RED CEDAR REVIEW VOL. 55 RED CEDAR REVIEW VOL. 55 2020 Red Cedar Review is an annual literary magazine published in the spring by Michigan State University undergraduates with support from the Michigan State University College of Arts and Letters and Department of English. Cover design by Joseph Rivera. Cover photograph by Madeleine Becker. © 2020 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved. RED CEDAR REVIEW VOLUME 55 STAFF MANAGING EDITOR: KATHERINE STARK ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR: JACOB LARGEN PROSE EDITOR: CLAIRE WALSH POETRY EDITOR: JACOB LARGEN ART EDITOR: ANUSHA MAMIDIPAKA COPYEDITING: CASSANDRA BLOOMINGDALE, MADI BROOKS-MILLER, OLIVIA DALBY, EMMA LANGSCHIED, NATALIE POLL, JOSEPH RIVERA TYPESETTING: KATHERINE STARK SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER: ELENA SCHAFER ARCHIVE TEAM: EMMA LANGSCHIED, CLAIRE WALSH, JARETT GREENSTEIN FACULTY ADVISOR: DR. ROBIN SILBERGLEID READERS: HANA BERNARD, EMILY BEVARD, KELLY CRAIG, KIANNA DELLY, SARA GILSON, EMILY HOBRLA, KELSI KARPINSKI, JULIE KLEIN, PAYTON MILLER, GRACE RAU, BROOKLYN RUE, ELENA SCHAFER, SYDNEY WILSON, MARY CLAIRE ZAUEL IV CONTENTS IV RED CEDAR REVIEW VOLUME 55 STAFF 1 EDITOR’S NOTE KATHERINE STARK 3 STAFF NOTE EMMA LANGSCHIED 5 PLUMERIA HALEY WINANS 6 TRAILER NO. 7 AMANDA PIEKARZ 8 ONE WEDNESDAY, OVER WHATSAPP, MY EX CALLS ME A HEARTLESS ASSHOLE EMILY ROSE MILLER 9 THE OBSERVER HAYDEN FROEHLICH 13 MENTAL HEALTH DAY HEATHER TRUETT 14 ARS POETICA HEATHER TRUETT 16 CITY DELIGHTS HUGH COOK 17 I LOVE YOU, I’M SORRY PHOENIX KENDALL 18 GREEN GIRL MARTHA ROSE 19 I’LL PLAY JOHN CORINNE DAVENPORT 20 WHOLE DAMN HEAD CORINNE DAVENPORT 21 IV TRIP RAZEEN AHMED V 22 DRAGON CONNOR CROWLEY 24 EVERYBODY LOVES BABY CONNOR CROWLEY 26 INFINITE BLUE ALLISON CRAFT 27 I WILL SHOW YOU FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST EMILY BAKER 28 BEAUTY IN UGLY PLACES EMILY BAKER 29 FRAGILE AS A BEETLE’S WING EMILY BAKER 30 BEACH EULOGY VIOLET MITCHELL 32 DID YOU KNOW VIOLET MITCHELL 33 IF KITES WEREN’T ATTACHED TO STRINGS, THEY’D FLY AWAY FOREVER DAMIAN WANG 36 4:52 AM IN A TAIWANESE MOTHER’S SANCTUM DAMIAN WANG 38 BORDERLINE BORDERLESS BORDERING DAMIAN WANG 40 CLOCK IN LEWIS SMITH 41 BLINK CHRISTINE A. MACKENZIE 42 REMIND ME OF THE RENAISSANCE ALLISON CRAFT 43 ON WHEELS NICOLAS STEVENS 44 COULD YOU PULL OVER HERE? HENNA AHMED 46 WAR SHELBY WEISBURG VI 47 LENTICULAR SHELBY WEISBURG 48 HOME NICOLE PUSCAS 49 USER’S MANUAL, 2009 HONDA ACCORD TAYLOR ANNE THACKABERRY 51 (ON BEING) A (SOFT) PLACE TO LAND KATLYN FURLONG 52 BLOOD FRUIT KATLYN FURLONG 53 TWOFOLD KATLYN FURLONG 54 SOFT FALLS OF FATE NICOLE RICO 55 TRUTH JULIANNA VAUGHAN 60 WEIGHTLESS KAYLA SIMON 61 A GODLESS ROOM KAYLA SIMON 62 MY GORDIAN KNOT RACHEL HAGERMAN 64 FOR THE HENS ELLIS GIBSON 66 EMMA WATSON LUCAS CURITS 67 BATTERY ACID KYLE WRIGHT 70 I AM NOT THE MOON, NOR A STAR KAITLYN VON BEHREN 71 BOYS OVERHEARD WHILE PLAYING A VIDEO GAME KAITLYN VON BEHREN 72 CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES VII VIII EDITOR’S NOTE KATHERINE STARK Dear Readers, The production of Volume 55 of the Red Cedar Review took place during a year of many changes, for both our journal and our world. Some were planned, as we continued through a period of transition for our journal; others were not. When we started reading submissions last fall, none of us could’ve imagined what it would be like to publish the issue this spring amidst a global pandemic. Despite a world filled with constant upheaval and a never-ending cycle of frightening news—not to mention the practical shift to distance learning, video conferencing, and working in pajamas—our team continued working to put together this final product. I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished this year. In an effort that has been many years in the making, the entirety of the Red Cedar Review archive is now accessible online. Every issue dating back to 1963, representing decades of undergraduate literary publishing, is now available through the MSU Libraries website. Special thanks for their contributions to this process go to Claire Walsh, Emma Langschied, and Jarett Greenstein, as well as Shawn Nicholson, Robin Dean, and the MSU Libraries Digital Repository team. You can visit the archive at https://d.lib. msu.edu/rcr. At the same time as we’ve been reflecting on the history of the Red Cedar Review through the archival process, we’ve also been navigating a major transition for the journal’s future. I’m excited to announce that this is the first issue of the RCR to be published completely digitally. With our new website, we hope to continue publishing innovative undergraduate literature for a national audience while providing room for more experimentation in content and form. I’d like to thank all of the many people who collaborated in the production of Volume 55: first of all, thank you to our talented contributors, dedicated readers, genre editors, and social media team, as well as Assistant Managing Editor Jacob Largen, whose help in leading the journal this year was invaluable. Special thanks go to the ENG 492 students, led STARK 1 by Dr. Kurt Milberger, for their hard work editing and putting together the final product. As always, we’re grateful for the wise leadership of Dr. Robin Silbergleid, our faculty advisor. Finally, I’d like to thank everyone at The Cube, especially Dr. Kate Birdsall and Sam Bloch, for bringing our vision for a new website to life. I hope you’ll continue to watch the journal change and grow in the coming years; I’m certainly excited to see what’s to come. Most of all, I hope that the stories which we’ve collected here can do what literature does best: bring comfort, hope, and joy to the world in times of fear and uncertainty. These pieces certainly did so for us. Sincerely, Katherine Stark Managing Editor 2 STARK STAFF NOTE EMMA LANGSCHIED During pandemics and times of crisis, publishing continues. This volume of the Red Cedar Review was completed from our own little spaces. It was produced despite the anxieties and loneliness brought on by our isolation from one another. From my own little space, I experimented with design software and reviewed final copyedits for some writing published in this volume. It’s significant that we all took time to attend to such tasks to bring this copy of the RCR to fruition. Indeed, it’s significant that publishing in general continues; people will always have ideas, descriptions, and poetry worth sharing. I hope this volume is read with the knowledge of the times it was created in—during the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. and across the world. I hope that during this interval, as readers and writers, we found some time to take some deep breaths, write a few lines, and find some joy amongst the difficulties and uncertainties. Emma Langschied LANGSCHIED 3 4 PLUMERIA HALEY WINANS You left me smothered in warm mayonnaise, snuggling with wilted lettuce between two slabs of stale sourdough. My disguise lounges in the crumby pit of your snakeskin purse. I’m pushed under a crumpled lei and a crinkly bag of hotel macadamia nuts so I’m not fondled and confiscated by TSA’s clammy sausage fingers. This claustrophobic terminal reeks of old people soap and bleach. The echoing cackle of a bloated tourist shrivels my petals as bulging suitcases clunk down the slatted ramp. I want to be in the loamy luxury of your terraced backyard surrounded by flourishing foreign breeds that greet me like a divine alien. I’ll grow to lick your window with my leathery leaves and convince your guests that my ombré blooms are criminally fragrant and worthy of California’s golden poppy sun. WINANS 5 TRAILER NO. 7 AMANDA PIEKARZ the wooden door too easily axed through: Here’s Johnny I joked years ago before we realized it wasn’t funny the panic settled thick, stifled in the back of my throat the doorknob hung limp and useless offering little security so at night, we pushed the couch in front of the door and tried to pretend we were safe surrounded by our smoke a murder-suicide in the now-vacant lot beside ours left ghosts and us, even more unsettled, anxious for the onset of our lives staring out the window past the cars at the fields of corn which according to King is contaminated with killer children and Cujo and alien clowns It’s the Barrens I say A— nodded, eyes pinched, nearly black with paranoia as strong as mine the shadows which stalked in the yellow streetlights, on the darkest nights where the strangers prowled just past our lingering sight they tapped on the aluminum panels leaving hollow, haunted sounds while we lay close together, knit by blankets 6 PIEKARZ in bed at night the trees would scratch our tin-can roof in complex abstract patterns all while we knew we needed out of Trailer No. 7 PIEKARZ 7 ONE WEDNESDAY, OVER WHATSAPP, MY EX CALLS ME A HEARTLESS ASSHOLE EMILY ROSE MILLER i see the notification on my phone screen and i move to it like a sunflower facing the sun. nausea churns storms in my stomach at the thought of what she might say now, even though i have only withdrawn to protect myself. i grasp hope as tightly as a child holds a dandelion, and lose it just as swiftly as the wind blows its feathery seeds. her words suck all energy from me. i wilt. the leaves of my body droop down, withering. the waxy petals of my mind turn frail and brown like the paper bags that held our lunch as we walked down a wide london street on an august day when i was naïve enough to believe she would fight for me and i would be sturdy enough to support her. 8 MILLER THE OBSERVER HAYDEN FROEHLICH I followed a pod of bottlenose dolphins swimming in the Atlantic. They filled the blue void with clicks and squeaks. The powerful strokes of their tails stirred the water and made the sunlight wobble as they attacked a silver hurricane of sardines. I lost all sense of direction as they dove in, out, and around the swarm. There was a little pulse of pleasure each time they caught one. I watched my great grandmother gaze at the shimmering, promising horizon from the deck of a Danish steam vessel. Her left hand held the rail while her right kept streamers of ebony hair out of her face. Those calloused hands would become veined and soft yet strong enough to strike piano chords and teach me to do the same. She watched dolphins dance in the wake. I traced the notes of her favorite etude back hundreds of years to a private salon in mid-1800s Paris. The chortling conversations, critical debates, clinking glasses of finest wines, and rustling of delicate fabric fell silent as Chopin sat at the piano. When he played, it wasn’t that he attacked the keys, they seemed to cling to him, relishing every blinding arpeggio or stunning chord. He could yell, whisper, dance, question, or melt with the notes. It seemed everyone had forgotten how to exhale. It had been a while since I hadn’t felt alone in that. I glided behind my children on the walk home from school. Leo plaintively sent his soccer ball tumbling across the concrete every few steps. Libra was trying to engage him in an earnest conversation about world hunger. I could feel the strength of her conviction. She’d done so much