The Laughing Medusa, Spring 2022

The Laughing Medusa

The Laughing Medusa

Literature and Arts Journal Spring 2022 Round 2: Volume 17

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The Laughing Medusa Editors and Council Editor-in-Chief Lexie Slotterback Director of Submissions Marielle Caparso Layout Editor Molly Mitchell Web Editor Lillian Smith Director of Publicity Lauren Foster Council Members Sammy Davidson Jules DiGregorio Charlotte Gunn Pam Zhou Susanne Hahs

Many Thanks for Your Support: Mary Crane and The Institute for the Liberal Arts (ILA) Akua Sarr Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs Peter Marino, Jacqueline Delgado, & Susan Dunn at the Center for Centers Mark Pinkham & Steve Noonan at Flagship Press 4

Table of Contents untitled Mikaela Savage

Cover

Circe at the Movies Jules DiGregorio

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Wallflower complex Lillian Smith

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that’s hip Grace Christenson

14

A Genealogy of Medicine Katy Gilmore

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mare frigoris Lexie Slotterback

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My Poor Mother Beatriz Pugeda

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Falling Grace Christenson

21

What can I give you Lemon Ding

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untitled Mikaela Savage

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I kept the light on all night Lexie Slotterback

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miss you, i miss you Taylor Giuffre-Catalano

25

So Much Tenderness Lillian Smith

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untitled Mikaela Savage

30

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Table of Contents

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Punchdrunk at Circle Tavern Lexie Slotterback

32

red girl Grace Christenson

34

Little Red Riding Hood Reads Her Victim Impact Statement Lexie Slotterback

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I grew closer to my body in the bathtub Jules DiGregorio

38

untitled Mikaela Savage

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Institute Park Marielle Caparso

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Arboriculture Katy Gilmore

41

Alone with Him in the Tech Booth Lexie Slotterback

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untitled Juliana Owen

43

How to Dye Your Hair in the Midst of a Mental Breakdown Megan L Stephenson

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Stop & Stare Grace Christenson

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Medusa in Her Court-Ordered Therapy Session Lexie Slotterback

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A Study in Language Katy Gilmore

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Table of Contents For Curt Dani Elizabeth

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Mid-Autumn Festival Lemon Ding

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they might be kissing again Taylor Giuffre-Catalano

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happy noise Fallon Jones

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Our Country Katy Gilmore

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untitled Eva Cassidy

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Glamorization Lauren Foster

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Swimmer Shoulders Julia Landwehr

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untitled Mikaela Savage

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Calling Home in a Foreign Phonebooth Lillian Smith

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untitled Mikaela Savage

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Where to Go After the Invasion Lexie Slotterback

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Mission Statement The Laughing Medusa seeks to engage the Boston College community with the artistic works of diverse women and nonbinary artists.

The journal provides a safe space for talented young artists to express and examine our lives.

We hope to emphasize and explore our collective humanity, and hope that all readers can see themselves in these pages.

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DEAR READER, The Phoenix takes a nine day pause before it rises from its ashes.

One might imagine that it uses this reprieve to consider the gravity of resurrection—the effort that must be exerted in order to will one’s singed flesh together again. The tiresome nature of gluing embers back together would give anyone a moment of hesitation. It would be much easier to remain ruptured on the pyre than to have to fashion it back into a cradle—to birth oneself into five hundred more years of life and grief and love and burning just to meet the same charred fate.

This year has been one of rumination. We’ve done the work. We’ve molted, shed our skin, and attempted to relieve ourselves of the weight of the past—of the antiquated systems and ideas that no longer serve us. In this pursuit, we have had to ask ourselves difficult questions. What drives us? What makes regeneration worth it?

Where do we go from here?

Time and time again, the Phoenix chooses rebirth. No matter the foresight or intensity of labor, it resolves to burn for a chance to live.

This edition is a collection of moments. Ones of defeat, musing, and, ultimately, triumph. It has been an honor to compile this magazine, to capture the undercurrent of revival that has run through these submissions, the brazen lean towards vitality in spite of circumstance.

We must choose to rise out of the ash. We must choose life and light, even if it burns.

The Laughing Medusa Council

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Circe at the Movies I couldn’t tell if she was real or not.

Every part of her was painted on, and when she left her fishnets at the foot of my bed they smelled like mint gum.

The way she smiled with the flip of a switch reminded me of the days when I do my makeup without looking in the mirror because I know it won’t give me what I want.

My hands have been left in the fridge too long so they’re bedroom-wall blue, just numb enough to stop shaking, and one plays God in the margins of my French notebook, swallowing verbs in a black ink tornado, the other tracing stickers on my water bottle like I’m not counting down to drown the rattles in my stomach.

My mother called me fish baby because I always loved the water but I think I’m more ocean than fish, My blood runs clear and it’s too soggy to stand and give me a few days and you can cut me open and drink me.

I sit there in the classroom, pressing into the back of the plastic chair.

I’m so comfortable I could fall asleep any second.

I’m not planning my escape not craving the sanctity of quiet bathroom tile and a locked door, eyes steady on blue hands in the sink as I boil them back to life.

