Windfall 2015

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WINDFALL such sudden fortune: wind’s gift of crisp, ripened fruit fallen at our feet — Founders, 1976

Vol. XXXVIII 2015 Undergraduate Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Art Truman State University

D EAR RE ADE R,

In your hands lies the 38th edition of Windfall magazine. This book not only represents a year of hard work, but also some of the best creativity and talent Truman students have to offer.

Before you begin reading, however, I’d like to recognize everyone who has made Windfall possible this year. First, I would like to thank the English Department. I appreciate all of the support given by the faculty and staff. We are better students and people because of their guidance. In particular, I am grateful to Dr. Royce Kallerud for his continued belief in Windfall. I also need to express my gratitude to our advisor, Dr. Ed Rogers, whose encouragement and good humor has helped make Windfall flourish.

None of this would have been possible without the Windfall staff. I need to especially thank our genre editors for their dedication and insightful comments. I’ll miss hearing from Hope Benefield and Conor Gearin next year. I would also like to thank Helen Stanley, our submissions editor. Windfall depends heavily on her behind-the-scenes work and I am immensely thankful for all she does. I could not have asked for a better Publicity/Events Organizer—Kate Hawkins consistently makes me smile and I appreciate her dependability. I am also thankful for our Design Editors, Emily Ploch and Allie Moore, for creating such eye-catching designs. I would also like to thank Emily Wild, my Assistant Editor. Her help was invaluable in the last moments of putting this book together. Finally, a heartfelt thank you goes to the Windfall Ghost Squad. You know who you are. Thank you for making me laugh this year.

Last, but certainly not least, I’d like to thank the reader and everyone who has submitted to the magazine. This magazine exists for you. My staff and I sincerely hope you enjoy reading what we’ve put together for you.

Sincerely, Kira Chatham Editor-in-Chief

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windfall Sta ff

Kira Chatham Emily Wild Emily Ploch Allie Moore Helen Stanley Kate Hawkins

Editor-in-Chief Assistant Editor Design Editor Assistant Design Editor Submissions Editor Publicity/Event Organizer

Elizabeth King Lena Leuci

Art Editors

Hope Benefield Arielle Sutton

Poetry Editor Assistant Poetry Editor

Conor Gearin Erica Nolan Rachel Ziebarth

Prose Editor Assistant Prose Editors

Lara Krusniak

Office Support Staff

Dr. Ed Rogers

Faculty Advisor

Melissa Albers Brian Cary Leela Chapman Jesse Dinkins Nathan Fridley Joelle Frye Sebastián Maldonado-Vélez Catherine O’Mara

General Staff

{contents} TABLE OF

Prose 13 23 32 44 55 64 90

Marisa Gearin Paul Wheeler Nick Kilgore Adriana Maria Long Rachel Cook Emily Stobbe Sarah Medina

Harvest Untitled Free Reading The Ox of Moscow A Parting Gift Saturday Night, 11:17 My Sister’s Violin

Art& Photography Cover Cover 11 12 17

Rachael Graef Rachael Graef Hanna Richardson Geoffrey Winkleman Danielle Kronmiller

22 31 37 38 43 49 54 61 61 62 72 77

Emily Pulley Danielle Kronmiller Megan Dux Emily Pulley Hanna Richardson Kathryn Sutton Danielle Kronmiller Elizabeth Salley Catherine O’Mara Breanne Dover McKenzie Grabish Sathya Anand

Fesh Giraffefix Gilligan the Toad Weathervane My Coffee Went Cold and Now Everything is Wrong: A Picture of Life at 19 Hob Untitled Ryder Africa Snow in Chicago Laika Untitled Untitled Cliffs of Moher Maria Victoria Untitled Untitled

81 82 88 97

Sebastián Maldonado-Vélez Anna Burland McKenzie Grabish Adriana Maria Long

Untitled Charon on the River Untitled Luna

P oetry 7

Nixi Schroeder

8

Conor Gearin

10 16 18 19 20 28 29 30 39

Jesse Dinkins Ashlee R. Estep Hope Benefield Codi Caton Adriana Maria Long Daniel Kick Lydia Frank Kira Chatham Codi Caton

40 41 41 42 50 52

Sebastián Maldonado-Vélez Adriana Maria Long Mattea Pezza Nick Kilgore Kira Gresoski Codi Caton

53

Allison Bearly

Portrait of a Missouri Woman Cantaloupe Island (After Herbie Hancock) junkyard love story Sap Adrienne and Francis GeoCaching Poem #3 Hotel Chelsea Confessional Lungs Origins of Life Catch a Falling Star The Day Everyone Lived Like it was Their Last Guinness Metaphysics Traveler The Aged Do Dance Krishna’s Yearbook The Last Bucardo Goat After Linus the Squirrel Died Tea

56 57 58

Kaitlyn Chotrow Kirsten Benson Sebastián Maldonado-Vélez

60 63 73 74 76 78

Erica Nolan Catherine O’Mara Hope Benefield Nixi Schroeder Nick Kilgore Lydia Frank

79 80 83 84 85 86 86 87 89 95 96 98 99

Sebastián Maldonado-Vélez Allison Bearly Sarah Barger Erica Nolan Kira Gresoski Hope Benefield Hope Benefield Nixi Schroeder Katlin Walker Emily O’Connor Kira Chatham Lydia Frank Codi Caton

6

Untitled Groupie Cursing at the Wind or To My Sister Irish Folly Is that the Sun? Payments on the Principle The After-Me Woman Under God compass north; or, an open love letter to the next person i fall in love with Comet Choirs My Favorite Memory Lady Death The First Snow A Mother’s Back After Judges Persistence September Bones Use Me Sleepwalking Eulogy to Summer Pulled Roots

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Nixi Schroeder

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PORTRAIT OF A MISSOURI WOMAN

She is the cloud bank She whispers imposition

from the curve of her neck the

sigh of her shoulder, the sycamore-blues of her grass-eaten knee. She is

amber, clotted against autumn’s pavement, a

beetle, crawling largishly in plastic beads and worn-through jeans

and she matches her dresses to her bruises

for she (will not) tolerate ugly things.

And she is a horizon; she is smudged rain; she is rusted bridges, her legs

the baked silt brown of river clay

every inch as powdered, as brittle, and

slowly, (secretly)

she is cracking from dryness But

each night, her sovereign lips

whisper skyward, (secretly) poaching soft kisses from a whisky-cask moon. and she dreams

she is breathing

7

{

Conor Gearin

}

CANTELOUPE ISLAND (after Herbie Hancock) 1. It Doesn’t Go Like That

What’s that song about not knowing where you’re going, trumpet rooting around in the reeds— I can’t quite pull it back to me now as a tide of clouds sweeps over the beach of sun.

“I’ve forgotten more than you know” is a line my dad is fond of but for myself I’d render it I’ve forgotten more than I know: the only cure to imperfectly recall, sing that, hear the wronged notes and sing it back till it falls out right.

What was it that we were doing a few weeks ago—all I’ve got are dry flowers, an image of light green and shoes a bit more worn.

It was something about standing in the right place, something about listening.

My mouth a little parted. Through branches. “No, move a little to where I’m standing.” Then comes the woodpecker of memory in its every speckle and red dash, its hammering rhythm— as I have it, we walked right from forest to city, straight from night to day, said goodnight when the sun rose as a farewell to our island of moon.

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2. It Goes Just Like That Light rippling in the shallows, pink with afterglow, anemones. A bike hissing, kissing along the sand, skating the edge of waves. Bass thump of breakers on the granite jetty boulders. Seagulls cruising at basketball hoop height, just too high for me to swat. Green plankton in the tide just starting to catch fire. And me, just starting to know you.

9

{

Jesse Dinkins

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JUNKYARD LOVE STORY

maybe we are too broken, jagged glass thrown against the wall of my skin, maybe there is too much passion between us that we are suffocating in ourselves like we fashioned plastic bags out of our sticky promises and ducked our heads underneath, ducked out of our convictions and our commitments, just jagged glass in a dirty parking lot. how could that ever amount to a shooting star, a love story? star-crossed, maybe but maybe we are just passing cars on a highway. wave to me sometime

10

{Gilligan the Toad

Hanna Richardson}

11

{Geoffrey Winkleman

12

Weathervane}

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Marisa Gearin

HARVEST

The ground was ripe for planting. Farmer Kevins dug his boots into the loamy soil and looked out proudly over his land. He’d won it from the birds not two nights prior, and those birds are a formidable enemy. The thing to do is get them out of sync with one another, Farmer Kevins reflected.

You may be able to kill two birds with one stone, but you can’t kill a stone with just two birds. That’s one of the first lessons you learn, living out here.

Farmer Kevins began to sing softly to himself as he pulled some long beige seeds from one of his overall pockets.

He knelt and used his index finger to poke narrow holes into the soil, dropping a seed into each and brushing more dirt over it. There were more efficient ways of planting. But Farmer Kevins was an artisan, and he believed the personal touch was what made his crop so… transcendent.

After burying about two dozen seeds, he stood and rubbed the dirt off his hands, scanning the horizon again with a smile. This time, he thought to himself, failure is beyond me.

Kevins walked slowly to the small building in which he lived. Inside, a young man—more of a tall boy, really—was stirring something in a pot on the stove. “What’s cookin, Kip?” Farmer Kevins asked.

“Clam chowder,” the boy said.

“And where’d you get clams from?”

The boy didn’t answer, just looked at Farmer Kevins with a mischievous smile, and pulled tight the knot on the bandana holding back his hair. Farmer Kevins shook his head and sat down heavily on one of the two chairs beside the kitchen table. He’d made the table himself, hewed it right from the beast.

Right from its center. There were a few bowls on the table, and assorted cutlery, all in varying stages of unclean. Selecting the least gross bowl, Farmer Kevins wiped the crumbs out with his hand and leaned back to let the boy spoon some of the chunky soup inside. Ignoring the cutlery scattered on the table, Kevins 13

pulled a spoon, not any cleaner than the other spoons, from his pocket, and, bending his head low over the table, began to eat.

“These Really Are Clams! How’d you manage that?”

Farmer Kevins asked again.

The boy still gave no answer, as he settled in on the other side of the table. That enigmatic grin was still on his face as he swallowed a bite of chowder.

Farmer Kevins decided the issue wasn’t worth pressing.

God came to earth. Why couldn’t clams come to the landlocked countryside? When good food is set in front of you, you eat it, and that’s that.

The boy had already emptied his bowl and was fiddling with a harmonica. Farmer Kevins sopped up the last of his soup with a heel of bread, slapped his hands against his knees, and stood up, leaving his dishes on the table. “Time to collect the crop,” he said.

