Phoenix 70

Issue 70/Spring 2025

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Table of Contents 7 Tabletop #1................................................... 8 Lola Reyes Bruised Bus.................................................. 12 Brian Fuson Untitled.......................................................... 17 Deborah Allion The (Failed) American Promise.............. 20 Brianna Eaton Jermaine:A Proud Tennessean................ 20 Elijah Clifford Three Witnesses.......................................... 24 Perfect............................................................

Quin Tomlinson

Anna Carter

Dot Poke Pen................................................

Elliot Ashlock Camera Still Life..........................................

Colleen Hefferen

Sara Caoile

The Promise.................................................

Grace Rook

Frank Lake (Shallow honesty).................

Andrew Hinman

Katey Llewellyn

The Religion of You.....................................

Brianna Eaton

Holy War Above Al’s Market ....................

Blaine Atkins Resting Letters.............................................

Elijah Clifford Wind Turbines/Somewhere in Indiana......................................................

Colleen Hefferen Rainbow Trout.............................................

Iris Love The Mountainside.......................................

Kaitlyn Hill

The Archaeologist.......................................

Hannah Fletcher

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Wait for You..................................................

Brianna Eaton

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Steve Burton

Whistle Wail.................................................

Henry Lubke

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The Eternal Dance.......................................

L. Nathaniel Adams

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Falling Through Timelines, Towards You................................................

Reagan Wilson

Something Lost ...........................................

Gwen Aguilar Beach Day.....................................................

George Culpepper

49 Pale Shelter................................................... 52 An Ode to Mi Morenita..............................

Jen Martinez Mendez George Culpepper

62 63

Preying..........................................................

Katey Llewellyn Pigment.........................................................

Jacqueline Ciabattari

The Weigh Down.........................................

JR Smalling

You Are a Goldfish.....................................

Jay Schleihauf

Poetry

63 65

From Me to You...........................................

Audra Spencer

Cover Photo

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36

eigengrau apparently............................... ren In Which I Am Nothing But A Footnote.............................

Hannah Fletcher Recluse..........................................................

John Hanson

They’re all bad dreams..............................

Owen Grosserode

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I Am The Apple of My Mother’s Tree ........................................

Olivia G.

9 10

hi angel.......................................................... 11

Burial Rites...................................................

Luke Leftwich

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How to Touch a Woman............................

Sophia Porpiglia

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How Nice it is to be Seen...........................

Henry James

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Is the Ghost..................................................

John Hanson

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Karina

15 DOUBLES MIRRORS!!!!!!.......................... 15 depression....................................................

Annelise Griffin inalienable....................................................

Felipe Trevisan Ferreira Gardening.....................................................

Mariam Mohammad You Don’t Have To....................................

Marie Essary

16 21 22

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32 33

33 Mysterious Ways......................................... 40 L. Nathaniel Adams sunscreen...................................................... 40 Kyra Harmon Nest of Embers.............................................. 41

JR Smalling

Nesting...........................................................

Helayna Garlett

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The Army Goes to Washington ...............

L. Nathaniel Adams

Sophia Porpiglia

ren

25

30 Procession of Thought............................... 31

4 6

26

Liminal Spaces.............................................

Samantha Fulton Alison Mazzola

10 Sinai ............................................................... 11

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58

66

Balcony One.................................................

Will Danzi

Tree Bark......................................................

Karina

Warning Signs.............................................

Helayna Garlett

51 Manatee Day................................................. 53 Marie Essary

59 Sand Mountain Sunset............................... 64

Heaven in the Temptest’s Rain...............

Reagan Wilson

28 The Price....................................................... 36

34 Sunday Reset............................................... 34 Sarah Redding dispair - self portrait.................................. 38 Jen Martinez Mendez

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Prose

24

Envinced........................................................

Jenna Mitchell

58

Maybe I’m Decomposing..........................

Hannah Buchanan

Chainmail......................................................

Lou Nguyen

Art

Daylight From the Food City Parking Lot ................................

Anna Carter

56 Eggs Inside.................................................... 56 Farewell.........................................................

Wendi Tang

The Heat of the Summer...........................

JR Smalling

43 46 47

48 Trinity............................................................. 54 Grace Rook Stone and Bone............................................ 55 Grace Rook

57 Margins.......................................................... 57 Charlotte Roselin Doyle’s Monster........................................... 60 Why, Create...................................................

Chante Thomas

Sarah Thacker

Love Gone Quiet..........................................

Hannah Buchanan

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Heaven in the Temptest’s Rain

From Me to You

Reagan Wilson

Audra Spencer

The trees bend in the wind, And dark wisps of cloud Float through the sky.

I think of my lover as I soar through Zeus’ sky.

Ichor flows through his veins, and I am unworthy, Shown by my broken wings as I say goodbye Through an act that is, hopefully, praiseworthy.

Bright flashes cover my view, And I patiently await The thunder’s reply.

A halo of light surrounds him, though he Would never burn me with his gentle caress.

He loves me, you see, and he claims it’s meant to be, A feeling that I always shared and had confessed.

The constant pitter patter of the raindrops Echoes in my ears.

And as they gather, They flow down the hill Like a calming stream.

I revel in this blessed fate of mine, Just like Icarus, naive and carefree.

The burning of the wax turning divine As I fall, wingless, to the churning sea.

(Be not mistaken, the ending is sweet, My love, because we two were able to meet).

I’ve never felt more at home, In my world, Than I do during a summer storm.

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eigengrau apparently ren Dark before the eyelids.

Dark behind them.

Dull gray, like static; You wait for sleep, and watch colors dance before your eyes.

It’s not a fault, insomnia.

We all see the gray, the dark, and like it.

The Germans call it eigengrau, I guess.

The intrinsic gray, seen with no light.

It’s a pretty word, for nothing.

No light, no sleep, no comfort.

Just, looking around and waiting, hoping for Sandman to feel bad for you.

Eyes close.

Sleep.

Perfect | Quin Tomlinson

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In Which I Am Nothing But A Footnote Hannah Fletcher

I am just now1 realizing how2

wrong3

me⁵­­

the things you have done to⁴

are⁶.

1. opening my eyelids to your iniquity and 2. my fixation with my own speck of dust was 3. fully keeping me from seeing your driftwood 4. keep your blood clean are staining 5. I shoot your red herring out of the blue sky, I know who you 6. and who you are not.

Tabletop #1 | Lola Reyes

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But I forgive you. ­

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Recluse

Sinai

John Hanson

JR Smalling

The dimly lit bar’s buzzing sounds reverberate off prison cell-like walls, lively music plays on the phone charging in the corner.

Seated near, her picture-esque smile speaks words without movement, muffled “how can I help you?”-s from the bartender.

Ignoring him, a tear falls into my glass, before I pour myself another drink.

I once met God on a mountaintop. He was weary. I was angry.

I said to Him, “Why have you let us suffer?”

God said, “I have not given you more than you can handle.”

“I do not care about myself!” I cried out. “I care about the children of this world.

