Cellar Roots 2017-2018
Cellar Roots 2017-18 Staff: Editor in Chief: Al Davey Managing Editor: Josi Ezinga Poetry Editor: Abe Vermeulen Fiction Editor: Rhe Reeder Visual Arts Editor: Maria Kornacki Assistant Editor: Tatiaira Herndon Copy Editor: Lauren Ahern Submissions Coordinator: KaylaRose Robison Marketing Director: Smirthi Srinivasan Water Boy: Mo Hijazi
I’d like to thank the Cellar Roots staff for all the love, support, and dedication they have put into this magazine. This wouldn’t be possible without you. A special thank you to Kate Mitchell for being so wonderful in her constant support and willingless to help. Thank you Eastern Echo for giving us the space and resources for Cellar Roots to exist and operate. And thank you to the lovely students of Eastern Michigan University for being courageous enough to share your work with the world.
Most of all, thank you to Al Davey. 05/08/1998-07/03/2018
Table of Contents • Violet Wash by L. Wise p6 • A Gratitude Prayer by Kristen Hudecz p8 • Naive by Rosa Leopardi p11 • Skin Deep and Just Breathe by Sultan Olaiya p12 • Counterrevolution of Nightmares by Taija McBride p13 • Body Language by Maria Kornacki p14 • Coffee Table by Natalie Tarr and Undergarment by Sasha Guo p15 • Gum Wad by Sasha Guo p17 • Speech Anxiety by David Ansorge p18 • NUTS by Brianna Murphy p20 • Perfection and Serentiy by Victoria Anne Rife p23 • Fairy Tales by Sierra Morissey p24 • Roses by Mo Hijazi and Holding it Together and Delicate Harmony by Sara Luckhardt p28 • Eternal Night by Victoria Anne Rife p35 • Re|lief by Tytiana Steele p30 • Collision of Colors by Maria Kornacki p36 • Blue Hibiscus by Gabrielle Dolin p40 • War by Mo Hijazi p41 • Growth and Adulthood by Natalie Tarr p 42 • Ode to Ohio by Zoe Hampton p43 • Synthetic Holidays by Alyssa Schad p44 • Tides by Kristen Hudecz p46 • Domestic Warzone by Alyssa Schad p49 • Almost Pornagraphic byy Abe Vermeulen p50 • Drains by Sasha Guo p51 • Cycle by Sasha Guo p52 • The Bow Lift by Abe Vermeulen p53 • Weak by Mo Hijazi p54
For Al
6
VIOLET WASH
L. Wise “But why bother with diagnoses at all, if a diagnosis is but a restatement of the problem?� -Bluets Maggie Nelson Now it has a name Somewhere to point. Structure. Numbered moments Acting butts Pivoting complications Linear statements in a letter to yourself. There is a you, Associations with sex
over time
7 they don’t What is it not?
love you back
It is not generous. It is not flashing A subjectivity in understanding the relationship Surrounded by night The blue hue Secret dark private Coated in the underground Is only teasing boring? Tease out your personality Find meaning in the danger At the end of the day is it meaningless when it means everything? A place holder for who is no longer here Fucking for Feeling (™) Something missing in this spectrum Viseroul absence dives [deep] Becoming our missing shade of omission Replace this obsession Until It doesn’t exist Until It might be a distant longing Suffering will always be The fabric of this life Until it breaks the fabric of the everyday. This color is pain Trade it for singular saturation “This sadness will last forever” -Vincent van Gogh
8
A GRATITUDE PRAYER TO LIVING
Kristen Hudecz
I’m curious. I want to go on a journey; I want to love and lose and have my heart broken a hundred times over. I want to dance; I want to stretch and balance and be proud on a stage. I want to work hard. I don’t want it to be easy. I want to smile and say “goodbye for now” to a person I love, and know I will return to. I want to spread myself across this Earth; I want to look at the constellations many times with wonder, from completely different places, but always with the same mystic solace. I want to breathe clean air and melt into a stranger’s arms. I want to cry with a stranger again. I want to hold hands
9 and brave something entirely new. I want to walk into a room like it is the opening night of a brand new show. I want to be a little nervous, but tingling with joy, and confusion, and warmth, and anticipation. I want to get angry. I want to throw things and break something important. I want to feel a sinking ship in my stomach acid and a heatwave enveloping my eyes. I want to think my world is ending and hold on white-knuckled to what I love. I want to live and feel everything. I want to be a part of my universe; I want to hurdle through space and time and never feel like I’ve moved an inch. I want to scream sing in a car until my throat hurts. I want to lift my child into my arms and tell her everything will be alright, and someday she will see everything the pain, the anguish, the fury, the turmoil, the whirlwind of love
10 and weightedness, and breaking, and laughter, and sorrow, and intrigue all as something so beautiful, that it will be the sweet candied lullaby that puts her to sleep on her last day. All I see ahead are blinding stage lights and an illusory blackness, stretching infinitely beyond, but I know there is more that is unseen lying ahead, more that I haven’t pained over or charmed in my prose, and in this curiosity, I am most certain that I want every last bit of it.
