Fall 2023 Issue

The Northwest Passage Fall 2023

Take a Rest Sage Phillips

The Northwest Passage Western Oregon University’s Student-Run Art and Literature Magazine Fall 2023 Issue

Editor in Chief Quinlan Elise

Editorial Board Ian Kincaid Jasper Beck Elyse Crane Emily Schneider

Website

wou.edu/northwestpassage © 2023 Northwest Passage. All rights reserved.

All materials and content within this publication are property of the Northwest Passage, for the duration of first publishing rights, a six month period, after which time all content submitted by the individual contributor reverts back to the author. All materials and content printed here may not be copied, reproduced, or distributed. Any other usage must follow the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Letter from the Editor Hello everyone, and welcome to the Fall 2023 Edition of Northwest Passage!

I am so excited to be back for another year of sharing the community’s work and voices.

We had so many amazing submissions this term, and this is only the start! I look forward to what the rest of this year brings us.

Being the editor of the Northwest Passage is one of the best parts of my time here at WOU, and I am so grateful to be in this position. Thank you to everyone for sharing these pieces of themselves, and I am so proud of this community for what it producess. Please continue submitting your art for further issues; your voice matters.

Humans are capable of so many things; while there is so much destruction, there are also those who create. This magazine shares some of these creations.

-Quinlan Elise

Submission Guidelines 1. Submit work as an attachment via email to northwestpassage@mail.wou.edu.

2. All WOU students, faculty, and alumni over the age of 18 are invited to submit their work.

3. We accept: art of any medium, photography, poetry, short stories, scripts, screenplays, creative essays, spoken-word, lyrics, music compositions, and recordings.

4. Submissions should include a title and be submitted without a name; this helps our editorial board maintain impartialty during the voting process.

5. A maximum of five submissions per creator will be published per issue, but additional submissions may be considered for future issues.

6. Due to space constraints, all written work has a word limit of approximately 1,700 words.

7. Art must be in digital format; please take high quality photos of artwork for best printing result.

8. Music and spoken-word is published in our digital album once a year, during spring term.

Winter 2024 deadline: February 16th

Table of Contents Cover 6-7 8-9 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18-19 20

21 22-23 24-25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Take a Rest / Sage Phillips I Know Some Things / Cien Lost / Kyle Murray Wind You Back Together / Sage Phillips Unified Theory / Jasper Beck Wave / Quinlan Elise Soar / Quinlan Elise Amorphous Viscera / Will Childress Pepinos: An apology from my dad / Cien Big Dipper / Sage Phillips The World Is / Jasper Beck Snake Plant / Quinlan Elise Peril/Nonpareil / Jessica Johnson Sunny Days / Jasmine Wetter Hello / Lucas Montpart Learning Differently, Succeeding Equally / Alexandra Brooks Change / Cien House of Worship / Jasper Beck Servicing the Safeway Can Return / Jasper Beck Hula Hoop Shenanigans / Serena Hall Mushroomland / Abigail Krupar Untitled / Cien Spider’s Web / Lillian Axelson American Idiocracy / Rob Moody Iridescent Floral Moon / Destinee Denney Musings Above the Irish Sea / Gretchen Sims OVER YOU WAS OVERDUE / Nathan Rodgers Structural Integrity / Will Childress Puzzle Box / Will Childress Cat Got Your Tongue / Jasmine Wetter King Morpheus / Abigail Krupar Squinky / Quinlan Elise

I Know Some Things Cien

6

Over the past month, multiple people from all different parts of my life, people who don’t know each other in any way or don’t interact if they do, They quote Socrates to credit themselves all-knowing.

They say they are wise, because they all know that all they know is that they know nothing at all.

And I don’t know but... that doesn’t sound all too wise to me.

I get what they’re trying to say I can appreciate it too, but it just feels too selfish for me to quote.

I don’t know a lot of things, but most that I do know, I’ve been taught.

Y Como que saying that I don’t know anything at all is taking away all the credit from those who have taught me, and I like to give credit.

Credit to My grandfathers and the other campesinos who, yeah, weren’t ever able to build their credit, but who taught me which fruit was just ripe enough to be picked, to sneak some at dusk, while no one was watching, when I was hungry.

Who I thank every time I pick my produce at the grocery store.

Credit to my mother, grandmother, tias, primas, and vesinas.

