Chanter Literary and Arts Magazine - Spring 2024

Chanter Literary & Arts Magazine and Arts Magazine

Chanter

Spring 2024 Spring

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

Spring 2024 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 The Mac Weekly and their office Facilities Services, for key access to said office CSLE Toby Hozier The Link Making things fit Brueggers Bagels and the Brothers Dunn

Editor-in-Chief: Zoë Roos Scheuerman Literary Editor: Nguyễn Trung Kiên Art Editor: Emma Nguyen Submissions Manager: Jamila Sigal Vásquez Editor: Ian Glejzer

Staff: Kelsey Blickenstaff Brooke Bound Caleb Coney Addie Daab Charlie Gee Ellen Pendrak Rosie Smith Paul Wallace

Writing ~ An April Anounce ounceofof Apriltastes tastesbitter bitter when whenswallowed swallowedbefore beforethe themeal meal 8 Sarah Tachau Ode To Dining Hall Meals With Friends 10 Alex Sonnabend Exercise 11 Chloë Moore seasonal allergies 12 Violet McCann Hamlet’s Eighth? 14 Holiday Rosa B.A. in Psychonautics 15 Zelda Rose Eructation 16 Kano Ottinger I’ve eaten all the goats under my bed. 17 Marvellous Ogunsola A meditation on paradox 19 Natalie Mazey Lovers Return at Dawn 20 Nolan Manz Inside the Moon 21 Zoe Grigsby Jolene 23 Luca Schira [THE RISK OF WRITING A NEW POEM] 38 Lucy Clementine There is no innocent museum in america 39 Kaliana Andriamananjara On Baguettes 40 Emma Nguyen The Pilgrimage 41 Nguyễn Trung Kiên Passing Light 43 Cecelia Bauer Darling I prayed for you 44 Marcus Alexander saving space 45 Gavia Boyden You Can Quit Whenever You Want 46 Brooke Bound Tempest 47 Lucy K Hoberg diálogo 49 Laszlo Jentes

My Grandfather’s Chair (A Letter I’ll Never Send) 50 M. W. Flotsam and Jetsam 51 Rachel Lock lights off 52 Jamila Sigal Vásquez Art ~ Summer Weeds 24 Bubble 25 Gulf Flounder 26 Four Horsemen 27 Claw Cleaning in the Great Ketelsian Swamp 28 Flowers for Christmas 29 Gender as a Holographic Trading Card 30 Lily pads 31 Materiality 4/5 32 number 45 - to be read from right to left 33 The Fall (16 & 20) 34 This Is Not The End 35 Marriage Bound 36 Red Tide 37

Ayuna Lamb-Hickson Leah Long Jane Skjonsby Noah Hanson John Bunting Nicholas Lobaugh Charlie Gee Julia Bintz Aahanaa Tibrewal Asa Rallings Gabby Simpson Bernadette Whitely Maddie Sabin Miriam Ruiz

Cover art: The Female Mantis screenprint Flannery Dahlberg

Editor’s Note Chanter’s power is its ability to unite and celebrate Macalester’s incredibly talented, sometimes criminally low-profile student artists. This collective makes production weekend worth it even when yet another round of copy-edits liquifies the Chanter team’s brains: Is that by-line in Garamond or Times New Roman? Comic Sans or Papyrus? C-H-A-N-TE-R is Wingdings! Especially after fall 2020, when I virtually attended my first Chanter meeting from my COVID-empty freshman dorm and printing physical copies was out of the question, I treasure every moment I can spend in community with people who respond to life’s beauty and brutality by making incredible art. As graduation looms on the horizon, those moments are also nearly over. I’ve tried to savor my time with Chanter this semester like a kid struggling to ration dessert, conscious that This Is It, and it still suddenly feels like there isn’t enough time and space to fully express how proud I am to have been a part of this amazing publication. Thank you to the staff, submitters, and readers who have become classmates, coworkers, role models, and friends, as well as the returning and incoming board members, whose work on this edition proves that they will do a fantastic job in the years to come. I am honored to have led the magazine and read your works, and I’m beyond excited to see what future editions will hold! The boat is tipping over the edge of the waterfall, so I’ll stop stalling and pass you the cargo: please enjoy the Spring 2024 edition of Chanter!

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

7

An ounce of April tastes bitter when swallowed before the meal Sarah Tachau Apparently it’s January but the kids are whipping frisbees across the lawn, girls clustering behind the sleeping big tree to whisper, hands cupped to warm mouths shielding the wind from stealing their secrets, classmates cartwheel by, others twirl, arms outstretched drinking the sticky sweet sunshine and 60 degrees.

The flag is back to standing at full staff, its cold shadow stains this camouflage lawn cropped cut and spotted with pink picnic blankets.

An ounce of April tastes bitter when swallowed before the meal.

No seed sprouts on an empty stomach.

But that’s not what we want to hear.

