking his head. I smile, not for his blatant refute of Christianity, which would be an uncanny gesture to make in the West given our close proximity—side by side in the cramped leather interior. But in Tangier, it seems customary to address opposing religious ideals even when they are separated only by a few inches. Instead, my smile comes from the mere fact that we are communicating about religion devoid of a common dialect, using nothing more than fingers and spit.

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Wolken B K S

I know, I know the science They’re nothing to be felt Just a pleasure to the eye Fodder for the star-eyed child Water’s kindest of performances An aerial display But quite without texture Maybe cold, condensation No hand can feel No bare foot touch I know that’s what they say And yet somehow I cannot believe That stepping through a cloud won’t feel Like cool and flawless wool

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Manta Rays B T R

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Detritus, Dirigibles, and Dreepin’ B M P

Despite what I’m sure my mum believes, the roof is not the planning station for all our nefarious plots. Neither is it where we go to snog. Not that we couldn’t go up there for that, I mean, we’ve been friends for long enough and been through enough shite together that we’d probably do well as a couple… But we aren’t. Maybe when Im done with university, when we won’t have to try to maintain a bi-continental-more-than-best -mates relationship, we’ll give it a go. But so far, my mum’s fears are completely unfounded. Now that I think about it, we never really do much of anything up there on the roof: we sit, we talk, he frequently wishes he hadn’t stopped smoking and I occasionally daydream. ~ Hop-stepping from that branch on the Maple tree to the flattest part of the roof is always the most difficult part. A foot isn’t a very big gap to cross and twelve feet is not a horribly long way to the ground, but it’s wide enough to fall through and high enough to break something. I try to avoid going up there when there’s a strong wind, because the branch sways back and forth, widening and shrinking the chasm, giving me motion sickness.

He isn’t bothered by it. But then, he also enjoys rollercoasters, which I for the life of me, don’t understand. Sometimes I think he’s right to say my sense of self-preservation is way overdeveloped; sometimes I think that’s a good think.

On the days where I feel capable of making that jump, the inhospitable place is my peaceful sanctuary. Most of the roof is steeply gabled and makes creaking threats at any daring explorer, but the part over the back patio, about twenty feet by ten, is flat-ish. Even with the two skylights and their invisible danger zones, it’s much safer there.

Caution tape, visible or not, has never acted as a deterrent for him, though. There are many moments catalogued and shelved in my mental library, where I’m sitting in the safe zone, looking up, watching him as he paces, talks, gesticulates and mindlessly leaps from gable to gable like some sort of Scottish-Cockney mountain goat. He said once that people from Edinburgh (ie: him) have a word for jumping from rooftop to rooftop—to spangy—and a word for ‘disembarking from a high place’—dreeping. I wasn’t surprised. ~ Nevertheless, it’s a filthy place, covered in dirt, loose gravel, and detritus from overhanging trees; but it’s still a sanctuary, fiercely guarded

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by a rotting moat of non-evaporated rainwater. My shoes seem drawn to this sludge, or maybe I’m just an official klutz, or a slecher, as he would say, but no matter how many times it happens I still am disgusted by the way it seeps through the fabric of my shoes, turns my socks grey, oozes out the sides as I walk across the roof. And then my jeans, my hands, anything that comes in contact with the roof becomes covered with grime and gravel. It spreads from there, getting on my nose, my shirt, and in my hair; it gets everywhere and anywhere and drives me a little bit insane.

Having inherited the running of his father’s business, he usually goes around wearing suits. But doing so up the roof is like committing Armani genocide. So there’s the small suitcase he brought with him once, filled with jeans, t-shirts, socks, and a white-trash American baseball hat. It’s already starting to get dusty, in the back of my closet, the shoes wrapped in plastic, the clothes still fresh from the last time I laundered them. ~ Between the bi-weekly emails, the occasional skypings, and the decreasingly frequent phone calls, he posted me some of my London things. On top was my half of our matching Stephen Fry t-shirts with a note saying: Alright, me hen?

Figured, since you won’t be coming over ‘till you’re done with Uni, you might want some of these. Am happy to keep them here, though, so post them back if you don’t want them. I’ll pay postage, of course.

Keary (& Richard), Dylan, Thomas (& Kathleen & wee James) all send their love.

They don’t miss you as much as me, though; the vibe here’s ruined now. Am driven to fucking distraction & shall be gray-haired, lass, you see me next!

Anyroad, graduate soonest! And don’t do anything me fae Auld Reekie wouldn’t do.

All the best, L I took out the t-shirt (that still smelt of his cigarettes) and the note, cried into the box for a bit, re-packed the shirt, and then sent it back. ~ There’s the breathy drone of the freeway and the eery hum of power lines punctuated by the tired groaning of the obsolete TV antenna as it sways and strains against rusting cables. There are excited bluejays, angsting doves, gossiping mockingbirds, whinging ravens—ah, but they

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only have crows over here—and scolding hummingbirds; Pete the oneeyed grey squirrel and Gunther the black squirrel play corn-cob hockey on top of my bedroom.

He got annoyed once and threw his cigarette lighter at them before realizing that would mean having to get up and retrieve it. I don’t remember screaming as he slipped down the front gable, but he says I did. Or rather, he says I ‘screeched like a fuckin’ banshee go’rn mental’, which is basically the same thing. The rain gutter is still warped where he put his foot to stop his descent. ~ When I sit up there I can see fences, rooftops, curtained and uncurtained windows, all framing the nearby hills in a beautiful panoramic view available to roof VIPs only. It’s one of those views a person could stare at for hours; and I do, until the smell of hot tar is replaces by the scent of dinner wafting through the open skylight. Moving, then, sometimes requires sledgehammer-like effort to break free from the hard shell of sweat-soaked clothing the sun has baked me into.

There’s a tour dirigible that floats around Silicon Valley (I would call it a blimp, but he insists there’s a difference in the framework and that it’s a tour dirigible not a tour blimp). It’s a unique thing, whatever you chose to call it, strangely captivating to watch—and it always moves faster than I think it will. And we argue over whether the planes flying to SJC are American or Delta; we never argue over Southwest, though, those are too distinctive. Sometimes the cargo planes from Moffett Navy Base fly right overhead, thrumming with so many decibels that my teeth rattle in my skull; or sometimes it’s the Google Maps plane, flying in an almost silent pre-programmed grid.