11
*trigger warning: themes of sexual abuse*
naive
Rosa Leopardi “I don’t wanna be a monster” He says as he pushes her head down in his lap. “I don’t wanna be a monster” He says as he yells at her for not swallowing her pride. “I don’t wanna be a monster” As he sits there and watches her cry. Tears drip down her cheeks until she slips into his next relapse. She loves a monster. This isn’t nonfiction or a fairytale. Monsters exist under a new name: Bastard. Because only a Bastard would take advantage of a heart on sale. “I don’t wanna be a monster” She hears over and over to the tune of pounding on the steering wheel. “I don’t wanna be a monster” She hears as the mirror reflects a wound that will take weeks to heal. “I don’t wanna be a monster” She hears as she wonders if this is really happening… if it’s real. Because now she realizes Bastards are monsters in disguise as the ones we think we need. They are the ones who shape our views of our self-worth. Then use it to keep use from being free, To see how foolish we are to let ourselves get hurt. “You are a monster!” She says as he’s on his knees beginning her for one more chance. “You beautiful Bastard.” She says as a new man pulls her in with a single glance.
12
Sultan Olaiya SKIN DEEP
My First Love: My Sun-Kissed Skin.
JUST BREATHE Ok. I’m..
Ready. Ok. I’m…
Ready. Ok. I’m…
Ready. Ok.
I’m…
Ready.
Ok. I’m… Ready. Hi, I’m Sultan. What’s your name?
13
COUNTERREVOLUTION OF NIGHTMARES
Taija McBride Do you really want to have a revolution? Full of bloodshed, pain, and more pollution You think we can have a revolution? When we can’t even produce proper executions to the problems we have now, Showing our ancestors we’re nothing but wasteful evolutions. Nothing but a fake solution. I can say with great absolution. Gays and lesbians aren’t welcomed into our general institutions. Unless the Constitution is revised or an “idiot” finds a reasonable substitution. I say let’s have a counterrevolution, Get rid of the oh so “perfect” society. Giving people who are suffering from different extreme cases of anxiety. Why is society so picky when there’s a variety? Of different voices with numerous potentials that need to be heard. But cannot because they are too scared. The bullying, the abuse, the feeling that no one cares You can’t even deny that we all have been there The fear deep inside is too much to be compared Who needs dreams when you’re swallowed by nightmares? The stereotypes and years that cannot be repaired. Judgmental people are too visually impaired. We shall all declare this war We shall all demand to be treated as something more More than just useless machines How about as human beings!
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Maria Kornacki BODY LANGUAGE Always asked if I want to “keep my part the way it is” when I go for a haircut. I tell her the middle is fine when she parts it in the middle at the end. I am in particular about where I keep my parts. Though most of the time, I keep it slightly off to one side. Why don’t I just pick a side? Sides often change, though. Perspective, an inner indecisiveness. What is a part? Just a bizarre hairless line separation leading down to your scalp. Receding hairlines. Your spine a connecting line from your scalp to your lower back. We are not defined by lines nor curves, but body language. It’s lineage speaks volumes. A line has minimal purpose on its own, except to divide and be the base of start and finish and here you are in the center of or perhaps off to one side. We are just fractions of a whole.
15
COFFEE TABLE You lay your books of knowledge and your stained cups of tea And your Mother’s old vase, and it’s history on me. My legs are quite wobbly, nearing their topple, I am quite rickety, and not nearly level.
Natalie Tarr
But you do not hear my plea, or my suffering as I sigh, For I am just a table and will work as so ‘til I die.
UNDERGARMENT(2017)
Sasha Guo
“My works involve an interest in observing the mundane, utilizing residual products resulting from day-to-day habits that lend to human comfort and existence in order to transform them into objects that embody both familiarity and discomfort.”
