Chanter Literary and Arts Magazine

Fall 2020

(noun): one who sings, or, the part of the bagpipe that plays a melody

Fall 2020 Macalester College Literary and Arts Magazine St. Paul, MN chanter@macalester.edu chantermagazine.com

Chanter would like to thank the following: Our generous alumni donor President Suzanne Rivera, welcome to Macalester! Maria Bodansky, who was in no way involved in this publication due to her leave of absence Mac Twitter Bisexuals, both ethereal and corporeal Scrum Masters

Cover art: Dalí’s Ghost of Vermeer But Different (acrylic on canvas), Carmen Quintos

Editor-in-Chief: Maya Crowl-Kinney Literary Editor: Teddy Holt Associate Literary Editor: Alice Asch Art Editor: Libby Sykes Submission Managers: Asher de Forest, Lily Duquette Public Relations Coordinator: Aron Smith-Donovan

Staff: Cynthia Aguilar Audrey Bentch Abby Bulger Zoe Felsch Adrienne Korey Cora Lewis Amy Paine Rebecca Porter Zoe Scheuerman Kira Schukar Irene Schulte

Writing ~ I don’t believe in ghosts 7 Maya Crowl-Kinney BEST PRACTICES 8 Anna Švercl Hetzer caramel 9 Aron Smith-Donovan To Resist 10 Ella Deutchman Oranges 12 Hannah Catlin Dorothy II 14 Asher de Forest 2030 East 19th Street 15 Becca Lewis That Bitch Ruth (For Lack of a Better Title) 18 Elyssa Cook Radio Stations 19 Erin Webb Good Yuntiff 20 Jonathan Hauser On practicality 45 Gabe Fisch h(omo)eretic 46 Rachel Warshaw Attendance Required 47 Libby Sykes Emily Dickinson 49 Brennan Drake partners on the mimefield 50 Rachel Warshaw Primal Clown Urges 51 Teddy Holt Unsweeping 53 Ella Deutchman Cosmic Gourds 55 Gabe Fisch For Heather 56 Elyssa Cook to the sparrow nibbling a phlox blossom 57 Kira Schukar Conditioning 59 Zoe Scheuerman Implications of “We” — The Drake Equation 60 Julia Ricks Stone Heart 61 Maria Arreola The Street 63 Adelaide Gaughran-Bedell 2am in early november 64 Erin Webb

Art ~ Conmovida (Touched) 22 Isabel Conde Factory 24 Nicholas Lobaugh Solitaire 25 Sarah Henderson 2 tabs 26 Zarra Marlowe Frightened Weasel 27 Nicholas Lobaugh Reaching Out 28 Lidija Namike Jungle Gym 30 Karina Polacek Self Portrait 31 El Alcala El Puma 32 Lidija Namike The Birdgeoisie 33 Sarah Henderson Fall 2020 Icon Set 34 Malini Basu One Call Away 35 Karina Polacek Girl in Love 36 Madeline Sabin World on - 37 Adam Clark Howl 38 Tobias Gilbert He 39 Zarra Marlowe Kitten 40 Tobias Gilbert Snelling Ave 41 Maggie Jaenicke Joe Lives With Alcoholism 42 El Alcala A Well-Lit Room 43 Carmen Quintos Split Rock 44 Maggie Jaenicke

I don’t believe in ghosts Maya Crowl-Kinney but my father strung up a rope swing for me from an arthritic oak in our backyard when I was eight years old and it makes it sound like the wind is whistling through a gap-toothed smile, and my mother squirrels photos like food for winter because she wants to keep years’ old light locked under gloss print. Hymns from Catholic school live just under my ear drums, and sometimes I hear them as I fall asleep, and the voices of faces I’ve forgotten rise into my mouth. I smell jacaranda blossoms when I taste champagne, and the stench of the soil after rain makes me recite the name of a woman who is long dead. I held my friend’s hand in a hot white emergency room, and now the month of November looks like the flicker of lifeless fluorescents against linoleum. Acetaminophen still sticks in my throat. The world was ending, and I walked through pools of late night light, trying to forget how to say goodbye before the future became a thing of the past. If something must be dead, or alive, how can everything be both at the same time? Is this what it feels like to be haunted?