She asks me what’s your zodiac sign? these are easy questions to get right, I tell her how I love scorpios, and there’s always a few seconds before I speak 11

while I try to remember my lines, let words surface in my mind and thin out until they may as well be hers.

And I’m thinking that she looks an awful lot like the shapes I recreate when I’m avoiding eye contact with myself Like the rubber mold I scoop parts of myself into, filling out the corners, rounding out my limbs and hands until they look like something you can hold.

I dangle my feet over dark wood that shines with stick They could fall off and I wouldn’t notice, and they’d shatter without making a sound, just step around the glass, please, and have a good night while over here the heat turns up and I’m cooking into something you can see yourself in.

I smile at her until she looks away, I’m not repulsed by the way she moves like a video I’d try to recreate I’m not suspended in myself, walking funny from the waterlogs and beating a pickled heart.

I have been here too long not to hate beautiful people.

Jules DiGregorio she/they

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Wallflower complex When the warmth of the first Bud Light is washed down by a second I feel angelic The complex green hues of my eyes Complimented by the blue bottle at my lips The white bathroom tile, a spackled halo Always I am taken aback, shocked That I am the same as I was just days before That I grew out of the fear of monsters under my bed To become painfully aware of one inside it Sloshing around my stomach Seeping under my fingernails Burrowing into the folds of my eyelids I cannot quite grasp That the people I have met in my periphery Remember my name and my face When, clearly, I couldn’t say the same She calls it my perks of being a wallflower complex She, in a sing-song-y voice, impossibly light and airy Like it’s this silly little refrain for all of us Says that I will never find someone to love me If I cannot love myself Why is she giggling at this funeral Playing peek-a-boo over the lip of the coffin Tickling the soles of cold clammy feet I hate the refrain but I cling to the complex Movies have plot arcs and character growth by design Things I beg to be imbued in me through naming the disease Ripping out my fingernails Flooding my eyes Flushing out my stomach Hasn’t lulled this demon out yet I take a theology course and pray We learn about symbiosis Lillian Smith she/her 13

that’s hip

Grace Christenson she/her

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A Genealogy of Medicine It begins with cold. Then, hunger.

Plague spreads through a family, a dye coloring each person blue.

So many endings: famines, lurking illness, organ failure.

Some eldery, many young.

There’s a story we tell about a woman a few lives back.

On her deathbed they offered her a new medicine from a pig.

With shame she sent them away, thinking it was one final crack about her weight. They left with insulin. She was too proud to live.

I don’t think we ever learn how to survive, not when our bodies are the battlefield.

Bad lungs get passed down in my family with our curls and love for music.

An heirloom trait: it’s a right of passage to be put on a ventilator.

Cancer consumes us too.

I’ve been to enough funerals to know that “one in a million” doesn’t really apply.

We are so heavy all the time.

How do we live like this?

Breaths catching on the weight of our genetics.

We just keep existing until we no longer can.

Katy Gilmore she/her

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mare frigoris when my grandfather died, I overwatered his plants obsessed with keeping something alive, I oversaturated his garden, didn’t know that too much life can give you root rot, can strip you of your color until you are drooping and yellow and being carried out on a stretcher. his casket was open the makeup couldn’t hide the jaundice of his skin, the way the cancer broke out of his lungs, metastasized and bloated his fingers, a swell that I used to press my cool lips to when he fought to turn a page of the Delco Times.

I have heard that when you die, your body leaks and contracts. swells from gas switches position clenches and releases

until it is rigid. scientists are citing new wrinkles in the moon’s mare frigoris as evidence that it is alive but how do they know that the moon is not bloated, 16

expelling the last of its gas while we gather around a telescope to watch? that whatever is moving the moon did not run through my grandfather first? at his funeral, I forced the officiant to let me place a flooded white rose in his stiff, caked fist his fingers, deflated, could finally fit that air force service ring with the garnet center, the steel of his wedding band.

Lexie Slotterback she/her

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My Poor Mother

[cw: rape, sexual assault]

In a past life, she was a dancer. Even the way she stood in long lines was poised and elegant. And no part of her was rigid.

Just soft, warm, and very alive. She was tall and long-limbed and like some sort of beautiful freak. But what separated her from the rest—what made my mother my mother—was how she conflated that poise with power and the picturesque. It was her show-stopping act, it’s what made her complete.

She told me about a place that truly felt like a home, wherein every room were erected mirrors instead of walls. And there was a beauty to it: for those mirrors made it impossible for a dancer to escape herself. She explained that in a studio, you had to make peace with you and your whole being—that was every good dancer’s secret. Learned technique and fundamentals: they were mere frivolities! What mattered most was the understanding that she performed for something even greater than the audience and its shiny applause.

So, when my mother danced, she danced for everyone, but especially for herself. She took pride in the ways her feet etched their patterns into the wooden floors. The ways her ears listened only for the accompaniment, her most dynamic of dance partners, in whichever way it pleased. The ways her mind came together with body to deliver confidence, intentionality. And with elongated arms and legs, she stretched to the corners at which each mirror met. She could hold up the ceiling if you asked her to.

