The objective of The Messenger is to encourage the appreciation and exploration of the creative arts on the University of Richmond campus. Since 1876, The Messenger has celebrated student work by publishing submissions in a literary and visual arts magazine. More information on the magazine, as well as past publications since 1987, can be found on messengerur.wordpress.com.
Acknowledgements
The Messenger staff would like to thank Dr. David Stevens for his continued support and guidance as our faculty sponsor. We are also grateful for the University of Richmond’s English and Visual and Media Arts Practice departments, who continually encourage students to create and submit their works, and the authors and artists who never fail to amaze us with their talent. Finally, we would like to thank our readers for their interest in our magazine. Without you all, we wouldn’t have this publication.
Award Winners
The Margaret Haley Carpenter Award for Poetry
This award is presented to a student who has had an outstanding poem submitted for publication in The Messenger. The winner is chosen by a panel of English faculty members.
Definitions (for Robert Landsburg)
Jessy Taylor
Honorable Mentions
some kind of colonialism
Susannah Carter
Abstraction #04
Olivia Couch
A Boy Named Congress
Ann Sabin
In German, snake is a line you wait in
Reece Steidle
after Naked Lunch
Bella Stevens
Mightier than the (s)word
Jessy Taylor
The Margaret Owen Finck Award for Creative Writing
This award is presented to a student who has had an outstanding creative work submitted for publication in The Messenger. The winner is chosen by a panel of English faculty members.
A Fowl Fate Maddox Lowe
Honorable Mentions
Tympanostomy Callia Nickels
My father and I are starting to have the same smile Jessy Taylor
Staff
Co-Editors-in-Chief
Julia Abcug
Helen Mei
Associate Editor
Bella Stevens
Treasurer
Ally Martinez
Poetry and Prose Editors
Julia Abcug
Mary Margaret Clouse
Makayla Hamlin
Ally Martinez
Amy Ogle
Kyrie Robertson
Ann Sabin
Will Sheets
Reece Steidle
Jessy Taylor
Virginia Thompson
Art and Design Editors
Holly Cheng
Helen Mei
Olivia Park
Annabelle Zong
Letter from the Editors
The creation of this year’s issue witnessed one of the most tumultuous times around the U.S. and the world. The works in this issue were made alongside political upheavals and social changes that occurred on national and global levels. As these events were broadcasted on television screens, our writers and artists captured their feelings in the works collected in these pages. This issue reflects the many uncertainties our generation has for the future. There is a common feeling of doubt that runs throughout the works featured here. As the works vacillate between humor and gravity, contemplation and examination, so too do their creators’ feelings for the present and incoming future.
With the turn of each page, we hope to make community with our readers by acknowledging the collective doubt that is present in this issue and, in turn, acknowledge that we’re together in this feeling. This feeling of collectivity is something worth noting, even in the face of our doubt. So, while our generation looks to the future with uncertainty, maybe by acknowledging this collective doubt, we can create a collective hope, too.
In making this issue, the variety of pieces featured here were curated with care, each resonating with our magazine staff in significant ways, so much that we wanted our readers to share those moments as well. As you go through this issue we hope you feel those impacts–collective doubts, hope, or maybe even something else personal.
Warmly,
Helen and Julia
Co-Editors-in-Chief
A Boy Named Congress
Ann Sabin
There is nothing ridiculous about a boy named Congress. Nothing at all. In fact, Congress is a wonder.
He rides a horse to school, wears wigs during recess, and keeps peanuts in his front coat pocket.
Congress can and should cough without covering his mouth. He needs to be heard!
“Congress bit the class pet!”
“Congress ripped my shirt in half!”
“Congress drew a nude in art class!”
Is that all that matters to you guys?
Congress was born with his hands cupped like a begging angel. And his eyes were open!
Big. Like moons trapped inside a baby.
I heard once he laughed so hard his heart fell out and they made him swallow it down like a pill.
After all that, you think Congress gives an eff about school? He once mimed pouring tea and then spitting it out when the teacher asked for his homework.
Congress may be in our grade, but he is not our age. I don’t know how old he is. He tried to use Sacagaweas at the arcade and his knees howl when he runs.
God! Congress is the best damn thing that has ever happened to us! You all must be as blind as bats at brunch if you cannot see that. And, by the way, what else are you supposed to name a kid like that? Peter?
Old man stares out window, preparing for death
Maddox Lowe
START DICTATION
“Avenge me!”
PAUSE DICTATION
(delete sentence)
START DICTATION
“My dear family, I thought it might be nice to write this letter as a reminder of how much I love you. To Cathy, always stay your feisty and ferocious self, no matter how much trouble you get in. To Michael Jr, don’t ever let a wonky knee keep you off the court. To Eliza, know that you have the creativity and talent to make anything possible.”
PAUSE DICTATION
(delete sentences)
START DICTATION
“I’m leaving Jonny my knives and snuff boxes. This isn’t up for discussion, these are my dying wishes. When I started this family in secret, I thought it would be something just for me, a respite from prior commitments. I never thought you all would grow up so… combative, just like your old man, but here we are.”
(new paragraph)
“I don’t have regrets… whatsoever. Well, except for breaking both my hands.”
PAUSE DICTATION
START DICTATION
“At the same time.”
(new paragraph)
“To Maggie, wear something sexy at my funeral. Your fiancé is a homosexual, I could probably do you better from the grave. Let me rock your world ghost style. Mike out.”
END DICTATION
A Man and His Cricket
Georgia Leakey
Bella Stevens
birdsong
Bella Stevens after Aase Berg
I puke, molten slush dribbling down my cheek, mouth slacked as my intestines hollow out. I hear a voice, laughing at my fingers. They are so limp that they cannot stop my mouth’s ooze. Instead I pick at my skin and discard the dead flesh. Open wounds feel so bitter, that bodily warm met with the prickly breeze. I would stop to clean myself but there isn’t a point. I wallow. My ear tilts slightly to the sound of a sparrow. I haven’t felt the urge to make life since the last time I bled. He is looking at me like his mother. I have too much buried in my swamp of a stomach to carve out a space for his ache.
