The Literary and Arts Journal of the College of Charleston
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 refl ect 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 XLVII, printed by Sun Coast Press, is set in Times New Roman.
Cover
Art:
“St. Of Frowns,” and “St. Of Smiles”
Mixed Media Collage by Cherry Hybrid
COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON MISCELLANY
ISSUE 48 | XLVIII SPRING 2025
Editor-In-Chief
Addison Ware
Managing Editor Samantha Barnhart
Staff Readers
Sydney Akers
Emmalyn Gilbreth
Mila Lawson
Marley Leventis
Danny McMillan
Lucy Miller
Mika Olufemi
Eden Shames
Madden Tolley
Table of
Savannah Bell................................
Danny McMillan..................
Poetry q
Mammal Meditation
City of Brotherly Love Song
Divinity Comes to Me in Waves Checkmates, Plagiarizings, Something Good, Double Entendres
Jakub Kaminski....................................
Reveal
Displaced 003
Displaced 005
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 XLVIII/48, 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 XLIV/49 are NOW OPEN.We are accepting poetry, prose, and visual art of all kinds.
Find more information at www.substack.com/@miscellanycofc
Letter from the Editor:
The creation, and appreciation, of art is something I hold so dear to my heart, and I hope that the following 70 pages invokes that for you too, dear Reader. The world is forever changing yet the voices of young people grow louder and louder, and that is what I strive to publish in every edition of Miscellany that I am lucky enough to work on. I hope, also, that these pages inspire you to pick up a pen or paintbrush and begin to create art out of love or hate, defiance or support, passion or apathy. The creation of art is a sacred act, thank you for taking the time to appreciate the artists we have published in this issue of Miscellany.
Thank you to all the artist who submitted their work to us, we enjoyed every moment we spent with your creations and we hope you submit again for the next issue. Thank you to my editors, your hours of work and support is appreciated and I couldn’t get this done without each, and every one of you. Thank you to Samantha Barnhart, my Managing Editor, and to Zina Dawood, the Operations Manager at Cistern Yard Media. Nothing would be possible without you two.
As I pass the torch of Editor-in-Chief to my successor, Mila Lawson, I know the magazine will be in the best hands to continue it’s legacy. To all future editors, I feel honored to have had the title that you now hold.
And thank you, Reader, for picking it up and spending some minutes or hours with us.
Mammal Meditation
Savannah Bell
God created two shrews so they wouldn’t be lonely & there’s the punchline. The setup begins like this: Their elephant noses wove into a plait like they were in love. Like they knew love as we know it— chocolates & scrapbooks & kisses that say “Time would pass without you but I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I would burrow in your belly if you let me.” And then came the shamans & eccentrics & the bright, enlightened people. Through some secret intervention, shrines were erected & it only ever rained if they danced for it. Each of the small creatures understood ritual as we did. They hid walnuts like doting mothers and celebrated in the spring. Telepathically, they thought, “We made this. Why else were we placed here, together? What were the odds?”
City of Brotherly Love Song
Savannah Bell
Maybe, in some other timeline, as bettas in separate tanks, pressed under the padded thumbprint of an unfunnier god, we could have moved to Philadelphia. This is your side of the apartment, here is your vintage trench coat, your light up globe, your rice cooker. The half with the wet clothes and the open window is mine. We could live close to my grandmother and loiter outside of the theater, frigid, tired, smoking, while she watches Nosferatu. I won’t tell if you won’t. Just across the river, maybe in Delaware, maybe Maryland, (I never could remember) I would meet the most foreign members of your animal family. Here, Philly’s skyline shrinks into a veil of smog— vaguer each time I visit. This world will be the one in which we behave. Where humanity is happening, where women are ordinary, where I’m the only one. When we walk to Wawa at midnight, we will stare at stained glass from the sidewalk. Breathe synchronistically. The air rests cool and the colors look meek and fuzzy, just for us. Maybe, if we stay here, and never speak to each other for the rest of our lives, you could become Catholic again. Wouldn’t that be nice? Will we be able to learn alone? This is all we have, now. Can’t we be good?
Buglady Grant Darnell
Lana turned in her final Interpretation of Literature essay, leaned back in her chair, and looked up at the ceiling. Her eyes blurred, reeling from the hours of work that shehad just put in, but despite her fatigue it always felt good to finally be done with something.
She was staring for no more than five seconds when her eyes caught a hint of motion and unblurred themselves. There was a small black speck on her ceiling moving towards the wall to her left. She stood up a little too fast and inspected it closer.
It was a ladybug.
Lana kept staring as it continued on its journey, not really sure of what to do. She remembered how much her grandmother had loved ladybugs (some had even called her ‘The Buglady’) and knew that she couldn’t bring herself to kill it –and besides, it’s not like it was a real pest like a spider or a fly. Still, she didn’t want it in the apartment either. Her only option, then, would be to set it loose outside.
She rifled through her desk for a sticky note (a task that took an embarrassingly long time), and peeled one off the sheet. She returned her gaze to the ceiling and realized she had lost the ladybug.
She darted her eyes across the ceiling, back and forth, back and forth, until she had found the little black speck again. She dragged her chair over, carefully stepped on it, and placed the sticky note in the ladybug’s path to ensure that it would traverse it and allow her to take it outside safely.
The ladybug arrived at the sticky note and stopped. It turned 90 degrees and started walking in another direction. Lana moved the sticky note in front of its path again, but it did the same thing. It took no less than ten attempts for her to finally catch the ladybug.
Once she had it, she darted out of her room and rushed to the sliding glass door. She opened it as fast as she could and gave the sticky note a good shake once it was outside. The ladybug flew off into the cold winter air, and that seemed to be the end of it. Who knew how long it would survive out there, but at least she hadn’t been the one to kill it.
The next day, after she returned home from another day of classes, she sat back down at her desk and started working on another one of her final papers. About an hour in, she took a break and leaned back in her chair, her eyes on the ceiling once again.
BUGLADY
It took her a minute or two to notice the black speck. She stood up and looked closer. It was another ladybug, wandering about aimlessly in roughly the same spot that the other ladybug had.
Lana couldn’t help but wonder if it was the same ladybug or if it was just a coincidence that two had appeared over two consecutive days. She decided it didn’t matter and peeled off another sticky note, much faster than she had the day before.
This time, it only took a few tries to trick the ladybug into stepping onto the sticky note. Once she had it, she set it loose outside the sliding glass door and watched it fly away. She hoped that would be the end of it.
By the next day, she had forgotten about the ladybug once again, her finals keeping her brain preoccupied until she arrived home. She started on another assignment – her last one, in theory – but she only got a few minutes in before she started getting a funny feeling.
She looked at the ceiling. At first, there was nothing. But then she noticed the two black specks.
Lana didn’t even give herself time to think. She grabbed another sticky note and began the relocation process once again.
You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here, she thought as she tried to scoop up the ladybugs. These two were even trickier than the first couple, and it took her a good half an hour to get them out of her apartment. She went back to her assignment, working quickly to make up for the lost time, and within an hour or two she had forgotten about the ladybugs again.
The next day was the kicker. She returned home, eager to knock out her final assignment and start packing for break, but as soon as she entered her room she noticed that something was wrong. She looked up at the ceiling and came face to face with what she guessed was around 10 or 20 black specks, wandering aimlessly about her ceiling in no pattern that she could discern. She stared at them for a long time, wondering what to do.
The time for the sticky note solution was long over. She thought of maybe using her vacuum, but there was too big of a chance of her harming a few of them, and the same went for an exterminator. In the end, it came down to two choices – waste a lot of her time getting them all out safely, or deciding not to care and allowing all the ladybugs to roam free around her apartment. She didn’t like it, but she knew which one she was going to choose.
Lana spent the next two hours carefully removing all the ladybugs from her apartment. When she was finished, she wasn’t even positive she had gotten them all, but she was too exhausted to search further. It was getting late, and she was tired. She returned to her room and remembered her computer, realizing that she hadn’t made any progress on her assignment today. She sighed. At least there was tomorrow. When she returned to her apartment the following afternoon, the ladybugs finally became the first thing on her mind. Even if they weren’t there today, she didn’t
GRANT DARNELL
think she’d be able to focus on her assignment – she would just glance up at the ceiling every minute or so, wondering if they were going to come out of the walls or the windows, daring her to try to get rid of them all. She would almost prefer if there were a few ladybugs in her room, so that she would at least be able to see the thing she was afraid of.
