The Grinnell Review Spring 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, inner cover art, and inner title art: Blade |Yilin Li All editorial and business correspondence should be addressed to: Grinnell College c/o Grinnell Review Grinnell, IA 50112 www.grinnellreview.com

LVII | Spring 2019 ARTS SELECTION COMMITTEE Rachel Eber Paul Chan Htoo Sang

EDITORS Rachel Eber Emma Heikkinen Paul Chan Htoo Sang Claire Boyle

WRITING SELECTION COMMITTEE Emma Heikkinen Claire Boyle Holly Clemons

Contents W riting

A rt

Summer Bordon

Before she was diagnosed with Addison’s 24

Christina Collins

Sunday Morning 37

Quynh Nguyen

Bounwds

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Megan Tcheng

Origin Story 8

To my Father, Glued to his Sheets 16

Eschscholzia califĂłrnica 22 Zainab Thompson

Mouthing Off

Of Parakeets and Frosted Metal

10 38

Miriam Tibbets Meadow 18 6

Winnie Commers

Remnants Hit Hurricane Irma

Rachel Eber

Bus to Western Massachusetts

14 7

Shabana Gupta

Hanging Pots 8 Bamboo 13 Structured Dependency 15

Evan Holt

The Book of the Ultan King 29 Lydia James

Repairing an Old Friendship

27

Yilin Yi

Blade

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Sofia Mendez

Out of Focus 6 La Chica Coherencia 23

Storage Project—Mariam “Tamalda” 42

Storage Project—Mithila “Holding Dear” 43

Quynh Nguyen Bone 20 Anne S. Rogers

Twelve (2 Sets of Six) 30

Leina’ala Voss

Lamp For My Feet 44 Herein Lie 45 Sam Walker

Boots in Eco House

28

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Letter from the Editors going abroad changes the HSSC prague and hopefully belgrade does it tickle? you’re immune to it now why emma why Why? We would like to thank SPARC, Talena Bray at ColorFX, the Faulconer Gallery staff, and all of our contributers.

Delectably yours,

-the editors

Rachel Eber ‘21

Paul Chan Htoo Sang ‘21

Emma Heikkinen ‘21

Claire Boyle ‘21 8

Out of Focus | Sofia Mendez digital photography

Bus to Western Massachusetts | Rachel Eber| pen on paper

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Origin Story Megan Tcheng In Humansville, Missouri, you tried to trace your shadow with alabaster chalk.

The shavings picked up the wind and saddled stories on to their backs like travelers stepping in line with the small-town sky.

When you paved the Pacific, you scraped your accent off your tongue and savored the syllables. The ivory soap tasted foreign, slipped between your lips.

Hanging Pots

Shabana Gupta | ceramics with glaze, string 10

They named you “Chink” and “China Boy” and pinched the creases of their eyes with pasty fingertips.

On Saturdays, you separated chickens from their heads and watched their bodies circle the soiled ground.

In your Hong Kong, cicadas whined in siren songs.

The mortal hosts wrote dialects like parables and you transcribed each note.

June fled and their amber skins split, hollowed, like cowries shelled beneath your bare and rambling teeth.

You buried yourself in alphabet letters and picked at the hums of hearts trapped beneath a homeland.

One country took you as their own and the other collected your discarded skin.

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“Oh no,” Pyla deadpans. “Somehow, despite your constant, insistent nagging, I managed to forget my cloaking and now all of these aliens can see me.

Because I am that foolish.”

Zainab Thompson

I close my eyes, praying for patience and refusing to deign the comment with a response.

“Are you all right?” I ask Pyla, when there is

“No, they can’t see me,” he continues. “Honestly? nothing but silence from the other end. Had I already lost an operative on my first surveillance mission? And I kind of wish I couldn’t see them. I’ve never seen so many of the creatures at once and they... they keep not just any operative... Pyla. Despite our history, I wish him no ill will. Oh, if only I had more equipment! tearing their faces open.” “...what?”

A response comes before I can worry myself further.

“Their faces. I first thought this was some sort

“Oh, so now you care?”

Ugh. I had nothing to worry about. “I thought we of medical area, because they all have the same odd looking injury on their faces, but... it can’t be. That’s said we’d keep this civil.” highly improbable with the sheer number of them, and

“Sure. I’m fine, if you must know. These aliens, none of them appear distressed.” however... there is something wrong with their faces.”

