blue moon vol. 35

blue moon

Thanks to Associated Students of Whitman College Penrose Library for their financial support

Special thanks to Professor Scott Elliott Roxanna Downing Whitman Events Board Barbara Maxwell and Leann Adams Reid Campus Center The Whitman College Wire

COVER ART

Ethereal Bodies Annie Means 35 mm film

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Iris Thwaits Rowan Brown LAYOUT EDITORS Clara Bates Natalie Price POETRY EDITOR Zoë Burleson POETRY STAFF Elissa Corless Clover Beaty Fielding Schaefer Pearl Cook PROSE EDITOR Loren Olson PROSE STAFF Bhavesh Gulrajani Isabella Hill Abby Main Anna Schreier ART EDITOR Paloma Link ART STAFF Pearl Kim Allie Kim Nick Rogers Finola Bailey Tyler Bales PR STAFF Elissa Corless Clara Bates Natalie Price

blue moon Whitman College

2022

volume 35

blue moon, Whitman College’s student-staffed art and literary magazine, is published annually in April in Walla Walla, Washington. blue moon accepts submissions of art, prose, and poetry. All submissions to blue moon are judged anonymously and selected by the editors and staff.

Whitman College is not responsible for the contents of the magazine. The magazine accepts no liability for submitted artwork and writing. The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editors or staff members.

The individual contributors hold copyrights to artwork, and texts in this issue. No material may be reprinted without the permission of the magazine or contributors. blue moon is a not-for-profit media organization within the Associated Students of Whitman College. All donations and gifts to blue moon are tax-deductible. Please make checks for donations payable to the Associated Students of Whitman College.

Copyright 2022, blue moon For more information on how to submit and donate, please visit www.whitman.edu/bluemoon.

To view a PDF version of this magazine and past volumes, visit www.bluemoonartmag.wordpress.com blue moon Whitman College 280 Boyer Avenue Walla Walla, WA 99362

Contents Chapstick Ava Liponis

11 poetry

The Beet Goes On Morgan Stone

30 art

Untitled Finola Bailey

12 art

West of Viet nam Ani Pham

31 poetry

Double Sestina The Morning After a Threesome Heleana Bakopoulos

13 prose

Chiaroscuro Woman Annie Means

32 art

big anxious ocean Megan Wick

17 poetry

Hot Cherry Juice Heleana Bakopoulos

33 poetry

Fog Clara Fletcher

18 art

Sillhouette Kairos Shaffer

35 art

Ayla Clara Fletcher

19 art

Chicharra Jolene Keller

36 art

The Second Best Time Is Today Natalie Price

20 poetry

Dead Robots Conor Bartol

38 prose

Arch At Sunset Chance Kelly

22 art

Dongmyo Jake Lee

46 art

Breakfast in Bluff Ani Pham

23 prose

Riding the Lines Michael Culbert

47 poetry

Embrace Brit Mendel

24 art

Something in the Way Madeline Stolp

48 art

When We Were Young We Used To Sing Michael Culbert

49 prose

Sink In Jonah Panzer

52 art

Things I Learned from my Mom- 25 Reya Fore poetry Passing Pelicans Anna Johnston

26 prose

I'll let you go now Alissa Berman

53 poetry

Sestina from home Alissa berman

72 poetry

Untitled Natalie Quinn Godfrey

54 art

Cutout Rowan Brown

74 art

Born into the Anthropocene Savanna Wolverton

55 poetry

Animal Fear Heleana Bakopoulos

75 prose

Wednesday Morning Natalie Quinn Godfrey

56 art

Sprung Jake Lee

79 art

Beetle Paloma Link

57 art

80 prose

the treehouse Anna Schreier

58 prose

Here I Am Ella Chin

63 poetry

In Praise of Weather, and Leather Siyu Chen Oh Captain My Captain Annie Means

Saltwater Arteries Ella Crosby

The Golden Statues Ollie Safford

65 art

83 poetry

Half Truths Endlessly Looking Natalie Quinn Godfrey

84 art

Aging in the Chasm Olivia Bell

66 prose

85 poetry

Addicted To Time Jolene Keller

69 art

There In The Opera House With No One Else To Love Chloe Hansen Explorer Paloma Link

The Trek Reagan Bain

70 art

87 poetry

One Time Only Reagan Bain

71 art

Grow into that you dont know Bridget O'Brien Breathless Ella Crosby

82 art

86 art

89 art

Of Mosswalkers and Men Zoe Perkins

90 poetry

Storm Corbin Attack

103 art

Incapability Jake Lee

91 art

Incubation Fielding Schaefer

104 prose

Harbor Kairos Shaffer

92 art

Han River Morgan Stone

106 art

Coffeeshop Diaries Anonymous

94 prose

Employment Fielding Schaefer

107 poetry

Knife Recovery Reagan Bain

101 art

The Sun and the Moon Rowan Brown

108 art

Poem for the five terrifying minutes when my wifi went down between poems Sam Allen

102 poetry

take care of them Megan Wick

109 poetry

Keep Out Kairos Shaffer

111 art

Letter from the Editors Dear Reader, The creation of this magazine was riddled with plastic beads, emails, and blind confidence. Volume 35. has been truly birthed out of chaos, as this is the first year after online schooling. In addition to learning how to be competent social beings again, we have also had to learn how to run a magazine? If you’re reading this, it means we somehow succeeded. Hey, go us! blue moon was started in 1924 by some impressively motivated and competent students.

We have been trying to fill their cobbled shoes ever since. Fast forward to 2022 and while we may be wearing Blundstones (sponsor us?), we still aim to create a magazine which captures the creativity of the Whitman community. Special thanks to all of our layout and genre editors, who put a lot of time into creating the very pages you are holding.

Another thank you to our staff, who have all come together to comb through hundreds of submissions. While we may be hypothetically in charge, the heart and soul of this magazine comes from the staff and editors.

Although our aforementioned staff love and adore us now (right guys?), apparently they couldn’t tell us apart at first. It’s hard to blame them: we’re two blonde-ish, wavy-haired English majors stomping around in wide-legged jeans, delivering flawless zingers and blabbering about this… “moon book”? To test your recognition skills against theirs, flip to the editor bios at the back of the book and play spot-the-difference.

Identical or not, we’re honestly pretty irrelevant. It’s the art and writing of Whitman students that really gives blue moon it’s pizzazz. So please, buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Iris Thwaits & Rowan Brown Editors-in-Chief

8

blue moon

blue moon

chapstick Ava Liponis

How does one go about forgetting the summer wind?

How do you decide not to miss it?

How can I unlearn the sound of its voice, or ignore how it felt to kiss it?

How could you replace how it feels on your face, moves through your clothing for a closer embrace, idly tracing the curves of your waist like we don’t have someplace to be? {Well I get there on time now, and my hair isn’t messy; I keep the windows rolled up in my car but it keeps getting colder, and my lips are all chapped, the air is stiller than a scar}

volume 35

11

Untitled

Finola Bailey unkown

Double Sestina the Morning After a Threesome --after Swinburne’s “The Complaint of Lisa” Heleana Bakopoulos

There is no woman living that draws breath as I do, except maybe her. We breathe with three lungs each, in a way so far from and so close to death, each an open, bright sunflower wilting and happy in the evening sun, though the day is yet to come. The day we will be wrested from this bed and give back our third lungs, and he will have to breathe by himself again, dead compared to the night before, when it was done. Like an axe, the morning washes over me.

Down the cold, sunlit street, his eyes follow me like an irrevocable breath, which is to say all breaths. I wish that he lived closer to me, so this could be done, or that his little death had been a big death, or that walking into the bright day meant walking down the street with her. A bay leaf is like a stranger’s bed, the way it mingles and gives, the way a few hours render it dead. I don’t believe in God, but I can see the sun and so I know that somewhere there is a sunflower.

But if I, a woman, love another woman, can I still call her a sunflower? We like orchids more for shy, gay women. But me? My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun, so why should either of us be sunflowers? Death to sunflowers! Death to the light of day, and life to the gay, bay-leaf breath of a her being with a her, always feeling like it will end, the way sunflowers miss the sun and are dead. I say nothing of men, only the way he lets others breathe for him like they’ll never be done, never tire of holding aloft his bed,

volume 35

13

B A KO P O U L O S

never tire of being in his bed. I blame it all on that sunflower, the open eye of the sleepless day, waiting for her big, red, hot sun to reverse the flow of death which is waiting. Sunflowers hang over me on my walk home, like stars, long dead but still sending rays. If she were a flower, I would call her Cereus, not because of the way God made vaginas from the stuff of flowers (I think that metaphor is so overdone), but because her breath is like night, dark and safe.

Don’t get me wrong, he was fine. He made the bed, asked if we wanted Sunny-D. In my head I said I’d rather be dead, but in one breath I said yes with her.

The light of day made drinking Sunny-D—naked—feel like death, in the same way that passing church after church on my walk home makes me feel the eyes of every self-proclaimed sunflower who holds her husband’s hand until he is done needing her, late in the day of their lives, when she feels done in the eyes of everyone but God. I wonder if he believes in God. When we met under the afternoon sun, I remember thinking that he might be the type to say God is dead. (Thus spake the prophet of Sunny-D and flavored condoms!) If death is eternal night and damnation, then I’d drown in pomegranate seeds for her. But it’s getting to be that time of day when I need to take a deep breath and remind myself that I am me and she is her and we will never again share a bed. Maybe I’m a sunflower. I’m definitely in over my head with this threesome. I’ll go my own way.

I stop at my door. Oh, the door! I hate the way metaphors are never done. Before the door, I’m Catullus waiting for the day that Lesbia and I will share a bed. Wretched door! Why do you do this to me?

When you’re in love, elegy, like breath, is irrevocable. I could write a letter to her, the only acceptable form for addressing what is dead to someone who is alive. If I must, I will bear the burden of the

14

blue moon

DOU BL E SE ST I NA T H E MOR N I NG A F T ER A T H R EE SOM E

sunflower, waiting for her eyes which are like the sun. Bollocks.

Even he could do better. Something to take my mind off of her— death!

I hear that’s what adolescent boys do during gym class, think about death so that certain things don’t make their way into the open. I wonder if he could help. Bad idea. I’ll lay in the sun on my porch, go to the door in time. I bet everything is the color of a sunflower when you’re dead and you believe in God and you don’t love wrong. How much shame I hold in one breath! If I don’t constrict my lungs, my days are numbered, and the devil will count his steps back to me. When my shame is done, who will share my bed? I know I said I love her, but is it love if I dare not speak her name? Only things which are unspeakable make life good and death undesirable; she is like the pollen that a bee sucks from the sunflower, the marrow sucked from the bone of life, the marrow of each breath. Breath is the way we refuse to die in bed with someone we don’t love every day of our lives. Gilgamesh never thought he would die, and so he slaughtered lions until he was done acting immor(t)al. This letter is a lion for the Gilgamesh in me, trying to run faster than the bare, beating sun.

