Chanter Literary and Arts Magazine — Spring 2016

Chanter Literary Magazine

Spring 2016

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

Spring 2016 Macalester College Literary Magazine St. Paul, MN chanter@macalester.edu

Chanter would like to thank the following: All the amazing writers and artists who submitted their work Matt Burgess Jan Beebe The Mac Weekly The wonderful developers of InDesign at Adobe Agent 001 Shoutout to the couch

Cover art: two cats (photo), Bade Turgut

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Editor-in-Chief: Karintha Lowe Literary Editor: Marshall King Associate Literary Editor: Zeena Fuleihan Art Editor: Coco Banks Associate Art Editor: Nathan Are Submission Manager: Bram Wang

Staff: Clare Foley Julia Fritz-Endres Claire Grace Maud Grauer Meg Hinson Matthew Later Elizabeth Loetscher Willie McDonagh Noah Mondschein Miriam Moore-Keish Austin Parsons Alex Ropes Sarah Taft Katie Tsuji Theodore Twidwell

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Writing

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Minnesota Brigantine 6 Anonymous Sound of Salt 7 Svitlana Iukhymovych

Before the Showing 8

I love a new stranger everyday.

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Alex Ropes Molly Sowash

Cravings 11 Katie Tsuji

The Boy Shows up at My Door, Late 12 Talia Young

A Tributary 13 Alex Dolabi

Fervor 14 Zeena Fuleihan

Amicable 15 Bethany Catlin

Conversations in Black 16 Julia Fritz-Endres

abdominal 17 Aidan Teppema

Rise and Shine 29 Isabel Beck-Roe

dysfunction junction 30 Maud Grauer

Iniquitous 32 Claire Grace

Grass Is Greener or 4/11/2004 33 Theodore Twidell

The Dragonfly 37 Matthew Later

Mermaids Sleep on Procrustean Beds 38 Beenish Riaz

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Descent, Paused 40 Zeena Fuleihan Grandmother 41 Annika Sampson bounty 42 Giulia Girgenti Companions 44 Molly Sowash Shells 45 Julia Fritz-Endres Is It Art or Is It In My Way 46 Isabel Beck-Roe Minnesota State Unfair 48 Svitlana Iukhymovych Art

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construction 18 Josh Koh

Williamsburg 19 Giulia Girgenti Nature and Structure – A Closure 20 Soobin Choi

n’est-ce pas? 21 Abigail Methvin

Afternoon in Rome 22 Haimeng Zhang

Porto Venere, Italy 23 Haimeng Zhang

Oral Hygiene 24 Noah Mondschein On Grand Facing Snelling On Grand Facing Macalester 25 Peace Im The External Mind 26 Nicholas Egersdorf seniority 27 Svitlana Iukhymovych First Touch 28 Bade Turgut 5

Minnesota Brigantine Anonymous In the coldest months when snow falls quiet in the long seconds

before dawn there are days crisp and clear, so frozen that sound is loathe to carry

and the world is bright as ice and sunlight glances even in its

eves and cracks these days the breathe of men with cigarettes floats miles in single

stubborn clouds the rooftop pipes drain out uncorded cotton, fat and bilious against

the sky wisps which spin themselves to sails in fleet like ash-tinged caravels

embark, antrorse the trees of the city wave, a brittle crowd with arms outstretched

and the stolid brownstones and the redbricks stare after with

empty windows

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Sound of Salt Svitlana Iukhymovych This, a rhythm that doesn’t come back, a fish ashore by the parted waters, nothing on the other side.

Winds carry the reek of her lightly, her mouth is still open in surprise at the waves, melody, crush, at the everything gone.

And a boy pokes her with the blunt end of a stick, a seagull too many bites into her already naked ribs.

Call me ‘water’, call me ‘wind’, the elements plead, storm her scales off.

They fly, iron petals, knife bloom.

Sultry, they hit the rocks with a metallic boom, they ask to become the second skin of a snake, eat her tail. Tender, the melody repeats.

