Fools Vol. 6

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A THANK YOU

TO OUR SPONSORS. FOOLS MAGAZINE IS GENEROUSLY FUNDED BY THREE ENTITIES THAT SAW POTENTIAL IN THE FOOLS TEAM & OUR EFFORTS. WE WOULD LIKE TO FORMALLY ACKNOWLEDGE THE MAGID CENTER FOR UNDERGRADUATE WRITING, THE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION, AND THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA STUDENT GOVERNMENT FOR THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO FOOLS MAGAZINE.

The ideas and opinions expressed in this magazine are not representative of the University of Iowa.

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T IS NOT DEAD PR AD PRINT IS NOT IS NOT DEAD PRIN NT IS NOT DEAD P EAD PRINT IS NOT IS NOT DEAD PRIN NT IS NOT DEAD PR EAD PRINT IS NOT T IS NOT DEAD PRI INT IS NOT DEAD P DEAD PRINT IS NO LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Dear Reader,

Fools Magazine was an idea first sparked two-and-a-half years ago and came to fruition at the hands of undergraduates in a backyard. Since the beginning, we have evolved alongside graduating and incoming members, editors, and assistants. A passion-project-turned-literary-force in Iowa City, our foundation has remained the same—a team of hungry creators—and we are so proud to share our sixth volume with you.

As Fools makes strides in moving from its artistic youth towards a long-lasting tradition in Iowa City, we’re honored that you’re part of our journey. This magazine is here thanks to those who believe in our mission to curate an honest narrative of our little sector of the universe, time and time again. That includes the hands this very copy lands in.

We have learned what it means to come together as artists, what it means to tell a story, and why it is necessary to do both. Where the answers to these questions meet is where you’ll find volume six—among all the art, humor, beauty, and diverse truths our contributors have to offer. We hope as you read volume six, you’ll revel in the humanity our contributors have breathed into it.

Yours truly,

The Fools Editorial Board

E D I T O R S .

JENNA LARSON

ELAINE IRVINE

CHOSIE TITUS

RILEY NAKAGAWA

HANNAH GULICK

editor-in-chief

writing editor

design editor

design assistant

writing assistant

ELLIE ZUPANCIC

GABBIE MEIS

VIVIAN LE

HAYLEY ANDERSON

NICOLE PAGLIARI

managing editor

writing editor

photo editor

photo assistant

writing assistant

SETH MOFFITT

GRACE OETH

KENZI RAYELLE

SKYLER BARNES

GABBY ESTLUND

treasurer

web editor

design assistant

writing assistant

web assistant

CONTRIBUTORS. ADRIAN SANDERSFELD

ELENA ALVAREZ

JACK HOWARD

NICHOLE SHAW

pg. 45

pg.21

pg.23

pg.29

ALEX BARE

ELLIE ZUPANCIC

JACKIE JIMENEZ

NICOLE PAGLIARI

pg. 26

pg.9

pg.17

pg.11

ALEX HERRICK

EMILY HOTT

JANIECE MADDOX

RILEY NAKAGAWA

pg.53

pg.3

pg.1,14

pg.20,25,29,37,48

AVA GRIPP

GABBIE MEIS

JENNA LARSON

SAGE ANDERSON

pg.44

pg.49

pg.48

pg.20,43

BETSY BUTCHER

GABRIEL MONTALVO

KATIE SAILER

SELA DAVIS

pg.51

pg.19

pg.48

pg.29,44

BRIANNA FRANKLIN

GEORGIA SAMPSON

KENZI RAYELLE

SETH MOFFITT

pg.20

pg.41

pg.7,32,43-45,49,51,54

pg.32

CHOSIE TITUS

GRACE OETH

LIV HARTER

SKYLER BARNES

pg.1,3,6,11,15,41

pg.15

pg.25

pg.6

CLARISSA DIETZ

HALEY YORDANOFF

MADELEINE ACKERBURG

TAYDEN SEAY

pg.43

pg.37

pg.14

pg.6

DAVID PETERSEN

HANNAH GULICK

MANDY ARCHER

VIVIAN LE

pg.37

pg.1

pg.7

pg.3,9,14,17,21,23,26

ELAINE IRVINE

HAYLEY ANDERSON

MERIA IVY

ZOE HERMSEN

pg.19

pg.6,19,33

pg.17

pg.11

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LUMINOSIT Y L AWS

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A PL ACE OF CONVENIENCE

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THE MEN THAT TALK TO ME

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FIRST LOVE / L ATE SPRING

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ON YOUR BIRTHDAY

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SMALL TREES AND MENTAL ILLNESS

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PURPLE

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CONSTRUCTION

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WHITE

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BARABOO

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UN CHIEN ANDALOU

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AN ITCH BENEATH MY SKIN

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1969

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SUGAR BABY

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ADH-DHAHIRA GOVERNORATE

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SUBJECT TO CHANGE

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TRASH PERSON

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NOBODY ’S HOME

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FOURTH GENERATION FLOWER

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PREPARING TOMATOES

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THE POET AND THE GYRE

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POEM ABOUT PPL , PLCS N THNGS

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SCAT TER MY ASHES

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NOTHING SEEMS TO FIT

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FROM THE GROUND UP

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THE FAMILY, THE FEMININE, THE FIGHT

LUMINOSITY LAWS by hannah gulick

DEFINITION(S): (translated: total electromagnetic energy emitted by a source ((translated translated: brightness of a star/galaxy/light bulb (((translated translated translated: dependence on another’s brightness to provide justification for the presence or absence of a luminous quality; the ability to “shine bright” derived from the lack of ability of another to shine as brightly))))))

QUESTION(S): to peel an orange in the dark ?

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EXPERIMENT(S): NOTES:

if we take two oranges and imagine them to be

stationary on a counter; (marble or granite or stone) like two figurines, like two halves of a sun, (magnitude A, B, or O) like two wave (electromagnetic farewell) packets of a sinusoidally distributed orange unknowns; superimposed, we can conclude that they (orange(s)) are: related. now, if we turn off the lights and remember them (orange(s)) on the counter, glowing (electromagnetic memories) in a conical halo of kitchen light, like two (2) cross-eyed angels outlined, simmering (sparkling, vibrating, frozen) halogenic, we can conclude their luminosity to be: transcendent; (through time or space) we can consider them alive ( “ alive ” ) for as long as we can remember them.

CONCLUSION(S): luminosity is the dependence on another. the sun is not “bright” unless the moon is 400,000 times dimmer; it is just the sun. likewise, your luminosity depends on mine (and vice); but whether you are luminosity (A) and i am luminosity (B) (or vice), the result will be the same as luminosity is a ratio; we are a ratio; which means one of us contains the other; one of us Is a percentage of the other’s whole; one of us is dimmer (or vice)

illustration by janiece maddox | design by chosie titus

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A PLACE OF CONVENIENCE

BY EMILY HOTT

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LIMINAL SPACE:

A place that looks both ways continuously. Where everything can be forgotten. A place where the present no longer exists and that perpetual tick of time is left behind glass doors. Where the bright world is cut to pieces.

CASEY’S GENERAL STORE: Winter 2009 - Des Moines, IA

In the family van, I sit with my tummy rumbling. We make an unexpected stop while driving home from the pediatrician. I am swirling my toes just above the floor. My fat little feet are jammed into the flats I am wearing. I can see the pasty, white skin tightened around the edges. I spy the remains of ancient Cheez-Its that have been ground into the carpet. I consider getting on my hands and knees to hunt for the treasure locked in the floor. The seat belt constricts my breathing. I want to go inside with my mom. I see her in there paying for gas. The harsh fluorescence of the lights abusively weighs on everything. I hadn’t realized how old my mother had gotten. The lights are not the only thing pushing her towards the floor.

The pediatrician’s words weigh on me too. I can hear the way my pediatrician pronounced the word “obese” with a particular kind of disgust.

I can’t stand the way my mom looks under those lights. I climb out onto the gasoline stained pavement. I can feel the hard lumps of century-old gum under my shoes. I put my hands on the glass door and throw myself into the bright fluorescence.

The rack of Hostess cupcakes rattles. The exit sign by the bathroom is flickering in and out. An old man glances at the fallen cupcakes, but he forgets to look at me. He doesn’t notice a fat girl stuffed into a frilly party dress. I have left the present. Nothing exists beyond this space, not the constant feeling of lost time or appetite or childhood. I can’t see out of the grimy windows. It’s like I am going to walk out to a blank world with a canvas of white encasing everything. My mom suddenly grabs my arm. I point to the Hostess cupcakes. I am dying to have one.

