Issuu

CONCRETE

LITERARY

MAGAZINE

2024-2025

All of the work found within the pages of Concrete Literary Magazine is original work published by undergraduates of Emerson College under the Student Government Association and the Writing, Literature, and Publishing department. All rights revert to the authors and artists upon publication, and permission to republish must be gained directly through the contributors. Emerson College 120 Boylston Street Boston, MA 02116 Copyright © 2025 Concrete Literary Magazine All rights reserved.

concrete 2O24 - 2O25

Staff Positions Editor in Chief Cammy Lehr

Managing Editor Mel Jones

Prose Editors

Poetry Editors

Tessa Donohue Meg Leavitt Ali Dening Mars Early

Olivia Trzaski Maggie Kaprielian

Assistant Poetry Editors Quinn Gardiner Camilla MacKay Heather Thorn

Head Marketer

Avanika Lefcowitz

Assistant Marketer Aylin Isik

Marketers

Alyssa Clark Carli Bertonneau Zach Stern-Hayes Grace Mattsen Gabbi Aquino

Events Coordinator Leah Shosteck

Assistant Prose Editors Khira Moore Joseph Norris Lillian Flood

Head Designer Reid Perry

Assistant Designer Rowan Wasserman

Designers

Paige Tokay Anabelle Rosenberger

Treasurer

Cayetana Espinosa

Head Copyeditor

Prose Readers

Grace Grauwiler

Assistant Copyeditor Liz Gomez

Copyeditors

Meg Carey Mia Solimine Madi Gagner Emma Carr Emie McAthie Mia Rodriguez

Poetry Readers Danika Benziger Rowan Wasserman Paige Tokay Juliette Habogian Danielle Bartholet Lucia LaVorgna Gabrielle Finucan Maria Mancur Caroline Benoit Stella Lapidus Melina Gardiner Lillian Flood

Brooke Buckmir Declan Ireland Laila Ahmed Ryn Brierley Alyssa Buford Maya Genuardi Nicole Guth Marianna Orozco Amelia Newman Kate Slade Abigail Lincks

Table of contents

How Do I Get Out Of This Production Machine

Minotaur

I know a place

Duluth, MN

Don’t Click My Buttons

College-Age Ode to Public Transportation

Beetles

Blocking Parts

Skin and Blister, Sister

King Minos’s Dream

coming to terms

Sucker!

The Birch Tree

The Next Generation

Aubade to a Tourist Attraction

Ce Vieux Paradis

Schmear Done Right

Intimacy

The Hyperbolic Labyrinth

Mirror Portrait

Dear Reader

irst and foremost, we want to thank our incredible staff for consistently showing up prepared and excited to work throughout the year. The entire Concrete team has worked incredibly hard to put together this magazine, and for that, we are forever grateful. This magazine is the final product of countless hours of staff collaboration and commitment. We also want to thank our authors for submitting their work and allowing us to review it. And finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t thank you, the reader, for caring enough to pick up this magazine and read our web of stories. Concrete Literary Magazine has a long history at Emerson College. In our forty-three years of establishment, we have undergone numerous name changes, brand changes, and more. Last fall, we began to incorporate a visual and conceptual theme into our annual magazines. This year, when we set about deciding our theme, a couple of things were important to us. We wanted the theme to be expansive enough to be accessible and relatable, yet specific enough to bring our unique outlook into the world. We settled on the image of the labyrinth. A labyrinth is a complex maze with twisting turns that take you down an unclear path, leading to a right or wrong end. We chose the theme Labyrinth as a way to embrace and display the chaos of life through stories from diverse perspectives, whether they take the form of psychological disorientation or literally running from a monster. Within your own labyrinth, do you retreat into yourself, letting the walls close in, or do you take part in the rat race, trying to find the end of the maze? As you sit down to read this issue, we invite you to take a deep breath and imagine the sound of a creaking floorboard and a distant howl before entering our maze of intricate poems and sophisticated short stories. Enjoy the magnificent perplexity of the labyrinth!

Cammy & Mel

How Do I Get Out Of This Production Machine (From Whalesong to the Metamorphosis of A Thousand Albatrosses) After Leah Nieboer and Hanif Abdurraqib

In a dream, on a small slip hidden inside the clamshell lock of the most unassuming fortune cookie, I had written to myself a secret message: How to get out of this production machine: I took a bite of the clamshell; its sugar pearls shocked me. I took a bite of the world; it was no longer my oyster. From my throat, I heard the song of a blue whale, the bluest whale, the loneliest whale, the only whale that could sing in 52 hertz; it rose like a blossom of black seaweed from the sewer; a watery bush of pubic hair floating in a wretched bathtub; a secret, sacred heart hidden far beneath the ocean, beneath the seafloor, beneath sand and magma and the hot yellow core of it all. Yes, the world was yolk, and I had only been seeing the eggshell, crying between the cracks of it all. Crying blues in jazz, blues in whalesong, swimming songs made of notes opposite to flight, drowning while dreaming of the feathered sky, endlessly obsessed with the movement of subterranean waves, of sameness, of being dragged thoughtlessly by the world’s whims and slow currents. I had dropped my gleaming eggs, one by one, kicked them out of the albatross’ nest and foolishly waited for the hopeful chicks to hatch. No, the chicks drowned. They fell, empty fetus husks, blind little hushpuppies, to the seafloor, into a nest of black seaweed. But a tiny pearlbeam of sun fell upon their heads. Maybe it was the antenna of a night lampfish—the sun doesn’t reach too deep. No—I believe it was the sun. Yes, the sun was the yolk that fed the drowned albatrosses, and they rose from the ocean like a bouquet of white feathers and yellow beaks, shining through the heavy whale carcasses. It was the spitting image of Easter, of resurrection, of love; from whalesong to the metamorphosis of a thousand albatrosses. 5

Rita Yea Se Chun

We were destined to be mythos If it were easy Everyone would do it We are in Crete and I am the monster

Minotaur Gabbi Aquino

I am the wretched thing chasing blindly after you in the dark Daedalus has hung me with chains and left me to rot In this sprawl of twisted corridors You send your innocence Your purity Your goodwill I return it with carnage and viscera I can do nothing else Amidst the gore I picture your smile When you finally cut me down In an instant I have only ever loved Theseus It has been so impossible to imagine Anything but the walls Strangling me like a web Muttering conspiracies I am digested by your good intentions The sword is expected Encouraged, even But when it slices it takes more than I thought I had to give My body is still rotting in the maze You have slain me, Theseus But you have not put me to rest I hope your penance is the memory Of my back against the wall You are the labyrinth I can never be free of I only wanted to see the sun 6

I know A Place

Madi Gagner

e hadn’t warned me how scratchy the dried

until he found me in the gym’s supply closet with a

corn stalks would be. Their leaves turned to

bloody nose and bruised knuckles that I was sure there

sandpaper in the crisp air of fall, whispering

was something in the air between us. The palms of his

against my cheeks and arms as we tore through. I

hands were soft as they landed in mine. I never noticed

don’t think we’re doing this whole corn maze thing

you painted your nails, nails, he had said, letting a thumb

right, ignoring the curving paths cleared in the crop

graze gently over my rings. I like it. it. This would be our

and stomping straight in. From the looks of some of

third date if you can call it that. We spent the first in

the already-flattened stalks under our feet, it’s not the

an old retro diner, locking eyes over the rims of mugs

first time he’s been here. Keegan’s adventurous like

as we studied for an exam neither of us would do well

that. Not so rebellious that my mother would clutch the

on, go figure. The second we spent down by the lake,

knitted ends of her cardigan in disdain, but rebellious

watching the sunset. Very romantic. The post-sunset

enough for the occasional thrill and light rule-breaking.

“talking” was even more romantic, if you know what I

He doesn’t have tattoos or anything like that, he’s only

mean. When he asked me to meet him outside of that

a Junior. His shaggy burnt blond hair and freckles that

same park after midnight, I assumed it would be more

crease with his smile are the picture of innocence, and

of the same backseat action in his geriatric Corolla. But

he uses it to his advantage.

he said he knew a place, somewhere more private. I

It’s dark out now, but the moon is nearly full and

thought maybe I wasn’t far off after all. After trudging

her cool light guides us. It gives the winding corridors

through patches of woods and backyards for nearly

of the maze an eerie glow. If I were alone, I’m sure it

thirty minutes, the chill started seeping into my clothes.

would unnerve me. Tonight, though, I have a different

“Are we there yet?”

nervousness thumping in my chest. Keegan and I met in calculus, believe it or not. I thought he wouldn’t notice the sly glances I stole at

“Almost,” he says without looking back. The drawstring bag thrown over his shoulder bounces with each step. “Trust me, it’ll be worth it.”

him from over my shoulder, but then he started looking

He hadn’t lied. After another few minutes of

back at me, smirking. It wasn’t long before we started

corn safari, we reach a clearing, which is circular but

talking—conspicuously, of course. God knows his boy-

not very wide in diameter. There are four openings in

next-door, chick-magnet, flannel-wearing ass couldn’t

the walls leading back into the maze, and a few hay

be seen with the likes of me, our hick town’s token fairy

bales scattered around. A blanket is already laid out

who pierced both ears. I wanted to make sure I got the

in the middle of the clearing, with a little red portable

gay one.

radio on top.

I could never tell if Keegan was flirting or

“Is this the center of the maze?” I ask. Keegan

just liked the banter. He was friendly, sure, but I had

grins proudly at his setup.

to remind myself not to mistake the kindness of a

“Sure is.”

classmate for attraction. Not again, anyway. It wasn’t

My cheeks flush, “And you came out all this way 8

just to put everything together?” He steps closer to me, “Sure did.”

until I hear the flap of fabric and a soft thump from the

“Why’d you need to bring the—?”

same place.

He cuts me off with a swift kiss, the kind that

“Okay,” I stand, “I gotta see what that is.”

melts in your mouth like sugar. Suddenly, I’m not so

“Wait—Jordan, I’m sure it’s nothing.”

cold anymore.

I ignore his protests and jog over, peeking over

“Sorry, what were you saying?” he says through thick blond lashes, “I didn’t quite get that.” I push his shoulders away with playful malice. “You’re an idiot.” He pulls me by the arm to the blanket, and we sit criss crossed. His tanned skin looks pale under the moon, his freckles almost invisible.

the top of the two bales. A brown rabbit sits at the bottom of a deep hole atop a wrinkled camo-print tarp, frantically trying to claw its way out. The hole must stretch close to six or seven feet down. “Woah, check it out,” I inspect the pit closer. It’s long and rectangular, like a grave. “Someone must’ve

“Want some music?” he reaches over and turns

set out a trap or something, but I don’t know what kind

the radio on. The only station we can get good service

of animal you’d need this big a hole for . . .” I trail off,

from is playing an old, Beach Boys-sounding song, the

suddenly aware of the silence behind me and the cold

kind you play by the sea or in your car on a summer day.

seeping in again. “Keegan?”

It doesn’t quite fit the mood, but it’s better than silence and the whisper of corn.

in again, shrugging off my concern for a few moments

I turn just as he charges at me, knife in hand. A scream bubbles up from my throat, and I dodge without

“How antiquated.” I poke his wiry arm. He

a second to spare, sending him stumbling into the hole.

laughs a little too hard, and I don’t think he knows what

The rabbit screeches as it’s crushed under his weight. I

the word means.

look down at my stinging chest and see that he grazed

“Yeah.”

me just below the collarbone. My ears start to ring and

I can tell from the look in his lidded eyes what

bile rises in my throat. Dark splotches grow across my

he’s thinking. Admittedly, I’m thinking the same thing.

tan shirt. It’s not a deep cut, but the pain increases with

He pulls me in for another kiss as the beachy song fades

every second it’s exposed to the night’s chill.

out. A rustle sounds from the corn. I lean back for a

I peek over the edge with trembling legs. I can

moment, turning down the new song that’s started to

tell by the way he groans and cradles his head he’s hurt,

hear. “What is it?” he murmurs.

but it won’t be long before he recovers. The knife—not

I hear it again from behind a stack of hay bales.

a big butcher’s knife but a long, serrated steak knife—is

“That,” I point in the direction of it. “Do you hear

discarded beside him. I feel like throwing up. Getting a

that?” Something in his face shifts then, but he hides it

single breath into and out of my mouth is a strain. The

well with an unbothered voice.

image of him flashes in my mind repeatedly. I want to

“It’s nothing,” he assures me, “probably just

call out for my mom and pull out my own knife that I

an animal or something. C’mere.” I let him draw me

don’t have and exact my revenge. I don’t do any of that

because I hear his voice rise faintly from the bottom. “Jordan . . .” I recoil from the sound, “it was

the rural Midwest don’t get happy endings, certainly not when Reagan’s in the fucking White House.

just a prank—I was pranking you, babe.” He waits for

I realize with a drop in my stomach that I’ve

a response I don’t give. “Can you help me up, please?”

completely compromised my sense of direction. If I had

I want to believe him. I wanna laugh the whole

thought it through for a second more, I could’ve gone

thing off and go back to looking through his honey

back the way we’d come, following the trampled stalks

lashes and letting his warmth wash over my skin. But

and footprints. Even so, he might have caught up to me

the Keegan I thought I knew was always laid-back,

out in the open. I’m not sure I would remember the way

never too wired to pull something like this. The boy I

home. At least in this withered labyrinth, I’m hidden.

had seen charging towards me had a hard, resolved look

For now.

on his face, with the veins popping out of his forehead

I take off my silver rings and studded belt,

and deeply puckered brows. At that moment, he was a

shoving them into my pockets so they can’t catch the

killer.

glare of the moonlight, and venture on. Every flitting “Fuck you.”

shadow and sound from the corn makes me jump. The

I put the adrenaline in my body to good use and

flesh of my arms and neck has never felt so delicate, so

sprint across the clearing to one of the openings. I don’t

slashable. My knees shake with every step.

dare look back, skidding around bends and corners until

The wind stops suddenly. The silence seems

my lungs give out. I time my breathing with the wind

to amplify each of my movements, and my breath has

so the whispers cover me. The back of my neck is slick

turned quick and shallow. I creep slowly forward,

with sweat.

scanning the canvas of dead brown grass under my feet

I’m alone now, and the darkness closes in. As

for sticks or rocks I could use to defend myself. Not

the shock subsides, anger replaces it. You would think,

that it would do me any good. The record spinning in

after getting the shit kicked out of me every week since

my head skips again and again, looping the same words.

the summer of ‘83, I’d be able to see it in his face; some

I don’t wanna die. Please, God, I don’t wanna

kind of disgusted expression after every kiss, an off

die. Not like this. Not here. I have to blink away the

comment here and there. But Keegan had never made

hotness behind my eyes. I can cry later when I’m tucked

any of those alarms in my head blare. He was perfect—

safely into warm sheets after waking up from this

albeit a little out of my league.

nightmare. I can’t let myself become another headline

So fucking stupid, stupid, I chastise myself over again,

parents use to warn their children about sneaking

fighting off the tears and hyperventilation that rear in

through the window at night to galavant with flannel-

the back of my throat. I never should have expected

wearing blonds. I’d rather warn them myself.

some kind of fairytale romance with a closeted hockey

“Jordan?” I freeze in place. The voice is nearby,

boy in my rural dream-crushing Midwestern village. I

and the way he drawls my name tells me he’s dropped the

never should have even entertained it. Artsy queers in

act. “Where’d you go, baby? Don’t you wanna dance? 10

Come dance with me.” I can’t risk cutting through

corridor. My breaths are wheezing now, my throat drier

the walls with him so close to me, but at least I know

than sand. I barely have a moment’s rest before I catch

the general direction he’s in. I tread even lighter now,

movement in my periphery. He’s there, one path over,

hyper-aware of the beat in my ribcage and the friction

his back to me. His shoulders heave in near unison with

of my jeans.

mine. The wall between us is thin, only four or five stalks

“Jordan,” he sounds serious now, like he’s

wide. I can barely make out his silhouette in the dark,

flipping through his catalog of deception tactics to see

and I don’t dare take my eyes off him, not even as he

which one sticks, “I will find you, y’know. And you

turns towards me. There’s a lull in the breeze, and I’m

won’t wanna be running from me when I do.” My breath

sure he’ll hear my breathing, but his gaze passes over

hitches. It seems so loud that I think he could’ve heard

me, and he continues walking down the trail until he’s

it.

out of my sight. I finally exhale and crunch my body “But I guess if you’re not gonna play nice,” he

forward, hands braced on my knees. I can’t outrun him

says, “I’ll have to find something better to do. You have a

forever, and I can’t risk letting him get to Clara or my

sister, don’t you? It’d be a shame if something happened

parents. I need to move.

to her.” He pauses as if waiting for protest. “Clara, isn’t

A few feet away, I see a fallen stalk lying across

it?” A new panic spreads through me. I think of Clara

the path and recognize the footprints of Keegan’s heavy

sleeping soundly just a room away from my bed, where

boots, the cut-through route he and I had first taken.

surely I’m sleeping too, conjuring up Keegan’s malice

But the problem is, I can’t tell which direction leads me

in my dreams.

to safety and which leads back to the center where it all

“If you’re not going to come out, I guess I’ll just head on over—” “Wait!” I regret it as soon as the word leaves my mouth.

began. The footprints trek both ways, and I’m unsure which is fresher. With no coin to flip, I follow my gut and turn left. Please, God, let this be the way out.

To my surprise, he halts his monologue. I hear a rustling.

It’s not. Within a minute of quiet and meticulous

It grows louder. I recognize the rhythmic pounding of

shimmying through the passage, I’m back in the

footsteps. He’s coming for me.

clearing. Any lingering hope for escape in my chest

Spurred on by a fresh surge of adrenaline, I

deflates. This is it, the place where I’ll die. I don’t try

make another desperate dash, zig-zagging and pushing

to stop the tears this time. They roll off my cheeks and

through rows of crops. The flurry of my own thrashing

create new splotches of wetness on my shirt. At least

drowns out his, and I lose any sense of where he is.

the blood has dried.

All I can picture is the knife plunging into my back as

I wonder what they’ll say about me in the paper.

he pounces or slices through my neck like deli meat.

“Local Queer Killed Dead by Fellow Classmate,” or

My mouth starts to taste of bile again, but I don’t stop

maybe ‘Rest in pieces, the chilling details of Jordan

running until I can’t. I come to a stop in a narrow

Filman’s murder,’ or something corny like that. Either

way, I won’t be around to read it.

catch on the glint of his knife, but I plant my feet. I

I always thought things would feel different

had expected another speech from him, but his lips stay

when you did them for the last time. Maybe that’s only

tightly pressed together. For a moment I even think I

true for people who know they’re going to die. I would’ve

see them tremble.

liked the warning regardless. I try to remember the last

“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?” It’s

things I said to my dad, the last hug I begrudgingly

stupid to make him angry, I know, but I can’t help

gave my mom, the last time I held Clara’s hand as we

myself. I won’t satisfy him with my fear.

crossed the street on the way to school. I try not to

He laughs stiffly, and it sounds forced. “Nowhere

remember the other stuff. The last kick I took to the

to run this time,” he speaks in a deeper tone than I’ve

back or snide comment sneered in passing. None of that

ever heard him. “What’s your move?”

matters anymore.

