SPRING 2017
SPRING 2017
clemsonchronicle
cuchronicle
cuchronicle
CHRONICLE MAGAZINE
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kristina Toney MANAGING EDITOR Matthew Delarosa LAYOUT EDITOR Diana Nguyen PROMOTIONS DIRECTOR Sara Stamatiades COPY EDITOR Katy Koon
STAFF MEMBERS Amanda Anderson Xavier Charlot Jarod Drinko Maggie Herring Lauren Kohnle
ART SUBMISSIONS EDITOR Alix Rokop LITERARY SUBMISSIONS EDITOR Rachel Garvais MERCHANDISING DIRECTOR Tara Brown WEBMASTER Jake Armstrong
Katie McSloy Hannah Rivers Nicholas Seiter Kaylin Woods Brendon Wright
ABOUT THE COVER: Map of Clemson in 1980, provided by USGS
EDITOR’S NOTE As I reflect on this issue of the Chronicle magazine, my last as editor in chief and a Clemson student, I am filled with immense gratitude. I can only begin to say how much my love for this organization has grown over the years, what our magazine has taught me about the power of the arts as a means for remaining present and engaged with the people and the world around us. It has demonstrated to me the transcendent ability of language and creating art. I have seen the incredible community of artists that exists here at the university, students who are dedicated to exploring, connecting, and empowering themselves and their communities through acts of artistry. I am truly thankful every day for those I have had the honor of working with and learning from as a member of both the Chronicle magazine team and the Clemson University arts community. Indeed, art of all kinds has within it a language that is captivating in its vastness and complexity. The ability to create and share parts of oneself through art is a wondrous one to be sure, and it is one of the most powerful tools for communication and connection that we possess. I cannot help but think on what a gift it has been to find myself in this amazing arts community with everyone at the Chronicle magazine over my four years here at Clemson University. Art can call us to see and to feel what was previously hidden from our sights. Every time we create art, we are able to make visible that which was invisible, if only for a moment. These once abstracted emotions and ideas, these new pieces of knowledge and sensations, are powerful; they enrapture us, calling us back to them, encouraging us to always seek them out, to continue to learn, grow, feel, and create.
And truly, there is art all around us, and everyone can create art in a manner that is uniquely their own. There is art in every act of impassioned thought or creation, in every quest to learn something new, in every smile, and in every act of human kindness. For me, this act of creating art will forever be one of constant discovery. Indeed, art may even be said to embody a kind of movement, a physical and emotional development wherein we find ourselves filled with a frenzy of thought and feeling, with words and images we may have never before known ourselves to possess. There is possibility in art; there is hope. Art speaks to a moment, an emotion, that takes up within us with such strength that one is compelled to create. Art is the means by which we chronicle our lives, in which we can not only find a sense of home, but we can also find ourselves. Thank you for allowing us to celebrate its beauty and its dynamism with you all. We hope you enjoy this issue.
Sincerely, Kristina Toney Editor-in-Chief
CONTENTS Art 09 12 16 18 19 21 22 24 33 34 35 36 39
Sheets Megan Heuble Bed Princess Helena Walters Sunlight Katherine Kesey Eat Me Ashley Bishop Once in a Third Moon Hannah Cupp Grandma’s Duck Joseph Pruett
40 Wreath Megan Heuble Pains 42 Growing Joseph Pruett Drive 43 Morning Hannah Cupp 48 Serve Marj Carnes 49 Yellow Katherine Kesey Children 51 Midnight’s Hannah Cupp Furs 2 52 Family Michala Stewart
Green Winged Teal Linda Fang
54 Untitled Anna Sullivan
Proposal in Black and White Garrett Ayers
55 AMaryGlassJoBluebird May
Tea House Mackie Seabrook
59 Core Raphael Figueroa 61 Mountains Haley Jones Image 68 Engraven Hannah Cupp
Sunset of the Seine Katherine Kesey Girl in Pool Helena Walters Under the Clemson Moon Margaret Whiston Untitled Allison Head
Poetry 10
20 Something Grant McMillan
Divorce 11 Mattress Elouise Cram Watching Her 17 I’m Preston Stone 20 Chrysalis A.J. Mackenzie Died in Summer 23 They Rebecca Boese
31 Autobiography A.J. Mackenzie Minute’s Walk 32 AAlexandra Karnes
37
Chasing a Shadow Down Coalfields Expressway Miriam McEwen
Corrupted 41 File Wyatt Street the Event of Retrospect 44 InKristina Toney 50 Poem Katelin McLaren
53
THe Young Woman’s Guide To Making Bad Matters Worse Miriam McEwen
You 56 Alongside A. J. Mackenzie
57 Becoming Rebecca Boese 60 A.M. Cody Hosek 65
Karen Doesn’t Believe in Objective Science “Studies Show You Have No Friends” Rowan Lyman
Fiction 13
One Cheeseburger, Hold the Hostility Emma McCracken
Wake 25 AStephen Hundley
Essay 63
O Small One: Be Impressed or Impress Yourself Cierra Townson
Sheets Megan Heuble
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20 Something Grant McMillan
he stands up and tells her that the most high status thing a man can do is go out and have a steak (red) that has been but walked through a warm kitchen and drink a glass of fine wine (red) she stretches her body out on the couch and tells him that the most high status thing a man can wear is a hickey on his neck (red)
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Mattress Divorce Elouise Cram
I am hurt. I might even go far enough to say I am offended when I hear Tom and Elise fighting about the prospect of the sale; I have been so faithful and so helpful, but even I can’t help but anticipate that all of their fighting would eventually culminate in this: selling me. Elise says something about a final straw, and I know the debate will be over soon, because all fights of theirs end with the same blunt, harsh phrase spat from Elise’s thin lips. I feel the abrupt pressure of Tom’s heavy body slumping into my worn springs, adjusting myself so he fits right into his depression. His fist slams down hard onto Elise’s side, and I feel him flip over, stomach down. I hear the bathroom door open and Elise’s heavy footsteps turn into a quiet padding as she crosses onto the carpet. I wait to feel if Tom moves to look at her, but he doesn’t. She hesitates, and, reluctantly, pulls back the sheet on her side and slips in. She’s careful to lie on her side, not acknowledging Tom, and hugs the side so closely I’m scared she might fall out. Minutes pass, and I feel Elise flip over, looking at Tom. She whispers, “I want it out tomorrow,” and switches off the light.
