Miscellany Issue XLV/45

MISCELLANY XLV | FALL 2023

The Literary and Arts Journal of the College of Charleston 1

Miscellany is the College of Charleston’s student-produced literary and arts journal, founded in 1980 by poet Paul Allen and his student, John Aiello. Miscellany is dedicated to showcasing the creative writing and visual art of the College of Charleston’s undergraduates as well as undergraduates across the nation. Miscellany’s staff of students invites all undergraduates to submit their work for consideration each year.

Miscellany strives to be a publication of inclusion and integrity.

All submissions are read and reviewed anonymously. The ideas and opinions expressed therein do not necessarily reflect those of Miscellany or the College of Charleston.

Miscellany is published each semester and uses one time printing rights, after which all rights revert back to the author. Miscellany XLV, printed by Sun Coast Press, is set in Times New Roman.

Cover Art: Maria’s Stickers (front)

by Camila Carrillo-Marquina Digital Collage/Photography Ad Nauseam (back)

by Mattie Flading Silkscreen Printing on Fabric

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COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON MISCELLANY ISSUE 45 | XLV FALL 2023 Editor-In-Chief Michael Stein Managing Editor Addison Ware Staff Readers Abbey Lute Akshay Patwardhan Ali Shafer Brynn Dybik Caitlyn Costa Ellie Patten Inés Carrillo-Marquina Julianna Gomez Katherine O’Shields Lauren Eells Lindsay Gregory Madden Tolley Madeline Ritger Marley Leventis Mika Olufemi Mila Lawson Sam Barnhart Xelyn Rogers

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Table of Poetry q

Sam Barnhart....................... Lost in Translation (for Ariadne)............................................7 Grace Warren-Page..........You Kissed My Cheek Before You Left ....................................17 Caitlyn Costa..............................The Carl Sandburg House...............................................19 Bee Saracco..................................... In Equal Amounts .....................................................22 Juneteenth Poem ......................................................23 Mackenzie Sturkie......................................Birth................................................................29 Frank Elliott............................................ Hey God.............................................................31 Marley Leventis.............. Send Me a Picture of Your Green Eyes.....................................56 Emily Prillaman................................Tongue and Teeth..................................................... 59

Prose q

Perrin Keene.......................................... Sacrificial............................................................10 Sam Barnhart.......................... Once Bitten, Twice Shattered ............................................25 Addison Ware................................The Ocean I Worship...................................................36 Thomas Hilton...................Three Unwise Men in Wild America.......................................47 Peter McKinney................................ Planter’s Peanuts......................................................61

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Contents Visual Art q

Marina Silvestri..................................80th Birthday Party ......................................................8 Liza Malcolm....................................Mr. Downward Spiral.....................................................9 Audrey Lawton................................. Evening on the River ...................................................18 Femur Rothenberger....There Must Be Something Out There For Me ................................21 Year of the Rabbit......................................................24 Sara Fischetti............................................. City Escape...........................................................28 Brittany Bowles......................................Memento Mori........................................................30 Haley Hershfield...................................Lowcountry Boil ......................................................32 Camila Carrillo-Marquina................ Escuela 1975-2002.....................................................33 Arrival ..............................................................34 Michael Biondo......................................Mixed Media 2........................................................35 Brittany Bowles...................... Recreation: Study of a Cat’s Head .........................................40 Michael Biondo......................................Mixed Media 1........................................................44 Camila Carrillo-Marquina......................... Archive..............................................................45 Gabrielle Minasi...........................................Untitled .............................................................51 Emma Gehris.......................................Sunkissed Cheeks......................................................55 Emma Lieber........................................ As Time Goes By......................................................58 Sara Fischetti................................... Spontaneous Creation ..................................................60 Sally Pham..................................................Appeelable...........................................................64

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Miscellany holds a contest each semester for the overall best submission.

We are honored to have a panel of judges from the College of Charleston faculty: Professor Susan Klein Professor Simon Lewis Professor Bret Lott Our First Place award goes to: “The Carl Sandburg House” by Caitlyn Costa Caitlyn Costa is a senior at the College of Charleston. She is studying biology and plans to attend medical school. She volunteers at the Medical University of South Carolina in the Neuroscience Department, conducting addiction research. Her poem, “A Recipe For _____” was published in the Miscellany XLIV Edition last spring. She currently co-hosts a radio show, SNOW MILK through Cistern Yard Radio, and sings acapella with the Charleston Vibes.

Thank you for picking up our journal and taking the time to read it cover to cover. We couldn’t be happier with the outcome of Edition XLV/45, and we hope you think so too.

Thank you to all of the students who submitted. We look forward to seeing more great work from you.

Speaking of... submissions for Spring ‘24 are NOW OPEN.We are accepting poetry, prose, and visual art of all kinds.

Find more information at cisternyardmedia.cofc.edu/miscellany

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Letter from the Editor: Dear Reader: thank you for picking up this copy of Miscellany. You’ve made it this far, so why not kick back and stay a while?

This year, we have more than tripled our staff size, quadrupled our submission totals, and created something that we are proud to leave as our mark on the legacy of the College of Charleston.

Special thanks to Addison Ware, my managing editor, for being such a big help, and for knowing when to tell me to shut up.

To our staff readers: your hard work has not gone unnoticed and this journal would not be possible without you. Thank you.

A huge thank you to our judges: Professor Susan Klein, Professor Simon Lewis, and Professor Bret Lott.

And to you, Reader: I deeply appreciate you reading our journal. It has been a labor of love, and I hope you enjoy it.

Michael Stein Miscellany Editor-in-Chief

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Lost in Translation (for Ariadne) Sam Barnhart

When you were born, this is what I remember: It was sometime in late April, or maybe May. It started with a downpour; the clouds, they came to settle on heavy haunches, whistling tunnels of language. Secrets in conduit conch shells—crying out to my body, in limbo. A pocketed quilt of wild poppies sprinting for the last train, the life cycle of staircases recycled on the path to Terminal 5. At first there was blood. Breaching. So was the yarn, that same bright color from spindles chased—or was it followed? Spilled milk on the tarmac. It was so cold, my skin against the bathroom tiles. In an instant, I loved you. I laughed. Funny, how much can happen in mere minutes.

I felt I had lived twice before I met you but from then on, my life was full; sweetbitterripe surprise. And green. Your voice floats to me like white silk spun by spiders.

Where did I go wrong?

The patterns were too obvious.

Would you have been happier, if not chosen?

I am not the god of mice or gold.

Seeds, withering under my touch.

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Marina Silvestri

80th Birthday Party

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35mm Film

Liza Malcolm

Mr. Downward Spiral

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Acrylic on Canvas

Sacrificial

Perrin Keene Beneath the gloves and scarves and coats and blankets the men shook with a frozen feeling, the Slim One particularly vocal about his discomfort. “This ain’t right,” he said, gripping his horse’s reins. “Us dying o’ cold out here. I don’t know why they can’t make ‘em graze somewhere further south.”

The Bearded One shrugged his broad shoulders, his hat pulled low as if he were trying to nap as his steed marched onward. “You just skinny is all. ‘Need some meat on ya,’ my ma would say, hah.” He sniffed, his nose running despite his forged nonchalance towards the weather. He wiped it away with a thick glove, then flexing his stiff fingers, knuckles cracking as if the ice coating them was breaking. The Slim One was unconvinced, huffing and mumbling and shouting to his partner that they oughta stop early to make a fire so they don’t freeze to death.

They didn’t make camp until sunset, stopping the herd in their heavy-hoofed tracks. The cattle, a large bustling group of reddish brown and white fur wrapped over fat and muscle with short sharpened horns, settled in for the early evening. They sighed thick clouds of misty white air from their pinkish noses. The mountains framing them were tall, distant mounds of snow-painted rocks, and as the night grew darker you could still see the snow illuminated silver by the moon.

A fire burned softly between the cowboys, their boots aimed towards the flames, daring the leather to catch ablaze. The crispness of the air was overtaken by a warm smoky smell. They drank water from tin canisters that made each sip taste like metal, sparking another string of complaints from the Slim One, and ate their own cans of beans they’d warmed at the fireside. The Bearded One decided to complain about those before the Slim One had the chance.

“Taste like rubber at this point...” he mumbled.

“Hm mm,” The Slim One nodded in vigorous agreement. “Like fucking nothing.”

In a moment of steady silence, metal forks tapping against cans, there was a groan. They looked up across at each other, eyes met briefly and darting away, as they listened to the quiet. Somewhere within the herd there was another moan of pain. The Slim One stood up first, marching into the thick of cows and bulls, weaving through their large sleeping figures scattered across the ground. The Bearded One followed after taking a final bite of his beans, setting the can down into the exposed dirt by the fire. Deep into the sleeping cattle was a small opening. A single cow laid out in the center. The others around her had their heads lifted, watching her with their large expressionless eyes in the darkness.

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PERRIN KEENE

Behind her was a calf. Wet with blood and afterbirth, it breathed heavily in the cold, shivering and mewling. Any white in its fur was stained red with bloody streaks.

“Get a blanket,” The Slim One said. He hit the Bearded One on the shoulder with the back of his hand. “Go on, it’ll freeze to death like that.”

They wrapped up the newborn, drying it off best they could with a rough woven blanket they’d bitterly miss using during their long walks, the thick threads soaking up the scarlet from the animal’s hide. The Slim One placed her head in his lap, rubbing his hands over the blanket quickly and everywhere he could reach, knuckles frozen over and painted red. The little thing smelled like how iron tastes. The Bearded One mostly watched, keeping an eye on the mother as she lifted her head and shook, ears flipping about, breath labored. “That thing needs to stand up, soon,” he said, pointing to the calf.

The Slim One nodded. They both worked to help her raise up. Her newborn knees left her legs wobbling like a broken table. The Slim One chuckled a bit, seeing the calf standing with the blanket cloaked over her like that. “Goofy little thing with them legs, ha...” He knelt down and lifted her furry chin, smiling as she moo’d in a high pitched version of the others’ throaty groans.

“Thing’s gon die before we get where we’re going,” the Bearded One decided.

“Maybe not.” The Slim One kept up some hope, cupping the calf’s head with both hands. Her fur was remarkably soft, unmarred by the outside world yet. Her eyes were large, deep black circles, like twin polished stones, eyelashes long and curling.

“Cute thing...”