“But what do you mean they’re ‘tearing their

I can feel his confusion, and my gills ruffle in faces open’?” unease. I wish I had visual surveillance of some sort,

“I don’t know, Potil!” Pyla snaps. “I’ve already but sadly the only information available is whatever told you! There’s a hole where there shouldn’t be, on Pyla mentally transmits. The relay tube in my station all of their faces beneath their nasal organs! The holes can only do so much.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “They can’t see you, keep getting bigger and smaller and changing shape and they’re making odd vibrations in the air. I had to can they? And stop calling them aliens, they’re called close my gills because the stimulation was too much, ‘humans.’”

Mouthing Off

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and I can still feel the vibrations.”

“Is... is it hurting you?”

“Funny how you’re so concerned about my wellbeing, now, when you never seemed to before.”

“Will you PLEASE—” I stop, calm myself, and try again. “This is a ground-breaking expedition that could possibly change the future of our interactions with Earth and other planets, so I would appreciate it if you would be gracious enough to temporarily set aside your snide comments and cooperate. You can guilt me for my past mistakes when the entire scientific community of our planet is not relying on our actions.”

There is a long silence, long enough that I fear Pyla has gone back to his old habit of severing the neural connection because I’ve said something he found disagreeable. Then: “Each face hole has... things in it.” The words are stiff and halted. Anger simmers beneath them, but at least they bear no sarcasm. “Little white things that look like smooth white rocks, and a bigger squishy pink appendage that appears very wet and moves around. The aliens take things from odd communal discs of some sort, and some take those things and put them in their face holes, and then the hole closes and moves around a bit. By the time it

opens again, whatever was put in is gone.”

“That’s impossible,” I say nervously, half expecting another snide remark in response. I glance at my transcription screen to make sure the relay tube is transmitting our conversation to the communal hub. I would hate to be unable to go over this with my team later. Perhaps Pyla is mistaken. Alien species have different physical appearances, sure, but moving face holes? That’s crazy talk.

“I’m staring at them,” he responds. “Others of them take the objects on the communal discs and retreat to a seating area, but there they will still put the objects in their face holes.” The relay tube crackles with mental static as Pyla vibrates with sudden excitement, the anger quickly dissipates in the face of scientific curiosity. “What if they’re... absorbing them?”

“Absorbing them? What do you mean?”

“I mean like the objects they’re picking up are food.”

“What?! What kind of creature doesn’t absorb food through epidermal pores? Impossible, impossible.

That’s like saying they don’t communicate with a neural hub.”

“Well...”

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I stare at the relay tube, wishing Pyla could see my entirely unimpressed expression. I can’t believe this. My gills undulate in irritation. “Pyla. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not being ridiculous. The vibrations from earlier could be some primitive form of communication! Based on what I’ve observed. One of them opens the odd face hole, the vibrations occur, and then another will make vibrations back. It’s like they’re using a neural hub, but with air vibrations!”

“Alright. I think you should probably return to the ship. What you’re saying is impossible. We can revisit this tomorrow after more of the visual surveillance equipment is ready for use. I’ll begin corroborating the climate information the ship managed to collect—” “No.” “No?”

“I refuse to quit right now. I’m going to take a closer look.”

“Pyla—”

“I’m done taking orders from you.”

“I’m literally your superior—”

“There you go, citing rank once again! Why do

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you know what’s best? Like you said yourself, this is a groundbreaking expedition, and we cannot waste an entire day’s supplies just because you refuse to believe in the possibility of physiology differing from yours.

Ha. Now doesn’t that sound familiar?”

“Pyla, return at once! You’re being foolish!”

“No, I think that’s just what you want to think.

What are you going to do? Intervene?”

That’s it. I can’t do anything. Pyla has to come back to the ship in order for me to safely reel in the line.

I suppose I could just start to draw back the cable regardless, but that’s dangerous to both Pyla and the ship’s machinery. I know this. I know this, and yet, I stare at the button that will command the ship to begin drawing back the line.

“You’ve never had the spine to intervene,” Pyla hisses, “which is why our child is dead.”

I press the button.

“Wh— Did you just— Stop this!”

I say nothing.

“Potil! I know you can hear me! Stop this! You’ve made the cloaking malfunction, they can see me!” The anger has bled from Pyla’s tone, and terror has taken its place. A scream resounds through the neural hub,

dissolving into sobs. “I blame you for this!”

“You always blame me,” I respond quietly, tiredly.

Seconds later, death’s shrill rings over the relay tube. My gills shiver in discomfort, but at least we don’t have video surveillance to show me what’s happening. When the line is finally reeled in all the way, Pyla is not on the end of it.

