Tea Volume 16

Tea

literary magazine

volume 16

Tea volume 16

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

Staff Editor-in-Chief

ANNA MEBEL

Co-Editor

KIMMY KEMLER

Executive Prose Editor

SAMANTHA THILÉN

Executive Poetry Editor

JESSICA HUDGINS

Executive Design Editor

JULIA KARRAKER

Art Director

JORDAN KADY

Business Director

KATHLEEN O’LEARY

Prose Editors

KATHLEEN BONANY KELLY STEPHENS LANI YU

Poetry Editors

KATHERINE GAFFNEY LINDSAY SUGARMAN MICHAELA KOTZIERS

Design Staff

KELLI MCADAMS LILY WAN

Additional Reviewers

BRANDON SHENK CIARA LEPANTO COLLEEN MCTIERNAN LINDSEY SKILLEN XHULIO BINJAKU

Letter from the Editor Each copy of Tea is a record of the year—the heartbreaks, the jokes, and the shifts in our aesthetic sensibilities. The work in the magazine is a reflection of what it felt like to be a person at this particular moment of the twenty-first century, working from Gainesville, figuring out how to depict the world we’re coming up against.

Of course, I hope that the subjectivity of these experiences reads larger, that, someday, you’ll pick up the magazine from a dusty shelf and find a poem that remains as vivid as it was the day it was written. Literature has the potential to mean something to you at any time—each story is a time traveler.

Tea has gradually developed its own aesthetic, despite being subject to variation that comes with graduation and change of staff. We like funny, though often the humor stings like bleach, and the over-green, humid Florida we live in has primed our attention for strangeness, for the potential alligator sleeping at the bottom of each pond.

This was my last year as editor, and I hope the traditions we’ve established continue. I’m perhaps most thankful to you, reader, for being receptive to us, for creasing these few printed pages. Keep on.

All my best, Anna Mebel Editor-in-Chief

Acknowledgements As always, Tea Literary Magazine would not be here without the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Student Council. Our organization would like to thank CLAS and Student Government for continuing to back us. Its professors, student leaders, and staff have provided us with unyielding and enthusiastic support. Without over twenty-one semesters of guidance and financial support from CLAS, we simply would not be able to do what we love.

We would also like to thank Broken Shelves, which has opened its doors to the English Society. Broken Shelves is a local bookstore that we hope becomes a permanent place for artistic gatherings in Gainesville. The staff of Broken Shelves have offered the undergraduate literary community a home. The free ad space we have given them in return is our way of showing our appreciation.

Tea is also grateful to the Honors Program for providing us with the means to reach a wider audience. The Honors Program is committed to promoting the Humanities and Arts here at the University of Florida, and their continued faith is encouraging.

Finally, thank you to all of the artists who submitted this year and all those that support and nurture art on campus.

About our Selection Process Each year, Tea Literary Magazine bases its content on impartial votes by the various committees of our editorial staff. The magazine is entirely studentproduced and any undergraduate student attending UF can participate in the selection process.

All submissions are emailed directly to the Editor-in-Chief of Tea. Reviews are conducted by individual visual art, poetry, and prose committees.

The staff meets weekly and, during these meetings, works are displayed with their creator’s name redacted. This is the first time anyone present at the meetings views each work. Only the Editor-in-Chief knows the identity of those who have submitted works for review. He or she does not vote, except in the instance of a tie. In this way, each work is selected anonymously.

Those present discuss the integrity, mechanics, and technics of the submissions. Keeping this in mind, the committees vote on whether each piece moves on for further review. If a majority agrees that a work deserves more deliberation, it will be saved for the final round of selection.

During the final round, no commentary is made. In a single meeting for each category, the entirety of the final selection is decided. Members of selection committees rate each piece with a numerical value. The highest averaging works are slated for publication. Only after the total selection is determined for each category are the identities of their creators revealed.

Because of the anonymity we afford our submitters, staff members are permitted to submit to the magazine. We do not, in any form, give preferential treatment to any poetry, prose, or work of visual art submitted by staff members. Tea has spent more than a decade perfecting our review process and we take it very seriously. The result is a magazine that represents the best work produced by our student body as a whole.

Those interested in being published in Tea 17 should submit their work to editoroftea@yahoo.com. We look forward to your submission.

Awards BLACKBIRD POETRY PRIZE

This year’s winner of the Blackbird Poetry Prize is “To the Eldest Cousin.”

Most Americans know little about Finland; this poem takes us there and gives us a glimpse of its culture. It is a measured, thoughtful piece of writing, displaying a great deal of poise.

The Blackbird Prize is sponsored by the UF Honors Program with funds provided by the Wentworth Scholarship Fund. The name is inspired by one of my favorite poems, Wallace Stevens’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. One of the stanzas is in my email signature: I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.

I like to imagine that there is a third option to prefer, that of anticipation. The liminal moment before the whistling holds tension. Will the bird fly away? Will it call out to another in its flock? Is the waiting as frustrating as the release is satisfying? These five lines prompt many questions for me.

Similarly, “To the Eldest Cousin” makes me ponder my own familial relationships and evokes images of trees in winter, lakes, and children playing. Good poems allow us to escape the present and enter a different world. Surely that is reason enough to read them.

Dr. Kevin Knudson Director, UF Honors Program Professor of Mathematics

PALMETTO PRIZE FOR PROSE

This is the third year of our Palmetto Prize, and the plaque that hangs in the English department has been filling up with names of exciting young writers. Those who have won the Palmetto are sharp and daring, willing to experiment with voice and form.

This year our judge was David Leavitt, a UF creative-writing professor and the fiction editor of Subtropics. The winner, Lindsey Skillen’s “A Sunny Place for Shady People,” is emotionally compelling, without compromising its bold sense of humor. The story takes on our everyday calamities with verve and richness.

