LITERARY AND ART JOURNAL 2025
AMENDMENT
SOCIAL PROGRESSION THROUGH ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
ABOUT THE COVER
Encampment
Lili Watkins
My series Encampment documents the events that unfolded on Monday, April 29, 2024, on the library lawn at Virginia Commonwealth University. This work captures the confrontation between protesters—many of whom were students—demanding an end to the war in Gaza and calling for the university to sever financial ties with Israel, and the law enforcement agencies present, including VCU Police, Virginia State Police, and the Richmond Police. The images depict the protesters aligned on one side, with the police opposite, illustrating the deep division between the student body and the university, as well as the broader rift between the city of Richmond, the State of Virginia, and the students' demands. Through this series, I explore the tension that exists when institutional power and collective dissent collide.
STAFF LIST
Editor-in-Chief
Jordan Kalafut
Literary Editor
Lauren Hall
Art Editor
Apollo Hurley
Social Media Manager
Sara Omer
Staff
Fatima Arevalo Zambrano
H. J. Barnhill
Lauryn Baynes
Gabe Carlson
Reese Cilley
Emma Laba
Elina Perera
Katharine Rasmussen
Designer
Carter Lydon
Student Media Center Director
Jessica Clary
Creative Media Manager
Mark Jeffries
An annual publication of radical studentmade visual and literary storytelling. We foreground works of hope, joy, healing, resistance, hard truths, imagination, lived experience, and ideas about how we can change this world for the better.
A student-run creative collective fighting for free speech and social change at the intersection of art, writing, and accessible knowledge.
Amendment first and foremost acknowledges the genocide and mass displacement of human beings in Palestine. We call for a ceasefire now. Amendment condemns all instances of colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism, including those happening in Congo and Sudan.
Amendment would like to thank a multitude of people for their hard work, without whom this book would not have been possible:
To our staff: From submission voting to book production, your input this year has been invaluable. It is an honor to work with you, to learn with you, and to learn from you. Each of your unique perspectives have left their mark on this journal.
To Lauren Hall, Apollo Hurley, and Sara Omer: Your passion for Amendment and our mission is evident through your dedication to your roles as core staff members. I cannot understate how inspiring your unwavering presence has been during times of my own uncertainty. Thank you.
To Jessica Clary and Mark Jeffries: Your support and guidance throughout the years has fostered a close community of creatives which I am proud to consider myself a part of.
To Carter Lydon: Thank you for working with us to make our vision for this journal into a reality. We are grateful for your willingness to work with us and your incorporation of our ideas for the design of this journal.
To our contributors: Creating art is in and of itself a radical and liberatory act. We commend your dedication to creation and encourage each of you to continue documenting your own experiences and those of the people around you.
To the reader: We hope the contents of this journal inspires critical thought, discussion, and action. Thank you for reading.
Jordan Kalafut, Editor-in-Chief
Amendment strives to combine student advocacy and resilience in the face of adversity and social regression, combatting censorship through creativity.
This year, however, we had to do a lot of censoring of image and identity to keep people safe. Protecting the identities of the people in this publication, both those who contributed and those pictured, takes priority.
As always, take care of your neighbor. Building and maintaining community is paramount to creating change. Be the light you wish to see.
The people united will never be defeated.
Jordan Kalafut, Editor-in-Chief
Lauren Hall, Literary Editor
Apollo Hurley, Art Editor
Encampment
Lili Watkins
Encampment
Lili Watkins
ABOUT THE FEATURED CONTRIBUTOR
Artist Statement
I am an anonymous author who goes by the letter D. Poetry is a compass for me: it helps navigate the crossroads of my humanity and marginalization as a gender nonconforming, queer, multi-disabled person of color. In this chaotic world, I find myself oscillating between wrath and relief. Wrath towards the American empire and the capitalist patriarchy that remains entrenched in our world. Relief when I get to translate this wrath onto paper—and finding refuge in self-expression.
I wrote the following poems on two separate occasions but found myself threading both works with the theme of ‘usefulness’ and commodification. No matter where I am directed based upon a part of my identity—whether it be my gender, sexuality, disability, class, or race—I am met with tthe question: what is my value? Each poem I write is a small protest to this question. Eventually, I hope that one day we are met instead with liberation—and no longer measured by use or value but held wholly and equally in love.