Lana walked nervously to her room. She set down her things, took off her coat, and turned on the light.
She tried to gasp, but no sound came out.
Her room was overflowing with ladybugs. The ceiling was completely covered in a red and black mass that gave off almost the same illusion as sunlight reflected on a lake. Her walls were the same, as was the floor. There wasn’t an inch of her room that wasn’t covered.
Lana finally called an exterminator. He arrived within an hour or two, and she quickly explained the situation to him.
“It’s not uncommon to get ladybugs this time of year,” he said. “If it’s as bad as you say though, that’s something I gotta see.”
She led him to her room and opened the door. All the ladybugs were still there, fighting with each other to share the limited space on the walls, ceiling, and floor. She looked at the exterminator’s face to gauge his reaction. His expression was plain and collected.
“I s’pose they’ve all gone, then, huh?”
“What do you-”
Lana looked back at her ladybug-infested room and gestured towards it.
“They’re right there. There’s gotta be hundreds of them, maybe thousands.”
The exterminator’s expression finally changed, giving way to frustration. “I see what’s happening here.” He turned and left the room to pack up his things. “I’m guessing you lost a bet? Maybe get high off prank calling? Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“What?” said Lana. “No, the ladybugs, they’re right there…”
“Sorry I couldn’t be of any assistance.”
The exterminator left the apartment and closed the door with a slam. Lana was left alone.
She returned to her room and gave the ladybug swarm another look. It was there… it was right there… how had the exterminator not seen it?
Lana invited her friend Ava over that night, and when she led her to her room to show her the ladybugs she gave the same reaction as the exterminator.
“There’s nothing there, Lana. It’s just your room.”
They stayed and watched a movie together, and then Ava left. It was dark outside, and Lana knew it was almost time for bed.
After she showered, she returned to her room and turned on the light. The ladybugs were still there. For the first time, she realized she was scared.
Lana spent the night on her couch.
BUGLADY
It was difficult, but over the next few days she managed to finish her last assignment. When the time came, her mother arrived to take her home for winter break.
“Do you have everything?” she asked as she stepped into Lana’s apartment.
“Yeah, just one second.” Lana walked over to her room and opened the door so her mom could see inside. All the ladybugs were still there, covering her room in the most thorough fashion imaginable, somehow having never trickled out into the outside walls or the other rooms of the apartment.
Her mom joined her.
This is it, thought Lana. The final test.
“It’s a nice room,” said her mother. “Much nicer than anything I had in college.”
Lana’s heart sunk. She gave it one more try.
“Even with the ladybugs?”
Her mother shot her a puzzled look. “Ladybugs…”
Lana shook her head. “Forget it.”
They drove home, and Lana did her best not to think about the ladybugs. Her family had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s, and during the second week of January the time came to return for the Spring semester. Lana remembered the ladybugs, and her fear returned full force.
“Have a nice semester,” said her mother when she dropped her off at her apartment.
“I’ll try,” said Lana. And she would. She really would.
She unlocked her door and stopped inside. It was warm, but not too warm; the heater had done its job while she was away. She went to her room and put her hand on the doorknob, scared of what she would find, more scared than she had ever been in her life. She opened the door and closed her eyes. Her hand found the light switch and she turned it on.
She opened her eyes. The ladybugs were gone.
Lana laughed, and laughed, and laughed. There was a break, and then she laughed some more. She sounded like a maniac, but she didn’t care.
All along, there had been nothing to worry about. All along, it had all been in her head. What had she been thinking, talking about seeing a swarm of ladybugs that covered every inch of every surface of her room? Things like that didn’t happen.
She unpacked her things, and when the time came she got ready for bed. She pulled up the covers and settled in, and as she closed her eyes she was too content and distracted to notice the small black speck that was moving slowly across her ceiling.
Divinity Comes to Me in Waves
Danny McMillan
DIVINITY COMES TO ME IN WAVES, IN OSCILLATIONS.
CUPPING MY HANDS AROUND A MUG OF TEA FEELS LIKE I’M TAKING THE BLOOD OF CHRIST RIGHT DOWN MY THROAT, SALVATION AND ALL, ONE OVER-STEEPED SIP AT A TIME.
I WORE A ROSARY TO WORK, ONCE, BUT KEPT IT TUCKED UNDERNEATH MY BLOUSE; THE WHOLE TIME, AFRAID THAT PEOPLE WOULD THINK I WAS SOMEONE BETTER THAN I AM.
(I TOOK IT OUT AND FINGERED THE CROSS, METAL HOT, WHEN NO ONE WAS WATCHING.)
THINGS GET SO BAD SOMETIMES THAT I THINK ABOUT GOING TO GOD, AS IF A RELIGION I’VE NEVER TRULY BELIEVED IN (AT LEAST, NOT LIKE MY MOTHER) WOULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT MY IMPENDING SALV ATION-SLASH-DOOM. I CAN TAKE ANOTHER SLUG OF MY TEA, AT LEAST, FOR NOW, AND HOLD IN MY MOUTH THE THOUGHT THAT SOMETHING DIVINE COULD SAVE ME.
Basilica
Mila Lawson
Photography
Checkmates, Plagiarizings, Something Good, and Double Entendres
Danny McMillan
I’ve tried writing poetry, but I never knew its meaning. I’ve tried making art, but I didn’t like how it looked; And anyway, you never want to see something You’ve seen before.
Other people invent out of thin air, Conjuring up their ultimatums, And I can’t write something without creating a theft. I’m even doing it right now, writing because I just finished a book and the main man Was a poet.
I microdose on poetry. I take something of A stuttered hit from the blunt of goodness, And then pass it to the she-god on my right Who takes a huge rip like a pro and passes it To the next sickened individual with Some facsimile halo drawn on by handAnd hey, they get to be pious too Just for a moment Just like God and her sizzling joint.
I like the idea of having-written, but not now-writing. It’s gross. It’s too human for something that is nothing but. I mean, people write because they have some shitty ghost under their Kitchen table that won’t leave any other way.
Sure, sometimes my salt-shaker tilts over on its side, Or my door creaks closed. But it’s no poltergeist. You know?
Maybe it is. I don’t know.
Maybe everyone steals to write something good. Maybe they never get caught and go on to lead Happy, poet lives full to bursting. Good for them. Really!
And maybe no one ever has enough of What they want. Maybe they take it, Borrowed from others, and then Mix it up with other stolen tidbits And plate it hot, steaming, with someone’s borrowed basil Pilfered off the windowsill.
That’s theft again. Damn it! There’s checkmate. I can’t keep stealing words other people’s words If it means I end up with none.
Close to the Sea
Sanya Sivak
“I am meant to be out there, Evan.” Theodore frowned as he watched the last of the sun’s rays slip under the horizon of the calm ocean. Evan’s bedroom was dark, especially now that the last of the natural summer light had disappeared. Evan didn’t mind it this way. In fact, he almost preferred his room at night. When shadows were cast across the walls it became easier to ignore how bare they were. When the only light was his brother’s spirit, which cast a much finer glow. “Imagine it! Me, a pirate!” he jumped up onto the grand mahogany desk that Evan was sitting at, his loose shirt flouncing in synchrony with his curly blonde hair that desperately needed to be trimmed, throwing his arm out as if there was a sword in his grasp. He looked more like the eight-year-old boy he had been than the twenty-two-year-old man he was now.
“To be out there you would have to first leave here. Besides, they’ll kill you immediately. You’re far too posh for them.” Evan shook his head at his brother’s childish antics. He closed the journal he had been writing in and placed it on a tall, dark, bookshelf beside the desk that contained all his other journals and notes. All the furniture in his room was dark. His parents liked it that way. They said it looked far more expensive. He wouldn’t share it with anybody, but his journals were full of the very dreams he was always trying to convince Theodore to leave behind. The dreams his parents would ridicule him for holding on to. Poems, stories, and songs, all about living like a pirate. He would not express his love for the idea of piracy, not anymore at least, but he could dream in private, couldn’t he? Evan walked across the spotless hardwood floors of his bedroom over to his bedside table and lit the candle that sat upon it. The flame flickered and illuminated his older brother as he stood tall upon his desk.
“Far too posh?” an expression of distaste graced Theodore’s face. “Certainly not!”
Evan rolled his eyes. “You should not stand on the furniture, mother will be furious. And it is far too dramatic for a man of your age.”
