Nova Literary-Arts Magazine, Vol. 54

When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others , it is the

FROM THE EDITOR

DEAR READER

Where do your dreams linger? Can you see them in front of you? Can you grasp them within your hands as they shift between your fingers in waning moonlight? Whether they are laid before us on an untrodden road or elude us in glimpses of rest, our dreams are the guiding lights that lead us bravely into the unknown in times of doubt and hopelessness. They are the glue that fills in the cracks between fantasy and reality. They are what drives us forwards – sometimes even breaking us in our vain attempts to reach the stars.

In that shattering, in that frenzied explosion so high up into the heavens, we see our brightest colors, plastered and painted before us. We get to bear witness to the dreams of our peers and our own coalesce – taking their purest form.

This explosion of passion and intimacy is what gives way to what I believe is the greatest art of all. Inspiration. It is the seed that sprouts from the soil of our dreams, watered in both hubris and courage. It is what makes our hearts pound with a fury to live. It is what our contributors have embedded so intricately into their creations to make them breathe with the luster of a razing spectacle we call a dream.

We have tried to capture this explosion and show a moment in time where dreams vibrantly clash against reality. When reading through this year’s curated works, take notice of the intent in each piece’s placement. Whether they seep into your nightly rest or shine above you in a lonely sky, let them consume you. Let them inspire you, because they have inspired us.

Ad Astra, Alexander Beets

Bed

LAURA LUCAS

Apologia JALA UNTERREINER

I have no defense for myself, except to say that I have spent more years than any person could be expected to bear with oppressive hunger, hunger that is impossible to rest with, hunger that made the world dizzy and unclear, unendurable. I hope you can understand how it has been, spending a lifetime like this. Maybe that isn’t fair to ask. It wasn’t fair to you. I have no defense for myself, except to say that when I met him, I was a wild beast, a cornered animal starved and skittish and weak. Unable to endure. And he fed me (forgive me, as I knew better than to eat from his palms, but you must remember my hunger) and I binged, I gorged, forgive me—I was full. For the first time, entirely sated. Forgive me, because I forgot the relentlessness of hunger. I forgot I would need to return to him, again and again, to quench, to satiate. I have no defense for myself except to say that I now knew what it meant to rest easily in thick sleep with heavy eyelids. except to say that I now knew what it meant to walk and feel the earth below my feet. except to say that I now knew his hands could be relied upon to be waiting, and full, and sure. except to say that I had to find a way to endure. Forgive me.

In The Essence of Spirit

Frustrated SYDNEY CARMER

The Journey

VANESSA YAKIMENKO Spotlight JADE SUSZEK

Rocks of Maine CHRIS ALLARD

Bones

PHYLLIS CAROL AGINS

He knows who he is, where he comes from. This island, slightly south of the Arctic, has only three hundred thousand, so strangers and genealogists laugh that everyone in Iceland is surely related. Filled with people who resemble each other—men with the same face, women who often look like men. All broad and sturdy, planted where trees never grow taller than the knee of a twelve-year-old.

Almost two years after the pandemic and he is driving again. Trying desperately to replenish his bank account, trying to get over that last night in a backyard shed. Trying like everyone else whose lives had simply stopped to start again. He signs up for the longest trips possible. Won’t they be grateful, all these tourists, to have an erudite man driving them? Porting their luggage and listening to their small complaints. Explaining how to dress for weather that changes constantly. Even within one hour.

He is good at reading his tourists. The ones who call themselves adventurers. Those who can’t travel without their coterie trailing behind. Even those who irritate with their constant questions. He sees the lonely women who drink too much at night, grabbing what is left in the bottle to carry back to their single rooms, turning inward on their sadness and disappointments. The promise of the Northern Lights won’t be enough to quiet their pain.

Today, his tourists stand around him at the entrance to the lava cave. He tunes his voice to professorial. “Lava flows like a river. When it dries out on top first, it forms a hard casing. Then the flow totally stops, and the tube remains, hard and hollow. Very simple really.”

He can hear them murmuring, anticipating, almost giggling at the darkness below. Hadn’t his early ancestors decided that volcanoes were the very gateway to hell? And in the hiss of lava hitting cold air, the ancients could hear the voices of spirits whispering together in their endless conversation. Why, his whole country was filled with elves and witches and trolls. Any wind-sculpted form would engender tales. You didn’t need alcohol to see the magic.

His group wears helmets and carries flashlights and steps carefully into jet black. Into that space created five thousand years ago, where the only manmade object in this underground interior is that spiral staircase that divides the deep. No spotlights, not even a path, just sounds of feet on metal stairs, and sometimes laughter when someone has to say, “I bet it’s harder going up.” Or an anxious gasp when a step is missed, and hands grip each other so as not to start a domino disaster.

An insurance nightmare that will be, although they all signed waivers. Someone—all of them—will blame him for the accident that sends them tumbling downward. There will be no reason to schedule more tours. No reason to rebuild the nest egg the virus destroyed. No desire to get up in the morning.

I Loved You at Your Darkest KELLI CROCKETT

No desire to dream whatever men in their sixties are supposed to dream.

“Everyone careful,” he cries out, shivering inside his parka at possible disaster.

But don’t all of them on his island live with disaster? The winds can blow a man off the road. The sudden snow squalls will blind you; the now-melting glaciers could swallow you with one misstep. The volcano that refuses to follow the rules and bursts out of sleep on a date that isn’t dictated by the actuary tables and the laws of averages. His island is indifferent like life.

The group now stands at the bottom, waving their lights across the walls, along the bottom, trying to penetrate what is too dark at the end of the chambers.

“Nothing can live this far down,” he tells them. “Only bacteria survive here. The water you hear treads its way through porous lava. Can you hear the sound—drip, drip? But there’s not enough to puddle on the ground.” The heads turn toward the sound. Then he thinks, nothing like a home can exist here.

Nothing like that tidy house on the outskirts of Reykjavik. Tight against the wind, warm with yeasty bread, and a fire that he lit even in the summer. And where is that home now?

He rented some nondescript studio when all was lost. Because a volcano erupted in his small house, in his tidy living room, between the flat screen and his wife’s box of knives.

She made those knives, cast the blades, honed the handles from bone and sometimes wood. Smithed the metal and etched intricate designs. Crafted complicated sheaths. All to sell to tourists. But her pride was in those blades— sharp enough to cut through shark’s flesh they sometimes pickled for winter feasts, sharp enough to slide through a lamb’s body, or skewer a fish through its eye. Her passion, her lust imbued those blades with fire.

He never doubted the danger that hovered in the very air she exhaled. Not even when they first met on a religious pilgrimage to Israel. Days on a bus together in that Holy Land. They had finally whispered that it was God’s will— this trip, this bus. So convinced, they married two weeks later.

“Really, Dad,” one of his sons said.

The other one politely added, “Hope you’ll be happy.”

At the bottom of the tube, the darkness covers them all. Disembodied lights flashing indiscriminately against the walls, searching for feet and hands, finding white faces that at times appear amused, sometimes fearful. Disembodied dancing lights. Like fireflies, he remembers, that turned adults into children and had once enchanted him. Some old forest somewhere, heavy with moisture, smelling of moss and decay. The lights beckoned him between the unknown trees. And he hadn’t been afraid. Not like that last night with his wife.

Only a year later after they married. As the pandemic defeated her resolve, and bottles of vodka opened and disappeared. As lust forced her to entice then chastise when he couldn’t perform, and she wouldn’t respond. As she slept off

her drunkenness or paced silently around the house, carrying one knife after another. Blaming him. For the virus. For her weakness, for her lack of faith. For their inability to love.

New Year’s Eve, when there were fireworks planned somewhere even though cold rain spit against the window, and no one would choose artificial lights over their beds. He shopped for steak and frites. An order of oysters and a bottle of champagne, although she’d been drinking since early that morning. Some fine cheeses and artisanal bread. He cleaned the hot tub that they’d loved in the early days, passionate together under the night sky when the Northern Lights seemed to play symphonies only for them. The air would freeze them on the way back to the house, so they lingered, knitting fingers together, brushing lips across each other’s skin in gratitude. Surely, starting the New Year that way could fix all.

After only ten minutes she started. “I will not continue like this.”

“The whole world is in pain,” he answered. “Not just you. Not just us.”

Her hair was unbrushed, her eyes wild. Like the women of the underground deep below the volcanos, like the mythical Hel, herself, swirling in some whirlwind of her own making. She screamed now. “I want to turn off your eyes— measuring how much I drink. I don’t want you anymore.”

“We can talk in the morning,” he tried.

The uncooked steak smacked against the wall behind him and lingered before sliding to the floor. The fries scattered like confetti around them. Announcing what? Celebrating what?

She opened the back door, her knife pointing the way. “Come back and I’ll slit your throat.”

