Glitch

GLITCH

</blacklight magazine>

Table Table of of Contents Contents 5

Nadaya Davis

8,9

Jayda Hart

10,12,13

Sarahi Rincon Molina

11

Sabrina Mahmoodi

14,15,17

Simone Gulliver

18,19

Jai Daniels

20, 21

Cameron Drake

22,24

Camille Johnson

23

Savannah Bowman

25

Ellie Gilbert-Bair

26

Tomás Miriti Pacheco

Photography

Akwe McDaniels

Models

Nyla Firoz, Gianna Gant, Nick Smith

Layout and Design Jai Daniels, Sarahi Rincon Molina

EDITOR'S EDITOR'S NOTE: NOTE: Something’s not adding up…

We are writing you this note from two different screens, watching cursors flash with each other's thoughts. As university students, we are the sum of our virtual realities - discussion boards and email chains, the blank stare of our own reflection over Zoom. Our computers groan beneath the weight of our collective memories, always seconds away from collapse.

Glitch: a disturbance or short-lived fault that (often) corrects itself.

“Glitch” emerged from the flickers of our academic disruption. In cyberspace, we found a graveyard for the stories we’ve lost - connections unsaved, personalities hacked, nuances corrupted over text. By exhuming these errors, we hoped to recover incomplete parts of our lives – the avatars we used to be.

In the following issue, we invite you to explore the aesthetics of “glitch” and its underworlds. Find yourself adrift in the imperfect clockwork below – transit rides to nowhere, time shifts backward, laundry lines of code.

Through artwork, writing, and all things in-between, we are searching for unsaved changes, the hauntings we couldn’t let go.

Thank you to all of our contributors and to the Blacklight Editorial Board for making this issue possible, for transforming errors into moments of creative potential.

Sincerely, Simone Gulliver & Tomás Miriti Pacheco

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01111001 01111001 01101111 01101111 01110101 01110101 by: Jayda Hart there is not much left to say of the matter to say of endings and beginnings and the fumbling fingers of a forgetful god this bed is a glitch this bed is a product of jumbled keys pressed in the wrong order a divine mishap caught between an extra space in a line of code something brought us here interlacing fingertips and electrical wires tied up in strings of ones and zeroes buzzing fingers and oil slick nights this mecha body was only meant to be held in the dark dimly lit by an alarm clock, a closet light, and a three wick candle with only two wicks burning i made my commute from planet V0971 to your J5345 lightyears and beer can spaceships i made myself yours two and a half forevers ago turning gears and knobs and heads typing (gasping) one line before the dreaded backspace backspace backspace my mechanical heart left leaking oil all over the hardwood floor what god did I upset to be stuck with taciturn loving? what did i do last life to be cursed with a gummed up motor and dead AA batteries?

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this gold plated skin was meant for kinder hands love, care, extended warranties this heart is a glitch this heart is a statistically improbable happening beating soft in spite of her carbon coating rusted and still in this remix of time and space because we found each other cold metal cheeks and neon robot eyes my android anatomy never knew her maker’s benevolence but sometimes copper kisses start to feel flesh like and sometimes i’m almost something human and i think i could love more than i was built to in this unfathomable undoing of code and script and life i think i can make myself yielding delicate and elastic you know what i think heaven is? a defect dimension between 1 and 0 a slippery place with too much voltage overheating blushing cheeks and living eyes skin and bones five minutes before they find their glasses and double check for errors and notice this pocket of you and me and this affair five seconds before backspace backspace backspace.

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</Sarahi Rincon Molina> 10

A A SPLINTER SPLINTER IN IN THE THE MIND MIND TRANS REFLECTIONS ON EXISTENCE

by Sabrina Mahmoodi

You’ll learn to live with the pain, to tolerate and exist around it. loose clothing and long sleeves shield discomfort from detection, each layer a gauze and guard of your own design. hiding helps– if no one bears witness to agony, it lives only in thought.

You’ll suffer silently to survive the ache, anything to avoid inevitable questions intense interrogation, inflammatory inquisition for fear of further hurt and memory of first puncture swells and soon the splinter sinks deeper, away from sight. it lurks beneath skin, an infection spreads into every cell that screams to be seen and you’ll feel it seep into bone, beyond reach.

You’ll dream of relief and dread reminders, fast retreat back to egg-like ignorance. self-medication is a numbness you cannot afford and yet going for broke means another bill your body continues to pay long after drug-induced fantasies of freedom fail to feel real.

You’ll understand identity locked in imagination robs your mind of the right to heal. remember- splinters engender revelation. once open wounds, now sutures of survival; proof of love your body will never forget. no matter how deeply embedded the pain, seek out support and remove with care. transition is a tender time– be gentle.

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</Sarahi Rincon Molina> 12

</Sarahi Rincon Molina> 13

PALINDROME

by Simone Gulliver

(AFTER LISEL MUELLER, NATE MARSHALL)

In the rearview I am un-meeting my reflection. She’s 21, 19 soon learning to leave adulthood behind.

She lives on the B-side of every record. Future etched in a rewind.

Hip bone shrinking. Silk press frizzing. Unloving girls in the rain.

Under streetlamps she is running towards yesterday. Porch lights wink off like candles on a birthday cake.

