Chanter Literary and Arts Magazine — Spring 2021

CHANTER CHANTER LITERARY AND ARTS MAGAZINE

SPRING 2021

C H A N T E R

CHANTER

C H A N T E R

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

Spring 2021 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 Professor Amy Elkins Maria Bodansky, who was in no way involved in this publication due to her leave of absence Gumby 1 Triangles, the strongest shape The old Chanter logo, RIP The enduring bravery of everyone who got on Zoom at 2pm on a Saturday

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 Associate Public Relations Coordinator: Kira Schukar

Staff: Cynthia Aguilar Audrey Bentch Emma Nguyen Irene Schulte Estelle Timar-Wilcox Jonah Wexler

Writing ~

dog bite success story? 8 Rachel Warshaw

L’Shana Tova 9 Rebecca Driker-Ohren Sketch of My Father

as a Raccoon 10 Anna Šverclová 10 Impossible Things Before March (Or Sometimes April) 12 Addie Engebretson

Drink 13 Katia Sievert

Song Poem I. 15 Conor Broderick

Another “Date” 17 Siri Greene

Settled 18 Dana Gustafson

ode to half asian skin 19 H. Grace Feng

Lonely in the City 21 Siri Greene

body alteration altercation 22 Rachel Warshaw

Gumby 2 23 Conor Broderick

all our mushrooms 42 William Ummel someday you will knock on my door 44 Aron Smith-Donovan I Didn’t Expect to See You in This Dream 45 Aela Morris

Garden.exe 47 Eric Fong

The Saltmarsh Sparrow 49 Daniel Whitman

new year’s day 50 Maeve Sweeney

Always and Never Mother 51 Anna Šverclová

blemished 53 Clary Becker For the Daughter I May Have One Day 54 Aela Morris

Home Oak 56 Kira Schukar

Internal Bleeding 58 Dana Gustafson

Spaces as seasons 59 Gianella Rojas

These Trees and I 61 Becca Lewis

Art ~

Eat Produce 24 Aidan Alls

Cucumber 2 25 Linnea Henrikson Disruption 26 Zarra Marlowe

AhNectarShelves! 27 Carmen Quintos

Burning Mountain 28 Emily North Aurora Borealis 29 Maria Dixon Buster Brunch/Dinner Dog 30 Carmen Quintos

Pepper Plant 31 Julia Ricks

THEMperor 32 El Alcalá

Curiosity 33 Shaherazade Khan SEXWORK 34 Zarra Marlowe

Self Portrait in Hindsight 35 Rachel Liebherr

Trickle 36 Huong (Jess) Nguyen peace plant calla lily 37 Libby Sykes

Peter 38 El Alcalá

Spread Thin 39 Nicholas Lobaugh

Grad Walk 40 Lidija Namike

mountain landscape 41 Linnea Henrikson

Cover art: Eyebrow Unibrow on a Horse pen and highlighter on paper Lidija Namike

Editor’s Note I would like to start this year’s Editor’s Note with an expression of overwhelming gratitude. As I begin to look back on my time at Macalester, I am filled with love for all those who have made Chanter such a powerfully positive constant in my life. Almost every week for the last four years, Chanter has served as a space for creation and appreciation of the art that makes this community so vibrant. If you were to travel back in time to ask me, after attending my first ever Chanter meeting in 2017, what this space looked like, I would reply that it looks like the lounge on the top floor of Old Main, with soft couches and warm lights. As the years passed, I would change my answer to say that this space looks like a classroom on the first floor of Old Main, with winter coats strewn over rickety wooden desks. Or maybe I would say it looks like layout, with flickering computer screens and cooling cups of coffee on cluttered tables, or perhaps the reception room in Weyerhauser on the day of the release party, with twinkling lights and stacks of magazines fresh from the printer. Ask me now, and my answer would be very different, and my answer would be that all of my answers should have been different.