The pain in my best friend’s eyes. The sorrow of my sister.

The exhaustion of my teachers.”

God said, “I have not given them more than they can handle.”

I whispered, “But you have. But you have.”

God sighed. He wiped the tears I hadn’t even noticed were flowing from my eyes. In a flash of light he returned to the heavens.

I screamed achingly at the sky.

Tree Bark

hi angel

Karina

ren

I met my old deceased dog in a magnolia leaf, that fell on my head. Why is it her, a leaf can’t speak, but I tell you that dog could. Who else would have some audacity just to go right for the head with some big leap but my dog. And when I plucked it out (what’s a gentle word for pluck? sweeter than for splinters) it just looked like her, with rich brown hide fuzzed underneath. and there I was crying, and petting a leaf. Who could care when’d she learned to speak? When I tell you, I tied a piece of string - around the stem - and walked it, through the grass, I heard panting, and a bark. When I tell you, when I moved back home for the summer, I put it on a bookshelf, next to my icons of the Theotokos like some altar to the deceased. When I took it to my new apartment, and I gave my friend a room tour, her boyfriend picked it up, (twisted the stem), said “why do you have a leaf in here,” I told him to “put her down please.” a memory is a living thing. panting and leaping

There ain’t nothin’ you could say, Sweetpea, that could make me ache or hurt In just the same kinda way As when I first saw you in that skirt.

Long and black, like an eel Whipping round your waist in the wind Then, you kicked back one perfect heel And I got a glimpse of your leg, golden-skinned.

I swear, as my feet stopped so did my heart When you turned around and smiled at me so sweet.

Darlin’ your voice gave me such a kickstart That I stuttered and my heart skipped a beat.

From then on, I’ve been yours, oh-so-faithful Greeting you every morning with, “Hi, angel.”

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Bruised Bus | Brian Fuson

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Nesting

Warning Signs

Is the Ghost

DOUBLES MIRRORS!!!!!!

Helayna Garlett

Helayna Garlett

John Hanson

Karina

Hope may have feathers But it also has claws And I have more scar tissue Than skin From all the times they’ve sunk in.

It can perch on my ribs And peck at my heart As long as it stays in that cage.

It has picked apart pieces of me To make a nest between My collarbones I can feel it fluttering From time to time Beneath my breast It’s beak must have punctured a lung Because I cannot breathe.

My heart aches When I think of you Like ancient knees When the rain is on its way.

It creaks and groans From too many hard years And so now it knows when pain is coming.

My lungs fail When you are near Like a canary in a coal mine They are the first to go When there is danger.

My hair raises When I see you Like the moment in a storm Before the lightning Though it only strikes once.

There’s a whistling in my ears When you speak Like a falling bomb I think I may survive The fallout.

Why does the empty heart leave no soul behind?

a casting and a reel and a sinker and a trout your father’s hand and yours in a holed canoe somewhere up a mountain my grandmother cored her eyes to hand down to me and they roll and reel about skitter down the river shore when the dead first died you buried them like new makeup and fresh satin but where is she if she’s in me if she’s in me then where am i and this is why i hate to love always forced to share it let me have it let me have it a fish slips from a toddler grip keeps its eyes and darts again for years and lifetimes maybe dies a whole canoe forgotten

Frightening those wishing to come in Dressed in grey solely to hide it’s true face Igniting demons to break their stone shells I am much much more than a world-renowned heartless soulless heap of haunted ashes But the esprit leaves its “cast-iron” heart where the spirit stops trying

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depression Annelise Griffin

my eyes stand heavy folding, let me rest them please disgusting like oil and stain down the drain I fear, I’m growing old, I’m never doing enough while gravity pulls me comfortably back to bed disgusting like oil and stain down the drain clutter and guilt bend the floorboard beneath my feet while gravity pulls me comfortably back to bed as milk and soup suffice these hollow cheeks clutter and guilt bend the floorboard beneath my feet reminding myself, I am gentle, I am living as milk and soup suffice these hollow cheeks wondering, when will the door open and lift me to my feet? reminding myself, I am gentle, I am living I fear, I’m growing old, I’m never doing enough wondering when the door will open and lift me to my feet my eyes stand heavy folding, let me rest them please

Untitled | Deborah Allion

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The Archaeologist Hannah Fletcher

When I awake, I lie quietly at first, eyes turned towards the sky like a morning glory. It takes a few moments to adjust, to remember why I’m not staring at the peeling paint and molding vents of my tiny studio apartment, but instead coarse canvas walls with bits of sun slipping through. But then, like clockwork, the sky becomes too bright. Open, close, open, close, and within a few blinks I rise and my head drops back to the ground.

All my interactions are like this: I stare at my shoes, listening to the man drone on about whatever financial or economical state of the country we’re in right now. Try to be polite, ignore the fact that he has five kids and a wife with a picket fence house out on Magnolia, because I can’t judge a man when I at least have a roof over my head, too. Or at least I didn’t, not until the man came and told me they were thinking of shutting down my department. Clearing out my walls, because why would anyone care to look at the past when the future's so much closer. Besides, they’ve already discovered everything anyway.

So here I am, in the middle of some washed-out desert with a pick axe, a shovel, and a couple of brushes searching for something to prove to him that we do deserve a spot. Or in his words, we’ll give you one last hooray before we demolish the building.

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Phoenix Magazine

I force on my mud-crusted boots, and tear open the tent, ready to face whatever the day may bring. But all I manage to dig, like yesterday, and the day before that, is bones, bones, and more bones. I stare with bated breath, sweat dripping from my temple to the creases in my eyes, burning, only to get something everyone’s seen before. I used to find so much excitement in the craft: finding something that can tell you everything and nothing all at once. A creature we’ve never seen? It’s old news by now.

That’s when I realized it doesn’t matter what I find, it’s not going to be enough for the man.

If only I could look him in the eyes for once! Give him a piece of my mind, show a bit of passion, prove that my department’s not a waste, that what we’re doing is capable of changing our world as we know it, because for some reason, we’ve got it in our heads that in this business, it’s completely earth-shattering or completely meaningless.

Before I know it, I’m packing up my bags, sweat still clinging to the crevices of my cotton pollo and the back of my neck burned to a crisp. I’m on the plane, trying desperately to get somebody, anybody to give me a ride home from the airport. But I haven’t talked to anyone in months, and when I tell them my name, they don’t remember me.

Issue 70/Spring 2025

By some miracle, I make it back and knock on the thick, frosted glass of the department head’s office. The man tells me to come in, and I keep my eyes to my shoes, finding the lumpy armchair by memory and sitting down with a sigh. I’m going to do it, I’m going to give this man a piece of my mind, I think, completely ignoring his headless babbling about whatever mess he’s in with the wife this time. Sir- I start, forcing my head up to meet his gaze, ready to tell him off, and say the things we’re doing here do matter, I don’t understand why you can’t see that, and hell, IBut I stop, because the man sitting across the desk is me.

