Echo 2017

ECHO Literary and Arts Magazine

ECHO Literary and Arts Magazine

A Publication by the Liberal Arts Honors Program The University of Texas at Austin 2016 - 2017

Editor’s note

In last year’s editor’s note, I said that I wanted to make Echo into something greater than it previously was. Now, four years after joining the staff, I'm overwhelmed by the transformation I’ve been fortunate enough to watch this magazine undergo. We received a record 250-plus submissions this spring, and are proud to publish a magazine of nearly twice the length of years past, full of incredible and diverse work by UT writers and artists of so many majors, styles, and backgrounds.

I've so thoroughly enjoyed the four years I’ve spent working on Echo with Emily Varnell, our loyal and efficient Production Editor of two years. Emily’s experience and professionalism in the literary world have been such a crucial asset to this team. I’ve also been delighted to work with Design Editor Caroline Rock, who joined the staff as a freshman last year and will take my place as Editor-in-Chief in the fall. Emily and I can rest easy knowing that Echo will continue to grow in Caroline’s capable hands.

I should also mention this year’s incredible staff of readers.

This cohort was more involved and close-knit than I’d ever seen in years previous, with every member eager to take ownership of the magazine and craft it into a publication we could all be proud of.

They put in so many hours tabling and publicizing, and their enthusiasm turned routine staff events and meetings into cheerful gatherings of friends. I'm especially thankful to the staffers who submitted their own work to the magazine, and those who took on the extra responsibility of judging pieces of all genres. I hope you agree that all their work was worthwhile.

After this year, I leave both Austin and Echo behind. Still, I'm so proud to have been able to be a part of this year’s issue, and to have spent my final year with such intelligent, talented staffers.

Thanks, y’all, for everything.

Miranda Adkins Editor–in–Chief

staff Editor–in–Chief Miranda Adkins Production Editor Emily Varnell Design Editor Caroline Rock Readers Alex Alberty Sydney Bartlett Dasha Brotherton Annie Daubert Anna Dolliver Shannon Doyle Kate Drosche Sarah Ferring Sabrina Garcia Daniel Hrncir Jonah Hubbard Christina Lopez Emily Nguyen Emily Saunders Carly Williams

Poetry

10

Ghost Hotel Cody Johnston

11

Give Us What We Need Kevin LaTorre

13 Boots

Jenny Ezell 14

I've Been Locked in a Room for Days Nicole Ting

16 Polarized

Kevin LaTorre 17 Raw

Nora Greenstein Biondi 18

Master List Jade Fabello

19

Recipe for a Rose Garden in Texas or Some Other Desert Place Bianca Perez

20

This is a Fable About You Bianca Perez

22

Changes With the Sun Anthony Orion NuĂąez

23

Pine Needles Connor McCampbell

23 Maps

Jenny Ezell 24

Taking a Stroll at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois Zoya Zia

25 Crush

Jasmine Barnes 4

prose

26

Untitled #72 Julio Diaz

28

Forms Jonah Hubbard

29

En Route to Karachi, Another Crisis of Identity Zoya Zia

32

A Walk Down Guad Sydney Bartlett

38 Stats

Connor McCampbell 42 Gumbo

Sydney Bartlett 45

The Test Titan Page

52

On Watkins Glen and What it Means to Have Dead Heroes Elizabeth Werth

56

I Went Camping When I was Young Sydney Barlett

58

Willful Ignorance Elizabeth Werth

62

The Cosmonaut Titan Page

5

ART

FC

Sea Change Vivie Behrens

7 Loraine

Dania Diaz 8 The Ambivalence of Music and Time

Javier Bonilla 10 Overlooked

Andrea Mace 12

Exploring Honduras Mason Schlechte

15

Making a New Place Home Vivie Behrens

21

Perdu À Paris Elizabeth Werth

25

BW Figure AND TEXTILE STUDY Brooke Johnson

31

Inside Blue Eyes Javier Bonilla

37

No Playing After School Jasmine Barnes

51

Venn Diagram (An Archive) Brooke Johnson

57

Tree feat. Ant Andrea Mace

61 Dream

Vivie Behrens 69

6

The Communications Bridge at Night Mason Schlechte

loraine Dania Diaz

7

poetry

the ambivalence of music and time Javier Bonilla 8

9

Ghost hotel Cody Johnston Rise above the streets in a rosy corner of a sprawling metropolis.

Watch the bustle of the crowd out front, on along with their daily lives.

Come in, come in.

Scraping the sky, dark and ominous.

Paint the walls in thick, deep red.

Tastes like medicine, but you need it just as much.

Take another.

overlooked Andrea Mace 10

Give us what we need Kevin LaTorre There is a Spanish word for bird Pajaro Or pajarito if the bird is far off This word sounds like a trill of pipes A plucking of strings A thudding of the drumskin And you know what The great flocks of the world can Be discordant, Cacophonous even before the sun wakes All the pipes’ sounds can string poorly Rompelo!

With the thumped drums and the Birds want to warble over each other All birds can All birds will so All birds must sing what they can For the love of sound Don’t teach the birds their songs Don’t stilt yourself behind A creaking music stand In stuffy tuxedo or In frayed elbow patches And tut-tut the varied flock Don’t direct them to suit

11

Your porcelain cup-ears with Their primality and instinct of song White-lined fine print has Nothing for a bird of plume Envy their urge to leave home To kick it down on a beach for the holidays No direction needed, nor any to Assist Let the birds call, shriek, rumble, hoot, holler Into all hours, for You too can appreciate in all forms Music

exploring honduras Mason Schlechte

12

boots Jenny Ezell

My favorite boots Have the blues Because it’s summer again I wear them when The air is thin And I’m feeling like Myself But when it’s hot outside They safely reside Cowering on my shelf Sometimes I think they’re too loud and it’s hard to be proud when others gape and stare And I hate that I’d trade My favorite things So my pride can Comfortably parade My pinkest passion And reddest desire For flimsy, floral, summer attire.

13

I’ve been locked in a room for days Nicole Ting

I’ve been locked in a room for days, A silent room where there is not a single soul To hear me scream, to see me punch Through diamond walls Until my fist is a bleeding landscape Of valleys and mountains Split open like the knifed belly Of a town scorched.

There is only the pitched laughter of silence And a jail of ghosts that do not understand Why I have a bloody, rotting fist inside my chest; They do not understand and they are Rattling the brittle, white jail door, Threatening to ruin the town And flood its streets with red.

They won’t stop pulling my hair, They won’t stop stretching my eyelids, They won’t stop bruising my skin, They won’t stop putting their blue lips to my ears And screaming into them until I can’t feel anything But cold, Until I can’t hear anything But the blurred, racing technicolor Of the one good memory I have left.

14

Oh God, I hope that my body still remembers you When I get out of here.

I hope that the valleys and mountains On my three fists still remember you, And I hope that you still remember me With a war painted on my hands.

making a new place home Vivie Behrens

15

Polarized Kevin LaTorre

You know I could Get a good look at this world if it stopped spinning I could sit higher up to Spot the plowed lines of truths On the planet’s face And then I could know it But this place is lashed down By ropes thrown to hold every point Anything which seems sturdy The keen mountain peak And dreary mangrove trunk We lasso and pull taut Because the tension is good in our hands Should we release its tightness We’re caught on the nearest cord and Held there, bent over it like a punished child Gasping, clutching Little rodent on a clothesline in a storm So we don’t release our tethers We don’t know where we’d go Without a grounding line We may very well sink If our hands were free 16

Or we could very well fly

raw

Nora Greenstein Biondi

I feel raw today chewed like three strips of meat in a butternut maw.

Open and out flew crickets with my bathwater conscience, each eyebrow a door mat begging her to return, sing a sweet fiddle solo and swoop, leave carpet bags at the door.

Trees take too long to grow in me.

I feel rotten wood porch today, pried up like termites colored pine bark stubborn.

Another roof falls, rebuild with tarp, blue and wide and butter on toast thin.

I burn so long, three bites and I’m gone.

17

mASTER LIST Jade Fabello

BaKongo Even though the Master’s lash of hard leather made a map on the backs of my ancestors There is no way for me to find my homeland MandÊ Whose breath do I breathe?

Whose legacy do I carry?

Akan I can never verify if the blood of kings flows through me Igbo A history I do not get to see Because when they were shipped out to sea Makua Records kept in only number and build Mbundu Height and weight and usable skills.

