Letter & Line 2021

LETTER & LINE

Prose|Fiction|Art|Poetry Portland Community College Sylvania Campus 2021

LETTER & LINE 1

You are about to read the eleventh issue of Letter & Line, a Portland Community College literary journal.

Envisioned and digitally assembled during a worldwide pandemic, this issue is an ode to the value of written and visual art, how it buoys us and connects us across time and space.

This Spring 2021 issue is abundant with pieces that invite us to connect: with our place of birth, with ourselves, with each other, and even with our four-legged friends. In these pages you will find work that delights, comforts, and affirms both our softest and most jaded selves. Come as you are, we welcome you to join us in this historic time and take a moment to enjoy the outstanding talent of PCC students and community.

LETTER & LINE 1

A Love For Literature Maylani Maathai

It all began with an alliteration.

“Literature lovers laid bare across my lap.

Listening. Longing for the lick.

Of what? They won’t know. They will have to wait.”

The words arose without warning.

Ten seconds to type.

A single second to send.

“What piques your pleasure principle?”

Taking my time. I whisper what I want.

Standing slightly taller on stilettos.

Sliding fingers down spines.

We browse bookshelves behind masks.

Vibrant red velvet.

Lace rather than leather.

Literature is read aloud.

Tips of our tongues tingling as we talk.

Wondering what will happen?

You won’t know. You will have to wait.

2 LETTER & LINE

“Space Woman”

Bien Lising

LETTER & LINE 3

Two Weeks Ann Goldenberg When I first moved to Portland from Florida, I had cocktails at Barlow’s

in downtown Portland with Mark, a friend’s brother. Sipping a filled-tothe-brim Martini, his handsome face half-lit by the winter light, he leaned toward me as he said, “It was three years until SAD got me. Now I can’t wait to get out.”

His russet hair framed a hangdog look that reminded me of a sad beagle, in contrast to his blonde wife’s cheery visage. She shrugged and rolled her blue eyes. “I don’t know,” she said, cozy in her pink fuzzy sweater. “I grew up here. I like it.”

He looked at me with haunted despair, begging to be understood.

At the time, I blew it off. It won’t happen to me. I’ve got more than enough sunshine stored up from my lifetime in Florida for Portland’s famously “depressing weather” to alarm me.

My arrogance was misplaced. It took exactly four years and “two weeks to flatten the curve” to do me in. It’s Wednesday, February 3, 2021, but who could care what day it is? They are all the same now. I watch the sky lighten to a dull gray in the eastern facing window of my sixth-floor apartment—the sky hinting, but not revealing, the day’s beginning. I am clutched with the thought that if I have to look at these four walls any longer, I will go insane.

I can’t bear to go outside; I can’t bear to stay inside.

Mercifully, I have a dog. I must go outside. My feisty little Schnoodle Bella, a former she-devil, naps 22 hours a day now, curled up like a black question mark. I drag her soft bed from underneath my desk and set her on her feet. She stands motionless as I put on her harness and snap on her lead.

She looks up at me with her black eyes, “Do we really have to?”

Yes. Yes, we do.

Portland looks bedraggled in the morning’s dim light. The trees are bare sticks, the fallen leaves are mushy brown lumps covering the sidewalks, streets and yards in a skein of shit. The old wooden houses in my Northwest neighborhood are swelled with moisture, green algae sliding down their sides like tears. Against this bleak backdrop, I feel my soul shrinking.

The English language is jam-packed with words, but I can’t quite name “A Better Tomorrow” all that I feel. The old fallback “melancholia” is out of fashion. Now we use “devasted, woebegone, crestfallen, wretched, and rueful.” Does that describe my state of mind? Not really. Without words to define what I feel, I just feel—things. I feel, but I cannot define; I can only act in instinctive ways, like a rabbit upon hearing the footfall of a hungry coyote, instantly pining back her ears and zigzagging to safety.

4 LETTER & LINE

Without the right words, I’m operating solely on reflex. I need help defining my mood from other languages.

Do I feel mono no aware, the Japanese word for the sadness of the fleeting nature of life? How about the French despite, the little fury when you are disappointed (like how I feel having graduated right into a recession)? Or is it koev li halev, the Hebrew word for the suffering you feel watching people you care about suffer, like how I felt hearing my Father’s voice becoming more silent with each phone call until there were no more?

