PLAINS PARADOX
Literary and Arts Journal, Vol. XIX, 2021
PLAINS PARADOX Literary and Arts Journal, Vol. XIX, 2021
DESIGN AND LAYOUT
Lead Designer:
Sara Kimbrough
EDITORS
Student Editors: Leni Checkas Bethany Daigle CJ Echols Robyn Eubanks Lucy Roper
Designers:
Zeke Dominguez Taylor Glover Amy Gurrentz CJ Surlow Leyla Walker Maggs Williams
Advising Editors: Kika Dorsey Sarah Schantz
SPONSORS
John Cross Patrick Kelling Blake Welch
COVER ART
“Silhouettes & Sunsets,” is a digital photograph taken by Kana Anderson.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editors appreciate the support during these unprecedented times. They would like to thank the students, administrators, and faculty who have made this publication possible.
Andy Dorsey, President Front Range Community College
Dr. Elena Sandoval-Lucero, Vice President Front Range Community College
Mary Lee Geary, Dean of Instruction Front Range Community College
Kathleen Hefley, Chair of Liberal Arts, Communication, and Design Front Range Community College
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Subtractive Figure Robyn Eubanks 2 Race Day Miranda Mykleby 8 Snowy Morning Kana Anderson 9 Portrait Victor Prieto 10 Love Well Evelyn Rake 12 Doctor Lucy Roper 13 Chopin Elise Flesher 14 Go to Hell Sonya Almaraz-Tatum
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16 Sense of Self Lucy Roper
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17 Reckless Abandon Monica Lindley
Dinah Bowman
24 Still Life
Robyn Eubanks
25 Hypnotic
Rebecca Ruiz
26 The Salmon of Knowledge Dinah Bowman
29 Seagrass
Rebecca Ruiz
30 Until the Breaking of Day Mikayla Carter
31 Lost in the Corn Maze
Kana Anderson
32 On the Side of the Retiring Sun Charley Peritz
34 Untitled (2)
Kana Anderson
35 A Sense of Autumn
Kana Anderson
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18 The Total Displacement of Zero
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 36 Forest Floor Joshua Stvan 38 Still Life with Doe & Sneakers Kris Jacque 39 Bee & Flower Elise Flesher 40 Broomstick Skirt Kelly Jensen 41 Untitled (1) Kana Anderson 42 Passionism German Aldama 43 Ode to Abandon
Kelly Jensen
45 Grandparent Love Part 1 Kana Anderson
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46 Grandparent Love Part 2 Kana Anderson
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47 A Visitation Lucy Roper
Gretchen Spomer
51 Stories of a Bathroom Stall Malyn Davis
54 Vintage Self-Portrait
Gretchen Spomer
55 Laura Swears Martha Connelly
57 I Salute
Riya Calton-Fulkerson
58 Silhouettes & Sunsets
Kana Anderson
59 Together
Aurora Vadas-Arendt
61 Twilight in Pandemonium
Kris Jacque
62 Internal Warfare
Caitlyn Abplanalp
63 Artist at Work
Gretchen Spomer
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50 Submerged
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 64 Values Megan Miraglia 65 11 Marlene Cabrera 66 The Woman’s Body Kana Anderson 67 International Orange Marin McCallen 72 Tami Rebecca Ruiz 73 An Analogy of My Current Relationship with My Parents Jade Szettella 75 The Rails Sarah Lee 76 Toes
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Kana Anderson
77 Unwelcome Sean Hollister
79 Fruits of Life
Kana Anderson
80 Tangerine
Sonya Almaraz-Tatum
81 The Glass Apple
Kana Anderson
82 Fragments and Flashes Marin McCallen
87 Grandfather’s Favorite
Robyn Eubanks
88 Awards
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Subtractive Figure
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Robyn Eubanks
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Race Day
Miranda Mykleby
People say their life flashes before their eyes when tragedy strikes, but mine never did—even when my life was forever altered in the space of seconds. Fifteen months ago I was in a car accident. The driver of the vehicle I was in ran a stop sign and we T-boned another car. I’d been working as a CNA at the time and tried to stay fairly active between swimming and running. It was a few weeks before we realized how long it could potentially be until I did any of those things again. ***
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It’s one of those warm 45-degree mornings in Denver. The sun’s encouraging warmth overrides the cool from the occasional cloud as I pace by the starting line, nearly oblivious to the elite runners finishing the 5K race. If I remember to look up when I’m facing the right way, I can see the mountains that became a refuge for me after the accident. I would spend hours driving around Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s mid-November and the Pumpkin Pie 5K/10K is underway in City Park. The course is the traditional 3.1 miles long for the 5K, which means that those of us running the 10K do two laps. My mom is walking with one of our friends, Laura, and they passed under the blue inflatable arch about fifteen minutes ago, which means I still have another twenty minutes until the start of the 10K race. I may be alone at this moment, but knowing that my mom is still close and participating in the event eases some of my anxiety. This is my first race since the accident, and I don’t think I can do it alone. I don’t even like pumpkin pie, but Mom and Laura do. The free pie at the end of the race is how I convinced them to come with me. I walk and stretch and walk some more, never stopping for more than a moment, afraid my hip will cramp up. There’s probably not too many twenty-four-year-olds who have to worry about that here.
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The race is run in three heats. There is an elite 5K race, the regular 5K for people who casually run or who want to walk it, and the 10K with no elite group. I’m debating whether or not to leave on my long-sleeve shirt when the race announcer gives the five-minute warning for all 10K runners to gather at the starting corral. I know that I’ll have to take it off by the end of the first mile because I’ll get too warm, but I’m cold without it right now. I quickly decide to pin the bib on my tank top and start the race with my long-sleeve tied around my waist. Music thuds from the speakers and the countdown begins. “10, 9, 8, 7, 6,” the crowd chants, and the time between each number seems to grow, “5, 4, 3, 2, 1!” The starting gun goes off, marking 0. The pack surges forward, taking me with it. *** I learned a lot since the day of the accident, like what PTSD feels like. I also discovered that it doesn’t go away easily, and it’s often worse if the accident wasn’t your fault. I became proficient in the use of crutches. Ten months ago, I underwent surgery to repair the labral tear it caused in my right hip, and I regularly curse the scar tissue that rises in rebellion under my scars. There are three of them, each about one-inch long. They’re my battle wounds.
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***
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The first tear falls as I cross under the big blue arch with the word START printed in white letters across it. I am not crying because I’m in pain or sad, but for some emotion I can’t quite place. It tugs on me the way the need to run pulled at me after my surgery. It rips me apart. The onyx shadows have clouded my every thought until this day and are bled out, left withering in the dust behind me. The reality of this moment strikes me. I am here. I am running. I tell myself I will finish this damn race even as I question whether I am truly ready for it. I have fought for ten months to be here and in this moment it has become real. The training, the waiting next to the start line, the waiting
in the corral—none of it was real because this moment, this run, this feeling was almost stolen from me. My tears give way to determination, focus, and elation by the time I complete the first mile. That wasn’t so bad. *** The first thing I remembered after waking up from surgery was the incredible urge to move. Running was all I could think about; I didn’t want to just walk again. All I wanted was the feeling of concrete under me as I lost myself in the world. I run to feel free, to escape this world and my clouded thoughts, which make it hard to get out of bed. The feeling of my legs stretching and propelling me forward is inexplicable, as though I’m able to leave all the bad behind and I feel lighter. I run for the same reason I love to dance: I can just be and nothing else matters. It would be several months before I ran again, something I’ve enjoyed for as long as I can remember, though I’ve never been the fastest. In middle school, I ran cross country and actually placed twelfth in a meet. I took dance classes in high school instead, but we still had to run the mile. I made it in seven minutes and fifty-two seconds my senior year. A record I have yet to beat. ***
***
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Mile two. The second mile of any race has always been the easiest for me. I settle into a rhythm and find my space in the pack. I got this, I tell myself, I just have to keep it up. A decent nine-minute mile pace in sync with the runners around me. I smile, knowing that I am near my pre-injury rhythm. On the faster side of it, too. I may have run a mile in less than eight minutes in high school, but my distance runs usually range from nine-to-twelve minutes per mile. I might be starting too fast, but I can feel my feet on the pavement, and the cool air burns my lungs with every breath. The energy of the pack fuels me, and running again is all that matters.