research for today’s presentation. My nine-year-old son could only think of his own empty stomach. I watched the woman who’d once married me through the final steps of cooking dinner. She sprinkled basil and black pepper onto the still bubbling mozzarella that coated her lasagna, arranged apple slices (with skin removed) on the edges of plastic Disney plates, and filled cups with cranberry juice, chocolate milk, and water. They gave thanks for the food, prayed for those poor children in Somalia, prayed for Josh’s arm to feel better, prayed FROEHLICH 9 for Mommy’s job interview to go well, prayed for Daddy to stay safe, and then they ate. I followed a memory back to the hilltop coated with pine needles. My shaggy brown hair mingled with Cassie’s sweeping black hair like coffee spilled on ink strokes. Through trial, error, and references to the Big Dipper, she unveiled the constellations behind the smoky autumn clouds. She told me how to connect the faint dots to outline a bull, or a fish, or a pair of twins. I told her the birthdays of my favorite musicians, and she told me their signs. I flew toward the light from the brightest star in her constellation, leaving the atmosphere behind. Didn’t need it. I passed the powdered surface of the moon and increased my speed. I could move in any direction, across any dimension, as fast as I wanted. Light-years passed by. As I grew closer to the brilliant explosive blue point, I noticed it wasn’t alone. There were two little stars waltzing with each other as the years elapsed. I watched them burn and boil. A triad of little gigantic infernos. The light would’ve been blinding. I didn’t have eyes to close. It was too quiet. I watched the man with the peppery beard rummage through my apartment for the drugs I hadn’t paid for, smoking revolver still in his hand. He found the pills in the medicine cabinet, the Ziploc bag of crystals beneath the sink, and the rainbow-colored tabs in the book of Gershwin sheet music and my yellow composition book. He and his partner left. Climbed into their cars and just left. I followed the one with the peppery beard through the steamy, amber streets of my old city. He lived in a ramshackle house by the flyway of route 85. I followed him through the door, past the hook where he hung his jacket, to the tattered sofa where a young girl sat eating pretzels and watching Tom and Jerry. He sat with her in silence until the DVD ended. She kissed him goodnight and left. He rubbed his eyelids with both hands. I watched a volcano explode in the Pacific with atomic force. The lava cooled into jagged black stone. Birds landed there, bringing seeds. The rocks were coated with green. I watched a fox wander through a city of oaks and a forest of concrete. I dove beneath the earth to watch a stalagmite grow steadily for centuries. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. One, two, three, four. . . I tracked the melody that had hummed in my head since fourth grade until I finally learned how to write it on the first page of my composition book. It was always a sad but energetic flowing tune, like a snowmelt mountain creek that knows it won’t last through the summer. I watched the little yellow book accrue tentative pieces. An experimental sonata, a passionate serenade, a furious dirge, a broken lament. It was placed with a tremble on church and school grand pianos, ruffled in backpacks, thrown across the 10 FROEHLICH room, yet always kept tenderly with the other compositions. I watched as the notebooks were taken from the crime scene that my apartment became and given to Cassie. She piled them all quickly into a plastic bin and stowed it in the attic where they couldn’t hurt her. I watched the bin collect a centimeter of dust. I followed Cassie, who’d once married me, as she sped into the peaceful predawn, away from our latest fight. It was about either the job interview I missed or the hallucinogens that made me miss it. The cedars streaked past in her tunnel of headlights. God, why did I make her go so fast? She nearly crashed once when she furiously wiped away tears and drifted into the next lane. I was relieved when she stopped on the shoulder to weep onto the dash. The relief didn’t last long. Her sensation of betrayal added to my guilt. I wanted to comfort her. Tried to tell her that I knew how wrong I was. I tried to force that sentiment to blossom in me and flow to her. Did I make her tears slow? Did I help her exhale? No. No, she was recovering on her own. Cassie is stronger than I am. I am nothing. I can see anything, go anywhere, but do nothing. I left. I observed the missions to Mars and watched new human colonies bubble up on the red surface. I flew with a monarch butterfly on its trek across the Midwest, flower by flower, to a forest draped with orange and black wings. I watched Bangalter and Homem-Christo don their silver and gold helmets and set a crowd of thousands dancing to their electric elegies. I heard the thunderous applause that Beethoven could only see. I followed a maple seed catch a breeze and tuck in a knoll until it created a thousand trees. Yet these moments were all empty. I followed the progress of a single perfect snowflake from its tumbling escape from the cloud to its helixing flight before landing delicately on my old windowsill. Behind the glass lay a warmer waking world filled with cheers and chuckles. A deluge of glossy presents was spread beneath our tree. I watched myself and my brothers unwrap familiar gifts. There was the copy of Super Mario Bros. that Stewart would play with his sons, there was the Tonka car Isaac would lose on our camping trip, there was the keyboard, hidden in that corner, that I would cling to for the rest of my life. I decided to visit my children’s Christmases. Libra celebrated with friends in a hotel in South Africa before leaving to serve pancakes and quiche to over a thousand. I then followed her merry evening phone call to her brother’s snowy home in Montana. He had five kids now. A reader with her new sci-fi novel, an actor with his new vampire costume, a napper with his new lion Pillow Pet, a gamer with his new puzzler, and a musician with something much older. A composition book with yellowing pages. She opened it, placed it on the piano, and the melody that had been stuck in my FROEHLICH 11 head since fourth grade poured from the strings. That couldn’t be possible. I almost remembered how to inhale. I followed the notes back again. The trills and chords were ringing from pianos, radios, and headphones across the world. Spreading, growing, gaining hundreds upon thousands of listeners. They made people smile while crying, gazing out train windows into thunderstorms, or made their eyes close as they coaxed the melodies from keyboards. They found them. The world found them. I had written the melodies that seemed to know what I was feeling in those moments. The moments she warmed my hands in the winter. The moments when I sat alone in the midnight fields behind my childhood home. The moments when I felt full and had to let the surplus emotion dance in a song. Had they really been worth something? It was incredible to see so many understanding my voice for the first time, but I wanted something more. They said the notes carried emotions across the years, and I needed to send a message. I found my former self in a huddled, chemically crazed heap over the keyboard at one of many terrible 2:30 a.m.s. I drifted to his side and poured it all into him. The remorse, the longing, and the emptiness I’d felt for lengths of time neither of us could understand. Now I drove him to seize this possibility. I can fill this void. He stirred. We can become more than a husk again. He blinked away the dried tears. But you have to sing louder than ever before. He pulled himself upright, and started playing, writing, and recording. I made him see it or, at least, feel it all. The shoulder of the road, the burning of the stars, the snow, the children, the mistakes. He worked all night, weaving melodies, cadences, ebbs and flows. He titled it “Apology to the Autumn Sky” and collapsed. I followed the tune, protecting it, until it finally reached the hands of the little musician on Christmas who had a song to show her grandma. 12 FROEHLICH MENTAL HEALTH DAY HEATHER TRUETT “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons . . .” – T. S. Eliot The rain is a tattoo on my windowpane. I sew myself to sofa cushions, knit the cat into my morning with her white paw resting on my shoulder. Her black nose is near my ear. I hear the throat hum sound of kitty contentment and sip Honduran coffee, poppies growing on the mug. The fan blades swirl their circles, steady, invisible dust. The rain tangles up my motivation, and I won’t move much today, won’t tie my tennis shoes, won’t get into my Prius, won’t battle Memphis streets with windshield wipers swinging; a salsa dance to a rhythm I can’t match. I am out of spoons, no tools for scooping another hour of concentration from my brain, instead, I stay here with the cat, the coffee, and the water drops. Today’s a day to sit at home, touch the cat’s fur, purr just like her as the clock ticks by moments and the calendar’s colored boxes of places to be, drip past with the clouds. I only breathe. All of the tasks on the list of to-dos are pinned fast to the pages, and they will still be there when the day is done. TRUETT 13 ARS POETICA HEATHER TRUETT “Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.” – Sylvia Plath I want to be the words that decapitated Emily Dickinson, made her so cold no fire could warm her. I will write scorch marks into the skin of a nation, scar its path. I want to hold ajar the door to Morley’s madness, scribble my sea creature diary, flying fantasy in Sandburg’s air. I will be the echo that asks the shadow to dance. I will write a light into the hateful night, force feed little lives into the daily deaths. I want to be the “Ahhh” of Lucille Clifton’s first poem, da Vinci’s vital truth, Pablo Neruda’s act of peace. I will write a war and make it melt, a snowflake soaking into manmade history. I want to make Dylan Thomas’s toenails twinkle, steal T. S.’s soul, make love to the lightning Randall Jarrell called to strike. I will write the striking blows of simple words with target marks. 14 TRUETT I want to be born in the bowels of the ancient wilderness of earth, midwifed by Mary Oliver and holding Berry’s hand while I breathe the unconditional breath. I will write in that air, ethereal, tailor the truth to tease and tumble. I want to be tangled limb by limb with Sylvia in her silence, becoming beautiful annihilation. I will write a brand-new Genesis, create out of refuse a hallowed Universe. I want to be to e. e. the only thing that matters I will write for them and me the only things that matter. TRUETT 15 CITY DELIGHTS HUGH COOK I rolled my tongue along The hot geranium staining my mouth, Nectar left by flower sorbet, Watching my cousin’s blond height In the French summer. “As a child on the New York subway, Knowing we were packed like rats And smelled of shit, I still loved the density of humanity.” For the first time I thought of myself as part Of the sweating night; Cooling our bodies On the stones of the street. We lay with the city’s people, So close we became an offering, Buried by stars and symbols. I looked back. Once past the Cathedral’s throng The people walked together, Scraping cobbles older than They will ever be. Tonguing redness at my lip, I watched the moon fall On all of us walking back From Catabasis, Divulging through streets. 