Having experienced almost a year and a half of Chanter conducted virtually, I have come to completely reformulate my definition of space. A space is defined by the people who occupy it, who choose to exist in and transform and preserve it, against all odds. Don’t mistake me, I have profoundly missed seeing all the wonderful faces of those who define Chanter every day, but I have also learned that Chanter is more than anything else a community of people who have chosen to persevere in the creation of art, no matter the physical area that they occupy. In the Editor’s Note for the first ever spring edition of Chanter I was a part of, in 2018, my predecessor expressed the sentiment that art is a powerful tool of resistance to the horrors of the world around us. This has been exceptionally clear in the ways that this incredible community of writers and artists have persisted in the pursuit of creation. I began this note by mentioning gratitude, but saying I am grateful does not even begin to cover the vast love I feel for every person in this community who has inspired me during these past four years, but especially during this last one. I would like to offer a special thanks to Chanter’s staff and editorial board. I am in awe of each and every one of you for your tremendous dedication and commitment to making this experience as remarkable as it has been. I look forward to all the ways in which you will continue to reshape and redefine this spectacularly beautiful space.

Maya Crowl-Kinney Editor-in-Chief, 2020-2021

7

dog bite success story?

Rachel Warshaw I used to bite my best friend: on the nose, the kneecap, the tips of her fingers, a quick light crunch because I couldn’t say “I love you” like I wanted to.

I said it all the time, I mean, but I don’t think she heard the dog-tooth desperation behind it.

I didn’t either.

I grew inward with that love, like those wild boars whose tusks eventually killed them, I pierced my own eyes, for shame.

Not Oedipus, but a certain kind of inescapable fate, nonetheless. Are you really queer if you have never looked at your best friend’s boyfriend with Othello jealousy, with a wild kind of wannabe violence, like, if I were you, I would know how to be happy.

How to make her happy.

8

L’Shana Tova Rebecca Driker-Ohren When the altered voice of god proclaims that our pockets hold dust & ash, preaches that there is never any certainty, the boy two rows in front of me reaches into his pockets hoping to find flecks of gold, expecting to find dead skin from the edges of his raw fingers.

Instead he feels grains of sand that sticks to the inside of his nails.

Feels them with his erased fingerprints, singed away, the murmur of divinity hot enough to smolder.

He takes his hands out of his pockets.

Picks up his prayer book.

Looks up & counts the tiles in the ceiling.

When it is time, he kisses his grandmother on the cheek.

He shakes the hand of his estranged Hebrew school teacher.

He nods to the husband of the girl he had hoped to marry.

L’shana tova, he says.

A sweet, healthy new year in process.

9

Sketch of My Father as a Raccoon Anna Šverclová More than once, I have watched him pick junk mail from the garbage to use as a toothpick, and then set it on the kitchen table to use again.

The center console in his pickup truck is filled with all sorts of useful trash: paper-towel-snot-rags with a few blank corners not yet mashed into the shape of his nostril, broken fishing poles yet to be duct-taped, holey tee shirts yet to be sweat rags, and old tobacco tins yet to be loogie bins.

My father is a collector of useless things: candy wrappers soft enough to make a bed in the back seat, broken bungee cords kinked in square knots, and chipped rims of coffee cups crafted into windchimes.

My father calls his trash-keeping, “engineering.”

He knows better than anyone around how to make a gallon of milk stretch the whole month, how to fuse 5 slivers of soap into a brand new bar, and how to save Ziploc bags and sour cream containers on the top row of the dishwasher.

When I grew out of my Christmas onesie, he showed me how to cut holes in the bottom of the feet so he wouldn’t have to buy me a new one.

When I went to college, he showed me how to tie the corners of a queen-size sheet to fit a twin-size mattress, how to make an ice cream bucket 10

into a shower caddy, and how to rig a towel hook from a shattered blister pack.

My father taught me: there’s nothing you can buy that you can’t make or fix with a YouTube tutorial, nothing smaller than your pocket ever worth spending money on, (and, of course,) no bigger fool than the rich man.

11

10 Impossible Things Before March (Or Sometimes April) Addie Engebretson Winter is the season where humans become dragons, the steam trailing behind bundled bodies.

They clutch their warmth jealously in wool-covered claws as they rumble through jewel-bright snow. Each star burns the brighter against this chilled air. Frozen lakes and rivers turn every sinner on them into the son of God, where the air is made visible trapped in ice. The cold glass

by January is thrust out by its own force, unveiling a sharp edged spine for the bay. Lakesides support two towns, one hunkered into shore with tar and concrete hands. The other rests lightly as the eagles, tearing at the fish left to redden the ice, before the tip up and flying off for fairer skies.