Bamboo| Shabana Gupta | ceramic with glaze, oxide stain

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Remnants Hit Hurricane Irma | Winne Commers | digital photograph 16

John S. Osler III

Structured Dependency | Shabana Gupta | ceramics with glaze

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To my Father, Glued to his Sheets Megan Tcheng Last Thursday, They took your skin And stapled it back on in patches, Like strips of budget bin fabric Or hand-me-down clothes Sewn in to an unfinished quilt –

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A collage of misfits, Tacked in even rows With running stitches, So as not to offend The promise of Shuttered eyes A waiting bed Maintains.

You called your leg an open wound And closed it under covers.

Each time I made your bed, I pulled back the skin And watched it separate In sheets.

Remember how we used to Dab lines of glue Onto our fingertips And let them whittle off In pale, white flakes?

When you lifted your limbs And braced them against The corners of your bedframe, I thought of the paper dolls That hang in hang in chains and wait For their arms to grow thin, Bending beneath the creases of Tissue paper.

You body has always been A work in progress, A string of edits, A new coat of paint, A jagged cut, A ripped seam, A bed unmade.

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Meadow Miriam Tibbetts A garter snake, that muscular rope, slides through the warm, lazy lupine just before us, hunting the nested rabbit kits close by which wait unknowing like the fruit we coolly pick to fill our bellies, her path as slick

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and fluent as a mouth that no longer requires a body-- just the lure of this pithy moment that blooms the self away, where our souls have all but left us.

This snake might be perfect as you are, my darling, slipping through the field where we delay a while, watching her lusty purpose as she seeks those living blackberries that cry out sweetly before the hurricane, before the burst of the body’s blood.

Blade | Yilin Li

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Bone | Quynh Nguyen | steel, thread, acrylic, fabric

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Eschscholzia califórnica Megan Tcheng we stole copper poppies from flowerbeds and slipped their stalks between each window crack. the rusted petals held the wind, like live confetti tracing lanes and crooked coasts. idle tides drifted static currents from the radio—you bit your tongue and tried to taste the honeyed sting of salt water, each drop a stranger to the saline air. we counted minutes with each bygone mile and curved saplingw branches from the arms of redwood matriarchs. the interstate rewound the road and carved veins from woodgrain. with founding hands against the wheel, we drove past citrus skies and paved the road with pollen.

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La Chica Coherencia| Sofia Mendez| digital collage

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my mom kept googling symptoms & eating pink salt from the palm of her hand & telling us there must be something wrong with her no one believed her because we come from a long line of crazy ladies

Before she was diagnosed with Addison’s Summer Bordon

i told my therapist & she said it sounds like your mom has a thyroid condition i said it sounds like my mom should go to therapy addison’s turned my mom’s skin brown even her scars & the skin under her nails & her nipples which were pink like salt like really brown for a white lady my sister & i used to take baths & tell secrets (like the time i thought our parents were ogres or which neighbors we’d move in with if they ever got divorced) now we just tell secrets (like how badly our mom doesn’t want to be white) sometimes god works in mysterious ways

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sometimes i think about how stupid her face must have my mom always talked about the shaky feeling she looked when she found out my dad was half cuban gets when she doesn’t eat all day but now she has addison’s & has to take pills & has to eat when she sometimes i want to plug my ears when she teaches takes them her friend how to play dominoes my dad grew up really poor because his cuban dad the right way she says double nines she says the cuban abandoned him because his mom got too fat & so she way had to raise three sons on a waitress salary & even though he’s fifty one years old he still looks like a child my sister calls this bitch-xplaining & eats everything all the time like food will abandoned him or god will spite him for being wasteful sometimes i want to chew up the flan my mom makes & barf it out right in front of her but i guess it’s sort of i don’t say any of this to my therapist because i don’t sweet that she’s spent thirty years perfecting a recipe really like talking to her about anything for my dad but i guess that is sort of retractive because my dad knows how to cook & if he really loves flan my mom says my skin is the color of a walnut so much he could have asked his abuela for her recipe before she died my mom says i have the bordon butt sometimes i barf up my food in the basement where my mom can’t see me & when i tell my therapist she says this is disordered eating no i say it’s family history

my mom says i have the bordon nose too my last name lost an accent so i always spell it out loud like to the person at the front desk in the waiting room of my therapist’s office

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my dad says my mom wanted to name me elsa but he said no because in school kids made fun of him about borden milk and the mascot a cow is named elsa or elsie or something & besides all our cuban family hated the name sometimes i feel like a big fucking cow i will never go to cuba my grandpa says we can go to cuba when the castros croak & sells health insurance & only speaks spanish when absolutely necessary & said he was italian in the 60s & would make a great latino trump supporter poster child even though he probably wouldn’t call himself latino & drinks too much wine when i say his parents were brown spanish-speaking immigrants which is exactly what trump hates my uncle nestor who was born in cuba says he likes european people better than cuban people because cuban people have no culture & only eat rice & beans

