Cellar Door Spring 2019

C C E E LL LL AA RR

D OO O O R R

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C E L L A R D O O R SPRING 2019 i

AWARDS POETRY 1ST the transmission is going carter hodge 2ND to grow liam hopfensperger 3RD

american cousin anisha datta i saw a prickly pear cactus today aisling henihan

ART 1ST 810,000 pounds jubal strube 2ND high tide kaleb lyda 3RD arches highway elizabeth smith

FICTION 1ST this old dog savannah bradley 2ND last meal etiquette marc brunton 3RD voodoo doll maya chari ii

JUDGES POETRY

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach emigrated

from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six years old. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Julia is the author of The Many Names for Mother, winner of the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry prize, forthcoming from Kent State University Press in the fall of 2019. Her work has been selected for Best New Poets, the Williams Carlos Williams University Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and New South’s Poetry Prize.

FICTION

Heather Wilson is a recent grad-

uate of the University of North Carolina’s creative writing program. Her work has been published in Off Assignment, an international online magazine for non-traditional travel literature, and Full Grown People, an online creative non-fiction magazine. By night, she produces and performs comedy in the triangle area, and writes fiction about robots, art, & health. By day, she works as a Communications Specialist at the UNC School of Medicine and lives in Carrboro, North Carolina.

ART

Mario Marzán is an interdisciplinary artist

whose work includes drawing, video, sculpture, performance, and installation. His works explore topics such as migratory aesthetics, walking as an aesthetic practice, the study of landscapes in relation to individual identities and histories, and the expanding field of pilgrimage studies. Mario Marzán is a 2018-2019 N.C. Arts Council Fellowship recipient. He has exhibited his work nationally at venues such as The Drawing Center in New York, Seattle Center on Contemporary Art, and the Circuit 12 Contemporary in Dallas.

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STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF TAYLOR LAWING FACULTY ADVISOR MICHAEL MCFEE

POETRY EDITOR ELIZABETH BECKMAN

ART EDITOR SALLY SASZ

FICTION EDITOR ELLEN BAKER

ERIC BROWN

JENNA DEMARTINO

ASHLYN BEACH

TAYLOR BRUNSON

MAANSI PATEL

GRACE KAREGEANNES

MAGGIE FOGLE

DEVYN SMITH

LI-ANNE WRIGHT

ELI HARDWIG ALEX REINHART CRYSTAL YU

TREASURER ASHLYN BEACH

LAYOUT & DESIGN TAYLOR LAWING

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THANK YOU To the Creative Writing Program and Department of English and Comparative Literature, for their ongoing support of student writers and editors and readers.

To Will Blythe, a Cellar Door editor from Fall 1977 to Fall 1978, for his generous support of our print magazine during what he calls “this endless digital monsoon.”

To Bland Simpson, for his benevolent support of this and other undergraduate literary causes.

To Michael McFee, for his decades of dedication to Cellar Door, including distribution of copies to the campus racks, and storage of boxes in his office.

To the artists and writers who create every day, for letting us share their work with the rest of campus, and beyond.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS POETRY Former Archaeologist

MARINA GREENFELD

1

The Year Ends at Lake Lure

MARINA GREENFELD

2

My Most Unbearable Seventeen Minutes KATE MEADOWS

10

the transmission is going

CARTER HODGE

16

Midsomer

AISLING HENIHAN

25

I saw a prickly pear cactus today

AISLING HENIHAN

27

To grow

LIAM HOPFENSPERGER

41

American Cousin

ANISHA DATTA

43

ART COVER

810,000 Pounds

JUBAL STRUBE

Arches Highway

ELIZABETH SMITH

3

Electric Madonna

GRACE GARCIA

9

High Tide

KALEB LYDA

12

Silent Night

CAROLYN BUCKNALL

15

Frosted Glass

ELEANOR BURCHAM

17

Crescendo

ROBERT PIERCE

24

Adorned in Gold

ASHTON ELEAZER

29

Western Wall

LYDIA WEINBERGER

42

Untitled

ALEXANDRA ZUCKERMAN

46

FICTION Voodoo Doll

MAYA CHARI

Until Next Time

PIPER ANDERSON

13

This Old Dog

SAVANNAH BRADLEY

18

Last Meal Etiquette

MARC BRUNTON

30

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4

MARINA GREENFELD

FORMER ARCHAEOLOGIST My mother sifts through silt, polishing clods with the smooth pads of her clay coated fingertips.

The warm wet soil crumbles and fills the creases of her palms like muddy rivers smudged with blood. Pulling bottle caps, broken nails, and hinges rusted shut from deep between the oak’s roots, she loosens tight-packed pockets of locked dirt that spill into her hands like an exhale— hot breath held for too long.

The wide branches hover above her head; their sway is mirrored in the lacy shroud of shadows that dapples her neck and back while she kneels bent across the open, wounded earth.

1

MARINA GREENFELD

The Year Ends at Lake Lure Her fingers remembered the folds of the paper hats she used to make.

Upside down, they were the boats and our tealights were the sailors.

We wobbled them into the dark, and watched them bob before they tilted, tipped, and the paper’s blurry shadow was lost beneath the splotches of light dribbling a greasy sheen over the water. They floated lower on the tide, until the pools of melted wax were finally flooded and the flames hissed out.

Landlocked waves rocked against the dock; from somewhere far across the lake they told us others were still awake and sending off their own years in the round, repeating pulse. We couldn’t see the silver circles swallowed to the lakebed, only the thin wisps of smoke fogging the cool black glass of the now still surface.

2

ELIZABETH SMITH

Arches Highway

3

MAYA CHARI

Voodoo Doll We made the voodoo doll of Madge at a Friday night sleepover at Connie’s house. It helped that Connie’s mom was a witch. Not the weird chicken-legged-hut-living kind, but the nice, normal kind. She’d make charms for Connie’s backpack to control her allergies and stop her from panicking during tests. Connie was convinced she snuck one on there to keep boys away, because she was almost fourteen and she hadn’t been asked out even once, and she wasn’t ugly or a freak or anything. When she talked about this Kylie nodded sympathetically, but I thought that sounded kinda nice.

I was tired of guys and their dirty loud mouths, tired of pulling my coat around myself and walking fast and pretending not to notice them. I was tired of my mom telling me I needed to be careful.

