pp. 101-150 - Stylus Spring 2023

what I would find. As I inched closer, I could smell the deathly aroma of the dead girl, reeking of natron and perfume. It now seemed to intensify in its odor, assaulting my senses and placing me in a trance. I recalled strange fables told by the fellahs, ghost stories of mummies arisen from the dead, usually with a vengeance. I had credited such stories to being works of imaginative fiction, but the sight of the sentient bag expelled all reason from my mind. The idea of the young girl arising from the dead both terrified and excited me; I longed to see her eyelids part and wink at me; I wished to see her wrinkled lips purse and ripple with speech; I wanted, so desperately yet so reluctantly, for the girl to be Alive.

But all of this longing fell away in an instant as a dark form suddenly darted out of the bag. I tumbled backwards and, in my frenzy, knocked over my mirror stand, sending it shattered to the ground. The small form that had escaped the bag was frightened by this noise, and as it leapt onto the rug, I could see that it was no undead fiend, but a rat. It dropped the shriveled hand that it had been devouring, no doubt attracted to the scent of rotting flesh and scurried away out of my sight.

How cowardly I was! To think, like an imbecile, that a fragmented corpse could come to life! I closed my eyes and shielded my face in shame. My hands trembled as I touched my dampened brow and rubbed my flushed cheeks. I felt almost feverish, but I knew, in my bitterness, that the sickness was artificial, a side effect of my own folly. With my heart still wildly beating within my chest, I sat up to retrieve the broken mirror. But at once, in the broken glass, I saw a Being so horrible, so utterly terrifying, that it drew a shriek of absolute agony from my wretched lungs.

Loret burst into the studio, followed by several aristocratic men, frantically searching the room for the source of such a commotion. And there I was, crumpled upon the floor in a half-faint in front of them all, clutching the mirror shards and staring at a countenance so dark and contorted that I barely believed it was my own face coated in the brown mummy dust I had created.

Untitled photography

Robert Vollbrecht

Death

Our Fathers, who art now gone, used to beg before every meal, Leave a chair for Death. My father, a stringent man, would chide me for my negligence, raising his fist until I left a seat. I used to scoff at this inane routine; yet when he died, and I ate alone, I set the table for two, him and I, and outside, hooves carried the third guest to my table.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse and its rider, and the rider’s name was Death.

ethAn bArroWS

The Intersection

June air stales over hot asphalt as unmoving cars glint under the damn sun, a mother stands outside the corner market, give me your hand, son.

The gentle bell of the piragua cart jingle jangles across the street. The señor was banned some five blocks over by the Angelino implants. They’re too good for his treats, man’s shunned.

Blue flashin’ low riders sit at the light, red-stained fender, some people’s grandsons Must’ve gotten involved with the wrong crowd, price of their lives was handsome.

Red rolls up on the green light but no one moves a muscle. Out of nowhere, a hand spun to grab guns. Bullets flung. Yellow light. Mom runs. Give me your hand, son!

June air stales over hot asphalt as unmoving bodies wilt under the tormenting sun, a mother stands outside the corner market weeping. A billboard is hung that says “Ban Guns!”

tAylor morAleS

Masha Kruk

Nova Brighton

Late at night, once all the restaurants blink off their lights, the Brighton stars beat down on blades darkened by the sky, so black you wouldn’t know they were green if you didn’t know grass.

A man in a grey tracksuit lingers outside the convenience store, one hand attached to a charred cigarette, the other pocketed. He follows you with his eyes as you walk by but never says a word.

Unlucky lottery tickets litter the sidewalk like colorful wrapping paper splayed across the floor on Christmas morning. Rats dart into the road, fresh out of their daily hibernation beneath parked cars that never budge from their spots.

The stars close in behind me as I walk through the bright lights of the lobby. I’m welcomed by heat and the smell of takeout orders left on top of the grate for too long because they were delivered to the wrong place or forgotten about by their rightful owners.

mAdeline mitSCh

Grace Wolski

Joe Dionysus

He'd show up to class late in his nicest suits often twice, even three times a week. We were in high school and it was silly and just a blatant sign of the wealth from his father's used car dealership that he would inherit after college, according to the prophecy. I'd make jokes behind his back that those suits were out of a cheap nineties’ porno or the mall.

He wore them to parties, too. And on Halloween when he dressed as himself: the modern-day god of wine and ecstasy. And on the day that Trump got elected, this time with a red hat cherry on top. He was garbage for that. He was young.

I've now known Joe since we were like ten and never had sympathy for the boy until I heard he was just 21 when he burned alive and his best friend

had to watch them put out the flames too late. And at his funeral over Zoom, my mic was off while our high school spewed some Jesus love bullshit about a student they tried to expel three different times for bathroom cocaine.