“She is always furious, Evan.” Theodore jumped off the desk with a thud that was too loud for the perpetually silent house, ignoring the comment on his character. Theodore was always too loud for their house. Evan had noticed this long ago. Too bright, too unique, just too much. “One day I will leave.” he continued, posture tall and smile wide again. “I will run to the sea, take you with me, and we will never look back! We’ll find Adam and Christian and sail the world with them!” Evan couldn’t help but smile at the reminder of his cousins who had actually done what
he and Theodore dreamed of doing. Adam and Christian were the disappointments of the House of Castellin that Evan and Theodore couldn’t help but look up to. They were scoundrels. Improper pirates. They were inspiring. They hadn’t heard from them since they left, of course, but the fact that they had managed to leave was enough to ensure Evan and Theodore never forgot them.
“You are a dreamer.” Evan shook his head with a laugh and pulled the curtains to his bedroom window shut before walking back to his desk to clean up the remainder of his writing tools. His quill, his inkwell, both now safely tucked into the desk drawer. “Does it not pain you to be so immersed in your fantasies that reality slips from your fingers?” Theodore was quick to jump over and open the curtains again with a flourish, allowing some of the moonlight in.
“You do not dream enough, my little brother. You would lay down on the floor as a rug for mother to walk over if it meant she would love you more.” Theodore fell to his knees in front of the window and looked out to the sea, now only illuminated by the stars and the moon. The waves called to them. “She will never love you. Not properly, at least. Can you not see this?” Theodore grumbled. Evan’s heart sank, though he knew it was the truth. “You always said you’d come with me, what has changed?” He sighed and turned to look at Evan from the corner of his eye. They’d had this conversation what felt like a hundred times but he was always disappointed that Evan had given up.
“We are no longer children, Theodore.” He moved to sit on the side of his bed, facing away from the window and his brother. Away from the ocean and towards his barren bedroom walls. “We must focus on what is true and in front of us or we will be the ones left behind.”
“What is true and in front of me is the sea. It is the ocean and its wonders. The pirates and their adventures! I will not conform to the dreadful destiny mother and father have written into stone for me.” Theodore protested. “I tell you now, brother, the next pirate ship that ports here, I shall climb aboard and sail away with.”
“And leave me behind to handle mother and father? Leave me to carry the name of Castellin? To manage our plantations?” Evan frowned again, turning now to fully look at Theodore. He avoided looking out the window he sat in front of, though. “I will take you with me, of course.” Theodore said firmly.
“You are naive.” Evan stood and reached to shut the curtains once again. “We are too old to absorb ourselves in dreams that will never come true.” Theodore opened the curtains once more, childishly insistent on staring out the window, and Evan finally decided to sit beside him and admire the ocean. Oh, how he longed to escape this life and sail away with a ship of pirates, but it would not happen. It would never happen. He was not a man of the sea. He was of the House of Castellin, a proper man. It did him no use to dream of anything other than the reality he was born to face. It was better to feel nothing. Or at least, to try. It was better to stop speaking of his irrepressible dreams.
ALEXANDRA ZUERHER
“You are too quick to give up. We dreamed as children, yes, but pirates are not children!We always knew they would not take us to be pirates when we were only eight. We knew it would be when we were older, stronger, how we are now!” Theodore finally stood from his knees by the window and stormed to the other side of the elegant, yet bleak room. He did always have a dramatic way of things. Maybe it was genetic. The whole House of Castellin was dramatic. “What mother and father do in this world is wrong and I will not stoop so low as to own slaves when freedom is each man’s birthright!”
Evan had no answer to give him. He was correct, of course. He always seemed to bewhen it came to knowing things about Evan. When it came to knowing what was wrong.
“Mother and father will live and die moving no more than the soil it takes to bury them.” Theodore snapped. “What will you move?”
Theodore waited for an answer just a moment longer before huffing out a breath and opening the ornate bedroom door. He lowered his voice to a whisper, but his harsh tone was not lost with his volume. “Our dreams could be real. They could be our life. Do you not want that? Do you not want to move with the ocean, feel the tides as they come and go? Do you not want to be more than what you were born to be?”
Evan, again, did not answer and Theodore left the room and shut the door loudly behind him.
They truly had been dreaming of the ocean their entire lives. Of being pirates. They always wanted to run from their parents, from their responsibilities, from their future that felt so set in stone. Evan could remember the first time they’d heard about pirates as though it was yesterday. Theodore had convinced him to eavesdrop with him on a meeting their parents were having. Something boring about the family plantation or money or something of the sort. Constantine, their mother, had been discussing the business potential in a small town just half an hour down the coast of St Lucia when Andrew, a family friend, had remarked it was destined to be ransacked by pirates. Edward, their father, agreed that the small town had limited protections but just enough money to make an attack worth it. He had talked about those “peg-legged filthy scoundrels” in such a derogatory way that Theodore, and eventually Evan, couldn’t help but be enamored. Sure, losing a leg and living in filth sounded bad, but it also sounded free. To these two boys who lived as marionettes to their father’s will and mother’s rage, not bathing and risking their limbs was heaven.
One time, when Evan had just turned nine, Constantine had brought a candelabra down onto Theodore’s shoulder for ‘practicing darts’ by throwing forks at an oil painting, and Evan (in typical fashion of a younger sibling) had cried for hours at Theodore’s side. Theodore was actually grateful for the injury. They had hidden away in Theodore’s room on the floor by the foot of the bed. Theodore had his shirt pulled down so that Evan could hold a towel to it. “Look at the grooves in the cut, Evan.” he had whispered with a smile as he pulled Evan’s hand away. “It looks like a seashell,
doesn’t it?” Evan had shakily wiped away his tears and nodded. “That’s my first pirate scar. Maybe your next one will look like a seashell too!” Theodore continued. Because even if it had been Theodore this time, Constantine was never shy with beating either of her children. “All pirates have scars because they’re tough and they fight. They don’t have to look all proper like we do now. We’ll have a bunch more one day.”
Both children were excited at the prospect of looking like pirates. Of course, when pirates actually fought they didn’t use silly things like sea shells and their scars weren’t usually a result of their angry parents. Evan knew this now, but it was a comforting thought to hold with them as yhey grew up.
Evan’s next scar was on the side of his face. A long thin one, nothing like a seashell. Constantine usually avoided mucking up their faces, she said it was important that they keep up appearances, but Evan was the spare heir to the House of Castellin and had accidentally tipped over her favorite vase so what else was there to do?
It was around this time when Evan started to push down his dreams of running away to the sea with his older brother. First, he had stopped engaging with Theodore’s rants and ramblings. The one’s about escaping their wretched house, leaving their parents withno heir to carry on the plantation, becoming pirates, and freely sailing the Atlantic. It did him no use to pretend they would come true. Then he stopped sneaking out to the beach with him. A few years later, though it came at the apparent cost of their brotherly friendship, he had started trying to convince Theodore to leave the dream behind as well. It never worked.
It got lonely, being the only son to follow his mother’s will. He attended all the meetings concerning their plantation, attended balls, festivities, and dinners, and dressed properly. He only associated with men of the upper class. Men with the same ideals that their family held. Men with ideals that one person could have ownership over another, that money and power were all that was good in life. It didn’t save him from his mother’s rage, though now it came less frequently. Evan didn’t want to do it alone. There was no choice in his life, he’d have to fall in line with their family, but by god, it would be far less painful if at least his brother was doing it with him.
The night Theodore ran was a tragic affair. Constantine sat at one end of the table. Edward, their father, down at the other. Theodore and Evan across from each other in the middle. It was a grand table, far too long to warrant their distanced seating, but the man of the house was to sit at the head of his table and his wife across from him, that was what was proper.
Conversations were kept to a minimum. Evan usually either kept his head down or stared around the room at the nauseating decor his mother had set up everywhere. Nauseating because their beauty so starkly contrasted the soul who put them up. Oil paintings of drab landscapes and long-dead family members in elaborate frames, ornate vases, always filled with fresh flowers, a large mahogany cabinet filled with the finest porcelain dishes, and even a silver suit of armor in the corner. Nobody in their family had ever been involved with the British militia besides for business
ALEXANDRA ZUERHER
purposes and even if they had been, the armor was far too outdated to be worn by them. Compared to his bleak bedroom, this part of the house was impeccably decorated. Appearances had to be kept up, after all. The walls were black. The rug a shade of aubergine. It used to be currant colored before Theodore had gotten mud on it and it had to be replaced. The dark color scheme was the only thing consistent throughout the entire house. Theodore had always joked that their mother was secretly allergic to anything associated with positivity—including light colors. Evan thought all the dark was probably some sort of intimidation tactic on their mother’s part.
