babyteeth spring '24 issue 2

hello infant, Today, we are separated by oceans, and the robots are winning. Hi, sofia (her leg has been replaced by a cyborg leg, it’s so cool). Hi, adiana (she is chewing fiberoptic gum and procrastinating blow drying her “hair”).

Hi, olivia (she has been injected with turbo-milk and the fluorescent lights are flickering in her bedroom). Hi, lily (she is about to die, and forgot her work-loader juice box machine at home, someone help her!!!) ahhhhh.

We may be distant, but this issue is absolutely electric and interconnected like you wouldn’t believe!! It’s supersonic, catatonic, absolutely: ELECTRONIC! We’ve decided to reject tradition and embrace modernity, baby.

Our next issue will be on a desktop monitor that everybody just has to pass around. Please don’t drop it because we only have one :( many heart emojis from cyber-space! sofia “legs mcgee” durdag olivia “0100100100010010011101101 (don’t look that up it doesn’t mean anything)” ho adiana “domo arigato” contreras lily “beep boop” akre

contributors:

adiana contreras, lily akre, sofia durdag, olivia ho, ethan kinsella, miah frances, stewie goon, kate ward (COVER!), elsa snowbeck, julianna baldo, aidan ‘27, tyler chodera, jyothi nellakra, E. J. Talbot, billy bratton, ruby dirks!

ΉΣ ΉΣ ΉΛƧ ΉΛƧ Λ Λ MΣƧƧΛGΣ MΣƧƧΛGΣ FЯӨM FЯӨM ƬΉΣ ƬΉΣ GӨDƧ GӨDƧ H i St ew i e ! !

This is very urgent. I’m a sophomore Carleton student who wants to declare Classics! The problem is, I can’t declare unless I get a hot, sexy babe to bring as my date to bring to the Classics social!!! Please help.

XOXO

C i c ero Dear Cicero, First off, you’re gonna wanna get a fellow classics major as your hot date; they’ll be used to the blood drinking and all other cult initiation rituals, so there will be no need for any mollifying drugs. And, luckily for you, sexy classics babes are all cut from the same chiton cloth! All you’ll need are some olives for eyes and a coupla verses of Homer tatted across your forehead and you’ll find yourself up to your ears in prospective dates that won’t be able to keep their eyes off you. Worse comes to worse... mention aqueducts! Oh man, love is always but a dead language away.

Love,

Stewie Weatherby Goon

STEWIE HELP!

Hello Stewie, Hope you are doing goony. I have a problem. My parents were going to thrown away my pet dog (chewybone300) so I had to bring him to live at Carleton with me. The first issue is that my roommate kicked me out (due to the elephant noises I made in my sleep and maybe also because I ate their shampoo) so I had to take chewybone300 with me. This is Wantson Phyers writing by the way, apologies for the late introduction. So I decided to move into the bathtub rooms on 2nd Myers so me and chewybone300 could each have our own rooms and bathbeds. The first night I was snuggly tucked under my favorite temperature of water (87°F) and quickly fell asleep. Unfortunately chewybone300’s water was very cold (33°F) and chewybone300 is cold blooded so anything he touches gets slightly colder. When I woke up the next day (12:04 am) chewybone300 was frozen. I need advice on how I should go about freeing my pet dog (chewybone300).

Should I remove the bathtub? Should I stick him in the microwave to thaw him out? Should I give into my parents wishes and throw him out? Don’t say yes to the last question I started crying even writing it out. Please help me find a solution to save my pet dog (chewybone300).

Yours goony, Wantson Phyers

STEWIE HELPS.

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aidan ‘27

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julianna baldo

BEDROOMSPAGE

OLIVIA’25

The chapel is unlocked. Now we are knee to knee in the pews, telling secrets, the best and most precious currency.

We are trying to figure out where happiness is. We think it might be at the U of M. There is someone playing the organ. I’m also not supposed to be here, he tells us, and we clap. It feels like waiting for a service that will never start. The music hangs thick in the air, like a pleasant fog.

This is cleansing us, we say. We love to say things like that. I want to cry, but I won’t.

[sofia durdag] this is a pieta

fr o m

th

en

ethe rlan ds. a

gre i vi

ng m ar y

crad

les a dea d jesus. she misses him very much.

friday friday

photography by ava blaufuss

friday

Lying in my lap on the steps of the chapel, a little Pietà of you and me, if you squint.

I love you and I tell you so.

I imagine us clad in white marble, in gold, trapped like flies in amber. The world is gentle at midnight, soft and smeared at its edges.

You cry and it feels vaguely holy.

There is so much more time at midnight, so much that I don’t think it will ever pass.

There is maybe even enough time to feel better, but only maybe.

saturday saturday saturday the moment i start falling i resign myself to it. i guess i give up very easy. my hands graze the edge of the building gently, keeling righter and righter and righter until they grasp the night sky and i am rushing and weightless. i always dream about falling and desperately clinging to crags and tree branches. but i don’t even scream. in my dreams i don’t scream, either. falling, like drowning, whittles me to the narrowest, clearest bit. my mind shimmers like chip of mica. in the gap between hand and earth, the world is quiet and still and waiting, except for me tumbling through it. i would renounce a great many things to make the universe wait for me. and i suppose this is why i give up very easy. even crashing back to earth isn’t bad, except for the metal landscaping divider that i land on. i hear a deep, muted clang as it bites deep into the side of my leg.

it doesn’t hurt too much until i let it. why do i always let it. anyway. my thigh swells and bruises into a massive, disturbing welt that fits just right in my hand, the size and shape of half of a large avocado. it protrudes from my leg like a tumor, or an alien. around my malevolent parasite, a corona of a blue-black sky and constellating scabs flares. i gain an ambling, piratical limp. it looks almost—almost—like a plushy, seductive Bratz doll mouth with punky purple-green lipstick. people never laugh when i tell them this. instead they tell me to please go to the doctor. the nurse measures it eight inches long and eight inches wide, like a prize fish. it hurts like penance, which is to say terribly. i decide to call it baby.

[sofia durdag]

by Billy Bratton

Finch by E. J. Talbot “Dear God, not another piece about birds” Is what I thought to myself when the idea struck Birds are perhaps the most overused symbol in all literature.

But there is a finch outside my window Its song is a melody amidst the din of my thoughts A reminder of the world’s persistent pulse.

But this finch knows not of the weight of its symbolism Nor cares for the scrutiny of poets’ eyes.

It lives, unburdened by the legacy of its kin Crafting its nest, its life, a testament not to tradition But to the survival, the sheer insistence of being.

Even in this observation I am aware This conclusion is not novel.

Mundanity.

Must I be so self-critical?

I’m just a person, with a window, a view And a finch.

Even if a thousand before me have written about finches I don’t think any have written about this one.

Perhaps that is enough.