I remember him explaining to me how computer geeks were able to program un-manned aircraft, but I don’t remember what the explanation was. I’m sure, eventually—when my money can once again be used for plane tickets across the pond instead of for university—we’ll have another conversation that becomes long and pointless enough to excuse my asking him for the explanation again. ~ There was an afternoon, just this last summer, where the NorCal equivalent of the Santa Ana winds picked up while I was sitting on the roof. It’s happened before, this getting stuck thingamy, and sometimes he lays on the roof and lowers me down to the hood of the BBQ. Or he straddles the gap between the roof and the maple and lifts me across it.

Or, if he’s feeling particularly chivalrous, he’ll climb down and set up a ladder for me.

It took me, by myself, the better part of six hours to get down. I wished he was in California or I was over in Scotland, but I didn’t mention it in my bi-weekly email.

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The Body B M D

The body is fixed. Has limits. Like stones Set in moving water, anchored Tight to the earthly grains of sand, Bearing against at what dissolves.

Not always keeping a balance, but holding at it.

And the particles that compose it feel Freed through the cracks. A mouth That breathes a last breath, the blood Cut loose. The soul is what we cling to, Forming currents in the water, chipping away.

But it’s the physical that leaves us. Even Proving nothing. Even proving nothing Day after day vainly to itself

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Crossed Extensor Reex at Work B W O

41

42

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Dean B H T

Dean’s big round eyes inch closer and closer to the rounded glass wall, his gold face growing outward and downward. The jewels of scales on his cheeks and plump frame become more evident, like the veins of flower petals become angular and substantial under the skepticism of a microscope lens. The light streaming from the window allows his scales to change from gold, to a notion of purple, to a shade of turquoise, to an almost diamond-encrusted white. His lips stick out far ahead of his round face, opening as if about to say something, deciding against it, and blowing bubbles into the watery space, instead. Bubbles spill out around him from his mouth and from the tiny slits tucked in his glittery skin. Once he presses his face close to the glass wall, he quickly cowers into the back of the bowl, kicking his fins quickly behind him, leaving a trail of shadows across the blue pebbles on the bottom of his home. It was like a sharp melody pulled tight across the gold strings in his tiny gold heart, sharp gold strings pulling him back further into what he knows, as far away from the other side of that glass wall as the round, glass space allows.

A cool breeze streams through the open French doors, raking through their sheer white curtains. It breaks through the warmth in the room, the summertime warmth hanging onto Sutton with a relentless grasp. She lets out a pent up sigh at the feel of the cool air settling on the back of her neck, on her shoulders, on her bare thighs and toes. It’s like she’s been waiting for that breeze all year. Damn—all her life. Like that sigh has been in the back of her lungs since the day she pushed out, coughed out that first breath. A long, overdue sigh like her grueling, overdue birth some eighteen years ago on a cold, winter’s night. Not a sigh of sorrow, however. Not a sigh of sorrow at all. Just a sigh like that sudden shock of cool breeze escaping from the back of the cloud’s white lungs. A break. A clean, sweet break in the middle of the heavy, sticky warmth clinging to her body like his scent clings to her small frame even days since. Even months since. She presses the inside of her tiny wrist to her freckle-ridden nose—intoxicating.

It’s a funny thing a scent, how nostalgic it can be, especially one like his. That scent of cigarette cinder, beat up leather, sweet apples, and soap. A scent can linger a hell of a lot longer than a person can. A scent can become a person, can take a person’s place when that person’s no longer present to withstand their own place. And so cigarette cinder, beat up leather, sweet apples, and soap—that dark, sweet, odd blend—all sit at the foot of Sutton’s bed every night

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watching her toss and turn, waiting for sleep to break the scent’s tight hold on her. It waits with prying eyes across the breakfast table as she takes a bite of an apple and shovels down a bowl of oatmeal before class. Wind through its hair, it perches itself in the passenger seat of her little old yellow Volkswagen as she makes her way through Topanga Canyon. Hand on the small of her back, it accompanies her to the grocery store, passing her the box of whole-grain pasta on the highest shelf.

Anyway, that clean, sweet break that escapes from Sutton’s tired, smoky lungs feels like New Year’s Day. All shiny and fresh. Like a crisp, blank page sacrificing itself willingly to a toddler’s ill-judged will matched with its multi-assortment of markers easily at chubby toddler hand. The thing about a blank page is a toddler—a person—has a couple of options. A person can let the blank page sit and linger like a heavy scent until it gets its grasp on the wooden table it’s been sitting on—as leaves shimmy off trees and flowers take their place on naked, gnarled branches—until the page becomes worn down into the table like a heavy scent would after some time until it’s not heavy or a scent at all anymore, but rather the table itself. A person also has the option to take the blank page and crumple it up bitterly and toss it into a recycling bin for some other to take better opportunity of its virgin canvas. And lastly, a person could use it, unapologetically for whatever device one sees fit whether it be splattering it into oblivion with the bright colors of multi-assortment Crayola markers or whether it be creating the next Mona Lisa on an 81/2 x 11 sheet of flimsy, white paper.

“Dean, are you sure you’re happy in there?” Sutton peers in at Dean, locking her deep, deep blue sea eyes on Dean’s bulging ones. She knocks a finger against the glass wall to get Dean’s attention, to snap him out of his fish routine. He swims across his bowl, meeting her eye to eye as if he could understand the words falling off her pink tongue, spilling out between her lips.

“Sutton, are you really trying to talk to your goldfish?” Olivia is leaned up against the frame of the door— the one that connects Sutton’s bedroom to the rest of the house. Olivia’s strawberry blonde hair is in a long fish-tail braid hanging over her right shoulder, a callous smile playing up on her rosy pink lips.