I didn’t think gods aged but now I know they die young; an anomaly too often ignored. The first thing we say whenever we come home is that he deserved more and he deserved better and he deserved to be celebrated by all of us together with his three older brothers, all in those silly suits— this time a 3-piece, black— that he loved so much.

beAtriz pugedA

wisemonkey colored pencil, photoshop

Alicia Wang

Imagine Mural, Strawberry Fields

Hi John, erm; well I’m simply sitting on a bench

—Pam and Gary MacDougal’s bench— yes, just sitting on a bench, in Central Park, listening to “Yesterday” and, well, I suppose I really wanted to write you a letter. John, as I sit here in Strawberry Fields and accompany your mural, most of the people I see around are with someone. My couple count is up to five; bound to be more.

I’m not. With someone, I mean. So I thought I’d write you this letter; a confession of sorts because, understand, when I was young, I didn’t like The Beatles.

They were, in hindsight, synonymous with love. Generational trauma, Mother always had to explain, in vivid detail. Having heard that narrative of violent intimacy

I adopted a nauseous association that I could not shed. John, why’d she have to do that?

Many years later my older sibling played me a few songs I didn’t know I knew. “Who are they by,” I asked; “The Beatles”

I began to listen to you

in earnest. I screamed the lyrics to “Rocky Raccoon” and zoned out to “Nowhere Man” and I added your songs to my life. And they held my mangled pieces when they were sharp as the despair that honed them.

“Mind Games”—damn, John, there were so many that a child had to negotiate and that this man must discard. And millions have their gratitude for The Beatles and for you. But I gotta tell you, in person, that your songs were what allowed me to re-create a self separate from the one I detested. There is a candle on your mural and I could sit here and be okay with living, John.

“Love is touch, touch is love” and I’m understanding this, albeit slowly. And John, The Beatles, I’m glad that I could see you in person, I never could as a kid.

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

“Life goes on”

thomAS milutin

Goggle Guy acrylic on paper

Megan Stevens

Baba Yaga

Over the silent forest-sea I fly. Beneath me is my twilight mossy home: It rushes under away into the distance, Devoured by the sky at the horizon, While I glide, weightless, in my mortar with the Heavy and cold pestle in my bony hand. The ashen outline of my figure, moving, Across a stormy or dreamy aqua sky, Strikes fear into the souls of wanderers. And yet, to princes, wolves, immortal spiritsAll those who frequent this timeless, evergreen Place, whose final destination is not hereTo them, I am a common tree or shrub. The hut turns ‘bout its center in the meadow, Chicken legs stepping softly on the grass.

Twilight: I watch the cauldron slowly boiling. A cat sleeps on the cobwebbed sooty stove.

Meanwhile, beyond my window, a grim wolf Hastily weaves his way among the birch trees, Beautiful princess riding on his back. They’re out of sight, but her hair lies dark Against the shining white of her simple dress, Bleeding with swirls of elegant red thread. Drifting into the gently blinding evening, Trees, meadow, princess, wolf - all disappear. The breathing fireplace lights up my window. I look at it, and see my own reflection: Beyond it lies an opaque, muffling night.

mAShA KruK

Cow Goddess ink and gouache, ceramic clay

Maria Piperis

THE DESCENT

Serin Hwang

The seacraft whisking you away from the perfect skies and endless blue seas is rusting, old, and awkward with its movement. Even when its only destination is down, you can feel it vibrating at all the wrong times, defying the manufacturer’s promise of a smooth, luxurious ride into the black ocean floors. When a dark shadow blocks the wide window where you had seen only water, you jolt, and look up in wonder as a great white shark swims by, individual muscles rippling with power. Its large dead eyes peer into the vessel, and you lock eyes with the behemoth for a moment, before turning away to stare at the narrow wall beside you. The vessel rumbles slightly as if the layers of metal cannot withstand the rippling water that came from the shark. You sink toward the dark world that few choose to inhabit, prepared to reach a destination carved from an uninhabitable wasteland by old machines and human stubbornness.

You pull out the paper tucked away neatly into your pocket as you descend further into empty space. It crackles as you unfurl the top, and you suddenly realize that the only sound you can hear is the sound of your breathing, which softens as you strain your ears for anything else. Sunlight feebly pokes through the waters, just enough for you to read the mission for the thirty-first time: routine checkup and maintenance for the Ceto outpost, a half-abandoned steel contraption approximately 13,000 ft below the surface, placed halfway between the Aleutian Islands and the Midway Islands for reasons you had never really learned. In fact, the only recent news you had learned about this automated base was that it had been the location of a murder fifteen years ago.

