Emerging Student Voices

B RYA N T

Literary Review

VO L 22, 2021

EMERGING STUDENT VOICES

EDITOR AND FICTION EDITOR: POETRY EDITOR:

drea brown

ASSOCIATE EDITOR:

Lucie Koretsky

STUDENT FICTION EDITORS: STUDENT POETRY EDITOR: DESIGN & LAYOUT: COVER ART:

Thomas Roach

Megan Polun, Aidan Quilty

Nilsa Laine, Nichole Page

Rebecca Chandler, beccachandler67@gmail.com

“Direction of Light” by Aidan Powers

The Bryant Literary Review is an international journal of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction housed in the English and Cultural Studies Department at Bryant University in Smithfield, RI. Since our first issue in 2000, we have published original and thought-provoking creative work from a wide array of established and emerging authors.

We see our purpose to be the cultivation of an active and growing connection between the Bryant University campus community and the larger literary culture.

MISSION STATEMENT:

Authors can submit their poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction work here: https://bryantliteraryreview.submittable.com/submit. Limit one submission per author: one fiction or creative nonfiction piece and up to three poems. Fiction and creative nonfiction pieces should not exceed 5,000 words (give or take). We do not accept previously published work. Our reading period is September 1 to December 1.

Copyright reverts to author upon publication. For samples of previously published work see https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/blr/. Any questions can be directed to Professor Tom Roach at troach@bryant.edu.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Visit our website at https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/blr/ © 2021 Bryant Literary Review

B RYA N T

Literary Review

VO L 22, 2021

EMERGING STUDENT VOICES

Table of Contents E D I T O R S ’ N O T E .............................................................................................................................................................................. 6 POETRY

On the Rocks: Michael Grassetti, Bryant University................................................................................................. 8 My Responsibility to Live: Michael Grassetti, Bryant University...................................................................... 10 Flashes: Lila Bovenzi, University of Rhode Island................................................................................................... 12 countless stars: McKenna Themm, MFA Program San Diego State University................................... 14 Youth: El J Reyes, Johnson and Wales University.................................................................................................... 16 The New Historian: Nilsa Laine, Bryant University................................................................................................. 18 Rites: Sanjana Aiyar, Christ University......................................................................................................................... 20 Not a Goodbye: Sanjana Aiyar, Christ University, Bengaluru India....................................................... 22 Rx#: Sea : Mikaela Gresty, Bryant University.......................................................................................................... 24 Full: Caleb Lewis, Bryant University.............................................................................................................................. 26 Driving to Look Out Point to See the Sunset: Riley Mayes, Southern Maine Community College....... 28 On the Rocks: Jean Mazlymian, York University.. ..................................................................................................... 30 Unlike Mike: Caleb Lewis, Bryant University............................................................................................................. 32 winter: Claudia Rosado, Boston University................................................................................................................. 33 headed inbound: Claudia Rosado, Boston University........................................................................................... 34 mono no aware: w.w. harris, MFA Program at Eastern Washington University. ................................ 36 plum rains (梅雨): Claire Kuo, Columbia University............................................................................................ 38 I drop your photograph in the sea: Claire Kuo, Columbia University............................................................. 40 God Spoke to Me Through the Car Stereo: Alexa O’Kane, Champlain College....................................... 42 I have felt for a while that…: Nichole Page, Bryant University........................................................................... 44 Submersion: Meg Peters, Roger Williams University............................................................................................. 46

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B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

F I C T I O N & C R E AT I V E N O N F I C T I O N

Minutiae 973.1: Lila Bovenzi, University of Rhode Island.................................................................................. 48 sex dream: Lillian Grace, New York University Gallatin.................................................................................... 60 I Am Not a Home: Kiley McAleer, Emmanuel College. ....................................................................................... 66 Swimming Lessons: Rebecca Mear, Gordon College............................................................................................... 70 Why I Cry for Little Girls: Julia Raboy, Bates College............................................................................................. 74 La Escucho: Leah Ryan, Bryant University.................................................................................................................. 77 A U T H O R B I O S . . ............................................................................................................................................................................. 8 9

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

5

Editors’ Note Welcome to the 22nd edition of the Bryant Literary Review! This very special edition of the BLR features emerging voices from across the globe. All the poems and short stories you will find here are from undergraduate and graduate students, each carefully selected by our editing team. The poems that the poetry editors and I chose speak to the importance of finding time for yourself and what this generation imagines as possibilities for the future.

They speak to the realities and struggles of right now, but they also show the fascinating ways in which people are finding peace. You will find yourself on the beach looking out on a calming ocean, under a night sky filled with beaming stars, or on the subway surrounded by infinite possibilities for love. My hope is that the poems and stories in this edition of the BLR encourage you to watch out for those special little moments, stand up for something big, and if nothing else, take a moment to breathe in some fresh air.

This was my second, and final, year working on the BLR, and not an experience I will soon forget. I want to express how grateful I am to dr. drea brown, without whom I would have never been introduced to the wonderful world of the BLR; Nilsa Laine, my fellow student poetry editor; Professor Thomas Roach, the fiction and creative nonfiction editor; and Aidan Quilty and Megan Polun, the student fiction and creative nonfiction editors.

The BLR editing staff would like to thank Becca Chandler for designing and laying out the issue; Aidan Powers for creating the cover art; Sam Simas, the Bryant librarian responsible for helping us launch the first ever digital edition of the BLR; and the Programming Council for Inclusive Excellence, which awarded us mini-grants to make this issue possible. I would also like to extend a thank you and congratulations to all the amazing authors in this year’s BLR. Finally, thank you to our new and returning readers who make it possible for us to come back every year.

Nichole Page, Bryant University Class of 2021

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B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

Poetry

POETRY 7

On the Rocks M I C H A E L G R A S S E T T I , B R YA N T U N I V E R S I T Y

Upon a scoured stone, painted in soil a bear scouts the raging river below.

Summoning sounds of angelic ballads the river itself begins to glow.

From white to black, from black to red, from red to a silver shimmer.

The salmon leaps and the bear dances swiping, twirling, and catching hold.

But, in his excitement, the scales begin to tip.

The bear slips and stumbles from his stone, his brown gaze meeting golden dreams while rustling leaves whisper “Let go.”

With vultures peering from the treetops, the bear pretends not to feel the splash which soaks his coat and dashes his hopes of the golden eyes he once imagined.

Hopelessness and melancholy flow through him, yet he wades through his own sorrow to remember warmer days.

8

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

The time has come to pass, the stench of the salmon’s muddied scales gone at long last.

A lingering hunger pierces the bear’s undercoat, one which he must fill though he wishes he could grumble back to his den to escape the current’s chill.

With the beaming sun above eclipsed by the reddening foliage of a maple tree, the twinkling lights of the Herdsman waiting to take its place, the bear quells his anguish, traversing back to the stone upon which he had sat where he watches the river till day’s end, waiting for the one.

POETRY 9

My Responsibility to Live M I C H A E L G R A S S E T T I , B R YA N T U N I V E R S I T Y

I wonder what it’s like to be a man unfazed by fire?

A living being like the rest of us: Untamable, unforgiving, unrelenting Giving light onto the Earth underneath the stars Taking light from those of us not ready to die If every man were an honest one like me, would they agree? For how many chickens and cows I have consumed to fuel my every desire, how many ants I have stepped upon to reach my peaks and troughs, simply shows we are all a torrent of destruction with no remorse A scar upon the beauty of this blue ball of dust floating through a black sea We do not belong to the trees in foggy forests filled with dewy evergreens That is for the blue jays, bears, and buzzing bees Nor can we call the oceans our home That is for the fish, fair-weather birds, and fathomless mysteries

10

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

Of lonely nights—I stared wondrously at the stars: What I came from, what I am, and what I will become when I am gone Toiling to find my place in this dim world Wondering if it would be better to return to the soil To realize that we are one of the same Our own blue dot in the sky, our own fire in a sea of salty blue and rugged green While we refuse to call nature our home because we believe we are unique Like everything else we still look to breathe.

For the countless sacrifice nature has made for me to live on without fear of being snuffed out, it is my duty to be a better man, to make dying in its persistent beauty worth something…

Something that keeps pushing…

Something worth more than dust…

POETRY 11

Flashes LILA BOVENZI, UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

Maybe it’s grotesque That I think of them like flashers.

No warning, unassuming, Jumping out at you on the streets Under the smothering gray of a trench coat Until it’s pulled back like a grand curtain, And at first it shocks you so much that you don’t know what you’re seeing Then you think it’s funny how you’re the one that feels exposed And you can’t help but look And you have to force yourself to turn and walk away.

I have never been flashed in the proverbial sense, No pervert in a trench coat waits on the streets for me (as far as I know) So I don’t really know if that’s how I would react, But I have attached this one metaphor to my flashes.

Not flashbacks although that’s what they probably are, They don’t feel like flashbacks They don’t feel back. They are now. Still here. Never gone away.

They don’t transport me, they consume me.

Eating away at me constantly, never taking too big a bite.

I think of flashes like lashes, too.

Burning and crawling on your skin Still raw, barely scabbed over And when they heal they will still always mark you.

12

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

They’re flashes of lightning.

A storm you don’t know is going to strike Sometimes on edge, and sometimes off guard When they bolt your heart thumps a little faster They sprout branches in your veins where blood runs a little hotter They’re over so fast but you still see them after they’re gone Their fingers leave prints on the sky.

I don’t know how to make the flashes go away If it’s possible to move on, I can distract myself with this and that, Or I can watch.

Sit, stay silent, don’t blink, don’t move, Just watch as they rush past Like wind brushes through a field Rustling every blade of grass.

Staying still like that My body passes through months in mere seconds.

They’re fireflies, Blinking in the darkness behind my eyes.

Raindrops, Pricking my skin with cool whispers.

Words in my mouth ready to be uttered Wriggling between my teeth, Rolling over my tongue, Waiting for a spark A crack A whack A slap A flash.

POETRY 13

countless stars

After Starry Night, Vincent van Gogh M C K E N N A T H E M M , M FA P R O G R A M S A N D I E G O S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y

I still taste the golden wisps of stardust, dancing across the midnight blue as tangs of home-squeezed grapefruit juice in the middle of the night. And I still hear the prayers of our parents visiting the chapel, permeating my childhood nightmares— almost like lullabies lulling me to sleep when I can’t fall asleep on my own. And I still touch the lingering memory of your cloudy blue eyes, threatening to spiral out of my mind like turbulent riptides escaping the sea, at the disappearing horizon line. And I still tuck away your hand-written letters imprinting loss and grief over everything: the looming darkness in the foreground of the landscape we ran through together.

14

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

But I can’t see the song anymore, drifting in and out of darkened windows, like the empty chapel whose candles and prayers have long burnt out. And I can’t touch the threads of gold weaving in and out across the quilted mountains—a halo of life once surrounded the crescent moon and will now surrender its own existence. And I can’t taste the golden wisps of stardust struggling to supernova beyond their painted forms, invisible black holes that suffocate the lives of countless stars.

POETRY 15

Youth E L J R E Y E S , J O H N S O N A N D WA L E S U N I V E R S I T Y

A miracle crosses paths with me, and I find myself staring right at my youth.

She is young, as youth is; she differs from how I’ve imagined her. Her face is stern, as if to frighten me. I narrow my eyes back at her.

She is more beautiful than I thought. The imperfections mean nothing to me as it previously did. Her eyes are sad, not like mine. What must the world be for a youth like her?

16

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

She only asks one question, loaded and inconsiderate— “What has become of you?”

My eyes are not like hers. It surprises her, when they brighten, when I tell her— “I’ve found some peace of mind.”

She does not believe me, cautious and unsure, but honesty was always our weakness.

She stares right back, searching. The next time I blink, she is gone.

POETRY 17

The New Historian N I L S A L A I N E , B R YA N T U N I V E R S I T Y

One month, we were given just one month.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Rosa Parks.

Harriet Tubman.

And slavery.

That was all I knew about black history.

For years I was lied to about black history, The “historians” controlled the narrative, Only putting into textbooks what they felt was appropriate.

I wasn’t told about historical figures like, George Washington Carver.

Jacob Lawrence. Henrietta Lacks.

Now I sometimes wonder if people know…

If people know the origin of gynecology If people know the origin of rock, rap, jazz If people know the origin of the blood bank We are the blank spaces between every word of the story that’s told. But we aren’t blank, We’re black.

Black history is American history

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B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

I am living black history, one of the products of: The Tulsa Massacre.