Or maybe it’s hi fun kou gai, Japanese for righteous anger and despair over a situation that seems terrible but cannot be changed…lockdown anyone? Maybe I’m feeling lebensmude, German for life-tired when you’ve entered a deep state of not-caring, and you might do very risky things because you no longer care about your own safety.

I try on the word viraag, the Hindu sense of sadness when you are separated from someone you love. It’s true, my heart does ache with “viraag” as I can’t visit friends or relatives for fear of COVID contagion, instead having to make do with faux-life Facebook.

I think I also feel tante, the Chinese word for a state of anxiety in which your senses are so heightened that you can feel your own heartbeat. But it’s not my heart that is loudest in complaint, it’s my old-timey soul that is speaking to me. I feel literally without a prayer. The Russian’s call this spiritual agony toska, a sensation of great spiritual anguish.

I feel all of these emotions.

How can I tolerate the seemingly intolerable any longer? Well, I can describe my torment in eight languages. These words have given me strength because they tell me that I’m not alone in the gray. Others, just like me, have been here before.

As I sit in my darkening apartment, I picture a sunny Portland where the clarity of the blue vault makes me feel perfection exists and my heart is filled with joyful sunshine. If it’s not weather that squeezes your soul like a damp rag, or “two weeks to flatten the curve” that turns into a year of solitary confinement, then it’s likely to be something else. Whatever. Bella is back in her basket, snoring gently.

The words that are stiffening my soul now come from an old sailor’s prayer, one they tattooed in crude blue letters across their knuckles—HOLD FAST. Brave Ann Goldenberg souls caught up in howling hurricane winds—ship groaning, hurled up over the waves, down under the water, each moment near death, holding to the slippery ropes for dear life, through the darkness, through the storm, past caring, and as the storm begins to settle and the first light pierces the gloom, the expansive relief, the tingle from head to toe, that beyond all expectations, you made it through because you held fast.

Tomorrow, I am going to get a goddamn sunlamp.

LETTER & LINE 5

Oil Envy Anic Ulrope

Oil from your skin from your car door that squeaks cellulose, lotion, and fur from the neighborhood animal like envy, like penis, like membrane like Venus, falling in out, in out again Hammer to the Earth the oil drilling, fracking, dirt chisel building for spilling Would you use the blue Dawn save-the-mammals dish soap?

To wash the grime from your eyes Wash envy off in a tub one that would look bare without a rubber duck and a copper faucet matching sink, black, white, black, white checkered tile where the feet here walk bare Satin snagging the keyhole, the lock, a swooshing in the night Envious of the oil, things that promise to stick like the electronic honey made from digital bees the ones that bite, instead of sting

6 LETTER & LINE

“We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change”

Emily Van Heusen

LETTER & LINE 7

Collage Abby Leadham The clouds shed their tears outside, pouring onto

the rooftop and down the window. Inside, the scent of glue filled my bedroom, though I had grown used to the stench. I cut away the corners of photographs. Grabbing the foam brush, I dipped it into the glue bottle and swept it across the back of a photo. Setting it onto the canvas before me, I added another piece to the collage.

I lost myself in the movement, rhythmic and steady: another photo, another trimming, dip the brush and sweep it across the back, lay it out onto the canvas. Pictures of my two dogs filled it, snapshots of memories splattered across. My eyes traced a pathway from one to the next—trips to the beach, walks to the park, and countless naps where someone had taken pictures of my two best friends and I snuggled up, lost in dreams.

I smiled at all the memories I shared with my two corgis, my two girls. I had grown up with them; they came home when I was seven. I loved them since, but it was not until I was thirteen that we truly bonded. And from there, my days were filled with them. My room became theirs, my bed their own. I could still vividly remember awaking to the sun shining in my room, rays lighting up my walls. My two girls lay on my bed, the sable fur of Momo appearing orange in the sun’s warmth, while the tri-color on Esther lit up, especially the brown which glowed.

All was still, calm, and warm. I swore I could reach into the picture, the memory, as though it were yesterday. I could feel their fur between my fingers—Momo’s soft and fluffed, while Esther’s was thick and more coarse. The touch of their fur slipped through my fingers, and I was back to myself on the floor, with them no longer here. But I remembered everything.

Esther was my little shadow, following me

throughout the house, to the front yard or back, up and down the stairs. She would even wait outside the bathroom door—a loyal, loving, undeserving friend. We could listen to the bird’s song and sit in the grass for hours. Esther would sniff the air, roll in the grass, and grin wide. It was her happy place, which gave me even more joy. I called her my little seal; when her ears were back and her big eyes gazing at me, the resemblance was uncanny. We napped together in the backyard with the summer sun gazing on us. There was scarcely a moment we weren’t together.