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I should have started running three months after my surgery. At six months, I could have been cleared to run outside on uneven ground where obstacles require sudden shifts in direction and changes to my stride. Recovery was not that easy though. Is it ever? At least I had moved on from the exercise bike I used for two hours a day starting the first day post-surgery. Physical therapy started the next week, fifty-seven appointments total, including those before surgery. The first thing I had to overcome was my fear. It had been so long since I could put weight fully on my leg without pain that I was terrified. *** Mile three. My lungs are on fire and I have to walk for a bit. I call my mom to find out her location on the course. The longsleeve shirt keeps slipping from my waist and I want to hand it off to her so that I can focus on this mission. I have been constantly re-tying it and worry that I’ll step wrong each time. I may be almost halfway done, but the thoughts are trickling in: Was I ready for this long of a race? Can my hip handle it? What if I hop onto that one curb wrong on lap two or go into that U-turn by the two-and-a-half-mile marker wrong? Just before the finish line, I catch up with them and give Mom my shirt. Mom and Laura sprint through the red arch for finishers while I continue under that blue arch for the second time, thankful to have one less thing to worry about.
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***
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I managed to work past that initial fear and, about two months after my surgery, I had a flare-up, forcing me to back off from the physical therapy exercises for a couple weeks. I knew what to expect because my doctor had warned me this would happen, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. What I didn’t expect was the bomb cyclone that hit Colorado less than a week after I had been able to resume my regular PT. The pressure change brought pain and left me trapped back in bed for days. Once the storm passed, I was able to start walking longer distances.
Almost every day I went to the rec center and walked laps around the reduced track. The first time I made it to a mile, it took me twenty minutes because of my right leg. I used to be able to walk a fifteen-minute mile on a slow day. I was still limping that first day. *** Most of mile four is fairly flat which makes running easier, and I’m almost on auto-pilot at this point. One foot in front of the other; make sure I’m breathing; watch for rocks on the course. I push my worries down. I reassure myself that I can make it and finish strong. I am over halfway through the race and have yet to purge all of the onyx ghosts that have plagued me for months. *** When I first got cleared to run, I could only do so on straight, flat surfaces. The bike path near my house wouldn’t work because it is full of hills. Instead, I ran on the track at the rec center. The track itself was certainly small, located on the second floor, it circled the basketball courts from above. There was usually a Zumba class going on in one area of the gym while people often played basketball in the other. I would run the straight part of the track and walk the curves for the eleven laps it took to make a mile. The first time I was able to go around the corners went great, and by my fourth time running the full lap, I had grown to trust that my leg could support me. That’s when I overstepped going into a corner and rolled my left ankle, which caused me to jump back onto my right leg too quickly, at a bad angle. I pulled my hamstring, and instead of being released from PT, another month was added because my hip couldn’t handle the extra stress. *** Plains Paradox |
Mile five. My legs are sore already, and I can’t catch my breath. Walking, I try to convince myself that I’ll start running again
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once I pass a certain tree or sign I see ahead, and I fail each time. I walk the first half of mile five like this. As I approach the five-and-a-half-mile mark, a group of children come marching down the sidewalk all decked out in their race T-shirts and medals hanging from their necks. I don’t know if they walked or ran, but 3.1 miles has nothing on carefree, energetic children. I miss that. These days, I spend more energy fighting my mind than I do admiring the world. As I approach the horde of kids, they all reach out their hands. I start running again to high-five each child. Their energy and joy flow through me, infectious. *** I eventually met my running goals. Instead of three and six months, it took four and seven. I signed up for this race on the first day I ran outside after my surgery. Even then, I had no inkling as to how much this moment, this day, would mean to me. ***
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I run the last 1.7 miles of the race, sprinting underneath the red arch to collect my cheesy medal. It’s a turkey preparing to eat a pumpkin pie with a fork in one wing and a knife in the other. Life is full of uncertainties. I will never look at a race medal the same way again.
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Snowy Morning Kana Anderson
Portrait Victor Prieto
Love Well
Evelyn Rake
I hope I used my allowance of love. There was a well of it that I used to pull from. I hope it’s empty now. I hope that any wishes tossed in would hit the stony bottom and bounce back out. I hope any seed that fell in would crumble and never grow. I hope that it is a Wild Wild West abandoned and deserted town in the middle of the desert and that it will be left alone until it crumbles into itself. It would be comforting. I think I drowned in this well when I was ten, when it was full. That time I spent in the hospital room turned fishbowl, pretending I had gills, and everything was fine. My guess is this: until the age of ten, I took my love as it came, in drops or glasses at a time, when I stubbed a toe or scuffed my knee. Took and gave and loved and loved and loved. As a child should. But then—at ten—there was vomit. There was blood. There were bones poking through skin. I needed love then. My family, my friends, were aqueducts, and I stood under the spout, showering in “Get well soon,” in “We’re in this together,” in “I love you,” in “We love you,” in “You are loved.”
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Sometimes life requires so much love, buckets and bathtubs of it, soup bowls and swimming pools. Forethought might have demanded love through an I.V. with my morphine. Forethought might have required spoon feeding, cooled down with ice chips, washed down with chicken broth. But like heroes, my friends and family rushed forward and gave and gave and gave. They held cups to my lips, rubbed the love into my joints, combed it into my hair, let it drip into my eyes. They spent nights, restless in hard plastic chairs beside me, days dreary holding gentle hands to my forehead, waiting for the heat to fade, digging trenches for the love to flood through.
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I like to think that I used my love up when I had no foresight for anything beyond the end of a hospital bed, that it was a blundering, fever-driven mistake, that it’s actually all okay because I am strong, and I don’t need love. If I have run out of love then I can’t be selfish. I can’t ask for others to bring me more. I can’t go and gather it for myself. It’s easier to tell myself that love is finite, that mine ran out ages ago—instead of facing the fact that I look at myself and find someone unworthy of taking more.
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Doctor Lucy Roper
Chopin Elise Flesher
Go to Hell
Sonya Almaraz-Tatum
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Your light-brown pompadour hair stays perfectly in place. Sweat droplets pool at the corners of your forehead while the rest of your face glistens. Mouth wide open, drool slides from the corner of your lip. For me, it’s all sweet, and I remind myself not to wake you while I edge closer. It’s still hard to believe that I met you in the middle of all this bullshit, while the world is falling apart. *** When I was a little girl, I loved playing underneath the pews. Most days, my grandmother didn’t care, but on this day, we had some guests. I remember her grabbing me tightly by the arm, dragging me toward the bathroom. I didn’t know what to expect; I had never seen her brows clenched, eyes squinted and dark. She faced me toward her, cupping my head tightly in her hands. I couldn’t understand what she was saying; I was so scared. Then she lifted my dress, pulled down my pantyhose, and spanked me. She didn’t stop until her hand was bright red and shaking. She kept clasping it open and shut after that. This kind of hurt would cast a shadow over me, and it wasn’t understandable. We returned to the pews, and I sat quietly with my head down. Later that day, I heard my grandma saying something about people who go to hell, people who do bad things. *** Brought back to our bed by your sigh, I am reminded of something, and I’m not quite sure how to tell you. I don’t want to taint this. But even in this moment with you, its shadow looms above us. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to shield you from it, and it seems impossibly a part of me.
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When I lay here with you, I can’t help but think that it didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that the orange tones swept across the streets heading west behind the peaks, coating the city with darkness, that we just made love, and your kisses feel like universal exploration. When we talk about sustainable living and kindness, we are two people falling in love. The same two people who were laughing as we drove down Hover Street and saw the man holding a sign, “God made them male and female, and said … a man shall be joined to his wife.” We both cringed and didn’t speak for the rest of the car ride. This type of loneliness usually felt lonelier. When we are like this, I get worried and scared. Afraid I’ll lose you to someone else’s fear. I can’t place if it comes from believing that, no matter all the deeds of my life, I’ll end up in hell. I don’t know which of my thoughts are worse. My grandmother’s belief of it or my own.
