The Tower, Spring 2018

THE TOWER

THE TOWER SPRING 2018

SPECIAL THANKS Our Advisor, Jessica Handler Oglethorpe University SGA All Contributing Artists SchoolPrinting.com

MASTHEAD Editor in Chief

Emily Rodriguez Claire Dunn-Grandpre

Ivy Jones

Jeremy Cooper

Laurann Herrington

Laurel Parrott

Lexi Covalsen

Ryan Holtzen

Sophia Summerlin

Aleece Bustamante

Rebecca Rikard

Sydney Stanley

Ryne Clarke

CONTENTS Ryne Clarke, Madness........................................................... 17 Sophia Summerlin, “Dirty Peach City”................................. 18 Joe’l Bethany Brock, The Refugee........................................ 19 Emily Rodriguez, This is an Adventure................................ 20 Chrysta Avers, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”......... 21 Ryan Holtzen, “Supermoon”................................................ 22 Kinsey DeGroat, Usurp........................................................ 24 Dishy K. Lemon, “Transit of Venus: an Ephemeral Duet”... 25 Amanda Franks, Black and White Photo with a Pop of Red from the Cardinal.................................................................. 25 Laurann Herrington, “Standing Still”................................... 26 Kinsey DeGroat, Nothing...................................................... 28 Victoria Lee, “Sugar, Sugar”*............................................... 29 Alexandra Benesik, “Gemini”............................................... 29 Jake Van Valkenburg, “Ode to Parkland”.............................. 30 I.V. Katen, “i have/tourmaline/for eyes”............................... 31 Claire Dunn-Grandpre, My Sister’s Reflection...................... 31 Ciera Robinson, “Our Secret Song”...................................... 32 Rebecca Rikard, le diable, dieu est une femme..................... 33 Orion Alexander, “Invisible”................................................ 34 Aleece Bustamante, Map 2................................................... 35 Tylan Buckner, “Five-Step Guide to Making Tea After a Break-Up”............................................................................. 36 Sydney Stanley, “Birmingham”............................................ 37 Chrysta Avers, Me................................................................. 38 Milo McGehee, “While The Evening Sun Plummets, They’re Afraid”..................................................................... 38 Hadia Barakat, Ogle’s Library............................................... 43 Laurel A. Parrott, “Beyond the Shallow Water Lies”............ 44 Lindsay Thomaston, Untitled................................................ 45 Khushboo Patel, “The Power of Awe”.................................. 46

Joe’l Bethany Brock, Coaster*............................................. 47 Aleece Bustamante, A Crisis of Identity............................... 48 Sophia Summerlin, “Untitled”............................................. 49 Luis Pereira-Hernandez, The Road Ahead........................... 49 I.V. Katen, “the heroine does not die at the end of this poem”............................................................................ 50 Gaffney Taylor, Atlanta At Night.......................................... 51 Ryne Clarke, Finger.............................................................. 52 Chrysta Avers, “Glutton for Pain”........................................ 53 Sydney Stanley, “Cement Mixer”......................................... 53 Dishy K. Lemon, “Ink”......................................................... 54 Rebecca Rikard, Untitled...................................................... 55 Skyler Stirling, “All My Goodness to Show”*.................... 56 Lindsay Thomaston, Untitled............................................... 59 Ryan Holtzen, “February”.................................................... 60 Aleece Bustamante, The Sky is Falling................................ 62 Luis Cotto-Quiñones, “The Lost Wallet”............................. 63 Julissa Canas Escobar, Unfinished 1, Midtown, 8th & West Peachtree (Top Left).............................................................. 68 Julissa Canas Escobar, Unfinished 4, Buckhead, Peachtree (Bottom Left)....................................................... 68 Tylan Buckner, “Samsara”................................................... 69 Sophia Summerlin, “Mosaics and Poems”........................... 70 Victoria Lee, “She’s Not Like Other Girls”......................... 71 Milo McGehee, “The Crow, It Watches”.............................. 72 Laurel A. Parrott, “Nature’s Heartbeat”................................ 73 I.V. Katen, “Teeth Cafe”....................................................... 74 Kinsey DeGroat, Retrograde................................................ 76 Orion Alexander, “Only Death Makes Constellations”........ 77 Chrysta Avers, Tide Pods: A Commentary Pt. 1 (Top Left)*..................................................................................... 78 Chrysta Avers, Tide Pods: A Commentary Pt. 2 (Bottom Left)*....................................................................... 78 Melody Weckel-Confer, “On Age: The Passing of Time”.... 79 Skyler Stirling, “Pump Fake”............................................... 80 Gaffney Taylor, Beauty.......................................................... 81 Tylan Buckner, “Vows”......................................................... 82

Ryne Clarke, Viceroy............................................................. 84 Laurel A. Parrott, “Isn’t It Funny”........................................ 85 Rebecca Rikard, Light of My Life......................................... 87 Lindsay Thomaston, Untitled............................................... 88 Claire Dunn-Grandpre, “If I Could Stop Running”............. 88 Ryan Holtzen, “You Were Teaching Me Art”...................... 91 Claire Dunn-Grandpre, Airstream........................................ 91 Orion Alexander, “A Diary, Almost Full”............................ 92 Joe’l Bethany Brock, The Colored Girl............................... 93 I.V. Katen, “What is Friendship? An Essay”........................ 94 Satana Lux, “Feeding Energy”............................................. 95 Luis Pereira-Hernandez, Because Fucking Emory Will Never Look This Good................................................... 96 Sydney Stanley, “Downpour”............................................... 97 Emily Rodriguez, Titan......................................................... 99 Sophia Summerlin, “Compositions”................................... 100 Luis Pereira-Hernandez, Empty Seat................................... 100 Luis Cotto-Quiñones, “Warrior of God”............................. 101 Aleece Bustamante, Map 1.................................................. 105 Rebecca Rikard, Strike a Pose............................................ 106 Orion Alexander, “Cogs”.................................................... 107 I.V. Katen, “oranges”.......................................................... 108 Aleece Bustamante, Untitled............................................... 108 Dishy K. Lemon, “ μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ”.......................... 109 Ryne Clarke, Tech Girls...................................................... 110 Lindsay Thomaston, “Home”............................................. 111 Shalonda Cash, “Changes That Come with Bittersweet Feelings”.............................................................................. 112 Rebecca Rikard, Fried Spam (Cover)................................. 113 *These works have been chosen by our advisor, Jessica Handler, for the Handler’s Choice awards in the catagories Art and Writing

Madness Ryne Clarke 17

Dirty Peach City

Sophia Summerlin

Screaming into two hands at midnight.

The only sound is of underwater delirium and violins.

Arezzo daydreams and a symphony beside a boy I must question love in.

Mine not his.

Phosphorescent daydreams that mostly involve running.

Away. To. Away from Summer nights that smell too strongly of rain, apples, and a dirty peach city.

To trains and babies in the backseat of their mother’s car.

Momma’s head ringing and memory slipping.

She asks where baby is not knowing she is referring to her full womb.

Suns exist on bleeding walls, overpopulating and outnumbering apartment moons.

Sinewy smiles of dirty girls behind dusty curtains taunting moans from muddy eyes.

Everything is filthy Until dirty girls are made holy by kaleidoscope light and rosary beads.

Sunday water cleansing nonreligious sins And pebbles are skipped off of raindrops into what we only hope is Heaven.

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The Refugee Joe’l Bethany Brock

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This is an Adventure Emily Rodriguez 20

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Chrysta Avers

You’re a will powered manic depressive living tonight, Dali and Bowie tacked with a neon pushpin into the hallowed walls of your basal ganglia moving past the adhesivity of a knife, Abstracted fashion icons hardwired into your motor movement cortex construed by being subdued and 40,000 in debt, You’re a Brooklyn art girl’s installation piece, Cellular chairs, Trapped by technology she cries without it we’re all unprepared, David’s coat of many colors wasn’t quite bright enough for me, Mix acrylics together with a fork, You form a spectrum haphazardly, Duct taped thoughts, Fleeting moments of erogenous boom zap pops, Your mind never quite slows, Writing peer reviewed essays prolifically on the damnation of Aristotelian values through 4 am prose, You’re a wage slave to the state, Indebted to 4 years of being sexually harassed passed off as a Boys Will be Boys rite of passage mistake, A coworker makes jokes of a respect in the workplace sign, “Why grab her by the pussy when you can grab her by the mind?”

My oh my, Well who would have guessed, That an intrinsic sense of misogyny promotes a woman’s professional fatality the moment that it pleads the loudest for a developed sense of individuality?

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Supermoon

Ryan Holtzen

There was a Supermoon on the first of March overgrown and ripe, spilling her light upon the cool ground below my feet guiding me towards the prison yard, where I clung to the fastened rails, upstairs through the gulag garden, where Her moonlight glimmer revealed the pink petals of the dogwood, tossed around by the playful wind – whispering that change is coming – I can Feel it; I can Feel it, Where Her supershine filled the naked courtyard, enough to swim through the light and into the dark craggy edges, the shadowed corners, hallowed haunts – where the ghosts of sweethearts still drink themselves to sleep, and death, awakening in the afterlife to see that shaky glimmer and feel the moment of Eternal Flame that quick drop of Bliss!

“This is what is Holy.”

“This is what I want—” Before Her gravity pulls the tide revealing these spirits as poets – people of God and products of hate, and love, and rage against the dying of the light, as I passed them by, 22

upwards towards my Lunar cell – escorted by a moonchild prison guard, Who seems to shine like her mother, Who speaks in riddles, Who dreams and sees the future Who takes my hand and guides me to the door – “Something big is about to happen” as moonlight drizzled through the foggy window, and I lay upon the eternal bed of sleep.

The guard has left and locked the door.

A record spins.

And Billy Corgan whines to “Luna” – soft and dizzy and blue, the record spins… and Luna tells me her secrets; She whispers words of God, And we dream of angels, laughing at their long curly hair – their boyish charm, dreading the day they fall to Earth.

