{Issue 2} Pest Control Magazine

Issue II

Pest Control winter 2021

Pest Control Magazine. Issue 2. Winter 2021. Published by Smartpress.

THE TEAM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Claire Bentley DESIGNERS Dakota Sherman Emma Sielaff KC Smith T Harris EDITORS Molly Bryson Tati Rodriguez KC Smith T Harris COVER DESIGN Dakota Sherman DONORS Adrienne Merjian Alan Chung Amy Zemser Barbara Knapp Barbara & Ken Miller Celeste DiMauro Lee Cissy Choi David & Lily Chung Ella Epton Emily Beckert

Emily Quan Frank & Lisa Lee Gregory Bloxham Ian Wenzel Irv & Melissa Chung Janice Arbia Katharine Chu Katia & Kit R. Roane Margaret & Jim Still Michelle Gondolini

Nhora Rodriguez Philip DiMauro Robert Vogel Robyn Tarragon Sadie Swenson Shanan Bentley Susan Lazor Tecla Palli-Sandler Vivian Chung Robert & Lilian Weiss

Special Thanks To Our Friends At Divine Artbook!

Find Them at: @DivineArtbook / divineartbook.com

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Inside Front Cover Art by Claire Bentley Brave Space Alliance Spotlight Editor’s Note Have Fun Everyday by Drew Laughner Lovelorn by L. O’Keefe Burrow (Bureau) by Iris Stratman Elsewhere by Buster O’Shea Playlist by @messcollabs Gliding in a Wooden Boat by Nadia John Playlist by Petey Choul Grout, Stainless Steel, Bare Feet on Tile Floors by Laura De Sousa Playlist by Josh Zegans The Devil’s Denny’s by Kristen Miciotta Mutual Aid, Mutual Pleasure by Bobby Sax Prom by Cailynn Johnson Oh no, a Woman! by Maxwell Playlist by Rosalyn Farney & Nate Large Hawt Dawg (screengrabs) by Nick Alonzo Share a Secret!

Dr. Hopps Poppy Hopps by Harris Untitled by Gage Maurie HE by Nico Tangorra Sharpened by Dakota Sherman Trough by Sam Merrick Your Smell Makes Me Cry by Jordan Roth Walking Around a Pandemic by Cam Nativity by Jerusha Crone Coyote I Carried Into the Mountains by Harrington Ryan Prey by Joshua Sauvageau Blue Belly by Bridget Conway Chicago Bus Ride by Cole Johnson Playlist by Sofia Swanson Playlist Page!

Get Me Out the House by Emma Sielaff Gravediggers Proposal by Ray Madrigal Dogs Allowed by Emma Punch Ode to Casey (From the West) by Jack Dorsey Bug Spotting!

Cicadas by Jordan Ferensic Have You Seen Albert? by Dakota Sherman Classifieds Staff Bios Contributor Bios Inside Back Cover Art by Claire Bentley

III IV 1 2 4 5 6 8 9 10 12 13 14 16 17 18 19 23 24 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 34 35 36 38 39 40 42 43 44 V VII

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EDITORs' NOTE

in support of

brave space alliance Each February, we are called to remember the myriad of innovations Black communities across the diaspora have manifested to inspire love, joy, and justice through the reclamation of their histories. Our team wants to amplify the message that Black History is far too expansive to be limited to a 28-day acknowledgment—it deserves year-round celebration. Black artists continue to inspire every axis of creative culture, choreographing new forms and gracefully challenging expectations of storytelling. This history deserves our sustained commemoration, continuous admiration, and collective support. Black History is boundless, teeming with excellence.

Literature as a revolutionary practice is forever tied to the powerful lineage of Black artists who forged its foundations and reconfigured its futures. Our team is humbled to have a place within Chicago’s literary history and, thus, commit ourselves to expressing the gratitude we hold for Black artistry in alignment with our mutual aid efforts. It is our honor and pleasure to redistribute a portion of Issue 2 fundraising profits to Brave Space Alliance. Their mission statement is as follows: “Brave Space Alliance is the first Black-led, trans-led LGBTQ+ Center located on the South Side of Chicago, dedicated to creating and providing affirming, culturally competent, for-us by-us resources, programming, and services for LGBTQ+ individuals on the South and West sides of the city. We strive to empower, embolden, and educate each other through mutual aid, knowledge-sharing, and the creation of communitysourced resources as we build toward the liberation of all oppressed peoples.”

We thank the Brave Space Alliance team for the comprehensive care they provide Chicago’s Black LGBTQ+ communities. We are deeply grateful to witness the center’s prioritization of bravery and encourage our readership to routinely support their broad spectrum of “programs that focus on the needs in our community, such as food insecurity, housing insecurity, and economic justice.” It is the bare minimum to say that Black lives matter. This publication will use its pages and platform to be intentional about the respect and tangible appreciation it pays to Black History.

In solidarity, The Pests

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Brave Space Alliance 1515 E 52nd Place, Chicago, IL 60615 (872) 333-5199 M-F 10am to 5pm bravespacealliance.org/contact

Dear Pests, These days I mostly feel like an overly fried egg. Rubbery and gross. Job applications are just weird, fruitless questionnaires. This magazine is like a baby sprout I have been brought on to help grow.

On a late night in November, my phone buzzed with half a dozen messages from my friend and exroomie KC, asking me to help print the cover of their magazine. I agreed to help, but in a frenzied fashion KC called to elaborate. Pest Control had hit a roadblock. We talked for over an hour, as they drove their mom’s car through a blizzard 300 miles away from me. I said yes several more times before they accepted that I accepted their offer. A very chaotic week or so later, covers were printed, as well as posters. Crisis averted! This is how I was informally indoctrinated into Pest Control. This new Pest Family has been beautiful and kind towards me. Their appreciation, love, and creativity has helped me remember what it’s like to be part of the Real World again! Issue 2 has developed into something quite gorgeous! But what do I know? I am just an overly fried egg, trying to help something grow.

Howdy, all you bugs and worms out there. Does anyone else feel like they’re slowly turning to glass?

I found five white hairs in the mirror last week. Lately I’ve been trying harder not to go to pieces.

Pest Control is my new glue and it feels like it’s finally sticking. I think we’ve really hit our stride in Issue 2, found our voices. This issue mirrors the idiosyncrasies of our time. Read it and you’ll see what I mean. I’m so very proud of the work in this issue and of my fellow pests. When we set off on this unlikely creative venture ten months ago, we were perfect strangers. Now I call us friends.

Maybe this is a tiny love letter to them for keeping me together right now in all the tiny ways that matter. It has been the longest winter ever. I hope this winter issue rounds it out right. (If not, you can always burn this page to stay warm!) Punk’s not dead. I love you all. Yeehaw!

The bugs have begun to munch on me. I feel them gobbling at my insides, mold mites burrowed up in the pit of my belly. I hate the anxiety of this stillness, the feeling of treading water through a pandemic. What I want is to get wasted enough that I tumble off of a countertop with glitter in my hair, crashing into the beer sticky floor and waves of sweaty partygoers while laughing off my sprained ankle. This magazine feels like a personal pest control for the bugs in my brain, fending off those damned mold mites which threaten to eat away at the last of my energy. Each season of Pest Control begets a metamorphosis, as Issue 2 has shown me. This issue is an ode to the resilience of your storytelling, and all the precious silver webs we weave with one another in this strange and weary time. We are gifted by you. We love you. We are grateful Learning how to drive in Chicago winter has become a new personality trait. A fluffy pink steering wheel, pink rearview mirror dice, reggaeton at max volume. This magazine was meant to be read outdoors with cocktails and friends at arm’s length. Untamed Michigan beaches with seashells strewn about, waiting to be adopted. I’m missing the drama of watching summer thunderstorms swell and break amid the company of toads. Loud croaking noises. Different from the pests in Caguas. Miscellaneous lizard and coqui chirps. Pests can be a great comfort. Wise, born-again creatures telling you to watch where you’re walking. Meditations on survival. Loving and creating as this city taught me. Black history every month, Valentine’s every day. Shoveling snow from the top, watching for cars, paint bucket effigies as bread crumbs. Issue 2 is our humble hive. We’re swarming inside. So much love to my team, so much love to you and yours.

