Chanter Literary and Arts Magazine — Fall 2021 by Chanter Literary Magazine

CHANTER LITERARY AND ARTS MAGAZINE

FALL 2021

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

Fall 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 Matt Burgess An in-person semester Tobie’s pica math The Mac Weekly’s table scraps The December 1963 Chanter’s JFK tribute The haunted Doty basement all-gender bathroom Broken printers

Editor-in-Chief: Teddy Holt Literary Editor: Alice Asch Art Editors: Maria Bodansky and Libby Sykes Submissions Manager: Kira Schukar Public Relations Coordinator: Aron Smith-Donovan Associate Editors: Zoë Roos Scheuerman, Emma Nguyen, Kiên Nguyễn, and Charley Eatchel

Staff:

Audrey Bentch Zeke Cambey Odessa Chusid Marley Craine Birdie Keller Mary Liebers Rachel Lock Claire Marko Colin Massoglia Majdaah Salaah Tobie Schecter Manavi Sinha Maddie Smith Estelle Timar-Wilcox

Writing •

jerzy boyz 7 Rachel Warshaw Ode to a City’s Night Sky 8 Kiên Nguyễn Because Joy Has Its Own Particular Grammar 9 Rowan Stephenson No More 11 Ella Deutchman PTSD TURNED MY BRAIN INTO WHAC-A-MOLE 12 Audrey McGuinness everything is about ghosts 13 Maeve Sweeney Romeo Reflects 14 Lanae Caldwell The Duck 16 Yinka Saba Dream of My Sister 17 Anna Šverclová An Undelivered Note 18 Zoë Roos Scheuerman Stalling 19 Marley Craine drinking with both hands / windchime 20 Lucy McNees a piece of you, eschewed 21 j.m.r. SELF-PORTRAIT WITH CHINESE LANTERN FRUIT 46 Rowan Stephenson The Parable of Nothing 47 Zeke Cambey Tennessee in July 49 Kira Schukar A Suggestion 50 Marley Craine Sorry I haven’t called 51 Anonymous a child who is maybe a son: jabberwock undone 52 Rachel Warshaw overripe pumpkins 53 Ella Deutchman Kansas 54 Anna Šverclová A pair of loons live in the southeast corner of Squash Lake. 55 Gabe Fisch

Floating Home, or “The First Honest Poem About Jean” 56 Elyssa Cook In Every Little Pool 58 Hugh Gabriel Sunrise Culling 60 Zoe Frank

Art

•

For Marguerite Porete 22 Zeke Cambey Rainy Day 24 Maddie Sabin Broken Window 25 Tina Chen Wise Gossip 26 Maraka Bradford Pickling O’Clock 27 Carmen Quintos swing dance 28 Linnea Henrikson Justice 29 Shosuke Noma Heist 30 Carmen Quintos Kraut (love letter to Appalachia) 31 Aron Smith-Donovan Also Ludwig 32 John Bunting Conversing with the Moon 33 John Gross next to you 34 Linnea Henrikson We Share A Wall 35 Maraka Bradford Untitled 36 Asa Rallings Goldfinch 37 Brooke Sapper Fungi and Snail 38 Julia Bintz Donut Pincushion 39 Brooke Sapper Rivera and Picasso 40 Libby Sykes not again 41 El Alcalá Gerald 42 Nicholas Lobaugh Untitled 43 John Gross Maiden in Red 44 Maddie Sabin Stretched Thin 45 Elizabeth Romero-Herrera

Cover art: Surfers film photograph Julia Bintz

jerzy boyz Rachel Warshaw We have removed the music at the beginning of the show, which was once recorded, and reproduced, but will now be built each night, anew. Noises, and silence, and noises, then silence again, these are theatre, full of fury, meaning nothing. We have removed the furniture from the stage, lest it distract from the act of creation, of bodies making shapes, like branches bending to the water, of bodies in space, like the promised explosion, when skin meets sky, and then the floating, the whirling dervish of guts and bones, Orpheus thrown into the stars, torn limbless, lost voice, heart already cut out. And then the silence that follows the noise, the aborted sweet music, ripped from lips and fingers, and now only memory lingers.