Lymphoma snuck up on her and all of us.

She passed too suddenly, too quickly.

Only a couple of weeks from then, my parents had gotten new puppies. Young and full of joy, but it conflicted with all that went through me. I wished it was just Momo for at least a few months, and wished I had time to grieve. It was too much and too fast. I couldn’t bring myself to object then, but I wished I had now. I didn’t have the time I needed to process.

To grieve. I had resented the two little ones and hated myself for it. Perhaps that was why still two years later, it didn’t make sense.

Momo and I grew close, relying on each other for the void where Esther had been. When Momo’s degenerative myelopathy took away her ability to walk, I bought a doggie backpack and took her on walks to the local school’s field.

Once I let her down, Momo was able to go loose and run, or drag, along the field she had visited since she was a puppy. The two of us spent plenty of time together on the grass in the sun, where Momo could sniff their air and listen to the bird’s song. We could remain there for hours. She would grin big sitting in my lap, soaking up the sun, happy as can be.

And now, even though their absence was everywhere, their love was, too.

8 LETTER & LINE

“Sunrise”

Abby Leadham

And then the end came. Too quickly, as it always did.

I sat back, realizing that as the memories had been coming in, I had been gluing down pictures on autopilot. I took a look at the canvas, pictures of Esther and Momo vibrant and happy. Their ends came too quickly in the form of genetic diseases. Esther and lymphoma, Momo and her degenerative myelopathy, only for her organs to begin shutting down. But they were happy, all the way until the end. I was grateful I did not try to extend their time. Their quality of life was what mattered most. I smiled at pictures of sitting with the two of them on the beach, watching the ocean waves. I treasured the memories of them both, of holding them, of their loud snores, of their comfort against the night, of their love. They always gave me so much love, endlessly.

And now, even though their absence was everywhere, their love was, too. I would treasure their memories, their photos and videos together. No dog could replace them, or the bond we shared. But the love they gave me, and I gave them, that transcended above all.

I stood and brought the newly dried canvas to my wall, where a nail caught onto the hook at the back.

Somehow, all their pictures and grins lifted the weight that had settled onto my shoulders. The images were full of love and life, as they were. And always would be in my heart. Their loss may always sting, but the experience we shared was beyond it all. I could not expect their absence to be filled, those two endlessly loving creatures, but I could share their love with other dogs. I looked to the window and found the clouds no longer shed their tears.

They began to move on and spread apart, with the sun’s rays peeking through. I took my keys, with a seal and a sable corgi keychain attached, and went to take my two dogs waiting downstairs to the park.

LETTER & LINE 9

“Lush” 10 LETTER & LINE

Emily Van Heusen

Del Monte Araguaney Rodríguez Da Silva

In the style of George Ella Lyon I am from corn flour and golfeados con queso’e mano From “no hay de qué, mi amor” and 5 lb avocados I’m from la subida and “la parada, por favor!” on a rainy day that’ll last the whole season

I’m from the flight impulse that ran through all of us on December 2007 The airport’s mosaic floor now a rite of passage

I’m from the suitcase full de recuerditos, the WhatsApp group chat, the cdsm no joda and the te quiero mucho vale, recuerda llamar a tu mamá

LETTER & LINE 11

Fragments Lee Vance Rays of early morning sun filter through the

The dark mahogany and burgundy furniture are probably meant to make this feel like a window of our living room. Specks of dust spiral professional space, but the effect is more somber. in each beam, making the sun appear in columns.