A Fowl Fate
Maddox Lowe
As I opened the front door to the cabin, a gust of icy wind shoved me back inside. The temperature gauge read negative ten degrees. I braced myself again and trudged out to the chicken coop across an icy field, grabbing the metal digging bar that was propped against the shed. As I approached the plastic tub to break the ice layer that had formed on the surface, I noticed a red and white blur of feathers poking out of the freeze. At eight years old, I had yet to accustom myself to the trials and tribulations of farm life and panicked at the sight of a frozen meat chicken stuck like an arctic fossil. Frantically, I smashed the bar into the ice with swift force and rescued the stiff body. When my mother returned from the goat barn, she found me sitting in the rocking chair with a rockhard lump of icy feathers, wrapped in a towel. She took the package from me and wiped my tear-stained face with her sleeve.
“Go grab the hairdryer,” she said after inspecting the scene. Renewed with hope, I sat with hairdryer and bird in my lap. As it blew, the feathers dampened and I rubbed a towel along the belly, back, crown, and feet of my defrosting chicken. After a while, there was movement. A beady eye blinked and his legs thumped, searching for ground within the blanket. I continued with the blow dryer on low until every feather was dry. Although a bit frostbitten, his crown became pliable again and he let out a soft crow. At that moment, I believed in farm miracles. My mother placed new straw in the coop and put a fresh warming bulb in the overhead fixture. I carefully placed Chickensickle in his warm nest and shut the coop door tight with satisfaction. * * *
I first came to Virginia when I was five, leaving the beaches of Key West for my grandparents’ farm. We originally came so my mother could care for her parents, but once settled in, my parents began collecting new projects. First came laying hens and meat chickens, which were eventually my responsibility. I fed and watered them, let them
in and out of the coop, and collected the eggs which I sold. However, the role of steward of the chickens came with lessons that stung, my mistakes often the difference between life and death. We were connected by a promise of care and protection in exchange for sustenance and nourishment. I had a duty to my flock and Chickensickle’s rescue instilled in me an understanding of the power I had over the lives of my animals.
But my parents didn’t stop at poultry. Next came milk goats, then ducks, geese, quail, and pigs, along with expansive herb and vegetable gardens. The farm chores became endless. My sister and I were expected to participate as much as our physical strength would allow. The farm shaped our lives just as much as our efforts shaped it. Not only did it provide for us, but caring for animals structured our way of life. Often we were late to school because of an escaped posse of goats or a neighbor’s cow choosing to give birth in our driveway. The last menagerie of creatures to join our farm was a pair of young pigs, Rizzo and Wallace. The pair produced multiple litters of piglets that squealed and escaped, ate enormous amounts of feed, and rooted up painstakingly built fences. Noises at feeding time were a cacophony of grunts, growls, and squeals. The hungry masses would swarm and push and fight their way to the trough. The pigs were robust and full of life, but one particular litter shook me to my core. Birth can be brutal and at the age of twelve, it quickly became clear to me that the farm is no place for the weakhearted.
One warm morning, Rizzo didn’t come up for breakfast. I stood at the fence, slop bucket in hand, calling for the pregnant sow. Something immediately seemed wrong. The dark skeletal forms of vultures blemished the green canopies of the trees. Suddenly, one swooped overhead, in its talons a pink form writhed and struggled, its squeals shattering the eerie morning silence. Rizzo had given birth earlier than expected, and the new life was heralded not by the stork, but rather by a squad of nefarious harbingers of death. Vultures carried piglets off into the air, dropping them midflight all over the farm. I got my parents and rushed down to the birth site. I watched as piglets flew all around me carried by large black wings. As my mother rushed down to Rizzo and protected her as she pushed out her last two piglets, I went about
the business of tracking down the rest of the litter, scattered around the property. Out of the eleven we managed to find, many were mangled, some already dead.
We collected the remaining piglets, placed them in my basement shower with a heat lamp, and bottle-fed them goat colostrum. The vet instructed that they needed to eat every two hours. So, by the time we finished nursing the whole litter, we had about forty minutes before we had to start the process over. Rizzo was traumatized. Believing her litter to be dead, she ignored the survivors, leaving their survival up to us. The vet cautioned my mother that without colostrum from their mom, the piglets had only a thirty percent chance of survival. Still, I had hope. I could save the litter that nature had turned its back on. I could be the difference between certain death and the promise of survival. We took exhausting shifts around the clock until they could drink from a pan. But despite sleepless nights, we began to lose some of the weaker ones. I cried with each loss, every death a failure. I craved another miracle, some sign that our efforts weren’t in vain, some glimmer of hope.
As the survivors grew, one piglet stood out. She was mostly pink, spattered with small black freckles. With feeding, bath time, and vet visits, she would visibly rally and nudge her siblings. She would lay on top of the ones pushed to the edge of the pack to keep them warm. It quickly became clear that Strawberry, as she became known, was a natural leader and mother. After about a month or more of pigs in the basement, they were moved to a stall. We began mixing formula with pig food and they grew and flourished, all by Strawberry’s lead. Out of the thirteen piglets birthed that day, only four survived to adulthood. Strawberry stayed on the farm, her natural leadership traits forged in crisis made her too valuable to eat. Despite her mass, she was polite and well-behaved, at times better than the dogs or my sisters.
But I had hoped for a miracle and received none. The majority of the litter was lost, but what was salvaged was nonetheless valuable. And yet, I struggled with my role in the piglets’ survival. Strawberry was not a farm miracle. She was a disaster response, her leadership qualities nature’s answer to a very natural crisis. I couldn’t save the majority of the piglets, despite my efforts. I saw myself as the guardian, and yet it was
Strawberry who assured her siblings’ survival. In a way, Strawberry was adaptation, the natural culmination of her traumatic circumstances. To me, Strawberry’s very existence undermined my role as the farmer. She was nature’s response, less miraculous and more innate, and in this way outside of my control. I felt powerless and confused. The way I saw it, I had fallen flat in my responsibilities as a young farmer, and Strawberry had picked up my slack.
Following the pig catastrophe, we bought two white geese and a flock of Pekin ducks. The geese ruled their multi-species flock with an iron fist, honking and biting at anyone who stepped out of line. The ducks were more docile, their sweet friendliness in direct contrast to their unforgiving leadership. But the ducks were bought as a food source, and their slaughter was imminent. Now fourteen, I had a role in this process. After a full day of harvesting, my parents granted two lucky ducks a pardon and a reprieve from the plate. Launchpad, bright white with a brilliant yellow bill, was a fine specimen and his friendly nature already had cemented his role as a pet. But although his pardon was a first brush with death, it wouldn’t be his last. Launchpad and his mate lived out their days swimming in the trough and waddling about with the geese. However, following the death of his mate, Launchpad found reintegration with the fowl clique difficult. He soon abandoned the noise and abuse of the goose pen and began his life as a chicken, following the hens into the coop at sunset and emerging at daybreak. However, just as Launchpad seemed to adjust to his new locale, his resilience would be put to the test.