-Sasha Guo
UNDERGARMENT
(CONINTUED)
“I take old undergarments that have been worn out and stained in bodily fluids, dip them into porcelain slip, arrange them into volumetric, lively forms, and fire them to maturity. This piece in a part of an extensive series that seeks to re-purpose and revive objects that supposedly have lost their value into relic-like states and challenges the material worth we place on objects.� -Sasha Guo
17
SASHA GUO
GUM WAD(2017)
“This piece is the result of a found piece of gum. After obtaining it, I transform the soft into hard, the temporary into the permanent, and the repelling into a desirable material through traditional metal-casting techniques. As such, this piece seeks to examine material worth and artificiality, as well as labor and function.�
18
SPEECH ANXIETY David Ansorge
“I made this work to try and describe what it’s like for myself to talk in front of large groups and having a panic attack. It is a depiction of one person’s chin neck and shoulders mirrored, representing a feeling of separation or dissociation, with several tiny hands and arms coming out of the figures neck, representing the feeling of my throat feeling clogged. There is also several vague shapes in the background looking at the main figure. It is meant to be unnerving and or off-putting as the onset of an anxiety attack often feels like for me.”
20
Brianna Murphy NUTS
21
The shooter crunched on frosted flake leaves. He knew his target would appear
at 8:19 a.m. holding his precious loot that had been stolen from him. He replayed the scene in his head. The sliding glass door that led to the kitchen had been left open a crack. He sat on the couch watching ER cracking walnuts wildly. His floor became a beach covered in shells. The door slid open, scaring the man and tossing the bowl three feet into the air. Sacred nuts dropped to the stained pink carpet and one was carried away by the thief! Thinking about the robbery only made him angrier. His blood boiled, turned to condensation, and fluttered out from his pores. He sucked it back up with a straw. On his doorstep this morning, a note read, “see me at the devil’s tree at 8:19, you pussy” in scrawled handwriting. He continued to walk on glass until he saw the crooked, twisted tree he knew the thief was hiding near. Soon he would have his walnut back and experience the satisfying crunch and woody, sweet taste of victory. He knelt behind a fallen log to take aim. As he brought his knee down to Earth, scattered snowflakes collected on leaves turned to liquid and seeped through orange gear.
The shooter checked his Casio watch his mother bought him for Christmas.
8:17 He was early. 8:18 Silence. 8:19
A brown paw came from a hole within the tree. It looked innocent enough…An-
other paw followed and out came a squirrel with both paws in the air. But what was that
22 in its cheek? The squirrel wetly birthed the walnut from its cheeks and held it up in spite. The squirrel began hopping on one foot to the other as if dancing. Don’t insult me! The shooter thought. He lined up the small brown target in his crosshairs pulled the trigger.
A small brown fragment, that almost looked like…what’s that? Florida! Came flying
at the shooter’s eye. A thin, red capillary nicked, and blood leaked into the white. Warm melted glass spilled over the red-rimmed lid, clumped black lashes together, and rolled down frostbitten dinner rolls.
He covered his leaking mucus membrane with his hand and looked to the branch.
He had hit his target. The squirrel was no longer dancing; it was waving a white flag in defeat. He got up and jumped for joy while burrs tugged at his clothing. But where was the shot nut?! He hobbled over sticks and brush to find his treasure. There, scattered under the tree, were the remains of the shattered shell, the shell casing, and three sweet, sweet walnuts. He rolled the dirt covered walnuts in his fingers. He took a bite, happy with how easy the whole endeavor was.
He didn’t even have to crack it.
Serenity “I believe that it is important to always remember that we can find peace wherever we go; we can also be the peace and joy for others. This photograph was taken on Mackinac Island.”
Victoria Anne Rife
Perfection
“Many of us strive to achieve perfection and we can drive ourselves to despair trying to obtain what we perceive to be perfect. However, perfection is all around us. These flowers prove it. As humans, we are imperfect, we will make mistakes. But experience is born from mistakes and with experience comes knowledge.”
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sierra morrissey Fairy Tales
25 I have only one window in my bedroom, and it faces the backyard of our house. The land that is visible through the window is the only bit of the outside world that I have ever seen. All the windows that don’t face the backyard have been completely covered. Our backyard is beautiful; it has tons of bright flowers in all different colors and has several full green trees. This is the only world I know. Well, aside from my home. Our house is huge; practically a castle. From what my parents have told me, it sits on the edge of the sector and is the biggest of all the homes.
The two spaces I frequent most often are my bedroom and my personal library. My
library has several places to sit: a hanging chair in one of the corners, a bean bag chair in another, and an arrangement of arm chairs in the center that sit atop a large circular rug. Every wall is covered in bookshelves that reach the ceiling, and I have every book imaginable. Books about heroes and villains, princesses and frogs, angels and demons. When all you know is a house you’ve never been able to leave, books can really be your escape. I’ve visited cabins made of candy and islands where boys stay boys forever, but I’ve also seen tragedies. Young, star-crossed lovers that ended up dead and massacres of entire kingdoms. I’ve always imagined that my life would be like one of these stories, maybe the ones where the hero goes on an adventure to save their world. Instead I’m more like Rapunzel, never being able to leave her tower to explore.
