Toothtaker Issue 02

When so much of our lives exist these days on The Internet, is there still a difference between what is IRL versus what is online? If tweets are an extension of yourself, can you really know someone just by reading 7,678 140-character fragments? If you friend someone on Facebook, then approach them in real life, do you still have to say, “nice to meet you”?

Are ‘likes’ the quantitative measure of selfworth? Is anonymity really possible today when every device on our person or in our home is calibrated to track our every movement? Do different rules of distinct social media platforms translate to human interactions; is a ‘like’ on Instagram like a wink, sometimes welcome, sometimes invasive? How can you have 1,764 friends on Facebook and still feel lonely?

These are the questions that guided us in editing this issue of Toothtaker. The pieces contained within are meditations on these questions and others like them. Or <askjeeves.com> Thanks for supporting Toothtaker. If you like it, find us on The Internet. Obviously. <facebook.com/toothtaker> <toothtakerzine.bandcamp.com> <toothtakerzine@gmail.com> Ladies of Toothtaker

TABLE OF CONTENTS CATCH BUSINESS------------------------------2 MADELYN SUNDQUIST---------------------------3 MAX FISHER----------------------------------4 DAVIS LAND----------------------------------6 CURT OREN-----------------------------------7 ALEJANDRA PEREZ-----------------------------9 HEBA ELORBANY------------------------------10 GAI HOTH-----------------------------------11 JOEY STEINBERGER---------------------------12 ROSEMARY BRUSNAHAN-------------------------13 WOODY KAINE--------------------------------14 KATIE DE HERAS-----------------------------15 JON BENNETT--------------------------------19 TORREY SMITH-------------------------------20 ALEX REILLY--------------------------------21 HOLLY DRIFKE-------------------------------22 BRANDON CLEMENTI---------------------------23 ANONYMOUS----------------------------------24 VIMEESH MANIYUR----------------------------25 TESSA ECHEVERRIA---------------------------26 JAMES LEAF---------------------------------27 CATIE RUTLEDGE-----------------------------28 E ORNELAS----------------------------------29

cell phone steps catch business looking down for another animation of your existence or the key to their bellies growing up in time to turn the last several seconds and breathe deeply no one is watching now the suits start to stare it’s only stressful if you ask if i’m or tell me that’s the way it looks like now you might not know what it feels like to be me just try to separate repetitions relating to one another i see you for who i see you for a time i knew the bluffs like i knew you were in our same shape too long too many moments in the magic or the music played hushed like the horizon no more clichés you begged me to stop so we stopped talking unless to our own side striking hours without you and without words not the time we spent on the computer last year

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fry MADELYN SUNDQUIST I am a husk of my senses.

In the morning I am a vesselâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; Milk waiting to be poured.

If I deserve to be inundated, The afternoon will be a liquid sweet, Pouring over the rim onto Two-prong, three-prong fingertip threads, Sending nervous shock to the spine.

These bonds are fried; Unplug me and unnerve me.

Hidden in the yellow basement of the Kurt F. Wendt engineering library on campus are stacks upon stacks of vintage trade journals. Somewhere between primary literature and textbook, technical trade journals occupy a bizarre, mostly outdated niche of advert and information geared at industry; existing for the corporate, rather than academic or public spheres in the days before such data lived primarily in the digital ether.

Canadian Electronics Engineering, Nuclear News, Foundry Trade Journal, Royal Australian Chemical Institute, Plastics World, Hazardous Materials & Waste Management, Telephony, Computer Aided Engineering; the list of archaic volumes calls to mind antiquated patriarchal professions, Nutter-Sexton pencil pushers with wide, heavy cotton ties and wider, tweed lapels, Damask office wallpaper and polyurethane accessories browned and musty, crumbling from indoor Winston smoke thickly accumulating year in and year out.

