Waldorf Literary Review, Vol. 15, 2021-22

Produced annually, Waldorf Literary Review endeavors to further the intellectual and artistic conversation at Waldorf University by providing a public venue for the strongest, most vital creative work submitted by students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other members of Waldorf University and Forest City communities.

Waldorf Literary Review is edited, designed, and produced by Waldorf University students in CWR 490: Literary Editing. It is printed by Bookmobile in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The magazine is made possible by the generosity and support of Waldorf University and its associates. Thanks to all our contributors; we appreciate the opportunity to showcase your talents. Thanks also to the high school seniors and juniors who contributed poetry and prose for our ninth annual Top of Iowa Conference Creative Writing Contest.

The top winners are selected annually by the staff of the Review.

General submissions are welcome during the fall and spring semesters, particularly November and January. You can email submissions to waldorfliteraryreview@gmail.com.

Here are a few criteria to keep in mind: Prose: Whether stories are fictional or real, we like strong character development and a plot with rising tension. We are drawn to reflective essays as well — especially when they circle an intriguing topic, seeing it from multiple angles. Good literary fiction or nonfiction tends to illuminate an important human experience and to offer a perspective that is not predictable.

Poetry: We like to be affected emotionally. This often occurs because of vivid, evocative imagery. Since poetry is about musicality as well, the language needs to have patterns and sound effects that contribute to a desired tone. A poem should be pleasing to the ear but not sing-songy. A poem should also be inventive in point of view, language, or form.

Art: With regard to skill, we look for a pleasing composition — that is, lines, shapes, and patterns that engage the eye. We look for a skillful use of color and texture, too, applied in a way that suits the subject. Photos are especially good for capturing reality in surprising ways, taken from unexpected angles or relying on unusual scale and proportion. And three dimensional art should offer a sense of space and tactile attraction, which is why we look for shapes that have volume and texture plus a distinctive style. All art, though, should convey something that causes us to marvel or to resonate with recognition.

For more information about the magazine or contest, please contact the Waldorf Literary Review Advisor, Professor Ryan Clark at ryan.clark@waldorf.edu.

Copyright © 2022, Waldorf University

Waldorf Literary Review Volume XV 2021-2022 Editorial Team Araneg Leon

Managing Editor

Cecelia Hemsworth

Poetry Editor

Joseph Van Essen

Prose Editor

Ongelle Schroeder

Editorial Assistant

Design Manager Murad Hazhibayev

Faculty Advisor Ryan Clark

CONTENTS Prose Charlie Blue

There is Nothing for Us Here

Zoee Pond

Coffee Stains

Dana Pioske

The Cardinal

Charlie Blue

Dear

Joseph Van Essen

Dying Light

Zoee Pond

Cardboard

Zoee Pond

Memories We No Longer Share

Zoee Pond

Elephants

Kayliegh “Kai” Wilkie Emily Elna Cooper Raina Miller Leslie Kim

Peace is in the Rain Crows My People Octopus in Seoul

Poetry Chase Bennett Nolan W. Reynolds

Tall Man The Little Things

Kobi Sadler

Unforgettable

Joseph Van Essen

Water Cycle

Joseph Van Essen

The Dwarven King

Derik Wolfe Nolan W. Reynolds

Nature’s Prayer Untitled #1

Zoee Pond

When Home Is Not Home Anymore

Charlie Blue

The Omen

Kobi Sadler

dIs pome will piss you Off,

Lydia Knudtson

Money Is the Root of All Evil

Lydia Knudtson

Mirror

Josh Martin

My Story of Worn Stone Brick

Myra Meyer

Avalanche

Myra Meyer

Shadow Hike

Madeline Taylor Alisha Wong

Demons Hong Kong: A Story of the Sea

Art Tyler Clouse Cecelia Hemsworth Ethan Hexamer Ellie Clark

Misty Mountains Darkness Enveloping Lonely Road African Crowned Crane

Sierra Kearns

Ship in a Bottle

Kobi Sadler

What’s Up, Duct?

Carlos Ruiz

LACMA

Cecelia Hemsworth

Fragile Beauty

Cecelia Hemsworth

Insight

Hannah Meyer

Living in a Fairytale

Tyler Clouse

Real-Life Snowglobe

Tyler Clouse

Red Rock Point of View

Ellie Clark

Tweet Tweet

Julienne Friday

Curved Maple and Ebony Box

Keely McLain

Breakfast: A Study of Brown

Keely McLain

Here

Keely McLain

Melanie’s Dr. Pepper

Keely McLain

Yanaka Takobo, Taito, Tokyo, Japan

Special Feature WLR Staff Warriors Writing Club

Interview with Marlin M. Jenkins Erasure Poems

Bios

Prose

THERE IS NOTHING FOR US HERE Charlie Blue - 1st Place Salveson Prize: Prose Mother’s hands are gentle in Lethe’s hair when she teaches them how to weave a braid. Her hands tremble but not terribly, as if she’s taken in a shaking breath that exhales through her fingers.

The Forest of Southern Galaxies is awfully quiet at night, the time when Starfire elves wake and walk. Lethe’s lavender eyes— such unusual eyes, Grandmother always whispers—drift toward the window in their bedroom, the one that overlooks the neighborhood. A cluster of constellations, a group of families that once made up the magnificent Argo Navis but have since lost and divided enough that four now stand where once was one.

Three, now.

The house of Vela is dark tonight.

Lethe does not know of grief yet; they are far too young. But they are a clever child, and they can tell that Mother’s hands shake with sadness, and Father’s eyes have darkened, and Grandmother mourns, and Grandfather pretends he does not, because Starfire elves don’t get along and Starfire elves die quiet and lonely.

Starfire elves don’t hold funerals. Mother says that a funeral is a concept of other elves, distant elves, elves much unlike the Starfire. Mother says that Starfire elves weave braids into their hair for remembrance, to keep lost loved ones alive.

Lethe complains that she is pulling their hair.

Mother shushes them. A constellation has died out. Lethe’s troubles are 8

miniscule in comparison. Mother repeats her instructions over and over again, whispering things like We bring the third strand back over the first, to remember the very first time we met, and we cross that over the second to remember all the good times in between.

Sweet notions. Lethe can’t help but feel disingenuous; they didn’t know anyone from Vela. And now they never will.

Mother kisses their forehead when she finishes. She looks sad, even though the braid is near-perfect.

Why, Lethe asks.

Her eyes are sad but her lips smile. An expression as disingenuous as the feeling in Lethe’s heart. You are too small.

She leaves. Lethe picks up a book they will not read, and they stare out their window at what used to be a house that glowed with the same light their own home does, the house of Carina.

The Argo Navis has been dying out for a long time, Lethe thinks. Probably as long as it has been four, instead of one.

Three.

Their fingers creep up to twist the braid.

Mother says they are too small. Mother means she didn’t want to see her child wear a braid of remembrance.

Lethe wonders what they are supposed to remember.

— Father’s voice is gruff, his hands calloused. He was a craftsman, in his prime.

Starfire elves used to come from all over Waldorf Literary Review

the Forest of Southern Galaxies to commission him.

Or so he says. Lethe has never seen him pick up a single tool, not even a knife to help chop the food at mealtimes. He sits on a plush armchair in the sitting room, and he stares at the woven rug, the ones Grandmother makes with fervor, and occasionally he will smile and read Lethe a story when they ask, but for the most part his violet eyes are haunted and he is silent.

Sturdy and silent.

But Lethe has felt the calluses on his palms well enough to know that he worked hard, once upon a time. He was dedicated. And Mother looks at him with enough sadness in her gaze that they know he must have been a really good man, for someone as wonderful as Mother to love him so much. Lethe does not think Mother loves them as much as she loves Father, but they also think that’s to be expected.

Father picked Mother from another constellation and brought her into his family.

Lethe didn’t choose any of these people.

One thing Lethe notices, shortly after the death of Vela—Father wears the entirety of his white hair in a braid that falls to the small of his back. Mother didn’t tell Lethe what a braid that big would signify.

But Father’s calloused hands are gentle when they embrace Lethe, and his eyes melt at the sight of Lethe’s smile. Father is a gruff, haunted man, but he softens himself for his child more than he does his wife, or his parents. Sometimes, when Lethe hugs him goodnight, he squeezes tighter when they try to pull away, as if he does not want to let go just yet.

Lethe wonders, sometimes, in the privacy of their own mind, if Father Volume 15 // Prose

wears his hair in a braid because Father’s soul has died. They fear, sometimes, that Father clings to them after an embrace has ended because they are the only reason he holds on.

Lethe’s father is a gruff man. But sometimes they think he is just a ghost in the sitting room. The older they get, the more they begin to understand— Starfire elves are lonely in life, just as they are lonely in death.

— In the years following, the houses all around Lethe’s home will fall into darkness, but Lethe will not add any more braids to their hair. They did not know those families, not like their mother and father and grandparents. There is nothing to remember.

But sometimes, when they look out on a dark neighborhood, a dark circle that was once the mighty Argo Navis, they can’t help but wonder if there were children in those houses. Were there children the same age as Lethe, children who would look out their bedroom windows at all of their neighbors so close and yet so far away? Were there children out there in the darkness, who wondered about the way of the Starfire, who thought about how sad it must be to live a long life and still be forgotten by the family only three trees to the left of you?

How isolating it is, to look out on an empty neighborhood and find it no different to when it was teeming with the lives of strangers.

Lethe’s mind catches on the concept of children. Are Starfire elves ever really children? In the stories they’ve read, children are bubbly and happy and a little foolish 9

but in an endearing sort of way. Lethe thinks they were old when they were born, as they have never been like the children from their foreign stories. Were the other children in the neighborhood like that, or were they innocent?

Were they sad when their families died? When they died? Or did they just look out their window much like Lethe is doing now, and wonder if anybody will remember them after they have gone?

Did they fear death? Or did death just feel like a continuation of life, another eternity of isolation?

The outside world is a very dark place.

Is it all like that, or is there light beyond the Forest of Southern Galaxies?

Were there children out there in the darkness, who wondered about the way of the Starfire, who thought about how sad it must be to live a long life and still be forgotten by the family only three trees to the left of you?

Lethe has many questions that will never be answered.

One by one, the houses around Lethe go dark with death and Lethe decides that the one lone braid behind their ear will be representative of all of them, a remembrance of the neighborhood that once was.

A remembrance of people they have never met and now never will, a remem10

brance of what it felt like to know that there was a world beyond the confines of their little home.

— Grandfather and Grandmother go together. Grandfather does not wake up one morning, so Grandmother fetches one of her many, many knitted blankets, and she lays down beside her beloved, covers the two of them in the woven blanket, and she does not get back up. Mother is beside herself, but Father doesn’t even seem to blink. His hair is already braided; what more does he have to lose?

Eventually, Mother pulls herself together, and, after adding two braids to her growing collection, she calls for someone to take Grandfather and Grandmother down to the forest floor, where they will be buried. We go to the Earth when we die, she tells Lethe in a wobbly voice. We return to her because she gave us a home in life, and so will she in death.

Lethe weaves two more braids into their hair, but for the most part, life continues as it always had. It all feels so meaningless. They’re only nine, and already the world is so very dark. What is the point of a night sky if there is no starlight to guide oneself by? What is the point of a Forest of Southern Galaxies if nobody notices when the stars go dim, dark, dead?

There is nothing here for us, Lethe tells Mother one day, watching her prepare that evening’s meal. Father is sitting where he always is, staring at the wall instead of the woven rug, as if the rug saddens him too much to look at.

Mother stops chopping vegetables long enough to shoot them a questioning glance. What?

Waldorf Literary Review

Look outside. Look at the darkness, Lethe says. There is nothing for us here.

Nothing at all.

This is our life, Mother replies, resuming her task. This is the way of Starfire elves.

This is only loneliness until death, Lethe points out.

Mother does not dignify their words with a response, but Lethe does not need her to. It is hard to believe in what the foreign books label joie de vivre when, as far as Lethe can tell, there has never been any joy in the Forest of Southern Galaxies, not since the creation of the universe. Maybe not even then. Maybe the Starfire elves were not joyous when they were given a homeland; maybe they wept for this damnation that had been gifted to them, a condemnation to darkness and despair when they asked for home and happiness.

Perhaps this is not a homeland at all.

Perhaps this is Hell.

Are we dead?

Mother stalls. She does not look up. A broken sob reaches Lethe’s ears, bringing their attention to the distraught expression on Mother’s face. No, Lethe. We are still alive.

Lethe would like to say that they could not tell. But they think that might be too cruel.

— Lethe learns the truth of their world when they are twelve years old, and Mother hands them a worn, leather-bound book. There is no title on the cover, but the first page boasts CASSIOPEIA, OUR QUEEN & TAURUS, OUR CREATOR. Lethe learns that Starfire elves are a divided people, doomed to isolation from the very Volume 15 // Prose

start, when they could not agree whether to worship the queen or the creator, the mother or the father.

Lethe learns of centuries of civil unrest bordering on war, decades of skirmishes and fighting and murder until finally Cassiopeia ruled that all constellations be divided into star systems, never to interact with one another for as long as they should live.

There is nothing here for us, Lethe tells Mother one day, watching her prepare that evening’s meal. Father is sitting where he always is, staring at the wall instead of the woven rug, as if the rug saddens him too much to look at.

Mother stops chopping vegetables long enough to shoot them a questioning glance. What?

Look outside. Look at the darkness, Lethe says.

There is nothing for us here.

Nothing at all.

This is our life, Mother replies, resuming her task. This is the way of Starfire elves.

This is only loneliness until death, Lethe points out.

Hundreds of years of isolation, all because they could never understand that they all held love in their hearts, enough to fight for, enough to die for.

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Mother says that the Argo Navis divided because of a battle before Lethe was born. She says Father had a brother.

She says that Lethe must be careful, if Lethe wants to live to be as old as Grandfather.

Lethe tells her that they do not want to spend seven hundred years alone. Mother sends them to their room.

The trees do not make very good company. The house has fallen so silent in the past years, as if the loss of Grandfather and Grandmother took the very last of the wind from Mother’s sails. She tries, but Lethe hears her sniffling at night when she thinks they are asleep. She puts on a brave face for them during the day, smiles through the meals and chats up a storm about nothing of importance during downtimes, but she stifles sobs in the late hours of the evening after Lethe has gone to their room for the night.

Mother cries when she thinks Lethe is asleep.

Lethe rarely sleeps.

The trees do not make very good company. The Forest of Southern Galaxies is very quiet, especially so high above the ground. Perhaps the high tree houses where Starfire elves make their homes are a tactical advantage, but so high up where the woodland creatures are not nimble enough to climb, one feels like nobody else in the world exists. The world within the Forest of Southern Galaxies is very dark and very quiet and the trees do not make good companions, so Lethe stares at houses that once were and imagines that this is Hell, after all.