At 3,000 feet below the surface, you see the shimmering shapes of light. You recognize them to be jellyfish that shine with mysterious reds and translucent whites. Deeper down, you see something bulb-shaped, swaying gently and growing brighter and brighter in your line of sight. It beckons to you, but you lean away from it, catching glimpses of a gaping maw and spiny teeth. You grip the paper, dyed green in the control panel’s light, as the craft sinks deeper. The illuminated control panel has become the most radiant thing in the ocean. You could flip a nearby switch and turn on the lights in the vessel, but driving habits stop you from turning on the lights, letting the darkness watch you observing its domain, and seeing in its abyssal face the belief that you do not belong.

You do not know how long you sit in your seat, staring at the dark, empty waters the vessel’s light peers through, the kind of hungry darkness that threatens to swallow you in an instant. What you do know is that at some point, you feel a harsh thunk.

Your vessel locks onto the roof of the dome-like facility and crawls along the top like a leech. Though each nailed plate covering the Ceto should be clean and smooth, you notice the new life caking the old thin steel and the strange plants hugging the cracks, surviving off the generator’s warmth. Your machine draws out a pair of razors, and you control it with a heavy stick shift that probably needs to be oiled. Stiffly, you shave the top layer of life from the circular indent where the vessel would enter. Translucent crabs scuttle away from the vessel’s harsh light. Their spindly, peculiar legs and large, bulbous eyes glow with an bizarre curiosity. The white beam of the seacraft settles on vague outlines, suggesting that hundreds of pale, spiderlike crabs had gathered on the seafloor, awaiting your entry into the complex. They watch and slowly creep toward you as your vessel pops into the socket and you descend into the first layer of the company’s oldest deep-sea base.

The doors hiss when you walk through them and enter the main facility’s halls. Metal shrieks in the distance. In the windowless facilities, you see nothing beyond the monochrome halls and bare rooms. No light filters in from outside, and the company had long since decided to tear down the ancient light fixtures in the base. The only source of light radiates from the generator deep within the outpost. Though you find four barracks and an ancient communications system, clear signs that life had once been present, the linen had vanished and the cabinets had been vacant for years. The dust had long since settled, and your walk around what should have been a crumbling landscape only yielded more colorless lamps, utilitarian furniture, and mechanical tools that, though old, look clean and untouched. In each barrack, you flash your light onto the beds, looking for the specific bed where two people had allegedly fought and stabbed each other with their multi-purpose utensils. The gray steel winks back at the sharp movement of light. Silly, you chide yourself, some company employees would have scanned and cleaned the Ceto immediately after the incident. The fact that you can’t smell even a hint of bleach, you remind yourself, is because the incident had happened over a decade ago. The last person to have been here was a Dan Wilson, who had visited three years ago for the last inspection and typed “GREEN - ALL CLEAR” on the logs and subsequent report.

Occasionally, the sound of thumping comes from where you assume the generator belonged. You follow the noise in the darkness, pointing the flashlight at the gray plate floors and ignoring the way the grates create strange shadows further ahead.

You hear something tap the roof of the complex. It’s soft, muted behind the layers of growth you saw outside. Like rain falling on tin roofs, or perhaps like horses trotting in the distance, more and more taps join the first.

Your former colleague had told you horror stories about the ocean’s depths, old tales that lived on among the whispering company workers. Sure, the ocean may have been explored and accurately mapped, he had insisted, something’s down there, something big that hides at the edge of our human senses, something that we never fully catch on the technology littering the ocean floor.

He would insist that its herald was the lights, which turned off without warning. The thing would start banging at the base, he swore, and nothing could be done to stop its rampage. You could remember his dramatic pause and dialogue: what you do then, he had said, what you do then is pray for mercy.

Something seems to move at the corner of your eyes. You shine a flashlight at it and stop. The even metallic crunch of your footsteps echoes and continues down the hall before fading into silence. Something clangs in the distance and repeats faintly, rhythmically, a cup falling down the stairs. You hear a faint whistling in the distance.

There’s a little clacking, and a sound runs through the steel plates outside, not unlike the shiver crawling down your spine. Just a routine checkup, you tell yourself. Just a routine checkup. The world settles into silence, noiseless cover only broken by your footsteps and the shifting, restless undersea base whose generator beats like a heart and whose steam exhales like sighs.

You hear a thump and look up. The hallway ceiling offers no response, but a dangling lamp— perfectly preserved, dead bulbs and all— swings in a phantom wind. The base can withstand rock falls and underwater currents, you reason, and animal corpses need somewhere to land. Maybe it’s a particularly large whale. And this time, it just happened to land on

the base.

The air warms as you approach the core of the outpost. Steam bursts from a nearby pipe, and the sudden high-pitched shriek makes you jolt. The billowing white vapor swirls under the scrutiny of the flashlight and vanishes into a grid above, leaving no trace of its existence.

