The Scop, Spring 2025, Vol. 85

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. The Scop accepts submissions worldwide.

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A Letter from the Editor In times of uncertainty and unrest, we often find ourselves desperate for some escape, for something to ground and distract us. Whether that be through the lens of a camera or the ink of a pen, creativity keeps us going and brings us to a world where maybe, just maybe, there is hope to keep going.

This year’s issue of The Scop comes at a time of immense change. Not only do we find ourselves amid a spring bloom and the time for college graduation, but we also find ourselves in a new, almost unrecognizable world, moving further and further into uncertainty.

Through this issue of The Scop, I hope that you find not only an escape from your current life but also a sense of hope to keep going. A sense of hope that somehow, someway, things will get better. That things will work out as they are meant to. In a time where it feels like everything is on the line, I hope that our issue can be your escape from whatever may be heavy on your heart, even if that be for just one poem.

Jillian Snook Editor of The Scop

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Away on Business | Drama

Away on Business Thom Hawkins

REBECCA, the wife HECTOR, the first husband JON, the second husband A darkened bedroom. REBECCA is in the bed.

HECTOR enters the room, and gets into bed beside her, putting his arm over her shoulder.

HECTOR: Four years? … (HECTOR looks around the room, and more closely at REBECCA.) REBECCA: Yes, Hector, four years. You disappeared four years ago.

HECTOR: It worked …

REBECCA (with her back to HECTOR): Mmmm.

You’re home early.

REBECCA: What worked? Talk to me, Hector.

What’s going on?

HECTOR: What do you mean? You expected me to stay up later?

HECTOR: I didn’t mean … four years? I wasn’t ready.

REBECCA: I thought you weren’t coming home until tomorrow.

REBECCA: What are you talking about? Where have you been?

HECTOR: Oh, ha ha.

HECTOR: Here. I’ve been here. In the basement.

REBECCA (REBECCA’s eyes open): Jon?

REBECCA: For four years?

HECTOR: Who? Are you dreaming? (HECTOR sits up and leans over to see REBECCA’s face.)

HECTOR: No. Not for four years. Just a few hours. We had dinner tonight—you told me your job interview went well. I went down the basement to do some work, and then I came up here.

REBECCA: Hector! What the hell?! (REBECCA scrambles out of bed and moves to the center of the room, facing the bed and assuming a protective posture.)

REBECCA: How is that possible?

REBECCA: What’s wrong with me? What are you doing here? My husband ...

HECTOR: What I was working on … I didn’t think it would work—I was sure it wouldn’t work—but I knew I couldn’t sleep until I confirmed it.

HECTOR: Yes, I’m right here. Are you having a nightmare?

REBECCA: What were you working on? You were supposed to be fixing the vacuum cleaner.

REBECCA: But— Where have you been?

HECTOR: I know, I haven’t quite gotten to that.

I’ve been working on a machine that warps time around an enclosed field.

HECTOR: What the hell is wrong with you?

HECTOR: The basement. Are you messing with me right now? You’re being totally weird.

REBECCA: Hector, you’ve been missing for four years.

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REBECCA: A time machine? You’re telling me you built a time machine in our basement?!

HECTOR: Yeah, I guess. I try not to think of it

that way because it sounds silly.

REBECCA: Yes, Hector, I love him.

REBECCA: And it works?

HECTOR: So that’s it. You don’t love me anymore. I’m just part of your past.

HECTOR: Yes … apparently.

REBECCA: Hector, you disappeared four years ago. You vanished. I mourned you, Hector.

HECTOR: I’m sorry, Rebecca. I didn’t mean for this to work, I just … (HECTOR gets out of bed on her side and tries to embrace her. She shrinks back as he hugs her.)

REBECCA: It’s complicated. You couldn’t figure out the past, but you expect me to? Now? You suddenly show up after four years and you think my feelings should just revert back to you?

HECTOR: Well, where’s this new husband? Why isn’t he here?

REBECCA: Hector … go back. (REBECCA steps backward out of HECTOR’s arms.)

REBECCA: He’s away on business. He should be here in the morning.

HECTOR: I don’t think I can. I was still working on the prototype. I can only go forward in time.

I hadn’t gotten around to figuring out the past.

HECTOR: There’s no time like the present. It’s already the morning. What time?

REBECCA: Hector, I’m married.

HECTOR: I know … Wait, someone else?

REBECCA: Yes, Hector. You were gone. I didn’t know what happened to you, where you went.

HECTOR: I went here. Rebecca, I came straight here. I saw you a few hours ago. We had dinner.

I went to my workshop for a while, and then I came up here for bed.

REBECCA: You didn’t, Hector. You never came to bed. Your car was still here. All the doors were locked, but you were gone. I reported you missing. I waited for years. I insisted on staying in the house in case you ever returned. Jon said …

REBECCA: Soon.

HECTOR: Can you be more precise?

REBECCA: Like give or take four years?

HECTOR: Oh. REBECCA: Can you finish your machine? Can you go back?

HECTOR: I don’t know. I’ll have to look at my notes.

REBECCA: Did you bring them with you?

HECTOR: No, they’re in the basement.

REBECCA: Oh. Oh, God.

HECTOR: Jon, that’s your new … husband?

HECTOR: What?

REBECCA: Yes. He said you abandoned me.

REBECCA: Didn’t you see when you were down there last night?

HECTOR: I would never leave you.

REBECCA: But you did. I told him ‘anything can happen.’

HECTOR: It was dark. I must have shorted out the lights down there. Why?

REBECCA: I guess we’re both right.

REBECCA: It’s all gone. I compromised. Jon agreed to stay in this house, but he cleaned out the basement. He wanted a rec room.

HECTOR: What now? You’re my wife.

HECTOR: My papers, my tools?

REBECCA: I’m not anymore. I’m just not. You’re too late. I’m married to Jon. I love him.

REBECCA: Gone.

HECTOR: I never left.

HECTOR: What kind of man gets rid of tools?

HECTOR: You love him?

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REBECCA: I’m sorry, Hector.

(They hear the engine of an approaching car.

The engine shuts off outside.)

REBECCA: He’s here. Please, go down the basement. Let me talk to him alone.

(HECTOR nods and leaves the room stage right as JON walks in stage left with a small suitcase.)

JON: Honey, I’m home. (JON puts down his suitcase by the door.)

REBECCA: How was your trip?

JON: Pretty good. I think we made some progress there.

REBECCA: Good, good.

JON: Is something wrong?

REBECCA: Why? JON: You look pale. Anxious.

JON: That’s what you get when you shirk your responsibilities and have no worries.

REBECCA: Jon, he was never like that.

JON: Well, maybe he is now.

REBECCA: You don’t get it. There is no then and now for him. It’s all the same.

JON: Well, he can’t stay here.

REBECCA: Where is he supposed to go?

JON: Back!

REBECCA: He can’t.

JON: Why not? Is it because he still loves you?

Or because you still love him?

REBECCA: Jon, if he goes back, I don’t marry you. Do you understand that? I’d still be with him.

JON: Who’s back?

JON: I knew it! I knew you still loved him! (JON leaves angrily stage left, grabbing his suitcase on the way. REBECCA watches him go.)

REBECCA: Hector. He’s here. He’s in the basement.

HECTOR (re-entering stage right): He seemed angry.

JON: What did he do to you?

REBECCA: He’s a good man, Hector. I wish you could meet him under different circumstances.

I think you would hit it off.

REBECCA: Jon, he’s back.

REBECCA: Nothing! Nothing. It’s not like that.

We’ve just been talking.

JON: Then what is he doing here?

REBECCA: It’s complicated.

JON: How complicated?

REBECCA: He came here in a time machine, from the night he disappeared.

JON: A time machine? You believe that rubbish? He’s making it up, Rebecca! Face it, he left you! But now he’s changed his mind and he’s too late. You’ve moved on. We should have, too. I wish we’d moved. I can’t believe I let you talk me into staying.

REBECCA: It’s not … It can’t be, Jon—he looks the same as when he disappeared. He hasn’t aged at all.

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HECTOR: Well, he’s gone now.

REBECCA: He’ll be back. And he’s right. You need to go. You can’t stay here.

HECTOR: You don’t love me anymore? Just like that?

REBECCA: No, Hector, not ‘just like that’. It’s been years. And I do still love you, but not in the way that I used to, not in the way that I love him.

HECTOR: But you told him ...

REBECCA: You heard that?

HECTOR: Yes, through the vents. I heard everything.

REBECCA: I’m sorry. I don’t think this is about us anymore. This is about you.

HECTOR: We’re a team.

REBECCA: No, Hector. Jon and I are a team now.

HECTOR: I don’t care how old you’ll be. I still love you. That won’t change.

HECTOR: So I’m out of your life? After all these years we’ve been together?

REBECCA: It won’t change because time doesn’t pass for you. It’s time that damages a relationship, like water wears down rock.

REBECCA: No, after all these years we’ve been apart.

HECTOR: That’s what I’m counting on. Look, I’ll go forward a year at a time to check in on you.

HECTOR: I was away on business.

(REBECCA sits on the sofa, HECTOR sits next to her.)

REBECCA: Please don’t. That’s a really perverse anniversary. I can’t bear it.

HECTOR: New sofa?

HECTOR: I don’t want to lose you. It was just one little mistake.

REBECCA: Yes, it was Jon’s. He brought it when he moved in.

REBECCA: It was more than that.

HECTOR: I liked our old one better.

REBECCA: So did I. Hector, does your time machine still work?

HECTOR: We’ve been over this. I can’t go back.

It doesn’t work that way. I might not even work out that science in my lifetime.

REBECCA: What if you go forward again?

HECTOR: What do you mean?

REBECCA: Maybe if you go far enough into the future, further than now, you’ll find what you need to go back.

HECTOR: I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t know anyone else who’s even seriously working on this type of technology.

HECTOR: What do you want me to do?

REBECCA: I don’t know. I told Jon I wanted to stay here because I thought you might come back. Now you have. I know what happened and I can move on. We can move on—me and Jon. HECTOR: What are you saying?

REBECCA: Hector, when you go forward in time again, Jon and I will be gone.

HECTOR: I can still find you.

REBECCA: But don’t. Maybe someday you’ll be able to go backwards again, and we can have another chance. But this is my path now. Jon is my future.

HECTOR: You don’t mean that.

REBECCA: There’s bound to be someone.

REBECCA: I do.

HECTOR: Not necessarily. But …

REBECCA: What?

HECTOR: I’ll go forward a year. I know you’ll still be here, with or without Jon.

HECTOR: Maybe things will be different in the future. For us, I mean.

REBECCA: Are you sure? You were also sure your time machine wouldn’t work.

REBECCA: I explained to you, Hector. I’m with Jon now. I love him.

HECTOR: I’ll take the risk.

HECTOR: You love him now.

REBECCA: So that’s your plan? Wait us out? I could love him until I’m old, and you’ll still be twenty-eight.

REBECCA: I believe you, Hector. I believe you now.

REBECCA and HECTOR embrace, then HECTOR exits stage right.

Curtain.

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Contributor Bio | Drama

Drama Contributor Thom Hawkins is a writer and artist based in Maryland. His stories have appeared or are scheduled to appear in Always Crashing (Pushcart Prize nominee), Collaborature, Encephalon Journal, Excuse Me Magazine, Gargoyle Online, New Myths, Oyez Review, Variant Lit, and Verdant Literary Journal.

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Breakfast Call | Fiction

Breakfast Call

The kettle boiled.

Brendan Crocker folded the newspaper and placed it on the table. He couldn’t remember the last time he completed the crossword.

‘Nine letters, beginning with N,’ he said, ‘to agree…’

His wife, Janine, scrolling through her phone, stood up to pour the water.

The matching yellow teacups were a gift on their fifteenth wedding anniversary from a couple they no longer spoke to. Brendan’s cup was chipped on the rim above the handle. To avoid cutting his lip, he drank from the other side. It was an inconvenience, but hardly worth mentioning. He once suggested new washing tablets for the machine, as some ceramics are especially fragile to caustic products. Janine paid little heed. Her cup was fine, and they had been washed together, the same number of times with the same powder.

Brendan was clumsy. Between laundry and gardening he’d throw the bedsheets in with the canvas material, and confuse pyjamas with cargo pants. When it came time for bed and there was nothing fresh to wear, Janine reminded him. He thought she would do the washing, if he emptied the bins and hoovered the stairs. Janine never explicitly

9 • The Scop • 2025

Justin Aylward

agreed. It was hard to manage a lopsided work schedule, and if time got away from her, surely Brendan should lend a hand. But he employed a different logic; he thought that if he said something and she didn’t argue, they were in agreement. But if she did disagree, an argument would definitely ensue. He thought the same thing, so often they pretended to agree with each other until it was apparent they were at odds. Then they each blamed the other for the fallout.

But Janine didn’t understand the mechanics of each task, Brendan thought. Thinking about something was not the same as doing it. When she wanted him to gather up all his socks for the wash basket, he first had to ensure there were enough spare pairs while the others dried out. On occasion, there weren’t enough socks and he had to wear a dirty pair for an extra day. Clients whispered about him at work, he thought. They were too polite to say anything to his face. How could a man offer marriage counselling if he couldn’t get his socks in order? But Janine always bought him socks, on his birthday and at Christmas. He never complained. If he didn’t have enough fresh socks to last a week, he should have said, or bought his own. If he sacrificed one cup of

coffee a week for a month, he could buy five packs of three matching socks; fifteen in total, enough for two weeks. But Brendan didn’t see it that way: missing coffee at lunch was intolerable. He couldn’t think clearly if his brain was switched off. But drinking coffee at home where it was free did little to switch it on, Janine thought.

She poured the boiling water into her cup, a green teabag resting at the bottom. There was just enough water left for Brendan who preferred black tea, hot and strong, no milk or sugar. If you can’t taste it properly, he said, what’s the point.

She noticed the pile of plates in the basin, the same pile Brendan said he would rinse the night before. The whole house would crumble if everything was left to him, she thought.

