Windhover 2021

Volume LV

Volume LV

MISSION Windhover, NC State’s literary and arts magazine, strives to serve the creative community of NC State through its annual publication that includes art, film, music, poetry and prose. Our main goals are to provide a welcoming environment for out-of-the-box thought processes and to encourage all artists to submit.

COLOPHON Printed by Theo Davis Printing in Durham, NC 1 Litho Way, Durham NC 27703 Typefaces used are 24 point Termina Demi for headers and 10 point and 12 point Spectral Regular, Semibold and Bold for body copy and bylines Book pages printed on #80 Text Accent, Warm White Cover and divider printed on #100 Cover Accent, Super Smooth, Warm White with clear foiling Created with Adobe InDesign CC 2021 1,200 copies distributed free of charge

POLICY Windhover considers artistic work for publishing across many mediums created by NC State University students, staff and alumni. Editorial staff, alongside their respective volunteer committees, review submissions with particular criteria in mind and then choose their submissions for the annual magazine. Submissions do not reflect the opinions of Windhover, Student Media, or NC State University.

For submission guidelines, please visit windhover.ncsu.edu.

© NC STATE STUDENT MEDIA 2021 307 Witherspoon, Box 7318, Raleigh NC 27695 919.515.5012 | windhover-editor@ncsu.edu

FROM THE EDITOR Admittingly, I’ve been working on this letter for a while now. I’ve spent many nights watching the cursor blink on a blank page, failing to produce the words to describe how I feel about my time here at Windhover and publishing this volume. Windhover LV is my third, and final, book as editor-in-chief and this experience has changed my life for the better in so many ways. All I can say is thank you. Thank you to every reader, artist, supporter and contributor who has made my job so meaningful—I will carry your impact with me always.

For this edition, we decided that we wanted to figuratively—and literally—flip the script on the conventional creative content you likely consume and carve out a space designated just for Black artists. Being a creative-focused publication at a PWI, we cannot ignore the fact that nearly all forms of art would be nonexistent without people of the African diaspora. But, art industries have failed Black people, despite not being able to exist without them. This was our driving force behind producing this volume of Windhover.

These days it’s easy to find yourself in an echo-chamber with the same people, perspectives and stories curated by those in power that you have become accustomed to. We cannot become complacent to accepting this shallow understanding of the world by not listening to the marginalized voices that are drowned out by deafening discourse. The purpose of this volume is to highlight the need for more equitable representation in this white-dominated industry and to commemorate the importance Black creatives have had on the arts.

As always, my dedicated team of staff and committee members have gone above and beyond to make this book the best it can be. I have so many people to be grateful for but I want to shoutout Emma Carter, Aubrey Izurieta, Alyssa Smith, Divi Sharma, Willow Arthur, Camilla Keil, Noah Wilde, Campbell Briggs and Maya Mitchall for putting their hearts and souls into making this historical volume. And I cannot thank our adviser Martha Collins enough for graciously guiding and supporting me through these past three years as editor-in-chief while making sure each volume is of the highest quality.

So without further ado, I am immensely proud to present an unprecedented book for an unprecedented year: Windhover LV & the Perspectives Edition.

Farewell, Xenna Smith Editor-in-chief

STAFF

EXECUTIVE EDITORS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF · Xenna Smith, 4th year communication-media MANAGING EDITOR · Aubrey Izurieta, 4th year communication-media

CONTENT STAFF AUDIO/VIDEO EDITOR · Alyssa Smith, 4th year graphic design VISUAL EDITOR · Camilla Keil, 2nd year art studies LITERARY EDITOR · Divi Sharma, 4th year English language and rhetoric ASST. LITERARY EDITOR · Willow Arthur, 4th year English lang., writing, + rhetoric SUBVOLO WRITER · Noah Buck, 2nd year business administration SUBVOLO WRITER · Neha Suresh, 3rd year biological engineering DESIGN STAFF DESIGN EDITOR · Emma Carter, 3rd year graphic design and English creative writing ASST. DESIGN EDITOR · Campbell Briggs, 3rd year graphic design PROMOTIONS DESIGNER · Noah Wilde, 2nd year graphic design