The 6888th Battalion.

Harlem hellfighters.

Black Power.

Alligator bait.

Redlining.

Degradation.

Gentrification. A revolution.

My history is the seed planted for the future my ancestors dreamed of The future I dream of The future I am fighting for I am the flower that seed has grown to flourish, I am the flower grown to flourish the xylem of power that brings change, Change in the way we are told our story.

Change in the way we receive our story.

Change in the way we are perceived to be. Change in our future.

I am the new historian.

POETRY 19

Rites S A N JA N A A I YA R , C H R I S T U N I V E R S I T Y

Present turns to past, When tenses change with The flick of a tongue.

Passing along a scroll; The distant ballads of his life; Solemn tunes already sung.

With no music, no sound To account for, mere lyrics In thought, romanticised memory.

Only a visage, asleep at last; An ending distorting the movie; A picture, eyes closed with placidity.

Still as a crane, amid four walls Of chaos and barn owl wails; Unaware of tears deep and shallow.

20

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

Powerless in the palms of tradition; In the ashes of earth and pails of water; Sanctified by words foreign, hands callow.

On a bed of bamboo and taut rope; Softened by a cloth of familiarity; Ready for transcendence by fire.

Present turns to past, As he prepares for his final journey.

Prey to a modern pyre.

POETRY 21

Not a Goodbye S A N JA N A A I YA R , C H R I S T U N I V E R S I T Y, B E N G A LU R U I N D I A

Blood flowing in your veins.

Heart beating slow.

Lips parted forcefully, Making space for the tube to go Inside the frail entrapment Of your body, breathing life Into a cage of bones and skin Linked to a monitor running rife.

Monotonic sounds of display; Proof of the crevices in your vitals, While faces appear in passing, Practicing parts for the final recital.

Your limbs tied with gauze to ensure You lay still with your bruises blue,

22

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

From needles, patterned across your torso; Fingers twitching, with palms a yellow hue.

Eyes unfocused, trembling beneath lids; Struggle to open, with a weakening will.

Barely yourself, imprisoned in dependence; By your side, tears threaten to spill.

I look at you now as I will tomorrow.

But I will not, I will not cry.

You’ll be heavier, a sleeping statue, But crying will mean saying goodbye.

POETRY 23

Rx#: Sea M I K A E L A G R E S T Y, B R YA N T U N I V E R S I T Y

The ocean calls, smells, like rosé aged with salt.

And see the water begin where I end. Swallowing those thoughts and dreams, that trampoline from brain down to chest to distend.

I let the sand, fingers, suck my feet deeper.

Encasing, and concurrently revealing a fluid mirror, foamed over, half distorted of what could have been.

Granulate hands climb, whisp, up my skin, tickling the hairs like a lover once did.

24

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

My body engulfed, turbulent burning dissipated by salt and sea, I let it pull me inward to outer, smothering and cradling like a coffin underwater.

POETRY 25

Full C A L E B L E W I S , B R YA N T U N I V E R S I T Y

Be the cup, have more purpose when you’re filled up.

You are sturdy, reliable.

Be clean, for no one wants a dirty glass.

Even when you are haunted by the taste of Hangovers, Used, and Empty.

Be the room, find purpose in your space and endless opportunity.

Filled by those that you love, be safe.

Be neat, for no one wants a cluttered room.

Even when you are filled with the ghosts Who lament the space you could’ve been.

26

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

Be yourself, For no one can survive on empties— although many will try.

When you have enough do not borrow.

Help to fill – so that a drink from the cup tastes like your laugh.

A walk through the room feels of your embrace.

POETRY 27

Driving to Look Out Point to See the Sunset R I L E Y M AY E S , S O U T H E R N M A I N E C O M M U N I T Y C O L L E G E

My car or yours?

We already know the answer.

Last time I drove I got us stuck in the snow. Boots wet and the sun long set by the time my boss came charging down the interstate, laughing to yank us out with his truck.

I shiver at the thought.

I shiver at most things.

We are driving to Look Out Point to see the sunset.

This is the most light we’ll get all day, what burns before it turns to ash in the sky.

The ocean is waiting there. Swallowing the shore in gulps, burnt dark against the sky, the horizon turning red and raw as my mouth in the wind.

I insist on staggering from the car onto the sand to press my heels in it. Ice underfoot clatters like dinner plates. There.

The wind stings my face and salts my skin.

I wonder, again, if this winter will ever end.

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B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

It’s been the longest one I can recall.

Mild, though (everyone says).

I think, in essence, winter is a state of mind. The simplest thoughts hold me captive, freezing on the ridges of my brain.

At work, a woman asked me if she could give me her last name. I looked at her and shook my head, grief in my eyes.

How to tell her, I already had one.

No, she said. For my loyalty points.

You know, my membership card?

Oh, I said.

She spelled it out for me, twice.

She earned five cents.

This is how it feels when I go to the edge of the woods and peer between the black boughs, gritting my teeth, willing myself to go in.

I avoid the trees like an old lover: stunned by how I used to love them, afraid that they still want me. Afraid that I still want them.

Am I really this cold, or has some shadow snuck inside me when the sun drew its shade at four p.m.?

I don’t remember.

I nudge a piece of ice with my foot watch it fleck blue and drown. I would like very much to crawl inside a fire and burn and burn and burn.

POETRY 29

On the Rocks

After Melancholy, by Edvard Munch J E A N M A Z LY M I A N , YO R K U N I V E R S I T Y

He sat on the rocks by the shore Staring at the sea The waves pulsating, Encroaching upon The torn sands, A dark and muted brown reaching greater and greater Lengths with each attempt And the shifting sands beneath him Become amorphous Engulfed by the Waves swirling, Tearing at the shore and Pulling back into the light blue expanse

30

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

Two People, dressed proper, stood on the dock Paying no mind to the man on the rocks As they entered a small rowboat The waves crashed against the rocks Indifferent to him As he sat above He thought about walking Onto the shore, and pushing through the forceful waves, Reaching a place where he could no longer Feel the sand beneath his feet He would lay back As if he were weightless Letting the water carry him further And further away from shore Until the sea was calm, He’d hear The soothing sounds of the ocean And gaze at the sky, with hints of swirling yellow Blue and green from the The dimly setting sun Watching the white birds Glide in the wind

POETRY 31

Unlike Mike C A L E B L E W I S , B R YA N T U N I V E R S I T Y

We lost time while heat simmered on the blacktop.

Our hands stunk of warm rubber still sticky from slushies and candy from the convenience store down the block.

The big kids lowered the hoops With a timeworn screwdriver.

So when we jumped we felt like pros.

We knew, when we grew up we’d do it without lowering the hoop.

We knew.

But now we’ve aged the best of us weren’t good enough while the worst of us feigned sprains and fractures to pretend that fate was at fault.

Dreaming about what could’ve been.

Now just a hollow echo of who we once were— Like the distant sound of a ball bouncing In a vacant schoolyard.

32

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

winter C L AU D I A R O S A D O, B O S TO N U N I V E R S I T Y

i was born on an island and hand crafted for the sun. made to withstand harsh rays of pure light and joy which make even the weakest smile. now, in the dead of the dead my ruddy cheeks and glistening nose are faced with the birds singing in warning. spring is not coming, he cancelled his invitation. the winter blues have begun their symphony, led by the chirp chirp chirping of a brewing storm.

POETRY 33

headed inbound C L AU D I A R O S A D O, B O S TO N U N I V E R S I T Y

i’ve fallen in love with you on the train over and over again. first you were her, pressed up against me back to chest when there was no more room and you slid you hand down so i could place mine on the metal. pinkies touching, practicing gratitude for the other person. soft smiles when i jumped off the car. then him, he gave up his seat for the older woman and stood next to me instead. catching me as the breaks were slammed, taking what he could of my body weight, before setting me upright again. dusting me off so i could shine.

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B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

then the man with the cap, elusive and laughing at the same joke told in the body language of another passenger who was akin to the drama of the subterranean theatre. then you, with your long flowing hair and soulful gray eyes who grabbed onto me. as you looked at our reflection in the glass two becoming one knowing that we were on our way home.

POETRY 35

mono no aware

“together we share the fatal illness, time”— jim harrison W.W. H A R R I S , M FA P R O G R A M AT E A S T E R N WA S H I N G TO N U N I V E R S I T Y

a part of me is still drowning beside shelley just off the coast or painting skulls one day then pears the next I had been knitting sighs in my lungs all afternoon before the comet struck the comet of course being life minutes become machetes hacking through the bones of time i like to stare at the sun even though it hurts or imagine myself as a conch shell pink & hard yet surprisingly easy to break &

36

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

thought by some to be empty yet echoing with a constant ineffable humming & aren’t we all humming constantly furiously beating ourselves against unseen currents thrashing against the inevitable hoping to find some nearby shore

POETRY 37

plum rains (梅雨) C L A I R E K U O, C O LU M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y

Tissue paper petals wilt under the weight of rain.

A snail is an eggshell crunch beneath soiled shoes, a belated “sorry” whispered in mist-veiled nights.

Mud combs through tree roots, enveloping a tribe leader with a soft sigh while his wife watches their village of squat huts sink, holding his hand-stitched coat.

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B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

On the road, squelched by visored motorcyclists and left for soggy stray dogs, tails drooping from heartbreak, heavy plums, relieving strained branches, fall. Unpicked.

POETRY 39

I drop your photograph in the sea C L A I R E K U O, C O LU M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y

But I am the sailor submerged in your endless blue–– your sea glass shoulder blades, worn smooth under the fingerprint whorl of eddies.

My hands are caught in your tangled ripples and curls; my white crescent nails like the frothy brim of waves sweeping shells to shore.

The conchs cry the lightheadedness of feeling lost

40

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

and I lick the briny bite of wind from my lips, starving to fill up on your watered-down smile until a seagull shits on my head and I decide to fish you back out.

POETRY 41

God Spoke to Me Through the Car Stereo ALEXA O’KANE, CHAMPLAIN COLLEGE

I was twelve.

The woman with the crooked teeth Told me I was a pearl, Shaped carefully by Him To be roughed up by The world until I shone.

She knew things she shouldn’t have.

I cried In the middle of the library.

She said I was going to write Something Important.

Every particle of my body Ached for her to be right.

I was nineteen.

The woman with the frizzy hair Tried to follow me home.

She made it as far as the lobby, Gazing in wonderment at the Splendor of a new building And the secrets it could hold.

She thought I held secrets, too.

Was I her long lost sister, Martha?

42

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

No. Yes! No. Then maybe I was a gift Anyway.

I asked her to leave, and she did.

I was twenty.

The woman in the red jacket Met me at the shuttle stop and Said she would follow me to Him From our places on the sidewalk.

And she tried, Spewing bible fire the whole way Up the steps of the bus Until someone with more authority Came to stop her.

Maybe the lonely, Crazy women Of the world Just like me.

Or maybe next Time I start the car And put on Some music, It’ll be God Speaking to me next.

POETRY 43

I have felt for a while that…

N I C H O L E PAG E , B R YA N T U N I V E R S I T Y

Time is passing too quickly again and I have not had enough time to hold you in my arms, chest to back, tangled in each other’s limbs.

So what if we took each other’s hands and hearts and strolled into the lover’s forest dance in a fairy circle, play in the fields of sun soaked lilac, eat from cloudberry brambles.

We need ten more minutes, five more hours, two more days. We need just until the end of time to rest against the Weeping Willow whose luring calls turned persistent pleads led us here we press our bare backs against her bark only meaning to rest, stop the time from slipping for just ten minutes, five hours, two days, until the end of time, we close our eyes

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B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

and awake to find ourselves as the Willow arms turned swaying branches, fingers now drooping leaves hair grown into lace lichen and the bugs feasting, creatures burrowing in our warmth.

Her voice echoes, our voices echo joined by those come long before us we are the skipped beat of the first heart in love, of the ocean finally reuniting with the sand.

The Willow cries that we have been forgotten to all but each other, fading into our ceaseless beat bu-bum, bu-bum, bu-bum, bu-bum

POETRY 45

Submersion MEG PETERS, ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY

Before anything else, there is water.

Before air, before life, water wraps me, fills my lungs and laps over my unopened eyes, primordial and deep as the caverns of oceans I have yet to discover. It beats time against the perfect, tiny hollow of my ear.

There is water invading my lungs and this time I’ve forgotten that it is safe, I fight and kick and thrash my way to the surface without knowing that I’m right where I belong.

