The North Branch Literary and Fine Arts Journal

THE NORTH BRANCH Literary and Fine Arts Journal spring 2016

Cover Art: Borders

Zoe Larson Mixed Media

The North Branch Literary and Fine Arts Journal •••

Spring 2016

North Park University

Letter from the Editors ••• Here you will find poetry from the 2016 North Branch Literary and Fine Arts Journal editorial staff, supplemented by work from other North Park University students to make it look less conspicuous. There is also some prose and artwork, because we did not attempt either of those things.

We hope you enjoy what is bound to these pages.

This was great, This was fun.

Next year there’ll be another one.

2016 Staff Senior Editor Stephanie Wirkus Managing Editor Kelsey Wilp Junior Editor Jonathan Love Graphic Design Consultant

Zoe Larson

Faculty Adviser

Dr. Kristy Odelius

Table of Contents ••• Jonathan Love Perhaps It’s the Mulch in the 01

Heat of the Sun Isaac Bauer Quiddity of a Father 02 Kayla Faust Still Waters 03 Lillian Hinshaw The 23rd Time 04 Kelsey Wilp Low Maintenance Lady 05 Jacob T. Howell ph3 06 Noah Grammer La Femme 07 Rachel Little To Bite a Snake 08 Brooke Turner 3 Poems 09 Gabe Johnson The Bellows 11 Kelsey Stevens Off Season 12 Cortney Tomczak Family Matters 13 Keir Quackenbush Pit-stop 15 Nathan Godfrey Measured response 16 Stephanie Wirkus Bridge 17 Kelsey Wilp Ameise Junge 18 Emina Karic Close To Heart 19 Nathan Godfrey Abbey Glim 20 Hayley Sheaff The Light 21 Kelsey Stevens Rush 22 Caleb Jack McCoy Simple Poem 23 Cortney Tomczak Brick House 24 Jonathan Love to Dad 25 Sam Wyand This 26 Acknowledgements 27

Perhaps It’s the Mulch in the Heat of the Sun

Jonathan Love

but At once I am Hovering over freshly baked plasticand burn my ass,

But my time is kept by bright bellsThe clanging of metal, distant shrieks, Tall red beams and lines of dumb ducklings.

It begins with a voice And ends with a sliding slam of a Silver Chrysler door.

Sustained by light thunder of feet, pounding, Packing dust in the seams of jeans My mother bought me from Kohl’s last week.

Or scream that I’m it and slap some chubby bully kid and run like the cool wind, Thank gosh I am quick, Impress Kylie with my Kickball Kick.

Or cry on the swingsthe playground’s gallows, When I learn she is moving come the fall.

Leaves roll in waves dragged across pavement.

Queens of the universe speed by, late for class in some far off world where there is no recess.

Rising Beyond miles of suburban roofs, swallowing every moment of your life that sits sighing, smiling.

01

Quiddity of a Father Isaac Bauer An aging Stakhavoite Calloused and cracked granite flesh With softness underset.

Cymotirchus.

Blackened copper wire strung as hair Barbasol, blood, astringent Charcoal perfume.

Winning a thin interstice between victory and defeat The tenuous thagomizer of a laborious life.

Crush, cut, bark, pine dust everywhere, rend, open, and then The only dream a conferred manumission For me. whispered fire and grip strength Rembrandt could not have rendered it better in acrylic Than the symphony of audible snores Rising from the living room sofa.

02

Built.

Still Waters

Kayla Faust Charcoal Drawing

03

The 23rd Time Lillian Hinshaw

I remember him when he really liked rocks and reptiles and weird leaves. He was always wearing a blue shirt and blue shorts with holes through the toes of his blue sneakers.

