The Scop is a literary magazine out of King’s College. It is entirely run and created by undergraduate students from a variety of majors. Its members believe in fostering creativity of all forms, including poetry, prose, and visual arts. The name comes from the term for an Old English bard or poet. This is the fifth year that The Scop has accepted submissions worldwide.
The Scop: King’s College PA Literary and Arts Mag
The Scop is published in the spring. Rebirth and renewal. Sheets of flowers and blooms of rain. The bird and its well-traveled tenacity picks through the sticks. Windows open with a great heave and push. Sticky-handed first graders grapple for the swings at recess. The caterpillar relinquishes and the butterfly emerges.
This year, our magazine, spackled and packed with bright petals and verdant greens, bursts with new life. Pen to paper sketches the surreal. The clack of a keyboard calls for revolution. A camera shutter snatches moments of change, of warmth and light. Life surrounds us, pulls us in. We look closely, then look out there, then look again. It’s all in here, in you, in us.
Draw near. Sit in the sunshine or sit next to me. Now flip the page.
Do you feel it, too?
Editor of The Scop
This girl I used to know from this art class I took once made a joke that I became a mom long before Morgan was even born. She said that because I was dating Levi, all of his baggage was now mine, too. When he first asked me out, his parents had just been arrested and he had gotten legal custody of his two baby brothers, Max and Ethan. He was taking care of these little boys and was barely over twentyone. The girl from my art class told me, “So now they’re your problem, too, huh? Grace, I mean...are you their mom now or something?”
I turned so quickly to glare at her that I dragged my brush straight across the vase of flowers I was painting and had to start over. I still don’t know why it rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe the sarcastic, judgmental way she said it. Maybe because I hated the way what she said scared me, and I hated the feeling of guilt that immediately washed over me even more.
Still, her words echoed in my head every time I was the one to pick the boys up from school, every time I accompanied
Levi to their parent-teacher conferences, every time I mended a scraped knee or took a temperature. Are you their mom now or something?
The truth was, I didn’t mind. Even before Morgan was born, I didn’t mind taking care of those boys. They were sweet, and they were happy, and they didn’t scream and throw tantrums and give me shit for not being their mom. And after all, Levi never wanted me to drop out of college, or take a gap year, or any of that stuff. He never asked any of that from me, and I had known what I was getting into when we started dating. Who was I to feel resentful toward him, toward the doubts that one girl from that one class put in my head? Are you their mom now or something? Jesus Christ.
When I was pregnant, I ran into the girl again at the same studio. This time, Levi was with me, and he had both of his brothers climbing all over him. I didn’t go out of my way to talk to her or anything, but I saw her glancing over whenever she thought I was turned the other way. When we finally came face to face, we gave each
other quick hellos, and as an afterthought she gestured to my stomach and went, “Oh! Congratulations. You’re going to be a great mom,” and proceeded to look behind me at Levi and his brothers.
Going to be. That’s what she said. That bitch.
When she turned three, Morgan called Levi’s brothers her brothers, and Levi just glanced up at me like he wanted to make sure I didn’t expect him to correct her. And I didn’t. I just lit the candles and started singing. It was the first time I thought about the girl from art class in a long time.
“I’m never gonna eat cake again,” Levi groaned, covering his face with his hands, laughing. “I mean, holy shit.”
I grinned, looking up at the stars. “You didn’t have to eat three slices just ‘cause Ethan bet you couldn’t.”
“I would have eaten that entire damn cake to prove him wrong, and you know it,” he replied, and I laughed.
Levi rested his head on his arm and let out a long breath. I could vaguely hear my mother talking from inside the house. “How’s she three, Grace?” Levi asked finally.
I chewed on my lip for a moment. “Yeah, good question, we should find someone who knows.”
He snorted. “Nah, but for real. What happened?”
“She turned three,” I murmured. The grass of my parents’ backyard was tickling my arms, but I didn’t move.
Do you want to get married? I felt the words in my throat, on my tongue, and then passing my lips. “Do you want to get married?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Someday? Yeah.”
“Not someday. Now.”
He turned his head sideways to look at
me, raising his eyebrows, and I nodded. “Like, right now. I mean, not like right now right now, I don’t think we have any rings and I’m pretty sure no one in our families is ordained, but like, this week or something? I don’t know—”
“You proposing to me, Chaplin?” he asked. I glanced at him and saw he was grinning. I felt my face turn hot.
“Maybe...?” I swallowed. “I mean...yes. Yes, I am. This is me proposing. Consider yourself proposed to.”
His smile widened. “Yes.”
I felt a smile tugging at my lips. “Yes? Like, really yes?”
“Really yes,” he murmured. “I want to marry you.”
A laugh escaped me. “Okay, then.”
“Okay, then.” He leaned forward to kiss me.
“Ethan stole my cake!”
A weight landed on our legs. Levi and I both shot up to see a pouting Max, shaking both of our legs with a frightening amount of aggression for such a small human being. Levi shrugged at him.
“There’s more cake. I’ll get you another slice.”
“I don’t want another slice, I want my slice!” Max insisted. He turned his attention to me, his eyebrows pushing together in an exaggerated frown. “Graaaaaaaaaace.”
“It’s the same cake either wa—” Levi tried.
“I want Grace!”
For a moment, I braced myself, waiting for the girl from art class’s voice to begin to ring in my ears. I waited. Waited. Waited.
It didn’t come. For the first time in years, the girl’s voice was quiet. I didn’t feel the knot in my stomach tighten, or the wave of shame, or the impending sense
of uncertainty I had become accustomed to. Levi looked at me, but I could see he was still trying not to grin. Despite myself, I began to smile, too.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay, Max, I’ll get your cake back.”
