Fools Vol. 9

vol. 9 december 2020

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T TH HE E

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My intent for the cover of Volume 9 was to make space to acknowledge the overwhelming loss, pain, and isolation of this year, and the regeneration and discovery that have come out of that time. In March, I made photographs of my body to examine how growing up in a digital age has shaped me literally and figuratively, and in conscious and unconscious ways. A few weeks into that work, everything moved online, and I could no longer discuss my progress with my peers and professor in person. Finishing a project so intimate and human in a virtual format felt like a tug-of-war between my curated internet persona and raw, physical self. Sitting with that uncomfortable intimacy and the accompanying dissociation was the catalyst for this cover project.

Over the summer, I stopped feeling like time existed in its same linear space. My relationship with reality fragmented further as I spent more and more of my days staring at screens, and the absence of human interaction was replaced with a constant, claustrophobic realization. I had naively allowed the false sense of security provided by my online presence to influence my understanding of myself and the world for nearly my entire life. I was staring into a reflection of myself I did not recognize and had perhaps never truly known. This cover is representative of that tension and urge to break away, and the solace to be found in collectively experiencing aloneness and transformation.

The photo at the center of the front cover is one from my March endeavor, and surrounding it is a myriad of imagery from other projects, in addition to text and symbols indicative of a Zoom-dominated year. I am incredibly thankful for my assistant, Madi Tarbox, for her patience and expertise in giving life to these feelings, as well as the rest of the Fools visual team.

Gabby Estlund

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Fools Magazine is principally supported by the University of Iowa’s Magid Center for Undergraduate Writing and generously funded by the University of Iowa Student Government, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Department of English. Thank you to these sponsors for suppporting our mission and efforts.

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

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C CO O N N T T E E N N T TS S In Lieu of Flowers Untitled Death Bought Band-Aids Egghead Out of the WTR How to Kill a Chicken Leather Migratorius Phase 1 Non-Perpetual Care Lord of the Flies Revolution This Island Earth Shimmer The Unavoidable Scope of Death, or, My Favorite Candle Night of Self Care Drawn Couplets Fingers Illustration News of Deliverance Twenty-Twenty Correctable

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CCCOOON NNTTT R RR III B BB UU TT OO R RS S Kaitlyn Kuker | Eva Long | Cheyenne Mann | Stella Rose Tarlin | Malcolm MacDougall | Jackie Claiborne | Selveyah Gamblin | Taylor Degroot | Gigi Bell | Cailin Hall | Caroline Meek | Alexander Fox | Rin Swann | Hannah Barrett | Abby Huls | Claire Whitehurst | Sheila Pang | Christopher Wayne | Madi Tarbox | Carmela Furio

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HEE EEDDIITTO OR RSS TTH Dear Reader, This time apart has made apparent the importance of Fools’ relationship with its readers and contributors. For us, not being able to sit in a room together and share our love for this process has made our community bond feel as distant and grainy as a buffering screen. But because of the resilience of our members, our team, and our readers, we persist. Fools could not exist without the people who continue to support it both with their creative contributions and their time spent thumbing through its pages.

Even though Fools is changing and evolving, it was important for us to remain in touch with the founding principles of this space: to make art heard by providing a medium for creatives to showcase their work and their talents while acting side by side. The medium has changed over time—from crowded classrooms and glossy pages to online meetings and interactive web experiences—but the mission has not. Art has a way of finding its voice, even in extraordinary circumstances.

The content of the magazine is an honest representation of what our team is feeling right now, and what our members are doing to keep their creative talents in practice. The things that we are making may or may not be representative of the times, but they are decidedly a result of sitting with ourselves in a way that we hadn’t ever anticipated.

We eagerly await the return of poring over spreads in someone’s overpriced apartment, or meeting in coffee shops to discuss pieces; but we’ll hold onto the heartening show of perseverance modeled by this generation of fools as we move forward.

Anyway, we hope you’re alright.

The Fools Team

M MA A SS S TT TH H EE EA AD D M A H A D Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Brand Liaison Treasurer Curatorial Liaison Photo Editor Design Editor Web Editor Writing Editor Writing Editor Writing Editor

Anna Nelson Nicole Pagliari Noah Neal John McAtee Melissa Martínez-Raga Gabby Estlund Mollie Phalen Franny Marzuki Natalie Muglia Callan Latham Melissa Martínez-Raga

Design Assistant Cailin Hall Design Assistant Abby Huls Design Assistant Sioban Morley Photo Assistant Madi Tarbox Web Assistant Gretchen Lenth Writing Assistant Marriah Talbott-Malone Writing Assistant Nicholas Cordes

In Lieu of Flowers

By Kaitlyn Kuker

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I was enrolled in a social work class during my sophomore year, in which I learned about invisible death and feelings that accompany the denial of death, especially in the United States. American society is fascinated with the idea of death, our relationship with it having been determined by factors like industrialization, modern medicine, the modern family, and largely, through our consumption of media. From the time we are small until the day we die, death surrounds us, yet we are numb to it, often denying it when it touches our lives. Herman Feifel, editor of the book The Meaning of Death said, “I believe that how we regard and how we treat the dying and survivors are prime indications of a civilization’s intention and target.

In emphasizing awareness of death, we sharpen and intensify our appreciation of the uniqueness and preciousness of life.” This work is an attempt to confront death in hopes of increasing the extent to which we live and care for our dying.

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BY EVA LONG

DEATH BOUGHT BAND-AIDS

By Cheyenne Mann Death sat in front of her, wearing a thrifted Hawaiian shirt and eating pancakes without syrup. Elizabeth preferred to drench her breakfast in sugar. She liked food so sweet it would scorch her organs. A haphazard smile, stained by black coffee, beamed out at her from behind Death’s lips and her bones felt like honey. He smiled a lot. She loved it when he smiled. It was warm, like eggs in the morning.

Elizabeth loved Death with every bloodyplucked heartstring in her chest.

HE WAS OLD TELEVISION STATIC. F L I C K E R I N G , S Q U I R M I N G , ALWAYS SEARCHING TO FILL THE SHAPE OF A MAN. HE WAS A VO I D ; N OT H I N G BUT CHAOS AND PANCAKES. In his middle age, Death kept himself presentable. He had a full head of plush, dark hair that feathered out from his scalp like a crow. His eyes were burnt molasses and they crinkled with laugh lines in the corners. Death didn’t have skin. That was something Elizabeth loved about him. He was old television static.

Flickering, squirming, always searching to fill the shape of a man. He was a void; nothing but chaos and pancakes. Skin issues were a commonality between them. Something that linked them beyond their fondness for each

other. His skin was in constant motion and hers, perpetually rotting. Genetics were flesh and blood. Death had neither and Elizabeth had too much of both.

“My knee is bleeding,” she told him. He paused, fork halfway to his swarming lips.

“Again?” he asked with genuine concern.

“I’m going to go to the store. We’re out of Band-Aids.”

In the few years since Death had adopted her, he had spent thousands of dollars on BandAids. Mornings would roll around and once more Elizabeth would apply as many as would fit, desperately trying to plug up the gaping hole in her knee. The Band-Aids would sop up ungodly amounts of thick, sweet blood until the wound eventually overpowered the itchy adhesive. Knees were not her strongpoint. She had hurt her left one badly and the skin never knit itself back together.