Why should she have to do everything just because he was incapable, or unwilling. Work as a divorce lawyer was perfect preparation for such drama, but she never knew a couple to separate over a stack of dirty plates. Let the place go to hell, that was an idea. But she had tried it before and only succeeded in spoiling her mood. It didn’t solve the problem, it just meant a greater accumulation of junk around the house. The mountain of old newspapers on the coffee table were bad enough. Some of them had turned brown. Brendan said he would read them when he found time. If he put the current paper down for five seconds he might get things done. In any case, the plates would still be there after dinner.

Brendan stood up and was about to pour water from the kettle, but paused. He raised the cup to the window and examined the rim, a queer frown stretching across his face. It was the same chip as before, but bigger. There were other cups in the press above the oven, but somehow they weren’t the same, Brendan thought. He preferred his morning tea from the yellow cup he always drank from. Something terrible might happen if he changed his routine. He might cut his lip if he continued

to drink from the preferred cup, but at least that was predictable. He didn’t know what he would do if an unforeseen event disrupted his schedule.

Janine sat down and swiped through her phone again. Another busy day ahead. She wouldn’t get a minute to herself, not until after dinner. Why not hire a maid? Brendan suggested it last Christmas when the turkey spoiled after he left the fridge door open. Not the worst idea, Janine thought, but learning to cop on might be a better one. And what did he want with a maid flapping about the house?

Janine knew how arrangements like that ended.

Dinner was eight hours away, or a week’s worth of appointments for some people. She didn’t have time to think about it, not with two court hearings and other nuptial miscellany.

Brendan refilled the kettle and switched it to boil. Janine looked up from her phone. She left enough water in it for his tea. If they kept boiling the kettle, she thought, the bill would go through the roof. He’d have something to gripe about then.

Brendan turned back to the counter and re-examined the cup. The chip on the rim was definitely bigger. He would wash it by hand in future, and store it away from the others in the cabinet. Janine couldn’t complain if her cup spoiled too, not after he told her about the washing powder. He poured the hot water over the teabag and brought the cup to the table. Janine looked at the kettle. There was still enough water for three cups. Surely he wasn’t going to drink his first cup, wait ten minutes, then boil the kettle again for another. He must have the morning off if he’s lounging around the kitchen sipping tea.

‘I’m expecting an important call.’ Janine said.

The words flew out of her mouth like a regurgitated prawn.

Important, Brendan thought; she said that about every call. There was no peaceable

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response, but that didn’t always stop him. But she spoke again, more hurried than before. ’My phone’s running low…‘ The charger was on his side of the table, with his phone plugged in.

He didn’t move, and just glared at the newspaper opened wide across the table.

N, nine letters, to agree. The puzzle was enough to make you cross-eyed, he thought, and Janine never helped. If he put it away for a while, the answer might come to him. That often worked, usually when you least expected.

He completed the puzzle one evening while folding underwear. The word was fortify; the clue, to strengthen or secure.

Janine scrolled through her phone, her manicured nail skating across the screen. She got the feeling he only pretended to hear, but in reality nothing registered. If I didn’t know any better, she thought, I’d think he was intelligent.

Brendan put the paper down and sipped his tea. He savoured the hot liquid, swishing it around his mouth. But something was wrong, and he wasn’t going to take another sip to be sure. He stood up and poured the water down the sink. There was time for another one if he drank fast.

Janine reached over the table and removed his phone from the battery charger, inserting her own.

‘I’m expecting a call any minute,’ she repeated.

Some day, Brendan thought, she’ll have the phone to her ear and it will ring.

He took another teabag from the pot and was about to boil the water again when his phone bleeped. It was a text message from the garage, notifying him about his NCT test at eleven. Brendan snatched his phone and read the message again. How could I forget, he wondered. If only he had written it on the calendar like he promised. But a two-day reminder from the garage might have been wiser, instead of one just hours in advance. He was going to advise them on that in future.

11 • The Scop • 2025

‘Can you drop me into work?’ He asked.

There was never a suitable day for a detour, Janine thought, and today was no different.

‘I’m in court,’ she responded, ‘I don’t have a minute.’

Brendan rechecked his schedule on the phone. He knew his plans for the day, but after forgetting the NCT, he was apt to doubt his own name.

Janine sipped some tea, clamping the smile on her lips. She reached down for her phone, but remembered it was plugged in at the other side of the table.

‘I’m booked up ‘til lunch,’ Brendan said, ‘and I’ve an NCT.’ A note of complaint singed his voice, like life was an unfair sentence.

Janine flicked the ring on her finger, waiting for her phone to charge. In a minute, she thought, Brendan might start begging. The only time he got on his knees was to propose marriage. The balance of power might shift her way if she held firm. If I’m late, she thought, the judge and my paying client will suffer. But if he is late, a disgruntled couple who should know better than to waste money on marriage counselling will learn a good lesson. She couldn’t let him get the better of her, not after the hard work and long hours.

Brendan frowned at his watch. It was late.

He looked at the clock on the wall; it was even later. The creases deepened on his forehead.

I’m not going to ask her again, he thought.

She’ll never let it go.

The garage could wait, but his clients were not easily pacified. Time for a cup of tea.

Janine sensed another complaint. It was cruel to let him proceed. She snatched her phone and hurried to the living room.

The glass door separated them, and neither glanced back.

Why marry; it was a question that lingered between them like a smell they blamed on each other. Twenty years, they were together, or twenty-one, depending on who you believed.

They shared their greatest habits.

How did marriage become a guessing game? They each wondered if another solution was possible, but both were afraid to ask.

Brendan looked at her standing there, sought after by many. One day the phone will ring, Brendan remembered. He picked up his phone, about to dial her number, but paused.

Don’t be an asshole, he thought. But they were supposed to be married; why should she have it all her own way. There was no clear answer to that question, and before he could think further, her number was dialling on the phone.

He held it to his ear, looking at her through the glass kitchen door. Why do women always fold their arms when taking a call, he wondered.

She looked different silhouetted against the front window. Judges were probably afraid of her, and cheating husbands. He looked again at the clock on the wall. The hands don’t go backwards. It was a waste of time, and he was about to hang up when her voice trickled down the phone.

‘Hello…’ she said.

Brendan turned, facing the door like a sentry, his reflection shining back at him. Janine stared back, a watery pallor on her face. It looked like a sigh, but Brendan couldn’t hear.

‘Hello?’ he responded.

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Golgotha | Fiction

Golgotha

It was the talk of the town, and there were no two ways about that. A body found floating in Wabbins Creek? The body of a Negro? When you have a town like Kenton, population eight thousand, every one of them with a white face, then there was no mystery why it would be the only topic on everyone’s lips.

Take the four men who occupied the same front window table for breakfast every Monday morning, 7:30 sharp, at Theo’s Diner. All had pushed past fifty; all were the pillars of the community.

Pete Scanlon sold life insurance and doubled as Kenton’s mayor. His horn-rimmed glasses, as they always did, looked as if they were ready to slide down his nose and off his face. He was clearly annoyed and spoke up first.

“It’s a helluva thing…a hell-uh-va thing, let me tell you. Can’t do the town’s image a bit of good, finding him out there like that.”

“I heard he was naked,” said Jimmy Harrington, who ran the five-and-dime on Main Street and was president of the local Elks lodge, stirring a third packet of sugar into his mug of coffee.

“Bare-ass naked,” said Sandy Braun, owner of the town’s John Deere dealership. “And

13 • The Scop • 2025

Nick Young

that’s from the police chief’s mouth.”

“How many days had he been in the water?” Ben Chapman was a raw-boned man with rough hands suited to his work as the only large-animal vet for two counties.

“Ernie said it looked like maybe three,” Sandy Braun answered.

“Well, it’s a goddamned blight on this community, that’s what I say.” Jimmy Harrington kept shaking his head as he spoke. “Just when the Chamber of Commerce is getting ready to put out their splashy brochure.”

“Jimmy,” Doc Chapman began, scolding, “we’re talking about a human life here.”

“He knows that, Ben. We all know that,” Sandy Braun cut in. Then, nudging his mug of coffee to the side, he leaned in and lowered his voice. “Will someone tell me how he ended up here in the first place?”

“Well, he came from somewhere down south, didn’t he? Mississippi, I think,” said Pete Scanlon, looking from one man to the next for confirmation. Ben Chapman nodded.

“That’s my point,” Sandy Braun continued.

“What business did he have coming up here?”

“It’s a free country, Sandy,” said Ben Chapman.

“What I’m saying,” Braun went on, his tone taking a sharper edge, “is that he should have stayed with his own kind down in Mississippi or wherever. Or kept going—to St. Louis, Chicago.

Live with his own people. We really don’t need nigg—coloreds—in Kenton, do we?”

“I guess he came along at just the right time for Reverend Beecham,” Pete Scanlon said. “He needed the help around the church after Rusty died.” Sandy Braun was not satisfied.

“He could’ve hired on a white man to do odd jobs, cut the grass. I never trusted young Reverend Beecham anyway. I have my doubts about his church. I don’t think it’s even really Christian.”

“Oh, come on, Sandy.” Doc Chapman rolled his eyes, his annoyance growing.

“I mean it,” Sandy Braun plowed right ahead. “I don’t believe he preaches the gospel of our Lord and Savior. He’s too wishy-washy… too, hell, socialistic. Why else would he hire that buck?” Doc Chapman set his jaw and looked away. The other two men sat absorbed in their coffee until Pete Scanlon finally broke the silence.

“I expect Ernie is going to get his end of it wrapped up pretty soon. It looks cut and dried.

No foul play, just a suicide.”

“Good,” declared Jimmy Harrington. “The best thing for this town is to get this behind us just as quick as we can, or we might as well flush that Chamber of Commerce brochure right down the toilet.” # “Anyone who thinks her leaving town more than a week ago was just a coincidence has a hole in their head.” This declaration was made with utter certainty by Mrs. James Harrington to the two women on either side of her as they reclined in lounge chairs beside the shimmering blue-green of the Quail Ridge Country Club pool. It was a ritual several times a week for Midge Harrington, Sue Scanlon

and Petey Braun, all tanned and trim in their mid-forties: a round of golf in the morning, lunch on the clubhouse veranda followed by an afternoon of sun and cocktails. “Timothy,” she called out to the young man behind the poolside bar, raising her empty highball glass and rattling the ice in it, “be a dear and bring another, sil vous plait.”

“Right away, Mrs. Harrington,” Tim replied with a wave.

“It is rather suspicious, isn’t it?” mused Petey Braun, smoothing suntan lotion up and down her left arm.

“Rather suspicious?” Midge Harrington answered. “That Negro begins working at First United three months ago. Elizabeth Beecham up and leaves town last week—” “She went to her mother’s up in Danville,” Sue Scanlon said. “That’s what she told Bev Sproules is what I heard.”

“The point is, ladies—” Midge Harrington broke off as the bartender arrived with a fresh drink.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Tim said.

“When you come bearing this,” Midge said as she took the vodka-and-tonic, “you are always forgiven. How about it, girls? Ready for refills?”

“Overdue,” said Petey Braun.

“Likewise,” Sue Scanlon agreed. Tim smiled and hurried back to the bar.

“Now, as I was saying,” Midge Harrington resumed, “the point is that Elizabeth Beecham suddenly moves out of Kenton and a few days later, the church handyman turns up floating in the creek. Coincidence?” Midge let the last word drip with suggestiveness. Sue Scanlon seemed scandalized.

“You’re not saying he did it because they were having an affair and she broke it off, are you?”

“And why not?” Midge Harrington replied.

“Well—I mean…” Sue Scanlon was at a loss to say anymore. At that moment, Tim appeared and placed drinks on the small tables beside

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Sue and Petey. After he left, Midge eyed her friend with bemusement.

“Why, Susan, you look positively flummoxed.”

“Well, Midge—what you’re suggesting.…”

Sue answered, quickly taking refuge in her margarita.

“Come on, Sue, we’re big girls here. We’ve all still got our…needs. Why would Elizabeth Beecham be any different?”

“But a minister’s wife?”

“A young, attractive minister’s wife. Eve and the forbidden fruit, m’dear. Don’t be such a prude.”

“Still…I—” “Can’t see yourself with a colored man?” said Midge Harrington. The question hung in the hot August air for a long moment before Petey Braun took a deep drink of her martini, leaned in toward her companions and said conspiratorially, “Just between us girls, did you ever drive by the church when he was working outside?

Well, I did a couple of weeks ago during that really hot spell we had? It was one of those days when it must have been a hundred, a hundred-five? Anyway, he was cutting out some thick shrubbery with a pair of big hedge clippers.” Petey Braun dropped her voice, her tone becoming more salacious. “And as I watched—I happened to be parked on the same side of the street—he stripped off the tight tee shirt he was wearing. It was soaked through. And he stretched, arching back at the waist…and I could see the sweat rolling down his chest…the muscles of his arms. I thought I was looking at one of those marble statues you see in a museum—only dark chocolate. And as he turned, I saw how the sun flashed off a gold cross he had on a thick chain around his neck.”

Her voice trailed off at the memory.

“Well. I. will. be. damned,” Midge Harrington marveled, looking at Sue Scanlon.

“I guess we know what our girl’s been doing when she’s all by herself in her room at night.”

15 • The Scop • 2025

# He sat alone in the front pew. From the west, the day’s fading sunlight filtered through one of the church’s four stained glass windows.

Philip Beecham let his eyes linger on the image: Jesus, bent from the weight of the wooden cross he was forced to bear, laboring up the steep hill where he would be crucified.

He drew a deep breath, closed his eyes and let his head fall forward. So much pain. So great the loss. It would require all his strength and test the depth of his faith to overcome what had befallen him.

He did not blame Elizabeth for leaving.

She understood that once the secret had been revealed, there was no turning away, the stain could not be erased. And it was not only the small-town shame. It was the personal betrayal.

A lie that could never be made right. And so she had said simply that she was leaving, “for everyone’s good.”

That had cut Philip deeply enough. But then to have had Roland go missing for days followed by the discovery of his body in Wabbins Creek….