Claire Jacquelyn Annino is a senior at Chapman University, originally from New York City. She primarily writes short stories and screenplays and has been published in literary journals both within and outside of her university. She is additionally the recipient of two national Scholastic Art & Writing awards.
Girija Sankar
Maurice Maco shifted restlessly on the cot in vain attempts to squeeze in a few more minutes of quiet before his day began. But Bracobama, the rooster, had already announced daybreak. Maurice had heard the name Bracobama repeated over and over on the radio a few years ago when he had bought some chicken. Bracobama! Bracobama! Bracobama! Maurice decided to name the rooster just that. Bracobama’s raucous morning sermons combined with the drip drip drip of the rainwater collecting in the plastic mug by his bedside, and Maurice sat up, unable to shut out the cacophony of the bird and the drip. He rubbed his eyes with his calloused hands— his only work tools, his only assets. Decades of labor had rendered his palms rough, with fate lines wedged deep and running crisscross like the dried-out streams across the Artibonite Valley. But the women had always said he had the gentlest touch. They also noted that Maurice Maco’s babies were the fairest of them all. They called him a magician, le majisyen. Mesye Maurice Maco, li pi bon
majisyen.
Daylight broke through the remnants of the hurricane clouds hovering over the Artibonite Valley. Hurricane Hannah had been good to Haiti this rainy season. Her waters had quenched a yearlong thirst of the parched farmlands of Bourdon, Maurice’s village. Enough for his asbestos roof to leak but not enough to cause the wanton mayhem and destruction for which hurricanes were infamous. Tendrils of smoke rose above the rooftops of neighboring homes, signs that Maurice’s neighbors were up, heating up black coffee and steaming plantains. The thicker plumes from the hilltops emanated from the coal pits. Maurice made a mental note to fetch some from his charcoal farmer friend on the other side of the valley later that day. Maurice Maco was slender and short but his permanently bent back made him appear even shorter. However, a low center of gravity made it easier for Maurice with his job. Maurice’s silhouette was instantly recognizable: a straw hat, a plastic toolbox, and a walking stick. He had always carried
a walking stick. His grandmother carried a stick, and since he followed in her footsteps, it only seemed appropriate to adopt the same style. He started when he was twenty years old, and to this day, the same walking stick accompanied him on all house visits. And, white trousers and a shirt, of course, because his grandmother wore white on all her house visits.
Maurice stepped out of his modest home and walked downhill to the stream. He used to be able to sprint down to the water in seconds. Today, it took him 20 minutes… on good days, when his atrit was behaving. He did not know that his condition had a name. Dr. Shah, the good Indian Doctor at the Medicins Sans Frontieres field hospital, told him that he had atrit, for when his knees complained. Maurice had no interest in the ailments of adult life, though. What made babies die, he knew. What made babies smile, he knew. Maurice purveyed in happiness and hope. What happened when joy and hope grew up and turned into despair and grief, he couldn’t say. He wouldn’t know. For Maurice was a birth attendant. He was a matrone. An attendant of hope and happiness. A midwife birthing joy.
It came to Maurice Maco in a dream. That’s how matrones came to be. One didn’t go to school or college to become a matrone. You were called upon to serve as a matrone by forces greater than you. That’s what his grandmother once told him. She had been a matrone herself. She delivered 1551 babies. All lived, past the age of five.
It came to him in a dream. It was the year that Francois Duvalier became president. Maurice had just turned twenty. The dream came to him on the night that Papa Doc Duvalier won the elections. The
night air was rent with the sound of drums and kompas. The streets ran red from the blood of goats and chicken slaughtered for the night-long feasting. When Maurice Maco lay down to sleep, after a night of griot, pikliz, and clairin, the first rays of a new dawn had already begun to shine on the Artibonite.
Ti Maman had come to him in a dream in those quiet hours of that early morning. She came clad in white— a white blouse, white skirt, and a white bandanna covering her head. Ti Maman always dressed in white when she delivered babies. To this day, he couldn’t tell you what she shared with him or why. The sights and sounds of Ti Maman disappeared soon as he woke up. However, when he woke up, Maurice knew that Ti Maman had blessed him to serve as a matrone. And that’s what he had done for 57 years, delivering 1321 babies. 1321 live births. Maurice Maco never attended a day of school, but he could always keep a running tally of this number in his head.
As Maurice walked back up from the stream, he saw Nathalie, a young girl from the village, run down to him. It was time. It’s Marie Claude again, she needs you right away, Nathalie blurted out hurriedly. Marie Claude was a forty-year-old woman and about to have her fifth child. Maurice Maco’s 1322nd delivery. And last baby.
The nurse from the NGO had stopped by three weeks ago and held community meetings in every village. No more babies at homes, she said, categorically. That was the way it was to be. The government had said so. The big doctors in the big fancy offices in the government buildings in Port-au-Prince had said so. Babies born in homes don’t live long, they said. Homes are
dirty. Matrones never washed their hands. They yanked babies out, the big doctors said. Their customs were traditional and dangerous. Maurice Maco knew what they really meant to say. They meant to say that the matrone’s methods were too vodou. And so, Miss Fredline, the nurse employed by the NGO, trekked from village to village, spreading this news. The people of Bourdon liked her. Maurice Maco liked her. She liked him too. She often gave him birthing kits with gloves and plastic sheets and new razor blades and soap and plastic aprons. Years ago, Miss Fredline had distributed these stylish-looking plastic cases. They came in green and white and could hold three birthing kits, about how many Maurice needed every month. Maurice attended to his green and white plastic case as if it were a newborn. No, it was more precious. Far more. Le boite was his life.