There is water running off my body and the slide of muscles underneath the skin, no more struggle only this: feet that point, hands that meet, An endless glide, and the break to the surface, the water still beating time against my ear.

46

B R YA N T L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W

Fiction & Creative Nonfiction

F I C T I O N & C R E AT I V E N O N F I C T I O N

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Minutiae 973.1 LILA BOVENZI, UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

The law of conservation of mass states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. If something is taken from the earth, it has to be replaced, or else the universe will fall into disharmony. Balance must exist in all places, and life is a game of give and take. What is worth keeping and what is worth sacrificing? When do you give in? When do you push and when do you pull? When do you move forward and when do you hold back?

The world’s oldest tribes and civilizations understood this struggle of balance in nature. If you plant too many crops on the same patch of land, it will grow dry. If a species becomes too overpopulated and depletes its resources faster than they can be replenished, it will die. But as the centuries wear on, indigenous peoples all over the world have either been wiped out or pushed to the margins of society. New civilizations have become too obsessed with the idea of growth, conquering, and progress that they forget humanity does not transcend natural law. As cities grow larger, exploitation festers in the wounds of industry, and skyscrapers grow taller, our time on this earth grows shorter. We have taken far too much more than we have given. It is the year 2025, and now the universe is coming to collect on our debts.

The Clocker did not tell me from where he came, how, or why. All he told me was that in three months his brothers would take back what we had stolen. Our world would disintegrate atom by atom into the solvent of the cosmos. He gave me power beyond what I could possibly fathom. His survival does not depend on whether or not I am able to wield it, but he was curious to see if the human race was always destined for destruction, or if given one last chance, we could save our own skin. Literally. Me? I personally didn’t think dissolving into space sounded so bad, but I found myself desperately itching to give saving the world a shot, for no reason if not to prove one thing: the existence of hope. And considering I had no time to waste even if I wanted to, I began writing my stories. ***

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Rewrite Option #17 in The All-Time Journal: It is well-known that the Mediterranean diet contributes to people’s longevity, but the majority of the Ontanop lived in a desert climate where they subsisted mainly off of cacti, yucca root, and various reptiles that roamed the terrain including lizards, tortoises, and snakes. As a biological anthropologist, I went to the fourth Ontanop village because its people had one of the highest life expectancies of any underdeveloped area in the U.T., and I wanted to discover if their diet had anything to do with it. For nearly the entire first of my three years of research, I did little more than make lists of the daily meals of the villagers.

But I did more important work. I got to know the village’s traditions, became familiar with the customs of its people, and learned to speak Ontanop with relative fluency. The most important way I learned the ways of Ontanop culture was by listening. Mainly, to Chief Taved and his stories.

I stayed with Taved in his adobe hut for seven nights while I was building my own, and during that time he told me many stories. Each one taught a lesson found within the dense mythology around which their religion centered, and the long-held traditions of their past.

One story that he recounted to me on my third night there went like this: Cristoforo Colombo’s ships landed in the area now known as the south of Florida in 1493 (months later than he had anticipated after his cartographer realized he had made some crucial errors and had to reroute). He was met by the Saraxi people. They welcomed him at first, but after he threw waste into a marshland sacred to the Saraxi, the chief’s son, Nasinto, slit his throat and let his blood drain into the marsh so that it would be cleansed of his wrongdoing.

The nearly 100 men who accompanied Colombo on his voyage fled back to Spain in fear, save the cartographer who wanted to stay with the Saraxi and map out its terrain. In their haste, they left behind several of Colombo’s personal belongings, including his diary.

Nasinto was reprimanded for his actions by his father, who sought to be merciful towards foreigners who did not know their ways. But once the chief found Colombo’s diary and the cartographer learned enough of the Saraxi language to be able to interpret it for him, he discovered that Colombo was frustrated by the lack of riches found in the new land,

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and planned to slaughter and enslave the Saraxi people. Then the chief was grateful to his son for preventing the murder of their tribe.

Before Taved told me the story of Nasinto and the Saraxi, the only thing I knew about Cristoforo Colombo was that he was the explorer who disappointed King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain so much that Isabella decided to travel to the New World herself.

It was then that Isabella coined the phrase, “Nunca confíes en un hombre para hacer el trabajo de una mujer,” or in English, “Never trust a man to do a woman’s job”.

When she and her crew landed in Florida, Isabella knew that although this was not the land of silk and spices that Colombo expected to find, it was vast and beautiful, and that made it valuable. She bestowed gifts upon the Saraxi in exchange for knowledge of the land and its resources, as well as the traditions of its people. The chief trusted Nasinto to teach her their ways. He guided her through the terrain, introduced her to neighboring tribes, taught her some Saraxi, and learned Spanish himself. Isabella realized that Spain had much more to gain from the New World by making allies of the indigenous tribes rather than by conquering them. With the help of Nasinto, who found himself in the sudden role of international diplomat, a series of peace treaties were created between the Spanish and dozens of native tribes.

Then, of course, comes the story every citizen of our nation knows by heart. Spain colonized the New World. Isabella’s daughter, Juana married the Zilania leader’s son, Taname, and they became the first Leaders of a new country, las Tribus Unidas (the United Tribes). The law of the land was cooperation, generosity, and civility. But it was far from perfect. The Spanish and the natives got on fine, despite their many cultural differences, but once other countries began colonizing as well, there were a great many issues.

Conflict between the English and natives culminated in Metacom’s war. Italians were widely discriminated against due to the historical belief that their language sounded like “sloppy, second-hand Spanish”. The French found the mixing of cultures to be so distasteful that they moved all the way up north. The Irish and most Asians weren’t even allowed in until the late 1800s. Worst of all, Africans were enslaved and traded amongst all tribes and villages. This led to the Great Civil War between the West, who wanted

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to keep slavery legal, and the East, who wanted it outlawed. After five years of ceaseless fighting, the East finally won and Reconstruction began. The nation turned over a new leaf, and many groups were granted long-awaited rights and acknowledgment. This was not without being met with resistance from hate-groups like the KKK and others. But even with its long history of skirmishes and discrimination among various groups, the United Tribes’ founding principles of freedom, equality, and diversity have been carried on through the centuries, and compromise after compromise has been made to ensure that these principles never fade away.

Taved said that he often wondered what might have happened instead if Nasinto hadn’t killed Cristoforo Colombo, and Colombo had indeed carried out his plan to slaughter and enslave the Saraxi people. What would our nation be like now? Would the old tribes and the new tribes ever have been able to exist in relative harmony as they do today? Taved finished by telling me the lesson he took away from Colombo and Nasinto’s story each time he told it: Be merciful if you can afford it, but do not hesitate when you can’t. Perhaps Nasinto had been urged by Gura, the Saraxi god of war, to punish Colombo for all his crimes: small ones like dumping his waste into the marsh, and the future atrocities he never got to carry out. Whether or not this was true, Nasinto had saved his nation from unknowable suffering.

I asked Taved how he knew so much about Colombo and the Saraxi. He said that back then stories had a way of travelling from tribe to tribe through nothing but word of mouth.

Nowadays with modern technology, it was easy for everyone to gain access to the same information. But before, stories had to be told with care and precision, in such a way that the listener would never forget and could pass on to the next person, and the next village, and the next tribe, and so on. The most important stories were passed through a network so vast that it spread to tribes all across the country, as it was known back then, Turtle Island. *** I put down my pen and closed my notebook. My hand was sore from writing, but I had no choice but to keep going. If I was ever going to make a decision for my rewrite, it had to be soon. Our world was dying, and I had a chance to fix it. But which course of action was best?

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There was no guarantee that any of them would work. This scenario was probably my favorite thus far, but would it really work out the way I planned it? Sure, killing off Christopher Columbus sounded great, but how could I be sure that Isabella wouldn’t kick things off the same way and commit the same atrocities? How would our world really be any different? Would my entry be anything more than a small footnote in all of human history, or would it change the course of history? And if it was only a footnote, would it matter at all when the world ended exactly as it was destined to now, and my efforts to save humanity were reduced to only a smidge of ash floating into the oblivion of the universe?

I covered my face with my hands and groaned. I had thought this was going to be a miraculous endeavor. But perhaps there was no miracle to be had at all. The Clocker warned me of this when he gave me the book. He told me, “If you try to solve all the world’s problems, you will only succeed in driving yourself mad,” and he was right. I was going mad. I was starting to believe there was no point in even making an entry at all.

But no, I had to. It was the only way. The Clocker told me so. I discovered him, or shall I say that he discovered me, in the back room of the musty old library I had been studying in since I first got out of grad school and moved to the city. Back then all I had were books and thoughts, and nothing to do with them. Perhaps that was still all I had, even these many years later. I had spent most of my youth studying and thinking so much that I forgot what life was really for: living, doing. Now I was almost 45 with no family, barely any money, and a job as an accountant, not nearly as exciting as the Crikey Jenson I created for my rewrite. That was the Crikey Jenson I wanted to be. The Crikey Jenson The Clocker wanted me to be, and the Crikey Jenson the world needed if I was ever going to save it.

Two months ago I was searching the stacks in the library’s back room, scanning the entirety of the Dewey Decimal system for something interesting. I came to a sudden halt when my eyes landed on a thick, red, dusty spine with no code. I slid it out from the shelf and looked at the cover. All-Time Journal, it read, in bold, white letters. I chuckled. When I turned around to take it back to my preferred reading table in the corner, he was already sitting there.

I noted immediately that he looked like Santa would if he was a tenured professor at Oxford University. He wore a tweed, maroon suit, a monocle, and a finely manicured,

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snow white beard which he stroked as he sat across from me. Jolly, yet refined. Old, but not elderly. I gave him a polite, “How do you do?” before sitting down.

He introduced himself as The Clocker and claimed that he had witnessed everything that’s ever occurred on this planet called Earth: past, present, and future. He said in three months’ time our planet would implode at last and every living species would be wiped out. Naturally, I didn’t believe him at first. But then he told me details of my life that nobody could have possibly known, details that I myself could scarcely remember.

He told me about a little kid from Arizona who had about 900 phobias by the time he was eight years old. A boy who tore his heart inside out expressing every fear and every dream to people who wouldn’t listen, and a man who didn’t bother trying any longer. He recited the poetry I wrote for my high school crush, and burned in the fireplace after I found out she already had a sweetheart. He told me about the frog I accidentally stepped on when I was seven, and how I wept for it and dug a grave for it and had a private funeral in the woods all alone.

I asked him why he was telling me all this. Why, if the world was going to end in a few months, couldn’t he have left me in peace to enjoy the last of my time on Earth?

“You haven’t enjoyed most of your time on Earth up to this point. Why not make the most of it now?” He grinned. “This may be your last opportunity to show courage.” He pointed to the book I held in my arms. The All-Time Journal. He explained to me that since time began, he had written in this journal every event that changed the course of history, whether it was in a small way, or a big way. This, he said, was the key to saving humanity, if I used it correctly. I had been chosen to pick an entry, any entry, and rewrite it. Rewriting the journal would change the past itself, and if I chose well, maybe I could save the world. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t believe that I actually believed it, too.

“But why me?” I asked. “Why was I picked?”

“It had to be a human, because this is your Earth. But don’t get any ideas about you being the chosen one or anything like that. I picked you completely at random. Well, maybe not completely. I came in here looking for someone well-read, and you are sitting in the history section.” He shrugged. “You won the existential lottery of a lifetime.”

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“Oh.” I leaned back in my chair.

“Now I know this might be a little overwhelming. But you’ve only got three months, and I need you to be clear on what you’re trying to do here. You can only pick one entry. One thing that changed everything. Rewrite it to the best of your ability. Can you do that?”

“Yes, but… Can changing the past really change the future?”

He shrugged again. “We’ll see. Any last questions?”

“Yeah. Are you God?” At this, The Clocker laughed. “There is no God, Crikey Jenson. But if you do this right, you just might be one yourself. Good luck.” And then he left.

I spent the next eight weeks writing out every scenario I could think of to put as my entry in the All-Time Journal. If Kennedy never got shot. If capitalism was never invented.

If Lincoln never got shot. If the first people who were forced into slavery never got stolen from Africa. If Martin Luther King Jr. never got shot. If Hitler died in World War I. If the asteroid never killed the dinosaurs. If Eve never ate the apple. I knew I had gotten carried away, caught up in the minutiae of things. This was all starting to feel like a messed up piece of science-fiction. Every so often I thought I felt the ground tremble, as if Earth was going to sink in on itself and crumble at any second. I was running out of time, and I didn’t know what to do. Every time I had a conviction, it slipped away.