A basket hung over by the cupboard, and the boy stretched on tiptoe to pull it down and followed Farmer Kevins outside. They tramped through the damp grass to where Kevins had planted the seeds about an hour ago. “Here,” he said, and they both knelt and began to dig, gently, with their bare hands.

“Got one,” the boy said. The shape in his hand was hard to discern through the soft mud which clung to it, but one thing was clear; it was moving. Farmer Kevins nodded; his own hand, under the dirt, and just closed around another.

They both set their finds in the basket and continued, their hands sweeping the ground like someone who has dropped their glasses.

“Hey now. This one almost got out,” the boy said, giving the creature a soft push so it’d fall back into the basket.

“Keep an eye on them. These fillies are lively,” said Farmer Kevins. He dropped two more into the basket. He laid his hand on the ground as if to sense vibrations. Then his eyes flicked up to the sky, with its drab, low-hanging clouds that slid about flatly like soap scum on water. “Oh no,” he said.

“What?” asked the boy, staring transfixed at the little 14

beasts cantering in the basket.

“We’ve got to get these inside.”

“We haven’t got all of them yet, have we?”

“Doesn’t matter now. The birds are coming.”

The boy, a panicked expression on his face, stuck his hand into the ground one last time.

“Now!” Farmer Kevins shouted. “We leave now!”

The boy felt movement. His fingers pushed just a little farther into the ground, and he yanked one out of the ground just as Farmer Kevins pulled at his shoulder, basket clutched in his other hand. “Leave it!”

But the boy already had it in his hand, and he tucked it into his shirt pocket as the two of them broke into a run toward the house. Out of the grey sky, he felt the wind raised by thousands of simultaneous wingbeats twist his hair. He didn’t turn to look. There was no point.

Farmer Kevins screamed. The basket was being pulled away from him, as if by an invisible giant. His feet left the ground, as he held on stubbornly, but it was no use. The birds were too strong. Farmer Kevins let go, and ran, and the boy ran too. They burst into their house and both leaned against the door to hold it shut as Farmer Kevins latched it with a shaking hand.

He peeked out the window. “They’re still out there.”

“How can you tell?” the boy asked, brow furrowed.

“Their wings are ruffling the grass all around. I just don’t get why they’re sticking around. They got what they wanted.”

The boy shrugged and put his hand over his heart to feel his pulse race. It was then he felt the struggling lump in his pocket. “No they didn’t, sir. We’ve still got one,” he said triumphantly, pulling it out. He held the horse up to his eyes, and it stood, uncertainly, on his palm. Under the dirt, it was a beautiful roan mare with white mane and tail and eyes that looked like they could sing songs.

A smile broke over Farmer Kevins’ face. “Good job, boy,” he said. “Good job.”

15

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Ashlee R. Estep

SAP

What would it be like to smash a poem against the wall

like a bottle of sherry?

To hear the glass skeleton shatter and see the words run

down the walls like sap from a tree, the ink of its life thick and sticky, catching bits of tree and leaf and dirt on its way down ‘til it’s not even really the same thing anymore.

What happens when you squeeze a poem dry, And wring out every scream and fuck you that it has,

along with the pain we thought was dry, back there with the everyone feels it routine and the

everyone’s insecure bit that you never

really fell for anyway?

Sure, there’s the happy kind where we sit around and

thank everyone but some kind of god because we’re too cool for that, too beyond it, and you can scream all you want, feel the pain slide through

your fingers like two-percent polymer, but nothing really cracks until you bleed the poem itself, stick a knife in it, tear it, shred it, or throw it against a wall like a bottle of sherry, and hear the glass skeleton shatter and see the words

run down the walls like sap from a tree, the ink of its life thick and sticky, catching bits of tree

and leaf and dirt on its way down ‘til it’s not even really the same thing anymore.

And once you’re done squeezing it dry, maybe you’ll sit

back for a second and realize it never had a life of its own in the first place.

It’s just sap.

16

{ My Coffee Went Cold and Now Everything is Wrong:} A Picture of Life at 19 Danielle Kronmiller

17

{

Hope Benefield

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ADRIENNE AND FRANCIS asked if i loved her i asked does night follow day

and the moon looks varnished with wax eyes only enough to tempt faith her face was on every bus in new york i think even the passersby were not innocent of falling forward refusing to retreat and without warning revolution the sky tar and pitch

18

{

Codi Caton

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GEOCACHING POEM #3

We went to the ballpark at night, empty metal bleachers, no birds or balls soaring.

Coke machines buzzing, spilling light on red picnic tables. We are looking for lost treasure. Coordinates unknown, feet and hands no longer dim points on a map, your stitched shoes over a mound, you said you don’t need a prize. Just crickets and strands of wet grass stuck to your shoes, a moon half hiding.

I am always searching, with foggy hands electric car battery rusting in my belly as headlights push through rain. You sitting, the scoreboard sleeping, me swinging bats. Strike outs in the dark are still strike outs.

19

{

Adriana Maria Long

}

HOTEL CHELSEA CONFESSIONAL

Please bury me next to my baby.

Bury me in my black leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots.

- Sid Vicious, in a letter found in his coat pocket after his death

12 October, 1978 four am and you were found on the floor of suite one-hundred, room spatter-painted the color of your crooked heart. knees trembling atop the towels that were sprawled across the tiles, can’t seem to scrub you from my eyelids, from the grout.

20

1 February, 1979 last night i punched numbers like veins

‘til I broke them,

‘til i ran out of combinations in my head. i thought it was a nine, but

maybe it was a five –

maybe neither and it really was a two. after a while the sixes look like sevens and the eights like a trip and i think i just kept

hitting the pound key. my stomach, the cord is in knots now, and i don’t know what happened. things do that sometimes,

they just, happen.

2 February, 1979 i want to tell you that the weather is the same as you left it, that it is warm out and that mother’s doing fine, but i can’t tell you what time it is or even the week and i think i found you in a spoon. i think i found you in a belt loop, i think i’ll see you in an hour.

nancy baby, i’m coming home.

21

{Hob Emily Pulley}

22

{Untitled} Paul Wheeler

I have always been fond of dogs. Being the sort of boy that I was, growing up in the time that I did, I suppose it was inevitable.

I believe I am fondest of our old Jack. We all were. I remember Ma calling in to school the day that he died, she said we needn’t go. Pa was the only one that ate breakfast, and he didn’t eat much. That was the one time I remember him coming home early, so we could bury him in the woods out back, the ones he loved so well. He was our first love.

My second love was Norma Jean Williams. There was a girl who was prettier than spring. But I’ll get to her.

No, I’ve always been fond of dogs. They have this amazing way of being as human as you treat them. And I remember every dog in town from those days, seems like. Mostly, I was friends with them. Those that were friendly, anyway.

There was one, though. The meanest bitch in Whitcomb county Jezebel. Though we all called her Red, for the color of her eyes.

She belonged to the Reverend Jeremiah Lynch. I’m sure you’ve heard about him. Used to live in that boarded-up house just down the way. The big one with the oak out front.

Rev. Lynch was always a very well-respected man. Very hospitable. My mother always said that he was about the Lord’s work- All I knew is that he was awfully concerned about preaching hellfire to the drinkers and gamblers in the back. He shepherded the town flock for as long as I can remember, and a good many years before that, too. But, sir, did he have a mean dog.

Now that I think of it, that should have been our first clue.

Now, don’t rush me. I’ll get there. Stories have to have a rhythm, see?

Where was I? 23

Well, it was the hottest summer I can remember, and I can remember a great many summers. None as well as this, though.

It started like most summers did. We stopped spending time at school and started spending time in the creek. Life was a rhythm that didn’t change much.

In the summers, I was expected to dress up every Wednesday morning with the rest of my brothers so Ma could show us off to Mrs. Lynch at the ladies’ luncheon. She was great friends with Ma, but she never was all that fond of me. Ever since I was little, when I spilled that tea on her dress. I still don’t think it was that big of a deal, since she had a new dress for the ladies to admire practically every Sunday, probably on account of her being good friends with Widow Williams, the town seamstress. The Lynchs would have the Williams over to Sunday dinner every week, in the name of Christian Charity.

And Mrs. Lynch would get a new dress every so often. Widow Williams was a proud, strong woman. Never put much stock in Charity.

Every so often, my family was invited to join them.

These were the nights I longed for, because these were the nights that I saw Norma Jean.

Norma Jean had a way about her. Everyone noticed it.

She was a quiet girl, just growing into her beauty, but she could always find a kind word for those who needed it. And she had a voice that could bring Rattlebones himself to tears. If her father had been around, I’m sure that he woulda been the proudest in Whitcomb county. And, seein’ as he wasn’t around, Rev. Lynch took the credit. She certainly loved him like something of a father, and he said he cared for her like one.

It was only later that summer that we found cause to disagree.

It was a Sunday night that we hadn’t gone to the Lynchs’. We had just set down to supper, and Pa had just finished Grace when we heard Ol’ Red bellowin down the street somethin’ fierce. Usually, Rev. Lynch would come outside and shut her up pretty soon, but this time he didn’t. And this time, 24

she was getting closer. When we heard the screaming, it was getting closer too.

Well, I’ve never seen Pa move faster than that. He had his shotgun and was out on the porch before the rest of us was out of our seats. Ma got to the door first, and kept us inside, but she couldn’t stop up our ears. Pa was yelling, then was off the porch. There was a gunshot.

Ma was always cool-headed in a crisis, and put us to work getting bandages and such ready before she went out. Pa carried the limp form of Norma Jean in the door, and I thought for a moment that she was dead. Her skin was ash, and she was bruised and cut up. Her dress was ripped in several places, and blood was dripping down one of her legs.

Ma looked right at me, I guess I must have got a little pale, cause she looked me dead in the eyes, put a pot in my hands, and told me, “Just go boil me some water, would you, dear?”

When I came back, Norma Jean had woken up, and Pa had cleaned up her leg a bit. Her eyes were red, though. She had been crying, and had the air of someone who was set to start crying again. I probably woulda been too, if Red had been after me.

Just as Pa started looking after her other hurts, there was some pounding at the front door. Ma went to get it, and Pa asked Norma Jean what happened. He was staring at some angry bruises on her arms.

“I was just out walkin’, an’ Red broke free of her chain, and I ran, and she bit my leg, and I screamed, and it just all happened so fast I don’t remember.”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Norma Jean. Is that all that happened? What were you doing walking this late?”

“Yes. I don’t know. It all just happened so fast.”

Pa was gazing at her steadily, but she still didn’t look up.

