brushing. art and literary journal 2020-2021
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BRUSHING
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Writer's Block......................................................................................6 Nancy Butler Moonlight.............................................................................................7 Natalie George October.................................................................................................8 Julie Bennie Knowles..............................................................................................11 Elizabeth Bonker Nameless Ghosts..............................................................................12 Savannah Horrell Patience...............................................................................................17 Elizabeth Trepanier On Poetry (Intimacies, Intricacies, Significance).....................22 Taylor Ingrassia Wings..................................................................................................24 Elizabeth Smith Cardinal Direction...........................................................................26 Siobhan Cooney Oikos...................................................................................................34 Camilo Garzón
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Oh the Sky is So Bright and Boundless.......................................37 Sara Mehdinia As We Watched the Ark..................................................................42 Angelisse Perez A Friend I Did Not Want.................................................................43 Elizabeth Smith Mollusca.............................................................................................44 Emily O'Malley Growing down..................................................................................46 Vic Olivo The Weed: A Self-Portrait...............................................................49 Gavin Clark Tutte le Strade Portano a Roma...................................................50 Nancy Butler
visual artwork The Arctic Series: Polar Bear........................................................18 Antonieta Lairet The Arctic Series: Seal....................................................................19 Antonieta Lairet Above the Clouds.............................................................................20 Gaby Davenport Peaceful Hue.....................................................................................21 Lanché Williams True Leadership...............................................................................38 Rafael Leon A Kaleidoscope Moment of Color...............................................39 Margie Sullivan Daniel Craig Portrait.......................................................................40 Maria Cedeno Violet Skies........................................................................................41 Maria Cedeno
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content warning In order to make our content accessible to all readers without censorship, we have added asterisks (*) to the title of every poem and story with sensitive content. It is up to the reader to decide whether they wish to check the marked stories for sensitive topics, or read on without knowing the nature of the piece. Topics we deemed worthy of warnings were depictions of mental health struggles and depression, as well as potentially offensive language.
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EDITOR’S NOTE It is with great excitement and honor that I present the 2020-2021 edition of Brushing Art & Literary Journal. As the academic year comes to a close, we find ourselves reflecting on how far we have come in just 12 months’ time. As much as we have had to tread through murky waters and say goodbye, this year has also been filled with growth and new beginnings. We found new ways to live our dreams and pursue our passions in spite of adversity. Thus, this sentiment dovetails perfectly with the theme for this year’s journal: “Out of Darkness.” As you make your way through the journal, I encourage you to take the time to read the personal statements that accompany each story, poem, and work of art. Some are more traditional biographies, while others read more like memoirs. Regardless, this is a special opportunity to engage in a conversation with some of the creative minds of our Rollins community. Without them, Brushing would not exist. My hope for our audience is that you can find something in this journal that you can connect with. Perhaps it will inspire you to produce something original of your own. Brushing is committed to diverse creators and content, and we would love to hear your story. Before I send you off, I have to thank our dedicated staff of Readers and Editors, who put in a tremendous amount of work to finely curate and polish the pieces included in this year’s publication. Thank you to my assistant designer, Tracy, for your beautiful work and for bringing the visual theme of this year's edition to life. Also, I want to thank Rachel Walton for helping me navigate our new digital journal management platform and setting a precedent for future journals to come. Lastly, thank you to Greg Golden and Victoria Brown for your expertise, guidance, and commitment to the success of Brushing. All the best, Siobhan Cooney Editor-in-Chief
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DESIGNER’S NOTE For this year’s edition of Brushing, the theme best associated with this journal is “Out of Darkness.” Thinking about the last and current year we are in, many individuals struggled with the presence of COVID-19. Positivity rates are currently on the rise, some are forced to stay quarantined, and others unfortunately stand at death’s door. With all of this in mind, it has undoubtedly been a dark time for every one of us. Yet, what this journal aspires to contribute is to remind those that there is still hope in this world, that even a small amount of light is enough to pierce through the darkness. In designing the cover, I became inspired by a video game called Disco Elysium, whose artistic style featured abstractions of various characters and I thought the painterly aspect of the game fitted perfectly with Brushing. For the color schemes, I decided to use dark blues, purples, and pale greens to represent “darkness,” and an orange/yellow hue to compliment the blue, alluding to light of course. The illustration of the hand, made in Illustrator, was inspired by photos I took of myself holding a lit lantern in a dark room. The strong white outline of the hands and organic lines makes them pop from the dark, emphasizing its importance in “unveiling the curtain.” The organic designs derived from a Webtoon I read called The Red King. In one of the chapters the artist drew an intricate ripple in space where the entity revealed themselves in front of Ivan. I decided to mimic that design creating that same ripple to another “space.” As for the page designs, I again mimicked part of the organic designs, and expanded into abstract “orb” which is open to interpretation. It may be seen as a globe or even an imaginative crystal ball. I also created beautifully intricate feathery designs and splotches of paint-like patterns. Finally, for the back cover, I decided to add more detail to it rather than leave it in a single solid color. By experimenting, I found ways to mimic the front cover’s color scheme (while making it distinct) by blurring and merging blots of those same colors in addition to revealing a soft glow in the center of the page. Sincerely, Tracy Lam Assistant Designer
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WRITER'S BLOCK Nancy Butler poetry
I am a senior English major and creative writing minor, graduating in May 2021. I am preparing for a career in editing, travel writing, and food journalism. The piece I have submitted is a free-verse poem. I titled this piece, "Writer's Block" because I often find myself overwhelmed when I try to write. When I compare myself to others and overly criticize my work, it inhibits me from creating anything. This poem tells my story of learning to let go. Trusting yourself is one of the most important pieces of any creative activity, as is not holding your work to an unrealistic standard. I hope that this poem inspires you to listen to yourself and know that you are fully capable of whatever it is you are trying to do, from writing a poem to winning the National Book Award.
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I My throat is dry. I thirst for poetry. II “Find inspiration around you.” A winter wind sends powdered snow from the thin needles of the pine trees, to rest atop your fresh grave “Find inspiration in activities.” My arms alternately pull me Forward, through the chlorinated sea: a struggle for survival “Find inspiration in love.” He stains the mugs with old coffee, empty promises, and apathy, but I’ll love him endlessly III If creativity flows from within, why waste time looking outward? My body is a poem. Each breath a stanza, beginning and end. Each heartbeat a rhythm, urging my story forward. Each movement a metaphor, a connection from nerve to muscle. IV “You are not trapped, darling, only untapped.”
MOONLIGHT Natalie George The watchman over the darkening scene Towering cypress of rotting brown Mangled like a sickly reaper Observes the silent, sleeping town The world is bathed in cold shadows That look towards mountains of opal blue Rolling like a wave of nightfall They bleed their color into the sky’s dark hue Few lights break through this growing night The pale church steeple, pinpricking the heavens Climbs up from the village Touching the swirls of wind that beckons
poetry
I am a current thirdyear Pre-Med student but I've always loved creative writing. This piece was inspired by Van Gogh's classic painting The Starry Night. His painting always conveyed an air of mystery and suspense to me, which I tried to explore in my poem, Moonlight.
