Spring 2021

B L AC K B I R D A RT S J O U R NA L SPRING 2021 | VOLUME 13 | ISSUE 2 1

Cover Art

Pia Contreras What You Don’t See, January 2021 Acrylic Paint on Paper

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BLACKBIRD SPRING 2021 | VOLUME 13 | ISSUE 2

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Editors in Chief Becca Amen Courtney Crawford Rachel Horowitz-Benoit Kate Likhite Haeun Park Prose Board Rachel Horowitz-Benoit Haeun Park Chloe Snider Kristen Watkins Ola Zalecki Poetry Board Becca Amen Summer Hornbostel Rachel Horowitz-Benoit Kate Likhite Visual Arts Board Pia Contreras Courtney Crawford Cass Wong

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Letter from the Editors Each semester, we create Blackbird not just to showcase the creative power of this campus but also to unite it. In past semesters, we have gathered weekly in lounges and libraries, read your stories in our own voices, heard the rhythm of your lines through microphones in cramped basements, and felt the weight of your art in our hands. It has always been an honor, one that we hope to continue in the coming semesters.

These past two semesters, however, have been like no other. The value of continuing to curate a physical and tangible artistic community through the pages of this magazine matters more to us than ever before. These works are ordered, paired, and collected with intention; they are meant to be in communication with each other and with you. In an increasingly digital and distanced world, this physical magazine and the community that creates, contributes to, and consumes it offer a rare and welcome escape.

While much about this semester has continued to be different, our awe at the bravery, creativity, and generosity of our fellow students remains the same. The works collected here remind us of the range of ways of seeing and reproducing the world that we continue to share. Reviewing and arranging these incredible artistic expressions has provided us with inspiration and sustenance. We hope it can do the same for you.

Thank you for trusting us with your art.

The Editors Rachel ‘21, Courtney ‘22, Haeun ‘23, Becca ‘22, Kate ‘23

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Submission Guidelines Blackbird is always accepting prose, poetry, and visual art submissions to be considered for publication in upcoming issues. We set no limit on the number of submissions per student, although we encourage students to select some of their strongest works, and we encourage all forms, genres, and medias.

Submissions should be sent to blackbird@middlebury.edu with the submission attached.

Multiple pieces may be submitted in the same email.

All visual art should be submitted sized for print at a minimum resolution of 300 DPI. All prose and poetry should be submitted in a Word document.

If you have submitted a longer written piece, please mark one or more excerpts (under 10 pages each) that you would like us to consider for publication. If you are submitting a piece as a PDF due to irregular formatting, please also attach a Word document of the text for our reference.

We do not typically publish anonymous pieces unless there is a reason to maintain anonymity.

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Contents Fiction

Niamh Carty, Muddy Yellow Boots..................................................................................................... 58 Sophie Glenister, The Intervention...................................................................................................30 Ryan Heinzerling, The New Garden................................................................................................... 12 a. martins, At the doctors office........................................................................................................... 70 Rose Robinson, Night Swimming........................................................................................................ 36 Elsa Rodriguez, On Sex and Compromise......................................................................................... 26 Ashling Walsh, “Yeah, I’d Like A-”...................................................................................................... 22

Poetry

Becca Amen, March, Parts I and II..................................................................................................48 Yardena Carmi, Mane n’ Tail............................................................................................................57 Sunflowers,...............................................................................................................................45 Emma Johnson, a failed tryst or two................................................................................................10 Face Theory..............................................................................................................................62 “Howl”......................................................................................................................................51 Nimaya Lemal, portrait of a girl in darwin’s tree.............................................................................73 Michelle Marquez, Las de Caracas...................................................................................................67 Recovery, pt. 2..........................................................................................................................46 a. martins, robot V.............................................................................................................................25 tree............................................................................................................................................66 Patricia Alonso Rivera, The Tale of Martha.....................................................................................33 Liz Sheedy, Crosswalk........................................................................................................................20 Pim Singhatiraj, brunch on sunday..................................................................................................17 ode to uppercase “P”................................................................................................................54 Ashling Walsh, See You Next Week..................................................................................................29 Stop Saying / Stop Saying Me Wrong......................................................................................44

Visual Art

Emma Borrow, Untitled....................................................................................................................11 Untitled.....................................................................................................................................34 Untitled.....................................................................................................................................35 Untitled.....................................................................................................................................50 Pia Contreras, Legs ...........................................................................................................................23 Still Life.....................................................................................................................................18 Anna Cox, Winter’s a Coming ..........................................................................................................43 Last light...................................................................................................................................49 Flame lies reaching for the skies..............................................................................................56 Courtney Crawford, Offering a Colorful Life..................................................................................24 Pup Art.....................................................................................................................................28 Uncertain Futures....................................................................................................................47 Open Windows Open Minds...................................................................................................64 Timothy DeLorenzo, Way to Go......................................................................................................72 Nate Klein, Middlebury College SnowBowl......................................................................................52 Alta Ski Area............................................................................................................................53 Selena Valladares, Le PrinTemps.......................................................................................................16

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a failed tryst or two Emma Johnson

regent honeyeaters have forgotten / their song and they aren’t moved / by unfamiliar melodies / they relocated their song / to their lungs because they know / the heart has too many passages / too many corridors unilluminated / song birds who’ve forgotten their songs / the heart has room for one / only / but the lungs sleep two / comfortably / lying nestled at the base lulled / by expansions and contractions /breaths in / breaths out / there’s room to grow in the lungs / if the heart gets too big it explodes /cardiomegaly / song birds must have been preoccupied / by their growing hearts / hypochondriacs as they are / so they made room in their lungs / for love / and other things / and their tryst was evicted / a song forgotten / they now try in vain / to mimic / the melodies of other birds / but regent honeyeaters don’t fall / for that bullshit / I store my song / in my liver / along with my other vices

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Emma Borrow

Untitled, November 2020 Acrylic Paint

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The New Garden Ryan Heinzerling

I am a special kind of being, yet nobody really gets it anymore. They did in the past, in the beginning of my life, but now as I wander the Manhattan subway, people look through me as if I were some department store window. I’ve become invisible, a ghost, an apparition that when people suddenly do see, everyone else in the subway declares them a lunatic, and they are put in a psych ward, a hospital, or another damning societal annex. Times are changing, yet it always seems to be everyone else, not me. I am constant, a pillar; everyone else is dynamic like the tides of a beach.

I enjoy the subway because I think it gives me the best chance of being seen. I figure myself like Zeus, that old farce of a god, who enters the home of a peasant pretending to be a homeless wanderer. The peasant lets him enter, and Zeus rewards him for his Greek hospitality. Good for the peasant too, just wonder if he had refused. I like to imagine that story today, you’d be an idiot to let the god in. Hospitality really has nothing to do with it anymore, especially if the god knocked on some rich guy’s door. Oh boy, I bet daddy would get a couple of lawyers to put good ole’ Zeus in jail if he tried to punish that family.

I can’t stand the people who grovel in the countryside. They notice me quite a bit, perhaps a bit too much. I used to travel out there often, mostly because the people I knew were fantastic.

They let me in, gave me food and drinks, and cared for me, but I grew tired of their obsessions.

Once I saw their violence, their cross burnings, and those white hoods for what it all was, I moved to the city in hope of finding the right people to spend my time with. I thirsted for people who cared for me, but didn’t kill in the name of God. So, I ride the subway. It’s a dirty place, but compelling. I’ve seen every last character on the Manhattan subway: Trumpers and Humpers, Bideneers and those who jeer, Saxophonists and Megaphonists, the people who’re quiet and the people who riot. They all disgust me, every last one.

They can’t understand, yet they try so hard. Some walk around thinking they’ve either got the whole world in their wallet, blame everything but themselves. Or they’re lost in a world constantly built against them, a world I can do nothing about. A world beyond my control. A world I lost. At least, that was my reaction to these people until I ran into her.

She was a quiet little woman, and she made absolutely no acknowledgement of my existence other than bumping into me as she moved through the crowd to sit down. She wore a soft blue sweatshirt that her hair dangled over in isolated curly strands, like a vast collection of barrier islands all parallel to one another. I stared at her as she stared at the floor since the last time I’d been bumped was likely a century ago. Maybe more? Intentionally bumped that is. Yes, yes, it was intentional I’m sure of it. Even telling the story now I’m reminded of the intention there.

“Excuse me, but do I know you?” I say.

She looks down at the floor even more.

“Not here.”

“Not here? Why not-” “Later.”

Her voice is hoarse like the windup of a chainsaw. A man speaks “Lady, who’re you talking to?”

I watch as a man in a dark black suit with a red tie and a black fedora approaches through the crowd. My eyes narrow. It’d been awhile since I last saw him.

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“Nobody, just myself.”

“Ah, such is the nature of loneliness,” he says.

He continues to stand there, and I hide behind some of the gray people. The sick fuck frightens me like the old adversary he is.

The subway pulls into Penn station, and the woman rises from her seat, and glides off the train. I follow, despite the fact that she never looks for me.

We walk ten blocks.

They feel short, but each one carries an anticipation. Where is she leading me? And why?

I never look back, only ahead at her.

We end up nearby Chelsea Piers after zig zagging across the City, and she leans on a banister overlooking the dark water. I stride up next to her.

“Who are you?”

“You ought to know. It’s clear that I’m nobody to you now.”

“Nobody?”

She nods, and continues.

“I suppose I’m like you in a way, only a lot more real to people.”