She started crying, deep rasping sobs that wracked her whole body. Pa put his arm around her shoulders and said “There, there. There, there.” But I saw his eyes. They were steel, pierc25

ing through the wall.

Then, Ma came back into the room, hot on the tail of Widow Williams. Mrs. Lynch and Dr. Burgess followed. After Widow Williams had crushed the air out of Norma Jean, and cursed that God-awful Bitch, Norma Jean was whisked off to Dr. Burgess’ office. He said later that my Pa had done an excellent job, and that hardly anything more needed to be done.

Anyway, that left Pa to deal with Mrs. Lynch over Red, until Rev. Lynch finally showed up and said that she deserved what she got and thank the Lord that Pa was such a dead shot and made an end of it. Then Ma finally realized how much later it was than our bedtime, and shooed us all upstairs.

Now, Ma and Pa never did argue much, and they never let us know that they was in a fight. We could only usually tell from a slightly cold feel in the room. But that night, we knew that they was fighting. They took a walk out into the woods out back, but we could still hear their raised voices on the wind. We never did find out what they were fighting about, but after that the Williams ate Sunday supper with us.

Norma Jean was always much quieter after that, and never did talk to Pa much. But it was nice to be out from Mrs. Lynch’s judgin’ eye.

But, such a nice thing was too good to last, and Mrs. Lynch was a proud woman who was very fond of her dresses, and wouldn’t have her Charity poached. Eventually, her insistence won the Williams back for a Sunday supper. We were not invited.

That Sunday was the last I saw Norma Jean. I think, if I’da known that, I woulda told her how I felt. But maybe I was still too shy about that then.

Who knows?

Anyhow, sometime after supper, when the family was sittin’ in the drawing room digestin’, there was a gunshot. Pa told us to stay inside, and got his shotgun and stood by the door lookin’ out until the police drove by. Then he gave the gun to Ma and went out. When he came back, he called Ma over. I’ve always had particularly sharp ears, so I think I was the only 26

one of us that heard him tell her Rev. Lynch was shot dead. Ma bustled us upstairs to bed, but our window faced the street, so I saw them handcuff Widow Williams and put her in the car.

Norma Jean went, too. She was crying, and her dress was torn.

That was how I saw her last, and that is how I still see her when she comes to me before I sleep. Cryin’, with her dress torn.

It wasn’t til after that night that we learned what had happened. What Rev. Lynch had done. The parents tried to keep it from us, but you know this town. No secrets.

Well, Mrs. Lynch moved away. There were rumors about it, but I never did hear for sure where she went. She took it hard, I believe. Widow Williams went to jail. Pled guilty. I think she must’ve gotten out, but she never came back here. I don’t blame her.

And Norma Jean went to live with a relative down in Riley county somewhere. I still think of her from time to time.

Wonder how she’s doing. If she’s happy. I pray that she is.

Now Ol’ Rev. Lynch’s gravestone is covered in moss, in the back corner of the cemetery. No one ever visits.

And now I pay more attention to dogs. I never judge a book by its cover, but I do judge a man by his dog.

27

{

}

Daniel Kick

LUNGS

L u n g s

So I sit.

Quietly.

Eyes, closed wide.

Unfocused on everything.

Thoughts:

cirrus wisps on

a crisp day.

Pinwheels spinning their colours

into the breeze and nothing happens. not even me.

28

{

Lydia Frank

}

ORIGINS OF LIFE

you know that grief has no target demographic, that all around you versions of this cosmic reshuffling take place every day—there is little doubt that some organic compounds came to earth from extraterrestrial sources. the question is, how much of our existence depends on the tails of comets and stardust? it is a mystery separate from both matter and electrons, living outside of the normal curve: random variables, distributions unknown. after you die, your atoms will pass through the mouths of strangers but your energy cannot be destroyed. in the beginning, there was water.

29

{

Kira Chatham

}

CATCH A FALLING STAR

Is it alien abduction if you ask for it?

She asks one night, her lips catching at my collarbone.

We’ve kicked off the sheets and the fan blades whisper above us.

I think of her fingers, scribbling out astronauts and the moon on restaurant napkins.

I want to show her the world, but how is one planet enough when she’s always wanted galaxies?

She points out the spider web hanging in the corner, tells me it’s a map of the universe and I want to shake her and say Look! Look at Earth, look at me! because I am grounded and gravity-bound, but there are only constellations reflected back at me in the black of her eyes.

How do you catch a falling star?

I ask her.

She answers: you don’t.

30

{Untitled Danielle Kronmiller}

31

{

Nick Kilgore

}

FREE READING

I formed the habit a decade ago, marking the page number when I see profanity in books. The reflex calls back to me and the other sixth grade boys, united in an underground obscenity exchange. We’d search our library for volumes of scantily-clad classical art and our science indexes for every reference to the word “reproduction”. If we were lucky, we’d uncover an infamous “F-word”, a textbook of medical diagrams, or The Illustrative Guide to Greek Mythology.

My God. The Illustrative Guide to Greek Mythology.

We would unearth these gems from their papery tombs, and show them off to whomever would laugh with us. Back then, what our teachers would call “perverted” was, to us, a secret game of chicken. To laugh was to lose, and nothing brought laughs like the naked and the lewd. It was a strange age to be, hanging in this sort of pre-pubescent limbo, where hormones were like rain and the storm hadn’t quite started yet, where girls enamored us but had yet to consume us, where friends were still your followers on some daily adventure, but you seemed to be outgrowing old toys every day. Time was a slow infection of maturity, and some days you could feel the sickness all over you.

One such day I sat cross legged with a hand tucked under my knee, and the other picking away at my eternally knotted uniform shoes. Mrs. Wells’ sixth grade class fanned out from both sides of her in a misshapen circle, wrapping around the cartoon city blocks that sprawled across the reading corner carpet. I pressed my fingernails into the stubborn laces with no effect, generally ignoring the book of the month being lifelessly read aloud in the musty library. The story was about a boy in a shipwreck, adrift in the wilderness, and persevering in what I imagined was dramatic fashion, but it was hard to tell through Mrs. Wells’ droning voice and my waning attention span.

When we had started the story, I loved it. The thrill of disaster and the suspense of survival gripped me, even with 32

our orator reading it like a terms of service agreement. When I tried to imitate it with my own story about a little boy and a mysterious car crash, Mrs. Wells threatened a meeting with my parents to discuss its “violent nature”. After that I lost interest in whatever happened to that stupid kid and his stupid boat. I hated Mrs. Wells and I hated having to sit on the floor with her sunken brown eyes peering disapprovingly over the edge of the pages.

She was younger than all the other teachers. A slender tree of a woman, who reached high up above us with her cardigan covered trunk, she seemed to wilt forward in a slouch from the weight of the willow leaves of brown hair that drooped about her head. She was pretty, and with even a hint of kindness she could’ve easily been someone’s childhood crush, but Heidi Wells was a childhood nightmare to the sixth grade boys. She isolated them across crowded classrooms, heartlessly marooning their desks, with endless seas of girls between them. When she’d call on you, a wrong answer would roll her pupils up and back into her head like the scrolling credits of her patience. A correct answer wouldn’t faze her in the slightest. In fact, annoyance seemed to be the sole force capable of moving her facial muscles past the threshold of begrudged disinterest.

I always imagined her accepting her marriage proposal with a dismissive shrug of the shoulders.

She seemed like a languid machine of dissatisfaction, but only a few weeks before, when Paul Carson was caught thumbing through the ever enticing pages of painted Grecian breasts bound in The Illustrative Guide to Greek Mythology, I found out human eyes have the ability to vibrate in anger. Paul still swears he saw wafts of steam puff from her flared nostrils. I couldn’t help recalling that image, as I sat opposite to her in the oblong ring of grade-schoolers, feeling those same eyes stare across the cartoon city streets as she laboriously sighed out the last lines of the chapter.

33

She closed the book and began laying out worksheets to grade on the table beside her, almost forgetting to disband the circle for “Free-Reading Time”. We were supposed to find a book to “free-read”, but finding something forbidden was the only way we could make “free” an operative word. Our game was to secretly spite the efforts to shelter us, and to hold back our laughter from the waiting monster listening for us giggling out our innocence. Scouring through the shelves felt more like panning for gold, felt more like sifting the tiny pebbles of decency through filters to find the big obscene rocks left behind, felt more like my thumb was a metal detector scanning over sands of letters trying to find the expletives that resonated.

Then there it was.

Some glistening thick beast of a book, with a crudely drawn figure of a woman exposing her ancient illustrated bust.

Its pages were full of medieval embroideries and paintings.

Knights spewed blood across war-torn battlefields, heads piked atop castle walls in bleeding rows of gaping mouths, women bathed while looking over their shoulders with blushing faces that said, Oh my... These were all good, worth a bookmark, but I wanted something great, something that would make you cough to keep from bursting, something that would force a snort or that motorboat sound when your laughing lungs betray you.

That something was on page one hundred and twentythree.

A ragged serf-looking man stood bow-legged at the edge of a light brown tapestry. His eyes pointed up at the sky in that timid, painful face you see in old biblical paintings where people stare up to God with that pathetic “have mercy on me” look. But no one would ever check to see what he was gazing up to, because your eyes were immediately forced to the tangerine-sized testicles hanging in perfect frame between his bending knees. I nearly lost it right there. My lips clenched tight and blood rushed to my face, barely sealing my hysterics in my throat. Marking a pencil in the pages, I closed the cover over the picture as if to trap them inside.

34

Snaking through the maze of aisles, I held my discovery low to my hip. I turned past the tall shelves of magazines and spotted a few other boys squatting over a pile of “National Geographic.” They looked up to me as I revealed the laminate cover with the bare breasted lady, and a smirk seemed to travel in a wave across one face to the next. I placed the book between them and made my retreat to an open bean-bag back in the reading corner. Moments later, the group of boys filed out from behind the magazine shelves with their still reddening complexions, and sudden strange sounding coughs that made Mrs. Wells’ eyes peek over her grade book like a lion watching limping gazelles through the brush. They had managed to keep composure, but they hadn’t managed to bring back the book.

I gave a quick wave to the one among them still able to make eye-contact without losing it, and mouthed to him, “Where is it?”

“Steve” he mouthed back.

Almost on cue, Steve’s snorting laugh sucked the silence out of the room. An instant later, the entire library spun their heads in unified horror toward Mrs. Wells, already charging across the carpet metropolis. She walked in grinding steps, like she was trying to crush the cartoon buildings beneath her in pursuit. Somewhere, between Goosebumps and The Grapes of Wrath, Steven felt the sudden overwhelming fear of the hunted prey. He scrambled through the labyrinthine paths, searching for some source of escape to stave off his impending doom.