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Bed Princess
Helena Walters
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One Cheeseburger, Hold the Hostility Emma McCracken “I’m not hungry,” I told my mother when she asked me if I wanted to eat burgers with them…with him….and her. I never really ate much anymore, but that night I was starving. I could smell the homemade burgers, the scent wafting through the open sliding-glass door, up the stairs and seeping through the crack under my bedroom door. I returned to my usual position—my door locked, my back pressed up against it, and hugging my knees. I pushed the temptation of the smell out of my mind as I heard her footsteps fade down the hall. My room was almost always silent, probably because I liked to eavesdrop. I never liked what I heard. Downstairs, my mom replied to his deep mumble, “She’s not hungry.” At seventeen, being an only child and growing up with a father who wasn’t around too much, I liked to think I knew my mother pretty well. We were close and alike in many ways. She was stubborn, but incredibly strong. When she and my father divorced, we were alone. She had only me, and she did her best to show strength and be my rock. She knew what the news would do to me, and she did everything in her power to be there for me, as a mother should. I think that’s when things went wrong. She saw that I was doing okay and supposed it was time for her to stop sacrificing and be okay too. That’s when he came into the picture. He was ten years older than my mother, but looked even older than that—old enough that my friends noticed. He was from New York, and it showed. He was the kind of guy that would yell, “Hey, fuck off, asshole!” out the window at another driver even when he was the one entering through the exit. I hated him, and I hated especially what he was to my mother, and I hated even more what my mother wanted him to be to me. I had never seen her with anyone. He bought her flowers, bought her expensive purses, took her to fancy restaurants. He kissed her, touched her; they locked themselves in her room. My muscles would tense and my blood would fill with boiling animosity and flow into every part of my body. I did everything I could to never look at him, and I wouldn’t dare to speak to him. I ignored his existence. In my efforts to erase his existence, I erased my own as well. I stepped lightly, never spoke, and rarely left my room. Most days, I would sleep. Seventeen hours was my best time. 13 | CHRONICLE • SPRING 2017
My face felt hot, though I could feel the cool ceiling fan blowing small strands of hair into my eyes. I touched my hands onto the cool hardwood floor and tried to understand how I got there. My thoughts were interrupted when I felt a knock at my door and its vibrations run down my back. I paused, then slowly pushed myself up to crack the door open enough to humor her. “You sure you don’t wanna burger?” Mom asked me again. She peered her head around like she would find the answer in my room, while my body stood like a guard, blocking her from the world I’ve been keeping myself in for months. She eyed me up and down and gave her usual look that meant she thought I was up to no good. It was then I thought she found me strange. This had been the first time I had seen my mother in days; I tried to never be home on the weekends. Her hair was salty and she had a light tan—he had taken her to the beach earlier that day, though I had declined their invitation. Even with eyes of suspicion, she was beautiful. So beautiful, that it was hard not to fall into her arms and cry, and tell her I loved her and that I was sorry. But, I kept my façade like she kept hers. I rejected the burger a second time, and shut the door. My mind didn’t have time to wander before she was at the door again. Curious to see what it was she had to say this time, I pushed myself off the floor again and opened the door to see a full plate in her hands. “I brought you one, anyway,” she said. “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to.” Maintaining my frown, I took the plate from her and with a “thanks” I shut the door again. It was a cheeseburger with only ketchup and mayonnaise, just the way I liked it, with a side of homemade French fries, and a napkin because Mom always remembered napkins that I always forgot at dinners until after I had already sat down. She was thoughtful like that, like a mom should be. I set the plate down on top of my bedroom dresser and just looked at it for a while. My stomach growled at me, but all I could feel were the tears welling up in my eyes. What was this burger, anyway? An apology? I doubted that, because I knew my mother never admitted to being wrong. I got that from her. Was it just a chance for them to “be the bigger person” and show me how rude I was behaving? I had never been so mad at a sandwich in my life, and I wanted to know what it really was. I thought long and hard, my back against the door, staring at the full plate. The more I thought, the more memories I came up with of how many times I’ve told my mother I “wasn’t hungry.” Never had she brought me a plate of food anyway, letting down her guard. She would predictably match her stubbornness with mine, slam a drawer or two, and then flaunt about how delicious the meal was, telling me I’d missed out. Although I had wished this burger were my mother, I knew deep down that it
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wasn’t. It was him; it was Peter. And it was a gesture of kindness that maybe I didn’t deserve. I could picture my mother downstairs telling him I said I wasn’t hungry. I could see her eyes roll, her hands slapping the counter in frustration that I inherited her attitude. I could see Peter talking her down and presenting to her the idea of giving me the burger anyway. I could see my mother relenting to him, maybe because she loved him. To my mother, the burger was to show Peter she isn’t stubborn like I am. To Peter, the burger must have been a peace offering. To me, the burger was one tiny brick taken out of the wall I had built up. I took three bites of fries, and pushed the plate away. It tasted bitter, and I wasn’t hungry anymore.
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Sunlight
Katherine Kesey
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I’m Watching Her Preston Stone I’m watching her I’m watching her lips fight one another when she speaks. They’re so plump. I’m watching her say It’s really nice to see you. I’m watching her paint her room. Now, sex is seafoam green for me. I’m watching her cry. I weave through traffic, wind crackling the grocery bags in the backseat. I’m watching her squeeze her eyes shut so tight her face wrinkles underneath her hands. I wrote a note in my phone that said I’ll never stop.
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Eat Me
Ashley Bishop
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Once in a Third Moon Hannah Cupp
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Chrysalis A.J. Mackenzie I felt my old self fall away like a shell— wondered if this was how babies felt, expelled from the womb, into a life they didn’t know if they wanted— or maybe this was how the dying felt, exiled from the life they once had, into an unknown. As the neurologist spoke about treatment options, I wondered if I stood up in this moment and turned around quickly enough if I would see myself sitting on the examination table. And if I saw her, would I know my self, or would she be unfamiliar? The truth was unfocused, slowly falling away and into pieces, crumbling any time I tried to hold a piece of it in my hand for too long.
I decided this was how the dying felt, and I would recognize myself on the examination table, but I would not be able to speak to her. My old self would stay there on that table, forever preserved in the moment she died and gave birth to this new self.