The next day wasn’t much warmer than the last. The sun did very little to provide any heat, much less light, what with the heavy gray clouds hanging over them, a cruel blanket, threatening to snow at any moment. The Slim One would remark on this fact every couple miles, looking up as if it would start the moment he opened his mouth. “Bet we’ll have to stop and set up early, sleep through a blizzard er some shit.”

The Bearded One stopped quelling his concerns after the third or fourth time it was mentioned.

When it did start to snow the Slim One spooked the nearest few cows with his exclamation. “Shit! Shit, shit, I knew it! I didn’t like the look o’ them clouds, whadda I say?”

“We can keep it up till it starts sticking,” the Bearded One said flippantly, then buried his head into his rocking shoulders, bracing for the cold that would follow the fluffy white flakes.

They kept the herd moving for a while before they were trudging through layers of snow instead of rock-freckled dirt. And even after that, despite his partner’s very vocal concerns, the Bearded One didn’t stop until the day crept to a close. They set up camp in record time, a fire burning just outside two small tents, the scent of charring wood soaking into their clothes and blankets. The Slim One kept his gloved hands close to the fire, flames nearly big enough to lick at his fingertips. Every few moments a log would crack, sparks dancing into the air. They ate their beans in the triangular entrances

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SACRIFICIAL

of their tents, taking in what heat they could from the flickering hearth amidst the gray and white world that enveloped them. As night came, the Slim One stood, a blanket still wrapped around his slender shoulders as he looked through the herd, returning to the camp site with the calf in tow, holding her by the scruff of her neck as she weakly stumbled after him.

“What’re you doing with that thing?” The Bearded One asked, his teeth starting to chatter.

“She’s gon freeze out here. Imma keep her in my tent. The ma can sleep outside here,” he nodded to the heifer following him.

“That’s the dumbest shit I ever heard,” the Bearded One said through a laugh.

“I don’ care.’’ The Slim One sat down in the tent, pulling the calf inside with him, hugging her stout neck as he steered her. The mother cow mooed. She stuck her head in the entrance as well.

“You look like an idiot,” the Bearded One chuckled. “You Mother Nature, now? That it?”

“Shut up.” The Slim One’s voice was muffled behind the thick canvas.

This pattern kept up every night it snowed. The Bearded One would laugh and joke that the Slim One was treating the calf better than a person. “Next thing you know I’ll catch you feeding that thing with a spoon.” All ridicule was dismissed, the Slim One sleeping rather soundly with a warm fluffy creature at his side. He even started referring to her as “Dolly.”

“Oh, what, you gon and named her now?”

“She looks like a lil doll-” “She looks like a calf, dumbass. You gon and got yourself attached now, what’s gonna happen when you part with her?”

“I ain’t a child.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

The Bearded One woke up the Slim One and the calf rather abruptly with a shout one morning. The sun was just beginning to turn the world into a cold blue, the black remains of night still leaving as his voice broke. “Coyotes! Fucking coyotes, I know it!”

Outside their tents the satchel that held their food had been torn open, the cans and packages of jerky that were still in the vicinity crushed, ripped and spilled out onto the snow, the beans mostly licked up by coyote tongues, any cheese or bread scavenged.

The Bearded One kicked at the snow, a shower of white dust flying into the air. His face tightened into an expression of such anger that the Slim One took a step back, almost knocking Dolly over as she stood behind him, trembling in the cold. “I’d hung it up! I’d hung it up, how the shit did they get it down?”

The Slim One nearly answered but decided against it, realizing just in time that the question was very rhetorical. The tips of his fingers tapped against his palm rhythmically. He suddenly got the sense he would miss the taste of those rubbery flavorless

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PERRIN KEENE

beans in a few hours.

After a long silence involving the Bearded One sitting with his head resting in his hands and the Slim One running his fingers through his hair, walking in circles around the scene of the crime, the Bearded One stood with an air of determination. He pulled his rifle from his horse’s saddle, checking if it was loaded, sniffing and wiping snot from his facial hair as a bird started singing a jagged tune somewhere.

“Where you going?” The Slim One asked.

“Hunting. We need food, hm?” The Bearded One said quickly, frantically, tone tight with a fear he couldn’t express quite right. “And since you’re the bitch o’ this relationship I figure I’m the best one to actually kill something.”

The Slim One didn’t say anything as the Bearded One marched into the woods.

He just stared, watching his partner’s boots leave dirt-coated imprints in the pristine white snow, like ugly scars. Amongst the trees the Bearded One felt the quiet of the world in his bones. It settled into him as he knelt down, rifle raised over a fallen log, aimed into an open field where the remains of a few deer tracks could be spotted from a distance. He breathed in the fresh freezing forest air that didn’t include cattle manure for the first time in weeks. He waited for a long while. The tree branches shook with a sharp winter breeze, silvery flakes raining down and sprinkling white flakes across his clothes. After what felt like hours upon hours he saw movement.

Two does stepped out onto the white scene, coats thick for the season, big dark eyes open wide as they watched for threats, unaware of the one just up in the woods. He looked down the black metal scope, breath short, hands trembling lightly with that icy feeling he’d nearly gotten used to. He aimed at the taller one’s neck, just below its jaw.

When he pulled the trigger they both darted away unscathed.

In the camp they sat in a snowy silence once again. The Bearded One kept glancing at the calf, looking between her and the Slim One. The Slim One was looking into the fire, mouth closed tight, his knee bouncing nervously. “Hey,” the Bearded One kicked his boot lightly. The Slim One looked up with a fragile shade behind his eyes. “I got an idea.”

“What?” the Slim One asked curtly.

“You ain’t gon like it-” “Tell me the goddamn plan.”

The Bearded One looked over at the calf again. “She ain’t in the count. The count o’ the cattle, I mean. She ain’t even meant to be here at all.”

The Slim One didn’t say anything. He knew what the suggestion was, he knew very well, but he didn’t want to say anything yet. He couldn’t quite look his partner in the eye.

“She’s just a little thing anyway. But she’d keep us fed till we get where we’re going. We ain’t gon make it without something to eat now, you know that. The count won’t change, we won’t get any docked pay, and we’d probably be saving her a death in the cold. She’s a sickly thing, no matter you letting her sleep in your tent er not-”

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SACRIFICIAL

“I ain’t eating Dolly.”

“She ain’t a goddamn person!” The Bearded One shouted, loud enough for the cows to stir.

The silence came back for a while. They set up for the night within that silence, the Slim One particularly rough with his belongings. He let Dolly sleep in his tent again, stroking her soft face and watching as she breathed in a steady rhythm, pink nose wet and smooth. He felt the top of her head, finding two small bumps where her horns should one day grow, and he looked at her cloven hooves, dark and sharp and very much not human. The men’s stomachs turned in hunger and the hours grew longer. Morning light broke the night’s hold and she didn’t look any more human than she did in the dark.

The Bearded One woke to find the Slim One standing outside, staring into the dead embers of the evening fire, hands buried into his pockets. The silence persisted.

They didn’t speak but there was an understanding. The Bearded One unsheathed the hunting knife from his pants side, gripping it tight with his frozen hands. “She won’t suffer none. I promise.”

They ate in silence too. The Slim One hardly touched his meal, picking at the little rib with a fork half-heartedly despite the hunger pangs in his gut. The Bearded One was more eager, savoring each bite of meat and just barely containing his remarks of how good it tasted. Reminded him of his wife’s cooking, he would have liked to say.

He figured that the Slim One wouldn’t appreciate the comments though. He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, his black curly haired jaw wet with reddish pink juices. To a certain extent he was grateful to those coyotes; he hadn’t eaten this well in months.

Neither had the Slim One, but something about the meat didn’t sit well on his tongue, or in his gullet. It tasted sour. When it started to snow that evening the Bearded One wrapped up the rest of the meat tight with twine and tarp, laying it within his own tent to keep out of reach of any canine scavengers.

The Slim One washed the plates and utensils harshly, scrubbing them with a rag in the nearest stream, just down through the trees and overexposed boulders topped with snow. The sound of rough cloth against tin was a scratchy, irritating noise that he tried to block out with thoughts of his bed, his sheets, his pillows at home. He very much missed home. Wind leapt through the needled branches above. The low muted moo’s of the herd sounded melancholic. On his way back he saw indents in the snow other than his own boot-prints. Light was dim as the evening set in, but he could still see the outline of hoof-prints walking away from the camp. He followed them back to the fire pit, but they’d faded away some paces before he reached the warm glow. He didn’t mention anything to the Bearded One. Could you imagine if he had? “What, you seeing shit now? Fuck off, you’re a paranoid jackass is what you are,” is what he would’ve heard.

Morning crawled in, savoring the dark snowy hillside’s quiet. There was a steady fog of cattle breath in the air. The Slim One woke with a jolt, heart pounding in his ribcage. He didn’t bother to wait for the Bearded One to wake up, barging into his tent and gripping his shoulders tight. He shook him awake. “Come on, get up, now,” he

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PERRIN KEENE

whispered harshly.

It took a moment, but the Bearded One murmured into consciousness, eyes half-shut as he asked what the problem was.

“I seen the calf–Dolly–I’d seen her in my dream.” He didn’t care much about ridicule then.

“You gon batshit, now-” “She was looking at me from the trees, eyes all big and watery; she was crying.”

“Did you really need to wake me and tell me this?” his partner demanded.

The Slim One left the tent without saying anything else. He looked to the trees, a blank space where he imagined a little white and red calf to be. He could still see the dark wet streaks running down her soft round cheeks like cuts bleeding out. The Bearded One wouldn’t say anything until later that day, simply in passing, but he might’ve had a similar dream.

“You seen it too?” The Slim One set down his plate, happy to do so.

“I don know what I’d seen.” He took another bite, chewing thoroughly. “You can have dreams about damn near anything, I don see why you’re making such a deal of this one.”

“We had the same damn dream, is why.”

“Don’t mean shit. We were both thinking ‘bout the calf–makes sense.”

The Slim One wanted to press on but he decided against it, finishing his food with even more reluctance than the night before. Within the herd he could hear a singular low moan. It sounded heartbroken. He tried not to think about it as he fell asleep that evening, but he woke in the night to that moan again. He leaned out the entrance, squinting through the snow-coated darkness. In the distance again he saw Dolly. She stood still, thin gangly legs holding her thin body up with more ease than they ever did in life. Wet streaks still ran down her face, dripping onto the icy ground from her furry chin. Her big black eyes stared at him as if waiting for some kind of explanation.

