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COVER ART BY LUISA LACSAMANA
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Silhouette is a literary and arts publication focused on fostering and encouraging creative expression 344 Squires Student Center Blacksburg, Virginia 24061 www.silhouette.collegemedia.com
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Hello Reader! I’m glad that you have found your way to the pages of our magazine! Over the course of this year Silhouette has become one of the most important things in my life. As an English major here at Virginia Tech, I really value all forms of literary art. As someone who loves creativity, I am a huge appreciator of artwork, design etc. I think that it is important for Virginia Tech to showcase all the amazing work that our students are doing and that’s why I’m so happy that you’ve come across Silhouette. Our contributors and our staff have worked so hard on this magazine and with that being said this magazine is a true labor of love. I am thankful to have such a hard working group of people behind this magazine and a ton of beautiful pieces of writing, photography and art provided by some truly talented students. Thank you again for picking up the magazine I hope you enjoy! Happy reading,
Layne Mandros Editor-in-Chief
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A RETURN DEVON KEYES
July 10th, 9:15 AM. Hallmark - Stoneway Hospital Gift Shop; It’s a boy™ 5x7” card, purchased: $3.99. July 10th, 11:32 AM. Hallmark - Stoneway Hospital Gift Shop; It’s a boy™ 5x7” card, returned: $3.99. burning a hole in my chest.
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L AYOV E R BY SARAH MCCLIMENT
You don’t know how old the razor is, or whose hair is sticking out of the rusted edges. You do know your legs, pits, and everything for that matter, needs to be bare and slick before your next redeye to Atlanta. He’s still passed out from the rum and cokes at Marg’s, so you can’t ask if it’s safe to use, not that you would anyway. You wonder when your last tetanus shot was, probably before you started pushing carts and handing out peanuts to jet lagged bombshells with Vaseline smeared from their lips, all the way to their mousey brown roots. You always get stuck working first, which is something “you should be thankful for,” as everyone says, but you’d like those people to deal with athlete’s wives or deprived CEO’s who have always wanted to say they screwed a flight attendant during a boy’s night, playing card at a camp they pay membership for in the sticks. But no, you’re lucky. You glide his Irish Spring soap onto each leg, then take the jagged razor up and down, being careful to slow your pace at the knees. You wouldn’t want to cut your leg and bleed; the only red you’re permitted to
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wear in uniform is your lipstick. You wonder if his girlfriend will notice the red stains on the blotted pieces of toilet paper in the garbage—or on her pillowcase. He said she didn’t notice a thing last time, even though you left your hairspray and round brush lying on the sink. “I said it was my sisters. They hate each other, so she will never ask her,” he reassured you during a layover in LAX. Guess she wasn’t smart enough to check the hair clumped in the bristles. His sister is as blonde as they come, but you, you’re a true Revlon boxed black. Your Mom wouldn’t let you dye it, but you took it into your own hands the day before Christmas Eve in tenth grade and have regretted it ever since, but now you can’t stop. You finish up shaving and yank the black skirt up and over your hips. You can’t zip it by yourself; so you go out into the den and lean over River on the futon. “Hey, I need zipped.” He rolls over to his side. “Well good afternoon to you too,” he says, while reaching for his glasses. “It’s 9:00 p.m.”
“You gotta be shittin’ me.” “Nope, we were out all night, if you can even remember.” He smiles. “I do recall sobering up a bit this morning for something.” You smile back, “oh, shut up and zip me.” He leans up and glides his fingers across your back, before finally zipping you in for the next six hours. “When you comin’ back?” “I dunno, we haven’t heard about our schedules yet.” “Well, I want to see you again.”
being careful to leave your lipstick inside the mirroredcabinet, next to Laura’s spray deodorant—which you heard gives you cancer. You think someone ought to tell her.
