Living Waters Review 2020 by pba9

by the Students and Alumni of Palm Beach Atlantic University

If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

John 7:37-38

THANK YOU

Contents 2

School of Arts and Sciences • English Department • Art Department • Development Office • Marketing SPECIAL THANKS President Debra Schwinn • William M. B. Fleming, Jr. • Dr. Randy Richards • Dr. Robert Lloyd • Dr. Susan Jones • Dr. Jenifer Elmore • Barbara Sharpe • Susan Williams • Hannah Gonsman • Taylor Smythe

FOUNDER AND FACULTY ADVISOR Professor David Athey GRAPHIC DESIGN ADVISOR Professor Tim Eichner SENIOR EDITORS Eden Prime Brooke Stanish EDITOR Taylor Gaede MANAGING EDITORS Bryce Langston Joe Washburn ASSISTANT EDITORS Delaney Esper Sarah Selden GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER Anna Maier COVER ART Doreen Desir

Help support Living Waters. Contact Professor David Athey in the English Department. 561-803-2259

Living Waters Review

Table of Contents

Broadway Bakery

Red Swallows Black

Static

Pleiades

Eden Prime

Claire Montanari

Taylor Gaede

Delaney Esper

Rifts

Things That Fold

Still I Rise

Symbols of Living

To and From

Ease

On the Radio

Taylor Gaede

Eden Prime

Sarah Schwalm

Jessie Kieffer

Michaela Payne

Megan Hurst

Zach Rohrbough

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I Ainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t No Nightingale

Ninety-Nine Cent Wisdom

Self-Portrait

The Sheephead Shack

Smallness

Tidal Hues

Humdrum

She Cried as I Sang

In the Bay of Drowned Poets

Ali

You Have a Lot of Talent for Someone so Purple

Brynn Richer

Nathan Nettles

Bryce Langston

Ali Rose

Sarah Best

Cana Scott

Annalise Walrath

Ali Rose

Anna Maier

Jeremy Garrett

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Contents 4

A Memory of Black Holes

Fleece-Lined Universe

The Sound of a Lonely Note

Phantom Lull

The Vine

Storage

Queen of the Bees

Oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Black Dog

Frog Hair

Stranger

Parrot Fish

Brooke Stanish

Brynn Richer

Bryce Langston

Ashley Smith

Brooke Stanish

Maren Brander

Sarah Best

Delaney Esper

Shelby Parks

Eden Prime

Natalie Bourgoin

Counting God

The Impairment

Alone, I Dance for God

Jidu

Sacrifice

Hereditary

A Sterile Song

Those Who Do Not

He Who Has Ears

Metamorphosis

What Matter Sounds Like in the Dark

Neysa Rogers

Bryce Langston

Eden Prime

Delaney Esper

Natalie Bourgoin

Cana Scott

Tori Warkentin

Taylor Gaede

Nate Brand

Alyssa Sullivan

Brooke Stanish

Living Waters Review

Panama

The Things I Heard in Lake Trout

Water Lily

The Sound of Three Wingbeats and What Follows

Jesse Koenig

Bryce Langston

Catherine Lu

Brynn Richer

The Backyard Stump

Incident

Umbra Viventis Lucis: Hildegard of Bingen

Time

Quantum Entanglement for Runners

Virtue and Indecision

Dove & Skull

Bryce Langston

Taylor Gaede

Brooke Stanish

Nathan Nettles

Brooke Stanish

Eden Prime

Sarah Hahn

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Up to Heaven Goes a Songbird

Say it in Spanish

When Highways Become Roads

Monologue from a Farm

Brynn Richer

Sydney Mantay

Taylor Gaede

Eden Prime

Contents 5

I Heard an Old Song Richard De La Rosa

Broadway Bakery Eden Prime

Flash Fiction 6

ost people don’t realize their city has a Broadway too. When I tell people I work “on Broadway” they ask me, “Oh, like in New York?” and I have to say no. I arrive at the bakery at three in the morning every day of the week except for Tuesdays, my day off. At that time, Broadway is dark. The street lamps meant to keep crime away from the downtown areas at night even seem to dim. This is the darkest it ever gets. Most nights the signal lights just blink yellow, letting the sparse traffic choose its timing, eliminating needless long stops. This is good, because it saves the delivery trucks time when they come to bring in fresh fruits at four-fifteen. By that time I have the stations cleared and the trays out, recipes for each employee taped to the shelf above their station. Today, Rosie will be making the strawberry danishes—her first time. The other workers arrive in time to help unload the truck. Next, they prep each of the fresh-daily items while I work on the day’s special. Today I make empanadas. The recipe is my mother’s from Argentina. Now the hum and thump of baking begins. My three employees and I roll out our doughs and mix fillings. The rhythm of our pins, paddles, and feet falling into sync as the daily rituals line up and fall away one after the other. “Behind you”—Tom slips past me to the walk-in to grab a flat box of berries. The kitchen is hot and comforting, it fills with the smell of baking and comes alive. Melinda fills the cases at six forty-five, our first customer arrives at seven. It is Ms. Martinez, she is here for my empanadas—she knows they will be ready because it is Friday. Soon, there is a line to the door. Customers squeeze in to avoid the slushy chill on the street. Melinda rushes out espressos while I ring up each order at the till. The empanadas are gone by ten. Tom puts another batch in the oven. I lean on the counter, sipping my own espresso. The windows are foggy from the warmth inside—sweating from the dance of hungry bodies. We do not sing and dance the way they do on Broadway in New York. Here, we sing our own song to the rhythm of the bread and exchange our melodious blends of coffee for the trill of change in the tip jar.

Living Waters Review

Red Swallows Black Claire Montanari

y father was a painter, the kind that seldom slept and rarely cooked. The kind whose house was filled with artifacts and bits of history that somewhat resembled garbage to the untrained eye. Our house was old, and seemed to have been that way for its whole life. Almost every floorboard between the front door to the stairs creaked, making it nearly impossible to sneak out (or in). The fridge was covered with vinyl that used to be white, but later faded to different shades of yellow. My dad said it was “art developing.” I thought it was just time for a new fridge. But everything had significance and value. My brother’s blue crayon marks on the wall were childlike inspiration for my father’s toil. The cosmic gash in our dining room table signified the depths and breaks in life, but I just saw something ugly and shameful that my friends side-eyed when they came over. He used to tell me that the imperfections were meant to be there—no one was intended to have a storyless home—and we would roam the house while he pointed out different treasures and markings of a lifetime. There wasn’t such a word as “ugly” in his vocabulary. He described each broken lamp as lovely, every torn tapestry as charming or fruitful. The world was designed to be held in awe, and my father was matchless at this. The first piece of furniture my parents bought was from a flea market the day after they eloped. My mother’s parents didn’t approve of her marrying my dad. “What kind of life could a painter provide?” But my mom lived for the art; she loved the way he viewed the world, with all its colors and textures. I imagine them picking out that couch, with the raised stitching and multicolored woven strands, my mom grinning at him as he rambled with elation about how they were meant to own it. I grew truly fond of that couch, fond of the marks on the wall, and the ugly kitchen. Dad taught me to see life in vivid color and showed me that joy was found through a wide open door. “Red swallows black, you know that right? Eventually even the saints fall to their knees at the sight of something truly lovely.”

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Flash Fiction 7

Static Taylor Gaede

Flash Fiction 8

ictor never turns up his music. When he switches on the radio, he dials down the volume to a soft, muffled level that can barely be heard above the hum of tires over asphalt. He does not have a favorite genre or band; rather, he listens to popular tracks trending in the nation and criticizes their lack of creativity. Sometimes, though, he switches to German rap because he wants to learn the language. He can recognize words, but he does not know meaning, grammar, or syntax. So he asks me every time we drive together. Such as tonight. “Lieben and leben. What’s the difference?” “Love and life,” I say. Streetlamps flash across his face as we drive down the highway. In profile, when he thinks, he dons a bored expression, as if thoughts—his own or anyone else’s—are valueless; yet, when he looks at me, there is a shine in his eyes—a fascination he alone understands. When I attempt to pick at his mind, he tells me, You only know the half of it. I have recently begun to believe him. He says, “The words are too close. I’ll get them confused.” “Is that so bad?” Victor turns away from the road and glances at me, a softness dipping his brow. “There has to be lines. Boundaries. If you start mixing up the words, it could cause trouble.” His eyes flick back to the road. He clicks on his blinker to drift into the HOV lane. “I’m sorry,” he adds—an afterthought. I stare at his knuckles—imagine fitting my fingers into the bony grooves. We never held hands. That was too loud for him, too forthright. I remember a sermon, years past, proclaiming the labor of love, that the greatest of all things is love. Paul’s words, I think. But what do you call holding someone’s heart in your hands and watching it dissolve to nothing, because you never truly held it? Reaching out, I turn up the volume and let a nameless, foreign voice pour between us.

Living Waters Review

Pleiades Delaney Esper

he thin metal railing carried my scared fingers over its cold spine and into the narrowing cover of darkness. We made our way to the end of the hallway, sat in what our hands recognized as two metal chairs, just as cold as the railing that led us to them. Our eyes could not meet, though in some ways they never did. We couldn’t see our fingers even an inch in front of the tips of our noses. Darkness has always frightened me. It is a slow-burning fear, introduced through enough time mulling over all that an absence of light has the possibility of holding within it. If the Seven Sisters were looking down upon us from their nesting place in Taurus, they would have seen two teenagers in a small black box that they had walked themselves into. We were visiting my favorite museum: The Mattress Factory, a contemporary art museum on Sampsonia Way in the city of Pittsburgh. For a little while, museums were the only place that felt like home to me. This one used to be a mattress factory and then was transformed into an art museum that made me feel like I had something to look forward to when new artists were in residency. The whole second floor of the space has, purposefully, no light, except when the elevator doors open and slice through the darkness. On this very unlit floor of the museum is an exhibit by James Turrell, an artist with an affinity for light. Everything on this floor relies on the absence of light so that the art may be seen. The cold metal chair held my body like an old friend, by now I was used to this feeling of uncertainty. I did not feel the warmth emitting from the boy next to me, I used to know that I was supposed to, but I let go of that notion over the years.

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As I looked out into the darkness created by the calculated hands of an artist, I waited for the light that I was promised to see. The woman by the elevator told us that we must sit in the chairs for about twenty minutes, then our eyes would adjust, and we would see those Seven Sisters in the fabricated night sky on the second floor of an old mattress factory. For twenty minutes, we waited, quietly. In that slowburning darkness, for a moment, the color of black lent to my eyes faint speckles of grey. And I thought: I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT LOVE BUT I DO KNOW IT’S NOTHING LIKE ALLOWING A COLD, METAL RAILING CARRY YOUR SCARED FINGERS AWAY FROM THE LIGHT IT IS NOT A SMALL SPOT AT THE END OF A NARROW HALLWAY IT IS NOT DARK AND IT IS NOT SAT IN TWO COLD, METAL CHAIRS WAITING FOR YOUR EYES TO ADJUST SO YOU CAN SEE JUST A HINT OF CHANGE IN THE TINT OF THE DARKNESS. IT’S JUST NOT THAT.

Creative Essay 9

Rifts Taylor Gaede

you love movies. do you want to be a director? he presses his pen into a napkin. blue ink stains soiled white cloth. his movements are small tremors rattling the room, begging attention. he is a silent film, a foreign film. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know the words, but I do not need to know. he is captivation. if someone loves books, loves reading, does she become a writer? but it is never books alone. yes, words dance, race, spin, bleed from paper, but I cling to words spilling from him. soft-spoken,

Poetry 10

never forgotten, a puncture in a balloon in a blank room. his chin resting on my head, his voice is a falling feather cracking on my cranium. quickâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;snatch it, jar it, fly home and spread it across paper, savor it. itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s moments. writing is moments captured. like scenes in a film. like that German film he showed me. about an angel wanting to be human and a woman he loved, hearing her thoughts and treasuring them. desire. I watched it expecting to find his heartbeat in every frame, his mind floating between. I sought understanding in a roll of film rather than pressing my hand into his and realizing, I cannot unlock him. he is not stashed gold, and I am not a key. I cradle an apple in my hands; he scrapes salt off a pretzel. he asks, how many moments are lost? does he hope I forget this one? all of them? does he know the thoughts that will fall from my hands because I cannot speak? none. they are locked away.