Ode to a City’s Night Sky Kiên Nguyễn It can’t have been more than 2 years ago, On a holiday, a rural island, where I made the mistake Of looking up At night. Luminous! The glistening canvas, I never know, never truly, what The stars look like, There was little truth To a city’s night sky. Yet, up there, splattered and clumped, I did not see a hunter, nor a scorpion. The figures drawn in neat narrative lines Spoken by minds like mine How much truth has there ever been? False veils, the city hangs Might as well been ink spots, dropped On a canvas, to inspire the poets, in us To carve the lines. I still make the same mistake, Tonight, tomorrow, more than once by choice. Of looking up, at a city’s night sky, Where lights are shrouded In darkness, more bright.

Because Joy Has Its Own Peculiar Grammar Rowan Stephenson Because your life is a blank sheet of paper you fold, unfold, fold again, the action weathering your hands soft, until the crease gives out, until it falls in two. Because you sit on the screened-in porch, mosquitoes buzzing, your hands gold in the lamplight. Because the stars look like droplets of milk, because they float like dead fish. Because your life smells like dirt. Because joy comes when you least expect it. Because joy can be angry like fire is angry. Because joy can be quiet, which is sometimes mistaken for sadness. Because your elementary school teacher was wrong when they said you can’t start a sentence with because. Because the record’s been scratched for so long you’ve forgotten the skip isn’t part of the song. Because cold dark water fills the bottom of the hole you dig in the dirt by the river. Because the earth disgorges each fragile dirty rib cage of roots. Because what’s good in the soil is in you too. Because you’re beloved by grass. Because the willows weave over you a net with their branches. Because soil blackens your nails.

Because your fur is soft and glistening. Because your life is perched precariously on the very wing-tip of a moth circling the lightbulb. Because your life is a wonder no larger than the drop of milk fanning out in eddies toward the edges of your teacup. Because a thing’s value is limited not by size but by joy. Because your pockets are filled with seeds. Because you hold an apple in your hand like a tiny sun. Because your feet are bare and the river’s inside you. Because the skip is part of the song. Because the song lives inside you. Because inside you there’s incomprehensibility. Because joy is often incomprehensible. Because it makes us wild. Because the animal inside you sniffs at your hand, runs uncontainably. Because the wings inside you dance with light. Because it jumps the fence, escapes the pasture. Because the eggshell gives way to the sharp insistence of the beak. Because wings swirl and jut and flap and collide. Because a pericardium, a mediastinum, a thorax cannot contain a beating heart pulsing with blood and stars and feathers. Because a rib cage, like a grammar, cannot contain joy. Because.

No More Ella Deutchman Whisk me into a fever dream I’ll paint every leaf pomegranate tangerine lemon wine but only till my wells grow parched because I can’t get drunk off depleted light not even tipsy turn me around till sun envelopes every angle of my cheeks but when the fuse splinters summer then suddenly totality eyes will sob if lucky hollow out if not all I want is effervescent water to rush as a river down deserted cavities through my throat I want all my love and all my loves to employ their cracked hands in the cradling of a crackling fire audible through eyes toasting skin gold can’t you see almost was always almost enough now I crave fire that is more than just smoke clinging to hair ash-laden desire bonfire bright one full moon empty next no more my fingers grow dexterous with days setting damp wood ablaze fires that settle into frigidity let me whisk you into a dream that knows how to be well. 11

PTSD TURNED MY BRAIN INTO WHAC-A-MOLE Audrey McGuinness and some days it doesn’t come with a hammer/and I never meant to put coins in the slot/and there are no rules to this game/and the flashing lights are blinding/and even when I win there’s nowhere to redeem the tokens.

everything is about ghosts Maeve Sweeney I wanted to see you but my orchestration was lacking follow the rituals feel the hollowness please pull it out of me, a snake’s tail looking for me in the empty spaces the wound shrinks and grows with the passing days here it is large, pulsing tomorrow it will be a faint bruise pain is a tether—old news so you are in my head, still taking time, making space there’s an orbital tightness here our past selves passing over the new in this new year I am inviting you to press on the bruise, under my unclothed rib cage hard enough to add weight to my frame I’ll have you close and I’ll have you hurt if you were wondering, I’m still finding it difficult to forgive desire persists anyways

Romeo Reflects Lanae Caldwell My dear we thought we’d left the grief behind us locked in the gun case, bullets ground to powder. We trampled over those flower fields mass graves in tribute to memories once cherished now little more than corroding marble and the scent of acid rain: heady regret and soft things rotting. And yet here we are holding them still losing them. There is no sense of closure in this casket. There is just an empty knell ringing outward flickering now like a candle refusing to die refusing to acknowledge that it died years ago. And steady as a scalpel in the slaughterhouse I keep thinking while pressing dried poppies into band aids when will the air be enough for wounds to close for those buried things to stay buried? And you are probably thinking gripping at my shoulders like a plug to the EKG monitor that perhaps there is still something here worth saving. But I tell you this: Once long ago you took my hands and said, “we are never going back because there is no such thing as a second chance as good as this one.” And I look now years later to say that you were right. Cleaning up glass from the fallen picture frame, you are right in the same way I know I am in the right to bring it out back and slit its throat.

