The Grinnell Review Fall 2019

Copyright © 2019 by the Student Publications and Radio Committee (SPARC).

The Grinnell Review, Grinnell College’s semi-annual undergraduate arts and literary magazine, is a student-produced journal devoted to the publication of student writing and artwork. Creative work is solicited from the entire student body and reviewed anonymously by the corresponding Writing and Arts Committees. Students are involved in all aspects of production, including selection of works, layout, publicity, and distribution. By providing a forum for the publication of creative work, The Grinnell Review aims to bolster and contribute to the art and creative writing community on campus.

Acknowledgments: The work and ideas published in The Grinnell Review belong to the individuals to whom such works and ideas are attributed to and do not necessarily represent or express the opinions of SPARC or any other individuals associated with the publication of this journal. © 2019 Poetry, prose, artwork and design rights return to the artists upon publication. No part of this publication may be duplicated without the permission of SPARC, individual artists or the editors.

Typeface for the body text is Palatino and the typeface for the titles is Didot.

Cover art and inner title art: Reach | Alec Berger All editorial and business correspondence should be addressed to: Grinnell College c/o Grinnell Review Grinnell, IA 50112 www.grinnellreview.com

LVIII | Fall 2019 ARTS SELECTION COMMITTEE Summer Bordan Claire Boyle

EDITORS Summer Bordan Claire Boyle Holly Clemons

WRITING SELECTION COMMITTEE Summer Bordan Claire Boyle Kathryn Bowen Audry Enerson Abe Golden MJ Old

Contents W riting Miriam Tibbetts

Allison Cottrell

See?

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Joanie Fieser

Learning to Burn 18

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Entonces

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We Were Inevitable

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Zainab Thompson

Evelyn Gonzalez

Fire Season 21

Early Morning Bench Talks

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A rt Alec Berger

Isaac Ferber

Summertime Rolls 16

Overflow

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enchant

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Reach 17 Harbored 30

Chelsea Shang

Gravity 25

Marooned 31

Claire Boyle

disconnect

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7

Letter from the Editors

We miss our dogs. We have never adjusted to the distance between us and our dogs. We can call our families. We can’t call our dogs. They don’t even know why we left. In their eyes, we just left one day and never came back. Our dogs just sit outside our abondoned bedrooms and whimper to be let in as if we will hear them.

And your dog does, too.

That’s why we do what we do here at The Grinnell Review. Thanks to the amazing submissions by our contributers, we are able to publish an arts and literary magazine that would make our dogs proud. So please, take a copy of this magazine to read to your dogs. They will be very impressed by the quality of what your fellow students are creating.

Thanks to SPARC for giving us money, to Talena at ColorFX for printing our magazine, to the Faulconer Gallery Staff for fostering an artistic environment here at Grinnell College, and to all of our talented contributers for making this possible.

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Your Editors, Holly Clemons (‘21), Claire Boyle (‘21), and Summer Bordan (‘22)

“Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.�

James Baldwin, As Much Truth as One Can Bear, 1962

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Early Morning Bench Talks Zainab Thomson Sunday, September 29th, 03:19 a.m.

It’s late.

You live in Clark, and you’re on your way back to your room. You’d been up doing whatever it is you do at three a.m. on a Sunday, and you’re so ready to pass out in your bed.

You’ve just walked past a thicket of trees and into Mac Field when you see a flash out of the corner of your eye. It’s coming from the rock benches along the new sidewalk cutting across the field. The other lights beam brightly, steady and constant, but this one flickers. Weird.

You stare long enough to realize the light is flashing in a repeating pattern. You know Morse code, because all Grinnellians have a random weird obsession and yours happens to be becoming a master spy. The letters spell out:

J... R... C...

Hmm. You turn and look at the JRC. You see nothing out of the ordinary. There are people studying in the Grill, somebody drawing on the whiteboard of an upstairs conference room, some weird shadowy figure standing alone in D-Hall... wait. That compost bin in the Grill isn’t new, is it? Shoot, no, it showed up last semester. You should actually use it some time.

