The North Branch Literary and Fine Arts Journal | Spring 2017

Cover Art: Olga and Susan Discuss the Importance of Green Bean Casserole Tatum Hendrickson

The North Branch Literary and Fine Arts Journal spring 2017

North Park University

Letter from the Editors Dear Reader, The North Branch was established in the 1930’s (originally titled Pegasus, lol), reestablished in 2014, and has been kickass since forever. It has been exciting to watch it grow into this latest edition, the last we senior editors will have the pleasure of working on. We look forward to seeing what the future of our kickass journal holds.

These pages carry the work of our very own finely tuned writers and brilliant artists. We are eager to present their work to you in this year’s edition of The North Branch. Let the work within surprise and delight you, as it has undoubtedly delighted us.

Senior Editor Senior Lit Editor Senior Art Editor Faculty Adviser

Kelsey Wilp Jonathan Love Zoe Larson Dr. Kristy Odelius

2016-2017 Staff Jorie Dybcio Madeline Gombis Tatum Hendrickson Lillian Hinshaw Amanda Huck Emma Johnson Michael LeFevre

Charlotte C. Manning Anna Murphy Chloe M. Park Kelsey Stevens Clarissa R. Sutton Yaphet

Table of Contents Jonathan Love Madeline Gombis Madeline Staurseth Anna Sardar Bennett Csukor Zoe Larson Charlotte C. Manning Yaphet Madeline Gombis Kelsey Wilp Agnes Hermansson Michael Ronnett Chloe M. Park Lillian Hinshaw Frank Roberts Sarah Kostelny Emina Karić Tatum Hendrickson Mark Walters Dariel J. Chaidez Clarissa R. Sutton Charlotte C. Manning Ethan Mershon Anna Murphy Mia Larson

Ways On the Way Up to Work at Chili’s in Evanston Tall Forts Small Forts Half-Wanty, Half-God Addicted The Island To Reside Here Only in the trees The First of February I Can Relate To High School Football Temporary City Frozen Chicago Destined for Dust Blades Kayaking Alone in the Wild Where Our Words Come From Yellow All Things Grow afternoon naps 37 N Garden Ave these lines Little Man The red leaf I keep in Romans Cachetada Libre Leading the People

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Table of Contents Keir Quackenbush Noah Grammer Noah Grammer Stephanie Wirkus Gabe Johnson Mia Larson Bennett Csukor Jacob Bretz Erika Dwight Christopher R. Edwards Samuel Bruns Mallory Ortmann Madeline Staurseth Charlotte C. Manning Jacob T. Howell Madeline Gombis Clarissa R. Sutton Ashley Faith Ferrer Corey Anderson Riley Ott Kelsey Wilp Tatum Hendrickson Frank Roberts Isaac Bauer Emma Johnson

Pickpocket Summer Old friend Hunting Hour The Courtroom is Empty Napoleon Crossing the Neapolitan Meteor Shower THE DEAD ALSO RISE Ephemeral Darwin’s Theory of Revolution A Night Out With Friends, Alone A Poem About Anger Untitled 1 post-being alone.

Alternative Romances.docx It is what it is.

Seasonal Affects Fox Poem Death and Life Never Say Die More Brain Juice i’m just a centaur girl in a mac and cheese world (S)he/it Statistics my love is tomorrow and yesterday

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Table of Contents Jonathan Love Riley Ott Lauren DeVries Bennett Csukor Emina Karić Kelsey Stevens Lillian Hinshaw Anna Murphy Gabe Johnson Jessica Sardar Madeline Gombis Caleb Laurence Nelson Liam Travers Stephanie Wirkus Annika Nyquist Rebecca Conner Jeanette Habash Sarah Kostelny Jeanette Habash Jonathan Love Charlotte C. Manning Kelsey Wilp Bennet Csukor Zoe Larson Acknowledgements

Garden Devils Run Mother Fucker Look Me in the Eyes Again Take Five This Is Just to Wake Up...

A Few Words That One Red Thing This weekend Summer Poem Advice from Ms. Boogie On Spaces Untitled The Exhibit Rhapsody Landscape 01 Fig 12.15 Untitled My Mother’s Eyes Dead Sea /Dead Sea Rock From Life Neutral Buoyancy Eight Cavities Heavy Makes Your Heart Hurt Insomnia Yeezus Walks With Me

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Ways

Jonathan Love

Pings from a porch sinking Saturday into sleep, into the rhythmic speaking across the wooden bay, marking the time it takes the way the heart swells, the indistinguishable busted language of bed sheets.

It is a ripple like love, rings reaching across grassabout the way a dog wanders, circling up some strategy but then returning home.

You are a breath, It is not even May yet.

1

On the Way Up to Work at Chili’s in Evanston Madeline Gombis I saw you sitting four seats over and across from me this past Sunday on the northbound Red Line train. You looked tired. I was wearing a big, grey coat, bright blue mittens, And I was wearing the same dirty shoes I have been for weeks.

I have habit of that, wearing the same shoes.

Of all the things that change in life, I can count on this one constant.

I like regularity, and I like to be caffeinated from morning til night.

That may be the reason I shake when I write.

There’s a coffee shop on Emerson Avenue that knows me by name now, and sometimes I get nervous that maybe they think I’m strange for planting myself there thrice a week.

Everyone seems to live such romantic lives, and I sure do try.

If I were classically beautiful, I would like to be wooed old-fashioned-like. I have a thing for carriage rides and candlelight--courting, even.

You got off at Loyola, and I wondered what was so romantic about a Catholic lifestyle, but, Hell, what’s romantic about some grey-coat, blue-hand bitch thinking at you from the corners of her eyes?

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Tall Forts Small Forts Madeline Staurseth

Half-Wanty, Half-God Anna Sardar

We’re sitting on a tall porch that is not our own. A stranger’s home is open, but its intimacy is hard to catch when you find yourself an intruder. We’ve become the confusing name of guest and nuisance.

You look at me with this kindness I can’t muster, but you aren’t waiting for the return. You give unapologetically and I beam at the child who can fill these exhausted spaces with that naked love expression.

“It’s been a long day, Zaya.”

“The longest.” He breathes out through his smile and gives me a curious expression.

“You okay, sis?”

“Sometimes.” I stretch out my hands and he returns the gesture with a bear crawl towards the swinging couch. He burrows heavy in my lap and I hold with aching love. This gift is not like the others. “I think I’m getting tired of people.”

He laughs playfully and brushes my shoulder with his growing hands.

“You miss too much.” I blink at his accidental knowing.

“Always.” I grin and kiss his furry head, soft gosling brother who never stops caring.

“I think I know why I’m always tired.” He perks his ears while curling closer to my chest, a ball of affection. “The more people I meet, the lonelier I get. There are too many absences, too many missings than I’m comfortable with.”

He pauses at this and looks up at me, all playfulness gone. I can see his thoughts swell in that warm brown and I wait. “I think…” He sits up and holds my shoulder for balance. I memorize his cheeks, this open-mouthed expression of hard contemplation without pretense.

“Yes?” I kiss his furrowed brow and he meets my soft gaze with a look I cannot comprehend.

Baby brother breath speaks half-wanty, half-God. He is my love teacher, this school of loud and forgiveness. He whispers my heart when I forget. Then that gentle tumble of truth pours from fresh lips, “We need everyone in our lives every single day. At least that’s what’s supposed to happen.” I forget he was born last and doesn’t wear that amnesia yet.

I bundle his body close and speak quietly into an ear, “Thank you for being my proximity, Zays.” He grins confusion and leaps from the swing – a whirl needless of detection.

4

Addicted Bennett Csukor There were six days when I was a child that I was not a girl, but an anchor and the family room floor a wave, when the sun’s rays were gray and the foundation’s cracks pooled with rain, threatening to drown us though only inches deep.