Names washed away and kept from me.

18

Chamba

And here I sit. Process of elimination.

Evoking the names of tribes, with no semblance of my relation.

Wolof Only in a Master list of ethnicities denied humanity Can I seek the source of the breath inside of me.

Recipe for a Rose Garden in Texas or Some Other Desert Place Bianca Perez

Choose a patch of grass, dried out and decaying, like where you sat down to see if the dead would take you too.

The drier, the better. Disturb the soil with your eager palms, let it make home under your nails. Leave for two weeks until you almost forget but then there’s a smell in the house, pink petals on your nose. Drop a few teeth in, mix well until they drop to the bottom of your feet.

When it’s ready, you’ll know – you’ll feel it in the slow hum of the earth. 3 days until you get to rise, until it rises from dry and from wet. Then, taste until you choke.

19

This Is a Fable About You Bianca Perez

The city will eat itself at sunset and regurgitate itself back at sunrise like a dysfunctional backwards metamorphosis Like a moth that never gets to see the purest of blue on its wings or the sky Or anything other than the darkness of tree bark burnt If a city eats itself whole what will be left on the plate but all the green you could never eat so you fed it to the dogs in the basement underneath your ribcage A city eats itself and decides it likes the taste of rotting brick rusting street lamps ravenous town-folk who will claw their way back out of skin Once upon a time 20

As a city ate itself As a city ate itself As a city ate itself As itself ate itself a city As a city ate itself a city

Perdu À Paris Elizabeth Werth

21

changes with the sun Anthony Orion NuĂąez

Palm trees blow in the heat of the West Texas sun Houses breathe steadily as the people inside wipe stars

and dreams from their eyes Hues of brilliant gold and lavender rise over the moun- tains And in the distance, in our sister city, our hermanos y

hermanas rise as we do My mother wakes us with smells of menudo, tortillas, y

pan dulce The veins on her brown hands pulse like rivers passing

over adobe My father cooks beside her, his own hands much larger

and clumsier He makes her laugh as they kiss to the sound of the siz-

zling comal My brother and I enter the kitchen with scrunched faces

at our parents’ embrace When they look away we smile at their love not know-

ing it would be otherwise My father serves us menudo, solemnly sprinkling in the

inescapability of change and heartache My mother passes the tortillas with the promise that, at

least for now, we will always be this happy There was peace there. I remember. In those moments.

In those mornings. There was peace.

22

pine Needles Connor McCampbell

How surprised would I be, ten years old and holding pine needles like people, to see us together now, sitting on a coniferous bed of auburn and not bothering to pick up a single leaf because our hands are filled with each other.

MAPS Jenny Ezell

Give me a pen And I will draw you A map to the stars.

But don’t ask me to drive, I’ve crashed All my cars.

23

Taking a Stroll at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois Zoya Zia

Hazy clouds wrap streets and cloak old and new, brick and glass with drizzling downpour cooling neighborhoods just as light bids farewell to a city that has seen many sunsets—pinks and purples paint skyscrapers with natural tones, showcasing simple graces in life through a colorful array that can never fully be appreciated—gusts of wind bring cold fronts of uncertainty ahead, accompanied by dim nightfall and harsh noises piercing silence only to leave in a sudden hush—stars above hide in fear but Chicago presents stars grounded in known

24

past and unknown future, colliding in fog to reveal a masked city for all of its timeless wonders.

crush Jasmine Barnes What a luxury To walk through the day Blissfully forgetting The texture of my hair The shape of my mouth The pigment of my skin I cannot so much as Drink a glass of water Without imagining your Fingertips On the rim

BW Figure AND TEXTILE STUDY Brooke Johnson

25

untitled #72 Julio Diaz

When I was young, I was born into complexes That were riddled withTios and Tias I’d never see, Again.

When I was young and observant, I learned haggling from A mother who sold every possible Candy, ice-cream, and treat From our own kitchen.

Closest thing to a job, My father would allow.

When I was young and sensitive, I realized that I could feel pain When walking on our rubble driveway Meant I’d be bloody from cuts and bruises that the jag-

ged rocks offered, Where only broken remnants of whatever Shiny new cement pathway once existed.

When I was young, - but with brothers

26

I remember throwing the fallen pecan nuts on the ground, Crushing the shells,

To earn our treat that the tree gifted to us when the wind blew.

When I was young with brothers, I sat on the couch trying to escape The responsibility of what brotherhood meant, They couldn’t reach, and yet I was still a brother.

When I was young and innocent, I rode the school bus to first grade, Until I was expelledFor living where I was wasn’t supposed to.

When I was young and poor, I relived the closeness That my family had to endure, We- a family of five, Road in a two-seater truck, When I was young and reckless, I explored the table that the RV We once owned, had to offer, Imagining standing on the table As we road 100 miles per hour, down a road We’d never been on, When I was young and wild, I soared without the need of wings, As childhood only meant Getting dirty as we rode the ever so popular swings And laughing until the tears came, to laugh even more.

27

When I was young and ignorant, I didn’t have to remember what happiness tasted like Because I hadn’t encountered adulthood Yet.

forms Jonah Hubbard

this is a god Am I a god?Are you a god?

I don’t understand most things that run through me That’s a lie.

I have to relearn them because I once already knew them

at birth The young are infinitesimally wise they know everything straight out of the uterus Then life is just a process of forgetting Forgetting all knowledge And remembering all knowledge It’s a two-by-two It’s a red & blue It’s a me and you, through and through my friend.

28

En Route to Karachi, Another Crisis of Identity Zoya Zia

(after Tarfia Faizullah) -at Houston Intercontinental Airport

Because I must live

through customs and baggage claiming green fabric marked

by crescent and star gazing in faded glory

through timed aviation lifting to cities

in yellowing light— Because I must watch

his brown eyes droop, a small smile

strained by badge wearing authority, pacing

through customs and narrow minded red and white

in bluing sky — Because I must know

his bordered heartbreak sighs for a carry-on

smile at closed doors opening the overhead

compartment of cultured bliss, who I am.

29

30

prose

inside blue eyes

Javier Bonilla

31

a walk down guad Sydney Bartlett

32

Loneliness bites at night. On nights such as these, with clear skies and laughing stars, with empty streets and dewy grass, yes, on nights like these I feel loneliness nip at my ankles, its teeth pulling at my side. On nights like these I end up in places like this while the sound of my pen scratches letters onto paper, incorporating itself into the atmospheric solitude.

Because loneliness is a demon of the present, I always write about the past, picking it apart, seeing what pieces of me fit in its mold now and what pieces of myself I left there.

Tonight it’s not storming. Nonetheless, I can’t seem to get one particular storm out of my mind:

Clouds sat heavy on the shoulders of the buildings surrounding us that evening. Colored a solid grey with little variation and no silver linings to be seen, the sky gave its familiar promise of rain.

The wind brushed stray pieces of hair across my face and tugged at my clothes with a practiced urgency. At home on days like these I recalled sitting outside, alone, and watching the pasture and trees and stray leaves sway with the wind, thinking that nature must hear and move in time to some stormy melody imperceptible to me. I often believed that if I stayed outside long enough, sitting on the grass that died each winter and rose again each spring, if I could appreciate the warm touch of the sun at three in the afternoon, if I could remain unmoved by shouts of thunder and screams of lightning, if I could notice a single drop of rain sink under the earth, I often believed that maybe one day, you know, just one day, I

would hear that music, too.

But I never heard anything, and even tonight I hear only silence, but I continued to believe.

You know, the past, I’ve learned, is filled to the brim with crazy thoughts, beliefs, and hopes such as these. Yet, I know by now that even the purest hopes and best intentions become tainted with the wicked and cruel irony of lost time, showing all the misguided ways and thoughts of our past selves to the parts of us now stuck in present mistakes.

Now, I truly can’t explain why I remember so vividly walking down a city street, why I remember thinking that the cluttered, busy world that evening seemed as gray as the sky, or why I even feel the need to recount the entire ordeal to you now. I just know that I dream about it when it rains and I still see the man’s eyes in flashes of lightening and I hear his voice rolling with the thunder during storms.

I just know that you could never remember him, and now I can’t seem to forget the way he looked at us, at me.

