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S i n k H o l l o w S i n k H o l l o w Sink Hollow

10th Anniversary Issue

Gli Attari Della Materia Un Progetto Grezzo Matteo Bona Cover Image

Sink Hollow

Letter from the Faculty Advisors This issue marks the ten-year anniversary of Sink Hollow. What follows is a curated collection of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Art from our combined 21 Issues. The Faculty Advisors of Sink Hollow wish to thank all those who have worked on and with Sink Hollow over the last ten years. Specifically, Jeannie Thomas, Phebe Jensen, and Brian McCuskey, the three Department Heads who enabled Sink Hollow to begin, thrive, and continue. Also, to the English Department office staff we offer a heartfelt thank you for your invaluable help. A huge thank you to all the student staff throughout the years. Without your dedication and hours of work, there would not be a Sink Hollow. A particularly large thank you to Shay Larsen, our first Editor-in-Chief, for setting the course of the magazine, always taking on challenges with aplomb and forging a path for Sink Hollow to endure. Thank you to our OG Poetry Faculty Advisor, Shanan Ballam, who was integral to Sink Hollow’s beginnings and continuance. And to the wonderful Millie Tullis and Britt Skye that played dual roles as members of our inaugural staff, and later as Interim Faculty Advisors. Thank you to Amber Caron and Anne Stark who also gave of their time filling in as our Fiction Faculty Advisors during a year that brought a pandemic and pandemonium. Thank you. Thanks to Zack Baker, Amelie Hammond and the Selection Committee (Dhanai Anthimidou-Friel, Indigo Aves, Emmalynn Errard, Brook Haight, Mikkel Ohene-Opare, Brooklyn Hibshman, Kayleigh Kearsley, and Ella Unguren) for curating the selections for this issue. And lastly, we thank you, our readers and submitters. Sink Hollow has built a reputation on only publishing what we believe to be resonant and impactful work. Our mission statement invites you to “give us your words, your art, your passion—and in return we’ll give your piece a place to call home.” We hope you’ve felt welcomed and appreciated over the last ten years. We hope to continue welcoming you for many more to come. Thank you. Sink Hollow Faculty Advisors: Russ Beck, Robb Kunz, Charles Waugh, Ashley Wells

10th Anniversary

Contents

Jarkarta Aubade

Gli Attari Della Materia Un Progetto Grezzo

Kikelomo Ogun-Semore (Issue 7)

Matteo Bona (Issue 5)

Artist Spotlight

Matteo Bona (Issue 5)

Letter from the Faculty Advisors

Asylum

“Get Old and Beg Someday”

Matteo Bona (Issue 5)

Leah Waughtal (Issue 5)

Veins on Peace

Inflicted

Matteo Bona (Issue 5)

Cira Mesubed (Issue 16)

Lost

The Albatross

Matteo Bona (Issue 5)

Beatrice Austin (Issue 20)

Campo in Flamee e Tulipani Anche Matteo Bona (Issue 5)

The Hanging Temple (Fiction)

Tianjun Li (Issue 3)

Tramonto a Villa Camilla Asti

Goneril

Matteo Bona (Issue 5)

Grace Ji Yan Tsang (Issue 2)

Eating Out

Braiding (Nonfiction)

Jameson Gillihan (Issue 18)

Kamryn Pitcher (Issue 13)

In_Arduis_Fidelis

Deep Red

Jack Schnepf (Issue 18)

E r ic S u chy (Issue 11)

Sink Hollow

“La Luna Y El Hacedor” 2

Memento Memorium 1 (Nonfiction) Helenor Harris-Evans (Issue 12)

Tianjun Li (Issue 11)

The Vision of Cinema 10

“La Luna Y El Hacedor” 1

Bailey Rigby (Issue 13)

Tianjun Li (Issue 11)

Ogre (Fiction)

“La Luna Y El Hacedor” 3

Avishai Sol (Issue 8)

Tianjun Li (Issue 11)

San Bernabe

Stomach (Nonfiction)

Brian Czyzyk (Issue 2)

Sophia Thimmes (Issue 10)

Whispers

Why Bugs and Girls are Friends

Daisy Crane (Issue 4)

Rya Tost (Issue 18)

We are owed 180,000 orgasms

Pretty Thing (Fiction)

Mayra Alejandra Cano (Issue 3)

Maren Logan (Issue 13)

Artist Spotlight

g3_orig

Tianjun Li (Issue 11)

Zoe Antona (Issue 9)

“La Luna Y El Hacedor” 12

maŋɡoʊ

Tianjun Li (Issue 11)

Victoria Oliveria (Issue 9)

“La Luna Y El Hacedor” 4 Tianjun Li (Issue 11)

10th Anniversary

“Get Old and Beg Someday” Leah Waughtal (Issue 5)

An old penny that tastes like blood. Raking fingernails through dirt. We are scabs and metal sliding down hollow throats. Wetness on bare lips. We are three fourths of not enough for these sharpened teeth. A body, a small, apple core thin thing. Venus flytrap lashes. We are pretty. We are worthless. Bent shoulders, heavy hips. We carry. Bruised knees. Broken wrists. We are taken. Callouses and tiny grease burn marks like freckles on swollen and wilting flesh. We are hungry. Barcode vendetta. Dollar bill boiling. Leaves to ashes. We are little birds with straws for legs. Marble eyes on the dead fox, giftwrapped around your esophagus. Money for body. Money for amputated vocal cord. For quiet. A smiling white face. An always eviction notice. A womb swollen with shame. Commodification on check memos. We be dirty work. Knotted arthritic fingers. Mommies made of mildew stains. Mommies made for meals. Mommies who never had enough money.

Inflicted Cira Mesubed (Issue 16) Art/Page 8

Sink Hollow

The Albotross Beatrice Austin (Issue 20) 6

10th Anniversary

Sink Hollow

The Hanging Temple Tianjun Li (Issue 3, Fiction)

The first time Sheridan sees Xuankong Si, really sees it, it appears slowly out of the mist just after sunrise. A temple clings to the wall of a cliff. It seems like it stays there only by willpower, that at any second it could give up and crumble. Dr. Shae wanted to get a time lapse shot for the documentary. They awoke at precisely four AM to make the twelve-minute drive in Mrs. Xu’s bus from The Henjili Hotel in Hunyuan to the temple. Sheridan sat with the film crew silent, some drifting back to sleep, some squinting through windows into darkness. It took them hours to set up multiple shots. Dr. Shae was sure each one would be the quintessential angle. Sheridan just waits. He is interning with the documentary crew, but he has no knowledge of the winking, whirring equipment. He studies architecture at Syracuse University in New York. He knows about wood, stone, and metal. The morning begins to speak. Birds whistle. Bugs hum. The people who work below the temple open shop. The buildings themselves seem to wake up with the morning sun. The colors seem brighter, closer. The temple itself curls into the cliff wall and refuses to step into the light. It was placed so precisely, that even in the sunniest hours of the year it only gets four hours of direct sun. The temple seems like a living fossil. It is 1500 years old. Sheridan is twenty-four. Dr. Shae comes to stand beside Sheridan. He wants to know what shots Sheridan thinks will be best. Sheridan looks up at Dr. Shae’s tall frame bending like a hook. The man is so tall it seems he could reach up and touch the bottom of the temple, hundreds of yards above them. The last stars dissolve into the sky when they turn to go. The crew will film for just under a month. It is early May, just before the monsoon season. Sheridan spends most of his days roaming beneath the temple in drizzles. The locals tell the crew this is a record year for precipitation. Sheridan can’t speak Mandarin, and even those who do on the crew struggle. The locals speak Jin, a dialect of Mandarin. Whenever anyone speaks to him, he pretends he is a monk who has taken a vow of silence and just smiles and nods. The rest of the crew stays in Hunyuan whenever they can’t film. Sheridan shares a hotel room with two men named Mike. One smokes too many cigarettes and shouts at waiters. The other takes pictures of dead birds and talks about entropy whenever the temple is brought up. Dr. Shae is always busy; but when he sees Sheridan he smiles and asks a million questions. Did Sheridan like the humidity that morning below the temple? Did he see the elderly woman crying at the temple yesterday? Did he notice that in the silence of the temple it feels like you’re underwater? It has been a week when Sheridan and one of the Mikes spend a rainy day below the temple. They climb up to the temple and Sheridan’s breathing gets harder. The rain turns to waves as he 9