Who taught me how to stretch a dollar, feed myself and my family, how to make tamales, To measure with my heart and use more than just salt, and 101 ways to prepare eggs.

Credit to my cousin at the huevería, who traded us dozens of eggs for an upside down pineapple cake.

Credit to my dad, Who taught me to keep going, even when he couldn’t, Who taught me to ponerme las pilas, and echarle ganas, and to know that things will only get tougher and tougher but that I will only get stronger and stronger Credit to my mom who taught me how to give it all I’ve got.

Who never doubted me, and laid with me in bed while I was peak suffering.

Who taught me that all medicine isn’t bad, it’s okay to be a little crazy, and when to wear bras And on that note!

Credit to all the bra wearing people, who taught me how to know my size, and which ones to wear when, to be the most comfortable in.

And the people who taught me that I didn’t have to wear one at all if I didn’t want to.

Credit to my 12th grade teacher, who taught me that even though I could get far letting myself be a token, I would have to sell out and might not get scholarships anyway if the people in charge thought I was a little too messed up.

And to the teacher who taught me that all poems didn’t always have to rhyme.

Credit to the Wikipedia authors, who, during one of my hyperfocused rampages, taught me the resilience of daffodils, to know that they grow in false spring and keep growing through all the weather extremes.

Credit to all the revolutionaries, near and far, dead and alive, who taught me to know my worth in a world that won’t always see it, and to find myself in a place that would.

So to my credit and theirs, I know some things.

7

Lost

Kyle Murray When I want to get lost I don’t have to go far.

No road trip or late night walk, I just reach into my pocket.

I keep a zippo there Among keys and cash And other stories.

It’s brushed silver case May look mundane But its little scars Reminds me of memories far.

A vertical scratch on its side Reminds me of a stupid plan I hatched Where my lighter became a wrench.

A dent, on the bottom left, Takes me back to Portland, July 2nd, where a friend Made me laugh a little too hard.

8

My favorite though, is a hairline slit Right by the hinge.

I’d like to keep that one a secret.

But within this brushed silver case

Is where even more memories wait.

They’re in a strange looking lighthouse With windows, a wick, and a flint.

Its windows give a glimpse inside Where the wick, like a staircase running high, Begs you to flick the flint.

If you so oblige, sparks will fly, Igniting the lighthouse with a puff.

A little lady flame will greet you, Waving and swaying atop this lighthouse.

She is the light that shines Into the sea of my mind, Her movements show me forgotten thoughts.

Her waving and swaying Turns to a samba that sends Me back to my first lover And our passionate distaste for one-another.

The little lady flames little dance can look like the street light Over the bench I kissed a friend after a fight Other times her blue dress And orange hair remind me Of a girl who danced just like this flame, And had a way of lighting my heart on fire.

This little dancing lady flame Reminds me of my desire

To be lost, but also to not have lost.

To be lost in my naive youth, But to have never lost those hurt by my naivety.

To be lost in search of pleasure and treasure, But to have never lost those I left behind in my search.

This paradox is the rhythm The little lady flame dances to.

Waving and swaying, lost in my contradiction.

But this song can only play for so long.

The longer you stare the lower and lower She will dance for you there.

Her fuel, of longing and lighter fluid, Will suddenly run dry And the little lady flame Will wave and sway no more.

In the sudden darkness I’ll cover the lighthouse with a zippo clink, Forgetting its paradoxical symphony, And return to my favorite little scar on its lid’s hinge.

This hairline slit, That reminds my of my wife’s silhouette And that I am no longer lost in longing and lighter fluid.

Wind You Back Together Sage Phillips

9

Unified Theory dedicated to the Barbie movie Jasper Beck

man i gotta tell you, after wasting my days on big-sounding words and sitting here a while on the porch, counting the suns hung in between the maple leaves, i can let it all go the bedazzled t-shirts, dusty door mats and decorative wall calligraphy from the department store they were right the whole time what else can you do but live no use philosophizing, coining terms, curled up in indulgent identity sobs at 4 am. you had a monster just to stay up that late what else can you do but laugh the flow of traffic and tragedies, tv static, the growling noise a career makes when it starts—it’s an in-joke, a blur of colors, with silly little you in the mix, a rattling fly in soup, grasping at sheer walls of joy

10

what else can you do but love it’s what all men are in the end: a reckless thrill, an arrow plunging into flesh. you can go on hating everything, but you’re still here, aren’t you, pouring out your heart like a beer as for me, i’m done scoffing at this womanly way of being it’s not like the word games i’m used to, not really an -ism just an is

Soar

Quinlan Elise

Wave

Quinlan Elise

11

Amorphous Viscera Will Childress

12

Pepinos: an apology from my dad Cien

My dad, like many others, is really big on never apologizing.