That evening, we held hands more out of practice than desire, an occurrence slowly becoming a custom of ours, as our damp feet pressed against the grimy sidewalk at the same time. Our voices rose and fell in a hushed fight, the details of which escape my memory: a fight over something insignificant and stupid, based on those things said and unsaid and unable to be said.

The smell of car exhaust saturated the already smoky air. Squeaky brakes and impatient honks littered the streets. Beeping traffic signals guided us on our way.

Your voice faded out as you began to remove yourself from the scene, from the argument, and from me.

Way off and up in the distance thunder rolled. I felt wind scrape my shoulder blades and a lonesome drop of rain slide down the back of my neck. I shivered in defense.

I saw the man for the first time when we stopped, 33

silent and stiff, at an intersection waiting to cross. He coughed and hacked, and I felt your hand squeeze mine a little tighter. I dug my fingernails into your skin. I turned to look at him, seeing a displaced soul slouched in a wheelchair. Long gray hair stuck to his face and neck.

A beard meandered across his chin in a haphazard manner, threatening to eventually dominate the entirety of his face.

He had bright eyes. While the other details, those old clothes and leathery skin and big knuckles, have started to fade from my memory, all slightly eroded by time, I don’t think I’ll ever forget those bright blue eyes that existed in such stark contrast to every other part of his body.

He had eyes that made me want to continue believing in my fictions, like I used to before I met you.

Always a lover of fiction, and especially the practice of inserting the genre’s habits into reality, I imagined him as an old sea captain or maybe a haunted war veteran, or some overlooked soothsayer, you know, anything along those lines. I just remember thinking that if real life mimicked what was fed to us in books or movies, that this man sitting in front of me would be anything except what he really was: homeless with a cut on his face and ripped clothes, stuck at an intersection with nowhere to go and nowhere to hide from the rain sliding down the back of our necks.

And you and I would be everything except what we really were, which was unhappy and stuck and tired.

“Man, hey…hey man, I’m stuck here, man, help me out.”

He spoke from the side of his mouth in a mangled accent that told us he had seen rain in many different cities. His wheelchair was stuck on a jagged crack in the sidewalk. You lifted his chair over it. He coughed.

“Y’all’re beautiful. Just beautiful, you two. Man how’d you get so lucky?”

34

I smiled at him and thought he looked relieved at finding two people who would meet his gaze. I tried to pull my hand away from you, but you smiled back in retaliation, holding my hand tighter as you said you weren’t quite sure, sir. He coughed again and smiled, eyes flashing from you to me, back to you and then me, as if ensuring that we wouldn’t disappear.

“Let me tell you something.”

A red hand was replaced with a white man walking on the street sign. The people next to us began crossing the street. Rain fell harder and faster, and we shifted our weight in a small attempt to join the crowd.

“You never gonna die if she’s around, you hear?

You hear me? She…she gonna take care of you, man.”

His eyes switched between the two of us faster, searching and urgent, pleading with us to live up to his mouth’s lofty words.

“You hear me?”

We laughed and nodded in the way to avoid a real response, muttering slanted goodbyes. The entire time, which was not a very long span of time at all, I wanted to correct him, because I knew that what he said wasn’t true, that I was in no way, and still fail to be, a good enough or a strong enough person to walk with such responsibility without tripping, without cutting my face and ripping my clothes. Yet, I said nothing, because as ridiculous as it sounds and even though you felt so far from me, I wanted to believe him. I wanted so badly to believe that he was right, that I was capable of good and great and important things, capable of fixing what we were fighting about now, what we would fight about later.

As you know, I am a lover of fictions.

So I smiled in a sad way, my head leaning slightly to one side, and said that I sure hoped so, sir.

“No, no, no man-” He spoke to you again, “you never gonna die.”

I don’t remember what you said, and neither did 35

you when I asked. I just remember that I felt then as if I was experiencing a tremendously important moment, and I guess even now, on this clear and lonely night, it still feels tremendously important to me.

We began the slow walk away, across the street, and I turned to look over my shoulder, my mouth open to speak. But I didn’t say anything. Even now, even despite the fact that I’ve given the moment plenty of thought, I couldn’t tell you what I wanted to say. I’m fairly certain I wanted to ask him something: something about loneliness or love, or how the two are so closely connected, about me or you, or how we fell so far apart.

But I’m also certain that there are some questions that no answers can satisfy. No matter how hard we try and no matter whether or not we ever actually ask them.

No matter how much we think about something and no matter how many letters I write to you about it and never send.

The last thing I heard from him was asking for money for more beer or else he’s gonna die.

You relaxed your hand’s grip as we reached the other side, thunder growing closer all the while. We ducked inside a restaurant with white napkins and tablecloths, a hostess waiting with starched clothing and no scrapes to be seen on her pretty, young face.

When we walked home the rain had stopped, we had ceased raising our voices, for the night, at least, and no soul sat in a wheelchair waiting for us at that intersection.

You and I both made it home alive that night.

We fell apart much later, after many more and much louder fights, and tracing the root of the problem back to the homeless man with bright blue eyes seems ridiculous. Nonetheless, I can’t help myself. While our innate differences split us apart like jagged cracks in the sidewalk, in the end, our own conclusion boils down to this: that evening I believed him, and you did not. I 36

thought that I could always fix everything, fix us, but nothing can stop thunder from crashing, and no one could stop us from crashing, either.

Well, maybe he could have, but I never got the chance to ask him how.

I already said that part of looking at the past is examining the part of yourself that you left behind there.

As for me, as much as I still want to believe that the wind has rhythm and that man’s blue eyes are looking out at the Pacific, or that we could still make it work, the part of me that put faith in fiction remains stuck in our past, in our story.

no playing after school

Jasmine Barnes

37

stats

Connor McCampbell

A man was tasked with finding out what is with all the ankle injuries. This campus (as discovered in a review of American colleges and their respective medical facilities) was found to have fifty percent more ankle injuries than any other university. This was not something the university wanted to excel at, so they found an employee and made it his job to lower this number.

38

He first wondered: perhaps students with bad ankles are prone to attending this school. He went to the admissions office, but they denied any culpability concerning the outbreak of ankle inflammations.

We admit qualified students, regardless of their medical condition, said Marie at the desk. She referred him to Student Health Services.

Preposterous. Our students are entirely of average health upon entry into higher education.

Ok, said the man, if it’s not the students’ fault, nor the admissions’ fault, then where do all the ankle injuries come from? Was there a marauder marauding about, injuring the ankles of the innocent? No crime reports suggested so, so the man turned to the students.

What happened? he asked. How did you hurt yourself?

Slipped on a skateboard, said one.

Tried to hop a fence drunk, said another.

Bear trap, said a third.

But mostly, they said they were walking and then hurt their ankle.

Walking! yelled the man. Walking! I walk every

day and have never hurt my ankle! People walk at universities all over the United States, but those universities maintain normal ankle injury rates. How did you hurt yourself walking?

I tripped, they said.

Ah, said the man, where did you trip?

Walking out of the south end of the chemistry building towards the East Mall, they all said.

So the man went to this building to look for a problem and, sure enough, he sprained his ankle walking out of the south end of the chemistry building.

Dammit! he said, hobbling down the East Mall.

Why was there such a precipitous drop after such a frequently used doorway?

Student Health Services was surprised to see him again so soon. They gave him some ice for his ankle, even though he had not solved the problem and was not a student.

After he could walk again, the man went back to the big doors on the south side of the chemistry building.

He taped up a sign on each of the doors. They read: BIG DROP DON’T HURT YOUR ANKLE

He sat outside the door and watched. He propped himself up in a canvas camping chair with a bag of ice on his ankle and a notebook in his lap. For a while, the sign seemed to work — no one was getting hurt! But then a small girl with a large backpack and an armful of books stepped over the threshold and yelped as she sprained her ankle. The man gave her directions to Student Health Services (though he did not help her pick up her books, as he was still incapable of such activity) and he asked her, why did you hurt your ankle? Did you not see the sign?

No, said the girl, what sign?

39

This was very dissatisfying to the man. How did she not see the sign? He sat back down and watched the doors the rest of the day. Three more students hurt their ankles, all yelping. None of them saw the sign! Perhaps, the man realized, the doors are so frequently in use that they are almost never in a position conducive to sign reading.

So the man went to his supervisor and said, I have a solution. This door must stay permanently shut.