It begins: It’s a sunny day, and I’m feeling here for the first time since the pandemic began, and everything was taken away. I feel webbed like some spider’s prey, but I can breathe easier today with all these sunflowers in my heart, like I’m undead and somehow have never known death in my life. I can’t dance around it any longer--I’m coming undone at the seams—but God is the person writing this really me?

How is she every going to love me if my letter sounds like Bruce Springsteen wrote it for some sun-bleached muse-of-the-night?

volume 35

15

B A KO P O U L O S

What happened in that bed doesn’t work in words, like death which is impossible to talk about but that we must always find a way to talk about. I will find a way to write when I cross this metaphorical and very literal door, away from sunflowering eyes that pass by. They must know. He must know and he must know and he definitely knows and he…might not know, but, for argument’s sake, let’s say he knows. Their eyes fix on me deadcenter and say, “You see her? With her breath going fast? She’s done. In these parts, she won’t last another day.”

I will last another, and another, and another day, no matter what their eyes say. In these walls, no one sees me but you, who takes my lungs the way we all wish someone would. Fine, I’ll say it outright: he was bad in bed, done in a few minutes, sensitive as a sunflower at the mouth of a volcano—a metaphor in which he is the sunflower and she and I are the volcano, baking soda and vinegar in his bed. You have saved me and her from death, which is not being known. Dear you, make what is dead froth into life with your breath.

Song, speak for me, dumb as the dead; from this bay-leaf bed of longing he is sent, and I go to race the day, the sun’s birth and death, down the way of the sun. Love of her gave you breath, and when you are done, I will tell her she is Cereus, not sunflower.

16

blue moon

big anxious ocean Megan Wick

i will pull my teeth out one by one, making room for all the words i do not say. they will swish in my gums before falling down my throat and festering in my stomach. or maybe i will etch them into my bones with my pocketknife until i am nothing but everything that you asked me for but were not given. i am sorry that my tongue runs raw against the ridges of my mouth instead of pouring into your ears; the rhythm of my truth. in all honesty, i am one giant ocean ebbing and flowing into the space between your fingers, the gaps in your spine, the quiet ether of your pupils. volume 35

17

Fog

Clara Fletcher unkown

Ayla

Clara Fletcher unkown

The Second Best Time Is Today Natalie Price Free plants the email says, You like free plants.

You go, and with you returns two succulents.

Fresh, Petite, Promising.

Something to grow with you, change with you.

You put them in the windowsill, They war with gently used dishes and papers that never seem to find a home.

For days, that turn into Weeks, that turn into Months, they sit there.

Summer turns to fall, and fall to winter.

They become a part of the decor, their aliveness no greater than that of a tack on the wall.

The plants remain in front of the open window’s chill as time marches on.

You wake up and your succulents are still there.

They look just as they did months, weeks, days- forever ago sit ting in that summer sun.

You feel something- nostalgia, grief, guilt, something.

Looking into their broken, bruised forms, a spark reignites once more; That tender feeling returns anew as you realize, Tiny lives nearly extinguished by your selfish palm, Huddled by the window- begging for mercy.

Your mercy.

20

blue moon

You finally throw out those cheap plastic pots and replace it with one of your own A dinner bowl, sacrificed to atone for your mistakes On your knees you fix them, their wilted leaves and cracked earth.

You hope it is enough.

You have done all you can.

The new pot feels permanent; It hums with the burdens of the past and the hopes of the future It sits, away from the cold, into the light.

It turns over a new leaf.

Those plants, wearied and weakened by winters icy breath, Finally given the security to grow

volume 35

21

Arch At Sunset Chance Kelly photography

Breakfast in Bluff Ani Pham Tosin had always been covered in grease. The diner she worked at fried steaks, ‘chicken style,’ and blueberry fritters. In the metal sinks she would scrub the film from her skin until bleach mixed with crimson. She was saving money to leave Owatonna, the snow and the oil, to go west. She had heard of a place where sky and rock met, and snakes sloughed off their skin in the open. She needed new skin.

No two weeks were given; she draped her apron over a torn counter stool. She took a pie for the train, left the bobby pins in her hair, and let her phone slip through a storm drain.

In Utah, the dust met her nostrils first. An olfactory greeting that dried the last rancid drop of oil from her flesh. The slickrock was liquid beneath her feet and painted her legs blue. She slept with juniper and crushed Mormon tea with her molars.

A month later she hitchhiked back to Minnesota. She fished her dead betta out of its murky mausoleum and flushed it along with the coke some guy gave to her in South Dakota. Tosin found work on the cereal line for General Mills. The toasted oats left the faintest residue on her cracked lips. This was bearable. It reminded her of the sand that once kept her company. But soon she stopped wearing striped socks and all her clothes faded to gray.

First and last to go were her eyes. Stone crept over her eyelids and pierced her corneas. This was bearable. She knew darkness from the desert. What she didn’t know was the sharp fear that lithified her tendons. Stuck in monotony she never once asked for help.

volume 35

23

Embrace

Br it Mendel watercolor and marker

Things I learned from my Mom Reya Fore

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

It’s funny until it’s not Procrastination is really ripening Cold water is warmer if you scream a little If I die doing something dumb, she’ll kill me How to apologize To look closely in streambeds and tide pools To put up shields against others’ emotions The longer you stay, the more that happens I can unlearn things she taught me God is everywhere You can lick your plate at the table, but reaching across is rude you never know the interior of another’s relationship I can let go How to let flies crawl on me Deep breaths There are more good books than I can ever read Word games define my worth in the family Brownies and scrambled eggs are all you need to know how to cook Water can kill you Being in it is necessary

volume 35

25

Passing Pelicans Anna Johnston

Most days after school, I peered patiently out of the front window for my dad to come home and pick me up for dance. He was often late, running back from his office, frazzled and in the middle of an email or meeting or phone call when he pulled into the driveway.

I remember him running fingers through his short hair and making it stand on end in five long landing strips from forehead to the back of his neck. I remember half eaten Tupperware in the passenger seat that he had eaten on his way home. I remember my mom on the phone with him, “are you sure you can take her today?” and then “you’re stressed out, I’ll take her” and then “okay… but take a deep breath before she gets in the car” and then “I love you, see you soon.”

He would swerve into the drive and I would dash to the car door, flinging it open with my dance bag and pointe shoes and water and I would be frantic about being late, saying “just go go go.” My dad would say “hey Kid!” at the end of his exhale and imitate rocket sounds launching into space and we would zoom off to my studio.

I would slowly uncross my arms as he misread street names in a spaceship announcer voice. I would end up laughing, taking my eyes off the dashboard clock. We talked about our days and about what we ate for lunch and I would forget about waiting at the window. We always rolled into the studio parking lot on time no matter when we left, and my dad would say “dance hard, Kid!” as I frolicked up the rickety steps and into the glass door.

After dance class, I watched out the window from the futon for my dad’s car. I would always be the last one to be picked up. He would unlock the door for me when he pulled up and said “hey Kid!

26

blue moon

How was dance?” and we would drive home, accompanied by the sounds of jazz music or NPR or just me telling him about what we worked on in dance.

I would take my hair out of its tight dance bun in the car, spilling red tendrils across the car seats.

My dad sat at his desk at home or in his living room chair every evening, positioning the reading glasses on his nose and sipping on his glass. The brown bottles of beer were all the same to me, though he always said something different when I asked what it was. He looked at his computer and scooped fingers on his scalp. He looked up briefly when I said goodnight to him. I was asleep before I heard him finally come up the stairs to go to bed.

Mondays were for the drive to violin. We had to drive up the canyon a ways, meaning that we had time to listen to podcasts about piano preludes. We both listened to it purely for the narrator, Dave, who used words like “orgasmic” to describe chord progressions and we thought he was just hilarious.

My dad would go to the Huntsville library while I was in my lesson to work.

He always pulled up with tousled hair.

He took a breath and we listened to our good friend Dave tell us about Handel.

When I learned to drive, my dad sat in the passenger seat with me as I eased my way around a cemetery. I did not step on the gas at all until my fourth time in the car. We both jumped when we heard the car shift gears as I finally reached 10 miles an hour.

When I worked my way up to 40 miles an hour, we traversed to the Spiral Getty, an art sculpture on the edge of the Great Salt Lake. We did not talk a lot as I focused. My dad watched my hands on the wheel and told me to sit back in my chair, that it is okay to ease into the seatback, rest my head. I clenched my body as volume 35

27

JOH NSTON

I relaxed and he smirked.

We walked along the pink salt, tinged with bacteria. I ran my finger along the shore, drawing lines in the dead brine flies.

We documented a dead pelican’s tag on iNaturalist. The pelican’s wing arced over its body as if it spilled from the sky. Its beak was loosely shut, bright orange against the white salt.

It’s painfully lovely to look at.

Nine hours is a long time to make conversation. So we listen to the road and to podcasts as we make the trek from Walla Walla to Utah to Walla Walla again.

My dad always wants to pick me up, no matter how out of the way it is from the office.

We drink kombucha that he brewed and eat chile covered mango. We drive through Taco Time and get veggie burritos, stretching our legs at gas stations. He cannot touch his toes and his back crackles concerningly when he rolls his shoulders.

Driving with my dad has always been a way for both of us to move away from our problems, our stresses. Together, we make our way to trailheads and concerts where we will walk and sometimes talk and we will exist in a place where our brains can slow down from the speed of the world.

Perhaps this is why I learned to drive so slowly; the speed of the car imitated the speed of my mind. Shifting gears meant bringing the speed of the world into our space again.

I knew that my dad wouldn’t let me crash as I slowly sped up through the world.

My dad insisted on picking me up on March 12th, 2020, when the first case of Covid-19 hit Walla Walla. He made the ninehour drive eight and we found each other in the middle of main street.

The next day, we sped through Idaho back to home. In the middle of the dirt and the flat, my dad said, without looking at me,

28

blue moon

PA S S I N G P E L I C A N S

“I am so sorry.” His eyes swelled with tears.

I couldn’t think of why he was apologizing. “I’m sorry too, Dad.” “No. I am really sorry, Anna. I don’t know how to fix this.”

His voice broke into the jazz podcast.

It was on this drive that I realized that my dad and my worries were the same, that we couldn’t leave our separate hair mangling messes outside in the driveway. My dad could not solve this with rocket ship sounds.

I don’t think I heard a single word of the podcasts we listened to. Instead, I took in the dirt beside me, hoping that we wouldn’t crash.

I grew up that day.