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I just want to go to a party. I want to wear a ridiculous outfit and dance all night. I’m sure we’d throw the biggest soiree imaginable for the release of this issue. There’d be a disco ball, fancy hors d’oeuvres, the color red, and house music blasting through the speakers. I’m sure we’d be good friends and giggle all night over yummy punch. Instead, this issue feels like my own love letter to the times we could have had, a celebration of all of us and what is and what could have been. Working on Pest Control has felt like my own escape within the bubble of my apartment. I’m so proud and thankful for this issue and the amazing pests I work with. Thank you endlessly for the support and love. Until we can cheers in real life, enjoy and welcome to the party <3 :-)

Magazine is a funny word. It’s like cigarette: pretentious but savvy (pretension is in the amount of syllables; savviness is in the consonants). Magazine. “Yeah, I work on a magazine.” Fingers snapping. Gloss and sheen. Magazine. “No, not that kind of magazine.” Not the tabloid kind, not the city glam kind, not the pop-culture-on-steroids kind. No, we don’t blow up buzzwords into headlines (WAR! DISEASE! SEX!); we don’t stylize tragedy, we don’t synthesize it. No, our magazine is messy. It’s confessions we can’t hold in; it’s art-barf; it’s assemblage and salvage (curation is a dirty word). Our magazine sounds like raindrops on a tin roof, hacking up a loogie, buzz cutters, breaking ice. We’re the kind of magazine that bleeds. Find us fifty years from now in your stack of memorabilia, slammed between your Moleskin of quarantine dreams and the laminated concert stub dated January 2022 (your first big one since college, you called it your ticket back to life). Lift us to the light. See our pages faded; see our fight. Let it roll off your tongue, that archaic word, that saint: magazine. Like a decade costume, a line from your childrens’ play, an old flame. Magazine. Take a puff, exhale. Like a testimonial. Like a plea.

The weirdest thing about coming to you now, here again, is that the days feel nearly the same as they did before, when we released Issue 1. I’m realizing now how much I’ve deconstructed time this winter - somehow without diving into chaos. I don’t feel as though time has passed, but I know that I’m wrong. I know that monotony is invented. I know this because I’m scary good at making a routine out of nothing. Now I know that I spend every day inventing and reinventing myself.

It might feel as though every day echoes sameness, but it’s impossible to do everything exactly as I had done it before. This gives me comfort. It makes me excited to know that routine can take diversions, shortcuts, twenty-minute naps. New music to discover, dinner recipes to try out, or (better yet) recycle the tastiest ones. Routine, surprisingly, can direct me out of the gloom and into something fun. One day I shed monotony by dressing up in an extravagant outfit, the next I lure it back by changing into something cozy. Every day can be different, a blank-slate, and so is Issue 2, our second-born. I’m glad to know I can make monotony meaningless; I make my own meaning.

I am excited to keep going, excited to make more deliveries to your doorsteps, excited to share this collection with you. Enjoy.

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But if someone gets over the fact that I have a dead, rotting, animated eel hanging on my neck, and that the eel is staring at their own neck with its awful dead eyes, and they still attempt to continue a conversation with me, I’ll try to open my mouth once more, try to talk around the eel, but the eel—the spiteful, evil bastard—will stick the whole damn tail in my mouth.

At this point, people usually just walk away. * Now this is where it gets really disgusting.

E I walk with an eel around my neck.

It is very dead, that’s true—but it’s got a real personality, my eel. Still bears those silky, milky fangs like it’s just waiting for you to take a photo. Translucent spikes jut right out of the dying grey flesh with impunity. My eel always, always has its mouth hanging open.

My eel is proud of its wide smile.

I always get looks on the streets. People don’t want to sit next to me on the bus, but I don’t care. I still take the bus. We all have places we need to go, and my eel is no exception.

We don’t like to be caged in the house, me and my eel. So we take the bus. We go to the park. I see my therapist. Sometimes I eat sushi during a cheap lunch hour somewhere.

Sometimes, when I’m reading in the park, or listening to some street player, or trying to blow a really big bubble with my gum—I’ll feel someone’s eyes on me. Usually, it’s a man.

A shy, timid man. These types seem to be drawn to me and my eel; men with their eyes in the corner of their sockets, men with hair on the backs of their soft hands. Men with cuts on their fingers. They never talk to me during the daylight hours.

Sometimes, at night, I’ll make a friend, but it’s not easy. No one wants to talk to someone with a rotting fish around their neck.

Sometimes, though, me and my eel will get lucky. A shy, timid man will step closer to me, eyes determined not to look at my eel. But my

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eel is territorial. The ugly, spiteful little thing will manage to bring itself to life enough just to direct an eye—that’s right, just one!—and fix it directly on the person. Right on their neck, too.

As you can imagine, no one wants to hang out with a dead eel staring at their neck. It can make anybody uncomfortable.

And, if I’m telling the truth, I get mighty jealous when my eel looks at someone else’s neck. I’m liable to throw a tantrum about it later when we’re alone. My eel doesn’t care, though. My eel likes my jealousy.

It’s a toxic relationship, I know.

But love is love.

But if someone does get over the fact that I have an eel on my neck, and that the eel is not only dead but also rotting, staring at their neck, and still attempts to talk to me, I have very little opportunity to respond. My eel will come back to life just enough to raise its stinking, decaying tail and slap it right over my mouth. My eel holds it there— slimy, steady. My eel will keep its dead tail right over my mouth.

I won’t admit this later, but if I’m really telling the truth, I love when my eel covers my mouth. Under the tail, I pucker my lips up to the sticky thing. And I swear, the dead skin of the eel kisses me right back.

When we’re alone, me and my eel, I lock my bedroom door. I cover the crack with a towel.

I light a candle, and I stand in front of my mirror with my eel. I caress the dead flesh. I coo at it. I slide my fingers up and down its huge, awful body. I find the places where the skin has rotten.

Soft spots. (We all have soft spots, and my eel has plenty.) I like to poke around these soft spots. I can tell my eel doesn’t like it—but oh well.

My eel weighs heavy on my neck. My shoulders have oily dents. My skin is discolored. I have aches in my body. It’s hard to fall asleep at night. Blooms of swampy green and interstellar purples are spotted all over my body. I won’t tell you about the warts and things on my chin.

But when I’m in front of my mirror, alone, looking at my eel, I forget all about my ugliness. Looking at my reflection, with this regal and vile carcass draped around me, I feel like I’ve been gifted something from an angel. I become overjoyed, glutted with glee. I become so thankful for my dead eel that I grin at myself until I feel as if my heart is about to burst. I open my mouth wide. I stretch it far. I make sure my jaw pops.

around my stomach lining, defying the bile to cut up the dead tail.