The generator is only one hallway away, you remind yourself, inhaling deeply and exhaling with a sigh that feels louder than a scream. You begin to see the fiery glow of the generator as the churning of steel grinding on steel—the cogs, you guess—churn louder and louder. You can’t hear yourself over the mechanical whirring and hissing and creaking and pounding, and the ground at your feet echoes in a symphony that grows stronger and stronger as the red shines and flaunts its iridescent hue. Your fingers flick the flashlight off. You reach the gateway, take a step forward, and approach the giant box with its scarlet pipes and gray fans, blue levers and crimson valves. It hums like a massive old cat, but the electrical buzz feels uncertain, tired. The humming stutters. The fiery red flickers like a broken light and darkness bathes the world. The wave of sudden silence lets you hear your breathing again, and you can once again hear the solid clangs of something outside. A large whine, like a saw cleaving a particularly stubborn construction beam, rings in the distance.

You turn the black flashlight on again, fumbling slightly in your rush to see the utilitarian walls and spaces that had seemed alive moments before. The blinding light of your flashlight reminds you of the monstrous crabs outside, of the anglerfish using its light as a lure for prey, of the sunlight you crave more desperately than all the treasures of the world. The temperature begins to drop with the death of the generator. The empty corridors lay silent—save for the high-pitched expellings of steam and the croaking of metal—as you circle the area around the generator. Nothing amiss, besides the rapidly cooling halls and the rising fear that you might freeze to death at the bottom of the ocean.

You hear something from above. It sounds like a knock, one on pumps, pipes, and ceiling. You feel the vibrations of the impact as they rush down the sides of the generator room and ripple up from your feet.

Another one, this time like a massive hand slapping a can on the table

and flattening it into a paper-thin circle. The sheets shudder, and you shake with them. The temperature creeps lower, and you feel the chill more deeply.

In the darkness, you hear another knock from above. You turn your flashlight toward the ceiling, searching for movement within the maze of pipes. The shadows move, but you don’t see anything. You try to quiet your gasps, covering your mouth with your free hand. The thumping becomes frantic, long, and harsh, before receding again. You stay frozen in your spot, not even daring to shiver.

One last bang, louder than the others, echoing and increasing in volume as the thick shiny ceiling groans. You think that the steel might break under the weight of whatever is on the other side. The sound stops, and you hear, for the first time, real silence, the absence of noise. Nothing in the base creaks or taps.

Just as you open your mouth to think or curse or scream aloud, the generator begins to purr again. The halls suddenly brighten, and the deafening industrial noises return as if they had never stopped in the first place. The generator feels larger, like its red and orange and gray have expanded and swallowed something in the room. The faint buzzing and clanging remind you of cars and rattling doors. Your companion of a flashlight turns off at your request. Nothing has changed, you remind yourself, I am the only person in this room, on this side of the ocean.

You leave the complex after checking every inch of the aging generator and scrawling notes on the lack of major rust or water damage that you can see. The dark corridors watch you as you leave, and the metal grates hush when you pass by. You enter the seacraft, ready to make your report, and flick the outside sea lights on. When you emerge from the base, you see that the world has been draped in a layer of marine snow. Whale fall, you tell yourself as you stare at the thin layer of dead particles in the visibly flat landscape; a whale must have died and fallen onto the base. In the void, you could see no silhouettes or shapes at all and the water seemed undisturbed, eerily still. The crabs have disappeared under the snow in futile search of flesh, and as you begin your ascent, you send a prayer of thanks to anyone out there who might hear it.

Melanie Cotta

Car Begging for a Change

He asks: step on the gas? so you press on the gas pedaling you forward gently at first another step on the gas lit fire beneath the seat of his lap that blazes while black slickness slips through his teeth when he tells you keep stepping, keep pushing, keep going until he steps down hard on the gas. Your body falls behind, scrapes on black gravel, fresh ooze slicks blazing skin, and you regret, beg silently for him to brake slow down let you out

let you go make it end but he steps even harder so gas crawls up your thigh, hip, heart fills with gas as he steps. The gentle thrum pulsing in your clogged throat while he steps, dragged down an interstate, speed mounting, mounting now, while all the others have their brake lights blazing, too blinded by red haze oh, the happy couple! to see you sputtering, covered, drowned in gas, bitter poison, pulled by your man who is pressing. Is it easier to just let him go until he’s finished?

Tank emptied out? No, the purple splotches that crop up across pale flesh, the sickened twisting of stomach acid as you are pulled

pressed dragged stepped on used up are warnings. This is his last, you hope, at least, surely, it is with you.

megAn CreSitello

a love so violent, even the poetry scares you.

pouring myself all over you toppling cascading falling you, bowing at my beauty, barely able to look up.

like an addict walking my little while lies drawing out little white lines surrendering, waving the white flag — suffocation, now warmth and i am sleep to the freezing.