We stuffed an old t-shirt with cushion insides and pulled and punched it into the shape of a person. I’d lent Madge my hairbrush earlier and there were several of Madge’s hairs caught in there, bits of flaky scalp clinging to the roots. We wound them around the herbs we’d stolen from Connie’s mom’s spell cabinet and stuffed them into the doll.

Kylie sewed it together. Her mom had taught her to sew a little bit, before she got sick. Her stitches were big and crooked, but that was okay, because the real Madge kinda looked like she was made out of lumpy stuffing and clumsy stitches, too.

“I feel bad,” said Connie as she held the pin over the doll. Nothing fatal, we’d decided. Just a shallow poke to the abdomen, something that could be mistaken for really bad period cramps. She’d stay home for a few days, and we’d get a break from her and just a smidgen of revenge. “Are we sure?” She looked nervously at us.

4

MAYA CHARI “Give me that,” said Kylie. We envied Kylie’s fearlessness, but Kylie knew she wasn’t actually brave, she just stopped feeling things as much after her mom died. Sometimes that sucked, but times like these it was a superpower. She plucked the pin from Connie’s hand and stuck it into the doll. We could almost see Madge on the other side of town, doubling over.

Madge was my friend first. We went to the same kindergarten. By the time I realized how embarrassing she was, it was too late - she was stuck to me, like gum on the undersides of the desks in homeroom. One time we were sort of fighting and she yelled at me the middle of the hallway, just started yelling, and it was like she didn’t notice at all the way people stared. I was so embarrassed. And then there was that time in social studies when Kylie passed Madge that note and she started crying and then crumpled it up and ran out of the classroom with everyone whispering behind her. Mr. Miller gave Kylie lunch detention for passing notes. Madge didn’t get punished at all. She was totally Mr. Miller’s favorite, so much that there was a rumor going around that they were screwing – obviously that wasn’t true, Madge never even kissed anybody. On top of that there was the way she dressed, like a mom, in long skirts and ill-fitting jackets, and the way she was always the first to talk in class even if her answer was wrong, and the way she had no sense of volume control.

We were just sick of Madge

making us look like losers all the time. I mean, Savannah probably would have invited us to her birthday party if it hadn’t been for Madge. So that’s why we decided to make the voodoo doll.

At first everything went great. Madge wasn’t in school the next day, and it was so nice. It was like how when I was a kid we used to have this neighbor whose dog would bark constantly. And then the neighbors moved and I

5

MAYA CHARI realized how great it was to wake up at seven and hear nothing except the birds and windchimes.

But then it had been over a week, and Madge still hadn’t come back, and we started to worry that maybe we’d stuck the pin in too far and accidentally killed her or something. We decided that Kylie should go to Madge’s house with chicken soup and the social studies notes to find out what was up, and also deflect suspicion, or whatever. Kylie’s dad was proud of her for being so thoughtful. He drove her up to Madge’s house but didn’t come to the door with her.

Madge’s mom opened the door. She looked just like Madge, except old and heavier and wearing thick eyeliner.

She ushered Kylie into the living room and made her a cup of tea.

She hadn’t been sleeping, she was so worried about Madge. Madge felt better now but she didn’t want to go back to school. She couldn’t stop crying. She was convinced that someone had voodooed her.

“Can you imagine?” Madge’s mom said. “She says they hate her, at school.” There were tears glazing her brown eyes. She was like Madge that way. It was one of the most embarrassing things about Madge, how her feelings were always way too close to the surface.

Kylie mumbled something. She drank all her tea out of politeness even though it tasted like BO. The next day at lunch Kylie tried to convince us that we might have overreacted just a tiny bit. It had been a fun thing but now it was time for it to be over. Connie agreed right away. I said that they were totally right and not to worry about it, I’d take the doll home and deactivate it. I told them I’d just learned how to neutralize voodoo dolls in the defensive spellcraft class I was taking at the community

6

MAYA CHARI center.

What I actually did was carefully place the doll in the secret compartment at the bottom of one of my drawers along with that letter from Stevie Rodriguez. Months passed.

I could say I forgot about it, but that would be a lie.

Everything wasn’t all peachy with us and Madge all of a sudden, because life is not a Disney Channel original movie. But we felt bad for her now, so she wasn’t as annoying.

I started hanging out with her more again, not just out of pity.

Then one day we were studying in my room and Madge got bored and started rummaging through my drawers, because she was one of those people with no sense of boundaries.

Normally I would’ve instantly noticed something like that, but I was too busy trying to unsnarl my pre-algebra homework to even notice what Madge was doing until she said “Holy crap, is this a secret compartment? – That is so cool,” and then I looked up just in time to see the expression on Madge’s face as she pulled the voodoo doll out of the drawer.

I opened my mouth to say What are you doing, that’s my private stuff, but I knew it’d be useless at that point.

“It was you,” said Madge. “I knew it was you.” She was already tearing up.

“It was Kylie’s idea, actually,” I said, which was true.

“You know… I thought maybe they hated me, but you…” Madge let the doll fall from her hands. She shook her head.

“You’re mean,” she said. I watched the pain in her face alchemize into anger, “and you just do whatever Kylie does.

Like you can’t even think for yourself. And,” she said, picking up steam, “you think everyone likes you. But it’s just because you’re pretty. I’m the only friend you had

7

MAYA CHARI before you were pretty. And one day you’ll get old and you’ll be ugly and everyone will realize you aren’t worth shit.” In all the years I’d known Madge I’d never once heard her swear.

Madge ran out of the room then, probably going to call her mom. She left the voodoo doll on the floor, which, okay, that was really stupid. I would never have been that stupid.

I got up and put the voodoo doll back in the drawer.

I couldn’t finish my pre-algebra homework. Couldn’t concentrate. Madge’s words played in my head that night and the next day at school. The smiles I got from boys and girls and teachers felt hollower than they had before.

I thought about what Madge said all that day. I thought about it on the bus, and I thought about it when she got home, and I thought about it as I filled the metal trash can in my bathroom with scraps of paper and got the lighter out of the drawer in the kitchen. I thought about it as I took the voodoo doll out of its compartment and flung it into the trash can, and I thought about it as the paper and fabric and yarn caught fire and the flames flickered over the doll until all that was left was ash and scraps of charred cloth.

8

GRACE GARCIA

Electric Madonna

9

KATE MEADOWS

My Most Unbearable Seventeen Minutes In the hall bathroom, the bottle of Bactine sits on the edge of the sink in a nest of plastic and paper. My mother has been mending my brother again.

She drove all night to South Carolina, billboard after bill board flashing by in the rearview, creases beneath her eyes turned blue and lavender.