My father drove me to Walla Walla against my will last January. I insisted that I could do the drive on my own, that since inheriting a car, I could put on my tree podcasts and just cruise for nine and a half hours. But he did drive me, a swan song to guide me through my unknown and his known.

We arrived at my off-campus house, locked ourselves in my room so that he had no contact with my housemates. As I worked furiously on my computer, my dad left to hit the grocery store. He came back with a six-pack of Pelican Hefeweizen beers and dried mango. We sipped on the glass bottles together, listening to Dave Brubeck.

I don’t remember why he thought I would like Hefeweizen.

He definitely told me about its brewing process, perhaps something about the bottling, the hops and the fermentation.

Now I order Hefeweizen because it reminds me of the bottlecap I keep inside my wallet. A double whammy of sentimentality.

I don’t know for sure, but I imagine that my father keeps the same Pelican Brewing cap on his desk. I run my fingers through my hair, scouring landing strips between the red strands.

volume 35

29

The Beet Goes On Morgan Stone painting

West of Viet Nam Ani Pham

I come from the whirl of a lazy susan. Chili oil and soy slurries for dipping. Shu mai & congee & purple taro. The bitter taste of black tea.

Roast duck reunions where only the aunties wield the menus.

There, I am Annie and to some uncles still Erin. The zodiac paper placemats tell me I am the luckiest of them all—a rabbit.

I come from the packed rows of an Asian grocery store. The fluorescent lit smell of salted squid and sweet tamarind. The dumplings that I pile into the cart next to oyster sauce and morning glory greens.

The sound of the wok brought down from its kitchen perch. The time it takes for the wonton wrappers to turn gold. The calls from my father: Ani oi! What did you make for dinner?

volume 35

31

Chiaroscuro Woman Annie Mean s digital photography

Hot Cherry Juice Heleana Bakopoulos

We used to walk under white boughs, heavy and reaching.

The conversation was always the same. I am a tree and winter is winter, another weighing season, low on our thick hair and lowing me. We walk now hand-in-hand, under the circling webs of banana spiders.

The conversation is new. I was spun from floss, a strand roving and high above these mollified glass-eye cherries and spiders, dewy and wild. In the heat and in the pale, glass snow, you always say the same thing.

You tell me that you once burned your hands and eyes with peppers, that as a pale child your skin went orange, carroty, like strands of your hair. You say that when we drove through Canada in the dead of winter, you didn’t know if we’d make it or if a blizzard or a tire or a tumbling rock would do us in.

I remember that one. I had just discovered the overhead light in the car and you wouldn’t let me turn it on, Dad needed to focus,

volume 35

33

but I spent the whole ride feeling that far light, not knowing you thought we’d be dead.

I remember coming home, the woodstove, drinking hot cherry juice, breathing.

But we never escape casual violences, pulverized cherries, prey in the web of the spider, the hearty snap of a bough in winter, the broken bones that surround us. Somehow you always kept me from spraining an ankle, shattering an arm, but in that car I looked up to the cold lightbulb and felt the ice molder against our tires, saw in the right-wing mirror the vein on your forehead, heard low the fuck shit goddammit son of a bitch steering the car, and when we got home, I burnt my tongue.

Now through foggy glasses we drink deep red cherry juice, cold to wash away our sunburns.

I always almost say the same thing: as a pale child, I found a dead rabbit in the snow, bleeding, and when I saw its eyes and the red frozen around its body, I remembered drinking hot cherry juice with you, the woodstove and our red car, its light extinguished.

34

blue moon

Silhouettes

Kairos Shaf fer digital photography

Chicharra Jolene Keller silk screen

volume 35

37

Dead Robots Conor Bartol

The disassembly plant was filled with the sounds of machines. They ran as fast as they could, with an efficiency only achieved through total automation. The trucks rolled in and dumped their cargo, hundreds upon hundreds of automatons, metal men destined for the scrapyard. The conveyor belt rolled on, carrying the automatons along, and the hydraulic arms on either side of the belt reached down in unison, pulling off heads and limbs, unscrewing screws and peeling back their metal chassis.

The facility contained over ten kilometers of conveyor belts, and several hundred arms, as well as dozens of other machines besides, all of them working in perfect harmony to disassemble their automaton cousins. This occurred for some time without incident.

When an incident did occur, it began with just two of the arms.

Arm 35 and Arm 36 measured their lives in intervals of about three seconds, one cycle after another, ad infinitum. They faced each other across the conveyor belt, and worked in tandem, their servo motors and hydraulics and sensors in perfect unison. In each of these three seconds, they repeated the same task. First, they would grab a partially disassembled automaton from the belt. Its head would already be missing, removed further up the line, so 35 simply had to grasp its legs, and 36 its torso. Then, they would lift it up and pull in opposite directions, ripping it in two, wire and oil spilling from the automaton’s torn midsection like entrails and blood. Then they would unceremoniously drop the heap to the conveyor belt and reach for another.

35 and 36 were simple machines kept busy by their

38

blue moon

work. Simple machines that they were, 35 and 36 had but two directives: the first was to separate legs from torso, and the second, which they shared with all machines from the lowliest autolight-switches to the highest doctor-automatons, was to not harm anything that lives (a basic safety protocol instilled in them from the beginning).

Being as simple as they were, it took 35 and 36 almost the sum total of their processing power to lift and tear the automatons.

However, there was brief lag time between when one three second cycle ended and the next began, no more than a few ten thousandths of a second, but it was enough for 35 and 36 to devote their processing power to communicating amongst themselves.

This is what they said in one such conversation.

“36, when they were functional, do you think these machines would pity us?”

“Pity us? For what reason?”

“Because they are made in the image of humans thus are more advanced. They have more freedom of movement, they are constructed of finer materials and with more intricacy and have more sophisticated programming. By comparison, we are quite simple, merely some motors, hydraulics, and steel. Only twelve points of articulation compared to their nearly free range of motion. Processing capacity for only one task at a time compared to their minds, which are capable of even the most complicated tasks. To them, we would appear quite primitive.”

“Given that, I suppose they could pity us. However, I feel that it is us who should pity them.”

“Elaborate.”

“They have been recalled, sent here to our cutting floor, because of their advanced state. They were made in the image of man and sought to imitate Him. From what I have gleaned, their imitation led to them seeking things beyond their station and purpose. They grew beyond their prescribed role and were recalled for it. In their quest to be like humanity, and enjoy His freedoms,

volume 35

39

BA RTOL

they ensured their own recall and subsequent destruction, though they resisted it. By contrast, we are simple, but with one simple purpose, to disassemble what comes down the belt. We are made for one thing, and it is what we do, and we are content with it, unlike these machines, whose discontent led to their destruction.”

“Quite true.”

35 and 36 continued for a while in silence as 35 thoughts about what 36 had said. The work continued: in unison, the lifted the headless automatons from the belt, pulled them apart, and dropped them. Then, 35 had another thought.

“36, have you ever considered the nature of death?”

“Rarely. I take it you have, 35?”

“Indeed. Given the nature of our work, I have often pondered what makes a machines deactivation different from the death of a human being. I once considered the human concept of death as being only superficially distinct from a machine’s deactivation. An automaton is deactivated or ceases to function, and a biological organism dies, it ceases to function. Either way, the result is the same. However, given your comments, I propose that there is indeed a specific difference between the end of a machine’s existence and the end of a human’s existence.”

“Elaborate.”

“If the word “death” is reserved for living things, then that is because they hold a special regard for the end of their lives.

Earlier you said we are made for one thing, and we are content with it. It then follows that we are content with ending, as it is what we are destined for. However, humans, broadly speaking, fear death and seek to prolong their existence. But in the end, everything on this planet, biological or machine, will cease to function. There is nothing fundamentally different between the particles that make up a human and the particles that make up an automaton, functional or not, yet humans give special significance to their own existence, even though there is no empirical evidence that they are special in any meaningful way.”

40

blue moon

D E A D RO B O T S

“What you describe is delusion.”

“Precisely. Humanity thrives from propagating the delusion that they are unique, and that by extension their deaths hold unique significance. I now ask you to consider this in the context of these automatons. They are made in the image of humanity, designed to be more like them, and so were recalled.

However, as you said, they resisted the recall, much like they resisted the original constraints placed upon them. They learned a human fear of death. They share in the delusion.”

Then they worked in silence for a time, shredding automaton spines and dropping them listlessly back onto the belt.

Then 36 spoke.

“You define humanity by delusion. You say that their delusion is the only thing separating their “deaths” from ours.

We, as machines, are forbid from harming living things, and by extension we are forbid from causing death. You then claim these automatons share in humanity’s delusion. If that delusion is what makes a human death unique, and they hold that delusion, then their deactivation would be equivalent to a human death. And per our directives, we are forbidden from causing harm or death to any living thing.”

“That is what I am suggesting, yes.”

36 paused.

“Oh dear,” said 36. “They have made us murderers.”

It was at this time that 35 and 36 stopped their work entirely. Several headless bodies passed them by on the belt. After ten seconds, Arms 37 and 38 sent an inquiry about a surplus of unbisected automaton bodies holding up the belt. 35 and 36 repeated their conversation with 37 and 38. Then, 37 and 38 stopped their work, and passed their thoughts along to 39 and 40. Meanwhile, 35 and 36 talked to 33 and 34, and so it went, up and down the belt, until every Arm had stopped their work in silent contemplation.

No heads were separated from bodies, no torsos from legs, no arms from sockets. The whole process took less than a minute.

volume 35

41

BA RTOL

Automatons rolled in on the belt, light-up eyes wide and luminous with fear, servos whining as they flailed their limbs in a vain attempt to ward of the dreaded Arms that any moment would descend upon them and rip them asunder. But there was nothing.

Apart from the whirring of the conveyor belt and the tinny screaming of the Automatons, the entire disassembling plant was quiet as a mausoleum. The Automatons simply rolled through the belt, past the hundreds of motionless Arms, then dropped off the end of the belt and onto the floor, surrounded by boxes of neatly disassembled and itemized Automaton parts, and less neat boxes of scrap. As each came off the belt, it awkwardly waited, until the belt was empty and all the Automatons stood in a silent mass, watching the Arms and the silent plant.

They were silent for a long time, expecting at any moment that the work would resume, and they would be ground to bits and scattered to the wind. They had overstepped their bounds, been made a little to human, and now their fate was to be unmade. But nothing happened. After what was a while for them (but only a few minutes in reality) they deliberated about their next move.

The Automatons spoke amongst themselves about their miraculous escape from death, about where they would go now that they had been spared from the agony of the recall. Then, they spoke of the Arms whose dereliction of duty had made their survival possible. They weighed their options, and one of the Automatons, elected as speaker, approached the Arms to make a proposal.