16 COOK I LOVE YOU, I’M SORRY PHOENIX KENDALL I’m repossessing the sandcastle Unless I cut my hair. Then I will bury it myself. Scanning Over the same lines, again an empty Swimming pool I sucked out. In my dreams, I take wire cutters, saw out my teeth, sew them into Valentine’s Day cards that I would have sent to you on Christmas. Return me to sender— I’ll write you a Freudian analysis and Scare you out of a barbershop quartet. KENDALL 17 GREEN GIRL MARTHA ROSE 18 ROSE I’LL PLAY JOHN CORINNE DAVENPORT Three detonators in a block of C4 is how I convince myself that my weakness is synonymous with danger. Ram me between a ’90s monitor and a swivel chair, I’ll float down that elevator shaft like a feather sighing. My smile is replaced with dominoes, I eat sandwiches made of falling pianos, I’m always hungry for broken cords. Only vocal. I think I keep hurting. My feet wrapped in my once-white tee shirt, dancing on glass windows (with glass feet) trying to find a way back inward. I sing with my back to the choir, my fists—mistaken for lungs—are not bombs. Clenched hands can’t pull clips. DAVENPORT 19 WHOLE DAMN HEAD CORINNE DAVENPORT It’s been three months, and I’m still bargaining with the devil to baptize me. I say, “He’s still sleeping in my head, he hasn’t paid rent in two years, and he leaves condom wrappers under the bed.” Achilles and his river grew up down the street, and the crossroads meet in my front yard. Each night I offer my brain for a little more heart. I say, “Take the thoughts. Take the whole head. I’ll survive without the memory of him if you just take the whole damn head.” 20 DAVENPORT IV TRIP RAZEEN AHMED I thought I saw a shooting star only to see it was a bug illuminated by the lights of 7/11, And I thought I met God— Until he asked to crash on my couch and I left him on read and I still feel guilty about it. I use glasses, can’t see without them. One time they got lost in the middle of a garage rock mosh— Fell off my face On the ground for so long, my heart started to hurt. If before my eyes it’s just a blur, how do I know I’m on the right track? And yet, amidst the twenty hundred stamps of the stampede of Vampire Weekend fans, They survived without a crack— Against all odds of universal entropy, how insane is that? Something went right for me For once And I still think about the seconds of that night, During the waking hours of my current ones Thinking how absurd the world works As I overflow spontaneously like Wordsworth A thousand pictures in my words, worth a million dollars each. Silver-tongued, I’m still a Star-Bellied Sneetch As I identify the things that sucked the life out of me I rip off the leech, But I forgive the disease. It knows no better it only knows how to be And so I simply say, “I can’t judge thee.” AHMED 21 DRAGON CONNOR CROWLEY Last week, the zoo got a komodo dragon shipped in straight from Indonesia. I saw it on TV. They’re calling him “Sean.” I think it’s kind of sick to take that kind of beast and give him a name like “Sean.” If I had a body like that and was stuck with a name like that, I’d sure as hell bite the hand that fed me. I wonder what the other komodos would think if they heard that he was being called “Sean” now. This lizard’s got the strength of ten men, he’s itching to get back to Jakarta. He sees the zookeepers—the bastards— and the dragon inside him wants to knock the eyebrows off their faces, and poison the burnt coffee that they drink every morning during their first cigarette break. The only thing stopping him is the six-pound clubs that they keep dangling from their belts. They said on TV that komodo dragons are venomous and will hide behind rocks for hours until a gazelle or something gets near them and then they reach out and strike and with one bite they’ve taken down a whole damn gazelle. I went and saw the lizard last night, after hours. I used to have a friend who worked at the zoo, he told me how to sneak in without making the alarms go off. Even without the alarms, I got a little tense. I spent fifteen minutes hiding behind a trash can after I got in, just to make sure the coast was clear, 22 CROWLEY and started cramping up after three minutes of crouching. I was surrounded by pieces of stained napkins that didn’t quite make it into the can. Seeing the zoo at night put me on edge. It’s like the animals know you’re not supposed to be there and I got afraid that one of the antelopes would cry for help or something. I was checking behind my back the entire way to Sean’s. His place was humid and dark, and stunk like raw meat in the desert. I wrestled that damn dragon for nearly half an hour before he got comfortable with me. The next day, I’ve got Sean on a leash, and we’re walking down Sunset Boulevard together. He’s a lot slower than the TV made it seem, and he’s walking about four feet behind me the entire time. I see some kids laughing, so I look behind me to check on Sean. This is the first time I really see him in daylight, the zoo was so damn dark I couldn’t get a good glimpse of him. He looks different than he did on TV. He has little hands and walks like my grandad. So I drop the leash and he runs into an alleyway. I’m not letting some lizard make me look like a kook. CROWLEY 23 EVERYBODY LOVES BABY CONNOR CROWLEY ray romano’s got the face of a baby. he’s tried to hide it with the coiffed hairdo, a full set of teeth, and smile lines hugging the sides of his mouth, but i don’t buy it. i still see the baby fat bubbling under those cheeks. you’ve gotta look close, but it’s all there: the loose teeth, the snotty lip, the blubbering. there’s a scene in “everybody loves” season 7 episode 22 where ray and robert are sitting on a sofa in the living room. ray is telling robert about a suitcase that he and debra are keeping on the stairs. it’s been there for weeks because both of them refuse to be the one to move it. debra can’t move it because she’s busy taking care of the kids. ray can’t move it because his hands are the size of grapes. there’s a look of annoyance on robert’s face. i’m on the edge of my seat rocking back and forth with my feet in my hands. robert calls ray a baby. i wail, excited that he is finally being exposed. ray looks back at robert, his face a play-doh structure, it can’t be real. ray pouts and gets upset with robert. robert buys it. typical. baby always wins. you can’t hate baby. marie enters, carrying a bag full of formula and pacifiers. 24 CROWLEY she walks up to ray, cooing, and rests his soft head over her left shoulder, patting his back. he lets out a burp that barely makes a sound. i ball my fists and stamp my feet. marie sets her child back down on the sofa, moving gently so as to not upset him. he continues to eat his crackers, surrounded by wealth. ray is a king, a pharaoh of an empire made of pink stone, draped in gold underneath the pulse of a warm sun. robert loves raymond. debra loves raymond. marie loves raymond. everybody loves raymond. jesus, man, how’d you do it? CROWLEY 25 INFINITE BLUE ALLISON CRAFT 26 CRAFT I WILL SHOW YOU FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST EMILY BAKER The urn tips from the mantle, or is thrown in anger, and cracks. Gray ash drifts like snow over the living room rug. You’re breathing in Great-Aunt Georgina. Oh, dearie me. A monster made from the dirt too dry to keep your crops alive bears down on the midwestern desert your home has become, roaring and tearing at the boards of the barn with claws and teeth of knife-sharp sand. Crouching in the ruins of the ancient forest, you bend to scoop up sawdust in your palm. You let it sift through your fingers, dance away on the wind. On the edge of the field of stumps and devastation looms a line of trees, marked with bleeding crosses of carmine paint. Your eyes tell you they’re next for the levelers. I will show you fear in a handful of dust, because dust is what remains when life has been pulverized to bits miniscule enough to be snatched away by an errant breath. You sigh. BAKER 27 BEAUTY IN UGLY PLACES EMILY BAKER The rainbow shimmer of an oil slick, choking life from water with thick, poisonous fingers. A spatter pattern of arterial spray on a white wall, red droplets like the rubies of a dragon’s hoard. The sheen of a dead bird’s feathers— because alive it never would have let you get that close. The grass that grows greener over shallow graves, nurtured by an absence it cannot feel. The color shift of a healing bruise purple-green-yellow-gone blooming and vanishing in its own sped-up spring. Ancient bone chapels that make the dead into art— ribcage chandeliers and skull sconces brown with the weight of years. Cracked soil, lines like scars or gaping mouths opening to beg for water in a drought, a roadmap of desperate thirst. Flood-slaked streets, ordinary suburbs transformed into Venetian canals without their permission—roads made rivers. The gleaming blade of a sword, sharp enough to sing as it slices through air or rope or flesh—a piercing melody. A tear in a butterfly’s wing, far more interesting than mere symmetry, a wound as a feature, a mark, a name. Towering infernos that paint the sky orange-warm, hungry pyres that insatiably consume homes and trees and lives alike. They say to pray for beauty to come out of ashes, but what if you’ve always liked the softness of the color gray? 28 BAKER FRAGILE AS A BEETLE’S WING EMILY BAKER I have no idea where my armor ends and my skin begins because my world is a wound I must encase in chitin while my soul beneath yearns for simple touch, a brushing of fingertips over my bruised heart. Some people have walls, but I have an exoskeleton; I inhabit a terror that breaking it will break me too. The illusion of safety, but bugs can still be stepped on. BAKER 29 BEACH EULOGY VIOLET MITCHELL I took a walk on the bare beach and apologized. I let the ocean chew on the sand under my heels and sink me down and down and I said I’m sorry. She whispered a wave. It was cold but I let her paint my ankles in the blood of shells and fishbones. I let goosebumps carpet me. I let her bury me low until her eyelashes were at my stretch marks, my thighs. We are earth together, I told her. I leave toe ponds for her, and leave my 30 MITCHELL fat gray heart next to the skeletons she let me make. MITCHELL 31 DID YOU KNOW VIOLET MITCHELL push pins perform somersaults / we decided not to go because of the rain / October is scary because we used to wonder what we would eat during winter hibernation / I am the scientist & the experiment / arthritis either smells like clementines or model train paint / artists are humans who draft / porter stout pumpkin sprinkle hops vine = masculine beer / we watch the misspellings grow / if you were here I’d probably overwater you / drag queen bingo was canceled last week / the president said that