BEST PRACTICES Anna Švercl Hetzer I tell myself I am leaving and it is the smoke that climbs headfirst out the window, northwest to the home it knows so well. The first time was in a tent, crab grass rolled up in Bible paper. We swore we’d breathe the whole campsite through our bodies practicing smoking, practicing filtering the ground from our mouths. I learned to grow up between my own teeth and fingers. How to hold and light small fires into myself. I am building myself like a tree inside out, the way it gathers itself from the carbon in the air.

caramel Aron Smith-Donovan there’s sunlight through the porch windows, moss on the stones out back, and onions in the cast iron on the stove. you grinned at me when we woke at 11: “we should make some jam today!” this seems a foolhardy venture, if we’re being honest; there’s no evidence to support the idea that we can pay attention to one thing that long. that kind of delayed gratification is a learned skill: “we will sow our seeds today and reap the fruit tomorrow!” but onions aren’t a fruit, and they don’t have seeds, I don’t think. but we can do our best, be as patient as we can, and the reward will be sweeter the longer we wait. the stove is making everything too warm, but I let myself daydream— I am myself, but it is two days from now, and I spread cold onion jam on toast and bask in the light you bring.

Oranges Hannah Catlin There’s a girl with a diamond knife in the park, and her long, white dress is covered in orange juice. She’s eating oranges. Her knife flashes into the fruit once. And then swish! Again! It slides down at a 45-degree angle and pulls out a perfect slice, which she pinches at the corners and bites into merrily, her knife flipped around and held by the hilt. As she eats (and she eats so quickly), laughter ripples out around her. But it barely makes a sound, just dings and tinkers, like a bell heard just next to your ear, so quiet and summoning. Her violent knife dances quickly into and out of the orange. She must have eaten 6 or 7 oranges since you started standing here, gleefully tearing through the flesh, letting pulp build up around her gums. Her hair, you notice now, is so golden and curled. It shines and spirals down her neck and shoulders, and, like a mirror, pulls in a thousand triangles of sun and refracts kaleidoscopically the light into your eyes. Slash! The knife again twirls around in her fingers like a drumstick and Whip! into the rind it goes. The way the knife hits the orange it doesn’t even make sense, in and out and out and in and it never stops, never does the orange resist. She whirls it like a conductor whirls a baton, the knife into and out of the orange as if it were air. She knows you’re standing there. She hears you breathe, deeply in and out and out and in as you watch her, fear crawling up your throat like the dead rising. Some fear you thought was gone and dead rising in you and SWISH her violent, diamond knife holds your eyes, tearing through the orange. And you begin to rock on your heels. She sees you do this and continues her work, it does not slow the swishing of her knife. She is no more or less gleeful than if you hadn’t stopped in shock to watch her eat twelve or eleven or eleven or twelve oranges in the park. You stare and stare and you cannot change it, the merry way the girl eats the orange. It is no care to her, the juice staining the silken lace of her white dress. The citrus streaming off her burning, pink knuckles in rivulets and 10

spirals and spirituals. The drops tumble over each other out onto her white dress seeping into the bones of the knit and flooding the pattern of the lace. Orange, almost pink, the juice pools together, bleeding through the dress and making intricate dalmatian spots and Rorschach test splotches on the train. She wears the fingerprint left by each orange as she eats one after the other and the other after one. You’ve stood so long now your mouth opens to taste the wind. You cannot look away still as the girl does her violence and you, the one aghast, are filled up with it, the diamonds bubbling out of your mouth like foamy drool and your nose stopped up by diamond dust. Crystals fountain out of you while you watch her from your stony perch. You have watched the girl forever, and she has laid out before you the rinds of a thousand oranges like an offering. Her knife, made of millions of fractals, buzzes, its atoms vibrating, alive in her hand.