At VCU, I study political science and gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. I research gender and race in politics and political rhetoric and am involved with community organizing efforts.
“The
Great Man Loves My Skinsuit”
This poem was written with a Manichaeistic undertone, primarily geared towards the Western and traditional Christian conception of God as a perfectly ‘good’ and unreachable, father-like figure. This description of God left me with the
impression that ‘good’ is inseparable from ‘man,’ and that, supposedly, anyone else who does not fit this description must be redeemed in some way. If I do not fit within the Manichaeistic binary framework of good (man) and evil (woman), I am allegedly more sinful than being a woman. The closest way I could redeem myself, according to this description, would be by disguising myself with the skinsuit of a woman: this is how I can properly declare my value to the “Great Man.” Yet, even with this disguise, I am poorly understood, never seen for who I truly am—a human who is neither man nor woman.
“To
be of Use”
Content Warning: Violent, intense imagery
This poem was written as a brief visualization of my experiences as a disabled person: violent and nearly soulcrushing under the consequences of capitalism. Through the analogy of prey and predator, I wrote the poem as my body akin to a bloody carcass sprawled on a pavement which was ravaged by a predator (such as a vulture). Illness completely upended my life, but to the capitalist eye, it is merely another reason that I must work harder to prove my value, and it makes no distinction between any of its disposable laborers: disabled or not. As I work harder to prove my value, or to simply just survive, I find both my body and my soul being torn apart. For some others, the self-mutilating process of living under capitalism becomes deceivingly desirable—a designed consequence that allows us to labor more at the expense of our humanity.
ABOUT THE FEATURED CONTRIBUTOR
Stretched over the latitude of a shadow, or my body, is the skin of a human girl.
The Man is lustful for my sorrowful gaze and plump, soft lips and silky hair (and especially the curve of the hips) but never seeing through the curtains of my chest wherein lies the altar of a soul — unbridled with an aching desire to be freed, waiting to devour the remainder of my body.
Nothing about me, even the taste of my blood, the imprint of my breath, the universes contained in each of my cells, the dying star bursting with its final light in my mind... is magical, poetic, special, nor beautiful to Him.
In His vision all that He sees before Him is the silhouette of a body and the amalgamation of everything He lacks holding the possibilities of everything It can do for Him.
The Great Man Loves My Skinsuit
The body before Him is not the object of His affection but rather the object for manipulation; to be thrown on a wheel, reshaped metamorphosed transfigured reconstructed materialized into the blood, bones, and flesh of a human girl.
Standing before Him is the reincarnation of Frankenstein’s monster and yet He calls for me.
“Come here, my muse my woman, my company, my womb, my vessel, lie next to me.”
Skinsuit or not, there’s nothing I can do for a Man who doesn’t see me.
My pride in my existence as a carcass is illusory but allows my body to seep into the pavement at a merciful pace.
I will pretend to be at the edge of death, at a bridge just before the Infernal place, and avoid eye contact with the eyes, and stifle the cries, and most of all — submit myself when it finally claws out my insides.
There is nothing merciful of a cruel nature, subject, or prey, or capital, or good, or person, those greedy eyes fails to distinguish between each because all that I am — and all that I need to know is to be of Use.
And with the death comes the sweetness, as my skin and tissue is stretched and torn and ripped and pulled apart, and as I wish to scream and cry in infinite agony, To be of Use
I plead that the last to be scavenged is my heart.
The violence is replaced with the gentle hymn. Rivers of blood and punctured organs becomes seductive instead of disgusting, and once I am fully emptied, once it has made sure I can no longer bleed,
I am no longer of Use, and I am discarded, as I was meant to be.
Luna Katie Rasmussen
You emerge from your cocoonknees knocking, palms dampened by sweat, at the same moment as the others emerge from coruscating chrysalises
You have never felt more alone amidst a sibilant seadazzled by lustrious Lepidoptera, more obviously flawed
The darkness is a hungry thinga gaping maw of mastication & madness that you aim for you are desperate to hide, wings green and sick with envy
A hand finds yoursyou know without looking, he too came from a cocoon perhaps in the darkness, you have found a light.
Journey
Lauryn Baynes
the names of You and I
You had a common name. it forces You back into my mind new people new memories plagued by old. when You remember me, do You remember me? who I was? how I was? the name I had?