The full moon, day bright Winter strengthens the ready Through stinging splendor

12

Drink Katia Sievert in conversation with Emily Jungmin Yoon’s “Bell Theory” I know only a few words.

Char siu. Har gao. Doh je.

I speak only food and thanks and only to my mom. In turn, she forgets my tonguelessness, each instruction a Cantonese riddle: do I close the lights or pat pockets for my phone? She repeats for me thrice: loi aa, loi aa, loi aa.

Mom says nai was an easier word when I was young. None of the harsh consonance of drink milk, nai slid down my throat thick and white, all the way down to my bones.

I sit with the white family members on plastic-covered floral couches.

Not part the purple vests and poppy flower slippers of the aunties, not permed black hair, just my alien overgrown curls. I crumple peony cushions beneath me while Mom pulls faces at family gossip in the other room. My name blooms from her lips and I catch no other words I know.

An uncle near me shifts to obscure a trio of fabric blossoms.

13

“How’s school?” he asks in English.

Proper, polite, pitying.

This is a muddying of peasant tongues, A sam yup say yup con fusion. Mom sits quiet at her father’s operas, impassive at Chinese movies, their foreign formal phrasings.

She only orders for us in Richmond, in Chinatown. When the waiter says ni hao she balks and pushes forth my father: tall, brown hair, white all the way down to his bones pouring, endless. Swallowed up by the rifts in dialectical dialects like slashes in my Chinese name Mom haltingly translates. Or maybe they aren’t slashes. But petals. Bursting unbidden from cream-colored peonies, soft like stigma and stamen, brushstrokes like blossoms into seed, ground into sweet new milk my mother pours me until my small glass is full.

Gau la, I tell her. It is enough.

Song Poem I. Conor Broderick “and if my bones are made of delicate sugar /

i won’t end up anywhere good without you” — Waxahatchee, “Lilacs”

i.

haven’t seen anyone i love in a week, forty

flies choked from the pantry into my mouth

ii. cut my arm open today, found an amethyst saw my reflection purpled, gore flecked

iii.

called my mother, said I couldn’t

come home, stared at the fan

iv.

cried while my bloodful toenail peeled

off, fluttered away iridescent v. bit my cheek awake from a nightmare, found my hair spun sugar, honeyed

vi.

called my brother,

call went dead vii.

brushed my teeth and the water turned

to sand, hourglassing down my throat viii. tried to sleep at noon, drift till the shuddering jolted

me upright, biceps peppered with window shards, blood 15

ix.

answered the doorbell at midnight to myself

outside in the heat, wild-eyed and grinning, teeth too long x. woke at dawn in a vicious sweat, bed pooling viscous

pulled free, opened a window, sobbed at the sun

xi.

Called: midnight, heat-shimmer, called:, shatter,

Called: noon, drink, called: dream

Called: dusk, sharp, called: fly,

Called: dawn, called: sunset, called: morning, Called, nothing.

16

Another “Date” Siri Greene you used to kiss me to the rape scenes of game of thrones and i would hear their grunting and moaning and quiet sobs as i felt your hands crawl their way down to my pant zipper and scrape at my belt like a hungry dog lapping up food in the palm of my reluctant hand the music heightens and swells as she reaches her breaking point and through this, his witness, his climax,

i would recognize faintly that the nightmare was coming true and you needed it there to inspire you

17

Settled Dana Gustafson Outside I knew how to keep silent.

I need the fourth floor climb to form a buffer between me and the truth— I feel smaller, and free On the walk back home deep into night surrounded by November leaves in the street lamp light I want to stay here forever, Strike peace in this apart-from-the-other World I came from, my Search patterns turn over old stones and Make things easier—they’ll wish It left an impression. When I left It felt like running But my feet are slowing down The ways I changed are all over And inside we only speak from the perspective of the onlooker.

