Volition - Spring 2023

CONTENTS

POETRY & PROSE

Ryn Shoemaker

I hope you have this memory too | 5 - 6

Serena Grant

A Cowboy in the Pictures, a Pilgrim at Heart | 10 Symphony No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 73_ I. Am Fälligkeitstag | 18 - 19

Mark Cochrane

Beneath the Lakebed | 12 - 14

Georgia

Dance 'Til You Drop | 16

Felipe Casas

Verano | 22 ¡Saben, estoy harto! | 34 Naturaleza | 36

Gracefully

Forever | 24

Anna Lopez

Wild Violet | 26

Kanwal Ahmad Jess Weiss

home is a ghost from a forgotten life | 28 death makes no effort at formalities | 32

(touch)starved | 30

VOLUME 34

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY

Sophia Porter

Goliath | Cover Vertigo | 17

Alayjah Johnson

hidden frames | 4 birthday boy | 11

Spiralized: An Unusual Epiphany | 7

95% Water by Volume | 8

Brompton [Fig. 1] | 20 - 21

Perspective | 9 The Workings | 15

Solito | 23

Explorando Suytun | 37

Emerald eyes | 25

Holly Royhab

bloom | 27 ghost | 31

Ford the People | 29 Entrance | 35

Holding Onto Letting Go | 33

MISSION STATEMENT

Volition serves to elevate the creative capacity of the Mason community by fostering freedom of expression across diverse mediums.

SPRING 2023

Carla Diane Keller

Panah Neshati

Emma Sherman

Alfredo Ulises Cervantes Frías Bahar

Enrique Ramos-Chavez Pat Kot

hidden frames | Alayjah Johnson | Darkroom Photography

I hope you have this memory too

Running for safety from the slightest drizzle parents calling after ‘it's not like you’ll melt’ but my nana told me i was made of sugar so i’ll sprint while it's still sprinkling finding haven in the backseat just before the downpour

The view of trees and traffic lights blocked by glass glazed with water droplets precipitation plummeting into the world pelting the car, distorting my vision, becoming my view

A cascade of beads the rain and wind and inertia choreographing their dance across the hyaline shield an extremely crowded dance floor the number of attendees changing by the millisecond

Two tears begin racing next to each other gaining stragglers and followers during the descent aiding in achieving the goal of reaching the finish line mostly intact

The community of droplets congregating in eye view, look now look closely, watch how they transform how that one just adopted the bead next to it how one drop just became two how this one just grabbed that one and now there's this giant bubble that just floated off the car but now there’s a string of ten tears in its place trillions of individual hydrogen oxygen bonds jiggling in place dancing with those around them tensioned to the car while simultaneously falling off and out of view i wonder if they remember every bond they came in contact with or if they remember the communal free fall they took perhaps the cloud they were before plummeting maybe even the river or soil or car window previously evaporated from have they come in contact before, you think? shared a dance in a different form?

Spiralized: An Unusual Epiphany | Carla Diane Keller | Photography

95% Water by Volume | Panah Neshati | Photography

Perspective | Emma Sherman | Photography

A Cowboy in the Pictures, a Pilgrim at Heart

It’s easier for him to be sad than happy when there’s a pen in his hand and sleep in his eyes.

The burdens of a sick mind made real by the written word, a monstrosity of a boy’s own creation, the blinking cursor beckoning the young one forward, begging for more of the pain that sets him apart.

He fancies himself a freak, the only way he knows how to be himself.

He sees himself on the edge of a dark wood, a beacon for all the nasty things that hide in the brush.

Their fangs gleam and their talons glimmer in the light of a pale moon, and it's midnight and dawn and dusk and all hallow’s eve and friday the thirteenth and everything terrible that the freak with the pounding heart and dripping nose deserves.

He is the lone rider without a horse, the unarmed gunman, the new sheriff who misplaced his golden badge.

A red riding hood, lone hero, abandoned child, victim of neglect carrying a wicker basket filled with the CDs that his father passed down to him and the clip-on earrings his mother let him take from her jewelry box.

He likes the CDs with the loud drums and strange lyrics because they were his father’s. He likes the big, enamel pearls that hang from his ears because they are now his.

Hands reach in to pick at the contents, but they’re swatted away by a boy with a heavy soul and a knack for interloping.

