Vortex 2021 Scottsdale Community College

VORTEX 2021

Vortex

2021

A collection of Art, Essays, Plays, Poetry, Scripts, & Short Stories

A vortex is spiraling energy, like a whirlwind or a tornado that exists throughout all of nature. The Milky Way, our greater home, spirals.

Moving water spirals as it flows over and around things.

Our bones spiral.

The Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) is an EEO/AA institution and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, or national origin in their programs or activities.

For Title IX/504 concerns, call the following number to reach the appointed coordinator: (480) 731-8499. For additional information visit: http://www.maricopa.edu/non-discrimination.

A Publication of Scottsdale Community College

Vortex

Writers and Artists Acknowledgment Poetry Alexia Norton Jones for “Under the Influence of Affluence” ©2021 Kylie Thesz for “Pressure” ©2021 Nesta Nordskov for “I Watch Her Eat” ©2021 Kristina Morgan for “I Wrote About My Lovers in My Journal” ©2021 Karina Reginato for “In the Hills of Asolo” ©2021 Romeo Barrientos for “An Open Letter to My Family” ©2021 Short Story Adrian Villarreal for “The Curandero” ©2021 Kristina Morgan for “Dismissal” ©2021 Creative Non-Fiction Kristina Morgan for “Pulling Salt from Water” ©2021

Adrian Villarreal for “Neighborhood Watch” ©2021 Krystal Simmons for “These are Rock Bottoms, These are Bloody Twos” ©2021 Kieran Noback for “Unanswered” ©2021 Kathryn Dwyer for “Pausing to Breathe” ©2021 Angela-Marie Luna for “I Hate It Here” ©2021 Steffan Quin Ponsolle for “A Foggy Sky” ©2021

Script/Play Marie Tomisato for “The Last Asian” ©2021 Birdie Holloway for “Out of My Mind” ©2021 Malichi Greenlee for “Snuffed” ©2021 Native Voices and Visions Autumn Whitehorse for “The Epic of Earl” ©2021 Seneca Peters for “Finding Peace” ©2021 Art Ellen Nemetz for Upon Reflection and Syzygy ©2021 Eleanor Babbitt for Endangered Creatures ©2021 Clinton Chandler for Lost in Time ©2021 Riley Duemler for Limelight and Above the Clouds ©2021

Judith Feldman for Lotus Flowers I and The Artist’s Window ©2021 Joanne Gallery for Between a Rock and Pinnacle Peak Giant ©2021 Barbara Goldberg for Moody Blue and We Are Not Broken ©2021 Stephen Hoffman for Amani ©2021 Melissa Kennedy for Sunset at San Tan Valley ©2021 Martha Klare for Ultra and Lotus Pond ©2021 Steven Soekrasno for Old Town Beauty ©2021 Aida Sanienejad for Blue Wind and Hidden ©2021

Cover

Ellen Nemetz Upon Reflection, Acrylics, 24”x24” ©2021

Back Cover

Barbara Goldberg’s We Are Not Broken, Digital Art 20”x20” ©2021 Riley Duemler’s Above the Clouds Digital Photography ©2021 Martha Klare’s Lotus Pond Acrylic 16”x40” ©2021 Judith Feldman’s Lotus Flowers I Oil 30”x40” ©2021 Sarah Brett’s Moscow Travel Poster, Photoshop Graphic 11”x17” ©2021 Aida Sanienejad’s Blue Wind Acrylic 24”x30” ©2021 Joanne Gallery’s Between a Rock Acrylic 48”x48” ©2021 Ellen Nemetz’s Syzygy Acrylic 48”x36” ©2021

Rarely is anything in life the way we think it will be. When I lost my mother to cancer, I woke up to the fact that I had been unhappy for some time teaching at the college where I was, but I didn’t see any way out. I resigned myself to being miserable. But then, as fate had it, I was able to transfer to SCC. I was told by the SCC President, Dr. Art DeCabooter, and the Dean of Instruction, Dr. Irwin Noyes, that part of my faculty duties was to run a creative writing contest and organize an awards event for our students. We enjoyed our discussion, and I was given support for my ideas and also given a budget (it’s exciting to remember the days when the arts had a budget!).

SCC’s art program had always had a great reputation, so I wanted to include student art with the writing. I met with Bill Martin who was Chair of the Art Department, and we hit it off immediately. Bill is one of the kindest and most amiable people I have ever met. He loaned me a manual slide projector, and we began creating a community for our creative students.

It was Camelot for nearly 10 years, but then times changed. All of the support I had been given for Vortex was gone from SCC along with those who had given it.

Without warning, my budget was removed, and I had just a few weeks to figure out what to do. I sat quietly in my office, and I thought how for me the most important journeys I had always taken were within. Everyone around me encouraged me to forget about Vortex, but I knew I couldn’t. Yet I didn’t know how to save it with no money, so I called Dr. Daniel Corr, SCC Vice President of Academic Affairs. We had a good friendship, and I had always respected his visionary leadership. I asked for his permission to move the Vortex awards dinner off of campus and to a nearby resort. That way we could sell tickets and raise money to help offset expenses. Dr. Corr agreed, so we were able to hold on to our community of writers and artists.

But that still couldn’t cover everything for the first few years. That’s when Bob and Marty Christopher came to my assistance. They were retired and had been my humanities students, and Bob was also my creative writing student (he went on to write nearly a dozen novels). They brought me a blank check. Seriously, it was blank.

I met with Buffie Diglio, Administrative Specialist Sr. of the EWLJ Division, and we went over all the Vortex expenses: a graphic designer, student awards, the awards dinner, and the printing of our literary journal (which by the way, has won national awards every year). I talked with the Christophers, and showed them our expense sheets. Their generosity made the world amenable again, and our community was unbroken.

Looking back on those clear moments in the journey of celebrating and showcasing SCC’s writing and art students, I remember so much kindness and bravery and

honesty of spirit that many contributed in order to sustain Vortex as an SCC tradition. It has been said that a gift only remains a gift by passing it along, by sharing it. This is the heart of Vortex. And it is the life of what our students create with their writing and their art. Parker Palmer, the great writer, activist, and teacher wrote: “In the human world, abundance does not happen automatically. It is created when we have the sense to choose community, to come together to celebrate and share our common store. Whether the ‘scarce resource’ is money or love or power or words, the true law of life is that we generate more of whatever seems scarce by trusting its supply and passing it around. . . .abundance is a communal act. Community not only creates abundance—community is abundance.”

Through the years, we have created that “community of abundance” here at SCC, and now as I retire 22 years later, I look back with great gratitude for this serendipitous experience that has enriched my life more than I could ever have imagined. In moving forward, I hope that all of you—students, faculty, and others— can remember to grow the seeds of abundance and sustain the kind of community Vortex has created by bringing the SCC community together every year to celebrate the gifts our creative students share so freely-- enriching us all.

I am deeply indebted to Buffie Diglio, Administrative Specialist Sr. for the EWLJ Division. She facilitated payment for our graphic designer and printer, organized the printing of student awards and getting them signed, handled all of our accounts, and made sure that student winners received their awards, certificates, and copies of Vortex.

She worked closely with Anna Dragon, Administrative Specialist for the EWLJ Division. Anna updated the online submissions, our web sites, and advertising, and she notified all student winners and verified their enrollment and information, and assisted in the process of the awards and design of the certificates as well as mailing students their certificates, awards, and copies of Vortex.

I am also deeply grateful to Shachi Kale, the graphic designer of Vortex, for her beautiful spirit, artistic innovations, and remarkable skill. She and her team spend long hours on formatting Vortex.

My gratitude also goes to our amazing creative writing judges: Dr. Cameron MacElvee, Robert Mugford, Joshua Rathkamp, and Rosemarie Dombrowski all of whom donate their time in support of the arts!

And I want to thank my wonderful colleagues at SCC who continually go out of their way to support and encourage our students in their writing and art.

Vortex Coordinator

Support the Arts!

“The rapidly evolving global economy demands a dynamic and creative workforce. The arts and its related businesses are responsible for billions of dollars in cultural exports for this country. It is imperative that we continue to support the arts and arts education both on the national and local levels. The strength of every democracy is measured by its commitment to the arts.”

–Charles Segars, CEO of Ovation “A broad education in the arts helps give children a better understanding of their world...We need students who are culturally literate as well as math and science literate.”

–Paul Ostergard, Vice President, Citicor “Arts education aids students in skills needed in the workplace: flexibility, the ability to solve problems and communicate, the ability to learn new skills, to be creative and innovative, and to strive for excellence.”

–Joseph M. Calahan, Director of Cooperate Communications, Xerox Corporation “An elementary school that treats the arts as the province of a few gifted children, or views them only as recreation and entertainment, is a school that needs an infusion of soul. Arts are an essential element of education, just like reading, writing, and arithmetic.”

–William Bennett, Former US Secretary of Education “In the push for quality math, science, technical, humanities, and other programs, please be sure that the arts are not ignored or pushed to one side. Provide your political support for the total curriculum. The arts enrich all of us.”

–Dr. Richard Miller, Executive Director American Association of School Administrators

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“. . . the arts have been an inseparable part of the human journey; indeed, we depend on the arts to carry us toward the fullness of our humanity. We value them for themselves, and because we do, we believe knowing and practicing them is fundamental to the healthy development of our children’s minds and spirits.

That is why, in any civilization--ours included--the arts are inseparable from the very meaning of the term ‘education.’ We know from long experience that no one can claim to be truly educated who lacks basic knowledge and skills in the arts.”

–National Standards for Arts Education “Art is a nation’s most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which guides us as a nation.

And where there is no vision, the people perish.”

–Lyndon Johnson, on signing into existence the National Endowment on the Arts “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

–Albert Einstein “The arts significantly boost student achievement, reduce discipline problems, and increase the odds students will go on to graduate from college. As First Lady Michelle Obama sums up, both she and the President believe ‘strongly that arts education is essential for building innovative thinkers who will be our nation’s leaders for tomorrow.’”

-Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education “The arts are not a frill. The arts are a response to our individuality and our nature, and help to shape our identity. What is there that can transcend deep difference and stubborn divisions? The arts. They have a wonderful universality.

Art has the potential to unify. It can speak in many languages without a translator. The arts do not discriminate. The arts can lift us up.”

–Former Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan

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Vortex Donors 202 0 -2 0 2 1 Eleanor Babbitt

Laura Fitzgerald

Robert Mugford

Dr. Judy Balan

Dr. Stephanie Fujii

Richard and Ann Pihl

Danielle Boyd

Georgia Fuller

June Rudyk

Robert B. Buchanan

Joanne Gallery

Kim Sabin

Sirio Calogero

Paul and Martha Gould

Jeanne Sabrack

Dr. Ana Cuddington

Doris & Martin Hoffman

Alex Stefan

Sandra Desjardins

Val Kossak

Angelika Zgainer

Stanley P. Desjardins

Robert Lewis

Joyce Erbach

Kathy Newman

Jared Aragona

Judith Feldman

E. E. Moe

Andrew Carlson

I am deeply grateful for and indebted to you, our donors! Because Vortex depends entirely on donations, we exist because of your generous support of the arts. Albert Camus once said “Real generosity to the future lies in giving all to the present.” So I thank you for giving our students a glimpse of what is possible through encouraging their passion for writing and art.

A Special Thank You to the following for their contributions to the Vortex Awards Event: Kim Herbst (IACE) for her suggestions and guidance.

Steve Heywood with Americopy for his impeccable follow up on every detail with the printing of Vortex.

Ronald Zhang, for his design and managment of the online contest submissions and his technical support.

About the 2021 Vortex Graphic Designer Shachi Kale Shachi is an artist, graphic designer, and children’s book illustrator.

You can see her work at www.shachikale.com or on instagram @shachidreams

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Table of Contents Creative Non-Fiction “Pulling Salt from Water” Kristina Morgan - First Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Endangered Creatures Eleanor Babbitt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

“Neighborhood Watch” Adrian Villarreal - Second Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Lost in Time Clinton Chandler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

“These are Rock Bottoms, These are Bloody Twos” Krystal Simmons - Third Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

“Unanswered” Kieran Noback - Honorable Mention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Limelight Riley Duemler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

“Pausing to Breathe” Kathryn Dwyer - Honorable Mention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

The Artist’s Window Judith Feldman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

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Table of Contents “I Hate It Here” Angela-Marie Luna - Honorable Mention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

“A Foggy Night Sky” Steffan Quinn Ponsolle - Honorable Mention.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Short Story “The Curandero” Adrian Villarreal - First Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Pinnacle Peak Giant Joanne Gallery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

“Dismissal” Kristina Morgan - Second Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Moody Blue Barbara Goldberg.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

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Table of Contents Native Voices and Visions “The Epic of Earl” Autumn Whitehorse.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

“Finding Peace” Seneca Peters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Poetry “Under the Influence of Affluence” Alexia Norton Jones - First Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Amani Stephen Hoffman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

“Pressure” Kylie Thesz - Second Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

“I Watch Her Eat” Nesta Nordskov - Third Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Sunset at San Tan Valley Melissa Kennedy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

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Table of Contents “I Wrote About My Lovers in My Journal” Kristina Morgan - Honorable Mention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Ultra Martha Klare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

“In the Hills of Asolo” Karina Reginato - Honorable Mention.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

“An Open Letter to My Family” Romeo Barrientos - Honorable Mention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Old Town Beauty Steven Soekrasno.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Plays and Scripts “The Last Asian” Marie Tomisato - First Place.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Hidden Aida Sanienejad. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

“Out of My Mind” Birdie Holloway - Second Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

“Snuffed” Malichi Greenlee - Third Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

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Table of Contents Writers’ and Artists’ Personal Statements

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Remembering Robert Buchanan About 4 years ago, when I had asked my honors humanities class to introduce themselves and it came time for an older gentleman in the front row to tell us something about himself, unlike the others, he did not remain seated.

Instead, he stood and faced the class and said slowly, “I am here to save my soul.” I could tell that the young students, most just out of high school, had no idea what Bob was talking about, but I did, and I was overwhelmed with that poignant confession on the first day of class.

With an engineering degree, Bob had worked in corporate America and around the world in highly political contexts. He told me later that the “Fortune 500 Life” had drained his soul, and he had come to SCC to reenergize his life by working on his writing (he had just published a book of poetry).

That was the beginning of our friendship, and through the years, I shared many memorable moments with Bob in my creative writing classes and with many other students who formed a writing community at SCC. Through our writing, we were all struggling to know and understand ourselves and our experiences, and through that, we found a common humanity that held us together through the years despite our differences. Writing can do that.

Through Bob’s work, I came to know his childhood suffering, adolescent confusion, education, jobs, world travels, and personal struggles. When he lived at Vi, I would pick him up, and we would go for coffee and talk about his trip to Africa or Tibet, and

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he would share his photography. Sometimes I would drop by and bring him one of his favorite specialty mini- cheesecakes.

Bob was always excited about entering his work in the Vortex contest, and we had many meetings to work on the final edits of his work. His writing won every year in poetry and personal essay from 2017 through 2020. I never ceased to be proud of how much writing meant to Bob and how seriously he took feedback with no ego interference.

We had conversations about spirituality. Bob’s writing was often infused with spirituality and gratitude—how he had come to embrace these in his later years and listen to their voices in him. His Vortex winning essay, “Mutually Assured Destruction” concludes with: “When madmen are restrained from creating hellish apocalypse, spiritual leaders and ordinary people can bring love, grace, compassion, and hope.”

And in his Vortex winning poem, “Ordinary People,” Bob wrote: “This life I have lived draws itself together, in this far-flung home of misfortunes, sad and limitless in this embrace of the heart and human connection that carries the silence, the bells, the assuring voice of my unsettled soul’s submissive calm.

My granddaughter reaches for me.”

I miss this special friend more than I can say.

Sandra Desjardins

Bob Buchanan and I met years ago in an Introduction to Creative Writing course taught by Sandra Desjardins, and we went on to take her poetry classes and advanced writing workshops. We were both “Bobs,” and were both about the same age, in the military service during the Vietnam conflict against our better judgment, respected leaders in our areas of expertise, and we both suffered from incurable diseases which we would not let get us down. Bob and I enjoyed our friendship and occasionally met for 14

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lunch to discuss our writing. He took his writing seriously and poured a lot of energy into it. He was one of the easiest people to get to know, and I never saw him without a smile on his face. I will always admire his strength and insights and cherish the friendship we had.

Bob Lewis, fellow writing student Bob is too large to squeeze into one paragraph. I miss his wonderful sense of humor and his positive attitude—even on the days when he didn’t feel well. He was always supportive of all of us in his writing workshops and never once over the years did he talk disparagingly about anyone. He will always be important to me as the very special friend that he was.

Kristina Morgan, fellow writing student Lucky me that my path led me to Bob, a man who possessed honor and grace not only in his own written work, but in the words he used in his critiques of other writers in our workshops. His sensitivity to the world around him was stunning. His ability to capture his life experiences in his poetry and prose pulled me in, no matter what the subject entailed. I will miss him: his contagious laughter, his beautiful writing, and the gentle soul that he was that never failed to capture my heart.

Laura Galloway, fellow writing student I met Bob Buchanan when I walked into my first writing class at SCC. He sat wedged into one of those combo seat desk schoolroom appliances designed for the young and flexible—which neither of us had been for many years. He looked up at me, his entire face breaking into an incredibly warm smile and said , “Hi, I’m Bob Buchanan.” We immediately became “old” friends--he was in his seventies and I was not far behind. Over the years, I came to know Bob, not just in conversation, but through his poetry and essays. Bob was a brilliant man (a former nuclear engineer), a humanitarian, a confident, and a writer who spoke to your heart. He was also the first to laugh at his own follies and never failed in giving encouragement to all of us. When

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I met Bob, he was experiencing a decline in health, fighting a cureless disease which affected only a handful of people in the world: an incredible man with a strong soul in a weakening body. COVID took my friend this year. He was much too weak to win this battle. Bob, by just being who he was, left an imprint on us to achieve, to do something, anything good. And it was not because of anything he said, but it made a difference just knowing that people like him are among us. Frankly, at a time when so many people are sowing so much divisiveness and hate that I can feel overwhelmed and distraught, Bob has left me with a seed of hope and optimism that I am grateful for.

Steph Rubin, fellow writing student I met Bob Buchannan on the first day of our Memoir Writing class. When I opened the classroom door, I found a man sitting alone. His salt and pepper hair was neatly parted, his plaid shirt and pleated khakis crisply ironed. We exchanged introductions, and I was immediately taken with his charm and affable nature. As the semester progressed, we spent one-on-one time discussing Bob’s past memories in search of writing material. I was always impressed with his willingness to dive deep and explore hard things. Although he’d disclosed his illness early on in our relationship as instructor and student, my heart broke when Sandy shared the news of Bob’s passing. Over the past year, it was always his smiling face I imagined seeing when we would be allowed to return to campus and resume a sense of normalcy. But here’s the magical thing about creative writing — Bob’s words are still here. While his gentle smile will no longer grace my classroom, I find great comfort knowing I can visit him on the page whenever I need to be reminded of his grit and tenderness. I will forever be grateful for our crossed paths and the privilege of our time together.

Kim Sabin, SCC CRW Instructor

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The National League of American Pen Women We gratefully acknowledge the contributions to SCC writers, artists, and musicians made by the Scottsdale Branch of The National League of American Pen Women– the oldest women’s arts organization in the country. We appreciate the continued support of these dynamic and creative women!

Awards Each year, the Scottsdale Branch of American Pen Women honors a winning student in writing, art, or music.

This year’s award is in music.

Nolan McDowell is the recipient of this

award for his original score, “Finding A Way”

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Score

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Vortex 2021 Creative Non-Fiction All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ~ Leo Tolstoy “I’ve given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages.

You can’t divorce a book.” ~ Gloria Swanson Personal essay writing is analogous to undertaking a vision quest, a potential turning point in life taken to discover intimate personal truths, form complex abstract thoughts, and ascertain the intended spiritual direction of a person’s life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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“Pulling Salt From Water” Kristina Morgan – First Place He entered at night. The only protection I had were the monsters living in my closet.

I begged them to pull him off me. Quietly. Softly. So much so, that he couldn’t hear me.

My words were hot breaths against his neck. I left my body to float on the ceiling. This man was not my father. He was an impostor who simply smelled and looked like my father. Old Spice was his cologne of choice. This man was not the man who seated me between his bicycle handle bars and rode me around the neighborhood. He was not the man who played hide and go seek with me and my two sisters. Not the man who taught me how to throw a football or quizzed me on math problems. He did not buy me a hamster for my twelfth birthday; my father did that.

The monsters never came to my rescue. Instead, they tormented me on sleepless nights, telling me they were going to shave my head while I slept or eat my fingers down to the second knuckle. The monsters had been in my closet for years. I knew they were there, these lecherous old men standing three feet tall with no hair and mottled gray features. They wore dinner jackets and stank of feces. They never blinked.

In the past, my brain caused me to lose words; I was locked in psychosis with no way to communicate. In the future, I will be hospitalized. There is a fear that I will not be able to get my proper medications. There is a fear that depressed and paranoid me will not be able to leave my house. I have a fear of losing words.

I was sitting in a psychiatrist’s office midday wondering why he had fake plants. He was a bald man with a Salvador Dali mustache, the ends of which beautifully stood up.

This was my first time seeing Dr. Denton. The file on his desk contained information about me. It was filled with an accumulation of hospital staff reports and my parents’ observations. Dr. Denton told me this as he randomly flipped through it. Dr. Denton was the one who would deliver the news. My diagnosis.

He cleared his throat and in one breath said, “I have reviewed your file and believe you to have schizophrenia.”

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Creative Non-Fiction

My whole world changed with that one sentence. I was 29-years-old.

Please, poetry, make me more awake; lead me to a new truth. Ask me to come to the poem with a child’s sensibility.

--Unknown I believe writing is a spiritual experience. I rarely know what it is I’m going to write.

I like learning what I don’t know about my story. I love the magic that is poetry. I am a poet writing prose. Sometimes my prose leaves me at waist level in water.

The day room is sterile with a smell of Lysol. There are couches covered in gray vinyl, a whiteboard, and several round tables with chairs around them. The TV is paused on Forrest Gump running. The room is well lit. There is no dark corner in which to hide. I don’t eat in the dayroom with the rest of the patients. The patients don’t interest me. I am a cat who never meows.

A few of us pace the hallway. Up and down. Again. Up and down. Once tired, I will stand still as a hinge sometimes for hours.

The family room was dimly lit. The wood paneled wall contributed to its dreariness.

It was 1976. Wood walls were all the rage. I could hear my mom in the kitchen preparing dinner. I knew she was making Italian food. I could smell the garlic. The clock in the hall chimed six.

Father and I stood eyeing each other. I was six feet tall at twelve. He had a couple inches on me. He was barefoot. I, in black and white Converse sneakers, flat to the ground, no heel.

I was afraid of this man. My fear was like a snipped tail of a kite unable to catch wind.

The kite stalls out before ever having flown. I am tethered like this. To the ground.

Flightless. Unmoving. At the mercy of what he will say. I’m afraid of being ridiculed.

I needed him to hear me.

“Dad, I’m tired. Like really tired all the time.”

Dad responded, “You can’t be tired. You’re only twelve.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. I lowered my chin to my chest with the hope that he hadn’t noticed I was crying.

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I didn’t know what to do with my hands. It seemed I would feel better if I just knew what to do with my hands. I rolled them into the front of my shirt creating a cotton muffler.