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Sense of Self Lucy Roper
Reckless Abandon Monica Lindley
The Total Displacement of Zero Dinah Bowman
I. What happens to a dream deferred?: My father always wanted to be a chef. He went to cooking school and prepared most of the food at home when I was young. When we had potlucks in elementary school, he made Swedish cardamom coffee bread. It entailed a full day of waiting for the dough to rise, then kneading and braiding and baking. Everyone said it was delicious. He never talked about his job at home; instead, he talked about what produce was in season, what new recipe he wanted to try, what herbs he wanted to grow in the garden that summer. He knew everyone at the farmer’s market by name, and when he brought home meat, it was wrapped like a gift in paper and twine. You could tell he was a scientist by the way he cooked: incredibly precise in his measurements, filling margins of his recipes with observations and suggestions. These were the only indicators of the person he was during the day. I never knew how close my father came to pursuing his dream. He was fully prepared to change careers before my mom got pregnant with me. He even talked about opening a restaurant with a friend from cooking school. My parents decided the commitment of long hours and late nights wasn’t practical with a new baby, so my father sacrificed his dream for me. I wonder if he ever resented me for it.
Children are much more perceptive than people give them
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II. This is the way the world ends:
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credit for. They may not be able to put their intuition into words, but they know when their parents are hiding things from them. A child comes downstairs earlier than usual one morning and sees a pillow and blanket on the couch and knows something isn’t right. Their parents stop yelling when they enter the room, but they still feel the hostility hanging in the air like carbon monoxide. But eventually, something happens that forces everyone to stop pretending. I forget the order, exactly: my father lost his job then got in the car accident, or he got in the car accident then lost his job. But these are the facts: he started showing up to work late, and sometimes he showed up drunk, and eventually he stopped showing up at all. On Christmas Eve, he rear-ended another car at a red light and totaled our old Subaru Outback. Except for a few broken ribs, he was fine. His mistress was in the car. III. Tyger Tyger burning bright:
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It’s funny how you can be certain that someone would never hurt you and still be afraid of them. When I asked why we weren’t allowed to visit our father’s new house, my mother said it wasn’t safe and refused to answer any more of my questions. She bought me my first cell phone, so I could text her in case something happened. She never specified what kind of something. A few Saturdays a month, my father took my brother and me to the park, or to a movie, or to get ice cream, and dropped us back off promptly at 5:00 p.m. while my mother watched from the window.
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I dreamed, as many children of divorced parents do, that my parents would make up. But things only got worse. He would call, but his slurred speech didn’t make sense. He would ask the same question twice in a row, or he’d forget the name of my
soccer team, my best friend, the family dog. We conversed, but in the way that you converse with someone who is talking in their sleep. Sometimes my mom would answer the phone and talk to him for a little bit, then tell us he was sick and couldn’t talk to us that day. My little brother said, “This dad is not our old dad.” I didn’t realize how bad things had gotten until my mom woke my brother and me in the middle of the night and told us to grab some clothes and our toiletries. I was scared because she looked disheveled, and my mom was always perfectly put together in front of us. We drove to a family friend’s house and parked in the garage so our car couldn’t be seen from the street. I was embarrassed because I was wearing pajamas, and my eyes were red and swollen. The next morning, we drove to my aunt’s new house, somewhere my father had never been. We stayed for two nights before going home. I didn’t find out what happened until almost seven years later. My father had sent my mom a series of emails describing, in detail, how he would kill her and take my brother and me away. IV. Richard Cory went down town:
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A lot of things run in families. The royals of the Habsburg dynasty of Austria and Spain were known for the “Habsburg jaw,” a facial deformity that resulted from centuries of inbreeding. Some of the paintings of Habsburg royals look like they were done by a caricature artist, with chins so long and grotesque they cast the entire neck in shadow. Several of Queen Victoria’s male descendants, including Alexei Romanov, suffered from a “royal curse” that caused them to bleed out after receiving minor cuts. This curse was later discovered to be hemophilia, a genetic disease that prevents blood from clotting. A lot of health conditions are inherited by commoners too: heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s to name a few.
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Alcoholism and mental illness run in families too. In my family, my dad ran back to Illinois, to his parents’ house. The rest of us stayed. I was sixteen when I found out he wasn’t coming back. I graduated from high school and went to California. I felt like I was hurtling toward something:
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• It was Saturday night. • My friends and I were going to a party. • I curled my hair, put on red lip gloss, and dabbed a tiny bit of gold eyeshadow on the inner corners of my eyes. • I drank a beer and some sangria my roommate made. • Together, we walked to a friend’s house. • My friend had just gotten a new dab rig since she had broken her old one while drunk, and everyone took dabs. • A different friend brought strawberry vodka, and I took a couple shots, even though it tasted like hand sanitizer. • We each did a line of coke, which one of my friends recorded for her Snapchat story. • I was wearing a white dress. • I felt luminous. • We walked a few blocks, not far, and we could hear the bass pounding inside the house from the street. • Inside, it was sweaty, and the lights strobed. • A guy looked at me, and I held his gaze. • I wanted to move in long flowing motions. • I drank and smoked and danced. • The air buzzed with electricity. • The music reverberated in my chest even after I started to walk home. • I was falling off the edge of the earth. • I thought, This was how my father felt.
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V. Do not go gentle into that good night: Picture us in split screen: We’re three years and thousands of miles apart, but on the same trajectory. He finishes writing the note and goes to sit on his bed. I put my phone down and turn on my blue projector light that makes me feel like I’m underwater. We both count out a handful of pills. His are the prescription painkillers he never stopped taking after the car accident. Mine are the sleeping pills I’ve been prescribed because I haven’t been able to sleep through the night in nearly three years. But there are differences between us too. Parallel, but not the same. I survived my suicide attempt. My father did not. VI. i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart): I remember my eighth-grade physics class where we talked about vector quantities for the first time, and I learned that distance and displacement are not the same. Displacement is distance in a specified direction. If you run one lap around a track and end up in the same place you started, you’ve traveled a distance of one lap, but your displacement is zero. In my father’s life, the total displacement was zero. He died in the town where he was born, in the house where he lived as a child. His was a meteoric rise and fall: raised on a farm, the first of his family to go to college. He graduated, became the first in his family to work a job other than retail or manual labor. Then, the downward spiral. I wonder how it felt to end up back at the place he worked so hard to leave. Plains Paradox |
But the distance my father traveled in his life was different, nonzero. He grew up, went to school, met my mom, had kids.
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He lived in cities, went to clubs, and coached youth soccer. He cheated and lied and drank and broke my heart more than once. I hated him and I loved him. His life might have ended in the same place it began, but the distance he traveled was immeasurable. I mourn the person he was and the person he might have been. I grieve because there are many things he will never see, and the list grows every day. He misses sunrises and sunsets, snow and rain. He couldn’t become a recovering addict and alcoholic and a sponsor for others who struggled. He doesn’t see me singing along to his favorite seventies glam-rock songs while I drive to work. He never watched his kids grow up, and he’ll never meet his grandchildren. He never lived to see winter become spring, to watch buds grow from skeletal branches, to see life return to the land and feel hopeful.
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When he died, I lost the future I had imagined for us, where he was part of my life again. For a while, it was my dream that he would walk me down the aisle at my wedding, many years in the future. It’s been almost four years now, and I have new dreams. I’ll be the kind of person that would have made my father proud. Every Christmas, I’ll bake cardamom coffee bread.
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Still Life Robyn Eubanks
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Hypnotic Rebecca Ruiz
The Salmon of Knowledge
Dinah Bowman
I. It was told by the Druids of old that along the River Boyne, in a still, dark pool, in the shade of the overhanging hazel trees, there lived a Salmon, and this Salmon possessed all the knowledge of the world. For many years, the Poet lived by the river and was known far and wide for his wisdom about the animals and the stars and the ways of the world. But despite his vast knowledge he did not know everything, so he endeavored to catch the Salmon. For seven years he tried, until finally the Poet caught a fish gleaming so silver and beautiful he knew it must be the Salmon of Knowledge.