Philip had gone to the tiny room Roland had rented in the old Tyler house beyond the southern edge of Kenton; he knew the way.

There were few possessions to speak of on a dresser top—a comb, some spare change, a 5x7 photo of Roland and a smiling elderly woman in a cheap silver frame. And there was a small oblong cedar box with a metal clasp.

Alongside, a folded piece of ivory note paper with Philip’s name printed on it in a delicate hand. He took the note closer to the room’s only window where the light was better and read, and his soul was wounded again.

Roland’s language was plain—words of sorrow, of regret at the pain he had caused.

There was also fear that gripped him, a terror of what would happen to him as a Black man if their secret became known and the deeper harm it would surely bring. There was more,

and the paper trembled in Philip’s hand as he read.

Now alone in the church during the dying of the day, Philip took up the small box, undid the clasp and opened it, letting the rich scent of cedar envelop him. Inside was the braided gold chain and cross that had been his gift to Roland. Gently, he lifted them free, entwining the warm metal in his fingers. He closed his eyes and brought the cross to his lips, holding it there for a very long time.

The Scop • 2025 • 16

I Lost My Reality | Fiction

I Lost My Reality

The sun shines bright through my closed eyelids, warmth hits first, then reality, waking me up where life placed me last. The rays from the sun’s compromised warmth remind me instantly where I am; it feels like regret, sharp, bitter regret. Let alone the shivering of my thin body (it is the middle of winter) and the growls of my stomach, which behaves as an alarm clock, now filling my mornings up rather religiously. The odor that reflects off my body almost repels my initial morning thoughts; ruined another day, I find myself still living. Oh. I cannot forget about the metal bench I slept on last night, uncomfortably, even though this was the best spot I could find.

I wipe my eyes and get up off the bench, dusting myself off any bugs and dust that might have found its way onto me, and walk towards the park’s bathrooms to wash my face with cold water, waking me up before this dreadful day. Making my way out of the quiet, desolate park, I turn onto Jefferson bridge that connects Middlebury and King of Prussia, standing above 50ft of nothing between it and the violent river underneath. Viewing the distance, the river flowing, unaware of its destination, so am I, not knowing of my own. My head hurts, my hands are numb, and I cannot feel my feet,

17 • The Scop • 2025

Brennan Robinson

so I just walk. Just walk pondering on a life that I could have enjoyed, could have spent happily knowing I did not have to worry about where my next meal would be, where I’m going to lay my head, and about the missing love that I’m missing right now. Instead, I’m filled with regrets and the hate for myself runs deeper than any river in America. If my family would see me now, I don’t even want to think about that, it scares me. It genuinely terrifies me thinking about my family seeing how their only child ended up. I guess it’s a good thing they’re dead. So, I keep walking.

I turn down Main Street, stopping at the corner in front of an old boutique shop.

Seeing all the foot traffic that lays before me, it embarrasses me to be seen like this, but I always come back. The sidewalk holds hundreds of people, so it is difficult to stand out, yet I am here like the holes in my shirt and the smell of the garbage within a home. My initial thought, as always, was to turn around and find a place to be alone. But my stomach would not allow me, it kept me from turning back. This pain in my stomach feels like the sudden strike of a clock chiming when you least expect it, lost in time. You’ll never get used to it; you will rarely expect the painful

growl of your stomach.

Standing here watching the people walk to their predetermined destinations brought envy into my heart; they have places to be and things to accomplish and I am just standing here thinking about what I never was and will never be. I want to do something about it, I really do, but I know not one person but others who share my situation. Where does one start if he has no option of clothing to wear but the ones currently on his back, no means of communication, transportation, or currency?

It is also not like my clothes are in good condition; I have been wearing them since I joined this jungle, and they are only getting worse in time. The holes in my jacket and shirt are detectable and the stains that cover my entire outfit cannot be reversed.

There are food trucks and stands on almost every corner, making the street have an aroma of signature American foods, hot dogs covered with ketchup and mustard, sometimes relish, pretzels freshly baked, hamburgers and pizzas being consumed by people all over the sidewalk, filled with grease and butter, something I never thought I’d miss, but here I am. I know why I am back, why I always come back, even though it is embarrassing; I’m hungry, I have no money, and I am surrounded by this amazing opportunity. You will never know what one would do when he has nothing to lose. He is fearless, he will do anything because what would it matter if he failed?

Not a damn thing! This world will continue to spin, continue to growl and consume more people like me into this jungle. This never gets easier, but my stomach is ordering me to do something about it, so I am.

Sunny as the day is, it appears gloomy to the eyes of my mind; the loneliness within me deepens, the thought of my family rushes back, all the people I disappointed come flooding back into my mind. I remember my parents telling me how proud they were; the first in my family to get the opportunity to attend college,

the first one to make a difference and get out of the life that consumed my family and me.

My parents were my reason, they sacrificed everything they could for me to get through college and make a better life. “Do right by people and make the right choices.” My mother would tell me anytime we were finishing a conversation on the phone. I remember those words vividly, as if it’s her voice in my head telling me.

To look at where I am now, you can say I never heeded her advice. After graduation, I began to get on my feet a little and establish myself in the real world. I moved out of my parents’ house and got myself an entry-level job in sales. Everything was going well; I was proving myself as an eager and goal-driven individual making sales left and right; I was in a good place. Suddenly, I get a call one night late, not too late but late enough where I’m safely dreaming in bed. I pick up the phone; “Hi, is this Jimmy Hux?”, a lady’s voice. Her voice sounds sweet but sympathetic, not sure what she’s going to say, but an uneasy feeling crept up my stomach as I heard her words through the other end.

“Yes, is everything okay? How can I help you?”. What could she want at this time of night? It better be important; I hate being woken up in the middle of the night.

“I’m Jessica Moble, a doctor here at Evergreen Medical Center; I’m calling regarding our patients, Tiffany and David Hux. Are you alone right now?”

“Yes, what’s the matter? Is everything okay?

Where are they?

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this over the phone, but Tiffany and David have passed away…”

This is where my loneliness began. This is where I began to feel alone in a world full of people. I learned soon that my parents were killed in a car accident initiated by a drunk driver.

One can only be alone for so long; after

The Scop • 2025 • 18

a while, its envelopes your mind into sadness and anguish. To lose the only people you had and everything this world has to offer is something that no parent or school can prepare you for. Slipping into deep depression didn’t help; Drinking had become my friend.

I stopped cleaning up after myself; my house was a wreck; I barely went to work. And when I did go into work, I was miserable. I turned everyone against me, and I became unlikable to my peers.

The only way I could get through my work was if I had alcohol in me, in any capacity. It helped me tolerate any anguish I had being there, but from the outside, I looked even worse than what I had thought. I was naïve and deceived by my own thoughts, it felt like I was in a hole looking up and every time I would jump to get out; I sunk deeper. And when you’re down there, too busy trying to get out, you don’t see all the hands around you trying to help get you out. And when you do see the hands, they annoy you, your patience wears thin, and you lash out. This is how I appeared at work; at the time I didn’t see it as help but threats. Working with me became difficult and often; I made my peers uncomfortable; work became a chore and a struggle to get through.

This behavior didn’t last long; after a little, they let me go; that was six months ago.

I continue to walk, one foot in front of the other, knees shaking, not from the nerves, but from the weakness my body developed over time in this jungle that humans created. Millions of people like me inhabit this jungle, a place not promoted nor designed for outdoor living yet forced to survive like animals or make it back to the standards of “normal” living on our own.

Hearing chatter amongst the crowd, the crisp feeling of the cold air entering my nose, with the smells of the street food, it possessed me. Like it does often; I walk benignly behind people eating, wandering my eyes from person-to-person. This feeling always hits

19 • The Scop • 2025

me hard; I get excited; the adrenaline rushes filling my body, but at the same time hate and disappointment fills my mind. Why do I have to do this? Why can’t I just ask someone for money? I believe it is our pride that makes us not ask for help. We would rather take and help ourselves than rely on someone else to get us to where we need to be.

The chatter in the crowd goes silent as my stomach picks up. I can’t sit here or walk around just thinking about what I’m going to eat; I need to do something about it. There are hundreds of people around with food and the trucks have an abundance. I tried eating food where I could, from the trash and dumpsters; I hate it. How can a country allow its own people to resort to such extremes as to eat scraps of food from the garbage? I’m done looking through trash for my next meal; it’s inhumane and humiliating. I have a different approach.

All this fresh food around me, I’m going to take it and enjoy it. I don’t care about the money; I know I don’t have it.

My eyes spot a woman; she just purchased two pretzels from a stand 40ft away from where I’m standing. She looked alone, no one around her; this is good because once I take those pretzels from her no one can and will stop me.

Making my way towards her, hating that I must do this, but the closer I get, the larger I feel. My meal is getting larger and larger the closer I get; my heart’s pounding; I want to turn around, but I can’t. I’m in too deep. I’m hungry and I can’t feel anything besides the rumbling of my stomach. The need for this is heavy, but the want for this is even more. I’m now 10ft away from her, walking away oblivious to my presence lurching from behind. It’s now or starve for the time being, not listening to my head but my stomach now. I walk beside her, ready to take what I’ve been yearning for since my wake. But before I could do anything, a shine from the sun caught my eye. The light appears small, but I’m fixated on it, I’m losing my focus, but I can’t keep my eyes off it. I can’t

tell you why.

The light appears brighter every second. I am trying to snap out of it, regain focus, but I’m losing my reality. I’m losing my mind, hearing voices, but I can’t make it out. It sounds like my name, “JAMES!” is that right? I’m hearing more and more of my name. “JAMES! JIMMY!” The voices are getting louder, the light brighter every second until it consumes my entire vision.

All I see is the light, it’s my only reality. In the light, still hearing these voices yelling my name, shadows slowly appear filling in with darkness.

The voices are getting louder, the darkness is beginning to overtake the light. Am I dying? I can’t move my body, just my eyes but they can’t look at anything but the overtaking darkness.

My eyes open to people standing around me. They were still shouting my name and the darkness that was taking over the light was the dark sky of the night. The light now appearing like streetlamps on either side of me, but these streetlamps seemed too powerful to be on a regular street. My vision is blurry, but slowly coming back into focus, the people around me are trying to help, I can see that. “Hey, Jimmy! Where are you at? Do you know where you’re at?”, a man says above me, he sounds scared and at the same time relieved that my eyes have opened. I heard his question and processed an answer but couldn’t speak. The next thing I hear – “you’re at Middlebury High School.” said by another man. I’m still confused.

I can’t speak but the words fumble into my head. I have no idea where I’m at or what I’m doing. “you’re at a football game, you took a hit and collapsed on the way back to the sideline.

You’ve been out for a minute. We’re glad your eyes are open, now, c’mon let’s get you back to the bench.”

The Scop • 2025 • 20

Liz Liza Roy Andy | Fiction

Liz Liza Roy Andy

You’re probably wondering who Roy is.

Was. Nancy is sleeping in her favorite chair.

What, baby?

We talk all the time. Or try to.

It was his first name. Roy, that is.

“You’re so vain, you probably think this song is…” from the dining room. Always.

I remember those days those days always the future always young and looking forward always…

I think later the man at Penney’s used to call him Roy. When Roy went mass market fashionista. The exec would never call him anything but…Roy. Never Roy at 54. It was always…Halston.

We always had the feeling that it was always going to be…Famous. Rich. Fascinating.

Everyone wanted to see them. Be them. Liza.

Halston. Andy. Tru. Liz. Bianca.

This morning they gave me vegan sausage.

I don’t know vegan sausage. I feel better for it. I feel better for not knowing, that is. Maybe they meant a beagle sausage? I don’t like that.

The aides just stare at me when I try to make my little jokes. I don’t know what they sound like with my voice. No talkie. No eatie. Beagle sausage I mean.

21 • The Scop • 2025

Saïd Cavakios

They were vivid; you got in and there they were, right in front. Liz Liza et al. Sometimes.

Maybe. Almost. You had to look around. Maybe you’d get lucky. They weren’t always just right there. For me, that is.

The shirtless boys. Hot numbers.

The aide is over now to Nancy and her chair. She’s sleeping, bitch. Leave her alone.

Studio. I got in. Maybe you’ll get lucky the shirtless boy in the jock told me at the door. I felt golden. He was talking to me. Nice basket.

Nice eyes. Nice pecs. Sigh.

But there were other doors. Always. You thought you had arrived but…they were all still beyond. Beyond reach. Then I saw her…they’d be on the dance floor in the corner. Just for a bit. Then, in a circle. Maybe Tru. Maybe Liza.

Halston…or Liz. Or others.

Liz was always sitting on a couch right near them. She was…Fat. Poor Liz. And then… Roy, oh! Halston, joined them and then… Oh, who was it next to him? Was it Andy? Like a breeze, a wind. Just drifted in from the dark streets. The dark unknown of 54th Street and its wind. As in gone…

I used to see Andy downtown. Just walking.

Really. Near Union Square. The Factory. Andy.

Just walking.

Maybe I should have had another line when Egon offered one to me and Diane. Those long, burning powdery lines. Messed me up for a long time. I lived for those lines.

25 years and Liza was talking about ’54.’

Onstage. And then it was almost 50 years and Liza doesn’t sing so much. Talk so much.

Go out so much. She’s on the coast now.

Near mummy’s grave. They gave Judy a big mausoleum.

It was always Halston at 54. Never Roy. He was a tough cookie.

I see that shirtless boy at 54 in my mind’s eye. Where is that boy? Where is that old boy?

Where is that old me? Where is this old man?

Nancy has her chin down. The aide is shaking her. So annoying. I try to tell her not to but I can’t.

I like it here. Assisted something…they’re good to me. Nancy is a good friend. I talk to her still. Just the other day. And Andy Liz Roy… oops Halston. Gone. Gone gone gone. Liza’s not singing anymore. I don’t sing either. I talk but nothing comes out. That’s what it’s like.