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The books have rotating-date stamps inside their matte-polyester canvas covers on the reverse side of a mostly disintegrated Hollerith card indicating frequency of checkout. Often years, a decade, maybe, will pass between uses, where a â&#x20AC;&#x153;useâ&#x20AC;? likely implies fingering to Pg. 542 of Vol. 89, Iss. 6, NovDec, 1982: Rapid formulation of diffusivity model parameters in supersaturated dynamic vertical annular flow systems and citing Ln. 3 of Para. 4.

Perhaps the most unsettling, and beautiful, relic from these pre-Information Age publications are the sprawling color advertisements that hide between the closed pages like vibrant Persian artifacts under millennia of pale Mesopotamian sands. The images are mere decades old, but they feel entirely foreign and indecipherable from a contemporary social and technological perspective, rendering questions of Who made these? and Who were they for? borderline archaeological. Out of curiosity, I made an appointment to visit the director of circulation and information services. I asked if she could tell me anything about this phenomena I had more or less blindly stumbled upon. She shrugged and said It was a different time.

MAX FISHER

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as practice, it is hard to consistently crash the car in the same place, every time sometimes you turn the wheel two feet too early or you forgot to put the right CD in for the job Car Crashing Hits Volume II, a personal favorite however, each time you get closer, maybe only a foot off the wind making the same noise through the cracked window the glass sizing against your forehead a box of tissue flying from the backseat and the thought in your head I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember buying those

mythbusters proved kleenex in a car wreck wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t kill you DAVIS LAND

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On May 16th, 2015, I bought a billboard. On May 18th, 2015, I was getting phone calls, texts, and emails from strangers all across the world asking if I was a real person. It was on this day that a dumb little joke of mine took over the internet for a time, and I realized that being an artist is kind of bullshit.

A little backstory: I really like taking small jokes as far as they will possibly go. Like, a lot. Like, I will spend hundreds of dollars and severely inconvenience myself in many ways if I think the joke is funny enough. This particular joke involved me buying a hat that said Curt’s New Hat, and thinking of different ways to promote my New Hat. Started with a T-shirt. Ended with a billboard.

This billboard wasn’t just any billboard though. It included a website that explained I had become addicted to jokes and spent all of my money on a billboard. I now needed donations to help me get back on my feet. That’s where the nifty little paypal donation button on the bottom of the site came in handy. It was a billboard whose sole advertisement was how to pay for itself.

When the billboard went up, I took a picture of myself wearing the hat in front of it, and put the pic on Facebook. Within hours thousands of people saw it. Within days, millions. It spread to Reddit, Buzzfeed, and news organizations all across the globe. GQ magazine called me a legendary genius. I received dozens of messages every day from people telling me how much they loved my hat. A lot of people couldn’t believe that any of this was actually

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real. Money actually started coming in. In less than a week I had raised almost $1,000.

It felt wrong for me to get money for what I thought was some dumbass joke, so I decided to donate it to a non-profit arts organization called Public Space One in Iowa City.

However, this got me thinking. Does something like this deserve to make money? Why were people so ready and willing to give money to someone they didn’t even think was real? I’m an artist and this is a piece of art, shouldn’t I be compensated for my work?

I started thinking of it in terms of supply and demand. Everyone wants to be able to do whatever the hell they want and not worry about the consequences. Everyone wants to not have to worry about money or how their actions are perceived by others. Everyone wants to be themselves.

But no one really acts that way.

When people saw this huge, pointless joke, they saw someone being themselves. They wanted to support that. But here’s the big problem: So many people assumed what I had done was completely out of their reach. I got message after message saying I was some otherworldly being. People saying “I wish I could do something like that.” This, I feel, is the core reason why artists, athletes, and other people who “follow their dreams” get paid enormous amounts of money for the work they do. This is why I made more money than many people make in a month in less than a week.