Contents

13

To the Eldest Cousin SAMANTHA THILÉN

14

The Shot JESSICA HUDGINS

15

Setting Sail ORA FRAZE

17

How to be Cool KELLI MCADAMS

25

Coffee Zombie DOUNIA BENDRIS

26

The Late Wiccan KIMMY KEMLER

27

Tam u Nebeských Bran VERONICA CINIBULK

28

Sir Gawain on New Years Eve SAMANTHA THILÉN

29

Horseman ORA FRAZE

30

Some People May Not Call Us Romantic JENNIFER HART

31

Portrait with Bag of Flour BENJAMIN H. INGLE

33

A Sunny Place for Shady People LINDSEY SKILLEN

36

Retrograde ZAC THOMPSON

38

This is all I know MORGAN THOMAS

39

Left Behind/Sun Spots SIDNEY HOWARD

40

Mayflies KIMMY KEMLER

41

Snídaně v Trávě VERONICA CINIBULK

42

July 4th SASHA CAMENKER

43

Scattered Fair SIDNEY HOWARD

44

English as a Second Language JESSICA HUDGINS

45

Stranded HANNAH DWYER

46

Freeze Response MORGAN THOMAS

47

Out of the Dark ORA FRAZE

49

Paper Cranes BRANDON SHENK

52

Mating Season at Cape Canaveral JESSICA HUDGINS

53

Through Mountains and Valleys #5 HANNAH DWYER

55

Berries, Blooms, and Lust NADIA SHEIKH

58

You Wanted to Celebrate Your Birthday Fifty-three Days in Advance JENNIFER HART

60

The Centennial of Poetry Magazine KIMMY KEMLER

61

A Solemn Moment ORA FRAZE

62

Artist Statements VERONICA CINIBULK AND FRANKLIN FRAZE

To the Eldest Cousin SAMANTHA THILÉN

You always write when you’ve returned to the city, the sun growing scarce in stands of silver birches. Lacing up your summer feet, you trample gilded leaves between trees and memorials in the esplanade.

On your side of Helsingfors, marbled stumps are the only monuments— monuments unto themselves.

In your absence the water gleams like wet slate. No one ever touched bottom, and no one ever caught that elusive perch.

All the cousins dove naked from the sauna, exhaling hot pine smoke from every pore, but you, never—perhaps finding it too cold, or too deep. I hid with you in the attic, peeling plaster from the walls. You told me something about a boy who shared your bed.

I try to remember it and picture you returning before the gulf freezes, learning to swim alone. I watch as you find the division of sea and sky, the glassy pines collapsing in your ripples. You will come home to Tenala. Your Fafa ages—too much now to wield an axe. The dock rots every winter.

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The Shot JESSICA HUDGINS

Kneeling on her porch, she finds the angle that gathers the opossum’s open mouth, padded toes, and pink tail-tip in one frame.

She has an eye for composition.

She mourns the animals while her film develops, washing the dog she never taught to hunt.

14

Setting Sail ORA FRAZE

lithograph statement on page 63

How to be Cool KELLI MCADAMS

T

he summer Andy died was the hottest our town had seen in thirty-five years. That was what people with more experience had been saying, anyway. My mom, the mailman, the woman working behind the counter at Millam’s Market and Convenience Store, and the parents pushing strollers through my neighborhood: all of them were saying so.

I was only sixteen that summer, so I couldn’t say whether they were wrong or right, but what I did know was that there were more dead worms around than I had ever seen in my life. They were okay in the grass, but once they hit the pavement they fried up so well that it took an ice scraper to chip them off the sidewalk.

When my little brother complained of boredom, I would tell him to go out and collect as many worm carcasses as he could, bag them up, and bring them back to me in exchange for payment in nickels and dimes.

Before she died, my best friend Andy and I would suck on bright, artificially flavored Popsicles, and watch Marcus from the window in my kitchen as he perused the streets for the remains of the dead.

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“Look at him! Jesus, he’s holding that thing like it’s a scythe.” Andy laughed, removing the stick from her mouth. Her tongue was the color of a fruit that didn’t exist. She flipped the stick over and held it up to her eyes with a smirk.

“Elle, how do handymen get to school?” she asked.

“Tool bus.” I sighed, watching Marcus as he hacked at a spot on the pavement with the ice scraper.

“Yeah, I think the Popsicle people recycle the jokes,” she said.

“Last night you said something weird.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Do you remember?” I looked at her, but she avoided my gaze.

She kept watching my brother, who had moved on to the next panel of sidewalk.

“Not really, to be honest with you,” she said after a few long moments.

She unwrapped a fourth Popsicle and shrugged her shoulders, tossing the plastic in the trashcan. “Besides, I was drunk, so who cares?”

Andy had been named for her grandmother, Andrea, but we called her Andy because according to her, Andrea Davenport I was a “stuck-up old bitch.” Andy always took great pleasure in saying things like that, things that would make her friends laugh in morbid appreciation and her Godfearing mother recoil in horror. She understood the power of words, and so did I, and maybe that was why we were best friends. In middle school we would swap books the way other girls swapped clothes, trading our beat-up copies of the awful shit we found in the Young Adult section of the bookstore. Lying on the floor of my attic bedroom with glasses of my mother’s latest juicing concoction, we read about girls who played soccer and fell in love with soccer-playing boys, girls who practiced witchcraft and fell in love with young Wiccan men, and girls who were ghosts and found love with ghost boys in the forever after. Later we tried our hands at the Adult Fiction section, but we always chose books by their covers, and despite armfuls of novels bound with colorful, illustrative spines, we found nothing relatable, nothing remarkable.

It was around the ninth grade that our sequestered reading club began to lose priority. Andy was pretty in an unassuming way, one of those plainfaced girls who, for some cosmic reason, drove teenage boys wild. She had a narrow face with sharp brown eyes and a cat-like smile, which formed a dimple in her left cheek when it was genuine. Her nose was crooked from two fractures in her tomboyish youth, and though her hair was naturally the color of caramel, she dyed it auburn regularly. When we got to high school, teachers gave us books to read—sometimes even good ones—but we only read them if we wanted to. Wanting to, I read all of the assigned

18

titles, and it became my unspoken responsibility to tell Andy which ones were worthwhile.

“I do want to read,” she told me once, as we walked side by side through the school parking lot. It was the spring of our freshman year of high school, and we were heading towards her older brother’s car, where he would be waiting for us as he had every afternoon since he’d gotten his driver’s license. In the sun, Andy’s hair shone brightly enough to be featured in a Pantene commercial, and I couldn’t help but watch the strands as they bounced and tickled her bare shoulders. “I just don’t have time to read shitty books, you know?”

