Growl Magazine Issue #7

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issue #7 fall 2020 FALL 2020

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CONTENT WARNING: Some pieces in Growl involve themes that may be upsetting or triggering in nature to certain audiences.

Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Design Editor Art Director Copy Editors General Staff

Staff

Emily Ewing Cecilia Gray Lauren Sager Jessica Mannhaupt Debbie A Manasvi Vietla Olivia DeFiore Caitlyn “Cat” Snell

Thank you to our contributors: Anonymous Debbie A Jessica Bajorek Olivia DeFiore Dickinson-Frevola Elissacita Emily Ewing Juliana Feeney Lizzie Frank Sarah Gascho Cecilia Gray Taylor Hunsaker Georgelyne Jean-Pierre Sabrina Josephson Jessica Mannhaupt Audra Nemirow Gabrielle Pascal Ellie Prusko Caitlyn “Cat” Snell Manasvi Vietla

Reconnecting Caitlyn “Cat” Snell

stand still Jessica Mannhaupt

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Despair Audra Nemirow

A Performance of Swan Lake Audra Nemirow The libretto swore she was a swan, but those waiting in the wings knew the truth.

Her infinite line had nothing to do with her species, but with the blithe gestures of a puppeteer pulling her legs from his perch on the moon.

Her posture did not come from royal birth, but from a fear of upsetting her crown of steaming soup.

How embarrassing it would be, spilling oneself all over the stage!

If her jump was generous, it wasn’t because she had wings, it was because the stage was a pit of snakes in love with her shins.

Her fluid movements were not the eloquent script of a princess, but the sandy cursive of a mad castaway repeatedly drawing the letter D. If she shunned the audience, fortifying the fourth wall, it was not out of oneness with the tragic Odette.

To her, the audience was as real as a lake of tears.

And the swan maidens framing her pretended to be mirrors, but they did not move.

They must have been cardboard, like Siegfried’s arrow.

She was not a swan, but she was not human either.

She was perhaps best described as a spine of knotted ribbons undone by a love of the music.

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Tits Caitlyn “Cat” Snell I like tits. Like, I really like tits. Like, I didn’t understand attraction to a body part, a body part and not a person because how can a body part, a leg, a chest, a hair style, how can that be attractive, how can it be in anyway appealing, but God, tits. It’s a cheap and cheapening word, but it’s the only word that fits in my mouth. “Boobs” is too juvenile, and “breasts” too clinical. Your lips spend too long drawing out the syllables, when “tits” falls from your lips, all quick and sweet, over before the word has begun, tripping like the palindrome that it is, and refusing to dwell on the concept, because we cannot dwell on the concept, because the frat boy inside of me has wayward eyes, and my God-marred heart has a machine gun pulse, because if God made sex he certainly had to make a complex to go with it, one caught between worship and sin, because wayward eyes wander and nervous tongues lick lips. And sex, sex, sex, sex, sex is a dirty word, and tits are not made for eyes, not for pleasure, not to speed up heart rates, not to distract or unfocus, neither is the curve of a hip, the cut of a jaw, the baseboard maleness of a chest beneath your fingers, or that feminine pout, smile, playfully guilting look that makes you do anything that girl asks from you. Because you didn’t understand the phrase weak in the knees until you felt it. Until you realized you didn’t know her eye color because your eyes never made it up that far, they always got caught on her barbed wire smile, until you realized you missed the whole math lesson because you had been thinking about his fingers curled up in your hair. Thinking of the almosts, and not quites and your own why nots and thank God’s, weeks later. Because God, are you horny, but maybe you weren’t quite ready for sex, but maybe you want to be, maybe you’ll never be. Maybe just not with him, maybe with her, if you ever work up the courage to hold her hand, or ask him out, or

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be struck down before you can fumble your way into something that would even get you close to satisfy that grabbing, clawing, gasping need, one that would get “tits” into someone else’s mouth.