Across the library, Paul Carson took cover behind the backpacks, remembering Theseus running in naked desperation from the minotaur.

“Steven!” she yelled, destroying the quiet conventions of the library.

They circled the aisles for what seemed like an eternity, and when they finally met, the entire class edged around the shelves for a closer view of the carnage.

“Give it to me,” she said through gritted teeth. You could almost feel the heat coming off of Steve’s eyes as she glared into them.

35

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Wells, I-” “Now, Steven!” she demanded, whipping out her arm with an almost audible snap.

He held out the book and looked up at her with the same face as the big-balled man. She snatched it away without breaking her stare, and opened it up to the pencil marked page. My heart raced, the air in the room seemed to thicken in anticipation, and, for a moment, even the library seemed eerily quiet. Her flowing knit cardigan hung like a curtain between the onlooking class and Steve’s shaking silhouette. Suddenly, she lurched forward, and in that moment, it seemed only a matter of time before Steve’s headless body crumpled to the floor in front of her. She brought her hand to her face, as if to politely cover her mouth from the big bite of him still caught in her teeth, but as she turned we saw her eyes closed in an unmistakable fit of laughter. Her treelike frame bounced in gasps of giggles, and when she finally let her hand down to show her radiant white smile the whole room let out a collective gasp of awe.

“Go,” she choked out with her eyes closed in fleeting resistance to the enormous organs.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Wells I—” Steven stammered again.

“It’s okay,” she said, with a deep sigh of composure. “I think Free-Reading Time is over.”

36

{Ryder

Megan Dux}

37

{Emily Pulley Africa} 38

{

Codi Caton

}

THE DAY EVERYONE LIVED LIKE IT WAS THEIR LAST

Johnny, with a tucked in spider-man shirt and snot crusted below his nose swears that he can jump across the creek. He ties his shoes and practices running towards the creek a few times, and then falls in the mud.

Madeline sews a hat for her newborn and watches Ellen, something she has dreamed of since getting her first job the day of her 16th birthday at a smoky bar.

An old man everyone referred to as Tug, who forgets that his real name is Rob, calls his ex-wife to tell her that he keeps her picture in his wallet. At a gas station, Jerome smokes what he swears will be his last cigarette, fills up his car and decides to drive to the ocean. Courtney kisses a frog, expecting nothing, and finds that somehow it makes her feel better knowing that she has tried. Ali books nine flights to random places, just wanting to spend as much time in the air as she can, looking down. Alan writes a letter to his mother and buries it. For the first time in four years he cries, hugs his son and takes him bowling with happy, puffy eyes.

39

{

SebastiĂĄn Maldonado-VĂŠlez

}

GUINNESS METAPHYSICS the one night Einstein got drunk looked up at the stars equations shuffling in his head all he could think about was that woman at the bar sipping on her own poison the way that her atoms lined up made the creases of her frown as deep as the trenches at the bottom of the ocean electrons and protons performing a ballet on her lips as they touched the lip of the bottle hitting the event horizon point of no return where the night began to blur into an impressionist painting of what a small town bar looks like at one in the morning he thought about how her atoms were like tiny solar systems with tiny planets with tiny people drinking tiny bottles so they could stop feeling so small anymore

40

Mattea Pezza

{

}

THE AGED DO DA NCE

Wrinkled hands, they still do touch,

And crinkled mouths can smile.

Swollen feet can relish dance,

Though they’ve been dancing for a while.

{

}

Adriana Maria Long

TRAVELER

we left ourselves in the transit stations of new york, our hearts now part of the metropolitan i’m convinced our souls now float down the hudson; modern-day huckleberry finn.

41

{

Nick Kilgore

}

KRISHNA’S YEARBOOK

I sit in dead-lock traffic waiting on the crowds of Jainist monks sweeping bugs from the highway Until Gyalpo Gyalpo blared the horn of his Jeep Grand Cherokee and I loved him for that I remembered god’s son flipping tables and kicking merchant-ass and how much closer we were after all that As the fiery tongues descended from heaven down unto his shoulder, Peter turned and said, “Cut it out, Jesus. That’s gross.”

But still the Tibetan monks wait for their friends with no thoughts of impatience only impermanence

42

{Snow in Chicago Hanna Richardson}

43

Adriana Maria Long

{

THE OX OF MOSCOW

}

The drink sat atop the counter, untouched. It was late afternoon. Two men occupied the bar area.

“He’d tell me I was not what he wanted.” The man’s cheeks hollowed as he took another drag of his cigarette. He leaned forward on the barstool, digging the heel of his boot into the metal footrest. “It’s been fifteen years. Nothing has changed.”

“Your father – I take it he’s the same.” The bartender pulled a glass from under the counter, and began to polish it with a dry wash cloth. He glanced out the window. The snow was falling now, in sheets.

“He is not my father,” replied the man to the bartender, swirling what was left of the drink in his hand. His fingers had grown white at the knuckles. “I have no father.”

“Ah, Misha. But you do.”

There was a moment of silence between the two men.

“You test my patience, Dmitri.”

Shaking his head, Misha drank and set the glass back down on the coaster dark with water rings, “I no longer await his return.”

“He died,” said Dmitri coolly, picking up another glass.

A look of unease spread across Misha’s face as he pressed the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray, scrubbing in a circular motion, “He would have my mother fetch a bottle each morning so that he may drink during the day. She refused, and he beat her; walked out the front door.”

“He was a drunk,” said Dmitri, bending down to put the glasses away.

“We are all drunks, Dmitri, but not all of us drink vodka.”

The bartender nodded, and Misha pulled another cigarette from his coat pocket. His gaze shifted from the countertop to the shelves of liquor that lined the back wall. In between 44

the shelves were worn Polaroids stapled in place.

“You see that?” Misha asked, gesturing to the wall, “I want that.”

Dmitri turned to face the glass bottles with a furrowed brow. “You want a drink.”

“Nyet,” his eyes were fixated on one of the photographs. A man and woman together, their smiles taking up the majority of the frame.

“Look at them,” Misha said under his breath. He propped his chin atop his left hand. “They look happy. So goddamn happy.”

“Da, they do.”

“Tell me, Dmitri. How does one achieve happiness?”

“You’re asking a bartender, my friend.”

“Do you know happiness?” Misha went to take another drink but set down the glass, realizing it was empty.

“I sell it.”

“Ah.” Misha glanced out the window.

“What happened to Sveta? I thought –”

“Nothing. Nothing happened to Sveta.” The wind was howling. The bartender took a large glass bottle off the back shelf and poured the remaining contents into the glass. He set the bottle back on the shelf.

“Spasibo,” said Misha taking a drink, “Sveta is a woman. Women get angry.”

“Da,” acknowledged Dmitri wiping down the counter, “This is true.”

“She says I spend too much time on my work, why not take up a real job.”

“You bring home a paycheck.”

“It is not enough. Painting is not a man’s job. But, painting is what she loved about me.” Misha pressed the rim of the glass to his lips.

45

“And now?”

“She hates it.” Misha rummaged in his coat pocket. He pulled out a few wadded bills and set them by the empty glass.

“Women.”

Dmitri put the rag in his back pocket and picked up the bills. “Another drink? On the house.”

“Nyet,” Misha replied, “I must be going.”

“Where are you headed?” Dmitri looked out the window.

“I hear there is an event at the Bulyanskaya tonight. An artist from Moscow is going to display his work.”

“Take care; the weather is not letting up.”

“I shall. Dasvedania.” Misha stood up and made his way to the door.

“Dasvedania, my friend.” *******

Misha stood in front of the large doorway. Men and women shuffled in and out of the gallery in an attempt to escape the cold. It was late and the only light came from the streetlamps that stood in front of the brick buildings. Across the street, he saw a book store, a barber shop and a closed café.

Misha walked into the gallery.

“Privyet.” A thin woman dressed in a wool coat walked up to Misha and handed him a piece of paper. “Welcome.

Tonight, we are proud to display the works of artist and fellow activist Nicolai Chistiakov. He grew up here in Moscow.”

“Spasibo,” Misha replied. The woman smiled.

Misha made his way through the crowd, paper in hand.

The architecture of the space made for an open environment.

The ceilings were high with wooden beams that crossed at the top. There were paintings along the walls of every shape and size. Each painting was done in a specific color scheme. Not a single wall was bare.

The largest piece was displayed in the center of the room. It was the artist himself. He sat nude atop a solid white rectangle. His right hand was propped under his chin for support. Nicolai’s body had been painted with a variety of colors.

46

A black fabric bag had been placed over his head.

Misha stood, his eyes fixated on the body before him.

Each muscle could be made out through the layers of paint.

The artist’s shoulders, although hunched, reminded him of an ox. His body looked strong, sturdy. Misha felt a knot begin to form in his throat, and swallowed.

After a few minutes, Misha’s palms grew slick with sweat. He wiped them across his thighs. He wiped them again and again. He looked away from Nicolai and at the others making their way around the exhibit. He could not remember how long he had been standing there. His face turned scarlet.

“Sir, are you feeling alright?” It was the woman in the coat. She placed a hand on Misha’s shoulder. “Perhaps you should remove your jacket. You look a bit warm.”

“I am fine,” he replied, clearing his throat. Misha shrugged the woman’s hand from his shoulder.

“Your cap, perhaps?”

“Nyet. I am fine.”

Shoving his hands in his pockets, Misha hurried toward the door.

Once outside, he walked to the side of the building where another man stood. Misha joined him in the quiet, their backs against the brick building.

Misha pulled a cigarette and lighter from his coat pocket. Fingers trembling, he attempted to light the cigarette but to no avail. The man beside him gestured to come closer.

He cupped his hands around Misha’s cigarette in order to block the wind.

“There,” the stranger said. The cigarette lit.

“Spasibo,” Misha replied.

Minute passed, and the number of people leaving the gallery began to dwindle. He took a drag of his cigarette.

“Like an ox,” he thought to himself. “A beast.”

Misha let out another lungful of smoke. His chest was carved and his hands, like the paws of a bear. The colors, they dripped into every joint, every crease.

Misha tossed the remainder of his cigarette into the 47

snow, and crunched it beneath his boot. Although it was near freezing, sweat had accumulated under Misha’s fur cap.

His legs looked like that of a racehorse. Long, sturdy.

His thighs were thick as logs.

Misha fumbled in his pocket for a second cigarette. He lit another and then another. In a matter of minutes, he had smoked the remainder of the pack. The other man looked over at him, still smoking his first cigarette.