This is also why I’ve begun to see something wrong with being an artist as a living. An enormous amount of work goes in to being an artist. I have sacrificed a great deal in order to do what I love. But at the end of the day, I will make art whether people pay me or not. Many people do not live their lives in a way where they focus on doing what they love. Our culture idolizes people who’ve achieved their goals in a way that makes them seem mythic. Our culture constantly tells people they can’t do what they want, because what they want doesn’t fit in to a social construct. But social constructs were made by us, and they can also be dismantled by us.

It’s a matter of supply and demand. If everyone is pursuing their passions, they won’t need to live vicariously through others. There will be no demand for artists or athletes, because everyone’s too busy being artists or athletes themselves.

Obviously this is an incredibly privileged viewpoint. But again, privilege only exists when culture puts it in place. And it is up to those in positions of privilege to dismantle the system that gave it to them. This isn’t a change that is going to happen overnight. It’s an enormous paradigm shift in the basic values and aspirations of our entire culture. Which may seem like a lot to get out of some guy who bought a billboard that said DO YOU KNOW ABOUT CURT’S NEW HAT. But now you know.

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CURT OREN

ALEJANDRA PEREZ 9

Above the Gravity of Reality HEBA ELORBANY I had not seen you, beyond the staring screen, past the fluorescent reflection of my own.

I only imagined gliding through the amorphous suburb of your backlit keys, on my swivel throne.

There you were, all along, in the live-in closet where the trade-offs of my youth had gone to bloom, and I so liked the way that your semi;colon had brushed so closely against the undercurrent of binary decorum.

Had you considered my corporeal existence?

I had, and dreamt of you nightly, in my .coms and .orgs.

Your static cloud gave me a swift lift into oblivion, the lifeless district of misdirection, the glitchy cadence of elliptical hesitation.

We floated, above the gravity of reality.

Good morning, my pet, good evening where you are.

For a moment, I had forgotten our transience.

And yet, Forged Bliss, I have captured you, in the same the way that a blind bat grasps at empty air.

I must repeat the motion to success, The loop of interjecting interests, For a sequence of thorough designs always becomes The eraser of a faint memory.

So, â&#x20AC;&#x153;weaknessâ&#x20AC;? is the word for our Crucial Collision. and I, even in my eventually murky mind, will never forget that you are trapped in a shroud, And I cannot restart, and I cannot let it Go.

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iRnEtAeLrInTeYt GAI HOTH Hello WWW, Do you know what an Ego Death is? According to the Internet an Ego Death is “a complete loss of subjective self-identity.” In other words, a radical change in ones psyche, it sounds pretty wild, right? Now consider this in context with social media interaction; twitter posts, status updates, comments, comment replies, snapchats, instagram posts, the online applications that the majority of us in some way or another allow to be our muse.

Where as you may work in customer service or retail where your undying pleasantness is a job requirement, the Internet can be your form of catharsis, a free place where you can really speak your mind and wont lose your livelihood for it. Achieving an ego death in this [cyber] aspect of our lives might not be as simple as eating 5 grams of mushrooms, or spending hours in a sensory deprivation tank. Achieving a “cyber ego death” may require a little more a little less, depending on the lens one would focus with. There are filters a lot of us use on the Internet superhighway that effect more than just color contrast on a #tbt selfie, these are filters of ourselves, that in turn dramatically affect both online and [offline] interaction with others and the world at large. Maybe you’re a donkey surrounded by elephants in the “real world”, but in the cyber universe are not be shunned for being an ass, in fact that may be where you congregate with your kin. In complete contrast to this the World Wide Web can also be completely anonymous, so instead of one interacting with several social filters, one might operate with none at all. This seems to be the Yin and Yang under which all online interaction operates by, making a harmonious cacophony of grey under which any actual exchange of genuine, individual ideas, thoughts or knowledge is lost.

