Writer to Writer - Winter 2025

Writer to Writer a journal by writers, for writers

WINTER 2025

ISSUE 12

Writer to Writer Editor-in-Chief Haley Newland Submissions Chair Michelle Liao Operations Chair Jiayou Shen Managing Editor Merin McCallum Art and Design Chair Harper Johnston Social Media Chair Alexandra Berryman Web Design Chair Kiran Koul Editors Jeanette Wakeford Katherine Saunders Lorenzo Norbis Janet Wu Faculty Advisor Shelley Manis

ISSUE 12 WINTER 2025

Letter from the Editor Dear reader, Welcome to the twelfth edition of Writer to Writer, a literary journal written by writers, for writers, in collaboration with the Sweetland Center for Writing. Through this organization, we aim to foster interdisciplinary creativity across a variety of modes, mediums and genres and to encourage conversation and growth among our community of writers.

In the beginning of the semester, through a series of biweekly creative writing workshops, our members were able to hone both their creative writing and editorial skill sets to further advance as professionals and academics.

In the latter half of the semester, our focus shifted to publication production. We received a record number of submissions and the editorial staff met weekly to share ideas, review submissions, and work together to compose the latest edition of our literary journal.

Within this issue, you will find pieces that touch upon common themes of love and complex interpersonal relationships. Many pieces also focus on cyclical issues that keep coming back. We hope that you see yourself in this wonderful microcosm of writing and that you enjoy the stories our writers have chosen to share.

As always, our journal strives to celebrate multimodality in writing as well as the individual writing process for different writers with our “Spotlight Interviews.” You can find snippets of these interviews with featured writers in the publication itself, and you

can hear the interviews in full by scanning the supplemental QR code to listen on our website.

Lastly, this journal would not be possible without the generous support of the Sweetland Center for Writing, especially from our wonderful faculty advisor Dr. Shelley Manis. Her incredible mentorship and willingness to help has been critical in the successful operations of our organization and our continuing growth as a young publication. To Shelley, the Sweetland Center for Writing, the contributing writers, and to you, the reader, we are so grateful.

Thank you all for your support.

Sincerely, Haley Newland Editor-in-Chief Writer to Writer

Table of Contents 1

Dark Fantastic Dreams Josephine Velo

2

Prophecy 1: RIVERBURN Anonymous

4

Blue Llama Abstract Lila Hudgins

5

Ode to the Eel Annabelle Wesorick

7

Rosemary Alexandra Berryman

12

Boxed Madness Alina DeVoogd

13

manchester Owen Hayes

16

Ghosts Lila Hudgins

17

epiphany Megan Ahrens

18

View From a Crucifix Lorenzo Norbis

20

Your lover smoking cigarettes on a balcony in Buenos Aires Joshua Nicholson

23

wild, wild Owen Hayes

25

Five Evil First Dates Alaina Newell

32

Alice the umich student Jiayou Shen

33

Ode to the Eagle Jack Johnston

35

Being Slue-Foot Sue Harper Johnston

39

Electric July Ellie Marchese

40

1:26 AM Kiran Koul

Josephine Velo

Dark Fantastic Dreams I am a moment that lives in a perfume bottle.

The scent of a panther prowling, deep night thick under a full moon, The electricity of humidity caressing, a mane full of dew.

Golden tendrils swim inside these four glass walls, Tall and full of body on a lovely lady’s dresser.

A perfume worn by her grandmother, thick and amber sweet, It transfers the taste of black coffee and spice to her lips.

But it’s unused and retired, With no naked wrist or throat to kiss.

The scent drips down through the dark wood, Creeping past apartments and sleeping girls, Deep in dark fantastic dreams that rock their world.

I am the moment that lives on the street And strikes you with life force, a rare painted heat Simmers with intention and words without sweet Hues along an avenue, which you barrel down to meet Me, dark and voluptuous, peeking out the crack of a wall like a mad cat.

Even madder yet, as I lay down your villainous track.

My nails are cracked, and in your head, sense drifts back.

1

Anonymous

Prophecy 1: RIVERBURN THE ORACLE of DELPHI Pythia and the Pythoness Do you remember what my voice sounds like?

Maybe I’m bitter. Bittersweet, and a little jealous. The kind you get when the truth is held on a sharp tongue and the last bits of hope held up by the throat.

You think you’re all prophetic, but your lines are all the same.

Clipped feathers and a tainted heart. The same four roads and always craving more. You come to my door and you ask me to tell you, to heal you, to save you, a life I never had and a life I never will flashing before my eyes.

Nicotine daydreams & the ephemeral scene.

Blurry vision & bad decisions.

Hand positions & never calling home.

Honey-tongued & a house on fire.