“Did you go into the exhibit?” Misha asked the stranger.

“Yes. Very different.”

“My wife would have enjoyed this more than I.”

“You have a wife?” The stranger looked at Misha, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

“Fiancée. We are to be married in September.”

“Ah, I see,” replied the stranger. “Young love.”

“I suppose so.” Misha shifted his shoulders against the wall.

“You would allow your wife to see another man in that way?”

“She does that without my permission,” said Misha.

“I see.”

“Women, you know how they are.”

The stranger shook his head. The men stood in silence.

“Tell me,” Misha asked the stranger after a while, “do you enjoy art?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What would you say makes a work of art successful?”

“If I am a different man after viewing it.”

48

{Laika Kathryn Sutton}

49

{

Kira Gresoski

}

THE LAST BUCARDO GOAT

“We are as gods and have to get good at it.”

Stewart Brand, proponent for de-extinction You spent the twilight days of your thirteen-year life tromping about Spain, eating sweet grass and watching the sun set over quiet hills. Utterly alone, you were the last bucardo goat. Alone until the end, until the Scientists grabbed you, sedated you, put you in the Jeep, drove you to a dry hay habitat, where you wearily rested after they extracted your cells.

Back to the sweet grass they let you go, believing you’d be born new from cells sleeping in Petri dishes. But you had already seen the whole fighting herd go before you, the spread of the hills and the woods growing slimmer each spring. You died in France by a gate with a crushed skull, bleating out for those who had known you, heard only by the birds.

50

The blood trickled out and with it the last vein of life the bucardo goats would ever know.

But Science said no, pieced bits of you away, inserting your somatic cells into the egg and the womb of a goat, domesticated, who had never tasted the same sweet grass you had, or slept beneath the same wild Spanish stars. Another you, they called it, the knot-legged creature born and dead in six minutes, unable to breathe the laboratory air.

The papers claimed it a success, and a few of your cells still swim, Scientists believing they’ll make you live again.

But what you were is dust now, and your hooves have settled on rocks and buds and blades of grass, and you are gone now, reborn in the stillness, just like all those millions, unrecorded, before.

51

{

Codi Caton

}

AFTER LINUS THE SQUIRREL DIED

on campus, next to the sunken garden with its flowers now reverted back into the earth in patches of dirt, we had our first date.

A guy with shaky hands said that the squirrel had fallen between limbs, as if hoping for an embrace and instead found the ground. He looks like a Linus, she said, it’s in his cheeks. I knew we had to do something for a creature I passed everyday so she grabbed two sticks and I brought a plastic Hy-Vee bag to take the body to a better place, a spot next to a dirty creek and brick buildings, probably farther than he had ever traveled before.

There with dark trees laughing and headlights flirting with our bodies, shadows quickly lived and lost, I dug up cold dirt with a spoon. Her hands red, cheeks ballooned, my finger tips numb, I wished I could warm them up against her shoulders, because we kindle fires even if they will eventually die, but instead I dug, touched spoon to dirt the way she digs childhood memories from my ribcage, or the way she ignites the candle wicks in my bones.

Eyes bigger than the hole, we placed Linus in with his tail curled head to toe like a jacket, an acorn between his arms. We said goodbye to a friend whose name we had learned that day, and hoped someone would do the same for us.

52

{

}

Allison Bearly

TEA

The cold creeps in past the windowpane, freezing my breath in my body before it can escape as a condensed puff of air.

I pull on another layer but the sleeves get bunched up underneath and I feel more annoyed than I do warm.

The tea kettle is roaring with a steady boil.

I pour the water, stir in some milk and sugar and grasp the mug with both hands.

It feels good until it doesn’t.

Hot. I pull down the cuffs of my shirt, a barrier for my bare palms.

The steam rises up and surrounds my jaw.

I employ too much self-control and like everything else it skips from scalding to drinkable to tepid too quickly.

I tilt my head down, inhaling the sweetly bitter aroma. The steam evaporates from my face and I am cold once again.

53

{Untitled Danielle Kronmiller}

54

{

Rachel Cook

}

A PARTING GIFT

The stone weeps. Rain drips off leaves of the overhanging trees and splashes onto the cheeks of the angels. Heads bowed, hands cupped as though waiting for something, the angels stand guard at the gates of the cemetery. Beyond them, the valley stretches out in neat rows of stone graves. Tears of rain slide down the surfaces to soak the ground where the dead sleep. A single mourner walks among the graves. The rain soaks her heavy red cloak. Mud and leaves gather on the hem as it drags behind her. A basket swings from her arm as she trails her hands along the tops of the graves. Reaching the far corner of the cemetery, the girl stops near an isolated grave flush with the fence. The forest rises up on the other side, dark and menacing in the grey light. The girl pushes back her scarlet hood, freeing her loose brown curls. Golden eyes inspect the tombstone as she reaches into her basket. She places the bowl of soup, still warm, on the ground in front of the grave. Beside it, she lays a single rose with a little note attached. “For Grandma” is printed in neat letters on one side of the card. The other reads “Sorry I was late.” The girl makes her way back to the angels and pulls the gates closed behind her. Turning, she brings her hood back over her head and follows the path into the forest.

A wolf wanders down the forest path. Her scarlet collar brightens the brown-grey fur. Her golden eyes watch the shadows.

55

{ Untitled } Kaitlyn Chotrow

something is wrong with My poem the Look on His face is enough.

No Words of Mine will ever bring a Smile to those Lips and no Rhyme of Mine could Sing His ears to sleep something is wrong with the words I use to describe My thoughts And the dislike puts Me in a Silent Place. where i. am. alone. i will show it to my Mother She is the only one who Likes it “there you go!� i do not like His response lost your money, try again If i could Rewind Time to fix the poem i had He would still read His Perfectly Worded Essay and craft a better work than i and there would still be Something Wrong With my Poem

56

{GROUPIE} Kirsten Benson

The way your breath caused my skin to crinkle should have been the first sign— the lenient hint of a PBR or two floating out from your cracked lips and delivering each word like a sunny bundled package to my ear.

Cheap beer should never smell so much like home.

The thrill of sneaking in back doors of dingy dives carrying an arbitrary piece of sound equipment and letting burly bouncers know I was

with the band.

I was with the band’s singer, really. And I let everyone know. I made sure to stand in the exact spot of the crowd for each show— —around second row, slightly to the left to catch each of your glances, your secret signals.

Each one was another package, gifts floating in your lyrics and delivered right to me.

So after the show when I saw her hand in your hair and your hand on her hip I realized why I never got to open any of your packages. They were all empty.

57

Sebastián Maldonado-Vélez

{

}

CURSING AT THE WIND OR TO MY SIST ER

sharing an apartment with a woman is impossible let alone a womb cramped corners no elbowroom noose around your neck you were afraid to leave holding on to me until the doctors pulled so hard you let go they tell me i won a battle that day but they don’t have to live with you fighting like the stubborn memory you are a scratch that keeps scabbing over mirrors within mirrors i see your face in every woman i love they notice your reflection in me and in an attempt to make me forget i break all the mirrors around me bad luck piles up like the garbage in my front yard they cry for me because i say i’ve forgotten how to but the truth is that you do it for me

58

when i leave them to be alone you follow conjoined twins attached at the chest we have two brains, four lungs but share one heart burdened with the pain of two pumping blood to a body that can’t move anymore my legs carry us through the graveyard where i find myself every time we aimlessly wonder around this sorrowful town i visit your tombstone near the fence where the cemetery ends and a pond begins jumping over the fence i remember the memories i made up for us the time we came here and i pushed you into the water you almost drowned that day but i dragged you back to the shore once more at the pond i wonder how dragonflies hover no matter how fast she goes their shadows bless the same patch of grass cursing at the wind

59

{IRISH FOLLY} Erica Nolan

Is fearr Gaeilge briste, ná Béarla clíste.

I was made in America with Irish parts.

I’m rooted in the green separated from the orange by the pure peaceful white.

My family holds mass on the living room floor; a coffee table an altar for a priest robed in woven wool. The heart on my hand points towards my own: living in loyalty, love, and friendship.

Boiled beef only tastes good after adding a can of Bud; don’t ever forget the horseradish. The soda bread’s cooked when you knock and a hollow echo answers.

Pick off the burnt raisins when it’s done.

Bagpipes sound like an angel’s song after a few Irish coffees. The best nights come from a gaggle of voices reproducing the same saga of stories, each rendition similar to the first.

Broken Irish is better than clever English.

60

{Untitled Elizabeth Salley}

{Cliffs of Moher

Catherine O’Mara} 61

{Maria Victoria 62

Breanne Dover}

Catherine O’Mara

{

IS THAT THE SUN?

}

Meet me where dreams pool in the street.

Laces trailing in mud, a kite in the storm, pulling the string.

Do we mark time in the dark?

Each branch takes me higher and higher to fall.

Leaves caught in my feathers, Or was it the other way around?

Curling fingers over smoldering stars.

Lips parted for departed hopes.

I want to take the light with me.

Above or of the world?

The choice was never mine.

In a different story, maybe this is how it is, And that is how it was.

I only regret the truth half told.

Is that the sun?

Maybe once upon a time‌

63

{

Emily Stobbe

}

SATURDAY NIGHT, 11:17

It was still early into the nighttime when I woke up that Saturday evening. I was getting older then; it had been awhile since I’d fallen asleep and woken up repeatedly. It felt strange, doing it again. From my spot in bed, with a sheet around my shoulders, I looked through the window at the moon hanging over my neighbor’s house. It was like a pale white eye watching me, or a hanging period, or a single earring. I took it in as carefully as I could. I looked too at the stars which were coming out like freckles in summer. I looked at the strange eerie light the moon cast onto the trampoline and the deck chairs and the grill. It glowed through the whole yard. It was a terribly bright moon. The clock said it was 11:17. I tried to go back to sleep. I laid my head on the pillow and stared hard at the wall and then squeezed my eyes closed; I knotted the sheets into my fists and curled up into a little ball. I laid like that for an hour. When I checked the clock only fourteen minutes had actually passed. I looked again at the moon–the careful white moon looking back at me. I could not sleep.

There was something, nearly in my bones, that was urging me up and out. I looked again at the moon and the stars. I threw the sheet back and slipped off the mattress and put on my favorite slippers, which were pink with felt flowers on the toes. I put on my glasses and placed my retainer in its orange plastic case. I checked to see if Coco was still asleep, and she was. I watched her laying there under the quilt, her head nuzzled into the pillow, her hair spread like a Chinese fan. Her mouth was open and she was drooling a little, and there was some hair in her mouth. My heart was an insect caught in a web. A panel of moonlight fell across her. I went closer. I took in her sleeping body. Her eyes weren’t moving beneath her eyelids. I looked at her hand, which was clutching at the bed sheet, at the little perfect fingernails and the silver bracelet on her wrist, and then again at her mouth, and her wet chin, 64

and the hairs in her mouth. I kissed her on the ear. She made a muffled sound and said, “Stop it,” and then nuzzled further into her pillow.