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Grandma’s Duck Joseph Pruett
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Green Winged Teal Linda Fang
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They Died in Summer Rebecca Boese
People used to whisper things like “he’s bad news” But there was something so beautifully and terrifyingly poetic about him leaving in the middle of church To go smoke a cigarette Walking back in, Dripping in sin and Sunday morning rain And he didn’t flinch when He dropped the bible Because God had dropped him a few times And he was only there because he knew the body that lay still in the coffin That they were wheeling down the aisle His eyes got redder and his mind spun faster and goddamnit there was her face again After all, the higher you are, the closer you are to heaven Or maybe he was just running from the devil That was the last time she saw him, a few pews over She sat on her kitchen counter that night at 3am Hopelessly drunk And watched as a summer housefly repeatedly bashed itself into the dull light on the ceiling A sickening buzz with every impact “Self harm is bad” she said as she took another swig “But isn’t it wonderful” she thought “Isn’t it wonderful” she didn’t think She couldn’t think Everything was spinning The fly kept going And nothing was wonderful Because goddamnit there was his face again
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Proposal in Black and White Garrett Ayers
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A Wake Stephen Hundley
Before his wife, Mara, passed, Silas promised her that she would be buried naturally, without public ceremony or affair, beside the river that ran behind their home. “Take me to the river,” Mara had said, her skin unnaturally warm and her fingers wrapped vine-like over Silas’s hands while she lay abed, her vigor fading by thin shades. “I want to lay under the trees.” Their dog, a patchwork mutt, was buried there. His name was Temer (for temerity), and it was while burying him beneath the river oaks and wild pines that Mara told Silas, while he turned out heavy riverbed stones with a shovel, that she would die soon. Probably in a year. The day that death finally came, Arlan, Mara’s brother, visited first, weeping at the foot of the bed. He was too afraid to touch more than Mara’s foot, which he gripped tightly. Soon after that, Mara passed, dying in her sleep and wrapped in Silas’s arms. There had been no children. Any friends they had were dead. In the depths of their old age, what Silas and Mara had was each other, their small brick home, and their land—their river. Though he didn’t yet feel alone in their bedroom, Silas saw now, with fresh eyes, the cracked and faded wood paneling on the walls, and he considered the tarp-roof that covered their living room, which had been smashed in by a falling tree and left unrepaired when Mara’s sickness worsened. With Mara gone, with the house broken, what was left? Early in her sickness, sleep had come hard to his wife, and she had been prescribed medication. Silas took the translucent orange pill bottle from the nightstand and poured several of the chalky tablets into his mouth, swallowing several times to work them down his dry throat. Eyes squeezed shut, he tried desperately to capture whatever remained—to record and to remember. His mind struggled with what Mara’s death would mean, and with what would come next until these questions and the medication exhausted him. Feeling the last of Mara’s body heat bleed from her back to his chest, Silas welcomed the uncomplicated silence that comes with sleep, and, he supposed, with death. When he awoke, someone was knocking on his bedroom door. “Silas Holden?” a young man’s voice called. The world came back into focus. Mara was stiff and cold in Silas’s arms. His body ached intensely “Silas, this is Deputy Sheriff Jim Webb. Your brother-in-law called us. He told us about your wife. I’m very sorry.” Silas said nothing. His jeans were wet. The smell of stale urine hung in the air. Confusion and revulsion came upon him suddenly. “Silas, it’s been two days now,” the Deputy said. “We’ve got to get her to a funeral home.” “What?” Silas said, lifting his head from behind Mara’s. “The State of Georgia requires that the deceased be moved to a funeral home twenty-four hours after death. She’s got to see a coroner. I’m sorry, sir, but it’s got to be done.” The deputy’s voice was firm but gentle. He was a boy raised to mind his betters, and people were long lived in this county. “She’s been passed not two hours!” Silas said, knowing it wasn’t true, but unable to believe the alternative. 25 | CHRONICLE • SPRING 2017
There was a pause. Silas’s neck burned from holding it off the pillow. His ears strained to hear the deputy and Arlan talking behind the door. His mind felt sluggish. His thoughts, syrupy. Had it been two days, he thought absurdly. No, he decided. “Arlan? Arlan, you hear me?” Silas shouted, thinking that he shouldn’t yell so close to Mara’s ear. There was silence. Then the deputy spoke again. “Silas, will you let us take her to a funeral home? You can ride with her in the ambulance. You can stay with her there after the funeral director does his work.” “Hell, no! My wife’s been passed not two hours, and y’all need to get the hell out of here. We aren’t going to the funeral home. Now, get out of my house!” More silence. “Silas!” Now it was Arlan speaking softly through the door. It sounded like he had his lips pressed up against the crack. “Silas, you’ve got to give her up, and come out. She’s got to be buried proper. I called these men to help.” “Arlan, this doesn’t concern you. She’s to lay at the river. I’m taking her there. Now get out of my house! Silas heard the deputy say something to Arlan. Something about shock. “I’m not in shock!” Silas yelled. He jerked himself to a sitting position, and Mara’s body rolled on to its back in the sheets. Her eyes were closed. The bedsheets and back of Mara’s floral nightgown were stained a dark yellow. Silas swore, and stripped his pants off. “Silas,” Webb said politely through the door. “I’m going to give you five minutes, and then I’m going to come in.” “You better not, son!” Silas said, buttoning fresh pants and finding Mara something clean to wear from her orderly chest of drawers. Five minutes passed. Silas changed Mara, and wiped her back with a warm, wet cloth. He could not, however, get Mara’s stiff arms through the sleeves of her fresh nightgown. The dirty one, he’d cut off. He swore again, looking down at his half-dressed wife lying in piss-sheets with a nightgown pulled over her head and knowing it was his fault. “Silas, I’m coming in,” Webb said. The door didn’t have a lock, but Silas wrapped his hand around the handle. “My wife’s not dressed, and this isn’t anyone’s business but mine. I’m burying her today,” he said into the crack between the door and frame. “You just go on.” The doorknob turned, and Silas felt the deputy trying to pull the door open. “Silas,” the deputy said. “Step away from the door. I need the coroner to get in there and see the body. Arrangements have been made at the funeral home. It’s all been taken care of.” “You’re not coming in,” Silas said. The pressure on the door increased, and it began to open by inches, and Silas saw that the deputy on the other side wore his brown patrol jacket and wide-brimmed hat. “Please step back, sir,” the deputy said. “Like hell!” Silas roared, shoving the door open and catching Deputy Webb full in the face. Webb went down bawling in surprise. Arlan was standing in the living room some five yards away, struck still by the violence of it all. “Silas, we’ve got to take her,” Arlan said with his hands up. “You’re not alright.” Silas had time to clear the living room and land a punch on Arlan’s eye that probably wouldn’t heal for six months. After that, Deputy Webb and the CHRONICLE • SPRING 2017 | 26