Living Waters Review

Things That Fold Eden Prime

tanding on Point Pelee’s bald tip, I dig my boot-toes into the coarse beige sand. Waves lap, dogs in a blue desert. I fold my arms in content, disagreeing with the sky, willing it to stay just blue enough for one more week, maybe, before it turns the waters grey with winter. One side of the Point is studded with granite boulders, but this side harbors a thin trail of beach. It is ordinary, like any Lake Erie beach. It holds the summer warmth just long enough to stack stones as they cool in the sunset-kissed dusk. The Point plunges fifteen kilometers into Erie’s gut. North of Sandusky, Ohio, it rests—Canada’s southernmost point—home to bird-watchers and dog-walkers. Pelee Island rises a few kilometers offshore, you can see it if you squint. On a late September day, it is a coin toss whether or not it can be seen at all. The wind is always up on the lake, but the fogs are another song to dance through. On those days, you can almost taste what it must have been like for the disciples in the storm on Galilee— exhausted and wanting some piping black coffee—while their ever-peace-filled leader rested his head at the bottom of the boat. Even when it rages, Erie sings. The deepest part of the lake is the color of an afghan my grandmother knitted me when I was sixteen. It is folded somewhere, with the tiny white hairs of my dog stuck here and there, on a bed in a room I rarely sleep in. My family is dispersed like droplets from the lake in their hydrologic cycle. Ontario, Michigan, Georgia, Minnesota, Alabama—but nowhere sings the way the lake does. It rises, swells, dips, and churns like a heart-pounding in anticipation of a shock. Its waves fold the ice under warming currents, barges blunder onwards with their weighty wealth, loons croon near reed-littered banks, somewhere, a musky splashes. Ferryboat captains drone out their days at the helm. Near a dock there is a cigar shop with its lake-weathered wooden guardian, waiting for the wind to sweep the locals indoors.

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Creative Essay 11

Still I Rise Sarah Schwalm

Colored Pencil 12

Living Waters Review

Symbols of Living Jessie Kieffer

“I

t’s hair. Human hair.” “No way! Gross! Are you sure?” “Yes, I’m sure,” I muttered, not taking my eyes off the mangled mass that spanned the entire length of the stone-cold exhibit wall. Strands of red, brown, and gray lay tangled with a couple loose braids in a monstrous heap. The hair was used to make fabric. “Haircloth,” they called it. Silently, our feet shuffled along the pathway, then turned the corner. Shoes. Thousands of shoes, in various states of decay. They lay scattered, some even doll-sized. My gaze landed on a particularly large shoe. Likely a man’s. The brown leather stitching still looked vibrant in contrast to the tan lifeless pile. Did he wear those to his job? To dance with his wife? We passed more and more symbols of living. Glasses, suitcases, prosthetic limbs. Heat pricked at my fingertips, which had fallen numb in the dead cold. Why are these people’s things being displayed like some sort of artwork? Unanswered questions reverberated inside my body until we stepped out into the stinging, bitter air. Impassively, I glanced at the large type plastered above the doorway. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

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Flash Fiction 13

To and From Michaela Payne

*Note: This is an excerpt from the book I am writing about the life of my father.

Creative Essay 14

December, 1972. There was no time for him to put on his shoes. His feet were accompanied by dirt and dust, which held on as if they wanted to go with him, far from the unswept floor of his bedroom. He stuffed the sleek, black shoes in the side-pouch of the leather duffel bag, a bag that had seen countless rooms and met numerous faces. With every use, a tear inched its way along the seam of string holding the handle to the bulk. The boy froze, debating his next move. He fell to the floor in a push-up position and looked under the bed. Clean. He slid around on his belly and stood up, peering into the closet. Clean. He spun around to scan for stray objects but instead found himself pausing to take in the moment, knowing he would remember that room until his final days on earth. He stood in it for a second longer... Second over. He grabbed his heavy duffle, throwing it over his thin body, and rushed out the door. “Robert,” the headmaster called from outside the building, “if you don’t come this moment, we will leave you here the whole winter! You’ll freeze in this cold and we’ll have to come back from a lovely Christmas to the burden of burying your sad little corpse, and what a shame that would be to your poor mother. Now, come!” He skidded across the threshold of the front door, the early December snow melting on the wood where tame met wild and past met future. Bare feet jumped two yards apart at a time, the added weight of the duffel causing him to slide around more than he typically would. Some uniformed kids laughed. Bobby’s leaping stopped at the first white bus, shins smacking the bottom step where he warily climbed in. Sitting down in an empty seat he searched quietly for some socks and gazed out the window. The archway words christened a goodbye in a somber voice, not only for the last year and a half of his life but also for the rest of it, as things for him had changed: Anna Wickey Correctional School for Boys. …

November, 1972. The delicately wallpapered hallway guided him up the stairs and to the office. The walls were accented by rays of afternoon sunlight and petite roses, escorting him higher. He liked the way the wallpaper felt on his out-reached hand, skimming along the smooth, firm surface. His fingers painted a translucent line of his winding path, which required enough imagination to keep him entertained for the endurance of his walk. The shoes on his feet were too large and too stiff. With each step up the grand staircase of the main entryway they echoed a stomp not only with his stepping down but flapped again when they lifted up. Upon the top of the staircase, he turned right and pitter-pattered down the corridor to the office. Earlier that morning, Bobby’s mathematics teacher received a note and paused his lesson on pre-algebra, promptly sending Bobby to the office without a hint as to why. Now, Bobby stood in a standoff with a mahogany door that mimicked the very grandeur of God himself. In size, the door appeared more mountainous than his body would ever be. Not to mention the quiet fear he harbored of whatever retribution wait for him behind it. He raised his fist to pound the wood, engraved to look as though elegant stars and small angels danced upon it. But his fist dropped along with his head, courage dissipating with the passing seconds. He let out a small sigh. “Robert? Is that you? Come in!” the headmaster called beyond the walls. Bobby scoffed at his own stupidity in making any sound, then pushed the door wide open. “Headmaster Williams! It’s nice to see you again.” His demeanor changed rapidly, a charming soft smile entering the room with him. Assuming an invitation, Bobby sat down casually in the plush velvet chair directly across from Williams. “I would love to say the same Robert but... these, well, the circumstances on why I have called you here today are not the most pleasant.” “I understand, so let’s just get right to it then. What did I unintentionally do to disappoint you this time? I am happy to sweep your balcony again to make up for it! Or maybe help in newspaper distribution this week,” Bobby offered, emphasizing his southern accent in each vowel to draw from the fact that the punishments he suggested

Living Waters Review

inflict the least amount of suffering. “No...” he wandered off in thought, “No. While those things would be good, it is actually not about something you have done. It’s news from home.” Headmaster Williams took off his glasses and put down the lit cigarette he held in his hand. The ashtray was nearly full. He rubbed his temples, pressing hard on each side of his forehead with the tips of his fingers. Williams had to be somewhat young, at the very least not an old man yet. He was greying around the base of his sideburns and his eyesight was fading so that every once in a while he misread the morning announcements, hence the glasses. Other than that, he was strong in character and fairly domineering, as a headmaster must be, which unfortunately for Bobby meant that he was constantly sweeping the balcony. “What’s happened,” he continued, “is that your father has... well, moved on.” “What do you mean?” Bobby furrowed his eyebrows. “Like from Georgia?” While he asked this, the pinching in his gut at the reminder of his father forced him to anticipate something of greater intensity. “No, it isn’t... I’ll just cut to it.” Williams shifted his body uncomfortably, crossing his legs and then uncrossing them. Finally clearing his voice, he wedged the cigarette back in his mouth. “Your father has died. He is beyond us, Bobby. And death, well, it is a part of life! And while it is not the most discussed topic, you should know that it is something everyone experiences. I myself have had distant relatives die, of course from something that is more conventional like old age, but regardless how, it is unfortunate and—” “Wait, more conventional? As in my father died from something less than conventional?” The demand was met with silence. Williams puffed his cigarette as if it fueled his every word, then huffed it out into the space above Bobby’s head. “He was in his study when your mother heard the gunshot. You may use my telephone to call home.” The news was as stale coming out of his mouth as was the smoky air they breathed in. Pure astonishment at the formidable thought of never again having a father forced his mouth ajar. Yet, it shortly returned to its original position upon the accompanying

Spring 2020

thought that, in reality, his father had been absentee all along. He lifted his head, stood from the chair, and walked out of William’s office.

Creative Essay 15

Ease Megan Hurst

Digital Illustration 16

Living Waters Review

On the Radio Zach Rohrbough

a joyous gospel choir is holding hands with their mouths on the radio as he drives me home and if it weren’t for the static they’d be real loud and clear just like I try to be as I’m making demands shaking a fist as if his bones alone don’t outweigh me and it’s real loud and clear that he can’t hear a word I’m saying like I’m a gospel choir on the radio

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Poetry 17

I Ain’t No Nightingale Brynn Richer

Maybe it’s my fault or my mother’s or my father’s that they didn’t bother to share with me how to be a melody. A toe-tapping force that is a source of angels. No, there ain’t no music in me.

Poetry 18

Just words that climb and dive sometimes like doves. Like old clunky cars or dive-bars —simple, heavy built, mumbled hard to hear words, tone-deaf or nail-on-the-head or like milk spilt words. Weed-like words without notes ending up smote ‘cause I can’t say them right or ‘cause good advice is a source of too-bright light. But like I said, I’ve got no music. Maybe a rhythm if you take the time to tune it, up a step or changed in scale. But, no, I ain’t no nightingale.

Living Waters Review

Ninety-Nine Cent Wisdom Brynn Richer

he goal of going through other people’s things in an antique store full of dust and misbegotten, broken jewelry was to find something older than dirt but not too far behind it. To find something that took a lot of time to be crafted—and even longer to age—but not a lot of time to find. A shop with peeling paint and a rusted aluminum roof seemed like a safe bet to find dirt-aged gifts. Sam had entered the building of choice warily—half the floorboards bowed beneath him, the AC in the store was provided by one small fan at the register, and all the items for sale were piled in mountains with no discernable meaning. Everything, including the old woman at the counter, sagged under the weight of the stale air inside. “Hullo,” she grumbled, “what are you in for?” “I’m looking for something for my wife, an anniversary gift.” Sam felt afraid to speak loudly. It seemed to be a crime to disturb the layer of dust covering everything. “We’ve probably got what you’re looking for, but I can’t promise you I could find it.” Not knowing how to respond to the bulldog of a woman in front of him, Sam smiled politely and wandered off. He didn’t know what information she could’ve provided him with anyways. His wife was picky, and despite five years of marriage, he had no idea what to get her. The traditional gift for five years of marriage was something made of wood. If he surprised her with a piece of wood, it would surely be his last anniversary. Sam walked around the winding path the store provided. There were crates of records sweating in their paper

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casings, clothes with shoulder pads still sewn into them, delicately illegal elephant ivory combs, whole dish sets of porcelain teacups and platters, and old designs of companies like Pepsi or Coca-Cola on steel created with lead paint. It made him sweat more than the heat did. Every display case seemed like a good idea. He didn’t entirely understand the importance of most of the items. There were bracelets he thought were perfectly fine priced at pocket change levels, while an obnoxiously colored peacock broach was three hundred dollars. The store drew him in and disoriented him at the same time. The deeper he went, the more crowded things became. From the outside, the antique store seemed like a small shack, bow-legged by its support beams and ready to collapse. Inside, capsules of history hadn’t been touched since their year of creation. Menageries of dolls and unwanted photographs all vied for attention. At what he finally thought was the back, a room lined with heavy woodwork bloomed open. Inside, spines stood at attention in jackets of army green, white, black, and crimson red mostly. Old collections of encyclopedias were the main huddled masses on the shelves. The whole room was jammed tight. There was no empty space on any shelves. Books overflowed and spilled into chairs, tables, and neat stacks on the floor. There was one book, however, that laid defiantly on the shelves horizontally. The book was a brick of information. Its eggshell blue color—given a gray hue in certain areas from years of sweaty hands pawing through it—was the only thing separating the story from its clay counterpart. It was tossed to the ceiling of the large bookshelf, too tall to fit in between the hand-carved cedar shelves. He had picked it up expecting it to be another edition of Hamlet or Gone with the Wind that was only used for a semester before being sold. It had a much more useless title: The World Owes You Nothing: A Collection of Essays and Other Tips. He had supposed that was why it was only ninety-nine cents. Clearly, it had been owned by some loving, apparently dismal, person in the past. The lettering of the author and title only left behind indentations of words, and the gold leafing weathered away long before being placed on this shelf. There were dog-eared pages and sophisticated granny-scrawl on some essay titles—there was even what looked to be blood on the corner of a few pages from a