You do not know me anymore.
I remember You, and it makes me ache. I do not know who You are, how You are, the name You have.
I do not know You anymore.
every time I hear your name I wonder if it is still your name.
I cast out my own,
H.J. Barnhill
out into the sea where fish occasionally pick at it.
I cast out my own or at least the one that I was given. The one You used to call me. I wonder, do You still have the one I used to call You? my name sounded sweet in your voice but after you left I realized it tasted bitter. like coffee that We got together. I remember, when they called our names we rushed to get our orders, and continue our meaningless conversation until we had to go, and say goodbye to
the names of You and I one last time.
I long for You to know who I am, not who You remember. I long to tell You my name, so I can take in its scent on your breath.
I long to know who You are, not who I remember. I long for You to tell me your name, so I can taste it in my voice.
I wish You could feel who I am, and not who He was. I wish the last time I heard my name come out of your mouth it was mine.
in the craft store line with three and a half yards of shimmery fabric (why fireflies light up)
in school, they said it was so the other fireflies know who’s here to party, and to warn anyone feeling snack-ish that this morsel might be the poisonous kind. really makes you reconsider the sequin. at sunset, when the dance begins, I am not looking for the predators, not remembering what they taught us in school about which kinds of frogs don’t mind the bitter taste, or the real survival lessons we had to teach ourselves on the walk home. there does not have to be a why. they still get snack-ish, even if you don’t shine.
Ollie McKeon
Dissociating Self Portrait
Amuri Morris
animal eyes
!
animal eyes glint from back of house sharpened teeth eyes his face a soft round stone when slack hardens into a weapon and his gaze carves up us girls if looks could kill our deaths would come from blunt force trauma to the cunt
i do not envy the sort of nude lust that possesses men like him i do envy the entitlement it is a new kind of dance
scythe eyes flashing petrifying again into a new shape what a warning what passes through prior to the hardening of the jaw and quivering pupils who’s in there, brows domed and asking that’s boy softness, right there in that
gauzy place of thirst
to taste to savor to enjoy is not, but maybe could be, to devour to gnash and eviscerate
the glare enhances its grip by doubling down he clenches with teeth eyes and shoulders, and forces us to wonder what he wants.
Swim
Amari Louviere
Unsent Letters Nemesis
Thousands of words scattered across sheets of paper
Words I clawed out from my heart and spattered to the page
Choking on those thick and heavy words as I spit them down
Knowing you won’t even read a single one
Because it’s not good enough
Gnawing inside my ribs and banging against my lungs
The hatred I’ve stored for you clamors to leave
Crying out in every language it knows to try and get the point across
Every single fat tear streaming down my face for you
A loss I gave myself to save myself from you
My bones are trying to escape my flesh to tear apart your own
Nothing is good enough to express to you
The pit inside my stomach sinking deeper with every blocked call
Leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone
Sharpening my teeth because my tongue is not barbed like yours
Praying my bite is worse than the barking I’ve written to you
Aching straight from the marrow to my soul
Yours would be damned if it existed
Digging up that empty grave you dug for a daughter
So your son can push you in with your back turned to him
This knife only digs as deep as the length you forged it
Better than staining my teeth to keep the words from my mouth pure
Blood-stained sentences from the hands I used to push as you plunge
I will make you leave me alone
boyscape (since latin class)
Amendment Literature Award Winner
I. a wet boy with a mouth scabs on the inside the things he’s done he was hellbent over reminding everyone that Latin was alive if it were a dead language why does he paw it every week fitting it up against his molars, his hard palette it’s alive as long as it coats his throat with its antiquity he used to think that the teacher’s name was made up until he remembered that all names are made up even the ones we didn’t give ourselves
II.
he only gets it when trying to fuck it doesn’t really matter if it feels good that’s not the point it’s the idea that someone wants to get to know the inside so human he isn’t he keeps saying it’s the moment before right before that counts like being born the darkness is swept from your eyes
and you see a big face above you, sober and you see it getting closer and you understand that you are outside the body looking in your body at the opening of another III.