My bedroom is large, as has bright blue walls. On the back wall is my bed, king
sized with white sheets, and above it hangs a sheer canopy. Across from my bed is a stone fireplace, one of the four in our house. Through a door on the left wall is my walkin closet, and a door on the left goes into my en suite bathroom. My closet is full, mostly of jeans and t-shirts, but there are also dresses and things of that sort for when my father hosts dinner for the Council once a year.
The Council is a group of 5 men and women that run the whole Territory. And be-
cause they run the Territory, they control each of the Sectors. My father is the Ultimate of the sector that we live in, Sector Seventeen. The Territory is made up of 49 Sectors, each with an Ultimate of their own. My father became the Ultimate when he was eighteen,
26 and soon I will be expected to do the same.
I just had my eighteenth birthday, and this year I, along with the recruits from the
other forty-nine sectors, will go to a training facility to learn how to be the new Ultimates. We will take the places of our parents before us and rule our sectors. We just have to learn how to first.
I don’t know all the details of training, but I have been asking my father about it
every chance I get. Sometimes he tells me about his experiences, but mostly he just has a thousand-yard stare whenever I ask. And I can’t ask my mother because she never went through training. But I know she knows something about it; my father had to have told her about it when they got married. And she isn’t good at hiding that she knows, because the first, and only time that I asked her, I could have sworn I saw her eyes begin to water.
I’ve also asked some of the people that work around our house what the facility is
like, but none of them know anything. All they can tell me is that they have heard that it is difficult, but that they believe in me. The only other person I was able to ask about training is Bradley, one of the men on my father’s team of bodyguards. Bradley has been assigned to me so that he can make sure that I never leave the house. He is like a second father to me, always playing games with me and taking care of my when my parents are out of town. Bradley has always told me things about the facility. He says it is in Sector One, and it is a scary building. He told me that he has only been in the facility once or twice when he was training to be a bodyguard, but he said that he remembers always feeling like he was being watched.
If I’m honest with myself, I’m terrified to leave. As much as I want to experience
the world, the things everyone has told me about the facility have almost ruined the thrill for me. On top of my worries about the facility, I have also been nervous about the sectors. I am nervous that they will not be what I want them to. If they are beautiful like I hope, then why does my father have so many bodyguards? And why am I forbidden to leave the house?
My mother makes me the most nervous. Every time I bring up anything about
27 leaving, her face goes blank and my father reaches over to squeeze her hand so tightly that her knuckles go white. Why does she act like this? There must be some reason that she’s so worried about me leaving the house, and I suppose I will find out what it is soon.
The day that I leave is fast approaching, and I have been busy packing. I know that
I have to take practically an entire wardrobe because my father told me that the training program goes from the end of August to the end of February. That’s a long time to go through training; I can’t imagine that there is that much to learn, but I’m sure the council has good reasoning for it.
28
ROSES
Mo Hijazi He came back with a bouquet. “Please forgive me” “Yes, yes I will forgive you! But just this once” She took the roses, and while caressing the pale purple mark on her chest, set them next to the lilacs
HOLDING IT TOGETHER Sara
Luckhardt
DELICATE HARMONY
Sara Luckhardt “The natural world is tied to humanity in infinite ways, and we desperately depend upon it. Nature will thrive without us, yet because our actions can do irreparable damage, we still have its fate in our hands. In my work, I explore this vulnerable tether between humankind and our delicate environment, and my personal responsibility to a shared ecosystem. While everyone should respect nature, not every person feels the need to protect it. How much should I be doing as an individual, and is that enough?� -Sara Luckhardt
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t y t i a n a s t e e l e Re|lief
31 Day 140 Today was more than she expected it to be. Task after task, everything had to be done before tomorrow. There wasn’t a moment where her mind wasn’t scrambled eggs. This was the norm. She was always stressed with everything overlapping with time. Never having enough time to do what she wanted, but only what was needed. It continued to be this way for a while. Opening the door, she began her errands. It wasn’t until 10:13 pm when she stepped back inside of her apartment again. You would think she was an entrepreneur in the making. Everything was always put into place; very neat and clean with purple and gold running through each room. Looking at herself in the mirror she realized that nothing else was to be accomplished, except for a hot shower and laying her face on her pillow. Tomorrow was fastly approaching.