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my bisabuelos died before i could ask them any real questions & god works in mysterious ways so they never answer when i build them shrines or buy prayer candles which my dad says my bisabuelo used to sell raquel my bisabuelo’s sister who shares my birthmark says cuba used to be really beautiful but it’s ugly now & she will never go back but she wants us to move to miami & take her to calle ocho to play dominoes i can’t sit through a game of dominoes all the way to 150 without getting bored & ripping at my cuticles my parents moved back to minnesota when i was three because miami was too hot & i had eczema & wouldn’t stop ripping off my skin all i know about flan is that it has a lot of eggs all of my family who stayed in cuba after the revolution is dead or we don’t call them because they stayed in cuba after the revolution

all i know is they were army generals & architects & poets & they got drunk & climbed trees & they probably ate rice & beans & flan & played dominoes sometimes i think i think i am probably more similar to them than my cuban american family because i will never know them & it’s easy to make them up i tell my grandpa what this country needs is universal health care my grandpa says this will always be a capitalist country so i tell my grandpa what this country needs is an armed revolution sometimes my mom says i am probably like margo my bisabuela’s older sister who stayed in cuba because she believed in the revolution but my mom also says my skin is the color of a walnut sometimes when i tell the men hitting on me on the bus that i was born in miami they ask are you cuban? i say a quarter but mostly i’m norwegian & we (norwegians) don’t really like talking about anything

Repairing An Old Friendship | Lydia James | torn photograph, thread

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Boots in Eco House| Sam Walker| 9B graphite crayon and colored pencil on paper

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The Book of the Ultan King| Evan Holt | smooth watercolor paper, colored pencil, and black felt tip pen

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Twelve (2 Sets of Six) | Anne S. Rogers| Graphite on cotton paper sewn onto cotton fabric with cotton thread, digital video

With Twelve (2 Sets of Six) I am investigating the relationship between the scale of a sheet of 11”x14” paper and my body, and how this relates to representing the process of folding. I sewed cotton dresses, each from two long strips of six 11”x14” rectangles. When sewn together, the front and back of each dress forms a different configuration of six rectangles, where they are arranged two across and three up. As each dress is folded, it creates even more different configurations of the rectangles, until it is in its final folded form as an 11”x14” stack. In order to document this process, I sewed six 11”x14” sheets of cotton rag paper onto fabric, replicating the form of a dress. I projected a video of myself folding a dress onto the paper and traced the outline of the dress being folded from every frame. Even though the drawing is not of my body, it holds the presence of my body enacting the process of folding.

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Bounds Quynh Nguyen

Without a car, the furthest I imagine myself going to is Walmart, a fifteen minute bike ride along the bumpy road of West Street. With Grinnell College and the distance to Walmart as the radius, drawing a perfect circle will encompass what exists in this island of a town. I can’t drive, so I can only stay on the island.

At times, when I have tried and failed to create a mental image of what there is outside of Grinnell, I like to think that this is it; nothing else exists out there. wIn mid-September, people like me who see Grinnell as an enclosed sphere got a chance to travel to other, more populated lands, which perhaps form bigger spheres. We each bought a five-dollar ticket to get on a yellow school bus with exactly forty high-school size fake leather seats. The ticket got us to a replica of our international homes shrunk to the size of a convenient food store: C-fresh market. We flooded the bus when it is time and filled the tiny space with deep aroma of sweat and the faint smell of previous lunches still

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trapped within our mouths. I made sure to sit in the upper half of the bus because the deeper I ventured into the back seats, the more squeezed I would come out looking.

During the ride, some of us tried opening the windows to let the bad air out and, the good air in. Out there, it was not water but a sea of tall corns swaying into the violent wind. It’s the same. One can get drown in any number of seas. The wind got to us and lit our hair into little flames, some flames wilder than other.

We did not move a lot in this bus knowing that if we were to spread our legs even a tiny bit wider than forty-five degrees, we would do an unintentional kneecap high-five with the one from across of the narrow walking aisle. “Are you going to sleep?” the friend sitting next to me asked, and only mostly to make sure if I would be available to lend her a shoulder. After the two minutes where I fell into a brief trance, I was jolted awake as the cornfield had already given way to blocks of concrete buildings.