An afternoon in the garden, wrist-deep in earth and everything that the child wrenched to the surface. Fluorescent rain formed radioactive puddles that no anchor could sink into. The glow became gray and mama rose; I raised my hand to wave goodbye—she could not see. A wave of nausea struck her gut, pulling her deep inside herself. The drip drip of chemicals, gray and invisible, mingling with her blood. “Child, fetch me some water.” Perhaps an anchor to life; I wandered and filled her cup with the rain.

5

Seventeen. She smashed windows and hearts like rain against a mountain, bringing mud and rock down in wave after bone-crushing wave. He was her anchor dragging her into his yellow jaws and deep, deeper still into locked bathrooms and dark alleys. Child bearing never looked so good, nor lonely, nor gray.

The lens through which she viewed the sky was gray and clouded by cocaine and cardiac scars and cold rain because she loved what only she and God could: a child, of sorts, whose children she bore through fire and wave.

Be breathed pregnant lies which buried themselves deep in her amnion, birthing his promised marriage-anchor.

For a millennium last year I was an anchor— as the myriad blues of the sea turned gray.

Neither St. Louis nor Orlando could raze her deep need for his paper-thin protection. Maybe rain would wash his chains from her: we’d wave from our Chevy, I’d forget I’m his child.

There was never an anchor that went unclimbed by a child, no matter how gray the sky or tumultuous the wave; in the depths of the deep one isn’t bothered by the rain.

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The Island Zoe Larson

To Reside Here

Charlotte C. Manning

Give me goose bumps to reside here, To sleep and wake near the pond Bring me a bag to carry wool and gather rest,

wool and rest, wool and rest.

Hollow me out; leave my heart to reside here.

I yearn to walk, for soles do carry far On roads that stretch till’ Monday,

stretch till’ monday, stretch till’ monday.

Catch me the dreams I need to reside here.

Silent and scared is this friend of mine called night Provoking images of deep blue and white,

deep blue and white, deep blue and white.

Lead me, please, I long to reside here.

Cradle my head and spin me towards the light, Forget what I said of my friend called night I know there’s a clearing, where trees long ago, Tied comets to an empty people And sent them away to twinkle and grow,

twinkle and grow, twinkle and grow.

Dig me a hole of a home, A pocket, a place to reside here Under a canopy made of garment Woven by women who prayed for me,

prayed for me, prayed for me.

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Yaphet

The First of February Madeline Gombis On February First, I ate an apple and felt comfort in the crunch, and I sat in the cold front room, feeling sorry for myself and yet warm, toes curled and bones soft.

Sunlight graces the pavement with a ballet, steps soft and light, worthy of an ovation, refined yet roaring. It is so welcome here; the cold front room settles into itself.

How good it is to be here, how grand in city, egregious and filthy. How good to be here and want to be anywhere else. Anywhere else.

Anywhere else.

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I Can Relate To High School Football Kelsey Wilp I’m trying not to self-deprecate as much, but I feel like a piece of shit.

I wanna wring my mind out like a sweaty locker room towel.

I’d grab those wrinkly brain folds and squeeze the gross piss-colored juice out of them.

It’d slither down the tiles of the communal shower like some kind of well-recognized, highly dreaded Yellow Snake and into the drain that leads to the high school’s boiler room or something.

Even Better: I wanna be my own inner 1980s football coach.

A 65-year-old man with a beer belly, roast beef breath, and sad eyes.

I’d call myself some slurs and make me run suicides.

I’d mutually hate my selves without ever saying it aloud.

As the coach, I’d know the kid could put more effort into the game.

I think as the kid I’d be small for my age. Runt-y.

I’d have private issues at home that’d make me wish coach would lay off.

Maybe there’d be a girl I liked, who’d practice her cheers a little ways down the sideline.

She’d only ever see me barking at myself like a big dog barks at a smaller, more fearful dog.

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As the kid I’d go home to one mom, no dad.

She’d get off work a little bit before practice ended.

Throw a microwaveable meal in for me.

We’d eat in front of the TV in silence.

She’d ask if I had any homework to do.

I’d nod and go up to my room to half study, half daydream.

I’d graduate on time, yeah. But right in the middle of average.

And I would never even speak to that girl.

As the coach I’d go home to my sweet wife who’d always have dinner ready.

I’d kiss her. She’d be the only one to ever see any softness.

She’d know and protect the sadness behind my eyes.

Next day, same thing. Same deal. All the way until retirement.

Boys who became men would write me long after I left.

Thank me for making them tough.

They’d say sorry to hear about your wife.

She was so sweet.

I don’t think I would ever write back.

But I’d read each one twice and crack a secret smile before tossing them into a filing box that’d only ever open to store some more.

The kid would never write to the coach.

The coach wasn’t the dad the kid needed.

This isn’t a movie, this isn’t even a real high school.

You can’t motivate the unmotivated.

You can only sweat the small stuff until the day you drop dead.

And when you’re small, small stuff is just regular sized.

Then you grow bigger and the stuff grows bigger with you.

And people still wonder why you’re taken down, tackled like a prepubescent kid on the J.V. football team, by the simplest shit.

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Temporary City

Agnes Hermansson

I walk around in a city and I start to feel confused.

Because it hits me that what I am walking around in is temporary, almost like a big bruise.

I see worn-out facades and broken roads with heavy rusty trucks.

I see a big lake, and I put my hand under the surface.

I do not have to stick it far under to not be able to see it, and it makes me nervous.

This lake has lived a long and healthy life.

It was here long before this determined city decided to settle down, without a strife.

I would like to think that the lake would have been lonely without the city.

That they need each other.

But the city keeps on sucking all the energy from the lake, like it does not even bother.

This city will kill the lake, and I cannot help to see it as a crime.

The city will eventually know what it has done and what it is missing.

But for now it is very comfortable and convenient, it is all an act of dismissal.

I see the lake without the city, and I put my hand under the surface.

The water is all clear and blue.

Now I don’t feel as nervous.

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Frozen Chicago

Michael Ronnett

14

Destined for Dust Chloe M. Park I drove to the creek to dissolve my past. frantically scrubbing and sobbing People stared then turned back to their hushed galaxies.

My words were Empty shells.

Bullets intended to strike bullseye yet destined for dust.

One day You looked at me. and for the first time I remembered my name.

15

Blades Lillian Hinshaw The smell of freshly cut grass ties my stomach up in knots.

Reminds me of being nine years old, walking to the field, water bottle under my arm, simply no bumps in my hair, my shin guards not yet sticky on my skin.

Reminds me of when my dog Rudy chased down and killed a small pigeon in my backyard and of that time when I sprained my tailbone at the park and had to lie facedown on the hill so the sun could warm the sting.

It reminds me of all the track meets I hated because it was there that he kissed me for the first time without asking and also of the Halloween that I snuck out to dance with this stupid boy on the football field.

It reminds me of trash bags in the August sun, of the time I got locked outside with the bees.

One time I read that the smell of freshly cut grass comes from the plants themselves letting out a cry of distress.

So it reminds me of being cut short. Torn in half. Clipped.

Of being flopped down in the dark after a leg numbing bike ride to tell my best friend that he left me for a man.

It smells like defeat and reminds me all the time that I would have been good.

Really good.

Possibly even good enough, had we just stayed Longer.