18

ode to half asian skin H. Grace Feng after Benjamin Garcia’s “Ode to the Pitcher Plant” half and half girl, i walk to the store // we’re out of half n’ half // just half cream is enough for my coffee walking to the store, don’t cough // covid coughs from a half asian, enough to arouse suspicion i redden, i self isolate for reasons i can’t explain // winter makes redcheeked babes out of us all // too cold to walk but too poor to drive i’m just a poor college student // student loans, don’t think too hard about it or you’ll spiral // doodling spirals in the back of my notes my back hurts from carrying the weight of this class discussion // that’s a joke, but let’s discuss disappointing when all the asians end up in the same break out room // room for discussion, it was probably an accident, but still when over half and half the class is white you have to wonder // as a half and half situation, where exactly do i sit— – never gonna look white, but it’s unwritten law since i’m not a native asian in an unprecedented situation, you write more emails than you ever had before // we long for the before times, things won’t ever be so normal again // i redden when i think of the rose-glassed before just waiting for the vaccine // i don’t want to play a victim, but eight months is an awful long time to wait // how i wish i could sit in a waiting room instead of clicking a link 19

what’s not clicking? // college is hard when you have to haul ass to class, let alone when you can’t catch up catching a cold never felt so scary // scared to be asian, my white half is erased by my almond eyes only white when it matters, when in wisconsin or at a white family reunion // carrying the weight of white eyes at a missouri gas station, sure wasn’t white then again it could be worse // isolate for months, haven’t caught a cold // the colder it gets, the more a mask feels like a shield // shying away from prying eyes, my face three-fourths fabric and glasses raise a glass to the half and half gal // don’t laugh, don’t cough, just walk past

20

Lonely in the City Siri Greene my town is pink and glistening golden at sunset stucco and glazed glass, what an elegant horizon without it i crave some distance between me and my spoiled shadow so drab gray i sometimes want to carve out a gash so deep it shrinks and bursts

into watery indifference but that’s not me. i made a set of rules when i was seven, no green hair, no colors riddled in music, no piercing through virgin skin. i’m breaking them and becoming the nightmare i dreamt of: Change. she wanted a mellow life, a personality colorful as lint. she wanted to smell of mittens evaporating on a winter’s fireplace and burnt toasted pages of kindling books so worn out and read they’re too tired to keep storytelling. but i coughed this all up from the center of my lungs and heart and stomach, somewhere my soul resides, and spat it into the palm of my hand. looking down on this broken channel my 30 day plan so poignant and beautiful but i wasted its pages. i’m glad i have such a golden city to keep me company, it’s less lonely in the glistening.

21

body alteration altercation Rachel Warshaw Battle for the best bones, bloody body, bawdy body, break the breast, crack the chest, and let the lonely heart loose let it beat beat beat its way through the floorboards of your flesh, let it linger like a looking glass eye always reflecting what it spies, spiraling with it! Feel it fester, watch it squirm, hold it tender, little worm, sneak onto the sidewalk post-rainstorm soak the soil, give it form, make a shape and take a shape, and fake it till it starts to break, then batter bloody bawdy body better best and burnished bright.

22

Gumby 2 Conor Broderick Gumby has been snoozy Sleepy slumbery gumby Wake up gumby!

I love you gumby, just like I love my mummy.

Gumby has a nose I have a nose! Gumby is my best friend. Wow! Gumby!

I saw gumby smile.

He looked smiley.

Smiley snoozy grumbly bumby Gumby! I miss you gumby. You are the coolest ever.

