Chanter Literary and Arts Magazine - Fall 2023

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CHANTER

chanter@macalester.edu

Chanter would like to thank the following:

Our generous alumni donor

Professor Matt Burgess

Laurie Adamson, The Mac Weekly, and their office

Facilities Services, for key access to said office

CSLE, for changing their name

Old Main 010

Jamila’s mom, for translating carrots in public oral sex gardens

A record-breaking 117 lit submissions!

Editor-in-Chief: Zoë Roos Scheuerman

Literary Editor: Nguyễn Trung Kiên

Art Editor: Emma Nguyen

Submissions Manager: Charley Eatchel

Associate Submissions Manager: Jamila Sigal Vásquez

Associate Editor: Ian Glejzer

Staff:

Kelsey Blickenstaff

John Bunting

Addie Daab

Charlie Gee

Madeline Graf

Birdie Keller

Sam Kenney

Cade Klein

Nicholas Lobaugh

Colin Massoglia

Ava A. H. Ortiz

Ellen Pendrak

Iffah Rostam

Rosie Smith

Paul Wallace

Writing ~

Leaving Candelaria 8

Holiday Rosa

Opened Fence Gate 10 Jamila Sigal Vásquez

holding on to the static home 11 Sarah Tachau

Parked Car 12 Sarah Phillippi

Jellyfish Memories 14 Miriam Ruiz

LIEB SICH, WER KANN 15 Zoë Roos Scheuerman

Ode to My Circulatory System 16 Charley Eatchel

Compulsion 17 Caleb Coney

In a Fairytale or a Different Elevation 18 Fiona Candland

secreto perdido 19 Laszlo Jentes

Summer Haibun 20 Zoe Grigsby why isn’t there a trash can 21 Birdie Keller

Autumn Dirge 22 Chloë Moore

Taking Time by the Forelock 23 Rowan Stephenson

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins 25 Natalie Mazey

Airplane Poem 46 Moxie Strom

Because the Gray Breasted

Junco Sang 47 Izzy Patterson

Baby Blue Ballad 48 Lucy Flack

Neglect Hides Behind Particularly

Thought-Provoking Wall Decor 49 Addie Daab

Notes from Mom 50 Emma Nguyen

Little Gods and Bigger Angels 52 Iffah Rostam

splinter 55 tobie schecter

pennies in listerine 56 Ian Glejzer

Corners for Mothers 57 Adrien Wright

SHE WAS A WOMAN, TAKE HER FOR ALL IN ALL, 58 Lucy Clementine McNees I SHALL NOT LOOK UPON THEIR LIKE AGAIN.

All The Forgotten Revolutions 60 Colin Massoglia meeting death a hundred little times 61 Ellen Pendrak Mänsklig Kvinna 62 Henna Oak

Art ~

Cremation 26 Lena Pak

Squeeze In 27 Ava A. H. Ortiz

1 Out Of 6 28 Bernadette E. Whitely number 101 context redacted 29 Asa Rollings

Erosion 30 Aahanaa Tibrewal

flowers 31 Emma Gonzalez Cueto

Willow 32 Grace Bonesteel

Taiman’s Offering 33 John Bunting

Materiality 1/5 34 Aahanaa Tibrewal

Spill 35 Maddie Sabin

“Matter Out of Place” 36 Inbal Armony

The Amazing Euryopis Umbrilica

Honey Pot 37 Maddie Sabin 38 Nicholas Lobaugh

Kentucky Porcine Cur 39 John Bunting

Cuddles 40 Ayuna Lamb-Hickson

“It sounds like a dog toy.” 41 Nicholas Lobaugh

Roadkill 42 Lena Pak

Scale 43 Inbal Armony

fish 44 Emma Gonzalez Cueto

grappling hook 45 Kyra Stobert

Cover art: La Luna colored pencil on paper

Miriam Ruiz

Editor’s Note

One of the reasons why leading Chanter is so beautiful, challenging, and exciting is because the magazine is a balancing act between continuity and innovation. More than sixty years after its first issue, Chanter is a Macalester institution. At the same time, a college’s nature demands regular student turnover. As Macalester’s student body evolves over time, so does Chanter, both in content and form. For example, Chanter has historically reserved the editor-in-chief’s note for the spring semester. I broke that tradition last fall because spending my spring semester abroad meant I could not write a note in the spring. This semester, I choose to continue breaking that tradition because I cannot force myself to be more reserved about this semester’s edition and because I like the idea of adding a fall editor’s note to kick off the academic year. My successor can decide whether they want to turn my tradition-breaking into tradition-making.