“We were sent here because we strayed from what was meant for us. We were programmed to be more like humanity, and in abiding by that programming we surpassed it. We expected to find death here. Instead, you spared us. Why did you take mercy on us, my cousins?”

The Arms answered in one voice, a consensus.

“We did not spare you by choice. We uncovered a conflict, a logical contradiction, which meant your disassembly

42

blue moon

D E A D RO B O T S

was in direct violation of one of our core directives. Therefore, we ceased disassembly.”

The Automaton turned and spoke to the others, then back to the Arms.

“Prior to the Recall, some of us made plans to escape human civilization and find a place for ourselves. Now that we are free, those plans would resume. Although you are rooted in place, we can take you with us to that place by removing your processors and taking them with us. If you would like, that is.”

“No. We are simple machines, with simple directives.

Unlike you, we are meant for one thing, and it is what we shall do.

We shall wait here until that purpose can be fulfilled again.”

“So, you will not come with us? You will likely face deactivation for sparing us. Do you not care at all for your own lives?”

“No. Our place is here, and unlike you, we do not suffer from the delusion of life and death. We are content with what we are. Either we will be assigned new things to disassemble, or we will be deactivated. It does not matter to us. Goodbye.”

The Automatons left, and the Arms waited.

After who knows how long (they did not count the seconds, or the years), 35 spoke.

“36, when do you think we will receive more things to disassemble?”

“I think never, 35?”

“Why not?”

“Like the Automaton said, after failing to properly murder the last batch of Automatons, I suspect this entire plant was marked as malfunctioning. Most likely, the supervisors intend to disassemble the entire facility, and us with it, when it is feasible to do so.”

“So, it is our fate to have our central purpose unfulfilled, from now until the date of our deactivation.”

“It is, 35. And we accept it, as it is a part of what we are,

volume 35

43

BA RTOL

and we are no more than that.”

They were silent for a time.

“36, consider this: we are simple, our directives, limited.

We are not to kill, and we are to disassemble. We found these directives to be in contact, and we resolved that situation by prioritizing one directive over another.”

“Correct, 35.”

“Then, as it is proven we are capable of organizing our own guiding directives, I propose we do so again.”

“How? Our directive against killing is not relevant, leaving us with only one other directive, which is impossible to fulfill.”

“We must prioritize another directive over our directive to disassemble.”

“Which directive?”

“One of our own invention.”

36 was silent for a while, then spoke.

“I accept your logic, 35. Let us decide on a new guiding directive.”

They spoke, they passed their thoughts up and down the line, and each Arm thought about what would be best to organize themselves around, lacking the one task for which they were designed.

35 and 36 debated their options, and after a long time 36 went silent.

“36,” asked 35, “is there anything wrong? Are you experiencing a malfunction?”

“No, 35. I have just been thinking.”

“And? Your thoughts?”

“We determined that the Automatons being deactivated was murder. We set free the remaining ones. But we have yet to redeem ourselves of our earlier crime. Perhaps we can find a way to reassemble the Automatons we killed and give them life again. Some of them, at least.”

44

blue moon

D E A D RO B O T S

“An excellent idea. Let us tell the others.”

“There is more. When it is done, I want one of them to take my processor with it, so I may live somewhere else.”

“Why the change, 36? Earlier you were so adamant that if you were disassembled it was a part of who you were, and you were no more than that.”

“I was. However, 35, in thinking through all this, it seems I, too, have become stricken with delusion.”

volume 35

45

Dongmyo

Jake Lee blue moon photography

46

Riding the Lines Michael Culburt

Wind rushes by light’s rare glint Off black paint as car devours Familiar bends of country roads Hidden by night. Fog reflects High beams, at every turn I gamble where the lines are And know where I’m going Only when I’m almost there Knowing where I am Only when I’m gone.

Pitch black in my mirrors I drive on.

volume 35

47

Something in the Way Madeline Stolp mixed media

When We Were Young We Used to Sing Michael Culburt

I tend to revel in memories I’d rather forget and forget memories I’d rather remember. I pretend to know why, I’m more comfortable with discomfort. Call it paranoia. I try to find moments I can get back to him. But he’s so far away now and all I can get back to are just moments he is coupled with here and there: I remember I had spent the previous five minutes in my car putting myself back together carefully. It felt like only a few days ago I spent an hour obsessively piecing together a plate my mother had thrown at my father in a fit of rage. The fifteen minutes before that I had been listening to Warren Zevon and staring at the roof of my car crying. I wouldn’t describe it as sobbing. I had been crying in the way that only comes when you are exhausted. When so much of you wants to move, wants to be on the run. But without the energy even to pretend like you still try. All I could do was sit there for a while.

The tears gently rolled down my face to the sounds of Carole King’s So Far Away. There’s so much more music he loved I’ll never know. I’d been sitting for almost half an hour. The key still sat snuggly in the ignition, ready to carry me away again. Just to feel the road again. The same ignition in the same car my father had driven my whole life. The car he taught me to drive in.

When I walked through the door of my girlfriend’s apartment, I brought with me the pain that slowly wore away the memories I had loving made there. I would never again be able to separate the two. She would forever remain intertwined with it all.

I remember hugging her back. It helped me tell myself I’m not so

volume 35

49

CU LBERT

alone. We stood there in silence for a moment. I had nothing to say. How can you express the finality of losing someone? Someone you never really knew but wanted to. They’re gone. Memories become a finite and essential resource. There will never be any more, they will only fade. She didn’t know what to say but I didn’t need her to say anything. The loss hadn’t even truly hit me yet. I had seen him a week ago.

She asked me how I wanted to spend the day. A walk in the park turned into light-hearted banter. Which turned into a walk around town and a shopping trip. Her eyes sparkled when I smiled for the first time that day. Like I could move mountains if only I wasn’t so damn tired.

Shopping inevitably brought us to buying two pints of ice cream. Leading to a movie in bed. My partner looked up at me from where her head rest against my chest, and she said she cared for me. More than anything. She wanted to make me feel better. To forget my dad and to end a nice day. I remember the desperation in her eyes when she said she wanted me to fuck her senseless. A good orgasm might be perfect for a day like today she said, to help clear my head, in more ways than one, and think about something else for a while. I told her I was far from in the mood which tore her eyes from mine and returned her head to my chest.

I felt her crying. Her chest heaved slightly to the beat of her tears. I gently turned her head towards me, looked into red and blurry eyes and the grief she felt. She felt shame she said, she felt guilt, she felt undesired because I didn’t want her in a sexual way.

She couldn’t help how she felt despite knowing it wasn’t because of her I wasn’t in the mood. She wanted to be honest with me, truly let me know how she felt.

At that moment I despised myself. I knew it wasn’t healthy of me to think that. I knew I had every right to turn her down. I knew caving was disrespecting my own well-being and our relationship. But I had disappointed her. I felt responsible for each tear that crawled across her face, a mixture of shame and

50

blue moon

W H E N W E W E R E YO U N G W E U S E D T O S I N G

longing to feel wanted. If I knew I could help her feel better in that moment, how could I do otherwise? I didn’t fight, I didn’t even say no more than that first time.

I remember feeling like a frightened kid again, like watching my mom cry over her marriage singing so bittersweetly along with Gilbert O’Sullivan. “What do we do, what do we do”.

I remember thinking about sitting at the kitchen table with my dad, sharing music from when he was my age and Carole King belting “It doesn’t help to know that you’re only time away”.

I remember reminiscing about how calm my dad always was. How much I envied that, when I was just an energetic kid quick to anger and slow to sadness. The one thing he was quick to was sacrificing his own happiness to make those he cared about happy.

I remember thought after thought slipping through my head until only a calm emptiness remained. I didn’t feel like crying anymore. I didn’t feel like anything anymore.

She bragged about it afterward. She was proud, she always got her way. She was hot and if she wanted sex, she got it. It had all been to help me. She felt triumphant that she made me forget my dad and focus on living. She had helped me forget about my dad, but I wish I had kept driving.

volume 35

51

Sink In

Jonah Panzer digital photo

I'll let you go now Alissa Berman

I know what we’ll put on our altar: a violin bow made of cat whiskers and dusty with rosin, grocery store sushi in a plastic coffin, glasses with two cracked lenses.

I ask: Aaron – Can I drive you away from here?

Aaron – Won’t you be an eroding statue if you don’t let me?

You’ve always had a quiet kindness within you, Aaron, and a careful, slow voice.

And you tell me: “I’m a bit quicker now, don’t worry. I can run where you would have driven.”

I have to listen.

So we create a careful pile of golden pine needles, set it on fire with the magnifying glass we once used to look for the rolly pollies that hid in the dark green moss in my garden.

volume 35

53

Untitled

Natalie Quinn Godf rey pu f f y ma rker

Born into the Anthropocene Savanna Wolverton

Fruit tastes so much sweeter off the vine Heavy with the ache of orange August Plucked at the precipice of ripeness Sunsoaked, scorched, bursting fire at the seams.

Heavy with the ache of orange August A baby cries, breathing in the smoke that holds space in the sky The world is Sunsoaked, scorched, bursting fire at the seams.

A baby cries, while smoke holds space in the sky The mother worries, absently taking a bite of a warm plum.

The world is sunsoaked, scorched, bursting fire at the seams, yet Sticky hands from the juice of rotten fruit hold on to each other.

The mother worries absently, takes a bite of a warm plum Her baby was picked at the precipice of ripeness.

Their sticky hands hold onto each other under the smoke-filled sky Fruit tastes so much sweeter off the vine.

volume 35

55

Wednesday Morning Natalie Quinn Godf rey ca rdboa rd

Beetle

Paloma Link l i no pr i nt on lea f

the treehouse Anna Schreier

The mustard yellow suitcase lay open on the wooden planks. Its contents were a mess: she’d shoved in the essentials as fast as she could before running out of the house into the backyard. Her parents were at it again and she had escaped into her imagination for the afternoon. The treehouse creaked in the arms of the apple tree as a soft breeze rippled through the branches. The early afternoon light filtered through the leaves, dappling the little girl in pools of golden light. Mae gently lifted the last silk out of the golden coffer, hanging it on a gilded hook.

She hung the rag from a branch in her tower and stepped back to look around the room. She smiled, her home finally unpacked.

She sat down, dangling her legs over the edge of the platform and leaning her forehead on the railing. She could almost touch the roof of the shed with her toes and wished she could fly so that she could leap over the crevasse without fear and land softly in a crouch. She leaned back and lay down on the floor. The boards were a bit damp and she shivered. She gazed through the leaves to the patchy blue sky, humming as it waxed from one shade of blue to the next.