coroner wrestled him off Arlan and handcuffed him. “Mr. Holden,” the deputy said later through a face full of bloody tissue paper. He’d been cut across the brow and lip by the door. “I’m going to let my better judgment slip in light of your loss and not report what just happened. I may even let you out of those cuffs when we leave, but you make one more move and I’ll take you to the station.” “Mind you don’t bleed on my carpet, son,” Silas said, glowering. A gust of wind hit the house and the tarp-roof bulged in violently. The coroner came out of the bedroom with Mara on a gurney, her body covered in a white sheet. “You take her out of that gown?” Silas asked the coroner, bristling like an animal. “No, sir,” came the reply as the coroner wheeled the body by quickly, maintaining his distance from Silas. Arlan had a bandage over his right brow, but his face was already swelling up and a dark line of blood ran down to his chin. “I forgive you, Silas,” he said without looking at him. “You what?” “I forgive you. It’s ok.” Four hours later, Silas was showered, dressed in a suit, and standing over Mara’s coffin in Holy Trinity Episcopal Church. Mara wore a white dress that Silas had never seen before. Arlan sat in a pew. “I’m taking her,” Silas said. “What?” Arlan said hoarsely, jerking his head up. His left eye was a dark, nasty purple. The lids were swollen shut. “I said, I’m taking her.” “Silas,” Arlan said. “She’s here. Let it be.” He stood from his pew and walked to the casket next to Silas. The floorboards creaked. Arlan laid his hands gingerly on the lip of the coffin. It was a pretty thing, he thought. Light oak and white cushions. Like a little girl’s playhouse. In the ca sket, Mara’s face was relaxed. The wrinkles of a million laughing fits, so deep in life, lay like dry riverbeds on her skin. “She lived a good life,” Arlan said, looking down at his sister. “A happy life. You know that more than anyone. What’s to do now is to lay her down easy, and try to find some peace.” But it was wrong, Silas thought. It was all wrong, and it wouldn’t do. “It was time, Silas,” Arlan said, putting his hand on Silas’s shoulder. “Lord knows it was hard for you both, but think about her. She was hurting. She was hurting bad, and the Lord finally called her home.” “Enough,” Silas said, his voice cracking. “She didn’t believe any of that shit, and you know it.” “She believed it once. When she was young,” Arlan said. “She can’t stay here,” Silas said. “Ok,” Arlan said, quietly. “I’ll go find the funeral director. We’ll have the service moved. Mother’s in Virginia. Mara liked it there.” He walked stiffly down the aisle, bracing himself on the backs of the pews as he went along and wondering if he shouldn’t have kept Deputy Webb on hand for Mara’s wake. Arlan heard the wood coffin scuffle. He turned, sweat blooming on his liver-spotted forehead. Silas was standing in the middle of the aisle with Mara in his arms, her body flat as a board. 27 | CHRONICLE • SPRING 2017
“Christ! What are you doing?” Arlan said, hustling back up the aisle with his hands up. Silas looked at him incredulously. “Arlan, I made a promise,” he said, as if to a child. “Now, I need you to go on first and see to the director. See that he’s out of the way when we come through. This is how you make it right—what you did.” “What I did? What promise?” Arlan said. “When you took her. When you called the law,” Silas said as he walked down the aisle with his wife’s body. “Now, I’m taking her.” Arlan backed up when Silas came nearer, repelled by the body. “You’re cracked! You’re not making sense! Please, put her down. Godahmighty, put her back down!” Arlan was trying to keep his voice low. He had backed up now until the fat of his backside was pressed against one of the pews. Silas kept walking until Arlan stepped in front of him, breathless. His hands raised, palms out. “There are rules!” Arlan said. “There are rights!” Silas said. “Her rights and mine! Burial rites! We had plans, and a dog and a house and a life and rites! Rites she asked for. Rites I have to give her. Stones I have to turn.” Silas’s mouth worked noiselessly, searching for the words to make Arlan understand. “And you can’t even look at her!” he said. “Look at her now!” He pushed Mara’s head under Arlan’s nose. “This is as much your fault as mine!” The smell of death was strong. Arlan wilted and shrunk back from Silas and Mara, his hands hanging open like a beggar’s. “No, Arlan,” Silas said, cradling Mara’s body against his own. “I’m taking her.” Arlan stood dumbly in the aisle. He reached for Silas’s arm. Silas pulled away. “Damnit, Arlan. Just sit down.” Walking with Mara, Silas felt at peace. He was reminded of the long morning walks they took before the sickness, and how, at the age of seventy-one, he would take her in his arms and walk bullishly through shallow brooks and flowered meadows while she marveled how strong he was—how good he was to her. Mara was just as light in his arms now, and he moved with long strides down the aisle, leaving Arlan in his wake. Silas put a boot against the push-door and kicked it open. There was no funeral director in the hallway when they exited the chapel, and there weren’t any cars in the visitor lot save his and Arlan’s. The cool night air filled his lungs. It was good. Refreshing after the stale air of the chapel. He lifted Mara to his shoulder and held her there, like a sleeping infant, while he opened the passenger door of his truck. He fit Mara into the cab as best he could and buckled her into the seat. She was stiff, it was true, but her face seemed happier now, he thought. Maybe it was the slight curving at the corners of her lips. “Soon, now,” Silas said under his breath, straightening her dress. He closed her door with a solid click and walked around the long nose of the truck to the driver’s side. “Silas!” Arlan called frailly from the front porch of the funeral home. “Stay out of this,” Silas said. He climbed into his truck and twisted the key in the ignition. “That’s a worm in an old man’s skin, lady. Mark me,” Silas growled to his wife while he looked over his shoulder and backed out into the empty street. “He doesn’t understand, and I don’t need him to.” “He means well.” That’s what Mara said the night she and Silas were wed and Arlan, drunk off his ass, had caught the drapes on fire when he tried to light the cake. CHRONICLE • SPRING 2017 | 28