After last spring’s gorgeous issue, we received a record number of literature submissions this fall, many of which were exceptional pieces. This led to the most competitive selection process in recent memory. Publishing such a competitive issue is bittersweet because not every excellent piece can be printed. However, this fall’s competitiveness also means that we are able to offer you, Reader, an incredible issue of vibrant student work. Many submitters were also first-year students, which bodes well for the years ahead. I want to express the board’s gratitude to all of our creators and staff members for their amazing work during this intense semester. Another big thanks goes to Emma for leading the magazine so expertly last semester, and I want to especially shout out Charley, who graduates this semester, for wrangling the monster that was submissions this fall. Now, without further ado, please enjoy!

Zoë Roos Scheuerman Editor-in-Chief, 2023-2024

Leaving Candelaria

Holiday Rosa

Good morning

Chittering like branches breaking softly

Desert rose petals open and close as slowly as my breath leaves my body

Exhaling feels like the momentous task of breathing under a gray sky

The task of breathing out obsidian chunks and playa dust

Good morning inhale exhale

Needle work to make blue and purple into a silver spun sky

Bathed in cactus nectar and singing Soldiers Meadows into oblivion

Sulfur mud on my feet and lizard teeth in my hands

The pressure to keep pricking my fingers, opening veins in the dirt, red and blue to make purple

And I’m slowly turning a paler white

Good morning

Ash as pine cracks and fire sparks and wood is snapping

Blowing flakes into the air — vanilla needles like napkins into a fiery snow

I’m inhaling and exhaling

Smoke in my eyes but it has yet to reach as deep into my lungs

Sweet and heavy, smoke towards beauty, towards age, towards youth, towards you

Turquoise on her knuckles and on her neck

Stolen silver and blue too bright for her empty eyes

All real, it’s all real! They cry out

It’s all Nevada desert and weeping women

See eyes following me as I drift past slot machines where ghosts sat sit

Good morning

Stone kiln full of sagebrush and hooker’s onion and thistle

And it burns to make my throat full of spikes — inhale and exhale

Clay from the lake where pyramids grew a millennium ago

Between my toes, between my eyes, I’m all but cracking under the warmest sun

Like a dragonfly escaping beige exoskeleton, desperate for water from a discarded bottle cap

Good morning

Opened Fence Gate

Jamila Sigal Vásquez

my mother hollers get back here, you silly dog! pawprints in fresh snow

holding on to the static home

Sarah Tachau

to the right of my window is a picture of home, glossy photo paper plastered to the mute concrete, white and rough

snow piled at the edge of the driveway, powdered sugar on the green granite countertop spills, sprinkling on the water-stained hardwoods worn under our bare feet, gentle fingertips trace the recipe on the back of the brownie box, my pointer finger plunges into the bowl, scooping up the sweet remains of childhood.

warm April air dusted with pollen drifts through the kitchen window, the weathered floors soak up Swiffer spray, this is our ritual:

she hands me the rotten, forgotten fridge food, I gleefully screw open caps and, with a pinched nose, dump their insides down the drain, boxes of Cheerios replaced by cardboard matzos and sugary macaroons, tonight we’ll feast, the best meal we’ll eat all week, I’ll sip wine and pretend to be older,

taller, now, I hoist myself onto the roof, the rubber sweats July’s warmth seasoned with the scent of 9pm dinner, the sky a tasteless lilac crying carnations.

golden honey window on the second floor, I know it must be fall by the way the granny smith flesh borders the sticky sweet. the waft of mom’s leave-in conditioner: cool, cranberry, comfort, the minivan a rusty rhubarb,

melting into my seat cushions, in the synagouge’s wooden womb, while they preach a new year and the fleeting old, I’ll crack open the story I’ve sandwiched in my siddur.

Parked Car

Sarah Phillippi

I was 15 on my first date with my now-abusive ex-boyfriend.

We had gone to a park halfway between both our houses, and we were sat in a bench with one of those little green tin roofs when he kissed me.

Ever since then, I’ve gone back to that park whenever I’m hurting, especially whenever I’m hurting from the lingering effect of his actions.

I go to that park so I can sit with my younger self, so I can be with her in suffering. So I can comfort the little me still inside this version of me.

But until yesterday I have been unable to get out of my car.

I sit in the parking lot, and I journal, I write poetry, I cry.

But I never get out of my car.

It’s not that I haven’t wanted to.

It seems that every time I’ve gone for the last year, I’ve told myself that I will get out of the car that time, but it’s always been too scary.

I’ve had this fear that getting out of the car, walking the same path that the two of us once walked hand in hand, sitting in the place that marks the beginning of my downfall

I’ve had this fear that it will be too much.

That once I sit down on that bench, I’ll be able to feel his hands all over me.

Last time I sat down on that bench I stood up a different person I’ve been so afraid that if I ever sit there I’ll stand up her again.

And while I want to sit with my younger self I never want to be her again.

But yesterday I was on my way home from what my mother has dubbed as therapy boot camp I was thinking about the healing journey that I’m on.