And then the record crackles, and Luna returns to her heaven home.

I fall asleep alone, unable to understand why the birds begin to chirp so early.

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Usurp Kinsey DeGroat 24

Transit of Venus: an Ephemeral Duet

Dishy K. Lemon

Despite parting long ago, I still remember meeting that woman with splendid eyes. Her eyes were possessed neither by starlight nor seductive shadows; rather, something else within them persuaded my heart to dance within its holding. Conversing in silence, we shared our secrets by exchanging glances.

Mutual fondness revealed our fears only to vanquish them, allowing our palms to embrace until we shed our subtle union.

Eventually we did dance, not in secret, but in the way we lived: forging a camaraderie through spirits symmetrical, our tender ballet was progeny to a waltz we would forever set aside without words.

Black and White Photo with a Pop of Red from the Cardinal Amanda Franks 25

Standing Still

Laurann Herrington

That summer of waiting and leaving. I had wanted to linger somehow in the minutes before they became hours before they became tomorrow and as I sat on the curb overlooking K Street, I wanted desperately to connect with something.

I loved where I lived. Where moss and tree limbs wrap overhead like a mother’s embrace. Where the houses stay the same except maybe one had lighter shingles and a basketball hoop out front or one had a wreath on the door and lawn chairs on the porch. You still had to know where you were going. To know your way around the cul-de-sac. Sometimes I would bike around the neighborhood. The humidity would dampen my shirt and make my hair shrivel, but I liked to feel every bump in the road, to reach towards the wiry moss, and to hear the hums of cicadas.

“The Richardsons’ are interested,” said mama. ‘You know they’ve been interested in this house since we invited them over for Easter dinner. So that roof got to be fixed today.”

Daddy shook his head. “I don’t know about them.

We’ve had this house in the family for so long. Don’t you want to keep it in the family?”

“I’m sure as hell not selling it to Cousin Odell, if that’s what you’re thinking. You can forget that nonsense.”

Everything must go. The memories will fade, the photographs will disappear, and nothing will be left. “If we forget it, then we’re supposed to forget it. Our brains don’t keep what we don’t need.” Mama had said that once when I caught her throwing away my kindergarten macaroni art. We were never meant to hold on to junk. She never kept those homemade birthday presents or school report cards like the other mothers did. Mama never wanted to hoard the past, to box it up in the attic. She moved forward like a shark, never looking back to see what she had left behind. I was always looking back. I did this so often, I tended to stand still.

Perhaps that was why graduation had been so hard. I 26

was unwilling to accept this life of leaving and moving on. To leave without saying goodbye seemed unfathomable. Oh, the places you’ll go. That’s what the valedictorian had said. All the places, as if the world had unfolded herself just for us. But what was wrong with the world we had seen? What was wrong with standing still?

“Kicked him out? He left her for that girl. He doesn’t deserve a house for cheating.”

“Now why you have to say things like that?”

Mama waved to our next door neighbor, Ms. Roswell, and ignored him. “Oh hello, Ms. Roswell. How are you feeling today?”

Seeing this as an invitation, she shuffled off her front porch to us. “Oh lordy, what y’all packing up now? Just going to up and leave me one day and you’ll forget all about me and my Howard. He’s still sick you know. Y’all won’t come by to see him anymore. Oh, Ella baby, I didn’t even see you on that curb. What have you been up to? Are you excited to be moving yet or are you ask upset as me, hmm? You gotta come on over sometime and I’ll fix something up for you. That sound good?”

Before I could say anything, Ms. Roswell had moved on to my parents. She doesn’t get out much, I had been told.

For the longest, I never understood what the neighbors meant when they called her a bessie bug until last winter. I was doing homework late into the evening when I happen to glance out my window. Leaning against her house, her nightgown slipping off her shoulders was Ms. Roswell. The moonlight made her skin blue. Her back was to me and her head was buried in the corners of her elbows. Her delicate, rounded shoulders bounced, shaking her whole body. Her muffled sobs came back to me often after that like a nightmare I couldn’t shake.

After that night, mama told me everything. Her dead husband. Her careless daughter. It was why mama and daddy hadn’t told her daughter what had happened and why they made me swear not to bring it up again.

More than anything, I feared that I had seen too much of myself in Ms. Roswell. I had recognized the slump of the 27

shoulders, that incessant restlessness. It nagged me that entire summer whenever I found myself hesitating when I should be persisting.

But what are you going to do about that, I asked myself. Nothing. What was there to do but to wait, to linger in the minutes?

The sun was setting over suburbia and everything became a memory.

Nothing Kinsey DeGroat

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Sugar, Sugar

Victoria Lee

“Ready with the confetti---Veronica and Betty are going steady!”

—Veronica Lodge in “Verse Than Ever,” 1977.

Sugar. You’re saccharine, like apple pie filling. Sweeter than the milkshake I’m watching you drink. You lick the whipped cream off your cherry, and I pretend to look at Archie.

Ah honey, honey. Your laugh is honey when he wipes a bit of chocolate from the side of your mouth, smearing the lipstick I picked out for you.

You’re my candy girl. Bubblegum-pink. I imagine what it will look like on Archie’s jaw later, and suddenly I’m burning.

The boy who brought me here says something as I leave, but I didn’t come here for him. I came because you’re sweet. Because you make my molars ache, Betty. And you got me wanting you.

Gemini

Alexandra Benisek

Two halves of my soul Battle against each goal.

One feels words, emotions, and situations.

The other stays comfortable within society’s creations.

It’s hard to find your passion and your place, But even harder when you have a Gemini’s Case.

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Ode to Parkland

Jake Van Valkenburg

I stay above and contemplate Look through the window at this dreary wake I dressed in white, and they in black.

They flip through pictures, They smile and weep.

I wish I could speak, reach down below.

I still see his face, in red and all.

He walked through hallways, a scythe in hand.

It’s become so common, like the morning news Tuning in and becoming blue.

As I rise above, I think of Nick What could I say, what could I do He looked so angry, that fated day.

The Man he greets us at golden gates Directs us down a trodden path Kids from Sandy, Friends from Vegas A boy in church, a girl at play.

Thoughts and prayers, we hear them say But there’s no room for their pensive praying hands Give me change, for I am dead.

A thousand wakes, a million tears Thoughts and prayers, I fade away.

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i have/tourmaline/for eyes I.V. Katen

they jitter, crawl (bugs) (or rocks) my eyelids are god yahweh light fractals on bleached wallpaper i am contrary to popular belief not holy this supermarket has a parking lot

My Sister’s Reflection Claire Dunn-Grandpre

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Our Secret Song

Ciera Robinson

You were so convinced the wind had a tune.

You claimed you heard it one cloudy afternoon.

Said it sounds of Christmas how it jingles and jangles.

My how we laughed, your tongue was twisted and tangled.

You told me you’d found where the wind speaks.

You saw it hidden in a tree just beyond the creek.

Said it dangled from a branch, the cross hangs three silver tubes, That clanked together like wine glasses at a toast stuffed with ice cubes.

You woke me at dawn after the first summer rain fell.

You were going to take me there, but I could not tell.

Said it was our secret, the song I was about to hear.

Then you ran off barefoot while I followed near.

You were too fast and left me on my own.

You didn’t seem to care that I was all alone.

Said if this happened to find a way.

My eyes began to water with the dew of the day.

I felt the slight breeze that made a faded tune.

I ran towards it and it led me back to you.

Said it’s about time you made it here.

Faith is like a wind chime trust me my dear.

It’s delicate, for it can easily be broken.

It weathers the storm not knowing if the clouds will reopen.

Said it’s how you felt after I left you that time.

Not knowing where to run, it brought you back to me underneath our wind chime.

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You were convinced the wind had a tune.

We sat and listened to it beneath the full moon.

Said I was glad when you finally made it here.

Faith is like a wind chime trust it my dear.

le diable, dieu est une femme Rebecca Rikard

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Invisible In immediate response to Parkland.

And you doOn’t Need your gun To be seen.

And you doOn’t Need your gun To be seen.

They say and sing out, “Can you hear our screams?”

They beg and plead, “Oh let us live our dreams!”

And if the dark that swarms your heart Reaches out for company Then let us drown it out with light; Remember, stars burn the night, And you doOn’t Need your gun To be seen.

And you doOn’t Need your gun To be seen, For we see With eyes ablaze And hopes and love That might amaze Even God herself, As now she cries, Seeing hopeless fate, And her tears 34

Orion Alexander

Run right down her face And turn the sunshine into rain And turn the sunshine into rain She sings, “And you doOn’t Need your gun To be seen.

And you doOn’t Need your gun To be seen.”

Map 2 Aleece Bustamante

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Five-Step Guide to Making Tea After a Break-Up

Tylan Buckner

What you’re going to need To Survive: Teabags (Tissues) of your preferred brand Your favorite (Pillow) Kettle 3 oz. Milk (a pint of Ben & Jerry’s) 2 (shots) Teaspoons of (Rum) sugar 2-5 cups of (Scotch) water in case you’re (still delusional) having company Teaspoon (index finger) Teacup (we’re drinking from the bottle today) Directions:

1. Heat water in kettle until steam whistles out of the spout. Realize that you hate tea. Fuck tea! He liked tea; now He doesn’t like you… Then realize that you might have more in common with tea than you previously thought, and decide to give tea a second chance before once again deciding that tea is loved by liars and the English! but scotch is named after the Scottish who fought against them. Edward I couldn’t break William Wallace’s Braveheart, and he won’t break yours either!

2. Position sugar in the bottom of your teacup before introducing water to dissolve better. Bottoms up! Shoot the rum like it’s a 3-pointer and you’re Michael Jordan. Don’t worry, cursing His name is the only chaser you’ll need tonight.

3. Submerge teabag into the sugared water, and let steep for 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Full honesty: you’re going to be crying a hell of a lot here, like, dehydration to the point where your tears stop being composed of water and salt, and start coming out as pure Johnnie Walker Blue Label.