You come to my door and ask me to save you. Loneliness, without the iron aftertaste. Desperation, with your face to the sun. But when everyone else has left, when you’re still a long way from home, your eyes beg for a breeze. But did you really think flying was that easy? You think the wind belongs to everyone’s wings?

There aren’t enough [warm summer breezes] for everyone.

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If I could save you, then I might (at least I tried). But the side of the highway made me bittersweet like citrus. The river made me a stranger. The earth made me prophetic.

You come to my door and ask me to save you.

But all I see is smoke and rain.

3

Lila Hudgins

Blue Llama Abstract

4

Annabelle Wesorick

Ode to the Eel You’re hiding– but your sly smile gives it away: you’re taunting me, luring me in with secrets, veiled behind amethyst eyes, ambushing me with perplexity.

Enigmatically undefined by science, unregulated by man, living only by Mother Nature’s whims, with your slick, streamlined body and elongated dorsal fin, you glide through the caves and crevices, slipping through my fingers, while I am grasping… no matter how many times Freud’s scalpel pried into your cold flesh, no matter how many times scientists stalked and tagged you,

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no matter how many times Aristotle spoke of mud and spontaneity, only you know the secrets that lie within the depths of The Sargasso Sea or the translucent, delicate larvae that may metamorphose into such a sibylline creature.

Undefined, unregulated, free.

6

Alexandra Berryman

Rosemary Jay sits on his bed and stares at the hole in his apartment wall. The hole stares back at him; one unblinking eye fixed on his impassive face. He pushes himself up from the bed and crosses the room to examine it. Only a few inches wide and almost round, the thing should not have the power to inspire such dread in him. Nonetheless. He takes his Beatles poster off the wall and moves it so the hole is covered. He opens the window to let in the afternoon and leaves to go somewhere he hasn’t decided yet.

The weather is indifferent: autumn, a day that is too warm with a jacket and too cold without, a breeze that jumps and stirs without warning. Jay is wearing only a tee shirt and sweatpants, but still he walks, unwilling to return for now. He hopes the distance will melt his dread away, but it only freezes into a hard mass which roosts heavily in the pit of his stomach. He shoves his hands in his pockets and continues down the sidewalk, moving silently past a row of ginkgo trees turned flaming yellow by summer’s expiring.

He tries not to think about Theresa and does anyway.

He does not return to his apartment until late in the afternoon, his walk having been rather winding and inexact. He steps inside. The stale terror he had hoped would escape in his absence has merely settled to the floor of his bedroom, carpeting it with a vague shame. The trees outside his open window cast drawnout, golden shadows across the wall, and for a while he sits and watches them dance until a gentle rustling brings his mind to the present. It happens again moments later: a soft, nearby sound like the shuffling of papers, subtle but startling. Jay’s eyes dart to the Beatles poster on the wall, his pulse accelerating slightly as he stands. The rustling amplifies as the poster begins to shake,

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prompting him to retreat to the corner of the room. He reaches for the metal water bottle on his desk and holds it defensively.

Taking a steadying breath, he approaches, hefts the water bottle over his shoulder, and tears the poster off the wall in a swift snag.

The hole greets him with an accusatory gaze that makes him cringe. It is exactly as he remembered it. He thinks about Theresa again, her face like a flashbang in his mind’s eye. He inches a hand closer to it, holding the water bottle in the other. Suddenly, absurdly, the wall chirps. Jay freezes.

“What—” before he can finish his muttered thought, a haphazard brown mass of feathers launches itself out of the hole and careens toward his face.

He yelps in surprise, swinging the water bottle wildly around his head by its plastic handle and sprinting into the hallway. He slams the door behind him. A light thud sounds from inside. He paces up and down the hallway, reasoning to himself that the window is open and the thing should be able to fly out on its own eventually. Still, what if the animal is hurt? What if it dies on his carpet?

He sits at the kitchen table where his eyes are drawn to the empty wine bottle on the counter, left out after last night. Dread pulses in his stomach.

A few moments later, he returns to his bedroom door. Tentatively, he opens it and steps back from the doorway. The bird is there on the carpet, hopping blithely on its twiggy legs. Some kind of sparrow, he thinks, a mousy little thing with a grubby white underbelly. It looks up and cocks its head at him. He inches forward, flinging his hands in the bird’s direction.

“Go, go on,” he reasons, trying to persuade the bird towards the open window. It merely looks at him, its glassy black eyes like

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polished stones. It chirps. Jay stops short of the bird and crouches down in front of it.