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bends in the air. Mike grabs Sheridan’s arm to keep him from losing his balance on the temple stair. “Hey man, what the hell?” Mike seems to shout from far away, “Are you okay?” Sheridan shakes his head and takes some deep breaths before telling Mike it’s just a head rush. Mike tells him to be more careful, and not to be the asshole who falls from Xuankong Si. Sheridan doesn’t tell Mike he has idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Sheridan doesn’t tell anyone he has idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. It is a flaw in his engineering, and one that no doctor can pinpoint. He has always been ambiguously sick. He has always been told to stay below certain altitudes and not to fly. Someday, it will kill him. Sheridan goes back to the temple later that night, alone. Mrs. Xu lets him use the bus when it is late. He has gotten clearance from a small lady who works at the admissions office to go whenever. He makes sure to climb the path slowly. He explores the temple carefully, like unfolding a secret. By the end of the second week Sheridan has seen all of the forty rooms, and each of the seventy-eight statues. XuanKong Si is the only temple with Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism all represented. Sheridan read somewhere the temple acted as a way station centuries ago. People of all faiths would come to pray. In the precariously balanced temple, all visitors found peace. Sheridan likes to spend mornings alone in the temple before it opened, before filming. It seems so clear why the monks wanted to be so high. The need for this silence. Legend says that you can’t even hear a dog bark from below when you are in the temple. The height makes Sheridan’s breath quicken and vision melt. The air seems quicker up here, this close to the stars. When the crew films, and when the temple is open, the spell is broken. The temple comes to life, flecked with tourists. Sheridan picks out Swedish, Lithuanian, Arabic, Portuguese. The film crew’s machines record everything. Someone is always filming Dr. Shae when he is at the temple. He is always talking about the temple, repeating the same lines, hoping for a better shot. He talks with the tourists. They smile and wave to their families. Dr. Shae keeps asking Sheridan to be in the film. Sheridan can’t find enough excuses. There are so many screens at the temple. They throw unnatural fluorescent beams at the ancient wood. Sheridan is sure that flash photography shouldn’t be allowed, but he hasn’t noticed much done to stop it. Mrs. Xu tells him that it is shame and it is a heavy burden knowing what your people have done to the ancient relics. She just shakes her head when Sheridan asks her more. One of the Mikes keeps asking him if he’s okay. Maybe they both do, Sheridan can’t tell anymore. By the third week Dr. Shae asks if Sheridan is okay. “When we’re up on the temple you seem distant. You look pale.” Dr. Shae passes Sheridan a beer at the hotel. Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis affects the lungs. It is really a name for a motley assortment of conditions, the doctors just can never seem to figure out what precisely is wrong with Sheridan. There is mucus in his lungs, it makes it hard to breathe. Sheridan is lucky, his condition has been late in its onset and slow in its progress. Two friends he made at the children’s hospital years ago with the same condition died before they were twenty-two. Another keeps breathing tubes on twenty-four hours a day. You understand why I couldn’t tell you before we left, Sheridan tells Dr. Shae, who runs a long Sink Hollow

finger on the lip of his beer bottle. Like a hook dancing on the mouth of a fish. Dr. Shae asks Sheridan if he needs to leave for home. Sheridan won’t. He can last the week. The crew starts to act differently around him. They walk more slowly up and around the temple. Their hands hover around his elbows. His dizziness gets worse. The statues in the temple were made by putting cloth similar to the paper mache Sheridan made in grade school over clay. After the cloth set, the clay was broken and taken out. Then the statues were painted gold. Sheridan felt like those statues, so light inside, but he still couldn’t seem to get enough air. The fourth week in China, Sheridan can’t hold in his resentment for the project. It seems wrong to him that the privacy of the temple should be exposed to the world. Every tourist’s picture, every second of film, they are a pervasion of the temple’s purpose. Sheridan stands by the temple walls and listens to Dr. Shae. “The temple is one of the very first examples we have of over-engineering. When some of the oak beams anchored into the cliff face needed to be replaced, there was concern for the structural integrity. However, it seems that the supposed mastermind behind the temple, Liao Ran, thought about replacing the beams ahead of time,” Dr. Shae has filmed this line seventeen times. Over-engineering is everywhere. Sheridan’s head gets hot as he stifles a coughing fit. One of the Mikes watches him like he might turn into a bird and fly off the cliff face. It is becoming harder for Sheridan to slip away from the Mikes. After his conversation with Dr. Shae, they seem always to be around. They are too nice. People always become too nice when they worry. No one will say anything mean to people like Sheridan on the off chance that’s the last thing said to them at all. More time is spent in Hunyuan. Hunyuan isn’t said to be a city but it has twice the population of Syracuse. The film crew spends time in bars and at parties. They have had enough of the temple. Dr. Shae and Sheridan are the only true lovers of structure, and architecture. Sheridan is alone. The last night in China, the Mikes both drink too much and Sheridan convinces Mrs. Xu to let him use the bus one last time. She has been a ghost the whole trip. She is always nearby but the crew was more interested in Hunyuan’s small night life scene than talking to Mrs. Xu. Sheridan waves at Mrs. Xu in the rearview mirror as he drives to the temple ground. She looks like a child standing outside the hotel. She has a child herself, a young girl, who she hasn’t been seen since the crew arrived. Why didn’t he take the time to learn more about the guide? The drive seems faster than usual, but Sheridan thinks it might be him who can’t keep up. It’s an hour before midnight when Sheridan gets to the temple grounds. He walks around below the temple for a while. The reservoir is still. The shops are silent. The temple is solemn. The night vibrates around Sheridan’s head. The air is lighter than it should be. The glow from Hunyuan leaks into the place. How would it have looked fifteen hundred years ago? Sheridan asks the night. How many stars could you see? It may be minutes or hours that pass before Sheridan turns to climb to the temple. It may as well be an eternities. The silence is so present that each step Sheridan takes sounds like a drum beat, 11

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an avalanche. The mountains around are as silent as Gods. Sheridan visits each room, tries to memorize each statue. He can’t remember which one goes with which religious tradition anymore. They all jumble together. He thinks he can pick out a Laozi, but it might be Confucius. The hours jumble together too. Sheridan climbs up and down stairs, trying to understand as much as he can. He makes himself look down, he makes himself think about the worst that could happen. There has to be something he is missing. The beginnings of dawn soon show. A birdsong, the sky turns to a deep ocean blue. Sheridan nearly runs between rooms, he is running out of time. His head swells, and he feels the pressure in his chest build. He looks out at the mountain across the valley. It is the twin of this one. Why was this mountain the one chosen to be crowned with the temple? Why wasn’t the other one made equal? Sheridan’s breath sounds like gunshots. The mountain across the valley swims in the ocean that is the sky. It is an iceberg. Everything seems upside-down and inside-out. Sheridan is gasping, but he wants the silence to be unbroken. He climbs to the highest corner of the temple. He feels like his head is falling into the sky, his body a tether. The world is so far away, he can see so far. The mountains blur. The world is becoming a smudge of color. Sheridan thinks of the Ten Thousand Things of Taoism. A number that represents the amount too big to comprehend. All of it. The birds singing here have lived by this temple for generations, their ancestors might have seen it built. How many of the people in Hunyuan have descended from the temple’s builders? The lines of history weave in Sheridan’s mind. The places like this all over the world that Sheridan studies overlay his mind. Cappadocia, Turkey. Where rocks like mushrooms became houses. The Roussanou Monastary in Greece. A place built on the pillars of the earth. Here. All of it so perfectly engineered. The structures will fall too; the world spins in front of Sheridan. He thinks of all the years already past. A sound. Two blonde women are smiling as they take a photograph. The first visitors to the temple. They journeyed here looking for something just like those travelers years ago. Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism. The creators of this place meant it to be a refuge for everyone. Places aren’t owned. Sheridan hears the footsteps of everyone who has walked these temple walls. Blood pounds in his ears. A rattling gasp forces itself out of his airway. Sheridan looks for something in the distance to focus on, something to steady his vision. He sees the last stars in the morning light, slowly getting fainter as the edges of his vision fade.