“Yes—yes, I am. Actually, no—no, I am not. I’m not trying. I am talking to him. I’m trying to coax him out of this monotonous life he’s leading. I mean—as his caretaker and adoptive mother of two weeks, I should make sure he’s living his life to its absolute fullest potential and getting the most of it out of his predictably short life -span. And honestly, fish these days—they’re doing more than sitting around in some fishbowl. They’re out doing things. Great fish things. I mean—I’m worried about him.

I think I should write out a bucket list for him and help him fulfill it.” Sutton furrows

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her brow and watches Dean swim blissfully unaware of his missed opportunities—of his blank page. He’s clearly letting it become the table.

Olivia raises an eyebrow. “Well, if he can get his whole bucket list finished within a week, it’s worthwhile. But that’s pushing it.” She shifts on her feet. Sutton suddenly wonders how Olivia got into the house, but is surprised more at her own surprise at Olivia’s presence than surprised by the fact that Olivia is actually here. She’s surprised by surprise. Olivia’s always just showing up places, conjuring herself up in mid-air like the Cheshire cat.

Sutton vaguely remembers inviting her over maybe a couple hours ago through the crackly telephone wires. Olivia mumbled something about waiting for her bikini to get out of the washer—like the bikini sets itself in the washer and decides to take itself out and presumably does the same thing with the dryer—and being right over.

“Dean’s special,” Sutton insists, following Dean around in his bowl with her eyes. She wonders what it’d be like if someone were to shrink her and stick her in a fishbowl. If they gave her air, she could subsist and potentially live in there forever. She could let the page become the table.

“Then give him one of those stupid castles they sell at Petco and call it a day. Let him cross Being king of the fishbowl off of his bucket list,” Olivia remarks, running her hands over her own shoulders, as if trying to smooth out some ache. Probably from conditioning. Olivia’s a runner. She’s been asked to run track for the University of Florida, so in the fall that’s where she’ll be running to.

“Dean should have greater plans than a plastic castle.” Dean looks as if he agrees, or at least Sutton thinks Dean looks as if he agrees. She takes the happy-looking swish of his fins as agreement. Sutton nods to herself, pleased and looks over at Olivia’s stoic face glaring back at her.

She blinks once at Sutton, before rolling her eyes.

“Do you know what you’re doing about the fall, yet?” Olivia changes the subject, glancing at her phone in her manicured fingers, “Not going,” Sutton says, now getting up from her bed, stepping away from the side table Dean’s home is perched on.

Olivia has that callous smile on her face again. Her phone begins to buzz in the pocket of her denim shorts and she presses something on the screen to shut it up, presses the thing to her ear. “I’m at Sutton’s.”

She pulls away from the doorframe as if to make herself somehow more present at Sutton’s house. To even further this illusion, she flops herself down in Sutton’s white comfortered bed. Sutton doesn’t find anything wrong with staying. There’s nothing else out there for her that she can’t find in California—hell, there’s nothing else out there for her that she can’t find under the fluorescent glow of the refrigerator downstairs.

She finds something wrong with Olivia leaving—running. Running

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away from something is one of the worst things someone can do. To run away without a trace or a goodbye ranks higher than that. And to run away with a half-goodbye is even worse. Sutton was lying on the floor of his apartment when he gave her his half-goodbye, toes curled against his. Their bodies were always like magnets from that first day they met in some fraction of time and space, a corner thrust in the back of Sutton’s mind, until that very last day. As he gave her his half-goodbye— Then, I guess I’ll see you— they detracted like magnets with opposite energies do.

And not a thing in the world could’ve put their energies back the way they once were, could bring the wavelengths of their bodies back together like the way they once were.

In any other moment, than that one that he pulled out that heavily creased map, she could place him down to the scar on his lower back and the splotch of birthmark on his collarbone. But in that moment, nothing about him was familiar. And it felt like Sutton was sinking under, under nineteen leagues of the body of the ocean, constrained in the skeleton of an oversized, glass bowl, that she put herself into when she let him go when he wanted her to leave with him. Or maybe long before.

She watches Dean make a couple rounds in his bowl with an absent swish of his fins, back and forth, back and forth—an elliptical cycle like the moon around the earth, constant even through its phases, through its reincarnation. And she wonders how the moon must feel to never release a clean, sweet break of celestial air from its translucent lungs.

She wonders if it envies her in that way, that she has that liberty or if, rather, it finds her foolish that she never really uses it, never evaporates into the vacuum of darkness when she reaches new moon, never crosses over out of it to the other side of the spectrum of whatever else is out there, the infinite continuum.

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Oia Vertigo B Z P

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And the World Walked Through Me B D P

I woke up and breathed Fire that bled water, Illuminating the world and Watering the grasses.

I turned my head, my ear Cracking at the weight of a crow’s wing.

I drew that crow there.

In the evening I stacked the Wood, blew life into a pile of Tender—it gave me back That care, that warmth.

I closed my eyes, Pulled the sheets of Earth around me, Folded and crinkling.

It fed my ears With drumming falls.

And the world walked through me.

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I'm Not Suicidal, it's just Monday B O A -E

Mondays are the stink of what the fuck happened to Sunday and I should really work out more as they rest at the basin of the sink along with all the other unwashed dishes. In full stride, both with panic of being late and false confidence, I hoisted my backpack along to join me and all of the clutter in the kitchen. I live in a really nice house, and by really nice I mean it looks like some wonderful suburban family from the 2000’s remodeled a country home and then adopted a golden retriever but actually this house was built last year. Anyways, if white privilege in 2013 ever crawled into a material shell, it was in this house and it was on that new white marble on the kitchen-island that we left Saturday’s beer cans on. I grabbed toast from the zone deemed for appliances and the toaster is really shitty but I’m leaving in May and then, on the other side of the island was the bowl of fruit, so I searched for my apples because I fucking hate fuji apples and I bought mine from the organic market so that made my apples better right?, and suddenly, I was quite aware how long life was.

Oh my god it would be tremulously long.

That said with no disrespect to the wonderful institution of living, but only with the same fatigue that one finds when reading a word for too long. Peculiar. peculiar, oh soooo pe-cuh-li-ar. I felt as if some goddamn sacred question mark had descended from Portland’s thinly grayed skies and it asked me Olivia what the fuck are you doing and here I am looking like a real chump because I had felt so goddamn good with that organic apple and toast that still had seeds in it.