It was those days she missed the most; the days she leapt with no intention of ever landing. She longed for the place where she could be free again. She absolutely yearned for it. Because then and there, her body was no instrument, nobody ever played her, she assured me. She was in control. It was all she ever knew, dancing through life with an outstretched hand. Take my lead, it beckoned.

Before she was my mother, she was his partner. And before that, a whole woman. A whole woman I’ve never met yet still find myself missing. That would twirl to the ends of the earth if the music only asked her to. Before the one who first told her the world 18

was her stage. Before he scoffed at her ability to dance out of every mess he made.

It was after the first time he raped her that she lost her ability to dance. It was how she lost her legs and how he took them over and over and over again until she didn’t even want them. She laid there, for hoursdaysyears, simply used and discarded. With bleak stoicism, she’d tell me that even in his absence his weight still pinned her legs to the bed they shared. How could they betray me like that? she wondered, thinking of all the places they had taken her before. But the more it happened, the more it made sense: If they weren’t strong enough to stay closed, then how would they ever dance me out of this life?

It only got worse once he took her arms, for she no longer embraced the world. His grip was always the tightest on her. On two arms that carried only pure intentions and beautiful stories, arms so full of life they even took their own breaths: with each contraction, an inhale. Each extension, an exhale. But before long, he had cut her long, long arms so short. Without wings, she could not fly. And he knew damn well that the weight of carrying me, too, kept her heavy and grounded.

As I grew, she grew. What was left of her swelled up like a balloon and for the most part she liked it; perhaps if she got big enough, she would float up and out a window never to look down on this wretched home again. In her pregnancy, I cherished the many restless nights we shared, they were an excuse for her to dream out loud. She’d tell me, If he returned my legs I would not run, but leap. If he returned my arms, I would not fight, but fly.

That was where her power lied, in her ability to move and shake, but that’s also why his tactics were so effective. Oh, how I can only wish to know my mother as well as my father does!

Truly, all I ever knew of him was what I heard from inside her.

His words only pierced; with venom that first muddied her bloodstream then mine. I imagined absolutely no dancer able to move to his arrhythmic accusations. And because his volume, alone, was paralyzing enough, these talks of theirs soon became one-way conversations with only the mere guise of exchange: an occasion that would leave me wondering where my poor mother had gone. All 19

night, she talked. But here and now and forever, she was rendered speechless.

Before long, only the bits and pieces of her remained, giving little semblance to her past self. It was unfair of her to hate the parts that had once made her whole, so she envied them instead, for they had a terrible habit of leaving and never looking back.

Take her neck, for example. He called it sexy, so she always hung jewels from it. This was where she kept safe her voice—the music that I danced to. And out of that vase bloomed his favorite target, her beautiful mind. Until he starved it from all sun and water.

For a while, just two lips hung lifelessly. Two chapped and bloodied fixtures on a blank and tired face. But when they shriveled up as quickly as they withered away, she felt no need to frown like so many times before.

Why listen, if life’s melody only reminds me of how I cannot dance to it? she then thought before giving up her ears.

The only power she now yielded was a similar kind to his; she simply willed the rest of herself away until I was all she had left. It wasn’t worth it; she would’ve told me if she could. Because even if she could leap and she could fly and she could make it to those mirrored rooms just once more, reflected back at her would be nothing. Because with his help, she had done the impossible, she lost the only thing worth dancing for.

Beatriz Pugeda she/her

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falling

Grace Christenson she/her

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What can I give you What can I give you? silence with deep breath, winds under winter trees, and corrupted autumn leaves.

What can I give you? cheap scarves, my restless heat, and a cup of dandelion tea.

What can I give you? midnight moon upon the buildings, rainy wet kiss lasting, and all my written poetries.

Lemon Ding she/her

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untitled

Mikaela Savage she/her

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I kept the light on all night, waiting for you to come back with that sea glass in your teeth and finish what you started.

For you to waste me the way only you do, my pulse pinned against my splinter of a bedroom door, you, devouring my resolve with that glitter in your smile before I can ask where you’ve been.

But you stay out until morning, slip into bed behind me— for the first time, the sun can see you press lips soft into my neck, your fingers spilling across my face until your thumb slips into my mouth, I’m sorry, penance, from my thrasher, and I suck.

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Lexie Slotterback she/her

miss you, i miss you heard from a friend of a friend or someone of the like that you’ve been tumbling across the midwest countryside slotted through cornfields, covered in silt parched and weaned, drinking the dusk out from under the moon again miss you, i miss you the sun sets earlier now, i went to the thrift store with raw fingers cold air licking along the back of my neck, with someone else smiling, but i felt like the auburn leaves crushing beneath my feet, whispering for summer’s breath choosing to self-deceive if i were resuscitated, could i crawl back into your skin for a day or so, until the darkened sky bends into a dayglow until it doesn’t have to be so cold anymore, my lips may be cracked but i’m dreaming again of petrichor, you know i know i need you more

Taylor Giuffre-Catalano she/her

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So Much Tenderness Who decided to build a highway that close to the beach? Nags Head must be a nightmare for parents, well some of them, my mom never seemed to mind. Caught up in her own things. The ruthlessness of the ocean on one side and the whirlwind of cars on the other, with only the smallest strip of sand as respite. Eastern North Carolina drivers are batshit. Hitting speeds of 65, 70 with lanes the exact same width as their cars, from rearview window to jutting out rearview window. Before dragging my mom from her own smoke invested one, I used to think it was these huge, pimped out trucks that were the scariest. Now I think it’s the small, low to the ground ones. These trucks and their looming presences. Growling and huffing steam like a bull. But I wouldn’t be able to see into the windshield on impact. It would smash my skull and distort my spine all in one go. The grill would knock my soul right out of me. Those small cars are the ones that you have to be careful with.