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4. Remove teabag before stirring in the milk. Alright, fuck the tissues. You might not have Him anymore, but your boys Ben and Jerry are always down to party; they always have the best puns, and they’d never betray you. You can’t just taste the swirls, you have to feel them. Grab a fistful of Vermont’s finest!

5. Benefit from your keen decision making by enjoying a perfect cup of tea! Go back and forth with yourself about what “Tea” really is, then give up, spend the time to brew a pot of coffee, then pour it into the sink, having decided that what you really want is to drink 12 oz. of hazelnut creamer through a straw while watching The Notebook in Korean with Spanish subtitles.

Birmingham

Sydney Stanley

i don’t have a word for hurt that is not hurt but the words hit like punches like her sticks on her four piece drum and i think i got it for a second the people in the crowd crying all we want is honest all i want is honest the years of being lied to piling up like a landfill i want you to tell me it hurts because it does please tell me it hurts you know it does there are plenty of stars here a dead light in a dying country 37

Me Chrysta Avers

While The Evening Sun Plummets, They’re Afraid

Milo McGehee

Lately I’ve been trying to find my weeping muse Amongst the city’s wash of cold greys and colder blues, So thus I huddle in the urban whispers around barrel fires Straining to hear hints of her angelic songs and golden lyres.

Yet she is still lost, and the sands of time are running through my fingers at an alarming rate, so I clench my fist and write alone, searching for what caused my muse’s mysterious departure.

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I begin my journey walking. First, I pass the noisy neon bars, then impersonal MARTA stations and cameras that don’t trust me. Then I step over an erotic magazine and then a newspaper and then I wait for permission to cross the busy street.

My head is tilted upwards in search. It is here that I finally see them. The ones who scared her—who banished the stars from the monotone city sky and who stomped out the simmering sparks of my warm mind’s eye, continuing to pummel the ashes with pasty hands and rich, bronze knuckles. It is as if they are unstoppable. Fearless.

Yet I am here to tell you that they are lying.

They’re afraid.

They’re afraid of young men chewing on their own long hair.

They’re afraid of the music that makes you laugh and cry And remember all moments of harmonious ecstasy as if each second of clarity was all connected by something genuine and sing-song because they are.

They’re afraid of the people who use public libraries For something more than an internet connection.

They’re afraid of those who realize that you can’t draw Lines between dots when there are infinite dots and even More spaces between them, with science leaving behind a by-product of young romanticism for me to gobble up all mad and starving.

They’re afraid of the people who make love And mean it.

They’re afraid of the kids who hold The Communist Manifesto 39

In one hand, and The Myth of Sisyphus in the other.

They’re afraid of black, leather boots stomping out Their unnaturally white teeth.

They’re afraid of angels in the streets Who have stripped themselves of their right minds For directionless ascent into heaven on Earth.

They’re afraid of the anti-machinery luddites Who chose juicy tomatoes over raw beef And passionate love over nine to five.

They’re afraid of what happens during Those meetings in your basements After 12 AM, the smoke and sweat in the Air obscuring one reality for another.

They’re afraid to give the Saints and Angels of the World Healthcare, and would rather spend your tax dollars on Blank tombstones erected outside the public view, flowerless.

They’re afraid of me talking to myself.

What do I say?

They’re afraid of your nose stuffing itself Into books that would have been forgotten On the shelves of beautiful, old abandoned buildings.

They’re afraid you’ll turn down the penthouse suite For a ditch.

They’re afraid of caffeine beating my heart like a drum, And young boys filling napkins with their white snot and whiter cum.

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They’re afraid of the unjustly imprisoned Who can now see past the bullshit, But have severed writhing tongues, Bloody and human.

They’re afraid of you climbing over the fences marked “Private Property” in the midnight, Because apparently every speck of dust On this beautiful planet is owned by some Bureaucratic sack of flesh and shit who thinks He can own the lakeside and put a billboard On top of every hill and within every valley In the great state of Georgia, Separating young kids like you and me Who want a chance to be one with nature And god in some absolute peace and quiet.

They’re afraid that you will realize that God is far Too large for your religion.

They’re afraid of your too-loud laughter In public spaces that cause black-suited men To stare at you in their periphery As if you were doing something wrong by breaking Their sickly green mold.

They’re afraid of boys who call sunsets beautiful And girls who fall in love with someone new every day, Because everyone is worth loving.

They’re afraid of sentimentality and sincerity So they divide us into cars, cubicles, sections, and suburbs, Hoping we don’t smile at or acknowledge each other on the street.

They’re afraid of feeding us brain food— So they give me the sterile, synthetic, sugary stuff 41

That never once felt the cool earth or warm sun but Sure as hell felt that factorial sting.

They’re afraid that we will forget ourselves, Trading in our sensitive identities for a commodified False idol who worships itself alone.

They’re afraid of broken clocks Whose indentations and subdivided markings Are the scars on the chest of an angel.

They’re afraid that the revolution will not Be televised.

They’re afraid of you living with a capital “L” They’re afraid that you’ll stop searching, Stop climbing mountains and staring longingly at the sea, Because their answers are so much easier to digest— They’ll give you science and religion and tell you To choose, and then they’ll give you a job and a Hobby and a spouse and a kid and now you’re locked in, But five miles away—over that ridge and across the river— Is another life that you will never know, Where fires burn indefinitely and soft and golden Where everyone’s eyes are childlike, pupils reflecting wonder And the moon.

Where wolves lick the spaces between my fingers And where the lion sleeps beside the lamb.

They’re afraid that your lips will no longer be Chapped and fruitless, But bloom into deep, profound color.

They’re afraid that you will stand up On sore limbs, Individual and unified 42

They’re afraid of your bruised fists Whose wrinkles contort into smiles that rewrite history Although form makes no difference Beneath the great equalizer of Holy! Holy! Holy!

Most of all, however, they’re afraid of the moments we spend together.

The holy moments. Not the mundane working ones, But the moments when you fall in love with everyone Around you And the world And yourself And you feel beyond life and death, Reality and unreality, Logical and illogical, And just are.

Just be.

And in those moments, there are no lies, And they will bow beneath you and burn into tremendous Bright stars at your feet.

And they should be afraid of me.

And they should be afraid of you.

Ogle’s Library Hadia Barakat

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Beyond the Shallow Water Lies

Laurel A. Parrott

I dropped a pebble into their conversation Just to see what would happen.

I saw how my words rippled through them; I watched as my waves brought their emotions to the surface, Like the tide bringing in useless driftwood.

I was disappointed to hear how empty their words were, How devoid of real substance, real thought.

They held meaning back when they were first said; But each person that repeated them was like a filter, Slowly ridding the words of their sentimental sediments, Until all that was left was a purified strand of letters.

But one did not move. One did not speak.

One person in that crowd was not affected by my little pebble.

She was still; her face was serene.

I almost mistook her silence for apathy, Until I saw the water brimming in her eyes.

I did not know what she felt, but I knew she was feeling And whatever she was feeling lay too deep in her chest To be moved by something as small and insignificant As my little pebble.

They say still waters run deep; I think they are right.

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Untitled Lindsay Thomaston 45

The Power of Awe

Khushboo Patel

We watch the African sun set behind the lake.

Painting orange and red and yellow upon a world that may not survive to see the colours again the next morning.

While the hippos bathe and the crocodiles hunt With their mouths opening wider than the canopies, We listen to the rustling leaves, Wondering if it’s a lion behind the trees Or maybe a zebra looking for some water.

We listen to the go-away birds signaling danger.

Smell the evening air mixed with wilderness.

We climb the rocks to look upon the dry land At grass that browns in the summer heat And stinging branches that leave thorns in our socks.

We watch the animals congregate at the water hole; A moment of peace as we all take a moment to drink.

And in the stillness of instinctual survival, We watch the warm sun bathe the white stripes of the shy kudu.

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We marvel at the brightness of the majestic lion’s hide.

We witness nature in all of its unfiltered glory.

We truly notice our insignificance in this wild existence.

Coaster Joe’l Bethany Brock

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A Crisis of Identity Aleece Bustamante

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Untitled

Sophia Summerlin

Somedays, I just have to kill the woman in me.

Abandon loveliness and vulnerability to take on Dad’s tough skin with the faded tattoos and finger burns.

Allow my womb to connect to myself and myself alone.

To remember the hippie children on the Arizona couch as if my former body was my own daughter.

I am trying to carve her from stone.

Not birth her.

I must remember to quit falling in love with ugly people just because they have pretty smiles.

They are wolves and baring teeth is a threat.

They will kill you.

And you will let them.

The Road Ahead Luis Pereira-Hernandez, 49

the heroine does not die at the end of this poem

I.V. Katen

I is it romantic to share strawberries in the underworld?

II asking for a friend III i read a book when i was younger about a mouse and a strawberry. is there a word for lust for food? gluttony? the mouse had a gluttonous lust for a strawberry that was quite larger than himself. i think he may have lost it at one point. is that a breakup? he didn’t cross the styx to find it IV why did my friend choose strawberries?

V i think in the underworld they’d prefer pomegranates to strawberries and pomegranates are (according to google) symbols of fertility and marriage. strawberries are sacred to the virgin mary. mary got married though but she’s not in the underworld as that is not the same religion VI she asked me to eat with her. i think this is a date VII i used to eat frozen strawberries in my childhood quite frequently due to them being in the lunchline beside the milk cartons in elementary school. there was a boy who always brought strawberries in his lunchbox the not frozen kind. i kissed him under the slide in kindergarten before growing up and realizing that i’m far too gay for that VIII down here, we are surrounded by volcanic pebbles and red fruit. my friend brought too many strawberries and even their little speckles are making me sick. she isn’t though 50

IX on earth it is winter not the season for strawberries. i’m stuck here til spring with just strawberries and my best friend and we’re both red like blood in the light of hell and she kisses me with tongue X maybe i belong here. with the berries XI sorry strawberries aren’t berries* they’re fruit XII she wants to dip her feet in the river and i tell her go ahead but if she dies i’m telling her mom she jumped right in real eager and she laughs at me popping a strawberry in her mouth XIII her lips are nice. red like strawberries but not as insufferable with a full stomach XIV to answer her question yes

Atlanta At Night Gaffney Taylor

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Finger Ryne Clarke 52

Glutton for Pain

Chrysta Avers

Neurosis of the brain says it’s a glutton for pain, You and I the fabricated split between reality and lies will never be the same, Honeycomb dome drips poison into my blinking eyes, How many licks until you get to the center of my succubus mind?