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inalienable Felipe Trevisan Ferreira

how do you say pão francês in English? my legs are the legs of an alien when they walk me to kroger to buy a pack of bagels instead I count a few dollars with alien hands and alien fingertips touch this world they touch the rude surface of hostile land brain and digits of an alien work to vomit intelligible words that seek desperate for housing I can pay for bed I can sleep for person I can be for country I can stay

The (Failed) American Promise | Brianna Eaton

In pretty polite polished emails I seek to sound native and I fail again and again I fail it is louder than anything I can say alien is in my blood, in my tongue in my face

they know. that at night I cry in Portuguese they know I scan for pão francês in the aisles of kroger walmart and publix they know I listen to emicida instead when walking to campus and think of my people they know there is an eu te amo repeating in my head they know that my smoky is vira lata caramelo they know I eat arroz e feijão and watch novela and as much as I have been trying to convince my soul – I can’t be certain when I say that it is great to be a tennessee vol aliens have the rights of saying excuse me I’m sorry, please and the right to go while every american citizen has always every right to say no But how do you say unwanted uninvited non-resident alien in Brazilian Portuguese?

Hm. That’s tough.

I guess I will never know.

Jermaine: A Proud Tennessean | Elijah Clifford

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Gardening

You Don’t Have To

Mariam Mohammad

Marie Essary

Mama brought a visitor to the dining table yesterday

“Do you think the couch cushion is turned the wrong way?”

It’s

a square “No, see how the edge is off from the other two sides?”

Sure “Remember when you sent me that couch in college and we dreamt about a life in which we could afford midcentury couches and atomic star fixtures to hang above it?”

Remember when we were in college and you were scared to start dating me because you didn’t want to use up my love before we grew old?

You don’t answer.

You don’t have to.

Your fingers slide from your lap to my hands in my own, eyes finding their way from my right shoulder to my own eyes “Remember when everything felt new and terrifying?”

That feeling might be timeless, too.

We both laugh lightly, gazing in synchrony to the dogs and the kids eating cherry tomatoes from the garden All which we’ve nourished with our own gentle, calloused hands I slide my hands over the edge of the cushion

Maybe this really is the wrong way “I know” We share a knowing look, One we’ve refined for 20-some odd years We hear distant laughter, the thud of backpacks meeting dirt Bikes curbed along the house Our hands find themselves threading vegetables and cheese onto skewers Pouring tea into our grandma’s little cups and stacking sugar cubes on plates shaped like flowers Mom! “That’s you,” we say in silly harmony We juggle the tea party to the garden, knowing that this is the life we have always yearned for, built for one another through each way that we learned to love both the 13 year olds in the NYC hotel bed and the 33 year olds on an uneven couch cushion Inside a house full of everything we’ve ever loved A bunch of 8 year olds drop sugar cubes in their tea We laugh I grab your hand Thank you You don’t say anything You don’t have to.

& it sat on her face as she stared at my chest for dessert.

Even as she invited me to garden with her the next day, the scowl did not leave—it took space behind her smile so that they could not quite reach her eyes.

After tossing

and turning the entire night,

Mama wakes me up before daybreak

& teaches me She speaks (in whispers) left the two mounds

what it takes to be a good gardener.

of how her mother had

carelessly

on her chest to scavengers

who picked out

the seeds in her before dirties her fingers

they could bloom.

She

as she dresses up mine before

hungry eyes set on them.

Mama tells me tales of times she was afraid she would pull out an herb while weeding. shine so brightly &

I recognize

Even in the dark, her fears how unsure she is

of making me a disciple of a gospel she was not taught to preach.

I want to tell her she still has seeds that may become a bountiful harvest

instead,

I join her as we rain on our desert.

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Three Witnesses | Anna Carter

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Daylight From the Food City Parking Lot | Anna Carter

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Balcony One

Frank Lake (shallow honesty)

Will Danzi

Andrew Hinman

The apartment across the view from mine has these lights strung up they’re warm, calling to me the way an animal in the forest shrieks for its own

“Shattered glass still sparkles so bright” Is that what you think when every love smells like cigarettes and bad decisions?

Heads or tails; is today melancholy or casus belli?

You live your life calling yourself the pusher, but you live your life pulled around.

It’s not ideal to spend your nights alone with Jack Daniels and empty promises.

A purple sky burning snowy mountains the crashing of waves echoing through their flickering these lights blur together when it's late enough hope seeps out of their bulbs even still

He who has not tasted quiche says sweet— tact is a tricky, fickle little thing when you’re busy and fussed being king of your baby carriage.

Because you don’t talk about our problems— you just let them define who we are.

Play devil’s advocate just to be devil, let your emotions take control again.

I know I’ll never reach them fittingly higher up on the property than my fluorescent balcony maybe just trying to reach them is enough Aristotle would certainly agree

Bad habits are wrongly folded creases— have you tried ironing them out?

You know damn well your floor, I just wish you’d find your ceiling.

But I fear in spite of my youth that my thread is pulled these lights stay on when I go to bed maybe tomorrow I try to grab them

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The Religion of You Brianna Eaton

My knees are torn and scrapped—- they are weak and shaky and bare.

Every sudden movement produces oozing and every oozing creates blood.

I am kneeled in a puddle of my own blood and it keeps getting bigger and bigger by the day.

I know an infection is coming soon but nothing can be as bad as the infection that you have inflicted upon me that has led me here in front of this pew.

My elbows are raw, as they have been supporting my weight against the pew seat.

My fingers are intertwined so tightly that I am beginning to I worry they will never upclasp from each other and will forever be forming the motion of a prayer, as I will be forever sitting here saying one.

The preacher offered me a towel for my knees and told me there’s no hope.

But I know deep inside that if I pray hard enough you will come back or maybe God’s will can bring you back to my doorstep.

The preacher asks me why God would will you back to me and I cannot answer Because the scars on my body are too deep for the gashes you slashed and the Wounds from where you stuck your fingers inside and dug up every muscle I had in order to strip me of everything I once worked towards in order to prove that You had some sort of power I didn’t and that’s what made you more of a Saint than me.

It’s almost as if you dragged me here to this church, to this pew, and forced My knees down into the floor so deep that I would become one with all below me, And my spirit would sink below, so deep that no one would hear my cries, And you would whisper to pray for your return so that maybe you would come back And save me, because you knew I would do it, because you knew I would follow You fatefully as if you were my own personal religion instead of the one I am bowing to now, praying for your pernicious return.

Dot Poke Pen | Elliot Ashlock

Camera Still Life | Colleen Hefferen

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Liminal Spaces

Procession of Thought

Samantha Fulton

Alison Mazzola

Car rides; Airplanes; Hotel rooms: Motion sickness. Ears popping. Can’t sleep.

Anti-nausea pills, white knuckles on arm rests, watch the ceiling fan while it spins.

Are we there yet?

I am sitting in your car.

Surrounded by streaked glass panes and cracked leather seats another reminder of the fallibility of life.

How we all start new and fresh and eventually wear away into misshapen versions of ourselves.