The air of the conifers hung lightly, smelling of mint and pepper. Elizabeth liked to hike up the mountains. She consumed the flesh of the trees with her calloused palms and memorized the texture on her fingertips. To climb a conifer was to conquer life. Atop a throne made of branches, she would sit and swing her legs. The earth breathed below her, shifting in shades of green and brown and blue. She swore if she leaned in close enough, fixating her vision on the intangible lungs encrusted in rock, she could pulse with the skin of the world.

One humid day in mid-spring, she leaned too far forward. Razor blade branches sliced her arms, scraping her body raw at every angle as she fell.

She landed knees first into the hard-packed, pebble-embroidered ground. Blood abandoned

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her body as fast as it possibly could, racing in out of capillaries to water the grass around her.

Her body was ruined, cracked at every angle, and she knew that this was where her skeleton would dissolve. The impact bounced its way up her bones and rattled in her teeth and when she looked up from the explosion of her legs, she saw TV static. That was how they started; instead of taking her away, Death simply stayed.

“I’ll go with you then, kiddo.”

“I can go myself.”

“I’d like to go with you.”

She returned to her eggs, covered in thick crystal sugar. Elizabeth poked the spongy, yellow blob and watched as it withered into soggy, green rot, shriveling in on itself like a leech. Blonde hair fell in her face and covered her eyes but she didn’t dare move to tuck it behind her ears. She didn’t want to rot. Death took care of it. His boney pinky drifted across her cheekbone. Swarming lips kissed the top of her head, gently.

It would scorch more than sugar. She’d never be able to do that, though. She’d never be able to touch her organs. She didn’t want to rot. She didn’t want to be just bone melting into putrid, liquid flesh. Death would be lonely without her.

And she’d be lonely without him.

DEATH WOULD BE LONELY WITHOUT HER. AND SHE’D BE LONELY WITHOUT HIM. Death parallel parked, hitting the curb just once, and they went into the store. The medical aisle was a wonder. It was decorated for Christmas. Shiny blue garlands glistened like cellophane on the shelves. They looked sharp and itchy, and Elizabeth wanted to wrap herself tightly in them. She’d have to touch her skin to do that, though.

“I like these ones,” Death mused and held out a light pink box. Strawberry Shortcake grinned at her, a peach-colored Band-Aid decorated with fruits stuck to the bridge of her nose. Elizabeth smiled at Death and dropped the Band-Aids into her shopping basket.

“I love you,” he told her, and she wondered why.

“Anything else?” Death asked.

Death drove and she didn’t argue. Instead, she looked out the window at the slurry of grey slush on the road and imagined what it would feel like to fill her lungs with it. Harsh, compressed crystalline ice that would drown her slowly, creaking in muddy strain as it was pushed lower and lower into her body until she popped at the seams. It would be nice to feel it. The rawness.

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“I’d like some fruit.”

As Elizabeth walked, the leg of her jeans stuck to the open wound. The patch of skin had been missing since she was eight and had fallen. It was surely still out there, somewhere, living alongside sphagnum moss and snail shells. If

found, she could reach out and touch it. Would that skin be more real than the skin she was wearing? Or would that skin rot if she touched it too? Blood pooled and congealed on the pure white linoleum tile underneath her as she grabbed a mesh bag full of Red Delicious apples.

S T R AW B E R R Y SHORTCAKE GRINNED AT HER, A PEACHCOLORED BAND-AID DECORATED WITH FRUITS STUCK TO THE BRIDGE OF HER NOSE.

is eight. She dies instantly. The parents die at the scene. Blood loss. The son is ten and he’s the last to go. He dies at the hospital, alone. The clerk gets convicted of quadruple homicide.

Electric chair.”

The cashier grinned down at her. “Would you like these apples in a bag?”

“Yes, please.” She smiled her most lovely smile at him. “I don’t like touching the skin.”

Death reached into his wallet, dropping twelve dollars and forty-two cents into Elizabeth’s open palm. She placed it on the counter beside the register and took the plastic bag from the clerk.

“Merry Christmas,’’ she said, and Death ruffled her hair.

“Ready?” Death asked her. She nodded.

Stepping out of line, she reached inside the polyethylene bag. The apples were rotten.

Liquid sludge splashed around the bottom of the bag, drenching the Strawberry Shortcake Band-Aids in a moldy batter. The scent of acidic mildew creeped into the air. She brought a “Electric chair,” Death leaned close to her ear handful of mush up to her lips and cried. and whispered. He did this often. It was a fun little game of theirs. Death would tell her how “Oh dear, you touched the skin, didn’t you?” people would die, and Elizabeth would smile Death clicked his teeth in disappointment. and bleed.

“I just wanted an apple.” She should have gotten “He goes on a cocaine-induced bender in ten oranges; a rind protects their skin. Maybe she years. Kills a family of four while driving a car could’ve eaten one of them. Maybe the citric he stole from a grocery store parking lot. The acid would have been strong enough to tear her car is blue. There’s a pink bumper sticker that esophagus to shreds. says ‘I honk for reusable straws.’ The daughter Elizabeth got in line for the clerk with the balding, sandy hair. She liked his smile and the marmalade acne that dotted his cheeks. He smelled sharp, like pine.

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Death wiped away a tear on her cheek and she buzzed like a swarm of bees. He reached into his shirt pocket and produced an apple, Red Delicious, shining like ruby gemstones. Her mouth watered and she wanted to yell. She wanted to pull her teeth out one by one so she could never bite into anything again.

“You know you need to ask me for help with things like this,” he said.

Death held the fruit to her and she bit into it.

Winter crisp and sweet as sugar, Death smiled and the world was static.

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DEATH HELD THE FRUIT TO HER AND SHE BIT INTO IT. WINTER CRISP AND SWEET AS SUGAR, DEATH SMILED AND THE WORLD WAS STATIC.

EGGHEAD By Ch eye n n e M an n

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O U O T H WT

T F E R

By Stella Rose Tarlin Content Warning: Discussion of sexual assault and coercion.

8–18–2020, Iowa City, Iowa: I delete every SWMRS song from my playlists and remove two SWMRS t-shirts from my closet. It feels like mourning.

8–2–2020 through 8–17–2020, Iowa City, Iowa: I do not listen to SWMRS. I cannot bring myself to purge them from my library.

I have always been a music person. Not always a musician, but a sing-in-the-shower, dance-whilecleaning, skip-my-bike-helmet-for-headphones kind of music person. I listen to it constantly, in any situation that it’s possible to do so, and that kind of listening cannot persist without some side effects. When you listen to music like that, it changes you; it leaks into your bones and rearranges your ears until it defines you, until the periods of your life are best labeled by the albums that you played while they passed by.

8–1–2020, Interstate 80, Iowa: I find out what Joey Armstrong did to Lydia Night.

When I was 18, I passed my driver’s test on the first try and drove home with Fall Out Boy’s M A N I A blaring through my speakers. When I was 17, I broke up with my boyfriend of two years and spent the night listening to Hot Mulligan’s Opportunities on repeat. Before either of those moments, I drove to Oberlin, Ohio with my dad and played SWMRS’s Drive North on both the trip and the return.

That trip was not, in the end, important. I’ve forgotten most of the details of that little college town, but I remember the thrill of hearing “D’You Have A Car” at highway speeds for the first time.