You nod, even though you know this is the last time you’ll see River, except wheeling your carry on through security. There is no going against you’re twice and done rule. He won’t look at you the first few times, but eventually he will stop you and pull out his phone to show you pictures of his new dog, Toyota, or the ring he is thinking about buying Laura, asking what you think. It won’t make you jealous, you’ll just tell him, “Oh, she is going to love it,” even though the ring is nothing but settling, in your eyes. You go and grab your bag, stuffing the Black Sabbath t-shirt inside as a souvenir and
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CINQUE TERRE JACK FOREMAN
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ELLIE’S SONG ALISON MILLER
VANITY
I hear the lusty crinkle of the wrapper of the rubber in your pocket as you sit next to my mother, and I wonder if that motherly instinct is enough to see that I have known you, if she can acknowledge in her head that I am grown enough for this – turns out I’m not mother knows best please mama please tell me the rest.
ELENA LEVICEVA
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INDIA AUSTIN LEDZIAN
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NI GH T
A N G E L
BY MOLLY RYAN
At the start of his shift in the mall’s parking garage, Burt Ramsby unpacked his dinner of hummus and carrots, neatly packed into the little portion containers from Weight Watchers. He flipped the switch on the dusty old radio on his desk, the one he’d found a few weeks ago in the mall dumpster. One of the speakers was dented, and the antenna wilted off to one side, but it still played NPR’s evening jazz. He kept an eye on the flickering security television in the corner, watching as it panned from floor to floor of the garage. There weren’t many cars left, as it was well past 8 P.M. The fluorescent lights illuminated the glass window of his little three by three security hut. It smelled terrible, like sweat and mildew, even though he burned a lavender vanilla candle each evening. He caught sight of his reflection, shuddering, watching as his many chins wobbled with every chew. His watery brown eyes were too small to offset his enormous sagging cheeks and round, piggish nose. His thin lips were turned down in a permanently mean frown. His bald head was covered in dark moles and pock marks from
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a nasty case of chicken pocks as a child. He remembered his mother staring down at him with disgust, his face red and swollen, – after declaring she would have to take him to the doctor after all. “Burty,” she had sighed. “Such a shame. Pretty little girls don’t like to kiss scabby little boys.” Sometimes he dreamt of his mother’s house. He remembered the way the roof used to leak in his room, and that when he told her about it, she’d said to “get a bucket and shut up about it, already.” She was a hoarder, but not of the usual sort. The mobile home was relatively clean, but she filled every inch of wall space with little porcelain figurines. Fairies, wizards, fawns with pining white eyes – she didn’t discriminate. She claimed they made her feel less lonely, after his father went off to work and didn’t return. All he’d ever heard about his father from his mother was that he was a garbage man, and she seemed to believe that Burt was destined to follow in his father’s so-called filthy footsteps. Even from a young age, he knew that his mother resented him, because he reminded her too much of his father. He could
see it in the way she looked at him, down her long, crooked nose. He could see it in the way she rolled her eyes when he would speak, and she’d dismissively reply “that’s something your father would say.” He was an only child, and he couldn’t always count on her to be home when he got off the school bus in the afternoon. So he spent a lot of time alone, just those damn figurines for company. She’d died two years ago. The last time he’d seen her, she was so thin and wasted away she was nothing but a breath of wind. Her mind was far too gone to remember him, which he’d hoped was for the best. But when he walked into that hospital room, she’d taken one look at him and grunted in disgust. She was right, scabby was all he had been his whole fortyseven years, despite his love of jazz and classic literature, despite his effort to lose the weight, despite the fact that he was only a mall security guard so that perhaps, one day, he could save enough to go to college. Burt moved out of the house when she died. He left all the figurines there, too, even as all the cutesy little animals stared
at him with glass eyes when he locked the door for the last time. His apartment was five minutes away from work, which was particularly convenient, as he didn’t have a car. It wasn’t much. The stove didn’t work and it had particularly thin walls, so the temperamental passions of his neighbors were no secret to him. He’d taken to planting roses on the six inches of balcony space that he had – white roses, red roses, orange and pink roses. He let them grow wild, wrapping around his window like a flowery, thorny cage. It humanized the place, somehow. Burt opened a drawer and removed one of his lemon Clorox wipes – he didn’t like the spring rain scent – and wiped furiously at the reflection of that man in the glass as if he could erase him. He brewed his cup of chamomile tea, the only dessert he allowed himself anymore, in the little coffeepot he had brought from home. Still keeping note of the security television, he was just about to open the library copy of Tess of the d’Urbervilles to where he had last marked the page, when the door to the third floor stairs opened.