Goneril Sink Hollow

Grace Ji Yan Tsang (Issue 2) 12

10th Anniversary

Braiding Kamryn Pitcher (Issue 13, Nonfiction)

“We’re not losing the birch trees, the birch trees are losing us.” Wayne “Minogizhig” Valliere

In the backyard of my home is a birch tree whose branches extend over the deck, catching the air in its leafy fingers. I can see it rock back and forth from the bathroom window, where I sit on the sink braiding my hair. Even from there I can see that it is no normal birch tree. The white bark is split open by something that resembles a willow, its inner skin bursting out and opening in large, almond shaped gaps, with branches bowed reverently toward the mud. I keep my eyes on the tree’s windy rhythm and my hands in my hair, tugging and twisting the three separate strands upon each shoulder, six altogether. When I look back to the mirror, there is a wet strand that has gone unnoticed, tucked tight behind my ear, just big enough to make me start the right side all over again. Somehow I begin to hear a scene from Smoke Signals, a scene I wait for each time, in which Victor tells Thomas he has to free his braids if he ever wants to be a real Indian. Victor tells him he needs to look like a warrior, like he just came back from killing a buffalo though Thomas is quick to remind him that their tribe was made up of fishermen alone and has been for generations. I think it’s funny that I am the one from a warrior tribe, with my auburn braids and pasty skin, and not these two actors whom Old Hollywood would have loved to have killed off in some John Wayne, stage coach, Apache production. But I am Ojibwe, from the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. The government there says I’m too much of one thing and not enough of the other to be a tribal member. But that is the same government that monitors blood, like people do with dogs and horses, so I try not to listen too intently. If I were an Indian from Oklahoma, I’d be enough. Or if I were from Fort Belknap they would put my photo on a piece of plastic with a fraction just below my face. I have done the math, the geometry, more times than I can count. Drawing a human silhouette in the margin of my notes, I separate it into eight separate slices. Seven of them have to be filled, I know, but I ponder which ones to darken first. I start in the middle and make my way to the arms and hands then to the shoulders and also the knees. I stop at the neck and the ankles, wondering which end I ought to fill in, which one I will deem whiter than the other. Ultimately, I fill in the head and throat and leave the feet to be the native percentage of the silhouette. It’s only fitting, I think. The feet are the ones the earth knows the best. It’s only then that I see how I forgot to give the silhouette braids. I have braided the right side again and there is now a bubble in one of the strands, imitating a rooster’s tail where my cowlick usually sits. My fingers pull the pieces apart and I restart, tighter this time. I wonder how long it will take for my family to congregate outside the door and wonder what is keeping me. I know that if I deem my braids a success and leave the bathroom, they will comment on the fact that I haven’t done this to my hair in a while. They will make me keenly aware of what I am trying to do. My dad might even call me his little Indian baby, kiss me on the forehead and walk into the kitchen, smiling. My ears burn to think of what my family will decide to see in me. Sink Hollow

Upon returning home from the second powwow I had ever been to, I showed my father the beaded earrings I bought from an elder in Wellpinit. I told him how her face fell when she looked at me and how she did not meet my eyes when I handed her the money. He said I could have told the woman what I am. But there is no way I could have told her what I am without also saying, “Hey, I know I’m white but guess what? I’m also native just like you! So rest assured, you are not merely selling your culture away to a colonizer’s descendant. Trust that I am not the pictures of the men on the money I give you, I am in fact the earrings you give me, though appearances do deceive.” Still, my father reminds me of our whiteness when I start to bead my own earrings. I have learned to study the old language alone in my room, with the digital recordings he gave me, so I won’t have to hear him say something that would give his heart away. There is a conflict in him he has reduced to jokes and side comments. But in an odd way, I am grateful for those jokes. They are the only proof of the conflict’s existence, that there is a quiet, unconfronted unrest that sits on the top of his chest waiting to be freed. Yet, for some reason, I am the one who carries the weight, at least more openly. Sometimes I think it is because the government told him he was enough, on paper, and therefore he does not breathe the same sighs I do. For him, they do not question the freckles that mark his pallid skin like constellation stories. They disregard the fact that, before he went gray, his hair was red, redder than mine. He used to shine like a penny on the pavement, a torch among men, though he never let his hair grow long enough to be braided. The braid on my right side is tight, tighter than the one on the left which sits lower, closer to my ear. I undo the left and begin the process once more. I can feel my cheeks burn. They’ve gone pink with frustration. And because you are only supposed to think good thoughts while you braid your hair, I take time to calm myself, watch my face return to a porcelain hue, think of something that makes me smile, before I can begin the process. Back in Spokane, I had friends who could braid my hair so tight my skin would turn, and stay, pink along my hairline. They danced jingle and fancy at the powwows. They asked me if I ever danced, and my answer, of course, was no. They spoke Salish. I’d share the few Ojibwe words I knew. The differences were striking. To me, their words matched the sound of a canoe paddle hitting the water, of fish falling from a basket. My words were long, awkward, still so new to me, but they sounded more like footsteps in the snow or a collection of drums, a heartbeat, carrying its song off into the distance. These friends helped me sew my first ribbon skirt. They gave me earrings their aunties had beaded for me. They were the most generous people I’d ever known. They listened in ways others never had before. They made me laugh, let me cry, taught me how to breathe when the quiet unrest would grow heavy again because they knew what it was to count the drops that defined them. I remember when I first told one of them what I was and in the process, I somehow seemed to apologize for the way I looked. She told me, while braiding my hair on the bottom bunk at cheer camp, that “It’s okay, my cousins are white as fuck.” My white cousin from Canada is racist in the way a lot of white people are racist. And because I am her family, because we are bound by blood and pigmentation, she allows her ugly words to hang out of her mouth as if it were a shared tradition I must partake in. I watch her ignorant comments, her political incorrectness, her whiteness fall onto the floor like a grotesque, flopping fish. Sometimes it’s the n-word she says in a song. Sometimes it’s the n-word she says when it’s not in a song. Sometimes it’s the fact that she suddenly forgets the n-word when my black friends are around, which I have decided is just as bad if not worse. Sometimes it’s the impressions she does of the “drugged up, drunk off their ass Indians” she sees at Walmart. If there is a native person in one of her stories, she will refer to them as “the Indian” for the entirety of her story. Once at a bowling alley, she began 15

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telling everyone about her boyfriend’s hilarious Indian accent imitation. But the bowling alley was too loud, my question stumbled through the air on the way to her ears, so that when I asked “What kind of Indian?”, she heard, “I’m kind of Indian” to which she responded immediately with, “Yeah, but you’re the whitest bitch I know.” I wanted to say, “tell me something I don’t know” but I didn’t. I refused. Instead, I went inside myself, the same way I do when I count the freckles on my legs or the blue veins beneath my chest. The same old screaming starts up again and says, “I am whiter than your whitest Indian! I am also your whitest Indian! I am too white to say that I’m your whitest Indian and make it sound the way I want it to! I know this! I am severely, acutely, excruciatingly aware of this!” Those thoughts lead to the wrong kind of braids, the ones I fight to build before angrily retiring to bed. They are the ones that hold tight to the fear that there is nothing physical which separates my cousin from myself. My left braid is now just as tight but one of the strands is noticeably smaller than the two. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I will not cry this time. I will let the sound of the wind surging through the birch tree branches outside tell my jaw to soften and my breath to slow. I will get it right this next time, I tell myself, and begin to loosen the braid so that I may fix it for good. I cannot remember ever seeing a photo of my grandmother with braids or even that of her mother. In the single photo I have of Great Grandma Ernestine, she is in a white, long-sleeved dress that covers her neck and extends just past her knees which are hidden by black stockings. Her shoes are tied all the way past her ankles, her hair is held back by a large, pedantic bow, and her hands are holding themselves together just below her waist. She looks stiff, modest. Her skin is the same as that of my baby sister, who turns as brown as the rocks at the bottom of a creekbed once summer comes. I learned, later on, through the pieces of Ernestine I have been given, that it was that color which kept a man from marrying her. She was grown, in love, and two people with white skin told their son that he could not marry my great grandmother, the one with brown skin, the indian. I learned that she hated being called “dirty indian.” She kept her kids so habitually clean to make sure no one would have room to talk. She married a mean Catholic who got lost shopping for some diapers and never came home. I learned that fact through a distasteful joke, in fact, I made to earn a laugh from my father. He did laugh but my Grandma Carol, Ernestine’s daughter, took it upon herself to reveal the severity of our ignorance. She told us how her brother was sent to a resident school in Kansas, a place where they work hard at killing the Indian and saving the man. She told us how her mother never knew how to speak Ojibwe, as her cousins did, but could make fry bread quickly, innately, without thinking. All of these facts I use to combat the shameful truth that all I have learned, until now, about being Indian has come from a click of a computer mouse, a talking head on a screen, a recording of an elder two states away. I take comfort in the assumption though, that Ernestine must’ve known how to braid, at least. I cling to all the knowledge I can, I cling to what is left. The braids are finished and they mirror each other in length and precision. They are as tight as I could make them and they show parts of my scalp no one ever sees. When I take into consideration the soft curve of my chin, the width of my nose, the slight slant of my eyes and the smallness of my mouth, I realize I look like the girl named Wendy whose face sits on a sign above a fast food drive thru. At best, I could be Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, Dorothy Gale. I look like a person whom the world will never hurt or betray for something so simple as complexion, but instead build stories around, famous stories, though they are never the stories I search for or kill myself to keep. I feel stupid for the times when I think I have to hide a part of me that no one can really Sink Hollow