God Marred Heart Caitlyn “Cat” Snell

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Cultured Elissacita My first language was Spanish But I feel like I’ve been thinking in English for too much of my life I don’t feel like I’m part of the culture My parents Or my neighbors I tried when I was little, wearing the dresses, trying to squeeze myself into the colors that I was born to be Speaking the language, fixing my tongue in the right shape, but it just didn’t sound right to me Learning to dance, tripping over myself and others, finding my way to what is supposed to be my culture But it wasn’t enough A girl whose world is her “cultured” American friends, friends who say, “Wow you’re just like Dora” just because I speak Spanish and have my hair short and have a slight tan to my skin does not mean I am anything close to a cartoon character meant for American parents to pat their kid on the back and call them “cultured” friends who swear in Spanish just for the fun of swearing in another language, please. That girl was tired, that girl did not suffice to fit into what I tried to be.

I tried to be proud, I tried to be unbothered by those “cultured friends” Eventually I gave into the American world where I can’t tell if I’ve forgotten myself or if I’ve found myself When they ask me now to speak Spanish, I slip up and don’t try fixing it Not knowing because I never knew Because there is a difference between adapting And erasing And I think I did just that But it wasn’t only me I was beaten down when I was young Because I’m not foreign enough for the foreigners And I’m not American enough for the Americans

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So, what am I “So, what are you?” those friends ask me looking at me like I’m a funhouse mirror Because I dress like them I talk like them But I have something different inside me My culture

Looks Can Be Deceiving Cecilia Gray

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I Don’t Remember How to Pray Anymore Caitlyn “Cat” Snell

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Abstinence Emily Ewing They put us in a dark trailer and taught us about sex, where a woman with greying hair and a life unlived showed us what abuse meant, said virgins were like chewing gum, sticky with flavor and ruin when used up like so many 1-ply tissues, and sex was a choice that could not be undone, like so many babies.

She put Kisses in our hands, temptation incarnate, and made us put them on our outstretched tongues, wrappers discarded, the chocolate turning slick and slimy like soap or cum.

The kids who ate candy were made harlots, heathens, because they couldn’t resist that rich but dangerous taste of chocolate, which left unchecked would leave you ruined in a shared twin bed, being told you cared, the shame of being a child mixed with the shame of a sex that they did not explain.

She’d left the word a nebulous, tantalizing thing, left everyone dead inside that cool dark trailer, and I was left relieved that I had never liked the taste of chocolate.

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astro (k)nights Manasvi Vietla

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Supporting Science Debbie A For years, they believed the Earth was the center of the universe Though Copernicus proved the planets revolve around the sun But the Church declared such statements heresy And Galileo, in supporting science, was found guilty There is no more Inquisition today But persecution is alive and well If you dare to speak up Against the powers that be With findings that contradict their inaccuracies

Reclaim the Climate Jessica Mannhaupt

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To a Past Lover Taylor Hunsaker The arrangement didn’t feel dangerous or strange— I was rather bored. Thoughts pitched their milliondollar ideas to the empty auditorium in my head. Front row seats in the theater to see no one. There was a Velvet Underground vinyl in the room; Andy Warhol’s banana mocked me in yellow.

Empty sleeves urged consumers to listen to “sounds of the city,” but Manhattan’s cries bled from the horns in the streets, rose up the skanky skyscrapers, ascending to those very sheets.

Money, envy, love, greed: top shelf vices from which pleasure gleamed. Faded white spots on the soft blue wallpaper, a tall glass of water placed upon a coaster on the black, glasstop nightstand.

I sized up his dark glasses and jeans, smirking yet unimpressed.

Mr. King shook his head as I circled back to the service elevator from the staircase to nowhere. Stench of marijuana smoke in the halls. Cold air hit the back of my brain as I pushed out of the crystal maze. New York glistens in the evening.

So, tell me, my love: Will you still take this tainted flesh as your own?

