Spring 2017 Edition

1 | Wooden Teeth

spring 2016 fall 2015 Volume , Number

spring 2017

The George Washington University’s Student Art & Literary Magazine

staff

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF sarah fannon CO-EDITOR mel piskai STAFF EDITORS anna fenzel

kendall geisel tara kosowski sophie rickless GENERAL EDITORS

rachel brady oona intemann geffen segal daniela mora savovic

LAYOUT EDITOR sarah fannon

submit Wooden Teeth is published twice each year and is open to all members of The George Washington University community. Undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, alumni, and staff are encouraged to submit their poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and art.

For additional information, please refer questions to: Please send submissions and questions to: gwwoodenteeth@gmail.com You may submit three literary works and three pieces of artwork each semester.

spring 2017 Volume 40

valerie jaimes Feel Love

table of contents poetry simon portillo

5

muzhda sabira ghafoori samsara counts e. doyle-gillespie m.e. may samsara counts lauren danielowski ellara chumashkaeva jamie reid geffen segall ellara chumashkaeva samsara counts karim nicolas camara

george westin

sarah fannon

jacob sagar

madeline morrows muzhda sabira ghafoori ellara chumashkaeva

megan fitzgerald

m.e. may

sarah fannon e. doyle-gillespie

6 8 9 10 12 13 15 16 17 18 22 24 25 26 28 29 31 32 33 34 37 38

Thoughts on America (From Across the Wall) Softly Fishing A Coven of Torturers Fairy Lights Spring To Mother Aurora Profanity R.E.M. Birthday The Giant Squid Run Hello From A Cavernous Room!

Sunburnt That Kid Beneath the Tree Forty Days of Mourning The Red Sun Not this winter Love in a Pimple Mermaid A German Man

prose m.e. may tara kosowski

3 39

coming up North Valley

art caroline rexrode michelle ritota andi ma tara kosowski andi ma delaney hoffman andi ma valerie jaimes andi ma caroline rexrode sophie rickless andi ma

2 7 11 14 19 20 23 27 30 35 37 41

Glitch Bitch Wonder Umbrellas in Jiangnan Peachy Pink Unicorns Deysy Patriotism Furry Friends A Feather in the Universe Hana Alice Kiss the Love

cover art: sophie rickless Justine

caroline rexrode Glitch Bitch 2 | Wooden Teeth

m.e. may coming up I am committing slow genocide.

The grass between my legs has been trampled by thousands of feet, saturated with yesterday’s rain, and then bleached by today’s sun until it’s taken on the consistency of hay. It’s an odd thing, to have four legs when you normally have only two. It’s an odd thing, to feel it every time the earth breathes. It’s an odd thing, I suppose, to be sitting in a pile of hay in the middle of Delaware on a Friday afternoon, slowly plucking pieces of dead grass and laying them in piles with their brothers. They did not have to dig their own graves. I am not a cruel tyrant, just a systematic destroyer of grass blades. I can hear them cry out each time I tear one from the ground—not a cry of pain, or a scream, just a short little “Aah” of breath. A release—a snap—a rip, like air ripped from the lungs just before the bottom drops out of the stomach during a fall.

“Coming up next,” says the voice of God. “The Wombats.”

One beat two beat three beat four beat five beat means I’m still alive and blood is still pumping so everything is okay and I’ve gummed the little paper tab to death, a little pulpy pile under my tongue somewhere. It tastes like nothing—it tastes like air—like color, maybe. It tastes like The Wombats climbing the stage stairs, the crowd’s screams coming to me through a tin can or maybe an airplane engine. Bad connection—call back later.

After an hour, or maybe just a minute or so, I remember that the point of coming to concerts is to watch the band, and my gaze is glued to the thin film of dust that clings to my fingertips. I raise my head, a thousand-pound deadlift, to watch shapes and colors move on a screen far-off in front of me. The screens hang above the stage so the peasants in the haybleached back of the field can still watch the singer’s gyrations or pretend that they can move their fingers as fast as the bassist, but I only see individual photons of light. The shapes are lost on me, but I don’t mind. Photons have always interested me more than faces, because what is the point of counting someone’s freckles if they’re just going to multiply and divide as you watch?

Six beat seven beat eight beat nine beat breathe.

All in working order, babydoll, you’re doing fine.

“Whoa,” my partner says, stretched into a thousand syllables, W-h-o-a. “I’m so glad you wore those pants.”

