Conceptions Southwest 2019

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Copyright Š 2019 Conceptions Southwest Published by the Student Publications Board at the University of New Mexico.

Permission to reproduce or publish part or all of any material in this issue must be obtained in writing from the individual author, artist, composer, or creator.

All rights revert to contributors upon publication. issn 1048-8790 c/o Student Publications msc03-2230 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, nm 87131-0001 Printed by Starline Printing 7111 Pan American Freeway ne Albuquerque, nm 87109 505-345-8900 Cover design by Joshua Rysanek Cover image, Luis Alonso VelĂĄsquez, Colonia el Hoyo de Las Lomas. 5 de Noviembre del 2017, Honduras,

by Martin Wannam Magazine design by Joshua Rysanek, Larson Fritz, Grace McNealy, Zoe Perls, and Nathaniel Perry 700 copies of this magazine set in Adobe Jenson Pro, Interstate Mono, and Soleil Copies and back issues are available in the Daily Lobo Classified Advertising Office, Marron Hall, Room 107. The csw office is located in Marron Hall, Room 225. To order copies, please contact us at csw@unm.edu or visit csw.unm.edu.

Concept Conceptions Southwest is the fine arts and literary magazine created by and for the University of New Mexico community. Its staff consists entirely of student volunteers, directed by an editor in chief who operates under the auspices of the unm Student Publications Board. Csw welcomes submissions from all unm undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education students; faculty; staff; and alumni.

Acknowledgements The past and present students involved in student publications at unm have been the basis for the continuation of csw, and csw gratefully acknowledges their participation and support. Csw thanks the Associated Students of the University of New Mexico (asunm) and the Graduate Professional Student Association (gpsa) for funding and the Student Publications Board for its continuing advocacy and encouragement. Csw stands in solidarity with the community of student publications on campus including Best Student Essays, the Daily Lobo, and Scribendi. Csw extends gratitude to all who have and continue to give form to its concept. Special thanks to Dr. Leslie Donovan, Amaris Ketcham, Becky Maher, Matthew McDuffie, Daven Quelle, Carolyn Souther, and Martin Wannam.

to beginnings and ends

Josh Rysanek — Editor in Chief Larson Fritz — Editorial Assistant Grace McNealy — Associate Editor Zoe Perls — Editorial Assistant Nathaniel Perry — Design Staff unm student publications staff Daven Quelle — Business Manager Carolyn Souther — Unit Administrator unm student publications board Monica Briones — Asunm President Representative Taylor Bui — Gpsa Representative Brendon Gray — Asunm President Representative Amaris Ketcham — Unm President Representative Selina Montoya — Asunm Senate Representative Cindy Pierard — Faculty Senate Representative Andrea Solis — Spj Student Representative Robert Trapp — Nm Press Association Representative campus comrades Alyssa Aragon — Editor in Chief, Scribendi Hyunju Blemel — Managing Editor, Scribendi Kyle Land — Editor in Chief, Daily Lobo Indu Roychowdhury — Editor in Chief, Best Student Essays

I

like to think of Conceptions Southwest as a breath—the forty-one-years-and-running operation, an utterance of the ceaseless rhythm attending the unconscious artistic life—a deep breath, a pause.

The annual ritual of csw carves space in the cacophony of university life. It gives us a chance to reflect on what’s happened and what’s ahead, but also to have presence in the present—to realign.

If csw is the breath, then the unm community is its body. And as breath, as oxygen, csw holds potential for the submitters, the staff, the public, and the university at large.

All stand to benefit; yet, so far, by far, most have not. Our lungs fill with air; they empty; the breath goes on without our attention, sometimes without our volition.

If we are to realize this magazine’s potential, we must learn the art of breathing, to recognize that we live on air and in it too. The air envelopes us. We move in it and it around us. Inhale and exhale. Absorb and release. Cyclicality and reciprocity—innate connection. We must take account of the breath—its universality, its invisibility, its paradox—unify process and outcome, to ensure breathing never becomes its own obstruction. The betterment of our university literature and arts magazine will require care and gratitude for the persistent creative condition.

For long csw has been a whisper, when it could be a shout—reverberant and free.

By design, as a publication made by students for students, csw inhabits a position of freedom on campus. csw has the capacity to amplify, to illuminate, to delve deeper still, and, like cold air, to capture the breath that was there all along.

With this edition, as each before, csw takes a new breath. I see csw 2019 pleasing; I see it annoying; I see it stimulating—stirring the winds of art and literature at unm.

On these pages live shadows and light, imaginative spaces and cosmic cats—what’s happening in art and literature at unm. Dear reader, breathe in. Breathe out.

contents

Comics Heather Hay______________________ 80 Kelsey Rust________________________ 31 Creative Nonfiction Leia Barnett ________________________ 22 Hyler Bowman ______________________ 74 Keriden Brown ______________________ 14 Poetry Cathy Cook _____________________ 63, 78 Trinity Koch _______________________ 18 Maxine Porter ______________________ 10 Josh Tise ___________________ 1, 8, 56, 85 Screenplay Sally S. Savage______________________ 43 Short Fiction Tori Cárdenas ______________________ 39 Jillian Kovach _____________________ 3, 35 Josh Tise __________________________ 25

Architecture

Siavash Rezaei _____________________ 32 Photography Nick CdeBaca ____________________ 2, 70 Hyunju Blemel ___________________ 38, 66 Douglas Brandt _________________ 68, 69 Zack Daniels _______________________ 12 Katrina Dutt _______________________ 62 Sierra Greenlee ______________________ 67 Noah Hickerson _____________________ 79 Logan Monroe ______________________ 61 Sarah Northrop _____________________ 34 Luisa Pennington ____________________ 37 Elizabeth Pflieger _________________ 17, 20 Paul Talley ________________________ 64 Nora Vanesky ______________________ 19 Alexandria Wiesel ________________ 58, 84 Video Julie Mowrey _______________________ 72 Visual Art Robbin Lou Bates ____________________ 57 Nick CdeBaca ______________________ 71 Ibra Dominguez _____________________ 13 Linda Holland ______________________ 16 Alex Kinney _________________________ 9 Amanda Magel _____________________ 60 Lucas Zuniga _______________________ 24

there it is— no more words here we have left behind babel. ugly ruins— “some evidence of human desire but no more” two who loved feel more lone slow separation of themselves the self-same alienation winds its way recursively back again— figure eight of brutal lonely human lack— one raises his fist from the fifth-floor window cannot speak for long— exeunt. et triumph how a body hurtles down from this height the second the anxious hand clapping against itself spectators are irreparably moved and salute an eerie unison in the square—all go home pray for the chance to see this again more clearly strict severe need for speech—from this vantage point god goes but slightly— and in a dumb tight circle.

Performance at Babel

Josh Tise

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nick cdebaca | veil, 35mm film

I

f there was one thing Perry knew, it was that he was virtuous.

He didn’t steal, he paid his bills on time, and he even allowed his elderly neighbor, Mrs. Stevens, to use him as a cheap errand boy.

He also once tossed a spider out the window instead of stomping it to death under his Doc Martens. That’s just who Perry was, take it or leave it.

Yet, like most people, there came a time when Perry grabbed a knife, waited until his bandmates fell asleep, walked out to the parking lot, and slashed their car tires.

Well, actually he hesitated before the first of his potential vehicular victims, a gray 2014 Mercedes e350. It had been a highschool graduation gift, its owner—their singer, Nick—once told Perry, a graduation gift he kept in pristine condition without even a touch of sun damage. Every Sunday after he recovered enough from his hangover, Nick would come outside with a bucket of sponges and car wax and shine his Mercedes until it glowed. A habit his father had taught him, Nick said, a habit Perry could take over for five dollars a week.

All the more reason to slash its tires, right?

Not exactly, because Perry didn’t slash them. He didn’t even slash three of the four as per that one Tumblr post that said insurance only covered tire slashes if all four were ruined, leaving the targeted party on their own to purchase three spanking new tires. Having never known someone in such a position, Perry couldn’t attest to the post’s accuracy, but he could at least try to make his bandmates suffer.

But that was it: try.

Perry had almost resolved to vandalism when a sound like a gunshot sent him sprawling to the asphalt, army-crawling beneath the Mercedes for cover, knife forgotten. Unfortunately, the vehicle’s underside had also become the night’s den for a moody raccoon, and for the sake of his face, Perry decided to crawl back out from under the car and face the shooter instead.

Except the night was still. No lights had been turned on in the apartment complex, and no dogs barked. To the world, the gunshot had never happened.

“In other words, we are not the world.”

Perry yelped a note even his prepubescent self could never have reached, but his panic dipped when he saw the speaker on the car's opposite side. The voice and body implied man, though the body itself was draped in a well-kept, flamingo-pink bathrobe, a beer gut distending its midsection. The man wore slippers in the same shade as the bathrobe and white tube socks, also in exquisite condition. The man’s legs were otherwise bare, borderline shaved, as if all the hair that should’ve grown on his legs had migrated to the massive beard bibbing his chest. This was not what surprised Perry most; however, for above the scraggly beard, watery eyes, and receding hairline, resided a glowing halo, white gold and

short fiction

We Are Not the World

Jillian Kovach

warm, accented by two strip-club-red devil horns protruding from the man’s head.

Perry blinked once, then twice, and when this peculiar man did not go away, he asked the most obvious question: “Can I help you?”

“Other way around, buddy,” the man said.

“I’m actually here to—hold on—” The man squinted hard and unleashed a noxious cloud of fart into the night, nearly tinging the air green and muggy. “Sorry ’bout that, had to try the new blizzard of the month, but yes, I’m here to help you.”

The smell triggered Perry’s gag reflex, but he was too polite to let it on. To hide his dryheaving, he glanced toward his apartment and pondered why the hell he hadn’t just gone to bed like the rest of his household. “Right,” he said as the fart dissipated. He picked the knife up from the ground. “That’s cool. Well, nice talking to you, but I gotta—” “You can leave, but I gotta follow you. I can’t leave until I—” “Well, yeah, that’s the point: if you can’t leave, I will, so see ya.” Perry turned his back to the man in the pink bathrobe and was about to march back up to his apartment when another enormous fart erupted at close range.

“Told you I can’t leave,” the man said, having appeared at the bottom of the staircase.

Fear crawled over Perry’s arms at the rate his nostrils were disintegrating. “Look, dude, I don’t know what you want, but I don’t have any cash and I’m a diehard atheist—” The man belched concussively and patted his chest. “I’ll just get to it: I’m your conscience and I’m here to tell you you’ll regret slashing those tires—and that you might feel better afterward, so it’s whatever you want, man.”

“Uh, what?”

The man sighed and reached into his robe, removing a bound, slightly damp scroll from somewhere near his armpit. He held it out to Perry. “Wanna do the honors?”

Something told Perry that was probably not a good idea. “N-no, don’t let me step on your toes …”

But the man had already unraveled the scroll.