Sometimes, when Mother is crying and Lethe is supposed to be asleep, they stare at the ceiling above their bed and feel quite 12

blasphemous, because they resent not only Cassiopeia but Taurus too. How dare Taurus give birth to a people so lonesome as that of the Starfire elves? How dare Cassiopeia decree that Starfire elves were never to see each other, in an effort to curb the infighting?

How dare Cassiopeia and Taurus play a part in such a miserable existence?

Sometimes, when Mother is crying and Lethe is supposed to be asleep, they stare at the ceiling above their bed and feel quite blasphemous, because they resent not only Cassiopeia but Taurus too. How dare Taurus give birth to a people so lonesome as that of the Starfire elves? How dare Cassiopeia decree that Starfire elves were never to see each other, in an effort to curb the infighting?

Lethe rolls over onto their side, staring out the window at the way the trees dance in the breeze. What it must feel like to dance, they think. How joyous an existence a tree must live.

The trees do not make for very good company.

— The house of constellation Volans arrives late in the night. Only fourteen years old, Lethe is not strong enough to hold up a bow and a quiver of arrows. The Waldorf Literary Review

quiver nearly pulls them down to the floor, but Mother puts the bow into their hands anyway, and, crying, she presses a kiss to their forehead. All my love.

Lethe cries too, confused and terrified because Father is standing, holding a bow and arrow in his withered arms, and he looks so grim he must already be dead.

Mother wears no armor, but she grabs the sword off of the wall above the mantel and steps out onto the rope bridge that connected Carina to Vela, once upon a time. The door shuts and the world is silent, for a terrifying moment. And then there is the sound of an arrow set loose, the sound of a blade piercing flesh, and a distant thud.

The house is darker, suddenly. Lethe sobs, allowing Father to shove them into a closet off the main hall, clutching the quiver to their chest as they wait for him to return, wait for light to flood their vision as he opens the door and pulls them out and pulls them close, pulls them into a safe and loving embrace because they think that Mother just died and that’s— That’s not supposed to happen. Not yet. Not before Lethe has taken a spouse, not before Lethe has produced an heir, not before Lethe has a family and a promise that the constellation will live into another generation.

The fighting is not loud. It is not a raging battle—there are no roars of aggression, no clashing of weapons. It’s just another house coming to finish what it must have started ages ago. Because Volans, Lethe remembers, was a piece of Argo Navis a long time ago. Volans has been exiled for as long as Lethe has been alive.

Which, in all fairness, has only been Volume 15 // Prose

fourteen years. In the face of possibly seven centuries of life, fourteen years is a fraction. Plenty of time to stew and plot and wait, patient, for each and every light around Argo Navis to dwindle into darkness until only one candlelight flickered in the dark night, until only Carina remained.

Lethe does not know how long they sit in the closet, waiting for Father to come rescue them. Hours, likely. Days, possibly.

Maybe even a week.

But when they push the door open, the house is impossibly dark. As if they have only a candle to light their way, Lethe can hardly see three feet in front of them.

It’s only fourteen years of never leaving the confines of this tree house that keeps them from tripping, only fourteen years of calling this place home.

But it’s almost entirely dark now, which means that Lethe’s is the only light keeping Carina in the sky— Which means that Carina is dead— Which means that Mother and Father— Slaughtered.

And for what? A queen? A creator?

Would either of them have wanted this?

Would an artist want to watch his masterpiece ripped to shreds? Would a mother want to watch her child be killed before her eyes?

Four families once made up the Argo Navis.

Lethe finds themself sitting before Mother’s vanity, staring at their white hair and wondering how one little braid could ever be enough to remember their sweet Mother, their sad Father.

One by one, Lethe watched the lights go out in the Forest of Southern Galaxies, 13

watched Vela and then Puppis and then Pyxis, disappear from the night sky.

The forest is so dark outside Lethe’s window. The trees make such terrible

Slowly, hands trembling as if their

company, mocking Lethe with the free-

shaking breaths exhale through their fin-

dom to dance, with the jubilee and gentle

gertips, Lethe reaches up and takes a large

breeze that make their lives so pleasant.

chunk of their hair, divides it into three,

This forest is not a homeland. This tree

and then begins to braid. Down to the

house is not a home. This is prison. This

ends of their hair, ties it off with a small

is eternal damnation while they are still

piece of twine, starts the process over

alive, a condemned existence from the day

again on the other side of their head.

they took their first breath.

Grandfather, Grandmother.

Mother. Father.

Cold hands press against the glass.

There is nothing for us here.

Judge’s Comment: Dana Yost Award-winning newspaper editor, poet, and author of the novel Before I Get Old

Written in an understated style, which gives its poignant story more power and complexity. There’s mystery we share with the main character, which is effective. The story does what good sci-fi should do: translates events and people from another world/another time to something that tells us about the universal, about the human condition.

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Waldorf Literary Review

COFFEE STAINS Zoee Pond - 2nd Place Salveson Prize: Prose The worst thing I ever did to you was say, “It’s okay, you can go. I’ll be alright.”

It is also the best thing I ever did to you.

The worst, because it was a lie. The best, because it made you feel okay with going.

And you needed to go.

They say that a person’s death doesn’t happen to them, it happens to everyone they left behind. I used to think that was bullshit. I get to live another day. You don’t.

I clung to that thought at your funeral.

It kept me functional for a while, if only because I didn’t have to feel it that way. It hasn’t been working very well recently.

I find myself in all the places you used to go, just to see if I will find one of those little pieces of you I never got to discover.

Searching for some bit of you I never got to unlock in all of our time together. I like the idea of there being more of you out there. Maybe someday I’ll find all those pieces of you. I hope I don’t.

I went to the coffee shop you used to work at when we were in college. Not the pretentious one on Sheridan with that asshole owner, the cozy one on Osceola — the Volume 15 // Prose

one I would visit you at on your breaks.

I didn’t know who the barista was. It felt wrong to be there without you. I ordered your bullshit barely-coffee with four types of syrup and two types of creamer. It was gross, and how you ever choked that shit down is beyond me.

Some kids were sitting at our booth, you know the one. You carved our initials into the windowsill and I called you a hopeless vandal. You used to write the specialty board in dollar store chalk, but you made it beautiful every week. We got up, and as we passed it, you stopped and wrote our names in the brightest yellow (the one you never used because it was too bright, it didn’t match anything else).

I asked you why you used that one if you thought the color was heinous, and your eyes sparkled in a way I don’t think I’d ever seen when you told me, “We match each other. It doesn’t matter if the world around us thinks we fit into it. You deserve the brightest colors for the way you make me feel,” and I laughed and told you how cheesy that was, and then your lips were on mine and you tasted like bad decisions and hope and sin and redemption all at the same time. You always were an oxymoron that way.

This stupid coffee shop that you and I used to love feels just a little bit wrong now. Everything looks the same, but it’s like everything has been moved just two inches to the right. I don’t know how to make it go back to how it was. I don’t think 15

I can without you. I don’t know how to tell those kids that they can’t sit there, it’s your booth. So I don’t. Instead, I walk away knowing there is a piece of you out there, even if I am the only one who knows about it.

I never understood your compulsion to mark up the world. Writing your name, my name, stories, favorite quotes, page numbers of the dirty scenes under the jacket in library books. I used to think it was so ridiculously strange. Now I’m just grateful there’s a little bit of you still around. Fractured little segments of stories you’ll never get to tell again. Why the dorm building you lived in your freshman year of college specifically won’t allow lizards (all other pets are fair game). How the door to the fridge in our first apartment got dented. How the carpet on the third stair on the way up to the second floor at work is a different shade of gray than all

of the others. Every part of the world you changed that will never be the same again, just existing without a story now. Drifting in the wind. I hope you aren’t just drifting in the wind.

Everywhere you’ve ever been, even the places you only went once, will always be yours. It’s just who you were. Those places are changed forever. So am I. I never used to go to the library unless I was with you.

Now I find myself ducking into the stacks every time I walk by our library, looking under the jackets to see if this book is one you touched.

I find myself in all the places you used to go, just to see if I will find one of those little pieces of you I never got to discover.

Searching for some bit of you I never got to unlock in all of our time together. I like the idea of there being more of you out there. Maybe someday I’ll find all those pieces of you. I hope I don’t.

Judge’s Comment: Dana Yost Award-winning newspaper editor, poet, and author of the novel Before I Get Old

Very solid, with use of specific memories to make us feel loss, hurt. Also has nice ways of alluding to friend’s death without getting specific, so it trusts the reader to understand what the speaker already knows.

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Waldorf Literary Review

THE CARDINAL Dana Pioske - 3rd Place Salveson Prize: Prose My dad just told everyone else in the van the bad news. My breathing stopped.

Everything, the world, stopped. I hear my mom start crying from the driver’s seat. I haven’t really slept in 24 hours, but I’ve never felt more awake. I look over at my brother and he looks to be in a state of shock, just like me. But then I see him open the van door and run out, slamming it behind him. He needs air.

At first I thought that it was just a bird that would stick around for just a little bit and then leave at some point, that there was nothing special about it, but it’s been here this whole time.

Through every season, every storm, every holiday. It disappears occasionally, but it always comes back.

The next step is not talking about how devastated we are, but it’s about what our plan is going to be next. Do we abandon our trip to Disney World, turn around and head back to Minnesota right away, or do we check in with our family and see what the plan may be? I don’t hear much of this discussion between my parents. I don’t process the information due to my lack of sleep. I start to feel like I’m floating out Volume 15 // Prose

of my body. Suddenly my brother is back sitting next to me, and, at some point, my mother switches places with my father, so he is now driving. We are still driving to Florida, so I go back to sleep.

When my family finally gets down to the house we are staying at in Florida, we unpack the car. I take everything up to the room I was staying in. Everything is such a blur. I see my dad cry while talking to my aunt on the phone, and that is something I will never forget. He’s apologizing for the fact that we are so far away while she and the rest of our family are back home, together, going through such a horrible time.

My aunt tells him not to worry, that they haven’t made any decisions about when a funeral would be or anything. It was too early. My aunt was not even in Minnesota when the incident happened. That’s when I had a thought and almost got physically sick. My other brother is on a school trip down to Florida as well when the incident happens. When he finds out, he’s also been driving on a coach bus for over 24 hours, sleep deprived. He is away from his family, around a bunch of people that he couldn’t confide in about the situation. That night I cry myself to sleep, as I suspect my other family members do as well.

My family ultimately decides to stay down in Florida until, at least, our family back home makes some decisions. The day after we found out the awful news, my family decides to go to Epcot because that is a park none of us have ever been to 17

before. A different aunt facetimed my dad while we were at the park and showed him my cousin’s crash site. I will never forget that image. The grass is black because it had caught on fire. I can still see the tire marks from his car going into the ditch.

It’s like I’m there, I feel myself almost start floating again. I could almost smell the fire. Just from knowing about the fire, I think about how awful his last moments might have been. I know there’s nothing I could’ve done or could do now to help if I were closer to home, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling guilty. The rest of our family is back home going through the worst thing imaginable, and my family is on a sunny vacation in Florida. How selfish and inconsiderate.

— I am in a tree when I see a car drive up to the house. Who is this? I watch them for a bit, and I see a family step out of the car. Parents, and two kids, a boy and a girl. They look sad. They’re not talking, and their heads are down while they walk.

Well, what do I know? I’m a bird. It’s pretty late at night when they get to the house, so the next morning I decide I’m going to check on them. I try to fly into the house, but I hit an invisible shield while trying to get in. What was that? I try to get in a bit more but give up after someone comes into the room. She looks confused, so I fly at the window again and she rushes out of the room. She comes back in with an older woman and they both try to get closer to me, but I feel a bit startled, so I fly away.

After a few minutes I fly back, and the older woman is still in the room. She comes towards me and tries taking a picture of me, and I let her.

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After about a week of me looking into this family’s house, I hear the older woman say something interesting. She says that she’s going to name me Carter.

It seems to fit, so I don’t give it a second thought and just continue sitting outside their window. These past few days, I’ve noticed that anyone who is in that room seems to immediately lighten up when I fly to the window. They are happy to see me. Even the older man stopped giving me confusing looks when I flew to the window after a few weeks.

There’s a quote that says “When you see a cardinal in your yard, it is a visitor from heaven.” I genuinely believe that Carter has been with our family for three years through that bird, and I am still really upset we had to move and leave him behind. Nonetheless, I’m glad I could have something to feel that connection for so long.

I’ve been flying to this family’s windows for over a year now. At least, that’s what I’ve heard, because whenever I hear them talking, that’s what they say. I don’t know why I kept coming back, they didn’t even have any bird food at the time. Oh. I guess I spoke too soon, because the older man is carrying a huge bag of birdseed outside. As soon as he puts some in the Waldorf Literary Review

bird feeders, I fly to them and start eating, not even waiting for the man to leave. He seems surprised by this, and he just stops and watches me, and I let him.

— I look out at the bird outside my window. It’s been three years since my cousin died and since this cardinal showed up at our house. At first I thought that it was just a bird that would stick around for just a little bit and then leave at some point, that there was nothing special about it, but it’s been here this whole time. Through every season, every storm, every holiday.

It disappears occasionally, but it always comes back. My whole family agrees that there’s something special about this bird.

Even my dad thinks that there’s something special about him. It showed up at our house right after an extremely traumatic loss happened for our family, and it has stuck with us ever since.

Now, my family has decided to move to a different house. I don’t want to leave

this bird behind. I genuinely think there is a connection between this bird and Carter.

I’ve thought about it, and I think there is a high possibility that this cardinal could follow us to our new house, somehow. I hope he does. He genuinely feels like a part of our family at this point. There’s a quote that says “When you see a cardinal in your yard, it is a visitor from heaven.”

I genuinely believe that Carter has been with our family for three years through that bird, and I am still really upset we had to move and leave him behind. Nonetheless, I’m glad I could have something to feel that connection for so long.

Right before we leave, my dad decides to dump out the rest of the cardinal birdseed he’d picked up a month earlier. He puts some in the few bird feeders and bird houses that were on the property before we moved in. The rest he dumps on the ground after the bird feeders and houses are full.

Judge’s Comment: Dana Yost Award-winning newspaper editor, poet, and author of the novel Before I Get Old

Inventive, courageously trying out three narrators in three sections of a short story. The three voices give us different perspectives on the same death and its aftermath. We experience sorrow, frustration, bewilderment along with the narrators. Especially inventive to tell part of the story through the voice of a cardinal.

Volume 15 // Prose

19

DEAR Charlie Blue - Honorable Mention: Prose I think our relationship was good. I do.

I do.

I think our relationship was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again, I don’t think I’ll ever look at love the same again, I don’t—I don’t think we ever stood a chance, which is really sad, because I used to think I was going to marry you. Do you know how that feels?

Do you know how it feels to look back on a beautiful rose and see venom dripping from rotten petals?

Maybe you don’t see it the way I do.

Maybe you do. I don’t think it matters. I don’t think it ever did. I think we are who we are and we were foolish to ever think we would work together, foolish to ever think that people can change. We knew better.