Now please don’t mistake the polarized fixations of a 20somethingfemale for the ponderings of a new age Socrates. No, I think the worst part about this kind of mental break down was that I was painfully aware that it was the fleeting obsession of an exhausted brain; was that I would rush out the door; that I was late to class again. And I would soon forget the way my life looked like a misspelled word.

It was just that oh so peculiar fatigue of another fucking Monday.

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Idleness B E G

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Hierra Suitt B M L I want you to be a small gerbil, But still retain your human face, And I want you to sit on my shoulder And squeak little jokes into my ear During an interview And I will feed you small pellets, With a pellet garnish.

I won’t get mad if you poop in my hand.

I will dedicate vast spans of time to gerbil puns.

I will joke about your nub of a tail, never mention your short lifespan, and burn my copy of Flowers for Algernon.

I will buy you a hamster ball Which you, indignant, won’t set paw in.

We will discuss gerbils in the media-Doctor Doolittle might get a little old.

I want you to be small gerbil, But please don’t get lost behind the coach, And don’t eat another hamster, because I hear hamsters do that, And that would kind of make you a cannibal‌ And don’t eat another hamster just to spite me because I bought you a hamster ball.

I won’t get you a wheel, Because you look great! and screw negative body image!

I will remember your tiny hamster heart And get scared‌ If you were to die, I would put you in a hand-carved wooden box.

I would play Yo-Yo Ma at your funeral after reciting a eulogy in French.

I would wear black from that day forth, And whenever I saw a Meryl Streep film or heard a witty play on words I would say to myself, “She would have liked that‌â€? while looking off mysteriously.

I would buy a new copy of Flowers for Algernon, And when I am old and near my end I will think, breathing my last: For you, tiny gerbil, my life hath been not a waste.

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Broadway CafĂŠ B J M

Apparently, I hadn’t learned a thing before college. In fact, it was in my first philosophy course that a special professor of mine made me excited about what I like to call “creative pride.� It was in the second semester of my first year that I found philosophy and this thought-transforming professor. She saw the beauty in planting seeds, giving enough clues and then turning the work over to us, to mulch and eventually cultivate into an intellectual garden that we ourselves nurtured through creative thinking. This approach worked for me, and it seemed to work for my peers as well. In required classes, it’s often difficult to get students past the “I have to be here� mindset, but she repeatedly generated willing contribution out of everyone. Tough guys, shy girls, active school-club members, and students who sprawled out in their seats all fell into a rhythm of academic excitement. Perennial metaphysical problems became the intellectual property of each individual–concrete collections of concepts made tangible because we had made them ourselves. If she had merely recited the meaning and the intentions of classic philosophical texts, we would have mouthed the musings of dead old guys. Instead, the arguments, proofs, and diatribes danced and became the matter of our dreams.

I had been delivered to a place in my grey matter’s depths of contented curiosity. I lovingly felt the need to question every thing I believed, or more accurately, my motive for doing so. I kept myself from any Cartesian conceit; I didn’t believe my whole life was a sham and that I had been led along, beguiled by some devilish deceiver. Rather, I shifted my concerns to commonly held beliefs in notions and ideas that I took for granted–things that I believed without really knowing why I believed them. *** What you need to know now is the religiosity and its deep roots in my family. My mom performed the exact routine every morning of life: she buried her head into her Quaker Oatmeal Squares in silent prayer.

Any phone call with her mother gravitated toward the question of, “How’s your relationship with Jesus?� after which I couldn’t help but think, “Well, it’s hard to tell. I haven’t really seen Jesus lately.� My dad, a tan, hardened, but quietly compassionate man, who spent several years on Palo Alto and Stanford police forces and served a twenty-five year sentence driving for a small company called Federal Express, has always been more stoic about his faith. He conveys a righteous, quiet

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confidence (not making a show of his strong faith as the Bible commends somewhere) or a misguided adherence to something he doesn’t really understand but carries on anyway. I suppose I still don’t know for sure.

I had been involved in various youth groups in town, but I had only gotten there because of the pressure of evangelical Christians–the ones who came to my high school, sat with my friends and me at lunch and somehow tricked us into promising that we’d be there on Wednesday.

In fact, one of my neighborhood pals was the son of a preacher man at the same church that I had been tricked into attending.

This is not to say that I have a problem with people practicing Christianity, or any religion for that matter. That first year in college, I simply became abruptly focused on the motive for why I was a practicing Christian. Every dinner growing up we recited the same prayer: Dear Jesus, thank you for your many blessings. Thank you for this dinner.

Bless this food to our body and in Jesus’ name, Amen.” In the same way that a kid can be led in the Pledge of Allegiance from the first day she sets foot in her elementary school, I said those words of table blessing. I memorized their order, and the way they sounded aloud. Not once did I think about what the words meant. Even though it’s been around four years now since I’ve recited that prayer, I can still hear the distinct rhythms of that last clause in my head. It will never go away. But up until my last recitation, those words were merely rhythms. I became concerned that the cross was dead weight to me, that I carried it without it bearing the slightest significance for my life. I knew that it was time for me to explain, if only to myself, my renunciation of religious belief (for belief’s sake). *** What was I to do with this new frame of reference, this new viewing lens? I began with a spiritual pilgrimage back to my hometown, Salem, Oregon, or what my friends and I had always called it, “Jerusalem, Methlehem.” Spring break provided the perfect opportunity for this spiritual journey.

Arriving home tended to be a tender and welcoming experience for my naturally subdued self, though I was often anxious when I approached my driveway, knowing that my parents were going to smother me with abstract affection. They never grabbed me and kissed my pores, but there was always this sense of unanswered curiosity about what I had done during every waking moment that we had been apart.