I grip the radio with increasingly moist palms. I

I feel a slight sense of peace in my grim

thought in my acceptance of death I wouldn’t be afraid

acceptance. I guess I never had much going for me

when faced with it, but I’m slowly losing my resolve. I

anyway, but if I’m gonna go out, I’d better do it in style.

don’t want to die. Not yet.

The little red radio on the blanket is still playing

“Why are you doing this?”

faintly from the same station, though the song is one of

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

those slow, waltzy-sounding tunes with a wailing male

This fucking prick.

soloist and a groaning trumpet in the background. Not

“Why go through all this?” I ask him, “Why not

the ideal score for my murder, but it’ll have to do. I

just kill me the second you had the chance? You could’ve

crank the volume up as loud as it’ll go, holding it above

done it. At the lake,” I see through a chip in his facade.

my head and letting it blare across the field. “You want

“No one was around. We made sure of that. So why

me?” I yell above the music, “Come and get me, bitch.”

didn’t you?”

It doesn’t take long for the siren’s call to lure him in, and as the song reaches its final chorus, he slinks

The muscles in his jaw ripple. “You had to trust me.”

through the opening parallel to me. He looks straight

I think back to the supply closet and the first

out of a horror movie with his dirt-streaked arms and

time I’d really studied his face. He seemed so real

wild hair. Small, crusted streams of blood run down his

and tangible then, his hands in mine, whole where I

face and cake in his brows. His shirt is nearly soaked

was broken. It’s a punch to the gut to know the most

through with sweat. For someone who’s supposed

genuine romance of my life was a farce. I guess if it’s

to have the upper hand here, he looks like shit. Any

any consolation, I’m less of a freak than him.

arrogance he might’ve had in his posture is gone as he glares at me with hunched and heaving shoulders.

“I did trust you.” I have to lock my arms to keep them from shaking. I don’t dare let them fall. “And you

I turn down the radio without looking away.

knew that. So why?” His face seems to soften then, if

My confidence has wavered a bit, especially as my eyes

only for a second. He looks to the ground. “Because 12

you wanted to?” He looks back at me, and it’s like I’m sneaking a glance at him from over my shoulder

“What—you think you’re some kind of savior?”

in calculus. His unguarded expression affirms my

It’s my mouth spewing spit now, my voice dripping with

suspicion. “I thought so.” And the wall comes back up.

as much hatred as I can muster. “Cleansing the world of

“I needed to choose people like you,” he

sin or some shit?”

says, flecks of spit spraying from his mouth. “Weak,

“No,” he smiles, “just a guy with a bad habit.”

vulnerable. Desperate for friendship and love. People

As if on cue, he lurches towards me, and I

like Mikey.”

take off, calculating our distance. I know he’s gaining

Mikey Torres.

on me, but before he can reach me, I stop, swivel,

“What?” My ears are ringing again. Mikey

and swing the radio back around as hard as I can. It

Torres was a grade below us, a spiky-haired freshman

collides straight-on into the side of his head, breaking

who liked to wear death metal tees and paint his nails.

the thing into little pieces of plastic shrapnel that rain

We’d sneak out the back door of the cafeteria and smoke

down over us both. The sheer force of the motion sends

cigarettes during lunch period. I complimented him on his

me tumbling backward into a hay bale. Pain shoots up

nails once. You like them? He had said. I can do yours,

my arm. I definitely pulled something. But I’ve hit my

if you want. I remember thinking it was nice to have

target, and Keegan falls with a heavy thud, the knife

someone who experienced school in the same hellscape I

flying out of his grip and skidding across the ground.

did, even if he wasn’t really gay. I remember the smell of

Fresh blood pours out of his face. I’d hoped the blow

that shitty drugstore polish and how watery the formula

would knock him unconscious, but after a few seconds,

was. He spent our whole lunch applying layers until you

he sits up, scanning the grass for his blade. He sees it as

couldn’t see the nail underneath. Specks of it still linger

soon as I do and contorts his body backward to try and

there, months after I saw him for the last time.

reach it. In the second his back is turned to me, I spring,

“Did you really think he ran away from home?”

whipping out the rolled-up belt in my back pocket and

he asks with a sneer. “It worked out better than I

tackling him. It’s a morbid game of tug-o-war as the

thought, with the cops and all.” He fiddles with the

belt cuts off his air. He claws at it with one hand and

point of his knife. “He was always troubled,” he says,

uses the other to strain toward the knife; fingers splayed

tipping the point towards me, “kinda like you.”

and white. He’s slightly bigger than me, and with every

I can feel my time and his patience for banter

they’d vanished.

taut moment, he captures another inch.

running low, but it does little to quell the sudden

I see the faces of my mom, dad, and Clara blend

fury in me. I always thought something about Mikey’s

into one and float above me in the colorful spots forming

disappearance was suspicious, and it always drove me

in my eyes. I thought I would have a “life flashing before

crazy that the police never bothered to really look into

my eyes” kind of moment, but this’ll have to do.

it. My arms shake violently now, both with rage and

I love you guys.

weariness. If I’d had any doubts about my plan before,

Keegan’s fingertips brush the knife’s handle,

but his breath is choppy, like TV static, and the hand

leaves and take in the scent of autumn, the scent of

that claws loses its determination. He just barely gets a

change. When I finally emerge, I fill my lungs to their

grip around it before slumping over. Lights out. I let his

capacity for what feels like the first time and let my

unconscious body roll onto its back. His face is purple

breath go with the wind.

and veiny, but the color comes back when his breathing starts up again. I take the knife gingerly from his hand. I could kill him. I should. But looking at him now, the soft rise and fall of his stomach, the thick lashes guarding sandy brown eyes and faintly freckled cheeks, a part of me still sees the boy in him. Another smarter part of me knows the boy will disappear the moment he opens those eyes and sees me hovering over him. And I only have so much time before he wakes up. Mikey. If I kill Keegan now, I’ll never know what happened to him. I know he’s dead, but if I knew where Keegan dumped him, I could at least give everyone some closure. He could have an actual funeral. I could visit his grave, leave flowers, talk to him about life and how much it all sucks. That would be nice. But there’s a chance, if I don’t end it here and now, he could get away, and I doubt I’d ever get a proper night of sleep again. So I do what I need to. I bind his wrists together with my belt and drag him over to the grave that was meant for me. He falls like a ragdoll to the bottom and starts to stir. For good measure, I push the two hay bales into the hole on top of him. The impact forces a muffled grunt out of him. He’s not going anywhere. I won’t say it all wasn’t a little satisfying, if not for the near-death experience and extensive trauma. But it’ll all be worth it when I’m the last person he ever hurts. I find the trampled path. I brush past their dry 14

Duluth, MN

Ethan Richmond

e’re here to see the statue of Paul Bunyan, Dad told me in the drive-thru, reloading his gun. He liked to do this—pretend that his motivation was sightseeing, nothing else. When we drove through Chicago, we were there to catch a baseball game at Wrigley Field. South Dakota, to gaze at Mount Rushmore. Iowa, to browse a museum he couldn’t remember the name of. We never got around to any of these places. Now, it was Duluth, Minnesota, to see a statue of Paul Bunyan—a name I didn’t know and a statue I wasn’t sure existed. I ate my Big Mac immediately after we pulled out of the drive-thru—one hand on the wheel, the other trying to keep the discolored combination of sauces from sloughing off the bun—but my father chose to wait to eat his McRib—wait until after he had me park the car a block away from the diner, wait until after he pulled a beanie with haphazardly cut eye holes down his face, wait until after he left the passenger seat. Man the comms while I’m gone, he said, as he always said, as I always hated, because he spoke to me like a poorly trained guard dog and not his son. I checked the clock on the car’s dashboard— the vehicle he made me keep off to save gas and avoid unwanted attention—and saw that it had now been forty-five minutes since he originally departed. I still hadn’t heard any gunshots. I thought of looking in the glove compartment, rifling past wads of cash kept in bondage by rubber bands to see how many pills Dad had left. But I didn’t want to know. So, I tapped the wheel to an unknown rhythm, trying to make out constellations through the overhead window, holding my breath to avoid the stench of the

deteriorating McRib, which sat lonely in the backseat. It usually didn’t take him this long— maybe something had gone wrong; he stuck up the wrong diner at the wrong time and wound up on the wrong end of someone else’s gun. But, I truly didn’t care if he came out of the diner with his face intact, or at all, and I hadn’t for a very long time. I can’t pinpoint when my lack of interest in his survival started, but it was cemented, and I was sitting, freezing, alone for no real reason. I turned on the car and reversed out of my parking spot, searching for an onramp to any freeway; the particulars didn’t matter. I was over the Wisconsin state line when I realized I hadn’t been playing any music. The sky was gray. I turned on the CD player, hoping something was already inside, not caring what, and was greeted by “Sugar Mountain” by Neil Young. I hadn’t heard it since the beginning of our indefinite road trip over two years ago, when I was still convinced Dad had killed my mother. The lack of details on her disappearance, Dad’s urgency to leave home afterward (just get in the car, get in the fucking car, you’ll see the dog again soon, I promise, yes, you can sit in front), and the 16

fact that I missed her made the conclusion infallible in my prepubescent brain. I was sitting shotgun, staring at his face—which was, at that point, still handsome, temples a respectable gray, eyes glinting with small explosions—thinking how, at the next motel, I would kill him. I would wait until he was snoring, reach for a pillow, and bring it down over his face until the noise in the room stopped. I was thirteen years old. He had killed my mother; it would be right to kill him in return, and it might make me feel better. As I played out this fantasy, he opened the CD player and put in this disc. Timid guitar strumming faded in, Young’s voice ached in the car speakers, and my father began to cry. Tears fell from the eyes that just two years later, would be marred by cataract clouds. He pulled over and lit a cigarette. The song and the Marlboro concluded simultaneously, and we got back on the road. He said nothing to me during this entire episode, and I made no effort to comfort him. My child mind couldn’t comprehend what was happening in front of me. I still can’t. His crying face looked so human, so vulnerable, before it eventually reverted to the sleazy coldness I had come to know before then and would continue to know after. Anyway, after this, I no longer thought about suffocating him, even when we were furious at each other, and only passively wondered if he had killed Mom. Years later, I looked it up, and there was, in fact, a statue of Paul Bunyan in Minnesota, but in a town called Brainerd, two hours and eight minutes from Duluth. 17

Before I finished backing out of my parking spot near that diner, I reached into the backseat, grabbed the McRib, and set it in the shotgun seat. I took all his pill bottles out of the glove compartment, placing them on top of his uneaten meal, which was cold, probably spoiled, but would now, at least, be somebody’s. I cracked the window and put these items on the sidewalk, where they would go to my father, or end up in the hands of someone homeless, who would, maybe, start believing in God as a result. I kept the cash. Then I drove away, watching window lights go out in what passed for skyscrapers in Duluth until I found a way to merge onto the I-94 freeway. Maybe three or four other cars were around, antisocially scattered in different lanes. I thought of the places my father and I had been, how we never spent much time in them except for motels at night and greasy spoons in the morning, how they all looked the same from a car window. I could find no difference between Duluth and any other place in America. I thought of these things, and other things like them, for a while.

Don’t Click My Buttons Hela Giaever

Let me off this elevator! For he whose face is sore has pressed every Floor. So I can’t stop the frequent ups and downs and my stomach will ache if I ride anymore. I’m having trouble navigating Where I’m supposed to step out For I can’t see outside this barren small box six feet about. Hearing it sing, rings, and dings. Blurry mirrored ceilings encapsulating my confused fogged reflective feelings about who’s stepping on, off, outs, and ins 18

I can see my life as romantic only on a bus or train, when I am going somewhere else—between places where no one knows my name, its letters kept safe between railroad tracks or tressed by wheels. The window unfailingly offers a sweet delight in every picture frame of life: well-loved apartments & never-ending trees. Sidewalks weedy. A story in each traffic light. All of it sitting to be looked at. How about this: I’ve never crashed a car, but I imagine it to be not unlike crafting an answer to a question that changes your life forever, quick pulse shattering. You know: something you know you won’t ever forget. The only gems I can offer are only the ones passed through my left kidney & wrapped in bilirubin— yellow as my childhood bedroom painted bright. I find allure in myself only when mystery hypnotizes me, trailing the brailled ridges of my brain like it’s anything devout. In the meantime, I learn to make a life my own by carving it out of tires. Like everyone else, I make my bed every morning, sometimes outgrow my friends & break my bones so I can stay just as tall. I press my mouth to flowers, swallowed a rose petal just last Sunday. I build a life out of a standstill— make each second last longer & stretch the hours like they’re rubber even as I count the minutes down. I’ve loved, I’ve lost. & you’d never believe it: I have twenty years’ worth of yearning under my belt. I dreamed of this city, its neat rows of brownstones & sea blitz a walk away, but now know that I bring myself everywhere. It’s still a life: bitter, sleep-shouldered, passively angry. Nomadic: spent listening to my cities calling me. I miss home the most when I’m leaving it, but I fall in love with the act of hovering between spaces— all the gritty mouth-ness of it. & always away I feel a tug 19

College-Age Ode to Transportation Heather Thorn

Beetles Elliot Berkley

elia loathed the feeling of lying on the ground, twigs in her hair, grime beneath her palms. But she’d do it for Anton. He was lying on his stomach next to her and somehow could still breathe well enough to have been babbling on for the last half hour. “It’s not . . . I don’t know. Do you think I’m . . .” Anton kept springing into new sentences before he could finish his old ones. Celia could tell he was still sifting through his thoughts about his new university classmate, Harry, and the jumbled mess was spilling out of his mouth. “Do you think I’ll scare him off?” Anton finally landed on. Celia shivered. The brittle sunlight scraping the patio stones was feeble against the March chill. She sighed. “You haven’t actually spoken to him, have you?” “Well . . . no, I’ve been—” “If you want to be his friend, you’ve got to speak to the man first.” Celia raised her eyes toward the cloudy sky. “You’re daft.” She rubbed her eyes. Her cousin was always like this. Ever since they were kids, he’d had a hard time with friends, always fearing he was too much or too little. That was the benefit of their friendship; there was no fear of fitting in when neither of them fit in at all. He tended to talk too much, she too little. He did not think enough before he spoke. Her mind, on the other hand, was wild with ferocious ramblings. “Don’t say daft,” Anton said. Celia laughed. At some point, he had gotten it in his head that it was his job to curb her bad

behaviors. It was sweet, though. He was like the older brother she’d always wished for. She shook her head. “You say it often enough.” Her ribbon was coming loose in the dirt beneath her hair. Spring swelled around them, new buds on prickling branches and the quiet dripping of last night’s rain. Her aunt’s house was more overgrown than when she’d last set eyes upon it. Tendrils crawled up the walls and window panes and the old glass sunroom. There was still a breath of frost on the wrought iron. The drone of an airplane in the sky; she glanced up once more, searching for it past the clouds. Anton was rambling on about Harry again. She closed her eyes under the papery daylight as he began his parade of self-doubt once more. “I don’t think he would find me interesting, you know?” There was a guilt in his voice that confused her, and she turned her head to read his face. What her attention instead landed on was the fat green beetle on the ground between them. The moment she saw it, it stretched its wings, as if noticing her for the first time as well. Anton opened his eyes and startled, scrambling backward across the ground. Celia laughed. He’d loathed bugs ever since they were kids. She sat up, got to her feet, bent over, and brought her boot down hard, digging the heel into the ground. She felt its shell crack and crush beneath her foot. She smiled, but she didn’t feel it in her eyes. “You’re cruel,” Anton pulled his knees to his 22

chest. “Stop pouting. You were the one who ran away. What else was I supposed to do?” “You could’ve shooed it away.” Anton was sitting in the middle of the patio, where the swirling pattern of gray brick consolidated. Little bits of spongy moss stuck their fingers through the cracks and toward the center as if reaching toward him. “I’ve never seen that species of beetle. It might’ve been rare. Exotic. Special.” Celia shrugged and looked at the sky again. “I saw two in the garden beds yesterday.” ※ They were eating dinner when the phone rang in the parlor. Dust was floating through the final rays of sunlight. Celia’s cutlery scraped the plate, napkin folded in her lap, the dining hall filled with rose wallpaper and glossy wood. Anton was grinning as he pulled out a chair to sit. “Celia,” he said “after class today, I—” A sudden sound filled her ears and she jumped, almost shattering her cup. Anton looked at her from across the table, his eyes wide. Her heart began to race. It couldn’t be. She didn’t break his gaze, hoping he’d understand. Stay. Just let it keep ringing. You know we both can’t risk it. The fear hung in the air between them. Anton seemed to be about to say something, but—nothing. He put his fork down. No. He was frowning as he walked past her, swallowed up by the parlor. You’ll have to lie to her again. The click as he picked up the phone. 23

Or they’re going to send me back home. “Hello?” No more. No more of it. I can’t be taken back. The sound of words. Murmurs, whispers, tendrils of voices carried across such distance. . . “Mother?” Celia drew her knees to her chest. It’s Aunt Constance. “Yes, I’m doing well. I’m keeping everything tidy, before you ask,” Anton said. And then he paused. “No—” A sigh. “Mother, she’s not—” Celia’s mouth was sand. “Celia’s not here, mother, again. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, I’ve been writing to her all month. I wish I knew where she was. Believe me, I do . . .” He trailed off into spooling exasperation with her that she could tell was half genuine. He was an excellent liar. She’d known that Anton would open the door willingly, that he’d been alone in this big house for far too long, and that he needed someone to talk to who understood him like no other—the same way he understood her. When she’d stolen the money for the train here, she’d had no remorse either. They could panic all they wished. Her mother, her father, her aunt and uncle. They

couldn’t find her. They wouldn’t get to her. And she didn’t care. She didn’t care. I don’t care. She lowered her head. There were two beetles on the tablecloth in front of her. Their hard carapaces looked like stones swirling beneath verdigris seawater. Her chair squeaked and almost toppled backward as she lunged for the big leather book on the side table. It felt so light in her hands and came down with a thud on the table. She bundled up the white lacy cloth with the green stains and took it to the bin outside. ※ The neighborhood around Anton’s house had grown in a flurry of new, fresh buildings with clean walls and sparkling windows. Yes, after the war, everything seemed to be flourishing. No longer was this the dusty, overgrown neighborhood she’d recalled in memory. Twisting along the road in the trolley with her mother, suitcases bumping her legs as a wall of yellow flowers filled her vision. When she and her mother visited London often. Just before the war, before her mother and her aunt had fallen out. Before Celia’s outbursts had begun. No. Celia decided to stop thinking about her mother. No more. She was far away now. Back then, Anton had been ten with scraped knees and a periodically bloody nose. She’d show up at his bedroom door at the top of the stairs on the fourth floor. She’d never say hello, only “Want to play in the sunroom?” “I thought you wouldn’t ever ask,” he would respond.