I hate you. I love you. I love to hate you and I hate that I love you. But sometimes, when I’m trying to fall asleep, I’ll stare at the ceiling and think about cereal at midnight and ice cream dates and holding your hand in the hallway because, damn, we didn’t care at all. Not even a little bit.

Nothing mattered. Nothing ever matters.

It’s on those nights that I have the dreams I wish I could forget, dreams of something I’ll never feel again, not like I did for you. I still can’t figure out if it was love. I can’t figure out if I want it to be.

But still. Sometimes I dream.

— I remember when you showed up for the first time. That’s a lie. You’ve always 20

been in my peripheral—but we ran in different circles, and one does not challenge the status quo in a small town. But I remember the first time I saw you like that, when I saw you walk down the hallway with all your buddies, laughing and shoving each other and talking like friends do, and I remember how my eyes caught on your smile and I thought, I don’t think I’ve ever smiled like that in my life.

Maybe that’s why you piqued my interest. Maybe I was fascinated. Maybe you were just a way for me to figure out how a person could smile like they held the sun behind their teeth, melting their tongue.

It doesn’t sound so intoxicating when I think about it now.

I remember how my eyes followed you down the hall, I remember standing at my locker for much longer than I should’ve, much longer than I needed to because I was just—stuck. Lovestruck, a sap might say. But I’m not a sap, and I don’t think it was a good kind of stuck anymore. I used to. But I’m older now.

If I was a hopeless romantic, I might’ve called it love at first sight. But it wasn’t love. I was obsessed with the image of a smile like nothing I’d ever seen before and you didn’t even know I existed. Love doesn’t come from that.

At least, I had always assumed you didn’t know. Could you blame me? We’d been in the same classes since kindergarten, and we hadn’t exchanged so much as two sentences.

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I’d later find out that you looked at me, too, that you were fascinated by the way my eyes crinkled when I laughed, but I didn’t know that at the time, and if I didn’t know you and I didn’t know you knew I was alive, how could I possibly be in love with you?

I’m in denial about a lot of things, nowadays.

I went home that day and wrote a lot of poetry about smiles and eyes and silhouettes in crowded hallways. The cut of cold locker against palm, the indentation it left when I finally remembered myself, remembered to grab my math textbook and go.

I think the worst part was that my heart didn’t get it. You left me like I was nothing, just went back to your old life and your old buddies and everyone hated me so much more than before, and all I wanted was to kiss you. To hold you. To be held by you.

Poetry about you. How gay. Sometimes I don’t blame your buddies for tormenting me. I was never subtle about it. My therapist says that I’m not supposed to resent myself for being honest with who I was. I think she’s full of shit—how could I not resent myself? If I was quieter, if I was better at hiding, if I was—well, if I was anybody else, none of this would’ve ever happened.

Sometimes, when I think about the first time I thought about you like that, Volume 15 // Prose

when I think about the smile the sun the silhouette, I wonder if I regret it. I feel like I should.

I should’ve done a lot of things.

— I try not to dream about it. My therapist says I’m supposed to keep a dream journal, because it troubles her that I have night terrors I can’t remember, but I don’t actually write anything truthful in it. The night terrors are a lie, anyway. I don’t have any night terrors and I don’t ever forget them. I just wish I did, so I lie about it because I’ve gotten really good at lying.

I don’t think it matters. She’ll think I’m fucked up anyway. I like to blame you for most of it, but the truth is that I’ve always been like this. You, too. That’s what happens when you grow up like we did, hated and terrified all the time. You’re bound to have residual effects.

That’s therapist talk, too. I like to regurgitate a lot of her words. It always seems so smart when I’m sitting on that couch in that office looking at her gentle face.

But when I say it to myself it just sounds stupid, or obvious, or entirely unattainable. She tells me to look in the mirror and name something about myself that I like to see. But when I try, I don’t see anything at all. I just wonder if I’m even there.

I heard that you left town after high school. I’m happy for you. I’m happy you went to college to pursue whatever dreams you stopped sharing with me. I want to be proud of you, but I just resent you. Resent you for leaving, resent you for leaving me.

I know my therapist is right, but I don’t care. It’s easier to stew in my misery because that’s what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years.

21

I like being miserable. It’s comfortable.

Sometimes I wish I was dead.

But that’s not your fault. I don’t think.

— On my worst days, I remember the best of us in startling clarity. I remember high school. High school was nice when you were by my side. Nothing was really different, but I didn’t care about all the shit the world gave because you told me not to. I never understood that—you spent so much time hiding, but you told me to be confident, to stop caring about the venom the world forced me to swallow.

But walking through the hallways felt like nobody else existed. I lived for the moments when you would hold my hand between the math and science wings, counting down the minutes to the next time you would press a chaste kiss to my lips behind the cover of a locker door because we were bold but not that bold.

You learn to walk the line very carefully when your neck’s ensnared in a noose.

It’s hard to think about how happy I was with you when I think about what happened. How am I supposed to remember innocent dates at ice cream parlors when I know how it ended? When I remember being soaked to the bone, when I remember pneumonia, when I remember tears so thick and real and painful they didn’t exist?

Yeah, I said it. I never cried for you.

I used to look in the mirror and beg myself to cry. Just one tear, I would plead.

Anything to prove that I’m still human.

That I ever was. You took a lot of things from me when you left. I never thought my humanity was one of them.

22

It hurts to think about now, but in a numb kind of way. In the way it hurts when you’ve been in a traumatic accident, when your body is beyond repair, but for some reason, you can’t feel anything at all. In the way, it only hurts because you know it should, not because it actually does.

There’s that word again. Should. My therapist says I shouldn’t use that word.

Maybe she doesn’t hear the hypocrisy the way I do.

Sometimes I wish I was in an accident like that. I wish I had amnesia. Wish I couldn’t remember any of this at all, because it’s all seared into my brain in ways I’ll never be able to rid myself of, ways that poison my way of thinking and living and breathing and walking around like a functioning human being because you know what really fucking sucks about small towns?

It’s not just me who remembers everything that happened.

— You know, I think maybe the worst part about all of it is that I still can’t figure out what happened. I can’t figure out if any of it was real and you’re just a liar, or if it was all one big joke, date the outcast because it’ll make your buddies laugh to know how far you had me up that line. I think I swallowed the hook. I think I can still feel it in my throat, from time to time.

Or maybe the worst part was how quickly it all fell out from under me. I loved you so much, it was ridiculous. You told me to be brave so I did, you told me to smile so I did, you told me you loved me so I did too, you told me to jump and Waldorf Literary Review

it wasn’t until I hit the water that I realized what you did.

Did you want to kill me? Was that the goal? Did you want to take my stupid little heart and rip it out of my chest and run it over with your stupid old Chevy and leave it in the dust to bleed?

Or are you just a coward? Was it all just one big façade? Did you need me to make you brave? Why did that stop being enough? What changed?

I used to wonder what I did wrong. My therapist says I shouldn’t. I say it’s a valid question. Was it me all along? Did you not love me as much as you said you did?

Was that the only way you could think to get out?

Sometimes I wish I was dead. Most of the time I wish you were dead.

I think you are despicable. I think you have no spine. I think you are the biggest coward I have ever met.

What kind of person strings someone along, only to play it off after months, claiming it was never real to begin with?

What kind of person kisses me and holds me and loves me and changes me, in ways I can never be changed back, and then says it never meant anything at all?

I could see it in your eyes, you fucking liar. I could always see it in your eyes. You loved me. I know you did.

Which is why I have to ask. I have to know. I need you to come back to town so I can punch you in the mouth, and then I can demand you tell me why you would do something like this, you asshole.

My therapist told me anger was a way to avoid dealing with the problem. I told her to fuck off.

Why did you do that?

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That was really cruel, you know. I probably won’t ever be the same.

I’ll never be able to love anybody else like I loved you.

— I think the worst part was that my heart didn’t get it. You left me like I was nothing, just went back to your old life and your old buddies and everyone hated me so much more than before, and all I wanted was to kiss you. To hold you. To be held by you.

To tangle our fingers together in the hallway, as if to tell the world that I could stomach their hatred because I had your love to drown it out.

Now I have nothing.

Does the world hate you too? Do you hate you?

Do you feel anything?

Or do you just—live? Did you move on and settle down and pretend you didn’t leave me the way you did, pretend you didn’t break my heart so bad I’ll never recover?

Pretend you’re a good person. Pretend you’re worthy of the kind of love I gave you. Pretend you’re worthy of that smile.

Pretend you aren’t who I know you are.

Pretend you didn’t take me apart and piece me back together again, know me in ways nobody else ever will, pretend you aren’t— Hated.

But you don’t have to pretend to be the hater, do you? You don’t have to pretend to be the bully. You are the bully. You always have been. I gave you a pass, because it wasn’t you who shoved me into lockers, and it wasn’t you who tried to throw me off a bridge because I’m disgusting.

No, you weren’t the one holding me by the arms and legs while I kicked and screamed and begged for help.

23

But you were there.

Maybe that’s why it had to happen the way it did.

Because it wasn’t you who wanted me dead. But you didn’t want me to live, either.

—

You’re pathetic. Is it you or is it me I’m talking about? I get mixed up, can’t tell if I hate you or me more. Do I hate you for doing it or do I hate me for falling for it, do I hate you for being a fucking coward, or do I hate me for being a fucking idiot, do I hate you for hurting me, or do I hate me for loving you?

I think you were the worst part.

Scum.

I want to take back everything I ever gave you.

— We were always doomed, weren’t we?

You weren’t comfortable with yourself, not like you lied. You hated yourself in ways I couldn’t fathom until you made me, until you dumped me and told everyone it was my fault. Told everyone I had tricked you, blackmailed you, that I was the monster they always said I was.

God, they were all so fucking stupid.

But, then again—so was I. You were a cruel motherfucker, when I look back on it now. I mean, you hear stories about it, but you never think you’ll 24

be one of them, you comment things like that’s fucked and I’m sorry and then you remember that it happened to you, too, and it feels different. Feels damning, makes your hackles rise, makes you want to lash out and scream that you aren’t a monster a freak a f— Your internal monologue chokes. You still can’t say the word.

You’re pathetic. Is it you or is it me I’m talking about? I get mixed up, can’t tell if I hate you or me more. Do I hate you for doing it or do I hate me for falling for it, do I hate you for being a fucking coward, or do I hate me for being a fucking idiot, do I hate you for hurting me, or do I hate me for loving you?

But it wasn’t all bad. It’s all tainted now, of course, tinged by the knowledge that you would one day stand in the mob and call for me to be burned at the stake, poisoned by the fact that you would stand there and watch your buddies try to kill me and you wouldn’t say a goddamn thing, even after I gave you my everything— But in the beginning, you ate cheerios with me at midnight—Honey Nut, of course—and in the beginning, you took me to the ice cream shop during the slow hours and in the beginning, you held my hand and stole kisses between classes and you didn’t care what the world thought of you.

Of us.

In the beginning, there was an us, and that was nice.

My therapist tells me I shouldn’t dwell on the past, shouldn’t dwell on the wrongs people have done to me, so I try not to think of it. But I can’t ever stop thinking about it, can’t stop feeling the ghost of your hand in mine, can’t stop seeing Waldorf Literary Review

your stony expression every time I close my eyes, your unfeeling eyes, and your unsmiling face when I begged you to help me and you did nothing.

When I told you I loved you and you said you loved me until you stopped.

When I held your hand in the hallway and you would tell me to be brave because it didn’t matter what the world thought of us.

When I looked at you and I saw the sun in your smile and I wondered what it felt like to be that happy.

I don’t think you were happy. I think you were burning alive, but it’s easier to smile than to ask for help.

One day you will come home. One day I will ask you why you are a liar. One day you will tell me the truth.

But I think you will have fallen victim to the world by then. I think you will be dead by then.

I think I will be dead by then.

— I think I was the worst part.

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— I think our relationship was the best thing that ever happened to me. I think it was the worst thing that ever happened to me.

I don’t think it should’ve happened to me at all.

My therapist says that’s progress.

— You loved me. I know you did. And you think I loved you—but I never cried for you.

Not once.

Perhaps you will come home. Perhaps you will find that this is not your home— there is no place for you here, not anymore.

Because your place was me.

And you killed that.

Coward.

— I don’t love you anymore.

My therapist says that’s progress.

25

DYING LIGHT Joseph Van Essen There are no good gods. Life and death.

Light and dark. War and peace. They all go mad in the end. No matter their domain, no matter their beginning, no matter their world, no matter their intent, every god breaks. And when gods break they take their worlds with them. The strongest being, the most resolute wills, they all crumble beneath the crushing heel of time.

When that happens, someone has to come pick up the pieces. Anubis decided death was greater than life, Tyr brought about eternal war, Apollo just wanted everything to be beautiful. In the end, it was my responsibility to kill them. But I had thought to never come to this world.

I walked with slow, firm steps across what had once been verdurous green fields, but had now been reduced to great open plains of churned earth and flickering flames dying as quietly as their birth had been spectacular. Ahead of me, crouching in the cooling embers of a dying world is a short matronly woman robed in cloth once as white as the freshly fallen snow, but now are stained with ash.

Crows’ feet and smile lines crease the corners of her eyes from years of gentle living and laughter. Those smiles are gone now, the tears over the destruction she had wrought taking their place. Primordial energies swirl, whipping wind and dust around her as great heaving sobs shake her body. I stop a few feet away from where she sits, and watch her for a moment. Memories of memories run 26

through my mind. Images of a younger woman smiling and laughing surrounded by people who love her fill my thoughts as I say, “Hello, Hestia.”

The rushing wind and sobs stop suddenly as Hestia’s eyes shoot up to meet mine, “Alastor ... Y-you’re here ... I-I need your help. I messed up, I ...” She pauses, a pensive look crossing her face replacing the sadness that had been there before.

“Oh, gods it’s all a mess.” Her eyes drop from mine to the ground before she continues, “But I can fix it. I can fix all of it, I just need time.”

I shake my head knowing the lie I have heard a thousand times. I cross the remaining distance that still separates us and set a hand on her shoulder. Hestia looks up suddenly at my touch as if she had forgotten all about me. Tears gather at the edge of her red-rimmed eyes again as she begins to tremble. I watch her for a moment musing over what I know I have to say to her.

“Where are your people Hestia?”

Hestia froze the trembling that had shuddered through her body disappearing as her eyes hardened, still locked with mine. “They abandoned me, Alastor. Do you know how that feels? I created them, me. This world and all of its people were my progeny and they just ... forgot me.”

Her voice breaks as she finishes her statement and the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes finally fall into well-worn tracks down her cheeks. “How could they forget me?”

Waldorf Literary Review

An unexpected lump forms in my throat forcing me into silence as I watch the tears stream silently down Hestia’s face. I know Hestia’s story all too well, it’s a surprisingly common one among the gods. As time passes, people simply move on. They find different answers or create different gods, and eventually, no one remembers who had made them. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times, and a thousand times I’ve killed them without a second thought. So why do I feel this way now? I shake the thought from my head as I finally force out the words. “What happened to them, Hestia?”

