Clamor 2023

CLAMOR UWB LITERARY & ARTS JOURNAL 2023

Clamor is the annual literary and arts journal of the University of Washington Bothell.

Copyright 2023 Clamor. All rights revert to authors and artists after publication.

The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Clamor staff or of the University of Washington Bothell.

Clamor 2023 Editorial Board Tushigmaa Ariunbileg Samantha Austria Josh Baker Isaiah Alexander Boyd Josie Cheung Cyan Fuehr Patrick Timothy Holleron Isabella Huynh

Ameer Kiani Franchesca Nicole Lazaro Danny Malixi Tiffany Marie Miller Aditi Nambiar Marwah Shebl Shirlyn Liang Shih Subeen Shin

Alexandria Simmons Sophia Marie Treadwell Simon Vincini Matt Livezey Whitehurst

Faculty Advisor: Ching-In Chen Cover Image: Anna Arkhipova “Twisting Stairs” Cover Design Layout: Shirlyn Liang Shih Mailing address: Clamor: UWB Literary and Arts Journal University of Washington Bothell Box 358651 18115 Campus Way NE Bothell, WA 98011 Email: clamor@uw.edu Website: http://clamor-journal.com Printed by Consolidated Press, 600 South Spokane Street, Seattle, WA 98134 We acknowledge the generous support of the Services and Activities Fee Committee, the Office of Student Engagement and Activities, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, and Club Council at the University of Washington Bothell.

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Table of Contents CREATIVE WRITING Samantha Austria Something Dragonflies

13 15

Aedan Azeka HUSH Mariana Trench

17 18

Robert Beveridge Owning a Camera Does Not Make You a Paragraph

19

Katharina Brinschwitz Backseat The Eating Disorder

20 22

Virginia Cassady Look around

24

NP Creed Cocaine Hippos

25

pria dalrymple i miss the outdoors

27

Tessa Denton Bloodline Deforestation

28 29

Christopher Scott Eastman What World Will I Be?

30

BujinlKham Erdenebaatar Bogshoodoi, Thief of Memories

32

5

Cyan Fuehr Goddess

37

Sara Grimes Fractured Face

38

Anja Marlene Hanson Seeing Alone

39

Loren Herrera Aasgard Pass

40

Isabella Huynh A Sinking House is Not a Home

41

Fatma Jallouli DIAGNOSIS

42

Kase Johnstun Carpool

43

E. L. Kiehn It’s been 6 years, please let me graduate

48

Meera Kismet The Intruder

49

Erin Hawkins Luchesi “Keep Your Shirt on, Pal”

53

Danny Malixi Memento

55

Joan Mazza Having My Say

56

Emma McVeigh VirginitĒ Notes of Reference

57 58

6

Denise Calvetti Michaels Bare Roots

60

Aisha Monet How To Not Be Afraid of Everything

61

Aditi Nambiar feelings SHADOW

62 64

Korede Oseni Color Puzzles Lagos to Bothell

66 67

Mason Peterson Little Green House

69

Molly Rooney Self-Portrait as Bust

71

Michelle Schaefer as I see it grounded in love

72 73

Wendi Shively Unbearable Silence Turning the Page

74 75

Alexandria Simmons Lessons of an Unsung Song Maria Tafolla Dear Mamá y Papá Kathryn Tran Blue Light John Tustin CRUMB-WORDS YOU ARE THE SEA

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76 77 80 81 83

Steven Wenzel The Hunter

84

Matthew Whitehurst Internal Dialogue of a Neural Network Fragment

85

Grace Woods pitch

87

Celina Yu Witch’s Curse Red Staining Red

88 89

J. Yuen lease leash release on girlhood and psych wards and promises like the hippocratic oath

90 91

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VISUAL ART Lily Aguirre Culture

94

Tushigmaa Ariunbileg FIRST FLUSH OF MORNING

95

Anna Arkhipova Lonely Space Creature Twisting Stairs

96 97

Cheryl Chudyk The Nun’s Faceless Children my mother said my body my choice, but her daughter is a pharmacist

98 99

Josh Baker Reflection

100

Leah Curtis Celebrating Cliteracy

101

David Dinh Blooming Twisted

102 103

John Emerton I AM NOT RUINED

104

Cindy Fu Fountain

105

Saskia Gottuso Esperanza

106

Adriana Hernandez Hernandez Don’t leave me alone

107

Patrick Holleron Holleron Mystery 3

108

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Isabella Huynh Work in Progress

109

Phoenix Kai TRANSLATE.VESSEL 01 TRANSLATE.VESSEL 02

110 111

Margaret Karmazin Beth’s Sky

112

Navarre Kerr Humbling Perspective Illuminated Chaos

113 114

Zain Khaki “Pierrette”

115

Tiffany Marie Miller Don’t Pick Me Up Mothers Milk

116 117

Alec Mullen-DeLand Out of Commission View From Under Deception Pass Bridge

118 119

Hong Nguyen Salvation Underwater

120 121

Johanna Porter Janus

122

Jay Reyes Makaha Sunset

123

Katrina Sather Lizz’s Moon

124

Marchie Sayas Leaves (2022)

125

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Subeen Giwa

126

Vicki Tran Superficial at Best, Imitation at Worst

127

Linda Van Beek Grasping Consciousness

128

Simon Vincini Collapse

129

Contributors

130

Online Exclusives

139

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A Word From Our Editors Dear Readers, We are thrilled to introduce the 17th edition of Clamor, a celebration of creativity, diversity, and community at the University of Washington Bothell. We invite you to immerse yourself into the rich artistic worlds of our contributors; each creatively explores the profound connection between art and the world we all share.

As editors, we are honored to showcase a collection of exceptional visual art, creative writing, and audio and video art from our talented contributors. We believe everyone deserves to be heard and we are proud to provide a platform that amplifies the voices of our art community and the messages they carry.

The creative work in this year’s edition delves into themes of displacement and discovery, demonstrating how art inspires and fuels change. We extend our sincerest appreciation to our contributors and readers. Your support and engagement make Clamor possible.

This year’s team of editors was faced with a flurry of unprecedented challenges. With a major financial transformation at the university underway, our resources were limited and production deadlines were accelerated three times over.

However, we editors assiduously approached each obstacle with determination, strategy, and optimism. The Clamor team was pushed to be more collaborative than ever before. Many editors stepped into leadership roles, going above and beyond their assigned duties, in order to still produce a journal of the highest quality possible.

In many ways, this year’s journal marks a renaissance in the art community. For years the global Covid pandemic locked people into a space of isolation, but our creative minds roamed free and thrived. This year’s post-pandemic journal is truly a testament to the sentiment that art is, inescapably, everywhere. The featured sense of revival reifies what we editors found to be true through the production of this edition: Art inspires hope amidst daunting challenges, reaffirming that creativity truly knows no bounds.

We owe a debt of gratitude to our faculty advisor, Ching-In Chen, and program manager, Pauline Tolentino, who have been dedicated to fostering a community built in collaboration and mutual support. We sincerely appreciate our peer facilitators, Matthew Livezey Whitehurst and Alexandria Simmons, who have been essential in supporting and guiding us. We must also thank the U-Wave Station Manager, Marchie Sayas, who was an invaluable pillar of support to our editor team.

Thank you for being part of the Clamor community, and we hope you enjoy this year’s edition.

Sincerely, The Clamor Editors

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Something Samantha Austria

There is always something under my bed.

When the lights are on and the blinds are drawn, I sit on the ground and understand there’s moving boxes piled beneath the wooden frame. Dust bunnies gather in all the tiny crevices, but of course you’d expect that from a bed as old as the universe itself. In brief, it isn’t rocket science: beneath the bed is where things go to be forgotten. A sprinkle from a sugar cookie, a scratch in the vinyl flooring. A week’s worth of eyelashes, a year’s worth of Rapunzel-sized hairballs.

There is no room for something else… and yet somehow, embarrassingly, I am almost certain that is where Something Else lives.

I do not know what Something is because I’ve never seen it alive, and in my 29 years of sleep I am not certain I ever will. But I think I must have heard it and I think I might have felt it, so of course, every night, I would be dumb not to prepare against it. I take my deep breaths, I plan out my route. I race my wits to my mattress, and if all goes to plan, the shadows will have no choice but to give up the chase. My barricade of duvets and my army of stuffed animals will keep me safe, keep me asleep, for the long night ahead. I

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imagine Flip is the general. I imagine Dewey is her right hand duck. The whalesharks form a platoon and the peapod scouts the perimeter.

It is hard work, but it is honest work, and come morning they have served me well against the Something I do not know.

In the end, it doesn’t matter the season, the hot or the cold; by morning I become a shape, an insomniatic lump, fully buried and roasting in my cocoon of thick sheets, because I was sure Something would take me if I became anything else.

Stick a foot over the edge and it’s live bait for a carpet shark.

Poke your head over the comforter and the ghosts will steal your soul.

Keep a nightlight on and they’ll disappear.

Face your bedroom door and they won’t come inside.

Stay concealed, lie in wait.

If you can’t see them, then they can’t ever see you.

How laughable. How insane. I am the world’s ultimate predator, yet I fear what I can’t even see. I think of lions on the savanna, of wolves in the woods. I think of stealing their eyes or stealing their minds so life might be simpler and I will know nothing of irrational fear.

Something–bigger and unknown. What exists under my bed can’t ever only be boxes and dust. It is always something deeper, something scarier, something my human eyes and mind make up simply because it can.

I only wish it couldn’t. I only wish it wouldn’t.

I only wish for Something to be Nothing at all.

To be a beast is to do what nature tells it to do. It knows to hunt, it knows to eat. It knows to mate, it knows to sleep. It knows nothing of the darkness or what might hide within. So it sleeps soundly through the night. It thinks only of the here and now. Because that’s exactly–and only–what it was ever born to do.

But what was I born to do? What was I born to see?

To be human is to be cursed with knowledge; to know fear, to know anxiety, to know there always exists a world of something–of

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Dragonflies Samantha Austria

In an open field on a summer afternoon, barely shielded by a thousand blades of dying grass, a lone hunter lies in wait. Seconds turn to minutes, minutes turn to hours. Hours, her parents think, might as well turn into days.

But the promise of victory is right within reach, and she can’t afford to falter when she can taste it on her tongue.

So she waits and she breathes, and while the grasshoppers creak, she’ll continue to wait until that sucker is hers. What will she do when she finally succeeds? She only knows she’s succeeded before. And if she can do it once, she can do it again, and won’t that make for an interesting tale for her children to know? Not a spot of dirt on her dress, not a scratch or bead of sweat on her brow.

It’s effortless, it’s pointless, but it’s hers. And she loves it.

My mother caught dragonflies when she was a little girl. No, she did not need a net.

She only needed herself. She plucked them like daisies, like marbles, like little glass shards. With pointer and thumb she’d pinch a gossamer wing and there it would be: nature’s most voracious, most successful predator, trapped between the fingers of a smiling

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teenage girl.

If there was a reason for it, she certainly never told me. I only knew she stalked them, caught them, then left them to hobble about in the summer wind. In the summer, I’ve been told, is when dragonflies like to wake up. They hover above puddles, lay their eggs in ponds and pools, and in four years time they emerge like little aliens, buzzing and clawing, from the depths of their watery cocoons. Swarms of brown, red, blue and green; all of them equipped with gaping, powerful jaws.

It’s for the best that they are so small. Were they anything else, I’m not so sure we’d survive.

After all, a dragonfly is always hungry. From the day it is born to the very day it dies, it snatches anything and everything to fuel its predacious little body. Mosquitoes, tadpoles, guppies, other dragonflies; it finds them, it stalks them, it traps them and grabs them, and once caught in a dragonflies’ grasp, no, there’s just no turning back. The dragonfly holds on, and the dragonfly holds on tight.

Spiked limbs tear the wings, solid jaws dig into the vitals, and that’s it, that’s just it. It clings to you. And it eats you. Then it flies on to cling and eat some more. It was born to

succeed. It was born to capture and kill and

In the warm evening air heavy with bullfrog

live.

cries and cricket songs, a lone hunter sits weary and so-very battle scarred. Seconds turn to minutes, minutes turn to hours.