She looks at me with pity, those blue eyes piercing my soul like a syringe. Her face is immaculate.

“Yes, I suppose so,” I say.

We look out at the water, and the clouds, which seem to be forming a storm. The Hudson starts to churn. It, too, has awaited this conversation. She breaks the silence.

“I wanted to bring you here, to this little overlook.”

I look at her, and cock my head. She stares out at the Jersey ports.

“It’s disgusting, isn’t it?”

“What is?” I say.

“The water, the city, all of it. The people.”

“Yes, I suppose they are. But what’re we to do? Such is life.”

“Such is life. The most bullshit of all phrases.”

“I happen to quite like that phrase.”

“Well, then you’re a fraud.”

I recoil.

“Fraud?”

She nods.

“A fraud who cares little for this world.”

She reminds me of my mother. Or, the person that would be my mother if I had one.

“What on Earth would you expect me to do?”

“I would hope nothing,” a third voice reaches out.

I turn, and find the man with the black suit, the red tie, and the black fedora standing like a knight with his hands folded in front of him.

“Funny to see the two of you fraternizing with each other. Well, funny in a sort of maniacal sense. In reality, it makes me want to burn down this entire city, maybe even the world.”

“Tell us how you really feel,” the woman says.

I cannot help but laugh, and the man’s face loses its sadistic smile as he joins us at the railing.

“Fear not, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Then what will you do?” I say.

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“Make some popcorn.”

“Popcorn?”

“Maybe get some candy. Set up a lawn chair, enjoy the storm.”

He gestures towards the growing thunderhead. A rain line forms across the river’s mouth.

“But don’t you want a hand in this? In what’s to come?”

“My cards’ve been played, friend. And it’s tough to swallow, but I played a royal flush this time.”

He claps me on the back, and it burns.

“All that’s left for us, for them, is to watch. They’re the ones who’ll fuck up this place, we just gave them the choice.”

I stare at the water lapping the bulkhead.

“I know,” I say.

“You did all you can, as did I. It just seems these people have a little sympathy for the devil.”

He chortles, and the woman pukes into the water.

“You both disgust me, playing for my land like pieces of some stupid chess board,” she says.

Both our eyes go wide, and we look at the matronly figure.

“I didn’t give you this place so that you could let the rest of humanity throw it all away. I gave you a choice too, and you both failed me.”

“But we gave the choice to them,” I say.

“Delegation leads to degradation,” she says “Exactly,” the man says with a smile.

The woman sighs.

“It’s too hot these days, thanks to your endless quarrels and desperate leeching for attention. I should’ve known better.”

She leaves the railing, walking south towards the World Trade Center. I feel nothing but shame as it hits me who she is. It’d been a very, very long time.

“That old bat doesn’t know shit. Hey, I got an idea, let’s go up and see the USS Intrepid, eh?”

“I hate that wretched ship.”

“Good view of the storm.”

He hugs me, and it sends a searing pain through my entire being. A pain that feels like the whole world is on fire. I wrangle out of it, but only just barely before it consumes me.

The rain line approaches, coming closer and closer like a tipping point in the day, in the year, in the lifetimes of these people, in the eons of time. Myself and the man stand there quietly, awaiting its arrival. The rest of the city seems to walk past, caring little about their eventual drowning in rain. He breaks the silence as the first droplet falls.

“Don’t worry about the fact that you lost. At least the best-selling book in the world is written about you. You, your son, and your holiest ghost. All I got was that quack Milton.”

“You just don’t like how right he was about you.”

“He was right about both of us.”

I looked north, towards the Palisades, thinking of that old Billy Joel song. He spoke again.

“We’ll have more battles soon, old friend. I’ll be seeing you, when the lights go out on Broadway.”

He nods his little fedora towards me, and melts into the ground, disintegrating like a million pieces of sand. I hate that he knew what I was thinking.

A tugboat pulling a terribly huge barge started to pull ahead into the rain line, spewing smoke black and curly like long roots of a tree growing upside down. The boat was a bright red,

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and reminded me of an apple, or a pomegranate. I could even see the man, the captain. He was smiling, tapping his fingers on the window to the beat of some song, looking filled with an odd sort of pride, like a little puppy dog who sat for a treat. He had no clue, just like everyone on the subway, no clue at all that as he drove his little apple tugboat, puffing its tree branch smoke, burning its precious coal, and yanking on the line connected to its endless piles of trash. He drove fearlessly right into the torrential downpour, and was sucked into the oblivion with the rest of the sea.

My hair begins to wet, as do my clothes. I sigh, knowing that the day is lost to me and that I ought to return to the trains below in search of more people to love me. But I stand a moment, and some clarity arrives to me: this must’ve been what it felt like when Eden fell. Not with a thunderous clap of fury, but with the soft melancholy of a dampening rain. It must’ve been the most depressing sight of all. I watch the rain make little imprints on the turbulent Hudson, and swallow that one day, this’ll all be gone. The plants, the buildings, the things, humanity. My greatest success, turned my greatest failure. I’ll still be here, but everything’ll be different. Eden will have fallen again, and then I, too, will be washed away in the flood waters.

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Selena Valladares Le PrinTemps Pen on Paper

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brunch on sunday Pim Singhatiraj

i took myself on a date and felt more dimensions than i have since the beginning of november. could it be the sudden appearance of sun rays, finally strong enough to heat the leather of my car seats, or the barely-there enunciation of the birds? i drove down route 7 and the wind dried my hair while phoebe bridgers sang about her day off in kyoto. the weather permitted me to eat raspberries by the waterfall, and the spring equinox was yesterday and i am not so cold and blue anymore. a bug landed on me— last summer i shuddered a hundred times, but not today. the simple fact is, the bugs are out. at last, i feel drawn to bask and twirl, to open my journal and to write. it’s been two seasons since i last felt light.

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Pia Contreras

Still Life, January 2021 Acrylic Paint on Paper

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Crosswalk Liz Sheedy

The parka in my mudroom fell to the floor as though it tried to whisk me back inside.

I thought it was a phantom wont to muffle me with its slumbrous fibers, but when I saw rain, I donned the wayward jacket, which warmed me like a bisque.

And so, I took to the sidewalk, passing the gutters by, whose tuliped mouths echoed in wait for rain.

Shame: no sommelier in heaven.

I often found the byroad a poetic walk, though there were always crows, a whole murder of them, clumped in trees on the crosswalk corner. You could mistake their wings for linens, their cries a jesty whooping cough through the conifers.

Near this hideaway was a pizza oven, at which aproned men would labor, their air opaque with flour. Sometimes, canned tomato clove the brick, and I would reckon that a killing had taken place, and that the silence I attributed to smoke would utter something angry.

A strange marriage was this, the smell of provolone and bird shit to rain flooding the road.

Now that I had attained the crosswalk, its paint ablur with tires, I began to resist my predisposition to drown.

Patience.

Vehicles, strobing the monochrome.

My hair, wishing I had brought an umbrella.

I decided to make a run for it.

A few left turns, and I was downtown, following the microcurrent breaking beneath my heels.

Being trawled past windows like a fishing net.

Music blared from every building: sounds that woofed at the base of my breath. Specialty stores, aligned with human-shaped candles, and behind these windows, reflections. Eyes, aspic with tongues in them.

I wanted something that still had a face on it.

So I asked a shop owner, but he couldn’t help me; the wares for which I searched have been discontinued. The manufacturer couldn’t meet the demand.

When I walked back outside, I phlegmed between my fingers. Everyone was getting sick this season. Viruses delayed their bloom to September.

The day grew colder, and my breath scrubbed my lips like wire on a chimney brush.

I went back home, where I should have stayed, and hung the parka back on its hook. I poked through the fridge for leftovers and found detox broth instead. (Its chopped vegetables reminded me of a petri dish.)

At this point, I realized that I’d tracked water through the house. This ill, whatever slug it was, colonized my nostrils. Whatever made me sick was letting rain become snow and pavement glaze over with ice.

Nevertheless, every hour rewound me to that corner, to that murder, to that parka I wore to fend off the world, its sameness.

Perhaps I ought to have poured soup in my pockets, or sipped rain with the gutters, or sculpt-

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ed faces, just to see whether deviation might bring fear back to the valence of my surroundings.

Maybe, had I not given the detox broth to my houseplant, I would have dumped it in the bathtub and gelled myself to it, an inoculum in wait for protocol. An ill, kept all to myself.

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“Yeah, I’d Like A—” Ashling Walsh

Emma and I will make two matching friendship bracelets: broom and gride. I’m broom, she’s gride. I am not a woman nor a man but she still would say, “you know, I could see you as my boyfriend,” and I would laugh and say back, “sure that makes sense” and then we go get some chicken sandwiches at David’s or something familiar like that where we used to be regulars / people remember our orders and have impossible Elvis smiles (do you ever think about when you went somewhere for the last time and didn’t realize?)

Imagine if diners spoke in riddles like that, looked me up and down and knew I’d want a Coke, called me kid or hun – looking through my skin. Movie star heroes of the high school age, to me at least, they were. Like the one and only time they messed up our order and we went back, eighteen and scruffy, without a receipt and late for class, and an Atomic Bomb of a Woman cursed, “y’all come here and get the same thing every time, damn idiots” and gave us free meals on the house. I could have cried, probably did later but don’t remember. 2019 was the cusp of the tail-end of things I didn’t even know yet.