blazing down quiet streets past the church’s sad grey lot on the way to Lucketts he was behind an ambulance and it took him twenty minutes to realize that the light was on in the back and that he could see the body reclining back there and he can’t remember now if it looked alive or not he remembers feeling like a pervert he was driving he was driving drunk home for winter the vocalist, nauseated in the passenger seat the two got home and the vocalist fucked him blindly animal sounds in the mossy cavern of his throat the vocalist wanted to be famoushe had his mother’s beauty droopy puppy eyes fast fingers
big deep lungs
Author's Note
boyscape is a collection of scenes, reimaginings from my adolescence. i came out as transmasculine later in my life, and this piece is a kind of retroactive glance at what moments as a teenager might have looked like for me. sex and intimacy play a major role in this piece as well - things that were important to me as a teenager, that i have the chance to relearn as i gain a deeper understanding of myself as a trans person and as an adult.
Encampment
Lili Watkins
Encampment
Lili Watkins
Encampment
Lili Watkins
Encampment
Lili Watkins
Encampment
Lili Watkins
Encampment
Lili Watkins
From the River to the Sea Amendment Art Award Winner
Leo
Artist's Statement
“For decades, Black Americans and Palestinians have supported each other through pain & suffering. One day we will all know peace.”
Author's Note
Since childhood, I've always wanted to do something more for a cause. With restrictions from an overprotective, immigrant parent and no monetary ways to help, I found myself wondering what I could contribute. My art had always been without narrative or purpose unless it had to deal with my mental health but I wanted it to show how I felt about the state of the world and the causes that I care about. I was given this opportunity through a text project that I was assigned at ODU. I combined several things that I loved to create this piece about alliance, peace, and liberation. Before I transferred, I was mainly a 2D artist whose strengths were in drawing and painting and I had barely dabbled in any kind of 3D works. However, my time at ODU festered a strong love for ceramics. Once I heard that there were no restrictions on materials, I immediately knew that I was going to mix media. Given the examples shown for this text project, I knew that I had to make a piece that brought awareness but also supported a very important cause to me. 2024 had been a rough year for both my people and Palestinians and I wanted to make something to show support but also the connection between us. I had seen many opinions on where Black Americans should stand on the genocide happening in Palestine and I wanted to highlight why we should care. I wanted to represent the care that Palestinians and Black Americans, African Americans especially, have had for each other over the years. There is a history between us of love and help that some may not know exists. I wanted this piece to do many things. I wanted it to provide comfort, awareness, a feeling of comradery, and support. I included the "controversial" phrase, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", because I know what it's like to have chants of resistance and hope be censored or villainized. I stand with Palestinian people in their complete liberation as I would for my own people and many others affected by colonization and greed. I hope that I have more opportunities and time to create more pieces like this one to spread messages here at VCU as well.
I’ll save You a spot
On the right side of my bed
And a goodnight kiss
Accept Our nature
(Were We not destined for this?)
Surrender your doubt
Just let me replace
Your worn down body pillow
Find what we both seek
Grace me with your arm
Keeping me as I keep You
Sunset in embrace
Lay Our pain to rest
Keep Our eyes on the stars
They display Our hope
In another life
(Perhaps another body)
You should have been there
Did We know We did (We knew We were doomed by chance) n’t have to pretend? Keep Me
To See What is There
!
H. J. Barnhill
A clank and clatter rings down my cave as a loose shoulder pauldron from a fallen enemy is haphazardly kicked. Men are always so clumsy. I quietly glide to the corner of a bend and wait. Maybe if they had more patience, they wouldn’t die so easily. I can hear what sounds like a bare hand being dragged against the wet cave wall.
Curiosity almost gets the better of me, but I would be a fool if I did not learn from past mistakes. Previous experience has taught me to use all my senses to my advantage. Sight is my weapon, but through sound, I can hear the weapons clanging on their belt, the heaviness of their armor, and most importantly, how far they are from me.
Something is off this time. This man is quiet. I can hardly hear him. There are no heavy footsteps of metal boots, or the jostling of a sword’s sheath, or the roaring of a lit torch. There is only light in the deeper chambers. He must know.
I quietly recede further back to where I typically spend my day: the central chamber of the home I’ve made in this cave. Torches line the walls, along with a central brazier illuminating the room. I hate allowing men this far into my cave. It is almost a day's work to carry them back to the entrance, but when a more intelligent man comes into my home, I don’t have much of a choice.