see. And when I don’t, I show what I am through beads I hang from my neck and ears. I will post the Ojibwe Word of the Day or something to remind people of all the missing and murder indigneous women the government has stopped looking for. I will learn a new song from the internet that I will sing casually under my breath, not so loud that my roommates will ask me what I am saying but enough to know that it is not for them to understand. Still, I am not so naive as to believe I don’t carry my family’s spirit inside me. The same spirit that is the strongest part of the earth. I am not blind to the secrets in the foliage, of what the birds signify or what the coyotes lie about. I can reach out and see quite easily the ways my arms are not so different from the branches of the birch. After I take my braids out, the damp, subtle waves brush the soft tips of my shoulder blades, and I leave the bathroom to find my way to the backyard. Outside, the wind has died down only slightly and the sun’s warmth lays into the skin of my exposed shoulders and clean face. I did not put any shoes on, I did not need to. The ground is soft from last night’s rain as I step down from the deck and onto the patchy grass, avoiding the dog poop and cockleburrs scattered around me. I stand before the birch where I trace my hands along the peculiarities of its bark. It is looking back at me as I do this. Baby birds rustle in the nest overhead. Cottonwoods sing in unison in the park across the street. The mud beneath my feet pushes through to the gaps in my toes, pulling me deeper into its mush. I feel I could cry for what has been lost or the strain of my arms and chest and back I feel while leaning into its side, hand catching wrist around the skinny trunk. I could pray to the ancestors marked down in the family records as Clearing Sky, Muskegon woman, Sioux captive and so on. But I do not. I lay my head against the birch and hear the old creak of its roots which say, “we are, we are, we are.”

Art/Pages 18- Deep Red 19

Er ic S uchy (Issue 11)

10th Anniversary

Sink Hollow

10th Anniversary

Jakarta Aubade Kikelomo Ogun-Semore (Issue 7)

–At Fajar Berseri Mental Rehabilitation Center The wooden pillars cast heavy shadows over white tile floor stained with cigarette ash, while the Jakarta heat wrings a cloth of wet air onto a row of brown bodies glistening under a yellow mask of daylight. Twenty women who reek abashedly of touched skin, weightless arms draped across batik fabric damp with sweat. Never mind the naked woman covered in flies, her chest concaved from hunger, silence a chisel scraping my insides clean. Never mind the metal beds placed in some rooms but not others, the number of consecutive nights unknown— He raped me. He raped me, scorching in my ear. I want to pray over and over, but I know I’m just a girl sifting through lifetimes of unholiness. Outside motorcycles roar as they speed by, mindless chatter pulling a sheet over the city, draped above crowds of Warung sellers and beggars. But never mind the woman staring Sink Hollow

blankly at the wall, never mind the ghost invading the glass walls of her body. He raped me. He raped me. Allah tell me this, why their bodies have crawled out of flesh to tiptoe around me, how I cannot help but watch because my body does not belong to me either— Allah tell me, the manner in which you pull each of our weeping strings knowing you will never cut them loose.

10th Anniversary

Artist Spotlight MATTEO BONA (Issue 5) Asylum Page 23

Veins on Peace Page 24-25

Lost Page 26

Campo in Flamee e Tulipani Anche Page 27

Tramonto a Villa Camilla Asti Page 28-9

Gli Attari Della Materia Un Progetto Grezzo

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Eating Out Jameson Gillihan (Issue 18)

I must be the loudest chewer on the planet. Here’s me: spit-spotted jowls, gum-juice leaking out the lipseams, smacking, mouth breathing, gingivitising the air. Can I share this room with you? Is there air in here for two. Can I drool over your shoulder rest my teeth on your collar, dig in or should I serve you tender, kiss gristle in your mouth and tongue your insides clean. Cheekchewed molar-marked mucosa: We’ll have matching scars. Cannibal love is so played out I know but I’m sick of taking risks and ready to lose my body—cliché, chlamydia, prion disease—I’ll take them all into me, learn new words for the parts of the mouth (your retromolar trigone, your maxillary alveolar ridge, your superior lip), take up dentistry, start filling cavities. Or I could go fuck myself. It’s just I need a you in me in you again, someone else’s spit in my mouth for a change, tasting sucking gagging, recursing, regurgitating me back into me. Teach me who I am again, teach me how I taste. How to eat someone alive. How to sit still while being eaten. Or pinch my clit between your teeth and bite me sexless, pucker your lips, roll me over that tongue of yours, roleplay somelier. Say something smart about me: say notes of sin and citrus, say you’d taste me over and over again if it didn’t mean using me up. Say didn’t your mother ever teach you to chew with your mouth closed.

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In_Arduis_Fidelis Jack Schnepf (Issue 18) 31

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Memento Memorium 1 Helenor Harris-Evans (Issue 12)

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Art/Pages 38-39

The Vision of Cinema 10 Bailey Rigby 37

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Ogre Avishai Sol (Issue 8, Fiction)

Garth was so ticked off he had to go downtown and eat a child. Walking down Fifth Avenue surrounded by tops of heads reminded Garth of the crowd he’d left at the firm, all smiling white faces guzzling shitty wine for Amanda’s birthday, or Sue’s birthday, Garth didn’t know. What he did know was that there had certainly been invites, and he did not receive one. It was the same situation with the Secret Santa project or the New Years party or the office fantasy football league. So now he walked the streets. Garth enjoyed the city, it was one of the few places he could blend in, become part of the throng. New York made Garth feel small; it gave him company, and space to spread out. Picking at the bit of corduroy still stuck in his teeth, Garth passed another hot dog stand. One of those big Greek carts where everything is large and drippy, and falls apart in your lap. Garth was also large, large and ugly, with loping arms and shoulders like a desk. Maybe that was why he thought, maybe that was why those scarecrows at the firm hadn’t invited him. Maybe because Garth’s pointed, bald, head always hit the doorframe on the way out of his cubical. Maybe because Garth’s voice matched his teeth, crooked, and bricklike, and black. Garth jammed his hands into his jacket and crumpled up the loose receipt tucked into the corner pocket. He threw it over his shoulder in the same loose wristed motion with which had been addressed with at the birthday party. Garth then gave a passing taxi a sarcastic little wave, mirroring the way a group of his cackling blond coworkers had ushered him out of the office. A pigeon flew overhead, gargling a low hoot. Ever since Garth was a little boy he had dreamed of eating a pigeon, though was yet to realize the ambition. Garth didn’t really have quick hands, and he was far too clever to go chasing pigeons down Fifth Avenue anyway. As he neared the Empire State building the street began to thicken. Garth waded through a river of heads catching a couple eyes, but they never stayed for long. Ducking slightly as he entered the rotating glass door, Garth emerged into the bustling foyer and proceeded to another line, then another. All the security folk knew Garth by now. His regular visits to the building had ensured Garth’s face was not one that the blue-coated men and women of the Empire State foyer would forget. Garth had been there so often that he knew many of the guards by name. He caught the eye of a new face as he passed under the metal detector. Pausing to read the guard’s nametag, Garth’s voice rumbled out in friendly greeting. “Good morning Ezra.” Ezra looked startled to be addressed by name and nodded jerkily in Garth’s direction, but said nothing. Garth wondered why he’d had wished Ezra a good morning, it wasn’t morning; it hadn’t been morning for a long time. Garth nodded at a couple more of the guards, none of them nodded back. Garth knew nearly all of them by name, but to the security staff Garth was just what he looked like, the lonely giant, with the black teeth. Garth always enjoyed the long elevator ride up. The many buttons on the spacious lift were entertaining enough, but combine that with the wide berth other riders gave Garth and the elevator became downright roomy. Perhaps it his intimidating stature that drove the people away, perhaps it was his stench. The lift would go four or so floors then stop, five more, sometimes as much as fourteen. Motion sickness was inevitable on a busy day like today. Garth did not enjoy all the stop and start, and Sink Hollow