Short Story 19

Short Story 20

too eager flip of a finger. Sam fanned through the pages some more. He paused at certain ones that earned a chuckle, including, “The Correct Boston Way to Scrub A Pot Clean” and “What To Learn From an 88-Year-Old Retired Secretary,” which only contained the sentence: “How to gossip without getting involved with your boss’s issues, and all the secrets of the world —but you won’t listen, regardless of which topic is more important.” He had never been much of a reader. He mostly read lines of coding at his job. Reading caused his eyes to burn and his mind to grow anxious from sitting still. But he supposed his few chuckles were worth ninety-nine cents. Maybe there was even an essay telling him what the perfect gift was. When Sam returned to the front of the shop, the bulldog woman was filling out a crossword puzzle. She seemed put-off that he was even still here. He handed her the book with reverence. Her knotted fingers tossed it between her hands. She took a look at the title and frowned. “Pretty depressing book for an anniversary.” “Oh, it isn’t for my wife,” he corrected, “I’m afraid I didn’t see anything up to her standards.” His eyebrows betrayed his politeness. The old woman turned slowly, dropping the book onto a bed of tissue paper, before going into another room he hadn’t explored. She shouted, “Gold or silver?” Sam jumped at the question. His eyes were already taken away with the shelves around him. “Uh, gold?” The woman hobbled back to the register. She threw a gold bracelet chain onto the counter. It was delicately crafted with birds connecting at the wings all around. “How’s that?” Sam had to take a few steps back to get on track with her. “It’s, um, nice.” “Twenty dollars,” she deadpanned, already burying it in tissue paper. He wondered how many times clueless husbands had come in here in a panic. He was sure he was getting scammed, like all the other husbands before him, but his wife didn’t need to know that. After exiting the shop with another soft jingle of bells, Sam sat in the parking lot for more time than he was in the store. The book had slowly fascinated him with every page he read—to the point where he forgot he was sitting in a hot car next to the off ramp of a highway. He had finally

reached the last essay the book title was taken from, The World Owes You Nothing. It was an odd choice for a title, an even odder essay to fit in with correct pot and pan washing techniques and secretary wisdom. The essay turned out to be a philosophical argument for religion. It was a very serious contrast to its smart-mouthed essay companions. It was lengthy with footnotes as long as the actual essay. The sentences were winding, and most flew over Sam’s head. He didn’t even know the essay was coming very close to an end until he bumped into the last few sentences: —so, you see, dear reader, the world doesn’t inherently owe you anything. Logically, there is no reason for it to. Its existence does not need you in order to keep spinning. But you knew that already, didn’t you? I have no reason to believe you hold in your hands any more wisdom than you had at the beginning of this. Nor a reason to believe you’re happy with this ending. I may have misguided you in my own self-interest. But I’ll leave you with this: the world owes you nothing, yes, but you have everything in Christ. Amen. Pastor Denny, Crossroads Evangelical Church, 9216 Rosemary Ave, Holladay, Utah 84117

Living Waters Review

Self-Portrait Nathan Nettles

Colored Pencil 21

Spring 2020

The Sheephead Shack Bryce Langston

Flash Fiction 22

he neon word OPEN blinked through the window of the Sheephead Shack as the sun began to dip into the end of the pier. Inside the coffeeshop, Maryanna continued wiping off tabletops with smooth, circular motions, knowing the evening tide would soon bring the second crowd of the day inside. The young barista moved gracefully about the room, sweeping around and underneath the worn, cushy furniture that had been in the establishment since it opened nearly forty years ago. She hummed a tune and inhaled with her nostrils, the joy of a saltwater breeze still not lost on her. Maryanna looked out the window that faced the end of the pier; on the water, skiffs and johnboats drifted with the lull of the sea as fishermen dropped their last lines of the day and offered up prayers. Soon, the shape of the sun disappeared, leaving only an afterglow that began to softly retreat from the sky, just as the boats did from the water. Maryanna took her position behind the counter as she heard the growing sound of boots knocking on the wooden dock; muffled, tired voices drifted through the shop’s aged front door, telling what sounded like the usual stories of a day’s triumphs and trials. The graceful barista smiled genuinely as the shop’s bell rang and wearied men garbed in ocean-sprayed and sun-soaked clothes entered in. “...the stuff is fake! Ain’t the real bait like we use. Fur sum reason—I ain’t gotta clue as to why—the fish is goin’ after this fake bait, but if they’d jus’ come to us, they’d find somethin’ worth bein’ hooked on!” a man with cracked, tan skin finished saying as he walked through the door. “Yep Pete,” another man sighed as he followed behind the other, “these modern fishermen sure takin’ the cake these

days, but they ain’t doin’ it right—that kinda bait ain’t true.” The crowd of fishermen filled the shop quickly, some heading straight to the counter while the regulars sat on the couches and armchairs, knowing they would be there until closing. Maryanna greeted the customers with a happiness that came from the strong ocean scent wafting through the open door. Those already at the counter ordered their sandwiches and wraps with a casual drink, usually tea; once they got their food, they said “thanks” and walked out the door, having better things to do than stick around. But the dozen fishermen who sat on the furniture stayed seated even after the line at the register was gone, too busy discussing the matters of their craft to get up and order. “I got a pretty deep cut today—my fingers slipped while I was changing hooks,” a man with lighter skin said as he brandished a long wound on his right palm. The fisherman on his left looked intently at the cut, feeling around it with his fingers as if to make sure the hand was real. “Yep, that’s a pretty nasty one ya got there, Matt.” “‘Course it is, Tom,” Pete chuckled. “Matt is still makin’ his rookie mistakes.” “Well I haven’t been doing this anywhere near as long as you and Andy have,” Matt said to defend himself, motioning towards Pete and the man beside him. “Yeah Pete, me ‘n’ you was taught fishing when we was kids, and I still nick myself somedays,” Andy said. “Well, yore just gettin’ old,” Pete cackled. Maryanna chimed in as she moved toward the regulars, carrying a board holding bread and mugs of coffee. “You’re all already old.” The men laughed, their wrinkles bunching up around sun-scarred cheeks. “Well we sure are happy to see you, Ann,” one of the fishermen said. Maryanna smiled as she laid the board on a table and the fishermen all rushed to grab their usual portion. “Happy to see all of you too.” The young lady sat with the fishermen, listening to their stories and jests intently. If she listened closely enough, she felt as if she were the one in the boat every day, her skin joyfully marred by knowing the sun so well; she imagined the feeling of a strong tug on the line, instantly followed by her reaction of pulling a catch into the sunlight.

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And while the stories of the fishermen never wearied, Maryanna could see that the old men were in need of rest. “Alright,” she announced reluctantly, “it’s closing time.” The fishermen groaned, but they knew it was true. Maryanna said “goodnight” to each one of them as they walked out the door and gave thanks. She locked up the shop and smiled as she left, knowing she would see them all again in the morning when the sun rose and called them to the waters—and they would follow.

Flash Fiction 23

Spring 2020

Smallness Ali Rose

Creative Essay 24

t six in the morning the canyon air is still. It doesn’t whisper through the grand firs or lift my hair. It doesn’t carry the stuttering of animal paws across the limestone plateaus. It hangs, cold and calm, in the span between me and the horizon. I fill my lungs with it, gulping down the unpolluted air because maybe, if I get enough, it will sustain me forever. The cliff drops off four feet in front of me where a lone evergreen’s roots hold together the stuccoed sediment. My fear of heights holds me back from the edge, yet it doesn’t keep me from peering, hesitant, into the annals of antiquity catalogued down the canyon’s face. My boots shift in the thin layer of sand and my pants swipe together as I reorient myself. The noise is grating in the thick silence. The absence of sound, like the absence of wind, strikes me. It is, in itself, harmonious. Before me, the sky’s soft lavenders tease the sun’s upcoming crescendo. But there’s nothing significant in the way the light bleeds over the mountains’ crests. It’s nothing no one has seen before. And yet, easing its way up to my chest, is a raw, clench-hearted beast that almost buckles my knees in its attempt to submit to the will of the wind, to the course set by the cosmos. Yesterday, just past midnight, the stars got brighter. Not a lot, just enough so that I could see myself reflected in them. The telescopes meant nothing, and neither did the cameras. The mass of people around me amalgamated into the darkness of the night and I was alone. What mattered was the sky, and how it mottled white and blue and yellow. What mattered was that I couldn’t feel my body below me

anymore. What mattered was the astronomer next to me waxing existential about a person’s relationship with the stars. It mattered, but I didn’t get those intangible phrases and passionate soliloquies. This morning, under the spotlight of the sun, the hoodoos are bathed in fire and the canyon extends far into the unknown, far past the realm of conceivable knowledge, far past the concrete. On the ledge above this petrified amphitheater, I look down into the many crevasses below, but I am no higher than they are. I am small, dwarfed by the rock spires and yawning ravine, miniaturized, but not to the point of insignificance. My significance lies within my smallness.

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Tidal Hues Sarah Best

Watercolor 25

Spring 2020

Humdrum Cana Scott

This is the genesis of the who am I. Rising from the corner lies some great automatic beast. Pulsing endlessly into the deep

Poetry 26

augmented by some breeze it has grafted into the spine and rushed to the brain. Come embrace the dust of this barren land where we harvest salt and eat the glory of truth. For the dreamer perishes. And yet, we stay. *Inspired by Kay Sage, The Wind in a Corner (1949)*

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She Cried as I Sang Annalise Walrath

hen I close my eyes, I can hear her sing to me. Her voice is somehow boldly quiet as she sings a fragmented melody I cannot grasp. She stands before me: her body healed, her eyes shining. Then she runs away toward a garden in the wilderness, her feet drifting upon the earth without a sound, flowers bowing as she passes. There is a fearless beauty in her soul, the type of beauty that takes your breath and gives you life. She is both imagined and real. My thoughts are now her territory, my life her graveyard. In the darkness she has built a fortress, the bricks created from memories of us together. Trembling, I stare into these stories playing out in front of me, memories of our lives intertwined. A young girl is burying tears in the arms of her mother, the memory of a seven-year-old me crying into my mom. I miss her. Haunted by her song, she continues to call me into her world while locking me out. It seems the closer I get, the farther she runs. We are connected yet separate. I am chasing someone who no longer wants to be found. There was a moment I caught her resting by the water, the moonlight revealing her face. I always believed that when the opportunity approached I would run and embrace her like the memory foretold, but my feet forgot to move. My body became burdened by fear, my mind unable to connect to my bones. Through the trees I watched her, trying to remain hidden while listening to her sing. Close enough to hear her message: “Darling, your bones are good.” Over and over again, she sang her melody as if mocking

Spring 2020

me for being unable to reach her. I figured she was simply taunting me, luring me to come out from the trees and into her fortress. Yet there was love in her song. Maybe she was trying to comfort me and that is why she beckoned me. Maybe she missed me too… *** It’s been a little over two years since my mom was within reach, roaming my mind and planting memories. My mind is now a forest. The trees wait for me to climb up and eat the fruit she left. Just now I saw her climbing up a tree to enjoy a feast of apples. I swore I saw her smile. There is one tree that I do not understand yet, for it stands alone. I do not know how a tree could be afraid, but somehow this tree is. I am drawn to this tree, my soul compelled to study it and attempt to understand. Here are the facts: there are no fruits, there are no leaves, there are no signs of life. Each of the other trees holds a story, each story singing part of her song, but this tree remains silent. Surrounding this tree is the stream I watched my mom rest near. She seemed to be singing to this tree, maybe she was encouraging it to grow. Why is this the only tree that died? *** Sometimes I wonder if this world is simply a creation of mine, even my mother a figment of my imagination. She once was real and really sang to me. I remember how her hugs felt, the safety I longed for. I remember her smile as I played music for her, my songs healing her bones. I close my eyes so she can sing to me—only to be transported back to earth, leaving her broken song ringing in my ears.