“Dolly...” he said. His voice broke. His heart stayed close to the ground as he stood, taking a slow step forward. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t want to, you gotta know that...”

She opened her pink mouth, a breath of cloudy air escaping alongside the cry of a child. A very human child. The Slim One flinched back, hands trembling near his face as she screamed for her mother.

The Bearded One woke up with a racing heart that morning. He pressed a large hand to his chest, letting his pulse steady before rubbing his face with meaty knuckles, mind playing over the dream again and again. He stared at the dirt under his short fingernails. He thought for a moment it looked maroon. He came out into the day to find the Slim One packing his saddle for their daily travels, tears of his own running down his narrow face.

“What’re you doing?”

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SACRIFICIAL

The Slim One didn’t answer. He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve.

“Hm? What’s the matter, huh?” The Bearded One marched up to him, hitting him upside the head with the back of his hand. “You crying? You really that much of a pussy, huh?” He asked each question genuinely, words rushed and angry. The Slim One didn’t speak because he knew it would come out shaking. “You just trying to prove me right is what I’m seeing. I was already thinking you some sorry excuse for a man, you know that? No need to prove it to me.” He hit him again, the Slim One’s shoulders hunched in defense.

They mounted their horses, the Slim One’s eyes still hot as he stirred the cattle. Beams of dim sunlight managed to peek through the overcast gray. The herd was slow to move, and as they started their trek the cowboys noticed one had stayed behind.

“What’s the matter with her?” the Bearded One asked, stopping his horse.

They stood still for a moment, watching as the cow laid out alone, head slightly lifted as she was otherwise motionless. They brought their horses closer, the Bearded One stepping down to get a better look. She didn’t react outside of the lone flick of her right ear. The Slim One noticed red ribbons in the whites of her eyes and a wetness at the corners. She’d been crying. He sniffed, the cold starting to seep in as he tried to look away.

“What’s her problem?” The Bearded One stood with his hands on his hips.

“Probably missing her calf,” the Slim One said through a tight chin.

The Bearded One looked back at him with a firm expression. He turned back to the heifer, marching closer through the muddied snow. “Get on, now,” he said, and gripped one of her horns, pulling her upwards. “Come on,” he groaned as she stubbornly kept herself down. He wrapped his arms around her neck, yanking her forward as best he could. The Slim One glanced at the herd, which had slowed to a lazy pace on this hazy morning. He looked back just in time to see the cow impale the Bearded One with her horn.

A pale spike stuck up through the fleshy underside of his jaw, up through into the roof of his mouth. He went limp, the cow pulling away and standing as quickly as she could, as if she’d shocked herself. The Slim One let out a shout as he watched the Bearded One fall into the swathes of dirt-coated snow, a white dust icing his clothes.

He leapt down from his horse. The animal neighed in a panic. He rushed to his partner, lifting his heavy head with both hands into his lap. Blood gurgled from his mouth in thick waves of crimson as his heart beat. Bubbling pools of it spilled down his hairy chin staining his shirt scarlet. The Slim One’s gloves were quickly wet with the stuff and his eyes stung as the reality settled in. The Bearded One’s teeth reminded the Slim One of pomegranate seeds. His wide eyes found the Slim One’s, lashes damp, his focus fading rapidly, and pretty soon his partner’s tears were the only warmth left on him.

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You Kissed My Cheek Before You Left for Mother

Grace Warren-Page confession: i have given my body to this world & everything small dwelling in it because i belong to nothing else & i can’t help but hate you for dying. sometimes, i wake up feeling like a child because of faint rain pattering on my tin roof & moon-dulled shadows haunting summer evenings. after those storms when i feel nothing like myself, i knot and criss-cross in muddy puddles & tilt my head under water-trickle dripping from rain gutters to wash my hair with goat soap & sponges. i want to remember something only the earth was witness to because you & your sequined-rage & tear-clogged throat only find me in dreams where i’m shivering in a sling tied between two posts. before you pull me up by my wrist to kiss my baby-hairs, you dab vanilla extract on my temples & behind my earlobes in hopes a creature will find me. then, you point to a robin falling freely from a wire & you tell me my arms are his to perch. i give him more than my limbs—

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i cradle earthworms in my mouth, ready for him to peck away at my lips & burrow in my hair. i am tired of this grief & i’d do anything to have you here again, stealing a loose eyelash from my cheek, making a wish as you offer me to the wind from your fingertip.

Audrey Lawton

Evening on the River

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Acrylic on Canvas

The Carl Sandburg House Caitlyn Costa

I. All the lovers I’ve taken to the Carl Sandburg house I’ve left.

September sky dark with a wild duck-migration. Remember freezing in the rain, your beard a frost-covered pasture?

Clouds leaving lips with each porch step? Remember the goat barn, warm with scent of grain the cat curled on the gate peering at you like a harbinger of death? My hands were violet buds balled in coat pockets. For once, smiling came easy.

II. Carl Sandburg wrote six volumes on Abraham Lincoln while his wife and daughters ran the farm. You pointed out we shared a birthday.

In August, I slipped note scraps beneath your pillow like teeth. I wrote small biographies on each daughter, each dewdrop that clung to your calves. I was the inkpot or I was drowning in ink. Night was a garden I waded through, finally dropping the pen by dawn’s lullaby. In the field, you gathered sun like yarn, stretched it until gossamer until you were left with your hands.

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III. All-American boy, milk mustache dripping. We joined the tight-lipped fray, reeking of campfire and sex. You wouldn’t shave your face for anyone, and I scratched myself on it like a cat. In the correspondence room – medals shining, spine-lined shelves – we forged a treaty to bury six volumes of civil war. All bets were off once we hung a right into the lake.

IV. To call something by name is to give it power, and this I keep coming back to. Myself a widow of names, a willow alone. My mother called you a name I can’t remember. She asked me whatever happened to ______?

Trace the horizon of blue ghosts when she calls – sit with them, wait for no echo.

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Femur Rothenberger

THERE MUST BE SOMETHING ELSE OUT THERE FOR ME

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Digital Painting

IN EQUAL AMOUNTS Bee Saracco

I. I don’t want to be your animal angry enough for both of us. A sword I wield like an angel when I’m nervous. I mean a bad dog. So you know I’m no fun at parties I bite the inside of my cheek.

I’m named after archangel Gabriel and it bleeds.

You know he translates God’s will: every terrible thing I say. God of us, God of anything as if I’m on good terms. A flaming sword in His kitchen a dog the authority to sit with every tender thing in my raging mortal heart.

And still hold the knife.

II. At night I am mourning together girlhoods, different sides of the Mississippi.

Strangers never think we’re related. Older sisters: built to leave.

I have all of her cadences.

Archangel Gabriel Queen of Spain she has always been faster. Getting out first— I hate her for it.

If I die in a house fire just to see if it would bring her home, who am I to tell a ghost how to feel?

Strangers again Different sides again The one who set the blaze Not the one who escaped, missing enough for both of us.

She has all of me.

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Juneteenth Poem Bee Saracco

Momma’s love is black tea. History is the open window’s song.

I am tired of resilience, of bloodied soil.

I am seeking pure growth.

I am like this: I want to be witnessed.

Holding all this blood inside my mouth...

“Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!”

One day the anger will up and leave me I am afraid.

What then, absence—

the false truth of a clean break?

the myth of moving on?

a bruise.

We write redemption songs, dreads that stop bullets.

“I will eat your pain for you.” We make communion.

They want us to die for their cause, selling our pain back to us— Juneteenth movie marathon She’s dead, and I don’t believe in ghosts, but reach for my hand and do not let go.

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built on grandmother’s back. please

Femur Rothenberger

Year of the Rabbit

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Digital Painting

Once Bitten, Twice Shattered Sam Barnhart

A confession: we had both broken the window.

My finger was wrapped and bleeding through the paper towel. Bright and nauseating. On my way to get it stitched up I wondered if it was strange, asking if they could help me. As if it wasn’t their profession.

It was strange too, living there. There was a backyard and a driveway, enviable amenities on a dense block. And a porch, but I didn’t go out much because of the mosquitoes. I cooked. I was unfamiliar with it, but I had the time at night to indulge my slow methods. I had a friend over, just once. We sat on my balcony, drank a bottle of rosé, and discussed globalization and our boyfriends. I woke bitten.

I lied. My mother came to visit. She was a friend at this point, and was smitten with the place. I reminded her to remember her apartment in Lauderdale-bythe-sea, with a stretch of sandbar and her floral carpetbagger couch that she dragged through the landscapes of my childhood, eventually covering it with beige, then white. This was much the same, our dragging push-and-pull, like waves I dreamt I could hear crashing into the harbor nearby. Eventually calming, the rough textured flowers: black, green, and pale yellow still covered—though you could imagine their honest hues if you pressed down the cushion. I had spent four months as a rower that year, quitting before I needed to race in a boat of four instead of eight. It could flip so easily! (Though of course it wouldn’t.) I swept hard. I liked carrying the boats out of the water the most; the hoist. I thought often about the water.

It was a summer sublease, my first time paying rent after moving out of my freshman year dormitory. During my mother’s visit, I couldn’t afford to take time off work. I was working several part-time jobs and taking summer classes online. While I watched TV at night, I would fill out online surveys for extra cash. They were typically for university research studies on attention, perception, or reading processing.

The girls living in the other three bedrooms were in and out, I would see them in passing, but barely. Another girl would come back to my bedroom in August. I was intermediary. Who would be my witness, I wondered? If I melted into the floorboards in the kitchen and sunk deep into the wet-breathing earth. So I called my mother. She would come to spend a weekend with me.

Everything I owned was haphazardly unpacked, levitating a few centimeters atop the bones of the room’s permanent fixtures: the iron bed frame, the raw mattress, the dresser, the walls. I felt like the sheets that get draped over furniture when a rich family leaves their holiday home. The house I lived in that summer was a hundred and fifty years old, split into two apartments. I felt like a ghost, wondering if I wasn’t 25

ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHATTERED

alone. If we would commune when I closed up shop for the night. My room was in the annex apartment, in the furthest corner of the house, above the kitchen.

The front door had always been finicky. I was told that. Even with my key, sometimes I couldn’t get it open. It did scare me some nights, and I thought about it, but resolved to let it rest, my brain already full. I never got up in the middle of the night. I held my piss and fear until the morning broke.