The crooked yellow crescent moon The aura of harvest in her light She shines on the town and planets On this unending, swirling night
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OCTOBER Julie Bennie
PROSE
“I’m not sure what I’ll do, but – well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.” – The Ice Palace, F. Scott Fitzgerald. In October, I noticed it was gone. Like most things, I had to lose it to learn how much it meant to me. The chaotic continuation of first semester moments: sipping lukewarm coffee in between forgotten emails, laughing with friends on a rusty boardwalk, halfhearted runs in the afternoon sun – all of it, in its ensuing nostalgia, came to a sudden halt. Always so preoccupied, I didn’t realize it had left me. Or, perhaps, was I the one who had now left it? In vain, I felt for its shape at the crevice of my neck, where it previously hung just right of my heart. It wasn’t an expensive necklace. It is just a simple silver chain holding a charm, the outline of South Africa at the center, about the size of a fingernail. I could find an identical one if I tried. Though this sudden awareness of my bare neck had brought an inexplicable emptiness. I had known this feeling before, though then I was far too stricken by the shining beams: America. A new place that wasn’t quite home, but wasn’t not a home either. For a long time, I had been blinded by those fluorescent lights, luminous colors of blue, orange, and purple. They were everywhere I looked. Whether it be in the brightness of the October sun, or in the glossiness of the new smiles, smiles belonging to strangers who spoke with accents I had always heard on television. Their tongues painted languages of technicolor: louder voices, new pronunciations, harder ‘r’s, longer ‘a’s that all circled me in maypoles of rainbow ribbons. Even their homes were decorated with more color (note to self, spelt with no u). Streamlines of lights and pumpkins spilt over well-manicured lawns. I could taste the pumpkins with every brisk breath, sipped in syrupy coffee. Funny that we don’t celebrate Halloween much back home.
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Opportunity. I had heard this from my father, my teachers and my friends. The word enticed me with every glimmering letter. Light was all I could see, all I could think about. In the midst of the golden gleam, I had
misplaced my silver chain. Though how? When? I began to trace my steps, back to the beginning. A time before October, lights, and pumpkins. Beginning (noun, or verb, depending on your perspective): the dusty smell of cardboard, a new bank account, velvet envelopes clothed with heartfelt sentences (noun). A world experienced through the haze of jetlag, like morning fog before sunrise. Sunset I had received the necklace as a gift the day before my flight. We were running late; Georgie awkwardly moved the clutch of her raspberry polo as we sped up the winding incline. The windows were open slightly, welcoming the sharp sea wind and final rays of the sun that illuminated her wavy braid. Sandwiched in between dotted cars, we laughed with relief that we had made it to the top of the hill. The descending sun bounced off the forests and crystalized the ocean. I remembered my 8th birthday, when I impulsively sprinted into its icy waves. Denim jeans stuck to my skin while sand wedged stubborn tangles into my hair. But my decision was all worth it—not because it made much sense, but merely because I had wanted to do it. I gazed at the sun, the one that had tucked me in every night. Though now, I stood beyond it, watching the pomegranate rays fall below my untied laces. The world got darker as it brought a chilly breeze and a starry city. I glanced again at my friends, who huddled together underneath old blankets. I shuddered. The next time I saw this sky, everything would have changed. Sunrise My mom couldn’t download an app. We were sitting in the airport café as she frantically jabbed the cellphone’s screen, her fingers no match for the incessant ‘Failed to Connect.’ Her soft lines converged as a tiny tear escaped from her warm eyes. All she wanted was for the digital map to show my location. She needed these pixelated coordinates, the confirmation that I would always be in the world,
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alive and okay. I reminded her that her toast was getting cold. Leaning over the table, I took her frustration and held it in the palm of my hand (I’ve always been the one that helps her with technology). She thanked me through another tear, a larger one. I think she cried because of the reality that hit her like frosty water: she could never know for sure whether I would be safe. No app is a crystal ball. Or that she realized I wouldn’t always be around to help her with her phone. Maybe it is as simple as cold toast. Perhaps it is all three. Look closely in these moments. Try not to be blinded by the sun. Do you see the necklace? I already looked between the pages of my passport. I am trying to smell it through my mom’s peppermint perfume. Did it fall through the window of the car, tumbling down the mountain through bush and stone? I am looking everywhere: friendships left in unread messages, the loss of the boy with the brown eyes, my reflection in a blurry morning. Did I forget it in my cousin’s soap bubble laugh, or in my brother’s burnt scrambled eggs? My suitcase is empty. The plane is about to take-off. I think it fell beneath the cracks of earth. Please let me know if it is there. I cannot see it, but you may be able to. For I am ascending further and further away from the ground. Upwards, into a blue of ocean and sky. This piece is inspired by a bittersweet farewell. It focuses on the complex feelings inherent to growth: missing who we once were while dreaming of we might become. It is about the progression of time, day and night, longing for the past but never being able to return.
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KNOWLES Elizabeth Bonker I think that I shall never see A window as lovely as thee. Sophia and the liberal arts Embody church values and hearts. Our queen will go to any length For wisdom is better than strength. God’s perfect wisdom, perfect love Shines down on faithful from above.
poetry
Elizabeth Bonker is a junior majoring in Social Innovation. Her life mission is Communication for All nonspeaking people. She wrote this poem about our beloved Knowles Chapel in place of an essay on a final exam.
Christ came to bring God’s love and light Reflected in Knowles’ chapel bright. Vaulted ceilings reach to heaven Remind us of what we’ve been given. Christ as the path back to our God Found in this place and in the Word. The only place with values poor Is in the frieze found o’er the door. With Natives squat and Euros proud The message shouts: “Exploiter!” loud. Christ sees all God’s good creation With love and her contemplation.
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NAMELESS GHOSTS Savannah Horrell fiction "Excavations revealed a crouched inhumation within a grave dug into the bottom of the ditch, opposite the entrance. A second grave containing the crouched skeleton of a child was found near the centre of the monument." - English Heritage Site, Woodhenge In between visitors, we fade into oblivion. Or at least, I try to. They wander the concrete pillars and harass the sheep across the road. The echo of an ancient wall rises up from the grazing pastures and empty fields, making a perfect place to play for a little ghost. Children. It’s not like they could die if they tried, so I don’t supervise. I'm not their mum. When a bulky car rattles up the road and settles in the car park, they return to sit on their grave, waiting for the new visitors to pay homage. I hover behind. It’s our shared grave, really. My body is somewhere else, among the hustle and bustle of the big henge, but I was buried here. We both were, yet somehow they're still the one who get the memorial cairn. Children’s deaths are so much more tragic; it’s not fair. The archaeologists said that I was barely grown myself. (But they’re not to be believed because they change their findings on a dime and call it “new research.”) A family tumbles out of the car, with a hurry of unbuckled seatbelts and dropped juice boxes. A mother, a father, and two little boys, rubbing their eyes and looking tetchy. Better than the bus of public school students we had an hour ago. Several young girls made daisy chains to lay on the flint grave with preteen solemnity. The wave of remembrance was dizzying. I could see the way the child’s head caved in; the memory of an axe buried in it. (Though scientists now think their death might have been due to natural causes, not gory human sacrifice, human minds change slow.) Perception is key. They said you did not die until your name was no longer spoken. Stripped of names for millennia, but are still remembered. Damn archaeologists to hell. Our legacy lingers, as bodies excavated, and as lives reconstructed half-halfheartedly from bones.