Just an hour ago, we all sat in the yellow dim of a seafood restaurant. We fumbled along to the hum of the aquarium and its tropical fish, our eyes darting between the silverware,

between the plates. I wanted to say that he’d been on my mind last night, but I did not feel the stolen swiss army knife weigh heavy in my pocket, nor the hot mist

as it drove in rivulets down my back, flooding the grimy dorm tile. While he sat upright in the hospital bed, bandaged arms out like a mannequin, mouth as hushed

as a monastery, I wavered on the brink of conversation, I sunk silent in the gauzy antiseptic stench. I thought of the long dark vessel of time that nobody remembers,

10

KATE MEADOWS where we once curled together in stasis and spoke our twinspeak in the red quiet of the womb. Somewhere in Georgia, a mid wife coaxed

my sodden head out into the cold, scrubbed me all over with a coarse brush and cooed, it’s a girl, it’s a girl, it’s a girl, all while my mother screamed bloody murder

for the seventeen minutes my brother hesitated behind the curtain of living.

11

KALEB LYDA

High Tide

12

PIPER ANDERSON

Until Next Time Of all people on the freeway, why did it have to be the Grim Reaper who stopped to check on her? At least, Ann assumed that’s who it was, considering the motorcycle’s license plate read REAPER. The figure wore all black, except for a helmet spray-painted with a half-exposed brain.

Shaken after her crash into the guard rail, Ann rested her head against the steering wheel and practiced her meditative breathing techniques.

Tap tap. She opened her eyes; it was the face of death hovering on the other side of her window: Gleaming white bone and dark eye sockets that froze her in their gaze. Is this how she died? 25 years old, on a shoulder off Interstate 10 to Tucson? She closed her eyes and a shiver raked her spine. When she opened them again the skull was gone, replaced by a face that was quite human, if not rather sad and lonely. She must have imagined it–– maybe she had hit her head during the crash.

“You okay?” The Reaper asked. He was older and rough-looking, with weathered skin and long, tied back salt-and-pepper hair. He smelled of smoke. Ann nodded, relieved he wasn’t who she thought he was, and climbed out of her car.

Desert stretched for miles in all directions, interrupted only by a ribbon of black road. The Arizona sun was merciless. Squinting, she looked up at him, one hand on the mace tucked inside her purse, just in case. “Thank you for your concern, that’s so nice of you.”

“No problem,” he said. His voice was deep and

13

PIPER ANDERSON rasping. Although cars zoomed by, standing next to him felt strangely intimate. He seemed to gather silence into him like water filling an empty vessel.

“A coyote ran across the road and I freaked,” Ann said.

He wiped his brow. “It’s hot as hell out here.”

“You would know,” Ann joked.

The Reaper smiled without humor. “I would.”

He lit a cigar and on his exhale, said: “Been riding south from the wildfire.”

“The one burning in California?”

“Yes.” Stiffly, he eased himself onto the ground, in the shadow of his bike. There was so much pain in the Reaper’s eyes, Ann no longer felt scared of him. Instead, she felt scared for him. Maybe he pulled over so he could have someone to talk to. She crouched down awkwardly beside him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Under the cornflower blue sky, on asphalt that stunk of fresh tar and radiated heat, he told her about the city devoured in flames. The ash and smoke and fire that closed in on both sides of the highway.

The charred bodies and skeleton cars and screams.

Sitting next to the Reaper, Ann felt too young and unequipped to comfort him. She didn’t know what to say, so she just sat with him, and stayed for a while longer, until the smoke in his eyes cleared a little.

Later, the Reaper watched Ann ride away in a tow truck. She could have easily died, but with the fires still raging, he didn’t have the heart to take yet another life before its time. He would meet her again one day, but hopefully as a figure of mercy, and not terror.

14

C A R O LY N B U C K N A L L

Silent Night

15

CARTER HODGE

the transmission is going drive it into the ground forget the fear of future problems three Christmases so far the engine is failing beneath foot it could go today or next month can’t picture mornings without you the task is to watch and witness and push it over the edge to realize there’s choice and refuse to make it when it goes and it will go whenever every evening we bicker

I could stop but

I don’t

it will simply slow to a stop steer as the gears refuse to change I gave up

wanting to

you’ll be okay-could

you stay with family far beyond the will of a shoe pull over with the momentum the car had your skin is unforgettable sorry for the surprise there’s nothing left but to feel it give up and make sure there’s a AAA card in the glove I’ll never smell your mouth so close again

16

ELEANOR BURCHAM

Frosted Glass

17

SAVANNAH BRADLEY

This Old Dog Fine- if you really want to hear it- I’ll bite. In the tundra of our family, my brother began to freeze like gelid water. One time when I got home from school, I saw him on the couch, arms stretched out, legs all jelly and slack, useless drool spilling off the tongue, ceiling fan whirring against the current of heat. When I went to shake him awake he opened his eyes and screamed, then I screamed back, a reflex, and our mother spent two hours rocking him in her arms until he couldn’t take it anymore and started screeching again, the sound deafening the whole neighborhood. That’s when I brought our spaniel, Justicehirsute and pot-bellied- over to him, and suddenly the screeching stopped as he raked his hands through the dog’s coat and scratched behind its ears, whispering about how Justice was getting older but still full of energy. My mother gave me a look, a look that I know too well, a look that said “Thank you” but also meant “We can’t do this forever.” And at that moment I had to roll over all the options of the future, all the timelines, all the versions, in that way only people who had a brother like that know to do. And if you yourself are looking for any kind of ending, like me, try A. A Keller, my brother, never gets reprieve from his affliction. That’s what our mother calls it- his affliction- because most people in Leadboro only know the word schizophrenia from the Thursday night CSI: Miami re-runs, during the part when they’re profiling the killer, and she doesn’t want to make things harder

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SAVANNAH BRADLEY for him (or for her). For all the town knew, that’s what Keller was, afflicted, to the vague and blurry point that the other kids at lunch growing up would ask what was wrong with my brother, why he talked to the birds at the park, why he blubbered when the fire alarm went off. I’d shrug and say “Just sick,” then keep on eating my sandwich, then add “Nothing’s wrong with him. Just sick.” And to keep up appearances as we get older, my mother secures him an honest and challenging job at the corner store, where he makes worthwhile friends who introduce him to worthwhile hobbies.

