The staff at Pwatem would like to give a special thanks to the VCU Student Media Center and the Student Media Commison Board. 2025 Pwatem Literature and Art Journal VCU Student Media Center P.O. Box 842010 Richmond, VA 23284-2010
Everything in this book was created with the blood, sweat, and tears of VCU students and faculty by student fees. We accept submissions all year round from VCU undergraduate students only. All styles are welcome.
To submit you art and literature, and to see our online-only content, visit pwatem.com Typeset in IM FELL DW Pica, Bradley DJR, Gothicus Roman, and Academy Engraved LET.
PWA-TEM
1 2
A fictitious French province created by James Branch Cabell that serves as the setting of several of his fantasy novels.
Virginia Commonwealth University’s anthology of literature and art.
Masthead
Editor-In-Chief
Reese Cilley
Art Director
Kirsten Sturgill
Social Media Manager
Melody Vang
Secretary Mack Blair
Gabe Carlson
Designer Reese Cilley
Editors
Paige Dudley
Jordan Kalafut
Avery Eckert
Eliza Young
Elina Perera
Ashley Gabales
Ajax Balane
Esther Schneider
Emma Pizzilo
Mollie Donovan
Fatima Arevalo Zambrano
Illustrators
Melody Vang
Avery Eckert
Imani Tigney
Kirsten Sturgill
Love Wilson
Ashley Gabales
Maeve Whilhoit
Apollo Hurley
Gabe Carlson
Cover Artist
Kirsten Sturgill
Director of Student Media
Jessica Clary
Creative Media Manager
Mark Jeffries
Editor’s Note
This is my farewell to Pwatem. Four years full of treasured memories and experiences are coming to an end as I move on to the next stage of my life. When I entered college and joined Pwatem, I did not know how important the Student Media Program would become to me. It is a place where I spend hours laughing, smiling, and creating. I will truly miss the Student Media Center, but I hope I make space for someone to also find love in Student Media.
As you enter this space of student literature and art, I think it is important to understand the importance of the written word and the drawn art. With every piece in this publication, we hear a story, and through those stories, we learn. Print media is extremely important, and I hope it continues to be fostered for many years to come. I hope that through this book, you can see yourself.
First, thank Kirsten Sturgill, who has worked with me since the beginning. They are a fantastic artist who does so much for this publication, which can be seen through this fantastic cover. I would not have been able to do any of this without them by my side. I also want to thank Mack Blair and Gabe Carlson for helping with the behind-the-scenes of Pwatem, jobs often unseen but without would be the downfall of the publication. Thank you, Mark Jefferies and Jessica Clary, for being my mentors and guiding hands through these past few years. I can not thank you enough for what you have given me. I will miss laughing and learning with you.
I hand this role to Melody Vang next year, who I think will bring new ideas and knowledge to Pwatem. Melody will do amazing things as Editor-In-Chief of Pwatem. When she joined the inner staff this year, she brought so much to the team by helping not only with our social media presence but also providing feedback and support to our team. Melody, you will go on to do great things, and I thank you for taking care of Pwatem next year.
Finally, I thank our students. Without you, we could not make this book. With your writing and art, this book is created. Thank you to our readers who pick up our books year after year. This book is for the students to provide them with more opportunities to be published while still in undergrad. Thank you to those who submitted. We love reading every submission and looking at every artwork.
I depart with the importance of Student Media. It has changed my college experience and many others. Thank you.
Farewell, Reese Cilley (Editor-In-Chief)
Pwatem Staff Tarot
Pwatem Staff Tarot
Nati Feliciano-Soto
Twin Magic: Sapphire waters and the Marisol winds
An island where the seas were born, Driven always by the wind and its scorn. Atabey and Guabancex, the yin and yang, For many generations, their strength still reigns.
Maybe like a Rose and its true image we can see a new creation. Bourica sangre, nada más que corre más profundo. Pero el mundo no se deja llevar con orgullo.
Agua y viento nunca se tardan, Siempre llegar en tiempo pero con el corazón nunca se tiene suerte. Así que la poderosa es algo que es peligroso, vente.
A man’s best friend, redefined, to protect their legacy. The diaries of their magical sorcery, Completes their speciality.
A half brother and a bloodline of strength. Yet with their friends, they are just teenagers, Living in the moment.
High school sweethearts: K-9 and affined, Green and light eyes, on Halloween, the stars aligned. Everyone says there can only be one, A Queen to lead the immortal world.
But with a bond so close, Why can’t there be two chosen with words?
Bella Wagner
Teenagegirl
Last year a girl was found dead behind my local drugstore
Her body resting solemnly on a body of moss
I never knew of her
Only the people looking for her
I never thought a bed of moss was fitting for a teenage girl
I believe though that nature was kinder to her than this world
Opening her arms to embrace her stardust form
The daffodils bent in mourning, curving inward to provide the comfort we couldn’t No bugs touched her skin
And the wilderness stood still
For the four days she laid there
On the forest floor
I hope she found peace
I hope she felt loved
Even the I nanimate Craves Companionship
Kylie Grunsfeld
Casey Kendle
A Yellow Rabbit Among White Wolves
When I tell him the kids at school call me “dog eater” my father tells me not to be so sensitive.