Instead of people interacting with people it is EGO interacting with EGO. So how do we kill it? How do we kill that which doesn’t exist? Perhaps Ego Death isn’t the solution, perhaps forming some sort of symbiotic dual personality, counter balance is the reality. That’s not to say it’s all weird, the unlimited access the Internet allots for user to user makes information exchange almost instantaneous, it has proved a most useful tool for civil right movements worldwide, unbiased journalism, event formation and plenty of other great stuff. With a tool so powerful a bit of reflection from all of us who wield it, in terms of how we do, couldn’t hurt.

Sincerely, Gai Hoth from the Internet.

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Words fail us in the 21st century.

Below are six definitions for words that do not exist. Please make up a word for the following feelings/thoughts/moments and use it in every day life. _____________________________: When you text your roommate from your bed instead of raising your voice or walking ten feet to talk to them. _____________________________: When you recognize someone you’ve never met before. _____________________________: That buzzing feeling of rising anxiety when your phone is in another room and someone texts you. _____________________________: When someone’s online presence is completely different from how they act in-person. _____________________________: When a new profile picture receives > 100 likes on Facebook. _____________________________: When you go out with someone and they ignore you for the internet on their phone. _____________________________: ______________________________ ____________________________ ________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _____________________________: ______________________________ ____________________________ ________________________________ _________________________________________________________ JOEY STEINBERGER Editor’s note: email your best words to toothtakerzine@gmail.com and we will share them with our readers.

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Clawing up a Primitive Trail In Arches “Natural Moneymint” (see Ed Abbey) There’s a guy holding an iPad Instead of an iPhone Or disposable I suggest he fall into a uranium mine Straight through to China Into the sister mine That built this laptop Maybe a petroglyph sabertooth Could eat us both But that absolution Shouldn’t be ours No, we get the guilty photos Developed at Walgreens And a disc to slip into the flatscreen At my fat dad’s comfort zone.

You know the drill Paiutes, Mormons, Mine shafts Roads Investment and popular enjoyment iPad accessible Razing treads “No facts, this is vacation.”

ROSEMARY BRUSNAHAN

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Biomedical Facility, University of Minnesota WOODY KAINE

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KATIE DE HERAS

From Notebooks to Notifications: A Social Media Memoir I used to keep a diary.

At the end of every day—or about every twenty minutes over summer vacation—I would pull a notebook out from under my mattress, write the date at the top of a page, and vomit my day back up in glitter gel pen (or, for a stint after discovering Harry Potter, quill-and-ink). I cataloged my crushes, editorialized on books and movies, complained about my parents, and waxed at length about my anxieties and insecurities. When one notebook filled, it got wrapped in plastic wrap to protect the doodles and collages that invariably gathered on its cover before being duct-taped shut and moved to a shoebox in the closet. They’re all still there, in the guest bedroom of my parents’ house.

In mid-2004 I started a blog on the now-mostly passé LiveJournal. My first username was a reference to the bassist from emo classics Good Charlotte, whom my prepubescent brain found devastatingly attractive. I signed every entry with something like “RoCk On!! *~katie~*” and wrote fragmented posts about how lame my parents are and how awesome blink-182 is, peppered with words like “peepz” and “hotTt.” Inexplicably, I made a post wishing Jon Stewart a happy 42nd birthday. I cracked the password on the dialup internet to type up my favorite Coheed & Cambria lyrics while my parents were out seeing Fahrenheit 9/11, which I was deemed too young to see. All day long at school I passed notes with my friends; after hours and during the summer, LiveJournal became a digital origami-folded piece of wide-ruled paper.

By eighth grade, however, I was a new and mature woman, embarrassed by my all-too-recent emo phase. I made a newLiveJournal, this one named after an Arcade Fire song, because “Funeral” had just come out and the CD (burned from illegally downloaded .mp3s, of course) never left my off-brand Discman. I learned basic HTML and reworked my blog layout, coding post links that bounced back and forth and a cursor that trailed tiny stars. I still kept a pen-and-paper diary, because my LiveJournal was markedly different from my private ramblings. On the internet I filtered out the banal and the embarrassing and played up the happiness, humor, and intrigue. Sadness and insecurity could be spun as melodrama.

