WINTER 2020 / 2021
JUNK DRAWER is a prompt-based art and literary magazine edited in
Milwaukee, WI.
We are so inspired by the contributors’ interpretations of these prompts and hope that their work encourages readers to create something of their own. Feel very free to check the prompts at the end of each issue and send your arts our way. Thanks for giving a shit! Yours,
No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without permission from the artists. For more information, contact junkdrawermagazine@gmail.com
CONTRIBUTORS
ALI BERRY
Maker and Painter
ALICE CARRUTHERS
Alice ‘Alcatraz’ Carruthers is a London-based illustrator, formidable GIMPressionist and independent comic creator. www.alcatrazillustrations.com
K R I S T A LY N G I L L
Kristalyn Gill is a professional dancer, author, and slam poet. She has two original chapbooks which are available on Google Books, Amazon, and LuLu Press. www.kristalyngill.com/poetry
CONTRIBUTORS
CHRISTINE GOEPFERT
Christine Goepfert is a freelance writer and researcher based in Washington, DC. She thinks people are fascinating and terrible and wonderful and terrifying. Instagram: @steenscene
SIERRA KRUSE
She/Her. Sierra Kruse is a poet and performer from Portland, OR. Currently, she is located in Chicago studying theater at Columbia College Chicago with a focus on education and cultural discourse. In her poetry, Sierra focuses on the female experience, Specifically the balance between modern candor and detailed beauty. JAKE MILLER
Dreamer by day & engineering designer by day job. Insomniac creative & inventive time waster by night. Nap enthusiast by necessity. Fall submissions are all mixed media collage works, investigating issues of identity, place, and the clash between the technological world and natural world. instagram.com/cosmicdoge
CONTRIBUTORS
CASEY O’BRIEN
writes, mostly about water and mirrors and smoochin’. She currently lives in Milwaukee, WI where she reads physics books she can’t absorb and dystopian YA novels in Spanish. brocasarea.webflow.io/
SHERRY SHAHAN
Sherry Shahan’s photos have appeared in national and international magazines, newspapers, and literary journals. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. www.sherryshahan.com B L A K E VA N E G E R E N
I’m an Artist with a masters degree in Art Therapy/Counseling. I specialize in art facilitation, communal art-making and art as therapy projects for all ages. www.blakevanegeren.com
CROWDED HERE AND THERE
CROWDED HERE AND THERE
1
ALICE CARRUTHERS
SI T TI N G WI TH MY H E ARTB REA K
An unexpected duet. Another night swiped right. Another bottle. Another piercing glare. I get cozy on the couch. She keeps her distance. I sit with my heartbreak. Wine in hand, I echo her woes and worries. Wounded and washed, the laundry stays red. She stays over. I don’t have the guts to tell her to leave, to tell her decades have come and gone by our window. People have placed their goodbyes neatly packaged on our doorstep. Opportunity stopped knocking. Dust started collecting. We fell in love with the past and lived inside the “should’ve”s, the “could’ve”s and the “would’ve”s. I should’ve stopped loving you long ago. I could’ve if I really wanted to. I would’ve moved on if being in love with my heartbreak wasn’t so damn attractive.
CROWDED HERE AND THERE
2
KRISTALYN GILL
CROWDED HERE AND THERE
3
ALI BERRY
CROWDED HERE AND THERE
4
JAKE MILLER
N ATU R AL AN D U N -
up here in my skybox apartment there are many mouths above & below me & I started and can’t stop rubbing my eyes & thinking about murder it’s everywhere blood on the inside of me & when it’s a placebo week blood on the out & it always hurts but something always hurts worse another violent summer will come natural like hawk on garter snake & un- like pistol on 3-year-old & it doesn’t do any good but I tell it to myself like flashcards, memorize it like I’ll be tested on it at the gates much later that I showed up to the rallies & bought local & dated left that even when I slept
CROWDED HERE AND THERE
5
CASEY O’BRIEN
the panic never did after all these years the corner store just west of the river still sells expired candy & I’m still deluded, thinking that my suffering makes me valuable I know I cannot stop the plunder but please spare the civilians in me there are women & children in me
CROWDED HERE AND THERE
5
CASEY O’BRIEN
CROWDED HERE AND THERE
7
SHERRY SHAHAN
CROWDED HERE AND THERE
8
BLAKE VAN EGEREN
U N TI TL E D
An impulse smashed into an idea And they tumbled into a pile of memories some clean, some tattered All a mess in here Hopes sidle up and get in each other’s way More thoughts spilling in— but from where? And why? And why so many all at once? Then there’s the many feelings taking up space—demanding it, even Domineering little shits An idea is throwing elbows, shoving for room, staking a claim It knows its value, its validity Crowded here and there Insufficient space for these transients, competitors, co-conspirators Crammed in, packed tight stuck and stiff Stuffed past capacity On occasion they all clear out suddenly, spontaneously evaporating Here and there is a blank space, a bare canvass, Humming with emptiness The only thought present: Why is there nothing here now?