Creative Essay 27

Creative Essay 28

I long for the days before I discovered this world. The outside world once was safe for me, so I had no reason to resort to my mind. There are some days where I feel safe enough to remain, but I always seem to run back to these trees planted by my mom. Today I dared to take one last journey. I closed my eyes and she began to sing to me. And this time I sang with her. I did not know her song, so I sang my own. Once again, we stood in the darkness, only this time I was bold. I took a step towards her, expecting her to flee, but she remained. For the first time, she revealed her face to me, her eyes looking directly into mine. I am not sure what I was expecting from this interaction, but I found myself gaining strength through her eyes. She led me back to the tree I once found her resting near, only this time the tree was singing. It was singing my song. I witnessed the tree renew, leaves and fruit bursting forth. *** I once believed that my world ended when my mom died. I was wrong. My world needed to be discovered. The world I knew was stolen from me when she left, and I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how to rebuild it without her. I lost my words when I watched her die. I lost myself. The last thing I did with my mom was sing. We were in her room, she was lying lifeless in the bed, too weak to speak. I had no words, so I sang to her. She cried as I sang.

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In the Bay of Drowned Poets Ali Rose

Sometimes I think I see an island in the distance or hear the prayers of sirens awaiting sustenance, a shanty sung in hues of dissimulation. I do not mind that I lie on the threshold between the depths and the sky, my starfished arms the only thing securing that membrane of surface tension. If it broke and the world inverted, everyone would drown but me. So I drink the salt and join the psalm and drift toward the mouths that await me.

Spring 2020

Poetry 29

Ali Anna Maier

Photography 30

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You Have a Lot of Talent for Someone so Purple Jeremy Garrett

Cold rain digs itself out of the sky, finding its way to earth’s lowest points and creating a lake, right there behind my house. Run through the water, carefully, for if you are too fast, you’ll pick up from the ground and fly, dropping your shoes from the sky. You’ll never see the ground again. It’s a shame you can’t love it now as much as you will then. For now, sink your ships, make your waves, appreciate the red sun catapulted off the rocky streets. There’s a word for that. What was it? Sparkling.

Spring 2020

Poetry 31

A Memory of Black Holes Brooke Stanish

Black holes are where God divided by zero. ~ Albert Einstein

Creative Essay 32

ot even light is immune to the absence of itself. The human eye can’t conceive of a space devoid of light. That’s essentially what a black hole is—a region in space where an enormous amount of matter coiled in on its new condensed self. A black hole is a minute accumulation of matter that alters the very shape of spacetime surrounding it. Einstein didn’t know what he was getting himself into. His theory of general relativity played a large role in predicting the existence of these cosmic questions, but it was the work of Karl Schwarzschild in 1915 that established the basis for black holes as science knows them today. Etched onto the insides of every person are black holes, areas of cosmic space where things condense and collapse and confuse. Listen closely to hear the breath of murdered stars. Listen closely; try not to forget. I pin my hands to the craters of my face and drink the whispers of my own black holes before they swallow all I know. oOo Memories try to uncage themselves, thrusting their shapes out with the weeds I pick on the side of my house. They engrain themselves within the dirt between my fingernails. I let them, so they aren’t consumed by the cosmos of the present. When I was very young, before I knew anything about stars or black holes other than that they’re very shiny and far away, my Grandma Shadow fed me meatballs in a tin cup. From a certain angle, this cup was also black and was

also a hole. The cup wore an image of four cowboys from an old TV show I can’t remember the name of. The taste of tin sticks to the roof of my mouth. With a sense of overwhelming self-importance, I took pride in spooning out bites of the Italian delicacy. My grandma calls pasta sauce gravy, and forever will the aroma of that simmering gravy tie her to me. Only recently did she tell me the reason why she fed me a single meatball before everyone else sat down to dinner. It wasn’t to bestow upon me the superior privilege of standing in as prodigy taste-tester, no. It was to make sure that I ate. oOo Time behaves differently surrounding a black hole. It slips its fingers into space and rearranges the puzzle that scientists still struggle to piece back together. If one’s body was to linger within the palace of space to tremble at the throne of a black hole, that person would experience time much more slowly. Rather than hurling towards a present absence, a person would take her time, strolling through cosmic corridors into the darkness. At a particular point, she would then freeze, inhaling the breath of stars sighing at her unexpected end. Amidst the unseen, unfathomable purple, blue, black hues she stitches onto the insides of herself, she eventually disappears. As this is all happening, though, spacetime from her perspective races in orbits around her, swirling quickly outside of her. Time plucks her from its course, and soon, forgets she even exists. oOo Frantically, memories unseat themselves from the living rooms of other minds, and beg for entrance into another. Unknowingly, I let them enter and wait for them to tell me from where they come. These memories wriggle through the fingers of time, seeking out a new place in the present. Records of the Monks of the Western Priory were the soundtrack of my Grandma Willy’s days long before I was born, when my mom was young. The record was also black and also circular, and it’s best remembered for its song “Happiness.” In a memory that’s not my own, my grandma slips on the record and seats herself at her organ. My mom sidles up to her, watching her own mother’s long fingers tap the

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right keys at the right moments, lets her silvered voice slide over her dirty blonde head. Unhinging unhinges. Now, my mom and I play “Happiness” from our phones, and this time my grandma closes her eyes to let pious notes filter through her. oOo Scientists call the inky abyss of a black hole its singularity. This is the point at which matter is most dense and compact. In this singularity resides the true absence of light. A photo of the black hole lovingly called NGC 3147 is currently circulating. Hovering around this cosmic lack is a brightly-colored ring. A hazy red light radiates out from the darkness, reaching out into space. This is the accretion disk, an encircling body of gas and cosmic dust surrounding a black hole. Nothingness pulls this substance towards its dark core, but it resists until it also is consumed. In the meantime, the accretion disk is the only technically visible part of the black hole. It crowns the unseeable accumulation of matter, the darkness, with an indescribably beautiful light. oOo Like light, memories leak. They can’t be contained like the matter within a black hole. Their reach is breathless; oftentimes, like black holes, they consume. I have a memory of another black hole, beginning with another scratch of light carved across a dim sky. A woodpecker flew to my home every morning, and probably still does if I’m there to see her. My mom noticed one morning, enraptured. She peered up at the blazing maroon head of the woodpecker bobbing back and forth at our headless palm tree. The bird carved out a space, also a hole, also dark. We were going to chop the tree down, but my mom told me that now we’d keep it. The woodpeckers pecked to make way for their nests; she didn’t want to take their home away. A few times my mom pulled out an old box of golden raisins to leave out by an orphan frond at the base of the tree. We didn’t know what woodpeckers ate, but the raisins were soon gone to some backyard animal. I love the way my mom loves birds: simply, sweetly, she watches them just be. oOo Before he passed, Stephen Hawking proposed a theory that perhaps black holes don’t consume everything. He theorized that they actually emit radiation and will one day,

Spring 2020

inevitably evaporate from space. Hawking sought to resolve the information paradox which questioned whether or not the contents consumed by the black hole will be released back into the universe upon its collapse. Research shows that Hawking may in fact be correct—matter doesn’t simply disappear forever, though it still may never be the same again. The same is true for memory. The fear of forgetting turns people into hoarders. We collect bits of things nobody else wants so that we don’t forget the people tied to them. The fear of forgetting lies at the center of black holes as well. A space devoid of something is unfathomable. A mind devoid of memory is unthinkable. And so we tie ourselves to the earth with objects, songs, birds to resist the tyrannical cradle of the black hole. We tie ourselves to earth, so we don’t forget.

Creative Essay 33

Fleece-Lined Universe Brynn Richer

Short Story 34

f there was a door, and not a blanket neighbored by two sheets of upright drywall, he’d have closed it. At least then he wouldn’t have to pretend to sleep and could actually drift into it for once. The yelling was usual, the distinct sounds of skin aggravating skin less common, but apparent tonight. Either way, he didn’t want to hear them. Julian sighed, his six-year-old lungs expanding to their full capacity to exhale and capture just how uneasy he felt. His flashlight shone up into his blanket, allowing a little bit of light to squeeze through the tiny, yellow, felt stars littering the fleece. In his room—more of a generously sized closet than anything else—the blanket made up a sprawling universe. A threadbare, folded-over universe. A place made up of cerulean matter and 342 stars. His universe was hot with spent oxygen and littered with black holes sewn shut to prevent it from mixing with the real one. This universe was expandable—with the help of extended legs—and took on a tent shape. Or small enough to disappear under if footsteps approached. But this universe, unlike its real outer-space counterpart, was not soundproof. And Julian could not shrink any smaller as footsteps approached. He couldn’t recall who had stolen the last word of the looming conversation between his parents, or whose words stuck the most. His light shut off with a quick click. The air in his universe became humid and oppressive, but moving would disrupt the protection it swaddled him in. The blanket folded, and an aura of brown, wispy curls sprang into existence.

“Julie?” The nickname fell off his mother’s lips. The light flicked back on. He stared at his mother. He ignored the black eye blooming on the left side of her face. His mother smiled, her puffed-up lid folding in lumbering resistance. “Whatcha doin’?” “Nothing. I was sleepin’.” His mother cocked her head, revealing as she got closer to the sun in Julian’s hands another angry mark on her forehead. “Sleeping with the flashlight on?” Julian looked away guiltily as his mother laughed a bit. “Did you find any new constellations?” His attention grabbed at his mother’s eye once more before deciding not to ask. Asking was hard. Answering was harder. The stars were an easier topic for the both of them. Julian shuffled under the thin fleece and slowly his mother joined him. Shoulder to shoulder. The universe stretched to encompass both of them. Julian pointed, with an accuracy only known to him, where the stars made paths to stories by long forgotten people. To landmarks used by wise men and flying misfits off to Neverland. At one point, he’d pointed out Orion’s Belt and the Little Dipper—they were not Orion’s Belt or the Little Dipper. Through exploring the masterpieces consisting of fivepointed yellow fleece his mother found another black hole. She wiggled her finger through it. “And here? What’s here, another vortex?” Julian took a moment. He followed his beam of sunlight up past her finger to the shadow puppet she made on his water damaged ceiling. He watched how the light illuminated that bit of tile and shook his head. Black holes were only black holes once his mother’s shoddy stitching pulled them shut. They were only there when they were safe. His universe didn’t include active cosmic threats. “There’s light. That’s Heaven.” He had said it with so much determination that his mother quickly retracted her finger. “Heaven, eh?” Julian nodded. “Well, I better stay outta there for a while, huh? I don’t want to get sucked in.” The somber thought of being without his mother made him point his sun to another portion of his universe. He didn’t want to think about Heaven, or his mother in it. He didn’t want to think about the yelling, or the brown splotches on the ceiling, or having no door, or his mother’s black eye. Not yet.