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Comrades: definition, 12 - 19

Co-opting of, 15 How to achieve reclusion, 23 - 45

Solitude vs. Loneliness, 24

Kayak vs. Canoe, 44

River vs. Lake, 44 Safety measures for walking into the wild, 47 - 72

What is a PFD? and other acronyms 49

A heart and other navigation equipment, 51

Drysuits, 57

Ziploc bags, 57

VHF communication devices in case of signal loss or punctured Ziploc bags, 58

Common sense, 60 Sand art, 73 Rowing I, 116 - 130

with the tide, 116

balancing, 121 Breaks, 133 - 147

snacks, 135

sunsets, 139 how to be one with nature while taking a helluva lot of Instagram pics, 142

pissing: go ahead, no one’s watching, 146 Record-breaking river bends, 149 Capsizing; 150 - 177

What not to do when, 150

How to perform CPR on one’s self, 159

Draining your kayak , 171

Meditations in an emergency, 174 Rowing II, 176 - 186

against the tide, 177

without a paddle, 183 How to, 183 - 200

be at peace with nature when Nature kicks your ass, 184

return to your campsite with head held high, 191

accept Henry David Thoreau’s Canoeing in the Wilderness as a parting gift, 210

Kayaking Alone in the Wild

17

Frank Roberts

Where Our Words Come From Sarah Kostelny We speak in an all-encompassing language comprised of our moments; our memories.

It runs like water dripping studio faucets and canyon falls — it fails.

Our words leave our native languages unrelated.

They attempt to capture the tongues of our souls and yet I sit here: listening, waiting for some new shattering sentence, for a glance into your ends end (the bottom of your canyon) My Earth is left parched.

18

Yellow Emina Karić

The new day and its sun rays hitting the floral chair in the corner of our living room, Next to the freshly picked sunflowers, And the bumblebees buzzing on the porch table,

the moments unappreciated,

the unremembered.

Though until we hear those New York taxis honking, Listen to unsettling choice of words, Gag at the crumbs and grease on the steering wheels.

It’s not new.

The first sip of the homemade lemonade on a hot day, Or the smell of honey toast and bananas, and mama’s sweet, warm voice.

buildup of ache,

when what was there is no longer.

Like flares in California fires, Like shapes and sizes of stars in the night sky, My emotions roamed, While his, as dry as the desert, said to me, “Don’t beat yourself up.”

It’s not new.

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As later sunshine promises to kiss it better, Allow the cold to slap you once or twice, Love on the seconds of the sun’s rays, Cling onto the warmth, Because even in the jungle of tall buildings That kiss each block, You’ll find sunshine in 30 degrees.

The cold from the shade can only last so long.

It’s not new…

Tatum Hendrickson

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afternoon naps Mark Walters today i had a dream, i was in my father’s house, he told me to burn the money, and something else... then i woke up hard and fast, nervous about what he had said. was it his ghost i spoke to last? then i realized he wasn’t actually dead, just in a hospital bed.

37 N Garden Ave Dariel J. Chaidez In those days the rain came down much heavier than it does today.

The drops raced each other down the fogged glass of the porch door.

My grandfather loved watching the rain on days with nothing else to do.

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these lines Clarissa R. Sutton A mother’s body is made of soft lines formed of deep love. Strength fills her arms, and grace she carries; comfort in the crook of her spine.

We all start out crawling like ivy and vines our bones shatter and mend, grow and abase the human body is made of clear lines a wild heart wanders alone, but in time the mountain’s home with rivers’ interlace we carry comfort in the weight of our spines though ribcages flood with evanescent wine, I’ll take your hand, this night we’ll embrace your body is made of senescent lines but don’t hold too tight, you’ll never be mine keep your hands to yourself, our hearts must stay chaste lovers carry comfort inside of their spines but when we get lost inside river Rhine you’ll find that childlike love isn’t blasé, for a mother’s body is made of soft lines: she carries comfort in the crook of her spine.

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Little Man

Charlotte C. Manning

Little man inside of you Hates how much you’ve grown.

Little man remembers when you’d walk Past the bus station Slate grey with a shyness, Too quiet to make you visible.

Little man notices your breathing; Wishes you could walk in a straight line Without digging your sweaty palms Into the shoulders of a big brother.

Little man hears you on the phone Asking your mother’s permission To eat with your hands And sleep in the field out back.

Little man finds you in the field out back Knees to chest, Letting the grass be the womb To cradle you to safety.

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The red leaf I keep in Romans Ethan Mershon the first time it came into my eyes, a screaming red and now faded into a paler shade, a crinkly red greeting me like an old dog, faithfully awaiting my return never asking where it was I went, or commenting on the time the first time I knew it’s smell, it smelled new not like death but like Easter or October now it smells of a paler red a musty red I dare not touch it now, lest it fall to pieces but once I lifted it off the ground to feel it glossy and firm between my fingers I wince every time I hear it crinkle for to lose it is to lose the Chicago of that October day when poetry was sound and sound was cars and sirens and opera from the music building and occasional silence, startling silence one red leaf, all this contains

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Cachetada

Anna Murphy

Ca Che Ta Da Rhythm: Four pasos, but nothing like bachata.

No. It’s one beat.

Hard hitting.

A child flinches as, “Quieres” and “una” are added to the song.

Always rhetorical and Exclaimed between two ears.

A butterfly swiftly lands to spread a pink kiss with its lengthened wings.

If a ring is turned the wrong wayA wasp’s sting.

Diamonds tend to leave marks.

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Libre Leading the People Mia Larson

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Pickpocket Keir Quackenbush

Bill hadn’t been smiling much lately. Whenever he felt one of them spreading across his face, he would pinch himself with his hand thrust in the pocket of his corduroys; the pain usually did the trick. But if it didn’t, he would try to picture something unpleasant, like buying groceries or having his photo taken. At home, he had rid himself of all reflective surfaces, except for the mirror in his bathroom, which he’d painted white.

His advanced oral decay, quite early for a middle-aged man, made him cringe with shame, and recently pain, too.

What began as a dull throbbing after microwaved meals soon turned into an ache that kept him awake at night, and very early one morning as Bill wrestled with his sheets, he remembered something that he’d picked up from a news hour medical report before he’d sold the TV: if left unchecked, problems in the mouth can fester and spread to the brain.

Or was it the heart? Although pain and even the possibility of imminent death was not altogether distasteful to Bill, he wished they might have the decency to occur on his terms.

“How are the kids?” Pam asked, scraping the side of one of his molars, her high-and-tight curls illuminated from above.

“Unngh,” Bill said, which her trained ears managed to grasp the gist of.

“Right, no kids!”

A silence resettled between them as she worked her way back-to-front. After wiping the dental pick against the sanitary bib hung around Bill’s neck, Pam leaned in close, her magnified, gloopy eyelashes batting the air.

“Bill, I know this isn’t your favorite place in the world, but you’re right for coming in. Sure, your chompers could use some work, but we’ve seen worse. Nothing we can’t handle.”

“I don’t know what you’re implying,” Bill spat, “but if you wanted to chit-chat needlessly while you work, you should open a hair salon.”

Bill’s stiff-armed retort caught Pam off-guard, and though there was no indication of it, Bill began to feel at ease.

It was seldom that such pacifying words were directed towards him.

Avoiding eye contact, Bill looked up past Pam to the ceiling, straining his eyes to read the first line of small text on ‘Advice for the Jaded’, a poster positioned for the patient’s digestion.

“If it weren’t for pickpockets, I’d have no sex life at all.” –Rodney Dangerfield 27

Bill’s mouth and eyes watered as his lower incisors were scraped and picked, the hooked instrument catching on buildup. He winced as Pam moved towards his other set of molars and felt a jolt of pain through his jaw.

“Ahh,” he cried involuntarily, and she withdrew her hand from his mouth.

“You’re that sensitive? I wouldn’t have guessed. You’ll want to take care of this one. Don’t worry, we’ll numb you up before we drill her out.”

“Do I have a cavity?” he asked nervously.

“Yes. More than one. That was the biggest of them.”

As soon as Pam disappeared from view, Bill sat up, took off the blue bib, and reached for his coat. His hands shook as he tried to feed the zipper. When a voice sounded from behind him, he wheeled around.

“Chilly? Let’s put that coat on.” The dentist stood in the doorway, blocking his exit. She reached for a hand mirror.