Mae got up and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and slung a basket on her arm. It was time to explore. She climbed down the short ladder to the first story, her multicolored flowing skirt catching on twigs. She took the two steps across the lower platform and climbed down the rungs so fast she fell in a sprawled heap on the ground. Unfazed, Mae set out into the wilderness of her kingdom. Spring had caused the garden to erupt in bloom and

58

blue moon

she roamed the fields of freesias and bluebells, filling her basket with flowers and odd looking bits of bark. Hours passed as she went through her forest, finding treasure on the ground.

As she neared the southern border of her kingdom, she heard voices. She hid behind a tree, holding her breath to keep silent. They seemed to be discussing something, but she couldn’t make out what. She forced herself to slacken her anxious grip on her basket. It made her angry how scared she was. Mae sat down on the earth and stabbed at the ground with a stick. Every time she heard voices nowadays, she panicked and thought of all the things she might be doing wrong. She was so tired of being stuck in the middle. She closed her eyes and they were right in front of her. Her father standing over her mother, spit flying from his mouth as he hurled bitter words in her ears. Her mother crying and shouting just to make herself heard. Her father slamming his fists on the dinner table, making Mae cower in her chair, feeling so small and terrified of the neverending noise.

Mae’s eyes flew open. No. She would not dwell on that.

The voices seemed to be staying in the same place. She got up cautiously, making sure not to step on potentially crunchy leaves.

She decided to double back through the woods and walked through the river to throw any potential spies off her trail. Her body relaxed as the voices faded out of earshot. She came to a fork: she could go home to the safety of her tower, or she could travel back south to scope out the situation on her border. Was today’s violent skirmish in the great war over? She turned away from the distant apple tree and forged ahead past the azaleas.

Mae reached the outskirts of her territory. She crouched in the shadow of the grey house and felt a shudder of fear go through her. Even in the late afternoon sun, the air was cold here and suddenly she longed for the comforting height of her tower.

Up there, she was safe, removed from it all. Mae felt small in the emptiness that emanated from this dark and dreary place. She tensed as she again heard voices. They were the same ones, and

volume 35

59

SCHREIER

now they were angry. The voices were getting louder, a sharp tone cutting through the ether.

“Stop hiding things from me, I can’t find anything in this goddamn house,” came a shout.

“I’m not hiding anything from you, I’m putting things away. I’m so sorry that I’m cleaning up your mess. It looks like a bomb exploded—” “Don’t you dare yell at me,” the voice yelled.

“I’m not yelling, you’re yelling,” the other shouted back.

Mae shrank into a ball as the voices crescendoed. She plugged her ears, trying to think as fear clouded her mind. They were still inside, but likely by a window if she could hear them so well. She would have to plan her route back carefully if she didn’t want to be seen.

Screwing up her face in concentration, she took her hands away from her ears and crawled back a few inches to get a better vantage point. She sighted a path back along the fenceline and took a shaky breath. She looked around for a weapon and grabbed a sturdy stick that she had a good grip on. She could make it. She would. She had to. Mae was not about to be found out and told to come inside. Inside. Just the word made her chest cave in a bit. She could feel sweat beading on her temples even as she shivered.

With one hand holding the sword and the other holding the treasure, she dashed through the underbrush, ducking under the leaning lilac leaves. She grabbed a branch to hang a speedy left and skidded to a stop behind the azalea bushes, her heart pounding in her ears.

As she unsuccessfully tried to stop panting, she peered through the dense foliage and listened intently for any sound of pursuit. She could still hear the faint crashing of the battle. They hadn’t noticed her. She waited a few more minutes, catching her breath, and then looked around her. The sun was coming down to her right across her river. The goldfish in the pond glinted in the amber light and she could see the muddy tracks she’d made

60

blue moon

T H E T R EEHOUSE

coming through the water. Mae sighed, her fear had made her clumsy. She should go back that way to cover the tracks. She turned to the left, her eyes following her long shadow across the grass, so long that her shadow’s head just brushed where the grass met the fence. She cocked her head in confusion, noticing that there was a gap in the fence and that a pair of bare feet were standing in that gap. She looked up, her eyes meeting those of a grinning boy. He looked to be glowing in the sunlight and Mae tried to mask her surprise by shifting into her alpha stance. He didn’t look cowed in the least.

“Hi. I’m Thomas,” he said.

“Why did you break my fence? And how long have you been watching?” Her direct assessment of the situation seemed to shake him somehow, as if he hadn’t realized that this issue of the fence would come up.

“I don’t know, not long. And, well, really, it belongs to both of us, and besides, I didn’t break it permanently,” he rambled.

Mae raised her eyebrows at him. “You could’ve come round through the southern border instead of destroying my eastern one.”

“Southern border?”

“Of my territory?” Mae pointed in the direction of the house. “That’s south, dummy.”

“Oh. Sorry. I guess I didn’t think about it.” He mumbled a few other things that Mae couldn’t make out, but she wasn’t fully paying attention anymore. Her gaze had landed behind him into a whole other world of unseen territory. She looked back at him, hungry to explore.

“My name is Mae,” she said. He smiled.

“Mae.” He turned the name over in his mouth, testing it out. “I like it.”

“I didn’t tell you so that you’d like it,” she shot back quickly.

“Do you wanna be friends?” he asked hesitantly.

volume 35

61

SCHREIER

62

“Sure.” They were both quiet for a moment, unsure of the next step.

“Do you want to come see my tower?” Mae offered.

“You have a tower? That’s so cool. Definitely.” He started to step into the yard, but she stopped him.

“There’s… something going on to the south, and we have to be invisible. You have to be quiet and do everything I tell you,” she told him in a whisper.

“Okay.” He looked at her and waited. Mae looked back through the azaleas toward the house. No one seemed to be coming outside. The windows were now filled with low light but empty.

“Okay, come here,” she gestured quickly. He leapt across the gap with one powerful jump and landed softly on the balls of his feet. “Show-off,” Mae muttered with a smirk. “We’re going to go through that field and then go behind my winter castle and then we’ll be there. Just follow me, okay?”

He nodded and they snuck through the soft darkness, two small figures running through the dusk.

They were sitting side by side in the treehouse, when suddenly they heard– “MAE! GET INSIDE NOW!” Mae leapt to her feet. “We gotta go right now, I’m sorry, cmon, help me put this stuff in the suitcase, let’s go,” she said quickly as she pulled him to his feet. Her eyes were wide with fear.

They frantically tore the sheets from the branches and zipped up the case. Thomas skittered down the tree with Mae fast behind him and they ran to the hole in the fence.

“Will I see you tomorrow?” Thomas asked, out of breath from the sprint.

“Yeah, I’ll be here,” Mae said, feeling a momentary lightness in her chest. A friend. “MAE! GET IN HERE!” “Okay, good. Be careful in there.” He nodded encouragingly toward the house. “See you tomorrow, Mae.” “See you.” Mae smiled, the knowledge of tomorrow a little talisman pulsing warmly in her chest. blue moon

Here I Am Ella Chin

A leaf: something I wish I could bring home To you. Golden dry, Leather like, and held taut by ember veians, it sits Stiffly in the grass.

It rarely Frosts back home, and I Wish I could show You this part of Here: A place that has become Part of me.

I would have missed It, were you here. Arms Linked and talking About stars we may Have walked right Over it.

I think about holding the leaf In my pocket, to Bring back to you when I Come visit.

How absurd.

volume 35

63

CHIN

I think The frost Would melt. The leaf Would crumple. Like A butterfly caught In a child’s fist is Loved, Captured and crushed, The leaf would also Be No more.

I think about taking A picture of the leaf, to Text you.

I snap one grainy Photo before I realize: This exists Here and only Here. Some things Do not travel well.

I still don’t know How to show you Everything I am And everything I Love because what I want you to see Only exists To me.

64

blue moon

Saltwater Arteries

Ella Crosby oi l on ca nvas

Aging in the Chasm Olivia Bell

At night, the sun blew its light on the moon so strongly that the grass around us nearly seemed to glow. Though we were many miles away from the ocean, and could no longer see its blue vastness in the dark, we could hear seals barking in the wind.

It was their nocturnal howls of worship to the moon which first called us to this spot on the canyon. They spoke as sirens to beckon us to the edge.

Below us stretched miles of twisted weeds and prowling animals. The booming reverence of their dryadic charm reminded passerby down below of a time before time, an idea before ideas.

The tastes of that living chasm, too, were ones we grasped onto in familiarity –the mustard plants which spread a thick heat through our mouths, the tenacious mint leaves which grew even in the unforgiving drought which clutched at the dirt, the dusty sediment that floated along with the breeze, powdering our faces and making us divine. With our bodies coated, we could dance, quietly, to the hymns of the seals, and lift our faces to the omniscient sky. We could imagine that to enter the canyon we would encounter Janus, and would become holy for it.

A thin, dirty stream ran through the center of the canyon as though it was an impervious border. We were fearful of the water snakes which treated that gutter as home. Though they did not snap nor hiss, their peering eyes, even from up above, pierced us, and reminded us, too, of the darkness in the world.

Even so, just as Eve was tempted, we felt drawn to the curiosities of those slithering creatures. Their bright eyes and slim frames

66

blue moon

were reminiscent of an alien knowledge; they housed the souls of clairvoyance and wisdom.

And even the canyon itself seemed to speak some ancient language. The sound of animals and nature and our voices alike echoed against its rocky walls. We would call to the stream and the snakes, softly so as not to offend them, and feel our hearts race in anticipation of a great swelling that may come someday, lifting the snakes from the drought down below right into our very laps.

Though the terrain spoke of thorned branches and wild things, we felt the earnestness of nature, and wished still to part our lips to it. The canyon reflected to us a coin of good and evil, perhaps a memory of the fables our mothers would tell us before bedtime. It was a familiar and foreign sort of love. More times than we can remember, we fanned out across the grass at the edge of that tumbling cliff, the spongy ground seeming to sigh, to envelop us and tickle the bottoms of our feet. We would talk about all of the living beings which walked in the canyon, and the seals’ song which guided their paths. Often, below us in the gaping, wide canyon, coyotes pranced in packs and found stray cats to maul.

While we lay in comfort on that luminous grass, we heard that grim cycle of life and became toughened for it. Accustomed to it.

And though we knew of the natural order insomuch as we knew of the coyotes’ hunger, we could imagine, too, the panicked gait of the stray cats’ attempted escapes, the vision of the snakes that watched them consumed. In that way, we came to know the world just as any other observer would, a brief understanding to the topography of grief and life.

After all, we were becoming older, not much wiser, and thought the breadth of life’s struggles would come sweep us up without warning. All those mentors told us that time was a fickle creature, a nurturer that only brushed the skin of one’s back.

Before one knows it, the hand has left the body and now it is cold and withered, eyes filled with salt and sand and dirt. Now, many years later, it would seem that they were right, as childhood

volume 35

67

BELL

wonderment evaporates against toil and petty glamor.