Where would the women go, Maurice wondered. Surely, Miss Fredline doesn’t think pregnant women would troop down to the government hospital four hours away. Nobody cared for that place— it reeked of piss, blood, and death. Folks from Bourdon never visited the hospital. Unless, of course, you wanted to die. Then, the villagers took you down there and found you a bed. But, to bring new life? Oh non, non, non, Maurice thought, no woman from Bourdon would deliver her baby at the hospital. But Maurice also knew that he couldn’t continue to perform deliveries. The big fancy people from the big government offices had informers everywhere, and Maurice was too old now to fight them. He would spend the rest of his days at home and live off the meager givings of his chicken and goats. With
Bracobama by his side, of course. But today, today, Maurice would help Marie Claude, for Marie Claude’s mother was his first baby. That Marie Claude’s fifth child would be his last seemed fitting. Maurice hurried up the hill, as fast as his arthritic limbs would carry him. He went home and changed into a white shirt and white trousers. He pulled the green and white case out from underneath his metal cot and wiped it down with a wet cloth. There was one birthing kit left inside.
Maurice Maco and Marie Claude are ready. Maurice kneels down. By now, Marie Claude knows what to do. She is on the floor lying on a tarp. She has a bowl of hot water prepared. And soap. Maurice pulls his white plastic box closer; his hands have been washed and are now donning yellow plastic gloves. He carefully extracts the plastic sheets from the box and places it under Marie Claude, so the baby is protected from the dirt floor.
The baby arrives. It’s a boy. Maurice cuts the umbilical cord, swaddles the baby, and places him on Marie Claude’s chest. It takes mere minutes, for such is the magic in his hands. I will come back tomorrow, he tells Marie Claude, and then again, the day after. Everything will be OK now, he whispers into her ears.
Have you decided what to name the baby, Maurice asks?
Yes, Marie Claude, whispers hoarsely. Maurice.
Girija Sankar’s works have been published by Khabar Magazine, India Currents, Muse India, Alimentum, NewPages, JMWW, Emboddied Effegies, and Eclectica. She works in global public health and is based in Peachtree Corners, GA.
Jennifer Krista Geisinger
The mirrors in jail were crap. The ones in prison were a little better. The last time she got a good look was when she went to the hospital to deliver Fiona. They had shackled her to the bed, but the doctor rolled her eyes, and said:
“Is that really necessary? Do you think she’s going to run? She’s got a baby in there that needs to come out, and she’s not going anywhere. She needs to be able to use her legs. Jesus Christ.”
They didn’t go away, but they did at least look ashamed of themselves. Later, when she said she had to use the restroom, she looked in the mirror for a hard calculated look, before she looked away, like losing a game of chicken with a train. So this is what it looks like. Motherhood.
After she found out she was pregnant with Fiona, they said she could keep her, let her stay in the special program for mothers and babies, and they could bond. The food was better, and all the things would be better, but she said, no, thank you, her baby wasn’t going to jail. Even when they told her it didn’t look like a jail, more like
a pre-school class. She said no, and that her sister would keep her, her sister liked babies. When she was out, she wouldn’t tell her daughter who she was. Marta could have her. Maybe she could pretend to be her auntie someday, and she would never know.
Her other one was old now, maybe didn’t even remember her, it was all a blur. That one she had lost to the system, but this one would be different. At least she could see her. New year, new life. In the mirror, she had seen the scar clearly for the first time. She was getting out soon, living a life without bars. She would go to school, help her community, get a job. She would stay out of trouble, stay away from boys. Without faith, hope dies. She would have faith in herself, even if she didn’t deserve it. Nobody else would have faith in her.
Fiona was gorgeous though. Product of rape, just like her sister, like herself and her own sister. Who was a product of love? Nobody she knew. She had twenty-four hours before they took Fiona away, so she just held her the once, counted her
fingernails, breathed in her baby smell, and then asked them to take her away. There was no use dragging it out. It was like a dream, like those matte mirrors back at the jail, smoked and smeared, unclear. Her mind felt unsettled, and unsure, and she needed to be empty, she needed to be alone.
Hours later, she panicked. She wanted to see her again, get into the program, be with her baby. No, they explained, there was a waiting list, your sister came and got her, try to calm down, we don’t want to restrain you.
She calmed. She ate some chocolate pudding out of the cup, and let them put the shackles back on, now that she was done having the baby. She was bleeding still, but they said she would be leaving soon, since the baby was gone. Transport was being arranged. She would be out in fifteen months, she told herself. She could get her back and start a life.
She wouldn’t. She knew this even as she dreamed. Before she left the hospital she signed Fiona over, and handcuffed, they led her into the bright sunshine.
Jennifer Krista Geisinger’s work has been published by Parliament Literary Journal, Apples in the Dark, as well as other literary journals and anthologies, including the 2020 Rails-to-Trails poetry award. Jennifer lives and teaches on Vashon Island, with her two teen children and a feral cat.
10/09/2022
This year, the second October Sunday brought a full moon. The entire day was one long adventure, and you thought of all the ways to bring closure to the night.
After dinner, when dusk arrived, you loaded your kids into the car, headed east down Morris, then left onto Kitchell, then right onto Hillcrest, and followed the road straight for about one to two miles.