So swing on in oblivion, hang your hammocks from trees’ arched backs, aching.

A certain kind of beauty, we coin it.

My seasons are spent, broke from August rains and powdered Februaries, when boot-high snow caked the dormant earth, the ugly face of uncertainty adorned in a magnificent mask.

8

Sure, I see it now, the pre-spring pill is kicking in.

I spin, my arms slice the air into a breeze, my hands uproot the fruit of an early bloom with a greedy yank and a sweaty tug, my teeth dig into the unforgiving flesh, I peel the pupa from its cocoon, “The birthing has begun” I cry to the chrysalis.

Let us stare into the sun like children who know no better.

Sky, so blue I name you a blessing.

This May, waking before dawn.

This January, dressed in June’s tunic.

I skip along chapped sidewalks, past weeping snowbanks, charred black like a neglected lung, and pretend I am a child twirling through this pleasant April afternoon.

9

Ode To Dining Hall Meals With Friends Alex Sonnabend Come friend, let us sit upon this discolored chair at this soda-sticky table.

We both have teeth, enamel-coated and off-white — perfect for chewing.

Our enzymes work in tandem, masticating carbs into sugar.

Tell me about your day.

Do you like your food?

Is this what you dreamed of?

Are we more than blood and bone?

Laugh with me in between sips of something that’s either Mountain Dew or battery acid.

Smear the grease on your lips with a napkin, brush the crumbs off your lap, let our presence linger like the taste of garlic on the tongue, wash it out with chewing gum.

Come friend, share this meal.

We are hungry and we are sated and we are loved.

10

Exercise Chloë Moore Autumn. We throw apples, the crab sort, for the dogs. One of ours finds antlers.

Bleached bones. In an old essay the bats flickered above the still waters. We go boating. I adopt a Cat. Or I think about it. I catalogue tent caterpillars in the nearby trees. These Days are dreary. I mistake an owl for a dove. I remember last year, when I got stuck in an Elevator. It made a metal envelope around me. I felt Fragile. It was a new kind of fear. We Giggled to make it through the tension while the machine gurgled around us.

Heartstopping lurches, until we got out. Later that year we built an Igloo. My mother learns to dye with indigo. She mails me skeins of blue. I abandon Jargon for joy. Housepainting instead of Kangarooing between projects. This too is a kind of Love. The lilies aren’t blooming anymore except in a voice on the phone. I slice lemons. It’s Mellow. I climb more mountains. It’s nice.

Nutmeg season is approaching. Until then it’s still rosemary and cumin. I haven’t peeled an Orange in quite some time. The stickiness — I evade it. The sections, like pieces of a Puzzle. When it comes together the pandemonium Quiets for a moment. In the gleaming sink the dregs of dinner Ripple. My body is still ridden with things I don’t understand.

Shampoo, a luxury sometimes. I use an electric Teapot. It’s terrifying, being like this. But maybe also Universal. I make sickness an umbrella. It Vines its way around me. It’s velveteen and violent. I snip it and vase it. My bones go White on the X-Ray. It’s been nearly long enough since this started. A Year. Two. And I’m no longer yours. Instead I’m a Zombie of myself. Beyond death. Maybe: alive.

11

seasonal allergies Violet McCann Winter passed, and he went inside. He slipped his shoes off just before he entered and left them out in the hall. Taking a deep breath, he stepped into his apartment, careful not to cause unnecessary air movement that might rustle his clothes or hair or the stuff that remained on his skin, and he swiftly took off his socks. Then he unwound his tie and paled, thinking of it flapping around in the wind as he walked like a tape trap for flies. Lips pressed tightly together, his nose plugged pre-exhalation, he unbuttoned and removed his linen white dress shirt he’d worn for his last day in the office. Then, methodically, his third-favorite pair of cotton navy trousers. He was almost unable to hold his breath any longer by the time he reached for the waistband of his briefs. Swiftly, in one direct, pre-planned hypotenuse from the foyer to the kitchen, he thrust it all into the oven, already steady at 430 degrees before he left for the office. Then, he crept to the shower, careful not to disturb the balance of the particles on his skin. He scoured his scalp with unscented shampoo until the only flecks remaining were dandruff, and some of his hair follicles bled. No conditioner. Then, he washed himself thrice from the folds between his toes to the crevasses behind his ears; first, a dish sponge and body wash, then a loofah and a fresh bar soap, and finally a towel soaked in disinfectant spray. He dried off with a towel he had pre-positioned, then immediately went back to the kitchen and tossed it in the oven as well.

He would never use the oven to cook, so there in the oven, the clothes and the towel would remain, at 400 degrees for the day, then sealed away at nothing for the rest of them. The stovetop was suitable. A week prior, he had bought 272 cans of chicken noodle soup, 136 frozen chicken breasts, 340 portions of oatmeal, and 136 bags of potato chips. Additionally, 272 coffee pods for his coffee machine. The soup, oatmeal, and potato chips were stacked against the bedroom wall. The coffee pods were ordered by day on the kitchen countertop. He would have to have it bitter, as he was short on sugar.