COMMITTEES AUDIO/VIDEO COMMITTEE Karuna Gangwani, Shemayah Hart, Sana Sheikh, Isabelle Wolf, and Shirley Chen LITERARY COMMITTEE Joshua Aelick, Blanca Arantxa, Emily Arnheiter, Juhi Dattani, and Ryley Fallon VISUAL COMMITTEE Maya Mitchall, Dillon Patel, Geneva Scanlon, and Emma Anderson

PUBLICATION ADVISER Martha Collins

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PROSE Snakes · Holly Brantley Family Business · Michael Coombs Spite the Sun for Shining · Alicia Baldelli VISUAL For George Floyd | Black Lives Matter · Shaun Deardorff Washed Away · Natalie Emerson Seeing Me · Natalie Emerson Looking Out · Bhavana Veeravalli Say Something · Bhavana Veeravalli Abandoned · Dillon Patel Radical Change · Natalie Cotton Bone Study · Hope Ketola Harvest · Olivia Bryant Dangerous Spill · Juhi Dattani and Ella Williams Port of Hamburg · Lauren McLaughlin Inside! Outside! · Allison Fleury Independent Woman · Heike Schneider Hoof · Victoria Ralston PRETTYBAG · Harrison Kratzer Morning in Guadalajara · Molly Niekamp Open Air · Kate Delahanty Tuesday · Kate Delahanty Carolina Flowers No. 1 · Noah Baldwin POETRY Hell and Autumn · Charvi Pande When there are no longer people · Mike Utt where i’m from · Kinsey Moritz The straight chick I had a crush on in high school has a girlfriend now · Kali Fillhart Dependency · Jules Millward Fenrir · Laura Mooney Reynard and the Ravens Behind the Thrift Store · Alexandra Gaines Rage as a forest; Resilience as an Ecosystem · Laura Mooney a change of feeling · Ella Williams Nixus · Jules Millward newton’s third law · Allison Fleury lunch lady · Holly Brantley Curses · Thomas Irene Long AUDIO Audio · Various creators VIDEO Video · Various creators

Holly Brantley

Snakes When I was a little girl, it was rumored that I was a child of Satan because I wasn’t afraid of snakes.

Aurora glanced at me and frowned. “Don’t even think about it.”

I shot her a look, huddling closer to her as the cool March air bit at my bare legs. “Think about what?”

“You know what.” Aurora jerked her head over to the part of the schoolyard where the boys were playing marbles. “I’ve already told you that you’re just making it worse.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because Emmy, you’re a girl.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

“And that’s exactly why you don’t need to go over there.”

“All I’m doing is playing marbles with them,” I argued. “I’m good at it and they’re sweet to me when I play.”

Aurora sucked her cheeks in. “That’s because they’re looking up your dress when you play, Emmy. That’s why they’re sweet.”

I felt the heat rising to my face. At 12 years old, there was nothing more mortifying to me than the prospect of boys looking up my dress.

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I’d never noticed the boys trying to sneak a peek before, but Aurora was fourteen, an adult in my eyes, and so I took her word as Gospel.

“No, they don’t,” I said, pulling down the hem of my lavender dress as far as it would go. “Jamie wouldn’t let them.”

“Jamie looks up your dress, too.”

“No, he doesn’t!”

The corners of Aurora’s lips twitched upwards. “Does too.”

I unhooked my arm from hers and crossed them over my chest. “Why are you being so mean?”

“I’m not being mean, I’m being honest,” Aurora replied, eyes darting to where Marigold Hawthorne and Pollyanna Matthews were standing and gossiping. “Now, go find something to do, and don’t you try butting in and trying to help when—” “If you’re going to your friends then I’m going to mine,” I said, standing my ground. “And if Cora were here, she’d go play marbles with me, too.”

Aurora rolled her eyes. “If Cora jumped off of a bridge, would you?”

I squinted and stuck my hands in my pockets, turning from her.

“Cora’s scared of heights, Aurora. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Aurora rolled her eyes one more time at me before going off to join Marigold and Pollyanna. I headed to where Josiah Hammond, Bobby Brewster, and Jamie Arlo were. At this age, boys were as devoted to marbles as a priest was to his parish. Normally, I stood just close enough to the chalk-drawn circle that they crowded around for them to notice me. If Cora were here, she’d just ask if we could play, but she’d been missing a lot of school lately. Her momma was fixing to have another baby and, since Cora was the oldest, her momma really needed her help around the house.