Wishes Prozac, peach schnapps, Read it And Weep sucked back in.

She’s circled this park so many times she can’t tell where memory begins and ends. Cherry blossoms drift along her dashboard. First love, Hanahaki memento from yesteryear.

Spring bleeds to winter on the asphalt of her high school parking lot. Last hello. First frostbite. Power lines skitter beneath their sternums. They are so close to getting it wrong.

Sunday winds up the drain pipe, shower head sucking water from her shoulder blades. Unspinning bottles in a basement. Hands in a closet. Hell in a church pew. Stained glass stranger like the ghost in every mirror.

Two fingers down her throat, baiting petals from her stomach.

She is hungry for words I cannot taste.

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"Soon" she will unroot her growing pains. Search for galaxies in her stretchmarks, song notes in a stutter. "Soon" she will love herself back.

Next year she’ll be 16 and ancient.

Trading her license for a learners, driving backwards down I-95 and un-crashing into stop signs.

When the skyline ruptures, we’ll meet again at the apex of every tracklist. She clicks on the radio I silenced, ghost hands on the ridge where our record stops spinning.

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PANTONE 637 (INTERLUDE)

by Simone Gulliver

i believe in a world where our webkinz never died, ghost girls glitter in the backlight stitching upgrades from deleted threads. my fingernails are poptropica blue like 8th-grade sky pics or the waves where my avatar killed zeus. she is older now racing down moonview highway every night, she’s died 20,000 times each one less painful than the last. i am dragon-riding to the edge of her memory card past tumbleweeds, patchwork, i love yous to the ex. dreamscapes flicker at the borderlands, stardolls corroding, text chains to kite tails, litanies from alphabet soup. my best self is billowing in cyberspace, hanging laundry from code lines heavy with my youth. i was 13 breeding galaxies on my DS, we are the sum of our past lives, the messages we delivered and unsent.

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</Jai Daniels>

18

“HOW “HOW TO FIX *MOST* ANY GLITCH” “HOW TO TO FIX FIX *MOST* *MOST* ANY ANY GLITCH” GLITCH”

by Jai Daniels

the process is integral* thousands of lines successive glances testing compatibility…

[SUCCESS (0x3)] but moments pass… components become too familiar applications overrun sources forgotten programming me to love you *fails to compute* default tasks extend towards the breakpoint logging long hours and distance connections fade my runtime diminishes tired of semantics and logic the error runs deep comprehensive scans report: [1] _corrupted_files_ [2]_insufficient_memory_ [3]_outdated_warranties_ maybe the process is incomplete my progress frozen that love equals *automatic failure* [at least for me]

*Arranged from David Nield: “How to Fix Most Any Computer Glitch By Yourself,” Gizmodo, May 5, 2015, https://gizmodo.com.

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TO REACH IS TO FALL

by Cameron Drake

Falling is a sensation one never gets used to.

That split-second, liberating feeling of gravity working against you, Desperately pulling you to its embrace, even as your body fights against it.

If you’re lucky, falling ends If you’re lucky.

I remember when I first fell.

I was just a boy, working on the floor of my father’s workshop.

I was reaching for a wrench When I slipped, dragging the table to the floor with me.

It was then that I learned the meaning of the word: “self-control.”

Well, I listened.

Learned is a different story: To learn means that I practiced self-control, that I practiced restraint.

But it’s hard to practice restraint when you are told to dream of the sun.

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So the choice was made for me.

I remember the last time I fell.

If you can believe it, I was reaching for the sun.

I remember I almost had it just within my grasp, when it rejected me.

When the sun decided that I was not worthy To feel its warmth, or to take in its light.

I still remember my father screaming my name as I fell: Icarus.

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</Camille Johnson>

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</Savannah Bowman> 23

</Camille Johnson>

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THE BEES

by Ellie Gilbert-Bair

Why do we call this the walk of shame? As if intimacy has to be permanent—pleasure, contingent? It’s the breath of re-entering your world. The 8:30am recalibration of tangled hair on your scalp and last night’s clothing on your stomach. A sigh budding out of spring, she smells foreign hyacinth. another’s garden setting up a sly pheromone trap—it attracts two straying women buzzing, they share time, names, sleeplessness. ask why don’t these flowers carry through the night? Silent reminiscing of home pollen remains.

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The The Ghazal Ghazal Struggles Struggles to to End End Tomas Miriti Pacheco You ain't gotta tell me that my path don't end.

I got stories to guarantee the past won't end.

Behind the door, the hallway is a bursting pen, Splintered swinging doors bring class a broken end.

In the bathroom, a cluster of whisperers recommend Vapors. They form at their backs, crack, and slowly end.

Between keystrokes, a pause like an indent.

Before they start, how many vast poems end?

Last we spoke, an inconvenient silence when Travis let the minutes on his Tracfone end.

Impatiently, I am making amends With the bowl of memories I let slip and so end.

Standing before the cornerstore, they let in One of us at a time to meet a glass-cold end.

The savior waits for an honest friend.

The faithful know his fast-approaching end Tomas, named for the doubting twin: Scrap-booked wings will hold you at your end.

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</COME EXIST WITH US>