“He means well,” she’d said again when he washed out of the Air Force and stayed with them “just for Christmas.” Christmas had lasted seventeen years. Silas caught sight of Arlan on the porch once more before he stepped on the gas and felt the truck’s thunder rumble up his leg, but that was that, and soon they were gone. Silas and Mara drove past the funeral home and the church it shared a lot with. Past the high school where Mara taught English, the new movie rental kiosk, and the old Shell station left to rust and rot in weeds three feet high. There were a few streetlights. The roadside was dark except for the islands of light that meant some turnoff road, or some shop. The dim beams coming from the truck’s wide-set headlights seemed to push the dark aside, rather than cut it. They were going soft. Probably needed changing soon, Silas thought absently. The truck buzzed over the rumble strips that told folks to slow down before the railroad. Mara slipped down in her seat a little when they crossed the tracks. Her legs were stuck out straight, but she wasn’t tall enough for them to keep her pressed up in the seat. The seatbelt’s shoulder strap was pulled tight under her chin. The railroad tracks marked the edge of town, but there were still fifteen minutes until they were home. Pines dominated the roadway, lined up nice and orderly the way the logging trucks liked them. Occasionally, a rogue poplar loomed amongst them, its broad yellow leaves littering the road beneath it. Silas glanced up at his rearview mirror, looking for headlights and not seeing any. He wondered how long Arlan would lean up against that porch before he called the sheriff ’s office. Silas reached over and pulled the seatbelt behind Mara’s head so it didn’t rub her throat. A pair of lights caught the rearview and cast a bright bar across Silas’s eyes and nose. He gripped the wheel a little tighter. Might be the law. Might not be, he thought. The lights were still a way back, and the road was long. Silas slowed the truck, then reversed off the road and into Jake Brown’s winding driveway. He didn’t think Jake would mind. The man had been dead three years now. The yard was all grown up, and the kids were still fighting over the house. Silas switched off his headlights and looked out at the road through the pines. Jake’s driveway had an old yellow streetlight at its head. A swarm of moths danced mad circles in its glare. Mara slipped down abruptly in her seat, and Silas jumped at the movement. Her hair was pushed up in a heap behind her head. The white dress had caught on the seat and was hiked up on the back of her thighs. “Shhh,” Silas said, and reached over to lift her back up some and smooth her hair and dress. She seemed heavier now. The tips of her teeth were showing between her lips. Silas knew the grin would grow with time. He should have taken her to the river the minute she passed. Maybe before, he thought. She could have spent her last moments leaned up against a river oak, listening to the water rush past while he told her old stories and buried kisses in her hair. The shame of seeing her now, stiff and in a borrowed dress, burned him. Still, he considered that if he had buried her immediately, he would have been without her now, and sitting in his truck with her body by his side, evading the police and Arlan, seemed a little brighter. Almost fun. She would have liked this. It was the kind of thing she instigated when they were young. Silas watched the road brighten under approaching headlights. A 29 | CHRONICLE • SPRING 2017
second later a sheriff ’s cruiser whizzed past. Silas grinned. “I’d reckon ole Arlo waited just long enough to find the phone,” he said. Silas and Mara waited in the truck for two more minutes before pulling back on the road. There were other ways home than this one. Webb knew where he lived, but he didn’t know the land behind the house, the land that ran along the river. The deputy’s taillights were barely visible when Silas got the truck back on the road, and they disappeared soon after. Webb was in a hurry. Probably brought along a taser and backup this time. Silas smirked in the dark of the cab. Silas turned off onto a dirt road that the loggers used when it came time to clear the pines. There was a whole network of these roads that ran behind the woods. Roads without names that changed from time to time. It would be a chore to get a cruiser through some of them too. Silas and Mara rolled and bounced over the swells in the road. She always liked the quiet of the backroads—some nights they’d putt through them slow with the highbeams on, spotting deer and whatever else walked in the dark. It wasn’t long before they met the river. They were deep in the woods behind their house now. Silas could see his home’s outdoor flood lights winking through the trees. He cut the engine and reached over to unbuckle his wife. The smell of decay hung over her plainly now. He didn’t shy from it. Outside, night bugs chirped and chittered in the dark. He didn’t hear anything from his house and suspected that Webb had tucked the cruiser up under one of the big oaks in the yard to stake the place out. Good. Let him sit until morning. Silas lifted his wife from the passenger seat, pulled a shovel from the bed of the truck, and walked to the river. He’d left the truck’s headlights on, and that was enough to see by. He wasn’t going far. Ahead, the water roiled impatiently, swollen with rain water and tearing down to the ocean. The night was fiercely cold. Stepping sideways through the pines, and being careful to lift his feet over the stumps of timber harvests past, Silas thought of Arlan—of where he might be, and what he would do now. He had loved Mara, and she was gone now. That was enough to earn him pity, Silas guessed. But what was a man to do with pity but fill his belly and starve. Silas laid Mara down gingerly on the rocky ground next to the river and dug a grave, piling the dirt carefully around the edges. He dug it wide enough for two. Lying in the grave with her body, stinking awfully, wrapped over his, Silas stroked Mara’s hair. Over the violent chattering of his teeth, Silas told the story of Mara and his honeymoon—the week they’d spent hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains with Temer. It had been an arduous trip due to Temer’s intense fear of water. They’d had to carry him over each river passing, while he yelped and squirmed. The river seeped through the silt soil and filled the bottom of the grave, so that Mara and Silas were soon lying in a shallow pool of water. Silas’s body grew numb. His teeth stopped chattering. He could no longer smell Mara’s body. Looking up at the sky, Silas picked out the stars he knew, telling Mara their names, real and imagined. He was puzzling out the constellations when a strong desire to sleep began to tug at his mind. Silas closed his eyes.
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Autobiography A.J. Mackenzie I have a double bed and two pillows: one for my head and one for my troubles.