Day 141 Waking up from a tiresome yesterday, tomorrow had come and today has started. Looking on her calendar, surprisingly, nothing had to be done. A resting day had been granted, a day that wasn’t seen so often in her world.
5:20 pm It’s like you’re trapped in a bubble without having the ability to pop it. Pitch black. No way in and no way out. Seconds go by, then a spark begins to peek. As it flies into the air it shoots right back down into the same spot that it hasleft from. “What to do?” It hasn’t grasped the ignition to continue its stream into space just yet. The fiery red path to nothing was blocked. Blocked by an unknown boundary that can only run to a certain level. Then the red starts to change its value, from pink to white, as it travels from one end to the other. The spark has be— “Wait, No! Not there!” It turns back to red instantly.
32 Shooting towards a different degree, the branch begins to attach itself from the end point of the boundary. White projects in the space. Still trying to find its way, it sinks deeper into the pores of a yellow passage. The linkage starts to dissolve like taste buds gripping the particles of your favorite flav— “Yes, I like this one, but what if?” Then it starts to get bigger. The spark, developing into this glowy thread of string. Becoming sticky and attaching itself to the walls of the bubble it pops. The space turns black. The thread breaks and floats into the space of which it has never gotten the opportunity to be in. Trying to reconnect itself, the spark returns and burns the glow in the opposite direction. Its fast pace keeps the heart pumping. Abruptly it stops. A yellow path is seen once more. Without even noticing, the thread feeds off of the broken bonds and the perspective is clear. A new gold path was made and it streamed along the outline of where the bubble was planted. “The closer I get, the more I can control it…right?” It starts elongating and tugging towards the outer surface of the vicinity. Coiling slowly into an upward motion, it surpasses the peak of which it could not achieve before. “Is this it?” It starts to glow again. Sprouting around the space, it almost covers it extensively. However, it still needs that one last bite to be completed. The texture changes as it climbs up the sticky walls of perception. It becomes noticeable. Morphing into a solid, the layers had finished solidifying its meaning. Speaking aloud, “I have now become the Idea, your idea,” said the Neuron.
5:21 pm Releasing stress can come in many ways. She developed a way to express her relief of stress, which was painting. Some people create or listen to music; drive until the road gives out; sit outside or in a dark room with no one but themselves; or meditating and letting the vibe take them to different worlds other than their own. She becomes the Artist as she leaves Earth. She pulls her hair up into a messy bun and begins to work. The pencil hits the page as
33 the Artist begins to sketch. She’s in her prime as a creator, a stubborn one at that. She speaks through her colorful mind as one idea falls to the next. Her system of imagination is pulled from that glowy thread trapped inside the hemisphere of her right brain, the creative side implemented through art and visualization of a virtual reality through one eyes of the artist. What she sees and what she thinks contributes to the concept. She sits in the same location and does not miss a beat of the ticking clock that glares across the room. “I can sit here for countless hours to forget and escape,” she said, as a few strands of her hair flew into her face falling from the bun that slouched on top of her head. The vision appears in her mind and she uses the medium of paint to express the emotion of life. Parallel to the ocean’s current, the curves of the brush separate the sky blue coat against the earthy green thickness. Overlapping continuously, the blue catches the glow from the darkness that centers the composition. The image projected creates these concrete curves. This figure that she’s been seeing in her mind was ready to be born into reality. The silhouette was non-recognizable. It didn’t have a face, but its features were easily displayed. The black form wasn’t specific, but the canvas enhances the figures importance as it hangs on the wall for display. Even though this isn’t a normal soul, it might be normal enough to decipher. “There’s the finished piece, I’ll call it Relief,” said the Artist. Grabbing another canvas, she couldn’t help but to create another. If one finally escapes, could they ever return back to reality? She was so in tune, that she had forgotten about reality. Time had stretched into the next day as you heard the sound of her paintbrush scratching against the canvas. The more she painted, the more a brainstorm was being stimulated. Neurons were replicating out of control and found its way out of the body and into her environment. The glowy thread traveled out of her pores and wrapped around the perimeter of the space until it trapped her. Inside of this glowing object is where she sat. She couldn’t stop as her body felt as if it was being controlled by another phantom unseen. The object attached itself to the surface of her apartment as it
34 sunk into the floor and drove deeper into the Earth’s surface. Soon, she wasn’t conscious of anything that was happening around her and escaped reality. Falling deeper into her own mind, she’s painting anything that crosses the zone of thought. The phone rings.
The branch attaches to the signal of the phone and pulls towards the direction of the sound. The threaded glow unravels from the object and slips back into her pores. She breaths heavily in and out. Blinking twice, she awakens from the phantom’s attachment and taps the phone. The screen projects in front of her.