The front door slammed open. My sisters had been playing Barbies in the front yard.

Their hands were full of blonde dolls and small cardboard boxes. They fell into the family room beside the blue couch like one falls from climbing a tree onto the grass below, silently and suddenly.

“Wow,” Samantha said stopping abruptly. “You’re crying.”

Dinner was silent. Samantha and Suzanne twisted spaghetti onto their forks, and then shoved it into their mouths. Mom wouldn’t look at me. I figured Dad had told her what I said. She was afraid of my feelings. Feelings weren’t her thing. Dad was brutally quiet. He usually was a mountain of talk. He reached for the garlic bread.

I pushed the broccoli around my plate. It was covered in cheese so my sisters and I would eat it.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“So, you’re tired and not hungry,” Dad said. “You’re really just a mess tonight.”

My sisters stopped eating as if to hear Dad clearly required them to abandon their forks scraping against their glass plates.

“Okay. I’m a mess,” I said solemnly. “May I be excused?”

“Of course,” Mom said before Dad could say anything. She saved me in that moment.

I felt her love.

I slowly inched my chair back. The wooden legs caught on the shag carpeting spoiling my quick exit. Dad stared at me. I stood and turned my back to all of them leaving my chair stranded a few feet away from the table.

“I love you, Kristina,” Samantha said. Her words painted color back onto a blank canvas.

Suzanne eyeballed Dad and then mumbled out an “I love you” in suit with her older sister.

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I paused and then started to cry again. Without turning around I said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I really don’t.”

“You’re just twelve,” Dad said. “Only twelve.”

The fact that I have schizophrenia makes my language at times, different. It impacts my descriptions of things. Sometimes the way I write only makes sense to me. I write in snapshots. My mind welcomes single images.

Sometimes, descriptions don’t necessarily fit in the right places. I have a blueberry that’s barely visible in the ocean of cranberries but is still sweet like only a blueberry can be while the cranberries remain tart.

Writing allows me to give voice to the metaphors that rub the inside of my cheeks and tickle my throat causing me to cough. I can hear it in a period, hear it in a comma—the phrase that longs to be set free, the paragraph that belongs to me and which I decide to share as I try to touch my reader.

In my dreams, Mom would open my closet door and encourage the monsters to come out. The monsters would moan and tell her they were too tired. Mom would offer them vodka. They’d still resist her.

I woke to my pillowcase being stained with drool. At times during the night it felt as if I was drowning in spit. This was a side effect of my medication. Maybe this is why the hospital pillow inside the white, starched, industrial pillow case was plastic.

It is quiet in the hospital. Still early. Most don’t rise until they hear the call for breakfast. One thing I know for sure is that no matter how sick the mind, everyone comes to meals.

I can spend an hour on one line of poetry or one paragraph of prose. The pitcher walks four players before she begins to strike out batters.

I’m not good at knowing what is working and what is not working in my writing.

Writing peers assist me in pulling salt from the water allowing me to quench my thirst without losing the spark that ignites each page. Water can boil without the salt.

Perhaps, the salt can be added as seasoning for later, but it’s primarily about getting rid of the thirst.

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There was a mirror perched above my dresser. I leaned toward it, my face a palm’s width away. “I don’t know what’s wrong but it will be okay,” my twelve-year-old self said to my reflection. A line of snot dripped from my nose. I swiped at it with the back of my arm.

“My time will come” I reassured myself. “Yes it will. I will be a strong and beautiful girl with the energy of a horse, who will have several best friends.” Right now I was alone with no one to talk to.

The salt from my tears had streaked my face. The bathroom was just across the hall from my bedroom. I took a wet washcloth and washed away the traces of my pain. “As if nothing happened,” I said. I dumped the washcloth into the laundry basket in the corner.

I was too tired to sleep which I knew made no sense but that was the way it had been for days. No wonder I was crying so easily. Exhaustion could do that to a person. I stroked Felix, my cat, my black cat with a white chin who’s small enough to sleep across my throat as I lay on my back, and began my count of a hundred backwards.

“One hundred, ninety nine, ninety eight,” I forced my eyes shut. Felix licked at my cheek, savoring the remnants of salt.

My doctor, Dr. Purewal, visited daily to have fifteen minute conversations with me.

At first it was always frustrating because I was unable to get him to understand me.

Pulling words randomly into full sentences was beyond my reach. My writing was bleak.

While lost in my mental illness, I could write only for me. Readers weren’t allowed in.

He said he could make the voices I hear go away and bring me into clear thought. With clear thought, I could write and speak once again in paragraphs.

Dr. Purewal always had a poker face. When I finally agreed to take Clozaril, he got excited. He clearly believed the drug would break my psychosis. It was the only antipsychotic of nine different anti-psychotics that I hadn’t tried.

I wanted to be well. I did not know how to always get my mind to cooperate. My mind was a wheelbarrow filled with glass bowls the color of cherries, the bowls filled with letters of the alphabet. Some bowls contained words like shoe, door, walk, and free. Others contained just random letters I desperately wanted to make sense of.

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The bird walks to the edge of the mountain and jumps expecting to fly, but instead finds that she has a broken wing, and tumbles to earth. Words like fall safe could have prevented her from crashing in a mix of feathers and blood. Before the Clozaril, I could not make sense of the things I thought about.

When stepping out of my mind, I could not be understood like an infant wanting to say hello. When I fell into my mind, I made sense. I am a woman who just happens to have schizophrenia but am not controlled by it. I wanted this. I wanted freedom like a helium balloon released from the clutches of a toddler’s fist.

My mind is never emptied of bothersome thoughts, but it is so much better. Many days the voices are just static, and I can clearly say good morning to my coworkers and thank the man who bags my groceries.

My home is a safe place for me today. There are no monsters in the closet. Mirrors are my friends; I can look and see more than just vacant eyes and an empty stare. I have pretty hair.

I have two black cats that I got at the Humane Society for ten dollars. They have never been without me. Grams is named after my grandmother and Annie, after my mother.

My home is as much Gram’s and Annie’s as it is mine. Together, we move forward.

The calendar ticks off days and nights of solace. I am happy. The world invites me to take a seat at the table of quiet abundance where I am served coffee with two sugars and cream.

I don’t miss my father. He died of a heart attack ten years ago. I still haven’t reconciled the imposter and him, but the two do sometimes fit into the same beige shirt and black khakis when my father morphs into the rapist in my dreams.

I continue to miss my mother. She never smelled of alcohol and cigarettes although she indulged in both. Alcohol killed her at the age of 58. She was walking around on Thursday and then in a coma by Friday.

I knew she drank too much, but I had no idea it was going to kill her at such a young age. I didn’t know she was dying. Her liver just quit.

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When young, I spent months hoping she would save me from him. How could I tell her he forced himself on me? I was too afraid and ashamed to tell her my innocence had gone the way of a feral cat, wild without bonds.

I have regret. I wasn’t a good daughter. I could have done more for her. At the time of her death, I was really sick. I could not swim my way out of depression.

I’ll always remember the call at midnight. Bob, my mother’s roommate, called and told me that my mother was acting really strange. He didn’t know what to do. I gave him the number to the psychiatric help line. They would send a team of therapists out to see her.

The next call I got at two that morning was from a psychiatric nurse in the urgent care center. She explained to me that my mother had been brought in to be evaluated.

Though rare for them to allow clients to be given the phone, they put her on. She was desperate to speak to me.

“I trusted all the wrong people,” she said over and over, her voice a piston of words. I could sense the steam through the phone.

The psychiatric nurse took the phone from her and told me they were transferring her to a medical hospital because she didn’t look good. Her liver collapsed on the way there.

I would never hear her voice again. She woke once from the grave of her bed in the ICU when I visited her. I told her I knew she loved me. She blinked with yellow eyes and then they closed, leaving me alone. I had never felt a loss so deep. I struggled, trying to break the surface of an ocean whose waves were relentless.

My heart fractures when I think of her. There is so much I want to say, I climbed trees at night as a kid, hoping to pull down a star to give to you. I no longer hate you for not knowing I was being raped. I want to take her hand in mine and whisper in her ear, “Sweet, you have nothing to prove to me. I love you just the way you are.”

I wear my schizophrenia blindly. When my symptoms are not present, a person would never know I have mental illness. Why do I have the good fortune of having schizophrenia? Right…the good fortune. But I do make the most of it, turning it on its head by writing about it. It can make for an interesting paragraph.

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I have not been in a hospital for eleven years. I have worked my same job with no absences for that same amount of time. I am at home in my body, able to watch comedy on TV and laugh, able to fix myself a spinach omelet, able to drive to the grocery store and shop.

I forgave my father because I had to. The hate and the loathing were eating me up leaving a big hole in my psyche where God should have been.

God is with me today. I am led to my creative self by inviting God in. God is the birds I hear in the morning, the dance of the bush in the breeze. The love I have for my friends is orchestrated by God. I am always in good company.

I walk away from psychosis leaving it on the pantry shelf behind my medications. I continue to write myself into being thinking I am best understood on the page. The days are gentle like green oil paint on the bristles of a brush. My schizophrenia is in my hands. I shake it loose leaving plenty of time to walk into the parking lot of life, painting a black Mercedes that I can drive, taking me wherever I want to go.

Creative Non-Fiction

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Endangered Creatures

Eleanor Babbitt

Medium: Oil Size: 30” X 36”

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Art

“Neighborhood Watch” Adrian Villarreal – Second Place That August 2011 night was like every other summer night in LA. The heat of the day hid in our homes, forcing us out into the cool air outside. Chris, who lived a house away from me, was dribbling a basketball in place at the edge of the street near his dad’s parallel parked truck. Every so often Richie would step up to him and put his hand in Chris’ face to blind him from the imaginary basket. Ruben rocked himself back and forth on the penny board nearby. I leaned against Chris’ dad’s truck exhausted from soccer practice. The skin of my sleeveless arms was stiff with dried sweat and felt cool against the steel. Someone was saying something about the possibility of us having classes together for senior year when a police car with its headlights turned off sneaked up on us. The driver’s door swung open before the car came to a complete stop. The suddenness of its arrival threw Ruben off balance, kicking his board under the truck.

“You guys live around here?”

All four of us heard the question. None of our mouths moved. We knew better than to say anything to the police, especially a cop who didn’t look or sound like us.

“What happened to that board?” The cop turned his flashlight on and spotted it.

“Who does that board belong to?” He looked at Ruben. Ruben shrugged. He then turned his head to the radio on his shoulder and mumbled phrases and numbers under his breath we didn’t understand. “Why don’t you all go and take a seat on the curb.”

Carlos, Chris’ older brother, came out the house barefoot and shirtless about the same time the second police car arrived with its flashing lights. He walked right up to the police officer who suddenly began to cuff Chris.

“What’s going on? Why is my brother being detained?” Carlos asked.

“Take a seat,” Cop #2 replied.

“Sit? For what?”

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“Sit down or I’ll throw you in the car.” Cop #2 pulled out another pair of cuffs.

“Are you detaining me?”

“No,” said cop #2.

“Then I’m free to walk away.” Carlos was persistent with his questions and knew all the right things to say. The officer didn’t respond. He reached for Carlos’ wrist, brought his arms behind his back, and cuffed him.

None of us understood what was happening.

When I was five, my mom and I saw a swarm of cops outside my grandma’s house.

Electric tension filled the air up and down her street flooded with police cars. Grandma was out back with a broom in her hands. We walked up the driveway that ran alongside the house and into her backyard. The Southeast LA sun broke through the early marine layer fog and onto the concrete where my grandma stood.

“What’s going on?” Mom asked.

Grandma led us into the kitchen. The counters and glass table shimmered with golden morning light as if the sun were rising in the center of the room.

“It’s Danny again.” Grandma untied her apron, dropped some bread in the toaster, and poured mom some coffee. “I heard the officers banging on Mari’s front door. I bet she thought he was at school.” She explained how she’d watched her neighbor’s teenage son climb out his bedroom window and jump the chain-linked fence. He ran across the backyard where she was sweeping, and then jumped into the other neighbor’s yard.

The officers must have heard Danny struggle over the high fence. They stormed up the driveway towards my grandma.

“And what did you tell them?” my mom asked.

“Pues, nada.” She shrugged.

Mom nodded and took a sip from her mug.

I didn’t understand. In all my five years of life on earth, I was always told to be honest.

Tell the truth. And here were the two most important women in my life nodding their heads in agreement about lying to police officers over coffee and burnt toast.

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A third police car arrived. Chris, Carlos, and Ruben were all thrown into the backseat of the first car. Richie and I sat on the curb. By now the whole neighborhood was out.

The red and blue lights spilled on their houses and flooded their dark bedrooms. It wasn’t their curiosity that dragged them out of bed, it was the need to bear witness to anything that might happen. Everyone stood just a few feet from the curb on the sidewalk. They wanted the cops to know they were being carefully watched.

One of the officers finally explained that two nights ago someone was assaulted by a group of unidentified men just a couple blocks away. The victim was hit over the head with a skateboard, and the injured party was now sitting in the back seat of the third police car ready to identify his assailant. My friends and I were instructed to stand in front of the car and await our judgement. A line up on Mines Avenue on a cool summer night. One by one, we were escorted before the car’s glaring high beams. The cop that walked each of us over seemed disappointed every time the radio told him this wasn’t the offender they were looking for.

“Alright,” he said into his shoulder as he turned to look at me. “Last one.”

I stood up and walked toward the lights. I turned to look at my mother who stood on the sidewalk with my younger brothers. She was expressionless, stoic. My siblings hid behind her, their arms wrapped around her legs. She watched intently, not blinking so as not to miss a moment, transforming every movement into memory in case an eyewitness was later needed. I struggled to keep my eyes open. It was all white under my lids. I soon realized I was standing there longer than anyone else had. The voice over the radio finally said, “negative,” but the officer hesitated to walk me back. He kept me there for all the neighbors to see as if to say, are you sure? Are you absolutely sure this isn’t the one we’re looking for?

As a kid, I was taught the cops patrolling our neighborhoods were the good guys, the heroes. I thought they were always on our side. Now I realize my grandma knew the same thing my neighbors knew: the only people that can truly look out for the community is the community itself. I often think about what would have happened to Danny had my grandma told the officers which way he went, or how my life could have changed in an instant had the neighborhood not been on watch that summer night.

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The block grew quiet again. We all stood there under the dim glow of the streetlights.

No one was in the mood to hang out anymore. We didn’t feel safe. It didn’t take long for me to go home. We were better off inside tonight.

I waited for Chris outside his house, not far from where we were detained that summer night ten years ago. We walked a quarter mile east down Mines Avenue. At the end of the street is the entrance to the San Gabriel Riverbed. Chris pulled out a can a beer from his pullover sweater pocket and handed it to me as we went passed the gate.

It was near midnight, but the full moon reflected off the water and illuminated the bike path before us.

“So, your brother’s a narc now, huh?” I said.

“Yeah, man. Not the best idea to become a cop right now.” Chris opened his beer and took a drink. “George Floyd’s murder is still on everyone’s mind.”

I thought about the national attention resulting from a few bystanders’ posting footage on social media. The world witnessed a murder by a cop in full uniform. What about those with no community to witness their injustices? We were lucky that night we were detained that our mothers and fathers and neighbors were there with us.

Vigilant communities sometimes save lives.

“I told Carlos to watch the way he treats people when he wears the uniform,” Chris continued.

I pulled out an unfinished joint, lit it, and handed it to Chris.

“He knows what it’s like to be treated unfairly by cops.”

Chris noddled silently and took a hit. “When do you head back to Phoenix?”

“I’ll be home till the end week.”

A couple days later I was sitting in my truck when Carlos walked up to the driver window.

“What’s good, officer?” I asked.

He chuckled. We bumped knuckles. Carlos had only been on the police force of a nearby city a couple months.

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“Nothing much, just getting off work,” he said.

“How’s it been so far?”

“Good. Crazy, but good.”

“People have a hard time trusting cops,” I said.

“It’s true. But I’m trying to be patient with people.”

Carlos was always the patient one out of all of us. Eager, but patient. He’d always wanted to be a cop. I wondered if it was the mistreatment we experienced from the police that shaped his decision. Perhaps he wanted to occupy this space, eliminating one less bad cop from joining the force. But what if he was wrongfully charged that night? Assault with a deadly weapon in California is a felony. Felons can’t be police officers. And what if I were wrongfully convicted that night? Felons can’t receive federal student aid. I wouldn’t have been able to attend university. Things could have turned out different. We could have been another statistic. It all felt like luck. Luck, and a little vigilance from a close-knit community.

Creative Non-Fiction

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Lost in Time

Clinton Chandler

Medium: Computer Graphics Photography Size: 10”x10”

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Art

“These are Rock Bottoms, These are Bloody Twos” Krystal Simmons – Third Place I. In 2017, Casa Diablo, a vegan strip club in Portland, was feeling pressure from the Feds to stop their marketing ploy of handing out blood stained two-dollar bills.

The owner, Johnny Diablo Zukle, had been hand dyeing the edges in a “trade secret” manner as an ode to The Titty Twister, the vampire filled strip club from the film From Dusk Till Dawn.

In many similar establishments, you, the patron, might stare at your ATM-crisp Benjamins and hesitate, as many do while holding larger denominations. Eventually, you would hand over your hard or easily earned big bills to be broken up into little pieces to rain over the gyrating bodies of post-pubescent women. One such lady steps into a glass box for all to watch as she furiously grabs at the air attempting to pocket as much as she can from this money tornado game. After the music stops, and all the excitement dissipates, the spectators move on to the next attraction. She’s only managed to bag $23.

What if the small Washingtons had been two-dollar Jeffersons? She would have doubled her profit for the same effort. This is why the societies of undressed women would wise up and start handing out two-dollar bills in exchange for your big Franklins. After you cast the new droplets of currency that seem to suspend mid air over your preferred tiny dancer’s dry panties, she winks at you. Her wink sounds like whatever noise your phone makes when you get a bank notification. Especially when your deposit is from a paycheck in which half of the dollars were paid time off hours you cashed in.

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Damn, I got paid the same as last time, for half the work, you realize.

Twice as much for having fun, the dancer giggles as she counts.

II. At the same time, the pious were receiving these bloody bills as change also from their coveted McDonalds. They would rather their change be stained with McRib sweat, than that of a Vampiric performer from the house of the devil. But 5-0 knew that wasn’t a legal enough reason to get Johnny Devil to stop. So, they hid behind some law about the destruction of God’s preferred country’s legal tender. Johnny buckled.

In order for the money to get the attention of 12, it suggests that there are a high number of bloody twos blanketing the city all coming from multiple sources. Small liquor stores use new two dollar bills as bait money in robberies. When you, the thief, step up to the plate in the strongman game between you and the cashier, you swing your hammer down to see just how high you can you make your buck go up. The bell sounds which means the operator gives you your prize and your turn is over. Back at your home base, you exhale that comfortable sigh and count your easy earned bounty.

You nick your hand on your weapon of choice as you retrieve the bills from the bag.

Now you are in possession of bloody twos. The next cashier you encounter provides a chance for you to give rather than receive.

“One McRib please,” you mutter.

The barely legal aged worker glances at your crimson Jefferson. “Oh no, we’re not allowed to accept those,” she warns.

You bow out graciously and flee. If you are the dummy that I think you are, for robbing a liquor store because the McRib is back, you’ll deposit the twos at a Walmart money center into your online only bank account. As you leave, you have to weave through people Sunday driving their oversized carts filled with bargains and babies sans pants. Lo and Behold, there is a Mickey Deez at the exit. Before you have the opportunity to offend the next cashier, swat is on your back like brown on rice. Turns out your biologically dye-packed twos had their serial numbers pinged, or however it works.

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III. Option three for the origin of red tar smudged guap comes from my own experience.

I didn’t live in Oregon, but California which is close enough according to everyone who doesn’t reside on the west coast. It was the year of our universe, two thousand and seventeen. I started my day like any other, in sheer panic induced by a particular strain of yawns. As soon as my eyes opened, an internal timer had begun. It kept track of when my pores were to open up and start releasing all the liquid I had kept at bay for the past 24 hours. It kept track of when my sinus cavities would lose all control over their mucus, and of when my legs would become more restless than I. It knew the schedule for my skin to begin resembling raw chicken legs fresh out of the plastic packaging; clammy, bumpy, and covered with stray feathers needing to be plucked and picked at.

Then would come the nauseating smell of everything, followed by several commode runs, and choking on cigarettes because I could finally taste them again.

My mother’s car engine rumbled. That was my cue.

The sense of urgency I used to display as a prized restaurant worker had been transformed into a seemingly lifesaving skill. I quickly spanned the 40-foot walk from my room to my mother’s and entered her private threshold. I got to work. Careful not to touch anything, I used my eyes to scan and rifle through her possessions. I had already been through the less-than- mint-condition coins buried deep in the ghost of purses past. I had also decided that the most recent treasure of gift cards she had received from wedding guests need not run completely empty because that was too obvious of a tell. So where to next? I opened a bedside set of drawers that I had seen in her room in multiple houses over the course of 20 years. I ignored my rule of touching only whatever I deemed as necessary, when I recognized my own handwriting on a piece of folded blank printer paper. It was a letter I had written to my mother about one or two years prior to this moment.

I lifted the letter, revealing my deceased father’s wallet (also 20 years old), a few pieces of mail, and to my surprise, a rubber banded stack of slightly crisp two- dollar bills. I hastily counted them. It was only enough to buy a dub. I googled the year they were issued to see if they had appreciated in value. My search told me that each bill was worth…two dollars. These had to belong to the mother of my mother’s mother, who Creative Non-Fiction

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raised my mother. I took them, all of them. Unlike you, I wasn’t dumb enough to go to Walmart. My dealer was foreign and might think these were as good as monopoly money, so I went to a grocery store bank and gave them change for a twenty-dollar bill.

Now they owned my red handed twos.

Looking back, I probably could’ve given my connect the two-dollar bills. I woke him up, pounding on his door at 6:00 am with a handful of change. He accepted. I had seen EBT cards, defunct electronics, and family heirlooms in his one room wooden shack.

And I’m pretty sure the guy standing guard outside was holding a pawned machete.

My connect wasn’t that picky. But I needed to know that my great-grandmother’s forty-year-old stack of Jeffersons weren’t going to be handed back as change into some unnamed heroin addict’s blood stained fingertips. What if the families scorned and robbed could add serial numbers to their memories, the smell of perfume that lingered on jewelry, or the microfibers of the cedar box that once held one of the watches so haphazardly thrown into a pile at my dealer’s dwelling. How many people could trace their bait belongings to that shack? Their faces start to poke at my core while I imagine how they would feel while buying back their own belongings that they didn’t sell or trade, just so this prick can keep his business open, ouch. A few weeks later I confessed to my ma that I indeed was a drug addict. A week after that she installed a camera over her door. I did attempt to make amends once, during a busy family event whilst sober and was met with “Do we have to right now?” A relief. We’ve never discussed this rock bottom, or our bloody twos.

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“Unanswered” Kieran Noback – Honorable Mention I’m originally from Wyoming, and back then, I knew everyone at school and life felt comfortably predictable. Back then, my family was whole. My mom and dad worked hard in our small town’s hospital; scrubs and the scent of chemicals wafting through the door as they came home was common. They were certainly kept busy, but in between shifts my parents made time for us. I still remember the nights our father read to my brother and me, the soft amber glow of the living room lamp illuminating our enraptured faces as the gentle tones of his voice guided us down the path of story after story. Mom and Dad took turns reading to us, occasionally delving into something a little more realistic, but my brother and I always preferred fantasy. Thus, the shelves of our home became lined with Harry Potter, Eragon, Lord of the Rings, and countless others.