He wandered to the shed in the backyard. In the faraway harbor, he heard the exploding fireworks. He found some old blankets and sacks of dirt left over from the summer planting. He would curl against them, trying not to freeze. Even an Arctic fox’s den was warmer than this.

When he woke, thin light filtered through the shed’s window. The house was still closed against him. His clothing in an unruly pile on the snow. He knew then that God-sanctioned, Holy Land blessed or not, this marriage was over.

“How long are we just going to stand here?” he hears someone ask.

“Turn off your lights,” he finally says, remembering why he is at the bottom of a cave. Now the darkness is total. “If you lived here, you’d go blind quickly. There’d be no need for sight.”

“Like moles,” someone says.

“Like Gollum,” another adds.

“This isn’t Middle Earth,” someone argues. Disembodied voices surrounded by black.

“But it is,” he answers, turning back on his flashlight. “Do you see the patterns the lava formed when it cooled?”

“It’s a great bomb shelter if the worst happened. You know,” the tourist

continues, “if someone hits that button.”

“Or if another virus comes along and won’t leave.”

They all laugh at the now possible.

“Shine your lights,” he tells them. “Explore this miracle.”

The lava had frozen where it cooled, irregular, almost arbitrary. You had to climb around the waves and step over them. Maybe like the patterns in a man’s life.

“No, you wouldn’t last long down here,” he says. “But something did find its way here. Maybe it simply fell down the opening.” He swings his flashlight toward the wall; the reveal works every time, their oohs and ahhs filling the cave.

Inside a rock cradle rests a white skeleton in a semicircle, curled asleep, exactly where the animal lay down for the last time. Skull tucked at the top, a bridge of bones links the distance between the head and tail. More delicate bones there. Legs folded. Only white bones now.

He hears, “Oh, my.”

“Just a fox,” he tells his tourists. “Plenty of them all around. Nothing in one dead fox.”

On the bus he will explain that the Arctic fox is the only animal truly indigenous to the island. That legends insist each face is distinct from all the others—just like human faces. And so plentiful, there is no need to mourn one dead fox.

But no one wants to hear more. They are moving toward the stairs, starting the climb upward. He can see the lights turning as they spiral. Yet one woman rests heavily on the rail at the bottom.

“All right?” he asks and holds her by the arm. “Do you need help up the stairs? Lean on me.” The light from his flashlight catches her face. Her careful makeup is gone. Tears fill the wrinkled pockets under her eyes.

“It was alone when it died.”

“The fox?” When she nods and cries more, he adds, “Probably just fell in. Had lots of water to drink.”

“But no food.”

“Maybe it didn’t take so long,” he offers.

“Life is unfair,” she mumbles with her foot on the first step. “Dying all alone and in total darkness.”

He has never cried—not that night in the shed, not even when he signed the divorce papers. But a knot is growing at the back of his throat, choking.

“A horror.” The woman wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands. Slowly she starts the climb, taking in a deep breath before she attempts each step.

He needs to sit—just for a moment, to think of something else. Once, his people didn’t need tourists. Once, they lived off the land and sea, and everything made sense, and they bound themselves together for survival. Now, wives kick husbands out even though they promised forever. And an Arctic fox tripped through a hole to die alone. Now every time he descends with his tourists, he will see only death. He finds his tears.

He closes off his sobs so the tourists far above him won’t hear. In that

moment, all he’d tried to cut out with sharp-knifed determination escapes.

He knows that one day, even after his own body is reduced to ashes, someone might still find that fox curled forever in its cradle. His own struggles and losses will burn away, but the land, the ice, will remain. And the sea that pulses against rock and the song of wind that chants over lava in its eternal lament. And perhaps the comforting breath of spirits traveling through the air to baptize all the lost bones.

The woman tourist returns to find him on the bottom step and puts a heavy arm around his shoulders.

“Poor fox, poor us,” he says.

“There, there,” she murmurs. Like someone who might care.

Little Dreamer

SAMANTHA INGRAHAM

in my mind the tether between us

JALA UNTERREINER

is red. flames without the undercurrent of blue—not the safe flame searing a marshmallow on a summer evening, the flame of a house on fire. the tether pulsates when I think of you, it’s cadence that of an anxious heart, binding us in the space of consciousness. I put my hand out to touch it, to tear it, and my fingertips melt, the convoluted coils of my identity burned away. oh well— soon I will be nothing but frayed flesh clinging bitterly to bone and I won’t feel a thing I’ll take that tether between skeletal fingers and tie it around your throat

Figure Study

AILY VALENCIA CERVENTES

Present KELLI CROCKETT

I the Moth NANCY LOR

In the golden hour, Sunshine compelled me forward. Like a moth, I came and went With no fear of the light.

Upon blue gardens and ceaseless stars, Through dry spells and against the current, I listened breathlessly to her thoughts and dreams Until her glow faded, deserting me into the past.

Villian of Sadness

Woman in Violet KELLI CROCKETT

JAZMYN M c CALLUM

Devout

VASILIKI GKOULGKOUNTINA

After John Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare

There she lies sprawled like a crucified lamb in avid submission on a bed of scarlet limbs limp on the floor bathed in white darkness slowly swallowing her neck raw and vulnerable, eyes shut in shame and intoxicating pleasure lips parted in prayer. When Fuseli painted this woman in chiaroscuro he was thinking of Anna Landholdt, the desperate erotic strokes fueled by his unrequited lust. Every arch of her strained body reminiscent of a man’s touch–possessed and curated for the eyes of men who will sexualize her years after her death. For she is not a person, she is a walking emblem of sex encased in flesh. Fuseli inserted himself as the incubus with his hungry red eyes perched on her chest, claws drawing blood from her pale skin as if to say She is mine I wonder if she feels her body is her own, or perhaps, a landmark of her past lovers.

Manufactured #2 BROOKE BUCHANAN

Manufactured BROOKE BUCHANAN

The Evocation and Capture of Her Who Looks Like Me

DEZANII LEWIS

After Ruth Miller’s The Evocation and Capture of Aphrodite

all who gaze upon her stand in awe of the gentle S curve so entrancing

she imprisons us in her gaze enraptures us with her beauty

We thank her for it

We give her praise

and she looks like me

We know she doesn’t usually look like me

those who look like me are cast aside she is embraced by spring and kissed by light once the extraction of cotton made us bleed and drained our life

she embraces cotton and exudes life

her lustrous skin

Brown and palpable as rich dark chocolate not the dirt

lynch mobs liken us to

skin made of a million waves of tendrils of threads woven together to capture the story of her beauty

I am swimming in the strokes of the thread I believe in her beauty

not her in the Louvre with cold, marble skin and worshiped shrine but her in Mississippi her who looks like me

does she know she captures our story? the story that We all are beautiful?

not the the story told by the lynch mobs who called us dirt said our lives didn’t matter that We were not beautiful and that We could never be

I believe in Her beauty

I can feel Her beauty

Her who looks like Me

Warrior

AILY VALENCIA CERVENTES

In the Dream Part 1 ASIA HANON

In the Dream Part 2 ASIA HANON

Techo De Mi Abuela

AILY VALENCIA CERVENTES

ACT II

This Dilapidated Old House NIARA MATTHEWS

South Hill

GRACE GLASS

The neighborhood is called South Hill but there is no hill, just a jumble of rust-colored houses, aged cars snoozing in driveways, burned-out street lamps. On the east South Hill is bordered by the Christian Day school, where eager thin-faced women teach children about eternal damnation. On the west, a field that used to bloom with corn, or maybe tobacco, nobody really remembers, is now a rough expanse of mud so thick it seems conscious, strange and stubborn. A red truck with a dent in the fender thrums down Center Street and turns onto Arapahoe. All the streets in South Hill are named Indian names and people say Indian names because that’s the kind of people who live there. Inside the truck is a girl in a hand-embroidered pinafore, a boy who kicks the dash with velcrofastened shoes, and a balding man in a policeman’s uniform. He grinds his teeth hard, even though the dentist told him he’d crack one if he kept it up, liking the tiny crash of one molar against another. He’s a crab-bucket type of man who drowns in a flimsy box of a life. A wife and one child too many and a six-room house that smells of sour milk and mold. The girl shifts in her seat, sore because she was paddled that day at the Christian Day school for forgetting the words to a Psalm. Something about bounty, redemption, but her mind refused to yield the right words in the right order. The teacher yanked down her underpants and struck six times and told her she’d better pray for forgiveness. Now she reaches into her book bag for her copy of Fellowship of the Ring but remembers her cousins made fun of her for always being buried in books and she wonders if Frodo Baggins would have cried in pain and frustration but then Frodo is a hero who never would have forgotten in the first place.

Goddammit, says the man, you kids quit kicking that dash. He grips the boy’s bare knee with a fat pinkish hand. Quit it I said.