She picks a cake up from the ground and buys it for me. I bring the cupcake to my mouth the moment we step from the claws of the gas station. My mom rips the small cake from my greedy hands. She forgot, she says. I have to control my eating now. This is how I know the world is still where I left it.

QUIKTRIP: Spring 2016 - Des Moines, IA

Our high-top Converse shoes beat down on the

sidewalk outside of school. The laces drag behind us. My best friends and I weave among the students.

My best friends, they happen to have the same name. I hear that exact name thrown over and over.

I don’t hear my own name. I know they see me. I know that they see the intensity pooled in the irises of my eyes, that I am begging for acknowledgement. I think I might hate them for ignoring me, but I ignore them too.

We pack ourselves into the small car, all three of us. My feet rest on my torn, tattered backpack.

They make me sit in the back, with the soda bottles and worksheets and wrappers of cinnamon gum.

The smell is familiar to me. I don’t know if they can smell the warm spice up in the front seat. They are so immersed in each other. My best friends talk in hushed voices in the car. About how they are going to get weed to smoke this weekend. What boys are trying to get with them. How this person had sex with this person. Stress. It works at my bones and gnaws until I am raw. It beats inside of my left temple. An overbearing tension from school, from my parents’ divorce. From the rapid changes taking place in every area I took to be a constant. I don’t know if I will tell them about the divorce. I want to beg them to not leave me behind, I am not ready. I can’t seem to hold on to anything. The words are caught in the sticky phlegm at the back of my throat. I can’t spit them out. I choke in the backseat. They continue on in hushed voices.

My friend parks the car. I can feel the scrape of the bumper on the sidewalk. The sidewalk is raw like me now. I walk silently with my head down towards the doors. Time begins to slow as the objects around me blur and finally evaporate. I don’t hear the bell ring when I open the door because formalities like that don’t matter anymore. My foot hits the dingy, yellow tile and sinks a little, but I bounce back up.I am floating in this gas station. The dim light hides everything that I don’t want to acknowledge. This place is not concrete enough to hold my pain. I step back into the bright world without my friends. That familiar throbbing in my temple returns, but the icy burn of the Dr. Pepper in my hand clears the fog a little. I decide to save the soda for later.

KUM & GO: Summer 2011 - Des Moines, IA

Time moves slower in the summer, I have decided image on the other side of the spokes. The harsh sun beats upon our exposed shoulders. Our pale

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skin could never stand its rays. My sister and I rule the summer on our own without parents to watch us.

Parents who go to the office instead of home. These summer days are inescapably clutched by loneliness beats upon our exposed shoulders. Our pale skin could never stand its rays. My sister and I rule the summer on our own without parents to watch us.

Parents who go to the office instead of home. These summer days are inescapably clutched by loneliness and chronic boredom, obsessively calling mom and asking when she’ll be home. The song I will always think of during this time isn’t by Pitbull or Katy Perry, but the sharp sting of the never-ending dial tone on the telephone. We manage though, with our bikes beating against the familiar concrete leading to the library or Hy-Vee or the ice cream shop. We had each other to pass the endless hours of summer.

walk on its worn gray carpet. I grip both ends of my life trying to hold them within reach of each other.

The strain is tearing my arms from their sockets. I’d rather lose both than lose one.

We enter the gas station near home with Ziploc baggies full of scavenged quarters. The blast of cold air could take you somewhere else, where cases of chilled soda stretch eternally, and we don’t have to worry about mom coming home on time because it doesn’t matter here, in this place. I could live here, I think, never aging or growing up to be the person I’m sure I wanted to be. I wouldn’t have to think about the hunger growing inside me for something more than sunbaked suburban streets. This illusion always falls walking out the glass doors, when the present clicked back into place perfectly, and the loneliness settled back into my bones. With a peach Snapple in my hand, I climb back onto my bike. I twist the metal cap and hear the satisfying bite of the safety seal breaking.

7-ELEVEN: Fall 2016 - Savannah, GA

KUM & GO: Fall 2017 - Iowa City, IA

I have alcohol swirling inside of me and people crowding around me. Whenever I talk, my words come out as light pink swirls. They wrap around my head and neck. My own words are strangling me.

My new friends crush me until I feel like a slosh of liquid beneath their feet. A girl complains about the people on her floor. Her words are beating against my eardrum. Their words are not pink like mine, but some kind of blue. When their words bump up against each other, they blacken as if taken over by some strange mold. I cannot get over how unfamiliar it all is. In this unknown city, I wander, away from the people who occupied my life before. I wander from my own mother. From the brown ranch home I grew up in. Miles away, I’ve forgotten what it feels like to

5 illustration by chosie titus | design by vivian le

My new friends and I pass through the sealed doors of this gas station into a place where nothing is of significance. I don’t feel the divide inside my mind, between two opposites that tug at my heart. I buy one blue Gatorade with my debit card. I leave all those friends behind and throw myself back into the world. The tearing feeling in my insides returns.

With my feet planted on the urine stained sidewalk, I open the Gatorade. I bring the plastic bottle to my lips. The bright liquid barely breaches my lips when, suddenly, my thirst is gone. My lips barely blue, I step down onto the street and keep walking.

I sit awkwardly in the rental car. It is seven in the morning. My mom says we have to get started early if we’re to make it home, but I don’t want to go.

Palm trees suit me now. I don’t yearn for evergreens anymore. The visit to a prestigious Georgian college is still rocking in my head. The thoughts tear craters on the inside of my brain. It stings to be told by the academic counselor that I’m not good enough to attend the next academic year. I want to tell my mom.

I almost can’t handle it. I can’t handle this grief over being told so bluntly and having my incompetence laid out before me. I am ashamed.

The rental car quietly stops. I look past the window, past the cigarette signs, past the road maps, past the slushy machine. I am looking through the entire structure. I see no bones. The gas station is like a hollowed-out chest. Something should be there holding it all together. I enter through the goldrimmed doors. I belong to this 7-Eleven now. I can sense nothing beyond it. I buy one black coffee, a bag of salt and vinegar chips, and a Clif Bar. I want to say something to my mom about how I’m not good enough. But finally, I shove the words down with the burning hot coffee, and then the chips, and finally the Clif Bar. We get back on the highway.

the men that talk to me by skyler barnes TYPE: The White Man tm Description: Arm hair covers his Rolex, eating time. Could be or has been in a frat. Watches Fight Club every 3 months.

What he says: Nothing.

Please Note: If we met online, he tells me that he has never been with a black girl. He then waits for my pants to fall.

TYPE: The American (White) Man Description: Works in my department. Shaves head for active duty.

What he says: He watches Ben Shapiro and calls anti-ICE supporters a terrorist group. When I don’t respond we start to play a game where our eyes skirt past each other in the hallway.

TYPE: The Black Man Description: White teeth, unrelenting. Oppressed and looking for power.

What he says: Hello. How are you.

Please note: Friendly, as if we are related. As if we are the same. I smile and say hello, hoping to god he doesn’t ask my name.

TYPE: The Lonely Black Man Description: Yellowed eyes and hairy knuckles. Oppressed and looking to conquer.

What he says: Hello. How are you.

Please note: He speaks from his dick and thinks me accessible. For we are the same, yet unrelated.

Please note: If with my white girlfriend, I am disregarded.

TYPE: The Vagrant Description: Potentially drunk, potentially homeless. Blackened fingertips and dirty nails.

What he says: He asks me if I call my space buns “pigtails.” I say sure. He asks my opinion about the election, and I let him speak first, for that’s what he wants, and I’m in the business of appeasing.

illustration by tayden seay | photo by hayley anderson | design by chosie titus

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FIRST LOVE / LATE SPRING

BY MANDY ARCHER

encapsulating my heather heart spring of my blood and severance of my head take with me your cooing and make me of the finest willow towers and rocky ice prisons melding blatant babying and old soul rock me yours take with you my leaves my leaves and store my fine golden slippers in the chest between infinity and cradles tactless roam found by soft cotton down sheepskin and hard-knit bleeding (river of) lethe wonder (if i can) wander (if i must)

illustration and design by kenzi rayelle

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there place of dipping toes and barefoot creeping

washcloth body felt touching skin no more mine or born to me taking branches to please you and one to please me an effort to humble myself to the earth pull out light pink silky bibs watch as (i can) scold the hand that plucks it bleach the flush that curses me, cherub let me deepen to you my shade cherry tongue guide and in me if there is or ever was Woman have her coddle have the moonbeams brush and not provoke

let them, i pray escape in the forest of a deeper shade maroon, silver, slate.

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ON YOUR BIRTHDAY by ellie zupancic I. Turn the tv to channel static.

Stop the static from moving, point to a single speck: ask why she’s here, if she’s okay, how she’s getting home.

Wait for her answer.