But time with our parents was not always quietly spent indoors. We had an acre of land which had to be maintained. Every summer, Mom armed us with oversized leather gloves and heavy jeans and put us to work. Ripping fallen tree branches from their beds of grass allowed Mom, atop her rumbling behemoth of a riding lawnmower, to obliterate the tall ranks of grass threatening to swallow the old oaks behind the house. Weed whackers in our small hands then dispatched what little grass escaped the mower’s blades. Along with this periodic maintenance, we hauled rocks and soil and planted seeds to help Mom with her landscaping and gardening. In the winters, our battle against nature was with the snow. Mom cleared the driveway by way of snow blower, but did not save us from work. Snow blown away always revealed ice, despite my prayers. Every few days, my brother Rowan and I tromped outside, tools in hand, to shatter that ice. But even through mittens, the shock of metal against ice became a familiar buzz in my arms. But I believe both my brother and I secretly enjoyed working with Mom. Her fervent passion blossomed into a beautiful flower garden, a tamed yard, and a constant influx of machinery use and time spent with her. Thus, the call of Creative Non-Fiction

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potential danger and new experience convinced two young boys again and again to join her.

Still, occasionally my brother and I found the freedom to meet with friends. Often when both parents were working, my brother and I would don our helmets and venture into town atop our oversized bikes; the rattle of wheels over gravel accompanying our anticipation of adventure. As long as we were back in the evening, our parents didn’t mind. Still, I remember desperate struggles uphill against the setting sun, my legs burning with the effort of pedaling back home in time. The occasional scolding waited for me when I did get back late, but for the most part I strictly adhered to my parents’ rules; I didn’t want to upset them, but I also knew I could leverage my good behavior later. When the time was right, I would beg and plead with my parents for the privilege of spending the night at a friend’s house. It didn’t always work, but on some lucky evenings Mom or Dad would concede.

It was one of these lucky evenings when Mom guided our ridiculous yellow car up a gravel driveway. My eyes wandered over the eclectic smattering of stickers haphazardly pasted on the rear seat windows by Rowan and me: Spiderman, Simba, a stylized skateboarder, and whatever other generalized figures might interest a child. Tellers at the town bank slipped them in with paperwork whenever we ran errands with Mom. It always felt special as a little kid, but now that I was a little older, I couldn’t understand the impulse to immediately paste them to the car windows. My fingers picked idly at the paper, hoping to fix the unsightly smattering, but never succeeded at cleanly removing any; sticky fingertips and tiny shreds of paper remained my only consolation prize. As the car lurched to a halt my mom twisted in the seat in front of me. Her kind green eyes traced briefly over my feeble attempts to repair the windows before meeting mine.

“Hey, we’re here.” I glanced up and returned the smile she was giving me. “All right, um, and I can stay the night, right?” After a moment’s pause, as if to consider, she responded: “Of course, and your dad or I will be here in the morning to pick you up ok, so don’t stay up too late.”

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the red-stained door. I paused a second to wave goodbye to Mom, who was already beginning to urge the workhorse of a vehicle into reverse. She smiled and returned the gesture.

“Come in,” my head snapped to attention as the familiar sound of Tyson’s voice echoed from the house. The hinges squeaked in protest as I pushed open the door and squinted my eyes against the evening sun shining through the faintly smudged windows across the room. The rush of warm air pulled me out of the winter cold. The pellet stove nestled in the corner blazed with a life that reminded me I was in good company; and besides, I had managed to negotiate a sleepover, there was no time to waste. We quickly got to work plotting out every activity for the night to come. My friend, Tyson, was the proud owner of more video games than I could ever dream of, so each journey to his home carried with it the promise of blue screens and bleary eyes. This trip was no different, and as the night hours ticked away, I broke the promise to my mom I made just that afternoon.

I was awoken the next morning to the sound of loud knocking. Foggy headed, I sat up in the pile of blankets we had strewn on the floor as a makeshift bed, and the cold air crept into my ears, pushing out the morning drowsiness. Still, it took me a moment to register the words being spoken to me. “Hey Kieran, your dad is on his way to get you, you should start getting your stuff together.” My protests were silenced by the quiet insistence on the face of Tyson’s mom. “Oh, ok.” I shook my head as she smiled and closed the door with a click. Both of us confusedly extricated ourselves from our shelter, the grey winter light harsh in our tired eyes and our movements clumsy from lack of sleep.

I quickly tore through a breakfast of hot pancakes, and, hands still sticky with syrup, gathered up my things as the doorbell rang. Its plea was answered, and I was ushered out into the crisp air with my father, who, aside from a brief hello, had said nothing.

A strained smile crinkled the corners of his eyes as I looked up at him, but he refused to answer the question in my tired face. His eyes were puffier than I remembered. He led the way to the car, each step of his tall frame, once comforting, now intimidating in the winter silence. Every crunch of snow dragged my mind into further confusion.

Clambering into the vehicle, I saw my brother waiting inside. He shot me the same Creative Non-Fiction

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confused look I knew I had, but his silence told me questions would have to wait. The car door shut and the engine gasped to life, carrying me to a new chapter of my life.

We arrived home and received the news. Stepping out of the car onto a fresh dusting of snow, we rushed to match pace with our father’s long strides. I crunched up to his side, “What’s going on Dad? Why’d you get us so early?”

He kept walking. “Just wait until we’re inside, please…”

So I waited. We stuffed ourselves into the mudroom, stepped out of our boots, hung our jackets. We followed Dad into the living room, where I threw myself onto a beanbag. Rowan sat down beside me, but Dad remained standing.

My father’s words barely outraced his tears. “Your mom--Erin’s gone.”

I leaped up in disbelief.

“H-how?” Rowan’s voice screamed in the silence, even if it was just a whisper.

“Last night, I found her in her room, with a rope around her neck--” It didn’t feel like I was there. The world was tilted and out of focus. Everything was falling out of place, I had no sense of up or down, my fingertips grew cold, I couldn’t breathe. The Christmas tree across the room silently mocked me. I sought the reassurance this wasn’t happening in my father’s face, but the warble in his voice and tears tracing his face spoke the truth. He slumped into a chair, mumbling apologies I wasn’t ready to hear. I fell back into the beanbag, now like gravel beneath me, and stared at nothing. I couldn’t believe I was so stupid to not see anything was wrong, to believe Mom when she said she’d be there to get me.

In that moment, a worm of uncertainty burrowed deep into my chest. It’s still lurking there to this day, telling me the next disaster is just around the corner, that those I love will always leave me. I remember crying, I remember all of us crying. I don’t remember anything else from that day. I couldn’t find the colors existing in my memories from when she was there, while the weeks and months after her death blended and smeared into a choking cloud in my mind. I never knew the darkness of depression Mom went through, and I’ve never had the heart to ask my dad for details. If there was a note, anything, Dad didn’t tell us.

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The year afterward was filled with uncertainty. My dad worked more than ever before at the hospital, the emptiness of the house refused to leave, and the yard decayed. That summer, he found better work in Arizona so we would be moving there in the fall. He met a new woman, but after a couple of her visits I knew she would never be our new mom. She was as shy as I was, and my brother was bitter. Gifts of ice cream and candy were sweet, but never filling like fixing a lawnmower of painting a canvas. Despite her kindness, we weren’t ready for her. School friends watched me with concern, but I wasn’t sad. I didn’t know what to feel; my life was unrecognizable, and I realized I had never thought about the future before.

Eventually the time came for us to move. After a year of grief-laden wandering in the once bright town, my life would be shuttled to the desert. I gulped down my fears, promising Mom I would stop wasting time stumbling in the fog of her absence. I owed her that much at least. So, when I left my childhood home for the last time, I looked back at the darkened lights, the rooms empty of furniture, the overgrown yard, and knew I had to give it up for my own sake. Those memories of happiness, of peaceful summer evenings on the porch, of wrestling with her and my brother on the living room floor, of relaxing and talking after a hard day of yard work, would cause too much pain.

When I first landed in Phoenix, the air tasted like gasoline and our new home had no grass, and when I looked out of my window there was only the wall of the next house.

But my convictions strengthened, and I chased away the thought of Mom just so I could survive.

I’ve now navigated four years of high school and just started the journey into college and I’m still uncertain. My new life has never been what I wanted, but that hasn’t stopped the color from bleeding back into it. I’ve met people I am now brave enough to call friends; Cacti bloom in vivid shades of red and violet in the desert. But despite my best efforts, her face never left me. I remember when I was angry at her for vanishing, thinking she was selfish for leaving me behind. It wasn’t until a late night at a campfire with friends that I said it and realized the anger was there. Now, those feelings have been replaced by the warmth of our shared memories. I thought that I had forced the painful remembrance of her away, but it crept back in, not as a shadowy jailor, but a Creative Non-Fiction

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warm friend. I’ve seen myself draw from her well of kindness and share the water with others. She may be gone, but I refuse to forget.

In the end, I think it’s impossible to know if she would be proud of me, and my questions may not have answers now or ever. But in the silence that replaces answers, I feel a swell of pride knowing that I am her son. I don’t need to hear her voice to know that she loves me. In the same way her hands worked the earth and her actions showed her light, she nurtured and tended me as long as she was able.

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Limelight

Riley Duemler

Medium: Digital Photography

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“Pausing to Breathe” Kathryn Dwyer – Honorable Mention “First, let me take your temperatures, and then could you write your address down for contact tracing, please? Be sure to include your email address and cell phone number.

You have reservations I assume?” said the overworked petite hostess wearing a N-95 mask, at the Ear Inn as she motioned to the battered spiral notebook. I pushed my friend, David, to write down his information since he lived in the theater district; I was just visiting for a potential job interview.

Three days earlier, I had flown to New York from Arizona to visit my beloved city and had my required negative COVID-19 test results with me. I was contemplating returning to New York since my father had recently passed away, and I’d been laid off from my job in Scottsdale.

On this clear, cool autumn day, David and I visited my favorite historic bar, the Ear Inn on Spring Street. The Ear Inn was established in 1817 and is considered to be one of the oldest operating drinking establishments in all of New York City. Caught in another time, with 19th century tin celling and the 18th century pine paneled wooden walls, the bar was jam-packed with sailing memorabilia, unique rusted signage, nautical artifacts, and historic photographs. Aside from the only dedicated employee acting as the sole server, manager and cook, David and I were the only people there for lunch.

“Our chef will not be in until 4:00PM. We have English pasties that I can heat up with a salad for lunch.” David and I looked at each other in bewilderment. “Yes,” the server-manager-cook answered as if reading our minds, “we do have a full bar.” David had recently lost his job at the Kimberly Hotel, due to a lack of visitors. Together, we agreed a pitcher of Sam Adams sounded great. After a strangely quiet hour, we left and we walked outside onto the uneven, cobblestoned sidewalk.

The expensive row of downtown hotels seemed vacant, even though Thanksgiving was only a day away. All the streets and subway stops were missing their energetic 46

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and incredibly diverse crowds; the people who defined the city I had known for over thirty years. Broadway’s theatres were dark, and the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, and New York Ballet had cancelled their entire 2021 seasons. Likewise, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall cancelled all fall programming; and 2021 New Year’s Eve in Times Square was planning a virtual ball drop without crowds for the first time in 114 years. Although, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of the City of New York, and the Whitney Museum of Art reopened five days a week, they were requiring temperature checks, contact tracing, timed tickets and reservations for all guests. Everywhere I looked, my NYC felt oddly unrecognizable.

I later learned that about 3.57 million people had moved from New York City in 2020, and 70,000 left the metropolitan region permanently, resulting in roughly $34 billion in lost income. Just two years earlier, New York City was considered the most populated city in the United States, with an estimated 8.3 million residents.

It was known as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world. It’s citizens significantly influenced commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports.

After saying goodbye to David that afternoon, I visited the Museum of the City of New York on Fifth Avenue, where I interned for a year while working on my masters in Museum Studies. I had recently submitted an application for a mid-level position, slightly below my experience and pay grade. I was willing to try anything, since I had been unemployed for over a year. My hope was to interview for a position as Manager of Visitor Services, utilizing my strong non-profit references and David’s NYC address.

I felt surprised and saddened to learn that I was one out of ten people visiting the extensive institution that day. I noticed that I was the only customer in their large gift shop, which was over-staffed. Four employees rearranged full shelves, looking for things to do. “It’s really tough here, since March, all of our positions are frozen, and there are more layoffs coming soon due to COVID. We are lucky to just get by as you can see,” explained the twenty-something artfully tattooed manager.

After pretending to look at exhibits, some that I had already seen, and purchasing some NYC souvenirs, I walked down the beautiful white marble steps holding back my Creative Non-Fiction

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tears. I was a single woman over fifty with twenty-five years of experience in the arts in New York City, and I felt completely lost. I recognized that I would need to explore new career options and found myself feeling deeply depressed with no answers.

I crossed the street while zipping up my twenty-year-old, full length black Calvin Klein coat. I walked briskly, matching steps with the few other New Yorkers hurrying down the autumn tree-covered cobblestone sidewalks. I recalled that I had noticed the same lack of people on the streets and in museums when I lived in New York City during the attacks on 9/11. However, this emptiness felt very different and 90% of the people out were wearing masks. They quickly glanced in fear at each other or just looked straight ahead. Some pretended to look busy playing with their cell phones, while others ignored their surroundings completely. I thought back to living in Manhattan during 9/11, which brought Manhattanites together as a community. We clapped and cheered for our first responders, we made food for our neighbors and the fire departments, stood in line to give blood that would not be needed (due to lack of survivors), and we shared stories of missing loved ones. Now, I felt fear, total isolation, lack of energy, an overwhelming sense of gloom and depression settling in.

I passed under the bright, yellow cathedral-like canopy of elm trees on Fifth Avenue, remembering that it was one of the largest and only remaining “stands of American elm trees in North America.” This was due to the fact that Manhattan was an island and had not been exposed to Dutch disease like the rest of the country. “How could these century old trees somehow survive living through the years of WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam, NYC bankruptcy, 9/11, and still provide beauty, shade, shelter, and even comfort to its residents?” I wondered out loud.

If those glorious elms could survive all of that, surely, they could handle this pandemic. I made my way into Central Park, with its backdrop of hickory, sugar maple, and dogwood. I walked by the Jackie Kennedy Reservoir that stretched all the way from 86th to 96th Streets with views of the cherry trees turning bronze and red, and the maple and London plane trees were changing color, too. In the water, I spotted many species of birds, from several types of ducks to herons and egrets. Vibrant natural life was happening all around me, and I began to breathe the fresh, cool, soothing air.

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Somehow, nature in New York City was flourishing, but mankind seemed to be drowning in poor decision making. Inconsistent museum policies in different parts of the country reflected the confusing, sometimes seemingly contradictory, sets of rules broadly governing public gathering places as officials struggled to contain the coronavirus. Most Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, DC museums remained closed while some museums in New York and Phoenix were open. “The decision making has been really erratic,” Laura Lott, President of the American Alliance of Museums, explained in Museum magazine. “There are 50-plus sets of different rules and thousands of museums making different decisions.”

I, too, have been confused in my making career decisions impacting my life during this pandemic. My career in the museum world has been forced to pivot, but perhaps I am beginning to see some hope in real rays of light with my new forced practices of self-reflection, self-care, and learning to breathe again. Hiking in the beautiful Sonoran Desert four days a week in Arizona, on the largest urban preserve in America, has given me space to heal.

Walks in nature help. Writing helps. According to my physical therapist, I must “smell the flowers and blow out the candles” to feel any welcomed glimpse of hope that may lead to a path where expressions and smiles can once again actually be seen. Elms will continue to blossom and grow in New York City, and the saguaros of the Sonoran Desert will continue to thrive. Life will resume, reflecting a new sense of normalcy, and I will once again understand my purpose in it all.

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The Artist’s Window

Judith Feldman

Medium: Oil Size: 24” X 24”

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“I Hate It Here” Angela-Marie Luna – Honorable Mention

The sun pierced through my Walmart button up that I had to pick from the Men’s Department, the only fittable choice. The heat crackled on my skin creating moisture in the most uncomfortable places. I hate it here. This particular place, the ranch. A cesspool of dust and heat that lingered for days. The dirt seemed to cover the double wide that was built atop a big pile of rocks and more dirt made to look like a hill. I bet when it was first placed there it looked nice. Now it was where all the horseflies lived.

The cheap acres of land were consumed by rusty parts of cars and chucks of houses.

It’s like they built a fort in the apocalypse with parts to spare. And now I had to spend the weekend here, living with the smell of horse shit and hay, manure and goat’s sweat swirling in the heat. What sixteen-year-old wants to be stuck in a hot dirt filled hell hole? I hated it, but I had no choice. When my foster parents felt like they needed a break, they would find someone else to look after you, like a pet while its owner was on vacation. In foster care we call this “respite” which by definition is “A short period of rest or relief from something difficult or unpleasant.”

I thought for sure when my mom voluntarily relinquished her parental rights in front of me when I was 14, I was free of that monster. I was going to be well taken care of, that’s what movies had taught me, someone would take me in and love me no matter what. But I don’t remember respite being a part of that script, or the part where I move every few months, one different prison cell after another. This ranch was my respite, no way out. I hate it here.

I was sixteen at the time, and now with the two longest years of my life being played out in foster care behind me, I knew my way around this hell hole. Newly fat, I hated myself. I was disgusting. I could see it, and they could see it too, everyone. Case workers and staff members in group homes looked at me with disgust from time to time, reminding me how far I was from being respected. No one was coming to save me, and I knew why. I wasn’t worth saving. If even my foster parents needed a weekend Creative Non-Fiction

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away, why would I be worth saving? Still here I stand in this god damned heat, hoping the long slow day would carry on already. I just wanted to be inside. However, Rick had other plans for me.

Rick was the owner of the ranch and taught kids how to ride horses. Rick was a short stocky man, late 30s early 40s with skin the color of newly stained wood. He wore Wrangler-type pants with modernized cowboy boots, a button up long sleeve shirt with the cuffs and sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He had two mossy green wrists to show how much copper meant to his health. A real modern cowboy. He was a stoic man whose walls of emotion were solidified by a history we were not allowed to know; a walking top secret classified file. It was obvious Rick had been a hard worker his whole life, so it was hard to impress the man. Now he has me working for him today, for free, I should be so lucky.

He was going to teach about 15 to 20 white bratty kids from loving families how to rope a semi-wild horse, whatever that meant. Rick jumped over a rusty white gate where the horse—young, strong with a thick dark chocolate coat—stood boldly across from Rick holding the lasso in his hand like he was in the Wild West. The kids and I stood around a beat up metal ring watching. I was bored because I had to give out ropes and keep kids in line, I hate it here.

“Now,” Rick proclaimed, “if you gonna rope this horse you have to approach it with respect.” He started to tap the lasso on his hip in a rhythm like the beat to a battle march, his arms extending up and down like an oil rig. “We’re gonna tap our ropes on our legs like this, then we’ll move to the right.” As he started his steady stride around the ring, the horse immediately reacted and started trotting. “This horse will do whatever you do. You walk right, he trots right.” He stopped in his tracks, turned, and the horse mirrored him. “Here is what I want you to do, go around the ring left and then right. Then I want you to stop. Now here’s the important piece, you walk toward the horse and place the rope around his neck.” Rick walked toward the massive animal with no fear. “You need to respect the horse. It will act the way you act. This part can be difficult if you’re not ready.” He looked at me, then put a rope around the horse’s neck with his head slightly pressed by his face. “ The horse has to see you, or he’ll run or stomp you. Pet the horse as you put the rope around his head, to comfort 52

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him. Show him respect. And then the horse will follow you. That is how we build trust.

You guys ready?” Rick pulled away slowly then and tugged the rope and walked with horse in tow. Most of these kids were like ten years old and looked shocked with a few sociopaths excited to try and die by wild horse. I’m happy to watch those kids piss their pants. “Angela.” Rick handed me the rope. “You’re first.”

What the fuuuuuck do you mean I’m first?! I work here! I don’t do this cowboy shit! No, no, I can’t do this, why, when is this hell hole gonna stop getting deeper and deeper?

“Rick, I can’t do this,” I stuttered while my heartbeat broke the sound barrier. Fuck, I give up. Rick shrugged and replied, “I didn’t know that but I know you’re first, so go on.”

I entered the dirt coliseum like a wrestler entering a ring with my head down. I could feel that heat of the sun on my back, but I didn’t mind because that was the least of my worries. “Angela. Go ahead, start.” Rick commanded. Now time for the downfall, the disappointment that my life had become, made itself known here in the ring. The undeniable opponent that I’ve faced day after day from group home to foster family to respite, over and over again. I had to walk toward the beast now. I had no choice.

I fucking hate it here. The first part was easy, I walked to the left and to the right tapping to the beat. But then the time came. I puffed out my chest trying to establish dominance. And just as my first step landed, the horse wailed and bucked up he was pissed, so I fell back. I knew it, I failed. Like always.

Rick called out loud real clear, “Try again.” I turned my head towards him. “Go on, try again.” I didn’t want to, what could I do just to get out of here. I had nowhere to run. I was too fat to run that far away from, everything. Ok...ok, I closed my eyes, I could not leave until I lassoed that horse. I opened my eyes, fuck it. One step, then two; closer and still the horse stayed steady, I kept my pace even, and I didn’t break eye contact. I kept waiting for the horse to call my bluff. But then I realized I wasn’t bluffing at all. Before I could exhale, I had my hands high in the direct sunlight burning the rope I clinched on to and lowered with calm, delicate precision. I was right next to the beautiful animal now and I smiled, his cheek warm against mine, and I eased the rope over him and gently tugged. Before I could blink, the horse and I were side by side Creative Non-Fiction

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trotting around the ring. I couldn’t stop smiling. The white bratty kids cheered like I scored the winning touchdown in a football movie.

I jumped out of the ring to hand back Rick the rope, and I walked away grinning for the first time in a long time. I couldn’t believe what I had just done. Rick yelled for me, and I stopped and turned around, had I missed something? And right on time like a character in a movie, Rick announced, “That was the best I’ve ever seen. Seriously.”

I stood frozen for a moment. That was unbelievable. But I played off my astonishment and shrugged my shoulders. See, Rick doesn’t pay compliments, he pays truth. I couldn’t fool that horse or Rick, and now I couldn’t fool myself. As the sun set on the beautiful landscape, I stopped to take it all in, watching the bright blue sky turn a deep orange and red as the setting sun kissed my sunburn cheeks. The bratty kids laughed and dragged me toward the house to help. I looked back at the horizon one more time where hell looked like heaven. I walked up the dirt hill to the castle doublewide for supper with a smile on my face. I love to hate it here.

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“A Foggy Night Sky” Steffan Ponsolle – Honorable Mention

I am called an “angel child” by my mother because I was her light in a dark time.

When I was one year old, my father was murdered by his poor life choices. I’m told we had two houses, nice cars, a family business, among other things. Once all of those things were sold off, my father’s death was the chisel that split our family apart. My mother and one of my brothers stayed with me, while my sister and other brother left for good.

This was a grand time of sadness and loss, but I was completely spared by my youth.