In the bedroom, he pulled on a pair of cotton jeans and a t-shirt from his closet, which had been ordered new two weeks prior and hand-sterilized the night before. Then, he grabbed his laptop from his bedside table, and took it to the pseudo-living room beside the kitchen. There, he sat on the squared-gray chair across from his television, and cradled the device, for a moment. For a minute.

For thirty. Then he opened it, and started to type.

12

Mr. Moore, Thank you very much for my time at your advisory firm. Although I’ve enjoyed this Winter with the team, I will not be able to come to work anymore. Please discard anything I’ve left at my desk.

Unsure of what else to say, he shifted his attention to the singular window in his apartment only to remember that he’d sealed it shut with glue and rubber, and that he’d put a dark film over it so that the light wouldn’t promote any residual particles. He was sure that he’d missed at least a few hundred. He couldn’t think of the possibility of a thousand.

He sent the email prior to signing it. Then, he scrolled through his contacts, deleting each conversation, then the contact information of each one. Except for Dave. So, he turned on the television and began his hibernation. There was a segment about bees on his favorite news channel, and he hoped the news was that the insects had all died.

A scream ricocheted between the walls of his apartment building and the neighboring one. Then another.

Then cohesive cries for help.

He got up and turned on the stove. He tried once, twice, thrice, but he couldn’t hear the gas click-clickclick over all the noise.

The screams became bellows, then cries, then sobs.

His only pot was already on the stove, put there that morning. He retrieved a soup can from his bedroom wall and cracked the top.

Then, it was silent.

But for the bubbling of the chicken noodle soup and the soft tink of his fingernails grazing the side of the can as he moved it to the sink. And for the solemn hum of the oven, which he would turn off in an hour. Letting his soup simmer, he made his way back to the chair. He reopened his computer and deleted Dave’s number.

When he retrieved his soup, he left the residue in the pan. He would wash it later. For the start of Spring, he sunk into his chair to see if all the bees were dead yet.

13

Hamlet’s Eighth?

Holiday Rosa

on grandma’s hard candy and my 11th grade english class nothing nothing writing my nonsense prose Wonka’s fever dream — ­ a set undone Poor Yorick has gummy worms out his nose Ophelia’s choking on bubble gum monologuing on abt sugar-high-joy see ‘cause ‘the chocolate lake is the thing, wherein I’ll catch that little Dutch boy’ and his mama will go on pretending Rosencrantz went south tasting candy floss Guildenstern sucking on chewable slacks did Roald Dahl imagine this chaos Hamlet and Charlie are the same in fact first, a man, and second, sweets to the sweet wish I had a sugar pencil to eat

14

B.A. in Psychonautics Zelda Rose Fuck Nancy Reagan! Give me a D.A.R.E. t-shirt to cut short at the ribs and a capsule of stardust to swallow, a note to pass in class or pass to the girl who puts it under her tongue, sour as sinking your teeth into a swollen lemon. The trick to having fun is to remember that we will not become faeries tonight. We are the worst of witches, playing with poisons to dance naked around the fire, pupils blown wide and black as the new moon — all the better to see your smile with, my dear!

Is the shadow in the woods paranoia or instinct, something long dormant finally awake for six hours to trick me into thinking myself a genius? I want to walk to the stream like the silent deer, to kneel and drink or to slip in, to dissolve like a tissue dropped into the sink, all thoughts spiraling around the drain.

15

Eructation Kano Ottinger Racing up A dark and tight Tunnel Emerging to only find The unforgiving confines of the world Yet they keep coming Who can tell those That bring remnants Of the past To stop — surely, not I For I am the one That loves them the most Encourages them Despite knowing it’d Be best For both, to stay in

16

I’ve eaten all the goats under my bed.

Marvellous Ogunsola After Robert Frost Ghosts.

I’ve eaten all the ghosts under my bed.

They came to take me away, to take me to my grandfather.

I refused. I refused once. Maybe twice. I remember the pink-haired ghost sitting, //embellishing heaven like it needed more marketing. I sat there, plotting a quick escape.

Poems about the end of the world: Robert Frost will never melt.

If the ninth hell is ice, then what are the odds it’s just like Minnesota?

Goat farm. He lived for his goat farm, he loved his goats. He sold them, milked them, mutilated them. He was very macho, ablaze in fire and glory. I’ve sought refuge in my bed, my comfort abode. The recession is never coming so I have no excuse for this //laziness, the grief left right after the phone call, so I have no excuse to be in bed. You need cruelty to survive, //he said.

Poems about the end of the world: Robert Frost will never melt.

If the Cats movie adaptation is bad, does that mean I have bad taste?!