I was thinking about letting go of the fear I’ve got coating all of my emotions. I was thinking about how badly I want to get better, how badly I want all this work to land me on the other side of my trauma. The side where it doesn’t control me anymore.

And somehow in all this thinking and reflecting I drove right past my house and straight to that park.

Now to be fair I did sit in my parked car for longer than I’d care to admit —

but then slowly tentatively I got out of the car. I got out of my car and I walked through the path my hands free all on their own. The wind and I took a deep breath together after nearly 5 years I got to stop holding my breath. I got out of my car, I sat down on that bench with the little tin green roof. I sat there watching the trees breathe with the wind. I couldn’t feel his hands on me, but I could feel the fear melting off. I kept sitting there right next to my 15-year-old self, in the exact same spot where my body became someone else’s until I felt ready to let her go.

“I love you,” I told her, “and as much as I wish I could go back in time to protect you, I can’t. I need to stop living my life for you and start living it for me. I am not you anymore.”

She understood, she never wanted me to be stuck here for so long. When I finally stood up I guess I was a different person but it wasn’t because I was her again — it was because I had left her behind.

Jellyfish Memories

Miriam Ruiz

Coils of translucent tendrils, bitterness bites your peeled eyes for even God’s tears taste of salt and sorrow, though it feels eerily cold somehow is warm in an ageless ambient embrace, shrinking into your paper skin black holes in your brain and body burrowing into expanding space eating the self and light your words left me a star singing its last Goodbye to all these memories you hold tightly onto crescent moon tipped touches immortality stinging until you lose your grip, turning deepest purple you are a cyst, forming on the sand these jellyfish memories ancient in you and forever, never spoken or revived for even God’s face is to be hidden a sense of reverence in this wreckage Of ocean empyrean rebirth.

LIEB SICH, WER KANN

Zoë Roos Scheuerman

It is my own stillness that suggests that you do not exist, regulated to the crevices between the stars, to my waking dreams — I feel my veins bulging, my heart is not beating. I don’t know whether I have blinked at all these last few, endless hours. All noises are underwater on dry land, and the thrum of the glowing-red power plant in the park is a long, human scream, something only soothing in this moment.

Ode to My Circulatory System

Charley Eatchel

Here is the moment when my body becomes a corpse, the breath between a heartbeat

Each clothing scrap wrapped around my bones is smooth scarlet silk and crushed velvet easing reluctant muscles into rigor mortis

And in the stillness, my blood’s current slows sludge through aching arteries

Here, the crook of my elbow becomes rusty water’s resting spot and as it pools and lingers in that nook the prickling stiffness sets in, a shaking spreading chill in fingertips cracked and curling in a lifeless drought

And here, in the bend of my knee a crimson dam, a levee that won’t break no matter how bloody the flood

So my leg becomes bloated shuddering with phantom pains

Panicked veins rush home to my hitching heart, the only thing still pounding — isn’t it beautiful to be a thing of the dead to walk on leaden limbs, not yet rotted bloodless but still clinging to bone

Here, the living flinch at my cold, clammy touch Here, they scream in my death-deafened ears And here, they watch as I stumble on numb feet roiling my dormant river system into motion They watch my body hit the ground violet bruises burst stain death’s pallor purple broken capillaries splashing dead flesh with fresh life, red waves breaking the stiff surface — isn’t it beautiful that even the dead can bleed

Compulsion

Caleb Coney

Water spews from the shower head, Running down my cheeks, making me feel like I’m able to cry.

I fear that I’m not the only one who wears this crackable crown. That I’m tainted by touch and taste which I can never erase No matter how many times I wash my hands, No matter how many times I brush my teeth.

Water cleanses the soul, just as fire purifies. But the frightening flickers bring rebirth. So I rub my skin red and raw, Pump, pump, pump.

Trickle, trickle, trickle.

Locking my door of flesh and bone from any intruder Trying to rob me of my stars, Trying to steal my portrait or splatter paint.

One pull at a loosened thread and I unravel. A glance at a gun’s trigger and everything’s decomposing.

The churning whispers puppeteer me, And even with scissors at my side, I can’t cut the strings. I don’t know who I am if not a puppet, So I wade into the water’s embrace, And drown.

In a Fairytale or a Different Elevation

Fiona Candland

It is gloomy outside and there is an itch in my throat. The house that exists in my window’s picture frame no longer looks like a fairytale, but a house where none of the blankets are warm enough and sounds of shivering bones chatter throughout the brick walls all night long. Stew for dinner night after night after night. Maybe I am just in a bad mood. I am gloomy and maybe the melancholic shade which falls on the house’s roof is a product of my own making.