I remember the way the chorus of “Hannah”

echoed around namelessly in my brain until a search of what few lyrics I knew told me that this, too, was SWMRS. Oberlin was unimportant, but its soundtrack has stayed with me.

8–1–2020, Interstate 80, Illinois: I drive from Evergreen Park to Iowa City with my dad. On the way, he tells me he saw a headline about SWMRS recently, and that it didn’t sound good.

More than any other band, my adult life has been defined by SWMRS. The August I moved out was the August they took over, dethroning my former favorite band and album to reign supreme at the top of all my playlists. They only had one album at the time, Drive North, but I played it on repeat until I knew every word, until even the songs I hadn’t loved at first were engraved word for word and note by note into the deepest layers of my skin.

7–21–2020, Instagram: The official SWMRS account posts Joey Armstrong’s apology letter regarding Lydia Night. In it, he admits that, although he “[doesn’t] agree with some of the things she said,” he “failed her as a partner.” He does not acknowledge any specific allegations.

He is currently 25 years old, and was 22 during their relationship.

SWMRS were more to me than just one band.

They were a symbol. They were an entry point to the world of modern California punk, a gateway drug for beach-themed band names and wailing guitars that made me feel like I was speeding down a summer highway. I devoured everything that Spotify’s artist radio had to offer, made a

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surf punk playlist to repeat whenever I craved energy and joy. I named it Gone SWMN, in honor of the band that introduced me to this world.

I became obsessed not only with SWMRS, but also everyone in their orbit. I came to love The Frights, FIDLAR, and Charly Bliss because of them. I came to love, almost as much as SWMRS themselves, the Regrettes, a group of teenage girls from Cali with a lead singer on whom I developed an immediate crush.

7–20–2020, Instagram: Lydia Night, lead singer of the Regrettes, posts a five-page letter regarding the manipulation and sexual coercion that she suffered during her yearlong relationship with Joey Armstrong. She is currently 19 years old, and was 16 during their relationship.

Not counting shock, the first thing I felt toward Joey Armstrong was rage.

I would be less ashamed of this fact if I did not believe that SWMRS had a large hand in teaching me how to feel angry.

7–17–2020, Twitter: Cole Becker, lead singer of SWMRS, responds to an accusation of sexual assault against the lead singer of The Frights.

The final line of his post reads: “this is a time where it’s crucial to fearlessly examine ways we embody patriarchy and rape culture and do the work to unlearn and amend.”

I’m still close to my ex-boyfriend’s former best friend; he’s the one person I regularly trade music recommendations with. He has better taste in songs than he does in people, and lately I’ve been searching for a way to tell him why I hate how he’s rebuilding his old friendship with my ex.

How do I convince somebody that I need him to be angry for me? How do I convince somebody that the friend who defined his teenage years has a secret superpower: the bizarre ability to beg and beg until someone else begins to feel disgusting?

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travel, I see SWMRS perform live for the first and only time, with opening acts Beach Goons and Destroy Boys. It is one of the best nights of my life.

I dyed my hair for the first time this summer, and as much as I hate to admit it, I felt a secret thrill each time I remembered that my chosen cut and color were not dissimilar to those of Cole Becker, my favorite SWMRS member.

2–15–2019, Spotify: SWMRS releases Berkeley’s on Fire, their second studio album. It has ten songs, three of which were previously released as singles.

Berkeley’s on Fire was my defining album.

It was different from my usual, more punk than pop-punk in both sound and theme, and it took its time to grow on me. It did, though, and more importantly, I grew with it. I stepped out from the other side of that album, the other side of that era, changed — and I no longer know what to do with that. I have never been good at being angry, let alone out loud, but SWMRS taught me a way.

Cole Becker and his band showed me how to laugh and sing and be filled with righteous anger at injustice, and I have since become almost comfortable in that feeling.

Can I turn that same anger toward the person that gifted it to me in the first place? Can I laugh at his awful hypocrisy knowing that, if any man but his bandmate had been outed as Lydia Night’s abuser, Cole would be laughing right along with me?

October 2018, New York, New York: Lydia Night ends her relationship with Joey Armstrong.

All of SWMRS were aware of their romantic involvement, as was the Armstrong family (including Joey’s father, lead singer of Green Day).

How do I apologize for sending him my SWMRScovered playlists, for forcing his ears to join mine in their guilt?

I look in the mirror now — look at my dyed hair, patterned shirts, heavy lace-up boots, and I am proud. The self I was before Berkeley burned would have thought herself far too uncool for any of those affectations, but that has changed.

I am glad that I have changed.

4–20–2019, Milwaukee, Wisconsin: After spending six hours and over 100 dollars on bus

Still, at the edges of my reflection, I cannot help but wonder. Is it possible to separate cause and

effect, to know whether I changed with the album or vice versa? I listened to it constantly before I even knew I liked it. I listened enough to send its chords and lyrics past my bones and into the nerves and mind that build my personality, and I fear it might have worked an alteration there.

I like the self I’ve built post-Berkeley, but I am bitter and ashamed every time I stop to think about its building blocks.

12–28–2017, Evergreen Park, Illinois: I break up with my high school boyfriend. He does not seem to understand why, and I cannot articulate how I have come to hate him.

When I say that I am bad with anger, I mean a thousand things. I avoid conflict like the plague, I am terrified of hurting others’ feelings, and I am far too easily taken in by love. I stayed with somebody I hated for months because I didn’t want to hurt him, and even now, in all my rage, I have not yet purged the love for SWMRS from my body.

I do not want to show respect for any facet of that band, but want alone can’t stop my hand from acting otherwise. I never knew before that adoration is involuntary, but I am still incapable of writing SWMRS’s name without breaking the cursive script that fills my notebooks to give them their proper printed capitals.

September 2017, Europe: After inviting her band to open for SWMRS on an international tour, Joey Armstrong begins to make romantic and sexual advances toward Lydia Night. At his request, she will keep this relationship secret from her friends, family, and therapist.

I worry about discussing SWMRS through the lens of the personal. I worry I’m inserting myself where I don’t belong, that I’ll appear as though I want to take Lydia Night’s trauma and pretend that it is mine. That is not my intention. As a fan of hers built by the deeds of her abuser, I fear I already owe Lydia Night one apology. I do not want to owe her another.

I would not have written this if I didn’t have to, but I cannot see another way out of the deep end.

July 2017, Sister Lakes, Michigan: I spend a

weekend with several friends at a lake house owned by one of their families. My boyfriend tries constantly to touch me when the others aren’t looking. He cannot seem to understand that “no” could have a reason besides fear of being seen. At its basest level, my anger toward SWMRS is personal.

I was terrified to come out to my high school boyfriend as asexual, but when the moment came, I thought my fears had been unfounded.

He told me that he loved me, that he was perfectly OK with stopping where I asked. It took far too many repetitions of his pleading, denying, and questioning before I finally realized that no, he wasn’t.

I hate Joey Armstrong because I was a fan, but more than that, because he is familiar. I know the kind of shame, revulsion, and confusion that he deals in. I know how it feels to be pressured past one’s limits.

July 2017, Sister Lakes, Michigan: A friend compliments the SWMRS song that I put on our communal playlist, and though I’ve barely even begun to learn the words, I feel like it’s me he’s approving of.

On the corner of my dresser, quarantined from all my other clothes, two SWMRS t-shirts sit in a folded pile. I know that I want to get rid of them, but I have not yet figured out how. The wastebasket feels like an awful anticlimax, but burning them, my first idea, would take far more effort than they’re worth.