My gaze shifts downward, mom-cut bangs dangle I watch the dust swirl above me, transfixed. It crookedly in my eyes. The therapist introduces is an insulated kind of quiet, the kind that only herself and tells us that she will be asking us happens early in the morning before anyone else questions about our family. I am fixed there, has stirred. I’ve climbed from my crib, wrestling frozen, unable to meet the eyes of my interrogapast the bundles of ribbons that adorn it. My twin tor. I study the plastic toy horse I’d plucked from sister sleeps soundly in the crib next to mine. I the toy chest in the corner of the office. I turn it am small, but I already understand that this is the over in my hands noticing every detail, enjoying best part of the day. With no one awake I am free the feeling of smooth plastic on to explore. Through the In my head I fashioned a world my clammy paws. I make the gleaming dust beams, I navigate my way to the where they met and fell in love; horse jump from leg to leg, an imaginary competition with kitchen. From here, the home would be so calm. other imaginary horses. I tune memory ceases to be my the lady’s questions out and the own. Through someone eager, canned answers from my sister. I am enelse’s eyes, I see my little baby body bumble up to grossed in the horse, a welcome distraction from a forbidden stack of drawers. I thrust my hand upthe stern-faced adult across from me. My sister ward to open the one I’m most curious about, at tells the therapist our father’s script, this is easy the very top. I stretch clumsily to open it, teeterfor her. Always the diplomat. She wouldn’t have to ing a bit, and cram my chubby hand in to explore choose between parents because my dad chooses the drawer’s contents. It’s a short exploration. I her. I suspect that what we say will be reported to pull my tiny hand away abruptly and bring it to him immediately. The truth is not welcome here. my face to understand the sensation I’m experiQuestions resume about the qualities of each parencing. A bright red stream makes its way down ent. “If you were to fall and hurt yourself, which my hand from my pinky, pooling in my palm. parent would comfort you?” “If you were crying, A cut runs the length of my little finger. Despite how would each parent respond?” The lady bethe pain, I don’t cry. I return calmly to my crib. comes insistent. It is a long journey back into my I climb inside and rub the satin smooth side of a body. I can’t imagine moving my mouth. I sense ribbon on my wound. It’s cool, and soft. I pull it that I’m being watched, but I’m stuck. I don’t tightly, the pain mellowing. This is how I’m found know how to be a co-conspirator in my father’s an hour or two later. revenge against my mother. “She’s nice,” I manage

My chubby child legs dangle from a reto squeak out in defense of my mom. What could markably hard chair. The tightly pulled fabric this lady do to help us, anyway? Even then I unappears to be straining to hold in its cottony guts. derstood that there was no real lifeline out of here.

I shift slightly, searching for some give in the This seems to satisfy the lady. When it’s over I slip cushion, but it could not be found. A lamp in the the horse into my pocket and leave the room. My corner illuminates the room with an amber glow.

12 LETTER & LINE

dad is waiting for us, sitting awkwardly in the room full of other somber children, toys everywhere. I meet his expectant gaze, numbly. He knows he will win this one.

The first time I met Virginia I blurted out, “But Dad, she’s not very pretty.” I was standing right in front of her. “But I’m really pretty on the inside,” she responded quickly, pulling open the pocket of her khaki pants for me to see. Even then I knew it was not the truth. With her fine blonde hair, and buggy blue eyes she looked nothing like my mom, who I thought was exotic and beautiful. Her “Family Hands Diptych” Kambra Phoebus skinny frame and cartoonishly large breasts Here are monoprints of my hand and my son’s hand. Parenting is a process made her an alien in my of hoping you make a good imprint on your child. This imagination. I couldn’t wrap diptych holds our positives and our negatives, like so much of family life. my head around it, and I couldn’t look away. I had been trying to set my dad up with my teacher all year. Louisa. I didn’t call her that, of course. I called her Ms. M. She was perfect, her gentle voice, smooth skin, and cascade of curls that framed her face. I thought she was so pretty. I told my dad all the time about how pretty she was. In my head I fashioned a world where they met and fell in love; home would be so calm. Ms. M often picked me to read by myself in the pillow-filled kid-fort in the library. It was a highly valued reward, and I appreciated the alone time.

At open house night at my school, I made sure that my dad met the infamous Ms. M, even though I’d already met Virginia. I introduced them awkwardly using my dad’s first name to be more sophisticated.

Stuttering through the end of my introduction, stopping just short of something like, “I like you, so my dad should like you, you should date and then get married and move in with us,” I gave each of them a goofy smile.

They humored me, sensing my expectation, and made small talk. I saw no spark there. Virginia it is, I resigned myself.

LETTER & LINE 13

Father’s Infinite Wisdom Airea Johnson

I’m a child, swinging, stretching with the Dogwood branches, and my father leans against the tree for balance. He sloshes nature channel facts and the value of pennies, insists that politicians barter souls for a handful. I’m oblivious, hear only the blue jays fight for the scattered cracked corn. Too young to know he was fired, fucked up on the job, snuck Lortabs with lunch. Broke his wrist on purpose for pills. But that’s not important–we debate Snickers and Milky Ways, appreciate coins we find on the ground, even the ones stuck on tails. Those are still lucky because they’re free. I am now aware my father knew nothing about fortune. Losing deniability always comes at a cost, but today I remember wafting moonshine breezes and my father’s infinite wisdom.