But I did like this last one. Christopher Columbus is killed in Florida, and Isabella takes charge. I liked that. It was technically impossible to predict her actions, but the history books said that she was not in favor of the Native American’s enslavement by Columbus, that she wanted them to be treated fairly. Maybe this was my chance. A chance to give power to someone who might actually deserve it. A chance to stop the big train that was capitalism and industry and colonization and racism from destroying our planet.

A chance to save us all. For a second I had a flicker of hope, but then it might have been something else. I couldn’t tell.

Hope or no hope, I had to write something down. I decided on this one: Rewrite Option #17. In my own completely unqualified and unprofessional and in-way-over-myhead opinion, #17 was my best bet. I opened the All-Time Journal and flipped to entry 1472-

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1473: Columbus’ first voyage to the New World. I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled, the words on the page were blown away like dust. No turning back now. No hesitation. I wrote it all down.

Now that I’m done, I sit back and wait. Eventually I’ll have to go out past my window, and face the world with new eyes. Or perhaps they’re old eyes, ones I haven’t used since I was a young boy who felt nothing but wonder. I think even if I didn’t save the world, at least I saved myself from dying without ever trying to live. I press my feet against the ground to see if it feels more balanced. And I’m starting to notice, although it could be my old eyes playing tricks on me, that the sky looks a little bit bluer. *** Compiled from the ethnographic journals of Crikey Jenson on his field work in the fourth Ontanop village from October 2034 - April 2037: Through my mentorship under Taved and my research with the villagers, I came to gain a general understanding of how the Ontanop collected their food. Once a month, a band of women called las renidas (the gatherers) ventured out into the desert and carefully hunted and gathered food for days at a time. They would often travel to neighboring villages to trade what they had excess for different goods, then returned to their villages each carrying baskets on their heads and sacks on each arm full of weeks’ worth of sustenance.

I was fascinated by this method of forage, and had countless questions I wanted to ask the renidas. Why didn’t they go out more often? Why didn’t they send more people out at a time? Why didn’t they keep food in stores so they wouldn’t ever go hungry? And so many more. But it wasn’t until I had earned the trust of the village that I was able to get answers to them, since the renidas were among the most respected members of the village besides Taved, and expected peace and solitude while they rested from their journey. The only people allowed to enter their huts while they recovered were family members and the Chief. I was not considered respectable enough to pay them a visit. After a while though, Taved grew tired of answering my incessant questions, and concluded that it would be much easier to set up a meeting for me, even if it fell outside of custom. He called upon the

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entire village for a vote, and they decided I had become familiar enough to be allowed one meeting.

When the renidas returned from their latest gathering, Taved entreated them to speak with me. Most of them did not want to interact with a foreigner at such a time, but one did.

A young renida by the name of Cachi, who had only been gathering for a few years at that point, agreed to let me interview her. For five long days I waited with painful anticipation, anxious to discover anything about the source of the Ontanop’s longevity. At last the day came when Cachi decided she had rested enough, and I was allowed to enter her hut.

Right before I went in though, Taved pulled me aside and rested his hand on my shoulder.

“I believe you to be a good man, Crikey,” he began.

“Thank you,” I replied.

“I had my doubts about letting a New Englander come to the village. There are certain stereotypes you know…” His voice drifted off.

“Yes.” I was well aware. “Rude, loud, crooked teeth, all of that.”

“Indeed. But you’re not like that. You’ve done nothing but respect us and our culture since the day you arrived. And your teeth are fine.”

“Thank you, Chief. I hope that--” “I’m not finished.” He exhaled. “To my knowledge, the New English are also known for, shall I say, philandering. Are they not?” I opened my mouth to respond, but he cut me off. “Don’t answer that. I am sure that you would never engage in such behavior. Not here, at least. But it would be remiss of me not to warn you, as your chief and your ally, that if you try any of that with Cachi, or any woman in this village for that matter, they will burn off your hands.”

“Burn… my hands? Off?” I asked, more fascinated than threatened.

“Yes. Off.” “How? Is there a ceremony or…?”

He sighed. “Yes, but can we discuss this later? You have a meeting.”

“I just want to know--” “You should not keep Cachi waiting.”

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“Okay.”

“And remember...” He raised a finger.

“No philandering!” I nodded. “You got it, Chief.” I was almost offended that Taved would bring up such an outdated, English stereotype, but I understood he had a responsibility to his tribe. Plus, it was sort of sweet that he would look out for me.

I entered Cachi’s hut to find her sitting on a rug in the center of the room. She wore a brown robe with a wide, orange belt. Her dark hair fell at her cheekbones, which were high and strong on her face. Upon seeing me in the doorway, she raised her head and met my gaze.

“Crikey Jenson?” She nodded to address me.

“Yes.” I nodded back before bowing deeply. “Cachi of Sonora?”

“Yes.” She smiled. “Please, sit.” I joined her on the rug, although I made sure to keep a few feet between us, bearing Taved’s warning in mind.

“Thank you for agreeing to speak with me during your time of rest.”

“You’re welcome. I was curious to meet you. Taved tells me you have many questions.”

I laughed. “Too many?”

“He said plenty.” She smirked. “Now what would you like to hear from me?”

“I am conducting my research on the Ontonap’s diet to determine if it provides reason for your longer than average life expectancy. I have recorded little else besides yucca, cacti, and various reptiles as the staple foods of the village, and I would like to know if you had any insight into some of the health benefits that have arisen from this particular diet.”

She frowned. “That’s what you came here for? To study our food?”

I was suddenly embarrassed. “Well… yes.”

“Don’t you want to know… more?”

I sat up straighter. “I want to know whatever you’ll tell me.”

“Good,” she stood up, grinning, “Then come with me.” Without another word, I stood and followed her. She led me out of her hut and far into the desert to a cluster of cacti. I didn’t recognize the species. They looked like saguaros, tall and many-limbed, but they bore blue fruit instead of their usual white and yellow flowers. I had never seen that before.

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“Why are they blue?” I asked Cachi.

She caressed one of the fruits with a soft stroke of her thumb.

Then she told me a story that went like this: Many generations ago, when there were only three Ontanop villages instead of eleven, during the first summer rain of the year, the Chief of the second village accidentally stepped on a toad as it was emerging from its hibernation. Toads are sacred to the Ontanop, as they are sent from the Gods of the earth below to claim nourishment from the land. The careless killing of this toad angered Reita, the Goddess of sacred animals, and she put a curse on the Ontanop, one that would endure for all time, barring divine intervention.

The people began to fall ill, with a sickness nobody had ever seen before. They bloated like animal corpses rotting in the sun. They felt as if their limbs were filled with water, and they grew heavier and heavier until, one by one, they began to drop. Upon dissection, it was discovered that their limbs were in fact filled with water. Water and mud. And their stomachs and throats were lined with moss. Reita’s curse was slowly but surely turning the Ontanop people into a swamp. The villages despaired, and each prepared to meet their fate.

Detirad, the daughter of the chief who stepped on the toad, begged for forgiveness from the Gods, but her prayers fell silent upon the unmerciful ears of Reita. Her sister, Locei, the goddess of sacred plants, however, was moved by Detirad’s plea. She snuck onto Earth and planted a single cactus: the Dorciame, and blessed it with all the power of the rivers and sky. Detirad found the cactus with blue fruit, and knew it was a sign for her people. She harvested just enough fruit to bring back to her village, and fed it to those who were still alive. Then she moved onto the first and third villages and gave it to them, too.

Lastly, she ate some herself. The fruit of the cactus restored the Ontanop’s health and put an end to Reita’s curse.

“The Dorciame is our gift from Locei,” said Cachi, “It is the source of our longevity and a deep blessing to our people. We care for our land and worship our Gods to show thanks for our endurance and for Detirad’s selflessness. We harvest the fruit once a year, just enough for everyone in our villages to have a piece.”

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I was silent for a moment. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

“You’re welcome.” She looked at me. “Now you see, Crikey. The Ontanop collect food the way we do -- do everything the way we do -- because of our origin. Locei and Reita teach us of balance and harmony. If you kill something without purpose, it is wasted, and the balance is thrown off. If you take more than you need from nature, disharmony will occur, and one way or another, nature will take it back,” she finished. We both stood before the Dorciame as if it was a God in itself, as the sun was setting over the desert and the sky turned to painted shades of red and orange and purple. I thought about mercy, and how nature was the only true expert on when to give it generously, and more importantly, when to collect. n

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sex dream L I L L I A N G R AC E , N E W YO R K U N I V E R S I T Y G A L L AT I N

We’re in a warehouse filled with excessive amounts of vintage furniture, and I know that my mom drives a minivan and is on her way to pick us up.

The details come together. I am old enough to live on my own, but I still do not have a license. It is thus not unusual for me to be waiting. Here, in the warehouse, the lights are fluorescent, and it is not cold. If I could drive, I would miss these moments of stasis, relying, passing time. I can feel the minutes, a touchstone with reality.

There are four garage doors up against one wall, and it is only because of this that I realize how long the room is. All of the doors are open just barely at the bottom, cracked and letting in the cold. The room echoes our voices, but in a way that feels almost like a ballroom, something that trusts and expands as we do. On every side, mountains of dressers and mirrors rise, fantastically colored wood with chipped paint. The ceiling is high, and it has a few tiny chandeliers, all turned off and covered in sheets for safekeeping.

They fascinate me, their fragility, so unlike the unstable stack of chairs in the corner of the room with the quilted cushions.

I think I know I am dreaming but in the same way I know that I am breathing.

There are five of us here, and none of my friends can handle a vehicle either. I know them all, how tall they are. Their laughter warms me. It’s sometime late in the evening, probably near midnight. We’ve been talking for hours as we always do. I have a feeling that I coordinated this whole event, though my consciousness is too far from me to be sure.

One friend resembles a sprite in the way that she sits: back perfectly straight against the wall, legs crossed, barely moving. Her hair is dirty blonde, a deep sawdust color. Her posture reminds me that before we met she was a dancer. Her shirt is emblazoned with a cereal logo. I think she’s vegan, but the cereal isn’t. I do not remember how we met.

The next has never cut their hair in their life. It gathers around their shoulders, bunching as they pull their knees up against them. They wear four necklaces, if I know

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how to count correctly, all silver and featuring some kind of chain. The couch that they sit on is a faded blue and matches their light-wash jeans. I don’t think they’re aware. They only like light-wash jeans anyway. We’ve argued about this.

The third friend shares the couch. Her hair was a bright magenta just a few weeks ago, but now fades, giving way to whatever she’ll next decide. She has an undercut but has always been too modest to show it off. Her clothes are all draping fabric, wrapped around in a way that armors her. She looks good in white. She wants to be a scientist from what I’ve heard.

The fourth and last person in the room keeps catching me in their side eye, gaze matching mine with the same thinly masked hunger. They stand at the edge of our broken circle, the way you do when you’ve been accidentally caught in a conversation for too long.

Their limbs are long, chest flat and wide, skin devoid of freckles. Do they wear eyeliner? I ask myself four times until I am still unsure. When I look at them, I get lost. They’re inches taller than I am, but I can’t mentally measure how many. I swear I’ve seen them before. I swear I know what their voice sounds like. They are silent but painfully attentive.

They say nothing, still an almost-stranger, but I know the urgency that they feel by their silence. There is a buzz in the cores of my shoulder blades, and I adjust my posture to ease it. I think they smile.

Now, I am deeply aware of the time and how there are only about thirty more minutes until my mother will be here to pick us up. It’s the same dark outside as before. The dialogue between the four of us moves too quickly with all the laughter in between words, and I know how much time the humor wastes. A resentment gathers in me at the thought of losing any more minutes. My gut tells me to separate myself from the three who are just my friends, their laughter. I cannot tell if it’s actually my gut speaking or just this new resentment. There are twenty-five minutes left. My friends don’t pay attention to me, instead distracting one another with colors and wit. I don’t believe I speak at all.

I am now somehow conscious for mere seconds, lifting myself up out of the dream.

If I can be left alone with the hunger, my mom will probably forget to pick me up with

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everyone else, and I can fulfill what it is I am aching for. I know this desperately, frantically.

I can feel the lost time. I recognize it, a touchstone with reality.

I see the chance that the dream is handing to me, to be more than I am somehow with this almost-stranger I have seen before. My chest pulses, and I do not recognize the heartbeat, a strangeness in such vivid detail, which remains as I am submerged back into the dream state.