I move over to my chest, softly open it, and pull out the blade that I stole from Athena’s temple. I can’t help but snarl as I see my reflection in the blade. I still haven’t quite figured out how to use a blade to its fullest extent, but it isn’t hard to fatally wound your opponent when his eyes are scrunched shut. I stand in the center of the room, where my eyes will be most visible, and I wait. Then, I hear what sounds like an unarmored body hitting the wet stone floor, and a cry. A woman’s cry. I stand frozen. A woman has never come to hurt me. Against my better judgment, I rush over to where I heard the sound, making sure to not allow my footsteps to make noise.
There she sits, crying to herself. She doesn’t even notice me. I stand there, watching her. I let the sword fall to my side.
Eventually, she wipes her tears, and I see her move to stand up. I take a couple steps back, ready my sword into a threatening position, and close my eyes. She’ll see me and run screaming. A scream didn’t come.
I open my eyes; my gaze meets hers. No, it’s as if she’s looking past me. Then I realize: her eyes are a cloudy gray. She is blind.
I take a few more steps back. My surprise throws my previous caution to the wayside.
“Is someone there?” A pause. “Oh gods, please don’t let something be living here.” Panic smears itself across her face.
I go to speak, but something stops me. She pauses for a long, tense moment. I could tell she is praying to the gods, hoping that this cave is empty.
“I was worried, I didn’t know if I could trust you,” I finally say. She looks toward my voice. “Oh, thank the gods.”
I tense up in anger as she says so.
She continues, “I came in here to seek refuge from the storm. I sought to pray to Athena for aid, and on the way back, I was caught in this downpour. I take it you did the same?”
I struggle to keep in my boiling hatred, but I must. “Yes,” I lie.
“Oh, then we are one and the same. Maybe Athena heard our prayers.”
I scowl at her suggestion; lucky she cannot see it. “I come from a faraway town.” It isn’t a lie, but it isn’t the truth either. “If you need, when the storm passes, I can guide you to the road.”
“That would be lovely.” She reaches her hands out. “Could you help me to a place to sit?”
I tentatively grab hold of her hand. It’s shockingly callous. I could tell that she hasn’t been shy to physical labor. I clear away a small spot of blankets and cushions, so she doesn’t grow suspicious, and guide her down.
“It’s quite warm,” she says.
“It’s because I started a fire before you arrived.” I sit down next to her, on the cold stone.
She holds her hands out toward the warmth.
“Everything feels different when you are blind.”
I look at her inquisitively. When I realize she can’t see my look of confusion, I vocalize, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Surfaces, textures, and feelings have so much more meaning. I’ve never felt fire this way. Where my hands are now, it feels as though the fire is gently wrapped around my hand, like a cozy blanket. If I move my hands closer, it would feel as though it’s in the center of the blaze. If I could still see, I wouldn’t feel it.”
“Have you not always been blind?” I ask.
“No, I have not.” She hesitates for a moment, and then loosens. “My husband is a sailor. He told Poseidon that if he let him live, then he could have me. I refused to let Poseidon onto me. When I didn’t take to him, he blinded me. I’ve been like this for weeks now. I ran away from my husband. It was clear he didn’t love me. I tried going to Athena’s temple, and praying to her, hoping she would take away my blindness. When I left, a wild storm ensued.”
“Poseidon is angry with you,” I state the obvious.
“I should have just taken to him. It wasn’t worth all the trouble it caused.”
“No!” I reply swiftly.
She is taken aback for a moment.
“I mean, you shouldn’t let the will of the gods dictate your choices. Don’t let them take away your power.”
She lets the warmth of the fire brush against her face. “They already have.”
“They have not. I still see a strong woman in front of me.”
“May I feel your hand?” She changes the subject.
I stutter, to which she searches for my hand on the ground, and eventually finds it. She holds it up and caresses it. She feels the tips of my fingers with hers, and drags them through the grooves between my knuckles, around the hair on the back of my
hand, and finally comes to rest in my palm.
“Your hand is rough. Are you a farmer too?”
“No,” I reply. “I work with stone.”
“You’re a mason?”
I briefly pause. “My father was.”
“You’re odd.”
She hears the pause of silence and fills it. “May I feel your face? To know what you look like?” She takes my silence as a no and lays down on the hard stone. “We should both get some rest.”
I grab a pillow that I had thrown to the side. “If you lift your head, I have a pillow.”