The world forges us, and then we weather.

Home is a smudge in the rearview, Friendships fly by, Sleeping in a new apartment is easier with melatonin.

Are we there yet?

You hate it when I ruminate, but there’s no interruption.

A rotating cast of characters grace my passenger seat.

I build castles out of clouds and let turbulence tear them down.

Maybe I’ll find rest when I’m older.

Are we there yet?

I notice the warmth that echoes from the tilted vents and the mountains that emulate a sine graph out the window.

Our seats shoulder to shoulder eyes staring at the expanse of blues and greens that coexist in the same shot.

I sometimes consider us as this.

My car’s high mileage makes her temperamental.

Airplanes keep catching fire and falling from the sky.

The thought of you keeps me awake.

Are we there yet?

They look as if they intersect from afar, but yet they never touch.

The mountains don’t pierce the tarp sky, and the sky does not encompass the mountains familiar enough to glance over yet far enough to miss.

Perhaps I should let you take the wheel, You who can navigate rough air and elevation gain.

But I worry that impermanence will make you toss and turn too.

Are we there yet?

I can feel you’re slipping away, for we haven’t talked this whole time so I reach out to hold your hand but I get distracted as I see that we’ve finally arrived with cemetery plots splattered like meteor particles on jagged all-consuming Earth.

You bask in my liminality.

I am your foot on the gas.

I am the jet fuel taking you where you need to go.

I am the weird dream you have in an unfamiliar place.

Sitting outside your car I try to reach out to you one last time “Do you at least like the flowers I brought?” but all you respond with is silence as I stare at your cemetery plot

Arrived.

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They’re all bad dreams

I Am the Apple of My Mother’s Tree

Owen Grosserode

Olivia G.

Walking into what seems to be a normal day of work and my boss sends me a text saying she needs to see me in her office- it’s urgent. I stride down the long hallway and open the door to find a giant maze of cubicle walls. The phone is ringing violently. She needs to see me this instant. My heart races as I struggle to find her. When did they rearrange the offices? Why wasn’t I cc’d on this? For the love of God- where is she?

“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”

- Bonnie Burstow

I wake up, my heart still beating.

It was all in my head. A stress dream.

Looking across the room during this raging soiree and I see the most beautiful woman beckoning me forth- she digs my style. I begin to advance and in the blink of an eye we’re sharing a meal together at a high-top table in the city’s premier brunch restaurant. A smile runs across my face. I can’t believe it’s finally happened, in love at last. She was a distinguished scholar who laughed at all my jokes. As we kiss, I ask myself- who is she?

I wake up, instantly feeling empty again.

It was all in my head. A fleeting dream.

Watching a crowd of people gathered in the park and nothing seems quite right.

The chattering voices are gleeful- a jubilant affair. I wonder what they are celebrating. The sun was in my eyes, so I didn’t want to lift my head to ask what was going on. Not that I would know who to ask; none of my friends were there. I’d leave, but I can’t seem to move. Utterly bemused, I light an American Spirit. Hold on- where did I buy the pack?

I wake up, remembering there are no good dreams.

They’re either anxiety, false hope, perplexing absurdity, or all three.

I leave my bed and resume my waking life. After a lengthy struggle to make my hair presentable, I grab my caffeinated drink of choice and walk out into the freezing cold. I sit through traffic in a car that’s low- in the literal sense, but also low on gasoline and tire pressure. The day is long and my responsibilities pile on further. It feels so monotonous, as though I’m watching a rerun of last week. This is so tiresome, I can’t wait to get in bed.

My father hacked off the arms of my mother last summer while parched dust from his mower swept the heat.

Her graceful branches stumped when the Boy Scouts of America needed to warm their sausages; her pyre oozed verbena as they doused gasoline.

My blood-streaked thighs and violated throat, stumbling to her spindle’s shade; I heart-swirled dirt and buds from the garden, smeared with aching fingers into her wound’s seeping gnarls.

Our sap spilling in droplets on closely shorn grass.

The Army Goes to Washington L. Nathaniel Adams

The great Potomac From behind a riot shield American lives

Perhaps reality isn’t where it’s at after all.

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Wait for You Brianna Eaton

They think I’m an idiot, I hear them say it as I slip by trying to get through the door. They think I am an idiot because I am still standing here, waiting.

I wait as the seasons change, as the crowds roll through, as the children slowly change into adults, as the school years fly by, and the dust collects on the books. I wait as You move on, as You forget me at the door, as if I was never worth waiting on for You. It’s sick, and I am sick, for expecting You to turn around, for getting tired of watching Your back as if I have no free will and cannot turn myself around to the other direction. I stall time, as if it is eventually going to slow down enough to allow me to think, for just one second, of how to fix this, how to fix You. I place my feet in the footprints You have made in front me, my feet are so much smaller and You seem so much bigger to me than you did before. I see the gap growing bigger, as I have spent too much time pondering You instead of running towards You. You can’t hear my screaming and You have never truly known my voice. You have never truly known me and You have never truly known how I wait for You.

Envinced | Jenna Mitchell

Sunday Reset | Sarah Redding

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The Price Steve Burton

Somewhere deep in urban America there is a solution to all of your problems. A salve to be spread across your open wounds. She is old, very old. More ancient than the widest tree trunks and the longest cordilleras. This woman, she dwells in the inner city, in filth, among other travelers and passersby. Her apartment is small, dark, practical; no bed, no kitchen, no windows. She accepts visitors only before the sun rises, though only rarely does anyone dare cross the threshold.

In times of desperation the wretched will crawl to her, pleading, but otherwise the woman passes her nights in silence, surrounded by rot. She charges a fee, nothing too serious—just one small task. Just look at the list of names she has written on some frayed palimpsest. There are many names, but all she demands is one. Do not ask why you must choose nor what will happen. These are the rules. Choose one and only one name. When it is time to cough up, most of the desperate sit shivering as they choose, closing their eyes and pointing, letting fate be sealed in that way. Others search the list with a vengeance, led by their deep resentment and the circumstances that brought them here in the first place. They know the price, and they are willing to pay.

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Whistle Wail

Preying

A kettle is placed on the burner. Herbal tea, a warm lemon-ginger infused ritual to ease the night owls of the family to rest. Generation after generation.

The older I grew, I often found myself trying to see how far back I could remember. It already felt short — vivid flashes of consciousness from elementary school or preschool graduation. Now and then, though, I had a dream. In this dream, I was in my mother’s arms watching the sunlight filter through the air around her head like a halo. A cool breeze flowed into the room through an open window and somewhere nearby a Thrush was chattering away. The whole dream was always slow-motion, but even upon waking it felt like the shortest dream imaginable. No, I never woke up feeling well-rested or comforted, just a sort of melancholy dreariness that settled over my arms with a chill.

Henry Lubke

Katey Llewellyn

I was there. There out of a genetic disposition to be wide-eyed as the clock ticked into the early morning.

Passed from mother to mother to son.