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He set down the leather-bound novel, watching the television intently. He suspected she was a waitress down at one of the restaurants, because every night, just after 8:35, she appeared in the same outfit – a white button down, black slacks, and a thin black tie. She carried a white leather bag with fringe on the bottom. The way the shadow of the fringe fanned out behind her on the pavement reminded Burt of feathers. Though she was small and unassuming in reality, her shadow was that of an angel, complete with wings. His parking garage angel’s hair was pulled back tonight, away from her pale face. She had a little button nose and, though he never saw her eyes in any detail on the grainy television screen, he liked to imagine they were blue. She couldn’t be much older than twenty five, at the very most. His mouth, as usual, had slipped open in silent awe. Usually she walked slowly to her car, pausing to light a cigarette and peer out open side of the garage at the stars. She drove a blue Toyota Camry, a 1996 model probably. It roared so loud when the engine started he could hear it down at the entrance. The
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highlight of his evening was when she drove by his little station, always with a wave and a sweet white smile. She was the only garage patron to acknowledge him. He loved her, and he never expected her to love him back. He didn’t even know her name. She was too young, too beautiful, too full of life for someone scabby like him. For him, it was enough to watch her walk to her car every evening, to make sure she got in safely, to watch her drive out into the night. Something was wrong this evening. He watched, transfixed, as a man, dressed in a white double-breasted chef’s coat, stormed through the doorway. The security cameras didn’t have sound, so he couldn’t hear what he was yelling, but he saw her increase her pace, folding her arms over her chest as he jogged after her. Burt gasped and cried out a little when the man seized her bag, breaking the wings off her shadow, pulling her back and around to face him. Fear, pure and paralyzing, washed over him. He felt helpless, remarkably so. Burt’s hands were shaking, his heart seemingly stuck in his throat. In all his fifteen years
of being a security guard, he had never dealt with more than chasing a few teens out past their curfew. But he had no choice. Fumbling for his Taser, Burt hauled himself out of the groaning office chair and hurried outside. He ran, as hard as his wobbling legs would take him. He ignored the pain in his chest, the vicious pounding of his heart. Sweat erupted all over him, settling in the crevices of his neck and soaking his shirt. His feet ached, and he feared his knees might buckle. He made it to the third floor, gasping, doubling over as he rounded the turn and saw them near the door. “Jesus Christ, Sarah,” the male voice was yelling. “I didn’t mean it, okay? She didn’t mean anything to me –” Sarah – he knew her name now – was trying to pull the fringed bag back from the man. “Please, Chris,” she said, much calmer than him. “Let me go, please.” “Stop!” Burt yelled, but it was more a gasping wheeze than a yell. Chris looked to him with wild grey eyes, almost white, and started to laugh. Burt shivered – the laugh carried a cruel edge that settled in his