“Odd,” she replies, as I slip the pillow under her head. “Goodnight, love.”
I wait until she falls asleep before draping a blanket over her.
I didn't sleep that night. Since I’ve been inflicted with the curse, I’ve found that I need to sleep significantly less. Beyond that, my mind was completely overstimulated. I had my first pleasant interaction with a person in years. Albeit, it isn’t like she knows what I am. She is clearly a naive, blind girl. Is that such a bad thing though? Sure, she isn’t given the chance to judge me, but it also means I don’t have a chance to ruin her.
She wakes up around midday.
“Are you awake yet?” She asks to the room.
I don’t respond, curious to see what she would do.
She lays back on the pillow and drags the blanket up to her chin. She is staring off into nothingness. I wonder, do blind people daydream all the time? Are they imagining what the world looks like around them? Or do they not daydream at all?
She sighs, and seemingly speaks to herself. “What a mess I’ve gotten myself into.” There is a pause, as if in prayer. “She sounds pretty at least, and she’s nice. Although, I can tell she’s hiding something... If you can hear me, please help.”
She sits up for a moment, and I could swear there is a brief moment where she looks directly at me.
She laughs to herself. It’s that awful jerking laugh you do when you’re miserable and you’ve exhausted every other way of expressing it. “Maybe she is right. It is a god that did this to me. Why should I revere them?”
She talks about how I am odd, yet she is fascinating. Her experience is almost the same as mine, but in the opposite ways. She escaped Poseidon’s grip, and she too could never look someone in the eyes again. Her fate is also decided by forces against her power, but that intertwines it with mine.
I haven’t yet asked her name.
I quietly take a bow and quiver from my chest and leave the woman alone in the cave to go hunting. There are a few statues of animals that dart the surrounding forest. There was a slight learning curve to hunting animals without looking them in the eyes, but I’ve had plenty of time to get used to it by this point.
When I return with my game, I find that she has felt her way around my cave, finding that it is well furnished, and quite cozy.
“Do you live here?” She asks me.
“Yes,” I say.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to judge me.”
“Judge you for what?”
“What is your name?” This time I am the one changing the topic.
“Anastasia. What is yours?”
I know my name has spread to nearby towns and cities. I consider lying. “My name is Medusa.”
The name doesn’t seem to register on her face.
I place the two rabbits I killed on the ground and walk up to her. I grab her hands, and take them to my face, where I leave them. She feels my soft cheeks, and rounded jawline. She draws her thumbs underneath my sharp eyes, and up to my brow.
She goes to run her hands through my hair, but I hastily pry her hands away and place them back to where she is cupping my
face. She drags the pads of her fingers over my lip, slowly leans in, and gently kisses me. It lasts only a few moments. I just stand there, stunned, blinking cluelessly at her. My breathing turns heavy with anxiety. Her eyes are beautiful. I hesitate, like I always seem to, but this time I don’t let it overpower me. I lean in, and gently kiss her.
She goes to lean her forehead against mine, and I pull away.
“I haven’t been fully honest about myself.”
“I know,” she responds with an amused laugh. “I can see the real you.”
It feels as though she is staring into my very soul, and I let her.
Once again, I take her hand, and this time I guide it to my hair. Upon touching it, she quickly recoils, and a pit falls in my stomach. Then, she goes back to feel it again. She gently strokes the snakes that are coming out of my head. They take to her and lean into the affection.
“How?” She asks.
I tell her the truth. “Poseidon. Poseidon forced himself onto me, like he did with you, but unlike you, I didn’t put up a fight. He did so in Athena’s temple. As punishment for such vice in her temple, she turned me into a monster.”
“No,” she responds. “You are not a monster. You are far too kind.”
Tears start to run down my face. I want her to hurt me, so I no longer have the anticipation of it. “Did you not feel them on the way in?”
“Feel what?” There is a tone of confusion in Anastasia’s voice.
“Those who have come to kill me. Athena’s curse makes it so any who gaze into my eyes turn to stone, petrified.”
She gazes longingly into my eyes, seemingly lost in them.
“Then I am glad I am blind,” she replies.
I start to cry, laughing. “I am too.”