I did not know my father, nor should I want to, I think. From the stories I’ve heard, he was a mess of a man. He was naive to anyone’s qualms outside of his own, leaving many reeling when they attached themselves to his selfish lifestyle. Thanks to this, I’m sure we would not have gotten along. Without him, we were poor but happy. I was able to have friends, happy times, all brought together by my small family of three, living in a calm aftermath of disaster. My mother’s decision to keep me largely ignorant of my father allowed me to grow up with the thought that our family was peaceful. I think my father would have been separated from my family one way or another, even if he had avoided his onslaught of gaffes. In another lifetime, my mother would have divorced him, and he would have haunted our family here and there with inappropriate visits that were prolonged and insufferable.

That was not the case. While his life and death bore no weight in my mind, Scotty and Stephanie’s memory of him was clear in conversation. They were the eldest siblings, who had strong memories of him. They never finished school, had trouble finding jobs, and were grappled with levels of depression most severe. Except for a few times, we had never tried hard to meet up. By the time I first met them as a non-infant, they were well into their late twenties, if not thirties. My memory of the time we met is the only true, clear memory I have of my sister. It was when I first visited their childhood home where both of my estranged siblings resided. She was tall, pretty, and confident. My estranged Creative Non-Fiction

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brother and she had a unique sibling rivalry that was charming to see. It reminded me of my experiences with Spencer, the brother I grew up with. In ways, it felt very familiar to be around them both. She had a fast-paced energy, moving room to room with a motivation that suggested an eager desire to prove to the world she was strong.

He, on the other hand, was slowed, receded, but nice all the same. We shared a similar jagged nose bridge, and a signature strong jawline. I noticed a resemblance in both of them right away, even as a kid. I was elated to have a sister and another brother after so many years of hearing about them. When we hugged for the first time, it was warm and inviting, with no hint of what lay deep within both of them. What was peculiar for me was the strong smell of cigarette smoke on their clothes. They both smoked, which was a shock. I had never been around smokers, so I found it odd to know I had family that did. The family I knew barely drank a glass of wine on New Year’s Eve. The visits were sequenced uncomfortably between our conversations about our memories and their appropriate smoke breaks outside. I always found this odd and felt somewhat impatient waiting for them to come back inside. I would watch them from the kitchen barstools, staring through the sliding back door. They were likely quicker than my memory serves, but I was often left alone for what felt like hours with the dogs they owned. When we did talk, they both spoke of memories of me that I do not have myself. I was used to talking to people who knew me, but I did not know them. This was a perk of being the last child born in a generation. Regardless, it was nice to meet them, despite our different lifestyles and extensive age gap.

The schism that my father created made me grow up not knowing what real sadness looked like, so it was not until my sister passed that I could define it. She overdosed on painkillers, but I do not know of her emotional state at the moment she ended her life.

I could not cry for her, and I felt awful for the inability to do so. This was a close family member logically, but to me, she was largely a stranger. Surely, I was sad for others but, nothing was inside me. It was as if the world was cracking below everyone’s feet but mine. I remained noticeably tranquil through the mourning process. I sat in black clothes on our couch, awaiting my mother who always was the last to be ready when we left the house. When it came time, my family hustled out the door and into a family car to a funeral service. On the drive there, this knot formed in my stomach. No one likes funerals, but this was my first. I knew one thing about funerals, and that was that

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sadness was a theme to everyone’s mood. “Was I going to be yelled at for not acting like I cared?”, I thought. The venue was a calmer tone than what I had expected. It consisted of a large reception as well as arching hallways, all leading to more rooms to hold services. Her funeral was full of faceless people in black, crying, moaning, hugging, and despondent. I felt great grief that day, to know so many people she touched, except for me, felt this way. Even the two people I had lived with my whole life knew her. I was at a funeral for a person I was unable to care for. Like an alien examining a human culture for the first time, I stood there in the middle of the masses, afraid to even lean on a wall for fear of looking out of place. During the eulogy, faint sniffles here and there were heard, but people were largely mute. A grand focus on a slideshow of memories I’m not in flashed in front of us all. I sat somewhere in the front, on an uncomfortable wooden pew. When we were all seated in the front row, I peered behind me to inspect the church, seeing more and more pews lined with hanging, mourning heads. Several faceless people came by and hugged me here and there. I was given special priority in this room, a priority I felt I did not deserve. I felt inadequate next to the depth of feeling others had. Sitting back down quietly, guilt swelled inside me but still I could not cry Scotty and I met once after that funeral. This was when his girlfriend gave birth to my niece, Zoe. It was a short visit, admittedly only half a day. When I was given a chance to hold her though, I felt her innocence filling the room. I saw her as enough reason for him to live on after Stephanie, so I put confidence in him as a father. He seemed genuinely happy then. I was much older when he contacted me one day. I was playing video games, when, out of nowhere, he messaged me from the digital world. We spoke even less after Zoe was born, but this time was tonally different. I was seventeen, capable of carrying an adult conversation aptly. This opened doors to discussing more “real” topics I suppose. His rhetoric was melancholy and nostalgic as the conversation carried on. Eventually, we only talked about Dad. “I remember when Dad took us quad riding. He was always trying to make me laugh. He had problems, but he loved us.” I stammered a weak affirmation, and a pause to our conversation was created as we ran out of things to say to each other.

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It seems that the knot in my chest returned at that moment. Afterall, we hadn’t talked for years. His behavior felt different, as if he were reviewing his life. He was struggling with depression and bipolarism for most of his life, both were a courtesy of our father.

It was hard to tell whether he was in his “up” or his “down” phase, so emotions were often a mixed bag. At times he would be eager to make reparations with our side of the family and reconnect. At others he would distance himself from us, receding into a pit of sorrow reinforced only by alcohol and drugs.

Once we resumed talking, we talked about life, death, happiness, sadness, the works.

At one point in the conversation, he asked me something odd: “So you don’t remember Dad at all?”, to which I replied “Nope”. “That’s sucks.” Scottie replied. “He would have liked you.” I wanted to respond indignantly to this, somehow that would make me feel more assured he understood I felt no connection to the past he knew. I couldn’t even count at the time, much less understand familial bonds as all of the trauma was occurring. I didn’t want to be compared to a man such as my father, a complete stranger. It felt wrong somehow. After all I never wanted to know him. Scottie never let go of Dad’s death, neither did Stephanie. Thus, I think this was all he wished to talk about, even with Zoe now in his life. He could never let go. I believe that his memories of our father were a nostalgia that left Scottie wanting more love and affection. He cherished his version of our father, so when Dad passed there was a vacuum left in his place. It is possible he wished only to share this moment of nostalgia with someone. I can only imagine.

The next morning, I was at my computer in the kitchen. Spencer, who was in our room, began screaming. “He’s dead!”. My mother ran from the kitchen to calm him as best she could and to see what was happening. Apparently, Spencer was notified about Scottie’s death by social media; Scottie had shot himself in his room that very morning, the day after our conversation. In shock, I returned to my monitor, but instead I looked at the wall behind it. I stared frozen in time at this blue wall that was covered with family photos. They helped me escape from the dreadful news for a moment: smiling babies and family pets, Christmas photos, all happier times I do not remember. Why did Scottie reach out to me last night before doing something so final? Why didn’t he tell me he was in pain? As my mother returned to the kitchen table with her coffee in 58

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hand, tears welled up in her eyes. I pulled up the conversation we had the night before.

I felt alone as I examined what was possibly Scottie’s final conversation with another person.

I did not go to the funeral. Spencer urged me to do so, but I thought of my sister’s funeral, of facing Zoe, and my confidence crumbled. I could not go through that.

Perhaps a stronger man could, but the strength required to face those who knew him evaded me. The sadness and guilt I felt was familiar, but it came only from my inability to care. So, I could not go.

During that once nonchalant visit where I met Stephanie, I also got to know Scottie a little. He would take his smoke breaks alone, but one time, he asked me to come out with him. The night was an unusually brisk one. It would be five minutes before I could no longer feel my nose. As the smoke left his lungs and faded into the starry sky, he told me, “School is important, and I hear you aren’t going.” He continued, “Don’t fail at life like I did. Make something of yourself. You have to keep going.” I quietly nodded, like a scolded schoolboy. Watching the stars fogged by smoke, I listened to his lecture, broken up by long inhales. My neck was cranked upward, unwilling to look at my now fatherly brother. He was referring to my phobia of public school. I could never handle the pressure of in person academic learning and did all I could to stay away from public school. I think about his words on occasion since they were more sincere than most of our interactions. At the time I resented the words Scottie was saying. After all, he wasn’t the first to plead with me to succeed in life. I was only eight or so, and I was failing all of my classes. Everyone around me was always urging me to do better. I think he was doing the same, but his lecture meant nothing to me. All I could truly focus on was the filter in the pool shuttering in the water, the stars in the sky, and how annoying the smoke smell was. After all, who was he to tell me such things, I thought. Now I know he was right, but I didn’t care at the time. A man I didn’t know was telling me how to live. So I remained mute, in an angered, subtle defiance to what he was telling me. I couldn’t respect his words then, but I often wonder what I would have said to him now that I do. A simple “how are you?” Would I have asked him what he was feeling? Back then, I simply neglected his sympathy, impatiently wanting to go back inside.

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I wish I could have shouldered Scotty’s depression. In hindsight, I was too young.

Maybe I didn’t know him or Stephanie, but I don’t think that changed my desire to help them. I was in a place to help someone that needed me, and I didn’t do anything.

When I think about that moment, the night before he died, I wish I could tell myself to dig deeper into his problems. Not just for his own life, but for his child as well. Maybe I could have been the person to push him into action. However, when I look back at it all, I was just so scared. I was terrified to uncover Scottie’s wounds, to learn more about him. I wanted to run away from him and all that he harbored. Now I am haunted by that inaction. I tell myself that there was nothing Spencer or I could have done, but I know that’s not true, it was my fear. And I know the regret I feel will never leave me. I feel it.

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Vortex 2021 Short Story I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story ~ Annie Proulx The short story is an imploding universe.

It has all the boil of energy inside it. A novel has shrapnel going all over the place.

You can have a mistake in a novel. A short story has to be perfect. ~ Colum McCann Like some kind of particularly tenacious vampire the short story refuses to die, and seems at this point in time to be a wonderful length for our generation. ~ Neil Gaiman “Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.” ~ Margaret Atwood Short Story

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“The Curandero” Adrian Villarreal – First Place It was too late. The Aloe Veras and Agaves in terracotta pots sat droopy and on the verge of decay. It was too late. There was nothing Maya loved more than her plants – not even me. I mean, I was probably a close second. We’d been dating six months now.

She trusted me. Trusted me enough to let me crash at her place while she was gone on vacation for a month. All I had to do was watch over her plants and make sure they didn’t die. Easy enough, right? And yet here they were, arms wrinkled and sagging like a body with no bones.

Truth be told, I hadn’t neglected them, I had forgotten all about them. Forgotten how each was inherited from Maya’s dead aunt. Forgotten that they were from a linage that spread three generations back, plants that were originally propagated from the garden of Maya’s great-great grandmother in Sonora, México.

“Remember to talk to them,” Maya had told me as she pressed her finger into the pot of the Agave to check the dampness of the dirt.

“You want me to talk to myself in front of these plants?” I asked.

“Any sort of company is good. Just talk to them, and if it starts to warm up again, please bring them inside.” She rolled the wet soil between her finger and thumb.

I took Maya’s warning with little caution. I had returned the following day with a bottle of tequila to replace what we’d drained that weekend along with a pot of Mexican Marigolds for an altar with photographs of people who looked like Maya. I placed the pot of marigolds next to the skull candies painted pink, “to remind us of our mortality” Maya had explained to me. Sticks of incense were placed in a bowl at the bottom of the altar to carry her prayers. Near the bowl was a small hill of salt my grandma once told me was meant to purify the spirits. Papel picado, confetti paper, hung from the ledge of the altar in bright colors. The smiling suns, doves, and flowers were symmetrically cut with Maya’s steady hands. An unopened pack of smokes, fresh 62

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nugs of marijuana, a pair of black high heels, a glass coke bottle, a basket of assorted fruits, a Sandra Cisneros novel, and bottles of Modelo, Victoria, and other Mexican imports were laid out on the altar as offerings for the dead relatives who would visit Maya at the end of the month. I placed the shooters that came with the bottle on the altar and poured us all a drink.

The early autumn sun had been delicate and unexpectedly gentle that day as it plunged into the distant horizon. The summer season seemed to be coming to an end as the valley had experienced for the first time in months two consecutive days of sixtydegree weather.

But by midweek, the triple digits had returned. I awoke late one morning in a puddle of sweat thinking I’d pissed myself. The sun refused to ease its grip. I remembered Maya’s warning. Perhaps she was just being cautious. She was a meticulous woman.

There were plants of the same species buried in the red earth that still managed to grow despite the merciless southwest sun. I had convinced myself her domesticated plants would be fine, but I was wrong.

So here I was, three weeks later. I knew only something drastic could bring them back to life within a week: Señora Soledad. She was a healer of sorts, with unorthodox remedies drawn from different practices. She had a thriving business she ran from the back of her house and was always booked a month out with never any time for emergency appointments. Lucky for me, I was Señora Soledad’s grandson. I picked up the phone and gave her a call.

“Angel, I’m in the middle of a consultation. What is the matter?” I could barely hear over the chirping of her caged canaries.

“Forgive me, Abuela, but these plants, they’re dead, they’re all dead. I’ve killed them.

What do I do to bring them back?”

“Just go and buy new ones,” she said.

“They’re my girlfriend’s plants. She left me in—” “Girlfriend?” The birds went quiet at the sound of her strained voice.

Seventeen, twenty-five, forty-one. It didn’t matter what age I was or would be, the Short Story

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harshness in which my grandmother said girlfriend was and would always be the same.

I couldn’t blame her though for being overprotective. I was her only grandchild.

“Yes, Abuela, girlfriend. I’ll explain to you later.”

“How bad are they?” she asked, as if the topic of lovers had never come up.

“They’re the saddest plants I’ve ever seen.”

“All right, this is what you’ll do. Grab a knife and make small incisions all throughout the arms of the plants, but not too deep, okay? Use the blade I gave you. I had it blessed.

Now, you have a bottle of mescal, yes?”

Tequila, mescal, what’s the difference? There was only the bottle I brought. It would have to do. “Yes, of course,” I said.

“Okay, find a black cloth and dampen it with the mescal. Then, very carefully, press the wet cloth against the arms of the plants.”

“That’s it?” I asked. Was magic really this easy?

“Let me finish, Angel. As you press the cloth against the arms, keep that—” She paused for a moment, then, “keep that woman in your thoughts and remember to whisper affirmations to the plants—” “Easy.”

“— En Español, Angel. These are Mexican plants, no? They are dying because you do not speak to them in Spanish.”

“You know they will not understand me.” I could barely speak the language.

“Try.” Her voice firm, the canaries began to sing again.

“And Angel, one more thing: After you finish with a plant, take a sip of the mescal before going on to the next one.”

“A pull from the bottle?”

“Yes, take a drink. You must dry up in order for them to flourish. You are the perpetrator after all, no? Now, tell me her address. You’ll need me for the final phase.”

My grandma was the first of her kind in the family. Back in México when Señora Soledad was only a young girl, the pueblo’s local healer, a curandera, took her in when

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her parents died. Mamá told me Señora Soledad started practicing then under the apprenticeship of the curandera. As a kid, I watched her work, but I was not allowed to learn. The healing hands of my grandmother could only be passed down to the women of our family. Mamá learned the practice, but eventually left home to study at the university and became a nurse instead. Being born in the States changes things. The craft would then have to be saved for Señora Soledad’s granddaughter, a granddaughter that never came. Mamá was never able to carry past her first trimester after I was born, let alone keep a man that could withstand La Señora.

An hour later, there was a sharp knock on the door.

“You only call when you need something, muchacho,” said Señora Soledad as I opened the door. Her eyes squinted, she kissed me on the check and handed me the big black bag that hung from her shoulder as she stepped inside. Her head full of bright grey hair hung neatly braided down her back.

“Jesus, what do you have in here, stones?”

Señora Soledad waved her hand as if to clear a mosquito from her face. A thin finger near her temple held the silence of the room as she examined the photographs up on the wall. She readjusted the glasses on the bridge of her nose and gazed at the gold frame placed above all the others. The photo contained a woman in a pinstriped dress with a belt of bullets around the midriff. Another belt crossed her chest. The leathered butt of her rifle rested on the cobblestone in front of her feet while her extended right hand held the end of the long barrel. Señora Soledad bowed her head before the altar and crossed herself, then lit Maya’s incense.

“You let the plants die in front of her?” she said in a low whisper. “Pour the woman another shot. She’s thirsty.”

Señora Soledad took a seat on the balcony bench and went straight to work. She pulled out two prayer candles: one with Our Lady La Virgen De Guadalupe, her hands clasped together, looking down with her sleepy eyes. The other had a skeleton dressed in black holding a scythe, posing like the Virgin. Señora Soledad looked up at me and pulled the half-burned cigarette from my mouth.

“What did I tell you about smoking?” Her inked eyebrows bent inward toward the Short Story

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bridge of her nose as she put the cigarette in her mouth and took a drag that sucked in her cheeks.

“Better you than me, eh?” She winked, then used the cigarette to light a hemp wick.

The wick then lit La Virgen.

“Take this and burn the tips of the arms of all the plants.” She handed me the candle.

The tequila began to settle on my eyelids, making them heavy as the stones in Señora Soledad’s black bag. I let out a deep sigh.

“Her name is Maya, Abuela, and we’ve been taking things slow.” Smoke rose from the charred thorns of the Century plant.

She didn’t look up from the concoction of dark herbs and powders she was crushing with a tejolote, a volcanic stone, wrapped in a thin white cloth.

“We met online,” I continued.

Señora Soledad’s face contorted into a frown.

“Online? Have you met her in person?” She looked around the balcony with suspicious eyes.

“Of course we’ve met. How do you think I got in here?”

Señora Soledad stopped pressing down on the ingredients.

“And why have you waited this long to tell me about the girl?”

“I wanted to be sure.”

Señora Soledad turned her head to look through the sliding glass door towards the altar in the living room. “You brought her ancestors the marigolds from the garden.”

Since I was a boy, Abuela and I had planted marigolds in her garden every spring. I still remember the fear in my heart when she told me these orange suns would guide her Mami and Papi back from the dead.

“I want to surprise her when she returns from her trip.”

She nodded.

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“Maya. What a pretty name.” Her voice was as warm as a sarape on a cold winter night.

When I finished with the tips of the arms, she handed me the cloth that was wrapped around the stone.

“Use this to wipe down the plants,” she said.

Señora Soledad followed behind me and sprinkled the powders in her molcajete, a bowl made of basalt rock, on the plants. She spoke in a hushed tone, sharing secrets only she and the plants could know. She then lit the candle with the skeleton on it. The flame blazed blue like a gas stove burner.

“Bring the plants in tomorrow at dawn.” She eased herself back onto the bench. I set an alarm every five minutes from six to six-thirty. I wasn’t taking any more chances.

“You know, the Aztecs believed that when a warrior died in battle, its toyolia, the earthly spirit of the heart, reincarnated into a hummingbird.”

I smiled, thinking of how many times I’d seen those tiny birds gracefully darting through the air, not realizing I was being greeted by an ancestral warrior. I thought of Maya’s great-great Abuela up on the altar.

“That earthly fighting spirit in the heart, it is in you and me both, Angel. Don’t you forget that.” She patted me on the hand then squeezed it with all her mighty Abuelita strength.

“So, are we done?” I asked.

“Yes. Now go bring me that bottle.”

I closed the sliding door behind me and lit the candles on the altar. The faint light flickered on the face of the Adelita, the warrior woman. I stared into her eyes. I wanted to feel her gaze. I wanted to feel her presence. I wanted to believe the drinks I poured would be drunk by her.

“Forgive my lack of attention to your dear plants, Adelita.” I picked up the bottle, took a pull, and poured her another.

When I stepped outside, I handed it to Señora Soledad.

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“Angel, this is not mescal.”

“I know. I fucked up. I thought tequila would work just fine.”

She scoffed, took a quick sip, then exhaled deeply.

“The plants will rot.”

The weight of her words settled on my heart like dirt on a coffin.

“The arms will be dead by tomorrow, but the root, the root will survive.”

“Oh, thank god,” I said relieved.

No, Angelito, thank me.”

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Pinnacle Peak Giant

Joanne Gallery

Medium: Acrylic Size: 20”x20”

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“Dismissal” Kristina Morgan – Second Place Frances lives off campus with a roommate, Gail. They’re both freshman. They hooked up a couple of weeks before classes started at a fraternity party. The fraternity house was an abandoned cathedral with spires and all.

They both loved smoking weed and found the same corner in the main room of the fraternity house to light up. Sitting Indian style on the red carpeted floor they watched the party as they got high. The party was out of control. People were falling over drunk. One guy was walking around with a bucket vomiting into it while trying to have conversations with several young women. He’d say “hello,” and vomit. “How are you?” and vomit, and string together a couple of sentences before vomiting again.

There were two nearly naked guys dancing on top of a glass table with two naked girls. No one seemed bothered by this.

“So what’s your name?” Frances asked.

She took a large hit off her joint, and her name came out as a squeak. “Gail.”

Frances blew out smoke. “Frances. I’m a freshman.”

“Me too,” Gail said They were screaming just to hear each other. The music echoed around the room.

People were dancing to Van Halen’s Jump.

“I need a roommate,” Gail shouted.

“And I need a room,” Frances shouted back.

“Cool.”

“How far are you from campus?” Frances asked.

“A ten minute fucking walk,” Gail said.

“Perfect. When can I come check it out?” Frances asked.

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That was the beginning of Frances and Gail. In their dope daze they were somehow able to exchange phone numbers. Gail pulled a pen from her purse, and they scribbled on rolling paper.

Gail would be the first person to see Frances’s decline into darkness. Frances shared with Gail that first night that she didn’t feel like she fit anywhere. In her stoned haze, she told Gail that her parents had thrown her into school at the last second with the hope that the structure of studies would place her on the right path. Her parents were concerned about her dope smoking and the many guys that streamed in and out of Frances’s life. They felt like they needed to amputate her behavior and attach a new way of being in the world, making that her focus.

It was a two bedroom, two bath apartment. Frances loved the concrete floors. They were a purple glazed color. Frances’s room was empty with a mirrored closet door and a window looking out into a courtyard of green bushes and red brick.

The main floor contained a long, floral couch, a brown leather chair with an ottoman, light oak coffee table and a large screen television.

“Wow. Check it out,” Frances said. “That’s a fucking awesome TV.” “Right. 58 inches,” Gail replied.

Over the following months, Frances learned that Gail disliked talking. Frances didn’t mind this. She enjoyed quiet after a day of noise. The campus rocked sound. It seemed a different band played on every corner. Students were loud in their effort to have conversation heard over the music. Frances wouldn’t miss this.

Frances’ older sister, Abby, had recently graduated with a BA in English and Education from Stephens’ College in Columbia, Missouri. She’d moved home to Phoenix after graduation, taking a job as an English teacher at Mountain View High School. She taught three classes of sophomores, a class of juniors, and a class of seniors.

She went to school dressed in a navy blue skirt with a navy blue jacket, looking less like the wallflower than she ever had. She was radiant. She wore a moon shaped pendant. It hung free in the dip of her throat. Occasionally, she would touch it when her steady voice seemed to get stuck on her tongue, which didn’t happen often. The students could attest to this. The students pulled every sound she had out of her as she Short Story

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stretched in front of them, giving them Shakespeare and Whitman, breaking down words and meanings into sugar cubes that dissolved on their tongues.