Impossible, asks for space, asks to be partaken, or even parted, like the sky, it wants to be called ‘water’, what would have become of us.

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Before the Showing Alex Ropes My grandmother sits at the head of the table now, enveloped by dusty armrests; still watches the stock market daily: hair coiffed, face powdered, in a paisley Chicos blazer; but she complains of estate tax now, to no one in particular.

My father emerges from her basement carrying rusty saws and hammer heads; copper piping and two-by-fours; whiskey bottle funnels used to fill mason jars labeled acid and mason jars unlabeled: sludge or molasses tilting along the bottom.

“He grew up in the Great Depression,” she offers, and still, he emerges, carrying crate after crate after crate of every National Geographic from 1985-2007.

Still, he walks past boxes of dishware and tablecloths and photo albums from before. Still, he dumps their uncreased spines in the corrugated metal garbage bin taking up half of the driveway.

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I love a new stranger every day.

Molly Sowash Yesterday it was the man who held a Watering can in the back room Of the coffee shop.

His quiet feet lifted just Enough to reach the hanging pot of ivy.

I fell in love with his achilles tendons Stretched taut, but mostly the bend Of his hairy wrist pouring water, The same curve of bone that tucks His daughter’s shirt tag in after returning home.

Not because anyone will see it in His plain-walled apartment.

Because her mother would do the same.

Because he hasn’t bought any plants For this bachelor pad & doesn’t like the look Of shiny, new watering cans, The air that glints off his head Is silver now & never before.

She is thirteen — The skin on her neck Is still a child.

I fell in love with her today, Stepping out of a van Into the warm shop, her hands gripped Her backpack straps As if they were the only thing Keeping her on the ground.

She headed straight for her stool Without looking up, Buried her “Hi Dad” in the hiss of the steamer.

Oh sneakers, Flipping off her feet against the metal bar.

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Oh blue fingernails, Tapping the cover of her book.

They told me nothing about my childhood Or the way midnight lets you feel The world spinning on its needle.

They did not explain to me why a frog goes Motionless with a flashlight in its eyes Gave me no reason why I should care About stars.

They moved to the countertop, To dance a fleshy jig, And I saw them wrapped around the metal handle of a watering can Thirty years from now — Tilted towards the hanging tendrils Reaching into the morning sun Her blonde hairs bright across the bend of her wrist.

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Cravings Katie Tsuji My favorite song is the one you hum while scrambling eggs in a

nonstick pan.

A damp cashmere pools onto the carpet, as birthday zinnias die on the kitchen sill.

Lately I’ve been all consolidation— I opened a tangerine to bruise its segments back into their skin.

I fold gloves to hold each other and not let go.

Cells huddle within my abdomen like a teenaged couple curled in the park at dusk.

Swaddle me, like hair in a shower cap. Cherish me.

To pass days, I chew blossoms that creep through the fence until my teeth stain blue and fragrant.

You come home late to cold spaghetti and anthills of chalk scattered throughout the house.

They found a grandmother at the soccer field at sundown, waiting

for her mother to bring her home from practice.

Your lullaby hangs in a yellow room, and all evening I’ve tried to tell you I crave your kiss like a dream craves morning

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The Boy Shows up at My Door, Late Talia Young Glutton at the buffet of skin, I know I will still get hungry. Yet, here he is. It is a curse, to be a tent. An unlocked houseHe cannot live here, though I fear he will live here. I fear he will move in.

Here he is, at my window. He’s smiling at me. I let him in, but don’t. People aren’t roads. Because I circle his skin. Because I rollerblade around his ears with my teeth. Because I dance up his leg, so warm I know why we eat meat. I know what it is to own nothing when he enters while still not entering.

How can he cross a world and end up at my door, a piece of metal taking him through the night? And if he can do that?

If we can spend hours not as bodies but as two swings, then why not cross our certain end?

Why not show up at his window, wherever his window?

Why not show up bearing a bouquet of lips, his many lips, each one a meal I ate and ate and now? I cannot find the space under my right ear until he touches it, softly.

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A Tributary Alex Dolabi The river that flowed out of Paradise broke into five rivers, not four.