Their butler served them each a glass of Gusbourne Estate Blanc de Blancs, roasted duck, and French beans. Evan didn’t really like duck, but he picked up his silver fork and knife and ate it. Constantine commented that the duck lacked flavor. Edward agreed. Edward always agreed with Constantine. That, or he kept his mouth shut.
“The Admiralty Board has requested my presence at their meeting in a fortnight.” Edward started the conversation, the noise of a light patter of rain accompanying his voice. Evan tensed up. Conversations on their family’s military engagements always seemed to spark an argument between Theodore and Constantine. Theodore tensed up too.
“They are wise to do so.” Constantine nodded quickly. “There should be at least one voice of reason in that room. The whole board seems to be entirely focused on pirates these days.”
Evan turned his eyes to his plate, even though he knew Theodore would be looking at him now. “They are wise to focus on pirates,” Theodore cut in. He didn’t even try to keep his mouth shut. “They are a force to be reckoned with.”
Evan glanced up at Theodore but he was looking at Constantine now. He was too late.
“They are idiots and scoundrels,” Constantine snapped. “They should be left to the Navy Board to discuss.” It took about another fifteen seconds of back-and-forth arguing for Constantine to jump from her seat. That cold glare, the one which meant you had gone too far to turn back, took over her eyes. It wasn’t even that important of a topic. So what if Theodore thought pirates were important enough to be discussed by the admiralty board and Constantine thought they weren’t? But Theodore was never one to hold his tongue. He was one to constantly pick a fight with Constantine. His age had made him more jumpy, more argumentative, more bold. All the time he had spent living under Constantine’s command had filled him up with so much anger that it was bursting at every seam, a stranger would have been able to see that about him. Evan didn’t feel that. Evan, a man who had been searching for his mother’s love all his childhood, and now into adulthood as well, had turned into a shell. If he was empty, if he felt nothing, it would be easier to do what was expected of him. If he was empty and felt nothing, maybe his mother would finally love him.
Edward and Evan kept their heads down. Edward, of course, because he
approved but did not want to be involved (it was the wife’s job to raise their children, not his. He was to be focused on his work), and Evan because he could not bear to watch. He didn’t look up when he heard Constantine’s plate, duck still aboard it, hit the wall behind Theodore and shatter. They’d need a new rug. He didn’t look up when he heard Theodore swipe the decorative candelabra at the center of the table down towards Constantine. That would need to be replaced too. As well as the table, since the candles would leave burn marks and scratches.
Evan kept his head down. He studied his plate. Gold trimmings. Constantine threw a fork at Theodore. It lodged in his shoulder. The plate was made of porcelain. There was a French bean dangerously close to falling off it. Theodore stormed from the dining room into the foyer. Evan had laid his fork down at too much of an angle to be considered proper. Theodore had Constantine’s fork in his shoulder. It was supposed to be at a 60-degree angle and his was closer to 70. Constantine took a vase with her when she stormed from the dining room after Theodore. Evan hadn’t drunk enough of his wine. That was considered rude. The vase smashed. They shouted. His placemat was slightly to the left of the center, that was the butler’s mistake, not his.
“Are you coming or not?” Theodore shouted from the foyer, overwhelming the screeching noise coming from Constantine. He didn’t need to be in the same room for Evan to know the question was for him. It would always be for him. It always had been. But it was easier for Evan to stay silent when he didn’t have to look at Theodore. It was easier to betray his brother one final time when he wouldn’t have to look him in the eyes as he did so. It was easier to look at his placemat. At his plate. At his fork. Once again, Evan didn’t answer.
The front door opened and closed. The shouting stopped.
Edward patted his mouth with his napkin.
“Have some more of your wine, boy.”
Evan stood up. Theodore had left. He still had the fork in his shoulder, at least when he left the dining room. Theodore had actually left. He had never left before. He wasn’t going to come back. And Evan knew what that meant. He was going to the sea. The pirates wouldn’t take him. He was loud and wild, but still far too posh. They were going to kill him. At least he still had the fork in his shoulder. He couldn’t do much with it but Evan was painfully aware now of the fact that pirates had swords and Theodore did not. He had a fork.
He went to his bedroom early that night, leaving the curtains and window open, despite the rain, so that he could sit at the foot of his bed and stare at the sea. The droplets that fell through the open window dampened Evan’s hands as they clutched the dark wooden windowsill in desperation. He thought maybe he’d see Theodore out there. He didn’t. Had he already found a pirate ship? Had he just stolen a row boat and disappeared into the horizon before Evan had a chance to see him?
Theodore had actually left. And Evan was too late to follow. Too late to answer. Evan always seemed to be just a little too late. Too late to meet Theodore’s
ALEXANDRA ZUERHER
eye at the dinner table. Too late to stop him from throwing forks at the oil painting. Too late to shut down his dream of being a pirate. He had even been born too late. A son who would make the perfect heir born just one year after the son who despised the title more than anything. This, Evan realized, was because he spent far too much time thinking about what to do instead of doing it. So, as much as it pained him to do so, he stopped thinking for a moment. A moment too long, maybe, because before he knew it he was running out the front door and down to the beach. The wind lashed across his face, stinging his eyes and running through his hair. His Castellin shirt, which had been flouncing just as much as the one Theodore had been wearing when he stood on his desk yesterday, was now stuck to his body with the rain that was now pouring down. He didn’t look at the houseshe ran by. He’d seen them a million times before. All too large and all different styles of regal, paved with cobblestone and lawns decorated with perfectly placed and trimmed trees. No, he was looking at the beach. Just a little more running, he could see the port in the distance, the dark wood illuminated by the moon. He could smell the salt water and the wet wood and he swore he could feel the sea breeze underneath all the wind and rain.
Finally, after what felt like hours, and somehow also seconds, of running his feet hit the sand. He stopped at the foot of the port, catching his breath and squinting around. The sand was wet, waves lapped up the shore, threatening his expensive poulaine shoes, though they were already swamped with water and squelching with every movement. Evan would have cared, usually, but he still wasn’t thinking. There were no seagulls squawking, no men walking up and down the port checking in ships, just the sound of the waves and the wind and the summer rain.
When he walked up the creaking wooden steps and saw a body laying at the end of the port his mind caught up to him all too fast. He froze. Once again stuck between thinking and doing
Although it was dark and raining, Evan could see his brother. His messy blonde curls, his blood-stained Castellin shirt, his sharp nose and jaw as they reflected the light of the moon. He knew his brother better than the back of his hand, even blind, he could have known it was him. Strewn out across the dock, limbs tangled, hair spilled around on the wooden planks underneath him. Evan walked forward slowly as if waiting for Theodore to jump up with a shout and try to scare him.
“I’ve been waiting for you to follow me!” He wanted to hear. He didn’t. He wouldn’t, he realized, as he finally stood above Theodore, eyes blinking from the bloody gash, smeared with rain, across his forehead to the wooden pole beside him to the silver fork that had fallen out of his shoulder when he fell.
He had slipped.
Slipped and bashed his head in on that wooden pole.
There wasn’t even a boat tied up to it, the pole served no purpose besides to be the weapon that would finally kill Theodore.
He had finally done it- run from home to the beach, chased after that pirate
life he had always dreamed of. Ripped his puppet strings from his mother’s hands. Sounded the drum of his life loud and clear. And here, three feet from an empty rowboat, just the next pole down the port, he had slipped in the rain and bashed his head in. Stuck forever between the House of Castellin and the ocean.
Maybe it was destiny. Maybe it was a lesson meant to be learned. Evan had been doing it all alone anyways- upholding the title of “Castellin”. What difference did it really make? He would still attend dinner, drink his wine, participate in meetings, and waltz at balls. He had been bearing the weight of their parent’s expectations for him and his brother for years, so why not for the rest of his lifetime as well? He was empty. He didn’t feel. It was easier this way. But why was his heart still pounding his chest? Why was his stomach pooling with cold dread? Why was his body shaking? Why were his eyes watering?