“Here…” he offers a finger onto which the sparrow hops, then carries it gingerly to the window and extends his arm outside. Jay waits, but the bird remains motionless. Its wide black eyes give away some rudimentary intelligence. Jay almost shakes it off. He is not aware of exactly what stops him until the creature blinks, and suddenly he knows that it is a living thing sitting atop his finger: a thing with a heart and hollow little bones, a thing with organs which keep it alive. He understands the value of it. He retracts his hand.

Jay names the bird Rosemary. He buys her a half-pound bag of millet, and she makes herself a nest in the hole in his bedroom wall. Miraculously, it seems she is perfectly healthy. He keeps the window open all the time, and she only ever leaves for whatever errands a sparrow needs to run. Whenever he returns home and she is not there, a whispering corner of him hopes she will never come back. After all, her wings are fine— why shouldn’t the wild bird be wild? Once, while walking to class, he raises his head to catch a brown blur darting through the ginkgo leaves. He smiles, hoping it is Rosemary gone off towards a place far away.

A few weeks later, when Rosemary has settled all the way into Jay’s apartment, Theresa sweeps back into his life. She brings with her a bottle of wine and a bouquet of apologies, cloyingly sweet, hand-picked. He invites her inside. The two sit down at the dinner table, across from each other like their very first date—come to think of it, Jay notices, she is even wearing the same sweater, a red cable knit. They talk a great deal and for a long time. Theresa muses that she does not even remember how the argument began. Jay does but decides that it is unimportant. Theresa cries.

She reaches for his hand across the table. He takes it. He realizes that he finds her very beautiful, and a second later shames himself

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for thinking of that when she is crying. He flushes. She meets his gaze, her eyes wet and dark, her brow furrowed in a troubled, delicate line. Her lips slightly parted. Her hands small and warm.

Jay wants to throw his arms around her, to forgive every indiscretion and argument, to pick up her sharp edges and muffle them with the softest parts of his body. Yes, Theresa had screamed and stormed and raged. Yes, she had put a fist through his wall, but the fist was hers. Theresa. So bright, vibrating with the force of a dying star, crackling, surely not of this world. Over the two years they had been together she had only grown more vivid, orbiting the core of him in a stunning vortex. Theresa. And her fist was a blazing fist, and he was so terribly afraid but so vitally alive, and his ever-growing fear of burning up only made the love more brilliant anyway. Her straining, screeching voice had left behind a ringing in his ears that must have been adoration’s recitative.

The dread is all obscured, maybe hunkering in shadow, maybe evaporated entirely. Instead there is relief, washing over him in a cool silver tide, fixing him up like some kind of magic. Of course Theresa has returned, and he has welcomed her back. Of course.

This is the way it ought to be.

“I’m sorry.” Theresa offers. Her voice is soft, he wants to curl up in it. “I’m so, so sorry.” She takes his hand and brings it to her lips.

“I’ll be better. I need to get better.” Her soft, promising mouth leaves a kiss on the back of his hand.

“You will,” he whispers, entranced. “It’s ok.”

“I love you so much.”

“I love you too.” Of course he loves her. He can’t stop.

10

It is an old routine, the steps laid out carefully in footsteps they only need to retrace. It is an easy routine, and never seems to wear down. He takes her to his bedroom. They have sex. Rosemary’s stifled chirp sounds from the hole in the wall.

The next morning, they wake up face-to-face in Jay’s bed. Theresa smiles with a satisfaction that could easily be mistaken for love.

They kiss. She leaves.

Two days pass before Jay realizes Rosemary is missing. On a whim, he peers into the hole to check her nest. She is lying beside it, perfectly still. One brown wing cradles her little ribcage. One black eye stares endlessly upwards.

11

Alina DeVoogd

Boxed Madness One night and my years unbuilt.

The box I wove with my mind’s hands Unravels with just a bite.

I keep my madness locked in a box, Genius, her twin, takes a sacrifice Dulled by her sister’s confinement.

A visiting opportunity often appears A glimpse of madness leaving as quickly as it came.

Madness calls to genius, Last night there was an answer.

Together at last.

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Owen Hayes

manchester pray not for those who did not go gently into the night, romance strays away from the raving light. turn to a dee-jay with a voice for monotonous chants – giving belated drunken song requests their last chance. as the faithful scaled the corners for exits in the maze, the schoolboys in wine-stained shirts fell back to sinful ways. since there’s still hours before sunrise and fags to be had, the econ boys scattered to find slags who give head, while poets shuffled towards the bar for another drink – a cheap, warm chaser to bring them back from the brink. in walked a classmate’s sister with powder up her nose – she was on the phone with old friends, begging for an overdose.

