babyteeth fall '23 issue 3

Babyteeth Fall No. 3

Editor’s Note Dear bababababababababies,

We are celebrating (crying) over our beautiful last edition of this term.

Hence, our unofficial official theme you will (won’t) see throughout this issue: GLITTER!!!! Roll it up or snort it, whichever way dear ol’ gran made it. Either way, LAST CHANCE to consume our itty bitty babie teef, om nom nom!

But before we go we need to say one thing: as we type this with greasy fungers, we are so indebted to our mighty contributors that are the lifeblood of babyteeth! You all have given us your creepy thoughts and your beautiful dreams, and we are grateful for all of them.

[Pizza update: We are dropping pepperoni by the seams, guys. Send help.

Send napkins. Send sanitary supplies. Take shelter. Don’t call that lady that tells you to put your food away in the libe, please.] (guys brackets means that its happening in real time) Just like seasonal affective disorder, we will return in the winter. When you’re feeling SAD, think of babyteeth! Cause we’re SAD, too, most likely, and PROBABLY MORE THAN YOU. Sorry, we don’t know what came over us.

Excuse us, darlings, we’re doing this because we love love love you. bye from ednitors, sofia “i am not going to be a teacher” durdag

ava “will only ever work for themselves” blaufuss ruby “hates shakespeare and is willing to talk about it” mead adiana “currently hungry, ultimately starving artist” contreras

Contributors <3 Anonymous, Lily Akre, Julianna Baldo, Grace Bassekle, Ava Blaufuss, Billy Bratton, Adiana Contreras, Sofia Durdag, Isaac Endo, Stewie Goon, Olivia Ho, Zaraya Jordan, Ethan Kinsella, Ruby Mead, Abbi Vosen, Max Votruba, Aidan Walker

photography by grace bassekle

I love you

by Zaraya Jordan

billy bratton.

nerede anahtarlari? by sofia durdag Is it the distance of my thumbnail, or the palm of my hand, the space between a word and its translation? I try and try to measure it, to gather what is lost and gained under my fingernails. Or perhaps there is no distance, no equivalency, two separate planes of glass set over each other. My father talks to me in Turkish, where are the keys when are you coming home can i close the door and the language he speaks to me and the language I often respond in, are not the same at all, two unmet hands, two verges that will not join. I think of how his voice changed after a phone call with my grandmother, thick with another accent that faded slowly, over hours. I wonder if by necessity there are things kept behind the door of his childhood apartment in Karachi, and only Turkish, spoken by a familiar voice, will open it. He speaks to me in his first language and there is a doubling—the thing he means to say, and the thing I know he is saying, which is I miss the phone calls with my mother. But I am a clumsy speaker of my father’s language. This is my own fault. When I was a small child, I would cover my ears with my hands and yell at my father to speak English. Maybe I was ashamed at this reminder of apartness, or disliked the idea that my father could belong somewhere else, away from me. I am much older now and reach my hand to the breach between one alphabet and the next, quantifying how one alchemizes a word into something more precious. But it always slips away like a bead of liquid mercury, uncontactable. I sweat over turning iron into gold and fantasize that one day it will be as natural as dreaming. Somewhere, somewhere there is a pureness in me, an untranslatable knowing. I only need to catch it in my hands.

Stollen Eyes - Abbi Vosen