Two of my legs move, forgetting I told them not to, and suddenly the boy behind me is leaning forward to wrap his arms around my waist and trace the colorful patterns on my leggings as they climb up my thighs. I remind myself that I am a onehearted, two-legged young woman, and there is a one-hearted young man sitting behind me, and his two legs rest on either side of mine. We are one, in the way that I am one with this field and these pieces of hay, but I sometimes forget we are two—two sets of four limbs, not one unusual octo-human.

That’s a trippy thought, I think.

3 | Wooden Teeth

One beat two beat three beat four beat five. Don’t forget to breathe.

“You okay?” he asks, and I remember that we were having a conversation, maybe a millennium or two ago. Time is hard.

Time is soft. Time is wibbly-wobbly and I am right in the center of it. How do you decide if you are “okay” when you are everyone and everywhere at once? Am I okay? I am me, I am not O-K, I am M-A-G-something. I’m missing letters. I’m missing limbs. I have something in my system, something not meant for this body. My body is my temple. Celestial body.

One beat two beat— I am the earth— Three beat four beat— I am polluted— Five— I am participating in the systematic genocide of hay.

I am overwhelmed.

“I’m great,” I say. My tongue is two sizes too big for me today and my words taste like cinnamon or maybe water running through limestone or maybe they taste like the color green. Taste is difficult to comprehend. Who decided what things tasted like? Who decided sweet who picked salty who made up honey?

“The come-up on this batch is pretty intense.” His words dance from ear to ear like the earbud distortion in a Radiohead song.

“No shit,” I say. The T sound smells like rosewater.

Have I ever smelled rosewater? Does it smell like water or does it smell like roses? What does water smell like?

Water smells like water.

I am drowning in Wombats. The music is its own beast, dancing beside me and within me, filling my limbs with summer and sunshine and the rain that soaked into the dirt this morning.

He touches my shoulder with one finger. I didn’t know before now it was possible to keep a glacier in your thumbnail but I feel the ice pulse, pulse, from the spot on my skin where he touched me down to the tips of my toes. What is cold but the absence of heat? There is no such thing as cold, only less hot.

He says, “Baby, you’re burning.”

Yes, from the inside out.

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simon portillo Thoughts on America (From Across the Wall) Where is my culture?

For I have stolen and eaten their words and found within them a profound idea— I am not impotent.

We are the same because your vanity might portrait twisted faces in grey-scale, but what is left are simultaneously ephemeral faces— mouths agape as I softly steal the mysticism in their tongues.

5 | Wooden Teeth

muzhda sabira ghafoori Softly As the morning lingers on your cheeks, Tiny particles— Rise and stir as if from sleep, As your skin begins to tingle— Hum— Greeting the early light.

As dawn and fog dance together— Hanging molasses around your bones— Think of me.

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michelle ritota Wonder

7 | Wooden Teeth

samsara counts Fishing I Tom, my cousin, six, strained to raise his net from the water.

Inside, a carp pitched. Tom grunted; the carp smacked the rain-soaked dock. The carp thrashed; the grimy bat swung.

The carp shed its blood in fat gouts.

My cousin tugged the hook out, held the carp by its lips, posing.

II On a cruise, I revel in dark wind.

Someone grabs me. Hey sexy, pinning me against the railing, clutching my waist.

I shove him off but lean too far: we fall over the side, entangled.

I wake, thrashing the sheets, my love beside me.

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e. doyle-gillespie A Coven of Torturers The other men called him Bone Caster.

He was the one who could see the future – who knew when the subject would break.

He knew exactly how many hours, counted in cigarettes and cold coffee backwash, would go by before the bearded man would finally become a child, and weep, and beg for peace.

We called one man, one young man, Plague Doctor.

He kept the books.

He kept the names all in his head.

He sat, some days, with an old woman from the local market.

She showed him how to slice fish this way and that with tiny, slender blades – how to separate skin from meat.

And me, I was Sin Eater.

We would go to the place that was set aside for men like us – a place that hummed with leaking cold air – and I would listen to the stories, washing each down with a sphinx’s stillness and lukewarm beer.

9 | Wooden Teeth

m.e. may Fairy Lights Outside the sirens and cars and trucks echo in the October air, but in here, there is quiet and calm and warm light.

The reds and the yellows wash the sheets with summertime, despite the breeze nudging its way in through the open window.

