DEDICATION
This 40th anniversary issue of the Wire Harp is dedicated to Almut McAuley, who carried the torch from 1984-2001 and to Connie Wasem Scott, who carried it from 2002-2023. We’re extremely grateful to both Almut and Connie, who have made the Wire Harp the award-winning publication it is today.
INTRODUCTION TO THE 40 TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE
Forty years ago, in 1984, “Owner of a Lonely Heart” filled the American radio airwaves, Ghostbusters played in movie theaters, and friends and family gathered around TV sets the size of kitchen ovens to watch Dynasty and Dallas. Tina Turner’s album What’s Love Got to Do with It? won a Grammy, and William Kennedy’s novel Ironweed won the Pulitzer. No one downloaded those songs, movies, TV shows, and books onto digital devices to enjoy later, nor did friends text each other or tweet about these popular cultural icons. The technology to do so was on its way over the horizon. But you, our astute readers, already know that, even though most of you weren’t yet born.
Something else big happened in 1984, at least to the world we share at Spokane Falls Community College. That was the year the first issue of the Wire Harp made its debut. Our school’s creative arts magazine was the brainchild of Almut McAuley, SFCC’s much-respected and long-time creative writing instructor. Prior to the Harp, SFCC published other literary magazines with a host of names that changed often, including Realms , Nuances , Images , and Campus Carousel . When Almut came on board as the advisor, four decades ago, she wanted a name that would stick, a name that would be worthy of the publication that celebrates the creative talents of our current students, alumni, staff, and faculty.
Almut landed on the title Wire Harp, which she found inspiring and worthy for two reasons. One is that a “wire harp” is a portable stringed instrument, favored by minstrels and other rogue artists. Secondly, when Almut researched the title, she found a collection of ballads with the same name, published in 1965 by the East German writer Wolf Biermann. The phrase “wire harp” appears in Biermann’s poem “Ballad on The Poet François Villon” and refers to the barbed wire on the Berlin wall that becomes like a harp when the wind passes through it, making music. The “wire harp” is a celebratory symbol for the creative voice that cannot, and should not, be repressed, no matter the oppressive context that may surround it. Almut found this fitting for a magazine that’s dedicated to freedom of expression.
Starting in the year 1984, then, and each year for the next 40 years leading to the anniversary issue you now hold in your hands, the Wire Harp moniker has graced the cover. When the Harp debuted, it was primarily a literary review. Over the course of those early years, other creative programs, such as fine arts, graphic arts, and photography, were flourishing, and so fifteen years into its run, the magazine became a showcase for all of these talents from many disciplines and genres, from our talented population. And in that sense, the Wire Harp is one of the finest collaborative efforts we have on our campus.
Our magazine is a result of the combined work of two student staffs, the literary and the artistic, and of all the students who create art and submit it to the Harp. Every year, we receive many more pieces of art and writing than we can publish, and anybody involved in the process of preparing a creative piece, polishing it, submitting it, and waiting for the results, is a winner in our eyes. Our staffs greatly enjoy reading and viewing all the work submitted to us for review as we have so many talented writers and artists in our midst. Sorting through all the submissions also serves as a training ground as we are an instruction-related student-funded club.
We hope you’ll enjoy the creative work we’ve selected for this anniversary edition as much as we do. We’re proud of this issue, all the issues that have preceded it, and all the issues still to come.
WIRE HARP AWARDS
Richard Baldasty taught philosophy and history at SFCC from 1984–2007, and during his tenure, he was regularly published in this journal and contributed significantly to the arts on our campus. Upon his retirement, the Wire Harp honored the spotlight he shone on art by naming our poetry award for him. Each year, the Wire Harp staff selects what we consider the most artistic poem and piece of prose as the recipients of these awards. We also give an award to a photograph and a work of fine art. Each of these four student artists receives a $150 prize, as a result of a generous gift from Richard. We appreciate Richard for supporting students in their creative arts.
Kambria Schaffer
Kambria Schaffer
Kambria Schaffer
Portrait of Alex
Anastasiia Kulish
Ode to the Light-Bringer
Willow McCann
To the golden boy of Delos do my words embrace, for your streaming blond hair and sun-kissed face
A flame of orange and amber do you light inside me, mania like ripe lemons wringing sour creativity
You’re found in my mind as sunflowers yearning, like Icarus they strain closer, squirming and stirring
The tune of your lyre tastes of saffron and daffodils as mortal ears flock closer through the valleys and the hills
It is you, Light-Giver, whom I find in yellow color–for I will remember you with this poem, and again with another
Bud Light Benediction
By: Elena Vigil
“One day I’ll meet my Maker” says my uncle often after one too many tempting fate weekdays just to come a little closer to God
My uncle thinks between all the jeers and drinks that the Holy Spirit might transcend upon his earthly drunken soul if he just drinks one more one more one more but when he’d passed out on the kitchen floor The Lord was nowhere to be found
my blood line and its blood alcohol content produces generations of faithful believers believers in the power of God believers in just one more
Mom says my uncle will one day meet his Maker face to face at the bottom of a Bud Light can
Mom prays we will be the generation to see His face in the gentle lilies
Burning Bright
Kambria Schaffer
In The Mountains
Haven Anderson
My Best Shot At Romance
Jack Miller
It’s because when I speak to you every thread that holds together the stitch of my being sparks with the current of the river Ganges. A love so mighty bogged down by the weight of all the garbage floating within it. By the time it comes out of my mouth the burnt bodies of loved ones, the once treasured plastic sandals of a youth, the placid black smears of blown out tires, pile into my cheeks like the tobacco my father used to spit into empty Pepsi cans. So with a mouthful of shit, I try to portray every single ounce of love I have for you through my eyes. Down to the last floating particle, trying to shine like warm incandescence in a stained glass chandelier. As I feel my spirit split open in front of you, through my lips I manage to compliment your ass.
Another God Poem
Kira Loweree
When I die
I want to ask God why the stars shine brighter in parking lots
I want to know how the sky can only be so beautiful
When I’m covered in old food
God, have you been inside my silver Hyundai?
If I knew, I could slow down on the back roads
Are you there?
Holding my hand when the moon feels too big?
Or are you the black cat on the side of the road?
Eyes bulging
Staring straight through me as they, he, she, you ask
Why I’m so afraid to stop
Head Scarf
Jasmari Gordon
Dreams of Plasma and Broken Physics
Aeden Swink
The Big Dipper is the only constellation I know. I often find myself staring at it, looking around, pretending like I have any grasp of what’s beyond the thin layer of steam we call an atmosphere, held in place by the press of mass on the fabric of existence. Sometimes I step out of my car into the muddy palette of the earth, feeling a certain kind of yearning that comes with driving at night, and turn my eyes skyward.
I wish to dance among the nebulae, surrounded by the swirling haze of frozen gasses conglomerating into a dusty sheen like splatters of gouache on the dark canvas of space. I know I would breathe easier, listening to a comet’s concussive melody, slicing through the cosmic latte, unthinking the woes of a life spent on Earth. I would be too busy catching shooting stars on my tongue and kissing the upside down, glassine surface of a world where the sun is always shining.
I wonder how it would feel to make snowmen from the poisonous galena falling from the sky on Venus and to wander the dried-out riverbeds of Mars where fish beyond our wildest imaginations might’ve swam, who died as a consequence of some theoretical people-oids’ irresponsibility. I wonder what it would be like to play hopscotch on asteroids in the Kuiper Belt and to wander the pock-marked skin of Ceres not thinking about anything in particular until the sun explodes under its own mass in a brilliant wash of light and color that not even the most visionary among us could cook up by the time it actually happened.
I think I would like to wait until the universe has expanded to the point of breakage, and unreality bleeds through the cracks until nothing makes sense anymore and I could play an axe like an accordion and paint the wasteland of the unreal with nothing but my thoughts. Would there be room to
make a better world? Or would the unexistence disassemble me atom by atom? Maybe the unreal would taste like eating bullets, or sound like washing your hair in the rain, or look like the scent of a fresh baked apple pie. I think it would feel like home, but also like a trip across the world to a country whose language I don’t speak. Could I even be in a place where my very existence is against the rules?