To Resist Ella Deutchman In yellowing days that slink away from daylight I fall into familiar fears auburn and decomposing at my feet glow ensconced by windows and blue walls can’t compare to aching sunlight setting everything aflame I am building a teepee of wood in my chest harboring heat for deepening nights so I won’t be a dependent of anyone’s half-hearted fire blue gold fingertips tangerine legs crimson chest arms open but not to anyone’s crossed ones or clenched fists smoke whispers trepidation into seams of every sweater but ash under fingernails reminds me bonfire’s ends are not phenomena to resist 12

fatigued and sunk into stars lulling you into the slumber your longing lit you out of on a bed of frosting fears dying life cradles as January sun blooms roses in cheeks

Dorothy II Asher de Forest I dream I’m back on my back that night, rain dewing my face, my arms, my legs. I dream I find those emerald blades again, turf between yard lines, nestling in calf hairs alongside little rubber rocks which cling, too, to my t-shirt’s spine when I sit up— not wake up nor grow up— crisscrossed, placebo sauced, tipping my head to sip warm spring evening. I dream I drink soft heat, the air, the rain, light drops, the purple clouds blended into black sky. A Saint Paul football field was once my Kansas prairie. In older dreams of younger me flying over deserts, ruby maybe, silver, something slipping off my heels, I never seemed to land on the same two feet. Minnesota May may be no more than dreams, but once the dream was real, and I was there, and I was there. 14

2030 East 19th Street Becca Lewis I. Small sneakered feet tiptoe Across the turreted brick edging of 2030 East 19th Street Where grandchildren fill the footsteps Forged nearly half a lifetime before By parents whose feet were just as small When they tightroped over the same boiling lava Over the same gaping canyons That grandchildren are so sure They imagined themselves The rising concrete slabs on either side Of the weathered front door Are the perfect pedestals For angry gargoyles in puffer jackets In itchy hats and oversized borrowed mittens Are the perfect platforms For Grecian statues Of eight- and ten-year-old grandchildren Keeping watch Over Avenue U in the fall Small sneakered feet hop Over cracks in the pavement behind 2030 East 19th Street Where grandchildren bounce tennis balls That have lived through more history Than boy and girl combined Where a postage stamp-sized Square of concrete stained by time Under overcast Brooklyn skies Provides more than enough space for pretending 15

II. The keys on Grandma’s piano speak in musical tongues unlike any other known to practiced ears. They sing somber and sweet, aging familiar melodies like matured wine, pause for luxurious breaths in places where others would never think to stretch time.

The keys on Grandma’s piano haven’t been tuned for over twenty years. They swallow old favorites, curdling major keys like yellowed milk, choke and leave hollows in places where melody was never meant to falter.

The walls of Grandma’s kitchen are papered by ribbons of orange peel fringed at the bottom like carefully chosen clippings from the Times. The cardboard in place of cabinet doors is bent into smiles from years of inhaling heat rising off Rosh Hashanah cooking.

The walls of Grandma’s kitchen are spider-webbed with cracks tally-marking each time Grandma said she’d call for repairs. The boarded up cabinets bow in mourning for the heater that abandoned her and Grandpa when maintaining eighty was no longer easy.

III. Grandma sings “Over the Rainbow” An inch past bedtime And I swear I could float on the glittering ocean Of her voice Until I fall asleep For moons And moons And moons to come Grandma transforms The basement Into a treasure trove Of ancient relics Rusty keys Into uncovered pieces Of rainy day mysteries Faded house dresses Into cascading ball gowns Of silk and chiffon Grandma shrinks Every time I see her She holds my hand In the space between Her sepia-toned fingers And suddenly My feet are small enough To tiptoe across The turreted brick edging of 2030 East 19th Street Where there will always be Just enough space for pretending 17

That Bitch Ruth (For Lack of a Better Title) Elyssa Cook My parents remember getting out of work late that day, the meeting they had with That Bitch Ruth, soccer practice, music lessons, the chili cooking in the crockpot, but we mostly remember the smell of the chill November evening clinging to their coats

Radio Stations Erin Webb I miss the strangest things from home. I miss the radio jingles. “Zimbrick Honda Fish Hatchery Road” echoes through my head at inopportune moments. Sometimes I get a feeling in my chest like the familiar curve of a road I saw everyday or the soothing shape of those buildings against the sky. My heart yanks me back two hundred miles and suddenly I’m on my back in the grass looking up through the giant leaves of the maple in the yard. The contrast of green against the sky and the gentleness of sunlight through the leaves feels like the safest place in the world sounds like my dad calling me in for dinner. Home smells different too. The whole city smells like something undefinable but comforting like the air itself is giving a soft hug after a long day. I miss the grocery stores that always have what I need. I miss the way the street names felt on my tongue the way they painted a map in the air that everyone else could see too. I miss knowing exactly what I meant when I said home. But mostly I miss the radio stations.