What Life is. What it isn’t. It isn’t for all time. It all seems so cheap now. Fleeting fame or just… fleeting.

What Nancy? It’s almost time for lunch. I talk to her in my head.

Or it’s time for din-din. Can it be, Nancy?

Still light out? What month? We talk often, by the way even though I can’t. Nancy gets what’s I’m saying. We talk in my mind’s eye during dinner.

That’s Life. What people say.

What, Nancy? Roy went out to stay with his family when he was sick. Had them chauffeur him around in his Bentley or what-have-you.

That’s all that he had left. Sometimes that’s the way you have to have it. Not much left. You do your best with your Bentley.

The aide is yelling and people are running over.

What did they say about a beagle sausage?

My God, my God, THEY ARE SAYING… Nancy died in her favorite chair.

First published in Book of Matches, January 2025.

The Scop • 2025 • 22

Lost Love | Fiction

Lost Love

I thought I saw her again. I thought I saw her speaking. Around her fluttered words like moths fluttering around our porch light at night. Is that possible? To see words in the air? To see words at times so dense that they shroud her from me—if just for an instant? And what words were they? Were they words I had spoken to her? Words she had spoken to me?

I can’t remember now. The vision is out of reach.

It may have been a dream. I often dream of her. She speaks to me in dreams. She speaks to me there, but nowhere else. She speaks, but we argue. We always argue in dreams. Why? I ask her. Why? Why? Why? I ask her over and over. She responds, but what does she say? I can’t understand her, but I can tell she’s unhappy. No matter what I do, I can’t make her happy. I tell her I want things to be the way they were. All I want is for her to be the person she was again. Even in my dreams I can’t make her happy.

I wake—but the memories are worse than the dreams. In the memories I see her the way I want to see her. The way she no longer is. I see her like I saw her the first time she appeared at what became our home, a few months before she moved in with me. I see her

23 • The Scop • 2025

Lewis J. Beilman III

in cut-off blue jeans, her hair dyed blonde, her blue eyes alight, and her smile—I’ll never forget her smile. She had a smile that cut through my heart. Sometimes all I want to do is sleep again because the dreams, as painful as they are, hurt less than the memories.

Once, we were at the beach, and I swam out farther than I should have, into the breaking waves. I turned back and caught her face illuminated in the sun. I began to swim to her, knowing that was where I needed to be. But I struggled to swim against the current. No matter how I tried I couldn’t reach her. I was growing tired. She saw what was happening.

I don’t know how, but she saw. She shouted, Don’t fight it. Just let go. Just let go, and you’ll be OK. And I did. I let go and floated farther and farther from her. And I was OK. Just like she said I would be.

I bought her a ring six months ago. I wanted her to know that there was no one else for me. On the ring was a diamond set in a halo of glimmering stones. When I surprised her with it, the gold band shone in the light and mimicked the color of her hair. She put her hands to her face and said, Oh God! Is this really happening? She said yes then, and I thought we would never look back.

Sometimes, when I walk my dog at night, I see the stars shimmering like a thousand tiny diamonds. I wonder whether she is outside looking at the same sky I am. Is she thinking of me? Or am I the only one who wonders what became of us?

After I gave her the ring, we talked about marriage. We wanted a simple ceremony— maybe in a courthouse or a park. We both had been married before. We felt like we didn’t need to prove our love to anyone. I was happy knowing I would be her husband, and I thought she was happy knowing she would be my wife.

But, soon, all talk of marriage stopped. I would ask her if anything was wrong, and she would say, No, nothing is wrong.

I would clutch her hand and breathe deep.

I thought, if I never let her go, we can never part.

At night, I open the bedroom window.

Against the rear wall, a gardenia bush blooms.

I close my eyes and inhale. I recall the smell of her skin, and the way I would tremble when she touched me. I think of how I would run my fingers along her nape and watch the goosebumps rise across her neck. If I think hard enough, I start to believe that she is there beside me. Then I open my eyes.

I’m in the living room getting the dog ready for our nighttime walk. I hear a creak. Did the front door open? Could she be letting herself in again? No—I realize it’s the wind jostling a neighbor’s pine. I ask myself, is it better to be haunted by the living or the dead?

The last time we were in the house together—three months ago—I confronted her.

Why? I said. Why? Why? Why? Why do you have to leave?

She gave me no reason. I can’t explain, but I have to go, was all she said.

And here I stand, waiting—and hoping against all hope that she’ll return.

On my only birthday with her, we traveled to Miami. It was the closest thing to a perfect weekend in my life. We visited the gardens at

Vizcaya, explored Little Havana, and sunbathed on South Beach. I can recall no more beautiful vision than seeing her bronze face illuminated by the neon lights on Ocean Drive. Then, in our room, we made love and held each other close through the night. I thought we had a lifetime of birthdays to share.

Years ago, when I was younger, I heard a story of a Latvian man who immigrated to the U.S. after his fiancée broke their engagement.

He decided to build a coral castle in Florida City, the gateway to the Keys. Some of the stones he used weighed more than a ton, and no one saw him move them into place. Castle walls, a gate, and sculptures appeared day after day as if they had been conjured from thin air.

He told people that the castle was a tribute to his lost love.

When she and I lived together, we would walk our dogs at twilight through our neighborhood. During the first few months, we would hear the song of a chuck-will’swidow from a vacant lot behind our house. The plaintive song became something we looked forward to hearing night after night. Then, survey stakes appeared in the lot. Within days, excavators and loaders arrived and cleared the trees and brush for construction.

With the vacant lot cleared, the song of the chuck-will’s-widow disappeared. And, as my love and I continued to trod each evening through the darkness, we allowed the silence to shadow us into our home.

The Scop • 2025 • 24

Man with a Hammer | Fiction

Man with a Hammer

Her heart will not come to her. Her heart is a dog, a dog that will not come to her. She is planning to kill her heart in order to survive.

Her heart caught the smell of death and backed away…

Iris is a middle school English teacher in an inner-city school. She teaches short stories.

Jack London, Shirley Jackson, Kate Chopin.

She used to teach The Catcher in the Rye. J.D. Salinger was the first person to change her life. But the inner-city kids she teaches— these are black kids—they can’t empathize with Holden. She would ask them what is wrong with Holden? Write an essay about what’s wrong with Holden Caufield. They would say there is nothing wrong with Holden. They can’t understand why he’s depressed. He has everything. He’s rich, attends private school— what is his problem?

“My mom would hit me over the head if I acted like that,” one kid said.

“This book is okay, but you can tell this was written by someone who drank his own piss,” another kid said.

The black kids have no trouble understanding The Lottery.

Iris was the first person in her family to go to college.

25 • The Scop • 2025

Jason Escareno

“I’m the first person,” she tells her students.

The rest of her family works in grocery stores. They used to all work in the same store, but now are scattered like the twelve tribes.

She wants to inspire her students. She does—she does inspire them. During her tenure, her students return to her. Her students become readers and writers—even teachers.

One day, the principal walks into her class just as the students exit. He looks at her handwriting on the papers on her desk.

Her handwriting is impenetrable, it looks like barbed wire.

“I have to fire you,” he said. “You’re the first person I have ever had to fire.” He’s a man who has to do things whether he likes it or not.

“You’re firing me?” she said.

She knew this might be coming, but she still can’t believe it. She’d been reprimanded, cited, warned. All because of one student. One student in twenty years can ruin everything.

They start arguing—until a student comes capering into the classroom. They stop arguing.

They freeze and watch the student gather a notebook that was left behind. It’s a large student, big boned. The principal and Iris are acting as if nothing’s wrong while this student is in the room.

Iris fights the termination with a union lawyer. She testifies before the school board.

She goes to war for her job.

She’s always been angry, it used to be on behalf of her students—now she’s angry for herself.

Joey, her husband, tells her she should give up fighting.

“Take the settlement they’re offering,” he said. “No one will fault you for taking the settlement.”

They’ve been married for most of the twenty years she’s been teaching. He works in a grocery store. Their marriage is precarious, not just because of what’s happening at work.

Iris is dropping me off at the airport. She’s telling me she’s getting divorced. She looks at me while she drives—not the road, she looks at me.

“When you come back, I’ll be divorced,” she said.

It’s a surprise to hear this. But I’m the most clueless individual you’ll ever meet.

My sister tells me about why she’s getting a divorce. She wants me to know why. She can’t stand Joey anymore. She can’t stand the sight of him. She tells me that he slept with one of her former students. That he smoked marijuana with one of her former students. Gave them alcohol. That he turned down promotion after promotion at work. He has no future.

“Why is he so passive?” she said. “I came to the realization that he wants me to support him.

He’s living off me.”

It’s a grim marriage.

We see a lawyer’s billboard that says: “Life is short, get a divorce.”

“What are the chances of seeing this billboard? I see signs everywhere,” she said.

Iris decides to kick Joey out before the divorce is final. He has nowhere to go. They’re screaming at each other.

“You’re a Nazi hunter,” he said. “They just

arrested some ninety-eight-year-old woman who was a teen-age secretary at one of the concentration camps. They arrested her and are going to charge her with accessory to ten thousand counts of murder. That’s what you’re doing. It was years ago. What I did was years ago and now you’re saying you can’t get past it? I admit I did wrong. You told me you forgave me. I confessed. You forgave me.”

The affair with the student was something that they had never talked about since he confessed and apologized. The affair was something she never stopped thinking about.

A deer appears in their backyard. It’s a huge buck, what you would call an Arthurian stag. Seeing this deer freezes them. They stop arguing to admire the deer.

Iris grows afraid of grocery stores with two doors. First, due to the large number of men masturbating in the parking lots. Second, due to the possibility of seeing friends and relatives, anyone she knows really—she doesn’t want to see them. She is too ashamed to see them. She finds herself scheduling her grocery shopping at odd hours—when parking lots and grocery stores are empty. Or else, she has to stick to the mom and pops.

We write letters—we don’t talk, we write letters.

There are a lot of letters between us while I’m away at school. Excited letters. Depressed letters. Letters with terrible handwriting.

Sometimes she asks about school. I sense some envy. “You will be the second person,” she wrote.

Sometimes she asks if I remembered certain things. “Do you remember walking me home from the grocery store and seeing that meteor shower?”

Her letters grow fierce. Filled with hate. She is now angry in all her letters.

“Our family is still in contact with my exhusband. They went kayaking together! Who

The Scop • 2025 • 26

do they think they are? That isn’t right!”

“Mom said I should have stayed married.

She said it was done too fast. I’m sorry, but I refuse to put up with infidelity (like her)! I’m done with it!”

She writes that our older sister wants to medicate her.

“She leaves me pills everywhere! She wants me to take her anti-depressants!”

She writes that she sees Joey driving past her house several times a day.

I’m back in town, at the supermarket with two doors, when I see Joey in line. He’s buying a hammer.

“Hi Joey,” I said. There’s one rule that guides interactions with my former brother-in-law: I’m allowed to say hello and nothing else.

“Wow. It’s been a while. So much has changed,” he said. He pulled on his ear. It’s the one with the silver earring.

“You’re buying a hammer. What are you up to? Are you posting ninety-five theses on a door?”

“No, I’m putting signs up to stop the water bottling plant they’re building. They want to steal our water. I’m fighting for our water. I’ve been putting signs in every yard that will let me. I broke my first hammer. This is my second hammer.”

Then he sizes me up. He’s debating what he wants to tell me. He’s weighing how much he wants to say to me.

“Your sister is hard to please. I can’t make her happy. Someone needs to talk to her. She doesn’t understand. You know what? That short story with the man with the hammer to knock on all the happy houses?” Here he shows me the hammer in his hand. “Someone needs to knock on all the unhappy houses, like your sister’s house for instance. What about the people who have no reason for being unhappy? What about people who make themselves and those around them miserable?

Your sister needs to change.”

27 • The Scop • 2025

“She’s just not happy how her life turned out,” I said.

“Nobody’s happy how life turns out! We all end up dead. It’s all pork with different sauces.”

He nudges me with the hammer, and we move up in line.

“I can’t make her happy. It’s sickening. I don’t even know why she’s unhappy. I don’t get it.”

“Another hammer?” the cashier said. Only she really said it, like someone who’s never read Checkov.

The next day I go to my sisters to see her for the first time since my return. When I arrive at her house, I see a cobblestone path lined by peonies, a well-laid-out garden. She’s a gardener. She can make things grow.

After a cursory greeting, we go inside the house. I see all my books inside her house.

She keeps all the books I read (back when I was reading for my life). She takes good care of them. I take Tess D’Urberville out of her bookcase, kiss it and put it back. I want to kiss all these books, and these books want to kiss me. The way a pervert is with girl’s underwear, that’s me and books.

We sit down. She has my favorite beer. I see a good-sized cross on her wall with a thin palm leaf behind it.

When I mention the encounter with Joey her smile dries up. She holds up her hand to stop me.

“I’m going to stop you right there.” Her eyes flash. Her eyes move like two knives sharpening themselves against each other.

Iris is unloading her hatred for Joey onto me. Her hatred is unlike ordinary hatred. This is quick drying stuff. She is pouring wet cement on my feet. Her kind of cement puts all other cements to shame. I no longer have feet. I’m cemented in place. I’m not going anywhere without a jackhammer.

A deer passes by in the backyard.

“A deer,” I said. She won’t even look. She’s

behaving the way Lot’s wife was supposed to behave.

Sixteen deer are soon walking in her back yard, strolling through her backyard. They’re twitching their ears. Lifting their heads. Sniffing the air. Scratching themselves. They tremble on their delicate legs. They come near us, they’re right outside the sliding glass door. They come so close! They’re each so alive that I don’t know which one to watch. Two deer lock horns, then they manage to unlock horns.

“I’ve never seen this many at once,” I said.

“I’ve never seen this many in my life.”

She said she sees them all the time—daily.

“This is commonplace,” she said. “Joey used to look at these deer like they were his. I think he thought they were his. I bet he misses seeing these deer. More than he misses me.

No doubt, he would take them from me if he could.”

“This is beautiful,” I said.