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They were three and buried in the center of the monument. Back when the wooden stakes stood high; their life and death must have mattered. Unlike mine, I was practically an adult (or actually an adult, or over thirty-five, or not yet done growing, so many contradictory details) malnourished and left in the outer ditch. Our bones suffered the same fate. Both lost now, through professional negligence and chaos of the Blitz. The mum is talking loudly, trying to explain our final resting place while her children assess the low concrete cylinders that replaced the longrotted wood posts, checking them for fun potential. I’d spent the last few decades of my death stuck with an eternal toddler; I knew when things were about to be climbed on. “Mommy,” the older boy says, his American accent grating on my ears. (Another sign that I could not possibly be what I was when I was alive. British accents hadn’t even existed, had they? No, I was shaped by the people who’d imagined me, dozens a day, every day including holidays, for sixty years. I was about as Bronze Age as the fake arrowhead necklace archaeology students on university trips liked to wear.) “Mommy, it says someone died here,” the boy all but yells, staring cross eyed down at the informational board. We have both drifted closer, instinctively seeking affirmation of our own existence. Now my littler counterpart is playing peek-a-boo with an unseeing partner, the smaller of the living children, who is only a few inches taller than they. “A child,” the mother tells him, authoritative but a little sad. The father reaches for their offspring, as if to protect them from monsters out of the past. “They killed her, it says.” No mention of me, per usual. A dead three year old gets all of the attention. She is now next to me, shifted to meet new, dubiously accurate expectations. Her hair is a little longer, the axe sticking out of her tiny skull more pronounced. It gleams silver, like it’s made of steel, which we both know is wholly inaccurate. “They killed me,” she parrots back, in a ghostly whine. Her face almost looks like that of the little boys. It always does, when there are
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parents around. They project terribly and she mirrors back their fears, an unseen reflection. I should be glad to let her soak up the spotlight, to fade happily back into the quiet darkness of forgotten history, but somehow it rankles. If we must be remembered, it should be equally. The family treks over to the child’s grave, a mound of flint pieces fused together. People leave things here often, and they prove no different. Once his parents are gone, the big boy goes and finds a feather, and places it carefully in a groove amid the flint pieces. Without even a stone to anchor it there, it will blow away soon, but that doesn’t matter.
It’s the thought that counts, quite literally.
The little ghost coos as she leans to examine her new treasure, and pulses a little brighter. These children do not know what ancient means. They only know old. They garb her in princess clothes from a movie, flouncy dress and all. She plays tig with them among the concrete and grass until their parents take them home. It’s getting dark with rain clouds. It starts to drizzle, and I know we won’t have any more visitors today. The dirt roads and grassy fields here get muddy to the point of being untraversable when it rains. It’s just us, the sheep, and the wind. I inspect our new offering until the wind blows it away, and they throw themselves on me. Away from outside forces, they are indistinct to the point of being unrecognizable, just a small, smoky figure. Genderless, featureless, curled up in on itself. This, the ghosts they had once been, were found crouching on the ground. “I want-” they whisper in a voice only the two of us can hear. Neither of us are sure what they wanted. Their mummy? No, they have no way of being certain they had one, no way of knowing what life was like for a child buried under a monument alone. Certainty is all a specter really craves; certainty and the peace of being forgotten. Perhaps there are other memory ghosts somewhere, in particularly well-tended graveyards. In museums, there must be other creatures like us, brought back from the dead kicking and screaming by the cold hands of science. Up the hill and across the road, by the old burial mounds and low
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barrows, there are some less distinct shades. But they do not get nearly the attention we do. Those long-neglected ghosts are pale shadows amid the long grass and cow patties, with no personality to speak of. The big henge, Stonehenge, has its own army of the dead, but amid the hubbub they can get lost. We cannot. Until the last researcher forgets, until concrete crumbles and the strange English language on the signs marking our newer, more permanent graves is forgotten, we linger. I cuddle the faceless little ghost close. There is something unmistakably tragic about a lost child of history that even I can’t remain unmoved. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I soothe, unsure if they can even understand. We died so far apart in history, really, there’s no guarantee our language is even the same. Instead, we communicate in what we are given, the English of scholars and historians, muddled by their ideas of what a teenager and a child from the Neolithic era would have sounded like, which is like, whatever. Eventually they quiet and lay silently on their grave. It is all too tempting to go and find my own burial place (just a patch of mud, really) and settle down.
Instead, I hold out a hand.
“Come on, let’s go play with the sheep.”
When I love them, they become less unfortunate in features, less the frail waif. The curvature of the skull grows less pronounced and ghoulish, ghostly cheeks fill in. You can almost see the chubby, happy, affluent child they almost certainly, possibly, maybe could have been. I am still bone thin, skeletal. They say I was underfed, and I have never known life as anything but a skeleton anyways. I see no reason to change it, though it often tries to change. Archaeologists and their facial reconstructions can bite me. A small, ghostly hand slips into mine. Maybe we are still human enough to have expectations and shape existence because I can almost feel
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skin against mine, a distant memory of sensation. We go and frolic among the sheep, who remain unaware of us. We have seen flocks of lamb, mature and die. Would I have seen this if I had stayed dead? Sheep, cameras, cars, people of every color and shape. It is not a ghostly thought, but we are so well loved by tourists that we are barely ghosts any more. The young man (almost certainly a man, scientists in the 1930s agreed, though I don’t trust them) buried here long ago was a nothing, not thoughtful, not kind, not knowing any of this. We are stories, fed by sacrificial flowers, feathers, coins, and regret. A modern Frankenstein’s monster cobbled together by misinformation, badly remembered history, researcher’s theories, and a dash of human tragedy. A word of advice to those of you with delusions of immortality: engrave your life story on your bones or else hide them somewhere the archaeologists will never find them. Eternity sucks without even a name.
This is a short fictional story I wrote quite a few years ago. At 16, while living in England, I visited Stonehenge and its sister site Woodhenge. I had a chance to see the cairn to the exhumed child mentioned in the story myself. I was struck by the small offerings left there; the coins, flowers, small stones, and other tokens for a child dead since the Bronze Age. The story haunted me until I wrote it and I've been sitting on it ever since. What is it like to be remembered (for your bones alone) long after everything else you know has disappeared?
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PATIENCE Elizabeth Trepanier
Patience rests at the foot of trees curled in nests of soft, mossy dreams. It gazes up through dappled light pliant from the warm summer’s night lying among the columned moon beams with a languid smile
hidden beneath nature’s green eaves.
poetry
Elizabeth is in her final semester of the master’s in liberal studies degree and plans to graduate in Spring 2021. Elizabeth is an avid reader, writer, and traveler whose goal is to become a published author. Her academic interests include critical media, narratology, fiction, and select topics in European history related to cultural influences, literature, and art.
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The Arctic Series: Polar Bear
Antonieta Lairet
Markers on Canvas Paper
The Arctic Series was inspired by Disney Nature’s Oceans (2010). When I create drawings, I gravitate toward elements in nature and animals that allow me to explore specific color schemes and values while bringing attention to the beauty of each species.
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The Arctic Series: Seal
Antonieta Lairet
Markers on Canvas Paper
This particular series consists of three separate pieces that connect in terms of the color and stylistic choices to highlight the cohesion between these species from the same environments and habitats.
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Gaby Davenport
Above the Clouds
Photography
Above the clouds the air is brisk and thin, the wind harsh, unrelenting. Yet all I felt was the warmth of my family around me, cheeks aching from laugther and red from the cold nip of the icy wind. As I stared out at the Swiss Alps, mountains as far as the eye can see, I was once again reminded at how small and insignificant I am in this vast world. Instead of fear, however, I felt calm, humbled by the knowledge that we are but passengers on the back of Mother Earth.