The bus only drove us to C-fresh market, and the Coral Ridge mall. It was a perfect compromise: we stocked up on authentic international food and ingredients for future use on one hand, while

dabbling in American essentials on the other. The only times I went to Des Moines were either for these shopping trips or for the flights back home. The distinctly repeated short trips were close to warping my perception of Des Moines as only consisting of an international food market, a mall, and an airport.

In Vietnam, I only travel by bike. Before I learned how to bike, I would sit sitting on my dad’s moped as he drove me from districts to districts. I have roamed around the city enough on my red paint-coated bike to know all its corners and its secret alleys.

The alley between the wedding store and the wooden furniture store on Van Hanh street is a shortcut to the Nhieu Loc canal. If I turned right at Pasteur street, and took two more left turns as I went, I would reach one of the best noodle houses in Saigon. The ability to get hold of spatial specificities is a bless. Being at home eases my sense of orientation.

But moving through multiple islands abroad, each time even further from home, my sense of time and place only worsens. When I got the Greyhound bus ticket leaving Boston to go to Grinnell winter break of 2016, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. My passport was

being processed at the consulate at the time, so the only means of transportation available would be through these metal containers on land. So, on Christmas day, I dragged myself with my large suitcase across the road spread with a thick coat of snow from my friend’s dorm at Tufts University to catch an uber pool to the station.

During the year-end holiday, the streets were congested. It was understandable. Who would not rush home to get away from this skin-cutting cold the final days of the year? But I was only rushing to go back to Grinnell, which wasn’t really the kind of payoffs I usually looked for at the end of a trip. After going up and down elevators chasing for the right line of code encrypted in the huge hanging electric boards, I sat on a bench inside a compact convenient store selling hot coffees and warm stale breads. The elevator music mixed in with indiscernible news bits coming from the small TV up on the wall somehow created a weirdly calm ambience, so we sat still. It was almost time. Some people at the corner leaned on each other for an express sleep to prime them for what came ahead.

Boston-Albany was the first leg, and like every

One can drown in any number of seas.

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beginning of a trip, it went by like a breeze. Four hours passed by with just a couple of strangers caught up in introductions, or a few chapters of some random old book you know you had finished, but perhaps on this bus with these people it would be a whole new experience you had never expected. I tricked myself into underestimating how stretched out time was on these bus trip. With yearly experiences with the onehour school bus trip to Des Moines, and regular sixhour Burlington bus trips to Chicago from Grinnell, I thought of myself as an accomplished bus rider.

However, Greyhound trips were of a different kind.

En route to Syracuse, our whole bus started drifting into a different realm. The night snuck in right about time the dim blue light running vertically on the ceiling came on. Letting the white noise coming out of the friction between the metal coat of the bus and the merciless wind drill through my ears, I put myself into airplane mode. A thud from behind gave a light kick on my back. The person sitting one row before me was already switching from side to side, with their legs in a rushed look for something of a shelf. I learned to not lean my little head on the cold glass because it would more than likely come into contact with a pair

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of cold bare feet from behind, sprinkled with crumbs and snuggly fit in the gap between my seat and the window pane.

Somehow, the bus must have fallen asleep too in the much too cold weather because the trip to Buffalo New York on the third leg took an extra forty-five minute to finish. Our quiet bus driver disappeared when we switched from Syracuse to Buffalo, and his replacement only emerged from the entrance door after thirty minutes. They called him late on Christmas night because his incomplete holiday rest would hopefully make up for all our missed plans. We were supposed to only have thirty minutes in transit time before the next bus delivered us all to Cleveland. The night grew thicker, as did the layers of snow that kept piling up as each minute passed by. The new driver was sympathetic, but he made sure we knew that it would not be possible to arrive in Buffalo on time alive. The snow storm could kill us all.

“I made some calculations and it looked like we still might have a chance to catch the next one.

Just a little bit tight in time but hopefully. Where are you heading to?� The black American middle-age man sitting across from me struck up a conversation.

Small bags made for pillows; human company made for extra cushion.

What else we could we do but try to make sense out of this mishap together? I told him I was going back to Grinnell. He was going back home with his family for the New Year celebration. There was only one choice to pick, either to sacrifice Christmas and get New Year or the other way around. We somehow formed a loose connection out of the stunned complaints of the bad turn of events we were going through. The bright white light suddenly suffocated the space to yank us out of our dreamy state. It came as an assertion of truth. 12:50. We really had missed the next leg to Ohio.

The line of people moved slowly like a giant tired worm. Each inch it moved forward was an inch of frustration, an inch of scowling coupled with murmuring of discontent. The automatic door opened.

We carried along our heavy luggage inside. The sharp cold wind carried our fermented odor.