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The Poet was tired from catching the fish, so he ordered the Boy, who studied under him, to cook the creature, but warned him not to eat even one bite. The Boy cooked the Salmon, turning it over and over, but when he touched it with his thumb to see if it was cooked, the Boy burnt his finger on the hot fish fat and sucked his finger to ease the pain, and thus gained all the knowledge of the world
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II. Tonight I cooked dinner for my family, sheet pan salmon glazed with brown sugar and hazelnuts. As I lifted the salmon to check its underside, I too burnt my thumb, and I put it in my mouth, and I thought of the Salmon, the Poet, and the Boy. I do not possess all the knowledge of the world, but I know this: My thumb will sprout a tiny red blister. My husband will eat his salmon, then retreat to his study. My sons will tell me they don’t like fish, and I’ll make them each a peanut butter sandwich. I will scrape the caramelized sugar off the pan, and wash the chipped ceramic plates, and dry them with the faded floral hand towel, once so beautiful, but now old and worn. I will help my boys with their long division and tuck them into bed. I will go to my room and take off my clothes and stand in front of the mirror and look at the body I no longer recognize, with its stretch marks and wrinkles and sagging fat. Even if you possess something special for a brief moment, Beauty, Knowledge, or Happiness, like the Salmon, you are not allowed to keep it.
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I will trace my hips with my hands and put on my thick flannel pajamas and lay down on my side of the bed and sleep, for an hour or two, until my husband finishes writing the poems I will never write, and joins me in our darkened bedroom, and wakes me, even though he tries not to, even though I’d never let him know he did.
Then I will lie awake, with the sound of soft snores next to me, and dream of being a silver fish in a still, dark pool, under the hazel trees, never to be caught.
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Seagrass Rebecca Ruiz
Until the Breaking of Day
Mikayla Carter
Far beyond the golden sky, a shadow makes his way through the forest and over the seas to extinguish the fire of day. He bestows his cloak, cold and black, across the prairie town and puts to sleep the little children who lay their heads right down. He wakes the owls from their rest and gives them all a map, a twinkling starlit sky guides them from their nest. Soon before the prairie wakes he will make his way up the hills and over the mountains until the breaking of day.
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Lost in the Corn Maze Kana Anderson
On the Side of the Retiring Sun (inspired by Pieter Bruegel’s painting The Return of the Herd) Charley Peritz
I. Jagged peaks of mountain stone march up to battle dark storm clouds. Cold fields of frosted crops bow below as a river separates two settlements, eastern and western; boats dot the water like boils. To the west, hills of autumn hues heave; clumps of aspens are robbed of their leaves. Six men, two bearing pitchforks, one atop an off-white mare, prod at cows and steer. Freezing wind stings their skin, bringing the livestock back to their village, prisoners of war. Defined by layered thatch, the street welcomes both man and animal into a round corral; these beasts will sustain the people who live on the side of the retiring sun. II. The children do not know of conflict yet and their mothers will not tell them. The women cover their ears and eyes with scarves— sending them to play in the mud-splattered streets. As the beasts plod by, they dip their heads to the little ones and whisper to them the spoils of their journey. Plains Paradox | 32
III. That night, lightning arcs from the poised mountaintops, striking the oldest aspen next to the corral. The children poke their heads through the windows of their homes and watch the fence posts ablaze, the cattle thundering through the harsh roads, shrieking in song. IV. Today fathers place fur caps on the heads of their children, crowns of survival and age. As the sun rises to life, to work another day, two sons take pitchforks while one claims an off-white mare.
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When the children, now grown and bearded, catch sight of the herd grazing on the horizon, they will remember the night the animals reclaimed freedom and bow their heads to the beasts, praying respects to life before them, escorting the cattle back west as family.
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Untitled (2) Kana Anderson
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A Sense of Autumn
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Kana Anderson
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Forest Floor
Joshua Stvan
The shadow swayed and clapped, vacant, empty. It jumped and billowed, mocking the fire at our feet. The popping pine leaped loudly, wrapping warmth where it belonged, leaving only waiting. And as the thrashing thistle woke the shallow beat, it forced the midnight threshold on its back. The earth was cool. The breeze was warm. Our darting chests paused and lunged, chasing one another. Our bodies broke the floor beneath and swung our empty arms to slap the smoke. ---------------------------------------------------Everything belonged. ---------------------------------------------------The pounding calm took its time, slowly sweeping through our smokey world. Ash reigned. Fireside pine needles burned like Marlboros.
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You started drawing in the dirt. I watched your dirty hands. They twisted the earth into us. We were shaking.
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The crashing brook weeping. The distant watching. The sagging branch swaying. The sap-filled air. The clear crack of fire and twig. ------------------------------------------------Everything belonged. -------------------------------------------------Glimmering shook through shut eyes. Silhouetting nothing.
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The fire warmed skin and spat sparks where laughter answered. The stones softened beneath our backs. We blindly stripped tingling bodies bare and bent our necks toward the dark.
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Still Life with Doe & Sneakers Kris Jacque
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Bee & Flower
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Elise Flesher
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Broomstick Skirt
Kelly Jensen
Early March’s woolens tucked into the back of the closet, inviting batik sundresses to optimistically daffodil-peek through transparent plastic bins, too certain of sunny days. Digging in her frenzied bags hoarded from over-shopping binges, my client gifts me the broomstick skirt, new with tags, a normal workday of organizing. At home I wash the skirt, alone, on cold, so that the new dye, earthy mauve, will not bleed its newness onto my familiar fits. I twist the damp strips of promising feminine lace to a crinkle, my love of vintage interweaving in seamless tiers. I thread the brown leather waistband with a tasseled drawstring, crisscrossing the ties with rooftop drinks and tapas, summer concerts, and long, layered turquoise necklaces. My imagination is apprehended like a shock of icy blue-green sea foam rolling over bare toes when the planting season of April piles snow thick as pandemic warnings. The regular fabric begins to fray at every stitch. My client shelters in her garden of clutter, and I shelter in the clatter of family. Concerts postpone, everything postpones in a nebulous cloud, pending. Praying Croz outruns a fatal trip to the grocery store, praying that my pack and I outrun the same. The skirt rustles in the screens of two virtual funerals. My uncle and friend bought old age tickets out of here. I consider their timing while we hoard canned food and parcel chores, as birds blather against the deafening hush outside. Plains Paradox |
Lace crinkle skirt Breathing cotton closeted Ready to taste the wind
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Untitled (1)
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Kana Anderson
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Passionism German Aldama
Tonight our bodies become canvases And desire personifies artists. Making a masterpiece so easily That jealous will be Velazquez. Using my fingers like brushes, Painting your slender figure of ocher tones. Slow strokes going down your belly, Arching your back, Begging for more. Outlining with kisses and caresses You move and create new angles. Turn around. I want to bite you like a forbidden apple. Paint me With the red vermillion of your lipstick. Draw me kisses, doodle, make pointillism. Show me the art of eroticism. Scratch my back, grab my hair And forget about moralism. I want to see how you get. Don’t ask for permission.
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So lock the door And turn off the lights. In this closed room You will see a “Starry Night.”
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Ode to Abandon
Kelly Jensen
I bought an RV a 1975 beauty with orange and tan lines, horizontal like the rise and fall of sunsets languishing over Lake Okoboji family vacations where soda cost a quarter and sisters hogged blankets on nippy cabin mornings, where the landscape in my mind exhaled with possibilities. I bought an RV when Covid ran rampant in my hometown, rural Iowa, where old friends do not believe in mask wearing, where my stepmother hobbles to stay and keep my father with dementia in their country home for one more season. I bought an RV where my half-black kids grew up in white Boulder, when I told them time and time again, if you are stopped by the police, then you are not the white half because Breonna Taylor and George Floyd are dead.