The Scop • 2025 • 28

Rites of Spring | Fiction

Rites of Spring

Equinox March 20th, and it’s spring in name only.

Really, it’s more like the dragging tail of winter.

Humps of dirty frozen snow flank the streets.

The ground is too frozen to bury him. So he stays in my freezer, the big one in the garage, where he’s hard and cold as the earth. Really, what are those for if not to hold bodies?

The freezer is, conveniently, near where I killed him. Where I hid behind the door with the knife held close to my chest, breathing hard. I was afraid it would be like a dream, and my arm would feel gelatinous, incapable of causing real harm.

I’d only ever stabbed him in my dreams before. In my dreams, it could never last.

Either he wouldn’t die at all, or I’d find him in the kitchen minutes later, asking why I hadn’t made breakfast.

This time, it lasts. I keep going out to the garage to make sure he’s still there. I open the freezer, and the white cold air breathes against my face. He’s still in there. He’s still gone. My bruises are fading, tea brown against my ribs and midsection. This time, he won’t get to refresh them.

I make myself decaffeinated tea. I’m still getting used to it. I jog in the cold dawn,

29 • The Scop • 2025

Brooksie C. Fontaine

because I’ve found it’s the only way to dispel the morning sickness.

In the evenings, people are warned to stay indoors – despite technically being spring, the winter spirits still linger, and will stay till the end of April. The yule cat still meanders the streets, black pelt dapper as a winter coat, tongue ruby red and eyes like unearthed gems.

I wish I could drag his frozen body out to the curb and leave it for the cat, to flip in the air and eat like a dead mouse. But it would be too much of a risk. I’m already worried about people asking questions.

Every day, on my way home from work, I park as deep into the woods as I can get and climb out with a shovel. I chip away at the frozen earth. That’s okay, I remind myself, a little at a time.

On warm days it gets easier. Eventually, at the hoof of a sprawling oak, I have a hole big enough to fit a body. But just barely.

I need it to be deeper – maybe twice that big, just to be safe. I dig more, and the elves of the woods watch what I’m doing, silk-white faces pale and blank and questioning as children. I’m not afraid of them seeing what I’ve done. I know they won’t tell.

He was always gone for long stretches,

ostensibly for work. No one’s noticed his absence, but that won’t last. I need to be rid of him, this ghost of frozen flesh and bone.

Walpurgisnacht

By April 30th, people have started to notice.

His mother called, always suspicious that I was a corrupting influence. I want to laugh and cry at the same time. I’ll soon be a mother, too, which is why he needed to die.

I tried to avoid getting pregnant, I really did.

But he didn’t want me on birth control, and seemed deliberately careless with condoms.

He was always afraid I’d leave him. A baby, he thought, was the ultimate way to keep me. The only thing it sealed was his death.

I killed him the day the test came back positive. I couldn’t imagine him treating my baby the way he treated me, or maybe even worse, raising my baby to be like him.

April feels a bit more like spring, and daffodils have beset the town like an army.

Pink blossoms explode from the trees.

That evening, the sky turns mothy blue, then black. Bonfires crackle to life, and people toss in straw witches.

Above are rivers of migrating spirits, pale as smoke against the cast iron sky. Women on broomsticks, illuminated by the fires far below, coppery light reflecting off their fine leather boots. The yule cat leaps from rooftop to rooftop, huge and soundless as death. It’s a night of migration for the supernatural, Halloween in reverse.

It takes me a long time to get him into the back of the pickup, since I’m doing it alone. I’m glad to have a garage, where I can do it unseen by neighbors. Most of the neighbors are out celebrating anyway.

As I navigate the streets that I usually find so familiar, I have the strangest sense that I’m the pilot of a little ship, steering through the unknown. There are distant voices all around, from the people at their bonfires and the spirits overhead. I can’t tell which is which.

Everything familiar looks unknown. The slick black street is a river.

I feel more like one of the migrating spirits than my neighbors, flesh and blood and celebrating the start of the brightest days of the year.

I drive to the heart of the woods, and his body feels so heavy as I wrestle it from the car.

I move it in increments until it falls hard on the mossy ground. The hole I buried is waiting, right next to him.

By the time I’ve rolled him into his grave, my chest and shoulders are heaving. Despite the cool late April night, I’m hot and sweaty in my thin wool coat.

I look up, and see a god of spring watching me.

He has the face of a piebald deer, his eyes blue, his lashes long and white. His antlers are so big they become indistinguishable from the branches of the trees, and they’re full of sleeping white birds, puffed against the cold.

I stare at him, holding my breath.

He closes his long lashed eyes in a slow blink, and nods, approvingly.

I exhale. I’m doing the right thing.

I cover my husband’s frozen body with earth, like a totem of winter. A breeze stirs the branches in a sigh of relief.

May Day It’s May 1st. I go to a celebration in the center of town, and dance around the Maypole with flowers in my hair.

The grass is warm beneath my feet, and it finally feels like spring.

The Scop • 2025 • 30

Uplifted | Fiction

Uplifted

The day my father walked out on Mom and me, I pored through our family albums in the den until way past my bedtime. One of the photos I peeled from its page and took to my bedside. In it, my father was lifting me high over his head as I cradle a basketball, ready to drop it in the hoop.

I was maybe three when the photograph was taken, yet I can still feel my father’s big hands like a vice grip around my hips, still smell my father’s warm beer breath as he shouts for me to “Slam it home. Slam it home.”

I remember how the concentrated smile on my face in the photograph evolved into a supersized grin once I swished the ball through the net. It was an unforgettable moment of childhood joy.

Otherwise, the memories we shared aren’t so great. And I’m glad they’ve faded further from my mind over time: There was always a lot of yelling when my dad arrived home from the plant, accusations hurled upon my mother and me. I could often hear him get physical with her—and even witnessed several attacks.

“Ignore what you saw,” she’d say face to face after kneeling down and pulling me close.

“It’s really not so bad.” Her eyes would soon well with tears.

31 • The Scop • 2025

Roland Goity

The day my father walked out on Mom and me, I was in the second grade and still wetting the bed. My inability to control my bladder made my father so irate. One time he wrapped me up in the stinking wet sheets like a mummy, tossing my mother aside each time she tried to stop him.

“If you think this is bad, just wait,” he said, “I’ll do a lot worse if you don’t stop soon!”

When he left home I felt an incredible sense of guilt about it, as if it wasn’t he who’d broken up our family but me.

The day my father walked out on Mom and me was the day my life began to change.

After the separation and divorce, my father had no interest in seeing me despite my mom’s insistence that a boy needs to know and understand his father. Over the next year, however, my bedwetting stopped, teachers noticed I was more engaged in the classroom, and other kids actually invited me to their homes for playdates, birthday parties, and sleepovers.

Things were working out for my mother too. She met Gerry, who also took a liking to me. They married in autumn. He became my stepfather in name, but always felt like the father I never had.

One night, a week or so before their wedding, Gerry surprised me with a ticket to an NBA game. I’d never seen the pros play for real, only on TV. Our team, the Hornets, was getting killed. Still, I didn’t care. With a bucket of popcorn in my lap and Gerry pointing out interesting info on the players and the keys to the game, I couldn’t have been happier.

Then, in the section across from us, strolling down the aisle with two big beers in his hands was my father. He was wearing a gaudy teal team jacket and when he plopped down in his seat, he handed over the other beer to a woman in a leather coat with blonde spiky hair.

Gerry noticed me staring and staring. “Is that who I think it is?” he asked.

I nodded, but shook my head a second later when Gerry asked if I wanted to go over to see him.

As we exited the arena to the parking lot, I noticed lots of men in Hornets jackets with dark, shoulder-length hair like my father, but none were him. I thought about the photograph again, and how basketball had brought us back together in a sense, even if he didn’t know it.

Our vehicle was far out in the lot, and I was dragging, getting tired. Gerry squatted down and said, “Get aboard little man.”

And so I did. Sitting there atop his shoulders, able to spot the pickup from quite a distance, I was taller than anyone in the world.

The Scop • 2025 • 32

Contributor Bios | Fiction

Fiction Contributors Justin Aylward has published short stories for Fly on the Wall and Fairlight Books in the UK, for Roi Faineant Press in Ireland, and Hibiscus, Flights, The Write Launch, Route 7, Hearth&Coffin, Juste Literary, and Squawkback in the US. He was also shortlisted for the Oxford Flash Prize.

Lewis J. Beilman III lives in Palm Coast, Florida, with his animal companions. He writes fiction in his spare time. His stories have appeared in Alien Buddha Press, ArLiJo, Reed Magazine, and other literary publications.

Saïd Cavakios has published 23 short stories. He has completed a collection exploring the conflicts and changes his characters experience while traveling, along with several ghost stories and other stories with assorted themes. Saïd Cavakios has completed one novel and is at work on two others.

Jason Escareno is a writer from Seattle. His other works can be found in Bristol Noir, The Rumen, The Opiate and Variant Lit. Brooksie C. Fontaine is a coffee addict who got into college at fifteen and annoyed everyone there. She is a teaching assistant, illustrator, and MFA recipient. Her work appeared in trampset, Bending Genres, Eunoia Review, Literally Stories, Aureation, Report From Newport, Boston Accent Lit, the Things Improbable anthology, and more.

Roland Goity lives in Issaquah, WA, where the summers are spectacular and the winters are made for writing. Recent stories of his appear or are forthcoming in Cirque, Landlocked Magazine, Poor Yorick, Louisiana Literature, Bending Genres, and Barzakh Magazine.

Brennan Robinson ’25 is from Norristown, Pennsylvania. He majored in Business Management with concentrations in Entrepreneurship and Sports Management. He’s a student-athlete on the King’s College football team and served as the Treasurer for the Black Student Union (BSU). Brennan is passionate about God, Family, and every one of his friends.

Nick Young is a retired award-winning CBS News Correspondent. His writing has appeared in dozens of reviews, journals and anthologies. His first novel, “Deadline,” was published in September of 2023. He lives outside Chicago.

33 • The Scop • 2025

The Scop • 2025 • 34

Boarding Life | Nonfiction

Boarding Life

It’s a perfect, quiet seat by the window (no piercing sun in my eyes) on the timely train, with a flask of coffee, a slice of cake, pen and paper for some exciting writing, while a phrase along this line might have crossed my mind: it’s too good to be true.

When my daughter grew up, she moved a hundred miles, from the countryside to the original city of Haarlem, close to Amsterdam.

Today our trains would meet halfways; her children would come and stay with me for a few days.

Florian and Fenna were seven and five, tensely sensitive, with extraordinary senses and rich souls, groping into the wide world of wonders and frights. Like me. We shared a lot indeed, such as deep feelings, the need of peace as well as creativity.

Hardly had I sipped delicious coffee, for Dutch courage in my frail shelter, counting blessings in the time being, than my phone rang. Daughter Phoebe (still young and small) in a broken voice, “We’re at Amsterdam Central, to change trains, but it’s freaky; Fenna got on first, it was hectic, a very big train, our large bags, we were nervous, not sure about the right platform, and all of a sudden the doors closed, between Fenna and us, Florian

35 • The Scop • 2025

Arno Bohlmeijer

and me, and the train left. For Berlin.”

My tiny presence of mind said: on its eighthour trip, that grand and international train will stop a number of times, here in Holland. But what did Fenna know now, alone at age five in a totally strange place of a devilish speed?

Or even Phoebe, for that matter, insecure and traumatized herself after severe tragedies.

The immense and heavy train was heading for Berlin as if it was an Agatha Christie film; where and how to intercept like James Bond?

Today of all ironic days, Phoebe had forgotten her phone and accosted a kind lady on the stunned platform. Several more calls were made, to railroad people here and there on the Berlin train and in station offices.

In various languages, passengers were trying to take care of Fenna, who could get off at Hilversum, the first stop after twenty odd minutes. Must have been hours to Fenna.

Phe and Florian would take the next train, and I’d make my edgy way there too, without further madness.

There was a birthday in the Hilversum Rail office, Fenna had a piece of cake and coloring pages, but she stayed frozen until seeing me, first to arrive on that alien true scene. The reunion was full of tentative relief after tears.

We did collect ourselves and the three of us continued the trip to my little town, including a train change with extra care, tact, patience, that should be reassuring – for years to come.

Sitting and waiting on a friendly station bench, drinking and nibbling grateful amounts of braveness, Florian watched a departure or two across modest platforms, and said, “Is there a train to China?”

Why, do we have adventurous and investigative minds, that deny or defy a fright of life?

We will try some lightness, “Next time, we’ll take a plane and fly.”

The Scop • Spring 2022 • 36

If I Had Things My Way | Nonfiction

If I Had Things My Way

In elementary school, my favorite time of year was Spring. The muddy gray snow and biting chill of New York’s winds were on their way out. It was finally sunny again, my classes were getting easier, and we finally had outdoor recess. Don’t get me wrong, I loved watching old Pokémon episodes or Scooby Doo on the projector in the auditorium--- but there’s just something about the feeling of the sun on my skin after English class. Other events were also happening, like my annual Stepping-Up ceremony1, and the Mother-Daughter Dance. I would get to dress up, eat fancy food, and do the cupid shuffle once again at the beloved Eastwood Manor. There was only one problem, I needed a mother.

I would be a liar if I said I was never jealous of people who have two active parents in their lives. From the outside looking in, they already have something I’ll never know about. Your mother’s smile of approval, her warm embrace, her words of wisdom that go through one ear and dance in your head. A father’s attention.

That was something I would not experience much of. If I were to lie and say seeing other people have it does not affect me, I would be just like you—a liar. ***

37 • The Scop • 2025

Danielle Simms

From the moment I existed, I was hers. With her, I have grown fingers, developed a brain, lost my mind, and even cried to see if I was still living2.

My mother taught me life lessons on survival that I will never forget. Every broken promise has made me into the woman I am today.

I am Danielle, wise, funny, and independent.

Wise, because I had to be aware of my surroundings from an early age.

Funny, because the only way I deal with pain is to laugh at it.

Independent, because I had no choice.