We were not the first bunch to hear to break the news of the misfortune. Previous groups of people already occupied most of the closest benches. With drooped eyes, their heads were in the direction of the electric board, blinking updates of continuous

delays. They lay down on the three whole seats and fit themselves under the armrest in the makeshift beds.

“The next ride to Cleveland would be at 5am.

But unfortunately, that ride was also cancelled due to severe cold weather.” The assistant looked at me. No, she looked right through me as she delivered the news.

This must have been the nth time she had to tell this piece of information because her eyes acted more like a scanner. As soon as a new confused person wobbled to the counter, her scanner would be activated and the line of message was sent. “We were not sure if there would be enough seats on the next day ride to Cleveland at 11am for latecomers like you folks but just take this ticket and checked with us tomorrow okay?”.

This was not only for me but for the long line behind me too.

Few carried only one large bag like me. They also didn’t travel alone. Maybe this was the right strategy to begin with. Small bags made for pillows; human company made for extra cushion. It was then that I knew I was still a beginner at the Greyhound bus game. The black American man found me sitting on

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one of the benches and his eyes lit up. He took from his small bag an orange for himself and an orange for me.

“I already came up to the counter as soon as we got off the bus. Have you got the new ticket yet?” So it was not his first time. When we finished the orange, the two of us split to find, or make, our own makeshift bed. My sleep that night came in intervals of ten- minute naps with my body stiffened the more naps I took.

When the clock struck 10:30am, there was already a line in front of gate 10 where the next ride to Cleveland would arrive. The kids looked excited. The parents were not as awake to feel hopeful yet. I saw the man at the back of the line still yawning, but making sure his eyes were open to catch the bus’s long-awaited appearance. It was 11am, and then it was 11:30am. The bus never came. To get to the next leg, Cleveland, Ohio the bus would need to go pass Lake Erie, the infamous host of the yearly winter lake-effect snow. During the last week of 2016, the whole Erie town was buried under 34 inches of snow. The doubled line from the riders of yesterday and the 5am cancelled ride broke into pieces as we moved to the counters. I heard loud arguments going on at the front of the new line. It looked like someone wanted a refund. The refund was never issued.

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I did not come back to Grinnell on a Greyhound bus. It was after the fifth re-issued bus ticket for the forever promise of a Cleveland bus back to Chicago that I decided maybe this was not happening. Maybe the engine of a train would be better to blaze through the thick wall of snow. I arrived in Grinnell on the 28th, two days after my supposed arrival if I were to take the Greyhound bus. The train ride transferred me to Chicago, where I would take another bus to return to Grinnell. When I left the Greyhound bus station, I didn’t see the kind friend I had met nights before.

Most of the people from the previous rides were still there, but with more blankets to enclose themselves into a warm cocoon for protection from the furious cold. Perhaps he was already asleep at some corner on a cold bench, waiting. I had a strange feeling that the Greyhound bus station was stuck in an odd time dimension where no bus would be able to reach.

Sunday Morning| Christina Collins | digital drawing 39

Of Parakeets and Frosted Metal Zainab Thompson

There is a man wedged between the tree’s thick roots. He is covered in frost and snow despite the spring air, and a green parakeet preens itself in his bird’s nest of black curls.

He’s a student here, I can tell that much; a bookbag that’s probably his is flung carelessly off to one side. He’s hunched over his knees, head down in

his arms. Frost makes violent patterns on the tree bark behind him, on the carpet of dead leaves, on the thick tree roots around him, all converging on his spot like he’s the epicenter of an explosion.

The bird stops preening to look up at me when it notices that I’ve stopped in front of them, turning its head this way and that in jerky little movements. I stare back.

“Help!” it finally chirps. I blink. The ice in the springtime doesn’t phase me, all things considered, but… the bird is a little weird. I’ve heard of familiars before, I’ve just never had the liberty of meeting one. I

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know normal parakeets can mimic to some extent, but nothing about this situation suggests in any way that this is a normal bird, what with the snow and all... huh.

I guess I did pick something up from Supernatural Animal Studies.

“Um,” I respond eloquently. “…how can I help?”

“Dying,” the bird croons, quieter.

I could pretend not to notice that. It’s what I’m best at; I do it all the time with my responsibilities and things I’m not ready to deal with. This is technically none of my business. If I stopped and try to puzzle out every odd thing I saw on this campus, I’d probably be stuck in the Underworld or something. Messing around with things that don’t concern you is a pretty stupid (and unfortunately common) way to die. At the same time… I dunno. There aren’t any alarm bells going off in my head right now, and I kind of want to help someone else for once.

I weigh my options, before sloughing my bag

off my shoulder. Homework and the library will still be there later, and if I die, well… I never liked Fae Economics anyway.