The brief click of the stove dial harmonized with the ring of her phone. We knew what the call was...what else could it be? It was after all 4 A.M. The rumble of the water scored the tremble of her lip. I held her as her eyes glassed. As she had done for me, time and time again.

I was there. There because she was once there, mirroring what was once shown to her. The sun rose and I let her howl with the kettle. As the family motto echoed in mind “You never tell a person to stop crying.”

I was there. There as two roaring sounds of release filled the room.

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The night I remember most vividly, she had just turned five. Too old for farm animals and too young for posters, the walls were a simple baby pink with pastel flowers dancing along the crown molding. She had surpassed the need for a nightlight, so I stood and watched the rise and fall of her chest in the meager moonlight. There was a waning crescent that night. It pierced the sky with its eggshell aura and seeped gently onto the Earth below. In another two nights or so, it would have fully disappeared, fading into a new moon. I climbed back into bed after that. I would not have the dream again until my daughter first fell sick.

Though this dream — or memory — didn’t come to me until long after my daughter had begun waddling around, it was so aggressively maternal. In a primal sense, being so weak and soft and watching dust float through sunbeams is frightening. I would have that dream and realize that vulnerability is always a breath away.

On nights when I woke up from the dream, I would run across the house and pause, gasping for breath, in the doorway to my daughter’s room.

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dispair 38 - self portrait | Jen Martinez Mendez

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Mysterious Ways

Nest of Embers

L. Nathaniel Adams

Sophia Porpiglia

I don’t understand.

Why did she travel alone?

I don’t understand.

Why can’t we have one of our own?

I don’t understand.

Why is there cancer in our skin, our organs, and our blood?

I don’t understand.

Is this the new flood?

I don’t understand.

Why do Your people choose to murder and maim?

I don’t understand.

Why don’t they just care for the lame?

I hope You understand; In a world full of evil and debris Why it is so hard to see The footprints in the sand.

I love you.

sunscreen

This is the first twig I lay.

The first nest I build.

This tree, so tangible, so human, so painfully rooted in the limbic forest of my brain– succumbing to your promising wildfire.

Hearts transfigure into fallen leaves, fracturing under your soft steps, ears ringing with birdsong.

You know me.

A finch blinded by smoke, unfamiliar eggs in a nest it no longer calls home.

Willingly landing in blistering palms.

Interned.

Wings flayed and pinned.

Nest left to burn.

Please, Don’t do this.

That was the first twig I laid.

The first nest I built.

That tree, so tangible, so human, lamenting my spirit as it turned to ashes in the wind– roots woefully dissolved, but finally

Kyra Harmon

i used to look the sun right in her eyes and relish in her beauty. now i shrink away and she burns me as a favor

free.

a reminder that, all i do is cower -oh to be fearless

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The Heat of the Summer JR Smalling Watermelon juice dripping down my chin, banjo’s strum and acoustic’s whims accompanied by the hum of cicadas, faint laughter, the feeling of freedom, and a fear of the end. Stagnant heat pours over me as humidity’s embrace ushers in our trial of sin. Summer was different when we were kids, innocence cloaked us from the world’s truth, our young hearts we did not lose.

Yes, it was youth that hid me and you.

Something Lost | Gwen Aguilar

Do you remember when my dad would set up that yellow sprinkler just for us? We’d jump back-and-forth through its spray, rapturous joy on display.

We could never get enough. Little rainbows would dance in the wind, painting our faces in iridescent light. Even when the sky became dark, lightning bugs shone in the night. We’d reach for them with our little limbs, and hold them close as we gathered their wishes. I put mine in a small terrarium—what is humanity’s obsession with caging what we deem beautiful?—but none lasted through the night, lost to hunger or suffocation.

I found them dead the next morning. I made the decision then, they were not meant to be pets.

I would not be the executioner of light if I could help it.

Beach Day | George Culpepper

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Pigment Jacqueline Ciabattari

I don’t recall the last time I saw her, but I do know it was when the sky was the palest shade of blue. Gazing out of the window, the trees below with splotches of green and pink were closed in by the park’s black fence. Business was going slower than I anticipated; the galleries were just opening up when the air was getting warmer–I didn’t have a huge following then. “What is my creative exigence?” I wondered, pacing from my desk to my canvas sitting bare in the corner. Making art isn’t for the weak of heart. It's not always the spark of genius, but grueling realizations of what you lack. No one I hold dear to has taken my job seriously, my mother about fainted when I told her that I wanted to move out. “You’re so intelligent,” she remarked “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to use that gift for something more…substantial.” That final word reverberated in my head when I found myself at the end of another unsuccessful day to start another piece.

Of course I’ve had blockages, but I was able to maneuver through them. Where my hands were able to move freely with no problem, my mind was now completely blank–I couldn’t think out of this. As I poured my cup of coffee the next morning, I resorted to sitting at my desk by the window rather than going back to my room in order to change this feeling I had. I came to understand 44

Phoenix Magazine

how the city sounded in the morning with the speeding cars with their blaring, high-pitched horns. And yet I never really knew how the city looked in the morning, especially from the height of my apartment. I’d rather look down than up. The park gate must’ve been opened while I was preparing my coffee because people were already filing in.

First there was a woman and her husband arm-in-arm, like a horizontal line through the park. Then there was a man in a grey suit with a briefcase and newspaper in his hand who was just on the edge, maybe he wanted to go inside and read but he was late. There was another woman in workout clothes jogging, and a man who was walking his dog on a leash. A homeless man in his brown cloak was sifting through the garbage.

Everyone had an objective, there was something each person had to get done and they were doing it. I sighed, rubbed the excess sleep out of my eyes, and put my mug in the sink. I sat back in my spot staring, pondering what could possibly be wrong with me. Just as I was about to go to the canvas I saw a woman walking in the park from roughly where my apartment entrance is, and eventually she sat down at a bench.

She went into her purse and she got a book with a vibrant purple cover and began to read. About five minutes go by and she shifts the book to where I can Issue 70/Spring 2025

see the cover again, the lighter shades of purple encompassing the outside of the book and the darker shade pulls the viewer into where the title is supposed to be. I can’t make it out now. Purple is seared into my eyelids once I close my eyes; it was never a color I liked to use.

There’s something so… heavy about it.

It sucked you in even when you don’t want it to. But on the outside of the book it looked inviting. Soft, like you wanted to dive head first into it. And– like a flash–the woman and the book were gone. My paintings and the consequent sales at the gallery were never the same after the woman left the park all those years ago, but it was just the shade I needed on that particular morning to express how I wanted to feel.

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Burial Rites

How to Touch a Woman

Luke Leftwich

Sophia Porpiglia

I’m only seven now, but it’s just like you say Daddy, someday I’ll be a man —Dan Tyminski, “Tiny Broken Heart”

From afar his eyes wander into her skin dancing around the delicate cells, rejoicing in their fleeting nature.

Well, they gone ‘n done it.

Yeah, they flooded Willow Grove.

Let the barns choke, Took the land ‘n tore it up.