And it did literally break. It is a modern phenomenon that has something to do with how we talk with one another: only today can we not see the origin of the currents binding civilization.

What no one sees is that the distant Ganges is in fact the true fifth branch of the once unified river of Eden. How else can it be simultaneously the holiest and most polluted river in the world?

It must flow—that is its nature, its way. This flow carries quite a weight, of sediment, and of excrement, and of spirit, too.

Contrary to popular belief, the River Nile flows as it should, North to South. At one time the people and birds thought of the Blue Nile to be holy. Abay to the Ethiopians and Gihon in the Old Testament, the river is bursting. Its banks rise and glimmer and shift shape under a circling moon. The Blue Nile is a mystery flowing from Lake Tana. There are some wonderful waterfalls that mark the starting line for the sand and spirit that the water carries.

The Blue Nile joins with the White Nile in Khartoum and remarkably designates the seat of government for Sudan, whereupon the river halts to redirect its course so that the investors and mapmakers travel on feeling pleased. The tributary of the river of Eden loses something and gains traffic as its banks, the riverfront, become the Riverside.

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Fervor Zeena Fuleihan There is a sweat creeping brook-like up your spine, seeping the way oil sneaks from the rim of a cast-iron pan two mornings later.

There is a stain on your back serpent-like across skin, burning the way baby flames lick wax coated string like familiar embraces.

There is a heat pounding inside your ribcage, best let it out.

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Amicable Bethany Catlin Daisy chains of maybe and blame hung questions in the hierarchy of your mind and mine but we addressed our doubts outside and made friends with maybe not You liked traffic cone orange and when you showed it I wished that you’d gone for big red brights so we could measure this transaction in bloody lines and losing fights I guess there’s such a thing as vending machine love I spent all my quarters trying to dream in color but nickels can’t keep up mosts and onlys and there are only five senses in my pocket now, not enough for our dispensary of pleasant empty things There are five stages and we’re drawing conclusions with the curtains Cancel the reprise and close the doors please there’s no reason to make reason anymore It’s time to pay the best for the worst because haunted isn’t for those passing through

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Conversations in Black Julia Fritz-Endres My mother bent inward leading with the shoulders then curling her wrists to clench a fist against her temple.

In the church, all is quiet, within these coiling winds that pry and lift the dark ripples of cloth that hold us to the earth and cover our skin, the wrinkled elbows, the dust-clogged pores.

My aunt, unfurling her blouse like an orchid’s lips flutter in the rain.

“Isn’t it fun?”

She smiles, wistfully, at her little, hidden luxury, opening her arms to show red, and gold embroidered beneath the black.

Is it wrong to laugh at a funeral?

The priest could not decide to scold or pretend that he heard nothing at all.

The rest of us, with nothing bright inside our clothes must crumple and swallow the giddy breathlessness as addicting as sorrow in our lungs— both shuddering and dying like folded cranes on a bright red string.

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abdominal Aidan Teppema i pulled a strange muscle i forgot i had i think it is in my stomach, it is small but seeps inexplicably (pulsating, soreness spreads from core to extremities; i’m up at night to enumerate) once i counted plastic stars on my ceiling twice i catalogued freckles on lovers’ necks without fear of forgetting my place three times, from the glint off his drug-dulled eyes, i was deadly afraid more, too many more, i did sit-ups until collapse and now my stomach is set in knots i apologize to god for this, for fate’s twist

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construction Josh Koh

Photo

Title

Name 18

Williamsburg Giulia Girgenti

Photo

Title

Name 19

Nature and Structure – A Closure Soobin Choi Title

Mixed Media

Name 20

n’est-ce pas?