spine. One of his front teeth was gold. He held on to Sarah’s bag, twitching his head as if to pop his neck. “Who the fuck are you, fat ass?” he said. “Chris,” Sarah said. “Give me my bag, okay?” Chris wasn’t listening to her. He kept his eyes on Burt, leering. “Is he – is he bothering you, ma’am?” Burt said, cursing himself for breathing so heavily. Sarah pursed slightly chapped lips, looking at Chris like he was a temperamental child. “No,” she said. “He’s not.” “Let go of her bag,” Burt said, his hand tight on the Taser. “Yeah?” Chris said, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “Or what? You’ll sit on me with that cheeseburger body?” Beads of sweat slipped into Burt’s eyes. Chris looked back at Sarah. “Who is this guy? Do you know him?” The world paused. Sarah looked at Burt – really looked at him, her head cocked slightly. Burt’s breath caught, but not because of fear or exhaustion. All those nights he’d watched her, he knew it was irrational, but he felt like he’d started to know her. And now, those eyes, as blue as he imagined, were seeing him. And as much as he
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tried to stomp it down, some small hope sparked inside him, that maybe, just maybe… “No,” Sarah said. “I don’t know him.” The breath Burt was holding left his chest in a painful rush as that spark extinguished. “I’m the security for this garage,” Burt said. “And you need to let go of that bag, young man.” “Young man?” Chris laughed again. “I’m supposed to believe you’re some kinda security guard?” “Yes,” Burt said, holding his ground even as Chris swaggered over. “Hand me the bag, please.” “Or – what?” Chris repeated, taunting him. His breath was hot in Burt’s face. “Chris, come on,” Sarah said. “Stop it.” Burt pulled the Taser from his belt. “Don’t make me use it,” Burt said. Chris sighed, those white eyes flaring. He looked from Burt, to Sarah, to the bag, as if assessing the value of putting up a fight. “All right,” he said. “No worries, Shreky. I don’t want any trouble.”
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He dropped the bag at Burt’s feet. “See you around babe,” he said, winking at Sarah. When he vanished through the door, Burt turned to look at her, picking up the bag carefully, holding it out to her with shaking hands. “You all right, miss?” he asked her, his breathing still uneven. “Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.” She took the bag from him, a silver bracelet jingling as it slipped down her arm towards her elbow. “If you ever need –” but he didn’t know how to finish what he started to say. “Thank you, but I’m fine.” A drawn line. A dismissal. She didn’t smile. He nodded; watching as she walked to her car, started that notorious engine, and slowly drove by and out of sight. She didn’t wave. He didn’t see her again after that night. He liked to think that she quit her job, lost Chris and found something better for herself. He used to draw that image of the wings on the pavement in the corners of his books, but after that night, he drew the dangling fringe on her bag instead.
GRAPHIC LUISA LACSAMANA
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SUNRISE ON MACHU PICCHU LOREN SKINKER 19 SILHOUETTE
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TWIG STUDY JACK FOREMAN
LEAVES JACK FOREMAN
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CODE FOR GROWING UP CAROLINE STEWART
//When I was little, I wanted to be a Doctor() { //my grandma got me a Barbie barbie = new Barbie(); //this barbie had a stethoscope.And_Pink_Lab_Coat(); } /** My uncle told me that doctors don’t make any money because of the health care system. He said that the government would take all my money. He said that I might as well be a mailwoman. I said that didn’t make any sense. I told him that I’d be the best doctor so that I WOULD make money. **/ My_Uncle is_a_dick; My_Uncle is_also_insane; //He told me that I should be a Lawyer() { //my grandpa said case NO_WAY: System.out.println(“They’re just as trustworthy as a prostitute. You might as well be a hooker.”); break; //but case WHAT_ABOUT_WHAT_I_THINK?: System.out.println(“Caroline, you need to have a job that makes you money!!! Lots of money!!!”); break; } /** So I can’t be a * @doctor, * @lawyer, * or possibly a * @stripper **/ 23 SILHOUETTE