My days, I realized, as a college student still blur and whirl together, and as such I was only equipped then with unsatisfying answers for

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their eagerly extended questions. The tension coming from my parent’s anxious curiosity often made it difficult for me to return home. *** A few days after I arrived home, my father stood at the top of the stairs while I stood below him in our entryway, light enveloped him from the kitchen behind him. He leaned up against the stairway handrail, arms crossed; I hoped he wouldn’t go off the handrails. My location suggested that I wanted to say what I wanted in a philosophical hit and run, to be able to make a point and then retreat to avoid the force that I knew would just be waiting for me at another time. I was always afraid to argue with my father; his obstinate attachment to the beliefs he had formulated over fifty-four demanding years overshadowed my pubescent eighteen. I can’t even remember if I had my shoes strapped, laced, and ready for me to dart out the door in the event that heaven or hell broke loose. I took a breath. Words got caught in my larynx (like they do even now when my integrity obliges me to confront somebody), and forced them by peristalsis back down to my diaphragm. I knew the words were going to be hard to chew for him and I was afraid of his choking. I took another breath; my voice, when I heard it, was pitched higher, and I explained to him what I had learned from my professor. I told him how it was important for me to have reason for my beliefs and that those reasons had to be organic and within– or at least figured out by–me or else they were the mere reiterations of others and they could never be my ideas or my beliefs, just beliefs I had been given.

I was struck by an awkward silence and I filled it by continuing to talk about this idea of creative ownership saying that I had never had reason for believing in Christianity besides the fact that I was a part of its practices since before I understood the language and how I had wanted to try out Judaism and Catholicism or Eastern religions and to carry on until I maybe had a reason of my own to return to the Christian faith.

He leaned harder against the handrail. His brow furrowed. He seemed to be processing and scrutinizing my words. What he didn’t know was that I was jamming eighteen years of thought into a single minute– “Well,” my father said, making the world come to a standstill. “I wish I could be OK with you doing that, but I don’t believe those other religions are right.”

My gut sunk below my knees. I felt both humbled and disappointed.

Every single philosophical discovery I had made, my idea of creative pride that I was entirely excited about was tarnished. What my father

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thought still mattered to me. I don’t remember if we argued anymore after that. I know now that there was nothing more I could have said to him. Nothing I could say would affect his weathered wisdom. No cry of passion could have ringed with thunder in his hollow, blood-pumping heart. He was, and always will be, sensible. His methods, tried and true, were enough to make me feel that, though I had run for the first time without a blindfold, I had run my stomach into the fist of a tough love that I didn’t understand. Since then, I have to confess, I have carried with me a spiritual stagnation, a flatness. I am a man in an arranged marriage who lacks a romantic fire. I am neither curious in one direction, nor confident in the other. *** Just this last January, about four years since the stairway standoff, my dad and I sat down for a cup of coffee. We found the comfiest loveseats in Salem’s most stellar coffeehouse, which happens to be closely affiliated to the non-denominational Christian church that my parents have called their own for fifteen years or so. Over these past four years, we continued a tradition where we have dad-son chats over espresso. At first, I never think I’ll have much to say. Then I find that I’ve talked myself hoarse, and walked myself through the course of four refills of water. On this particular day, as we sat in the café overrun by bearded, skinny-panted faux-hipsters that wish they could call Portland their home (like I can!), my dad and I were talking about an offer that my parents gave me about three weeks before: I could move back home after I graduated for a time if I wanted. Not a chance, I thought to myself amidst the din of an acoustic guitar player who was hired to play background music but apparently mid-set decided he was Leo Kottke playing for Carnegie Hall. Raising my own voice above the noise, I declared to my dad that I was not interested.

“Look,” my dad replied, “I don’t want you to either. But we wanted to give you the option. I am your dad. I’m always going to look out for you.”

I looked at my dad. “Yeah?” I said, as my stagnant, flat lips upturned into a spiritual smile.

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222 NW Couch B B C

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Foggy Recollections of an Unfortunate Event B PJ M

A polo shirt, it had to be a polo shirt. Mom always made me wear those when I went out. She always worried way too much about that kind of stuff. I would much rather wear my grey sweats with the worn through Nike swoosh and my mismatching Adidas shoes with the hole in the bottom of the right sole. They formed well to my feet and only caused me discomfort when I would walk through the rain which infiltrated my socks, or when gravel from the driveway would sneak through the thinning rubber in the heel.

My favorite outfit would not be an option on this night. It was a family effort to get me ready. I was surprised when they let me pick which pair of boxers I would wear. My cousin lent me his new Air Force One’s reminding me not to crease the toe or I would owe him a new pair. My grandma, who could handle my raggedy style even less than my mother, took me to pick out a pair of jeans. I got this kind called Lucky because the inside flap of the zipper said “Lucky You” when they were unzipped. Unfortunately, I think I was the only one who has ever read these words. My Pops, who gave much less of a shit than the rest of the family doused me with some of his cologne, “This is the good shit right here, now go out and get some.” He always had a way of calming me down or making me laugh when my mom’s frantic pestering got to be dangerously close to starting a fight.

After shaving what little peach fuzz I had mustered up over weeks and weeks of growth, I was ready to get the hell out of this house. My mother reluctantly let me leave after doing her usual last minute maintenance on my hair as well as some nagging side comments about how I should have really gotten a haircut today and thought about trimming my nails because my long pinky nail makes it look like I use coke. I could hear the concern on her voice shouting to me as I entered my car, “Remember to open the door for her and hug her parents! Oh! And pay for her ticket! I put money in your account so you could pay for her ticket!”

Jesus Christ ma, leave me alone already. It’s a just a damn movie date, we’re not fucking eloping.

My thoughts usually became bitter when I had to deal with my mom’s badgering for extended periods of time. This was especially the case when she gave me dating advice, which was my hell.

There was something comforting in all of her concern though. It gave me something to focus on. My frustration acted as a lightning rod for

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my attention. My mind was purely concentrated on how annoyed I was with my family. I had to remind myself to clench my teeth so I would not unleash a can of verbal assault on everyone I saw. But now I am alone in the car left with just my thoughts.

Do my nails really look like a cokehead’s, I’m feeling kind of sweaty, what if I sweat through my shirt and she notices, I think my breath might stink, does it stink?

I need to go to the gas station.