I am Danielle, a survivor. But I’m not sure who I am outside of that.

I read a lot of stories about the strength of a woman, a mother. Carrying the weight of the world on her all while trying to nurture a child.

It’s an unparalleled strength. I know before she is a mother, she’s just a girl. My mom has had her fair share of experiences. Somehow, some way, she made it out of Jamaica. Beyond her wildest dreams, she made it to America.

She came to the Bronx as an immigrant and made a home out of our hole in the wall in the city. She gave up her world, her dreams, and aspirations, to be a mother. I think the most personal thing she ever told me was that in high school, she received the “most likely to be

successful” superlative in her yearbook. Our relationship is complicated. Our story is not one of unwavering love. She’s not the villain, but she’s not a complete victim either. I wonder when the lines got so blurry for me. When I was a child, it was easy to see good and bad. I used to write about all the good and bad things in my journal and it would go something like this: • Mom picked me up late from school today, and I was the last kid in the cafeteria, so I sat in the front office with school security—Bad. • Mom dropped me off at school late and got me breakfast from McDonald’s so I could make the rest of my class jealous—Good!

• Mom and my stepdad are fighting again.

Not sure why. I came in and tried to stop it and I gave them numbers. He was #1 and she was #2. I told them when I called their number, they could talk, but I guess they didn’t hear me call their numbers over their shouting—Bad. *** When I was a kid, I would stare outside my window and look at the stars and wonder if they were planes. I’d hunt desperately for a shooting star, so I could wish the problems with my mom and stepdad away. Sometimes I would stare at the popcorn ceilings and sing songs in my head to tune out the fighting. In my head, I’d picture that I was a superhero.

I had a lot of unreasonable fears and sworn enemies. My stepdad was one of them. It’s funny because he is the reason I know so much about comics. My stepdad found his great love in between boxes and action words drawn big across the page. If I was Batman, he was Joker.

If I was Superman, he was Lex Luthor. We were never going to get along.

Before he was my arch nemesis, my stepdad was my greatest hero. When I stood at 4 feet, he’d pick me up, put me on his shoulder, and show me what it felt like to be tall.

Sometimes, he’d even swing me around and I would pretend I was an airplane. He taught me everything I know about comedy and showed

me all the great shows and films. When I told him about the monsters in my closet, he got me a huge green lantern so I could see that there was nothing to be scared of. On Free Comic Book Day, we would go all the way to Manhattan, and I’d grab all the Archie comics I could find. When I would get in trouble with my mom, he’d sneak me ice cream. He was a good man. I can say for the first couple of years of my life, he was my dad. I could recognize him as that protection I always yearned to have. Those first couple of years, he was the love of my mom’s life. A man my mother could recognize.

I guess when you’re a kid, you don’t see everything. As a woman, I wonder if my mom took in these good moments and held them close as a shield against the bad. *** I am a hopeless romantic, so naturally I read a lot about relationships and success stories. In recent years, there has been much talk about Black women in relationships, and how hard it is for us to find our one. As a black woman, we are expected to put up with so much, only to receive the bare minimum. We are nurturers, caretakers, and much more for the community.

Yet, instead of being seen as human, we are labeled intimidating, mean, and vain. It’s been a common saying that people “aren’t checking for black women” after they turn 30. I wonder how these labels have affected my mom. In my family, we were taught to look nice and speak proper so one day a man could love us and take care of us. I wonder how much of these values are instilled in my mom. What real dreams does she have? Did she ever want to travel more after emigrating to America? Is this what she wanted out of her life? When my mom had me, she was 24. Not that far off from my age. She then had my first brother with my stepdad at 28.

I wonder, did that impending time clock force her hand? Because 30 was close, did she now dream of being just a mother? Was her dream to live for other people?

Now that I’m getting closer and closer to

The Scop • 2025 • 38

the age my mom had me, I’ve been wondering about my future. Do I want kids? One of my greatest fears is becoming like my mother. The last thing I want is for my child to feel like they are not loved. I can only do so much, I myself am still trying to figure out this life thing. Also, I’ve practically done the mother thing already— kind of. I am one of 6 kids from my mom, and I’ve raised 4 of them. I guess there’s some builtin nanny clause on my birth certificate, as I was stuck looking after my brothers. I was around 12 when I realized I had a full plate. My routine in middle school was: • Get the kids ready for school, then myself • Walk the kids to school, then walk to my school. Conveniently, my sister’s school, my school, and my brother’s school were all right next to each other.

• Pick the kids up from school, feed them and make sure they do their homework • Put the kids to bed and clean the house before my mom got back from work At first, I was not mad at this routine.

Between my mom and stepdad’s issues, and their jobs, I was their only hope. Things slowed down a bit after one time when my mom overheard one of my brothers calling me “mom.” I guess something went off in her head and she finally clocked into her parenting shift.

It wasn’t until my 13th birthday when I started to feel the sadness of my life. My childhood was over, and my teens had begun. I had nothing to show for it besides time reflecting in my brothers. They were growing too. The gray area between resentment and pity for my mother was officially tipped in favor of regret, as I wished for another life when I blew out my candles. At this point, the rift between my mom and I was growing stronger. She had let me down so many times, and my siblings had just represented every mess I was left to clean up.

When I told my sister about my feelings, she said it was because “You love mom, but she loves him.” ***

39 • The Scop • 2025

One day, during the intermission of my mom and stepdad’s arguments, he said something to me that unfortunately, I can never forget.

“Danielle, I don’t care who you end up with.

Just make sure you love yourself more than you love them, or you’ll be just like your mother.”

To this day, that sentence is carved into my brain like a curse. My mom and stepdad’s tumultuous relationship over the years had subconsciously set my standards for relationships. Their relationship consisted of gaslighting, lying, cheating, fighting, and compromise. I was very aware of each issue they had, as my mom would confide in me about each argument, begging me to pick a side. In a lot of ways, they showed me what a relationship should not look like. It’s easy to see when you have lived through the ups and downs of a toxic partnership, but they never talk about the little things that find their way into your relationships. With friendships, I have found it hard to make close bonds with people because I don’t want them to throw things in my face, and I would rather talk to myself than make a friend. Through my romantic relationships, I have found out that I have a fearful avoidant attachment style3. It’s hard for me to distinguish if someone truly loves me or not. Half of my relationships are in my head since I overanalyze every little thing until it’s over. I don’t feel entirely sad when people exit my life, as I had anticipated it from the beginning. Somewhere along the line, I became a pessimist. I hope this bitterness leaves me before 30, or I’ll end up rotten and alone. *** Now, in the present time, I found a way to distance myself from my mother. Sadly, my brothers were collateral damage, and I’ve barely been home. I can’t even call it home.

That is where Danielle the nanny lives, and I want to be Danielle, a person. Someone worth loving, someone with meaning, that’s what I yearn to be. I’ve often had the thought that my mother does not love me. I tried to tell myself

it wasn’t true, but one day I finally visited the house, and I saw my mom hug my brother. I couldn’t tell you the last time my mom willingly hugged me or even took an interest in me.

When my mom hugged my brother, I realized that Danielle the nanny, was all I would ever be to her. Now the only time I have contact with my mom, it’s only to ask me if I am available to help with my brothers. If I say no, she just says “OK” and hangs up the phone. I remember when I watched the Barbie movie and they said, “Mothers stand still so daughters can look back and see how far they’ve come.” The entire audience was emotional, my friend was leaning on me, teary-eyed. I did not feel anything.

I just thought of all the times I had been an afterthought to my mother.

As I have gotten older, I have realized that my mom being more than just my mom does not work as an excuse for the way she has treated me. The constant issues with my stepdad may make me dislike him, but I can’t blame him for my strained relationship with her either. My gray area is very black and white.

Still, I can’t seem to find the strength to hate her. I always have tried to give my mother the benefit of the doubt. After years of mental stress, one day I woke up and felt nothing for her. I found that in trying to love her, I would lose myself. It felt like a pit for approval that was never-ending. In a way, my stepdad’s twisted advice had saved me from myself, because if I spent one more day trying to care enough for the both of us, I would have nothing left. *** If I had things my way, I would have never existed. I am sure that you are expecting me to say that in another life, my mom and I were inseparable. She would have shown up to my stepping-up ceremony, she would have come to my graduation. She would have held my hand and told me everything would be okay. No. In another life, I would have never existed. I like to believe that my mom would have followed her dreams, she wouldn’t have let a man become

her destiny. I believe that my mom was not meant to be a mother. She just got stuck in what was expected of her. She did exactly what she was supposed to do. My mom made sure I was fed, that I had clean clothes, and that I was in school. For her, that is where being a mother starts and ends. In this life, we are inseparable.

As much as I try to let her go, she will always be a part of me, biologically and mentally. My mother represents all of the obstacles I have tried to overcome. When I think of my mother, I think of a girl who took on responsibilities because she had no choice. If I had things my way, I would have never known her. *** When I was younger, I would always yearn to be a part of the mother-daughter dance. I just wanted to have someone there who could hold me close and make me feel important.

Though I could not get that from my mom, I found it in my great-grandmother. She was my biggest supporter. With her, I could do anything. She picked out a nice burgundy dress for me and pressed out my hair for the night. She’d only let me wear my hair down for important occasions. She even matched me and wore white shoes. When we had gotten to Eastwood Manor, she told everyone I was her daughter. Though her hair was as silver as the balloons reaching for the ceiling, nobody questioned it. For that one night, I felt as though I belonged. We ate the fancy food, and she held me close when we danced. If I had things my way, we would still be dancing.

1Stepping-Up Ceremony: an event typically held for those in elementary school in which people celebrate a student moving on to the next grade (not a graduation).

2Crying as Proof of Life: My mom told me that when I was born, the doctor pinched me so I could cry, and make sure I was breathing. Now when I cry, I feel the most alive.

3 In fearful avoidant attachments, people believe they are unlovable and don’t trust other people to support and accept them. Since they think others will eventually reject them, they withdraw from relationships.

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Contributor Bios | Nonfiction

Nonfiction Contributors Arno Bohlmeijer is the winner of a PEN America Grant 2021. He’s a poet and novelist, writing in English and Dutch, and has been published in six countries – US: Houghton Mifflin.

His novel NARROWLY will appear in September 2025, about rare solidarity.

Danielle Simms is a lover of all things poetry and plays. In her free time, you can find her cozied up with a word search puzzle, listening to old-school R&B, or overanalyzing the world around her.

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Abecedarian for the House with a Cracked Foundation | Poetry

Abecedarian for the House with a Cracked Foundation

Alicia Orzechowski

Ash trickles like fallen snow, bathing the crystal tray with specks of charred cigarettes. Those were Nana’s favorites— Dependable. Thick and coarse on a silken throat.

Everyone is here. Nana’s children, spouses, and their children, filed into the teeny room like cigarettes lined in a pack.

Glassware yellowing, smothered with ice and filled with the potent heart and soul of our family name.

Ideated by low ceilings and too warm heat, jackets still on in preparation for a quick departure. Aunts keen on their glasses, and uncles turvy in their seats. Kids longing to go home to wait for presents and candy and a magic only kids still believe in. Yet— No one leaves. Even if all seem so eager.

Obligation, perhaps. Guilt more likely for some.

Parents dawdle, grazing adult conversations that lead to quarrels, rather than Christmas spirit—Linger on the past and the present and the future, refusing to leave but still hold tight to their glasses and glares. Hold to stupor, never change, never grow—for life goes too slow if you do. Or perhaps, too fast. Only time will tell, they say—They say time is the usurper—Borrowing and stealing memories away like foxes, or feeding on them like vultures—Pecking until there’s nothing but bare bones left.

When did it become like this—a hassle of conference. When did xenial grow tense in the evanescent house. Soon, parents say— You’ll understand. You’ll grow and change, spirits will dance away into the zephyr and you’ll know nothing but a fracture of time in an old house.

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Poetry | As Mary Magdalene

As Mary Magdalene

Alex Carrigan

After Jericho Brown I can continue to stare at this rock and hope that it someday rolls away and shows me what treasures it keeps behind its visage.

I’ll make a note of how tall the weeds around my feet grow each day, anticipating the day that they finally tickle my knees, causing me to kick my sandal into the air and into the rock.

It might barely register the force, may take some dust upon itself, but at least it will be the first time I’ve laughed since I first sat down on this flat stone and wept until the weeds began to grow all around me. I had some company with me when I first sat down, but he’s been pulled up into a tree by a low-hanging branch. His hair begins to collect buds while ants crawl across the pieces of silver that lay underneath his feet.

He’ll fade into the tree around the same time the weeds grow tall enough to tickle my nose, causing me to sneeze so hard the rock will surely have to move from the force.

I can continue to stare at this rock and hope that some action on my part will finally beckon it to move, but I think it won’t be until after the weeds have grown so high that I can’t see the rock anymore, and I’ll miss whatever is inside when it finally reveals itself to the world.

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For My Son, Who Asked Why We Die | Poetry

For My Son, Who Asked Why We Die

All of everything circles the cosmic drain, returning into nothing, perhaps to be something once again.

Beyond that I cannot say, except death rests inside us like a slow-growing seed with the briefest bloom.

And I am so sorry dear child but one day I will leave you as I was left, a lone leaf exposed far out on a branch and buffeted by wind; already I turn golden and brittle. So: squeeze my wood hand now and remember you are rooted, a tree on top of tree on top of tree stretching down centuries. When I go, cover me in loam and wait.

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M. Benjamin Thorne

Poetry | Gone Gone

Gone Gone

Stephen Joffe

part of my floor still clutches your mud footprint, from the angle i sit at noon

you might have taken a running leap through the window- flew away with the birds you watched, from the table where you could not join me, past the plants you never watered: i have to do groceries, & you are gone. i have to clean up, you will not return. what of the million small things that make the largeness of this life? & each one, a memory of you? is it really better? to miss, than forget?

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Icarus’ Love | Poetry

Icarus’ Love

It is undeniable that people pity me, Even ridicule me, For flying so close to the sun.