In the dark of a lonesome night, he is uniquely deplorable and inexcusably wretched.

He prays his destination will cure that, a clearing with a steeple that houses an occupied holster.

In his room, wearing cowboy pajamas and reading a western under the covers with his flashlight, he is twelve years old.

| Serena Grant

birthday boy | Alayjah Johnson | Darkroom Photography

Beneath the Lakebed

The four of them go to the dry lake to play, the hideaway that feels to them their own. It’s the boys’ favorite spot to play, despite – or indeed, perhaps because of – their mothers’ warnings not to venture out there. It was the site of a great catastrophe generations ago, long lost to memory, and the boy’s attention is here, and now. They throw a ball as hard as they can, no rules to a game, just seeing who will dash out the quickest, who will lay out for a spectacular catch, dirtying their clothes.

On a landscape of cracked caliche they run, one catapulting the ball and two more tearing out in its trajectory; the fourth lags behind, his mother’s admonitions still in his ears – it’s his shoe, while he meanders to the others calling him to catch up, that strikes something firm, substantial buried in the sere earth.

“What is it?”

“He tripped over a rock.”

“It’s not a rock, it’s too pointy to be a rock.”

“Do you think it’s an animal skeleton that got buried?”

“Like a fossil?”

“That’s stupid.”

“It’s bigger, it’s like a corner. A big corner of something.”

The others are unconvinced but probe and trace the sandy clay with their sneakers. The coarser gravel of the lakebed is called grus, minute fragments of plutonic rocks crumbled over centuries. Their shoes find edges, firm lines artificial in straightness.

“It’s like the start of a building. My dad showed me something like it once. They built the base but never made the rest of the building.”

“That’s stupid, how could they build a building in the middle of a lake.” The leader stamps impatiently at the ground, and his foot breaks through the duricrust, half his calf below ground level.

They have no tools but cannot fetch them from home, as the dry lake is forbidden. As they claw at the glassy rock and gravel heaps, they begin to use their own weight, jumping in place where the surface feels light and like the dried exoskeleton of a crab it breaks apart. Eight hands scrabble at the earth, tossing away the great flakes that shatter on the lakebed.

When they stop to regard their progress, there’s a wall, partially uncovered, and set in the wall a door beneath where the surface broke; a level of a building submerged in the top stratum.

“It is a building.”

“How did they build it underwater?”

“Maybe it was a man-made lake, like when they dig a mine. I bet that’s what it is.”

| Mark Cochrane

“Do you think there’s underground mine tunnels still around?”

“But when did they demolish the building?”

Curiosity makes for boundless energy. The excavation centers on the door and when the crater they’ve hollowed out gets too narrow for all of them, pairs take turns scooping out the cavity, the remaining two sitting at the edge resting their red, chafing hands and daydreaming what relics might still be inside the foundation, sealed away for years unknown.

“How big do you think it was?”

“I dunno. You’d have to find all the edges, and the dirt’s harder at the top.”

Despite their persistence it takes many thousands of handfuls to uncover the doorway. Excavated sand and pebbles trickle back into the pit as it deepens – more of the gravel they unearth is craggy and porous, gray and off-green pieces the size of arrowheads. By the time all the boys feel internally they must soon return, the sun’s descent quickening, they’ve dug down to the door’s knob.

“It’ll take forever to open it. We’ll have to dig more so it can swing.”

“But it’s still locked. How can you open it? There’s no keyhole.”

“Look, scrape out more from under the knob. Just do it.”

When there’s a cranny dug beneath, one boy takes the biggest chunk of rock they’ve unburied above his head and standing astride the doorknob heaves it down, striking a harsh clang. He does it again and bits of rock shoot off, stinging his legs, but the knob breaks and hangs limp.

They kick at the door. It budges, but with the hinges still buried, holds fast. All their force cracks the door open just a few millimeters. To return home now is unthinkable, no matter the hour, their goal tantalizingly close. With so little leverage, kicking ankle-high, one of them lies back against the slope of the pit and stomps with both legs. Another takes a running start and slides into the door foot-first –– part of the fossilized door breaks away, the boy tumbling after into the darkness.

“What’s inside, what’s inside?”

“I can’t see!”

“Move away, let the light come through.”