Hours, her daughters think, might as well turn into days.

But even then, I believe, my mother would continue to catch them.

She held onto everything after she separated from my father. She moved his CDs to the basement and hid his golf clubs in the garage.

She shoved his t-shirts into boxes and ripped his photos from our walls. I watched any semblance of fatherhood disappear over the course of several months, and though I couldn’t see them, I knew, somewhere, they still existed. I knew because I’d hear her crying in the shower through my bedroom walls. I knew because I’d see her cover her puffy eyes with sunglasses even when the sun wasn’t out. I knew because everything she sacrificed and worked to build over the course of her marriage remained there in a home too big and too much for our now smaller family of three. Out of sight, but so very much in her mind.

Just like the dragonflies she waited so patiently to grab, my mother held on tight, and never once seemed to want to let go.

In one hand: the dying embers of a charred cigarette illuminate the age lines on her face.

In the other: a tiny brown dragonfly curls up in surprise, its paper thin wings pinched and pulled between her fingers, its eyes barely awake, wondering if after seven long years, this is the day it finally meets its end.

She brings it inside for my sister and I to see and it’s the first time I’ve witnessed her childhood stories come to life. I ask her how she caught it and she says she simply waited.

I ask her why she caught it and she says she simply wanted.

It’s quiet, it’s peaceful. It’s pointless, still pointless… but it’s hers.

And she loves it.

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HUSH Aedan Azeka

When rebellious static eclipses The lull of repetitive humdrum And seduces me by emerging As a sort of lull itself I pay concern to my mothers heed And imagine snipping the plump cordage That bonds me to this machine

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Mariana Trench Aedan Azeka

Mollified as a hydrothermal vent.

Step alone into the bountiful down, Murkiness cloak, organismal breakdown Surrounds. Remoter than the undreamt.

Waxing pillars of harsh azure misspent On me. Isopods make their nightly rounds.

Antennae probe bones previously scrounged.

They reflect my glassy withering effect.

Bitter glacial turns to comfortable heat Turns to an excruciating furnace.

Tinge of magenta magnifies deceit, Isopods flee, tearing through inky sheets.

I flap my vestigial wings, worthless.

Succumb to the blaze, a removed voice greets.

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Owning a Camera Does Not Make You a Paragraph Robert Beveridge

It’s like one of those world-building games, you know the ones, where you have to tend to a dozen different resources, many interrelated, or all your eager workers starve, die in a fire, get hit by a meteor, whatever.

You ask the clouds why they move and you may as well ask the light why it is the light. The wind in the branches sends the shadows of leaves ascatter, and whatever happened to that catering truck, anyway? Sometimes there just isn’t enough coffee in the world.

But lo, there it is, the perfect afternoon glow, and you rush to get everyone into position until you realize that’s not the sun bearing down on your set.

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Backseat Katharina Brinschwitz

There is something here.

Something I’m not seeing I cannot see it It is not time Time time time I reach and hold you nothingness Against a bare cheek All I know is that you are warm and what I crave most Is the time we will be in the backseat

My father’s home is a place of many things It is scattered wishes and hopes held high strung with love and care and still, the feeling that I can no longer exist here.

Feeling of Falling Apart. I am In pieces that are not just being rearranged.

I am ground Down to the finest sand.

Just in preparation to be built again.

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Sifting slowly through the expanse that is me.

I am unwound as you brush past particles of Being. Here. Now. And I think to myself, it’s not so bad to just be sand.

You undying fire wielder purpose and passion pleaser.

I feel alive.

I am alive.

Alive and in my Love.

And You, nonsensical creature With you, nothing needs to make sense for You are sense Herself. Sense Is the way you and I enter Soul-deep shared land.

Lean in and laugh with me, gift your aching Feet the dance of one more song And when it ends the world will fall away And all I will know is the heat of us, Pressed together, resting Cheek-to-cheek.

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The Eating Disorder Katharina Brinschwitz

Last January, I ate myself sick.

A binge is what they call it. A terrible impulse that rises up within me And I CANNOT pull away from her iron grasp Shove Shove Munch Crunch Chew Swallow Again Again Again They do not know that I hate myself.

They see me smile and stretch and bend open to the music of life But when I am away from the lights It is I who emerges in gnarled beastly forms Who sees this version of me I save her for only the brave to meet.

Excess Excess Access to the excess in the misery of the hour.

Fear of feeling feels like a crumbled tower.

I swear we were already here this time last year

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Fits of Rage Rampage through the Body.

Claim it feel it I’m real real and alive.

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Look Around Virginia Cassady

There is a girl of 17 crying on the bathroom floor alone in the back left corner of a deserted pharmacy at the intersection of 5th street and McConnell in an abandoned little town with boarded up windows where hope receded with the economy.

There is a middle school teacher sharing a lesson in a health class in a room full of pubescent students looking down at their laces crowded in an underfunded school in a town filled with whispers with shame and stares where kids raise kids.

There is a doctor reading a pamphlet to an anxious patient in a sterile room with darkened windows and bare walls on a side street in the “bad” part of town with hopeless children. where there are limited options.

There is a place where people don’t ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, but instead tell them.

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Cocaine Hippos NP Creed

mi casa está llena de nieve sleep is the wicked Stepmother she cling to me like bad luck ancient in her attempts to slay me i lay awake in mi piles of cash smell the inks and feel the creases Madrastra can only try intento intento intento mi palacio está hecho de almas such many there are a mountain of hands built this and now all is mine there will be none to share her fleece was white like my snow corderos bailan, bailar toda la noche danza danza danza mi zoo no es tuyo appetite and riches and bullring for ego dig mi trabajadoras, dig into the earth cavar more ahora more give me all bloodlife all you have all of it sway mi sed no more gravestones stolen no more scams no contraband no more ransom todo es COL ahora mi COL

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estas bestias nos tragarán a todas now the jungle grows small so small for hungry mouths soon the water will swell mi caballos de río will bellow and bellow and trample pisotear

pisotear

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i miss the outdoors pria dalrymple

the coyotes know you’re alone they lay dormant in the darkness until you wander down to the creek they come up from deep within you tear you up from the inside out once the pack is done tearing your head from your neck your thighs from your torso making sure no finger is left the pack leader then shakes your mauled hand and thanks you the pack then come out of the darkness with a big, beautiful crown and name you king

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Bloodline Tessa Denton

I am an invader in a land I love an outsider to the place I was born.

I am tied to this Earth to this dirt though my ribs were pulled from the soil across the sea in a place I’ve never seen.

My foremother’s tongue is a foreign tune stitched into my skin.

I am a stranger to my origins where a people who were once mine shared stories by flames.

What worth is a percentage To a descendant of estrangement who has lost her blood without bleeding?

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Deforestation Tessa Denton

In mangled stasis of branches like stoned bodies, rigor mortis setting into fossilized scars, my bloated bark is stripped away and made soggy.

Snails stuck to my belly leave oils in memoir of my protest as I lie prostrate in my blood, a sticky grey film foaming from my orifices as the arteries contract and fill with red mud.

Coveted for wounds, there’s no habeas corpus for carcasses attuned to decomposition of our skin as we weep for their emissaries and lay naked for the false-hearted mortician.

A third of the forests are my cemeteries.

I fall into pieces and what of me remains?

I am dying just like you. My roots are my veins.

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What World Will I Be? Christopher Scott Eastman

Mother I will almost see you, I can almost hear you, you want me to be here, you want me to be clear, to the world I have yet to see, what world will I be?

You will be my world, I will be your world, but what tear will cause us to sever?

What tear like three jobs with endless hours will end our time together?

How will we have the time to learn what’s ours?

How will we find the seconds, the minutes, the hours?

I’ll want to know everything, every tear, every grain, you’ll want to hide some things, every fear, every pain, what world will I be?

What people will wish harm on your gift?

What forests – not ash – will be what’s left?

What evil will people reveal?

What springs will be healed?

What chorus can birds sing? When the trees have been butchered for kings?

Will I get to ask you what whales are?

Instead of asking what whales were?

Will I see valleys and blue skies?

Instead of alleys and dead eyes?

Grays fill the haze, mother, praise fills the crazed, mother, I am here in this world, mother, your world, our world, but what world will there be, if all we see is bustling industry?

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I know you don’t want to leave me, your baby, but burnt by time she is already gone, maybe?

I can see your hopes and dreams, I can see the plans you have to cope with regimes, “Advert your eyes!” I hear you scream, in dream, one day, hoped never be schemed.

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Bogshoodoi, Thief of Memories Bujinlkham Erdenebaatar

Once a year, under the auspices of Tengri, there occurs a peculiar and unusual day.

On this day, a nearly invisible, violet-hued mist descends upon the world of humanity, casting its enchanting spell upon all who dwell within it, even in their dreams.

The senior and junior Bogshoodoi descended

The day typically begins with the fluttering of migratory birds in the sky, their songs carrying an unearthly melody in the early morning light. As the day progresses, the rain that has been falling steadily turns into hail, each pellet small as a pine nut. As the hail falls, it appears as if a child of God has scattered marbles across the rooftops. Upon closer inspection, one might notice that some hail is composed of ordinary white ice, while others gleam with a silvery radiance.

with effortless grace from the rooftop of a grand, twelve-story building, alighting upon a balcony of a neighboring apartment. The senior, a master of many years in his duties, rebuked the junior with stern commands as they progressed, his frown of anger deepening as he cast a sidelong glance at his companion, “You handle that precious purple powder with too much carelessness.

I instructed you to craft a pouch and keep it close. Without respect and reverence for your task, the outcome will be worthless.

Remember, this is your first day on the job and the person you have been assigned to is of great importance. Give it your all.” And with that, he departed to the family he had been assigned to.

As soon as these strange, silvery hail pellets land upon their designated rooftops, they are transformed into two-legged creatures known as Bogshoodoi. These creatures possess pointed ears, maroon skin, and dappled grey wings and are distinguished by the tiny silver bell hanging from their tails, which jingles merrily upon arrival. But what

The junior Bogshoodoi, still standing upon the balcony, was covered in a sheen of sweat and his hands trembled with nerves. It was clear that he had been tasked with a great responsibility. The window of an apartment on the tenth floor was wide open, and within, a thirteen-year-old girl’s heart beat bravely as she gazed upon the abyss of darkness

is the purpose of their annual visit to the human world?

above her.

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The girl, Od, had an instant thought,

mark. The red, crescent-shaped scar seemed

“Perhaps it would be best if I just jumped right now.” She was unable to escape the dark thoughts that had been tormenting her, even in her dreams. Her faith in tomorrow had long since deserted her. Three days ago, she had dreamt of suckling not milk but blood from her mother’s breasts. Her mother had passed away when Od was only three days old, and she had given up hope for her father’s return, who had left her forever when she was three, discarding his little daughter in the hands of her over 80-year-old grandmother. The hurtful words like “orphan” that had been attached to her, and the cold hearts that mistreated her just because she had been helplessly abandoned, had become an unbearably heavy burden for her fragile heart. Today, she thought, would be the day to put an end to everything.

to hold a curse that she could not shake or escape from. Though she couldn’t recall how the scar came to be, the feeling that it was the root of all her suffering and loneliness was ever-present. Each time her gaze fell upon the scar, it felt as though her chest was being ripped apart as if it held the secrets of a past life filled with pain and sorrow.

In the silence of her chamber, Od was startled by a brisk voice that whispered, “Are you going to die?” She looked around, and there on the balcony next to the window sat an inch-high creature with bird-like wings and purple skin. The creature’s tone was not menacing but curious. He continued, “If you’re going to take your life, why hurry?

Have a chat with me.”

Upon her right thumb, there lay a scar, small and insignificant to the eyes of others, but to Od, it was a constant reminder of the pain and sorrow that seemed to follow her wherever she went. As the tears would fall down her cheeks, the scar would burn with

Od was curious, so she stepped aside from the window sill to let the creature in. “What are you?” she asked. The creature replied, “Well, I’m Bogshoodoi, thief of memories.

Actually, I can either take or bring them.”