“Yeah. Hey, do you think I should dye my hair?”

“Are you joking?” Andy reached out and grabbed a large chunk of my long, white-blonde hair, shaking it in my face like evidence. “Your hair is like fairy-tale hair. If you dye it, I’ll murder you.”

We reached her brother’s car and I slid into the back seat, greeting Charlie as I moved some crumpled-up papers and an empty pack of cigarettes to make room for myself. I stayed silent for most of the ride, barely listening to Andy and Charlie as they bickered about the radio station and where to stop for milkshakes on our way home.

“ShakeStop uses blended up maggot larvae as a milk substitute.”

“Fuck you, that’s such a lie!”

“Look it up, I swear to God.” I didn’t end up dying my hair.

It was a hot summer, but Andy’s funeral was air-conditioned, held inside a church I’d only been to on Christmas Eve when little children had stood before the pews dressed as farm animals. The Davenport family had attended St. Paul’s every Sunday for a long time, at least until Charlie, sixteen and certain, told their mother that “religion was invented by man to alleviate fear of the unknown,” and that he would not be attending Sunday services any longer because he was not afraid. Andy followed suit, and for the last two years Mr. and Mrs. Davenport had, with great reluctance, allowed their children to sleep in on Sunday mornings while they sat in the pews and prayed for forgiveness.

At the funeral, I sat toward the middle of the church. From my pew I could see Charlie, stuck in the front row between his mother and father. I tried not to look at him for too long because I knew that everybody else was looking. I could hear them and their pitying voices, and I knew that he must have hated it. “That poor boy, can you imagine?”

During the service I stared at my hands. The priest’s voice was slow and deep, and it was easy to stop paying attention to him, far easier than listening would have been. When it was over, Charlie stood up and walked

19

quickly towards the back of the church, deserting his mother and father at the front. When he passed the pew where I sat with my parents, he didn’t look up at me, just walked straight on through and out the door, but I didn’t blame him. I didn’t blame him for anything.

Charlie Davenport had never been a front row type of guy, after all. In school he had preferred the back row, where he didn’t have to pretend to be listening, where he could fall asleep with his head cushioned on a three ring binder, forehead stuck to its protective plastic covering. He was incredibly smart but incredibly lazy, and during lunch hour he would drape his lithe body over the courtyard steps and fall asleep in the sun.

I’d known the Davenports for most of my life, but I didn’t know Charlie as much more than Andy’s older brother until he got his driver’s license and started giving us rides to and from school. Charlie’s car was full of junk: dozens of empty CD jewel cases and an equal number of loose discs, used-up packs of American Spirits, multiple pairs of sunglasses with missing lenses or broken frames, and tubes of lip balm left by girls who’d lost more than makeup in his back seat. He played his music loud, and whenever Andy complained that it sucked and reached for the radio dial, he would smack her hand away. “Just wait,” he would say, drumming his restless hands on the steering wheel while he waited for the light to turn green. “You’re gonna miss the best part.”

This was how he taught us how to be cool. He made us listen to good music until we liked it, and he showed us how to light cigarettes without looking like morons. Andy and I were fifteen, coming off our first year of high school, both ready and not ready to act older than we were. Once we had our milkshakes, Charlie parked near the lake and pulled out his lighter, demonstrating the way we should flick our thumbs against the metal, how not to burn our fingertips with the flame. I showed little promise, terrible at following his instructions, but Andy was a pro. She lit her cigarette with minimal effort and didn’t even cough on her first drag. I watched with envy as the smoke poured from her thin lips, and then accepted the cigarette from her elegant fingers, having given up on lighting my own. Charlie was watching me steadily from his spot on the bumper of the car, legs parted and hands on his knees. His hair was the golden color that his sister was trying desperately to avoid, wild and tousled and sticking out every which way. Even so, they still had the same brown eyes that yellowed in the evening sun, the same smile, cat-like and crooked. I inhaled and choked on the smoke while both of them laughed at me, and after that I never smoked a cigarette again.

Somehow, despite their most sincere efforts, Mr. and Mrs. Davenport had managed to raise two children who turned out to be exactly the op-

20

posite of what they had been hoping for. Their house was nice, with wood floors, a fireplace, and a chandelier hanging in the dining room, and even though my family lived in the same neighborhood, the Davenport’s place seemed much more expensive than ours. They refurbished their front porch, they repainted their shutters every year, their grass won awards for being so green. On certain Saturdays I’d see Charlie outside, mowing the lawn just like the good son he was supposed to be, and when I waved at him he would roll his eyes and mouth “fuck this.”

Following the funeral, the Davenports held a reception at their house.

Candle lanterns lined the front lawn, and every ten minutes or so, I saw Mr. Davenport walk outside to relight the ones that the wind put out.

While my parents commiserated in hushed tones with friends of theirs from the neighborhood, I stood by the window with my little plate of cheese and crackers and oversaturated fruit. Through the glass I could see him, balding and lanky, and I watched him light each candle with an elegant precision that made my throat tighten.

My own parents were good people, and they held strong to their philosophy that they would trust me until I gave them reason not to. Andy told me once that she liked my parents because they were “real human beings, constantly making mistakes.” I wasn’t sure how to take this, but what it ultimately meant was that in the months leading up to summer, when she started showing up on our porch every Saturday at midnight and I had to help her climb up to the attic, my parents would already be asleep, pretending not to hear her laughter or her loud, unsteady footsteps as we made our way up the stairs.

Andy would shed her shoes and her pants and crawl into my bed like a cat. Sometimes she fell asleep right away, but other times she talked first, her voice low and sleepy, words slurred and hitching with little yawns.

Sometimes she asked me to guess who she had made out with that night.

Sometimes she cried. At sixteen she had long legs and breasts bigger than mine would ever be. When I looked at her, I thought that the girls at school who called her a slut were probably very jealous.

“You’re lucky you have boobs,” I once told her.

“They’re not that great.”

“Says the girl with boobs.”

She rolled over onto her side and grabbed my hands. Lying flat on her back with her chin tilted upwards, she arranged them over her breasts, and letting go, instructed me to squeeze. I did, and her flesh gave under my fingers, and she shut her eyes and laughed. I could feel her heart beating in my hands.