I come home for the winter and my mother cradles me. She folds me in two and brings me to her chest, like I’m a much smaller creature, like her mother must have done. She says my sister has been sleeping in my bed, that she’s missed me, that they all have. I only get two days in the old house before my father takes us away. I think he forgets that I’m a visitor now. It rains when we leave for Lima, a delicate drizzle that does nothing but stain the tarmac and send us off with a gentle touch. My father completes his Duolingo lesson on the plane. He likes to learn only enough of a foreign language to stumble through the essential sentences. He enjoys being a tourist- like if he drowned in the stereotypes of crass, impolite Americans, no one would notice that the face coming up for air was brown. Our minivan broke down on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee one summer. The man who gave us a jump smiled with every tooth and told us we had beautiful skin. I remember this story when the rental car pops a tire in the Andes; when there is no offhand comment on any unusual feature. Nearly everyone has a similar skin, made no less beautiful by its mundanity. Everyone is a different shade of the same brown, a different tone created by a different life.
I study the colors of my father’s face in the resort bar. We meet another family, a Sri Lankan family, and I see a flash of recognition in my father’s eyes, then a tired glare, then careful calm. By welcoming my father as one of their own, they have shattered his painstakingly crafted American illusion. I’ve watched him build the untruth. I see it when he makes my grandparents stop taking my sister and me to the temple, when he passes out on the lawn at the Dave Matthews Band concert, and when his accent manifests only while he’s nervous on the phone.
He chastises my mother over the coffee table in our delicate suburban facade of a home. He thinks she’s spending too much time with her Nepali friends. I catch the thinly veiled fear- my father worries that we’re moving back, returning home, sailing brave american boys
against the current that he stirred the seas to form.
When I was nine, we spent a month in Nepal with my mother's family- we only spent a week in Sri Lanka. My father doesn’t like to be reminded of where he came from, but I saw the house he grew up in. I walked the halls lined with portraits. I met the people who raised him in love. He says now that he doesn’t want to go back in time, that he wants to progress, to be seen as an American, to build and preserve a nuclear family. But he is the first to volunteer our home to host his cousins, makes a place for his parents at every dinner table, loves his little sister, and makes their presence in our lives a tradition. He frowns when we sing the Sri Lankan national anthem during karaoke, but he brings out the amp and the mic. He doesn’t always speak his love, but when he does, his voice is the loudest.
I want to find the version of my father I know only in pictures and show him what I have seen- loud and brash and brave and brown American boys. American and whole, just like him. I want to watch the love that raised him return to him, carried effortlessly by the tide.
When we fly back home from Peru, the tarmac is still wet, as if by the same storm, like time stopped while we were away. As we pull out of the airport lot, the rain begins to pour. My grandfather is driving us home, so my father runs his hands over the souvenir I picked out, a little clay tablet on a string.
I am learning a new language, just like him, and I think every word might be essential. I am learning to speak like my father, to hold space and hold my loved ones like my mother. Beneath the flash of recognition in his eyes I see my sister’s face. She looks just like my parents, and I look just like her. We craft our own Americana: they calm the water and we learn to swim.
Arkan’s Sandcastle A
A human: by nature, capable of change. By system, unable to escape isolation or incarceration. Is that not enough to soothe a nation?
Justice ought to be sufficient. Justice and vengeance are not equivalent.
A flawed institution involving killing for retribution must be reexamined. We must demand it. Danger is imminent. Whether guilty or innocent, taking “an eye for an eye” is a concept of a child unaware of life’s sanctity. It is unfair to humanity to kill in a dystopia and give in to a phobia of confronting a broken order where execution is elevated murder.
Justice ≠ Vengeance P.D.
"Object"
Lauryn Baynes
Midas touch Lauren Pazant Hall
You walk with gold tipped fingers and peer with soulless, pitted eyes.
For your amusement supersedes your reverence in your scope of the world around you.
You scorn the greenery’s forgiving graze as you bristle by crushing the plants you deem beneath you
Soiling the earth with ease; turning dancing grass to sod Ripping the moss from its trees and tossing its carcass in the ocean
Scorching the land’s flesh until its lifeless body gives no room for rot
Only dust
And
The “from dust to dust” verse you abuse and use
As reason to excuse your greed
As reason for your haughty assumption to the heir of earth’s throne
As reason
For your delusory right to destroy every flowering field
And every grassy plain
Yet
You never cease to wonder why the ocean refuses to learn your name
And still.