Day 142 4:44 am “T2, why are you still up?” “I had to get away from the world again, my brain was filled with too many accusations and suggestions. I needed to get away, Rock.” “I know the feeling,” said Rock, shaking her head back and forth. T2 finished her painting. She placed it on this massive long wall in her apartment next to the other 21 paintings she’s made so far this year. It’s not easy finding time to herself anymore, but these represented the stolen days in a world of the Artist.
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THE ETERNAL NIGHT (VISUAL ART) Victoria Anne Rife
THE ETERNAL NIGHT(POEM) Victoria Anne Rife Darkness everlasting, the eternal night, descending upon a springtime’s twilight. Echoed memories enduring to shaken, breathlessly binding, beaten and broken. A cloudy nightmare void of freeing escape, a dark slumber from which I cannot awake. The cringing night, both lonely and longing to silence a sob to shield the feeling. To be left alone to shake and to shiver, to wordlessly whimper and quietly quiver, when neither hope nor joy can bring a light to darkness everlasting, to eternal night.
36
M a r i a K o r n a c k i COLLISION OF COLORS
37
Stone Gray
There he is, standing in the same place with the same helpless look on his face. I cautiously slip through the bunch of people I’m sandwiched between while simultaneously performing a balancing act. My body is tense as a tightrope walker, trying my best not to slip on the scattered patches of ice draping over the sidewalk. I promptly make my way over to him to apologize a second time. His drooping eyelids sink lower and lower over his elusive eyes the more I stare at them. “I’m sorry, young lady…who are you again?” He asked me. His slurred, gravely speech sounded bothered like I had just interrupted his solitary time at the corner coffee shop. Chagrin filled my cheeks. The brittle-boned man I had sworn I shattered to pieces didn’t remember a thing.
Purple Memories came back a few months later more prominent like noticing a bruise days after you’ve fallen on ice. I made my way to my classroom door and saw nothing, but darkness coming from the rectangular piece of glass lined against the side I was walking towards. Where are those 3 people who always come early? Their names still escape me. A power surged from my brain directly to my mouth when I recognized the sign. I foolishly grinned while saying out loud, “Class is canceled” after reading “the following class has been canceled” with my course number written in pencil. “Sorry for any inconvenience.” was typed underneath. My cheeks were slightly warm with embarrassment, though I hadn’t missed class like my heated cheeks seemed to think I did even after reading the sign. I then made a fist and pulled it back to my chest like I had just won a point from a killer serve in a tennis match.
38 I headed back downstairs where I entered. Normally I always go for mint gum, but I was feeling bold, so I unzipped the smallest compartment of my backpack in front and grabbed an unopened pack of Wild Blueberry Twist Trident gum. The color of the packaging has a similar, but lighter hue to blueberries when they’ve been baked into a muffin and ooze out. I tucked the tiny wrapper into the front pocket of my jeans and went back outside. Turbulent rain was slashing down as I had anticipated when I packed my red umbrella that morning. It’s comforting to hear rain fall and sometimes even to be in the middle of it falling if it catches you on the right day, feeling the lifted weight of the clouds when they’ve reached maximum capacity. Just then as I was sloshing my way down the sidewalk, I let out a lion-like yawn and my hardly-chewed gum flipped over my bottom lip and fell to the pavement like a purple raindrop. I laughed at myself in the rain. I almost passed a piece of lined paper flattened on the pavement, but the words somehow jumped out at me. “If you’re reading this, don’t worry about me”. Most of the letters were still readable, but the dark blue pen ink bled so much that the words and heart at the end had sprawled out, taking the shape and color of what looked like a vibrant Jacaranda tree in a parkway. Why did a color that held so much darkness suddenly provide me with the most overwhelming sense of calmness when it bled? Was it the color? Was it the rain? Or was it because I no longer felt the weight of blue and the heaviness of frigid white under my umbrella? “White is light. White is all the colors it does not show. I am white and all the light you see above it,” the old man spoke softly to me.