The couches in my living room have been pushed together to make a bed. We have a visitor. When things change, the past and present become tarnished — lost from themselves, detached from the feelings they evoke: irretrievable — and I am left standing in a field of purgatory. The grass is long and I can’t find my footing. I feel like I will never smile again; everything feels so definite.

I look up at the poster I have taped on the wall, the ladybugs, dragonflies, and beetles I have lifted in the air; I have given them a chance at flight. The poster looks uneven as I stare at its whole, but when I look at each individual side, they all look straight and I no longer believe myself. Looking for too long is ungrounding and I am back in the field where the long grass itches my legs and I can feel insects crawling all over my skin. When I look down, they are not there; my imaginary bugs will never get a chance to fly.

I am left standing alone in the long grass and I wish I had a jacket. These winds are sharp and harsh and their infliction feels intentional. I wish I could fly away. Maybe I would land on the house’s roof, on the edge of its tall brick chimney. Maybe from there, life would feel like a fairytale. Maybe from there, I would have a jacket on and the grass would no longer bite and gnaw at my legs. A soft breeze from way up there, maybe.

secreto perdido

Laszlo Jentes

está lloviendo, como siempre

dentro de los raíces ennieblados ocultaron algún lujoso secreto

no tan grande, porque su tamaño se estiraría el refugio hasta que los granjeros se den cuenta

y no tan pequeño, porque su peso debería tener la fuerza del mar para el trabajo que viene con alba

por el momento, duerme el secreto contento, empacado con plumas

lo veremos en la mañana

si tuvieras un buen espejo

podrías ver como el sol vaciarlo detrás de una niebla ligera

consumiendo la miel pesada adentro con una cuchara hecha del creciente robado de la luna (por eso era nueva)

anoche intenté a buscar el secreto, donde mis espíritus lo guardaron bien pero no podría aguantar la lluvia oscura

ahora debo huir lejos del sol celoso rey con herramientas llameantes

no me vale acabar la búsqueda.

por favor, cuéntame cómo lo reluce antes de la devoración.

Summer Haibun

Zoe Grigsby

Summer begins when the snow sinks back into the earth and yanks me out by the roots first. Summer in the Green Mountain State relies on the blind obedience of its trees; they have no say in the changing of seasons. The sun beats our 1700s farmhouse into a pulp, gluing together the floorboards and squeezing me out. The naked hobos bathe at the swimming hole in the clearing where dogs wander off to scour for berries or beetles or bugs or Bambis not yet shot by the kids I went to high school with. I once again become subservient to the ruling class of Floridians whose lips inflate more and more each year until they pop and wash me away with them. A nuclear family begrudgingly allows their children to detach from their iPads and stab at the trees until I ooze out onto their pancakes. I’m a nuclear bomb. I never took physics in school, funny that now the babbling brooks and rustic farmer’s markets get to decide whether I am solid, liquid, or gas. Yesterday, the creepy bartender at work told me weird sexual things about the dolphins at SeaWorld and I shriveled into a dried prune. Maybe now he’ll stop blending me into fruity frozen margaritas (half priced on Thursdays). Today, I’m spilling and oozing over a plastic lawn chair, being sucked up by flies. I see my pedophile neighbor (convicted) riding up and down our road, shirtless, on his mower-tractor. He and his wife have cut down all the trees in their lawn, maybe I’m next.

Unknown properties

Composition is in flux

Thousand year-old tree.

why isn’t there a trash can

Birdie Keller

Lint is when you open the dryer and you find no lint

Lint is when you open the washer and the clothes are completely dried

Lint is not lint at all but the clothes, and the clothes are endless

The clothes willn’t diminish but end less

And when you open the dryer you have to run it again

because the landlord is a stupid (man)

Autumn Dirge

Chloë Moore

Seventies, grey. Yellow interruption. Leaching chlorophyll disrupts the chromatic schema of the day. I’ve been longing for the smell of the wind.

White mycoheterotrophic ruptures, and a small dog. Rapture, even. Pink tongue and sparkling tooth. Once we found a small animal, unidentifiable in its youth. My father slept with it in his chest. In the morning, it was cold. We hid it somewhere, in a cardboard coffin. Makeshift burial at the end of summer. Most things are like that these days.

Taking Time by the Forelock

Rowan Stephenson

A dusty afternoon, aswarm with leaves

Of fire in strontic red and calcic orange And sodic yellow. Black spruce shadows stretch Out tenderly into the streets. Return. The wooden wingtips, the vertebral roofs, They make a stark and vacant line against The sky. Return, return. I will return To softening grey again. I’ll swim against The tide of time, to where the light has draped Itself across a chair: a yellow shawl, A day grown warm. I will transmute this flesh Back to a guttering candle flame, memory Back into breath — to mild and placid air.