21

“You know what Charlie told me?”

“What?” I asked.

“This summer is supposed to be the hottest summer in thirty-five years.”

Forty minutes into the reception, I discarded my plate of food and left the living room, which was still occupied by most of our neighborhood.

I walked cautiously through the hallway that led to their bathroom, my black heels clicking on the wood. On opposite walls, the school portraits of Andy and Charlie hung in two straight lines, one photograph for each year. I felt like the star of some shitty TV movie about grief and loss. The most recent picture of Andy featured her auburn hair and a smile with no dimple, a smile that wasn’t really hers. There was a tiny diamond stud in her nose, and when she’d gotten the piercing I held her hand and she squeezed mine hard, but she told me afterwards that it hadn’t even hurt that badly at all.

In the bathroom I grabbed a washcloth and turned on the sink. I left the lights off. While the water ran, I held the towel up against my mouth and screamed into it. Fuck, I screamed. Shit. Words that weren’t words.

After a minute or so, I turned off the faucet, replaced the towel, and went back out to the living room.

The summer Andy died, we spent our days like children do, and the heat only encouraged this behavior. We terrorized my brother, ran through neighbors’ sprinklers, ate popsicles until our lips were swollen and numb.

We got used to the dead worms.

At night, Andy acted her age, and sometimes she acted older. I hadn’t gone on an excursion with her since around the time of my first and last cigarette. At parties I was boring and sober and nervous, and after I’d refused her offers a certain number of times, she stopped asking me to join her. Of course, this did not deter her from showing up on my porch, from tossing cigarette butts out my bedroom window, or from clutching my hand in her drunken affection and falling asleep in my bed. And I let her.

I don’t know exactly when the crying got bad, because it wasn’t like I had never seen her cry before. That was what drunk people did—they cried and they puked, and then they forgot about it. She always forgot about it, anyway. She would sit at the edge of my bed, smoking her cigarette and blowing the smoke out through the crack of my open window, and then all of a sudden I would feel the bed shaking and I would open my eyes and see her trembling with her face in her hands. I would get out of bed, take her cigarette away, and sit down next to her. I would ask her what was wrong. “I don’t know,” she always said and in the morning, “I don’t remember.” That summer it was worse than ever, though, and some-

22

times she cried so hard that it made her sick. I would hold her hair as she heaved into the toilet, her body shaking and drenched in sweat. The next day we would sit on my porch in the shade, playing card games that lasted for hours, and she would sip on ginger ale with ice and pretend she’d just had too much to drink.

“Don’t tell my brother,” she would say, rolling her eyes. “He’ll freak out over nothing.”

A week before her funeral, she kissed me. It came out of nowhere, but she did it with such force and conviction that I didn’t pull away. Her mouth tasted bitter, and she pushed me down onto the bed and pressed her warm, tear-stained face into my stomach and whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” against my skin.

“Please tell me what’s wrong with you,” I said.

“I don’t know!” Her words came out in a wrenching way, and she pressed her hands against her face so hard that the edges of her palms turned white.

Finally, she dropped them and opened her eyes. She looked at me for a long moment, and then said, “I think something happened to me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, sitting up. “What happened? When?”

“I don’t remember,” she said in a whisper.

“Do you mean, like—” “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know, Elle. It was a long time ago, I’m not…

I can’t…”

“How long ago? Did someone do something to you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Andy.”

“I don’t remember.”

I stayed to help clean up after the reception. I put appetizers in Tupperware containers and threw away abandoned paper plates loaded with half-eaten blocks of cheese. I snuck out through the back door while Mr. and Mrs. Davenport were still in the kitchen, because I knew that if they said goodbye to me they would cry, and I didn’t want to embarrass them.

I found Charlie on the back porch, which was not so much a porch as it was a stoop, a block of concrete with steps that led up to the screen door.

He was sitting on the top step, the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up to his elbows, the cloth damp and sticking to his back with sweat. In the yard, lightning bugs flickered on and off in the darkness, and I wondered how that worked, and what the point of them was, and why we never learned about it in school.

“Hey Charlie,” I said.

He didn’t turn around to look at me, but with one hand, he moved his crumpled black suit jacket to make room beside him. I stepped out of my

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heels and took a seat, smoothing my hands over my dress. My bare feet looked pale in the darkness, my toenail polish chipping and lavender. He looked at my feet, and I wondered if he knew it was Andy’s nail polish, and that she had painted my toes herself after begging me to let her, holding each of my ticklish arches and moving the brush with meticulous concentration in her honey-colored eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why?” “I don’t know. I just am,” he said, still not looking at me. His jaw was clenched, and I saw him press his hands into his knees like he was trying to sit still.

“Well, I’m sorry too.”

“I shouldn’t have given you cigarettes. Jesus, you were fourteen.” He inhaled sharply through his nose, wiped impatiently at his eyes. “I don’t know what the hell was wrong with me.”

“Anyone would have done it.”

“You wouldn’t give cigarettes to Marcus. You’re as old as I was then, and you wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t.”

“Marcus is eight,” I reminded him.

Charlie couldn’t talk anymore, but I stayed next to him. I moved closer and I held his hand, and after a while he gave up on trying not to and pressed his face into the crook of my neck, each of his jagged sobs as warm as summer on my skin. He clutched my black dress with his fingers and I let him, because I didn’t like this dress anyway. I thought of the morning several days earlier, when I’d woken up after dreaming of ambulance, and walked into the kitchen and saw my mother facing the window, crying, saying, “Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God,” into the receiving end of the telephone. The day of the funeral, I heard that Charlie was the one who found Andy facedown on the bathroom floor, that he had her blood all over him but he wouldn’t let her go, that he rode in the ambulance where they would try to revive her even though everyone knew she was already dead, that she’d been dead for hours, maybe even longer than that.

After a while, Charlie lit a cigarette, and we sat in silence, him smoking and me wishing that I did too. He kept reaching up to wipe his eyes with his wrist, and I pretended not to notice. When we said goodbye, he gave me his suit jacket to cover my strapless back, placed it over my shoulders like a shell. I watched him go inside, and then, smelling of smoke and holding my high heels in my hands, I walked home alone in the dark.