14 LETTER & LINE

“Disjointed”

Emma Schafer

The above painting is an exercise in color and pattern to capture the restless, out of control feelings of a mixed bipolar episode experienced while in quarantine as an essential worker.

LETTER & LINE 15

“Om Nom”

PJ Golden

Sweet Surprise Conor Davenport Two coffees, one in each hand. The flight of stairs is half a spiral. I walk up one flight, there’s a

landing, and then 180 degrees around is the other flight. Atop is a gate. This is always the tricky part to traverse. Whenever making trips with full hands it’s a wise idea to move the gate before awkwardly straddling it, attempting not to break your neck and fall back down. Two freshly brewed mochas cradled in each hand wave through the air as I try to catch my balance, but to no avail. I fall forward with an acceptance of defeat “Ahh shit.” It wasn’t until this gate was no longer necessary for me to realize its importance.

The directions to the Munchkin™ baby-gate clearly say not to put by stairs as it is a tripping hazard. The gate is off-white with a grated pattern. Holes peer through to the opposite side. There are coffee stains still on it, as the tripping warning hasn’t been heeded. The plastic as the dividing factor between north and south. Up and George is a scavenger acts down. Upstairs: my little old lady, Gracie. A Persian resof human delicacies, cue cat with a permanent smushed angry yet sweet scowl. anything from crumbs to Downstairs could fuel a nuclear reactor. George was bred to be a sport Yorkie. Able to navigate obstacle courses and slices of steak. run next to bullet trains. He’s a mutant. The gene affecting

16 LETTER & LINE

pigment in his hair altered, giving him a very faint blonde coat that gently bristles his dark skin.

The two are oil and water. Completely different wavelengths and guises. If George could simply leave Gracie alone, then they could cohabitate. However, this is not in his nature and he would love nothing more than to play a game of chase with her. This antithetical and cliché existence requires a mediation; thus, Gracie resides upstairs and George downstairs, only separated by a three-foot by two-foot amalgam of hard plastic.

As my dad was preparing to venture to the store, he decided to freshen his breath with a nice cube of Icebreakers—peppermint flavored. My dad is a big guy. Tall, spaciously cumbersome. Spatially unaware and lacking dexterity in small motions with his bear paws. As he opens the fresh pack of Icebreakers, several cubes spill to the floor. George is a scavenger of human delicacies, anything from crumbs to slices of steak. If it drops on the floor, he’ll be there to clean up the mess.

I’ve always hated Splenda. Any artificial sweetener really—sucralose, aspartame—anything that tastes sweeter than literal sugar (to me) is not to be trusted. Xylitol is no different. I’m no proponent of the naturalistic fallacy, but there is something unnerving about certain synthetic flavors (Xylitol being one of them). Xylitol is a key ingredient and flavoring agent in Icebreakers gum: the new-fangled cubes they’ve been making for several years. Xylitol was discovered in 1891; it took around 70 years for the FDA to approve its function in a dietary facet. On top of gum, Xylitol can be found in jams, cooking/baking mixes, protein bars/powders, flavored waters, even certain cosmetic and beauty products.

As I’m waking and recalibrating to another day spent indoors due to the pandemic, I go downstairs to greet my walking partner and mischievous compatriot. I hear the garage open along with the frantic footfalls of my mother. My dad didn’t realize that the pseudo-sugar cube could potentially cause George’s kidneys to fail. She grabs him and puts him in the car on the way to the animal hospital.

Mo was a natural-born killer outdoors. He was oversized, grey with white splotches and a little goatee. You could see his ample belly sway side to side when he would run across the street to come back inside, where he would give everyone headbutt greetings, tail in the air as if he were welcoming you into his domestic kingdom. He was the first cat I ever owned, and he died unexpectedly from pneumonia in an animal hospital. No one got to say goodbye. We didn’t realize the weight of the infection.

Xylitol can take up to 12 hours to take effect in dogs. We B-line George to the animal hospital, all we can do is wait as they observe him overnight. We eat nachos and we drink margaritas, an attempt at a sliver of solace.

The blender whirrs and the nachos release their 4-cheese aroma. The mood is distracted. After the first margarita and plate of nachos, I decide to go upstairs and be alone with my thoughts. I walk up the flight only to see that there is no gate up. The lack of inconvenience is foreign.