Theodore was always the beating drum. Just more and more and more. He was persistent, strong, deep, neverending. A drum, sounding out until the world would end. Now there was silence. It was easy to create a symphony in your mind when there was the beat of the drum to lead the tune. It was easy to hear the music when Theodore was around, even if Evan had tried not to, it was always there in the back of his mind. Without the drum, without the tempo, without the beat, it was just screeching violins and cellos and flutes crossing over each other. Hardly a symphony. Not a symphony. It was loud, it was horrible, and it was not music. It was no peace. Was it better to hear the countdown or to know it had ended? Was it better to try to shut out the music, or not hear it at all? To know you never would again?
The world was ending. But it had been ending. Theodore was never a steady heartbeat bringing life. He was never something soft. Something calm. His symphony was wild. Free, but wild. He was the countdown, the escalation, the hope, and the warning. Theodore had been so close to dying for years. Perpetually drowning. Since the moment he found out about pirates. Since the moment he had seen his father crack a whip across an innocent man’s back.
He had been drowning since the first time Constantine raised her hand in his direction. The first time she shut him in a cupboard with no food. The first time she even looked at him. Because she had never looked at him with love.
His light was snuffed out over and over. Then, finally, he died here running to escape. He was a ghost in the House of Castellin. Choking on the water of his desperate dream for freedom. Crying out, screaming, fighting for air. A loud, dramatic ghost, but always still a ghost with no purpose but to haunt his mother.
And now, to haunt Evan, to remind him what he was giving up by following his parents wishes. To remind him that if he did not fight he would be just as bad as them. To remind him that he did not dream enough. That he kept trying to swallow that saltwater instead of spitting it out. Instead of choking on it.
He sat beside the dead body for a while. Coming to terms with the fact that he wouldn’t see his brother again after tonight. Coming to terms with the fact that The-
ALEXANDRA ZUERHER
odore had just put the final nail in Evan’s coffin, even if Evan had laid himself down in it. The one whisper of what could have been snuffed out. He let his breathing return to normal. He let his eyes dry up. He let his mind clear. He emptied himself. His mind, his heart, his soul.
If he could sit there forever, if that would bring Theodore back, he would do it. But he couldn’t. And it wouldn’t. So, hours later, when the sun began to rise, he stood up and walked back home. Back to the House of Castellin. Back to Constantine. Back to the futile game of gaining her approval. He walked away from the sea. Away from Theodore. He wouldn’t look back.
Displaced 002
Jakub Kaminski Photography
Ars Poetica: It's Like Sex*
Madelyn Degnars
Not from the crystalline streams which sever hills into two mothering mounds of green but from the sewers sunk low into the dark slip-aways of city streets salt-skinned sirens slink skyward to suck at the shell of your ear to breeze dirty words further down that burrow which bumps against your brain.
And in that same brain, the bad man is bound. To a bed. To a shadow. Loin towards the ceiling, neck strained in a shiver as the thrill of gooseflesh chases his arm. He’s heard their call.
Yet I keep the pig suppressed. And I send the sirens home.
Because, my point is, I can’t write because I keep thinking about sex.
My point is, I cross my legs and lean close, I bat my eyelashes and try to undo my wedgie in a wiggle, Good writing should be like good sex.
As in, you get right to it.
But I find for me that writing is more like meeting a bad man by the mouthful in those moments after his frozen fingers fumble past the front door after I try and undo my laces sat graceless on my living room floor.
I can’t find the words to forgive my mother my own ruptures while the pervert pressed against my mind pants as he wonders
I can’t will the words which will make my past-lovers return as he wonders
how to slip between the space of a strange man’s shoulders.
And I always lose the words I lose the poem at the edge of its completion. I lose the poem in a mouthful like an unlearned lover, who, like the sun on a school morning came too early to meet me.
It’s like sex. I mostly suck at getting right to it.
*A note from the poet
I had been sitting on a lot of these lines, along with a desire to be unabashedly raunchy (particularly after binging BBC’s Fleabag) for a while at the time of writing this poem. Broadly, I wanted to think about women’s sexuality; how it is treated as a beast or burden best tackled cynically. I think this poem is mostly about obsession and the perversion that becomes it. It’s an ars poetica about lack of fulfillment, lack of completion. It’s meant to be uncomfortable, especially when I go straight from sex to mothers. Sonically, it is meant to slink and slobber. But mostly, I hope it’s just a fun time.
Cruised Kyle Jordan
knock knock on a stall who’ s there on last limb who cares.
your Mother forfeited duty, your Father lapsed on your contract. your locket, disguised by small size as thoughtless accessory, was mine. took great care asserting it yours now.
Behind the latched door, I placed a photo of myself, ripped a photo of myself out, left unoccupied space for you to fill when you will.
you have no favorite color. I’ll paint different Pantones, on each square inch of our wall.
you have no favorite. I’ll ask each morning Would you rather die by the beach by your house or live and die in our Oregon queen bed By our exhausted hiking trails.
knock knock on a stall In the bathroom at JFK By the etched initials above the handrails. Sweetness never follows past the sinks.
Denied romance we take skin as trade, Paste it over skin with tape, what’s a better band-aid
Sunburned Green & Blistering
Kyle Jordan
let’s play mermaids! I’ll be the Kraken she tans I burn he tans I blister awaiting debridement the skin colors sickly – green but blue licks at my face in reflective strips little blinding specks spots like cornea kisses from heaven — it’s white lace and body oil decorating her sundress pageantry peroxide-blonde halo bathes my nighttime in light
Tracing the hemispheres of his arm — unsunned until mid-bicep We know it’s been long since blue backgrounded me bare He replays her beach volleyball games in his head past the solstice the days only shorten.
My stunted penchant for mischief oversees my sun-up saunter to bed so I prosecute time thieves only to find myself cuffed She, of course, tells me everyone has pretty eyes in the sunlight
Greek
Yogurt Kyle Jordan
Lavender tincture-tinged fair-trade coffee, alt fashion by way of sweatshop plus mysterious allure — read as bitchy or gassy. Hole-punched cartilage, sting temporary, lamb inked arm only softens so much evidence grace my forearm, split your finger. You ration attention — starved, I lease stretches of personality. Rented Scorpio moon, feign shocked when I must withhold security deposits. Green rings from Claire’s butterfly jewelry sprout moths and moss, dirty exfoliated fingers and this body is not a burden. Inquire raccoons to trash bag skin, fling rotten apple cores and loose leaf letters, bare moldy remnants from last night’s party Wind — caress.
Limbo-stranded, gifted release. Label a sweaty lower back a pond where swans host family reunions. Unzip your torso skin, don’t touch. Remind fatty deposits and bones they are not dumbbells, just carefully wrapped boxes needing to eat despite — I treat myself to a breakfast of black tea, sure that you’re watching.
These rings aren’t worth the ten mall dollars spent if unseen. The moon — a spotlight on him. not sleeping not writing I watch.
Drinker from Minnesota Cherry Hybrid Mixed Media Collage
Dionysus in Duck Boots
Britt Bennett
Sing, Muse! If you can be found in Helicon’s holler, Kiss sweet speech ‘pon my brow and pour wisdom down my throat, Blow the smoke of isolation and calm into my eyes— I’m fixin’ to sing some praises and hope that it’s love y’all find.
Yes, love! The feel of a cool sunset on your face, Childhoods of falling asleep at parties, The touch and mind of a Grammy, a Nana, a Pop. Take these things into my chest and joyfully, futilely bunch it in.
Or, if not, then be free to find death, life’s clingy lover. Put hurricanes in my eyes, make mine the eye men cower from. If it be bones that I strike, then to them my lightning shall find. Give me God’s most proud atrocities so that I give the creator my due.
For it’s not the creator, but the maker I wish to imbue, It’s he who fills our cups, With moonshine and honeydew, maybe a good tune, Tottering through tall grass like young pups Who haven’t learned to look for snakes. It’s he who drive men mad with his kiss, Chasing the drinking and drinking without chasing, Married to mazes made from azaleas that twist, The heart of the glutton hitched to the stomach of the lusty.
It’s he who gives us cause to fear, The kudzu crawling up our minds, roots embedded, Taking the senses ‘til life is all senseless and drear, When rain is hot and dry is wet, this is when he drinks fullest.
And the heat, God, the heat! Yet, my Argo must sail through this.
Tell me, then, of cooler nights by the water, My reflection crowned by laurels of evergreens and heron’s wings, While spiders weave, daubers build their homes in the secrecy of the boat’s cover, Creation, overwhelming, as I lie there and breathe.