Good Yuntiff Jonathan Hauser The bench bent David, its back at a bizarre angle that forced him to either rest his chin on his palms and elbows on his knees or to sit up unnaturally straight. And the suit was itchy too, the shirt inside irritating his skin, but he was crushed between his mother and another congregant, so he couldn’t move to itch it. He curled his toes in his shoes, tapped his fingers on his knee, tried to crack his knuckles. Now the back of his neck was itching, now his crotch was itching, certainly couldn’t do anything about that. All the while, The Rabbi droned on from below the balcony. It wasn’t even a synagogue, rather a church that the Presbyterians let them borrow for the high holidays—temporary housing while the number of congregants spiked for the new year.

…and how are we to look inward when we cannot look outward? Leviticus tells us we should be “clean before the Lord” cleansed of our sins, our regrets, our worries, doubts, fears. But we know this to be unrealistic, and surely the writers of the Torah did too. Surely, God does too. So what are we to do…

Sitting on the balcony across from David, The Clarinetist was engaged, nodding vigorously as The Rabbi spoke. A stainedglass window directly behind The Clarinetist gave him a colorful glow—he almost seemed to float above the bench he was sitting on. David stared at him hard, daring him to look back, or maybe drop his prayer book on the floor. The sound it would make, echoing through the spacious church, bouncing off the walls. The Rabbi would pause for just a moment, but long enough for everyone to know he had heard it. The Clarinetist’s face would turn bright red, he might leave, might get up to go the bathroom, would wipe that smile clean off his face. He wouldn’t play with 20

the Klezmer band on Purim anymore—perhaps he would never play the clarinet again. …yes, this is a solemn day, but that does not mean we cannot find joy. Joy to be here together on this day, even if for atonement. Look up at those in the balcony, or wn at those in the pews. Look at your neighbors, look left, look right… He could feel The Congregant To His Left staring at him. In his periphery, he saw a perfectly bald head, shining in the sunlight. A smile on his face. He caught a whiff of his breath—sour from lack of food or water (or apparently toothpaste). How many times had he seen this man, checking in on his Hebrew school class, walking in and out of the synagogue, delivering some useless announcement as Friday services came to a close? The Congregant To His Left’s head was still fully turned toward him. Hot pinpricks shot into his skin, a bead of sweat ran agonizingly down his back. He turned to The Congregant To His Left, who smiled and clapped him on his back. Startled, he fumbled his prayer book with sweaty hands, dropping it on the floor. The sound echoed throughout the church. The Rabbi paused for the briefest moment (but long enough for everyone to notice), The Congregant To His Left bent down to pick up the book filled with God’s name, and at the balcony across from him, The Clarinetist smirked. …and when we are done with all the reflecting, and done with all the looking inward and outward, what more can we do? I’ll tell you what more we can do: break the fast.

Conmovida (Touched) photography Isabel Conde

Factory ink Nicholas Lobaugh

Solitaire 35mm photography Sarah Henderson

2 tabs watercolor on cardstock Zarra Marlowe

Frightened Weasel digital Nicholas Lobaugh

Reaching Out pen on paper Lidija Namike

Jungle Gym woven silver gelatin print Karina Polacek

Self Portrait leaves, glue, and pen on paper El Alcala

El Puma pen and highlighter on paper Lidija Namike

The Birdgeoisie mixed media Sarah Henderson

Fall 2020 Icon Set pen and ink Malini Basu 34

One Call Away silver gelatin print and tea-toning Karina Polacek 35

Girl in Love plexiglass etching and watercolor monotype print Madeline Sabin

World on photography Adam Clark

Howl pen and ink Tobias Gilbert

He drypoint print on cotton rag Zarra Marlowe

Kitten pen and ink Tobias Gilbert

Snelling Ave watercolor Maggie Jaenicke

Joe Lives With Alcoholism pen and ink on paper El Alcala 42

A Well-Lit Room acrylic and acrylic ink on canvas Carmen Quintos 43

Split Rock watercolor Maggie Jaenicke 44

On practicality Gabe Fisch It’s hard to write poetry about my mother, perhaps because she is so practical. I can barely picture her sitting behind my father, on the back of his motorcycle, flying, down that Hartford road that makes you feel alive and weightless at the top of each hill. The road leads to a church surrounded by trees, where I once mistook a priest for a Jedi. The robed man shook his head and smiled. This, back when the doors at Pick ‘n Save opened because of magic and not because of wires.