I didn’t do anything, says the girl.

I don’t give a fuck. Both of you sit up straight and be quiet until we get home. I’m late for my shift as it is.

The truck pulls into a short driveway that bisects a yard littered with dandelions and broken toys. Inside the TV rumbles and a woman with shiny birdlike eyes hunches on the couch, eating potato chips. The children have been instructed never to interrupt when she’s watching TV, so they sit, silent, on the stained upholstery. On television one of the men taken hostage by Iranian students leans on a doorway looking thin and overwhelmed. Microphones bob and cameras flash. The man has a ragged beard that he pulls on whenever a

reporter asks a question. How are they treating you, yells one, and have they told you when you’ll be released. To the girl it’s clear the man won’t answer these questions. You can see by his eyes that he’ll only say certain things in a certain way. The reporters turn to a girl in a black headscarf. She announces that the students won’t have any trouble shooting the hostages if there is no end to American imperialism.

What’s imperialism, asks the boy.

It’s all lies, says the woman. Fucking savages. I hope we bomb the ever loving shit out of them.

They’d kill them all if we did that, calls the man from the kitchen, where he’s packing his lunch for the night shift. He makes a bologna sandwich and tucks in a cupcake and two beers. The beers freeze his fingers so he rubs them against his thighs in a nervous, insectile rhythm.

They don’t have the balls, says the woman. You don’t know what you’re talking about. As usual.

A serious man in a black turban mutters something in another language and folds his hands in prayer or at least the illusion of it. The camera pans to a brown desert that glitters in the relentless sunlight. A man with a goat hurries by. A child draws shapes in the dirt with a pointed stick. The girl all of a sudden remembers that her mother loaned her a sand dollar for show-and-tell and after the paddling she’d forgotten about it in the bottom of her Crayola bookbag and surely everyone stepped on it and now it’s crushed. Her stomach boils with sadness and guilt. She forces herself not to cry by clenching her throat. The boy asks why they can’t watch cartoons.

Because I’m watching this, says the woman. Be quiet. The boy unstraps his velcro shoes and takes off his dirty socks and wiggles his toes in the shadows. He likes to count them to make sure they’re all still there and because he’s proud he can count to ten when most of his class can only get to three. The woman is his mother which means he lived in her belly before he was really alive. The girl is his cousin which means they’re related but not as much. She stays with them after school because her parents got a divorce and her mother works in the city and doesn’t come for the girl until the moon, sometimes a quiet, barelythere sliver, sometimes fat and self-important, floats in the blackened sky. On the screen President Carter announces something called sanctions. He has thick flapping lips and wounded eyes. The boy thinks he talks a little like the Beverly Hillbillies.

I’m going to work now, says the man.

Fine, answers the woman. We’ll be here.

After that I have to go to the dentist.

Wait a minute. We can’t afford a fucking dentist. What do you think you need a dentist for? She sits up straight, clutches the couch cushions, stares at him with fierce black eyes.

It’s okay, he says. This is a student. He’s way less expensive. I have to do something, I’ve had this goddamn toothache for weeks.

The woman mumbles something that sounds violent but nobody can hear it. She whisks potato chip crumbs onto the burnt orange carpet. The man leaves the house and gets into the black-and-white patrol car parked on the curb. The engine roars then fades.

I’m hungry, says the boy. Is it time for dinner yet?

The woman grunts and goes into the kitchen. She dumps two cans of Spaghettios into a pot and makes two cheese sandwiches. The girl wants to tell her please not to put mustard on them, she can’t stand the biting taste, but she understands she’s not really supposed to be here and her job is to swallow the bad things like she’s taking medicine. The children eat at a table covered with a scratchy cloth. There are Oreos for dessert. The boy steals the girl’s cookies but she doesn’t tell.

Now go upstairs and play, says the woman. I’ve had enough of both of you for today. Give me a little peace for once.

In the boy’s room there are remote controlled cars, a Monopoly game, a scattering of legos. The children build a fire station and pretend they’re fighting a monstrous blaze that devours city hall and Kmart and even the Burger King on the edge of town. Then they play Monopoly with rules they’ve made up, like whoever lands on Boardwalk first has to pay the other two hundred dollars. They pass pink and blue money back and forth as darkness creeps over a purplish sky.

The man drives his patrol car onto Main, then into the town’s northern section. This part belongs to the rich. He likes to slide by the multi-storied houses in his air-conditioned car, smoking, thinking about how someday after he makes Sergeant he’ll live here and he’ll paint the trim happy rich people’s colors, mauve and celery green, and he’ll mow the wide bright lawn and sit on the porch and drink beers and watch the yellow roses he’s nurtured, kept safe from snow and wind. He eats the cupcake, coughs chocolate crumbs into his lap. He can’t stay here for long because nothing bad ever happens in this part of town. He cruises

over to the east side, where the black people live. He pulls over when he sees a small-boned boy with a backpack ambling over the broken sidewalk.

But I didn’t do nothing, protests the boy. In the darkness his eyes are glowing fearful eggs.

Shut up, says the man, pushing him against the car. He shoves his hands into the boy’s pockets and up his thin shirt, surprised at how hot and butter-soft the skin is. He rummages through the backpack. Dusty books, a folder of worksheets with a teacher’s red marks on them, a crumpled peanut butter sandwich. He pockets ten dollars from the boy’s jeans. The boy sits on the curb with his heart whipping like a curtain in a hard wind, furious and scared and for some reason ashamed, and he tries hard to remember what his father said about dealing with cops because certain things are crucial or else you might not come home at all. The man thinks about how he’s doing the right thing, the heroic thing, even though if people saw him they’d complain and make disgusted faces. Nobody knows, he thinks, what we go through with these people. There isn’t any pot or coke but there could have been and that’s enough. His mind, a narrow, sour cave, will only stretch so far.

Behave yourself, he says, unlocking the cuffs. You got lucky tonight. The boy scuttles into the night. The man tries to eat his sandwich but his tooth hurts too badly to chew. He spits a wad of wet bread and cheese onto the asphalt and drinks the beers fast to dull the pain.

Later in the waiting room at the dentist’s office he reads People. Michael Jackson, in his red leather jacket, stares at him from the glossy page. Just another one, thinks the man. They think when they get famous they’re just as good. Well fuck them. He turns the page and reads about Princess Di’s morning routine, which begins with tea and toast and ends with a vigorous run. The princess smiles with perfect white teeth.

The dentist wears a white coat but his face is a teenager’s, soft, unformed, nervous. He inserts a needle into the man’s gum and his mouth turns heavy and warm. The kid opens silver pliers and grips the tooth and pulls. The man feels a huge tide of pressure crest and capsize. A few minutes pass and it becomes clear that something is going wrong. The kid struggles and curses, and salty droplets of his sweat hit the man’s face. Then there is a vicious, apocalyptic crack, and the kid says, oh no, shit, oh no, and there is a hot yellow obliterating pain and the man puts his head between his knees and starts to cry even though he never cries, he can’t even remember the last time, and vomits beer and cupcake onto the cold white floor.

I’m so sorry, says the kid. This has never happened before, I swear. But you’ll

have to go to another dentist. I can’t shift the root. He keeps talking, skittery and hectic, but the man stops listening and stumbles outside, gripping his jaw, spitting coppery blood onto the pavement and wondering why it is that when you’re inside pain you become an animal, all instinct. How the brain that wonders and wishes and worries has been erased as easily as a pencil scribble. As he drives home everything–street lights, signs, the beautiful houses–are nothing but blurred patches of color and dark. And he can’t stop bleeding all over the polished leather seats and surely the Sergeant will be angry about the stains.

The woman in the South Hill house washes the smeared bowls and the plates strewn with black crumbs. If I’d married somebody else, she thinks, I’d have a dishwasher, maybe even a garbage disposal. Well, you didn’t, she tells herself. You were nineteen and thought you knew everything and that life was a spool of thread you could wind around your fingers. Now, she knows life is mostly just moments to let go. Even having her son was only weather–something to be lived through, not thought about. She turns off the water and notices that her hands are starting to look old. Veiny, rough-skinned. She returns to the television, hunts for more news about the hostage crisis. She’s addicted to it, sucking up every detail, the fear and the rage and the speeches made by world leaders who either preach common humanity or vow revenge, often at the same time. She’s sure America will conquer evil in the end and that it will be delicious, like a sweet Coke on a humid day, and she doesn’t want to miss it. But she finds only cartoons and Mash reruns and a cooking show where a man coats a raw chicken in butter and specks of herbs.