They met her with her top off, beer in her spit, her hands on her tits, still clinging to her wits. thoughts of hailing an uber, her money and love all spent until her best mate bumped into her, head hung in lament. she watched him trudge up, flashed the crowd on the stage. the philosophy queers loved that he was underage. raising his fist, he announced he became a nihilist. pulled up his sleeve to show he had been cutting his wrist. tears flowing like albumen, cried “What’s happening to my friends?” but the last thing she wanted was for the spectacle to end. she put on a mask, telling jokes and forcing performance, craving attention from bearded men to feign self-importance.

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there must be something else, something real: a genuine side she’s trying to conceal, besides purging her emotions on strangers she’ll forget or crawling on sticky floors to find her cigarette packet. she looks up and sees a Dartmoor lord giving out hypodermics – medicine for all the bohemians and depressed academics. with a bony finger, he beckons her beneath the smoke alarm – forget the cigarettes, she snatched and stuck the needle in her arm. her head on his lap, she promised it will be quick, whispering to herself that she was still feeling sick, not from the spells of bulimia or drinking, more from questions the heroin kept asking, “is a warm hug one of those feelings you miss?” perhaps you could – oh wait – she needed to piss. on the toilet seat, locked in a sway, her mind wandered off to a happier day, before a time of tainted romance and cider, with eyes of innocence opening wider. now eyelids grow heavy and her face pales, tired of life. she’d sooner blow her brains out than settle as a wife to some hyper-political misogynistic man-child, yet she’s stood by the mirror, rehearsing a smile.

The lights come back on, the bouncers show her out. the woman inside her wanted nothing more than to shout, “i am not meant for such sweet sorrow,” instead she chose, “see you tomorrow.” as she begins to ponder about going gently into the night, she wonders why we bother, why we rage, against the dying light.

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WRITER SPOTLIGHT Owen Hayes AB: You open with the line from Dylan Thomas’ villanelle “Do not go gentle into that good night”. How does that work intersect with your piece, and what does it mean to you?

OH: So my life in England has mostly been colored in, from the twilight years of the pandemic, by loss. So I speak on behalf of my friends when I say that we’ve all lost either something or someone from the pandemic. And to be fair, it was also our youth that was stolen, because two years of our adolescence were just taken away all of a sudden...And when we came out and the world violently regressed back to the way it was, rather unsuccessfully, may I add, we were all dealing with it in our own individual ways. There are some kids who chose to indulge in a bit of a hedonistic binge. So they go out on nights, try to fill up on all the best times that they can get before they go into adulthood. And so it also claims some lives, that life, and that is why it’s set in Manchester, because Manchester is a place of urban myth sort of thing...So everyone goes to Manchester either to have fun or to make a name for themselves. I know boys who will never be 20. I know intellectual women who in their own private spaces, battle through mental illnesses in the face of academic pressure, intellectual or existential dread. And so I thought that I wanted to write something that would subvert Dylan Thomas, because I think it is impossible for me to think in that head space, to imagine that someone like my friends and myself who is burnt out by work, who is sort of overwhelmed by the impending floods of global crises and dealing with an excess of information online to find a message in “Do not go gentle into that good night” to be anything but antiquated. So I wanted to sort of highlight the fact that there are people out there who may not see it so easily.

To listen to the full interview, scan the QR code or visit writertowriterumich.music.blog 15

Lila Hudgins

Ghosts

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Megan Ahrens

epiphany baby pink & cottonwood june, a time for half-unpacked boxes. ice cream that melts, not into drips but just softens cracking the bones in your pinky finger june bends your knuckles to feel the release. drops of morning dew on the gardens. like the tears of your mother they appear at night linger in the early dawn beetles crawling up your back & into your coffee black, with a dash of cinnamon grass stains are fresh upon knobby knees & rainbows flicker on the warm wood floor stars numbered like the connect the dots page in a children’s coloring book did you know we’re just beginning? she asks i smile sunrises are even more beautiful than sunsets.

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Lorenzo Norbis

View From a Crucifix A sheath of dust rises as weary pilgrims toil to the city of stone, late to see their Messiah—yet much sooner than you or I, I suppose.

Close nearby, Calvary cries out with the wailing of Marys and Disciples, their patchy beards meeting the horrifying end of three years of hope.

And Christ, with forehead now sunken by brash thorns striking the sutures of His skull, this Christ must see the entire world from here, I think.

From such a height, He watches the rivers feed brooks, barley ebbing, a cloud burst just beyond Jerusalem. His eyes pass over—with some melancholy, I imagine—the cedars His hands are now presently bolted against.

And in this state, with flies already tearing at His bloodied pores, I must believe Christ looks up to stare longingly at a vacant sky, closing His sunburnt eyelids to see visions of you and your fourth story apartment in Berlin: with you clutching the bottoms of brown paper grocery bags, climbing the winding stairs, passing the rotting old man, his mangy dog, with your dismissive smile and flash of hair falling down your cheek.