Flooded Chota too, ‘N all from Dale Hollow.

Picked meat off its bones.

Well, it ‘n Tanasi — picked ‘em clean.

Truth is, them places was sacred, ‘N now, they been baptized forever.

Hey, l’il bucko — pay attention, now.

Well, says the TVA workers, Them boys who went ‘n did it, That ain’t nobody lived out there.

Well, they gave us a dam, ‘N well, they took everything else.

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Now, my daddy’s middle name is Dale.

Well, he ain’t never been hollow.

Look righ’chere, kid.

Well, he always been too full instead, ‘N wakin’ up at all hours of the night.

Them waves lapping at his head, Ghosts askin’ him for burials.

It ain’t surprisin’ to me.

Well, none of ‘em ain’t never went to sleep.

Well, not since they been locked in the deep.

Whatcha lookin’ all bug-eyed at?

This ain’t a campfire tale, kid.

Well, even if it was, Then them flames woulda gone out, ‘N the ash scattered all ‘cross the water Like a cree-may-shun.

Phoenix Magazine

From afar his hands pull at the brittle strands of her hair that become intertwined with the ravines of his cracked palms, and he rejoices again at the body’s connection– “Oh! How sweet can it be to know your pleasures but taste your pains– for my desires are hidden in the harshness of your lips in the redness in your cheeks in the salt of your tears in the concaves of your hips!

Show my spirit how to hold fast to your slippery mind and sweltering heart!

For I know creatures of solitude are only there by happenstance.”

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From within she seeps into indignation, letting her scaly fingerprints clash with a boiling tongue, her opposition formed by her own conception– From within she feels the dry bricks form around her tender breast as she falls deeper into her own wintry grasp.

“Oh, put to rest the chill of desire and extinguish the heat of unrequited love!”

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How Nice it is to be Seen Henry James

For the man at the deli to greet you by name.

For him to ask how the job search is going.

It doesn’t matter that he has now brought up the only two things he knows about you.

What matters is he sees you, and when you tell him you got the job to which you both applied (yet rejected him) he reacts not with jealousy, but sincere gladness.

How nice it is for the girl whom you haven’t spoken to since elementary school to smile as you pass on the street.

And for you to smile back and mean it wholeheartedly.

Because you remember how kind she was to you —over a decade and a half ago— and she probably doesn’t remember, but she smiled anyway.

How nice it is for the bookshop owner, to call out your name as you enter and tell you she has found the perfect book for you and for her to be right.

How nice it is to be seen, in a thousand little ways.

To be known by others barely and briefly.

It is not being known the way a friend knows you, nor a parent, or a lover.

But it is beautiful nonetheless.

An Ode to Mi Morenita | Jen Martinez Mendez

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The Eternal Dance

Falling Through Timelines, Towards You

L. Nathaniel Adams

Reagan Wilson

The moon peeked over the horizon just as the colors from sunset winked out of existence. They would be here soon. Just a few hours. Every night when the moon rose above the town’s short skyline and cast its reflection across the sea they appeared on the overlook.

They had never harmed anyone or made trouble of any kind. In fact, when word of them started to spread tourism to Town increased. The pair was fascinating to the tourists. Mundane, now, to the locals. Tourists began heading to the overlook now with cameras and video recorders in hand sporting freshly purchased “Overlook Dancers” t-shirts.

Only one local went. A gnarled and hunched old man. He went every night to watch the dance. He shuffled out and sat on the same rock he’d sat on the night before, and every night before that one for the last 20 years.

The old man began to cry silently. The dancers came near him, as they did every night. He forced himself to look at them. They were young and beautiful.

The man was tall, clean shaven with a strong jawline. The woman, even now, had a gleam of intelligence in her eyes.

They smiled at each other as they spun past the old man. They were bound to this town now. They would never leave like they had once dreamed. They were going to move to the city and start a business and a family, never to see anyone in this seaside town again.

The old man couldn’t bear the thought of them leaving, so he did what he had to do to keep them with him forever.

They still had each other, and he still had them. He wiped his joyful tears and eagerly awaited their next pass.

The air shimmered over the grassy cliff as the moon reached the designated spot. The waltz began. A salty breeze blew through the town whipping dresses and jackets. The dancing couple took no notice. Her dress flared as they spun, but they were otherwise unaffected by the elements.

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You asked me if I ever think about alternate realities and branching timelines, the ones created by all our choices and mistakes. And though I always have, I think about them more often now.

Who would I be if I’d let myself believe that he could want me too? If I had reached for his hand as the screen flickered, the characters’ perceptions blurring the line between reality and hallucination? As we steadied the tv against the wall, if I had said yes instead of laughing, swallowing my want in fear of being caught? If I had let him close enough to change the shape of my memories, would his lips have rewritten my story?

Who would I be if I had noticed him sooner? If I had let myself see the way he always found me in a crowded room?

If I had realized then what I know now?

We didn’t waltz, didn’t follow any steps – we just laughed, twirled, and swayed when the music slowed, caught somewhere between childhood and whatever came next. Would we have grown up together, his hand in mine through teenage summers, his number on my back in a college stadium, cheering his name like it was always meant to be mine?

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Who would I be if we had never drifted apart? If one of us had held on tighter, if we had risked the distance, if we had let late-night phone calls and whispered promises carry us through? Would we have been high school sweethearts, counting the miles between us but never the reasons to walk away? Would I have been yours, and you mine, the way our mothers always joked we would?

Would I have worn your last name as easily as I once wore your friendship, carried your love like something steady, something certain? Would we have built a life where best friends became something more, where love was something familiar instead of something I yearned for? Or were we always meant to let go, meant to become strangers who sometimes wonder?

And you – who asked the question, who set these thoughts spinning – who would I be if our words had never crossed? Or would you have found me anyway, somewhere, somehow, as if we were always meant to meet?

And in another life, another thread of time, did I know the shape of your hand in mine, the quiet weight of your gaze, the way your lips felt pressed against mine, the way your name became my own? Did we become something more, or were we only ever meant to be a question left unanswered?

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Manatee Day Marie Essary

On Tuesday, we drive into town to meander down the Trader Joe’s freezer and beer sections. We prepare the car playlist the entire weekend before, and we always drive home with the windows down and radio blasting.

“Trader Joe’s day, we’ll call it.”

Thursday: Salmon and vegetable dinner. Friday: Amy Winehouse karaoke night. Saturday: weedeater and front porch iced tea day. Sunday: Wildlove Bakehouse day. We’re hysterical, naming each month and kicking water onto our shins. “I propose that January is ice cave spelunking month, and February is chocolate-covered Strawberry latte month.” “Well, then, I think March must be garden tilling month, and April must be baby bunny month.”

I realize that time is as much a gift as a constraint. We are so lucky to have manatees, Amy Winehouse, pastries, porch swings, gardening, and good drinks. We are so lucky.