I thought that my high school breakup had earned me freedom from revulsion, but now it won’t stop creeping back to find me every time a chord or lyric reminds me of what used to be my favorite. I can no longer listen to the songs I used to love without dwelling on how, in the spaces between notes, the drumbeat is tearing down somebody not unlike me. The drumbeat is making me bolder, making me angry.

It is all I can do to hope that, even if the opening notes of Drive North had never graced my ears, I would still have discovered this anger.

April 29, 2017, Evergreen Park, Illinois: Spotify recommends me a SWMRS song for the first time. Enamored, I save and listen to every song they’ve ever written.

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how to kill a chicken

By Malcolm MacDougall Illustration by Jackie Claiborne

CONTENT WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGERY

Here is how to kill a chicken with no struggle the he’s recently started to grow it and hasn’t learned way your friend taught you in the baking summer to shave it properly. of 2012, hunched in a tin-roofed shed on his family farm that grows like a cancer on the borders of “Why do they run like that?” you ask.

Marion, Iowa: He shrugs. “They’re dumb. Too dumb to know Step one: Pin the chicken and hypnotize it by they’re dead.” His voice is deep like a bullfrog’s drawing a line in front of its face. Let it sag croak. You’d been in the church choir together and relax, its little mind focusing only on this when your voices had broken, simultaneous dark line stretching forever before it. creak-cracks in the middle of the Gloria. You would both race down the scale, pushing the Step two: As it lies there, thinking of nothing Adam’s apples protruding from your throats but the line—the line—reach for your hatchet further into your collarbones. with the caution “Sometimes I wonder if of a cat. It can be they know they’re alive a small one, but when they are,” he rumbles. make sure its head is heavy; it must You watch the headless bite clean through chicken, now fallen on its the awkward neck side, legs pedaling at the without catching on the brittle bones. sky. It doesn’t seem to understand. The primal urges that moved its body are still telling it to Step three: Clip off the head with a spurt of eat, to run, to fuck. Was there any instruction in arterial blood. The chicken will, at first, those cells that told it when to die? not quite know what to do; its brain that has been telling its body line, line, line is no longer Seven years pass by like pages in a flipbook and giving those signals. The chicken’s scrawny you drift apart. It’s nothing severe, no fights, no little calves will double up underneath it, caustic remarks, just the natural progression of propelling the headless body forward like a childhood friendships. Just what happens diver off their block. when you’re too much a man to say how much you care, like two pieces of Step four: Let the chicken have its last run, driftwood bobbing apart in a softtoo mindless to understand that this is the rippling sea. end. Its claws kick up the dried summer dirt, its dark blood turns the rut of the line into iron- You’re scrolling through bland smelling sludge. It runs with no direction, a Facebook posts, watching lives frantic, random circle that grows ever smaller. unspool in front of you, people who don’t really Your friend watches its desperate flight with a faint care about each other smile. He’s grown up on this farm, the executions spitting sentiments such a regular part of his life it no longer leaves like mother birds an impression. He has a bit of smeared blood on vomiting down their throats. his cheek from when he wiped it with a gory hand, children’s the hatchet still dangling from limp, casual fingers. One post stops you.

The blood clings to his haphazardly stubbly chin;

“Why do they run like that?” you ask.

He shrugs. “They’re dumb. Too dumb to know they’re dead.”

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It starts with “We have news,” and suddenly you earth. The heavy smell of rain on metal hangs off of the crucifix towering above you. An agonized remember him.

Christ clings to it like a wiry squirrel, all stringy It begins with that glistening morning killing muscle and rusted face, staring you down with chickens when the doors burst open and you’re tormented eyes. You scuttle past and creep swallowed up. You remember how he wanted to between the silent rows of tilted grave markers. do music, and how you argued about which was the superior childhood state, New Jersey or New Stones and tiny obelisks with farmer’s families York. You remember how he listened to you as in neat lines glare at you. MOTHER and FATHER you talked and talked and talked about how if and CHILD, CHILD, CHILD. You scan the names, superheroes teleported fast enough from point searching for his, wondering if you found the right place.

A to point B, they would start to show up at point B before Chickens are the stupidest they’d left point A, and wasn’t animals. Humans know that so cool? when we have been killed.

When our brains are You read about how he went severed from the spinal cord creeping down to a hotel halfway across the world—an ordinary our backs, we have the decency to flop over vacation to someplace in Eastern Europe, some and die.

But, standing in the graveyard, the grand vacation destination—how he’d been as happy as he’d ever been. heavy damp weighing down your shoulders, you want him to be there.

You read how he’d eaten something off, not had water for two days, how something had You want to see him after death, see some sort gone wrong. of life. Even if he bursts from behind a tree with his head split open, pulpy and gooey like You read how he ran and ran and ran in a straight a smashed-in orange. Even if he spins in everline off the twelfth story of the hotel. tightening circles, spurting gore. You’re hungry for him, to see him—offensive, horrifying, but You read how he died. there. You want him to defy death, to stand up again and run in crazed, loose patterns.

Did he still run when he hit the ground?

Chickens have it right, you think. Better to not You don’t go to his funeral, don’t feel like you know you’re dead than to be standing outside had the right. All you could think of was the lurid of it with rain soaking through your thriftdetails of it all—how he must have looked, how his store windbreaker. Better to not know than to body must have come apart. You hate your lack of be trapped longing for impossibilities. respect, but you can’t stop. You replay the run you imagined him taking in your mind’s eye; you think You go home, the damp of the rain clinging to of his mud-brown eyes dark with fear and panic. your cheeks like chicken blood.

Did he still run when he hit the ground?

You promise to visit him in an impassioned Facebook message to an empty page. You find your way to the little graveyard where they buried him, and you have to leap over the sagging wrought-iron fence to get in.

It’s been raining and the water slops into your shoes as it squeezes out of the muddy, slogging

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L L E E A A T T H H E E R R

WHAT

By Selveyah Gamblin

AM

WHERE

DOING?

I

GOING?.

What am I doing? Where am I going? This is not my skin, and this is not my brain, and this is not my world. This charade has gone too far, too long. The last time I was in my own skull … I cannot remember. I cannot seem to find a way out of being crammed into any little black box that makes me look perfect. Desirable.

Every new person I encounter rips a part of me away, leaving this stupid fucking fake leather to show. When was the last time I was relaxed—unremarkable? Can you tell me? Because I sure as hell don’t know. Who I want to be is so far from what they—you—have made me that I lie awake, crippled with a fear of having strayed too far to turn back. So I let this fear pull my veins and my hands and my lips to tell fake stories that show my worth, that I deserve to be here, that I am remarkable. I pretend to be unbearably complex, hard to read. I chant to myself “come on, babe, be more like they want you to be and you’ll make it; show some leather!” Maybe then I can fool everyone into thinking I have untold stories waiting to be pulled from deep below to fill you all with awe, keep you interested in me just a bit longer. Make them love me a second more. When the old graying man at the end of the long table interviews me, he wants to hear about my dangerous, tear-jerking adventures in this land of which I suddenly do not belong. A new piece of flesh rips apart to reveal yet another portion of shiny, polished, beautifully faux leather. When the well-intentioned editor who has never seen a world outside of her small town reads words branded onto my heart against my will, she wants me to write more to entertain her colorful imagination. More about struggle, more about pain. More. I am forced to claw at the last of my weak skin, eager to give them a peek of more of the pretty leather they know will be there. I am enough, but that is not enough. You have no time for my happiness or my joy, only my sadness, only my worst. You make me worse, don’t you know that? When you pull at the last part of my skin that I have remaining, my actual skin, you make me so much worse. You read me, critique me, you tear me apart, break me down and in my place you build a new leather suit. Why? What makes you so hungry to see the leather? It took me so long to build this thick skin, only for you to tell me it’s not what you wanted all along.