On the way up, you pointed out the moon, how it was orange, like a giant pumpkin, and how happy you were to share this moment together. Your kids screamed about Halloween, about trick-or-treating, about the costumes they would wear. You smiled, thinking of memories you had with your parents, one dead and one dying.
At the top of Hillcrest you parked the car. Bats flew overhead as everyone walked to the edge of the cliff. You showed them the exact place the horizon meets the city skyline, the exact place stars glow in the black night.
Tohm Bakelas
And together, you watched the moon rise over treetops, watched it turn from orange to white and illuminate the cold cliff you all stood on. And you knew, right then, that their lives changed—forever.
Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. He is the author of twenty-four chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including “Cleaning The Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023). He runs Between Shadows Press.
The barman perches on an iron stool, sipping iced tea, silently amused at texts.
Christina E. Petrides
The occasional mosquito pricks my fingers— sugar-jittery from hot chocolate and Kahlua, unseasonable sweets in the stifling twilight.
The wine bar window-wall opens to a cobblestone street. Flies form a lazy tornado midair.
I watch pairs and groups of tourists disappear up or down the hill, out of sync with the jazz inside.
The barman lights small candles at the empty tables and I order a belated stem of house red rather than return to my lonely hotel room.
Christina E. Petrides
A Christmas tree ziggurat of empty soju bottles stands outside the restaurant whose round steel tables miss their central charcoal burners. The hungry crowds grilling samgyeopsal* or seasoned beef will assemble after dark. From the stall next door, eyebrow-curling chili pepper wafts off a crimson pan of ddeokbokki (insipid rice-paste logs submerged in fiery sauce)— schoolchildren’s favorite snack, eaten with toothpicks out of paper cups. The South Korean tiger proves its fierceness in consumption of flames and fumes.
*samgyeopsal—thick bacon triple-striped with fat
Living on Jeju Island, South Korea, for 6.5 years inspired Christina E. Petrides to write poetry. She is the author of three children’s books and the verse collection On Unfirm Terrain, and served as primary translator of Maria Shelyakhovskaya’s Being Grounded in Love. Her website is: www.christinaepetrides.com
Charles Leggett
1.
Chewing on a stub at 3rd and Pine propped against the marble, gave a light to two young Chinese students who were back from summer break. Whilst chatting I was handed two different brands of Chinese cigarette. This one, a Huangenlou, with camouflage pattern, greens and browns, upon its filter.
“I hope,” the one with better English drawled, “that you don’t like them. You can’t get them here.”
2.
“Happy ninth of August,” said the dude outside of Solo whose cigarette I’d just lit. He seemed to be trying to decipher my behavior, which I’ve been told is one stern current to swim against. He couldn’t make out whether I was being brusque; was at the ready to take offense. So he tendered his august
wishes for this day – which boasts the births of P.L. Travers and Phillip Larkin, mourns Joe Orton’s death, and celebrates the publication of Walden –with an undecipherable degree of irony. “Fucking A,” I replied. He chuckled and started walking back to his people, but noted, of my reply, and not without enthusiasm, that it was “Thompsonesque.”
Charles Leggett is a professional actor based in Seattle, WA, and a 2022 Lunt-Fontanne Fellow. His poetry has been published in the US, the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India and Nigeria.
Max Roland Ekstrom
You are a blacksmith looking for limping centaurs. First you try the usual places: the groves, the springs, the Pierian search engine. Single Female Centaur. Enjoys archery, grooming, fleeting sensation. You’ve met so many it’s hard to tell what’s what—the bottoms race out from under the saddle, the faces shamed by the mask of memory: torso of a woman, eyes of a piranha, tongue of a snake. Beyond the gates, beyond the ruins-in-the-making of your city and your learning are other places, you hear. Mountains and deserts and jungles of the imagination. And there is a ship, and on the ship a crew. And there is a caravan, and leading it a team. And there is a magnificent bird no one has seen yet. And hunting it is your centaur, broken-hooved and broken-hearted, I’m sure.
Claiming to renounce art, Duchamp marries and turns to chess, carving fifteen wooden men whose arguments soon become so convivial they supersede his wife’s affections. Together the men tilt at windmills— the knight and bishop fianchetto at long diagonals while the rook awaits the open field of endgame and the ambition of an isolated pawn. Late one night, Lydie glues all the pieces to the board.
Max Roland Ekstrom holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in such journals as New American Writing, Arion, Roanoke Review, The Hollins Critic, and Illuminations. Max lives in Vermont with his spouse and three children.