My burgeoning sorrow bleats for help bleakly. My grass-fed heart blames myself. Eating muffled //sobs, muddled thoughts, muzzled muffins. He was a do-nothing, no-good terror, //lashing-out-at-babies type, ne’er-do-well, finger-crackling, caterwauling evil old man. He made fun of my pronunciation //all the time.

I don’t miss him!

17

Poems about the end of the world: Robert Frost will never melt.

If everyone is sad, then why is everyone at work and looking good doing life?

I’m not going. I know where I am, I know where I come from. I come from a lineage of dogeaters: eat dog, eat world, eat labia, eat gun, eat everything. Just survive. I’m eating //my grandfather’s favorite goat.

Poems about the end of the world: Robert Frost will never melt.

If the world is ending, then why are the poets waxing and writing?

I feel full. I leave my bed to get water. From here on out, I leave my bed every day.

Poems about the end of the world: Robert Frost will never melt.

If the final stage is acceptance, then how on earth will I live with myself?

18

A meditation on paradox Natalie Mazey When I decide I must become a blank slate I call to tell you I cut my hair and you tell me I am not built for suffering painting laugh lines along the corners of my eyes your revelations pierce the dark your freckles strewn like constellations echoing the brushstrokes of a heaven I am unsure exists you tell me you’ve seen miracles happen right under my nose and to you that is proof enough I tell you I’ve seen the sky christened in hues of gold and found that etchings of seafoam feel far from strangers but still this vastness does not tell me to concede so I tell you my only miracle is that I can look to you Maybe believing in God is like believing in a person who believes in God let my faith in you be faith enough

19

Lovers Return at Dawn Nolan Manz His rough skin waits for me somewhere the noise of burning skateboard wheels on red brick echoes in the summer heat. I returned home and I stared absently into the nothingness of West Texas highways and the world felt tighter in the flayed air.

I remember being inside his Jeep at night as we sat and cried in our long silences, sorrows being taught in our time together and guilt being built while now — across this cracked asphalt ocean his uprooted long hair shines on the highway’s horizon under that oppressive sun, as I wait for you with coppery, burnt skin.

20

Inside the Moon Zoe Grigsby Only thirteen years of age, I was nothing but a gardener, sneaking outside at midnight to water the carrots; In the dark, my aim was poor, and water escaped my grasp like a poorly rehearsed confession; I was unaware of when it met the earth, or when my vegetables had grown.

So I looked to the night sky for help, and when the moon felt me staring, he met my gaze with his, and his craters transformed into small portals to dimensions beyond the boundaries of Pluto and Mars and nighttime and herbs.

I floated out of the garden and towards his sparkling crater-portals.

Each celestial gateway emitted vibrant music: Chimes, and hymns, and a pot banging against an aluminum countertop.

In one portal, I saw my grandmother playing a flute as a young girl — simple melodies drenched the dark chamber.

In a different lunar tunnel, I saw my own body, transformed into metal, plastic, and synthetic fear.

Violins and cymbals and cicadas made symphonies.

Another portal illuminated the murky pond by my house, but its surface held the reflection of a frozen tundra from some untouched civilization.

21

A child whistled a tune I should’ve recognized, but couldn’t.

I don’t remember how long I stayed in these sound tunnels — being shot through moon’s songful subterranean subway system — until the planet spit me out, feet first.

When I finally got my bearings, I found myself in a familiar garden, but here, my carrots were fully grown.

And in the distance, Bach’s Cello Suite in G major played in reverse.

22

Jolene Luca Schira I fear my mother will not live to see my children Her words linger loose in my room So shockingly soft and fragile But there they lie like kindling Feeding the picky flame in my head I take my shirt off and see her there Sand on her boots and soot on her face She picks a cone from the hot ground Longleaf pines are charred in her wake Months later they flourish, still warm I fear my mother will not live to see my children Mortality clogs my ears yet I don’t flinch Finding peace lying on the leaves Still wishing I wasn’t deaf to the world But all the streams here are frozen After the funeral she drives me a decade younger Her child is grasping dearly for his life Learning he must die too Her words soothe him like peepers at night Inspired by her mother before her Walnut Grove Church Road My little feet fall from my mother’s truck She takes me to the free pile There I find my treasure A shard of blue plastic at my feet My soft hand grabs it Twists it between chubby fingers And extends it to my mother Thirteen years later we both return Sending off the last signs of my life here I search between the gravel There’s still treasure to be found here 23

Summer Weeds watercolor Ayuna Lamb-Hickson

24

Bubble digital photography Leah Long

25

Gulf Flounder linocut Jane Skjonsby

26

Four Horsemen acrylic Noah Hanson

27

Claw Cleaning in the Great Ketelsian Swamp oil John Bunting

28

Flowers for Christmas ink Nicholas Lobaugh

29

Gender as a Holographic Trading Card earthenware, mixed media Charlie Gee

30

Lily pads print, etching Julia Bintz

31

Materiality 4/5 digital photography Aahanaa Tibrewal

32

number 45 — to be read from right to left digital photography Asa Rallings

33

The Fall (16 & 20) graphite Gabby Simpson 34

This Is Not The End multimedia collage Bernadette Whitely 35

Marriage Bound earthenware, dried flowers, lace, and gold leaf Maddie Sabin

36

Red Tide linocut print Miriam Ruiz

37

[THE RISK OF WRITING A NEW POEM] Lucy Clementine I think there might be more. Just for a moment, more to this one.