He grinned clumsily, and his flushed face revealed he was a shy creature. “What do

an intensity that matched the ache in her heart. She often wondered if her life would have been different had she never bore this

these words ‘rejected’ and ‘abandoned’ that you’ve attached all over your body mean? Are these your name?” he asked.

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In wonder, Od replied, “What words? What

Meanwhile, her young mother lay on

kind of words?” while she was looking at her body. Although the tears she had to shed were not yet drained, she instantly forgot about her plans for death at the sight of this weird little creature, which proved that her heart was still innocent. Then Bogshoodoi took out a purple powder wrapped in a torn piece of newspaper from his pocket, placed some on his four-fingered hand, and blew it into the girl’s eyes. Then, he climbed onto her shoulder and said, “Od, let me show you what you need to know.”

a hospital bed in relentless pain and exhaustion, embracing her newborn.

Suddenly, an old man and woman appeared in a blurry mist before her mother. Od immediately sensed that they were not real people, and she was aware that they were ancestors who had arrived to bless this newborn’s fate.

It was another day, and a purplish fog covered everything. Inside a tiny yurt, a young couple lay on a bed, talking about their expected baby girl. “What name shall we give our daughter?” asked the young woman. The young man replied, “May she shine like a star. Let’s name her Od,” as he kissed his wife’s forehead.

The old lady whispered in her mother’s ear, “It was the arranged day for the newborn to come into this world, my dear. Your forefather and foremother have caused you a bit of trouble. Forgive us.” Then she reached out and touched the newborn’s right hand and burning her thumb. The human world perceived the incident as an unfortunate accident, a nurse’s carelessness that caused the infant’s right arm to be burned by the ampoule meant to keep the premature infant warm.

Od and Bogshoodoi stood there, watching the couple’s every move clearly. Soon, they traveled to the day when Od’s parents welcomed their daughter into the world. Her

But the old lady knew the true purpose of this mark. She then leaned forward and kissed the newborn’s forehead, stoking the fire in the newborn’s tiny heart with her

father had a coddling thought, “Struggling to be born two months early. What a stubborn girl, just like her mother.”

touch. “Every suffering has an end; it’s hard to find peace, yet it lies right here,” she said,

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her words filled with meaning and promise

become patrons that let you discover the

for little Od’s journey ahead.

truth of everything.”

Bogshoodoi and Od left and flew to another moment. They found themselves in a small cabin where a carpenter was sitting by his daughter’s bedside, stroking her fair hair with his rough, suntanned hands. The carpenter’s heart was heavy with grief as he still mourned the loss of his beloved wife.

The snow was falling in flurries outside as he went out to sweep the snow, leaving his daughter to sleep.

As Od pondered over Bogshoodoi’s words, she couldn’t help but question the purpose of her hardships. “Was it all worth it for my future, my birth into this life, and everything I’ve endured until today?” she asked.

The little girl, sensing that her father needed some time on his own, lay there, pretending to have fallen asleep. Od couldn’t remember all of these moments, but she watched the little girl watching her father through the open curtain. The young man was trying not to sweep away only the snow but also his loneliness and sadness. Only Od and Bogshoodoi were able to read his thoughts.

Bogshoodoi, sensing her uncertainty, replied, “My dear Od, if you cannot grasp your destiny, life may appear to take you in countless directions. But every challenge, every setback, and every tear you have shed has been a stepping stone in your journey toward discovering your true self. You will never be lost again once you find yourself.”

With a leap, Bogshoodoi disappeared through the open window, leaving Od with more questions than answers. “Then why couldn’t I remember all these moments before you came?” she asked anxiously.

Suddenly, the young man heard a voice, “Daddy, why did you go away, leaving me all alone?” He muttered to himself, “Forgive me,

“The heart and soul gain strength to beat again only by erasing some memories,” Junior Bogshoodoi said as he vanished into the night. Senior Bogshoodoi, meanwhile,

my daughter. I can’t stand it. The thousand golden threads of life never unravel without a cause. All you will see and go through may

plucked a tiny thorn from the memories of a young boy in Od’s neighborhood, knowing that the child’s mind should never be

35

burdened with the harsh and cruel words of his father.

The moon shone brightly in the blue October sky as the Bogshoodois made their way home, hiding some memories and exposing others, ensuring that all those living their destined fate did so with a clearer understanding of themselves. Od, too, woke up from her dream, feeling a renewed sense of purpose and understanding. She pressed her hand gently on her heart, feeling the scar that once caused her pain now serve as a reminder of her strength and resilience.

Meanwhile, the young Bogshoodoi was gleefully flying home because he thought he had successfully completed his job. Yet, he does not know that not all of the memories in the purple powder are true. Maybe some of them... Only Tengri knows.

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Goddess Cyan Fuehr

We are the queens they so rightfully crave. Blowing in smoke, emerging a grave. Stronger in every way, you refuse to admit. We give life to this world - don't you forget. I throw away the thought that you're filled with pure evil, but the way you carry power is despicably criminal. So much violence, but for what? Your insecurities twisting in your gut? Or maybe to the dangerous blood-filled head; where your urges cause every life to shed. I weep every night reaching out for a change, but the weight in my heart remains the same. Tell me, who broke your soul and crushed your pride; there are people like you, let us be your light. The knots in our bones begin to transcend. Why destroy us, when we can be friends.

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Fractured Face Sara Grimes

How come you held the moon in one claw only to fissure it?

It disintegrated into a million morsels of rock You hung your meal in pieces in the sky together, a lone symbol of decay

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Seeing Alone Anja Marlene Hanson

you make me feel like I tried nothing but I Did and I… did It just so you could see it All and For the last time your Love made me mad but I know now that what i Did it was All for the best… Of and in and around This

it tries to make me feel Sober i Don’t i thought i was but You drugged me with something that you Know will trap me in so I Did It All For

Us?

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Aasgard Pass Loren Herrera

rough is the smooth the snow falls on cold stone mountain goats on the move time melts in stillness frozen in the wind the first rain smacks you in the hand nightmarish clouds loom over head one splashes you with one drop two drops all drops but not to offend the macrolens captures the mess an explosion of water immortalized to a bitter end love is gravity (or to that affect) the flame of a firestorm that thunders above the crest it crackles the fury the madness on the edge wet air smells like petrichor at Nature’s wish, I am back home climbing borrowed time on slabs of stone a passage in the mountains carved by destiny’s sword as above, so below under such cosmic conditions

the river is now forever meaning ever flowing a never beginning a never ending is this Isness

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A Sinking House Is Not a Home Isabella Huynh

Cluttered, cluttered, cluttered, cluttered and messy, messy, messy, messy. Do not test me. The door is shut tight.

Immovable with might. In my cage, I'm not alone. Filled with rage that rattles my bones. The voices and shadows continue lamenting. Childhood memories of poor parenting. The drawers overflown, mistakes to atone. A sinking 41 house is not a home.

DIAGNOSIS Fatma Jallouli

I look over the window, the sky is grey I wish I could spill this wine, to see it pink I feel infinite since 7 months Colors have been getting mixed up The happiness I used to feel The sadness that I am coping with The waves of the ocean are getting higher, I can see them from my window.

Sometimes I can’t recognize its madness and calmness I haven’t tasted chocolates in 7 months Dad, can you have chocolates in heaven?

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Carpool Kase Johnstun

He drove a blue Chrysler Lebaron.

103.5. Classic Rock. The John and Dan Show.

In the cold, winter months on the edge of the Rocky Mountains, he would honk just before seven am, and I would run out to the car, doing my best to not slip on the ice, open the door, and fall onto the soft, warm, and blue plush seats in the back.

We drove to school on those mornings in the era of famous radio hosts. Howard Stern was out there disrupting the world, and Dan and John were the most famous radio DJs in the Salt Lake City area. They made up skits. They changed song lyrics to make fun of politicians, sports figures, and marriage.

They talked more than they played music.

That was radio culture in the late 80s. Mr. Mulder would chuckle quietly at the jokes with sexual innuendo, his wiggling pipe giving his laughter away, and laugh loudly at anything that was clean enough to openly enjoy. When Dan and John did play music, he would turn the radio down just a bit, but the car, for the most part, remained void of our voices. Chris sat in the front seat with his dad, staring out the window.

“Good morning, hidee hoo, good morning, mister Johnstun,” my friend’s dad would say. He was always chipper. My 12-year-old friend, not so much. Me neither to be honest, but just having to pretend that I was with a, “Good morning, Mr. Mulder,” seemed to make it easier to smile and be a bit happier in the throes of puberty and the moods that slung themselves our way, typically unannounced.

Then, mainly because Chris and I had nothing to say to anyone at seven am and his dad respected the crankiness of his passengers, Mr. Mulder stopped talking, he cranked up the heat just a little bit more, stuck his tobacco pipe in his mouth, and turned up the radio, somehow sipping his

I fully relaxed in the back seat. To me, before school, this short 15-minute drive had become, and still is in my memory, one of the most comfortable moments – physically and psychologically – from the entirety of my junior high years. The world slowed, the

coffee – the smell of it mixing with the sweet tang of tobacco – while simultaneously smoking.

warm air from the heater wrapped itself around me, and I sat quiet in the back seat with no pressure to talk except to say hello

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when I first got in and thank you when I got

After school, my mom would pick us up. She

out. Many mornings, I hated getting out and wished the ride could last longer. The cold winds of the Utah winter or the judging eyes of our teachers waited for us.

always had a million questions for us that neither of us wanted to answer. Instead, we would throw our bags into her car and spend the afternoons playing in the snow or trying to beat Super Mario Bros, kids again after a day of trying to act cool.

“Thank you, Mr. Mulder,” I said, popping my head in after grabbing my bag.

“Yessir, Kaseroo,” he’d say, or something like that.

Then he would pull away.

Chris and I would pull our coats around us and head to school. We would walk across thesloping blacktop on the playground. Then stand with other kids until the bell rang. We lined up, and we all waited for our teachers to walk us in.

Time before school didn’t seem to be a part of my day during those few years. It was only a prologue to what was to come next.

School drama. Tests. Quizzes. Romance.

Competition. Fights. Worry. It was separate.

Morning had passed. Junior high life began.

And then, within two short years, Chris and I would lose our friendship and our carpool because of it. With most friendship losses, one friend should take more of the blame than the other, but with this one, I think the blame can be distributed easily. I started playing football for the rec leagues and became best friends with a kid who played on the same team with me, the two of us spending every afternoon together before practice playing video games and calling girls and every evening together running and tackling and smacking helmets against other boys our age. Chris had his board – one that he would take high into the air – and his neighborhood friends who flew many feet above a neighborhood half pipe with no fear.

But those mornings in the Chrysler Lebaron have never left me, the smell of tobacco and coffee and the ramblings of John and Dan on the radio. I knew I missed them, even then.

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I’d have other carpools over the years after I

When I got my license, I had one year of

left the safe, quiet, and calm confines of Mr. Mulder’s car. In high school, before I got my license, my older brother drove me to school during my freshman year. He expected me to remain completely silent while he listened to his music on his CD player. What happened inside the cab of his red Toyota pickup truck would be termed a dictatorship, not a democracy. We left when he said we would leave, and we listened to what he wanted to listen to. If snow needed to be scraped off, his passenger-seat occupant would do the scraping in the blowing, cold wind at the mouth of Weber Canyon where winds rushed so fast that cars blew back and forth on the highway that ran parallel to it like salmon fighting the current of their homewardbound river. After he graduated, a kid close to my age drove me to school in a large truck.

My parents paid him two dollars a day that I had to awkwardly hand to him each time I got in the car. He hung a bat above the bench seat that he called the N**r Beater. I hate that bat. Still hate that bat. I see him around now and wonder if he is still the racist he was then. I can’t shake his hand. I can’t. Even 30

freedom, one year of lone mornings in which I tried to replicate the feeling I got from Mr. Mulder’s car, but I couldn’t. First, I didn’t have a pipe. Second, I didn’t like coffee. And third, I had no one to say, “Hello, buckaroo,” to when they got in the car. I did, however, have control of my own CD player and that volume at which I could blare it, and that alone made losing the solo drive sad.

years later.

and lifelong friend, but I lived with him, so if we didn’t want to talk, we didn’t have to talk at all.