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“And those stars there are in the Ursa Minor.” Julian pointed again. No, not yet. *** Click, click, click, click. Pause. “Julian.” Slowly, Julian looked up from his microscope. He knew from the footsteps alone that it was Olivia. She had one of her arms crossed, the other propped up and twirling the keys to lock up. “It’s not healthy to just keep sitting here. Those samples will still be there after you clean out your mother’s house.” She smirked. “Fine,” Julian grumbled. He begrudgingly got up, pushed his chair in with an ear-scraping nudge, gave one last tight-lipped smile to her, and left. An old, beat-up car sat in the gravel driveway for a while, catching its breath from the forty-five-minute drive. Inside, Julian almost looked disappointed that it had made it here. As if it had done its job wrong. He really wished it had. The apartment condos hunched over in front of him. His gray eyes trailed up to the fourth floor, still expecting to see a light on when he knew, better than anyone, that it wouldn’t be. The inside of the apartment looked the same as it had a week ago. A small city of smushed boxes was starting to form in the small kitchen and dining nook. Right now, it looked more like a grand suburb than anything. The population was quickly rising. Despite not living here for ten years, and the occupants of the apartment very much gone, Julian still tip-toed through the cramped space. His feet still knew how to get into the living room without making a single warped linoleum tile creak. The living room was small and carpeted, allowing him to walk freely. He took in the last of the things needing to be done in order to get the deposit back and dispose of his mother’s belongings. Even with his mother’s caregiver he provided her, there was a long way still before the city of boxes could be evacuated and the last bit of inheritance collected. *** It had been a few hours into the evening before Julian took the time to realize it was dark out now. It wasn’t until he could barely see that he flicked the lights on. Even now,

Spring 2020

a decade out of this place, and he still grew nervous about whether the electricity bill had been paid. The light especially didn’t help with seeing how much progress he’d made. Now illuminated again, several punched holes in the wall blinked back at him. A space hub of wormholes bringing past nights of shouting and bits of drywall dust. Attached to each a frightening memory, still fresh in his mind. Julian was glad to finally patch them shut. He was so intimate with these patches of exposed timber that he could recall the dates of all of them. The one he was now scraping with his putty knife came from the Christmas when he was eight. Ben, letting anger swirl with liquor, had screamed at his ‘ungrateful’ wife when she had asked about the absence—a painfully common one—of Julian’s Christmas presents. Ten minutes earlier he had screamed about how the apartment wasn’t festive enough. Before Julian’s mother could speak again, the hole was born. Julian’s hand paused. He couldn’t fathom how Ben had lost the title of father and yet still held one from his mother about being a good man. The only problem he ever dealt with was his bar tab. The only thing treated with kindness was the beer usually swirling around in his left hand. Julian’s putty knife scraped harder against the spackling paste. After tackling several of the holes, Julian gave up for the day. He could only deal with so many cracked pieces of his childhood at a time. Christmas, 2004; March 23rd, 2004; July 5th, 2007; and February 8th, 2013 were all forever trapped behind spackle and fresh drywall. The progress made him nauseous with relief and recycled fear. Julian’s spackled hands broke the seal to one of the inhabitants of the cardboard city and raided whatever cloth he could get his hands on. As he wiped his hands, his eyes swept over the rest of the walls. He still had many calendars’ worth of holes to fill. His hands tossed the used cloth into the pile of trash he’d made before he saw, under the spackle, yellow, fleece stars. As if apologizing to the piece of fabric, Julian quickly bent over and picked it up. His hands ran over it calmingly. He chuckled a bit, seeing his old friend for the first time in over a decade, smaller than he remembered. It now could probably only stretch to cover his head and half of his chest. But it was still big enough to make a universe.

Short Story 35

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Slowly, as if not to scare it, Julian raised the cloth to his cheek. The drying spackle scratched him a bit. He pressed into the softer parts of the fabric and closed his eyes. So many nights of cracked drywall, of comforting words not doing their job, of tears from worries that a child shouldn’t even know exist were still absorbed into the comforting fabric. Julian felt all of them. His eyes watered behind his closed lids, but he managed to hold the tears back. It had been so long since he felt safe—and it took many years to build up that feeling for himself. And yet, a maybe three-foot-long scrap of fleece still held more stock in that feeling than he had ever made for himself. He had almost wanted to throw the blanket over his head—drywall dust, spackle, and all—and see how his universe had changed. But, as what happens when an old friend stays away for too long, he had forgotten what it looked like in the first place. Ursa Major, the Little Dipper, Orion’s Belt were all jumbled into the fabric now. They no longer stood out highlighter-yellow to him. Julian pulled back from his embrace with the blanket and turned it over in his hands a few times. His mother’s terrible stitching was still holding together the universe. No black holes threatened to swallow him. His fingers ran over the puckered scars in the fabric, greeting them each individually. He met the one still open hole in the fabric. It was much larger than he remembered. Julian’s fingers passed through the fabric of his universe, past the stars. His lips gave a quick start and pulled his cheeks into a smile. More of a snort than a chuckle came out from his lips. Heaven. He had never poked his fingers through it as a child or let his mother after the first night of its discovery. Softly, he closed his fist around the fleece. Heaven, eh? He could still hear his mother’s words. Ben had passed long before his mother, giving her a few decades of peace without him. Julian believed his father wouldn’t end up there—too many holes in the drywall to atone for. He whispered, “At least one of us made it there.” Reverently, Julian folded the fleece. He picked up his tools, set them on the counter, flicked off the light, locked the door behind him, and took his universe home.

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The Sound of a Lonely Note Bryce Langston

The pianistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s flurry of scales and arpeggios ended suddenly with the depression of a single key a lonely note tied over eight bar lines diminishing slowly into a kind of silence and electrical wiring whined fluorescent lights buzzed theater chairs creaked phones vibrated in pockets shoes squeaked on tile a man cleared his throat a child cried a mother shushed a car horn honked a motorcycle engine revved tires screeched the air vents began to hum a girl sneezed and the pianist sighed for they would never know the sound of a lonely note

Spring 2020

Poetry 37

Phantom Lull Ashley Smith

Watercolor 38

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The Vine Brooke Stanish

Throw your smile across my mouth & show me what it means to write peace on my brain, the kind that smells like chocolate chip pancakes on a pine needle griddle & bleach on a Saturday morning, windows open, bleeding out The Cure; that sounds like pleading with a TV to just kick the ball already & soulful scheming to finally take that road trip to the Grand Canyon, O.K. Corral. Throw your smile across my mouth & show me what it means to be without thinking, without draining my black coffee to the dregs & wondering whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s next? because life is long & I am short on thoughts of how a person can plant a flower in the spine to bloom a rose in the mindâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;how a person can write peace on the brain.

Spring 2020

Poetry 39

Storage Maren Brander

A file cabinet sits behind her ribs where all the comments about her figure are stored. An indirect relationship: the breadth of that cabinet

Poetry 40

and the width of her waist. They grab, pull, and tear at the barest skin level, but “what you see is what you get.” Before you walk out, make sure to write your review, slide it into a crisp, tan folder. Another file to tuck inside; the drawers are stuffed and spilling, but we’ll find another cabinet to store it.

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Queen of the Bees Sarah Best

Mixed Media 41

Spring 2020

Oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Black Dog Delaney Esper

baking in the light there was still room for melancholy

Poetry

on Sunday afternoon

breathing and making a loaf of bread as to feel like there is some purpose the heart thrives on loneliness in the presence of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s old black dog

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Frog Hair Shelby Parks

Oh, that’s cornball. A library doesn’t need a shiny gold sculpture. A simple, content man only needs a fried bologna sandwich to be as fine as frog hair. So many pink, yellow, and white bands intertwined lay slack against his thin wrists. What’s your favorite color, Papaw?

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The painkillers answer pink to please his only granddaughter. Canned Spam. Cigarette smoke. Macaroni noodles with canned tomatoes. Trips to the library on early-out school days. My own getaway driver. A cut-up, he instilled and inspires my humor. Ask me how I am. Just fine? No. Fine as frog hair.

Spring 2020

Stranger Eden Prime

A bit too fast you talk green language in a floral flash fading Iâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mind

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if hour, hour, hour leaps by by bye but talk slower would you mind?

One, then two, sad windows

on a leaving train.

Come back again your expression, is alive.

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Parrot Fish Natalie Bourgoin

Watercolor 45

Spring 2020

Counting God Neysa Rogers

In the third pew from the back we were criss-cross sitting, gazing out at the procession of believers ceremoniously seeking the hand of an answering man, like a machine of righteous kneading.

Poetry 46

On the red worn pew, scratched up softly in my remembering, I sprawled my legs across your lap and everybodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. Believing comfort cradles hope when you are young and uncaring. Leaning on the wooden frame of the old church pews, we giggled and counted how many times Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name was lifted from the lighted stage to our thick and budding ears.

Living Waters Review

The Impairment Bryce Langston

hard of hearing since you dove into that muck your ear filled with filth that muffled the drum eight decades and still it fades despite the aid at the table we lean in closer to retell the joke smiling when you laugh with tan wrinkles you let the bread and wine pass you by deaf to the invitation of the preacher he who has ears, let him hear the filth keeps you from believing the mire seems too thick for cleansing I wonder how close I would need to lean in to speak gospel that would pierce and ring you spend yourself on the family you made we—your own flesh and blood—are grateful but hear—that is not the blood that saves

Spring 2020

Poetry 47

Alone, I Dance for God Eden Prime

The moth holds her candle to the permutations of a dead wind waiting for the configuration of light to form a path betwixt to flutter.

Poetry

She denies us the power to claim

48 little pictures of her blurred hearthstone dance by her winged erratic dirge: quia ego Deus solus chorus

Living Waters Review

Jidu Delaney Esper

We inhale incense, one of us from the choir, the other in the lower left pew Give thanks unto the Lord for He is good. I do not know the Apostle’s Creed, I lift my head to watch you recite it with your tobacco-torn smile For His mercies endureth forever… I am old enough to know the Lord’s Prayer, yet still antsy for movement, and not sure what I mean when I say “Thy kingdom come” I rise, facing the golden robes, reaching out in hopes that I may be mystified to know how I look from where you stand. In my distress I called upon the Lord, He heard me and brought me into a large place. Alleluia!

Spring 2020

Poetry 49

Sacrifice Natalie Bourgoin

Acrylic 50

Living Waters Review

Hereditary Cana Scott

don’t call it a compliment, i look nothing like my mother. a belly full of fire and rugged hands. worn brown skin and weary green eyes, you just like your mother, yeah right! her understanding is the jungle and unruly as the beast. the wild is inevitable and she rests at the nucleus of the labyrinth. decades ago, flowers sprouted and the sky carried compassion. now earth is expired, dawn has abandoned, and stillness has died. y’all look the same, you looking right? don’t call it a compliment, i am my mother. we wear our passions on our face from disgust, confusion, and frustration. quick to react with an even harsher bite, cross us once and we’ll hurt you twice. if she’s the jungle sovereign then i’m the desert sands. a fusion of feverish aspirations and frigid truths. an ingestion of acid and remorseless by design. we don’t mix too well, my mother and i. but my mother has walked with the sun and declared the rain. she’s burdened herself with mountaintops and wrestled with time. observe the peaks to the pacific to the pits and know she forged it alone. so, when splendor became unnecessary, she retired her symmetry and placed it in a seed. so look for the garden i am everything like my mother.

Spring 2020

Poetry 51

A Sterile Song Tori Warkentin

Creative Essay 52

ntiseptic smelling hallways never lead to anything good. I strain my eyes against the fluorescent lights and glance up at a passerby. I read their face— grief—a look all too familiar to these sterilized halls. Room 302. A space I visit daily, yet never get used to. I put on the yellowing gown that ties awkwardly at my back and struggle with a pair of too-small latex gloves. You would think I was the patient from my getup, but it’s a routine the doctors insist I follow. No one tells you that healthcare providers may also be Petri dishes for infectious diseases. MRSA just happened to be an added bonus to my mother’s long list of luck. Peeking into the quiet room, I spot her sitting up in bed. She is a shadow of her previous self, a woman who once hiked Mount Kilimanjaro and raised four children all on her own. I look at her arms, now skin and bones covered up with a thermal made for a child. Her eyes are still honey, but they shine with a sickness that has crept deep into her bones. “Did you dress up just for me?” my mom jokes for the millionth time this past year. I smile to appease her and sit in the chair next to her bed. We chat a little about our day, hers consisting of medication and visitors and mine of work meetings and a leaky faucet. Most of our time is spent in comfortable silence, biting back the words that are better left unsaid. Back when she was well enough, I used to wheel mom outside, and we would sit under the manicured trees on the hospital grounds. She would close her eyes and smile, listening to the coo of the mourning doves and the chatter of the wind. In those moments, she almost looked like her old self, like the woman who taught me how to play the piano and who sung along to worship songs while we drove to school in our Aerostar. Her cheeks were now hollow, but her spirit continued to shine like sunlight-struck glass.

Living Waters Review

Those Who Do Not Taylor Gaede

look at you. high forehead and cutting cheekbones; nose sloping to a mouth that never quite smiles. hair and skin, artificial. your face, a reproduction. but you have those glimmering spots in your eyes— light reflecting on cold iris and placid pupil, an artist’s touch to bring his creation to life. it makes you real, proves you will never fade, never sputter like a guttered candle. never die. we are alike on every surface— but I am dust and you are wires. when I die, I return to the earth; but when you die, you return to wires that can be remade, rebuilt. another you, another me (artificial). you live. I die. but maybe one of us was always dead.