you’re right where you’re meant to be—here, with me
Abbie Doll
hey friend. / how are you? / i only ask because / i see you staring / down down down / studying that gaping existential pothole / a g a i n / & look, / we all know it’s there / & sure, it’s alright to assess / once in a while / but don’t get too pulled in / y’know? / if you’re looking for the bottom, / i’m here to report / you ain’t gonna find one / sorry to say so / but i dove in once myself—only to learn / i couldn’t tread tar / so trust me when i say / i know what it’s like / to be swallowed by sadness / clutching shadows / & those tiresome midnight blues / i get it, i do. / i know you’re convinced that void’s your destination / & lord knows i get that temptation / truly, i do / but honey, / it ain’t nothin’ but a dead. end. / speaking from experience / i just gotta say / this one thing—look around. / life doesn’t orbit this / black hole of a place / where light can’t reach / where misery lives / & thrives / you can’t always be looking down / man / think of your poor bent neck / wrung out & sore, poor thing / you gotta remember / to look up! / because right outside that unspeakable void / are all these bright happy colors / all this remarkable razzle dazzle / begging for your attention / your admiration—tangerine grasses, magenta skies / topped with a leafy canopy of granny smith foliage / competing for light / so whenever you start to feel blue, / take a look a r o u n d / just look at all the light / take my hand & / feel that light, feel that life / because it’s in you, too. / i know you know / don’t you dare apologize / we all forget sometimes / it’s alright. / go ahead. / chuck your bottled rage & motherfucking despair / down that hole, sure / but don’t you accompany it. / stay up here
/ with me friend / we got things to do, places to see / new shapes to find / colors to name / we live in this lovely kaleidoscope world / & i don’t want you / wasting any more time / locked in that cramped box. / just remember, / i’m here. / for you. / here to help / point out all the things / you might be missing / when your silhouette’s soaked in blue / the bluest blue i’ve ever seen / just don’t bleed yourself dry / trying to mourn the whole damn world / ‘cause we gotta shoulder the burden together. / okay? / & just remember, / whenever you’re blue, / all you gotta do / is recall the petals on the daffodils! / the geraniums, the peonies, the poppies! / the tulips, the irises, the daisies! / every bit of color you can name / just spread your arms & / wade in that beautiful messy rainbow / bask in its huggy warmth / & i promise you / everything’ll be alright
Abbie Doll is a writer residing in Columbus, OH, with an MFA from Lindenwood University and is a fiction editor at Identity Theory. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Door Is a Jar Magazine, Full House Literary, and The Bitchin’ Kitsch, among others. Connect on socials @AbbieDollWrites.
The red light glinting
On a rain soaked road.
The click clack of your high heels
As we run, dodging droplets.
Skirts swaying, Hands held A laugh lifting off, Getting caught below Brooklyn Bridge As we wait for a Taxi that isn’t coming.
I’ll always remember today. And the way our lipstick looked Together on that glass.
Holly Payne-Strange is a novelist, poet and podcast creator. Her upcoming novel All Of Us Alone is a recommended read for Women Writers, Women’s books in December 2023. Her poetry has been published by Quail Bell, Academy Heart and Red Door, among others. She would like to thank her wife.
Frederick Livingston
“Eco” from the Greek “Oikos” meaning house or home
When the parking lot flooded and the softball field sucked our feet as spring rains swelled Dunawi creek we celebrated small victories of beavers reclaiming wetlands paved where they once swam.
At the dentist numbness spread to my tongue and lingered.
I don’t know if the pain we save is always worth its cost:
opening my mouth to speak breathe receive a needle a gamble between harm or healing.
The following night we found the parking lot full of cars and a cavity torn from the dam by a city official, the spectators speculated, through binoculars searching blurs of urgent fur.
The sabotage shocked and reminded us how most ecoterrorism operates in uniform and broad daylight.
Why we harm ourselves or any union of breathing earth I may never understand, but hear familiar slithers of “necessity”. When the slender venom flute slipped into my nerve as a jagged flash my eyes overflowed suddenly confronted by all I’d heaped inside. The sound of running water compels beavers to gnaw down trees, drag them in their jaws.
So we gathered dusk after dusk these newly mild evenings
to witness stick by stick construction of a life’s work, clarity of purpose
we call “instinct” in other animals. A week later, the city broke the dam again and beavers resumed the same night.
I have touched the muck where thoughts of giving up one’s red wet insides arise.
We are standing in it together and I cannot halt the rush of that pain.
I am telling you this because beavers will need our help rebuilding the Earth.
Because I know it is possible to do what you must while widening rivers of abundance.
My tongue was numb for months but truthfully I have spent years attempting to escape sensation
rather than return home to a mind I myself have terrorized. Slowly I am relearning to taste beauty as real as any fear. And I believe in the budding revelry of leaves as much as anything on Earth.
Frederick Livingston plants seeds grounded in ecology and experiential education. He is the author of “The Moon and Other Fruits”, along with numerous works found in literary magazines, scientific journals, and public spaces. His upcoming title, “Trees are Bridges to the Sky” won the Prism Prize for Climate Literature.
I wanna make a pact with you, to swear and never tell
That I went down to Galilee, spent two seasons in lesser hell
It was there I found the answer, to pastures green and plain:
“When cleanliness forsakes you out, then focus on the stain”
I heard it spoke from lips of love, twice tainted with a bruise
Spilling through the radio in a tongue I cannot use
And now I’m left dissatisfied, feeling treason like the clown
The Ezra Pound lost and found has dragged me to the ground
Tonight I’ll take the moonlight, I’ll brand it with an ‘A’ I’ll listen to the midnight screams in yearning for the day
I’ll make a worthless promise, defying all my greed
With shadows trembling behind me on the wise man’s toilet seat
He says it o so beautifully as he casts it out the door
A present to the pathless class who prosper ‘neath the poor
And now I’m whistling, mother, but I cannot make a sound
The Ezra Pound lost and found has turned me inside out
The book in which was written, a mantra straight and true
Nocked and shot from cupid’s bow to the mind of all you do
Your flowers turn to tank traps, your sunshine into ash
Majestic metal eagles turn to face the zeppelin crash
The worst is always envious of all those wealthy friends
Whose presence is illusive like the butler’s homeward sends
And now I’m just a letter, that is looping back around
The Ezra Pound lost and found has robbed me of my crown
Mine eyes have seen the message, that’s written on the mule
“A thousand books for Agatha, and a thousand more for fuel”
I read them with a longing, and I hang my head in shame
I tried to smoke with Whitman’s grass but wind put out my flame
I hate the leaves beneath me ‘cause it makes me think of times
When staring out the window milked a magnitude of rhymes
And now I’m stacking bodies on the cemetery mound
The Ezra Pound lost and found parades me through the town
O hang me from the gallows, and chain me to the tree
I’ve never spent a moment never thinking about me
There’s music in the hallways, of every angel’s son
Who died upon the killing fields for crimes they had not done
But what is worse: the shouting or the hearing in the night
When your receiver’s broke and all you hear is poetry in plight
And now I’m at the crossroads of “if” and “why” and “how”
The Ezra Pound lost and found has fed me to the hounds
I think I’ll set out early morning, with everything I own
On a pilgrimage for fortune and the world’s worst telephone
And maybe in the evening all the birds will sing my name
Or maybe clouds of gunfire will shower me with shame
Either way I’ll wake up with a name I’ve understood
The purring paws of pertinence, from Eliot the good
And now I’m rising lonesome from a sky that’s run aground
The Ezra Pound lost and found…
April 15 + 19th 2023
Rohan Fitzpatrick is a writer from murky Middle England. He has written four novels, a short-story book and a mess of poems. He has published in a New York magazine, but nothing in England. They like him better in New York, because he doesn’t use words like ‘murky’ there.