Have you ever shared it with anyone?

The poem you keep on the underside of your wrist?

The one on the outside of your ribcage?

The poem that cannot be concerned with tomorrow, that does not remember yesterday, it is creating and being created between your forehead and my neck, another between your palm and my stomach, one more between my leg and your hip.

Have you ever shared that poem, on the underside of your wrist, with anyone?

Have you ever let yourself be sad and called perfect?

Do you want to? Nod your smiling lips, undermine, slide to my neck to the poem I keep behind my ear, your whisper like rustling ivy spreading across my skin and planting hundreds of gentle roots.

Not all voices write poems, and those that do pull up one tiny root and find a way to write about the sting for months.

Replant and refuse its oxygen, oh, to care for and never be cared for.

Leave your ink your voice like ivy traced all over my skin I do not write a poem.

I do not write this one.

You are the author of all, author of me, author of the poem I keep on the underside of my wrist — that one that has been waiting to be written, the one undermine.

38

There is no innocent museum in america Kaliana Andriamananjara Every time I go to the art museum in my city I go to their Africa section — one room below a floor with hundreds of rooms dedicated to each decade of America and Europe.

They say “This is Africa” of their 20 exhibits from 15 of Her 54 countries.

Countries carved by the knife of England, who still bleed gold and oil for it.

I know the countries in that room, and those who aren’t but I still look for mine. I don’t find it. We aren’t even Africa.

They have Tanzania near Senegal, who wouldn’t be neighbors outside this place.

Whose house was raided for this Maasai Mask?

Whose tomb was ransacked for this Yoruba tusk?

Someone’s face and hands bled to model and make this beautiful shrine — the exotic word for “memorial”— Only for 18-year-old white boys to laugh and call it ugly.

There isn’t an artist or model name on the plaque.

They are several oceans, countries, centuries away, but they are my sisters.

When I was in France, I went to the Louvre.

They have a section called Pavillon des Sessions, one room for, to quote, “Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.”

I searched every piece, looking for my country.

You would think our colonizer would have our art on display, the way a fisherman boasts a fish, a hunter mounts a deer head.

But they keep our art in their basement — they don’t even give it back.

I don’t know if it would have hurt more to see our art put up: A layered alo alo on a red French wall, to be demeaned next to Da Vinci, or a valiha on a stand for mustached Frenchmen to compare to a guitar.

39

On Baguettes Emma Nguyen After Sally Wen Mao The French missionaries who sailed through Đà Nẵng harbor and thought they opened Rhodes to new riches filled ship basins full of wheat to fashion meals fit for their king: airy baguettes, flaky pâté chaud, cows, coffee, carrots. Familiar foods to protect delicate stomachs from jungle poison while prodding palaces in Huế that guarded our final king. They peered down their noses and deemed người Việt Nam unworthy of pastries, of wheat, of bread, of their deli meats and pliable pâté.

They multiplied like yeast and overgrew in palaces and romanized hết chữ Việt thereby stealing the protection language smacks in the doughy face of the colonizer.

Khi chiến tranh liberated baguettes, mì welcomed bột gạo, layers of mayo became bơ. Chả and pickled carrots replaced cured meats.

Parisian luxury morphing into food fit cho mấy người it once mocked. The lofty baguette became softer, kinder as it welcomed the saline air of Sài Gòn.

Pâté is spread with butter on the edges whispers of history but the bread does not resist becoming a beloved staple so mấy người Việt Nam can afford what couldn’t be theirs. Ở nước ngoài, I eat variations that water down the tastes of history with mayo.

Even so, con phải nhớ Việt Nam’s resistance in loaf form mỗi lần con ăn bánh mì.

40

The Pilgrimage Nguyễn Trung Kiên In the Aga Khan Museum in Ontario, a piece of parchment dated to 1778 CE shows the holy city of Mecca, with the Ka’ab at the center. It was a certification for the completion of the pilgrimage (haji) to Mecca.

Its inscription reveals it belonged to a woman by the name of Bibi Khanum, who asked Sayyid ‘Ali Wali to perform the pilgrimage in her place, perhaps due to poor health.

Bibi dreamed of sunlight and sand. Of dried dates and stale bread for breakfast, of water that tasted of the leather pouch that held it.

Of sore feet and back from riding all day long, and the few words of pleasantries between peers, for no one had any energy left to talk.