Abigail Methvin

Acrylic on Board

Title

Name 21

Afternoon in Rome Haimeng Zhang

Watercolor on Paper

Title

Name 22

Porto Venere, Italy Haimeng Zhang

Watercolor on Paper

Title

Name 23

Oral Hygeine Noah Mondschein

Photo

Title

Name 24

On Grand Facing Snelling (L) On Grand Facing Macalester St. (R) Peace Im Title

Oil on Woodboard

Name 25

The External Mind Nicholas Egersdorf

Ink on Paper

Title

Name 26

seniority Svitlana Iukhymovych

Photo

Title

Name 27

First Touch Bade Turgut

Photo

Title

Name 28

Rise and Shine Isabel Beck-Roe The Bean Plant and everyone who loved it woke up early and they shoooooook off their dirt and they streeeeetched their leafy limbs and they ate ate ate a yummy breakfast and they watched the sun peak out and make things yellow yellow hot and the Bean Plant and everyone who loved it said hello

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dysfunction junction Maud Grauer a starting point like that exercise on the first day of health class where my teacher passed around a bowl of milk and a bottle of blue food coloring and each person had to put a drop of food coloring in the milk and it meant something about sex but i don’t remember what it was, i just remember that you could see little drops of concentrated blue with blurry halos spreading and mixing and it looked like a piece of china that you only bring out for special occasions we have special occasion sterling silver that we only bring out for thanksgiving. when my mother dies i will inherit the special occasion sterling silver. she asked if i wanted it last thanksgiving and i said yes because it’s very beautiful especially the little spoons for salt or coffee that we never use because we have a saltshaker and i’m the only one who drinks coffee. i will inherit it but it won’t really be mine because the silverware is engraved with an “O,” “O” for Oberndorf and i am only ⅓ an Oberndorf from my middle name in kindergarten they got my name wrong. the teacher put “Bern Maud Grauer” on my nametag and i probably cried because that’s what kids do when grown-ups don’t work the way they’re supposed to. i cried when i was a kid and i cry now, but i remember not crying for everything in between. i think i should have because grown-ups weren’t working the way they were supposed to but maybe i wasn’t a kid then. instead of aging in a straight line i think you age up and down and around. i remember diagrams in math where a wave diagram was the same as a circle diagram

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i don’t remember a lot of things i should. like math or my grandpa. when people don’t remember a person’s face they remember something else about them, like a mole with a hair coming out of it on the right side of their neck or the espadrilles they wore on the porch in August 2002 holding a glass of iced tea with mint. i don’t remember any of that. he kicked me out of the sunroom so he could watch everybody loves raymond. and hot dogs and whole milk and pasta with butter and catalpa pods and never going in the front door. he didn’t work the way he was supposed to there are dents in my head. and when they checked our scalps because lice was going around mine was so dry that skin came off in waxy scabs. i didn’t bleed when they picked them off with popsicle sticks. i didn’t bleed until i was eleven. when i was eleven i bled like no one else was bleeding and the teachers hadn’t told us what it meant yet. when i was eleven my mom tried to talk about it in the car and i kicked the door so hard i left dents in it like the dents in my head. i wanted to kick the door so hard it split in two so i could fall into traffic and bleed the right way. unpredictably. you shouldn’t know when you’re going to start bleeding. i wonder if when you get hit like that you bleed or you just break. i wonder if my grandpa bled or broke. the dents in my head are from the boxes with buttons that make the lights turn green. i kept hitting my head on the corners

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Iniquitous Claire Grace I met God at an alcoholics anonymous meeting in May. Said he hadn’t been sober since he cast Lucifer from Heaven.

No matter how often he drowned the skies in rain, only drunkenness dulled such potency.

God sits in a garden of metaphors empty.

I met Adam in between drunken slurs of temptation won.

He snapped my fingers like twigs so he wouldn’t be the only arthritic hands at the bar.

Told me ancient Baltic battleships sank when I was born.

I now know loss cuts deeper than bone.

I can no longer pray to those I knew as a child For Adam and Eve grew up drowning in cigarette smoke and watered down sherry and God tied rocks to his ankles and let himself sink down down as he whispered over and over jesus christ, now aren’t we living?

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Grass Is Greener or 4/11/2004 Theodore Twidell It’s hard to explain What it’s like To be on the outside Of your own coffin.

It feels oddly– Incomplete.