“Has someone been having extra sweets the last few years since we saw you? Cut corners brushing here and there?

Do you smoke?”

Bill eased himself silently into the backward-leaning chair, staring defiantly at the poster tacked to the ceiling.

Behind him, the dentist rolled her eyes.

“The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.” –Russell Baker

“See back there on the right side, the one with the black dot in the middle?” the dentist said, holding a up the mirror. Bill glanced into it and shuddered. The face that floated before him winced, revealing teeth that had turned a shade yellower since the last time they were visible. In a flash, Bill saw his father in their old kitchen, bearing his own set of graying-yellow teeth. A broken plate lay on the floor, and a draft swept through the open back door.

As the cold heaviness of numbing agent settled into the side of his jaw, Bill felt a burning contempt for his dentist.

He brought his hand to the side of his face, though his face did acknowledge it. If only I could disappear as completely as this, he thought, patting his jaw. Alone in the small, fluorescently-lit room, Bill let his head rest back and shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets.

“After ecstasy, the laundry.” –Zen koan

What the fuck does that mean?, he wondered, blinking away the beginnings of a tear, tonguing at his numbness. I should have left when I had the chance. The dentist plopped into her chair beside him, clipping the bib once again around Bill’s neck and used it to wipe drool from the side of his face.

His words were droopy and round.

28

“Lehts jest get this over wif, huh?”.

“You’re not numb yet?” The dentist asked after Bill recoiled from cold metal prodding once again at exposed nerve. She reached for the small glass full of transparent liquid and drew some more into her syringe.

“Open wide again, this one shouldn’t hurt as much.” But it did.

“Nothing we use or touch can be expressed in words that equal what is given by the senses.” –Hanna Arendt

“You won’t be able to feel a thing in your mouth in about five minutes, but just in case I’m going to hook you up to the laughing gas just to be sure.”

Bill shook his head in disbelief at the operation this had become, unaware that his mouth hung open. The dentist broke a smile and disappeared once again out the door.

“I never took hallucinogenic drugs, because I didn’t want my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.” –Frank Lebowitz

After laying a tube with triangular cutout over Bill’s nose, the dentist instructed him to take deep breaths. A minute later Bill felt his body tingle, a weightlessness creeping into his chest. He continued breathing through his nose and a pleasantness streaked with exhilaration overcame him. He had nearly forgotten about his dentist and her assistant when they appeared in his upper periphery, masks on and tools in hand. His neck was a pillar of rubber loosely attached to his head. The tips of his fingers were being massaged by grains of sand, and he was weightless. Perhaps this isn’t so bad after all.

On their recommendation, Bill had slipped earbuds in, but his generic rock music was not so loud that he couldn’t hear what they said as they began drilling into his tooth, making his vision vibrate wonderfully. Bill continued to breathe exclusively from his nose, drawing deep into his lungs the sweet nitrous oxide.

“This guy’s sensitivity is way high,” the dentist said under her breath, to which the hygienist murmured her assent.

“It’s only taken him most of the appointment to numb up. Could you make a note in his file about that? We’ll have to bill this asshole for some extra time. Did you move the toothpaste from the counter? Ok, bill him for that, too. I’m sure he stuck it in his coat. This guy, I’m telling you.”

Bill got a kick out of how comfortable they were around him. Finally, someone bold enough to speak their mind, he thought.

I might learn something from these ladies.

The dentist’s movements had become far less gentle, pushing up against his lips with her tools, stretching his mouth open further without the typical courtesy, but he didn’t feel a lick of pain.

Suddenly, the whole situation felt quite ridiculous; Bill hadn’t felt this way since bowling at a childhood friend’s birthday, this giddiness bursting at his breast. It occurred to Bill that he was in quite a wonderful and strange situation, the two apes dressed in white pouring over his ailing set of teeth, buzzing around him and assessing the situation deep in crevices of his molars. The dentist pulled down her facemask.

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“This is looking like an acute abscess. Might by periapical. Can you go tell Cindy to clear my afternoon?”

The hygienist left the room. A tear slid down Bill’s cheek. Such a busy operation for such a small problem, he thought.

What strange and wonderful creatures we are, that we should take care of each other’s small problems. He looked again to his poster, his source of inspiration, and savored one more quote as the hygienist watched the poor man from behind.

A touch of red appeared from a split in the corner of his lips, the beginning of a smile forming.

“It is a fine thing when a man who thoroughly understands a subject is unwilling to open his mouth.” –Yoshida Kendo

Summer

Noah Grammer

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Old friend

Noah Grammer

Hunting Hour

Stephanie Wirkus

Hibernation season falls upon us like corpses of time, bones eroded by oxygen and silenced in heat.

Swallow ties, break harnesses of light while forgetting to take the change out of your pocket.

Swaddle tightly, allowing the flowers to bloom under your sullen eye; a new day has come to reap the old one and we’re lucky to be alive and hearing each other breathe.

An empty chair belongs to its wood, nothing belongs to nothing and everything falls under a peacock bed; so happy to be here today one may place it under fate.

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The Courtroom is Empty Gabe Johnson The courtroom is empty There, you will find nothing but swollen stones and solid ground upon which the dead have left The courtroom echoes For there is no noise to disrupt its lofty lance There, I saw a cloak of grey before me, wrinkled and worn Its shoulders stooped to a low, swooping hood, hovering and swaying above the ground His eyes were fierce, though I did not see them His ears were sharp, though I did hear his mangled call His voice was heavy as the thunder, though I had not spoken And his unrelinquished anger bloodied the halls I asked him twice more where his bread lay, Though he gave me not a chance; A smoldering, wildly beast of smoke and ash I spoke not another word when he turned my way Then quickly back into the fold A creature of darkness, a machine without light Faded into the hallowing dim When he left, I heard the silence; The wind swooping and unseen

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The cold and empty core had come my way And laid bare upon my spirit

Its charges pressed against the fabric of my mind It told me that my eyes were fierce. My ears were sharp. My voice was heavy.

It was then I sensed a mountain before me, deadly a foe It brought me to my abase and lower still As my eyes were turned inward to the guilt within ‘Fierce eyes. Sharp ears. Heavy voice.’

The wind was swooping through and through All along that hallow plane When my fury could subsume no more “The courtroom is empty!” my heart of hearts said I fell on my knees and cried to the heavens But a voice, like a feather, brushed in my ear And spoke to me words of assurance But I countered it and said, “The courtroom has shown me a mountain of stone It is before me as you speak And I have no strength, for I am weary and wilted” But the wind took my supplications As the voice carried on with words of the wise It said, “Hold fast my child, and leave this place For the courtroom is empty And cannot hold your soul intact”

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Napoleon Crossing the Neapoliton Mia Larson

Meteor Shower Bennett Csukor We were statues drinking the night on a blacktop floor waiting for comets to flare and flit from sky to sky. My wristwatch lied about who we were and why we were there. Perhaps its cogs were aluminum it second hand worked like a severed nerve.

It couldn’t relax— we were never late never on time.

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THE DEAD ALSO RISE Jacob Bretz The dead stinking lay, With Eyes white and skin gray.

In prisons of their own decay.

Aye, they shall rise again someday!

On moonless night,

When clouds strangle hope and light.

Night of fear, eve of fright.

They aim to set their lives alright.

Rotting feet tread in our world, The banner of Hell is now unfurled.

Dancers of death, once spun and twirled, Now arms are straight, death-claws curled.

This is the curse of the damned, Cast out from divine plan.

Forever stuck with fellow man.

To GOD, pray! If ye still can!

We mortal men, doomed to die, Gaze upwards to the sky.

Beg GOD, not pass us by.

Not forever walk, but one day die.

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To evil men, is laid this curse: Taught his skin, lips eternal pursed.

Driven by demented thirst, Drink warm blood, till stomachs burst.