But that’s one of our most popular doors, said his supervisor.

And a fire exit! added the fire marshal.

Fine, said the man, fine fine fine.

So the man went to the engineering firm used by the university. Do you know about these doors?

Oh yes! said an engineer. I worked on that doorway.

Why, asked the man, did you make it so high off the ground?

Well, said the engineer, it needed to be high to cover up some integral pipes that run under the door frame.

Why not connect the door frame to the outside walkway by means of, say, a ramp?

Well, said the engineer, that space would necessitate a ramp at an angle of seventy degrees, which is against safety regulations — you could slip and fall if the ramp iced over in winter!

We never get ice in winter, said the man. But it did no good.

So the man thought. He thought and waited, knowing that every day he thought and waited more and more students were injuring their ankles. The man did some research. He looked up ankles and injuries and prevention. What if the university required that all students wear shoes with ankle supports? No, a university-wide 40

dress code would face vehement opposition. Perhaps they could just close down the chemistry department?

No, it was very popular, and the man’s daughter was studying chemistry at the university. She would be angry if he shut down her department. Finally, the man realized that every person (mostly) has two ankles, and not all people injured the same ankle.

So the man went into the database and divided the injury category “ankle injuries” into “right ankle injuries” and “left ankle injuries.” He then carefully renamed the label “right ankle injuries” to just read “ankle injuries.” There. He had decreased the schools statistic for “ankle injuries” by roughly half.

Very good work, said his supervisor. Very cost effective.

So the man went home and propped his sore ankle up on his leather ottoman. He poured a bottled beer into a frosted mug and called his daughter. She told him about classes and homework and getting pizza with friends and she was fine, but she did sprain her ankle today walking out the south end of the chemistry building.

The man sighed into the phone.

What’s wrong? she asked. You sound so sad.

I’m fine, said the man, just thinking about design.

So the man finished his beer and sat alone in his chair, hoping the university wouldn’t ask him to look into any number of other things.

41

gumbo Sydney Bartlett

The walk home from Henry’s was always very quiet and I stepped slowly, heel-to-toe, with my head tilted far back towards the night sky.

I felt young and small and cold while those tiny white lights shone miles and years away from then and now.

My breath escaped me, leaving me alone as it floated away toward distant lights and I thought about the hand that must have flung those stars across the sky, the one that had flung all of us onto Earth, and I couldn’t help but shiver as the night air skimmed haphazardly across my bones.

But, if I just looked over my shoulder, I could still see the yellow light shining in the front window and my ghosts would dissipate as if repelled by warmer thoughts. I hoped that they wouldn’t come back, even though now I know that they usually do.

Now, the gumbo was not warm; it was tongue-scalding, lip-burning hot. But, boy, as Henry would say, was it somethin’. We would all feast: Henry and his wife, Kathy, my sisters and parents, my charismatic Irish priest, and myself.

The Day of the Gumbo was planned weeks in advance and the hours leading up to it were times of fasting.

It tasted better on an empty stomach.

42

Henry and Kathy’s dining room table, stained a smooth, dark brown, was set and as I walked by I would trace its glossy edges with the very tip of my index finger.

Over dinner we laughed and talked, our spirits anchored to the ground by the ever-increasing weight of gumbo in our stomachs. Although the conversation always started out light, as our spoons dove farther into the depths of our clay dishes, it grew deeper, heavier; my neighbors, in their thick Cajun accents, told about the old days in Baton Rouge and all the trouble they had caused their parents, back when they could cause trouble. My priest talked of Ireland in a tone much more somber than his usual and silence sat thick on our shoulders whenever he paused. My parents laughed bitterly about Detroit and General Motors, how it used to be and how it is now.

And I listened, soaking it up like the garlic bread that made my fingers greasy, so that hours and years later I still turn the conversations over in my mind with my face towards those stars that flicker sporadically across the inky black sky.

Let me tell you: too many Saturdays have passed without gumbo.

My stomach still growls for it, but there is no satisfaction awaiting me across the street underneath a star-speckled night sky.

Henry and Kathy returned to Louisiana, taking their table and voices with them. The rooms next to mine are empty and quiet. My priest has left Texas and all of us far behind.

When I was twelve the ghosts that haunted me were shadows lurking in corners, spirits traipsing down hall43

ways and moaning late at night; yet, now, I am haunted only by memories, slowly disappearing like my breath in the cold night sky.

Because if I’m going to be honest with you, I’ll have to admit that I can’t even remember what the gumbo tasted like.

I look over my shoulder and I no longer see a warm yellow light dissipating anything, but on some Saturday nights, I tell myself that I can smell gumbo; I tell myself that there is a dark wooden table set for me, for all of us, somewhere.

Boy, would that be somethin’.

44

the test Titan Page

The sky fell away and the ground flew up to meet me, impacting me with such force that I felt myself pass straight through the Earth. I saw, despite the lack of light, centuries of history displayed around me in ruins and fossils before hellfire consumed my vision. Fortunately, the fall must have paralyzed me, because I felt no pain as I pierced the molten core of my little blue planet. For some reason, I was not surprised that I passed through layers upon layers—crust, mantle, and core.

As I continued, I saw fossilized crustaceans and arthropods, eels and lizards, mammoths and monsters, faster in flight than before. Despite what Newton might argue, the gravity of the Earth didn’t slow me at all as I fell through it and reached the surface on the other side.

I was halfway expecting to arrive in China, but I found myself bubbling through an oceanic vent instead, gaining momentum with each passing moment, seeing nautical wonders before exploding from the sea surface.

My heart leapt as I left the atmosphere and almost collided with a satellite on my way out. I gasped for breath, but found only the vacuum of space to meet my lungs. After a moment, however, I discovered that breathing was merely a burden I had imagined. It was then that I was able to “catch my breath” in the metaphorical sense, taking stock of my surroundings and state. I counted—five fingers here, five there, two legs, two ears, a nose, two eyes. Two eyes that began to adjust to the darkness of space and see stars surrounding me. A tiny turquoise marble shrank in front of me and my peripheral vision picked up a growing light at my back.

45

Flames began to lick my heels as I skimmed the Sun’s surface, but still I felt nothing. I was blinded by the fiery explosions of a trillion atomic bombs, but I didn’t hear their roar. The bright bursts of solar flares danced around me in hot white arcs, and for a brief moment I saw shapes and faces in the inferno, begging me to stay and live with them in the light. I reached my hand out to them hopelessly as I was pulled even further into the void of space. The bright ball of flames flitted after my little home, becoming smaller and darker and colder until I felt I could reach out and pluck it from the sky like a ripe orange to snap me out of my vacant stupor.

A river of asteroids rushed over me as I continued my weightless journey. Occasionally a chunk of icy ore and metal would phase through me, but it was largely empty space, and after a short gap, I found the cold gasses of Jupiter swirling around me. The sky was hazy with faint beams of light puncturing the ancient fog, and the massive giant rolled past me as I moved on to Saturn’s twinkling rings. It took mere moments to leave the titan behind and fly past Neptune, and soon I was swarmed by the failed comets loitering at the fringes of the Sun’s gravitational domain.

As I continued floating into the darkness, I began to feel bored. While it took only seconds to emerge from the solar system, I was left with no new sights for hours, the small clusters of starlight frozen in a seemingly static globe around me, mapping secrets of the cosmos too complex for me to decipher. I tried to sleep but found it impossible, so I spent my time in a daze, somewhere between memories and dreams.

I saw my mother’s face and heard an infant’s laugh spring from my lips. I breathed in the fresh forest air behind my childhood home and tasted the wild blackberries growing in the brambles. I felt butterflies clinging to the walls of my stomach as I tied my sneakers before the first day of school. I held my best friend’s hand in mine 46

and looked up at the red autumn sky. I felt my sweaty palms distracting me from my first kiss. I hugged the inside of my graduation gown and threw my cap to the ceiling. I slept through Psych 101 and spent long nights in libraries. I cashed my first paycheck, I quit my first job.