JeSSe JuliAn

Her photography

Yingshan Wei

Dandelion Town

The train whistles, an alarm echoing from down the street every morning at 7:15, 7:35, 7:53—a built in snooze. And you wake to chatter just beyond the front door, buzzy neighbors; you are not in this mindset, coffee barely poured, but the dog down the road has already sent your skull ringing, called you outdoors as your bike wheels spur to life before your brain, braving the bulging roots beneath black cement sidewalk. There’s the school where the kids go, the post office and the creep there—Zippy or Ziggy or someone— and there’s even the Dunkin Donuts, lot filled with shiny Honda Civics fresh from the wash, complete with little trees hanging from their rearviews.

Maybe today, you make a wrong turn, reach the dead end in the corner of town directly opposite where you woke to the fresh shrill of train. A field, one you’ve never seen before, is littered with white cotton bulbs, and instead of continuing your workout, another 350 calories, 2.41 miles to go, you pause.

You hop off the bike.

You grab a dandelion, plush, full, from an endless supply.

You hold it to your lips.

Make a wish. Blow.

No wish for change, just for a good day. That is enough.

I'm intoxicated with Spring's silent slumber

It’s March, and where I thought I would be planting flowers I’m picking out the weeds from last year’s garden.

Because now it’s Spring, and I have a Winter kind of longing to destroy.

In March, there’s a breeze that chills my skin with the slightest of touchest. For in Spring, I’ve hoped to be kissed by the Sun’s warmth.

With Spring, I find a child-like curiosity within me. My heart swells like the chests of the birds that beckon me home each morning.

Even the trees have begun to weep terribly green tears and I can’t help but wonder if they’ve forgiven themselves for dying.

Birds pick adamantly at the ground, nestling their beaks in the cold wetness desperate to find anything left from February.

A bell chimes a softly sad tune and the trees sway as if orchestrated to dance to the music of Spring.

It is Spring now, and I am tired for a sleep remedied only by moss and algae that’ll sprout from my fingertips as my face kisses the soil. My body will cry somberly to her, “I’ve come home.”

The branches of the barren trees still droop as if suffocating from the weight of having to stay upright.

But it’s Spring, and I wish to smile. For every year she brings flowers; and each year I will wait patiently for them to be mine.

omAr ShAKer

Little Brother, the Musician

Guitar picks for your fingers and that’s what you picked and that’s what you carry of all of it.

You make music of all of it. I remember mom’s soft hands I don’t remember calloused fingertips creased and burnt and the screech of taught strings I remember them soft. Is that why you picked chords, picked notes and notes on repeat, picked up a guitar when you could have carried so much heavy?

You make music all the time Free concert! I tell my friends when they hear you, all grown up and it’s soft strums smooth chords —you amaze me, did I mention? No more screech of strings in untrained hands, something to do with fingers that won’t stop fiddling, incessantly tapping Something pent up that finds its way out in the form of a sound that’s light and soft and proud, despite so much of the all of it.

Silence, it can be said, Is the heart, the sensitive core, of the library. It hovers in the air, a thick Blanket, soothing and smothering Sound. Whispers reflect off Patterned ceilings, reverberating Through the air, that melancholy haze Of stiff-backed volumes bound in Red canvas, blackish-blue leather, faded green Cloth surrounding pages decades untouched. The ghosts of voices can be assigned To these pages—cries of authors wrapped up Numbered, placed in perfect order— Assigned if you so choose, and light

The embers of the urge to strip back Dust and dive into law codes, essays on Vietnam, Threateningly verbose philosophy.

You let it take you, picking a volume off The shelf. Not at random, but by judgment of Its cover, a childhood rule ignored. A creak as the spine compresses, old bones unsettled, And beyond, a floorboard echoes in groaning sentiment As soft treads make way through a maze Of shelves and tables. But you are hidden, The rough, heavy pages holding secrets For you and you alone. The pages do not Remember the last fingers that passed over Their words and margins, finding a corner and folding Further into the text of the third volume On the war of 1812. Sated after searching through For but a few moments, you return, emerging From the stacks with care to maintain that silence.

As a visiting archivist to this repository of ideas, You are responsible for its upkeep and security. And who would want to be that person, To attract stares and malignant thoughts

Circling your chair like vultures as the Legs keen a lament against the boards. With a gentle touch, the chair glides, Knees sequestered beneath the table once more, As a peaceful aloneness fills the hearts of Other seated patrons, making quests to the temple, Pilgrimages for peace. Or, perhaps, A home where fear and pain quenches in the forest Of leaves; no shouts haranguing ears, no father In this church. It is a soft place.