all my friends are illegal, again / I want to watch you meditate / my best advice is to arrive a month early to your appointments / I’m smiling for you no matter how many eyes I have 32 MITCHELL IF KITES WEREN’T ATTACHED TO STRINGS, THEY’D FLY AWAY FOREVER DAMIAN WANG He doesn’t like me from the get-go. Since entering the restaurant, with the bell at the left corner of the frame tinkling away, I have had this feeling. When I glance at the man, he is looking at me with an inexplicable rage, and a certain neurotic furor. When I lock eyes with him, my phone clutched in hand, rising by the second with my thumb paused over an unsent text (“Quick, should I get house special fried rice or chicken chow mein?”), he smooths his complexion into something apathetic and absent, pinched-together eyebrows sliding off his face like sweat, trickling down in black droplets. But I know it is there—that unsolicited animosity. I have seen it, and I am unlucky. The bell is still chiming. It chimes and my heart quakes and it is still chiming and chiming and I see it. I see it—he’s reaching behind the counter for a chef’s knife, freshly sharpened. The word “bolt” flashes across my mind’s eye, in black and red, and I repeat it to myself, my feet unmoving, my back sweating, my fingers cracking. I turn around and slam my hands against the door. Push, push, push. The sign says to pull. My fingers have left sweaty greasy prints on the glassy acrylic or the acrylic glass of the door, I do not know but I wonder how ominous it will be for the next customer to see. How left-behind fingerprints always mean that the person who left them is no longer around. I pull the doorknob, and it falls off in my hand, but I don’t let go. Out the door it is sunny and raining and thundering. So hot and so cold at the same time, and I am unlucky. All I did was come out for Chinese food, and I have been caught in something that I cannot understand. This is what happens to Asian kids who don’t cook their own Asian food at home. This is what happens to Asian American WANG 33 kids who “have a little too much American in them,” like my uncle often bemoans at the dinner table. This is what happens when you don’t eat your mother’s home-cooked meals, and you look elsewhere, away from the love she has cooked up for you. You might as well have slapped the rice bowl out of her hands, how you have shamed her and your family and brought this onto yourself, this danger and this impending doom and all this evil that you deserve. On the sidewalk there is gum everywhere and they beseech me like slime, drag me down towards them like dirty little demons of the street. Tiny hands unseen to the naked human eye clamp onto my new chucks and seep into the stiff navy blue canvas. They do not let go. These gum demons want me and they want me now. But I am a hot item tonight, 75% off and so desirable to all the shoppers. I turn my head back towards the restaurant, and I see the man coming for me, chef’s knife in hand, so slow, so sure, so deliberate in his movements. To him I do not even have a discount. I am 100% off. Free to hunt. He follows me onto the street, and I beg the gum demons to let me go, I need to go, I need to go. Please let me go. The gum demons relent but take my right pinky and ring finger as offerings to appease their king until the next time. I do not know if there will be a next time, but I keep my mouth shut and I bolt, canvassed feet thudding across the grim sidewalk. I do not know where I am going. I am suddenly in an unfamiliar town, and I run but I do not run out of breath and for fault of human error, I still gasp as I run. Down the streets of this unfamiliar familiar unfamiliar place I run, the man so close behind me, knife in hand and never wavering, always pointed straight at me. If he were a sniper, he could have shot me by now and been done with it, steady as his hand was and unwavering in his determination. But he likes the chase. He likes my fear. And I hand it over like I would hand over my precious jewels to a robber because I know of nothing else, I do not know what to do besides fear him, fear this whole place, fear for what I have become and for what I have unknowingly done wrong, in this life and in the past and most likely in the future one too. The man’s face is grinning, frowning, crying—a one-man Kabuki theater show as I run and run and run. In and out, and the people of this place fade and reappear. In one second people on the street are looking and shouting at me, in the next second the entire town is empty and I am running all alone with the man chasing me, then in another second the crowd is so thick I cannot see where my feet are taking me, there are elbows jabbing and hands shoving and I fear. I fear so heavily. Past a flower shop I run, but I skid and turn back to smell the plumeria bouquet. The flowers are so delicate and beautiful and fragile, and I pet their pretty colors, absorbing them into my fingertips. I swipe the lines across my cheeks like belated war paint halfway through a battle, and I run again. Even as I thud through the streets, I can 34 WANG hear the little slimy leechy gum demons teetering beneath the cement, I can hear their gnarly soft voices promising and threatening and I do not respond. I know the man is still chasing me. I have been running for so long it feels like I have been traveling for light years to Alpha Centauri, like I am amongst the cosmos looking for Vega and homebound for an alien civilization that loves me and welcomes me and wants me. Into a four-story garage I turn, my hand catching on the sharp stone corner, skin tearing quick and slow at the same time, and propel myself up the staircase. The man is so close behind me. Up each individual stair I go—up, and up, stumbling and gasping and my hands feeling blindly in front of me for something I cannot name. When I finally trip and fall, it is with astounding violence as I spill across one-third of the grimy staircase. My blood, too, spills across the staircase as the man finally puts to work the knife he has been gripping so patiently for so long. I think I have allowed him some relief, that perhaps he deserves. I think perhaps I deserve this too, to be chased, and to have fear instilled in me and to be hunted until I have nowhere to run. Cheek pressed into the metal of the stairs, my eyes follow the black blood trickling away from every yawning pore of my body, bones aching, and flesh creaking like a great beast tossing its weary head. My blood smells like blueberry yogurt. The Yoplait brand, not the generic kind, never the generic kind. I open my eyes again to a cobbled ceiling, hobbled hopes dashed across each ridge, and I do not breathe. I wish I could close them again. WANG 35 4:52 AM IN A TAIWANESE MOTHER’S SANCTUM DAMIAN WANG Bitter melon soup Bitter melanin too When my mother cups me like Achilles’ healing is unfound in her crockpots and cast iron pans. Grated skin makes the most flavorful stock, bitter me lies down on the kitchen floor. When they make you bleed, thank them. Chefs don’t like when you play the victim card. Knives are only a weapon made of intent. Toys can be weapons, too, in the wrong hands. You see, the more fight and bite you have, the more satisfying the slice, because ‘fight’ and ‘bite’ are mouth-feel, mouth-run, mouthing at your soul —less child, insolence is not permitted, how dare you knead her hand hold. Each peel of your skin hitting broth, Pan fried in peanut oil and charred. Give in, because bitter melatonin won’t bring dreams. Your mind may sleep, but you are running from 36 WANG bad omens come in bitter men. You wish you had been sweet. Bitter melon, bitter mellow, Bitter me, lion within. Lying is whining, and bitter is the taste they forget. Bitter melon gourds are not guards against cuts me against your chopping board, then sour their tongues with your pointed truth. Achilles was once a hero in his days and sometimes bitter gods just want to be unguarded, human too. WANG 37 BORDERLINE BORDERLESS BORDERING DAMIAN WANG An eye for an eye is the coward’s way out. I learned the hard way that head trauma is hardly fair, which some kids are forced to endure for the lack of white they contain. The more melanin you retain, the more damning the melancholy that follows. When I’m forced to question the relevance of where are you from and I answer here. Here, I’m from here no, where are you really from I cannot help but think, I don’t know how to satisfy you. I’m hungry for an answer too. It’s palpable in the are you an immigrant that the Target cashier spits out, the terracotta of my mother’s skin heating, the tectonic plates of her shoulders fracturing, and my hands sweat glue as I piece her back together, my arm curved around tattooed shame. The plateau of her face has never known peace. Broken English chases me even though I was born here, because my mother is All Broken and no English. How is it possible to exist when your own damn mother is worth Less Than White? 38 WANG The difference between knowing and wondering is buried in my mother’s bones, the aches that she kneads when no one is looking. There’s no room for her own grief when do you bow when you greet other Ayy-gee-uhns? her spine crumbles under mouth traffic, mouth lost and mouthing at spoiled spice. I thought color was the only difference. But when whiteness encompasses all that I Am Not and all that she never was, I mourn how the sun rises from the West. WANG 39 CLOCK IN LEWIS SMITH I always wanted to live in a monastery. I could ring the bells: signaling prayer, meals, and reflection. Trading Jowett’s Jig for single tones, how meditative. I would pay my rent in pearls of wisdom. Concerns of capital consigned to oblivion, my checkbook checked at the door. The hour now approaches, steadfast in its passage through time’s coffee filter. The minutes dripping on my receding hairline. Lamentations of daily woes, like shampoo, melt away the fine tufts on my head. I would much prefer cloistered contemplation. The world offers only stress, but the ethereal offers a hidden companion. I want to live in a monastery, so I can finally be at peace. But it will have to do: my clock and me. 40 SMITH BLINK CHRISTINE A. MACKENZIE is it normal for her to lean her head on the train window see wild brown grasses rapid blown in a field rapid shifts to woods streets towns is it normal to have moments when time roars like white rapids that sweep bodies down to the rocks is it normal to burrow into his arms to find a calm place to rest for a moment hand in hand eye to eye is it normal to blink all time has passed into the shade blink the sky outside is white farmhouses crumpled hands folded into each other is it normal to turn back blink lips on hers hands in hers body on hers each moment to the next moment to the next moment with him is it normal for the sky to fluster a thousand colors for the birds to arrive the next moment until they blurred shaded drained into puddles is it normal MACKENZIE 41 REMIND ME OF THE RENAISSANCE ALLISON CRAFT 42 CRAFT ON WHEELS NICOLAS STEVENS The pufferfish that once swung like chaos from the rearview mirror now gathers dust in the glove compartment, waiting for the