Spring 2020

Poetry 53

He Who Has Ears Nate Brand

Short Story 54

uther looked skyward. He saw a stained glass sea crashing on stony shores, a crystalline Christ gesturing peacefully on a boat within the inclement art. Luther stood unmoved like the pillars at his side. Unmoved, save for the occasional shift of his eyes whose constant green mingled with the shimmer of prismatic light resting on his face. There was an absoluteness in the quiet of the hall around him, he was certain of it, but his deaf ears made that certainty the only faith he ever really had. Luther had lost his hearing at age twelve. Now twenty-five, music swept through him all the same, as he had a rare form of synesthesia in which the sight of colors produced involuntary audiation. Luther pored over the windows like he was reading an orchestra score. A thought occurred to him, I’m probably the only man alive who knows what stained glass sounds like, yet I can’t hear a church choir. A deep brown hand clapped his shoulder, startling him. Luther’s angular chin parted the thick air as he turned his head down, hushing the chorus of colors above him. He saw the face of his friend Marcus bouncing with a chuckle. A few faint notes chimed in Luther’s mind as he watched Marcus’s ivory smile dance over his priestly garb. “Enjoying the show?” Marcus signed with slow novice hands. “Always,” Luther returned with a virtuosic flourish, “despite the interruption. Guess I looked like I needed a good shock?” Marcus’s fingers quipped, “Not as if I could’ve warned you.”

Luther felt the rumble of laughter in his chest. Laughing always felt good, and he missed the sound of it. He missed a lot from his years before the accident: the sound of his older brother’s pencil scraping a page, or of his mother’s whispered voice counting crochet lines. A cab had run a light, taking both of their lives and leaving Luther with irreparably damaged hearing. He heard their voices still when he listened to his brother’s old drawings, and his mother’s afghans. “She would’ve been glad to see you here, even if it’s just for the music,” Marcus signed, acknowledging the windows. “I’m glad you’re here too.” “I know,” Luther signed as he looked back up to the glass, “I always hated going to mass. But now I can’t stop coming back. There’s nothing like the voice of a cathedral.” Marcus tapped Luther’s arm, speaking directly to his friend, who read his lips. “I’ve been listening to your work for a while now. God is speaking through you.” “Maybe,” Luther lazily replied with a single motion, his skepticism resting proudly on his brow, along with more than a little pain. Marcus pointed down the aisle, then signed, “Your father is in his study if you’d like to see him.” Luther’s face hardened. He looked again at the ceiling. A musical prodigy, at ten years old he had debuted as a pianist with the Philharmonia Orchestra, and at eleven he had composed his first symphonic poem, published to some acclaim in England. At twelve, just before the accident, he had been a finalist in a youth conducting program in Berlin, thwarted by tragedy before the final session. His father— an Anglican priest stationed in their hometown cathedral—had stayed behind to continue his duties, and was not there when the wreck occurred. Luther resented him for not being there for his mother and brother, for listening to God’s voice instead of the voice of his own family. Luther signed to Marcus, “Do you know my ears rang for days after the wreck? I couldn’t even call him, couldn’t hear his voice. Couldn’t hear anything. I wrote him an email, and he told me to pray. He never showed up. When I came back here, he brought me to church. You brought me to therapy sessions. I came back here for you, Marcus, not for him.” “Allan knows that. He’s been at his desk all day, afraid he’ll upset you if he comes out when you aren’t ready to see

Living Waters Review

him. Shouldn’t that tell you something?” Luther closed his eyes and held his temples. Frequent headaches were another side effect of his condition; sometimes it was a sharp pain, other times it felt like a constant clamp on his skull. Before he was injured, he could only register the sounds of colors if he focused on them intensely, with bright hues causing mild tones to hum in his mind. But his lack of hearing amplified his synesthesia. Now, he clearly heard the music of everything he contemplated. Only the darkest rooms were silent to him, and there had been an arduous time of adjustment. For the first few months the constant mental noise was paralyzing, like bright light to a newborn. Luther signed, “This superpower has its drawbacks.” In time, with therapy, Luther had learned to control his curse. The colors of the world became a spell he could capture with ink, and place on staff paper for all to hear. At fifteen he translated his sensation as best he could into the language of instruments and voices, and the result was never perfect, but even in its diluted form his gift was hailed as revolutionary. He began to compose the sound of famous artworks and scenic locations. His tonal language was as varied as the spectrum of visible light, and his audiographic memory allowed him to maintain a command of orchestration akin to any aurally-unhindered composer. Luther’s most recent project was a tour of famous cathedrals around the world. He would spend a week or two in the local area and give voice to the timeless structures. He now stood in St. Andrew’s Cathedral in his hometown of Dent, England. This cathedral was not on Luther’s list, but Marcus had asked him to write a cantata for him, and so Luther made a special visit. It was here that his father had prayed from afar for the recovery of his mother and brother as they lay dying in a German hospital. And it was here that Luther attended their double funeral. He hadn’t been back for years. There was a long, motionless pause. Luther was tearyeyed. Marcus, wishing to leave his friend in peace, turned to leave and prepare for evening mass. Luther got Marcus’s attention with a tug on his frock. He signed, “You really want to know why I’ve been spending so much time in cathedrals?” Marcus looked back at him inquisitively. Luther continued, “When I finally started compos-

Spring 2020

ing after that wreck took my hearing, I felt like a sorcerer, the voice of another world. It seemed like some arcane power flowed in my veins as I transmuted sight into sound…” He paused, considering his next motion with some gravity, as he noticed Marcus struggling to keep up. Luther signed more slowly, “Lately it’s been almost impossible to keep that sense of mystery; I see everything in terms of harmonic clusters, shifting timbres, microtonal shading. The colors of the world are just fodder for my publications. I feel like a novelty. But within the walls of a Cathedral, it’s like I’m connected to that other world again.” Luther stopped when he noticed Marcus smiling. “I know what you’re thinking, Marcus. Don’t get your hopes up,” he signed. “Luther, I know you better than that,” Marcus signed at first with some difficulty, but looked again at Luther, who obligingly motioned for him to speak. Marcus continued verbally, “I’d love to offer you some explanation involving the fire-forged faces of saints looking down on us, or the kind eyes of a son screaming for our sake as he gets pinned to a cruel cross.” Marcus acknowledged the large crucifix in the hall. “But I’m smiling because when you talk about music, your eyes sing even to us mortals who can’t hear the bright green in your gaze.” Luther was surprised by the answer. Marcus nodded reassuringly. “I once read something by Mark Twain about his relationship with the Mississippi River. He loved the water and wanted to be a steamboat captain from a young age. The better he got at piloting the boat, the more he came to understand the river and the less he felt awed by it. He just saw it as a path for his vessel. To keep his sense of wonder, he remembered a sunrise over the water, one of the first he’d ever seen. But he looked back on that sunrise, and soon realized that he could never experience it again. He was too enlightened to be overwhelmed by weather.” The parallels were not lost on Luther. He motioned to Marcus, “Continue.” “Maybe faith is your sunrise. I think cathedrals give you the chance to feel connected to a very real part of you that died with your mother and brother. Maybe cathedrals give you permission to listen for the voice you don’t believe in.” Luther was still and stoic for a few more seconds.

Short Story 55

Short Story 56

Eventually a slow, half-hearted smile flickered on his mouth. “You can call it whatever you want. Maybe it is the voice of God. I just don’t know, Marcus. I don’t know,” he signed with unsteady hands before running them through his dark, shoulder-length hair. Marcus rubbed his own clean-shaven head, waiting for Luther to return his gaze before speaking, “You’re missing the point. Of course I think it is the voice of God speaking to and through you, but I also think there’s more to it than that. You miss your family, and you miss your hearing. Who wouldn’t? But you also miss your faith. It was every bit as important to you as their lives, and your ears, even if you don’t want to admit it. Cathedrals give life— they give voice—to your dead, silent muse.” Luther teased, “An atheist whose muse is faith. How romantic. I should write a song about that.” Marcus laughed. “Apparently you’re still full of magic tricks. Your hands can weave sarcasm from silence. Now go, see your father. He’s missed you. He wants to see you.” Luther hesitated, but eventually nodded his assent, signing, “You’re good at your job.” Marcus grinned. “I’m not a true priest yet, but thanks anyway.” Luther looked at the ceiling, then down again, “I’m sure you’ll be a fine priest, the voice of this cathedral.” He reached into his satchel, and handed Marcus his promised choir score. The title read: St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Dent: Dedicated to St. Marcus. Marcus’s grin softened as he signed again, so smoothly it seemed as if he had rehearsed this particular phrase, “Thank you for this. Enjoy your tour, my friend. I can’t wait to hear your rendition of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. It’ll be interesting to hear what Bernini’s architecture sounds like.” Luther retorted, “Oh, I’m not going anywhere yet. I have to stay and make sure your performers don’t mess this one up. Gotta lend you my critical ear.” “Fine then,” Marcus signed, “I’ll look for you at mass.” He paused, then signed, “You really should go see him.” Marcus then left to gather the singers, who had started wandering in for rehearsal. Luther sat down and closed his eyes. He was seated in his own personal darkness, at last in complete silence. Another thought entered his head: If you’re really talking, then give me ears like Marcus. It took every effort to open his eyes again, still more

to rise and walk down the aisle toward his father’s study. He stopped short. His father was walking out to meet him. Luther hadn’t heard the sound of his dad’s familiar tears for over a decade, but here they were, glinting loudly in the bronze light of the candles and fading sun. The sound distorted as Luther’s own vision blurred with stinging discord. The distortion dripped away from his eyes, and he looked again as his father took his hands, obviously struggling to speak. “No need, dad. I hear…I see you,” Luther signed. The irony of the expression occurred to him as he continued, “I’ve been deaf for a while. I’m ready to listen.” “Glad me to…hearing it,” came his father’s reply as his fingers tied themselves in knots. Luther laughed, pointing at the windows, “You’ll be glad to hear those too, soon enough. I’m told they’re the veritable voice of God.” His father understood the last few words. He waited for Luther to meet his eye again before speaking, “I’ve spent a lot of time listening for that voice. It sounds a lot like your own.” He held up a CD, Luther’s first publication after the accident. Luther looked skyward.

Living Waters Review

Metamorphosis Alyssa Sullivan

Stained Glass & Ceramics 57

Spring 2020

What Matter Sounds Like in the Dark Brooke Stanish

Creative Essay 58

THE ELEMENT OF EARTH

atter peels its skin back as music is shaved from the earth’s exterior. Her laughter crumbles onto the pavement entombing names unexercised by lips given to linearity. Time is not linear, though, and matter is not always visible. Sometimes matter is invisible, like music, like the breath beneath a tombstone. Only a mere 5% of our universe is made up of what we know as normal matter. The remaining bonds cradling our planets are comprised of dark energy and dark matter. A staggering 68% of the universe is made of dark energy, while 27% is woven out of dark matter. Though this matter carries the majority of our universe in its darkness, astrophysicists are still unsure as to what it exactly is. Our fingers can only carry a few things, so we tuck the rest into the folds of trees and other hollows, hoping it remains there until we come back. Cemeteries attest to our burying nature—invisible matter beneath our feet, and an emptiness hidden in the earth. Wise phrases and clever quips on stones cannot deny the fact that we cannot understand, we cannot make visible what dies or what slides along the notes our universe sings in the darkness of itself. II. THE ELEMENT OF WATER

Shooting up like steel daisies spotting the cemetery, sprinklers sprout along the intervals between death. The water washes over the graves in a perfunctory baptism. The liquid music rushes through the pipes in a steady hum.