“Do you want to play, Emmy?”

I looked up and my eyes met Jamie Arlo’s. He was smiling at me, but it took me a minute to smile back once I noticed that his lip was busted.

Though the evidence of Mr. Arlo’s abuse of Jamie was always painfully apparent, it was especially bad right around planting and harvesting season, when Mr. Arlo was most stressed. Last week Jamie’d been taking off his coat when his shirt rode up and I saw fresh welts all along the bottom half of his back. Jamie didn’t like it when we asked about his injuries, so I didn’t say anything and just smiled instead, crouching next to him in front of the circle.

“You can get on next round,” Josiah Hammond said, giving me a genuine smile before shooting a look to Bobby Brewster. “Once I win the Aggie back, you can use that.”

I shook my head and grinned. “I don’t like the Aggie. I want to use the Dragonfly.”

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“You’ll have to take that up with Jamie, then. He won it last round.”

Jamie grinned at me. “You can have the Dragonfly if you let me copy your science theme.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not letting you cheat, but I’ll help you with your theme.”

“Deal.”

Bobby shook his head, pointing an accusatory finger at Jamie. “You can’t just give her a marble! She’s got to earn it in the game!”

“Lay off, Bobby,” Josiah retorted. “He can give her a marble if he wants to.”

“Just because she’s a girl—” “Leave her alone,” Jamie said, digging through his red marble pouch.

“She’s better than you are, and if she won’t so nice, she’d probably have half of your marbles.”

“Ain’t nobody supposed to be giving away marbles,” Kevin Valentine sneered.

The four of us looked up to see a group of older boys, led by Kevin Valentine, staring down at us. There were only three of them, but it felt like a lot more. Kevin was in eighth grade, but he already had his driver’s license and I could tell that the other two boys with him weren’t that much younger.

“Nobody’s giving away marbles,” Josiah said, squinting up at Kevin, “and even if we were, it ain’t any of your business.”

Kevin Valentine snorted. “It’s my business if I say it’s my business.”

“Why do you even care?” Jamie asked, standing up. At 13 years old, Jamie wasn’t that much shorter than Kevin, but he was noticeably skinnier. “Don’t you got anything better to do?”

Kevin smirked, kicking the marbles inside of the circle and making them scatter. “You’re a priority right now, Arlo. Don’t get used to it.”

“I was about to win the Aggie!” Josiah snapped, standing up next. He glared at Kevin. “Just because you can’t be a jackass to someone your own size doesn’t mean you can get away with it here!”

Unlike Jamie, who at least had height going for him, Josiah was neither tall nor big. In fact, he was just barely taller than me, and I’d always been small for my age. Kevin Valentine took a step toward Josiah, nostrils flaring, when Jamie stepped in between the two of them.

“He’s right,” Jamie said, giving Kevin Valentine a look. “Go pick on someone your own size.”

“Don’t pretend like you’re better than me, Arlo,” Kevin Valentine spat.

“At least I passed first grade.”

Jamie’s fists tightened by his side. “After the fourth try.”

“Come on,” I said, jumping up the second I saw Kevin Valentine’s hand pulling back. “Come on, I’m going to help you with your theme.”

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Kevin Valentine smirked again, his hands relaxing. “And now you’ve got your girlfriend sticking up for you? That’s pathetic, even for an Arlo.”

Jamie’s cheeks flushed. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Sure, she isn’t.” Kevin shrugged. “After talking with your brother, it doesn’t surprise me that you’ve got a little girl sticking up for you.”

At this point, most of the kids around us had stopped to watch. While Kevin Valentine didn’t have a lick of common sense, he tended to know the most dirt on people.

Jamie’s face turned even redder. “Daniel knows even less than you do.”

“You’re a walking piece of shit,” Josiah continued angrily, thrusting his finger in the middle of Kevin Valentine’s stomach since he couldn’t quite reach his chest. “You think you can—” “Quit it!” I hissed, yanking Josiah’s arm back. “You’re making it worse!”

Kevin Valentine didn’t even seem fazed and kept his gaze on Jamie.

“Tell all your little friends how you busted your lip. Tell ‘em how your old man beat you because you got scared when that snake got loose in the hog pen,” Kevin sneered, his eyes darting from Jamie to me. “You ran up out of the hog pen when you saw that snake. You ran like a scared little girl.”