She replenished herself in the baths she took at night. She’d try to relax as the fish swam in their bowl, the bananas rotted on the counter, and the alley cats had sex outside her back door. It was the end of another sixteen hour day, but she didn’t regret the length of her work. She wanted to teach teenagers more than she wanted a lover or a fancy burgundy bedroom with light wood floors.

Having students helped nurture Abby’s need to feel like she was making a difference although they stole time that she would otherwise give to Frances. Abby worried about Frances as if she was a toddler trying to climb out of her crib and enter a world she was unprepared for. Ironically, Abby was the one who taught Frances how to climb out.

Gail realized that Frances had not opened a book for weeks. Gail figured that Frances must have dropped her morning classes as Frances never made it out of bed before one in the afternoon.

I’m not her gatekeeper, Gail thought. Or her mother.

Gail wondered if she should call Abby and let her know she was concerned. Gail knew from listening to Frances that she thought her sister was a better mother to her than her actual mother.

Gail pushed up her white framed glasses with her middle finger. They were always sliding down her nose. It was quiet in the apartment except for Fancy Pants clawing on the twine of her beloved pole. The cat made her way to Gail.

“No food for another hour,” Gail said. “Six o’clock. You know the drill. How’d we end up with a cat when we’re both dog lovers? Huh, Fancy Pants? Can you answer that question?”

Frances wasn’t too concerned with the morals her parents attempted to instill. She found that many of them led to boredom. She didn’t want a conventional life. And she wanted to be rich. She saw college as the first step to a conventional life, to be followed by work in the boring mainstream, then marriage, then children, and living in the same house and driving the same boring car. Frances lived to fly. She knew a job, a husband, and a child would prevent her from doing that.

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Frances entered the dimly lit coffee house named Stray Dog. It was named that because the owner found a stray dog in the dumpster while the café was being renovated. Chi Chi had prosthetics on each leg. Whoever put her in the dumpster had tied her legs so tight with twine that the blood flow to her limbs had stopped, thus the need for amputation and the prosthetics. Frances took a seat away from the door and opened a composition book. She had just started keeping a journal. She had heard it was a great way to have a conversation with the self.

Dear Journal, Frances here. I’m sitting at a coffee house writing this with a jacket on even though it’s a typical Arizona day of 111 degrees. They always blast the air conditioner here. I tried at one point to quit coffee, which I did for four months. Then I came back to it. It helps me focus plus I really love the taste and smell of it. So I spend $80 a month on it.

Oh well.

As you know, this is my second journal entry ever. The reason I write at a coffee house is because if my roommate knew I was keeping a journal she would tease me about being a new age sissy. She thinks introspection is an airy-fairy thing. This belief keeps her talking about boys, clothes, and the weather. No shit. She’s a walking mannequin.

I must say I envy her money, though. Her parents are not only paying for her college and housing but are giving her $2000 a month for spending money. I get no allowance and have to pay for my own housing because I’m living off campus. My parents really wanted me in the dorm or a sorority house. They think to really experience college a person needs to live in one of those two places. If I had chosen to live in one of those two places, they would have paid for my housing. There is a little gnat flying around in here. It’s bugging the hell out of me.

I love marijuana. When I first smoked it, I knew it was the thing missing from my life. It takes away my anxiety and puts me at peace. All is right in the world. My sister tried it and said all it did for her was make her paranoid. She sat in a corner, rocking back and forth. I told her she just smoked it wrong.

I have made the decision not to return to class. I hung in there for half a semester.

That’s long enough to know I don’t want anything to do with it. I hate being a starving Short Story

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student.

My cell is ringing. Do I answer it? Put my writing on pause? Hold on…

It’s her dad. Frances knows right away something is wrong because he doesn’t call her Frannie.

“Frances. Do you remember Gary Hopper?” he asks.

“I do. He’s the one who gave me a baby doll on my tenth birthday. I remember because I really wanted that Chrissy Doll. Still don’t know how he knew to get it,” Frances says.

“Me. I told him. He was like an uncle to you,” Dad says.

Frances doesn’t say anything. She takes a sip of her coffee and notices she’s dragging her pen across her paper in a weird doodle.

“He saw you,” Dad says. “You hear me?” Dad raises his voice. “He saw you, Frances.”

“What are you talking about?” she asks although she knew what he was talking about. She sat up straight in her chair ready for the fight. He is more than pissed.

You’re doing peep shows,” he states.

“And what business is this of yours?” she asks which pisses him off even more.

“I’m your father. It is my business.”

“I’m eighteen.”

“I don’t give a damn. You’re a college student, by god,” he emphasizes student.

“By god I’m soon not to be. I might as well tell you now. I’m dropping out.”

“Dropping out so you can pimp yourself ?”

“I dance. Seductively. And what is Uncle Gary doing at peep shows?”

“Who gives a fuck about that,” Dad says.

“He’s married with a wife and kids,” Frances says.

“Just stop, Frances,” Dad’s voice is still loud and piercing.

“There’s nothing else to say, Dad.” 74

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“There’s –“ “I’m hanging up, Dad. Letting you know that. Please, don’t call me back,” Frances hangs up.

Within seconds, her phone rings again. She silences it and places it on silent so the ring tone can’t be heard again. She doesn’t know when she will talk to her father again and she doesn’t care.

Dear Journal, I don’t mind dancing naked in front of a window that only reflects me in the small, barren room that acts as my workstation. There’s a lot of money to be made. The customer pays $200 to watch me for fifteen minutes. I make $150 for every fifteen minutes I dance. I am going to buy that baby blue Corvette. It symbolizes freedom and wealth. Both of which I’m hungry for.

My father rages and my mother’s a drunk. They aren’t exactly good role models. Mom still dresses like a teen. Mini skirts and see through blouses. I dress the same. And I can see me in Mom. Black hair to the waist, 5’10” inches tall, slender with a big bust, green eyes, high cheek bones, and a little nose. I’m glad I don’t have her ears. Her ears stick too far out. She’s told me she hears better because of it. I don’t believe her.

The last time my dad got mad at me is when he found me in bed with Steve. Naked.

It was obvious we’d had sex. My parents weren’t supposed to return from their vacation until the next day. It wasn’t my fault they came back early. I thought my dad was going to murder Steve right then and there. Instead, he just shouted “out” and left the room. I didn’t know someone could dress as fast as Steve dressed.

So, I am in deep shit. I’m glad they’re in Ohio.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Frances said. She took a seat at the kitchen table. “I didn’t invite you to come over.”

“I got a call from both Gail and Dad. Gail tells me you’re not going to class, and Dad tells me you’re doing peep shows,” Abby said.

“Fuck them both for getting into my business.”

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Abby pulled up a seat at the kitchen table across from Frances. “So what is it? What are you doing?”

“None of your business. I don’t want your love or concern, Abby, so fuck off. I’m telling you to leave.”

Abby paused, then stood, “I’ll be in touch.”

“Don’t bother.”

Abby didn’t start her car right away. She sat still except for one hand unrthymically tapping on the steering wheel. Abby didn’t think she asked much of Frances. All she wanted was for Frances to be sober, at least, until this. Now she wanted Frances to be sober and lead a clean life. There was no virtue to be had by flaunting sex, by dancing in peep shows. Abby wondered if she hadn’t been so consumed by teaching, could she have seen Frances veering off.

Frances just got done telling her to fuck off. How could she drop her sister like a baby bird pushed out of the nest, vulnerable to someone stepping on it?

Is Frances insane, Abby thought. “My baby sister is a stripper,” Abby said this out loud and put the car into reverse. She pulled out of the driveway and made a silent vow to stay away even though all her instincts were telling her that Frances was is serious trouble.

A week after hanging up on her father, Frances remained grateful that he hadn’t flown to Phoenix and shown up at her door. But then how would he, Frances had never shared her address with him. Maybe Abby was withholding it from him. Or maybe he simply doesn’t care, Frances thought.

Frances shook gloom from her mind and walked into the showroom of the Chevy dealership. Her Vette was there. She’d managed to save $20,000 as a down payment and would claim she made $4000 every two weeks in tips bartending at a ritzy hotel. One of Gail’s friends sold cars for a living and told her that they really had no sure way to know if you were lying about your income or not.

Dressed in Gucci, wearing some flashy heels with a Prada purse, and oozing confidence, Frances made her way to one of the sales associates before he made his way 76

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to her.

She stretched out her hand in greeting, “Frances.”

“Bob,” the salesman said.

“Well Bob, I’m here to buy that car,” she pointed at the baby blue Corvette.

Bob beamed, “I would love to help you with that.”

It was midnight when Frances got to her way to her car in the deserted parking lot.

Everyone seemed to have finished dancing early tonight. The street lamp was buzzing, threatening to go out.

“Hey chickee chickee,” a man’s voice came from behind her.

“What the—“ he swung at her, breaking her nose and dropping her to the ground.

“A pretty thing like you shouldn’t be out her in the dark in this big bad world. You never know who you might meet,” the man said. He picked up her car keys from the concrete where they fell. He opened the door of the Corvette and threw her into the driver’s seat. “I need just a little bit of room, chickee chickee.”

Abby’s phone rang at three in the morning. She fumbled for it on the nightstand. The screen flashed Gail. She answered it. “Gail. I’m done. Please don’t call me about Frances anymore.”

“She’s been raped, Abby.”

The rape had scarred Frances. Her mind has snapped shut. Her heart felt soiled.

During the five hours she’d been in the emergency room she’d had time to think. They’d done a rape kit and had her take a pill to ensure she wouldn’t get pregnant. The nurse offered to send in a social worker to talk with Frances. Frances declined.

Frances wondered if her father would have shown concern had he not been so angry.

She knows Abby is concerned. The peep show building wasn’t in a very good area of town. And she knew that all the clientele weren’t as decent as Uncle Gary. Uncle Gary would never harm anyone, or would he? If he was perverted enough to pay a woman to dance naked, what else might he do?

Dad, she thought, Dad. He had always kept her safe.

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Gail had brought her a pair of blue jeans and an oversized charcoal sweatshirt. She was glad for the loose clothing. She grimaced as she pulled up her jeans but wouldn’t have traded the discomfort for a skirt. She pulled open the curtain separating her from the rest of the emergency beds.

“Let’s go.” Frances walked past Gail. Gail followed behind her roommate toward the glass doors noticing Frances wasn’t as graceful as usual. She usually had a carefree gait with a little swagger of the hips. Now, her steps were deliberate, her hips, still. Her head was up, though, and her shoulders squared. Gail knew she’d be okay.

Frances would phone her father and say, “I need you in my life.” And he would be there. It was that simple.

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Moody Blue

Barbara Goldberg

Medium: Acrylic Size: 24” X 30”

Art

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Vortex 2021 Native Voices and Visions “Though many non-Native Americans have learned very little about us, over time we have had to learn everything about them. We watch their films, read their literature, worship in their churches, and attend their schools. Every third-grade student in the United States is presented with the concept of Europeans discovering America as a “New World” with fertile soil, abundant gifts of nature, and glorious mountains and rivers. Only the most enlightened teachers will explain that this world certainly wasn’t new to the millions of indigenous people who already lived here when Columbus arrived.”

~ Wilma Mankiller “To understand American Indians is to understand America. This is the story of the paradoxically least and most American place in the twenty-first century. Welcome to the Rez.”

~ David Treuer “I write in order to find out what I truly know and how I really feel about certain things.

Writing requires me to go much deeper into my thoughts and memories than conversation does.”

~ Leslie Marmon Silko 80

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“Honoring our Native Voices and Visions” was created to allow an opportunity for American Indian students to share their stories, culture, history and experiences. Each year, Dr. Ana Cuddington, Director of the American Indian Program at Scottsdale Community College, awards scholarships in writing and/or art to winning students.

Scottsdale Community College is located on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and the traditional lands of the Onk Akimel O’odham (Pima) and the Xalychidom Piipaash (Maricopa) people.

If you are a member of a federally recognized tribe and attend SCC, you can submit artwork and writing in the Native Voices and Visions section of Vortex. For more information, contact Dr. Ana Cuddington at ana.cuddington@scottsdalecc. edu or call the American Indian Program at 480/423-6531.

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“The Epic of Earl” Autumn Whitehorse On this journey called life, we all have so many experiences that make us feel pain, sadness, joy, happiness, anger, and so much more. There is no “How To” book with instructions for how we should live our lives. We search for ways to be remember and be remembered. An important part of my journey began with the sudden and unexpected passing of my father, Earl Whitehorse. This loss left me struggling with pain, sadness, and loneliness that I am still working through.

In 1995 my mother, Virginia, thought she had the flu but found out she was pregnant with me instead. When October rolled around, my mother gave birth to me, and my father named me Autumn for the season and Eve for the time of day.

Through the years, my siblings and I looked to him as if he was a superhero because he would do everything in his willpower to give us the best lives we could have. He was kind, helpful, and very unselfish. He showed us how to love by how he treated our mother and us, to continuously help others through kindness, and so much more. There are so many stories that I could. I know I was my dad’s baby. He called me that every day of my life, through a text message or in a birthday cards, and I felt special.

I was born 8 years after my sister and the age difference made it difficult to live up to my siblings because I grew up in a different era than they did. My parents raised us all to be athletic, playing basketball, football, volleyball, baseball and softball. But growing up, I always felt just average at playing sports compared to my siblings. But my mom told me not compare myself to them and to be myself—which was not easy to do. But one day I realized my own calling. I was about 6 years old when I went to the Shonto Rodeo. I fell in love with barrel racing and fast horses, and my interest in rodeo began that day.

I began by using my cousin Jeffery’s horses. Then seeing my passion for rodeo, my father bought me my first horse named Babe. We got along well, and she was a great horse to learn from because she was gentle and followed my commands. But eventually, 82

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I knew I had to get a different horse, one that loved going fast as much as I did. I wanted to win! And again, my dad came through for me with two horses, Sissy and Bunnie. If I said my dad brought two amazing horses into my life, amazing would not do them justice. There is one rodeo I will forever remember in my heart, Yakama Treaty Days in Yakama, Washington. I never won a saddle during my first four years of competing in rodeos, but that was my goal! My parents, sister, Aunt Irene, and I made the long drive to Washington just so I could compete in that rodeo. When I saw the saddle that the Champion Junior Barrel Racer would take home, I could barely breathe; it was so beautiful. I wanted to win that saddle more than anything!

I made my first run in the Junior Barrel Racing, and I won the long go (the first round of the rodeo). The next round was the short go run. Before I went into the arena, my dad was tightening the cinch on my saddle, and I looked him and asked, “What do I need to do, Dad?” He replied, “Just be a little bit faster.” Bunnie and I made our way to the gate and like he said, we were “a little bit faster”--fast enough to win. Bunnie helped me win my first saddle on that day I will never forget. When I trotted out of the gate after that run, I rode up to Dad who was sitting on the fence. My mom was on Sissy. I saw the tears in his eyes because he was so happy and proud of Bunnie and me. Through every accomplishment as well as every heartbreaking loss, he was always there for all of us with his famous line, “All right!” As kids, we never knew what it was like to have an absent father because our dad was ever present for us.

Last year, my parents began to volunteer with the Navajo-Hopi COVID relief group that delivers food and every day supplies to families and elderly who weren’t able to travel to stores because they were at risk of getting COVID or who became sick with COVID, so they were self-quarantining with their families. On the Navajo Nation, not everyone has running water, electricity, or access to certain luxuries. My parents volunteered all through 2020, and they helped people with what they needed—even hauling water for livestock. The luxury of running water is a main concern especially living in a climate that gets up to 105 degrees during mid-summer days. We own a herd of cattle and ranch horses, so we understand the importance of hauling water for livestock especially on hot summer days. My parents would plan out their deliveries wisely, they would take 350 gallons of drinking water for livestock as well as the food Native Voices and Visions

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for those families. If they needed more water, my parents would drive to Page, 30 to 40 minutes away, to get another load of water. They made sure everyone within a 40 mile radius of Kaibeto was taken care of before coming home or they would get at the crack of dawn the next day to finish where they left off.

On December 1st, my sister took my father to be tested. While he waited at home for his test results, he did what he could to help heal my mom. He got herbs that were believed to help with COVID, he got an overpriced heater to keep the travel trailer warm for my mom, and most of all, he prayed so hard for my mom to heal. Two days later, he received a phone call, and he was told that he was positive for COVID too.

He didn’t show symptoms for a couple days, so he went out walking, drank tea, went into the sweat lodge, and drank a lot of water. But as the days went on, he started to worsen. He coughed a lot, slowed down on drinking his water, laid on the couch more, and lost his taste and smell. At this point, my sister and I were doing the best we could to take care of our parents. My sister cared for my mom the majority of the day, and I took care of my dad. But then my mom began to worsen. She wasn’t able to keep down any liquids, and so she eventually got dehydrated and had to be taken to the emergency room twice. The second visit to the ER, she had to stay longer because she needed oxygen and antibiotics. The days that my mom was hospitalized, my dad worsened. He lay in bed more, he slept more, he hardly ate or drank liquids, he didn’t leave his room.

He was struggling.

Honestly, a serious fear of losing him began to settle in my heart. I begged him to sit up, and he would tell me, “Baby it hurts to be awake. The coughing takes a lot out of me.” His condition worsened, so my sister took him to the ER. She watched him walk for the last time. Every day that he was in the hospital, I would text him to check up on him. On December 10th I wrote him, “Good night Daddy. I love you. Keep getting stronger.” He replied, “Feeling better,” and little did I know that was last text I would ever get from him. A couple of days later, the doctors believed that he needed more help than they could give him, so they decided to fly him to the Del E Webb Memorial hospital in Surprise. Once he flew out and was admitted, he was sedated. We called the hospital every single day to get an update on his condition. The nurses and doctor had so much faith that he would heal, and they believed he was going to be released the 84

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second weekend. We could not have known he wasn’t going to make it.

Two days before he passed, I had a dream of him. We were at a rodeo, and my boyfriend and I were chasing the calves down the return ally to where my sister and her boyfriend were. As we were walking behind the calves, I looked up into the stands and saw him sitting next to my mom. I ran towards my parents and asked my dad, “When did you get back? Why didn’t you call us to pick you up?” He replied, “I just got back from Phoenix. The doctor said I’m all better now, so I called mom to pick me up. I told her to not to call you girls because you guys were busy with the cows and calves.” I said, “Ok dad, I’m happy you’re home, but you still should have called us.” The last thing he said to me before I woke up was, “All right, you go take care of the calves. I love you baby,” and he gave me one of his big ole daddy hugs. I woke up crying because my dad always called me baby no matter how old I was. The dream gave me a glimmer of hope that he was going to recover from COVID and come home to us.

Within the next couple days, his health took a serious turn for the worse. Two days after my dream, we were scheduled to FaceTime with him, and the nurse told us he was fully sedated, but he could still able hear us. As we were talking to him, I had this gut feeling that this could be the last time I would I talk to my dad. I didn’t want to feel that feeling, and I didn’t want to think about it, so I fought it the whole time we were talking to him. Towards the end of the call, the nurse told us that as a family we needed to make a decision about what was best for my dad, but I knew that being the man he was he would make his own decisions. And he did. Once we got off of the phone with him and the nurse, we stayed on Facetime with my brothers. At first, no one said anything. Then I spoke. “I don’t want to be the first one to say it, but I think we need to let Dad go. Everyone was living their lives when he broke his leg, and I was the one home with him every day. He wasn’t himself. He is so independent that I could see he didn’t like how his youngest had to take care of him. He didn’t like being handicapped and unable to do anything for himself. I don’t want to see him struggle every day now because we are too selfish to let him go. He deserves not to suffer. As much as we all don’t want to let him go, we have to if not for ourselves but him.” My family cried as they spoke, but we knew we had to let him go.

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louder each day. I wander in my thoughts and memories searching for my dad. I know I am waiting for him to come home, and the pain is a churning in my gut that never stops. I am only 25 years old, and I have lost my maternal grandmother, maternal and paternal grandfathers, uncles and the memorable horses whom I loved. I feel I have lost so much in my life. At night, I lay in bed wide awake because the house feels so quiet. It feels like we are all waiting for him. I wonder how God could take someone so unselfish, kind, and loving. I know I should not question God’s intentions but I do. My dad caught COVID because he was doing everything in his power to help those who were weak and needed help the most.

And I feel so guilty for letting this happen to my dad. It is hard to come to terms with his passing because it is hard coming to terms with what we could have done to save him. I think of everything I should have done as a daughter and I cry and say, “I’m sorry dad. I’m sorry this happened. Daddy, you are the best person to ever walk this earth, you were the best father and grandfather, and I love you.” I would give up everything to have one more day with him. And when my mom cries, I wish I could comfort her and make her feel better. All my life, I’ve always seen my parents together; there was never a moment in life that they weren’t together. But lately, I have a feeling he is still right there beside her.

Every day since his passing, I battle the feelings of being lonely, lost, and confused about life. I wonder who I am without him. I always went to my dad for everything, from air in my tire to help with homework. He made sense of every little thing. Now I feel lost not being able to turn to him for help. For me, this journey is just now beginning because, for the rest of my life, I will be learning to do things without him.

But I remember him telling me that we never stop learning. And although I have lost my dad, I have gained the gift of knowing what a man among men he was to all our family: grandfather, uncle, husband, son, and most of all, as my dad. My dad always believed that I could do anything. Whenever I felt defeated, he always told me “We wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t do it.” Now, I reflect on his words and think, “I would not be at this point in my life if my dad didn’t think I could live life without him.” And I want to continue to make him proud of me.

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“Finding Peace” Seneca Peters FADE IN: INT. CAR - DAY SEAN (30s) and ELAINE (60s) drive through a Phoenix area neighborhood. Both are dressed in black...funeral attire. Sean stares blankly out the open window, his mind far away. Elaine drives with a concerned look. She glances as Sean wanting to say something, anything, but she can’t bring herself to.

EXT. DRIVEWAY - CONTINUOUS The car pulls into a driveway and parks. Sean looks longingly at his house. The ghosts of his WIFE (30s) and young DAUGHTER (7) play in the yard. He hears their laughter as they chase each other on the grass. Their squeals of happiness fade away with their ghosts. The yard is empty and so is Sean. Sean opens the door and steps out of the car. He says nothing, just walks towards the house. Elaine steps out too.

ELAINE Sean...

Sean stops and turns.

SEAN Thanks ma.

ELAINE I can stay if..

SEAN No, its fine. I’m...ok.

Elaine knows he’s not but she doesn’t press. She watches as Sean turns and walks towards the house.

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ELAINE Call me soon son. I love you!

Sean doesn’t acknowledge her plea. He opens the door.

INT. LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS Sean closes the door and scans the empty home.

SEAN (longingly) I’m home.

DAUGHTER (O.S.) Daddy!

Sean’s daughter turns the corner and runs towards him with the smile and happiness only a child could express. He kneels and as she jumps into his arms she disappears... her laughter lingering. Sean falls against the door, his eyes clinched in pain and his arms wrapped around emptiness.

DISSOLVE TO: INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT Sean stands at the sink cleaning up after dinner. His frozen pizza box sits on the counter next to a half empty gallon of milk. He grabs his cup from the table and puts it in the sink. He grabs the milk and opens the fridge. As he places it inside he notices the house phone on the counter has a message. He presses the play button and returns to the sink.

PHONE (V.O.) You have 1 message.

Sean carries on arranging the dishes in the sink. He’s lost in thought as the message plays.

WIFE (V.O.) Sean you forgot to charge your phone again.

Sean freezes. The voice of his wife shocks him.