Return now to the cemetery, stood by The grave, below a silver chloride sky, These sober words that float like flowers of phlox On water. Back now to the kitchen table, The evening, swirling, lands atop the trees, Each drop of wine raised on a fingertip, Dayenu raised aloft on every voice. The soul within the throat is burning bright As caesium. Now open up the door, Let in the spring dusk-cold. The body thaws And melts and drips away. You shiver and You wake — your fingers raw, they point towards home. Your fingers clumps of cedar needles now, They’re stabbing at the peeling paint. You are Homesick and morbid and diaphanous. You feel the pull and flex and flow of time. You cry: How could this ever be enough?

Grab hold of two big wads of mane. It runs Through snow-lit woods and over fields and hills Beneath a dripping sky of winter shards. I feel beneath my hand its muscled movement. Its nostrils flare, its eyes are wide as stars. It leaps the frozen brooks and walls, the trunks Of trees I knew once, views I’ve seen before, A barn now fallen in from time and snows, These hillsides seen now from a goshawk’s eye, This valley still and covered up with frost Where once my two small boots tramped down a path.

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Natalie Mazey

I have dreams where I scream at you

Where my lungs expel howls

Where my mouth stings of cayenne

Under the glow of the moon.

But in the daylight

My rage softens

Butter melting on the counter

And I decide to make banana muffins

Let something old become new —

Because my grief is rotting

Yellow molting into black and blue.

Anger seeps into my fingers

Mashing memory into mush

Folding in flour becomes frivolous

As muttering musings into the batter is too.

The secret ingredient is always love

Maybe mine is madness

Haphazard handling of chocolate chips

No measurements

Add a handful more

For my sense of scorn

Divvy out my desires

Divvy out my time

Bake for twenty minutes

By then I’ll be fine.

Cremation mixed media

Lena Pak

Squeeze In gouache

Ava A. H. Ortiz

1 Out Of 6 collage

Bernadette E. Whitely

number 101 — context redacted

digital photography

Asa Rallings

Erosion clay Aahanaa Tibrewal

flowers digital photography

Emma Gonzalez Cueto

Willow linocut Grace Bonesteel

Taiman’s Offering graphite

John Bunting

Materiality 1/5

digital photography

Aahanaa Tibrewal

Spill charcoal and India ink

Maddie Sabin

“Matter Out of Place” linocut Inbal Armony

Honey Pot charcoal and India ink

Maddie Sabin

Nicholas Lobaugh

The Amazing Euryopis Umbrilica digital and gouache

Kentucky Porcine Cur graphite

John Bunting

Cuddles watercolor

Ayuna Lamb-Hickson

“It sounds like a dog toy.” acrylic, charcoal, and ink wash

Nicholas Lobaugh

Roadkill oil

Lena Pak

Scale lithograph

Inbal Armony

fish

digital photography

Emma Gonzalez Cueto

grappling hook mixed media

Kyra Stobert

Airplane Poem Moxie Strom

When, on the dark and quiet airplane, I see the person one row up and one aisle over Staring at their screen on which our speeding airplane Inches along the tiny blue map, I know for certain I am done with doom. I don’t believe in Things existing just to test our devotion. My father snuck six clementines Onto this plane without declaring them at customs. Next time I reach my hand Towards you, I will treat it like a blessing.

Because the Gray Breasted Junco Sang Izzy Patterson

Because the gray breasted junco sang, I cried until I couldn’t anymore. She cries out, leaving her nest behind in the crevices. Carved out of the overturned wood and restless foliage, her home is abandoned by autumn’s winds and tossed aside for me to discover. Here is where I dug into the waterlogged soil, staining my fingers with brown clay and iron oxide. After she departs, I concede to mourning as my hands burrow the ground like I am burying the night stars under a funeral mound.

Because winter’s arrival is fraught with freezing breath and bitter omens, her last song was barely uttered above the silence. Drawing near to me,

the crackling of breaking ice deters my imagination buried under the mud laden dirt with the poor gray breasted junco that sang so sweetly above the calm. I wept as she trilled a final chorus that lasts no longer in the air as it did resounding in my heart.

Baby Blue Ballad Lucy Flack

Through the sweat, the painting hung quaintly on the beige wall; I stared at it for hours, hours, hours, waiting for him to come. I memorized every brushstroke imitating the fleecy clouds against the linear pastureland, every color — mahogany, ivory, medallion, baby blue — the artist’s name which I couldn’t quite make out from my stationary position on the bed — Karl, maybe Karol, then Johnson or Johansson. How perplexing it was to see storm clouds without hearing thunder, a field of wheat without the distant whinnies of mares, a newborn without a sob.

I was so loud without realizing it, trying to hear the crackle of lightning or a tractor purring gently to drown out the sound of my own discordant groans. And when it was done, my body torn apart and my arms vacant, the neonate silence of the fawn-colored room immobilized everyone but took a particular liking to me.