At twenty minutes, my white-outfitted friend makes the decision to leave, her hands getting too cold from the night air coming in from the vents and the garage doors. We hug and blow kisses to each other. Each friend holds me in turn, all of them able to tuck their chins into the space between my shoulder and my neck. The one with the long hair tells me that I make them feel safe. Those words reach me for a quick tender moment before separating. I am two selves, one who is holding a friend and another who sees that I do not feel anything. I witness my own numbness, my act and my urgency.

Is this a feeling I recognize from life too?

The doors to leave the warehouse are automatic. They slide open and closed like a grocery store. I listen to the trio, still bubbling up with jokes, stumbling down the hall.

They don’t look back or remind me that it’s my mom giving them the ride.

“I need to find my jacket, I think I left it in here somewhere” is the excuse I call out.

They do not hear or ask. My words are just a half-reason to fill the space.

Seventeen minutes left on my internal stopwatch, and I try to let the time slide off me now that it no longer matters. The space does stretch, though. When I turn back to meet the last one’s hungry eyes again, I am struck by how directly they are looking at me.

I trust we are alone now.

There exist no moments of silence. Instead, them and I are machinery, calculating in our own minds exactly the place and the necessity. There is a large tilted slab of wood covered in a sheet, sanded and cut from some larger piece. The sheet is gray, I think, some dark nothingness shade. The thought occurs that we may get splinters, but they are leading me with ghosts of their hands. I forget immediately.

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As much as I do not want to admit it, I am still very aware of the time, the buzzing.

The blanket weighs our bodies down like it’s a curtain, and it probably is. It’s red, a quilted fabric that traps the heat. I shake all of the chills out of my body because I do not want them to be worried by the coldness of my skin.

That first moment is dramatically still. I do not know what they are thinking. They do not speak.

Then, their hand climbs the side of my chest, through my shirt’s collar until it has reached my jaw. Their thumb moves against my jaw in arcs and then shifts, back and back, and now the fabric between us is bundled. Their fingers probe into the back of my neck, like searching for a pressure point. There is somehow no unfilled space even though our bodies are still parallel and separated. I am captivated by the bridge of their nose. They tilt their face, but I can only see the way that bridge curves and bumps. I don’t feel their hands as anything more than movements.

The kiss brings me so far underwater. I lose all feeling in my ears. The first place that I grab for is their hip bone.

For me, the moment is like breathing too hard into a pillow when you try to fall asleep, except, instead of my face, it’s a humid warmth felt all over my skin. It is a desperation, the way I can only see them in a tunnel vision way. I am not aware of my body really which is strange for me, unconscious of the way it moves beyond my hands. I do not doubt being wanted by them. I am just glued to this movement, something so simple made so fluid.

When I was younger, I used to think of intimacy to help myself fall asleep, a lullaby. I used to think that sex was always out of desperation but never of need, never of desire, out of something else more natural, a lily opening. I feel that feeling now, the lily, the opening. I never have, in consciousness. I never have known such a deep ecstasy, muted immediately below skin-level.

Something breaks in me. I lose track of my second self, the one outside of my body. I am both in my body and out of it, free and unfree.

Their skin is so soft and generous, and our eyes do not meet once. I don’t think mine are closed because I see their changing shades so clearly, something glowing, something

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like a sunrise. They are not china, but more akin to the face of Venus, the marble dust evened and smooth. In my stomach, something climbs in the way that a tree grows. I can feel them get taller beside me as it does. The space we share is still liquid. Distantly, I recall how I have not touched someone without anxiety curled in my gut in so long.

When we end, we end naturally. There is no lingering feeling, no coming down, just a mutual moment of completion.

The heat is still breathing, an ozone layer trapped between us.

I can still see their breath.

We lay less than a foot apart, still.

I crave their skin again as soon as I am no longer against it, and when I move my hand, I do it knowing that I shouldn’t be.

Their collarbone is a pocket, the feeling of a head scarf, silk in my hands. I do not watch their face. My hands move with some predetermined understanding. I do not hear their breath. I am fixated on the feeling of this being who is not a being, who is devastatingly temporary. They breathe softly, a type of crumbling, heartbeat not rising with my fingers on their skin again. I want to beg them for their hip bones. When fingertips reach their chest, I feel their scars, crescent moons turned upwards, hanging dark and still.

I don’t think I trace them. I could be wrong.

“Hey, I don’t need aftercare from you,” their voice cuts through the warehouse. I cannot be sure if it echoes, but it likely does. They sound too far away, and when I go to look into their eyes and apologize, their whole body has somehow already turned away from me. I don’t know how I missed the movement.

I imagine a jigsaw puzzle made out of their spine, the feeling of something so seamless.

It is an emotion I cannot describe. It is not love, at least not how I know it. It is comfortable but not in a kind way. We are meant to stay here forever, I imagine, never doing anything more than touching and grasping at warmth.

The minutes are still there, but I would swear they are longer. I’m not worried about the time anymore? I remake the discovery.

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As my eyes fixate themselves on the curve of their neck, their hair gathers, half-mullet, half-dyed, half-mine. I never re-separate from my body, though the ecstasy returns in waves and I think I am still open. At some point, the warehouse motion sensors turn off.

I’m not sure if they feel anything. Still, I watch their silhouette all night, just in case they ever do decide to look back at me. n

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I Am Not a Home KILEY MCALEER, EMMANUEL COLLEGE

I am from many places, but none of them have ever quite been home. A mint green house where neighbors are always yelling and my dad comes to visit for a few hours every other weekend. A red house tucked away in the woods, set high on a hill, and withdrawn from the rest of the world’s prying, perceiving eyes. Then a yellow house, the same color as the lemonade I make with my little brother, a quarter a cup when we set up shop on the corner, but free for our mother who adds in a splash of vodka. A small two-bedroom, where dinner is never quite filling, always pulled from the freezer and ready to eat in under five microwaved minutes because I am in charge while mom takes a nap, and I’m too young to use the oven or stove. A brown townhouse where there’s no more mom and no little brother, replaced by a father and stepmother who are rarely home at the same time and often unhappy.

The red house was in New Hampshire, at least a two-hour drive from Rhode Island and my father. As I was starting the first grade, my mother went away to rehab for the first time.

Our neighbor, Dawn, would come to get us ready for school in the mornings because my stepfather left too early. She’d get us dressed and make banana pancakes while we watched PBS Kids until it was time to walk to the bus stop. Mom came home quickly, only a week or two after she had left for the facility. Straight back to bed she went. Dawn stopped coming by, so I was back to taking care of myself and my half-brother. I’d make us ‘french toast’, but not the real kind that you cook on the stove and coat in sweet syrup. It was just a piece of bread, sloppily buttered and coated with too much cinnamon sugar. I was the one to get us dressed, but I didn’t have a winter coat, and there were days in November that I showed up to school in shorts, so money must’ve been tight. Yet the liquor bottles piled up. Third grade was the year they nearly held me back because I missed too many days of school. Nobody was around to make sure I was going.

We were back in Rhode Island by the time I started fourth grade. Custody was split evenly, one week at the yellow house with my mother, stepfather, and brother, and the

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other at my father and stepmother’s one-bedroom apartment. But the yellow house was short-lived. We were only there a summer, just long enough for my mother and stepfather to announce their divorce and start sleeping in separate rooms. My mother was sobbing when she told us, but I didn’t care much. She had already cried at least three times that day, and I had never really liked my stepfather. Soon after that, I started spending more time with my father and stepmother, who moved into a townhouse so that I could have my own room.

Living in the two-bedroom, my mother’s drinking got worse. When she hugged me, it was like it was all she could do to stay upright. Her slurred Iloveyou’s were endless and annoying. By the time I entered sixth grade, she no longer had custody. She was allowed only public, supervised visits, which I didn’t want to attend. On our last visit, she showed up drunk and my stepmother had to take me home early. A few months later, my mother was arrested for a DUI on Thanksgiving Day. She texted me a lot then, asking for forgiveness and claiming she was getting clean. But I was twelve and already so tired. I saw her once more, and only because my grandmother asked me to. After a while, she stopped reaching out so much. Just on birthdays and ironically enough Mother’s Days, because I don’t wish her a happy one and that makes her upset, and have I forgotten that I have a mother? After a little while longer, I blocked her number. I have not seen or spoken to my mother in seven years.

Permanently living with my father and stepmother in our brown townhouse, it was more of the same, even though the setting had changed. I was a depressed, chronically anxious teen. My parents did not take me to therapy, because I needed to just deal with things and stop being so emotional. Even when they found out I was self-harming in the spring of my freshman year, shorts baring all of the scars from a winter’s worth of damage, I was not taken to a doctor. That would make them look like bad parents. When I managed to force their hand in my junior year, things worse than ever, I only went to therapy for a few months. Not because I wanted to stop going, but because I wanted my father to stop sighing and shooting me an annoyed glance each time he had to pay for my session. Along with the gaslighting, my father’s hobbies included drinking and cheating.

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So, my stepmother left the white house with the green shutters we had all moved into only six months previously. She’d stop by when he wasn’t home, but the drop-ins grew more infrequent and didn’t make me feel better anyway because she was only there to tell me I needed to clean my room. By senior year I had never felt more alone.

I have seen plenty of what home is not. It is not a mother letting her seven-year-old daughter sip from her cocktail because she wants to see the funny face her child will make.

It is not a father who berates his daughter for any reason he can find, starting when she is somewhere around ten and never stopping. It is not a stepmother who moves out because that same father has treated her so badly she now has PTSD, and the fifteen-yearold is left to take the brunt of it on her own. It is not that girl at eighteen years old, now in college, crying when she has to go ‘home’ for semester breaks. It is not all of these loveless houses and apartments I have known, and I have known them oh-so-well.

So I know what home is not.

I’ll know home when I’ve found it. I’ve caught glimpses of it, in other people’s living rooms during family movie night and in their kitchens as they all talk about their days at the dinner table, a home-cooked meal in front of everyone. It’s not about how big their home is, or what movie they’re watching, or what’s on their plates. It’s the warmth that radiates from every happy heart, every full belly, every shared laugh, every teary eye that’s soothed by a loved one’s thumb, every I-love-you that slips out so easily and goes handin-hand with each goodbye. Home is hugs, as often as they can be given, and talking just because you want to hear their voice. These little things are what make a home. I’m not sure if these people are aware of just how at home they are, because they’re so used to it.

But I am not, and so I am painfully aware of each time I encounter home. I will offer to do the dishes, watch the kids, help with anything I can just to bask in that warmth for a few moments longer before I go back to my own ‘home’.

Nowadays I am still from that white house with the green shutters. It’s just me, my father, and the dog. There is a large backyard, two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a pantry room, and even a finished basement where my father sleeps in a La Z Boy recliner.

The master bedroom is mostly used as closet storage, and it does not contain a bed,

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because there is no one to sleep in it. There are no pictures on the walls, and the living room furniture is hardly ever put to use. I stay in my room. My shades remain drawn, and my door is always closed. Even when I am the only one in the house, I walk gingerly throughout, trying to leave as little evidence as possible that I was ever here. I am from this house, but I am not home. n

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Swimming Lessons REBECCA MEAR, GORDON COLLEGE

It was time to learn to swim.

Or at least that’s what Nana thought. Little did she know of my horrid fear of water, of the way I shuddered at the feeling of water slipping over my hair and down my back, my refusal to take a shower, for, at the time, the sensation felt like tiny needles pricking into my skin. I had no intentions of learning to swim, of dunking my head under the water, water filling my nostrils and eyes and mouth and ears. So many places where pool water doesn’t belong.

During the car ride, my anxiety escalated with each breath of perfume-soaked air, courtesy of Nana’s fragrance affinity. Even driving under telephone poles spurred many an anxious thought. Can electrical wires transfer their deadly energy onto people? You know what, they probably can. I’m most definitely collecting electrical energy, which will shock me to death upon entering the pool. How can I relax when I’m going to explode, and on such a nice day?

In attempt to distract my mind from these wicked thoughts, I called upon my old friend Invisible Shadow Man. He ran in time with the car, speeding alongside us in the sunshine, hopping from one patch of grass to the next. Because, everyone knows, stepping onto the pavement is a Shadow Man death-sentence.

We eventually arrived at the scene of my upcoming electrocution, as deemed by Shadow Man’s abrupt disappearance. After changing into our pink one-piece bathing suits and putting on wretched sunblock (the bane of all children’s outdoor existences), we emerged beside the concrete pool.