h(omo)eretic Rachel Warshaw Is it foolish to trade you for the prayers I used to fold into my sheet corners, sharp like I wanted to cut God in my dreaming? I want to make holy home of you: place of rest. Save me like coupons, darling, put me in a drawer. Place of shame. I should have gone to synagogue more often, I should have learned to pray without getting on my knees. Didn’t Mordechai grow lightning rod into the ground to show Haman (hiss like snakes) that Jews bend for no one? I want to break my back dybbuk for you. I will carry you into the desert, praying only for you to rise. I want to hold you and think Torah scrolls—too tender to be touched by fallible human hands. Make me metal, mend me yad, righteous pricking pointer finger to trace the scripture of your skin (scripture, skin, feels wrong to equate you to something I would so willingly disobey). I want you more than I want to be forgiven. I want you more than I want to be written into the Book of Life. Seal me butterfly within your pages, I will live eternal flame down your spine. Dayenu. 46

Attendance Required Libby Sykes Do bumblebees, like fish, sleep How much time is an item Where does anger go to die Why are smells so evocative Who will teach me to cry from joy Will my memory be remembered How much time is an item How come tenses make me tense Who will bury my body Of whom will you be from? Of whomst’d’ve? From whence? Did you wile a while or sigh a sign Lol ha ha Frowny face winky face lmao When will you learn your future self? When will you forget? Am I future perfect if I’m a pro And past continuous if I’m a con God is an orb Like an Edison lightbulb Or a Tesla thunderstorm Time is a flat earth Like a shellacked booth or a hardwood bar Are social constructs reality Who’s to say it? Is it offensive to be defensive Will corruption lead to better things If I exercise is it exorcism How post-phenomenal is deconstructionist paradoxy What do I smell like to others? 47

Is becoming a verb or an adjective Should I fight to be drafted? How many layers are an onion? Which gland makes me green with jealousy? What system should I uphold? Am I a doer or a beer Who did frame Roger Rabbit? What is what should never be Should I eat it out of sweet charity? Will I serve savory justice today How soon is now actually? Hear me out heretic hermetic Will you listen or just wait to talk? When I yawn am I internally screaming? Which facet of love were you talking about

Emily Dickinson Brennan Drake after Lucy Ellmann the fact that my day started at 1 pm and is going to end at 2 pm, and then will probably start again at 12 am, the fact that I don’t have a schedule, the fact that Pain has an element of Blank, the fact that Blank could be a formal feeling or it could be nothing, the fact that sometimes I’ll feel pain, Funerals, buzzing, Learn More About the Author Here, the fact that Feet should move aside for a beetle, but die for a Fly, or Beauty, the fact that maybe you shouldn’t take all of my advice, the fact that I seldom take my own advice, the fact that if I have anything to say it’s that we should all get outside more, and if you never think about Death well start thinking, 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Emily Dickinson, the fact that I love slants, Light, Rhymes, Truth, the fact that if the light in my window isn’t slanted then I’m probably not going to think much of it, the fact that the Brain shouldn’t be told what to think about, the fact that I have to read the Bible with a microscope because the words are so small, the fact that did they know about Times New Roman font size 16 when they were writing that, Take this Quiz to Find Out Which Emily Dickinson Poem You Are, the fact that sometimes seeing a bird feels the same to me as drinking 3 glasses of wine, the fact that Butterflies could teach swimming lessons, but they definitely don’t want to, the fact that if I share too many clever ideas they’ll say my father taught me everything I know, or they’ll lock me to a Chain, which is kind of the same thing, the fact that the Soul can love staying Home and going out on Wild Nights with you, the fact that the Soul does a lot of her own choosing, Choose One, the fact that the Soul gets to Choose and the Heart has to ask, the fact that do I have to Die in order to find a like-minded companion around here, A Study in the Sexuality of America’s Greatest Poet, the fact that they call my ideas dark but for me they’re just lunch. 49