took note of the gurgle in his stomach and the heat of the elevator. Garth stood in the left corner of the lift with his head inches away from the ceiling. Taking a sweeping glance around the room Garth heard a blowing noise to his right. Looking down to buttoned side of the lift, Garth watched a small brown skinned boy make explosion sounds as he smashed two toys together. Garth could smell him. The boy would swing one around his head making a whistling sound as he did, and then would slam the toy into the other, blowing spit out of his puckered mouth in a raspberry. Garth was fascinated. He followed the boy’s story with rapt attention, each clash was more violent then the last, each meeting of plastic combatants had more grit and determination then the one before it. After many doors and floors the boy finally smashed the toys together with enough force that one of their arms flew off. Garth gave a little gasp and clapped his hands together in delight, causing a few of the more distracted people in the lift to jump at the noise. Garth was treated to their sideways glances for the rest of the ride up but he didn’t care. What a finale, Garth thought to himself, as the boy was led out of the lift by his hairy-wristed mother. A few more floors passed in stop and start fashion. Garth farted. Garth decided on a whim to get off at 98 and walk the last few floors. The remaining few riders looked relieved to see the back of Garth’s neck crane through the double doors as they dinged open to let him out. Going three steps at a time, Garth was almost alone in the stairwell. A few ‘no exit signs’ and an occasional fire alarm lined the white drywall, but only the distant echo of squeaky shoes broke the quiet. Breathing through his teeth as the topmost platform came into view, the door swung open even before Garth could reach the push-pole handle. A young couple came blushing and giggling out from behind it. The girl’s face changed when she saw who was striding up the stairwell towards her and the smirking boy put his hand on her back as he ushered her past. Garth climbed the last few steps one at a time. The top of the Empire State Building was coated along the edges in young people, school field trips, and a camera wielding Korean tour group. Garth squinted in the glare reflecting off the Gatsby Enterprise building and blocked out the sun with his hand. Moving out from the doorway, Garth waded through the gaggle of Koreans to get a better view of the surrounding buildings. Craning over the edge he could see down to the sidewalk and the multi coloured grains of rice scurrying along below, each of them washed orange in the light from the Gatsby Enterprise. Garth wrapped his long fingers around his gizzard and leaned against the railing. He took a deep breath through his nose and blew out threw his protruding lips just like the boy had done. Just as he was about to try and hock a loogie over the edge of the building Garth heard woman shriek from behind him. Quickly swallowing his snot, Garth turned and looked to see the Korean tour group create a semi circle around two figures, one of who was in the middle of proposing. The two hugged as all the Korean women on the balcony simultaneously swooned. Camera clicks and laughing followed as staff emerged from inside the Empire State Building carrying bottles of wine and plastic cups. All of the school field trips converged on the wine despite their chaperones’ protests, the Korean tour group took turns congratulating the giggling fiancés and smiled and danced and drank and stayed at the Empire State building for much longer than their schedules said they would. It took Garth a minute to crack a smile; the movement made his cheeks creak. Watching the mismatched crowd sheepishly boogie across the Empire State balcony put a beat in his step. As the volume got adjusted his tap became a two-step, then a shuffle. It wasn’t until a peck of pigeons took off together off the railing that Garth hoisted himself off the railing and sprang into the crowd. Towering above the rest of the dancers, Garth couldn’t help but laugh as he slid and skipped across the concrete floor. He shot his black teeth around at everybody in the room and everyone smiled back. Garth danced with the rooftop crowd as long as anyone there, longer than the Korean tour group, longer than the fiancés. He bobbed around like a pigeon or a ball, catching child-flavored burps in the back of his throat. 41

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San Bernabe Brian Czyzyk (Issue 2)

We are yellowed splints of pine warped by constant sun. Your tongue tastes of ash, and my hair comes loose in your palms. Before the drought, we were flank steaks and troughs of gravy. We were belly buttons dripping over waistbands. We shined each other with greased palms, with olive oil, with spit. Now, we are scabbed elbows and lanugo hair. We are copper teeth and sandy mouths. If only we had measured every grain punched into dough. If only we had collected the sweat from our sheets and drenched the vineyard with it. Now, I press my palm to yours, my forehead to yours. I mutter a prayer—not for rain— but that I am enough blood to slake your thirst, enough meat to help you beat away the buzzards. I pray that my grit will enter you, and you’ll trudge somewhere where shadows will canopy you, where you can get sticky juicing grapes, where you can wet your lips on fat slices of honeycrisp.

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We are owed 108,000 orgasms Mayra Alejandra Cano (Issue 3)

One for each day Of each year Of the conquest Because we are hijos de la chingada A people born of rape Because they slaughtered the men, And stole our pleasure. I’m still looking for it Because I’m not allowed to have men in my room They used to hide us from men They still hide us from men Porque en la noche adentro de la tina My sister-in-law slaps my niece’s hand away for scratching an itch on her vulva and says No te tocas ahí, no seas cochina Porque I am not religious but I still feel the weight of l a Virgen de Guadalupe Between gasps of laughter I chismear to my friends I am a hoe of color Because you make me feel like Coatlicue like her, you and I make the gods moon and stars I love the sound of us how your laughter turns into moans,

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the movements of your mouth the feeling of your tongue. Because sex is also a form of resistance So you and I Let

resistir

Art/Page 43

Whispers Daisy Crane (Issue 4) 45

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Artist Spotlight TIANJUN LI (Issue 11)

“La Luna Y El Hacedor” 12 Page 47

“La Luna Y El Hacedor” 4 Page 48

“La Luna Y El Hacedor” 2 Page 49

“La Luna Y El Hacedor” 1 Page 50

“La Luna Y El Hacedor” 3 Page 51

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Stomach Sophia Thimmes (Issue 10, Nonfiction)

When I was a little girl, I had a pregnant Barbie poodle with a stomach that could open and close. When you unlatched its stomach, three poodle puppies would tumble out: one white, one grey, one pink. The pink puppy was my favorite. One time, when I was sitting at the kitchen counter playing with the poodles (in the tummy, out of the tummy, in the tummy, out of the tummy), the pink puppy fell all the way out of the stomach and onto the floor where my family’s black dog, Maizy, snatched it up into her jaws. Maizy let it go after I jumped down from the barstool and squealed at her, but not before she disfigured the small plastic face with its rounded muzzle and fine, painted eyelashes. Maizy was a quarter wolf and wasn’t ever going to have any puppies because she had been fixed. A silvery scar ran across her stomach from where she had been cut into and sewn tight. Since I was a kid, adults have asked me about having kids like it’s as easy as in the tummy, out of the tummy, in the tummy, out of the tummy. Although they ask, there’s only one acceptable response. Everything else is met with, “you’ll change your mind.” It’s like I can feel their hands on my stomach searching for a latch. I don’t know how many times I’ve googled the price of having an abortion. $600-$1500 for suction aspiration in the early stages of pregnancy. More for later on. Out of the stomach, out of the stomach, out of the stomach. The closest clinic is an hour and a half away. It’s good to know. Just in case. I used to think that I’d be fine if I just talked about contraception with my partner. I should have known that someone would want to pry me open on their own terms. After I stopped playing with them, the Barbie poodle and its puppies were sealed in a bin in my parent’s basement. When Maizy died, my Dad buried her deep in a canyon. When I got my IUD, I stared up at a rectangular patch of sky that had been placed over a fluorescent light. At first, I thought that this small thoughtfulness was silly, but the glimpse of blue was oddly comforting as I laid back and felt the copper wings of the IUD unfold themselves sharply in my uterus. After the OBGYN cut the plastic threads, I got up from the rustling paper, pulled my skirt back on, and drove myself home. The cramps were only bad on the first day, and the bleeding stopped by day four. I used to have dreams about giving birth to random objects: a hooked earring, a stone, a disfigured pink puppy. The occasional child. Those nightmares, at least, have stopped.