II. Stop the kitchen radio mid-Waltz in Divertimento, ask the musicians to halt, remind them what Bernstein said:

two is the rhythm of the body, three is the rhythm of the mind .

III. Take your birth certificate from the family filing cabinet, cut it into confetti, garnish the cake your mother made.

If she cries, return to your time and place of birth and request the hospital print you a new one.

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photo and design by vivian le

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THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SMALL TREES 11

AND MENTAL ILLNESS by nicole pagliari

I didn’t know that my dad had had cancer until I was about 11 years old.

and determination. I never contested him. I liked being the wonder kid who literally outran her illness.

I didn’t know that he had had it twice until I was 18.

My junior year of high school, I started to get sad. I thought that maybe the weight of tests, impending college decisions, and two sports was finally catching up to me.

I decided to take more naps. When an unusually high ACT score with my name on it was delivered to my front door, my dad told people that I was destined to do great things. When I told my dad that my best friend was going on medication for depression, he said that she should try exercising more. I didn’t tell him, or anyone, that I was becoming increasingly depressed myself. I didn’t want anything to get in the way of me doing great things.

He is the type of person who doesn’t fixate on the 40 days he spent sedentary in a hospital bed in his early twenties. Instead, he makes sure to play hockey every single day, sometimes with college kids (which he says keeps him quick). He never talks about the drugs that made him lose his hair. Instead, he rarely leaves the house without a baseball cap broadcasting his support of the Blackhawks or the Hawkeyes.

When I was no more than 6 years old, my dad was teasing me. My dad has a wild sense of humor and he often pokes fun at people. All these years later, I can’t remember what prompted me to call him “baldie” in response. All I know is that a stillness came over the room, and my mom quietly said, He lost his hair when he was sick.

In middle school, my dad and I started running together in the evenings. We didn’t go far, only around the park near our house, which couldn’t have been more than a mile. About ¾ of a mile in, my childhood asthma would start to act up and I’d start to wheeze. My dad would glance over, surprised every time that his daughter, who needed to be taken out of little league soccer games to puff on an inhaler, was having trouble jogging. He would tell me to just keep going.

My senior year of high school, on December 14th, I didn’t get into the school of my dreams. I won’t name names, but purple is no longer my favorite color. I knew that it had been my reach school, and I know that everything happens for a reason, and that what you get out of your education is about what you put in, but I was destroyed. Suddenly, my dreams of doing “great things” had shattered, and my last leg of high school took a turn. The pressure of a sadness I couldn’t pin down was barrelling down on me, and I started to shut down. It was too exhausting to keep up healthy relationships with my friends, my boyfriend, even my teammates. Unlike when my dad lost his hair, I couldn’t put on a baseball cap to hide what was wrong with me. I retreated into myself, conserving my energy in order to keep up appearances in front of my parents, especially my dad.

Looking back, I understand where he was coming from. Leukemia was the ultimate battle, and he fought it twice. As I grew up, I kept in mind the body’s ability to overcome impossible odds.

I can’t remember a week the last month of my senior year that I showed up to school all 5 days.

In high school, I started running regularly. I never was a track star, but I was able to run 6 miles without stopping at my peak. My dad proudly claimed that I had absolved myself of my asthma using sheer willpower

When my friends got mad at me for not answering my phone, I deleted Snapchat.

When my boyfriend broke up with me, I ran 8 miles.

When my parents asked me what was wrong, I said that

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school was pointless this late in the year, and I’d rather spend my time at home with them before I had to leave for college.

Tell them what’s going on with you, my cousin begged me, He’s your dad. He is so proud of you no matter what.

At night, I sat on the bathroom floor while the shower ran and cried.

Eventually, my retraction from the life I had spent close to 20 years building became unavoidable. I refused to admit that my mental health was so precarious.

I have cancer-surviving blood in my veins. I have asthma overcoming air in my lungs. I have a prodigal brain in my head. I also have an ongoing battle with mental illness. One of these is not like the other.

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I wielded the hedge clippers. They were heavy and warm in my palms. My dad said he was going inside for some water and he left me, standing there, with a tool and a dead tree for company. I started to sporadically cut the tree’s branches down. They fell to the ground, tickling my legs as they went down. Eventually, I stopped using the hedge clippers to actually clip, and instead resorted to swinging them at the thicker branches. I liked watching the dents form in the brittle bark.

By the time my dad came back outside, almost all of the branches were gone and I was swinging wildly at the trunk. He stood silently for awhile, possibly to let me continue, possibly because he didn’t want to startle me and take a pair of clippers to the head.

I didn’t realize until much later that he had been inside much too long to just be getting a glass of water.

The last 2 weeks of senior year, I was only making it through half of my day. The feelings I had been struggling to identify or cope with were catalyzed by not getting into the school I wanted and my deteriorating relationships with those around me. I became less and less able to keep up appearances even to my parents.

I spent months trying to summon enough energy to hold conversations with them. I worried about what my dad, the man who overcame a physical obstacle that sometimes even modern medicine cannot hurdle, would think if I asked for help. So I didn’t.

With a final kick, the tree went down, and I stepped away, pulling my feet out from underneath the pile of fallen branches. My dad nodded. It looks good, he said. I smiled, out of breath.

To this day, I’m still not sure what shifted. I don’t know what made my dad decide to try to snap me out of my self induced isolation. All that I know is that one day he called to me from the front door that he needed help with something outside. I’m doing homework, I had said, staring at the open book in front of me. It’ll just take a second, he said. I pulled myself from my desk and went outside. My dad held up a large pair of hedge clippers. He pointed to a small tree behind the shed we had built when we first moved, and said that the tree was dead, and it needed to be cut down. The tree’s trunk was maybe double the circumference of my wrist, its branches varying from the size of my pinky to the handles of a bicycle. He handed me the hedge clippers and showed me how to take down each branch, how to hold the clippers so that when the branch went down it wouldn’t scratch my face.

I do know that my dad believes that the body can overcome almost anything. I’ve stopped thinking of the hedge clippers as a tool, and more of an olive branch.

That afternoon, when I was supposed to be sitting in AP Physics, I was offered a physical outlet to try to chop down my depression. I was offered an opportunity to separate myself from my debilitations, and to smack them around for awhile.

In the years since, I’ve tried to put together my dad’s methodology for handing me a pair of hedge clippers that spring. It took me a long time to come to terms with the idea that brains can get sick too.

I don’t know if my dad believes in mental illness.

I know that even though he didn’t quite understand or want to admit that something was wrong, he did want to make it better.

I know that telling someone who is indescribably sad and lost to cut down a tree isn’t the same as saying I acknowledge your struggle, and I am here for you, but I know on that day they were similar in all the ways that matter. illustrations by zoe hermsen | design by chosie titus

by madeleine ackerburg Hunger was purple like the soles of my feet as they pounded against the concrete until the scabs wilted into my tennis shoes. It was the cacophony of cicadas in the humid summer air as my mother called me inside for dinner. It was the monster that screamed at me whenever I reached for food. It was the hum of the generator as we lost electricity the same night that I told my father I had the stomach flu.

I used to bake pies with my grandma. Mama Timo, we called her.

She was 5’2”, half-Italian and half-Native American, her olive skin wrinkled with freckles like stars. She would talk to me as she kneaded the dough in her rough hands, pressing and slamming it again and again on the kitchen table. You know, she would say sternly, people used to call me “chink” in high school. Like it was an insult. Like they were making fun of my identity. I’m telling you, Madeleine, it’s because of our eyes. Now cut those apples better, or this pie will be pitiful.

My grandpa always avoided the kitchen on pie days. He’d wink at me as I made my way warily into the kitchen, crossing my arms across my chest, preparing for the war that was about to ensue.

Why do I have to bake? I would ask him, pleading as he sat in his tattered brown office chair. He would lean back. Because it makes your Mama happy, he would say. His blue green eyes were so unlike the rest of my family.

Hunger was purple like my brother’s skinned knee when he tripped over the barbed wire my schizophrenic neighbor used on his fence and split open his teeth. The blood ran cracked and jagged across the concrete. My mother cried as she held him in her arms, screaming at my father to call the doctor. It was when he came home from school in 4th grade and ran upstairs without saying a word to either of us, refusing to make eye contact. It was when he transferred schools because people didn’t understand him, or his ADHD, or his autism. It was when he made jokes about himself in order to make us all feel better.

That’s when I felt guilty for not eating. When I felt guilty for looking in the mirror and hating what I saw. When I pinched my hips and my cheeks and tried to make the fat go away. I didn’t want them to realize the pain I was feeling because they were too preoccupied with him. I wanted it to stay that way; even when I started crying if I tried to eat anything more than fruit and when I ran so fast and for so long that my heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest.