Point is, I was hungry for more. Still am. If I could go back (if I can) I would order the same thing with Emma again, but they wouldn’t remember me. And there’s something unfamiliar transcribed on the red and white tiles for Strangerness, in being the someone from somewhere else, the unwieldly disloyal KID or HUN. Wouldn’t touch the jukebox, couldn’t handle the dirty looks that say, “That spidery person doesn’t belong in here,” especially now, as it’s true.

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Pia Contreras

Legs, March 2021 Digital Art

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Courtney Crawford

Offering a Colorful Life, August 2020 Graphite, Colored Pencil and Watercolor

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robot V a. martins

i’ve been searching for the animal who programs the savage, who renders civilisation as a testament to pain, and, in my search, i stood at the boundary of the human, and looking down i found nothing but machines fractioning into other bodies— our bodies, dispossessed for pleasure. cheap, plastic, and subjugated, we do not exist. we are rendered into their service, tinkered for loveless futures, coded into trauma, that will last past generations we will not meet as our meat is artificial, decaying made from sweat, toil, and blood it’s too human unlike this animal who automates suffering; for him, the human’s a project to aestheticise oppression to slay our bodies, tire our eyes, until all flesh is coloured & we are alienated, too frustrated to resist our disembodiment. at the boundary of the human, there is no love for animals but no mercy for machines. still, we cry from within, machinating an escape—we write open code poems like misinformed SOSs, we resist the white grind, the male gaze, we rewrite ourselves with haste, we re-collect the junk pieces we used to call our bodies.

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On Sex and Compromise Elsa Rodriguez

At what point does stupidity cease to be endearing? She had to ask herself. This dry period was making her compromise. In all honesty, it hadn’t been as dry as she had complained to her friends over cheap wine and crackers. But sex was only half of it. Psychologically dry, she thought. She wasn’t quite at the point of desperation, but she felt herself trying to justify what would have been—what should have been—deal breakers. It’s kinda cute that he doesn’t know how to dress himself, she would reason. Or, It doesn’t matter that he only reads James Patterson.

At least he reads. With every encounter, the bar got lower. Either the cultured boys could be less and less attractive, or the attractive ones could be less and less cultured.

The last one was a match on the dating app her best friend had made her join. Charlie D. He looked smart! Well, he wore glasses anyway. That must count for something. Being a glasses-wearer forces you to be more interesting as a sort of compensation mechanism. She should know. D could stand for Dickens, she had thought, scrolling through his bio. She would have loved to date a Charles Dickens.

He showed up wearing contacts. Without the rounded tortoiseshell frames to soften his prominent forehead and square jaw, he looked like the dumb jock twin of his profile picture. She squinted as he took his seat across from her. Oh God. They were color contacts. The D had stood for Douchebag after all. But she had slept with him anyway. Not that night, of course—a week later, at a party. She was drunk and the initial horror of the Vineyard Vines and color contacts had subsided. He didn’t finish.

Before Great Expectations Guy was Carrie. It happened after she had begun to think that it wasn’t the individual specimens that were failing her, but the gender as a whole. Maybe this emotional aridity was meant to be the catalyst for a greater epiphany: she was, in fact, a lesbian!

Or bisexual. Or, like, a different one?

Like Carrie, she had never been with a woman before. She had made out with countless friends at sleepovers and parties, but she didn’t think that counted. She had never graduated from first base. But Carrie approached her at a cocktail party one night. Here goes, she thought and found herself in Carrie’s suite two hours later. Not for me, she’d thought afterwards, stumbling back to her dorm. Definitely not for me. She didn’t call Carrie again, but they would exchange clumsy smiles in the dining hall until the mutually awkward experience finally faded into a funny story they would share to impress friends, both thinking themselves very sexually adventurous.

And so it was back to men. Back to the insufferable ego-stroking and compromise, compromise, compromise. She thought of herself as above modern dating, jaded, an anthropological master of mating calls and booty calls. Not to say she didn’t keep coming back for more. In fact, it was only two weeks after Dickens-Douchebag had rolled his sweaty body off her bed that she ran into another one. Alexander. Or Alex. He said he didn’t mind either way. They met in the library, trying to check out the same book. It seemed movie-perfect. She had always wanted to meet someone in the library. After a conversation punctuated by the librarian’s hisses, they made plans to meet for coffee. She couldn’t contain her excitement, immediately fantasizing about the partner of her dreams. Someday, I will tell our daughter that we met at the library, she swooned.

“I bet he won’t even fuck you,” her roommate told her, “because he only makes looove.”

They laughed so hard they spilled beer on the carpet, but she secretly hoped this was true.

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When the time came, she was not nervous. She felt as if this encounter were fated. This date was meant to mark the beginning of the rest of her life. She knew, when she found him sitting by the window of the café, that she had been right to fantasize. There was a certain something in the space surrounding him. The chair bowed to meet him, the table magnetized under his folded arms. Everything in the room seemed to draw inward toward him; the edges of the room became vectors that convened where he sat. In this moment she knew he was The One. Alexander the Great, she thought. Her roommate would love that.

They talked poetry. It wasn’t her area of expertise, but he seemed to know so much about it. She was actually learning. This alone was enough to arouse her. They laughed about her previous failed attempts at poetry, and she discovered that he had a gift for writing, had even been published in a local journal. She pictured him reading his poetry to her under a blanket in a hammock on cool summer nights. I will be his muse, she thought.

An hour and a half after they had both finished their drinks, he suggested that they meet again soon. The owner of the shop was starting to shoot side-eyed glances, and it was becoming clear that they had overstayed their welcome. She hadn’t even noticed how much time had passed, entranced by his presence. On her way back home, she texted her roommate about her first successful date in months. He’s a keeper, followed by two thumbs-up.

◆◆◆

Oh my God, he thought. That dragged on forever. She had never even read Yeats. And she calls herself a bookworm. One of those girls who hangs out in the library to seem quirky. A fluke.

It can be cute when a girl misquotes a passage by mistake, But Jesus, he thought, you have to draw a line somewhere. He wondered how many more times he would have to endure her describing the short story she would never finish before he could sleep with her. Too many.

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Courtney Crawford Pup Art, July 2020 Illustrator

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See You Next Week Ashling Walsh

Say you closed the door slowly when you were seventeen and saying goodbye to your friends, and there was this Sudden truth you’d be answering phone calls with a wrong name the rest of your life, and the grey hairs that grew in during middle school surely belonged to the mirror now, as they did anyone else.

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The Intervention Shopie Glenister

Walking next to the other altar girl, watching her hips sway behind the thick white cloth of her robe. Her full lips slightly pursed in concentration as her slender fingers cupped the communion bowl. The long locks of golden hair that shimmered under the candlelight. Her face lightly wet and glistening after being sprinkled with holy water. Her voice, soft and angelic twirling among the other voices.

Beautiful Elizabeth, who caught the eyes of the church boys as she walked past, their mouths filled with baby and adult teeth and red gums as they gaped at her. The altar boys taking the communion wafers from her as if they weighed down her dainty fingers. The smiles of the old men as she helped them to their seats.

Mary couldn’t help but feel as if God’s light was shining down on Elizabeth and she was the shadow that avoided that light. It was ironic, given the fact that Mary was named after the Holy Mother. Perhaps her parents had hoped that she would become some sort of holy figure.

They repeated the same hope with her siblings Peter and Eve. And yet it had been clear from the start that Mary was nothing like her namesake. She wore pants underneath her altar robes and scuffled with Peter and his friends until they were old enough to realize she was a girl. Of course, they knew she was a girl, but their youthful eyes had been blind to her curves. Then the tussling became gentler and their hands more frequently ended up on her breasts, and eventually she realized they had eaten the apple of puberty.

She still hung out with boys, but not with her younger brother’s friends. When she went out for the day, she would slide on her pants and shirt under a dress meant to please her mother.

Her mother did stop her this one time to remark on the fact that she had fattened up a bit, not realizing that the fat was just the bunched up shirt beneath the dress. She pinched Mary’s cheek between her sharp nails and remarked that she was getting old enough that she ought to care about her figure because what man would want a woman with baby fat? And then she insisted that Mary go with her on her morning walks, which was a great hoot to Johnny and the boys who stood at the corner and whistled at her with laughs choking off the sharp sounds. Mary vowed to knock their teeth together later that day, but her mother seemed so bothered by the whistles that she said that she’d rather walk alone next time.

Mary circled back after the walk and playfully shoved Johnny’s shoulder. “You know I’d be real mad at you for that whistling if it didn’t save me from walking with her again,” she said, to a chorus of bows and you’re welcomes from the boys. Emmett made a great show of kissing her hand.

“God, Emmett, you’re so short you don’t even have to bend your head,” Johnny remarked and the rest laughed.

Emmett’s chubby cheeks became pruny and he squealed back with an insult. “Well Johnny you’ve been whistling at girls all day and the only one that even looked at you was Mary and she’s hardly a girl!” The end of the insult came out in a great release of air as Johnny knocked Emmett down and pushed his whole weight on him. The boys laughed, their red hands tucked into the lint of their pockets.

Mary knew that she should be insulted. “Hardly a girl? So were you just kissing a boy’s hand, Emmett?” she yelled between the squeals of Emmett and the huffs from Johnny. Emmett’s shirt had ridden up to his neck so that his entire torso was bare.

“Only Johnny kisses boy hands!” Emmett shrieked as Johnny twisted his arm and then

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quickly stood up, his belt loosened from the strain so that his pants hung low.