One chilly morning I was awakened by the haunting cry of a fox, a high-pitched scream that shattered the morning silence. Any bird owner knows that the fox is the natural enemy of feathered friends. Peering out of our frosty kitchen window, I caught sight of my mother running barefoot in the grass in her nightgown, banging two wine bottles together from the recycling. I wiped frost off the window with my sleeve and identified what she was chasing. A bright orange fox dragged Launchpad down the hill. The two tumbled and fought, the duck’s struggles no match for the stronger predator. As I watched, a wine bottle came hurdling through the air from my mother’s direction and clunked the fox
directly on the head. The fox released its grip on Launchpad and fled, his would-be meal a survivor once again.
Launchpad’s final trial would come much later and from the skies. Racing down the driveway late for varsity lacrosse practice, the shadow of an enormous bird momentarily shrouded my windshield in darkness. The largest bald eagle I had ever seen descended to the left of my car, its talons outstretched toward Launchpad, asleep in the grass. Before I could react, the eagle had grasped him. I honked and screamed as the eagle flapped its enormous wings, struggling to gain height with its heavy passenger. With the noise from the car paired with Launchpad’s voluptuous duck physique, the eagle was forced to drop the duck who immediately sought refuge beneath my car. The predator was gone as quickly as it had descended, and Launchpad had stared down death once again.
After tending to his wounds and leaving him to rest in the coop, I drove to practice in silence. We had spared Launchpad from slaughter, and yet nature had other tests in store. Launchpad was a pet, loved and protected. But there was only so much I could do to keep him safe. Launchpad’s trials had toughened him, each one preparing him for the next. Our decision to spare him only set him on that path, however. I realized in that moment that my control over life on the farm was an illusion. There were no miracles born out of a farmer’s desperation. There was only the cycle of death and rebirth, where leaders and survivors alike are born out of natural crisis and necessity. Strawberry hadn’t undermined my role as the farmer. She was nature’s rebalancing, her struggles early on preparing her to bring more life into the world as a mother. Death to prepare for life. As a farmer, my role wasn’t to control. I can guide and protect to the best of my ability, but ultimately the fate of my animals is left to the natural world, as is perhaps ours. I knew then that I did not own; the animals on our farm belong to nature, their fates written in the seasons of harvest and rebirth. It’s very difficult to give up control, and at that moment I thought of Chickensickle and how all that time ago, his fate had been decided for me.
I trekked out to the coop, my feet sinking into the soft grass. In the weeks since I had found him frozen, the weather had warmed; spring was upon us. I walked past the trough, the liquid surface rippling in the morning breeze. The digging bar rested in its place against the shed. I was becoming increasingly frustrated with Chickensickle. I had brought him from the verge of death, but in the weeks since, he wasn’t quite right. He staggered about and acted oddly, holding his head sort of cocked and insisting on sleeping in a laying box. Every morning, I walked to the coop, helped him out of his box, and forced him to eat and drink. But I didn’t mind doing it, Chickensickle was my miracle and I would do what I could to nurse him back to health. I reached the coop and pulled open the door. Chickensickle’s box was empty. His crumpled form lay on the ground, lifeless. I stood in the open coop doorway as dust wafted out on a spring breeze.
Mightier than the (s)word
Jessy Taylor
In the beginning there was the word, and the word was made flesh. The word flesh took on a different form, formed words like carrion and carnivorous and wove its way through the body. Body was also a word, no longer homunculus when given meaning. Words flowed through a consciousness and words described what the body saw. What the eyes (another word) saw. And in all of the body’s wordness there was a place to form thoughts, made up of strings of words. The brain strung those words together and wove them into other words through interpretation. The words were not only sounds, but meanings. Words meant other words. Words meant life. Words meant death. A word was a weapon mightier than the sword, because the sword was also a word. The sword could only be constructed through instructions, words translated into action. The melting of the metal, the bending and the casting, could only be described by words. The sword was made of words. The words displaced their s and put it on their chests like armor. The sword penetrated the flesh, which was the word, which came from the word, and the word was everything beginning at its end.
Duel
Miah Walker
after Naked Lunch
Bella Stevens
One thing they never understand is when I say I feel like those seniors stuffing their faces, mouth-agape & slobbering all over their chins or dripping from their feeding tubes, shirt stains stiff from the stuff. I can’t stop myself from my own disgust. It’s a part of my being. I taste my wisdom teeth growing in, all stubby and catching my compost scraps from last night’s dinner. Sometimes I breathe out sharp and full and smell my mouth rotting. Can you imagine?
Decaying while you’re still alive? Waking up one morning with your bones all tangled and aching, that incessant yelling, like someone’s screaming from inside of you? It’s not all as fun as it sounds, believe me. It’s a pest waking up every night at the witching hour frothing at the mouth for some painkillers, rummaging in nightstand drawers hoping that you won’t have to roll out of the fetal position, stretch out those stoned ovaries, and walk your ass over to the bathroom to tear apart the cabinets like a drug dog. It’s a tired life I’m living. Seeing those geezers spilling soup down their faces in those diners, well shit, that makes someone like me feel like I’m nearing an expiration date, living beyond my years.
In German, snake is a line you wait in
Reece Steidle
Caricature of life as ouroboros:
Writhing rings of Saturn
I am still the lineleader from childhood’s throes
(I have not forsaken my post)
Grade school sleeper agent
Bred cold-blooded American
Chasing his tail
(I am still waiting for the signal)
Nothing says Order like S’s of war
Reich of the sinusoidal
Zigzag across the crossfire
And raise high the coiled banner
I fly holding patterns wielding an H-bomb
Loose the highway
Ravaging the horizon
Snake across the hillsides
Venomous concrete-cobra
Spit poison sky high and
(I change passports twice in a bank line)
Clear the left lane for me
Damn your snakes
German is not my forked mothertongue.
Definitions (for Robert Landsburg)
Jessy Taylor
a·poc·a·lypse
/əˈpäkəˌlips/ noun
1. Fast approaching, comes when you least expect it. Your body is the first defense against the ensuing cataclysm. You can either turn away and pretend you’re not too high up the mountain to escape, or attempt to capture evidence of your end.