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WIFE (CONT’D) We’re headed to the store...

DAUGHTER (V.O.) Let me, let me.

The phone rustles on the message playback. Sean’s eyes begin to well up.

DAUGHTER (CONT’D) (excitedly) Hi daddy! We’ll be home soon.

Sean hurries over to the phone and picks it up to be closer to the voices on the other side.

DAUGHTER (CONT’D) We need milk and stuff for my lunch.

Love you. Byyyyeee!

WIFE (V.O.) Love you!

The message ends.

(Scene plays out in silence) Sean trembles as his pain boils to the surface. He crumbles to his knees, despair on full display. He’s gutted. He cries out and sobs.

FADE OUT: FADE IN: INT. KITCHEN - MORNING Sean wakes up on the kitchen floor. He sits up, red-faced and still a wreck. He stands a beaten man. Looks around the empty house...he can’t be here right now.

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on the passenger seat floor. He looks at his cell phone which has several messages waiting to be read. He unlocks the phone and opens his mom’s message. He presses a few buttons and then hits the speaker phone. The phone rings and then is answered.

ELAINE (V.O.) Hi son. How are you?

SEAN I’m...I don’t know. But I need to get away. I’m going for a drive, just wanted to let you know.

ELAINE (V.O.) (worried) Where?

SEAN North somewhere. Need to get out of the heat. Gotta go, love you.

ELAINE (V.O.) (with concern) Be careful. Love y...!

Sean hangs up before she can finish talking. Plugs the phone in the car charger and tosses it on the passenger seat. He removes a picture from the backpack he brought with him. He lovingly stares at his wife and daughter. He places the picture where he can see it, takes on last look at the house and sets off.

EXT. HIGHWAY 491 NORTH - DAY Sean’s car passes down the road surrounded by desert. It’s a beautiful day.

INT. CAR - CONTINUOUS Sean listens to music as he drives the open roadway. He looks around as he sips on a 44oz fountain drink. This area is new to him. He sees the Shiprock off in the distance and is clearly interested. He turns left and into the pullover lane on Highway 491 to get a better look.

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EXT. ROADSIDE - CONTINUOUS Sean looks out to the Shiprock and surrounding land. He’s mesmerized. In the distance a vehicle drives down the dirt road close to the Shiprock. He wants to get a closer look too.

EXT. SHIPROCK DIRT ROAD - CONTINUOUS Sean steps out of his car that’s parked on the dirt road. The massive rock towers over the land. He leans against the car amazed. He scans the land and looks over to the wall that extends from the Shiprock. It can be climbed.

EXT. SHIPROCK WALL - CONTINUOUS Sean gets to the top of the wall area and finds a rock to sit on. He looks around both sides. He can see for miles; the town of Shiprock, desert as far as the eye can see and the mountains near Red Valley. He turns to see a Native American man and woman running the dirt path leading to the Shiprock. He waves and they return the gesture.

He finds some peace for a moment and takes it all in. The land is quiet except for the wind.

DISSOLVE TO: EXT. TEEC NOS POS TRADING POST - LATER Sean walks out of the Trading Post with a bag of chips and chocolate milk in hand.

He passes Vurlene, an older Navajo Woman (60s) who’s selling handmade crafts as she weaves a mini navajo rug. He opens the milk and surveys the landscape as he mills around the parking lot. This area brings more peace to his soul. He closes his eyes and takes it in. His peace is broken by the annoyed voice of a younger Navajo man (20s) standing near Vurlene. Sean looks on.

MAN Nali I told you, you can only sell during the week. Saturdays are off limits.

VURLENE Go back inside. I’m not bothering anyone.

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MAN (aggravated) I will call the police if I have to. She laughs at his threat. Sean is surprised at her reaction.

VURLENE (amused) Go ahead! They won’t get here till tonight. I’ll be home watching TV by then.

The man looks over at Sean and shakes his head. He’s giving up.

VURLENE (CONT’D) Go inside and buy me a pickle please.

MAN Get your own pickle. Get a spicy one too...burn your tongue I hope!

Vurlene smiles and continues weaving as the man walks inside. Sean goes back to surveying the land. He looks sad, he wishes he wasn’t here alone to take in the beauty.

Vurlene notices.

VURLENE You lost?

Sean isn’t sure she’s talking to him.

SEAN (confused) I’m sorry.

VURLENE You lost bilagaana? Where are you trying to get to?

Sean has no idea what she just called him but he walks closer to her table.

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SEAN (somberly) I’m... (beat) I’m not sure where I’m going. I just needed to drive.

She stops weaving and notices his sadness.

VURLENE (thoughtfully) So you are lost.

Sean’s chin quivers. He hears his daughter’s laughter in his head.

SEAN Yea...you could say that.

VURLENE Come sit with me.

She points to an empty chair next to her but Sean isn’t sure.

SEAN (politely) Uh...no that’s...

She sits up purposefully.

VURLENE (purposefully) I’m a mom ya know. A grandma, an auntie, a sister...I know when I see someone who needs to sit down for a minute. So sit!

She pats the chair and smiles. Sean gives in and makes his way over.

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VURLENE (CONT’D) Actually, why don’t you go inside first and get me a pickle. The one by the candy counter. Then we sit.

Sean cracks a smile.

VURLENE (CONT’D) A spicy one...if they have them.

Sean heads towards the Trading Post front door.

INT. TEEC NOS POS TRADING POST - CONTINUOUS Sean walks in and spots two large jar of pickles. They are both labeled; REGULAR and SPICY. He heads for the spicy jar. The man from outside is behind the cash register.

Sean brings the pickle in a baggy to the counter.

MAN She suckered you huh. That’ll be $1 but I should charge $5 for her! The man looks out the front window annoyingly and shakes his head as he takes Sean’s dollar.

MAN (CONT’D) She’s so stubborn!

Sean smiles and heads for the door.

SEAN Thanks.

EXT. TEEC NOS POS TRADING POST - CONTINUOUS Sean sits beside Vurlene as she bites into her pickle.

VURLENE (with a mouthful) Mmm...I love a good pickle. Its better with some black cherry koolaid though.

She looks at Sean with a smile. She’s grateful but clearly wants the kool-aid.

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INT. TEEC NOS POS TRADING POST - CONTINUOUS Sean places a black cherry kool-aid packet on the counter. The clerk looks at the packet and stares at Sean in disbelief. Sean shrugs.

EXT. TEEC NOS POS TRADING POST - MOMENTS LATER Vurlene sprinkles her kool-aid on the pickle and takes a juicy bite. She loves it!

SEAN You live out here?

VURLENE (chewing) All my life. It’s home.

SEAN (genuinely) Its...Beautiful.

She nods.

VURLENE Yes it is. Little windy and dusty...but still beautiful.

She takes another bite of her kool-aid covered pickle.

VURLENE (CONT’D) You know why natives don’t smile?

Sean has no idea what to say.

SEAN Uhhh...

VURLENE Cause out here, where the wind never stops, if you smile too much, you end up with a mouth full of sand. Vurlene laughs at her own joke. This makes Sean smile too. He takes in the scene next to him. He’s at peace for now.

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She looks over at Sean’s smile. She puts her pickle back in the baggie.

VURLENE (CONT’D) (curiously) You want to talk about it.

Sean looks up and meets her kind eyes.

SEAN (thoughtfully) I...can’t.

His eyes well up and he looks away.

VURLENE Your heart hurts, I can tell by the way you look at the land. You long for someone.

Sean hears his daughters last words to him.

DAUGHTER (V.O.) Love you! Byyyyeee!!

He turns his head away from the woman to hide his tears.

SEAN Two someones. (beat) My wife and daughter.

Sean looks at Vurlene and wipes his tears.

SEAN (CONT’D) They were kil...

He hesitates to complete his sentence.

SEAN (CONT’D) They’re not here anymore.

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Vurlene takes in his words. She understands his sadness. She grabs his hand caringly.

VURLENE I’m sorry shiyáázh.

Sean isn’t sure what she called him but he knows it was something caring. He doesn’t mind her seeing him cry now as his tears roll down his face.

Vurlene stares of into the landscape.

VURLENE (CONT’D) (thoughtfully) I’ve lost two children. The pain never goes away. But once you embrace it and not let the hurt and your broken hear control you, you can move forward.

Sean internalizes her words. He’s not sure he believes it so soon but he appreciates her thoughts.

A old truck pulls in the Trading Post lot and near the table where they sit. Dust flies in the air and the Vurlene covers her faces with the towel that was in her lap.

The truck driver, an older Navajo man, steps out of the truck, walks around to the tailgate, opens it and walks over to the table. Sean realizes he’s coming over to them.

VURLENE (CONT’D) (in Navajo) Is it already time?

NAVAJO MAN (in Navajo) Yes! Vurlene looks at Sean, smiles and nods.

VURLENE It’s time for this old woman to go home.

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SEAN Oh is this your husband?

The Navajo man laughs.

NAVAJO MAN (thick Navajo accent) No way! This is my crazy sister.

The man notices the pickle in the baggie on the table.

NAVAJO MAN (CONT’D) Did she make you buy her a pickle?

Sean smiles and looks at her.

SEAN Do you always ask strangers to buy you a pickle?

She shrugs as she stands and to fold her chair and prepare to put away her crafts.

VURLENE I always get my pickle!

Sean smiles widely.

SEAN (appreciatively) Thank you for letting me sit with you for a few minutes.

Vurlene stops what she’s doing, grabs a beaded necklace from the table, walks over to Sean and motions for him to bend down.

SEAN (CONT’D) (politely) Oh no...that’s ok. You don’t...

Vurlene furls her eyebrows and motions again.

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VURLENE Shut up and bend down biligaana.

Sean’s eyes bulge at her words, he smiles and obliges. She places the necklace around his neck.

VURLENE (CONT’D) I collected these Juniper Seeds myself. They will protect you from negative forces.

The black seed beads symbolize the journey you will take.

She places a hand on Sean’s chest as tears again roll down his face.

VURLENE (CONT’D) Allow yourself to go on the journey, no matter the pain you will feel.

You will heal in time shiyáázh. Sean stands and examines the beads as she returns to her table and starts to collect her goods.

The Navajo man looks confused but shrugs it off.

SEAN Thank you.

VURLENE Thank you for the pickle and koolaid.

Sean smirks and looks out onto the landscape taking in the beauty of the mesas. She notices his gaze.

VURLENE (CONT’D) I’m here every weekend.

Sean turns his attention to her.

VURLENE (CONT’D) I’ll be here every weekend till the day I die probably. Come back and say hi. Bring your hiking shoes, my grand-kids can show you the way to the waterfall up near the school.

She points off to the northwest. Sean looks and nods his head.

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SEAN (sincerely) I think I will.

Vurlene walks over to Sean and gives him a hug.

VURLENE (caringly) Be careful shiyáázh.

SEAN (curiously) What does that mean?

VURLENE It means...my son.

She stares into his face lovingly, pats his cheek and rests her hand on his shoulder.

VURLENE (CONT’D) He would be about your age by now. Before you drove up and before that bozo in there bothered me, I was sitting here thinking about him. He was a good boy, I miss him and my daughter.

Sean takes in the gravity of her words. He’s grateful he stopped here.

VURLENE (CONT’D) The pain never goes away. But it becomes bearable. You will heal in time my child.

Sean holds back the tears this time and nods.

SEAN I hope so.

She takes a step back and looks West.

VURLENE Now if you drive Northwest for a few hours you’ll get to Flagstaff before it’s too 100

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dark. Hurry, it’s a full moon tonight, never know when the Skinwalkers will be out. She smiles as Sean’s eyes get big, he has no idea what she’s talking about but he doesn’t want to find out. The Navajo man laughs at his expression.

SEAN Thank you again. I’m Sean by the way.

She turns and acknowledges his introduction.

VURLENE Vurlene.

Sean smiles.

VURLENE (CONT’D) Come back and say hi sometime Sean.

Vurlene turns back to her table of jewelry, rugs and other crafts.

VURLENE (CONT’D) But for now you can help me pack this up.

Sean laughs and obliges. Together they slowly put her crafts away.

DISSOLVE TO: INT. CAR - EVENING The glow of the dashboard lights up Sean. His face is filled with sadness but he manages a hint of a smile as he fiddles with his beaded necklace.

EXT. HIGHWAY 160 WEST - CONTINUOUS Sean’s car drives off into the evening surrounded by the beauty of the Navajo Nation landscape.

FADE OUT

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Vortex 2021 Poetry There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either. ~ Robert Graves Poetry is what gets lost in translation. ~ Robert Frost You don’t have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone. ~ John Ciardi “Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don’t know you know.” ~ Adrienne Rich Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift. ~ Mary Oliver

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“Under the Influence of Affluence” Alexia Norton Jones – First Place

East Hampton’s hot August wind, the splintered path among the dunes down from our summer house to the beach.

They looked like movie stars, perfect bodies their laughter and barely there bikinis.

But no one looked like me, I was brown with Afro hair, fourteen years old, invisible, inside my parents’ designer dream home. Interested only in what they wanted.

I hoped for a hug, even one. In the silences I sank into oblivion.

The Hamptons had the beautiful ones.

Tanned boys down One Mile beach, Twenty-four year olds, went to bars, drove sports cars, wore hippie clothes, had mustaches.

I wanted to be with them.

I wanted to be like the girls they craved, lithe, golden, confident, like the one who said, “your friends are your lovers your lovers are your friends.”

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It was 1975. No one asked your age in a bar or in bed.

Those boys knew I was young.

They laughed and called to me, I said, “ Yes, I’ll go, I don’t need permission.”

A walk down the beach to his red MG where everyone gathered, drinking beers, smoking. I liked how he looked at me. Anything to escape my family.

Those boys were smooth, cocky with smiles like they were in a beach movie. They showed me what they wanted and made me feel over and over and over that I was special. Like I was a grown up.

But I wasn’t.

Those sunny places we went to every summer were where our parents could abandon us.

With no questions or rules about where we were, we innocently rushed through our youth.

I know each shame by name.

I know each intimacy by blame.

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Amani

Stephen Hoffman

Medium: Oil Size: 9” X 12”

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“Pressure” Kylie Thesz – Second Place

I woke to your thumbs digging craters into my hips as you tried to pull down my favorite satin froggy prince pajamas.

Tell me: are they really hips if they belong to an eight-year-old girl?

I woke and stared at you; my eyes skinning you with a fear I’d never felt before.

You left.

I should have followed suit but instead let my petrified body experience fight or flight for the first time. Moments later, I watched the door handle turn the same way it always did but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t dissolve into the floor.

You laid behind me and slipped your hands between my beating heart and silky shirt.

Tell me: could you feel the pounding blood rushing through my body?

My brain chose flight— I soared away from you before you could destroy the blossoming blue-eyed, blonde-haired babe with your flame and destruction.

Pressure.

I wake to you inside me.

Pounding.

Beating.

With every push, I feel another piece of my soul fall away.

With every pull, another ache in another limb that must belong To another body.

How could I let this happen again?

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Your morning breath clouds my vision and burns my lungs with the pungent scent of the alcohol I must have drunk the night before.

Your breath brings back the foggy memory of bright lights, pouring rain, and James Bay’s harsh British accent.

Your breath burns holes in my lungs that never seemed to heal properly.

You see, every time I try to take a deep breath, I can feel the fireball and Miller Lite pour into my lungs and I’m drowning in the regret of putting my trust in the hands of a stranger who crushed it in a moment.

Pressure.

My hands are locked behind my back in a vice grip that could kill.

That does kill.

Tell me: do you have what little hope and strength and courage and self-love I had left tucked in an old shoe box under your bed?

Or do you wear her like a prize you won with the claw that left razor blades stuck behind my eyelids?

Tell me.

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“I Watch Her Eat” Nesta Nordskov – Third Place She is not the apple in the tree, forbidden to me as sin is to a saint.

Or a deviant I bring home on holidays to frighten my mother, scrying over turkey bones: find my daughter, bring her back to me.

My hips a harbinger of wasted potential and snide words passed over like bread and butter, they gorge themselves on judgment.

Mother cease your prayers for me, I do not need saving from her.

She is the red-crested sun breaking through the windowpane, calloused fingertips trading secrets with my spine at the dinner table, a subtle luxury.

A hushed murmur between sips of sour wine, she is the seamstress of their gazes embroidered to the breast of her cardigan padded with my head, resting.

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She kisses my temple, and I pray.

This love is not serpentine or my mother’s tear sodden gravy pooled in the mashed potatoes left behind on my plate.

Cutlery prods porcelain— an open mouth, bellyaching anticipation seizes me as I watch her eat what I cannot stomach.

Each forkful of my mother’s sorrows that comes to pass her lips becomes an understanding of what I have always been.

And I am utterly consumed as a slip of gravy spills down her chin, known to her as she is known to me: wholly.

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Sunset at San Tan Valley

Melissa Kennedy

Medium: Digital Photography Size: 7” X 5”

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“I Wrote About My Lovers in My Journal” Kristina Morgan – Honorable Mention

How we sweated belly to belly, our thighs on fire, our mouths searching for what we wanted to keep, fingers tangled in each other’s hair. I remember Gabrielle smelled of mint, Liza was salty sea, and Emma, patchouli.

The summer after I turned eighteen I came home, saw my journal open, my secret revealed. I found my mother in her room, dusting her perfume bottles.

“Why?” I screamed.

“If you can go into my closet for a belt, I can read anything of yours I damn well please.”

She did not turn to look at me, her back flat against me like a stop sign. “I don’t want you here,” she said.

I knew she’d tell Dad. And she did. Over dinner.

“You know how much I hate fags!” he screamed, loud enough to startle our nearly deaf dog.

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What he said meant nothing, but his tone fixed me in his storm of articulation.

Mom cried, “But why do you want to be a boy?”

Silence followed, a thick fog I was lost in.

I could not find my way to say I felt more like a woman when in the arms of one. They shamed me with the only beauty I had.

I moved to a studio. Finally alone, I stared into my face, searching.

I liked what I saw, a smooth forehead, black hair pulled back, lips the color of raw steak, eyes fierce with freedom. Emma lay in my bed, her lean body tucked into mine, her large hands on my shoulders, her whispers repeating all is well.

It was years before my father spoke to me and then it was only about hurricanes and football.

Mom stood by me after getting over her shock.

She even met Emma, complimented her on her makeup and dresses, but who knows if she meant it. She was rarely sober.

Since she has been dead, I write poems about my mother, some are soft with compassion, others throbbing with anger. I still journal, but I keep no secrets. Words are powerful.

I give them away so they cannot be stolen.

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Ultra

Martha Klare

Medium: Acrylic Size: 24” X 24”

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“In the Hills of Asolo” Karina Reginato – Honorable Mention

You should go up to Asolo* a morning of light when the sun in the mountains is still soft.

In summer we hike the hills to the tower listening to the echo of the wind that drew the clouds on your forehead.

The steam spread over the rooftops of the village to the trails that the angel was going through We look for fruits in the forest, some water, flowers of paradise… our names painted on the stones.

In the hills of Asolo the golden angel observes the summer sky, the colored threads of the souls.

Here you only fly with the wings open in immensity. *Asolo- A small city located in the Alps in Italy

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En las colinas de Asolo Hay que subir hasta Asolo una mañana de luz cuando el sol de las montañas aún es suave.

En verano caminamos las colinas hasta la torre escuchando el eco del viento que dibujaba las nubes en tu frente.

El vapor se extendía en los tejados de la aldea hasta los senderos que atravesaba el ángel.

Buscamos frutas en el bosque, un poco de agua, flores del paraíso… nuestros nombres pintados en las piedras.

En las colinas de Asolo el ángel de oro vigila el cielo de verano, los hilos de colores de las almas.

Aquí solo se vuela con las alas abiertas en lo inmensidad.

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“An Open Letter to My Family” Romeo Barrientos – Honorable Mention

Through the streets paved by the tears we shed.

Here I see a place where no one belongs, A ghetto of good and bad, No other place to call home, yet I don’t feel welcome.

Killing each other because they know no other way.

Yet, you kept us away from the damage Out of the pain of these color wars Until I found what I was meant to be.

Meanwhile you ran from it all, with an arrow through each leg Overcoming everything with no reaction and a flame in you Making just enough, but not enough.

For you, I do more than I can every second Once I know you can feel okay Running, hoping I could outrun the life that followed me.

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Everything could be fixed if I just ran from it.

Violent cries like a caged bird without a key Envying the easy life of kids in suburbs Running from the color of my skin, wishing I was born again.

Yet, I see now the purity of brown.

The shattering embrace of the past that created me.

Here I stand over the cracked road, walking.

I hate how much it hurts, yet I walk with a flame in my pocket.

No more running, I live now to be better than the streets made of tears.

Go live free now, I am okay. I promise.

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Old Town Beauty

Steven Soekrasno

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Vortex 2021 Plays and Scripts When you’re writing a screenplay, it’s like you’re dreaming the film for yourself again and again and again until it becomes almost like a memory before you make it. ~ Greta Gerwig Writing a screenplay, for me, is like juggling. It’s like, how many balls can you get in the air at once? All those ideas have to float out there to a certain point, and then they’ll crystallize into a pattern. ~ James Cameron My plays aren’t stylistically the same.

Just being an African-American woman playwright on Broadway is experimental. ~ Suzan-Lori Parks

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The Last Asian Marie Tomisato – First Place

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FADE IN: EXT. SCHOOL - DAY A young Asian teenager, REN (16), enters a school administration building.

INT. SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION BUILDING - CONTINUOUS Ren walks up to the front desk, where an OFFICE MANAGER sits at a computer.

REN Hello, I’m here forOFFICE MANAGER The new math tutor! Come on, I have some stuff for you.

REN Uh, I’mThe office manager hands her a heavy box of paper and gestures down the hallway.

OFFICE MANAGER The kids are this way!

Ren SIGHS as she follows the office manager down the hallway, balancing the stack of papers in her arms.

INT. CLASSROOM - MOMENTS LATER The office manager leads Ren inside the classroom.

At one of the tables sits Ren’s Asian sister GRACE (7), who wears a hotdog costume.

Grace is playing with two white dolls. One wears an outfit like Ren’s, and the other is a blank-faced blonde doll lying on a toy couch.

OFFICE MANAGER Here they are!

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Grace turns around, spotting Ren setting down the box.

GRACE REN! REN Grace! You ready to go?

GRACE One second, I gotta pack up!

Grace stuffs her dolls in her backpack, struggling to fit everything.

Ren looks back at the office manager.

REN That small fry is my sister, so...

Ren walks over to Grace and picks up the miniature couch.

REN (CONT’D) It would be easier to carry your backpack without so many accessories...

GRACE Sasha needs the couch for her therapy sessions. She has bulimia.

Ren blinks, but pushes through.

REN Right. Okay.

Ren helps Grace with her bag and puts out her hand.

REN (CONT’D) Come on, you gotta hold my hand.

Grace SIGHS and begrudgingly sticks out her hand.

Puzzled, the office manager watches as they walk out the door, calling after them.

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OFFICE MANAGER Wait, so you’re not the tutor?

EXT. STREET OF TINY SHOPS - LATER Ren pulls Grace along to the shopping district, but Grace drags her feet, tired and cranky.

GRACE SHOPPING?! No...

REN Don’t be a grumpy pants, it’s unbecoming.

Grace mouths the word “unbecoming” in confusion as Ren continues to tug her along.

REN (CONT’D) I need to buy clothes that don’t scream “tutor.”

GRACE Pretty sure my whole class will always think we sleep with SAT books under our pillows.