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I bought an RV when my grandchild requested a robot for Christmas, sheltering at home, wanting someone to play with and to talk to. I found myself binge watching The Tiny Homes after another day of Zoom.
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I bought an RV on a miracle morning swelling like sold-out yeast over the Rockies. It ran alongside elk in the high country, stamina and sinew, bugling to kindred animals, riding hard through the day and setting a communal table at night. Naysayers said don’t park that thing off Highway 71, the childhood stomping grounds where my friends and I used to run unleashed through Old Glory Park with the rusted slide and the balance beam of railroad tracks and maple-lined streets now littered with meth and traffickers. My city eyes crushed the skeptics who thought that I was the same girl.
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Grandparent Love Part 1
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Kana Anderson
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Grandparent Love Part 2 Kana Anderson
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A Visitation
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Lucy Roper
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The knife slides easily through the strings of fat holding the pork together. Having diced meat so often I let my mind wander as I work. I tie my hair back with a hairclip and prepare a meat and vegetable stew when I hear a knock on the door, a solid rap of knuckles on polished oak. I let out a tired sigh, twisting the dial on the stovetop to bring the stew to a low simmer before tightening my apron and going to open the door. Swinging it open reveals a man I cannot describe without using some version of the word rotund. He takes up the width of the doorframe while barely reaching half its height, like some sort of scaled up garden gnome. His stature invades so much of my thoughts that I don’t immediately realize he’s wearing an illfitting police uniform. His feet shuffle for a second before he clears his throat, as if waiting for me to invite him in. “Is there anything I can help you with, Officer?” I ask politely, putting on a friendly smile. “My husband should be home in a couple hours, and I’d like to have everything in order for him.” The policeman tilts his head slightly, as if he couldn’t get the question through that thick skull of his. “May I come in?” he finally manages. “I’d like to ask you a few questions regarding the disappearance of your neighbor, Tracy Dee. We believe it might be connected to the other missing person cases in the area.” Inwardly I sigh. I’m not getting out of this quickly. “Of course Tracy is missing. She’s always been good at sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong and getting involved with married men after dark.” The officer’s face scrunches up, as though smelling something foul, and I realize I had said that out loud, although it’s unclear how much he heard.
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Resigned to my fate, I move out of the doorway and back into the kitchen, beckoning to the officer. He lumbers after me but freezes in the doorway to the kitchen, face paling and mouth agape before pointing to the counter where I was making dinner, to a spider, no bigger than two inches and only harmful if you’re allergic to it. I can barely repress my laughter at the sight of this walrus of a man being brought to his knees by a mere comb-footed spider. I imagine he would faint if he went near my compost for the garden out back, which happens to be the perfect breeding ground, since they have more than enough food. As amusing as it is, watching him quiver with fright at this miniscule houseguest, I don’t want him in my house any longer than need be, so I carefully trap the spider with a cup, and release onto the compost heap without sparing another look at the police officer’s distraught face. “I’ve just started dinner, so I might be a bit distracted,” I call back, setting aside the little incident so I can focus. “Feel free to sit at the bar.” At least if he relaxes at the bar, I’ll be able to keep an eye on him as he asks questions. I get to work chopping up more zucchini as he waddles his way, weak-kneed, to the stools. Once he settles in and the colors returns to his face, he asks me some basic questions: what’s my name, how well did I know Tracy, if she was exhibiting any strange behavior prior to her disappearance? It wasn’t until he asked if I had seen her the day she disappeared that I slowed my knife and chopped with precision. “When was she declared missing?” I ask, inquisitively tilting my head. He thinks for a second, and I entertain the thought of him thinking so hard he faints. “Last week, on Wednesday, did you see what she was wearing?” he prodded. He had been growing increasingly frustrated at my answers and was growing redder by the second. “I believe I did actually, if I’m remembering correctly. She was wearing a lilac skirt, as well as a cream blouse.” I stop myself before I mention that beautiful butterfly hairclip or the bruise starting to form under her right eye. The officer jots
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down what I would guess to be notes about Tracy’s appearance, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had been doing today’s word search instead. “Is there anything else you need from me, Officer? My husband should be getting home soon, and I do wish to have a nice dinner,” I ask, growing impatient. He shakes his head, apparently deciding that I didn’t have any more useful information, and heaves himself up and lurches back to the front of the house before turning back to me. “Thank you for your time, Miss. You ought to be careful these next few nights not to go out after dark. You never know who might be out there.” I nod back. “Of course! And let me know if you ever find Tracy.” He smiles, seemingly content with my answer, before heading out the door into the brisk evening. The door shut loudly behind him as I let my plasteredon smile drop. I knew the police were incompetent, but this officer hadn’t even bothered to look around my house. I fidget with the blue butterfly clip in my hair. If he had gone out back and looked closely at the compost pile, he might have seen what little pieces of Tracy’s body remained, covered in spider silk and decomposing.
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Submerged Gretchen Spomer
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Stories of a Bathroom Stall
Malyn Davis
I traced the profanities that made their home in the wood of the stall, my fingers pressed against the messy ridges, sloppy lines, some so old they were completely indistinguishable. Their original meaning only known by the drunk bastard who had put them there. The rhythmic bump of the club’s music filled my senses. The floor vibrated with the bass; the door to the stall shook. The faint clink of glasses and playful conversations traveled under the gaps of the stalls and echoed off the walls as the DJ switched songs. I watched through hooded lids as white powder cascaded over the side of the toilet tank, hitting the floor as the new mix blared to life.
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I felt myself wretch forward, bile forcing itself past chapped lips, stinging the raw skin as my guts forced themselves out of my throat, a frantic push to escape the bubbling pain that made a home in my abdomen. When there was nothing left to squeeze out, I was left to dry heave, eyes aching, nose bleeding as sweat wove its way through my baby hairs, trailing down my neck and chest. The toilet’s cool porcelain was the only thing that seemed real anymore. Even my own body felt fabricated; my limbs buzzed, twitched, radio static ran through my veins.
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My forehead met the rim of the bowl hard, confirming to me that I was, in fact, real. Again, I was dry heaving; this time the pain had pushed its way into my chest. My lungs refused to inflate, to take in air, heart beating wildly against already aching ribs. My body was turning inside out. The static made its way to my head, pushing itself across my vision. Sharp, wet pain enveloped my skull, and my vision danced between night and day.
I felt my chest rise sharply, eyes suddenly burning, fluorescent lights flickering and shaking to the beat of the ever-present music. A bitter mix of bile and blood pooled in the back of my throat. I felt my body jolt, heave again, trying to dispel the blockage in my airway. I felt like I was floating, even while staring at the violent mix of body fluids that filled the toilet bowl, even though a constant trickle of blood dripped from my nose to my mouth to then pool in the hollows of my clavicle. I felt warm. The pain that had once gnawed its way through my bones seemed to quiet, sleepily rummaging around. I felt so warm. The lights were bright. Had they always been this bright? They flickered rhythmically, dancing. If only I could make my legs move; I was stuck to the tile floor. Limbs heavy, buzzing more than ever, the warmth seeped its way from my head, down my chest, to twist through my guts, down to numb toes. Why was I so tired? No matter how many times I shut my eyes, every time I opened them, those lights were there, dancing, they welcomed me back to the world. I longed to dance with them, but I also felt content pressed against the cool floor, nuzzled into the corner of the stall. My fingertips found the profanities again, etched into the wood.
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My head rolled back, resting against the worn wood. I wrapped my arms around myself, unfazed by the shirt that clung to my arms, soaked in blood and vomit. I was warm. I was sleepy. My heart groggily murmured. It was so quiet, so faint. The music grew quieter too, or maybe it was farther away? Maybe I was floating far away from the crowded club? Despite the floating feeling and my heavy eyes, I could not deny the fact a grimy bathroom floor was the end. The etched profanities would be the last words I would ever read. I would begin to rot as the
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lights flickered overhead and the songs switched every few minutes. Some poor waitress or bartender would find the lifeless heap of flesh I would leave behind, and the police would have to scrape me from the floor.