You come to the blistered door and shuffle the bags to rest on your left hip—standing maternal now—keying top and bottom locks.

Trudge in to hear the same squawking door hit that spot where the 18

floor is uneven, set the fruits upon the counter and the meat by the foot of the icebox. Your eyes pass over the portrait left on the floor—with turquoise polka walls and distant gaze, hands crossed and poorly outlined—belonging to the roommate perfumed with bad cigarettes and burnt hair. He knows that it’s our secret— my sleeping there last night—how we laid skeletally intertwined, stealing notes from Zeppelin through the neighbor’s walls, quickly forgetting the day in each other’s arms.

I picture His peeling eyes glaze back down frail as He cries to Father once more, just a boy, mother weeping at pinioned feet, with love upon His perfect, perfect mind.

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Joshua Nicholson

Your lover smoking cigarettes on a balcony in Buenos Aires Trailing smoke on a summer breeze and the flickering of an old porch light under the darkness of a crescent moon so weak that I can only see Your eyes by the warm glow of the lighter reaching to kiss your unlit cigarette.

And the way your lips parse, briefly, and join together again on the stained orange paper, an easy instruction for the uninitiated into this nightly ritual.

They touched me like that, once.

“Those things will kill you, you know.”

I said to you once, half drunk on cheap wine that tasted of sin and promises, the kind that peers at you from the bottom shelf like the apple from the tree above

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daring you to open it and uncork the future you keep hidden in the cold recesses of your mind.

A stray ember breaks rank and dances, alone, through the air.

We used to dance like that.

Our feet moving in sync until I forgot where the last of me ended and the first of you began.

We breathed the same air.

It lights the dark as it goes and I watch it, wishing for it to reach the ground and find some rest. but it burns up, and winks at me, an unspoken cruelty The air is thick with the smog you blow with a lofty elegance until I can hardly breathe.

It is not the smell of tar, or the lightness in my head driven on by the blackened air, but the apathy of each pull.

I am dying, but you do not care.

You are dying, but you do not care.

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The first time I saw you light a cigarette: Under the delicate glow of a lamp on my bedside table, your hair unkempt, your brown eyes wide and doe-like as you gazed around my room.

The artistry of it all, the innocence of it, our bare skin pressed flush under the covers.

And despite the smell, which invaded each crevice of the room, I was senseless.

The scent of sex, the caress of your spare hand, the way your face was illuminated, golden, like the fleece. My mind empty but for one word: lovers. That is what we are

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Owen Hayes

wild, wild he breathes the same smoke – yes, his heart burns with the same smoke that he uses to make her choke on fantasies she wishes for. off he goes: glass in hand, proposing toast; whiskey words swirl down the glasses, t’was the heart, of what his business is – homespun Irish tales can’t run out of thread. ay, that’s denial! his devilish nods at the band, Salute! with a smokescreen smile; oh, nice try! he masks misery from playing a part in those love stories ‘bout hearts he’s torn apart, but when his whisper melts gold and separates mist, imagine what morals she’ll forget when he blows a kiss; or when he tells her how falling from the tower of Babel and how falling out of love with him is as abysmal. he’d laugh it off as he places a pistol between the eyes because to him, it’s all just intellectual exercise. then, he will kick her out into the streets or down the nearest screaming abyss, and he will force the liquor down her friends’ throats, in order to make them forget the night’s episodes: they’ll see how sobriety makes nights unworthy of memory. he’ll erase all hopes of returning to sanity,

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as he caresses her arse or nuzzles her ear – leaves her inconsolable when he disappears into the crowd. by his side, a thoughtless lover she becomes – whispering his name between moans as she comes. together, they piss at the heavens up above, at God, and when the sun comes up, the vows they’d forgot.

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Alaina Newell

Five Evil First Dates I have always said that to live a life of true happiness, everyone must first brave five evil first dates. “Evil” here does not mean “bad” or “wrong.” This particular use is more closely synonymous with words like “heinous,” “vile,” and “nefarious.” These dates send you flying back to your roommates with wild eyes; they send a tremor of disgust up your spine and leave you cringing at their memory. These are the five evil first dates.

These dates are not sequential or predictable. You don’t get a card that says, “Watch Out!” the night before or a visit from three ghosts warning you to change your plans before the clock strikes twelve. These dates appear innocuous. They could happen to anyone, and they will happen to you. *** The first of five is what we call “The Sweater.” This date was supposed to occur at a Chili’s, but The Sweater doesn’t like Chili’s because he choked on their Chicken Crispers last time he went.

So, the date is at Starbucks. Not much to choke on there unless you start gnawing on the cups.

The first problem with The Sweater is that he’s forty minutes late.

It’s Starbucks, so you basically ordered as soon as you got there.