2. Holds the beauty of Helen, of war incepted at every camera shutter. Shakes you into a dream rather than awake.
/aSH/ noun
1. Do not inhale.
2. Used in a sentence: It was not in your job description to frame yourself among the ash. Photographers never step in front of the lens.
verb
1. A translation; cremation.
2. Become a pyroclastic envoy of granular soot, art cache in a carcass, definition under M for masterclass in photographic
mar·tyr·dom
/ˈmärdərdəm/
noun
1. Originated by the Christian Church.
2. Slaughter by one’s own belief.
3. The north-west transept of Canterbury Cathedral; worship built to your remembrance centuries before your existence.
cam·er·a ob·scu·ra
/ˌkam(ə)rə əbˈskyo͝orə/
noun
1. Latin for dark chamber.
2. (are you) Holding or held within.
3. Encapsulation within is tantamount to immortality.
4. The cylindrical rainfall will be printed by your mourners.
pe·num·bra
/pəˈnəmbrə/
noun
1. A shadow over art made through sacrifice.
2. A beast that would have eaten you either way.
a. At least you captured him, even if from within his maw.
ho·mo·noid ap·er·ture
/ˈhōmōˌnoidˈapərˌCHo͝or/
noun
1. The hole through which the photographer can be seen when one looks into the lens of a camera; see peephole.
2. Grief; I cannot write a poem about your life when all you are is your death. You were a photographer, survived by undeveloped pictures under your body’s cover.
3. A desperate attempt at making sure some part of you survived.
Tympanostomy
Callia Nickels
I didn’t learn to talk until I was older than two. Until the day I spoke my first word, I kept to myself, stacking blocks to build eye-high towers and gripping jumbo crayons to color in the lines. I could throw and catch, walk down the stairs, sort my stuffed animals by color and size, and sculpt play doh into the shapes of them. I knew love too; I’d hug my mom so tight my fingernails would leave a mark. I was smarter than a two year old should be. I wasn’t developmentally delayed or behind or slow. I couldn’t talk because I couldn’t hear. That was it.
Bird Trail
Miah Walker
In the vastness that was my silent mind existed a stillness where all things were known but nameless. The stuff on the four pronged metal stick eased my stomach rumbles. The plastic toy that looked like me could fly if I lifted it above my head and ran in circles. The green stuff outside was pointy but soft enough in certain patches to roll around in it. My dad’s eyes went wide when I stuck a certain finger up. My skin would turn a different color when I fell.
I lived in a world where silence was not an absence, but a presence—a space filled with untold stories, unknown utterances, and a heartbeat of existence. I became attuned to keen facial shifts, lip movements, specific hand gestures, and the tenderness of touch; the invisible strings that connected my life to others without the deliverance of sound. I was closer to the core of things, I sensed what others missed.
Before I learned to call the world by its name, I understood it already in its truest form—whole, unbroken, and full of wonder. When my ears finally opened to the noise of it, they carried a subtle wisdom, a gift from the world that spoke to me before words ever did.
I miss the eternal quiet sometimes.
subject
Ryan Doherty
When I was thirteen years old I thought I knew what it meant to control. My psychology teacher in high school gave us a project where we were to condition classically, in the vein of Ivan Pavlov, an animal of our choice to do a certain action. She gave us two weeks to finish the assignment and present the results of our experiment to the class.
That weekend, I went to the pet store to find myself a cheap subject that I could easily condition to make the assignment less difficult. I went to the betta aisle and the fish were stacked on top of each other in tiny plastic containers like groceries. Almost all of them looked like they were dead or were about to be. Their fins were ragged and decaying like the white flag of a beaten-down and surrendering army. I flicked the container of a fading jade fish, and he didn’t react. I looked into his black eyes, but there was no reflection, no spark. Nothing. This was the same pattern for most of these fish, all condemned to the clearance aisle and remembered only by their $8.99 tag.
Except there was one. Instead of lying down and preparing to die like the others, he danced. He swam around his tiny prison as if those plastic walls didn’t exist. His blue, orange, and gold scales glistened under the store’s fluorescent lights. There wasn’t a more perfect subject for my experiment.
I bought a small tank from the store and some fish food to keep him sustained throughout the study. The goal of classical conditioning is to force an animal to make a conditioned response to a neutral stimulus which becomes associated with an unconditioned stimulus. In simple terms, it's about making an animal react a certain way to something that you do, such as ringing a bell, etc. For the design of my experiment, my fingertip would be the neutral stimulus, fish pellets would make the association, and his following my fingertip would be the conditioned response.
For the remainder of the week, I would place my fingertip into his tank,
and then place a pellet right next to it. He would come up and greet me, then eat his reward. After completing these repetitions numerous times, I put only my fingertip in the water. As I moved it around, he would follow. If I went to a far corner, he would as well. It got to the point where if I touched my finger against the glass, he would approach it, almost kissing it. His reality was mine to dictate. I became his god. All it took was a wave from my finger to get him to move, dance, swirl, and jump across the tank. He was beautiful as much as he was pathetic. I presented this footage to the class and received a 100% on the project. For that, he earned his name, a combination of my best friend’s and my own: Myron.
I wasn’t yet finished with Myron. I was an aspiring photographer and I decided to do a photoshoot of him to present to my photography class. He became my muse. I had developed a fascination with minimalist still life photography and developed my own style where I would isolate my subject (flowers, fruit, or vases) against a blank black background. This would give me full autonomy over how whatever I was photographing would appear, and it was this control that was the most important aspect.
Myron was rebellious, though. He claimed every part of my photography’s negative space as his. He wasn’t shy to show himself off, and I was following his lead instead of my own when I was taking photographs of him. If he wanted to swim around and flaunt his fins, he would, and if he just wanted to sleep in the corner, he would do so. He was the model and director, and he was only allowing me to capture his artistic vision. For that, I had to be grateful. His golden tails flowed like silk banners, and his deep, smooth sapphire skin shone like an ocean’s horizon under moonlight.
When I would get closer to the tank, though, my eyes would re-focus, and instead of looking at him, I saw my reflection. My skin was rough like gravel with scars burnt into it by the sun. He was what I wanted to be. He was magnificent. I was disgusting. I hated my body, my face, my voice. He swam around with thoughtless confidence, never needing to acknowledge his radiance, all he did was exist. I spent every moment thinking about
how I appeared, how I dressed, and how others thought of how I looked.