“That’s called being smart!” Josiah argued, practically foaming at the mouth. “If you saw some snake that was ’bout to bite you and kill you—” Kevin scoffed. “It won’t no poisonous snake. It was a stupid garden snake, and when his daddy made him pick it up, he started crying.

Daniel said he thought you might’ve even wet your pants.”

Continue reading this story online at windhover.ncsu.edu

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Michael Coombs

Family Business The car came to a lurching stop in the mud. Jaye stepped out, taking a long stride over the trench of it that her tires had dug up. She looked back at the dirtied sedan uneasily. In the soupy nighttime darkness you could only make out a faint grey orb on the windshield, mimicking the moon. She turned and faced the brush-strewn path ahead of her. An arrow-shaped wooden sign pointed down it, with “SAHGITAW THIS WAY” carved into the face of it. Jaye sighed, stuffed her hands into her pockets, and began the walk.

Crickets chirped incessantly, grouped in many little choruses that echoed together through the woods. She felt the crunch of curled brown leaves beneath her flats, making the ground uneven and demanding short, certain steps. Only the moon could be her guide (a flashlight was risky, too risky), and so she kept her eyes straight ahead and let her ears take care of the surroundings. She was sweating more with each passing second and she felt the armpits of her thin khaki shirt begin to soak.

Together with the wet southern Virginia air and the swampy terrain, it left a taste in her mouth of long summer campout nights spent peeing behind bushes. Her fingers started to tingle. She walked faster.

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She stopped a moment later. She saw the outline of a building through the thin cracks between the trees. She followed the weeded curve of the road and poked her head around an old oak coated with vines. Through the moonlight, she made out a decrepit shed topped with a corrugated metal roof. She frowned at the sight. It was new.

The door, fashioned out of a sheet of plywood, rustled with life. Jaye ducked behind the tree, keeping her ears perked. She heard it creak open and someone stepped cautiously into the dirt. The familiar ka-cha of a pump-action shotgun followed. Her hand wandered to her hip. She gripped the holster and took a long breath. She submerged herself into her old mindset, fishing through her brain for what the old Jaye would do.

She thought of a long shooting range full of dead grass. She thought of huge wrinkled hands steadying her awkward grip. She thought of a single pigeon fluttering hopelessly into the sky, desperate to get away, desperate to find a friend. She thought of the shell, thick and red and fiery hot, rocketing out of the barrel and careening into the sky. She thought of Hickory’s laughter.

She heard the door creak back into place. Another cautious glance beyond the oak and then she was off, moving quietly but quickly. She’d be gone by the time they could aim. All the while her handgun’s holster burned against her. * Sahgitaw hadn’t changed in 20 years, at least not outwardly. Houses were made quickly and cheaply, with rubbery white paint and makeshift shingles on the roofs. It was more settlement than town, only a few blocks gridded out by a winding light-brown road. The road was bumpy, sometimes muddy, and wide enough for a single car, no more. It snaked through the lines between each building and then up a swampy slope, eventually leading out of the woods to a long-abandoned service road.

Jaye hadn’t entered through that side. It seemed safer at first glance, but then Hickory would have seen her coming for sure.

The long rectangular saloon at the center of it all was the one building where the path didn’t connect right up to the door. It was situated by itself, on a small grassy hill above the rest of the shabby houses. Double

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doors met patrons on each side, and tiny circular windows across the walls were left open to leak out cigarette smoke and the sounds of raucous laughter, shuffling feet. The sound was constant in the day and intermittent in the night. Sleeping schedules were never too consistent.

It was the type of town one had to know about in order to visit.

If an outsider was unlucky enough to stumble upon it, it was a coin flip whether or not they would be run out or shot on sight. The ones that lived there tended to be around for specific reasons and short time frames. Only a few kept their little encampments up year-round, sleeping and eating there even through the foggy winters and boiling summers. Hickory was one of those few. Sahgitaw had been his home for Jaye’s entire life. She knew it only through scattered summertime visits as a child. Her father would hold her close to his side, a hand glued to her shoulder as if he was terrified to lose track of her. She’d never known any details or what made it the way it was. It was only on her first visit after her father died, 14 years old with no hand on her shoulder, that she was made aware of the whole story.