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Peaceful Hue
Lanché Williams
Acrylic Paint & Modeling Paste I am currently a first year student studio art major. For this painting I really wanted to explore nature and most importantly color. I wanted to challenge myself by limiting myself to only a few colors,one of them being green of course. I used a combination of acrylic painting and modeling paste to create this painting. One thing that I am really trying to explore in my artwork is texture and I really feel like the modeling paste help me achieve that goal. I hope you enjoy it just as much as I do.
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ON POETRY (INTIMACIES, INTRICACIES, SIGNIFICANCE) Taylor Ingrassia Prose Before I become a poet, I must submerge myself in words. I must be a linguist, a lexicographer, an artist before I can be heard. I must look up and see words inscribed in the stars; they must linger behind my eyes as I sleep. I must find them through windows, under cracks in doors, in mirrors. They must be tangible, a brewing storm on my skin. They must become the air that encompasses me. If I am to paint each sky in black figures, I must have thoughts that embody luminosity, craft sentences that cast color. I must learn to see each paper-thin layer of cloud for its shadows of gray against white—depths in the light, breaths in the night. And it is as such with words on paper, for all their layers of thought and connotation, transparencies, translucencies, opacities. I must sow words like seeds, water sprouting poems daily—kiss their growing leaves, fast and resilient as peppermint or thyme. I must carry within me a pen and a dictionary, ink in new definitions, pick them with care like grapes off the vine, taken on the tongue and taste for wine. And I must let the words flood my bloodstream in waves. They will become the water that sustains me. And when I give these words to you, they will pour from my lips like an offering, spilling steadily, a quiet stream out of overgrown forest. The syllables will babble and splash against the rocks of my teeth, pool around our feet. These words are precious to me. And when you lean down, hands cupped, allow the words to surge between
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them. Lift them to your lips; do so slowly, and with all the intention I have offered them with. When you drink, think of their taste, and of all the particles they contain: Intimacies, intricacies, significance.
Taylor Ingrassia is an English major, Creative Writing minor, and aspiring editor. She is also an aspiring writer, whose inspirations include nature and poets both unpublished and renowned.
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WINGS Elizabeth Smith
poetry
I am a rising senior majoring in Music with a minor in Communication. I consider myself an advocate for disability rights, women’s empowerment, and the protection of children. When I was sixteen, I published a fiction novel that intertwines my own story of injustices as lost souls in a fiction world are drifting along the sea, hoping to find their way back to the real world. I have previously been published in Brushing Art and Literary Journal as well as The Independent. I am currently an intern for the KEM Hospital Research Center in Pune, India, where I continue to advocate for the causes I am passionate about. Furthermore, the narrator in this poem, Wings, is a bird. The journey is symbolic. As the reader, I would like you to picture what these words mean to you and if you find hope reading it.
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I am a bird. Wings with depth and breath, Sunrays radiate among my feathers, Warm winds joined as one among my wings, Alas, I collapsed. Wings with missing mounts, Clipped and plucked purposely presented for the monarchy, Who examined me, every bone. Found fault in every flight I embraced, In a ceramic bowl shooed off, Off onto the plotted land. Alas, I collapsed. Wings with doubt and grief, Moonlight shone among my feathers, Against the dirt, mucked ground, I shiver, brisk wind billows across my demolished wings, Morning sun did not mourn for a day, Its rays reminded me, Wings or not, I am a bird. Life with depth and breath, I take in what is near and far, Embracing every aspect of what is true, For I would not have known what voice I had If the suspicious men kept my wings as they were, All come along to hear me, As I sing melodies magnificent,
And so, Wings or not, I embrace the morning sun, For their rays remind me, Life is within me as it is within you, Our wings do not determine our worth, For our life is unmeasurable
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CARDINAL DIRECTION* Siobhan Cooney
fiction
Shutting the heavy wooden door behind him, Father Dominic adjusted the folds of his purple vestments and lowered himself onto the bench of the Confessional. He held tight to the solid mahogany. The aches and creaks of the old structure echoed off the walls of the empty Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church with a faint moan. The absence of warm parishioners left a bitter chill in the air, but outside was hardly different. Even in late February, the town was trapped in the last throes of winter. Father Dominic rubbed his hands together, rough and hewn from decades of beseeching prayer and bearing the burden of the sacred word, leather-bound like the soles of his humble shoes. They were soles that had been worn from following his faith across continents to administer to the physically and spiritually sick, giving absolutions at the unyielding will of his master. He was younger then. Now, after thirty years of servitude and twice that amount in pounds that his robes failed to conceal, he was tired. Rust-induced creaking from the hinges of the adjacent door signaled to Father Dominic that a parishioner of was ready to be absolved. The parishioner’s voice fumbled through the lattice that separated their two alcoves. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he said. That Brooklyn brogue, that slight hesitation in the middle of the opening prayer while he caught his breath. It’s Tony, no—Tommy Shepherd, back again to repent for losing his temper at his wife and sons. Father Dominic once heard another priest say that the repeat offenders are the worst because they never seem to learn. But Father Dominic thought the contrary. Only the faithful sin the same way twice. At least they have some sense of direction, or focus. To him, it meant that they only screwed up in one area of their life, and that they made up for it everywhere else. Try as he did, Father Dominic could not bring himself to listen to Tommy drone about how he couldn’t help himself from yelling when his wife was talking too loud on the phone with her women’s club. After all, the big game was on TV. Or how Tommy’s boys got into a fistfight over the last slice of pizza, and even Father Dominic himself would have broken his diplomatic silence to let off some steam. Instead, the priest let his thoughts drift back to this morning’s unsettling breakfast in the rectory, where the radio reported the latest numbers from the CDC about virus-related deaths, and the unemployment rate acting like mercury in a thermometer on a hot day. No one could
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manage to scrape together a few extra contributions to the parish food pantry. It haunted him as he finished his oatmeal and terrorized his thoughts during service. By day he stood before the masses at his church, preaching the words that merely passed over his lips when he yearned to kneel amongst the flock, shoulder to shoulder with those who also needed guidance. By night he tossed sleeplessly under his thin bedsheets, watching the light replace the darkness but not feeling illuminated. A sigh slithered out. He removed his horn-rimmed spectacles to rub his fatigued eyes with trembling, corrugated fingers. How could a loving God allow his creation to fall into such utter turmoil? Tommy stopped mid-sentence, something about the President’s recent address that really got him going the other night. “I’m sorry, Father, what was that?” Father Dominic shook his head, cleared his throat. “Ten Hail Mary’s and your soul shall be forgiven…and kiss your kids tonight. Tell Samantha she’s beautiful.” Another cry erupted from the neglected hinges. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” said a woman’s voice. Though he felt tempted to nod off, there was something about her flowery lilt that shook him awake and reminded the gentle priest of a sunny yet silhouetted figure from his past. Dominic returned to a period of time he had lost but not yet forgotten. They would picnic and play guitar, sweating under the sun, and praying in the moonlight, wrapped in each other’s arms. His lovely Linda. Her love coated his heart in a layer of sweet honey. But it had hardened into a crackling shell. It’s because of this emptiness that he could only listen to the problems of parenthood instead of living them. Dominic couldn’t remember his days with Linda individually; they all ran together. The images that passed through his head like a reel of film made him feel warm, but they were shadowed in his mind. He hated the shadows. Returning his attention to the lady on the other side of the grate, his mouth mechanically delivered another prescription for penance. Again, the second door closed. The silver pectoral cross that hung absently around his neck thumped against Father Dominic’s hollow chest, in rhythm with his muffled sobs that were absorbed by the wooden walls of the Confessional. Through the gaps between the velvet curtain and the booth’s window to the right of his head, orange rays of the early afternoon sun were suspended in the particles of dust that hung in the air. He closed his eyes and went to sleep. It felt like hours before Father Dominic awoke to a knocking on the Confessional door. The rapping knuckles belonged to Grace Garcia, Blessed Sacrament’s bookkeeper. After a moment she opened the door and