Pale Shelter | George Culpepper

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Trinity

Stone and Bone

Grace Rook

Grace Rook

“Ave Maria” is a comfortable hymn. It is in Latin and I don’t speak Latin so it means whatever I want It’s easier that way, and I have no problem with holy mothers I hope my mother knows, she is holy, knows all the hymns I am her miracle child, the doctors said I wouldn’t come but Mary is blessed and my mother is cursed There is no mystery to the English hymns anyways Nothing holy rhymes.

“The mountains of Appalachia are not older than trees,” says my professor Clearly upset by this exaggeration carelessly thrown about By those not schooled in the nuances of geology, tectonic plates, and the like “Parts of them are,” she concedes, graciously “But the old rock is at the center, the outsides of the mountains are newer”

What is a god but a father? A void is no father.

On my back in a secret night the grass hurts and the sky is a void suburb skies are empty, no stars My father looks at me through red eyes and small glasses He is too small and gentle and his questions eat me because he used to be bad and he is worried I am bad too My father cannot know that I have made a void my father so I lie and I tell him I am good and he smiles But his small eyes know me, he knows I came out wrong I am the miracle child and I disgrace my beautiful mother And I am supposed to die for my father but I am killing him instead A long-dead lamb-child possesses these willing hosts And sings the hymns, that girl, that Son, that holy ghost

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They used to be bigger, too And I can scarcely believe that there was ever room For more mountain than there is now But they have been whittled away Pressed down, by weather, and gravity, by the universe breaking What must have been Mount Olympus into the ancient hills To which “smaller” can now somehow be applied And I wonder what it will do to you? You who are as tall as a tree You stand as a giant, a friendly Titan, leaning down to speak to my ear Your face could be the sun when you smile, bright and glowing and up When your great heights are humbled, will I look one day And see a shrunken old man, somehow eye-level with the rest of us?

I will not bear it. I want to be below the ground by then I would bear the weight of the earth rather than that

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Why, Create Chante Thomas Most days my thoughts are too big for my head From all those silly little scenarios to the infinite many worlds I have created, they get all stir crazy inside me with no place to go What am I to do with them?

Why, Create of course!

Because God cursed me with an invisible illness, an injustice wrapped in sweet reverie No amount of sleep could ever hope to cure the tiredness I feel Then so be it, because from my dreams weapons of mass creativity and imagination are forged Yes! It is here, from the vast uncharted subway seas of my mind resides an endless amount of ideas in slumber What am I to do with them?

Farewell | Wendi Tang

Why, Create of course!

Margins

Charlotte Roselin Draw a line in my life and mark it with your every trace until your pen runs dry and I am embedded with your gentile words.

I want you to outline the letters of my soul until the page bleeds and the letters grow faint; until we are yet but memories in margins and whispers of threaded souls.

Capture me in your essence and I’ll capture you in yours.

Eggs Inside | Sara Caoile 56

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The Weigh Down

Maybe I’m Decomposing

The Promise

JR Smalling

Hannah Buchanan

Grace Rook

There are 26 churches on Franklin Road within a 20 minute driving radius.

There’s one in particular, the one next to the church I attended when I took part in religion, that houses a cult.

Nobody really talks about it. It’s too taboo to point out an imperfection in our southern suburbia. Two years ago they made an HBO documentary about it and used clips of my neighborhood and school. I found it hilarious.

A secret lurking behind our shiny million dollar houses and nationally ranked education. The cult got found out because they killed a kid. Locked him right up in a chest and forgot about him. He was 8. Their mission revolves around some ‘weight loss for Jesus’ premise. No one outside of the church could tell you the specifics, and no one inside is willing to associate with the nonbelievers. I’ve always wanted to know what led people to such devotion. I sometimes understand when I’m surrounded by 100,000 screaming fans in a football stadium worshiping our own form of god.

Or when I reached level 500 on that stupid phone game I’m always playing.

Or when I was so in love with that one guy. Maybe devotion is the easiest part.

Maybe I should find a different town with fewer churches.

The first time I felt the sharp burn and compression of smoke in my lungs, it came out of an old mutilated Coke can by the train tracks behind the cemetery of an old Salem Church. That same pair of tracks, and those same headstones – plus three or four – saw the first time I chain smoked a pack and a half of menthols. The tracks saw the bourbon, and the tears; the defeat.

I spared the dead from that much.

I wish it was seen by an old willow tree, maybe a doe napping beneath it right as the sun starts to rest. Maybe then I could call myself a poet.

Even if we never have that house. Even if we never have that castle you promised me in a rustic fairytale setting, far away from the rest of the world. Even if that hotel room, much closer than the house, much further than we want, falls through like a footstep on a rotted attic floorboard, to imagine it cannot be too far from the real thing. What could be sweeter than laying on your couch, weaving cotton candy dreams from our thin, wispy wants? When I’m with you on some lazy afternoon I can taste the sugar melting on my tongue already, that dreamy future dissolving into a plush and perfect life all around me. If it’s gone as soon as it hits my tongue, it was still sweet, it’s still the sweetest I’ve ever tasted.

Instead, I must call myself a hick.

A natural-born, full-blooded, mountain-caged hick who is never going farther than the Shell station three miles south of the Salem Church that has a billiard bar in the building out back. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll make it one state over and write a few poems before descending back into my predestined fate of a premature death at 40. Maybe it’s from the smokers cough, maybe it’s pneumonia. Either way I’ll end up back at the Salem Church where the same Coke can lay mutilated, waiting for its two hundredth year to come before it can finally be laid to rest.

If it all stops one day and you’re just a boy after all, I’m no longer Venus and you’re no longer mine, I’ll leave you in the past. But I won’t regret it. You’ve already given me a life with you in your whispered prophecies, your paintings of us in a house where we never have to leave. My hair will stay stuck in your carpet, forever. Your promise will hide in my chest, forever.

In photographs and letters, gifts and chapstick dropped in your backseat, we will be happy forever. In all that cluttered debris from a youth whiled away the two of us will hold frozen, unchangeable hands, two people who found a life in each other. Our unrealized future selves play out in the reflections of our glassy ghost eyes, infinite and quantum in possibility.

Chainmail | Lou Nguyen 58

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60

Doyle’s Monster

Love Gone Quiet

Sarah Thacker

Hannah Buchanan

I looked to the sky And saw He who created me Close the cover on His begotten child I existed as nothing but a time capsule of an idea For twelve years—twelve years cloaked in the darkness That came with plunging to my death into frigid waters And yet, I now stand before You, limbs restored, An ingrate Lazarus How do I offer my gratitude To the One who saved yet condemned me with the same pen?

How do I dare to resume the life which You took?

Would I be here if not for the multitude of angels Who tirelessly pleaded with their savior for a miracle?

Bless them—for they have received their reward And what of I, Sherlock Holmes?

Where shall I go from here?

221B Baker Street, no doubt I go where You direct me I do as You ask of me I speak the words with which You ink pages I am but Your creation—Your monster Your fiend and Your regret So guide me, Author, to where You see fit

The heart never grows fonder, She screams and pounds, tearing muscles To escape the tissues that guard her.