I’m still smiling, big and corny, as the eel lodges its rotten, black-speckled head into my mouth. I’m still smiling, but it isn’t my smile anymore—it’s a slimy smile, with jagged teeth, with no tongue, with no pink—just a pit of dead blackness. Two dead eyes look back, right at my reflection. * My eel’s tail started dripping. Once thick with waxy scales, flecks have started to shed at the whisper of a touch— behind me, a trail of putrid flesh marks my steps. The little, sharp bones prick against my shoulders. All of my sweaters are in tatters.

My eel doesn’t eat anymore. I keep trying to feed it anything I can find— moldy slippers, dead batteries, mango trees— but the eel won’t eat it. Not even my chewed up bubblegum. My eel doesn’t even look.

It used to be happy, my eel. My eel used to curl around my neck.

I stood in the mirror, again. My eel barely even had a head anymore. I sighed. I cooed.

I brushed my fingers along the spine of my eel, oozes of gummy, gluey skin sticking. My reflection in the mirror wasn’t even half as regal as before. I stood there, lonely with a slimy skeleton, a worried furrow developing between my brows.

I couldn’t stand this rot anymore. I went to the window, unwrapped the eel from my neck, and threw it out with both hands. It was a moonless night. I didn’t see where the eel landed, but I didn’t look too closely. It didn’t concern me much anymore. I rolled my shoulders and went to bed. c

But my eel, with no audience but me, is shy.

At first, my eel flicks my cheeks with its decaying tail. My eel twirls into my mouth, slides past my molars. The dead head of my eel dangles between my shoulders. I’m still smiling as the eel pushes itself, slowly, vertebrae by vertebrae, down my throat, hitting up my esophagus. The eel wraps its tail

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By Buster O’Shea

Today I was elsewhere.

My breath snuck down and out my toes— who wiggled in her absence.

My body stayed put while I was in the garden, in the clouds, dispersed into sweet air where the sky swept me into a dustbin and I idled with worn yarn.

Then, my bin was emptied— I was forced to mull about with the bunnies and banana peels who taught me how to dance.

I swerved and spun and curtsied until I lost my breath.

She returned then to my body as if I had never left.

Playlist by @messcollabs 1. Astral Plane by Valerie June 2. Samo Is Now by WILLOW 3. Wh i t e Ra b b i t b y J e f f e r s o n Ai r p l a n e 4. Crossing by Jessica Pratt 5. Dead of Night by Orville Peck 6. Isolation by Cherry Glazerr 7. Driveless Passenger by TOPS 8. Life on Mars? by David Bowie 9. I Also Have Eyes by Florist 10. I’m Going Home by Tim Curry

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6 . . . . stepping aside the lost window of opportunity

hand (shocking, percussion!) (persisting 2 dismiss an evil thought

to be thrown over the railing (wading to get in the water) persisting on our pedi’s anyway

not to ‘s’ecarter de son devoir’ and to make way for curtsied Ecclesiastes would you have dared kiss me, anyways? … .

You dodger of the Bull, Hippo and all smart-ass creatures and sometimes, (myself included)?

I am under the influence of that- your percussive disturbance splaying on the bank, the tides roll in again will you initiate this one in typography or calli.? armies moved forward under the motioning of the stage coach (hare-brained, rash, giddy) when the two armies moved forward: The Oven Was Pruned.

Now to go towards the horizon Is to splash in one’s bath, giddy, rash, scatter-brained bubble Santa-mustache.

To break off a piece (!) and glide Inebriated. under the influence of a drink

aside that, and outside into the noise abroad.

the crowd sits loudly made of fog perfect for you you docked ship caught in the dramas of the wind (I would wish 2 peel off) to see) the flights of imagination) you wooden fence

my dear tortoise shell comb. scaling the room. scouring from seasickness At the movies or the park the wooden edge continues. As you continue to fret I do I say “”can we take a moment in-between temperament” like trying to crack open a walnut You’d concur if I could provide a vice and out of my pocket fly doves then and you hold my

Put down I Say, whether you like it or not my cosmopolitan voice happens to getme places turns the Pages, is the PAGES and such but i’m reminded if one would do more with with less - life is much like the more i shear my hair the more it curls

b y

In my work ,I would, not hesitate to place you as the background switching switching switching

finally deciding you are enough of a veil already (on your own) on another day excitedly in a voice cosmopolitan I say, let’s get ribbons?yes multi-colored games, screaming fans of rok music, and you say turpentine

“turpentine?”(not sure what that is its like slurping up latex, you lazy-eyed malignant

… .ribbons, mhmm, we will get them

now it is time to ring out our silks in the river Seine?dance under stars etc, No, not here we are with .

A dollop. a fervor of fir clothes (you would object to) if my pink was downy…)and wish for beige, stark, almond, clear.

you are like a circa-1960 photograph of a NYC sidewalk that someone (I) pulled out of a slightly yellowed book.

Glidin g in a Wooden Boat Nadi a John

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The dishes are piling up again. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the way things fester. I’ve been watching mold grow on the plates and wondering if perhaps they are the greatest colonizers. They’ve spread themselves, slowly, encapsulating the mugs and inching toward the spoons. The kitchen sink is black. I will watch them sprout legs and crawl– hide in crevices and tuck themselves away into shadows: they have learned all the places I won’t look.

It’s not that I’m oblivious, but they know there is strength in numbers. Billions of them will sit in my sink: plot against me, laugh when I cry. They know the shallowness of my breath before I take it.

I like to imagine that in my sleep there is death.

When I shut my eyes I do not breathe. Time stops, if only for a few hours, until I awake. Then, the sun is allowed to rise and I open my eyes.

I take my first breath.

1. Woun ded by THE COOK IES

2. Pack Yr Romantic Mind by Stereolab

on 3. About Somebody by Molly Nilss o Atsuk Nina by 1 y 5.

Hi-wa Wey U by Chanté Moore 6.

4. Someday We’ll All Be Free by Regina Belle tina ngs Fall Apart by Cris Thi 7.

9. Until You Come Back To Me (Acoustic Version) - Hil 8. De Stad (met Wende) by Typhoon and Wende St. Soul 10. A Zed and Two L’s by Fila Brazilla

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finally started to rain. But the tombstone remained a monotonous stony gray without any signs of it, stained only by the shadow of an overhanging branch. I remember that the branch was green with fresh leaves and the sky above it blue and the alive-ness of it all made me think the world was mocking us.

That my spine ached.

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by Nico Tangorra

I want to tell you about a headache.

I want to tell you when someone says they are having a headache, we never take it seriously. We say go get some sleep. We say relax. We say it’s only a headache. I want to say there are seven different types of pain medication in my medicine cabinet right now, and I’ve used them all. Two of them are prescribed. One can knock me out for twenty-four hours and leave my mouth sandpaper dry. I want to tell you that a headache made me overdose on pain medication once, and all I remember was lurching up my lunch at the student health clinic, and a beautiful nurse patting my back whileI was crying at the same time, crying and lurching, crying and lurching, because the pain didn’t go away, the one in my head, the one pulsating like a heart about to explode. I want to tell you that I know someone who had a headache, and the only way they got rid of it was they shot themselves. I want to tell you that I’ve thought about shooting myself.

I remember the day because it wasn’t raining. I remember that we all wore black, except for my uncle who wore a deep navy blue. I remember that the flowers on the lid of the casket weren’t red and that my mom wasn’t crying and that everything about the day was wrong. That the sound in my ears pulsed. The priest’s sermon was muted and undulated like when waves slosh over your ears when your head’s dipped just below the surface of water. That my vision was blurred. I remember the tingling on the side of my face and how I thought that it had

And then I couldn’t see it. Any of it.