When I was small, metal flowers like these were houses for fairies. Inside, I hoped to find a small, sleeping body clad in holly leaves with gossamer wings, thin as a whisper; an acorn cap for a dining table, laid for breakfast, shimmering with the gentle fey light of fireflies.

But I found peace in plug-in instant gratification, the filament’s glow a small comfort of its own.

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andi ma Umbrellas in Jiangnan 11 | Wooden Teeth

samsara counts Spring Rain batters the skylights and a well-dressed weatherman warns of a superstorm.

Nana turns the volume down and calls us to dinner: pot pie made with peas and carrots from her garden, washed down with cheap cabernet in Christmas glasses.

The weatherman announces a tornado warning. I finish my wine and we crowd into the hall closet where I shred my napkin.

Thirty minutes later, we emerge.

Outside: overturned plants, chairs, bent fan blades, wind chimes, and glass spheres broken on the stones.

“Will there be a rainbow?” Nana wonders.

Barefoot, I cross the garden to the dock, to find out.

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lauren danielowski To Mother Mountains are mother nature’s romantic gesture to humanity, a memorial to her soft yet prominent and endless curves.

To walk them is to love her, your own smallness awash in the forest green, and her thunderous cries of pleasure their own force of destruction.

Our loving is fickle, but her curves are forever.

She is full of many sounds: honeybees buzz and hunger cries in the heart of her being.

On her own she is very loud but inside her man is the loudest he will ever be, even though her wholeness swallows him in the eyes of God. Why must she always carry the thunder of small men on her back?

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tara kosowski Peachy Wooden Teeth | 14

ellara chumashkaeva Aurora When risen, leave it to the dawn of day To mask the deaths, you tucked in bed at gloom.

When air is enemy, and you are clay, When you come forth from the flowery womb, O child, you must keep that luminescence That bombinated in your heart like spring.

Go on, delay that tricky senescence!

Align in a vast constellation, sing, And feed that buzzing bee with life’s flowers When they throw at you defeat, scorn, and pain, Prevail, show them your meteor showers.

No matter the wreck, the permanent stain, There is tomorrow that runs in the storm.

A ship awaits you, water is lukewarm.

15 | Wooden Teeth

jamie reid Profanity Profanity is The rebellious language Of cunning linguists

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geffen segall R.E.M. Spider-vein fractures wrap like ivy, ‘round each dream clutched so tightly.

Ebon wide-eyed stitched smile, please sit and join us for awhile.

Today’s specials: a boy’s shattered piggy bank of a dream and a mother’s empty mattress of a scream, some symbolical six-pack-bound wings of a dove, cooked without soy, gluten, milk, and love.

A bottle of Flint sparkling water, a basket of money with ergot and butter.

Saline drips and stomach pumps, our bar is open at all times to everyone.

So raise your cup and mute your pain, blur your existence as the dazed and lame.

But when the tea cup breaks and you have dined, gratuity is life at The Restaurant at the End of Mankind.

17 | Wooden Teeth

ellara chumashkaeva Birthday The gift of life– A mandatory draft For the war with no winners.

Smothering walls Of a doll house Seemed to shrink With each creeping day.

I never met my childhood.

At night, My mother crawled on her elbows, Through the trenches, Scarring knees and hands on barbed wire Spiked with insults and routine lies.

Every day, She salted slabs of meat with sorrow, Peppered them with pain, Threw the plate in front of the enemy– “Eat.” We sat on our designated chairs Like pawns, Subject to execution.

No one ever told her that Life would be just a chore.

Marriage– just a cage.

Love– just a punchline To a dull joke.

At night, the walls echoed smothered shrieks.

They whispered, “Guilty,” They pointed fingers, spat.

I never celebrated birthdays.

Instead, I planned funerals.

Years later, you told me You’ve never been afraid, Held me against your chest, And said, “It’s over.”

And in that moment, Somewhere inside me, A child was born.

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andi ma Pink Unicorns

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delaney hoffman Deysy Wooden Teeth | 20

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samsara counts The Giant Squid In the natural history museum, she enters the corridor of sea life.

Wanders to the giant squid and her egg sac encased in a glass tomb. She touches above the squid’s eye, bigger than her fist, seeing whales, wrecks, storms.

Against the jet-black backdrop, her scarred flesh is still. Once her tentacles rippled in the current, clung to desperate prey.

She propelled herself and her eggs through dark water, seeking.

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andi ma Patriotism

23 | Wooden Teeth

karim nicolas camara Run Darkness is controlling your soul, You're getting deeper and deeper Into the mighty dark emotions' hole, And you will be their final supper.