Monday, September 30th, 1:03 a.m.

It’s only one a.m. this time, which is pretty cool.

Sure, you got kicked out of Kistle and your only two options were sleeping or trying (and failing) to study for a quiz tomorrow morning (today?), but that’s besides the point. You’re going to bed before two! It’s practically unheard of for you.

You enter the North loggia, maneuvering around

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that bike that’s been gathering dust for two semesters.

You spot the flashing out of the corner of your eye again. FM should really fix that, you think. Would that even be FM’s job? You’re not certain. Heh. FM could also stand for Fighter Mom. Or Fantastic Mongeese. Or Fart Nuggets—wait, that doesn’t work, nugget doesn’t... hmm. Is mongeese even a word? What’s the plural for mongoose???

You’re very tired.

You approach the light. It looks normal enough, but the bulb hidden behind the frosted glass panel still flickers in the same pattern.

J... R... C...

You turn to look at the JRC again. The shadowy figure from a couple days ago stands by one of the large windows overlooking Mac Field. It occurs to you that there probably shouldn’t be anyone in D-Hall right now. Hmm.

Not your problem.

Tuesday, October 1st, 10:54 a.m.

You’ve been freed from your ten a.m. class and you’re headed to D-Hall to get brunch, because who actually gets up early enough to get breakfast? That’s crazy talk.

You spot the shadowy figure standing in the salad bar. Not in the space where the D-Hall workers stand.

No, that’d be rude. It stands in the counter top, its torso emerging from the space in between the soups that you’ve never seen another living soul eat from. You’re not a huge soup fan, but you do want some of that pumpernickel bread.

You move towards the bread. The figure turns, and it seems to be tracking your movements. It cocks its head as you reach for the white tongs to grab some bread for your to-go box. You were raised to be polite, so you offer some pumpernickel bread to it. It distorts and distends and makes a horrendous screech before

“You were raised to be polite, so you offer some pumpernickel bread to it. It distorts and distends and makes a horrendous screech before swallowing a nearby first-year.”

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swallowing a nearby first-year.

Not everyone likes pumpernickel, you suppose.

Wednesday, October 2nd, 03:09 a.m.

Three a.m., once again. You were really just procrastinating this time. Not like you weren’t procrastinating the other times you’ve been up this late, but tonight you genuinely could have gone to bed about four hours ago. Ah, well. There’s still one thing you haveto do before going to bed.

You walk up to the flickering rock bench and click on the flashlight you hunted down this morning.

You’d been reviewing Morse code instead of doing your pre-lab for tomorrow (today??), which you know you will eventually hate yourself for but now is not that time.

J... R... C...

Y, THO? you flash back, because you’re lazy. The Morse code you studied doesn’t have punctuation, though, so really you just said “ytho”.

The sequence momentarily pauses. When it resumes, you realize it’s different. Progress?

WHAT.

You imagine there is a question mark at the end of the statement. You decide to use a different tactic.

NAME.

BOB, comes the response. Seems legit.

REALLY, you ask anyways, just in case.

YES.

That’s too easy of an answer, which means that as a Grinnellian you are obligated to ask a hard question.

You start to respond “WHAT YOU WANT” when Campus Safety drives up to you in a golf cart and asks you why you’re flashing lights at the field. You say you’re talking to Bob.

“Who’s Bob?” he asks.

You shrug. He stares at you for a long moment, before asking if you’re alright. You respond with an affirmative. He doesn’t look convinced, but he drives away anyway.

You try, “WHAT YOU WANT” again, but it takes far too long to flash out and you think you may have messed up a couple of times.

“Bob” doesn’t respond. After about five minutes of waiting, you give up and head to Clark.

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Friday, October 4th, 06:07 p.m.