You and I A median between divinity and fear will always be at war, You’re the purity of loving vs. the ounce of arson my tongue yearns for.

Cement Mixer

Sydney Stanley

cement mixer this blue yellow of every night as i stand between back and forward afraid of being stuck though i can’t will myself to move i hold a bottle of nail polish remover in my hand thinking ‘if i drink this whole thing will i die?’ it’s nearly full, ‘i’ll down it like a shot, it’s fine, my friends drink all the time’ i can never keep up with them light on my weight after two sips the dizzy without the dying if the taste burns the same i’ll make it no longer thinking i am dead lying back on my yoga mat but being it 53

Ink Come now, let’s make a voice together; a shout that goes unheard, only to be captured by the eyes of the curious, and those who are just too late in realizing the truth of who you are.

In that spirit, we might as well scream out.

Oh don’t worry, be as loud as you want to be; on paper there’s no danger of hearing your voice crack or losing momentum to a mumble.

Are you ready?

This time we’ll sing a different tune…

Let’s see if the parchment can stand up to our melody.

54

Dishy K. Lemon

Untitled Rebecca Rikard

55

All My Goodness to Show

Skyler Stirling

cord stretching back forever into forever snap, just slightly, because it let you see what it was trying to be. That tiny nagging intuition that this had all happened before became animate and displayed before you - what else is someone supposed to do when presented with a reminder that the audience for this little gem bubble of emergent complexity is still watching? Would you forget this in your supposed DMT death dream, when you watch the moon give birth to life once more by body-guarding the earth against the angry brother sun and you watch the universe gain a mystery outside the frame of language for a sea of children by the observatory, and riding in someone’s SUV down a slow residential road you see the cops look up and the symbols adorning the window controls and air conditioning switches stretch back to the first alphabet?

If you were to line up every number from one to infinity, and then draw lines linking the primes together in little arcs they would ripple out progressively more and more until they met in a series of nested little fractal waves glowing red against the void of the numbers that don’t exist. If you were to trace the outlines of where these waves meet you would see very clearly the preciousness of each moment we share, how brightly these intersecting points shine like gems fashioned from the lives of the simple and humane things we want to be. You would see that the whole of this fragile little lattice is glinting against the shifting slow geometry of the dark below us, and that James Baldwin was right beyond right when he said that the second we break faith with each other we drown.

Each of our cities is a nest for the things we say and have said to each other, and the stories that echo around in quiet metro 56

stations, ornate old ballrooms, huge brutalist administrative offices, cramped apartments suffocating families, traps suffocating dreams, people that think they can ever make a difference while having a properly filled out 401K, section 8 housing adorned with flat cement porches and barred windows keeping out nobody important, homeless encampments sandwiched in between interstate bypasses and special ecological parks in the backyards of suburban false memory shitscapes, yuppie McMansions with the lights left on and nobody inside, children’s sections of public libraries, apartment high rises towering above waves of orange sodium lamps arrayed into oceanic diffraction patterns that stretch on forever because the echo into the dark of Georgia as a name and an idea. And it’s all in the process of melting second by second like a man walking through the desert of entropy under the buzzing sun of realization. Places take your name and run with it if you aren’t careful, and if you aren’t careful you don’t deserve to care.

We’re cradled by the animating mystery that imbues this all with a meaning beyond meaning and a love beyond love. And I love you, because we are coterminous and because the deepest secret in the whole wide world is that transcending the self requires losing it. And while you’re navigating that moon river we all see but can’t swim across, I hope you’re going this way.

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58

Untitled Lindsay Thomaston 59

February

Ryan Holtzen

Are you sitting down? because I’ve loved another, pulled upstairs and tossed about, on purple wrinkles, lightly faded, needing washed, a pond of lavender with rippled edges, and a fish swimming in the overgrown path of memory, looking across the fog of old church pews on a Sunday morning, where God no longer dwells.

The mattress squeaks through the door, and I can hear the answers we’re both looking for, in the walls, despite their painted over permanence, yellow like hysterical women, mad and desperate, for a drop of moonlight as it slowdances across the floor towards something just and beautiful – They’re holding up the room, a sacred space where lovers blur the line of magic, and shiver, sweat, and swing to the rhythm of a broken watch, tick-ticking towards forever, where we eventually pack up and leave beyond the four corners of reality that we built to keep us company.

My hand glides against something new – The body of a bottle, a glass filled to the brim with loneliness as sand keeps falling grain by grain, little specks of truth that never envy the hearts of lovers, as finicky and fragile they are, 60

ambivalent towards the night, and longing to be kept warm, to be lovely and loved and lonely – pressed further into the bed of laughter, of smiles and teeth.

Hands get lost in tangled hair – the branches of the eternal sycamore that is growing from our backyard spreading its green leaves to make home for the wildlife – the forest nymphs, mockingbirds, and bastard squirrels that tore up the garden.

Its leaves will drop and face the breathy gusts of winter, where I will debate again to end its misery, cut it down, and make it mortal, to turn it into something I can better understand – but for now, the tree still stands where underneath I find a different place reminiscent of the echo chamber hallway (that is youth and progress) hidden by the heavy curtains, tucked away behind the pretty campus, and below the heavy quilt.

Our bodies end with hieroglyphics, and we stop and breathe, confused by what they mean and try to make sense of something ancient – beyond ourselves, beyond God and his powerful hand, beyond the memory of myself – something that connects, like telephone wires struck by lightning, exploding in the night like supernovas over busy streets, 61

as cars drive by with shooting-star gleam; connection gone by fire but quick flame shines bright; The truth of every mark and symbol is underneath the skin, where the blood seeps, royal purple, apple red in pretty drips across the floor.

62

The Sky is Falling Aleece Bustamante

The Lost Wallet

Luis Cotto-Quiñones

Dedicated to Leaferbag Danny dreamt.

Why he was in the foyer of the Phillip Weltner Library, he did not know. Through the front door, the day outside was beautiful. No one was walking about on the immense courtyard at the center of several buildings about the campus. To his right, he saw a gold-rimmed mirror hanging from the wall adjacent to the entrance, and, with just the slightest hint of hesitation, as though he were frightened of what he would see in it. As he set a hand on the bar handle of the door, he decided to glance into it. In recent months, Danny hadn’t been eating very much, and it had slimmed him down another ten pounds.

His face seemed gaunt, more skeletal, the eyes in his sockets dimmer, and his black hair had grown longer than ever before, shaggier and spreading out here and there in direction. He didn’t know why he was wandering around, but he figured it was because he had been dropping acid again. The final product of three full years at Oglethorpe University. He could not look away, scanning around his reflection and taking in each detail, then scowling once he drew conclusions of what he saw.

He looked forward and stepped out through the door.

Coursing through the moving air was the smell of lilac.

The wind rustled through the branches and leaves of surrounding vegetation and stroked the back of Danny’s hair. His reflection was still heavy in his thoughts, and he felt the sudden craving for a cigarette. From his pocket, he produced a carton of Marlboro Reds, then reached in further for the lighter. The pocket was empty. He checked the other and found it empty as well, then patted around all his jeans for one. A sudden tinge of worry stung in stomach. He knew he had been carrying something else. Then, like a smack to the back of his head, he realized what it was. His wallet was missing. He patted around his pockets again. Nothing.

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middle school, and he had lost it long ago when he was in the eighth grade. Here, however, it was everything to him—his license, his debit and credit cards, his condoms, his photographs of his grandparents and aunt—and now they were gone. Somewhere out on this campus, he had lost it.

Taking the cigarette out of his mouth and putting it behind his ear, he remembered he had smoked a cigarette before entering the library and thus went jolting around the library and down the sloping hill beside it. A smoking deck stood at the bottom of the hill, a large, polygonal wood structure which stood near a dividing creek on the other side of which rose the student campus center. Running toward the deck, Danny saw a round woman with curly brown hair standing at the edge of it, her back to him, staring out at the campus through the trees growing around the deck. Something about her seemed familiar. The wind rustled through the branches of the trees. Cascading down from the brilliant green canopy above him were many small, pink flower petals circling and falling against the cement trail leading to the student center, perfuming the air further still. When he reached the deck, he looked about the chairs and the small stand for disposing of cigarettes. Nothing. Just then, when he put a sandaled foot against the deck, the woman turned back and smiled at him. Now he knew why she seemed so familiar. It was Aunt Celia. A stroke had taken earth from this earth last year, two weeks before Hurricane Maria swept away the island in wind and water. Yet, when she stood on the deck smiling at him, her face was healthy and bright, full of life and that same immense kindness which always distinguished her features. It was though it was normal, as though he had never lost her.

“How are you doing, Danny?” His aunt had been very fluent in English, and he and she spoke it quite frequently in their several conversations.

“Titi Celia, what are you doing here?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” She looked up through the canopy of the trees and looked up into a stunning blue sky. “It’s a beautiful day.”

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But Danny couldn’t pay attention to it. Instead, he kept glancing around the deck for any sign of his wallet. Nothing.

“What are you looking for?” She asked.

“My wallet.”

“Did you have it out while you were here on the deck?”

Danny looked around again. His memory was returning to him, “No.”

“Where did you last have it?”