I crouch down next to the guy and put a hand on his knee. Frost instantly begins to crawl up my fingers, and the skin of my entire hand sheds involuntarily and grows a layer of malleable copper metal in its place.

My fingers… tingle? What?

He jerks and tries to scramble away from me, falling as his hand catches on a root. I barely notice; I’m still staring at my hand. I felt something. I’ve barely been able to feel my own body for years.

I shift my attention back to mystery dude, whose eyes are glued to my metal-ified hand. I pretend not to notice and extend my other hand, partially to help him up, but mostly because I crave sensation on my fingertips again.

“Don’t!” he snaps, shifting further away. His back hits another tree, and his hair shifts long enough for me to get a better look at his face. Frozen tear tracks streak his cheeks, stark white against the dark tan of his skin.

His eyes glow a soft, pupil-less blue.

He can’t control the frost.

At this point, I should probably call Campus

Safety, and get them to bring a couple of specialists.

Waywards tend to be dangerous. Even if this guy’s loss of control isn’t his fault, which it most likely isn’t, he’s still a risk to everyone and himself. Logically, I know this. Illogically, I can rationalize that bringing more people into this situation is a bad idea. Right? Right.

“Dying!” the parakeet screeches.

“Shut up,” he snaps halfheartedly, still staring at my hand but reaching up to swipe at the bird in annoyance. The action sends a cascade of snow out of his curls and onto his shoulders. The bird nonchalantly flitters out of reach before settling back in its perch.

“Are you actually dying?” I ask quietly.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

Silence, stretching on for a few quiet minutes. I sit across from him, leaning back against the tree behind me. He looks away from me and glares at his knees.

“Is your hand okay?” he finally asks, as if reluctantly. His eyes seem normal now, and dark brown irises stare back at me from behind his curtain of curls. “I got some stuff for frostbite in my bag.”

“I’m fine,” I respond.

“You don’t look fine,” he snarks, wary eyes on

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my hand again. It’s already softening back into normal squishy dermal tissue, splotches of copper shrinking in miniscule increments with each passing second. It honestly just looks kinda like a nightmare of oddly shiny bruises.

“I don’t feel it.”

He raises a disbelieving eyebrow. I clench my other hand and punch the tree root on the ground next to me. He flinches, but I just shake my hand a little and stare at the split knuckles.

“What?” the bird murmurs quietly, startling a laugh out of me.

“What the- Why did you just do that?!” He surprises me in grabbing the newly injured hand to inspect the damage, but he immediately lets go when the frost races from his skin to mine. He blinks and his eyes are glowing ice blue again, fear beginning to mar his features. “I… I’m sorry, I just made it worse, I’m so sorry-”

“Nah, it’s chill,” I respond brightly. “Pun totally intended.”

My weak attempt at humor falls flat. He still

looks petrified, pupil-less eyes wide. An odd feeling tingles once again where the frost touches my skin, and I stare at my hand. It’s not metal-ified at the moment, so the weird discoloration is probably frostbite; go figure. Though… normally, the long dysfunctional sensory nerves in my skin wouldn’t even bother trying to respond. Now? Some part of me is actually registering the lower temperature.

I want to laugh giddily, but it’d probably be inappropriate considering the situation. I should also probably just fix it and stop freaking the poor guy out. My hand didn’t automatically solidify because I was a little more ready for the frost this time.

I will my hand to turn into lead, bracing for the immense weight difference. Blood and ruined skin sloughs off, and I sluggishly flex my fingers as I adjust to the heavier weight. Denser metals always mean slower movements, which can be annoying sometimes.

After a couple of seconds, the lead starts to disappear. Dark gray melts away in blobs, until there’s nothing left but the typical scarred brown-ness that

My weak attempt at humor falls flat. He still looks petrified, pupil-less eyes wide.

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characterizes my skin. There are new scars on my knuckles, though they’re barely noticeable.

I look up. He’s staring.

“What? You can make ice. I hardly think that being able to turn into metal is weird.”

“Help!” the parakeet interjects.

I point at the bird. “That, though? That’s a little weird.”

He shrugs. “The higher-ups decided I needed to ‘stop internalizing’ and got her to broadcast my feelings 24/7.”

“… you feel like you’re dying?”

He blinks, like he’s realizing what he just said, before breaking eye contact. Silence reigns again.

I’m not quite sure what to do at this point.

Something tells me suggesting counseling would not be well-received, so I’m at a bit of a loss. My eyes land on my bookbag, and I quickly look away. That homework isn’t due for a couple days, anyway; I can afford to stay longer.