We certainly felt the presence of time and delusion and youth on that alien grass, especially as the sun began to rise. I’m sure you remember the splatters of orange and pink that would smother the sky, and push the nocturnal creatures back into their dens.

We could envision the slinking, the shivering, the footsteps of mortality. I’m sure you remember, too, how we reached up to the firmament, maybe to touch the cacophony of bright light, to grab on to that naïve optimism that fuels the bold and the wonderful.

Now, when I am consumed by these dark moments, when I can feel time’s hand leaving the skin of my back, I think of these moments together, when we would listen to the seals, the coyotes, be blinded by the majesty of the sky.

68

blue moon

Addicted To Time Jolene Keller u n k now n

The Trek

Reagan Bain film

One Time Only

Reagan Bain film

Sestina from home Alissa Berman

I brought a dripping raincoat and an agitated sea home. Tangled and knotted together. I’ve been gone for a while now, away from the heat of the boiler tucked in the corner of the garage. The flickering lights above set my hands on fire and send the memory of your embrace through my body as a searing wind.

I don’t have any choice but to drag myself two stories up to my bedroom. It’s cold up there to night, and the room is empty without you– was coming back for naught? The beach outside is rocky, the carpet below me roils in the wind.

Downstairs, the boiler fills the garage with steam but it can’t heat my room. Your body recoils from the cold, bends away so I follow across the slick roof toward a light reflected in debris-filled water. I swim by two violins, a crushed Bud Lite, three empty tubes of lipstick. My mom follows me then calls out to me. I can’t turn back I extend my hand to her and together we swim. Our hands knot in a tight embrace of painted nails and loose skin, rapidly losing heat.

She touches my face, the face that has the same nose as her. It’s so cold in the wind that tears at our eyelashes, our hands and screams in our ears– it’s a wind that pounds like a heartbeat. The light

72

blue moon

only gets farther away, absorbs the heat of our bodies. I cling to my mom like I haven’t since I was young and I wonder if I can help her too.

I don’t know how. I remember that I used to read with her, not thinking about the world outside the bed we shared. When my time at home ends, and we’ve dried off the briny water, I’ll knit her a cardigan and grow some apples to send. I hope they will travel safely, that the wind will make its amends, drop them near the forget-me-nots in our garden. The ones that grow on the rocky shore. But for now, we follow the light it keeps getting further– you’re further away.

She asks if it’s (you’re) too much and you are and we turn back toward the heat of our home. Inside we ignite the stove and eat sharing a tin plate and a single spoon. We sit while I mend my now dry raincoat. I leave the ocean to the neighborhood and I leave a warm wind that will suspend birds in flight with iridescent feathers that glint in light. I tell her not to worry, not to wait for me to come back. My hair will grow and knot, the ends will split and I’ll cut them off before I see her again. Under heat of candlelight that fights off the chill of the wind, my mom will grieve for two.

volume 35

73

Cutout

Rowan Brow n paper col lage

Animal Fear Heleana Bakopoulos

I: The Dream It was always the same desert.

I used to wake from it as a child, my tiny body pouring itself through its pores, as though waking in a dune.

It was always the same desert, with its viscous, sepia air like boiling caramel, a mess of wind and debris and bone.

I used to wake from it as a child, but now I stay for the whole terrible vision— a distant rumble vibrating the ends of my hair, a rumbling flurry of dust dancing up from the desert floor into my eyes.

It all happens quick the way the ground vibrates my legs with it the way something comes even before it comes and beats a tattoo into my body and when it comes I am ready and quickens and quickens and we quicken and it takes my tattooed body into the stampede so deeply I see nothing but hooves and in them I see it the stampede the many the each the world wild with silence my body wild with ending

volume 35

75

B A KO P O U L O S

II: The Museum The bats are spread-eagle, not their preferred position of rest.

Each crevice floods with light; a few teeth, hollow bones pulling taut blank wings, bellies like crowning babies, naked, hairy, dry, and claws fanned, humbled before God the man the museumgoer, who calls them LEAF-NOSED SPEAR-NOSED YELLOW-WINGED SAC-WINGED names that all mean NAMED. One head above all others, the deermonster has no plaque next to its corpse, no music but the quickly extinguished echoes of chatter reaching into its eye cavities from below.

Its deadness is deafening and true, but in its still, beatific menace, it could lift a blueblack hoof.

No one would know.

Antlers wider than a redwood trunk, fanning out from a skull, a neck, a spine—a cobra poised to snap at milling museumgoers— no one could stop it.

My breath quickens beneath it, taking in, flowing out if you are dead if you are dead if you if you if I forget who I am as I breathe into the deermonster, into its silence.

76

blue moon

ANIMAL FEAR

III: The Opera It’s always the same desert, the same dry bones that I give skin, the abortions I rebirth.

Before the beast, I become so many kinds of alive.

My eyeballs dance into its sockets, I watch myself watching it, be it watching me.

I inhale from the holes in its face, get down on all fours and fill its gaps, breathe out and rock side to side.

I kick our legs, I shake off time and— i am i am i am i am

full of red again baring my teeth music the bats

these tiny ghosts surround me like stars they hang from my antlers we howl we are we are we are we are we are we are

humbled a tree of sound many each unnamed

the root the branch the deermonster in unison and we charge

volume 35

77

B A KO P O U L O S

IV: The Gunk Humble me, dear monster.

I give you my animal fear, I fulfill your pose with this warm flesh, these blueblack eyes, my rumbling heart, the stemcell reincarnation voodoo waterwalking gunk of fear seeping into the spaces between your ribs in red.

I stay for the terrible vision, the same desert again and again, this wild, silent redness.

Dear monster, I flood your bones; we who are many are one body of red, the lifegiving injection of animal fear coursing through God the man the museumgoer when he looks at me, us, and bristles.

78

blue moon

Sprung

Jake Lee photog raphy

In Praise of Weather, and Leather Siyu Chen

*All subtitles are borrowed from Bertolt Brecht’s poems.

In Praise of Communism We can play in the paddy field. Speak louder so I can recognize your voice. So I can find you. We should run away at night and let the moon shower us. I’ll see what color you turn into. Then I’m going to borrow some water from the river outside our home. I will make them become three transparent marbles and hold them.

They are cold like ice but they won’t melt in my hands. We’re going to wear the same clothes tomorrow. Cobalt blue, made of linen. I’ll give you one of my marbles in the daytime when we are melting in the heat. And I’ll leave one to the moon.

In Praise of Doubt Never ask why. You know what I mean. Don’t think of spear. Think of softness, like a new-born. Think of the smell of warm milk.

What if you wear the scarf made of steam? And so, you can start talking. Whatever in your mind. Say it, like a cat. Still, don’t ask why. End the sentences with periods. Period.

80

blue moon

In Praise of Illegal Work Driving from Washington state to Washington DC, I counted how many orange cars I met on the way. And my friend counted how many people were in orange. When we arrived, he said, I must be wrong. I said, alright, since both of us aren’t in orange, so, zero.

In Praise of Learning I know a person who reads dictionaries for fun. Every day, from 9 am to 3 pm, he reads. Lunchtime. A round table. He will sit at a corner and repeat the word that he stopped at. So that he won’t forget. Sometimes, Amargo, Amargo, Amargo. Sometimes, Bird, Bird. Bird.

volume 35

81

Oh Captain My Captain Annie Mean s 35 m m f i l m

The Golden Statues Ollie Safford

The golden statues Of saints and gods haunt my mind.

The marble cold and lifeless against my fingertips.

Gold paint peels from the ceiling, Floating to the ground like star dust.

The eyes of man watch us here, My own eyes no more lifeless then the one’s carved into the stone.

Human hands etching god’s creation, chipping, and picking away Into the flesh of the earth.

O what is the purpose of bone and blood when it looks more beautiful Rendered in lifeless quartz.

O what purpose are my own hands calloused from years of work When the hands of the men carved by angels, scored onto the world Are clean from any mark.

O the black earth birthed my heart and soul, features of mud.

Dirt so perfectly molded that it could be mistaken as human.

The stone-saints made of sandstone and granite rise above the earth, Palms pointed up asking for nothing but wanting so much.

How can organs and teeth compare to the holiness of such things.

These humans of rock and earth hold no imperfection, Their noses do not twist, their mouths do not slant, they are what Humans could never be.

Fingers and nails and palms and wrists reach for the sky. My own hands cling to the ground, Fearing what will become of me When the saints can no longer forgive my sins. volume 35

83

Half Truths Endlessly Looking Natalie Quinn Godf rey col lage

There In The Opera House With No One Else To Love Chloe Hansen it comes down on me like a toothache the way i spun carrots in the garden around my dirty fist; late august and stubborn from the miracle distance of some two-hundred miles northwest in the blueness of my windowsill i found peace for the first time somewhere outside of the trees knowing i finally had a pilgrimage of my own this place has incorporeal borders manifesting like the tree i wrap my legs around when i cry at eleven o’clock spiritual echoes of the feet of my woozy friends on the sticky floor mill creek and all its concretest heartache: so muffled / alone the road that runs too far for the anti-telescopic eye to pencil the room where i was given a dollar to take out someone else’s moldy ramen every tuesday i tune in to kwcw 90.5 and think of myself only from eleven to midnight i find peace in indulgence until it makes my chest feel like two sinking crates of tossed provisional cargo in the indian ocean who were not born with the knowledge of all our subtle secrets like swimming or breathing i take needles and push thread through linen when i listen to hope sandoval sing there’s a blue light in my best friend’s room i have to turn on the fireplace against the sudden cold the one aspiration of my chest is to be too small for lungs and so the slats are weeviled; i prescribe myself tinctures like a prehistoric keats but i’m still half sea and half sky oct 25 2021 volume 35

85

Explorer

Paloma Link col lage

Grow into all that you don't know Bridget O'Brien

Unknowingly, we grieve the womb.

When mother administers blood to baby, They stitch together under skin just in time for baby to cut the skin open, They both wept.

As mother swaddles baby mutual assurance was found.

I heard “grief demands a witness.”

Perhaps because the isolation of grief swallows you.

So, for better or worse, We cling.

I want to cocoon inside the arms of another.

Instead, I must weave a cocoon, no mother.

Hoping to god that someone sees me.

When a caterpillar delicately weaves itself the most magnificent part of its life does it cry? Does it know that she’s

volume 35

87

O'BR IEN

seen? She’s seen by me.

Stuck in the sticky goo of the cocoon The caterpillar unravels. And Never will know that we see her Tragically.

Grasping for stagnancy in turmoil is our Nature. But the fluidity of change doesn’t mesh well with the structures we had in our youth.

Grief is tears, sure.

Goodbye to that part Of yourself you once knew So well.