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Nothing Like A Dame Sarah Gascho

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Something Insatiable Lives in My Stomach Caitlyn “Cat” Snell Something insatiable lives in my stomach. I forget about it during the school year. I’ve never been starved enough to remember hunger when I am full.

During the school year, in between complaints about red tape and how college is a scam and every halfthought-out fuck-the-man adage that falls from my privileged mouth—what lives in my stomach feasts.

It feasts on the classes I groan about going to and never miss, it feasts on the noise complaints my friends and I rack up, it feasts on the books and the homework and the lessons I think critically on, it feasts on the lessons I don’t agree with. I am so full that I forget the need, the call to cram my head so full of new that I can screw out my old eyes every week finding them loose in my sockets and their wood peeling with splinters, and find a new glossy glass doll eye pair between my class notes and conversations, and find they fit just right for this week.

During the school year I forget how uncomfortable those old eyes grow, so quick am I to take on a new doll eye pair. Without lessons or ears, the thing in my stomach aches, and the shiny glass loses its glimmer. It falls away with every harsh truth laid out in the undeniable that runs, an undercurrent, in the news-stories we must view critically, for they are written in the actions that speak louder than the implicit bias that my make-america-great father gave to me even as I fought the explicit in his words.

That something insatiable eats the glass-shard hard truth, unable to taste the table scraps against the hollow pit which has gone unsated for years but has gotten used to the attempts. My glass eyes are no longer glass –their brightness was worn away as is their nature, for glass has always been

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delicate. They revealed their core to once more be only wood, dull and stinging with splinters.

The insatiable thing in my stomach is unsated as is its nature, and my eyes hurt. I read books not assigned in classes, looking for different eyes, searching for ones with a different core. The wood ones still sting in my sockets, and the insatiable thing in my stomach consumes every word which I look for them in. May Sarton, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde—here I look for new eyes, something to render eyes worth looking through. Bel Hooks, Toni Morrison, Carmen Machado—I am finding new eyes cannot be given, they must be crafted. Given eyes have cores you cannot see.

My eyes are still wood —I cannot forget the implicit, but I can build new lenses to work against it. I wrap them in other people’s words, but still the insatiable sits in my stomach, wondering when I will see that actions feed better than words.

Eye Scream Audra Nemirow

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Shut Up Cecilia Gray

Dragon in the Coffee Shop Taylor Hunsaker Sitting in the back-left corner of this industrial space I watch her slender shoulders slither by, sipping my earthy espresso.

Shades down, snickering smugly and steaming from the eyes and lips She’s slick, sly—too eager to pass you by—and doesn’t see me Yet. But I see her; I want her; she’s mine. It’s now play time.

Slinking up to the steel grey counter, standing slightly on her toes, Pressing her hips and raising her heart to flirt with the whole entire world.

At once I stand, fumbling to get over myself. She’s fuming, flames from her hair.

“Buy you a coffee, sweetheart?” I con and coo. She doesn’t move.

A roaring erupts. Her smile goes black. You didn’t see my coffee spill, then stain.

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Sycamore and Sun Olivia DeFiore Even as a mere sapling, he strived to reach the sun.

Constantly, she called to him with her bright white rays, Caressed his blossoming leaves with her warmth.

Through the branches of neighboring trees he climbed, Reaching, stretching, straining, Hoping to someday reach her.

But growing is a slow process, you see.

For years, he was forced to wait, Urging, pushing, pulling, Wishing to grow just a little bit taller.

Too focused on her glow, he failed to recognize The devastation brewing around him.

Finally, he spotted the barren stumps Scattered across the surrounding earth Like tombstones in a graveyard.

He watched in horror as those around him Were mercilessly chopped down, Praying that he wasn’t next.

But, perhaps, he would survive, Perhaps, he was safe.

Surely the culprit knew of his mission, His hopes, his dreams, his aspirations.

He was so close to reaching his sun.

A little more time was all he needed.