Like nights on which You yield To the stormy sea Of TooMuchGin And can’t piece together Why you woke up On the floor, Like finally catching That yellowed shadow That lurks in the corner Of every mirror Only to lose it Seconds later; A shadow prowling in The grass above which My body floats At shoulder-height; The blades hissing.

How is it grass Can even feel?

It seems pompous To thrive in a graveyard.

So vibrant and vengeful– Feasting On those below; It should have Some damn’d Respect.

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Suddenly, the grass Crescendos A screeching static; As if I care that Behind my glorified Fed-Ex I see only one Of my ungrateful spawn.

(Wasn’t that close With the others Anyway) His head held high Surveying the grass, (Without the disdain I justly hold) My son pulls his kid close His wife’s hand clasped In his shaking one– As if he’s got something to prove; I get it!

You’re a better father than me!

A better husband!

Good job for meeting that low bar.

He’s crying!

Goddamnit he’s crying Can’t he see his son watching!

If he has his way That kid’s gonna end up A college-educated sissy Living in The Castro With an impossibly tiny dog And a latino lover.

Instead of crying How about you give a damn eulogy!

Anyone! Anyone!

My ex-wife looks oddly peaceful And my current wife Is already moving on.

How about you give a damn eulogy first!

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My son marches slowly As if he hears me Screaming in his ear; Refusing to move an inch, Rivulets as eyes.

I stumble to him Stop fucking crying!

I shriek.

He picks up his son And holds him as they walk.

Grabbing his head in my hands Man up, damnit!

The tears pass through My trembling fingers And he straightens his son’s tie.

I fall to my knees Trying in vain To clutch his hand Don’t you know I tried!

Hugging his son tight He lies: “Grandpa loved you So very much” STOP I’m alone: I haven’t seen a soul Since the day mine left, And my grave Is already worn.

People flit as shadows Through the yard Laying theirs to rest Ignoring me, awake.

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As I stare At the pitying moss Creeping ‘cross my name, I am become The yellowed shadow– Filled to the brim With empty gin, And I feel the coffin Close ‘round me As roots slowly drain No one knows I tried.

How should I have known That grass Can feel?

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The Dragonfly Matthew Later Up against a little rock I smashed the dragonfly with a large marble.

The clear glass marble is snug between my middle and index fingers and pivots in the socket it has fitted between the insect’s thorax and the base of its abdomen. In one vast reflection, the marble catches both the insect’s bulging halves and the sharp clouds above. As the dragonfly struggles to pass, I watch its legs kicking into the blue sky like a flock of long tongued animals lapping at a pool. If I tilt my head one way, the marble lights up with mixed greens of the forest’s reflection; from another it takes on the boring Sun’s uniform white. The marble is a perfect eye. Not only does it see everything around it at once, but it traps these many perspectives together in a single vessel too. Of course, to see every side of the marble, I would need to lift it off the dragonfly so I could see it from below; but then it would be held in a new position and I’d have to restart my examination from the beginning. I would also need to remove my fingers, but the same issue arises then: it may roll away to a different location. To observe the marble from all sides, I would need for it to be static and levitating. And I have not yet even begun to account for my own reflection and shadows. If there is no use in me raising the marble, I may as well keep it here, pressed against the bug until it dies. Today is a warm day and I have plenty of time to wait.

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Mermaids Sleep on Procrustean Beds Beenish Riaz When I was ten, my mother pointed her out there the mermaid on the beach in Seaview, her body coiled on the sand, gigantic tail veiling her face.

My first thought: how much she mirrors me.

Brown skin splintered after twenty minutes in the oven hair flakes oiled down with the water’s dark waves.

Throbbing gills, three black half-moon holes cut on my neck suck my scream down my throat.

My pupil-less eyes want to puncture through these humans’ skins, carve out, swallow But seaweed ties me to shadowed sand waves I am penetrable Little girls and boys’ eyes scurry their tiny spider-fingers crawl two pea-sized fists tear through muscled fins ironing hair out of my head painting the cap red peeling the skin off my face like petals off a flower revealing a chewing gum rippled inside dying me moon-white.