Fingers pass over pages, run rampant over keys, Grasp pens not to place on paper, but rest on chin or lips In contemplation. Hollow panels above take in This raucous ring of thought and firing synapses And release a soft murmur near obscured by the faint But constant buzz of bulbs and hum of air in vents, Dispersing a truly room-temperature breeze, not for the sake Of patrons but of the nursing home’s eldest residents, Necessitating control of the climate To prevent further tears and breaking of fragile Sheets and save lost minds from fully rotting away. Light lances through the hall, dulled by cloud And folded glass to cast a cool light. Searching for warmth, you twist the lamp switch And a snap spreads through the room. You glance Up, subtly scanning around, searching for disturbed scholars At prayer. A cough is the only response.

Wish quickly for the history volume, but You have replaced it, already cognizant of the stack Collected on your table as a dragon hoards gold and these pages, Letters, ink, are gold to you. The first in your stack Is On Psychological Conditions. Something could be said for that, you think Of irony in Shakespeare and shuns of coincidence By literary critics, and open the book anyway, Breathing the scent of corpse wood. You wish A candle could hold such a sensation, A reminder of your grandfather and grandmother’s home, Of this place and its care for searching souls,

A copse of memory, discovery, a body of literature To be devoured raw, untainted.

Silence is a blanket, and you tuck in To your meal of phrase and vocabulary, A filling first course; warm, finally, Despite the pressure of summer’s heat at home.

henry troAKe

Serene Mornings digital photography

Lauren Foster

On the morning of her 89th year

Cecilia Durcan

She lay quietly in bed until just after 8 – quite a lie-in by her standards. She doesn’t want to wake anyone else; she knows if she gets up, she’d go wake the dogs to let them outside and, in the process, wake her son, sleeping down the hallway. He has aches and aging of his own. No, better to let him be. Instead, she lay in bed.

Where she lies on her bed, it’s just the perfect view to see the sun light all the colors in the field, the one behind her house that she crosses each morning to tread its dirt path. She’s particularly fond of a bright bit of red, the one that only appears in the morning sun from the position where her head, full of wispy greying curls, rests on the pillow. The red color fades by daylight, and she isn’t able to spot her favorite little section of treetop from any other window in the house – the bedroom window is slightly further back from the field, you know. But, she enjoys just lying there, watching the sun bring all its colors fully into the field. In a younger age, she might have

Stretched her long arms in the morningHigh up to the light grey ceiling of her room while Soft light weaves through the curtain

Wraps its rays around her waking body and then Drink tea and pencil in the crossword until Her day is full of too much potential to sit a moment longer and linger With the sun too high in the sky and the clouds wispy for the first time in weeks She goes outside because

There are too many footprints left to be made along her dirt trail

that has since been weathered well into the ground. She cannot remember the last time she woke without feeling that the world had grown quieter, more fragile little by little – even today, she thinks it as the red beams of the morning withdraw. The better days, now, are the ones where she remembers her weekend birthday plans without consulting her son’s note, stuck to the fridge in a messy scrawl. Dinner! Don’t forget.

Later that Sunday, her granddaughter asks what her favorite flower is, and it’s a question she hasn’t considered for several years. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a favorite flower. I suppose I might say daisies. Or roses. Actually, those ones that your mother brought me today are really quite nice. Yes, I think that for today, daylilies are my favorite flower.

prism photography

Caroline Clark

How is it already October?

The leaves seem to be dying quicker every year, my shadow stretching farther away from me. I hear the trees rustling their goodbyes in the grieving winds of fall and wonder, if you stopped dyeing your dandelion roots, whether you’d look more easily wisped away, gray like starlight or ash. I can’t stop doing the math, staring into the dark hole of my bedroom ceiling, wishing I had also been born in 1973, or not born at all, or born so we’d die on the same day same minute, sneaking out of the dinner party cause we just wanted to go home, but what else can I do except say I love you every time before I hang up the phone.

mAriAm ChAduneli

One day, it will be like this again

magnolia trees belong to my little self sitting on the chalk rocks in july mississippi humidity and watermelon juice made everything so sticky grass clung to sweat and stained white dresses

wildberries, earthworms, polly pocket dolls with their plastic feet shoved in the dirt the girl and the magnolia tree talked to each other the girl liked the pearly soft flower petals the tree liked having something to protect speckled shadows grazing across the lawn and virgin skin

roots cradling, digging down into the damp earth

KAty gilmore

Back Home Once More

I’ve proclaimed god a sham, but mortality I can not neglect. So when I enter into endless sleep, inevitably lulled by the lullaby of life, let me awake by your side.