More than the function of the gate, it is a symbol of two worlds. It becomes even more apparent that my little brother is absent. It feels like walking through an abandoned city center. A place where there should be life and movement but is only inhabited by ghosts.

With George gone, I make sure to let Gracie know that she is indeed loved. She sleeps next to me on a Peruvian blanket made from alpaca wool. It had been a gift to me, yet she claims it as her own.

The next morning, I lumber downstairs, through the gateless corridor. I don’t see him. “Is George here?” I ask sheepishly. No response from the parents.

The tension is thick and heavy. However, I see a rustling under a blanket, and then the peering glassy eyes of George peeking through the red cotton.

Every time I move that gate, I feel a sense of relief. Like a form of self-flagellation, I pay homage to the Gods of minor inconvenience, a small penance to pay for my upstairs-downstairs family.

A place where there should be life and movement but is only inhabited by ghosts.

LETTER & LINE 17

When She Comes Around Hana Elogbi

They say it was spring, but the roads are scorched in blood and joy. Flames lick

the tears off the faces of those crying out on the streets. The tears taste salty and exuberant. Feet shuffle across pavement kicking about rubble, shell casings. It isn’t a gun that brought about this moment, it is fists and feet, swinging wildly. Limbs scream in anger and pain, pounding into the flesh of the beast.

Death walks down the street to meet the crowd, she looks upon them with confusion. “Why are you happy to see me?” she asks. The crowd rushes towards Death, competing to shake her hand, pat her back. She preens from the attention, blushes from the shining, grateful faces turned in her direction.

She walks towards the gutter where a man lies, tufts of hair pulled out, blood and bruises covering his body. This level of violence that is not unfamiliar to Death. She shifts the body to look at his face; she sees a man but she sees a plague as well. She is reminded of all the children he ripped away from the world. She remembers holding their hands, picking them up and cradling them gently in her arms. Death doesn’t feel sadness, but she knows when something is not right. She asks the children their names, but they don’t remember. Some never learned to speak.

The body remains as Death walks away, briefly wishing that she was human. To understand pain and euphoria simultaneously is incredibly profound.

For a moment, Death thought she understood envy.

18 LETTER & LINE

“Untitled”

Jessica Werner Black & White monoprint coptic stitch book with polymer clay cover created in Zeinab Saab’s Spring 2020 Design Book Arts class.

LETTER & LINE 19

About the Contributors Deirdre Curley | Editorial

Deirdre Curley is very busy all the time, but never too busy for a good book. A lifelong cat lover, Deirdre aspires to rescue at least four cats, despite the protests of her very tolerant and loving partner.

Eleanor Brownlee | Editorial

Eleanor Brownlee is an Anthropology student with a love for writing. She also enjoys photography and likes to drink some tea with one of her cats in her lap.

Hana Elogbi | Editorial & Contributor

Hana Elogbi is nearly a graduate of Portland Community College. She is just beginning her journey of writing fiction and loves having the ability to explore topics such as identity, culture, assimilation, community and the complex spectrum of human emotion.

PJ Golden | Contributor

PJ Golden is a self-taught watercolorist. Ms. Golden discovered her love for this medium in 2020 when she suddenly could no longer walk due to an MS exacerbation. PJ uses a manual wheelchair and credits her ability to adapt quickly to the world around her to the creative skills that she developed while painting her way through rehabilitation.

Ms. Golden is currently attending PCC. She aspires to be an art instructor here so she can share not just her passion and skill for art, but also for the development of the valuable life skills that are learned while creating it.

Ann Goldenberg | Editorial & Contributor

Ann Goldenberg grew up in the wilds of Florida, where she spent her childhood swimming and scuba diving in springs, lakes, and coastal waters. She spent many years making educational television programs about art, science, and history. She recently completed an Interior design degree at PCC. “Two Weeks” is her first published essay.

Airea Johnson | Contributor

Airea Johnson is enchanted with the grief process, the idea of significance, and the freewill dilemma. Her work appears in Third Wednesday Magazine, Outrageous Fortune, Poetry in the Time of the Coronavirus, and 100 Lives Anthology. This Florida girl now resides in Portland, Oregon with her red tabby, Henry.

Abby Leadham | Editorial & Contributor

Abby Leadham currently attends Portland Community College. She enjoys swimming, hiking, being in nature, and spending time with her two dogs in her free time.