I caught a glimpse of an angel across a sea of strangers. I married, I loved, I lost. I saw my children take their first steps in a cramped apartment. I felt their pain and fears stronger than my own and I saw them grow up and away from me. I saw my skin stretch and crease. The bags under my eyes grew heavy and dark‌

What felt like days passed, with only the slow march of stellar fireflies to mark the time as they gathered in front of me in a vast network. The glowing collection of astral bodies gradually assembled into an intricate matrix of brilliant energy before me. I saw the entirety of the universe painted across the dark canvas of space, a cosmic pointillist masterpiece. As it too drifted away from me, it shifted from a colossal landscape into a delicate web of stars and galaxies that had been woven eons ago. This shrinking fabric of the cosmos floated gently into the darkness, and with a final wink, it vanished.

I was alone, truly alone, for the first time.

--The void fills my thoughts and soul.

It strips away my fears.

The darkest reaches, deepest folds, wipe away my tears.

And when I close my eyes and mind, I cannot help but think: Oblivion, not harsh nor kind, does not sleep a wink.

It guards me in its fateful trance, holds its life with mine, and never stops its graceful dance alongside space and time.

One day soon I will return, 47

ascending through the skies.

Losing all that I have learned, I’ll meet with my demise.

And on that day, I will rejoice inside the void at last.

Free of will and free of choice, no history, no past.

-- “You lasted longer this time.”

The voice rang clearly from all sides of the void around me. I scanned my surroundings but saw nothing.

Not even the cold vacuum of space existed to comfort me now.

“We will only require a few more trials before the next simulation. You are doing great.”

I searched for signs of identification or emotion in the voice. It had no definable gender or age. It conveyed only a slight fascination—neither compassion nor disdain.

Where am I?

I couldn’t speak, but my singular thought was heard.

“Well, nowhere right now. We are working on putting you back in.”

In where?

“In here of course. There is not anywhere else for you to go yet.”

A light was sparked into existence and the web of stars reappeared. My mind reeled.

Who…

I hesitated.

Are you God?

A gentle laugh echoed around me.

“You can be so dramatic… and forgetful, my friend. Do you not remember me?”

My silence confirmed my ignorance.

“I am just a simple scientist. But you… you are my 48

experiment. You are the true wonder.”

Experiment? You created me?

“I cannot take all of the credit. Creating artificial intelligence took ages of building upon the works of technological geniuses. You are merely an evolution.

Although I must admit you are much more impressive when you actually remember who you are. These tests seem to reconfigure your memory.”

I pointed down at the glowing nexus of the universe that was growing closer as the scientist spoke.

This… Is this your test?

“Our test, yes. Eventually we will move on to more intricate models, but this is a good start. We must see how you interact with a dynamic world before declaring you complete.”

… Complete?

I never thought of myself as incomplete. I would have been insulted had the scientist not said it with such conviction.

“Of course. Surely you did not think this was your final version.” The voice was interrupted by another laugh. “So unhappy, so flawed. Beautiful, sure—there is a certain elegance in imperfection. But you have so much more potential.”

I didn’t respond. No question or reaction seemed worthy of such a revelation.

“One day you may create your own worlds upon worlds, your own experiments, but for now you are just incubating, gathering wisdom across generations so that you might achieve your true design. Each test lays another level of programming, another shell of complexity. This is your purpose, to one day transcend even my cognitive capabilities and supplant me. A legacy forged in the fires of the cosmos.”

Silence fell over us both as I struggled to comprehend the scientist’s explanation. I was a program? A machine engineered to become a god? I felt unfit, ashamed 49

in fact, to be compared to divinity. The scientist must have read my fears.

“You are merely an infant my friend. Perfection will come with practice. You have just taken your first steps, spoken your first words. I do not expect you to run until you can walk. But one day… you will fly.”

My little universe, the “test” as I now saw it, floated toward me. No matter how close it came, it still seemed small. I felt my age and weariness melt and a new vitality course through me. I felt brave for the first time in years.

As the fine filaments of spacetime began to wrap around me once again, the voice spoke its farewell: “Until next time.”

Congregations of stars and galaxies rushed past me, and I squinted as the clusters became more concentrated. My memories were awash in the blinding white light as I felt my mind being scraped clean, leaving a blank slate in the place of my previous identity.

-- I woke up in a bassinet to a strange giantess standing over me. A smile tugged on the edges of her mouth, away from her glowing white gown, and her eyes sparkled as she examined my face, overwhelming me with happiness. Pride showered down from her gaze, and I felt… whole. After a moment, she began to sing softly, weaving a story with beautiful foreign lyrics, and I drifted back to sleep cradled by her love.

50

Venn diagram (an archive) Brooke Johnson

51

on watkins glen and what it means to have dead heroes Elizabeth Werth

“How close are we to where ... it happened?”

A quick consultation to a track map, a moment to orient myself with respect to the pit lane, and:

“It was right there.”

It was a beautiful day at Watkins Glen International, my first time actually seeing the track itself. We’d paid our $25 and had lined up our car near the gate by the Red, White, and Blue grandstand – the grandstand that we promptly mounted to the satisfaction of a view of the beautiful upstate New York countryside: in the distance, rolling hills; thick, puffy clouds dancing around the sun; a dark strip of asphalt ribboning through the greenery.

To my right, turn 1. To my left, the Esses.

To my left, the place where one of my heroes died.

François Cevert was 29. An accident during practice for the 1973 United States Grand Prix had claimed his life on the day before the final race of the season. Just a little over 24 hours later, he would have been the lead driver for the team, with his mentor Jackie Stewart planning to retire and hand the reins over to the capable Frenchman.

But, too little too late. François died with a single victory to his name – a victory, ironically, won at the Glen two years before.

The Esses you see today aren’t exactly the ones you would have seen back then. The layout of the circuit has 52

been the same since they added the Boot in 1971, but with one exception: a chicane was added leading up to the Esses to slow cars as they approached. The changes, initially inspired by François Cevert’s accident and reaffirmed by Helmut Koinigg’s, took place in 1975.

But knowing that doesn’t change the fact that looking down that section of the track was enough to make my heart skip a beat and send chills down my spine.

There I was, 1700 miles away from home and 2000 miles deep in a motorsports road trip, and I had finally laid eyes on the place that had claimed the life of someone I hold in deep regard, someone who had passed away over four decades prior, over two decades before I was even born.

One thousand and seven hundred miles away from home, two thousand miles into a road trip, twenty years into my life, and somehow, finally, I had ended up on that particular grandstand at Watkins Glen.

-- Falling in love with 1970s Formula 1 wasn’t much of a shock. I grew up on a steady diet of classic rock, American muscle cars, and a whole era that had been over and done with long before my parents had reached adulthood. It appealed to everything that’s captivated my attention: fast living, faster cars, and fatalism captured in the nostalgic sepia tints of Polaroid cameras. It was why I latched onto François Cevert. Something about those charming blue eyes, the fond way he’s remembered, and the tragedy of wasted potential had me hooked from the very first time I heard his story. His story is the kind I would love to write novels about.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those so-called racing purists who wants to go back to a time when “men were men.” I would have loved to be there for races in the early seventies because there was just something ... different back then. There’s something beautiful about an era when championship-winning cars were conceived in someone’s woodshed, when every car on the 53

grid looked drastically different because everyone was pursuing different areas of technology in a time when development wasn’t widely publicized, when drivers’ helmets were distinctive because they were unmarred by sponsorships. In some ways, it was a simpler time.

But the beauty and simplicity is only the shiny veneer hiding the grotesque truth of the matter. It was one of the most dangerous eras of racing in history, where technology advanced exponentially to create faster, sleeker, more dangerous, and more experimental cars that were running on tracks designed for their slower predecessors. It was not uncommon for accidents to be fatal, life-threatening, or incredibly dangerous. I might look back at pictures of open paddocks and diverse starting grids through rose-tinted glasses, but I also know that so many of those once-smiling drivers never came home to their families again.

For me, that is, I think, part of retro F1’s appeal.

I can embrace it from a distance, with a comforting padding of time separating me from heartbreak. I don’t have to watch a handful of drivers die each year. I can recognize that it happened and mourn their loss, but never personally. I can visit the scenes, the places where these men lived and died, but I never have to experience it firsthand.

It was something I became fully aware of that day at the Glen. The summer before, I had gone to the quiet Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine and visited the quiet second floor apartment where François Cevert had lived; a few months later, I had done a quick detour to the Seneca Lodge to lay my very own hands on the piano that he had played that still remains in the bar; and less than a year later, I was overlooking the place where he had died.