When I broke the window, it was early morning. The cicadas had gone back down to bed and I needed to take the cans to the curb. Our annex apartment got thedriveway, but the tradeoff was being tasked to take the garbage and recycling to the curb, two bins of each. It was early. I was the only person in the apartment. I walked out and let the door gently swing behind me, not wondering if it had made up its mind to shut or not. I lumbered over the bricks with my cans, ungraceful in my giant sleep shirt and dollar flip flops. My only accessories a puffy morning face and squinty eyes, unappreciative of the dawn filtering through trees and bouncing off the windows of neighboring homes in the early hours. I hadn’t heard it rain that night, but the dew was heavy. My feet became grassy and slimed, my hair flattened, and my brow beaded in the hanging humid air. I dropped the cans at the curb and turned back. The door, humorous, it must have thought itself, had chosen to close when my back was turned, locked.

There were six small panes of glass on the door, one right near the lock. It was an old house, an old door, surely not stable. I was embarrassed in my solitude. I wrestled with the doorknob. I whisper-screamed at it. I gave it a stern talking to in my most confident voice. I pressed my face up on the door, looking to see if I could break the little bottom left pane and gain entry. I pressed on the glass. It was already loose. A tropical summer storm could have knocked it out. The door being slammed a bit too hard could have cracked it in half! I let myself inside.

Back in the kitchen, I let my blood run under the kitchen tap water, temporarily staining the white ceramic sink. I had anticipatory nostalgia being in that kitchen. My gaze blurred, taking in the girls’ magnets on the fridge from European travels. I decided I would adopt the idea, if I ever made it to Italy or somewhere romantic like that. Cabinets full of boho dishes and mason jars for iced coffee. A dish towel I was so fond of I tried to find it on Ebay. I took a pink Ikea glass when I moved out, a souvenir.

I taped over the missing piece with a brown paper grocery bag. The repairman came a few days later; it had never happened.

My mother’s visit made the house feel like my own. She was consistent in her manner, bringing a cooler full of food with her, and never wasteful. She would sit in the kitchen and work her remote job while I went to work. She liked to go on walks in-between calls, or on them. We were the same in that way.

She dealt with the humidity better than I did, or maybe it’s a grace that comes with age, sweating less. She bought a few bottles of her favorite wine. I hated it. When we fought, it was like sisters. She frequently miscalled my name as that of her younger sister, the youngest in a chain of four. I chided her. Always the youngest. That’s what it

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SAM BARNHART

was like.

I had gone off to work somewhere on a day-shift. When I returned, the bottom left pane of the window was missing. Hadn’t this already happened?

No one was home, so I entered, not needing my key. When my mother returned from her walk, I was angry. How could you break the window? Please, can you fix it, please. Please.

Maybe the stove had been on. Maybe there had been an emergency. Her brain was full, too. We, the kind to set things down to examine something closer and walk away, forgetting what we had carried. We were spun the same way. She loved the dish towels, and the magazines with Jackie Onassis on the cover, of which she also had some in a box in her attic.

My mother was a miracle worker beyond time and language and providence.

She believed in those things. Around her, my hesitancy to belief was often challenged.

But, the window. My sweet annex, open to the crickets, worms, and what else.

There had been construction men around the property the past few days, pressure washing and fixing up. I was distraught without cause; it was already going to be fixed, she said. She’d bribed them with cash and probably kindness, though she didn’t say this. But what else?

When I was young, we had waded into a fast rushing muddy river, wanting to climb on an island of rocks in the middle. She always liked to take photos. I have black and white prints of her work from the 1980s framed in my room now. When I was young, her snapshots were catalogued on her work Blackberry. Afraid to get it wet, she held it in her hand above her head as we crossed a section of river towards the island.

No backups or cloud drives, just faith. It’s easy to see where this is going.

She dropped it in the river and I knew that thing was gone. She was frantic and she swept her arms in the river, fishing and praying for several minutes. How many particles can be moved in a second? So she resigned herself. One final palm net was cast, and she pulled that sleek Blackberry out of the water, dripping. We perched on the rock island: ankles, pants, and hands wet—phone screen black.

The window pane was fixed when I got home from work the next afternoon.

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Sara Fischetti

City Escape

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Graphite

Birth

Mackenzie Sturkie I wasn’t born to die I am the potential energy Rolling up the hill of mortality Always ready to go, Always building My mother didn’t birth me But instead, spit me out Like a cherry pit Raw and subjected to the world I planted myself in the ground, Wishing to grow So that I may give you My cherries, so That I may live on forever Remembered, eaten, Spit out again I was not born to die, I was born to take the Entire world

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Brittany Bowles

Memento Mori

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Charcoal

hey god

Frank Elliott hey god, i saw one of your angels today, bloody and bruised and battered, slumped over the hood of a ‘79 chevy truck. do you not love him? he was crying for you. oh, but a mother’s love is not unconditional—a father’s love is like a hurricane. do you not love me? all i wanted was to be good enough. i’m dancing on glass and fingering the trigger these days, these days, these days. my world is burning outside these dirty windows. my car kicks into overdrive on the way home, five thousand rpms, danger zone. it’s like it knows home is no home at all, panicking like i do when the driveway fades into view. i got sick this morning. why don’t you pick up when i ring heaven’s landline? i saw another one of your angels last week, head down outside the quik mart in dixiana, tired eyes and even tireder wings. do you not love us? have mercy on the sinners. it’s all we’ve got left. god, i saw your only son, dead and bleeding out on the cross. do you not love any of us? a family’s love is like cancer, settling deep inside until you can’t tell where you start and it ends. it never lets go. i’m on my knees, please, just let me be good enough. why am i not good enough? is it not enough to bleed and to cry and to scream and to abstain? the city lights are calling. pick up the phone.

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Haley Hershfield

Lowcountry Boil

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Colored Pencil and Newspaper

Camila Carrillo-Marquina

Escuela 1975-2002

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Digital Collage/Photography

Camila Carrillo-Marquina

Arrival

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Digital Collage/Photography

Michael Biondo

Mixed Media 2

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Mixed Media

The Ocean I Worship Addison Ware

I’ve been baptized twice in my life. First, as a newborn, when my parents brought me to the marble podium in front of my church. The tears of holy water gently poured onto my face. The second time was as an adult, alone in the ocean.

Tumbling under the white water, I prayed to God, I prayed to the sea, and I asked for forgiveness from whoever would answer. The rage settled, and thus I was baptized again. By who, I still do not know.

I ask myself, what is a truer sign of Godliness than pure rage, followed by an undeniable love?

— I hadn’t seen Caleb in two years when he decided to reach out to me. I got his notification in the middle of making breakfast, between the cracking of eggs and the frying of bacon. I worked myself up to opening the text by pouring another cup of coffee and adding another slice of bacon in the pan, and even then, I stalled for an extra five minutes.

The message read: “I was listening to an old playlist and I thought of you.

Would you like to get lunch while I’m in town?”

I responded: “would love to get lunch. let me know when ur free. i’ll be there.” And then a day later, I was there outside the cafe, catching my breath and letting the calm from the morning surf linger over me. The cafe we met at was two blocks from my apartment and seven blocks from his parent’s place.

Common ground.

— Notified by the ding of the opening door, Caleb turned with wide eyes, surprised that I’d actually showed up. He was waiting for me by the trashcans and tray collection closest to the door. He hasn’t grown since we were teenagers, but the years of age showed on his face with a new aura of maturity. He still wore the same surf-branded t-shirt, which hung loosely over his shoulders, but he had upgraded his board shorts for a pair of casual slacks. Crescent moon wrinkles appeared around his lips when he recognized it was me in front of him, and he flashed his boyish smile.

“Maggie,” he said, exaggerating the vowels in the way he used to, and brought me in for a hug.

“It feels weird to see you like this. A scheduled lunch date isn’t really our thing,” I said, laughing. “Usually there has to be some divine intervention for us to see each other.” I thought of the last couple of times I saw him–a run-in at the grocery store the summer before college and the pump behind me at the gas station after a 36

ADDISON WARE

concert. The most bizarre was two years ago at the D.C. airport between Christmas and the New Year. I never called Caleb when I wanted to see him. He would always appear when I needed him. He smiled at me. It was one of those smiles that reminded me of the distance between us, like a memory, but also an inhibition.

“It’s good to see you too. I’m sorry, I know you’re not a fan of this deli, but personally, I find it has quite a charming vibe to it,” he said, gesturing around the room.

The walls of the deli should’ve been haint blue, but they’re faded with rust-colored dust disclosing the years since this place was last renovated. It smelled of onions and burnt mayonnaise. Tables and chairs were randomly placed throughout the dining room with booths lining the windows, giving views into a parking lot full of hybrids and electric cars. It was still fairly crowded for so late in the afternoon. The line to order is usually five people deep at any time, but we got lucky and were met with a relatively short wait of just two people ordering to-go. Caleb and I always had the best luck when together. It was a part of that mysticism. “Anywhere is a good spot to see you.” I said.

He tilted his head for us to join the line.

“So,” he said, “how are you? It’s been what, a year since I last saw you?”

“Yeah, more like two, actually,” I confessed. I felt my face flush with the admission of guilt. I didn’t think he would so bluntly address me ignoring him for those couple of years. I could feel him looking at me, possibly taking some kind of pleasure from my fumbling for something to say.

“Caleb, you know I-” I started, but he nudged me in the arm for an interruption.

“Come on,” he said, and that boyish grin appeared again. “You know I could never stay mad at you. I’m sure you had a reason.” With a wink as a period in his sentence, he turned to browse the billboard-sized menu hanging from the ceiling.

I thought, looking at him in that moment of grace, I had received forgiveness for my silence towards him that I’d been craving for a long time. It was a simple moment of respect for our past friendship. Whether it would survive or suffer after this lunch didn’t matter. “Order whatever you want. It’s on me today,” he said.

He reached into his chest pocket and flashed a new silver credit card. He bounced it in his palm to show the weight of it. A symbol of his adulthood I had yet to match. He stepped towards the glass front counter when the guy behind it yelled, “Next!”

“Whoa, you’re a big spender,” I joked. The embarrassment faded and morphed into that familiar rapport we used to carry with us. It felt comfortable again.

“I’ll just do the brie and prosciutto plus whatever she wants,” he said to the man behind the counter.