When the dead walk, Shall we cower and balk?

Or resign to idle talk?

While in the night, undead stalk.

Now mark my words, this be true.

The night is soon, then rook he flew.

But what of me, what of you?

The answer I wish I never knew.

You may fight but hope is lost.

Over this I cannot gloss.

In your slumber, ye turn and toss.

To wake the mariner and the dead ALBATROSS.

Ephemeral

Erika Dwight

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Darwin’s Theory of Revolution Christopher R. Edwards The ant gets weary As the sky gets dreary And the clouds get teary Do you hear me?

That’s what the lion screams.

Another journal entry from Hannah She’s doing ecological research in an African savannah That’s a grassland Science coming from the pen of a black man But no one understands It’s cause they don’t want to They want me to be their jigaboo.

Tell me What are civil rights?

Black versus white?

Or the power to control my life?

I’m not politically tough Nor am I intersectional enough So I guess I don’t belong Because my combination of words were politically wrong And I don’t know the newest Beyonce song.

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Let me put on my liberal leash For I am not to fill that niche Black lives matter Gay rights Women’s rights There The Rottweiler barked Now can I head back to the national parks?

Where conversations of wild fires are sparked?

Probably not Because that’s where I have no place Not even blacks want to see a black face Not here Not in this white man’s scientific atmosphere I’m not allowed to speak of the finch or tapir.

I’m supposed to cry over European luxury cloth Not tell the world about the Capuchin monkey or sloth I’m supposed to report on police brutality Not the intersectionality Of I and the ocelot’s reality.

You let Steve Irwin hunt crocs You let Jane Goodall watch chimps make tools from sticks and rocks But me I have to slave to make you free But what about the lemur?

What about the bee?

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A Night Out With Friends, Alone Samuel Bruns Midnight Western Brownline That height that is frustrating to the depressed.

Is it high enough to kill me?

If only I were high enough not to care.

The train is coming Pulling in to Damen I grab the bars behind me, believing it will hold me back if I decide to bound into the track I let go Walk to the track.

Cry, damn it.

Why can’t I cry Walk up Kedzie alone A feeling that has become all too familiar on a Friday night Friday night out with no companions.

That girl is cute.

That is all I have to think about it Now she has briefly left my mind We both walk up Kedzie We reach the intersection at Lawrence I can tell you’ve noticed me.

I feel it I don’t see it, but the rapid glances are tangible to my mind.

As we cross, she quickens her pace, A subtle and unexpected change.

Feel like shit.

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I can’t imagine living with that fear.

I wish I could comfort you I wish I could signify that I have no intention to hurt you.

That sign doesn’t exist All I can do is keep shuffling up the street to my apartment and allow you to stay far ahead.

She turns onto Ainslie Looks back at me and relaxes I wish in that moment that fear did not exist Inexpressible.

I continue down Ainslie and see you walking in my direction You are black You are very black I am tense I shouldn’t be tense.

I wish I were not so tense I have been conditioned this way.

Through my beloved movies, television and videogames I have been conditioned this way.

I know you will not hurt me.

I don’t know this I know it is highly unlikely.

I wish I could relax I look at you briefly and continue to nervously pass I would not feel this way if you were white.

I would not feel this way if you were white This is an apology to you.

In this moment and every moment after, I wish that fear could not exist.

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A Poem About Anger Mallory Ortmann

Anger is honest to a fault.

I remember standing there, Watching you scream until your voice cracked, And in your wild eyes I saw Unpredictability.

Sometimes it was all I could do To keep from laughing at you In your ridiculous state.

Anger is honest to a fault.

I love fighting you.

I hate the pushing and shoving; The cuts and bruises I receive When you get a little too carried away.

But. Sometimes, I think anger can be a beautiful thing.

Anger allows for The freedom of honesty That would otherwise be masked By societal correctness, Or your guilty conscience.

Some of my deepest wounds came from the words that fell off your lips.

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Your anger was honest to a fault.

But then you broke.

A shell of a soul.

Hollow eyes.

Blank stares.

And I was left screaming at you, Until my voice cracked; I felt

unpredictable and wild.

“Mama, look at me, please!”

But, your empty eyes looked straight through me.

I would trade this Apathetic passivity for raging anger in an instant.

If only, you’d replace the

deafening silence With some brutal honesty.

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Untitled 1

Madeline Staurseth

post-being alone.

Charlotte C. Manning

i’ve realized that I don’t know how to love myself… though, i try that warm affection. caressing my own stomach in bed; i say a prayer for its size. i can’t bear to look at my own thighs in the mirror, except on a good day when the lighting is rightwhen my eyes don’t have to lie to my face and say:

“you are a gorgeous body of God;

a temple of attraction; …he loves you.” i’ve realized that letting go of a man, unwillingly, is like some deep, incomparable agony and woe, then, feelings of hypocrisy wrapped in a blanket of blame, because i pushed him away all those times i nagged for so much more than “love.” in clusters of cliché conversations out of my wine drunk mouth, i always found a way to say that she “deserves better.” someone with the face of a “husband.” a man, not a boy. Someone deserving of their gracious heart, laced with maternal instinct; and the strength of a “promise” to not tell on their tears.

i’ve realized that my enemy and my joy, they are the same. it tastes good. it feels good. sustenance never misses my mouth like he does at night when his feet get cold and his heart beats fast at the thought of my stomach and my thighs… and that sounds good to me. though… i’ve realized that in a loss of love the willing one- the one who gave upcannot both dream of and neglect my heart when reality sets in. you were always weak. and i lie still, shattered in my own bed; fearful that my limbs are a ruin, collapsed, in having never known how to love myself beyond that of a dream or a caress from you, who called me “handsome.”

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Bound 2 pt.2

Alternative Romances.docx

back flipping through photo albums like gymnastics turns us on;

something spawned another feeling

I’m feeling like it’s going gone.

do you like me, Michael Kors? she scoops some jaws off turquoise

floors.

traded a kidney for her house key for my morbid curiosity

MAGAyou&me.exe >be Barron >homeschooled >flunking algebra

Wednesday.

>be Donald >self-employed >saving the world from

by Jacob T Howell

>me, 2020, with a >266” 4K screen wrapping 360o >browsing your timeline

cracked out on hydrocodone wrestling demons bloodshot eyes/an empty canvas; light pollution coddles us the city sky is best defined by the tools at our disposal. namely:

depressants, anti-depressants, amphetamines, hallucinogenics, self-abuse and poetry. Meanwhile, I’m plugged in/tuned on, stealing shy inhales of nicotine time, asking

“what do you want? do you want the moon?” all we are are stars, or streetlights

Lemon Light

white heterosexual cis-gendered millennial male was ( ) with Sam, sniping satellites from the parking lot of a K-Mart when their egos interrupted them. and personally, I find them relatable; she’s on the radio, he’s a spare component to her stereo. “why’d you shoot the cotton candy sky?” she inquires, no reply

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Rockwell

cigarette smiles, naked watching Netflix with our Diazepam prescriptions, big-boned pheromones, tangled tongues, and breaking homes.

showering alone

It is what it is.

Madeline Gombis

A restless and inviolate force cries out for space to run and stretch, and my sheets are tangled from tossing and turning.

I’m wide awake and I’m fucking exhausted. My hands are clammy and my sinuses burn in the dry radiator heat.

Everything, on a cellular level, is off by a single insufferable degree. I leave the discomfort of my room and gear up to greet the cold, hoping that my atoms will slow down and let me rest.

Red lights in the kitchen indicate half past three.

Everything is larger in the dark, and the city is so quiet and still. Something out here hums so softly that it’s only white noise. Snow, falling from the sky, settling on the back alley rubble, only whispers. Soothing and unsettling all at once, it indefinitely borrows the breath from my chest. Nothing moves but aimlessly drifting flakes. No wind, no cars, no passersby. The trees don’t move, save the occasional heap of snow slipping from a branch to the ground.