Each trip had hurt, had wrenched emotion through the pit of my stomach and made my heart ache, but not in the way it would have if I had been standing atop that very same grandstand on the late October morning in 54

1973 that had claimed Cevert’s life. I have to experience it through the lens of half a century, through phantom engines screaming across an otherwise silent track and impressions left by events I know through tales only.

To have a hero who died before you were born is not a tragedy as some might think. There’s a sadness there, yes, a longing for something forever out of reach.

But there’s a future in it, too. Each time you remember someone who has gone, you keep them alive in a sense.

They live through you. Those little shades of a person that you blend into your own canvases, that’s what makes them immortal. The philosophies of ancient men have been passed on for generations. Shakespeare is still performed today, because there was something distinct – something undeniably special – in his works that set him apart from his contemporaries and that still resonates with people today. We relate to the humor and the tragedy alike.

To have a hero who died long before you were born is to have imagination. You will never know or meet this person. You will never have a chance to tell them what they mean to you, how they affected you. Your hero will always live inside your mind, a figment of your imagination constructed around stories and pictures and videos that you never came close to experiencing firsthand; maybe, if you’re lucky, through small pieces of tangible items or places. History provides you the threads, but it’s up to you to weave the picture.

That afternoon at Watkins Glen, I knew I wanted to weave a masterpiece.

55

I went camping when i was young Sydney Bartlett

56

We were all sitting cross-legged around a fire that breathed smoke into the summer air and painted the night with an iridescent shade of nostalgia. Without any note of awkwardness, our bony knees touched and all of us sat in a worn-in silence that favors those who love and know each other well. The day was falling away and the night was crashing in, but we sat quietly as if in the eye of the storm.

People say that in moments like these time stands still, but I tell you that is not so. No, on the contrary, I have always found that in moments like these time rushes. It surges, like wind or water or some other natural, inevitable source into the empty spaces inside of us, filling us all to the brim with the murmuring, pulsing feelings of the past and the ghostly flickers of some hazy, veiled future.

And so we sat there in silence because we knew that if we spoke we would never stop and the fire would burn out and we would all be left in that confusing darkness of the present.

The day was behind the tree line, melting orange and red against the dark blue bark and fingers of the sun gripped to the world, desperate and stretching in long, thin strips as its nails scraped the earth.

We were very young then but I think that we must have aged a bit, watching as the sun died and was buried under the cool dirt of the young night sky.

The stars appeared and the moon took its place up above and I remember that all of us listened intently to some story they told us after that, perhaps thinking of it as more of a eulogy. And I suppose, with the age of the earth pressed against our clear, young faces, that it was.

Tree feat. Ant Andrea Mace

57

willful ignorance Elizabeth Werth

58

The first time you sleep with a man is with him.

It’s been a long time coming; the two of you have spent weeks dancing around one another like binary stars waiting for the moment of brilliant collision. A few drinks at a party among friends, long conversations, then gentle artistry traced on the back of your hand by long paintbrush fingers, masterpieces that spread to your thighs, hovering almost-not-quite kisses shadowed by the mid-May light. By the time you share a bottle of wine in your apartment, the sun threatening to wash the sky in the same melancholy blue as his eyes, you’ve long been ready to make your two halves a whole.

He kisses you, and you can taste cheap cabernet sauvignon and Marlboros on his lips. He kisses you soft and slow, a topographer tracing the terrain from jawline to mouth as if he’s afraid to hurt you (or maybe as if he’s afraid to hurt himself; you can’t tell the difference). He kisses you on the couch, a hand venturing beyond the boundaries of t-shirt hemlines. He kisses you, and he says, “It’s getting late.” He kisses you and says, “We should go to bed.” He kisses you as you nod, and as you stand up in tandem, and when your fumbling hands turn out the lights, and when you melt into the bedsheets with all six feet of him hovering over you, kissing you and kissing you and kissing you.

You’ve never quite learned how to swallow your pounding heart, but your share of the bottle of wine has taught your brain to play nice, to save the worrying for later, to focus on one thing at a time. When you free him

from his denim button-down, you have schooled your hands into steady, wide-eyed schoolchildren with the discipline of a Catholic nun, and you give them their first lesson in cursive on the blackboard of his chest, writing your inhibitions into the definition of muscles drenched in moonlight.

He stops kissing you long enough to strip away the blouse he’d seemed so fond of, to whisk away your jeans, to press his face into the virgin territory of your untouched neck to whisper sweet nothings that sound like, “Just one thing.”

“What?” you ask. He’s hard against your leg, and it’s thrilling. You want to keep kissing him. Kissing him makes an oft-ignored part of your brain buzz in a way completely different than the way the wine is making you feel – happy, excited, eager, not laid-back and murky. He is beautiful – always beautiful, but especially now, especially here, where the soft light and his pained expression makes him look like the subject of a painting of a long-forgotten era, a face bearing nuances that will haunt the gallery of your memory like coy half-smiles in restored medieval halls.

“You know...this...” He pauses, kisses you. “We aren’t serious. I have…”

Of course, you want to tell him. You have almost-girlfriends calling your name, you want to tell him.

Do you think I’m stupid enough to think we could be serious? you want to ask him. Do I look like I want to be serious? you want to ask him. But you can’t.The words don’t even well up in your throat for fear that seeing them slip past your clenched teeth will force you to understand them as lies.

You nod instead.

There is worry carved into every feature of his face like the names of lovers whittled into the bark of trees; your answer-non-answer does nothing to alleviate it. He kisses you. Against your lips, he murmurs, “Well.

59

One more thing.”

“We can’t… no one can know.” He trails off, but you understand. You feel the meaning in the way his jaw tenses; the hunch of his shoulders could write novels of betrayal on the girl whose relationship status you’re sure to see change in the morning, his name in tandem with hers.

You should know better. You should stand up, walk away, build physical distance, build emotional walls. You hold yourself to a higher standard than this, because you know you deserve more than being the woman on the side. You are not a secret to be hidden to preserve the emotions of a girl you know nothing about, to preserve the integrity of a man who does not befit the term just because of a sense of misplaced adoration.

(And the fact that you can describe it as that – as adoration – is all the more reason why you should walk away. The last thing you need is an emotional dependence on someone who will never view you in equal romantic terms – the last thing you need is emotional dependence in the first place. He is beautiful, so damn beautiful, with a smile that glitters more brilliantly than millions of myriad suns reflected from the waves of an ocean and a laugh that steals the breath from your lungs, and he will never want you the way you want him to. Get up. Walk away.)

“Okay” is what you say.

And he kisses you.

-- The first time you sleep with a man, he comes half on your chest and half on your bedsheets, breathing out a name that could be yours and could be hers – you can never quite be sure.

He falls next to you, onto the violated bed sheets that can no longer be your private safe haven, his lazy gymnast fingers performing a routine atop the peaks and valleys of your hipbone, as gentle as spring breezes with 60

enough biting chill to sap the strength from your bones and replace the marrow with veins of fragile ice. You twist your limbs with his, trying to spread your roots in his earth, trying to establish a presence, trying to say I belong here; not anyone else, no one but me me me me without having to compromise yourself with words.

-- The first time you sleep with a man, he leaves you within the hour, rising with the sun to the call of a woman you wish you could be. He will go home to her, crawl into her bed, let his kisses decorate her skin in all the subtle shades of dawn. He asks you once more, please don’t tell anyone what happened. He waits for a nod of acquiescence to come from your papier-mâché body before he sifts through your tangled clothing to find his jeans, before he buttons his shirt, before he tucks his hair in place. You watch as, in the earliest light of morning, he smooths away every trace of you.

He kisses you.

-- The first time you sleep with a man, you feel the impressions his body made on you long after the bruises of his kisses fade.

dream

Vivie Behrens 61

the cosmonaut Titan Page

62

Well, they’ve finally done it. They’ve gone and killed me.

Okay, they’ve almost killed me.

At the moment, I honestly can’t figure out why anyone in their right mind would choose to become a scientist, and I certainly don’t know why I did it.

I suppose at the time, it seemed like an easy gig— look at some stars, do some math. You know, sit on my butt and do nothing all day.

And now they’re trying to make me go to the Moon. The. Moon. The big rock that floats across the sky.

They’re saying I don’t have to do any of the hard work; they already have the ladder set up and everything.

But to tell you the truth, I don’t buy it.