You tried to sit by the door and look like you were expecting someone, but after a few minutes the barista was making so much eye contact that it felt like you were letting her down more than your grandma when she saw your tattoo.

When The Sweater finally walks in, you decide to be friendly. You

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compliment him on his red shirt. He says it’s pink.

There’s no way.

Oh, but there is a way. There is a way that his shirt could be pink.

It’s because, as his name suggests, he’s sweated so furiously and profusely that the entire shirt is drenched and has, like a mood ring on an angry child, entirely changed color.

Maybe, you think, you can move past this. So far, you aren’t sure that he knows you know how ungodly sweaty he is. You hope he starts drying out soon. Maybe you can pretend you’re waving away a fly and secretly fan him with your hand. What’s the hand-power to full-body-sweat drying rate?

There’s no mention of the fact that he’s almost an hour late, so you sit down and try not to look at the shirt.

He moves his hand across the table. You stare at the line of sweat that slides out from under it. He asks a question, but you could not be more distracted. Thankfully, the barista has her gaze locked on him like a caffeine-powered tractor beam. He gets up to order.

“Americano, hot.”

God, why?

He grips the cup, wet steam floating up into his face. A single bead of sweat drips down his nose and you watch as it splashes saltily into his coffee. There might be vomit in your throat.

“So, what kind of stuff do you like?”

How could someone this damp be so dry?

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Your response must not be satisfactory, because he announces that the date “started later than he thought” (I wonder why?) and he needs to get back to his apartment to watch football.

You stand to say goodbye. He moves forward, not towards the door, but towards you. He opens his arms.

No human should ever be described as soggy, but when The Sweater envelops you, there are no other words. It’s so near waterboarding that you’re certain he’s violating at least one Geneva Convention.

You can’t even breathe a sigh of relief when he’s gone because your entire body feels like a biohazard. Inhaling could bring infectious particles into your lungs.

The Sweater is the first of five. *** The second evil date is not always immediately identifiable, but once discovered, is by far the most fun. We call this one “The Fibber.”

The date with The Fibber is always in a Buffalo Wild Wings.

Something about the constant presence of televised sports, trivia, and men named Mike brings out the worst in this person.

You just ordered and they’re telling you about one of their friends, Peter. They brought him up because you mentioned something about math. The only issue is that the person whose life they’re describing is not Peter’s, but Matt Damon’s in the Oscar-winning film Good Will Hunting. You’re clued in when The Fibber mentions Peter’s wise-yet-humorous psychologist (Robin Williams) and that he’s a janitor, but also a mathematical genius.

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Despite this first, and ridiculous, lie, you do really want your parmesan garlic wings, so you try to change the topic. The first thing that comes to mind? Politics. No, not a great date topic. Not to worry, though. The Fibber has it covered.

“Oh, yeah, my uncle actually worked for Ronald Reagan when he was president. He was actually best friends with him. They sometimes still go golfing.” They throw in a convincing chuckle.

“I hear he’s got a mean swing.”

It’s amazing Ronald has that much vigor since he’s been dead since 2004, but you sip your water and nod. The best thing about The Fibber is that they don’t stop if they don’t know they’re caught.

“Wow, so tell me about your family. Do you have any siblings?”

They take a deep breath, drawing in the oily air and television static, cooking up a little Buffalo-fueled lie.

“I had a twin, but I absorbed him in the womb.”

You mangle your laugh into a gasp.

“I do have a sister, but she lives in Canada and is in the CIA.” You can’t resist.

“That’s so interesting, is that the Canadian Intelligence Agency?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Mhm. What kind of missions does she go on?”

The Fibber spends a moment deciding whether they should start plagiarizing Jason Bourne or think of a movie without Matt

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Damon in it.

After a long drink of water, they say, “It’s classified.”

These dates never have a follow-up, because something sudden and unexpected always happens to The Fibber. They get in a car accident or their long-lost aunt from Singapore visits on the day of your next date or they have to go play golf with a deceased president. The reasoning is unpredictable, but the result is always the same: a pure, baldfaced lie. Just be glad they don’t absorb you like the twin. *** The third installment in this quintet of evil is “The Driver,” and, my god, would he love that title.

The Driver, like all men without identifiable personalities, is in love with his car. This date takes place exclusively in his vehicle, because the proposed date location is never within walking distance of any place you’ve ever been. He has to pick you up. He’ll just swing by. He doesn’t even need to show you he can parallel park. Not because he’s not good at it. He is. The best, maybe.

He’ll just sit in the street outside your apartment and honk. He might even start honking to the drum beat of “Rollin’” by Limp Bizkit.