I love you and so there should be no peaceful end to this. Arteries which meld together can only be severed in the most intimate of ways. After all, the sharpest swords are those which have been purified from the violence of devotion. And I gladly accept the price for my impudence. Kneeling onto the altar of the guillotine, I’d cast my sword into the dirt the moment my eyes meet yours collapsing like a weary sun. Your palms would shake sweaty as they rub against my temples; your mouth moving still trying to salvage us praying that I should repent for this battlefield amputation. I can see it all too well, my hands reaching to cup yours, mutual understanding scattered like the ghosts we denied. And blearily I would reply to your pulse trembling like a sparrow, or perhaps more like tectonic plates tearing open an ocean basin, my heart, the blood welling up from cracked lips does not suit you. But I would not be saying it like this if that is how it went. Because there are no grand gestures. No begging me to stay. There are just the nights where you said “come to bed,” and I just couldn’t bring myself to. There are just those quiet sighs, feet on the dashboard of the moving van, and an absence that I cannot shake even though I was the one who tore out the stiches in the first place. And I’m in the kitchen cooking for two even though I am only one measly person blinking stupidly at the cut on my finger. Waiting for somebody to do something about it, waiting for my body to catch up and just fucking heal like it’s supposed to. But healing is uncomfortable. It itches and aches and sometimes an open wound feels like a friend tender in the way it whispers aggression in the guise of comfort and familiarity. Merciless in the guise of a lover felled by personal inadequacy. And so here we are again screaming at a mirror that you yourself broke, mourning dreams which never saw the light. My dear heart, we have been over this too many times. You have never been in love. Stop trying to turn yourself into a tragedy.

The Duck Yinka Saba i don’t know how the duck ended up here but it did it was alone for the past three days it has wandered this busy college campus almost a mile from the closest body of water i heard that ducks can’t go more than eight hours without water. i’m sure the duck didn’t mean to get lost but it did i don’t know why the duck grew quiet but it did at first glance it looked frozen in time not a feather on its back shifted until you peered in closer and noticed its beak gently moving up and down unable to make its call i heard that ducks only quack when they’re in a happy mood. i’m sure the duck didn’t mean to lose its voice but it did i don’t know why no one knew how to help the duck but no one did it wasn’t a problem for anyone to bear the duck was just another animal everyone figured it would wander back to its pond somehow or maybe its flock was looking for it or maybe the duck wandered off on purpose i heard that ducks don’t make the best adventurers. i’m sure the duck didn’t mean to get lost but it did

Dream of my Sister Anna Šverclová In the dream, in the graveyard, the grass folded over the headstones long enough to braid: the root follicles, twisting like roots of a large tree, like networks of mycelium, every living thing cocooning underground in scribbles, making perfect casts around the dead. The pale blind root I pull from the ground today is gnarled as if around a thumb, curve slicing around the soft flesh & nail, pricking shallowly into the pores like brand new bike tires. In the hole it left, a worm ventures out cautiously poking pink head through the prairie. Wild ants gallivant past, carrying pieces of my sister. In the dream, my sister is buried in the ground. Unembalmed and wilting, she dies like anything else in the garden, softening into the Earth, piece by piece, by the collective hands of the loam, the old rope roots of the oak crackle open to make a headrest. The sinkhole envelops her. In this dream, she never fell into a fire, encased forever in green ceramic on the mantle, her body wasted into ash. 17

