Yet Another Sunrise

Josephine Hodges Photopgraphy Class of 2025

Beak

Curved and slick black, just a shred of pink tissue still clinging to the intermaxillary, suggestion of a single flat eye— it takes so long to understand what I’m looking at, confusion all but swallows disgust. If a plurality of ravens is an unkindness, and crows a murder, what do I call this bloody fraction of one or the other?

The fat tuxedo cat perches on his brick wall, coughing up filoplume and bristle with indifference. Sweet thing that he is, he tumbles down at the sight of me and rubs red-stained jowls against my calf. My hesitant fingers touch his fur, and I fight the insane urge to ask What did you do with the rest of it, you brute? The meat and viscera, at least, bend to inference, but what of the hollow bones provisioned for flight? What of the stiff coverts and primaries that would have splintered and scratched my pet’s tender mouth? What small violence unmade a delicate skull? And why not see it through, why leave behind this foul spot on the lawn to remind me of things I’d rather forget: the intricacies of anatomy, the shape and force of a sweet thing’s bite, this awful dead eye to watch me as I walk away?

The cat tires of my distracted caresses and tracks back through his mess to reach a sunspot. He rolls to expose his soft belly, a chiding reminder: I was hungry. I was bored.

I heard the voice

I heard her calling again A soft whisper in the dark

I forget her name, but I know her voice

She tells me things

I wonder if she smiles when she does Do you think she has a face?

If she did I might remember her name

I bet it’s a beautiful face

Glowing. Pearlescent and pristine as porcelain

She called me beautiful once

I clung to that compliment—milked it for all it was worth It didn’t fill the hole in my chest

But maybe I could spread it across the bottom? Coat it with something close to comfortable

I wish she told me more nice things

And I hope she smiles when she does.

Elizabeth Norris

Class of 2022

A Seat At The Table

Yarn, ribbon, and acrylic Class of 2021

Clonycavan Man

The swamp’s cacophony silenced as he trailed her to the mud, crooning sweet nothings as he beheld her olive face saying: (he knows he shouldn’t be here, in the muck, away from the safety of the home— Love, he’s been warned of sirensong, of the women who drag you into death and ruin— don’t don’t but he’s so enchanted, and she shines like iron, he knows he’s seen it before—) leave me. So he held on, even when bleeding, or even when the soft peat rose and drained him tenderly

i’ll share my umbrella with you

when it unexpectedly starts pouring in the middle of our class together, and you look out at the rain and say, “fuck. i left my—” but before you even have the chance to finish your sentence, i shake out my own umbrella and i open it up and i stand next to you real close so you’re under it, too.

and it’s kind of bad because the umbrella is only so big (i got it at a school event) so both of us are only really half-covered, but i guess halfway dry is better than all soaked and cold, and our bags keep bumping against each other because we want our books to stay dry more than ourselves.

then i drop you off at your dorm building and you thank me again even though you really don’t have to, and i really don’t mind that my left arm is dripping wet, and we’re both really glad to have spent the time together despite the weather. i blow you a kiss and you catch it and giggle and walk back to your room.

i think i love you.

Emma Greer Class of 2025