Do they not see That I would have done the same Without any wings at all?

In that split second, Before the dark sea came up to meet me, I touched the eternal blue sky, And the sun, my dearest love, Lay in the palm of my hand.

Death was a thousand times less Than what I would have paid For one last kiss, For one last touch Of the golden glory That was her.

47 • The Scop • 2025

Annastatia Brooks

Poetry | Kid Sister

Kid Sister

Devahuti Chaliha

They say when you die, your life flashes by, And you feel every hurt you’ve dealt in your life.

I hope so. When I die, I don’t need to feel how many loves I’ve loved without return, I don’t need to feel how I’ve salved The pain of others, or been the breath of fresh air They say they had needed.

I want to feel the suffering of my kid sister When I beat my childhood bullying onto her.

I want to feel her terrified helplessness as she clung to me In the swimming pool, as I pushed her away.

Because when I die, there will be No burden from the gladness I gave, No strings that were attached But those on my conscience – A guilt sitting heavy Like a child’s stone drowned.

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Less Left | Poetry

Less Left

He insisted on aging in place.

So her routine unfolds.

Wash him.

Dress him.

Comb his hair.

Take his vitals.

Feed him.

Repeat the next day.

No thanks in his eyes.

No smile on his lips.

Few words from his mouth.

Just a darkened track on the carpet between the kitchen and his bedroom and a rented metal bed with adjustable height and tilt.

She struggles to help him out of bed and onto the chair in the shower.

Her back hurts when lifting and her strength isn’t what it once was.

She’s exhausted even before day’s end.

I can get you more help, her daughter often says.

A caretaker comes twice a week when she walks with her friends, but he complains, says he doesn’t like strangers around.

49 • The Scop • 2025

Marianne Brems

There’s less left of them both than yesterday.

She knows this can’t go on, yet she keeps saying no to saying no more as the walls hum faintly with noises from the past.

She had preferred a retirement community.

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Meditation | Poetry

Meditation

Julia Ludewig to catch the worries and stories careless cageless as they are in the breath’s bowl to swing swirl them like a sommelier a nervy wine that to me is meditation to swing and swirl without sipping or skipping not to seek comfort but choice and poise from this heavy heaving bowl

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Poetry | Meditation in October

Meditation in October

Stephen Mead

Chrysanthemums come in Summer’s end, these burgundy bursts backed by orange lozenges.

My veins are such pom-pom livewires, my vermillion heart all the failed, valiant, & untold.

Heat-less is this October here, this apartment a sea of clipped-back window boxes cats scamper through.

I take a water bottle & mist these petals as promises yet, my fingers, my eyes full of greenhouse green.

Listen, if we would only treat each other like these stalks packed in at the roots, then the warm blooms would come to astonish with ferociousness gentle.

But we turn cold, indifference feigning itself, & the mums in that vase, & that vase in a hat wrapped by a scarf of burgundy, will keep just so.

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My Thoughts | Poetry

My Thoughts

are real. My thoughts are spirits with different names.

I can’t remember where they came from or why.

My thoughts haunt me, with no solution between the threshold of waking and dreaming.

Or if I’ve ever seen it before, or if there ever was one.

My thoughts are electric particles, shocking me when I pull away the plug and watch them turn to nothing.

My thoughts are happiness with wings, small slippery jewels sucking nectar from the garden flowers which are real, and I watch them drip back into plastic because it’s easier that way when nothing is at stake.

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Margaret Marcum

Poetry | On Matisse’s Le Bonheur de Vivre

On Matisse’s Le Bonheur de Vivre

Joshua St. Claire

This is the world without once. This is the world without again.

An unseen scarlet sun burns away the golden hour as pan pipes play what is remembered and forgotten.

This first and final afternoon has been unfolding for an aeon as seedless fruit and fruitless thought bloom from sterile flowers.

This is the world without once. This is the world without again.

Upon the grass, the Graces we have no need of orbit on while the sun is still. Lionless lambs hold us rapt in their power, lording over what is remembered and forgotten.

A knot of hair in ivy flames. Ambergris suspended in a lavender ocean.

No makers of monuments beyond a belly for meadow or a twig for a tower.

This is the world without once. This is the world without again.

Distance is dead. Flesh is fire. Touch is tintinnabulation.

Omphaloskepsis exhausts itself in a sunshower.

What is left? What have we remembered and forgotten?

The still world rocks with the force of fingers through hair and the motion of light as it lingers. Timeless time creates what it devours: the world without once and the world without again.

Only the joys of passacaglia and prism are remembered and forgotten.

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Peace and Worry | Poetry

Peace and Worry

Do not worry yourself about the force of the wind and the turbulence of the water; do not worry yourself about the scale of the earthquakes to overturn the weight of the storm; do not worry about the heaviness of the gigantic oak trees falling across the path, obstructing progress, impeding advancement, halting every improvement, but trust in the miracle of our love to conquer centuries of darkness, pull down mountains of beliefs; trust in the audacity of our faith to swim across oceans of doubts, and rivers of insecurity.

When the tide is high, should we not leave the water?

When a war is imminent, does it consume the vulnerable?

Even within the amber of every war, there’s a treasure trove of peace, like roses strewn on a cactus field.

55 • The Scop • 2025

Jonathan Ukah

Poetry | Poetry and Prose

Poetry and Prose

Paul Karnowski

“we’re wonderful one times one” —e e cummings Newlywed they sat atop the poet’s lofty perch, resolved to fly above the fray.

No sooner did they flap their wings than all their plans came crashing down.

They quickly learned that life is better lived if feet are planted on the ground.

They winced a bit, but had to say it’s mostly prose that rules the day.

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

And rule it did… they drove to work wrote some code went to school taught some kids mowed the lawn pulled the weeds took some trips cooked their meals had some fights made some love walked their dogs read their books drank some wine …and said goodbye.

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Upon her death he flew again to the perch from which it all began.

Looking down upon their days they truly were a life of prose.

But wrapped within, around, above, in each and every breath of air the poet’s words were always there.

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Poetry | Qualifying Heats

Qualifying Heats

Anne Babson

Hear about the split second that matters: We’re in The air. Twisting and lifting, you’re praying We don’t hit the bar again, that this time you can Sense in the hot ether our exact location.

Then, the crash pad grabs us, and your ears might tell you If the bar has fallen, but don’t trust your own ears.

There are spectators gasping, the judge dropping his Last plastic cones. Trust me, trust me instead, trust me That I’ll do one of two things, beloved – trust that Either I’ll get you over it (if you’ve practiced, Given me your personal best) or if I don’t, And the bar clatters, trust me that I’ll give you some Victorious perspective in losing again.

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(Re)composition | Poetry

(Re)composition

the lilies haven’t died yet, she whispers to herself, trudging home through fallen leaves, a bundle of chrysanthemums in hand. She is not a woman who knows from flowers, as she fills her house with them, forgets to sweep up the fallen petals so the space next to her nightstand starts to look like the late October sidewalk. She is not a woman who knows from hope so she is learning to be a woman who knows from flowers, as she tucks them under her arm, and stops to adjust.

She knows no more hopeful a way of walking, doesn’t know how to protect the stems, as she’s never known how to protect her faith in what comes next, in herself. But if they bloom next to her bed, maybe when she rolls over she’ll remember that she’s trying, each petal a step forward even if it falls, even if she trips.

And as she sweeps up the dead flowers and washes out the vase, she knows as she’s never known before, there’s been enough, she knows there will be more.

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Emma Sheppard

Poetry | Reliability

Reliability

Marianne Brems

Early morning nightness, most windows on my street still black, the same few lit as always.

Traffic light changes.

Cars to the left and the right stop.

Cars in front and behind move ahead. Repeat.

CalTrain #105 passes Menlo Park mornings at 6:28 just ahead of me on its reliable route to the city.

Steam rises through the dark from the pool.

We churn back and forth on the clock in lanes of uniform length, constant width.

Then we rush through forty-degree dawn to shower, change, get to work, or take kids to school.

Reliability—the lynchpin of my morning in a world where power goes out, storms disrupt, cancer intrudes, all without warning.

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Scriptorium Cordis | Poetry

Scriptorium Cordis

I feel your longing reaching out to me, tentative, querying the air an inch from flesh; do you fear my palimpsest body, written over in the hands of other lovers; a looming erasure; or being simply an amanuensis, tonight just one of many copies? Let your fingers read the Braille of scars and freckles that fleck my back in a language only you can understand, and remember when I said your love is ink time’s waters can never wash away.

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M. Benjamin Thorne

Poetry | The Poet Dreams of Tigers

The Poet Dreams of Tigers

Emma Johnson-Rivard

I lay below the window, in sunlight my cat’s tail wrapped round my wrist. Dreaming, I fashion myself teeth.

Give me, o muse the shadow of an eye upon my ear, the stripes and tribulations of yesterday’s ghosts and iron for the soul.

We are restless, the cat and I. We could be anything here.

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The Words I Want to Say | Poetry

The Words I Want to Say

I cannot, but you read me like your favorite book whose ending you hate. A sigh escaped my lips like a violent chill and the silence on the phone grew too loud to hear. I think about happier times, when we drove over the railroad tracks behind our houses too fast, our heads hit the ceiling and the twelve pack of coke cans you left in the back violently exploded without warning. Wide-eyed we stared into each other’s souls until your face turned red with the first laugh of many and our roaring convulsions overtook the Silver Springs harmony. Wolf sisters, we decided, as the aroma of natural flavors and phosphoric acid imprinted the ceiling of my mom’s black station wagon, before she got sick and before you left to study ecology so desperate to stop the world from ending. You called me after seven weeks of no reply to ask me how are you, how is work, the concern in your voice you could never quite hide. You told me about school and that phosphoric acid is used in most fertilizers so the plants grow deeper roots while I pretended to be interested since we are no longer anything alike, but why did you call to tell me about soil. I needed a pack of marlboro lights so I removed the yellowed sheet covering mom’s car and I was almost surprised—there they were, the small specks of brown splattered across grey tinged interior and I wondered if these memories we shared are what knotted us together and if you howl at night too and I knew I would never get them cleaned.

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Sara Snelson

Poetry | Train Horn

Train Horn

Stephen Barile

From the switchyard, at 3:30 in the morning, a train horn blasts loud blaring above hushed drumming of heavy steel on steel rail.

Fresno, California, in the San Joaquin Valley, a railroad town since the beginning.

Built next to Central Pacific tracks laid by Chinese laborers, where the sinks of the Big Dry Creek met the bleak alkali prairie.

Train horns echo off buildings, and fly over rooftops.

At grade-crossings, where the street and railroad tracks meet, a trumpet sound for 15 seconds.

The train engineer makes an effort to awaken the entire village with horn blasts before sunrise.

At every stop along the rail, two long, one short, one long.

The 16-cyclinder diesel-fueled engine sounds like waves breaking on the rocks in a stormy sea.

Rotation of the main generator, becomes the cadenced rumble of a regiment’s charge.

A Santa Fe diesel locomotive its mile-long caravan of commerce eases into the switchyard, where locomotives work sidings and spurs in the yard, The Scop • 2025 • 64

shunting equipment and apparatus, splitting-up empty boxcars all night.

A huffing diesel takes up slack at the couplers, heavy explosions of steel jerking on steel.

By the time the last car of the hundred-car heavy-haul clears the last blinking signal the engine is miles ahead in the dark.

A pull on the horn-cord, and the engineer-driver makes the trumpets blast in a two-octave celebration, as the train reaches full-power, and disappears into the flat distance of the San Joaquin.

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Poetry | Virtual frog dissections.

Virtual frog dissections.

Sarah Watkins

I. (i convinced myself i didn’t have the stomach for a scientist) I begged my mother to sign that I could not do the in-person dissection labs. I had seen a skinned animal many times—a skinless deer hanging hog-tied from a tree with a red-soaked rope, a pink-meated fish spilling its entrails from a knife wound. I did not wish to see one beneath my own small knife.

II. (my teacher types in the url) VIRTUAL FROG DISSECTION UPDATES. UPDATE: SQUISH sound to play each time the scalpel is used to cut a new part of the frog flesh.

BUG FIXES: Fixed pixelated frog skin—now more realistic than ever. Fixed gallbladder texture—now appears more bile-filled.

III. (my teacher leans over me and frets over a credit card—is it her own or the school’s?)

The virtual lab costs $2.00. The real frog cost $0.50. Next is a crawfish dissection lab.

Will they charge half price for that one, since the creature is smaller?

IV. (i am in the hallway) fantastically bloodless & scentless the splayed open frog has virtual black ova it’s a girl! inside the room there are groans it is grosser when their frogs are women V. (they are in the room) suspended in formaldehyde to maintain the countenance of the living without any of the effort of remaining so… the little frogs inside the room lay bare to the core on rust-trimmed trays so their ninth grade disembowelers may incorrectly label their lungs on a diagram

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Walking the Abandoned Railroad Tracks | Poetry

Walking the Abandoned Railroad Tracks

These railroad tracks may be abandoned but their history isn’t.

Nothing metallic about this rusted steel.

These are bones.

Crossties, sleepers, spikes, plates: gravestones, every one, for those who believed parallel streel lines really could conquer a horizon, that back-breaking work was just the right ballast for progress.

And now nobody rides these rails.

Whoever needed to be some place has long since arrived.

Whoever sweated to get them there, I’m standing on.

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John Grey

Poetry | WHO IS & WAS

WHO IS & WAS

Stephen Joffe

the architecture of clouds from abovethe soft, slow setting of a broken bonethe ineffable curvature of youth, however shortthe quiet song half asleep-

you only hear

& the faltering step before waking-

that throws you

& the ground that does not catch youthe roof of a mouth when laughter & tears meetthe secret & entire life inside cocoonshoney & saltpermanent & unfinishedthe clutching of a good story & what happens in silence

after.

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i can never quite explain you, when askedyou are like a thing that sets & rises, blooms & wilts, but much more like a human beingso i just say i loved her, i still love her.