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Coffee Zombie DOUNIA BENDRIS

coffee, ink, and graphite

The Late Wiccan KIMMY KEMLER

I ask you to come back—your coffee-colored hair longer and silvered, your stomach brimming over your waistband—as if passing years affected the lilt in your voice during Catholic mass or the way your lithe fingers traced the Celtic triskele sewn on the underside of your cassock.

Linger on until Sunday, when I’ll participate in the seventh sacrament, at the park behind the church— where you read to me from the Book of Shadows and I recognized Kipling in the lines and we were out in the woods all night with flashlights and a stick-lined pentagram— watch the ceremony from the back left row.

Wasn’t that where you stood through our sisters’ communion?

At the after party my mother mistook Gerald Gardner for gardener; she didn’t worry when I came home late with dirt-filled fingernails my journal stuffed with pressed anise and citronella.

Return, if only to see the two purple candles, unlit but anointed with myrrh, beside your mother’s bed.

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Tam u Nebeských Bran (There at Heaven’s Gate) VERONICA CINIBULK

graphite statement on page 62

Sir Gawain1 on New Years Eve SAMANTHA THILÉN

A pub waits on the year, its only patron humming “Auld Lang Syne” alone.

The barkeep has pulled two pints for every request since his wife went out, dressed in close-fitting emerald— “For luck,” she said. Toasting the ring she left in a highball, they meet at the bottom of a drop of absinthe, full of oaths sworn eagerly by strangers without money for wagers.

The guest revives in the new millennium, girdled by jade-colored knickers.

A bar tab he can neither confirm nor deny tattoos his neck’s bare flesh—the ink green, and the scars permanent.

1 Sir

Gawain and the Green Knight was written in the late fourteenth century. The

poem—one of many tales in the Arthurian tradition—concerns a knight’s chivalry, a challenge, a quest, and a “beheading game.” Naturally, an amorous, married lady appears to test Sir Gawain’s honor. The color green figures prominently as a motif, culminating in Sir Gawain’s furtive acceptance of a token from the lady: a green silk girdle, woven with magic that will guard his life.

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Horseman ORA FRAZE

etching statement on page 63

Some People May Not Call Us Romantic: An Exchange JENNIFER HART

I made an outfit, special for this occasion.

I made waffles.

Well then, the world is ours.

Oh, and supposedly in April, Friday the thirteenth, of 2030-something there is a really close encounter between the Earth and an asteroid. If we happen to escape that, it swings back for round two!

You ruined the mood.

Hm, I thought I was doing the best with what we have.

What do we have?

Waffles and a spectacular outfit.

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Portrait with Bag of Flour BENJAMIN H. INGLE

oil on canvas

A Sunny Place for Shady People LINDSEY SKILLEN

T

he house where Bradford grew up has been turned into a sex colony and he doesn’t feel too good about it so now we have to go check things out. The only reason I’m going is because I’ve been in love with him for the past three years but we’re about to break up. And I’m also a little bit curious about the whole thing, honestly.

It looked normal enough from the outside. Bradford pointed out the porch around back where he took his first steps. And the basketball hoop his dad put up above the garage was still there.

We pulled into the driveway to turn around, but I guess they were expecting someone because they came right out and beckoned us in. The thing about these colonies is that the people who go naked are always the ones who shouldn’t.

I had trouble figuring out just how many people there were and distinguishing between them because I was trying so hard not to look at anybody dead-on, but I think it was a naked older woman who said, “No need to be shy! Newcomers are always welcome!”

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As we approached the front door I caught a glimpse of a sign that read, “Florida–A Sunny Place for Shady People.” “Indeed,” I thought to myself. I wanted to point it out to Bradford, but I was worried that he wouldn’t laugh.

A naked man said, “There’ll be no pressure today. We’ll give you a mini tour and some pamphlets to look over. You can stay as long as you like.”

He sounded hopeful. Someone else whispered, “I can’t even imagine how hot it gets in all those layers.”

I flipped to the pamphlet’s Table of Contents: “Swingers…page 3, Being in the Closet in a Closet…page 4, The More the Merrier…page 5, Dress-up/Role Play/Costumes/Furry with Friends…page 6, Package Deals and Packaged Meals…Page 7.” The small print at the bottom of the page said something about testing and cleanliness and not being held liable in case of, well, basically anything.

Most people have nightmares about showing up to work or class with no clothes on. Everyone else is dressed and they’re the only ones who forgot that day. The tour through the house was the opposite of that. I felt more self-conscious being fully clothed among all the nudes than I would have had I been standing stark naked in front of my boss.

In this place bodies were bare but the walls were not. Perhaps it had something to do with so many people living under one roof, but there was clutter everywhere. Dirty, wet towels sat coiled on the floors. Posters of genitalia masked the floral wallpaper. My favorite said, “Don’t be a pussy.”

It was a pussy poster.

After the tour of the living room (orgy room), kitchen (storage for lubes and hallucinogenic substances), and formal dining room (currently being used for nightly pornographic screenings), we were given penis-shaped lollipops and told we were free to explore the rest of the house ourselves. We didn’t want to be rude so we really did eat the penis pops.

I have what I call Familial Amnesia, which means I can’t remember anything related to my family. But Bradford remembers everything.

“Here’s where I used to swim in the bath tub with my beta fish,” he said in the bathroom.

“Here’s where I chipped my tooth against the banister,” he said at the top of the stairs.

“Here’s where I would hide when my brother and I would play hide-andseek,” he said outside the linen closet, now a closet for people in the closet.

The door to his old bedroom was locked so we didn’t get to see it. I said it was probably for the best. I couldn’t help but notice how the lollipop resembled a pacifier in Bradford’s mouth. I imagined that I was with the baby Bradford, the one who grew up here. And it was my job to shield him from seeing too much. But then I remembered that Bradford is a grown man. And even if he wasn’t, it wouldn’t be up to me to protect him. Not now or ever.

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It was already getting dark and most of the nudes, furries, and alter egos were in the backyard garden sipping strong teas under twinkle lights.

We were told to sit down and then told even more without asking.

“I overcame cancer, obesity, and diversity.”

“I was the Kevin Bacon of the Honolulu airport before I came here.”

“We were married just long enough to fuck up the kids.”