She dreamed of scorching days and cold nights, of friendly noblemen who gave them a place to stay and dangerous hoodlums who waited ceaselessly for the caravan to let their guard down. The clink of coins, the smell of dried horse manure, the soft humming of a running stream. There was a certain sweetness to such daily hardship. The knowledge that she was suffering to be cleansed, that every strained step was leading to the light. She could feel the day getting shorter and that their journey was nowhere close to its conclusion, but it was there, and she would make it.

After all that, she dreamed of taking the first step into Mecca. The houses, the trees, the people. The sun shone brighter here yet only grazed the skin. The water brought forth more life in a sip than any rivers or streams on her journey. When she stood under the shade of a palm tree, her spirit healed as fast as her body, and she wouldn’t even need to take a break anymore. For right there was the Ka’ab, and she was at the doorstep. She could taste it on her tongue, sense it like a light touch on her arm, hear it buzzing in her ears. Luscious, imminent, forthcoming.

41

And Bibi woke up.

Her eyes felt glued together, yet she pushed against that fabric between consciousness still. Her head was burning and her skin was taut, but she felt no sunlight. This was a more devious heat. Bibi rubbed her eyes. There weren’t many things in life that could hinder the spirit of a woman such as her, but a wrathful illness on the cusp of her pilgrimage was, if not an omen, a test. As she lay festered in that draconian cage of flesh that no longer felt her own, Bibi was scared.

Sayyid had promised he would pray for her and evoke her name each step of the way. He promised a beautiful tapestry of every city, every stream, every death and birth on the way, so that she could trace with her breath the journey that he had undertaken. She did not tell him that she never believed his words. That she merely approved of the pilgrimage for his sake, so he wouldn’t beat himself over it, so she could dwindle in her own den of despair.

Yet despair need not be devoid of dreams. And if the pilgrimage were to be spiritual, she would let herself dream on, and perhaps the mind could run faster than flesh, and that she was ahead of him every step of the way.

Such that, till the end of her days, she would be dreaming of Mecca still.

42

Passing Light Cecelia Bauer only in passing light do i notice something missing. revisiting questions morphed into ovals. round, but never whole. heavy in the hands of the curious. i am running around celestial rings. only in passing light does the Sun hit my face, this time i’m not looking at its rays. i am looking in the mirror. now at my cheekbone, my face is bare. something’s missing on my face. a scar. perhaps left from love, nevertheless rendered a crater. i think about planets. and i talk too much about Saturn.

Saturn and i appear on first pages. we are in one sentence, our names take up half the words. our story ends short, our time forever stolen. in blood, we are bonded. for 10 months, i recognized her language. i tried to paint her in a frame — can i call it a self-portrait? to find her face is to look at mine. but we’ve parted ways now, for Saturn is a planet and i am just human. only in passing light do i find new craters. only on these days, do i choose to drink coffee. i set it down on the cherrywood table. the mug stains a sphere. i wasn’t expecting it to taste sweet, but today it tastes so bitter.

43

Darling I prayed for you Marcus Alexander I confess to losing my religion,

as you are all I’ve put my faith in.

It was once revealed that believing in you was the truth,

on that day you danced through the Sun-bathed deluge.

While there was light, a stack of rainbows straddled the horizon, And during the night, your moon-kissed face glowed brighter than Orion.

O’ child of August, your majesty deserves a triumph, for even among Saints thou art sacred, more amazing than Hippolyta, your laurels laden with wisdom from beyond the Ages.

You may not perform miracles, yet still, when tired you let my heart rest, you cannot be the one to save me, but please intercede in my fate now

&

at

the

hour

44

of

my

death.

saving space Gavia Boyden today, i see graves high-rise a thousand acres are you with the earth? are you with your savior? who aches for you then? — to lay claim to your bones? — those nightcrawlers, again.

45

You Can Quit Whenever You Want Brooke Bound One. You’re fuzzy. There’s a pressure in your forehead — light, and barely noticeable — and if your skull were a fishing freighter, your brain would be an untethered crate crashing to the front.

Two. Your throat burns with spice and chemicals. Your head has helium balloons around it, like the house in Up. The air slows.

Three.

Your mouth is dry and sticky. Your eyelids begin to droop. The whisper of the radiator becomes a soundtrack. You hesitate.

Four.

Smoke plumes around you like the curls you had when you were younger, dancing in the soft evening light. Your brain is a track, your thoughts greyhounds chasing a metal rabbit they’ll never catch. Your brow slackens. Your jaw is clenched.

Five.

Your body vanishes. You exist only in breath, in the heartbeat knocking in your empty chest.

Are you satisfied?

46

Tempest Lucy K Hoberg It‘s raining when it happens.