“Introduction, introduction, yadayadayada— here it is.” He burped in lieu of clearing his throat. “Yeah, I don’t feel like reading it.” He stuffed the scroll back into his robe. “Basically, there were a bunch of budget cuts and layoffs and the higher-ups said, ‘Consolidate!’ so we did. Hence this.” The man pointed to his halohorns combo and the pink robe. “They also thought you people could use some outside opinions, thus why you don’t look anything like my beautiful self.”

Perry remained silent for a moment. “So you’re … technically someone else’s conscience?”

“I’m the best you got, kid.” The man produced a lighter from his outer pocket and held it against his back end, farting an arch of flame around himself like a banner. “Ta-da.”

“Right, that’s, um … impressive.” If this really was Perry’s new conscience, then he must’ve been slipped a tab of acid earlier in the evening; it had happened before. What his bandmates liked to call a “practical joke” because he “never laughs anymore, you damn buzzkill.”

They had started as just that, bandmates, but one of their impromptu kickbacks rapidly transformed into the three of them moving into Perry’s one-room apartment, followed by their alcohol, someone’s dog, the occasional girlfriend—but how dare Perry ask for rent?

“Fucking hell, man, my name’s not on the lease,” Justin, the drummer, had said just last week. “If you didn’t want me living here you should’ve just said so, asshole.”

Perry did. Many times. In rapid-fire succession.

Perry’s conscience started belching out the alphabet, sustaining D as the last of his gaseousness abated. “So, yeah, do whatever,” he said, “but know that you’ll have to reap the consequences.”

Perry rolled his eyes. “Look, dude, I think it’s great and all you’re manifesting as ….”

He gestured to the robed, lactose-intolerant figure. “But I don’t need to have a conversation with you to figure this shit out.”

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His conscience shrugged. “You will one way or another. So if you don’t mind my asking—” “I do.”

“—what makes you think shanking car tires will solve anything?” His conscience wasn’t going anywhere. Perry rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, collecting the thoughts he’d had in the four months since his bandmates invited themselves over permanently. The initial fun of it vanished within a week, really.

It had something to do with not being able to shower because Ryan was sleeping in the bathtub. Claimed he liked hearing his spine pop back into place when he got up, which was why he also left plastic takeout cartons lying around. Any chance of boredom and there was Ryan, a carton in each hand, clenching them before Perry’s ears as the latter experimented with lyrics and guitar riffs or wrapped a box of chocolates for Mrs. Stevens’s birthday.

“I’ve tried being an adult about this, really, I have,” Perry began. “I’ve asked them to leave, pay rent, or just something to make me want to come home and all that. But they just won’t go away.” Like you, he almost added.

Perry’s conscience nodded in a side-to-side motion. “Understandable,” he said. “It’s kinda like when mothers are at their wit’s end and drive the carload of kids into a lake, right?”

“W-why the—no! Just … no, nothing like that. I’m pissed, not homicidal.”

“So then why don’t you slash their tires?”

“Because it’s wrong.”

“But you’re pissed and there’s a knife in your hand.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s well established.”

“Perry, do you like chocolate or coffee ice cream more?”

“No, I—” The question registered half a second later, and Perry scoffed. If his conscience was the universe’s way of saying he should appreciate the company that had taken over his life, he had half a mind to go back inside and give his bandmates a kiss on the forehead each. Not that it would get rid of them. They were still a pack of fucking freeloaders and always would be.

His conscience coughed and gagged on whatever came up. “God, that tasted awful—but yeah, chocolate or coffee?”

Perry sighed. His arms hung at his sides, swinging in close passes. “Coffee, I guess.”

His conscience farted something huge, his lucky lighter again creating flames that now engulfed them both.

“And why do you like it?”

Upon realizing his was not a fiery death, Perry said, “Because I just do. Chocolate can be too rich, but coffee’s light enough so I don’t feel like ripping my tongue out.”

“What’s one thing you wish you could change about coffee ice cream?”

He shrugged. “More coffee flavor? I don’t know. Why are you asking me this anyway?”

“Because ice cream is a lot easier to talk about than slashing your bandmates’ tires.

Don’t you think?”

“No, I think I’ve had enough.” Perry looked to the darkened sky, trying to find stars beyond the flickering light the streetlamp left in his gaze. “I just don’t know what the hell to do to make them listen. I can’t even listen to myself. It’s all just a jumble of fuck.” His fist clenched the knife. “I need to do something. I can’t live like a fucking slave anymore.”

“You’re not a slave, Perry,” his conscience said quietly. “I know you know because you just said it, but I think you should start acting like a grown man rather than a slave looking for freedom.” Blissfully, he did not treat Perry to a David Hasselhoff impression. “Think of it like the ice cream. You love your coffee, but you don’t hate the chocolate completely.

There’s a bit of good in both, even though you can’t handle a lot of chocolate and too much coffee is still fattening. Both the good and the bad in each flavor, though in different amounts. Chocolate or coffee? Which do you prefer to live with until you die?”

And so he left Perry with a little something called perspective, that beautiful thing where you’re forced to step away from your crossroads

5

and examine the features of yourself that led you to them in the first place. Positionality, as some may call it. If Perry were in a better mood, he’d have remembered the term and used it as a song title. But for now, his grip on the knife handle loosened. The man in the pink robe had a point.

“But I mean … even though you’re all up in my head now and freaking me out, you were someone else first. What would that guy do?” “…”

Keep silent, apparently.

Perry turned to face the stairway, but there wasn’t a pink-robed figure in sight, nor any evidence of one’s presence.

“Oh, fuck you, man,” Perry said. He shook his head and stood up, finding no relief in his irritation. Really, annoying as the guy was, that was his conscience. It was the dude’s job to listen to his complaints, as he’d made so abundantly clear. Wasting time wasn’t in the job description, the last Perry had checked.

A rustling in a nearby bush made Perry grip the knife hard again, but he loosened his grip when his conscience came waddling out from behind it.

“Woohoohoo, do not go back there, if you know what I mean,” his conscience announced as he tied his robe around his bulging stomach.

“Hopefully that’s the end of it—” “Get the fuck out of here.” Perry threw the knife at the conscience, aiming for his face.

“Sounds good, see ya!”

Another sound like a gunshot, and the conscience was gone.

The knife clattered on the asphalt, just shy of the bush, but Perry ignored it and marched back inside to the snores of his bandmates. As always, Nick and Justin were crashed on the couch, surrounded by empty chip bags and bottles of cheap vodka. The open bathroom door revealed Ryan curled up in the tub with his hand dangling to the tile floor. Together, their three distinct snores harmonized better than their waking voices.

Perry glanced at his empty hands and then back to his bandmates. He had to admit: like this, they almost resembled children, tuckered out and warm after a day of hair-pulling and misery. They were at peace in holey socks and spare blankets given to them in generosity and, perhaps, genuine concern.

And Perry?

A slave.

Long before any of his asshole bandmates had moved in, he was Perry. Nowhere between the P and the Y did “slave” or “little bitch” appear. Just “err.”

Something human.

“Well, you could be really awesome and change your name to Janis Hendrix Schulman.”

Perry glanced over his shoulder, reminded his thoughts weren’t private that evening. “Do I want to know?”

“Yeah, Janis Hendrix Schulman, Lil’ j.h.s., call her what you will. She’s my next stop.

Gone through four of us already, she’s so stubborn, though the last one did get her to—” “Dude, that’s great, but I kinda don’t give a shit. I’m supposed to be figuring myself out over here, right?”

“Oh, yes, please, do continue.” His conscience began a set of squats, a fart accenting each bend of his knees.

Turning his back again, Perry gathered his thoughts around him like a bouquet, but where they were once vibrant they were now dead, petals peeling and dying all around him.

Yeah, perspective was nice and all, but that didn’t change the fact that there was a knife in his hand and vengeance on his mind.

“I just want something to go my way for a change,” he whispered. “I want to play in a band that doesn’t use me. I want to be sure of myself rather than talk all this crap out with you—no offense—like a tweaker.

Normal people don’t talk out loud like this, right? I mean, from what you said, normal people don’t exist anymore since they have to rely on each other to feel sane again, but what about feeling like yourself? I feel like a hallucinating pushover.” He sat on the curb.

6

A pushover.

Incapable of listening even to himself. “Chocolate or coffee?�

Standing over his bandmates, hovering like a winged being fallen then risen, Perry left his frustrations out with the knife in the parking lot. They were all human. Spiteful and greedy, but human. Besides, the lease was his.

He could always just break it.

For the first time in months, Perry settled down into bed with comfort in his chest.

He even dreamed of the new blizzard of the month, which he ate while wearing a pink robe and matching slippers.

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War Tender Josh Tise

after you think a cruel thought: i would like to see you in the middle of war— you admit some embarrassment and cover yourself with a war sheet some have described the sight as new ghost in the field. stand in the dead center and shout thee

going brightly on and on— everyone who sees this solitary mourns little by little

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alex kinney | the ventriloquist, acrylic and ink on paper, 2' × 1½'

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Psychopomp Dreams

Maxine Porter

1 Your body had no name when they found you balled up in the bottom console drawer in your hotel room. No one can figure out how you got there or who might know.

Everybody wants to know how a twenty-two-year-old from Wisconsin with a half-finished master’s and such slim arms could have pulled out the drawer and shut herself in, and did you know that it takes two people to do so? They tried.

2 We met in a fever dream first. I searched the hotel ballroom for a lost gold ring, combing the carpet eagerly. The ice bucket dripped as you stepped into my vision, looking over your shoulder from every angle as I pursued you.

You took the far exit and I never caught up. I knew it would be the last time I (Who was I?) would see you, but it was not the last time I (as I am now) would strain against sleep to reach out a hand to your shoulder and wake up, arm outstretched above me.

Each dream in its own way is different, but each dream is also the same.

3 You are not the first girl without a name to be found in the rooms of this hotel, so strange in death. Three years ago: a man on the roof found shot through the base of his neck, with what, we don’t quite know. And last year: renovations revealed a girl and her dog in the walls.

One night I play solitaire on a fold-up table and sit on the bed as the room fills up with smoke.

You stand in the corner, curled over, half facing me. I flip the top card of the deck expecting Death or Judgement, but instead I see the hanged man, 1963, the belt and bruising.

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4 No one visited you until your parents at the morgue. By then the authorities knew your name by the Wisconsin state id trapped in the wallet warped by the shape of your hip, tucked between travelling money and neatly folded receipts, reading: libra ortiz.

You own nothing lying on the steel table, but your phone shows fifty-five voicemail messages from your mother and ten from your father—neither of whom know one is calling you when the other is asleep or at work or out of the room, just to hear your bored, distorted voice say: “This is Libra, you know the drill.”

5 But how would I know. I am not from Milwaukee. I have never left home, cruising down the coast of California, bags packed, stashed in the back, and all alone. I know only what you tell me from the corner of this hotel room.

You hold the scales and ask me a question I can never recall when I wake up.

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zack daniels | from connecticut, 35mm film

ibra dominguez | chasm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 5' × 4'

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S

Growth

Keriden Brown

tudies indicate that houseplants reduce stress.