My mind drifts back across the rings of Saturn, dodges the many moons of Jupiter and the ashen debris of the Asteroid Belt. It observes Phobos and Deimos from the corner of its eyes with passing disinterest, and sailing through the grand emptiness, bathed in ethereal radiation, it bursts into flames in the atmosphere and finally comes crashing to a sudden halt back in my head.
Feet in the mud, cool nighttime air pooling on my skin, I take a breath and smell the rain that’s just finished falling. The porchlight glows in the thin haze, and the stars disappear behind an invisible cloud.
Rabbit Logomark
Kathryn Dexter
Fine Art
Unfinished
Anastasiia Kulish
Favorite Chapter
Taylor Davis
The birds sing a song from a nearby tree perched and pretty. I play my own music but I prefer the tweety-tune. The heat of the golden sun kisses the beads of sweat emerging from my pale skin. Salty? Yes, but a sweet sensation nothing will ever compare to, with the whispers of the wind through the waves of my frizzy hair. Between the sway of the hammock that cradles my body, and the insects buzzing in my face, I can hardly focus on my book. However, I don’t mind. I like this version of my own story. In fact, this is not the chapter I long to skim through. So I close the book, and sing along to the song of the birds.
Summer in Evergreen
Sofia Hessler
In summer, the evergreen girls are made of cats in sun-warmed grass.
They fly high off rusted springs, with rotten wood and squeaking chains their wings.
A smooth red ghost across the river is seen only by two girls of three. But the third has escaped few hauntings, for orange curses follow.
A stone floor is pebbled together. A carpeted tree reborn in death still shelters from the rain.
The evergreen girls tell stories, and the evergreen girls live stories.
In summer, the days have more hours. But the nights are longer.
This is intuitive, like the way a morning bed is soft and sweet, but at night is dried lichen on a rock.
Hard, like a lively dead-end street. Softened by bare feet, year after year.
This corridor of stone leads to most places, while secret passages of dust connect others. And the houses are mere closets in the Grand Mansion of Evergreen.
This mansion houses many creatures. Some who chase the evergreen girls, with square eyes and steaming noses. Others who watch them and wonder, with weird expressions reflecting their weirder observations (of drawers, of deliveries, of diggers, of dancing)
In summer, the sun rises, A dripping peach. The water glistens, and jumps! onto the rocks. The grass caresses everything.
In summer, the evergreen girls are bright with joy; but summer is short like venomous honey.
Untitled Haven Anderson
January Joy
Elizabeth Hart
Today I plucked a marigold from the top of the hill. I picked it specifically for Mother because red and gold are her favorite colors. It was the only flower that had survived this far into the season, standing limply next to dried petals. I picked it from the very base of the stem so that Mother could use her tallest vase: the blue and pink one. That would go well with the dainty flower. The petals were soft like her skin.
I placed the flower on the blanket draped over the birch tree roots. It was warm and green in the afternoon, so I lazed away in the meadow until I knew she would be home from work.
After I laid long enough for my skin to get what Mother calls her favorite ‘honeydew glow,’ I grabbed her flower and my blanket, and raced down the hill. I skipped over the creek, ignoring the flat, little bridge. My shoes had dark stains when I got to the back door. I shoved them off and raced to the bathroom.
I scrubbed the dirt off my face, combed my hair, and straightened my collar. Then I waited in the living room.
Once I heard the scrape of tires on the gravel outside, I flew to the window. Instead of Mother’s little red car, Father’s truck was moving up the driveway. I went to my room so he wouldn’t have to face me after work.
From my open window, I could hear him walking downstairs, footsteps echoing through the window seat Mother adored. The fridge opened and slammed shut. Clinks of beer bottles hit the tabletop and once I heard glass shattering against the wall. The newsman talked about the war that might happen in Europe. And then, when the smoking commercials were blaring, I heard him
crying. It was faint, repressed, and vanished when the next shooting scene started.
And, eventually, he snored loudly. I shut my window to make it warmer when I returned. The room was already feeling like outside, and outside was getting inside.
I tip-toed in my socks to the landing and grabbed the rail tightly. I used it to leverage my weight as I tentatively placed one foot onto the next step. There was minimal creaking that couldn’t be heard over his snores and the calls of the men on TV. I felt damp impressions underneath my feet, soaking into my socks. It was sticky; it was beer. He’d cleaned up the glass, entirely, I hoped.
The flickering TV was the only light in the room, except for the moon’s kiss, as Mother called it. It was her favorite time of month, when the moon was full and lit the bright winter night. She was out there waiting for me, waiting for our ritual. Father mustn’t know about our ritual.
I slid past him in his armchair, his hands hanging over the sides; he was almost completely slumped over. I made sure he was breathing and could continue to breathe before I made my way through the kitchen and out the backdoor.
I slipped into Father’s big trail boots by the door. I trudged along the muddy stone path down to the river. I was careful, as the boots were many sizes too big, and the stones were slick with January.
The ground got softer near the bank, and I turned left on the fork in the trail leading to a small wooded area by the river, close enough to hear the roar and see the spray without feeling it.
There was Mother, waiting for me in our meeting place. Her hair shone in the moonlight, as did her eyes. She wore a white dress — her wedding dress, lovingly crafted by Father. He had sculpted her expression perfectly, the glow in her cheek as present as the twinge of her lips. And outstretched was one loving marble arm, costing all of Father’s money, her hand outstretched in both giving and receiving. I placed the marigold in her palm, trying to pin it beneath her thumb. It brought color to her white figure, a relief in the snow, especially as flakes fell and piled upon her long locks.
I stepped closer to kiss her, my lips frozen on her cheek. I stayed there for a while and watched her.
She began to move. She lifted her long arms above her head, the marigold firmly within her grasp. She danced in her long white dress, which trailed snow tracks. She sang loud and clear, her voice ascending to the heavy clouds. She thanked me for the marigold. She wanted to kiss me, but her marble lips would be too cold and take me with her. She held the marigold to her heart instead. Finally, she breathed its scent in, a heavy, lively breath. She stepped back in place when the nightingale sang back to her.
Snow was collecting on my cap now, so I carried my burdensome boots back up the trail. I’d been gone too long—long enough for Father’s midnight snack.
The TV was still flickering through the window when I got back to the house. I placed Father’s boots back exactly where I’d found them. I grasped the knob of the backdoor—it was locked.
I went to the window to see if Father was awake. I was shivering cold. He wasn’t in his chair; bottles had been moved and rifled through, looking for last sips.
I went to the front and removed our spare key from the grooves of some logs stacked on the porch. Once I got inside, I went to check the bathroom light before heading upstairs.
The light was off and the room was empty; had Father made it to his bedroom already?
I saw a shadow pass by the window, and I went to look. As soon as I stood in front of it, I saw the barrel of his rifle tunneling through my vision. I ducked, and a shot blasted out. Bits of glass poured onto my neck, cutting into my hands covering the back of my head. They felt like icicles slicing into my skin. But most of all, my ears hurt like nothing before.
I was crouched by the window shaking, not even daring to move my hands. I realized I couldn’t hear once I felt heavy footsteps approaching. Father knelt beside me.
He began prying my fingers apart. He held my head down so I wouldn’t move and spread the glass. He cleaned the glass from my hands entirely, then shook my shirt free and removed my cap. He took me into his arms and sat me down in his chair by the fire. He wrapped me in a blanket. He cleaned and bandaged my cuts. He examined me, pausing to check every bit of exposed skin. Finally, he held me again and carried me upstairs to my bed. He tucked me in—I haven’t been tucked in since…
When I woke the next morning, he was sitting in the window seat next to my bed.
The first thing I heard when my hearing recovered was a gulp of a sob.
“I didn’t want to lose you too.”
Fine Art
Ginkgo Leaf Bunny Webster
Love Potion 9 Bunny Webster
Photography
Untitled Ashley Lupton
Fair skin
Emma Wenski
He found himself in last year’s laden spring, snuggling into the softened ground among roots and nutrients, blades of grass writing words of love over his skin, chickweed and yarrow clusters, bugs running over his veins, and songbirds sound overhead. Unmarred earth, and small vermin untangle the knots in his hair with vehement devotion. The universe welcomes him back home with adoration under the clear sky, swallowing him and his grief whole The sodden dirt stays imprinted with the boy’s body, in the center where he and God curled into his last breath.