An Undelivered Note Zoë Roos Scheuerman Every night, I swallow up your mouth and spit out your words before you do. I know how to call your bluff. I keep expecting you to call mine, too. I told you once that I’m not sure you can really know the weight of someone’s heart in your hands the same way you can know the weight of their body on yours. When I sit with you, I am sliding off the roof like the raindrops, like the condensation sliding down a Friday night beer bottle, like tears I shed on my couch sliding down into your hoodie. That Friday night beer bottle. Someone spilled it on my shoes, and now, heading back to you, I am spilling my guts because you are not a secret I want to keep. I like the things you say when you strip your soul bare right before you fall asleep. We are not on the roof anymore, but I am clinging to you, to your translations— You said I am more than meeting your enemy on a battlefield. I am sinking into you like a sword through your liver, and we are what Terrance Hayes meant when he talked about one question flush against another. I will be the woman with wings pressed against the spine you trace the way I want so badly to trace the shapes of your thoughts. Stop calling things poggers and come to bed, baby. Maybe in a month we won’t be here, but for now, I want to learn the taste of your dreams until dishes rattling in the kitchen wake us up. 18

Stalling Marley Craine In the morning, the sun is honey and it spills through my window and kisses my face, warm as a woman with thick, golden hair and hands that smell like tea. Day in, day out, here we go again, I am tripping on the squeak of my shower shoes, I am stuck in a phone booth-sized bathroom stall, I am always followed by uninvited guests. In the mirror, I see poltergeists. They scream at me, wailing sirens, flashing lights that shine on the bags underneath my eyes that look gray and the spots on my forehead that used to be porcelain. I am tired. And I can’t find my reflection. And nobody will help me look. I think it is gone. And with it are the soft hands that feel like cream called L’Occitane and this is why I ache. I long to feel those hands on mine they’d clear my face and dry my eyes but my shower shoes won’t let me run home. Again and again, I’m in a stall and I’m learning to drive, the passenger seat screaming, gas! now clutch! stalling, falling, we’d shudder and rock like a girl wrapped in her mother’s arms sobbing on the cool tile floor of the bathroom. 19

drinking with both hands / windchime Lucy McNees ambidextrous as the girl with a bright future and the one drinking in the mountains reflected by the bright sun cracked dry hands with rings soft bare hands with pencils feel the same I need not write life to live it I need not choose one to write life the way you think it exists I need not smell the sagebrush to know I am in it I need not feel the hard desert sand to know I am lost and sunburnt I need not know I exist to exist —————————————————————————— when I make noise I speak with the dusty purple sky and glowing moon on my skin I speak with the preciousness of a child’s mobile of shapes and new touch I embrace the blue-green pine needles until my hands bleed and heal around them and the windchime sits silently with the touch & love of a dead sister the dusty purple sky reflected on her rusted skin 20

a piece of you, eschewed j.m.r. evolution blessed me with a virgin birth because it knew that i had little left to live for. in the bottom of my stomach, i felt the weight of something growing, a peach pit taking form. i learned that the female aphid is born pregnant. it does not need to bend its back over for someone else, it does not need anyone but itself to survive. evolution blessed the aphid with a virgin birth because it knew. when i walked down the sidewalk 15 minutes to the local cvs in the freezing cold, i came up with 100 names. i saw 100 lifetimes flash before my eyes. the snow crunched under my feet and i thought i could feel the kick. i could feel the weight in my stomach (the weight of something growing, a peach pit taking form), and the fear began to settle itself all over my body, catching my breath, aching my shoulders. i passed it off as the cold, and kept walking, my cheeks red and stiff, my hands stuffed into my pockets still freezing. i walked inside and i got what i needed, the girl at the register smiled at me, i stuffed the box into my coat—terrified. i walked all the way back, in that same cold. i sat on the toilet, waited for the other girls to leave. and in my head i just hoped and hoped that this was not the end. maybe i was less afraid of having a child, so much as being tied to him. a life sentence with someone i didn’t even want or love. even worse, of having to rip this pit out of me, burying it somewhere else to take away the blame. i held the pregnancy test in my hand and i waited, watching it, alone. alone. alone. negative.

For Marguerite Porete ink and poetry Zeke Cambey

My lady Tied to the crucifix And engulfed in flames Light pours from her eyes And incinerates her gray headdress As her eyes are turned to liquid A silver dagger hangs over her heart Piercing her to emanate divine rays With her arms outstretched With her arms outstretched Blood dripping from her palms And from her side The flute is played And the lute is struck As her silence falls on deaf ears Caught in her throat And protected by God