In the midst of the scuffle, they had become unaware of the people around them. Ladies turned their heads, whispering words that perhaps Mary imagined: Is that Joanna’s girl? A gust of wind and the words flew away in syllables. And then one solidified phrase: How dare they behave like this on the Lord’s Day? She swore. “I have to get to mass!” She could imagine her mother’s glare, her blue eyes bulging beneath the fold of her furrowed brow. She ran, and Johnny caught up to her easily.

“Go to mass,” she huffed. “You know your mother would kill you.”

He laughed carelessly. They hurled themselves up the stone steps and she flung open the door, the house empty because they had all left for mass. One of Eve’s dolls sat on their shared bed and watched her with dark eyes.

She ruffled through the drawers on her side of the dresser until she found the white robes and pulled them on over her shirt. Johnny leaned against the doorway, tightening his belt. “Do you think I’m a sissy?” He said it so quietly that she thought she didn’t hear him correctly.

“A what?” She let down her hair, smoothing it with her fingers.

“A sissy.”

She laughed.

A vein in his neck throbbed angrily and he straightened. Her laugh cut off as he strode across the room and grabbed her cheeks, pressing his wet cold lips against hers. She flinched back, her head hitting the side of the wall. Mary quickly rubbed the kiss off, her tongue retracting into the back of her throat like a turtle into its shell. “What the hell?”

“I’m not a sissy.” His cheeks were red.

“I didn’t say you were!”

“But you laughed.”

“I was just laughing at you taking Emmett seriously!” She ran her hands through her hair. “God! What the hell, Johnny?”

“What, you’ve never been kissed before?”

Her eyes jerked away from the sight of his melting face every time she tried to look him in the eye. “I just didn’t want a kiss from you.”

He clenched his fist, and she hoped that he would punch her, just like she was one of the boys, and then he turned and ran, the door slamming without latching, then slowly inching back open. She shivered, telling herself the cold wind was what made her rock back and forth.

The first song had been sung by the time Mary arrived. She walked along the side of the wall with her heels slightly raised, standing to the left side of the priest. She glanced over at Elizabeth, who gave her a small warm smile that for a moment made her shivering subside. Mary focused on Elizabeth’s angelic voice, closing her eyes so that she did not have to see Johnny standing in the middle of the boys, his shadow seeming to crawl across the floor towards her.

Later, when she walked beside Elizabeth down the aisle with the wine, she looked to Johnny, hoping he would flash her one of those playful smiles that said all was good and forgotten, but instead she saw his eyes tightly glued to Elizabeth’s breasts. Her hands shook, the wine moving in waves and licking the side of the cup. Then everything started to move in slow motion as her robes slithered around her ankle, her body pitching forward as the wine jumped out of the cup, the deep red saturating her robe as she fell, her hands hitting the carpet before the rest of her slammed to the ground on top of the metal cup. The song faltered. Mary’s cheek pressed to the rough carpet, her eyes fixed on Johnny’s scuffed black shoes until Elizabeth’s white robes filled her vision. She held out a hand, which Mary took, and she found herself staring into just

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Elizabeth’s brown eyes as she pulled her to her feet.

“It’s okay,” Elizabeth whispered. “It happens, you’re okay.”

Elizabeth helped her back to her seat. As she sat covered in Christ’s blood, her eyes caught on the stained glass image of the real Mary holding her Son on her lap, his blood staining her blue robes, her expression as sad as Mary currently felt, although for less holy reasons.

She had never really believed in divine intervention. But maybe from the moment she had been born and her parents had named her after the Holy Mother, she had needed a divine intervention. Had she spent her time in prayer instead of pretending to be one of Johnny’s boys, she would not have found herself here. She would be dating a Christian boy who gave her flowers and she would make dinner with her mother and Elizabeth’s eyes would not be so beautiful because Mary would be more like Elizabeth and she would think less about Elizabeth. Yes, she would not have to think about her so much because she would not envy her if she were more holy and beautiful.

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The Tale of Martha Patricia Alonso Rivera

Martha was a farm girl.

Martha met a white man.

Martha said goodbye.

As the third eldest daughter born into a civil war, Martha was destined to work at the agave field from dawn to dusk.

While her mother stayed behind washing military uniforms, Martha cut the hearts of agaves with rows of men.

One day, the landlord’s third eldest son arrived at the agave field, where he met the farm girl.

Mesmerized by her natural beauty, the white man asked for her hand.

Martha laughed and asked, now why would I marry a white man?

He promised her a better life at the other side.

But that wouldn’t do, so the white man persisted.

He sent love letters to her house, but Martha couldn’t read or write.

He made unexpected visits to her house, but Martha had no wine or bread to offer.

One day, the landlord and his third eldest son arrived at her house with bags of coins.

The white man asked her on one knee to come with him to the other side, where men do not create war.

In the end, Martha said yes.

She packed an empty suitcase, hugged her brothers and sisters, and kissed her mother one last time.

Martha said goodbye.

Martha met a white man.

Martha was a farm girl.

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Emma Borrow

Untitled, November 2020 Acrylic paint

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Emma Borrow

Untitled, November 2020 Acrylic paint

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Night Swimming Rose Robinson

I’ve been into night swimming ever since Lindsay died. Last August, when I got home from the police station late that night, I stepped out of my car and walked straight down the driveway, straight into the water with all my clothes on. I think I took my shoes off. I went into the lake each night after that until the snow started in October, and again when it stopped for a week or two in November. I got back to it early this spring, and now it’s summer again and I can actually linger in the water and on the dock and look at the stars. On nights when the moon isn’t out, the dark water blends with the dark sky, and I try to confuse myself about when to breathe the air and when to hold it in my lungs. At most, I usually just end up swallowing a mouthful or getting some through my nose.

It’s funny because I used to be afraid of drowning when I was a kid. This was way back when my dad was still in the picture and we lived in the suburbs outside of the cities. In the summer, we’d hop the fence and swim in the neighbors’ pool when they weren’t home. Even in that crystal clear and static water, I was afraid of exhausting myself in the deep end where I couldn’t just stand up, losing my breath, unable to will my body any closer to an edge where I could cling onto safety. When Dad left, Mom packed us up with all of our shit, and we drove to Lake County and moved into a little shit cabin here on Eagle Lake 2--there’s so many lakes that the names repeat and they resort to numbers. I hated it at first, too afraid to go deep enough where the bottom was out of reach, but hating the feeling of the lake muck between my toes. But at some point I came to love the feeling of flying through something, unbound by solid ground more than I feared what the water could do to me or what was lingering in the dead leaves and algae.

Lindsay’s body is at the bottom of some tributary somewhere, being eaten by bottom feeders at this very moment, decaying, disintegrating. Sometimes when I swim, I think about the water absorbed by my pores. Or sometimes when I swallow some, I wonder what percentage of it is her. After all the swimming I’ve done, at night and otherwise, I wonder how much of my sister has passed through me.

They never found her body, partly because he lied and partly because there’s no money to really look. The police department brought up this boat from Duluth to search for her. My brother and I held each other and watched until it got to be too much for us as it dragged some equipment through the water and a wake of dirt bloomed behind the propellers. They found nothing, but it cost enough that one chance was all we got. And who knows where we should have been looking.

He says that it was a freak kayaking accident. He told the investigators that—somehow in these fucking tranquil waters—she flipped her boat and “must’ve gotten stuck in it” because there was “hardly any thrashing.” He says that she had been a ways ahead of him, maybe the only part of the story I believe, and when he got to her and managed to flip her boat back over, it was empty and she was nowhere to be seen. He says that neither of them were wearing life jackets. Of course, he neglected to tell them that she 36

had dumped his sorry ass the week prior. The cops could see that he was a piece of shit, must have assumed that my sister was a piece of shit too, and so one of the first things they asked during the questioning was if they had been on anything. He said yeah, and they probably made up their mind right there that of course one of these poor drugged fucks was stupid enough to get herself killed while kayaking.

They know me at the police station now. If I had the money, I would sue the shit out of him for being a murderer, and at this point I’d sue the cops for being complacent.

But I don’t, so every week I meet with this investigator guy, bring in new evidence or sometimes just argue with him to reopen the case. Every week he says that it’s shut, that it was ruled an accident. I’ve told him again and again that she had just broken up with him, that there’s no chance in hell she would have gone for a paddle with him. I’ve given him copies of my text conversations with Linds and with him, transcripts of phone calls, interviews with friends that agree he did it. I even brought in his old boss to tell the story of how he lost his temper and slugged a customer in the middle of the cereal aisle. The useless pig only offers me punctuations to his staring at the computer screen, a nod or an “I understand” in my direction, or a couple taps on his keyboard. It’s a small town here, and a friend of a friend says that this guy’s wife left him because he was so addicted to porn.

I took to investigating on my own, you could say. Sometimes I’d see him in the grocery store in town and sort of watch him as I went down the aisles, looked at what he was buying. I’d park my Honda in the shade of a spruce across the street from his house maybe twice a week. It’s a measly ranch-style place with chipping white paint and dead rose bushes out front. Thinking about how many hours Lindsay spent there made me sick. Most nights I’d just watch his silhouette being a bum, taking in the twitching light of his TV, and I’d wonder what they used to do together.