Nature, unrelenting, finds its solace in these parts, And the animals take on the joy, the challenge, the climb, (Though sometimes the apple does seem a bit too high, don’t it?)
A toast, then, to those who persevere and take part in the meal: Beans with black eyes staring out at me, depths scrying Fortune’s fancy, Pork for health, life found in the corpse, And greens, collard, to buy me collars of gold, diamond, pearl. I pour out my sticky, sickly tea to you in libation.
13, Polyurethane Emily Mandracchia
i am not five, i Haven’t been for a long time. Today i smelled fresh-cut grass again. It stained my sneakers but i could not care. This is how you learn to Grow Up, no mommy will clean it up for you. and suddenly i cried because my bag fell off my shoulder and my coffee spilled all over my jeans and When it creeps up your legs, cold as punishment, this is how you are taught to be careful, to be frugal, to be sparing, and it’s no longer just about Growing Up, and here i was, furious i’d spent $26 on mascara, breakfast, and coffee, the waste i’d made, my anger that i hadn’t cooked my own breakfast in time, my own coffee, etc. but this is how things stop being about the things themselves and start turning into endless energy expenditures incurred purely to interpret and languish in the two most frequently offending resignations
“What-Did-It-Matter” and “I’m-So Embarrassingly-Sorry-For-Myself” in a world that seems to rely on misfortune to spin but this did not teach me to be brave nor did it teach me to be forgiving and it certainly did not teach me how to play the game. when i fell in the grass as a small girl, i didn’t cry, because daddy would carry me Inside; give me a bubble bath [that artificial, pepto-bismol pink that was so comforting!] and i’d fall asleep in the late-afternoon sun on a tan carpet bigger than you and me ever will be, probably pretending it was sand. “Little Bear” mused all these sorts of broad fantastical ramblings about nature and friendship in the background, and it seemed over time that i craved those grass burns i was never blamed for, junes slow and hot as greenhouses, to take a bath and leave the
Stain.
[are you grown up yet?]
when i was thirteen, i remember thinking the smell of “new floor” was gross. poly-Something (i couldn’t name it because i sucked at chemistry, this is how i was taught to care too much). my face would screw up in a disgust that i thought only came with wine-tastings or embarrassing stories about your friend’s freakish crushes in a teenhood dream come true. It was after winter break, when it was not green anymore, to my surprise. i liked the green floor, though nobody else did, strangely. it smelled… Softer. rubbery, like a toy. and i used to like gym class, too, but not much after that; nor did we play my beloved flag football. we didn’t want to damage the new “laminate.” some idiot kid would probably stamp his ugly plastic footprints into the film like it was wax on an envelope but i Could Never be the one to do that, especially not as a joke and yet i probably would have laughed anyway. Everyone wanted something New, didn’t they?
[mommy, the gym smells like i need a doctor’s note, and i can’t breathe.]
how Old were you when you skipped gym class for the first time? i don’t remember how Old i was. but i remember the first time i cried there, in middle school, the worst, most unappealing place a person could be: i was fourteen and no one would pass the volleyball to me. i thought that meant i was
Bad or something. no one would like me, then. Right. but we all used to Play together…? drugstore blush hadn’t done well at hiding my juvenile scorn for it was much, much too ugly.
“You’re too Old to cry.” the wordsrolled off my tongue soft like a doting mother’s would, despite the disappointment so warm and stupid and predictably mine that it fried my eyelashes. maybe we would play together again, but i don’t remember if we ever did. i didn’t tell my parents i had cried, nor had i cried when i was little enough to. i came home with my eyes puffed up and raw and told them it was just spring allergies. warm, stupid disappointment, poor logic, cold, dry day.
[i really wish we would play flag football again.]
i restyled my room at seventeen. i traded the brutalistic chalkboard-gray walls and polyester pinks for seafoam green and quilts, my dad layering this barbecue sauce-brown glaze on my childhood desktop. he told me not to inhale the fumes. he should know i would have tested him and inhaled regardless, since i always was That Way. and i’m not sure if my eyes welled up from its unwelcome plastic miasma or its nostalgic chemical Volatility, but I did not want it to go Away. he said it was the polyurethane [that made it poisonous] and something inside of me knew it was true because i felt as if i was there a thousand times before. nobody taught me this is how you learn to care; this is how you learn to care too much, or not at all, like it was as
simple as categorizing diametrically opposite things like playground strangers and hot pans or fat crayons that only come in primary colors and teddy bears with the tags cut off which i hated him for a little since i always said “i know” as soon as i could speak but it was no longer that simple. i watched him carry my desk downstairs with less ease than he used to carry me at five, i would not play flag football atop it in my rhinestone converse as not to ruin it [which were rather ugly, and i didn’t know Where they were, because nothing says maturity like a kid being fearless enough to wear her homemade pimped-out chucks like louboutins or a good cry over an Old dingy floor that had this dream-like video game terrain flatness that smelled hollowly, maliciously, Intoxicatingly, of chalk and rubber, also, desks are smaller than gymnasium floors, and are not bigger than you or me.]
i miss thirteen. but i am not thirteen, and i have not been for a Long Time.
All Those Ways my Body Seemed to Pray Without Me
Emily Mandracchia
today i was at the dentist when i realized that when i lie down on my back, i fold my hands over my stomach, and one always seems to cradle the other. Not the way i would hold myself, but a lover, maybe. and i wondered why, given i spent that morning wishing my hands would do more than to Hurt me as the Disturbingly Capable Appendages i’d deemed them. there was something tender about my grasp that made me think if i squeezed my eyes hard enough i would not know where i was, and that could have been
someone Else’s hand. suddenly there was a lump in my throat the size of a cherry pit [i am allergic to cherries] and as i lie there with my jaw slack, i remember i am being observed— handled. no, the touch was not cruel as much as it was indifferently catalogued by the latex barrier dragged and caught against my skin not unlike a young girl [who i, too, once was], illusorily gentle with her new plastic doll— but i was never built for indifference, nor was i ever made to beckon the fatal sweetness of nimble, knowing hands that cannot decipher the viscous ruin of a cooked allergen from the delicate, intangible brutality of a justified passion. so i instead recalled all those ways my body had seemed
to Pray Without Me, and the surreal Density of the ritual lived in my pocket like a coin meant for the newspaper’s slot in the vestibule of a grocery store everyone knew about but nobody ever paid for [there is a gap between my front two teeth that could fit a dime, and flossing between them feels like a joke]. i Wondered if i picked the cherry off the tree quickly enough then maybe i would flush with the acidic saccharine of a Love Forgone before i could desperately run my swollen and itchy tongue through its cathedral of teeth
What Copper Is, What Gold Isn’t. Emily Mandracchia
— inspired by Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) by Gabriel García Márquez, on 14 year-old América Vicuña’s life and death
the man i know comes from a place so warm His mirth sits in His eyes, ready, the mucous, the insides of grapes, on the silver platter, or in His head when they were supposed to be bottomless decadently canine, sweet brown like mine He, Who Prays Before He Touches You
i have so much to be Grateful for, like fruit so Sweet, rottingly fermented it would taste like candy; a song so young, i’m where i belong, and it’d hurt not to walk to its beat. i know, i know your days before me made you ravenous, Vespertine, poor, starving, injusticed-thing-you, but it is nothing cold, nothing new, and you are injected with its white hot, wicked numbness.
and i pray my compliance somehow transforms to Its own kind of Sugar on my lips, His face, metallic blow behind me, pulp seeping into the floor as if it had Seen me a thousand times before
i am a pigeon, lying Awake in the manure, i am a dead thing made to Look Alive Barbiturate-Black conscience to match, my Choice, the almond slice of a breast, copper on turquoise wishing it was gold a statue touched far too much, dark, wild hair, the feathers of a crow, and he is Something even more animal and Stupid than i Was.
Azaleas
Mila Lawson
Photography
Judith is beheading Holofernes Marley Leventis
Knuckles seizing dark hair and wrists freckled and flexed, she is dressed in yellow. She looks down, holds down a man, blade sharp like a sheet of printer paper or the pang in my sore calves when I shift my weight: she saws through sinew and I am her witness. Of satin skin and crumpled fabric, solid oak tree arms, the pinch of her brows and how intent sets her mouth thin. A gold-emerald circlet flashes and embraces the forearm: pretty and decorative, one delicate thing around a protuberance that presses gore into rough red velvet.