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leaned lightly in the archway. Looking down at the sleepy priest she asked, “Falling asleep in the Confessional again, are we Father?” Father Dominic’s eyelids fluttered open, he rolled his neck from side to side, and stretched his spine into a cat-like arch. If anyone else had discovered him, especially that obnoxious Sunday School teacher Mrs. Krum, he would have just brushed off the blush of his embarrassment. But it was sweet Grace standing in front of him. She never failed to put a smile on his face, even when she complained about her mother-in-law and worried about her son struggling with fractions. She was always so patient with him, even during one of his spells. Perhaps it was because she saw already what Father Dominic didn’t have the heart to tell her, or anybody else for that matter. He at least held on to the impression that the other parishioners had not yet caught on to his changing condition. Or maybe they did, but they refused to accept that the keeper of their faith could ever evade God’s heavenly protection. There was just something about Grace that being called, “Father,” felt a little more special coming from her. Maybe it was the way her nose crinkled when she read the newspaper, the same way Dominic’s did. Maybe it was how one giggle blossomed into a laugh that cast sunshine to those around her, just like Linda did. Grace was like the daughter he never had. Linda ripped the chance right out of his hands. He felt the corners of his mouth starting to droop, so he quickly switched gears. “Aren’t we a little nagging this afternoon? Save it for that plumber who hasn’t fixed your upstairs toilet yet.” Grace rolled her eyes. “Please, you sound just like Michael.” “Well, your husband’s a smart man.” He popped his knuckles, then his back. “Now, what is so important, child, that you felt the need to interrupt my nap?” “You have some visitors in your office, Father. Rachel Williams and Jack Callahan. They’re here for their last Pre-Cana meeting.” At once an image of an eager brown-haired couple came to mind, though their faces were slightly out of focus. Father Dominic scratched his head and felt the prickly mixture of dry skin and dandruff lightly salt the shoulders of his cassock. “Glory be, I’d completely forgotten.” In his haste to get to his office, he quickly pushed up from the wooden bench to get out of the booth. But he misjudged the last step, tripped, and fell onto his hands and knees. Father Dominic cursed. Grace did not say a word. She only placed her delicate hands around his arms and helped him stand. Father Dominic cursed that word, forgotten. *
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Dawn greeted the absent sun on the following Saturday morning that bled all the way into the early evening for the Williams-Callahan wedding. Guests packed into the pews, and as they huddled together there was a sense of collective thawing under the warmth of excited murmurs and anxious rustling. Meanwhile, Father Dominic secluded himself in the dark, damp, hermetic sacristy. He washed his hands and polished the chalice. He unfolded small linens, after discovering them in the cabinet where the oils were kept. He must have put them there after yesterday’s mass. The silence breathed frigid air down his neck. It taunted, dared him to make a mistake. He floundered through the preliminary prayers. He felt as though the words were safely locked in a bureau in the back of his mind, but someone hid the key from him. Is it you Linda? You and your games. Faint laughter slipped in under the crack of the door from the hallway. The altar boys, Johnny and Patrick, were restless. He told them to get to work and handed them the chalice and linens for the mass. He opened several doors until he reached the right one under the vesting table and produced a reptilian green vestment, just one among many sets of colorful skins. He shed one for another at the whim of the liturgical calendar, whose dates were never the same year to year. He felt like an imitation, fraudulent and ashamed. After dressing, Father Dominic dipped his scaly fingertips into the font. Holy water glistened and transferred feebly to his wrinkled forehead, then his chest, then each shoulder. That much had permeated his muscle memory, something not even God could control. With a deep breath and passive nod of the head, he turned on his heel to walk out of the room. But something hooked him in the pit of his stomach, spun him back around and yanked his upper body toward the oatmeal-colored carpet. It pillaged his stomach, replicating a sensation of perpetual motion sickness. It kept on thrusting him under Christ’s disappointed gaze from the Crucifix hanging on the wall. After pulling himself together, Father Dominic left the sacristy and made his way to the altar. It was perfumed with the fragrance of freshly cut gardenias and peonies. He lifted his hands and the guests obediently arose from their seats. Little ones stretched as far as they could on the tips of their toes while the adults simply turned their necks to watch the bride join her future husband at the end of the aisle. At once the string ensemble awakened their instruments to begin the familiar chords of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major. Vibrant refracted light from the stained-glass window swaddled Father Dominic’s plump face. Underneath his weary smile a disinterested
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yawn begged to be released. But he couldn’t blink. Like a camera shutter, he knew that an insignificant open and close of his eyelids would engrain this vision into memory, right alongside the day he took his own vows to Christ. Memory had become a valuable currency that he couldn’t afford to spend on another empty one. For three decades, the image of his priestly rite had resided steadfastly at the forefront of his brain, although in recent years it had started to blur and wander listlessly in the periphery of grey matter. As he looked on at the young couple before him, he did not think of the day he received the sacrament of Holy Orders. He did not think of the allure of the earthy chrism. He did not think of the bishop’s hands conferring onto him the power of the Holy Spirit. He did think of a woman with golden hair and round eyes whom he had known when he was just Dominic. The strings died out into a faint cacophony in the back of his head as he wandered back to Linda. Again, the young blonde woman crystallized before him in his mind’s eye. He transcended back to the day he almost received the sacrament he truly wanted. Linda’s feet barely touched the marbled tile, floating under cascading layers of ivory lace and taffeta that hugged her bodice and coalesced behind her. A pair of small hands blossomed from slender arms padded with puffy sleeves. They held tightly to a bouquet of roses. As she approached the end of the aisle, as though reaching through silk, she extended her hand and let it fall, like a breeze. As the memory faded, he tried to chase it, forlorn. Once more, Linda’s hand slipped through Dominic’s outstretched fingers as it had forty years ago. Once more, Father Dominic found himself standing alone at the altar. Once more, he felt a crackling in the shell. In the aftermath of Linda’s departure, he heard a calling to a higher power. At least, that’s what he had believed at the time. Thinking that it would renew the fires of his faith, he followed the calling to the doorstep of the seminary. From then on, he was no longer just Dominic; he went on to proclaim the word of God to devoted followers whom he knew would never leave. He vowed to a life on the other side of the altar. He used to believe a lot of things when he was younger. Now he was choking on the smoke and ash of his regrets. As the string quartet regained its original volume in Father Dominic’s ears, he desperately ached to squirm under the starch of his white collar but remained stiff, as though a single misplaced scratch of the neck or swipe of the brow would disrupt the heavenly stillness and send shards of blue, green, and purple into the sanguine wedding guests. The
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optimistic faces of the bride and groom triangulated with Father Dominic’s: a perfect trinity. The priest took a deep breath. As the ambrosial, floral scent filled his lungs, he suppressed his lethargy to utter the first words of the rest of their lives. * After saying the 7 a.m. mass the next day for the same collection of early-risers and never-sleepers, Father Dominic changed out of his vestments and left the church through the narthex. After checking the lock three times, he treaded a well-worn path just behind Blessed Sacrament to Rosemary Memorial Gardens, where his mother was laid to rest three years ago. Over the years, however, he came to realize that the only part of the cemetery that was anything near garden-like were the haunted visages of overgrown mounds and tombstones. Hands shoved deep in the pockets of his navy windbreaker, Father Dominic trudged through the milky fog, kicking stray gravel stones with the tips of his sneakers while the rest crunched underfoot. He finally arrived at his favorite bench, positioned just behind his mother’s grave. The iron curves and crevices brooded in the bitter cold, trapped in a long-extended winter that craved for spring. On any other day he would settle in with a thermos of tea and talk to his mother. He would pour out the contents of his heart while absently plucking the petals off the flowers he meant to leave for her. But now, Father Dominic moved his eyes around the perimeter of the grave, not directly at it. He couldn’t bear to look at his reflection in the ice cloaking her gravestone. Three years ago, it felt unfamiliar to be just Dominic, not a messenger of God but a man burying his mother after she finally succumbed to the torrents of dementia. Why would my God do something like this…to me? He shivered and forced himself to look at anything else. Blades of grass yearned for dew drops but instead found themselves wrapped in a cocoon of frost. As the sun crept over the tree line, steam radiated from the ground as though the lifeless souls contained within were exhaling. Off in the close distance, a group of groundskeepers were busy digging a spot for the next resident, a new plant for the Gardens. As he watched in comfort the cadence of the rise and fall of the shovels, a cardinal, the color of fresh blood drawn from a thorny rose, landed on a vacant branch near Father Dominic’s head. It mocked him with song. “Good morning, Father.” There she was again, snapping him out of a dream. Father Dominic rubbed the corners of his freshly misted eyes. “Hello, Grace. Here to visit Michael’s brother?”