The boy inside scrambles to his feet, nerves alive. “It’s pitch black, I can’t see anything.” The ground underfoot feels metallic, and some glassy rocks rattle as they seep in from the outside. Not volcanic glass, but minerals melted by human fire.

“What it’s like in there?”

“My eyes need to adjust, hold on.”

As the others chatter excitedly and begin to climb in, the boys’ pupils dilate and start to regain their acuity and they can see the extent of the inside. It’s a small vestibule, just an enclosure for a stairwell.

But the stairway does not lead up, it leads down. In the darkness and disorientation, they find themselves not in at the base of a stairwell, rather at the top landing, the entire thing

tilted on its axis. The boys squint at the handrails and steps, where the rays of light do not reach.

Then it was not a foundation they came across at all, but the bulkhead on a rooftop. The true size of the edifice is impossible to judge.

“How did they… build down?”

“How deep is it?”

“What if the building was here before the dirt covered it?”

They look down the dark mouth of the stairwell, imagining the uncountable stories of the structure – and if an entire building was swallowed, could there be others sleeping underground, beneath layers of dust and earth and rock, those shards reminiscent of lightning-born fulgurite, sand melted by a tremendous heat. One boy picks up a stone of fossilized lightning and drops it down the slanted cavern of the stairwell, listening for the clatter. Then they all follow suit.

Long forgotten but for warnings diluted by time – there were not lakes, but craters; not beds but ceilings, vaults formed after bombs shook the earth and buildings sank into the fissures. The silicate minerals metamorphosed by the heat of detonations.

A boy picks up one of those pale green rocks and drops it down the skewed tunnel, and this finds the center of the stairwell, touching nothing as it falls. They wait and a sound never comes.

“How far does it go?”

“It’s dark. It looks like it could go forever.”

There’s no wind in the buried chambers, nothing breaking the eerie silence, though to the boys it feels as though something could be lurking, lingering to hiss out from the past. They dare not descend. Looking down the stairwell is akin to looking up into the night sky; it’s as if the distance could go on forever.

| Mark Cochrane

The Workings | Emma Sherman | Photography

Dance 'Til You Drop

He sat atop a maze, And danced his nibbling feet ablaze. And when the jester’s jig was done, The maidens cried: “Another one!”

“Dance for us, poppet. Dance, dance!” They cried with glee. And so he danced, And how he pranced, On that summer’s eve. And there, he sat atop a maze, And danced his nibbling feet ablaze. Oh, how he mourned his shoes. But the moon hung, And the circle spun. And so, that wouldn’t do. And so he danced, And how he pranced, And grew sick with unease. His hair was slick, Lips chapped and sticked, And feet bled in the breeze. But the maidens round, Enjoyed the sound. Of the sweet, shrilling call. So, the maidens round. Increased the music’s sound. And saw the jester fall. The maidens round. Increased the sound. “O. How the Jester Falls!”

Vertigo | Sophia Porter | Color Film

Symphony No. 2 in G Min Am Fälligkeitstag

Perched on the edge of your chair, looking down into the pit of an opera house from box seats, a cacophony of self-taught singers floats upwards to greet your ears with a too tight, calloused handshake.

They scream, cry, and whine, paired with their plywood guitars and keyboards, anything they could learn to play online, the same fears of the Monday night newsroom broadcasts and whatever is going to come next after the kings and journalists and idols die out, it’s all a resounding chorus of visceral heartbreak and misery, it reaches back to the first night that you considered dying and fills your lungs with that grief, newfound and christened in the white light of a touchscreen.

The first day the world pressed down on your shoulders, a slight and unfamiliar pressure, you felt guilt for no particular reason, and sorry all the same. The future had made itself apparent, tapping at your window in the form of a grey crested bird, its own tip tip tapping lullaby that kept you up for weeks.

or, Op. 73_ I.

It was a bird, begging to be let in, that tugged on the strings inside your ribs, and after fading into the sounds of your commute to work, the robin keeps the beat for a choir eight billion strong. They perform on the cusp of unknown and charted territory, each artist agonizingly similar to one another and yourself.

It’s a song that’s been sung before, it’s a song that will be sung for a long time, but as it’s sung now, you cry with the chorus.