They’d take me out at the knees, shin and thigh become perpendicular. Shattering my kneecaps, bone splinter shrapnel embedding themselves into my skin and scatter, tinkling across the asphalt.

Shins get left behind, sucked under the car, kept warm by the cooking asphalt while my torso cools and oozes on the roof.

But for now, I keep to my side of the white line. The tightrope thin space they leave for pedestrians and call it safe. You’ll make it home or you won’t. Just like my mother says, it’ll work out or it won’t, every time I come to her with a problem. She shouldn’t have given that refrain to me because now I wield it like a weapon.

Or a shield, I feel too comfortable walking beside this highway for unsafe logically I know it is. But it’ll work out or it won’t.

Sometimes this highway reminds me of the Daisy by Marc Jacobs perfume commercial. Some waif thin girl struts through an idyllic daisy field. Her movements and actions so perfectly timed that she stretches out her graceful arm plunging into the mess of daisies. Her fingers so feminine and light that they brush over those 26

delicate petals without disturbing a single fragile blossom. I stretch out my hand trying to emulate that ballerina composure. I extend my fingers mocking Adam in the Creation of Man. I want to graze those trucks like they are daisies and this is my time in the spotlight. A couple of times the roar of their engines and their sudden closeness forces my hand back. My animal instinct battling against my Daisy dreams. I keep at it, nothing more thrilling than dominating this survival instinct. I want to feel the smooth paint against my finger tip, maybe scratch it with my nail. Leave a mark on it the way I imagine it would on me. Would it? Would it hurt? The curiosity is the best part of the game. The Daisy girl gives the camera an enticing look over her shoulder. Come closer she says, have you ever really smelled a perfume as perfectly ethereal as this one, she coos. So, I do the same. Come stop me, come beg me not to play in the street, come admonish me for being so reckless. But no one is behind me, maybe a family back a while in the distance, but my look has enticed no one.

Fine. I bring my hand up, abandoning God and his Creation of Man becoming beast and clenching my fist. I would’ve thought I’d close my eyes for this but I maintain a steady gaze on the place where the highway finally collapses in on itself on the horizon.

I make eye contact with the Fibonacci spiral of my fist. Fingers squeeze together, folding in upon themselves, phasing through top of the rearview mirror. Just before my hand becomes two dimensional, the mirror snaps off at its hinge, but my hand doesn’t reform and my wrist can handle all this pressure.

The rearview mirror clanging to the ground wakes me from my reverie before the fire in my hand can. Before I can smell smoke, I see the car has slammed on its brakes and the doors are opening, three of the four, there were people in the back too. I clasp my mangled wrist and hand in the crux of my opposite elbow and takeoff across the highway. I’m enough of a local to know that the sound side has windier roads, more places to lose someone, less public property and right now I’m willing to trespass. I run and 27

turn and turn and keep running. Only three streets away, I realize I’m alone. Not even strangers with a damaged car look for me for long. I slow to a walk and let the searing pain in my wrist flood my being. It is all consuming. The vibrations of my step reverberate through each shard of bone in my wrist. They all seem to individually prick different nerves. I am only so capable of holding something with so much tenderness, even, especially myself.

The sound doesn’t collapse into a single point on the horizon the way the highway does. It remains a looming mass expanse in front of me. Oh, to be a part of something big, I wade in to join.

Wading into the sound is not like walking into the ocean. Walking into the ocean symbolizes giving up. Relenting to something that will always be bigger and more powerful than you. Asking mother nature to take control because you can’t find the strength anymore.

Chew me up, you beg, drag me down, and spit me up where ever you see fit. Walking into the sound is like turning nineteen. Disappointing, a non-event. Something somewhere should be changing, is probably changing, yet feels strikingly the same. A hundred steps in and the water is lapping at the bottom of my kneecaps and a hundred more it’s still tickling the sensitive part on the back my knees. I walk and wade until when I turn around I can convince myself the people on the shore would only see me as a blip. That they’d really have to look to find me. I can sit down all the way, legs extended in front of me. I recline in a half sitting half back float kind of way. I stare into the menace of a sun. Not one cloud.

I could sit here until the moon takes the sun’s place. Both without getting cold and without being disturbed.

I think back to the meager bundle dropped on the faux beach of the sound. Chacos, a phone, t-shirt, and towel are the only things waiting on my return. How great would it be, I think, if I could make it to the hospital all by myself. Get swaddled in a cast and return home all without a word. She’d only notice the cast because I reach out to grab the salt I asked her to pass. But the act of lying my wrist on top of the water still requires an agonizing amount of 28

effort. It looks like I have sliced open my skin and taken out my wrist bones so I’d have somewhere to put my balled-up napkin from lunch. I can picture the piercing they are doing from the inside. Any moment now one will be sharp enough to break through.