Throughout his being in my care, Myron actually came to like me. I learned this fact after cleaning out his tank numerous times since atrocious-smelling bubbles would form and cluster at its surface. What I learned shocked me. The more bubbles the betta produced, the more satisfied the fish was with his life. And his bubbles were overflowing from the tank, each one being a love letter to me. I decided to turn our initial contract into a long-term arrangement. I bought tiny black rocks to place at the bottom of his tank, an electric waterfall that would extract muck from the tank, and a plastic palm tree decoration. I also, ignorant of cultural sensitivities, placed a Buddha statue that would protect and watch over him when I could not. Now I was playing servant again. I had to clean his tank each week, keep him well-fed, allow him sunlight, and make sure his fins were healthy and maintained, all so he could reward me with his bubbles.
After about six months of him being in my possession, or me in his, my family decided to take a short trip to Richmond. I would be separated from Myron for the first time since I met him. I could have cleaned his tank up and asked my next-door neighbor’s children if they’d be interested in taking care of him in my stead. The kids wouldn’t have been able to contain their excitement as I explained how to care for him for the week, and I know they would have done an excellent job doing so. What I decided to do instead was let Myron die. I unplugged his electric waterfall, didn’t leave any pellets for him, turned off the lights, and slowly closed my bedroom door. When I came back, he was upside down and lying in the statue’s lap.
I didn’t bury him. I didn’t tell my parents. There was no eulogy, no song, no prayer nor an afterthought as I flushed his body down the toilet. I dumped his rocks into my backyard and threw his electric filter out. After that, I washed his Buddha statue and placed it exactly where his tank was. I never cleaned the statue again. It’s been watching me ever since.
Phantom Crossing
Miah Walker
The Language of Exclusion
Erlinda Sali
The fear of a whisper forces me to be loud.
What is whispered is sacred, unwelcomed to travel further than mouth to ear. The intimacy of a whisper, the information few are worthy to know.
I’m not given the honor of a whisper.
Where is the logic in ‘just above a whisper’? Once it exceeds the norm of what is a whisper then it ceases to exist. And if there is ‘just above’, then surely there should be ‘just below’. Even though ‘just below a whisper’ would be nothingness. Yet somehow, the whispers around me seem to live in that liminal space; just above or just below. They love to whisper whenever I’m there.
Whispers to leave me stranded.
Whispers that last sound before sharing a knowing smile.
Whispers knowing that I’m sitting right across the table trying to fathom it.
If it’s just a small meaningless whisper, whisper it loud enough to reach me.
The whisper is an indication of failure – the human connection I couldn’t manage to create. The tightrope of a whisper is one I never got to master. So I stand here, being a little too loud for their liking, because if the whisper makes me invisible, I’ll do anything to make myself heard.
gingivitis
Bella Stevens
I pluck out my teeth to make room for god. I hear him when I whistle, all tissue and no bone. Barely a sound. I’m tired of clenching my jaw so tight that it hurts to speak. Maybe my roots will decay, expunge these razors from my skull. In the meantime I lick my bloody mouth-flesh, feel those mauled gums dangling, empty. A holy taste of absence. There is no tooth to replace my baby bone. It is all I have. Once the pain has passed, I wonder if these scars will bring me closer to you.
Time’s Toothache
Julian Moore
My father and I are starting to have the same smile
Jessy Taylor
I stopped wearing my retainer a few years back, and the front left tooth on the bottom has begun to angle itself inwards. I saw it in the mirror this morning, almost expecting it to wiggle back and forth, to be loosening itself. Unrooting itself. It reminded me of a photo I’d taken of my father a few years back, the one where he’s wearing a wine charm as if it were an earring, sitting in my dead grandmother’s recliner. It’s the only time I can ever say I’ve captured his grin. I suppose it’s not his grin, but him grinning. It doesn’t belong to him. I think it might belong to me, but wouldn’t that make it an inheritable trait? Something we share, encoded within ourselves down to an atomic scope? I ask myself— mouthing the words to see if the tooth resets itself with the movement—why angled inward? My tooth remains crooked, laughing at my naivete, my wandering, silly mind. My mind then makes it a metaphor, and my tooth replies: Pal, you’re in need of some introspection. I already
toothmark
Bella Stevens
knew that. I always need to look inside. I’m the only member of my family that can’t stand looking inwards, seeing the plaque and the veins and the gums. They’re all doctors and dentists, and I’m a writer. My father was an artist in another life. He’s a soon-to-retire plastic water bottle mold salesman in this rendition.
The tooth next to the angling bastard has a chip in it, not enough to bother fixing. I’d gotten that procedure before on one of my molars. The dentist noticed a chip and decided to take the tooth apart in order to put it back together. If I liked metaphors, I think I’d be the tooth. Or maybe I’m the dentist, grinding down the small chip, creating a deeper chasm so I can feel like the filling-in will make a difference. Making something newly artificial. But wouldn’t the artificial tooth still anchor itself in the same root?
My father and I are starting to have the same smile, and I’m not sure what amount of us still remains from before the chip was made.
Olivia Couch
my vocabulary did this to me though what you really mean is the world was too big for your brain so you drank the world away, every word on the page no longer internal and so, manageable. the obsession with a poet’s obsession with the death of another poet is sacred—your vocabulary didn’t do this to you. everything was too accessible, including words, yours and lorca’s, and the way you imitate a young boy’s geometric suicide in technicolor. you hand the bartender a book that will one day be worth thousands but right now it is full of one night stands that sing with regret. you belong to the bay in the same way your vocabulary belongs to you, at once too big and too small to fill the space, and you bullied your earlier poems out of the full collection. you look with derision on the early days, on city lights, on selling out. you follow lorca from the poverty ward of san francisco general hospital. i find a view of the golden gate bridge from the tenth floor of the uc berkeley math building and remember that somewhere between here and there, between you and your vocabulary, your vocabulary and me, there was a renaissance, and it was beautiful, and it killed you.