Now they were both two feet taller and Celia was seventeen, Anton could barely match her stride despite being three years older than her. There was a blinding warmth in the air, a breeze drying the sweat on her forehead. The air smelled of overturned soil, grass, and a fresh hint of flowers. Motorcars whirred past. They didn’t play games in the sunroom anymore. The two of them were walking back to Anton’s house after touring yet another university that didn’t offer women an education and had been all grey and glum. She’d been posing as his sister all week; they looked similar enough. They’d hoped that after the war, with the 19th amendment in America allowing women to vote, and with all the forward movement that seemed to be trickling slowly across England, someone might be able to pull some strings. Celia needed something to do, something to lose herself in. She wanted to study again. But, no luck. “They felled the tree that we thought looked like a stooping man,” Anton told her, staring at the ground. “Oh.” Celia kicked a rock away from the sidewalk. “How sad.” She remembered the tree; they’d played underneath its shade as children, its branches hanging over them like shaggy arms. Once, Celia had fallen and chipped her tooth there. Anton had carried her home on his back, even though she could walk fine with a chipped tooth. Now there was a telephone pole there. Celia closed her eyes. 24

“The neighborhood has changed so much,” Anton said. “It’s quite sad.” “Things are simply growing.” Celia shrugged. “It’s for the best. There isn’t any use in being sentimental, Ant.” She kicked the rock once more. She knew the words were true but saying them felt like biting down the inside of her cheek, like a necessary pain. And she almost did, just for the tang of blood. The yellow flowers were nowhere to be seen as they turned the corner and gazed down the block toward Anton’s house. A mother strolled past, a parasol over one arm, the other hand clutching the hand of a small girl with ruddy cheeks. Something inside Celia twisted. Anton was gazing at her. “You don’t have to be so melancholy,” he murmured. “You’re the one being melancholy. I’m telling the truth,” she snapped. She hadn’t meant to. Anton froze. She kept walking. He hurried to catch up with her. “The one who ran away from home is preaching to me about telling the truth? Really?” Celia whirled on him. He had his arms crossed, a crease between his eyebrows. “Would you be quiet?” Her heart raced. The street around them was quiet and empty, but, still, she feared someone might have overheard. “At least I actually have the stomach to do such a thing.” She turned before he could retort. From the corner of her eye, she saw him, mouth open, looking appalled. He sucked in a breath, as if 25

about to say something—but stopped himself. Instead, she focused on his house as they approached. It was the only corner of the neighborhood that hadn’t morphed, a shard of frozen time, the hands of a clock, unmoving. It was tall and wedged between two much newer-looking buildings, barely a breath of space on either side. The windows had velvet, half-drawn curtains, creating the appearance of drooping eyelids. It looked crooked, as though there was a surplus of narrow, teetering stairs within, which Celia knew there were. It stood, weary and proud, this aching comfort of bygone days when Celia hadn’t yet learned to fear the labyrinth of her mind. “There’s a letter in the postbox,” Celia said, and stood on the garden path with her hands in the pockets of her coat, balancing on her toes as Anton dug for the letter. “So you spoke to Harry . . . yesterday.” She hoped the remark would clear the sudden tension between them. Anton smiled, the sparkle in his eyes returning, his face flushed. “Yes, and I think I’ll call him tonight.” He glanced down at the envelope, and his lips turned down. “Cricket, it’s for you.” Celia briefly grinned at the use of her old nickname. Then her stomach plummeted as she noticed the crisp, white paper and the looping, blue ink, losing herself in the sweep of the “O” and the scribble of

the “I.” Olivia Clifton. She plucked her mother’s letter from Anton’s hands. “Aren’t you going to open it?” he asked, reaching for her shoulder. Before she could think, the words were out of her mouth. “You talk about Harry an awful lot. Don’t you think it’s strange?” He froze, a pained expression on his face. Guilt tasted like metal in her mouth. She knew she was hiding. But she wanted to remind him that he was hiding, too. She rushed past him toward the house, gasping for breath. Inside, she flicked the switch beside the door, and the old glass lamp above her filled the entry hall with chartreuse light, battling against the sun through the stained-glass windows. She kicked her boots off and shoved the letter in her coat pocket. Then she froze. On the azure carpet sat five beetles. Green and shiny and big. Anton gasped behind her, the door creaking. Celia grabbed a black umbrella from the stand by the door. “Move,” She muttered, and Anton quickly scrambled out of the threshold and halfway into the parlor as Celia leapt across the carpet and began sweeping the beetles toward the door. As they were prodded, each one jerked and hopped, wings fluttering, as if trying to cling to the carpet with their fat legs. She reached over and opened the door, and with one final stroke, swept the insects out onto the front step. They made the

same crunch that an apple between her teeth would as she stabbed each with the point of the umbrella. ※ That night, the rain was a throbbing symphony in the back of Celia’s head, drumming its fingernails against the windows in the green and enveloping darkness of the house as she sketched a beetle by candlelight. The pristineness of the letter, unopened, haunted the periphery of her vision. Celia pinched the bridge of her nose, wiped her eyes, lit another candle, tried to fix the corner of her sketch, and couldn’t stand it anymore. She got up, blew out the first candle, and floated with the second down the hallway. All was still and dark. A strike of lightning outside. The hallway flashed into view, glimpses of yellowed floral wallpaper around the warm candle. And then it fell dark once more. In the parlor, Anton was draped across the sofa beneath the window, streetlamps casting him in a spectral glow. His cheeks were wet with tears. He was sleeping, curled in on himself, and the ghostly light on his cheeks made him look so young. The ten-year-old boy that she’d never see again. As if the world was only just beginning to hurt him. She tried to tiptoe past. A floorboard creaked. He startled awake, and the ghost was gone. The flicker of a firefly. “I didn’t know you were down here,” she sighed. “I haven’t seen you all night.” His voice shook. “I was sketching.” “Are you . . . going to ask—” Celia’s shoulders tensed. She stared down the hallway. 26

“About Harry,” she muttered. “I called him.” His shoulders trembled as he took a breath. “Celia, he said it was strange— that it was strange of me to do, that we were only strangers, he said I was—” His voice hitched. “Then forget him.” Celia felt her tone turn cold. “It isn’t important.” “I’m not meant to feel this way about . . . about him.” He sat up, his lips trembling, the candlelight dancing in his eyes. “I’m not supposed to be . . . this way.” “Well, I don’t know what to tell you.” She couldn’t stop the ice creeping up her spine and into her lungs. The way it always did. “You never do!” Anton leaped to his feet. Celia jumped back. A tear rolled down his face. “Whenever you’re faced with emotion, all you do is run.” He was breathing in gasps as if someone had socked him. “I know you haven’t opened that letter. I know it. I’m scared too, Celia. I don’t want to lose you. But you have to face it.” Celia ground her teeth against one another. She reached for something else. Anything. She only regretted the words that leaped from her mouth a moment after they were in the open air. “Why don’t you face it yourself? There’s a reason you let me stay here,” she hissed. She could feel the ice reach every corner of her chest, stopping up her lungs. She could feel herself twisting her words in cruel and taunting ways. “If they find me here and drag me away, you won’t have anyone left to hide with, to deal with your whimpering about boys.” She spat out her last words, hoping they’d hit him 27

in the stomach. “You’re shameful.” Anton stepped back into the shadows, out of reach from the light of the window, his face morphing in the darkness. Celia stood. The ice in her throat was melting into a flame. “Shameful?” His voice was low. “I’m lying to my mother for you, Celia. You’re the one running away. You’re running away from your parents. Because you, like me, are a coward.” The last word was venomous. Celia flinched, and the fire in her throat jumped to her eyes. She turned. Anton’s voice pierced the smoke at the edges of her vision as he followed her. “And you won’t talk to them. You won’t talk to me. You won’t talk to anyone!” Past the tiled kitchen. Up the twisting stairs. Down the hallway with the carpet like stained glass and flowers. “And you’re running away from me at this very moment!” he shouted. Into the bathroom. Candle on the edge of the washbasin. Beetles in the tub. There were so many of them that it looked, at first, as if the bathtub had been painted from the inside out, a lustrous green-black-purple color that swirled in the light. And then she saw the flutter of wings and legs, the squirming and the worming and the writhing. They were like oil, the mass of them, crawling across the expanse of chipped porcelain, each one as big as an apple. “Oh my god,” Anton rasped from behind her. Celia didn’t hesitate. She was already twisting the handles next to the faucet, and water splashed. She turned the knob over and over until

the water hissed, until the beetles were hissing and jerking and lurching, and she felt old soap bottles splash into the water. Anton dug his fingernails into her shoulder to try and pull her away. She shoved him off and pulled at the handles until one toppled off and splashed into the water. The shadow beneath the surface was twisting and trembling, and they were drowning, and she was drowning with them. There were drops of water in her eyes, on her face. Spools of water dripped over the side. There was a beetle on its back in the water, legs twitching. Water splashed her face as Anton rolled his sleeves up and dove for the handle of the faucet beneath the surface. He screwed it on, and the water stopped flowing. He turned. Celia’s stomach lurched at the horror in his eyes. “Celia,” he said. It wasn’t cold or cruel. Just her name. They were dead at the bottom of the bathtub. “Leave me alone,” she said. She felt the fire in her mouth and stomped over the puddles, slamming the door behind her. When she fell asleep, the sleeves of her nightshirt were still wet, her sketch abandoned on the desk next to the unopened letter. The house was dark, and cold, and empty. ※ When she woke, she knew what was beyond her closed eyelids just from the sound they made as they rushed over one another: the whispering, the rattling, the slithering. The darkness did little to hide their gleaming bodies. They were a different kind of darkness, a green and lustrous darkness, the darkness of a hidden emerald or the depths

of a glassy pond beneath mossy rocks and bending trees. Celia sprung to her feet without thinking twice. There was a tiny box in the drawer of her dresser. The match hissed between her fingers as she struck it. The flame sprung to life. All around her, they writhed, dangling from the ceiling lamp, coating the walls, jutting, jabbing, curling around her. They were big and bulbous and green. She couldn’t tell if she was screaming or not, couldn’t tell if it was tears or sweat pouring down her face as she touched the curtains, as she watched the light between her fingers grow, as she attacked the antagonistic, imposing force with everything in her. All she knew was that they would be gone forever. They had to be gone forever. She’d hunt each one down and snuff it out like a candle, stomp on its shell until it was broken pieces and guts, until the house was stained with emerald sap, and there were no more BEETLES. The smoke felt like incense. Her lungs were raw. They dropped from the curtains like acorns from a tree. As she stood and turned in a circle in the room swarming with tiny clustered bodies and breathed, her eyes wide and her lips cracked, she needed the fire to swallow up anything she wished. 28

It needed to swallow her whole. She didn’t recall picking up the letter, but there it was in her hands, trembling. All she had to do was close her eyes and let it go. Forget it forever. Cecelia. Rivulets of cold water streamed down her face. Anton stood before her, an empty bucket dangling from his hands. His eyes were wide. The curtains were soaked. Beetle carcasses were scattered across the carpet. Slowly, the shame crept into her stomach. She shut her eyes. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was so loud in her lungs but only a whisper in the air. Anton dropped the bucket. “What have you done?” He grabbed her face in his hands, digging his fingers into her cheeks for a moment in a way that was painful, his face twisted in fury, in confusion, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the dark. “I’m sorry,” She whispered again. His face melted into concern, eyes sparkling with tears. “Have you burned yourself?” “No.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry.” “Listen, I’m just . . .” He sighed, still searching her face. “I’m glad you aren’t hurt.” Anton drew his hands back. He was looking down at the letter clutched in her fingers. “Enough of this,” he murmured. “And all over a letter. Open it.” Her fingers shook as she tore at the envelope. He put a hand on her shoulder as they read the elegant handwriting in silence, the first embers of light creeping into the sky and filling the early morning with cold blue. 29

Cecelia, This is shameful behavior. I won’t have you putting Constance’s household to ruin next. I can only imagine what you’ve already destroyed with your evil words and fiery temper. You nearly set fire to our house in a fit of insanity and have the gall to run away, to hide your face? Shameful. This is not the daughter I raised, not the young lady I expected you to be. I earnestly wish to repair whatever terrible thing is wrong with your mind. You must stop hiding and come home at once. I implore you, Cecelia. Celia folded the letter and dropped to her knees, tears streaming down her face. Anton was next to her. They sat, both of them silent, both of them shaking. “They don’t understand,” she whispered. “You should know how it . . . how it feels. They don’t understand either of us. They can’t. They don’t understand, and so they hate us.” “No, they don’t,” Anton whispered back. “But there isn’t anything wrong with you.” “Something is wrong,” Celia sobbed. “I’m trapped . . . in here.” She grabbed the hair on the sides of her head, pulling as if she could open her mind and let herself out, the pain a shield against the well in her throat that was threatening to swallow her whole. “I can’t escape, and I have these fits all the time where I can’t breathe, and I don’t feel like I’m here, like I’m real, and my parents keep dragging me to these cruel doctors who don’t know how to fix me! Nobody knows how to fix me! They’ve prescribed bed rest, and I’ve rested and rested, but

it’s never worked, and I can’t get out. Maybe if I had something to do, something like university—” Her shoulders heaved. The blackened curtains in front of her caught a ray of blue light. Anton squeezed her tight. A few seconds later, he spoke. “You’re still Celia. And I shall not ever stop loving you. Neither will anyone who matters at all.” “The beetles.” She wiped her nose with a sleeve. “They’re still all over the room.” Anton stood slowly. Celia babbled. “I didn’t mean what I said. I’m sorry. You’re not . . . who you are isn’t . . . shameful.” “I know.” He was walking to the window. There was a breeze in the air, this slight coolness that was ice against her cheeks, which were hot with tears. “You’re going to go back home,” Anton told her. “And you’ll speak with your parents. Properly. No more running away.” Celia’s heart fell into her stomach. The room spun for a moment. The thought of her mother and father burst through the barricades in her mind she’d built against them. Waiting for her in the dusty sitting room. Their horrified expressions. Their hands twisting in their laps. She looked at Ant, leaning on the windowsill, at the face that had been in such anguish mere hours ago, now observing the damaged curtains with such studiousness. He was so brave, so wildly himself. She’d have to be the same, no matter where they tried to drag her. Anton swung the window open. They rushed outrageously out, all of them,

wings outstretched, catching the air. A wave of green, the boughs of a tree rippling in the wind. One landed on Anton’s hand. He flinched. For a moment, it appeared as if he were going to crush it. And then he glanced up at Celia. “Come look at this,” he murmured. The beetle’s glassy shell was like the leaves on the trees in October that had barely begun to turn orange. It was every color at once. The sky and the forest and the light that had danced upon the curtains. It stepped warily across his hand, its tiny legs moving carefully. New to the world that was a human palm. Celia’s breath clouded before her in the frigid air. The breeze was drying the tears on her face as they fell. He stretched his arm toward the open sky. He was smiling. The beetle took flight. Celia’s heart raced as she watched her fly, but the fear ebbed. It was some kind of . . . joy. An ecstasy she hadn’t touched since age seven. Her iridescent wings caught the first rosegold light of the sun as she spiraled up, up, up.

Blocking Parts Heather Thorn

We crafted a spiral staircase out of our mourning masses, built a ladder, too, that led to the heavens through a little trap door: murky clouding cotton, candy shells hard as tooth enamel & dense like the tomorrow of heartbreak. Look, we could drive to Boulder & back in fifty-two hours. & if we drove to Boulder & back in a car wrapped with Christmas lights, it would still take fifty-two hours. If the holiday season is slow-coming, does that make it a setback? & what does that make of my ankle, kissed by your mouth— bound in eyes blindfolded with the black rope of Times New Roman lettering. What. I talked until there was nothing left to say: the mundane never came easy for me, small talk the incisors of a mouth craving connection. How to tell someone an unsmart thought in earnest. How to tell you that I’ve never been X-rayed but I’m excited for the day I finally am, for no reason at all. How to tell the patient that it’s terminal. Never mind that. How about this:

we would’ve never driven to Colorado anyway. It would’ve taken too long—you too sick of life to do anything but smoke another cigarette tucked between your fingers like a deuce card. You’d always gleamed masochist. An explosive, you lit your own wick with every Marlboro Red, its ashes perching pretty between your organs. I would’ve listened to anything you had to say even if it was the rules of a board game. I never looked pretty when sleeping until I had to. Never had to think about these things like road trips to the mountains. & I am laden with grief but none of it is you-colored so I at least have God to thank for something. Another hour, please. If we split it we can afford it. it.

Skin and Blister, Sister Alyssa Hannah Chang

ihan takes four “Am I gay?” quizzes over the course of senior year and asks herself the same question each time. Her results, in no particular order: no, yes, maybe, and no.

The door shuts behind her with a click, and Jihan wonders how she’s going to walk home with a too-full box of peaches. Mrs. Park had insisted on not letting her leave empty-handed.

One “yes” is canceled out by two “nos,” and she quickly concludes that it all means nothing. After all, what does a fourteen-year-old Quotev quiz maker know? Certainly less than Jihan, who has at least three theories about how the world will end and three more about how it began.

You don’t like her, her brain supplies quickly. Still, the thought wavers, catching in the air like a loose thread. Rephrase the question. Knead its weight into the shape of a knife. Sharpen it until it, too, learns how to slice where it will hurt: Jihan wants Mina, but does she hate herself enough to act on it?

But the thought resurfaces after Mina pulls her away from the throng of suffocating relatives at their All-State concert. It comes again when Mina doodles Jihan’s favorite Pokémon onto a receipt and folds it into a paper crane.

Jihan snaps back into her own head to find the beginnings of a headache. Bile and beer linger in her throat. The bass in her head is loud enough to hurt. There is a boy eyeing her from across the room, raking down her ribs and her knees and everything in between. She looks back, more out of curiosity than anything, and that seems to be enough welcome for him.

The G-word looms over Jihan for the sixth time when Mina has a fever and Jihan’s mother insists on sending over porridge, even though she never lets Jihan skip school when she’s sick. Jihan scowls at the “Live, Laugh, Love” welcome mat on the Park household’s porch when Mina opens the door in a tank top and men’s boxer shorts. She’s fever-flushed everywhere—from the back of her neck to the apples of her cheeks to the tip of her nose— but where Jihan should find sympathy she only finds a stirring in her gut, like somebody stuck a spoon into her abdomen and decided to make a soup out of whatever was left.

The songs in the background fade in and out of her consciousness, rhythmic and irreverent. The boy says hello, and Jihan says it back. He introduces himself and she loses his name under the heaviness of the music. He asks her a question that she doesn’t quite answer—she’s putting on her best confused smile when his body angles itself towards hers. His tongue starts worming his way into her mouth, and she just barely manages to push him off of her.