The tiniest shard slices an opening and the tension tears it wide.

Now I have to stand on the beach and search for my own bone shards like shark’s teeth.

Lillian Smith she/her

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untitled

Mikaela Savage she/her

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Punchdrunk at Circle Tavern To say that you were slapped

across the face by a “bad” man would be a misnomer.

To cite the chorus that followed you, crying, into the Circle bathroom, He’s not a bad guy.

He just had one too many.

Let them find out what people call women who have one too many.

Look at him, swaying as his friend attempts to remove his rum and coke from his leadened fist.

He’s the nice guy, who would never hit a woman sober, would only hit her if he can forget it in the morning.

How can it be his fault that the Minotaur grows hungry once a year?

You’ve known another beast before him, the nice guy who climbed into your bed and took— this one at least left you 32

in the bar bathroom, cheek raised and flushed as if you had been caught unprepared in the first snow of the season. You long for that cold, that delight, that feeling of newness.

Not this familiar burn, a mark you know how to cover in the morning. mare frigoris

Lexie Slotterback she/her

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red girl

Grace Christenson she/her

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Little Red Riding Hood Reads Her Victim Impact Statement They didn’t tell me he would be here.

No, I don’t need a minute.

I just didn’t know.

I thought I knew a lot before.

Before, after. The split I use to make this make sense.

I’m here about the during.

I was walking home, head high in the part of the forest where I was told not to go.

He stopped me along the path—yes, him—teeth shining like little daggers as he grinned out a greeting.

But I knew his type— what he wanted, how he’d take. I knew, so I wasn’t afraid.

Told him to piss off and I went on my way to my grandmother’s—well, I thought it was my grandmother. It wasn’t.

I didn’t—didn’t know until his flesh took mine until I begged for him to finish— 35

What was I wearing?

Are you supposed to ask questions during this thing?

I wore a white dress with ruffles and the red cape my grandmother made when I was eight and told her that I wanted to be a superhero.

No, I don’t have it with me.

Why?

He tore it to shreds.

Besides, red means something different to me now.

Why come forward now?

I saw an infant in the mouth of a snake this morning.

I couldn’t stop its jaw from unhinging, can still hear the crunch of bone— there are others, I’m sure, that didn’t make it out of the wolf’s belly. Beasts like him can never stop at just one.

What do I want?

I want before 36

when red reminded me of my grandmother, of love, not thinking he would strip me to my bones. When I could walk alone in the forest without fear. I want him hanged, but that’d be too kind.

I want to see him broken, have to hear someone he loves cry out as he is swallowed whole— Will I settle for him getting twenty-five years on the registry?

I don’t— That’s all you can do?

Lexie Slotterback she/her

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I grew closer to my body in the bathtub where book covers leave white shadows on my knees and bubbles fizz out across my stomach I learned to love mirrors with the lights out and pleasure began with the first bite of an apple with that first summer swim, sand sucking between my toes. what softness can you teach me that is sweeter than the catch of a cat’s paw in my hair? you break its wave and twist it into your fist pulling me close enough to ask can I kiss you and I am learning already yes

Jules DiGregorio she/they

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untitled

Mikaela Savage she/her

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Institute park I.

The brown flowers of the cattails tumefy, and their short little bodies dance like sprites, across miles and millimeters.

I went to confession when I was seven wondering if they had time to prepare for the supernova of their short little lives. They live like my fascinations: for a season, until a short little girl comes by, and suddenly the entire park is covered with the non-substantial, white, cotton fluff.

II. My childhood Golden Retriever jumps up and sinks her teeth again into the cigars.

I strain to watch as the insides rupture like the piñata at my cousin’s pool party.

The sheepskin fuzz falls from her gnashing mouth and whispers promises of starting its life anew. Implosions cover the grass with a new form of sea foam; The crashing and receding waves on the pond’s shore trickle down my cheeks in salty, muffled tears.

III. At seventeen, I listen as the wind weaves through them, making the gentlest wind-chime. The water catches at their stems and swirls through them, creating patchwork, spirals, and eddies like the designs of the LL Bean backpack the boy you liked had in seventh grade.

The roots find anchor along the pond’s bank, flowering its clavicle and creating a beguiling scar. Body woven together like yarn, they hold each other’s hands to make a blanket medicinally sewn tight under the water. The mercury surface reflects the lucid brown and green matchsticks.

Marielle Caparso she/her

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Arboriculture A tree grows through this house. The seeds festered in his liver then rooted in his veins, teeming with jaundiced sap.

Nobody wants to acknowledge their weeds until they overgrow.

Waiting. Chewing. Then, devouring. Feeding on imbalanced humors.

Once he was yellow and ripe they burst through. Vines spread up, up, up, into the attic where I am sheltered.

Hospital beds, breathing tubes, fluorescent lighting, mercenary doctors, palliative care, filthy clothes, a sunken arm chair, feelings too foreign to name.

We deserve awards for the parts we play: ignoring his vegetative state.