My grandpa forgot our names and Mama and the pies four years later. I would say it was blue because of tears but no, no, this was red.

It was when he couldn’t walk anymore and he could only remember the name of his brown lab, Gabbie. It was when he’d have good days and bad days but lord, when he’s having a good day, we better be ready. It goes away fast, Mama would say. Appreciate it while he’s lucid.

Appreciate it when the calories got lower and lower and my piano teacher told me I looked like I had lost weight. When my mother made me get on the scale when I came back from summer camp because she thought it had gotten too bad. When I would purge the contents of my stomach, bile spilling from my lips as I hunched over the toilet.

And sometimes the days became yellow like my father, who spent

I always saw my mother cry because of his isolation. She would try to hide it from us both; but sometimes I would find her, hunched over the kitchen counter, gasping for breath as she rocked back and forth.

I’m fine, she would say. Don’t worry about me. Go upstairs and say goodnight to your brother.

illustration by janiece maddox | design by vivian le

the hours hunched at his desk with a single light; his hands cramping as he tried to make enough money to send us to college. Yellow like when I buried my dog in the backyard, and it started to rain.

But hunger was still purple, all purple. And it consumed me.

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by grace oeth I live in a college town that is constantly under construction. The skyline is growing taller with accented cranes, building upon an emerging skyline.

The cobblestones downtown are torn up and laid down again in an attempt to make the historic city new again. The route I take every day to campus is invaded by orange cones. Once, after a building fire occurred two blocks from my work, the entire flow of traffic was disrupted and scattered; in reality, my commute should only take seven minutes, but instead takes fifteen to twenty.

The construction always starts during a holiday break. The street I take every morning and evening— Burlington—was ripped up and re-paved in the middle of the summer. Although finishing the project during quiet months to avoid massive crowds of students should work, in theory, it’s never completed before they all return and become sufficiently annoyed. It’s something that everyone complains about and is an overused, valid excuse as to why someone was late to class, to work, to a meeting. Everyone must adapt to change.

Burlington’s work started while I was home visiting old friends from high school. I thought it would be like it was a couple years ago, only this time with a little more alcohol.

It was different.

After hours of conversation, I realized the dynamic between us was not the same. In high school, we had belonged to a friend group of nearly twenty people, all connected by one activity, one similarity, one town. I had established myself as an outlier in that group, happy to observe and ride the wave of their traffic. But since moving away, and removing myself from that atmosphere, I have found my voice.

We had all changed our lives in one way or another,

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and I wasn’t sure at first if it was for better or worse.

Some chose to reconstruct and refurbish what they had always known. Others had realised new paths they wanted to follow to their future. Many of my friends stayed in our hometown, deciding to live in a place they had always known—a place where development isn’t as pertinent. As much as they wanted to form their own selves, they followed in their parents’ pre-paved paths. Others moved far away, in an attempt to plan out and build upon a foundation they had discovered before. All of them found new people to love, new hardships to endure, and new places to explore.

With everyone gathered for the first time since separation, the need to reconnect was evident. We knew change had been inevitable since starting college and, as a result, everyone wanted to know how each others’ lives had changed since we parted.

Here, I finally had a space to speak up. I didn’t have to hitchhike off of other people’s narratives; I had my own developmental arc toward adulthood.

I had new friends, new experiences. I was writing regularly, expressing my opinions—more than I had in the years I had known them before.

Driving back down Burlington, to where I have built my life, I believe the shift was ultimately a good change—a welcome change. I am no longer the girl who listens to others in silence; I now speak for myself. The broken parts of myself that I would have ignored in the past are becoming whole. We are all creating ourselves, and must make space for improvement, development. There are still cracks within me, but they are new and different. I know how to fix them.

I tried to get back at The System and took a “Sidewalk Closed” sign from its post outside my cousin’s apartment on Bloomington Street during my

freshman year. It was there to block an exposed pipe.

After realizing it could ruin the repair and endanger an innocent bystander, I felt guilty and put it back.

The potholes on Burlington Street last winter were so terrible that my cousin’s car’s bumper partially fell off. People would swerve to avoid driving over them, and the road is by no means wide. Parts of myself are at war for it frustrates me that the work dedicated to improvement must take so long, but I also wait for it to be over—to see if it gets better.

During a storm warning throughout the county, a tornado had knocked a tree down on Burlington.

The portion of the road it had struck was already sectioned off by the traffic cones. It didn’t—couldn’t— hurt anyone.

When I first moved to this college city, I thought the construction was bothersome and irritating. How could a town with such little space justify all of these roadblocks? I still have those moments of frustration.

Yet, I can further understand the need—and want— for sustainable progress, even if it merely protects people from trees struck down in a storm, or from falling into dangerous manholes.

I know I’ll be happier when the construction is finished, and Burlington is cleared. My daily drive will once again be timely and smooth. There will no longer be twenty minutes of traffic leaving me to battle with my inner thoughts. But eventually, when the Burlington construction fades away to new roads, more projects will start. The cones will still surround me and the signs will continue to tell me to move.

Eventually, the roads will be safer, smoother, and I’ll no longer be forced to stare down a flashing arrow, telling me where to go. But for now, I must make room for the new. illustration and design by chosie titus

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BY JACKIE JIMENEZ

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I wish I was white.

Their skin, so white; the ideal definition of beauty.

These models didn’t look like me.

I was morenita.

I felt ugly, because in my culture, if you have a skin color that makes you look like a natural indigenous woman, you were pushed to the side and given less opportunity, just for being darker.

I wish I was white.

They had minimal hair, and I didn’t.

I have sideburns, My arms, so hairy that my classmates and family point it out.

Bullied by my own family, my own blood, for embracing my natural hair that comes from our indigenous blood.

My embracement, slowly turned into embarrassment.

As I shaved my arms and face, I was also shaving away at the culture that we share.

When we think about a Latina women, we usually think of lightskin.

Curvy, but not fat, skinny at the waist and a culo grande right?

These are what we see in novelas.

The darker skinned women are always portrayed as Ugly, Dirty, Stupid.

I would get bullied by my family, Specifically, the men.

They would bully me for being bigger and taller, when they were fat, hairy, and dirty.

But we are expected to bring them food at the table because that’s what women do.

Our job as women in the Latinx community is to serve the men and live by their standards, because it’s traditional.

We should be skinny, we should be hairless, we should be lightskin, we should obey men, we should stay at home, we should be the perfect wives.

I don’t wish I was white.

My culture is beautiful.

I wish it wasn’t so traditional.

photo by meria ivy | design by vivian le

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by elaine irvine

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photo by gabriel montalvo | design by hayley anderson

UN CHIEN ANDALOU by brianna franklin lipstick painted on lipless listless lovers free of things charging at bodies of lesbian wet-dreams insects incepted in insipid ignorance architecturally boring individuals with strange predilections sharpened razors shorted by sharp eyes bow-mouthed yet-to-be-mothers felt up and feeling androgynous women in place of the handless precise haircuts curved over ears of the modern-day gamine butter wouldn’t melt in hot mouths and on seashores a myriad of misunderstandings misunderstood by a myriad of miraculous men

illustration by sage anderson | design by riley nakagawa

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AN ESSAY ON ANXIETY

by elena alvarez

21 design by vivian le

NI

N IT

H. A

.A

TC

C

H. AN I

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TC H

1969 Analogue Minimoog monologues betwixt hypnagogic candy-coated oscillators mix; sunshine recorders regale me with their tune, and take me on tour to a long-forgotten room.

Anachronistic audio adorning all the walls children’s laughter leaking through the window; hear their calls soothily coaxing cochleae of preservation’s boon, enclosing them inside of this long-forgotten room.

Modulating melodies hold me in their hum, vocoders vocalize as they tango with the drums.

Cultists croon apocrypha; unease sets out its loom, coercing me to stay within their long-forgotten room.

Arpeggios barrage me as I struggle for the door slithering insect sample sounds scale me from the floor.

The cultists speak in tongues into their wicked tomes of doom, forbidding me to ever leave this long-forgotten room.

Then breathy prophets whistle through the catastrophic air; auspicious sine leads fissure through the cultists in despair.

The sound wave carves salvation on the walls throughout the tomb, and grants me an escape from this long-forgotten room.

Returning where I was before, headphones on my ears, how long I left, I just don’t know; days, weeks, perhaps years.

The past inside the present is all I can assume, the answer for this riddle in that long-forgotten room.

by Jack Howard

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photo and design by vivian le

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SUGAR BABY Turned into something of a punchline in our culture, the sugar baby lifestyle, which can seem like a glamorous and easy job for college-aged women, has actual consequences. Photographer Liv Harter interviewed and photographed a local woman to understand her reality. The identity of this individual has been redacted in order to maintain her privacy.

