grandma sevigne

grandma sevigne Sydney Mantay

“M y heart, go get the flour.” Beads of sweat gather at the ends of my baby hairs as I look up at her, confused. She says again, “Flour,” this time with undertones of frustration and pain. She cannot tell if I am stupid or if I cannot understand English. With a final huff and mumbled words she continues to prepare the meat.

I know I will not get any further direction until I fulfill her request. Tears run hot in her dark kitchen. Her cataracts cannot handle the harsh light of fluorescent bulbs. Light from the foggy window casts shadows on her high cheekbones and strong nose. Her pursed lips hold the tension; hurt that I cannot understand her words and disappointed that her accent engulfs her identity.

I open every cabinet and stick my head through, hoping I will find what she wants or the courage to ask her again. I crawl in and take my time. I sit and wait. I hear the door creak open, pursed lips turned smooth and red.

“My heart, come help me.”

We don’t speak. She heats the oil in a pan and begins frying the meat. I relax at the sound of melanesia floating in bubbly oil. I lay my head on the cold marble countertop and watch her move around the kitchen, a bit stiff, but strong. I feel the guilt hang low around my shoulders. I’ve heard her cry about what Americans think of her when she speaks, how her words get lost. Flash Essay

43

Acrylic

44

portrait study #1 Lucy Bacon

kiss of divinity Shelby Fletcher

In the mirror I see, something I do not know unfamiliar is this face of mine: dark irises kiss the sight before them eyes sink into mattresses of flesh lain beneath soft, weathered skin that’s been drawn on by the sun with a marker of age

there once was a flesh-toned person I thought was me blush settled over her young, taut skin liner traced her eyelids blankets of mascara coated her lashes to make herself more beautiful

even then insecurity greyed her demeanor stiffened her smile silenced her God

now, my skin is bare tethered to the wind that blows down but blessed with the kiss of love that resembles beauty Divine Poetry 45

three haiku Cailan Owens

Poetry 46

intertwined trees rooted

growing

un arbol la historia de una vida tantas hojas

in the moonlight the sun bear knows home

embraCe of the oCean Gwendolyn Dressler

I’m afraid of the ocean because it’s so beautiful. Her arms brim with dazzling fragments of speckled sunlight. Her hue shifts from verdant to vermillion to cerulean to charcoal. From the salmon dawn to the tangerine dusk. The shore clutches human ankles. One step and the tides rip them from the sands and tuck them into the seabed. Oceanic gargoyles perch themselves on driftwood left from hubric ships. The ocean loves humans. See them cradled in the seabed. Poetry 47

funneL Brooke Pearson

Knitting

48

the ConCept of CirCLes Taylor Gaede

he tried to hold my face in his hands. tried to comb his fingers through my hair. he has such confidence in his hands; but his eyes speak lingering questions wormed into words:

I don’t know you or what you want from me. I can’t stand your stare but I don’t want you to look away. why can’t understanding be as simple as a touch?

I could sit with my knees pressed against his watching him while the air conditioner coughs and chokes behind the walls and doors crack and slam and someone laughs, far and loud in some other corner.

but he interrupts, asking, what are you thinking?

and I don’t say, that we love each other

but in circles

never intersecting. Poetry 49

LiturgiCaL Bryce Langston

Creative Essay

50

Standing in a circle, we closed our eyes and waited for the Trinidadian woman to rub oil on our foreheads. A man stood in the corner of the room, singing a song over the group of twelve missionaries. The pews were empty. Outside the walls of the small church was a highway and the quiet countryside, the crowded lights of Port of Spain beyond it.

I opened my eyes to watch every few minutes. The woman—the pastor—stood before a young man and laid her hand on his forehead, speaking rapidly in tongues and prophesies as her husband wandered freely about the room, joining her at times or singing with the man in the corner. Occasionally, he grabbed a tambourine and started hitting it. A young lady from our group fell backwards while the pastor anointed her with oil. Another who had been anointed half an hour earlier appeared frozen, her eyes closed tightly with a grimace on her tearful face. Another young lady sat on the floor with her legs crossed, arms raised, and head bowed. The words of the pastor and her husband came out in passionate shouts, most which I could not understand because of their thick accents, the man playing guitar and singing in the corner, and the speaking in tongues. She came to me, laid her oil-soaked fingers on my forehead, and began prophesying.

The members of the church believe their pastor has all nine spiritual gifts: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discerning of spirits, different kinds of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. In the southern Baptist churches I grew up in, we rarely talked about these spiritual gifts. Our pastors never spoke in tongues or performed miracles. In Trinidad, I heard stories of dying people who were brought to a pastor and healed. The local believers told us that Americans rely too much on science for healing. Worship there is free and spontaneous; the singers start the songs in whatever key is comfortable and the musicians figure it out by the end of the first verse. When one song finishes, they go into whatever others they know. There are no bulletins to give order to the service, no time limits placed on any part of it.

The man who had played guitar while we were anointed was also one of our drivers for the week. He taught me how to play the calypso rhythm used in their music. During one of the rides into town, we talked about worship in our churches. He stressed the importance of letting the Spirit manifest in our worship and not restraining its movement. I thought of the churches I have attended in America, where members might complain if the pastor preached longer than usual or if the chorus of a song was repeated too many times. In the churches we visited in Trinidad, the worship team might sing a chorus twenty times over.

I asked the driver if he thought the way we planned worship was wrong.

“No, no, no,” he chuckled while dodging a pothole. “Just different.”

the CaLL of Jeremiah Paige Goodin

Golden hands to feeble lips, speak on greater behalf. No longer just a youth, no longer sitting complacent. Stitched and woven, trillions of cells in the womb, designed, millions of hairs reach for glory. “For I am who I am.” Too long goats run wild, too long weeds overrun. It is time for turning or threshing. It is time for bowing and gnashing. Turn them, young weeping prophet, to leading staff, before they walk right off that rocky edge. Poetry 51

to defeat babeL Scott Cotto

Poetry 52

How I love words, Convulsing and conditioning me as I finger through wings of dictionaries and the bones of thesauruses. I was taught to love the words that descend and ascend and conspire and respire. But until you: Words never twisted under my teeth, or ganged up against my tongue. Vicious as they are, they never loosened; they never harassed; they never fled into deep caverns and mountainous lands harsh as they were; cold as they came; simple as they spoke, when they hail down like a storm, dripping from the edges of my mouth, words filled me with compelling impediment. I wove them like Pallas on the spindle. I fashioned them as boldly as Vulcan. Until you: Twirled and Tangled, Complexed and Compounded, I was an artist…I was the storage keeper of deeper knowledge behind a world that knew nothing more than the idiosyncrasies of a school boy that ran into his house discovering that mud was made from dirt and water. Until you: I knew how to abash kings into giving up their thrones to my feet. Until you: I knew how to aggravate wise men, and to stumble Socratic scholars in their place. Until you: I was a master of the world. Then You humbled me.