You worship your kin
And you give thanks for your presence that you seed in earth’s carcass
You reap what you sow And so, the frayed strings of yarn tarnish the quilt of the land
Along with the sodom soiling of earth’s crisp linen
To reap what is worth in gold of the rice planted below where you stand
To conquer the glory of the history that has been overwritten
To castrate the remaining memories of those you’ve cast out
The people
These people
We,
Who were here before your structures approved us before your phones learned us
And although you may move here for respite
And although you think your mere presence on this soil raises its value to gold
And although you think your ways are better
You can never erase who was here *is here
Reverence Not awe Restoration Not deconstruction
The love in this land is what serves it, is what grows it
We can thrive without your invasion
Sherpa Z !
I'm glad I get to walk across the street
Cool gravel
Winds blowing gently
The night breeze
And I live in safety
With friends and community
My day is full of days
And each day, full of moments
(Three days packed into one)
And I’m with people who see and understand me
And God does it feel good
I don't want to die anymore
I don't think I ever did
But to look up in the sky and know in my heart that It's not all going to collapse upon me
It feels like life
I'm glad I lived past 18
I'm glad I lived past 21
And I'm glad i can see a world where i have the choice to live past 30
I used to feel like the future was obsolete
A hopeless apocalypse
Abandoned
Drowning
On fire
The world was ending every day and I didn't know what to do about it so I just kept getting high and drunk and high
And I believed I deserved it
That I was damned
And to look around me in a desolate parking lot littered with trash in Richmond, Virginia and to
Really be there
And believe that I am happy
I never thought i would feel this way
And when my child tells me they want to kill themselves
I'll ask them "why?
What part of killing yourself do you truly want?"
Release
Freedom
Empathy
Pity
I'll treat them the same
And give them what they need
Because thank God I was able to get
Exactly what I need
Flowers can only grow with the rain
Ginger Bolton
The Idea of Having Sex with a Friend
You ask to embrace me; I pull away, Afraid.
A body I wish to embrace, To love, Because it homes Somebody I love.
It makes my head spin With joy. It beckons me towards you, It beckons me to the forbidden, It beckons me to being loved.
I am afraid of being loved.
When we embrace, And you touch me, I feel you, But I can only think About who hurt me.
It is a sickening fear. It makes me want to vomit.
I am Terrified It will burn if I stay to long, Yet I stay in your warmth And I tell you, “No.”
I am not ready,
H.J. Barnhill
For what we want Still causes me Pain.
A tear rolls down My cheek, And you let it fall Onto your bare shoulder.
I smell your hair, And feel your chest against mine.
As you hug me, I know where you Differ from him.
I hope one day I can feel Your warmth Not just around me, But inside me. I hope one day I can know you In your entirety.
I take comfort In what we have, And the idea That one day I will finally have sex with a friend.
Eating loose teeth for breakfast, pouring him a cup of coffee
My hair is straw, my bones made of wood
A prayer tugs at me while I braid my hair for 8 AM service
I sit under a tree and let the ants pour over me
Let the sun burn, the boys yell, the blood pour out of my veins
Wet and warm through the roots into the seeds
My little brother grows to be twenty feet tall and I keep shrinking
Into rubber shoes, I hold hands with Constanza
We are both warm and tired– of the Georgia heat
A red or blue car drives us to church, a ribbon in my hair
While the choir is singing, the snowstorm of 2009 whistles in my bones–
Flying on my daddy’s shoulders, Fingers purple in the skin of a white March
A prayer in Spanish before bed, before meals, before mass
A prayer to grow tall enough to look him in the eye
A bite of cake, frosting on my chin and Jesus on my tongue
Tiny Plastic Jesus, The Snowstorm of 2009 Mayra Figueroa
Encampment
Lili Watkins
Encampment
Lili Watkins
Encampment Lili Watkins
Amendment accepts submissions from VCU undergraduate & graduate students. Submit inquiries to amendmentvcu@gmail.com
We are located at the VCU Student Media Center at 301 W. Cary Street, Richmond, VA 23220 Find us and submit your work at amendmentvcu.com On Instagram @amendmentvcu
Amendment is a proud member of the VCU Student Media Center.
VCU Student Media Center
PO Box 842010
Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA 23284-1010
Amendment 2025 was typeset in Verdana and Myriad Pro