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Vintage Self-Portrait Gretchen Spomer
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Laura Swears
Martha Connelly
When Laura swears it raises hairs on necks for miles around. She’s a lovely girl, with platinum curls, her skin golden-brown, but when she opens her mouth, such indelicate things come out. She sounds like a sailor, out on the town. Steve’s a Marine, he’s stylish, cut clean, his dress blues fresh from the presses. While on shore leave one day, from across the way, he spotted Laura’s platinum tresses. His interest piqued, he dashed across the street to where she window-shopped for dresses. What a beautiful girl! With his thoughts all awhirl, he proceeded to follow her around.
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When Laura noticed him there, she turned with a flair, and started to dress him down.
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“Stop following me, goddammit I simply won’t have it!” she swore with a thunderous frown. Well, she swore and she stomped, eyes narrowed, arms crossed, green eyes flashing the whole time. Steve was love-struck, as if hit by a truck, but he stood and he took it just fine. He thought to himself, while being told to go to hell, I swear I’ll make this girl mine! They stood toe-to-toe, her voice getting low, then stopping, and for a moment they seemed lost in each other. Steve kept his vow, they’re married now, with a love not quite like any other. You see, Laura can swear, and Steve doesn’t care, because she sounds just like his mother.
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I Salute Riya Calton-Fulkerson
Cheers! To life decisions and life regrets to life forgiven and new life steps. To an empty house and unmarked boxes new neighbors and the pleasant locksmith endless bills and dirty windowsills. To the names on roll we cannot pronounce. To the names on parole that will not come out. Thank you to the mothers that brought us here to the fathers that left us for beers to the bottles we finished in tears. I raise my glass and release my hat.
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I salute what I fear.
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Silhouettes & Sunsets Kana Anderson
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Together
Aurora Vadas-Arendt
Birds of a feather flock together,
but only when birds of a feather squawk together— or screech together—
scream together—
breathe together— Birds of a feather stalk together,
they go prowl together— or get stalked together—
and creep together—
hunt together— Birds of a feather fight together, to make new nests together— steal from each other—
lie to each other—
fake-innovate together— Birds of a feather talk together, they cough, hack, sing together—
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howl together—
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wait together— stare at fate together—
Birds of a feather can’t breathe together, but is it disease, together? or just unease together—
metastasized fear together—
believe like sheep together— Birds of a feather aren’t free together. They’re stuck together—
because
Together they’re only birds of a feather.
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Twilight in Pandemonium
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Kris Jacque
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Internal Warfare
Caitlyn Abplanalp
-- courage rots within the gullet -widowed words never molded swollen letters, delayed caged symbols corrupt the filmy tongue an apprehension disengaged -- seize this crime; scream on stage --
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Artist At Work
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Gretchen Spomer
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Values Megan Miraglia
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Marlene Cabrera
In 2011, droplets poured down to the soft padded grass behind the navy-blue house. In 2011, the grandest elusive escapist moment was to crouch and stare. what am I staring at? In 2011, ruminating whether I should enter the house again. In 2011, my time of indulging in the smell of dew. It was time to head inside the closed walls seeking comfort. In 2011, pedaling my bike across the lawn warmth on that day.
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In 2011, robins vocalizing among the pine needle trees at the park it was warm.
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In 2011, the baggage was slowly becoming heavier by the day.
The Woman’s Body Kana Anderson
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International Orange
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Marin McCallen
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The first time I viewed San Francisco, it was from high above, a bird’s eye view, a gift. In a small bedroom under the staircase in our ramshackle home in Bellingham, Washington, I’d tacked a poster of the city, given to me by my brother, to my wall. An aerial shot, it showcased the entire thumbprint peninsula on a clear and sunny day. I stared at it for the longest time, an anchor for my awareness. Long before I’d known the street names, I’d traced them in my mind, stewing in my teenage anger, following the lines, grids, and rolling hills of the city, pocketed with green, surrounded by blue, crowned with spires and towers. As our family limped along in the years following my parents acrimonious divorce, my father absent, my mom, brother and I adjusting to the Northwest after an abrupt exodus from the stunning mountains of the sunny Southwest, I longed for an escape from the cloudy, wet, monotone of Washington. Bellingham, nicknamed “The City of Subdued Excitement,” set world records for yearly rainfall and sat so far north that the perpetual winter darkness made everything permanently gray. As I sheltered in my room, listening to the rain hit the windowpanes in a city without color, I’d listen to Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Sly and The Family Stone, and Santana and wish for a colorful, fanciful, Bohemian life of music and art in a city where people wore flowers in their hair and unsubdued expression flourished. I’d look at the bridges spanning outward on two sides, narrowed my eyes to differentiate the colorful neighborhoods, and felt somewhere deep beyond conscious recognition that I would go there, that I belonged there. Surrounded by water on three sides, San Francisco sits on the tip of a northward jutting peninsula on the California coastline: forty-seven square miles of hills and valleys
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overlooking a shimmering ocean to the west, verdant headlands to the north, a deep-blue bay to the east. From its beginning, the city was an evolving entity. Once a part of Mexico, it was home to Spanish explorers and missionaries before the United States claimed it during the Mexican–American War. Its time defined as a military outpost was ended by the discovery of gold in 1848. In only one year, the city’s population expanded to twenty-five times its size. During this frenzy of fortunehunting, sailors would abandon their ships upon arrival and head for the mountains, leaving the vessels to sink in the bay. Remnants of them are occasionally exposed during the construction of new buildings, uncovered while digging foundations. Today, the crowds striding through the Financial District and Embarcadero might be surprised to know some forty ships are still buried beneath the concrete under their feet. Layers. Reminders. Palimpsest. A place can form an aggregate, solidifying itself in our hearts, minds, and lives, gathering people together. The idea of a place becomes enough to draw us in; its power is instantly palpable to those it attracts. The shared experience in that location and time becomes, inevitably, a piece of identity. San Francisco is such a place, a siren song to misfits and marauders. San Francisco, burnt beacon of westward migration—a barbarous outpost of riches and revolution, a beatnik dream of love, a golden gate to a new life, a stinking, shining, shaking city on the sea. Years later, I finally arrived on San Francisco’s grimy, salty doorstep, seeking my own fortune. My college roommate introduced me to a group of girls our age already living in the city, and they’d invited me to rent a bedroom in their large house in the Sunset District. The three-story home was perched on a steep slope, with sweeping views of Sutro Tower, the Golden Gate Park, and in the distance, the red-orange spires of the Golden Gate Bridge–an ever-present reminder that I was here, living in my poster. Jim Marshwall, a notorious, curmudgeonly, rock and roll photographer and mentor of sorts, treated me to lunch in the Castro a few weeks before graduation
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from photography school. He offered to help get me a job working for Bill Graham Presents, organizing and cataloguing their peerless photo archives, which contained negatives of every great musician and show from the last forty-five years. A job that married my dream of art and music, it came with some pretty excellent perks, not the least of which was an entrée into the San Francisco music scene I’d long worshipped, a wave of the hand would gain admission into the many historic music venues in town. After college, assessing my vortex of opportunities, San Francisco pulled me in, and if indeed I wanted to live there, I found I couldn’t ask for a better situation. And this is how it unfolded. People offered gifts: a home, friends, community, music, money, and I received them; San Francisco opened its revelrous, romantic arms, and I stepped in. When I arrived, the city was still recovering from the dot-com bust, far from the thriving tech megalopolis it would become once Silicon Valley bounced back. But then, in the early aughts, it was easy to squint and see the anarchist soul behind the Victorian architecture; like the ships under its foundations, San Francisco was a whisper of piracy under the commerce, still a small-town in spite of its cosmopolitan finery, although larger than any place I’d ever lived. Each neighborhood was distinct and familial, from Chinatown to The Richmond, where English was an afterthought, to the Mission, where artists slowly encroached on the established Hispanic community, forcing the rents up and eventually pricing everyone out. Our neighborhood, the inner Sunset, was a stop on the N Line and right across the street from the main artery to Golden Gate Park. Walking down the steep hill from our seventies-era neighborhood, I’d pass Chinese laundries, ramen shops, Scottish pubs, vintage clothing stores, and Craigslist, a nondescript establishment, with a small sign over the awning in front. Our local haunt, the Little Shamrock, sat facing the park at the base of the hill, an Irish pub and glorious dive which had stood there since before the earthquake—a grandfather clock in the rear of its murky interior displayed two hands