Whatever … The leather is quite beautiful now.

THE LEATHER THE LEATHER IS QUITE IS QUITE BEAUTIFUL NOW. BEAUTIFUL NOW. 15

AM

I

I Interrupt Myself Most of All Photographs by Taylor Degroot

MI GRAT ORI US

ART BY EVA LONG WRITING BY GIGI BELL

When you drive for a long time, all you can think about is not driving. Not even thinking about the destination you’re reaching so much as thinking about being somewhere else, or maybe somewhen else. Your mind flickers in ways known only to it, like the unknown forces that guide the crackle of a candle flame, the particular zagging pattern that a bolt of lightning takes, or that mysterious extra sense gifted to migratory birds that ensures they are never lost. You can listen to music, but you are quickly faced with the unmoving monument that is your music taste, and the realization of how few songs you actually like at any given time.

Once that resource is exhausted, if you are lucky enough to have traveling companions, you can try conversation. But on a trip as exhaustingly somber as this, nobody can think of much to say.

You even take a gander at observing some of those birds high in the sky, ink specks so far away that you can’t tell if they’re making some immense journey across their known world or if they’re just taking their equivalent of a walk around the neighborhood. You find this last option to be particularly inadvisable; your contorted form trapped in a wheeled cage makes both you and the birds above unspeakably sad.

You placate yourself with better memories of better journeys that would make the spying birds above jealous of you instead of the other way around.

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You placate yourself with better memories of better journeys that would make the spying birds above jealous of you instead of the other way around. You think about the tour to the French countryside with grass so green that it’s permanently tainted your view of the farmlands back home. You remember Chongqing, China, with its hidden delights such as a faraway city (amusement park? tourist trap?) containing among its curiosities a cat café, a wax museum, and a noodle stand selling transparent glass noodles dripping with a spicy sauce—eyewatering to your American palate. You remember a road trip through Italy, so deeply engraved into your soul that just hearing one of the songs on the playlist you made for the trip (“Gimme! Gimme!

Gimme!,” “Sucker,” “The Chain”) throws you back to that bus and the warm sugary taste of the Haribo candy that sustained you hour to hour.

But inevitably, thoughts of past travels only leave you with a hurt heart and the knowledge that this journey you are taking—this final drive there and back—is probably the last one you are taking for a long time, through no fault of your own (this being the most frustrating part). You don’t want to be making this trip, but it must be done. It is happening earlier than you anticipated. You had already picked a slot to clear the stuff out of your dorm the following week. And though things had been precariously slowing for some time, it suddenly seemed liable to grind to a halt. Many cities have ordered their people to stay indoors. If you don’t get there and back now, you might not get another chance for a long time.

There aren’t a lot of people out here, which was to be expected, given the circumstances. You are sure this flock of vehicles on the road is looking significantly shabbier than its aerial counterparts.

What surprises you is that people are making this

drive at all. You feel both a little comforted and a little betrayed by the fact that the road ahead demonstrates that you are not alone in the universe.

Why are they here? You try and put yourself in their minds. For the truck drivers, you suspect that they are simply out here for the sake of their jobs. The smaller cars are more inscrutable. What reason do they have to be driving? You see those trying to get to their homes, their families. You see those trying to outrun the inevitable. All are frightened, even if they don’t think about it. Like the birds above.

Like you.

You remember a time, months ago, encapsulated in a meme, shared with friends in the dorm lounge on an uneventful night. Some joke about how the world was overdue for another plague, made by some young person in a few minutes for some quick and dirty clout on whichever site it was on—Twitter, probably, its false white bird laughing along with you, or maybe at you. You don’t even remember.

You do remember the laughter. Why was it even funny? Why was any of this funny? You definitely don’t remember now.

You remember a time just a few weeks ago: feeling overwhelmed, on the verge of drowning; like you feared you would during your one fateful semester on your high school’s canoe and kayak team; like a land bird with wet, useless feathers. You remember a harried conversation with someone, it doesn’t matter who, where you said something to the effect of, “God, I just need a break. I just need everything to stop for a few days so I can catch my breath.”

Well, someone listened. It seems like some fairy tale or myth—your wish being cruelly twisted before your eyes to the laughter of a vengeful djinn. It adds to the overall feeling inside you that this is all just some low-budget TV show that someone in another dimension is watching idly while doing something more exciting. Nothing feels real—not the sky, not the rolling hills, not the birds above, not even the car—and you begin to wonder if there was ever a time when you weren’t driving.

When you stop driving, whether at a rest stop or at a hotel for the night or back home when you’re unpacking all your junk from the car, all you can think about is the state of driving. You can feel it intensely; when you sit still after getting home, you feel the pull and sway of the highway, like a weathered sea captain on shore leave. After all that thinking of being elsewhere, all that occupies your

mind now is the vehicle that could theoretically take you anywhere, if the country wasn’t about to go on a total lockdown in some faint attempt to contain the spread of the virus. Your mind can’t escape the thought of those intrepid travelers on the road below and in the sky above, compelled to carry on in spite of all obstacles. You wonder how much a bird misses flying once its wings are clipped.

The moment of your trip that stays with you the most is a rest stop in Nebraska; the sky began to cloud over in brilliant grays, and a flock of birds soared overhead in a line stretching a considerable distance. You remember being in sixth grade and reading about the passenger pigeon. You learned that there were times when a dark sky would not be the responsibility of some amorphous clouds but instead an immense flock of these birds, now forever lost in the annals of time, unable to fly again. You wonder if the last passenger pigeon to fly through the chaotic skies felt the way that you feel right now, knowing that this journey you take is long and hard but wholly unique nonetheless. Once you stop flying, there won’t ever be another like it, because there will never be another one like you to take it.

All are frightened, even if they don’t think about it. Like the birds above. Like you.

You like to think that there is still a passenger pigeon or two that all those scientists missed out there somewhere; there were billions of them at one point.

Perhaps those cars on the road are those missing pigeons, the last few that were able to slip through the cracks into the great unknown—still carrying on, even if the rest of the flock has left them to seek shelter from an improbable future. After all, there isn’t really much difference between creatures in transit, no matter the form of the journey.

By Cailin Hall

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Phase 1

non-perpetual care

By Caroline Meek

upon entering BLOCK 8 and finding a chipmunk, compact, on a low wall and hearing the Fed-Ex truck moving up the road and pushing back against wind that’s picking up and transporting a small cotton puff in the mid-distance and describing the lichen in bubble-cloud formation and seeing a telephone wire sheathed in orange and reading names that are dissolving and don’t belong to anyone and stepping over a walnut disassembled and left in a pile of caramel brown and raw green and walking past gravestones tilted out of earth and noticing how the chipmunk is gone now and the wind has gone still and observing a dog and his owner sitting in the grass and resting by a grave and wondering if they are just cemetery visitors like me or if they might have blood underneath this dirt.