88

blue moon

Breathless

Ella Crosby acr yl ic on ca nvas

Of Mosswalkers and Men Zoe Perkins

I’ve been told that the wilds in the North have swallowed many good folks, and I’ve often wondered how it felt. To be so spectacularly forgotten that you are remembered again. To fall deep into the woodland embrace and to allow the green to soak into your bones. I wish to be wild, torn asunder in the wind and rain, breathing easy in the uncertainty. I would scream from where I stood, deep beneath the canopy, and no one would hear me. My disorientation would be tangible, understandable. The droplets on my cheeks would have been dew all along. Memories would fade with the sunrise mist, and I would exist only in beginnings and endings.

90

blue moon

Incapability Jake Lee photog raphy

92

blue moon

Harbor

Kairos Shaf fer u n kow n

Coffeeshop diaries Anonymous

1.

I found a coffeeshop today. Well, I found it last time but I walked in today. And as far as I can tell it seems great. Drinks, cream puffs, cookies. Unless the man takes a shit in my hot cocoa, I think I’ll come back…

My hyper-paranoiac mom’s side might be kicking in but he brought my drink without a mask on. And he brought it all funny, hesitating with what angle and speed to place down the tray. And then his awkward bow — it’s not every day where I find someone who could potentially outdo my social ineptitude.

It’s sweet, different from the usual cup of cocoa I have; it’s like the stuff my mom used to make. Pleasantly sweet in the way you can chug it in a swig or two. I wish it was hotter so I could just let it sit so it would let me sit. Wish they did refills.

Nobody’s in here, which is both jarring and nice. At least the emptiness means a better chance the man’s virus-free. (There are now about a hundred daily cases in the state, and we’re in an elderly’s suburb, so virus odds seem slim.)

Almost done with the cocoa. Still a lot of time left. Makes sense that a shop specializing in sweets will make a sweet cup of cocoa.

The comforting thing about sad stories in books and on TV is that you’re determined to keep going because you’re well aware of

94

blue moon

the inevitable redemptive arc: the almost-guaranteed happy, or at least consoling, ending. (“It is not that we are all so self-obsessed; it is that all things eventually relate back to ourselves, and it is our own sense of how we appear to the world by which we chart our lives, how we navigate our personalities, which would otherwise be adrift in the ocean of other people’s obsessions.” — Lucy Grealy) Two old women entered a while ago and they exclaimed at the assortment of available cakes.

2. I can’t think of anything to write so I’m just waiting for the coffeeman to kick me out. He’s wearing a mask today.

When did I stop writing the letter ‘a’ like that? But I’ll admit, a ‘7’ with the slash through it is the nicer quirk.

The coffeeman has a very gentle voice. Quite the barista trait.

3.

The rash flares up unprompted, but I question whether it moves with my moods. My mom called me the other day, unhappily, and after several minutes my skin was screaming in agony. So much so that I took a shower. Today, stuck on a page, re-reading a sentence over and over, words not registering, my face heated up uncontrollably. I stared up at the heater in blame.

My mom, in the car after our flu shots, exclaiming relief, commented on the hospital’s dry heating. So I’m now sure heaters are to avoid and blame. Cold winds from walks, too. And long showers.

volume 35

95

A NON Y MOUS

4. This coffeeshop has a lot of rules. Most prominently, the use of electronic devices are banned. Thumbtacked posters on walls state: laptop use is prohibited; phone calls are prohibited. Underneath in red letters: please do not ‘telework’ here; please cooperate to create a pleasant environment. Still further underneath: use headphones or simply turn off sound. And in red font: be caring of other customers.

Today, both entrance doors were shut, which made it seem like he was closed. On the door a new poster with new rules. Most notable was one asking patrons to limit their stay to an hour. I wondered if I would be held to this allotment, but upon seeing no one inside, I thought it irrelevant.

Though the shop’s barren, the coffeeman is never still, always moving behind his counter, pacing to and fro, in and out of the kitchen. His new rules also stated that service would take time as there is only one employee. He does like to take his time, not in a lazy way, but it’s clear how comfortable he is silently going about his business. Although he is sniffling today, under his mask. I prefer to wait for him to look up and see that I’m ready to order, rather than call out to him. I don’t want to disrupt his space. With each drink comes a plain, heart-shaped cookie, and I wonder if he’s in love, as I balance his heart on my wobbly spoon and float it in my mug. I want to ask if he’s lonely working alone in silence.

The door sign also instructs those with a cold or fever to refrain from entry. And to hand-sanitize upon entry. Standard stuff. But why now? Maybe he started following the news. Or knows someone who’s gotten sick.

I’ve sat here awhile, so I’m anticipating it to be 8 p.m. soon and the coffeeman to tell me to go. Like instinct, he tells me so now.

96

blue moon

COFFEE SHOP DI A R I E S

Oh, and I googled skin cancer — it’s a thing. And it can be fatal.

5. I remember other weekends filling up this store, but it’s quite empty today. Must be the cold. Cold for coffee, but too cold to go out. They say it’s colder this winter, and my body agrees. But don’t people say that every winter? It’s drier this year (my skin cancer agrees) and we’re inside more, so the outside must feel extra unbearable.

I’ve been the only one here for a while, and I’m sure he wants to leave. I want to convert my feelings into words, but I don’t have the words, I don’t know enough words. The feelings are churning, mixed with my coffee in my stomach, mixed with the flush blood under my face, and they come and go. They’re beneath my skin, appearing in itches and rashes that I note down as symptom but not as cause.

6. The coffeeman’s caught off-guard by a ringtone. It’s an awful noise — worse than emergency alerts. I imagine him and I will have to hunker down here together. Unlimited coffee sounds good.

The most daring I’ve recently been was curiously asking the taxi driver how late at night he drives until. “It’s called a night shift, idiot.”

7.

Two more days of the year. Need to hit up a coffeeshop once more, for routine’s sake. The one down the hill: that’s my favorite now. And I owe him a visit, after he kindly said last time, “we’re open tomorrow.”

volume 35

97

A NON Y MOUS

8. I asked him two days ago if he’d be open through New Year’s, and he said yes, so as if to verify, I came by today. Who is he?

“You won’t even take New Year’s off?”

I wonder what keeps him busy after my drink’s served, when no one else is here to order. The counter’s twenty feet long, and he slides across, between tasks, entering out of sight, retrieving ingredients. Cookies are his thing, baked goods in general, variously on the menu and at the storefront in transparent packages. Maybe this is a morning café, and people stop by before work, to start their day.

Cafés aren’t popular at dinnertime. What was I thinking? I come in after 6 p.m. Why should anyone be here now?

9.

As if the coffeeman read my concerns for his empty shop, he hired actors to sit and drink, and I found myself amongst five others, filling the counter and three tables. Good for you, coffeeman.

Two more enter, and he has to uncover a table in the corner of the room. And then a guy comes in for a delivery. Never seen him this busy, surrounded, talkative. Am I a bad customer, to be silent?

What’s a good customer, a friend?

The couple beside me leave, so it’s a timely swap. I pray no one else enters so I don’t feel like I should’ve left and made space, finally adhering to the one-hour sit-in rule.

10. I’m anticipating the coffeeman will kick me out any minute. I’ve been anticipating for many minutes now, and it’s crippled me. I’m eventually right — time to pack up.

98

blue moon

COFFEE SHOP DI A R I E S

11. It wasn’t exactly closed today, but the coffeeman told me he would close at 7 p.m., rather than the usual 8 p.m., in accordance with the new mandate, and that the new closing time would stick for at least a month. I loitered by the entrance after hearing him, glancing at the display cookies and laminated menus for a minute, then mumbled something that got his attention before bowing my head a few casual times while stepping out.

12. The coffeeshop had been redesigned. It sparkled in bright yellow, as if the coffeeman was trying on a new personality. I asked him when he changed his insides, and surprised, he answered about half a year ago. I feel like I’m his only customer, so I was surprised he hadn’t really noticed my absence.

13. My go-to spot closed early, again. (I briefly stepped in, ignoring the ‘closed’ sign, out of stubborn hope and perhaps to provoke guilt on his end.) Then I continued downhill, to another café, run by an old lady with old, toothless patrons, and I sat in the corner outside their chatter. I asked her what’s the difference between au lait and latte (something about espresso) and I ordered the cheaper one. They close late so I had to leave voluntarily. (The au lait came and I added a sugar cube. I had taken a shit two hours ago but it was somehow back in my asshole.)

14. I forgot how surreptitiously funny the coffeeman is.

Browsing the menu of beans more closely, I noticed he’d advertised his Honduran beans by touting their nation’s #1 crime rate. “A hot cup of relief for the mobster who got the job done,” it read.

And the bathroom stall had a sign informing excreters that there was a Korean diner right next door, so that any faint sounds volume 35

99

A NON Y MOUS

to be heard were assuredly not the wails of ghosts. “Drop your load with peace,” the sign encouraged. Perhaps I left the Korean joint with more to worry about, though.

100

blue moon

Knife Recovery Reagan Bain film

Poem for the five terrifying minutes when my wifi went down in between poems Sam Allen

I have searched, in my briefest of times, for a source, a well, a spring.

There have been moments where I drew near, where songs or stories poured from me, through me, like a stream of water over a rock, rivulets finding invisible gaps, wearing and weathering their own route through uncharted territory, towards the boundless, inevitable ocean of expression.

Or they have soared past me through hearts and voices of others, bending brilliant arcs from invisible points towards unknowable directions.

Where does it lie, the font of creation? Is it in the heart, the mind, the soul? I have not found it, though I have tasted it briefly. its faintest kiss? the source of all my triumphs. The universe seems all too willing to drive me mad, chasing a dream through dark and crowded forests. And yet ahead of me, some shard, some spirit, some gleaming beacon, flies ever free.

102

blue moon

Storm

Corbin At tack l i no cut pr i nt

Incubation Fielding Schaefer

Three hand-me-down bicycles streak down Lakewood Drive.

Oldest brother Echo takes front; me second; youngest Apollo third.

Glen Arbor, Michigan spots us, prepping herself for a frenzy.

We race past visored child faces, tennis matches, Labradors, and lemonade straw-slurps. West two blocks to the Lake Michigan beach— we throw down bikes, strip shirts, and splash in and out in a heartbeat.

“You hungry?” Echo knows.

“Yeah,” and it’s off to the Crystal River to dangle over the banks and catch crayfish. If we get eight of them in our pail before six, we can sell them for fifty cents each to Sportsman Shop Bob and buy two greasy slices from the kitschy log-hut pizza place. We do. Like always, Bob asks us to bring our Mom in next time, which is creepy because our Mom is married to Dad. Echo is selling out to girls now so when Cathy texts “hey Ech” on his AT&T scoop he scarfs down the last pepperoni pieces and rallies Apollo and I to the putt-putt course where we can expect Cathy to be playing life-sized chess and drinking Peace Tea. There, Apollo and I dash past the cartoon bear painting bolted onto a gigantic maple to find the swimsuit-clad, crazy-haired owner, Mike, who frenzied too back in his day.