Not five minutes after leaving the house I find myself at the Shell station down the road. I place Old Spice, nail clippers, a pack of gum and Tic-Tac’s on the counter. For some reason I’m really nervous. I fumble my card as I try to slide it through the machine and the clerk laughs, “You gearing up to live out of your car son?” I do not appreciate him laughing at me. I am a very self conscious young man, can’t he see that? I lack any composure and very aggressively reply, “No!” Oh fucking seriously? My voice cracked. Awesome, this is awesome.

Once again, I over think my actions and get embarrassed so I jog out of the mini mart almost bowling over a lady trying to enter the store.

Smooth dude, really smooth.

After trimming my nails, reapplying deodorant, and chewing as many pieces of gum it takes to get me to the house, I am finally ready. I have done everything in my power to be presentable for this date so all I have left to do is have a good time. I shake her dad’s hand at the door, but my eyes are way too wide when I look at him. I quickly look away and stand in awkward silence for a second.

Don’t say anything, just speak when spoken to.

I quickly break my rule, “Nice dog you got.” He smiles and brushes the conversation aside, “Thanks. My daughter is just getting ready, she’ll be out soon.” On cue she enters and is ready to leave, “Bye dad!” she shouts as she hurries out the door, “Ready to go?”

As we begin to drive, I am relieved that she takes charge, but soon realize that I am completely unprepared for any sort of dialogue. Naturally I make the biggest mistake when engaging in a conversation by reverting to small talk, “The drive wasn’t bad coming out here. Less traffic than I expected.” She smiles, “That’s good.” I have no clue what to say. I am bad at this sort of thing. It is my first time really spending time with her and all I can think about is that she is so much smarter than me. I worry that she can see the thoughts floating out of my head like I am in a Garfield comic.

I miraculously hold enough conversation skills to make it to the movie without being too awkward. I pay for her ticket and open the door of the theater for her, not because my mom told me either, I did it because I am a gentleman. I make sure to buy a large drink and pop-

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popcorn because I assume that is what a gentleman would do.

I chose a romantic comedy, because they are harmless and at the very least I will get a few laughs out of it. My Rom-Com idea backfires about ten minutes into the movie. I am mortified when I see there is a dick on screen.

What the fuck? Seriously, a dick?! What kind of romantic comedy has dick in it?

Should I laugh? Is she laughing? Do not look at her. You cannot look at her while there is a penis on the screen. That might seem like you are implying something.

I can feel the warmth in my face as I glow red in embarrassment. I try to play it cool by casually laughing. Most times I would be cracking up but given the whole first date situation, I want to prove my maturity, like a gentleman would. I begin to eat the popcorn. It helps to ease my mind. The chewing calms my nervousness and makes me less uncomfortable. I do not realize it but I am on a steady popcorn diet throughout the movie, and when the popcorn is done I begin to chew down the unpopped kernels. I remove the outer waxy skin with my front teeth and crunch down on the leftover pulp with my molars. I know it is a bad habit but if I stop chewing my thoughts will consume me again.

After settling my nerves with the kernels and the movie finishes, I finally start to feel some confidence in myself. I feel comfortable in our brief conversation about the movie as we leave the theater. I am no longer concerned about sweating, bad breath, or lack of social skills.

But then it came over me, like a wave of despair. The popcorn, how could I forget about the popcorn? I ate SO MUCH POPCORN. I feel it festering in my stomach like water on a hot stove.

This is not happening, not now. Please God have mercy on my soul, whatever I did to deserve this I apologize for and will never do again just don’t let this happen on my first date.

We had already walked out of the theater and there was no turning back.

Just act natural and get that weird look off your face before she notices that you’re straining.

A light breeze picks up.

Perfect, now if you can just let it out slow, nice and easy, nobody will notice and the wind will carry the smell away. Nice and easy, nice an...

BBBBBRRRRRRRRUUUUUMMMMMPPPP! Just like a gentleman.

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After Some Rain B D L M

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Untitled B J J

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Mi Madre B M S M

It's the same face.

There, When I put on my seat belt and my prom dress.

When I did the dishes and my homework.

When I snuck a boy in through my window and spoke songs.

When I cried about the 20 dollars I lost.

When I put on a back pack and got on the airplane.

That face, so perfectly proud and sad, I could practically hear your prayers.

I don't need my fake ID anymore, I don't eat popcorn as meals, and I can see the difference in your face now.

It's so raw and so fragile.

It told me, "Este a単o va ser mejor" You that every year.

Your hands too, They scare me.

Because you're temporary.

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CafĂŠ Rouge B T

C

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Trinity B I C

well what the hell do you want me to do then? Dallas spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. What in god’s name do you want me to do? he said. I can’t lift this goddamn truck out of the ditch with my bare hands and lord knows you’ve been pretty much useless for the last hour. Joseph leaned against the hood of the truck. He leaned against the hood and he looked down at the barren highway stretching behind him and the lonely flat endless farm fields stretching out in every direction and I don’t feel good about it, he said. I don’t know why but it I don’t like it. Christ, Dallas said. He looked up at grey sky and the raindrops that were falling from it and what the hell don’t you like about it? It’s just a farmhouse. Look, he said. He pointed his index finger to the lonely wooden house standing at the far end of the fields and look at the house, goddamn it, he said. I’ll just go over there and ask the farmer to help us get the truck out of the ditch with one his tractors or whatever and if he doesn’t have any tractors then I’ll ask to use his phone so I can call a goddamn mechanic. Joseph looked down at the mud oozing around the front tires of the truck. Jesus Christ, Dallas said. He set off across the fields, head bent beneath the rain, feet slapping the muddy earth. Just stay by the truck until I get back, he said as he walked away. I think you can handle that much.

Joseph stared down at the ditch and the muddy water that was running through it. He stared down at his feet and he felt the rain soaking the back of his neck and then there was thunder rolling across the earth somewhere. He looked up. He looked up and he looked up across the fields the endless waving farm fields and there was lightening slicing the sky into pieces. There was lightening and there was the thunder and he could see Dallas walking away he could see him walking through the fields to the farmhouse and there was so much emptiness opening up around everything there was so much emptiness opening up against the heaventree of the sky. It was the same sky back home. It was the same sky that bent and rolled like the scattered bandages of drooping sunflower petals. Joseph used to stand in the kitchen with Dallas. He used to stand there when Dallas was rolling cigarettes on the counter when Dallas was falling in love with sinners and whores and what it would be like to be crucified at three o’clock in the morning?