Without the cacophony of moving parts, this world is an unfurnished house. The trouble with all this empty space is that the same anxious ghost that drives me from my bed can spread its cramped limbs and breathe deeply and grow larger, which isn’t within my own means of living. It almost makes me feel inadequate, like I don’t have the capacity to care for and contain it. It feasts on everything: its own food and mine. I have nothing left to give, and I give up, lie down in the alley and watch the flakes collect on my lashes.

For a moment, I consider laying in the snow until I’m blanketed by it. I consider a car coming down the alley and not noticing me. I decide I wouldn’t mind. The cold is making its way to my bones, and my eyelids are sinking low. I’d be too tired to move if a car came this way, I think to myself. It takes the gentle *poff* of a sheet of snow falling from a gutter in the back yard to break the sleep that is finally settling heavily in my chest.

The discomfort lies in an impending uprooting, when the snow melts and the river flows fast and the soil is soft. It lies in an ambivalent desire to leave and to stay, to roam and to root. But everything is always in transit, and the red lights in the kitchen will always keep marking time. Everything will go back into boxes and suitcases, and it will be what it is, and I’ll still feel the same as I do in this alley: off by a single degree.

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Seasonal Affects Clarissa R. Sutton

The problem, of course, is not that the air is too dry rather craggy branches beckon the swollen sky, stretching their fingers up until the ice coats their bare bones, grasping at the clouds, clawing for crumbs

of moisture to fill the air the river dawdles in this cold softness, city noise is muffled by a shroud of conjugal rice

that tumbles

down, down, down.

The problem, of course, is not that the clouds glow orange, filling the streets with bright darkness,

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heavy cotton resting here

because it has nowhere else to go, filling the streets until the whole world is swaddled, at rest.

The problem,

of course

is that, in the morning, salt and crystals shatter the softness weighing on the ground mixing into sludge and clogging

the arteries, wet cement

slopping on and sticking

to everything, leaving behind chalky remains.

The problem, of course, is not that the air is too dry, rather, that the dryness comes after the flood, and when it does dry up, it dries too quickly.

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Fox Poem Ashley Faith Ferrer There was once a fox Who made declarations Like: “Beware, wet waters!”

And “Caution, soft pebbles!”

Whether or not The waters were truly wet Or The pebbles were actually soft Or if whether or not whether was WeatherDeclared them, the fox did.

“The first line of this poem Is indeed a declaration Perhaps this poem Is the fox himself the one Who makes declarations,” declares the fox.

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Death and Life

Corey Anderson

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Riley Ott

More Brain Juice Kelsey Wilp I can’t catch the words that slip out of my mouth but I can hear them.

I think if there was less of me, you’d like me a lot better.

I’d like me better, too.

But, I know something.

Maybe you know it already, but I’ll just tell you that one daysomeone will groove to your circadian rhythm.

They’ll see that disco dance through that dark carnival of blatant misbehavior, through the self-conscious shellfish shell, and want to buy a ticket, cram themselves inside, make a couple of pearls with you.

They’ll know that only time makes people better because we are all in a constant state of fermentation in our own cerebrospinal fluid and if our thoughts are negative and sad our brain starts to taste that way.

Take a sip of my cerebral elixir and tell me if I’m okay or let me know if you’d wanna hang out some time.

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i’m just a centaur girl in a mac and cheese world Tatum Hendrickson

Out the slope Wasted tropes Come to form Elegantly adorn

(S)he/it

after Lois Bielefeld Frank Roberts

Navy-blue daughters in combat boots The fight which has begun To stir/stare To know what you are baby It bugs me To see who you are truly truly truly Tattered; hibiscus sons In a land which wanted none To conceive what has begun This mystery to ruin In due time He shits.

She shits.

They shit.

Where?

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Statistics

Isaac Bauer

So you turn the statistic over in your mind one more time.

A coin in the mind’s hand inspecting familiar worn markings.

It’s somewhere back in the reference section between “shark attacks” and “vending machine accidents” Eleven million to one.

“Most flight failures occur as a result of human error at take-off or landing.”

Eleven million to one.

“The failures that occur due to engine malfunction or weather turbulence are statistically negligible.”

Eleven million to one.

Doesn’t keep the adrenaline out of our popping ears as our fragile miracle tin birds move skyward.

But as I squeeze your hand and know how much our Love is – I remember eleven million to one will happen 57

mostly from human error.

my love is tomorrow and yesterday Emma Johnson

my love is tomorrow and yesterday yesterday roses sprinkled your chest blossoming with each honest, scarlet breath tomorrow lilac summers traced by gentle fingertips blushing in midsommar tulips yesterday voices of roses cradling fragility, virginity

somewhere in between – today perhaps wild cat claws tearing at our ribs bleeding red, like wild strawberries

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Garden Devils

Jonathan Love

There are hills, mostly, dumb and grassy with stupid little animals digging and sniffing searching for their stupid little homes.

Of course it wouldn’t be a problem had we more trees or hawks, a rabid dog maybe.

It would be quick, painless, to simply explode them out of existence.

Just a few sticksI’d have a smoke, and watch the grassy knolls unfold.

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Riley Ott

Look Me in the Eyes Again Lauren DeVries A small Gently

gray plume of smoke rises from her cigarette.

“I’ll try not to smoke you out,”

She says, flirtatiously.

But under the coy smile Hides her anxiousness.

Is she too bold?

Is she

not bold enough?

I try to figure her out

Try to see past the coping mechanism

Try not to breathe in the

smoke.

But isn’t there something romantic

About the same substance sitting In both her lungs and mine?

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Take Five Bennett Csukor

Eleven months ago I swallowed nineteen chrysalises Caterpillars entombed in chitin coffins— now resurrected. Raised to new life though no angels have rolled away the tombstone so they flutter and knock about their hydrochloric confines clueless of the chronic discomfort they cause. I took an antacid to manage the monarchs making Muhammad Ali’s most memorable poem— did he write others? An ode to bloody noses or a sonnet to left hooks—blare in my ears and in my abdominal veins. It isn’t the nerves that’ll kill you, though they’ll make you feel the weight of the eight foot cross teetering on the brink of dooming your marriage to last a full seven seconds before ending it in the most holy and the least holy way possible. Four years three months twenty-three days culminate in two words for which we’ve waited, a glimpse through the gates before the flaming sword spanks us on our backsides, setting our pants on fire and sending us running back down the street—at least we saw it together. “Marinate in it.”

Jason’s unsolicited advice has got me hiding in a corner under a round table where the Zhdan and Miulli families will be seated soon. How is it that one forgets to breathe?

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Maybe I should leave and get tested this tumor that must have sprouted on my medulla—I said there would be uninvited guests, did I not? There isn’t time so screenings will have to wait. I’ll have to wait.

I’ll have to. The music has begun, I’m standing where we rehearsed. Hands clasped, left over right staring at Peter, looking at myself, knowing nothing.

Mountains of transitory miles and millions of minutes of obligatory patience converge; sunbeams through a convex lens: you are the focus and I am yours. Come promise me these promises we wrote over a glass of Spanish red with the smell of fresh pine and—what was it, cinnamon and vanilla?—permeating the living room where soon we will get on with living and breathing and making love and fighting over whose parents we don’t want to see more. Unhook your arm from the Raven’s and tangle your fingers in mine because I can’t face God on my own and you can’t face my mother on your own and together we’ll make the mess of the millennium, but oh! what a mess it can be if only we can forget to keep it from getting too tidy.

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This Is Just to Wake Up...

Emina Karić With my favorite lavender flowers, Where waffles waited on the table, The morning became sweeter, There was no place else.

Kissing me like waves a shore, The sounds of the ocean danced.

My forehead touched by strange lips, And I was awake.