Copper Flowers
Michele Bournonville
Where the Worthless Thrive
Sam Simons
In an old apartment where innocence dies
On a black leather couch, cracked and Old, it’s where we sit to watch him
It’s a privilege, he is the kindest here
He loves us.
Three little girls, close in age and nearly identical
Sit like decor in that dirty apartment
The walls are as thin as his patience for us
We watch what he wants
We wait for mom to come home
Where she will cook dinner and they will fight
She loves us.
We sit while he takes out his anger on whatever is near
The TV is still on, the waiting screen for a game
We couldn’t afford
He loves us.
Harsh hands in fragile strands of hair tells us it’s bedtime, but It’s alright
The old couch will be there tomorrow
The TV will stay there, holding knitted characters within its screen
Waiting for us
Yorick Taylinn Dawson
Photography
Spirit Ashley Lupton
Of All the Things I Could Say
Lorelei Palmquist
It is a chilly, dismal day. Not snowy, despite the turning of the new year. My child has asked me to meet them at a park near their dad’s girlfriend’s house, where they all live now. I don’t think their dad knows about the meeting.
I go, and my child’s hair is even shorter than in the last picture they sent me. They say that obviously they want to have a relationship with me, and I try not to weep at hearing it. They blame the stress of being at a new school for finding it difficult. Neither of us mention their dad.
These last few years, I have so infrequently felt able to speak freely with them. To tell them what was real or true. I have been too afraid of my words being carried back to their dad. But I am not afraid of that now. I tell them about the miscarriage that I am in the middle of. I ask if they would want to meet a future sibling. They nod, then say, “Just let them know you love them, from the moment they’re born.”
There are so many things I could say to that.
If I were my mother, I would say, “It hurts me that you don’t see how much I love you.” I would weaponize my feelings, and blame my child for having caused them. But I have known for some time now that despite my previous fears to the contrary, I am not my mother.
If I were my past self, I would want to focus on facts, and ignore the feelings. I would say, “Parents who haven’t made sense of their own trauma won’t form secure bonds with their children. I was a victim, which is why I hurt you. I’ve become a survivor now. I’ve learned. I’m confident I’ll be a better parent moving forward.” As much as that all may be true, it is cold, and beside the
point of my child who is now crying before me. It’s not what they need to hear.
Because I have grown, I simply say, “I’m sorry that I didn’t show you enough,” and hug them. Their body is still so slight and fragile, despite all the time it has been since they last allowed me this particular display of affection.
It is easy to blame the rupture of my relationships with my kids on their dad, and it’s true he’s not guiltless. What is hard is acknowledging that my behavior hurt my kids, both the one I hold and the one who hasn’t spoken to me in months. My failure to make sense of my own pain led me to pass it on, despite that being the last thing I ever wanted to do.
I make sure not to linger on the hug too long. Not to overstay my welcome. When it ends, my child opens up to me. They reveal more about their stressors and their inner life than they have in ages. I bask in the renewed familiarity between us.
It is a cloudy, murky day. The future of my relationships with my kids lies uncertain. I know I have done many things wrong as a parent. At least I can say I got this moment right.
YOU’RE NOT A WOMAN . YOU’RE A MAMA .
Laura Woods
His small voice declares it & the 25 year old in me cringes—
My smirking uterus, feminine wiles wave from the curb—
I have traded in my lipstick for lanolin, heels for loafers and my sleep for days that turn into nights that turn into days—
The come hither sway of my hips has been replaced by a haven that calls “come here child, this is your place child, you, you are safe here”
Halter tops have moved to the back (maybe I’ll wear these again one day I tell myself)
But for now I’ll put on my cape It’s knit from a thread that weaves back to a boat where my great grandmother holds an infant to her breast, $2 in her pocket and a heart-thread that weaves back to her grandmother before her and straight back to the ancients, a cape knit with the salt of our bodies and hope of our hands and a love that transcends words, with the power of a thousand women who came before messy hair and bloodshot eyes betray my strength.
He sees my cape; he knows I am more than a woman, I am his Mama.
Untitled: Self Portrait
Cary Ellis
Inconvenience
Alexa Tomkowiak
The drive to my therapist’s office is 54 minutes long according to Google Maps. A “faster route” of 53 minutes is available if I take the highways but I’ve never preferred highways to backroads. It’s a long drive to a long session and then somehow an even longer drive back, despite it being the same distance.
For a lot of this drive I find myself parallel to a set of train tracks. Eventually, I have to cross over those tracks in order to make it to my destination. I do not have the schedule of the local trains memorized. So, more often than not, I find myself sitting at a standstill, my car in park, foot off the brakes as I watch a 4,000-20,000 ton collection of metal creep through the intersection, acting as a moving barrier between the four or five smaller collections of metal just waiting for the bars to lift so they can proceed on with their route. I look around at the nameless faces that sit in front of, next to, behind me. All in their own frustrated worlds of being stopped by the train. I can’t blame them. I watch the minutes of my, 30 minutes ahead, clock tick closer and closer to my scheduled time of arrival. I can’t help but feel a sense of camaraderie between me and these other people trapped in the middle of their journeys. We are after all, all forced to sit and endure one of humanity’s greatest weaknesses together: waiting. I have a feeling, however, that if they looked into the tinted windows of my Santa Fe Sport, they wouldn’t include me as a part of their collection of shared misery.
As my wheels drag me closer to the same train tracks I have to pass every time I make this trip, I get excited. In my thoughts I secretly hope that the red and white
striped bars will be blocking my entrance to the other side of the road. I breathe a sigh of relief and joy, when I see those flashing lights upon my approach to the tracks. I gladly stick my car in park and turn my music up just a few more notches, as I sit and wait for this inconvenience. The ground rumbles low and comforting beneath me. I belt out to whatever song has come up on my playlist, and I sing like I wrote the lyrics, feeling each and every word. My eyes follow the train as it chugs along, I study each tag spray painted on and mentally pick out my favorites. I think about being a character in a movie, running away from home and jumping onto the train as it moves along, catching a ride to anywhere and nowhere. When the end of the train finally makes its appearance known, my sorrow contrasts with the joyful energy of the cars around me. Our session of camaraderie has come to an end. I finish my trip, but after a long talk that feels shorter than it is, I find myself back in that same position: approaching the train tracks and hoping I get stopped.
The Part I’m Playing
Lani Riggs
My stick of blush comes with me everywhere
It lays idly in my makeup bag at home, eagerly awaiting to be used in the morning
It comes with me to school every day too
A tube sitting in the top zip of my backpack
A reminder of my youth and beauty every time I reapply
On my lips, and on my chin, and on my cheeks it goes bringing color and warmth
And each time I apply it in between classes or admire myself with the plush pink on my cheeks in my vanity mirror
I think about the part I am playing
A girl without a care other than whether her lipstick is smudged
I think about the way I appear and what privilege my naive look must give me I think about how much I get away with because of my innocence
So, every day, my stick of blush comes with me
Growing sparser and sparser
And I wait for the day my youthful beauty goes along with it
Sunny Street
Anastasiia Kulish
Family Portrait
Taylor McGuire
Lamby
Mylie Leitz
When I was born, I was gifted a small stuffed toy lamb
The lamb, as big as the length of my arm at that time, held no sentimental value then Just a plush toy sitting in my crib
When I was two, I would throw a tea party for my stuffed animals
The lamb, called Lamby, sat in the middle of the circle around my pink rug I poured imaginary tea for her into the blue and purple teapots
Lamby and I would talk
And conversation would drown out the muffled yells from the floor above
When I was three, mom packed her things
And my things
Lamby sat in my lap on the quiet drive to my grandparents’ house
My Father’s Cigar
Abigail Helm
Click, click, spark, whoosh.
A small flame comes alive from a shiny zippo lighter, and dances around the end of my father’s cigar. He leans back in his chair, the rusted metal painted purple groans, as he leans further and further, almost tipping it over.
Thunk, thunk, ding.
My brother’s darts hit the board, while his nose starts to crinkle, as the smell of burning tobacco twirls around him.
My father uses the scarred tip of his finger to shave off the old part of his cigar. Small sparks ascend into the sky from the open garage door, greeting the stars.
Two dogs bark, reminding me of our neighbors, I saunter up to the fraying blue tape line to throw my darts.
Thunk, thunk, thunk.