Max Alletzhauser
Today, we’re likely to misremember how the clouds sailed as they formed out of nothing, utterly original, and the ladies spoke in low, steady tones about the truth yet to be confirmed, their lifeblood.
It didn’t matter in any case, the feeling of that age would stay the same that is to say still as glass, not fully visible.
Only, belief cannot exist outside of action, impressed by some alternative brand of possibility.
It is only the meeting of a familiar face, the reunion below a beloved song for which one is sold, as the summer expands and recedes again and (out of the unexpected fall of night) the morning blooms itself into exhaustion again, only this that permits us to say we were there.
Max Alletzhauser
It’s the game that is played when you see what comes –
Until the backdrop falls away and old members of your people are nameless, it will suffice.
Time – and time again –our ideas and personalities came to fruition through the landscapes created against sleepless fret.
Not as a palliative, but to help still upward, onward, not around but through. Since this is what’s left you, every other soul’s evaporated and you’re alone in the city where regression is anathema, the self is a chimera, and everything is measured.
A sulphuric tinge, not some hot, oily teenage hell to be sure, but a fortification of self once again forfeited in time. It simply cannot be.
Since not everyone’s desires are alike,
the art of living bourgeois has little to do with worth but instead is in the self-justifications (pseudo-histories behind each grandmother’s ornament, brooches of sapphire bees twice-used) backed by a way of acting on behalf of this, never rude on purpose and letting a few in entirely, but never entirely.
A solidity of being one’s self, knowing only too much about the stream of occurrences to forget, conveniently, about her story (yours). It is impersonal, only by analogy. Everything’s a stand in for the might of the will and its detriments, everything taken as a metaphor for life and vice versa.
Max Alletzhauser (b. 1992) is a South African-born AngloAmerican poet and translator living in Stockholm. He often works in collaboration with visual artists. His writing has appeared in Eunoia Review and Texte zur Kunst, and he is currently translating the poetry of Anders Olsson into English.
I have a whooping crane in my mouth
Her beak forces my lips, my teeth, apart and a call cries out
sorrows that I thought to keep secret
I shower, and the crane calls and calls and though the sound ripples out through the surrounding waterfall
her mate does not come
In the evening, I sit out on the back patio the crane crying within me
I want to comfort her, to tell her that my mate is gone, too, to say that she can stay within me for as long as she wants, but
she’s the lump at the back of my throat and I cannot speak, until
finally I open my mouth find sound amid the silence:
a long, mournful wail so full of sky I can almost feel the world bend towards me and when I look up, I see a trumpeting of cranes swooping down to meet me
Liana Kapelke-Dale (she/her) is a queer poet, mixed-media artist, ATA Certified Translator (Spanish to English), and non-practicing attorney. She is the author of the full-length collection Seeking the Pink (Kelsay Books) and two poetry chapbooks. Her poetry has been featured in myriad journals.
Eric Machan Howd
she made him a cherry pie to woo him after they first met she painstakingly pitted each fruit by hand until her fingers bled like Lady MacBeth’s – stained crimson from a past that never washed away
and those same hands stroked his hair in a remote graveyard full of people they had never met before read rubaiyats to one another over trim lawns and avenues of death
they loved each other
she never made another cherry pie again favoring the ease of apple or pumpkin over the difficulty of pits and stems and he watched her fingers curl inward and knuckles burn all night long calling longer ships of pain toward the red light behind her sea-blue eyes
he never liked cherry pie and she never asked but they both loved murder ballads
Eric Machan Howd (Ithaca, NY) is a poet, musician, and educator. Their work has been seen in such publications as Slant, Slab, Caesura, The Scop, and Nimrod. They are currently working on a crown of sonnets entitled “Hearts” based on the twenty-two embalmed hearts of past popes in Rome, Italy.
Sarah Beth Kolodziej
We weren’t really close. More like two worn shirts that just happened to be on the same clothesline.
Regardless of the distant space between our tattered threads, we washed clothes together, two old house wives, sweating in the sun and swatting flies.
We carefully folded the shirts, ironed the slacks, pressed each blouse.
Until suddenly, the iron grew too hot.
A heap of anxiety piled up like dirty laundry; the clothesline snapped.
Sarah Beth Kolodziej, King’s Class of 2015, teaches 9th, 10th, and 12th grade English classes at Mid Valley HS. Her poetry appeared in Cicada in 2008, in issues of The Scop from 2011-2023, and in Poetry In Transit in 2022 and 2023. She is working on her Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction.