The cook looked worn out and in need of two Advils and a cup of coffee. Dark circles like parentheses crowded around his eyes. I ordered the same as Caleb.

Down the line, he paid for the meal with the young clerk and grabbed our water cups, then headed to pick a booth. I followed behind like a school child. The diamond tile floor had that slippery film on top, forcing me to move carefully when walking to-

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THE OCEAN I WORSHIP

ward him.

“Hey, thanks for this–you know, paying for the meal. But also asking me to lunch,” I said once I caught up to him. We sat down at one of the nicer booths, but even then, it was still broken. You could see yellowish foam poking through the fake navy leather seat and the fabric backing covered in mysterious marks of brown. I took the grungier side of the table as a sort of repentance for my silence.

“Don’t worry about it. I meant what I said before, I don’t think I could have any hard feelings towards you,” he said, taking the cleaner seat across from me.

“You do know lying’s a sin, right?” I asked him. He grinned but habitually fixed his hair, a quirk he’s had since childhood which always meant he was uncomfortable. To change the subject, he leaned across the table and confidently lifted up a clump of my wet hair. “So you’re still hooked on surfing?” he asked.

“Ha, yeah, but it’s not the same. It gets a little lonely out there without you watching me wipe out on every wave.”

He laughed. The intimacy of the reach surprised me. His finger still lingered on the knot, digging for some insight into the person I am now, a person he doesn’t know anymore. We were children the last time he was this close to me. To keep my cool, I described the latest surf that he missed out on as he pulled his hand back to his side of the table.

Though my head was congested with the thoughts of our missing pieces, I found that our conversation flowed like we were teenagers again. It seemed we’d buried the hatchet in the backyard and forgot about its existence entirely like an overgrown garden. Caleb smiled through his words, and I couldn’t stop laughing at the stories he shared of his goofy teachers and pompous classmates back home in New England. He told me he switched his degree to Religious Studies and is thinking of a graduate program for it too. We were both in high school when the Episcopalian and the Anglican split happened. Caleb’s family switched denominations, while mine quit it altogether.

He grew closer to God and distant from me. I couldn’t help myself, I had to bring it up.

“When was the last time you were at St. Andrews?” I asked.

“Probably not since before the split. Maybe our confirmation?”

“Did you hear it burned down?”

“What? No, I had no idea, what happened?” he asked. He sat up, mouth agape in concentration and folded his arms on the table.

“Really? I can’t believe you haven’t heard about this. It was in the middle of the night so no one was hurt or even in the building. Apparently someone left the candles burning in the prayer room, you remember that room? We used to hide from our parents in those velvet curtains.” He nodded and I paused, letting the memories consume the two of us. I taught him how to put out candles with your fingers and spit and he taught me where to look in the room for loose change.

He leaned closer, encouraging me to continue. “Remember all those candles that were always burning? Well, that’s how it started apparently. It’s almost like God

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ADDISON WARE

wanted it to burn down for their stupidity,” I said.

A laugh escaped at the end and I immediately knew I messed up.

I didn’t mean to come off so cynical, but when the words were leaving my mouth I couldn’t stop them. Caleb moved further back into his booth and sat up a bit straighter as if he were at lunch with a stranger, not a friend.

“You shouldn’t talk about the church like that, even if you’re no longer a member there,” he said. He took his hands off the table and placed them in his lap. If I didn’t know better, I would assume he was praying before his meal came out. “You’re gossiping about God like he’s some pyromaniac.”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that, really.” I tried to cover my tracks, but my anger about the church left my lips and I was exposed. “Nevermind, just forget I said it.” “No, you already said it and actually I think it’s good for you to say these things out loud,” he said, he too was angry. “If you’re going to think about these things, it’s best you talk about it to me anyways. My family and I may have switched during the split, but my faith is just as strong, if not stronger, as it was when we were at St. Andrews together.” Caleb reminded me of our youth minister, Daniel. The type of guy who thinks it’s cool to question authority when they know they’re the authority you want to question. “Plus, your concerns about the church are the kinda stuff we discuss all the time in class, I’d be happy to talk about this as much as you’d like,” he said. “You’ve always been a questioner, even when we were friends.”

He picked up his water and took an extravagant sip. On his middle finger, he displays his class ring and a signet of the cross on his pinky. I could never take Caleb seriously when he discussed God; he forgets who the Almighty is and wants to claim that name for his own. He put his cup back on the table and cleared his throat.

“Why did you say that about the church? I thought you liked St. Andrews, even after we left?”

I looked down at my hands. I found them plucking on a loose piece of linoleum on the corner of the table. Flick. Flick. Flick.

“Well, I used to like it,” I mumbled. “Until everyone decided I was God’s least favorite child.” I knew where this conversation was heading, and I only had myself to blame for starting it.

Flick. Flick. Flick. The noise seemed to fill the whole restaurant. I could peel off this whole strip if I wanted to.

“I don’t think you even understand what you’re saying,” he said, rolling his eyes. He snorted at me like I was a child, dismissing my reservations about God in the same manner a parent would about Santa Claus.

“Caleb,” I began in a plea of frustration. “St. Andrews said that it was okay to have doubts, and when I said mine out loud they basically excommunicated me. It was hypocritical. How do you think that made me feel?” I tried to keep my voice and mannerisms light, even forcing a small smile.

“They did not excommunicate you,” he said. The snort upgraded to laughing,

39

Brittany Bowles

Recreation: Study of a Cat’s Head

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Oil on Canvas

ADDISON WARE

like what I said was absurd. “You’re so dramatic, Maggie. You basically asked them why we don’t worship nature in the same way that we worship God. What did you think they were going to say? You’re the second coming of Christ, all hail Maggie?”

“You’ve always been like this,” My voice was louder now. I could sense the restaurant eavesdropping. I leaned closer to him, “I could never say one thing about God without you stamping it down with your ego. How am I supposed to grow with that?”

The recollection of happiness is shadowed by the means to an end and I needed to prove my innocence at any chance given.

I hated myself for asking him about St. Andrews, but when I’m with him it’s the only thing I can think about. That past is all-consuming and impossible to escape when it’s sitting in front of me.

After a moment of reflection, Caleb rolled his eyes. “You just don’t like the challenge. You don’t know how to have blind faith.” He sighed and stroked his phantom beard. “Look, this isn’t a new conversation between us. I thought with age you would leave the past behind and realize you sound like some pot-smoking high-schooler when talking about faith. Clearly, I was wrong.”

“But you’re not even listening to me! I don’t think you’ve ever listened to me,” I said. I leaned back into the booth, craving comfort in the situation, savoring the brief silence between us. I wanted to go back to the way we were in line; a reunion of love and sympathy. He was icing me out of a feeling I grew too warm by, burning my fingers with the ignorance of my own conviction.

“Maggie, I don’t know what to say,” he said. He laughed and replicated my artificial comfort on his side of the table. He took another sip of water, this time placing the glass on a loose napkin when finished. He knew I was upset by this. I could see it in how he was looking at me with upturned brows.

“Okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mocked you. Say your doubts,” he said. “I want to know what you think.”

“I don’t want to be toyed with Caleb,” I said. “Whatever, let’s just forget about it and go back to talking about class or whatever.”

“No, I’m serious. Please,” he said. “You know how I get, I took it too far, I’m sorry. Please, say what you want to say.” He always had the skill of apologizing first.

I took a deep breath. “Look, you remember how we would get up at the crack of dawn to get on the water? And we kinda had this unspoken prayer to our ritual?” I said. “I feel like that’s the closest to God we human beings can ever be. To feel that pure and undeniable beauty of His creations. Like, that’s what He wants us to see.”

The echo of those mornings was overwhelming. I couldn’t mask the joy that came upon me when thinking of those hours we would spend together. I wanted to stop here, in this memory with my widened eyes and peaceful tranquility. I could’ve finished the conversation and gone back to how we were in those days. But again, I couldn’t help myself.

“Reading the Word can only get you so far, right?” I asked. “The baptisms of

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THE OCEAN I WORSHIP

nature are unlike anything you can get in a building. Isn’t that why monks are in the middle of nowhere? To be surrounded by these creations?

“The act of worship shouldn’t be done in a stupid building, and you know that.

The love of God can’t be given through a speech, and most importantly, not through some degree a university gives you. Do you really think you have a better chance to get to Heaven because someone says you do? Or because you pay for it? It’s cruel for them to drag people along like that,” I said.

Caleb leaned forward to respond, but we were interrupted by the clerk bringing us the sandwiches. Both meals looked the same except mine was in a shiny red basket and his was on a matted blue plate. We looked up at the clerk and said our thank you’s with phony smiles. Once he walked away, Caleb centered back on me.

“You’re the one being cruel,” he said. “This high horse of sacrilege you ride so proudly is an embarrassment, and you know it.”

He pulled the toothpick out of the top of his sandwich just to set it back down on his plate. I could see that he was biting his tongue, but I wasn’t created with the same level of self-control.

“Me? I’m the embarrassment?” I pushed my fingers onto my chest in frustration. I could feel moisture rising in my eyes. This continuous sermon of precedence left me feeling dirty, unable to be cleaned regardless of atonement. The pompous attitude he denounced earlier was soaked into his words like a cloth in water. He sat hunched with a flat line across his lips and a creased brow, playing the offensive line to my definite truth.

“You think I’m the sacrilegious one?” I asked, shaking my head. “Your arrogance is radiating, Caleb. You’ve never taken me seriously, and if you had, you would’ve remembered. You, and those—those people—that just love to look down their noses at anyone who isn’t a blind follower of some self-proclaimed disciple. You and those people are the reason I’m angry. The questions that we were egged on to ask, I asked. ‘Why does the pastor act like he has all the answers? Why is his interpretation more important than mine?’

“Once I asked those questions, you and everyone else turned a cold shoulder towards the least favorite child. I was left behind as a sinner, as a leper! You say you have a heart of forgiveness but can’t even forgive someone for speaking their mind. It was humiliating.”

I looked everywhere but at him. A light in the corner of the deli was what caught my eye. It flashed twice, pause. Three times, another pause.

Caleb was staring at me, I could feel it hot on my cheek.

My hands found their way back to the loose corner of the table and I pulled on it. I removed two inches of siding and had to sit on my hands to save what was left.

“If I wasn’t excommunicated, then what the hell happened?” I asked, trying to find an answer with a juvenile sense of helplessness.