Seventeen. A first kiss. A teenage tryst. A house party that she has to leave by 10 p.m. This is the type of story she should be eager to tell. The suburb is fringed with wildness. The boy Jihan has exchanged all of three sentences with, kisses her like he’s trying to push himself into her body. Take it, he seems to say. You said you can stomach it, so take it all and never give it back. She opens her mouth and swallows it, feeling the heartbeat slip on her tongue and down her throat. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Mina leaning on the doorframe, staring at them, her eyebrows raised. Her jewelry gleams, impulsive cartilage piercings winking under dim house lights. Jihan’s lower lip is throbbing. The boy bit down as if he were starving; she wonders if that was something all boys did. She thumbs at her wet mouth and tries on a placid smile. “That was nice, but—” “But?” He’s already wincing, tasting her insincerity. “Sorry, it’s just . . . someone’s asking for me.” She pushes him off. He scampers away like a frightened animal. “You didn’t have to chase him away, you know,” Mina says, stalking forward. She’s 35

suddenly as close as the boy was moments before. “I know.” Jihan presses the cool side of her hands to her flushed face, trying to collect herself, but Mina’s vice grip on her arm does little to soothe the heat in her body; her cleancut nails dig pink crescents into the softness of her underarm. “Well,” Mina blinks hard, and an inky blot falls from clumped-on mascara onto her cheek as she lets go of Jihan’s arm. “How was it?” “I think my lip is bleeding.” Mina’s eyes curve prettily as she grins. It’s an all-American smile—barely any gums, just braces-straight teeth and bared canines. ※ The first time Mina laced their fingers together, humming casually as she’d looked out the bus window, Jihan had been surprised at how rough Mina’s hands were. The cracked surface of her skin mirrored the havoc violin strings wrought on her own, but Jihan somehow expected Mina to be above the pain, the grit, the blood of the instrument. Jihan’s palms went damp after a while, sheepish with nervous sweat. She tried to shake Mina’s hand loose when they arrived at the venue for All-State, but Mina’s grip only tightened.

There in the background, visible only if you squint: Jihan’s hummingbird heart; tiny and barely-there, beating all the same despite her neglect. “Oh, isn’t that just adorable? Say cheese, you two!” Mrs. Park barely avoids crushing at least three other middle-aged women to get the perfect shot for her Facebook wall. Her French tips tap impatiently against her phone. This is part of why Jihan hates recitals: the fanfare and fuss, the embarrassing award ceremony, the immortalization of her lumpy dress, and the gap between her front teeth. Still, her mouth peels itself into a reluctant smile. “You two look like,” Jihan’s mother frowns. “What do you call in English? Si-si . . .?” “Sisters?” Mrs. Park chirps helpfully. “Right! Sisters,” Jihan’s mother claps, loud enough that a few classmates look in their direction. “Oh, do we?” Mina presses her cheek against Jihan’s with a pleased little sound. “Should I call you unnie, then?” Cloyingly sweet. A name for sisters, for lovers. “Since you’re older.” Suddenly, the smell of her shampoo is suffocating enough that Jihan kind of wants to die. “Only by like, four months,” she mumbles.

“You really do look just like sisters!” Mrs. Park says again, beaming behind her bejeweled phone case. She smiles with all her teeth, and Jihan thinks that maybe that’s just something you inherit. “I wish,” Jihan chokes out instead, in what she hopes sounds like a laugh. Mina is the soloist who leaves the recital in a Range Rover, with the kind of parents that have been in America long enough that they run marathons for fun and bake cookies on weekends. Jihan is the first chair but not the solo. She’s headed to the dentist’s office after this, where she is going to agonize over insurance on her mother’s behalf and stammer with embarrassment and anger that is not her own. The drive back home is a crawl. It’s a quiet thing filled only with the sound of Jihan bouncing her leg against the dash until her mom scolds her. A rosary sways from where it’s wrapped around the rearview mirror, wooden beads clicking against plastic. Her mother drives with two hands and the GPS always on. It dictates in loud, automated Korean because she can never read the signs in time. She doesn’t let Jihan play music, because she needs to listen to the directions. She’s terrified of being a bad driver. Maybe that’s just one of those things that you inherit, too.

No one can agree on the temperature of hell. Is it hot? Is it the prick of the needle in her thumb that her mother swears cures indigestion? Is it the searing heat of Mina’s gaze when Jihan messes up during practice, the crack of a wrong note burning the space between them? Is it the too-warm touch of her palm against Jihan’s bare skin when she guides her bow back into position? Is it cold? Is it the pew digging into her knees when the pastor locks eyes with her because her mother insists on sitting in the front row? Is it the chill of the sheets between them when Mina sleeps over and Jihan stares at the paper crane on her nightstand wishing time would wind backward? Is it the shiver that runs down her body when Mina touches her and the subsequent fear that she’s never, ever going to get used to it? ※ Animal Planet is on. The TV casts technicolor light over them, and the shadows on Mina’s face flicker blue, then pink, then yellow. They’re curled up against each other, limbs finding limbs in a tangled mess. They’re as stripped-down as they can be, Jihan in threadbare pajama pants and an old t-shirt and Mina with no makeup and those boxer shorts she likes so much. 37

On screen, a lion is clawing at a bony gazelle’s leg. The animal shrieks, far too loud for two a.m. Jihan winces, fumbling for the remote. She doesn’t have the stomach for these things, the metallic smell of blood, and the squishiness of a living thing’s insides. When Mina speaks, she’s close enough that her lips brush against the underside of Jihan’s chin. “Jihan unnie.” She pronounces the honorific not like a spear or like a sword, but like a more delicate weapon—a little butterfly knife hidden under her sleeve. It’s small enough to disguise as sweetness, sharp enough to gut a man. Her lip sticks out in a practiced pout. “I’m bored.” “Okay,” Jihan says. She’s not convinced. Animals only cede higher ground if they’re submitting or if they’re about to go for the throat. A bad feeling whispers to her about which direction the night is heading in. Mina’s hand is tracing shapes into the line of her jaw. It’s cold enough that Jihan shivers. The sound of cruelty keeps playing out on the television. Impossibly, the gazelle totters on, bloody and battered. Jihan supposes they’re only really good at running. “What do you want to do?” Mina asks from the crook of Jihan’s shoulder. Her dark hair spills over in an agitated rush that closes the space between them first. A stray strand makes

its way into Jihan’s mouth. Jihan has patience in spades, but patience is limited to the logical part of her brain, to the not-yet-fully-developed frontal lobe which is slowly eroding under the hand on her neck. Her body doesn’t remember how to be a body. She reminds her lungs to expand, but they barely move. Muscle memory should kick in by now but it doesn’t. There’s no air in her brain. She remembers honors biology class and the way Mina would kick her under the table and snort when someone said something stupid. After she wastes a minute thinking about the ugliest version of Mina’s laugh, she remembers that it only takes five minutes of low oxygen for the brain to start dying. The tissue begins to shrivel in that short of a time. It’s been two minutes since Mina had started tipping her over the point of no return, and she’s going on to minute three. “I don’t know,” she replies, and she can feel the sweat start to bead on the nape of her neck and under her nose. Jihan doesn’t know why she bothers. She knows what this is and Mina knows what this is and they both know what it will become. On screen, the lion finds that gazelle again, ripping it into ribboned strings of viscera. Jihan is patient, but not even she can hold off the yawning chasm in her gut. “Tell me you don’t want this,” says Mina.

There’s an unusually serious look on her face, a downturned tilt to her lips. She won’t move unless Jihan does, too. Want is a funny thing. Jihan has enough of it to fill up her basement and her neighbor’s big blue pool, and then some. She wants to remove one of her ribs, or maybe two. She wants to go to one of the UCs, preferably Berkeley, and Mina will probably go to Stanford; Jihan wants to be able to clap for her when she inevitably gets in. She wants her mother to be able to go to the grocery store by herself. She wants to be first place and not second for once; she wants to taste that victory without making Mina cry. She wants to see the pink of Mina’s face without the fever flush, and she wants none of this to be her fault. It’s hard being prey when everything bites. Not just boys, but lions and girls, too. “Are you mad at me?” Mina asks There’s a blown look to her, round eyes weighed down with worry. Jihan picks at her skin in the mirror even though she’s not supposed to. Mina waits for her clay mask to dry so she can wash it off. Jihan squeezes a pimple until it bleeds, becoming an open wound. The pustule is raw and red, and will likely remain that way if she keeps clawing at her skin the way she has been. It’ll only scab 38

over if she lets it. “Every time you ask this,” Jihan says, “It’s like you want me to say that I hate you or something.” “Do you hate me?” She stretches out her leg from where she’s sitting on the edge of the tub like she’s going to poke Jihan with her manicured toes, but she stops just short and frowns instead. “Hey.” Jihan squeezes the tube of toothpaste hard enough that the excess flops sadly into the sink before haphazardly sticking her toothbrush in her mouth. Buying time, running out. When Jihan looks up, Mina’s still staring at her through the mirror. Jihan prickles with guilt. Her gums are raw. “I could never, Mina,” she says around a mouthful of blue foam. “Do you like me?” The toothbrush jabs at her throat, and Jihan wants to gag. She spits instead, and watches the bubbles disappear into the drain as she turns the faucet back on. There’s blood in the basin. “No.” When Jihan looks in the mirror again, her

ears are a bright red; Mina’s smile is wobbly in the wavering bathroom light. Rephrase the question. Know that its very existence is a curse and blow it into glass before you break it into shards again. Damn it with the shape of a knife, whisper it a love song. The words must learn to carve through fat before they shatter on bone and give way to the truth. String your knives together. Turn them into a sentence: Mina wants Jihan, and she hates her enough to do something about it.

King Minos’s Dream Ryn Brierley

hey arrive at night with their swords and spears—hundreds of men secured in bronze plates and encrusted helmets that plume upward toward the heavens. The city’s silence at once becomes a confused storm of cries and violence. Their torches shroud the roads in an orange haze of glowing terror. Smoke scales the walls of homes as the soldiers begin to invade. Men who dare to approach them are indifferently cut down before their pleading wives, leaving behind pieces of fractured households. All this the girl can see through the tear in the tapestry that conceals her family’s drink jars. Her brother had dragged her to this closet at the first sound of drums. They knew what was approaching. Every nine years the Cretan soldiers came, and every nine years they took some Athenians home with them. She can see her brother outside now, waiting. The sound of marching strides grows ever closer. Smoke fills her nostrils. There is a crash behind her—a broken door. They are coming through the back of the house. She sees her brother run inside. Their mother is upstairs, hidden in a small compartment behind the back wall of a wardrobe. They made it for this purpose, knowing that any intruders would not look there. Two soldiers enter. They ask her brother if there are any women in the house. He lies, shaking his head. The girl remains silent. For a moment, it looks as if one of the men will doubt this. She fears the man might strike him, or set a torch down on something that will catch. The soldiers turn abruptly, however, and leave the home. Once they are out of sight, the girl takes a shaken breath and runs to her brother. In her haste, 41

she knocks over a pot. She freezes. The tapestry is pulled aside. It is a soldier. Yet this one wears their city’s colors. She lets out a quiet, relieved whimper. The sight of an Athenian guard softens her fear. She goes to him, believing he has slaughtered the men outside. He grasps her shoulder. She is so close to him now, she can smell his sweat from beneath his armor. The stink of blood hangs around them. Once more, he pulls aside the tapestry, and the girl looks out. The Athenian soldier pries her from her hiding place. Two Cretan guards wait to greet them. They do not wear the red sheathings of Athenian men. The girl looks up at the soldier holding her. With her eyes, she speaks to him. With her eyes, she says, protect me. With her eyes, she says, kill them. Instead, the man throws her into the arms of the foreign soldiers. The exchange is done. “You may leave here now,” he says to them. The edge of his spear seems to dull at the words. At first, the girl struggles in the grip of the two men, then she drops her shoulders. Ahead of her, she sees an older man attempting to rouse his son from a dreamless slumber just before a Cretan pulls the young man away. An Athenian soldier stands as if guarding the scene, stiff and immovable as he watches the father languidly lose the will to resist. His helplessness streams beyond the sight and seeps into her body. Her knees buckle. It is over. They take her by the hair. Her brother races from the home and follows. She does not scream. He reaches for his sword, but the girl shouts against him. “Honor our mother,” she says. “Keep her safe,”

she says. He watches, uncertain, as they take her to the boats. She can see the imprisoned fury in his eyes clawing to escape. His hand hovers over the handle of his blade. He is shaking. She keeps her eyes on his, or else she could not control him. She does this even after his eyes have melded into his face, which soon becomes a blurry spot in the distance. She is thrown onto a black ship occupied by six other women from the city. Under the deck, they are brought into a small dark room where their wrists are bound with rope and they are left in their disquietude. The noise of the city outside begins to die down slowly. Unnaturally, as if the tumult is being forcibly, painfully silenced. All becomes still for a brief moment. Then, a clamor of feet above. The women look up, almost afraid that a heavy, greaved leg would break through the solid wooden deck and crush them. A series of shouts begins pouring through the walls from deeper within the hull of the ship, followed swiftly by the booming, rhythmic sound of a drum. The boat starts to move. Several of the women move closer together in an attempt to comfort one another. The girl settles against the wall, pressing her ear against the space between two wood panels. She can hear a conversation between two men in the room next door, barely intelligible. Only one word can she comprehend: Crete. The voyage lasts a day. Not a soul enters the room where they are being held. When the ship’s keel finally sinks into the sandy shore of the island, the women shudder. In an instant, the door is

opened and a soldier grabs one of the women by the arm, barking orders at the rest. “Get up,” he says. “Off the boat,” he says. The girl stands. The seven women follow the man outside and onto the stone deck of the port, where their waists are chained to one another as a train of bodies. Across the dock, the girl sees seven more bodies. Young men. She vaguely recognizes several faces from her city—all Athenian, as they are. The women are made to walk, but one of them refuses. “Where are you taking us?” she asks a soldier. The man

turns. His eyes hide behind the shell of a solid bronze helmet, hungry and burning. He strikes the back of her head with the pommel of his sword. She cries out, stumbling, but the women say nothing. They tremble, fearing the blade. After a moment, the soldier speaks. “You are tributes,” is all he says. The destination, he does not disclose. Then he tugs at the chain connecting them all and they walk on. The young men follow. The procession stops as they reach the mighty gates of a sprawling stone structure. A churning of metal parts mechanically opens the two large doors, and the soldiers usher the fourteen of them inside. It is empty. The girl looks up, but the structure’s walls are too tall to see over. All that lies in front of them is a long corridor open to the sky, branching off into several more passages further ahead. As the soldiers begin removing the captives’ restraints, one of the young men suddenly makes off down the yawning hall, turning and disappearing down one of the adjacent thresholds. The soldiers continue unbinding their prisoners, unshaken. When all are released, the soldiers turn to leave. “What are we to do?” a woman asks. A dark, resounding bellow emanates from deeper within the maze, followed by a scream that sends the girl’s blood rushing to her feet. “Run,” a soldier says. The gates shut. At once, the men and women break off into frantic sprints in all directions. The girl hesitates, the weight of her fear still trapped in her legs, holding her down. The wide space of the entrance 43

is now cold and desolate and filled only with the dulling reverberations of frenzied footfalls. A second, horrible low rushes through the corridors, closer than the first. Its proximity slices the girl’s feet from the ground and thrusts her into a desperate gait toward the nearest threshold. As she bounds down the hall, the shriek of one of her sisters from an adjoining passageway swells the wind beneath her stride. She attempts to move further away from the noise—west, toward the dimming, pink sky visible over the walls. However, the nauseating twists and turns of the maze only lure her deeper into its hold and nearer to the sounds of some terrible beast panting and snorting. The rest of the labyrinth has gone quiet. It is as if some disturbing force has swept through and drawn in all the sound in one great lap. The girl follows the stone walls around another turn and is met with a walled off corridor. She stops. The maze has ended. And now she hears it even louder—the ever approaching steps of something immense and hooved, like a boar. Its grunts grow harsher and raspier as it nears the corner the girl has just passed. The scent of violence slinks up her nostrils, forewarning the arrival of this savage, but there is nowhere to escape now. The sun has fallen so low that the walls of the labyrinth are engulfed in shadow. Stars stir in the black sky. A dark, colossal figure rounds the corner and crosses the threshold into the corridor where the girl stands paralyzed. As it closes the distance between them, she begins to make out the gruesome details of its appearance: cloven-hoofed, as a demon, with

black angular legs, covered in the thick pelt of a bovine creature. It looms, and the girl’s eyes move upward over the smooth paler frame of its torso, which resembles that of a human man. She stiffens. Attached to its shoulders is the head of a bull with strong, outspread horns and a broad, veiny muzzle with a rubbery nose bubbling snot. The girl’s back presses against the cold, stone wall behind her. Every cell of her body tingles with a prickly heat. The amalgamation snuffs up a breath, and a droplet of sweat spatters against the girl’s cheek. She flinches to action, shoving past the hairy creature just as it lunges forward, head-first, to seize her. The beast’s horns jolt downward and meet the masoned floor of the maze. The surface chips the horns’ pointed ends with a rough scrape. A deep howl escapes its lungs, as the girl slips beneath its reach. She makes to flee, but a sturdy arm grips her ankle, and she collapses. It drags her forward along the craggy rock and chafes her skin. It swings the limb about, splitting the bony core and drawing it from the girl’s body like a blade from the sheath. She screams. The noise ricochets against the confines of the labyrinth. The creature moans, disturbed, and raises the broken girl to its eyes. She gazes into the glossy mirrors of its eyes, but nothing reflects. Her

vision blurs as the water within her flows out, but the monstrous thing does not notice. It simply stares. She whimpers. The maw of the beast opens. Inside, the black banquet of Hades is spread before her. ※

The bull-sparing king awakens, coated in sweat. The silk sheets of his bed are warm and damp. He stands, crossing the room. Ever so steadily, the pounding of a drum reaches his ears. He trembles. Out the window in the harbor, a black ship approaches.

coming to terms paige tokay

with the empty tank in the car i have to drive cuz my hometown don’t believe in sidewalks or consistent bus schedules highways carve up my appalachia in thirds but at least they’ve got smokey bear adverts to break up the distant treeline only i can stop forest fires if ever i live to sleep in underbrush again with the snow and how it only starts up in january now winter shrunk down two months give or take my sister drives us up roads that have more barns than cops and tells me this is what pennsylvania should look like flurries dusting the fields she tells me

this is why she will never leave it with the abandoned mills that haunt half of this state like war torn ash trees it seems everyone’s got an uncleorcousinorbrother out of a job rubbing worn hands together these are men who built bridges from smog and through the smoky haze of a ghost town they are burning i think they are burning with my mother’s gray hairs that only ever peak out when sun breaks through our perpetual cloud cover her eyes blend with the steel cool sky as

original art by talyn mcclafferty

she says she’s either flying south when all of her baby birds finally ditch the nest or reincarnating in someplace with warmth with forgetting the heady smell of sulfur that buzzards through skeletons of dead industrials with forgetting to appreciate the fort pitt tunnel coming back from the airport with forgetting to use my turn signal and with forgetting the way home 46