Pushing children aside, anglers come forward, scrape my scales, saw my pink insides in half ply apart a vagina, craft with rounded nails, and stitch with needles.

Wipe the sweat off their brows on to two legs parted open.

Finally.

More human than fish and not fish and human Only, one tiny scale flickers, my mother leaves in the sparking absinthe, shrouds it in pashmina.

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But the scale sparkles through cloth shimmering in the dark.

And his eyes follow the silver green glow same hands that denied my fish hood had ripped his.

So before he touches me, he thinks should I? But the scale glimmers and his lip crushes my flapping scale grabs it by the lip but it bites and pricks and claws and he sticks and spits spilling blood all over his shoes.

When I was thirteen, I saw his two-pronged red sandals pushing the dead mermaid wide open up into the garbage pile, head last.

To be burned on a pyre of plastic bags.

I saw a tiny sparkle blink I thought how much she mirrors me.

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Descent, Paused Zeena Fuleihan The speckled mirror licks my eyelids, as they lie still, ice over glass, and the curve of your cheekbone appears in sepia behind me, etched in my retina, silhouette burnt into permanent ash.

My fingers curl still to cotton, rippled wave of bedsheet between us and the warmth of your abandoned pillow cools in my rocky resting palm, the ghost of you alive floats in the seams of my casket – falling to soil, gone.

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Grandmother Annika Sampson I want to be making poems to you in daylight, on the trail to Avalanche Lake where the cedars are wide and fragrant.

When I talk about the white bellies of birches and their yellow arms aching, empty, I am talking to you.

The hill leading to the lookout has been sheared by wildfire.

I drink Jameson by the embers.

Onions and peppers linger in hot oil, honey, spice, their own juice.

All day I have been consumed by the asking.

Am I enough? Why am I not a good student, a good daughter, a good woman?

But I can name plants and make lavender syrup and tell a story and climb a mountain and put on warm wool socks.

I wonder how we ever get to know someone.

Worlds inside worlds inside worlds.

Cowgirl poets. Awe of others. Fear of others.

Corn tortillas. Fisherwomen. A fast moving river.

The world rolls out west. Here poetry is law.

The mountains are speaking, slowly.

In ten spans of geologic time we will hear their truth.

It will be something like om mani padme hum.

It will be something like love.

I am speaking truth to you, slowly. It is enough.

This voice. It is enough. This song.

I am a girl without a face but I am also not a girl.

Field of yellow flowers. Medicine Grizzly Lake. Red earth.

I walk. It is.

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bounty Giulia Girgenti I. 16 and alone in the house mommy back at sloan kettering and daddy, daddy down the block with that woman but no one says so vincent god knows where and I just got back from key food with some cans of soup nothing fancy just something to eat before i go to work and go to class and back to work and back here just alone again in this brownstone shell of a family where nobody eats but me II. 20 and foreign country foreign language foreign boyfriend two years since mommy been at cypress hills no tombstone yet just a mound of earth to hold her while that woman that woman sits in her chair but it doesn’t matter cause i got out and here i am with this boy this man who cooks we’ve known each other for a few months and I’ve never seen him use a can opener just his hands i don’t know if i love him but the food loves me more than 238 degraw street forgot to

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III. 39 and back to the brownstones long time, 18 years married and the new daddy speaks foreign to son and girl, feeds her good loving food and screams foreign and i just want to be a better mommy than cypress mommy i don’t visit her instead i soccer practice ballet classes preschool afterschool saxophone classes laundromat groceries nine to five in the office dentist appointment nanny drop off pick up write the check everything but the cooking IV. 43 and group therapy he learned how to twist the bad mommy knife and i started throwing plates every few months the women, they all talk about food starving themselves binging and purging and dieting i thank myself that i never had disordered eating and go home to him with bounty on the table again

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Companions Molly Sowash Every night we wake with the moon

to slip into bed beside the living and cup their bodies

within our hollows.