I decided that if they could not remember my name, then they had no need of their own ... I made them love me and fear me. I showed them my power, the power that I held over them, and everything they knew. I showed them what I was capable of so that they would know. So that they would remember me, and in doing so ... I destroyed them.

Hestia froze again, her eyes narrowing in anger, the flow of tears coming to a sudden stop as she brushed my hand off of her shoulder. “What do you know about ruling a people, about what it takes to preside over an entire world? You’re just an executioner Alastor, Yahweh’s dog meant Volume 15 // Prose

to keep us in place.” Her voice falls into a harsh whisper as she continues. “They were everything to me, everything, and I should have been everything to them.” She pauses, some of the anger leaving her face as she relives a long-lost memory.

The scenes of her memories fill the air, scenes of Hestia forming this world from its very core. First nothing but molten stone, then earth and air and water. Then she gave her breath into the earth she had made bringing it to life in her image, and they loved her. Hestia led her people well.

They built great cities and temples in her honor, they knew no strife, no war all because of her. “I was their mother. Their god. I wanted to save them. To rule them.

They loved me, worshiped me, and then they forgot me.”

She finally broke eye contact with me to stare at the ground silently for several seconds as the scenes around us changed. The cities and temples she had helped to build turn to ash as war and hate consume her once gentle people, destroying the compassion she had seeded there, and as that compassion faded so did Hestia. She disappeared from their histories and they replaced her with other gods fueled by hate.

Hestia seemed not to notice the show around her as she continued, “I ... I couldn’t take it. I just couldn’t stand it, Alastor. That they wouldn’t know my love and wouldn’t love me back. Even as they destroyed everything we had built together, and each other. I loved them, and it killed me inside. So I showed them.

I showed them my love, my power. I... I had to.” She continued, a note of hysteria entering her voice, “I had to make them 27

see. I could end it. The war. The suffering.

I could end my pain. If only I could make them remember me. They would know my love, they would know peace, and I would know their worship.”

There are no good gods.

Life and death. Light and dark. War and peace. They all go mad in the end.

“What happened to them, Hestia?” I say again a quiver entering my voice as I speak. I keep my eyes on Hestia, watching the different emotions warring across her face as the cultivation of her madness plays around us.

“I destroyed them!” Hestia screamed her powers returning, whipping the air into a frenzied rush, then shattering and tearing away the ground beneath her until there is nothing left but the earth on which I stand. Hestia floats into the open air in front of me, her arms outstretched and power glowing from her palms and in her eyes. “I decided that if they could not remember my name, then they had no need of their own.” Her voice explodes in my mind, causing me to clutch the sides of my head in pain as it reverberates through me. I can’t move to stop her and the force of her power overwhelms me. How was she doing this? Hestia never possessed this power before. As I slowly recover from the pain, the scene around us changes again.

Hestia appears before people gently at first, showing them a scene similar to what 28

had played out before, the world forming and her giving them life. Trying to show them who she was. And no one believed her. They denounced her as a heretic, refuted her godhood, and finally, Hestia couldn’t take it anymore. She showed them her true power, the power I felt now, tearing apart what they had built from the blood and bones of the world she had created. “I made them love me and fear me. I showed them my power, the power that I held over them, and everything they knew. I showed them what I was capable of so that they would know. So that they would remember me, and in doing so ... I destroyed them.”

The power and light fade from Hestia as she settles back onto the ground in front of me, tears staining her cheeks again. Every sign of the anger and power she wields, gone. “I killed them, Alastor.

My children. My loves. They’re all gone.

Everything I ever strived to create. Everything that is good in this world. I broke all of it.” Tears flow freely down her face as sobs begin to shake her body once again, “All I ... All I wanted ...”

“I know Hestia,” I whisper, gently stepping forward with slow inexorable steps that I can not explain to wrap my arms around her heaving shoulder. I have seen it far too many times. Everyone forgets eventually, everyone leaves their god behind. And what is a god with no followers?

“I know how you feel. How it must have felt after all those years to be left alone. For them to forget their mother. I know. But you have to let go now.”

“No,” Hestia said, her voice suddenly regaining its firmness. “No, I can still fix this ... I can still rule them.” Wind and Waldorf Literary Review

power begin to rush around us again as her voice rises to an unnatural volume.

“Stop, Hestia,” I say firmly, not releasing her from my grasp despite the rising force around us. “You have to let go. It’s time to move on.”

The wind cut off as suddenly as it began. As Hestia’s sobs return again, she presses her face into my chest. “I’m so sorry Alastor.” she forces out between sobs, “I’m so, so sorry.”

I say nothing as Hestia continues to cry into my chest, her tears wetting my shirt.

Eventually, her sobs become less frequent, and her tears slow until they stop completely. After a moment she pulls away and looks

Volume 15 // Prose

up at me with red-rimmed eyes. We watch each other silently for a moment before Hestia asks, “Was I a good god, Alastor?”

I force a sad smile to slowly spread across my face before I nod and answer, “Yes, Hestia, you were one of the best.”

She smiles back at me, her eyes alight with genuine happiness for the first time since I had arrived, before closing her eyes with a sigh.

There are no good gods. There never have been, and there never will be. Light and dark. Life and death. War and peace.

Executioner and those he executes. We all go mad in the end.

29

CARDBOARD Zoee Pond There is something to be said about the first breath of air after drowning for so long. No matter how shitty it is, the first thing that doesn’t taste like cardboard and loneliness when your head pops above the surface of the water is the best thing anyone has ever tasted. I have never had anything as good as the unsalted almonds that I ate at the end of October during the worst year of my life.

After long enough, though, cardboard and loneliness don’t taste so bad. You get used to it and it becomes almost nice, and almost nice is better than nothing. There are some things we just can’t help but get attached to. People become everyone around them, over and over and over again. When I wake up in hotels, I make the garbage complementary coffee first because my mother does. Immediately after that, I look for somewhere to get a real cup of coffee the way my father does.

My favorite thing to do is find an art store and buy a pen because my best friend in high school liked when I brought them back for her. We haven’t been friends in years, but I still buy them. There is a cup of them on my desk. I stare at them sometimes, on the bad days. They do not stare back.

30

There is something to be said about the first breath of air after drowning for so long. No matter how shitty it is, the first thing that doesn’t taste like cardboard and loneliness when your head pops above the surface of the water is the best thing anyone has ever tasted.

Waldorf Literary Review

MEMORIES WE NO LONGER SHARE Zoee Pond The sunset is full of marigolds the same way my father’s grave smells like stargazer lilies long after they’ve died, leaves decomposing on petalless stems. With the last of the physical gone, only ethereal memories dance across the backs of my eyelids. I can almost feel the heat of his coffee seeping through his favorite mug when he hands it to me for a sip. On the porch in the early weekend light I listen to him tell his stories.

The ones he made up were very good.

Tales of bullets and biscuits, crazy creatures, winding roads. He could pull stories out of thin air. The best ones, though, were the ones about his life, the ones that were true. He didn’t talk about his past, except in the early mornings when I would sit on the steps and he would sit on the rickety swing. His voice would fill the empty space between chirping birds and the creaky hinges of that damn swing. When I read

I often wonder if he did that with my mother after I left, or if he just did it for me. I hope he did. I hope he didn’t. Standing in the harsh light of mid-day amongst the fields, I take comfort in knowing how much I loved him. In the uncertain safety of the dark bedroom, I regret how little I told him so.

the stories in the notebook I found in the attic last winter after his funeral, the scent of the soft dirt I used to dig my feet into in anticipation before he started talking feels almost pervasive.

I often wonder if he did that with my mother after I left, or if he just did it for me. I hope he did. I hope he didn’t. Standing in the harsh light of mid-day amongst the fields, I take comfort in knowing how much I loved him. In the uncertain safety of the dark bedroom, I regret how little I told him so.

Volume 15 // Prose

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ELEPHANTS Zoee Pond Summertime means sticky hands and soft eyes. I remember when my sister taught me how to peel an orange into the shape of an elephant. Swearing softly as the cottony pith ripped just a little bit wrong. How we would sit outside in the sun letting our hands turn tacky because neither of us were willing to go inside and wash them. My palms feel dipped in honey just thinking about it.

She taught me to swim. I used to inch around the edges, terrified if I lost my grip on the edge of the pool the shark waiting patiently below would strike. Our father told me I was being irrational and gave me that look adults give children when they want to yell at them but don’t. On the way to the pool that day, she taught me as many shark facts as she knew so they would be cool instead of scary. I let go of the edge.

She was the only one who ever knew how to smooth the jagged edges of my voice when it was filled with rage. She would tell me to think of the softest shades of green, feel the leaves of mom’s sage beneath my fingertips.

When I tripped in the coop and got chicken shit on my favorite jeans, I cried in the grass until she came out of the house and handed me an orange. I don’t think she even thought about what she gave me, just something to hold while we talked about dad’s marigolds out front until my tears dried.

The first time I cried after she moved out, citrus sat on the tip of my tongue and 32

I didn’t know why. It wasn’t until years later when someone asked what my favorite fruit was that I made the connection.

Sometimes I wish I had told her she made me feel safe when we were younger.

I hope she hears it in the sage I planted by her front step when she bought her first house. I hope she still sees elephants when she smells oranges.

She was the only one who ever knew how to smooth the jagged edges of my voice when it was filled with rage. She would tell me to think of the softest shades of green, feel the leaves of mom’s sage beneath my fingertips.

Waldorf Literary Review

PEACE IS IN THE RAIN Kayliegh Wilkie Peace is in the rain, it is the cool wet blanket out a window, a blanket from anxiety.

Even in the most desperate of times, it calms.

She hadn’t played piano in months, strength to tickle the ivories hadn’t coursed her body. Even if it had, it could never laugh like it once did, it couldn’t sound so sweet. Rainy days would be an accompaniment to her dancing fingers across the white keys.

It’s blasphemy. They can’t be dead, I’m alive. How are they dead? Did God do this?

Did She look down and decide that I should be the one to live when I am the one who sinned? They are being punished for my own idiocy. Why is everyone looking at me?

They were my parents and I’m the reason they are dead. They are Abel and I am Cain.

It was still raining when Hazel’s eyes opened. The past relived itself in her mind.

Her brother, who was like a coursing river of emotion, dried up by grief, tried to get back to full volume. Her sticks and stones got swept into it, but it was never as it used to be.

It was blue, splashed with red, limbs pulled down heavily. My body was restricted up. Thick liquid dripped into my eyes.

A tightened seat belt prevented my wiping the blood from my eyes. God did not want me to see, She did not want me to see the aftermath of my sin. Shattered glass like broken pieces of sky littered the ceiling of the vehicle, footsteps like giants pounded on the snow outside. Red and blue reflected off the shattered sky, followed by sirens like screams.

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Eyes opened; the river stood in front of her. Words were tossed, but nothing caught.

She gestured to her work and he shook his head. No sound registered, laughing and talking were drowned out by an emotion that wasn’t known. Sadness, possibly.

He asked if she was okay, she lied. She saw the guilt and sadness on his face and

Why is everyone looking at me? They were my parents and I’m the reason they are dead. They are Abel and I am Cain.

moved her lunches to the band room, where eyes didn’t pry and whispering voices couldn’t intrude.

A new person sat in the room, not acknowledging her presence. She stared at this new girl in front of her, the new girl’s fingers running nimbly across guitar strings, singing a bittersweet song. She was caught, the new girl stared her down with eyes like the flash of lightning amongst the thundering clouds Lightning eyes didn’t seem friendly, but she tried, to no avail. Days passed and one day Lightning eyes disappeared from the room and the halls of the school. Days passed without her, just as she sat down to play the piano, the girl appeared in the door.

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“You don’t play violin as well as piano.

I used to be in your piano class when we were younger. I’m Mati.”

The death had not been hanging so heavy on her shoulders with Mati. She had picked up violin and she improved, although the piano seemed still daunting. From the friendship, love seemed to bloom, and to her, maybe not requited love from Mati. It helped her to not have to think about the sin.

And then, everything reached upwards towards a beautiful oil painted sky. She loved her, and Mati loved her back.

She is the eye of the storm, the blessing in my sin. God gave this to me, She gave me a beautiful distraction. Mati is Awan and I am Cain. This is the calm in the storm.

The calm before the storm, everything was a honeymoon. Until the first screaming match. Yelling and arguing about things that didn’t matter led to a red-hot mark across her face. Mati apologized. It would never happen again, she promised. And Cain believed her wife, it could never happen again, it couldn’t possibly happen again.

But it did, hitting and screaming in her face. Mati brought up her sin, which stung like a wasp sting. Eventually, it rose to a point it became too much for Cain. Her godparents loved Mati, she reasoned. They would never believe her.

I was wrong, I am Cain and she is Lilith, we were never meant to be, and I was a fool. I should have never expected something so sweet.

It was raining again, opening the window, looking out, Cain watched heavy drops hit the pond outside. Rain always held peace.

Getting off her bed, walking to the piano, she stared at it. For once, the strength 34

came back, coming back for the very last time. Jardins sous la pluie was played with a low hum. Fingers made the ivories laugh so sweetly.

She left, walking down to the edge of the dock, staring at her reflection in the water, thundering clouds overhead. A lightning flash in the distance lit up the sky like day. Cain put rocks in her pockets, stepping off with one foot, going to pull away. But something grabbed her.

Did She grab me? Am I finally paying for my sin?

She is the eye of the storm, the blessing in my sin. God gave this to me, She gave me a beautiful distraction. Mati is Awan and I am Cain. This is the calm in the storm.

Wait, I don’t want to go! It’s not my fault! It was a car crash, we hit ice! I could have not possibly known that it was icy the night of my piano recital. Help! Help!

Please, I am not Cain! I. AM. NOT. CAIN. Air filled her lungs, it consumed her skin, blinding her eyes. She fought against the water, it was shallow, yet deep enough to fill her lungs. Peace is the rain and today it calmed a mind of turmoil. As the water went silent, she realized, cold water in her lungs. She could now see.

Peace is in the rain, and I am at peace.

Waldorf Literary Review

CROWS Emily Elna Cooper - High School Writing Contest 1st Place Greater Midwest: Fiction Joanna always wanted a white wedding.

She could recall being just old enough to waddle into the sandbox sunk into the family yard, her painstakingly maintained monument among empty plastic bags and rubber tire pieces and overturned garden chairs. Mama wouldn’t notice if she took the back door and crawled underneath the hole in their chicken-wire fence to pay Ol’ River a visit. As for Papa, he would be alright with their little adventure, because buried folk never tattled on nobody.

Careful to step over a long-flattened, stained pizza box while balancing a pitcher full of muddy water in both hands, Joanna maneuvered her dirty feet with purpose over the bright pink rim of the sandbox, and from there into the carefully cultivated realm of her fantasies. Her dark brown eyes darted around to see Princess the Rottweiler sleeping underneath a sapling.

She wouldn’t tattle neither.

A comforted Joanna brushed off her well-worn overalls before sitting knees first on the sand. Only then could she make magic with her hands, molding the skin-colored sand below as if it were the Earth — and she a divine creator, hellbent on bringing Adam his first breath.