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A Minute’s Walk Alexandra Karnes It’s typically a minute’s walk between a church and a cemetery, and I walk it often. With clammy bare feet, I rush with excitement down these dull cinder block halls. As usual, my heart stops as I knock. The sight of you is familiarly overwhelming. You smile, and I’m yours, unaware time will seduce me for your kill. The black sky only turns darker as I admire you contently from the wooden desk at the foot of your bed. I kick my legs back and forth, not hearing a word you say about your day. Your body does all of the talking as you pace and concentrate, over and over. You finally take me in to be yours. In your arms, I don’t dare give up the opportunity to let go. My courage betrays me as I look up at your eyes. They’re raw and full of life, frightening me. I could never feel more in one moment. That piercing shade of green holds my breath through everything that follows: when we are spinning skin to skin, when my fingers get tangled in the waves like wildfire on your head, and when my eyes hold a weary smile as I am falling asleep in your sheets. Your skin is too soft, and the harsh sunlight always comes so soon. I retrace my steps past the same damn prison walls, to a tomb that will soon possess my name. This time, I am choked up outside your door. It opens before I can even pull myself together to knock. I’ve forgotten how to be strong. You stand there with your raw stare, exhausted eyes cutting into me. I barely let out a whisper, and you knowingly follow me out to this cinder block coffin. Pale flesh forms over your once-bright face, letting me know you saw my death coming. You help me lower myself into the ground as the tears hit in an uncontrollable storm. It’s in this moment that I realize the weight of love is the only burden that could ever kill me. Your calm stature does not budge. I cannot suffocate in your presence any longer, so in a familiar minute, I am gone. After that day, your face changes with time and will never again look full of life to me. I see dreadful eyes and poisoned white crystals on your tongue like sugar. I will be dead, pretending to be the sun you used to bathe in. Each time I must pass these cinder block walls, they will remind me of a time I used to walk from a church to my own grave.
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Tea House Mackie Seabrook
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Sunset of the Seine
Katherine Kesey
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Girl in Pool Helena Walters
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Under the Clemson Moon Margaret Whiston
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Chasing a Shadow Down Coalfields Expressway Cody Hosek
Strip mine to my right and the tracks on my left. Leaves are falling; no other soul on the highway. Got high beams on but the night has other plans. Appalachia. If I close my eyes for a moment I’m home garage closed yet car’s idling and I’m pulling towels from the trunk in order to seal the door to the hallway then I’m yanking out a lawn chair and waiting for an exhaust fume migraine to swaddle me. 21st century, suburban Yellow Fever. Eyes open And I’m back, white knuckling the wheel, moving on. Highway stretches out like a nerve, a bundle stretching its fingers into the fog, wet with blood or tears or sweat. The human being is a hydraulic beast snared, in stasis, halfway reacting to trauma halfway acting, anticipating trauma. Call it what it is:
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Isn’t imagination, memory is pulling itself up out of the leaves despite its own weight. I want to say I don’t believe but the Shadow of The Valley is alive between the Blue Ridge’s shoulder blades. I want to say I don’t believe ghosts or gods or greater-thans, but there’s little room to debate here. Train’s horn blares through the dark and echoes in the tomb to my right. My left, Quetzalcoatl, iron serpent feathered in leaf litter slithers through the fog. I match the train’s speed and it makes the truck shake. Don’t want to be alone, don’t want to believe, don’t want to close my eyes but I’m driving down Coalfields Expressway.
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Untitled Allison Head
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Wreath
Megan Heuble
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File Corrupted Wyatt Street Ctrl + Alt + Del Login Username or password is incorrect Backspace Reenter Welcome 1 New Message “Are you fine?” No Backspace Backspace Yes Enter Insert: smile Open file: Happiness Error: File Corrupted Select, Delete Searching for: help No results found Close window The user has been logged out Game Over
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Growing Pains Joseph Pruett
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Morning Drive Hannah Cupp
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in the event of retrospect Kristina Toney i keep telling myself that if i would have known, simply known, the answer to a simple question, where’s the party at, man? we would have never met, but then i never would have felt the scruff, the rough, calloused hands that said more about you than the kind of work you did. the hands i first held in a gas station parking lot at 11pm, when i got lost on the way, and you picked up the change i would have left with the pavement. but now, love letters stopped, your service, dropped; you say you lost my number… yet even now, CHRONICLE • SPRING 2017 | 44
i’m reminded of the time we ran outside, jumped in the car, rolled the top down, and just drove. we ended up at one of those little white churches from the songs you’d turn up on the radio; managed to make it in to the back row of the chapel without anyone noticing. but when the preacher raised his hands, you took mine and thrust it high. you cheered. let out a loud “hallelujah,” and as the congregation turned their eyes upon you i could not help but smile and laugh as i became your echo. we raced out of there before the bread was just as broke(n) as we were but nowhere near as in love with it, like i was with you
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when you called me up at 3 am because you were craving pancakes and we just had to go. we left just as rain droplets became deluge, yet we could still only laugh even as we began to break down, because living life like stalled engines waiting for the mechanic who’s too busy chatting up the college girls in from out of town to bother only works for so long, but it was the only shop in town, so... in my hand is a crunched up receipt for blueberry pancakes and a rain-stained flyer asking me if i have found the lord i don’t know about that but i have finally found the door.
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so i go too, won’t try and call you. you’d think i would have learned and truth be told i did but it wasn’t what i wanted so i’ll admit to nothing, just like you, just like, i love you, when maybe you should have because maybe you did. i bet you try to rewind time by losing it in old newspaper headlines but the postman is here again and he has stopped accepting those gottogetherbackpoems you wrote on dunkin’ donuts’ napkins. i guess you should have remembered the stamps.
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Serve
Marj Carnes
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Yellow
Katherine Kesey
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Poem Katelin McLaren
I have to sleep with your name in my hand because I easily lose it. What would happen if I left it sitting on a coffee table and someone buried it under dated People, Smithsonian, or Golf Magazine and it got stuck in the pages and your name on some new, non-mine mouth and it didn’t want to leave? I try to forget the smell of iodine tanning lotion, pulling adhesive on fair arm hairs and so painful the look in your eyes, your smile and correct number of teeth. I want to donate these emotives curl into daytime television and Gamay wines and chemical information, listening to what impulses should feel and taste like. Strangers understand it all, especially those things they’re not involved in. I can’t remove myself from this version that deprives itself of oxygen and lives in REM. I think your face and my skin sweats it out and legs shake and joints deadbolt, pin-pricking sensations drifting along my appendages. I pull myself inwards, hide in closed off umbrage pages. Waiting for sleep, with your name in my fingers is as close to a confession as I’m able to give.