Black Keys. Keys, keys, keys. Where are my keys? Momentary panic. Pat the sides of your pants. Think hard and then let your thoughts become sound. Convince yourself that thinking out loud helps solve problems faster and act like you’ve got everything under
39 control in attempts to conceal your momentary panic. Duh, I left them in my jacket pocket. The power of the mind. A little late night drive with the music playing. I still forget how dark it is at night in the months following the never-ending winter until I’m actually outside, driving in my car and then suddenly feel the instability of losing a sense. Or at least, I can imagine it. It can be disorienting when you realize you’re closer to the double yellow lines than you thought you were. I pass illuminated “pass with care” signs contrasting against the sky and grayish areas on the road from where my headlights extend their reach. My drive with my mind on autopilot didn’t long before my tires screeched like the sound my CDs in my car make when they don’t seem to want to move forward. Picture this sound 5 times as loud and it matches my shoe slamming on the breaks. I was worried there would be someone behind me that was going to bump into me when I stopped so abruptly, but I looked in the rearview mirror and no one was there. Only me. When my eyes closed, the figure of a deer in front of my car, glaring at me with his glossy-frozen stare was still imprinted under the lid of my eyes as if I had just been staring into white light for too long only to still see aura-like color spots after turning away. But I wasn’t the one staring into the lights. My eyes were shut. I was in the dark the entire time.
blue hibiscus Gabrielle Dolin “This piece was made as part of a series, studying the impermanence of nature and life around us. In most pieces of this series, there can be a found a mandala, a symbol of impermanence, whose meaning ties the organic flower to the geometrical circle. This piece comes from a hibiscus photographed in my grandmother’s garden, and I chose it for its pale indigo hue which compliments the background yellow nicely. The flower depicted is gone, and this painting will be gone one day too. This is the point I tried to make with the piece itself.�
WAR
Mo Hijazi A flower and its petals, A face and its freckles, So beautifully designed. A building and its levels, A war and its rebels, So poorly left behind. A flower void of its petals, A face burned of its freckles, A building leveled of its levels, A war and its victims, So we must all bear in mind.
42
GROWTH AND ADULTHOOD Natalie Tarr This rose will grow through Concrete, after blood and Tears are left to dry in The blinding sunlight, The blinding sunlight Yes, this smashed and neglected weed Will crawl it’s way upward to Bathe in the fires of The day to sit and wait For a drop of Water.
43
Ode to Ohio
zoe hampton
You need Jesus And 50 prayers
“It’s five minutes From my house”
Or maybe just A will to live
Okay, that doesn’t Help much.
To walk through The corn mazes
Pray to Jesus you Are able to find the house.
That are every where. Corn-
You have nothing Else to do.
Easily found No matter where you are
You could find A parade for
Whistling in the wind For no reason.
Some type of food. Maybe apples or
If there is No corn there
Sauerkraut or Beer. You’ll
Will be a farm With animals to
Find them no problem Here in Ohio.
Gock at. Talk to.
We love food more Than our own children.
You’ll do it all until You don’t care.
Thank God that I’m no longer in Ohio.
Directions will Never be harderNo more ‘miles’ No, we use time.
44
ALYSSA SCHAD
Synthetic Holidays
On holidays, my aunts, uncles, and grandparents crowd around our dining room table, decorated with a vase of artificial lilies. The lilies’ pink petals appear silky and lifelike, but when you try to stroke one, the stiff polyester crinkles under your finger.
45 My mother molds her face into a tense smile, brightens it with rosy lipstick, and shepherds us to the door to greet our relatives. When they aren’t looking, she scowls and quietly commands us to join the conversation. If you lean into the blossoms and hope to inhale a honey-scented aroma, the petals only wheeze stale, synthetic breath. Aunt Katherine’s mossy perfume chokes us when we lean in for hugs, and we grimace at each other over her shoulder, pinching our noses and giggling. The stem appears vibrant and healthful but is eternally petrified, like veins in the head of a newborn found frozen under the snow. My mother guides the pre-dinner prayer, extolling gratitude and love for the almighty, even though a week ago she admitted to me that her belief in God had crumbled, and I gnash my teeth through “Amen.”
46
TIDES
Kristen Hudecz In that moment, time stopped. We stood there, shoulders tangled, your head on my shoulder. We were infinite. We entered the room full of mirrors and moved for the sake of living; for the sake of holding a hand. We moved for the sake of being an amoeba. We moved because even in the mirrors, we couldn’t see who we were or what we looked like; We moved because we noticed ourselves in each other instead.
47 We moved for our god forsaken existence in that hour, on that day, in that room. We moved because the tides bounded backward into the sea, and we knew we only had so much time to dance on the soft, forgiving sand before our vacation ended and the weeds, and bottle caps, and broken shells would chase us away again. We moved because our golden hour, even as it died away, had cast warm light onto our scars and made them into something beautiful and unalarming.
We wanted to scoop up soft pools of memory the hours we’d spent in a dream, and take them home in jars as souvenirs, but the tides would come rushing back, and we would leave with mason jars of vacation air instead.