Then came the first chop, Sending sap spilling down his bark, Into the soil below, The soil he knew so well.

He was sent toppling, Falling, plummeting, collapsing, Far, far, away From his sun.

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The Waiter Ellie Prusko

Three mouthfuls of spaghetti in, I noticed the waiter was looking at Darling and not me. Not that I blamed him, but when I smiled twice, he smiled back both times. She was there eating spaghetti too. But Darling made everything look graceful. And anyone next to me was considered graceful.

I should’ve known. When she admitted to him she wasn’t twenty-one, he left her wine glass anyway. He took mine without even asking me my age.

My parents didn’t even protest. My mother watching her with concerned eyes as my special sister sipped the red as if she’d done it a thousand times.

He even was so bold as to give the three of them glasses of homemade limoncello –on the house, of course. God, I should’ve picked up when he poured it right next to her. Leaning in to smell her perfume and see the precious clumps of mascara that had fallen under her lashes. A hand on her arm when he walked away.

Darling flashed me a smile. Isn’t this wild? it said. No, Darling. It’s not wild at all. This happens to you daily, and you approach it like a puppy and a ballerina all at once. The waiter watched her at the end of the dining room. Every blink, every lick of chocolate off of her bottom lip, and every smooth throat-bob of a swallow.

When we got in the car in the back row, she showed me the crumpled piece of paper. The number scrawled hastily but lovingly. She gave it to me to examine, her eyes wide and her heart thumping so loudly I could hear it.

Without warning and a surprise to both of us, I took the paper and swallowed it.

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daydreams Anonymous SOMEWHERE IN ANOTHER LIFE I PIERCED THE GLASS WITH MY FIST THE WINDSHIELD MELTED, BECAME SNOWFLAKES AROUND ME THE SHARDS PUNCTURED MY FOREARM A BILLION TINY PARASITES, HEADS BURIED IN MY FLESH, I FOUGHT BACK, DAMNIT, LOOK AT ALL THE WAYS I SAID “NO” SOMEWHERE IN ANOTHER LIFE THE E.R. DOCTORS PATCHING ME UP WERE MORTIFIED THEY HAD NEVER SEEN A LIMB SO MANGLED, MY FINGERS DANGLING BY THE LIGAMENTS SOMEWHERE IN ANOTHER LIFE I MADE A CRIME SCENE OF THE WHOLE DAMN NEIGHBORHOOD MY BLOOD DROWNED EVERY LAWN STAINED EVERY WHITE PICKET FENCE KILLED ALL THE HYDRANGEAS SOMEWHERE IN ANOTHER LIFE THE COMBUSTION OF MY RIBCAGE WAS SO VIOLENT THAT YEARS FROM NOW THE CUL-DE-SAC KIDS WILL SAY THEY STILL HEAR MY RESISTANCE LIKE AN ECHO SOMEWHERE IN ANOTHER LIFE I CARVED MY JAWLINE WITH MY KNUCKLES I FELT MY TRACHEA COLLAPSE I BLED OUT IN A DITCH DAMNIT, I FOUGHT BACK

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MY FLEETING BREATH SCREAMING “NO” MY TEETH STREWN ABOUT MY HAIR, LODGED IN THE BACK OF MY THROAT, THE VISCERA, THE AFTERMATH OF NO.

NO

NO

NO NO NO NO. NO.

NO no

NO !!!! NO!!!!!!! NO!!!

NONONONONONONONO NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO———NO NONONONO NO NO! NO! NO! NO! No. No...

In this life, I walk away unbloodied.

My cells simply refuse to detonate.

I was afraid of death, resigned.t In my deepest shame, I did what I had to do to survive.

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Crop Top Caitlyn “Cat” Snell It’s just a shirt. A bad shirt at that. It’s a crappy shirt for a job that I so staunchly do not care about and can only remind me of how Chris McCandless didn’t wear socks when he worked at McDonald’s and fuck, his feet must have hurt, but man, do I stand by the message.