Vines crawl towards me across shrieking wooden planks.

I hope my sisters are asleep and deaf to the sobs of this weary willow.

The floor curves up. The house roars as the tree grows right through it.

Thud.

It falls.

Katy Gilmore she/her

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Alone with Him in the Tech Booth Don’t touch me, I should have said it.

Should have wrenched your head from my lap, not let my fingers fill with your oil spill hair just because you said please.

Just teach me, I should have pled, instead of listening to your pus, frothing that no one understands you, said no one could understand me either.

Was that teaching?

Your head in my lap, thighs shaking under my plaid skirt, your wife expecting you home for dinner?

Lexie Slotterback she/her

42

untitled

Juliana Owen she/her

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How to Dye Your Hair in the Midst of a Mental Breakdown REMINDER: 48 hours before coloring 0.1 / TAKE THE ALLERGY TEST you acknowledge that you are reading these instructions only ten minutes before you begin. for convenience sake, you decide you’re probably not allergic and skip this step.

0.2/ DO A STRAND TEST TO DETERMINE OPTIMAL COLORING TIME hair dying with drugstore box-dye is an inherently impulsive thing, and this would ruin the fun. you skip this step too.

HELPFUL HINTS: if you’re willing to take the time to do these steps, you’re probably mentally well enough to go to a salon. you should probably do that instead.

PREP 1.1/ PUT ON GLOVES. COMB HAIR GENTLY you put on the gloves. you find it funny that the instruction specifies you should comb your hair gently, as if the people who wrote this instruction guide knew you might be having a rough go of it. you appreciate the thought, but it doesn’t particularly help.

1.2/ OPEN CONTENTS OF BOTTLE (1) AND POUR INTO BOTTLE (2) you struggle to pour the powder from bottle (1) through the small opening of bottle (2) and think about how the little dust particles that puff up are probably attaching themselves to the alveoli in your lungs and giving you cancer. the point of this exercise is not necessarily geared towards wanting to live, though, so you suppose it’s fine.

1.3/ SHAKE THOROUGHLY UNTIL COLOR MIXTURE IS FULLY BLENDED as you shake bottle (2), you wonder vaguely what chemical reactions are taking place inside the bottle. then you remember you’re an english major and not a Woman in STEM, and this whole thing is probably some sort of metaphor.

APPLICATION 2.1/ APPLY ALL OVER the instructions say to start at the roots where you “have the most gray.” you suppose this should make you question your desire to do this at nineteen years old, but you don’t dwell on it. instead you squirt the sticky 44

white substance on your scalp and rub it haphazardly through your hair, trying your best to cover up the blonde that has recently become oppressive. it starts to burn but it also feels nice, like you are burning last night off of you.

2.2/ WORK THROUGH work through what? why you’re doing this alone in your dorm on a saturday night? you can hear your neighbors in the hallway as they shout at each other to wait! i need to put glitter on my tits and nick isn’t even gonna be there you whore and shut up he might! a small part of you wishes you were getting wasted with your roommates right now, but a bigger part of you wants to just shrivel into yourself. you acknowledge that dying your hair, like getting wasted, is a socially acceptable cry for help. unlike getting wasted, though, it’s permanent. also unlike getting wasted, you remain in control.

2.3/ WAIT you set a timer for 20 minutes. you scroll through instagram and ignore the slight stinging sensation on your scalp.

FINISH 3.1/ WHEN TIME IS UP, RINSE UNTIL WATER RUNS CLEAR last night you stood under this same showerhead in the communal dorm bathroom and watched as the water ran down your body. it seemed like there should have been some evidence, some brown dirt or red blood, but the water ran clear the entire time. today, it runs black with dye and a small piece of you feels vindicated. the rest feels numb.

3.2/ APPLY CONDITIONER the creamy white conditioner smells nice, but your hand shakes a little in your line of sight like your body knows something you pretend you don’t.

3.3/ LET SIT 2 MINUTES. RINSE. USE REMAINING CONDITIONER THROUGHOUT THE FOLLOWING WEEK. you only make it to sixty before you lean back into the water. you close your eyes to the haze of steam and let the water trace the curves of your body in a vain attempt to encase you in a false sense of safety. but you can feel the residue from the conditioner as it slides down your body, silky smooth and lingering like his touch as the water pounds your skin red.

Julianna Markus she/her 45

stop & stare

Grace Christenson she/her 46

Medusa in Her Court-Ordered Therapy Session Even the great Athena has her biases.

Protecting her brother, the god the thrasher the rapist from repercussion with no regard for the hours I spent writhing on the temple floor.

Raped as I prayed, begging for Wisdom, and I’m the monster?

How is it my fault that a god couldn’t resist?

I know you’ve seen Callisto, a fellow virgin and huntress, ensnared

by Zeus wearing a mask of Artemis.

He fucked her, furious, the virgin goddess dispelled her.

Not to mention she was turned into a bear and nearly shot by her son— but at least Zeus got off, right?

They always do.

My once beautiful hair is now coiled and serpentine, hissing into my ears all through the night.

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(Can you give me something to help me— no, not me, the snakes— sleep?)

Now I am ugly and pregnant, not with child or hero but with a horse.