My mother helps me with my math homework, while chicken grows cold on the stove. FOX news blares from the TV, breaking up the stiff silence of our dining room.
When I was in 4th grade, I took a field trip to Jamestown. people dressed in colonial clothing surrounded me, and my teacher joked that if she left me here, they would mistake me for “one of those Indians.”
I felt myself redden in shame, but for reasons I could not understand. I will not cry. I will not be sensitive.
On the bus ride home she gives me a gobstopper, she only gave those out as a reward. Overjoyed, I pinky promise her I wouldn’t tell anyone what she said.
Sara Omer
I feel at home at the Whole Foods
These are my hands, and they rest well on my knees. And yes, these are how smooth my legs are. Unshaven, I am; embalmed, I hope to be, And breathe with a stillness. For I am of the people around me.
Sitting, a yogurt container sings to me: “Yes, I am fat free.”
Standing, a man says to me, “You keep this house very clean.” I clean with vinegar, Never bleach— Very on-brand For what this Whole Foods should be.
Kylie Grunsfeld
In My Head We Are Friends
I spotted him with his head bent; the lone wilted black-eyed beauty on the city bus, headed outward. By the grace of the fogged up window one could assign a frown to that face, angled toward the screen in his lap— the blue light and the winter flush combining for some midnight purple.
Standing on the salted sidewalk and vibrating in the chill, I could imagine him headed to have one final talk with the dastardly girlfriend or to stay a night with the aunt whose whole house has a headachey perfumey curtain draped over it, asphyxiating all who dare to breathe. Where else so late, with so little?
Soon it will come down in flurries, like trillions of little runners trying to catch the city bus before it takes off into the night. And when I wake up to the world with its edges softened and look around for some sign of life, I’ll remember the dark hair, dark jacket, off on some business that perhaps wasn’t business at all, but a quiet meander just for the sake of it.
Pilot
Anika Hammel
RRGGSGAGDHDHS FUCK YOU I HATE YOU SO MUCH YOU FUXKING MOTHERFUCKEF DIE DIE DIE
You took me into the office to tell me you needed to change my hours, along with the other student workers. You said you were trying to “run this place more like a business” instead of catering to student schedules. Mind you, the entire point of this position was to cater to student workers and having odd hours.
Anyone who disagreed would simply have their hours cut. I had to roll over and let you because I would be homeless without this job.
Instead of allocating everyones hours where they needed to be, you pulled people. I should not have had to ask the manager from the location next door to send people over because we needed help, right in front of you, for you to continue sitting on your ass and not helping “the business” you’re trying oh-so-hard to create.
I should not be doing the job of three people that, last week, were all here. They should not have had their hours cut. We shouldn’t have union busting. But here we are, because we’re students and all too poor to afford a lawyer to take you to court. I should not want to stick my hand in the fryer so i can get five damn minutes of time to breathe during a rush because I am the only one on the line.
Nobody else’s hours are getting changed. You’re just cutting them. We are going back to how understaffed we were while you complain about the understaffing. You fucking created it you stupid corporate cock sucking asshole.
The only reason I’m even on my break right now is because the manager from another location took his employees over to help and let me take it. While you sit on your ass in the office saying you’re trying so hard to figure out what went wrong with the schedules.
I hate you so much the only thing stopping me from throwing a frying pan at you is the law. Fucking cuck cuntface dick breath idiot i hate you i hate you i hope you step on a nail i hope your mom tries to post-natal abort you i hope you experience all the pain you’ve caused me “Hes not trying to be transphobic to you” “just focus on your job” i will hunt you for sport and wear your skin if you look me in the eyes and tell me to bootlick another classist prick who comes sniffing around complaining that the burgers are too burnt because i had to do four more jobs and left them on there two long. “Trying to run it like a business” then run it like one I cant run the whole thing for you at sixteen an hour give me a raise or i will raise my fist and shove my middle finger so far up your ass you can taste it
Elina Perera
shrinking feeling
i find your note to him in the margins of my textbook and i miss him too now, and i understand it– the futile endeavor to halve the sensation, over and over, to infinitely smaller pieces. yes, it shrinks, it tessellates, but it never disappears. grief is too clever for such kindnesses, but every time your message is read, someone new knows his name, and for you, i will take it and place his ghost upon my shoulders, unburdened
“The Cycle of Paris and Helen”
Gillian Grunenfelder
Elina Perera
same//same
and i live for it now that brief snatch of warmth in the snow and the thought that we might be tasting the same something–the same foul moment. watching the ash hit the ground it’s not allowed. it’s dirty, but i noticed he spoke to you and looked at me “you know i only do this when you ask and i won’t imagine that it’s anyone else.”
we stood removed from the streetlights just enough to see how, in their weightless dance, our triplet breaths carried each other upwards, made of the same something–exhaled filth into the air. i thought i’d earned the selfishness of trading health for heat you know i only do this when you ask and i won’t imagine that it’s anyone else.