“I’m a two-beer queer.”

We were eventually brought stale cookies on fine china. Bradford said he recognized the plates. His mom had left the china in the house when they’d moved because it had belonged to his dad’s first wife.

As we sat there, I wondered if we made a good couple to the sex colonists. I was positive that he wasn’t thinking anything about us, not because he was engrossed in the conversation, but because Bradford doesn’t think about things like that. I just wanted to know if we looked good to other people. I decided that even if we looked nice together, like we matched physically, we would never look like a perfect fit because we had become too stiff around each other like the blow-up dolls sitting next to us in the corner staring straight ahead.

We were invited to stay for “erotic mouse movies,” but Bradford made up some fake children who needed us at home. We had stayed long enough to realize how many people were neglecting children somewhere, and our lie was met with understanding nods.

It felt like a crusty layer of mold was coating my body as I climbed back into the car and I wished that I could scrape it all off with a cheese grater and start over. I couldn’t wait to get as far away from the condemned house as possible but Bradford wasn’t backing up.

“When we were kids my mom used to play a game with us on our way back from soccer practice. It was called the ‘Will Daddy Be Home’ game.

We would all take bets on whether or not Dad would be back from work yet. I always said he would because I always hoped he would. I can still remember how good it felt to turn the corner and see his car parked in the driveway.” Bradford was crying a little bit. I could tell even though he wouldn’t have wanted me to see.

We released just enough air from our stiff blow-up bodies to reach over and touch hands, but not enough to actually hold each other. I felt as though Bradford would float away out the car window at any moment and leave me slowly deflating in the passenger seat.

We sat out there for a long time. We talked about the future. We made plans we knew would never happen.

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Retrograde ZAC THOMPSON

mixed media on paper

This is all I know MORGAN THOMAS

With practice, two people can sleep in a single bed without touching. Sweet-pea scented candles only cost two dollars a pop if you buy in bulk from the manufacturer. A new smell won’t save a marriage, whatever Granny says. If you want him to come after you, leave in his mustang. Crying won’t get you out of a traffic ticket. Taking off your shirt won’t get you out of a traffic ticket. A mustang can go eighty miles with red Kool-Aid in the radiator before the engine starts to smoke. Sometimes, he still doesn’t come. Walking six miles in Mary Jane’s hurts.

Crying won’t get you a discount on your motel room. Dialing his number on the pay phone hurts. Past thirteen, nobody cares if you’re sorry. Vending machines won’t take Monopoly money, not even the orange five hundred. Taking your shirt off will get you a discount on your motel room. New radiators go for three hundred bucks. Used radiators gummy with Kool-Aid go for fifty if you know how to sell them. Two hours home—black leather seats and silence—burns like the easy-bake center of the earth. Working it out is You take the sofa, I want the dining set, is agreeing that lawyers are greedy damn bastards and we don’t need them, is having a laugh about it, sharing a bottle of tequila, waking up cotton-mouthed and angry again.

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Left Behind and Sun Spots SIDNEY HOWARD

digital photoraphy

Mayflies KIMMY KEMLER

We are born from the water womb and forget our water skin. It swims. Fish and birds beset.

Their faces gape and take us in. Our airlegs take us to the caves of green. We look for eggs but don’t succeed. Nymphs and naiads brim and meet their air and learn to swim without the lake. One by one the women rise.

They take us in two at a time and spill their eggs into the womb until next year, when they will bloom.

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Snídaně v Trávě (Breakfast in the Grass) VERONICA CINIBULK

graphite statement on page 62

July 4TH For Max SASHA CAMENKER

We wouldn’t be that couple who buys Independence Day fireworks in the K-Mart parking lot and gives their children sparklers while you grill and I wear something domestic, like a cardigan, even though it’s summer.

We would be the couple who didn’t make plans or guacamole that night, who drives to a place that isn’t a park yet but will be one day, who sits on a hill watching other people’s fireworks and kisses as if it’s urgent and new.

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Scattered Fair SIDNEY HOWARD

photograph, gum wrapper

English as a Second Language JESSICA HUDGINS

She came to class with her shirt on backwards, bringing raisins in an olive jar.

She read from a history textbook as though it were a documentary script and said she would prefer to learn Inland Northern American English.

She was researching a snail endemic to Romania, discovered ten years ago in a cave by the small lake where, as a girl, she gathered globe daisies.

She ate standing up and believed the couple living above her was dealing drugs; she often saw the man looking under rocks in the backyard.

She was learning the short i, repeating sentences we made for that purpose. “I have a love for tedious things,� she said again.

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Stranded HANNAH DWYER

waterbased monoprint, thread

Freeze Response MORGAN THOMAS

I am the shallow-breath stillness born in Cambrian seas, when the first sharp tooth emerged hungry from eel-slick flesh.

I am indefinite pause beneath voracious dusk, the midstep of air-caught leg, the untwitch of whiskers.

I am prey caught in a twilit gaze, not shivering though wet-cold, secrets kept in eye corners, leak of rank ammonia.

After the mewling of a tender kit neglected, I am the shrewd unmewling, the dry tongue swollen, mute at the huff of a scavenger’s breath.

I am cocked head at pierced teakettle call, quick inhale before red-muscled flight, sleepless night as yellow eyes rustle nearby grasses.

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Out of the Dark ORA FRAZE

etching statement on page 63

Paper Cranes BRANDON SHENK

S

he was unintentionally precocious, dryly sarcastic, logically bent. Both of her parents were too. She’d satisfied their expectations, thus far, by placing first in every science fair she’d ever taken part in, dominating the competition. With her capacity to learn, her uncanny intuition, she confounded adults. The other kids glared at her, considered her odd, a nuisance. They talked about her to each other and said far different things than the adults.

Already, at age ten, she heard her mom and dad babbling on about MIT, Harvard, Caltech, and a few other places that failed to capture her imagination. At dinner her parents volleyed heated phrases back and forth over her head as she tried to register the verbal trajectories. Often to make these moments more bearable, she used a technique she’d discovered when she was six. In her mind she would reconfigure her surroundings into crude geometrical forms without associative functions. Her parents then looked like compiled circles, with dulled olive-brown edges, and their words would eddy out like thin vapors. This transformation subdued the grating sharpness of her reality. In this state she felt light as a particle of dust.