I returned to leaning against the dirtied back of my booth. My chest rose and

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fell in a heavy rhythm of grief.

Caleb’s eyes were somber, but his mouth was pinched like he ate something sour. It was stupid of me to think one small act of grace meant years of spite resolved.

Then the sorrow in his eyes turned bitter. He took a deep breath, “You were not banished. We did not treat you like a leper, and you did not get excommunicated from a fucking youth group,” he said, and uncrossed his arms to grab his water cup as a crutch.

“You weren’t doubting man, you were doubting the choice of God, and it hurt the community of the church. You made your ideas very clear that you didn’t care for the authority of a lesson, and you happily went along your way when no one agreed. I tried to be your friend afterward, but you couldn’t stand the fact that some people actually liked being lectured to,” he said. “You claim to know all the answers but couldn’t even find patience in your heart for those who wanted to learn. You think we’re the hypocrites?”

The latter sounded more like a statement of offense than a question.

He picked up half of his sandwich and took a proud bite. It disgusted me. My stomach turned cold sitting here, getting scolded for the same thing over again. “You think you’re so big, using big kid words to make your point,” I scoffed. “If people want community, they can get community outside of a place focused on profits and greed.” My cheeks felt wet and I felt small because of it. I hated that he made me feel small. “No matter how you viewed what happened, I know how I felt then. And it hurt.”

I waved my hand to grab the attention of the clerk counting the tip jar.

“Can I get a to-go box, please?” I asked him. Reluctantly, he stopped tallying his earnings and grabbed a styrofoam to-go box without washing his hands. He placed it in the middle of the table, assuming that since we ordered together, we would probably leave together and could share the container.

“Take the sandwich to whoever, I’m not even that hungry anymore,” I said, blinking away the tears.

I started to slide out of the booth to leave, but he grabbed my hand to stop me.

“Wait, don’t go yet. I’m sorry, okay,” he said. “Why don’t we just forget about this and not talk about church or anything that has to do with it? Here, look at this.”

He leaned to his left and reached into the back pocket of his jeans, pulling out a brown leather wallet with a faded middle seam from years of use. Inside, he picked out a business card and passed it to me. It read: DR. HENRY DUNN, CHAIR OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES, AMHERST COLLEGE. “This guy’s a genius. You should reach out to him. He could answer all your questions.” He looked up at me.

“Caleb, you’re still not listening to me. You think you are but you aren’t.”

My hand felt cold after he let go and I had to balance myself on the floor when I stood up. It became clear that no matter what either of us said, we wouldn’t change our minds. After a moment, I gathered my things and left the restaurant the same way I came in.

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Michael Biondo

Mixed Media 1

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Mixed Media

Camila Carrillo-Marquina

Archive

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Collage/Photography

46

Three Unwise Men in Wild America Thomas Hilton

FREE YOUR MIND... and your ass will follow... the kingdom of heaven is within!

George Clinton, Funkadelic

Most people, if you asked them, would say that the only place left to find America in its natural state is Alaska or South Dakota. That’s bullshit, because the obvious answer is Florida. Florida is the only place you could be driving down the road and see a man walking down the street barefoot with no shirt and have three options as to what he is doing. Is he A) Coming back from a long night of partying? B) Going to a party? C) Or is he just going to work? He’s probably doing all three anyways and doesn’t give a damn what your pretentious ass thinks of him looking out through your air conditioned mechanical monster most Americans refer to as a car. People spend their whole lives fantasizing about living in the Wild West and being some John Wayne takes-no-shit-doesn’t-give-a-damn-shoot-first-and-never-ask character.

For those of you who do think about that, head to Florida, that’s just the place you’ll want to go. You, dear reader, may be asking why the hell I and two of my compatriots packed our shit and took a trip to Florida. Simply put, Ernest Hemingway’s house is in Key West, and any self respecting alcoholic must make a pilgrimage. You have to respect the man to some degree; he was the encapsulation of a bad motherfucker. His own wife at one point supported the fascist Franco regime in Spain, and he still went and fought against the fascist forces. No man is perfect, I will admit, but he was a bad motherfucker. At the end of WWII he took a jeep with a mounted .50 cal machine gun and liberated the bar at the Paris Ritz of fifty-one dry martinis in several hours. In the spirit of this pilgrimage, we had decided to drink and do as much drugs as possible while in the Keys. I had packed all the essentials: ten packs of cigarettes (Camels and Newport Menthols), two bottles of Jack Daniels, one bottle of wine, a quarter ounce bag of mushrooms, boardshorts, a half ounce of grass, a bottle of cannabis oil (highly effective), and the hope that no law enforcement officials decided to stop us on our quest. I was confident that this, along with the beer being supplied by my two other travelers, would be sufficient for a 4 day excursion into the American wilderness of interstate highways, truck stops, and billboards advertising lawyers and Jesus. Being that this was a boys’ trip, and the fact we had brought no condoms, we were limiting ourselves to drugs and rock’n’roll.

We left early in the morning, driving through Georgia, stopping occasionally for food and gas. All was well as we drove through the Everglades until we stopped at what could only be described as a gas station for vultures. The pumps seemed to 47

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be in working order, but the building itself, situated by the canal, was in shambles. The wall was held together by haphazardly nailed boards, the ice machine was rusted and missing a door, and the painted sign by the roadside promised all the earthly delights: gas, cooked food (consisting of snake, alligator tail, frog legs, and some other items which I can’t for the life of me recall), beer, cigarettes, and most importantly, a working bathroom. While Joseph, one of our compatriots, availed himself to one of the few bathrooms in this stretch of swamp, I conversed with the owner, a grizzled old man missing several teeth; he was a pleasant and hilarious fellow. We bought a couple cases of beer, and he, not once asking for our ID, rang us up and continued talking about his illustrious career as a python hunter in the surrounding swampland. “For them 4-5 footers everybody seem to catch, you can get yourself $50 for a tiny ass snake than don’t even wanna bite you, just try to crush your hand into dust. Them big ones, that’s the real trouble. They’ll kill you and won’t even break a sweat.” I began to mull over the fact that snakes couldn’t sweat, and debated telling him, but I figured that it would be in vain.

We took our goods, thanked him, and walked back out to our mode of transportation: a Dodge pickup truck. As I opened the door to load the beer in, I had to throw myself back from the open door, as a water moccasin had conveniently taken advantage of the shade of our vehicle to cool itself. I’m not afraid of snakes, but nonetheless a certain degree of caution must be utilized, as well as ethical and moral concerns. We discussed it at length. If we moved the snake or forced it to, it could die, and it being an innocent creature, we decided against it. Besides, how would you like it if you found a chair and umbrella sitting empty on the beach, only to sit down and have some man come up and poke you with a stick, demanding you leave? We then decided to erect the folding chairs we had brought and crack into the first case of Coors, and simply wait for the snake to have sufficiently cooled and leave the premises. I lit a Newport and we sat looking out towards the barren swamp past the canal. It was very surreal, almost like a painting; perfect, puffy, fat ass clouds skirting towards a large looming thunderhead miles away.

Jeb did not drink, being that he was driving the final leg, but instead smoked half a pack until after two hours we decided to look and see if the snake was still there. Sure enough, this mean fucker was still sitting in the ample shade underneath the back door.

As I approached, he immediately started hissing and revealing his white, fanged mouth.

I stopped and looked at it, finishing my beer. The only solution was to evict the snake at this point. Joseph went to find a suitable stick. This was not needed, as the owner of the station had come outside and noticed the dilemma. He pulled out of his belt a snub nosed .38 revolver and shot twice, missing the snake first and then hitting him dead to rights in the head. Joseph’s stick did come in handy dragging the corpse out from underneath. We shook his hand and thanked him again, continuing on our journey.

When we arrived at our lodging in Key Largo, we began to unpack. The place was adjacent to a junkyard, and had been an old fishing village, but was equipped with a kitchen, outdoor shower, and ceiling fans, as well as a tiled porch with a large table which one entered from. It was excellent, with all the amenities one could possibly

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need. Included in the price was even a slew of kayaks and a dilapidated outrigger canoe next to a small dock with several fishing rods available for use at any time. After unpacking our belongings, we took the remaining seven Coors Banquets and two fishing poles and paddled the outrigger out in between two small mangrove islands before a channel. Using a cast net to catch some bait, and several beers later, we caught two large snook and a small red snapper. The water was crystal clear, and as we reached the dock back at our abode we saw several large clawless lobsters. Although this is highly illegal, we decided to take three and keep them on ice for the coming dinner we were about to cook, as the sun started to set. After I had cleaned and filleted the fish, I took a shower, and then we cooked the fish and lobster. The lobster had to be boiled in a pot which was not quite large enough and kept boiling over, almost burning the fuck out of my hands, but it sufficed. This is when the real drinking began. Although they had just stuck with beer during dinner, I had opted for the Jack Daniels, drinking about half before we had even finished eating. This turned what had been so far a tranquil evening into a complete shitshow, consisting of drunken revelry and stumbling through the many streets and neighborhoods of Key Largo accompanied by Jeb and the remaining bottle #1. I awoke the next morning on the front room couch with an empty bottle sitting on the floor and a headless plastic garden gnome. According to Jeb, in my alcohol-assisted ignorance I believed that the gnome was “looking at me wrong,” so I took it from the neighbor’s yard, and on the way back to the house had beheaded it using my knife and knee. These are the kind of stories one never wants to hear the next day after awaking with a headache and zero memory of the evening before besides, of course, some vague sense that you were indeed alive and did do something. As Jeb told me this I cooked up some eggs, bacon, and onions and opened up the next case of beer, this time Budweiser. I have found through extensive research that the best way to cure a hangover is to immediately begin drinking. After furnishing our morning meal, we went out to the front room to eat, and also rolled a joint to mull over the events of last night. We all agreed that we must be careful and try not to steal any more lawn gnomes or any other personal property, and instead stick to other drunken activities. Making no promises to them both, we then decided that today would be an R&R day, a relaxing day to do some fishing, drinking, and generally being stoned. With a joint and cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, we put on some music and gathered up some provisions as we intended to canoe to one of the mangrove islands we had fished around in the channel yesterday. This particular mangrove had a sand beach built up in front of it, and we decided that it would be an excellent place, very reminiscent of The Old Man and the Sea and general masculine ideals, and a good fishing ground.