I wanted to be his best friend so I started walking home with him from the bus. He would chase the stray dogs away and wait for me at the corner before I got there. I would run right past him, daring him to catch me, laughing when he did. Now I see him, in his V-necks and his stupid skinny jeans, no longer an other. He is always wearing blood shot eyes and I want to be his best friend, so I listen to him when talks about dying and follow him to make sure he doesn’t. For five years I’ve been following him, entranced by the fact that I can look straight into his soul and still find desolation. I am convinced that I’m actually just looking in the wrong place, you know? Like maybe the depths of him are just in a different spot than the rest of us. Every time he wants to go someplace, I always say yes, thinking that this time will be different and this time I’ll crack the code and this time he won’t steal anything. All I ever get from him is calculated and strategic, numbers and facts, all yes or no and black and white which pisses me off because I live so consistently in the gray space. This night we climbed, because that’s what he wanted to do. I stepped into the pocket his hands made as he hoisted me to up to the roof of the post office. A federal offense probably. As I folded my arms behind my head to lay down, I pictured him five years ago, standing tall in my front yard, his blond hair smiling in the sun with a 4-foot snake held high in the air. He was smiling and proud and in awe that he got it out of our bush. And laughing at the terror painted on my mother’s face until the snake crapped out a whole frog in a mess of yellow goo onto the front of his shirt. I was rolling in the dirt breathless and teary while he was asking me to hose him off. I pointed the hose at his face and laughed harder. I like to keep him there, when he liked reptiles and colored rocks and stood in my yard covered in shit, when life was streaked all across his front. But then I hear him say into the cool of the roof below us, “Would you have sex with me?” and I have to say, “Nope” for the 23rd time as my memories are silenced I begin to forget.

04

Low Maintenance Lady Kelsey Wilp Don’t leave your bed until the sun has burned a hole in the sky.

Your eyes should crack open like eggshells.

Hardboiled.

Pigeons have taken to your hair. An adequate home, unwashed and versatile.

Wisps and strands are stiffened with shit and adorned with loose feathers like a crown.

The birds have also taken to your mouth (at night you sleep with it wide open) Each yawn is a deranged chorus of tweets and whistles.

You pluck a robin’s egg from out behind your bottom right molar, and cradle it on your tongue.

Once an ugly duckling, now a harpy ready to leave your perch.

Spread your arms like the winged creatures that infest you and cast a long shadow on the pavement below.

The early bird can keep its worm, you feast on finer prey.

05

No.27@6AM

[Punk Dancing for Self-Defense]

>be me [an unspecified amount of time before Drake hit us with the hotline] >count the cars caught by the red light cams on Montrose and Western >lose count >be me >an unstable acoustic guitar string, >Connor and her watch me,

pH3

by Jacob T. Howell

while tripping acid in Java Haus

>be something else

Not Another Coverletter

[Chapter 15, Verses 3-4]

[REDACTED] to a picture of [REDACTED] in a blue Beastie Boys shirt, or pretending like [REDACTED] is a relevant form of [REDACTED].

Just another mid-summer millennial bleeding on the page; for context, my collaborator [JEREMIAH] explains…

THREE CONTEMPORARY LESSONS IN CLASSICAL WEST-COAST WORSHIP: —a suggestively confiscated $1,700 Chase QuickPay —Backstreet Freestyle or Love Again (Akinyele Back), —one Last Chance to Lose [MY] Car Keys

[REDACTED] hashtags [PRAYPACIFIC] I anatomically sense something different.

carmen twice, then on argyle at long last, a second burgh bath, but because everyone’s so fascinated with the façade I put on yet another trash bag It sounds like my student loans, on the 4th floor or all those time we dressed up has a mental breakdown. my addictions in leather;

whatever

06

and

La Femme

Noah Grammer Canon 18-55mm f3.5/5.6 IS STM Lens

07

To Bite a Snake Rachel Little There is nothing left in me to give you.

Where a well was once watered, now wrought.

I was pressed and poured out all that was within me but now, now I am pressured, parched yet you come back for more.

Your clean cut keeps me but nothing cures the wound of a dry bone.

Serene silence you meet me, brash beatings you leave me but I never asked you to be here.

To call it quits is not an option you give me so I silently submit to the whipping grip and weep all the pain on my feet hoping it would be a trace of the grounds I have walked.

You hate me.

Your pseudo sensuality rips through the chords of my soul and I believe you every time.

I walk by your side and I find comfort in the pain, but I never knew liberation was going to come cleanly with my own two hands.

Your promises of protection and fervor are futile and I’m freed from your stench of deceit.

I hate you.

No more do I walk with you, no more do I need you, no more do I ask your healing hand to deliver me into the pit.