No, sorry— a pegasus, because even a horse needs a pretentious name with those people.

The only gift the bitch gave me is that the eyes that entranced the god are now weaponry.

There’s an arsenal hidden behind my irises that halts the male gaze in its tracks— makes my prey just as paralyzed as I was.

You look scared.

No, not scared.

Aroused.

You want to touch me?

I dare you to try.

You’d look so pretty powerless.

Lexie Slotterback she/her 48

A Study in Language Midas DNA like a crime scene: our mezuzahs and our menorah and our Shabat glasses and my jewelry— all glistening gold but cheap, loseable plastic within. One goblet reads “Kochava.”

My parents chose that second name for me: “Stars.”

The chain on my neck was gold when the Chanukah candles shone and I asked my sister to buy it for me. Now it’s gray and aged with blushing rust. Chain links tighten so it chokes— tugs me back to Shabat dinners with Challah and Hebrew prayers and two parents. Now there’s a stony word: “Grief.” It dances with calls of “Dayenu” at each Seder since my father passed over. Should it have been enough?

I was born on another culture’s day of the dead, interrupting my parents’ lives on that Friday in November.

A year later I spoke for the first time: “Goodbye.”

It always goes like this: a rhyme.

Katy Gilmore she/her

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For Curt I waited for manipulation the way one longs to get back home, it was a familiar destination and I have a fear of the unknown “He’s just like all the others” I cautioned to myself “Give him time and he’ll get bored, he’ll find somebody else” I searched hard for ulterior motives to find out why he seemed to care analyzing every sentence and finding nothing there *** I was never met with judgment even when he saw me as I was he never tried to fix me and he met my scars with love he appreciated all my flaws and found beauty in my mess I could tell him every painful truth and he’d adore me nonetheless he told me all too often that I was his greatest friend his supporter and an ally in a world where judgment was the trend I heard him, but I didn’t listen “I couldn’t possibly mean that much” a sweet exaggeration is all I told myself it was *** 50

The first phone call was the hardest, shock and grief set in “We found you in his messages, we’re trying to locate next of kin” the detective asked me questions although I’d forgotten how to speak.

The medical examiner’s call left me feeling just as weak “I’m so sorry about your boyfriend” “Oh, we were just good friends” but honored by the misconception, I was tempted to pretend. *** Was it the way he called me “sunshine” or how he’d ask about my day?

Or how even in the hardest moment he’d have beautiful words to say?

Was it how he saw me as a person and not a means to some selfish end?

Or was it the pride he held each time that he declared me his best friend? his last text said “I’ll always love ya” four simple words now make me cry I pray that “always” is a place that continues when we die. ***

Dani Elizabeth she/her

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Mid-Autumn Festival Only the moon could tell, how much I love you.

We are always apart, distances or hearts.

Only the moon could be shared with two of us.

Lemon Ding she/her

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they might be kissing again they might be kissing again knuckles knocking and interlocking stole away while no one was looking a beer in one hand, a hand in the other dancing like nobody’s watching, because they aren’t this private moment interspersed through a public setting leaning on one another topsy-turvy, ‘til they might tip over but they don’t it smells like skunky beer and a rain-left puddle of mud not much to see here tonight just two people in love when i say topsy-turvy, what i mean is head over heels they’re drunk and are looking about to keel in the lawn, but their knees were long since buckled hearts since kindred there’s a vulnerability in their accepting sway in knowing they might fall flat on their faces but they’ll do it together suspended just a few inches over the crushed cans and mulch, whispering something, a laugh unafraid of falling what anyone might wonder is how two sets of enmeshed hands is keeping itself standing up all i can ask is why do pinky promises imply so much trust if i could go back to people watching two topsy-turvy lovers without a cause, without a clue across a beer-can-bespeckled back lawn 53

two who weren’t great at being friends if i could go back to people watching see the pureness in two topsy-turvy lovers with knuckles knocking and fingers enmeshed i would wonder what it’s like to be held up again Taylor Giuffre-Catalano she/her

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happy noise Fallon Jones she/her

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Our Country Gray wooden planks, neat as soldiers, guarded our borders.

That white garage with its cobwebs and bikes, boxes of soon-to-fit clothing as our capital: we revered and begged entrance to its archives— a monument to a time before our arrival.

Births of daffodils and azaleas and speckled leaves kept time.

Earthworms sprouted between magnolia roots and built lives beside us.

The days overflowed: we spent our time marking the lawn with love; chalking the landscape; hanging chimes on the trellis to hear their hymns; painting toy houses with our fingertips and hiding them under branches— like a prayer we believed that fairies would thank us for them; performing ablutions on our favorite plants to immortalize them; whispering secrets between sisters for the wind to carry away.

We fished lightning bugs from the air and whispered 1, 2, 3.

Then we let them float back up to the constellations we knew they came from.