Crows called caw-caw-caw overhead, like church bells in Joanna’s mind.

She wiped the sweat off her brow and gazed down imperiously at Adam and his primitive little world. There was a conspicuously hill-shaped altar behind Volume 15 // Prose

him and another little person to his left, an identical female on whom Joanna used toothpicks to bequeath a tiny smile. But Joanna felt something unpleasant crawling around in her stomach at the sight, so she smote the woman with her thumb in much the same merciless manner as a Canaanite god. At least, Mama usually made Canaan sound like a place where all the nasty folk who ruin weddings must come on down from. Joanna had the strange idea that Mama must have seen a wedding ruined.

The dusty woman’s former likeness lay viciously smeared into the sand.

Joanna had never been to a wedding. She somehow had the feeling that she would never have one like in the pretty pictures and on the T.V., for her skin looked like the dry and cracked ground after a long drought season, neither strong dark dirt nor pretty pure sand on beaches far away.

She had the tanned skin of a field-hand.

Why should it matter? Joanna couldn’t say, as the distinct differences lay beyond her youth-glossed brain. She simply saw it in the reflection of the river and felt it when others of the same age would always keep out of kicking distance. It was a strange thing in the eyes of the world to be at the bottom of the ladder.

Maybe, Joanna thought while re-building the smited woman in a show of sympathy, everybody had their own place in the world.

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Of course, all that went out the window when she turned around to leave and saw a strange, tall man with his long, spindly fingers running deftly through the fur on Princess’s canine head. Joanna didn’t know whether to be afraid of him or the fact Princess seemed completely passive.

He laughed in her face from ten feet away. It was a hoarse sound, rasping like the broken lungs of a smoking man. “Now what in Sam Hill is that look on yo’ face all for, child? Settle down. I ain’t gonna hurt nobody — let alone yo’ dog.” He turned his head, simply laughing again as his touch made the aging animal roll pleadingly onto her stomach.

“Unca’ Emmanuel!” Joanna exclaimed, dropping the stolen pitcher and all pretense of secrecy as she waddled over on unsteady feet to the man in question.

He was no stranger, she’d realized quickly enough. The town had always talked about the man who come through when the going gets tough and the rubber meets the road. With a flask of whiskey always tucked in his back pocket and his hat tipped to all and sundry, seeing Uncle Emmanuel meant the end of your troubles as long as you put your trust in him. Joanna paid no mind to the prattle she heard about imaginary friends. Uncle Emmanuel seemed as real as could be.

“Did ya’ come on down from out of town?

You better have!”

She stood across from him with her hands on her hips, leaning sideways to make direct eye contact with the man. He waved his other hand flippantly. “Naw, naw, nothin’ like that. I just up and went on a little local trip ...” He grinned wide, 36

his big teeth set like yellow stones as he whispered conspiratorially. “I done seen yo’ Papa on the way.”

“My Papa?” Joanna stood up straight, brow furrowing in immediate confusion.

“But he’s —”

She somehow had the feeling that she would never have one like in the pretty pictures and on the T.V., for her skin looked like the dry and cracked ground after a long drought season, neither strong dark dirt nor pretty pure sand on beaches far away. She had the tanned skin of a field-hand.

Why should it matter? Joanna couldn’t say, as the distinct differences lay beyond her youth-glossed brain.

“No, he ain’t.” The man in the old-fashioned hat corrected flatly. “You wanna see ‘im? I know exactly where he is, and all you’ve gotta do to see yo’ Papa again is promise not to tell Mama.” Joanna ended up shuffling her feet with uncertainty. She didn’t know what to say. Memories flooded in of running into her Papa’s arms, when he would come on home from wherever he’d been working that day.

He never fussed on her appearance like Mama always did. Maybe he didn’t make enough to ‘get by’, maybe he didn’t put a real ring on Mama’s finger, but he was Papa all the same.

Waldorf Literary Review

Joanna felt tears well up in her eyes. “Really? I can see ‘im?” Her voice quivered, with that childish effect found among all her age who have been presented with a pony or a playset. “Please, sir!

Please show me where my Papa is!”

She clasped her little hands together.

“I promise, I swear to you I won’t tell nobody. Not even Mama!”

Uncle Emmanuel stood with a surprising amount of speed. “That’s what I like to hear! Jus’ follow me, child, and you’ll be right on the way to seein’ that old man. Can you do that?” Joanna nodded affirmative fast enough to nearly give herself whiplash, stumbling behind Unca’s long strides over rocks and over trash in the yard. She eventually had to hold his wide, flat hand to have any chance of keeping up.

They began to walk farther and farther from the house on a dirt path trodden by time, the little girl glancing back to see her family’s ramshackle home shrinking on the horizon. It was swallowed up by the trees like a tiny silver fish thrown back into a big green pond. “We heading back soon, right, Unca’ Emmanuel?”

Joanna tugged nervously on his lapels and received sickening silence in response. “I don’t wanna leave Mama an’ all my cousins behind like that ...”

She sniffled to herself before remembering why they were walking through these woods in the first place. Papa always liked to bring out a rickety old canoe, all handmade, and take her out to fish on the lake ... But not everything made sense. Joanna decided to ask of it. “Hey, Unca’.” She tugged with a tight fist on one of his suspenders and received a hefty sigh in response.

Volume 15 // Prose

He looked down from his imposing height. “Somethin’ ailin’ you, child?”

Joanna cast her eyes down and shifted her bare feet. “Yessir ... Papa wasn’t just out fishin’, was he? You’re makin’ it sound like there’s somethin’ left of him for me to see. That the fish ain’t eaten him up yet.”

Uncle Emmanuel grinned with a knowledge that made her severely uncomfortable in its breadth, Joanna able to see his eyes for the first time underneath that tilted hat. They were the heavy fog over rivers and the menacing clouds before a downpour, obscuring something underneath that chilled Joanna to her very core.

At last, with the sharp whistling of the wind and the squawk, squawk of crows all around them, he spoke lowly. “Well, there sure is somethin’ left. Look.”

By the time the girl could tear her eyes away, they were in a place she recognized all too well. The edge of the river. It was a broad thing both beautiful and ugly all at once, as generous as it was cruel.

Mama purified the water for bathing and drinking, and Joanna used it to make little smiling perfect people, but it was the same still vastness that had eaten up Papa all those years ago. Could he truly be alive and kicking to tell the tale?

“Now here come the part where you just gotta believe. Keep yo’ hand on mine, nice an’ steady. You might just walk on water.”

Joanna found that Uncle Emmanuel didn’t stop at the bank of the river. His long, long legs kept him going. She dragged her feet.

It didn’t mean anything, for he was soon walking into the river itself. “Hold on a second! Wait!” Joanna screamed. “You can’t — !” The girl was silenced when her feet touched the water, too.

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Rather than be afraid of the lonesomeness, rather than cry for help in the silence, Joanna’s questing feet carried her ever onward until there existed nothing in her world but the great expanse of water.

Quietly, complacently, Joanna sank into the depths like her Papa had all those years before.

Indeed, something else washed over her in that moment. Joanna stood in the stillness as if it had reached into the breadth of her very soul and swallowed whole every apprehension, every anxious thought, every idea contrary to what must have been perfectly normal. A shaking exhale slid from her astonished mouth.

“It’s cold ...”

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And yet she waded onward. Joanna waded and waded and waded until her feet gave way and the water lapped at her waist, an easy feat the liquid dogs found in comparison to Uncle Emmanuel, who himself towered like how Goliath must have looked in days beyond remembrance.

It was only when the water came up above her overalls did Joanna notice the giant man was nowhere to be seen. Like a whisper on the wind, he had vanished as quickly as he had come, the stranger from a by-gone age, whose culturally mandated need for assistance always went unrecognized and unpaid. His outstretched hand was little more than a memory.

Rather than be afraid of the lonesomeness, rather than cry for help in the silence, Joanna’s questing feet carried her ever onward until there existed nothing in her world but the great expanse of water.

Quietly, complacently, Joanna sank into the depths like her Papa had all those years before.

The crows were calling. Maybe, she thought at last, family ain’t so bad after all.

Waldorf Literary Review

MY PEOPLE Raina Miller - High School Writing Contest 1st Place Top of Iowa: Prose From the time I was born until I was nearly thirteen, my brother and I were always at Karen’s. She lived in Woden, a nearly non-existent town now, and we lived about 15 minutes outside of it, right between Buffalo Center and Woden, in a great big, bright yellow farmhouse.

(When I say bright, I mean that if you’re in a 5-mile radius of it, you’re not gonna miss it.) Karen was our daycare lady, however, I always feel a twinge of guilt calling her that because she’s so much more to me than that. She gave my brother and I both of our childhood bestfriends, Sheena and Carter.

Every morning we’d walk the three blocks from Karen’s house to the preschool building down the road. Karen always accompanied us halfway, as well as drug along the other ten kids she was watching, just to make sure we got there safely. Then, when it was time to move to a different school building, which was about 10 minutes from Woden, we’d have to catch the bus in the morning. Karen would walk us to the corner on the end of the block every morning with a group of nearly 10 kids at times, just to make sure we made it.

I can’t think of a more peaceful time in my life than when I was at Karen’s. She would take me to dance rehearsals during recital week. I remember being so excited when she would take me. Like one weekend, we went to a dance recital together at a different dance studio and talked the Volume 15 // Prose

whole time about how much better the studio I went to was. I think that’s what makes Karen different than anyone I’ve met before, no one talked to me the way Karen talked to me. She was the only person growing up who acted as though they wanted to hear what I had to say. When you’re five, you don’t realize that you don’t know anything, you don’t know that what you’re saying has less meaning than that of an adult, you just talk. The only thing you really do know is whether or not anyone listened and Karen did even when no one else would. “ To take children seriously is to value them for who they are right now rather than adults in the making ” Alfie Kohn Now, you’re probably thinking, it’s kind of weird that this girl’s best friend is a 60-year-old woman, but I also love Karen for the people she brought me. When you spend your entire childhood with the same few people they become family. They understand you and the things you’ve experienced like no one else can. Those people for me, besides Karen, were Adam, Carter, and Sheena. Sheena was my first real best friend. She was a grade younger than me but I can promise you that you’ve never met someone with a more positive 39

outlook on life. She was shorter, although, I was also double the height of a normal girl my age back then so probably closer to average height. She had golden blonde hair, and the only way to really describe her body was puffy. I didn’t know much back then but even I could pick up that her body movements were uncomfortable for her.

Sheena was born sick. I didn’t know it back then but her chances of surviving longer than a few years were slim. Yet Sheena made it to ten. I remember every month she’d be gone for the day for an appointment and the next day she’d have bruises and needle marks on the insides of her arms. Looking back she’d been poked more times in one day than I had in my entire life. One of the last memories I have with Sheena is of us laying on the trampoline just talking. I remember being really stressed out about having to go and get my blood drawn in Rochester.

I wasn’t stressed because I might be sick, I was simply terrified of needles. Sheena, obviously being an expert in the area, told me all the tips and tricks on things to do that could make it hurt less, like to make sure I got a needle that had a blue butterfly clip around it, and to ask them if they had numbing cream. I had cried every single day leading up to it until Sheena helped calm my nerves. She always had a special way of making me feel better, sometimes simply by watching her endure challenges that I couldn’t even comprehend without blinking an eye.

Sheena passed away on March 9th, 2014. I was 12 at the time and the closest thing I’d experienced to death was when my grandma died when I was 6; I barely 40

remember it. Learning how to live with such a close death to me was hard but it taught me a lot, and in hindsight, made me who I am. I would be a completely different person had I never met Sheena, and over time I’ve learned to be grateful for the time I did get with her rather than mourn the time I didn’t. Sheena wasn’t meant to be on this earth long but her impact on it will be something I never forget. “ There’s something about losing a friend, particularly at a young age, where it’s not something you get over. I don’t believe there’s a healing process for that. ” Chris Cornell

Sheena passed away on March 9th, 2014. I was 12 at the time and the closest thing I’d experienced to death was when my grandma died when I was 6; I barely remember it.

The first people my brother and I met when we first went to Karen’s, even before Sheena, were the Trunkhill boys. Jacob, the oldest, Adam, in the middle, and Carter, the youngest. Adam was my age so we were close while Carter was my brother’s age, they were inseparable. As for Jacob, he was just the staple piece for our survival, always keeping us in check since we Waldorf Literary Review

weren’t dumb enough to do reckless things in front of Karen or our parents. The longer we went to Karen’s, the closer our parents got, and the more time we spent with them. We spent lots of weekends together, and one constant throughout them all was ATVs.

It was a horribly drawn picture in crayon but at the top, in big red letters, was “to be a farmer with Tommy Miller.” Now, Tommy’s always been the more emotional sibling, but it was almost always out of frustration. This was the first time I could actually tell his tears were of pure sadness.

If I let myself think about it, I can almost still hear Tommy’s screams after my mom told him Carter was gone, sounds of sheer agony.

We were constantly taking four-wheelers, rangers, really anything with a working engine, out in the fields and through the woods. Since we all lived on farms, that was really the only thing to do. With all that time on them, we knew how to do it. We knew what to do and not to do, what was safe and what wasn’t, eventually our parents didn’t even worry when we got on one. However, one day, it was snowing and Carter took the ranger down to a local field with Jacob and his Volume 15 // Prose

dad, something we’d all done so many times. He hit the ditch just right that the ATV tipped over. Carter was crushed underneath and his dad and brother did everything they could to get it off, eventually managing to, but when they lifted it, he quit responding and eventually passed away in the snow.

The last memory I have of Carter is when he walked my brother home from school one night in the dark to make sure he got there safely. That was just the type of kid he was, always looking out for others. I don’t know many other 12-yearolds who’d even consider whether or not someone else got home safe let alone go out of their way to make it happen. It had been a while since I had talked to Carter at that time but I recognized his highpitched, child-like voice the instant it echoed through the house. I came out of my room and asked him if he’d like a ride back to the school to which he responded “I’m ok, I just wanted to make sure your brother got home safe.” I responded with “Well you’re practically my sibling anyway so shouldn’t I make sure you get back safely too.” Those were the last words I ever said to Carter and, for some reason, they continue to resonate with me today.

I felt guilty for such a long time for how much I struggled with his death when I knew how much more my brother was hurting. The following week, on the first day Tommy went back to school, the guidance counselor took him to her office and showed him what Carter wrote when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. It was a horribly drawn picture in crayon but at the top, in big red letters, was “to be a farmer with Tommy 41

Miller.” Now, Tommy’s always been the more emotional sibling, but it was almost always out of frustration. This was the first time I could actually tell his tears were of pure sadness. If I let myself think about it, I can almost still hear Tommy’s screams after my mom told him Carter was gone, sounds of sheer agony. Watching how much my brother changed after that made me think of when I lost Sheena.