His father asked him that. His father sat at the kitchen table back home. His father drank his whiskey neat his father never drank his

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whiskey on the rocks and no son of mine is going to be a goddamned heathen, he said. No son of mine is going to run off from home with some kind of fairy boy and you look at me when I talk to you goddamn it. On the last night that Joseph was home he walked out into the field behind his father’s house. He walked outside and he stretched his arms out to either side and sometimes he was lost beneath the silence of the sky. He was lost beneath the seams of the stars Lazarus was lost in the darkness of his tomb in the goddamned salvation of his tomb and yes father it’s true that I do hate god most of the time. It’s true that I hate myself when I am back home when I am back home on the porch when I am back home in the West when I am back home beneath the fearful roots of rainshadows and the fearful bending spine of your goddamn heaventree.

Joseph looked into the distance. He looked into the distance and he could see Dallas walking back toward him. He could see Dallas walking toward him he could see Dallas walking away from the tomb of the farmhouse with fear and pain and love in his eyes but everything was ok because one day they were all going to be crucified anyhow

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The Mornings B D L M

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Half-Asleep, the City B J H

Unspools light like movies I’ve already seen, played in reverse to relight the dialogue down boulevards I’ve already been in, bleached by lamp posts and made new.

Crumbles, rebuilds itself out of corners bent in every yearbook or phonebook that presented I to me, the skyline made from a Song of Myself turned sideways.

Spreads a sheet of dust like a mother, or an artist stretching canvas, splattering trash in attempts to catch the bit of light that the corner of our eyes miss.

Magnifies the stoplights as each hour unfurls, projects its image onto the back of my eyelids, a vague, violent nocturne though the tune is lost every day at dawn.

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Sleepy Contention B C M

Eyes livid, begging to close.

Fan on high, futile attempt to drown out whimpering Elmo.

The vet said that was normal, I shouldn’t worry.

Worry tomorrow, work tonight.

Just one more page.

Mr. Bishop won’t notice if I make the font 12.99, right?

Let your extra large Argentinian rugby shirt drown you in comfort.

It’s still warm from the dryer.

It smells like laundry detergent too.

Enough of this work.

I like to write.

I like to write stories about Lola, the drummer who sold her mother’s spoon collection to pay for her drum set.

Stories about Rocco, the deep sea lobster fisherman, who only ever loved one woman, his boat, Leigh.

You are no Salinger, You will never contend with Steinbeck.

Why keep battling exhaustion, why keep writing?

Your bed is waiting.

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My mind is wrangles for precise words.

My eyes, weighted by the day’s affairs, will not submit.

I will keep writing.

I will not put on my rugby shirt, my sheets will remain unturned until my last word is polished.

The End. No, I don’t like the sound of that. Maybe something more foreign.

Fin.

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King City Astronomy B A L

In August we convinced ourselves we were tired of California the burning interstate hills sleeping like dragons big and lumbering and charred by the sun the warm mild winters and fires in the chaparral the traffic lights that scarred our irises and the cold, metallic Greyhounds that passed us in our sleep That night we brushed gold dust off our bent-up shoulders and stamped in it no longer the pioneers we were as clear-veined children fretfully, we stamped in it That night we were soldiers our units, our eyes and limbs our hearts, matching regiments the coasts like exacting, empty-eyed generals promising the glory of coordinate squares promising a world of planetary faith divided, destructed, and devalued sketching in the most careful lines two cities crumbing upward In my own, the hotel is cold yellow walls the gray remains of dirt fixing nitrogen clouds of cigarette smoke imprinting themselves inextricably onto the wallpaper existing and absorbing and forgotten fading like conversations tattooed to vocal chords no longer memories, but parts of the thinnest mucosal membrane (our time-stretched larynx oscillations) of which sadly, as the pianist said are only capable of minor chords of melodies bound by the radio and

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three broken lamp shades nailed to the wall (three lamp shade telescopes) from which I can see our see our king city astronomy: Saturn’s B-ring spokes and circumstellar dust the things we had and lost, had and became part of Here, a new observatory the sky through a lampshade here, Eurydice, calling you blind sipping the cosmos through a paper cup drinking the same milky galaxy over that colored, Kerouac “wailing sweet bop” that spirit holding you in smoky bar clutches in redlight jukebox fingertips in a reflection of the sea I watch the stars with lampshade eyes through your island-stranded city through your concrete burning plain and no matter how long I wait (stargazing with shaking neurons) I know you will never love as fractal mathematics because neither does Manhattan and neither does the sky Here, a champagne flute Here, a calla lily a graceful flask that inundates me like patient underwater drowns me in bullet gold sea foam and keeps me from the lunar mass of the blackest, empty spaces But I let the stem slip through my hands it broke I broke we broke together

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we were calla lily corpses meteors burnt up and sleeping in New Mexico craters pretending that we were still shooting stars pretending, now too the same frantic symphony of my private suffering falling to Earth rapping on presolar grains while you conduct everything from somewhere blue, and tolerant, and far away My quiet astronaut my martyr of lenses and heliocentrism my sweet Galileo you decide everything and while you resolve how the notes go while you pay your jukebox five I promise the world that you still love me that you haven't burnt up or turned away or disintegrated into molecular grime I promise like a meteor like meteors promise they once lit up the sky but now in the Cenozoic promises are dust mites to empty ear canals circular tissues with every memory of our lavender apocalypse circular promises now tempered to the moon bringing about the silent cardinalities of desperate infinity silent since the dust turned dark in the summer and you turned dusty, dark, and brave silent since I traced Orion in my windows and left our California for the rain.

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The Boy Who Kept Moving B J L

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About the Creative Contributors @OLIVIAALSEPTELLIS: i liek 2 right things THX 4 reading!! #EnglishMajor #Yolo (50) CECILIA BRUNNING would have a hard time deciding between Henry VIII’s court and 1960s America if she were given the chance to travel back to any historical time period. She is a vegetarian, lifelong bibliophile, sophomore Ed and History double major who considers The Office her favorite TV show ever, even without Michael Scott. (21) TALLEY CARLSTON is a senior Organizational Communications major.