Wine lingered on my lips from the night before, As the strength of the coffee Killed its sins.

His cold hands, though strange, Healed my wounds And suddenly, I was no longer afraid.

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A Few Words Kelsey Stevens

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That One Red Thing

Lillian Hinshaw

The winter always stays too long. Even after the snow melts and the slush that makes the porous sidewalks gray finally gets soaked up, I have to let my bones thaw. I wear sweaters into the Spring. No, not brightly colored ones. Not entirely thin ones or breathable ones either. I beg the winter to pass through, stopping quickly for a bite to eat, a chance to peruse the twinkling neighborhoods but not much else. A short trip. But she is stubborn. She insists on staying; calling everyone we know and those we once knew to come over and play board games. Like the bitterness of a cough drop, it lasts far too long in the mouth. Nothing like a jolly rancher. Nothing really at all like candy except when your throat is tight and feels lodged. Then, that stubborn lozenge is all you want with a cup of Irish Breakfast Tea, three pillows exactly under your tailbone, and the specifically coral and gray blanket Bruce made. The one that hangs just right, the one that is on winter’s side and asks every morning over the New Yorker, “why don’t you just stay one more day?”

I’m impressionable, the child fresh off the moving truck. Whatever is said to be normal, I just take. No argument. I’ll change all that’s inherent within me to participate in the normality of my fluctuating surroundings. So no, I don’t love the winter but because she insists on staying, I can’t really get myself to loathe her either. My aunt and I made up a game once when all the cousins went to a PG-13 movie and I was still only 9. “Let’s play ‘What’s Not White’” She said. “Point out everything that isn’t white at all.” We had gotten dumped on the night before, so even the spots between the fences were filled with powdery snow. Even the ground covered by bushes or cars or trash cans was purified. And the sky looked pregnant with more flakes; twins she was having. The next to come.

All was white. I spotted a pine cone that had rolled under the short driveway awning. It stood out brown, it’s every divot visible in juxtaposition to the white-washed background. A blue dodge ball. The black cover to the grill outside. We began to laugh as I resorted to pointing out the blue in my own eyes or the magenta pom-pom on my stocking cap. “It has to be outside, little lump!” She threw her head back and hugged me when I pressed further, “But I’m outside!” I marched around the yard, swiping the snow away to uncover the dead garden underneath, “Maybe I’ll find the last surviving tomato!” We haven’t found red yet.” I turned expecting her to laugh at the preposterousness of finding a red tomato in the dead of January, but she looked at me blankly, “Red is the only color I’ve seen.”

It wasn’t until I, too, turned 13 that I discovered that the day of the snow in my 9th year was the miscarriage that sent my aunt into the most stubborn winter of her life. When it dumps and all looks pristine outside, I beg the sun for a Hail Mary.

Just one. Just a shot at melting it all. But the snow sticks and stays and settles and no matter how hard it may seem to us to find what’s not white, she will always say, “Nothing ever is.”

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This weekend

Anna Murphy

You left bloodstains on my white sheets on Friday But don’t worry, my mama showed me how to wash blood out when I was 13 --white soap and freshly melted snow So, I’m staying with silence this weekend.

She’s always present when sought out And where are you?

Because you’ve always shared your words from a shot gun uncontained I can see you coming 3000 miles away and the explosion that inevitably follows So, I’m staying with silence this weekend.

Even if I can still hear you ring

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Summer Poem Gabe Johnson I wait in anticipation

Hazy and tinted in bronze For friends who do not return I spend time in the sweltering car Watching lamp posts run by

And sunsets in the distance I think about what could be Like fancy spaceships and different languages Though I don’t have much going on, The days run by in mysterious fatigue As I wait for worlds of all kind to come true And stay preserved I want those worlds, my worlds, to be remembered If I could, I would launch them on a satellite Even if Earth were to wither away, someone else, like you, might find them In the black and star stained sky So… even if you’re not a human like me

Even if your organs are different from mine Please carry it on

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Advice from Ms. Boogie Jessica Sardar I was like you once, wordy and wise Weighted by the world and his wanting cries I liked to ask questions from a rickety soapbox Though it was too clumsy for the questions that mocked But now I have found something new To balance the questions, I dance too White picket fences, I whirl around With my sashes and silence, they’re left confound And from there, I go to dance with the trees Their rough wrinkled skin always calls for reprise, They would never tsk at my point, though it’s poor My boots make it hard, but my toes still endure Those un-sorry soles that tread on the moss Their rubbery patterns leave it embossed But it’s only a second, then its old form returns From the years of brash boots, it’s forgiveness she learns Of course I trip, on the branches that crawl On the forest floor, but then wind catches my fall Young and old leaves long for her touch She releases them from their stiff branch’s clutch Sometimes I fall, and the snow beneath me breaks My breath becomes heavy and my achy legs shake But I can feel my pulse and it winnows my rage So I mutter a thank you and think to myself

This sanctuary is much better than a stage

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On Spaces Madeline Gombis

I haven’t seen vastness in a long time; perpendicular to the still waters, towering scrapes against the sky ruin the illusion of enormity. I haven’t had my breath stolen in a long time; had to get my fix from the picayune parts of my life, to which I had misassigned meaning. Breath only borrowed.

It’s a bad habit to get into. It makes the details worth examining, because nothing else starts to matter more.

I guess I can wonder at the intricacy of the granite giant, but the soft rush of something big is a pastiche of the spontaneous burst that happens between ribs in conjunction with wonder. Feels like a sigh, a gasp, a settling of dust on something tired, but the comedown is a panic in the lungs. I haven’t had my breath brutally stolen from my body in a long time, and it’s stale in my cells: the smell of lakewater in August.

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But here I am. In silence, in still in space suspended. Hands in my chest, the cold does not concern itself with life or death. Winter has no scruples; it takes what it sees and likes. It saw my breath rise from my lips and it snatched it from inside my coat, right out with its frigid, dead fingers. A blanketed field, a sublime silhouette of spindly spruce and birch, it took every intricacy and ordered it into a vastness so monochrome and wide. I cried involuntary tears of peace.

Untitled

Caleb Laurence Nelson

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The Exhibit Liam Travers Act 1 Two young men in plain clothes stare intently at a painting. They are the only ones in the room.

What do you think it is?

Your guess is as good as mine.

How much did we pay for these tickets? $27.49.

Maybe art is just not for me.

Try squinting your eyes.

Is it a boat on the sea?

I thought it was a bird in the sky.

We should have just gone to Pizza Hut. Does it look crooked to you?

What?

Look at those two.

I guess so.

I’m going to fix it.

Jake no --

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Act 2 The broken frame and torn canvas lay on the bare floor as the two make for the door.

Act 3 Two snotty fashion-forward middle-aged men walk into the empty room and look upon the destroyed painting.

What do you think it means?

It is some sort of statement.

Look at the beautiful torn screen.

An exquisite placement.

This is my favorite piece in the exhibit.

Such a stunning piece of art.

It will be adored by all the critics.

They will love it from the start.

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Rhapsody Stephanie Wirkus The moon came down and grabbed the earth, dragged it down. down. into its back pocket. You asked me how this was possible; my response tempered with illegitimate tones and gargled phrases.

It is a fear you inspire; your wits are no match for an exterminator like me.

I talk fast and keep the lions on the other side of the fence, while you pet them and draw shapes in a black notebook. Nothing can remain like fields of wheat in the summer, oblivious to the crimes of yesterday’s malpractice.

Look directly into the sun and break your pencil.