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permanently stopped at five and twelve. I loved to sit at the polished bar and think of the nefarious characters who’d sat there before me: This was a place where the mantle of lawlessness and marauding could be sensed innately. The dimly lit interior felt alloyed with ghosts of longshoremen, gamblers, cutthroats, and vigilantes, as if the numerous unknown agitators who’d filtered through over the years were saturated into its very walls. Built in the late 1800s, it was one of the oldest standing bars in the ever-changing city. The mid-to-late 1800s in America was an incredibly ambitious time, and San Francisco exemplified this industry. The gold brought the banks, and the railroads turned the city into an epicenter of the West. Factories popped up, cable cars were installed, and the colorful, Victorian gingerbreads that typify the city’s look sprang up and down its rolling streets. It rapidly went from a mucky and dubious port to a brilliant international city; layered on the brothels, saloons, opium and gambling dens, were schools, churches, and theaters. It’d drawn in nearly 400,000 souls by the morning of April 18th, 1906, when, at 5:12 a.m., an earthquake of a 7.9 magnitude struck the city and tore it all down. The collapse ignited gas lines, and a fire consumed the peninsula, nearly burning the entire metropolis to the ground. But not the Little Shamrock, who’s clock hands still warn the customers and staff alike of the catastrophic tectonic rebellion that could hit again. Thousands of people died, and nearly everyone was left homeless by the disintegration of San Francisco, yet reassemblage resumed immediately. The city pulled itself back together, re-using pieces of its former glory. The reconstruction expanded its original borders as the wealthier residents moved west, onto bedrock, to safety, toward my neighborhood. Simultaneously, lower areas were filled with rubble, a burial ground on which skyscrapers eventually would rise as if the dead resurrected. The early 1900s brought New Deal cando, ambitious municipal construction, tunnels, dams, and bridges, keeping the area busy and building even as the Great Depression whipped through the rest of the country. Indeed,
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during that period, San Francisco unfurled her most notable feature, a magnificent engineering achievement, the Golden Gate Bridge, erected from the water and the cliffs which framed the north and south entrance to the bay. The bridge mesmerized me—me, and many others. It is breathtaking, spanning the Pacific’s blue, towering upward. Its international orange spires and cables, instantly recognizable across the globe, are kept bright with continuous painting and cleaning, thus providing employment to forty-nine ironworkers and painters, who traverse its height in wind, fog, or sun, employees of the city focused on the forever upkeep. The unique color, designed to distinguish the bridge from its surroundings, never faded or corroded because of generations of diligent caretakers. The first time I drove across it, upon exiting the tunnels of Marin County, and getting my initial glimpse of the bridge and city beyond it, every car around me began to honk. I laughed out loud and laid my hand on my horn too. “There it is!” we all rejoiced. “Isn’t it just marvelous?” Like unsuspecting passersby joining an impromptu parade, the city drew us in; and together we entered her arms, cheering.
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Tami Rebecca Ruiz
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An Analogy of My Current Relationship with My Parents Jade Szettella
It’s midnight and the boy is in the office alone, sitting in front of the printer with one cold, fluorescent light overhead. Having picked up the same sheets from the floor, still white, blank, despite his best efforts, he loads more paper into the tray. “Who is right?” The printer shivers and whines, as if wanting to go to bed itself. “Trust me, I’d like to go to bed, too.” It spits in his face–a blank sheet. “Are you on my side?” He asks patiently, but gets another blank sheet thrown halfheartedly at him in response. “Do you find my situation uncomfortable?” He did, certainly. His shirt was all the way buttoned, his tie tight around his neck, at midnight on a Thursday evening. He should’ve been home hours ago. What was keeping him? “Is it unfair how I’m forced to stay?” The printer coughs out another sheet with black lettering centered at the top of the page: I have seen both points of view.
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He strikes the wall behind the printer with his fist in his frustration. It wasn’t out of ink! It simply didn’t want to talk.
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It didn’t want to sympathize, or print out a sheet that said, “That sucks.”
That’s all he asked of the thing, a shred of understanding or sympathy. Though if it were to come from a device designed to replicate objectivity, would it really have made him feel any better? The boy left, stopped loading paper into an uncooperative machine, and refused to keep trying to elicit human emotion from a printer.
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The Rails
Sarah Lee
I cannot remember the specific time I fell in love with trains. I thought, in the quietest hours of the morning, that the whistle made a pink, strawberry, and deep-orange sunset sound. It is a harmony that couldn’t be anywhere else. They speak of travel, going across far distances I’ve never seen. Their chugging awakens a deep pulse in my chest that feels like home.
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I love the faint rumble when it is safe to step across the tracks. That humble feeling, when I watch one trundle by, and realize that I am actually very small, and unable to do much damage to those I love unless I tried.
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Toes Kana Anderson
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Unwelcome
Sean Hollister
They came from nowhere. They came in hordes. The beetles came with their black and red shine and six legs, hundreds of them creeping through the cracks, oozing through the walls. ................................................................................................. On the shower curtains, under the bed, in the sink. Crawling in that glass you are about to drink from. Clogging the drain. Eating your pants. Speckled on the TV screen. In the air vent. They were in the fucking air vent. .................................................................................................
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They are in places you don’t think to check for them. Hiding in your shoes. Concealed in the thick shag of the carpet. Dead in the toilet. Their presence makes thick beads of salt drip down your forhead. .................................................................................................
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They stow away in-between the small crevices of living. Sometimes they drop from the ceiling. They make your toes curl, and ass clench, and your face tighten in disgust. .................................................................................................
You feel them at night in places they aren’t—phantoms of horror. You imagination tells grotesque lies. They move up your legs in such thick numbers that they paint your body black. They are the veins of the house, transported through wood and plaster. They are nightmare-jagged edges. Don’t fall asleep. ................................................................................................. You squeeze one between your fingers. Its flimsy exoskeleton crunches and spills its sparse, purple juices. One death makes no difference. ................................................................................................. Ants outnumber humans 1,000,000 to one. Cockroaches survive nuclear fallout. Fruit flies lay as many as 50 eggs per day. Voodoo Wasps plant 80 eggs at a time inside caterpillars, hatching and devouring their innards while the caterpillars are still alive. ................................................................................................. They could kill you, you know. They could crawl in your mouth and fill your lungs. You can’t breathe. Picture them under your skin, little moving pellets. Breeding inside of you. Feasting on your entrails, slowly eating away. .................................................................................................
Plains Paradox |
But they don’t. They live in your space, existing.
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Fruits of Life
| Plains Paradox
Kana Anderson
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Tangerine
Sonya Almaraz-Tatum
Tangy juice drips from my fingertips. Plastic cups flow out of the neon, blue boxes, spilling onto the kitchen floor. Roaring sounds escape from within my chest. I am driving my nails into my knuckles, clasping my hands together. My teeth stroke the soft parts of my inner lips. I cannot resist the burning urge of emptiness. Pinching the tips of my fingers against the cup’s seal, I scrape away the adhesive. My tongue slurps at tiny orange slices. Teeth stroke the soft parts of my inner lips. Salty, sweet liquid overflows from my gaping mouth. I can’t escape the emptiness. Small blotches cover the skin of my stomach. I glide my fingers over the bloat, suck in little breaths of air. I cannot contain it anymore. I volunteer up my fingers into my throat. I grip my dangling bell—the bumpy skin inside wraps itself closed. My body no longer responds to these kinds of threats. Punishment extends to days. I feel powerful because I know I can survive on water. Pedialyte packets push me a little further. Four days in, I scale over every inch, disappointed by the lack of protruding bones. My skin, thin and delicate, gamy in its tone.