Chris McCandless who changed his name from Alex Supertramp like that wasn’t already a killer name, and man how I haven’t thought of this martyr of a man who was stupid enough to die, since high school.

It’s with these thoughts and sockless feet (outside of work hours) that make me refuse to wear the shirt that they gave me when they hired me in the middle of a pandemic. “WE ARE ONE” it claims and tells me to bleed orange like the training videos, but I refuse to bleed for minimum wage and the shirt is two sizes too large.

I am thankful for the money that is being funneled into my student loans. I refuse to wear the shirt.

I am not part of the “ONE,” and my veins do not run orange copper rusting propaganda or the electric orange of the Fanta Soda that the breakroom offers for the swipe of your credit card in the vending machine. I refuse to wear the shirt on one of my two days off a week. I refuse to sleep in it, or wear it to work. I cannot wear it, so I defile it.

I take the kitchen scissors to it and chop it into a crop top. I slit a V-neck into it and wear it for twenty-four hours. I dance and sleep in it. I wake up to it and stare at myself in the mirror. It is the sluttiest thing I own. Me who’s never owned a crop top, never had the courage for a bikini, never wanted to see how my stomach bled over the lip of my jeans, my shorts, my only pair of sweatpants that cling as tight as leggings because I can’t wear clothes that look too bulky because my restrained eating disorder will flip.

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aaaaah Caitlyn “Cat” Snell The shirt no longer reps my minimum wage job, because I am no longer allowed to wear it to work, and I spend twenty-four hours not being able to look away from mirrors because I am wearing a crop top and it feels like a victory. I’m nervous and excited and the last thing I’m thinking of is my job, because this is the sluttiest thing I own and I am forcing myself to walk around the house in it.

To talk to my family in it. To let myself be seen in it, like it’s just another piece of clothing cause it is and my stomach still bleeds over the lip of my jean shorts but I try not to suck it in, because I’ve been hit on enough in retail to know I look good enough to be objectified, and I am wearing a crop top for myself.

I am wearing a crop top for my high school self who wrote into her five year plan “Wear a crop top” with the caveat “(or at least have the confidence to)” because I thought I might never do it, but still wanting to be able to cross it off eventually, I figured I could reason myself into having the confidence to. I cut an insult into a crop top and I am working on feeling comfortable in it. And it’s just a shirt, a crappy one at that. The bottom curls up, missing the weight and the uniform of a seam, and the V in the neck line is off center, but I wore it for twenty-four hours, and it feels like a victory lap.

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1622, Marble Jessica Bajorek When Bernini sculpted his statue in Proserpina’s image, did he know that he trapped her inside those hard lines of stone?

That for all its likeness, the carefully trimmed fingers pressing into the flesh of her thigh kept her hurt stagnant there in Pluto’s vice.

I cannot remember when last I was not made of marble.

I may look real, my skin soft beneath the touch of a lazy thumb grazing the apple of my cheek, it flushing red in response, but the sediment is settling in the salt of my blood.

My eyes are graying beneath the fluorescence of recessed lighting.

It’s been ages since I’ve seen the sun.

Do I catch the angle just right, standing here poised and stoic? If I promise not to shift even the corners of my lips, not to let the brightness into my irises, not to let my pupils dilate even a millimeter, will it be enough? Will you leave me alone? Will it close the channel to my heart?

Can I detach myself from the memories I had of you?

Now I’m walking and breathing in stone. I’m haunting my own body, I am an epitaph written on the frame of a girl.

I have been chiseled out, my essence ground by mortar and pestle.

If you took me out to the wind, would I dissipate like ashes do?

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I look at the grief in Proserpina’s eyes, and I know now that secret behind them.

I know what it is like to move, perpetually at a stand-still.