She crept into town with the curving shade of the trees as her mask. It was a slow night at the saloon. The twangy melody of a Hank Williams song drifted out of the open windows, but no conversation accompanied it. If she focused she could make out the occasional clink of a glass. The bartender and a lone patron, most likely. Thank God for my luck, she thought.

Continue reading this story online at windhover.ncsu.edu

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Alicia Baldelli

Spite the Sun for Shining As I walked in the sun today, I recalled the days I’d spite the sun for shining. I could not bear happy faces, and I could not bear beautiful days. How dare the day so graphically contrast with how I felt? The endless cycle of the sun’s rays on their eightminute journey from their place in the solar system to my window’s place in the solar system— arriving only to mock me. The audacity! Days unimpeded by darkness, where the evidence was everywhere of the sun sustaining the plants and warming the cold fingers of humanity which I despised for existing.

It came like a slowly rising tide which consumed me just as the foam of ocean waves creep to unexpectedly soak one’s beach belongings. I only noticed the tide after it had taken me out to sea to drown me far away from those still on shore.

Yes Netflix, I’m still watching.

But whether it was “Breaking Bad,” Chopin’s nocturnes, or headlines of “Two Murdered Halifax Children” —there was nothing anymore. Nothing. The light switch?

Off. Only the blackness of my pupils could emulate what I faced. Who I faced. Sure, the blood of a fresh wound demands the attention of necessity, but the human psyche also has a cruel way of making its demands known.

“The world is dumb. I think it wouldn’t be so bad if a meteor came and wiped out humanity. Like, whoops. Restart button. Consciousness was a bad idea, abort mission.”

I ranted in blue bubbles.

But it was me I wanted to be destroyed, the consequence of a man losing meaning; I had strayed far from the light of the straight and narrow path. My gnawed off fingernails and I would gladly fantasize about tearing the curtains down with me, dismantling the very foundation of life with my own descent, even if there was never any fullness of satisfaction to be found in the destruction. Hunger returns without submission.…

And then, even the clouds and the rain lost their coddling comfort. The drops began irritating me with their driveling, dangling harp strings tapping an incoherent song on the windowsill.

1-1-3-2-1, 3-1-1-2-2....

Make up your damn mind about what rhythm you want to play! I keep losing count. Will you be a part of the order or not?

I felt irritation at anything moving humanity forward. At all of creation unfolding towards that distant dot on the horizon. A hate of self and God and anything residing on that chaseless border of present and future, now and next. I despised my existence and all its reminders, but especially the essential building blocks of sun and water.

But I have long since returned to where I belong, with a deepened sense of joy and gratitude.

The place where a falling leaf, my mother’s singing in the kitchen by the casserole, that stranger’s tale of woe in the post office line, that booger-nosed child’s scuffed boots, the flickering sunshine spilling in my window, and all that is in me as a woman capable of creating reside, not where the pestilent outlook and impulses of a calloused, suffering, and resentful soul once was.

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↑ For George Floyd - Black Lives Matter | Shaun Deardorff, graphite and charcoal → Washed Away | Natalie Emerson, ceramic

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↑ Seeing Me | Natalie Emerson, ceramic → Looking Out | Bhavana Veeravalli, digital media

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↑ Say Something | Bhavana Veeravalli, digital media → Abandoned | Dillon Patel, photography

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Dillion Patel was a volunteer for this volume. As per our Submission Policy volunteers are not permitted to take part in the review of their submission(s) to prevent subjectivity and bias. The acceptance and consideration of their piece(s) is decided by the editor-in-chief and managing editor based on a pre-established critique process.

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← Bone Study | Hope Ketola, acrylic ↓ Radical Change | Natalie Cotton, digital media

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Juhi Dattani was a volunteer for this volume. As per our Submission Policy volunteers are not permitted to take part in the review of their submission(s) to prevent subjectivity and bias. The acceptance and consideration of their piece(s) is decided by the editor-in-chief and managing editor based on a pre-established critique process.

