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Onion River Review 2025

The Onion River Review is the literary and visual arts review of Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. Edited entirely by undergraduates, it has been published at least once a year since 1973. Full text can be found on the databases of EBSCO Publishing.

The review welcomes submissions from anyone in the Saint Michael’s community, including alumni. Submissions should be sent to onionriver@smcvt.edu. For further information, go to http://www.smcvt.edu/onionriver/.

Onion River Review

Two Thousand Twenty-Five Issue

river run by Erin Boyd

Megan Koren

Kathleen Dean

Victoria Reed

Allie Medeiros

Anthony Morales

Editors’ Note

Like any good meal, this year’s Onion was prepared with love, laughter, quarrels, compromise, and plenty of salt. Our ingredient list was over two hundred submissions long—thank you to all the gardeners who contributed their crops. With a team of six chefs (core editors) and five sous chefs (auxiliary editors), we spent two arduous weeks in the kitchen creating the dish before you. We sifted, sliced, and sautéed our way through submissions until all that remained was this single, scrumptious Onion. Thus, we invite you to sit back, sink your teeth into, and savor the fruits—rather, the vegetable—of our labor.

Yours in eternal Onionhood, The 2025 Onion River Review Staff

On the cover: lake winni by Erin Madden, digital photography

Banana Bread

Scott Gausland

digital photography

Saturday Morning, A Dance

Victoria Reed

Only music coming from you flipping pancakes and my stockinged steps on the hard floor; moving wordlessly about the kitchen, I slide clean plates into place, ceramic on ceramic; scraping of the spoon on the side of the batter bowl; you silently sidestep so I can reach a cupboard, then shift back, flip again: our improvised choreography.

Take a Slice

Joelle Cameron

acrylic painting

Today 9:31 AM

Jenna Wilbur

A text from my friend lights up my phone screen. Attached: a screenshotted notification from the New York Times detailing the 330 foot-long asteroid that may (or may not) hit our planet. I swipe away the message. We agree to go get bagels.

Strawberry Arianna Petta

paint markers

Tomato Anthony Morales

I delight in the idea of sinking my teeth into your red flesh, like the hungry beetle who I caught ravishing your leaves just before you were ripe but I’ll resist temptation for I desire you for sofrito that blessed aroma of my abuela’s kitchen that blessed matrimony of cilantro, culantro, onions, garlic, and ajis

Palomas

Evelyn Mercier

digital photography

Poland Pigeons

Eden Milczanowski

oil paint

Not Her Time

Jason Harlow

Mom fell asleep behind the wheel of her station wagon when she was forty-six as she drove to work one sunny morning.

The car went off the road at 50mph and flipped end over end, crash-landing in the median. Because she hadn’t put on a seatbelt, the impact flung her into the back, the vehicle’s only spot that didn’t get crushed. All she sustained were bruises on her arms from the airbag, a minor concussion, and wounded pride as passersby gawked while the rescue team

pulled her out of the twisted metal hulk. “It wasn’t her time.” A kind lady said on the phone, calling me at high school

my junior year to explain what happened, and that mom was okay. An agnostic before I knew the term, by temperament

averse to miracle, yet I felt as though an angel’s wing had brushed my face; the grace of it spared me from her dying the way her father did by heart attack, then her mother by leukemia –both before she had even turned fifteen,

the rebellious age I was when I began to ask if mom and I would ever be friends, a question that evaporated

in the wake of a divine being who ensured her survival, and left me grateful to have more time with someone I scarcely knew.

Soul Fire

Vickie Castillo

acrylic paint and colored pencil

Euphoria by Calvin Klein Jenna Wilbur

I spray, everyday, my mother’s perfume. The same one gifted from her mother to her and then to me, in my own expensive bottle, when I reached the appropriate age to be a woman.

I don’t know how to feel when my bottle is running out, and I’m trying a new scent today.

The Able-Bodied Supremacy

Allie Medeiros

My mother is a compelling woman. She does not take no for an answer. That was, until the day the doctor told her no. There is no preventing this disease; there is no way to cure it; there is no “all better.”

I see the mounds of pills –an anthill being built to protect the Queen. Down the pills slide, gone with her pride.

Fatigue remains. This world preaches liberty, yet my mother remains shackled to her disability.