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Poetry | Contributor Bios

Poetry Contributors

Anne Babson’s fifth collection, Crossing State Lines, will be published in 2026 by Unsolicited Press. Her play, Reenactment, was published by Review Americana. The opera for which she wrote the libretto, Lotus Lives, was performed in multiple cities in North America. Her poetry has appeared in journals on five continents.

Stephen Barile, a Fresno, California native, was educated in the public schools, and attended Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, and California State University, Fresno. He is a long-time member of the Fresno Poet’s Association. Stephen Barile taught writing at Madera Center Community College, lives and writes in Fresno.

Marianne Brems is the author of the full-length poetry collection Stepping Stones (2024) and three chapbooks. Her poems have also appeared in literary journals including The Bluebird Word, Front Porch Review, Remington Review, and Lavender Review. She is a nominee for the Eric Hoffer Book Award 2025. Website: www.mariannebrems.com.

Annastatia Brooks is from the beautiful island of Newfoundland, Canada. She is a poet studying English and Social Justice, and she works as a journalist for her campus Journal as a University contributor. She is working towards becoming a full-time writer so she can share her works with the world.

Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Alexandria, VA. He is the author of Now Let’s Get Brunch (Querencia Press, 2023).

Devahuti Chaliha is just finishing off her Neuroscience PhD, and can’t wait to finally learn how to be a normal human. Between gleefully experimenting on humans, she loves historical detective novels and logic puzzles. She watches horror movies for a laugh, and is equally merciless towards violators of human rights.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Tenth Muse. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in HaightAshbury Literary Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.

Stephen Joffe is an award winning actor, musician, writer, and sound designer based in Toronto, Canada. He has previously been published as a playwright, songwriter (Birds of Bellwoods, etc.), and poet.

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Emma Johnson-Rivard is a midwestern writer of poetry and weird fiction. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Coffin Bell, Moon City Review, and others. She can be found at Bluesky at @blackcattales and at emmajohnson-rivard.com Paul Karnowski is an artist, a poet, and a retired art teacher. He lives on a few acres just north of Asheville, North Carolina along with his dog Bingo. He spends his days growing flowers, vegetables, paintings and poems.

Julia Ludewig is a learner, teacher, and traveler with hearts on two continents. She teaches German and Environmental Humanities at a small liberal-arts college in Pennsylvania. Her work appears in Midsummer Dream House, Meat for Tea, Waffle Fried and Scribeworth.

Margaret Marcum recently graduated from the MFA program in creative writing at Florida Atlantic University. Her poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, NonBinary Review, Scapegoat Review, October Hill Magazine, and Children, Churches, and Daddies, among others. She is also author of the poetry chapbook, Recognition of Movement (Bottlecap Press, 2023).

Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print and cyberspace. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, an online artistic space for LGBTQI historical renderings predominantly before Stonewall.

Alicia Orzechowski ’25 studied Marketing and Business Administration Management at King’s College. She resides in Hanover Township, Pennsylvania.

Emma Sheppard (she/her) is an English professor, teacher educator, and writer living in Toronto, ON. She writes on issues of identity, grief, family, and more. Her work can be found in Stonecoast Review, Soliloquies Anthology and The Bookends Review, and on Substack and Instagram at @emma.out.loud.

Sara Snelson is a recent graduate of Millsaps College and former middle school writing teacher. She was the previous Editor-in-Chief of The Promenade essay publication and The Purple and White newspaper. She has been published in The Stylus for her nonfiction piece, “Burning Alive.”

Joshua St. Claire is an accountant from rural Pennsylvania. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Lana Turner, Modern Haiku, Burningword Literary Journal, Delmarva Review, and Ligeia Magazine. He is Pushcart Prize, Rhysling Award and Best of the Net nominee.

M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Cathexis Northwest, Griffel, The Westchester Review, Feral, Gyroscope Review, and Molecule. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.

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Jonathan Ukah’s poems have appeared in NDQ, The Pierian, Boomer Literary Magazine, Strange Horizons, Kingsman Quarterly and elsewhere. He won the Alexander Pope Poetry Award 2023 of The Pierian Literary Magazine. He was a finalist at the African Diaspora Award 2023 and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

An Arkansas native, Sarah Watkins is an educator by trade and a writer by necessity. She currently resides in northeast Arkansas with her husband.

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Visual Arts | Allusion

Allusion

by Jasper Glen The Scop • 2025 • 74

Autumn Details | Visual Arts

Autumn Details

by Brian Emershaw 75 • The Scop • 2025

Visual Arts | Cat

Cat

by Orsolya Karacsony The Scop • 2025 • 76

Cherry Springs Meteor | Visual Arts

Cherry Springs Meteor

by Brian Emershaw

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Visual Arts | Dali

Dali

by Alaina Hammond The Scop • 2025 • 78

Delaware Falls | Visual Arts

Delaware Falls

by Brian Emershaw

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Visual Arts | Everyday Imaginings

Everyday Imaginings

by Susan L. Pollet

The Scop • 2025 • 80

Flatiron | Visual Arts

Flatiron

by Paul A. Hoyt 81 • The Scop • 2025

Visual Arts | Flow

Flow

by Clarissa Cervantes The Scop • 2025 • 82

Frozen | Visual Arts

Frozen

by Josh Ulanoski 83 • The Scop • 2025

Visual Arts | God

God

by Darling Victoria The Scop • 2025 • 84

Hang in There | Visual Arts

Hang in There

by Clarissa Cervantes 85 • The Scop • 2025

Visual Arts | Holman Hardt

Holman Hardt

by Jordan Veres

The Scop • 2025 • 86

Icelandic Horse | Visual Arts

Icelandic Horse

by Josh Ulanoski

87 • The Scop • 2025

Visual Arts | In Memory

In Memory

by Adrienne Seiwell The Scop • 2025 • 88

Memory of | Visual Arts

Memory of

by Darling Victoria 89 • The Scop • 2025

Visual Arts | Moon Lake Star Trails

Moon Lake Star Trails

by Brian Emershaw

The Scop • 2025 • 90

Moondance | Visual Arts

Moondance

by Josh Ulanoski

91 • The Scop • 2025

Visual Arts | Pollen on the Wing

Pollen on the Wing

by Camellia Paul

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Reflections | Visual Arts

Reflections

by Clarissa Cervantes 93 • The Scop • 2025

Visual Arts | Save Me as You

Save Me as You

by Jasper Glen

The Scop • 2025 • 94

Solitude Part One | Visual Arts

Solitude Part One

by Orsolya Karacsony

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Visual Arts | Solitude Part Two

Solitude Part Two

by Orsolya Karacsony

The Scop • 2025 • 96

Spring Melody | Visual Arts

Spring Melody

by Camellia Paul

97 • The Scop • 2025

Visual Arts | Stormy Diamond Head

Stormy Diamond Head

by Jackie Hoover-Darby

The Scop • 2025 • 98

Tacitus | Visual Arts

Tacitus

by Paul A. Hoyt

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Visual Arts | The Big Thunderstorms Over Mush

The Big Thunderstorms Over Mush

by RUNA

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The Great Gig in the Sky | Visual Arts

The Great Gig in the Sky

by Josh Ulanoski

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Visual Arts | The Tower

The Tower

by Darling Victoria

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The Warm and Sunny Citadel of Horom | Visual Arts

The Warm and Sunny Citadel of Horom

by RUNA

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Visual Arts | Tiniest of Us

Tiniest of Us

by Anna Reyes

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Untitled | Visual Arts

Untitled

by Ojo Victoria Ilemobayo 105 • The Scop • 2025

Visual Arts | Worry Beads

Worry Beads

by Edward Michael Supranowicz

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Contributor Bios | Visual Arts

Visual Arts Contributors Clarissa Cervantes is a researcher photographer. Clarissa’s photo gallery includes images from all over the world, where she finds inspiration to share her photographs with others through her creative lens, inviting the viewer to question the present, look closer and follow the sunlight towards a brighter future.

Brian Emershaw is an LCCC graduate, and project manager for a local direct marketing firm. His passion lies in using camera equipment to capture the intricate beauty of our natural world, both here on earth as well as in the night sky.

Jasper Glen is a poet and artist from Vancouver, Canada. His work appears or is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Review, A Gathering of the Tribes, Posit, BlazeVOX, Amsterdam Quarterly, Word For/ Word, Another Chicago Magazine, and elsewhere. Poems have been nominated for Best New Poets and the Pushcart Prize. jasperglen.com Alaina Hammond is a poet, playwright, fiction writer, and visual artist. @alainaheidelberger on Instagram.

Jackie Hoover-Darby ’24 enjoys visual artwork and travel. She has worked at the King’s College print shop for the past eight years.

Paul A. Hoyt ’66 earned a B.S. from King’s College and an M.B.A. from Xavier. He is a retired senior-level Healthcare Executive, now an artist.

Ojo Victoria Ilemobayo is a Nigerian Literary Enthusiast. She is a Poet and a Smartphone Photographer. Some of her works can be found in brilliant magazines and anthologies. She tweets @ilemobayo-ojo.

Orsolya Karacsony is a self-taught visual artist, living in her hometown, Debrecen, Hungary.

In her works, she usually combines analog and digital techniques and aims to be fluent in both areas in the future.

Camellia Paul has a Masters in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University, India. She works as a Senior Instructional Designer in a multinational ed-tech company. Her works of translation, fiction, poetry, and art regularly appear in magazines, online journals, and anthologies. Camellia loves owls, nature, reading, and exploring cultures.

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Susan L. Pollet is a visual artist whose works have appeared in multiple art shows and literary publications. She studied at the New York Art Students League, has been a member since 2018, and resides in NYC. Anna Reyes has always been involved with poems and her interest in art. She has been published in one newsletter and one spiritually based online magazine, Clayjar Poetry Review.

RUNA was born and lives in Lisbon, Portugal. She holds a Master’s Degree in Painting, at Fine Arts Faculty of the University of Lisbon (2022). RUNA has participated in more than thirty exhibitions, individual and collective, in Portugal, UK, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Armenia, Colombia, South Korea, Turkey and USA. Adrienne Seiwell is a junior high school student at Hazleton Area Arts and Humanities. She enjoys painting (specifically oil painting) and dancing ballet.

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.

Josh Ulanoski works as the Associate Director of Creative Services in the Office of College Marketing and Communications. When he’s not doing whatever that entails, he’s probably sleeping or trying to find the motivation to do something other than sleeping (he’s very tired, just all the time).

Jordan Veres is a Jewish musician/songwriter/composer/lyricist/producer, shutterbug, poet, sculptor, artist, and welder currently residing in the Upstate of South Carolina. Jordan execrates where he currently hangs his hat because he is surrounded by a bunch of bigoted mossbacks. Meanwhile, Jordan is an avid supporter of Bernie Sanders and a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Darling Victoria ’25 is an aspiring author and digital artist with a special interest in mysteries and unconventional storytelling. Their work ranges wildly from introspective bite-sized poetry to dramatically intensive one-act plays.

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Poetry | Editorial Staff Bios

Editorial Staff Bios

Faculty Advisor

Robin E. Field is the Manus Cooney Distinguished Service Professor and Professor of English at King’s College. She teaches contemporary American literature and creative writing.

Her short stories have appeared in The Dalhousie Review, Permafrost, Bluestem, Orange Blossom Review, and other magazines. She enjoys vegan baking.

Staff Advisor Josh Ulanoski ’09 works as the Associate Director of Creative Services in the Office of College Marketing and Communications. When he’s not doing whatever that entails, he’s probably sleeping or trying to find the motivation to do something other than sleeping (he’s very tired, just all the time).

Editor Jillian Snook ’25 is a senior at King’s College in the sciences.

In her free time, Jillian enjoys reading, napping, and chasing around her best friend in cat form, Delilah.

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Assistant Editor Stephanie Dunlap ’26 is a junior English Literature and Philosophy major at King’s College. She can often be found in her apartment, now a forest of houseplants, writing short stories and staring out the windows.

Social Media Editor Giovanni Sariti (or Gio, for short) ’26 is a Mass Communications major and Professional Writing minor. He plans to pursue a master’s degree in Strategic Communications, primarily because he thinks it would be cool to have one. He loves to read graphic novels and write short fiction stories. Other than his work with The Scop, he is the president of the King’s Gay-Straight Alliance and a member of both the Lambda Pi Eta and Chi Alpha Epsilon honor societies. When he’s not stressing out about classes, work, or other extracurriculars, he likes to play video games, draw, and stare at his phone.

Layout Designer Samantha Buchernatale ‘19 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.

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Poetry | Editorial Staff Bios

Staff Bios

Alex Arnold ’27 is a sophomore Pre-PA major. This is his first year with The Scop. Alex enjoys reading and occasionally writing in his free time.

Sasha Seiwell ’25 is leaving King’s College in May of 2025… because she’s graduating. A senior English and Spanish double major, Sasha spends her time napping, drinking coffee, and watching Seinfeld (in that order). OH, and she does her homework too; she loves doing homework.

Madysen Thomas ’28 is a freshman Accounting major at King’s College. She commutes to campus from Pittston, Pennsylvania.

In her free time, she enjoys reading, writing, drawing, and bicycling.

Darling Victoria ’25 is an aspiring author and digital artist with a special interest in mysteries and unconventional storytelling.

Their work ranges wildly from introspective bite-sized poetry to dramatically intensive one-act plays.

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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.

Layout Photo Credits Front Cover Artwork: “Everyday Imaginings” by Susan L. Pollet Back Cover Artwork: “Save Me as You” by Jasper Glen Drama Section Divider Photo: Tobias Keller, Unsplash Fiction Section Divider Photo: Sergey Shmidt, Unsplash Nonfiction Section Divider Photo: Ashim D. Silva, Unsplash Poetry Section Divider Photo: Ken Cheung, Unsplash Visual Arts Section Divider Photo: Mark Basarab, Unsplash Staff Section Divider Photo: Claudel Rheault, Unsplash Table of Contents Photo: Masaaki Komori, Unsplash Front and Back Inside Cover Photo: Daniel Leone, Unsplash

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