next victim to unknowingly reach their hand in. Prickly enough to draw blood. An obsidian letter opener brought back from Belize has long since disappeared somewhere between or under the seats. The sunglasses holder filled with a cacophony of random objects: A large bolt, a crystal egg, and a fossilized clam that used to rattle violently at each turn, now remains deadly silent. Somewhere in the junkyard my collection of oddities lies waiting to turn to dust abandoned between flights cross country its chassis too rusty, and its engine too moldered to start. STEVENS 43 COULD YOU PULL OVER HERE? HENNA AHMED On my way to heaven, I want to make a pit stop first. I want to go home. I want to stand on the front steps. I want to close my eyes and feel the warm air of an October noon. I want to walk in to see my mother on the phone in the kitchen surrounded by an aroma of spice and flavor. I want to hear the distant clanking of my father in his office. I want to walk past my sister and her boyfriend on the couch, laughing so . . . peacefully, as if in that moment the world outside had finally taken a big, deep, blue breath, and exhaled its sweet, long-awaited apology. I am here. I imagine walking up the stairs, passing the books that are no longer there, the trophies that no longer stand, and upon the carpet that hints at some mix of lavender and lemongrass. I go into my room. The lights are on; the music is playing. I am here. I want to turn off the lights, open the balcony door to hear the ceaseless, swaying palm trees fight the soft world outside, and then let myself fall backwards. I’ll fall for miles and miles only to be caught, so gently, by the smooth hands of the bed. I am here. I am here. And then I will sleep, maybe for a long, long time. And this time, I swear to you 44 AHMED We will not be awoken by the shattered glass of their sirens, or the smell of lavender being replaced by burning books, or the sight of our entire childhood being swallowed whole by the same red earth that once raised it so peacefully. No. We won’t. For I am here, and I will never leave you again. AHMED 45 WAR SHELBY WEISBURG there’s a stone in the front yard of their red house. the soil under it is common and full of worms, and they overturn that stone every morning, so gentle and easy with routine, to see life’s beckoning rawness under it. they grew up when they truly loved that stone: they had something to lose, something so devastatingly casual, a stone some worms some soil a house. so they sing, we want we want we want our stone we want to get in our cars and drive past what we know, what belongs to us. always already forever there was us and our stones, the stones in our yards, the yards of our homes, there our red house, there the neighbor’s blue one, down the street our school, our church, our people who live all around us, who sing the same always already forever there was us and ours. what they will do for anything, for one more stone one more car in the garage, one more yard on the block. they will turn over their stones, dissolve themselves in the common soil, place their stones where their faces used to be, sign their names away for something so casual. the soil under the stone not just soil anymore. because they said it belonged to them, they said it writhed dormant with life’s rawness. 46 WEISBURG LENTICULAR SHELBY WEISBURG after Lucinda Parker iron mountains delay the oncoming studebaker clouds pink as the sun, bright against the sea-mist sky. pat the rolls, pat the rocks, waft your hand through heavens. there the clouds, there the mountains approaching collision. we cannot follow the clouds where they want to go. (down in the foothills a girl dances for rain to kiss the papery grass. her mother scratches her arms and waits for some sort of shunt. the strings of drought reverberate for the tambourining fingers of rain pebbling over bluffs, the land a raspy soloist twiddling for the clashing chorus of more-than clouds arriving late in a studebaker.) instead, there they are, halted by our pregiven classifications. WEISBURG 47 HOME NICOLE PUSCAS 48 PUSCAS USER’S MANUAL, 2009 HONDA ACCORD TAYLOR ANNE THACKABERRY Don’t park under trees, don’t drive on gravel roads. Close the sunroof before you park, or rain will get in. Your father loved this car, and only gave it to you because he loves you more. It will last a long time if you take care of it. This is how you check the oil. This is how you check the wiper fluid. This is how you jump-start the battery in the winter when you’re world-weary and cold and just want to go home for Christmas. If the oil is leaking, park over an old moving box. What did I tell you about driving on gravel roads? This is how you change a tire. This is how you change lanes on I-81 so people won’t honk at you. Don’t park outside without putting up the sun shield. If you need to cry, do it in the Target parking lot; everyone’s done it there at least once, no one will judge you. The radio has six presets: you’ll know you’re getting close to home when they stop playing static. You’ll know you’re even closer when the roads turn to gravel. I told you, take the other way. These country roads get bad in the winter, and I don’t want you driving on them. You’re the Friend with the Car now, a powerful and dangerous position to be in. Can you pick me up at the airport? Can you drop me off at my friend’s house? Can you pick me up from this party? You can say no. And when you do drive someone, don’t be afraid to ask for gas money. Driving THACKABERRY 49 home will cost you forty bucks in this economy; only do it if you really need to, we’re not worth it. Driving friends home should be an act of love. It says, I want to make sure you get home safe, I want you to stay out of the rain, I want to prolong the time I say goodbye until the very last possible moment. Don’t let that boy you like walk home in the sleet. Drive him home, and then on the drive back, blast your favorite love songs and sing along like you mean it. Unless he lives on a gravel road. Then make him walk. Most importantly, always text me when you get home. I’m not there to drive you anymore, and I want to know that you got back safe. 50 THACKABERRY (ON BEING) A (SOFT) PLACE TO LAND KATLYN FURLONG I flinch at the same scratch in the record every time. for spending eternity bracing for impact this body knows nothing about defense. applies it to everything. the touch of a hand, the creek of a floorboard even when it holds a familiar weight; in my chest—chest—chest— I say it as if to escape it. paper skin and paperweight bones. I can’t remember why this started in the first place. I think it was something about permanence or the lack of it or about white socks with frilly lace tight around my ankles I asked my mother to take off but she needed to mark me girl soft and open a front porch step and a kiss on the cheek in June all the color runs out and I am staring at the big sky braiding the trails of planes no longer earth bound and I wish to soar past light but I am still taking lessons in becoming it. FURLONG 51 BLOOD FRUIT KATLYN FURLONG this summer I am all heart no song, raindrops vibrating a tin roof, the light that lingers, the soft hum of electric current, recurrently resurfacing— always coming up for air. I am a mouth full of a lover’s mouth full of love for me; still Hunger burns a sore spot in the soft spot of my belly & nothing can mollify her need for blood. I crawl through forests foraging for wild berries with red-stained fingertips I tell her I did it, but she knows I could never kill it. he knows it too & tells me between bites he’s moving to San Francisco for the winter, says he could love me from there & my stomach rumbles at the thought of canned preserves, the dying taste of July, & the fruit we thought could sustain us. 52 FURLONG TWOFOLD KATLYN FURLONG I want to be transparent, I say—as light floods the room I used to call home—that’s the only way to make it real—to take this body and turn it into crystalline water—so that you can see me so clearly—you can see yourself reflected back—perhaps the reason we fall in love is because we want to be seen— through eyes other than our own—so I stand still for you—but I only look like myself when I am running—away—like I am trying to escape this body—and these hips—and these collarbones—and these breasts—these things that make me feel like something I am not—I want to be fluid, I tell you as you pour a cup of coffee—you look at me through the little ribbons of steam—trying to escape the air—I say it again, louder—but language restrains me—as it does to anyone who’s ever believed in more—a week ago we were lying in the balmy sun—each of our bodies learning the weight of the other—you said we brought each other balance—but I want it on my own. FURLONG 53 SOFT FALLS OF FATE NICOLE RICO 54 RICO TRUTH JULIANNA VAUGHAN The two o’clock trolley arrives five minutes behind schedule to pick up the group waiting on Wilson Street. Two men and two women board; the women on their way to the grocer and the doctor, the men don’t say where they’re headed but the stench of whiskey reeking off of them tells me where. The men haven’t bathed in days, but when they board, they carry themselves with an air of dignity, a lie they upkeep to prevent the gossip, but everyone knows—they just don’t talk about it. “Did you hear,” Mrs. Stein leans over to whisper to me, “about poor Mr. Armstrong?” Mrs. Stein is small and stout. Her warm smile and twinkling eyes have a way of drawing people close to her, and one would imagine she has many friends. With how inviting she is, she often wonders at night why her husband doesn’t love her, why her two boys disrespect her the way they do. Neither have come home since leaving for college. On Christmas, two places remained empty, and there were far too many leftovers. “Poor Mr. Armstrong?” I echo just over the driver’s holler—15th street and Franklin. They should say poor Mrs. Armstrong. She’s been through her share of troubles, but it’s easier to blame her instead of acknowledging me. The trolley stops, the two men exit. I see them walk straight to the bar. There is shame in the way they hang their heads. They’ve been out of work for a while. Their children are hungry, but their addictions are hungrier. “Mrs. Armstrong has always been an attention seeker,” Mrs. Stein continues, touching my seat just inches from my knee, but not quite, “I told Patrick not to marry her, but did he listen?” The other woman, Mrs. Russo, adds solemnly, “He was bewitched by her beauty, but he’s regretted marrying her since before the ink dried on their marriage license.” She’s Mrs. Stein’s next-door neighbor, heavily pregnant with her sixth child. She’s naturally pretty. Can’t be older than thirty. She wears a shiny diamond ring and earrings Mrs. Stein has always desired for herself. That’s not all that Mrs. Stein coveted, though. She has always believed Mrs. Russo VAUGHAN 55 has the perfect life: beautiful children, a handsome, kindhearted husband, and a well-trimmed garden in front of her white-picket-fenced home. Mr. Russo died just two months ago. Killed in a fire at the factory. Her oldest boy, Sam, who’s only thirteen, just