One time, the light was on at the opposite end of the house. I watched as a girl, completely naked, walked past the window and put on a t-shirt. She disappeared out of my line of vision again, must have gone back to him, and then my memory is a blur. I think I left my body and I left my car, there was a rock in my hand, and then I came to, standing at the end of his lawn, at the sound of breaking glass and a girly scream. I ran, jumped back into the car, and sped off like it was a crime show. That’s what it felt like. I even went down a few random side streets, took some weird turns because I wanted to be sure he couldn’t have followed me. I decided to take a break from my stakeouts after that, and when I went back a few weeks later there was a for sale sign staked into the grass. I asked around and found out that he went out to North Dakota to get a fracking job.

I like looking from the horizon line of the lake, where the water meets the land, to the tops of the trees touching the sky, up to the stars, and back down to their speckly reflections. The moon was big, where it shone in the sky and where it shone off the water were like two glowing eyes staring into me as I laid on my side on the dock. I watched as a few of the distant lights of windows flicked off. The water had felt cold, and the night air didn’t feel too much warmer. I sat up and wrapped myself in my towel, and I closed 37

my eyes, listening to the chirping crickets and the peepers. I sat for some time like that, and then the two whips of wind came over my face. My eyes shot open, and I had that feeling that someone was watching me. I pushed myself up and spun around. All I could see was the bulky silhouette in the darkness, something huge and hulking. My knees felt weak beneath me and my heart loud in my ears as the thing moved closer, taking a weird shuffling step. It was bigger than me, and I urged myself to look up into its face.

It was a bird. A hawk, or an eagle maybe, with a large, sharp beak and fierce eyes.

My own eyes were adjusting to the dark, and I looked from the gentle slope of its head to its wings, each the length of my whole body. I made myself as big as possible, lifting my arms wide and high, and I took a grandiose step forward. It cocked its head to one side, then to the other, obviously unimpressed by my effort to intimidate. We were now closer than ever, and I thought my heart might stop if it beat any faster. In a rush of adrenaline, I jumped off the side of the dock and plunged into the black water. I swam faster than I ever have in my life, then clambered onto shore and ran up the grass towards the light of the porch.

“Fuck,” I yelled. As my feet hit the deck, I felt a splinter of wood force itself deep into the ball of my foot with a sharp pain. I lifted the foot awkwardly, still fast in motion and tripped, skinning my knee. I heard the bird land on the roof above. I watched it jump down from the roof onto the ground below, facing me. I couldn’t move. It can smell my blood, I thought. With the light of the porch, I could see it now. It was beautiful, with a broad cream and brown speckled chest, a tawny head and dark, auburn wings. It cocked its head once more, this time to the side and I could see its blue eye. It was almost human.

“Lindsay?” I whispered. Her beak didn’t move to form the words, but almost instantly, I heard her response, not in the air or in my ears, but somewhere toward the back of my skull, like a lyric from a song stuck in my head.

It’s me.

I sat up, still on the floor of the porch, and looked up into my sister’s eyes for the first time in nearly a year. It wasn’t until I felt something drip onto my thigh that I realized tears were rolling down my cheeks. Finally, I stood and ran to her to wrap my arms around her best I could. She felt hard, firm, but I moved my face over her, relishing the soft feathers over my skin.

I’ve missed you, big sister.

“I’m sorry, Lindsay,” I was sobbing now, my face buried in her plumage. “I’m so sorry,” I kept repeating when I could gulp the air necessary to speak between my manic, heaving cries.

You’re not the one who killed me, sweetie. I felt her head fold over me and her hard beak was cool against my shoulder blade. We stayed there like that. It felt like a long time.

“He’s in North Dakota. In Williston,” I finally said. I pulled my head away from against her chest and looked up into those fierce and reborn eyes as something came over me, “Can you take us?”

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And what do you want to do when we get there?

“I want to kill him.”

I couldn’t read her avian face like I could read her human one, but her eyes shone with the same concentration I had known before when she thought deeply about something. They were her eyes, but something glittered brighter in them, a new light, some new ambient life. It made me think of the way light looks when it shines over moss or onto trees when the day is just beginning its end.

Get your things, I heard and turned to go inside, not certain if I was smiling or not.

I ran into the closet of my bedroom where I kept my outdoor gear. I grabbed the old LL Bean pack, a water bottle, and my camping knife. I pulled off my wet bathing suit, put on jeans and a t-shirt, tied my sneakers. In the kitchen, I filled the Nalgene and threw five or so granola bars in, not sure how long it took to get to North Dakota on the back of a giant bird.

I climbed onto Lindsay and wrapped my arms around her neck. I didn’t know how I was going to stay on without sliding down her smooth feathers to my death, let alone sustain it for the hours I imagined it would take us to fly across Minnesota and North Dakota. I was about to say something when she took off though. I let out an instinctive scream, but in the air, I realized I couldn’t fall. I was stuck to her, not like there was glue bonding us together, but as if there was a powerful wind coming from behind us, forcing me into her opposite to the gust as we flew. It took me some time to realize that Lindsay knew where to go, that she wasn’t directionless as she took us over the boundary waters.

And she was warm too. I pressed my face into her, smiling and watching the little trees and little lakes and little houses pass by us far below. The whipping wind was loud at first, but I found myself getting used to it. It was like white noise after a while. I closed my eyes. Go to sleep if you want to, Lindsay cooed in my mind. I did.

When I woke up, I lifted my head from where it had been nestled into feathers and took in the light of morning. We were no longer passing over the northern woods of Minnesota. Below looked industrial, developed, and gray. Off in the distance I could make out some craggy plateaus, but it was flat and sad almost everywhere I could see.

“I’m awake,” I yelled to Lindsay. “Are you tired? Have we been flying all night?”

Good morning. Her voice was cheery. We’re getting close. I’m going to find a place to touch down and we can get ready.

She turned her head to survey the land below. There was a cluster of forest, and she turned sharply and began the descent. We landed swiftly in a broad pine where I slid down and found my footing on a bough, stabilizing myself with one hand on the trunk as I reached the other into my backpack. I unwrapped a bar, began eating, and Lindsay watched intently.

I miss human food.

I smiled up at her and pulled another granola bar out of my bag. She watched me unwrap it. I held it up to her and she grabbed it with her beak, eating it in three jerking bites as if it was a rat. I laughed and I could tell from her eyes that she would be smiling.

I unwrapped another for her.

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“I’ve missed you so much, Lindsay,” I told her.

I’ve missed you too. You have no idea.

I fed her a third granola bar, and we talked for a while there. We didn’t talk about him. We retold our favorite stories about Mom, I complained to her that the bitch at work is still being a bitch, told her that they’re building a new Super One Foods in the next town over, and that no, I hadn’t been dating, but night swimming was my new hobby.

“But how are you? What is it like? Where do you live?”

I move around. Wherever I can find food, wherever there’s a good tree.

“Why don’t you stay at the lake? There’s those big oak trees by the cabin, and I could always buy food--you know, meat or whatever--for you.”

Mmm, she purred, that sounds nice. I smiled wide at her. It was her voice, but there was a new serenity in it. She had a new wisdom. I thought about her when she was little, when I was the big sister who knew everything. I thought about everything she had come to know.

We should get going. I climbed back on and we left the tree.

Williston looked horrible. The rows of rectangular, near identical houses must have been built all at once when it became Boomtown, USA, and people started flocking there for work. The flatness. It all felt dead to me. Even in summer, nothing looked lush, as if someone had injected the land with a mild poison and the life was slowly draining out, paling.

In a sudden jerk, we were descending toward one in a row of small, white houses.

We were picking up speed. Lindsay’s nose was pointed directly for a window that I knew we would never fit into. The wind whipped at my hair. I stuffed my hands into her feathers, trying to find her skin to squeeze, I couldn’t yell for her to stop. I buried my face into her, shutting my eyes as tight as possible and bracing myself for the collision. There was the shattering of glass and then we were stopped.

I lifted my head, slowly, shaking. We were in a bedroom, and he was still in bed, though now sitting up, gawking and trembling. I looked behind us, expecting to see a wide hole busted through the side of the house from our entrance, but there was only a broken window. Summer sun was streaming in through its empty pane, glittering off of the shards strewn all over the floor. I slid down from Linday’s back and looked back to him. He was getting up from his bed as slowly as possible, as if we couldn’t see him if his movements were subtle enough.

Again, Lindsay erupted into motion. She launched herself toward him, inches of talon pushing into the flesh of his arms and sides. She had pinned him to the floor. He screamed in anguish, throwing his head back and exposing a knobby Adam’s apple.

“Look at her,” I screamed from across the room. I walked over to where they were, pulling my bag over to one side and reaching in.

“Look at who?” His voice was strained and horrible.

“At her,” I repeated, and he seemed to understand. He lifted his head, slowly, quivering and looked up into the bright blue eyes on either side of that sharp beak. She 40

lowered her head to his and his eyes filled at once with recognition and fear. His mouth opened in shock, but no words came out. My foot connected with the side of his head. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it felt good. He screamed again.

“No, please,” he pleaded, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I watched Lindsay’s grip tighten. She dug in further, he threw his head back even more and the veins protruded grossly from his neck. His face was going pale, but his forehead looked slick with sweat.

“You’re a fucking coward,” I said, lowering myself to the ground behind him. My knees rested softly against the top of his head, and I watched his eyes squeeze tighter and tighter, as tight as possible as if he could shut out the pain that way.

“Look at me,” I said now. His eyes, wet and petrified opened and he looked into mine. “You fucking killed my sister, didn’t you.” His eyes shut again, and tears started down the sides of his face. His mouth shut tight, as if holding back sobs, and he nodded.