I remember the panic. The first knock on the inside of my head and then the others that followed and the speed with which I turned away from the grave and darted for the back of the crowd, my knees buckling with each painful pulse. I thought to keep walking, to fixate on a distant focal point and escape to it. I imagined everyone turning and seeing a black speck in the distance and knowing it was me. They would look to my parents for an answer and would be met, instead, with knowing vacant gazes.

The first time it happened was sophomore year of high school in Ms. Ferraro’s English class. We were discussing Ender’s Game and I thought the sun filtering through the blinds was too bright and the sprinklers chattering on the football field three floors down and across the parking lot were too loud and that it sounded like someone was stuttering the word “cheetah.” And then my right eye blurred and Ms. Ferraro’s voice became muffled, as if she were speaking through cotton. And then pain, a music of pain, sharp thumping, a heartbeat in the temples. Drumming and thrumming. And then I closed my eyes and pulled at my hair.

I could hear my spine creak as my muscles tightened themselves around it and I thought it would for sure snap. Pain.

Someone was stabbing me in the right eye.

My eye was shut tight and when I chanced to open it, I found myself on a planet like in Ender’s Game. But it was a planet of red. Pulsing red. Pumping blood. A planet of bleeding roses with thorns that were piercing the inner cavities of my brain.

Then someone far off said, “Ms. Ferraro.”

And they must have been pointing at me because I could hear people turning to stare, shifting in their seats to behold a monster, writhing in its chair, clinging to the edges of its desk as if the pain would launch it from its seat. And someone said, “He’s probably

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crying because Mrs. J didn’t cast him in Little Shop.” But it wasn’t because of Mrs. J because Mrs. J was not stabbing me in the eye. The casting was a pain of a different sort, and right then, it didn’t matter because my world was about this pain. This physical pain. The kind that erases all of your woes, a pain so intense it steals your ability to speak.

When Mrs. Ferraro asked if I was alright, all I could manage was a shake of my head, and someone said, “His right eye is closed.”

But they did not know that someone had stolen my right eye, plucked it right out of its socket.

“Take him to the nurse,” Mrs. Ferraro said.

But I couldn’t move until I felt fingers clasped tightly around my arms. I don’t remember anything else other than I woke up on a cot and that my tears had stained the pillowcase.

The only pain left was a slight, fading throb.

They’re called cluster headaches by most.

They’re called suicide headaches by others.

I remember that I plummeted to the grass, in the sun and among a grayish haze of other tombstones that stood guard like sentinels.

My fingers drilled into the ground and tore the green blades out from their roots, crushing them, earthly things beneath and around me and flinging clusters of dirt and bug carcasses with each stab I felt on my body. I remember rolling onto my back in a brief moment of relief, and when I dared to open my eyes, the sun was yellow and normal. The sky was blue again. Rain still had not come, but in that moment, the day felt right, returning suddenly to balance.

Then I remember the grass. I remember how its characteristic calm and stillness instead held a chaotic energy. It was alive. When I grazed my hand over a patch, expecting to feel lush softness, I felt a threatening wave of prickling. There were a thousand knives.

They surrounded me, each blade teasing and tickling my palm, awaiting the command to strike. I watched them. I watched the way the wind, cool and gentle, pointed them in my direction like King Cobras rearing their heads. I remember seeing a flash of red across my vision coming from somewhere above me. I remember when I turned my head towards the sun, it was flaring red and pulsing. And the sky was no longer blue, but purple, slowly deepening because the red was invading. My temples trembled and my

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back began to arch. I breathed and waited for the next wave.

The headache was an unwanted guest. And my unwanted guest was a serial killer with an ice pick. “He’s coming,” I would announce, when the right side of my face would begin to tingle, my vision in that eye blurring. This headache became personified, the pain took a pronoun.

By nature, he was consistent. He came and settled at roughly the same time each day – around 1:00 p.m. for about four weeks at a time – and lasted for two hours. Afterwards, he would leave, disappearing like a memory.

I began to plan my life around him as one would plan their day around snow. My mom began blocking off portions of time on her desk calendar with a red sticker, the same one she would use to mark my sister’s periods.

Once, when the pain came, I grabbed for a knife, my fist tight around it, contemplating digging out my right eye. I was nineteen.

When the pain passed, I realized I grabbed the blade instead of the handle. A four-inch cut almost to the bone. A pool of blood in the shape of a flower on our table cloth, like the stain from a murder. It was the first time my sister witnessed the terror he brought.

She stood just outside the doorway to the dining room picking at a bloodied hangnail, a tableau trapped in a tableau she would have rather escaped from. She raised the finger she was picking at, as if she could do nothing else, and pointed it to the ceiling, and stood silently as a neat line of red traced its way down the folds of her knuckles and onto the carpet. I did not ask for help, nor did she offer it. It was the first time she understood.

I remember I was begging. Please please please just, I gasped to him. Begging and gasping, and I remember he wouldn’t listen.

He kept striking. I remember being doubled over, clasping at my stomach because it was trying to leave my body and abandon me.

Nausea was rarely a guest at his table, but today he invited it to feast. Ohmygodthisis gasp. But it seemed the more I begged and the more I gasped and the more I held onto control of my body, the harder he fought.

The more brutal his attacks. There was a tombstone, I remember. Not one belonging

to anyone I knew and certainly not the one we had all gathered to see that day. But I remember that the squared corner of the stone was a weapon that could be used to end this battle. I crawled to it and he stomped on my back and whipped my head this way and that. My fingers, caked with dirt, tried to hold it in place, to take control.

My nails dug into my temples and I felt warmth and I concentrated on that bloody warmth because it was comforting because blood was everywhere that day because it was on me and in me and six feet under us and up in the sky flaring out of the sun. But there was that tombstone that remained gray, unstained, and untouched by any of his doing. So I pressed on, using my elbows to drag my body across the grass while my hands contained the explosion going on in my head. I remember feeling bubbling somewhere deep inside me and a wave of something new and unexpected the closer I got to the tombstone and suddenly I felt my stomach give and escape and begin its climb up my esophagus, clawing for the light.

Some sufferers—soldiers, as my sister would call them—have banged their heads repeatedly against brick walls, turning their foreheads to mangled meat. Some have attempted to take power tools—drills in particular, to the source of the pain in order to etch a hole of relief. Some have begged their friends and family to end their misery. I do not consider myself to be a weak person.

In fact, I’d say my tolerance for pain is fairly high. I saw six doctors, four specialists, had four MRIs, and a number of X-rays of the spine, and more blood tests than I think I had blood left in my body. Nobody could determine what was wrong with me.

Some doctors inquired as to whether I might have been over-exaggerating the pain, going so far as to suggest that it was all psychological. And though I was fifteen at that time and everything was psychological, I wanted to bludgeon each one of them with a scalpel to the right side of their faces. I wanted to tear it from their temple down the side and across their cheek, scraping their cheekbone along the way, and slice right into their mouth. For good measure, I wanted to stab them in the right eye, directly at the center of their pupil, and feel the pop as it punctured. I wanted to watch as blood and

whatever other liquids or tissues spooled out. “You see,” I wanted to say, “this is how I feel. But worse. Much, much worse.”

In the end, I was a rarity. I suffered from something only a sliver of people had. The doctors said this as if I had won a prize. My winnings: pills. I had a collection of them of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. And I took them like M&Ms. They did their job for the most part, keeping him at bay, but my prescription cocktail bogged me down and made me feel heavy and loaded with lead. They kept me safe but they took me away from myself. That day I felt it would be wrong to take them and so they stayed shut away in the bathroom cabinet.

My sister and I often joked that these cluster headaches signaled a more dramatic side to my personality. When he visited, she would sit with me and roll her eyes and tell me my drama was exhausting her. She always laughed to make sure I knew she was teasing.