That thought meanders around in my head while I lay curled up on my left side, in bed after an anxiety-induced tear session. I turn to look at my healthy little pothos, cursing the damn thing for letting me down. Again.

I think long about how you’re supposed to talk nicely to plants and about that experiment that shows how hurtful words can be toxic to water and, by extension, to plants.

“Fuck you, Harold.” The co2 from my breath is enough to help him breathe a bit. It doesn’t really matter if it came from a curse word. MythBusters proved that talking to plants, kindly or not, will produce very similar effects.

Fucking plant.

I worm farther under the comforter and stare at the wall.

It is yellowy tan and smooth. My eyes roll up toward the ceiling that looks like popcorn’s coming out of the flat surface.

In this blank-slate phase, everything about my home is hideous.

It feels like I want to go home, even though I’m in my own onebedroom apartment. This hideous place is not home.

Not right now. Right now, I’m here but only just.

Being a cocoon steeped in your own thoughts takes you weird places; like, you think your pothos, Harold, needs to be pruned because he could get leggy.

But vines can’t get leggy, and that bothers me. It bothers me that Harold grew oversaturated in the lush, peaty soil I bought and that he’s too dry without it. It bothers me that he'd sooner die from too much love than of the low-sun legginess of neglect.

Harold is bothersome.

I’m the same as Harold, and he is the same as me.

I’m a difficult houseplant. I think about how, perhaps, I stress Harold out because I’m like him but with more complicated emotions; like somehow he can’t relate to me the way I’m currently relating to him.

I bring the hood of my pull-over onto my head and roll myself onto my back, to my right side, and finally onto my stomach on the opposite side of the bed.

I stick my hand out from the comforter and touch Harold’s pot where it sits on my nightstand. It’s cool.

“I’m sorry, Harold.”

My arm snakes its way back into the sea of covers.

I want … comfort? to be alone? The answer in this featureless state of mind of mine is always both.

Hmm … Yeah. Both …

I swing my legs out of bed and become fully aware of the temperature difference between the free room air and what was trapped under the sheets. I stand and adjust my panties to cover my ass. Most of it, at least.

creative nonfiction

I stumble to the kitchen to stare at the different teas that live in my pantry.

Both. Warm and alone.

Inside the pantry, the boxes stare intently at my glossed expression. I glance passively at their labels: Sleepytime, Peppermint Green, Cinnamon, Sleepytime Extra, Earl Grey, Lemon Zinger…

What would Harold like?

I grab the coffeepot and fill it with tap water from my leaky sink. While I wait for the water to reach the 12 line, I consider how a plant would take its tea. Personally, I take it with a bit of cream and some honey, but today that won’t cut it.

I gingerly pour the glass carafe’s contents into the back of the coffee maker. The crimped paper filter fits tightly in the basket. It easily holds nine tablespoons of ground coffee, but I only use seven.

I sit on the floor below the gurgling brew against the cabinet, legs outstretched, feet touching the wall across from me in my narrow kitchen. The heaviness crawls back up into my chest forcing an unwanted lump into my throat.

Fuck. I tip my chin forward and back tapping the back of my head on the cabinet repeatedly.

Not now. My breath comes deep. Slow. If I don’t regulate, I’ll hyperventilate again.

Harold… I hunch my shoulders forward and press my palms into the hardwood floor.

I rock my weight from arm to arm trying to manage my breath.

Come on, Harold. It takes a minute for me to stand. My legs feel like they haven’t been stood on in years. Bambi legs have historically been a result of pleasure, but today I’m just weak. I don’t even characteristically adjust the lace on my butt.

“Haro-old … .” I lean against the door frame and stare at the viny pothos sitting near the bed. I sigh. “Let’s go.”

I lift him into my arms, careful not to crush his leaves against my body. I shush the small plant as I make my way back to the kitchen, pausing only at the door frame to lean again.

“Well, we did it.” Harold sits on the quartzite counter next to the coffeepot. The coffee is only at the 8 line and still dripping when I grab myself a mug from the cabinet.

When I remove the pot, some drops fall on the hotplate and seethe until they evaporate with the heat.

I press my shoulder into a high shrug by leaning on the counter and bring the black coffee to my face with my free hand. The inhale brings that spicy earth smell into my body. It’s revitalizing. It feels nice.

I look sideways at Harold: on the counter where I usually bring him when I need both.

The coffeepot is filled to the 10 and it has stopped its slow brew.

Fuck it. I grab another cup from the cabinet above, fill it halfway with coffee, and top it off with cold tap water.

I bring my coffee to my face and prepare for the long draught. I check the temperature of the watery half-brew with my pinky and dump it on Harold.

“Cheers.”

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linda holland | cache, acrylic on canvas, 24" × 18"

elizabeth pflieger | lake eerie, digital

17

It used to be funny when I wrote “motivation” on the grocery list but now you read it and sigh, say, “I don’t think I can get this at Walmart.”

I’m not asking you to look there.

I’m asking you to help me.

Sorry for being unclear.

So I don’t write it down anymore.

I let it fade from our memories until it’s nothing more than an uncomfortable giggle, until I am nothing more than the sum of everything that I am not.

A Matter of Perception Trinity Koch

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nora vanesky | validation, digital

elizabeth pflieger | a winter park, digital

H

The Fewest Number of Assumptions Leia Barnett

er eyes are curvaceous brown almonds, so similar in shape to her father’s. I feel weak sometimes marveling at these genetic consistencies. I am not a mother. May not ever be a mother. I’ve never been moved to bear children out of some deep reverence for the “miracle” of the creation of life. While the delicacy of the reproductive process is worthy of awe, it is also simplistic in nature: life begets life. The evolutionary engine, forever forwardmoving, grasps onto those shifts that are advantageous for perpetuation of self and, subsequently, perpetuation of species.

Standing in the vacant guesthouse where he (this member of the other sex who is my chosen mate) does his laundry, I fold his daughter’s underwear and notice the russet stains in the crotch.

She and I, we are women and we bleed and we bleed because perpetuation of ourselves is imperative, uncompromising and unconditional. This synchrony moves through me as a tide of biological sharedness, a slow-growing flush of evolutionary symmetry, life’s unwavering commitment to life. She is a young woman, swept up in the flurrying rush of building a social identity; staring down the impossible expanse of the future’s unknowing, she bandies about in the winds of possibility. “I’ll do my premed in Texas,” she says, “maybe I’ll be a surgeon.”

My beliefs about the human-induced suffocation of the planet are extreme, almost fundamental. Just because we can reproduce doesn’t mean we should. Such unequivocally evolved conscious beings, it’s time for us to recognize the great responsibility of choice. We can choose. I can choose. Knowing this, believing in it from the tangled roots of my being, does not switch off the biological desperation to procreate. I careen through my thirties, precariously swerving into bouts of grief at the prospect of selfimposed childlessness then into solemn, lonely devastation as the season of winter retreats further and further each year, the mountains that framed my youth seeming to wither under the stresses of some alien climate. We are all parched.

The first real snow comes in February. Born into this dryness, I love the unapologetic sparseness of the high-desert landscape, but the aridity of December and January wore on me like heavy penitence. I’m not afraid to say it: we should all wear this hair shirt.

The discomfort and shame of participating in the degradation of our home should fondle us in our sleep, pry open our eyes and cause us to writhe with an uncompromising urgency to tend to the places that offer restorative quiet, to move slowly through the spaces that make us feel small and blessedly unimportant, to sit in humility because we came from it all and will return to it all and it’s all of us and in us and resonant of what we know as “wild.” We are wild, wildness, wilderness, a conglomeration of biota giving rise to awareness, a whorl of hormones and tissues. We are complex beyond understanding yet simpler than

creative nonfiction

we’ll ever know. We seek belonging and, in belonging, self-identification, connection, a place in the world—like every other being.

Our insignificance is relief, a deep quenching realization that perhaps we matter far less than we’d like to believe: specks, universal dust mites.

It is an argument for planetary preservation but also for the preservation of my heart, for the space that opens up inside me as he laughs with his children, experiences that umbilicus of knowing and being known that comes in the eyes of a child; he sees an ontogeny that I may never see. I inspect my emotional labyrinth curiously, the inscrutable sadness that moves in me like a great symphony, a cacophony of hormones. But is the explanation so simple?

Occam’s razor: choose the answer that requires the fewest number of assumptions.

Yet I want it to be more complex than this.

This twisting cord of longing within me, this knotted desire to select my own genetic legacy and press it forward into some future, no matter how bleak or uncertain it may seem, must be made of something deeper than prodigious survival mechanisms; it must have arisen from the glittering expanse of feminine consciousness, that mothering, nurturing, caregiving, baby-holding, breastfeeding magic that swirls in empowered spirals through our current moment.

But I am too much of a skeptic to fully surrender to that identity. I believe in the macroscopic explanatory power of evolutionary theory, not because it answers all the questions like some dogmatically dry doctrine, but because it lends itself to the incredible symbiosis of beings and becomings, strategies and accidents, statistical significances and stochastic stumblings, an interconnectedness that reverberates with the circular perfection of the first prokaryote. We are all swamp creatures; we should collapse our binary obsessions with difference and find the sweet warmth of an ultimate shared beginning and a definitive shared end.

These are the entangled branches of my process: a creature of reproductive means attempting biological mutiny under the auspices of “greater purpose” and “ecological salvation.” Sometimes, I feel folded inside out, the seam that marks the truth lost in the wrinkles of wants and needs and externalities.

How do we stitch together the thing that we want and the thing that we choose when the edges seem mismatched and frayed? Or were the edges really ever there at all?

I trudge on, deeply in love with this man, this father, who has raised his children, watched their soft fuzzy heads pressed into this world through the blood and the mucus, felt their little fingers grasp his own as they step into the precarious balance of being. He has had a vasectomy, has felt the impossible weight of those sleepless nights, babies crying, needing, always needing; he doesn’t want it again. “That’s fair,” I say, feeling my own need welling up inside me, a meniscus of desire and doubt dissolving into one another, cresting the rim of my rational self, spilling over as torrents of emotion, a potent solution lacking resolution. “That’s fair.”

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lucas zuniga | gaunt, chalk pastels, charcoal, and pen on paper, 9' × 10'

Pick a Human Thing

Josh Tise

O

ne thing I am quite certain of is that I am a man. Perhaps a boy. It depends on how someone believes that border is crossed—whether by age or experience or an event that marks a clear difference. I have heard that in some cultures boys must leap over a fire to become men, or behead something still living, or accomplish some other dangerous, erotic thrill.

This breathless chase seems somewhat girlish to me. I like to sit and stare out my one small window. I broke my arm once, in third grade—far too early for it to count toward my manhood.

The reason I am positive of my gender is because I have a dick. I am mostly aware of it because of its near-total uselessness, in spite of the organ’s storied prowess and importance to the continued existence of man. Its uselessness fascinates me, because this seems completely right to me. I understand that this is not right at all. It exists between my legs and is never used but to piss.

What other purpose could it possibly serve? is the question it seems to beg.