Conformity Dickinson-Frevola

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containment breach Lizzie Frank necessary // we are all hungry things // holding ourselves back on the verge of uninhibited connection // sinking into the mud // seaweed under my armpits and tangled around my neck // trying to escape you // I saw a UFO once and my life stayed the same // I am always in that room. I can never go anywhere else // I am sorry for the wrong I have done // I am sorry for the things that put me in here // hopping on the train and hopping off, no ticket necessary // not anymore // I have dreamt about sinking every night this week // pocketing candy though I crave red meat // a vortex held in my gut // turning my face toward the shower head // not sure when I got so much blood in my hair // is moonlight such a crime // be careful when you synonymize darkness with sin // I want to be let out, but they are not so sure I would return // when they’ve let me out before, I haven’t come back // I hear the trains running in my dreams. I cannot look at the clock without thinking about the trains // an earthquake in my blood // the natural world belongs to me // naked mornings with the driest dirt between my teeth and raw meat I bit into freshly churning in my stomach // but they keep me inside down // howling // hungry // sinking

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Spacing Out Jessica Mannhaupt

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August Caitlyn “Cat” Snell

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Morning Train Ride (aka the Ghost of A.K.) Audra Nemirow This morning, the city is steel-grey and misty.

The train, nearly empty, floats among ghosts of stars: baubles of light in the bright air.

I sit, prim and innocent, draped in last night’s black velvet.

Fine lady, in love with the high wire, with the plunge underground.

We are gliding through suburban ash, through memory.

I think we are returning home after a night of foul dreams.

I am not guilty of anything, anything‌ I am innocent, except for the mist I emit and my intermittent shriek.

See? My dumbness sets me free.

I am sleek inertia, glamour and numbness.

drowning Jessica Mannhaupt

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The Tale of Two Women Juliana Feeney I must have been around eight or nine When the pain abruptly began I was playing tag out in the yard My hair flowing free, as I ran My hair was thick and full of frizz Each strand would plaster to my face And with sticky hands I brushed them back Cause combing was a waste My grandma then handed me A black elastic band She taught me how to tie my hair up And helped me understand My ponytail served its use I was free and careless all day I could run and kick and swim and play With no pesky hair in the way But when the fun was done And the guest had left I felt a throbbing on my head Where my ponytail was held up high before Just pain was left instead.

I whined and said “oh grandma why Must my head hurt with this pain” My grandma said “come child, sit All your feelings I will explain See ponytails are special gifts Each time you take your hair down Remember that ponytail bruises are The phantom feeling of your crown.

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future is female Jessica Mannhaupt

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When You Look at Me Gabrielle Pascal

When you look at me, just what is it that you see?

Am I your fetish? A pound of flesh to toss aside when you’ve fulfilled some fantasy.

Or am I your token? Someone to dangle at your side as proof of your moral superiority.

For so long, I’ve been told that my anger is misplaced.

That my emotions have no validity when they erupt.

But what you see as anger and unnecessary displays of emotion is my desperately trying to speak my truth.

Because when you look at me, You do not see me for who I am.

I do not believe you ever have.

If you did, Your gaze would reach beyond the color of my skin and the kinks in my hair.

Your gaze would see that I am a human being.

Not a thug.

Not a target.

Not a threat.

When you’d look at me, You’d see that I am not perfect.

I do not pretend to be.

Yet, that is what this world expects.

When you’d look at me, You’d see that this appearance of composed togetherness, my steel heart, and indestructible strength is a masquerade.

The mask I designed for my survival And what lies beneath is Sadness, intelligence, anger, and...beauty.

I walk in this world with unbearable weights on my soul and each day is a war to not let it tear me apart.

I would fly to reach expectations that became higher

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each time I grasped them, destroying myself over a single mistake.

I brought fire to my hair to morph into standards never meant for women like me.

I starved myself for years, shrinking into something I hardly recognized.

I would lie in my bed at night and want nothing more than to be tossed into oblivion.

I alienated myself from the ones who love me most because I only sawee shame in my reflection.