Debasish Mishra
I am waiting here as I did some ten years ago. Back then, it was my anger which waited to be assuaged with an obtuse apology but the father in you would never put it directly. I knew that ever since my tongue learnt the art of juggling language and emotions. You knew the method of coaxing me even when it was my mistake. It was always my mistake.
The moon pokes its nose of stone on the crevices of the night. And I look up at the serrated sky, marred with a hundred stabs. I am waiting, no matter how impractical it may seem: call it a futile exercise!
The stories of magic that you had shared in sleepless summer nights dilute my knowledge of real things and truth. This time, if you come, which I know will never happen, I will assuage you— as you did with me, all your life.
Debasish Mishra is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Science Education and Research, India, whose recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Penn Review, Prism Review, Consequence, and elsewhere.
Joseph Geskey
We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.’
–Louise Gluck
“I have a good idea,” my daughter would say, and my wife and I knew we couldn’t imagine what was going to come next: fine art painting of a three-year-old. Reams of recycled white paper set down like a drop cloth on the floor, traipsing muddy brown footprints walking to where? Hand-squeezed Elmer’s glue to fix a handful of grass & haphazardly placed twigs, and I silently thought, no more bedtime stories about the three little bears huffing & puffing & blowing houses down.
Paintbrush clumsily spreading daubs of yellow in an approximate circle in the upper right-hand corner with variegated blue streaks under it. Her fine motor skills didn’t do nuance yet.
“Do you know what it is?”
Post-truth philosophers would be laughed at since the answer was clear:
“It’s Grammy’s house,” with a satisfied smile, & no advanced techniques would ever improve upon the joy of her vision.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. High school typing class trying to accumulate as many mistake-free words in a minute under the teacher’s panopticon gaze, checking you didn’t look down at the keyboard, as if a quick glance at the letters were glimpses of nudity when you promised not to look. If shop class could be compared to philosophy then so could typing, a more humane factory, days and hours of rhythmic clicking keystrokes, the benefits of office work over manual labor, freeing up time to do something more enjoyable while dreaming of Keynes fifteen-hour workweek. Forty years later, typing my father’s obituary in templated form, errorless and efficient, saving precious minutes so I can fall less behind on checking off life’s ever expanding to do list, I light a candle in his memory and think about the assembly-line of workers centering wicks in machine-poured candles before they get lidded, wondering when automation will perform that task. A majority of workers forced to practice Stoicism while the few with security enjoy eudaimonia.
Joseph Geskey currently resides in Dublin, OH. His first book of poetry, Alms for the Ravens, will be published in 2024 by Main Street Rag Publishing Company. He also has poetry forthcoming from Tar River Poetry, Poetry East, and many others.
weaves in secret, unseen I think as I wipe her intricate strands from my night light. Only after the small black lamp cover is clean do I realize what was there.
Delicate thread in parallel lines, crossed in geometric patterns whose math is as beyond me as the art whose author is better hidden than the fragile web.
Was it she I brushed from my skin under the cocoon duvet?
Again, I didn’t think to examine what touched me.
Disconcerted by the break in my routine, how the lamp lights my book, its dusky awning covered in dust I usually ignore
unlike the stink bugs and mosquitoes that find ingress through invisible crevices.
I catch fireflies one handed, barely feel their carapace. As a child I put them in a jar with a tin lid I’d hammered holes into and watched.
I didn’t know how they mate how soon they die. Do stink bugs ache at being slapped, mosquitoes register pain?
I open the window. The cicadas complain. Uncup my right hand and the bug of light disappears into night.
Sandy Feinstein’s poetry has most recently appeared in Willows Wept, Pivot, and Seems. Her chapbook, Swimming to Syria, published by Penumbra Press, appeared in 2021.
Bart Edelman
Welcome to the funhouse.
We’ve been expecting you, And the familiar figure In the concave mirror. We suggest you arrive early, Flowers in hand, wine in tow, And then we’ll be prepared To give it a good go; At least at first, of course. From there, who knows where The evening shall take us. Hopefully, you can survive. If not, please note
We have an obituary written, Should the floor beneath you Open at the prescribed moment, And the walls collapse, Crushing your spirit in half.
But fear, fear, fear not.
We haven’t lost a soul this week.
Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023. He lives in Pasadena, CA.
it must be something like tradition to bend my figure to fit the box you designated for me to cling to cling wrap because my mother never wanted food to spoil to never spoil food and never spoil me
my heritage is learning to scrape my plate and never waste food never take more than i could finish never overconsume overindulgence isn’t pretty
never weigh more than 115 pounds never drink soda never eat chips never crave sweets guilt is the only flavor i taste in a coconut cream pie
what was it you called me when we met at the shiny glass fence? what was it you carved in the condensation? three little letters: F-A-T
your eyes seem to be avoiding mine you look everywhere around but at my body what about it would you change if you could reach over to touch? but your arms are crossed
my weight quivered as much as my bottom lips did when i begged my mother to stop stop nagging me about losing weight i’ll do it on my own you’ll see
but i see things have changed my jeans are looser around my hips i went down two belt holes before i used the leather strap to keep it in but now it’s to fight gravity
aunties were the first to notice have i been eating enough? mother, have you been feeding me? Craig, who married your aunt and who probably doesn’t remember your name noticed— that felt weird
they tell me not to hide the “cute” figure behind old baggy clothes so i squeeze my body into fresh sausage casings
does that make me more palatable? tell me why you still won’t return my gaze who am i again? am i you or are you me? which side of the mirror do i stand on?
only you—I know the truth that slimness comes not from health-nut diets or an active lifestyle but by locking yourself away in your bedroom cavern lying in bed in nothing but the nude eating nothing but cheerios and apple slices and letting your brain rot away with thoughts of ropes and intricate knots fashioned into an everlasting necklace
what grants the perfect body but the sacrifice of your sanity —that’s how you truly lost weight
and now you feel a different kind of guilt the guilt of liking your newfound skinniness even knowing the cost you paid for it you know it’s wrong to you know it’s not healthy but for the first time
the girl in the mirror smiles at you you are beginning to look like her she reaches a hand out to you and you reach one back but when you touch all you feel is the cold glass surface of the box you’re trapped in.