The revelation of dark matter emerged similarly out of place, unexpectedly, awkwardly. As early as the 1930s, scientist Fritz Zwicky noticed something awry with his observations of the Coma Cluster, namely the unseeable appearance of dark matter. Anticlimactically though, this finding was forgotten until the 1970s when astronomer Vera Rubin discovered a strange phenomenon occurring within the Andromeda Galaxy. All throughout the spiral galaxy, the stars rotated at the same speed when they should have been rotating more quickly in the center, meaning that there must be more matter existent that scientists could not detect. The unforeseen discovery of the unseeable. The invisible splotches the grounds of our universe. The substance of nothing rains onto the bed of our universe’s stars and planets, humming her blind music. As a child, I begged my mom to let me run through the sprinklers in our front yard. I loved the hissing sheets of music that washed over me and my sister and my brother. We wound in circles around our lawn, like galaxies, like cosmic tumblers filled with a whispering heaviness and jars of dark matter. III. THE ELEMENT OF AIR

Circling a cemetery calls a memory of names out of me. The stones ask me to lend them my voice, only for a moment they say. I let them speak the names sketched onto their grave bodies. The stones give sound to the unreal, and the air absorbs this music to push to another portion of the earth. Maybe on some other terrain, on another planet perhaps, quickness, the wind, and a voice materialized in a name. Up from the dark matter, a music folded from a memory. Astrophysicists have also been searching for a particular name, waiting for its electromagnetic music to reveal itself from the air. WIMPS or weakly interacting massive particles are one of the contenders for what dark matter is. Otherwise, the substance is nameless because it’s not observable. Dark matter does not emit light, and it does not exude energy. Still, scientists search, reading names from pages scribbled with numbers and nothing. The wind gives them nothing. Should we expect the wind to loop back through our

Living Waters Review

lips? Singing stones only go so far in a universe measured by darkness and what it is not. Air is awash with sound; it cannot be escaped. It also cannot be understood. Mathematics lies within the music of a shoe tapping gravel, the rhythm of fresh flowers slipping back onto the earth, put to sleep on the bed of a tombstone. We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to grasp the science to breathe within the sound of someone waking up to a ceiling of daylight, calling out a name. You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to understand your name, all the wind requires is that you listen. IV. THE ELEMENT OF FIRE

We are trapped in rapid expansion. The universe grows larger and larger more quickly than it has in the past, increasing with the unknowable. Bodies burden the earth beneath the casing of the cemetery. With death, she expands. Electric fire surrounds the outskirts of the graveyard. In the darkness of matter, the lamps glow. For whom the lamps glow and guide, nothing is certain. Perhaps some caretaker of darkness props herself on a concrete bench, trying to connect the dots of the lives underneath her toes. In a gold mine of South Dakota, similar journeyers are guided by the fire of discovery. Among many other unique and unprecedented locations anticipating answers, LUX or the Large Underground Xenon dark-matter experiment is looking for the substance of dark matter. Still, no experimenters have been wholly successful in locating this matter which is only known as what it is not, namely baryonic matter, the familiar physicality of our universe. Despite the impenetrable thickness of this dark matter, scientists continue their wandering. Their sweat crystallizes into droplets that swell as the universe does, and they pin their eyelids open with manic fingers waiting for a light they may not be able to comprehend. Lights freckle the cemetery, showering pulsing, musical life onto the scraps of grass below. Underneath, matter similarly dark, unfathomable, disintegrates as fire dulls into the skin of the earth. We emerge from the dark matter, fingers inflamed, remembering a time when death was a song and life a tree.

Spring 2020

Creative Essay 59

Panama Jesse Koenig

Swamp-groggy crocodiles on teeth-infested lake vision of a boardwalk of faces exiting waters to a wild tribe mystery rabid roosters, mad melodies

Poetry 60

faithful family born bound to hopeful huts kids playing soccer in the dust howling trees wave down the canal slinky arms extend from a speedboat a banana slice fed to the walkers of the trees

Living Waters Review

The Things I Heard in Lake Trout Bryce Langston

he stillness of the water gave the impression that it was frozen. If it were not for the small ripples made from our gliding along, it could have been mistaken for a giant sheet of glass, a window to an unknown world beneath us. The orange and yellow in the oil-pastel sky was slowly sinking, overtaken by a thick, darkening blue which Venus and Sirius poked two pinholes through. My hand rested on the cool surface of the boat’s gunwale as I turned my head and observed the quiet scene. Across the lake, the woods in which my brothers and I had played paintball years ago still stood; to the left were the clay roads I tried drifting through in my old truck; to the right, the first house in my neighborhood. It was a family tradition to go Christmas caroling via boat ride. Usually, we were on my grandfather’s pontoon, traveling across Lake Lotela while our collective weight caused the floor to flirt with the water level. This year, we found ourselves in my cousin’s boat, moving slowly through the waters of Lake Trout, and fewer in numbers. It was that odd time of transition in which the people who used to be the “kids” were now in college, married, working full-time jobs, living in another country, or starting their own families. My grandmother sat opposite me, entertaining her 1-yearold great-grandson, Grady. Many summer days had been spent at Lake Trout in my childhood. The waters were more turbulent then, and the sky brighter with the midday sun that reddened our faces. My brothers and cousins rode inner tubes pulled behind our grandfather’s old ski-boat, flailing as waves launched them into the air. Sometimes I stayed behind on my

Spring 2020

aunt’s beach, watching the boat grow smaller as it sped to the other side of the lake, the sound of the engine disappearing. But when I put my head underwater, its muffled whining began ringing in my ears. I was fascinated by how far water could carry the sound, and yet how strange things sounded beneath the surface. My grandmother held Grady in her lap as the engine grew quiet and we drifted behind someone’s house. A couple walked out of the back door. My family whispered to each other, deciding what carol to start with. I looked towards my aunt’s beach, where we had come from, wondering what I would hear if I stuck my head underwater. Maybe the whine of the ski-boat engine still lingered. Maybe the echoes of days when we were all much younger existed on the other side of that liquid window, fading into silence. I turned to face the couple and smiled courteously. Suspended above the depths of Lake Trout, the belly of our boat dipping beneath the surface, my family and I began singing into our neighbors’ backyard.

Creative Essay 61

Water Lily Catherine Lu

Watercolor 62

Living Waters Review

The Sound of Three Wingbeats and What Follows Brynn Richer

don’t understand how people can start a story with a date. When something comes up in my life, the first thing I think of is not, “Quick, what’s the date? Add it to the calendar!” How do people pinpoint the exact moment something nicks the smooth surface of life? I can tell you that I was wearing brown New Balance play sneakers my mother said would hide mud better since upstate New York was a soggy marsh bemired with pine needles tucked into the cold earth with a comforter of dead, fallen leaves. The air had smelled of unashamed lake water, and the dampness was so thick you could swim in it. And because brown sneakers were cheaper. That was always a bonus. The date becomes less important when all you remember is it was the time of year where leaf skeletons litter things like an aluminum dock that gets pulled from the almost frozen ground to slumber on dry land until the speedboats and jet skis stop shivering. I was old enough to know that the maple trees with blue tubing for syrup lost their leaves in the fall while pine trees did not. I was young enough to picture the lithe, clustered pines as snobbish ladies, upturned noses red from the air, pulling their needled boas closer to their delicate shoulders. So somewhere in there is where the date lies. You could pluck any date off a calendar, they could all be right as far as I’m concerned. Inquisitive as I was, checking under every rock for bright orange salamanders, every thorn for fat and seedy raspberries, looking at every shape in the soil for animal tracks, I never checked the calendar. I never checked because I didn’t need time to be sched-

Spring 2020

uled. I didn’t want a day-to-day look at my childhood. Every time I accomplished something wasn’t counted. No milestones were chiseled into a slate and brought down from a mountain. My family owns one scrapbook—not even half finished with baby photos of me and a whole lot of ambition that’s still waiting to be cashed in. It must run in the family, this unabashed refusal of accountability. The only thing I ever remembered to pencil in memory was the wingbeats heard over Kayuta Lake in that time of wearing boys’ New Balances and skeleton leaves. The wind was blowing for a second and the pine trees leaned in like a sort of forgiveness. The ladies in boas shimmied their ensemble to fight their shivers. Something started to glide over the canal of the lake. It wasn’t the predicted early lake effect snow coming in. It was a Great Blue Heron. I had seen dozens of them before, across the lake, on the shore surrounded by lily pads, starting a band with the toads on driftwood and the fat, skittish turtles—their croaks and rough chuckles like jazz. This Great Blue was not in the marsh. Gliding past the naked maple branches, there was enough quiet to hear the wingbeats. Every other animal had apparently heard the weather advisory and stayed under the earth except this heron. It had come into my view from the way of the lily pad marsh, its first wingbeat sounding of bouncing cotton. One. The beat of its large wings lasted a third of the peninsula consisting of pine. I could see its eyes focus on me as it beat its wings again, gaining momentum and air so it tickled the feathered ladies’ matching hats. Two. The bird’s eyes left me and one more beat of its wings left it careening over the tops of the pines and out of sight. Three. I stayed on the aluminum dock, on tip toes as if I’d be able to see where the heron had gone. It squeaked against my wet and muddy shoes. The heron gone, only myself remained to accompany the abandoned maple buckets on the trees. I stayed there for an unknown reason. For being young enough to not care if sap was on my favorite sweatshirt, or if my hair remained in the shape my mother set it in, there was an appreciation that did not apply to a specific age to be gained. Three wingbeats. No one in the world other than me had heard them. The sound had met me, given a brief and delicate princess handshake, and left. Trailing behind the heron, many wingbeats behind, followed an eagle. One of these I had never seen before. Its

Creative Essay 63

Creative Essay 64

white head did not turn to look at me. Its wings did not need to beat to make a streamlined exit, continuing straight into the mouth of the lake. There was no sound, there was no breath that exited my lungs. Cashed in on that moment were hundreds of pricked fingertips by protective thorns of blackberries. And several hundreds of devouring those protected clusters. Paid in blackfly bites and sore aching welts from the itches. Sacrificed fresh lungs that became coated in extra DEET bug spray were given for this moment. Stale food given to sneaky paws belonging to raccoons at night and shelled peanuts given to chipmunks tipped the scales of favor for a moment of maybe four seconds. None of it was scheduled. No experiences were tamed in one-by-one-inch boxes. No late arrivals or early comings. No plans, no ambitions, no expectations in my back pocket or in hand. None of it needed to be.

Living Waters Review

The Backyard Stump Bryce Langston

it had been ready to fall since winter spring was of no use to its rotten trunk holes scarred the bark where intruders had infested, permeated, sickened— taken what they wanted and left He came with an axe sharpened by judgement, swung with righteousness and met with the crumbling of a corrupted, brittle body it pleased him to see it topple, break into fibers and woodchips on the grass rings so thin they remain unseen, but then more inward, dark and thick from wet seasons when children would climb on strong limbs— joy, without the knowledge that life decays at the center, a split passageway to a time before when a diseased seed opened its coat— and further, to a time when its ancestor was crafted by God, and it was good.

Spring 2020

Poetry 65

Incident Taylor Gaede

Poetry

PROLOGUE:

EPILOGUE:

a man

because there

winds up

are no endings,

watch

one

hands,

day

counting

unwinds

down

on the old manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s watch

66 PLOT:

SEQUEL:

time swells to fill

who said

empty

his story

pockets

was ever

until

finished?

it tears finite stitches

Living Waters Review

Umbra Viventis Lucis: Hildegard of Bingen Brooke Stanish

t’s true, what they say—the life of a nun wasn’t always the exalted vision and glowing orb of the cathedral ceilings crowning our covered skulls. Forty years set into stone as if my very flesh would drip into the monastery walls; forty years of a single window glazed over, an unfeeling earth; forty years of illness and disembodied days spent in a cave creaking empty. And still, the music grew up from the slits of stone covering the floor as if it had been planted beneath the monastery long before we felt like balancing the world on our little finger. My eyes blew up with the sky when I was young. Migraines. Impenetrable, beating migraines and a vision. For a second, God was all of the earth to me. A quiet fire bled from my eyes. I didn’t know what to do. I was three when I felt it and I was five when I knew I had heard from God, I knew that I was burning, but there was no stream in which I could rush in and peel the fire back from the pores of my skin. At eight years old, I was given to the monastery and at eighteen, I became a nun. I lived with the burning until I confessed it years later and then at forty-two I wrote them down because God told me to. And then the music, always the music which blew across my writings of cosmic visions and transcendent reveries. I thought it was odd at first, allowing sound to unfurl from my lips and pulsate through my stony cavern and the echoing unnerved me, unraveled me. An openness and a cold, blue fire caught quickly in my hands that day and I held onto it like a blade of ice, a lightning bolt, a knife. The other nuns loved the music, too, of course. And yes, it’s also true that I was rather strange in the way I led

Spring 2020

them. Their hair loosened longingly down their backs in divine color—mahogany, grey, strawberry, flame, yellow, the sky between the stars. And there were flowers too: violets, irises, roses encircled their heads as halos birthed from the earth. The monks didn’t like it one bit, of course, but what else would you expect? We were women and we were singing about God and we were happy. An overwhelming green bedecks the earth from which we’ve been alienated for so long and to which the music returns us to, the creases of God on the planet. We are all of us the garden and the blade and the dirt. They asked me to exhume the body of a man who had been excommunicated from the church, but how can a human wrench back from God what He has already taken and transformed into the dust of the ground and the echo of the songs I play when I’m alone? Naturally, I refused. Life has been a short fire, but I would like to continue burning. I walk backwards into a vision of colossal wooden doors, a woman’s hand outstretched towards mine, a thick, heavy covering placed over my head. Through sound, my feet move quickly back along cobblestone steps and into the vision of a child who caught fire one day while she was lacing a bundle of lilies for a crown. And you probably wonder why I’m telling you all this. I guess I’m still trying to piece together a few charred notes of music, I’m still trying to listen to the song of fire and the crackling melody of a little girl burning.