I always did and often, when he permitted, I met her with a laugh. During episodes like this, lighter and lasting a shorter amount of time, her self-appointed role was to simply be present. To be physically nearby. To not say a word and to offer no help. To focus on anything but me until it passed. Then during more violent visits, when she would find me hiding in my closet, fists slamming against my skull, she embodied a more active role.

It became a ritual. She would take my hands away from my head and replace them with hers, gently holding it right at my temples.

We would each close our eyes and breathe deeply. The pain lingered and pounded against bone and muscle but there was a comfort in feeling the pulses against another’s skin. The longer we stayed like that, the faster peace eased into me. It felt as if she were draining him out of my body and replacing him with relief, a moment to breathe. And though I knew this wasn’t the case, I became convinced my little sister was the only one who could save me.

“You know there’s only one true way to get rid of him,” she said at the end of one of his last violent visits.

“How?” She and I had never discussed a plan of action. We had surrendered to my prescription cocktail as the healthiest way to deal with these headaches. But never

21

once had either of us mentioned that there might be another option. Surgery or a new diet or reiki or— “Decapitation.”

The silence that followed was deafening and loaded. The word seemed to have wrapped itself around us and was constricting, cutting off the circulation of the air. And then she smiled and from that smile came a stuttering laugh. A joke. The worst kind, but a joke nonetheless. I met her with a laugh, like I had always done, and soon the pain he usually brought me evaporated and she and I were left with this moment of joy.

Then she winked.

But when she winked, her eyelids stayed closed, and the creases on her forehead folded and furrowed and the muscles in the rest of her face stilled. I saw panic in the eye that was open. Panic and pain. Soon she was slamming the door to her bedroom down at the end of the hall where I could hear the unmistakable sound of skin smacking skin and the bumps and bangs of a body turning against itself.

And this was how the following months proceeded, with cries for help in the middle of the night only to be met with locked doors and heavy silence. With muffled and muted bangs of head against wall, against desk, against fist. Still, when I arrived to help the same way she had always helped me, I was turned away. My role in her pain was to be absent, to keep a distance, to let the monster do its work. And so I obliged, and so her battle continued until it ended, six months later on a rainy day, with a gun, with a boom, and with red. I wondered if she had given hers a pronoun too.

It’s been four years since the pain last took me. I remember that last time and the magnitude of it. I remember him banging on my door. There in the middle of my sister’s funeral. I remember finding myself bent over a stranger’s tombstone, vomiting the contents of my stomach—finger sandwiches, mostly, the kind served at the luncheons before a funeral procession—onto the floral wreath left there. I don’t remember the name on the tombstone. I remember the ache of my spine and how my nerves took turns to stab each vertebra, one at a time, turning on me like Caesar’s conspirators. I remember my

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right eye. I remember imagining a demon being exorcised out of my body, a demon that wasn’t going quietly and would drag my soul along with it. I remember thinking that I would surely die in that graveyard, that this pain I had dealt with for nearly ten years would finally take whatever was left of me, and that my sister’s body would not be the only one they lowered into the ground that day.

As its final hurrah, he clawed its way to my heart and latched onto it like a parasite, forming an entirely new monster – a symbiote of physical and emotional pain.

One that, even with the pain of the cluster headache gone, would leave me beaten and scarred, bent over this stranger’s tombstone. And so, finally, I cried. Not for my sister and the family I knew was about to be torn apart. I cried, instead, for yet another victory this headache held over me. Over the years, he had stolen many things from me, and finally he was stealing this moment, a last chance to know my sister above-ground, in the realm of the living, before she lied permanently lying among the dead.

I missed the burial but have not heard a whisper of him since. Now, when I think of that day, all I can remember is him and how he invaded and violated every moment of it. Even now, when a headache comes, I brace myself for the worst. It’s as if a hurricane approaches, and I have to board up all the windows and extricate all the furniture from the bottom level of the house. This is the dread the pain brings me.

I think every headache is a hurricane.

He haunts me. This pain. There is so much of it out there, and we all experience it to varying degrees. Eating at us. Digging through us. Pain of the mind, of the body, of our culture. Our lives. Pain that erodes. Pain that disassembles. Pain that obliterates and erases. To this day, I look around corners, waiting for him to return. I wish to be rid of him forever, but I understand what I wish for is unrealistic.

The suicide headache, you see, always comes back for another visit.

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WALKING AROUND IN A PANDEMIC:

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by Jerusha Crone I am the center child. I am rage. I am an orange picked in my great grandfathers side yard where the dog gave birth to eight illegitimate dog children in the month of May. I am my dog, a real whore, who lay in labor beneath the orange blossoms and her eyes asked if she could be done now, if she could go inside and sleep on the cold tile floor of the four room shelter we made our crowded home th and we said no. You’re doing great. I am strong, but my body quivers. I am fertile and I ache. I am the dogbirth tree with deep, twisted roots and thick skinned leaves that make sounds when you bite into them. I bit them often as a child in the years before the fruit bloomed, an ritual enacted in both sweet curiosity and feral greed. I am the cool black dirt neath her body that day. I cradled her as she whined, yes, black lucious dirt sweet and soft in the hands. I am the firstborn dog, white and slimy.

We picked him up, held him in our bundled bloodstained shirts. We saw his new heart beat through thin infant skin. His small lungs whimpered, newly airkissed and reasonably overwhelmed. See, I am newborn wonder. I am clumsy limbs. I am seven more births, each easier than the last. But still it was the firstborn, my own dog, who I raised.

When in ten years he grew old and his eyes asked for peace, we shot him in that same yard like his mother before. Its a southern thing to do. A garden grows there now. Yes, I am an orange, colored yellow like the ones we harvested the summer after all the dogs. I am the third of six children all raised anxious, each feeling so much we can barely breathe. I am rage. I run in circles.

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PREY

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31

Chicago Bus Ride

By Cole Johnson

I left for work in a rush, can’t be late for the bus.

I crossed the street twice just to get to that stop.

The doors opened for me, I stepped up and paid the fee Said “Hello sir, thank you” and chose me a seat.

I watched the sun hit the buildings and people.

Thought to myself that nothing could be evil On such a striking day.

I said thank you and ran, Almost got hit by a van But I got to the bus just as the left turn light went off.

I hopped on and said “Thank you.”

Paid my transfer fee.

That honk wasn’t much But it sure meant a whole hell of a lot to me.

See the bus costs two twenty-five But that man’s kindness was free.

Oh yes, now I know and I promise, Kindness is free.

Some people got on, Some people got off, And I pulled the string to request my stop.

The light turned from yellow to red – The stop just up ahead – And the next bus I needed to be on Was about to pull away.

My arms weren’t strong enough for the task, But the bus driver noticed the bus I was trying to catch And he offered his assistance.

He asked, “Is that your bus?”

I replied “Yes.” Then the bus driver honked, getting the other drivers attention, And opened his door.

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Gravedigger’s Proposal Here is the plan: I will go into the woods. I will bring a shovel. I will wear a plastic raincoat to keep the damp from my shoulders. I will not have practiced, and I probably won’t know how difficult it is to dig six-feet-down, six-feet-long, three-feet-wide until I’m already in the middle of it.

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Ray Madrigal

okay, it’ll cost you between six and seven thousand dollars. If you want your dead buried, make it seven to twelve thousand.