I throw mine lazily, my laughter controls my movements as my father describes his day. His neon green coat still on from work,
blinding us like the sun.
My brother’s frustrated sigh, as I turn to him, making an odd scrunched up face, gloating I got one more point than him.
My father brings his chair back to earth, and sets his lit cigar on a small, scalloped plate, we brought from the kitchen.
His heavy boots, thick dirt clinging to their soles, take long strides towards the taped line.
Whoosh, thunk, thunk, thunk
He managed to get a perfect score. My brother and I keel over in defeat.
We stay in the garage hour after hour, repeating the same act. Until the sun melts into the earth and the sound of singing drunken men flood our ears.
Photography
Water Damage
Wyktoria Taschler
Fine Art
JoAnne Connolly
Cherry Bombs
Kaitlin Creeger
There is a game many know where you have four squares connected in a giant block and you throw a red-rubber ball at your opponent, bouncing once in their square before they hit it back to whoever, never holding onto the ball. Let’s play:
I was just eight standing in line, the silver bell had just rung and There was I raced no escaping to the what they had courtplanned, like yard like a villain waiting I had never in line at an seen such ice cream shop, a fancy time seductively to dance licking their in a square pink lips free of of mine half-and-half two other residue— girls in brown we faced each wavy curls other with malicious intent stared smugly I swung back my pale like I was a piece baby arm of meat to tempt struck the girl straight on her perfect teeth & ran from their jowls on(wards)
I guess we were just white kids in a rich neighborhood. I should have known I wasn’t free of trouble coming from home, punching a girl richer than me When entering that yellow dilapidated machine to take me home In a dirt shack creaking in the wind.
Baby Clown
Jasmari Gordon
Stained Eawyn Gilman
Buttons
Eawyn Gilman
Flesh
Eawyn Gilman
Pinkie Jasmari Gordon
Kathryn Dexter
Swing, Batter Batter
Lauren Alade-Herath
When I was a kid
The only sport I could play Was softball
But only because my brother Played baseball. So neglected fields, Overrun with dandelions, And stubborn clover, I held my bat up And swung.
When I reached middle school, My dad bought me a metal bat
The only time I saw him that year. Later a girl
Upset that I made varsity Lifted it above her head And swung. It clanged against the pavement, Independence day sparks And sulfur smell
Scratching the perfect pink paint Or a fraud’s instrument.
In highschool
I wrapped a wooden bat
In barbed wire And traded baseballs
For old, discarded windows In a dump site
Near my house I wound my arms back As far back as they’d go And swung
The broken glass spun colors Into pictures
That I saw
When I closed my eyes Against the sun rising Outside my window.
Later, I’d stick
Poppies and dandelions to each barb
As an apology
Red and White Petals and Sox
Slowly pressing themselves To the back of my underwear drawer.
Now,
When the ringing is too loud, And the taste of pennies
On my tongue Is too much I wrap my hands And stand in the cold
In front of my mom’s Perfect Matte, black punching bag And swing.
Just 19
Kira Loweree
I wish I knew what this was all for
I’ve held the Earth in my hands
I’ve shaken it like a magic eight ball
Watching my fate bobble
Stuck in the dark waters
So I’m forever 10 years old
Chasing my mom down the stairs
Begging someone to hold my hand
I’m perpetually turning 15
Watching the screen door slam again and again and again
Or maybe I’m just 19
Clinging to the past
Like I’ve clung onto anything and everything that’s come my way
Cheap boxed wine leaks through the holes in the walls
I cut my tongue off and still taste bitter pills
I beg someone to help me
And my words slur in a way that would make my dad proud
My hands are wet with tears
I want to punch something to dry them off
19 years
631 days since the last incident
And I’ve learned nothing about how to be a proper person I sit and pray for change until I can stand to look myself in the mirror
Until I become someone the Earth will answer
Until I become good
Offleash Clouds & History’s Reflection
Photography
Susie McDonald
Ring Around the Rosie
Crow Webster
It’s 4th period. The period I’ve been dreading. I trudge up the dull gray stairs, tuning out my friends’ chatter behind me. There are a few stains on the stairs, brown spatters. I imagine a teacher, rushing down the stairs, late to a staff meeting, coffee in hand. They stumble but manage to catch themselves. A few drops of coffee fly out of the hole in the lid, splashing on the stairs. I blink, and we are there, standing in front of the classroom. A cacophony of sound slams into me as I open the door, letting my friends through first. The other freshmen huddle in groups, smiling and laughing. I sit at my desk in the corner, silently pulling my fingers. The bell rings. The teacher calls our attention up front to the whiteboard. There, the dreaded words are written in dying green marker. ‘Socratic Seminar.’ Underlined twice. The bottom line is black, I notice. My teacher’s green pen must have died. Glancing over my hastily organized notes one more time, I pull my bag over my shoulder and file out of the room behind the others, walking towards the room we will have our seminar in.
Ring around the rosie…
There, through the window, I see them. Twenty-eight beige desks, arranged in a neat circle. The click of my teacher’s key unlocking the door seals my fate. One by one, the class enters and settles into their spots. I take the last remaining seat, directly across from the teacher. Clammy, shaking hands remove my notes from my backpack and set them in front of me. I glance around at the other students. They are still talking, smiling, seemingly not worried. How are they so carefree? The teacher calls our attention yet again, and the seminar begins. Immediately, people begin a lively discussion, throwing around intelligent points, agreements and disagreements. I take a deep breath, eyes trailing across
the room. There is a painting behind the teacher, a cherry blossom. It is quite beautiful. The windows showcase the stunning sunshine outside, not a cloud to be seen in the jet blue sky. Near the door, there is a poster. ‘Hang in there,’ it says, mocking me. I glance at the clock. Ten minutes have passed. Twenty remain. Letting out a shuddering breath, I begin to center myself, tapping my thumb to each of my fingers. One, two, three, four.
A pocket full of posies…
I refocus on the discussion. People are adding points at a rapid pace. A pause. I open my mouth and gather the courage to speak, but someone else beats me to it. Mouth closing, I sink deeper into my chair. Ivy climbs around my throat, constricting so tightly that no words can escape. I claw desperately at the vines as there is another pause in the discussion, to no avail. As someone else carries on the conversation, the ivy grows back, thicker, and tighter than before. One, two, three, four. It’s getting hard to breathe, hard to think. My eyes dart wildly across the room. The other students seem to glare at me, disappointed. The teacher too. All of their anger, their judgment, pointed at me. No, I can hold it together until the end of class. Breathe in, out. One, two, three, four. Another glance at the clock. Ten more minutes have passed. Ten remain.
I grit my teeth and scan wildly through my notes, searching desperately for a point to add that has not already been said. Another pause. I open my mouth again, shaking hands clenched on the hem of my shirt, twisting it into a tight spiral. It’s no use. The ivy spreads, taking over my lungs, my throat, my brain. I cannot speak. I cannot think. I slowly rock back and forth in the plastic school chair. One, two, three, four. The chair squeaks faintly every time I rock backwards, and I am
convinced everyone can hear it. Five minutes remain. They seem to flow like seconds, too fast for me to react. I try to speak one last time, desperately attempting to squeeze even one syllable past the bundles of ivy in my throat. Nothing but air escapes. My peers continue the seminar, oblivious to my struggle.
Ashes, Ashes…
The bell rings. I shoot up from my desk, heaving my backpack over my shoulders. I rush to the door, one of the first in line. As I pass the teacher, head bowed, he says “we’ll get ‘em next time.” Nodding silently, ivy creeping further and further, I walk past him. My eyes burn with unshed tears.
I can’t breathe.
Icant breathe.
Icantbreatheicantbreatheicantbreathe.
Breathe. Ground yourself.
One, two, four- No, that’s not right. One, three- No, try again. One, two, three… this isn’t helping. My breathing becomes harsher as I slam the door of the all-gender bathroom shut. I collapse to the floor, rough gasps tearing through the ivy and my throat alike. I rock back and forth, back and forth. One, two, three, four.
We all fall down.
Fluorescent Adolescent
Bearly Downtown
William Simpson
How’s it going to end?
Juno Williams
This vessel doesn’t look like my body At least, not anymore. Thousands know it’s my body. Why am I not one of the thousand?
In this digital biosphere, every gaze a lens, Distorting in the light, even if it hits just right. There’s a silent praise in the code Of thousands who know my name.