He searched his thoughts again. Faux recollections extant only in the world of dreams inserted an image of him walking down to the library with beef jerky in his hand, “I think I bought something from the vending machine in my dorm building.”

“Okay,” and she moved toward him, “Let’s go there.”

The two walked off the deck and around the structure, heading on the trail which led to the dormitory buildings. Already, he could see the structure of the Jobe dorm entering into view the further they walked.

“You never answered my question,” his aunt said.

“What question?”

“How you were doing.”

He remembered. The question conjured enormous distress within him. The truth poured out from the many cracks of his heart and rose up toward his mouth, welling behind his lips. So many were the things that weighed themselves against his tongue, demanding to be released, about his plummeting grades, the degrading relationship between him and his mother--her sister--of the steady deterioration of his sanity. To think of where he had been once and where he was now made tears sting at the bottom of his eyes, even when he thought about it only so superficially.

“I’m doing alright,” he said.

“Alright?”

He nodded.

They moved along in silence up to the Jobe building, up alongside it to the front door. By some surrealistic logic, the front door opened on its own accord without needing his 65

student ID, and the two of them entered through the lobby.

They headed into the elevator and went up to the third floor in silence. When the doors of the elevator slid open, he could see the alcove in the corner where the vending machines stood humming. They stepped out and approached them. Danny looked around on the floor, bent down underneath the machines, but saw no sign of his wallet anywhere. Desperation was consuming him.

“I can’t find it.” He huffed.

“Did you take your wallet out anywhere else?”

“No, this is the only place I took it out!” He took off his cap and started coursing his hands through his hair.

“Could it be in your dorm?”

“No Titi,” Standing in front of the machine for the drinks, he smacked a hand against it and fell to the floor. He leaned the back of his head against the machine and sighed. “I just don’t understand why all of this just keeps happening to me. I don’t know why I just keep losing everything.”

“Are you just talking about your wallet?” She asked.

The truth would not restrain itself, “No.”

“What’s been happening to you?”

Danny shook his head. He sank his head into his hands, “It would take too long to explain, titi.”

“You know I will always make the time to hear what’s going on with you.”

His heart warmed, and he stood. He set his hand up on the corner of the top of the machine, where he always set it when he was awake, then suddenly felt an object exactly where he put his hand. When he drew it off from the top of the vending machine, he saw that it was his wallet, the Pikachu face staring back at him. His eyes became wide, and his aunt smiled at him. He opened his wallet and found everything in it still intact. His smiling face on his Florida driver’s license was still in its place, as were all the other cards and belongings.

“Look at that,” she said.

“I can’t believe I left it up there.”

“Feel better now?” She asked.

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“Yeah, it’s just,” and he looked down to the floor. “I thought I lost everything.” And the truth of his whole world lay in that single sentence.

His aunt was looking at him, both entirely silent for the time they were standing there. She let out a sigh—the one she always had made whenever she would think profoundly on a matter—and then she approached him. She set her hands around his like a faith healer and stroked them with her thumb.

“A lot of times, when you think you’ve lost everything, you come to find out you haven’t.”

Danny was silent.

“And sometimes, to gain back the things you lost, you have to retrace your steps,” she said, “Take a moment to take a breath, then start going back through the motions.”

Finally, Danny spoke, “What if there are things I’ve lost that I can never get back again?”

“Then you move forward,” she said, “Keep going until you can compensate them, replace them.”

His hands felt warm. The touch of her hands was a loving heat which he’s not felt in a long time.

“Keep going, Danny,” she said. “Keep going.”

She released his hands, and when Danny looked up, she was gone. Returned to whatever quarter of heaven from which she descended to speak to him. However, the wallet and the warmth of his aunt’s touch were still in his hands. The warmth still tingled under his skin, tingling and tingling even after he awakened…

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68

Samsara

Tylan Buckner

He woke to the whisper Of an angel in his head, Who taught him what it Meant to scream, But never told him Which words to shout.

He woke to the joy Of terror, learning the Suicide of immortality, The weakness in power, The weight of a breath.

He woke to the salt Stains of stale tears, and the Memory of when Holding on meant holding back.

He woke to the freedom From a prison that never existed, But couldn’t let go of the key.

He woke to the rest He’d long been avoiding.

He woke to the end.

Unfinished 1, Midtown, 8th & West Peachtree (Top Left) Unfinished 4, Buckhead, Peachtree (Bottom Left) Julissa Canas Escobar

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Mosaics and Poems

Sophia Summerlin

The milk is spoiling on the desk beside the empty wine bottle.

Last night I watched as an angel unfolded her wings and tasted ecstasy for the first time. She became naked. Her body perfect and perky and her lips blooming onto the want of mine. She widened her tongue and placed a pink bullet gently onto its surface.

The world is cold and sober tonight.

There is a man pulling his stomach out of the ocean. I am afraid of his guts and blood and he is afraid of my skin.

I am out looking for driftwood that my lover will like. Pretty enough to hang on the wall.

My nails are too long for me to sing to you. He says it is an excuse. I say it is a terribly inconvenient reality.

We are all eating dinner together through the window sill and we are too cold to determine who is outside and who is in. Who is outside and who is in.

I imagine hard love falling to me and she sighs pretending that she can feel it. And she does…but it hurts a little. Her wings are not white or dirty, but a glass mosaic that God does not yet know how to love. The people are in awe. She is so unholy, and I am praying as she looks up into the sky. Her throat and chin now an arrow.

She watched as false love spoke names too often and as emptiness became too loud. An exaggeration of sincerity brought on by honey and poison. Leaves and dynamite. She watched as softness was cut without notice. Without intention. As Loneliness fell asleep in the arms of Lonelier and as fingers dangled from the side of a cliff body.

Masses of carnations. Masses of carnations. Masses of carnations!

My mother has terribly sad eyes and I am afraid that the world is composed of only endings for her. She says, “Nothing will ever be the same.” And she is right.

There are girls smoking cigarettes outside of my old high 70

school. I don’t recognize any of them. I hope they are happy.

The boy I used to love keeps on calling.

All the things I ever wanted to cry out fall asleep on the wetness of an angel’s tongue as though a bullet of my life will fire from her voice and carve its way through my skull. I’ve placed my suicide inside of an unholy creature. She will save me.

She’s Not Like Other Girls

Victoria Lee

She’s the kind of woman who turns heads wherever she goes. Not because she wears high-heels or skimpy clothes—it’s probably because of her five, screaming mouths. Most girls hide behind caked-on makeup and fad diets, but she’s a real woman, with curves in all the right places and tentacles in all the wrong ones. When she walks, people stare, and when she runs, livestock disappear.

Other girls are obsessed with frivolous things like fashion, but not her. She only owns one dress: a paradox of strange geometry and indescribable color that shifts in the light. Everyone who sees it is enchanted by its devastating beauty. Once, I caught a glimpse of it under the moonlight—something federal emergency services advise against—and I’ve been devoted to her ever since.

But I know someone like her could never love someone like me. I’m not popular, or handsome, or an eons-old cosmic entity from another dimension. My only hope is that someday she’ll notice me. Maybe then, when the Star-Spawn return, and one thousand pitiless Old Things slouch toward their Mistress on legs that are not legs, and the voiceless shrieking of the heretics is reduced to a strangled sigh—maybe then she will count me among her legions in the bedlam to come.

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The Crow, It Watches

Milo McGehee

“My child, why canst you no longer run, play, And make merry this calm autumn day?

The trees beckon with warm, golden Boughs and vivastic root Far from the city’s rain of grey cloud and black soot.

The sing-song creek babbles and pops Atop elusive grey fish and smooth rocks Next to layered sandstone cliffs Who—within—hide buried treasures and gilded gifts!

The silken-haired angels speak through soft wind Healing weak boys who had gone hungry and thinned While milken-white clouds dot heaven’s blue lip And across the viridian pasture, antlered deer hop, jump, and skip.

So thus, little one, look me in the eye And give good answer: Why my child, why?”

To which the boy responded with a cry: “Because the dark crow watches without sound, Just a ‘caw’ that echoes gravely ‘cross this hallowed mound!

Look there: The children who once played are now bit by a hunter’s nasty hound And the flowers—once heaven bound—now hit blackened, ashen ground!

At night I huddle against the burning cold, blind, The only escape being the lingering lees of my mind— Lees which that feathered crow doth infect Horrendous thoughts that grow unchecked.

Prayer flies out from mine soul, then, like murdered bird, tumbles Down towards hellish soup to fizzle and fumble.

Then when I look up and around the bloodied moon, Stars grow blotted and lazily strewn, 72

Spinning into mad shapes and forms, Eventually lost behind disorder-belched storms.

And all the while,” The child spoke through sharp acid and bile, “men laugh teary-eyed at my innocence defiled!”

At this I could not help but weep As the boy rejected my embrace And the solemn crow watched on, Yellow beaked and stony faced.

Nature’s Heartbeat

Laurel A. Parrott

With salty air in my lungs And warm sand under my feet I know I am home.

I close my eyes And listen to nature’s heart beat: Ebb, flow, ebb, flow – The eternity of the sea.

Floating in a blue abyss, I lose myself.

It’s the tide that finds me; I feel myself lose control As I get tossed by the relentless waves.

I struggle for breath and wonder when it will end.

Ebb, flow, ebb, flow – The eternity of the sea.

A boat was lost at sea the other night.

A dad took his son out to learn how to fish; He didn’t check the weather that morning.

The coast guard has been scouring the waters, to no avail – Poor souls stuck in their watery grave.

Ebb, flow, ebb, flow – The eternity of the sea.