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Landscape 01

Annika Nyquist

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Fig 12.15

Rebecca Conner

I learned in chemistry that potholes are formed because water expands when it is frozen The water creeps into the character of the road and in its expansion, the road is pushed from where it was settled and cracks appear Over time, perhaps after years or even just months, the pounding of the wheels on the pavement and the unpredictable fluctuations of the water that climbs into the fissures and makes a space and then leaves again when the weather warms will create a hole so large that it cannot be filled by the seasonal showers You came into my life like summer rain, fresh and warm and still innocent from the spring melt, settled into the scars and valleys time had etched into my fingertips You made me want to dance in puddles again and sing in sunlit parks under canopies of glowing leaves I did not mind when you rearranged the components of my heart without permission because it felt as if you had clutched in your hands the missing pieces to that which felt incomplete in me And now I am letting you go Watching your form grow smaller as the shadows stretch longer You changed my fingerprints when you slipped from my fingers and now in your absence I touch everything differently I am gentler like you but also more afraid Some people tell me that everything happens for a reason and others will argue that destiny is a facade and life is far from predetermined by I know only two things: 1. We were meant to meet 2. and you were not meant to leave so soon but you did 75

And not in the places of me you once filled all I can see are the empty chasms wild lines running out as electrical wires or wrinkles in my sheets or chords of the songs we sang that I still listen to late at night and I cannot find you when I look up into the heavens the distance to the stars seems infinitely longer as if when you left you pulled up the night sky like a curtain and now the isolation of our single selves is inescapable the illusion of belonging in this magnificently lonely universe is refuted and we seem so small that my pain feels misplaced in its magnitude then I remember who you were and how you pulled me into focus and declared “you. you have great value. you are important to me.� so now despite the size of my being in the context of the orchestrations of this great universe I declare that you are indescribably important and you have changed me forever and like ripples from you to me to those I interact with and beyond your life will change the world perhaps imperceptibly to most but to me it is obvious you mattered so much you matter so much

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Jeanette Habash

My Mother’s Eyes Sarah Kostelny You have eyes like his mother, you know — well, you don’t, but maybe there is a warmth in them that reminds him of home — You remind him of home, you know. Maybe a home where brown-eyed mothers and blue-eyed lovers can speak with flawless language and intent, a home of oak trees and familiarity.

Perhaps December winds have brought about a change in you, and perhaps home is a little further away.

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Dead Sea

Jeanette Habash

Held in hand, Oil flows over and under the curves A crystal, the reflection is present Rare But among others of its kind.

In the empty cleanliness of the sea it is Known in the affectionate touch; unknown to the vast Lifeless, yet still full of lifetimes She is a scientist at the edge of the thick water A garnet in hand, it glimmers momentarily Before the sun settles over the Dead Sea.

Dead Sea Rock from Life

Jeanette Habash

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Neutral Buoyancy Jonathan Love Every day of week at dusk the sun seems to speed up, hurrying its way to the horizon, the peak velocity of its fall, all the while we diligently continue our spin, Floating around like strange nameless fish that feed the bottom of a lake letting out bubbles of gasps at great lily pads that hover above- dark ominous UFO’s, wondering when they too will be abducted, passing around a paper cup of cyanide to make haste its happening, to sink below the bottom at top speed.

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Eight Cavities Charlotte C. Manning I found out yesterday that I like the pain of a hangnail It’s a gateway to the perfect tear On my already cracking skinBlood in the crevices I’m just adding to my hand full of painful pieces, Hang nails,

stubbed toes,

overly tweezed eyebrows, razor burns, alcohol poisoning, jaw breakers and heart ache.

Is it trivial to fuss over yourself ?

When you’ve grown adult teeth?

Probably.

But the cavities on my rotten molars have cavities And if you ask me what I want for breakfast I might just scoop a hole into a sugar hill With a rusty shovel And dive in with my mouth wide open.

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Heavy Makes Your Heart Hurt Kelsey Wilp Seep deep into me, little love.

I’ll help you waterproof yourself this season.

Maybe you can take care of it, but I’ll be sitting on the edge of my bed just outside the cool winter membrane leaking through my clouded window pane.

Your body language bites like when I let a lighter linger too long under a clumsy finger.

Someone else’s mother once told me never to shave my head.

I wanted to buzz those flaxen locks off my dumb scalp and watch them fall limp onto the kitchen floor.

I’d have liked to toss them out into the backyard so that the birds could weave them into their nests.

Whatever.

I don’t need a crew cut to show you the imperfections of my skull.

We’re all a bit ugly some of the time but seep deep into me and maybe you’ll think I’m beautiful.

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Insomnia Bennett Csukor

Four in the morning is the most productive hour— hope of drifting into a world where life isn’t an anvil on your chest has vanished resignation to wakefulness has won out.

Sheets snaked around marathon ankles untangled.

The desk is across the Grand Canyon opt for a seat on the stark floor, in the canyon’s depths where the echo of your breath reverberates reaches your ears in harmony with this breath (but what is the melody?)

Ignore the centipede crawling between the floorboards Your wakeful wandering has wrecked his reverie removed from the singular comfort of your overpriced mattress (that reminds me: invest in a pair of sturdy boots) you two once were companions unknowing

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Ah yes! The pen tucked away has new life one page turns to eleven it isn’t good once more and

twice more and

third time’s the— rubbish.

Remember the bard—any bard, really— whose quill holds no match to the poems your dreams have written wake to find them spattered in vomitus blood soaked on the operating table choking for life —call it: 4:37 AM they lived a good life well they lived

vasoconstriction, O sweet caffeination manufactured volcanic sleep body blasts off mind jogs behind “Catch up” catch up catch up

Somehow you’ve arrived stainless steel coffee pot—also overpriced— sits grind heat tare filter pour consume

arrhythmic heartbeats syncopated breaths lungs inflate overinflate stop breathing in we can’t take much more pop carbon dioxide and hemoglobin paint a mural on the floor two hours later your mother discovers your lifeless body.

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Yeezus Walks With Me Zoe Larson

Acknowledgements The North Branch Senior Staff members would like to recognize the following individuals for their contributions, support, and overall enthusiasm during the making of our beloved journal. Without you, we would still be tying this thing together with twine.

Together we would like to thank• Dr. Kristy Odelius, our fearless leader and faculty adviser. Thank you for fostering a place on campus for creativity with an emphasis on collaboration, seeking out students for what makes them unique, and helping us see ourselves as valued creators within this community.

• The readers of this journal, for following The North Branch (@northbranch.npu) and our personal accounts on Instagram.

Kelsey (@welseykilp) would like to thank• The entire staff of The North Branch, this year and last.

• The North Park writers and artists whose work thrills and kills me. I feel privileged to format the pages they lay upon.

• Dr. Kristy Odelius. E N D L E S S L Y ! And for E V E R Y T H I N G !

• Jonathan and Zoe, for being the paper bags I could scream into (sorry!), being the gosh dang BEST at what you do, and being the most wonderful collaborators and pals a gal could ask for. It has been an absolute honor working with you these past two years. Not to mention, this journal is SO. DAMN. BEAUTIFUL. GO US! • Maya Durham Rayner, for her expertise and insight into the world of printing.

• Nancy A. Wynne Wilp aka “The Old Lady”, for being our most loyal supporter, muse, and a sensational role model.

This journal is for you, TOL! (Also thx mom & dad for driving her to campus and letting me major in writing poetry?)

• Giovanni M. Scardino, whose name will make the pages bound to this journal increase in value over the next 15 to 20 years. That’s just business, baby!

Jonathan (@jonevol) would like to thank• Professor Odelius, for her invaluable guidance, perspective, and encouragement throughout the past three years.

• Kelsey, for her diligent leadership.

• Zoe, and the rest of the staff, for being such wonderful teammates.

• All of the writers and artists who have tirelessly constructed their excellent work.

Zoe (@zllarson) would like to thank• Kelsey and Jonathan, for the countless hours they have dedicated to making The North Branch as incredible as it is.

• Tim Lowly and Kelly VanderBrug, for their guidance and wisdom over the past few years.

• Kanye West, for his creative genius and influence on her work.