My year-and-a-half younger sister Hannah and I scurried to the shallow edge of the pool, to a place of not safety, but where the risk of drowning was lesser. We ignored Nana, who was already in the pool, looking as graceful as a fifty-year-old woman in a Speedo is able to.

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What a thrill it was, sitting on the pool’s concrete lip and watching other people laugh and swim into the forbidden deep end. We sat, content in the sunshine, pumping our short legs back and forth, ignoring the useless Dora the Explorer floaties wrapped around our arms.

I eventually traveled down the pool’s three concrete steps, my fear of electrocution temporarily forgotten. Fortunately, I was tall enough for my head to be kept above the water’s terrifying surface. I walked around, my small fingers wrapped around the pool’s concrete lip, the water pressure punching my stomach where the water jets resided.

Hannah, too small and frightened to venture out, stayed on her step. As I made my way back to her, I felt hands on my body, lifting me, holding me. The hands of a person who would not leave the pool without teaching me to swim, whose perfume even stank in the chlorinated water. I tried to escape, to return to the safety of my sister, but what use is a child’s squirming in the hands of a determined grandmother? So I was lifted up, told, “It’s okay. I’ve got you. I won’t let you drown.”

I tried to say no, to claw my way out of Nana’s grasp, but who could stop a sweet grandmother, a sheep, from teaching her frightened lamb of a granddaughter to swim? So my shaking, convulsing body was held up, my stomach lifted. I was told, “Paddle your arms and legs. Doggie paddle!” By that point, I still hadn’t responded and my breathing went shallow. I feared drowning, the touch of my nana’s hands, and the fate in store for Hannah.

I was a lost cause, incapable of learning to swim. But I already knew that. Somehow my shaking body was returned to my sister, who witnessed my pool struggle, her eyes full of terror. Hannah: the next victim.

This day at the pool showed the difference of Hannah’s demeanor and mine. My silent suffering and squirming juxtaposed Hannah’s violent screaming, her tell-it-how-itis attitude toward life. Nana picked her up the same as me, but felt the need to dunk her under the chlorinated water, happily saying, “Dunk!,” as though Hannah was a basketball.

My Sister the Basketball: a novel.

I watched Hannah contort and splash in the water, both of us unable to do anything about it. I mean, if I went over there, then what? Nana would have two victims. Maybe she wasn’t a sheep after all, but a wolf.

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Hannah’s torture was shorter than mine, though, for her screaming morphed into crying, and we can’t attract attention, now. Nothing to see here. Just two little lambs afraid of the water. Aren’t they cute? Such darlings.

By that point, our time at the pool was over, Hannah distraught and I tactfully quiet as we were corralled back to the pool house. We followed Nana back into the old woodpaneled bathroom to change out of our bathing suits. Nana set her sunglasses and ball cap down onto the beach bag before entering the bathroom stall, leaving me and Hannah alone in the main bathroom area.

Now, what I did next is something I will never forget, something that shocked even me. I was Big Sister Rebecca, failed protector of lambs smaller than I. I was too young, too innocent to speak my mind, so I did the next best thing: with confidence, with poise, I picked up those left-behind sunglasses and hat and marched into the handicap stall.

Without hesitation, I threw them both into the toilet, amused by the resounding sound of sunglasses-on-toilet-bowl.

Nana walked out of her own bathroom stall in time to see me flushing her belongings, her sunglasses and hat spinning in the toilet water. I don’t know what I thought would come of this, but the idea of flushing Nana’s belongings was as close to a revenge scheme as I could muster. You dunk my sister in the pool, I dunk your shit down the shitter. Good luck enjoying the sunshine now! This moment, the kind that evil laughter would best accompany, was ruined by the look of utter disgust on Nana’s face. What was little lamb doing, throwing things in the toilet? Oh my. Nana put her hand to her crucifix pendant, praying for the forgiveness of my toilet-dunking soul. I don’t recall the words she said or how a certain soaking wet hat and sunglasses were extracted from the handicap stall toilet, but I remember the strong emotions coursing through my body. The realization that I was no longer a defenseless lamb brought with it uncertainty and a bit of guilt.

We eventually arrived home, Nana’s report to Mom including neither dunking of the pool nor toilet variety. It was our little secret, one that I would not tell another soul until I was later dragged to Confession, where I admitted my master plan to a Catholic priest. He actually erupted into laughter and promised the forgiveness of God, at the cost of saying a

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few Hail Marys. Mom actually asked me what he was laughing at, as our altar session was visible to the parish, but I just shrugged my shoulders. It was our little secret: mine, Nana’s and God’s, and with it resulted in the fact that I never got my sea legs. n

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Why I Cry for Little Girls J U L I A R A B OY, B AT E S C O L L E G E

I like working with little kids, and since I have been old enough to be employable, my main source of income has been from childcare: camp counselor, babysitter, nursery school “teacher,” etc. I find the presence of young kids refreshing. It’s so much more enjoyable to be around people who want only to love and be loved, to be happy and kind and at peace, than to spend time with jaded, aging adolescents. I remember being a young kid and wanting to grow up to be just like my female camp counselors and babysitters. I looked up to older girls as though they were the pinnacle of perfection. Now that I am the camp counselor and babysitter, I know there are little eyes on me all the time, watching me with wonder and amazement. To these girls today, I am everything they want to be when they grow up. They absorb every word I say as if I were the only other person on earth, and try to emulate my every move. In their presence I become an utterly infallible being, placed on a pedestal by these tiny humans, so high that I’m afraid to look down.

The funny thing is, though, now that I’m here, I wish I could be just like them again. I long for the days when I was blissfully unaware of how badly people could hurt each other. I wish I didn’t understand the unadulterated cruelty that permeates the depths of human existence. I know things that would break these girls’ worlds into a thousand tiny shards of devastation, and yet, I don’t want to extinguish their youthful fervor for life and all things good. So, I attempt to foster a symbiotic relationship with the children who find themselves in my care, answering their never ending questions honestly and to the best of my ability while trying simultaneously to deconstruct the violence of reality by showing them a world based on what I wish I could unlearn, in hopes that my lessons imprint somewhere deep in their subconscious, and can, at least in a small way, challenge the future of humanity. But since I was raped a few months ago, I can’t seem to do it anymore.

I wish I could say it wasn’t true, because to admit it feels like a submission to weakness, but my rapist took something from me; something that I can never get back. Something

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big, and although I can’t put into words exactly what that “something” is, its absence is painfully impossible to ignore. The thing is, people “like me” don’t get raped. Not people who have dedicated enormous amounts of time and energy, through both academics and extracurriculars, to combatting sexual assault, certainly not to gender studies majors in their third year of college. And yet, here I am, baffled by my own stupidity. Why didn’t I act in the moment, why didn’t I see the signs, and why did it take me weeks to realize what had actually happened? What the hell do I do now?

I came home from college for winter break at Thanksgiving, and it had only been about a month since I was raped. As I was left alone to sit with my thoughts, I realized I needed a distraction, so when the opportunity to babysit for a local family with two toddler aged girls came my way, I grabbed it. I expected the job to be easy, the kids were in my key demographic: I know preschoolers. And for all intents and purposes, it was easy: the girls were easy going, great kids. But the entire time I spent at their house, I wanted to cry. I wanted to break down and sob like a baby. I couldn’t help it. I tried so, so hard to be a happy, fun playmate for the girls, but every second we spent together was excruciating.

As soon as I got back in the car, I lost all control, and without my permission tears came waterfalling down my face. And I’d cry all the way home. I grew so angry with myself. I felt like the ultimate loser, and a complete and total fraud. There I was, letting my rapist win, giving into a power that I let take control, and feeling sorry for myself at the same time. I soon realized, though, that I was not crying for myself. I was crying for the little girls.

When they are young, we tell little girls that they are special, beautiful, incredible little people who deserve the world—because they are, and they do. We tell them they can be anything they want, that they are loved, that no one will ever want to hurt them. We may mean these things, and want, desperately, for them to be true. But they’re lies and empty promises. Fifteen years ago, I was the little girl who loved and wanted to be loved, who was happy and kind and at peace. Now, after spending barely two decades on this planet, I feel lied to. I feel cheated. I look at these little girls, and I know that I am lying to them, too.

The world will not be kind to them. They will soon learn that they are walking targets. The love and kindness and reassurance we give them won’t matter when someone else tries to

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claim their body and break their spirit. No amount of giddy happiness or foolish promises will matter when someone takes them by the hand, only to turn around and hurt them on purpose, and teach them to understand a violence they never knew existed. Yet we keep telling these lies over and over again, knowing they are not true. These girls don’t deserve to be lied to, and they don’t deserve the future has already been laid out for them. And neither did I. We, as a culture, community, collective, or whatever you fancy, have failed little girls.

We continue to fail them everyday. We send them off into the world with false hope and unrealistic expectations. If there is one thing I wish for these little girls who have looked up to me over the years, it is for them to grow up to be nothing like me. The person they see on the imaginary pedestal is a fraud, an idealistic version of a me that doesn’t actually exist. She is a me that was taught to mindlessly reproduce the lies that have become the bane of her existence; lies which are nothing but paternalistic exertions of false protectionism. I didn’t, and I don’t need protecting. I needed honesty. But how do you tell a bright eyed four-year-old that the world she was born into is far more gruesome than she could ever imagine? How do you tell her that what she thinks and what she wants isn’t going to matter because to someone, she is just a body and flesh ripe to be taken advantage of? You can’t. We can’t keep telling lies, but we can’t shatter hearts and tell the truth. So, maybe, it’s time to change our truth: because there are too many little girls drowning in a sea of lies, and I, for one, don’t have enough tears left to cry. n

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La Escucho L E A H R YA N , B R YA N T U N I V E R S I T Y

When I started my career as a passionate photojournalist, I never expected it to be my demise. I was a naïve 20-something year old, ready to leave the United States and travel the world, capturing its majesty with the click of a lens. That was when there was beauty to capture…

I had come back to Guatemala on a whim. When the depression became too much to handle, I knew there was only one cure: to go back to the place that had given me life in the first place. This country had inspired me to begin my career in photojournalism 20 years ago. Its indescribable spirit had awoken a hunger in me to capture the lives of people all over the world; how could one species live so differently? Now, a lifetime later, I was back, yearning for the indescribable knowledge that spread through the wind here— a wind which seemed to have passed through the United States unacknowledged, albeit uninvited.

Now, I sat on a bus winding through the hilly dirt roads, on my way back to Monterrico. In my hand was the picture that had started my career—the one I had taken in Monterrico long ago, along the shores of the magnificent Black Sand beach. The picture captured the gummy smile of a young, Guatemalan child, standing at the waters’ edge, looking into the sea. Looking at the picture, I thought back to that day. In my broken Spanish, I had asked the young girl what she was doing. She had replied, “I am listening to the water, my grandmother asked me what it was saying.” Puzzled, I had turned from her and found who I assumed was the girl’s grandmother approaching me. After introducing myself as an aspiring photojournalist, I asked, “What does your granddaughter mean?

What is the ocean saying?”

The old lady scoffed, the wear of years in the sun burned into her face. A fire seemed to set itself ablaze in her eyes and I had known instantly that my question had awoken anger in her core. In broken English, she began to speak. “You Americans will never understand.

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But since you wonder, I will tell. The ocean has spirit, like you and I. It talks, like you and I. So does breeze, animals, skies. The difference between you Americans and us is that we take time to listen. Spirits are all family. Open your ears, child, maybe someday you can hear too. If you do not listen to spirits, you will see the damage.” I remember chalking up her explanation of a ‘talking’ ocean to old age, even lack of education—an empty threat on deaf ears. But why was this woman so angry?

The child turned back to her grandmother and smiled, breaking my train of thought.

“La escucho, abuela!” she exclaimed. I hear her. Her? I looked around for someone else before realizing the child was talking about the ocean. The grandmother smirked, seeing the confusion on my face. I tried to hide my expression, embarrassed, knowing I was turning red. When I saw the girls face, the pride in her eyes at her discovery, I grabbed my camera and took the picture that lay in my hands today. Even if I did not understand the depth of emotion that seemed to be before me, covering my face with the camera was an easy escape from my discomfort, a retreat from the smallness I felt in not being able to connect with the world.