Bien Lising | Editorial & Contributor

Bien Lising is a huge fan of bigger than life stories whether it be fantasy, science fiction, or super heroes story while still being grounded. Bien hopes to expand his comic universe while hoping it marks an emotional impact on people as his stories progress.

Maylani Maathai | Contributor

Maylani Maathai is a student in the PCC creative writing program. She currently lives in Portland, OR.

20 LETTER & LINE

Kambra Phoebus | Contributor

Kambra was born in Southern California and lived there for 7 years. From that point until highschool, Kambra lived in southwestern rural Puerto Rico. Kambra has always had a keen sense of curiosity about the natural environment and our human interactions. After a career as a naturopathic doctor, Kambra has found her way back to art and is currently exploring a visual language in two dimensions, trying to ask questions about humans, who are really a part of the natural world, and how we can best care for it. Kambra wants us to stay curious, and to shed joy and laughter, and notice the awesome beauty that is our world.

Araguaney Rodríguez Da Silva | Editorial & Contributor

Araguaney is a nonbinary Venezuelan immigrant. They are also a community organizer, literary translator, and currently attend Portland Community College with a focus on creative writing. They hold a bachelor’s in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Brown University. When they are not working or writing, you can find them taking their dog on adventures by the Oregon coast, or trying to bake the latest recipe from the Great British Baking Show.

Emma Schafer | Contributor

I am PCC student who created this piece for my color theory class. It was an exercise in color and pattern to capture the restless, out of control feelings of a mixed bipolar episode I experienced while in quarantine as an essential worker. It’s gouache on a 15x20 bristol board.

Anic Ulrope | Editorial & Contributor

Anic is a free thinker. A reader of obscure fiction. A writer of selfish convictions and harsh truths. Her poetry holds space for subjects such as but never limited to mental health, sex, femininity, race, and individuality. Currently exploring the complex consciousness that generates the African diaspora within American society.

Emily Van Heusen | Contributor

My name is Emily Van Heusen and I’m a visual artist, currently pursuing the goal of gaining my BFA. I work in many different art mediums, but love to work with printmaking, drawing and painting the most. My art and choice in subject matter is often focused on nature, the human relationship to nature and ultimately our impact on the natural world. Inspired by natural environments and the intersectionality of our world I aim to make art that is not only beautiful but conceptual as well.

• Details of print We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change - Dimensions: 6” x 7 1/2” Media: Printing Ink, Rice Paper - Date: November 2020 • Details of painting: Lush - Dimensions: 15” x 20” Media: Gouache - Date: November 2020

Lee Vance | Contributor

Lee Vance is an aspiring memoirist if for no other reason than to excavate the many lives she’s led up until this point. She is seeking continuity, and using writing as a medium in which to explore the threads that hold each chapter together.

Jess Werner | Contributor

My name is Jess Werner and I live in Portland, OR. I create art as mediation and use it for expressing emotions. I specialize in mixed media collage, illustration, book making and graphic design. My art style is illustrative and/or abstract and I enjoy trying new mediums.

LETTER & LINE 21

Masthead LETTER & LINE Volume 6, Number 1, Winter 2021 Front Cover image: Kambra Phoebus Letter & Line is a literary magazine created by the Editing and Publishing class at PCC Sylvania.

The work herein is a collection from members of the student body and PCC community. To submit your work for a future edition of Letter & Line, visit: letterandline.submittable.com

EDITORS Eleanor Brownlee -- Prose Editor | Layout Editor Deirdre Curley -- Poetry Editor | Copyeditor Conor Davenport -- Prose Editor | Copyeditor Hana Elogbi -- Poetry Editor | Layout Managing Editor Ann Goldenberg -- Prose Editor | Layout Editor Si Hayter -- Prose Editor Abby Leadham -- Prose Editor | Copyeditor Bien Lising -- Prose Editor | Layout Editor | Social Media Araguaney Rodríguez Da Silva -- Poetry Editor | Copyeditor | Masthead Megan Savage--Faculty Advisor Anic Ulrope -- Poetry Editor | Layout Editor | Social Media

Copyright @ 2021 by Portland Community College Portland Community College, PO Box 19000, Portland, Oregon 97280-0990 Portland Community College reserves all rights to the materials contained herein for the contributor’s protection, on publication, all rights reserved in the authors.

LETTER & LINE 22

LETTER & LINE 23