When you get in the car he’ll ask if you recognized the honk pattern. Because you’re not Horn Shazam, you don’t, which is exactly the answer he was hoping for. It’s a song from the first Fast and Furious movie. Of course.

Once you’re in the car, safely buckled, he doesn’t check his mirrors and peels off into the street, engine grinding and wheels shrieking. He’s removed the muffler, so it sounds like you’re in a combine running over human bones. Romance is alive.

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Every red traffic light is an affront to The Driver. He hammers his hands against the steering wheel and gestures to the car stopped in front of him, which is, most frequently, a Honda.

“We could’ve gotten through. He shoulda gone.”

You’ve never had anything in common with Rihanna, but, in these moments, you wish he’d shut up and drive.

Every green light is God’s gift to The Driver. Each emerald bulb gets a “Green wave!” or “Bless up!” The bless ups are the most exciting, because he takes both hands off the wheel to point up to God. Sometimes he even signs the cross which gives an extra ten seconds of unmanned steering time. Fifteen when he forgets to tap his head and has to redo it. You’re not religious, but you hope he really does have heavenly connections. Jesus take the wheel.

Yellow lights give The Driver a surge of adrenaline comparable to a mouse on cocaine. He whoops and reaches over to shake your shoulder, slamming your head around while he goes 80 through the intersection.

“You know,” he says, “cops actually can’t arrest you for speeding if the light is yellow.”

Oh, how wrong he is.

The Driver never gets pulled over. He’s protected by some invisible shield that lets him do the stupidest things you’ve ever seen while playing the worst music you’ve ever heard. There are only so many times you can listen to “Highway to Hell” before you start hoping you’ll die and go there.

A shortcut with The Driver is always the longest and worst possible way to get somewhere. Children narrowly escape flattening 30

and numerous one-way streets are reversed all the way down before you offer to turn on Google Maps. This is the greatest insult he’s ever received. He knows the streets.

Pray you never arrive at your destination, because the moment The Driver steps out of his car, he becomes an encyclopedia for every part of the vehicle.

The wheels? Oh yes, he knows what they are, and he just had them rotated. He kicks them to show you how strong they are.

His headlights? New. Wanna see? He blinds you.

When it’s finally time to go into Texas Roadhouse (yes, Road), you ask what he’s getting.

“The All-American Burger.”

You don’t even have to ask why.

“I believe, well, my philosophy is, that everything made in the U.S. of A is superior.”

You wait for it.

“Just look at my car. All-American Chevrolet.” He turns, blowing a kiss back at the parking lot.

Dates with The Driver always end in an Uber ride home.

To read the full piece, scan the QR code

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Jiayou Shen

Alice the umich student

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Jack Johnston

Ode to the Eagle We the People, elected you— a stoic, valiant, apex predator to spearhead the new world.

A pure white helmet, adorned with a cruel golden crest, commands the skies through your vigilant eyes The bald eagle is the vanguard of rife liberty and the pursuit of wealthiness, a warrior of red, white, and blue.

The designated raptor has been drafted into eternal attention, a condemnation only determinable by God’s Favorite Nation.

Did you become a protected species for honor, or demand the title due to our needless pesticides that plagued your insides.

And this country says they hate ill eagles.

With your pomp and prestige, glory-mad hunters view you between black, unforgiving crosshairs.

As your breeding grounds are chopped down, you wonder why the respect others have for you is feather-deep—

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enough to place you on billboards and weapons of war. Somehow we, the American People, can’t help but sell your carcass on black markets.

As your fledglings take to the heavens, and explore this new world, I wish them blissful dissociation from the species that idolizes them.

A symbol of freedom, chained by its own devotees.

Forced upon this star-spangled podium, the bird remains, its wings clipped.

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Harper Johnston

Being Slue-Foot Sue I can ride almost as good as the man himself, but it’s never enough to keep my ass on the saddle. In some versions, he falls with me and our boot prints stamp outlines into the dusky, cracked dirt of a forgotten part of Texas. Sometimes, I am a horse with a broken leg—there is nothing he can do but press the warm, ready end of his shotgun to my temple and tell me sweet dreams as the lights spark up all shattered and then go turpentine dark.