Sucker! Jagger van Vliet

alking to the Repo-Man, as he calls himself, his sullen leer peeking forward through the gloom: He says, “Nothing ordinary about my profession, as it were. Nothing ordinary at all.” He says this with the snarling stench of truth, coarse as sandpaper, only denser and with malice to coat itself. He talks with the cadence of an old croaking viper like he has been growing in foul soil his whole life. He wears that rank terroir; lets it hang all over him. The Repo-Man is telling me about his dreams while I shine his patched and scummy old shoes. I am kneeling before a specter and charlatan who has found for himself a real calling. I can only envy him. My present purpose does not exist beyond a pair of gloves, leather dyes, brushes, and saddle soap. His loafers are my only real priority, and there is still the matter of payment. “Of course, a man cannot live doing just one thing alone. A man could go crazy like that. No, you’ve got to have a hustle.” He says the word “Hustle,” and I can feel cancer on his breath, yellow and miasmic. It is a spearmint aftertaste, tucked in the puckered-up lip, staining every molar and canine. He has a year to live, maybe. I repeat the word back to his shoe, and he goes on without hearing. “You see a lot of real crazies in this profession. All of them the same in my books. Whether you a skipper, a deadbeat, a junkie, or a cokehead attorney. Makes no bit of difference to me. But then what’s to say I’m really doing anything worthwhile at all? Still, can’t let the

days get too similar on you.” The Repo-Man leans down and expects me to stop what I’m doing. His old straw hair stretches out for me, but it’s too old, too atrophied to reach its mark. Up close, he has a sore developing under his hook nose, and there is a waxen stuff built up all around the nostrils. Up close, I could almost think of him as a dog—the admixture of alien breeds, all mixed into the same repugnant Petri dish and grown up into a sore, jaundiced skeleton. “I collect their tattoos, you see,” he smiles, and maggots practically materialize between his veneers, “Only the interesting ones, truly unique designs.” I am shining the part of his shoe that has already been shined. I can see a warped, blackened silhouette of myself. Just at the perimeters of the glint, I can make out the curve of my jaw. He might stop right there. Supposing I show any signs of finding the Repo-Man’s story odd. Supposing I cast just one furtive glance upwards, askance, as if I were a church-goer. He seems the agitated type, so there is every possibility he will take offense and leave. There is the matter of payment, of course, and I am late on rent again. Supposing I don’t react at all, hardly breathing, and keep on shining the same part of the shoe. “And I’m no Philistine, so it’s slow going,” he says. “It’s taken me nearly forever just to get to where I am now, and I’m still lacking parts, you know. Parts, pieces, projects, whatever you call it.” I don’t doubt him either, as far as I 48

can follow his rambling. He is speaking to me conspiratorially, and I am struck by the scent of gunpowder, mausoleum floors, and matricide. The words spill out over his vulgar tongue with the weight of gelatin, slippery and flaccid, the finality of gray church bells pealing; of all my debts come home at last. “I’ll tell you certain parts are easier, you know. Easier in two ways. Easier to find and easier to obtain. Easier to find means the arms, you know. The arms, the chest, the calves, the bicep. Folks get ink there all the time. And easier to obtain, well. . .” He smiles again, and there is the unmistakable perfume of depravity. “Skin round the stomach just slides right off, you know. Same goes for the flabby bits of the arm, the fatty undersides of the thigh.” He lets his vowels run long, practically drooling as he speaks to me. I have still fixed my eyes downwards, so I am beginning to think that I now know how it feels to be watched by a slobbering jackal, or perhaps a half-dead one, still wet and gaunt from the hunt. “Once, I had to pay a visit to this one lady. She went on crying her head off about how I couldn’t do this to her, and all I could think about was how lucky I’d been to meet someone with a tattooed tongue. Needle in my eye: she had a jet-black tongue. Told me it took nearly three weeks to heal up right. Never mind that; it’s in my collection now.” The Repo-Man’s raspy inhales resumed, reminding me sharply that he had not been 49

breathing the entire time he had been speaking. It all dribbled out of him—geysers of putrid horrors do quite a number on the listening ear, and so I took a moment to breathe as well. Turning my head did no good, and his cologne followed me, musky damp soup, runny sewer water, purulent acid. “I’ve got some real gems too. You ever met a man with tattooed teeth? I got his whole set. Yes, sir, I’ve done my due diligence. Traveled damn near as far as you can go. Seen it all and come back with real treasure to show for it. Real treasure.” Repo-Man sucked a stinking cigarette and considered the scene around us. For all I cared, it was just us. Just the two of us occupying a gray space. Maybe an airport terminal or a bus stop or perhaps merely a filthy lunchroom. Wouldn’t matter in the slightest. Men like this are liminal animals. They are creatures that never really look as though they ought to be anywhere at all. So, miraculously, they spawn into these dusty corners of well-traveled areas. They hang around for a while, drink a black coffee until it’s cold, and then they are onto the next dead-end shopping center or motel pool. Animals like him are always lingering in motel pools, reeking of chlorine and cheap booze. “Now, you might be surprised, but some still elude me. Might shock you to hear it, but I haven’t gotten a right hand yet. Left hand I obtained a good while back,” and his eyes went far off with some sinister reverie. It’s an electric panic when I realize there

is nowhere left to shine. Slick and glinting, the Repo-Man’s vamps watch me with hesitation. I’ve done all I can do: no more brushing or polishing for me, nor any amount of fidgeting with the gloves or the rags that can prolong my looking into the Repo-Man’s weathered, predatory eyes. Currents of blue dread drip upwards to my arm, collecting between my lips and nose. Droplets of a pearled sweat demand that I ask for his money, though just then, I’d have welcomed getting stiffed. “What’ll it cost?” he asks, and I think he may be smiling or leering. There is the sticky sound of gums separating from teeth, so he is most definitely smiling above. He is pulling about his overcoat for some cash. Maybe it’ll be today: the wheel spins, and I’m lucky for once. It’s always the same game with me, that’s my trouble. He gropes through his coat, pawing at the pockets the way a drunken man might caress a lamppost. One, two, and three, and he is unsheathing a beaten wallet. If there is a God, the Repo-Man will rip me off today, skittering into the waiting gray. But he has found some money, as he always will. Some crumpled bills, broken bones contorted, involuted as a body bag. Ghastly fingernails, the shape of death, grip the cash as it hovers beneath my nose. On a different day, I might be some exterminator or maybe a cab driver waiting on the corner of a bombed-out culde-sac. I prefer their chances. I set down the brushes, and the polish, and the rags. Hanging like a last leaf, a president’s pupils swim into focus. He is tipping me well

today, so a celebration is in order. I am setting down the saddle soap now, and at long last, I must believe. Here I am, slipping off one glove and then the other. Ah, there is the slight gasp—imperceptible inhale through the coarsely tightened nostrils. Yellow-boned chest rises and falls, and if I would look up, there would be the passing of a protuberant tongue across arid lips. There is the posture, shifting as the priest who has found his holy spirit. If I were ever to look up, it is possible that I would scream. Only now, as I consider the hanging cash, can I see my own palm, right hand inked with a tattoo. It’s as striking as ever. And I know that he agrees.

The Birch Tree Madison McMahon

am not afraid of the dark. The warm glow from a band of fairy lights melts over my bed. Colorful Christmas lights lace the curtain rod, strung to illuminate the opposite wall. Shadows from my lava lamp float around my desk. This is all for ambiance. I am not afraid of the dark. My eyes slowly gain weight as I read six chapters of a book, finish the newest episode of a TV show, and reorganize my sock drawer. Heavy eyes are no match for a can of caffeine and a wandering mind. I’ll even go and get the soda myself. See, I am not afraid of the dark. I close my bedroom door quietly and am swallowed by the sleeping house, shrouded in black night. It’s okay. I can sense every upcoming turn, standing lamp, and side table. I step around the floorboards that creak and see the shine of the refrigerator winking at me. A relief rushes through my body that I am ashamed to recognize when my foot catches and I trip. I trip on a loose toy with a hard plastic exterior. It’s just a quick shuffle of my feet to keep myself upright, but enough to make my heart lurch and pump. It pounds like there’s something waiting for us. Something watching me fall for this sample of misfortune. A premonition of the day to come, lurking with dripping teeth. It’s enough to elevate the ticking clock on the wall from background noise to a bomb. Each second that passes grows louder to remind my ears of the inevitable blow. I tuck myself away in the bathroom beside me, pressing the door closed to muffle the ticking. Tick.

Tick. Tick. The door clicks shut and I stumble towards the window, the midnight outside brighter than that inside of the house. I focus on the birch tree beaming in the yard. In the limbs going bald with the cold air, its skeleton absorbs the moonlight. The white of the tree illuminates the grass and the bushes, like a faint spotlight in a play at its most solemn moment. Every night I am drawn to the tree, but I promise it is not because I am afraid of the dark. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sound seeps under the door frame. I clamp my hands over my ears, but with each tick I remember what I have forgotten. I made lists. I set reminders—I swear I did—but there is only so much I can account for. I can’t say no when my mother asks me to watch my sister, even if I designated that time to do homework. I have to accept the opportunity to work another shift when my co-worker calls out. We need the money more than I need to sleep later than five in the morning. I must finish that essay before I allow myself to eat. That is what awaits when the sun rises. Fear of the dark is for babies. They are scared of the unknown. Fear of the light is for adults. I suppose that’s what I am now. Almost an adult. Terrified of what I know is crawling towards me as the sun rises. I bury my head in my hands. I embrace the dark because night is a hammock in time. That is the only way I can make sense of my affinity for these hours. The air does not buzz with responsibilities 52

and flash with new tasks. When the rotation of the world lulls everyone else to sleep, I melt into the silence. No demands. No rush. There is chaos in choosing how to fill the night, but I can decline and accept ideas at my whim, not the world’s. I swing in my crescent hammock, unable to see above the fabric of night. The only thing that peeks over the hammock is that birch tree. I pull my heavy head up and watch as the birch tree refuses to sway in the whistling wind. The relief I felt in seeing the refrigerator curdles in my chest. This tree that my parents contemplate cutting down every year because it’s “dead” is standing solid, yet I rely on caffeine to keep me safe in this moment of time. If I do not fall asleep, Tomorrow cannot awaken! I press my forehead against the cool glass of the window, attempting to ground my anxieties. The silhouette of a bird flutters across the white beam of the tree and settles on a branch. Another bird sails and lands on the same branch. The two creatures do some sort of dance with one another. I have never seen anything quite like it, at least not in real life. It is a push and a pull, a twirl and a jig. Almost distinctly human, but soundless. If there had been leaves on the trees, I never would have been able to see it at all. I have always venerated, envied the birch tree for its beauty in both the day and night, but what about in the seasons? What about in the springtime, when its limbs don a fringe of catkins? Or in autumn, when the leaves bleed orange and yellow? Or now, when its bare skeleton can best present the organs 53

it deems most vital . . . the moon, the birds, and I’m sure many others I have yet to see. A yet that requires a tomorrow. I suppose a whole lot of tomorrows are the only way to see change. The catkins have always grown. The leaves have always changed. But the birds, they are new. There is always something new, isn’t there? Like that damn loose toy. But what about the birds? The whimsical joy of seeing the birds dance feels more palpable than the moments of panic about the toy. There is nothing but a dull ache in staving off the future’s potential. And that mindless, parasitic lethargy feels so adjacent to the trying times I might as well just live those instead. Risk having those times because no amount of reading, knitting, or scrolling could fill me like stumbling across a moment I am sure will kindle my senses until the next glowing moment. Even if a toy should cause me to trip. There are constants in the inconsistencies, and I suppose that can be enough to get through today. I peel myself off the glass and exit the bathroom. Tick. Tick. The refrigerator glistens, but it always does that. It always will. But birds don’t always land on the same branch, and toys don’t always poke your feet. I pick the toy up, place it on the coffee table, and go back upstairs— To bed.

The Next Generation Jenna Bens on

Bronx, New York, 1967 “Bitte! Bitte halten—ikh bet!” Charlie woke, once again, to the sound of his mother shouting in a language he would never understand. Yiddish or Hebrew or German, he could never tell. His parents refused to teach him any of them. Charlie was born in the United States, and they took pride in their American son who spoke perfect English. Nonetheless, their native tongues would slip out in the predawn hours, when rigid darkness blurred memories from the past and the present. “Hush now, Helena. I am here. You are safe. We are safe.” Charlie’s father, Henry, murmured comforts to his wife in a thick German accent. Her wracking breaths and Henry’s raspy words consumed Charlie. At sixteen, he still shared a room with his parents. Their one-bedroom apartment was all they could afford. His eyes, barely open, took in the sight of his trembling mother curling up in his father’s embrace. Her forearm passed through a shaft of moonlight let in by their one-bedroom window. 48559 48559.. The black ink was stark against her pale skin. His father had one too—140602 too—140602— — hidden under their thick red quilt. Long sleeves would conceal those numbers once his parents dressed for work, just like their nightmares would be tucked away, never acknowledged. Charlie knew what those numbers meant. Although Helena and Henry never spoke of it, he pieced together the basics of their story in history class. Charlie tried to ask his parents directly once. Just eight years old, he worked up the courage to approach his father, who paced the length of the bedroom after waking from a fit. “What’s wrong—” 55

“Sheket. Sheket.” Henry’s hands raked through his hair. Charlie tried again, “What’s wrong?” this time tugging on his father’s pant leg. “Sheket!” Henry shouted, his torment brought to life as a backhand to Charlie’s cheek. The pained gasp of his son drew Henry back to the present. He dropped to his knees. “I am sorry,” Henry cried, tears falling unabashedly as Charlie forced back his own. “I am so sorry—I cannot. Do not ask me, Charlie. Please.” Henry’s voice broke on that last word as he drew his son into a hug. Charlie kept his arms locked at his side, but as his father sobbed into his shoulder, he dropped his head to lean into the embrace. This was the first and last time Henry ever struck Charlie. It was also the first and last time Charlie ever tried to ask. ※

Like most nights, Charlie never fell back asleep after his mother’s shouting. But he made sure to keep his eyes closed when his parents got up and readied for work. His mother would always stop by his cot before she left, waking him up with a kiss on the forehead. That’s when he would open his eyes, with a forced yawn and sleepy smile, and wish her a good day. Charlie barely managed to stay conscious in school. He may have fallen asleep for part of first period, but English class wasn’t even memorable enough for him to remember when awake. History, his least favorite subject, was the last class of the day. Mr. Harris had decided to review World War II as part of their upcoming test. Charlie’s palms began to sweat, but he tried to distract himself by working with friends. Once they circled their desks together, Charlie, the freckled redhead Mac, and brown-haired

mousy Will tossed questions back and forth. “What,” Will paused because he loved dramatic effect, “does ‘Aryan Race’ mean?” His eyes darted between his two friends, waiting to see who would answer first. Mac jumped at the chance. “Zees I know!” Mac shouted in a guttural attempt at a German accent. “Eet ees zees man! Charlie Becker, Aryan perfection!” Mac leaned over his desk, grabbing Charlie’s face between his hands, and shook his friend for emphasis. “Shut up, man,” Charlie said, laughing over the coiling in his stomach. His parents always told him he inherited their best features. He had blond hair like his mother and blue eyes like his father. Maybe if he had gotten Helena’s brown eyes and Henry’s striking near-black hair (now peppered by silver with stress and age), people would look at him and see a Jew. Trying to shake the thought, Charlie asked the next question, “What is a blitzkrieg?” ※

Charlie strode down Third Ave, squinting his eyes against the glaring sun that flared in and out with each passing building—mostly apartments, but now and again a deli or bakery or corner store. He passed Moishe’s, the kosher butcher—the one his parents never went to, even though it was closer to home than any other. Henry and Helena could be strict sometimes. Going out on the weekend meant homework had to be finished, and Charlie didn’t want to be the only guy to miss the Yankees game. He usually holed up in the Mott Haven Library and knocked it all out in one sitting before heading to the apartment. Today was no different until a stranger walked into him and papers went flying everywhere. “Are you alright, sir?” Charlie asked as they both instinctually

kneeled down. “Yes, yes, just a klutz,” the stranger replied, scrambling after paper that threatened to go off in the wind. Charlie’s hand grazed rough cement as he helped grab at the loose pages, gathering up a pile in his arms to hand back to the man as they stood. The papers were covered in the same sort of letters on Moishe’s window—Hebrew. Charlie paused. He looked up and saw the stranger’s face was framed by two dark curls of hair. The man had a greying beard, a skullcap, some fraying white strings by his belt, and a rumpled but neat-looking black suit, white shirt, and black tie. He looked like the kind of man Charlie’s father would mutter about when they passed, saying sadly under his breath how they were the “first to be round-up.” Charlie shook his head with a smile and awkwardly stuck his hand out with the papers. The man took them, looking at Charlie in a way that made him think his change in demeanor hadn’t gone by unnoticed, before saying, “Todah rabah,” and walking away. “What—” Charlie considered cutting himself off, but the man had already turned back around. “What does that mean?” The man straightened. “Thank you.” “Oh, you’re welcome.” Charlie watched as the man made his way down the sidewalk, his eyes trained on that skullcap until the stranger disappeared into the crowd. This was the first time anyone had ever spoken to him, directly, in what he assumed was Hebrew. It sounded a lot nicer outside of a nightmare. He shook himself from the thought and started back toward the apartment, but stopped after a step. There was a piece of paper under his foot. He and the stranger must have missed it during 56

their scramble. Charlie bent down and grabbed it, eyes skimming over the foreign letters on the page. He could only understand one part, the header:

Jacob Schiff Jewish Center 2150 Valentine Ave Bronx, NY 10457

The man was too far at this point to chase down. Charlie figured he should chuck the paper in the trash. What else was he going to do with it? Charlie shoved it in his backpack anyway. ※

Helena wailed. Henry and Charlie both shot up. Even after all these years, Charlie couldn’t help his disorientation and heavy breaths after being startled out of a dream—of what he couldn’t remember, he never could, but he was sure he had been dreaming. Helena began muttering to herself as a tired Henry embraced her once more. Darkness hugged every nook of the small room. Even the moonlight seemed to have disappeared, leaving an inky black night in its wake. “Yitgadal v’yitkaddash—yitgadal v’yitkaddash shemeih raba be’alma . . .” Charlie wondered if the noise ever woke their neighbors. When he was younger, nearly everyone in the building had been a Jew, so he knew they wouldn’t mind. Most went through the same thing. But as time passed, one by one, 57

they moved out. New families moved in—usually Black or Puerto Rican, but never Jewish. Charlie wondered what they thought of the noise. He kept on wondering until his mother’s cries faded into panicked whispers, then into the sparse murmurs of a fitful sleep. ※

A few weeks passed. Same as any other Friday afternoon, Charlie hunched over an old desk at the library and finished up his homework. Mac had invited him and Will over to watch the Yankees play the Red Sox at seven o’clock. Mac’s family, unlike Charlie’s, had a television, so Charlie ended up there most game nights. Mac still hadn’t let up on the whole Aryan thing. Charlie was lucky if a day went by without hearing that butchered German accent. He almost laid into Mac over it a couple times but caught himself, because then he would have had to explain why it bothered him so much. It also bothered him to think about how those things that made him seem Aryan—the blonde hair, the blue eyes, the tan but still very much white skin—also made him look so “American.” He tried not to dwell on how they overlapped for fear of what he might find. Charlie dumped his books into his bag as he readied to leave the library. He made sure they didn’t completely crush the stranger’s piece of paper, the one he still had not thrown out. Charlie read over the address line one more time before zipping up the bag—not that he needed to, he had memorized it by this point. He started his trek back home at East 140th Street, leaving the Mott Haven Library.