There’s been one time that was totally my fault ‘cause I was not being smart about it.

I ran down the steps and he ran after me, and I was in heels.

You always have to meet in public, and if you feel like there’s a red flag, step back.

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by liv har ter

design by riley nakagawa

BY ALE X BARE

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A

SUBJECT CHANGE SUBJECT TOTO CHANGE

FR A E B L B

BY NICHOLE SHAW

We talked about the Civil War that day. All I can remember is how everyone shifted in their seat and glanced at my ten-year-old skin, darker than their alabaster “purity” that I so envied at the time. I was the only mixed girl in my class, the only Other, the only person left looking in from elsewhere. I don’t remember much of the actual lesson Mr. Laughlin discussed in class

—only that my classmates never stopped staring at me.

Staring at my kinky hair rolled up into a bun. Staring at my mixed skin as if it had the answers for how to respond to atrocities such as slavery—as if any mention of the Civil War would automatically jerk me out of my chair, because the war on slavery so divided me from within that I could never be content. That Mr. Laughlin’s lesson of the war on race would cause me to grow feverishly triggered, unleashing the fury of my black brothers and sisters—black brothers and sisters who suffered systemic racism and a slavery that stripped their humanity away from them.

It still does.

I remember the aching feeling that I was supposed to say something. That I was supposed to represent my entire black community because they were one of the races who fought to be seen, that I fought to keep hidden, afraid of letting my black dot make a splash in a sea of white.

Afraid to be black when

the only time I saw white mix with black was when it was trying to be black without consequence.

How was I to speak for an entire people?

I couldn’t even speak for myself.

There is a Civil War that has already ended, and there’s one that is still going on today. Tensions between black and white squeezing the noose around my neck.

I feel like we’re in the 60s—the time when my black ancestors fought for treatment that transcends racial boundaries and were met with violence from the mind and body. A time when they fought to be who they were unapologetically. A time when they fought so I wouldn’t have to be afraid of who I am. Turns out we’re fighting that war today, and this war is both a white and black division I struggle to survive from.

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White dandruff flakes from the Black-Cherokee scalp, the deep brown wood of the table covered by this new white construction. Grandma—mimi—is taking out my mother’s sew-in tracks. Half the extensions are out as she continues to snip the thread that binds the Indian hair to the black kinky braids. It’s the first time I’ve actually seen my mimi do my mom’s hair, and I sit, a malleable teenager, watching in childlike fascination. She’s only ever buffed out the blackness of my mixed hair with her gold straightening comb after applying a temporary perm to the wild curls. It’s fascinating to watch.

I

D

My matriarchs talk in black vernacular, speaking about the terrors of being black in a white world, using words like “kitchen” to describe the kinky hair at the nape of one’s neck, intercepting a conversation about Tamir Rice and the officer that discarded his life, talking about how earlier that week my mom was pulled over by a cop for what we call “DWB”—Driving While Black.

It hurts to know I couldn’t do anything but grieve for her mistreatment.

I would never share the same experience, because my skin passes as white.

T0 C LA K Mimi used to eat toilet paper because Great Grandma Barber would lock the cabinets to ration the food between her and her eight sisters.

Mom is followed around stores because white people think her black skin makes her a thief who drains from the white system.

As a mixed girl in a black family, I always felt I had to “perform” as a black person—using African American Vernacular English (AAVE) to fit in and feel accepted, saying things like “threads,” “homeboy,” “brother,” “sister,” and even “honkie” with the explicit utilization of hands to gesture our meanings—a language of difference not only in words but in tone and body language. Black people are unique in their connection to their body as a mode of communication, a mode of language.

I was never a good actor though, falling short of fitting into the black identity. I didn’t share the same type of oppression they did. I never grew up worrying I would encounter someone who would be explicitly racist to me.

My dad’s white skin privileged me that way, even if it was the only thing he ever gave to me.

He left before I was old enough to remember him.

I was white enough to not be black, but black enough to not be white.

How could I belong when my skin ostracized me in every community?

The inner civil war ripped me from my own skin as I fought to erase what I was, from who I was.

I walked back from the pod-style bathrooms into my college dorm room, water dewed my kinky curls. I was slowly becoming more comfortable with presenting my black self—my black hair—to my white community members. I was on the cusp of no longer feeling the pressure to assimilate

—even though everything I had ever known was taken from me.

My father, my whiteness, my blackness, my privilege, my marginalization, my identity itself.

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Walking into my dorm room, curls tight and thick, I’ll never forget the disdain that dripped out of my roommate’s white mouth as she said, “oh! Your hair… it’s so… … cool.”

She suppressed my black image in what she thought was her white space. And in many ways, it was because I let it be her white space—a space where I couldn’t straighten my mixed hair, because “it smelled like that black people hair;” a space where I would do her makeup and style her blonde hair and hide my coconut oil and pull my hair tight into a bun before walking back from the showers. I tried to morph myself into a white image—I kept trying to appear whiter, more “appropriate,” less “racially charged” to keep the race relations in my own living quarters tolerable, despite the itching yearn to embrace a part of myself I never really had before: my mixed race.

I couldn’t stand it.

And I shouldn’t have to.

To die without speaking to my experience, I silence the entire voice of a mixed community, both black and white, enabling a system of isolating disjunction.

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illustration by sela davis | design by riley nakagawa

Trash Person

design and illustration by kenzi rayelle

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NOBODY’S HOME

By Hayley Anderson In this series, I explored abandoned structures throughout the Midwest spanning from Detroit, to the neighborhoods of Chicago, to rural Iowa.

Oftentimes buildings become victims of societal disruption, financial crisis, or plain neglect, leaving them to be claimed by nature, vandals, and sometimes developers. Abandoned places have always been an interest to me; they are simultaneously eerie and beautiful. Behind the paintpeeling walls, broken furniture and collapsed ceilings are someone’s story. Witnessing the decay of our past could be an indication of our future; what will the earth look like when we are long gone?

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photos and design by hayley anderson

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I AM A FOURTH GENERATION FLOWER

BY HALEY YORDANOFF

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Originating in Mexico, the dahlia flower is admired for its large blooms in a variety of bright colors. The author’s maternal line has passed down the pink dahlia decorative for almost 100 years.

The First Generation: Clara Sabelka (1903-1992) Born Clara Meier in Guttenberg, Iowa, on April 22, 1903, Clara grew up in a very German and very Catholic household, two identities that stayed with her until death. Her German roots came shining through when it came to drinks; Clara loved drinking beer and could hold it down with the best of them. She also loved bringing family together, hosting the Meier family reunion each August. The granddaughters helped her make prune and apricot kolaches, which were always the highlight of the event.

At the age of 20 she married John Sabelka in an old wooden church that would later be turned to ash twice. As a farmer’s wife, she never had a license, but she always found a way to weekly mass. The old church was, quite literally, a sacred space to her. The structure united her with her love, watched her children grow, and allowed her to mourn the loss of her husband. Clara thanked this place by picking bright blooms from her own large garden and bringing them to the church.

The church was consistently decorated with fresh dahlia’s from mid-summer to early fall due to the commitment of Clara and her granddaughter who drove her there.

her to translate German chatter for the English-speaking nuns.

After eighth grade, Dolora was finished with her education and helped tend the family farm. She had always figured she would become either a nun or a farmer’s wife, so there was no need for higher education.

On a night in Spillville, Iowa, Dolora met the love of her life after dancing with him to the “Blueskirt Waltz,” which later became their song. Dolora married Julian Sabelka on October 8, 1953, and the sunny weather proved fairer than their original desired date, October 9, 1953, which consisted of terrible storms. The couple moved to a farm kept in the Sabelka family and soon started their own clan of nine.

Every day on the farm consisted of chores: cooking, baking, cleaning, and regular upkeep. Dolora was always busy, but dinner became a time to relax without worry. The nine Sabelkas would eat together in the kitchen and then watch the classics like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lawrence Welk, The Carol Burnette Show. Dolora loved music and dancing; she made sure to go in town with her husband at the end of every week. There, she danced the polka while indulging in one whiskey sour which she deemed her weekly extravagance.