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Midnight’s Children Hannah Cupp
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Family Furs 2 Michala Stewart
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The Young Woman’s Guide to Making Bad Matters Worse Miriam McEwen Be disabled and an ableist. And wait for confirmation that you are neither. And listen to what they know about you just by looking. It is said that you are an abstraction of a simpler time. Rejoice in your lack of tangible qualities. For every little thing they cannot discern is for your shaping. Be in love. Tell no one, except everyone you know and the guy behind the counter at the tea shop and your best friend’s old goat. Each one will express the enthusiasm due those flutterings in your stomach. And when you come back to curse his name, they will be happy to oblige much as before. Store up a desire to reap cacti in your flower bed. Sow nothing until the moon gives you direction. Lay still under five layers of oxygen-rich dirt, and wait a full fifteen days to grow into a better citizen. Emerge unchanged. Lead a revolution around your plot of earth. Where you counted on green, watch a strip mall spring up. Be a feminist. Sit back, and let the blue rigidity of your mountain rearing suspend your disbelief. Bury your heart way down, below the pelvis. Pray that it will not come for you one bitter night, beating you from the inside. And you all but hollowed out. Be like the burning bush you tend so faithfully. Practice fullness. Procrastinate. Procrastinate daily. It will keep you from becoming the most perfect version of yourself. And in that fretful way, you will continue to spark secret controversies only you can rectify. And when they get around to praising you as a radical, be politically irrelevant. Declare yourself a moth. Then declare victory.
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Untitled
Anna Sullivan
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A Glass Bluebird Mary Jo May
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Alongside You A.J. Mackenzie Nothing was beautiful and everything hurt when I was there in the white-washed walls of hospital halls, a victim of my own mind There was something sad about being trapped in a building with revolving doors so I left for the mountains, for the freedom to explore to feel soil between my toes to lie in meadows and let sweeping winds rustle the grass’s repose and restore my own There is something perfect about nature. No one can tell her she’s wrong, and I am welcome to wrongfully exist within her, and so I did alongside you. Under blue skies, with a clear path before us everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
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Becoming Rebecca Boese Imagine two and half years of unrequited love (some go their whole lives) Of watching from a distance and Drowning in yourself and Crying to your best friend (a few shots in) about how you can’t shake the feelings and Denying it when your mother asks “Omg no, he’s like...my brother” My jaw ached for days after that Imagine eighteen and senior prom and Guns N’Roses and “I’ve always loved you” And the rest is history But it’s not Imagine a nauseatingly cliché first love Like the ones in the movies you watched when you were thirteen Like walking on the beach collecting fucking shells together Like sun dresses and 7/11 slurpees and playground swingsets at 2am Like daisies on your windshield when you get out of work And climbing the fire tower in town, pointing to the city in the distance Saying someday we’re gonna go there (I wonder if you ever did) Like aged wine and coffee kisses and conversation and Dancing on the roof in the rain Watching water drip down your forehead And it reminded me of my heart Dalí must’ve been proud Because my God, I melted in your arms
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I tried on wedding dresses with my sister when we went shopping Just for fun And always listened to old 70’s songs when I drove home from your house I would turn it all the way up I would go to the beach by myself and pick yellow flowers in the dunes And eat ice cream for lunch Then go for a run and write a poem in the woods that your eyes would never see I would replay the thrilling nights in my head when I couldn’t sleep (even when I could) The ones when all our friends were there (I guess we were family at that point) When we all let go and waltzed with the night sky (I’ve never felt so free and alive) The ones we would never forget I would get up at 6am just to see the sky be pink for a few minutes And get the sweetest, fruitiest tea at the store And drink it in the sun Honey one day, on a rainy tuesday in a city coffee shop maybe, Maybe under the lights of the stars in Arizona, (you will go to these places someday, you’ve always wanted to) You will realize that you did fall in love that summer, But it was with yourself and the way that you and life fit together like puzzle pieces, He was there to simply watch the beautiful show, And what an ending, oh what an ending, when you must leave him behind, To go run off with life.
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Core
Raphael Figueroa
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A.M. Cody Hosek
Waking up comes with the sound of scratching: crotches / dandruff / lotto tickets / serial numbers / accompanied by the pop of gum bubbles and the minty heat of his mouth that envelops the senses like a waterfall composed entirely of yawn breath. Waking up comes with the wiping of eyes wondering how I can tell him that I want to rocket ship coin flip frothy champagne grip his thigh and pull him back before he leaves again, wondering how I can tell him I forgive him because I see him the way shine catches brass in those old black and white shots of musicians that make horns look like flames caught in film, that I think I get jazz now, wanting to tell him I’d wish he’d stop sleeping with gum in his mouth—that I’d take his morning breath every last day of my life before I’d start one more without it, laughing, telling him that he makes me want to white flag doggie bag saddlebag ragtag shag and it’s silly because for once in my life, I don’t even care that I can’t dance.