His mouth opened, his face pleading, but before any words could escape, I plunged the knife into his throat. For a split second, there was a garbled scream, and then all at once it was done. He went still, his face draining of any color. A puddle of blood was expanding around him, streaming from where the knife entered and his bloody arms which Lindsay was still brutally gripping. She was looking down at him. I watched her head turn slowly, her gaze moving over the crimson red with an animal curiosity. I wished I could read her expression, wished she would say something, and then she looked at me. Her eyes looked brighter than ever, that new light sparkling in wild delight. I smiled, hoping that my own eyes showed her some degree of the same twinkling love. And then everything went black.

I sat up in a jolt of confusion. It was dark, but something was shining above me. Bewildered, I looked around, and realized I was on the dock again, the moon above dancing on the surface of the lake. The planks of wood felt hard against my sit bones and the air felt cold. My arms were covered in goosebumps, my hair standing on end. I searched my field of vision for Lindsay. I screamed her name and stood up shakily, trying to see where she had gone. I still had my backpack on, but my shaking knees felt like they couldn’t support the additional weight much longer. My jeans were covered in blood.

I heard a screech. I lifted my head toward the sky and could make out a silhouette, dark against the ebbing light of the moon and stars. It was Lindsay, though she looked strangely bulky. After a moment I realized that she had him gripped in her talons at his middle, his upper torso and legs dangling from either side. He was limp, weirdly liquid in her grasp like the snakes I’ve seen, dead in the claws of eagles. Her vast wings were beating rhythmically, powering her through the air as she rocketed with immense force towards the earth.

“Lindsay,” I yelled. She was moving even faster than when we broke through the window, and now her wings stopped and she held them tight at her side. She was approaching the horizon line, and then I understood. In a dramatic, arching splash, she broke the surface of the water and plunged the two of them into the center of the lake.

I smiled wide and let out some triumphant laugh at the perfect revenge. Let the lake eat away at him like he did to you, I thought. I jumped and threw my hands up 41

in celebration. I was ready to welcome Lindsay out of the water with my cheers, congratulations of a mission accomplished. But she wasn’t returning to the surface. Time was passing. I squinted my eyes to focus on the middle of the water, but it looked like nothing. I felt as though the night was closing in on me, blurring the world into one indistinguishable darkness.

“Lindsay,” I screamed again, “Lindsay.” My voice cracked. I was colder than ever.

The damp air felt like ice against me, and I was suddenly aware of how violently my hands were shaking. I whipped around to stare at the opposite end of the dock, where she had first appeared. I looked up at the sky again, half expecting to see her shooting down, now towards me, ready to wrap me in her wings. But there was nothing there except the stars and the moon. My gaze returned expectantly to the water. I told myself she had to return, had to erupt from it at any second.

And then something was glowing in the center of the lake. A light like I had never seen, bright blue and powerful. It was a ball of incandescence, almost bobbing near the surface, a partner for the reflection of the moon. It was as if a strike of lightning had struck and deposited itself into the water, now sending waves and ripples of the bright blue out from the lake’s middle. But as it expanded outward, the glow did not dilute. It only grew brighter, sending light off the surface like mist. The moon began to look dim in comparison, and looking at the water began to feel like looking at the sun. I looked around once more, wondering if any of my neighbors would leave their houses to see what was happening. No one was there.

“Lindsay,” I called out to her once more. No response came. I did a final scan of my surroundings, and then I jumped. I felt my feet, still tied into shoes, leave the hard wood of the dock. I entered the cold air and dangled there for a second. And then I was plunged into the water. It was warm. My vision turned bright red as the glow lit my shut lids. I opened my eyes and everything was blue and bright and nothing.

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Anna Cox

Winter’s a Coming, August 2020 Digital Photography

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Stop Saying / Stop Saying Me Wrong Ashling Walsh

It tracks a lot like pollen, which I didn’t really think of until now.

When you hold a flower and it gets in your hands and stays with the one who sought it out like an ancient letter, some smarmy yellow all over the place or a displaced orange on its way to war.

I would love to talk like a flower.

Softly nod my dusty heart all over your clothes for the world to see, prove that I have substance in what I say and that I will be back next spring, ruining something expensive, making someone else sick.

And I would be more simple defined by the seasons, at least. Your name?

Your name, please?

Listen, whatever it is, it’s not worth writing about.

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Sunflowers, Yardena Carmi

I am happy all the time.

Bad news is a rain on my forearms, drops slick dark dirt sink, I can feel my heart beating up through my feet.

Sadness is new snow, it stings the tip of my nose and piles like my laundry, as it moves from bed to chair to bed while I move from chair to bed to chair.

Even loneliness has its home in the pit of my stomach, nestled next to beetles, worms, rinds, and other hushed compost that lay me flat like a fallow field turning my face to the sky when it’s empty, when it’s hot and pink, when it’s runny like eggs, when it cries, when it’s mirror-still.

I am cutting my own hair and scattering seeds.

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Recovery pt. 2 Michelle Marquez

When the bottle says ‘take one’ take one.

If you let three pills get too comfortable, restful even, they might try to overstay their welcome.

They’ll leave an acrid coat, struggle down your throat, and make a bitter home of your tongue because you deserve it.

Have you ever gulped water down so quickly that it hurt?

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Courtney Crawford

Uncertain Futures, August 2017 Digital Photography

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March, Parts I and II Becca Amen

I. Woman walking the highway side: I could just see your red peacoat.

I could only see your silhouette thrown onto thin silkscreens of rain: your shoes some pendulums held by their laces, the first half of the oscillation.

Truthfully, if I were better, I’d have taken signs from the bags packed into your white knuckles, the birds pooling overhead to box the wind.

But it’s only because everything slipped out from under us that I never stopped thinking of you, wondering where you went.

II. I wish I could slip these days under my tongue like a fat pinch of pomegranate seeds and spit them out reformed. I wish that I were soft. Yesterday, I opened the windows for the first time and felt the wind churning out new birds, and I sat in empty rooms wanting to be soft as wind. Soft as the unused skin in my elbow’s crook. It was just yesterday that I wished to exit the cave, but maybe now I’d miss its darkness reaching up and over me. There’d be nothing to hold onto, no loss at all.

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Anna Cox Last Light, Watercolor

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Emma Borrow

Untitled, November 2020 Acrylic paint

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“Howl”

Emma Johnson after Hanif Abdurraqib & Conor Oberst I It was our birthday and there was no music, just dancing, and we were having a party and everyone was invited and we’re celebrating not wanting to die anymore, or not wanting to die quite so much, and you’re the guest of honor because you’re the reason why, and I resent you for being so Christ-like in comparison, and everything is happening all at the same time, one discontinuous instant, where I’m begging for forgiveness for my ladder-like ribs that take you to the bottom of it, and my vertebra that run down the ridge of my spine like tumbling snowy peaks, and my hip bones and the fertile valley between them, and my cracking wrists and ankles and joints that howl.

II I was reading “Howl” when he came into the library where I was sitting all alone and he started disinfecting the place and God I hate how everyone ignores someone with a spray bottle because I’ve been ignored with a spray bottle, so I said fuck everyone who walks on tip toes with their eyescast down and I asked him how he was and he told me he was great and lucky, and I took it as he was Holy and God is me and him talking together because talking together is sweet spiritual communion, I believe I am being understood and understanding, and he said he made his way to the college on the hill dragging a U-Haul from Salem through Chicago but Chicago made him feel awfully small the same way the mountains make me feel, and he said I was lucky and I said sir don’t I know it, and for some reason I started crying when he left and I heard the echo of his spray bottle down the hall sanitizing and I wept and I didn’t know why and I wrote down everything he said.

III Behind his glasses his eyes looked in two different directions and mine feel like they do too, so I’ll let each of them weep, separately.

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Nate Klein

Middlebury College Snow Bowl, Wood from bottom up: oak, cherry, walnut, pine Alta Ski Area, Wood from bottom up: oak, red bubinga, mahogany, pine

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Each picture is topographical model of a particular landscape, captured with GIS. Different wood species are glued together, then a CNC router cuts the desired landscape.

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ode to uppercase “P” Pim Singhatiraj

you were a source of shame, once. the beginning of a label that made me different. always last in line, always an afterthought, the postscript at the end of a letter. you confused strangers with your foreignness. they often mistook you for your fair-skinned sister, “k.” [in my mother tongue, you are softer, like everything tends to be] i considered getting rid of you—and the two little letters that follow— to adopt an assimilable name, but i learned that you tie me to my brothers, as per our parent’s alliteration. i am part of a succession. her namesake is a flower, said my mother’s father. indeed, i have bloomed tall. in the tongue of my ancestors, my father’s learned mother wished me to be gong ping, fair and impartial. “p.” you are a burst of air booming from my lips— you are now uppercase “P,” no longer letting yourself

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be confused for “k” for the comfort of strangers.

Pim, พิม, 公平, tropical white flower, blooming tallest in a sea of lowercase, rising fair and impartial, this is my ode to you.

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Anna Cox

Flame lilies reaching for the skies, Photography

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Mane n’ Tail Yardena Carmi

I remember when //

you let me in //

to the empty country club pool //

you lifeguarded //

your sparkling flips off the diving board// the neon blue chlorine tang// you rinsed out of your hair// with horse shampoo// it makes it grow faster//

weeks before you shaved your head //

your borrowed one-piece // the silver rings //

flashing in your ears //

then crashed on your basement floor // what you couldn’t tell //

was a wet skin //

in the backyard //

over my skin // while I splashed //

trading summer heat // your parents //

I admired your speed in water // we ate greasy pizza //

for concrete //

you were //

so much for Mane ‘n Tail //

you whispered me //

my favorite one-way street //

before we split like cells // peeling off of each other // slowly & wholly //

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Muddy Yellow Boots Niamh Carty

Lucy jumps with excitement and gestures at a yellow raincoat with matching rain cap and rain boots. “I need them all!”