partners on the mimefield Rachel Warshaw for Cassidy You and I are fools for too many kings. We have sworn our allegiance to a sorrow of sovereigns, a resignation of rulers, a melancholy of monarchs— we have butterflied ourselves into a week of too short motley, mayflied our need to be loved into a sun-up-sun-down kind of tragedy. No one else paints our faces foolish. It is done by our own trembling hands. Self-inflicted hate crime, indeed, the deed is done (and cannot be undone), except by the nimble fickle fingers of Time. We knot and unknot our Gordion goals until we have convinced ourselves that it is the kings and not our hearts that are cowards. Easy to cry tragedy before the sheep have even gone to the field, before we learned the word for wolf, before we had that menopause tropical storm of how good it felt to lie: never to others, only to ourselves. What is a fool but a storyteller? One man puppet show, we are just strings and wood, and wouldn’t we like to be real boys? Wouldn’t we like to prophet ourselves to sea and be drunk down by a big fish until Papa needs to be rescued. Takes a man to pull another man from the waves, don’t you know? Takes a man to know a man. And isn’t that all we ever wanted? To be known men, to be notorious for it, to be wanted like a poster with a reward, a reason to pursue us, silly fools, sitting in the corner, mottled with our motley, bruised with our ripe banana readiness to be— to be— the infinitive. the infinite. the unfinished. a fool is a loose end that cannot be woven in by the end of the play. and so are we. and so are we.

Primal Clown Urges Teddy Holt Doug and I were tossing half-full water bottles behind the Panera dumpster waiting for Paulo’s shift to be over when we saw them go in. Striped, spotted, sparkling, squeaking… in marched the clowns. One wore a plastic flower atop her head, another, the classic rainbow wig. Two moved jerkily together within the same tent-like striped jumpsuit. “Haha, dude! Check out the clowns!” Doug said, wolf-whistling. The elderly clown holding the door for the rest of them tipped his bowler hat in response before disappearing inside. I couldn’t hear him. My unflipped water bottle hung listlessly between my fingers—I could hear the blood pound in my ears. My knees trembled. Oh, I had never experienced anything like this—not driving my brother’s ATV, not watching bad teen porn. The raw adrenaline of desire! I thought fast. “Doug, I’m having a thought.” “Be careful,” Doug said. Who was he, my dad? “It’s hot as balls out here. And there’s clowns in there. Why are we hanging around like losers?” I asked. “Probably ‘cuz we are losers. But I take your point,” Doug said, scrambling up from the ground. “Let’s go do some real loitering.” We made it as far as the foyer before Paulo slipped out of the kitchen doors, heading for us. I craned my neck to see the clowns cram themselves into one booth—there must have been ten of them. I craved their easy gambol. Being a teenage boy was hard. 51

Paulo slapped my shoulder, hard. “Fuck, man, I hate clowns. Let’s get out of here,” he grumbled. I risked one last glance at the gaggle before tumbling with him back out of the glass doors.

On the way back, sitting in the backseat of Doug’s Camry alone and uncrowded, I dreamed of a clown car. Vintage, it would ride low to the ground, and its brakes would squeal. It would be yellow, with purple and green flowers and eyelashes on the headlights and a big red nose. The man with a bowler hat would drive. The twins would insist that I sat between them, despite being connected by fabric. I would sit on their laps, each thigh on one of theirs, but it would be okay—all was legal in the world of the clown car, provided “all” was related to shenanigans and tomfoolery. My clown makeup would sweat off in the heat of the many bodies. My wig would frizz. I would revel… I was getting too excited. When Doug dropped me off, I stood in the muggy driveway and gazed unseeingly at my parents’ Kia Sedona. Before I knew it, my feet had carried me to the Dollar General the next street over. “Will that be all?” the cashier asked and popped his gum as he rang up the red foam nose and the individually-packaged car eyelashes. “Yeah, man,” I said. “That’ll be all.”