Meanwhile, I get married to my high school sweetheart, Bonnie, and we have a few kids, which I find just as honest and challenging, and through fatherhood, I feel bad for not being as close to him as I should’ve been growing up. So, we invite Keller over for family dinner three times a week until the kids go to college, and he plays with the dogs, and Bonnie picks him up from work every day. Then our mother gets sick, and he eventually moves into the guest room. Then our mother dies, and then the rest of us do too, at our own given times, I suppose. This is the end of the story.

B As we get older Keller becomes less sick, less afflicted, but still a little bit sick nonetheless, and our mother tells all the ladies she plays bridge with that the doctors up at St. Veronica’s were miracle workers while we both know it was the anti-psychotics that finally reeled him in. Keller starts rendering his hands into doing something productive, making art, and by the time he’s made it in Chicago the whole town knows that his affliction was really just the schizophrenia- the thesis of his work. He

19

SAVANNAH BRADLEY slicks his black curls poker-straight to the scalp and starts wearing glasses he doesn’t need. The capital a-p Art People start shortening his name to the round, thick gloss of Kell, or the casual K, which feels odd in my mouth, but he never comes home or calls enough for me to call him anything at all. Sometimes I think he makes some of his work about me, but deep down I know it’s really about our mother, red inkblot holding an ace of spades, forcing a blue shape to spill into the corner of the canvas. You’d feel the heat left in a quiet brush of color just by looking at the damn thing. I feel selfish for wanting to be something more than peripheral to him, but my focus is now on our mother, hooked up to her IV, chain-smoking in a dark room of the house, and I’m not really sure if her sulking is for lying about him all those years or for raising him in the first place. I wonder if she’s seen his art. I never think to ask. She dies, then Keller does, then I find out I receive none of his estate, and then I go, too. This is the end of the story.

C Keller moves to Chicago and does the whole painter thing, but falls in love with an art theory professor named Bonnie, a woman with skin glossed with the buttery polish of expensive creams, a woman with more art in her little finger than in all of Keller’s limbs combined, a woman for whom things were done. By November she’s living in his apartment, but by March he’s already seeing other women on the side, which I find out when he leaves mom’s birthday dinner early before getting the hostess’ phone number. I don’t point any fingers, though, because I start staying in Chicago on the weekends and coup up Bonnie in my hotel

20

SAVANNAH BRADLEY room, where we drink Spanish beer and sleep in one another’s beds. Keller finds out when he sees us kissing at the gallery opening and- to our surprise- gives us his blessing, going on a tangent about how his next installation is centered around the horrors of monogamy. So we get married, just like in A, but on the day we agree on the blue-and-lace cards that read Save the Date for Malcolm and Bonnie McLeod’s Baby Shower, not those ugly pink ones, we get the call to come identify a body they pulled out of Lake Michigan. We end up naming him Keller Jr., and everything continues as in A (you just have to remove my brother from that version).

D Keller Jr., who we call KJ, shares his uncle’s affliction, who is alive in this version and teaching ceramics at the local high school. KJ is coltish, rangy, and giddy to feel the world, just like his uncle, but by the fifth time Bonnie and I feel comfortable leaving him home alone- this time to go to his baby sisters’ dance recital- we come back to a house that smells like turpentine and smoke, walls now a splatter of teal and blood orange, and all the family photos defaced. He cries; says he thought we’d like it, how we were talking about wanting to redecorate in the den. After we send the kids to bed we start making plans for the new wallpaper, maybe the bird print, no that’s too gauche, maybe some thin stripes, no, no, I don’t know, honey, it’s whatever you want, really, I don’t care. Bonnie cuts me off, tells me that she just can’t take it anymore. The months roll on and in the mornings I start dropping the girls off at school and KJ off at Keller’s studio, then I go home, lock my

21

SAVANNAH BRADLEY bedroom door, cut all the lights off and light a Parliament. Everything continues as in A (you just have to remove Bonnie from that version).

E There is no tidy ending. The anti-psychotics don’t take. The screaming gets worse. Our mother does the thing we always knew she’d do, die, and because our father isn’t around and we’ve got no other family, the social worker puts me with one of our mother’s bridge friends and Keller at a residential school two towns over. I visit him on the weekends; he’s made friends, so many that I can’t keep all the names straight, and he’s found some worthwhile hobbies and paints pictures of Justice to pass the time. We both get older and I find out that my worthwhile hobby is sold for $17.99 at the ABC store. I don’t think to settle down, because I figure I’ll be taking care of Keller the rest of my life, but when I get my money in order and make a room up for him in the apartment, Keller doesn’t want to leave. I use every bribe in the book: he’ll get to see the dog; mom would’ve wanted him to be with me; I could buy him some more palettes, oils, acrylics, whatever he wanted. But I do the right thing and transfer him to an adult facility, where we both know he’ll spend the rest of his life (this fact seems to only matter to me). Now the story’s got no mother, no Bonnie, no KJ, and no Keller. I die somehow- maybe it’s all the empty bottles, or I get what mom had, or a bus hits me on the way to work. Keller outlives me, and maybe he mourns me first, or maybe he doesn’t even notice I’m gone at all. I never get to know. Who’s to say if there’s an end to this story.

Who’s to say if stories like this end at all.

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SAVANNAH BRADLEY F Now, then, if you find this all too bourgeois, switch things up a bit. Take Keller and I and put us in the Siberian tundra. Replace making art with baking pastries, or Columbian drug trafficking, or writing the next great American novel, or winning the Tour de France. Make one of us a spy. Give our mother a pair of working lungs. Invent time travel. Kill Bonnie off in the first half (or KJ, if you’re particularly masochistic). Make my brother every schmaltzy stereotype in the book: tortured genius, or sweet-but-“broken,” or all the things he hates, regardless of whatever version we’re in. Make me have the affliction and make Keller the alcoholic, concocting alternate realities about his brother to distract him from our mother slowly dying in the next room. What I’ve learned through this thought experiment, though, is that any way you render it, one thing always remains constant: there will always be a moment, that moment, where I wake Keller up, and he screams, and I scream back, and my brother cries and smiles and brushes his hand through that soft thicket of fur, murmuring to no one in particular “This old dog. This old dog’s still real good.” Don’t forget that when you pick out what happens next. That part’s a cakewalk.

Now pick out the Why. #

23

ROBERT PIERCE

Crescendo

24

AISLING HENIHAN

Midsomer The ocean opens easily as morning glory, stretching to bare its insides, the order of petal-stamen-pistil traded for the chaos of cracked oysters coating the sea floor, of crabs scuttling in golden shadows of fish that glide above, obscuring sun, blind to scavenging, scavenging to live. So much invisible, so much concealed beneath opaque glass of surface tension, whole worlds contained here.

