babyteeth winter '24 issue 3

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spring term 2024 edition 3 spring term 202

Dear babies, Well, well, well, what do we have here? A babyteeth reader, is it? We’ve seen our fair share of hooligans, but we’ve never seen the likes of you.

Go on, git! You rascal!! Go away and never, ever come back! Just kidding please stay, we love you so so so so so much and we’ll give you a kiss. And someone has to eat all these bugs we caught. And it sure as hell ain’t gonna be us. No sir, we’re much too busy to sit around and stuff our faces full of bugs! We have art materials to purchase and submissions to wrangle. That’s right folks, we rounded them all up for you and corralled them into these very pages!

There’s animals, there’s dracula, and there’s even a couple of floppy fish if you can catch ‘em! spring has sprung and so have we–for new art supplies. check out our forthcoming emmy-nominated reel unboxing our hot new art supplies for this term’s BABYTEETH WORKSHOP. Be there or , sofia “sick as a dawg” durdag adiana “sneezed underwater and doesn’t recommend it” contreras olivia “just really loves dracula” ho lily “she might be taking a nap” akre

C O N T R I B U T O R S : lily akre, stewie goon, billy bratton, ethan kinsella, owen roth, olivia ho, adiana contreras, sofia durdag, max votruba, sunniva maharjan, ava blaufess, miah francis, E.J. Talbot, elsa snowbeck, noel wang

subway wind by owen roth I have been known to fall in love with places, but this is new. This city’s in my blood like clots. Let me describe it to you: My love is in a valley. If you build a city in a valley, in this way, with mountains all around, it will be hot and muggy all the time. The air learns how to cease to breathe. The mountains hold it in from every side. The mountains hold me in.

This morning I rode on the subway and felt and believed in the wind in the tunnels. Did you even know that the wind made the subway? It took many thousands of years, but it was the wind’s force, it was friction that whittled those tunnels into the concrete.

More and more these days I like to walk along the city’s river, that which made my love’s vast valley. It is shallow now.

They’ve made an even, concrete riverbed and concrete stepping-stones. When I sit there, sometimes I will imagine the concrete becomes a boat. Then I imagine floating down the river, through the southern mountains, and out, beyond the city I so love.

This morning I rode on the subway and likened the tunneling wind to the river, so cool and shallow. I couldn’t imagine that so soft a wind made these tunnels, but then again, if it were stronger, it might have been able to tunnel much deeper, through mountains and out of this valley. I so often ride on the subway, and always I wonder how my life would change if the subway were longer. Today I rode down past my city’s great station, a symbol of distance, of wingspan, of reach. If I weren’t underground, I would see, like a net, all the train-tracks extending beyond this vast valley, my valley, this city I love.

Trains from the great station of my city run along the river. There I sit, beside the river, waiting for the trains to barrel by, and when they come, I stand and spread my arms. I dream of real wind.

Next to the train tracks, in the sun, there is no wind, even when trains race by. There is an ever-present, forceful stillness hanging in this valley, hot and muggy. Here, the air is stopped, like clotted blood. I feel no wind, walking along the river. Nothing, other than the river’s water, flows at all, but there’s a pulse beneath the ground.

This morning I rode on the subway and felt, more than ever before, the sheer power and lift of the wind in the tunnels. Compare it to blood: if the tunnels are veins then the pressure is higher than ever before. This morning I rode on the subway and felt and believed, more than ever before, in the wind. As I stood in the station, the wind whipped my clothes off and lifted my feet off the platform. It flung me through tunnels and showed me no mercy, destroying me, scraping my skin against walls of concrete. I collided with pillars and sides of the tunnels, and still the wind carried me onwards, but as my bones broke and my vision went fuzzy, I shut my eyes tight and imagined that I was above my city. There, so far above the valley, there must be wind like this. I had a vision: I was no longer stuck inside the tunnels.

The wind had carried me into the sky.

I saw the train-tracks grow out of the station.

I saw the river shrink into a line.

Then, high above the mountains, for a second, I thought that I could leave.

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Happiness Como,

is in Minneapolis

Nostalgia is a creative act.

So I imagine the embrace, kind of home.

Warm wood and soft sunlight.

Spiraling up – nice, good, deep.

Beyond this little world, into one much smaller.

Comfort is cool friends, hot summer.

One is much sweeter than the other.

poem lily akre poem lily akre

art miah francis art miah francis

to be kind again by olivia ho

I want to shut doors quieter. To never again slam a door. Behind me. Every room with a lingering smell of peppermint tea. That I carry. In my pockets.

When I carry it I will put it down. I want to put it down.

This world. I want the world to be put down.

I want to touch the world. I want to touch the world with uncalloused hands. I want to smile. I want to smile and shut my eyes when I cross the road.

I want to cross the road. With my eyes closed.

I want to trip. Ash to ash onto my windowsill. Tapping ash on my windowsill. Alone on the concrete. I want to look in on my sleeping body. To look from the window at my sleeping body. To be outside tapping ash onto my shut eyes. My eyes slice down the edges of my face.

If I grease the hinges. I want to shut doors quieter.

maxvotruba

maxvotruba

maxvotruba

mitchporter

mitchporter

mitchporter

The night on the bench Julianna Baldo I was sitting on the island with the labyrinth the other day and watching the geese the other night. It was warm, not warm enough to be uncomfortable but just warm enough to start to get sleepy. As I began to drift off, I focused on a mated couple in front of me.

How do animals love? Does a goose see his lover’s feathers and find their pattern more beautiful than any ripe lakeweed he’s ever seen? Does his partner wait anxiously among the reeds on the nest for her lover to come back, familiar with the specific and eccentric way he tilts his neck as he swims?

Among an entire flock, can a goose hear the inflection of her mate’s voice?

Does she run to her when she hears it and mimics it as best she can? When they fly in their slow and deliberate vees, do they turn their heads every few flaps to see if they are directly parallel to each other?

In a world of predation, guns, smog, fires, and cars speeding down highways leaving feathers in their wake, why pair for life, season after season, when eggs hatch but also when they don’t?

Maybe I have a lot to learn.

maxvotruba

maxvotruba

maxvotruba

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4 edition 3 spring term 2024 edition 3 spri