Katy Gilmore she/her

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Eva Cassidy she/they

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Glamorization

Lauren Foster she/her

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Swimmer Shoulders On a warm, summer day in late August 2017, I stand smooshed in a huddle of girls in swimsuits and caps, barefooted on the grimy, wet pool deck. My arms are thrown around the swimmers to my left and right. My final season as a high school swimmer has just begun, and some of us varsity team members are sharing motivational phrases and aspirations to pump up the team on our first day of practice. I say some platitude about the team and the season and making friends and swimming fast. But Alice, a stout sophomore breaststroker, yells into the circle something like: “I can’t wait to see all of our biceps grow!” She mockingly flexes to the laughing and cheering huddle. We spend the next three and a half months together, swimming laps back and forth, pulling relentlessly at the water like our lives depend on it.

Most nights before I get into bed, I roll up the short sleeves of my oversized cotton pajama shirt and flex my arms, smiling back at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Our biceps did grow. * I stand in an Urban Outfitters dressing room in early January 2020, draped in a sky-blue cowl neck mini dress. My reflection stares back at me from a thin mirror hung on one of the light-colored wooden walls. Indie music wafts around the store. I figure a person who’s 19 and in college should maybe own a short, party dress—for a formal, if I were ever to be invited to one. The satin, blue fabric clings tight to my body, hanging from thin spaghetti straps that nestle into the groove between my shoulder bone and muscle; I spin to the side and see the stomach I’d always had protruding from the dress and my too wide biceps hanging over the seam on the side. I need a second opinion, someone to deliver the verdict in the case of whether I look beautiful. Stepping out of the dressing room, I turn to my friend Sidney, who is perched on a low bench just outside my dressing room door. “I like it. I just don’t know about the top, it makes your shoulders look kind of broad, you know, because you’re a swimmer,” she tells me, straight faced. I hum in agreement, pretending to ponder myself in the mirror before retreating back to take the dress off. I’m not 59

a swimmer. I tried and failed to make it on my D1 college team, and I haven’t participated in high school sports in about two years.

I am no longer an athlete. But my shoulders aren’t so eager to let things go. * I sit at a table at the end of January 2022 during my senior year of college. Confused and directionless but growing slightly more comfortable with the notion of calling myself a writer, I join a mentorship program for senior women. I try to dress up at least a little nicely for our first meeting, wearing jeans and a casual, loose-fitting sweater. I feel a lump in my throat that won’t go away as my small group and I talk about our futures (mine, completely undefined) and college challenges (too many to name). Having made it through the reflection, we grab dinner from the buffet at the back of the room and sit back down, chatting casually. I strike up a conversation with a redhead, and we cover the basics: Where do you live on campus? What’s your major? Do you have any siblings? While I’m answering this last question, it comes out of nowhere. My brother is in his first year at Pepperdine University, and the girl tells me that she was a swimmer in high school and almost decided to join the team there. She didn’t go, though. I smile excitedly and tell her I too am a washed-up former sprinter whose career fell apart before college. She stares right at me, and a look of total clarity and understanding wash over her: “Ohhhh, I see can that.” She’s big into long distance running now. What will become of my muscle is still unknown.

Julia Landwehr she/her

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Mikaela Savage she/her

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Calling Home in a Foreign Phonebooth I pinched my glove off with my teeth Steadied myself with one hand On the phonebooth door The other skimming across the keys Brushing across unreadable braille To type in your number Ended up gnawing on that glove Mushy soggy yarn volleyed Between canine and molar To the beat of the unanswered rings Clamped down on the glove My mouth and throat shutting down Just as your voicemail started Hearing your all too familiar voice For the first time in too long Only through the tinny handheld receiver And the overly formal tone Reserved for business partners And your daughter 4,461 miles away.

Lillian Smith she/her

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Mikaela Savage she/her

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Where to Go After the Invasion My mother always said that her mother always said You never want to live through war.

She meant fire, meant flee, meant Boom.

Her hands used to shield, act as blockade against sound, against explosives dropped in Dresden, the next town over, against the cries her mother begged her to stifle.

She fled to save her children and their children from the rattle that took her bones but Mom-Mom— what if there’s already been an invasion?

2010. ‘I didn’t think of Iraqis as humans,’ says U.S. soldier who raped 14-year-old girl before killing her and her family.

1800 BC. Medusa turned monster after being raped in Athena’s temple.

2022. Putin’s Forces Attack Ukraine.

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2018. My friend thinks I am asleep after prom and he takes

2016. In Stanford Rape Case, Brock Turner Blamed Drinking and Promiscuity.

2020. Trump Overhaul of Campus Sex Assault Rules Wins Surprising Support.

14th Century. Little Red Riding Hood thinks she knows and wears too little.

2021. Former Archbishop Carroll High School teacher gets probation for sex with student.

I didn’t want this didn’t ask would have fled tried to I swear but I was paralyzed then and now every smile, baby, is a Boom.

Every unwelcome touch, a strike.

But I will love or try to in spite of the war that floods me, step over the tattered red cape on my bedroom floor that he tore when he swallowed me whole I will not ignore the bombsites, the temple, that school.

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I will bring new lovers to their grounds, show them where the aftershocks started. I will not scorch the remains, but leave them as a warning for the next—yes, I will refrain from burning but I will chase the light I will chase light if it kills me.

Lexie Slotterback (she/her)

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“You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly.

She’s beautiful and she’s laughing.”

Hélène Cixous