The morning before a Santa Cruz gallery opening Olivia Couch
It’s shoes, really, but Eli makes them out of older shoes, puts foam on them, writes about what makes something handmade. He is very cool and I am wearing my Freddy Krueger sweater and sweating through it, watching strawberries decompose on my plate before I eat them. Jacob asks for a fun fact about Ancient Greece and I tell him about Zeus, his Greek epithet, Zeus father, Zeu Pater, the Roman Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system, the angriest, my father. Jacob tells me he doesn’t understand, I tell him I don’t know any other fun facts. He looks at me like I don’t know what fun means, maybe I don’t, I am my father’s daughter after all, although Kris Kristofferson died two weeks ago and Pete Rose a few days after, and strings are snapping left and right. I don’t tell Jacob this. I go find Catherine and she asks if I want to smoke and being high might be the worst thing right now, too many shoes around that are not mine, I might fall into them and start running, but I say yes anyway. Yes always, Catherine, because maybe tomorrow the strawberries will decompose more slowly, I will read another Robert Frost poem I want tattooed on my back—such was life in the Golden Gate—and I will not have to watch a stingray die on a fish hook off the pier. Cities collapse into one another, into me, Santa Cruz wags its tail as we take off up the 1. This is all later, though. Now: there are shoe boxes and four across in sleeping bags on Eli’s living room floor. The sound of the coffee maker and the not-yet anger and the sea fog rolling out.
Abstraction #04
Olivia Couch
I take my time in the West Virginia travel plaza gift shop, weighing bits of painted pottery with my eyes as I browse, the clerk is nice but bored stiff. I have decided that I am in no rush. This is unprecedented. I buy honey for my mom, a mug for my brother—he will find it fun that it’s from a West Virginia travel plaza gift shop, if I decide to tell him. I get coffee there too, two creams no sugar for the way back, I prefer it bitter if the trip is over four hours. I left Mia in Richmond, which is really why I feel like this. She brought one of my plants to the car for me. She cried. It is too real to write about, and the drive home is very long.
Charlotte Georgia Leakey
some kind of colonialism
Susannah Carter
you are a man in a car going too fast down the highway and you like when i call you and when i call you (you can fill in the blanks) you know that you are not, but you like that a woman notices you.
come to me with your poetry don’t you ever get imposter syndrome?
and isn’t this some kind of colonialism, the way you want me, the way you tell me i should we should and suddenly what you want is what i want
i think your head and mine got a bit mixed up when i spent the night in your childhood bedroom
lover
Helen Mei
Primordial soup
Maddox Lowe
Do you think we’ve met before?
I could have floated with you maybe in a primordial soup where it’s warm and loud and it sounds like sand underwater pushed by waves across the floor
Do you think we’ve met before?
I think I’ve shared with you a leaf drifting downstream We’d hold on for dear life just a couple of bugs with dripping antennae Look at this boat we’ve got!
Wait, I know where I know you from We were mites on a monkey’s scruff Did I bite you by accident?
Only for you to be plucked away lifted by descending primate fingers and snacked on in the name of reconciliation
Julian Moore
Face The Sun
I think I’ve known you for a while something about the way we perch a couple of crows on their squawking break
Could I bum a cigarette? Give me a light Gosh, how many more lives till we get thumbs? Hate seeing us this way
Did you see the warning in my leaves? A storm coming for weeks
Too busy tickling me with your buds and spitting seeds
The ache of your roots being upheaved
This time you were eaten by the earth I will stand here for both of us
Where have you been?
My teeth are jagged and throat hollow howling over violent winds and an orchestra of leaves
My coat is grey and loose I’m coming apart in patches
My pack is a lonely river that drags me
In this life, I missed you for the first time
the bird in me
Susannah Carter
i saw myself and there were curves there used to be lines and the bird in me was terrified now, i was a statue aphrodite but the bird in me was terrified i am a woman now nestled in nature’s bosom but the bird in me yelps in indignant self-preservation don’t you miss the way it used to be you were just a branch, a stick. but boys play with sticks dogs play with sticks but the bird in me
gnawing, pecking, was terrified
I’ve never met a River Marcella Pizzato
I’d say
I can see you as A river
The way I see a specific part of you
Enough to fit a frame
Passing stream, shedding skin I can never meet you twice And that’s fine
Sometimes
Just shallow A horizon
The entirety
Your ups
Your erosion
I’d find your source and know
Sometimes I prefer not to be seen For everything I am shallow water horizon A dam
But if I were to see entirety of you ups and downs Your tributaries
I’ve never met a river But an ocean. tidal Helen
Showered With Depression
Callia Nickels
The hard water soaks the clustered follicles of my scalp, rolls down my spine forcing each vertebrae to protrude one-by-one, pools inside the dimples of my thighs, and follows the misaligned path of the unshaven hairs on my calves down to my toes, dilating the blood vessels in my epidermis to forge streaks of red that infiltrate the rest of my inflamed flesh, and I allow each drop to pleasurably scorch my skin to remind myself I’m still alive if I can feel them, yet when I first slid the glass to get in my tile-covered cage, this exact feeling, this temperature, felt so agonzing that I instinctively
jumped out and adjusted the knob to a more pleasant warmth, but as I stand there in this moment – the weight of having to exist bearing down on me – I hesitantly increase the heat in nearly immeasurable increments until I can’t anymore, and now the water, at the same temperature which was once intolerable, encapsulates my face then engulfs my entire body, softly burning every inch of my being, though not in a way my brain recognizes anymore since it was conditioned to short-circuit all of my thoughts, and then it hits me – not very fast but rapidly enough to prevail through the numbness – that it’s weird that I’m having all these feelings about water, because I don’t think I actually feel anything at all.
Julian Moore
Memento Mori
Self Portrait
Georgia Leakey
Shoe Shopping
Ann Sabin
Olivia reminds me I’m useless because I haven’t read the instructions. I have red ink on my hands and everywhere and I need clean hands to touch the press. I will need to do that repeatedly before this is over. I loved during the demo when our teacher mistakenly said “whole-wheat milk.” She blamed the error on jetlag which I used to experience more often when I went to school in Scotland. Olivia loved London and wants to return, while Scotland gave me blepharitis and dandruff, for which I still have prescription. I remember my dermatologist saying, “You’re gonna hate me,” as she handed me a bottle of scalp lotion. I don’t. I want to wear black again. I found out from my nurse that my doctor had made a note that I like writing and comedy. Horrible. I told you that in confidence, doctor. Now a year later you’ve ordered the nurse to take my blood
and she’s asking about my improv troupe and I’m saying “It’s a great mental exercise.”
And she’s asking if I’m doing anything after my appointment and I’m looking out the window and sighing, “Shoe shopping.” Soon I’m feeling dizzy and trying to lie down, but the nurse put the blood tubes on the bed. “This can’t be here!”
I’m saying, flailing my hands. (The first muppet made of flesh.)