She is an event I had stumbled upon, tired legs tripping, struck, elated— her unromantic and graceless ferocity tucked into a corner, immortalized but ultimately overshadowed by Venus: soft, shy in pastels, and coyly covering her breasts.
Chloe Duncan DSM-5 Collage
Chloe Duncan Mother Dearest Collage
Harry Ted Madelyn Stepski
Harry had been able to hear his upstairs tenants through the bathroom vent every day for the past eight years, even when he didn’t want to. He had pissed to bickering about in-laws, brushed his teeth to the rhythm of their vacuum, and showered through an excruciatingly awkward Thanksgiving, involving a confession about ‘the bastard child’ that he would have liked to abstain from overhearing, and preferred not to know was conceived in the bedroom above his. Neither was his business the black-tie dinner party with ‘friends’ that gossiped about their hosts every minute they hid away in the kitchen. As he scrubbed his arms and legs, Harry heard the drunk confessions about Ted being a Cheater and a Beater, and Martha a Boyfriend Stealing Brute who can’t keep a job or even bake a lemon meringue pie without burning the crust.
Harry often wondered whether his upstairs neighbors could hear his family below them. How they ducked away when he neared them by the stairs, or the lobby, as if he was going to confront them about their late rent, or as if looking at him was too much to handle, told him they did. He had been young once, he wanted them to understand. He wasn’t just a money-feening landlord, and he wasn’t someone to pity either. Harry kept himself busy with his art.
He preferred working in the shower, though at times it was difficult when the whispers of drunk tension and suspicious inquiries permeated through the walls. When Harry first heard the mention of his own name wafting down, he stuffed and stabbed at the cracks in the vents with crumpled-up toilet paper squares. The draft proved to be stronger than the rolls of Charmin that his wife never let him buy. He had then tried stripping the nails out of the grate and nailing a solid slab of steel across it, hoping to muffle the lies that the cracks permitted. Rather, their echoes suffocated him as the steam did.
“What do you think he does all day? I’ve never seen him leave the building.”
Harry was generating a new portrait of his family. He had made individual figures of each of them before, dedicating precise finger-touches to make them look as life-like as possible. But for his newest piece he decided to do stick-figure portrayals, so that he could fit a smiling image of all three of them in a line, holding hands. He swiped the razor up his leg, then tapped it on the wall of the steamy shower, allowing the cob of dark hairs to stick against it. He shifted the pieces into place, starting with his Ellie. He used the longest strand for her head, which was littered with thick curls Harry himself did not possess. They had grown profusely, as she did. He remembered her habitual pronouncements in which she swore she would grow it out to her toes. Harry giggled to himself as he plucked from his eyebrows, for finer hairs to fit Ellie’s sweet smile below her upturned nose. After he had perfected the proportions of her body shape, Harry real-
ized he would have to budget the rest of his hair in order to fit his wife and himself beside her, lest he planned to resemble a sphynx cat. He swiped another two runs of the razor and tapped, dragged and spun.
Beside Ellie, he constructed his own figure, which was always hardest to emulate, for his reflection inverted the guilt that plagued him the longer he stared into his own eyes. He reluctantly drew his straight head of hair, envying the limitless supplies he could bestow if he resembled his daughter. He saved his wife for last, of course, and drew her a head of curly hair too, even though hers was straight, because it made him feel better about the fact that he didn’t know where his daughter’s curls came from. She had a longer body than Ellie, requiring Harry to pull from his scalp. But when he reached up to do so, he felt bare skin. Had he managed to go bald in the few days he’d been doing this? How many portraits had he done? He couldn’t remember. He often got lost in his work and confused time. He blamed the upstairs tenants for distracting him with their stories.
“He’s gotta be so lonely. It’s so tragic, what happened.”
“It’s none of our business, Martha.”
Deciding that he couldn’t block out the neighbors, Harry used them for inspiration. Next to his family in the shower, he started a portrait of Martha and Ted. From the everyday weather talk to the late-night secrets they divulged in seeming privacy, he felt like he knew them; like he could bring their characters to life. He imagined his hands on them. With special care, he spun a pie into Martha’s hands, using leg hairs for the wafting lines of steam rising off of it, and reaching for the darker hairs below his waist to authenticate the burnt crust. As he was decorating Ted’s head, he found himself lost in his curls. His fingers stuck against the moist wall, steam pouring all around the smiling faces of his fiber-family. He stared at Hairy Ted on that wall until the water turned cold.
“Do you think he did it?” Martha’s voice echoed down.
“Oh, Christ, Marty. Would you leave the poor bastard be?”
Fixed on Ted’s mop of curls, which he did not have enough remaining hair to finalize, Harry couldn’t help but think about Ted’s bastard child. How funny that he liked to throw that word around. He then remembered he could get extra hair from the freezer.
He wandered out of the shower towel-less, oozing a trail of droplets behind him that led back to his family. As he approached the kitchen, he heard the two tenants scuffling above. He wondered if they could ever hear when he and his wife argued. After he retrieved his supplies, the scuffling subsided, but when he turned to go back into the bathroom, he heard a tentative knock at the front door. Hesitantly, Harry swung a towel around his waist, but refused to let go of the ball of hair in his hand. He cracked the door open just enough to peer an eye through, which met with Ted’s. A Ted who looked as if he’d been dragged there by a smiling Martha in front of him.
“Hi Mr. Stevenson.” Her voice was higher pitched without a floor between them. “I–we, just wanted to check in. After everything that happened with your family. We should’ve come sooner, but, ya know, and–well if you ever need anything…”
Harry stared through Martha at Ted’s full head of curls. He glanced down at the fist of straight hair in his own hands, then back to Ted, whose eyes now refused to meet his.
“Mr. Stevenson?”
He remembered that she was standing there and looked at her for the first time. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My daughter’s in the bath and Rachel, well, she’s in the kitchen.” He helped the door close in her startled face. Ted’s gaze remained downturned
MADELYN STEPSKI
behind hers.
The naked man turned around gently, with the nest of cold hair in his pruney hands, facing his empty apartment. When he reentered the shower, he found that the hair portraits had moistened and slipped downwards towards the floor with his time away. There were slanted, faded versions of his family smiling back at him. Ellie had lost her legs and her face had melted sideways. His wife didn’t have a head anymore. Harry himself had disappeared completely. The only figure perfectly preserved was Ted’s.
Harry slammed his fist into the shower wall and watched the water pour around his hair-less knuckles.
a postmodern learner Quentin Graham
A comically unsettling breeze would punch right through the chipped, smoke-stained paint, of this opaque by age window. There I was heaving sweet dime metal, colored dye; dying the dull alleyway plastic siding where my neighbors reside with muddied lungs.
Seemed to notice myself too, burrowed, beside everyones shared left-breast pocket pain. I come to the realization that it hurts to let my breath rest here. I was turning into Change.
Broke my last dollar and tossed three-fourths for four smokes. I didn’t need to finish high school to count on hoping, these would last me awhile.
This time I knew, it won’t
I’d find this new spot alone, on this bench at the edge of a snow coated sidewalk. I watch a golden cross patter silently, from me the distance a leg of my bruise-colored jeans away. We both breathe a breath perspired into warm smoke against static air.
I look to see burnished gold and madeleine-brown. The tail gregoire has turned its back to me, And I not sure, head inside.
Scyphozoa Ali Elgin
Once I heard that jellyfish can’t feel pain, because they don’t have brains.
I remember my sister, scorned by their limbs. Vinegar & razorblades shaved away a pain unfamiliar to its creator.
Pain is all that we know, no trace of when it began & no sign of letting up. I brushed against a child, its shocks contagious, the water igniting around us two.
I like to think of myself as a jellyfish, floating peacefully and unaware of pain. An inconvenience, a pest, I understand their desire for warmth. August brings them home.
Washed up on Delaware shores, legs torn off, all that remains is a gelatinous mass taken by the tides.
Once a foe, now a toy for children to rip apart. The sting cannot reach you, & pain cannot reach them.
The Lamp Killed the Moth Kylie Bruns
You, baby blue, I escape into you. Sanction the suffocation of whoever is speaking to me like that. I swear, I am not a mindless mind mindlessly minding minds.
Believe me, blue. You only see me when I arrive to override mine.