I crept out of the bedroom and into the hall, to the bathroom. I peed. I went to my parents’ door and listened.

They were already asleep. They’d been going to bed earlier than usual–my mother falling asleep quickly, my father playing some game on his phone. Solitaire, maybe. I went down the stairs extra carefully; I didn’t want to wake them. The stairs were padded with soft gray carpeting, and anyway I wore slippers–I didn’t make a sound. In the kitchen I washed my hands because it felt right. I went to the living room and perched on the leather couch, facing the television. I itched to turn it on. The remote, on the coffee table, stared back at me, its single red power button eye piercing my very resolve.

I resisted. I hugged a pillow instead, and felt its stitching. The stitching was in the shape of a flower and a bee. I looked at the photographs on the mantle: our school pictures, Mother and Dad on their wedding day, and a family portrait of us at the beach from two years before.

I remembered the beach vacation, sitting there on the couch and holding the pillow to my stomach. I remembered Coco eating a crab, pulling the meat from the hard shells of its legs and claws, dipping them into butter. Was that the proper way to eat a crab? We didn’t know. We ate the crab meat with horseradish sauce and ketchup. We tried a bite with a pickle chip. At the beach we poked jelly fish with reeds and drift wood and watched the firm pink globs shake and sway on the wet sand. We threw brown and green sand dollars back into the water and tried to build a fort out of a beach towel and all the different poles it took to put together our beach umbrella. It collapsed on our heads. I dared Coco to eat some sand and she put a pinch of it onto her tongue and swallowed

65

and then screamed. We tried to call dolphins to us. We spied on Mother and Dad kissing in the bathroom. When Mother had to go to the hospital we got lollipops in the waiting room even though it was past our bedtime. We watched the fish in their tank–clownfish and other kinds I don’t know the name of. When Mother was better we got to eat hotdogs for lunch, but she only made herself some toast and beans. I don’t know why I remembered that then, sitting on the couch, staring at the photograph. I remembered her leaving the back offices in a wheelchair. I wanted to ride in her lap but she pushed me away, and then she cried because she pushed me away, and she spent the rest of the vacation sitting on her chair under the umbrella staring out at the water and brushing flies off her legs. I don’t know why I remembered that then, sitting on the couch. I didn’t like thinking about it.

But I was awake, anyway. My heart felt jumpy, like it might just hop around a bit inside my chest. I put aside the pillow and padded over to the window, and lifted the blinds just enough so I could see outside to the neighbors–not the moon or the stars or even much of the sky, just the neighbors’ house.

The house was dark. All the birds were asleep; the birdbath was empty. I didn’t see any squirrels trying to hang onto the swinging bird feeder, either. I stood at the window and stared at the house and the quiet trees with their quiet leaves whispering against each other, and then I pulled up the curtain more and looked at the moon, which hung steady, and I got the chilling feeling that it had been swinging about for ages and had only settled seconds before I’d pulled aside the shade.

The stars were brighter too, somehow, like pupils. I suddenly felt afraid. I dropped the shade and stood there looking at the plastic slats, for a moment. Then I yanked the shade all the way up. Something told me I had to. I looked at the moon and the stars. It was like a staring contest, but one I couldn’t win.

I blinked and then squeezed my eyes shut and let them water.

When the water cleared I looked at the sky again and it seemed whole and calm and peaceful, like it had earlier.

I listened intently for a moment. My head even tilted 66

from the listening, like an owl’s head tilts, or a dog’s. I waited until the blood stopped rushing in my ears, and determined that Mother and Dad were still asleep in bed, and Coco too.

The television. I wanted to watch it and forget about the sky. By then I was wide awake. I took off my slippers because my feet were getting hot, and then I found the remote and turned on the TV and hit the mute button over and over again until the TV was awake enough to read it, and only one word escaped–“Cloud”–and in my silent house it was like a scream, and my heart pounded and slammed around for a few minutes. When I settled again, I simply watched the muted newscast–a storm front moving in, and then a short clip about a high school football player with a head injury, and something about a humane society switching to kill, it had too many dogs.

I gathered that from the pictures and the captions. The announcer was a very serious woman with a harsh haircut, and she held her papers in front of her and a pen between two fingers, and just from the way her mouth moved I could tell she said everything sternly, like it was the most important thing in the universe. I don’t know how long I watched her behind that massive desk, and the reels of videos and the soundless soundbites of 911 calls. I did not grow bored of it. Watching the news without volume is the only way to watch it. I could make any sad story happy if I thought quick enough. When the story about the animal shelter came back on, I went up close to the TV and used my sleeve to cover the little header about them euthanizing dogs. When they showed short, grainy videos of dogs leaping around and licking or cowering in their cages, I told myself they were all about to be adopted.

I kept doing this. The boy with the head injury was actually a star–the NFL was going to take him and make him their most important player, their quarterback–he would be the player my father and his friends shouted about when they watched the games together, over chips and cheese dip. The storm front moving in was harder. I decided in the end it was a modern painting, the kind Coco liked to look at on Google images. It was satisfying. I felt like God. I made the homeless 67

people actors on a movie that was going to win a lot of awards, and I made the girl scouts who had their funds cut actually just tiny actors who were also going to win a lot of awards–lots of sad people were actors who would win awards. I kept my arm over the header line until it fell asleep. On a commercial break I shook it until the blood reached my fingers again. I watched the commercials with my arms limp at my sides–department stores, and jewelry stores, and lawn care chemicals, and cat food. A fluffy white cat licking wet fish stuff out of a can. When the news came back on they reported the time. It was 1:03.

I went to the cabinet and looked through the videos for a movie to watch. Nothing was good, though, and I felt like the moon was watching me. Then I found the old videos Mother and Dad took of Coco and I when we were babies and pulled them out one-by-one, and stacked them in front of me into a tower of black grooved rectangles. They were all labeled and dated carefully. I picked a random one, from when I was two, and put it in the old video player. I adjusted the TV settings and wiped some dust off the VHS player out of boredom. Then I sat on the carpet in front of the TV. I was cold again. I put on my slippers. I took the TV off of mute and turned the volume down to almost nothing. My ears were adjusted to the quiet by then, I could have heard the slightest sound. I felt superhuman. I picked at the spaces between my toes and watched twoyear-old me run around the same living room I sat in at that moment, pulling magazines off the coffee table and screeching and then stopping and looking into the camera with the same disquieting sternness the newscaster had used. I looked at my hair, which was darker then, and very short. I looked at my round chin and my fat hands and the rolls of fat at my ankles and wrists. Two-year-old me stood shifting in front of the camera. I wondered if Dad was doing something behind the camera to get my attention. Two-year-old me’s lips parted slightly, and then she began to bawl, closing in on herself. The sound was unbearable. I took the VHS out and put in a different one.

In the new one, Coco was turning one. I wasn’t born yet, not for five more months. Baby Coco looked up at my 68

mother’s face. Mother held her like she was utterly breakable.

I imagined Mother’s heart felt like an insect caught in a web.

On top of Mother’s soft hair there was a pink cone party hat, the elastic band tight against her chin. She turned Coco’s body toward the camera and made her hand wave around. I heard Dad laughing. I could nearly make out his breathing. Mother smiled and then turned her smile down at Coco–who was only Caroline then, I shortened it to Coco–and Mother’s smile was like orange juice tipping into a glass.

I watched more videos. I watched one of me screaming and wailing in the front yard during a summer that was full of locusts. They landed on my body and in my hair. Mother said I always seemed to attract them, because I was so sweet. I didn’t like watching that. I felt like spiders were crawling on me, watching that. I watched a video of my dance recital, in which I wore a blue snow princess tutu and held a glittery plastic wand and stared at my feet the whole time, concentrating on the steps. I watched one of Coco’s checkups with our old doctor. My parents insisted on filming it to catch him in malpractice. In the end he performed well for the camera, for the first time ever, my mother insisted, but they switched us anyway. I watched the doctor bent over Coco, testing her reflexes, and I watched his white mustache, as thin as a caterpillar, twitching on his upper lip. I watched a video of our house’s coordinated Christmas lights glowing like a pinball machine. I watched a video of my fifth birthday. I watched a video of Coco pulling out her own baby tooth. I watched a video of my mother showing me around the house for the first time. I was an infant and she held me to her stomach like I might be safer that way.

She wore blue slippers and her winter coat and showed me the living room, and the fireplace, and the kitchen. She opened up the coat closet with one hand and showed me the mops and the mop bucket and where we keep the extra gloves and hats. She showed me my crib, for later, and then she laid me in the white bassinet and sat on the bed and closed her eyes.

Watching the videos suddenly felt like too much. My head was hurting. I lunged at the VHS player and ejected the 69

video and put the stack away, and shut off the TV. Without the sound and the color the house was still and quiet again. I sat for a moment, absorbing it. I listened to the sound of the second hand on the kitchen clock moving. Each hand was a different-colored chili pepper. I could picture them in my head.

I did that for a moment. I could feel myself growing tired–it was like cotton behind my eyes. I stood to my unstable feet and went to the window again, pulled by an outside force–I looked out at the moon. It was partly hidden behind some branches and leaves, but it was still like an eye. I looked into it. I was too tired to look away. My eyes cleared up momentarily and I could see some of the craters, but the leaves kept me from seeing the man.

I looked into the craters like looking into someone’s mouth at their teeth. I thought about the beach vacation–the hospital and Mother pushing me away from her, and crying about it. I still don’t like thinking about it. They wanted it so badly, and it flooded out of her– she pushed me away from her, and cried about it later. She smoked cigarettes for a month after and then quit as suddenly as she’d begun, jamming the pack into an already-full trash bag and then making me drag the bag to the curb, even though the trash wouldn’t come for two more days. Our neighbor complained about it to Dad, and he spit just left of her foot and looked her in the face, daring her to say a single word, and stalked inside. I can connect all those memories now, stringing them into constellations, but then, standing at the cold window, looking into the moon, everything was obscure. It was all different and disconnected.