The fact that I knew exactly what he was feeling made it almost harder than when I experienced it myself. I would have given anything to take that away from him. “ Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can ” Dodie Smith While Tommy and I were struggling with our losses, Karen was struggling just as badly. She had a very special and rare way of caring for her daycare kids as if they were her own so it hit her just as hard, if not harder than it hit Tommy and I. Just recently we found out Karen has cancer in various areas of her body.

More tests need to be done to figure out for sure what kind(s) of cancer but based

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on the different locations, she’s going to go through a lot of treatment. When I first found out I didn’t even panic the way I normally would. If you were to ask me to name one person who is the most capable of kicking cancers ass it would be the strongest person I know: Karen.

She gave my brother and me two of the greatest friends we’ll ever have, which taught us, at a young age, what we deserve in a friend and how to pick the right ones.

Sheena and Carter gave us that gift and our lives are better off for it. I wouldn’t trade knowing them for the time that I did. I wouldn’t trade feeling that loss because they are two of the biggest lessons I’ve learned so far. Their deaths have given my entire life a whole new meaning. I have an obligation to experience everything I possibly can because I know they won’t be able to. They have pushed me to live the life that I want instead of the life that others want for me. They taught me that I should do everything and anything I possibly can, not just for myself anymore, but for them. However, the person who gave me it all, Sheena, Carter, all the lessons that came with them and so much more, was Karen. There’s no way to thank someone for making you who you are but if there was I’d say it a thousand times over; thank you.

Waldorf Literary Review

OCTOPUS IN SEOUL Leslie Kim - High School Writing Contest 1st Place Greater Midwest: Nonfiction I’ve dreamed of seeing the ocean. Being landlocked in Iowa, I have never seen the vast blue waters and smooth waves, captivating admirers with a lulling calm.

Now, as we prepare for our trip to Seoul, South Korea, it is only time that keeps me away. “Do you want to study Korean before we go?” asks my mother.

“I don’t know. I’m busy. Why?” I stare out into bustling cornfields as we drive home from school. The scene is so familiar it has become a canvas for daydreams. “So you can speak and understand there.”

“Mom, I don’t know. I don’t think I need to learn Korean.”

— When we arrive in Seoul for the second time, we coalesce like moths to the light.

My mother and my siblings and I cluster under the glow of the apartment complex entrance to escape the darkness of the night. The door to the complex buzzes aggressively as it unlocks and a thin figure slips out. My mother greets her, my grandma. “안녕하세요.” Hello, she says. This I can understand.

My mom hugs grandma with politeness. There is uncertainty in the delicate way she rests her arms on grandma’s back. Grandma reminds me of those porcelain American Girl dolls I never had; her skin a pretty pale, matted with flowery powder I can smell on her jacket.

Her hair is permed into tight curls and Volume 15 // Prose

dyed so black the white roots were eradicated. If I stare closely, grandma’s eyes are glassy.

The apartment complex is towering cement. My grandparents live on the 14th floor and I have never been in a building that high. The elevator feels like it will never come back down to the ground floor. Tears bulge away from grandma’s face. No one knows what to say. “어머, 많이 컸네.” Oh my, you’re so tall now. My grandma says, gesturing to my brother. I play ad-lib with the Korean, picking and chewing on the words and syllables I recognize. My brother smiles and mumbles out Korean words about his height, like scattered alphabet soup that he can’t seem to arrange with his spoon.

Despite his uneven cadence and rough consonants, his understanding of Korean far surpasses mine. As a Korean born, who didn’t come to the United States until he was seven, Korean has been saturated in his mind since he left the womb. Unlike my Korean exposure, diluted into a mixture of household Korean and American preschool English standards.

It doesn’t really matter what comes out of my brother’s mouth, because he has a particularly soft and charismatic face that makes it easy for adults to blindly adore him, and even easier for girls to be envious of him. Maybe it’s because of his wide smile that is a bit too big for his face, or because his jaw 43

is curved like a heart, or because he has mom’s eyes, almond-shaped and kind.

I’m convinced his face is more suited to be a female than mine.

As I scroll through Instagram to pass the time, I flick through gaudy pictures of K-pop idols, mesmerized by their thinness and smooth bright skin. My brother could be an idol. I try to imagine my flat face slathered with makeup, my belly flab limping out of a sparkling cropped shirt, the fat on my thighs cinched by black booty shorts. My body seems to swell in Korea.

Grandma pulls me in as she enters the passcode to the apartment. Her voice shakes as she whispers the pin to me. The issue is, I have never learned how to count past six in Korean.

Numbers are so universal and one-dimensionally simple that it never occurred to me that I can’t count all my fingers in Korean without losing a few digits. I can find the limit of a function at an undefined point, producing a value from a point that does not exist, but can’t tell her how old I am. I want grandma to write the numbers down and we can bond over our mutual and respectable understanding of numbers like 1, 24, and 78, but in its written form, understanding is complicated. For now, I stare at Grandma’s hands as she clicks in the numbers, nodding my head to show her I’m listening.

The inside of the apartment reminds me of a minimalist Chinese tea shop.

Which is silly, but I’ve never seen the inside of a Korean apartment. There are black bookshelves that are cluttered with painted fans, plates glazed with blue flowers, little golden Buddha status, wood-carved elephants, and a photo of me, Kijune, and Hanna. A photo of us so 44

young, we were still learning where South Korea was on a map.

The first time I came to Korea there was a wedding of a cousin whose name and face is a tan blur. I wasn’t old enough to remember the ceremony or the white dress laced with fake pearls that now gather dust in my closet back in Iowa.

Once I tried to put the dress on, my broad shoulders squeezed against the stiff collar and the zipper protested against my bulging waist. I stood in front of the mirror with my arm out in front like a T-Rex playing dress-up in disbelief at how large I had become.

As we slip off our shoes and enter, my mom nudges me, “First we have to bow in front of grandma and grandpa.”

I squint my eyes at her.

“It’s just tradition.”

It feels strange because I’m this self-declared atheist, democratic socialist, who doesn’t believe in worship or the rigid confines of tradition. But I face my grandparents as my knees fold onto the wooden floor while they sit expectantly on the leather couch. Grandma keeps running her finger along the deep set cracks on the leather as though she’s been meaning to fix it for a while now.

What troubles me is that I could not confirm that the two people in front of me are genuinely my grandparents. My 3rdgrade family tree didn’t bear fruits with their name, because their names escape me, they’ve always been grandma and grandpa. I don’t know their names; isn’t that unbelievable?

As I lower my head to gaze at the floor, I want to feel our DNA communicate, tell the synapses in my brain to absorb Waldorf Literary Review

the image of their face, and store it in the “family and close acquaintances” mush of my brain. My arms flail out in front of me. Phone calls from Korea are rare and intercepted by my parents. Occasionally, when it’s New Year or one of the rare days my grandparents call us, my dad will push the receiver my way. My eyes will widen, my heart will drop, and I make a feeble attempt to shake my head in protest. I wonder how long they have waited to listen to static. I kneel and sink my head to the ground, and maybe it’s fitting that after this neglect, I bow to my grandparents like they are Gods and pray for their love and forgiveness. I am this imposter of a granddaughter. A slimy sheen of shame coats my skin as my jelly skin flushes red.

What troubles me is that I could not confirm that the two people in front of me are genuinely my grandparents.

My 3rd-grade family tree didn’t bear fruits with their name, because their names escape me, they’ve always been grandma and grandpa.

I don’t know their names; isn’t that unbelievable?

Here at the fish market, the crabs clamber over one another, and dead fish are piled like bags of sand. A store without white tiles, labeled aisles, printed price tags, or advertisements to carry on shopping carts. It’s a mess of blue and grays.

There are stations of aquariums overflowVolume 15 // Prose

ing with gray scales, red shells, and slick black tentacles. This is the closest I’ll get to the ocean as our days become packed with family reunions, hair salons, and explorations of Seoul. There is too much to do on land.

My grandma orders octopus and naive me imagines cellophane wrapped styrofoam with pre-sliced red octopus. Instead, a lady with a pink apron thrusts an octopus from the aquarium, and water lands carelessly around us. The woman handles her knife with ease: each movement is deliberate and swift. My eyes are racing to watch the dissection. I am cringing at the thought of contact. A sliver of the shiny metal slices through the air until it slams through the jelly tentacles, rattling the white plastic table. There are countless little rifts on the table that match the stroke of that knife. The octopus legs continue to wriggle as they’re tossed in a black plastic bag. Saliva builds into the pockets of my cheeks; I am swallowing down a gag.

There is no cashier. My grandmother just fingers the green and pink bills and passes it to the lady like they’re conducting a black market deal. The lady wipes her fingers on that pink apron. Her fingers filter through the bills making a snapping sound as she counts. The change is dropped into my hand. “학교 안 갔어?” Did you skip school?

She smirks.

“Ah,” I say. My tongue doesn’t feel like my own. Korean spills out in confusing curdles. The lady’s drawn-on eyebrows furrow. I watch my mother’s laughs puncture into the pause, explaining why I wasn’t in school. She reorganizes the words from my mouth into coherent 45

sentences. The lady nods and smiles. Her lips strung like a tightrope. I am so lost I might as well have teetered off. My mom leans into me, her voice is a whisper I can barely catch. “You should learn Korean,” my mom says.

My mouth tastes like brine.

Back at the apartment, a tentacle dangles from the silver chopsticks balanced on my grandma’s fingers.

When my mouth remains closed in a tight seal, she prompts the chopsticks a little closer to my mouth and prompts, “Good. Healthy.”

My nose crinkles, “Mom!” When my mom arrives she swats at my complaints and sits down at the table with us. She chats rapidly with grandma, popping the slimy octopus legs into her mouth. Occasionally my mom pushes the red legs into gochujang; the red thick paste coats it like oil paints. My mouth waters with the memory of the spicy sauce, flooding my mouth with saliva. I don’t grab the chopsticks. I just watch. My mom glances at me, pressing her tongue at the roof of her mouth, she hissed a click through her teeth. I slump in my seat and, picking up the chopstick, I dangle the octopus on my tongue. The octopus slips around the roof of my mouth. I gulp. “한국말 배워야지, 그래야 할머니랑 얘 기하지?” You need to learn Korean, so you can talk with me, Grandma scolds.

My mind is stuck in the middle of the sentence, but the conversation has to keep moving and I am already late. I regret not chewing the octopus. “학교에 다니면서 영어를 더 많이 써 서 그래요.” It’s because of school. I speak English more.

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The octopus’ tentacles grasp the insides of my stomach. “그렇구나.” I see.

I imagine it’s protesting and wriggling around, trying to find its way out. “다음에 올때는 한국말 배워서 올께요.”

Next time I come, I’ll learn Korean.

My mom and grandma step into a rhythm. Korean flows like water, pushing and pulling my fading understanding along with it.

I am watching the women eat and laugh from a distance. I am drifting in the ocean, my body slippery and cold.

Tentacles start at my stomach. They make their way to my mouth.

My mom and grandma step into a rhythm. Korean flows like water, pushing and pulling my fading understanding along with it.

I am watching the women eat and laugh from a distance. I am drifting in the ocean, my body slippery and cold.

Tentacles start at my stomach. They make their way to my mouth.

Waldorf Literary Review

Poetry

TALL MAN Chase Bennett - 1st Place Salveson Prize: Poetry Each day a new door opens.

Each shorter than the last.

The width has never bothered me, however.

Each door I duck my head, lower and lower.

At first creating a slouch, Now a permanent hunch.

Walking like a Neanderthal.

Physically shorter and shorter with each door.

Threshold after, Threshold after, Threshold crossed.

Shorter and, Shorter

and,

Lower permanently doubled over.

One day after crossing the threshold of the shortest door yet seen.

Must be this tall to pass In front of me, a sign

Judge’s Comment: Dana Yost Award-winning newspaper editor, poet, and author of the novel Before I Get Old

Exceptional poem, working both in tone and narrative as well as a concrete poem.

Well done, with irony, humor and that twist ending.

Easily attainable in my original height, now impossible with my hunch.

Shaped by opportunity, now turned sour.

No longer the Tallman, not able to rise to the occasion.

Hunched and weakened, no longer tall and strong.

Cast forever to be just short of the man you need me to be.

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THE LITTLE THINGS Nolan W. Reynolds - 2nd Place Salveson Prize: Poetry When you’re with someone for a long time, you find yourself in love with the little things they say or do.

How they crave their morning coffee, but always leave some in the cup.

Or the way they purse their lips and scrunch their face when they’re deep in thought. And when it’s over, those little things suddenly carry more weight than they did before. Something so simple becomes a constant reminder of the relationship you shared. All of the memories continue to linger.

You both carry on with life, telling yourselves it was for the best.

Hoping that one day it won’t hurt this much.

Judge’s Comment: Dana Yost Award-winning newspaper editor, poet, and author of the novel Before I Get Old

Nice, light touch to a tough, demanding topic.

It uses everyday images well, lingering on them to paint a picture of memory, then to make for contrast to tell a bigger story.

That, one day, coffee will just be coffee.

And you won’t be able to remember how they looked in that moment of deep thought. You’ll wait for the day when someone else comes around and stays long enough for you to be in love with their little things, forever.

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UNFORGETTABLE Kobi Sadler - 3rd Place Salveson Prize: Poetry

9/10 Ideas are unknown.

Victims are still unaware.

This is the day before the day we fall. The day before the day that we feel small. The day before the day that we must stand tall. The day before the day we watch the the crumbling of what we thought could withstand all. Tonight’s insights, undisclosed, frights of flights, terrorists spites, a country with right unites. September tenth is the day beofre the day that we will never be forgotten. The fresh “Big Apple, soon to spoil and taste like something rotten. These twins stand towring, such an eye catcher.

Appear to go up for miles, what a sky stretcher. So beautiful, like the Empire State Building, the Pyramids of Giza and Mount Kilimanjaro. These incredible Siamese structures can be seen from many locations, that is until tomorrow.

For now, enter the center of the World Trade Center where we sent him and we sent her to be a representer and a mentor. To teach during the nearsighted dates.

As we are The United States.

Judge’s Comment: Dana Yost Award-winning newspaper editor, poet, and author of the novel Before I Get Old

Had to be a difficult poem to write, making a moving point while fitting the text into those concrete forms. It works, and it’s true: we don’t forget.

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9/12 Today is the day after the day that they attacked us. The day after The day of the crash, demolition and black dust. It caused a negative impact on each and every person in the United States. It really can’t get worse in the upcoming dates. The world will never be okay to us.

All because of Al Qaeda’s. Today is the day after the day of unexpected violence. Now all that is heard is an echo of silence. Today is the day after the day that we were shaken to our core. Now we look at our neighbors, reach out, love, and adore. Today is the day after the day that we witnessed the Twin Towers fall. Much like the slow-motion crumble, today’s hours crawl. Today is the day after the day where unprecedented actions had to take place. Now we assist one another with open arms and a safe space. Today is the day after the day planes were taken over by the Middle East. Skyjacked and attacjed by sacrificial beasts. Today is the day after the day that we need each other the most. We will all think about those we lost in the smother, the roast. Today is the day after the day we will constantly be reminded of. We can no longer see the lost, the are a blinded love. Today is the day after the day we will think of when we do something that is regrettable. To the 2,977 of you, just know that you are all unforgettable.