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Властелин на мухите

21

LORD OF THE FLIES

By Alexander Fox

Революция

Revolution

By Alexander Fox

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This Island Earth

By Kaitlyn Kuker

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Try to imagine going somewhere you can’t actually go. I dream about realities without sadness, without suffering. I dream about how scenarios would play out, how conversations could go.

Moreover, I wonder how life would be if I never existed, or where I might go when I die. Analogies are the closest I can get to knowing these alternate realities

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I recently read an article about the movie This Island Earth which said, “We can compare the earth with an island — a spot floating in the void of the universe in the vast expanse of the sea and suitable for nurturing human beings. On this island, humans are born. Some live as long as one hundred years — long after coming out of the hidden, mysterious world (the world before birth). Others die as infants or young adults.” If the ocean in this analogy is a void that exists outside of time and space, and we are only on our island — which exists inside time and space — for a short time, then what happens when we leave the island? Where do we go? Can we swim? Are we looking forward to it or running from it? This series is my attempt to explore a yearning to no longer be held as a captive on this island. .

Shimmer

By Rin Swann Embroidery by Anna Nelson

The needle hovered exactly four centimeters above my right eye the moment I realized I was going to live forever.

It was such a small thing. The length of a pinky finger with a sharp end and a ribbon of wire streaming from the other side. Such a small thing for such a powerful promise. My memory contained forever within a server. The doctors told me it was the closest thing humanity could get to living forever, neurons sparking like binary code as you were uploaded.

If it worked.

For someone like me, destined to die soon anyway, that needle gave me a chance. It was immortality contained within a thin silver line and it whispered that it would free me from the fear of death that started in my teens and never really faded. But as I looked at it now, I knew immortality wasn’t what I wanted. Not really.

remembered how much she loved to sparkle.

Shiny lips, shiny eyes, sparkly silver eyeshadow that glinted like starlight, and a collection of jewelry sunk into the hollow of her throat like craters from falling stars. The glitter was just enough to hide the selfish little girl underneath. Ally never really grew up. She was always looking for the next sparkly thing; diamonds for her birthday, emeralds and rubies for Christmas, essences and shimmery perfumes that made her shine just a little more.

It took seven years before I saw her for what she really was. I was so blinded by her reflected light that I didn’t see what she was doing with my brother behind my back.

I still haven’t spoken to Dan. It’s been five decades.

The needle started to descend and I resisted the urge to jerk away. I wanted this, I told myself. I still want this.

Yet as it glinted from the hospital lights, shimmering under the fluorescent glow, all I could think about was everything a shimmer could hide.

Shimmer. My first wife, Ally, liked to shimmer. The memory of her was from so long ago that I could taste the dust in my mouth, but I

The needle hovered exactly four centimeters above my right eye the moment I realized I was going to live forever.

Three centimeters. I fought the urge to shut my eyes. I was waiting for an epiphany, a sudden realization that would give meaning to my life. Or maybe I was waiting for regrets. What was the point of immortality if you never knew if the ones you loved would see you again?

Instead of an epiphany, all I remembered was the glitter caked on Ally’s eyes. Girls seemed so willing and ready to powder and primp behind a cakey layer of dust and glitter. Of course, I was no stranger to hiding either. I hid a forged check that allowed me to buy the pink diamond necklace Ally wanted. I hid my secret chocolate stash that my third wife called disgusting behind

my beer bottles. I hid the truth like I hid the bruises believed in an afterlife, but I wish I had the choice. that my “hard-working” father used to greet me with each night.

I inhaled and tried to steady my breathing. When my daughter, Bea, was born, I walked up and down There was no epiphany but there was a quiet the hall eighteen-and-a-half times before I could acknowledgement of the truth. I was never meant finally bring myself to enter her room. When I did, to be a father. When Ally told me she was pregnant, all of my fears seemed to disappear. She was so the first thing I did was ask her not to keep it. When small, wrapped in a little duckling blanket tucked she refused, I begged her to leave me. under her chin. I promised myself then that I would be nothing like my father.

I could still feel the memory of the blush-colored bruises on my ribs that my dear dad had given me on And I wasn’t. In the beginning. I spent hours my tenth birthday. That temper was something we cleaning diapers, sleeping beside her crib, and shared. I knew there answering her every were things that cry and tear with would always cause a coo and a funny me to react and face. Ally’s friends the eruptions were used to laugh at just as volcanic as me, saying they’ve my father. I didn’t never seen a father want something be so motherly. so innocent placed in my browbeaten “I had to beg my arms. I didn’t want husband to change my child to ever a diaper once a flinch from me. week! And look at him, he just does it!”

But Ally refused. one laughed.

She came home the next day with a I attended every collection of glittery concert, wiped mobiles—pink, blue every tear, gave and green so the every hug while Ally baby could have variety—and little sparkly onesies. pursued her hobby of the week, collecting jewelry She kissed me on the cheek, told me it would be and kisses behind my back.

OK, and passed me a rhinestone rattle. As I turned it over and over in my fingers, the gemstones It was only when Bea was six that I found out. When catching the light, I almost believed her. all the glitter was finally gone, I realized I was never meant to be a family man either.

Two centimeters. I could feel the shadow on my eye, like a physical weight. For the first time, I thought I packed up my suitcase and walked out the door. about what I was doing, really thought. This was Bea hovered in the window, watching me go. I an impulsive choice, made while I was sputtering almost went back, just to hug her one more time, blood, geriatric, and alone in a hospital bed. Was all pull her closer to me. Instead, I placed a hand over of it worth it? Was this tiny chance that someday, the rattle in my pocket, got in the car, and drove Bea would see my memories worth becoming away. The last thing I saw was Ally’s hand on Bea’s something more than human? I didn’t know if I shoulder, her wedding ring glimmering.

She kissed me on the cheek, told me it would be OK, and passed me a rhinestone rattle. As I turned it over and over in my fingers, the gemstones catching the light, I almost believed her.

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It wasn’t like I never saw Bea again. I married three more times, though I ensured I never had another child. But when she turned fourteen, everything changed. She came home from school one day, on one of her weekend visits, wearing glittery eyeliner she had gotten from one of her friends and sporting a brand new stud in her nose that her mother had gotten her for her birthday. Without telling me.

stars shimmered, inviting promises that she didn’t keep. The sky might, if only I asked.

The needle hovered over me. Half a breath and it would be over. In that second I realized that, although I was about to be immortal, I never felt more human.

I inhaled my last breath and thought of Bea, the I still can’t explain what happened. Seeing that reason I was doing this. She had a daughter of her silver packed over my daughter, my baby’s eyelids, own now, a daughter who would never know her like Ally’s, that silver stud in her nose shimmering grandfather, unless she watched my memories. over and over … A part of me lost it.

And this would be my last memory, my message, I screamed at her. Yelled at her to take it off, to my last change to get it right. I would make it count. return it, to never wear makeup ever again. She shouted back that I was being unfair, that I was It was my fault, I thought. I should’ve said I loved old, that I wasn’t in her life enough to tell her what you that day. And I should’ve been there every day to do. I turned my back on her and she caught my after. If you ever see this, remember that I love you. arm and I raised my hand. Halfway towards her, I realized what I was doing and let my arm fall back The needle descended. The hospital faded. I could to my side. taste the wine on my lips and smell Ally’s perfume.