I’ll think about tío Mike, how mobile he was in the hospital bed with his pupils dilated each to a different size. Even with his brain bleeding, he breathed wholeheartedly, his entire body shifting in its bed, his throat working at a swallow. I hadn’t seen his chest bare before that, hadn’t known I will imagine, as I walk to my spot, that the trees about his tattoos. His daughter’s name, his son’s are leaning in to cover me. I will picture the lush, name, and “El Indio,” his gang name. I looked at mossy forests of my California upbringing, married that ink for the first time between hospital tubes. into the moody woods that I’ve met in Chicago.

The resulting scene will be cold and green and a I’ll think about how still he was in the casket. We little bit brutal. All this will be imagined. The trees didn’t see the transition. Didn’t see him bathed, though, they will know I’m there—also know that didn’t feel the warmth leave his skin. I couldn’t I’ll be gone too soon for their century-slow selves connect the dots between that dying, active body to invest in. And if it’s truly cold Chicago, their and this stone sculpture. I saw him in the hospital, branches will be bare. veins working, and then in the casket where he looked too heavy for any of us to lift. It was like he Maybe, if I’m feeling precise, I will mark out the died because he became stone, and his body was edges. Like cross-stitch. The organization of just too heavy to be moved any further. women’s work translated to mud. It’s easier to persevere if you can parse out neat squares of And then the burial. The box wheeled into the what’s been done and what you have left to do. I’ll church while mariachi trumpets wailed so sweet use stakes, yarn tied between them, like someone and mournful it may have been heresy. Men in digging for gold in old Sacramento. white gloves, untouchable, touching the oiled wood lid. I wanted them to open it again. I wanted The first shovel pushes will be deep, an enthusiasm to be fully convinced he was in there. I hadn’t seen I won’t likely be able to maintain. The soil will give him go in. way easily for a few strokes. Soft, dark, loamy.

The smell of broken earth will rise up around me The grave was already opened by the time we in damp whispers. I’ll smile, and maybe even sing if herded ourselves from the church to the field. Slow breathlessness allows. and scattered in our grief, happy to see each other, Abuelita hugging her grandchildren through her The work will stop being fun after the first hour. tears. One of the funeral home men kept rolling Eventually, I will have to pause to take off my down his white glove to check his watch. raincoat – the bright polyester makes its own atmosphere around my body. Maybe my skin will The hole was perfect, machine squared. Pulleys steam into the cold air as I roll up my sleeves. My to lower the box in. Artificial grass laid over the chilly hands will sprout blisters where they grip muddy real stuff. White folding chairs. Umbrellas and rub the wooden shovel handle. I’ll realize I for the sun. We were protected. Hands clean. We should have packed gloves. I’ll say something self- didn’t bury him ourselves, didn’t even see the soil deprecating aloud, and the birds won’t notice, pushed closed over him, but we each tossed a and neither will the trees. Do you think birds and fistful in and hoped it was enough. We left his box trees are ever self-deprecating? Do you think they there in the hands of well-paid strangers and went have to worry about loving or hating themselves? home to pray his novena.

I’ll feel envy.

My grave in the woods will be imperfect, try as I Childish determination will push me through the might. I’m no machine. Even if I mark it carefully, I work. I will think, begrudgingly, that this would doubt I’ll be able to carve out a straight line. I will be easier with another person. I’ll flip through a wonder if I did this with others, taking turns at the mental Rolodex of people I may have called before shovel or climbing into the earth together, would it I set out, seeking anyone who might have said yes be straighter? Better? But I know I still won’t want to to a pointlessly muddy task. Takes a village to raise call anyone and perfect or not, I will finish the work a child, takes a village to bury one too. alone. It probably won’t be six feet deep. My body will be tired, and I’ll worry about being able to climb I’ll think of the American Way we bury our children. back out, cringing at the idea of needing rescue Concrete coffins. Sleepers untouchable. If burnt is from something I can’t quite name the point of.

I imagine the sun will be starting to set by the time I can call the task done. I’ll catch my breath, deciding whether or not I’ve opened the earth the deepest I reasonably can. I’ll look around, and then I will climb in. A moment will be spent deliberating how to orient myself, which end to put my head on, and which end is for my feet. I think I’ll want my feet pointing west, towards my first home, towards where they buried him, towards where my parents will probably be buried too.

When I’ve decided, I’ll lie down. It will take me a moment to settle. Despite my best intentions, I’ll resist the feel of the cool soil on my warm body.

Maybe shiver a little as the heat of my atoms bleed into the earthen walls, the floor. I’ll give up the weight of my head to the ground, feel the dirt catch in my hair, feel it under my palms, my fingernails.

I don’t think I’ll be able to hear the birds from that quiet space.

When I lie back and look up, all I’ll see is the shifting of the sky. I’ll focus and unfocus, taking turns making the heavens spin around the earth and the earth spin through the heavens. A practice in shifting perspective. It will all be muffled. Distanced enough from the hustle and grind that I don’t need to worry about someone falling in on top of me or, knowing Chicago, pissing into the hole.

I will step out of the world for a moment, sink into it for a breath. A tortoise slowing down for winter.

A frog buried in the mud. Fish frozen under the ice.

Earthworms shifting cold bodies in the dark. And me, tired and grimy, resting among them.

Watch me dig a grave.

I’m going in.

I’m going to lie in it.

It’s not that I want to die. I am not jealous of the dead anymore, at least not in a way that’s as actionable as it was in high school. It’s that I am tired. And nothing will slow down for me. And I don’t know what I would do if it did. It might be like if the world suddenly stopped turning on its axis, a celestial car slamming on the brakes, sending us all whiplash forward with our own deadly momentum.

But I’m building a space. An empty pocket for my little body. And I will build it without permission.

And I hope no one else comes in with me, even though it may be easier, because I need it to be quiet. And I will sleep here until I’m ready to come out again.

37

HE WEST) T M O R F Y SEY (AWA A C O T E D Dorsey O

by Jack y This is an ode to Case h ug la us He had the most precio Infect ious, in fact He was Mormon oredom Far away from this Wh the temple But was kicked ou t of For masturbati on all our locations (It is said they keep On serv ers from where he lives.)

In a mountain not far the same sex He may be attracted to tles before him, Like some of the apos esh He yearned for the fl his mum But he couldn’t leave And his friends s life as a dead en d And he couldn’t live hi in Ut ah And so he’s out there ide peaks Under the frosty suic tch Ra nge Of the lumber ing Wasa ge n green and summer sa Overflowing with aspe t and mighty The forest grows grea en river, valley, and gl Cain wanders through s song by Sun City Girl I was li stening to a ask for his laugh And couldn’t help but After all these years ne from the West I am Away, but not go

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everyday i wake up to plant fungus gnats in my house. we don’t know where they come from but slowly and surely i am losing my mind. @human.lime

We have an ant infestation I’ve been killing so many ants.

I do feel quite bad about it.

It’s not their fault they’re in the wrong place, I can’t exactly Move them Like when I move spiders.

That’s different, they’re on their own, I can kick them out.

If I do that to ants they come back.

Or worst they die of heartbreak, Confusion, or simple weakness.

Because an ant on their own is useless.

Its mercy to kill them The rest will die soon anyway, At my hands Or the next housekeeper’s.

I wish I could let them live Or just move them somewhere else But it often is not the best option.

Ants can’t handle change all that well Everything is hardwired into their DNA “Where is something sweet, how to reach it, what’s worth bringing back to the queen.”

I wonder if they follow the sweetness of breath And I spend my nights swallowing them And my days killing them.