You’re in D-Hall a couple days later, and you’re the only one to notice a very confused first-year get regurgitated up by Bob the Shadowy Figure. The dude is still holding the soup bowl and coffee cup he had in his hands when Bob first consumed him. He looks no different except for the fact that there are rapidly dissolving tendrils of shadow clinging to his limbs.

You’d completely forgotten about him. How long has it been? Three days? Four? Was anyone looking for him? You’re not sure.

He looks around, bewildered, before his gaze rests on you. He seems to be trying to figure out if whatever happened to him actually happened.

You shrug. This is a hard enough question with no easy answer, so you think you’ve done your job.

Sunday, October 6th, 10:30 p.m.

There’s someone sitting on the bench this time.

The person looks up at you as you approach, and you recognize the unfortunate first-year. His eyes are literal pits of shadows. He opens his mouth to speak, and

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darkness spills out from his lips.

“Ew,” you say without thinking.

The mouth closes and twists into a frown, and shoulders rise in a self-conscious hunch. Aw, you feel bad.

“I— sorry. That was rude.”

The “first-year” shrugs and doesn’t look at you, kicking a nearby rock.

“So, like... are you possessing him, or something?

Because he probably has class in the morning.”

A frown. The mouth opens tentatively. You hold back the instinct to flinch. A voice like the dish line pulper with a fork stuck in it grates out: “No... I just copied him...”

“Oh, that’s fine, then.” It’s really not. The dude probably didn’t consent to that. “So, Bob. Have you decided what you want?”

“Yes... prank...”

“Prank? Prank who?”

“Prank... Joe...”

“Joe?” “J... R... C...”

And then you finally get it, because you remember what Bob is a nickname for.

Robert Noyce wants to prank the Joe Rosenfield Center.

Monday October 7th, 10:57 p.m.

You are in the JRC the day after Noyce’s declaration, staring in horrified awe at the mess that used to be the JRC lobby. He had somehow managed to get his hands on the old D-Hall soft-serve ice cream machine, and now? You’re up to your thighs in mint-chocolate chip.

You watch, numb, as someone from your lab section falls into a sea of vanilla while trying to retrieve her bookbag from the bag racks.

She doesn’t resurface.

Hovering by the buried reception desk is Noyce. The shadowy haze that makes up his form spasms sporadically.

You think that means he’s laughing.

You didn’t know it was possible for there to be this much ice cream in one place.

The “prank” disappears after a few hours, but you and the other four students that got caught up in it have been forever altered. So… much… ice cream…

Tuesday, October 8th, 11:15 p.m.

You are in a predicament.

You’re in one of the JRC conference rooms and you want to leave, but for some reason you froze as soon as you touched the door handle. You can’t move.

You feel... anger? This is odd, because the anger is not yours. You’re not mad about anything; if anything you’re confused, because why isn’t the door opening?

Why can’t you move?

The anger-that-is-notyours intensifies alarmingly.

“Mr. Noyce?” you ask, unsure why he’d lock you in a conference room.

You hear a small squeak to your right. You laboriously manage to turn your head to look. One of the dry erase markers is writing on the white board.

“YOUR ICE CREAM???”

“Uh. No. That was Noyce.” Talking is hard.

“YOU HELPED?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Nothing appears on the board for a long moment. Then:

“The shadowy haze that makes up his form spasms sporadically. You think that means he’s laughing.”

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“You may go.”

The door opens on its own, and you can breathe again. You step out into the Wellness Lounge.

Rosenfield apparently didn’t find the ice cream very funny.

Friday, October 11th, 11:23 p.m.

It’s Nerf or Nothin’.

You’re trying hard to stifle your breathing as a group of “humans” approach your hiding spot. You’re a “zombie” in this game of Humans Vs. Zombies, and you’re hella gonna tag one of these naïve mortals who should be paying more attention to their surroundings.

You lunge out of your hiding place as soon as you see the tip of one of their shoes. One of them screams.