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She couldn’t remember exactly when she’d picked up origami. The obsession was immediate and acute; it blurred other capacities of her perception in a soothing anesthetic kind of way. She kept this part of her a secret from her parents, crawling beneath the bed at odd times to work her nimble fingers. She was precise, meticulous, great at re-adapting creases and folds. She practiced making all different kinds of creatures and shapes, but it was the classic paper crane that won her ultimate affection. She increased the wingspan, shortened and streamlined the body. Her cranes seemed veritable fighter jets, while still being elegant and fragile.

She started a collection, and it grew and grew. She hid the cranes in boxes deep in her closet behind her physics library and chemistry equipment. Seasons cycled and she made and stored the cranes away. It was unfathomable to her how her parents never found them. At least they never said anything.

Then one day they had to leave for a weekend conference dealing with thermodynamics. They asked if she wanted to go, but she declined.

“It would probably be remedial work for you anyways,” the dad said, patting her head one succinct time; to her the gesture felt like she’d been tapped with a tiny plank of wood. As her mom walked by, thumbing away at her cell phone, she said, “Take care, darling,” and left without a touch.

The next day the girl got her old wagon from out of the shed.

Even with the wagon, it took four trips to move all of the boxes. She pulled each load to a fifteen story parking garage two blocks away, then up the service elevator to the top level. After she’d transferred every box to the garage, she placed each one next to another, precariously, down the stretch of the concrete banister on the southwest side. Twice, two different people noticed her, but the little girl was so intent, a serene emptiness to her face, that they didn’t interrupt. They shrugged and walked off, confused.

Finally, every box, all of the cranes she’d ever made, were resting upon the edge. She stood at the far end of the line, looked up at the expanse of a clear sky. A gentle wind played against the back of her ears and along her forearms. For a second she wanted to peer over the edge and see what the scene below might look like. But she didn’t. She breathed deep, blinked three times, then ran off down the line, quickly pitching each box over and shaking out the cranes. Not able to withhold the urge to look any longer, she didn’t pick up the last two, just shoved them off and heaved herself up onto the concrete support to lean over.

The receding white specks reminded her of a snow globe. Most of them fluttered straight down, some spiraled, a few zipped off for long distances, disappearing behind the corners of buildings. Suddenly, she felt very peculiar. But after short reflection she classified it as a soothing feeling. Poised on the ledge, she boasted to herself that this was by far the easiest thing

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she’d ever had to figure out. Quickly, deftly, she focused on the towering buildings and turned them into rigid rectangles back-dropped by a plain of light blue and roundish clumps of white. The little girl smiled, letting her head tip forward and down, as her legs rose up into the air like the side of a seesaw suddenly gone vacant.

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Mating Season at Cape Canaveral JESSICA HUDGINS

He peered around neighborhood hedges, squinting into his pellet gun’s viewfinder under the April sun.

The criminal, the residents said, could fell a peacock from the treetops with a single shot.

He knew the birds’ preference for cabbage and broccoli sprouts and roosting in hardwood pine.

It was mating season.

He silenced each honking fowl with the offhand precision of an assassin.

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Through Mountains and Valleys #5 HANNAH DWYER

linocut, collage

Berries, Blooms and Lust NADIA SHEIKH

P

urple juice dribbled down Abby’s bottom lip. “Bub bub bub,” she said.

“I know what you mean,” I said, bouncing her toy beach ball on the carpet.

“Doh wee oh.”

“But I’ve called her and she won’t answer.”

“Boober,” Abby said. A chewed blueberry fell onto her shirt.

“Damnit, Abby.” I picked up the mush and wiped her face.

“Boober?” she asked.

“Yes, blueberry,” I said. “Are you listening?” I sat down at her miniature table.

Abby licked the stain on her shirt.

“Abby, baby,” I said, poking her cheek.

She reached out to tug at my ponytail, snagged my earring, then pushed another berry into her mouth. I tossed the beach ball against the wall of the apartment.

“No, no,” she said, wagging her tiny finger. The blueberry

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plopped onto her diaper. She ate so many of the damn things that she shat green. Even small humans have their vices.

“I hope your ma’s the one to find that stinky surprise tonight.” Some days, eight bucks an hour isn’t enough.

Abby giggled and put the half-chewed berry back in her mouth. She wobbled to her feet, ran to her pillow on the carpet, and fell onto it facefirst. She looks like my sister did in her baby pictures, but with rounder cheeks and cropped hair. Psychologically, I figure, not having seen Dee in months, or heard from her in (forty-four) days, would make my brain start to forget about her. Or see her everywhere, even in a stranger’s baby. It’s a toss-up. Psycho logical.

Abby ran and spilled her blocks across the room, flinging the box.

“Done!” she said.

“Alright, little rebel,” I said, swinging her upside down by the ankles.

“Not so tough now, huh?”

I rested her head on the carpet. She giggled and tumbled onto her back.

“Moo,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “Milk?”

She stood up fast, nodding and breathing heavy.

Milk is like crack to this baby. I wondered at what age the effect wears off. Maybe it’s by the time you fly the coop and have to warm it up for yourself, but I’m out in the wild and still sneaking sips from Abby’s bottle.

I should look into the curative properties of warm milk.

I picked up Abby’s bowl to wash it but she ran over whining, arms in the air. “Okay, okay,” I said, sighing.

I could be back in school instead of sitting on this baby all year. I could be clean, but not every stain comes out with seltzer water or even bleach.

Or if I had just been quiet. If Dee hadn’t woken up to pull me off of the balcony railing this summer. If I hadn’t reached for the silver glowing citrus that I saw, hovering over the water. But I was so thirsty, after eating those purple morning glory blooms from our neighbor’s garden. So many that I must have shit green. But I can’t remember.

Abby had purple lips and two blueberries left in the bowl. I reached and slurped one into my mouth.

“No, no!” she said, finger wagging.

I took the bowl and lifted her up into the crook of my elbow while I chewed.

She wriggled her finger between my lips and tapped at my closed teeth.

She whined and rested her head on my shoulder. After a moment, she leaned in and bit down hard on my neck.