“Americans,” the grandmother had scoffed. “Never listen. All show.” She scooped up her granddaughter and began to walk back to their village. I felt exposed, as if the woman had known that I was trying to hide. All the while, the granddaughter chirped, “La escucho, abuela, la escucho.” This picture, and that memory, sent me on my lifelong journey to understand what I was missing. What did this country understand that I did not? What sparked the anger that old woman felt? Why did I feel exposed, naked even, after that encounter?

I put the picture on my lap, resting my head on the bus window, the sun beating down on my skin. Guatemala was scorching in the summer, never mind being on a bus without air conditioning. After years of traveling, taking pictures of people that seemed more connected to this world than I, I felt drained. I have spent my life searching for what I witnessed the little girl find that day on the beach and I have been unable to find it. Now, on my way to Black Sand beach once again, I hope to truly listen to what I have been unable to hear before.

My head began to throb in anticipation. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep…

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*** The bus arrived at the village shortly after the sun had set, dark shadows engulfing the village I was staying in. Flashlights spotted the air like fireflies as the men returned to the village from a long days-work in the fields. I knew from the last time I had visited that men woke up each day before the sun rose, walked miles to the banana vineyards, spent the day in the blistering heat macheting the lands, walked miles back to the village, and slept a few measly hours before waking to do it again. My face reddened as I thought about the prospect of getting off a vehicle knowing that these men did not have such a luxury. I knew they were used to Americans coming to do missionary work in their village, but it still felt unnecessarily flashy for me to be arriving on a bus. I gathered my belongings and stumbled out into the night. Some women rushed towards me to grab things from my hands, leading me to my hut. I made my way the best I could in the darkness before crumpling onto the blanket that lay on the dirt floor. I lay awake for a while, staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to take me away.

In the morning I sat up, stretching out. When I started my career, sleeping on the ground would have been nothing but now I smirked as I heard my joints popping. It was still dark out, but I could smell food in the air. I wandered out of the hut towards the fire by which breakfast was being cooked. I sat down at one of the wooden tables, observing, by firelight, children emerge from their huts, holding their sibling’s hands. The older sibling in each family catered to their younger siblings, making sure they could find their way in the dark and had a place to sit. With the seats quickly filling, the older siblings stood behind the youngest without complaint.

When the food was ready, the woman preparing it put it in a large bowl and brought it over to the children’s table. Immediately, I knew it would not be enough for the crowd of small children. Nonetheless, the oldest child grabbed the bowl and placed a little bit on their siblings’ plates before passing it on to the next family, watching the oldest sibling there do the same. This cycle continued until the bowl made it back to the child that started the round. No food was left in the bowl. The child put the bowl down and began tending to their sibling, feeding the helpless baby, seeming unphased that no food was left though I knew the child was hungry.

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“Hey, are you Leah?” asked a voice behind me. I swiveled to see a white woman approaching me.

“Yes,” I answered, a little surprised to see whoever she was.

“My name is Bethany. I came to Guatemala to do missionary work when I was 17.

When I graduated high school, I came back to do some soul searching. I found it and didn’t want to risk losing it by leaving. It’s a humbling lifestyle, to say the least. Anyway, I run the missionary programs for this village and others in the area, so basically that means I take the rich people that come here and try to show them the consequence of their wealth. A missionary brought one of your pictures a while back and gave it to me. I have been dying to meet you to ask about it, and when I heard you were coming back I figured now was my only chance.” Bethany reached into her back pocket and pulled out a picture of a mountain with a man holding a bundle of bananas in the foreground. Even in the dark, I knew what picture it was—this was another picture I had taken in Guatemala on my first trip that I had published alongside the young girl on the beach. Behind the man, mountains reached into the sky, making him seem miniscule, nonexistent. In fact, unless you looked at the picture very closely, you’d likely miss him altogether in favor of the grandeur behind him.

“Well Bethany, it’s nice to meet you. I’d be happy to answer any of your questions about the picture.” As I spoke, my stomach began to grumble. I hadn’t eaten since before my flight. Bethany began to chuckle.

“I’m so sorry. I sometimes forget about my previous life. If I remember correctly, regiment deems you need breakfast in the morning. I was supposed to bring you some.

And I did! Here!” Bethany reached into a basket she was holding and pulled out a bundle of bananas. “Feel free to eat as many as you want.”

I took a banana before giving the remainder of the bundle back to her. “Here, give the rest to the older siblings. I noticed they did not get any breakfast.”

Bethany shook her head in response. “Surely you do not understand. It’s a kind gesture, but the children will not eat this. And before you ask—it is not because they are picky. You see, the banana is a symbol of the lives these people live. It is a piece of fruit that does not represent Guatemala but instead is fuel for America and the other ‘lands beyond.’

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It confuses them why more of their old playing fields are being wiped out and sprayed with fertilizers for these curvy yellow things. Even if they wanted to eat them, the companies that buy up the land here and hire Guatemalan men to work it are strict about them taking any produce back to their families, so why get accustomed to the luxury? Profit beats people, every time. We have this bundle because I requested some for the missionaries, which I will treat you like. It is specifically for you.” Bethany put the bananas back in front of me. “Now before you say you don’t want them, understand these people will be upset to know you are unsatisfied with the offering and will try to give you more of something they barely have themselves.”

“But what will happen to the older children then?” I asked, guiltily peeling open the banana even though I had lost my appetite. “They gave all their food to their siblings.”

Bethany smiled. “Of course they did. This is why I found my soul here. In my experience in America, people hoarded in times of crisis or sought to own and dominate other people, places, and things. But here… Here is different. The older siblings trust that when they give, they shall receive. And not in that cliché way Americans talk about at Christmas time. The older siblings give to their younger sibling and trust that down the road, the spirits will see to it that they be gifted themselves. Maybe by someone other than their younger sibling, but gifted all the same. Did you also notice that the older sibling only took what their younger sibling needed, so that everyone got some? Try that on in America where siblings fight over the 15 red crayons the other won’t share. It’s just a different way of thinking here. It’s cyclical and reciprocal, not winner take all.”

I thought back on my own childhood. I have a younger sister and we were always fighting. I wanted the bigger piece of cake, I wanted the newest toy, I wanted the attention —and as the oldest, I had felt I deserved it. I felt another sweep of embarrassment come over me. Never once did I consider that others had far less—that perhaps having the most did not make you rich but instead exposed your selfish core. These children had more generosity in them then I had seen in my whole existence. I gazed over at the small table on which the children ate. The younger siblings showed their gummy smiles, laughter emitting as their older siblings worked to feed them. The older siblings looked tired, aged

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beyond their years from needing to care for their siblings, but had a smile on their face just the same.

“Anyway, can I ask about the picture now?” Bethany asked, pulling me once again from my thoughts. She picked the picture up from the table where it had been lying in front of me. She stared deeply at the picture before asking, “Who is this man?”

“I’m not sure.” I answered, picturing that day in my head. I had been more focused on the mountains behind him.

“I’ve always wondered. Did you want him in the picture?” I thought back to that day, how I had been trying to get the perfect mountain shot all day, but I knew the man would never move. I had already taken a lot of shots with people and I wanted to try to get a pure landscape picture.

“I don’t think I did,” I answered candidly.

“Can I tell you why I have always loved this picture?” Bethany asked.

“Please,” I replied.

“To me, it represents why I left America. No offense, but I feel like being blunt is the only way to get my point across.” She paused, looking up from the picture, meeting my eye.

“I can handle it,” I promised. She pushed the picture across the table towards me.

“Please look at it while I try to explain this picture through my eyes.” I did as I was told, looking down at the picture, making out as much of it as I could in the emerging light from the sun. “Okay. I have rehearsed this in my head a million times so I hope it comes out right. Look at that mountain, it’s magnificent—there is no denying that. Now, look down at that man. That’s right. Really squint and look at him, holding the bananas that he does not even like to eat. Now, see what I see. A man with nothing, despite years spent breaking his back for people he will never see—and that will never see him. He works right next to this mountain you spent time admiring. In fact, you enjoyed it so much you photographed it for millions of others to see. Yet, he does not get to enjoy the nature he loves.

“Cultures experience nature differently. This man, he can hear the land weeping as fertilizers are poured on it for the very bananas he has to tend to. And he can do nothing about it. He is forced into a life that defies his core morals and that causes him immense

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pain each day, physically, mentally, spiritually, and on other dimensions Americans do not even know exist. Meanwhile, a white woman that owns more than he ever will is behind the lens, clicking away, wishing he wasn’t there. And that…that’s the part that gets me most. This tiny speck of a person, holding up bananas like a white flag, is an imperfection in the photograph. Seeing him takes away from the world you wish to experience. Your wealth would lead you to believe you can only see beauty in the grandeur. But what about listening to what nature is really saying in this picture? To me, the man is saying, ‘Look how small these bananas are in the scheme of things. You want them? Come get them. But take them from here and see what they really mean.’

“You see, what this man hears everyday when he goes to tend the bananas is that he is no different from the land he is on. He is disposable, a means to an end he never benefits from. And each day passed is another day he goes unheard by the very people whose empire is built upon him. That is what I see when I look at this picture. Disposability.

Invisibility. Ignorance.”

I looked up at Bethany, tears streaking my cheeks. “Leah, I know you are not a bad person, and I do not mean to make it sound as though you are. You just do not see these people the way that I do. And I wish you did. But if it were that easy to see, I would like to think the world would not be this way. Out of sight, out of mind. This part of the world is out of sight. You’ll see when the sun comes up what the lifestyle of the wealthy world has truly done here. And I truly do admire your work. You give an outlet for people like me to really see this world at face value instead of the superficial crap the media streams, and that’s the first step to breaking ignorance. So really, I applaud you, even if it doesn’t sound that way.”

“Thank you, Bethany. I just do not really know what to say. The guilt I feel now is immense. I was like 25 when I took this picture and I’d like to blame being young for my ignorance, but I just witnessed five-year-olds with more character in their fingertips then I have in my whole body.” I put my elbows on the table and laid my forehead on my open palms, dropping the picture back on the table and closing my eyes. Bethany’s voice rang clear in my head—“out of sight, out of mind.”

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“Well. Let me tell you what. Keep your eyes closed. Now, picture the last time you were here. How did everything look?” Bethany asked, her voice more soothing than it had been before.

“Everything was as green as ever. Lush. Grand. Serene. I mean… you live here, you know this place can’t be put into words. Black Sands beach brought me back this time. I long to hear the ocean.” I pictured the young girl in my head as I thought of it. “It was like there was some kind of magic in the air that everyone could feel but me. I came back to see if I could feel it this time, but after this morning I am losing hope.” I sighed deeply, feeling the full depth of the pain that brought me back here.

“I hate to say this to you. But it will get worse before it gets better. I want you to think more deeply about this village in particular. What was it like, strictly from a visual perspective?”

“Well, there were huts. Not many. I’d say about 15. Families lived in each. They were about the size of my living room. Dirt paths. A school building. The breakfast area.”

“And what was everything made of?” Bethany prodded.

“Uhm, straw? Palm leaves?” I was caught off guard by the question.

“Was there any trash, per chance?” Bethany asked softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Not that I remember,” I replied.

“Okay. The sun’s out now. Get ready to see the light, and with it, the new reality. Open your eyes.”

I lifted my head and opened my eyes. Bethany was gone as were the children that had crowded the breakfast table. I looked around as my eyes adjusted to the light. That’s when I saw it. Trash. It was everywhere. I recognized some of the labels, especially on the plastic bottles. Next to the fire pit that was used for breakfast was mounds of cardboard, ready to be burned despite the toxins I knew would be released into the air. I ran into one of the huts, looking for Bethany, and saw the beds—old plastic bags stacked on top of layers of cardboard. Feeling sick to my stomach, I began to run. Surely, this could not be real. Before I realized where I was headed, I heard the waves crashing. Black Sands beach. The end to the nightmare. As I passed the final clearing, I fell to my knees.

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Trash covered the sand to the point it was invisible. The water was a sea of plastic.

Dead animals littered the trash heaps, both on the shore and in the ocean. Standing in the trash (in the water or on the land, I was not completely sure—it looked the same covered in waste) was a grown woman. I recognized her immediately. She was the girl in that first picture I took. I stood, in a trance, and walked towards her, stumbling over the trash to meet her. I fell to my knees when I made it to her. She stared straight ahead, towards the ocean, but I knew she knew she had company.

“La escucho,” she whispered, her voice indistinguishable from the wind, to the point I was not sure if it was spoken at all.

Putting aside the risk of looking crazy, I asked, “What is the ocean saying?”