He didn’t scream at you, though, and you suddenly find yourself... on your back? Staring at the ceiling. What? You blink, lifting your head off of the Noyce Elbow’s decades-old carpet as The Orb mows down a second member of the trio of Nerfers. Last you checked, though, The Orb was in the Math commons... and it also wasn’t waist-high. It rolls away and zips around the corner towards Kistle, leaving you and

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three very confused others behind.

“The hell was that?” says The Orb’s first victim, lying unmoving on the floor nearby. You stand (painfully) and extend a hand to help him up. He accepts it gratefully. You think he’s in your Econ class.

“I told y’all that thing was haunted,” The Orb’s second target grumbles, inspecting her elbows for damage. You’re pretty sure you definitely maybe know her from something you were in at one point. You don’t know her name or why you know her.

“Yeah, but you were also drunk off your ass!

Forgive us for not believing you,” the third student shrills, looking panicked. They aim their blaster down the hallway The Orb disappeared into as if a barrage of foam Nerf darts are going to do anything against a possessed ball of wood.

“Are y’all okay?” you ask.

“Yeah, thanks,” the first student says. A thin stream of blood runs down his temple, but he says he’s fine so it’s probably nothing.

Distant shouts sound from somewhere else in the building, accompanied by blaster fire and an ominous rolling sound. You decide not to head in that direction.

Amusement that doesn’t belong to you echoes

in your head, and you realize: this was retaliation.

Rosenfield is definitely laughing his ghostly ass off somewhere.

That’s it. You’re dealing with this.

Saturday, October 12, 12:04 a.m.

You’re at the rock bench where you first met Noyce, because you’re going to tell him you’re done with... whatever this is. You find him fuming in the form of the first-year he “copied.”

“Joe... Nerf...”

“Yeah, about that–” “This... means... war...”

“Ok, but–” “WAR!”

So. This is happening now.

You should have just gone to bed.

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Summertime Rolls | Alec Berger

Reach | Alec Berger

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Learning to Burn Joanie Fieser We can hold our candles to our chests In fear that even the slightest breeze Will put us out

Indifference, apathy, contempt: The winds that drive us to shield our candles with bell jars We hide our flames to preserve ourselves

But sometimes we forget about the way things ricochet We’re safe from the wind behind our glass Only as long as we ignore where our deflection has sent it

Eyes down-cast in bustling streets Glass cages clamped tight in place

We forget that bell jars suffocate flame

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Or, We can hold our candles in one hand Lift our eyes from what we protect To what is out there for us to light Yes,

Dance to your drum

Like a flame in the breeze

Remember to extend your open hand and swaying flame

To cold candles

Maybe our flames will flicker together Unguarded in the same breeze For a few waltzing steps.

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enchant | Chelsea Shang | ink on paper

Fire Season Miriam Tibbetts

The galls went up like sick apocalyptic versions of blooming flowers; that’s the first thing I remember. The wasps fizzling out in replica explosions just as all the red giants in space do; in so far away a place that they look no bigger than wasps. I was watching my friends move in the water along the fire’s edge. They forgot that they had no bodies, so serene were they in their dance along death’s net. They forgot that bodies are like planes in the sky, suddenly failing in the engine area of their bellies, falling into bodies of water while they burn from the inside out. The dew boiled on the goldenrod. That’s the second thing I remember. How often does anyone get to see dawn meet destruction like that? How often before that moment had I shaken like those drops of water in bed, thinking that this was it? A million minnows thrashed against the net of my skin, my barracuda assassin and lover pinioning me to the ground outside the circle that resisted the inviting fire. I tried to cry out to my friends to run, lest they burn too. But they danced in the thick of the danger, utterly happy in their rapture, and I stood alone behind them, afraid and completely alone. I was so frightened with nothing but the darkness behind me that I held my voice in my hand like a quivering baby vole and stroked it until it was still. I watched them in their joy, apart from me. And the fish were in the water, and the water was in me. The third and final thing I remember is this: that just before the moon cracked open like a skull, the squill started to die all at once. I licked the backs of my friends with my despairing fingers, and I, too, broke. The fire was meant to be there with my friends all glowing and not looking at me, and the season was ripe and heavy with drink. I owed everything to the fire, from the way I breathed in its smoke to forget the dying wasps to the way it waltzed on the edge of the water, illuminating my greatest desire. I owed it everything.