As the numbers incessantly climb Where does truth end and how?
Captive in the theatre of perpetual screens, A yearn for authenticity, and a half given up dream.
A life on display, in small cages
The size of a camera lens and computer screens, With smiles plastered, and rehearsed emotions. I am a vague concept they dreamt up
Drunk on lithium and ideas of fame. My time is consumed by people I barely know but who pay to know me. But how comforting the hugs of wires are.
As the line between mirrors and screens blur I ask: Mother, why do I look like this?
When did it get like this?
Mother, what happened to your son?
Rico
Jasmari Gordon
The Silent Yearning
Vanessa Graham
Colorless
the sky shifts into oblivion. The sound of waves crashing against unmoving boulders is all but a gentle hum.
Just feet beyond the shore the ocean lays a void. Vast but not empty.
L’appel du vide
We crave its sanctum
Ella Kipp
Where Were You?
Kaitlin Creeger
In that empty flesh shell, hollowed Cheeks and sunken black eyes, as if they were sun-kissed by Fallen angels planting their hopes into your disappearing mind Were you a skeleton starved From the touch of love, death waiting behind Your fluttering spidery lids— Did death look bright in golden robes like a fading eclipse, halo Shining as if he is your god, the spite of never repenting your lies, Holding them inside as if you are a rusted safe, Until you visit earth one last time, almost as if your soul gathers to dust in the blink of an eye.
Photography
Krislin Serena Willcoxon
Fine Art
Starman
Ella Kipp
Night Dreams
Sara Edlin-Marlowe
Death you are lurking behind every corner.
Filling my dreams with messages
As I dance in my imagined heaven
I am brought back to reality by thoughts of you. Yet every day I wake with renewed gratitude for life and love. Banishing you from my everyday existence. Move on, you curmudgeon of fate, I send you away into the whirling daze of light.
Les Rêves de la Nuit
Translation
Eddy Cuisinier
Mort : tu rodes à chaque coin de rue.
Remplissant mes rêves de messages
Alors que je danse dans mon paradis imaginaire
Je reviens à la réalité en pensant à toi. Cependant, chaque jour, je me réveille avec une gratitude renouvelée pour la vie et l’amour.
Te bannissant de mon existence journalière.
Va-t’en, grincheux du destin, je te renvoie dans l’étourdissement tourbillonnant de la lumière.
Dear Captain,
Alexa Tomkowiak
I have failed our ship
I’m sorry we’ve sunken and now you’ve been swept away and I am caught in the tides drowned and decayed is this what it feels like? the atonement of our sins?
I wish I could say it wasn’t all my fault but was I not the one supposed to hoist the sails? was I not the one supposed to batten down the hatches?
was I not the one supposed to take care of you?
My captain?
if I could see through my empty eye sockets filled with salt water and an eel that slips from hole to hole maybe I’d see you again My captain silhouetted on the coastline of the beach I can’t think of anymore not because I don’t remember I remember every moment with you but because if I do, the crab that has made a home in my rib cage starts to feel too much again like a heart
Day in the Studio
Serena Willcoxon
Greenery
Gwendolyn Owens
I’ll never forgive what I saw in the garden maze all those dead snakes no longer writhing arranged in a desperate shape display of their final lunge pleas unheard still longing to hear a footstep so their venom may be unburdened but sometimes in a strong breeze they may rattle decaying windchimes often at passerby to remind them of fear and the hope the snakes once had
I like to sit among them so I can hurt when they move and write my gorgon poetry
When Pleasure Goes Home
Inspired by Robert Gregory Sydney Rogers
My teeth sink into desire herself. For only two ticks of the clock my body floats, serpents sing sweet harmonies. The serendipitous river lulls me.
But once I hear the clock’s defying scream the feeling ends. My stomach acid takes calories they burn slowly I worry soon my organs will follow in suit.
A party clown fills a balloon then it twists and then it twists.
My body also fills and expands. It won’t stop and I melt into a puddle of flesh.
If I could stop consuming. Consuming. For pleasure. Then, maybe the crows would swoop down use their talons to put me back together.
Instead, they stare perched on a tree branch.
They have the eyes of a feline large, with a slit for pupils. They watch as I take another bite.
They watch as I expand once more.
Eyes so beady they could see my stomach acid eating away at my stomach, heart, esophagus
I stare at the candy between my fingers. It’s arms reach out to me, I can’t resist.
I consume once more
The saccharine taste rots my teeth. My stomach battles with my tongue. And it hurts, but I accept that’s how it feels when pleasure goes home.
Fragmented Portrait
Luna Redhawk
Creation
Ashley Lupton
In My Own Skin
Aeden Swink
They said the new procedure was revolutionary. The consultant said it would improve confidence and, by extension, public appeal. He said it would bring back everything I’d lost like it was never gone in the first place. It made me smile, if only for a moment.
Two weeks later and they’re splitting me open on the operating table.
I met all my surgeons beforehand, specialists at the tops of their fields who’d come together to perform nothing short of a miracle. Some of them remarked how they didn’t think I needed to go through with it, others studied my face, ordered me to strip off my clothes so they could inspect the work ahead of them like my body was a house to be renovated.
Being poked and prodded was nothing new for me, not really. Yet as the doctors uncapped their black Sharpies, pulled at loose sections of skin with cellulite or stretch marks that looked like zebra stripes, I couldn’t help but flinch, imagining the scalpels.
I sit in the waiting room of the clinic, twisting my fingers into knots, praying I’m not sweating too much, staring at the old-style linoleum flooring. My agent came along for “moral support” as she put it. But, as we sit together in these uncomfortable lobby chairs, she doesn’t look up from her phone even once. Even when the first and only tear escapes from my eye, runs the length of my nose, and drips onto the floor.
A nurse escorts me through the swinging double doors ever-present in hospital dramas, down a hallway lit with bleak blue-white fluorescents and tiled like an asylum. My agent offers a weak thumbs-up as the nurse pulls the door to the room closed.
I pull off my clothes and place them in the receptacle on the wall. They slide into the darkness, likely off to be sterilized. Under normal circumstances, I’m sure they would allow you to wear a gown to preserve some level of personal dignity, but I’d been expressly told multiple times that due to the nature of the surgery, I wouldn’t be allowed to wear anything, for it would only get in the way.
That surgeon was my least favorite. I couldn’t remember what her name was, or if I’d even met her that first day, but I remembered her face. I remembered the way her mouth smiled, but her eyes didn’t as she said, don’t worry about modesty, darling, we’re professionals.
Darling. I could probably remember a time before she was born.
I sit down on the stool and wait. There is no clock to hear ticking. Not even a sundial to stare at, for all the good it would do in a windowless room like that. At least sundials tend to look somewhat nice.
There was one in a park nearby where I lived as a child. Damascus steel worked into that signature dorsal fin wedge, casting a shadow over the marble pillar on which it rested, decorated with swooping, culturally nondescript markings of flowers, leaves, and people beside calligraphic numbers, engraved with more precision than I could write my own name.
I look down at my hands, the rippled feeling of the marble, once the city decided to cut costs and let the park fall to disarray, tingling under my fingertips. Rust marred the folded, rippling steel, ivy latched onto the pillar as if mother nature herself were trying to drag the obscenity to her chaotic order over.
When was the last time I saw that place?
Minutes later, on the other side of a wash of dull faces behind surgical masks, I’m lying on my back on the cool, metal table, lights blaring overhead like the eyes of enormous insects. Voices ring to my left and right, saying words I neither understand, nor want to hear.
How many surgeons are there? Five?
The surgery is revolutionary, one of them had said, but, as it is in its infancy, we have yet to expedite the process. I wonder if there were ever any other surgeries that take so long the doctors must treat it like a relay race.
Faces appear overhead, sheathed beneath several layers of sanitary garb; masks, gloves, hats, all blue. One of them I recognize, the kind man with the dead eyes who’d first contacted my agent. His crow’s feet crinkle, studying my face. “Are you ready, Penelope?”
“Yes.”
Hands slide straps over my ankles and wrists, holding them fast to the cold table, now slightly damp with the ghost of my sweat.
Penelope King was once one of the largest actresses in Hollywood, starring in more blockbusters than any of her contemporaries. Hers was a name that demanded no introduction, her presence turned the air to flashing static from the paparazzi’s cameras.