I was disoriented. I was exhausted and it was still the thick of the night–I could picture my dad’s beard growing in slowly while he slept, it was one of my favorite things to imagine, and I could picture Coco drooling a bit and Mother breathing muffled into her pillow. I didn’t piece together the information until years later, at Coco’s wedding of all places, me clutching a bouquet of yellow tulips, Coco whispering her I-do’s–I looked down at Mother sitting in the front pew crying and I suddenly remembered the hospital, the lollipop, the clownfish, 70

how she shoved me away from her–I felt a shiver up my spine and held the tulips so tightly I thought they might wilt in my fist. I watched Coco say “I do.” I watched my mother cry and thought of her in that wheelchair, the towel between her legs.

We turned the spare bedroom into an office.

That was years later. I didn’t know any of it yet. I was only eight at the window. I was eight! I looked up into the sky.

I felt woozy on my feet. Soon I’d curl up on the couch and sleep until morning, until Mother found me and shifted me into her lap and played with my hair until I woke up and looked into her tired-yet-smiling face. But for the moment I was at the window–I looked into the bone moon eye and it looked back at me. It did not welcome me and it did not turn me away. It hung there like it had been waiting millenniums to finally rest still. I felt the same way.

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{Untitled McKenzie Grabish}

72

{

Hope Benefield

}

PAYMENTS ON THE PRINCIPLE

I am not worth your time I am not I have thoughts thoughts sometimes pretty sometimes pretty words extend legs from the hips rocking but by my body I mean I claim no substance this body of mine with blood and flesh and mind If I am If I am I have yet to see the value of this investment, early stages I have always wanted I want am wanting and maybe a light the light in the ceiling fan hardly brighter than sunlight drifting through blinds I thought coming here here would render results an imagistic approach pixel by pixel and thousands of words you were supposed to be here some greater force than I than nature pedantic sure a soothsayer of potential taking clay and alchemy pseudoscience where is the body you promised me?

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{

Nixi Schroeder

}

THE AFTER-ME WOMAN

and i think She will be beautiful;

cornsilk hair, coffee-ground eyes,

mica-flecked dimple-smile—

all accoutrements of Autumn. and i think She will be young;

newly-sculpted Missouri sunlight

100% American-made, Her toes and legs

scooped in balls from the rich river mud.

She’ll have the energy of a cotyledon—

fresh sprout from a green shell. and i think She will laugh like Coca-Cola, and when

you open Her mouth She will

fizz

with the excitement of PopRocks, of a

child’s first

lemon drop

and Her lips will be lozenges

to soothe you when you ache.

74

i think Her hands

will be crafted of bandages, torn from the pages

of self-help manuals and the bed sheets of Jesus

and She will have met Jesus

on a chat-room for alcoholics six

years ago, back when She

was a doll of ripped satin. i think She will be old-fashioned;

silver-screen hips and the

freckles Mary wore

in the days she picked flowers and braided them

into chains, the days

before she knew the songs of angels. and of course, She will know all about the angels. and She will never know my name,

the woman i dream, the woman after me;

but She will be your salvation, probably.

and i think

you will love her.

75

{UNDER GOD} Nick Kilgore

Under J.C. Penny Argyle a Spy Kids tape-recorder pinned to my lapel a forever remembered first reconciliation’s record of the sins I started with Under Golden Braids a wax crying candle in reverent procession ignited Christ’s love on my first communion and Erin Sullivan’s hair Under Graduation Gown I was Confirmed Christopher who was confirmed to be non-existent, so I took Jude instead the patron of lost causes Under Catholic bark, all of the liquified words of past popes dripping infallibly from spigots as Papal Syrup

76

{Untitled Sathya Anand} 77

Lydia Frank

COMPASS NORTH; OR, AN OPEN LOVE LETTER TO THE NEXT PERSON I FALL IN LOVE WITH

{

}

there are unexplored, uninhabited deserts of skin between the constellations of freckles that populate your arms—my role as cartographer is to chart them all, to draw pictures in flesh-tone pigments to ensure that i will always be able to find my way home. we are only salt water mixed with air, so whenever you miss me, you only need catch sight of the ocean to bring me back. i want love that stumbles over the earth in broken ecstasy and i want to pass beyond the end of the world with your heart in my hands and your breath at my back. (there is a name for every direction of wind in the mediterranean, but your lips are the only ones that sail me

steady.) magnetic north may drift away, but even in ten thousand years, the crooks of your elbows will still feel like home. your body is made of crease marks and pencil dust, and the edges of maps marked Here Be Dragons— i set out to ravish the world but if you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes and a world without hope for happily-ever-afters is flat. though our bodies may be parted and skin may not touch skin, i will send messages on the backs of gum wrappers and coke bottles until i can find your lighthouse eyes through the fog once again.

78

{ COMET CHOIRS } Sebastián Maldonado-Vélez

the surface of a comet vibrates, allowing a choir to ring through the mountains in the vacuum of space speeding towards the lack of anything which sometimes vibrates our bodies in such a way that we can’t stop touching because the moment we do epiphany strikes that all i can afford to do is continue falling forward forward through small waves slightly slowing me down as a reminder that kids never forget that one time you tripped accidently grabbing jenna’s breast instead of finding her arm on the way down ok sad man a comets tail is nothing but pages torn out of its journals leaving a paper trail so long that astronomers will be writing graduate papers for the next six hundred years about all-too-fresh memories stuck in a loop

79

{

Allison Bearly

MY FAVORITE MEMORY

}

It’s my favorite memory I never had— well, I had it, I just don’t really remember it.

But through the foggy memory, I do remember laughing— laughing a lot. It’s hard to recall at what, but I remember the sharp sounds echoing off the wet pavement and drunkenly stumbling across the street in the post-rain haze.

Everything was washed clean again, everything was good and new and fresh— the grass, your shirt, my hope, that car that was illegally parked. So we walked until we were tired, and then we sat and laughed and breathed in the humid summer air.

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{Untitled SebastiĂĄn Maldonado-VĂŠlez} 81

{Charon on the River 82

Anna Burland}

{LADY DEATH} Sarah Barger

Her voice is dry leaves underfoot.

Her laugh is wind whistling through bare branches.

Her eyes are weak autumn light and her mouth is sharp teeth in the dark.

Her hands are brittle bones and her neck is a broken stem.

Her skin is pulled taut across sharp cheekbones and her lips are pressed in a bloodless line.

She is an unwavering presence, a steadfast grip on your heart.

She is bitter comfort and fiery contempt.

You feel her shadow follow you from night to day and back to night.

You know she will take the hands of all those you hold most dear.

Your cries will fall on deaf ears and your fists will hit air.

You want to cup her face in your warm hands, but every time you touch her, cold seeps into your soul and the warmth leaves your palms.

You can’t go with her.

83

{

Erica Nolan

THE FIRST SNOW

}

I wish to feel the wet drops of snowflakes and see the clean slate it so aptly makes upon the lifeless land set before me.

When fireplaces crackle back to life and fill the darkness; the warm glow a key to winter memories owning no strife.

When child-like joys leap through frosted skies too young and light to understand most lies.

Deep down, I want to run through the pure white blanket that tucks away the once green ground.

Who knew destruction could bring such delight?

While outdoors, my snow boots make crunching sounds; steps packing down a frozen deception.

I imprint my flaws into perfection.

84

{

Kira Gresoki

A MOTHER’S BACK

}

In high school, my mother was a dolphin, a slick-bellied diver that sprung from boards and bent air around her back, her hands splitting the water in half as it swallowed her down to careful, pointed toes.

She is a secretary now, and she vaults and arches her fingers over shiny black keys on a keyboard, eyes tracing out emails on a screen.

She wanted to be a ballerina.

When she begs me for a back rub, my hands feel her worry waiting, locked right beneath the skin of her shoulders, stretched tight as a drum head. My light punches touch nothing but brick. I try to knead the needing from her neck, but the veins tense even as she drops her head limp.

She was made for oceans.

85

{after judges} Hope Benefield

I cut my hair, the inverse of Samson; greater strength within myself. And the pillars shook but the foundation stood. The foxes set alight the fields with kerosene burning in their lampshade tails, and the lion soon returned, having devoured Delilah, fresh bowstrings, new ropes and braids; he stood inside this body asking of me only, “What is sweeter than honey?”

{PERSISTENCE} Hope Benefield

In the belly of my ghost are moths’ wings attracted to the bulb and fanning the window, aching to escape. You, my lepidopterist; never have I ever been a butterfly, alive, more than spectral spectator. My name absent from the lease, haunting hallways until I pass on.

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{SEPTEMBER} Nixi Schroeder

We sit on the front step counting slugs— your body curves against mine

in a question-mark shape.

A three-legged cat lurches uncertainly: “He always looks like he’s going to fall” Your hands are deliberate, whispering,

callused from months

of gravel and flowers.

A potted twig stands on the wall, solemn

deathly memorial to where life stood

before the fall:

the fall of August, the fall of sunlight,

the fall of childhood and seed- hood and all lost things— its question twists into the knelling cool: “Now what are we going to do?”

The slugs,

reaching the sidewalk’s end, become dampness.

Stars murmur their voyeristic intent.

Your gaze a paintbrush, tickles my lips—

my limbs curl softly

in the shape of yes.

87

{Untitled McKenzie Grabish}

88

{ BONES } Katlin Walker

Engine hum forces me to break my gaze from every minuscule crease in your face. Damn it.

I was trying to memorize them but my thoughts are runaway bulls and I am a vertebra sucked clean and you are the wilted hydrangeas that surround the Virgin Mary two days after Christmas when no one weeps or kneels before you anymore and I am the drizzle, biting breeze that keeps them from so much as dropping by for a greeting and quick prayer.

We’ve become the salt and pepper sand that rubs raw every crevice of sensual skin it touches.

You’re a map I will never not read upside down for I like to not know where I am traveling inside the valley that is you and the salty sea carrying me the way when on the beach if I stand just so, I can avoid sinking in for almost two seconds before I’m submerged up to my ankles in the same gritty shore that is us.

89

{

Sarah Medina

}

MY SIST ER’S VIOLIN

Dad packs the violin last, perching it carefully atop our suitcases and onto a padded bed of winter coats and scarves, while Mom’s thin, freckled arms steady it from the inside.

Cissy stands by me, still wearing her puffy blue coat, biting her lip as she watches them. She squeezes my cold fingers into her purple-mitted palms and I smile, asking the question that she, with her big brown eyes and shaking knees, is too embarrassed to ask.

“Can the violin sit in the back with us?”