He just had to walk five blocks, straight down Third Ave, to make it back home. He walked past 139th. He made it to 138th and hesitated. He hooked a right instead of going straight. He stopped when he hit Grand Concourse Station and rode the subway up to Fordham Road. From there, it was just a short walk to the Jacob Schiff Jewish Center. Charlie felt a bit like an imposter as he went inside. A handful of people mulled around, deep in conversation. Some were off by themselves, poring over books in various corners. Most of them were men, and all of those men had those skullcaps on. Charlie noted a box full of them next to the door, labeled “Free For Everyone!” He ignored it and walked further inside. It took him just a moment to find the stranger from before. Only two men in the room had those distinctive face-framing curls, and the other, Charlie was surprised to find, had hair as blond as his. The familiar man was settled deep in an armchair on the far side of the room, looking absolutely enthralled by whatever he read. Charlie made his way over and stopped by the man’s feet. And then he just stood there. The man looked up after a second, taking in Charlie with a confused look on his face. Charlie’s mouth felt terribly dry and he had no idea what to say. “Can I help you?” the man asked, not unkindly. “Yeah. Um . . .” Charlie cleared his throat. He set down his backpack, unzipped it, fished out that piece of paper, and silently held it out to

the man before him. The man took it, his brow still furrowed. “You dropped it the other day,” Charlie explained. “Or the other week, I guess.” “Ah!” The man said as his expression softened. “I’m surprised you held on to it.” He shook the page lightly for emphasis. “It’s good you came when you did, otherwise I doubt you would have found me. This place is closing at the end of the month.” “What? Why?” Charlie asked. “Not enough Jewish people left here to fill up a Jewish center.” The man gestured out at the sparse crowd. Charlie wondered for the first time how full the room was meant to be on a Friday evening. “Most of the members have left. It would seem their idea of the ‘American Dream’ has moved out to the suburbs,” the man said, chuckling to himself. “Oh.” Charlie wasn’t sure what to say to that. He just stood there some more. The man watched him for a moment. “Is there something else?” “Yeah. No, I mean, yeah. I just . . . I had a question.” Charlie could feel his heart beating up against his ribcage. The man squinted at him and cocked his head. “Ask away.” “I’m going to butcher this, but do you know what ‘veeyeegadal veeyeegadash’ means?” A bewildered expression flickered across the man’s face before he composed himself. “Yitgadal v’yitkaddash?” he asked back. “Yes,” Charlie said, trying to ignore the heat that rose along his neck, “that.” The man couldn’t help but smile at this strange boy. “Those are the opening words to the Chatzi Kaddish and 58

Kaddish Shalem, part of daily prayers in Judaism. That, or the Mourner’s Kaddish, which is said to honor the deceased and to help the living heal after losing a loved one.” “Oh.” Understanding dawned on Charlie, but he didn’t know what else to say. His mind raced to fill in the gaps of his mother’s life. He wished he could stop imagining. “May I ask you a question?” the man interrupted. Charlie nodded, still at a loss for words. “Why do you ask?” Charlie considered this. Telling the truth felt like a betrayal of his parents like he was divulging their secrets. But he could feel the answer clawing up his throat so he just let it out. “My mother, she says that sometimes. My father, too. They get nightmares or something, and I’ve heard them say that.” The man’s face softened. “Where are they from?” Charlie shifted in obvious discomfort but still answered. “Germany.” “Seeing as we’ve never formally met, let me introduce myself. I’m Rabbi Yakov.” The man extended his hand, which Charlie shook. “What your parents have gone through, and what you go through, I’d like you to know you’re not alone. My temple, Beth Or, is just down the road. You’re all welcome anytime—” “No!” Charlie exclaimed. He winced at his own outburst. “I’m sorry, but no. It’s just, my parents, I know they don’t believe in God and all that. Or they stopped believing. They don’t really talk about it. And I don’t think I do either—believe, I mean.” Charlie flushed, feeling like he must be disappointing this man of faith, 59

both with his confession and his inability to even do that well. “I just don’t think it would be a good idea.” “Okay. That’s okay,” Yakov said, holding his hands up in reassurance. “But if there’s anything I can do to help, I would be more than willing.” An idea flickered in Charlie’s mind. “Yeah, actually, there’s one other thing I think I’d like to know . . .” ※

Helena screamed. “Lo! Lo!” “It is okay,” Henry murmured, still half asleep. “I am here, Helena.” “Bitte. Bitte.” Her words shuddered in and out with her sobs. “Bitte.” Charlie listened for a moment. This time, he did not close his eyes. He rose from his cot, its creak drawing his father’s attention, and began walking across the room to his parents’ bed. “We are fine, Charlie,” Henry rasped. “Go back to sleep.” Charlie didn’t stop until he stood by his mother’s side. She curled in on herself, shying away from his attention. Helena covered her mouth with her hand, muffling a whimper, as if trying to shield her son from her panicked words and breaths. Charlie placed a hand on her shoulder. “Ani mevin,” Charlie said, his voice cracking halfway through. He tried again. “Ani mevin.” I understand. Henry stared up at him, wide-eyed. Helena sat up, looking at her son through her tears. Her mouth opened and closed as if trying to form

around a word she couldn’t find. Henry filled in the silence for her. “Where did you learn that?” “I—It doesn’t matter. It’s just, I understand. I want you to know I understand,” Charlie said. “Ani mevin.” Helena moved first. She reached up, grabbing Charlie’s hand in one of her own. Henry leaned across his wife and clasped both his hands around theirs. In that moment, touch conveyed what words could not. And night gave way to dawn, a soft ray from the sun shining through that single window, landing where their arms met: One blank, next to 48559 and 140602 140602,, visible in the daylight.

Aubade to a Tourist At traction with Lou Reed’s “Coney Island Baby”

Rita Yea Se Chun I sit on the pull-out couch, beside your sleeping body and think the morning comes as more of a consolation than anything, your crumpled skin suggesting some bad dream you’re going through, and I write what I want to say to you, how wrong you are but you’re right beside me, my lips are two sealed vacuums, sucking in words like dust already flown out of yesterday’s window. I write to you when you wake up. You say, “What’s that?” so I snap, “Mine,” and snap my notebook shut. Because how do I share a bleeding thorn without piercing you or all those things that you’ve done? done? Your father’s books line the walls. I’ve never met him but his name is your middle name, and your older brother sleeps in your room. You keep your mother hidden beneath the fruit bowl; I’m surrounded by your blood, your entire past, your memories of the only girlfriend you’re not yet over. Because they’re invisible, they’re all the more overwhelming. Only two months I’ve known you. Yet I come sit beside you and the blanket is thick and plaid blue, you smell like a stock photo of Sunday, lukewarm with a slight chill, staged. I’d give the whole thing up for you. I shiver so you hug me, so I leave the room.

A river drifts away outside the window. I watch it all head East. Manhattan is strange, but remember that the city is a funny place Something like a circus or a sewer. All those things that you’ve done drift away. I pray for a while, wondering what to thank God for. And just remember, different people have peculiar tastes and I’m grateful for this opportunity to . . . Nothing comes after the word. Because your unfamiliarity feels like a hug, and I’ve found that I don’t actually know you at all—I’m just passing through. And the glory of love just might come through. I cry when I let you crawl inside me, because I am any body and nobody in that moment for you. Not her, I tell you to pull out. “I feel like a sex doll.” “That’s upsetting.” We wash off our dread in the shower. We’re done and you wipe away the steam with a pale blue squeegee. You’re well trained by your mother, I see that. The glass is clear now, and you admit you’re upset because your balls are blue. So I let you come because I feel your old pain, mine lingers too in the backdrop, And right now she just might come shining through. . . We pack our things and leave to break our fast. The glory of love, a warm bacon egg and cheese, a real New York bagel, a hole in the middle for a home forgotten. Glory of love, give it to me now. . . Bus wheels about to turn—we count the empty seats. But we don’t turn our heads to recount, so you play me a song to remember who loved you, even though she knew you were wrong. . . And you begin to think about all the things that you’ve done as we drift away in the traffic, tread sun-drenched asphalt, and watch the sky, light rays already stretching, refracting—never to return.

Ce Vieux Paradis Jagger van Vliet

High above in Pandemonium, Satan herself is fuming now, She, the pale vision of death Or the portrait’s glimpse of opal Her, the regal sorceress of sin To make all beneath a formless sex So much is hellfire in this court To those who watch, the unsightly, Her wicked pets of rust and ruin Spelt out Belial and Mammon Etched to the walls of her grand chateau Satan herself is fuming now, Maddened with riot and ravenous want For she is the taker of life She, the thief of pearls from the oyster’s tongue A fresh nightshade blossom is she, That uniform whose image is burned Scorched to the near-perfect epitaph Upon that eyelid’s frailest underbelly Satan herself is cursing now, Striking with vicious daggers Calling desperately to her grande amour The wounded God, whose breasts are pink And whose visage peers downwards, From the kingdom of unfallen angels 63

As though to gloat in passing, says God

The gravedigger remains ever-devoted

So scoffs Satan that God knows about nothing For the sexton only ever strains against the night That frailest addiction to insomnia, Put into the blood of all nocturnal creatures Suffused by that slender hand of Satan Whose delicate touch will forever belong Above As an artful talon or the painter’s widow She has made a striking figure, Newly-made unto the image of her lover So Satan dreams each night, of God Dreams of a grandly poisoned autocrat, The politician whose romance now withers Forgotten is the promised whisper Taken in the eve of that ashen month Where, by the banks of the white river Satan and God’s love dissolved in tandem All forgotten now, into fatal dreamland Into Pandemonium’s highest vault, Kept from the sightline of Sin and Death Those cackled geese of spurious rumour Who might observe this love laughingly Or make a mockery of Pearline grace Satan herself is fuming now, Wishes to remind God of their youth She, the ever-plotful assassin Whose shrillest arrow is drawn back Pricked by the tar and bitumen Which has since drowned her lowly heart Sends that arrow streaking upwards 64

Far past the Marquis and pale bureaucrats, And even beyond the fleeting lips of religion, So that this insidious arrow descends Deeply and justly into the hips of God How she, the wondrous angel, shrieks Clutches with her veiled fingertips That indigo scar of death Recalling now the lips of Satan Worn like the broad flag up on high Remembers, as a sudden vision That mountaintop palace of glass Of her promises to a lost amoureuse Look above to the locked gates of Heaven Where God herself is fuming.

Schmear Done Right Kira Salter-Gurau

ll I wanted was a bagel. Everything toasted with some veggie schmear. You can get veggie cream cheese very, very wrong. The peppers and carrots can be sliced too thick. The cream cheese can be whipped, which is so wrong that the right schmear has left the bagel shop altogether, taking an orange juice and its vape uptown to the next shop. Cream cheese is a felt sense. You know when the bagel is perfect because you feel it in your stomach. Schmear done right is not a flavor or texture but a gut feeling. This past May, I was sitting in a Berlin coffee shop with my younger sister and a few friends, some of us reading and the others journaling. In my notebook, amidst doodles of a stick figure with a brain full of squiggly lines, I vented about how humid it was outside. I wrote about the woman standing outside the cafe, through the glass, smoking. “The color on her lips is red. I can’t help but resent her lips. The cigarette in them too. Her striped shirt. Her French tips. I can’t tell what I feel, but I’m steeped in it.” Next to that, a frowny face. She stood there, seemingly harmless. Her posture was normal, her clothes very regular, yet her nonchalance triggered something in me. The lack of care pricked me like a spindle. My fingers tingled as I closed my journal and rubbed my chest with my thumb, the spot where my anxiety was forming into a tight, hot ball. I leaned over and whispered to my sister, “Eighty years ago, she could have totally been a Nazi—”

“I was just thinking that,” Lila snapped back in an equally hushed tone. She pushed her plate forward on the table and her napkin crumpled over the remnants of a demolished poppyseed bagel with plain cream cheese. She downed her cup of water and held it up as if there were more underneath. During the whole trip, we were so thirsty all the time and couldn’t seem to drink enough water no matter how hard we tried. Lila and I promised each other that we would focus on the exciting parts of Berlin for this two-day trip before we moved on to the next city. Last year, we started the process of activating our German dual citizenship, a little benefit from our grandparents being persecuted during the Holocaust. Our family had fled from Hanover, a city south of Berlin in the thirties. Growing up we heard tales of ships taken in the middle of the night, a ham eaten over the course of a week as our grandmother hid out in the woods away from the Nazis, and Hitler Youth roaming the neighborhoods where my family lived, pushing little girls off of their bikes. These tales seemed almost humorous when recounted and so our return to that country, the country that had squeezed us out felt triumphant, yet a little false. We had done it! We’d survived. Yet, they still had a lot of ways in which they carried on. We left, but our family wasn’t demolished. Our bloodline is active, red, white, and blue cells pumping through our veins instead of the

treacherous black, red, and yellow of the waving German flag. A little less than a year prior, on a beautiful windy day in October, I walked to the German Consulate on the 5th floor of the Prudential Building in Boston and signed some papers to expand my identity—to unlock the German in me. I wore a floor length, pink floral skirt and a vintage green sweater that I’d thrifted. My reflection in the windows as I walked past was stunning, the woman before me smirking and beautiful. The room at the consulate was small, beige, and carpeted. I was a splotch of color in the drab waiting area. When the blonde woman called my name from the window, I set down the travel magazine I’d picked up while waiting to hear my name. The pages were filled with umlauts and large double s’s that looked like Bs. The whole process was quick. I entered as an American and left half German. What happened in between, I couldn’t tell you. Dotted lines, perhaps. Signatures and proof of suffering. Not much, really. I had skipped classes. After getting to the bottom of the Prudential Center I hopped on the red line and rode forty-five minutes to Cambridge to get an everything bagel with chicken salad, lettuce, and red onion from a spot near Harvard. The whole ride my fingers drummed against the manila folder that held my naturalization papers, the ones that had survived my whole life and sixty years before that too.

Their yellowing edges were soft from the passing of time, through palms and stuck in bookshelves, eventually reaching my outstretched hands. The line is always long at the bagel spot, but the turnaround is quick. The chicken salad they offer has capers, raisins, and fistfuls of dill. I arrived, stuffing the papers into my bag and ordered. That bagel is my dream bagel. If you were to cut open my chest, you’d see a Bagelsaurus everything bagel with chicken salad spinning like a record, keeping me alive with the sweet, sweet flavors of salt, garlic, and sesame seeds. Ever since she was little, Lila has had the same bagel order—poppyseed with plain schmear—whether it’s a Dunkin in Cambridge or the bagel shop we had just entered in Berlin, her order remains untouched. Lila’s eyes lit up when she saw the stacked bagels against the glass at the cafe. Our legs were tired and tempers short after a long day wandering the streets as tourists in the German capital. The city was draining us. We were empty. This bagel shop seemed to be an oasis of sorts. I found comfort in the familiarity of a cafe. Typing fingers clicked on computer keyboards, slow sips from warm paper cups filled with coffee. Whenever I’d visit somewhere new on our travels, I’d find a coffee shop or bakery, a place where the etiquette was easy and comforting. My sister’s presence provided a certain level of comfort as well. I knew when she was dehydrated or in a bad mood, water 68

the easy fix, or her headphones playing loud music proving to be a much better one. To have my sister with me when returning to our socalled homeland was to bring my real home to my supposed one. While cliché, what country compares to an hour, or even a minute, with my sister? Home is not a country. I knew the rules in this cafe. Order. Pay. Eat. Thank you. Bye. I couldn’t say the same about the rest of Berlin. At first impressions, the city was lush. Deep green leafy trees waterfalled into the road, cocooning our walk through the streets, crowded with locals in cool clothing and sharp haircuts. We noticed how much trash was around and wove our way through broken glass and flyers, beer bottles half full, left on the sidewalk for someone else to finish or collect. In neat piles next to park benches or by doorways, clothing was left for anyone in need. Kleiderhaufen or “donation piles,” our friend Arlo told us. A Jewish kid from Philly, with a Star of David necklace hanging at his collarbone and curly brown hair, Arlo had been studying memorials in Berlin for the past nine months. He toured us around, pulling us along the Berlin Wall, his fingers tracing the chipping paint. He explained how the city had no center. Berlin was originally nine or so different cities that merged; that’s why it felt so expansive. Culture, people, and landmarks littered the streets because every street was its own center, leading only to itself. Every corner was important. This 69

explained my feeling of being swallowed. It felt like the city was eating us. At one point I looked at Lila, her feet dragging. I could see she had left her ears at the train station, Senefelderplatz, so that she could just tune out and give herself a break. The days were long in Berlin, and she was getting demolished. Arlo took us to his favorite spot on the wall, a squiggly mess of colorful lines. I could manage that some of the lines were holding hands. We took pictures and he answered so many questions, his knowledge of the city quite impressive. While he was from Pennsylvania, he could have grown up in Berlin in another life. He was a symbol of “what if?” or rather, “what if it didn’t?” Out of nowhere, I asked Arlo if he could show us a synagogue. I wasn’t sure where the question had come from. My heart beat fast. Of course there was a synagogue, but why would I ask? It was something and someone much older than me who had asked. He brightened. “Are you okay with a bit of a ride?” Mumbling something in German, Arlo gave the train assistant in a red vest some paper tickets and we boarded the yellow train. We whizzed by massive trees and patches of sky that flickered on our faces with the kind of light that only appears after rain. The kind that licks droplets on the glass pane of the train car, making the world outside the window glitter. Berlin sparkled. I held my breath but the words came out

anyways. “Does it ever get to you?” “Does what ever get to me?” Arlo nearly fell when the train lurched out forward. He grabbed the rail and I reached my hand out to catch him. “Being Jewish in this place? Does it still get to you?” “Oh, all the time.” He told us how he still was shocked by how much everything upset him, even though he saw it every day. The streets marked in gold where Jews would walk to avoid the eyes of the hateful men in brown shirts. Bricks where books burned. Stations where families were torn apart. As we arrived at our stop, I swallowed the lump in my throat. This was what I was avoiding. The night before, Lila and I were searching for tampons in the aisles at Rossman’s, a drug store inside another train station. That night, I couldn’t tell whether it was the exhaustion from travel or my mind starting to lose itself but the labels in German seemed to float around me in circles, like a mobile above a crib. They soared out into the station, a concrete Hogwarts, with moving staircases and escalators extending higher and higher in every direction. When I looked up, I couldn’t see the top. This place was endless. I imagined thousands of passengers weaving their way through this station over the past 200 years, their footprints echoing

on the concrete, stuck in this endless chasm of moving stairs. The black interior design of the Ostbahnhof felt depressingly nostalgic, leaving a metallic aftertaste, like after you bite your tongue. For the whole trip I was avoiding the big elephant in the room with a Hitler mustache and a pint of sour beer. This elephant had been waiting for me and my sister to give up. My sister was like a fellow soldier, we were in this together. This city was dripping with history, a waterlogged blanket of pain coating the streets, the train lines, the parks. I was Indiana Jones running from a giant rolling boulder, ready to crush me, crushing me the minute I was born, every minute before I was born. The ache felt older than me, as though someone else were feeling it too. In that way, I didn’t feel lonely. I was seeing ghosts. Each corner I turned, I was scared of what I was going to see. Maybe I’d spot a young Jewish boy, clothes covered in soot—my grandfather 80 years ago—the morning after Kristallnacht, squatting to clean up the window shards in front of his family’s apartment. I was terrified. Arlo pulled us closer to the bricks of the synagogue. I opened up to him about the ache in my chest and he nodded his head. He understood. Arlo’s hair was the same color as mine, his eyes too. My family never took us to synagogue or Hebrew school growing up. When 70