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The Glass Apple
| Plains Paradox
Kana Anderson
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Fragments and Flashes
Marin McCallen
My memories are trapped in the open fields and skies of Coventry. They echo through the chamber of childhood impressions, and no matter how many times I revisit them, I never discover their meaning. They are sagebrush-scented, a sky pregnant with lightning, a chorus of hound dogs singing from their chains, butterflies trapped in a net, the warmth of my horse under my heart. “But what was it really like?” I ask this empty soundstage of rural perfection. My father was the kind of man who moved his young family farther and farther into the wild because even the smallest mountain towns began to feel too crowded. He had a restless longing, but I never knew what for. I do not know what he was running from or to, just that there was always urgency in the flight. He followed that impulse out to the very edge of the Naturita Canyon, with the snowy peaks of Colorado behind and the sunset mountains of Utah in front. There, on a dirt road, he bought a tract of ranchland with an old weathered shed, a hay barn, some horse paddocks, and a white and brown trailer. It was fifty-five acres of fields, covered in sweet-smelling grasses, the only flowers, the little clumps of purple found inside the clover-shaped leaves of alfalfa. No trees cast shade or blocked the wind that carried up from the canyon and across the road. The property was flat, on the cusp of the high mesa, with sky in every direction. “The perfect place to build a house,” Dad said.
Plains Paradox |
We moved into the single-wide, two-bedroom, woodpaneled trailer and began plans to place our home on the flat few acres behind it. We would design our house just how we wanted it, every bit built by my dad. We would have wood floors in every room, and a kitchen with an island. It would be
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two stories with my room on the top floor. The house would have a wraparound porch and windows in every direction to invite the endless sky inside. In the meantime, he erected a rough deck on the trailer where we would sit in the evening and watch the sunset over the La Sals. In my earliest memories, we lived there, a place the locals referred to as “Coventry Turn.” Looking back, what I remember most was the aloneness. Our neighbors, already physically distant, had kids all older than me—or else they were just plain old. A community of various eccentrics, what the people did share was an obvious predilection for solitude, for space. We were ten miles from the nearest flyspeck town, a hundred miles from the nearest stoplight, and my father left us six months of the year to work on oil tankers and cargo ships. While he sailed across foreign seas, I was alone with my mother, alone with my thoughts, alone in the wild.
| Plains Paradox
When my dad was gone, we were always waiting: waiting for a letter, waiting for a check, waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for the house to be ready, waiting for his threemonth deployment to end, waiting for Dad To Come Home. While we were waiting, we were working, attending his bucolic dream. Mother and I tended to the fields, moving the sprinklers across acres and acres of alfalfa. After the birth of my brother, John, Mom had trouble pushing the unmotorized sprinklers, so I had to work harder, pulling and pushing and yanking on the wheels, which were taller than me. I pulled harder, I woke earlier, then I walked the dirt road to the highway to catch the bus to first grade.
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In this place, I learned I was from the West, one corner of the wild still left. Walking from my front door, left along the dirt road past our haybarn and fields, across the Gurly Ditch under the shade of cottonwoods, past the de facto neighborhood junkyard at the end of the road, I turned right again to skirt the clifftops making a wide westward-curving arc in the same direction I’d come. The dirt road turned to sand, littered on all
sides by rusted automobiles, and old tin cans punctured with bullet holes. Eventually, the tire marks turned into footpaths. I walked the rocky piñon, over the barren canyon, under the immensity of the sky, all that expansiveness—a weighted presence bearing down on my still-tiny body. I held my breath and stepped lightly, listening to what it might have to say. Mostly it spoke through wind, an abiding call on the edge of the high desert. Sometimes I spoke back, telling stories that I was a pioneer, lost on the frontier, watching for Indians and mountain lions. And sometimes I was an Indian, like the ones who lived here, whose arrowheads we found among the smoking sagebrush after lightning set fire to the canyon in the summer when I was six. When my dad was home from sea, our solitude was not as lonely. He filled the space in our small trailer, his wild black hair nearly touching the ceiling. His energy was magnetic, and I smothered him with demands for endless play. I hung on his bicep as he lifted me higher and higher, using me as a human weight; other times he pretended to be asleep, and when I drew near, he leaped up to ensnare me, tickling me until I cried and shrieked. When he was home, we had visitors stop by, sit and talk on the porch for hours, and my mother became animated by his presence. Her blue eyes softened and crinkled happily, and kindness and love radiated from them. Her shoulders softened and her arms reached out more often to pull us into hugs. She smiled and laughed, becoming the most beautiful woman in the world.
Plains Paradox |
When it was time to run errands, he’d put me in the bench seat of the truck, and we’d drive around the countryside. I always stayed perfectly quiet during the grownup conversations that transpired through the rolled-down window on the driver’s side of that old Ford, and I never touched the pistol wedged next to the seatbelt buckle. We drove, he and I, through the fields and hills at twilight, animal-spotting time. He could point to a herd of deer in the distance without even
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taking his eyes off the road. He trained me to see them and paid me nickels and dimes for locating bucks or bull elk. If I ever spotted a mountain lion, he said, “I’ll pay you five dollars.”
| Plains Paradox
Sometimes he would drive us off the roads, bounce and roll through creeks and rivers. We’d park the truck in an open space and continue on foot. I wasn’t allowed to speak during the scouting trips; they required total silence and furtiveness. As we knelt in the woods, scanning the horizon, he’d peer through his binoculars at something so far away, something only he knew to look for. Some evenings we would return to the truck in the blue of dusk without ever seeing it, but sometimes he’d speak in the quietest of tones, point and say, “There,” handing me the binoculars. Sometimes I glimpsed coyotes, or deer, and sometimes bobbing and streaking in my unsteady grip, the amplified vision of elk. “Always look near the edge of the woods and the meadow,” he said, “that is where you find them.”
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Year after year, on his breaks from sea, my father built our ranch house. Hanging from the frame, hammering, he sent me to crawl under the deck and pick up the nails he dropped. We needed a larger house. My brother and I shared a sixty square foot bedroom in our trailer, and we were both getting bigger. When my mother read books to John, I heard every word from my top bunk. When I had nightmares, I woke the whole house. When Dad came home late, clumsy and loud, it was impossible to ignore. When the house was done, I would have my own bedroom. We would have two bathrooms and a gas range in the kitchen. When the house was done, we would have a private phone line. (My mother hated the party-line. Every time it rang, everyone in Coventry picked up, click-clickclick, and people didn’t always stop listening when it wasn’t their call. A sneeze would ring out, or a clock would chime, and you’d know someone had heard Dad calling from China, telling us how much he missed us.) When the house was done, no one but us would hear him calling from The Hitching Post, asking for a ride home because he’d had a few too many.
After all the waiting and excitement, I remember very little of the short time we lived in that new home. Dad stayed longer and longer at sea. When home, he spent his time in the fields, or at the neighbors, or The Hitching Post. I was eleven then and we didn’t go driving around anymore; we never looked for animals. He became unpredictable—sometimes fun and strong, hoisting both my brother and me on either bicep; sometimes mean, gripping my arm and shaking, pushing me, and hissing, “What the hell is wrong with you?” He got in bloody fights, wrecked his truck, and the new house was bigger, all those spaces to reverberate with his anger. He was never really there even when he was, and we were always alone. One day my mother got tired of waiting, and we retreated back to society, trading in Coventry Turn for Telluride, returning to the mountains of my birth. I left my childhood in an empty house, surrounded by those fallow fields, where the dirt turns onto a lonely highway. My memories ricochet through this ending of our togetherness; they register only as fragments and flashes. A burst of violence and vertigo. An aching unsteadiness under a graceful sky. My mind turns back to the fields.
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Grandfather’s Favorite
| Plains Paradox
Robyn Eubanks
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Awards
2020 1st Place, American Scholastic Press Association 2019 1st Place, American Scholastic Press Association 2018 2nd Place, American Scholastic Press Association 3rd Place, CCHA Southwest Division
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