public class WhatShouldCarolineBe?(not Doctor, not Lawyer, what_ about Engineer?) { //my dad was the one to suggest this one. Engineer computer_scientist = new Engineer(); //”You’ll have money, security, and, hey, you might even find yourself a smart, rich husband” Husband smart_and_rich = new Husband(); //What if I want to learn History? try { System.out.println(“WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A HISTORY DEGREE??”); catch (Exception I_can_be_a_teacher) { //I don’t like math. I like to read. I like to write. I’m good at it. } } try { System.out.println(“You can make learning History your hobby. Learn it in your free time.”); catch (Exception What_about_doing_what_you_love?) { //The thought of having a job that I don’t enjoy drives me insane. //I’d die before I worked a job I dreaded going to every day. } } try { System.out.println(“If you want to go to college, you’re going to get a degree that will matter in 10 years”); catch (Exception Unlike_my_cousin) { //he’s thirty and is still living at home. //I want to be on my own. I want to make money. } } } //Doctor? You want to be a doctor? Let your family decide that one, little girl. Doctor(you CANNOT_BE_A_DOCTOR) { break; } VOL. 40
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ASYLUM SARAH BENSON
for Zelda Fitzgerald
I find her tucked between white walls and bedsheets. Baptized in smoke, her spine bends like a broken sanctuary. I call for God in the dark, but the air crisps, crumbles like dried lungs. Above, ash trees gasp prayers thicker than water and the moon sways, hollowed and blue. Her face is blued by the death of something transparent. Gently, she closes the world in her palm, holds it to her breast, asks me how to breathe in the light. She has yoked her dreams to the ocean. In the fire they drip into glass bowls and curve shut as seashells. Her body, emptied of weight, sifts in shadows from the boughs. At night, it uncurls like a broken halo, emerges in my throat.
RED ROOFS
I open my eyes and breathe out-misting her ghost into the margins.
BRYANNA DERINGW
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ABANDONED LUISA LACSAMANA
ROANOKE LUISA LACSAMANA
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MIDDLE TENNESSEE, B U R N I N G WAT E R SARAH BENSON Middle Tennessee, Burning Water Socks on old creaking hardwood. I saw my grandmother in her kitchen trying to make tea. I was confused. The air in the dark hall smelled acrid; food had fallen into the electric range and burned. She saw me and laughed, “Your grandmother’s so bad at cooking, she can even burn water.” My great-grandmother’s second stroke happened in the same place, standing over the counter shaping biscuits, hands coated in flour white like her hair. I thought I could see the brain cells die: her speech slurred along with her face. The paramedics arrived; she kept asking about the biscuits. My grand29 SILHOUETTE
mother told her that they’re not important. My great-grandmother used to have me sit on her bony knee, ask me “What do you know?” in a sweeticed-tea Middle Tennessee accent. I said, “My ABCs!” and we sang them, except she did it differently, with a wilting rhythm: “Next time bring home A’s ‘stead of bees.” She taught me grapes had seeds. Behind her old house in McMinnville, her neighbor grew grapes on trellises. We went out back and snagged a few. Her back porch was full of sewing machines and thread, a fire hazard my mom said. When she moved into the small apartment in Oak Ridge, she had to throw all the scraps away.