I meet other Jewish people who look like me, sporting the nose and the hair, I contain my giggles and listen gleefully, to every little word they say, filling in some gap from my childhood. Walking up the block, on a wide street with Wes Anderson shaped buildings, orange and decorated in afternoon sunlight, we approached the New Synagogue. At the top was a glass dome shaped like a clove of garlic, made out of blue stained-glass. Gold lined the edges of the building, caressing the dome and glinting in the sun. Through tall Linden trees, I took a picture of the giant stained-glass beast. Arlo explained that this 150-year-old temple was just a façade. Services were held there until 1940 when the building was taken by the Nazis and almost completely destroyed by the Allied Forces bombing it in 1943. It stood there before us, sighing with trees. “There’s nothing there,” Arlo said, grinning. He rubbed the back of his neck as he peered up at the synagogue, the largest in Germany. His eyes scanned the windows with so much intent—it was as if he were looking for a glitch, for a white patch that the computer failed to fill in. It seemed as though the synagogue was speaking to him. I didn’t know what it was saying but I wanted to be a part of that conversation. I longed so deeply to be able to speak to this place. My aversion to feeling sad had dissipated. I was just feeling at this point. As I watched Arlo look lovingly up at this structure of our 71

past, I thought about the lack of Jewish culture in my upbringing. My mom put up a menorah and there were always loose dreidels in our junk drawer. To grow up in New England was to grow up around Atheists, Lutherans, Unitarians and Agnostics, preaching acceptance, but really preaching the Bible. My ideologies around Judaism were formed by jokes at school and my family alluding to the suffering “over in Germany,” a world away in Europe, this home of a treacherous history that I supposedly belonged to. Supposedly, supposedly, supposedly. Where was my clear answer? I deserved one, I always deserved one. The only person who deserved it more than me was Lila, my little sister, living through this world just one step behind me. I vowed then and there to give her that answer whenever I could. I would buy her a Star of David necklace the next year, which she’d wear every day from then on. I’d start attending Shabbat services in Boston. I’d find the answer on my own, since no one else was going to hand me what I wanted: a relationship to this culture. Watching Arlo communicate directly with this creature, this relic, made me envious and passionate to connect. We left and took the train towards Raumerstraße, where we were meeting other friends for dinner. The train rumbled beneath me, in the bones of my legs. I faced backwards in the train car, watching the synagogue grow smaller in the distance, looking like a toy from this angle. It grew smaller and smaller as we moved further into the belly of the

city. Back in the cafe, I opened my journal back up and made a little map of my feelings. Wishing my mother were there, I texted her. She wouldn’t respond for a few hours because it was three in the morning in Maine. I hated our time difference. In this heated frustration, I had never felt farther from my mother or my childhood. I felt like a grown-up, though, journaling my emotions into pill-sized doses, taking them one at a time. The sweet waitress cleared our dishes from the table. After saying our thank yous we stepped out onto the street. The skies were gray but it was gorgeous out. For a brief second, I dreamed of moving to Berlin, finding a writing job, and dating a German girl. I shook my head, German is a rough language. So many hard G’s, I thought. We all looked cool, mixing in with the city, the sharpness of our noses matching faces on the subway, our dark features blending in like watercolor as we made our way to the train

that would take us south to Munich. I blinked and opened my eyes in a world where Lila and I grew up in this city, German dancing on our tongues as first nature. We’d come to this cafe and journal for the day, our backs sore by the afternoon from being hunched over pen and paper, dispersing our thoughts onto the page. What kind of pain would we feel then? Would I be longing in the same way I was just then? I’d find us a table and Lila would go up to order. In every reality, at least some things would remain the same. Trains. Noses. Long days. Bagels done wrong. Bagels done right. Poppyseed with plain. Everything with veggie.

Intimacy Juliette Hagobian

The avalanche crosses my eyes, a white underbelly foraging mouse type lump. Breaking, the tongue slips between teeth like a shotgun between the trees. A canopy of pastilles practicing slow descent. Who lets me choose

my own affection— the kind that begs, the kind that bends and bows

edge too hard?

like the skin

meeting the sharp

of a stone when pressed I watch

crush

the kipuka around us like a horizon.

Ravaged with pain and iridescence. 73

Avalanche, again.

Do not ask him are the kinetic

what you are, you switchblade hand for his hair, the vestal with two open mouths, the crowbar. I watch his eyes, tines of jade, protesting the darkness.

The avalanche

is now chest-fixed. A white princess atop

chaise lounge, undressed.

The Hyperbolic Labryrinth Charlie Williams

ne more exercise of memory before that ability slips away, too. I am watching my hand move my pen across the page, finding ugliness in all I see. Pen and finger, whorls and letters, so many unnecessary curves and corners, senseless symbols. Understanding my written words makes me feel ugly, too, and I’m suddenly wishing for the Pretty Thing in my fingers instead of the pen. The Pretty Thing. Top drawer of my desk. No. This first. Chronology. Here are the letters of my name: Isabella Graham. David Klivansky—the greatest sculptor in the world. My friend. Fante Moreno—his protege. We existed, we three. I must affirm that. I came late to the evil that pervaded David’s sculpture studio in the summer of this year. My old friend was due to unveil his latest and most anticipated sculpture at an Austrian exhibition in mid-July, an event that had become something of a Klivansky showcase since he’d signed on. David had reportedly ordered two tons of raw sheet metal, mostly copper and steel, for his untitled new project. To add to the chatter, he’d also fired his secretary and most of his staff—mostly trusted colleagues— keeping only his protege, Fante Moreno, in his regular employ. Without a letter from David for months, art publications and tabloids had supplanted my knowledge of his life. Relentlessly rabid for updates, they made him out like a garish cross between Vulcan and Victor Frankenstein. There he was, they said, holed up in the hills of rural Maine with his scrap metal, assistant, and an arsenal of

hammers and metal presses, wringing from the fires of his furnace a new, inconceivable wonder into the world. It was endlessly intriguing to anyone who didn’t know David better. The rumors didn’t alarm me any more than his silence; I knew he could get erratic when working. In the interim of relative silence in our correspondence, I picked up a modest position teaching art history at Bates. I’d written to David just once in the interim, wishing him well but asking mostly about young Fante, who I knew had an interest in the college’s arts program. David’s response reached me two days after the Austria exhibition, which had opened with no David and no sculpture. The coordinator was reportedly furious and humiliated at having to unveil an exhibition without a centerpiece. The magazines practically trampled each other to death trying to cover it. A French rag paper won the day with an op-ed about the latest Klivansky technique, Sculpture sans Sculpture, claiming there was no piece and that David had taken us all for fools— aesthete fools! David’s letter urged me to come to the workshop as soon as possible—that things “wonderful and terrible” were happening there. At the time, I was teaching an inattentive summer class on Caravaggio, sweating through my clothes, hopeful for an update. That same day, I put in a leave of absence and drove north, toward Lincoln. The studio was isolated by design, tucked in a thicket of pine trees ten miles north of a small town called Union. I saw its trussed roof from half a mile away, rounding the last forested bend before the road deposited me at the bottom of the drive. 76

David greeted me before my third knock could sound, explaining he had fired his secretarial assistant, which I already knew. I hardly heard him. He was too much a sight to pay proper attention to anything else. At some point, well before my arrival, the figure of the brilliant, if not tolerably brash, man I’d known had soured into something else. It seemed he’d aged too far too fast, it seemed. His skin was liver-spotted and brittle, eyes cloudy and yellowish, fingers crusty with halfhealed scabs and blisters. By my estimate, he’d lost thirty-odd pounds since last I’d seen him, maybe more beneath the sugar-powdered stubble on his cheeks and throat. His magnifying loupe goggles, perched haphazardly on his scalp, were the most recognizable part of him. He led me out of the foyer and around last exhibition’s sculptures on their black marble pedestals, saying something about the heat getting better the higher we went, apologizing for the smell. He always talked with his hands, as though beating the words away from himself as he spoke them. I said offhandedly that I didn’t smell anything, quietly noting the scabs coating his gesticulating fingertips like frostbite. I blinked sweat out of my eyes, silently cursing the summer humidity that worsened inside the studio. I’d half-hoped we’d go to his office to chat— the stools in the workshop forced me to hunch and hurt my back—but he mounted the spiral staircase and passed the open office door to the second floor without a look inside. I caught sight of the inner space and stopped a few steps behind him. I might have said, “Oh,” or something equally insightful. A blizzard of prickly metal detritus filled 77

the office halfway up the doorpost, held back from spilling into the stairway only by the tangled balance of scrap and a few strips of duct tape stretched taut across the threshold. I say scrap tentatively; every component of that vast pile could have been something, or at least half of something. Stare long enough at any piece, and David’s signature design becomes apparent if you know how to look. A quick glance revealed whip-curls of smoky copper, botanical branches frozen in bronze bloom, and so many tarnish-winged whirligigs, all intertwined within a sinuous network of mad torsions. A pair of helical prongs jutted out of the heap, just around my eye level. I asked about Fante for the first time and was surprised to find myself struggling to voice my question nonchalantly. The sight of all that discarded metal, stuffing the mouth of the office like embalming cotton, set an irrational unease lingering in my chest. No—looking back, it was the junk pile’s silence that disconcerted me so, even more than its sigh. It felt precarious, that silence, as though the slightest shift might send the whole thing crashing forward, those twin prongs punching through my eyes. David said over his shoulder that Fante was a diligent protégé, and was “more level-headed than I was at eighteen. A natural mind for this work.” I asked him if Fante was excited to start school in the fall, studying the arts in an academic setting. “He’s thrilled,” David answered, with such shortness that I didn’t inquire further. By then at least we’d reached the workshop. At first it looked to me like the space between the worktable islands was occupied by

a gargantuan tumbleweed. It was tall enough to reach almost to the vaulted ceiling, wide enough to nestle atop the islands, with enough space beneath for a person to crawl inside and stand to their full height. Closer, I saw the incredible detail and depth of the thing, which was composed of two tangled frames of copper and iron. The work tables were entirely lost beneath a layer of junk in various stages of patination. From the green-brown jumble, the sculptor plucked the Pretty Thing and placed it in my hands. At the time, I saw it as little more than a cleverly-manipulated twist of scrap, an object with no apparent purpose beyond aesthetics. The dart-like shape brought to mind a planchette piece, the concave of one metal arc stretched and tapered to form the vertex of its double on the perpendicular plane. David showed me how to put my fingers in each opposing crescent and twist them back and forth, allowing the shape to rotate between them, before taking it to demonstrate himself. Gyrating in his hands, it took on a fluid, spherical blur. “This was the key,” he said, staring fixedly at the rotating object as he spoke. “A raised hyperbolic paraboloid. First to popularize the method was a tribe in prehistoric Ireland, who used it mostly for ceremonial torcs before they and their method were lost. The way they did it, they’d stretch a band of metal between two fastened boulders and twi-i-i-st with bone pliers, distressing the middle of the band until the ends tapered at opposing right angles. You could fashion anything from jewelry to swords to complex mazes, all with a single pliable method.” David set the paraboloid back on the desk. “We have Celtic usage of the paraboloid on the archaeological record, but disjointed evidence

of its influence is present in nearly every ancient civilization. If you indulge in mythology, Isa, you’ll recognize the Minoans’ success with the method on a scale much greater than Celtic jewelry, four thousand years before the Gauls learned to smelt.” “Minos’ Labyrinth.” I nodded to the nestlike sculpture. “That’s your take on it, then? The ‘Minotaur’s maze?’” He shook his head, pulled two stools into the sculpture’s shadow, and gestured for me to sit. A mug of graying coffee sat half-hidden amid the junk; he took it in his hands, offered me a sip, and downed it when I quietly declined. Again, I noticed the stillness of the space, and wondered aloud (again, straining for nonchalance) where Fante had gotten off to. As though he’d been waiting for the subject to arise again, David drew a stapled crumple of papers from his back pocket and passed them to me. I recognized his scrawl from past letters, messy, but legible. I looked from the pages to him. “You want me to read this? All of this?” He nodded, leaning back on the stool. “Right now, if you have the time. I’d tell you myself, but I’m tired, Isa. I wrote it just after I called you. You read it, then tell me what you think. We can’t talk plainly until you do.” So I did, while David sat across from me in obliging silence and swirled the dregs of his coffee. The heat swelled into the workshop as though eager to fill the great nested thing David had filled it with. I still have the letter; I’ve included its pages here amid my own writing.

From the Desk of DAVID KLIVANSKY Fante Moreno was a bright boy in all respects, and would have done wonders at university and wherever else life might have taken him. Consider this summation not a fraction of the love and respect I still hold for him or the shame I feel for the way things have since turned. He’d already spent his high school years at my work table, twisting scrap into unparalleled art. Fine, he’d told me, but not college. Maybe not the years just beyond college. He wanted to get away for a bit, meet someone, bring them back here when he’d wandered enough. Fine by me. Truthfully, I didn’t want Fante to spend the rest of his life here. That is not an apprentice’s duty than a seasoned smith’s. You know, Isa, that my formative youth was spent in Italy, learning craft secrets from a creature who bore more resemblance to a stick bug than a man. He was my mentor, the great sculptor Nan Toya, and a good friend. Needless to say, I understood the need to travel, to love, to experience, just as Fante understood that the secret I’d imparted to him, the knowledge of millennia of metalwork, would eventually call him back to the smelter. Already, his natural aptitude for the art was sharpening and guiding his way. Among his better instincts, he was especially wary of the paraboloid the moment I brought it back 79

from Dublin. Coupled with his commendable knack for metalwork, Fante had taken a private interest in Kabbalah and the occult while working here, spending his evenings and free time with a book of mysticism perched on his knees. So if something seemed off about the technique to him, I might have done well to listen. He was worried even before the first face appeared, worse for it after. The day things soured had been a productive one. I’d cracked the Celtic method by then and was moving on to the real work of the reef. I’ve found through countless hours employing the Celtic technique that the stressed paraboloid is an oceanic shape. It could be any fluttering strand of kelp or, by scalloping the stressed edges with pliers, a sort of crustacean shell. What’s currently littering the table are attempts at squids, but their fins are tricky. That day was just the frame, though. We were setting it down in the work area when Fante fell away, nearly dropping his end and crushing my foot in the process, with an awful look on his face. Only by instinct did he not let go; we hastily set it down, whereupon I asked him what had frightened him so. He looked hard at the frame for a moment before answering that it was nothing. It had to be nothing. When I pressed him on it, he admitted he thought he’d seen something in the helix framework, something no blueprint or schematic accounted for. I asked him to draw whatever it was, and he refused, mumbling

something about needing rest after the day’s work. I’d have pressed him further, but I was tired too. I wonder, now, what difference it would have made. I awoke in the early morning hours to screaming from Fante’s room. He was tangled in the sheets, seized in the grip of whatever nightmare played against his fluttering eyelids, the rolled-back whites of his eyes. He insisted after I shook him awake that he had no memory of the dream that had possessed him. Fante was lethargic the next day. He nearly lost an arm to the metal press, staring off into a corner of the ceiling as he absentmindedly guided the machine through its work. I was afraid to let him near the reef, as the fitting of the second “chassis” layer into the first was delicate stuff, each curve required to lock perfectly into its counterpart for the proper effect. He saw something again, sitting on a stool to overlook the work. It gave him such a jumping fright that the legs of the stool flew out from under him, glancing off the reef’s nearest curvature and denting the delicate balance of metal. This time, pointing wildly, he named it: “A face! There, in the brass!” I acted harshly then. With no sparing of force, I hauled him to his feet and, unintentionally, used the momentum of my hand around his arm to send him flying against the worktable. Unfinished pieces went scattering; in the moment, this only enraged me more. I drove him out of the

studio, and before slamming the door in his face, told him plainly that I hadn’t the capacity for dullards so close to an exhibition this important, and if he saw fit to pack his things before dinner, I wouldn’t stop him. His expression as the door closed was one of distant shock. He was still staring at the reef. I worked tirelessly throughout the rest of the afternoon to buff out Fante’s folly and keep on schedule. The exhibition was two days away then. I ended up missing the show, but I couldn’t have foreseen that at the time. I had worked against greater deadlines than these, and I tried to keep a level head even as the work started to get away from me. The paraboloid was proving almost too fluid for its own good. I created octopi with the same scalloped effect on their tentacles as the vegetation, and crabs with those crescent formations for claws, and sharks and rays and eels with the stressed helix for their undulating bodies and fins. They populated the outer curves of the reef, with leafy striations curving about the inside like the tails of still greater beasts. I wanted a sense of layering, you understand, the effect of looking down into an ecosystem wrought from a single shape, the viewer always seeing something new in those conjoining depths. I saw the face for the first time while fastening a manta ray to an inner arch, lying back on the wheeled creeper seat. I recall the exact moment because I 80

was focusing particularly hard on the task at hand. Strange things have been known to appear in the corner of one’s vision when you focus, such as tricking the unskilled eye into deviating from its task. I fastened the ray and glanced aside, only for a moment, succumbing to the old instinct to clear my mind by dispelling the distraction at the source. The face camouflaged itself in the folds of helical coral in such a way that it appeared indistinct at first, like those tree roots which, for their gnarls, resemble the face or body of a human being. So it was with some impatient indifference that I glanced that way and then away, and was preparing to wheel myself out of the reef’s undercarriage when the details of the anomaly settled properly into my head. The first nomenclatural thought that came to mind was anglerfish, though I knew at once that I had neither planned nor crafted such an animal for the reef. I wheeled myself back under, already hunting for the exact spot, for the anomaly, but it had gone. Or I wasn’t looking properly or in just the right place. Or it had never been there at all, which, given the next events, I cannot really believe. Even so, I was able to put it out of my mind, chalking the whole sighting up to too much work with too little sleep. I wasn’t expecting to see Fante at dinner, but he was there before me, and had prepared bowls for us both, as he had all other nights. We sat in silence for some time, me picking at my food (despite my labors, I 81