Valancy Green is a queer Vietnamese American poet and writer from Minnesota, USA. She is an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota studying English literature and publishing. In her free time, Valancy volunteers at youth writing centers. Button Poetry has featured her poems in their past Short Form Contests.
Your Absence Made New
A Lie Is Told By Time
Edward Lee
RESERVOIR
David Summerfield
Gentle
Edward Michael Supranowicz
Nothing Here Is Ever Real
Peter MacQuarrie is an enigma. He lives in Northern California.
Edward Lee is an artist and writer from Ireland. His paintings and photography have been exhibited widely, while his poetry, short stories, non-fiction have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll.
Katie Sullivan Hughbanks’ photography has been recognized internationally, including two honors from the London Photo Festival. Her photos appear in various publications, including in Peatsmoke Journal, In Parentheses, L’Esprit Literary Review, New Feathers Anthology, Glassworks Magazine, and Black Fork Review. She teaches English and Creative Writing in Louisville, Kentucky.
David Summerfield is a graduate of Frostburg State University, Maryland, and a veteran of the Iraq war. He has been an editor, columnist, and contributor to various publications within his home state of West Virginia, his photo art has appeared in numerous literary arts magazines/ journals/and reviews. Website: davidsummerfieldcreates.com
M E Fuller is a rural Minnesota visual artist working primarily on canvas and paper using acrylics, watercolor, and mixed media. Her most recent works depict abstract and energetic landscapes and mindscapes. Fuller is a former graphic designer, art director, self-taught author, and visual artist.
Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/ Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up in Appalachia. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet.
Janis Butler Holm served as Associate Editor for Wide Angle, the film journal, and currently works as a writer and editor in LA. Her prose,
poems, art, and drama have appeared in small-press, national, and international magazines. Her plays have been produced in the U.S., Canada, Russia, and the U.K.
Claudia Tong is an artist based in London, dedicated to storytelling and humanity. Her practice spans from landscape, architecture and illustrations to mixed media, visual computing and music. She graduated from Brown University in computer science, and has lived, worked and exhibited internationally. https://linktr.ee/claudiaxt
Dr. Robin E. Field is the Manus Cooney Distinguished Service Professor and Professor of English at King’s College. She has published short stories in The Dalhousie Review, Isele Journal, Orange Blossom Review, and The Long Story. She has one husband, two kids, and three cats.
Josh Ulanoski works as the Associate Director of Creative Services in the King’s College Office of Marketing and Communications. Photography has been his hobby (and sometimes his job) for the past 18 years. When he’s not at work or taking more photos than he has time to edit, he enjoys bike riding, hiking, traveling, listening to music, and catching up on movies, TV shows, and video games. Josh also took all of the cover and divider photos in this year’s issue.
Brandi Naprava is a third-year English/Secondary Education major at King’s College. While not doing homework, tutoring in the Writing Center, or working on The Scop, she can be found searching for new books to read, staring at maps, and taking on more responsibilities.
Jillian Snook is a junior at King’s College who is also The Scop’s Assistant Editor. In her free time, Jillian enjoys writing, reading, and once in a while, relaxing.
Ashlyn Golya is a senior at King’s College and is pursuing a major in Marketing along with a minor in International Business and concentration in Mass Communications. In her free time, she likes to enjoy the outdoors with family and friends, go see live music, paint, and travel.
Samantha Buchernatale (King’s College Class of 2015) is a writer and graphic designer from Royersford, Pennsylvania. She usually has paint in her hair, can say the alphabet backwards, and determines if a day is great or not by the amount of dogs she’s seen. Her written work has been published in Aurora: The Allegory Ridge Poetry Anthology, The Northeast Poetry Review, Poetry in Transit, and The Scop.
Joseph (Joe) Gacek is a senior English major at King’s College. He commutes to campus from West Pittston, Pennsylvania. He lives with his mom, dad, and two younger sisters. In his free time, he enjoys running, listening to music, and spending time with his friends.
Jess Gittens is a senior History major with a minor in Creative Writing at King’s College. Jess works as a manager at a small business in Forty Fort, as well as tutoring in the Writing Center. In her free time, Jess loves reading classic literature and researching her favorite historical topics. She also is an avid writer, who focuses her work on the many challenges and undefinable struggles of domesticity, womanhood, and mental health.
Stephanie Dunlap is a sophomore English Literature Major at King’s. She is a member of two honors societies and the captain of the Overwatch Gold team. In her free time, Stephanie can be found caring for her houseplants as she slowly turns her apartment into a forest.
Michael Little is the Chair of the English Department. He has taught business writing, late 20th century American literature, and a variety of film, writing, literature, and critical thinking courses at King’s for almost twenty years.
The Scop would like to extend a formal thank you to the King’s College English department faculty for their contributions during the voting process!