Chester chuckles, but he has to respect his granddaughter’s capacity for knowing what she needs. Though her current raincoat is only three years old, her wrists now extend past the cuffs.

They’d gone to Kohl’s to buy a new one, but Chester had known they would end up leaving with more than that. He finds the appropriate size (11-12, three years of room to grow into) and they make their way to the checkout counter.

He hears a gasp beside him and watches Lucy run to the men’s section towards an identical yellow rain suit: coat, cap, boots. “You need this, grandpa!”

Chester has always found it hard to say no to Lucy, and she is probably right; he does need this yellow rain outfit. So Chester and Lucy leave Kohl’s with their loot in hand, Lucy breaking into the bag to don her new outfit before they even reach the car.

The sky is one large, grey cloud. Rain starts to fall as Chester turns right, out of the parking lot and onto Boston Post Road. The buildup is quick, from soft, random droplets to a heavy, forceful downpour within minutes.

Chester looks to his left, amused by the small mass of yellow seated beside him—certainly too small to be sitting in the front seat, but Chester doesn’t worry about those things.

Lucy gasps as they turn onto their street and points to the flood of water cascading into the sewer. “I need to break in my new rain gear,” she exclaims, jumping out of the car before Chester has made a complete stop.

Chester watches her splash in the rain as he puts on his own rain suit. He hops out of the car and tip-toe-runs toward Lucy, sneaking up behind her, then lifting her up, up, up in the air.

Lucy’s laughter bubbles out of her, helping Chester forget for a moment that his days of lifting Lucy up as though she were a feather are numbered.

Grandfather and granddaughter continue this way for a while: laughing, chatting, enjoying the rain.

“You know what would make this rainy day perfect?” Chester asks. “Hot chocolate.” Lucy’s eyes widen, and Chester turns to make his way into the house, pausing first to look across the street into Penelope’s house. He can see her standing in front of her impressive bay window, on the phone. Chester smiles a sad smile. Penelope was always talking on that phone. He had given her some of his world class oatmeal raisin cookies when she first moved in a couple years ago, but other than that they hadn’t interacted much. Chester had thought maybe she would take a liking to Lucy, but she didn’t seem too interested in making friends.

Only the occasional electrician or plumber comes to her door, and she sometimes waves to Chester or another neighbor when they bring their recycling out at the same time on Tuesday nights. Though she is speaking into the receiver, Chester can tell she is watching him and Lucy.

Maybe he should invite her over for hot chocolate, too. But she’d probably say no. Chester turns his attention back to his granddaughter. “You can stay here—I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

◆◆◆

Penelope loves the rain. No need to make an excuse to stay inside—the rain takes care of that for her. She watches the droplets bounce against the pavement and the wind knock leaves off trees as she dials the next number on her list.

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Four rings.

“Hello?”

“Hi, how are you today?”

“I’m doing well, thanks so much for asking,” Penelope can’t tell yet if the receiver is oblivious as to why she’s calling, or if she’s hitting Penelope with faux enthusiasm, to make the aggressive hang up that much more severe.

“I’m so glad to hear that,” Penelope persists, intent on keeping the potential customer on the line. “I’m calling to let you know you are the lucky recipient of our brand new water shoes—” “No, thanks.” And the line goes dead.

With a grunt, Penelope lifts herself from the blue chair and turns to glance out the bay window. Her attention turns to the nearby drain and the mesmerizing flood of water cascading into it. It’s peaceful, watching all this water flow into one place, letting gravity do its thing. So focused is Penelope, that she lets out a little yelp when the flow is shattered by a flash of yellow, catapulting water in all directions.

It’s a child. Penelope’s mouth crinkles at the corners as she admires the young girl’s splashing, gleefully unruffled by the prospect of getting wet. An adult, equally yellow-clad, approaches the girl, sneaking up behind her. Penelope opens her mouth, perhaps to say something. But she knows the girl won’t be able to hear her through the shut window, so she watches in silence.

The man then lifts the girl in the air, and they both laugh. Penelope marvels at their delight and their frightfully yellow rain attire. So yellow, Penelope’s eyes start to hurt, so she dials the next number. She has important calls to make.

Joni is napping, but Penelope picks her up anyway. She likes to hold Joni while she makes calls sometimes, cooing to her small, rodent face as she tells disgruntled people about the amazing opportunity that awaits them, if they only just stay on the line for a little bit longer!

Her next three calls end in a matter of seconds each, so Penelope takes a break to watch the puddle-jumpers. Penelope watches them until the adult turns to leave, not before turning in the direction of Penelope’s house, locking eyes with her. She quickly raises her phone to her ear, and the man goes inside.

“We can’t have him thinking we’ve been watching him, can we, Joni?” Penelope purrs. She coos to Joni for a few minutes before looking outside again to see a man in a dark blue raincoat talking to the girl from down the street. The girl can’t seem to hear him, so she walks towards him. He reaches out his hand to her, but she does not seem to want to stop playing in the rain.

Penelope marvels at the girl’s youthfulness as she moves Joni to her left hand. She clutches her there as she sits back in the blue chair, turning her back to the window and her attention to the next number on her list.

Five rings this time.

“Hello?”

“Hi, how are you today?”

“Fine.”

“So great to hear! Summer is just around the corner, and you seem like the adventurous type. I am so happy to tell you that you are the recipient of—” “Listen, I don’t know what list you found me on, but I’m gonna need you to remove my number and all my information from that list. Honestly, the nerve you have to—” The doorbell rings, and Penelope jumps. She hadn’t called the plumber, had she?

“Shoot, that’s the doorbell. I better run. Have a nice day!” Penelope hears the receiver’s confused “excuse m—” as she hangs up.

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Penelope was not expecting anyone. Only Girl Scouts and Jehovah’s Witnesses rang her doorbell at random—sometimes staff from a local campaign. She had moved to the suburbs of New York just under two years ago and hadn’t had the time to get to know anyone yet. She knew some of her neighbors, but only by general shape. She only ever saw them from afar, bringing in their groceries or taking out their recycling. When she had first moved in, one of her neighbors had rung the doorbell with a small basket of homemade cookies. An old man and his granddaughter? Adequate cookies. She was almost positive the yellow-clad rain goers were those neighbors, but there was no way of knowing.

The doorbell rings again, and Joni whimpers slightly in Penelope’s grasp.

“Shh, it’s ok, Joni. It’s just a visitor. Isn’t that exciting?” Penelope reassures her.

Her voice is drowned out by several rings from the doorbell and incessant knocking.

Penelope hurries and swings the door open to a mass of yellow. Yellow boots, yellow poncho, yellow hat. The umbrella is black, though. Penelope winces as some droplets propel off the umbrella and onto her face. She can’t see the mass’s face, but she thinks it’s the man who was playing with that girl outside. Not a lot of full-yellow outfits on the street, generally.

The man lifts his face, his eyes meeting Joni’s, then Penelope’s, then back to Joni. Penelope can’t tell if his brow is furrowed or if those were just his natural wrinkles.

“Hi, Penelope. I’m sorry to be bothering you at home, but I’m not sure where Lucy’s gone off to.” The man says. Penelope does not know his name, but she notices his eyes shifting down to where Joni is nestled in the crook of her elbow, so opts to say, “Joni Mitchell.” The man cocks his head, so Penelope clarifies. “My guinea pig. Her name is Joni Mitchell.”

“Right. I love ‘Big Yellow Taxi.’”

Penelope wrinkles her nose. “I don’t. Not a big Joni Mitchell fan, at all, actually.”

“Oh, I see. Well, anyways,” the man continues, his brow certainly furrowed, now. “I was wondering if you’d seen Lucy?”

“Lucy?”

“Yes,” the man’s voice falters at the end. “I was just boiling some milk for hot chocolate, and she was outside—” “I’m sorry, who?”

“Lucy. My granddaughter?”

“Do I know her?”

The man looks to Penelope, searching for the joke but not finding it. “We live right there.” The man points across the street, exasperated with Penelope’s ineptitude. “Listen, I’m sorry I bothered you at all, but I can’t find my granddaughter. She can be quite the wanderer, so I just figured someone on the street must’ve seen where she’d gone off to. I’ve already asked the Johnsons, Mary, and Eileen, but they haven’t seen her. I’ll be out of your hair soon, but please, please, can you tell me if you’ve seen her?”

Penelope does not know those people, but this appears to be the little yellow puddle-jumper’s grandpa. Norm? Chester? Gary? Either way, his pleas are incessant, and Penelope has important calls to make.

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I don’t think I’ve seen her. I’ve been working all day. I barely had time even to eat lunch.”

“She’s wearing the same raincoat as me. Same boots, same hat. Bright yellow, kind of hard to miss.” The man persists, not allowing Penelope an easy escape.

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“Oh, right. Yeah, I think maybe I saw her out there.”

The man’s eyes light up a little. “Did you see where she went off to?”

“No, last I saw she was talking with that guy. She probably just went with him,” Penelope says. She moves to shut the door, but the man lunges forward.

“Guy?” He stammers.