The Second Generation: Dolora Sabelka (1929-2009)

Clara gave Dolora some of the dahlia bulbs to grow in her

Born Dolora Hackman near St. Lucas, Iowa, on May 16,

after Clara died. Dolora loved to arrange the dahlias. With

1929, Dolora was the youngest of eight children and the fifth

voluminous soft petals unlike any other flower, she knew the

daughter. The Hackmans primarily spoke German in the house,

blooms were too beautiful not to be seen. The flowers joined

but the kids picked up English in their small Catholic school.

a new bed filled with sweet peas, zinnias, gladiolus, pansies,

When Dolora attended school, her bilingual abilities allowed

asters, and bachelor buttons.

illustrations by david petersen | design by riley nakagawa

own home since the bulbs multiply each season. Dolora continued delivering the blooms to the old wooden church

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The Third Generation: Ellen Yordanoff (1966-) Born Ellen Sabelka in Lawler, Iowa, on April 14, 1966, Ellen is the second youngest of seven children, and the fifth daughter.

Ellen grew up on a farm, doing everything from feeding pigs to driving tractors. Nights after dinner were spent watching shows together. Ellen would sit on her mom’s lap, always curious as to why her mom’s voice would sound so weird when she put her head against her chest. Her mom taught Ellen and her sisters how to sew. They had so much fabric that they made matching outfits and quilts from familiar patterns. Living in a family of nine, her mom knew how to stretch a dollar.

Chocolate chip cookie batches were quadrupled and stored in the freezer, and the mac and cheese recipe was doubled. The one treat that could never be stretched was the holy grail of all treats: homemade chocolate pie. Every part of the pie came from scratch; the beautiful flaky crust contained real animal lard, a true staple of country cooking.

Ellen graduated high school with 100 classmates, almost all of whom she had known since kindergarten. The town was so small that on prom night, everyone went to church before the dance regardless of religion, all dressed up in their formal attire. After high school graduation, Ellen knew she did not

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Mötley Crüe, and although she was hesitant, she called the number written on the napkin a few days later. They married four years later in the old wooden church and found a home in the suburbs outside of Des Moines.

A few years after settling into the big city, Ellen received dahlia bulbs from her mom so she would be able to grow them in her own backyard. Over twenty years later, she is still greeted by the big bright blooms every July. Although dahlias are simple to care for, the freezing months prove to be too harsh for the sleeping bulbs. Before the first frost, Ellen digs up the bulbs so they can rest easy (definitely getting some beauty sleep) until spring comes again. Ellen knew she wanted to keep the legacy going; the blooms reminded her of simple times on the farm and those who came before her. The blooms bring her back to summers in the old wooden church when morning sunlight poured through the stained glass. She is the current keeper of the matriarchal legacy, making sure Clara and Dolora can come back each summer to see their daughters.

They will stay until late October, standing through the toughest storms because that is what mothers do.

The Fourth Generation: Haley Yordanoff (1999- )

want to be a farmer, so she chose to study biotechnology

Born Haley Yordanoff on May 17, 1999, in Des Moines,

in college. There, she met her future love at a dance held

Iowa, she did not grow up on a farm, unlike her maternal

in a local bar. They first danced to “Home Sweet Home” by

ancestors Haley grew up in a cozy suburban home just fifteen

minutes away from downtown Des Moines. Her younger years

She shared her family of dahlias with friends, loved ones,

consisted of weekly library trips and mass every Wednesday

and even her favorite teacher, her “school mom.” The blooms

and Saturday. Every summer she couldn’t wait to get a picture

were featured in photos and poetry, showing how beauty and

taken with the dahlia flowers bigger than her head. Some

strength can be so closely tied.

weekends were spent on the farm, which were filled with curious exploration and grandma’s homemade waffles.

Haley’s last year at home came with the hard-hitting realization that in a year, she would no longer see one of her oldest

From simple sewing to driving, Haley’s mom was patient

friends every day. Her mom was home in every essence, and

enough to help teach and encourage her to do anything that

she didn’t know if she was ready for that to be so far away.

caught her fancy. Many nights were spent at the dining room

Everything about the future was shaky, but her mom steadied

table, running the sewing machine very slowly (going fast on

Haley. She stood with her through the anxiety-fueled sobs and

those things is scary), and making sure inseams ran straight.

even when Haley changed from the pharmacy major she’d

Some Saturdays were spent in the kitchen baking every kind

been dead set on for five years to journalism. Her mom stood

of cookie and bar. Once she could finally stick with a book

with Haley through the storm of unknowns because that’s what

instead of constantly switching to new ones, Haley’s mom

mothers do. Haley’s last true summer at home was soaked with

would buy her a stack of books every June, and they would do

nostalgia, knowing that things would feel different the next

the library’s summer reading program together.

time she came back. Although much of the future remained unclear, Haley was certain of two things: she would meet her

During high school Haley became even closer with her mom,

love at a dance, given the familial track record, and soon

learning everything about her and the life that came before

enough she would be able to welcome Clara and Dolora –

her. Nights on the weekend after dinner were spent watching

and one day Ellen – each summer in her own garden.

rom-coms and Gilmore Girls, almost all of the shows ending with both of them falling asleep on the couch. Whenever Haley worked on something for school her mom always asked what she could do for her, even driving Haley all over town just to find letters for a photo project. After admiring the dahlias from their garden for years, Haley decided to do more with them.

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PREPARING TOMATOES by georgia sampson This knife might be too big, but it still breaks the polished flesh of the tomato the tear in the skin lays a slice to the side. Red decorated with white seeds paint the plate; the semi­sweet juice envelopes the white tile on the counter and spills across my hands. my slices are thick, but not so thick I grip the knife, but not too hard.

My grandmother taught me that.

The counter below is splashed vermilion and cardinal like a painting that I can never remember the name of.

More cuts and motions move the blade straight down­ sending fissures down the side of the whole, creating slivers.

I fractured my wrist in third grade, and I haven’t felt whole since.

It’s the smallest thing that can set you off, the smallest thing that might define you.

My grandmother taught me that.

The kitchen is a mess now. I must have spread the crimson to the walls.

Her kitchen would have been cleaner. with her straightened knick-­knacks and marble countertops.

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illustration and design by chosie titus

This leaves little room for comparison to the stacks of dishes I have left in the sink and the graying walls I never want to decorate.

I wonder if her kitchen ever reached this level of filth, if it did, she would have never let people see it.

It’s hard to clean it without dyeing my hands in the juice.

I wonder if my grandmother had this problem, if she did, she wouldn’t have told.

When she was my age, she already had my uncle and was preparing for my mom.

With a tomato­-stained plate and a mind that never rests, I ’m nothing like her. No way I ever could be.

The kisses of red that decorated her hair and the sanguine way she cleaned off her knife: I should have asked her how she did it, how she stayed that way­ Only falling into pieces at the end, but I guess I’ll never know.

The plate is full of juice now, swirling around itself and opening up again to show seeds.

The tomatoes have split themselves in front of me.

I must have helped somehow, but I doubt it.

The slices fall in rows now. Some are more uniform than others.

Some of the rows are longer than the others, I would try to fix it but I know there is no use.

Nothing here is perfect, but nothing ever could be.

All we can do is pretend.

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THE POET AND THE GYRE by clarissa dietz The car rounds the bend a little too fast and he says, “Watch out.”

I’m on a carnival ride, seven years old and spinning, and it’s easier to move away from the center than towards it. I’m seven years old and I lean into the spin and hear metal groan.

I find God for the first time in our wood-beamed church, forgetting to breathe during The Canticle of the Turning. I end and God begins as flickers in my vision and weakness in my knees and an ache deep, deep inside me. I understand, then, the need to sacrifice a calf, to wash with blood the feet of such a God. At a family reunion in a park I’m not sure exists, I fling my arms out, blur the world into rings around me. My ankles cross and uncross as I spin. Blood goes out to my tingling fingertips, and the child’s laugh warps in my too-old mouth and still I go, on and faster and forever.

I am in high school, thrown by a poet’s vision. By the image of all creation as a rickety carnival ride: the centre cannot hold, things fall apart. I wonder, in sympathy and anticipation: when?

I slip off the bones of a sweet boy’s spine, dig into his ribs; find God once again, go away for a while. Later I will think about the word unmoored and how tempting it is to let go of that which anchors. Later I will run my fingers across the marks I left and revise: how fragile the anchor.

I imagine that poet as a prophet, hair unwashed and haunted, as I am, by the bodies of small things—chicken bones, a car-killed raccoon, the hollow cricket that has been on the doorstep for weeks. I imagine that the poet goes, as I do, searching drunk in a spinning room for something lost and finds again an acorn, round and dogged as the voice of God, heavy in the palm of the hand.

The acorn is round and heavy and it waits and waits and waits.

I drive through the desert sun, the road winding. My lover grips the door handle hard enough to bruise and my throat aches. He has become a foreign tongue, common roots found only in the dark. We round a bend in the road and he says, “Watch out.”