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Teeth Cafe

I.V. Katen

the hostess asks a name for the party. i tell a lie and wait against a divider for a table. we take seats where we can see. i baptize my tongue in an iced water with lemon. i curl my fingers into my palm like a newborn then uncurl them again. all before the lights dim. melissa disappeared for months before coming here. before now we’ve only seen her by the quay, on the far railroad tracks, in a green rubber raincoat. uriel to my left asks me rose do you have a pen. i ask why. he says i want to write down what she says. i say no. he says is that a no to the question or a no to the action. i say no again. the darkness spoons me into comfort. i breathe in distant cigarette smoke. i breathe in the woodland perfume on uriel’s lapel. something like a fox curls around my ankles, but i pay it no mind. hello everyone melissa says in a circle of light up front. she does not know we are here. she does not know why or how we’ve found her. i hope she never will. five seconds pass before she speaks again into this massive blackness of a room. perform, melissa i whisper. duet with god like you always have. the fox around my feet purrs. maybe it’s not the fox after all. i bring my drink to my lips and press it there before sipping. i cannot see, but i know that my lipstick has rubbed an imprint into the glass. i will leave it as a present. melissa is nervous. it’s as if she knows we’re here. her voice 74

does not have the cadence of a poem but the rhythmless potholes of a country road. she speaks of dying lilacs. i don’t remember this chapter of her life. is she emotional or illusional? maybe she met more talking flowers when she left us. maybe they brought her here. uriel leans to me, breath warm on my cheek, when are we moving? we should move soon. i pause a moment. melissa is saying things about pressed roses now. are you gonna stop her? he asks. no i reply. i’m rapt. i remember being the fly in her web when she spun venom and gluttony into me. our food comes by way of a platter. for uriel a turkey sandwich and a strawberry salad for me. i prod with a heavy fork but don’t eat it. uriel bites into his sandwich. lettuce falls like rome out of the crust. melissa finishes. there is clapping and snapping from all around. it stabs my ears. she takes a bow and clutches a notebook to her chest. she exits the spotlight. i stand. the fox bolts away. i know where he’s going. uriel takes a second and final bite. he asks no questions. it is time to take our leave. i lay a crisp ulysses on the middle of the table for the bill and a generous tip. the fox has returned. its marble eyes glisten in the dull light. it looks at me. i look at it. it dips its head and begins to walk away, checking behind that we’re following. we follow. it takes us to the side and upon concrete flooring. my heart beats patterns into my ribcage. i feel uriel’s presence close behind me. the fox paws at the women’s restroom door. i push it open. there’s a figure inside. she turns as we enter, dropping an eyeliner pencil when she recognizes us.

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rose? uriel? melissa’s half-lined eyes are saucers but i have no pity. i’m glad you’ve come for the reading and by all means you’re allowed but you know you aren’t supposed to be here – the fox bites her ankle. uriel clasps his hand upon her lips before she can cry out. then he pries her mouth open and we take her teeth, one by one, in this cafe bathroom. they drop in my handbag. the weight feels delicious.

Retrograde Kinsey DeGroat 76

Only Death Makes Constellations At the end of things In a place unset, With a tactile sigh And shaded regret, With a hopeful start But no way nor means Of containing gods Within fractured seams, And the gilded sky So far forlorn — There’s a star, bereft, Emptied of scorn; There’s a moon, uncleft, With dreams untorn.

And the saddened seas As they reach for skies Knowing now the pain Of the heart that dies, As now torn from them, Thrown to heavens there Is the Once Great — Will they comprehend?

Will they comprehend?

Orion Alexander

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78

On Age: The Passing of Time

Melody Weckel-Confer

All of a sudden, my hands are my mother’s—with a personal twist.

If but for this place and time, my visage is transformed.

Every year feels like a century has passed by the time it ends I can scarcely recognize my Self.

How do I face such changing beauty?

How do I catch the qualities that Deem my appearance redeemable.

As they float by me like butterflies on the river of time I fear that I shall continue to deteriorate And my beauty will just keep flying away.

I don’t know how to keep up.

I don’t think anyone does!

We all lose track of time And the toll it takes catches us by surprise Until suddenly we find someone new Greeting us in the glass.

Then one day, There’s no time left.

And there is nothing we can do To alter our situation As it is “only natural”.

So we remain uncertain And dissatisfied with what we are.

Tide Pods: A Commentary Pt. 1 (Top Left) Tide Pods: A Commentary Pt. 2 (Bottom Left) Chrysta Avers

79

Pump Fake

Skyler Stirling

you can see it in the blaring neon colors bouncing around in our heads awkwardly filling out the outlines of adulthood. selfsame in every generation, the lines never fully intersect, and in that abyssal space today falls everyone leaned out at every block party, stealing other people’s shit for xans, poppin percs on a wednesday morning on a bus in the sun, pulling up to the function with four lokos, shooting up heroin in the bathroom, codeine crazy. the same jaggedly vacant pair of eyes that hit lines in someone’s room at a frat house and talk about how the magic school bus made them want to go to college, passed out face down in a pool off quaaludes, flew planes off vicodin and valium and pina coladas. the same inertial pull downward in the pit of the soul that fried itself on acid rolling around in the rain and the mud in front of jimi hendrix, that slipped down a slide of mescaline catatonia into a kaleidoscope of the sublime, shroomed itself into van gogh swirls and spirals, stitched all of these wounds back together with dexedrine and speed and ended up right back in the mask of an accountant or a claims adjuster or an artist or a school teacher or a software developer or a soldier with more answers than questions. you can hear it in the synthpads slurring through soundcloud rap, uneasy notes that hang entirely too long, flat sixths that ache and groan with the ethereal uncertainty of growing up. the uneasy fusion of bubbling, dimly aware and barely contained nihilist rage with the longing to be held, to be acknowledged as real. you can see it in the self-reference of a e s t h e t i c, repurposing the visual artifacts of eyes that can no longer see. it falls along the carefully lined up edges and contours of the million times borrowed tool of minimalism - once from another place carrying another people, again from the edge of a self-inflicted nuclear gunshot, and this go-around intended to imbue our lives with some sense of truth or maybe honesty - without any grander context or narrative giving us room into which we 80

can breathe our lives. euclidean forms jutt upwards above our old cities, cold bone hands half buried in a sandy moonscape of the real reaching for a heaven somebody forgot to construct in all the rush. the incandescent hand of the market tending to a desert garden world strewn with the corpses of decomposing ideas. the tiny embers of our lives drifting up towards the summit of this mountain in the dark, the local maximum of enlightenment, lit from below by the stained glass light of What Could Be. we live under pixelated pinpricks stitched together into a compound eye, a panopticon of growing up in the psychological shadow of nickelodeon and disney and a handful of other state religions telling us what it’s like to be able to hope. you become a teenager plied with the suggestions and neon absurdities that picked us up and dropped us off in a place that isn’t real, not quite yet. the empire is ground down by the gears of its own machines, and we are left with a skeleton asking us to help it out of the hole, clawing desperately into our optimistically full, strong and verdant hands with grimey industrial bones.

Beauty Gaffney Taylor

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Vows

Tylan Buckner I can be your hand.

Unfurling at your gaze, Take me as you will, then Send me to do the taking.

I can be your rose.

A song that matches your tempo, Each lyric a petal, a promise Unwilting and deep-rooted.

I can be your home.

Kick off your shoes at the door.

Throw your keys on the table.

Grab a pillow and a cup of tea.

I can be your coffin.

Lay your skeletons in my closet.

Bury your fear within my chest; Only you know the combination.

I can be your end.

The time and place of your demise: The chalice that cradles your blood As you dissolve within our union.

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I can’t be your tongue.

Your words are born from lips All your own, supporting a voice Unpricked by the world’s fangs.

I can’t be your heart.

Only you can direct the choir Poets call love, and choose to Conceal or share that sound.

I can’t be your heaven.

At best I am a tool you can use To love yourself—the genuine Comforts arise from within.

I can’t be your life.

Though we may walk together, The path you take, your freedom, Your destiny, is yours to make.

I can’t be your birth.

The time and place of your origin: The mirror that reveals your image As you establish your own identity.

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84

Viceroy Ryne Clarke

Isn’t It Funny

Laurel A. Parrott

I need a storage space, she told me. Somewhere to store all the junk that I don’t have room for, and don’t want to make room for. Somewhere that I know is secure, so I don’t have to worry about it coming back up when I don’t want it to.

So I think for a moment. And my thoughts lead me to this little box I got at a vintage store downtown. It’s about the size of a Bible, and deep enough to fit one. It has a pink-andblue floral pattern, with images of faded old stickers here and there and the word “treats” spelled out on top in pretty cursive.

Since I got it from a vintage shop, I used to like to imagine what its original purpose was – was it a box for candies and such? Or was it a jewelry box? Or maybe a box to keep letters and postcards? Thinking about it now, I realize it was just a box. Funny how that realization makes me remember it a little less fondly.

Anyway, I chose that box as my storage space. So whenever she told me to put away those thoughts and feelings, I imagined writing it all out on little scraps of paper and putting all those little scraps in my treats box. Once I actually did that for real. I wrote some of my secrets and negative memories on scraps of paper and put them in the box. I was going to do that on a regular basis, as a therapeutic thing, but then it slipped my mind. I don’t even know where that box is now. We’ve moved so many times since then, I can’t remember what is where.

Funny how I no longer know where to store my emotional baggage.

Now I need I a safe place, she told me. Everyone knows what a safe place is. A place in your mind that makes you feel happy, and free, and, well, safe.

So I thought about it. And I thought of the barn where my mother boarded one of her horses. Back behind the training ring was an old pasture. The fence was broken in several places, so it was no longer used, and the grass and weeds had grown wild and carefree without their equine groundskeepers 85

to tame them. Something about the wild grass appealed to me; I can’t quite put my finger on what that appeal was. I never thought about it before, but now I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t just fix the fence, instead of moving the horses into a different pasture. Funny how I only know of my safe place because a boundary had been trampled and broken.