The door opens and her husband falls inside. He’s bleeding from the mouth and making a sound like something dying. A harsh, atonal, despairing bleat. She kneels beside him and wonders what to do, and thinks, what would someone who loved him do, that’s what I should do but her heart won’t stretch, refuses to imagine, it’s frozen in the cage she constructed at some point but apparently lost the key to. He stinks of sweat and blood and beer and he won’t move from the floor at first, but finally she gets him to stand, leaning on her small inadequate body, and they move, a lumpy amalgamation, to the bedroom, where he collapses and spatters blood onto the white sheets she just washed the day before, and it’s stupid to think about sheets but she can’t help what she thinks about, nobody can, that’s just the way it is.

The children come down and lurk in the doorway and ask why is he making that noise, mom, and Aunt Beth, is he okay, and she pushes them out, her thin fingers digging into their soft skin, and tells them to get back upstairs or she’ll get out the paddle. I’ll do it, she warns. They stare and don’t move and she can’t think of any more threats. The groaning fills her with fear and worse, an overpowering disgust. Like it births maggots in the mind. White things that seethe and wriggle, intent only on feeding and fucking and dying. She pushes past

the children and finds a bottle of aspirin and dumps a handful into his gaping black and red mouth and pours in orange juice. She’s pretty sure he swallows but what’s to be done if he didn’t. She gets a beer out of the fridge and sits at the table and sees that the children spilled tomato sauce on the cloth and it’s probably ruined. She starts to cry before she can even take the first drink.

At six-forty, the girl’s mother pulls a long maroon Oldsmobile into the driveway. She is a short woman in an ill-fitting pantsuit with tired eyes. The girl runs outside and collides with her mother’s bony body, which smells of gasoline and cigarettes. The mother pats the girl on the shoulder and disentangles herself.

Were you good for your Aunt Beth, she asks, as they pull out of the driveway. The girl says yes but there’s something wrong with Uncle Scott, he’s bleeding and had to go to bed and he’s making a really bad noise.

Hm, says the mother. Don’t let me forget to pick up your blue school dress from the dry cleaner’s.

The girl promises she won’t. She wants to know if her teacher called her mother and told her about the Psalm because the truth is she not only forgot it she giggled about forgetting which has to be a really bad sin. But she’s afraid to ask. As the car moves through silent streets she tries to forget the way Uncle Scott sounded. Like a broken machine, its parts grinding, destroying each other. Her mother lights a cigarette and smoke dances out the open window. South Hill vanishes behind them. The houses get farther apart and have more windows, and many of them are lit up with lamplight and flickering televisions. Flowers bob in the night’s breeze. Stars explode over the sky.

I broke the sand dollar, mommy, says the girl. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean it.

Oh, says the woman. She drags on the cigarette and doesn’t say anything for a while. Then, well, I guess if it was an accident.

Yes. An accident.

I had that sand dollar for twenty years, the woman muses. Even before I met your father. Even before I went to graduate school. I found it in a souvenir stand on a beach in North Carolina when I was a different person. It was a thread I could pull on. I don’t know if I have anything else like it.

I’m so sorry, says the girl. Tears drip from her chin onto the pinafore. She thinks about how her mother made the pinafore from scratch, huddled over the fabric, weaving the needle in and out, so calm and careful until a butterfly bloomed from a nest of scarlet flowers, until a happy bee buzzed beneath a perfect sun.

Don’t cry, honey, says her mother. I didn’t mean to make you sad. What’s done is done.

Okay, says the girl. She chokes a little and tries to quiet herself. When they get home it’s late and time for the girl to take off the pinafore, the tights, the polished strappy Mary Janes, and get into bed and she thinks, wait, just for this moment things are okay, and I don’t want to go to sleep and miss it but there’s a heavy bank of fog that rushes through her, burdens her eyes and slackens her muscles, and she falls asleep and dreams of houses that all have insides, and each inside is different in its unhappiness, like chocolates that all have their own bitter, gooey centers that you would never know about until you bit into them and the sticky fluid runs down your chin and spots your clothes and by that point, after the shell is broken, there’s nothing more to be done and you have to taste it, forever.

Autumn Road in the Great Smoky Mountains

ZACHARY WHITE

Untitled ALYSSA SMART

A New Path JADE SUSZEK

Prometheus Folds His Laundry

ABIGAIL VINCENT

It is a delicate task. You see, the eagles snapping vessels, spraying seawater & hot air into his abdominal cavity— it stains. Laundry is an endeavor here, after the strain of washing at arm’s length, wringing cloth on the dried spots of the rock, their eroded brown plasma chipping with all the beauty & stench of lead paint— after such devotion to cleanliness, the man with a muddled liver must make a single crease at a time, dodging his eagle at work. Between corners of flesh ripped out, spraying out across this small horizon, that which he wishes to be death—for death would be peace in the face of the steel-eyed eagle’s hydraulic beak—punctuates his day, interrupting the banality of laundry, of waking with the sun, of frying an egg, of bathing, of learning to live again. For the man made meal, it is no exaggeration to believe existing in your own body is radical bravery.

Gray Area 2

LAURA LUCAS

Gray Area 1

LAURA LUCAS

Such An Inconvenience

KASSADE EDWARDS

The Weavers

BRITT OLSON

You will molder slowly starting in your toes. You will be born off the edge of the cairn that’s built between your own tongue and the earth.

You will push through fog so dense it will swallow all the streetlights. Fog so dense it feels like smoke feels, when you capture it. When you devour it.

Cigarette embers spray the blacktop, the fog is not menaced. Nothing burns. Even the still, postured air is shrieking. There is no concession in the fog.

Drips of condensation will slip from you, or they’ll hover, like the time, like memories, that won’t fill themselves in.

A seed becomes the focal point of every spidery crack in the horizon. Limbs sprawling out, webbing the sky to ensnare a swarm of birds who become new blackened foliage.

The birds could braid the road. Their beaks could pull rib bones out of the soil. They could nest in your slushy bloodstream. In the fog, some unknown thing sags towards you. Soon, you will meet yourself. You will pass yourself a seed, which won’t grow in the murk. The birds will erupt from your ribcage.

Light(t)rail

ZACHARY WHITE

Glitchy Cityscape

NIARA MATTHEWS

Coral City

HEATHER CHAN

Building Up VANESSA YAKIMENKO

In The Attic CHRIS ALLARD

Manor

GRACE YOCHEM

You have good bone structure, with a lovely outside to match. Freshly painted trims, lawns a half inch high, gardenias in rows - neatly pressed against strong beams to lift their weight. Sweet violins will sing your praises to all of those who pass.

You have good bone structure, but you’ve gutted what’s inside. Hardwoods rotted to the core, drapes knitted together with mildew, glass smashed - into dust-covered walls sagging with the weight of time. All neglected by the care you show the other side.

You have good bone structure. At what point did your eyes begin to see the putrid filth as shiny? The gore and blood as diamonds. Your entrails are drawn in a path that leads to the beating heart. What festers there, dear one?

You have good bone structure. It’s a shame you don’t use it. A grand mansion and sprawling lands are useless to those who want to make a home insidebut you’ve left them no room. The foyer is filled with maggots.

NANCY LOR

Shoji Lights

HEATHER CHAN

Morning Essence

Dad’s House ZACHARY JENKINS

There is meaning in all things, even the routine || sunsets. This, too, includes all that you hold in esteem, people and places that you love and those that you covet in secret, with violent hidden fury.

I grew up in a house full of quiet fury, expressed without meaning. Affection was kept secret, and when my dad said “Son, set yourself on track” with anger || it wasn’t love expressed sternly, but a denigration of esteem

Oh, the steam!

Blazing summer days, where the sun rises with fury, and you observe the shade trees with love. || A love of shade, and more, it means a love of sunset.

Love as pure as that, of shade in the sun, was secreted, and I was left to wonder where that love had been hidden || rotting in a photo album, or a secret second family, I joked || meaning, I thought he must have had love for something, he just didn’t esteem me enough. This provoked private fury, and I built a shell. Now as I, the son, sets

out into his own life, and as the sun sets again over childhood home, I wish I had been loved, but I realize, with brow furrowed, that I had been all along. It was hidden in the mundane; the secret cleaning, the hot meals, the clothes, and for too long I withheld esteem. There is in all things meaning,

And the meaning of that was that he loved me.

Fishing RUBY CLEMMONS

Witch Cottagte Interior

SYDNEY CARMER

Bar

RUBY CLEMMONS

adam JALA UNTERREINER

It is not an exaggeration to say I see God in you. God, who opened the earth, swallowing whole those who could not accept love as abandonment in the wilderness. God, who turned Lot’s wife to salt for the sin of saying farewell to her home. God, who bases his love on how close you’re willing to stand to the flame. God, who thinks love is measured in sacrifice. God, with an unquenchable desire for affirmations of love, which is loyalty, which is possession. You are made in His image. You are the son of his sons. His hunger is your hunger.