I won so many Oscars they started to feel like simple collectibles.
I feel the first incision in my forearm, slicing through the skin that used to be taught and plump, but had become soft and paper thin from wrist to shoulder. I feel the fibers tearing, first the icy sting of cold steel, then the burning warmth of blood pouring out. It sounds something like unzipping a jacket, the zipper catching on the small metal teeth.
A sharpness like wasp stings tells my brain this is an attack. I gasp, craning my neck as far as it can go, staring straight into the bright surgical lights until my eyes roll back in my head.
Anesthesia is impossible, they’d said. In order for the procedure to work, your body must be without the interference of numbing drugs.
It was idiotic. No one would put themselves through such agony for simple vanity.
I’d resisted the idea of plastic surgery for decades. People preached from every corner of the media that aging was beautiful, it was something to be cherished. Age spots and withered skin were the mark of a long life well lived. I told myself I believed that for a while, even as my career began to tank.
The knife slides beneath my flesh, disentangling the bundles of proteins and fats binding skin to muscle with all the delicacy of a painter replicating the impasto of an old master, laying the pigment, mixing the soft tones of skin, brush in hand, moving it side to side, watching the fibers breathe life onto the canvas.
Fire; it feels like fire. Like a sunburn so bad my skin flakes away in chunks, like lemon juice spread over a skinned knee. My entire body tightens at the sight of my skin, the skin I’d had since I was a young girl, pulling away in a clean, smooth-edged shape, until one of the surgeons places it in a kidney basin on a cart with wheels.
People assured me that it was just part of getting older. Movies can’t cast older women—they’d said older women like that made it better—as teenagers or twentysomethings. It was nothing personal. I just wasn’t leading lady material anymore.
I would look at myself in the mirror and wonder how much longer until my hair grayed out completely. The streaks made me look something like the Bride of Frankenstein.
Somewhere along the line, I went on a talk show to talk about my beauty routine, back when people still thought I was aging gracefully, before they began to lament how beautiful I used to be.
Words like collagen and cleanser and remineralizing rolled across the screen of the teleprompter situated in the middle of the empty audience, nearly invisible from the blaring lighting that served no benefit, except to highlight the sweat creeping down the side of my face from my hairline that I only noticed watching the footage back after the fact.
Cool lays across the flames, stinging so badly I think I might pass out. I jerk, pulling away, tears beading in my eyes. The cold feels slick, and though I’d been told in advance what it was, the reality of it hit me only then. The work of bonding nerves to unfamiliar tissue is quite an arduous process, and a painful one at that.
Like electric shocks, each sting of the needle, each bite of the suture. My stomach turns, as hands find my other arm, fingers probe, and scalpels are drawn.
Critics had a lukewarm reaction to my interview, and someone published an article entitled, “The former Queen of Hollywood talks about the joys of forty-seven.” I’d just stared at the title for a long time, maybe a few minutes, maybe an hour. Not once in the entire interview had I said how old I was.
Skin pulls away like the flaky layers of an onion, replaced with cold slabs of flesh laid down and stitched into place. I wonder what her name was, what she did for a living, if she had any close family or friends. How she died.
Was it still theft, once she was already dead?
She consented to organ donation in the event of her death. This is perfectly within the rule of law. Until now, however, we didn’t have the capability of transplanting skin on such a large scale.
I feel them spreading stem cell salve across my hypodermis with cool, clean strokes. They move with the grace of professional dancers, the confidence of politicians lying in the Capitol. Burning, like a finger pressed to a wound, breathless, blinding, the shooting pain of nerves in distress, wrangled, and sewn together.
My agent found me crying, that day after the review, and laid a pamphlet on my lap. Revolutionary cosmetic surgery! Apply today to secure your place in a more stunning tomorrow! The cheap copier paper on which it had been printed crinkled and withered in my tear-streaked hands.
I do not know how long it’s been. The skin is laid, tingling with whatever magic they’d worked. I feel wrapped in silicone, smothered from the outside world, from the air, the light. Knives bury themselves in my neck, thousands of fingers pulling, cutting away the blood from the fat. I am barely conscious, my eyes burn from the lights, but I can’t bear to close them.
The skin of my face comes off faster than everywhere else, peeling back, and stripping off my scalp. Perhaps I look like a skeleton, or like an anatomical diagram scrawled by an unpracticed hand. I see it, hovering above me for a moment, frozen in time, like a mask, lips slightly ajar, eyes like gaping holes through which the light shines down on my bloody face.
I am mummified. Bandages wrap around the silicone bodysuit, which has only just begun to tingle. Perhaps it is to hold me in, to make sure that I don’t slide out through the bottom of my feet and tear my muscles to ribbons as the sutured nerves and patchwork pieces rip apart.
In six months, the bandages will come off. If all goes well, that poor girl’s skin will have attached itself to my body with all the proper bands and vasculature; it will be mine. I will stand before the mirror, touch my arms, my legs, looking for the scars I’ll be sure I can feel. I’ll pull at the skin, touch my face, run my fingers along the invisible seam on my eyelid where they stitched the skin at my
lash line. My hair will be thick and luxurious, night black, effortlessly glossy.
The media will gasp at my new face. The face that looks like mine, flexes like mine with the same quirk at the corner of my left eye. Sensation will have returned comparable to my old skin, but my face will remain a mask.
Sometimes, I will pull at my face, desperate to get the cadaverous suit off, even if it means blood and agony, even though it is and shall always remain a part of me.
And through the flashing haze of the photographs, my mouth will part into a smile with stolen lips.
Around the Oysters
Susie McDonald
Machines
Riven Thomas
Callused, worn, lean and tan; how perfect, a perfect part of a man. Grease spills onto those rivets and they disappear coming back smeared. I was that machine; bent and broken, a blood spent spout. What’s the problem? I ask, my lips begging for more. His eyes flicker, you’re bleeding; my heart dripped on the floor.
Pets!
Kambria Schaffer
at the Food Bowl
die Progression
Silhouette
Michele Bournonville
Pastor
CW: sexual abuse
Juno Williams
I am praying again. I am on my knees again. Pastor how often do I repent for sins I didn’t commit?
I needed a father. I needed a mother. I needed someone older, wiser, to talk to. God hasn’t been answering my prayers.
My knees were raw, But not from any prayer I told. You put your hands on my body And prayed over it, Pastor.
But there was a little more than prayer. You called it “God’s love” What you did to me Was not God’s Love.
I was just a child, Pastor. You never even told me why. But I still remember when you First smiled at my bruised knees.
You killed me so I could be “holy”. You dirtied me so I could be “holy”.
So with the faith of a dog, I look at your hands drenched in red. And I know, you’ll do it again.
I Don’t Know What Sorrow Means
Casey Masjoan
“Deep distress,” No, no, I don’t think that fits.
“Sadness,” perhaps. But what kind?
Is it some sort of petty thing? Or the feeling of the clouds Which hug my mind?
“Regrets…” “IIII’ve had a feeew,” But that’s not it, that one’s wrong too. This definition is so shallow, Compared to the deep, engulfing meaning Of something such as Sorrow.
“Especially for the loss…”
…
“Of someone… or something… Loved.”
Huh.
It feels a bit more like a hug, But unlike most, it’s not the kind I feel the need to recoil from.
Both cold and warm at the same time. Hot, but more a bath than a flame It’s these contradictions so profound, for Which the English language doesn’t have a name.
It’s so comfortable, But not like I’m depressed I can get up and leave whenever I want. Like and unlike a lover’s kiss.
It feels like a poison, but one I chose. Capsaicin and weed, or a mobile phone, Sugar, and fat, and hard alcohol, The lovely lonely feeling of a night spent alone.
It’s a strike of lightning, but I’m not frightened, It’s slow and soothing, it creeps and moves, It trickles down my spine and it makes me numb; Passion and boredom, joined into one,
I don’t know what Sorrow means. I like it and I shouldn’t and I love how that feels. Where’s that anguish? Where’s that pain? Am I flawed for smiling at the rain?
I feel at ease with thoughts like these, Memories of all the friends that I’ve watched go. The ones who fell, I miss them still, I don’t know what Sorrow means!