In the brief moment that the lightning strikes, Amaya is hyper-aware of every part of her body. The world comes to life in painfully sharp clarity, and then all at once it’s gone. There’s a shock of white hot pain coursing through her veins, and then a lingering emptiness. The scent of char lingering in the air, a faint buzz beneath her skin, a dull, pulsing pain, and ringing in her ears. The feeling is there, but it’s hollow.

Distant, maybe.

The wounds last longer, though. For better or for worse. In the days after, the pain comes in waves, skin still raw and hot to the touch. Every morning Mama trickles a woody liquid on the burns and dresses them in sweet smelling salve, clucking her tongue irritably each time Amaya flinches away from her touch. “You were a fool to go out during a lightning storm,” she snips, and Amaya’s first instinct is to argue, but the guilt, resting heavy and uneasy in her stomach, stops her.

She accepts the reprimanding with a pained smile and a quiet, “I know, Mama.” If it surprises her, she says nothing, continuing to tend to the threading scars with steady hands. Mama is right anyways, loathe though she is to admit it. Using the storm as a cover might have seemed like a clever idea at the time, but Amaya can hardly control the lightning on a good day, much less in a torrent of rain and billowing winds.

The moment she felt the first sparks at her fingertips she’d known it was a mistake, but the recklessly stubborn part of her had won out against her better judgment. The lightning came too easily, and spread too easily too.

Still, the scars are a small price to pay. She’d take a lifetime of their pain over whatever the auscultators will do to her if they find out. Pietro’s deal had been generous, all things considered: two decades in direct service to the crown, another working for the military’s blacksmith. Not that he’d taken it. She still hasn’t forgiven him for that. The gardener hadn’t been so lucky. The praefectus had deemed her talents for growing plants to be useless, and ordered her imprisonment. Both the garden and the gardener withered away quickly, and a mere two weeks later she’d been found dead in her cell. In nightmares, Amaya sees their frail, lifeless bodies, and wonders if she should have done more.

Amaya is roughly certain what would happen to her if she were found out, and she’s made her peace with that much, at least. Lightning is deadly, which means they’d almost certainly find it useful. That much would keep her alive, for a while at least. It’s cold comfort, but it’s something. Still, she knows that whatever it is, Mama would never forgive her for it. So Amaya can accept her scolding. It’s better than the alternative. __________ A cool wind rips through her hair on the walk to the creek. It’s a biting sort of cold, and it does nothing to soothe the persistent sting of the burns. Beck is already there when she arrives, perched on a weathersmoothed rock, feet dangling in the clear water. A woolen cloak is wrapped around her body, skirt pulled up and spilling out on the rocks around her. “You’re late,” she greets, matter-of-fact.

She feels a small smile tilt on her lips. “Perhaps you’re just early.”

Beck laughs, a light, twinkling sort of thing. “Of course.” She tilts her head back, shoulders sinking in a rare moment of relaxation. Something about the image loosens the tension pulled taut in her chest. For the first time in weeks, she lets herself breathe. “Now come, sit. I haven’t seen you in days.”

Amaya folds herself neatly onto the rocks next to her, though elects not to dip her feet into the calm waters. It’s only fair, she supposes. Beck has her water and Amaya has her lightning, and they have each other. “Mama has hardly let me out of her sight,” she explains, halfway between exasperated and fond.

47

Beck’s voice is melancholy when she responds. “Isn’t it nice that she cares, though?”

The words are almost enough to make Amaya flinch. With guilt, maybe. Or something resembling it.

“Are we talking about your parents, or Pietro’s?”

Beck shrugs. “Both. Neither. Doesn’t really matter.” She doesn’t sound particularly affected by the admission. It’s just like her, really. Beck, who has never cared to let others hurt her, who lets the truth wash over her, because what is there to do but accept it? Amaya wishes she could do that. “What matters is that she loves you.” Then, with a teasing edge, “I can’t say that about everyone.”

Amaya laughs, raw and bright. It’s the realest thing she’s felt besides pain in ages. Since the storm. Since Pietro. “Not an easy feat, I’m sure.”

The creek’s current slows with that unconscious sort of power Beck has always possessed, the control that came easily and unintended. Maybe it should scare her. Maybe it would, if it were anyone else. “Of course not,” she concedes, “but the best things never are.”

Amaya smiles, watery. “Now that can’t be true, not when I have you.”

The water spills back into motion, an easy ebb and flow between rocks and earth. Next to her, Beck leans in against her, presence warm, breath steady. She lets herself drink it in, while she can. __________ A week later, an auscultator shows up at her door with a warrant for her arrest. Amaya knew, on some level, that it was coming. She’s heard the whispers, the suspicions of a conspiracy, and they might be horseshit, mostly, but it’s not like it matters all that much, not when there’s a kernel of truth somewhere in there. She goes without protest, and ignores Mama’s horrified pleas.

It’ll be better this way, she thinks, even as she feels the lightning fraying at her skin. A clean break, one less person to miss her when this is all over. It’s a cold comfort.