And still it took my jaw in its sharp, tender mouth, holding me still as it killed me with the bliss in its wildness.

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Entonces Evelyn Gonzalez

You can’t bleed yourself from your confines of ink, For if you do, The scantron reader won’t pick you up.

When getting picked up is the only way to get critical attention, You try poorly imitating rules set by critics of rebels, Rebels we must admire before chaining ourselves to their tomes.

So you copy some of their flow, Regurgitate their aspirations, Until the nausea makes you sick.

Then you write a poem about nausea, And its form, And you get a check minus.

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That little tick mark crumbles years of resistance, So you begin screaming in the courtyard, Screaming “Fuck the police” and whatnot.

You tear apart the rules, Scribbling over the Mona Lisa, Presenting it before your peers as if ‘twere a beautiful bouquet.

But when they smile, Silent recognition flickering beyond their irises, The ancient scar reveals itself.

You realize that everyone tore up the rules years ago, Entonces, None of us are really unique.

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Overflow | Isaac Ferber | Adobe Photoshop 26

Gravity | Alec Berger 27

disconnect | Claire Boyle | digital photograph (series)

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We Were Inevitable Miriam Tibbetts

As we always have been, we were lucky to be alive. Yes, we were.

How immersed we were in jackhammer dreams, in mechanical blooms.

We believed in nothing but the sunflower sutra and the springhill mine disaster, and the persona we bled on the bedroom floor was just ink to be used the next morning.

It was hard to talk of earthly things. We were that blind man’s pen: endlessly searching.

Plain-spoken and obtuse, we found the bookish motherlode. How we forgot that paper burns.

We were young. We were full of promises. We slipped the fantasy on and off when we wrote.

How could we have known that we would set the river on fire? Only in mountains, new notebooks and fresh sex could we find ourselves. Back then, it was a comfort. Later on it became a bomb.

After a time, we hit the wall. We found work: to alleviate suffering, but to keep it close.

How happy we were. No. How stupid: anguish fit like a glove filled with petroleum gel. It soaked in.

We began to set our feet alight to save ourselves the walk across town. Yes, we drank, and thought of all the people lost inside of us.

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Bloodroot covered everything. Sweet rot begged us to imitate love.

We exhaled spores like leaflets, and life was another drunken dumbshow, with us crying out for touch.

How could we not? Our adulthood was inevitable, but we burrowed back down into the earth.

And whereas the best minds of our parents’ generation found enlightenment in the suburban home, we kept on returning to the nighttime and the alleyway to pursue that hoochie lash.

Our pot of inspiration never drained. It’s just that the sky grew larger.

How hard it was to begin again after we had feasted on images troutfishing and American nomadism.

We were too far gone: how we withered, how we wished to grow anew. We grieved, yes, and at the end of the night the meat on our hands still looked the same. Sutures were no longer an option. As nothing kept Berryman from the bridge, so nothing keeps summer from fall.

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Harbored | Alec Berger

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Marooned | Alec Berger

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See? Allison Cottrell

I.

close as they once were.

Like siblings.

Yang clapped vigorously as Aunt crossed the

Just like Aunt and her mother were, before her length of the pool, and the older woman’s head bobbed mother became convinced that Aunt had moved to a thanks to Yang’s crowd of one. goddamn Florida when she was so plainly here in

There should have been four hands clapping, vibrant color, gliding by in her luxurious freestyle.