I do not recognize myself when I am at the doctor’s, the paper gown changes me.
It is my full moon. I watch from my periphery as she adds another note to my profile: The patient is combative and most likely, useless, but we will have to wait for her bloodwork to be sure. Enjoys shoe shopping.
Reflections
Reece Steidle
I.
I don’t understand the archetype
Old pictures change overtime & it keeps racing on
With an occasional horn to announce its passing Or maybe bells which to me always sound like crystal
Uncut probably
Raw, beautiful Spear and mirror
III.
Make me a song
But believe in the words And shine a light through the void over Virginia
There are no acoustics
Like the open sky in May
Don’t look down
II.
Inverted bat flights retrace my steps
Leathery wings like a worn face
Bats are an underappreciated animal
I too
Come out at night and eat mosquitos then return to my cave
Contented cavernous crystalline
If you see one thank it
IV. Intravenous
I am the one one in the mirror I am harnessed to some Disaffected aphelion
The stars never Twinkle anymore Just shine Haven’t you noticed?
The Human Cannonball
Reece Steidle
America has done at least one thing right: baseball. As I walked into the stadium, I marveled at the crowd, the smell of peanuts and beer, and the distinct brighter-than-life color of the field. The dirt was too orange to be dirt and the grass too green to be grass. The smack of ball in glove sounded too loud for the distance to the players.
It was the Fourth of July weekend, so energy was high as people discussed barbeques and fireworks and other plans for the holiday. I personally was planning on sitting in bed with a good movie and drinking a
Searching for Freedom
Julian Moore
bottle of vodka. If I was feeling especially patriotic, perhaps I’d pick a war movie and drink bourbon instead. I wasn’t one for socialization and all Independence Day traditions seemed to revolve around quality time with people I’d rather avoid.
The one friend I did see frequently was the reason I was at the game in the first place. He was in charge of production for the local minor league team, the Ducks. We were both baseball fans, but he more so than I. We met in high school because we both tried out for the baseball team as center fielders. He got the spot and I got the bench, but he was nice about it and we became friends. Despite his electrical engineering degree, he had worked at the stadium since college because, as he put it: “What’s a better job than getting paid to watch baseball?”
He had offered me a free ticket and told me I’d love the event after the game. Apparently the Ducks weren’t playing well, but I didn’t really care who won or lost, so I thanked him and said I’d buy his drink the next time we went out.
I inspected the stadium, looking for 301, the section printed on my ticket. I found it to the third base side, right at the far end of the bullpen. Not great seats, but according to my friend, it was the only sold out game of the season and I hadn’t paid a cent, so I didn’t complain. After a stop for concessions, I settled into a front row seat with a beer and a bag of peanuts. A family sat to my right and the opposing team’s pitchers warmed up in front of me.
I had made it a quarter of the way through my beer by the time the umpire yelled “Play ball!” The first pitch was a beautiful strike; it dropped right at the last second and the batter whiffed. That was all it took to remember how much I loved the game. I pulled my cap down and settled in for a great night.
Now some people will tell you that baseball is a boring sport. Don’t listen to them. It comes down to a lack of two things: patience and intellect. Baseball is a thinking game— more like chess than anything else in my mind. A true fan isn’t there for constant action. The appeal is in seeing a 3-1 count with one out and a runner on first and thinking “where is this next pitch coming?” The answer, for anyone curious, is high in the zone to force the hitter to ground out into a double play. I was never the
best athlete. I was a decent fielder and I hit singles and walked more than I got extra base hits. but I understood the game. That appealed to me more than anything else.
By the bottom of the second, my beer was gone but I hadn’t even noticed. The Ducks were in the middle of a good inning and some college kid a few rows back had flipped his hat inside out into what’s known, to superstitious fans and players alike, as a rally cap. His brief appearance on the jumbotron had elicited a laugh from the crowd, but we were dialed back into the game now. Two outs, with runners on first and third. The next pitch was a slider but it hung just a moment too long and the batter was able to smack it into the ground down the third base line. The third baseman, who had been playing in, snagged it, and shot a dart to the catcher. The runner kept coming, slid, and a cloud of dust obscured my vision of the play. The umpire’s call was clear, though: “OUT!” The crowd roared in anger. I just smiled. Baseball is a fantastic sport.
“Now that was a hell of an inning.”
I turned my head toward the unexpected comment. The voice came from the father of the family sitting two seats over. He was shaped about how you’d expect a man in his late 50s to be: probably once fit, but alcohol and too many years of gravity had left him a little worse for wear. He wore a straw fedora, a green polo, and khakis, and his dark skin was offset by his shiny gold jewelry. His smile was the kind that instantly makes you feel like you’re old friends, but I kept glancing up, across his glasses, to the very obvious vein protruding from his forehead. He looked vaguely familiar, but I suspected he just had one of those faces.
“Name’s Joe. Are you a Ducks fan?”
I shook the hand he offered and told him that I just loved baseball. He laughed with a noise like artillery going off and slapped his knee hard.
“My kind of man!” He shook my hand again. “I’ll tell you, I’ve been around a long time and a ballpark is a special kind of special. There’s only two places where magic can happen: that’s a baseball field and a stage. And it’s even better when they set up a stage on a ball field.”
I immediately liked Joe.
“You’re a big music fan? Who do you listen to?” I asked.
“I love me some jazz. You ever heard of Joe Jones?” His eyes twin-
kled and I could tell there was a punchline coming. “Well, now you have; pleasure to meet you!”
He laughed his belly laugh again and I realized why he was familiar. I’d seen his smile on a couple of records before. He was a relatively well known pianist and I’d actually listened to and enjoyed some of his music. I might have even seen him play in a jazz club once or twice. I couldn’t say for sure. I finally snapped out of the state that his friendliness had put me in and gave him my name in return. I told him I was a bit of a jazz buff and that I liked his work and he gave some modest reply to the tune of “don’t mention it.” He asked why I was there and I explained about my friend.
“Well, that sounds like a hell of a deal. I’m here because the third baseman down there” (by now, the Ducks defense had taken to the field) “is my second favorite son, but don’t tell him that! So I have plenty reason to go to the games, but tonight outta be something else. That Human Cannonball deal is shaping up to be a real spectacle.”
He paused for dramatic effect and leaned back in his seat, removing his hat and running an aged hand over his intricate braids, smoothing down what wasn’t out of place. I didn’t know what the Human Cannonball was, but I didn’t want to interrupt so I just nodded politely.