She considers the show Pietro gave them when he was arrested. Snarling, angry and arrogant, all at once.

Shredding iron from tin until they pinned him down and bound him with rope instead. Proud as they read off a list of his crimes. Defiant to the last. Body swinging from the branches of the old oak. Amaya refuses to be like that.

She holds her head steady, and gives them a story. Pietro was the leader, and she was his fearful, reluctant co-conspirator. The fewer who knew, the safer the secret, so they’d dared not involve anyone else. The story spills from her lips easier than it has any right to, driven by a singular need to protect Beck and Mama.

In the end, they buy it. By day’s end the praefectus has delivered her a deal for her survival: fifteen years of military service, or the noose. Guilt sits heavy in her chest when she accepts it.

The lightning is deadly, she thinks. She remembers burnt flesh, skin raw, warped and red, and tries to imagine fifteen years of that. Tries to imagine fifteen years of death. She feels sick at the thought.

Maybe it’s that moment that she makes her decision. __________ In ten years the King will be dead. A summer storm will rage, and a crack of lighting will cut open the sky. Amaya’s world will be lit in brilliant white, and for a moment, everything will exist in perfect, painful clarity.

When the light fades, the King will be dead, and Amaya will be gone.

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diálogo Laszlo Jentes estoy mordido por su voz los dientes afilados por labios de los otros listos para trozar y recortar mis palabras en sobras por eso no digo nada y me mira con hambre subiendo a mi cara nos miramos ojo a ojo desangrándome en silencio una gota, sílaba viscosa cruza su nariz y su lengua la caza rápida como si inanición sienta paciente en la punta de su canino.

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My Grandfather’s Chair (A Letter I’ll Never Send) M. W. I’m becoming my own man now, but I think you know that, perhaps you knew it before I did. You’re alive in my memories, don’t you worry, even as you’re resting in that violet light, or whatever greets you now. In life, you always knew more than I could, and it seems the same is true in your death — it feels like another one of your jokes, the volumes you compiled or the ones which slipped from your mind. You’re alive in my remembrance, a warm light which you lit in my soul, just now that light bears a violet hue. Your chair in your house is empty, but I never worry, I know you’ll be back, that I’ll see you again in some way or another — in the warmth of a friendship, in the beauty of die Sprache we shared — one which was neither of our firsts, yet the one through which we spoke purely, truthfully.

You’re never truly gone, only physically — now, I’m learning your language, and I feel as if I’m inheriting your perspective, an inkling of your presence I feel worthy of inheriting. I needn’t ask of your Kindheit, whether you were warned for your sharp tongue, chastised increasingly as you grew and it grew with you — I saw in your eyes, felt in the rich resonance of your voice, even as it faded, that you’d never lost it, and I hope you know that I carry even a shadow of it with me, and that you’re still here in the smiles, laughter, and friendships which colour my life. You’re the best friend I’ve known, the best friend I’ve got in those quiet, lonely hours, when all light is out. I can feel your music painting the sky as the sun rises and falls. I hope you know that your kindness never faltered, even as it skipped a generation, and that your son’s laughter is your own, that you never failed your son as he failed you.

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Flotsam and Jetsam Rachel Lock After Erika Meitner’s Yizker Bukh Memory is a tree ring, shrinking through a long drought and growing when the rain floods in sheets. Memory is my grandmother’s wedding ring and ruby brooch dissolving in a shoe box in the back of my mom’s damp and dark closet. Memory is Bubbe’s Russian nesting dolls that I tucked into my bag while we went through every cubby and drawer, judging pictures and knick knacks until all that was left was a few floors and some walls. Memory is the empty patch of fur on my stuffed dog Woofy’s paw, rubbed away through sleepovers and movies.

Memory is the reminder, every other visit home, that there’s a green binder in a drawer, under the stamps with Facebook passwords and songs to play at the funeral which is all paid for.

In case of emergency, stand back, break glass but try not to get any in your hair because who will be there to pick it out? Memory lives in melted wax, stuck to the menorah, growing each year and if you peel back a layer and squint, the years will boil away. O Memory, please don’t leave me lonely, please tell me how all of us can stay right here, right now. We’ll light the menorah and you’ll hold my hand while we watch the candles burn down to nothing.

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lights off Jamila Sigal Vásquez Summer again and her desire is the sharp-sweet juice that spills from bitten fruit and spirals down my hand, sticky and wet and transparent as ever, so palpable I feel it next to mine. I want her to tell me everything, need her to split apart the vowels and kiss my teeth. We drink honeywater, slick enough to soothe — ice cubes fall into my mouth, tense against my molars.

I cling to the friction of the feeling, let it linger and curl slow against my tongue.

Heat binds us together, relentless, the gentle press of her hand in my hand is a necessity and when I look out the window waves of heat coagulate thick enough to choke my body disobeys me my vision blurs — 52

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