Fluent in silence, but my brain banned the language. Find me in a purgatory amidst my strangling thoughts and silencing music. Only drawn to distractions- only a moth stuck in the lamp.
The weights have dropped on my toes. My pride worships me for keeping a straight face. At least paralyzation stalls the sting. Sensing only the pressure of my hollow breaths grasping for sentiment.
Take after the deer in headlights, misplace yourself among shattered sensibility. Confine to static through the absence of feeling.
This space makes me claustrophobic. I hoard the unfulfilling nothingness to reconstruct the reality in which I reside Emptiness paired with a stellar collapse. My racing heart reaches a singularity.
Baby blue, I plead. Pull me out of the internal blackhole- once more. Play me that song again, and again, and again. You ought to remind me the ability to feel is as miraculous as this melody.
REVEAL
Kaitlyn Steffke
Multimedia Interactive Piece
In a Dream I Meet My Dead Father
Madelyn Stepski
He has been gone for some time yet he looks the same, for the dead are unchanging. He has the same golden brown hair and crinkly blue eyes and slouchy nervous demeanor as when he was still here, though now he seems softer than the clouds around him, brighter than the sun above us. Death has been kind to him. I’m happy someone was.
He is looking at me and he is smiling and he looks so young and happy and alive that it takes a great weight off my shoulders. Yes, I think, just as I remember. Enough has changed already, I don’t think I could take it if he changed too. He reaches out and his brow furrows in confusion when his hand passes right through mine. He is shocked, and I wish I could say the same, but the truth is: it is I who has changed, who has really died.
I am sick and withered and old. There is anger in my gut that is twisting, squeezing and choking my innards, suffocating me from the inside. There is anguish in my chest that is withering away, deteriorating, crumbling in on itself until there’s nothing left but an aching, gaping hole. I’ve been decaying, rotting, and the stench is so repulsive people can’t bear to be near me. This heartache is killing me. This loss is tearing me apart piece by piece. My grief is so heavy and I have nowhere to put down this love. I don’t know myself anymore and I don’t think he does either.
I ask my dead father how he’s been and he tells me he’s been eating peaches and swimming in lakes and watching the sun set. I can’t remember the last time I watched the sun rise, can’t remember the last time I did anything. With each step my body gets colder and stiffer and one day I know it will stop moving completely and I will become one of those unnamed bodies in the morgue, one of those forgotten sacks of bones in the grave.
He tells me he feels free, but I’ve never been more trapped, and it’s getting hard to remember who is really dead: him or me?
Afterwards in Bed Madelyn Degnars
I was laid down beneath him, his picked and precious plot, spring-softened and still wet with wanting for that first cut of shovel.
Shameless, he savaged my sheets with cigarette smoke, muddled the stain on my belly with two absent fingers.
And from above, and on a whim, something soft–something Spanish–faltered forth.
Full fluency in his father’s tongue had long fled from him, like a first pet flees from a front door.
And yet he spoke–
Cariño, he called me, and in his throat, that dearness caught like cotton in a lit chimney.
So instead he coughed:
It feels so good to be loved by you.
And I tell you now, that I did not love him, that he sheathed himself in me so only naturally I succumbed to sickness, fed the fear which called itself hunger.
But still, I touched him tender, but still, I did not speak.
Only wondered:
Do house cats howl when their homes catch fire?
With knuckles to the doorknob, I think, is the fire in the hall?
And with fingers to his stubble, I speak,
Do you need a lighter, baby?
I would have swallowed him like a season, full and long.
But he–my lover–took the light, and said nothing at all.
Field Onions
July 18, 2024
Paxson Amy
And what does forgiveness smell like? Is it like chlorophyll, like the dirt under my fingernails on evenings where we didn’t have much to say, a whole pile of clippings next to me, scalped earth bearing your likeness
I cannot tell a lie! but I’m not gonna be like that prick Appleseed, so you’ll have to accept that some things are just gonna stay dead
I can make you a bouquet, but it’s gonna smell like field onions, like how we used to pretend we were making soup in the soccer field on days when it rained. I’m always happy to offer you some. The love I can give is humid and dense. It is a low, gray sky over a delta February. My adoration is damp. I cannot tell a lie!
O! Zarka
December 15, 2024
Paxson Amy
They make it in Texas it’s A bottle of water. Made in Texas like my grandfather he Was a belligerent man but He never drank. Didn’t need to
Your sweater doesn’t smell Like anything anymore did You hear what I said. You smoked Too much in it but All kinds of people do That sort of thing So I can’t say for sure it Smells like when you did. You didn’t do it any different
All kinds of people do the Sort of thing I did to you But there’s all kinds of people I don’t like. Doesn’t help No good. All worries—Not Bottled in Texas. Made in Texas like how Moselle Used to cuss at the TV at The Cowboys. In heaven They’re not good either. Staubach and co. are Still at ground level.
L. H.! She would say, That was her husband’s name. Didn’t even stand for anything
Królikarnia
Jakub Kaminski
The first time I found it, the cafe, was the last time I was inside.
Teal on dark tan, Roof on wall.
It speaks of a constructed face and hair Bruised, but caressed into life again. Destroyed, then; slammed into with the fist of a pointed metal cone But now put together, not the same, in the current summer light.
It is a wonder, then; How many tales there must be in the wrinkles of that pieced face How many stories must whisper from the creaking when the wooden lips part.
Who stepped in these halls before I got my lemonade? Who knew I could get lemonade with mint in these walls? Who figured the bees could get a taste too?
Outside the cafe.
Now, sugar ants: small, little lines drawn to what must be, to them, stories of round worlds of lemonade, a soft tan, lives which give way when prodded, Left on the dark metal of a garden table.
It must have been another tale, then: the people of the few moments before. The tale must’ve been one with an ending, for the lemonade cups left were empty on the table mostly; the tale must continue elsewhere. So I remove those small, little lines drawn to the story–mostly; they always return anyway–And the empty cups of lemonade.
I start and continue and finish another story by dropping my story–two new lemonades–on the same spot.
I have returned to a familiar face, the way a photo is familiar in the present through its pastness, sitting at that dark garden table, to drink the lemonade.
The face who bears a knitted sweater, large threads, of a graying tan The same color of the threads that lay on her head A color which tells a quiet tale of natural and unnatural death.
The threads of her sweater, storied together by a hand I wonder if I will touch again.
For the last time I held it then, May be the first time I always think of when remembering.
This threat of remembering makes me wish that white heat of the summer day was enough to turn the pavement sticky, like dried lemonade, so that when my shadow fell on it, it would stay, stuck there
And I would have to stay until something tore away
From me
Or the world I left.
Political Serenade
Cherry Hybrid Mixed Media Collage
Home from Methuselah
Quentin Graham
My hands roped to the balloon framing plywood. my kind, contrary to my mind, hold mine to the joist.
It was a time one summer day where a job was not the water sawed from face to moisten up the porous trifle that is the place between duty and hiding space.
Afraid all of the days skipping feet on summer clay I fear this fear I’ve stood behaved
They tip toed round the thousand-year-old tree, and engraved their embrace the same length of the likeness of yours and me so, what of the foundation became the mountainous distance between the sawwer and the being split from me
Displaced 003
Jakub Kaminski Photography
Displaced 005
Jakub Kaminski Photography
Contributors
Paxson Amy Vanderbilt University, ‘26
Savannah Bell College of Charleston, ‘27
Britt Bennett University of Georgia, ‘27
Celia Bonawandt
The University of Iowa, ‘28
Kylie Bruns College of Charleston, ‘27
Grant Darnell University of Iowa, ‘25
Madelyn Degnars University of Delaware, ‘26
Chlow Duncan College of Charleston, ‘25
Ali Elgin College of Charleston, ‘27
Quentin Graham
Stony Brook University, ‘27
Cherry Hybrid University of Florida, ‘25
Kyle Jordan University of Rhode Island, ‘26
Jakub Kaminski University of South Carolina, ‘25
Mila Lawson College of Charleston, ‘27
Marley Leventis College of Charleston, ‘25
Emily Mandracchia Stony Brook University, ‘27
Danny McMillan College of Charleston, ‘28
Sanya Sivak Florida State University, ‘26
Kaitlyn Steffke College of Charleston, ‘26
Madelyn Stepski
Stony Brook University, ‘26
Editor Emeritus
Michael Stein
MISCELLANY
The Literary and Arts Journal of the College of Charleston