It’s a happy song. I cannot emphasize enough that this song is a happy one. Your tears are immensely content, dripping down and drowning in the velveteen cushions on your dark oak armrests, nailed into the floor of your premium cost box.

You know what it’s like to drown now. Try the dead man’s float. The next step is swimming, but it’s okay to save your energy for a little while longer.

Brompton [Fig. 1] | Panah Neshati | Photography

Verano

Déjenme vivir un poco más, En la anécdota del futuro. Donde vivir no era un lujo, Y le tenía amor al mundo.

Déjenme vivir un poco más, En mi sueño del pasado. Donde despertar será un regalo, Y no tendré que morir a diario.

Déjenme vivir en mi presente, Donde el futuro recuerdo Y el pasado sueño Se conocieron finalmente.

| Felipe Casas

Solito | Alfredo Ulises Cervantes Frías | Photography

From the moment I met her, I knew I wanted her in my life forever.

I knew we belonged together, As friends. As roommates in college... As best friends. Or even as lovers.

And that’s what I wanted, To be lovers.

It took me 3 months to fall hopelessly in love with her, It took me 3 years to realize she will never be mine.

It was always so clear to me that we would be forever, But it was always so unclear what forever would mean.

Forever is always changing. But one thing about forever that will never change…

I will never be her lover. I will never be her forever. But she will always be my forever.

Wild Violet

Ever since I was a little girl I have always felt sorry for the flowers.

Everything. Every moment, every word, every touch, mattered to me. And it still does.

Like a boy scout learning to tie knots in so many magnificent patterns, I learned the tightest of knots that could be fit to hold all that I felt. Tucked in bed, it was safe resting below my chest. I still remember how wide my eyes would sit open as a child. I can feel the hope begin to manifest again within me as I sit back and remember.

I wished for nothing more than for someone to accept my vulnerability. I craved for someone to cradle it in the way my mother cradled me when I was too young to comprehend the weight of my delicacy. I know I have always been this way. I know because I have never felt more at home than when I speak of the way my heart receives yours. And yours and yours and yours and yours. I see you all.

Why feel sorry for the flowers?

Because they’ve only bloomed last week and you have already forgotten that they are the reason the air smells like spring. You stepped on one by accident trying to get in your car and I'm sure you won't ever notice. Because when the sun goes away and the clouds suffocate the blue sky they can't mask their wilt. I feel sorry for the flowers in the way I have always felt sorry for myself. Perhaps that’s too much to digest right now. I'll put that thought to bed, or maybe just down for a nap.

But I feel like I finally have the words that can do these feelings justice, now. Ever since I was a little girl I have always felt sorry for the flowers.

| Anna Lopez

home is a ghost from a forgotten life

soaked brick pathways are undulating shades of burnt orange under dappled shadows of this midnight sky i can’t tell the dew on the handrails from perspiration on my coffee, a frigid, sugary drink, and yet it brings a sense of peace to windy nights like these you wear a twinkle in your eye, a smile soaked in moonlight, and when i look up to the sky and close my eyes under the shine of streetlights, i think i can almost see us on the other side of the ocean, drinking tea under the firefly night sky i can smell the ever-lingering scent of gasoline, feel the warmth of sun-baked balcony; i think of plastic chairs on worn porcelain patios, and secrets spilled under starlight, of a place where home means both inside and outside, and it is so close yet so far out of reach it is a siren song that's left me eternally hypnotized, i can hear it always, and memories and dreams blend together, somewhere between the desperate and the divine home is a ghost from a forgotten life; traditions fall from our hands like the sands of time the air is different outside of American haze, a drug so strong i forget how to pronounce my own name i dream of a closeness not so fleeting, of a place where bonds are deep-rooted and lasting

| Kanwal Ahmad

Ford the People | Enrique Ramos-Chavez | Film Photography

(touch)starved

If you go long enough without a meal, would you even remember you were starving? If the hollowness lasted for days, weeks, yearswould you not grow used to its company?

Because I think I might’vewith a different kind of hunger. One I didn’t know was there aching in my chest until I felt your hand in mine.

I am skin starved. Insatiable after a single bite, that I would not have my fill of touch if even a feast of it was offered before me.

Affection is not my first language, but I’m doing my best to learn; to read the pangs in my chest the same way I do my stomach. To accept this gentleness and warmthto give it back.