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Why Bugs and Girls are Friends Rya Tost (Issue 18)

Because a dandelion traveled across her cheek and the aphid passenger thanked her with softness. Because a silk web cornered her and a crouch won the fight. Because granddaddy long legs saunter by with purpose and it’s not to melt his maw against her neck. So that fathers will have something else to kill. To feel a silk moth kiss the oils of her skin and move on like she’s only a pebble, or the same. To be melded with the environment, accepted. So paper will be creased hotdog-style. To teach fathers and boyfriends how to be gentle with life. Because wolf spiders and Orb weavers have families too. No sourness, squishing, or Swiffer Sweepers needed. Because a cup and copy paper would otherwise not embrace. To teach compassion. Because silverfish want to live, too. Because teenage boys will dangle a mantis by the antenna and ask “What’s wrong with that one?” Full of ignorance, judgment, and hormones. Because bugs, too, have thoraxes too flat and eyes too big. Sink Hollow

To give the empaths a new child. To give the spiteful a new prey. Because wasps have open seats in their defense class. Because sparrows aren’t so friendly and bluebirds get hungry, too. To let each other breathe for a half-second Before the boot stomps or the Raid sprays. Because they’re two pages of the same book. Because the gods knew isolation is a killer and one ladybug is not.

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Pretty Thing Maren Logan (Issue 13, Fiction)

To understand the Gallery, you must understand the anticipation. The sweating. The chatter. The headlines flashing across Times Square. Then there were the girls, of course, glistening, shiny, lips like plastic, hair like honey and butter. You flip through the magazine pages, past perfume ads that smell like French lavender or rose petals, to find the list of names, exactly two pages long in sleek Times New Roman. The Gallery itself was in the center of the city, a long white building, Hellenistic in design. My mom took me every year. She would call into work, painted lips smacking as she spoke over the phone, long acrylic nails tapping against the kitchen island. Then we’d drive two hours into the city, parking at the top of those cylindrical parking garages. She’d flash her yearly pass at the orderlies with one hand, grab mine with the other, and guide me down the hallway. It would be completely silent, except for the sound of her heels clicking across the marble floor. We’d spend hours there, observing those girls, my mom mostly criticizing with eloquent diction and imaginative analysis, the tongue of a writer, as if she expected me to take notes. I never did; I was busy studying my mom, the way her auburn hair puckered out of the copper clip she always wore, the way she sneered in disgust or smiled in approval, followed by the tap of her long white fingers against her forearm as she gathered her opinion. The day always ended in cheap takeout, but we rarely ate more than a bite. The anticipation started on audition day, when tall, beautiful women lined down streets, stretching their legs, drinking black coffee, and smoking cigarettes. The process was simple; I could recite it in my sleep. You walk in, stand in the light, find your light #731! No, closer, look for the X at the back of the room, keep your eyes steady on it. Try not to blink. Can you tell us your name, age, and height? Thank you for coming. Meanwhile, they circle you—they, the critics—slowly, the weight of their bodies shifting and easing across the floor, closer, until you can hear their breath and feel their chest rise and fall. I would know, I’ve auditioned five times already. The first time, I was eighteen, fresh out of high school. I didn’t have a manager or a resume. They asked me my name and I stuttered. The woman, the only woman, snorted. Then she waved her thin hands to signal my exit. The next four times I was more confident. I had a contract with a modeling institution. My manager was a man in his late fifties with a shiny bald head that looked misshapen, alien. I wondered what it felt like to touch, if it was soft like dough or hard like rock. I had money from my job as a barista to purchase luxury, Gallery-recommended lipstick. I used my entire first paycheck on it, then sent a picture to my mom who informed me it didn’t play into my type. I told her she was wrong, that she would see. She was right. When I turned 22, I rented an apartment twenty minutes away. If you preened your neck out the window, you could see, wedged between office buildings, the tip of the Gallery. We were on the twenty-sixth floor, Beth and I. Beth was my friend from college. We met in the same sorority, though she was two years my junior. My mom hated Beth. It wasn’t surprising considering my mom’s analytical nature. Beth was tall and skinny, with an oily forehead and a button nose and thin lips she got injections for sophomore year. She was too skinny, my mom said; there was something unnatural about her figure. Sink Hollow

Everything about her was fake, artificial: the crackled wetness of her bleached blonde hair, and the brittle, clumped nail polish she wore. But I loved Beth. She bought me expensive chai lattes, the kind with whipped cream and cinnamon, and helped me curl my hair when I missed a few strands in the back. Some things annoyed me, I guess, like the way she knew every detail of my life, prying information out of me like a dentist removing a rotten tooth, but I knew nothing of her. My mom didn’t want me to live with Beth, who dropped out to pursue the Gallery full-time on her dad’s money. Hypothetically, she’d drive me crazy with her bottles of goo, her tubs of mango scented creams, her hair all burnt up on the bathroom floor. I thought that was rather pretentious of my mom—wasn’t it enough to just be pretty? Why must beauty be of a certain breed of naturalness? I ignored her opinion and let Beth pick out a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood, ten minutes from our modeling agency, and fifteen from the coffee shop I worked at. As it grew colder, my patience thinned and my layers thickened, but Beth’s squeals echoed in my head, that positive input she always squeezed into a conversation: Fifteen minutes of burning calories! Every morning, when I slid out the door, makeup smeared over the narrow line of pimples blossoming across my forehead: Fifteen minutes of burning calories! Take an extra muffin because you’ll burn it off walking back anyways! Whenever Beth offered me a muffin it tasted like carpet in my mouth. This was a common occurrence in our apartment. Somehow, she always had baked goods lying around the kitchen: baskets of bread rolls, leftover cupcakes from her cousin’s baby shower, or a freshly baked cherry pie the man at the grocery gave her in exchange for her number. The entire apartment smelled like a bakery. And she’d say, slurping a detox spinach smoothie out of a paper straw, My parents worry about me so much, that’s why they lavish us in carbs. I’m so skinny. But I can’t see why they’re worried. I won’t eat them, but you totally should! Come on, help me out. Eat one. It won’t hurt you. Then I’d take one of those double chocolate cupcakes out of its embarrassingly loud plastic box, plop it down on a napkin, and sit in the dim kitchen light, across from Beth. Oh! Use the Cranach knife. That knife, the adorned one from the drawer, with its golden handle. It was a gift from her parents when they bought her the place, from some kitchen designer with a fancy French first name and last name Cranach; as if I knew which brands were expensive or cheap, she relished in reminding me, her mouth popping each syllable and rounding into a faux accent. I’d eat one bite, feeling the chocolate syrup squeeze between my teeth like toothpaste out of the tube, exploding in my mouth, a sweetness that tasted so good it hurt. Then I’d wipe my wet fingers on the damp napkin, fold it, and throw the cupcake away. You know, you should really finish that; I’m worried about you. The only way you could truly prepare for your Gallery audition was to work with smaller galleries. These were cheap renditions of the Gallery, poor imitations that you booked as a part-time job. I took a job once with a traveling gallery, right out of college. I played a waitress from the 1950s. I got to wear this pink dress with an embroidered apron and ask Would you like a slice of apple pie? Over and over. That was it. People paid to watch me smile and ask if they wanted pie, this ridiculously plastic slice on a plastic tray. Some Gallery critics frowned upon this work as if it made you unclean or impure. But how else would we learn how to smile, how to speak, how to hold ourselves? So, we loved and despised the work. It made girls brag, but also blush in shame. Beth loved working for those galleries. She paced around the living room in her slippers, reading from the scripts our agent gave us, never more than three lines. It was pathetic watching her. She would repeat the lines over and over until they lost all meaning, and pose dramatically in front of the apartment window as if she was the next Audrey Hepburn. The gigs themselves sucked. You were like a mannequin on a shelf, repeating the same lines– and maybe two steps of choreography if you were lucky–for hours on end. Not to mention the pay sucked. It was the feeling of people watching you, rich, lavishly dressed men, in their fur coats and silk ties, that was currency. The one downside, and the only downside, to the Gallery was that you 57