Rainy Day watercolor monoprint Maddie Sabin

Broken Window photograph Tina Chen

Wise Gossip ink Maraka Bradford

Pickling O’Clock acrylic Carmen Quintos

swing dance photograph Linnea Henrikson

Justice digital photograph Shosuke Noma

Heist acrylic Carmen Quintos

Kraut (love letter to Appalachia) linoleum block print Aron Smith-Donovan

Also Ludwig graphite John Bunting

Conversing with the Moon digital photograph John Gross

next to you 35mm film, caffenol process Linnea Henrikson

We Share A Wall ink Maraka Bradford

Untitled digital photograph Asa Rallings

Goldfinch wool Brooke Sapper

Fungi and Snail ink Julia Bintz

Donut Pincushion wool and pins Brooke Sapper

Rivera and Picasso modeling clay Libby Sykes

not again ink El Alcalá

Gerald charcoal Nicholas Lobaugh

Untitled digital photograph John Gross

Maiden in Red collagraph monoprint Maddie Sabin

Stretched Thin graphite Elizabeth Romero-Herrera

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH CHINESE LANTERN FRUIT Rowan Stephenson after Egon Schiele Light textured in swirls of paint, brush strokes like the individual threads of a tapestry brought right up to the eye. Eye contact is a copper wire wound around the ferromagnetic iron core of the soul. Jawline in bruisy blues and greens. Note how posture implies life. Notice how the backdrop is wounded by each blood-red husk. See how each shadow becomes a bruise. See how each bruise becomes a dusting of ash. How an Adam’s apple resembles a whirlpool. How a human eye bursts with life like a ripe peach giving way beneath your teeth, soft and defiant, golden juices dripping stickily down your arms.

The Parable of Nothing Zeke Cambey In life I separated myself, always pursuing absence. I wanted to make myself into nothing. To me, it seemed like the most beautiful thing, almost like heaven. A state beyond fear and sadness. Beyond struggle. To do this, I lived alone and closed my eyes to the world. Children, the sunset, rivers, animals, clouds, and trees. All of it melted away. However, I still hungered. I still felt pain. This was not nothing. Nothing does not feel pain, it does not feel hunger. The hour of my death approached, and I welcomed it with a secret greed in my heart, but under that I knew that nothingness does not feel greed. It does not feel secret elation. I buried my body near a river, in ragged clothes, with flowers in my hand. The instant I died, I forgot who I was. The body sat in the ground, decaying for a time, supposing it had become nothing. Without memories, without identity, without desire. The body’s fingers rotted. The teeth fell out and the flesh was pulled away. Bones remained, thinking they were nothing. However, nothingness does not rot, does not fall away from bone. Nothingness does not lay in the ground for years, slowly becoming a skeleton. The skull realized this as a tree began to grow through its eye sockets. The tree grew into a great oak and forgot the body. No consciousness, no thoughts. This was true nothingness. This was emancipation from the struggle of matter. No inclinations or reactions, only large towering shadows. Only rays of sunlight. Only waving slightly in the breeze. And then an insect burrowed into its trunk. A bird made its nest in its branches. A child climbed it. Nothingness does not contain, it does not nurture, it does not blow softly in the breeze. It does not allow a bird to make a nest in its branches. A baby grew from the tree, and fell to the ground. The baby did not remember who the tree was. In fact, it did not have any memories at all. It did not have any experience. The baby laid there for a time, thinking 47

nothing. The baby did not idolize anything, it did not have any opinions, it did not think much of the world. It was truly nothing, empty. Nothing in that moment, until it cried out for its mother. At that point it desired, at that point it was filled with something. Nothingness is not filled with something, it is not an infant, it does not cry out for its mother. The baby sat there for a time, until it was lifted into the sky by a strong gust of wind. It saw the whole world under its kicking feet. It floated in space for a moment and then a powerful white light shone from its forehead. It was lifted higher and higher and then exploded into dust. The dust thought it was nothing for a second, and then realized that nothingness does not collect on the surface of a mirror. It does not cloud the eyes or congest the throat. At this realization the dust became angry, it became furious. “What is nothing?” it cried out to the cosmos. “How can I become it? I have destroyed myself in every attempt thus far, and yet I am no closer.” “No matter how insignificant you make yourself, you still desire,” Nothing replied. “You will never get nothing by desiring it. But this is not the answer. By responding to you, I have become something. I have become an answer. An answer is not nothing.” Nothingness smiled. “As I am no longer nothing, I cannot tell you how to become it. The best I can do is give you advice. Be okay with being something, you cannot be anything else.” At this, something embraced the dust and they both wept at the great task before them. To be nothing is nothing at all, to be something is the hardest of things. Through the tears, the dust smiled to itself.