There is nothing tentative in the way she launches herself into depths that don’t belong to her, no timid toe to test how cold it might be this morning, no warning before her hands pierce glass, displacing minnows, first with shoulders, then hips, toes scrunched at the rush of blood that feels like sin. She parts the sea neatly as her hair, which takes on a new form under water, haunting her head, swirling around the eyes kept wide open in the back of her brain, next to the stamps and secrets she collects, little souvenirs

25

AISLING HENIHAN

of sacred spaces, the hollow place between collarbones and the first lie she ever told. Her mother warned her not to change her name or go swimming in her jewels, lest a shark sneak up and eat her alive, and here she is: running her fingers through mud, sifting shells, dragging her belly like a bottom-feeder, praying to St. Antony and scavenging for lost things she’ll never know again, how pine smells after rain, the sting of red ants, her nana’s voice, vinegar.

All this, for an earring she threw away.

26

AISLING HENIHAN

I saw a prickly pear cactus today next to azaleas pink ones like the dress you wore last spring when you spent April hiding in the garden were you hiding from me I looked for you sister scratched my hands on thistles and thorns mistook a bush

for a belle

lost my phone never found you anyway

I didn’t know

cactus could grow here where air is so humid too thick to swim and I forget to breathe when I see flat green pads with big spines

27

AISLING HENIHAN

pink fruit swollen and spiked

it reminded me

of the time we went to the desert and walked a creek bed sat with eyes closed for hours I saw a snake there spooled in shade waiting and after as I shed skin where it bubbled peeled in sun I understood exactly what we were

28

ASHTON ELEAZER

Adorned in Gold

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MARC BRUNTON

Last Meal Etiquette Isaac and Lily were having dinner at the Domani, an Italian place their mother had taken them to all the time when they were kids. Back then they would ring the bill up into the hundreds from appetizers alone, with bowls of shrimp soaked in cream sauce and charcuterie boards weighed down with thick slices of Jambon de Bayonne and Brie. Their mother did all of the ordering but never ate more than a few bites. Instead she’d watch the children from the opposite end of the table, her glass of wine never far from her hand, occasionally dipping a bite of bread into olive oil.

The Domani hadn’t changed a bit over the last ten years. The walls still bore blurred scenes of an imagined Italia, watercolor outlines of Tuscan roofs and Casanova silhouettes. The lights were kept dim, supplemented by the candles in the center of every table. The waiters wore white oxford shirts with black bowties and always knew the perfect time to refill drinks, slipping in between pockets of conversation with fresh bottles cradled under their arms.

“It’s nice, being able to come back every once and a while and have everything exactly as it was,” Isaac said, smoothing his napkin over his trousers.

Lily smiled at him. “Our enduring little slice of Italian kitsch.”

“Don’t be like that. Not everyone can have spent a year abroad in Italy, studying, what was it again?”

“Immersive gastronomy. And I was only teasing.”

Isaac picked up a slice of bread from the basket in the middle of the table. He concentrated on the bread, making sure the butter was spread neat within the borders of the crust.

Lily stared at him. She ran her pinky finger along the rim of her wine glass. She drummed on the edge of her bread

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MARC BRUNTON plate.

“I have a question for you.”

“What is it?” Isaac asked, eyes still down.

“Have you ever thought about your last words?”

Isaac regarded her for a second, his head tilted up in acknowledgment. Then he focused his gaze back towards his bread plate. “Why would I have ever done that?”

She thought about it for a few seconds. “Well, you never know when you might need to pull them out.”

“I’m twenty-six Lily. I’m not going to need last words anytime soon. Neither are you.”

Lily gave a little huff. “You’re no fun.”

“I didn’t come here to be fun. I came here to get dinner with you.” Isaac had lost track of how much time on the phone he’d had spent listening to Lily alternating back and forth from lamentation on life to non-sequitur. Existence is unbearable; what’s your favorite type of chocolate?

The last phone call he could remember had gone on for three hours. He’d had to switch ears every so often as the listening one became sore and sweaty. Isaac wasn’t sure how many words he’d spoken, but he was certain it was under a hundred.

The server came by with Caprese salad and another basket of bread. He was an older man, probably about sixty if Isaac had to guess. Isaac felt pity at the sight of him.

At that age, a man ought to be a patron, not a server. He’d probably been fired from his long-term employment and this was the best he could get, serving bits of prosciutto to the privileged residents of Gibbons Park from sunup till sundown.

“Thank you, sir,” Isaac said with a nod of his head.

He gave the man a closed-mouthed smile. Not wanting to lose sight of his plan for the conversation, he directed the

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MARC BRUNTON attention back towards his sister. “What have you been up to since I last saw you? It’s been about six months, hasn’t it?”

Lily pouted her lips and turned her head towards the window with a flick. “Exactly six. I’ve been long overdue for a check-up. My life could have fallen apart and you wouldn’t have even known.” She avoided his eyes, keeping track of his reactions in her periphery.

Isaac squeezed his napkin into a clump. He held it tight for ten seconds before releasing his grip. He decided he wouldn’t bring up the three-hour phone conversation. “I’m sure it’s been dreadful.”

Lily snapped her head back. “I really don’t know why you have to be like that. Just because I don’t have some fast-paced career like you—” “Do you have some slow-paced career that I’m not aware of?”

“You know perfectly well that I don’t. There’s no point in holding that over my head. It’s not my fault. I don’t know if you know this, but there’s hardly any demand for twenty-four-year olds with Masters Degrees in Gastronomy.”

“You should apply to work here. I’m sure they could put you to work in the back of the house.” Lily opened her mouth to speak but Isaac kept going. “Now that I’m hearing it, it sounds like a good idea. A hard day’s work might make you feel better. You don’t want live off Nathan and our father for the rest of your life.

“Well you’re going to get part of your wish. Nathan and I are finished. I bet you’re happy about that, the prospect of me living alone and suffering.”

“Did you break up with him?”

“Not yet. But I’ve had enough. He’s wanted to sleep

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MARC BRUNTON with one of his graduate students for weeks. You should hear him talk about her. He wouldn’t shut up all last month about her essay on “The Presence of Allusion in Joyce’s Ulysses.”

Lily scrunched up her face in imitation. “If I hear another word about it I’m going to show up to the pizza place where she works and pound her over the head with the hardback.”