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KATIE DE HERAS

From Notebooks to Notifications: A Social Media Memoir At the top of each LiveJournal post you could write your mood and choose a corresponding emoticon, but I usually opted to write a song lyric instead of a conventional mood: “this all was only wishful thinking.” It became an art, selecting a lyric that simultaneously showed off my hip music taste and was a subliminal message to my latest crush. I wrote posts that made me feel like the protagonist in a YA novel, the kind where the regular text is interrupted by poorly formatted email transcripts and gratuitous “LOL” use, except my spelling and grammar were always impeccable. I began carrying a camera everywhere and snapping 2-megapixel photos of my friends smiling widely at their own immaturity, posing next to the model of a nude Chumash man at the Museum of Natural History or wearing a trucker hat snatched from the head of a cute boy with a bad haircut. In contrast, my analog diary detailed my misery as I was bullied at school and exhausted at home as my parents cared for my sick grandma 24/7. I was often depressed and deeply insecure about my teeth, skin, weight, and clothes. LiveJournal became a way for me to reconstruct my image and present myself as someone who was funny, confident, and popular. Slowly, my old-fashioned diary use declined.

When I first went behind my mom’s back and made a MySpace, the site allowed for only four profile pictures. There was no notification system, so I had to manually check my inbox, photos, and comments section to see new messages or comments. LiveJournal also had a comments section, but the main focus of the media was the creator’s post; comments were secondary, hidden behind a link and used to discuss only the original content above. MySpace was more of a two-way street: your page was a combination of self-representation and peer approval. It didn’t matter if I had the wittiest About Me section if I hadn’t received a new page comment in three days. The Bulletins feature became the pond into which I would cast my compliment-fishing pole: announcing new selfies (pc4pc? <3), filling out endless surveys with questions like “Have you ever broken the law?” and “Have you ever kissed someone who’s name starts with the letter T?” I mentally logged friends list and picture comment counts, trying to gauge my popularity compared to my peers.

MySpace also vastly expanded my range of social interaction. I could now view the profiles of people from other high schools, cities, and countries. My image 16

had to be constructed not only for my close friends, but people I might potentially meet, and even people I would never meet at all. More than intimidating, it was a intoxicating chance to achieve the popularity I felt my real-life self lacked.

My overprotective parents would never let me even remotely close to a situation that could lead to debaucheries like kissing boys in the back of movie theaters or sneaking out to go ice-blocking at the golf course, but on MySpace I could be coy about my complete and utter lack of experience in anything rated higher than PG. I didn’t have to lie—just be mysterious. Crafting an online persona gave me freedom from the confines of what my reality allowed.

At the urging of a friend, I joined Facebook in 2006 when it was invite-only. I was riding high on my MySpace persona and was hesitant to join a site so sterile and oblique. I couldn’t have matching vanity display names with my best friend or a widget to play a Neutral Milk Hotel song when you looked at my profile. If LiveJournal was a diary and MySpace was a performance piece, then Facebook was a mirror, and I was not too fond of my reflection.

The first “status” feature on Facebook prompted you to finish the sentence:“[Your name] is ___________.” On MySpace, I could tweak my name, age, location, appearance. On Facebook, what proceeded the verb would be tied with my full name, my high school, and pictures that were usually less retouched than on MySpace. No longer could I be in control of defining my online persona; my online persona now defined my reality.

In 2009, I briefly sought respite from the metropolis of Facebook in Twitter, where I could share thoughts and pictures without the pressure of inextricably linking them to my analog life. Twitter was followed by Tumblr, then Google+ (for about a week and a half), then Instagram, then Snapchat, Vine, Yik Yak, and Ello, until I realized I had reached critical mass in terms of social networking accounts. I found that each platform involved complicated code-switching, assigning different aspects of my personality to each account, and tailoring my self-representation to the intended audience.