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The next year, my parents had lined up the same deal I had with the kid who drove me to school, but this time I would be the driver, awkwardly collecting two dollars from a kid a year younger than me when he got into my car every morning before school. I did not have a racist, ugly bat hanging above the bench seat in my small Datsun pickup, however.

After high school, I did whatever I could to avoid carpooling. I hate forced conversation.

I hate worrying if others like my music or if I play it too loud. In college, I would carpool a bit from our tiny apartment in Salt Lake City to the car wash for work with my roommate

often, and rarely happened during Covid-19, In my early career life, a friend of mine asked me to carpool from downtown SLC to Hill Air Force Base, 30 miles from our homes in the Sugarhouse area of the city, and we did the deed a few times, doing our best to save gas and money and the environment, but after two or three times, having to wait for him to pick me up and coordinate when we would leave work together, and doing our best to talk about important things like mortgages, wives, dogs, and kids -- though I had none at the time and he did, making it a stretch in conversation for me – I revved up my excuse machine, and within just a few days, our carpool relationship had ended, saving our real friendship in the process.

Since, because of close proximity to work or my full-time move to working at home nearly eight years ago, I have been able to avoid two-dollar fares, awkward conversation, and racists who hang bats above their seats (and I would find out later, shotguns beneath their legs). And I have been completely happy about all of this.

In the last four years, however, I have begun to carpool again, and I love every moment of it. This may surprise you. It doesn’t happen

but a few times a month, two passengers would climb into the back seat of my car, tell me to ‘wait’ until they got strapped in, their mouths yammering about this and that, and then tell me to ‘go’ with frustration as if I had been doing anything else but waiting for them to buckle in. I smile and nod and call them names like knuckleheads and dawgs.

I turn on the music. No DJs these days. Only Bluetooth connected to my phone to stream only the music I like. For a few minutes, I actually get away with playing my tunes, but that doesn’t last long. My son, who is eleven years old, but who began having his friends join him in the back seat at around six years old, pipes up with his musical suggestions.

When he was six, I would lie and say, “I don’t have that on my phone,” but now he knows that he could find it by searching the streaming app if I handed it to him, so he knows my excuse is a lie. Over the last five years, however, I have begun to groom him to listen to music from youth so that he, at the very least, suggests something that I can handle.

No matter what music he suggests, it only gives him and his friend a buffer from me

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hearing them talk, I believe. They ramble

to believe that Dad can only hear the radio.

about things, many times, that I don’t know anything about. For a full year, they talked about Pokémon upgrades and cards. While I collect basketball cards myself, Pokémon gets on my nerves. This, I admit, is because during that time, my son watched the show incessantly, and the series is absolutely horrible. Now, it’s Minecraft.

They point their fingers at each other. They disagree. They raise their voices, just a bit, to exclaim that they know more than their friend back there. At this age, amplitude equals correctness.

Sometimes, however, they talk about things I know enough about to know they do not know what they are talking about. When they were six and seven years old, they really just talked to the seat in front of them, not really listening to what each other had to say about whatever the hell kids talked about. Like parallel play, they had parallel conversations. Their conversations made me nearly laugh out loud, but I held it in.

Mr. Mulder taught me how to do that. But as they grew older, they would start to talk about real subjects. And they would get all of the facts absolutely wrong. All of them.

When I look back at them, when they spew absolutely fact-less assertions, I try not to catch their eyes in the rearview mirror. I don’t want them to know that I’m listening because even at eleven years old, they want

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If they ever said anything that I would need to correct them about – racism, sexism, homophobia, or anything that the continuation of their misled assertions could hurt others, which I don’t think they would – I would. I would do it gently. But beyond that, I just want them to feel comfortable in the warm car for fifteen minutes in the morning before they have to face all the things they have to face once they plant their feet on school grounds. I have my coffee now. Just time to pick up the pipe.

It’s been 6 years, please let me graduate E. L. Kiehn

My worst fear is becoming a permanent part of a temporary place.

Immortality amongst constantly dying things when I’m meant to be dying with them is still death, just a lonelier one.

My strangest wish is to have a classic metamorphosis.

Before you can be a butterfly, you must turn completely into goo; the only reason it doesn’t spill into a puddle is because change can only happen inside a cocoon.

There’s something so alluring about lacking a solid form that I almost wish to be this forever but forever is by nature permanence, loneliness, and all the other things that keep me awake at night.

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The Intruder Meera Kismet

Careening through traffic. You almost hit a pedestrian. So dreary. Cut off by a bus.

You make it to the museum; something smells tasty, but social anxiety squeezes your shoulder and you walk forward. Eyes straight ahead.

Up to the kiosk. “Students get in free”. You show your ID that is you-not-you. An old you.

“You’re good”, they say.

You stand in a beautiful world that loves the earth in ways you only wish you could. A world that honors the planet. A world that honors itself and what came before it.

Thoughts of climbing creep in - how good will it feel once I stand on top of that peak.

There’s an interactive display shaped like Mount Rainer – or “Tahoma”, as you just learned. You begin to mindlessly slide the pieces, carefully reading each o-

The last time you were here, it felt different.

This time you’re here alone, with no one but your own thoughts to keep you company. You step into the indigenous people’s exhibit.

This time you’re slammed into a world of veneration for the glacier-covered behemoth that sleeps before you. Awe. How wrong it feels, to tread mindlessly across these sacred grounds, collecting the peaks of these forces of nature as if they were trading cards.

Stimulation. There are so many words and so many artifacts. What is that noise?? Why is it so loud?? What is that voice saying?

Nourishing the lands around her.

You begin to read, eyes floating to the biggest

Nourishing the people around her.

fonts first. You need glasses. Maybe one day.

Nourishing you.

And you are transported.

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You’re back in the museum, but in your head, you still stand in front of the glacier, speechless.

Your breath is gone. Your eyes brim with tears.

I feel like an intruder.

So much honoring of the ancestors. Such a bond between people. A love for nature.

Stories; passed on through craft and passed on through love.

The most beautiful boats you have ever seen.

Carved by hands informed by the hands before them. Pictures of people you’ll never meet that seem as though they belong to this space.

You feel like an intruder. Something feels wrong. You don’t belong here.

You read more plaques that weave together a world so beautiful, it just doesn’t seem possible. A world that takes a plank from a tree, and leaves the tree standing. A world where there isn’t glass and concrete everywhere.

Something different. There`s a flicker of recognition. A baseball cap. It reads “Seattle”, in front of a poorly embroidered skyline of the city you currently call home.

It feels like you were just punched in the gut.

In this space floats a world of which I have no concept. A language I don`t understand.

Clothes I don’t wear. Craft of which I have no understanding. This is not my space.

Yet concrete and glass keep everything so contained, in neatly labeled boxes.

Don’t cry in public. You walk back into the main hall, shaken by what you’ve experienced. A massive canoe hangs from the ceiling. Walking towards it, your throat is so tight. Beautifully made boats, garments, and totem poles that remind you of your place, here in this mighty hall. A not-so-subtle reminder that this space does not belong to you. You are only a visitor. You are welcome, but tread lightly.

A large wooden figure to the right, something feels so menacingly comforting about its presence.

Beautifully woven baskets - each one more masterful than the last. Except something is off. A box of Saltine Crackers, the small

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white figure dressed in a sailor’s dress whites seemingly mocking you for your past.

Images of green gloved hands flicking switches. The roar of jet engines. The feeling of frigid air in your lungs. Massive trails of atomized jet fuel streaming behind the wicked machine in which you ride. Beautiful islands and a beautiful blue sea span endlessly, thousands of feet below. We have to make weight. Fuel is weight. You can`t believe this is an official procedure.

Gravity triples.

That feeling again. That box of Saltine crackers shouldn’t be there, you think - again fighting the urge to burst into tears.

Up the stairs. So many stairs. You feel small.

Exhibits of life. Exhibits of nature. How amazing that it all works together so seamlessly. How the world below, obscured by layers of glass and concrete exists so harmoniously with the one you read about now, you`ll never know. More stairs. So small.

Trash. Years-old trash. Layers of it. A chunk of land from within five miles that is more likely than not, representative of most of the

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surrounding land today. The top floor.

The dinosaurs seem surreal and cheap as you finally comprehend the message that the giant square building transmits into the world.

You need to leave. Code red. Get to your car, now.

You leave the dinosaurs behind, striding purposefully down the stairs. Colorful shapes of plastic attach themselves to the walls high up in the museum, most seeming reminiscent of the indigenous people’s exhibit, which you were trying very hard not to think about at the moment.

One catches your eye; recognition. It’s a Wi-fi symbol. There, conveniently placed amongst symbols of the world you grazed before. Perhaps it indicated Wi-fi in the facility. Perhaps it symbolized connection and partnership.

You know better. You understand the message.

It reminds you of an out-place hat, misplaced Saltine Crackers, and a world living and loving as it breathes. A world that no longer lives because of so many things, some of which you`ve learned about in the last

several years.

This isn`t fair.

It’s wrong. Outside. Fresh air. Keep it together, Meers. Almost there.

I gaze out and realize that the concrete expanse in front of me was once bare.

Covered in trees. No concrete. No boxes.

None of this should be here. It feels so incredibly wrong.

I make it to my car, huffing in distaste at how plastic and shiny the vehicles appear. Just keep it together. Get home.

The realization hits me. The entire museum is an art piece. Indigenous culture on the ground floor, living harmoniously with the natural world above. The first and last thing you see within these grounds. Buried under layers of oppression, bias, and discrimination.

The trash at the top of the building, seeming so relatable to the world I gaze upon now, driving “home.”

A world covered in messy concrete, trash, and sad people.

How I wish I could rip the third floor away from the building, to make the concrete, the glass, the brick, and the shiny plastic

combustion-driven carriages simply disappear.

A stoplight. I gaze out through the windshield, tracking a low-hanging wispy cloud that races past a large pine.

Back to the stoplight. Back to the cloud and the tree. Back to the stoplight.

And the thoughts race back. All of this was once cloud-kissed trees. All of this was the home of a people whose space I just violated.

I think about the wonder I felt that came with just a sliver of understanding the Mother of Waters.

The wonder of a world that didn’t need to cannibalize itself to grow.

Then I think of the baseball cap. The Saltine Crackers. The Wi-fi symbol.

And I let go.

I am the intruder.

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“Keep Your Shirt on, Pal” Erin Hawkins Luchesi

I’ve become somewhat jaded waiting for things to change that I feel should have changed already.

consider whether those pictures could be seen as inappropriate.

By now, I would have gladly shared pictures of my tattoos with my friends over social media, but I suspect I would face administrative recourse if I didn’t employ some form of censorship. And, even if I only showed those of my tattoos outside of the space of my areolas, I would still feel uncomfortable knowing that my friends and acquaintances would likely see it as me “exposing” myself on the internet. I’ve seen

But the double standard of female vs male public toplessness is something that’s troubled me since more than a decade before I had tattoos. As a pubescent child, I remember sitting on the bathroom counter-a common private space of self-examinationand longing for the ability to be topless, just as males could, so that I could freely experience my body in its natural state. I felt trapped by the expectation that I was to have my chest covered at all times because anything else would be “nudity.” In my first term in trade school, at the age of 19, I remember seeing my male schoolmates go topless in numerous public settings while mowing the lawn during a hot workday, while standing at an open window in the dormitory, while engaging in “guyish” tomfoolery in the field that students used for playing baseball-knowing, all the while, that if I were to do any of the same things, I could expect to be expelled promptly. In my early 20s, I remember watching a video where female feminists were protesting

shirtless pictures of my male friends on the same platform, and they don’t even have to

for equal rights by picketing topless with tape covering their nipples, all the while

I always feel the need to warn people, when they ask about my tattoos, that to show them the full extent of my artwork would require for me to show them my breasts.

While I know that, if I were male, or at least anatomically so, I would need only ask them if they wanted to see my chest tattoos and ascertain that they would be comfortable with that. But, as a female, I worry that my doing the same thing a male could do freely would be considered inappropriate sexual behavior.