The paddle out was substantially farther than our previous fishing voyage, but being stoned gives one the ability to perform well at monotonous tasks such as rowing, grass cutting, and many of the other tasks modern people are generally faced with. We dragged the canoe up onto the beach, cracking open some beers and making general conversation. We fished off the beach and caught several small bluefish and sharks

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which we threw back. I decided to break a limb off a piece of driftwood and traverse further into the mangroves, finding a little path which weaved in between them. Although infested with snakes, spider webs dangling in between the branches, and various biting insects, Joseph and I had made it to the beach on the other side of the island. There were large rocks scattered around the beach, most likely old coral, but this was not particularly interesting. What was, however, was a large iguana sunning itself on the largest of the rocks close to the water. Remembering how excellent the alligator tail smelled at the swamp station, and seeing as neither of us had eaten iguana before, we decided to quietly sharpen the stick I had taken to walk with and attempt to dispatch it for our lunch.

It was just past midday, the sun was baking. I was almost too deep, too stoned, but my primal instincts were primed and ready. I slowly snuck behind the rock, but as I got close the iguana began to stir. I raised my spear up and back next to my head, and jabbed into its midsection. The iguana, of course, was not content with this, and sprang up and off, sprinting back towards the mangroves. I attempted a javelin-like throw but missed.

Our quarrel was going to escape, so I thought, but thankfully Joseph had clubbed it in its attempt to flee. Some of you may be cursing at me right now, and thinking what an evil bastard, what a sorry motherfucker, how could you? Simply put, I was hungry and stoned. Many have theorized the impetus for the evolution of mankind’s technology, and I am a firm believer in cannabis as one of those elements. One would have to get efficient at hunting and killing large wooly mammoths if you sat in the cave most of the day getting high and painting. No doubt Crunga and Oog had to find some way to satiate their massive, cannabis fueled appetite, and so the human story truly begins to take off, all thanks to dope. If only they had alcohol, then they really could have got something going. A bottle of whiskey, some Neothilic mid pack, and you could have had a really good fucking time, as long as you didn’t wander outside and get disemboweled by a saber toothed cat. This is besides the point, however, and I will say that after creating a small but hot fire we suspended the iguana on a spit and cooked it. I say “it” because I am not a biologist, and whether it was a him or a her is not known to me. Besides, how could I know how the iguana himself identifies? Surely it would be rude to assume, and assumptions always make an ass out of you and a stupid fucker out of whoever says that, or whoever came up with that shit. Does he not realize science is partially based on assumptions? “I think the Earth is round and orbits the sun.” That’s great and all, but you have to fucking prove it. I can say whatever stupid, idiotic shit I want, but I at least have to make an effort to prove it. The scientific method is simplified. Everything requires an assumption on some base level. You assume that the color orange exists simply because YOU can see it, but maybe we all don’t. Maybe we’ve been lying to you, talking about you behind your back, “He really is a dumb motherfucker, isn’t he? He believes orange is a color! How absurd!” Sure, Occam’s razor would tell you that the simplest answer is probably true, and that orange does exist, but even Occam’s razor is an assumption that simplicity in explanation is generally truthful based on principles of logic that we assume to be true. Besides, who the hell is Occam? I could simply Google it, but then I’d

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Gabrielle Minasi

Untitled

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Photography

THREE UNWISE MEN IN WILD AMERICA

be assuming that Google knows who Occam is, and then I’d be assuming that Occam is real and not an invented construct designed by someone to dispense a philosophical notion. The reality is that I’m a moron, and have essentially scrambled eggs with a side of toast and coffee-d my brain through incessant drug and alcohol use, so why believe anything I’ve got to fucking say? The best part is that YOU still don’t know if orange is actually real, and that iguana is genuinely delicious minus all the little fucking sharp as hell bones that could cut through your tongue or intestine if you swallow them, so for once don’t do some stupid shit. Stay alive, even when it sucks and you’re hot and wasted and you don’t want to row back, you just want to lay in the sand with a full belly in the Sun’s warm, beneficent, cancer inducing rays. You can’t experience that if you’re dead, because no one knows what death is like (if anyone has come back from beyond the veil and told you what it’s like and where they came from and how it works, assume you’ve taken too much acid and ignore it. Unless, of course, you’re in a 300 year old building where children died and a bunch of horrific shit happened. That might be real, but keep your head and assume. Assume the shit out of that situation. Leave nothing to chance).

As we rowed back, we all agreed that tonight was the night to imbibe the mushrooms I had brought. Anyone who has eaten mushrooms before can attest to their taste. It’s not terrible, but if you’re not an animal of the pasture and accustomed to chewing on grass, it can be unpleasant. What you want is the psilocybin inside the mushroom, and to get it out, the most efficient way is to soak it in lemon juice and then add water, which can be put in virtually anything. It’s not an exact science, so when you do this to 8 grams of albino penis envy mushrooms (yes, that’s what they’re fucking called, and yes, they look like a large penis), you can’t be sure what dose you’re getting.

But as we ate and watched the sun set after drinking the brew, we didn’t really care. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? Be assured that the worst can indeed happen, and it most likely will happen, so the best way to prepare is to accept that weird funky shit might. Later than evening, Joseph became convinced that the headless lawn gnome from the previous night which was sitting outside was going to kill him in revenge for its theft and mutilation, so he disposed of it by running down the dock at full speed, yard gnome above head, and jumping into the dark, shallow water, shoes and all.

This led to general hysterics for about an hour, but we eventually calmed ourselves down and sat outside around the fire pit, playing music and looking at the stars.

It really was surreal, and I think everybody should trip every once in a while. You need it sometimes, a little checks and balances on the ego, a little realization that you’re not hot shit and that you are the same stuff as one of those far off sparkly dots you’re looking at. For some this can be unpleasant, but just remember that you’ll come out a better person. Amazonian shamans believe that when people who take psychedelics throw up or have a negative experience that they are ridding their bodies of bad energy and evil spirits. In the Western materialist worldview that sounds like horseshit, you should take Prozac instead. In the ideal society, we all agreed, the government would not control

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what you are allowed to do with your mind, and wouldn’t feed you manufactured chemicals to numb you into submission and productivity. Why should they? It is mine, after all. I should be able to do whatever I want to the air traffic control of my meat puppet human vessel. I’m not advocating that you should take 3 tabs of acid and take the kids to school, but within the confines of your home, in a safe environment, you shouldn’t be afraid that federal agents with grenade launchers and M4s will bust down your door and cart you away. If that sounds like a crazy statement, don’t think it hasn’t happened before. Besides the gnome incident, it was an excellent trip, and we awoke the next day feeling tired but refreshed, and ready for the true purpose of our visit.

The Hemingway House is situated on Whitehead Street, very close to the southernmost point of the island, and America by extension. The grounds are well manicured and tropical, with palms and flowers dotting the landscape. It truly is a place everybody would probably want to live, but unfortunately only visiting is done these days. We had taken a substantial amount of cannabis oil an hour before and as we walked in, it had started to kick in. On most of the walls there are stuffed heads of gazelle and antelope, and bookshelves and magazine stands are dotted everywhere. The highlight of the house is the bathroom, which features a urinal from Hemingway’s favorite drinking establishment. He reasoned that he had pissed enough money into its wide, porcelain frame to own it, and so therefore he removed it and placed it inside his own bathroom. The tour guide explained this as we were stifling laughter, our bloodshot eyes still obscured by sunglasses. The worst thing about weed, especially in edible form, is the general paranoia. No one probably knows you’re high unless you tell them or they gaze into your eyes, but you will be inclined that everyone knows and is dispatching the authorities. On the grounds of the house one will also find several six-toed cats, given to Hemingway by a ship captain. They are quite friendly, well accustomed to people, and I fed one a piece of summer sausage I had saved from lunch to gain its favor. One thing never discussed about Key West is the roosters everywhere, and I mean literally everywhere. They will stand in the road and crow, blocking traffic for several minutes and refusing to move for cars. I would say that they’re worse than Canadian geese, because nothing can top the arrogance of those birds. All life is sacred, but if I didn’t know that those birds lived in American suburbia and what they ate I’d eat one simply out of spite.

The throngs of people walking around began to wear on us, so after a quick dinner at a Wendy’s next to a strip club we drove back to Key Largo and started drinking as soon as we hit the door. By 7:00 we were dancing shirtless around a large fire we had made in the firepit, and generally causing a ruckus. There was a small diner up the road from our house, and the noise attracted visitors. None of them stayed except for a random guy and his girlfriend who were more than happy to join with the promise of as many beers and cigarettes as they wanted. Eventually in the search for my bottle of wine I also found the prescription bottle filled with pre-rolled joints constructed the day before. We shared a joint and finished the bottle of wine between the 5 of us. The guy, named Ryan, and his girlfriend Louise had a hotel room on the other side of the

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island, so we offered our couch to them for the night, and breakfast in the morning. They agreed, so we continued drinking. By 3:30 Jeb and I were the only ones still awake, but too drunk to really be considered functional. I awoke a couple hours later sitting next to the smoldering fire and the new rising Sun. I smoked some cigarettes, went back and cooked some breakfast, and went to sleep until 2 in the afternoon. I didn’t see Ryan and Louise go, but I hoped that they were alright and had appreciated our hospitality.

There isn’t really anything more to go into, except of course more poor decisions and an ever present ache in my liver from those 4 days. It did make me think about relativity and time. 4 days is not terribly long, but it felt long. We had many conversations the morning after a night of drunkenness and asked “How much is too much?”

Obviously, too much is too much, and too little is too little, but how do you know? Can you know? Can a person truly know anything, except themselves? Even then, I don’t think many people even do, and I certainly don’t have a fucking clue. I simply assume I’m conscious and we’re all conscious because we seem to operate in a similar way, but that’s an assumption that can’t be tested and proven, so we’re back to square zero and shit out of luck. I am what I am, you are what you are, and orange maybe isn’t a color, but who fucking knows? We’re all cowboys, riding through the vacuum of endless space and time, constantly expanding and shifting to what appears to be order and disorder in one, two opposites, two natures, yin and yang swirling endless in a mandala of nebulous gases holding within its ethereal clouds more galaxies with more stars and planets swirling around them. Remarkably amazing and terrifying all in the same breath. We only get a short trip, and we have to make it last, and everybody has a different idea about what to do and how to go about it. Enjoy it and don’t go casting stones. If we even found anything, it was that general masculine ideas and Ernest Hemingway lead to levels of debauchery that cannot allow a person to continue existing healthily and contribute to the betterment of anything, much less themselves. Yet I’ll admit I won’t stop drinking, and that this whole thing reads more than likely, like drunken ramblings, which is exactly what the notes I took there are. But even though we can’t know anything, all we can do is try to exist in the present and figure things out for ourselves. If I don’t see you, dear reader, no more in this world, I’ll meet you in the next one, and maybe we’ll be able to figure out why and how the fuck is orange.