The deepest sadness, ultimate dejection, To me it’s complete and useless satisfaction. An ugly kitten, a washed-out rainbow, I don’t know what Sorrow means!
I just know that it’s the Taste and touch of nothing left Which leaves me feeling quite impressed. And that’s to me what Sorrow means.
The overwhelming amount of different lives. All that’s good and bad, all that’s born and dies. Infinity reaching down to comfort me. That, to me, is what Sorrow means.
Morpheus Sandra Rivera
Upwards Bound
William Simpson
rain dance
Ronan Asche
change never comes when you want it to despite the endless hours of Altruistic Pursuits: benign facade of I ntrospective criticism...
If the days and weeks and months and years; these you spend roaming halls; digging the streets and pathways carved by man, foot by foot, and tire / by / tire and never stop to consider YOU might be missing out on something: burn it all down; burn it all down; LIVE! for change like rain, like tears, that never comes down
when you want it to.
for what am I/am i to do if i Can/did change yet what I AM is “a mustard stain on your favorite pair of jeans,” would YOU wash me off dilute me in image sterilize me in medulla and flush what’s left down the river, like rain, like tears, like mornings alas! alas! and still do we breathe and Change never comes when you want It, too
P . O . V .
Violet Harreld
I like writing, Can you tell?
I’ve learned about rhyme scheme, I know fancy words I can tug at your emotions
I’ve been taught all the P.O.V.s
I’ve watched characters get crushed as a loved one dies, When my favorite protagonist turns bad, I cry. I’ve fallen in love through other peoples’ eyes.
It’s just like this storybook life of mine.
I played the hero, a dashing, bright knight. I can be my own monster sometimes I’m a princess in peril, But I rescue myself.
I’m the wizard who comes To save little men Upon a white horse, I destroy the darkened.
Well, that’s who I thought I was, I suppose, Sadly, that’s not how my story goes. In my life, I’m the antihero.
My POV was skewed from the start, I thought I knew I played which part. I thought I defeated the evil ways, But it was me all along.
The antagonist wore a convincing mask.
A Fence’s Skylight
Photography
Susie McDonald
Skull Study
Madelyn Lewis
A Little Black Box
Vincenzo Cardamuro
It is no bigger than a carry-on, this little box that holds everything I am.
Every morning, I pack it.
First is my motivation, I keep it next to my bed. I need it to allow my bare feet to touch the cold hardwood floors. I don’t need a lot; it folds up easily and takes up little space.
Next is my shame, I collect it hanging from the bathroom mirror, the last thing I saw before going to bed. the steam from the shower loosens up the wrinkles. It folds nicely to be hidden behind a zipper.
As I put on a robe, I collect my vanity from the closet, I always take time to hang it nicely. I carefully place it into the box, fussing over the little wrinkles that only I will see.
I see my ego hanging from the hook by the door, it is the first thing I take off when I get home. As I remove it from the hook, I hang my vulnerability in its place. My ego covers the zipper that hides my shame.
Finally, I grab my hopes and dreams. Covered in ink spots and strewn across my writing desk. I collect the parts of them with care, looking over the idea of what I could be. Together, they fill up the rest of the box.
The buckles close with a snap.
Reading in the Dark
Fig Depaolo
That night, William was to give a poetry reading in the basement of a bookstore downtown. Those also reading were as follows: Joan of Arc, Harry Houdini, Sylvia Plath. The real ones. He had checked that they weren’t going to be actors or drag performers.
William woke up early, when the light was shy and new. He didn’t sleep much, which was how he met Yusef, who didn’t sleep at all. They met on a beach at night, Yusef gathering kelp, William just poetically contemplating his lack of gills. He was really leaning into poetics, back then. Now they lived in a two-room apartment together, and Yusef’s presence and the sound of his sewing machine at all hours didn’t help William sleep, but it didn’t hurt, either.
To eat all the oranges Yusef brought home before they rot had been a challenge at first. But William had risen to it. He took one from the box at the end of their bed (a mattress on the ground, anything else was unnecessary), peeled it expertly, all in one piece, threw the peel atop the pile in the box next to Yusef, who would take them and sew them together before they dried. He had been making these enormous quilts of orange peel for a few months. He wore blue latex gloves because he was allergic to oranges.
In this way, William and Yusef supported each other’s art. William peeled and ate the oranges that were the necessary waste of the project, and wrote pages of halfhearted ekphrasis on the finished quilts. Yusef listened to the finished poems, listened to William, which was necessary, because sometimes William felt as though he spoke at one of those frequencies only dogs can hear.
“Did you know Joan of Arc lives in Minnesota?” William had a piece of orange in his mouth when he said this.
Yusef glanced up at him for only a second.
“Yeah, she writes poetry now. I guess I’m reading with her tonight? I wonder if it’ll be in French.”
William was, honestly, quite worried about his performance. He assumed he would be going first, as he wasn’t a saint or a magician or a famous tragic genius. What could he read to a room full of people who were surely only there to see the reanimated historical figures following him?
He pulled toward him the shoebox in which he kept his poems, written in pencil on printer paper. He dug to the bottom. Maybe he would read the one about a tree falling on him. Or the one about running along beside a train. Or the one about there being no afterlife, which contained a quite good line comparing God to a bad smelling animal. Not that one, he thought, not in front of Joan.
Without his noticing, it had begun to rain. When lightning illuminated the room, he turned to look out the window, and found that he could barely see. The wind whipped the rain in frantic pirouettes. It bulleted against the window. He could hear howling.
It was only a few minutes after that that the power went out. William stared into space, blind until his eyes adjusted. He saw Yusef’s shoulders slump as his sewing machine quieted and stilled. He pulled off the blue gloves, stretched his arms over his head.
“Well,” William heard, in Yusef’s low whisper.
They lit a candle and sat on either side of it on the floor. The light tried to swallow every bit of darkness in the room, and this attempt made the patches of darkness it couldn’t manage to reach even more ominous. William asked Yusef to try and summon some ghosts. They held hands in a way they wouldn’t normally, and Yusef made noises under his breath.
“Ask them what they’d be impressed by, if they were to be read a poem,” William said. Yusef asked, and William was immediately nervous, because they might think he thought all dead people had the same taste in poetry. “Don’t actually ask that, please,” he retracted.
The candle went out. It was silent except for the weather outside for the long seconds before Yusef found the matches and lit it again. William was sure that everyone in the apartment building could hear his heart beating.
“It’s too late, I already asked,” Yusef said. “But they didn’t answer. Here, show me which you were thinking of.”
Hours later, the storm hadn’t let up. It had, if possible, worsened. The power was still out. On the walk to the bookstore William mentioned Noah and his flood at least three times. He clung to Yusef like a Titanic passenger destined to drown. They made it, to a place with light and heat, and William was glad to have something easy to talk to the bookstore owner about. What a storm! they said. What a storm.
William’s co-readers looked just like their photos on Wikipedia. Except Joan, who was a real, human girl rather than a drawing or a statue. She did speak some English, but not a lot. No matter what, William wasn’t planning to ask her what she was doing in Minnesota. After introductions facilitated by the bookstore owner, none of them spoke.
They were to read in backwards chronological order according to the date of their deaths. The crowd was far thinner than William had imagined, which was good,
because with every minute that passed he was more certain he had never written a passable poem in his life. When he took his place at the front of the room, behind a wooden podium, he saw that there were many chairs empty. Plath must have drawn bigger crowds even before she was a reanimated corpse. Houdini certainly did. And Joan, she commanded armies. William supposed it was the fault of the weather.
He got a few laughs from the crowd, which was always good. No one went “mm!” at any particular lines, but that was okay. It often seemed performative to him when people did that, anyway. Plath didn’t read any new stuff. It was just the hits. He couldn’t blame her. Houdini’s poetry was long and nearly unintelligible and not about magic at all. William thought it must be from the perspective of an animal, though he could not tell which. Joan’s was all in French, as he suspected. She had a clear, sharp, hollering voice that electrified everyone in the room.
After Joan lowered her arms and the last long holy syllable left her throat, the light in the room shuddered and the power went out. William saw her flinch, just a little, and the crowd began to murmur and stand up.
Yusef had wandered off immediately after they arrived, returned for the first poem William read, then disappeared again. He was illuminated by the flashlight the store owner was waving around by the doors. He was holding a stack of flattened cardboard boxes which would surely turn to pulp in the rain. Maybe this was his plan.