Anyhow, in that old pasture was part of a creek. The creek continued on either side of what was left of the fence surrounding the pasture. On the left, the creek grew wider and deeper; on the right, it narrowed and flowed into what I think was a storm drain – I’m not quite sure, my memory is a bit fuzzy with the details. The part of the creek that was in the pasture was always in direct sunlight. Since the rest of the pasture was covered in shade from nearby trees, this made the creek appear to have this spotlight on it, like in a movie. There were these big, flat rocks lying in the creek bed. I loved to sit on those rocks, with my feet in the shallow water, and just enjoy the quiet. I wish I knew how to describe it in better detail. It really was such a beautiful and serene spot. Funny how I can’t seem to describe the place I felt most at home.

So I chose that old pasture and its creek as my safe place. Whenever I needed to calm myself, and clear my mind, I imagined being right back on those rocks, watching little minnows race past my toes. It always worked.

Want to hear something sad? I can’t go there anymore.

My mom moved her horse to a different barn, and it’s not like I can just show up at someone else’s property, even if I still know how to - wait. Now that I think about it, I don’t even know how to get there anymore. I know the road that leads to it, but do I take that first left or – no, it must have been farther down, past the – but wait, that’s too far, it definitely wasn’t down there. Wow. I really don’t remember. How many hours had I spent there? How many memories had been formed there? And now I don’t know where “there” is. Funny how I no longer know where to go to feel safe.

I have to laugh at these little ironies. Otherwise they would haunt me.

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Light of My Life Rebecca Rikard

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Untitled Lindsay Thomaston

If I Could Stop Running

Claire Dunn-Grandpre

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Broken down.

Run down.

Running around a messed place With fucked up people Trapped in space.

Keep your head down.

Just push through, But times running out.

I needed to get away.

Away from everything I once knew.

Running out of luck.

Out of chances to run.

I got out But I don’t know how.

How to stop trying to run.

From feelings.

From people.

From life itself.

I never trusted anyone before.

Why would I start now?

If I ever stopped running I think I might drown.

Drown in the unshed tears I used to just choke down.

If I ever stopped running I would have to face the truth.

And the truth is that I’m broken And I always knew.

But I’m starting to wonder If I stopped running Would it be so bad?

If I ever stop running Maybe I could find where I belong.

If I ever stop running Maybe I wouldn’t feel so lost.

But I don’t know how.

How to stop running away.

If I tried to stay I’m not sure who I would be.

So I keep running away.

But if I stop running Maybe I could figure out Who I’m meant to be.

If I could stop running Maybe I would finally be free.

But right now I’m still running.

It’s all I know how to do.

Run away.

Never let them see you cry.

Just run away.

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Never let the pain show.

Run away and hide.

But if I could stop running Maybe I could have some peace.

Maybe I could breathe.

Maybe I could learn to be okay.

Maybe the pain would finally go away.

I want to stop running.

I want to stay.

I want to be okay.

I want to breathe.

I want to be free.

I finally stopped running.

All that happened was I learned how to just be me.

I learned to be me And I was okay.

I could breathe.

I felt the pain finally leave.

I stopped running And I learned how to just be me.

I finally stopped running And I was free.

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You Were Teaching Me Art A golden angel stole my poetry, and I’ve lost my place somewhere between crazy and stir-crazy, I wait for a precious sound, seeking truth in my imaginary discussions, mute against the voice of reason, unable to tell the difference between a madman’s trigger finger and the bookshelf that sits in the corner – untouched and ripe.

Ryan Holtzen

Airstream Claire Dunn-Grandpre 91

A Diary, Almost Full

Orion Alexander

Three more pages of a book I’m terrified to look, I’m Terrified to stay, but Too scared to go on And on I’ll go – or Will I here remain so Hesitant, oh so hesitatingly Conflicted since I’m confronting This god-awful doubt, this Sniveling, crippling – Three more pages of a book, A life’s about to end, oh, Will I hear its end or Will I just suspend myself In the viscous fluid of time Mumbling this horrid rhyme as Tick goes on to tock Sucking off the clock-face, Allowing for our march to a great Oblivion, unknown, how much Longer do we go?

A life’s about to end, And I’m terrified to look, To finish off this book, to See or hear or experience the death, Or a closing off to me.

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The Colored Girl Joe’l Bethany Brock 93

What is Friendship? An Essay

I.V. Katen

i ate cake with you just a day ago. but you chose strawberry, and i had the velvet. you stay in between the two most of the time. i am not surprised in your actions, of course not, my love, because baked goods do not stay eligible for good times or existence, actually. friendship is holding my hand while yours kisses the blue, blue unknown. i wear gloves. you wear crucifixes on lace! friendship is lending you my grandmother’s left gauntlet. she ate lemon cake on porcelain. until lately, i did too. friendship is twelve gallons of rose water spilt on the afterworld. the void. one broadsword away from being headless. indeed, an embroidered choker is the only thing keeping your head from falling off, but friendship is not pointing that out until i need a good grade in a useless class. friendship is how handsome you look when you are eating or even when you arent. you truly have a taste: red things and redder things. a friendship is the waning moon. when i look at the stars i think of your teeth. but those are not red, unfortunately. friendship is coming home to cake and dead women and rouge. so eat your cake in the valley red. friendship is devil’s food cake in rye.

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Feeding Energy

Satana Lux

I would write you a poem if shaking hands could drag intrepid lead to hills and valleys—gravid semantics of crests and troughs where your beauty stands and your softness sleeps never alone.

I would give you flowers if the flower girl hadn’t tossed the wilted petals at the greencard marriage of life and success in room 203 and only if I hadn’t battered my hands with auspicious applause at the conception of the throne of death and forgotten to collect the roses as they seeped through the floor like overdue William Blake books to the mind.

I would ululate for you veracity if my jellyfish-string vocal cords could resent their sting and could gently vibrate to please the birds living in the mouth.

I would try coffee if the sardonic and dry tongue could taste mortality like the austere Buddha idol on a boat, passing in the River Thames.

I would curl my toes if my passing body could claim ground as a perch to fly with sun-seared wings, drenched in wet sunlight, like a shower in Mercury.

I would laugh at your name drops if I could attire myself in Cooper like a winter trenchcoat or a leather skirt as an extension of the broken prism light, radiating from acceptance of a label among sheep.

I would cry if the rain shadow on Everest in the dry season would be uncomfortable and ticklish on its feet.

I would praise your swimming in Silverlake if my head hadn’t been fixated on the stars in the sky frying my courage as an egg yolk to salt with indignancy and to pepper with exhaustion at 8:15 lab times.

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I would love your summer radiance if I hadn’t been preparing for winter snow for the 16th year—to be born among a sophistry’s shroud of white comedy and to look back to see vacancy of children with hope scarves wrapped around their necks and gloves plastered to their plastic hands.

I would have abs if I hadn’t feasted on ego, bouncing puckishly like a messy bun on late night soups.

I would sing harmony with your ethereal hums if only I could resonate with the callous fingers’ dance with guitar string as it recreates soft pit pat pift pat pift boom of kindred heartbeats sliding down holy holy lightpole beacon light through baked sand jewelry.

I would appreciate you if appreciation was obsession.

I would say “I’m sorry,” But you already know.

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Because Fucking Emory Will Never Look This Good Luis Pereira-Hernandez

Downpour

Sydney Stanley

i. i tell him that love is like a tar pit la brea tar pit where i have never visited and have only seen in drawings in comics in my childhood bedroom it’s sticky and ugly and gooey and large and it can suffocate you swallow you whole but it can rebirth you too i’m waiting for the rebirth my cocoon is starting to itch ii. what do you think of yourself? i try not to laugh, or cry but instead act like i am thinking i tell him that i am like a half hour a prime time special, perfect for a thursday night that people will tune in laugh and forget until thursday rolls around again i say thursday, because thursday is when all the good shows come on because thursday marks an end but not quite i am so cold and bone lonely iii. i’m leaving next semester i tell him this with more weight than i have told anyone yet before just awkward, hopeful, and embarrassed 97

now i’m carrying stones in my stomach knots in my back this place eats people alive this place spits them out too people don’t look at each other. i get so lonely. you said once that yes, you, dream you who no longer infiltrates my dreams nightly but sometimes stops by to say hello iv. the he in this story is not important the me in this story is the me that is dying in dreams and fantasies the me that feels like she is breaking every bone to be and feel normal that recognizes when she feels alive because she so rarely does that speaks in third person in regard to death because it is so difficult to do so in first writing this in her bed feeling nothing but synthetic v. i do love myself, i tell him parts of myself like mechanisms moving in my brain the rube goldberg of my self esteem i do.

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Titan Emily Rodriguez

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Compositions

Sophia Summerlin

Vomit and alcohol are the composition of bodies I know.

One day dust and acid will compose bodies I knew.

Soon, Autumn will be another Summer.

My November nostalgia will be replaced by sun kissed skin.

I will be composed of scales and multicolored gas masks.

Blue for Monday and green on weekends.

Surviving becomes a fashion statement— A piece.

All of my willow trees will be set on fire, And I will mourn willow mothers while the oak trees weep beside me.

One day my elephants will be gone and with them my compassion for man.

Guns will be an emblem of new nature.

We are replacing Earth with aggression.

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Empty Seat Luis Pereira-Hernandez

Warrior of God

Luis Cotto-Quiñones

Dedicated to Dr. Maher and SmokeADaKoosh

For months, Mrs. Mary Beauregard Petty possessed a mounting anger toward her next-door neighbor.

Pancreatic cancer killed her husband Harold last April, and with the medical bills for treatment cramming into her mailbox and no life insurance to cover the expenses, she had no choice but to put her home up for sale and move in with her daughter in Texas. Her home, that two-floor house where the scent of Mahogany drifted through the halls, where her grandchild would arrive and fill it with chatter and laughter, where she and her late husband had shared a roof for forty years until the Lord had taken him. It ground her heart into sand.

One day, while she was outside hammering a FOR SALE sign in her front yard, she glanced up toward the house next door. Funny, she thought, that a law-abiding citizen like her--a loving mother and wife and grandmother—was the one who needed now to leave. All these years, she knew the neighbor boy Misael had been selling marijuana out from his house.