The battles disintegrated my worth into ashes and drowned my joy in suffocating sorrow.

In the loneliest hours, These thoughts invade my mind.

That I’ll never find the love I desire because I deemed myself unworthy of ever having it.

That if I were to someday disappear, There would be no one searching.

That if some man had put his hands on me, My screams would go unheard and my tears buried deep inside.

That I’ll wake up one day too exhausted to fight with nothing else to hold onto And let myself vanish in the darkness of night.

That if my brother leaves our home, wrapped in the warmth of his hoodie, Someone will mark him as dangerous and kill him.

Or that someone could fearlessly do the same to me.

And our names would be forgotten as if they meant nothing.

That to you, we are just nothing.

It is this hate that terrifies me the most, the one lingering inside.

Now, I tell myself to reject it.

But it’s seeped into my soul like a snake’s venom Reminding me that I am all the things my mother tells me I am not.

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When You Look at Me Gabrielle Pascal Though I have learned to approach desires with caution, I find myself wanting many things.

See, I want to simply live with no fear of what may come of it.

To no longer hide my intelligence because it intimidates you.

To stop hiding my natural self to appease your ignorance.

To stop defining vulnerability as a weakness and see it as my lifeline.

I want a world liberated from your gaze.

I know I may not live to see it and that it may only exist when I close my eyes at night But I see hope in flickers of rebellion and revolution in the streets I find strength in trying to heal the parts of myself poisoned by my own hate.

I feel love when my mother and father smile at my words and tell me they see beauty when they look into my eyes.

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I start to breathe joy in my lungs again when my brother tells me about his dreams.

I must continue moving forward Even if what lies ahead is marred in uncertainty and fear.

I am someone that is just beginning to search for beauty in the mirror’s reflection Coming into her own identity and discovering a world she hid from for years I still succumb to howling winds screaming in my mind and disappear in my torrents of sadness I am someone scarred from ruthlessly tearing myself apart.

I do not give myself illusions over perfect blue skies appearing on my horizon I cherish light whenever I may find it.

It is not much, but it’s enough to hold on to.

It reminds me that with its cruelty, there is still beauty to be found in this world.

So I can no longer define myself by what you see in your gaze When you look at me, you do not see who I am.

I have found something more valuable than your recognition could ever give me Golden pieces rising out of once neglected ashes I am finding freedom in forging a life that is unequivocally my own.

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through the looking glass Jessica Mannhaupt

Walk a Mile Debbie A Even your best friend can’t understand Because she’s never walked in your shoes Just borrowed them from time to time She may be a size 6 too, but she’s never encountered someone who looks down on her for Sporting that brand She has plenty of choices in her walk-in closet, after all You scream: “Oh, you don’t need to save me You don’t need to save me You should never think that’s what you’re supposed to do But take a second please and listen Just listen My shoes, they were a loan My truth, you’ve never known Our different experiences, we need to own.”

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Well Wishes Sabrina Josephson I’ve walked this path enough to know that I can’t afford to think or speak on any future matter but you’ve seen this path before and didn’t enter and now now you circle back you study the arches stare at the leaves watch how the sun fades and you enter there is no hatred and no love for your sake and ours instead we offer a medium of hi’s how are you’s and well wishes.

The Meeting No One Asked For Cecilia Gray

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GROWL’S VISION Growl is a collaborative magazine presented by Hofstra English Society. We believe that there is power in the written word and in artwork, and we exist to offer students a platform on which they may creatively express their feelings regarding social issues and advocacy. Our mission is to uplift voices that encourage equality, inclusivity, and diversity. Our subject matter includes gender and gender identity, sexuality, race, religion, mental health, body image, politics, and social (in)equality in hopes of empowering historically marginalized voices and topics.

For more information about our magazine, follow us on Instagram @growlmagazine

COVER ART

“I Draw the Lines of Beauty” Georgelyne Jean-Pierre Logo design by Michela Polek and Lauren Sager