They are coming to forever reign, They will feed off of your good pain.

Run now, faraway, run far, run far.

It is between death and a life scar.

Heart and soul, you've already given To this land and no love can fertilize The desert. It's time now to realize It, and go find another right heaven.

Somewhere resides your deep peace, Somewhere you'll find again a piece Of yourself. Start now the journey, Sure you'll find along the love key.

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george westin Hello From A Cavernous Room!

I do hope my note reaches whoever you are soon.

Alas, a note? No- a plea from this darkest tomb­; I am lost in lachrymose halls and in forlorn gloom, forever to etch sketches of my existence on the walls of this catacomb.

Betwixt stalagmites and dendrites softly dripping Lay two windows gently rescinding Into the flesh of this grotto’s womb; Windows through- I have sent my note to you, whoever you are. Come! Hurry fastsuch abysmal gash which was slewed upon my leg is seeping, spewing blood of the reddest huecoating all I thought I knew in a form of residue which alters all and all is skewed: Where is my voice I had to sway?

Where is the smell and sounds of dismay?

Tis abhorrent here, and despite my fearIt seems I would like to stay.

So my dear friend, whoever you are, whom my note did find— my wound does bleed- this pain I needconsumed in the caverns of my mind.

25 | Wooden Teeth

sarah fannon Sunburnt My mother has always kept an Aloe Vera plant in our home, as if long ago she knew she would give birth to a daughter who would clash with the sun.

I burn, quick as a lit match.

Normally it’s because I’ve forgotten to reapply sunscreen, or because I didn’t know I needed it in the first place.

But sometimes it’s a reckless stubbornness, a girlish defiance, a challenge to the sun: you cannot touch me.

Whenever I am burned, I cut a piece off the plant and bring it to my mother with the knife.

She slices open the octopus arm of the succulent, and it oozes.

I feel phantom gel from all the times before, and I shudder as I wait for its cold breath.

We laugh at how much I squirm, but beneath the chill and goop, my mother’s soft hands are a comfort.

I revel in sunsets, squeal like a child when the sky is aglow.

Sunsets are the aftermath of the blazing sun, and I suppose so am I.

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valerie jaimes Furry Friends

jacob sagar That Kid Remaining unseen can get exceedingly lonely, but I listened because my know-it-all momma taught me that only.

Every once in a while I attempted pronouncing my smile, but everyone always ended up becoming extremely hostile.

Their faces turn a hot red as they begin to drip sweat, when I haven't even officially decided to walk up to them yet.

Forever being irregular, abnormal and a considerable disgrace, I just keep telling myself I was only misplaced.

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madeline morrows Beneath the Tree I want to bury myself in the backyard beneath the bones of those who have died before me.

And when I wake again— it will be raining.

My fingers will crawl through damp soil like worms; Dirt will flood my nose and into my brain until I believe I can birth a tree.

My tree will reach out its lumbering arms— grabbing at the telephone wires that cut across the sky— and I’ll sturdy my bark to protect myself from the woodpeckers.

But I’ll be home to squirrels, Bugs will use my canopy for a shroud of shade And I’ll do my best to whistle back when the wind comes through my leaves.

Fall will come and I’ll begin to wither— losing nostalgic memories to the coming of cold— snow is never a comfort.

And when that first winter comes I will die and die again— I can feel myself seeping out of my roots and back into the damp soil— like worms.

This time I will die and stay dead— Leaving the shell of who I once was to stand as memorial— slowly rotting, being eaten from inside and out.

And I’ll think to myself, as I’m suspended between worlds, My memories should imbue my carcass— I am not carrion!

I can stand far past my death because I have sturdy bones.

And for such a thought I would writher and writhe.

29 | Wooden Teeth

andi ma A Feather in the Universe

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muzhda sabira ghafoori Forty Days of Mourning My tender boat crawls slowly from the pebbled bank, into the dark and quiet world of water, where once I knew wise words which now escape me.

The oars they creak with age and the undertow whispers a lament back to the bow.

What sad songs lived and died along your shores?

I carry it still.

Beneath my chest.

I cast the reel, It soars up high and drops down into the meadow, I have no hook to steer me home.

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ellara chumashkaeva The Red Sun When grudge lifts its metal hand, a flower blooms.

But rust uncovered is not a healed wound.

A shrinking heart becomes a dwarf raisin.