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“Yes, he’s over there now. I wanted to give him some space.” She wiggled her way into the empty space on the bench. They sat shoulder to shoulder. Grace gazed out over the Gardens in the direction of her husband, lingered a moment, and then looked back at Father Dominic, whose head had fallen into his hands. “Father, what’s wrong?” He felt a stirring at the bottom of his heart. He lifted his head. When he did, he caught a glimpse of his eyes staring back at him in the icy mirror. The familiar hazel was gone, masked by shadows and unbearable cold. “I’m terrified. Ever since my mom died, I can’t help but feel myself slipping down the same path. I give mass to the parishioners, some of whom I’ve known ten years. Their faces are completely blurred. Sometimes I even fumble through the Our Father. All the time I help these young couples, families and their children, and I feel cheated. Cheated out of the life that I really wanted. And now,” he choked, “I’m finding it harder and harder to justify staying with a vocation that I don’t really believe in.” Grace swiped away a tear with a pink-painted fingertip. Resting her hand on Father Dominic’s shoulder, she opened her mouth to issue some kind of consolation. But Father Dominic spoke first. “I love you, Linda.” Her hand jerked back. “W-what did you say?” “Didn’t you hear me? I love you! Why did you leave me at the altar?” This time she didn’t hide her tears. “Father? It’s me, Grace. Who is Linda?” Realizing his mistake, he tried to spit out an apology, but only managed to stumble over a few broken syllables interrupted with coughs. Grace’s green almond eyes blinked a Morse code of forgiveness and understanding. Father Dominic mustered a congested goodbye to Grace and told her to say hello to her husband for him. Dominic returned to Blessed Sacrament to grab his car keys and drove to Matthew’s Diner a quarter mile up the road. He left his windbreaker on the rack and settled into a booth tucked in the back of the restaurant. As he waited for his coffee, Dominic drummed his fingers on the tabletop, adjusted his position on the squeaky blue plastic cushion, and leaned his head against the wooden back of the booth. Light from the yellow lamp shade warmed the crown of his head and parted faint clouds of dust. Something started crawling up the back of his throat. He welcomed the yawn like an old friend and slipped into the shadows. *Content Warning: Depictions of depression
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As a writer, I have learned to seek out inspiration from anything and everything. My greatest sources of inspiration come from nature, history, and my own personal passions. I hope that the readers can find me there as the ink on the page and forever between the lines. I have a constant desire to express my thoughts and emotions. Writing, for me, satisfies this need and is exciting and liberating, so much so that I have deemed myself a storyteller by trade with the utmost respect for details. I have a great deal to say, and 24 hours in a day is simply too short to spill my mind’s contents. So, I turn to writing, where pen and paper are my loyal audience, all ears and anxious to listen.
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OIKOS* Camilo Garzón
poetry
Camilo Garzón (b. 1993, Bogotá, Colombia) is a Colombian American poet based in the East Bay Area. He graduated from Rollins College with Bachelor of Arts degrees in Philosophy and Religious Studies in 2015. He is currently a managing editor for Poets Reading the News. His work has been featured – or is forthcoming – in on-off. site, Rollins College’s Brushing Art and Literary Journal and The Independent, it has been read to an audience at LITEROCALYPSE, and it has been published in two self-published works: “Entombed: A proem in five stages” and “Ontologies: Ten Proems.”
It’s only in the house of the impoverished in spirit, that you’ll be able to find grace. The emphasis of what’s lacked will be seen in the austerity of what’s fairly given. And critical, we are, of each other’s motives. This instance, this set bar, is only as low as its motifs. Because, I know now, I have only those keys that are of no use to me. The ones that led me and them to commiserate in boredom and replenish this oceanic feeling by replacing our hobby for a fish toss. Like the home found for a pain who lacks the condition of being part of the house. Living in a nucleus of warmth, these cold, dingy particles, speed up the periphery of what’s damp.
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How, pray tell, do unlikely partnerships become familiar occurrences? When fraternity arises between the bald-headed shopping for hair in a barbershop. Scarcity dwellers, let’s call these lackers, who are trying to contain the unintended consequences. As companionship surges amongst the hearing impaired, who feel their own drums pumping in the concert. And don’t ever think to mention these ropes in the apparent house of those who are to be hanged. Or claim a press conference surrounded by extractors of secrets, while scarcity dwellers fail to contain the aforementioned consequences. What is that everlasting annoyance you feel at the unheard mutiny of the so-called dawdlers?
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Sometimes it’s found in the pretension of not recognizing rarity, claiming blindness, just before being lit by a sunset. Other times in self-denominated gypsies, finding static solace amidst some moving carriages. But, to crack down what makes a house, the nomination of its laws, is all you’ll need to browse. The shared disgrace, the laws of this place, give its residents a home with grace. And once you know, that this is your home, this is how you'll grow free to love and the heart, a wanderer. *Content Warning: Potentially offensive language
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OH THE SKY IS SO BRIGHT AND BOUNDLESS
Sara Mehdinia
poetry
Sara Mehdinia is a computer science major at Rollins College. Her poem “Oh the Sky is So Bright and Boundless” was inspired by her love for the Icarus myth. In her free time, she writes speculative fiction and pets cats.
In that moment when Icarus began to descend toward the
sea
Was he thinking of the crow’s feet in the corners of his Father’s eyes Or perhaps of the Sun’s caress as it reached out and turned his face ever so gently toward Godliness
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Rafael Leon
True Leadership
Photography After several leadership experiences, I have come to realize that leadership is not a constant. True leadership is passed on and shared due to the skills that one can and cannot bring to the table. These three lions were taking turns on the lookout. It symbolized the process of true leadership, and how no matter how hard we try, we sometimes need to take time to rest and let someone else be the leader. There is no need to overexert yourself when being the leader. Rely on others, and pass the torch. Consider yourself.