My Father’s Things

Jordan Douglas

film photography

Toronto in August

Evelyn Mercier

digital photography

Secondhand Smoke

Kathleen Dean

is worse for the lungs.

You breathe out; I breathe in.

What a generous exchange of more than just breath.

I always cough it up after we’re done, but most of it lingers in my hair, clothes, and skin.

Back on 74th Street

Chloe Brown

pencil and oil pastel

In the House of Ross

Dan Johnson

Game by buzzer-beating game, the bleachers fill. They used to pack ‘em in like sardines in the eighties! And, game by one-point game, more come in, as if called by the hardwood language, preaching thump and bounce and squeak. When they’re shooting free-throws, you’d hear a drop of sweat hit the floor. Quiet honor. There was a time with too much space between pairs of eyes, empty pockets turned lonely air; a time of bummer-something. But now the buzzer sounds, all rise, and names are called to boisterous bleacher-whooping. Shuck of nothing-but-net.

Palms smack palms, and boys point proud to their arms ice in their veins: yes, ice-cold, confident.

The ball comes back off the floor delirious, happy to be sent spinning into its other home in the air. O, banners wave and buzzers get beaten in the high-ceilinged House of Ross.

The Talking Shape

Cody Fuller

oil paint

Holga Contact Squad

Jordan Douglas

film photography

Summer Times

Joelle Cameron

collage

They say

After

“We Real Cool”

by Gwendolyn Brooks Elianna Brownell

Keep your hair long. They say there’s no need for you to be strong. They say wear more skirts and dresses. They say clean up everyone’s messes. They say always have on a smile. They say be kind all the while. They say watch how you talk. I say do you also want to tell me how to walk?

Pavlov Victoria Willson

I am Pavlov’s bitch, Every time I drive to your place, Open that door, I am reminded of his hands on me, The mouth on my skin, And like the bell rings, I beg for you to touch me, And the cycle goes on, I am Pavlov’s bitch.

Wrinkled Beauty

Vickie Castillo

digital photography

Blue Bird in Flight

Celia Durgin

colored pencil

cease fire!

ink and digital art

Eline Van Dam

The Clothesline

Annabelle Coburn

If I could, I would wring you out.

I would peel back each layer, carefully folding each piece of you into neat stacks.

I would fold your socks, hang your shirt on my clothesline.

I would scrub your spine clean, straighten your skeleton.

With each wipe, your bones would gleam.

I would iron your pants, and steam your soul.

I would leave you there.

Sitting in neat piles, in the corner of my room. Resting next to my clean laundry.

At least for a while, at least until you collected some dust again.

Two bottles for me and you

Anna McNulty

35mm film photography

Ball Hunt

For Alex Smith

Dan Johnson

7:30 PM. Dark, and practice is over. You walk and search beyond the field’s perimeter for pearls lost

in January snow. A daily ritual; every ball you bring out must come back in. Every day there is an accounting.

Somewhere off in the halflight, where the power of the four field-light obelisks begins to wane, they sit like round monks meditating in new-made ice caves, the whiteness of their robes a natural camouflage.

You scan. The true eye relaxes, searches for shapes, the patterns snow makes, the patterns a pearl

interrupts. O, this our wax on, wax off, chore-become-ritual. The balls return, a stickful

dropped into the bucket with the paradiddle thunk of rubber, the rattle of metal handle, each tough orb

finding its place until you kick the bucket over again tomorrow. They’ll be flung over 100 yards of green and beyond, but find the bucketomphalos again, always desired, fought for, hunted in the January snow.

Half Dome, Yosemite National Park

Erin Boyd

digital photography

Footprint

Madeline Newell-Wilson

I walk amid the alpine tundra on a rocky path covered in wooden boards meant to minimize the marks left by my feet. Up the steep slope, there is a stilled closeness, as though the aged vegetation, fragile but powerful, would wrap about me and I become aware that I am imposing, a woman

rambling alone, as in the storybooks where young girls are hunted for walking in the forest. I feel temporary, here, though the boarded planks suggest

I am not, that my short life’s footprint has lasting impact and what appears strong – the bouldered face of Mt. Mansfield – can be hindered or aided by another’s presence. Many years have passed here; how will I choose to spend mine, and who will see my own strength and fragility grow together and want to protect it?

Peace and Serenity

Teagan McCaffrey

digital photography

Katie Hughbanks

Marigold with Green

digital photography