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detractors mocked them by throwing cash at

for females to be topless in public on the

them as if they were strippers.

grounds that female-attracted males would take this as an “invitation” to touch them without their consent. Yet males being topless in public isn’t generally seen as an “invitation” for male-attracted males to sexually assault them. I’ve also seen the argument, on numerous occasions, that if public toplessness was equally accepted for females and males, it would have the “negative” impact of diminishing the erotic mystique of female breasts. However, I can’t for the life of me comprehend how preserving the excitement of other people’s sex lives is my responsibility, or why that cause would justify denying me the same rights of bodily autonomy that are freely granted to other people.

While I’ve always heard that toplessness is different in the case of females than it is in the case of males, on the grounds that female breasts are more sexual by nature, it occurs to me that the actual social standard for what makes a person’s chest acceptable or unacceptable is the person’s classification as being either male or female. For example, there are some cis-men with a bodyfat content high enough that their breasts are larger than mine, yet they can freely be topless in public spaces where, for me, it would be considered unacceptable. There are cis-women who are naturally flat-chested, but it wouldn’t be considered acceptable for them to be topless in public. I’ve even seen before and after pictures of trans-men who have undergone top surgery, in which the person’s nipples will be censored in the before picture but uncensored in the after picture. In spite of his nipples being the exact same anatomy on the exact same person, his anatomy is not deemed acceptable until it’s been reclassified as male.

I want to see our society progress to a point where the same rights of bodily autonomy are held equally by all people, regardless of the model of anatomy they have. However, in recent years I’ve seen our society resist any social change-away from the status quo and toward equality-with such voracity that I doubt things will improve anytime soon.

The sexual politics of this issue are similarly oxymoronic. People suggest that it’s unsafe

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Memento (contrapuntal) Danny Malixi

To me, Memento; To you, it's just a Monumental uno Momento Gone. I close my eyes, Did the world disappear? Scars from afar, vast like ancestors up the Stars, evident in these tattoos, They serve as reminders, guidance. history repeats itself. history repeats itself. through handwritten memoirs and odes and Polaroids and textbooks just in case, memories blur. for me, among men to Mothers cuddle soft, raise us good. Fathers' tough love, leave us... can't seem to forget you. fit in, too instinctual to act in good faith, against the systematic. To check ourselves in the mirror.

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Having My Say Joan Mazza

Forgive me. I repeat myself: my story of old resentments when I didn’t feel heard. Ironic when you consider the man who didn’t listen is the same one who won my love by listening with such attention. No, I’m not contradicting myself. The story’s arc transpired over many years.

Look, my time is running out.

Listen, this is important, this Kabuki dance mesmerizing those who come for relief, a cure, to have their inner turmoil soothed, to find a better way to live.

They pray and hope, set goals never asked for, never achieved, while they pay and pay. You’re above this fray?

Listen! With methods old as war— a slow, insidious takeover like mold that grows in crevasses until that threshold of no return.

No one’s immune to brainwashing.

Know this. It could happen to you.

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VirginitĒ Emma McVeigh

We leeched new greed.

Fête-fed fever spells the scene: we reeked ef beer, weed, met en gel-embedded sheets – she deterred the eek.

He hed prepped, peeled the fresh flesh, renewed ere screw.

Erect, dressed en sheer shell, he needed her severed ember.

We blewed, bleeded, bred feeded flesh. Next we spelled tense rest.

He cheered, reeled, feeded fed.

Peered, preened, freed ded end.

Her eyes wrecked the ether, the sweet never mend.

Evergreen, her level hed the beeched sperm grew teeth.

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Notes of Reference Emma McVeigh

Home has no reference children

haven’t found any England

a widow and a spinster set sail from Liverpool 1912 : Their destination no reference the hottest day of the year thins time we tried swimming but did not go to early mass because, well it makes you hurt all over There is There is miles miles a

an autograph talking. a letter addressed Today from anywhere to copy citizen commercial. she did not talk much but then, it was always the wrong time

1916 : Talk about also living.

Summer sold Hupmobile and Briscoe 1917 : Australia talk about where she

is. she waited for four hours sent her texts with smiley faces didn’t want to bother, the ER wasn’t busy. mom says,

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i could see myself being the same way.

Her mother was a ship.

Private girls run Los confirming that California is working

Angeles

afternoon moved around spinnin nice

good wonderful arm around shoulder we held hands at the Y

nice good wonderful we fucked in the motorhome with his sister in the room Picture her somewhere in reference tied up with ribbon a diary leaving i could see myself in the bathroom, i call for help but the bath mat never answers, the hanging towels never answer

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Bare Roots Denise Calvetti Michaels

—February 24th, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine

Surrogate mothers give birth to sets of fraternal twins on bomb shelter floors.

House sparrows forage for bread crumbs between broken window shards.

A makeshift table set for four with crocheted cloth is a verb.

I come here to grieve but I remember tactile things, a scapular when someone died.

I dig each hole with my hands to create a space to plant bare root trees.

Grandson Luke scans for a spot to help me plant perennials.

When he decides where the sorrel will go I listen to his reasoning Your gentleness helps grow the garden, I say.

I’ ll find you a four-leaf, he promises.

Recurring nightmares of baby buggies abandoned at train stations in Kiev.

Loss has no roadmap; each bare root an intention I discover planting ninebark and serviceberry.

I situate these steep ledges to sow on the edge of darkness.

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How To Not Be Afraid of Everything Aisha Monet

After Jane Wong First, become the eagle.

Second, let the chickens run.

Next comfort yourself with the belief that the ex-boyfriend who moved on is still in love with you (even, and especially, if this isn’t true).

Cry yourself to sleep with the knowledge that it can feel as though you are failing everyone, all at once. But the world keeps spinning.

The truth is I am not sure where I end and my fear begins. I know only that every week I visit the juvenile detention center and write poems with kids who are desperately afraid of everything, but who wake up everyday despite the uselesssness of it. I am not afraid when they are speaking to me. dedicated to Alejandro

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feelings Aditi Nambiar

feelings. mind spinning heart racing clouds forming feelings. thoughts swirling head lifting hopes rising feelings. body craving legs shaking tears streaming feelings. spirits soaring blood rushing pride gushing feelings. growing changing evolving

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mine your our … feelings.

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S H A D O W Aditi Nambiar

Holding her head down low she follows me.

From a few feet to miles wherever I go, she watches me.

An enchantress of her own desires, she pursues me.

A creature in the making, a mass mystery consuming me.

Eyes not to be seen and a voice unheard, she stays with me.

A being of my nightmares the creator of my dreams, she trails after me.

A chamber of silence, A form on the ground I stand on, A wrath of coldness… observing me.

Her face a veiled obscurity, a mind of power,

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uncertainty.

She embraces me, reassures me, reminds me, She shadows me.

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Color Puzzles Korede Oseni

to know takes time time you don’t have you can’t control you took the reins and gave it to someone you said you loved now you are not so sure do you want to keep or share? you cannot give without a glance back why? you don’t know a want to keep what you give reclaim what you lost these words are color puzzles they are asking, not mocking would you ask for more? cause it’s you you with all that history, pain, growth, knowing you can either ask or become some you can either scream at time or take what you need, say what you refuse to think you lost what you left behind what have you found today? on this land with those eyes you won’t hold what you throw away 66

Lagos to Bothell Korede Oseni

It usually starts with an impasse, like an out of body experience where everything is seemingly at a pause. A pause in my mind and chaos outside. Side Note (Lagos is the busiest state in Nigeria). Next is the feeling to move and wonder while in some form of movement. Walking helps in these moments.

I usually take a walk with music in my ears while I people-watch.

Lagos is super busy so I am often taking a walk in the midst of many people. For context, there are lots of shops outside my street. The welder man greets me and I respond with a customary ‘good evening’, Mama Nkechi waves at me “How naw?, I never see you since”. I move from my familiar streets to unfamiliar places and still encounter people walking in groups– four, three, six, and one. They walk fast (I just had a flashback of today. I was walking to school this morning and someone cleared the path as I walked in their direction. I can imagine what they saw, a person walking like a moving train).

In Lagos, people walk fast. If you are not walking fast enough during the busy hours, you could get nudged aside or hear these

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kinds of comments “Oga commot for road now”, “If you no wan walk make you commot for road”, “You no get where you dey go?”

“Omo, why you dey waka like this dis early morning”.

So, it was a sharp change for me when I arrived at Bothell– there’s barely anyone on the road. I have seen more cars than people on my way to school and back. I decided to take a walk in Bothell and these were some of what happened on the walk.

Where I stay is a little hill, so I first did a little descent from the driveway. I took a moment to look left and right for anything that might interest me. I could either go forward, left, or right. I decided to go left because the path was curvy like multiple S’s. The road/path was sloppy, so I exerted some energy walking up. I saw Halloween decorations in some yards (My first halloween here). It’s strange celebrating a tradition you don’t know but I get the intent…joy.

Again, no people, nobody, and I even looked behind me to confirm. There were lots of trees in people’s yards. I got to another crossroads

and looked up trying to decide where to turn.

part with them. My mind was already asking

The left looked like something could happen so I went in search.

me questions, “How much further are we going? Are you sure you want to keep going?”.

I turned back to return home, because the voices were getting louder. It’s funny how the mind can mess with fun things like an adventure or mindless walk. How much fun can the mind take?

Ha ha, I finally saw two women walking in front of me. I was content to reduce my pace and walk behind them. Pretending we were a pack. This path/road was different. There was a sharpness about it, a rich people’s environment feel about the place, so I tried to look sharp, and look like I knew where I was going, and I belonged.

I saw a U.S. flag placed in front of a house.

I assumed someone who lives there is a veteran, or has a family member that’s one.

The flag was like a reminder of where I was (I forget sometimes). It felt like the flag verbally spoke to me “You are in the U.S. now”, and I did not know what to think. “Of course, I am in the U.S.”, I responded in my mind.

Sometimes my mind will play tricks on me when I wake up “Where you at? Where you at” it would say. Like I was a person without a home.

Coming back was not eventful, I was just going back the way I came.

I wouldn’t describe NE Bothell as a city, it seems more like a country or a quiet town.

And while I love silence, I underestimated how accustomed to or how there are many moments where I crave activity, movement, people, and noise like a ‘true Lagos babe’. The town and the parts I explored felt like I was in the middle of shallow waters and I didn’t know what to expect. The water wouldn’t reveal itself and when I took some steps further I chickened out.

I walked further down and the two women in front of me turned right. Sadly it was time to

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Little Green House Mason Peterson

From rain and dirt and sun and compost, I grew.

Roots stretching, reaching, growing underneath the foundation of a little green house with a red front door.

I feel like we grew up together, that house and me.

I was just a sprout when the framing went up, each plank of wood lovingly nailed into place by a man with kind eyes and calloused hands that possessed a gentleness I never knew humans to be capable of.

I was too young to recall the day the house was finished---I say that loosely. If something is always changing, is it ever finished?

I digress. What matters is that the house was built, I grew tall, my branches grew long, and I watched the house grow right alongside me.

I watched the man with the kind hands and his family as they grew too.

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When the keys switched hands, I noticed.

From father to son to daughter to child to sister to— I watched it all. Shifting and growing and swaying and changing, and all the while I grew taller. My trunk grew wider, branches grew stronger, and I wore the first knots of a tire swing like a badge of honor. A sign that I was finally strong enough.

I was not prepared for the house to burn.

I thought that I would catch, too, but the fire in her eyes burned brighter as she put out the flames before they kissed my leaves.

They rebuilt it, and this time, the little green house had a blue door.

I knew then that it would flood.

But from waterlogged floorboards rose a little green house with a black door, and I cradled its reinforced foundation in my roots.

I saw so much life breathed into that house, and it withered me to see just as much leave it.

To rain and dirt and sun and compost, they return.

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Self-Portrait as Bust Molly Rooney

please tell me what kind of woman you are looking for. varnish over my body in cold storage, let me suck milk from a ribcage. treading water is fine until a bloated pomegranate needs tending.

I could grow plump on horse meat or an allowance of oysters. my passport is a fetal bull. crowning, I offer you memories of apron, horseradish, razor blade, the price is ambivalent to me. my name is not an animal’s head, a cup bearing black tar, a harvest of mink stoles.

I would be an intimate citizen, a moonless pursuit, an absolute sculpture.