Then the needle ruptured my eye and all I could I told her to get in the car. I brought her back to Ally think was how, in the false fluorescent lighting, it and her new boyfriend without a word. looked like a glittering rattle.

Before she got out of the car, she looked back at me, silver makeup streaming down her face, and told me she loved me. I told her to get out. That was the last time I saw my daughter in person. Outside of the support checks, I was nothing to her anymore.

One centimeter. A single tear fell from the corner of my eye.

There was one night after Bea was born when I sat out on the deck with Ally. It had been two weeks of not sleeping, but finally, out under the stars, Bea curled up and fell asleep in my arms. Ally and I shared a glass of wine, toasted to good health and good fortune as we stared up at the night sky. It felt like I was immortal then. Like my bones would never ache and I would never be without a family.

If I could get Bea to finally sleep, I could be the man my father never was, and that possibility went to my head quicker than the wine. We leaned back in the deck chairs and stared up at the night sky. The

In the false fluorescent lighting, it looked like a glittering rattle.

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The Unavoidable Scope of Death, or, My Favorite Candle

By Hannah Barrett When my favorite candle, gifted to me by my father, (It smelled like pine, it reminded me of home) Was about to go out, it was quiet.

Then, it flickered.

Then, rather suddenly, There was a small explosion, almost as if to say, “I’m leaving now!”

Then, it went out.

I imagine that is what death must feel like.

I imagine this wind is what causes candles to go out.

My father makes jokes about time And I laugh, although reluctantly, Because I know that his jokes hold fear behind them.

I wonder what his small explosion will look like.

My father bought me a pine-scented candle.

I think about it all the time.

My father and I speak to each other in Inside jokes and witty comments.

We do not talk about hurt, or jealousy, or anger.

We do not talk about death.

At my grandmother’s funeral, my father and I made jokes about How we could not hear the priest through his mask, and How the old ladies huddled together in circles at the back after the ceremony.

They pinched my father and I’s cheeks and told us how much we had grown.

My father watched both of his parents die.

My father doesn’t talk about it.

Neither of us speak of hurt, or jealousy, or anger Or death.

I imagine he thinks of death the same way I do.

I wonder if he thought his parents smelled like pine and home.

I wonder if that’s why he gave me the candle.

He doesn’t usually give gifts like that.

My father and I are eerily similar for this reason.

The only exception to our similarities is that Only one of us has Parkinson’s.

Parkinson’s is a lot like The restless shaking of your fingertips when you have too much coffee, Except that it gets worse every day, And eventually you lose your memory along with it.

To mimic my father’s shaking, I drink coffee.

My father and I are eerily similar for this reason.

Only one of us can’t drive (Although my father insists that’s me) Only one of us will slowly lose focus of the world Only one of us will forget the other’s name with time.

Time.

So much yet so little, a helpless paradox. I have nightmares about my father dying All the time. I wonder if he has those same nightmares about me.

I’m sure he does, because every time I see him, he hugs me a little tighter.

I do the same.

This notion of time moves like a lazy wind And stirs the trees.

A Night of Self Care

by Abby Huls

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drawn couplets.

BY CLAIRE WHITEHURST

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These drawings correspond to a series of physical paintings and sculptures that were in created in the same period of time. The paintings influence the sculptures and the sculptures influence the paintings; a call and response to one another. The titles and writings of the drawings in the book correspond to notes and gestures of poetry I had written during that specific time. The book was meant to serve as a legend for the body of work, but itself became a poignant relic of this time and work for me. The pages are translucent, so the scans build upon one another, as do the layers and structures of the paintings and sculptures.

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f fi inn g e rrss

By Sheila Pang I am fascinated by fingers.

my waist even though my clothes were soiled with muck, and the way she took my fingers in hers. My grandma would tell me not to dirty my beautiful hands as she gently wiped them clean, as if she were holding a precious glass figurine. I remember the way my small hands would fit snugly into hers as we walked out of the park.

With one command, a message runs like lightning—from my brain to my motor neurons to the muscles of my fingers—to wrap around any object and apply unto it any amount of force I desire. With one chemical impulse speeding down an axon, my fingers can tuck themselves neatly into the folds of my dry palm.

With one thoughtless action, my fingers are I remember my grandma and her fingers drumming the ivory tips of their nails against grasping handfuls of candy. I remember how an unsuspecting table. One wag, one twitch, she would always bring Werther’s caramel one move of a finger is just candies because they mind-blowing. were my favorite. I would smuggle them into my When I was younger, I used to pockets; eating them was despise my fingers. I would always a top secret mission obsess over hiding them kept from my mother. It behind my back, within the took skill to act like I was folds of my crossed arms, yawning and covering my or covered in the haven of a mouth with a sticky hand footlong sleeve. Behind my full of caramel. back, my fingers were always enclosed in fists, concealing Even after my fingers grew themselves in shame. In the thick of my arms, thicker with bumps and hair, my hands still fit I would try to cover their width and hairy perfectly into hers. My grandma still managed knuckles. I even remember sitting childishly to wrap her wrinkled hand around mine, even cross-legged in a nail salon, surrounded by after she crashed her head into a sharp corner colorful confetti and birthday balloons, and of a desk and ended up in a hospital bed, unable refusing to paint my nails because it would to move one side of her body. Half of her axons bring attention to my fingers. As I got older, dead, she couldn’t talk or walk anymore. Her I gained a habit of trying to scratch off the messages were lost in communication, stuck small writer’s bump next to the nail of my within her body; they no longer went from her right middle finger. brain to her motor neurons to the muscles of her fingers.

There was one person who thought my fingers were pretty.

She remained that way for ten years—not really gone but a ghost grasping onto a body, I remember my grandma, laughing and chasing deteriorating with every day in a hospital bed. after me as my tiny, grubby fingers waved in the Her fingers laid at her side on the cheap white air, my clothes splashed with mud. I remember blankets she slept in. Her hands grew dead the way her wrinkled hands wrapped around with each doctor and nurse that came to inject

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I forgot

about her

I am fascinated by fingers.

shots and examine her body. She had to stare at walls that were sickly yellow with the paint peeling off. An endless procession of flower bouquets, whose stems crumbled as dead petals, littered her bedside table. Despite her situation, whenever I visited, she looked at me with kind eyes and reached out to me with her paper-thin hands, scattered with brown liver spots.

The worst part was that I got used to it. The memories of our playground, the Korean folk songs, and the caramel candies all disappeared with age. I chose algebra homework over visiting my sick grandma. I chose my middle school clubs over going to the hospital. I didn’t have the guts to imagine the pain she was going through.

I forgot about her.

Then, just as I entered high school, news frequently came from the hospital. She refused to eat her food, and she constantly took the IV out of her wrists. She wailed as the nurses gave her the daily shots. During our now regular hospital visits, we were met with dim eyes, almost unrecognizable. She stared at the ceiling, and it seemed as if she were gazing at God, asking why He was putting her through so much pain. Her touch had become like the kind of ice you see on ponds in early winter—fragile and a second away from breaking.