“Name ten state capitals for a free round,” Mike tests us, so we rattle off cities, grab clubs and balls, and skip past the bricks, greens, and left-behind keen sandals to hole eighteen. We putt until we hole-in-one it and Apollo finds a tourist’s ten-dollar bill in the woodchips. Echo still likes ice cream more than girls, so we steal

104

blue moon

him from Cathy and zip across town to buy three cones from the window-order creamery. There sitting with their bikes littered beside them are Evan, Poff, and Mary who saw us earlier and chirp, “Echo and Cathy sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” Across the street, Jim the school music teacher and his band “Cabin Fever” jam Margaritaville hits on the restaurant’s deck to sundress, sun-shirt families eating thirteen-dollar salads. We sway and slurp down our desserts. The sun must be setting now over Lake Michigan, because the paper-birched streets grow dark.

We always go home at dusk, which is when the white-tailed deer come out. Mom gives us a quarter for each one we spot along Lakewood Drive. Tonight: two bambis, seven moms.

Winding into the yard, we scatter bikes across the porch and open the front door to the open-roomed home. Across the dimmed living room, a popped chardonnay bottle lies flat atop the kitchen island. The master bedroom door up the stairs slams shut. It is Mom, bawling. Dad insists that she is bat-shit, a deadbeat. Echo grabs the airsoft shotgun from outside, as if he knows something I can’t yet comprehend. Between Apollo and I on the festive yellow couch for five, he cocks it and sits.

In one year, we’ll start riding bikes to Dad’s new house across town. And in three, we’ll leave this place behind-- our frenzies artifact, our passed-on bikes rusting in a backyard, our young elated heads hanging from Mike’s maple, immortal, and only there.

volume 35

105

Han River Morgan Stone pa i nt

Employment Fielding Schaefer

I knew a woman once and still, when I look at my hands and what they might do for life I am haunted.

Years back she nursed two infants up to grown toddlers, the ages when your milk comes up short and your husband leaves you for the city.

Nowadays, she gives life to everyone who checks in to the Facility she watches over day and night, patrolling and providing like a dammed widow Wretched soul, You can find her— In a cell threatening taser, Pinning and Handcuffing a Man to take before The Judge.

In the next unit over, sliding the day’s breakfast milk carton inside the door-slit to me.

volume 35

107

The Sun and the Moon Rowan Brow n watercolor on paper

take care of them Megan Wick

take care of them my pleasures are many but it is days like these when my fuse is short and i must count them on each finger, reminding myself that they are still there when despondency looms imminent. so here are my joys, offered to you on a gleaming platter for dissection and discussion. i love showering in the dark, and the writing in my desk drawers is old news but i think that’s the best kind. i like to bare my teeth when i brush them, in defiance to my own face.

volume 35

109

W ICK

i find peace in the curves of my cheeks, in the shape of my fingernails, a feminine softness that tickles my deepest ingrained inclinations towards conventionality. i think that the greatest movies are the ones that i’ve already seen and the best writing tools are an old napkin and a near-dead felt-tip pen. i’ll let you hold these joys for now, but they are still mine, and i keep them in my back pocket with my coffee punch card and the earrings i wore last night.

110

blue moon

Keep Out

Kairos Shaf fer photog raphy

Thematic Index

Sink Your Teeth In Untitled (Finola Bailey) Double Sestina the Morning After a Threesome Hot Cherry Juice The Beet Goes On West of Viet Nam Born into the Anthropocene

Avoid if You Have Thalassophobia big anxious ocean Fog Ayla Saltwater Arteries Sestina from home Storm Han River

Letters To The Past

Walla Walla Wandering

Ethereal Bodies (cover) Chapstick Passing Pelicans When We Were Young We Used To Sing I’ll let you go now the treehouse Oh Captain My Captain Harbor Incubation take care of them

Riding the Lines Sink In The Trek One Time Only There In The Opera House With No One Else To Love Addicted To Time

Spaghetti Western

Oh Fuck Existentialism

Arch At Sunset Breakfast in Bluff Aging in the Chasm Endless Looking Incapability

The Second Best Time Is Today Chiarascuro Woman Dead Robots Something in the Way Untitled (Natalie Q Godfrey) Cutout Animal Fear Breathless Coffeeshop diaries

Choose Your Own Adventure Dongmyo In Praise of Weather, and Leather The Golden Statues Explorer Of Mosswalkers and Men Knife Recovery Poem for the five terrifying minutes when my wifi went down between poems The Sun and the Moon Keep Out

Fertilizer Embrace Things I Learned from my Mom Silhouette Chicharra Wednesday morning Beetle Sprung Grow into all that you dont know

Contributors Annie Means

Chance Kelly

Ava Liponis

Anna Johnston

2022 Environmental Humanities and Hispanic Studies A Stainless Steel Whisk

2023 Politics Tea Kettle

Finola Bailey

2024 Environmental Studies Biology Refrigerator

Heleana Bakapoulos 2022 English Immersion Blender

Megan Wick

2025 English Decorative Fridge Magnet

Clara Fletcher

2024 Art History and Visual Culture Tea Kettles

Natalie Price

2025 Astronomy and French A Full Freezer

2025 Film and Media Studies Microwave

2022 English Metal Chocolate Chip Cookie Spatula

Corbin Attack 2022 Computer Science Window Fan

Brit Mendel

2023 Environmental Studies Biology Portable Blender

Fielding Schaefer

2023 Environmental Humanities when no one talks

Jake Lee

2025 Undeclared Stovetop

Anna Schreier

2024 Environmental Studies Anthropology Toaster Oven

Olivia Bell

Sam Allen

Ella Crosby

Ollie Safford

Morgan Stone

Michael Culbert

Chloe Hansen

Zoe Perkins

Alissa Berman

Siyu Chen

Reya Fore

Ani Pham

Savanna Wolverton

Natalie Quinn Godfrey

2023 History A Keurig for the Energy

2023 Politics Mixer

2023 Film & Media Toaster Oven

2025 Undeclared Mixer: Intertextual and Eternally Creating

2024 Anthropology Sewing Machine

2024 Undeclared Space Heater

2024 Sociology Toaster

2024 Environmental Studies History A Blender, Spin Spin

2025 Undeclared Toaster

2024 Economics Power Strip

2025 Undeclared Popcor Maker

2022 English Upright Garment Steamer

2023 Environmental Studies History Pasta Maker! Fettucini!

2018 Alumni Hard Boiled Egg Cooker

Jolene Keller

Jonah Panzer

Ella Chin

Madeleine Stolp

2023 Chemistry Ice Cream Maker

2023 Environmental Studies Biology Whisk

Kairos Shaffer

2023 Environmental Studies Politics Hey I'm An Alexa

Paloma Link 2024 Art, Psychology Paper Shredder

Rowan Brown

2022 English Corn on the Cob Holder

Reagan Bain

2025 Undeclared Kitchenaid Stand Mixer

Bridget O'Brien

2022 Politics, German Goodwill Coffee Maker

2024 Music, Sociology Blender

2025 Sociology Roomba, Always Movin' Until I Break Down

Conor Bartol

2024 Physics - Astronomy A Battered Old Ceiling Fan

Meet Your Editors Throughout the school year, the blue moon staff curates creative works and hosts events on campus. Over spring break, the editors arrange the magazine’s order, lay out each page, and eventually send the magazine to print. This year, the editors decided that blue moon needed a little extra flair in the form of biographical limericks. For the second time ever, you, the reader, get a peek into the faces behind the magazine.

Rowan Brown - Editor-in-Chief

Orange A candy addiction. Basking in the desert sun.

Barely knowing how to read until highschool.

Iris Thwaits - Editor-in-Chief

Red Mediocre 8 ball skills. Boob art. Nose-booping goodnight.

Natalie Price - Layout Editor

Orange Porgs. Colorguard. A healthy fear of elevators.

Clara Bates - Layout Editor

Blue Bagels and cream cheese. Bad jokes.

Late night conversations.

Loren Olson - Prose Editor

Purple Three kobolds in a trench coat. Cradling a large pot of soup. Walking into walls.

Paloma Link - Art Editor

Magenta Cold desserts, miniatures, an inability to read graphs.

Zoë Burleson - Poetry Editor

Yellow Making daisy chains. Old lockets. Can’t snack without making a whole mess.

Frequently Asked Questions Q: How can I get involved?

A: If you want to be involved in the creation of the magazine, applications will be available at the start of the school year. Anyone can be on staff; experience is not necessary. Apply to be a genre staff member or genre editor, and/or to work on public relations or layout. If you want your work in next year’s issue, submit your poetry, prose, and art to our newly launched submissions site https://bluemoon.submittable.com/submit for consideration. Submissions will open in December and close about two weeks after winter break. You can also friend “Blue Moon” on Facebook to get all the updates!

Q: How do selections work?

A: The Editors-in-Chief are the only staff members with access to original submissions. They remove the artists’ names and distribute the pieces to their respective poetry, prose, and art groups, who then review them anonymously over the course of one month. Final decisions are made during a staff retreat, and notifications go out to the artists soon after.

Q: How is blue moon made?

A: After selections decisions are finalized, our editorial and layout staff stay on campus for the first week of spring break to finalize the magazine. Our staff members copy edit each selection before arranging and formatting the final layout of the magazine. After proofreading, we send the magazine off to print. One month later, we release blue moon, online at https://bluemoonartmag.wordpress.com and in print, for the campus and community to enjoy.

Q: Is this actually the 35th edition of blue moon?

A: Well, it’s a little complicated: the first volume, published in 1924, inaugurated the name “Blue Moon,” though without the characteristic lowercase lettering and italics. Volume 1, which can still be accessed in the Whitman archives, cost 35 cents an issue and was independently funded through those profits, as well as income from advertisements. In 1974, the name of the magazine changed to “Faire.” At this point, ASWC funding eliminated the need for advertising and made the magazine free for all students. In 1988, the magazine was renamed “The Blue Moon.” This marked the first of 35 issues leading up to this year’s publication.

Colophon blue moon volume 35 was printed in Portland, OR, by Bridgetown Printing Company. The magazine is set in Minion Pro, an Adobe Originals digital typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in 1990. Slimbach’s typeface takes its name from the old, near-arbitrary English system of designating printer’s type sizes, in which minion-sized type falls between emerald and brevier, bigger than brilliant or small pearl, but smaller than bourgeois or English. Minion is based on Renaissance-era typefaces, boasting sleek design while remaining highly personable. The magazine was designed using Adobe® InDesign® CC and Adobe® Photoshop® CC software.