He reminds me of when I was a kid, of the days when random patches of skin would go metallic without my permission. Losing control is terrifying. I don’t really like to think about it, but…

“I get stuck sometimes, and I… I can’t change back,” I say quietly. “It’s usually because I, like, panic or something. Which happens pretty often. And I, um… I can’t concentrate enough to get a hold of it, which makes me panic even more.”

Echoes of my own frantic wheezes sound through my head. I close my eyes against the memories and pretend they aren’t there. “Sometimes it gets bad enough to start spreading inside. Like, beyond just my skin, to the muscles and stuff underneath. I’ve had to go to the hospital a couple times, because, um… well, it could kill me. If I don’t get a hold of it. It’s already messed up my nerves, so I can’t feel anything anymore; pain, light touches, temperature… and that’s pretty terrifying. I mean. Until your frost.”

“Oh,” he says, seeming lost. Or maybe confused?

Like he isn’t sure what to do with the information. He hesitates for a long moment. Then:

“…Sometimes I’m afraid that I’ll never be able to get control again.”

His voice is barely above a whisper when he finally speaks. I glance up when I hear him shift. He’s a little less curled up in himself, now, knees a little farther from his chest. He stares at shaking hands

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propped against his thighs.

“Sometimes the ice just vibrates out of my skin and I… that’s when it starts spreading to other things.

Other people. Then I can’t touch anyone without hurting them, so I just… I mean, it… If I don’t let it out, feels like a bunch of needles just stabbing me all at the same time. So I just… hide.”

I nod, and the silence is different this time.

Comfortable. He has a different type of control to lose, but it’s still a relief to meet someone who sorta gets it.

“Can I sit next to you?” I ask.

He nods stiffly, ignoring the indignant squawk from the parakeet at the movement, and I shift to sit next to him. After a while of the both of us pretending not to notice his sniffling, I say,

“I have a pretty great shoulder, if you’re open to leaning on it. The metal will keep you from hurting me.

And. Well. I’d actually feel it, which would be nice.”

No response. I tip my head back against the tree and close my eyes. Eventually, my shoulder sinks slightly under an added weight. I wordlessly raise my arm and pull him a little closer. Frost spreads, and I pretend not to notice the beads of ice rolling off of his cheeks. The cold is comforting.

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Storage Project—Mariam “Tamalda” | Sofia Mendez | digital collage

Storage Project—Mithila “Holding Dear” | Sofia Mendez | digital photographs

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Lamp For My Feet (lefr), Herein Lies (right) | Leina’ala Voss | digital photography

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Contributors activity called worldbuilding. Most of the art he makes represents some aspect of his fictional world Christina Collins ‘21 is a second-year psychology and or is meant to have come out of it, like the Book of the studio art double major. She began drawing digitally in Ultan King. His current long-term projects include her first year, and she’s nervous but excited about shar- drawing table-sized maps of his world and designing ing a piece of her artwork formally for the first time. languages, cultures, and histories for it.

Summer Bordon ‘22 looks at the moon.

Winnie Commers ‘22

Rachel Eber ‘21 likes eating foods that are shaped like pockets.

Shabana Gupta ‘22 wants to focus on exploring her own artistic abilities, which means experiencing different mediums, different forms, and different glaze combinations. There’s no favorite type of art; everything is in development. Thus, she presents to you all some of her Beginnings, combinations of ideas, forms and colors that she hasn’t attempted before.

Evan Holt ‘20 is a computer science major who calls Minnesota home. When he is not doing homework, he enjoys playing and developing video games or listening to progressive rock. But most of his free time he spends developing his fictional world, an 48

Lydia James ‘19 This issue marks the 6th and final time Lydia’s artwork will published in the Grinnell Review.

It’s been a wild ride!

Yilin Li ‘20 Sofia Mendez ‘19 loves looking at branches and clouds among other things, and plans to continue making photos for the rest of life.

Quynh Nguyen ‘19 is from Saigon, Vietnam. She wants to eat doufuhua every morning if possible.

Anne S. Rogers ‘19 is soliciting submissions for her clothes and laundry playlist.

Megan Tcheng ‘19 spends most of her time thinking about her next meal and avoiding clickbait on her

Snapchat Discover page.

Zainab Thompson ‘22 puts her right foot in and her right foot out, but can’t always muster up the mental energy to shake it all about.

Miriam Tibbetts ‘19 once found the meaning of life at the bottom of a jar of salsa Valentina.

Leina’ala Voss ‘19 will miss chillin’ with the cows and corn in Iowa!

Sam Walker ‘21

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