Where green vines used to intertwine and dance, There is a woman scared of the shadow.

She has memorized sacrifice’s face.

And befriended silence of her own voice.

She hushed her fingernail babe with mute eyes.

She told her to make way, to maneuver, To fit into any place allotted, To be subordinate quiet statue, Crumble without a fight, don’t resist them Lobster men– cannibalistic fishers Sick with their excellent gamete disease.

Inside the babe a seaweed woman, Weaving, wrapping limbs like poison ivy Around the last, solitary lightbulb– The dying sun with its upward red hands.

They reach, they strangle her loud cynicism And rise and chant the loud sweet song of self.

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megan fitzgerald Not this winter Every other time of the year it is a sin.

But when the nights are long and pitch black, air frozen, we demand that stars are given new homes on top of our houses and birches, blaring into the darkness as if to scream See me, see my beauty, see how a string can cover up everything.

Childish almost, that we find the tiny beams so captivating and calming, these displays of a families' bling.

But not at my house. Where life is tearing at the seams.

If only the string could sew us together and bring back the ring that meant stability, that meant happiness, that meant trust.

I hate these lights. They only shine of empty dreams reflecting what you didn't bring.

Shaking- I rip them down- who cares to put them away. Let all diamonds rust.

33 | Wooden Teeth

m.e. may Love in a Pimple On that last night, I stopped blinking so that I could watch you breathe, and I found something like love in the pimple on your left nostril.

I charted the angles of the fine hairs that grew between your eyebrows.

I carbon-dated the dirt crammed into the space beneath your thumbnail and tried to memorize this face, this breath, to number these freckles and eyelashes, and finger-paint with the spreading shadows seeping slowly across thin, hungry cheekbones.

I couldn’t know then, that when the worst year passed, we’d be tangled together in another bed and I’d still be trying to count your freckles in the low dim glow of early morning.

Instead, you slept on, as the blue-grey smudge between the blinds crept closer to daylight; while something in my chest splintered, and shards of me flew into the night.

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caroline rexrode Hana 35 | Wooden Teeth

sarah fannon Mermaid Wading in the Atlantic Ocean, I look at my pale hands beneath the water. They are shimmering with sunlight and shadow; my mermaid hands, fingers kissed with red nail polish.

The underwater world is dreamy, a hazy polaroid, and my body feels like a fairytale.

I am weightless, giddy with this feeling of myth.

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37 | Wooden Teeth

sophie rickless Alice

e. doyle-gillespie A German Man And when his ghost came back to Dresden, he had to wear his father’s suit and the worn-out shoes that his Wehrmacht brotherhis turned-to-ashes on D-Day brother, had left behind in the hallway closet.

And when he took to walking the shattered streets at night, his yellow armband with its three black dots glowing like vengeance, he would tell the other patchwork men that it was a black American soldier who left him like this – who carved a smile into his belly.

It was ein schwartzen Soldat that carved a crescent into him and left him to steam in the white crust of the Ardennes.

And when he finally found just the right bridge to climb, and a ragged length of rope from the back of an American jeep, he would whistle whatever it was that was on the American’s lips that day as he cleaned his bayonet in the slush, ran for the tree line, and stopped to look up as the snow began to fall.

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tara kosowski North Valley The story ends with a house.

In this version, Simon and I are alone in his living room while his parents are on holiday in Prague. It’s the day before I leave for college, and I tell myself I’m here to lose my virginity. It’s a matter of insurance, obviously. Of tying up loose ends.

I take off my shirt like I’ve seen it a dozen times in the movies; how the girl crisscrosses her arms over her head. Here is the church, here is the steeple. I put my hands over the rolls of my stomach and feel the hairs raised across my body. It’s August, but his living room feels like a morgue. I ask if it’s okay if we lay down and not touch each other for a little while.

Just lay side by side, completely naked, and listen to the empty breathing of the walls. I will stare up at the mobile on his ceiling and ask if it’s a real Calder piece. Real art. He shrugs. The mobile rotates above us like a constellation, and for a moment I pretend I can see the future.

“Why are you here?” he asks, absently.

Because you picked me up from the train station in your dad’s Mercedes. Because I’m bored. Because I thought we were in love, a couple months ago, when you kissed me in the sauna and told me I was pretty.

The rest of his home is perfect. His stepmother is Czech, so the entire house looks like an Ikea catalogue – white walls, grey chairs, couches that aren’t actually couches at all but cubed sectionals that could be broken apart into smaller sectionals.