23

Eat Produce lithograph print Aidan Alls

24

Cucumber II photograph Linnea Henrikson

25

Disruption acrylic on canvas Zarra Marlowe

26

AhNectarShelves! acrylic on 48x36” canvas Carmen Quintos

27

Burning Mountain linoleum block print Emily North

28

Aurora Borealis embroidery Maria Dixon

29

Buster Brunch/Dinner Dog acrylic on 16x20” canvas Carmen Quintos

30

Pepper Plant block print Julia Ricks

31

THEMperor ink on paper El Alcalá

32

Curiosity digital illustration Shaherazade Khan

33

SEXWORK screenprint and letterpress on rice paper Zarra Marlowe

34

Self Portrait in Hindsight marker on paper Rachel Liebherr

35

Trickle acrylic on canvas Huong (Jess) Nguyen

36

peace plant calla lily acrylic on canvas Libby Sykes

37

Peter ink on paper El Alcalá

38

Spread Thin ink Nicholas Lobaugh

39

Grad Walk pen and crayon on paper Lidija Namike

40

mountain landscape watercolor and ink pen Linnea Henrikson

41

For Katie Woodhouse, Hannah Hayat, Caleb Huntington, Zoe Allen, Marcus Lane, Hannah Murray, Colin Kirby, Billy Pilgrim, Becca Gallandt, Jack Lickerman, Grace Jones, Marlon James, Jake Bassler, The Bonds, Evan Bates, Tim O’Brien, Jojo Baldus, Andrew Baumann, Moira Mulhern, Vincent Mougin, Han-Ray Jahn, Jane Mather-Glass, Maggie Jaenicke, James Dawes, CADO, Scotland Kraker, Lucas Zecker, Jayson Sawyer, Sally Sheridan and all her Shades, Adelaide the Mustard Queen, Eli Smith-Cohen, Sam Liberman, Louisa Mullin, Sumubulunu, Gifford Pollock, Olga Gonzalez, Jeff Hughes, PKD, Natty, JG & AD, my parents, the two women who drop dog shit in my garbage can seven days a week, Matt Burgess, and most everybody else.

all our mushrooms William Ummel look here. i keep it on my mental-mantel. i know it belongs to you, i’m just keeping it safe beside the scuzzle-bugs, deli-mugs and all our mushrooms. i found it long ago, stumbled into it, among the sun-stained periodical cicadas and the maroon-streaked electric-blue ghosts of toys painted on a basement easel. i glimpsed it as, wormless, i fished with frozen corn and my lure still bred ripples… of slushie-stained socks and how, ears beneath sweet nokomis, in july, we saw in those reeds the thai food we ate atop the waxed, dull floors of georgia’s coast, where fish guts look to me like ahab’s hands and harass with the headache of oversteeped tea and the scream of stealth bombers and the man 42

on the midnight train who told me he was a pharaoh, his fist hasped round the over-sharpened blade, almost brittle… i apologize, but that’s a part of it. our kisses have molded and so have all our mushrooms. and yet my tree-torn forearm still rends the soil and raises toward the light of sister moon, your sofa tattoo, your mad knitting fingers and the moose i dreamt up in your family’s guestroom. and somewhere, the long legs of a boy from philadelphia point, soles up, back to the loam. and holy still grow all our mushrooms. it’s waiting for you. like dust-cloaked guitar strings or the flower clock in your father’s sock drawer where he keeps candlesticks and thermometers of mercury and other objects out of joint such as the uprooted, rusted payphone i’m calling you from this very moment between metra tracks to and from chicago. and i’m screaming over the wind-rattle of chain link: bring your bare feet, bring your pierced nipples, bring a leek-green bottle of beer and all the pomes you can cram in those torn pockets! bring a crossbow to skewer it to earth. because it’s going fast. like diner marmalade, like ants in the bathtub when your mother comes running. it’s going fast, even as it grows like all our mushrooms.

43

someday you will knock on my door Aron Smith-Donovan and i will try to turn you away, having grieved you already long before you glow in the porch light. i do not want whatever you are selling. i am done with self-mourning. your graveyard is long since built, a little plot under my left collarbone for all the selves that never lived, it is no use. in the spring my bones ache with a longing to run from myself so you may never find me again, never remind me of every choice unmade, each life abandoned. do i forgive you for being what i wanted for myself ? you, softer, with the light in your eyes, standing open-armed in the threshold before i shut the door and am ruined. you return in the throes of late october, a specter: face painted and smile disguised, arms outstretched again, pleading, begging. and i feel lucky to be able to oblige, so long as i consider you a stranger.

44

I Didn’t Expect to See You in This Dream Aela Morris * Last night, I saw you for the first time in half a decade.

You called out to me on a street corner of some city, Chicago? New York?

* *

You must have

remembered me,

but your eyes

looked at me

like you had never seen

a woman before.

* * Wondering if she had been there all this time, the secret identity a fifteen-year-old who forgets to wash her face.

* *

You are wrong.

She is my exoskeleton.

I built her because

I kept losing pieces of myself:

* * On the dance floor, a hostel toilet, in the arms of someone I couldn’t love. *

45

* I painstakingly painted her self-portrait with red lipstick and pink blush. * * Suddenly, a crowd appears around us.

The city spotlight shines in my eyes.

The air floods back into the bell jar. * * A barrier grows between us.

People are shouting my name.