Creative Essay 67

Time Nathan Nettles

Mixed Media 68

Living Waters Review

Quantum Entanglement for Runners Brooke Stanish

An inquiry into running and quantum entanglement via the relations between System A and System B.

SYSTEM A:

ho we are, we remember in motion, in entangling ourselves in the quick sighs of the earth. Being is a tricky thing that fingers try to untangle, and breath attempts to unwrinkle—a motion unknown until set into motion. And yet people still wonder why individuals run. Truly, it’s a question I ask myself every morning, the pale sun dripping through my window. I untangle my laces to retangle them again, this time the right way, and wonder: why am I doing this? Various propositions attempt to drive running into a coherent formulation of inevitable reasonings and inarguable proof, but still the results are elusive. I chase the air I exhale as I run, in a vain attempt to rebreathe my own body, heaving with remembrance. Running escapes confinement as we escape ourselves— quickly, secretly. We hide behind our own hands, blinded, yet still trying to trace the lines of our palms. SYSTEM B:

In motion, I discovered quantum entanglement. I can vividly recall the first time I heard of the experiment in which physicists monitored dual collections of atoms, allowing them to remain in a quantumly entangled state for a whole thirty minutes. My weathered sneakers screeched to a stop on the sidewalk; my head jilted backwards in laughter. The sun spilled its heat across my shoulders, freckled from my runs and my

Spring 2020

usual treks to the public library. Quantum entanglement is one of the thorniest, most ambiguous concepts within quantum physics. Each time she hears a physicist draw near, she hastens her pace and flies behind corners guarded by mystery and mathematics. A wanted woman, she defies understanding. Put simply, quantum entanglement occurs when two particles, mere inches or millions of miles away, retain tangible impacts on one another. Measuring the spin of one particle determines the spin of the other. An observation made of Particle A determines the state of Particle B, no matter how far apart those particles may be. In order for two particles to be entangled, they must be created at the same time and place. Though infinitesimally small and invisible to the human eye, the quantum world has entangled physicists in its web, in its labyrinth of numbers and incomprehensible thoughts. SYSTEM A:

The soles of my calloused feet are the only things that exist in this world of motion, quickening mortality. Beneath glazed heat, I am here and nowhere all at once. Running stretches humanity across the curved presence of the earth. It entangles individuals with the one who was before they were. There’s something so palpable about running. Every particle of my body sings, screams in disunified harmony. I’ve been asked why I run, why for so long, why so often? My lips withhold the secret that only my body knows when it finds itself again, picked up along a gravel road, wilted but alive. Most people know that exercise increases the flow of endorphins to the brain. In addition to this, the brain also emits a protein called the Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) which also aids in reducing stress, increasing mood, and repairing memory regions in the brain. The body knows this, so it tries to whisper its secret only realized in movement, in motion. Running propels the body forward in an act of creation—a hand falling across a canvas, a page. Motion creates newness. Who I was seven miles ago is and is not who I am seven miles hence. Running entangles us in ourselves, it unravels us from the self.

Creative Essay 69

SYSTEM B:

Creative Essay 70

Characteristically, Albert Einstein was the first to encounter the quantum phenomenon of entanglement in his 1935 paper. Wary of his own discovery, he termed the finding “spooky action at a distance” and was unsure of how to react to the element which inevitably unsettled his theory of relativity. As a result, he proposed that two quantumly entangled particles must retain some hidden information, a secret code which concealed the outcome of their spin and their relationship. Uncharacteristically, he was wrong. Instead, entangled particles retain an undefined, random spin state. Only upon observation could the state be measured and related to that of its counterpart particle. The particles know each other, but physicists cannot know them. Only when set into measurement, into motion can quantum entanglement begin to unravel the mystery of itself. Much to my own dismay, this facet of randomness inherent in quantum entanglement disqualifies such a finding to lead to the creation of a system of teleportation. If one particle some distance away maintains a tangible impact on another one, then maybe someday, on some sphere of human experience, teleportation may be accomplished, right? Not really. Though performed on larger systems of particles, quantum entanglement still only pertains to the quantum world of the infinitely tiny and imperceptibly miniscule. Albert Einstein was afraid of what he found. Still, in fear, his body drew him towards something he knew he must know, a discovery hidden beneath sheets of scribbled numbers strewn across his desk. SYSTEM A:

Running forward propels the mind backward into itself, into memories drenched in lavender and gold. Motion extends itself into every crevice of the mind, searching out every crease in the canvas of the earth. Entangled selves find each other sweating and in tears from forgetting what it was, is, will be to be human—a fact found in motion. Various memories bloom through the spaces of my brain as I run, and I hold them tight like flowers in my fingers. I hold them like the little weeds that grow in my neighbor’s lawn; I used to bring them to my mom when I

was young enough to confuse weeds for flowers, refuse for gold. She smiled, told me no different. Eventually, I discovered the truth, only I don’t remember how, or when. By now, my running sneakers, my beloved Brooks, are worn and weary from treading miles of road, sidewalk, rubber, dirt. Every morning, I tell them, “One more time.” Opening my door, the breath that morning had been holding tight for so long, at last, leaks in. I enter silence. Moving towards motion, I leave one part of me, still twisting from maroon bed sheets for another, cutting through the quiet like a dove, like a knife. SYSTEM B:

The speed at which light runs is unparalleled beneath the sun. Calculations of quantum entanglement confirm this to be true. With this in mind, the quantum concept of entanglement is believed to hold the key to reconciliation between general relativity and quantum mechanics—the visible and the invisible. The fact that the state of one particle impacts that of another upon its observation regardless of its position in space and time is groundbreaking, if not eternally incomprehensible. Oftentimes, the motion of discovery is circular. As soon as we think we draw towards something definite, the discovery shakes her head, laughs, and turns away. We follow the dripping of her laughter down spacious halls and corridors carpeted with vain illusions and false conclusions. Still, we obey the motion of our bodies and search and search. The selves we meet are and are not the same as those we left when we started. Both are delicately entangled in a mystery only known through its own entangling. We run away from and into ourselves who were and are still yet to breathe beneath a tearless sky, an unconquerable earth. Movement is humanity untangling herself from the cords she ties herself in. Our bodies crave a motion which calls us back to ourselves when we belonged to the dirt and the craters of the earth—entangled, human.

Living Waters Review

Virtue and Indecision Eden Prime

If we could grow words from our skin

the same way (that large organ) prickles when

we sense the world falling

out of place in

our presenceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

you could say exactly what my sensations are screaming but we are made mute by indecision, and virtue pins us by a cuff and chain.

Spring 2020

Poetry 71

Dove & Skull Sarah Hahn

Ceramics 72

Living Waters Review

Up to Heaven Goes a Songbird Brynn Richer

When songbirds die, they lie in the corner of church vaults. Choirs comfort their fallen messenger. Worries flit from beneath feathers. Delicate song remnants loosen from their pigeonholing. Chippings of oil & candle soot rock the warmest lullaby. Their last rite a sigh of content.

Spring 2020

Poetry 73

Say it in Spanish Sydney Mantay

I beg him “Please, just say one word. Any word!” Silence and his brows turned in tell me no, again I close my eyes and put my fingers to my own lips trying to create phrases with the language he never taught me with his tones and inflections daydreaming of what his wisdom could sound like

Poetry 74

his English voice is slow and raspy maybe his Spanish voice would be like my grandfather’s dense and serious or like my grandmother’s mysterious and overwhelming I lean back into my memories to a moment when he forgot I was watching I can smell chimichurri and steak watching his slender profile with his rough nose protruding from sharp freckled cheeks wait—I hear something a quiet strum building Ah I sit on the stairs of that moment in my mind out of his sight and not ready to leave the scene a sink full of greasy dishes the earthy aroma of herbs and meat and the sound of my gentle father listening to Spanish guitar

Living Waters Review

When Highways Become Roads Taylor Gaede

y father and I traveled together every Saturday, driving the hour stretch between home and his job in Tamarac. Each way, we talked. Sometimes, conversation cruised smoothly down a straight road or gently curved around bends—like driving on the highway. Other times, however, our conversation reduced to a road in the city, confined and constricted, surrounded by one-way streets and blaring horns and bass-beating music. Those highway conversations have convalesced into memories that are pleasing but always softly slipping. They are overrun by the possibility of what if. What if I had said—what if I had mentioned—what if I had told: and each of those what ifs would end with wonderings about my father’s response, his reaction. Too easily, those conversations are muted by cranking up the volume of the music, for music has a way of drowning the insincere and suppressing the troubling. But the small-road talks. They cauterize the brain in remembrance. There are no doubtful what ifs plaguing me, for I have presented them with uplifted hands, confused and lost and unable to loosen the straps of the burden that has clung to my back. Unforgiving in my confession, but seeking forgiveness all the same. In these moments, the background music cannot silence us. Only the pulsing bass shakes our rib cages, stirs our hearts, and squeezes our lungs—until our words chip away the newly-laid asphalt to find the old rural roads beneath.

Spring 2020

Creative Essay 75

Monologue from a Farm Eden Prime

Creative Essay 76

hen you visit, I’ll take you down the hill too—there is an old schoolhouse at the end of the road near our farm. When I pass it on my way to work, around seven forty-five every morning of the week, it winks at me through the trees. In winter it wears a coat of fresh snow, swirling around its foundation like a shawl. I never attended school there; in fact, it hasn’t been an operational schoolhouse for nearly sixty years. When the weather begins to warm, and the slush on the roads turns to mud, I have to drive extra slow in order not to get stuck in the bend just before the old place. Once, my car slid just enough that I almost hit the front steps. Since then, I’ve always been extra careful. I wish you could come and see all the ice and know what that’s like so you’ll be ready, but that’s alright. You’ll know soon enough. Spring operates slowly up here, and sometimes it feels like it ought to be midsummer before things really start to green. In late May we go out behind the schoolhouse on the walking trails to hunt morels. There is an oldness to the little park back there, and it smells like the duff where the mushrooms grow, all alive and full of singing—but instead of children at recess, the sound is of the robins and their low-throated calls. July rolls around to reveal the greenest trees and the loudest bumblebees. The farm is busy then, and the schoolhouse sits at the bottom of our hill, watching visitors come in the morning and leave before dusk— tired and with a few dozen eggs or some jams bouncing around on the back seat. That’s when you’ll be here so you’ll understand soon enough. When you visit, you can feed the ducks and then we can walk down and pick wild flowers on the road. The best ones are by the schoolhouse.

Living Waters Review

I Heard an Old Song Richard De La Rosa

The smell of nostalgia took me somewhere new. And for the first time, I questioned the sound. How did you get here? “I grew up.” How did I get here? “You grew up.” What road did you take? “The one we all travel.” Where am I now? “Far from where you started.” Did you take me here? “No, I simply made you remember.”

Spring 2020

Poetry 77

Title Author

Poetry 79

P.O. Box 24708 • 901 South Flagler Drive West Palm Beach, FL 33416-4708 www.pba.edu • 561-803-2000 Spring 2020

Living Waters Review 2020

Articles inside

Virtue and Inde ision

Quantum Entang ement for R unners

Mono ogue from a Farm

Say it in Spanis

UmbraViventis Lu is Hi degard of Bingen

T e Ba kyard Stump

T e Sound ofT ree Wingbeats and W at Fo o s

T eT ings I Heard in LakeTrout

He W o Has Ears

A Steri e Song

W at Matter Sounds Like in t e Dark

T e Impairment

T ose W o Do Not

Counting God

T eVine

T e Sound of a Lone y Note

You Have a Lot ofTa ent for S omeone so Purp e

S e Cried as I Sang

F ee e-Lined Universe

Sma ness

A Memory of B a k Ho es

Se f Portrait

Ninety Nine Cent Wisdom

To and From

Rifts

Broad ay Bakery

Stati

T ingsT at Fo d

P eiades

Symbol of Living