Your face inches from mine, in the bunkbed of our youth. The top bed left abandoned to alleviate any distance, no matter how minute.

In our quaint sanctuary turned whimsical, I’ll blink through sleep’s distortion, and witness your mischievous grin. Your laugh erupting as your hand clutches mine; an echo of the age of ten.

Gods of our self-made playground, you’ll profess, as you yank me out of bed.

Giggling as I stumble into the sunlight, you’ll say to me, What should we do next?

oliViA emeriCK

Chloe acrylic on wood

Maeve Pinheiro

As Blackbirds Land

Sergio Rivera

Bernard was working on the Mathis account when the piercing sirens, like heavenly shrieks, started blaring all around. He’d never heard this type of alarm before, not in any drill, not in any emergency (not, of course, that he’d been in many). He looked around the office, everyone was as static and confused as him. Suddenly, Bill from HR started running, slamming against desks and other people, knocking down computers and bins; others followed suit. Bernard clicked save on the spreadsheets he’d been working on—it’d be a shame to lose his progress—and started heading for the exit. There was a shaky scream: “We’re getting nuked!” People looked around at each other, incredulous. What a bad joke, they thought. But after a moment of dazed contemplation, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind. The screams almost drowned out the sirens as everyone ran for the exits, and all hell, as they say, broke loose.

Bernard made his way to the stairs, but it was no use. Everyone was struggling to escape, clamping up against each other, forming an unmoving chaotic mass along the stairway, like an ocean leaking through a crack. A few people were waiting for the elevator. Bernard, with a slight hesitation—elevators must, of course, not be used in case of fires but guidelines are a bit murky regarding atomic warfare—joined them. He dialed Elise, the only thing that had been on his mind, other than running, this whole time. “Where are you?”

Before she could answer, the elevator doors slid open with a ding, and Bernard got in. A soft jazzy number was playing. “Bern… I’m…but I have…”

“I can’t hear you. I’m in an elevator. Give me a second.”

“What?”

“I’m in an elevator.”

“What?”

“I’m in an elevator!” The others gave him a look. With another ding, the doors slid open and spat them out. They continued their savage run. “Elise! Elise! Meet me at the house. Listen, I love you. Meet me at the house. Ok? I love you, Elise. I love you.”

“What?”

“Oh, for God’s sake. I’ll text you.”

The parking garage was mayhem. People had tried driving off at the same time—were reminded, quite abruptly, of the existence of other

drivers. Most left their crashed cars there, alarms and headlights raging, and went off running. Others smashed their way out, leaving metal scraps and dents in their wake. Bernard didn’t even try his car, knew it would be better to just keep running.

He had never been in a warzone, but as he made his way through the frantic streets, that was the word that came to mind: “warzone.” Masses of people swerved through wild cars and buses; the wild cars and buses flattened runners or sent them flying or crashed into each other. Yet no one stopped, as if stillness was death.

The word rang in his head—death—as the full implications of all the chaos dawned on him. Where are they all going? Do they think they can outrun a missile? Do they think they can survive a blast? Where was he going? How silly it all seemed. But his legs kept moving, fueled, he guessed, by the need to see Elise one more time, to give her a final embrace, perhaps a last kiss—to burn, if burn he must, with her. He supposed it was the same with the rest of them, running to their loved ones: Armageddon, evidently, is not as bad as Armageddon alone.

When he reached the house, he was wet with sweat all over, his heart and lungs felt like they were being gripped by crab claws, and he wondered if, perhaps, he should have chosen a closer meeting location. He opened the door, and there was Elise. He’d prepared a speech on his way (heavily plagiarized from several movies, but quite romantic, nonetheless), but when he saw her, all he could do was gasp for air.

“My...inhaler”.

After two puffs, the moment seemed to have passed and instead of speeches, he pressed his body into hers and looked into her eyes, for what could have very well been the last time, and they were wet and pearly and beautiful, and he kissed her. Her lips were soft and trembling, and he held her tighter and felt tears trickle down her face, and they kept kissing and kissing, like the world was going to end. But it didn’t.

“Huh. So, how long do you think it’s going to take?” she asked.

“Not sure. Maybe it’s a slow nuke?”

“How much time does it take for a slow nuke to get here?”

“More time than a fast one.”

They walked outside and stared inquisitively above. The sky was blue and infinite in all directions. There wasn’t a warhead in sight.

…….

They had made love many times, thinking that there was no better way to go, and had hydrated in between with a few cabernets and merlots—which fueled the desire but, quite frankly, spoiled the performance—until they were too tired to make love again. Now, they

were lying close together, at the feet of the couch, each with a book they had been meaning to read for a while, but hadn’t the time, pressed to their face. A couple of the empty wine bottles swayed slightly at their side.