A Veces nos dimos cuenta que batallo mucho en el trabajo, when he said and did things we know now he didn’t mean.

And sometimes, Hours after I slammed the door to my shared bedroom, I’d just barely hear a knock Somehow strong and soft at the same time.

Like he was low key hoping I didn’t hear it.

And when I opened the door, there he was.

My dad Standing there holding a plate of fruit he cut up to replace the worded apology I so desperately craved.

Mangos and oranges he bought from a street vendor.

Apples and bananas he brought home from work.

All sliced up, perfectly shaped, A reminder that he’s done this before, Like, for work “Ten” he would say, and then disappear to his room.

When Winters were freezing, they were, for the most part, fruitless.

Not to say that the need for apologies wasn’t there; it always was.

But this time it came in the form of pepinos sliced up, covered in salt and limon, sometimes even Tajín, canned peaches, and a handful of the almonds we always got in food boxes.

The worded apology never came, but I learned to really appreciate those apologetic offerings.

Especially when I learned that in the days before modern transportation and food stamps, Fruit wasn’t too easy to come across.

And because it wasn’t, giving someone fruit really meant something.

And I realized that it really meant something to me too.

13

14

Big Dipper Sage Phillips

The World Is Jasper Beck

the oahu botanical gardens from below: big sky washing out the canopy sprayed into lofty space like static from tips of lightning bolt branches the deltas of black river trunks snaking across the noise dancing with their negatives: trickles of blank light seeping in from the cracks in the crowns where nothing could catch it crashing down while the earth vaults into heaven—it’s all flat the background of my phone that i’m talking to an old friend on he’s a nazi now

Snake Plant Quinlan Elise

15

Peril/ Nonpareil Jessica Johnson

Sunny Days

Jasmine Wetter

16

Hello

Lucas Montpart Hello, the dream I had again, Figures my height standing there, Looking away, they stare, Like trite parsons in prayer.

Never mind them, I shift and there are people I know Faces blurred out like wet paper, I haven’t seen them in forever.

I remember conversing with them, Like they hadn’t left prematurely, And I hadn’t shut out somberly, As if it was all back the way it was.

I’m gone again, I see new recollections, I’ve filled them like potholes in my heart, Only for them to fall apart in chunks of rock, The same ending I acquaint with myself.

I awoke and went back to sleep, Hello, old me in a young form, A scared child in the unknown, Reliving stained moments in the keep.

Learning Differently, Succeeding Equally Alexandra Brooks One feels the rushing waters of a cool, mountain stream from above.

It is round and smooth and white like a dove.

The other bakes in the desert sun, rough and wedged like a slot canyon. and despite their differences, they treble, because they both succeed at being a pebble.

17

Change Cien

I feel bad For people who don’t feel the need to Change or who see Changing only as a bad thing. imagine how boring it must be To remain stagnant.

Imagine if we were the same people that we were 5 years ago?

We change because we learn We grow and with that comes self awareness.

Is it a coping mechanism?

To think yourself so perfect. that there is nothing left to improve?

A part of breaking cycles generation after generation Is learning that we need change the harmful things that we have grown to see as normal.

Is learning and adapting not Change?

Do you not feel the need to Change your clothes according to the weather? your language according to the crowd?

18

What a privilege it must be, to be able to continue being yourself in every situation, never changing a thing.

When they said to be happy with who you are, did they not consider us living growing beings?

Madre Tierra nunca para de cambiar.

Even the trees Change in their leaves through the seasons, the most beautiful going from green to yellow, yellow to orange, orange to red, red to brown, and from brown to the ground where they Change once again to decompose and fertilize where they fall, where then a seed changes to have roots, and then sprouts into a plant.

Tupac once talked about the rose which grew from concrete, when no one else even cared.

Proving once more that Change makes for beauty, even when we’re unprepared.