I know, of course, the electric sort of sex current running through everything around me. Someone reaches out an arm at the park I can see from my window to grab at a flowering bush with these dexterous, powerful hands of theirs and gasp when they crush it. I imagine the gasp but I see the little recoil that indicates it. It’s almost impossible not to hear it. But there is none of that for me. Men especially are supposed to revel in that crushing moment. This is a lesson I learned from my father, a man I am deeply grateful for. Even still—I am somewhat relieved he is dead. It is difficult not to wonder about whether he would be worried about my potential failure, or inability, to cross over from boyhood.

short fiction

I have tried to build a fire in my front yard, but the neighbor came rushing over, screaming, waving wildly a hose that I was sure wouldn’t be long enough to bridge the gap between our two homes. I was surprised to be wrong about that one.

I start to understand the protocol a bit better when I realize that usually I can discern no clear referent for these guest narrations—to read them is alarming, maybe even distressing, because no real sense can be made from them. My nails are bitten—sometimes even bloodily—down to the nub at least. There’s no way I could allow anyone to read them like this, and the books are often too fragile to support an erasure. Option three: the nuclear, I suppose. This book, in particular, is a pretty dour and sloppy thing regardless. Just read the title.

To be clear, I think this is horribly sad—I am reminded of my always unfinished food going down into the dark hole of the garbage can every day at lunchtime—but the fault belongs to no one. Not the innocent, lovedumb reader and not my superiors with their strict and utter fairness and not mine— definitively. I do not really choose my actions here, I am an employee. And truthfully there’s a real relief in being able to say with certainty: this one is done. Sometimes, when I throw the book in our giant bin labeled soiled materials, I throw it in there with a little extra force. I really use my muscle, just for the thrill. I call it my little violence and I like to think I am doing my sort proud, even if afterwards I treat my next failing object with extra and exact tenderness.

What are you doing? he asked. Are you fucking insane? he asked, and I don’t think he was angry so much as confused because I shared that feeling with him.

It felt to me like a nice moment of connection for us. The hose was barely spurting out its drip of water, and I wanted to put my lips to it and drink, like I did back when I was in a much smaller body, but the force of it was clearly not enough to satisfy anyone’s thirst, and anyway it was fighting an equally weak fire. I said I was sorry and offered a smile. A sort of bemused What’s one to do? was the general feeling I gave off. To be perfectly honest, the whole situation seemed composed nearly entirely of massive over-exaggerations.

I think I am prone to these, but I would have to ask my neighbor to be sure.

I am an archivist when I get down to working, I do not stare out my window all day. In truth, I would like to be an actor. Archivist is even too strong a word, but this is what I’m told I am. It’s possible they use the term librarian.

Most of my day I spend making sure old texts are mark-free and totally pure. I have to be extremely careful with some of these things, but this is something that I excel at. I admit, I am somewhat ashamed of this. Men, after all, are meant to be rough.

It’s a terrible thing but if someone has jotted a little love note in the margins of our copies, the protocol is to trash it. I have never heard of this happening anywhere else—I have my suspicions that I am being played like a fiddle when I am told I need to throw out a failing copy of Charles Williams’s Shadows of Ecstasy because someone has written exactly right! in a blank space on the page.

My musculature is a topic I usually try not to think about. Frankly, it is weak. Three weeks ago I was asked by a woman in a parking lot if I could please help her to load a new dishwasher into her car. I was impressed by the size of both.

To my surprise I said quickly Yes, of course I will, and she said, with a great sigh of relief, Thank you so much. I didn’t tell her at the time, but I thought the thanks were premature, and this was proven absolutely correct, or nearly so, depending on whether she is the type of person who gives thanks simply because the thought, the intention of help has been offered, or only when real and actual help has been

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rendered. No matter how many times I twisted my body or heaved or grunted or felt sweat pooling in the small of my back, we could not lift the appliance. I said with a laugh Well now your dishes may never get clean. Not laughing, she said I need to get this in my car. It humbled me, this was a serious situation. I could feel my arms burning, now that I realized how serious this was, and I could tell by how frighteningly badly they hurt that they were not making the cut. The woman called out to others who walked promptly past and I stood there totally dumb. At one point I said What would you like me to do? and she looked totally surprised, her eyebrows went inward together toward the center of her face, she turned a bright red. She said I don’t care and stared at me, then said it again, I don’t care, and I found it impossible to recognize her. I imagine that, most likely, she's thinking she'd like to see me castrated, which is a fair response.

To this day, three weeks later, I wish I hadn’t have stood there dumb. I could’ve begged someone else for help or walked away and chosen not to let this be my charge any longer. I could’ve been either her or the people walking past. Eventually the dishwasher would have ended up in her car, and the phone call she made to her husband, which was a tearful appeal that he not be mad at her for being so late, would have resolved itself inside her home, where a new dishwasher would have been waiting for things to clean. I admired the force of her conviction to appeal to her husband so strongly and openly, while I stood there, thinking I might try again to pick up the dishwasher, or maybe I should just leave. As much as I would have liked for it to, none of what would happen next required me.

When I was young and my father was alive, he would tell me to flex, he would poke at my tiny arms and just say Jesus, and I was always happy to do this. He would stare at me and he would say Do you understand? and I never said anything back because I had absolutely no clue.

The whole reason for my being there in that parking lot was because I was purchasing movies. I am a fan of Westerns. They are quintessentially American. There is a scene in every cowboy movie where the camera is first focusing on a vast desert landscape, like it’s attached to a helium balloon with perfect equilibrium, staying exactly in one place. The leading man is perhaps or perhaps not the only person in the scene but he is always the most important, even from far away, I can tell, and I lean forward to try and catch an additional bit of detail every time, which doesn’t really help but helps me to feel more part of it all. He has a gun in his hand, which is clear because of how the sun glints off the surface of it, even from this distance. I like to imagine the screenplay says something along the lines of The gun hurts to look at. Then the cut happens and the zoom.

The camera is clipped tight on the cowboy’s face: he is sweating, this is how you know he is a man, he has sweat for this moment. No matter who else is in the scene, they listen to him, and even the noises of the desert stop, the whole set is listening intently to what this man has to say, I imagine everyone on set is leaning forward to take whatever is said next to heart. The speech is usually about justice.

It often ends with a smile and a low slow nod of the head, and despite the gun, despite the heat, despite the sweat, despite the fact that he has just singlehandedly shot dead a score of conniving men, it is monumentally gentle.

Every single person left alive, from the leading lady to the young, bored p.a. offscreen—who I imagine usually sits waiting most of the day, anxious for the chance to bring this man his coffee—wants to fuck him, or be fucked by him, I think.

When I watch this scene for the fourth, fifth, sixth time, I position myself like this: in front of my mirror, my face takes up the righthand side of the glass. In the left is the tv, playing the scene. I alternate between holding my breath until I am forced out of it and breathing in and out like I am panicking, to get the right

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shade of red on my face and the right thin layer of sweat. I recite the lines carefully and hold my right hand down at my side with my fingers clutching a big gun that isn’t there. I do this again and again and get very good at it. I never, ever act out the scene before this, the shooting—though it is something I fear I may have to work my way up to.

even more glad that my father is not alive to see that despite all the one-on-one it has yet to amount to anything. If I had been given a little brother, I think I would have one day tackled him to the ground and pressed his face into the carpet, placed his head into the crook of my arm and held him there until he screamed that the rough, thin carpet was burning his face, and then he would have looked up to me.

It’s possible it might have happened backward, with me in the carpet, saying Okay, okay, you got me. Very good, I admire you.

I would be okay with either outcome, but I would not be able to handle this never happening. If we had both gone through our childhood without violence of any kind, if he were to come into my library with a book totally mark-free and say Thank you, this one was great, it would be unbearable. He should come in and drop it heavily on our returns table and say I couldn’t help myself and I would have to throw it into our soiled materials bin, but I wouldn’t be able to blame him, I would be glad that I have a brother who feels so much it spills over. It’s possible in this scenario I might even be circling passages and writing in the margins this is perfect and reminds me of you. Sometimes as adults we ought to still meet up and reaffirm that one of us can grind the other into the ground. If I had had a sister, I think it would be much the same.

When my father would put a gun in my hand I would always fail him. He would take me around back in our suburban backyard, the picket fence powerfully white in the weekend sun. It was a distraction, even if I should have been strong enough to ignore it. He would say Now aim and shoot and I would ask Well what about the neighbors. It was a stupid question then and even stupider now that I reflect on it.

To my father’s credit, he never pointed this out or stooped so low as to grace it with a response.

He would carefully take the gun from me and hold it out so straight and still that I writhed for him. He would shoot into the trees, into the next-door neighbor’s backyard, and of course no one would come out and ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing or if he was insane, and he would never have to shrug and smile and say Well what’s one to do, because he was perfectly well within his rights. After the last of the booming noise had left the air alone, he would place the gun back in my hand, he would say Watch out for the recoil, it’s a bitch. No mention of my failure and no weak or sloppy encouragement. My father was straight facts. I did not share in this feeling at all, and he seemed to live very distantly from me, despite his best efforts to bridge the gap like this. Always, eventually, he would take the gun from me and point it right at me. We both would hold our spot for a few moments. I think these were the moments he came closest.

The only other time I have been ground into the dirt was one night just after I’d finished my tv routine, and I was tired, and feeling pretty good about myself, and I stepped outside to take out the trash, and someone came up behind me and knocked me to the ground.

It could have been a man or a woman, the way that boot came down on my head, with the same sort of strength as the woman in the parking lot telling me so articulately how little she cared in-between bouts of crying for her husband, and the same sort of strength as the cowboy who has just played grim reaper

I never had a brother or a sister to share this with. All this was for me, which makes me

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and then tips his hat and speaks softly. I said Looks like you’ve got me right where you want me, which was a line from the film (I can’t remember who said it, the cowboy or maybe the woman who loved him, it was one of them, one of the leading roles.). My arm started to hurt where I had broken it as a child, which seemed like it might be a portent that this was my leap over the line, and I was excited.

Whoever it was above me didn’t say anything, just stood with their boot on my face and spat on the ground next to me and then took off running—they seemed to have made absolutely no decision here—and I never got a good look at them, and I was disappointed that they were much too much like me to help anyone.

The rabbit was breathing fast and I pointed the gun at it—I stared at my dad who was strangely holding up two fingers, like some scout’s salute, and I couldn’t understand what he meant by this, but I adjusted right. I would have to act the part—I had seen the movies— I would have to act it. The neighbors did not come out, and I pulled the trigger, but my arms were so small they were not prepared for the recoil, regardless of any warnings, and I got terrified when my arm flew back so that I dove forward in a sad attempt at equilibrium. The shot went who knows where, and my body went directly on top of my stiff, uncontrollable arm. The pain was actual. My dad said nothing for so long that I was afraid I had shot him, but my eyes were closed because, disappointingly, I was refusing to look at my own arm, which I understand to be the worst reason not to look in this situation.

Father said Good goddamn, and I said nothing. He said Are you just going to let it lie like that and he said Good goddamn, that’s inhumane and I believed he was referring to me. He said That’s enough and was kind enough to leave me alone and let me get up on my own. I admire his ability to stomach something in the name of justice.