She found out at church one Sunday when one of the ladies at church told her she caught her grandson smoking with him in the backyard of her house. Now, she looked upon his home as though it were the literal dwelling of the Antichrist. Pray and pray and pray she did that her dealer neighbor would depart, and now here, the Lord told her it was time for her to leave.

Had her resolve, her dedication to God not been steelier, she would have cursed Him for turning her into a Job and allowing the Devil to divest her of all she loved. The rage she felt warped her face—contorting it into a snarling look, turning it red when the rage arose, then a slight green when the intensity of it made her feel sick. She struck the sign once more with her hammer and yanked out the other one behind it which read TRUMP/PENCE. She shook off the dirt from the pegs of it and stomped back into her house, stepping inside and slamming the 101

door shut.

Mrs. Petty had cameras installed in her front yard September of last year before the election. Every other night, she would check the recordings. After her husband’s passing, she had done so with greater frequency, determined to make her neighbor share the same fate to which she herself was doomed and greater. As of recently, however, she hadn’t noticed anything out of place, nothing incriminating, nothing which she could have used to have him arrested. For all her own struggles, she wished her neighbor would pay the price. She would stamp against his front door with a fist and drag him out to the gallows if she could, but no such thing would or could ever come true. One Saturday morning, however, sometime in the middle of June, she had found her reason.

That morning, the intertwined haunting of the upcoming sale and the memories of her husband filled Mrs. Petty with enormous tension, so she decided to spend it gardening. Lined up at the foot of the house were several bushes bright pink with white flowers and in need for trimming. Mrs. Petty stepped out of her house in her pink felt hat, holding her hedge trimmers in her hands as she made her way outside. Making her way down the stairs from the portico of the house, she glanced over to the driveway and noticed she hadn’t taken her trash can back to the house. She tossed the hedge trimmers before the bushes and walked down the driveway toward the can, glaring once over at the house of her neighbor and scowling, then looking forward and continuing on her way. She reached the trash can and began hauling it off from the curb of the street and toward her house when, suddenly, she noticed an object glittering bright orange against the rich and heavy green of her grass. She picked the object up when she reached it and saw that it was an aluminum package for White Owl cigars in Mango flavor. Her face became red as a beet. She glared at the package as though it were a challenge from the depths of hell sent against her dignity.

The trash left trash in her yard, she thought, glaring over toward the house next door, and that she would not tol102

erate. She grabbed the felt hat off from her head and tossed it down onto the driveway, then started marching her way over to the house. Mixed in deep within her anger was that tiny tinge of pride, thinking of herself moving her way along to the other house to stand up against what to her was an impugnation to a respect she felt was owed to her. Like a Crusader, she moved her way forward to fight away the sinners and cleanse the land—a true warrior of God if any one had ever before existed.

If she was to be exiled from where she had paid her taxes and raised her family, should would not allow any devil to besmirch the community she adored. Her husband, were he still in life, would have told her not to jump gun. When her dignity was in jeopardy, however, she would not leave without swinging a fist.

Soon enough, she was making her way down the driveway of his house and knocking against his door, then ringing the doorbell only once. She stood there waiting with her arms crossed.

From within the house sounded footsteps, and the door opened. Standing there in the doorway was the great sinner himself—a tall young man with dark tan skin and long, curling black hair. He wore a green shirt and white pajama pants, his bare feet protruding from out the doorway. When he came to see Mrs. Petty standing there, glaring back at him with a stony expression of contempt, he seemed exhausted.

“Misael—” She spoke it as though she were calling the name of a demon. “I hope you have a good explanation for yourself.”

“What is it now, Mary?”

“I’ve done told you before that you address me as Mrs. Petty,” She was shaking a finger at him.

“What is it? Why are you at my house?”

She held up the wrapper very close to his face, “This look familiar to you?”

“I told you before not to hold shit up to my face like that,” Misael said. “And no.”

She lowered the wrapper, “Don’t try and lie to me!”

“I know you got cameras all lined up in front of your house,” Misael said. “Why don’t you take a look at the footage 103

and tell me if you see me walk up and throw shit in your yard.”

“I really do wonder how you kiss your mother with that mouth,” she snapped. “And how your mother feels about you having all your druggie friends around to your house that go around acting like all the neighbors are their personal maids.”

“You can keep my friends and family out of whatever bullshit you’re trying to start with me, Mary,” Misael said.

“And again, if I or any one of my friends did it, I’m sure you can go check your cameras.”

She nodded, pressing her lips, “I sure can.”

“Did you?”

The question caught her off-guard, “Look, it’s not any of your business what I’ve been doing.”

“So you didn’t,” Misael smirked.

Her face was turning red again—one half because of embarrassment, the other because of angry which the embarrassment induced.

“How do you even know I did it?” Misael asked.

“I’m going to check my cameras and send it over to the police when I’m done! I’ve had it with your crap!”

“You do that, Mary,” Misael started stepped back into the house. “You do that.”

“You will address me as…” But Misael had shut the door before she could complete her sentence. She stomped on the floor underneath her once, then stormed back toward her house, resolute entirely in making sure Misael would be punished. Yes, and her pursed lips were becoming a malicious smile, she would finally make him pay. She marched back to her own home, slamming the door shut.

She had her son set up all the camera equipment in the basement. She slammed open the door, and she turned toward a wall whereupon hung three large television monitors lined in a row—one for the cul-de-sac as a whole, one for the side of the house, and one straight for Misael’s house itself. She opened the files for all the recordings and scanned through them for any recordings from yesterday night. She was salivating. She scanned and scanned through the several different recordings 104

until at last she came up to an image of a young man—a blond boy she knew lived up the street—walking down the road on which she lived. She could see him pulling a cigar out from the wrapper she now carried, then dropping it on the side of the road opposite to where her house stood, smoking whatever it was he decided to smoke and taking a walk around the cul-desac. Long after the young man left the screen, a wind blew and carted the wrap over to her end of the street, finally sweeping over into her yard and staying there.

Her face reddened. She smacked one of the televisions down onto the floor—the screen of Misael’s house.

Map 1 Aleece Bustamante 105

Strike a Pose Rebecca Rikard

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Cogs

Orion Alexander

I heard the creaking again, today, Doomsday clock turns hand once more, And though ‘tis ends I oft abhor, It’s the implication that I fear That I shan’t ever hold you near Before the world comes to an end And any hope will in twain rend.

I heard the creaking again, today, Cries of battle and endless war As man make of Gaea a whore And split her veins to pimp and pump That which into oceans dump The horror, choking, viscous death That yields the end of healthy breath.

I heard the creaking again, today.

I hear it as I’m sitting, now, Begging for the screams to stop.

Pleading for the stars to sing.

Wishing for the world to pause And again let love and freedom ring.

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Oranges

I.V. Katen

twelve oranges lay lumpy on the windowsill above his kitchen sink, kissing the sunlight but rotting from the heat. they are the icaruses of fruit and the citruses in glass-authority and magnification. their home had been made for a month on this wood, but, “they’re too far gone to eat,� mama says, rinsing dirt-caked hands (she must have been gardening) but he wants to feel their ooze between his fingers one time, at least. mama takes them in her palms (no fair!) with a wrinkled nose and lobs them each into the plastic garbage bag one by one by one.

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Untitled Aleece Bustamante

μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ

Dishy K. Lemon

Champion of Ogle, ere we part, Won’t you give me back my heart?

Or, since it has fled this breast, Keep it warm within your chest.

Hear my vow, the call I crow: Ojou mou sás agapó.

By your spirit unconfined, Focused by a fearless mind; By the will you wield so well, Forged by heat that humbles hell; By your splendid, clever soul: Ojou mou sás agapó.

You faced all my challenges, Made my losses sweet as wins; Leaving cheer with all you’ve met; Living life without regret.

Teacher, Rival, Darling Foe: Ojou mou sás agapó.

Champion of Ogle, my dear friend, One day soon we’ll play again.

Until that prophecy is fulfilled, I’m training to surpass your skill.

No life nor death can break this oath: Itsumo sás agapó.

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Tech Girls Ryne Clarke

Home

Lindsay Thomaston

I have always been my home.

The safest place I have known, I have carried with me.

Home is a private place A very, very private place and Even in the day I dead-bolted Every door and drew the blinds From every window.

I have carried it with me But you, you felt so safe You had every curtain Slung to the side Open wide, letting in the light, The way that you like.

It didn’t scare me For the first time, It didn’t scare me Even with the breeze Coming in through the window It didn’t scare me.

It felt safe So safe I almost mistook you for my Home.

I am my home. The safest place I have known You were close.

I carry it with me.

I’m thinking of opening the curtains, Letting in the light The way that I like.

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Changes That Come with Bittersweet Feelings

Shalonda Cash

When I first saw the most current map, my heart broke.

I couldn’t help but feel that this place, Ben Hill Park, or now known as William Walker Recreation Center, and the places around it were changing. I realized that its been years since I’ve been to the park. Years, since I’ve seen the basketball court and the football field where I spent my time with my Uncle Lowe as he coached. The place was different compared to another map and the map of place from my memory. The Abdullah the Butcher’s House of Ribs and Chinese Food, a family favorite was gone. The batting cages were gone. All the days of watching a living legend walk around and be a big part of the community was gone. I know that despite this, this map is only that – a map. I see that there’s no way it can tell how we always stopped at these places after practice or just for dinner. There’s no way it can still hold these images for me. But what they can do though, I realize, is that it preserves my memories. While the things around it are changing or closing, Ben Hill still remains, a skeleton of the community of what was. It seems that its still creating memories for another small little black girl watching her dad or uncle coach or her brother or sister play their favorite sport, just as it did for me. Hopefully it can stand for more years to come, for my kids or nieces and nephews so that I too can come back to help map their memories.

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Fried Spam (Cover) Rebecca Rikard

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For more information, contact us at ogletower@gmail.com

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