19

House of Worship Jasper Beck

it doesn’t feel like a house, at least, not one that anybody lives in. a model, maybe, a recreation, a redemption of space itself, too clean for the real world: tables that nobody sits at, plants put in their place, symbols designed for appeal, signs you’re not supposed to read on your way to the god within the enormous smiling lobby. behind the happy couple, an ancient torture device— it never used to look wrong.

20

Servicing the Safeway Can Return Jasper Beck pop open its plastic face and dig in, elbow deep in grimy chutes and sensors, groping for the jam. find purchase on an indigestible coors light crumple. toss it in the bulging bag slick with capitalist cocktail: beer, pop, the tang of a dozen factory fruits— whatw the fuck is a blue raspberry? cinch the bladder, droop it over an unwanted shopping cart. watch it piss out a torn corner and puddle across the summer concrete to a young woman, rehired after a four-or-five-bottle relapse and the remains of her t-shirt business.

Hula Hoop Shenanigans Serena Hall

Immense mushrooms with pastel pink and white dots surround a grove of pines A young girl sits below the cap staring up at the gray gills Abigail Krupar writing in her pale yellow notebook in a garden of tiny multi-colored mushrooms She softly sings fiddling with her pencil a ray of neon orange sunlight displays the delicate colors of the sky as the clouds pirouette bringing a slight rain lukewarm.

Mushroomland

21

Untitled Cien

How often I am told That if I really cared about something, I wouldn’t forget it just as often I am reminded, That I’d forget my head if it wasn’t on my shoulders And I don’t know what I hear more, “You think too much” Or “Were you even thinking?

“You’re being too loud” Or “I couldn’t hear what you said” But if you told me that I had the option To give everyone a look inside my head And then I’d never struggle to explain, or prove, myself ever again, I’d put my soul on the table in a second Under that table, a sign that read

22

PLEASE DO NOT FEEL OBLIGATED TO LOOK, THANK YOU

I thought the phrase “wear your heart on your sleeve” was partially that option Personal experience bleeds no.

If I could, I would measure the volume of my voice, and have the decibels displayed on a little sign on my shoulder With a bigger one right above it that reads

But if I’m being too loud just let me know But I am wise enough to know That I’m bound to quickly learn, That walking around with a decibel reader Will hardly do anything other than have me called loud AND crazy So if I’m so loud, why doesn’t anyone hear me?

Or am I just sitting in silence overthinking And no one can hear me Because I haven’t actually spoken a word.

23

Spider’s Web Lillian Axelson

She pulled the covers up to her ears. Viola wasn’t sure what had woken her up, but she didn’t like it. The rainbow night light that was usually plugged in next to her door wasn’t on. She couldn’t see if it was unplugged or just not turned on.

As her eyes adjusted, she could make out dark shapes lurking around her room. They seemed to be shifting. The moonlight streamed through her blinds, casting a crisscrossed web onto the floor.

A shadow scuttled across the floor; she whimpered and pulled the covers completely over her head. Was it a spider? It looked like a giant spider!

Viola hid until her fear got the best of her. She peeked out, only for another shadow to cross the floor. That was it, she couldn’t stay here, she would die!

Viola sprang from her bed and rushed out of her room, slamming the door behind her.

She stood in the dark hallway, feeling even more exposed than before. She could go to Mom and Dad, but they would just send her back to her room and turn on the light.

She looked at the door across from her and shuffled over. Pushing it open, she looked in. There was a blue light flickering, brightening the room. Lori had forgotten to turn off her computer again. It wasn’t dark.

Padding across the floor, Viola stopped at the bed. “Lori...” No movement. “Lori.” She shook the bed a bit, there was a groan. “Lori!” She pushed at the bed.

Lori sat up and peered over at her. “...What? Viola, what are you doing in my room?”

She teared up. “There was a giant spider in my room,” she whisper yelled.

“Did you see the spider?”

24

“Yes! ...No, but I saw something move on my floor.” She tugged at Lori’s blanket.

Lori sighed. “Can you go back to bed?”

“No, my room is scary.” She tugged at the blanket again. “Can I sleep here?”

“Will you actually go to sleep?” Lori mumbled. “You have school tomorrow.”

Viola nodded frantically. “I’ll go to bed, promise!’

“Alright, get up here,” Lori said, scooping under Viola’s arms to help her up onto the bed. It was a raised bed and she was too short to get up by herself.