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Emma Gehris

Sunkissed Cheeks

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Mixed Media

Send Me a Picture of Your Green Eyes Marley Leventis

Unfolding sixth-century olive trees and miles of mountains a world away. She posts online and I see it all from here, remember I gave my sister’s diary to her crush once, purple plastic pressed into palms like bruises. Betrayal of misguided support. Our father told us about how the Pope drove the tigers out of Venezuela, but she wasn’t listening and I was busy deciding if I’m the Pope or the tiger and which one would be worse.

I’m wine-drunk now shaking silently, all of us— kinship through bottles of bubbles and bellies vibrating with pregnant delight,

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a new pack of hyenas while she sits down for an early dinner. Her and I used to curl like lilies on the couch.

Now her life a series of pictures.

And in her hair, colorful rubber ties with her dress matching perfectly— Who noticed her efforts?

Who saw the small details and who saw her growth? I did.

I guess I’m saying don’t underestimate John Paul. That’s all I’m saying.

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Emma Lieber

As Time Goes By

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Photography

Tongue and Teeth Emily Prillaman

Every woman in my family came from cold country, Mothers to daughters like fair-weather friends.

With coarse hands and love as rare as a smile at Saturday school, My grandmother wished me into difficulty.

Displeased and dismal I couldn’t read her the stories About kot and psa without tears of anger, Little shapes played tricks on my mind, Little crosses in my retina, I skated tongue and teeth to form irregular shapes.

Scraped papers returned slashed with brilliant red To my mother’s disappointment, My mother’s mother, Grandmother, Babcia, And her mother, and every mother on my mother’s side Uprooted family trees and graves Etched with names foreign on my lips As I pretend foreign and I aren’t the same.

When I call home, I hear their voices fade They sound like cold repentance, And I will never learn the word for forgiveness.

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Sara Fischetti

Spontaneous Creation

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Watercolor

Planter’s Peanuts Peter McKinney

My uncle was killed when he was hit by a car riding his bike to work. He was finally getting his life together, had sobered up, and his kids were talking to him again. In one swift moment, it was all taken away. Away from him. Away from his family. Away from all of us.

The police report said he was killed instantly, but the only person who would know if that’s true is dead. Sometimes I find myself wondering how it happened. Did he pull out in front of the car? Did the car not see him? Was the driver texting or using the phone? I wonder a lot about a lot of things, though I admit that I don’t wonder enough to actually answer these questions because sometimes no answers are better than real answers. Sometimes.

He used to live in a small RV. This was well before folks these days were trying to glorify the van life movement and the “freedom” of not being tied down to one place. This wasn’t that. It wasn’t even his RV. I don’t remember exactly when it was, but sometime around the late 1980s or early ‘90s my uncle lived in my family’s RV, in my driveway, and he never traveled anywhere.

I was too young to understand why, but as I grew older, I put things together.

His life had fallen apart. His wife had divorced him and took my cousins with her. He struggled to keep a job. He had a real alcohol problem. But when I was young, none of that mattered to me. For me, it was like getting to have one of my favorite uncles permanently hanging out in a clubhouse in our driveway.

There are things I remember about my uncle. Things nobody else remembers. Things that nobody else knows. Things that maybe I don’t even really know but they live in my head like that one song you played over and over on the CD player in your car when it was summer and the windows were down and you just got your driver’s license. When the weather was warm but not too hot and the sun was just right and you could live for eternity in that moment even if it wasn’t actually perfect.

It’s what’s in memory that counts.

I used to go out to the RV in the driveway and hang out with him. I never had to knock. Or maybe I was supposed to knock but I never did and he never seemed to care. I remember that when I opened the door and stepped inside, the fold out step creaked and if I bounced on it a little, I could make the whole RV bounce like a boat on the lake we sometimes went to for vacations. I remember that he always had the curtains closed. The RV was old, and it was decorated in various shades of brown inside and out. The cushions and curtains and countertops inside could have just as easily found themselves as the décor of choice for my grandma’s living room in the 61

PLANTER’S PEANUTS

1950s. The light was never totally blacked out by the window coverings, and the evening sun shining through made everything sepia toned like it was straight out of one of the old wild west movies I sometimes watched with my dad on Sunday afternoons.

The sink was always full of empty cans, and the scent of stale, cheap beer saturated the air. I loved that smell. To this day, that smell still reminds me of my childhood spent hanging out with my uncle, or with my dad and his friends at the lake, or in the garage getting to be “one of the guys” with the adults.

I could hear the television always going in the back playing some old sitcom.

It was one of those old TV’s that still had turn dials that made a real crunchy-clunky noise when you spun them and rabbit ear antenna that you always had to fiddle with and sometimes add some tin foil to so you could get the stations to come in clearly. That’s where my uncle would always be – just lying in the bed, sometimes awake, sometimes napping after a hard day at work and a few beers. I remember always sitting in the bed next to him and just hanging out.

He smelled like Camel’s, Pabst, and hard work. He worked as a carpenter as far as I knew, and he showed it. Several years younger than my dad, his face looked a decade older. The weathered, creased, leather-like skin was a tell-tale sign of too much time outside, and not enough sunblock. His hands were always scarred, scabbed, and calloused. None of that ever mattered to me. To me he was just my uncle.

We would usually just sit there and watch whatever was on TV, or sometimes we would both fall asleep for little naps. He always made me feel comfortable, and never complained if I ate too many of his Planter’s peanuts out of the glass jar. The ones with Mr. Peanut wearing the eye glass and top hat with a cane on it and the blue screwtop lid.

I’d always ask him about my two cousins. They were around the same age as me, and sometimes we would get to hang out and play together. That had been happening less and less, since now they lived across the state line. It was only about an hour and a half away, but an hour and a half to little kid me might as well have been trying to reach the wild west on the Oregon Trail. Maybe on a trip to see my cousins I would have come across Josie Wales or Billy the Kid like those old movie westerns.

He would always tell me they were doing good, and that was all I needed for an answer. My curiosity was easily subdued, or maybe my attention span was just too short. It wasn’t until much later in my life that I realized that he probably hadn’t gotten to talk to them recently. And he probably missed them. And he probably didn’t want to talk about missing them. I imagine that his bristly salt-and-pepper beard with the mustache that grew over his mouth, covered the slight frown he might have gotten when he thought about it. I didn’t notice things like that back then.

I remember he drove a black over silver Chevy Blazer two door, one of the smaller ones. The windows were tinted dark, but it had turned the light purple and bubbly that happens when you combine cheap tint with sunlight. It had polished aluminum wheels that looked like they had little fireballs from Super Mario engraved on them, and

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I used to think it was one of the coolest looking cars in town. I remember hoping that one day I would grow up and drive a black over silver Blazer, and all the other kids in town would be jealous. He used to park it right behind the RV in the gravel drive on the side of our house. I always looked out the living room window waiting for it to be there.

I don’t remember when, but eventually he stopped living in our RV. He married a new wife who had her own kids. He still lived in our town, and I went to school with some of my new cousins. I knew them before they were my cousins, which was weird. My uncle wasn’t around as much since he had a new family to live with. Maybe I thought about it at the time. Maybe I didn’t.

As we got older, his living across town might as well have been across the world. He had another family to worry about then, and eventually I moved away and started a family of my own. My only connection to my uncle at that point was hearing stories from my dad about how he’d been divorced again, and moved out west somewhere, and was drinking a lot. When I heard those stories, my mind would drift back to younger days. I’d think about sitting in the brown RV with brown curtains and brown walls and brown light while reruns of M.A.S.H. played on the old white TV as the scent of PBR permeated the air. I’d think about his grizzled, hard-working hands passing me the glass jar of Planter’s peanuts. I’d think about how he managed to never accidentally chew on the salt-and-pepper mustache that grew over his mouth while he was eating them. I’d think about whether or not he thought about those things, too.

When I heard he was killed, I thought about all the things all over again. I thought about how things inside the world of our RV were so different from how things turned out for him. I also thought about how things were maybe much the same. I thought about how sometimes, you don’t get a happy ending. Sometimes all you get is Planter’s peanuts.

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Sally Pham

Appeelable

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Cardboard and Oil Pastels

Contributors Sam Barnhart The College of Charleston, Class of ‘25

Marley Leventis The College of Charleston, Class of ‘25

Michael Biondo The College of Charleston, Class of ‘25

Emma Lieber The College of Charleston, Class of ‘24

Brittany Bowles The College of Charleston, Class of ‘25

Liza Malcolm The College of Charleston, Class of ‘24

Camila Carrillo-Marquina The College of Charleston, Class of ‘24

Peter McKinney Appalachian State University, Class of ‘25

Caitlyn Costa The College of Charleston, Class of ‘24

Gabrielle Minasi The College of Charleston, Class of ‘24

Frank Elliott The College of Charleston, Class of ‘27

Sally Pham The College of Charleston, Class of ‘27

Sara Fischetti The College of Charlesotn, Class of ‘25

Emily Prillaman University of South Carolina, Class of ‘24

Mattie Flading Coastal Carolina University, Class of ‘24

Femur Rothenberger The College of Charleston, Class of ‘27

Emma Gehris The College of Charleston, Class of ‘25

Bee Saracco Emory University Class of ‘25

Haley Hershfield The College of Charleston, Class of ‘26

Marina Silvestri The College of Charleston, Class of ‘25

Thomas Hilton The College of Charleston, Class of ‘26

Mackenzie Sturkie The College of Charleston, Class of 27

Perrin Keene The College of Charleston, Class of ‘25

Addison Ware The College of Charleston, Class of ‘25

Audrey Lawton The College of Charleston, Class of ‘23

Grace Warren-Page The College of Charleston, Class of ‘26

65

Editor Emeritus

Jordynn Pinckney 66

YNALLECSIM 3202 LLAF | VLX