Yang thought, but Jason stayed motionless as Aunt swam. He didn’t even acknowledge that Yang or Aunt II. were there, or that he was witnessing greatness in its purest form. Instead, he sat looking at the deep end of

Yang curled her fingers under the table. The the pool where Yang and Jason, now-college graduates, pie in front of her looked like plastic. Perhaps, Yang had almost drowned as sullen, scared six-year-olds. thought, the fruit inside had been in living in the

Yang called that day the Key, as it was the thing stillness of northern Minnesota for too long and had that had unlocked her true sight. lost hope in reality.

Jason had never mentioned the experience again “Suzanne,” her mother said. (granted, he didn’t talk much at all). But, Yang knew

Yang imagined that her mother’s eyes were tiny that Jason must have lost his true sight, and she was plastic lemons, rolling around, the puckered ends determined to return it to him. Then, they could be as resembling pupils. “Just Yang, mother,” she said.

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Her mother sighed, the sound like a wilting balloon.

“Look at me, Suzanne.”

Yang took off her glasses, and her mother became an abstract portrait.

“Repeat after me, child.”

“I’m not a child,” Yang said.

“Just say it for me once. Aunt is not here.”

“Aunt believes in me, mother. She’s here for me.”

“Suz—Yang. You’ve got to let go of Aunt. She’s not coming back, child. She’s not someone to idolize like—”

Yang turned her ears to silent and watched her mother’s mouth-hole form its dark lies.

The two didn’t speak again, not until the check was placed on the table. Yang waited for her mother to reach for the slim strip of paper; she wasn’t about to waste money on what her mother could pay for with ease.

III. Yang wasn’t sure when Jason had gotten to the pool. It was the Fourth of July and she had been there, watching Aunt do her daily workout, and then there had been two of them on the pool deck. Jason sat with his long legs dangling in the water.

(Silent, infuriating. Yang told herself to remain calm.)

He looked taller now. Yang tried to remember when they had last seen each other. They had been prepping for college, she remembered, when Jason told her in his secret-whisper-voice that he wanted to be a dentist.

Now, he told her nothing.

Yang felt the anger boil up her chest cavity before she made the decision; she pushed Jason in the middle of his back with both of her hands.

Yang rubbed in his resulting cool splash of water into her pores.

Jason’s hair covered his eyes as crawled, coughing, back onto the concrete deck and curled into a ball. His shirt stuck to his skin, and Yang could see the outline of his ribs.

“You see anything down there?” she asked.

Yang could hear his teeth chattering, but he didn’t reply.

Aunt was undisturbed by the situation, consistent in her power and form. (Perfection, as always, Yang knew.)

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IV. Yang perched in a tree in Jason’s yard under the August sun.

She wore her true face and the head-to-toe camouflage that had been in style last fall.

Yang threw a stick at the window.

Jason startled, tilting off of his chair onto the floor. In the moment that Jason whirled around, hair over eyes, mouth open, Yang saw that his teeth looked too sharp. After standing, Jason opened the window and swore quietly at Yang. The teeth and the swearing, Yang knew, were not natural.

As Yang walked home, she counted the bug bites on her arms. Four on the left arm, two on the right.

(Six, just like the age they were when they first Saw.) V. “Suzanne,” her mother’s voice slipped through the door.

Yang was procrastinating packing up the rest of her life. She hadn’t slept last night, couldn’t rest while she could See the unknown surrounded her, choking

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her. (Jason must feel this too, she knew, but must be unable to comprehend why.)

“I don’t know a Suzanne,” Yang said.

Her mother sighed. “It’s your aunt.”

Yang opened the door to her mother in an old bathrobe, eyes bloodshot and face puffed. (Mothers shouldn’t cry, Yang knew.)

“She’s been found, Suzanne. Dead, in her apartment, presumably suicide.”

Yang opened her curtains to see the pool in the rising light. Aunt was still out there, swimming laps with seamless form. Yang’s arms cranked the window open and her mouth yelled through the slight fog, “Aunt! Aunt!”

Yang’s mother rested a hand on her shoulder, and Yang jerked away. The hand felt like a lazy fish, squishy and unused to work. “Lies,” Yang said. “Lies, mother. Stop spouting lies.”