“Maybe he likes her because she’s got a job.”

Lily ignored him, as she often did. When they were children, this had infuriated him. They would be going at it in the back seat of the car, fighting over whether or not Isaac’s status as the oldest sibling (his eleven to her nine) gave him any scrap of authority over which place their mother took them for dinner and as soon as the argument seemed to no longer be going her way, she would start talking about whatever movies were playing at the Manor Theater down the street, or what she was learning in Ms. Regan’s social studies class. There was no bitterness, no sense of a lost debate. It wasn’t worth her time—she was going to get her way.

“What are your thoughts on Nozick’s pleasure machine?”

“I haven’t the slightest clue what you’re talking about Lily.”

“Well Isaac, it’s a brilliant thought experiment.

Imagine there was a machine you could plug yourself into that would simulate your reality perfectly, but with the added benefit that you could have anything you ever wanted. You could have feasts with barrels of Old World wine and marbled slabs of Argentinian steak every night. You could have every lover you’ve ever wanted to have, including Abby what’s her name. Oh my god you remember her, right? The one who never paid you the time of day in middle school?”

“I remember.”

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MARC BRUNTON “Whatever happened to her?”

“I have no idea.” In fact, Abigail Blankman was living in a nearby neighborhood, which if pressed on, Isaac would have pretended he hadn’t heard, or rather, asked at the last high school reunion.

“She was the absolute worst once we got to high school. She was one of those people who smiled at everyone so she could win the class president election. And once she got her college admissions letter she wore the school’s T-shirt every chance she got. We get it Abby, you got into Cornell. Honestly, I wouldn’t have gone if they’d accepted me. It’s the lowest-ranked Ivy League. It’s essentially paying sixty-grand a year for a Harvard-reject complex.”

Isaac moved the mozzarella around on his plate with a fork.

He watched the candle on the table flicker. He followed the movement of a drop of wax as it slid down the base.

“Is something the matter?” Lily asked.

“I just don’t know why you have to be like this all the time.”

“Be like what?”

“You’re acting the way you always do whenever I call you. You spit out the first thing that comes into your head and then spit out something else the moment you get distracted. It’s like I’m being read a shallow version of The Sound and the Fury.”

“That’s a really good one.”

“I’m being serious Lily. Why can’t you be for once?”

“Because I’m bored Isaac. I’m so bored all of the time. I thought the least I could do was liven up the conversation.”

Isaac imagined what his father would say if he could hear their conversation. He’d have offered to pay for ballet lessons. He’d have already signed her up for a private

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MARC BRUNTON lesson with the dancers of the Stuttgart. Coach class for the flight over to Germany though, he might spoil her if he wasn’t careful. It would be just like when they were children. Lily flitted from one amusement to the next, a dilettante by age five. Isaac had been there right alongside her.

He put the guitar he’d begged for down after two weeks, and took only five pictures with the camera that had come with seven interchangeable lenses. But never once did he feel compelled to whine to anyone that he was bored.

“You’re being overdramatic.”

“No, I’m not. Do you know what I did yesterday morning? I woke up and sat at the kitchen counter. Nathan poured me a cup of coffee like he always does and then he went off to work. And I just sat there twisting the mug around in my hand, watching the cold coffee swirl around until it got cold. I sat there for four hours Isaac. Do you have any idea how miserable that was?”

“Why didn’t you just get up?”

“And do what, tidy up Nathan’s house? Become a nice little homemaker and have dinner ready for him when he gets back from work?”

“You could pick up dancing up again. I’m sure there’s a local company you could audition for. Or you could find a studio and offer to teach lessons to the younger students.”

“I don’t want to dance. I don’t want to do anything.

Nothing excites me anymore.”

The server came by to clear plates in preparation for the main course. Isaac wondered if the old man resented him.

He thanked him twice just to be safe. The man returned after a moment with their dinner. The same dish they’d ordered every time as children, two plates of linguini in a light truffle cream with an ocean of oysters buried amongst the pasta. Their mother made it clear the first time they ever

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MARC BRUNTON went to the Domani that ravioli and spaghetti of any variety were off the table.

“Excuse me sir, but could I have your name again?”

Lily asked the server.

“Yes ma’am. My name’s Thomas”.

“Well Thomas, you’ve got a wonderful smile. I want to know your secret. How are you so happy?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m that happy. I’m right there alongside everyone else working here.”

“Come on, let’s hear it. Nobody smiles like that without a reason.”

“Smiles are a part of the Domani uniform.”

Lily laughed. “That’s a good one. But I don’t know if I buy it.” She smiled wide and looked Thomas straight in the eyes. “I bet it’s a woman. You’ve got a gorgeous wife waiting for you at home, don’t you?”

“No ma’am, I live by myself in an apartment, about thirty minutes from here. Which I don’t mind, you know? No one knows me better than I do. But it’s always nice to get home after a double. I’ll probably stretch out on the futon, see if something’s on. Maybe order some Chinese food. You get sick of the Italian leftovers after a few years.”

“Well Thomas, I’d give anything to have a reason to smile like you.”

“I hope you can find a reason ma’am. Hopefully this pasta will do the trick. Please enjoy.” He clasped his hands together and paused for a second. “Is there anything else I can get for you all?”

“We should be perfect,” Isaac said. Thomas smiled and walked back into the kitchen.

“You know what? This meal just reminded me of some really good last words.” Lily twirled the linguini around her fork as she spoke. She didn’t wait for a response. “So,

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MARC BRUNTON there was this murderer from Tulsa in the nineties who’d been on Death Row for months. Finally, it came time to send him off, so as per custom he got to request a last meal. And he asked for this ridiculous feast, two-dozen steamed mussels, two-dozen clams, a double cheeseburger, two strawberry milkshakes—the works. And he topped it all off with a can of Spaghetti-O’s with meatballs. But you know what he said right before they killed him? The bastard said, and I quote, ‘I did not get my Spaghetti-O’s, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this.’ What a way to go out. Anyways, I was thinking I should pull a similar stunt with the waiter over this linguini.”

“Don’t you think you’ve already pulled enough of a stunt with the waiter?”

“I was just making conversation.”

“He just served us sixty dollars’ worth of pasta. He doesn’t need to hear you complaining about how hard it is to smile.

If I was alone at that age and still worked as a waiter at this place, I’d probably kill myself. But here you are rubbing your life in his face and then spouting off last words like it’s all a big joke.”