Dad looks back at me sharply, running a hand through his black hair as he thinks, breath billowing out into the crisp morning air as if his very soul is trying to escape. Finally he sighs and jerks a thumb at the instrument, nestled among the winter-wear like a sleeping princess. Cissy looks down at her scuffed converse and feigns disinterest, but I can see her eyes light up as I gently remove it from its cloth cradle. It’s a fullsized violin, and I imagine I can see its lacquered red wood and the dark lines that frame its every curve through the hard leather case. It was Cissy’s twelfth birthday present, her reward from us after eight years of playing on my chipped hand-medowns. The day she got it, she had locked herself in her room all evening, plucking at the shiny silver strings that connected seashell-curled scroll to bridge, body to soul. I had listened outside her door for a while, smiling at every giggle that accompanied the discovery of a new note she could coax from the instrument’s belly.

“It would get lonely back there, don’t you think?” I ask, carefully sliding into the van’s back seat and laying the instrument over my legs.

She shrugs as she slips deftly into the seat opposite of me. “It’s just a violin.” Yet her eyes are warm and she can’t suppress the gentle smile tugging at her lips as she pulls the other end of the case onto her lap. She may have begged Mom 90

for that blue streak in her hair all the while insisting that she’s a sophomore now, practically an adult, but she still treats her violin like a younger sibling, to be loved and catered to like any member of the family.

Dad glances back at us. “Seatbelt,” he says tersely. We click them into place as he revs up the engine and slowly pulls out of the driveway. Cissy and I crane our necks to watch our small baby-blue house slip out of view as the car turns right at the top of our street and Mom’s GPS announces our destination: Columbia, Missouri: 168 miles.

Even with the radio filling the car with the twang of country music, the atmosphere is heavy, as if we are on our way to a funeral. Mom and Dad glance back at us through the rearview mirror occasionally, tight-lipped and shiny-eyed. I guess they’re just tired from having to get up so early and I’m glad Cissy doesn’t seem to notice their lack of enthusiasm.

She’s staring out the window, quiet excitement shining on her face. I’ve always loved the way she watches the world go by during car rides. She examines every dilapidated building, every familiar side-street as if it’s a snapshot from a faraway land that she can only behold for a moment. Today, she’s practically bouncing in her seat, all high school-conferred dignity temporarily abandoned. Ever since our violin teacher had told her about the all-state orchestra, auditioning has been all she’ll talk about. I imagine my own excitement must nearly match hers; I’ve missed her last few performances because Mom and Dad accidentally scheduled my therapy sessions at the same time and refused to let me skip out. They almost made me go this time too, but my doctor gave me express permission—said it would be good for me. When I told Cissy, she hugged me so tight I thought my arms might fall off.

After about an hour, the cityscape outside begins to melt into the soft green monotony of highway wilderness and 91

I can tell she’s getting nervous by the way she twists at her ear and drums her feet against the floor. “Hey,” I whisper, beckoning for her to lean in close like we did when we shared secrets as kids. “I’m bored. Want to play a car game?”

She grins in assent. “I Spy” turns into “Who am I?” which is eventually overturned in favor of the alphabet game.

As we giggle and whisper back and forth behind cupped hands, I can feel the tension leaking out of her, drop by drop. She’s just found her third “S” word—Shakespeare—when Dad turns off of the main road and swiftly pulls us into a parking spot. I glance at the time on the dashboard before the engine shuts off: 12:30. Her audition is in one hour. I grab her sheet music and violin as our parents pore over the campus map, trying to locate the small square labeled “Memorial Union.” Columbia State’s campus is as antique and sprawling as I remember from my Science Olympiad days and I know I’ll be no help getting us there.

We traipse along the cracked sidewalks, tension growing thick in the air with every step. When the building finally comes into view, Dad’s face is taut and white while Mom looks about ready to cry. “You need me to carry anything?” Dad asks as we all stare at the weathering brick building. It’s magnificent, with green and brown ivy spider-webbed across its worn exterior, a promise to crumble it back into the earth one day.

“No, I think we got it, Dad, but thanks,” I say, and he clenches his fists. Cissy’s trying to bite at her nails through her mittens.

I tuck a strand of loose brown hair behind her ear and squeeze her shoulder. She looks at me gratefully and together we follow our parents into the tiled hall.

An older woman smiles at us from behind a folding table. I give her our last name and she directs us down a hall where several other kids are crowded around, like ghosts in purgatory awaiting their sentencing. I set her stuff down against one of the cold stone walls while Mom and Dad wander off to find a water fountain. Cissy has removed her mittens and is chewing on her hands in earnest now. I tug one away, trying to massage some warmth into it. “It’s hard to play with cold 92

fingers, isn’t it?” I say lightly.

“Yeah well, maybe this way I won’t be able to feel my wrong notes,” she grumbles. I laugh and a brief smile flickers over her face before she lapses back into uncertain silence.

“You’ll do great,” I insist. “You’ve been practicing so hard.”

It’s true. She’s always been a much more dedicated player than me, sometimes practicing for up to five hours at a time. Usually I sit on her bed and listen, doing homework and eating grapes while applauding the end of every Vivaldi or Tchaikovsky piece. These past few months, though, she’d been so focused on the audition that she wouldn’t even let me into her room. I’d sit with my back to her door instead, imagining I was playing every piece along with her. She’s brilliant, every bow stroke executed with just the right amount of pressure, fingers flying over the strings like deer in the woods behind our house—light, carefree, sure-footed. I’d told her this once. She’s punched me in the arm and called me a corny poet, but she’d smiled all the same.

A man pokes his head out of the adjacent room and calls “Anderson.” A small red-faced boy hurries forward, accidentally banging his bow on the door as he disappears inside. With every name called, my stomach lurches and my sister’s tan skin seems to turn greener, her hands colder no matter how much I massage them. When the man finally calls “Pierce,” I hold my breath, waiting for her to start forward and disappear into the room too. She doesn’t. “Come on, Cissy, that’s you,” I whisper, trying to nudge her forward gently. Her shoulders tense at my touch, her chest rising and falling rapidly like a bird pinned by a cat. She takes a step forward, but nothing more. I can see her lips turning pale blue, her brown irises disappearing into the blackness of her pupils, wide and horrified as she just stares at the door.

“Come on, Cissy, you can do this,” I say, louder this time. Everyone is watching us now. I whip around to face my parents, annoyed that they aren’t over here supporting their daughter like parents are supposed to do when their children 93

are scared. To my surprise, they’re both watching me intently.

Mom’s shaking like a cornered animal and Dad’s face is pulled so tight it’s paper-thin. Before I can protest, Dad grabs my arm and pulls me into a nearby hallway.

“Why are you doing this, Vanessa?” He lets go of my arm, but grabs my shoulders and shakes me so hard that the hallway distorts like a bad piece of film. “Why?”

I push him off and take a few steps back towards the main hallway. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Cissy, blue and still as an ice sculpture. Anger swells inside me as I realize Mom isn’t even trying to help her. “Doing what?”

“Are you trying to punish us? Is that what all this is?”

“Dad, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but please, Cissy needs us, can’t it wait until after her audition—”

“Vanessa.” His voice is forceful and tremulous, as if he’s trying to fight back one storm with another. “Your sister died last year. This is your audition.”

I shake my head. He’s lost it completely, and I open my mouth to tell him so, that Cissy’s right down this hall and she needs him, she needs us, when—

I turn. The violin and music are still sitting against the wall. Mom has her head buried in her hands, and even from here I can see the tears slipping down her wrists. Dad drapes himself over my shoulders, chest shuddering as he whispers apologies into my hair. Cissy is gone.

Shaking, I look down and see that the calloused hands I’ve been massaging have been my own.

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{

}

Emily O’Connor

USE ME

You require me You need me I like to be used Use me Please Use me to rid yourself of your past Rinse it down the drain Let me lather your mind And change your views It’s a new day, a new dawn I can improve your love life I can improve your friendships I can improve YOU If only you’d use me Instead I lay here forlorn Spending my days in solitude Forgotten I long for your caress, For your long, cool fingers to wrap around me To pick me up To feel your skin under mine I am I am your soap

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{

Kira Chatham

}

SLEEPWALKING

runs in the family, or so Mama told me when I asked her why we wake up with new moons beneath our eyes, hanging dark and heavy into our cheeks.

Grandmama says she remembers waking up out by the lake on Uncle Jack’s farm in late December, her bed sheets tangled round her legs and fingers blue as cold starlight.

She shudders and tells me, “Don’t forget your mittens, dear,” before pushing me back to bed.

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{Luna

Adriana Maria Long}

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{

Lydia Frank

}

EULOGY TO THAT SUMMER

the summer i first went to your house was the summer your dad didn’t spray the vegetable garden in your backyard. back then, you lived off a gravel road, and i got to play City Mouse Goes To The Country—i screamed when a worm crawled out of the corn we were husking but i find i’m only scared of bugs when you’re around to kill them. after the fourth movie you told me that you didn’t believe in writing eulogies for things that hadn’t died yet—you didn’t look it, but back then, you were the kind of boy who believed in redemption and ice cream sundaes; country music with an imaginary little sister mixed in. it’s not fair to freeze people in time like that, you said. tomorrow my life could be different. and you were half right but even though you still aren’t the type to say i told you so, i’m still not going to admit that you made me change my mind. i bought corn at the farmer’s market yesterday and i know you want to hear that it wasn’t as good as the corn i ate with you on your back porch under that infinite kansas sky, but here’s the truth: it was better.

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{

Codi Caton

}

PULLED ROOTS

Orange mist and the Beats, her knees stained grass green and she says she wishes she had roots.

Plants have it easy, she says. No water bills.

There’s just something so romantic in being stationary, bound to the ground and nothing more, she says-Fingers peeling through pages-toes bumpingeyes slipping-chests heavingShe says she could sit on a porch swing and dissolve like an old photograph, sick of planes and phones and asphalt cracks in her hands.

Veins unrealized. Hipbones broken pots, so much to spill.

She says its too hot to talk about ‘us’, so I bury my feet in soil and stretch as she leaves.

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{Colophon} Windfall was founded in the fall of 1976 by students and faculty. The magazine contains the creative works of Truman State University undergraduates.

All submissions are judged by a blind jury of students, and consideration is given to each work solely based on its artistic merit.

This issue of Windfall was designed using Adobe InDesign CS6.

The font used throughout the magazine’s body text is 11-point Georgia; 20-point Helvetica Neue UltraLight for titles, and 16-point Georgia Italic for author’s names.

Five hundred copies were printed by the Missourian Publishing Company in Washington, MO. Windfall is funded by the Division of Language and Literature at Truman State University and the FAC. Any queries or request for copies of Windfall may be sent to: 100 E. Normal SUB CSI Mailbox Kirksville, MO 63501 or windfall@truman.edu Please visit our website at windfall.truman.edu.

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