“La escucho,” she whispered again, unmoving. This time, however, the inflection of her voice had changed. It carried with it pain, agony even. This young girl had watched the ocean she had loved turn into garbage from a land she would never know, and with that, she carried the burden of its pain. Tears silently swam down my face as I looked out at the ocean. This beach was supposed to be where I found myself again, where I finally found what I had searched the world looking for. Now that I was here, it was too late. I began crying harder, realizing that even after hearing the pain in this young woman’s voice, all I could think about was myself.

“Leah!” I heard Bethany’s voice calling for me. I stood and made my way back to her.

“When did this happen? How did this happen?” I sobbed, the questions barely understandable.

“When? Always. It’s been happening. Slowly, over time. Why do you think it hasn’t gotten any national attention? What’s one more piece of trash? Nothing, when it looks like this. Nothing, when it’s going off with the other disposable people instead of the backyard.

How? The people that do this do not care about nature. Think about when you came here before. Did you care about nature? Sure, in a superficial sense. You maybe cared deeply about it for a moment in time. But overall, when there are 70 different types of fruits and vegetables in the grocery store at once and the convenience of a quick water bottle, who stops and thinks about what that actually means? You are privileged. You don’t have to.

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We do. She does. Her name is Viajar. It means ‘to journey.’ What kind of journey is one that never leaves this small square of earth? When you’re connected as spiritually as she is, it is the only journey that matters. Do you know why she’s standing out there in the water?

Go ask her.”

Hesitantly, I stepped through the trash until I was at Viajar’s feet once again. “Why are you here?” I whispered, my voice hoarse from crying.

Viajar’s breath caught for a moment. A flash of annoyance rushed over her face before leaving an expression of disappointment. She knew who I was and saw that after all these years, I still did not understand what it was to be connected to the earth, what it was to appreciate the life we are given.

Finally, she released a long sigh. She seemed defeated, saddened that she needed to offer an explanation. “What she feels, I feel. For when we stop and feel the pain that we are putting on her, this ocean of ours, we may try to understand. We see what we are doing…but we see deeper than just trash in water. We see the slow evolution of what has happened, of what is to come. We see the result of a lifestyle I have only heard about. One which everyone thinks I want to be a part of—one which I despise for the assumption. I would never treat her in this way. So how she must live, I too shall live. In your mind, we are one in the same either way. Disposable. Unimportant.”

“Out of sight, out of mind. But never out of yours, on either count,” I whispered.

“Perhaps you Americans are smarter than we give you credit for,” Viajar said as her eyes finally wavered, sweeping over me. She seemed skeptical, untrusting, as if she had only ever known pain.

For a while, we stood there in the silence. I closed my eyes and listened to the waves crash on the trash-covered shore. With my eyes closed, the rushing of water did not sound much different than I remembered when it was clean. I could imagine the beach vividly in my mind—the blue waters standing out in sharp contrast against the black sand, engaged in what I always considered to be a battle for complete ownership. Knowing what I know now, I realized that the tides were never a battleground but instead a place of reciprocal giving. What the ocean had given, the land had then given back. Through this, life was

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created and could thrive. This concept was lost on the American people who viewed everything as a transaction. I shuddered at the thought.

Opening my eyes, I was brought back to present time. The trash that surrounded me was overwhelming, engulfing.

“How does this make you feel?” I asked Viajar after a while.

“Pain. I feel pain that I am a pawn on a chess board that I never wanted to be a part of.

But I also feel pride. If something as beautiful as this beach is going to be taken down, I want to go with it. I am proud that I am able to think that way. I want people to truly see what they are doing. Perhaps adding humanity would help? I am not sure. But nothing has been successful yet.” Viajar stared out at the ocean, her eyes saying far more than her words were letting on. “If a family member were sick, would you still care even if you hadn’t heard of the disease, or if you never saw them? Perhaps science hadn’t proven their disease existed yet, so you did not believe their illness. That family member is this earth— this very beach. It’s my people and others around the world that are weeping the same as I. The disease is pollution, global warming…The result is this. We don’t have the resources to stop this, and those that do are still trying to decide if the illness is real. I have spent my life learning English, hoping to someday mobilize change. But as I’ve watched my family die from the heat in the fields and trash slowly piling up, I felt this sense of it being too late.”

I stood silenced. Embarrassed. I wondered if any of the trash at my feet was once mine.

I realized it did not matter either way. It was here. If mine wasn’t, it was somewhere else doing the same. I began to cry more openly, audible sobs escaping my breath.

“See, now you feel it too. The pain of the violence that has wrapped our town. We are considered at no higher degree than the waste of your land.” Viajar sounded spiteful as she said these words. She turned and started to walk away, leaving me in my despair. I had found what I had traveled the world for. The ability to hear and experience what Viajar had instilled in me 20 years ago and yet, I was left with more dissatisfaction than I had begun my journey with.

“Wait!” I exclaimed, turning back to Viajar. “I have an idea. I cannot fix what has happened, but maybe we can use my platform to make change. I can’t bring everyone

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here to experience this, but I can try to bring this to everyone else.” Viajar looked at me skeptically. “Wait here.”

I ran back to the camp, grabbing what I needed before returning to the ocean and

Viajar. “Hold this,” I instructed, handing her the picture of herself when she was young —the picture that started my career. “Now, go stand on the waters’ edge and hold that picture to your chest and then look at me.” Viajar listened to what I had said. She looked up at me with solemn eyes, unsmiling. I grabbed my camera and snapped the picture.

I looked down at the picture I had captured. Viajar, holding a picture of herself 20

years ago, smiling on a clean beach. Now, she stood in her misery with trash surrounding her, making the landscape nearly unnoticeable. I walked over to Viajar and showed her the new picture.

“I’m going to publish this everywhere. I’m going to call it: ‘La Escucho, 20 years too late.’”

Viajar laughed bitterly. “This will not change what people feel at their core. Perhaps it will evoke sympathy for a moment, but surely you are not naïve enough to believe it will cause a revolution. I want people to see what they are doing, yes, but you cannot come here, all high and mighty, and think one picture will save us—that you can save us.”

Viajar handed the picture of herself as a child back to me before slowly walking back towards her village. This woman stood in stark contrast to the child I had met. She had lost all sense of excitement, of trust that everything would be okay, of playfulness. I felt an urge to run to her, to explain that when the world saw this picture, surely some would reevaluate their choices…but I realized I could not honestly say that change would happen.

I felt the burden of this reality crash down on me, leaving me with one question: what can be done? n

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Author Bios SANJANA AIYAR

is a Teach For India Fellow. She has majored in Journalism, Psychology and

Literature and loves a good story. She prefers writing poetry for the individual experience it allows the reader to have. She usually writes under the pen name kiwiyana.

LILA BOVENZI

is an aspiring young writer and undergraduate student at the University of

Rhode Island. Her areas of study are Spanish, English, and anthropology. She is passionate about incorporating her love of language and human culture into her stories and poetry.

LILLIAN GRACE

(they/them) is a queer interdisciplinary artist from SoCal, currently

attending NYU Gallatin. Their work can be found in Sterling Clack Clack, Humankind Zine, Youth Aspects Magazine, Coffee People Zine, Adolescent Content, Clementine Zine. ‘i am the love letter’ (2020, Tablo Self-Publishing). More at lillianlippold.com.

MICHAEL GRASSETTI

is a student at Bryant University, class of 2021, majoring in Finance.

Born on July 3, 1999, he grew up in Somers, Connecticut. An avid reader from a young age, Grassetti’s literary immersion and affinity for nature and the cosmos inspire his work.

MIKAELA GRESTY

considers herself an “art major guided by a business brain.” Her work

expresses how nature intertwines with the worlds raging within us - mentally, emotionally, politically, and economically. Mikaela aims to leave these thoughtfully constructed pieces echoing in readers’ minds. At Bryant University she studies Marketing, Environmental Science, and Creative Writing. This combined with coaching from Eric Paul, rounds out her perspectives.

W.W. HARRIS

has been published in Voices Israel, Poetry Salzburg Review, Canyon Voices,

and recently came runner up in the 2019 Blue Mesa Poetry Award and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Grindstone International Poetry Prize in 2020. He studied at

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University of Tennessee, Knoxville and DePaul University and is currently enrolled in the MFA Program at Eastern Washington University. He lives in Cheney, Washington with his girlfriend, kid, five cats and collection of guitars.

CLAIRE KUO

is a junior at Columbia University studying creative writing. While most of

her work has been concentrated in nonfiction, she has been thrown headlong into her first real exploration of poetry. Her current writing obsessions include Taiwan, her family, and the multifaceted nature of water.

NILSA LAINE

is a current freshman at Bryant University. At Bryant, Nilsa is pursuing a

Bachelor’s degree in Politics + Law and Global Studies. Nilsa’s hometown is Bridgeport, Connecticut. Apart from writing, Nilsa finds joy in reading, spending time with friends and family, and broadening her knowledge in a variety of topics.

CALEB LEWIS

is a Senior at Bryant University currently living in Whitman, MA. His poetry

is a reflection of the nurturing creative culture fostered by his parents and the influential teachings of Eric Paul and Jana Iampietro.

RILEY MAYES

is a full-time student and essential worker currently residing in Brunswick,

Maine. She is interested in explorations of nature and the self in her studies, writing, and adventuring. Her work has been published in several print and online publications, including Garfield Lake Review, DoveTales Literary Journal, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and Sudden Denouement Collective.

JEAN PAUL MAZLYMIAN

is a second-year university student majoring in English literature.

He enjoys most types of literature and especially enjoys more contemporary works. He is a writer in his free time and only began writing fairly recently, writing mostly short stories and poems.

KILEY McALEER

is from Warwick, Rhode Island. She is expecting to graduate from

Emmanuel College in Boston, MA in May of 2023 with a BA in Writing, Editing, & Publishing.

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REBECCA MEAR

is a senior at Gordon College, where she is an English major with a French

minor. Her favorite genres of writing are creative nonfiction and poetry, and she has pieces published in the Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle and the Vox Populi. Rebecca is a writing tutor in Gordon’s Writing Center and she also works as a remote intern at a Massachusetts publishing company.

ALEXA O’KANE

is a senior at Champlain College with plans to pursue an MFA in Poetry

and Writing for Children & Young Adults at The New School in August. Her poetry has appeared in Pinnacle Anthology (2019) and Willard & Maple (2021), and her debut poetry book, Troubles, premieres May 5, 2021.

NICHOLE PAGE

currently attends Bryant University where she double majors in Applied

Mathematics & Statistics and Literary & Cultural Studies. Page’s work has previously been published in the Bryant Literary Review. She lives in Plainville, Connecticut with her family and pets when she is not at school. She works part-time as a data engineer in the Hartford Area.

MEGAN PETERS

is a senior at Roger Williams University, where she is an editor for

the Mount Hope Literary Magazine, as well as captain of the Swim & Dive team. After graduation, she plans to serve as an Americorps volunteer at a nonprofit in her hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Bryant Literary Review is her first publication.

AIDAN POWERS

(Class of 2021) is from Tewksbury, Massachusetts, and is currently a senior

at Bryant University. Aidan is a dual concentration in both Finance and Psychology, along with holding a student Portfolio Manager position for the Archway Equity Portfolio. After Bryant, his goal is to pursue a career in asset management.

JULIA RABOY

was born and raised in Westchester, New York. She is currently a Junior

at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine where she studies Gender and Sexuality Studies, History, and Philosophy. Outside of school, she loves dogs, her peloton bike, and a good New York Times crossword puzzle.

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EL J REYES

is a junior at Johnson & Wales University, studying Media and Communication

Studies with a focus on media production and screenwriting. Her work has been previously published as a headline in the Stars and Stripes, a daily newspaper for the United States Armed Forces.

CLAUDIA ROSADO

is an emerging poet, journalism major, and English minor at Boston

University, set to graduate in May 2021. She has previously been published in Lowlands Magazine.

LEAH RYAN

is from southern Maine. She is graduating from Bryant University in May of

2021 with degrees in Actuarial Mathematics and Team and Project Management. She is an HRA, ACE peer tutor, and honors student.

MCKENNA THEMM

is currently an MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry student at San Diego

State University. Her poems have been published by the San Diego Union-Tribune, JMWW, and The Stray Branch. She is writing her first full-length collection of poems, based on the life and work of Vincent van Gogh. She is the managing editor at the Los Angeles Review, the production editor for Poetry International, the MFA Director’s Assistant at SDSU, a Content Strategist at Circa Interactive, and a Teaching Associate at SDSU. n

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