You are the pit and your home is despair.

Your days are few and you share your disgrace with the nations.

But I look at my face and I see the grace of salvation.

You didn’t chose that. You and a quarter walked so I don’t choose you.

I chose Him. I choose Him. Every day, over and over again.

I choose Him.

08

3 Poems Brooke Turner

She walked like a tree falling, limbs rotted She, a fire eater with wood chip teeth that smoldered as She spoke bait -spilling ash into the lungs of all who listened until She eeny, meeny, miny’d her love into each of your tree rings She, a windmill suturing your senses so that your glass heart sounds like snow melting when it beats

••• you are a wrap around porch beckoning stillness i swallow a star and return to your company with hopes of stalling time by prolonging the light

•••

09

Sometimes: forgiveness is murder the evergreens staple your dreams to its grain the forest clips its wings its beaks are blunt you, trapped between gods, breathe as tightly as harmattan eyelashes stillborn love rock-paper-scissors itself into avalanche beauty Somewhere: God is using your bones as maypoles wrapping them in ribbon, suturing wounds deeper than sky you celebrate in the speakeasy between wisdom’s shoulder blades Somehow: where the spinal chord of the alphabet bends your memories become water colors and Grace makes you buoyant

10

The Bellows Gabe Johnson The Bellows were harsh and dry And in unsteady brick, it lay beneath the ground And I, a weary traveler, was burdened by a cause I could not follow So I walked the path of shadows, though the clear blue sky loomed above my head I all but passed a man in ragged cloak, crouched beneath the stones He feebly grabbed my leg and asked me for the way to Tiernee But all the while I knew it not For when my cause was put to shame, I laid it all to silence He asked me if I lost my way, to find my path in ruins To this I gave no reply Then he showed me the cuts on his leg and said, “The way- it is not mine, but the way is true, the way is clear, the way is evermore” I walked along my way, thinking nothing of it but old man’s folly But my mind soon came to wonder how a man could sit so still in the silent chaos of the Bellows And the burdens of my mind were put to light once more Between the stones and crumbling brick, I took the path that none would take To measure what was in me And the hollow wind brushed against the stones The pale orange light was rising in the sky as I dared to lift my head And in the song of somber wind, I heard a whisper in my ear That said, “The way- it is not yours, for all is done” And then I heard the Horn of Glory- sounding through The Bellows

11

Off Season

Kelsey Stevens Canon 5D MarkIII 35/1.4L Lens

12

Family Matters Cortney Tomczak The kitchen sink is leaking And mom and dad are working late Childish fingers can make Mac and cheese But they can’t fix hearts when they break Some money went missing and the hospital bills weren’t paid and I need new shoes and you’d think that it might be a good time to check her bedside table But instead we prayed for supper And we prayed for sleep And we used the chipped china and the mismatch silverware and we didn’t complain I was the Truman show I watched bagged lunches and kisses goodbye in 3D We believed in love and always remembered that anything that hurts can be washed away with a glass of ice cold water with a lemon in it Our sofa has a stain on it but it’s so comfy it’s easy to forget Big kid strides into sweaty palms and curious mistakes Remember that time the record player serenaded you and I with pineapple in our mugs I read a lot and I learned a lot and I wandered far from the tree Traffic called me Wonderland smells bad sometimes and you can’t ever forget to turn off the coffee pot Once you break the fourth wall it stays in place for a moment Things still look pretty and people still laugh at your bad jokes After while the cracks start to show After while there’s not any cash in your savings Haven’t called in two weeks Come Christmas there’s an empty spot at the dinner table No one to take pictures of you when you open your presents No one to sing you to sleep

13

My parents aren’t the cover of the magazine They’re just the people in the middle in the background of an ad for toothpaste Funny how the picture tears when your brain picks up speed We aren’t the people on the billboard We’re the people on the street Sometimes they don’t even look at us, sometimes they knock us out of place A hand is often said to be for holding and a punch offers a bigger blow when fingers are intertwined Calling someone a hypocrite makes you just that Breaking pieces off of someone else and pasting them to yourself still makes you ugly Still makes you broken The most beautiful thing I ever saw was the day she came home and put her crying head in my lap I said “You’re so beautiful, sometimes I forget.”