had his first day of work yesterday at the same factory his father was killed in. She stayed up all last night in constant prayer, terrified he wouldn’t return home. “What did she do?” I ask the women, who simply exchange looks and shake their heads. “I don’t want to sound rude, but you’re the last person who I’d tell her story to.” Mrs. Russo smiles kindly. The driver hollers back, 18th Street and Washington. “That’s me!” Mrs. Russo struggles to stand under the weight of her growing stomach. She’s so round she could pop any day now. “Goodbye, Jennie,” she nods to Mrs. Stein. She turns a blind eye to me. We watch her waddle towards the nearest building, smile still on her face. She’s ten minutes late for her doctor’s appointment. He probably won’t see her anyway; she hasn’t been able to pay her medical bills, even before her husband died. She wonders if she can teach her oldest daughter to deliver a baby to save on the crushing weight of the hospital bill when the time comes. To our surprise, Mr. Armstrong climbs onto the bus. He brushes past us, but I catch up to him anyway and we are seated together. He avoids me like the plague, and he hates hearing what I have to say. Still, I ask him, “What happened to Mrs. Armstrong?” “It’s her fault.” He can’t look me in the eye. It isn’t her fault. “How are you, Mrs. Stein?” He asks the woman in front of us, because he knows he can’t talk to me without bending under the pressure of my gaze. No one can look me in the eye while they fabricate a story. “I’m well.” She isn’t. For some weeks now, she has lacked the strength to get out of bed in the morning. She seldom is able to eat. “What’s the news on Alice?” He sighs as if he is stuck in a traffic jam, like his wife is nothing but an inconvenience. “There’s not a thing wrong with that woman’s life.” There were, actually, quite a few things wrong with Alice Armstrong’s life. “And yet she insists I’m the root of all her problems and she won’t come back to the house.” “I’m sorry that you have to go through this.” Mrs. Stein says softly. “I can’t imagine how difficult this must be for you.” But it is far more difficult for Alice, the woman who has been trapped in a cage by this wretched man for twenty years. I’ve a good mind to look Mr. Armstrong in the face and make him confess out loud what a right fool 56 VAUGHAN he is, but not yet. He’ll reach his breaking point soon, when he’ll have no choice but to confess. “I did everything for her, gave her the life every woman could ever dream of. And this is how she repays me . . .” Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong live in an (un)pleasant apartment complex in an (un)pleasant part of town, but never have to struggle with the bills. Mr. Armstrong used much of his paycheck to gamble. Alice Armstrong is an excellent cook. She is very smart. She daydreams often, of a world where she can speak her mind and vote. The other women think she is eccentric and a little strange in her habits. Some of them wish they had the courage to attend suffrage meetings downtown as she did. “I can’t think of a single reason why she did what she did.” I can think of hundreds. “She has always been very happy with her life here.” There’s never been a day in her life with that man that she has felt genuinely happy. “Women are always complaining about nothing. Us men, we work all day, every day. And they think they have the right to claim they’re tired at the end of the day. They think we should have to help with the kids or do the dishes. It’s never enough for you women.” Mr. Armstrong considers this fact. Even if he said this to me, his words wouldn’t change one bit. “I’m sure you are tired,” is all Mrs. Stein says. She isn’t smiling anymore; she doesn’t agree with him. The driver hollers: 24th and West Baltimore. “Ah, my stop.” She nods at Mr. Armstrong. She bites her lip when she notices me watching her and quickly looks away. Mr. Armstrong doesn’t care to watch her walk down to the grocer and tips his head back against the seat, but I notice the way she recounts the money in her wallet, knowing that she hardly has enough. For a while, it is just Mr. Armstrong and I on the trolley, waiting for the other to give up and leave. But Mr. Armstrong won’t stand up and exit, not if there’s a chance he’ll have to look at me. He’s afraid of me. He’s afraid of being proven wrong. “Are you headed home now, Mr. Armstrong?” I ask. My stop is approaching; I have somewhere to be. “Yeah.” His eyes are shut. “Bet it’ll be quite the change, having the house to yourself.” I hover over him, knowing as soon as he opens his eyes, he’ll see me. I think I’ve almost got him. “I’m looking forward to the peace and quiet.” He turns his head; eyes open only when I’m out of possible sight. He’s terrified of the quiet; ever since Mrs. Armstrong left him, he hasn’t gone home once. We’re almost to my stop. The trolley’s starting to slow. “Patrick, look at me.” VAUGHAN 57 “I can’t.” He whispers. “You have to face me, Patrick. It’s the only way you’ll ever be able to move on.” “I can’t! I will not—” I grab his face, turn his head. I watch the fear wash over him. It’s the fear of realizing that I know what he’s done, and maybe something far more. Maybe when he faces me, he’ll know he isn’t innocent, that he’s never getting the life back that he wasted. “36th and Prospect.” The driver hollers back at us. I nod as I let go of Mr. Armstrong. “Remember what I said.” I warn. I hear him gulp. I stand up and walk to the front of the trolley. The driver glances back at Mr. Armstrong, whose hands now cover his eyes. He shakes his head, “Some people never learn.” “I guess they don’t. No one ever wants to face me, and until then, they really can’t learn, or change or grow in any way. But for some, facing me is more frightening than being miserable.” “Have a nice day,” he smiles, having nothing to say on my words. They aren’t for him, anyway; he and I have spoken often and have an understanding of each other. His smile is always forced, there is pain in his eyes, and sometimes he struggles to stay kind to the people of this town, who treat him like he is beneath them. They will never know what hardships he endures off this trolley, but God knows I do. His wife is very ill, in the final stages of her disease, yet he has to work so she can stay in the hospital. He longs to be at her side. He’s afraid that she may die while he isn’t there. I meet his eyes. His pain is close to seeping to the surface, and I wonder how much longer it’ll be before it does. “You will find peace soon,” I say, and I never lie. Hearing it come from me, I can sense the wave of relief wash over him. His family has suffered for so long. I step off the trolley onto Prospect, watching it roll away until it’s out of sight. Mr. Armstrong is still covering his eyes. He might not move his hands until he’s forced off the trolley, miles from here. Nearby, Alice is waiting for me. “Sorry I’m late.” I stride over to the bench she is patiently seated at. “Now tell me, how are you?” Her smile is genuine; she hasn’t felt this way in decades. She doesn’t have to say, I already know. Some days ago, she faced me for the first time in her marriage. She realized there was nothing more she could do to make things work between herself and a man who did not care for her. She admitted everything to me, and by telling me she understood that none of it was her fault and didn’t feel guilty for doing what had to be done. 58 VAUGHAN Alice gathers her bags from beside her as she stands, smile turning into a beam. She doesn’t have much, but it’s enough to get her by for now. “Thank you. For everything.” “No need to thank me. Your strength came from within. Telling me only helped you realize that,” I point out. “Now go on, you’re going to miss your train.” “You’re right.” She checks her watch, surprised at how fast time seems to be going recently. I watch her hurry towards her train, board, and speed away on Opportunity. It is quiet on Prospect today. It gives me time to think. About Alice, Mrs. Stein, Mrs. Russo, the trolley driver Mr. Miller, the men headed to the bar, even Mr. Armstrong. Many of them live lies to hide from me. It is easier to pretend that their lives are better than they really are; to put up a facade is all some of them have ever known. But on most of their current paths, they will never know real happiness, they will never be free from the lies they’ve buried themselves in, that they’ve convinced everyone but themselves are reality. All they have to do to redeem themselves is tell me. It seems quite simple, doesn’t it? But no one wants to tell the Truth. VAUGHAN 59 WEIGHTLESS KAYLA SIMON i. you have cuts on your hands carved by your own fingertips and a burn from back when you could still stomach toast for breakfast. back when you could still stomach the image of your ribcage in mirrored glass. now you shake when your mother boils water on the stove, and it’s been almost three years but you’re not doing better. and it’s so easy to lie when someone asks if you’ve eaten that maybe you can convince your own body it’s not starving. ii. in chasing the absence of ourselves the darkness turns us into angels we don’t fear falling, no, we just want to know where we’ll land and will the ground shake and will our wings be too heavy, will they weigh us down? if God asked you if you’ve eaten yet today what would you say? 60 SIMON A GODLESS ROOM KAYLA SIMON i stopped praying for a while faith always slips away from me after loss. how i wished you could have seen the way i made Death into a father figure. i needed a strong grip in my life and had held Death’s hand enough times to know that his would do. i had always imagined Death like the opposite of God so i stopped praying— i gave up waiting for words from above because if there were any i was missing them maybe the angels took a lunch break or the celestial radio was set to the wrong station. there was this feeling that no one was listening. maybe my holy words were smoke in a windowless room, collecting at the ceiling but never touching the stars. maybe it wasn’t Heaven’s fault my grief was piling up when I was the one who locked myself in, but i stopped praying. for a long time. i began to imagine God’s voice like the sound just after a fire alarm stops ringing— that is to say, silence that is to say, a noise built on absence. SIMON 61 MY GORDIAN KNOT RACHEL HAGERMAN I know you look a bit like me— Long, stringy brown hair. Small waist. Ambitious green eyes. Maybe you even have my dark eyebrows, straight teeth, and crooked smile. A touch of pink on the cheeks and tan in your arms. An artistic freckle here and there. Maybe you’re not a perfect image, but a resemblance just the same. Although, isn’t it perfection that you seek? “Straight lines, rule books, rising to the top.” You tie a slew of vague notions about a flawless self in knots around my brain. “Perfect body, perfect mind. Always be 62 HAGERMAN best.” You dance in graceful motions, anchor the rope. Feet quietly kick my thoughts. While your ideas entangle mine, my imprisoned brain begins to ask: Should this Gordian knot be undone? “Straight lines, rule books, rising to the top. Perfect