48 One day you would vanish, and your jar would be repurposed for raspberry jam or sold at a garage sale, but I”d keep mine in a shoebox for safekeeping for the rest of my life. I’d save the air for one of my last breaths. I’d only take it from my basement when a far move or an act of God drove me out of my own home. I’d flirt with opening it only on the days that melancholic infinity would surprise me with an overdue visitation. Instead, my guest and I would settle for a cup of tea and tracing the ripples in the glass. Reminiscing with our hands, tracing the cool glass edges and familiar penmanship on the label...
49
DOMESTIC WARZONE Our living room filled with wreckage from when the economy ravaged our family keyboard shop: boxes of dusty, beige piano keys and broken wires, screws, and keyboard parts, smelling stale and dusty. Mounds of old baby dolls with missing eyes and limbs, soot-colored skin, and ratty pigtails pile up in the dining room like a heap of child casualties collected for mass cremation. Maybe someone will buy them, so we can pay our bills or fix our shower. Every cabinet bursts with letters, envelopes, and written notices, warning us that if we fail to pay soon, we will be forced to flee like refugees. Some monuments endure among the war torn landscape: a carving of nude African goddesses hefting a lampshade with their slender arms, a painting of a solemn Chinese woman with skin the shade of a blueberry, and a sculpture of a Greek woman dining on grapes, crafted by Rodin’s mentor. As long as these poised figures remain, beauty will run through our home like sparse patches of wildflowers clawing out of the ashy debris of crumbling cities.
Alyssa Schad
50
ALMOST PORNOGRAPHIC
Abe Vermeulen It’s almost pornographic to tell you that what you are about to read is true, but my body demanded to be written for the first time. I will now hold a coming-out party for it in language. This is perhaps the first “true” thing written by us together:
[hr nose draggd down my whole thigh and i said srry, th smell is just mildew, i frgot to dry ths months ago and it never went back to normal]
51
DRAINS(2017)
Sasha Guo
“Over the course of a month, I showered with slip-casted porcelain drain replicas of my original shower drain. This piece serves as a live documentation of cleansing and collecting and an examination of material values and beauty.�
52
cycle (2017) Sasha Guo
Porcelain, jar, menstrual blood
“Cycle is the live documentation and visual representation of such routine— involuntary, but biological—that comes and goes on its own accord and acts as another layer of intervention in my daily routine. It is a way of displaying the vulnerable, personal experience into a public one, yet it is still confined in its vessels, physically and abstractly.”
53 THE BOW LIFT
Abe Vermuelen
in the beginning, The Middle of the World trembles behind its essential facade: the song as a unit. teeming viola bows make sound tense as a Protestant parade. I breathe up and out a flat cave of paper. sometimes I breathe without knowing it. sometimes my breath is tuned to the edge of serrated paper. I breathe into the gut’s pause and it’s far too easy to foil a plan so it’s messy
my body
can touch herself like trees do
stops when you didn’t
hollow
of skin
to the blunt, she adds.
legs exposed
or will they take it for song
cut my hair
formally busy
inherently
stuck out
in air
writhe it alive the no-song
they’ll take it for instrument exposed belly
still dated
I am drawn to that bravery. I am drawn to the viola’s hike and drop around a note. any note proud at the outset is nipped up and down by minor deviants, manic and depressed cousins which are never essential but always edgy. they extend under the radar. the viola swings up to break. trying to work the sound of tragedy in this language is an effort to promise something like banality ends tomorrow. trying to pin the breadth of tragedy in this language is a gull dropping from its colony into a solid gray lake. like sleepers in your eyes when you finish sleeping, the song digs you up implicated in it. but we were taught nothing of body like its part of the crescendo, or that silence is rest becoming and not a mandate, it had to be lived but then the bow lifted
atomized
on its own
moans
another
if you find yourself stale in the face of an ocean of sounds, you were duped by the unit and should likely stretch your arms. I come from the school of thought that nothing is valuable until you have finally memorized it but we embody being strung out and strung through. impasse can still be the pattern they promised you into. another promise: the viola swings up to break again. the song began behind the essential front of the song as a unit. I was embarrassed to be lost in it. The bow lifted and relieved me. We were both done until I woke up and rose the next morning in a series of liftings just as real as the lights going out each night, the viola breaking, and the song lasting 2 minutes and 2 seconds, which is to say that each time, I wake up in the middle of the world already moving and with it, I resume breaking into the insistence of my pulse.
54
Mo Hijazi weak A proud sensation on the tip of my fingers as I caress it’s textured body. It tells me war stories, and how it can down a beer in under 5 seconds. But I push down on its core. And can feel it squirm under the pressure of my skin. I push a bit harder, and it starts to writhe in agony. I don’t think I pushed too hard, but it’s so Delicate Fragile Weak.