↑ Dangerous Spill | Juhi Dattani and Ella Williams, photography ← Harvest | Olivia Bryant, digital media

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↑ Port of Hamburg | Lauren McLaughlin, photography → Inside! Outside! | Allison Fleury, mixed media

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↓ Independent Woman | Heike Schneider, collage → Hoof | Victoria Ralston, marionette (clay, acrylic, fabric, wood, string)

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↑ PRETTYBAG | Harrison Kratzer, digital collage → Morning in Guadalajara | Molly Niekamp, photography

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← Open Air | Kate Delahanty, photography ↓ Tuesday | Kate Delahanty, photography

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↑ Carolina Flowers No. 1 | Noah Baldwin, photography

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Charvi Pande

Hell and Autumn I watch the leaves fall Walking on a red and orange flame through a stony path And wonder if the trees are in pain As they shed their death to the ground.

Death suits you, I tell the trees.

It makes for a pretty view.

There is a rustling wind, And I watch one leaf in particular as it falls Swaying and twisting to some unknown tune, La danse macabre.

I wonder if I am a villain For admiring death.

And I wonder if someone will admire mine.

The thought is startling - cruel, sinister, ugly.

The sound of a passing train kills it, Scattering it with the falling leaves A silence interrupts between me and myself, As I continue walking, Through the red and orange flame, It stretches for a long,

long while,

I wonder if I am a villain

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Suddenly this is amusing to me.

I think of a Disney villain and laugh quietly.

The train sounds once more, And I look to the pretty dying leaves as they fall, And I continue walking, Through the beautiful red and orange flames.

Mike Utt

When there are no longer people If there was a place a place with people a place for all the people who are only themselves on paper I would be home

Kinsey Moritz

where i’m from i am from stethoscope and tincture; sutures and cross-stitch St. John’s Wort like moonshine under my mother’s tongue and all five of ours “thank you for the food lord amen” my cheeks already full of pickled beets and cow heart after the younger ones had their fill i’m from coal smudged faces, oil-stained hands, and sawdust basement showers thrice a (lucky) week to smell of lye and lard and lemongrass again i’m from dinners ‘round the school table dishes each night to a scratched CD promise of banjos and satellites seven pairs of worn-in boots; but we went barefoot anyway except Sundays when we all hid our scabbed knees and i tried to hide myself

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Kali Fillhart

The straight chick I had a crush on in high school has a girlfriend now

You and her on the beach skinny And aesthetic I wish the Instagram post Didn’t bother me We didn’t talk we didn’t share secrets Seashells or inside jokes or seaweed kisses No flirting and floating on toxins But I dreamed about you blushing sunburn as we found ourselves stranded on a closet island where our boyfriends couldn’t find us You the moon pulling me the ocean by the jean pockets I imagined you licking the sea salt from my tattoos hands in shallows sand soft breathing waves’ rhythmic sshhhh lulling us silent We both fucked too many straight dudes for this shit for our paths to cross again in a picture of your tangible love on the hips 38 | Windhover 2021

of some other current

Laura Mooney

Fenrir

A snake that cannot shed its skin will be skinned the wolf who runs with sheep must be slain.

Tonight, like all that come before it I dream of you again It has been said that fate is woven by unskilled hands that make mistakes As I unravel your fate is wrought, it was always going to be this way This time I dream of ancient acts Sisyphean fixation, my lust and bane Inevitable as night stalks day— to expunge the sun is to know my pain You had it coming.

Jules Millward

Dependency To awaken so softly Like the cream in your coffee The rubbing of eyes and forging of ties Signal sip-tea sighs and sugary lies Order the tall, the short, and the grand It seems beans and leaves are the becomings of man Caffeinated confessions, cajoled at cafés Beckoning blackouts, bring forth the day

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Alexandra Gaines

Reynard and the Ravens Behind the Thrift Store The modern day Reynard picks his black snout through the lost and abandoned goods.

Something behind the thrift store has caught the fox’s curious mind.

He has distracted the party of like-minded ravens: sharers of his thrifting hobby.

Done by a tossed piece of foil into the antique interested group.

A treasury of old wares: pocket watches that no longer tick, water-logged paperbacks and carefully stitched old quilts all collect under his paws.

He chooses a scrap of fabric periwinkle blue; carries it away.

If one were to see the flash of grandmother’s quilts entwined in his den, Or in the nest of the Mother Raven, where trinkets and forgotten jewelry collect where her children sleep, would they recognize them?