RAISE THE ROOF LUISA LACASMANA
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NO SE S A N D I F WE R E A L L Y
N E E D
TH EM
BY MOLLY RYAN Do we really need noses? A lot of the things we taste, we can only taste the way we taste because of something in our nose, but as children wouldn’t we rather not taste broccoli? As teenagers wouldn’t we rather not taste the alcohol we have to pretend to like, continuously guzzle to belong with the people we think we want to belong with, the people we think we need to belong with? As twentysomethings wouldn’t we rather not taste our own abysmal attempts at cooking, remind ourselves nightly that no one will marry us because we can’t figure out how to fucking cook? As thirty-somethings wouldn’t we rather not taste a rotating menu of cum, desperately aware that instead of swallowing his unborn offspring, we’d want nothing more than to carry them, marry him? But we never learned how to cook. Do we really need noses? In through the nose, out through the mouth. When we’re running for something, away from something. When we’re running as fast as we can, that’s how we’re supposed to stave off the stitch in our side, keep running through anything
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that starts to hurt. He told us time after time, running a step in front of us when we were young and convinced we could always follow in his footsteps. We could one day be like him, a ridiculous idea now that we realize how great he truly was and how far the apple truly fell from the tree and we fell so much. We fell so many times. And so many times he picked us back up, put us on our feet, and told us, in through the nose, out through the mouth, fight off the pain, keep running. We tried but eventually we stopped trying because everything started to hurt no matter how religiously we breathed in through the nose, out through the mouth. He couldn’t get us to get up after a while. And if we couldn’t use our noses for that, for him, not only do we not need them, we don’t deserve them. Everyone always told us we had her nose, and when we were younger we were nothing but proud to wear this part of her prominently in the middle of our face. Then as we grew older, while everyone continued to tell us we had her nose, we learned that we had more than just her nose and her nose was less a part
of her face than it was part of a mask. Whether she meant to or not, she taught us to never take off the mask. She taught us nothing was more important than making sure the world never saw what we hid behind the mask and she taught us so well that, like her, we don’t think there’s anything left behind the mask. There’s nothing there. She taught us how to hide so well when maybe she should have been teaching us how to cook. We learned how to pretend we are what we aren’t from her, and when anyone tells us that we have our mother’s nose it only reminds us that we ended up with so much more than just our mother’s nose. Do we really need noses? But it was his nose that we fell in love with first. We always wanted him, but because he was successful and attractive and going nowhere but up in life and we wanted to go with him. It was his nose that we actually fell in love with. It looked funny from the side when we turned to look at him in the driver’s seat or next to us on the couch or in the morning when we turned to find him in bed with us even though he almost always left in the middle of the night. It had a bump or a crook as if it broke once and
was never fixed. Because it was and when he told us the story about looking up through the hoop and getting a face full of basketball, we fell in love. He wasn’t just successful and attractive and going nowhere but up. He was real in a way we never realized until we knew about his nose. About this little broken part of him. But still. We wish we had never fallen in love with him because not for one second did he ever love us back. His entire life was just ticking off check boxes one after the other as if God himself wrote the to-do list, but never will we ever fit in one of those boxes, no matter how much we love his nose and he told us so himself. So do we really need noses? If we were cliché we’d say he broke our heart the way that ball broke his nose. Irreparably. And we need noses to hold up glasses but he said we were prettier without them so we stopped wearing them anyway. Do we really need noses? Olfactory senses are closely linked with memory. Do we want to give that up? Do we want to stop seeing the past so much more clearly than what’s right in front of us? Do we want to see the world without that sepia toned replay reel of
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everything that’s gone rolling across everything? Do we want to smell the bay and see that parking lot by the boat docks without watching us from four years ago sit in that parked car and make that mistake we’d give anything to stop us from making? Do we want to stop remembering? He’s been gone for years but whenever we smell cigars he’s right there and we can’t walk past him. We can’t see past him. We can’t see anything. So yes. Yes. We’ll give that up. And God gave us noses. But we are living, breathing proof that God makes mistakes. Do we really need noses? What about smells? Of course. Smells. Smells to warn us what’s safe and what we should walk away from. What if we didn’t have those warnings? What if we couldn’t smell the poison before swallowing? Would we be brave enough to keep drinking? What if we couldn’t smell the smoke of our plans up in flames, our worlds turning to ashes, our love burning out? Would we be brave enough to keep planning, keep building our worlds, keep falling in love? If we couldn’t smell, didn’t have any way of knowing, were
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given no warnings, would we be brave enough? Maybe it’s time we find out. Do we really need noses? Don’t we need noses for all those times we were told to be seen not heard? Don’t we need noses so every time the world tells us not to speak out, keep our mouths closed, we can still breathe through our noses, not suffocate, try as they might to stifle us, stamp out the flame? But isn’t it about time we stopped fighting that fight anyway? Let them cut off our air supply. Just stop fighting. No one would hear anything other than the split second hiss of a valve closing. And sure, it’d be a lot harder to breathe without noses. But remember how many times we wished we couldn’t? Or we didn’t have to anymore? Do we really need noses?