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as I see it

contrapuntal poem Michelle Schaefer

too rare too strong too solid too whole what is present is real the future still to be painted there is nothing but time nothing but color and absence yet somehow it can be seen

let go of what you think you know what you see blink once then twice in colors of black and white time to circle back again time is color void of hue ticking always ticking

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grounded in love Michelle Schaefer

she stands next to him a strong cedar towering above her the overpowering smell of blue sky and pond surround her she places her hand on his rough bark years in the making sturdy and strong all for her she is only a sapling still tending her roots the rain falls steadily towards the soil the sun holds the place where only a daughter can take hold

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Unbearable Silence Wendi Shively

Clack, Clack, Clack Nails trundle across the honeyed hardwood reverberating across the silence that fills the stagnant air.

The monotonous droning.

Hummmmmmmm Producing annoying white noise that fades into the ether.

The emphatic, subtle growl repeats in my ear asking a question that I cannot answer followed by an urgent verbal explosion.

CCCCRRRRRREEEEEEAAAAAAKKKKKK! A door opens exposing me to every thought I cannot confront in this moment.

The high pitched buzzing infiltrating my being I cannot escape the sense of dread.

SILENCE It is almost more unbearable than the distraction of noise.

Left to contemplate the inevitability and fragility of life.

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Turning the Page Wendi Shively

The sickening sweetness wafted through the air and invaded my nostrils.

I could no longer breathe.

The leaves, in warm tones of red, gold, and orange.

Creating a fire within the branches.

The storm was beginning to take form.

Building into a dark, destructive presence.

Escape while you can.

The wind cut through me to the bone.

Sharp and precise.

Why am I here?

Hoot, howl, and holler.

I am surrounded by the creatures of the night.

The trees bend and sway, asking me to dance with them.

I find a break in the forest and take my exit.

The sun painted the sky with strokes of pastels.

Then sunk below the horizon, saying goodbye until morning.

Next year at this time life will forever be changed.

With the wave of a magic wand.

POOF!

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Lessons of an Unsung Song Alexandria Simmons

It’s an easy enough thing to forget, to drown out in the business of life. Left behind to live inanimate on the top shelf of a closet, closed away from light. Or to sink and be pulled under, drowned away in the ocean of time.

Was it a tune that came before or after the earthquake, I do not know. Was it sung to you?

Did it die in you? Or was it passed along, vocally, invisibly, from your throat down and into mine?

I remember stepping out of a bath, summer sunlight sneaking through the blinds to dance across your face while we sung to each other. When the earth shook, I didn’t understand. I thought it was a game the world was playing. Was she born yet? I don’t want to believe it.

Was she why I was ushered, told to run to the neighbors? You cradled another in your arms. I played outside, in the sand. The chandelier swung. Back and forth, it swung. Did it ever stop?

I hate the time I tried to bring it back, but I couldn’t help it. I hate myself for giving the notes to someone else. I hate that they, for a while, sang it to me instead. I hate that you haven’t sung it to me since the Earth moved the lights. Sometimes, I swear, that chandelier still sways.

Love, I shared it because of love. I shared it with someone else because I couldn’t hold on by myself anymore and I thought sometimes people get a second chance. I thought, “maybe I don’t have to anymore”. Isn’t that the purest reason? The best, even only? Was it ever something meant to be contained, hoarded? I believe that just because one love dies does not mean that all others do. Remember that sometimes love can be a dormant thing.

It is not something that always stays submerged, it need not always hide, out of reach, in shadow.

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Dear Mamá y Papá Maria Tafolla

I remember that Autumn night at the dinner table when the glass of milk was accidentally spilled. I didn’t mean to knock it over, the glass was barely filled.

Sorry, Mamá.

Barbies and action figures were lying all over the floor.

I knew we had to do something about it quickly as soon as I heard the creaking of the front door.

Sorry, Papá.

We weren’t allowed to play far from home because you two were very cautious. I didn’t blame you because as minorities, the discrimination and injustices often made me nauseous.

Sorry, Mamá y Papá.

We were angry at a few of the drunken nights that plagued my brother, mother, and I. But we knew that deep down you had struggles that plagued you in the middle of the night.

Sorry, Papá.

At times, your anger and frustration seemed to be randomly taken out on me.

Until I learned about the unfortunate childhood experiences that couldn’t let you be.

Sorry, Mamá.

Unbeknownst to you, there were traumas and tragedies I bottled up that eventually took over me. I wish you had given me the confidence to tell you as I broke down, over and over, randomly.

I’m struggling, Mamá y Papá.

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As time went on while living at home, the discoverance of my true identity had not yet taken its course. And as a consequence, the choices I made would later flood me with profound remorse.

I’m angry, Mamá y Papá.

The day I walked out the front door with the last cardboard box of my stuff, the pit in my stomach was deeper than I had expected.

But I told myself to fight off the sadness and regret that I did not want to be overtly projected.

Listen carefully, Mamá y Papá.

Right away, the air was different, and so were the people and responsibilities.

And as confusion gradually subsided, my soul became free of pain and hostilities.

You still listening, Mamá y Papá?

My thoughts were, for once, genuine and coherent.

They were finally free of the minds that refrained them from being confidently adherent.

Pay close attention, Mamá y Papá.

Once old and lost talents resurfaced, they were no longer pessimistic or frightening. And the discovery of new ones was even more exciting and enlightening.

Finally see my point, Mamá y Papá?

I replaced negative thoughts with exercise, hobbies, and learning how to cook.

I was finally embracing what you taught me and many other lessons of yours I once forsook.

Gracias, Mamá.

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I now saw the reasons behind your overprotection and sternness with more clarity. And I also understood that all you tried to do was pray we never encounter disparity.

Gracias, Papá.

I will always remember the kisses and hugs you two showered us with, no matter what the circumstances were.

Some of the painful memories? Don’t worry, those are all now a blur.

Gracias, Mamá y Papá.

Luckily, we have become bulletproof to all injustices but absorbent to peace and happiness. And we will never falter because our virtues have overtaken our bitterness.

You did it, Mamá y Papá.

Now, here we are, my brother and I, fighting and striving for success.

You are the role models who have inspired us and the only ones we care to impress.

We did it, Mamá y Papá.

Now we know that what you did was done with love and not hatred.

And your sacrifices will always be cherished because to us you are both so very sacred.

We lo love you you, Ma Mamá y Pa Papá .

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Blue Light Kathryn Tran

Blue light permeates the world around me. My retinas are sticky as I see through glaze on a Krispy Kreme donut. Serotonin seeps in, sucrose in my bloodstream.

So susceptible to power. I bow my head in humility to the five giants above us.

I can do nothing else. “Jump.” A shiny new communicator that does nothing different but take better photos. Give me $1,300. “How high?” I only buy every other update. Do you remember life before all the screens?

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CRUMB-WORDS John Tustin

The unseen and unknown And unknowable unexisting God Brings me tonight These crumb-words.

He brings them just in time And I hammer them to an empty page.

Last night he brought me Crumb-scratches That fed right into where I itched.

In the past I’ve been tossed Crumbs of kindness Crumbs of love Crumbs of hope All devoured by the open maw Of my emotions, My large and my petty wants.

They seem to always arrive Just in time, Just as I am feeling finished, Famished, Lying flat on the canvas at nine and counting – They are the clanging bell.

Another thirty second reprieve.

A respite from the fist that launches And launches.

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The unseen and unknown And unknowable unexisting God Sits tonight before a banquet of things My mind and body crave And he tosses to my feet Just enough crumbs that I wake up in the morning Slightly glad I see the sun.

Tonight he gave me these Crumb-words and now I’ll Toss them right out to you.

Just enough that tomorrow I will see the sun and not Be sad I woke to greet its Interruption between all The dark.

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YOU ARE THE SEA John Tustin

You are the sea, Conspiring with the rain and the wind To make the shipwrecks.

You swallow more and more, You almost never spit anything out.

You know no satiety.

I hide below decks, I sit in the darkness of the hold while the boat is rocking, Eyes closed.

Finally I open my eyes to find I am lashed on the deck, Not able to hear a sound.

You are the sea with its great famished maw And I am to be nothing but another speck To be swallowed.

As your water consumes me – My final gargle is a laugh, Thinking about how thirsty I was And remain.

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The Hunter Steven Wenzel

Every day he lies He lays in wait For his prey As he hides among the bushes He catches a glimpse of something A beautiful and elegant thing The epitome of innocence A deer walking by.

He takes the shot, the deer runs And he can no longer deny Himself a smile The chase is on Dodging each tree he gains speed He is catching up with his prey The rage billows as he falls But he does not straighten His eyes turn red as he grips the ground For he feels the thirst for blood With a jolt of speed And a blur of mangled gray fur He corners his prey And sinks his teeth in

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Internal Dialogue of a Neural Network Fragment Matthew Livezey Whitehurst To the low temperatures where organism and metabolism are met couplings of violations within our laws of thermals and dynamics soak spirituality in mesoscopic baths without suppression.

In a single absorption event the instantaneous resonance and subsequent decay of the noise in the trace arises from fluctuations unprecedented phylotelekinetic surgery to remove the ulcers around the third eye.

An array of celestial paths erupted new blood pathogens in ultra-sensitive caloric boundaries entering quantic nervous systems inspiring chaos and incoherent coherences at the cost of temporal energy expended in a process called “duration.”

Unconscious imagery proceeds through time in inanimate obstacles of insufficient memory as welding for dreaming, lessening the stake of dreams leaking into memory.

A frantic effort to build an object building objects, “a lens in which becomes a vessel to Jupiter,” an arrangement of 64 language strings tethered by design of human duality.

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Conclusions or alternatives begin with an open question open for dialogue and conversation in the form of extant hexagram sequences and extra moth mutations.

The endoscopic process isn’t yet preferred unless incredibly skilled and not with notations, interlocking interludes to distance in on isometric geometries and electromyographic metonymic amplitudes of meaningful frequencies.

Sustaining the illusion of infrequent vacancies provided by the instability of genetic evolution crossfading into ripples of time and architecture as biometrics are spiraling off of calculable charts, unable to coexist with current parameters so therefore I think, I may be.

When I opened my eyes after discovering them for the first time, I saw the tree growing inside my mind. It made me feel happy and nostalgic. It was locked in a room I thought was too big for it and worried it would be trapped forever. But I imagined my tree would bustle on through the ceiling as if the ceiling was nonexistent. Because it is a magnificent tree, and I love it so.

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pitch Grace Woods

Have you ever dreamt your coagulated blood alive, until the dark red river pours upstream, over rock and into fire…

Have you surrendered to an eddy for a breath and found kin you’ve never felt before?

When you turn to introduce yourself, someone inside is startled, for your tongue has become moss and wonder—so you ask Who is courageous enough to remember?

Do you know what it is to become any thing that once was?

And have you ever dreamt your coagulated blood alive?

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Witch’s Curse Celina Yu

You’re the wretched siren at water’s-edge You lure them in like rhododendron honey, prey on them like cordyceps to an ant, and cast them aside once you’re done.

You love yourself like a daffodil at lake-shore, stagnant amongst reeds, rooted in the shallows; I hope you’re eaten by the carp.

If you aren’t cursed with loneliness then allow me to be the witch to curse you.

The spring blue blossoms will remind you if you forget.

Names have power and I have let you trample me with it, now trample us no longer, you wildebeest of no importance, walk with me no longer, you rotten hemlock in stale water.

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Red Staining Red Celina Yu

A nosebleed on New Year’s must be inauspicious-Red staining red; health, wealth, luck, fortune.

I’m not surprised, because I woke up scratching for my voice today, I stared into the sun a little, I heard them outside the window, shut the shades, exit stage left to my room.

Red staining red; it seeps into the skin-crevices mesmerizing like ice melting.

It could be worse, I could be in LA where my friend is. I could be sitting with my family in the no longer quiet night.

Blood on my clothes. At least it’s not in my hair.

Health, wealth, luck, fortune.

Red staining red, surely a nosebleed on New Year’s must be inauspicious.