Sometimes, it feels like peeling back my skin, like baring my neck and exposing the soft slope of my vulnerable stomach. But you have only ever lain upon them gentle fingers and it has gotten easier to swallow my damnable pride.

| Jess Weiss

death makes no effort at formalities

my mother wakes us at 8:35 on a Saturday in a hush my father is in the other room; there's no more time, we’ve slept enough

my uncle is gone (and no one says why) his body is hours away and the funeral tomorrow at noon two hours to pack the car, i shiver and i rush; 10 hours of silent driving (and no one says why) we're there and cousins i haven't seen together in years share the same space, fit themselves onto the same sofa, arrange their bedding on the same floor; nobody comments that we are too close, as if around some hearth that flickers in and out of view and it feels so childish to think this feels like a sleepover that in another life, there'd be a movie and s'mores, night clothing and bonfire haze; core memories all the same. (and no one says why)

my aunt passes out rosaries at dawn; chill of pajamas in a home not your own, chill of my uncle's skin in an open casket.

i have so many other thoughts and none at all my most stoic cousin doesn’t know what to do with herself, she tells us memories of an uncle we saw once every few years and i watch myself clink beads with glass eyes; and i can feel my own existence, i can feel that the sun has set and risen again,

| Kanwal Ahmad

and all that separates us is amber and gold. and it’s a chilly michigan december when we drive out to the grave. my aunts are shaking and the rosary slips through my fingers with fragments of breath i’m wearing socks with flip-flops and i get them wet in the dew-soaked fresh-turned dirt and i am not sure how to process my father helping himself down to lower the plank with his eldest brother's body. what do you do when the dirt keeps falling on a face you knew from the day you were born? what do you do when there’s nothing else to be done except continue pouring the earth you come from onto another and praying that he and you, and you will be forgiven while the world turns?

we stand and watch over a depression in the earth and my father finishes his prayer and says it is time to go i take my aunt’s arm and we walk to the car it is still a chilly michigan december when it is over. i sense there’s something in the wind, that feels like tragedy’s at hand (and no one says why)

saccharine sky, what a day to die where do i go from here?

¡Saben, estoy harto!

¡Saben, estoy harto! Me mata vivir en una pausa, Donde el silencio es quien manda. Y su falta de habla, dicta la realidad A como le plazca.

Ayer fui un mosquito, Que probó del fruto prohibido. Y después del acto, Ella me mató con la mano.

Mañana seré un extraño, Que intenta volver a casa.

Y después del acto, Volverá a ser un solitario ermitaño.

Hoy desperté como un rey, Perdido en batalla. Y después del acto, Moriré sin ser recordado.

¡Saben, estoy harto!

| Felipe Casas

Entrance | Enrique Ramos-Chavez | Film Photography

Naturaleza

Querida madre, El fruto tuyo vuelve al árbol de donde se cayó. Recógeme de este suelo marchito, que con mis hermanos acabó. Y llévame a tus brazos verdes de dulzura y miel, A los que me quiero aferrar para no volver a caer.

Perdóname madre, como fruto tu vida solo extingo.

Perdóname madre, por haber matado a tus demás hijos.

Perdóname madre, por nunca haberte valorado.

Perdóname madre, enséñame a amarte y cuidarte Para no matarte.

Muéstrame tu belleza interna, Sumérgeme en tus mares, camina conmigo en tus montañas, columpiemos en tus selvas, juguemos con los animales, preparémonos para las estaciones, y descansemos en las praderas.

Para poder amarte al final, tengo que dejar de aferrarme a lo material. Y quedarme solo contigo. Porque, así como nací de ti, También moriré en ti.

| Felipe Casas

Explorando Suytun | Alfredo Ulises Cervantes Frías | Photography

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For more information on how to apply, visit volition.gmu.edu

STAFF

Executive Editor

Sydney Allworth

Prose & Poetry

Prose & Poetry Editor

Naomi Gordon

Faculty Advisor

Jason Hartsel Randi Roy

Jay Sapinski

Saba Shaukat

Sariya Scribner

Semira Benyam

Nat Romero

Amelia Williams

Colby LaTessa

Safiya Khan

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Erin Zellner

Art & Photography

Art & Photography Editor

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Graphic Design

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Public Relations

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Emily Preiser

Angel Lee

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