Anyway, the truth is that I broke that arm myself, an injury borne from my own stupidity.

Again my father had handed me a big pitchblack gun, and he had told me Aim and shoot.

There was a rabbit sitting on the other side of the picket fence, on the neighbor’s grass, which is perfectly idyllic. I wanted badly to do what needed to be done, or as I was learning in thirdgrade history, do some hunting for the tribe— which is how our early people survived, by accomplishing what needed doing for the good of everyone—but I find it difficult to disrupt something that seems to be in good order.

I told my father Well, I think it’s nice, and he said I am your point of reference and stood at a distance away from me. I think that he meant that I should aim at the rabbit with him in my line of sight, a way of looking at a clearer target to get a better sense of the geometry of the lesser one. But I was moved that he would put his life on the line like this.

I said Dad tell me what to do, but he stayed quiet and strangely small across the backyard.

I raised my arm and thought about the recoil, which was a bitch, and my little fingers were clutching tight the whole machine. If I had had a sudden cramp, my finger would have squeezed the trigger, the line was that thin.

What I had done to that rabbit was completely unforgivable. To leave it in a state like that.

Later I stared out the window and watched him climb over the fence to collect the thing.

It might have been the framing of the window lending the scene an essential drama, but I believe I saw him crying into its body, which is I think a near-perfect reaction. I tried to do the same, but no tears could spring to my eyes, so I just stood in front of the window and doubled his motion, hunched over a small thing in my hands, my face scrunched up tightly and turning red. We did this at the same time. The one thing I could not get

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right was my father’s arm cradling the little white and red blotch against his blue shirt.

The symbolism, of course, was disgustingly obvious, especially framed like this through the window. My father was a true patriot.

My own arm was useless and it burned in a way that signaled to me that, regardless of its obviousness, this was all very actual.

alley between two huge brick buildings—the solitude was nearly perfect. I said So what is this play about, and he said Well didn’t you read the fucking flyer. I produced it, and he said Yes, that’s it, exactly. I asked So now what, and he threw his hands up in the air. Didn’t you come prepared with anything? he asked. A monologue.

I thought You take the gun in your hand and you bring it up so that you are squinting down the barrel. You aim right for the heart of the fucker.

There is a cold clear precision and you do not under any circumstances shoot. Your father is doing the same some yards away. You are aiming for one another. You hold just like this and it is perfect, you are forcing him not to shoot. He is under your finger, which is on the trigger. You are forcing him not to under any circumstances shoot. There is no dialogue. You learned it from him and now you are using it against him. It is impossible to say if he is proud or not, but you do not stop even when he pisses himself. You absolutely do not. In the end you tell him Okay.

You tell him Shoot. This is how you go out and he dies of bladder failure. You do not die of bladder failure, and under no circumstance do you shoot and under no circumstance do you allow him to shoot until you have given him the Okay. You have given him the Okay, he has forced you facedown into the dirt. There is a symmetry.

I said, Are you listening? and the director said Okay, I’m listening. Moved, I said, Tell me what to do. He said, Jesus. He said, Christ. You are a person in this play. Pick a human thing to do and go.

My father died some years ago of a failure in the bladder—the doctors said it wasn’t actually the embarrassing, uncontrollable nighttime pissing in his sheets that killed him, but that had been a sign of an infection, and the infection had dominated his body and forced him into submission and shut down his essential organs and eventually killed him.

I said Well at least you’ll have to wash the sheets less and no one laughed. I said Of course, I’m shocked and devastated, and they told me Well he was very old.

There was a rabbit on a poster I passed recently, which always catches my attention, and this time it was a lucky one, thankfully.

It was a poster advertising auditions, for a stage play. The words hopalong cassidy were printed just beneath the rabbit, who seemed to be leaping over the name, and it seemed decidedly triumphant. The play was a grand reimagining of an american icon. I was dumbfounded by the grand and obvious destiny of this. It was enough to give me the strength to tear it down, and take it home, and get red faced in the mirror each night, and begin to think of that setup as looking onto a stage, two alternate and parallel scenes occurring stage right and stage left, and the exciting part was that they were nearly indistinguishable, but one was realer than the other. I began to think there was even something in this staging I could pass on.

When I arrived for my audition I was somehow surprised to find that it was not on a stage. I’m hoping that comes later, the director told me. We were tucked away in an

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kelsey rust cat, poetry comics

Left over from their industrial past, the Albuquerque Rail Yards compose one of the greatest spaces in New Mexico, and though they survive with limited function today, filmmakers and designers have seen potential in the unique architecture of the Yards, leading to their use as a filming location for a number of nm-based productions.

Albuquerque Rail Yards Housing expands on the Yards’ potential by reimagining the space as the technological hub of the city as it once was. In the mechanical era, the Yards vitalized the city, facilitating Albuquerque’s expansion and employing a quarter of the city’s workers after World War ii. When technologies shifted from mechanical to digital, the former glory of the Yards was largely left behind, which this project seeks to change.

As modern technology continues to redefine the ways in which we perceive the spaces around us, the Yards present an exciting opportunity to once again form the center of our city—the data center. This project creates a vision for Albuquerque’s future and ushers in a new era for this historical structure.

The Rail Yards are awake.

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siavash rezaei | albuquerque rail yards housing, architecture

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sarah northrop | groundhog day, digital

J

eremy felt naked—probably because he was. His clothes were tucked away in his dorm room, and the outfit he’d worn last night was drifting some fifteen feet below in Pi Kappa Phi’s dingy swimming pool.

It hadn’t been his finest eveningwear, that mascot costume.

The fabric was plush like a three-year-old’s teddy bear, though the stains on the green and yellow felt indicated more than grape juice and drool. Along the bottom of the costume, where its long, phallic tail and weathered feet would drag along the ground and pull the fabric, miniscule glory holes exposed his hairy legs, allowing a sufficient breeze to cool the backs of his knees where they sweated in the damp darkness. Combined, the intended effect was “dragon,” but from the inside, Jeremy felt he more resembled phlegm.

Of course, right now he felt naked and insecure. What seemed a victory last night had come back to bite at his ankles, jumping higher until it was biting him in the ass.

A dog did that once while he was in the costume just before a basketball game. He’d had to go the rest of the night baring a freckled ass cheek to the world, pale white and sweaty against the mossy dragon.

Jeremy now scratched that ass cheek because he knew Dina wouldn’t see. She was also naked, but her clothes were on the floor. Her ass wasn’t itchy because she didn’t even try to scratch it, or maybe she was just being polite. Jeremy’s heartbeat pounded in his head like the drumline last night, the only music he’d needed to dance before the football stadium’s student section, knocking people aside with his tail and repulsive scent. They all knew there was a person inside the mascot, but that didn’t make him easier to be around. He knew all the rumors that said he’d fucked Dina’s sister, and in the costume no less.

He liked to think that while dancing in front of the student section, squinting through the mesh screen within the dragon’s black mouth, swinging the head to and fro to shift the beefcolored tongue out of the way, he’d pinned his gaze on Dina, and she’d done the same to him.

Okay, now Dina was definitely awake. Her low groan was in the same register as the night before when he’d approached her beside the swimming pool in which the dragon now lay submerged. “You’re still wearing that fucking thing?” she’d said.

“It’s been hours since the game ended. Take that thing off.”

Jeremy wasn’t offended. It was his tradition to arrive at afterparties as the dragon, sacrificing his vision and sense of self to ferment in his own humid body odor. But this time, he just wanted to be near Dina, the green and yellow mascot costume the buffer that would get him closer because she couldn’t see his face.

short fiction

A Mascot Costume Floating in a Pool

Jillian Kovach

“Can we go inside for a second?” he shouted, sacrificing his hearing now as well so Dina could follow his words through the layers of moldy fabric. “I want to talk!”

“You promise to take that fucking thing off?”

“Yes!” No. He didn’t take it off. Jeremy stayed inside the dragon, where it was dark and pensive. It was his dungeon, and while he didn’t have the time to repent, he did have a wall of foam to speak to.

“It’s true, I fucked Dora,” he said through the dragon’s esophagus. His voice reverberated, suffocating him with the truth. “But you’re better than she ever will be, Dina. I messed up, I know. I’m sorry.”

The plan was working because she didn’t try to smack him. She just stared at the mascot, at its glossy, crossed eyes, the off-center head almost as charming as an ugly dog looking for affection.

Dina sighed. “You gonna take that thing off or what?”

Now the night was gone and Jeremy was still staring at Dina, but there was no dragon in the room to defend him. He watched her sit up with a yawn, turn her gaze to him, give him a once-over with all the judgment of a Jewish mother.

“Good morning,” he said. “How did you sleep?”

“Fine,” she said. “You stink.”

“I was inside a dragon most of yesterday.”

“That thing is so disgusting, I swear.”

“That’s why it’s in the pool.”

The remembrance grew on Dina’s face.

After they’d found somewhere on the second floor for proper make-up sex, Jeremy looked over at the suddenly forlorn mascot costume staring up at them. Between the moisture it contained and the carelessness with which it had been shed, so much like the skin of a proper reptile, it looked like a green puddle against the wooden floor. Its upturned stomach was distended, what had once been a small tear in it now vomiting yellowed stuffing. The unblinking eyes begged for something Jeremy couldn’t identify, but the

gaze crawled up his arms and back, leaving goosebumps and an accelerated heartbeat.

The folds of fabric shadowed the dragon until it was no longer a puddle, but a wave, a wave that demanded attention and love.

You will put yourself inside me, the dragon said, suddenly capable of words. You like putting yourself in things, right?

Dina had put her hand on his arm before the dragon could go on. “Stop looking at it,” she’d said. “It’s so fucking filthy … Do you ever wash it?”

Jeremy shook his head.

“You should wash it.” She stood up and opened the window.

Jeremy watched her gaze out at the pool below, but didn’t join her. He had purposely left her in charge of the company she’d keep.

“What if we threw the thing in there?” she said.

“What thing? Oh.” Jeremy blushed. “Well, I mean, there’s chlorine in the pool. That would clean it, right?”

Dina smirked at him. “Throw it in,” she said.

“It was your idea, you do it.”

“I’m not touching that fucking thing.” Dina grimaced at the dragon, its green and yellow presence dull and ancient in the night. “You do it.”

So he did.

Now, Jeremy’s full attention was on Dina.

He didn’t say another word as she turned to face him, her white breasts bare in the morning light. Her nipples reminded him of the mascot costume’s eyes.

“Let’s make the best of us. Agreed?” she said.

He told her yes, knowing full well they were saying nothing, much like the mascot costume floating in the swimming pool.

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luisa pennington | old friends, digital

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hyunju blemel | welcome home, digital

Nuclear Family Tori Cárdenas

J

ackson unlocked the Burque Bomb Bay showroom and switched the power on. Large warehouse lights pounded on, illuminating heavy gray and black demo models like huge pills. Miniature motorized displays of subterranean and above-ground models began to fold and unfold on waisthigh tables, their ceilings opening in a loop. The radio kicked on with a voice in the middle of a Lotaburger jingle. In twenty minutes, an ad was set to run, detailing this week’s sale at bbb.