Ren GROANS disappointedly and takes Grace over to a clothing store and looks inside.

Bored, Grace glances around, eyeing shops of bikes, cowboy boots, and a window with a Sasha Doll in front.

GRACE (CONT’D) A SASHA DOLL?!

Grace YANKS herself free from Ren’s hand and rushes to the shop’s window REN GRACE, WAIT! Ren scurries after her, but Grace has already shoved herself through the doll shop door.

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INT. DOLL SHOP - MOMENTS LATER Grace squishes her nose against the glass, her eyes reflecting into the green eyes of the Sasha Doll.

GRACE Ren, look! This Sasha is so cool!

REN Yeah! I can see that.

Ren shuffles to the counter, waving at the CASHIER. She pulls out her wallet.

REN (CONT’D) (to the Cashier) Hey, how much is the Sasha doll?

CASHIER Oh those old dolls go for about one, two hundred.

Ren chokes on air and puts away her wallet.

REN Oh! I guess I can be cool another time. Thanks, anyway.

The cashier nods in understanding and pulls out a flyer, sliding it over to Ren. CASHIER Or you can win one. Apparently there’s a doll decorating scene contest coming up.

REN A competition?

CASHIER The winner gets a studio doll.

GRACE A STUDIO DOLL?!

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Grace sprints from across the store and SLAMS her hand on the counter with unbridled intensity. The cashier CHUCKLES. CASHIER That’s right!

GRACE That’s AMAZING! (to Ren) It’s an original doll crafted by Sasha Morgenthaler herself.

Factories only mass produced certain ones, so this is ONE OF A KIND! Ren grabs the flyer with a smirk.

REN We’re entering.

INT. LIBRARY - DAY Ren types furiously on her computer as Grace looks over her shoulder. Grace now adorns large, librarian-like, red rimmed glasses.

REN Each doll scene must fit within the set parameters, present a theme, and feature only one Sasha doll. So you have to choose.

GRACE Choose only one of my small fries!?

REN You’ll have to, if you want to defeat Alice. She won the Sasha Doll Scene Contest for the last three years.

Ren shows Grace pictures of ALICE, an old white lady standing next to her blue ribbons, with a garden, a puppy palace, and a yellow submarine.

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GRACE These scenes are so babyish.

REN Then clearly we have to go for a PG look. Something neutral, cute, that won’t ruffle feathers.

GRACE That completely goes against the history of Sasha dolls, originally made for children of war.

REN What?

GRACE It’s why none of the dolls are smiling.

Grace adjusts her glasses with practiced, performative poise.

GRACE (CONT’D) The original creator, Sasha Morgenthaler, did not think kids processing the traumas of WWII could relate to a doll that was forced to be happy all the time.

REN Oh. That’s-that’s cool!

GRACE We should do a pirate scene!REN No way. We can’t just go nuclear on them.

GRACE What does nuclear mean?

REN It’s like atomic bomb. Like, “go wild.”

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GRACE Oh. Well, what does atomic mean?

REN Uhhhhhh- I’ll tell you later. Let’s look at their group page, see what they like.

INT. HOUSE - MONTAGE -Ren dumps a glue gun, fabric, and other craft supplies on the floor. Grace now wears a toolbelt, dressed like a carpenter.

REN Okay, two of the judges this year are from the UK. So no Brexit commentary.

GRACE UGH! Fine. But does that mean those judges are unbecoming?

REN Not the right context.

-Ren bedazzles a mini cowgirl hat. Grace cuts fur off her dog.

REN (V.O.) They also have a weird cowboy obsession. Horsies are a plus.

-Grace glues dog fur to a bald plastic horse, and ties colored floss around it like barbed wire.

GRACE Remember War Horse?

-Ren opens the trash and throws the floss away.

REN Too long. It has to fit in the specified parameters.

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-Grace GROANS and slumps into glitter, caressing the cheek of her Sasha doll.

EXT. HOTEL - DAY A sign outside the hotel says SASHA DOLL FESTIVAL. A few figures holding Sasha Dolls enter, excitedly talking amongst themselves.

Grace, dressed like a princess, tiara and all, sits in a wagon. She brushes the hair of her doll as Ren lugs her inside.

INT. HOTEL LOBBY - MOMENTS LATER Ren enters the lobby, filled with old white ladies surrounding Alice by the sign-in tables.

Grace and Ren are met with stares. Ren smiles uncomfortably.

REN GraceRen turns to Grace, sticking out her hand to help her out of the wagon, but Grace hops out on her own.

GRACE I’ll sign us up!

Grace eagerly speeds off. Ren mopes, dragging the wagon further into the lion’s den, Alice’s eyes following her.

INT. HOTEL HALLWAY - LATER Competitors set up their Sasha doll scenes along the sides of the wall. Each has their own set cube where they position scenes of dolls at tea time, on the beach, and in a kitchen.

Most of the dolls are white - blondes and brunettes - but a few are brown and black, like the factory spray-painted the same mold.

At their station, Ren positions a saddle on their plastic horse, which stands on a thin bed of desert sand, next to a mini cactus.

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REN How’s it coming? Time’s almost up.

GRACE Although Sasha does not approve of fast fashion, she is choosing to make this part of her gender exploration.

Grace wraps a bandana around her doll’s neck, fluffing it appropriately.

REN Put her on the horse, and then we can check out the auction.

GRACE Yeah! I hope they have cool stuff !

Grace carefully sets her doll inside their cube.

GRACE (CONT’D) Done!

Ren takes her hand, and they walk down the hall.

INT. HOTEL AUDITORIUM - MOMENTS LATER Ren pulls Grace along to where people bid on Sasha dolls and Sasha accessories.

A boisterous AUCTIONEER needs no mic.

AUCTIONEER Going onceBIDDER #1 Eighty-five!

AUCTIONEER Eight-five for the punk rock Sasha shoes! Going once, going twice... SOLD! The auctioneer bangs a gavel and the BIDDER grins.

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AUCTIONEER (CONT’D) (to the room) Alright, now I’m not supposed to do this...

REN AND GRACE (jokingly accusatory) Oooo...

Ren and Grace CHUCKLE as an assistant rolls a cart with a curtain-covered box onto the stage.

AUCTIONEER Who wants to see the STUDIO DOLL for this year’s scene competition?

The room ERUPTS into cheers. Ren claps as Grace jumps up and down.

AUCTIONEER (CONT’D) Here she is!

The assistant removes the curtains, revealing the studio doll.

It’s ASIAN. Ren hesitantly looks over at Grace.

Grace gapes at the doll, soaking it in. Goosebumps flow over skin until she’s looking at it in absolute reverence.

It’s as if the Asian eyes on the doll reflect in her own.

AUCTIONEER (CONT’D) THE LAST ASIAN! The room is silent as the crowd stares at the Asian Sasha Doll. Ren looks between the doll and her sister, who appears to be in her own world.

GRACE (whispering) Beautiful...

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Hunger creeps through the crowd.

BIDDER #2 TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS! Confused visitors murmur.

AUCTIONEER ...This doll is not up for auction, it’s for the winner of the scene contest later on this eveningBIDDER #1 I WANT THE ASIAN! FIVE THOUSAND! Ren GULPS. AUCTIONEER Once againBIDDER #3 That studio doll should be MINE! Ten thousand for the Asian!

Ren hides Grace behind her as more bidder take a stand.

BIDDER #2 I saw it first! Fifteen for the Asian!

Grace jolts back into her body and backs away from the crowd with Ren. BIDDER #4 No fair! You already have a studio doll! (to the Auctioneer) TWENTY for the Last Asian!

AUCTIONEER NO! This is NOT for sale!

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The auctioneer gestures to their assistant, and the assistant rolls the doll away. More bidders flood the stage.

A security guard slips out of the room, not wanting to get involved.

BIDDER #2 THIRTY! Terrified, Ren lifts Grace and walks swiftly out the door. Grace’s gaze follows the doll off stage.

INT. HOTEL LOBBY - CONTINUOUS Breathing fast, Ren carries Grace into the hallway, searching for some place to hide away.

REN Okay okay okay okay okayGRACE (tearing up) Ren, can they take her away? Can they do that?

REN Just a second, we need to- we needRen bumps into a table, and hunches over in pain.

REN (CONT’D) ITAI! Where’s a bathroom to hide in?!

They pass a gaggle of old white ladies crowded around a station, murmuring amongst themselves, equal parts jealousy and fascination.

As Ren searches for a restroom, Grace peers over their hunched shoulders, and seesGRACE REN! 132

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REN What? Are you okay?

GRACE LOOK! Ren stops and looks to where Grace points at Alice’s COWBOY SCENE. With a Sasha doll in stylish clothes, a desert tree that hangs over the side, and horses with braided hair. Alice smiles proudly.

It’s BETTER. REN Oh, god...

Ren clutches Grace tighter and runs into the bathroom.

INT. BATHROOM - CONTINUOUS Ren plops Grace on the bathroom floor and LOCKS the door behind them.

GRACE (crying) Ren, Alice’s cowgirl scene is better! We’re gonna lose!

REN Grace, I’m sorry, butRen reaches out for Grace’s hand but she yanks it away.

GRACE I’m gonna lose, and I’m never gonna play with the little Asian girl!

Ren leans against the bathroom wall and slumps to the floor. Grace rips the tiara off her head and kicks a trash can.

GRACE (CONT’D) I can’t believe I actually thought I could belong here!

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Grace sits on the floor and pouts as Ren frowns.

REN Grace, I know this sucks, but... why in the world would you believe that? I mean this place...

GRACE Sasha Morgenthaler would have wanted me to belong! To feel seen!

Grace pulls one of her Sasha dolls out of her bag and shows it to Ren, who still looks confused.

GRACE (CONT’D) Why else would she create dolls that had feelings like us, that LOOKED like us!

Ren buries her head in her hands as she finally realizes what this doll means to Grace.

Grace looks into the doll’s eyes and then points it at the mirror, SIGHING. GRACE (CONT’D) And now we’re gonna lose “The Last Asian” to that old white lady with the cowboy tree.

Ren peeks through her fingers as Grace bobs the doll’s head up and down.

REN Wait, the TREE! INT. HOTEL HALLWAY - MOMENTS LATER Ren runs down the hallway, searching the stations frantically, Grace on her heels.

REN Where are the judges, where are the judges...

Ren spots the judges over by the awesome cowboy tree scene, about to pin the blue ribbon on Alice’s doll scene cube.

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REN (CONT’D) WAIT! STOP! The judges turn to Ren in surprise, slightly frightened.

REN (CONT’D) The tree goes outside the parameters! She didn’t follow the rules!

The main JUDGE glances at the cube and yanks the ribbon away.

JUDGE Oh! You’re right.

ALICE WHAT?! It’s in theJUDGE It goes over the edge. That’s a disqualification.

ALICE Oh, come on. I can easily make the tree fit.

Alice pushes the tree further into the cube and starts forcing the little leaves inside.

REN (to the judges) The time to make changes is over, she shouldn’t be allowed to do that.

JUDGE (hesitating) It’s just a little adjustmentGrace watches in awe as Ren gets right in judge’s face, her teenage body somehow towering over all of them.

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REN If she’s allowed to make changes, so are we.

The judge GULPS and backs away from the stations.

GRACE Yeah! So are we!

JUDGE Okay, uh... one hour. Anyone who has already signed up to compete can make changes.

The competitors stare at the judge.

GRACE Now? JUDGE N-now.

Everyone rushes off, determined to make the winning change.

Ren urgently grabs Grace’s face, squeezing her cheeks with fierce love.

REN Listen to me, Grace.

GRACE (muffled by her cheeks) Mmk---ay.

REN You’re not going to do a “my little pony” doll scene.

GRACE Im mot?

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REN You’re going to do what YOU want. What YOU feel is right. You don’t need to cater to anyone. You’re amazing the way you are.

Ren lets go of her face.

GRACE (grinning wolfishly) Got it.

REN Good.

GRACE Let’s crush that unbecoming b---INT. HOTEL HALLWAY - GRACE’S STATION - MONTAGE Ren watches in confused amusement and admiration as: -Grace ties a hotel robe belt across her forehead like a samurai.

-Grace rips the plastic horse limb from limb.

-Grace tears the clothes on her Sasha doll.

-Grace squirts massive amounts of glue.

-Grace races around with a piece of flaming carboard.

INT. HOTEL HALLWAY - LATER Judges and other onlookers CLAP half-heartedly as Alice reveals her cowgirl tree scene once again.

The crowd travels to Grace’s station.

JUDGE Okay... (looking at notepad) Playwriting

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Grace? Show us what you got.

Grace removes the curtain, and everyone GASPS. The judges blink in shock as the onlookers clutch their pearls. Ren tries to hold back her laughter.

Grace’s scene is splattered with BLOOD. Guts spill out of the horse. There’s a house burnt to a crisp. Glue makes everything look like it’s MELTING. And the Sasha doll is covered in ash.

GRACE (dramatically) Hiroshima.

Silence. No one dares to breathe. An old white lady faints.

REN WOOOO! Go Grace! Good job! That’s a winner right there!

Ren CLAPS enthusiastically as Grace beams back at her.

EXT. HOTEL - LATER Alice walks to her car, lifting her luggage into her trunk. She dons the winning blue ribbon.

Ren jogs out of the hotel and yells after Alice.

REN Hey! Alice! Wait!

Alice turns around as Ren comes to a stop.

REN (CONT’D) Hi. ALICE Hello...

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REN Look, I know this is a long shot, but you know about the Sasha doll creator, right? Why she created the dolls in the first place?

ALICE (scoffing) Yes, of course.

REN Then you know who these dolls were created for. And you know who THIS doll...

Ren points at the last Asian Sasha doll.

REN (CONT’D) ...was made for. Please.

Alice still looks puzzled.

REN (CONT’D) It was made for Asians? And my sister is...Asian?

Ren gestures to the hotel window, where, on cue, Grace does her classic pouty face, her nose smooshed against the glass.

REN (CONT’D) (to Aice) “What would Sasha Morgenthaler do?”

ALICE Oh! Don’t worry, you can visit whenever you want.

Alice closes her trunk, pleased with herself, like she just cured cancer in puppies.

EXT. MUSEUM - MORNING A family enters the museum building. A sign for a toy exhibit hangs over the roof.

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INT. MUSEUM - CONTINUOUS Outside a glass window, visitors pass by a description of the display, which reads: “Sasha Doll donated by Alice Kuffel.”

Inside the glass prison-like walls, a metal pole holds up the last Asian Sasha Doll.

Ren and Grace stroll up to it, checking out its habitat. Grace is dressed like a butterfly.

Resigned, Ren watches as Grace gazes at the doll with a muted desire, her hand pressed against the glass.

REN I read that you can take off doll paint with nail polish remover.

We could find another Sasha doll and re-paint it to be Asian.

GRACE I don’t have it in my heart to take away someone’s expression.

Ren and Grace stare at the doll for a while.

REN So do you feel seen or represented or whatever?

Grace peers into the glass, past the Sasha doll, and sees... Ren’s Asian eyes reflected onto her own. Grace turns and looks up at Ren. GRACE Yeah.

Grace takes Ren’s hand. Ren whips her head around in surprise, a genuine smile on her face.

FADE OUT.

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Hidden

Aida Sanienejad

Medium: Acrylic Size: 16” X 12”

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Out of My Mind Birdie Holloway – Second Place

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INT. TESS’S APARTMENT - NIGHT Lights rise on a shoebox apartment. A small couch is downstage center, a Fat Orange Cat sleeping on it, a coffee table in front of it. To the left, a small but clean kitchen and the front door. To the right, a door to the bathroom, a desk with a laptop and other desk clutter. In one corner, a half draped dress form and rolling cart piled with fabric, elastic, tools of the fashion trade. Next to it is the door to her closet. Behind the couch, a tall bed with plain covers, lots of pillows, and two people sitting in it.

On the right, PATRICK (22), frequently told he could be a model. On the left, TESS (21), told she should smile more. The two lazily hold each other until an ALARM sounds.

PATRICK (waking up, startled) AH! What is that?

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. TESS It’s just my alarm, chill out.

TESS gets out of bed, moving over to the coffee table. Patrick finds his phone in the bed and checks the time. Tess chuckles lightly to herself and types something on her phone.

PATRICK Why do you have an alarm set for 10 pm? Do you have some kind of night life I don’t know about?

TESS It’s so I take my pills on time.

PATRICK (getting out of bed) Pills? I didn’t think you would party this late, but I respect it.

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AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. Tess walks over to her nightstand table, takes out an orange pill bottle and a thin pill packet. Patrick gets out of bed and starts putting on a pair of crumpled pants from the floor.

TESS Not that kind. Normal ones, prescribed by a doctor. Birth control, antidepressants.

PATRICK Antidepressants?

(Pause) You’re not like, crazy, are you?

AUDIENCE CHUCKLE. Tess rolls her eyes, starts gesturing with the bottles.

TESS I’ll have you know, nearly 7% of Americans have depression, and nearly 20% of Americans suffer from some form of an anxiety disorder. “Crazy” is just a label some doctors slapped on people so they wouldn’t have to take the time to understand mental illness, and it’s a stereotype that continues to be perpetuated so that people are shamed into hiding anything that might be considered broken about themselves.

I have mental illness, and as an adult woman with access to healthcare and a strong support system, I have it fully under control.

During her monologue, Tess gets a birth control pill out of the pack, throws the pack on the nightstand. She opens the orange pill bottle and reaches in for a pill, not grabbing one. She finishes speaking and is still searching for a pill, eyes on Patrick.

Patrick watches her, still.

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AUDIENCE CHUCKLE. Tess looks down at the bottle, finds it empty.

TESS (CONT’D) Oh. PATRICK Everything ok?

TESS I’m out of antidepressants.

Patrick starts getting dressed again.

PATRICK Looks like you have it under control.

AUDIENCE LAUGH. TESS It’s fine, I just forgot to pick up my prescription today. I’ve been so stressed out with my presentation, I mean, all the time I have during the day I’m working or doing homework, how am I supposed to remember to go to the pharmacy before they close?

PATRICK (putting on shoes) You could wake up earlier.

TESS What a great idea that I’ve never heard before. That would mean I need to go to bed... (looks at clock) Now.

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PATRICK Say no more.

Patrick grabs his keys off of the coffee table on the way to the door, slugging on his jacket. Tess follows him.

Fat Orange Cat hisses at Patrick as he passes. She jumps off the couch and heads over to the bed, making herself comfortable.

AUDIENCE CHUCKLE. Patrick opens the door and stops, turning around. Tess is behind him.

PATRICK (CONT’D) Hey, why haven’t I heard that alarm before?

TESS You’re normally here after it goes off.

AUDIENCE OOH. Patrick grins wickedly. Tess shrugs, smirking. He kisses her cheek before turning to go. He hits his vape as he leaves, blowing smoke as he speaks.

PATRICK See you later.

TESS In your dreams.

Patrick leaves, shutting the door behind him. Tess locks the door, heads over to the bed. She gets in, makes herself comfortable. She takes one last look at her empty pill bottle, sighs. She lays down, turning off the nightstand lamp.

A quiet moment.

The nightstand light is turned on again, revealing two new characters sitting on either side of Tess in bed.

On the left, hand on the lamp, ANXIETY, the embodiment of the word tense, the volume of their outfit is ASTRONOMICAL. 146

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On the right, DEPRESSION, a sad sack in yoga pants and a stained sweatshirt.

Tess sits up, panicking, looking quickly between the two.

ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION Hey. Tess groans and throws herself back on the bed.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. INT. TESS’S APARTMENT - LATER The apartment is dark. Tess is tossing and turning, calling out into the room. She jolts up, shouting.

She turns on the light and sits up in bed, closing her eyes and slowing her breathing, her hands rubbing her arms.

She opens her eyes to find Depression standing in the corner, a bag of chips in hand. A moment.

AUDIENCE CHUCKLE. DEPRESSION Hey. AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. TESS Hey. DEPRESSION Did you have a nightmare?

Oh. TESS (rubbing her eyes) Yeah.

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DEPRESSION Yeah. (crunches chip) That sucks.

Anxiety moves off the kitchen counter and hops up onto the bed.

ANXIETY Now that you’re awake, I wanted to talk to you about something.

TESS Well, I was gonna try to go back to sleepANXIETY What if our kids are ugly?

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. TESS ...what?

ANXIETY I know we’ll love them, because they’re our kid. But you weren’t a cute kid, and what if we meet a really hot guy but it turns out he wasn’t a cute kid so your kid ends up being double not cute? They’re gonna have a harder life if they aren’t pretty, especially if it’s a girl. Who would want that for their child?

Tess is stunned. She stares at Anxiety.

AUDIENCE CHUCKLE. TESS What?

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AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. TESS (CONT’D) Where is this coming from? I don’t even want kids.

ANXIETY I was just thinkingTESS Shocker.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. Tess gets out of bed and moves to the kitchen, grabbing a glass out of the cabinet, getting a glass of water. Anxiety follows closely behind her.

ANXIETY I’m just thinking about our future! I know we don’t want kids right now, but what if we change our mind and by that point it’s too late and we have to settle for someone ugly?

What if we’re wasting our valuable soulmate finding time on Captain Sex-A-Lot? TESS Do you mean Patrick?

ANXIETY Well I don’t know it’s been so hard to keep them all straight.

AUDIENCE OOH/LAUGHTER. TESS What’s that supposed to mean?

Depression crosses the apartment, sets the chips on the counter, puts their arms around Tess’s shoulders.

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DEPRESSION Go easy on her. She’s just being smart. We all know her standards are too high and boys only want her for her body anyways. There’s really no point in worrying about all of that.

ANXIETY Oh. (pause) But what aboutTESS Oh my God, stop. We’re done with this conversation.

Tess leaves the kitchen, moving to the middle of the apartment. She turns to face Anxiety and Depression, hands on her hips.

TESS (CONT’D) You both know how badly I need to sleep. I’m presenting my junior thesis. A whole fashion line, straight from my brain.

A brain that won’t work unless I get some sleep. What will it take for you to let me do that?

Anxiety and Depression pause, think. They look at each other. Then burst into laughter.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. TESS (CONT’D) Fine. I am going to watch TV. I’ll be tired eventually.

Tess moves and sits on the couch, brow furrowing when Anxiety and Depression sit on either side of her. Fat Orange Cat jumps into Tess’s lap and settles there.

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Tess clicks on the tv and settles back into the couch.

INT. TESS’S APARTMENT - LATER Tess sleeps soundly on the couch, peaceful as ever.

Anxiety is hovering over her, almost planking on Tess, their noses millimeters apart.

Tess’s phone rings on the coffee table, startling her awake, she stills when she locks eyes with Anxiety.

A moment.

AUDIENCE CHUCKLE. Tess picks up the phone, eyes never leaving Anxiety.

TESS Hello?...No, Patrick you didn’t leave your vape here...ok...no I don’t want to come party...because I have to be up early...ok, have fun.

Tess hangs up the phone. Anxiety hasn’t moved. Tess lowers her phone and looks directly at Anxiety, eyebrows raised.

ANXIETY Hey. TESS Did you need something?

ANXIETY I was just thinking, where is our birth certificate? Because if there’s a fire, we don’t know where it is, and I’m not sure how hard it would be to get a new one, but anything with bureaucracy is a nightmare andTess scrolls on her phone absentmindedly. Anxiety takes notice as TESS pauses on one screen. Anxiety looks at the screen and looks at TESS, eyes Playwriting

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wide.