Model JAZMYN McCALLUM

The Visionary BRITTANY PORTER

ACT III

Lovers, Resurrected

VASILIKI GKOULGKOUNTINA

my beautiful boy, with your clipped angel wings bouquet of curls atop your head you are a sacred temple let me climb inside you and bask in your holy light. who hurt you in your past life?

weaved those scars into your fiber let me sacrifice my skin and blood replace every part of you that once hurt ignite a renaissance.

I have memorized every fold and arc of your body every follicle of hair pale pink mole is ingrained in my being.

I lay in your arms and listen to the hymn in your chest let me enter the catacombs of your heart and drink your wine blood.

I want you to carve out the chasm in my soul and bury yourself in the grave of my heart so that we may never part.

let me die across your chest inhale the fumes of your nectarine soul I won’t be gone forever so please place those sinful lips on mine give me the sweet seal of slumber till we meet in a new life.

DONIVEN LONG

Stuck In A Purple Shirt

IMPOSTER

UNGODLY HOUR CAMERYN LYTTON

Peel

HEATHER CHAN

Tangerines

Timeless Architecture VANESSA YAKIMENKO Agency

April 10th, 2014

Andromeda Winks

ABIGAIL VINCENT

Hour 1: Pawleys Island, SC

Dear Adrianna,

I picked you up today. It’s late afternoon, about half past 4, and the sun is leaking through the buildings right into my eyes. It’s only a month until your birthday. It’s a shame; you almost made it.

Have you ever been in a hospital morgue?

Yeah, I guess you have. Though, it’s not like you’ll remember. It’s eerie. It feels like you’re not on this planet when you’re in there. That’s sort of how this rental van feels, too. Like our own personal morgue. It feels strange to be this close to you in space again. It’s a little suffocating. You’ll have to forgive me for stopping to write, but I need to put a little more distance between our bodies, and there are things we never spoke about. If our situation were reversed, I think you would need the same.

I’m taking you home to be buried next to Dad. I hope you don’t mind, but your sisters were going to have you embalmed if you stayed in South Carolina. They never bought into your paranoias. Not that I did much, either. I will admit, I’ve started to change my mind. And anyway, he already had ‘Andi’ inscribed on your half of the wide stone. I couldn’t let you stay separate from your husband for eternity—8 years of death’s distance was long enough.

I had to put kitty litter in the bottom of your casket. Is that weird to tell you? The mortician said it will catch any leaking body fluids, rather unceremoniously. It’s kind of like I’m the one changing your diapers now, isn’t it? Don’t worry—I’ve got the AC on full blast to keep you cool. The downside is that the coffee I got on my way east has turned into jelly. It’s one of those sludgy cups from a sputtering rest area machine. Now it’s become a dark tumefaction globbed across styrofoam.

I did as you asked. I picked you up. As a kid, I thought you must have been crazy to think the methanol seeped into the garden, turned the root vegetables strange and malnutritious, poisoned the ground and the family who ate from it. Now, I think you were right. I’ve started to wonder what else you might have been right about.

—Jackie

Hour 2: Charleston, SC

Adrianna,

I’ve left the car running for you. I had to get out of that van. It’s so alien to be driving your corpse around the freeways. I can’t smell anything yet, and I can’t stop for too long, but the AC seems to be helping so far. I looked up the temperature you need to keep a body: between 34 and 36 degrees. The best I can offer is a chilly 64. Hope that’s enough.

I never got to tell you much about what I do. Recently, we learned about Georg Cantor. He’s the man who figured out what infinity was. Well, he never quite figured it out, perhaps just discovered it. Found out there are infinitely many sizes of infinity, that there are bigger infinities and smaller infinities. Poor guy, he spent the last year of his life in a mental hospital. With a discovery like that, who can blame him?

My professor spent nearly a week on Edwin Hubble. The guy with the telescope and the Cincinnati stars. One of the things he found was that you can measure the stars all the way in the Andromeda galaxy and see how far away they are from how rapidly they blink. Since it’s millions of lightyears away, we’re looking at the blinking past. If a star is watching us back, maybe it’s winking. The slower the wink, the farther away, the longer ago. Scary, huh?

On second thought, it’s probably a good thing I never got to tell you this in life. I think it would have driven you mad der

—Jackie

Hour 3: Green Pond, SC

Andi,

I know we had our trouble, but I did miss you. Sometimes I wish you hadn’t left, but most of the time I was thankful you did. I know you were happier back in Pawleys Island with your siblings again. It’s no wonder you seemed so lonely back home in Mobile. It was kind of you to move away from your family for Dad, when his siblings started having their own families. I always wondered if that was your marriage gift to him.

When Dad died, you told me you refused to be embalmed. An aversion from your childhood, growing up in a valley downriver from a new church graveyard, like an invasive insect. You said its seepage poisoned the soils in your gardens. You were certain that’s what took Granddad: liver failure after eating 15 years of always-decaying carrots and beetroot. In fact, that must have been your final straw with religion. I know you were religious all my life, but you weren’t for most of your youth. After your dad, you found God. Maybe you thought if you prayed, did penance, it wouldn’t happen again. If you bowed, he wouldn’t strike you. And twenty years later, God stole away the love of your life. No wonder you needed to get away to what family you had left, people who had gone through it

with you once before.

—J

Hour 4: Savannah, GA

Dear Andi,

The air conditioner gave me a nosebleed. Of course, I can’t turn it any dimmer than full blast, given the circumstances. For now, I’ll enjoy the sunset and a break from the arctic. You look different than I remember. I wonder if it was the time or just the sink of death. I didn’t think it had been that long since I last saw you, 6 years maybe? That’s not an eternity, but it was enough to age us both into new eras. I can tell we both entered new times in our lives, we just didn’t do it together. I’m sorry for letting us fall out of touch, but we’ve always done better with scheduled breaks between family visits and you could’ve broken that silence, too.

Isn’t it bizarre? We learned how far things are because of the slowness in Andromeda’s winks. That is to say, we only know we are so small because the things around us blip out of existence, return to us. We can measure our own relative size and location by the things we are only allowed to see temporarily.

I measured our distance based on the time between phone calls. Like the fabric of space, we were always stretching out. Flinging faster and farther away from each other. Why did you ever let me outside of your gravity?

For the record, I don’t think you were crazy. I think you had ideas you just didn’t have the right language for. Then again, you were apophenic, but the more I think about it I realize physics has room for you in its heart. Maybe I can make room, too.

—J

Hour 5: Eulonia, GA

Dear Andromeda,

May I call you Andi? I’m sure you saw it all, up there in the heavens. How she sat stubbornly in her home, refusing to leave what objects she had left of my dad. When the ocean ran to her, she had to sit on the roof of her trailer, clinging to the divots of the metal and wearing my father’s army jacket. I’d like to be thankful for the rescue team that found her, but all they did was prolong the inevitable. Once the floodwaters shrank, she came back to collect her things swirling in the roads with the ocean and trash and shitwater. She’d return to the shelter at night, and in the morning her things would be scattered again, looters trying to find what remnants of another’s life they wanted to snatch. And she would gather what was left of her things. For four days, she would return to her yard to unscatter fewer and fewer things. She must have been losing parts of

herself as her life was picked through over and over, leaving her only with what everyone else discarded.

They told me it was pneumonia, but I wonder if it was the grief that really got her. When she moved, she invited me to visit once. I said yes, but I never gave her a date, and she never followed up. You’re 2.5 million lightyears away. If you can see me, wink.

—Your faithful follower

Hour 6: Brunswick, GA

To my mother,

Hair conditioner makes radioactive material cling to you, because of its binding agents. You taught me that when we drove out to a field with a shiny, square trapdoor in the ground, each side only 4 feet across. You also told me if we ever moved in under the earth, not to let anyone in, no matter who it was outside yelling. You told me you would never leave, and if I ever heard your voice outside, not to believe it. We drove home faster than I knew, even that young, and you got to drawing your frantic depictions of the tangles between your ears.

Now, I know it was your paranoia, a caged owl battering around in your head in neverending patterns. But fuck, as a kid that was terrifying! We’re halfway home.

—Jackie

Hour 7: Jacksonville, FL

Andi,

Not all of your theories were delusions. Though you mostly saw empty patterns, flimsy nothings that kept you ever tired, ever detached from your tangible life, I think you glimpsed the patterns of the universe. I know Dad stopped entertaining them the last few years of your life together, but a few have turned out to be possible—in fact, for some it is vanishingly improbable they are not true. Your entropic brain carries the unavailable chaos of the cosmos.

Have you ever heard of Ludwig Boltzmann? He was an Austrian physicist, and he worked in infinities. One of his conclusions, or rather realizations, was the fact that an infinitely possible universe must include human brains detached from any body. Even worse, he offered up the idea that it’s easier, and thus more likely, for a human brain to spontaneously form in a vacuum and invent everything it ‘perceives’ or ‘remembers’ than for an entire universe to be born and grow in the way we think it has. If you ever saw a picture of him, he certainly looks like the kind of guy who thought up that idea. It was sort of the look you had sometimes.