The rain hurt William’s skin, shortened his breath, the wind nearly knocked him over with every step. Even in the darkness he could see the rivers that the streets had become, the swirling currents at the gutters. Water poured into his boots and up past his calves. Yusef was trying in vain to keep the cardboard dry in his coat, which slowed them both down.
Maybe William was dreaming it, maybe too much water had drained into his head and was making him see things. Through a window in a building up ahead, lit up though surely all these buildings had lost power, he could see someone looking out at them struggling against the flood on the street. He tried to yell, and point at the orange light, make Yusef look, but there was no use getting him to focus on anything but where his feet were going and the state of his cardboard. In the window, William saw a face, and it was not of a man or a woman or anything else. It wasn’t even human. It was grinning a horrible grin, and at that moment, soaked through and now not even moving forward, just staring upwards and locking eyes, William knew that this was the face of Poetry, and it was disappointed in him.
Mojo Jojo Kambria Schaffer
Photography
Umber
Serena Willcoxon
derivative
Ronan Asche
my body rocks to and aft and fro on the waves of stone the wary ghost of titchener riding the bus alongside me as it breaks down it is a floor on which i sit pushed by a diesel engine it could move anything in air or ground or sea rattling along in its muted glory
unbeknownst to it its life could have been so much more than pedaling along the streets i erase its dull life as i step off the grumbling beast and i paint its smile ghibli; the world is father christmas to me
Photography
Dead Dill
Ashley Lupton
Copper and Brass My Favorite
Michele Bournonville
Ode to a Disciple
Gwendolyn Owens
She played my heart strings like lyre, wrote a tragedy Her lyrics bounce around in there still. I don’t blame her, maybe just those fingers They were made for music, and a muse must sing when she dreams a melody. She liked the mixolydian mode and accentual verse The gentle curvature of her lilt silhouettes her form and I feel her arms from behind me She whispers nothings in my ear, spoken in a strangely familiar tongue just beyond my grasp. I turn and she’s gone, her features dust in my memory and punctures in my heart, shaped like her palm
Molly
Vincenzo Cardamuro
Agrim reaper grinned back at Pater from the wall of the club. Its eyes were alive from the bass music, shaking the building on which the smiling skull was painted. Pater inhaled another long drag of his cigarette. A cold October chill swept the alley, causing the smokers to retreat inside or wrap their coats tighter around them. Most of the crowd was further up the alley, a cloud of vaporized haze hovering over them, while the unfashionable cigarette smokers were outcasts farther away into the darkness. He could hear her voice as she mingled with the crowd. He discreetly made eye contact. She responded with a devilish grin and turned to go back inside the warm club. Pater took one last drag, stamped out his cigarette, and followed.
The cold quiet of downtown was replaced by the humid warmth of humanity crowded together. A slow bass beat ran through Pater’s body. He took in the club, lights, and lasers, briefly illuminating the deep red walls. In a corner booth, a group with more money than sense ran to and from the bar carrying bottles of champagne. Pater took a lap around the edges of the club, fist-bumping and hugging a few of the people he had grown close to. He filled a plastic cup with water and stood, momentarily taking in the world around him.
The dance floor was packed with people lost to the music, while next to Pater, a member of security stood rigid like a gargoyle, aware of every detail happening in the chaos. Pater clasped a hand on his shoulder and offered him the rest of the pack of cigarettes. The gargoyle discreetly palmed the cigarettes and nodded towards the dance floor. Pater spotted her bright red hair as it disappeared into the crowd. The intensity of the music increased as he continued his pursuit.
The smells around him changed from cheap colognes to sweat and the sting of alcohol. Lost in a jungle of raw emotion and booze, Pater relaxed. He took a breath, and his shoulders loosened. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to fall into the beat. Around him, the club disappeared. There was only music. A conversation with the DJ, telling a story that everyone heard a little differently. Pater felt a touch on his arm, and there she was. Smiling that predatory smile of hers. She held out a finger and presented Pater with a capsule.
A little white cap shaped like a heart, with a tiny smiley face etched into its surface. Pater took the cap in his fingers, considering this opportunity. The music around him slowed with his perception of time. Once again, he was alone in his mind, staring at this little white capsule. The music became discordant, and a poorly thought-out transition smashed Pater back into reality. The DJ’s story was brought to a screeching halt.
The energy in the club shifted and died as the performer became desperate to recover. From the darkness of backstage, another performer leaped into the light. A microphone in hand, the music began to flow once again. Pater placed the cap in his pocket and wrapped his hands around her hips. Together, they danced, allowing the music to guide them on their journey. The intensity of the rhythm grew as they pressed their bodies closer together. He could smell the slight stink of cigarettes that clung to her, mixed with her sweet, citrusy shampoo. His heart fluttered. For a while, it was only Pater and her in the club. The lights, the people, the performers, all disappeared. Just the two of them lost in a void.
The music slowed down, and Pater looked into her eyes. Their bodies touching, he could feel the warmth emanating between them. Her hand slid down his back
and into his pocket, pulling the cap back out. The music stopped, the lights went out, and the crowd tensed. Pater’s breath caught in his throat. Everything was black and silent for just a moment, but it felt like hours to Pater. A blinding flash, an explosion of bass from the subwoofers, and the club reignited.
She had her tongue out, the cap sitting on the tip, the little smiley face on its surface mocking him. Pater hesitated, and in that hesitation, she swallowed the capsule. She gave him that devilish grin once again. The energy in the club was a raging inferno, pandemonium in all directions. Flailing bodies of pure, unfiltered emotion. Pater once again closed his eyes and lost himself to the beat.
Pater danced for a long time, completely enthralled by the music. Lost to the DJ’s story, his body flowed freely with the highs and lows of the beat enveloping him. With his eyes closed, he saw the colors and shapes of the melodies. The bass beat on his chest like a drum. The silky vocals guided him on this adventure, taking Pater out of his body and into the night sky above the city. It wasn’t until the houselights illuminated his eyelids that Pater realized she had left.
The gargoyles took flight, moving around the room, checking in on guests, and ushering them slowly off the dance floor. Pater saw no sign of her. He reached for his cigarettes, gone. He shuffled out of the club. His muscles remembered their age and were beginning to ache now that the music no longer supported them.
He leaned against the grinning reaper in the alley, catching his breath, taking in the cold autumn night. The crowd’s chattering provided a soothing white noise while he caught his breath. He heard her laugh, that mystical, intoxicating laugh; he looked up and saw her climbing into a cab. Their eyes met momentarily, and she gave him that grin one last time for the night. He took his hand off the wall, and with a limp, he shuffled towards the train station.
Photography
Moonboy Ashley Lupton
Self Portrait
Jasmari Gordon
Photography
Seance Ashley Lupton
Rest Stop Sun (For Guitar)
Jack Miller
Grey dawn rolls over the Palouse’s honey-covered hills like a lover turning over in bed. I greet her with bleary eyes and burnt smelling breath. White lines cut the highway like stars in the night sky’s eyes. She turns to face mourning birds and two hundred miles of blacktop.
2024 WIRE HARP STAFF
Graphic Arts Editor
Kathryn Dexter
Graphic Arts Staff
Katie Anderson, Gavin Davis, Kambria Schaffer
Literary Editor
Aeden Swink
Literary Staff
Lauren Alade-Herath, Kira Loweree, Casey
Masjoan, Gwendolyn Owens, Juno Williams
Graphic Arts Advisor
John Mujica
Literary Advisors
Ben Cartwright, Tim Greenup, and Laura Read
Special Thanks
Richard Baldasty, Linda Beane-Boose, Shelli
Cockle, Dale Duncan, Anna Gonzales, Heather
McKenzie, Carl Richardson, Connie Wasem Scott, Erik Sohner, and Korynne Weyrauch
PRODUCTION NOTES
Print Production
HP Indigo 15K Digital Press
Paper
Cover: Red Pepper 80# Linen Cover
Text: White 100# Satin Text
Ink Color & Treatment
Cover: Red Foil
Text: 4/4 Color Process
Bindery
Perfect Typefaces
Gandur New Fleisch
Skolar Sans Latin
Printer
Lawton Printing 4111 E Mission Ave
Spokane, WA 99202
lawtonprinting.com