And my dad fixed the leak in the sink And I handed him the wrench And she was so sorry And we ate with mismatch silverware Sure smiles are usually slightly yellow And there’s a scar on the upper right hand corner of my forehead But after it storms there’s new flowers in the bed And still I think she’s beautiful Even though sometimes I forget

14

Pit-stop Keir Quackenbush Pit-stop poetry scrawled lawlessly on walls offering condoms of three varieties

This interstate pull-off is far cry from protestant piety You’re sitting for a moment in a land where needles poke

And melanoma smoke stacks belch

And gas is two sixty-five a gallon

Slick-back attendant sits between smoke breaks Shirking no responsibility he never had the opportunity to take Cash or debit, eyeing hands in pockets

He’ll lock up later, long after the sun dries up

In a lean-to outside of ‘town’ the sloped roof pushes water downhill Towards out-of-towners scrambling up leafed hillsides Hashtagging words like ‘adventure’ and ‘Fall’ as their faces glow Their species finds release in the drive by, Drive through, the stop-in petting zoo

Lily escapes from home, bee-lining to the gas station Where her sweet-tooth seduction awaits She skips past you as you open the door to leave The place she calls home

15

Measured response Nathan Godfrey I don’t remember quite when you became a mushroom, sometime between Easter and Christmas I reckon.

I’m not sure you slipped, or just kept your balance far longer than anyone thought You weren’t always like that I think you just got lonely.

That’s what happens when people get lonely.

They turn into mushrooms.

We all have weaknesses, but yours and mine, they have claws and teeth plus a rather terrifying grin.

I’ve learned not to look them in the eye.

Another day another painting hung where space should be.

You never could hold on to what was important Not that I hold it against you I just learned to measure my expectations in sideways glares and choking hazards.

Gram, I’m learning we can measure our sanity by how much of the wall stays uncovered.

If I’m lucky mine will stay visible longer than yours did.

16

Bridge Stephanie Wirkus I Sight before speak, words entwined in the subconscious depths of swallows and broken-winged creatures; Things fall—fell—maybe before one realized. The unfortunate disregard of ink-lined pages bound to sturdy spines.

Douse them in gasoline and watch the flames massage the sky; II Beeswax, shoe-tying, blithe hours after next— Crescent branches tidied up and made whole again.

Bars of soap; twine-strung pictures rest against the walls of my bedroom, Adorned with delicate tacks to take the edge off.

III Disconnect me from you; There is a peculiar ending to every long car ride and trip to the grocery store.

You’ll have to double-back to make sure I locked the door; I get so careless, You know?

That could account for why we’re having this conversation: Reading between the lines of swollen pauses and brief tangents— We are thriving in discomfort; looking through yellowed newspaper in search of some obscure word, An idea about the end of the world. I’ll take you down to my favorite spot at the lake.

“Where is it?”

I can only tell you that I’ve been there and know the way; I can’t ascribe language to that which I already know.

Sight before speak.

17

Ameise Junge Kelsey Wilp He has the all influence of a puny ant, but he conquered the colony.

“Under New Management” reads the sign he etched into the interior of my skull.

He leans back in his poached throne with a smug air of inhabitance and plans to stay for awhile.

Perhaps he’s an amateur entomologist.

Too many pins sticking out of one already stuck exoskeleton. He was once a child who pinned and probed and pricked an insect, long lifeless.

But with him as the ant, I can lobotomize myself.

Clear out his cranium kingdom and focus the sun into a compact dot through a magnifying glass onto his abdomen.

I’ll scald him on the sidewalk until he scuttles away to hide amongst the weeds in the darkest recesses of my garden.

18

Close To Heart Emina Karic Once I called you my home, Full of safe havens At the end of each zigzag road.

Sure, you are not Rome, With history or romance, You are much more.

I lust to come back to you, For you who created my childhood, And shaped my mind.

I lust for your wet roads, And residents Who forget how to drive while you cry.

I lust for your smell Of evergreens, Countryside sunsets, And bonfires along the Columbia.

Once I called you my home, And always you’ll be.

19

Abbey Glim Nathan Godfrey • • • •

In winter dead, the stones Stave off the ice.

Observing snow, cautious In its tentative fall.