CROWDED HERE AND THERE
9
CHRISTINE GOEPFERT
A TRUE
INSIDER
AT THE NODE
AT THE NODE
10
ALI BERRY
T H E SH APE O F YOU F I G H TS TH E G ALE
The shape of you cannot tame your windy hands. Hands flurrying through your hair, to find reason, to find purpose, to find one damn excuse to keep you breathing because right now, a silent body and a quiet mind are ideas making too much noise whistling and whipping through your thoughts. I know I cannot give you much. I can’t tell you where the wind is coming from, or if the gale will ever stop, but what I can give you is a reason for you to stay. Let’s build a windmill together. We will feel the breeze hit, yes it’s true, but let’s just show it how to waft on by.
AT THE NODE
11
KRISTALYN GILL
THE X-RAY UNDERS
S T A N D S M E B E T TD EA RWNS ON YOU
U N TI TL E D
Yes you Just you For you but it is not yours A crepuscular realization That cannot be shared There are no words Not in German, in Arabic, in Latin in situ Only you At a loss for words to the insight gained In this moment Today, it dawns on you fully filling you Then it departs, carried on in the momentum of unstoppable transformation in development in decay The dawn is not constant It soon becomes too bright overexposed, oversaturated, overwhelmed What has been revealed is no longer what was hidden It dawns on you to keep it To yourself
DAWNS ON YOU
12
CHRISTINE GOEPFERT
STAR O F TH E SEA
April 11th Star of the Sea dawns on you. I have a habit of catching glimpses of churches As I drive through unfamiliar cities And in san diego I saw one with a big marque That read “Star of the Sea” And I thought If I were going to pray to anything That would be a good ear to have on the End of the line I’m not in the habit of praying Except for J In Lebanon Because he is in a world as unfamiliar to me As the bible And I feel like now is maybe the time To try something new If there ever was a reason to pray it would Be this It would be me in the car with no way to help It would be him buying fruit It would be for everything that gets lost In between my plans of prayers
DAWNS ON YOU
13
SIERRA KRUSE
DAWNS ON YOU
14
ALICE CARRUTHERS
H E L L ON PU R P OSE
in the morning it dawns on me that sun in full I can’t imagine life before the fridge lit up or you the modern age the burning of islands whole the autocratic semiautomatic in the hand of whoever the mothers of the blue rectangle using filters to make their babies cry life before here to Bogotá in eight hours here to sleep in 4 milligrams or knowing so much so many thumbs arthritic from the scroll peering into hell on purpose or you
DAWNS ON YOU
15
CASEY O’BRIEN
TH E SH APE OF YOU IS H OLY
The shape of you is dust to dust, a closed circuit of coinciding conflict. The shape of you is round, tail to the sky, blazen brass and copper penny. You know nothing but bad luck, and when I say bad luck, I mean you are a middle finger salute, a viper who bites not only to bring blood to lips, but to poison, and when I say poison, I mean the memory of you makes me feel like I’m having a pat down at TSA and I can’t quite take off just yet. Those searching hands, groping and grabbing, you pluck me and play me rib from rib, from love, from anything that actually made me believe in myself. Thumb and finger, a stretched hammock taught across my throat, too comfortable. They didn’t squeeze tightly, no, it was more like a pressing, ear to seashell. You waited until the ocean sang back the melody you wanted to hear, and by wanted, I mean you knew you would hear.
DAWNS ON YOU
16
KRISTALYN GILL
Yet, when I listen to you, the shape of you sounds like cables slapping plywood in an argument against the wind. All talk and no answer. Diligence to my detriment. For you are both home and hell, and I am welcomed into the blaze of you. I reflect your flames like the moon, and finally admit that the shape of you is less shape and more substance, less string and more kite. I couldn’t have held here even if I tried. Six months later, the shape of you smiles back at me across my tainted glass screen, five seconds, your grin darkens, and I succumb to the realization that the shape of you can only be traced by your absence. I wear your clothes to keep you on the move. I drive to Taco Bell and order three quesadillas every Tuesday like you used to, the ones with the thin slices of steak, your favorite. I set your alarm for 6:26AM so you won’t be late to work. Every two weeks I switch sides of the bed so we can share the nightstand. I bought you a mouth guard so you won’t grind your teeth at night anymore because your smile is beautiful, it is holy, it is the only shape of you I have left.
DAWNS ON YOU
17
KRISTALYN GILL
E D I TO R ’ S PL AYLIST
CR OWD E D H E R E AN D TH ERE
Compact Disco - Faux Fir Frail State Of Mind - The 1975 017 FREESTYLE - BERWYN AT TH E N O D E
Lilacs - Waxahatchee cellophane - FKA twigs Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris - Hayley Williams DAWN S ON YOU
Open My Eyes - LA Priest Did You Know? - Villagers invisible string - Taylor Swift
S U BM I SS I O N S FO R S U M M E R 202 1 D E AD L I N E TB D J UN KD R AWE R MAG AZ I N E@ G MAI L .COM
A Watcher’s Life Still Still The Girl Would Rather
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