The crowd buoys you away. * * Until all I can see is your head, like Marie’s outside the palace.

Your hair and face, a crow perched on a snowbank. *

46

Garden.exe Eric Fong I downloaded my Garden from a Dropbox sent to me by a very, very kind stranger on the Internet, and it runs just fine on Windows 10.

I think it’s an old witch’s spell programmed in HTML5. A very old witch’s spell, according to the read.me file.

Today, I’m in my Garden, and I rain petals: During installation I’d decided that body hair is prohibited in my Garden, and the stubble on my face and the wispy black hairs on my chest and legs drooped, withered, and floated to the ground, and when I’d looked down, there were rose petals covering my toes, up to my ankles. I’d smiled and giggled then, and felt up my legs. It’s still a pretty new feeling, the smoothness, but it’s wonderful. There are still plenty of petals when I enter now, but never as much as that first time. The petals tumble away. It’s always a moody sunset in my Garden, muting its colors; purple-pink violets, white-pink daisies, yellow-pink willows, all milling in a pink breeze.

I decide that today I am small, and each leaf is huge, in my Garden.

I’m like a fairy. I’m pulling gently at a slender willow-leaf, and then a bit harder, and then twisting and yanking, and then the leaf pops from the branch, and I’m red in the face, bent over my knees, huffing and puffing, my chest—oh, I have a chest now, I decide, because I think it looks nice, and the Garden obliges—my chest, heaving. The leaf folds around me easily, some sort of strapless top, because my Garden is always a cool evening after a hot day that never happened. I wrap another leaf around my hips, twisting to sew it together (because I have a needle and thread as well, I’m an excellent seamstress, and they are both my size, even though today I am small). I don’t need clothing here. But I like it. Somehow I doubt Adam and Eve waited until after they ate the forbidden fruit to accessorize. By accident, for sure, some jaunty leaf floated down and became the first hat. Petals conspiring to tangle in their hair. A tangle of vine—something. Can hair be clothing? In any case, I’m clothed in a willow-skirt. There’s even pockets for my phone.

47

I don’t know how I come into the Garden, only that when I want to be there, I’m there, and when I want to go to the other world that isn’t the Garden, I’m there, too.

Sometimes I stay for days. I only come back to check my laptop for flowers. Like yesterday and the day before, violets poke out of my laptop’s HDMI port, still sunset-kissed, even though it’s midday, here outside of my Garden. I pluck the violets out and I set them in a plastic cup next to my laptop filled halfway with tap water. They only droop a little. I check my laptop’s other ports, because the clunker is already choked with dust, and doesn’t need anything else clogging the system up; this is the laptop that runs my math homework, too.

My professors see this thing. But there’s nothing sprouting, not even a bud.

Mom doesn’t know about the Garden. I think I’m too embarrassed to admit that I keep one. She just knows I spend a lot of time in my room, and when she peeks in, she says she always sees me hunched over my laptop. She likes that I kept flowers in my room, though.

She says I’m just like her in that way, keeping flowers. She says I look scruffy, and I need a haircut and a shave.

48

The Saltmarsh Sparrow Daniel Whitman Ammospiza, scampering, weaving Through Spartina (aptly named), Peaks her blue and orange face Above the spears of thick cordgrass.

She holds an ever-shrinking patch, The tomia of land and sea, And builds her nest (a little higher), Prays that somehow it won’t flood.

Should they survive, the tiny eggs, Kept warm beneath her clean white breast, Will one day yield her spiky young To join her as birds, neglecting wings.

The people who cross on the trail through the marsh And curse at the prickles that sting their bare feet Strive for pale sand and bright, crashing waves That run up the beach to taste the dunes.

They do not see her or hear her call, And neither see the rising tide.

49

new year’s day Maeve Sweeney I hope my grief drowns this park desperation’s hands curl inside my throat, my stomach winces, I came to lick my wounds as children rush past me, twin livers, red hot, and on their knees for cessation so this is how we’re meant to fucking suffer leave me on my side, then there’s a hand in the dark, reaching but it’s all spilling out anyways it gets quieter here, leaves rustle while the knives twist stay on the phone, I’ll dig a hole through this cement stay back, I’ll leave you the fingers wrapped around your wrists let go, the pieces of light sink into me, give no relief there is no release my hands grow cold, leave the remains to a faceless face you and your gods they take up too much space

50

Always and Never Mother Anna Šverclová I found you once in the purple pattern of the shirt I wore to my sister’s wedding, how it framed my eyes like yours: blue, gold, green, brown.