• • • •

On the wick Flame flicks and sways Dancing in defiance of Ever encroaching shadow.

• • • •

A solitary robe, a man Treads cold stone floor.

He keeps the books.

Maybe they keep him.

• • • •

He stands guard over A ruin which will Outlast him for three Thousand years to come.

• • • •

His only companion, The dancer clad in wax.

To meet her swaying hips Could sear him to the bone.

• • • •

While corridors are steadily Reclaimed by chill The same candle that burns him Delivers him light

20

The Light Hayley Sheaff The light is fading catch it quick Slip it into the drink of a young girl who needs it Paint it on your finger tips Smudge it on your cheekbones Know that you are not in this alone Let your breath fall like raindrops on a Tuesday afternoon You are not you You are the compilation of decades of dreamers just trying to matter- just trying to take up space You are your Mama’s artwork, Daddy’s best catch You are the exhale of a Monday morning, a constant “Here we go again” The light is fading tame it quick Whisper it into existence Name it with your lips Write it into your daily routine right after your brush your teeth The flicker of candlelight on a Friday night wrapped up in sheets You are the music moving the story The dramatic pause and the cascading conclusion You are the very pulse of movement The light is fading hold it quick Stitch the warmth into the lines on your palms You’ll need it when the gray clouds come covering you from horizon to horizon You are the boldness of sun daring to rise and You are salt water stinging eyes You are a mess and you’re still here The ribcage in your chest more capable than you thought of holding up your heavy heart The light is fading find it quick

21

Rush

Kelsey Stevens Canon 5D MarkIII 35/1.4L Lens

22

Simple Poem Caleb Jack McCoy Sorting through my days & sifting the sordid hours, I’ve found none as brilliant warm & bright as those spent with you.

23

Brick House Cortney Tomczak Let the dead bury the dead he said But what if I am the one who’s dying Frantic rumbly world needs more needs betterness needs everything you can give it plus a little extra Take take take until the last breath is the last day and the sun is a glare rather than a warmth and you had just enough strength to walk through your front door I know that it hurts I saw when it burnt like cigarette straight to the leg hair pushed down to the muscle deep into my bones I caught on fire No one cared to notice Oh we burned in the background we melted like Styrofoam we crippled down to ashes and still she said Get down nose deep in the dirt you are I screamed I wailed I twisted from the flames And still no one came Princess in a tower The dragon ate me whole Lost at sea The sharks chewed my bones And as the house went up in orange spikes the heat breaking glass I reached through the windows But the people walked past Shouts without sound are shots to the legs You’ll live but at what cost Where’s the line drawn in overflowing stumbliness to stretch farther than you can reach?

My voice was lost in the blender I picked up bricks to build up my burned to the ground house Tired and heavy I carried load after load to the ears on the outside Confused and unsure I pleaded hurt eyes swamped with slaps to my worth Bruised shoulders elbows knees I scratched at open wounds Until knelt to the cement He peeled me off the pavement For my burden is easy and my yoke is light We put the brick in the closet We brushed off the concrete And we left the ruins to rest in their ashes The biggest lie they’ll ever tell you is a broken heart makes you small The truth is share your pieces and make something more than whole

24

to Dad Jonathan Love Bent and afraid of you On our porch.

But you Slowed your worn voice, Void and vacant to those that passed.

New For me, eyes mild, hands still.

The years we rested for.

25

This Sam Wyand Page is dedicated to stillborn ideas.

Dead end plans.

Broken dreams with twisted, stunted spines.

These words are filled with chloroform.

They use ridged angles stacked on one another, Constructed to manufacture nourishing substances.

They are doomed to be garden pests, My precious seed spread across an 8.5x11 lawn Like so many milk thistle and dandelions.

Critical blades will mow them down.

Malicious poison will brown their leaves.

Noxious rains will make their roots barren.

My weeds will grow, spread, and die, And for every failure Three new words will rise.

May I find the correct genetic sequence, So that my words are resistant And yield wretched, bitter fruit.

26

Acknowledgments •••

Dr. Liza Ann Acosta Dean Charles Peterson Jorunn Fleck Scheiderich Dr. Kelly VanderBrug

27

NOTES

NOTES