Once she was settled on the bed, Lori grabbed the extra blanket from the end and handed it to her.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, now go to sleep and don’t steal my blanket.” Lori pulled her own blanket up to her chin, pulling Viola down with an arm looped around her waist.

She fell with an ‘oomph’. “You’re suffocating me!”

“No I’m not, I’m sleeping. Go to bed.”

Viola frowned but unfolded the blanket, squirming under Lori’s arm until she was comfortable. She looked at the room. The computer light was still flickering, bright enough that it chased away the too dark shadows.

“Goodnight,” Viola said, closing her eyes. She got a muffled goodnight in response.

When Lori’s alarm went off in the morning the room was completely lit up; she had forgotten to lower her blinds the night before. It gave her a clear view of Viola, still sleeping, with not one, but two blankets. Rolling her eyes, she shut off the alarm.

25

American Idiocracy Rob Moody

26

Iridescent Floral Moon Destinee Denney

As I sit here watching the endless waves — as I touch the substance no one tamés — I contemplate the anomality water presents the mind’s curiosity.

How can something so nurturing, so soft — a something that brings ships safely to dockt — be the same entity that sinks vessels and entices spirits into its tressels.

Musings Above the Irish Sea Gretchen Sims

The same healing water, to which I am well acquainted, against the dry shore rams.

Both cleansing and destroying is the sea.

‘Tis the quantity twill set the mind free.

A doctors washpan is but a bow’eld; the south sea alone holds a thousand-fold.

Ne’er a wreck found at the end of a glass — the worst be an attempt by a blonde lass — but many lay in a sandy graveyard; far more than those feld by the swor’ed.

All need this to live, yet by it, all die.

The body is water, yet to earth it lies?

Perhaps the water itself needs feeding because to its counterpart it’s seething.

The offerings performed to the dirt are many, yet the sea receives less than plenty.

Hungry to be praised the water ragéd, Still unnoticed, unprotected this age.

27

OVER YOU WAS OVERDUE Nathan Rogers

There she go no gratitude just attitude she angry with a magnitude at these platitudes. You mad? If you are you shouldn’t be. Take a moment to wrap your head around the things that you said to me. Might have been nothing to you but it really put a hurt to me, pretty close to being just done yeah the end for me. Sometimes I’m in love with you but it’s like sleepin with the enemy. One second you don’t want a thing the next second you’re a friend to me. The truth is, you’re ruthless, you probably want someone...just instead of me. I can see through you straight up ethereal, immaterial, a ghost...just like you’re almost dead to me.

I know I’m the illest, sick with it...you’re bacterial.

You killed off all my emotions like you’re something serial.

Now you gonna go behind and steady fading me, tossing shade at me, I can’t feel this for you no more, That’s what you made of me.

Now you’re talking in circles like these tracks that’s insane to me.

You can convince yourself of anything, No need to explain to me.

You got no shame and that’s a shame to see, You must be outside your mind...frontal lobotomy.

Can’t believe a chick like you ever got to me...

What was her name, I’ve already forgotten see?

I think you better take a look at how you stack up, A little slow on the uptake...better catch up, Forget you whack clutz, And you gotta be squirrel turds...about half nutz...if you ever thought a chick like you could make me a backup...now back up...cause you gotta be ill mental...if you thought a platinum piece like me could be a silver medal... and put with all the ways you act up.

What a beautiful mind to put so much missuse, unsubscribing from your, issues...quick get a box of tissues. You were too much work, a bad job...here’s my resignation...I up and quit you.

If you promise to go away...I promise not to miss you.

28

Structural Integrity Will Childress

Puzzle Box

Will Childress

29

King Morpheus Abigail Krupar

Cat Got Your Tongue Jasmine Wetter

30

Sweet soft paws on my thigh gray and white he’s not shy Childhood Christmas memory faint purr my remedy Golden eyes my surprise Gift I can never repay pray he never would go away Now it’s cold and dreary want to feel his warmth in my arms When I was gone he would meow at my door knew his mom would come home ready to play with him on the floor Wish I could hear him snore a faint sound of sleepy I just want one more meow The love from him was beautiful pure I wish I knew where he went off to I’m unsure I love you my sweet friend May God bless you as you ascend and as I always say

See you later.

Squinky

Quinlan Elise

Fall 2023