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Mountains
Haley Jones
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O Small One: Be Impressed or Impress Yourself Cierra Townson
There’s a resonant feeling of smallness that absolutely overwhelms me when I look outside through the window from the comfort of my bed, gazing into that vast expanse of everything. There’s just a particular je ne sais quoi to feeling that small at times. I feel especially itty-bitty when I realize that my gaze doesn’t really reach beyond what I’m looking at immediately before me. You know that realization: that one that occurs to you when you look at an enormous, billowing cloud or a sky absolutely riddled with stars or the edge of the woods lined with looming trees or a large stretch of road with no other cars on it or a path that seemingly doesn’t host another living being. You know that realization, teensy-weensy one. It’s a feeling that pricks you like a needle, a feeling filling a simple thimble, reminding our modest beings to be humble. We’re so tiny, us wee mites, that we have to pack that valuable lesson of smallness within us. Our bitty existences do not match our enormous considerations. What ever could I mean, you with your little voice probably question . . . probably. I mean to say that stunted though we are, our tiny minds and tiny bodies reach. Dwarfed though we are, our tiny minds and tiny bodies grow. I mean to say that however much our fisheye views overwhelm us, continuing to realize that everything is larger than us, we do nothing to reinforce our smallness but everything to accept and extend beyond it. I mean to say, really, that we aren’t determined or at all deterred by our size! We accept our condition. Your indignation, spirited sprite, is apparent. You demand to know what your condition is. Well, so do I. Yet we’ve known what our condition is and what it will always be. That smallness that we know, that we embody— that smallness is the human condition. We are belittled by the enormity of the universe and such other conceptions that we cannot fully grasp; we are allocated limited space and time; we are situated within a far-reaching network that extends beyond us; we are stricken with a sense of futility and insignificance; we are given a mind without means and means without mind; we just are. You go over all of these human terms of acknowledgement, making yourself big— enormous. Though we are tiny humans, we are only limited by our size, but not when we know our limits. When we realize them, we can reach our limits, take up every centimeter between them, and break free of them. In realizing our smallness, we become greater than ourselves. Woah! I hope you’re not overwhelmed, small one. I told you about that valuable lesson. That smallness that we feel is the acknowledgement of our limits, how we are limited in comparison to everything else. Perhaps this is all too abstract; let’s put it all into perspective. We’re small—especially small when compared to things we cannot understand or fully grasp. Take the universe for example. It’s so large, unexplored, unknown—it’s infinite. Take the concept of love for example. It’s so overpowering, unexpected, unrelenting—it takes on innumerable forms and cannot be explained simply or at all. These concepts and 63 | CHRONICLE • SPRING 2017
constructs make us small. We live for only a short time—mere decades—and are given a small expanse of space to reside in: our bodies. We are made microscopic in the scope of our network, that which extends to those people that we have associated with and impacted and been impacted by. We may die at any moment and life will inevitably go on because we’re too small to be significant to that vast network and those networks that others have. We have a lot of big ideas without ways to implement them, and there are a lot of things that we could do that we just haven’t the capacity to think of yet. All of these terms of smallness, our condition, our human existence—we acknowledge. Hark back to that valuable lesson! Why should I be belittled by concepts larger than myself, merely live within a small expanse, subsisting; situate myself within a vast network, becoming anonymous; accomplish very little when given too little means and too little mind—why should I just be small?— all questions you ask as you’re forced to accept that lesson of smallness! Fight back against that valuable lesson, little nymph! When we remind ourselves of our smallness, we humble ourselves, but in humbling ourselves we have the ability to teach ourselves our own limitations. We don’t need to be taught our limits. We know our limits. We realize our limits when we walk through life and see so many structures and so many people. We are pinned down by that feeling of smallness initially, struck and seized by that smallness, overwhelmed by that smallness!—but only initially— at the beginning. You appreciate your smallness when it hits you so, but then you extend beyond it by acknowledging that smallness does limit you. O small one. You reach outside of your limits because you don’t want to embody that lesson of smallness. You learn from it, sure, but only to guide the journey outside of your limits. You continue to defy those conditions set for you, finding ways to grasp immense concepts, to immortalize yourself, to live vicariously through empathy, to determine what you mean to others, to think bigger and better, and to strive at length to make those thoughts reality. We continue to look out into the vast expanse of everything and try to grasp how it extends beyond us. We continue to leave our mark on human existence, living beyond death. We continue to live outside of ourselves in trying to understand others. We continue to characterize ourselves as individuals so as to not lose ourselves within our networks. We continue to come up with things that we can’t implement yet and then try to do what we can with what we have at the moment. We, in our smallness, continue to disregard our limitations to ultimately become bigger than we have ever been before. We are impressed with the idea of smallness but impress ourselves regardless.
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Karen Doesn’t Believe in Objective Science “Studies Show You Have No Friends” Rowan Lynam KAREN: Why only take one sleeping pill? Take fifteen. Never wake up. SELF: Thanks for that advice, Karen. I’ll pass. There is no light here – palmed the evening and a month’s prescription, set them cooling over the eyelid, so that it was heavy the room undone by overhead fan and the distant siren this the afterlife of mermaid song that unmoored ships drifting water risen to the upper lip lulled to sleep in the dark KAREN: Crash the car. Take it 90 on a sharp turn flip the car and-SELF: I don’t take driving advice from soccer moms. Wake / in / stages developing photographs pulled too early into light, the faces of the parents smeared, dilating with color the eye finds it hard to blink through the smell of hospital the brain a scratched disc skipskipskipskip three days the/body/will/wake/in/stages the body hears: Don’t wake up at all KAREN: You’ll never know love. There is no door to the room – youth ward bright and sterile through the window, lay it horizontal on a plastic mattress, so you can’t hide from it under the sheets the hand
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cramps from mandatory journal entry sleep now and dream of floating in the darkest water a tank with no edge outside the mother says something the floating body cannot hear SELF: It’s like treading water with a weighted belt – there is only a second of time to float. There is the routine abandon of the muscles. There is briefly going under. You never get the belt off. You never touch the bottom of the tank. You just tread. A forest turns in on itself, refracting (((hall of mirrors))) the same patch of leaves in a different order above the promise of stars, here the body achieves stasis calmed by unlit cigarettes the fingers shakes less the grandmother tells stories of the heaving breath of the ground in out the earth breathes with you here and for a moment all is silent KAREN: Don’t forget to miss me in the quiet moments, when you almost feel like you’re floating. Maybe your musculature has grown numb and you cannot feel yourself working to stay above the water. But I am here. Tucked in a back drawer without a lock. It’s so easy to unfurl myself, drape myself over you so that my eyes align with yours. My mouth enveloping, tasting, speaking. Your teeth become mine. Where do I begin? Don’t / get / lost / out / there there is no path or light to see by and the compass spins the mother knows about the problem of reverberation how to tell which way a voice comes from when through the trees there are only more trees the mind an echo echo echo chamber for the darkest voices CHRONICLE • SPRING 2017 | 66
KAREN: Buy a pocketknife, mostly dull but sharp enough to prick the skin with pressure. Use it to draw on the outside of the calf, where jeans easily cover. Promise to throw it away. Don’t. Keep it in your sock drawer. Pull it out every three months, just to look at it. Promise.
On the atomic level, the body is frenetic, and emptiness exists only in the smallest spaces between electrons and the nuclei the cavity of the mouth haunted the illusion of absence and individual swept aside the state of isolation imagined and yet and yet SELF: Her voice and mine cohabitate – so same it’s hard to tell them apart. Science tells us that the depressive brain misfires its instant signals in the amygdala and that that puts an unasked for thought in the mind. Intrusion within the body. The brain stages intervention on its own time. Vivisection might show a small shell tucked into the folds of the brain, against the inner ear it hears the ocean when the body can’t the threat of riptide the father knows how to ride the backs of hurricane waves and the trick is to know its coming KAREN: I have had many names Dark lingers beyond the sun, always they say zeus feared none but him invisible hand the lingering over the brow the lonely procreation from nyx and they say, even then, there were names spliced onto disorder in the brain moros a haunt when hypnos fails for sleep the hands of gods left stains on me
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Engraven Image Hannah Cupp CHRONICLE • SPRING 2017 | 68