I swear I do feel quite bad. @Mona Neilson

40

re dinner the ing before n r e e v id e p y s a lack yesterd ally tiny b re s y a ll w a it re . was a terrified e ing. i was eiling whil on my ceil d on the c n f u o ro s a e d g o n crawli al epis n fi e th g m hin peared fro i was watc re it disap fo e b nglish e c the offi with my e g n ti it s r, ve e c ou ch netflix fore er - on th g in g l ie cause pan ceiling be springer s e th t a p ed u t on the and i look g little do in y if rr te very the g around, there was n li w ra c s wa om . ceiling. it d for my m d te u o h s i d e slowly, an then start ed up and my k r, o o lo o fl r e e g gin me th n o ll fe it a . t it ,iw s barking a mashed it r. s d n a in e of the hou mom cam r the rest fo d e ifi rr te @1iglan

en getting a lot of My room has be ing in they began com ladybugs lately... to the y wa e th ming in all co , ld co e th m fro I live in the cooperative of to or flo nd co se to find windowsill I used y m ar ne ay st to intriguing , whimsical and gn ni be gs bu dy la g up my hen I was growin w e im et m so til un them... sed her phobia of es of pr er ist -s ep st gan ptance of them be My natural acce look n ca I .. s. her view being clouded by em in th ng ei se to daze.. in go d an em th at seemed fore... their spots be ’t dn ha I ys wa e solid, rre and sickly. Th za bi e, ac pl of t ou can feel eir beetle bodies th of s es in ch un cr wings and their brown sensorially icky, e of a m d in m re ings now under their red w peanut M & M.... @Nadia John

before it A few months a got too c go, av old was chil ery run -of the-m for creepy crawle ling ill long -le rs, gg from the in my bedroom about a ed spider ceiling. U benevole foot do sually n whole tim t so I trapped th I kill bugs but I w wn the wall e e. It was as feelin lil’ guy in g s a couple o high up that I (a a jar, screaming o the c f c it id s enta leg It was sti ll moving s off in the proc lly!!) clipped ess. though, the sp so A couple idey outside of m I deposited ya of As I look nights later, I wa partment. e s lay d up atthe spider o ceiling, I ing in bed. n the sa m no e In gettin g closer part of the wall ticed a to as Only. Ha d. Six. L it, I noticed that last time. e it. g s. H revenge.

I killed it e had come bac k for th @girltras at time. h

My little sister has three screams: a bad scream (when Mom fell), a good scream (when she got that new job), and a bug scream. One morning, my sister screamed a category 3. I knew what to do. I reached into the pantry for the Bug A Salt 3.0, Black Fly Edition, and ran upstairs to the bedroom quickly and soundlessly. “You’re here,” she met me at the door in a towel and wet hair.

“Where is it?” I said, and she pointed to the ensuite. The lights were off. I opened the door a crack. A Lepisma saccharina, common name, silverfish. He was paused mid-crawl on a roll of toilet paper posing like George Costanza in his couch pose.

“God DAMMIT,” I said.

It was a new roll a white pillowy crepe cake of a roll. I took the BAS up to eye level, pumped the slide cock once and slowly drew it back.

“It’s a big one,” I said, looking through the scope.

I took a shot and missed. The salt spray shot off the shower glass walls and sprinkled to the floor. A poof of cotton splayed from the two ply.

“The toilet paper!” my sister said.

“There’s plenty more!” I shouted, but it wasn’t true and we both knew it.

I pumped the gun again, faster this time. Another shot, more salt, the TP etched with a patina of tiny salt bullets.

“Got him!” I said. “I got him.”

The carnage was self-contained. I wrapped him in the top couple of layers of the TP and flushed. “Can we still use it?” my sister asked. I sighed and said, “We haven’t got a choice, Kid.” We went back to our bunkers. @Casey Bergin

41

than a curiosity. Some seasons it felt like I lived in their sound, wrapped in the white noise, the big spaces were filled with padding.

Without the cicadas, without the birds, the quiet echoed off of the trees, affirming the things that didn’t exist. Even after a cicada had moved on to the next stages of its life, it left behind a shell, it continued to occupy the spaces that I would explore. They kept me company.

I am back there, back here again, visiting.

And predictably - well, something I ought to have predicted but failed to - I startled myself.

I opened the drawer of my nightstand and found, surrounded by other detritus, a singular cicada shell, perfectly intact, excluding the split down the back where its adulthood burgeoned forth. I picked it up and placed it on my palm. Through this little object, this alchemical paradox of life and death, I was pulled into memories of my own mythology and scenes that will never leave me.

There had been a cicada explosion one summer. Black, stinky ass cicadas.

Leaving the house, the stench of feces and corpses hung in the air like a damp towel around your nose.

The grass there, here, was always long, weedy, and crowned with dandelion gold, or wildflower mauve. The air was heavy, not just for the humidity, but because it magnified the sky behind and held swarms of gnats, swimming territorially in pockets of it. If the feeling of the back of your throat being parched could be a smell, that’s what the air would smell like, but it also smelled like pollen, like cut grass, hot asphalt, tree musk.

Meanwhile, the blue jays stumbled drunkenly about, comically huge. They would peck at the cicadas out of pure instinct, only to fling them out of their beaks a moment later and waddle on, repeating the process.

It was humid enough that the air ran brown before thunderstorms in summer. Half the time the sky scared itself with the anticipation of movement, so that no rain, only a little lightning would eek out.

Mimicking the jays, I would run around the paths in the woods and collect something for which I had no need. Some trips I would fill a bag, other times I would carry back a singular evacuated husk between my fingers so it would not be crushed in my pocket.

They’d end up all over the house, these husks. Sometimes I was placing them, staging great cicada migrations up the spine of a couch, across a headboard, an exodus down a hallway. A good amount of them, however, seemed to migrate on their own, ending up all over the house via the chaotic properties of childhood homes. My mother would discover a shell here to a screech, a shell there to a shout.

On any back road it was easy to drive to the top of a wide hill that climbs to its peak over half-miles. On a peak like that, the ground was flat, but the land around would gently drift down so the altitude wasn’t felt and there would be miles of uninterrupted view.

I never collected other dead things. I think the cicada shells were more of a comfort

42

Sometime, at the end of this visit, I’ll do that.

Drive one of those back roads, to one of those hills. I will have taken the cicada shell that I found in my nightstand and installed it on my dash, trusting the legs on a long dead cicada to hold on tight for one last migration. And when I got there I’d lean against the driver’s side of the car, not in a candid one-flat-of-ashoe pressed against the door kind of way, or smoking, just leaning straight-backed against the window and looking at the sky, parsing the flashes that went off and smelling the dirt. o

CLASSiFiEDS CAREERS

MiSC.

BIOS STAFF Claire Bentley is a writer and filmmaker from Chicago. She spends most of her

time trying to decide what to have for breakfast, which she believes can be eaten at any time of day. Claire has many hobbies, most of which she prides herself in doing mediocrely: making clothes, playing guitar, writing silly poems with rhyme but no meter, and sharing handmade gifts and letters with her friends. If you’re looking for Claire, you can find her on Instagram @clearlybentley, or attempting to practice the theremin (so far she can only make ghost sounds).

Molly Bryson is a writer and curator from Chicago. She is inspired by the kinds of material culture others might call “junk” but which she calls “archives.” Her work has been published in the Smithsonian’s FolkLife digital magazine, Chicago magazine, Cabinet Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a co-founder of FUNNEL, a virtual gallery and mutual aid space. Molly graduated from Oberlin College in May 2020 with a B.A. in Creative Writing and Art History.