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KATIE DE HERAS

From Notebooks to Notifications: A Social Media Memoir My Facebook presence is (mostly) devoid of four letter words and references to illegal activities; it’s curated towards (nearly exclusively) friends and family. I am acerbic but restrained, moderate on the selfie-posting and smug about my profile uncluttered by clickbait. My profile is almost completely private, with only four out of 5,000+ photos of me available for public viewing.

My Instagram account is public, and my feed is focused more on documenting aesthetics than events. I don’t use hashtags and my captions are brief. On Instagram, my house is always spotless, I practice yoga every day, and my skin is perpetually blemish-free.

On Twitter, I am far more rogue than Facebook or Instagram, careful not to post anything too incriminating but more . Naïvely, my current Twitter account began as a “professional” account, where I envisioned myself retweeting esteemed news sources and adding thoughtful commentary. It quickly deviated to where I post whatever I deem too absurd or trivial for Facebook or Instagram.

Tumblr is a messy amalgamation of all my other social networking accounts.

My archive is both invaluable and terrifying in its honesty. It’s as rambling and incoherent as a James Joyce novel, though arguably less insightful. It probably speaks the most about me, which is why I always panic when someone I know in real life follows it.

For the last ten years, I have been digitizing myself, creating a historian’s nightmare of accounts with forgotten passwords and uncategorized blog posts, entire years’ worth of photographs lost to a faulty server. I am of the first generation to explore an internal monologue, curated and broadcasted for an audience. I can look back on nearly half my life, documented digitally for public consumption.

Like many of the epistolary era, Emily Dickinson requested that upon her death all her personal correspondence be burned. I envy the simplicity of this tradition. I have no idea how to destroy a Cloud.

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new tricks JON BENNETT “I’m talking about a revolution!

Everything should be free, like my friend she did a Crowdsource campaign and made like 10,000 bucks!” so everything should be free and anyone who’s good with technology can be great, or good, or at least know a lot of people on Facebook the thing is if everyone is good no one is bad and if no one is bad no one, really, can be good.

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Technological Infrastructure Haibun TORREY SMITH

A collective crossing, a grid of iron and efficiency, an undertaking of the sky, the clouds; a swirling substructure, full turning tumblr foundation;Â the permanent silhouettes of instagram installations forming a bulbous basis for effortless operations, on spouting blues fields, grubby watercolor bases, evil jazz and jive establishments. A revolutionary part of an orogenic bebop belt, building mountains upon mountains that are more affected by the precipice of polluted pinterest activity or meta-metamorphism orâ&#x20AC;Ś something, than the expansive celestial sphere above it all.

The scaffolding of the body, the bony structural osteology, the fundamental facilities and sordid swinging systems serving the cadavers of country, city, or area, the footing of conveyance and communication systems underpinning power plans and the superstructure of fools.

Greying skeletons at two- and four-beat meter, in binary and bits.

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ALEX REILLY

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The Art of the Touchscreen HOLLY DRIFKE With a quill and ink or whispers Depressed words always appeared More desirable in longhand Spoken softly to a lover recluse They chilled bones with a comfort ‘My darling such sweet sorrow...’

Edgar or sweet Vincent, How heavy their hearts must be now Since ravens tapping have gone Left quietly with crows over wheat fields Just a new kind of tweet remains ‘I think my Bae has a side hoe...’

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Ok-I get it here, but when you’re in another city Are you searching for components of a face?

Pressing through to interests Thinking planning a shared lair?

Dwindling window shopping running out of so-called options until a radius is cleared ~AND~ Once set, then met, do no further options indicate that all’s been seen and if nothing passed, then nothing was missed?

Component surveying: plumbing the depths of strangers’ happiness!