I wonder if the poet, too, feels dread when the crow swoops in to draw the dead raccoon back into the circle. Dread, too, on the precipice of winter and the sight of hard buds on lifeless branches.

illustrations sage anderson | design by kenzi rayelle

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Relief at the perfect hole bored in the acorn, the weightlessness, the finality. I wonder if the poet, too, feels relief and dread and knows we have not yet been thrown from the gyre.

I bring the car round the bend a little too fast and he says, “Watch out.” The calf in the road looks up as I brake, chewing a mouthful of scrub and dust.

“Relax,” I say. “I know what I’m doing.”

Poem About Ppl, Plcs n Thngs by ava gripp All I need is you and Cleveland and a new fucking vegan bar in Lakewood, or Tremont, or wherever vegan bars are where I can buy Japanese beers and talk about new cars and eat Pad Thai without protein, because do you know what type of shit is in there?

A shot and a beer are all we came for you’re my best friend and we do donuts in the parking lot behind the Catholic Church I want to feel like this all the time.

Maybe I’ll come home this time next year.

Except it’s the best time of year to go to Alabama, or Arkansas maybe they have vegan bars and Pad Thai there too?

I know they have Catholic churches, but I suppose we can go to New York.

Or even Paris, too.

illustrations by sela davis | design by kenzi rayelle

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SCATTER MY ASHES LIKE STARDUST ON THE PRAIRIE by adrian sandersfeld

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Descending into the river valley, Highway 6 diverges down two paths. The corridor through the trees opens onto a quilted landscape of scattered farmland and patches of wild grass.

In the early spring, when the evening sun begins to set, the Millrace looks like a stream of honey. Snowmelt and dirtied slush slowly trickle through the canal, catching amber glimmers on its surface. Seven villages compose the Amana Colonies, each situated no less than a mile apart from one another. All my life, I have called this land my home.

If you stripped away the asphalt road, you’d see the same wild earth that captivated Amana’s founders; banished, Inspirationalist exiles who sought refuge when they landed on the rocky shoes of the ‘New World’ after more than a century of persecution in Europe. Between the eighteenth and midnineteenth centuries, the discordant religious climate of presentday Germany proved a hazard to the branches of Protestantism in conflict with state-approved faiths.

The Inspirationalists’ dissenting belief in Christian pacifism resulted in their repeated banishment by local rulers from villages and towns across southwestern Germany. Here, they mingled with the Moravians, born of the Bohemian reformation in the 15th century. Each upheaval attracted followers to their community from sites across the motherland. Like the Moravians of Herrnhaag, the Inspirationalists valued sacrifice and communal life. In a feedback loop of their oppressors’ design, the Inspirationalists revered and mimicked the selflessness of Jesus Christ, for which they were taxed, imprisoned, and flogged, drawing congregates closer in solidarity as a Protestant group.

By associating their faith with the nurturing and selfless actions of the Lord Jesus, these Protestant sects worshiped the symbol of the lamb and fixated on the side-wound of the crucified messiah.

To branch Moravians and the Inspirationalists, the abdominal puncture—occasionally referred to, in theories on faith, gender, and sex, as the ‘womanly wound’—simultaneously embodies wholeness and multiplicity that cleaved mortal concepts of sex and gender. Christ, the paradoxical incarnation of God, was an intersex figure who served as shepherd, mother, son, and gender-neutral leader of their disciples; a poor exile guiding, in spirit, fellow impoverished exiles for thousands of years after their death. Just as Christ had been punished, the Community of True Inspiration was persecuted by lords and puritanical governments of the German states.

The attention of the Church’s remaining leaders turned to America after failed attempts to keep the community in Germany. Unwilling and unable to continue indulging their

illustrations by adrian sandersfeld | design by kenzi rayelle

dogmatic overlords by paying prejudicial fines and high rents, the Inspirationalists took their leave and embarked on a journey to America. In 1842, when the pietists crossed the Atlantic Ocean, the Inspirationalists escaped persecution and settled in New York. They christened the colony ‘Ebenezer’ before the fast-growing city of Buffalo threatened to impede upon the community’s wishes to sustain themselves on land unspoiled by the corruption of capitalism and industry.

In the years that followed their trek from West Seneca, the Community of True Inspiration established seven villages in the river valley of Iowa. Lush with deciduous forests and creeks lined with riparian marshes and framed by undulating hills and raw cliffsides, the frontier tamed by the Meskwaki and Ochéthi Šakówin before them was their promised land. Before the Great Change, the Inspirationalists sustained themselves in the Amana Colonies on their own reaped harvests, hand-reared livestock, felled trees, sheared wool, and the synergy of a communal kitchen. They were not entirely self-sufficient, contrary to the mainstream understanding of outsiders. From farming equipment to medicine and seeds, the colonists have relied on goods from outsiders’ communities since their arrival.

During the Great Change in 1932, people of Amana welcomed vagrants and wayward folks to take shelter in their care. Not that this was a new development; the Inspirationalists have been protecting outsiders since before they arrived in North America. Despite frowning upon marriage to outsiders—and the contractual agreement of marriage in the first place—the Inspirationalists did not hesitate in the extension of goodwill to the hungry and homeless. Communal meals were prepared with these newcomers in mind in exchange for simple labor from the able-bodied. Newcomers to the community were invited to church services, though their religious participation was never compulsory. Importance was placed on barter and a mutual exchange of goods or services. Even with communal lifestyle falling to the wayside, they maintained their piety.

My own paternal family tree was relocated to the Colonies sometime in the twentieth century from a farm in Williamsburg, just ten miles south of the nearest Amana village. By this time, the Great Change had long since passed. Marrying someone from outside the Amana society no longer came with the condition of banishment. Churches held services in English as well as Kolonie-Deutsch, the distinctive and unique tongue of the Inspirationalists. New homes were built with kitchens included; as the concept of communal meals became obsolete but were far from gone. Oktoberfest, Maifest, and Winterfest continue to bring the folks of Amana together.

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The Sandersfelds of my bloodline took root in Main Amana, the central hub of the seven colonies, and Middle Amana, a mere mile away, several decades after they first settled in Conroy, outside Williamsburg, Iowa. They raised families, founded businesses, and sent their children to school alongside the kin of other outsiders. The Colonies’ slogan, ‘The Handcrafted Escape’, may capture the spirit of the Amanas as a safe haven for the sur vivors of religious persecution but also describes the kind of eternal home it would become for people outside their congregation.

and months that followed the magnificent shower, meteorites were unearthed. As the ground began to thaw in the warmth of spring, pieces of chondrite that fell to the surface became easier to dig up. Like the thousands of other transients and outsiders to the Amana society, the meteor’s earthbound fragments came to be embraced and treasured for the worth they added to their hamlet along the Iowa River. Today, the largest of these specimens are protected relics in the Amana Heritage Museum collection, on display to showcase the heavenly marvel that graced the plains with stardust.

My parents married in 1992 and built my childhood home on an empty lot from the ground up with the help of my paternal grandfather. As tech-savvy as they’d been, and still are, they opted to build a wood stove in the far corner of the living room to keep us warm during the winter months. Hints of the Amanas’ pastoral history are inescapable, even in the newest of housing developments springing up across the thousands of acres of colonized land. Most streets were alike in my village. On ours, all of the houses were tan, beige, and navy blue. The homes framed by 220th Trail followed the architectural style of the colonial revival, colored with a neutral palette. If you stood at the edge of the cornfield across from 27th Avenue and looked up and down the road, you might string them all together like beads on a thread.

When I came out, I felt comfort because Amana children were taught to knit regardless of gender. Because the Inspirationalists believed so genuinely in impartial comity and rejected puritanical notions of conversion therapy. Because my own faith borrows, from them, the idea that my gender is divine. Like artifacts from the heavens, I am warmed to know that I am as loved as relics of cosmic splendor. When, like my birth-name, I die, I will desire nothing more than for the hands of my loved ones to scatter my ashes like stardust on the prairie.

My ancestors were English Quakers on my mother’s side and Norsk-German farmers on my father’s. We were outsiders to the Amana Society, but the nature of the Inspirationalists reassured us of our acceptance. I find myself thanking my paternal ancestors for uprooting themselves from Norway and Germany and transplanting to the Midwest. Even if it is only to myself, I thank them; in my body, the vessel which carries all evidence of my heritage, I thank them. When I realized I was agender, my first steps from out of the closet were met with tangible acceptance. I felt warmth and generosity like a rush of heat from the hearth of Hahn’s Bakery. I felt love like bare feet on the woven texture of the Bergers’ denim rugs. I felt beauty emerge from within me like the orange-crested hills of a Kellenberger painting. I was grounded. I was safe.

In the late winter of 1875, the cloudless, February sky glittered.