Lily dropped her gaze.

“Feeling ashamed of yourself?” Isaac asked.

Lily didn’t respond. She kept her eyes down and fidgeted with her napkin. Isaac looked at her for a few seconds, then picked up his fork and knife and resumed eating.

“Have you ever thought about it?” she suddenly asked, her voice softer than it was before.

“Thought about what?”

“Killing yourself.”

“Are you kidding me? Jesus Lily. What’re you trying to say?

“It was just a question. Sometimes I think about it.

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MARC BRUNTON What’s wrong with thinking about it?”

“What’s wrong is that you’ve got absolutely no good reason to think about it. Just because you’re bored—” “It’s more than boredom. I’m miserable all the time.

I don’t think I’ll ever be happy.”

“You’re full of it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You just want the whole family to feel bad for you.

You’re never going to kill yourself because that would actually require you to do something. That’d be a first for you, wouldn’t it?’

He stopped. “What’s the matter? You know I’m right.

I’m just being honest.”

“Don’t.”

“You’re the one who got us off on this damn conversation.”

“I mean it.”

“For God’s sake.”

Lily turned her eyes towards the ceiling, focusing all her attention on the light fixture that hung above the nearest table. Her lip trembled, but her face stood stubbornly stiff. Isaac stared into his pasta. The thought of eating another oyster suddenly made him feel ill. He thought of the Tulsa killer, forty-eight slime-covered clams slipping down his throat. He remembered once when Lily had not wanted to finish her meal, how their mother had forced the oysters into her mouth and would not let them leave the restaurant until the plate was clean, how she told her the next morning her skirts were getting too tight.

“I just thought of a good one. Better than the Tulsa killer’s.”

Lily kept her eyes fixed upward.

MARC BRUNTON “Hear me out. We gather the whole family together, tell them it’s going to be a big reunion party. I’m talking third cousins and uncles twice removed kind of big. Then, right in the middle of dinner, you’ll stand up and proclaim to the heavens, ‘You all drove me to this!’ And then you’ll take turns looking everyone right in the eyes.”

“And then I should kill myself, right?” she asked, still turned away.

“I have a better idea. You end the scene by diving on top of the table and shoving slices of Aunt Ruth’s cornbread down your throat. It’ll be bone-dry as usual, so you’ll have to be careful not to choke. But you can’t kill yourself. You don’t want to miss the aneurysm our mother’s going to have.”

Lily gave a little smile to the light fixture.

“I hope you’ll at least consider my idea.”

The siblings sat in silence for a few minutes. Isaac watched as one of the servers ran a bright pink slab of salmon to a couple seated by the wall, who did not so much as look up in acknowledgement.

Lily turned back towards Isaac. “We also need to consider that line would read even better if I delivered it while coughing on cornbread.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

“This is why I wanted to brainstorm.”

“Well we still need to hammer out the details. It’s going to take at least a month to write out all the invitations and plan the food. Since nobody’s going to be free this short notice, we should probably shoot for a date at least a year in advance. I’ll check my calendar when I get home.” Lily nodded in agreement as Isaac continued. “You’ll have to hang around with me in the meantime though, because there’s no way I can plan all this by myself.”

By the time Isaac had paid the bill, it had grown

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MARC BRUNTON dark. Though the warmth of the sunlight was gone, a warm humidity still hung in the air. Isaac remembered sleepily walking to the car as a child, weighed down with food, wrapped in the warmth. During the car ride home, he and Lily would try to see who could stay awake the longest. Sometimes Isaac would try to trick her by closing his eyes like he was asleep, so that she would think she’d won. It always worked, and when he opened his eyes he would see Lily leaned back into the leather of her seat, her head tilted to the side, eyes closed. Only then would he let himself fall asleep, his mind drifting with the soft hum of the highway.

Isaac and Lily sat in silence as he drove her home that night. The only sound came from the radio as it carried on at half-volume. When he looked at her in the passenger seat, he saw that she’d fallen asleep. “Here lies Lily”, he said, allowing a smile. He looked at her, her body leaned up against the door. Then he turned back towards the road. He kept his eyes fixed on the black stretch ahead.

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LIAM HOPFENSPERGER

To grow Devilwood grows rampantly on my mother’s land. Its matte black drupes fall from waxy branches, shriveled and dry. It always seemed to me like an apathetic plant.

In China, osmanthus grows swathes of revered blossoms. I know where my ancient mothers settled, and supposedly the autumns there are peppered with humble orange petals; shattered butterfly wings that smell of apricot.

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LYDIA WEINBERGER

Western Wall

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ANISHA DATTA

American Cousin She parts seas when she comes, wheels tracking country dirt and spilled juleps onto polished floors dotted with your Country’s dirt.

Motherland’s eyes, oppressor’s voice “Home away from home” but mostly just away from home.

It’s been three years, and you can’t help but feel unsettled.

Your night is her day, your flinch is her fight.

She sits at the breakfast table, smacking her lips, Loud and unapologetic, taking up space in a way you’ve never felt before, the tilt of her head a screaming declaration: “I exist.”

Through millions of brown bodies pressing together and apart, trading fleeting presses of palms, brushes of clothes, snatches of words Through quiet lives and closed blinds,

You notice.

She’s unfamiliar—the thought surprises you.

Un-family-er.

But then her lips curve up that well-worn path that your mothers have travelled for so many years

And you know her.

Sometimes, after the sun has gorged itself on dust,

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ANISHA DATTA Sometimes, after the sun has gorged itself on dust, growing orange and heavy and speckled by the day, she sits on the rooftop.

Amongst the wilting flowers and damp sheets, she sways with the wind and squints at something that you cannot see.

“What are you thinking?”

The question perches on the creases of your lips, seconds from flying away.

But then you see the back of her head; Back there, the hair that inspired a thousand fleeting derisions: Messy, Frizzy, A Disaster.

Here, you told her, it was the kind they used to make the hair of the gods, curls and corkscrew helixes too heavy for the wind to carry, blessed by harrowing prayers, with thoughts of their own.

The question lodges in your throat and withers away without a word

And you know her.

She likes to curl on your bed when the air grows still, limbs as lazy as the stray dogs that sleep on your front steps.

When her eyelids droop from the weight of the day, you see shocks of bright purple, blue, green.

In them, you think you might see oceans.

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ANISHA DATTA Wednesday mornings, like a routine the women pass her by and point to her knees— Peeking patches of skin and fraying denim Their whispers cling to her clothes like smoke

And they notice.