Unsweeping Ella Deutchman What to do with the gnawing fear, the knock-knock knocking on creaky doors? Shaky fingers have unlocked and swung them open, padlocks in black bags, keys in the wild. It is hurricane season, my love, our summer skin, the clenching of strong arms are no match to the rickety swinging, earth slamming and shouting. It is enough to make you think you’re not enough, but let the winds ravage these wood slabs on their hinges, let them weather what they will— faces of everything mortal. My love, it lives in wind so ferocious it flushes cheeks it waters eyes it unsweeps all our carefully concocted piles, my love it is a frosty inhale and downed power lines inside-out chill, 53

children know it in their strides, I feel it when I run and cry and all of my doors remain opening ever wider as wind peels paint from the chopped down things we latch over our hearts.

Cosmic Gourds Gabe Fisch For my father, I became a man on a farm field in November with blood to my forearms and beet black organs littered about in a circle. Cosmic gourds pulsing and warm. Like a small town. They grunt, you know—dead deer. Cold windpipes still sing. Sometimes I’ll eat beets and think I’m bleeding to death on the toilet before I remember what I ate for lunch that afternoon.

For Heather Elyssa Cook You said, “If we were prettier, we’d be in one of those… sister bonding stories, like the princess protection program, or something.” “But with weed,” I replied. I didn’t correct you that you were pretty enough; I just sat out on the balcony and sipped some more of my fizzy blue drink and wished that I’d said something better. The waves turned white and foamy against the shore, and I marveled at how blue everything was: the ocean, the sky, the hard soda on the table, your lighter, my pipe. I’m not sure what you were thinking about, but I imagined it was something similar; you’ve always loved the color blue. I was eating my bread bowl from the takeout box using just my hands, while you opted for a fork and knife. While I wrote the poem, you abandoned the utensils for your hands, too. “Bread bowls are the only time I like soggy bread,” you mused. I nodded. The stars danced in my peripheries. The song playing in the background howled back to the wind, “Just sit with me; we’ll start again, and you can tell me all about what you did today!”

to the sparrow nibbling a phlox blossom Kira Schukar pluck it, if you must, snip its slender neck and sip from it syrupy drips. This darling flame, this flower buried last spring— Take it! Tear it from balding bush and just as swiftly drop this one for that. After all those petals bloom fuller than the last, that nectar sweeter than the last one—do you prefer this one or the last one? I have cut them, one from the other. I’ll pluck you another, slice its umbilical cord and drown it in resin. No carbon, no stream, no tempo, no dust nor note, no oil slick or rust will drain and pale and dribble into the earth. I’ll rob it of brevity and brevity’s beauty. I would sooner steal you a gust of wind in a jar.

So I’ll let it wither if you wish. Those darling faces? Let them rot and sink sleeping into the feathered soil. And when I fall from porch swing or desk or branch or blade of grass, when worms nibble my stomach from the inside out, when maggots pluck my eyelashes one by one, I will lie by the phlox blossoms. My fingers will leach blood and graphite. Let it be taken up and spun into symphonies or stems. Pick me up, cherie, then cast me off again.

Conditioning Zoe Scheuerman When you drew and quartered me for the millionth time, I felt my guts spilling onto the track and tried to read your expression while you watched from beyond the barbed-wire fence. We used to call them battles, but high school sports were never wars, and even if they were, that meant you commanded child soldiers. I don’t want you in my head anymore since I walked on broken bones because of you, and I refuse to walk through fire so that you can brag about my burns, but a part of me is still fourteen, idealistic, invincible, and ready to be your perfect cadet, so whenever I think ill of you, she drags me back to that damp, windowless locker room to open my ribs like an oyster and watch me bleed out all over again.

Implications of “We” — The Drake Equation Julia Ricks Leaping and flowing through time and space, we sail on the current of the cosmic ocean where only real travelers dare venture. Past Canis Major, we are the only ones here. The cool fluid stillness full of milky systems and blackened eternal vastness tempt that we drift farther into the speckled void. Oh, and look to the left you can see a school of starfish circulating the Andromeda reef! We are on a voyage. To find others, and to float through the gaseous lagoons of the supernova, looking for life. It might be too late by now. At any one moment, do we coexist in this primordial sea? Did they too strike one another down or head straight for war? Technology and primal emotion, the Achilles heel of intelligence. We sing too loud to hear each other sing. How loud could they sing? How loud do they sing? Are they too simple to swim yet? To sin? Are they single cells learning the ropes of life? We may be far away from them and time is running thin so we may as well pop open that planetary gin and drink to the song of the birth and death of worlds. We watch civilizations improvise jazz in dangerous keys. The midsummer June constellations swirl around our heads while we wonder if we are the last. It makes sense that “mighty” empires must die, be it violence, or ignorance, or drowning too soon.