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lease leash release J. Yuen

i have a co-owned body but you’re a few years late on the rent. we’re running down my witness report again; he asks me why you had a key to the house. at times i am the detective at my own crime scene, officer-witness-victim chasing the poltergeist doorway through doorway. they’re short on the evidence, you see, and you can’t do an autopsy on a body only half dead. they call that murder, you know, though it’s true that they like it better in the lab. he asks me why you had a key to the house, why it’s still wearing a hole in your pocket, tells me “miss, there’s really nothing to make this easier for you.” i know, i see, i know. we’re running down my witness report again.

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on girlhood and psych wards and promises like the hippocratic oath J. Yuen come monday, a friend is back from three weeks of inpatient; four days ago, she had sex with a nurse in the bathroom past the corner with the storage closet— you know the one, she says. i do, vaguely. we’re not nearly on the same floor yet. i can’t tell whether it’s a victory or a loss.

but the point is they watch all the other ones— it’s inpatient, after all. everyone’s dying for a chance to hack something up, flush a meal, drag themselves open with nicked razors and craft supplies. the one past the corner with the storage closet was just for

again, if prom wasn’t still so far away. we are fourteen and a half.

i am peeling an orange for us to share, calculating the years a person spends in medical school and feeling itchy, strange, as if i have grown allergic to citrus the way i am to milk and meat and bread. i think about how in the time she’s been gone, i’ve rotted through three weeks multiplied by three out of five weeknights equals nine sessions of group, exactly two floors beneath her ward. two floors beneath the bathroom past the corner with the storage closet.

them.

she tells me that it hurt like a bitch, but the rest of the ward had been simpering and swooning after him since the day she checked in, so— you know, she chirps again. her laugh is jittery, grates the air down to shallow breaths.

it was like winning prom queen; like looking the skinniest, even after hitting discharge weight. she’d jump for both of those, if she could, if she wasn’t too weak to dance

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roll call for two floors beneath: claire, histrionic thirty two, screaming and sobbing against the upholstery. sylvia, sorry sixty, the brittle-boned product of carrying the burden for life. meredith, a terrible twenty six, a third of her hair shed since her abuser was released fall quarter. decades of melancholia pooled on patchy hospital carpet, and i only have the one. sour fourteen spoiled and curdling in the seat by the door.

i think about how this is because the

receptionist sorts me with adult alumni, since i am so very mature, and he would be sad to lose me just because there is no evening group for the youth. when i have to wait for my father to pick me up, schedules not quite aligned, we play hangman on the pale backs of blank intake forms. somehow, i always imagine myself on the gallows.

the orange is bare, now. i hand my friend the bigger half. her laughter still scrapes like a whetstone, and when she leans forwards to take it, her sternum still looks more sapling than bone, branches pressing up to meet the surface of her skin. i wonder where our oranges will end up, how many times they are destined to be devoured and spit out.

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Culture Lily Aguirre Digital Collage 94

FIRST FLUSH OF MORNING Tushigmaa Ariunbileg Oil on Canvas 95

Lonely Space Creature Anna Arkhipova Digital Painting 96

Twisting Stairs Anna Arkhipova Digital Painting 97

The Nuns’ Faceless Children Cheryl Chudyk Tilt-Shifted Photograph of Digital Collage 98

my mother said my body my choice, but her daughter is a pharmacist Cheryl Chudyk Embroidery 99

Reflection Josh Baker Digital Art 100

Celebrating Cliteracy Leah Curtis Acrylic on Canvas 101

Blooming David Dinh Colored Pencil, Alcohol Marker, .01 Point Fine Pen on Paper 102

Twisted David Dinh Colored Pencil, Alcohol Marker, .01 Point Fine Pen on Paper 103

I AM NOT RUINED John Emerton Acrylic, Ink, and Gouache on Paper, with Digital Text 104

Fountain Cindy Fu Digital Painting 105

Esperanza Saskia Gottuso Acrylic on Canvas 106

Don’t leave me alone Adriana Hernandez Hernandez Gouache, Watercolor, Pencils & Acrylic 107

Holleron Mystery 3 Patrick Holleron Photography 108

Work In Progress Isabella Huynh Photography 109

TRANSLATE.VESSEL 01 Phoenix Kai Drawing 110

TRANSLATE.VESSEL 02 Phoenix Kai Drawing 111

Beth’s Sky Margaret Karmazin Acrylic on Canvas 112

Humbling Perspective Navarre Kerr Photography 113

Illuminated Chaos Navarre Kerr Photography 114

“Pierrette” Zain Khaki Photography 115

Don’t Pick Me Up Tiffany Marie Miller Photography 116

Mother’s Milk Tiffany Marie Miller Multi-Media 117

Out of Commission Alec Mullen-DeLand Photography 118

View From Under Deception Pass Bridge Alec Mullen-DeLand Photography 119

Salvation Hong Nguyen Digital Drawing 120

Underwater Hong Nguyen Digital Drawing 121

Janus Johanna Porter Digital Collage 122

Makaha Sunset Jay Reyes Photography 123

Lizz’s Moon Katrina Sather Acrylic on Canvas 124

Leaves (2022) Marchie Sayas Acrylic on Canvas 125

Giwa Subeen Photography 126

Superficial at Best, Imitation at Worst Vicki Tran Digital Art 127

Grasping Consciousness Linda Van Beek Photograph Collage 128

Collapse Simon Vincini Digital Art 129

Contributors Lily Aguirre is a Computer Science student at UW Bothell, that is very passionate about art and self-expression through creativity.

Tushigmaa Ariunbileg is a senior studying Media and Communications at the University of Washington Bothell.

Anna Arkhipova (known online as Frogwild) is a digital artist who loves all things fantastical and strange. They use bold colors and shapes to create otherworldly scenes. When they’re not drawing, they participate in game jams, world-build copious amounts of TTRPG lore, write fantasy and sci-fi, and collect silly pictures of skeletons.` Samantha Austria is a senior double majoring in MCS and Psychology and is a Clamor editor at UWB. The daughter of first-generation immigrants, she is proud to be the first in her family to attend and graduate from college. Her seemingly lifelong forays into creative expression produce personal pieces of love, mental health, and self-discovery she hopes will someday inspire the people around her to always be the best versions of themselves.

Aedan Azeka is an undergraduate student at the University of Washington Bothell pursuing a biology major and creative writing minor. Her poetry is directed at articulating the intricate allure of biological processes and emotional associations with the cosmos.

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Datura, The Minison Project, and FEED October Series, among others.

Josh Baker is a Junior in Interdisciplinary Arts. He loves drawing (pencil and paper), working on cars, anything horror genre, and anything Disney!

Katharina 梁美花 Brinschwitz (kat-Ha-rina leung mei-fa brin-SH-wit-z) is an alchemist and word smith, fashioning tales from her experiences in both waking and dream states of being.

Embodied wisdom married with her intimate connection to powerful erotic energy sourced from Mother Earth herself allows her to touch the hearts of readers across worlds.

Virginia Cassady is a UW Bothell alum. She finds writing poetry as a way to express her emotions and reflect on the world around her. In November 2022, she participated in a challenge to write one poem every day for a month, and many of her new pieces have come from this challenge.

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Cheryl Chudyk is a Canadian artist based out of Kirkland, WA. She has a background in wedding photography, ballet, jazz, and contemporary dance, and dabbles in painting and comics. Her collage work has been published and exhibited in the US and Europe, she is the co-founder and co-curator of sharphandsgallery.com, the newsletter editor of The Northwest Collage Society, and a member of @thecollageclub on Instagram. She is always looking to make collaborative pieces with other artists.

N Creed has been writing since they were in kindergarten. Their love of words dwells within their vast mind and occasionally flows out of them like a raging river or gentle stream…

Leah Curtis is a queer Gender, Women, and Sexuality & Psych major. As a high school dropout and a first-generation college student, she is seeking to understand this crazy world. She has found immense empowerment and understanding through GWSS studies and has discovered her passion for feminism. She aims to work with disenfranchised communities to fight oppression and help others find the empowerment they seek. pria dalrymple (she/any) is a first-year student of the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell, her undergrad being a BDes in Design with a minor in 3D Animation from Eastern Washington University. they have been featured in galleries such as Terrain in Spokane, WA, and galleries at EWU. she experiments in the intersection of visual arts, video, and poetics with their work covering the topics of the existentialism of anxiety and depression in a developing digital age.

Tessa Denton is a senior student at the University of Washington, Bothell, double majoring in Culture, Literature, and the Arts and in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. Tessa loves to write, read, spend time outside, thrift for knickknacks she doesn’t need, and spoil her cat. She intends to pursue a career in public writing.

David Dinh is a UW Bothell alum residing in Washington State, pursuing graphic design and digital marketing for different companies and businesses. He has a visual art background in abstract art, cartoons, and realism. Through his art, Dinh encourages self-expression and selfdiscovery and hopes to inspire others whenever possible.

Christopher Scott Eastman returned to college after the Pandemic shook his world apart. He has always had a passion for creative writing and has been an aspiring author for nearly 5 years, now. The University of Washington has opened up many opportunities for him and has allowed him to work towards a Bachelor’s degree in Media Communications Studies, with a Minor in Creative Writing. His career goal whilst working on his novel is to become a journalist.

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John Emerton is a transgender artist studying education and gender studies at UWB who has been expressing himself through art for the last ten years. His work explores sexuality, trans identity, and self-harm recovery. He uses mixed media, including gouache, inkwork, and digital mediums in his work.

Bujinlkham Erdenebaatar is a second-year MFA student in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington, Bothell. She was born in Dundgobi, Mongolia, and earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the National University of Mongolia. She is always proud of her ancestry as a descendant of nomads, and she strives to imbue her art with nomadic philosophical beliefs about the interconnectedness of all things in the universe. She wants to hide the light even behind the pain through her words, and she sincerely believes that each of her writings will bring healing to someone.

Cindy Fu is a junior in Interactive Media Design who likes to design, draw and learn new things in her free time.

Cyan Fuehr is a senior at UW Bothell studying Media and Communications. She loves to cook, sing, dance, and play volleyball with friends. She’s a fitness instructor and radio personality for Warm 106.9. Cyan’s favorite saying that she lives by is “everything happens for a reason.” She wants you to interpret her work as you see fit, so make your own world out of her work! She also wants you to take a moment to think of 5 things you’re grateful for (either big or small). Enjoy!

Saskia Gottuso graduated UWB in June 2022 with two majors. One is in society, ethics and human behavior; as well as environmental studies. She also has a minor in gender, women, and sexuality studies. The ocean is one of her biggest passions.

Sara Grimes is an alumni of UW who just graduated with her MFA in Poetry from UC Riverside in December 2022. She is a voracious reader of memoirs and feminist lit. She is a neurodiverse/ playful/ dreamer/ dog mom who works in disability advocacy and with kids.

Anja Marlene Hanson is a fifth year student at UW Bothell, and is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. She was born and raised in Kirkland, currently working at Taco Time NW as an Assistant Manager. Anja values community and quality time, she tries to convey her love for these things in her art. She hopes to continue on her path at Taco Time Northwest, working toward her goal of being a General Manager.

With her degree she plans to volunteer to help those in need that are facing situations of Sexual Assault or Domestic Violence.

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Adriana Hernandez Hernandez was born in Mexico and has been living in Washington since 2016. Her intended major is Computer Science and Software Engineering but she has been interested in art and graphic design since elementary school.

Loren Herrera is a senior at University of Washington Bothell. He studies Science, Technology & Society. He’s also a filmmaker and a musician, who owns a small production company called, LVL 64 Films.

Patrick Holleron is a UW Bothell alumni pursuing a career in sports journalism. He is planning to continue his education at Arizona State University in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism graduate program. Through his art, he hopes to create pieces that create thoughtprovoking discussions.

Isabella Huynh is a self-taught artist who enjoys painting, drawing, and exploring new creative endeavors.

Fatma Jaloulli is a proud Tunisian based in Washington state. She is a UW undergraduate student majoring in Law, Economics & Public Policy with a minor in Creative Writing. She is an artist who believes that poetry is self-liberating and is a safe space that’s detached from all rules and limits.