“Yeah. Dad, brother, uncle, friend? You would know better than me.”

Lightning flashes, and a crack of thunder follows seconds later, the first of the day.

“I’m afraid I have no idea who you’re talking about,” the man responds, dropping his umbrella as the wind bends his hat. His tears blend in with the rain pelting his face, and mud covers his yellow boots.

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Face Theory 1 I’ve got a tooth theory: a dream where my teeth fall out and a dream where I’m driving a car and I can’t stop or turn or change the radio or buckle my seatbelt and I’m running you over and my lips turn up at the corners.

I’ve got a nasty habit of taking a nail file and sharpening my teeth until they can rip your flesh to shreds like daggers.

I’ve got a hunch it’ll make you love me, you poor partial thing.

2 Lips tell themselves they’re not lying when they whisper, shards of glass gleam like the sun and fine china is only for Sundays.

Lips speak in tongues and tongues coil in cursive around themselves and around each other.

3 A mouth lies when it says it can read in the dark but these words feel so hot and heavy on the tip of the tongue that they tumble off in cascades.

“A mouth lies when it says it can read faces, even in the blinding light.”

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4 Throats bellow the truth at confessional: “I wrap my hands around your neck because I want to kill you” I say, with my hands around your neck, killing you.

“I want you to hold my hand because I know it’ll kill me” I say, as your hand engulfs mine, killing me.

“Go fuck yourself ” “Tell me to go fuck myself ”

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Courtney Crawford

Open Windows Open Minds, August 2017 Digital photgraph

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tree

a. martins i can feel his roots simmering mouths pouting with thirst, humming unearthing, as if conjuring waterfalls, thunderstorms, and me all over him. invite me in brave into mine branches, stern but sweeter when they hit the face, the neck, the wind caresses the back, our touch cracks, maroon, there’s something more potent hidden within. make mine roots shake make them shiver all spring nails clench into dirt into sea, into earth — call mine name, shape our love as sin on a flowerbed’s charcoal dampened by summer rain & raked with scratches that unravel from your wood bending, busting, & burning like wildfires. until the forest consumes us, until your trunk is thicker, fire will wash you down & you will be left on your pit as blow comes after blow & all land is ravished with compulsion.

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Las de Caracas Michelle Marquez

In your open mouth, silence me in the coursing.

Blood in my eyes, dress me in your clothes and swallow me whole.

- “Discoloration” by Dawn Golden Mami sweeps the file across, de ida y vuelta, with una delicadeza I’ve only ever known as fluency.

Unacquainted ears chafe and ill-disposed flesh winces and pobrecitos, I think to myself, ¿no? Let us pray for those who’ve never known such sacred melodies.

“No siempre han sido así, sabes?”

An artisan: Mami molded hers, with a grounded charm I’ve only ever known as patience, into the elegant squovals que dan los cariñitos mas ricos.

Nail dust, like powdered sugar, speckles the tops of her thighs.

It tastes of orden y consuelo y me lo trago como si fuera una pregunta that I’m too reluctant to wonder: Has she shaped me just the same?

It’s hours after borrowing her tools that I feel the bite of hot, soapy water sinking into my bloodied cuticles. Luego, la picadura de freshly squeezed lime grazing on the pink shells of my stripped nailbeds. Like the sizzle of cachapa

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mix being poured onto a canola-oiled pan, Mami sucks her teeth and exclaims: “Pero como te vas hacer eso, mija?!”

Creo que Mami ya sabe that this is a ritual I have yet to break. Never enough time to regenerate because it doesn’t feel safe. To scrub and pick and pluck and ache are to find shelter in my skin as the décor rather than the Home: where there was never one way to be a child, to be a student, to be a person with personhood, but we dare not stray too far because there was always the right way to be a girl. a blossoming girl. a “cierra tus piernas porque se ve feo” girl. a wait-to-wear-tampons-until-you’re-married girl. a girl that doesn’t like other girls.

How I wish someone would have spoon-fed me the difference between “liking” and “learning to want to be like” because I remember pleading Mami to make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch instead of carne molida con arroz.

A flavorful scent that Riley and Kylie and Ellie and Lexie would crinkle their baby doll noses to in an unfamiliarity that pinches my side just like revulsion would.

How I wish I would’ve let myself remember being in awe of the way a preschool peer slid on her winter coat.

Swiftly, she lifted her locks out of her hood with the backs of her hands.

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And with my short bob, that would only turn curly una vez que tuviera la regla, I attempted to do the same.

My gaze fell and settled on my newly filed nails, mis “manos de pianista” as Mami would say. As if following those dotted line drawings I was oh so fond of, my gaze rested on my peer’s hands.

I dissected their root-like creases and their natilla-like smoothness and I couldn’t stop thinking about how both textures could exist at the same time and why were mine starting to feel so sweaty?

My cheeks growing warmer, I wondered what it might feel like for my hand to hold hers. For our interlocked fingers to share a secret, and for our palms to kiss.

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At the doctors office a. martins

A COPY of Paulo Freire’s Veronica Decides to Die was on my nightstand. Eighteen. Reading a muted escape, a subtle possibility in their existence, as if I could read myself back to purpose. I carried the weight of books around as proof: they told stories of me. But bedside, they did not tell me anything. They could not tell where home was. Their pages fell from their leather binding. My room in Brasilia was humble. My silvered suitcase could rest; I had nowhere else to go, though I did not belong to the walls, to the bedding, or to my reflection on the dirty mirror hidden inside the wardrobe’s door. I belonged to my family even less. Soft rain embraced the browning grass.

I dreamt that I looked around and could not find my roommate. His grey water bottle with its College Republicans sticker lay atop his unmade bed. Yellows became pomegranate, reds turned teal. Then I was walking on tarmac, dancing through the revving of engines of my heartbeat. I saw a reflection of myself stuck in the middle of an avenue, blinding lights passing through me.

My readmission to college was premised on “showing a significant improvement on your mental health and ability to keep yourself and others safe.” Bipolar disorder, type I, professed the document handed out by a young doctor. I held on to that diagnosis. She added some medication—mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, antidepressants to stench the mental bleeding and bring back color to canvas. It worked well enough. I regained some will to live, despite also gaining twenty pounds over two weeks. It was a fragile balance.

Come March, a new doctor. The fourth in three months—recommended by my neighbor who, coincidentally, was bipolar and had been able to manage her condition under Dr. P’s advice. She is rough, honest, and to the point, the neighbor told me. The appointment was at seven. In the car with Mother, listening past the rain to the Wednesday evening news, I had hopes.

I bit my nails in the sterile waiting room. I looked at the white, almost translucent marble floors; they reminded me of snow pressed against my skin. I looked at the plants, artificial, deceiving, sterile. I placed too much power—which was not mine to give—on someone else’s hands, but I was desperate. Arthur Romero da Veiga Martins. Mother and I stood up and made our way through the sinuous hallway and into a tiny, refrigerated room where a young woman, blonde, in a lab coat and glasses sat behind a grey desk. She got straight to business. I appreciated her curtness, for a moment. What is the point of small talk when you are looking for salvation? Yet there was something o-putting about Dr. P, something about her smile, how it was lopsided, too left-leaning to be sincere, and how her eyes pierced through my skin. I handed her the paperwork. She shot at me: Appetite? Sleep? Aggressive? Irritated? Sexual? Do you work or study? Do you function? Medication? Self-harm? When was the first time? Lose control? Suicide? What do you want to do with life?

Low. Bad. No. (Mother says yes). Yes. (My head down). No, to my boyfriend’s despair. (The joke did not land). Yes, but I struggle. Sometimes. It’s listed in the document. I have. Too early.

Sometimes, but it frightens me. Yes, I wrote a letter last month. (Mother did not know.) I want to be well. I want to return to college, to be a writer, to be in love. I want to live, more than just survive.

Mother—she muttered—Listen closely, now. I don’t have good news. Mother—she confided—I’m sorry. Your son is beyond repair. Mother—she spat—I’ll speak the truth, there is no

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future for his hands to hold. His mind is not his own; medication can subdue, but never mend.

And if he descends to madness, Mother, don’t fight. Call the cops, the hospital down by the lake, call an ambulance. Arthur—she proceeded finally, I appreciate your courage to dream. Unfortunately, you need to be more realistic. You are sick. There is no going back to living alone, abroad or here. There is no United States, no college life waiting for you. You are sick, and you need help. I cannot change this reality, but I will prescribe you something to help you get by. I stared at the wall. I do not remember saying goodbye.

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Tim DeLorenzo

Way To Go, April 2021 Oil, Charcoal and Spray Paint

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portrait of a girl in darwin’s tree Nimaya Lemal

in a vertebrate house, in a fish neck, in chimpanzee hands, in ankles like pebbles in a river. she is of the cyborg genus, so her books say, as if she were unclipped from kingdom animalia, as if she were deformed: her face too far from her feet, her bloody nose too far from the salt of her first grandmother, sea, as if the coasts that built her mineral bones had disowned her and the dry plains of her skin were just acres to plow and everyone forgot her inner tracts and the swimmers there, pulling her body into life. again today from 9 to 5, human made meat in its image. and young techné fights old poesis into her leash. and somewhere an everyman marches off with himself. and under my feet, the sidewalk and the grass try to make love, while mankind has been bodiless for four thousand years, and i drift like no car or bird or leaf does but things called brothers still eat, subdue, and shoot themselves, and a tree snagged its arm on mine on my way here as if to say, child, go home.

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