When they got bored of reading, they went together to the kitchen. He suggested they make pasta from scratch. She got the flour; he got the eggs. They took turns kneading the dough and threw flour on their hair. Bernard looked for the pasta maker in the cabinets but couldn’t find it. Elise moved a few pots and pans and there it was, dusty and unused. It dawned on him that they hadn’t made pasta, not from scratch, in at least two years. “Why is that?” he asked. “We love homemade pasta.”

“We do, don’t we.”

Occasionally they went outside to search the skies for any projectiles, the horizons for any mushroom clouds. There was nothing. They could have, of course, turned on the news for any updates, but for some unspoken reason, neither of them did (if they had, they would have known that there was no nuclear warhead headed their way—or any type of warhead, for that matter—and that alerts had simply been sent out in “egregious mistake” by a soon-to-be-fired intern at the defense department). At one point, Elise happily thought that perhaps they had already died, and that heaven looked and felt like their house. Bernard passed gas at that very moment, bursting that silly idea.

After eating two plates of pasta each, they took a tub of ice cream to the couch to watch a movie. “The last movie we’ll ever see. What should it be?”

They put on Shrek. To their surprise, they were both awake at the end of the film (a truly rare feat) and decided to watch another. They saw The Sound of Music and Cinema Paradiso and then Midnight in Paris, and in between they opened another tub and another bottle, and they wondered why they had never been to Italy or France or Switzerland or, frankly, anywhere at all worth going. At some point in the night, they fell asleep, her head on his shoulder, two empty cartons of ice cream, a couple (some things should not be counted) of wine bottles on the floor, and Owen Wilson walking through rainy Parisian streets on the TV.

Bernard was driving to work for the first time in a week. His company had given all employees paid time off for the traumatic events experienced. He’d had a truly great week. As he parked, he noticed that the entire parking garage had been cleared of all debris.

The elevator doors slid open with a ding and he saw the office exactly as it had been before the sirens. People were grouped together

by the coffee machine recounting their apocalyptic experiences. Bernard joined them, waiting, without much interest, for his turn to share. To his surprise, the stories people told were all quite similar—until Bill from HR described quite crassly his end-of-the-world affairs (“not with a whimper, Mr. Eliot, but indeed a bang!”), and people quickly dispersed to their stations.

Bernard’s desk was just as he remembered it. He sat down and as he waited for his computer to turn on, he looked around the office. Someone at his side asked him for the Mathis numbers, waking him from his torpor. “Of course,” he said, “right away.”

He opens the spreadsheets he had saved just before leaving and begins working.

Oh, were you to be an optimist and that a smile in the presence of a sneer did bridge across your face, and did connect one eye with another

I—I do contemplate what catalyzed such bipolar facial manifestations,

for at times your veneer is fathoms deep and at others? It is gaunt gravestone, etched, ancient deep, explanation eons faded; those elements impel laments, don’t they?

It’s not your fault, you know that the lined paper, corrugated countenance, bespeaks to another reality, or another time later in the span of voyages. And it’s not your fault

that caused an Earth to shudder or tremble while a home imploded or was razed to the point that even Death

and his sorrow could not enter—Living grief had staked her claim, after all —it’s not your fault; it did not displace. and yet you were—displaced. Yet it’s not their blame either, you’re so sorry, it’s not Death or Living or even your mother who is responsible for a memorial that forgot how to reflect back vitality despite fatigue or hope, however hesitant, in spite

of the nihilistic man within whom a child is trying to make listen.

thomAS milutin

kachow photography

Matthew Kirven

The Outlaw

Joseph,

If I never had the terrible happenstance of thine acquaintance, I do suppose that I would’ve been betrothed eons past. Whence thou cometh! Thither thou goeth! Oh Joseph! Whence thou cometh, Sir of Cotton-Eyes!

oWen FletCher

To the Lock of Ludwig Beethoven’s Hair, Exploited at the New York Public Library Polonsky Exhibit

Fibrous grass of the scalp, you were “frequently snipped” by fanatic strangers and confidants alike.

Ludwig’s remnants, I wonder if you would have preferred decomposition along with your fellows in 1827

to this. Oh, it’s been noted before, this criticism of abhorrent mummification archiving so that descendants may gawk and further construct the lore of objects “possessing particular iconic value as a physical manifestation of. . .” blah, blub, blasphemous!

Heresy, I say!

It’s been noted, as I’ve said, but I must denounce once more, forgive me.

Dearest Ludwig, your follicle’s offspring is in an antique box —without corner, oh my!— and it is tarnished gold inlaid with design, ornamental, and a hair, singular; you sit in a satin urn, petrified by old-lady memento and aura.

To extract a lock, from a living man with poor digestion and irritability, Oh, yes, and depression,