“When you’ve been playing jazz as long as me, you start to get a feel for things. In a good chart, you only go a little while before they throw something sharp or flat at you. An accidental, right? You get good enough, you can feel them coming. Well, life is a little bit like jazz music and right about now, it’s been on key for too long. We’re overdue for an accidental. I gotta funny feeling that’s gonna happen tonight. Keep your eyes peeled, my friend. Remember what I said, magic only happens in two places.”
He seemed like he had more to say, but a sudden yell interrupted him. Further towards home plate, a girl, probably about 5 years old, had lost her grip on a balloon she was holding and was now yelling for her mom to help. Unfortunately, she was too late. Joe and I watched the balloon drift slowly upward, missing the media box and passing by the lights. As it vanished for a moment in the glare, I thought about magic.
Joe and I talked sporadically throughout the rest of the game. I learned that his son, aptly named Quincy, had been injured and this was his first game back. We cringed together when the Ducks fell behind by 3
runs in the 5th and cheered together when they started to mount a comeback in the 6th. Quincy turned two to end the top of the 8th and when we leapt to our feet, Joe gave me a bear hug that nearly crushed my chest. Despite my antisocial tendencies, I was glad to have made a friend, especially a famous jazz musician.
Throughout the game, the loudspeaker began advertising the Human Cannonball more and more. Allegedly, he was going to be launched seventy-five feet in the air from a cannon and land safely in a net. This was obviously the show my friend had mentioned and I understood what Joe had meant. I was certainly intrigued but he just smiled and shook his head after every announcement.
“We’re back to the refrain. Just give it a moment. The solo’s about to start.”
The Ducks ended up losing by one run after a thoroughly disappointing last inning. Neither Joe nor I really cared. He got up abruptly and shook my hand again.
“It really was a pleasure, my friend. Enjoy the show. I have to go take this crazy bunch home and give Quincy a good slap on the back.”
“Give him one for me, too,” I laughed as he pulled me in for a partial hug.
“You keep listening to jazz. And buy my records.”
I sat alone now, waiting to see what kind of magic tonight held. The Human Cannonball, who introduced himself as David Brass, looked more like one of the line cooks at the restaurant I used to work at than a circus performer. He took several laps around the infield, rambling about how happy he was to be there, the records he’d set, and whatever else he could, to stall while his crew set up a not very sturdy looking net over home plate. The cannon itself was an elaborately painted tube of fiberglass sitting on the bed of a truck. The driver backed it into its place right behind second base. Seventy-five feet seemed awfully high, even from my elevated position in the stands. None of it looked particularly safe, but I wasn’t the expert. The Human Cannonball continued his laps. The crew attached posts to the net at the edges and I watched as they struggled to straighten the posts and pull the net taut. The Human Cannonball shook each post more than I thought they should be able to shake and began his final dia-
logue.
“What do humans long for? Height, flight, freedom! Leonardo DaVinci knew it when he tried to build a flying machine. The Wright Brothers knew it when they succeeded. Neil Armstrong knew it when he set the bar highest of all. Why else would we build skyscrapers? Why else would children climb trees? That is the nature of humanity: to strive to go higher! Well tonight, my friends, I will be a hero. Tonight, I will fly!”
At this point a scantily clad woman appeared, who might’ve been his wife or his daughter. I couldn’t remember which he had said. He ran from his makeshift stage on the pitcher’s mound to second base and mounted the truck bed. He raised his hands, as if reaching for the height which he would soon occupy.
“I will be a hero,” he said, so quietly that the mic barely picked him up. I wondered if he was talking to the crowd or to himself.
“But I need your help!” He roared. “I need you to count it down!”
He climbed a short ladder and slid himself down the barrel of the cannon.
“Ten!”
I thought about magic and wondered what Joe had meant about that accidental.
“Nine!”
I thought about my friend who got me the ticket and where we’d go for drinks that week.
“Eight!”
I thought about the beer I had finished early on in the game and how I had to pee.
“Seven!”
I got up in search of a bathroom.
“Six!”
I turned my back on the Human Cannonball. Maybe there’s some magic in that.
“Five!”
And the rest of the countdown was drowned out by the hum of the bathroom fan above my head. The moment before something incredible is its own kind of magic. A sort of potential energy takes over and it’s
not what’s about to happen, it’s what could happen. When you embrace that potential instead of just letting it transform into its intended state of reality, something magic happens there. Something a little bit like an F sharp when it should’ve been F natural. It’s wrong, but it becomes right. And in those moments, what could happen does.
I heard a cheer, then silence. I exited the bathroom and found chaos. Fireworks burst over the stadium and people screamed. I looked down at the cannon smoking on the field. So he’d been shot. I looked at the net and saw nothing. In fact, the Human Cannonball was nowhere to be seen. I asked the man at the snack stand next to me what happened. His slack jaw and dazed expression gave way to what might’ve been fear or confusion. I couldn’t tell.
“It launched him, and he went up. Then I lost him in the lights for a second and next thing I knew, he was gone. He just never came down. I don’t understand.”
I left him without a word. With one final glance at the field, I began walking towards the exit. The fireworks over the stadium sounded like dozens of cannons firing. Launching their own Human Cannonballs towards this wonderful world where magic can happen and baseball fans can meet jazz musicians. Maybe they were jealous.
I made my way through the stunned crowd and out the exit. I walked to the bus station down the road. The cars began to stream past me but I kept my eyes above the stadium, as if somehow I’d see the Human Cannonball there.
Changing my mind, I walked past the station. It wasn’t so far to my house and I wanted to savor the feeling of my feet on the ground.
Real Prayers Do Not Require Words
Ann Sabin
I was admiring penguins sliding down the rocks, standing in groups, lying lethargically by themselves. This special section was a dark cave with a glass window, giving a more intimate look into their captive lives. It was a moment for reflection, or had been, until a young boy charged into the room as if chased by one of the beasts from around the corner. He smashed his hands and face against the glass and wailed with acute agony. The rest of us waited to see what was wrong. We inspected his knees for blood and his hands for a missing toy.
“They are so ugly!” he shrieked then continued to cry. Upon his declaration, his mother dragged him out, leaving the rest of us to consider his shocking words. A woman next to me threw up into her hands. A man buried his daughter’s face in his chest. A penguin approached and pressed his flipper against the glass. His hideous countenance, wretched with wisdom of the years. We all rushed to him, shaking and desperate, huddled together for warmth.