Stone Heart Maria Arreola It’s a miracle I’m alive today, what with the stone heart beating irregularly in my chest. My whole life I’ve been told I’m unfeeling, cold, incapable of loving. And yet I was able to find others like me, those that are called unfeeling, the people I met at the clinic, but I barely got to know them before I saw them turned. Their turning was slow and imperceptible at first, a stone encasement that then served as a second skin, only a finger or a toe. Eventually it was too difficult to ignore. At the time I was a volunteer at the clinic, no longer a patient. I was constantly moving in and out, a luxury few others had. And Ruthie, although she was Ruth to everyone else, remained angry at the world and difficult to be around. The nurses avoided her, so I forced myself to spend more time around her. I grew to love Ruthie, despite her rough edges. Thinking about Ruthie reminds me of the clinic with its antiseptic smell, its off-white, water-damaged walls, and the tangible loneliness that permeated that place and settled in your bones like a chill. Few came to visit, fearing that the condition was contagious, so I became a daughter and sister to the patients. Unlike them, I was born with a heart of stone. But unlike them, the stone had remained firmly rooted, seemingly uninterested in exploring the rest of my body and resting snugly in my chest cavity. While I wait to see Santa Trinidad and my miracle, I find myself wondering what would have happened if Ruthie had lived long enough for her own miracle. Santa Trinidad has been able to heal even those in the most advanced stages of the illness, all with only her words. I’ve seen it on television, as she leans over in her chair to whisper into a weathered ear and suddenly the person attached to that ear is in tears. But these aren’t like any tears I’ve ever seen. They are the type of tears that can displace a stone encasement, that can liberate skin from stone. And suddenly the unfeeling can feel. 61

As I near the top of the hill, I get a better view of Santa Trinidad. My eyes prickle with tears at the sight of her, but I hold them back. The tears are supposed to come after she leans over and whispers in your ear, not before. By the time it’s my turn, I feel unprepared. I move slowly towards Santa Trinidad, towards my miracle. “My heart is stone,” I say, unsure what else to say in Santa Trinidad’s presence. “But it beats?” I nod my head, although this is not the question I was expecting. Santa Trinidad appears pensive, tapping her fingers lightly on her thighs. I begin to become impatient; there are others like me waiting for their miracles, why is it taking her so long? “I can’t heal your heart,” she finally says. The tears that I have been withholding escape. They’re not magical tears, just regular ones. “Can you at least try?” I ask, ready to fall on my knees and beg. She motions for me to come closer and I do so immediately. I’m so close, I can see the small acne marks dotting her cheek. She exhales and the air tickles my ear. “Your heart never needed healing,” she whispers. I pound my chest, the spot over the rock. “I’m broken, don’t you see. I can’t live like this, I can’t love like this.” Santa Trinidad tilts her head. “You’ve never loved somebody?” I think about Ruthie, the way my heart felt when she turned completely, the way my heart still hurts to think of her passing. “I still love her,” I say, tears streaming down my eyes. These are not magical tears, but they feel magical. 62

The Street Adelaide Gaughran-Bedell It was snowing and it had snowed Thursday’s bustle swept streets in laced up boots, home from school on this side of the street stands flurried folks with books in bags bags in hand, ticking clocks on that side, a graveyard. and maybe you will spot a deer walled in by city’s din melting amber softens white— hers, the only footprints in the snow the deer will look with an unspooling of the eyes, a graveyard in the cold in the snow, a deer the walls of the graveyard are fall too tall to tall to jump; it is boxed in by city streets, and softly, she crunches leaves long-lost in icy banks you cross, catch the bus, here lie cold hands and eyes red with winter, chapped lips, late for work. over there is a graveyard, there is snow. maybe you will spot a deer

2am in early november Erin Webb when I start to miss you I remember we weren’t the first to feel that not the first to confess it at 2 am in early november there was snow on your nose and in my eyelashes but you will kiss—me or someone else—again you will hold hands walk for hours on a snowy night cry until the world does not exist you will feel more than either of us can imagine and so will I

Chanter Literary and Arts Magazine

Fall 2020