It was the look you had at the bunker, the look you had when I broke a third salad plate in a year. I wonder what pattern you saw in me that made you sever the ghost of your motherhood.

—Jackie

Hour 8: Lake City, FL

My mother,

I feel like I should rest for a little, like I need some sleep. Who knew this could be so taxing. I can’t stay in that van, but I can’t stop driving. I can’t see you decompose in front of me. Or, behind me. I just needed to stop and get off the hypnotic road for a minute.

Mom, I’m sorry I wasn’t enough for you to stay after Dad died. That I couldn’t be someone better for you than your siblings were when you felt alone. I was alone, too, you know. Actually alone.

Hour 9: Tallahassee, FL

Dear Andromeda, I’d read somewhere that a body can sigh or twitch, or even sit straight up after death. All those gasses building up, releasing. I was scared she would haunt me, shoot right up in the back of that van and stare at me. But she didn’t. The body didn’t move or speak. It was dead.

Adrianna,

In a space of infinities, some are larger than others. For all we know, the universe has been continuously and infinitely unraveling out from a point infinitely small, dense, and hot, always spiraling outward and upward. I fear that time moves backwards, and the universe is succumbing to the unknown inverse of entropy. Pulling itself downward past the tipping point of mass overtaking its own gravitational force.

Perhaps we are a reiteration of the stars, clusters of cosmic dust finding and losing and finding each other again and again. Mom, you were a neutron star. Maybe I’m heat-death, the next step.

—Your blazing star

Hour 10: Deerland, FL

Mom,

You won’t fucking believe what happened. Even though you were technically there. Did you know there’s something called alligator hunting season? And that it’s only in Autumn? I sure as shit didn’t, but I do now!

A cop pulled me over for a dead tail light, and when he saw your heap in the back of the van, he searched the car and asked me if I was a gator poacher. I told him no, and he lifted your sheet and saw you. If I hadn’t had your death certificate with me, I swear I would’ve just gone to jail.

Mom, I hate to say it, but you’re starting to smell. I can’t decide if that’s funny or horrifying. Up to you. But this cop must have been looking for a problem, because I learned a second thing tonight. It’s illegal to transport an unembalmed body into Alabama. I looked him in the eye and told him, “It’s my mother.” He let me go.

Your daughter, Jackie

Hour 11: Pensacola, FL; Escambia Bay

Mom,

Black holes are the everlasting plunge of density in on itself. Indefinitely collapsing neutron stars. When I look at your drawings now, at the scribbles spiraling over and over in on themselves, I feel like I’m starting to know you. I feel like I want you to sit up in the back of the van, look me in my mirrored eyes, and tell me you stole the darkness down with you. I want you to tell me you’re clutching it hot inside your chest, pulling it in and in and in on itself so it never unravels, never reverses and stretches out to me. Can you do that? Can you hold it close enough to stay out of reach?

—J

Hour 12: Mobile, AL

Dear Mom,

We made it home. You didn’t get pumped with formaldehyde, we didn’t get lost in the unraveling wrinkles of space, you never even sat up. I think I know why you were who you were. It wasn’t your fault you saw patterns everywhere you looked, connections in the tissue of the world. Perhaps I was just a warning sign of another sick woman to come, another victim of her mother’s anxieties repeated. Maybe you didn’t stay because you couldn’t bear to watch your own youth all over again. I hope I didn’t fall into your habits, your patterns of grief. I hope you’ve forgiven me for the winks of my distance. When you pass by in the night sky, let me know you’re there. I’ll be looking for your wink.

Tomorrow, I’ll come back to the funeral home and arrange your burial. You’ll be in the ground with Dad by Sunday.

Love, Jackie

Nest of Bone

EMMA HINESLEY

The soft dying of breath as footsteps slow, her shaking legs fall quiet in the leaves as the gentle scythe of time takes the doe, warmth of recent life subtle earth receives.

Time passed persistent, old flesh revealed bone. A feathered scout searches the ground beneath. New life seeks sanctuary till grown, a quiet grave becomes twig woven wreath.

Leaves of the trees morph with grass of the plains, the skeletal palace ready at last. With death there is life in giving remains, eggs hatching where breath once lived in the past.

The song of a family chirps from inside, the body a home once more to provide.

Ecco2k

RUBY CLEMMONS

Desert Scene Self Portrait

SYDNEY CARMER

CARRY MY BONES

SAM AMBLER

Carry my bones to the hills, where I can rest my eyes on the island of Santa Catalina. Carry my bones to the topmost peak of what was once a seafloor bed. Carry my bones back to the burnt-ochre deserts of the inland empire. Carry my bones home. I’ve been away, a lifetime gone.

Push together a pyre of oak and scrub fueled by dung and peat. Build it in the gorge where, in the middle of the day, the horned owl screeches, where rattlers twist and chase off king snakes.

Kindle the spark of the bonfire with verdigris lichen. Sprinkle its mischievous flames with white berries of winter mistletoe. Listen to it crackle (such glee in its hoary voice, such abandon) as it sings my name and chars my bones.

Let the ground mist of dawn cool the sparkling embers. Grind them into dust as fine as talcum. Daub them on your face and rub your cheeks. There is more power in the sand of my bones than in all the tiger balm in China.

Goblin Fairy

HANNAH PERMENTER

Long Dogs

HANNAH PERMENTER

Anointment

MAYA OSAKA

once, when i was seventeen my kneecap fell not up or down just off, inside the pouch of my own skin, and i didn’t notice it it was caught there for weeks, seaglass rolling in the waters of my sinew and clouded oil. it hurt, more than usual but so does everything. it fell again this morning and i coaxed it back in, misshapen fingers ushering a lamb to her pasture, calling her name the curve of my knee a shepherd’s crook. little lamb, it is time for spring slaughter the table must be set with what is left of you.

Curry 4x Champion

VISHAL NAIR

Smino Luv4Rent Cover

VISHAL NAIR

Radiate

KELLY GILBERT

KELLY GILBERT

Artwork Contributors The Runner

ALESSIO ZANELLI

On feet of dreams the runner’s headed to land’s end. She knows the horizon keeps receding while she’s running, but she runs as though it didn’t. A finish line is not her aim.

Along the pathway time’s not measured in seconds but in paces, in fact a runner’s time and space commingle. The run will come to a stop where dreams dissolve, and dreams don’t hinge on time or space but on the run itself.

Land’s end is but a moving sight, the pathway a circle.

Aily Valencia Cerventes: Aily Valencia Cervantes is a senior pursuing a double major in Graphic Design and Illustration at UNC Charlotte. She has been working as a designer for Midas Magazine for a year now. When she’s not designing, she enjoys dancing, practicing Portuguese, and painting.

Alyssa Smart: Alyssa is a transfer student from the Appalachian Mountains. She enjoys most art forms and processes, but Illustration is her passion. So, it is no surprise that she is getting her BFA with a concentration in Illustration. She looks to anything and everything for inspiration, for life itself is a gift.

Asia Hanon: Asia Hanon is a Graphite artist based in North Carolina and works primarily in portraiture. Her work explores themes of black ancestry, spiritualism, reconnection, duality, and African spirituality. In her current body of work, she talks about the idea of reconnecting with her ancestors through dreams and visions; as it is believed that our ancestors can visit us in our dreams to provide spiritual guidance, enlightenment, and protection.

Britanny Porter: B. Portner was born in Augusta, GA in 1988. She has been painting since her great-grandmother first indulged her curiosity as a young child by purchasing many painting kits. Having been inspired by her life drawing classes, she now focuses on creating dramatic narratives using the figure. She is the 2022 recipient of the Roderick Mackillop Painting Merit Scholarship Award, and she studied abroad this past summer in Italy.

Brooke Buchanan: Brooke Buchanan is a 21 year old digital media student at UNCC. She has always held an interest in art of all mediums, but gravitates more towards digital art and composition. She is inspired by horror movies, and pop culture, and likes creating pieces that the viewer can relate to. When she’s not creating digital composition pieces, she enjoys painting and drawing. Instagram: @brookesvision

Cameryn Lytton: A first-generation college student and multiversal graphic designer, she aspires to work in the branding and advertising field. You can find more of their work on their Instagram @goodiebagraphic.

Chris Allard: Chris is a Junior currently getting his BFA in Digital Media, He has a passion for Animation, Digital Art, and Photography. In his work, Chris has an interest in capturing characters and key moments and then presenting them in an engaging way.

Danielle Arias: Danielle Arias is a student at UNCC pursuing a BFA degree with a concentration in Digital Media. She enjoys all arts mediums, but especially digital painting, 3D modeling, and animation.