It looked like it would be a slow morning. Bomb shelters were slowly but surely gaining popularity in the greater public, with the arms race in the news almost every other day. Families from suburbs around Albuquerque came in to poke around, ask a few benign questions, let their children play on the models like playground equipment, and generally waste his time.

But most of Jackson’s paying customers were from the labs in the foothills and Los Alamos, so he didn’t worry too much; these were people whose paranoia (and bottomless credit cards) could be preyed on. But Jackson often wondered how much of it really was paranoia, and how much some of them really knew about the precarious ticking of the doomsday clock or the hidden machinations that cranked it closer to disaster. But as long as he had enough business to turn a profit, he tried not to think about it much. This morning, Jackson sat at his desk and checked emails (or pretended to) for forty-five minutes before beginning to dust.

short fiction

He’d nearly dusted all of the demo models when the speaker near the door chimed and a woman of about thirty walked in. Her blonde curls rested like swallowtail butterflies on the fur collar of her coat. She held out an article that she had pulled up on her phone, then cleared her voice and said, “Hello, I’m here for the sale.”

This month, Jackson was running a sale on his basic model. If a customer brought in a breaking article about the nuclear war surging in Antarctica, they would receive free delivery, installation, and one year’s worth of freeze-dried food with full purchase of the basic model. “Breaking” was six hours after first reported on, and each news story expired after that. If a customer decided to upgrade beyond the basic model, Jackson threw in an extra five percent off.

So, what if five percent was five thousand dollars? People needed to feel protected; they needed security in these uncertain and dangerous times. A twitchy trigger finger could unleash the power of countless neutrino bombs at any moment, especially with this many countries in the arms race.

watched him walk to and from work every day, but other than that, he was hardly ever above ground. Parents told their children to avoid him, and Jackson didn’t mind. The fewer connections he made in the neighborhood, the less guilt and the more room his bomb shelter would have, if disaster did strike. But despite its appearance, Jackson’s property was a rarity, and it more than made up for what it lacked above ground. Its original owners, a crotchety old couple worried about the ramifications of the Cold War, built it in 1953. The house was modest because it cost extra to dig in the stubborn desert soil, not only basements, but bomb shelters. A pair of broad wooden doors along the house’s west side opened to a steel hatch to the shelter in the dusty basement floor.

Since he had purchased it at auction, Jackson had invested a lot of time and money into the three-hundred-square-foot shelter. He outfitted it with an easy chair, a memory foam mattress, and a mounted moose head. The walls were wood, refinished and assembled from old pallets, with a sixty-inch television on one wall with a sleep setting which gave it the appearance of a window. Jackson could change the landscape from a beach to a forest to a view from a tall city building with the click of a button, and a four terabyte drive built into the wall held every bit of television he could ever hope to watch. Eventually, he’d stopped living upstairs altogether.

Just this morning, he’d walked up through the house to check for symptoms of an Albuquerque winter. But there were no burst pipes, no broken windows, nothing missing, no leaks. Everything was in its place: the dining table set for eight friends or family members (neither of which Jackson had ever taken the time to make, even after fortyfour years of life), the pictures meticulously straight, every shelf and curio dusted. But since he had been upstairs, he hadn’t checked the news.

A headline shone from the woman’s bright phone screen: Arms Race Comes to a (War)

And even if that didn’t happen, could you really put a price on your family’s safety?

“Can you put a price on that? Go ahead, think about it,” Jackson told stubborn husbands, wary geriatrics, frazzled mothers with babies hanging from their wrists. “Threat of nuclear war has been a constant since the fifties. It’s beyond me that architects stopped including them in their designs. They’re invaluable. I prefer subterranean units, but above ground will do in a pinch. Wouldn’t buy a house myself if it didn’t have a bomb shelter.”

And he hadn’t purchased a house until he’d found the perfect one—a pitiful swatch of property in Albuquerque’s Huning District, and, on it, a shabby Victorian-style house with no more than a whisper of a yard. Most of the neighborhood avoided him and his house, which resembled a condemned building. They

Head: Nuclear Summit Scheduled for Friday.

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“You’ll need to install my shelter as soon as possible if this headline is telling the truth,” she said. “I’ll pay extra; I don’t care how much.”

As she said it, about eleven more people came through the door, the speaker announcing each of their arrivals with a loud beep.

“Now, now, everyone please line up here at the counter and I’ll be with you as soon as possible,” Jackson said. But they didn’t; they flooded through with their phones and newspapers, roaming around the floor models, snapping model chairs and shelving in the cut-away displays with anxious fingers. He slapped a hand to his hairline; he could have sworn he felt it recede a little more.

The woman who had come in first said, “I’m not going to wait all day. Now, are you going to sell me one of these or not?”

“Of course, ma’am, I’m happy to help. What was your name again?”

“Lisa Keller, I’m here to buy a bomb shelter for my family. Like I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time.”

Jackson led Lisa to his office area in the corner of the showroom and sat behind his desk. If he was going to survive the rush, he would have to send for some extra help, but Josie, his other salesperson, wasn’t scheduled until this afternoon. He sent her a quick email, prayed for a response, then turned to Lisa and said, “Let’s have a look at our models.”

“Let’s not. I’ll have the one that’s on special, thank you very much. Don’t try to upsell me.

And I have my news article.” She flashed her phone again.

“Absolutely. Now, how many folks will be using this shelter, Lisa?”

“Mrs. Keller, if you don’t mind. Hopefully, none of us none of us will have to use it. But it’s my husband, myself, and our twins— toddlers. And my stepson, Greg.” She said her stepson’s name like it was a swear word.

“That’s what we call around here a nuclear family.” Jackson chuckled at his own joke.

His desk was devoid of pictures, trinkets, drawings, birthday cards. If he wasn’t going to laugh at his own jokes, who would?

“I’m pretty sure that’s what everyone calls them.”

“If you’re going to have more than four people in this model, it’s going to get a little tight. Especially with the kiddos,” Jackson said. His hand rested on a laminated, menulike pamphlet with the complete list of units offered by bbb.

“Greg’s never home anyway. If he doesn’t make it in, that’s too bad. Run that as credit.” She held out a weighted card that felt like a secret.

Jackson filled out the paperwork and was swiping Lisa’s card when the phone rang. The voice on the other line said, “Hey Jacks. Can’t come in early today, I got the shits. Should be able to make it for my shift though.”

It was Carter. Carter was one of Jackson’s floor salespeople, and was always calling in with some illness or another. Jackson assumed most of these were hangovers.

“Business is booming, business is booming,” Jackson said. He couldn’t yell at Carter like he really wanted to, not with this many customers around. And Mrs. Keller. “A lot of bonuses flying around today, if you know what I mean.”

Carter didn’t get the hint or he didn’t care.

“Might be a little late, actually. Catch you later, Jacks.” He hung up and left Jackson with his mouth open.

“I’ll expect you this afternoon then,” Mrs. Keller said, taking her card back from Jackson’s stunned hand.

“Actually, the free delivery and installation is the standard package that we offer; if you want same-day delivery that would cost extra.”

“You never said that,” Mrs. Keller said. Her face turned pink.

Jackson pointed to the pamphlet's fine print: Standard delivery and installation package included. Estimated Turnaround: 2-4 weeks.

Mrs. Keller’s eyes “We might not have two to four weeks, asshole. How can I wait for this thing with the summit on Friday?” Lisa’s voice filled the showroom like an expanding cloud.

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“Ma’am, I would be happy to show you some other delivery options if you would like.

What you save on the year’s supply of food more than covers—” “We could all be dead by then! Don’t you fucking get it?”

The room fell silent, all eyes trained on Mrs. Keller, who was screaming and waving her hands. Then, everybody in the store flung themself at Jackson’s desk, yelling, waving their newspaper, beating their fists on his desk. Jackson tugged at his tie and held out his hands to stop them, but they crowded in closer and closer, pinning him to the wall.

The front door beeped again, almost inaudible under the roar of customers. Then, the sirens. Sirens were played when someone finalized a purchase. Bright red lights flashed around the showroom, and a voice on the intercom said, “Congratulations on your purchase! You’re the newest owner of a bonafide Bomb Bay bomb shelter, made in the great u.s. of a. Thanks a megaton! Come back soon!” The voice on the intercom died but the sirens wailed on.

Jackson was able to escape from the confused crowd, ducking into the break room where the switch was.

“Goddamn, Jackson. We’re at critical mass in there. What happened?” Josie, Jackson’s other salesperson, dumped her purse into her locker and frowned with her asymmetrical eyebrows. She didn’t flick the sirens off, which Jackson thought was a good idea, but lit a cigarette and took a long drag.

“Thanks for coming. Carter won’t be in until this afternoon.”

“I dropped Nando off with his grandma. I better be making overtime for this.”

“Yeah, of course,” Jackson said. They wouldn’t see the loss if they could start selling a few units. “You see the news? There’s a nuclear summit on Friday.”

“Holy shit, no wonder everyone’s going ballistic in there,” Josie said. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Jackson noticed she did that when she was getting a migraine. Or

when she was annoyed. He realized they must be pretty closely related.

“We’d better not keep them waiting too long.

Punch in and take the next person. I still need to smooth something out with this lady…”

He flicked off the sirens and walked out to find Mrs. Keller, but she was gone. Everyone was gone.

A voice on the radio said, “This radio station has been repurposed as an emergency broadcast system. Please stay tuned for information regarding actions to take during nuclear crisis.” When it finished, there was a brief moment of silence before the same message began again.

Jackson’s mouth hung open. He turned to ask Josie if she wanted to run to his house, but she was already running out the door, calling her son’s name. At first, he almost shouted after her that it wouldn’t do any good to run, that she should just try to find shelter—but then, he thought, she could have used her employee discount.

She never had, and neither had Carter.

That was their business.

And so Jackson bolted out the back door toward home.

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Kiki the Cosmic Calico Cat Copyright Š 2018 Sally S. Savage All rights reserved.

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o yes it feels a struggle can you not see it there a little loose pieces of clothes eerie it seems to be giving itself up to the wind o the wind ah violent has blown it inside out that’s exactly “a sort of dance i been looking for”

can you even compare it—

excited thrash indicates complicity

or—at least—joy

given over like to god o yes you squirmed exactly “ like this the day you

you in the baptismal

waters—they rush over

you and you are you

no longer, you belong

to god or at least him

in the abstract, suddenly

you are gentler—you

have given up or over”

Blank Point Josh Tise

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robbin lou bates | baby schoops, acrylic and marker on canvas, 36" × 48"

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alexandria wiesel | reflecting on past lives, digital

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amanda magel | burning motels, digital art

logan monroe | just like heaven, digital

katrina dutt | na�vetÉ, digital

A Fear Response to a World Made of Combustible Headlines Cathy Cook

My body is all concentration and apologies.

My hands want to be sunflowers.