Tennessee in July Kira Schukar Well really it was only six hours into the drive and already I felt like I was dying, the sky sobbing fits throwing thunder into the pine trees. I watched the night approach no later than two in the afternoon the clouds wrapping themselves into the trees and settling down to sleep my car a red mite on their pillows. And it is all I can do—drive between the folds in the hills grip the wheel until my knuckles go white. And it is all I can do—think this must be heaven where I see my life from a misty plane cruising over the earth at eighty miles per hour my tires lifted above the pavement on giants’ tears gushing in turrets carving up the mud and ferrying it back to where I began six hours below.

A Suggestion Marley Craine if you wake up and the sky is red, you are supposed to take warning maybe it’s red like extra-strength tylenol or red like flashing lights of an ambulance or red like inflamed skin or it could be read like newspaper unfolded over half the kitchen table with a crossword sporadically filled out that you’ll sit down and finish and somebody might get annoyed about that but you had to, it was an urge, and now that it’s satiated, you can begin to think about taking warning but you’re so afraid of boats even when the sky is blue you should probably just stay home if you wake up and the sky is red and you realize that your parents look old, you are supposed take warning and think about crow’s feet and how it’s actually quite beautiful how older people have creases by their eyes, like a natural tattoo since they smiled so much, and crow’s feet is ugly but nice things can have ugly names and ugly things can have nice names: melanoma if you wake up and the sky is red and your parents look old and now you have a headache, you are supposed to to take warning, think about crow’s feet, and know that you look old too, like a woman, like jacqueline kennedy more and more each day (ha!) after that if you can’t stop dwelling on your mother’s crow’s feet and maybe also her melanoma, if your head is still splitting like it has since fourth grade you should creep to the kitchen and drag a stool across the floor, reach for an extra-strength tylenol, and unless it’s really bad you should hum alanis morrissette and cut the pill in half now it’s jagged, so you should find some water because this one might be hard to swallow but you should probably still try.

Sorry I haven’t called Anonymous I’ve been thinking about you and all the adventures we went on. Oh, there were so many San Francisco, Minneapolis, New York H-Mart, Michael’s, the Kohl’s by our house… Mom, I miss us more than I’d be able to tell you in my mending Vietnamese and your fortifying English. The men in our house will never— could never? will never— understand, but we do, and I miss that most

a child who is maybe a son: jabberwock undone Rachel Warshaw O, my beamish boy: you are an adventure writ large and looping, turning in on yourself again and again until you envelope fold the letter of the law to undo me! What glory! Glorious, duly, dullness lends to unruly fullness, here. And here. At my heart. Feel it beating, mimsy like the borogroves, tender your right-hand fingers to my chest, while the left clutches the blade; vorpal, full of vim as it vigorously hacks at the snick snack bim bam beating heart secret-kept in my armoire breast. O, my beamish boy, you are no pickpocket, you erupt the bells in their tingling with the slightest shift, and o, my beamish boy, you’d wake the sleeping dead with the simplest shit. And hast thou slain— the foe? The mirror beast that haunts me, reflection of a child who is almost a rising sun, or should have been raised a son, or should have been shunned: the claws, they catch, the jaw it bites! The gnawing! The tearing! The fear in the night! And in the darkness, beaming, in the choshech, gleaming, the grin of a universe beginning. The teeth that shimmer from the depths, the leer that lets us know: we are not in on the joke.

overripe pumpkins Ella Deutchman funny kind of yellow stirs past midnight thunder cackles wildflowers parched don’t think I go in peace, no I go with overripe pumpkins in my pockets smoldering ash in my eyes peaches squelching under my feet don’t think I go in peace I go with every pure intention and every base one shattering minerals with sledgehammers hazing orange suns don’t think I go in peace I go with conviction to never return but left my boots on your porch muscles burning carrying what they can don’t think I go in peace don’t forget the old-growth forest in my chest that’s the matter with my incendiary everything catapulting flames from fingertips sure I’ve singed your edges but I retain my place as the one always kept up on fire 53

Kansas Anna Šverclová 8 hours in the backseat

Werther’s Originals Coke or Pepsi? 40 miles ‘til Des Moines halfway to halfway to show up fashionably late

Lisa Simpson, yellow (jaundice) tying her bandana over her bald head everyone is trying not to watch think: An asthma attack & a mouse in the basement & the floor no one could find. Iowa & Misery, Kansas, usually pouring rain & somehow we always arrived at night— The basement mildew cat piss stink of the mattress bleeding into her fleece coat snow sludge ash on the tires tracked into the house church & church & radio church. the lunch after: hush puppies & vinegar on french fries & that song from Rent from her funeral at my senior choir concert 6 years later & I cried about the fact I never cried when it happened how

you

hole write

about

without writing about the earth around it?