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would never get to soak in the admiration. You could never hear them say Wow, she’s gorgeous, isn’t she? What a sight. I wish I could hold her in my arms, cradle her body while it was still warm, and feel her heartbeat beneath her skin. If only I could press my ear to her chest and hear one now! Once, on a Gallery trip, I saw a man around thirty, with a thick head of blonde hair and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, fall to his knees and weep at the beauty of one girl. It felt unreal, like watching a mortal worship a goddess. My mom sighed and muttered something like That’s the only time you’ll ever get a man to beg for you. There was one boy from Detroit who saw my traveling exhibition every day we were in town, pausing at my stand. I winked at him a few times. He was handsome, young, probably fifteen. He told me, I know you can’t talk back, but I just want to say my name’s Axel, and I think you’re really beautiful; remember me when you get off work, OK? And I’ll buy you a real slice of pie. And then he left his number scribbled on the back of an exhibition pamphlet. I never did get that slice with him, but I kept his number in my purse for a while. There aren’t many other men worth mentioning. I met others. In college, I could get a guy to buy me drinks just by telling him I auditioned once. Everyone wanted a Gallery girl. In the city, things were trickier because every girl wanted to be a Gallery girl but, realistically, so few would be. Guys got pickier, felt free to dispense their own critique of you, passing it off as helpful or constructive, or Just another reason you should sleep with me because you won’t meet another man who minds your flaws like I do. We got it. We all got it. We were disposable paper dolls, pretty little playthings. And we had fun with it. Beth went through lots of men, big and small, mostly covered with tattoos or piercings. She called them her Boy Toys and kept them around long enough for flowers and rings and teddy bears, then kicked them to the curb. It was as if every man made her richer, more attractive, better. I was impoverished. There was Edgar, this tall guy with a face tattoo and a thick Russian accent that hit on me once at a club. He was surprisingly very sweet, and when I told him I was too nervous to go home with him, he kissed me on the cheek and paid for my next drink. Beth stayed the night at his place. A few days later, after dumping him over the phone with one of those cherry appetite suppressant lollipops hanging from her lips, she told me Edgar thinks you’re very cute. Would you like me to give you his number? I said no. In my daydreams, I often see Edgar strolling the aisles of the Gallery, wearing that big, ripped leather jacket and a white t-shirt. In the dream, he stops and the blood drains from his face: me, perfectly still, glass. And he cries one tear, perfectly silent, down his handsome, chiseled face. It’s so quiet that everyone can hear it hit the floor. I know I can’t be resentful towards Edgar or Beth. I was the one who was too nervous to have sex with him. It wasn’t like I was in love with him or anything. I am what many men have called tightly wound, prudish, It would do you good to smoke weed every once and a while, you know that? I haven’t figured out why. I suppose I’ve just always known I was crafted to be looked at, not touched. Please refrain from touching the art. It’s common knowledge that girls over 25 do not get picked for the Gallery. It seems reasonable to place restrictions, and it’s not like older girls can’t take roles at smaller galleries. Mostly they just quit and get married, find attractive men whose sperm would breed beautiful babies, future Gallery girls. That’s what my mom did. I washed my face that morning—Audition Morning—with water from our filtered pitcher because I didn’t trust the tap. I kept, in a drawer under my sink, a bottle of anti-aging cream my mom had bought for my last birthday. I applied it religiously every morning. It was white, odorless face lotion; I scooped up with my index finger and massaged in circles around my cheeks and forehead, Sink Hollow

beneath my eyes, and around my cupid’s bow. I worked quickly, for fear of Beth barging in, then slipped it back into the drawer behind a box of floss. Beth entered; her hair parted neatly into sections. She plugged in our old curling iron, innocently eyeing my idle hands. Your breath smells like coffee. Oh. Well, I haven’t brushed my teeth yet. I fumbled around the drawer for my toothbrush. How are we doing timewise? We’ve got an hour. Don’t worry; you look pretty. Beth’s skin looked smooth and shiny, glowing softly around the edges like a highlighter. My mascara had clumped thickly on my eyelashes, and I’d rubbed it off with the first towel I could grab, scrubbing not too hard so that my skin wouldn’t blemish, making my face appear sallow, thin. You’re 23, right? So, it’s one of your last auditions. You’re old. I didn’t say anything; I kept my eyes fixed on my reflection. My mom died last year. She was 48. Heart complications from anorexia. She’d been toying with eating disorders for her whole life. I remember once when I was maybe thirteen, she bought us everything bagels, with seeds that crumbled from my lips and onto my lap as I ate, layered with velvety cream cheese. It got all over our faces and made my skin feel sticky and oily. Do I look like Santa Clause? She laughed and smeared it off with her thumb, gnawing at another chunk of bread. We were listening to music and sliding around on the kitchen tile in our socks when she caught her reflection in the microwave. She snapped at me. Don’t get crumbs on the floor. I sweep all the goddamn time and none of you give a fuck. And she yanked what was left of my bagel from my small hands and threw it in the trash. For the next hour or so, she cranked up the volume so loud it hurt my ears and puked in the half-bath toilet. We were all surprised she made it to 48. My grandma told me it was manageable when she was young; she was just obsessed with controlling what she ate, keeping lists and calculations of calories, regular, teenage girl habits. There were a few hospital visits, separated by a few years each. Then she turned 25, failed her last Gallery audition, and started eating: pasta, burgers, milkshakes, cupcakes, pies. Her doctor diagnosed her with severe depression, so she found my dad and moved outside the city. It wasn’t until I turned twelve that some switch just flipped in her, right back on. For my birthday that year, my dad baked red velvet cake with frosting flowers, but she wouldn’t eat a bite. You don’t remember that kind of thing until it’s too late. At the same time, I was discovering my body: lingering a second longer on the bathroom mirror before I stepped into the shower, pulling at the waists of my jeans. Sometimes I feel grateful because her disease kept me skinny too. I thought about how she accused Beth of having an eating disorder, and how rude it was when she took the two of us out to lunch one day and eyed Beth’s salad the whole time, squinting with each bite Beth took and taking extra care to leave even more leaves in the bowl than her. I guess Beth probably did have an eating disorder, I just didn’t want to know. I tried not to notice what she ate or when she ate. I kept all my meals private, on the desk in my room or at work. I bought fewer groceries than her and found myself hungry at the end of the week, stealing snacks from Beth’s pantry. There was a collection of wrappers under my bed because I was too paranoid that Beth would check the trash and find them lying in the bottom. I would be humiliated. Those snacks were the one thing I thought I’d miss if I was picked for the Gallery. My diet was tasteless, consisting of mostly undressed salads and egg whites. Those snacks were chocolate fudge, ripe and juicy like forbidden fruit, but bitter with the taste of guilt. The more I ate, the hungrier I got. I could fall into a pool of that hunger, clawing at the velvety walls of desire, where my feet couldn’t find the bottom. I thought maybe that’s why I could never dedicate myself to a man because I was already in love. 59

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I wondered if that’s how my mom felt. If she loved food more than she loved me. There’s a lot of shame that comes with that. But food could fill her in a way my dad and I could never, and I understand that now. I slid myself into my crisp white leotard, one leg at a time. As I did, I realized how ghostly pale my skin was, swan-like. My skin was fragile porcelain, and the veins stared through like lightning across my skin, corpse-like. I zipped myself into my sweatsuit and headed for the door. You look SO pretty. So do you. It’s called the Swarm, and it’s the rush of girls lining up every year. The streets completely close off. Taxis up their rates. It was the Swarm again this time. You could feel the buzz, like walking by a wasp nest—the muttering and mumbling that sounded inhumane—and you got through only by keeping your eyes straight ahead and zoned out. We were zombies, a hive mind with only one thought: keep walking forward. There were always a few girls, new girls, who made the mistake of breaking out, a lapse of judgment that led to a sort of mental psychosis, a coma-like state of fear and jealousy. Those girls would compliment you. You have really pretty hair. A really cute smile. That is the sweetest laugh I’ve ever heard! But they never made it through. Their mind was cracked. There was no cure. Beth and I didn’t stand together in line. She preferred to be as close to the front as she could get. She was confident. I slunk to the mid-back, where I could remain unseen until I wanted to be. There wasn’t an exact formula or good luck charm. There was no science to say if placement changed anything. My number this year was 889; Beth’s was 223. We advanced gracefully, delicate step after delicate step, a dance well-rehearsed. They don’t tell you this in any training sessions, but you are being watched. Pedestrians on the street, following eyes from the windows of taxis, or the windows of skyscrapers, all the way up to the fiftieth floor. And when you finally get to the waiting room, that quaint little room with the white walls and white couch, there’s this big, floor-length window that people can watch you from. As girls shuffle out of their audition, they sometimes stop and look at you, with beady, jealous eyes. It’s like pinpricks. It’s like invisible bugs nipping at your skin. An itch. A tickle. A rash creeping up your forearms, your chest, your neck. I looked over at that window. She was blonde and thin, and she had a strand of hair—you could really only see it when the light hit a certain way—that was too oily. She wore a big gray hoodie that swallowed her angular body, and her hand was in her pocket, poking forward at me. She looked like Beth, only her eyes were glassy, like a doll’s that could roll up into her head any minute. I continued forward. Can you tell us your name, age, and height? I am white, thin, and beautiful. I have two dimples on my cheeks and white teeth. My face is heart-shaped, and my eyes are pale blue. When my face is completely still my skin is smooth and soft and my eyes large and bright. I am petite, but with a small waist that gives the illusion of curve. I am pale so some of the freckles on my body look like dots of ink. When I pull my shoulders back, I look slender and narrow. Angelic. That’s what they called me. Like the dove from Noah’s Ark, an angel on Earth. I know I am beautiful in all the ways Beth is not. And I look nothing like my mother. The judges were three men. One with an oily, slicked back mullet and small eyes. One with a snarl. One with yellow teeth. And then there was the woman. When she looked at me, I felt my skin vibrate, like there was something beneath it, trying to escape, pushing and poking at my tissue. A memory comes to mind. It was a week after my high school graduation, which my mom had missed from her recent stay in a facility for patients with eating disorders. My dad suggested I pick her up, and we go to the mall and have a “girl’s day.” My mom wasn’t good at shopping like other moms. Sink Hollow