One visit during the November of my sophomore year of high school, I reached into my pocket and took out my phone. I channeled my inner Gen Z and opened up Snapchat. Press for a few seconds and swipe left three times. This time, unlike the countless other visits, I reached out for my grandma’s weak hands and pulled her into the picture next to me. Confused at first, she stared until she realized that the app had decorated her hair with shooting stars and sparkles. Her dim eyes lit up just for a second, and she let out a

faint chuckle. A quivering hand grasped at the air, briefly forgetting its years of weight, as if she could catch just one constellation to hold on and whisper a wish to.

On the eve of my best friend’s birthday, I huddled around my phone, waiting for the clock to tick ten minutes forward. Other friends who couldn’t wait had already streamed our chats with early birthday messages for my best friend. But I tapped my restless fingers against the wooden floor and waited to ring in another grand year.

Right then, five minutes remaining till midnight, I was notified. I remember the taste of salt against my forced smile as my fingers clicked the keyboard: “Happy Birthday!” I remember the murky screen, the cheers, the falling confetti and tears.

Wednesday, January 13th. My grandma regained her brightness as a brilliant star in the night sky.

The most unsettling part of the funeral was closing the casket. The still body looked as if it were asleep. A small part of me expected her to reach out for my hands again. I wished for hers to calm my trembling ones. Her wrinkled fingers just laid dead and cold against the dark blue satin folds. Death was unyielding.

My warm palms embraced her frigid fingertips; a storm emerged in me. I stared at our hands: intertwined death and life, ice and fire. I wished the fire breathing within me could have passed straight through my fingertips and into hers.

Anyone could tell her fingers were worn out.

Her fingers had been through eighty years of life, ten in paralysis. I shivered as the mahogany coffin was sealed.

I looked at my fingers, which I had thought were so disgusting, and compared what my fingers had gone through with hers. My fingers had warm blood and oxygen pumping through their veins, muscles, and cells. Hers did not. They could do so much.

I am fascinated by fingers.

1

Illustration by Olivia Fortman

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news of deliverance

By Christopher Wayne

I drew a map of my town sitting on my Walmart bike, traversing the streets and displaying my prepubescent obesity atop an impossibly heavy frame, carrying a cloth bag which digs into the folds of my neck and causes me and my bike to list to the right, both weighed down by the news I deliver through the hot stench of dinners behind closed blinds of houses that explosively hiss as doors crack open and accept the interruption of my due diligence, giving me a nasal and visual glimpse of their world: a sour stench clings to me as I move along to the next customer in another old factory-house which has long since been abandoned by humanity, instead occupied by the forgotten, who wish only to forget, and inside I can hear all manner of animals: dogs, and cats, and lead-painted children—little ones unkempt, unclean, with heads of matted hair, and soiled cloth diapers that dig into flesh like the bag noosed loose around my adolescent neck—their echoed screams burrow into me as I become their daily deliverance, and now I get off my bike and walk a short distance through the forest and feel the water flow over the dam in its torrential fashion and watch the turbulence create a frothy foam that lethargically floats atop the Hershey brown river —reminiscent of root-beer floats—so I sniff to see if I can taste the sweet-sodasyrup, but quickly exhale the feral air of cats who recently littered there, spoiling my respite once again, and so I am forced to turn on stilted heels and walk, head down, to the next house where the Fat Man resides, immobilized by his size, yet he remains unmoved by his circumstance or his tilted residence, which slants toward his too small bed blanketed by him, but his modesty is blanketed by a crusted yellow towel, one I ignore as he welcomes me inside and the treat I deliver, from aisle 5 to me and from my hand to his, the caramel candies that match his caramel smile, which he flashes and breathes a hot hello, so I smile back and wade through his ocean of loneliness and debris-filled waves of a purposelessness which I nearly drown in but have somehow managed to

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tread with every visit; nonetheless, I feel as though I’ve been dipped in wax while I converse with my friend, the Fat Man, who thinks he has tipped for time, but my presence is a present I’d have given for free, so I sit prostituted and listen to slick lips smack and pocket the two cents he has given me before I say, goodbye friend, and proceed on my route: up and toward the painted yellow hovel, a brightness that stands juxtaposed to the elderly waited upon to die inside, who subsist off tins of tuna and Campbell’s soups and the pained smile of the newspaper boy that they welcome into their rest stop apartments, which are furnished like waiting rooms where they sit, wait, read, and pray that the news I deliver is of their children

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who have long since been raised and are now free to remain unseen, save for the pictures that stare down at me and saddle their wasting kin with hope-topped disappointment, which leave their eyes to fill with the former, heart smothered in the latter, and after bearing witness I climb out of my chair and accept a cheek-marring kiss, knowing it has been planted on an ill-suited stand-in, then I move on, onto the next door, then the next, and up to the second floor and to the fourth door, where I find the woman with hoof-like hands, fingers big and thick—there are only three per hand, each with nails that need tending, though I am not brave enough to touch, I am cowardly enough to steal a glance, one she pretends not to notice—and she hands me a glass of water which I have to muster courage to drink while she tends to her jigsaw which I am puzzled at how she can solve because there are dog accidents carpeting the floor, which she waits patiently to dry, as that makes them easier to clean, but still are much larger than the puzzle pieces she deftly places time and time again, and from time to time she asks me to walk her dog, which this time I do, because despite my daily delivery of news I cannot deliver my own and say I don’t want to or your hands confuse and frighten me, or that me thinking this makes me feel bad as a human person—and beside her deformities, her eyes are normal, actually more than normal, better than normal, they are warm and welcoming and kind and beautiful and they have

seen the world and the cruelty that persists in its timeless bounds, of which, for now, I have run out—so I finish walking her dog and I wave a guiltgilded goodbye with my perfectly normal hand and she smiles with her wonderfully abnormal eyes that gently pierce and release me, and I leave, hopping on my bike happy to revel in my trip back, as it is all downhill and I no longer have to struggle under the weight of my route, so I let loose a yelp of my own and coast down the road, eyes watering in the wind, because upon the cracked black pavement I paint my own lines and find freedom—freedom to sway, freedom to swerve, and freedom to stand and dance as I snap the day’s final glance of a town that only I truly know—so I use my breaks to prolong this trip, but gravity wins, as it always does, and leads me to the green-brown lawn

under the yellow-hued street lights that turn my flesh jaundice as I drop my bike and walk toward the house and onto the lightless porch where I strip the scratchy sack from around my neck and allow the darkness to wash over me; it fails to clean, so I stand at the door of a house, a house which smells of too many hotdogs with too few buns and which houses too big a family for too small a space and holds too many tears for too few eyes, but also has too much love for too few hearts, an abundance that always restores my emptied stores as I open the door and enter a house brimming with those kept blind to those shut behind closed blinds, blinds I see behind with those that puzzle, pray, lay, and wait for news of deliverance: I stand beyond another door of another house: I’m a dusty collector of all these things which together make —my home.

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Photographs by Madi Tarbox

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twenty-twenty correctable

By Carmela Furio “i’m a negative four and a negative six,” i say and they both look at me and sigh and soon we’re comparing optical ailments, the thickness of our lenses and the blurs of our lives who can make out what and whose prescription is strongest and what even is legally blind and “i haven’t been able to see since i was three” she says and now it’s not who’s worse but who’s got the most chance. we’ve had fuzz in our vision since young cottonpuffballs and halohazes and if i take off my glasses sometimes i can’t find words at the tips of my wingspan. this, life, hazed, blurred so much i cease

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WANNA BE A FOOL?