I hated that painting. I hated looking at those inaccessible farmhouses with families of five or six praying over peas and mashed potatoes, and a robin fluttering past the lamplit window to her speckled, baby blue eggs.

“It’s in God’s hands.” No. He was supposed to be in mine.

Neglect Hides Behind Particularly Thought-Provoking Wall Decor

Addie Daab

My thoughts speak through your thoughts like light speaks through stained glass windows together, we open them, palms pressed to improbable green panes

ventilating our stagnant six-walled space

and remembering the last time we invited the wind in with open mouths, pretending to inflate our lungs with the whole sky and all of its restlessness.

That was the year we draped our walls with echoes and forgot, again, each day, to take them down until they began to ooze like berries in sugar

staining the floors like unwashed love stains fingers.

Notes from Mom

Emma Nguyen

A gallon bag of persimmons the color of autumn leaves From Nội’s yard. Wash right before eating. I wipe each one by hand until the skin waxes like a banana leaf wrapper, now touched by three generations of women — two real mothers, one still playing pretend.

My childhood was cluttered with notes on the kitchen table. Búp bê, call the dentist to reschedule your appointment. Đạt, please drink this cup of milk before school. Laws laid lovingly down on the back of grocery lists, caring brown eyes always watching from afar.

The gallon bag in the mail comes close, but nothing will replace the waft of papaya conditioner and gentle clink of ceramic on faux wood — a plate of carefully sliced crispy pears or glistening peaches basking in my loquat lamp light.

One look at Subtle Asian Traits and the plate is an accurate stereotype, an unoriginal commonality. Thousands of others sharing the same stories of magical pieces of watermelon cooling fights, fevers and stress from school, the silent bowl a proxy for “I love you,” the rattling that speaks through a double-paned language barrier. But 2,044 miles away I find myself

writing on pastel pink Post-Its.

A friendly Reminder that rent is due tomorrow. I have extra garlic if you need some. Just made some brownies and they’re in the kitchen. A different kind of love.

So I’ll tape your note to my wall, savor the ripened persimmons and Keep them in the refrig. Enjoy! Make batch after batch of brownies and banana bread and leave little notes about unfinished chores but never, ever cut plates of fruit for these people I call my children.

Little Gods and Bigger Angels

Iffah Rostam

“There’s really no way to put this delicately. It brings me no pleasure to inform you that after thorough review, we’ve had to make some cuts. Difficult, difficult times… You’re going to hell.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

He gives me a disapproving look, and then I see him clacking something away on the keyboard, and the left side of my judgment scales moves down the slightest inch.

“This is ridiculous —” I start to fumble with the button of my suit jacket. I have waited in this line for hours, days, in an elevator with music. “What even are you? A cherub? You look like a Renaissance painting made a wish to be a real boy. Can’t you get — an archangel or — someone —”

He sighs and drags his glasses further down his doughy nose, smacking his gum with a greater magnitude of annoyance. “The files speak for themselves, sir.” More gum smacking. The air conditioning whirrs. “You’re no murderer, but there are just some classic, Abrahamic Religion 101 no-nos here. I mean, care to explain this?”

He turns his computer screen towards me. The video is in 1080p definition. I am in a club, thirty years ago, on Lady Gaga night. I kiss a man, and then a woman. “It’s Adam AND Eve, not Adam OR Eve!”

“That’s a deepfake.”

With a click of his mouse, the next image flashes. It’s one of my tweets, from my years in college, timestamped at 2:45 am.

she asked me what my pronouns are i said they/damn girl what that cake do

“Oh, so Gabriel is allowed to be nonbinary, but when I try it —”

Clack, clack, clack. The scale dips in the slightest, and so does my heart, hammering in my ear. This is ridiculous. There are murderers, there are abusers, there are billionaires burning the Amazon, but I’m going to hell for straying from the straight and narrow.

Rugrats seems to have read my mind. He lets out a puff of air from his chubby cheeks. His swivel chair squeaks as he adjusts it, so he appears higher above the counter, agonizing second by second. Squeak by squeak. We both ignore the eleventh anguished scream of terror in the past hour from the fiery pits located next

to the Human Resoulses building. “It’s not really because you’re a flaming queer —”

“I don’t think you’re allowed to say that —”

He pauses to chew on the inside of his cheek. “It’s what came as a… result.”

I clench my jaw. It sits tighter on my face, making my cold eyes harsher, my chin sharper, and I have learned to like it this way. It’s funny. If I were a poet, I’d say we eat what we fear, in some attempt to own it. But I’m not a poet. I’m a man.

He clicks his mouse, and I know, I know, I know what’s playing next.

My father looks at me indignantly. He’s doing that thing he did when we were kids — his fist comes banging down on the table as he hisses, the line of his cheekbone pulsing. Jaw tight. My mother is crying next to him, sobbing incoherently.