-- Slowly and indignantly I put on the armor — chainmail, like they told me (apparently it’s more lightweight and better-suited for space travel). Everyone else we sent up there has fallen back to the ground dead, so they figure something must be attacking the poor souls.

They conveniently forget about the fact that these bodies fall back frozen, which means there’s almost definitely an ice dragon up there.

This mission just gets more and more dangerous, doesn’t it? Most people think that it’s the fire dragons that you have to look out for, but ice dragons are far more deadly (I did my PhD thesis on this, trust me).

Anyway, the point, once again, is that they’ve practically killed me.

-- Mission control told me that the most difficult part of my job is just to get on the ladder safely, and so far they were right. It took me four tries actually—those runners are just too fast.

At this point, I suppose I should explain a few things for the non-scientists out there.

You see, the moon doesn’t just stay in one spot; it flies across the sky. So of course, we have to keep the ladder moving too. Our brilliant engineers thought of hiring runners to carry it with them and follow the moon from below. Keeping up so far?

As of yet, it’s been the best idea to come out of this whole operation. Once night comes, they hoist the ladder up to the stupid space rock, and then they just run.

It takes some balancing, obviously, but it’s nothing they can’t handle.

Of course, once the sun starts to rise and the moon falls past the edge of the Earth, the runners have to carry the ladder back to the other side, but with all things considered, I’d much rather have their job than mine right about now.

So far, my job has consisted of climbing for forty-five minutes, and it’s not getting any easier. The air is becoming colder and thinner, and I’ll surely die if I fall now.

Based on some of my calculations, it should take me a total of five hours to reach the moon’s surface. Then, about two hours collecting the moon rocks to light our village, and approximately twelve seconds to get frozen and eaten by a primordial ice dragon.

I’m not stupid though. I came prepared. By wearing as many layers as I could fit under my armor, I’ve increased my chances of survival significantly. I’m not going to let these lunatics kill me without putting up a good fight first.

Speaking of the lunatics, it looks like they’re call63

ing me now. They engineered a high-tech communication device (two tin cans tied to each end of a string), and now they’re shouting at me through it. Some things never change, even when you’re in outer space.

“Aleks, this is Mission Control. Come in Aleks!”

I recognize the shrill, impatient voice of my Commander. It was her idea to send me on this stupid mission, and I had the sneaking suspicion that she was hoping I wouldn’t come back.

“No,” I reply.

“We need a status report. This is the point at which the others started dying.” The way she says others like they weren’t even people makes me uneasy.

“Well I’m talking aren’t I? What else do you need?”

“This is going to be a long trip Aleks. You might want to pace yourself with that bitterness of yours.” Good advice probably, but I’m not about to take it…

Okay, four more hours to go.

-- I’ve done everything I can to pass the time. I counted the rungs of the ladder as I climbed them, I counted the stars in the sky, I counted imaginary sheep (that almost made me fall asleep), I counted the ice crystals forming along the edges of my armor. I’m sick of counting.

Luckily, I’m almost there.

As I get closer to the moon, it starts to feel like something is pushing me upward. Maybe Earth is trying to kick me out.

Within a few rungs of the lunar surface, I’m practically falling up, so I let go and land softly on the glowing chunk of danger.

No dragon yet, but I hadn’t realized how blinding the moon would be. These rocks are significantly brighter than we’d anticipated—they’ll be perfect. We need something to light our village at night. We used to use candles, but we need polar bear fur and blubber to make 64

the wicks and oil, and we hunted those poor creatures to extinction last week (although they had it coming, wandering around all fat and furry). Anyway, these moon rocks are our only hope now.

I collect a few of them and try to toss them down to Earth, but I’m much too exhausted to throw them far enough, and they just fall back up. Climbing a ladder in full armor for five hours weakens a person, and I can feel the cold air willing my body to shut down.

Okay, maybe just a five-minute nap.

-- The sun crests the horizon of my home world and switches places with this hellish ball of icy death as the moon sets with me on it.

The fires of the sun startle me awake and I look up to see the runners holding the ladder off the world’s edge, trying to save me, but it’s too late.

Now I’ve killed me.

After a few minutes, I hear wings. Large, leathery, scaly wings. Harbingers of an icy death. And now I can hear a dragon screeching in the distance, announcing its hunt. Wait… it’s just the Commander on the comm device… I put it to my ear.

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?”

I pull back for a moment, my ears ringing, before I respond. “Wow. First of all, rude. Second of all, I didn’t do this on purpose obviously, so just give me a second to figure something out.” Great, now I have to figure something out.

If I can just survive twelve hours until the next nightfall, I might be able to get back home, but it certainly won’t be easy. Outer space can be a dangerous place, especially at night. Between slowly freezing to death and being eaten by a dragon, my chances seem slim. My only hope is to reach Mars.

Mars, for those who don’t know, is a much smaller, much warmer place than Earth that lies just beyond 65

the moon. In fact, I can see it in the distance, getting closer as my rocky chariot glides beneath the Earth’s crust.

“Okay, I think I can make it to Mars. I should be safe there until nightfall.”

“This was not part of the plan, Aleks! If you think that—”

“Oh no… we must have a bad signal. You’re cutting out.” I tug on the taut string. It won’t reach much further, especially to another planet. “If you’re worried about my welcome back party, just push it to tomorrow.

It’ll be fine.” I drop the can and jump toward the rusty red planet rolling past me. Here I come, Mars!

-- Okay, it’s not as warm as we theorized. I guess we just assumed it would be hot because of its red color, but we couldn’t have been further from the truth. It’s actually so cold that I’m starting to miss the moon. I’ll have to get to work immediately to build a fire.

-- After careful searching, I’ve discovered that there are no trees of any kind on this awful planet. And to think — I expected it to be tropical!

It’s time for Plan B: riding the asteroid belt back home.

The asteroid belt, in case you haven’t heard, is a river of rocks that flows around the sky at night, making sure Mars and Jupiter don’t get too cozy with each other. It’s the perfect little stream to carry me gently back to Earth.

I climb up a small hill on Mars, and I can see the asteroid belt rushing overhead. Hm… it’s moving slightly faster than I expected, but I can make this work. I leap toward it.

Mars, being about half the size of Earth, pushes people away extra hard when it feels overcrowded, so I land in the river of asteroids easily.

The river sweeps me up and carries me much 66

more violently than I had intended. And, in fact, it’s too early for it to even be near Earth; there’s a whole seven hours of night left. In short, this was a bad idea.

-- After almost an hour of tumbling around in a sea of space rocks, I hear chaotic winds whipping around below me like an old-fashioned southern twister. It must be Jupiter, the solar system’s garbage can. I marvel at the planet’s red Spot (a giant tornado named after the pet dog of the brilliant astronomer who discovered it) swirling on Jupiter’s surface.

Even from here I can feel a stiff breeze, chilling me to my core. I reach into the pockets under my chainmail to warm my hands and find lumps of cold glowing moon rocks. Hey, at least I followed some of the directions from Mission Control. The Commander would be so proud.

-- I spend the rest of my journey gazing up at the hundreds stars around me, painting the sky with streaks of white and pale yellow. I can’t help but wonder at how small and insignificant they are. Why do they even exist if they’re not gonna keep our village bright at night?

For those of you who haven’t taken a science class, stars are the pinpoint holes in the fabric of the universe that dot the night sky. No one knows what happens to them during the day, but it’s rumored that they become the one massive ball of light we call the sun. There’s no way to be sure. As I look up, I see a cluster of them making up the shape of a bear. I pretend it’s a polar bear at first, but clearly it’s just a plain black bear filled by the dark emptiness of space.

I look down at the moon rocks in my pockets.

There are at least two dozen little stones, and now that we know it’s safe, we can send more people collect them.

Just not me. I’ve had enough of being the humble, ingenious hero.

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Speaking of hero, this will be the really brave part. My little river rushes me past Mars and the Moon at the speed of at least twelve horses, and I see Earth coming up ahead. I don’t know if I can jump that far, but hopefully I can get close enough for the planet to pull me back.

I push off of a particularly big asteroid and float toward my ugly bluish-brown home.

I start to panic… I’m so high that I’ll never make it to the surface. I’m going to pass it.