9/11, the day that changed America Struck from above.

Bystanders witness Below. Imprisoned individuals. Terror, torturing trembling taxpayers who live to work, and work to live. Now facing forward with their facial features frozen, focused on fear in the flailing failed falling fabrication. NYC, the city that never sleeps. Is now NYC, the city that forever keeps a reminder above the streets and silenced by the weeps of those who have suffered. Flight -eleven flew first.

Onboard the outsiders are inside over-ruling The terror hits as the terrorists take this ship on a dark detour that is a devastating dreadful destination.

Flight 175 freedom deprived south tower dived, darkness derived Flight 77 thrusted third. Airplane packed, planned to land. Cruel corrupt captain currently in command seventy -seven streams straight into the side of the structure. Absolutely apparent, this isn’t an accident, but an attack!

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9:42AM, Aviation Administration haults All aerial adventure.

The White House worries, wondering what to do. Flight ninety-three comes after the crumbling collapse of the South Tower, a half hour later, the North is struck, simulating a smoke shower. We send out our love to those who died in an airplane. Send love to their families, as we don’t know their pain. Love to those who died in the buildings. To their families, because the pain still stings.

Thank you to those who were out their risking your lives.

You’re the reason many were able to survive. We lost many on the date of September 11, 2001. It’s a date that’ll be remembered by everyone. All the unfortunate victims boarded for their last calling in the hauling of human cannon-balling that lead to the horrific F A L L I N G

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WATER CYCLE Joseph Van Essen - Honorable Mention: Poetry Crystal flakes drift aimlessly, slowly settling to meet lukewarm death as they melt on innocent flesh.

Their quiet demise goes unnoticed, as uncountable millions land in piles in the streets and yards of the city.

There they wait, to be swept away by the uncaring steal of the snowplow or the ecstatic flailing arms of children excited by their precipitous drop.

Some lucky few will find days’ worth of peace amongst buried brown blades or the cold shingles of roofs.

But eventually, the pitiless sun returns with fiery judgment to destroy them in their masses.

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Only for each snowflake to be born anew at the next cold snap, completely unique from any other that has been or will be, yet still exactly the same.

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THE DWARVEN KING Joseph Van Essen - Honorable Mention: Poetry Down deep we go Down to the depths Where the wind doesn’t blow

Yoe Hoe

What do you know Of the dwarven king Whose eyes with greed did glow

A long time ago In days long gone by Deep beneath the earth The dwarven king did lie He looked upon his kingdom With a disappointed sigh He had all he had wanted Had all he could need Yet looked upon the surface With a never-ending greed

But one thing stayed his hand From taking what he could Without this single threat Go to war he would 54

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There was a goblin kingdom Growing in the east Until the threat diminished He must withhold the beast

So the dwarven king Decided he would hide He watched the whole world crumble Right before his eyes Till the glorious day Of the goblin king’s demise From deep beneath the earth The dwarven king did rise

But the great king’s greed Would lead right to his fall Despite the goblins’ end He could not fight them all Humans crushed his people Made him a simple thrall They stay beneath the earth To heed the humans’ call

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NATURE’S PRAYER Derik Wolfe From the whispering willows, To the silent sequoias, Your promise is always remembered.

From the serenading cicadas, To the chirping chiffchaffs, Your mercy is always well-tempered.

From the dancing daffodils, To the frolicking ferns, Your name is the One we praise.

From the immature morning mist, To the sun’s bright beams, Your gifts never cease to amaze.

From the splendid scarlet sunrise, To the starry night sky, Your presence is always felt.

From the snowy summit, To the vacant valley, Your blessings never melt.

From the babbling brook, To the raging river, Above all others, I shout Your name.

From the highest hill, To the prettiest prairie, You receive all the glory and fame.

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UNTITLED #1 Nolan W. Reynolds the easiest thing i ever did was picking you. i know it sounds silly, how out of a million beautiful things, i was drawn to you. but imagine the biggest garden you can, and imagine yourself in it. roots so deep even storms cannot lift you from the ground. leaves that make the most beautiful song when the wind blows. and i don’t mind that you’re not always blooming. you open up when you’re ready. when it’s safe. when the world can handle your beauty. anyway, i always knew i’d love you. you’re so grounded that you laugh at gravity for thinking it’s holding you down. you look towards the sun because you know that’s how you grow. and even though there are a million beautiful things around me, i was led to the nearest garden and out of all of the flowers i picked you.

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WHEN HOME IS NOT HOME ANYMORE Zoee Pond I have never felt more lost than standing in the middle of this room.

This room I have felt the morning sunlight stream through, the beams bouncing off the pictures I taped up years ago.

This room where I have drifted off a thousand times over the chipped paint the last thing I see before I close my eyes.

It is the room in which I contemplated death, the room in which I decided not today, again and again and again.

I found my way back here.

Again.

It did not find me.

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THE OMEN Charlie Blue i. my mom always used to drink a cup of coffee after church with the ladies who sit in the front row. two sugars, one cup of half and half. i always thought the wooden stir stick tasted better than the coffee itself.

ii. when my grandmother died, we drank shitty coffee in the hospital waiting room, because there was nothing else to do.

iii. the kids at school decided coffee was cool in 7th grade. the starbucks on 6th street has not known peace since then.

iv. my father’s teeth are yellow, and his breath always smells like his morning cup of coffee.

v. i met you for the first time in a coffee shop, but we didn’t know it at the time.

vi. and i never liked coffee because what reason was there to like it? people drink coffee in hospitals, churches, funeral services. people drink coffee Volume 15 // Poetry

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because that bitterness takes the edge off. they don’t drink it because they like it.

vii. we had coffee after my mother’s funeral. i put two sugars, one cream in it. and then i walked outside and dumped it in the backyard.

viii. the bitterness didn’t take the edge off. i was wrong.

ix. but the first time i met you, you offered to buy me a coffee, and i didn’t have the heart to tell you.

x. is it weird that i remember your coffee order more than anything else?

xi. vanilla latte. double espresso.

xii. but the thing about coffee is that it has this aftertaste—no matter how you try to dress it up or water it down, that same tang of bitterness stays with you all day long. xiii. i smell coffee and i see dead people.

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xiv. i miss your vanilla latte flavored kisses, i miss going on dates to the coffee shop, i miss your stupid jokes and your toothy smile and the way you remembered to wash the towels but not the washcloths.

xv. your eyes were the color of espresso, you know that?

xvi. i smell coffee and i see dead people so in hindsight, this really shouldn’t have surprised me. but it did and it does and you know what i realized? i really fucking hate coffee.

xvii. i didn’t start drinking coffee until i started wanting to die.

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DIS POME WILL PISS YOU OFF, Kobi Sadler

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MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL Lydia Knudtson (Conflict Materials — The Story Of Stuff)

Profit from valuable rocks funds generational trauma.

Mining minerals and metals makes oppressed men.

Global Witness announced these rocks “have funded brutal conflicts in Africa that have resulted in the displacement of millions of people ...”

Money took their place. “...Diamonds have also been used by terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda to finance their activities and for moneylaundering purposes.”

Money ran their race. “...during Sierra Leone’s eleven-year civil war ... the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) utilized violence and terror, including rape, the systematic amputation of Volume 15 // Poetry

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victims’ limbs, and mass murder.”

Three senior commanders were convicted for crimes against humanity.

Crimes against humanity ...

Using earth to expand equity, trading people for vanity ...

This is insanity.

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MIRROR Lydia Knudtson Invented by man, Hu-man, Who is Hu anyways?

He made a sinister move.

We weren’t supposed to see ourselves unless we’re bent over catching the river’s reflections.

Stillness is a historical rarity.

Back when windows came into play, self-impressions were dirty.

An acceptable dustiness.

Now mirrors are excessive.

Handheld, even.

Used in place of brick or stone.

Look left.

It’s your figure, exterior.

Banal, but stores complexities.

Complexities can’t be spotted in the mirror, and because of that, they get messy.

Because we’re too busy cleaning the mirrors, instead of shattering them.

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MY CITY OF WORN STONE BRICK Josh Martin I find myself wandering through the city, The one I’ve known for many years now.

This city is not one of porcelain perfection But one of worn stone brick, With graffiti that shines like a newborn morn, Giving the elderly buildings some semblance of life They once had years prior.

As I drift along with the breeze I pass many shops and stores I’d never known.

Through the jungle of worn stone brick, I tread.

My ears seem attuned To the cacophony of sounds that blended into the city, The sounds that truly made the city come to life, The sound of a woman bickering with her lover While they argued how best to keep their secret, Their secret and whom they were keeping it from, unknown, For but a moment passed and they were gone, Yet there was still much to hear as I trudged on.

A baby crying, an old man laughing, a child humming a simple song, The clopping of shoes on pavement, Busy people shuffling through the mid-day crowd, The summer breeze gentle blowing past me As it softly ruffled my hair, 66

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Brilliant machinery pounding, Engines humming and cracked mufflers shouting while they buzz by, All sounds of the city of worn stone brick.

These sounds of my city will never falter or cease, For the city of worn stone brick may never rest, For the city, no matter how tired, was never meant to know precious sleep, As it wasn’t meant to be mortal.

I drift on.

As I move on in my city of crumbling stone, A stench catches my nose and slows my pace to but a brisk walk, For I smell something foul from my city of fading dreams, The very stench of burning fuel, as vehicles pass me by, But there are more scents yet lingering in the air.

These scents that now fill my nose are pleasant, The scents are warm and inviting and as I follow the sweet breeze I’m led to an unfamiliar restaurant, with a door held open, So all may catch a glimpse of her delicious and intoxicating scent, But I refrained from entering, while she lured in more and more, For I had no mind for food, at least not for the moment.

As I leave the luscious fragrance long behind me, I round the block and return to where this journey began.

I took another glimpse of my city of worn stone brick, I approach the building I’d seen when I first began my journey, I admired her beautiful graffiti, I shut my eyes and laid my hand upon the worn brick.

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In that moment I feel her coldness, her emptiness, her loneliness, I feel sorrow and a feeling of being forgotten, But then, strangely, I feel a happiness, and a hopefulness, And as I open my eyes in confusion, I see this isn’t the same crumbling building, Though its core features remain the same.

The building itself now stands proud and true.

Although it is the same building from before, It’s more than what it once was, As now it blooms with hope and its bricks are no longer crumbling.

I glance around once more, at my city of worn stone brick And I now see a city I no longer recognize.

My city of worn stone brick is no longer there And I feel fiery tears of joy and sorrow roll down my cheek, For this is now a city for dreams.

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AVALANCHE Myra Meyer I feel the world caving in around me, but I am expected to keep moving forward like I’m not being c

r u s h ed

by the weight of circumstance.

Dense layers of paper and responsibility cover my body, made heavier in combination with one another.

Nobody will come to unbury this corpse— I tossed the first pebble that orchestrated the Volume 15 // Poetry

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a v a l a n c h

. e

And my fingers bleed every time I try to claw my way out toward that steady stream of light that pours in through the cracks.

But I’ll grab it and fashion it into a rope to pull myself up and 70

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empty the rubble from my lungs.

rubble that will serve as the building blocks for my fortress against each new pebble that trickles down to me.

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SHADOW HIKE Myra Meyer If I choose to walk among the shadows— to get lost between the brambles and branches, don’t follow.

I wish to befriend the shadows as they shift to fit the folds of my skin, interlacing themselves with my body and manipulating my marionette limbs.

Our fusion of shadow and spirit will traverse the solitary wilderness.

And when we reach the treeline, our parting will leave a hollow echo in the cavity of my chest, but I sense their presence as it reaches toward me at the edge of each new cliff.

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DEMONS Madeline Taylor - High School Writing Contest 1st Place Top of Iowa: Poetry I recall the very night my voices came to me, knocking on my mind like the cops knocking on a serial killer’s door.

One stern knock then BAM crashes the door.

I’ve fought my demons for nights on end, laid restless with the thoughts flowing through my head.

I’ve cried so much to the point I was left gagging on my spit.

I’ve hit lows and I’ve hit highs but one high I’ll never come down from is falling in love.

Baby blue eyes stare into my empty soul, a smile so sweet it lights my extinguished heart ablaze.

Love is what saved me from my demons.

Love is what gives me back, love is the reason I can’t stop talking and I can’t stop smiling, Volume 15 // Poetry

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love is my hope that the demons won’t arise the next morning. The fear of waking up to an empty phone kills me and leaks the little demon offspring into my delicate mind.

The delicacy of demons is kind of like a game of Jenga, one wrong step sends a swarm of violent voices just how one wrong step makes the whole tower collapse and you have to rebuild.

Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild.

That’s the demon’s strategy, to tear you down and make you rebuild, to force you to understand your flaws and accept them.

Some let their demons push them to the edge of a cliff.

Others, like myself, play along with the role of being a simple block in a Jenga tower.

Some, like myself, find hope in life all because of a simple pair of eyes.

Oh those baby blue eyes, how grateful I am for them to stare into my lively soul, words so sweet it scares the demons away and keeps me safe from all my pretty little 74

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thoughts.

Let the demons come knocking, they have faith you’ll fail, let them come a-knocking just a little tick, tick, tick.

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HONG KONG: A STORY OF THE SEA Alisha Wong - High School Writing Contest 1st Place Greater Midwest: Poetry In the form of a haibun it was here i seeked bloom on this upturned land—hooked my reveries in sunken, netted founts, hauled promises ashore. waves caress my dirt-inscribed soles in cardiac rhyme, a moon-strummed melody. i lap up the ocean’s tears until they tie like strings, tethers, in the pit of my belly. i asked for a home and was given a maudlin taste of orchid’s1 kiss.

——— my mouth is swollen, liquored consonants, dialect un-teething; i no longer recognize stray murmurs of my red-rimmed homeland. along the infected forearm of america, picketed lawns impale shadows, pries yellow leather apart from gingered flesh. blue screens seduce eyes, angled shutters, culled souls. my spine, a mullion for my body, rivered in cracks.

——— this was never mine to keep: here where children link arms, wide-mouthed, cupping fireflies and swallowing stars. i follow paper lanterns unhitching from fingertips, nicks of light splintering the night sky, kindling for culture. our kneecaps graze rice paddies as the ground tremors—this land is our temple and our pulse beats prayer. i extract streams from my homeland and they bind my wrists until their indents imprint like a birthmark.

1 The national flower of Hong Kong, also known as the Bauhinia blakeana 76

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——— my grandmother tells me jám seoí sī jyun: when you drink water, think of its origin—think of its origin think of your origin think of home think of us. back then, i found a vantage point on my mother’s gutted fields, sipped nectar from father’s cleaved ambition. before, i split fish portions too unevenly, selfishly, forgetting my family was once smothered by winter’s maw. nìn gōu sweet as cigarettes and ash squeezed from chāsīu bāau.