What I like about it is: Each Miss Mary Match really might go somewhere to a bar, altar, hospital, teacher conference, and if even not then to coffee is THAT not something to move you both ahead? ~~keep in mind: Portraiture’s failings and Lighting indicating more than smiling Quips on TV shows and Dumb they will always be dumb in-jokes with everyone “Only on here to find friends” “On here because of my friends” “No hookups” (The expectation not to do Facebook lookups) Exhausting contacts before they’re made and not contacting past exes like you can stay hidden.

Saving each last hope to be saved by a maiden You’re sorry your sorry is laced with complacence and All that’s wrong doing is theirs until smitten it’s the Move to the side that you wait on.

Or it isn’t.

Aren’t I acting thirsty? Let’s grab drinks.

First we think to act, knock knees Like there’s a real God and she, grounded, looks a round in the eyes.

A second passes and comes.

Things become far less clear.

OK, I get it here.

OK, I get it here.

BRANDON CLEMENTI

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swipe left swipe left swipe left swipe left swipe left swipe left swipe right hi how are you lets meet for a drink at the wisco i touched too much you wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop staring nineteen months later i still touch too much and you still stare ANONYMOUS

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Radio VIMEESH MANIYUR The first A.M radio known Never listen nor clear Notices came day and night Before departure and after arrival We were women Me -thirteen lean boy Thirty four ma Songs were less after The dancing steps of Horrible smell Inspiring us to vomit Casting beaten wind With hold with new born marks We the women Bench, plates, maâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s diary My copy book, lunch box All burn with unlettered words He, the distortion With intervals Without advertisements Once it started phone in programme We overjoyed like August 15 But rest not changed We go on like a Third word country Before that he offered a newly bought F.M radio Long after he himself turned off High frequency, clarity Unending phone in Still we havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a single Outgoing

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Killing Time, at work TESSA ECHEVERRIA Sit under the harshest light in the bar, just right of center, casting sharp shadow lines larger than life. Better than sitting alone in the dark corner. Fingers hold the iPhone half out of pocket ready to press at a moment’s warning. Ice melts in the almost finished drink as notices buzz past the still trigger finger, waiting for the right signal. Sit alert, yet some how calm. It’s one of those stools with a back, allowing for the worst kind of posture.

The stool was easy to invent: rock, log, pile of dirt and there you have it. But what lazy fuck came up with this chair? Can’t even sit straight. Hand tightens and pulls phone to ear, head nods, as if they could see through the lines, and then hangup. Drop a ten and walk out. A quick glance spots the blue mini van with the mustache. Is this some bored soccer mom?

Insomnia strikes. It must be past 3 AM. Automatically the door slides open. Two steps in and the van speeds away. Don’t even think about the tinted windows or the twenty-something white dude hunched behind the wheel. iPhones make everyone safe. We document everything. Haven’t you seen the videos?

Get lost in the odd seat covers and the plastic lined floor. A few wrong turns is just a short cut. Trigger finger flips wallet aimlessly. The car stops. Look up out of mind, try to focus.

Gun barrel, iPhone fingers aren’t fast enough.

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changes in apperception JAMES LEAF there you are where the vibrating air is transformed and carried by other air unbreathable as if many had not tried to make it so and therefore met themselves reflected back through five years of lighting a bedsheet every morning in answer to questions which they had not been asked but had instead anticipated. you have perceived this translation like it were a fault in what fills the walls around every sacred thing thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s yet untouched by boredom knowing anxiety is a relentless force fighting entropy to keep the wild things forever at their bloodiest point. you spoke of the birds and their falling from great heights to meet flowers hardly known or even visible to the imagination subsumed by blue light and exiled in the desert of collision and sleep where the unknown sits with sword in hand in case anyone comes to find it.

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CATIE RUTLEDGE Night, once we turned each other inside out.

Stared deep into brightly lit screens and felt the violence of our knees shaking, our lives bookended by underpaying jobs, the spaces between our legs waiting to be filled.

Night, we touched once. Held our phones in outstretched hands, tried to feel a kind of together.

(I had never felt more connected than when I was thousands of miles away.)

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E Ornelas

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