body, perfect mind. Always be best.” This rope you’ve created, is it good? This image I’ve created, does it show me who I am? You raise your pink cheeks, and point your tan arms at me. “Success, success, this is your desire!” But you are not my perfect reflection, No—you simply show me who I want to be. And, with tired green eyes and a shrinking waist, I wonder if I still believe this lie. HAGERMAN 63 FOR THE HENS ELLIS GIBSON Hens peck the ground, kick their feet, stride around wobble-wattled, bright-eyed, proud and prim. I love them all; I admire one, who, in a snit, hits wing-tips against her sister, pecks a bloody feather off, leaves mottled gray skin bare, and blinks yellow, pleased. Struts in the fence don’t keep me out—but when I’m seen, they scatter and flee. My trick is easing round the side where bushes cast shadows and leaning there, teeth sharp as rooster spurs, until I’m sure. Then straight for them. The birds craft their eggs, bide their broody time to hatch the chicks, and I’ve bided too, let hunger scratch down my throat, fed my children on thin milk, crept at night to scout near the henhouse. Light hours: harder to hide, but the girls are outside, the chance is mine. I want to kiss their necks, loving where the farmer’s fist chokes. I am a mother, therefore twice the fox. Know as I do: blood’s meant to 64 GIBSON bleed, hens to feed on wheat. My mouth is not for love stories but to open up and eat. GIBSON 65 EMMA WATSON LUCAS CURITS 66 CURITS BATTERY ACID KYLE WRIGHT As a child, lying propped up uncomfortably, wheezing and drawing air, waiting for the albuterol to kick in, still clutching the little plastic mask to my face like an adolescent, asthmatic version of Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. Waiting for the little fist-grips on my lungs to release, waiting for the air to stop feeling like a bucket of Nickelodeon slime or the dust in couch cracks as it goes in. Finding somewhere to hide within the films and television I watch, falling in through the pane—smudged or rosy, frail images, film stills, back of mind warped like a cracked lens. The sharp blows on my chest fall away. My imagination making the pieces of the people I see my own. I separate, and suddenly I’m one of the lucky kids in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory or strapped into a proton pack as one of the Ghostbusters. My voice speaks to me as if it is coming from someone else. Grab that chair right there. Listen to this story. Your lungs don’t have asthma, it’s your mind. Your breath doesn’t feel full of sand, it is someone else’s bad body. Alright, don’t break your other arm. Are you afraid of getting old? I am, I say to it as we fade into the ether. We look each other in the eyes and it’s no use, the voice says, wavering as if across cave walls. If he’s coming down with asthma, I don’t want him out in the rain—that’s the last thing my voice says. Fading like the opening credit soundtrack. Letting myself slip into the projection of solids upon a plane surface, into the tides of moving pictures. Trying to will myself into the flickering television screen, into the crackle of old VHS tape. Align my heartbeat to the rhythm of maladjusted tracking lines. Find a flick that doesn’t feel sick. On a note lost to the wind I wrote that I was beginning to feel the symptoms of an asthma attack. Chopped pieces out of the note, like a paper snowflake and let it fly from an open bedroom window. Alright, close your eyes. What do you see? Rub ’em. Can you see the stars? WRIGHT 67 Can you feel the film? Blurring the separation between body and movie. The inside of my thigh, edge of my collar bone. The light on the screen, flicker of mouthed words. The parts of my body that are changed by the scene, finding some real center on which to base the pain or erogenous textures. Finding the film that makes me forget that my own body doesn’t always do what I tell it to. Change me, cinema. Make me feel someone else’s faults. Find the words on someone else’s tongue, lose them, feel the vibration of their larynx when my own only makes pitiful bleats. Find the strength to move in a body on screen, or find a place to focus, to forget about the tightness of my own bronchioles and the way gravity is heavier only on top of my chest. Like reading Coetzee’s Age of Iron, feeling the sickness working its way through my insides along with Mrs. Curren, hollowing muscles and bone. Feeling it so much it’s almost impossible to continue reading. Feeling it seep through cracks my healthy body. Feeling the cancer welling up inside, the way ink or juice soaks into a napkin, spreading tendrils and blooming. The look I’ve seen in the eyes of friends and family consumed by it. Slow, silent. No flames or smoke. But the charred flesh is there, just underneath. The same putrid smell. The same queasy unease I feel, looking them in the face, making myself smile, hold back tears. Trying to grasp some language, even just a few words, to break the silence in the room. The cold sweat starts at my palms, works its way across my back and between any parts of my skin which touch. Trying to think of something to say, anything. Comment on the meal Dad just made us. Say something about the Chuck Norris movie on the television. Let loose a wild one and ask Grandpa about his time in Vietnam. Anything to fill this ringing quiet gulf. Strange to think of the films that stuck with me only in one or two scenes; these scenes left imprints on parts of my own anatomy. One that comes to mind is Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist. I can picture the cabin in the woods, the gray sky, the dull colors of the forest, and little else. But my groin still tenses in ghost sympathy, nausea rising from this area and shivering up through my stomach toward my chest. The instinctive way my hands move toward it, to protect from some unseen assailant. I don’t even remember much of what happens, but my body does. A tinge of recognition in my penis, not quite pain, but nothing sexual. At least I don’t think so. The way I wince, the way I tense, seems in fear rather than arousal. This isn’t a pleasant flutter running across my skin, a fire I feel between where the muscle and bone meet, across my shoulder blades, up the back of my neck. It is a quick reaction, a jump cut. It is a coolness, an electricity, water on the verge of freezing pumping through my veins, my chest. Everything feels heavy, less responsive. Not pain, but uncomfortable. A lingering anxiety. Some 68 WRIGHT little sliver of the images stuck in my psyche like the piece of pencil lead in my index finger that has been there since high school. Something in the film I can no longer recall the source of—I’ve lost everything but the tactile outer shell of the movie. The leftover emotionality lingers in my lower-torso, in my legs and sex, even with the film’s reels long-since out-of-print in my memory, among the countless other bodies on screens, other traumas, other pieces with which mine sympathize. WRIGHT 69 I AM NOT THE MOON, NOR A STAR KAITLYN VON BEHREN in response to W. H. Auden’s “I Am Not A Camera” a girl with the sun’s rays hidden in her hair whispers to me a secret, and i wish i was the moon, reflecting light back to her. instead, i am a black hole, collapsing matter, eating light. saturn’s rings rest on her fingers, and she giggles, her grin veiled as if by a spread of cards (the sun and moon), and i wish i was a star, luminous and warm. 70 VON BEHREN BOYS OVERHEARD WHILE PLAYING A VIDEO GAME KAITLYN VON BEHREN after Mary Szybist’s “Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle” Amber’s boobs were practically escaping during Bible study today, did you notice? Hey, I’ll check the safes for ammo—don’t die. I swear, every Sunday the evangelist’s daughters wear less clothing. Not like I’m fucking complaining, though. Switch your goddamn gun. No, no, yeah, that one should hold ’em off. The sister is pretty hot, too. What if I go for Amber and you go for her—what’s-her-name? Jada? Jade? Whatever, doesn’t matter. I heard she’s kinky as hell. Refill your ammo, quit trying your luck. Maybe the two of ’em would watch a movie with us next Friday, probably not unless we have something to smoke, though. They only fuck with druggies—you just have to pick ’em off. Just choose somebody and shoot him. This quest sucks. At least Cecilia’s back down to nine a gram. Run, dude, run! Look for cover, Jesus! No wonder you get shot in the back so much. Think you’ll finally get to third base? Just ask if you can slip a few fingers under her skirt, I dunno. She doesn’t seem like a virgin to me. I’m just going to spray paint everything. I wonder if they’re into Vicodin, maybe Xanax. I have a shit-ton left over from when my younger sister had a meltdown. Crap, where’d all these zombies come from? VON BEHREN 71 CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES HENNA AHMED is a nineteen-year-old Asian Indian poet currently studying psychological and brain sciences and English at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is in her second year in the English program and loves writing, poetry, and photography. In 2018, her childhood home burned down in the Woolsey Fires of Southern California. She writes about childhood, grief, and finding peace in the wake of such profound loss. She hopes to pursue higher education in the future and remain an advocate for mental health awareness. RAZEEN AHMED is a second-year student at the University of California Santa Barbara. He is currently working on his comingof- age novel, which is based on journal entries from the middle of high school through the end of college. He hopes that others find his writings relatable and can learn from his experiences. EMILY BAKER is a student and writer from East Tennessee who is good at baking and less good at keeping plants alive. She specializes in poetry and short fiction, but just loves the art of a good story in any form. She wants to cultivate a lifelong love of learning in herself and others, for all manner of things from history to woodworking to languages. She believes we live in a fascinating world and wants to know and experience it as deeply as possible. HUGH COOK attends the University of California Santa Barbara studying writing and literature. He has authored a collection titled The Day it Became a Circle (Afterworld Books). His poetry has been published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Ariel Chart, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Blue Unicorn. 