——— now i lick trickles of rainwater wedged between moist soil, rice grain, the husk of quagmire and bovine liver. now i plead to resurrect dead vowels and tones, loop bygone vernaculars around my molars. my mother used to recite her gilded wants to me, witness boons from her gods, her tongue warped from intonations. my mother’s tongue. mother tongue. her tongues. my tongue. no tongue.

——— feet dipped in ocean alcove, i watch the colony swim with shadows, a prologue to uprootedness. storefronts decay into corporate slums and i receive invitations for insurrections. mainland throes add skin to blackened souls. my tongue peels against raw words, too hulled to recognize refuge. and yet i begged for bloom—gripped the water so tightly, hoping to feel kumquats and monsoons, watch incense tear the sky so we may rapture. i asked for a home and think

of the origin as the sea’s tears flood my mouth, kisses turned bitter.

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Art

MISTY MOUNTAINS Tyler Clouse - 1st Place Salveson Prize: Photography

Judge’s Comment: Hannah Testa Photographer and proprietor of Happylandic CO

The breadth of the landscape captured in this image feels like a private moment we are getting to steal away.

The foreground in the lefthand corner as well as the branches delicately peeking in from the upper righthand corner gives the illusion that we are peering into an untouched landscape. The fog settling against the silhouette of the trees gives dimension to the scene.

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DARKNESS ENVELOPING Cecelia Hemsworth - 2nd Place Salveson Prize: Photography

Judge’s Comment: Hannah Testa Photographer and proprietor of Happylandic CO

The dark background and highlights pull our focus to all of the tiny details we often do not get to glimpse. The leading lines in the curved branches keep us connected and traveling through the image. The attention to detail and the moment chosen showcases a keen eye.

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LONELY ROAD Ethan Hexamer - 3rd Place Salveson Prize: Photography

Judge’s Comment: Hannah Testa Photographer and proprietor of Happylandic CO

This image takes me back to a place in time. The composition of the foreground and the contrast of dark sky against the bright glow from the street lamps gives a cinematic view, leading us to wonder what will be at the end of this road. The emptiness of the street serves as a reminder that we are alone in viewing this scene.

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AFRICAN CROWNED CRANE Ellie Clark - 1st Place Salveson Prize: Art

Judge’s Comment: Keely McLain Art Gallery Director and Professor of Drawing, Painting and Design at Waldorf University

It has a good sense of visual proportions and movement. The spread wings and the fine details keep the viewer’s eye moving throughout the piece.

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SHIP IN A BOTTLE Sierra Kearns - 2nd Place Salveson Prize: Art

Judge’s Comment: Keely McLain Art Gallery Director and Professor of Drawing, Painting and Design at Waldorf University

Very dramatic. I enjoyed the choice of colors and the detail in the waves, tentacles, and the shark silhouette.

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WHAT’S UP, DUCT? Kobi Sadler - 3rd Place Salveson Prize: Art

Judge’s Comment: Keely McLain Art Gallery Director and Professor of Drawing, Painting and Design at Waldorf University

This piece was fun and an interesting use of duct tape.

A great combination of an iconic Looney Toons episode and a fun medium.

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LACMA Carlos Ruiz

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FRAGILE BEAUTY Cecelia Hemsworth

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INSIGHT Cecelia Hemsworth

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LIVING IN A FAIRYTALE Hannah Meyer

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REAL-LIFE SNOWGLOBE Tyler Clouse

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RED ROCK POINT OF VIEW Tyler Clouse

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TWEET TWEET Ellie Clark

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CURVED MAPLE AND EBONY BOX Julienne Friday

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BREAKFAST: A STUDY OF BROWN Keely McLain

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HERE Keely McLain

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MELANIE’S DR. PEPPER Keely McLain

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YANAKA TAKOBO, TAITO, TOKYO, JAPAN Keely McLain

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Special Feature

Interview with Marlin M. Jenkins Marlin M. Jenkins is a poet, writer and teacher. He studied Creative Writing and Black Studies at Saginaw Valley State University and poetry at Michigan. He has worked with Inside Out Literary Arts and with middle schoolers from public schools in Detroit, where he was born and raised. He now teaches at the Breck School, after relocating to the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Jenkins visited Waldorf University as part of the Distinguished Visiting Writer series this past Fall, where he read some of his poetry from his collection Capable Monsters to the students and community at the Boman Fine Arts Center. Prior to his reading, members of the Waldorf Literary Review staff, Cecelia Hemsworth and Ongelle Schroeder, interviewed Jenkins to learn more about him as a writer.

Ongelle Schroeder: Has poetry always been a constant in your life, or did you get into it in college?

Marlin Jenkins: Yeah, [it has] absolutely not been a constant. I hated poetry for a long time. When I was really young, I really liked reading. Then, probably by the time I was around 4th, 5th, 6th grade, I couldn’t stand it anymore—I think for two reasons: one, I wasn’t able to go to the library as much as I was when I was younger; and two, I just had a really hard time getting into the things that I was reading in school. I had a really hard time connecting with those things, and it felt like it kind of zapped some of the joy out of it. So I started writing because I really wanted to like reading again. I figured that if people aren’t going to give me things that I like, I’m gonna write things that I would want to read. So that’s how I started writing fiction. I started writing poetry in high school, and by that point, I was able to find different entryways that made it interesting and feel relevant to me. Then I slowly began to find poets and poetry that I was interested in, and I think that fueled my love for poetry. So by the time I went to college, I chose to major in Creative Writing.

Cecelia Hemsworth: What poet has influenced you the most, and why is that?

MJ: Lucille Clifton. Easy question. I mean, I really love being in conversation with lots of different people, so I think if not Clifton then like seventeen other people would be runners-up. I think I encountered Clifton’s work at a time when it felt very important to me to sound smart, and I think in my poems I wanted to sound smart. I wanted to have these great concepts and be really intellectual and all of that bullshit. And, at the same time, I wanted to be very apolitical. I think I was raised in a way that my family kind of frowned on being involved in politics. There was kind of this weird stigma or shame attached to it, and I think this weird thing happens where we equate partisan, party politics with all of the other stuff that’s involved, and so we throw out all of it. I felt like I 98

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needed to detach myself from that, and so when I encountered Clifton’s work it felt very direct and conversational in a way that I didn’t know a poem could do. I didn’t know a poem could be casual and seem simple in its language and at the same time be evocative, nuanced, and complex—that a poem could be short and about a blessing, or about reflecting, or wanting something to be positive, or seeing a fox outside your door; that those things could be a poem and I could still care about it. Also, a lot of her stuff has to do with being a black woman. Not all of it has to do with that directly, but I think that was a moment where I was like, Okay, I can see it. This doesn’t feel like it’s preaching at me in a way that feels ranty or like the type of stuff I was trying to get away from. It’s just being honest with where it’s coming from and realizing that the personal is also political, and I think I needed those two things at that moment.

CH: What kind of poetry does she write?

MJ: A lot of the poems are pretty short. There are no capital letters, which I think is interesting. [Clifton’s work features] a lot of straightforward declarative sentences, and there’s some questions, often. Approach-wise, she talks about how, for her, poetry isn’t so much about what she knows, it’s about what she wonders, and I think there’s really that kind of quality in the sense of exploration. It feels exploratory, but in a way that doesn’t feel meandering.

OS: You’ve done some art and poetry teaching. How have you seen those impact your students?

MJ: One of my favorite things is when a student tells me they don’t like English classes but they like my classes—kind of that begrudging yes, this is valuable and I kind of had some fun with it. I live for that moment. I love it. I think it’s something that reminds me how valuable it can be, when I see it being valuable for someone else. More specifically, I think for some students it gives them an opportunity to see themselves, and for some students it gives them an opportunity to see outside of themselves, which I think is really great about literature, that it can do both. It can allow us to feel represented. I think both [James] Baldwin and F. Scott Fitzgerald talk about how there’s these universal struggles, and so we go to literature as a way to feel connected and less lonely. And, at the same time, we can read about all of these experiences and things that we can never be. Sarah Kay talks about how that’s what storytelling and poetry do for her, that it allows her to live all of these lives vicariously, through the imagination she’s writing with or through the other things that she’s reading. Those, I think, are the really important moments, when a student’s like, Oh, I really like this poem. I could connect with it. Or, I really like this poem. I never thought about it that way before.

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OS: What is the goal of your writing?

MJ: That is an unfair question. What is the goal of my writing? This is an impossible question for me to answer for a couple reasons. One, because part of what I go to write for is opportunity and flexibility, and so the goal is a moving target, and I think that kind of is the goal: for it to not be one thing. I think my goal is, more simply, the endless possibility. I want my writing to explore what is possible, and I want it to teach me and show me what is possible, and through that process I can hopefully present that for somebody else. Sometimes that possibility is to critique; sometimes that possibility is through imagination; sometimes that possibility is through imagining the future or reimagining the past, or rewriting a story. But I think that this sense of possibility is at the core of a lot of it. The poet Franny Choi said something like, “I think all of my poems are asking the question, what would it be like for this world to love us back?” I think about that a lot, and I think not all of my poems are about that particular question, but I think that all my poems, or at least many of them, answer the question, What would it look like (blank).

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Erasure Poems

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Bios

Chase Bennett is a Waldorf senior and career Cross Country and Track mid-distance runner. He is from Junction City, Kansas and is a Business major who enjoys writing, time to time.

Charlie Blue is a Waldorf University freshman, double-majoring in Creative Writing and History.

They are from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, and when not writing, they can often be found drawing or singing.

Ellie Clark is from Le Mars, Iowa and attends Waldorf University. She enjoys drawing birds, which are her favorite animal.

Tyler Clouse is a sophomore from Forest City who is majoring in Marketing with a Spanish minor.

Tyler is also a member of the golf team here at Waldorf. When he is not taking pictures at Warrior athletic events, he can be found flying around the Midwest in his plane or on the golf course.

Emily Elna Cooper is a high school junior from Grinnell, Iowa. She has been writing since she was ten years old. An avid reader of classic literature, she often likes the novels assigned in class. Her other interests include participating in a local theatre program, hiking, drawing, and studying languages. Emily is happy to contribute to the Waldorf Literary Review!

Julienne Friday is a Professor of Psychology at Waldorf University who also does woodworking. She has displayed artwork at the Vesterheim Museum, MacNider Museum, and the Museum of Danish History. She also does projects for the International Owl Museum as well as for Waldorf University.

Cecelia Hemsworth is a senior at Waldorf University majoring in English and Education. She runs track and cross country. When she is not running, she is enjoying a good book during her down time at work.

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Ethan Hexamer is a Waldorf University sophomore majoring in Music Education with an Endorsement in Theatre Arts. He is from Alton, Iowa, and when he isn’t performing, he is sketching or reading around campus.

Sierra Kearns is a Waldorf University senior majoring in Communications. Her creativity bucket list is a mile long and includes painting a mural, writing a fantasy book, and trying as many forms of creative arts as possible. Because of this, she is constantly what she calls “beautiful minding” all over her notebooks.

Leslie Kim is a junior from Ames High School. She enjoys writing creative nonfiction and occasionally writes poems when it’s raining outside. When not writing she can be found coding, baking, and watching Studio Ghibli movies.

Lydia Knudtson is a junior at Waldorf majoring in Creative Writing with a minor in Communications.

When she’s not at school or work, you can often find her at the gym, doing yoga, tending to her plants, traveling, or creating visual art.

Joshua Martin is a Waldorf University sophomore, double-majoring in Creative Writing and Vocal Performance. He writes whenever he can, and when he’s not writing he’s enjoying the company of his friends or unwinding while listening to his favorite rock band.

Keely McLain is the Gallery Director and Art Professor at Waldorf University. She enjoys painting, drawing, woodworking, and learning new ways to make art. She served as the judge for traditional art pieces for this year’s issue of Waldorf Literary Review.

Hannah Meyer is a sophomore Communications major at Waldorf University. She loves all things creative, including writing, drawing, and the digital arts. Hannah aspires to one day publish something great, but for now she’s going with the flow and loving it!

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Myra Meyer is finishing her last semester here at Waldorf University. She is double majoring in English and Creative Writing and minoring in Spanish. Myra plays French horn in Waldorf’s wind band and she is also the president of the Warrior’s Writing Club this year. In her free time, Myra likes to get outside and enjoy nature.

Raina Miller is a Forest City High School senior, graduating this May. She is currently undecided on a major and where she will be attending school, but she is confident she will one day be in a field that actively helps others.

Dana Pioske is a freshman at Waldorf University majoring in Psychology. She is from New Ulm, Minnesota, and when she’s not writing, you can usually find her in the music building singing with the choir or playing with the band.

Zoee Pond is a Waldorf University freshman from Monroe, Wisconsin. She is majoring in History.

When she is not reading or writing, she is playing volleyball for the Warriors. She enjoys cooking and drawing in her free time.

Nolan W. Reynolds is a Waldorf University freshman majoring in History and minoring in Religion. He is originally from Brainerd, Minnesota, and you can often find him in his hammock out by the pond on warm, sunny days.

Carlos Ruiz is an Assistant Professor of Communications at Waldorf University originally from Denver, Colorado. He earned a Master of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from Asbury University and a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Waldorf University. In addition to his artistic endeavors, he enjoys video games, cycling, hiking, and spending time with his family.

Kobi Sadler is a senior from Indianola, Iowa. He is a Business major along with being a Creative Writing minor. Kobi enjoys pondering aside from the crate, and his favorite sound is laughter.

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Madeline Taylor is a senior from Nashua-Plainfield High School. She has plans to become a Veterinary Technician after high school. In addition to her passion for animals, Madeline also loves to write and express herself in art.

Hannah Testa is a photographer and proprietor of Happylandic CO. She served as the judge for the Salveson Award for Photography pieces for this year’s issue of Waldorf Literary Review.

Joseph Van Essen is a junior at Waldorf double majoring in Business and Creative Writing. He is originally from Edgerton, Minnesota, and he plays League of Legends for the Waldorf University Esports team.

Kayliegh “Kai” Wilkie is a Waldorf University freshman majoring in History and minoring in Shakespearean Literature. They are from Geneva, Minnesota. When they are not writing, they are busy acting, drawing, or streaming on Twitch.

Derik Wolfe is the Director of Online Student Services at Waldorf University, and he currently resides in Foley, AL. Derik earned his MA in Organizational Leadership from Waldorf and earned his BA in English from Huntingdon College. In addition to writing, Derik also enjoys fishing and spending time with his family.

Alisha Wong is a writer and current high school senior from Minnesota. Her writing has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, St. Mary’s College, and the Ledbury Poetry Festival, among others. Her other works are found or forthcoming in Euphony Journal, The Phoenix, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Up North Lit. In her spare time, she enjoys calligraphy, fashion, scrapbooking, and black coffee.

Dana Yost is an award-winning newspaper editor, poet, and author of the novel Before I Get Old. He served as the judge for the Salveson Awards for Poetry and Prose pieces for this year’s issue of Waldorf Literary Review.

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