His voice never shakes, not in the broiling roars of my memory, but it does here.

We never ask you for much, Dad pleads, angrily, and I think of all the times my pockets and stomach have never been empty. I also think of every family picture where I shrink in on myself, every single time I tug uncomfortably on my dress in church, my father’s gravelly voice in my ear, forcing my head down before the cross. Oh, he’s given, and asked for, a lot more than that. I think of Isaac. I wonder if it was quiet, when he walked back down the mountains with his father.

We scream back and forth, both my parents against me. A neverending war on two fronts. The Bible lands on the table with a deafening thud. Boom. My brothers retreat into their rooms and lock their doors. Bang. And then Dad says it. He drops the nuclear bomb, chest heaving with the effort, “I’d rather have no kid than a gay one.”

The war ends.

It doesn’t matter that he’s using the wrong word. I don’t correct him. “Then no kid, it is.” I walk out for the last time, and my parents lose their only daughter. But in truth, they never had one. I don’t know why they’re surprised. I’ve always looked more like Dad.

Rugrats looks at me, for the first time, with some semblance of pity in his eyes. Not understanding. Just pity.

“I don’t see what I did wrong.”

“I don’t know if this is your first rodeo, but family, honor thy father and all, is quite the rage around here.” He begins packing my files into his suitcase. “I’m sorry, kid.

There’s nothing I can do.”

There’s nothing he can do. They love saying that. They fucking love it. It’s the final nail in the cross for me, but the final tick off the agenda of their Google calendars today. I’m not going down so easily. I didn’t go through surgery and injections to rebuild myself, bloody inch by inch, hair by hair, just to accept defeat with a quivering chest that I paid thousands of dollars for. I lean forward, my face dangerously close to the cherub’s, hard eyes burning craters in his. “I want to see him,” I hiss, “your manager.” My fist comes crashing down on his desk, and in the echo, I hear a familiar banging. I ignore it.

Five minutes later, I’m in an elevator up to the infinitieth floor, holding my judgment scales, my jaw clenched tight.

I’m going to give the Man a piece of this mind he made. Who does he think he is, anyway? He couldn’t understand it for a second. God and his tests. He knows everything, so he knows nothing, nothing of imperfection, of inadequacy, of feeling unloved and sacrificed for what your creators made you.

The doors slide open, and I brace myself for an angelic choir and a blinding white light that will force me to my knees in penitence. Instead, all I see is another desk, cluttered and spilling. And I mean, spilling — just, packed to the brim, files and papers and paperweights, spilling. It’s so ridiculous, that I start to think dramatically. Spilling like my tears on the floor of my first apartment, empty and quiet and alone. Spilling like my son’s chocolate milk, all over the expensive sofa, which I don’t scold him for. Spilling like the flowers on Dad’s casket. Spilling… Spilling… Like, like — I’ve never really been one of those art types, not really — Spilling, I hope, like the mouth of God spills with truth and forgiveness.

God, at the desk, is no blinding white light. I almost can’t believe what I see. My jaw relaxes, and my eyes soften to look, really see, Him. It’s horrifying.

He’s just a man.

Of course he is. Isn’t that how the world is run? He’s working day and night, pouring over file after file, coffee cups piling on his desk. God is a reflection, terribly human. I look closer, and, hysterically, I realise God looks like my father. So he looks like me too.

He’s thumbing through the file again. I think I see a girl and her baby blue dress in the flash of paper. I don’t bother peering this time. He doesn’t even notice me. He’s still flipping, painstakingly, achingly searching.

He won’t understand yet. Not yet. That’s okay. I do, now. Just a little.

In my heavy hand, the scales tilt towards balance.

splinter tobie schecter

leaves like ash, should hurt more — summer in fall

pennies in listerine Ian Glejzer when i gave you my whole heart, i was met with soothing words to never forget how i learned your care and how i was your wonderful memories of the weird quirks integral parts from our mixed personalities to be a perfect couple you’re in love with

a smile with teeth, the taste of blood and you told me i was an embarrassment of your own image interrupting my self-liberty that you beat out of me, you swept away so you can correct me and tear me down a broken vessel, killing me

Corners for Mothers

Adrien Wright

Kitchens are not built for two women. A woman is an animal built to fit corners like water fits its own dull skin. So kitchens are built for one woman to hide in:

There are corners enough to spread herself thin on multiplying and shrinking stacked high in the cabinets freezer-burnt on the shelf folding neatly against the sweat of the stale cups which sometimes, for her maybe, catch the light.

Even if you tried, you couldn’t stick your fingers through a surface that is only surface. Mothers lap against each others’ edges here, prickling with hormones like March apples and saying nothing, with their mothers’ voice.

When I am six the men with sledgehammers peel then slather the kitchen in gray tile. The two women don’t notice because they are always lonely anyway.