Other endings, I am bucked off his jealous mustang in my yellow wedding dress and bustle—a burning comet-bride until I settle in a crater among the stars. To be his wife is to be trapped, starving on the harvest moon. He lassos me—wraps a rattlesnake around my waist, pulls me back to him, and the dust, and the desert—or he misses, and the rope falls back to earth with a thud at his feet and the coyotes howl to me, forever amen. * I turn to admire this girl in the big big mirrors. I’m in the third grade and the cowgirl winking back is tinier than you’d think and so so cute in her blue polka dot dress with ruffles on all possible hems so she’s a flurry of lace—puffed sleeves, collar, and the swish of crinoline under her ridiculous skirt—though the edge hits higher than it should now, but I’ve pushed my arms into the sleeves because I don’t care to keep myself from doing what I want for practical reasons. My mother wore this getup too—proud streak a mile long, generationally long, runs back like the Rio Grande—originally made for my grandmother by her mother, so that’s three mothers and myself here if you’re keeping count. Grandma is what she calls sentimental, and what my mother calls a stage two hoarder once she hears the car doors click

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shut but Oh! is Grandma so proud to have kept this sweet navy polka dot thing with yellowing lace ruffles that has held its dust like a starlet clutches her bouquets waiting for her next final bow.

Passed down like tall tales, she is coming off the hanger again to become Slue-Foot Sue. * I have prepared for all endings, any version of the story I’m telling tonight, when my hair crackles like catfish on a spit, whiskers twirling as the ribbons around my braids move as we do—back to back, face to face—as the book reads itself again, or someone does, or we live it out loud—the do-si-do I’ve done in endless dances. Each time returns to the same partner, and we start again when we hear the sharp twang of the caller, crying encore! My feet are turned out and too big but the steps are familiar enough—the knife cleaves the longhorn from hide again, it is draped over my shoulders still warm with life and cow but the night is cold and clear. Orion’s shotgun cocked and pointed with his finger resting on his leather holster, a lazy wait for his navy spyglass eye—he wants to watch this play out. I am back at the mouth of the Rio Grande, the reins of the catfish are in my hands but I can’t turn around. In the end I am his story to tell. * I’m bothered that my Pecos Bill has not bothered to ask his mother to starch and iron his cowboy shirt. We wait for the curtain to open on our outlines, moving like shadow puppets silent behind the scrim—him with the palomino stick horse and wrinkled shirt, me in the cowgirl boots I pleaded for in Sedan three “this might be your last time seeing grandma”’s ago. She hangs in there alright, stomps on tarantulas as her spurs jangle, fends off rattlesnakes with a good’n pokey stick. I go back to

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her, to the next scene in the script and to his last line before my entrance, to the danger and cigarette butts of the backyard, to the Rio Grande carving divots in the cracked rehearsal room floor.

It’s the first time I’m proposed to—he picked out a mood ring for me at the mall which he offers up for real on one knee after our fake wedding. Four years later, he makes fun of me in seventh grade science—I pull out my left hand and ask if this is any way to treat your fiancé—he pulls out a lasso and his shotgun and asks if I’d like to be rescued from the moon this time. The ring flashes catfish.

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WRITER SPOTLIGHT Harper Johnston KS: What was the moment that came to you first or the character that came to you first?

HJ: I couldn’t remember the name of a character that I played in a theater camp in elementary school that was all about American folklore...but it’s based off a cowboy legend from Texas. There’s like a million different versions of the story... It’s such a weirdly specific story, and so many of the details are just so surreal and so odd and it was a really fun starting place for me to think about all of the really weird plot elements that are going on there and the separation of stories.

KS: What made you decide to do a longer form piece as a prose poem?

HJ: Yeah, I don’t usually work in longer poems, and I’ve been trying to break out of that recently, or push myself to do something different. So for this one, I just kept having things to say which was nice, and I like using the structure of what I’m doing to inform what’s going on in the piece and vice versa. I felt like it needed to be longer because of the recurring nature of things and how things keep cycling and a wanting to return back to things.

I think it needed more room and more words. Doing sections also needed more room for this switch to happen, to go back and forth. So I think that’s kind of how it ended up being longer. It gives you more of a chance to draw from the way that folklore is told, and the way that cowboy stories and stories of the American West go. Using that rhythm was also more prose leaning.

To listen to the full interview, scan the QR code or visit writertowriterumich.music.blog 38

Ellie Marchese

Electric July

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Kiran Koul

1:26 AM The night crackled like flare guns, the dark blue ripped like denim jeans you made me wear because my knees were free. You tell me to be free this one time, grab a Dr. Pepper (your fifth) and tilt your chin to the sky.

You say it tastes like happiness, soda’s fizzy giggle on your tongue. Laughter drumming in my ears.

Unsteady feet buzzing like neons. Rain.

Your last words become my first and we’re crashing together down wet streets and evenings hasty enough that we forget our raincoats back at home.

So this is what it means to be seventeen. Sprinting.

Each footstep bursts like a firecracker and I swear I see sparks under your soles.

We revel in sticky hands and the crunch of aluminum cans before our cavities grow into holes big enough to fall into and our hearts’ eccentric incandescence fades like chemtrails. You tell me to forget the future and start singing the alphabet backwards.

We skid through shop-lit puddles, untied shoelaces bouncing from side to side.

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