ANXIETY (CONT’D) Jenna hasn’t opened our message.

TESS Nope.

ANXIETY Hmm. Anxiety sits back on the couch, considering. They lean up and talk directly to Tess.

ANXIETY (CONT’D) Do you think she’s mad at us?

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. TESS What?

Anxiety stands to start pacing behind the couch.

ANXIETY (confidently) Yeah, she’s mad at us.

(MORE) ANXIETY (CONT’D) We should send her another message, confront it head on.

Tess sets her phone on the coffee table, rubs her face.

TESS No. I’m not doing that.

ANXIETY You’re right. Then she’d be even more mad at us and stop talking to us all together. We’re already so annoying as it is.

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Tess tries to get comfortable again.

TESS You’re being crazy. She doesn’t hate me.

ANXIETY I hear when you’re saying, but hear me out...what if she does.

Pause.

Tess’s eyes widen and she sits up.

TESS Keep talking.

ANXIETY What if we called her right now just to check? There’s no harm in checking, right?

Tess stands.

TESS I should call her.

ANXIETY (animated) We should call her.

TESS (animated) I should call her!

Anxiety pulls a megaphone out from behind the couch, yelling into it.

ANXIETY (into megaphone)

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WE’RE GONNA CALL HER! Tess picks up her phone to call Jenna. Her phone dings before she can dial.

ANXIETY (CONT’D) (bitter, almost crying) Is that Jenna telling us to kick rocks?

TESS It’s an email from that astrology website. But they only send me emails at...

Tess looks between her phone clock and the clock on her stove.

Oh my god it’s almost 3? I have to be up in 4 hours.

Tess looks at Anxiety, determined.

TESS (CONT’D) I’m going to sleep.

Depression stands. They lazily make their way over to Tess, like a cat or a king. They take the megaphone from the coffee table. Slowly, they raise it to their mouth, getting right in TESS’s face.

DEPRESSION (normal volume through megaphone) I’m hungry.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. TESS It’s so late. If you let me go back to sleep, I’ll eat whatever you want in the morning.

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TESS What do you even want?

DEPRESSION (megaphone) Cheese.

TESS Absolutely not. Pick something else.

DEPRESSION (megaphone) Why? Tess takes the megaphone from Depression, sets it on coffee table.

TESS I am horribly lactose intolerant, and you know that. Pick something else.

ANXIETY You were never diagnosed.

AUDIENCE CHUCKLE. DEPRESSION Who suddenly can’t process dairy at 18? Sounds like someone is faking for attention.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. Tess puts her hands on her hips, slowly approaching Depression.

TESS Pick DEPRESSION Cheese.

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TESS -somethingDEPRESSION Cheese.

TESS -else.

Anxiety and Depression look at each other, considering. ThenANXIETY AND DEPRESSION (chanting) CHEESE! CHEESE! CHEESE! CHEESE! Tess throws her hands up and storms to the kitchen, opening the fridge.

TESS Fine! You want cheese? Cheese what? Grilled cheese, mac and cheese, fried cheese balls, chicken parmesan, cheese pizza, cheesecake, or maybe I should just eat a block of sharp cheddar!

Tess takes a hunk of cheddar cheese out of the fridge and takes a huge bite.

The audience laughs as Tess looks at Anxiety and Depression, the battle won. Her face gets more sour as she chews. She swallows and smiles defiantly.

Tess’s face falls. Her hand slowly goes to her stomach. Her eyes turn glassy.

TESS (CONT’D) Oh no.

Tess rushes across the apartment and slams the bathroom door.

Anxiety and Depression stare at the door, unsure of what to do now. They look to each other.

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ANXIETY Why does she even have that much cheese?

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. The bathroom door opens. Tess strolls out nonchalantly. She makes her way to the kitchen and gets a drink from the tap. She tosses a pill in her mouth and swallows.

ANXIETY (CONT’D) What was that?

TESS (relaxed) Benadryl.

DEPRESSION Did you get an allergy attack in there?

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. TESS No, but I will be getting a good night’s sleep.

ANXIETY What if we just have more nightmares?

Tess starts to form a rebuttal, her face falls, she is silent. She thinks for a moment.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. TESS (to Anxiety) Shut up.

Tess skips to the bed and jumps in. Anxiety perches themselves on TESS’s desk, assuming a tense position, staring off into the distance.

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Depression sits beside Tess in bed, petting her hair.

DEPRESSION One more thing?

Tess sighs and sits up, facing Depression.

TESS What?

DEPRESSION Your mom is going to die one day.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. Tess’s eyes widen and she turns, staring into space. Fat Orange Cat jumps on the bed and settles down.

ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION (CONT’D) Aww. INT. TESS’S APARTMENT - LATER Tess tosses and turns. She groans, sitting up and checking her phone.

TESS How did I only get a couple of hours from that?

Anxiety jogs out of the bathroom wearing sweatbands around their head and wrists, leg warmers on their calves. They jog circles around the couch.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. ANXIETY Hey I just thought of something. What if one day the cat got out and we met a lovely italian man just like in that one episode of Friends, but then he’s actually really nice and he was actually the head of a fashion label! And he compliments our pajamas and thinks we have great style and he whisks us 158

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away to Milan or Japan and we become overnight an super star!

TESS (yawning, irritated) That would be cool.

ANXIETY But then the fame goes to our head and we burn out by 30 and become a joke in the fashion world, a one hit wonder.

We take time off, find ourselves, maybe travel and get inspiration from nature and the world outside of us. We come back for one more incredible line, Paris Fashion Week.

We blow the fashion world away. But we’re snuffed out too soon by a jealous fan or maybe an ex lover.

TESS Can we maybe put a pin in this conversation? I love entertaining hypotheticals as much as the next guy butDEPRESSION I think we need to talk about this now. Who do you think would murder us?

Tess throws herself down in the bed, putting a pillow over her head.

ANXIETY Well, anyone from school, there’s that one girl Natalie from History of Textiles.

DEPRESSION Or Henry from that internship last year.

ANXIETY Or maybe Julie from a few summers ago, man, we really had a good thing going with her. Should we call her?

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DEPRESSION Or maybe there’sTess snaps up, pillows flying.

TESS ENOUGH! Enough of you talking at me! I am so tired, I have one of my most important finals tomorrow, I need to sleep! All I want to do is succeed but there you are distracting me! God, I hate you, I hate you! What do I have to do to get you OUT OF MY HEAD? A moment. Anxiety and Depression are stunned. The room is silent, tense.

Fat Orange Cat jumps up on the back of the couch and stretches long and extravagantly.

ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION Aww. Tess bursts into inconsolable tears. There’s no stopping this breakdown.

Depression puts their arms around TESS, who sinks into their arms willingly.

Depression leads her to the bed and lays her down, resting Tess’s head in their lap.

Anxiety curls around Tess, rubbing her arms, trying to calm her down.

DEPRESSION (CONT’D) Shh, shh, it’s ok. Let it out. Just relax.

Tess’s sobs start to soften until she’s quietly weeping. Depression turns out the light.

INT. TESS’S APARTMENT - MORNING The apartment is empty. Sunlight shines on the clean apartment, on the freshly made bed.

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Tess walks out of the bathroom, dressed impeccably. She is putting in an earring while crossing to the kitchen. She is calm and collected, though the tenseness in her posture gives away her nerves.

She takes the last drink of coffee from a mug on the counter before setting it in the sink.

Depression walks out of the closet and crosses their arms, leaning on the doorway.

DEPRESSION HeyTESS HeyDEPRESSION It’s almost time to go.

TESS I know.

Anxiety sits straight up from behind the couch.

ANXIETY We have to leave in 2 minutes and 45 seconds.

TESS (annoyed) I know.

Depression makes their way over to Tess, leans on kitchen island. Anxiety stands and hops up on the counter.

DEPRESSION That was a wild night. I missed you.

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Depression reaches out and boops Tess’s nose. Tess isn’t amused.

TESS Well, don’t get used to it. I’m stopping by the pharmacy after school today.

DEPRESSION I thought you had that meeting with your advisor.

ANXIETY And you told Jenna you’d help tailor her blouse for that job interview.

DEPRESSION And you’re meeting the girls for drinks to celebrate being done with school.

ANXIETY And you still have to call your mom back from the other dayTESS I will make time! I can’t live like this. I went to sleep.

I’m ready for my presentation, absolutely no thanks to you.

Speaking of whichTess looks at her watch.

TESS (CONT’D) -time to go.

She makes her way over to her portfolio sitting on her desk. When she turns back around, Anxiety and Depression are ready and waiting to tackle the day with her.

TESS (CONT’D) No.

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AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. TESS (CONT’D) No way. You aren’t coming.

Anxiety opens their mouth to fight, but Depression gestures that there’s no need.

DEPRESSION If you’re sure.

Tess steadily makes her way to the door, expecting a fight with every step.

Anxiety and Depression move out of her way. Tess has her hand on the door knob.

DEPRESSION (CONT’D) Have a great day. Can’t wait to hear about it.

Tess turns to look at them again.

DEPRESSION (CONT’D) We’ll be here.

Tess looks disdainfully at them. She walks out the door.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER.

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Snuffed

Malichi Greenlee – Third Place

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FADE IN: EXT. APARTMENT BUILDING - DAY The front door of an apartment swings open as MAX and OLIVIA, two hiply dressed college film students, stride out of their apartment and down the stairs.

Max is holding a camera, Olivia has a long object wrapped in a blanket.

Max and Olivia energetically walk to an old sedan in a parking lot and get in.

INT. SEDAN - DAY Olivia and Max drive through the outskirts of town, taking in the scenery of grimy streets. A flyer for a film festival lies crumpled in the footwell. Miscellaneous film gear occupies the backseat, along with the mysterious bundle.

Olivia itches her face.

EXT. OVERPASS - DAY Max and Olivia sit on top of the sedan with the camera, just out of sight from a dirty HOMELESS MAN. The Homeless Man has a cardboard sign with only squiggles drawn on it.

Homeless Man neurotically itches himself. Olivia routinely checks her watch.

Homeless Man drops his sign and stumbles out of sight. Olivia grabs Max’s attention.

The squiggly cardboard sign absorbs water from a dirty puddle.

EXT. UNDER A BRIDGE - DAY Homeless Man wanders through trash and overgrown shrubs to a tent at the edge of society. He slides off his belt and stiffly bends to his knees to crawl in the tent.

Moments pass. Max and Olivia emerge from the shrubbery and sneakily approach the tent.

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INT. TENT Homeless Man is passed out in his tent with his belt tightened around his bicep; his arm is covered in track marks.

Max approaches the opening of the tent, casting a menacing shadow across Homeless Man’s unconscious body. The tent doors flap in the wind. Olivia steps closer to him, and then approaches the tent.

Max and Olivia search the tent and place an obscured object into an intricately engraved metal box they find. The engravings are similar to Homeless Man’s squiggle sign. After stashing the box, Max and Olivia look to each other and drag Homeless Man’s body out of the tent.

INT. SEDAN - DAY Max gazes out the open window. As Olivia drives with purpose, her sleeve slides up her arm as she steers revealing track marks. Max notices and their eyes meet.

Annoyed, she rolls her sleeve up and they look in opposite directions. She itches herself reminiscently of Homeless Man. The mysterious bundle lies in the backseat.

EXT. SAND DUNES - AFTERNOON Max and Olivia pop the trunk of their sedan to reveal a disoriented and frightened Homeless Man. Max and Olivia’s words fade in and out of his consciousness. They pull Homeless Man out of the trunk.

Homeless Man has fear in his eyes. Olivia shows him the metal box, and Homeless Man calms down. His eyes widen in delight. Max escorts him away from the car.

Olivia removes the mysterious bundle from the car.

Max kneels Homeless Man down in the sand, giving him a chance to take in the beautiful splendor of the dunes.

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Max holds the bundle for Olivia as she places a hand on Homeless Man. She bends down and tightens Homeless Man’s belt around his arm. Max looks down on their dirty hostage and kicks sand on him like he’s a thing.

Homeless Man’s eyes flutter in ecstasy, and then seem to lose focus on the wonderful scenery. Olivia drops an empty needle in the sand.

Olivia takes the bundle from Max and unwraps it, revealing the oriental sword.

Max backs up further with the camera.

Homeless Man’s shaky hand draws squiggles in the sand.

MAX (O.S.) Rolling ... and... ACTION! Homeless Man doesn’t respond to the command. Olivia swiftly swings the sword into Homeless Man’s neck. Homeless Man watches his blood hit the sand for a moment, and then slumps over. Max steadily follows with the camera.

INT. LARGE THEATRE - NIGHT A large audience begins CLAPPING and CHEERING as they watch Homeless Man bleed to death on a large projector screen.

A well-dressed ANOUNCER excitedly prances on the stage with a microphone, and pulls out a slip of paper and reads, ANOUNCER And CLEARLY, the award of ‘Best Picture’ for this year’s Underground Film Festival goes to: “Snuffed!”

As the audience’s excitement increases. The announcer lays the paper onto the podium, revealing it is only a scribble.

FADE TO BLACK.

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Writers’ and Artists’ Personal Statements Eleanor Babbitt I am an oil painter who loves to transform an image onto a canvas to create a piece of art that will capture that image in an interesting, colorful, vivid and contemporary way.

Phyllis Benson I am a Computer Science student at Scottsdale Community College. I spend most of my time writing or taking care of my puppy at home. I hope to become a NASA engineer in the future once I graduate from ASU.

Sarah Brett I am a 24 year old graphic design student native to Arizona. It is my passion to draw and create content for clients that can help build personal brands as well as self confidence in their businesses. The art I am submitting consists of 822 hand drawn layers to portray St. Basil’s Cathedral.

Clinton Chandler I’m currently studying graphic design here at SCC and I hope to make a career out of it soon. In my free time I like to experiment with photography and digital art so I can create meaningful art.

Riley Duemler I have been writing and photographing for a few years. I really enjoy both and am majoring in graphic design at Scottsdale Community College. I do a lot of selfphotography and use my friends as models. I enjoy photo manipulation as well, and it is my favorite type of media to create.

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Kathryn Dwyer Since 1971, I have lived in Scottsdale part-time and loved its beautiful public libraries and the Preserve, and have always appreciated the art of writing. Being a volunteer and contributing time and energy to many amazing non-profits has been an important part of my life. As a volunteer, I have been part of the crew on tall ships and historic tugboats for over ten years on the Hudson River; a volunteer coach for NYC Donate Life Marathons and Triathlon teams for eight years; and now I am a steward/volunteer at the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy, patrolling the over 218 miles of trails and assisting in hikes. I’m thrilled to finally have the time to take creative writing classes.

Daily, I am inspired and thankful for our insightful gifted professor Kim Sabin and the gifted students of SCC.

Judith Feldman During this difficult year, I’ve tried to focus on painting, seeking to recapture some memorable things I’ve seen before the pandemic. Lotus flowers are particularly appealing to me because they represent the potential to grow from a dark place to reach the light and become very beautiful. I still love using strong color to express my emotions.

Joanne Gallery I create artistic images that bring brightness, joy, and fun into my world. I enjoy experimenting with color, textures, and paint, and I want to surprise my viewers and take them on a visual journey.

Barbara Goldberg I am an artist who loves color and abstract images. It is truly amazing how a line, shape and/or color triggers the mind into completing the message. I paint with palette knives and large brushes to create multiple layers. I do the same with my digital artwork. I feel grateful to have been able to hone my skills as a student at Scottsdale Community College’s open studios classes. They have been instrumental in my art journey.

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Malichi Greenlee I am a first-year student at SCC’s school of film and theatre. I have been studying screenwriting and other aspects of film production, as well as writing songs on my own time. I love being creative and sharing my work.

Stephen Hoffman As a student in Scottsdale Community College’s Art Department, for almost 20 years, my exploration into the world of art through classes in sculpture, humanities, drawing, and painting have given me great excitement, pleasure, and joy. I have been able to express that beautiful feeling in my art. My oil painting in this magazine is titled Amani. I met for the first time at my local Safeway, and I introduced myself as an art student at SCC. I showed her some of my paintings, and she agreed to let me take her picture and paint her portrait. Life is good!

Birdie Holloway I am a college student with big dreams! I took up writing when I was 11 just to copy my big sister, and I stumbled into a life long passion. I’m a busy woman trying to work full time, go to school, and find time to write and have a life, but I’m having a blast! I want my readers to know it’s all right to laugh at themselves and their situations, and that they’re never alone in what they’re feeling or what they’re going through. My writing goals include winning lots and lots of Oscars and Emmys, and having people ask to have lunch with me. But being able to finish a project works too.

Alexia Norton Jones My name is Alexia Norton Jones. I’m new to writing poetry in any serious way, so I was stunned to have been a Vortex winner in 2018. Since then I have been taking a different kind of risk. I have become a Silence Breaker and part of the national #MeToo Movement to raise awareness about sexual assault and violence against women in America and around the world. Through this movement I have learned the gross disparities between reporting and convictions of rape (it’s the most under reported crime) with less than 2% convictions, and for Native America women it is the most 170

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serious of all in Arizona. As a biracial woman, being a survivor of a high profile media story has helped me understand better how invisible nearly 100% of all survivors are: Cis, LGBGQT, BIPOC, Non-Binary, and the severity of violence against the Trans community. To be an agent of change has been healing. The poem I have submitted is about the very portal so many survivors describe —how abuse begins. To tell our stories we must begin with telling our truth.

Melissa Kennedy I am currently a graphic design student at SCC and would like to demonstrate what I have learned here using tools such as the Adobe software.

Martha Klare The art and culture of China and Japan have long been one of my interests. I am also passionate about the natural environment and spend time hiking and backpacking in Arizona and elsewhere. My artwork is inspired by a combination of feelings and visual cues experienced while immersed in nature, and my interpretation of aesthetic and philosophical principles of China and Japan.

Angela-Marie Luna I am a 34 year old former foster kid who happens to write. I am a filmmaker, and I believe that no matter how old I am, I can still be somebody. I hope to reach those who are like me and need to feel heard. I want to be known as writer for the rest of my life.

Nolan McDowell I am currently a music major at SCC and will be transferring to ASU next semester after earning my associate degree. I am very interested in all kinds of music but am mainly inspired by early 80’s synth pop/fusion funk. I believe it is most important to study what came before and to never stop learning.

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Kristina Morgan The best thing I’ve done, other than teach high school, has been to write. I’m primarily a poet who has ventured into short story telling and written a memoir called Mind Without a Home: A Memoir of Schizophrenia published in 2013. Writing doesn’t come easy for me, but that’s okay. I can spend a lot of time considering one word or even one sentence. When all settles into a finished piece, it is magic. A shout out to Sandra Desjardins who pushes me to the edge, challenging me to write better and better. I so appreciate her. I love you, Sandy.

Ellen Nemetz Like many artists, I always loved creating. Unlike many artists, I got undergraduate and graduate degrees in science. Although I could do the work, I realized that I could never be genuinely happy unless I was creating on paper or canvas. My realistic acrylic paintings start with reference photos. I draw the design directly on to the canvas before laying in any color. I work in layers of color, glazing some areas multiple times while leaving other areas with unmodified color. This series began with a longing for water in the desert. I feel compelled to paint water with its calming and mesmerizing tranquility. Unlike artists who paint water as part of the overall landscape, I paint water as the star of any landscape. I continue to paint water and specifically in Arizona, where water can be a scarcity.

Kieran Noback I moved to Arizona from Wyoming in 2015 at the start of my journey into middle school. I consider myself a creative person, and art and reading have been constant companions in my life. I am currently pursuing an associates degree in biology and exploring my interests at SCC; as part of that, I am diving into creative writing. Writing has always interested me which I attribute to the love of writing my parents fostered in me from a young age. My personal essay “Unanswered” is one of my first pieces of writing that I have shared publicly. This essay has been cathartic for me to write as I have had the chance to explore a very difficult time in my life and contemplate my feelings about it: the pain of losing my mother as well as the love we shared.

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Nesta Nordskov When I was seventeen, I wrote and published a short story online to prove to myself that I could write, and eighty-thousand people read it and liked it. That story is one of the reasons why I still write and why I’m pursuing a degree in creative writing. It’s also the story that allowed me to express myself freely for the first time without judgment and why I don’t hide who I am in my writing now. I feel that every story, poem, and scrap of writing I’ve put together say more about who I am than any personal statement I could make.

Seneca Peters I am a returning student here at SCC, and I decided to take creative writing because of my love for the medium and because I needed the challenge to get me back into the habit of writing again. I am not here for grades as much as I am for the interaction and feedback on my writing.

Steffan Quinn Ponsolle In a grim world, I believe one’s greatest defense is introspection. As a young college student, this world truly scares me. My family has braced against so much, so while I am terrified of the responsibility my generation has, Spencer and my mother give me all the strength I need. That’s why I can’t let my past drag on; the future needs my full attention. I’ve noticed a great many of us let memories fester and eat away at our psyches. So when I wrote my narrative, I tried to face myself and ask: what have I let sit inside me for far too long? I believe we can all stand to ask ourselves the same question, in the name of healing and progress. Let my work serve as proof of such sentiment.

Thank you for reading, and thank you Sandra for pushing me even further than I thought possible.

Karina Reginato I am a citizen of the world, with deep roots in Italy, my heart in Venezuela and Brazil, and my love for Arizona.

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Aida Sanienejad I’m currently a full-time Interior Design student. Besides going to school, I spend time painting and making jewelry sets. In addition, I enjoy gardening, hiking, and exploring different places in the wild. I’ve lived in Arizona for about five years, and I would like to explore and see more places in this beautiful state.

Krystal Simmons I came from California to Arizona looking for personal freedom, and I found a piece of that here. When I’m not at work doing non-emergency medical transports, I’m helping other drug addicts and alcoholics find their personal freedom. When I’m not doing that I am writing, sewing, gardening, cooking, or talking to my cats. We all have many gifts, and I plan on exploring mine!

Steven Soekrasno I am taking a photography class at SCC, and I entered my work in the Vortex competition because I like to pursue a variety of challenges that are available. My goal is to complete my AAS degree this semester while picking up any other fun stuff on the way. When I am not studying, I like hiking, biking, dancing, wood work, and playing the drum. Thank you for the opportunity to share my art!

Kylie Thesz I have a strong passion for writing, especially as a therapeutic release. Writing has been my friend, companion, and the most reliable outlet for most of my life. When I’m not buried in my journal, I can usually be found reading a book, behind the lens of a camera, watching an excessive amount of Law and Order: SVU, or spending quality time with my family, friends, and dogs.

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Marie Tomisato I am a screenwriter at SCC. I write what I see in the hopes that my ideas will be heard. My piece, The Last Asian, is about racial isolation and building one’s own representation. The weight I feel every day as a person of color with a mixed racial background is backbreaking, so this script is mostly wishful thinking. I know that it is not one person’s responsibility to represent her/his race--or in my case, multiple races-but in my script, there is hope that the work I do means something to others.

Adrian Villarreal I’m currently working on an Academic Certificate in Creative Writing at SCC and intend to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing in the future. When not reading, writing, or doom scrolling, I like to pass the time in the outdoors.

Autumn Whitehorse Hi! I am a 25 year old student studying nursing at SCC. I am a member of the Navajo tribe in Northern Arizona. I recently lost my dad to COVID in January, and he is the one who inspired my personal essay for this contest. I had so many mental health problems going on since he passed, and writing this essay and getting all my feelings out, really helped a lot. I am now happier and have begun to see life a better way. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy my essay!

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