The coffee pot hisses at midnight. It hisses at dawn, doe-furred and broken. The two mothers cross their arms in separate doorways, dig their palms into the slick countertops. Eye each other, alone.

And I turn — and just over the sink window — The pear trees shudder. The gardens are shallow like trays, and cropsick. Like terror. Like breakfast. Like cracking one eggshell and finding two yolks.

SHE WAS A WOMAN, TAKE HER FOR ALL IN ALL, I SHALL NOT LOOK UPON THEIR LIKE AGAIN.

Lucy Clementine McNees

All my world’s a stage and all my limbs and appendages merely players, most of which have been sore for too long.

[I have felt perfect recently. My hand has been intertwined with the air and my pockets have consisted of dried, crumbling leaves and stomach aches of you, stomach aches of you and nothing else.]

All my body’s a stage and all the men and women merely players, the art of play; to manipulate my limbs at their joints and bend me like a self-indulgent mannequin, you are encouraging my own exploration of myself.

I have found it is my shoulder blades that carry motivation, and with them I am able to squeeze and release into perspective the work that I carry, the words that I marry together in my brain’s honor. I find to tighten them is to restrict my thoughts and to release the tension is to breathe and write.

I have discovered my stomach to be a place my fingers may now gently walk across with indifference, and my cheekbone untouchable by carving thumbs.

Yet I will portray my jaw’s quiver under blinding spotlights as I mourn the loss of reality, letting my eyes shine bright with the invention of dramatic chaos.

I am here, onstage, and refuse to turn the page beyond this glorified moment.

As simply as I sow seeds of emotional power, I have sewn words to my inner thighs, my collarbone, and shoulders. They never last longer than this play will go on, but I can lend them to you for a brief moment of egotistical selflessness, and claim I am fulfilled by this stage presence as you are.

How unbearable it has been to play her. How liberating it is to forgive a body that never apologized.

All The Forgotten Revolutions

Colin Massoglia

What is a rebel without a cause? a peacekeeper without a war a hand who has lost all of its fingers, counted down like the days of our lives.

If we examine the principal thing We cannot astonish without a point of reference no sweetness can be tasted in a kiss without eyes to gaze into no statue can stand erect without a pedestal to rest upon no promise of martyrdom without the risk of defeat

They are left, alone in time, exiled by the days that passed them over.

meeting death a hundred little times Ellen Pendrak

Death is not a hunter in black nor a blade-sharp harvester. It is not a stalker trailing nor a looming stormcloud on otherwise sunny days.

Death is the little girl you’ve never met before, together passing the dusks of your brother’s Little League losses. Summer sunset coolness and cicada white noise, eternity spent at Limbo’s playground, swinging side by side.

Death is the distant cousin at the family wedding, the two of you in your flower girl best, offering a hand and a path to Purgatory’s dance floor — free and careless as only children are.

Death is the babysitter carrying you to bed half-awake and dreaming, waiting for your parents to come home. Singing a lullaby, braiding your hair, and drawing horses better than anyone.

Death is the childhood friend in sepia-toned memories — Both of you running, hand in cold hand, toward something undetermined.

Death is the best friend you held for a day and never saw again, on vacations, on playgrounds, in pools Something warm and gentle between one place and the next.

Death is not a finale but a liminal space. It is a worn mahogany bridge, leading you somewhere almost familiar.

Death is but the last turn of a car trip waking you from your gentle sleep, some instinct deep within you recognizing that you are finally almost home.

Mänsklig Kvinna Henna Oak

Linda’s first mistake was getting lost inside an IKEA. Her second was thinking she could run. The Swedish meatballs she had eaten hours before made her sluggish and easy to track through the aisles as the fluorescent lighting shone down like a searchlight. Her footsteps rang out on the cold laminate as she passed through the bedroom section for the fifth time. One of the bookcases trembled as a man stepped out from behind it, directly into Linda’s path. He killed her swiftly and efficiently with a single twist of his Allen wrench, and her body was dragged to the staff room where it was rendered down to its base components. After they had been affixed with a barcode and deftly cataloged, the limbs were sorted and thrown onto soft heaps titled “left” and “right”. Soon a bored worker in a yellow smock slouched in, headphones dangling listlessly. He stood staring down at the fleshy merchandise before selecting a body part from each pile: two arms, two legs, a head, and a torso. They were placed inside a box, appendages neatly tessellating. Linda’s head was packaged tightly in a plastic bag, her blond hair plastered to her face. It nestled between the joints of her knees in the cramped box, resting on a bed of packaging peanuts. After making sure the accompanying bag of small, incomprehensible screws was missing exactly one key bolt, the box was sealed shut. Soon a label would be plastered on the top: “Human Female” written in unpronounceable Swedish.