They used to know how to bloom into a promise.

Fingers used to flit, flick, pull, twist silver bands shadow dance hands with a life of their own.

Spine is more gun rack than tree roots.

Brain is more cobwebs than roadmap.

When did I swallow all this ambition?

Like bad medicine fat in my belly, rots, molds, until it becomes some other demon. Grotesque. Rancid.

I need all of these voices out of my head.

All the shouts and whispers: be quiet find silence, silence, silence.

I don’t remember what I promised myself only know I break that promise when I burn my tongue to ash, coat the roof of my mouth in dust.

Throat made of coal.

Every unspoken word a broken promise.

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paul talley | vinton, digital

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hyunju blemel | sky conquered, digital

sierra greenlee | flower boy, digital

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douglas brandt | dweller, digital

douglas brandt | sweetpea, digital

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nick cdebaca | indeed, 35mm film

nick cdebaca | interference, digital art

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Arts Incarcerated Julie Mowrey

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Arts Incarcerated is a short documentary film, which examines the New Mexico prison system and the plight of incarceration by way of one man’s experience.

Without the resources to reintegrate into society, Ryan Crawford prepared for his release from prison by starting the non-profit #ArtsNotViolence. After his release, he worked for the Juvenile Detention Center in Albuquerque, workshopping art with teens while bringing #ArtsNotViolence to fruition, dedicated to disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline and helping kids stay out of prison.

This documentary tells Ryan’s life story while exploring the limitations and prejudices that attend being a formerly incarcerated man. Rather than supplying easy answers, Arts Incarcerated casts light on the stigma of incarceration and reminds viewers of how it’s a critical issue facing contemporary America.

Watch the video above or go to csw.unm.edu.

julie mowrey | arts incarcerated, video, 6 min 10 sec

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Six Years Old

Everything Hyler Bowman

The trees are massive, towering over the small girl’s body, making even her father seem small.

I didn’t think that was possible.

She smiles and clutches her small walking stick, the old dead wood cutting into her hands as she looks up. She loves the forest.

She loves the way light filters down through the leaves, soft and warm, the light tinted yellow and green. And the wind, oh how she loves the wind, how it whistles and sweeps by, pulling at her hair gently, lifting it up and around, pushing and scattering the leaves, their low sounds soothing.

“See that, Hyler? That’s a tortoise! He’s big, gotta be at least one hundred years old!” her father calls. She looks over at his voice, her small legs quickly carrying her to where he crouched on the forest floor, his boots crunching the bright leaves underfoot.

“Wow, he’s big,” she says, voice low and eyes wide in awe as she crouches down beside her father. He is an old creature, with hard stone eyes that gleam in the sunlight, and white hair straggling down his lumpy chin. His mouth opens and closes as they crouch over him, as if trying to speak, or bite, his stump legs bringing him slowly closer to her father’s knee, his mouth snapping at his leg.

“Careful, Dad!” she yells, but with no real fear, her small body shrieking and laughing as she runs in circles through the leaves, her father playfully taunting the old soul before him.

“Well, old man of the forest, this little lady and I shall leave you.

Bauble, say bye to the turtle.”

“Bye, mister turtle!” she calls, her father grasping her free hand firmly in his as they walk through and past the woods, into the unfiltered sunlight of an open field.

She loves days like these. Days when the world is bright, her father even brighter, and so high up, like the sun, she simply lost in his orbit in this vast universe.

On days like these, she loves her father fiercely, without stipulation and without end, his rough hands warm and protecting, his voice soft and low. But she wishes they could last.

That this peace was real, not a calm before the storm. She wishes this man could be her father all the time.

She wishes this moment could last forever.

Eight Years Old She covers her ears, wondering why they always yell, scream, curse, whenever they meet. She thinks to herself, I’ve never seen them smile while in the same room.

Later, her mother sits her on the sofa, tells her the unthinkable.

“I’m leaving.” She wants to cover her ears again, but she can’t, her hands stuck under her thighs, as her mother tries to explain,

creative nonfiction

tells her her girlfriend’s family needs her, and that she is going to follow her.

“I’m going to fight your father for you,” she says. The girl nods, unsure.

Her father takes her for his weekend, driving too fast.

“She’s going to steal you away from me. Is that what you want—to never see me again?”

The girl begins to cry, the world blurring by as his foot becomes heavier, the engine squealing.

up, slamming the window shut, leaving her with the sound of the glass rattling, of her heart beating.

She sits up, sighs, the words ghosting over her lips as she goes to him, apologizes to his back. She sighs again, turns away, eyes hot with tears, throat thick with something she can’t place. The pillow shakes in her grip as she cries, screaming into it, until her throat is dry, the pillow soaked.

“I hate you!” she screams into the pillow, unsure of who she is screaming at. Him or herself?

Ten Years Old She sits in an airport, the last day with her mothers spent playing. They sit happily, eating before she must go.

“So, how’s your father?” Her stepmother asks casually.

“He’s fine. We’re both fine.” She looks down at her food, appetite gone, stomach filled with cement, as her mothers exchange a glance.

“Sweet pea, is he still working?” Mom asks.

“Yes, he is still working.” The words fall flat, hitting the table, the syllables pulled out all wrong, and the girl cringes.

“Why can’t I lie better?” she screeches.

“You don’t need to lie to us. None of this is your fault, sweet pea.”

The girl struggles to breathe, and cries the whole plane ride. Her father ignores her red eyes and takes her shopping even though it is 3 am. At the store, she hears a song, a song her moms listen to, and sings along, trying not to cry as her father juggles snacks and a case of beer in his hands.

Twelve Years Old She hasn’t talked to her mothers in months.

The water has been shut off, and a beer can pyramid seems to tower over her from the living room table. She moves around, desperate to do something, yet desperate not to wake him, but the silence is deafening, it’s clawing at her ears.

She doesn’t reach to cover them.

Books are stacked high on the floor of her room, already read, waiting to be returned and exchanged. She lifts the pages to her face, inhales, hoping to close up the pit inside herself, this pit of despair and loneliness and anger and hurt and abandonment that refuses to shut up.

They never wanted you.

His words echo throughout the room, and she lies down, eyes closed.

That’s why you’re here with me. Because they never wanted you. Do you think that if they really loved you, you’d be here?

She bites the pillow, struggling not to gasp as she cries, wind blowing past the house, the wood creaking, her nails pinching her skin as she grapples for control.

Eleven Years Old She wakes up, trying desperately to cling to the darkness, to dreams of birthday cakes with purple frosting, of candlelight, of laughter, of belonging.

She shivers, eyes fluttering involuntarily.

She glances at the window, realizes it is open, panics, the cold momentarily forgotten.

He bursts in, a greeting on his lips, but stops, freezes, looks down at her, his eyes squinting in anger, yelling about having to turn the heat

Thirteen Years Old The tires screech against the rough asphalt, and a woman trips and spills from the car.

She stumbles forward, shocked. Her mother looks up at her, something she has never had to do before.

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“You’re so tall. ... Are you okay? Are you okay?”

“Yes, mom, I’m fine.”

seeping into her very bones as he slips back in, voice soft and sad, accusing, at her ear. Like he never left.

Like she never left.

The tears start, the girl desperately trying to choke them back, as she sees the police car in the street.

Fifteen Years Old “You’re allowed to be angry with your mothers, Hyler. Your feelings are valid; don’t fight them.”

Her therapist’s words ricochet through her mind, barreling through all her walls, her pretenses, as she watches, all her lies crumbling to the ground, leaving her in a world of dust and decay. Leaving one crooked, horrible, dangerous thought.

Why did they abandon me?

She shakes her head, the thought fading away for a moment, as she grounds herself again, in the blade and blood in her hands, wondering when this would end.

If it would ever end.

And where that end would take her.

Here for him, she realizes with a start, her long hair streaming past her and her mother in the late summer wind.

“What is going on?” His voice comes from behind, and she turns, as he eyes the policeman before looking to her.

“She’s leaving,” her mother says, her feet planted, voice firm.

Her father looks back to her, a mix of shock and anger flashing behind his eyes as his feet move forward, the policeman’s voice filling the air along with his as he screams and points at the girl’s mother. She wants to cover her ears, but holds still.

The yelling stops, and he looks to the girl once again.

“I’m leaving,” she says.

“Why?” His voice is like a plea, nearly shattering the girl’s resolve.

She shakes her head.

“It’s because of what you do, Dad.” “And what exactly is it that I do?”

The girl shakes her head again. She lets herself be led away by her mother, and after a trip of nearly two thousand miles, she feels like she can finally breathe again.

Seventeen Years Old The scars are old now, faded white against her already pale skin, the feel of the blade between her fingers long forgotten.

The last time the phone rang was nearly three years ago. Yet sometimes, she will jump at the ring of her phone, at the sound of a deep voice, at the shadows of large men.

She still flinches at people yelling angrily in the street, still loses her breath when she picks up an unknown number and thinks for just a moment that it’s his voice on the other end.

Sometimes, when she hears her father’s words in another person’s mouth, she freezes, suddenly eight years old again.

When his packages land on the doorstep, she tenses up a bit, that numbness seeping in as she puts the box away, barely glancing at its contents as her thoughts become consumed by him.

But life has meaning again.

Not every waking moment is stolen by him.

Not anymore.

Every day, she remembers how wonderful the world is, how beautiful and endless and

Fourteen Years Old Now the girl can breathe, but she can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t think, without him slipping in.

The phone rings.

She ignores it.

He has nothing new to say.

At night, when the world is finally quiet, she scribes into her skin, scribes the unspeakable feelings she holds, red blooming and falling down her leg, her fingers wet and warm, her mind empty of everything but the pain.

The phone rings, and she puts the blade down, picks the phone up, the numbness

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breathtaking the world can be. How she is now part of this world. Every day, she envisions her future, sometimes with him in it, sometimes without. Either way, she knows she has a future.

And that is everything.

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Agnes

Cathy Cook

We haven’t washed ourselves in weeks.

Bodies laid head to toe, human dominoes, mile piles on mile.

I steer and Esther pays for gas, from the waitress tips stashed under the seat from a time before we were hobos, or van people, or musicians, but maybe we were always musicians, only before we pretended we were waitresses, and journalists, and Donnie was a fry cook or a lawyer and I don’t know who Agnes is but her name is spray painted on our window and none of us have the heart to clean it off because everyone deserves to claim a space in the world even if it’s the rusted-out floor of a 1967 Volkswagen without any air conditioning and a radio that’s broke but it doesn’t matter because Donnie plays 60s protest songs while we drive and the brakes don’t work anymore but we don’t want to stop anyway.

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noah hickerson | address unknown, digital

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heather hay | keep, autobiographix

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alexandria wiesel | new geometry, digital

Circle This Josh Tise

o let’s be bolder understand this is sweat to begin again again we are chasing our own tails in ecstatic circles perfect—compass the most extreme map in utter baseness. there is no precursor beside the semicircle— incomplete feeling— say one thousand trees felled in rough semicircle w ould it matter you spoke quickly— thy body may we please submit this a passionate movement— for that singular feeling is it a litany against boredom— devastate a small thing roundabout this circled phenomena the way the mouth moves ‘o’ a theory meant to bring us closer: let’s speak god more gently this time. will it work or wrap up neatly in the total failure of semi-complete

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discover your fate How are you today, dear reader?