Doniven Long: Doniven Long is a second-year transfer student majoring in Graphic Design at UNC Charlotte who works mainly with digital art and media. His current piece Stuck in a Purple Shirt is a color study relating to color theory regarding complementary relationships, similar to his other works exploring bold and unique design.

Hannah Permenter: Hannah Permenter is an aspiring Illustrator honing her craft as an art major at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her overall goal when sitting down to create is to make something that can improve the lives of her viewers; whether that be by showing them a new point of view or by making them smile. Her favorite mediums include watercolor, ink, and digital painting.

Heather Chan: Heather Chan is an aspiring Art Teacher at UNCC. Been doing the arts ever since she was a child. She loves any art process done by hand like cutting, gluing, modeling clay, etc. Dedicated to the over craft and process that goes into any projects she does. She hopes to spread the joys of arts and crafts to everyone she meets.

Jade Suszek: Jade loves photography with her whole heart. She has taken photos since 2016. Her favorite types of photography are concert and portraiture. Her goal is to make some sort of difference with photography even if it is to just add a smile on someone’s face.

Jazmyn McCallum: I am a Digital Media major who aspires to become an animator in the future. I enjoy incorporating emotions and empowerment in my work. I wish to someday create a cartoon for children that promotes emotional awareness for them to use throughout their lives.

Kassade Edwards: A recent UNCC freshman made this piece of digital art, which is labeled Such an Inconvenience. Since she was a little child, Kassade Edwards has been making vibrant, colorful paintings that depict actions or items from daily life. Kassade is a digital artist who also appreciates traditional art.

Kelli Crockett: Kelli Crockett is a senior in the Honors Art and Architecture Program at UNC Charlotte. She will graduate in Fall 2023 with a BFA in Art, double concentrated in Digital Media and Painting, and a minor in Art History. Her work focuses on representational figures and animals, visual texture, and realistic rendering.

Kelly Gilbert: Kelly Gilbert is an artist and graphic designer based in Charlotte, NC. Her work often investigates the relationship between identity, body language, and vulnerability. When she’s not designing, her time is spent riding her bike and jamming out to live music. View her work at www.kellygilbert.art.

Ksenya Englesby: Ksenya Englesby is a sophomore at UNC Charlotte double majoring in English and Spanish and minoring in Russian. Ksenya works at Chick-fil-A and has an art commission side hustle. Ksenya’s art centers around finding the beauty in the everyday moment.

Laura Lucas: My name is Laura Lucas and I am a senior pursuing a BFA degree with a concentration in Painting and a minor in Art History at UNCC. My work primarily consists of figurative painting, drawing, and printmaking which explore my personal relationships and feelings. My work has been featured in the Novant Health Art Show 2021, Popp Martin Student Union Group Art Show 2021, UNCC Career Center 2022-2023, and recently I had a solo show, 21, at the Popp Martin Student Union.

McKenzie Perry: McKenzie is a full time student at her local community college with plans to transfer to UNCC within the next year or two. She’s been drawing for her entire life, and painting for about three.

Nancy Lor: Nancy Lor is a Hmong-American graphic designer and illustrator based in North Carolina. She specializes in visual storytelling and communicating through fun, but efficient designs. Her work combines the two disciplines into creative visual solutions that are cohesive, intuitive, and passionate. When she is not busy creating, she enjoys gaming, reading, singing, and occasionally writing.

Niara Matthews: UNC Charlotte Bachelor of Fine Arts major with a concentration in Illustration. Class of 2022. Instagram: @nmatthe216

Ruby Clemmons: Ruby Clemmons is a student pursuing a degree in Graphic Design at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She works in digital media on Procreate and Adobe software. Her works focus on artist portraits or character design.

Samantha Ingraham: Samantha Ingraham is a sophomore at UNC Charlotte and is pursuing a BFA in Art with a concentration in Digital Media. Her main focus in art is digital illustration and animation. Her piece, titled Little Dreamer, is an appreciation for the inner child, and the magical wonder that is associated with childhood innocence.

Sydney Carmer: Sydney Carmer is currently a third-year Art student at UNC Charlotte. They are double concentrating in Digital Media and Illustration, double minoring in Psychology and Art History, and are a part of the Arts + Architecture Honors Program. Sydney enjoys a wide range of mediums and loves twisting expectations in her artwork, often in dark or humorous ways. She plans to work in animation, video art, or motion graphics.

Uma Chavali: Uma Chavali is a student at UNCC pursuing her Bachelor’s in Business Analytics and is in the Early Entry Program for her Master’s. She finds her happiness in her passion for photography and art. For the past year she has worked on pieces of digital art, photography and acrylic painting. She hopes to one day become a wildlife photographer and follow her passion for art. Instagram: @umc.photoart

Vanessa Yakimenko: Vanessa Yakimenko is a graphic designer and photographer, with a passion for street photography and typography. Combining elements from the two concentrations, Vanessa follows a philosophy that is based on a desire to create unique stories and capture special moments through the smallest details.

Vishal Nair: I love playing sports, making music, and creating art for my favorite artists and athletes. Check out my work on Instagram @vishuals.

Zachary White: Zachary White is a street photographer from Greensboro, North Carolina attending UNC Charlotte as a Political Science major. Zachary enjoys roaming the vibrant streets of big cities with his Canon camera capturing the beauty of everyday life. Zachary is drawn to bright colors and shaping light to create cinematic-inspired photographs.

Literature Contributors

Abigail Vincent: Abigail Vincent is a current M.A. student at UNC Charlotte. She is a T.A. teaching intro to creative writing and is writing her master’s thesis. She loves her dog, crochet, and poetry.

Alessio Zanelli: Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English. His work has appeared in some 200 literary journals from 17 countries. His fifth collection, The Secret Of Archery, was published in 2019 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.

Britt Olson: Britt Olson is a graduate student at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte studying English Creative Writing. Britt is an aspiring children’s book author, whose favorite writers include Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, Mary Oliver, Paige Lewis, and Shari Lapena.

Dezanii Lewis: Dezanii Lewis is a senior at UNC Charlotte majoring in English and minoring in Journalism. Ever the storyteller, Dezanii has always loved the way words can paint a picture. She has wanted to be a writer for as long as she can remember and hopes to be a professional writer after graduation. She interns with Queen City Nerve and writes for UNCC’s student newspaper, Niner Times.

Emma Hinesley: Emma is an English major at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. In her free time outside of school, she likes writing, doing art, and crocheting. When not doing one of those things she can also be found enjoying frogs.

Grace Glass: Grace Glass lives and writes in Frederick, Maryland. In her writing she favors damaged characters, often trapped in situations they don’t understand, and whose flaws emerge in ordinary situations. When she is not writing she enjoys running, rehabbing her house, and studying twentieth-century history.

Grace Yochem: Grace Yochem is a student at UNC Charlotte studying Communications and English with a minor in Data Science. She writes poetry in an effort to be more introspective. Her friends would argue she doesn’t need help with that.

Jala Unterreiner: Jala Unterreiner is an author and poet finishing her senior year at UNC Charlotte. She enjoys exploring religious imagery, history, and the ties that bind human relationships in her work. For Jala, writing has always served as catharsis, as a place to both reflect on and reframe the past. She views her poetry as a space to heal, and as an opportunity to learn how to forgive.

Maya Osaka: Maya is a sophomore pursuing her B.A in English and Philosophy, and minoring in Japanese. When she isn’t annotating readings and practicing kanji, she’s most likely watching poorly-rated films with her roommates and trying to untie her many knotted shoelaces.

Nancy Lor: Nancy Lor is a Hmong-American graphic designer and illustrator based in North Carolina. She specializes in visual storytelling and communicating through fun, but efficient designs. Her work combines the two disciplines into creative visual solutions that are cohesive, intuitive, and passionate. When she is not busy creating, she enjoys gaming, reading, singing, and occasionally writing.

Phyllis Carol Agins: Phyllis Carol Agins has long found inspiration in Philadelphia, PA. Two novels, a children’s book, and an architectural study of synagogues and churches were all published during her years there. Recent short fiction has appeared more than fifty literary magazines, including Art Times, Eclipse, Lilith Magazine, The Minetta Review, Soundings East, Pennsylvania English, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Verdad, Santa Fe Writers Project, Westview, Whiskey Island Magazine, and Women Arts Quarterly Journal Five excerpts from Finding Maurice have been published, and one will soon be included in an anthology by Brandeis University. For many years, she divided her time between Philly and Nice, France, adding the Mediterranean rhythms to her sources of inspiration. Please visit: phylliscarolagins.com.

Sam Ambler: Mr. Ambler earned a BA in English, specializing in creative writing of poetry, from Stanford University. He delivered singing telegrams and sang with the Temescal Gay Men’s Chorus in Berkeley and the Pacific Chamber Singers in San Francisco. He has worked in nonprofit theater at Berkeley Rep, Geffen Playhouse, Actors’ Equity, and The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Now retired, he lives in California with his husband, visual artist Edward L. Rubin.