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A Kaleidoscope Moment of Color
Margie Sullivan
Photography The photograph was taken on January 17, 2021, at Mead Botanical Garden in Winter Park. The bird is a Common Grackle, which is a type of blackbird. This photograph is one of my favorites, as it is so colorful and full of texture with the resurrection ferns on the live oak tree. Each visit to Mead Botanical Garden is an adventure as you can see a variety of birds depending on migration, turtles, flowers, and plants. Being able to lose yourself in nature and being in the moment is freeing.
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Daniel Craig Portrait
Maria Cedeno
Pencil & Photography
I was inspired by taking the idea of combining my two favorite art forms photography and pencil drawings into one. I chose Daniel Craig as he is my favorite James Bond actor and because I have always loved doing portraits of artists. Looking back on it, beginning the drawing seemed daunting because you had to make sure it lined up with the photograph but once you got the outline it was simply about adding shading and details.
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Maria Cedeno
Violet Skies
Photography
I took this photograph during a firework show because I’ve always loved capturing a moment that you can look back at. In particular, I’ve always loved taking colorful images of the sky which was my goal with this photo. This image shows a beautiful moment within that entire firework show and I wanted to share it with everyone.
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AS WE WATCHED THE ARK
Angelisse Perez
poetry
Angelisse Perez is a queer, nonbinary latiné writer and scholar. They are often inspired by mythological and religious themes in their work. Their experience as an LGBTQIA+ religious individual growing up in America contributes to their topics of religious trauma, exclusion, and acceptance.
Each drop fell, bringing with it a taunt over our own depravity. It shouts, “Liar, Schemer, Thief, Murderer, Adulterer, Covetous - Human?” Well, sir, in your flawless plan, there lies all but one fatal cavity. Did you not tell us to lie? Plot our schemes? Plant that which remains to be stolen? Why, then, are we trudging through puddles of wrath? And what great plan lies here, in the aftermath? Humans are, as humans always have been, Weak, and held prostrate to sin. Do you think some water will wash it all away, And make you forget the mistake you so wrongfully made? You cannot go around boasting free will one day, And then smite down your children for feeling oh so betrayed. You shouldn’t create life with brains, and hearts, and souls that reach beyond, Then destroy them for deciding that with their life they will abscond. For what good does a man free will, When one wrong choice could feign them ill? But I know one mustn’t argue with your allknowing plan. For I know you know far more than I. But as I watch the water reach the tips of my hands, I wonder if I truly have to die.
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A FRIEND I DID NOT WANT Elizabeth Smith
poetry
A friend I did not want, Tears poured down like a storm in the Gulf Coast, At fourteen years of age I never could predict, A chair, big wheels on its side, would be the friend I need,
I am a rising senior, majoring in Music with a minor in Communication. I consider myself an advocate for disability rights, women’s I rejected it, empowerment, and the Others close to me did as well, protection of children. Mom not once, though, When I was sixteen, I published a fiction novel that intertwines my This friend accompanied me along my journey, own story of injustices Grocery stores, concerts, ballets, countless places, as lost souls in a fiction Sitting there, that spinning twister and hot air world are drifting balloon did not go off into the sky, along the sea, hoping The horses stayed in their stable, to find their way back Those symptoms stayed manageable, like a dog who to the real world. I listens on command, have been published in Brushing as well Still, I rejected it, as The Independent. Years, I would not get the little blue parking sticker, I am currently an intern for the KEM Others close to me as well could not accept, Hospital Research Mom did not reject once, though, Center in Pune, India, where I continue to At seventeen I went for a fitting For a new chair to be a friend; more custom to me, advocate for the causes I am passionate about. Physical therapist measured my stance, Furthermore, this poem I chose the color, Tangerine Metallic, so the sun creatively describes would follow with me, my journey toward ‘Might as well embrace the difference,’ I said, acceptance of being disabled. It personifies the wheelchair as a friend I did not want, but the relationship changes as the poem moves forward.
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MOLLUSCA Emily O'Malley
fiction
Dew pearled on the snail’s shell. The early morning condensation was a signal from the sky; it was time to cross the barren-desert sidewalk. The snail might have wondered why it crossed its personal Sahara every morning, risking its life to trade dirt for dirt. The grass is always greener, the snail might have joked. Except the snail does not wonder or joke. It does not do anything at all but cross the sidewalk. As the snail began its one-footed march, dew drooped down its whorls, oozing toward the soil. The damp dirt was slow to absorb, but just as sure as the snail inched forward, the dewdrop sank among the minerals. Concrete is sharp, grainy. There are thin ridges, imperceptible to a human’s soles, but rough to the snail’s foot. It scratched and scraped. From a distance, but steadily crescendoing, came thunderclaps. Still, the snail crawled. A woman was out on a morning jog before the sun could begin to broil the day. Earbuds in, eyes focused on an ever-distant point that she ran toward, she was able to purge her mind of everything. The snail crept toward the verge. Blades of grass rose up like an oasis—or mirage. One upper tentacle leaned slightly, its eye glancing toward a gigantesque monstrosity that seemed to be growing, though that could have been an illusion. If the snail had been capable, it may have pondered that distinction, or what the monumental thing meant for its existence. But the snail merely moved along. If the woman had looked at the ground, she might have seen the snail. As it was, though, the woman either did not look or did not care. She ran steadily closer. And closer. And closer. Until— A crunch. The destruction of the shell, with its mantle and whorl. Heart, kidney, gut, lung, brain, all pierced by the shards of their former encasement and burst under the pressure. Foot, tentacles, mouth, eyes, all flattened to the cement. If the woman’s shoe made contact with the snail, if someone had been paying close enough attention to listen, this is what they would have heard. But the snail, as it were, survived. It settled among the grass as the monstrous freak stormed past. Comfortable in the soft, damp dirt, it blinked slowly and retreated into its shell. Would it wonder about its close brush with an unknowable death? Would it tell the other snails, nestled in
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the blades of grass, about the freakish creature? Would they laugh together about how outlandish it is to be so gargantuan, unable to feel the pleasure of a dewdrop underfoot? Of course not. They are snails.
Emily O'Malley is an English major and writing minor. Their research interests include the intersection of race and gender in contemporary visual narratives and representations of mental illness in young adult literature. After publishing their personal essays in The Independent, Emily became the Editor-in-Chief of the campus magazine. They were a runner-up for the 2019 Stony Brook Short Fiction Prize, and the article they co-authored with Dr. Paul Reich has been included in the Winter 2021 issue of Popular Culture Review.
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GROWING DOWN*: Vic Olivo
poetry
These pieces are from my poetry project in my creative writing class. I have struggled with my mental health for many years and I wrote these poems to show that these types of feelings are common. I've been studying and writing poetry since my freshman year of high school, with mental health as my main subject.
So you want to be like me.
Throw yourself into the deepest hole, into your darkest fear, live through that every day. Drown in your tears break your vocal cords and scratch your own scent off. There’s no magic inside of me no fairy dust only ashes only wounds constantly ripping open, again and again I don’t know much about getting better I just know that the sicker you get the healthier you look.
The more I grow up, the more I liked who I was when I was a kid
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My personal recollection of pain.