“Ahoy!” I said, a warm tingle moving up my spine. I put her down and when she looked up at me smiling I said, “Easy, Dee.”

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I gave Abby the last blueberry. She sang all of the sounds she knew.

With my eyes closed, I felt the bite again and again. It was gentle, like a kiss. I warmed her milk in the microwave and remembered, listening to the heat hum.

There were hand-sewn pillows, a broken TV with a channel-changing dial, the smell of oil and onions, my sister holding my hand when we went to the den. She set up the pillows and I slid the door closed. It was her bite, the warmth when she slipped my skin between her teeth. At the grocery store my mom had asked seven-year-old-me, “Is that a hickey?” My sister said we were wrestling, that she had pinched me. I remembered that it always felt better than pinching. Mostly I remembered her breathing hard, riding my thighbone like a horse jockey for as long as she could until it was sore and I pushed her off.

By now, Abby was crawling up my leg while the microwave beeped. She nibbled on my calf. I pulled her off of me and set her down just outside of the kitchen. We stared at each other.

She sat on her haunches and frowned, then patted her diaper. “Oh, oh,” she said.

“Shit,” I said. I lifted Abby under her arms and swung her to the bed.

She unstrapped her diaper and smiled. A warm, green pile sat right in the middle.

“You sure you’re not radioactive, baby?” I wiped her down and went to get a new diaper. When I came back, Abby patted her bare crotch and laughed. I pushed her hand away and gave her the milk bottle to hold.

“Easy, Tiger.”

She ran off in a clean diaper, fresh milk in hand. She flopped back onto her pillow and slurped.

I thought of Dee, far away in her big-city apartment on a luxury futon, biting her fiancée the same way that she used to bite me. She would deny every ounce of it, but she knew. She’d remember it as filthy. No excitement in the indulgence.

She couldn’t see the citrus glow, either, but she wasn’t so thirsty.

Abby tossed the empty bottle and sprawled out on her pillow. “Boober?” she said.

“More?” I said. “You’re addicted, baby.”

Dee’s nails had cut into my back so hard that I bled when she pulled me down from the railing. Wild, eyes dilated, I fought against her. She held me down until I pushed her off of me, but she still pulled me back into the house.

Dee had pinned me on top of those hand-sewn pillows and bit me until I pushed her off. We still went back to the den. I opened the fridge and laughed at the bowl of blueberries and the purple morning glories and my sister’s sweet lust.

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You Wanted to Celebrate Your Birthday Fifty-three Days in Advance JENNIFER HART

I tore up my calendars and planners to make confetti for you.

With no dates or written days, I’m not certain when these things happened, but I’ll try my best.

Saturday— You dumped me off on the side of East Highway 20 and said to me, “Babe, go see the stars.”

Sunday— You bought me crates of cherries and you said to me, “Cause we know what great taste in men you have.”

Monday— You broke every bowl I owned and bent all my spoons and you said to me, “Now you have no way to collect the rain.”

Tuesday— You caught the ends of my hair on fire and said to me, “You are the most spectacular comet I’ve seen.”

Wednesday— You took pictures of strangers and said to me, “Documentation is a strange manifestation of dreams.”

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Thursday— You watered my cacti with day-old coffee And you said to me, “Don’t we all want to play messiah.”

Friday— You left before the newspaper came and I haven’t seen you since.

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The Centennial of Poetry Magazine KIMMY KEMLER

For one hundred years now they’ve been bent over their desks, making cumbersome edits, like perhaps a comma after this, an em dash after that— and each new entry must depict more interestingly and in fewer words the hysteria, the hummingbird’s wings moving wildly, an acacia’s sap dripping sepia on the grass, the whale’s song as it hefts itself onto the beach. The poems go into the thousands and the words must be more frugal, the horizons pinker.

The calligraphic fonts are switched for serifs; the layouts are simplified. I think, soon all poems will be in perfect tense and what happened to adverbs? and when will they condense the poems so much that they disappear?

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A Solemn Moment ORA FRAZE

color monotype statement on page 63

Tam u Nebeských Bran Snídaně v Trávě

27 41

Veronica Cinibulk THE CZECH REPUBLIC: AN EXPLORATION

This collection was inspired by my Czech heritage and my desire to take on the perspective of those who have lived through decades of suffering and change in recent Czech history. My work serves not only as a look into the memories of those who lived through Communist Czechoslovakia, but also as a commentary on the dangerous developments of present-day society, acknowledging that the eradication of one danger inevitably allows for the rise of another. The two works featured here are the last two of the collection, concentrating on current developments rather than painful memories of the past.

“Tam u Nebeských Bran” (“There at Heaven’s Gates”) is a criticism of the effects that Capitalism and Globalization have had on the Czech Republic.

The woman pictured looks back on the days when the Czech Republic truly belonged to the Czech people, while a chain featuring a pattern found on the Koruna (coin) envelops her and rises to the sky. The words “Tam u Nebeských Bran” wrap around the chain, separated from the woman, illustrating how the beauty of Czech culture and tradition has slowly eroded in the face of monetary gain.

“Snídaně v Trávě” (“Breakfast in the Grass”) was inspired by my observation of Czech forests and fields, and is an exploration of the damage that has come to the beautiful natural environment of the Czech Republic in recent years.

The man pictured is surrounded by the darkness, in which the words “Snídaně v Trávě” float, disfigured and evoking factory smoke. His clothing has been penetrated by numerous “X” marks, like those painted on trees that are to be cut down. Blind in one eye, he looks up in memory of the once-pure streams and thick, dark-green forests that have now given way to housing developments.

Ultimately, it is clear that environmental destruction is a simultaneous destruction of humankind, for this man is decaying, losing himself to the darkness.

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Setting Sail Horseman Out of the Dark A Solemn Moment

15 29 47 61

Ora Fraze ARTIST STATEMENT

The work I create explores human interactions and psychology. Inspired by the abstract technical organization of music (like melody, tonality, pitch), I create each image as an obscure narrative, letting the viewer draw upon elements and symbols within the piece to create individual narratives. By using different printmaking processes, such as lithography, intaglio, and monotypes, I create complex atmosphere and movement. This variety in medium allows me to stay true to the obscurity within my work. The viewer can take time to contemplate his or her psychological relationships with others and oneself.

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