Pulling out the red from my hair in clumps, in shines.

I found you in the sun that day, streaking onto my skin in little brown spots.

I find you in mirrors and any reflective surface. A window, car door, or the face of a lake.

In my skeleton, cheekbones to high heaven, forehead curved in a heart shape. In my skin, my eyelashes, the cilia that mascara never coats long enough to keep from touching my cheeks in a glaze.

I find you in the caverns under my eyes like marbles sunk into a wet tissue, blue-mauve like a bruise, purple floss stabbed into a dotted needlepoint plane.

I have a scar on the right side of my face that you insisted came from a dog’s mouth, and you live there too: in the scar, the dog, my face, its mouth.

Mother, you are a complicated thing.

You are more blood than mother.

When you have gone, you become me; you become everything but your body.

Kitchen tools faded in touch, radios left on in the night, every leaf you’ve ever plucked. Your initials carved in every tree.

November and May. You are the snow as it freezes, and as it melts, and the idea of it coming at all.

You exist in breezes from broken windows, the bitter cold, the knot of my nipples, in backseats of cars, raindrops racing down the rear windows.

You live tucked in the smell of frying pork on an oily pan, in the scrapings of the meat gristle, the oilblood of baking beans and saturated on broccoli’s pebble skin.

51

You are clumped in a hard stick of butter mashed between hands, flour, and egg.

Really, you are more idea than body or blood.

Sometimes outside there is a twinkle, a shine of you.

There might be a laugh of you, a letter hidden in a file cabinet, a voice garbled in mail, but it’s harder to see you in yourself than the sun, or a cloud, Or anything I can touch with my fingers.

I never called you Mother when I knew you only that way. I still don’t.

Only in poetry do I call you at all, because it’s easier in a name than to explain that you have become everything.

52

blemished Clary Becker today i revel in my ugly paint my hidden bright unredeemable red fish the hair, not blonde but in black thick roots from the shower drain, look here hung up framed, i will force us to see and not fear discovery or skirts rising or a summer lake out of nowhere. i forbid you to find me desirable, bite your neck with yellowed teeth and spit tar down your throat because what does it matter you’ll choke on the bland sweat dripping down the back of my knees or my morning breath anyway. the mirror is a useful weapon only shattered smeared in dark blood my tongue laps up between prickly thighs spread with a tremble thick copper scent shed, coughed, pressed out in no scenario do your fingers know to draw the liquid over my body without spelling shame three airless inhales and i come hard alone. a leak expanding hideously

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For the Daughter I May Have One Day Aela Morris I do not know how you came into this world Screaming from my womb or someone else’s I do know that I cried When I held you for the first time.

In your eyes, Which looked nothing like mine, But at the same time, were exactly the same, I saw every deep, dark night When I imagined cutting myself into a thousand pieces, Wishing I could dissolve into atoms And be blown away on the wind because Death wasn’t thorough enough; I wanted to have never existed In the first place.

But miraculously, You arrived.

I survived in order To love you.

My chickadee, I loved teaching you to read Or when you’d roll your eyes at me I loved every sticky spoon And bandaging every scraped knee.

My darling, I lay awake before you were born, Wondering if wanting you Was selfish of me.

What if this world breaks your heart The way that it broke me?

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My love, Someday you will be the age I was when I cried to my mother “I just want to be normal!”

And she said, “You weren’t born to be; I knew from the moment I first held you.”

Someday you’ll be the age I was when I looked Forward and wondered who would be foolish enough To bring a child into this world And who would be foolish Not to.

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Home Oak Kira Schukar It’s crazy my mom told me to grow

how many years it takes

I thought it was as old as the redwoods. She said it was growing before they built the house.

Its branches stretched up cracked fingers caressing the blue. Green leaves humming mom singing Irish Lullaby.

Living, a tree is a hymn to something greater than the tree.

It’s crazy she said how many years it takes to Dying, a tree is an omen to the living.