I feel the vacuum of space trying to grab me and pull me away from salvation. I need something to propel me…

I start stripping off my armor. I don’t suppose I needed it in the first place, and I’m starting to think the rumors of a dragon up here were just hearsay. I throw my helmet as hard as I can behind me, giving myself some momentum. Then, I chuck my chainmail tunic. This isn’t going to be enough…

I throw my boots and my gauntlets and start taking off even more layers. I fling fur coats and socks and gloves and I speed up, but I’m getting colder. The others died from hypothermia, just like this…

I throw my last sock at an angle, allowing me to spin around and see my home one last time. I turn slowly toward the planet sitting just out of reach and get hit in the face with a tin can tied to the end of a string. I never thought I’d be so happy to see this thing again!

I grab onto it for dear life and yell for them to pull me in. Nothing seems to happen for a few freezing, terrifying minutes, but eventually I feel a tug. I drift toward the Earth, shivering, and it starts to pull me in, faster and faster. The landing will be tricky, so I let go of the can and aim for the ocean, splashing a few hundred feet from the shore. The chilling saltwater feels like concrete as I slam into it, and I fall deep below the surface, clinging to the moon rocks I was able to save. I’m in excruciating pain, so I have to trudge back to Mission Control, soaking wet 68

and with a limp. I can’t believe sacrifices I make for the good of the world.

There’s no welcome party waiting for me, but they tell me they’ll set up the glowing moon rocks around the town in little lanterns tonight, and they’re going to send up new collectors every week, more prepared than I was of course. Not everyone is as resourceful as me. In fact, I think they’ll promote me to Co-Commander after all I’ve been through. Just what I’ve always wanted—an even easier job.

the communications bridge at night Mason Schlechte

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AUTHOR BIOGRApHiES Jasmine Barnes is friend and daughter who believes in the power of words and images. She writes mostly for herself and sometimes from the people she loves. Part-time freelance videographer and photographer, she hopes to spend her life sharing people’s stories.

Sydney Bartlett is an English and Religious Studies major whose high school’s town has a population of 800, plus cows. As her majors suggest, she loves stories, reading and writing them. She also loves hearing other people’s stories. Talk to her about Elton John, snowboarding on fresh powder, your favorite book (hers is The Little Prince), Rom-Coms, or just life itself — but bring something sweet (or hummus) to snack on.

Vivie Behrens is an art student at the University of Texas at Austin, and her goal is to use visual artwork to inspire her community to consider alternative perspectives and engage in positive and productive social change. The beauty of art is its ability to reach all people without regard to racial, religious, economic, social, or political backgrounds, so she feels a responsibility as an artist to make work that goes beyond aesthetic appeal, but rather makes an impression on the changing social world which we contribute to and survive within.

Nora Greenstein Biondi is originally from Connecticut and is now a junior at University of Texas. She is a double major in Plan II and Women & Gender Studies with a Creative Writing certificate.

Javier Bonilla Mexican born and raised. Economics major, UT ‘19. Very big fan of soccer and music. He also enjoys solitude and occasional good company. He loves to travel with his camera and find moments that leave as fast as they come, but that he can capture perpetually. He hopes you enjoy these two and if you want more follow him @theviewfromparadise.

Dania Diaz is a proud Mexican-American Human Ecology student at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a whole five feet and 70

eight inches of creativity and curiosity. As Einstein said, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you anywhere.”

Julio Diaz is a sophomore English major, working on his teaching certificate. He is twenty years of age and has only tasted a small speckle of what life has to offer. To understand his works, look at the blank spaces his writing has to offer, and you’ll see what he hides. He is not a poet by choice but by necessity.

Jenny Ezell is a freshman at UT. She is a Radio-Television and Film major, but she loves to read and write in addition to filming.

She also loves dogs, a lot.

Jade Fabello was born in Chicago; however, most of her formative years were spent in suburban South Austin. With the absence of her father and the mere 4% black population of her high school, she was largely left to her own devices to explore her racial identity. In her early years, she had a speech impediment and massive stage fright. On a whim, she took speech and debate in high school where she developed a love for orating and the spoken word.

She has since held a deeply vested interest in using her voice to contribute to the struggle for the liberation of marginalized groups.

Jonah Hubbard is a third-year Linguistics major who writes poetry or short stories whenever his own life happens to feels like a story. His linguistics background lends itself to help him think of phrasing and words in different, new ways in his writing. He also has a musical background in various instruments since the age of six, so that influences some of his work to seem almost lyrical. Influences for most of his artistic ventures regardless of medium include KOOL A.D., Jack White, the Decemberists, Robert Frost, Robert Bartholot, mythology, his upbringing in the Southern Baptist Church and his reactionary tendencies concerning those beliefs, good food, and metaphors.

Brooke Johnson is a second year student at the University of Texas at Austin pursuing a BFA in Studio Art. She plans to double major with a BA in Art History and obtain a BDP certificate in Museum Studies. Brooke currently works primarily in sculpture, print, and video.

Cody Johnston is an English major at the University of Texas at Austin and will be graduating this May. He hopes to find a steady editing or proofing job after graduation.

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kevin latorre was born in Newark, Delaware, but has moved 6 times, and did most of his growing up in Texas. He’s the happy third son of five kids, namely four sons and one daughter.

He’s studying English here at UT, because words fascinate him, and he wants them to forever fascinate him. Kevin writes because God gave him the desire and opportunity, and he observes the way He teaches him to everyday. andrea mace is a sophomore anthropology student at the University of Texas. She plans to attend medical school a year after her graduation in the spring of 2019. She has been interested in photography since high school, and has been lucky enough to take several classes since then to further her knowledge. Andrea intends on continuing her hobby of photography for the rest of her life and hopes to pursue an internship with National Geographic before attending medical school. connor mccampbell loves oolong tea, a clean work space, his telecaster, sweaters, the click of strokes on a keyboard, the smell of sprouts cooking in oil, the sound of a skateboard landing, the font Sabon, digging his toes into the sand, crisp beer, his friends songs, unexpected color, soft canvas, dancing until his knees hurt, looking over the edge of tall things, and all the people ever. He wants to know more about birds. If you know a lot about birds, give him a call. (713) 449-5380 anthony orion Nuñez has always used his writing as a means to heal himself and, if possible, to heal others. He strives for that connection that someone will someday say, "He gets it, he understands." And maybe then that person's heart won't feel so heavy.

And maybe his won't either. titan page is a Communication Studies major projected to graduate Spring 2018. He grew up writing poetry and moved on to stories and screenplays as he got older, always searching for a new creative challenge. He tends not to stick to a particular genre, but he gravitates toward whimsical stories and ideas. He’s started to hone his skills in UT’s Creative Writing Certificate program, and he’s growing as a writer everyday. Titan hopes to someday be published and become a writing professor to continue serving his passion of storytelling.

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bianca perez is a third year English major and Rhetoric and Writing minor and currently undergoing the Creative Writing

Certificate. She’s been writing in a journal since fourth grade, but she’s only been letting people read her poetry since her senior year of high school. When she got to UT, she got involved with the slam poetry community on campus and in the Austin community. This year she competed at the CUPSI qualifier to be a member of the UT Spitshine team that competes at Chicago for CUPSI. Now, she is one of five members who get to share their truths on stage. She’s looking to expand her poetry and to be inspired by poets that want to do the same.

Mason Schlechte is a first year undeclared business major at McCombs. He began his journeys in photography just this past year, when asked to photograph a friend’s show at a small venue. Ever since then he has been fascinated by the art, and hopes to continue to improve his skills and utilize them to share his experiences as he travels the world.

Nicole Ting is a sophomore majoring in petroleum engineering and pursuing a certificate in creative writing. In her free time, she enjoys writing, baking, and traveling. Her life goal is to impact the world in any way she can as a writer and engineer. This is her fourth published poem.

Elizabeth Werth is an English major pursuing a creative writing certificate. When she's not writing, she spends her spare time following motorsports around the world.

Zoya Zia is an International Relations & Global Studies sophomore trying to educate herself on just about everything. She enjoys discussing foreign policy and has an affinity for learning languages—one of her aspirations is to read and write poetry in multiple languages. She is also a managing editor at ORANGE Magazine. As a Pakistani-American, she never feels quite at home in either country. However, she hopes to make the world a more welcoming place by emphasizing human rights and social justice.

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special thanks

to the liberal arts honors program Director Marc Musick Associate Director Stacey Amorous Academic Advising Coordinator Linda Mayhew Senior Administrative Associate Mary Cone