A pair of loons live in the southeast corner of Squash Lake. Gabe Fisch The shore of my grandmother’s youth. Amoeba-shaped and nestled within northern Wisconsin pines. She lived there with her uncle during the Depression. He owned small cabins and rented them to families from the city. Wooden with chipped green paint. Faded red tin roofs. The cabins were torn down decades ago. My grandmother remained. She built her home beneath the lake’s two tallest pines. It is hidden by the forest from the water. When she canoes, the treeline guides her home. Sitting by the shore, she tells me of the loons. Monogamous, they’ve lived in their little corner for twenty years now. The water is too shallow for boats. The muck is knee-deep and home to a thousand leeches. Grasses grow from the shallows and flit in the breeze. This is the loons’ love-bed where they bare themselves fully, to each other, where the moonlight holds onto their bare breasts. This is where they wet their mouths with each other’s ecstasy. This is where the mother lays her eggs. Year after year, they never hatch. This is where she mourns her unborn children. This is where her wails echo off the night-water until dawn, while her lover coos soft words in her ear. 55

Floating Home, or “The First Honest Poem about Jean” Elyssa Cook I told Mal and Mattie to be quiet because Jean was in the back room. Jean was in the back room, recovering from her heart attack. And Mal and Mattie laughed because they thought it was a joke, and I laughed too, even though it wasn’t. Jean was slumped, pale, when my parents carried her in a plastic porch chair out to the car. Heather and I watched from a crack in the bedroom door as they peeled out of the driveway to the hospital. And then she died. I helped Dad clean out her mobile home. We found the dirty dishes she’d hidden in the oven when the sink overfilled, found the maroon scarf I’d knitted for her (out of obligation, not love) draped over her favorite wool peacoat, found Thumper, her blind old cat, hiding in the closet, and took him home. And then he died. It took us two years to scatter their ashes, 56

Jean and the cat. It happened one summer, my parents came home and Dad said, “We’re gonna go dump Jean in the river; do you guys wanna come?” “Don’t be an ass,” my mom reprimanded. We hiked out to Hat Creek where Jean used to fish. Heather carried the bag of Thumper, and I carried the bag of Jean. We emptied them into the river, and Thumper and Jean sank straight to the bottom, seeped through the holes in my neon blue Crocs. We poured out a drink for them, laughed when Heather’s blackberry lemonade turned blood red in the water, mixing with the ashes. And my dad poured out his IPA, said, “Goodbye, Jean. Goodbye, Thumper. I’m sorry it took so long to send you home.”

In Every Little Pool Hugh Gabriel Speaking as a Salmon fry, I am acutely Aware my odds of lying in this pool with eggs of my own, hover around one in five thousand yet statisticians forget in their tests that my stream sparkles more than the rest, and trillium petals sometimes swirl, above my perfect pool so

I am going to be the first Salmon Artist. I will craft from the river stones Mosaics. I will carry glowing aspen paint far out into the cold violet palette of the deep from my fins a streambed starscape will complement waves, I’ll weave the kelp into arching golden oaks beholden to all who range the seas. 58

Egg-eating scuds Ferocious floods Salamanders and Grizzled anglers, Commercial fisheries Arctic tern rookeries Beluga whales and Cracks in my scales,

All will leave me in peace. Because I am not a one in five thousand, I am a one-in-a-million Salmon fry artist, And I’ve got to paint this pool Before I die in it.

Sunrise Culling Zoe Frank Harvesting radishes with you my love, the morning snowfall biting through our boots. Dyed red on my skin, or lack thereof, our ventricles have become beetroots. Entangle me in thorns and needle leaf while the massif peaks pierce the bleeding sky. The smile in your eyes is sweet but brief, as the ground’s persuading us to detoxify. Bitter brittle crackle of teeth when hands entwined we cut out running; with each step our feet pack the dirt beneath, and we land tough on the earth so cunning. The roots on your throat strangle and splay, and my body and yours sink down to decay.

CHANTER LITERARY AND ARTS MAGAZINE

FALL 2021