“Suzanne, please.”

“Lies are bad for your complexion, mother.”

Yang took the screen off her window and climbed out to the tree that always extended a helping branch.

Her mother did nothing to stop her, and Yang ran into the night, trying to wipe Aunt from her mind. It was a

sign, a warning, just a puzzle to solve.

(Aunt was there, always.)

But, doubt started prickling Yang’s skin.

VI. Yang had always been able to pick up Jason Feo so he could ride on her back when he was too scared to leave the house. It wasn’t like leaving the house, Yang would tell him, because she was his home too.

“Piggy-back?” Yang said when Jason opened the door.

“What?” he mumbled, perhaps too tired to remember that he hadn’t been talking to Yang.

“You’re coming with me, Jason.”

Jason moved to shut the door, but Yang caught it.

“I’ve figured it out, Jason. The sight is in the pool.”

“Yang, that’s a fantasy,” Jason said, but his eyes narrowed. Yang knew he was unsure. He must be unsure, otherwise he had grown even more ignorant than she thought. (Those who have Seen can never truly forget.)

“Come,” Yang said. “I’ll make you believe.”

Jason did, reluctantly and shoe-less. Yang took

off her own shoes in solidarity, feeling the asphalt burn the bottoms of her soles as she carried Jason’s lanky form. She had not lifted him in years, and her muscles burned with the extra weight. (Yang knew the Sight must be lightening the load).

Their two-bodied form walked the few blocks to Aunt and her mother’s house. (Always their house, both, forever.)

VII. Aunt was not swimming laps. (A trick, Yang knew. Aunt was always there.)

They approached the darkest corner of the pool, the one in the deep end, the one that the light never fully reached.

Jason hunched his shoulders. Maybe his noises were crying. Maybe his noises was not exactly his, and did not consent to be owned.

How quickly does a Jason Feo grow? (Not this fast, never this fast.)

Yang wasn’t sure if Jason knew his fate as she clasped him from behind, her body taking over his body, movement, and thought. Her shoulder went to

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his midriff, her head to his shoulder. He was cold and smelled of paprika.

“We are the Key. Together.”

Yang took his body within, without, and among her own, and she threw them into the depths that gloated with its secrets. Yang did not know how to swim, but she felt her legs take over anyways and guide them into the corner that was always too dark.

They reached the bottom of the pool, and Yang let out her breath, sinking. Jason thrashed his body that was too long, and yelled with lungs that shouldn’t swear. Yang opened her eyes and through the water could see Aunt, above, in a backstroke. Yang smiled to that turned back, and she knew that Aunt Saw the baring of her teeth.

Aunt had always Seen as Yang did, and now Jason would See true, too.

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“In this short Life That only lasts an hour How much‒how little‒is Within our power” Emily Dickinson, poem 1287

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Contributors Alec Berger ‘23 Claire Boyle ‘21 wants to relive the experience of warching Avatar: The Last Airbender for the very first time.

Allison Cottrell ‘21 wants to tell you about her Taylor Swift conspiracy theory.

Isaac Ferber ‘20 is a biology and anthropology major from Omaha, Nebraska. Outside academics, his interests are writing and photography, both of which he uses as an editor for the B&S. Joanie Fieser ‘23 loves celebrating the finer things in life: long bike rides, dinosaur-shaped sugar cookies, and the satisfaction of filling a journal Evelyn Gonzalez ‘23 is a photosynthetic gamer girl just trying to weave together what hath been scattered.

Chelsea Shang ‘23 is a first year who is tragically undecided. Likes cats, pokemon, and procrastinating on waking up each morning.

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Miriam Tibbetts ‘20 is a bowl of oatmeal waiting to happen.

Zainab Thompson ‘22 isn’t really sure what she plans to do with her life, but she does know that there will be zombies involved. She’s also about 86.3% certain that Noyce is haunted by a benevolent army of microscopic ghosts that like knocking Nerf darts out of the air.

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