Instagram: @mollybryson

SERViCES

T. Harris likes to say that they “make comics about people with issues.” It’s true, and somewhat more palatable than saying that they make comics about themself. page 17 Instagram: @worm.rat

Tati Rodriguez, creatively known as Honeyshot, is a WGAE writer and

NEED HELP? GOT SOMETHIN YOU WANNA SAY? ADVERTiSE iT HERE! CONTACT US AT PESTCONTROLMAGAZiNE@GMAiL.COM

44

performance artist from Chicago. Her professional background includes network television screenwriting, independent film festival programming, and magazine publishing. She has performed original poetry and raps, facilitated workshops, and organized installation projects. You can find her astral projecting in her room. Tati graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago this past December with a BA in Communication.

Instagram: @honeyshot Website: https://sites.google.com/view/tleerod

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BIOS CONTRIBUTORS Dakota Sherman is a Potato chip. page 23, 43 Instagram: @djcsart Website: www.DakotaSherman.com – currently down...stay tuned EmmA Sielaff is constantly wondering how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop. Although she has tried many times herself, she still does not have the answer.

She is a multidisciplinary artist from Chicago, where she currently sits and thinks while she waits for the snow to finally melt. page 35 Instagram: @big.smiley.face Website: www.EmmaSielaff.com

KC Smith is a wannabe anarcho-primitive transhumanist from the middle of nowhere.

They are currently on the run from a mysterious past in comix and independent publishing. For now they are holed up at an abandoned airfield, drafting a screenplay, while scouring around for an affordable RV. They taught themself how to whistle during lockdown. Now they’ve moved on to bird calls. Their favorite bird is the loon. Their favorite song is Matthew by John Denver. If you have any RV leads, hit them up.

Instagram: @dirtywetdog Website: kcsmithart.wixsite.com/art4ghouls

Nick Alonzo is a non binary self taught filmmaker based in Chicago. They are currently working on a 10-hour biopic about writing a proper biography about themselves. You can check out their work at www.nickalonzo.com page 14–15 Bobby is a bowel mover, collaborator, friend, lover, sandwich maker, and artist of sorts. page 10–11 Website: https://bobbysax7889.wixsite.com/website Instagram: suncloud0_ Soundcloud: suncloud0

Buster is a largely aimless being who finds joy in storytelling. She has been forever changed by children’s fantasy books and thus believes herself kin to fairies who will soon return to this plane to reclaim her. Her Instagram is @busterbabby. page 5

Cole is twenty years old and is hoping to adopt a cat with his roommate, Malcolm, in the near future. page 32 Bridget Conway is an artist in Oberlin, OH. Her work confronts the failures

of language and communication through abstractions of objects and the repetitive practice of printmaking. She can be found online at bridgetconway.cargo.site and @onewomancoven on Instagram. page 31

Jerusha Crone is an MA student at the University of Chicago Divinity School where she studies Philosophy of Religion. She grew up in rural Texas, a landscape that still deeply influences her academic and creative work. Beyond that, her writing centers around themes of ethics, natural events, and processes of transformation. She has called Chicago home for five years and still can’t believe snow is real. It’s beautiful. page 28

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LAURA DE SOUSA is a Brazilian-American poet from Tampa, Florida. Now working out of Chicago, her work focuses on self-reflection and identity. page 8 Jack Dorsey’'s favorite movie is Joker (Phillips 2019). page 39 Jordan Ferensic is a writer from Maryland. He has studied in Colorado and taught

English domestically and abroad. His work has been published in The Greyrock Review, Cicada Creative Magazine, The Sock Drawer Magazine, and Sunday Mornings at the River. page 42

Cameron Goulder is an illustrator living and working in Chicago, Illinois.

Cameron’s love for sports started from watching NBA games as a kid. Around 2018, Cameron’s love for basketball and pop culture turned into a love for art. His work ranges from Tony Soprano screen caps to drawings of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. page 27

Cailynn Johnson is an interdisciplinary artist from Chicago, IL. Her art practice

is currently focused on fiber work, writing, film photography, and jewelry making. She also works in other mediums such as printmaking, collage, installations, other 2D and digital work. Cailynn’s work comes from a place of experiment, impulse, and desire.

Archiving her feelings, findings and special moments into visual pieces of art is what her practice is all about. page 12

Drew Laughner is an animator/ illustrator residing in Chicago. In his free time he

enjoys spitting and swearing. page 1

Ray Madrigal is a queer Chicanx maker, former Chicago art student, current

California hardware store associate. Through a range of mediums, Madrigal parses the impact of late stage capitalism on the miracles and tragedies of everyday life. They question the absurdity of ownership, of objects, and the costs of living — costs higher for some than for others. Madrigal uses their practice to make their own sense of the world around them, and in braver moments they share this work with others in hopes of connection. These days especially, Madrigal leans on making as a balm, a practice that allows them to view all experiences as valuable regardless of how painful they may be. page 36–37

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Gage Maurie would prefer his bio blank. page 18 Max is tall and thin with brown hair, blue eyes, a square face and a stiff yet somehow pliable demeanor. He leans towards self-seriousness and an apologist attitude, though he has convictions, we are assured. He spends most of his time cooking, reading and walking. He plays the clarinet, but not very well. page 13 Sam Merrick is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the tension between our built environment and embodied experiences. page 24–25

Kristen Miciotta is an artist living in Chicago. She mainly works in illustration and relief printmaking. Her art tends to reflect her interests in horror movies and biology. page 9 Nadia (they/them) is a poet-artist from the Midwest. They have published three books of poetry including Don’t you Love my Gardening Styles, and Din of Soot & Glint of Vert-de-gris by GaussPdf. They are a member of the social justice cooperative, Doveland. They are most interested in the study of narratology, (psycho)linguistics, and affect theory, and how it relates to experimental art forms and emancipatory politics.

They’re learning how to play the guitar. page 6-7 L. O'Keefe is a writer and philosopher based in Chicago, Illinois. She recently graduated from Northeastern Illinois University with a BA in English and philosophy.

Lately, she has been inspired by Ottessa Moshfegh and Hannah Arendt. She has been published in The Decadent Review, five:to:one magazine, Pioneertown, and elsewhere. page 2–3 Emma Punch is an artist based in Chicago, IL. She recently received her Bachelor of Fine Art from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work was most recently exhibited in South Korea, and published in Scratch Magazine. Her work ponders life’s biggest questions like, “How should a person be?”, “Am I doing this whole (life) thing right?” and “Do I remember what I ate for breakfast? What should I eat for dinner? Should I just eat the same thing?” She plays with these ideas by finding humor in the everyday through a wide range of mediums such as print, animation, and sculpture. page 38

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Jordan Roth is a visual artist living in Chicago, IL. They make films, illustrations, and sculptures. You can see more of their work on Instagram @whoa.thanks. page 26

Harrington Ryan is a photographer, musician, and visual artist from Tucson,

Arizona. He likes mountains, sonoran sunsets, sexy suburban parking lots, and plant matter. Find him on Instagram @plant.candy. page 29

Joshua Sauvageau is a 41-year-old child who resides in Chicago. He is originally

from North Dakota and has been a nuclear reactor operator for the US Navy, an upright bassist for the band Midwest, a yoga teacher, a triathlete, a bookseller, an amateur cartographer, and a burger flipper. page 30

Iris Stratman is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago. She is inspired by

stuff like biology (sex), consumerism, myth, perversion, epistemology, and the collective unconscious. Although her body of work is heterogeneous from aesthetics to methods, everything she makes directly relates to the Anthropocene. page 4

Nico Tangorra is a Chicago writer, having recently completed his MFA in Creative

Writing at Roosevelt University. His writing explores the depth and nuances of human connection as well as the hilarity of being gay in 2021. John Stamos saw him cry once. page 18-22

Hope round two was a good ride, see you next time! Yeehaw!

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