hadn’t much of an appetite), him staring into his own bowl with the same haunted look as before. When I started in with some empty apology, words about morale and discipline required for such a taxing project, he held up a hand to pause me. I admit this gesture scared me more than all his erratic behavior before, because by no stretch of the imagination could it be considered the movement of a youth. And when he raised his eyes to me, they were sunken and too dark, all the light burned out of them. “I’ve been dreaming while awake, Mr. Klivansky,” he said flatly. “In my dreams, I am an Athenian youth, running down a hallway with floors that refuse to stay smooth. Imagine a space, miles wide in every direction, where up becomes down too late, and bastardized gravity pitches you into a new arc. It’s as though the dimensions themselves are shaking you off their coils to a plane where chasmic patterns of color exist only in relief against the blackness. And in that space . . .” His eyes grew wide. “It is not space!” he cried. “Those patterns, they are dead and flat, and I—I, bodiless, find myself spun about their oscillations until I sob for it, and when I do not wake screaming, I wake sobbing, sure I’m drowning either way. Even now, that feeling grips me.” “You need sleep, Fante,” I told him, hardly believing my own words. He continued mechanically: “All day I’ve tried to sleep, sir, but every time I close my eyes, it’s there, like a bad mirage. Then I’ll nod off without

meaning to, and it’s waiting for me in the dead, flat patterns, waiting to chase me from coil to coil. It catches my ankle sometimes and drags me . . . deeper . . . away from away . . .” “What is it?” His eyes, beginning to drift, snapped back to my face. He said plainly, voice hideously flat: “The face of the creature in the torc you brought back from Ireland, sir.” He would not speak for the rest of the meal. As he continued doing the dishes in dutiful silence, I set about changing the locks on the workshop door. I’d drawn a connection between the boy’s fevered talk and the way he stared at the reef and saw the action as necessary to protect my work. I am not a confrontational man; it fits delicate work to surround oneself only with the agreeable sort, individuals who do as they’re told without pushback. I admit that beyond the lock switch I didn’t know what to do with him. My earlier reaction had been a product of the heat of the situation; using force to eject him from the property didn’t seem an option. I hoped he’d leave on his own terms, and indeed, it appeared he might. Passing his room that night I saw a trunk stuffed full of clothes, his books atop the heap. One more evening here, perhaps, and then he’d catch the first train away. I dreamed, that night, of climbing a helix tower by a silk-thin thread, my sole objective the waving hand of a maiden some countless leagues above me. There was the sense of being underwater, through the

swirling murk of the tower’s location, light bulbs blinked in and out of existence like the phosphorescence of certain depth-dwellers. The face that met me at the tower window was achingly beautiful and sad, drawing me in at once for a lingering kiss. When her face grew close enough that her eyes conjoined into a single circle of light, I experienced a euphoric rush of colors and patterns, boundless, kaleidoscopic patterns as the boy had seen, but not a nightmare——no! Such brilliant, swirling things that put the height of my own work to deserved shame, and she at its heart, Venus incarnate crying out for my aid. When I awoke, still dazed, to a series of crashes in the direction of my studio, I felt the same fear that grips the heart of one who knows their lover is in grave danger. I thought of my reef, and again of my pupil’s depraved eyes, and somehow between them, the imploring look of the damsel, and this latter image was what drove me out of bed, down the hall and stairway to the studio door, which lay crooked on its busted hinges. The boy stood just inside, his nightshirt drenched in sweat, a cross-pein hammer dangling from his slack hand, staring up at the reef. “Fante,” I said. He started sluggishly and turned towards me. Such a bottomless disorientation to his face, like a sailor lost too long at sea. I stepped back. “How do I know I’m not drowned, sir? I can’t trust the breath in my nose or the eyes in my skull; they show me things I 82

know needn’t be real. Those things have been unmade, but I can bring them back.” His lips trembled and strained; I realized he was trying to smile at me. I wanted to weep. “No more faces after this, Mister Klivansky. No more nightmares.” He turned back to the sculpture, fingers tightening around the hammer. I saw at once what he meant to do; without being fully conscious of doing so, I was already reaching out to sweep the nearest length of helix metal off my desk and into my fist. I approached him, low, from behind—— My pen falters here. I know what comes next. I have replayed it so many times in my head that it’s begun to feel like someone else’s deed, and I still can’t force my hand to put it down in writing. Three little words, noun verb noun. I can’t. I’m moving on. I’m sorry. It took me the rest of the night to clean the blood off the reef. It’s cavernous, and most of what spurted from Fante’s neck got in between the interlocking places, the spots I’d hoped never to touch again once they were complete. I worked singularly, as though possessed. . . I don’t know what it was that told me with such conviction that what I’d done was right, justified, necessary, that Fante was the threat I’d played him up to be in the crucial instant. I could have subdued him, I think. I needn’t have. . . but she needed me, you see. And now she needed me to clean the reef. And she wasn’t awful like Fante made her out to be. Not at all. That fair face. . . 83

As I scrubbed the blood out of the sculpture, I began grinning to places just to the right and left of me, hoping to greet the beautiful visage my eyes insisted had been there seconds before. Twice I thought I saw her in the greenish patina of a freshly cleaned curve, and I twisted expectantly where I lay, gazing up through the branches for a sign of her. But nothing, nothing. The reality of what I’d done struck me around dawn when I wheeled out from the reef with the last batch of bloodied towels and saw the boy’s crooked body lying some paces away, a vacant expression reflected in the blood pooling around his head. I spent close to an hour without control of my breathing, whimpering his name again and again, like doing so might revive him. I remained on the creeper for the duration of that time, and only when it felt safe to move, when I assured myself that there was no numbness in my arms or unconquerable pain in my chest, I moved to dispose of the body. I put him in the smelting furnace and set it to cook him, and I haven’t touched it since. The furnace works slowly and efficiently, but even for that efficiency and slowness, it will overheat soon. There is no difference between hours or days. I’m going nowhere.

I finished reading and looked up at David, whose expression and position had not changed in the fifteen minutes we’d sat in silence. He looked like a man long marooned. “None of this can be

true.”

David nodded as though expecting this response. “You should leave, Isa. The smelter finished with Fante hours ago. It’s eating itself now, and it’ll eat the rest of the studio once it’s done with that. This place will be an inferno soon. Give my letter and apologies to his family if you think they’ll appreciate them.” I stared at him, back down to the last page, then at the sculpture beside us, and back to him. I repeated my assertion, as if repeating it would convince me. “Smell!” He tilted his head back and inhaled deeply through his nose and mouth, like a man resurfaced and greedy for oxygen. I sniffed, too. While reading, I hadn’t noticed the faint odor that had snuck into the room—a gamey smell, like blackened pork. The heat, worse than it had been below, shimmered and blurred the air around the nested reef. I felt faint. David clambered down from his stool, coming to sit cross-legged before his sculpture. With a faint smile on his lips, he craned his neck to look at something deep inside of it, something I couldn’t see from my position. “You go now, Isa,” he said again. Rising to his knees, he stuck his head and torso inside the sculpture. I rose on unsteady legs, stumbling past David and his colossal work. I tried not to hear the sounds that came from within, but the metal magnified them, and promptly, the studio was full of the smacks of tender kisses that, between pleasured grunts, grew in wetness and longevity as he kept on. I made an effort not to look inside the sculpture as I passed, and though I’d love to laugh

at that choice now, call it superstitious, I’m still glad for it. David’s kisses promptly gave way to a sound not his own, a throaty suckling and popping, the sound one’s mouth might make to siphon blood out of a shallow wound. I cannot say what motivated me to scoop the prototype paraboloid off the work table and into my pocket as I departed. I forgot briefly of doing so as I stepped out into the hallway, now clogged with oppressive heat, black smoke, and the overpowering stench of charred flesh. I passed the smog-veiled mouth of the office doorway, taking the stairs two at a time, and something moved at me from the spiked junk within. It might have been the pile settling, another shimmering mirage, or the precursor to a greater collapse of heat-loosened metal. Still, I cannot, even now writing this in my home, shake the peripheral image of a gaping black mouth closing shut just shy of my shirttail as I fled. Intuition, nothing more. But then, intuition spurred me to take the paraboloid from David’s studio so my gut could mislead me. Remembering the shape in my pocket as I sped away from the studio, I reflected on my good sense for taking it. A puzzle piece, so it felt at the time, in a mystery yet unsolved. A means of understanding the madness that had ruined my lost friend. The studio was still visible behind me when the roof caved in. The glimpse of it in my rearview mirror and the sudden scream of so much ruined metal collapsing at once startled me badly enough to misjudge the curve of the mountain road. I slammed on the brake, screeched to a halt at the lip of the bend, and sat with my hands trembling against the wheel. Even from here, I could smell the smoke, fresh in its charnel stink. My dashboard gleamed 84

with hideous orange light from somewhere behind the car. I knew what I’d see if I raised my eyes to my rearview mirror, so I didn’t. When my breathing settled, I drove on. I knew, before the coroner’s report was released to the public, that my friend was dead. What I hadn’t expected was the described state of his body. Burned almost beyond identification, but also found strewn about the workshop like discarded wrapping paper. A leg on this scrap table, an arm on that one, the skin-stripped face hung by its lips from the half-melted reef. Like he’d been blasted, or torn, apart. I tried to return to teaching after my trip but extended my leave indefinitely after my first day back. We were to examine a copy of Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes that day. I remember unfurling the canvas on the table and seeing what lay there in place of the painting. This is an elaborate nightmare indeed, I thought, for such a thing like this to appear in such detail. But no, I reasoned; I had awoken that same morning from a similar dream, so vivid that I took comfort in the reality brought simply by brushing my teeth. “Fluoride,” I muttered, and promptly collapsed. Next thing I knew, a student was pressing a cold rag to my forehead while the others stood about, unsure of what to do. The poster had furled up when I’d let it go, twin scrolls staring down from high above my head. A nasty throbbing at the place the student held the compress suggested I’d struck my head on the corner of the table on the way down. I dismissed the class for the day, citing the summer heat as the reason for my fainting. Only 85

when the last student had left did I allow myself to approach the scroll again. I knew what lay within, I reasoned. I rented the copy from the college’s archives and inspected it some minutes before class. Beneath would be Judith, gracefully ambivalent, putting a sword through the neck of the tyrant Holofernes as wizened maidservant Abra watches on. I rolled the painting open with a flick of my hand. A murder indeed lay on the canvas, but not the one immortalized by Caravaggio. Judith wore the face of my friend Klivansky, swanlike arms burying the hilt of a blade in the neck of writhing Fante, who inhabited the form of Holofernes. And Abra, the handmaid. . . I stared at the face sitting on Abra’s shoulders until the details of the painting began to dull and blur around it. As though staring at that blemish, that leering sore, might fade it from existence, too. But it remained stubbornly vivid, imprinted like a flash of sunlight against my eyelids as I swayed again, feeling for my chair. In one form or another, the Pretty Thing has followed me ever since. I haven’t slept properly in a few weeks. The thing finds me when I doze, meeting me in the serpentine labyrinths my dreams have become, and I often wake up screaming into the pleasant afternoon sunshine. It is a noseless, wasted thing with a vaguely equinal skull and human eyes that are never without sparkle. It watches me from the corners of my eyes when I try to sleep and breathes down my back whenever I turn away. I’m sure it’s here from the paraboloid, something from the “unknowable” side of things Fante spoke of—he was right about everything he could comprehend. It is no accident that the Celtic

torc was lost to the mosses of millennia, which is why Knossos fell to ruin and the Labyrinth, beneath it, to legend. What power does wrestling a shape out of metal give the wrestler? No more than David Klivansky possessed, I think. True power is in the shape itself, over the predatory things those ancient configurations might summon, and is innately unachievable. The face is interlinked with the paraboloid, but I can’t seem to give it up. It’s such a pretty, pretty thing. Even now, writing this, my fingers burn to return to it. I’ve spent hours with my fingers inserted in the opposing crescents, turning them clockwise and counterclockwise over and over until even my fingers fall away, and it’s simply the shape and its infinite curves turning in indefinite space. Sometimes I lick it. I don’t feel like I’m starving to death. Funny, because my stomach looks like a gray shuck most mornings, sallow and sunken. It started to look that way after I started eating six meals a week to allow more time with the sculpture, then three, then two. But even now, no pain. Isn’t starving supposed to hurt? I’m done here. Some more play with the paraboloid, and then I’ll sleep, and if the long, smooth face doesn’t come for me, I think I’ll play some more. Dreaming or awake, it doesn’t matter. The Pretty Thing will follow me wherever I don’t want to go. Here again, for further proof of my existence, are the letters of my name: Isabella Graham

Still moon sleeping over rising tides, I find: the yearning self is whole. They didn’t lie to you, they only knew the selfsame little, just as human as you are. Come here, being of a creature. As woolen as a bear,

Mirror Portrait

bunched into a little ball of anger, of hibernation, of love, and that hardened fear: hate. Still, moon sleeping. Over rising tides I find: the yearning self is whole. No one asks: Who are you? Only this remains: What have you been? A praying child, a love-eyed loon, a wiseground woman, a suffering stuntaddict, a sensitive bruise, absorbing blue pain for sake of healing, a mirrored sponge, drawing in soundwaves, reflecting— What else? It all dilates, then titrates at night. Still moon. Sleeping over rising. Tides receding. Sands granulating, counting time spent wisely over time killed, time spent like turning moonstones in a palm, thinking bygone over bygone I find: the yearning self is whole, the selfsame little, just as human 87

Rita Yea Se Chun

Author Bios Rita Yea Se Chun is a South Korean writer, musician and artist currently obtaining a Creative Writing BFA from Emerson College. She spent the majority of her life in Hong Kong, though she’s now based in Boston and Seoul. Exploring the beautiful and painful aspects of being human is a throughline in her multidisciplinary art. Her work has been published in Eunoia Review, Stork Magazine, and Rabbit Hole.

Madison McMahon is a junior from Connecticut pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Writing, Literature and Publishing. She enjoys setting her stories in New England with its simultaneously comforting and haunting sights. Madison has a published fantasy novel, The Son of Mara, and has another novel on the way. She loves matcha lattes, cats, and Disney, and when she is not writing, Madison thinks about writing——for better or for worse. 89

Jagger van Vliet is above all else a Dadaist. Jagger was born in Maine and currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts. They are pursuing an MA in publishing at Emerson College, where they also write novels, short fiction, poetry, and various editorials. Jagger’s work can be found in Stork Magazine, Five Cent Sound, Concrete Literary Magazine, and several other publications. Presently, they work as the Editorial Director of Index Fashion Magazine. Jagger’s work concerns the grotesque, the strange, or the ineluctably necessary (which are all the same thing).

Kira Salter-Gurau is a writer based in Maine. Some of her works appear in Emerson College’s Your Magazine as well as in previous issues of Concrete Literary Magazine. Outside of Emerson College, she’s written for the Quinobequin Review as well as the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Freeport, among others. She is enjoying her fourth and final spring in Boston by walking around Brighton, getting fried rice, and taking advantage of her student discount while she still can. “Schmear Done Right” is one of five essays comprising her senior thesis which explores her ancestry in Germany.

Ryn Brierley is a multi-genre fiction writer from Peabody, Massachusetts. He enjoys experimenting with various forms of fiction such as playwriting and Heather screenwriting. Science Fiction and Thorn is a current drama are his most-written genres, sophomore student at although he takes interest in all Emerson College in pursuit kinds of stories. His tortico cat, of a BFA in creative writing. Kira, is the most precious thing in She seeks to capture all of the his life, immediately followed by the raw edges of the human experience savory bliss of nachos enjoyed with in her poetry. Other works of hers friends. He is incredibly excited can be read in Dreamworld Girl Zine, to make his publishing debut Dollheart Zine, Flowermouth Press, with Concrete in their Spring Dulcet Literary Magazine, and Jardin 2025 issue! Zine. On campus, she works with Concrete Literary Magazine, Five Cent Sound, Your Mag, and Milk Crate. Elliot Berkley grew up on the rainy west coast in Tacoma, Washington among the pine trees, seafoam and gray skies. She is currently living in Boston, MA, pursuing a degree in Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College. She is part of Stork Magazine and has previously had her novella published by Emerson’s student-run Wilde Press.

Ethan Richmond is a Los Angeles native, now a junior at Emerson College studying creative writing. His work can also be found in Gauge Magazine. He spends most of his spare time in used bookstores.

Charlie Williams is a fiction writer from Northern Virginia. His primary genre is horror, though he likes writing and reading all areas of the slipstream. He has been published online with Maudlin House and Eunoia Review, and in print with Page Turner, Stork Magazine, and now Concrete.

Alyssa Hannah Chang was born in Columbus, Ohio before she moved to Daegu, South Korea at a young age. She is a junior Emerson College student studying journalism, with minors in political science and marketing. Her favorite book is Martyr by Kaveh Akbar.

Juliette Hagobian (she/her) is a sophomore at Emerson College. She is an alumna of the 2023 Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program and the International Armenian Literary Alliance’s Poetry Mentorship. Her works can be found in h-pem, Surging Tide, The Howl, The Round, and elsewhere. Find her on her bed eating sumo oranges.

Jenna Benson majors in Creative Writing at Emerson College with a focus in fiction, specifically historical fiction and fantasy. Her work typically explores themes of power dynamics, mental health, Judaism, sexuality, and marginalization. When she is not writing, Jenna enjoys music, reading, nature walks, and being subject to the whims of her Great Pyrenees, Juno.

Madi Gagner is a sophomore Creative Writing major from St. Albans, Vermont. She enjoys writing fiction, poetry, plays, and pretty much any story worth telling. She’s previously been published in Page Turner Magazine, and her play “Death of Gogh” was selected to be performed in Emerson’s 2025 NewFest Short Works. Aside from writing she likes to paint, crochet (poorly), and play Roblox.

Hela Giaever is a VMA major and a freshman at Emerson College. She is super pumped to show you her first published poem in an Emerson magazine! She loves to listen and perform poetry with the Boston community at Trident bookstore’s open mic. She takes a lot of inspiration from science fiction and hopes to make her dad proud with her poetry!

Gabbi Aquino has been writing since she figured out how to hold a pencil. Inspired by writers of the past like Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe, Gabbi hopes to convey both the beauty and the horror of life with her work.

Paige Tokay is a freshman at Emerson College pursuing a BFA in Creative Writing. A Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania native, she came to Boston in pursuit of her career interests in writing, primarily in adult fiction and thriller. She loves to read and has been writing for as long as she can remember. In the past, she has been published in various regional literary magazines, and she is currently employed at Concrete Literary Magazine and The Emerson Review.