You catch your qualms and place them deep inside with gentle, considerate hands, but she wears her anger like a crown.

Down the hall, your language drips from her tongue like the nectar of a bitten peach —Fast, messy, and sweet, eager to consume and be consumed.

And you know her And you don’t.

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ALEXANDRA ZUCKERMAN

Untitled

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CONTRIBUTORS Piper Anderson is a senior English major, minoring in Public Relations and Creative Writing. She’s equal parts Cali girl and Carolina girl. In her free time she enjoys watching movie trailers and eating startling amounts of queso dip.

Savannah Bradley is a first-year English and Media & Journalism major with a concentration in Creative Writing from Charlotte, North Carolina. She is currently the editor of Haloscope, a platform by (and for) young creatives. She loves Tori Amos, Chinese food, and abolishing ICE. Marc Brunton is a senior, double majoring in Public Policy and English and minoring in Creative Writing. He is a firm believer in “The Old North State” and is currently writing an honors thesis in fiction set within its space. In his spare time, he can be found arguing/laughing/snapping with his fellow senators of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies.

Carolyn Bucknall is a North Carolina native from Greensboro who explores the themes of home, family, faith, and belonging through her paintings. She is a sophomore earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Art History. She is particularly captivated by the emotional intelligence of the animal-human hybrids that populate her paintings (many of whom are modeled after her furry friends).

Eleanor Burcham is a sophomore from Edenton, North Carolina majoring in Studio Art and Journalism and minoring in Hispanic Studies.

She loves traveling and enjoys experimenting with photography in her free time.

Maya Chari is from Cary, North Carolina and studies computer science, history, and creative writing. She might finish her degree this semester; alternatively, it might finish her. She can often be found

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eavesdropping in coffee shops and lurking in libraries.

Anisha Datta is a junior Statistics and Analytics major from Louisville, KY. Her interests include photography, makeup, and British panel TV shows. She is patiently awaiting the day it is socially acceptable to go to class in her pajamas, and hopes anyone who might be reading this has a great day.

Ashton Eleazer is a senior from Mooresville, North Carolina, studying photo and video journalism and dramatic art. She dreams of being a freelance visual storyteller focused on telling stories of migrants and women. She loves sitting by the window with a vanilla bean candle and farmer’s market flowers while reading a good memoir.

Grace Garcia is a first year Journalism and Art History major. She is from Charlotte, NC and can be found backpacking across another country or staying up late listening to old music.

Marina Greenfeld is a junior, double majoring in English and Slavic Languages, and minoring in Creative Writing. She grew up in Naples, FL and Saxapahaw, NC, but now lives in Carrboro with her cat, Maude.

Aisling Henihan is a senior from Wilmington, NC studying art history, geography, and creative writing. She is working towards an honors thesis in poetry and trying not to kill yet another house plant.

Carter Hodge is a senior from Chapel Hill, pursuing majors in Women’s & Gender Studies and Music, and an honors thesis in poetry. They play in their band Dissimilar South, the UNC Bluegrass Band and the Carolina Ukulele Ensemble. Sadly, the white Volvo that has been the subject of multiple poems this year has finally died, and Carter now drives a much more functional Toyota.

Liam Hopfensperger is a senior Biology and Chinese double major, who finished his Creative Writing honors thesis. Apart from writing, he sometimes bakes, cooks, and does visual art related things.

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Kaleb Lyda is a junior Studio Art major from Concord, NC who didn’t realize his love for art until he came to UNC. His recent photographic subjects have ranged from bellybuttons to traffic cones, and he enjoys building semi-functional cameras out of cardboard.

Kate Meadows is a sophomore pursuing an English major with minors in Creative Writing and Southern Studies. She serves as an editorial intern for Algonquin Books and heads the campus organization CampWrite UNC. Kate was born in Warner Robins, Georgia, but has lived most of her life in Chapel Hill.

Robert Pierce is a senior from Arden, NC studying Computer Science and and Creative Writing. He enjoys working on his writing and photography when he’s not lost deep in a video game.

Elizabeth Smith is a senior English major with minors in Physics and Chinese. She enjoys finding new places to go stargazing, dining at Lenoir and playing with her pug, Agatha.

Jubal Strube is a Senior Studio Art Major, who deals in black and white photography because of his dyslexia, making it easier for him to show in photos then words. He is from Rimertown, NC, where he loves being around his family, photographing his life.

Lydia Weinberger is a second-year, majoring in Studio Art and Political Science, with a minor in Creative Writing. She is from Raleigh, North Carolina, and loves dogs, G-d, and other words that are combinations of o, d, and g.

Alexandra Zuckerman is a senior Studio Art and Jewish Studies major from Raleigh, NC. She primarily works in printmaking, exploring process as form and romantic moments in non-romantic relationships.

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INFORMATION Cellar Door, the official undergraduate literary magazine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is published twice annually and welcomes submissions from all currently enrolled undergraduate students at UNC. Guidelines for submission can be found online at http://studentorgs.unc.edu/thedoor. Please note that staff members are not permitted to submit to any section of the Cellar Door while they work for the magazine.

All undergraduate students may apply to join the staff of Cellar Door.

Any openings for positions on the Poetry, Fiction, or Art selection staffs will be advertised online. You may contact us via e-mail at thecellardoor.unc@gmail.com.

SUPPORTING CELLAR DOOR Your gift will contribute to publicity, production, and staff development costs not covered by our regular funding. Contributors will receive copies of the magazine through the mail for at least one year.

Please make all checks payable to “Cellar Door” and be sure to include your preferred mailing address.

Cellar Door c/o Michael McFee Department of English UNC-CH Greenlaw Hall, CB 3520 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520 CONTACT US AT THECELLARDOOR.UNC@GMAIL.COM

FIND US ONLINE https://cellardoorunc.wordpress.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cellardoorunc Instagram: thecellardoor.unc The publication of this issue of Cellar Door was made possible by the generous financial support of the UNC Undergraduate Senate.

© CELLAR DOOR ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2019

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SPRING 2019 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF TAYLOR LAWING COVER ART JUBAL STRUBE POETRY

ART

FICTION

DATTA

BUCKNALL

ANDERSON

GREENFELD

BURCHAM

BRADLEY

HENIHAN

ELEAZER

BRUNTON

HODGE

GARCIA

CHARI

HOPFENSPERGER

LYDA

MEADOWS

PIERCE SMITH WEINBERGER ZUCKERMAN