My first summer home from college brown leaves dripped like liver spots. A shadow stained our window a mold creeping up our walls, and I spent the summer ignoring her requests to go to the farmers market or on walks in the woods.

It’s crazy to grow old

how many years it takes

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Mom texted me

call me she told me she has skin cancer in the crescent above her eye they’ll take it one thin layer at a time there’ll be a scar on my eyebrow It’s crazy Sleeping

is like falling

in an old bed

waiting for solid ground

It’s crazy

how quickly

They took our tree in chunks It’s crazy

how quickly they take it

Gone, a tree is a bald spot of the years.

It’s crazy

greedily

a fragment

how quickly it disappears.

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Internal Bleeding Dana Gustafson Been thinking about internal bleeding Recently— What it may have sounded like To a three-year-old The next room over Old stitches popped open Pounding blood split the lining From the inside— Your own skeleton’s aggressor Punched through the lingering organ While skin held Its tensile strength, bold integrity The power to refuse entry I thought I had felt it.

But my child went comatose Beyond my sight, and when I flew home I didn’t find the old battle She could win on my shoulders Couldn’t rise to the moment Where a three-year-old would stand tall— Been thinking, while the blood splits the lining How to reach in How to pull your insides back together.

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Spaces as Seasons Gianella Rojas Fall

Winter

What is a space?

Reborn, renewed Late into the year yet still A beginning for my wonder-filled heart.

Here in the classroom, it feels like there are Fallen leaves that are Able to break at a step forward, Susceptible to any spoken word.

Layers of sweaters and socks As the Fall introduces itself.

A timid classroom that blocks out the wind, Or a crowded room with couches and warm drinks.

A random arrangement of people from everywhere.

This feels like a deciding point.

What do you promise me here?

Unsure, hesitant, alien.

So this space is Fall.

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Spaces can change like seasons, I discover.

It is now winter, and there is no space to breathe.

Hidden under layers and layers of clothes Are thoughts I decide not to speak aloud, Fear of sounding dumb, sounding weak, Fear of not being taken seriously, Fear of being taken too seriously Hidden under layers and layers of snow Are memories I decided to pretend didn’t happen.

My tongue experiences frostbite under all The Whiteness.

Layers and layers meant to keep you warm Yet still the frost sneaks in through the threads.

Here outside in an empty courtyard, In a loud classroom, I pretend I don’t exist.

Colder, distant, apathetic.

And this space is Winter.

Spring Summer Spaces can be made for you.

A cherry blossom tree or a cultural org, A dance group or a therapy one, It’s the same, isn’t it?

Not made for specifically you, but somehow, still Made for you.

A layer comes off as the temperature rises, As words come spilling out of my mouth.

A few nods in my direction and hums, maybe Not all layers were meant to stick to my skin.

There is no guarantee that winter will Stay away, what with climate change and all.

But, for now, this pocket of space is safe.

Safe enough to take off a jacket or two.

Tonight, the frost decided to stay under my boots.

It looks like a conversation with someone who Understands what it’s like to shut down.

It looks like couches, fresas con crema, and jokes.

Understood, accepted, sane.

Hello, Spring.

Spaces can love you back.

So this is what it means to breathe.

The heat in here could drown me In the best possible way.

It looks like people who smile at you like you Are their cherry blossom tree.

It looks like a random text that wishes you a good day, Knocking on the bathroom stall to ask what’s wrong.

It looks like laughing until you’re crying And long conversations in a soft bed, The sheets are off because all layers are gone.

It’s hot outside, it’s hot in here.

It’s like Spring, but it’s more.

It’s beyond acceptance, It’s love.

In the heat of the summer, I take off layers and layers until I can jump into the water with No advisory, no layers, With only the sun kissing my skin.

For once, I feel more than safe, I feel brave.

You feel like summer.

There’s love and space, So much space, For me to breathe.

Loved, warm, pure.

This space, with you, is Summer.

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These Trees and I Becca Lewis The trees with light and feathery breath await me when I sleep

In morning light they whisper of the secrets that they keep

The leaves and branches swell and sway like sweet, inflated lungs

These trees and I let out a sigh, we speak in common tongues

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CHANTER CHANTER LITERARY AND ARTS MAGAZINE

SPRING 2021

C H A N T E R

CHANTER

C H A N T E R