(9, 64) IAN CLARK is an English, Elementary Education, Mechanical Engineering and Nursing Major. In his spare time, he enjoys staring off into the distance with a glazed look in his eyes because he believes that doing so will make the people around him think that he is meditating on deep and important Truths. In reality, however, he is probably trying to remember whether or not he left the stove on. Oh no he probably did.

Shit. (10, 65) BENJAMIN CO is a senior Computer Science and Biology major who was born and raised in Portland, OR. He has cut his ponytail since the last time he was in Writers Magazine. (cover, 56) AJ DAVIES is a sophomore Biology major. (13) ALEX DICKENSON will be graduating this Spring with a degree in English. Feel free to give him a job. (12, 27) HOPE DORMAN is a huge fan of stringing words together and hopes to someday support herself by doing such. (11) MONICA DOWN is a senior English major. (40) PHILIP ELLEFSON is a sophomore English major. (5) COREY FAWCETT is a senior English major. (6)

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EVAN GABRIEL has a degree in English Literature and German Studies, which means he is unemployed but has big plans to celebrate the spring equinox twice. (34, 51) DEANNA GAYOMALI is an optimistic dreamer, writer, and Communications major. She enjoys traveling, learning what other people are passionate about, and geeking out about Doctor Who and Harry Potter. (19) JACKIE JEFFERS is a senior from Bellevue, WA. (62) JOSÉ RAUL HUERTA is a senior Music and English major who is slowly realizing what a bad decision it was to major in the fine arts. José likes to spend his time composing music and worrying endlessly that he will get stuck in a restaurant job for the rest of his life. José hopes to continue writing both prose and poetry in between his dead-end jobs and inevitably crushing debt. (68) JOANNA LANGBERG is a senior English and Psychology double major with a minor in Fine Arts. Her enduring love affair with art began two decades ago with the gift of her first box of crayons, and she would like to thank her wonderful family and friends who have supported her over the years. (4, 74) Although ATHENA LATHOS has considered herself mature since infancy, she is an amateur of her daily pursuits (writing, cooking, bicycling, and crossword puzzles) suggesting, perhaps, that she is not. (71) W.C. LAWSON, from the heart of the Midwest, is a junior communication major at the University of Portland focusing on journalism and photography. In his free time he enjoys the outdoors, reading, strumming the guitar, drinking coffee and skateboarding. Visit his website at wclawson.com. (29) MEGAN LESTER is a sophomore English major. (52) MASON LINDBLAD is plagued by a desire to read books, write fiction, write and record music, take photos, and design with Photoshop. He is also plagued and/or motivated by a Marketing and OTM double major that makes it a challenge to do the aforementioned very frequently. (15) DANNIEL LORENZ MATARLO is a Sophomore Nursing major. (61)

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JEFF MAKJAVICH is a music nerd who also plays guitar and writes songs for his band, The Harm. He attempts to show through his writing that he's not just a blonde bimbo. (53) What can be said about PJ MARCELLO that hasn't already been said about Batman? Not much other than he will supposedly be graduating from UP in May and hopes to enjoy a comfortable career at some point in the near future. Feel free to contact him if you need an employee with skills like the Batman. (58) MONICA SOLANO-MOLINA is studying Global Business with an emphasis in Marketing. She has a sick love for alliteration and ValleInclรกn. Monica was voted Miss Congeniality in high school and hates chocolate. Hardly ever sleeps. (63) CLARE MUNGER is a sophomore French Studies major. (69) WAKABI OMI: I'm a biology student that loves to study life and draw it too! (41) MACKENZIE PARKER is a professionally published fiction writer and poet, currently pursuing a English and Drama degrees at the University of Portland. When not listening to her muse, Mackenzie reads, updates her Twitter feed, memorizes random facts, watches British television, and pretends to be witty. (37) ZACH PETERS I love it when you call me big poppa. Follow my cat on instagram @cookiethecat3. (48) DEREK PORTER: My favorite place to be is the mountains or the river. My grandpa has a pet squirrel that has greatly influenced my writing. (49) HANNAH ROBINSON is a junior English and Spanish major who is currently jousting at windmills (otherwise known as studying abroad) in Granada, Spain where her photo was taken. In her free time, she enjoys dancing, tea drinking and laughing at inappropriate puns. (26) TAYLOR RUDOW is a shark enthusiast (yes, shark) that has dedicated her college career to environmental conservation and putting GoPro's on sharks. She enjoys rainy days, long walks on the top of the Chiles dome, and intellectual conversations about squirrels. (36)

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NICOLE SIMARD is a Junior studying Psychology and Theology who feels that life is better with books, tea, and a camera to remind us of our adventures. (33) ENID ROSALYN SPITZ is out exploring. (14, 28) KATELIN STANLEY is an observer, a muse, one who thinks on paper. She takes pleasure in the little things—perhaps why she chose to study biology—and likes to experiment with language, even the German that is her second major. (35) HALI THOMPSON laughs at her own jokes because she thinks she’s hilarious. She has a penchant for strawberry milkshakes, Best Coast, and Zach Galifianakis. In her free time, she considers new ways to make “fetch” happen; she also has a tendency to write things. (44) NASTACIA VOISIN is a sophomore double majoring in Communication Studies and Sociology. Photography is a casual but addictive pastime that lets her share her love of the uncanny, the clever, the beautiful. (20) KELSEY WEYERBACHER is a sophomore English major. (30)

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Acknowledgements Special thanks to our wonderful advisors, Dr. Lars Larson and Dr. Genevieve Brassard, for their deep thoughts and guidance throughout the creation of this publication.

To Kassie Hansen, from the UP Print Shop, for bringing Writers Magazine beautifully to the page.

To Erin Bright and the UP Bookstore, for kindly hosting our premiere event by their cozy fireplace.

To our ingenious and engaging editors, for all of their effort on the publication from start to finish.

And finally, to all of the students who contributed their creative work, for sharing their inspiration and genius on these pages.

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