72 BIOGRAPHIES ALLISON LEE CRAFT is a graduating senior at Virginia Tech majoring in cinema with minors in creative writing and leadership/ social change. She is a passionate and enthusiastic writer, director, and producer. Along with film, Allison Lee is an accomplished and published writer and photographer. She has been published many times by Silhouette Magazine for her poetry and photography and is excited to branch out to Red Cedar Review. After graduation, Allison Lee will be attending the Sundance Film Festival and traveling cross country with her dog, Dolly May, most likely writing poetry and taking photos for as long her Silverado will carry them. CONNOR CROWLEY is a fourth-year student at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. He studies mathematics and creative writing, focusing primarily on creative nonfiction. His writing often explores the mundane and characters who have odd relationships with the public eye. He is currently working on a choose-your-ownadventure novel and spending quality time with his unruly pet rats. LUCAS CURTIS is a twenty-one-year-old artist from a village called Dimondale, about twenty minutes south of East Lansing. He is a junior at Michigan State University currently pursuing a BA in graphic design. He has been illustrating mainly with graphite pencils and charcoal for as long as he can remember. Using Instagram as a main display for his work, he has received recognition from a broad range of audiences which include Hollywood celebrities such as Chris Pratt, Martin Sensmeier, and Lolo Jones to name a few. His inspiration comes from the huge support from his family, his uncle Keith, and his dear friends. CORINNE DAVENPORT is an Eastern Michigan University student studying written communications and creative writing. Loving words from a young age, she told the entire fourth-grade student body during an assembly that she was going to be a writer. Corinne loves to experiment with poetry and prose and parataxis, often mixing the three. For the future, she would like to continue on to have entire collections of work published, sharing what she truly loves to do. BIOGRAPHIES 73 HAYDEN R. FROEHLICH is an undergraduate cinema and creative writing student at the University of Iowa. Hayden explores his love of art and storytelling through writing, cinema, animation, and photography. What Hayden will create next is unclear to everyone including Hayden. Sometimes he writes or films stories about a time-traveling ghost musician, a pansexual superhero who can’t touch the ground, or a sentient stop-motion dry-erase sphere. His works explore themes of motion, emotion and work towards better inclusion for the queer community. KATLYN FURLONG is a senior at California University of Pennsylvania where she majors in English with a concentration in creative writing. Katlyn has been published in Litro Magazine and works as an editor for an online literary magazine and as a writing consultant. She is from Coal Center, Pennsylvania, a small town with a whopping population of 176 people. She writes mostly poetry and creative nonfiction and shamelessly lives in pajama pants. ELLIS GIBSON is a transgender, disabled poet most recently educated as an undergraduate at The Ohio State University. Ellis has had more encounters with chickens than with foxes, and is interested in manipulating language to approach the unsayable word, story, memory, or body. RACHEL HAGERMAN is studying English with a concentration in writing, rhetorics, and literacies at Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University. She currently works as a freelance writer, teaching assistant, Superstition Review editor-in-chief, and ASU Senior Writing Mentor. She is also the founding editor and editor- in-chief of the ASU student organization, The Spellbinding Shelf Book Bloggers. Passionate about literature, she plans to pursue a career in editing and publishing after graduation. PHOENIX KENDALL is a non-binary poet studying creative writing at Eastern Michigan University. Their work is forthcoming in Glass Mountain. Their work often examines the crossfire between 74 BIOGRAPHIES marginalized identities and the anxiety of the world around them. They are a big fan of their two pet rats, Holden and Phoebe. CHRISTINE A. MACKENZIE studied at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor with majors in English, creative writing, and psychology. She is a crisis counselor and facilitates a mental health support group. In the future, she aspires to publish her poetry books and become a psychotherapist. EMILY MILLER is currently an undergraduate senior at Saint Leo University in St. Leo, Florida, where she is studying English with a specialization in creative writing. Her work has been published in The Dandelion Review, Sand Hill Review, and is forthcoming in The Dollhouse and Inklette. When not writing, she can be found cuddling with her five cats and/or devouring frozen pizza. Connect with her on Instagram @actualprincessemily. VIOLET MITCHELL is a Denver-based writer and artist. She earned a Bachelor of Applied Science in cognitive literary studies and is completing an MFA degree in creative writing, both from Regis University. Her work has been published in Heavy Feather Review, The Blue Route, Sixfold, Word for/ Word, ANGLES, Furrow, and several other journals. She received the Robert A. O’Sullivan, S.J. Memorial Award for Excellence in Writing in 2019. AMANDA PIEKARZ is a young writer who is currently a senior at the University of Akron. Amanda has worked as the fiction editor for The AshBelt and as the arts and entertainment editor for The Buchtelite at the University of Akron. Amanda will be graduating as an English major with a double minor in psychology and creative writing. In her spare time, she loves kicking back with a good Stephen King novel, but her all-time favorite author will always be J.K. Rowling because Rowling inspired her love of reading as a child. NICOLE PUSCAS has been surrounded by art for as long as she can remember. Her mother showed Nicole her graphite, colored pencil, and watercolor pieces when she was younger, and she has BIOGRAPHIES 75 been a huge inspiration ever since. The main reason she really got into watercolor was because of her mother. Without the materials and resources available to her, she would not be where she is now, and she is forever grateful. Her whole family inspires most of her work because the love and care she has for them makes her want to honor them in some sort of way. NICOLE RICO has always been drawn to the occult and the idea of unseen beings living amongst us. Her work revolves around the concept of an Other: a living, breathing consciousness that inhabits us, our space, or follows our lives unseen yet aware of our every move. The Other can be anything from an inhuman entity, unearthly beings or a secondary consciousness. Within her photos she explores the Other, their inward dwelling, and their entanglement within our lives. MARTHA ROSE has always had an interest in art. In college, she has continued her art education with 2D and 3D classes, commission pieces, and research projects. Her work is in a variety of different mediums, focusing primarily on the depiction of the inner person through varying methods of portraiture. In the future, she plans to continue her art education through college, exhibiting her work in various locations and eventually teaching art at a public school. KAYLA SIMON is a first-year student at the University of Connecticut, where she is majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing. There are few things she loves as much as poetry, but chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream definitely comes close. When she isn’t writing or reading, you can find her taking photos for her photography business or looking at the stars. LEWIS SMITH is a junior computer science major and mathematics minor at Missouri State University. Although not pursuing a degree in creative writing or English, he has an avid interest in poetry, essays, and postmodernist fiction. He frequently writes on topics such as midwestern living, social issues, politics, and film. 76 BIOGRAPHIES NICOLAS STEVENS is an undergraduate student who was born in Vermont and studies creative writing at Pacific University. He has worked for Pacific’s undergraduate literary magazine Silk Road: A Literary Crossroads as an assistant editor and has also had work accepted into the 2019 National Undergraduate Literature Conference and the 2019 Northwest Conference in the Humanities. TAYLOR ANNE THACKABERRY is in her fourth year at Virginia Tech studying computer science and creative writing. She hails from Purcellville, Virginia, a place with far too many gravel roads. Although she considers herself a prose writer, most of her published works are poetry. She has been published in Silhouette, the Virginia Tech literary magazine, and was a finalist for the Steger Poetry Prize in 2018. In her free time, she enjoys paddleboarding and trying to find her place in the world. HEATHER TRUETT is a mom to teen boys, a student at the University of Memphis, and a slightly heretical pastor’s wife. The Scientific Method of Getting Luckie, her debut novel, releases in 2021. JULIANNA VAUGHAN is a junior at Shippensburg University with a passion for writing fictional short stories. She is working toward achieving a Bachelor of Arts in English with a concentration in writing. Her plans for the future are simply to see where life takes her. KAITLYN VON BEHREN is a nineteen-year-old poet currently studying English at Ripon College. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Oakland Arts Review, Canvas, and Wisconsin’s Best Emerging Poets 2019. Her poems have also been honored by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and Button Poetry. DAMIAN WANG is a city boy who wears his heart on his sleeve and enjoys rainy days, hunting for boba, eating ramen, reading comics, doing JoJo poses, and inhaling the dusty aroma of old books. He has an eight-year-old cat named Miu Miu who likes to play feline editor by bodily key-smashing incoherent lines into his works. A lover of BIOGRAPHIES 77 poetry, Damian currently majors in English at UCLA with a concentration in creative writing. As the son of a diplomat, Damian uses his extensive cultural experiences as the backdrop of his writing, while exploring themes of gender, race, and loss. SHELBY WEISBURG is currently a third-year student at Willamette University, where she is majoring in English with a focus in creative writing and expects to graduate in May 2020. She has been previously published in Oakland Arts Review, Cornell’s Rainy Day, FLARE: The Flagler Review, and Blacklist Journal. When she’s not writing, she works in the Oregon State Legislature, watches re-runs of SNL, and enjoys bouldering. She calls Colorado home. HALEY WINANS is a ceramicist, organic gardener, and writer from Annapolis, Maryland. She has poetry published in Scarab Literary Magazine as well as The Shore. As a senior at Salisbury University, she’s studying environmental studies and creative writing, with specific focuses on environmental justice, sustainable agriculture, and poetry. In all of her realms of interest, she is heavily influenced by the intrinsic connection between humans and the environment, and the impacts they have on one another. KYLE WRIGHT is a Chicago-based writer, musician, and visual artist. His work has appeared in Subterranean Blue Poetry, antinarrative journal, and Bleached Butterfly, and as part of Really Serious Literature’s Disappearing Chapbook Series. He has surfed couches across Europe, lived on a mountain in Colorado, worked as a wedding DJ, and played blues music at old folks’ homes. Currently, he shelves library books and sometimes tries to write them. 78 BIOGRAPHIES