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EMPTY LOT AUSTIN LEDZIAN
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MORNINGS R O B E R TA M CCO R D
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TO THE TIGRESS, MADDIE GALLO
you are bigger than the world that owns you each stripe on you is a life you stole from mother earth prideless but you are proud half-blind voiceless you release your war cry you spill blood half your age I see you in the morning when the sun is white in the sky reflecting the red of your slashed foot I wait for you to come limping home I wait to see your dark hips roll toward me again slow and powerful you would have been a good mother
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SNOW IN JANUARY MOLLY RYAN
Snow in January With flushed cheeks and gloves forgotten, I paid the familiar woods a visit, One snowy afternoon in January. I expected the trees to greet me with their earthen murmurings As they did in Spring or Fall But they were far too sleepy Draped under Winter’s favorite cashmere curse. My breath turned my vision to soft focus In a billow of fog. Winter wept softly, With only a few months left to live. The air was silent, astonishingly so And I forgot the nearby road As I stood between the trees. The wheezing sun reached with weak fingers, But the warmth in his longing touch couldn’t reach my 41 SILHOUETTE
face Before she swept him below the horizon. A chill touched my neck. The snow in January is not at all Like the snow before Christmas. In January, Winter’s spell takes a turn – Magic shifts to sorcery. In her effort to cling to life, Her intentions move from benevolent To malevolent. I watched as the evening Settled into that hushed grey. The shadows grew longer, Their grip on me grew tighter And I realized that although I had come alone, I was no longer alone at all.
white, In that moment – it felt quite dark. I was watched, not by human eyes, not by animal eyes But by something else. Something I could not explain. When I turned, my footsteps were gone behind me, Swallowed by snow. And suddenly I felt swallowed myself, Seduced by Winter’s breath in my ear, As she pulled me into supernatural clutches. Perhaps if she stole me away, She could postpone her death a little longer.
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a narrow path a momentary white streak—
LOOKING FOR A MEMORY
human teardrops among the ambivalence of rain
JAMES STECK the walls around pulsate with rythms
And stepping into that house pausing Within the intestines of my mind—
navigating—
Your faces retreat
through unsteady damp caves of electrical impulses floating lightning
glazed fireflies charteuse bulbs flicker into that basement
still
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ghostly descending
and descending the top of a crumbling staircase
trickling down each step
where am I now? in some synapse hovering
dripping light
and I am blinded
particles riding
a wave
in a twilit meadow
a storm
approaches
in the dew of myself illuminated in wet light yellow alone in the passageway from which I entered
caught in the wind of thought
I cannot remember
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LAST NIGHT CAROLINE SUTPHIN
I dreamt of a yellow poplar, dizzying to look up to. Mushrooms clustered at the base, dispersing into the soft grass. The ground called me to lay down, so I did. Ladybugs crawled up my arms, butterflies hovered above me, and the sun kissed my face while flickering through the leaves. Seeds sprung loose in a breeze, twisting and flying towards the ground. One landed in my palm, and I broke it open between my fingers, green juice staining my skin.
NIGHT OUT SHANICE AGA
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MEET THE S TA F F Layne Mandros Editor-in-Chief
Amelia Dirks Blogger & Prose Editor
Shannon Larkin Business Manager
Anna Harjung Blogger
Kasey Casella Special Events Coordinator
John Grennek Blogger
Richie Parks Outreach Chair
Kirsten Corbman Blogger
Charlotte Kuhn Social Media Rep
Julia Lattimer Poetry Editor
Cassie Keene Head of General Staff
Jessica Walker Poetry Editor
Karen Tran Webmaster
Peter Valpone Prose Editor
Paul Berges Webmaster
Hana Lee Designer
Joe Mrava Photography, Art and Design Editor
Charlotte Nasworthy Designer
Jessica Worth Photography, Art and Design Editor
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Mia Watson Designer
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