Each second: utter bliss.

Each instant: a kiss. A gift, each blessed breath …

Okay.

Would you say there’s a difference between pleasure and happiness? Just curious.

Yes. In the thick of some nerve-withering joy the two are easily conflated, however.

Somewhere between 1 and 0 on a scale of 0 to 1.

Same here. Follow me..

Beautifully put.

Are you an artist?

Nah. Different name for the same thing.

If I may ask, what kind of art do you make?

Shut up.

Fine Art. Very fine.

Do you believe in fate?

Sculpture.

All is meant to be.

The end is built into the beginning.

I am but a mere vessel for longing and anomie, overflowing with nothing.

Yes and/or no.

I hold an opinion not represented by the other options here presented. I am broad and contain multitudes.

Good art.

If

Bad art. Other

you’ll

by

nascent

nonfiction poetry, sweet poetry

undergrads—can

balm against loneliness and alienation and maybe even a one’s fate?

other

graffiti, in bathroom stalls

love letters, in bathroom stalls plays

As you may be able to tell by the fact that I am bleeding from my eyes and frozen inside a glacier, I am a performance artist.

I don’t. Art sucks. I thought this was one of those magazines with pictures of hot biker babes.

I do.

I understand. Maybe next year’s issue?

Nonetheless …

Are you a student/faculty/alum/staff member at/in/of the educational institution called the University of New Mexico?

Yes.

I am a student. A Lobo and loving it!

As a professor at unm, I have devoted my life to imparting knowledge and wisdom to students who are actually stupid enough to believe they are autonomous human agents who make choices and determine the course of their own lives, ens causa sui, and not in fact just totally at the whim of what some call fate—lux hominum vita.

Do

sense of utter proneness to

screenplays

music

Q:

function as an existential

I am a writer. A wordsmith. A belletrist. A pixel-stained wretch.

I write:

profanity, in the sky with an airplane

oblige,

you feel that art—even art

Photography :)

Nice try, pawn!

Your fate awaits. fiction

I’m cool. I mean, I smoked a cigarette once.

No.

Yes.

No.

I am the Dean.

I do something else here. Don’t ask.

Very well, after you enroll/get hired by this fine institution of higher education, follow this line to your fate …

submit your work to csw at csw.unm.edu!

contributors LEIA BARNETT

The Fewest Number of Assumptions (22)

Leia was born and raised in and around the mountains of northern New Mexico, where her love for wild spaces was first ignited. As a student of anthropology and a lover of the natural world, she hopes to explore the ways that humans build and maintain a sense of connection to the world around us, and to use this information to serve and preserve our Earth.

She has had poetry and prose published in The Santa Fe Literary Review.

ROBBIN LOU BATES Baby Schoops (57)

Robbin Lou Bates is originally from Tucson, Arizona. She received her ba at University of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha, Wisconsin. She is a graduate student in the painting and drawing studio art program at unm.

HYUNJU BLEMEL Sky Conquered (66) Welcome Home (38)

Hyunju is a bundle of energy and enthusiasm like no other.

Born and raised in New Mexico, always in hand was the collection of family cameras, which were frequently dropped due to sheer wonderment—a phenomenon that still happens to this day. Similar to her younger years, she is still always found with a camera in hand to capture the happy, sappy, and vibrant moments life has to offer.

HYLER BOWMAN Everything (74)

Hyler is a second-year student at unm, pursuing a degree in English. If not writing, it’s likely she’s reading or out with friends.

DOUGLAS BRANDT Dweller (68) Sweetpea (69)

Doug is a New Mexican artist who specializes in domestic animal portraiture, wood turning, and jewelry. When he’s not working on his art, he’s drawing inspiration from the landscape and people of this great state. His work has been published in Scribendi and csw.

KERIDEN BROWN Growth (14)

Keriden is an Albuquerque native who graduated from unm with a ba in English literature and a minor in honors interdisciplinary liberal arts.

When she isn’t working as a fastpaced news editor, she can be found eating spicy rice noodles, drinking coffee, or working in the open mesa as balloon crew. Keriden has had pieces published in Scribendi, Best Student Essays, and csw.

NICK CDEBACA Indeed (70) Interference (71) Veil (2)

Nick is passionate within and without. He loves to skateboard, shoot celluloid, and vx1000.

Experimenting in the darkroom, Nick plans to shoot more film and continue on his creative adventures.

CATHY COOK

Agnes (78) A Fear Response to a World Made of Combustible Headlines (63)

Cathy is a Pushcart prizenominated poet and the 2018 Albuquerque Poetry Slam champion. Her poetry is inspired by the body of the land and by the landscape of her body. Find more work at rewritereread.wordpress.com.

TORI CÁRDENAS

HEATHER HAY

LOGAN MONROE Just Like Heaven (61)

Kiki the Cosmic Calico Cat (43)

Heather still has Ghostbusters on Beta.

Logan is a photographer interested in how the simplest aspects of the world can become cinematic. He has been published in New Mexico Magazine and Lux the Zine.

With an mba in finance, Sally developed energy efficiency programs for various electric utilities during her career.

Now retired, she is developing and honing her skills in screenwriting, photography, and videography.

Keep (80)

NOAH HICKERSON Address Unknown (79)

Noah has an affinity for the abandoned and eclectic!

Working only in black and white, he seeks to capture what the world doesn’t see.

LINDA HOLLAND Cache (16)

Linda’s abstract paintings evoke realms, sense of place, enigmatic yet palpable. Layered and blended colors, textures and motion invite the viewer to a journey. Her sculptures and paintings have been chosen for public, university, corporate, and private collections.

Nuclear Family (39)

Tori is a queer Tainx/Latinx poet from northern New Mexico.

She is the incoming editor in chief of Blue Mesa Review and her work has appeared in Vice, Cloudthroat, and the 2018 Writers Resist anthology.

ALEX KINNEY The Ventriloquist (9)

Alex is a senior at unm studying studio art. He enjoys painting, drawing, and working with video. He has other work published in Figroot Press.

ZACK DANIELS Zack is an electrical engineering student at unm who found an interest in film photography after finding his grandfather’s old slr. He plans to focus his future career on ocean sciences and intends to continue pursuing film photography along the way.

KATRINA DUTT

SIERRA GREENLEE Flower Boy (67)

Sierra is a photographer and creative with roughly six months experience. Her unique concepts and innovative execution have earned her a cover and spread in Xpressions. She resides in Albuquerque and is completing a degree in strategic communications.

Groundhog Day (34)

Sarah is a freelance artist and aspiring novelist living on the road with her husky and ferrets. For more about her odyssey and opus, visit northernweaseltales.com.

LUISA PENNINGTON

TRINITY KOCH

A Matter of Perception (18)

Trinity spends a lot of her free time roaming the Cibola National Forest with her horse, where she finds inspiration. She hopes to continue to live locally and one day support herself and her fur babies through her writing. She also enjoys working with clay and reading.

JILLIAN KOVACH

Mascot Costume Floating in a Pool (35) We Are Not the World (3)

Jillian graduated in May 2018 with a ba in English. She was editor in chief of csw 2018 and has carried her experience over into the (semi-)professional publishing world. When not writing, Jillian enjoys cuddling mini horses and cursing at Duolingo.

AMANDA MAGEL Burning Motels (60)

A current studio arts student who is largely interested in pushing the definition of fine art as well as “comic/commercial” art, Amanda seeks to tell stories through illustration and comic art/sequential art.

PAUL TALLEY Vinton (64)

Paul is a recent graduate of unm.

In his free time, he enjoys taking pictures and drawing; in his paid time, he is a geographer. He is inspired by geography, nature, and humans with all their eccentricities and complexities.

He was published in csw in 2017 and 2018.

JOSH TISE

Blank Point (56) Circle This (85) Performance at Babel (1) Pick a Human Thing (25) War Tender (8)

Josh is an English major at unm.

He is interested in experimental syntax, word collage, and the transmission of ideas. His work has been previously published in Scribendi.

Old Friends (37)

A Winter Park (20) Lake Eerie (17)

Naïveté (62)

Katrina enjoys photographing things not immediately obvious to the casual viewer. She tries to capture the hidden beauty of objects in nature and focus on the details; she looks at something, finds the lighting compelling, and takes a few pictures. She loves photography because she can present things in a new light and elicit emotion from the viewer.

SARAH NORTHROP

ELIZABETH PFLIEGER

IBRA DOMINGUEZ Chasm (13)

Arts Incarcerated (72)

After moving from place to place, Julie landed in New Mexico, where she has found inspiration in the unique landscape and developed her storytelling craft. Her work comments on universal social issues, sparking conversations with and in her audience. She has a ba in media arts from unm. More at juliemowrey.myportfolio.com.

Luisa is a self-identified freelance amateur for the liberal arts and studies at the unm. She has been published in Blue Mesa Review, csw, as well as other platforms.

From Connecticut (12)

Growing up around the fine arts in New Mexico, Ibra has expressed his emotion with visual arts since an early age.

Whether producing his own body of artwork or doing commissions, his technique has refined over the years.

JULIE MOWREY

SALLY S. SAVAGE

Elizabeth made up her mind to graduate with an English degree this spring. Besides investing time in her education, she likes to photograph passing moments like morning fog, pink sunsets, and tiny smiles.

MAXINE PORTER Psychopomp Dreams (10)

Maxine is a senior who will soon have to find a real job. Until then, she publishes poetry on her blog (fulguriter.blogspot.com) and is working on a book of poems about androids.

SIAVASH REZAEI

Albuquerque Rail Yards Housing (32)

In August 2016, Siavash Rezaei moved to the United States to enroll in the master of architecture program at the unm School of Architecture and Planning. His genuine love for the field of architecture and his participation in such a meaningful profession brings him joy.

NORA VANESKY Validation (19)

Nora is a first-year student at unm, studying photography and dance. This is her first publication, and she’s excited for the chance to have her work represented.

ALEXANDRIA WIESEL New Geometry (84) Reflecting on Past Lives (58)

While pursuing her degree at unm, Alexandria takes time to find the hidden beauty in our world. She uses photography to share her story and inspire others to look closer at their own.

LUCAS ZUNIGA Gaunt (24)

Lucas Zuniga is multifaceted, multidisciplinary artist living and working in Albuquerque.

His primary focus is finishing is undergraduate degree in studio art and psychology at unm. He is specializes in painting and sculpture. He is open and active in exploring many avenues of artistic expression, including music production, furniture fabrication, photography, film, and theatrical production.

inside ARCHITECTURE ART

KELSEY RUST Cat (31)

A recent graduate of unm, Kelsey is an uncontrollable juggler of too many projects with a wayward plan to find her passion in the midst of them all.

COMICS PHOTOGRAPHY POETRY PROSE plus A VIDEO