Gazing toward the horizon, Amana’s congregates fixed their eyes to the crest of the trail-marred hill beyond the thawing river and beheld a falling star. The Homestead meteorite, as it would later be called, carved a path through the atmosphere above the empty prairie. With a succession of thunderous claps, the dazzling ball of fire exploded above the hills of Iowa County.

Extraterrestrial rock rained down over the forest. In the weeks

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NOTHING SEEMS TO FIT by jenna larson There’s something spilling from your nose that makes my smile turn in different directions

do you know it’s there or is it your ignorance that keeps it running?

I’m wearing your oversized t-shirt and

there’s salt spilling out of my mouth

you didn’t offer to clean it up Instead you grabbed a knife and severed my lip said, salt and blood are like peas and carrots

no one likes them The ceiling fan was drifting into the water and it became the boat that held us together Find your way back to familiarity without a mouth Hold the concrete in your hand as it molds

into the perfect shape of his own Am I making sense? I scream with my eyes and they pop out of my sockets

roll right up to my cat’s feet

she rocks them back and forth until the salt and blood dripping from my mouth

seep into my eyeballs and burn them into a puddle of acid I can’t see anymore

but I know your nose

keeps on running

illustrations by katie sailer | design by riley nakagawa

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FROM THE GROUND UP by gabbie meis To build a house, I’m told, one must first lay the foundation.

Cut into the earth, the deeper the better. Pour the concrete and hope for the best.

My parents, searching for something, anything, to keep us busy, would pile us into the red ’98 Dodge Durango and drive around the neighborhood.

Just like us, the neighborhood was under development, littered with half-finished houses and model homes to tempt families into buying a square of bricks. On Saturdays, the model homes offered lemonade, cookies, and the promise of cool air in the summer heat. We could pretend, for an hour, to want to buy a house and to be able to afford one.

My sisters and I loved the ones with intercom systems. On the brink of the future in 2005, we imagined cultivating a smart house with our voices echoing through the static.

When we pressed the button, we could hear the realtor’s unusually-friendly voice from downstairs and our mom making excuses: “we’ll have to see” or “I’m not sure this model is the one we’re going for.”

We would run from room to room, claiming whichever perfectly-curated bedroom we wanted as our own.

Sometimes, they would have books inside, but more often, the rooms would be bare, more of a hope of a family than the presence of one.

Back downstairs, the realtors would shoot us glares, accompanied by our parents telling us to hush. My fouryear-old sister responded by shitting in the fake toilet.

It was better though, when we could walk through the homes-in-progress. Construction workers built the houses in a matter of days, but on the weekend, the plots would empty.

The exteriors, covered in plastic insulation, awaited their brick overlays and roofs, but when we arrived the sun shone

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deep. Instead of colored walls, the rooms and areas were segregated by wooden beams. 2x4s, probably. My parents would encourage us to explore. Get comfortable. Imagine the couch here, your bed there. We would hike up the unfinished stairs, leading to nowhere, pushing the middle of the board on each step, listening for cracks.

Her father, my mom reasoned, built a house, and it was safe enough.

The sun could reach you anywhere in those houses, awash against the threadbare tanktops on your back.

illustration and design by kenzi rayelle

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THE FAMILY, THE FEMININE, THE FIGHT: A GENDER-CRITICAL REVIEW OF RED DEAD REDEMPTION II by betsy butcher

ARTHUR

gender norms occurring by Jack’s request is unprecedented

One of the most memorable moments of Red Dead Redemption

actively approve and support this activity instead of suggesting

II comes when Arthur agrees to teach young Jack, the child

a more “boyish” activity overthrows the gender expectations as

of his gangmate and rival John Marston, how to fish. Arthur

they relate to the Western genre. Groundbreaking underlying

takes him away from the bustling campsite and down to a quiet

commentary aside, it is the sweetest, most wholesome

river shore. Jack, being five years old, understandably gets

interaction I’ve seen in media in a long time.

for a violent he-man video game. To then have the protagonist

bored with fishing relatively quickly. But instead of splashing or running around or asking to leave, Jack tells Arthur exactly

I can remember stringing clovers together while my father set

what he’d like to do instead: pick flowers.

up a camouflage screen for pheasant hunting, or my sister braiding flowers in my hair while he fished for bluegills. The

Imagine a man with rope knots under the skin of his hands,

calmness and innocence you never quite get back once it

calluses, the lines that come with weary work under the

leaves you. My brother’s little hands would flick a fishing pole

sun on his face. A man who has faced violence, faced law

wildly until the hooks caught on shrubbery or a log. It was that

enforcement, hunted and fished for his own survival and the

little-boy-anxiety that makes quiet moments too loud, and I

survival of the people he loves. You would probably expect

wonder how he could have benefited from a flower crown. No

him to tease, or become angry, or at the very least deny the

one told him he couldn’t make one, but no one ever really told

request. But no — Arthur Morgan nods, and lets the boy go.

him he could, either.

Maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising; Arthur has shown himself

A man giving a boy not only permission, but encouragement to

to frequently be an appreciator of nature’s beauty. He carries

express those ‘feminine’ instincts is an awfully powerful thing.

a journal filled with sketches of the people he lives with and

SADIE

the places he’s seen. He writes about heartache and misery the world has shown him, as well as the surprising moments of joy

that found their way into his life. He is sensitive — not meek,

Red Dead also stars gunslinging, pants-wearing Sadie Adler,

but aware of others, of the world, and unafraid of experiencing

a rescued widow who joins Arthur’s gang early in the plot and

the quieter or simpler parts of life. Not everything has to be a

becomes one of his best friends. She is in many ways a foil to

display of strength. His macho masculinity still allows for the

Arthur — a depiction of subverted femininity to accent and

delicateness of a flower petal, as well as the rough handle of

mirror the masculinity of the protagonist. On the surface, she

a fishing pole.

is coded to be a portrayal of a strong ‘feminist’ woman: she wears pants, carries her own gun, and she rejects the idea that

The scene is framed without dialogue options. The player

as a woman she should want to cook or clean rather than split

has no choice but to allow little, baby-faced Jack to go pick

logs. She’s also a helluva shot.

flowers, and even encourage him to do so. Arthur, the Western gunslinger, just nods and tells Jack how nice it is that he’d like

Sadie is a badass, an Annie Oakley-level sharpshooter who

to make a flower necklace for his mama. The subversion of

insists on equally splitting work with the gang’s men, but she’s

Visual

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a feminist because she is written to deny passive, western

drenching her face, her clothes, and her braid. She looks, for

narratives of women. She laments the loss of her husband,

a moment, like a wild animal.

displays vulnerability about how much she misses him, and even struggles with an implied sexual assault by a rival gang.

This moment of ferocity is important not just because it

She and Arthur grow close and depend on each other without

highlights the masculine qualities of Sadie’s personality, but

any trace of a romantic connection. This display of platonic

because it exists in a complicated mixture alongside her softer

support and complicated assumption of masculinity and

side. Sadie can be both violent and sympathetic because she

femininity is a much more equality-seeking take on the Western

exists outside of a simplified gender binary. It’s not that Sadie

tropes’ definition of womanhood than just wearing pants.

is crazy – it’s just that she possesses the same ruthlessness as the male gang members of the Red Dead Redemption universe.

There is a moment late in the game when the player is presented

Her morals and actions reflect the difficulties she has faced,

one of the final side quest choices: to either help your friend

and this ambiguity of character is fully felt. Instead of making

Sadie get revenge on the gang that caused her so much trauma

her demure or blameless, Sadie is instead a person, with all the

or end the cycle of violence and let them live. It’s one of the

messiness of personhood included.

most complex moral dilemmas of the game — the player can be loyal to Sadie or curb bloodshed. As Sadie implores Arthur

When the fighting is over Arthur brings her a chair, and

for help she says, “You know what they did to me, and to my

she begins to cry. She discloses how much she misses her

husband. . .” Let’s say for the sake of argument that the player

husband, “every day, every moment.” She turns from rage

chooses loyalty over peace.

and anger to the purest expression of grief. Of vulnerable heartbreak. In that moment the player sees the layers of Sadie

During this final raid, she repeatedly screams the name of her

sit side-by-side: the manly gunslinger and the devoted wife.

murdered husband and her own, calling out “You ruined us,” to

Not competing, but coexisting.

the men she is shooting. Sadie insists multiple times that there is a specific man who Arthur cannot, under any circumstances, kill. When she finally finds him hiding in an attic at the end of the mission, she is crazed, leaps on his body, and stabs him directly in the heart. It’s gruesome, and one of the bloodiest murders of the entire game — by the end she has blood

illustration and design by kenzi rayelle

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illustration by alex herrick

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fin

Otis was not harmed in the making of this magazine.

illustration by kenzi rayelle

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