Eyebags filled with red freckles screaming thoughts / graspy voice pining ears and shaky hands. My dad bringing me my favorite chocolate bar The room filled with wrinkled clothes unfinished water bottles and stains along the sheets. Standing on an unbalanced floor feeling unbalanced myself My mom looks to me wiping my falling tears Holding my hand, neverlettinggo
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I had never seen someone so precious. Her walk looked like she knew the world belonged only to her. You flinch when you sleep, and you stutter when you get mad. You smell of lavender mixed with an essence of blossom flower. You wear your heart on your sleeve, and sometimes you pull them down to hide scars that weren’t there before. You lie to yourself, and you skip a step when you go up the stairs. You switch languages without noticing and you dance when you eat. You also swallow your words. You choke up when you get uncomfortable, and you close yourself off when things get hard. you always disappear. I can hear your voice crack whenever I mention your sister, and I can see the red freckles under your eyes. I feel your shaking — it shakes the entire table — and I can see the scratch marks on your chest. I see how you pinch yourself whenever his name comes up, and how you always chew gum when you get stressed. I knew your little motions, those tiny details about you, and because of that, I thought that I had known you. But I guess I don’t. I guess I never did. because like I said, you close yourself off when things get hard. you always disappear
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*Content Warning: Depictions of mental health struggles
THE WEED: A SELFPORTRAIT
For the Rollins College Grounds Team You don’t belong here. Amid the lush green. Among the pink and white blossoms, Stealing nutrients from the soil and water from the roots of those who flourish. You are a trespasser among rightful things, things of beauty. You, you are ugly. Thin and prickly. Morning dew drips like feverish dreams from your climbing vine as you reach for the sky. As you try to hide. Blend in. You. The Mimic. The Imposter. Here among halls and gardens built for future titans. What is it you think you can be as you stalk and spread in the shadows? Can you be anything other than a weed?
Gavin Clark
poetry
I am a senior in the psychology department here at Rollins and also a full-time facilities employee on the grounds. I am 46, married with two little boys at home, and have returned to school to begin a new career as a social worker. Although I don’t see myself as a poet, I wrote this poem last spring for my Intro to Creative Writing class and I thought it described me pretty well. Everybody has doubts and thought distortions about their worth or place in the world which inhibit us from really blossoming. This represents my attempt to reconcile my thorns - my own feelings of being an impostor within this academic community with my own growth as an individual and actualizing my dreams of helping to build a better world for our children. Just like a weed is only a weed by name, you don’t have to fit the mold to be beautiful, blossom, and grow in your own way.
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TUTTE LE STRADE PORTANO A ROMA Nancy Butler
fiction
I trip on an uneven cobblestone, blinded by the sunlight piercing the sky. The Circus Maximus— once the largest arena for games and festivals, the circus has been humbled to an empty green space dotted with yellow wildflowers. I close my eyes and try to hear the cheering of 100,000 Roman spectators, but all I hear is the whining of vespe flying by. I walk away from the circus, climbing the nearest hill. The mosquito-like traffic gives way to a few pedestrians. Cyprus trees intermittently block the sun’s rays, casting shadows on the Roman path beneath my feet. Colors of bright orange and suntan peek out on the old buildings that are entangled with vines. The scent of rich espresso captures my attention. It floats out of a loud bar, packed like an American club on Latin night. I squeeze between the locals taking a mid-afternoon break and flag down the man behind the counter. “Che cosa prendi, signora?” His thick Italian accent and tanned skin sends a cool shiver up my spine. I tuck a piece of hair behind my ear. “Vorrei un cappuccino, per favore.” “Certo, bella.” He turns to the cappuccino machine, its polished silver façade tall and proud. I take my cappuccino to an outside table, avoiding a puddle on the ground from last night’s November rain. The delicate foam on top forms a heart. I take a sip and the shape stretches apart, its love dissipating into the bold coffee itself. My heart feels the same, melting in the face of Italy’s charm and richness. Women dressed in exquisite coats, hats, and shoes pass me. They aren’t dressed up for anything special; fashion is their art form, their new Renaissance. I become very aware of my jeans and simple top. I must go shopping today,at the stores on Via Condotti or Via del Corso: my favorite kinds of museums. Cigarette smoke twirls around my chest and into my nose with that unmistakably European smell. The source: cigarettes in the fast-moving hands of Italian men. Their conversations just look loud. Grandmothers carry bags of fresh produce and bread from the nearby market, uttering
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“Mamma Mia” and Hail Mary’s under their breath. I sip the last of my cappuccino, licking foam off my upper lip. My feet take me further upward, away from history - the Forum, the Colosseum, the Circus. On one of Rome’s seven hills, I arrive at a park that overlooks the city. Green grass adds a freshness to the tan color palette of the city below. The ancient construction is peppered with industrial buildings, a visible blending of old and new. Perched on the nearby wall, a couple is more interested in each other’s eyes than the city in the distance. I hear the pop of their bottle of prosecco, the “Salute!” as they raise their glasses. Italians need no reason to celebrate. Every day is a chance to embrace happiness, love, excitement. I wish my feet would melt into the cobblestones, that I would be forever instilled into this moment, this city. But even Rome’s eternal glory faded. “Ciao,” I say, because I cannot decide between hello and goodbye.
I am a senior English major and creative writing minor, graduating in May 2021. I am preparing for a career in editing, travel writing, and food journalism. The piece I have submitted is a haibun, which is a form of poetry that includes a prose poem and a haiku. A haibun typically traces a journey by combining the external images observed and the internal images of the traveler’s mind during that journey. More than just musings of setting, the haibun is intended to explore awareness and to evoke emotion. During my junior year, I studied abroad in Rome, Italy. My time abroad has served as an inspiration for much of my creative writing, including this non-fiction piece. The title is Italian, and translates to "All Roads Lead to Rome." I hope that this haibun conveys images of the beautiful city of Rome as well as the sense of longing that I feel for Italy as a whole.
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EDITOR BIOGRAPHY Siobhan Cooney '22 Editor-in-Chief Siobhan Cooney, 20, is a double major in Communication Studies and English with a minor in Spanish. She is preparing for a career in the publishing, cultural arts, or entertainment industries. Words cannot adequately express the sense of fulfillment that Brushing has given her in nurturing her passions. After hitting the books, Siobhan hits the stage as an Open Championship Irish step dancer. With fifteen years of both competitive and performance experience under her belt, she is now studying to become a certified Irish dance teacher.
Tracy Lam '22 Assistant Designer Tracy Lam, 20, is a Studio Art major and Asian Studies minor. She hopes to pursue careers such as graphic design, web design, video game design, or freelancing. Brushing allowed Tracy to express her creativity, as she is able to illustrate her ideas mentally and physically for potential viewers to appreciate. She is also incredibly passionate about gaming, and recently became a small Twitch streamer by the name of “ImAnOwtcast.” Tracy aspires to work as a full or part-time streamer along with her artistic endeavors.
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CONTRIBUTING STAFF READERS
EDITORS
Sophia Foster Aqsa Hasan Taylor Ingrassia Alex Lichtner Sara Mehdinia
McKinnon Bell Tyler Hart Sara Mehdinia Ferah Shaikh
SPECIAL THANKS TO Greg Golden
Victoria Brown
Director of Student Media
Faculty Advisor
Rachel Walton Librarian Expert
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Brushing Art & Literary Journal is a publication of Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida.
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