When the mall got too crowded, her eyes would go blank and her mind spacey. She’d wander around aisles of leather purses and evening gowns with her eyes fixed on nothing. Then she’d force me to try on random garments as if she’d snapped out of the trance and wanted to apologize, but she wouldn’t pay attention; she’d pull and pick at her skin, the way it fell across her stomach. When I asked how something fit, a smile would pull across her sallow cheeks, You look great, honey. You always look great. On the drive, she asked me what I’d eaten that day. I guessed because she wanted to live vicariously through me, to clench her hunger. I told her pancakes and scrambled eggs for breakfast, a salad, the kind with spinach and raisins and pecans for lunch, and then some almonds as a snack. I talked about the way the food felt on my tongue, dry or smooth or crinkled or slimy, and the way it smelled, the potency of my vinegar dressing, and the sweet vanilla from my pancakes. I watched her eyes dilate with each syllable. We shared a soft pretzel in the food court, not wiping off the thick chunks of salt, and dipped it in one of those small plastic cups of cheese sauce. And then a slushie, blue raspberry, that dyed our tongues purple. And then a slice of pizza, without dabbing the oil off on our napkins. She nodded her head and encouraged me to eat even when I was full. I did because I knew if I stopped, she would too. It was like a test. Then she sent me into the dressing room, with a handful of beautiful party dresses, sparkles rubbing off on my forearms as I hugged them to my chest, while she went to the bathroom and puked it all up. I only know she puked because when I stepped out in the first white dress, the one with lace up to my neck and down to my forearms, she smiled with a sugary, shallow excitement, and there was still a sliver of vomit stuck between her teeth. I would kill to look like you, do you know that? How did it go? We’ll see. Beth sat on the couch, eyes fixed on the TV, an infomercial for a new diet pill, a turquoise, opaque pill. It’s really cold in here. She wore a dirty gray hoodie. She was tapping her foot the way she often did when she was anxious. For someone so small, her toes thundered against the floor. I moved to get a cup of cold water. Beth had cleaned out the fridge and refilled the pitcher while I was gone. The whole kitchen looked cleaner. Dirty cups and plates were put away, the clean ones stacked neatly. How did it go? I don’t know. She said that loudly, her pitch inflecting towards the end like she wanted me to ask a third time. How did it go? Good, I think. That man was so into me. He wanted to sleep with me. I hate when they want to sleep with me, you know? You get it, don’t you? She winked at me. I attempted to pour the pitcher into my glass, but the thumps of her foot shook my sore, tired arms and I spilled a pool across the counter. Hey, by the way, I got us a cake to celebrate. It’s in the cupboard over the sink. Do you mind cutting it with the Cranach? I’m so excited. I feel good. I grabbed a paper towel and wiped up the puddle; the paper came up moss green. My glass was swimming with bacteria. I reached up, standing on my toes, to retrieve the cake, sitting on an ornate glass board. I clutched the blurry glass, so tight I was afraid I might shatter it. My first thought was that the cake should’ve been refrigerated; it was too gooey, dripping off its seat and onto my white hands. It was probably very pretty when Beth bought it when the frosting flowers bloomed; now they were rotting and melting into the rest of the mush. I set it down on the counter and gently took the knife from the drawer. It’s chocolate. I know how much you love chocolate. Now I stand on my assigned platform, my bare feet finally adjusting to the cool, marble surface. If I move forward slightly, bending my torso, I can see down the hallway of girls, bare and shiny like me, as smooth as river-worn rock. 61

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I can hear the wheels of the Gallery owner, with his big metal cart, bumping gently over each floor tile. It is rhythmic: the rolling, the steps of his slow, heavy feet, the stop, the sound of nothing; it reminds me of the gentle peaks and valleys of my mom’s heart monitor before it plateaued. It gets louder as he approaches. And there he is, finally approaching me, in a white apron and latex gloves. The cart is empty except for a syringe, long and silver. It’s beautiful, the most beautiful needle I’ve ever seen, long and metallic, smooth and sensual, so shiny I can see my entire future reflected across its skin. It moves with power and dominance, sliding through the air, up to my temple to insert itself. There’s a moment where it clicks, sucking a breath, and then it releases. It hurts but I don’t move. I don’t pull away. I don’t say no. I don’t push him off me. The serum shoots through my brain, thick and hot and sticky like it’s melting my brain. The pain is searing, at first, but then my muscles relax, and I understand what it is like to be beautiful, to be desired, to be loved. He pulls away and moves on to the next girl. The next girl. The next girl. Blurring together, their skin melts into oil like a fresh painting, The Judgement of Paris, the artist at work before me. Beth’s body is rotting on the couch of our apartment. Blood caking her throat. In the ten days since we found out, she has started to smell. Excrement leaks from her pores. Her skin fades to black, just a cold chunk of meat with her Cranach in her throat, like a pig carcass at the grocery store waiting to be shred. Her eyes liquefy into milky pools in her skull. She does not look beautiful and never will. But me? I will be beautiful forever. Immortalized like the Goddess Venus, a nude that will haunt every spectator rich enough to walk through the Gallery. Let them do whatever they want to me. Let their eyes pull me upright like puppet strings, turn my head away so I cannot see. Seeing is everything. Do you understand?

g3_orig Zoe Antona (Issue 9 Sink Hollow

10th Anniversary

[m a ŋ ɡ o ʊ ] Victoria Oliveria (Issue 9

*This poem uses phonetic transcription based on characters from the International Phonetic Alphabet: [mæŋɡoʊ] → the american pronunciation of mango [maŋɡoʊ] → mahngo [æ] → a as in apple, cat, trash [a] → a as in art, talk, water (similar to [ɔ] as in monster, pond, dog) My sister says I don’t pronounce it properly. [mæŋɡoʊ] she says, [mæŋɡoʊ] [mæŋɡoʊ] [mæŋɡoʊ], but I say [maŋɡoʊ]. [maŋɡoʊ] is from my mama, from her time in Zamboanga; the Subanen of a missionary girl. [a] before ooh: a quality conversation. The [a] of possible thoughts, of water crawling into my heart as I walk into the tarn. Her [mæŋɡoʊ] sounds angry and sad. It feels icky in my mouth and it sticks. [æ] [æ] [æ] a mad cry for help, and a man with a bat. Mama gave me her [maŋɡoʊ] and my sister got the man who grabs at her with the bat in his hand. [maŋɡoʊ] [maŋɡoʊ] [mæŋɡoʊ] Sink Hollow

The tarn bursts its beaches. Water washes over my head, and down the hall where my sister sleeps. [maŋɡoʊ] [maŋɡoʊ] [maŋɡoʊ] [æ] [æ] [æ] cries the man, lungs lighted like a match, belabored breaths from drawing in the juices of my [maŋɡoʊ].

10th Anniversary

Bios All Bios for submitters can be found in thier original publication issue of Sink Hollow. Those can be found on our website sinkhollow.org. The correspondent Issue number of publication is indicated under each submitters name and publication title. They can also be found the Table of Contents. Sink Hollow retains contact information for submitters only as it pertains to First American Serial Rights.

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10th Anniversary Edition Selection Committee Zack Baker - Editor-in-Chief Amelie Hammond - Managing Design Editor Dhanai Anthimidou-Friel Indigo Aves Emmalynn Errard Brook Haight Mikkel Ohene-Opare Brooklyn Hibshman Kayleigh Kearsley Ella Unguren Cover and Magazine Layout and Design by Robb Kunz

10th Anniversary

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