It was clean and empty and expensive. The main room was composed of floor-to- ceiling windows, which faced the woods behind his house. The pines broke the sun, so that what fragments of light reached us looked like broken, distorted panels of stained glass. I want to cut through the light and eat it, sink my teeth into his privilege. Eat the open floor plan with a fork and knife.

I want to pause time there, with our bodies drifting apart on islands of couch sectionals. We are the two color swatches in a greyscale room. His body is so small, so fragile, across the ocean between us. I don’t think we were ever quite in love. I don’t think this couch is very practical.

Simon missed my senior prom because he was on a trip with the debate team. Someone told me he was in love with his roommate, a blonde boy with freckles and a soft smile. Someone told me they smuggled a bottle of Schnapps into the hotel room.

39 | Wooden Teeth

“Will you call me when you’re gone?”

Maybe. I think we’re both looking for different things. I think I want to fuck your kitchen table.

He slides his hands over the folds of my tummy and he kisses my neck. He’s always smelled like peppermint and cleaning detergent. I close my eyes and try to go back to the first time I ever wanted to touch him. We were in his sauna, which was modeled after his stepmother’s retreat house in Zurich. I ran my hands along the hemlock walls, delirious with the warmth of it all, and unaware of the snow outside. I go back to that moment, the heat of it, and pretend that my boyfriend is hard right now.

“Are you crying?”

I don’t know. Maybe. Do you think I’m pretty? “ .”

Do you have any food?

He zips his jeans back on, sighing, and leads me to the kitchen. I follow, still naked, and my reflection in the glass window makes it look as if a faded version of myself is left outside, in the pines. Simon shuffles through the refrigerator and asks if I want banana yogurt. He’s been trying to get me to go on a diet for months now. Sometimes, he counts my carbs for me.

Sometimes, I count the gaudy rings on his knuckles.

I hoist my thighs onto his kitchen island and giggle. Giggle like a fucking school girl because the quartz is so cold and wonderful underneath my skin that I want to spread out my body, make myself an offering. Spread out my fingers into a cat’s cradle. Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the door and see all the people. There is a certain electricity in beauty that fills up my tummy and runs through my hair.

And I want to say: Will you go get my clothes, I left them in the other room?

But the words left unsaid still lay heavy in the foundation of that house, which he doesn’t live in anymore, and which was never meant to be mine.

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andi ma Kiss the Love

contributor biographies Karim Nicolas Camara is a junior originally from West Africa, Senegal. He loves writing poems about love, loss and melancholy.

Ellara Chumashkaeva is a second-year student from Kazakhstan. You know– the homeland of Borat. She doesn't speak English very well. Please communicate with her through memes.

Samsara Counts is a sophomore from Fort Worth, Texas double-majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics with a minor in Creative Writing. She enjoys puns, pulchritude, alliteration, and ACM Game Nights.

Lauren Danielowski is a junior from Woodbury, CT. Her three greatest loves are lemon bars, water fowl, and a good pun.

Muzhda Sabira Ghafoori is a 25 year-old Afghan-American transfer student from Northern Virginia. She loves many things and changes with seasons.

E. Doyle-Gillespie is a 92 GW alumn who works in law enforcement. He spends his time staving off rumors that he is 47 and needs to start "acting like an adult."

Sarah Fannon is a senior who just wants to read books, eat french fries, and hold a fox.

Megan FitzGerald is a senior from Colleyville, Texas. She is thankful for her family and friends who inspired her to write and Wooden Teeth for this opportunity.

Valerie Jaimes is a sophomore in the Elliott School from Houston, Texas. She sometimes takes a break from looking at memes to do art.

Tara Kosowski is a double major in English and Fine Arts from Philly. Her favorite food is milk steak. You should know what that means.

Andi Ma is a freshman from China, who should really be spend her time on learning English, not writing diaries everyday.

M.E. May is a senior Creative Writing and English major with too many hometowns. She is still waiting for everyone to figure out that she's really just three stacked toddlers in an ill-fitting trench coat.

Jamie Reid is a political science and sociology student from Atlanta, Georgia that wears skinny jeans but can't pull them off. No seriously, get scissors.

Michelle Ritota is a senior from Bergen County, New Jersey. She is an artist, a writer, and exercise-enthusiast.

Geffen Segall is a psychology and computer science double major from New York. He procrastinates by exploring DC and finding new inspirations for his writing.

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