Vasiliki Gkoulgkountina: Vasiliki Gkoulgkountina is a poet based in Charlotte, NC. She is originally from Thessaloniki, Greece and her cultural experiences are often reflected in her poetry. Vasiliki is currently working on her thesis which will be her first completed poetry collection. Some of her favorite themes to explore in poetry are love in comparison to religion, relationships with family across global seas, reflecting on Greek mythology, and connecting the self to surrounding nature.

Zachary Jenkins: Zachary Jenkins is a first-year student pursuing majors in Computer Science and English. His writing has appeared in several literary journals. While he dabbles in poetry, his real love is for fiction. Reach him on Instagram @zach.n.jenkins.

ART

CHRISTINA SINGER is a graphic designer and educator from Chattanooga, TN. She started her career with a B.F.A. in Art concentrating in Graphic Design and worked as the Associate Art Director of EatingWell magazine in Vermont. Then she went on to earn an MFA in Art concentrating in Graphic Design from the University of Florida. Singer teaches graphic design at UNC Charlotte and takes on freelance graphic design projects through her business Ody Design, LLC.

CYNTHIA FRANK received a B.A. in English and an M.F.A. in graphic design from Yale University. In addition to teaching full time at UNC Charlotte, she produces design work for both local and national clients, and creates public art with PAC3, a partnership based on a mutual interest in dynamic form/space relationships. She has served on the Boards of AIGA Charlotte, Founders’ Circle Affiliate of the Mint Museum Craft + Design and The Wall Poems of Charlotte, an ongoing public mural project that celebrates North Carolina’s literary heritage. In her spare time, Frank sings with Vox, a semi-professional choir, and paints and exhibits artwork.

KRISTIN ROTHROCK began teaching at UNC Charlotte in 2000. She is a Senior Lecturer in Art Foundations in the Department of Art & Art History and teaches Book Arts and Paper Making. Rothrock has an MFA in Graphic Arts from the University of WisconsinMadison and a BS in Studio Art/Printmaking from Skidmore College.

LITERATURE

ELIZABETH GARGANO’S poetry and fiction have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Poem, The Long Story, and other journals. She is the recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Award for Fiction. Her books include a scholarly monograph published by Routledge Press and Cassandra’s Eye, a novel, published by Belle Lutte in 2019. She teaches in the English department at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

TIFFANY MORIN is a lecturer in the English Department at UNC Charlotte and the Director of the English Learning Community. She has taught several courses over the years, including courses on monsters and villains. Her favorite genres are horror and gothic literature. When not teaching, she enjoys traveling, reading, and playing with her dog.

CONTRIBUTORS: Thank you for choosing Nova to showcase your artwork. Without all of you, this magazine would not be possible.

VOLUNTEERS: Thank you for all of your help and contributions to the magazine. We wouldn’t be here without you.

KELLY MERGES: Thank you for your steadfast guidance and ideas, and for always searching for answers to our questions.

JOSHUA WOOD: Thank you for all the work you put in to guide us, your thoughtful advice, and your encouragement.

LAURIE CUDDY: Thank you for being an amazing Business Manager and answering all of our ridiculous money questions.

PATTY COX: Thank you for always being ready to help us with our documentation and guiding us in proper workplace procedure.

ART AND LITERATURE JURY: Thank you for putting your full thought and effort into helping us pick the very best work to feature in Nova.

iTEK: Thank you for patiently adapting to our changing ideas, and for helping us turn all those rough drafts into a final printed magazine. We appreciate your continued support.

STUDENT UNION ART GALLERY: Thank you for coordinating with us to display this year’s art and literature and offering us a place to showcase our amazing artists.

JANITORS OF THE STUDENT UNION: Thank you for always keeping the office clean and pristine.

STUDENTS OF UNC CHARLOTTE, SAFC & READERS: Thank you for your continued support and interest in this work. We hope you enjoy this issue.

FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND LOVED ONES: Thank you for being there to support our hard work and passions. We are grateful for you.

To all of our incredible and dedicated staff members and volunteers, thank you! We have come a long way from our first meetings and calls for submissions. We should all be proud.

Meet the Staff

Alexander Beets (he/him) EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Alexander Beets is a senior at UNC Charlotte pursuing a B.A in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Alexander spends most of his time hoarding Bojangles in the Nova office and authoring hastily written poetry. He is currently working on his debut chapbook To Luna, Who Sang With the Wind.

Grace Yochem (she/her)

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Grace Yochem is a student at UNC Charlotte studying Communications and English with a minor in Data Science. She spends her time playing Dungeons and Dragons with her friends, working in the Nova office, and doing homework at Thoughtful Cup. Her order? Latté with vanilla and cherry syrup.

Zachary Jenkins (he/him) CONTENT EDITOR

Zachary Jenkins is a first-year student pursuing majors in Computer Science and English. His writing has appeared in several literary journals. (Insert “when he’s not ____” joke here.) Reach him on Instagram @zach.n.jenkins.

Trinh Dang (she/her)

CONTENT EDITOR

Trinh Dang is in her last year at UNC Charlotte, majoring in English with a Women’s and Gender Studies Minor. Trinh’s position this school term at Nova lit a lightbulb for her and she has since discovered that she’d like to break into the publishing industry before pursuing a published author career.

Noah Atwood (he/him)

LEAD DESIGNER

Noah Atwood is a senior at UNC Charlotte majoring in Graphic Design. All he does is design. Design, design, design. When not designing in silence, he is designing while listening to music. He also enjoys film photography, making music, and collecting vinyl records. Find him on Instagram @noahtheatwood for all of your design needs.

Cameryn Lytton (she/they) DESIGNER

Cameryn Lytton is a senior at UNC Charlotte pursuing a B.F.A. in Graphic Design with minors in Women and Gender Studies and Human-Centered Design. They love creating ceramic dishes and spend a lot of time at the wheel. When she is not doing homework for Print Production, she is probably thinking about her homework for Print Production.

Katelyn Dooley (she/her) DESIGNER

Katelyn Dooley is a senior pursuing a degree in Graphic Design and Business Analytics. When she isn’t knitting or crocheting, you’ll probably find her drinking a Red Bull. And if you still can’t find her, she’s probably getting sat on by her great dane, Bruce.

Shae Jarrett (they/them)

WEBSITE MANAGER

Shae is a senior pursuing a Psychology major with a Women and Gender Studies and English double minor. When they have a rare day off from work, they can be found in a corner of Atkins. They’re either editing the poetry portfolio they’ve been working on for longer than they’re willing to admit, or more likely, napping.

Landry Hutchens (she/her) PROMOTIONS COORDINATOR

Landry Hutchens is a first-year student majoring in Pre-Business Administration and pulls double duty at Nova as both a Promotions Coordinator and Graphic Design volunteer. When she’s not building a LEGO set, you can find her drawing while listening to Taylor Swift.

Skylar Hatch (she/her)

VOLUNTEER

Skylar Hatch is a sophomore at UNC Charlotte, studying English in Language and Digital Technology, minoring in Journalism and Technical/Professional Writing. She enjoys creative/fiction writing and reading during her free time. Her current read is The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake.

Vasiliki Gkoulgkountina (she/her)

VOLUNTEER

Vasiliki is a senior at UNC Charlotte majoring in English and double minoring in Diverse Lit & Cultural Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies. She recently finished a poetry collection for her honors thesis, which she will present at a colloquium later this semester.

Colophon

Copyright 2023

Nova Literary-Arts Magazine and the Student Media Board of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission of the copy holder.

iTek, Charlotte, NC

2,000 copies for Nova Literary-Arts Magazine were printed on 100lb Silk Text. The cover was printed on 80lb Silk Cover with a UV varnish spot gloss. This magazine contains 116 pages, with a trim size of 6 x 9 inches. The poster was printed on 80lb Gloss Text with a size of 15 x 17 inches.

Typography

Philosopher Family

Minerva Modern

Boruna

Appropriated

Adobe Creative Cloud 2023

Google Workspace

iMac Computer (24” 4.5k Retina display 2, Apple M1 Chip, 2021, Silver & Mint Green)

Zoom Cloud Meetings

The Letter L

Sherbert Ice Cream

Black Adam (2022)

14% Grain

Your Wildest Dreams

Credits

Book Cover Design: Noah Atwood

Layout Design: Noah Atwood, Cameryn Lytton, and Katelyn Dooley

3D Design: Cameryn Lytton

Poster Design: Landry Hutchens

Poster Quote: Alessio Zanelli

Staff Photography: Noah Atwood

Copy Editing: Grace Yochem, Zach Jenkins, and Trinh Dang

Submission Guidelines

Please visit novacharlotte.com to view past issues, submission forms, and view general requirements.