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The nerves poke and prod trying to escape the sobbing as the 24-barred cage throbs and jolts.

The mind broke the bond The heart so ferociously longed, A feeling now painfully dislodged From a body that seems to have gone numb.

That same body now in cryonics Begging to regenerate without The heart intact, yearning a quick and easy fix But instead is left aching in slivers, strewn In cities the mind can still depict.

No distance could ever be great enough To disconnect the axons from the cuffs Who imprison her and can never be unshackled.

With all love rebuffed, A silent beaten heart.

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Resting Letters | Elijah Clifford

Holy War Above Al’s Market | Blaine Atkins

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Wind Turbines/Somewhere in Indiana (2025) | Colleen Hefferen

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Sand Mountain Sunset Katey Llewellyn

My Daddy, though not on the same level as my Papaw, had been my hero once.

My fondest memory of him, though clouded by disappointment, still glowed in my heart.

Back when I had two gaping holes for front teeth, Daddy put me in his big grey pickup and stuck a cooler under my feet. We drove in silence, as usual, while some radio preacher mumbled a prayer at us. After a bit of driving, though, we stopped in front of a crystalline lake with jade-colored water.

Daddy taught me how to fish that day.

It was deep summer, the point in the year where the days never end and the woods come alive with chattering birdsong. He would reel in a bass, a catfish, a writhing crappie. I’d squeal when he wrapped a worm around my hook, piercing its slimy flesh. My neon pink fishing rod wasn’t quite cut out for the big fish, so I would reel in a baby bluegill every now and then, giggling with delight and always giving my poor victim a peck on the fish lips before Daddy threw it back in the water. He didn’t talk much that whole day, but nothing really needed to be said.

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At sunset, we choked down dry ham sandwiches and shared a lukewarm Pepsi. We watched deer meander along the shore, leaving their trails through the sawgrass. Lightning bugs flickered around us, and I got up to chase them.

I’d catch three in my hand at a time, juggling them carefully. Once the sun had fallen behind the tree line and the skies blood orange had melted into plum then into pitch-darkness, Daddy helped me back up in his truck and drove us home. He carried my little body, weary from the summer sun, and tucked me into bed.

The picture he took of me, bluegill pinched between my fingers and toothless grin beaming, sat on his nightstand from then on. And on that hot, humid day, toes in the cool water, Daddy was my hero.

Rainbow Trout | Iris Love

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You Are a Goldfish Jay Schleihauf Intrinsically, you have always hated the water.

It’s in the same way, you presume, that your person hates the fact that they’ve lived in Carthage, Tennessee for most of their life. It’s not even a deep-seated hate. It’s just a present, lingering apathy.

Everywhere you look, you are underwater. Every time you breathe, you are using the natural components of your body to extract the only useful thing from your surroundings. In some ways, you feel resourceful. In most ways, you feel angry.

You hate the colorful rocks at the bottom of your home. Glow in the dark.

Even when the lights are off in the apartment, they taunt you. Staring up at you with a dark luminosity that is simultaneously captivating and damning. Nothing in nature looks like those rocks. Not once have those pebbles been cleaned. The water of your doorless bedroom has been filtered and changed, but those pebbles are disgusting. All the shitty food you couldn’t bring yourself to nibble on plagues the uneven surface like a swampy, mossy sheen. You are surrounded by nothing but filth with a clean smile.

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Sometimes, your person weeps once they get home, and you hate that, too.

The lights don’t have time to greet them before there’s a maniacal unraveling of uniform from body, shedding of work clothes like a whirling tornado, even though that level of destruction never seems in season. Then they’re sobbing, and it’s deep and guttural, the cry that claws its way out of a mother when she looks at her aging child. You don’t understand it. Maybe that’s why you hate it.

God, you are one rotten fish.

Not once have you seen your mother’s face, but it comes to you at night. Something vaguely goldfish colored with eyes like black tapioca pearls glares at you, somewhere above the haze of mossy glow in the dark pebbles. She is always striking in a way you can’t place. You are, after all, just a goldfish. Instead of trying to figure out things beyond your tiny little brain’s comprehension, you imagine she’s come to tell you about life beyond water. Of gills glistening in the sunlight and the sensation of grass. That the sky looks like one big, undisturbed pond. Your mother would glubber a tale of a young goldfish settling down far too early in a quaint pet shop, and even though she had never met you, she doesn’t regret bringing you into this life.

Issue 70/Spring 2025

There is a cracking, creaking moment, a flood of sensation almost too much for your little brain. You will live in the same liquid you shit in, the same liquid you eat in, the same liquid you will die in. The confines of your glass enclosure warp the walls of an apartment you are surrounded by constantly but never get to understand as more than a backdrop. You will swim the same loop you always swim and only exist above the glow of the dirty pebbles below you. You can never tell your person that you see them, in all their glowing, festering rage and softness and illusive avoidant tendencies.

You can never tell them anything at all.

This is all there is for you. There must be more. There must be.

Intrinsically, you have always hated the water.

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Letter from the Editor

Phoenix Staff Advisor | Erin Elizabeth Smith

What a semester this has been! Our graphic designer won an American Advertising Award for the design of our last issue. Our friends at The Beacon found a slew of awards from over the last twenty years.

We welcomed a new faculty advisor. Our art editor got to see Morrissey perform live. In spite of all this, I find myself deeply sorrowful as this issue is also the first issue of my presidency, wherein we have to say goodbye to graduating staff members, as they leave UT. Come May, our ragtag operation will be three members short. Instead of bribing each of them to fail their classes and thus stay with us forever, I have decided to dedicate the spring issue to them.

Assistant Advisor | David Peavie Graphic Designer | Nola Mooney Editor in Chief | Maxwell Edmonds Poetry Editor | Adin Lamb Copy Editor | Carrie Cheng Prose Editor | Lidia Biggs Art Editor | Dani Summerlin

Lidia - Prose Editor - From my first day as support staff, you have made me feel welcome. You have a truly delightful spirit. I am in constant awe of your ability to make me giggle, and your music taste is nothing short of delightful. I will forever tell you my in depth thoughts on Conan Gray and Doc Martens.

Public Outreach | Memphis Powers Support Staff | Bree Eaton

Dani - Art Editor - I have never met anyone with your spunk and passion. I had fears around finding a new Art Editor, when I stepped down. But those feelings dissipated after meeting you, and I realized that you are perhaps the most competent person to exist both personally and professionally.

Nola - Graphic Designer - Your excitement about creativity and life is infectious. I can’t help but get excited with you. Thank you for always being so patient with scheduling, as only someone in the creative field understands. During those times, our fifteen minute catch up meeting that evolved into gossip sessions always made life brighter.

Phoenix won’t be the same without you all. It has been an honor to be on staff with you and to call you friends. Thank you for your dedication to the magazine and making my weeks better. I have nothing but excitement for each of you going forward.

- Maxwell Edmonds

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Phoenix Magazine

Issue 70/Spring 2025

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Sponsored by the English Department at the University of Tennessee