Having fallen to the other side

past heart beats

and gas prices fingernail clippings in bathroom corners, we grab

at their dreams play with

them

the whole night

through, before coating them in our dust, return them to the breathing, where at first slit of sunlight they wake to find

us in the fog across a highway, smoke curling from cigarette ends,

soft hairs standing tall on their necks

when they realize we are always watching.

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Shells Julia Fritz-Endres The sand piles thick in crescent-moon ribbons while the seagull bends the knee to leap, to fray the ice-cold canvas.

In his claws, a crab lies limp, contorted.

Their legs embrace in a final prayer to whatever God crabs worship when they fall.

A crumpled mass, the crab welcomes the visitors who are kind enough to attend his wake.

He opens his chest for warring beaks to plunder and dine.

When the body is clean they grow bored and forgetful, flying from the scene before thanking the caterers for such a fine event.

Beside the shrapnel, blue-black as the sea, horseshoe shells lay like broken soldiers on broken backs.

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Is It Art or Is It In My Way Isabel Beck-Roe The city is major. It is comfortably stuffed with people except for when those people are all taking the train at which point things are less comfortable. Most people walk fast and aggressively, because their shoes have at least a slight heel, because they wear business shoes, because they work in a major city. The streets are wide but really the problem is that there is not enough room for the cars going lengthwise, not widthwise, and this is traffic. The people walking cross the street whenever they want, which is usually when the cars aren’t going past but not always. The buildings are old and beautiful. They are not lit with neon but labeled with engravings or simply identified by their iconic shape or imposing chunks of stone that bulge out further than the smooth glass buildings. The buildings are massive towers, because a lot of people need to fit into them. Concrete sidewalks frame the buildings. They are smooth but shoes will stick to them, because they are sticky, because people here are busy and do not always have time to put their sticky things in the proper places. The buildings are beautiful, and the sidewalks are beautiful, and there are beautiful parks with sculptures inside, some of which are beautiful. City people love all of the beautiful things they don’t have time to look at.

There is one old building that is smoother than most of the others, and also more beautiful, not because of the smoothness but because it is filled with art. The building has too many smooth stone steps so that the city people have time to see who is going in to look at art. Inside the building the floors are the smoothest thing. Everything that hits them makes a sound that echoes off of the slightly less smooth but still very smooth walls. Every step and word and sound is huge and unwelcome. City people decided that looking at art is quiet. The art is on different floors separated by too many steps.

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There is one floor, however, that has just the right number of steps.

The steps go down. After loudly walking down the steps, there is a gallery. This makes sense. It is quieter. There are three different rooms. Similar to most rooms, each room has four walls. On one wall, in each room, an oriental rug hangs. The colors of the rugs are very different. Each room is filled with pedestals, and each pedestal holds up one shoe. The shoes are affiliated with the rug in their room. There is no sign explaining the exact correlation. The only signs are on the pedestals, clarifying what each shoe was running from. Some explanations are more figurative than others. That shoe was running from the start line. That shoe was running from typhoid. That shoe was running from a commitment.

Couples walk down the stairs. Every couple looks at the shoes for a long time and does not spend as much time looking at the rugs.

Every couple tries to correlate the shoes and the rug and every couple gets into an argument. Each room has a guard. The guards all wear plastic bags on their feet. The guards watch couples fight all day long, and they find it to be hilarious. When the couples want to leave, they walk up too many stairs. No one yet has thought that room was art.

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Minnesota State Unfair Svitlana Iukhymovych come on, I said maxima pancakes books say how to make it a creme brulee karamel sutra slap apple tart on your face give whiskey on your neck abridge prelude to souffle to sorry for hangry burning American cookies you deep fried Monte Christo sweet and Paleolithic I’ve meant you roast like chocolate-dipped cherry on a spoon my pretzel tongue refuses to say you so good for what’s under my deep fried ribs speak like bacon ice cream sizzles sweet potato taco to spice my bitter dot shakes you think thoughts that rival salted caramel puff malts in this espresso float my confession I can’t express see, when I even try to tell you how I love you, it’s all shit

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Chanter Literary Magazine

Spring 2016