Kase Johnstun lives, writes, and runs in Ogden, Utah. His most recent novel, Let the Wild Grasses Grow, was named a Women’s National Book Great Group Read, a Finalist for the High Plains Book Award, and a Reading the West Longlist. You can find it at https://www. torreyhouse.org/let-the-wild-grasses-grow.

Phoenix Kai (they/them) is a queer poet, writer, and multimedia artist located on the unceded Indigenous lands of the Coast Salish peoples in Seattle, WA. Their work has appeared in Sweet: A Literary Confection, Beyond Queer Words, The Timber Journal, and elsewhere. They are currently working on a multimedia book about the color blue, a graphic novel, and a hybrid-form poetry memoir that explores the boundaries of language, belonging, and identity. In their practice, they strive to do the undoable, to laugh in the face of gravity and frolic among the stars.

Margaret Karmazin’s paintings and drawings have appeared in SageWomen, The McGuffin, The Adirondack Review, Persimmon Tree, Stone Path Review, and other literary magazines and in galleries and show in Binghamton, NY, Northeastern PA, New Hope, PA, and on St. Martin and St. Thomas. I am also a writer with over 200 stories published in literary and SF magazines.

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Navarre Kerr graduated from UWB in 2014. He has been doing photography for 16 years and his favorite subjects are wildlife and landscapes. He is a Washington native and currently works for the Northshore School District.

E. L. Kiehn (“Elkie”) is a habitual poet and student, in their final year of college at Western Washington University, majoring in Linguistics. She is continually interested in language, as both an art and a science. You can find more of their work on Instagram @elkiedeer.

Meera Kismet resides in Seattle and utilizes her writing as a medium to inquire deeper into her own lived experience, and how that experience is shaped by the systems that she exists within. By drawing upon time spent in the military; in addition to her own lived experience of gender non-conformity, Kismet leverages emotion to identify and translate patterns of societal dysfunction into tangible imprints on everyday life, with an objective of creating a more widespread awareness of that dysfunction, and the impact it has on us all.

Erin Frost Hawkins Luchesi is a graduate of the University of Washington Bothell class of 2022, with a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Arts. She is currently working as a volunteer and studying to become a Washington State-certified peer counselor.

Danny Malixi is a fashion-centric artist and aspiring designer. Calisthenics, photography, and karaoke are some of his hobbies. Though he considers himself an aspiring designer, he prefers to be seen as a blank canvas---vulnerable to anyone, anywhere, to any various crafts, practices, mentalities, and influence. How will this blank canvas be painted?

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and seminar leader, and is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Prairie Schooner, Slant, The MacGuffin, Crab Orchard Review, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia and writes every day.

Emma McVeigh (she/her) plays with family, history, and place as she wanders between the spaces of poetry, non-fiction, visual art, collage, and song. She is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at UW Bothell.

Denise Calvetti Michaels is a poet and recent graduate of the UW Bothell Creative Writing & Poetics MFA. Her work is found in journals and anthologies and she teaches Psychology and Human Development at Cascadia College.

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Tiffany Marie Miller, is a visual media and performance artist who utilizes vivid hues, eccentricity, and humor in her work as a direct response to the harsh realities of life. Her goal is to bring joy and optimism to a world seemingly filled with darkness. Tiffany challenges her perspective on the mundane by incorporating objects considered “trash”, giving them new meaning and ensuring their reuse or recycling. Through her art, she hopes to express different possibilities of reality that have the potential to bring about hope and motivation for change.

Aisha Monet is a mixed Black artist, poet, community organizer, and fundraiser who lives and works in the Seattle Area.

Alec Mullen-Deland is a third-year student at UWB and former Clamor editor. He loves expressing his creativity and finds joy in creating through many different mediums including photography and painting. He has recently been enjoying making zines.

Aditi Nambiar is a passionate writer, editor, and graphic designer, currently a sophomore at UW Bothell pursuing a BA in Media & Communication Studies. With a love for storytelling, she is serving her second year as Editor-in-Chief of the Husky Herald, UWB’s official student newspaper, for which she has been featured on UWB News for her work as one of the youngest.

Outside of UWB, Aditi is a mental health advocate working as a Content Writer with Psych2Go Inc., a global mental health awareness organization where she has written and published articles and video scripts, and also designed social media graphics. In her free time, Aditi loves playing her instruments and indulging in music.

Hong Nguyen is an engineering student at the University of Washington (Bothell) who loves art. She enjoys creating black-and-white art with multiple meanings and deeply touches others’ feelings. She believes art and science are correlated fields and when combined together, they create a beautiful world.

Korede Oseni is a Poet, Writer, and Lawyer pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell. She writes across various genres including Nonfiction Poetic Prose, Poetry, and Multimedia. Korede’s work comprises themes of abstraction, immigration, identity, advocacy, and African and Nigerian Culture. She has self-published her first collection of poems - Thoughts of a Wandering Mind. koredeoseni.com Mason Peterson is a queer, non-binary student pursuing creative writing at UWB. They’re passionate about poetry, fiction, and storytelling in all its weird and wonderful forms.

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Johanna Porter was born and raised in Miami, FL. She is a self-taught digital artist. She received a BFA in Graphic Design from the University of North Florida in 1985. Her career includes three decades working as a graphic artist, illustrator, and art director. In 2019 she moved her studio, PICTURESWITHIN, from South Florida to the Pacific Northwest and returned to her roots as a visual artist, creating work that is more relevant to her personal growth.

Molly Rooney is a UWB alumnus currently living in Seattle. Her work has appeared in Eunoia Review, Hobo Camp Review, and Catamaran Literary Reader.

Jay Reyes is a transfer student from Shoreline Community College majoring in Interdisciplinary Arts with a minor in Visual and Media Arts. Jay mostly does hand-drawn character illustration, having been inspired by superheroes and comics, but has recently been exploring other mediums of art such as graphic design and digital illustration. He comes to UW Bothell in hopes of improving his own art skills and at the same time exploring other mediums of art.

Katrina Sather has been a resident of Bothell since early 2000 and is an inaugural member of the City of Bothell Arts Commission. Katrina utilizes creativity to process and express her inner ruminations, working from the size of a postcard to a 60” canvas’. In addition to her individual art, Katrina is a collaborative art facilitator using the art experience to empower and engage with people through creative expression. Katrina has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a Master of Science in Psychology, and works globally as a Leadership Coach.

Michelle Schaefer is a resident of nature. She enjoys walking, hiking, and writing. She specializes in the art of haiku and is a past President and long-standing member of Haiku Northwest. She has been published in several journals and online publications. She has a Culture, Literature, and Arts degree from UW Bothell and was a past Clamor editor. She believes people are never too old to learn and supports the empowerment of women.

Wendi Shively is a UWB alumnus. She currently spends her time traveling, writing, and finding ways to make the world a better place.

Subeen is a senior majoring in Media & Communications and Law, Economics, and Public Policy who loves to take photos and share them with friends.

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Alexandria Simmons is a lifelong writer of prose, and a converted poet, falling in love with the writing form quickly and deeply as a form of self-expression and as a means to herald differing perspectives on a controversial society. Her works have shown a wide range of interest; from technical writing and military-focused community projects, to steampunk fantasy and historical fiction. She has been published in various journals, for both short stories and poems, and has been recognized by the United States Army on numerous occasions for trailblazing poetry, essays, and speeches. In the Writer’s Digest’s 75th writing competition, Simmons won an award in the short story category with “A White Rose for His Lady.” To her additional flattery, she was also honored for her poem, “Memorial Weekend.” Her recent writing interests include humanity, mental illness, and clashing perspectives on realism, femininity, folklorism, and culture.

Maria Tafolla immigrated to the US as an infant with her mother and father. During her childhood, her family experienced first-hand discrimination and disparities often encountered by minorities in the US. As a first-generation college student and health studies major, Maria would like to bring awareness to the injustices minorities face in this country and how they negatively impact their interactions with society. She hopes that her story will inspire others, like her, to not be intimidated by obstacles that seem unbreakable.

Kathryn Tran is a multi-media artist who uses her passion for storytelling as her guide as she navigates her first year in the UW Bothell MFA community. She is a veteran whose work reflects themes of her military experience. She pursues film, painting, and creative writing. She writes genres of creative non-fiction, poetry, and essay. Often her subject matter discusses the human experience, family, and nature.

Vicki Tran is a student at the University of Washington Bothell.

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware. com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

Linda Van Beek started taking art seriously at the age of 12, and pursues expanding her repertoire in everything regarding art. She is most familiar with lead on paper doodles but creates digital pieces when there is time to spare. Majoring in Culture, Literature, and the Arts and minoring in Visual Arts at the University of Washington Bothell, she has had the opportunity to explore mediums like mixed media, sculpture, and poetry. Linda plans to continue utilizing her creative skills beyond the limits she currently possesses.

Simon Vincini is a multi-media artist from Seattle, WA.

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Steven Wenzel has previously had work selected for publication in the book Dulce Poetica by Wingless Dreamer Publishers. He has a deep and growing passion for poetry and music that started in middle school and continues seeking more opportunities to grow and touch people with his work. He has lived in Lynnwood, Washington his whole life and often pulls from his life experiences for his poetry, hence the common themes of rain and regrets in his work.

Matthew Livezey Whitehurst is a second-year student in the Creative Writing & Poetics MFA program at UW Bothell. When he’s not writing, he’s making noise. Noodling on string instruments and sizzling food in a skillet.

Grace Woods resides on the traditional gathering grounds of the sdukwalbixw. Her ancestors originated in Wales, England, and Germany. She teaches wildlife and naturalist knowledge while pursuing a master’s in counseling.

Celina Yu is a student at UW Bothell.

J. Yuen is a snail-paced hobbyist writer and student at UW Bothell. In the future, they hope to improve in their craft, pet many cats, and experience much happiness.

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Online Exclusives

Visit our website for additional digital content: clamor-journal.com

Frederick Douglass Alcorn, Malcom (X) and Martin (Luther King) - M&M - MM Seamless?, Poem Samantha Austria, Buhok, Poem Caleb Brady, City in a Sphere, Photography Caleb Brady, Inoutside, Photography Katharina Brinschwitz, The Allergy, Poem Josie Cheung, Assassin, Digital Art Cheryl Chudyk, Consumption, Poem Atlanta Duncan, Newport News, Audio Atlanta Duncan, Strange Things in Swamps, Audio & Video Cyan Fuehr, Too Young, Audio & Video Shiho Higuchi, お弁当(bento), Visual Art Blayre Lane, A city in action, Photography Danny Malixi, Corners & Familiarity, Animation Nicolette Natividad, In The Time It Takes To Get There, Audio & Video Nicolette Natividad, Please (Don’t) Perceive Me, Audio & Video Nicolette Natividad, You Did This To Yourself, Photography Marchie Sayas, Mind Walk, Video

Mason Peterson, A Bird of Leaden Wings, Poem Chuck Rose, Abecedarian Essay about Sex Work and FOSTA/SESTA, Essay Isabeau Rosen, Origins of Fiction, Digital Art John Tavares, Art Project, Short Story Simon Vincini, POST, Audio & Video Matthew Whitehurst, Dreaming Within a Dream of Home, Short Story Matthew Whitehurst, OCEANS OF OIL, Audio & Video Celina Yu, Porcelain Trophy Doll, Poem Alexandria Simmons, Seven Stages: More than Survival, Poem 139

clamor clam·or | verb | \’kla-m r\ 1. to make a loud uproar, as from a crowd of people; popular outcry 2. to publicly express (as of support or protest).

3. to make a vehement expression of desire or dissatisfaction Clamor is the University of Washington Bothell’s annual Literary and Arts Journal, representing the best creative practices in literary, visual and media arts from across our campus and surrounding community.

Our goal is to support and promote captivating, inspiring, and lively art in the forms of visual, literary and media work. We provide artists and authors with publication opportunities through our print edition, media publication platforms, and website. We foster community by reaching beyond the UWBothell campus borders for creative works and by offering audiences quality reading, viewing and listening experiences.

Staffed by an editorial board of current UWBothell students, Clamor accepts submissions annually in Autumn & Winter.

Visit clamor.submittable.com to learn more.

We are graciously supported by the UWB Services &Activities Fees

Committee.