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Laura Mooney

Rage as a Forest; Resilience as an Ecosystem When we burn it all down, You will be the first sapling to crack the crusted shell of blackened earth.

When the rain rushes to meet our outstretched hands, You will be the vine curving skyward to imbibe from its nimbus bosom.

When our Mother Earth is young again, You will be the redwood tree and by my hands or my daughters’ never again shall your towering limbs be felled.

My Sister, there are worlds within You that man can never touch, never till.

This land is boundless and wild and tender.

For Our rage is a forest, teeming with life and promise, aching for expansion.

For Our resilience is an ecosystem, mutual aid and symbiosis, self-sustenance and rebirth.

As we roll into position and begin again, I hear a sparrow song by the light of day and know it to be true.

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Ella Williams

a change of feeling

Jules Millward

Nixus My lips are turning blue you see but my lungs they must be red They are burning, burning sirens fee and I am losing most my head Someone come press down on me I’m fighting with the shock Release this air and set me free don’t let me rise up to the rocks Decompression leave me be my eardrums pulse and shred This pressure changed too rapidly too soon this disrupt spreads My skin must be dark blue by now surely speckled with debris If only you could see beneath this neo-livery I’ve used my air all in the depths it goes faster there than upper sea This surface force must accept my plummet plea or buoyancy It seems I’ve got the bends again my knuckles turning white It seems I’ve got the bends again so I’ll sink with all my might

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this grand wool glove tucked away in a vintage green drawer four months of sticky hands, blue eyes behind permanent sunglasses the summer of peeling oranges and pulling their stuck fibers from teeth. a guilty summer of hair matted to her forehead after long car rides with no AC. such patience to grab this warm relief! the frenzied storm outside ignorant to chapped hands, red and just as angry as the uproar thrashing against her yellow picket fence. the perimeter of a quiet place where you can scream how you love. how you hate. how you feel everything, all at once. parallel to the frostbite replacing sunburn; a different heartbreak that stings the same. inside, a tender chill weaves silently through conversation while shiny specks sleep softly on the windowsill. evidence of our new climate a pronounced hello to the faithful gloves.

Allison Fleury

newton’s third law i find myself on hillsborough moving myself forward and back swinging from opposite sides of the street in and out and back and all the same i’ve just bought myself a coffee and smugly grinned he shuffles in “dude they fired my ass!” glances around the room “fired on my day off! again! and for what!? i was sober!” sighs and laughs calls for a coffee on the house and as far as i know the baristas didn’t let it reach him

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Holly Brantley

lunch lady the dryer sheets i buy, smell like the lunch ladies crooning:

baby

over roaring ovens, and clattering pots and metal pans steaming with rancid food. they watched us, gave us our milk, whispering:

make sure you eat it all, baby because how lucky we were to have the privilege of ingesting bagged strawberry milk at ten-thirty in the morning.

they empowered us all, my hesitant nods earning:

speak up now, baby, let us hear you

as anything worth saying is worth saying loudly, because your words are precious and the only thing you ever truly own. and in return i grow up before their eyes, walking down the procession for the last time, they smile: all grown up now, baby? don’t cry, baby. we’ll still be here. it’s you that’s leaving. tears salt the overcooked chicken, glistening on my plastic wrapped cookie, when i realize that leaving is the only thing worse than staying.

44 | Windhover 2021

Thomas Irene Long

Curses A necklace of curses between my shoulder blades sharp lungs secular cages for strained atmosphere in the community of the ecstatics each speaking to his own God leaving the garden of suicides and returned to the apartment of vases and inkstands of the lady poet

Volume LV | 45

LISTEN ONLINE windhover.bandcamp.com

HEATHER BY CONAN GRAY (FUSION COVER) Chirag Jagdish Gunjal

PAUSE Kris Noël x Alcott

46 | Windhover 2021

WHITE FLAG Kris Noël x Phaino

STEALING STONES Benjamin Davis

Volume LV | 47

WATCH ONLINE www.vimeo.com/windhover

THIS WAS LIFE Anna Lee

DISSONANCE MJ Sanqui

48 | Windhover 2021

SCOOT Kathryn Mullis

WE’LL ALWAYS BE Kinsey Moritz

THE TOYMAKER Austin Simons

Prompt Challenge Winner: Empowering Artists with the Gregg Museum of Art & Design Volume LV | 49