Conjuring Luce Barahona
Camden Walker
Camden on the Shore
A dreamer
Often caught wandering
Between running tangents
And sauntering silence
A stroll on the shore
Ejecting the arms
Trying to catch the gust
Which whips against the face
That’s what I always liked about the shore
You could tell the wind anything
Or nothing
The forgetful listener
Vulture King Kennedy Washington
Elyott Saxe
Sorry This Might Be A Lot But
I think of myself like a bug in a jar and I think of myself like an exotic animal in a zoo with a compulsory plaque explaining my behaviors, a glass display case with onlookers saying, what even is that thing? I meet someone and I’m a walking talking labeled diagram, I say wait a second and I pull the scalpel out, the drill, the bone saw, and I carve down the center of my head (vivisection, noun[1]), crack open a section of my skull like an eggshell (trephination, noun[2]), point at little bits of my brain and say I’m sorry for how I am. This here, this is why, and this. And I draw a nice clean line down my midsection and pry it all open, I say, this is my heart and these are my lungs, see the way they pulse and expand-contract? Please tell me, do you like me, despite the thrum of my blood and breath? A doctor said that I don’t breathe right, that air goes out, then in instead of in, then out. (Respire[3], aspire[4]; verb, verb.) I’ve never breathed any other way and I’ll never have any other lungs but I spend my days thinking of how to do it right. It hurts my chest. I just want to breathe correctly, get to the root of it, but I’m no anatomist so in the quiet hours of night I take the scalpel and I just stab, blind, I hack myself open and I pull something out and I say, what even is that thing?, and I poke and I prod like I’ll figure it all out, but God, it’s just so bloody and messy and human. But I don’t know how else I’m meant to do it because being autistic is about how weird you seem to other people, normal people (etic, adjective[5]; emic, adjective[6]). It’s about living in a room with one-way glass and being told to decorate it like your neighbor’s. So, could you please take the scalpel and cut me up and show it all to me? I’m sorry about all of the blood. (Exsanguination, noun.[7]) I can go. A doctor said that I can’t tell when people want me to go. I maybe wish I never learned because even though everyone said yes, yes I noticed you breathe backwards, so obviously I was doing it wrong the whole time, it didn’t hurt before. (Epiphanic, adjective.[8]) But a doctor, he took me under the knife awake, with forceps and lancet and intravenous tubes, and he made the incisions, then at a point he started digging with his nails and bringing red hands up to my face to show me pieces of my flesh, saying, you lack the social understanding expected at your age. So it turns out everyone, all the time, has been putting me under the knife awake, and everyone, all the time, has known I breathe backwards, that my heart goes thump-thump and not thump-thump, that everyone all the time is looking at my insides and thinking, what even is that thing? So can I be blamed for taking a blade to myself, putting all my
On the Ship
Gabba Heinze
Sara Omer
Sitting with Sardines
I am catching the fish. I am eating them for breakfast. They sit on their plates, and sing!
Good morning. I am not just Omega-3s. I am everything you need. And I don’t feel pain. You can tell by the way you get to slaughter me.
Camden Walker
Unnamed #2
I’m watching the world
Through the apple of my eye
The suns yolk seeps
Through the canopy of lush leaves
Leaving shadows shaped like Infinitely winding paths
Finch Benton
Tintagel Horizon
A shivering chapel etched on sea-carved cliff steps risen to the broken swell where ghosts can walk the edge of cracked time unlocked by the last glimmers
People Power Burke Loftus
Johnnie Watkins
Casey Kendle
Roots From A Torn Up Tree
Casey, your DNA suggests that 46.7% of your ancestry is Southern Chinese & Taiwanese Unassigned.
People of the Shangshan culture near the lower Yangtze began to domesticate rice around 10,000 years ago, and their genetic legacy was likely carried by their descendants as far away, Madagascar and the remote Pacific. Rice remains at the center of southern Chinese agriculture, but the ancestry of southern Chinese people was transformed by the expansion of early northern dynasties. Although these migrations pulled the diverse people’s of southern China toward a shared genetic identity. with their northern neighbors, a distinct, southern ancestry. St We found evidence of your recent ancestry in the following regions. Darker regions represent places–where you have DNA in common with more people who report ancestry from that particular region. Because these results reflect the ancestries of individuals currently in our reference database, expect to see your results change over time as that database grows. Read
STRONGERe not using screen readers, clicking on the locations below toggles a map to zoom in and out of the corres Matches.
Finch Benton
Almost Swimming
The heron stays close to the bank. His long legs keep him just above the water until he takes another step and begins to float, reluctantly, until he can stand again.
Bella Wagner
Grief cowboy
⟡ Best Literature ⟡
February fifteenth, eight pm
The day I became a cowboy
The evening I got the news I put on my boots and left
I knew what it was What you did
But I had a job to do
The wild lonesome west.
Time after time
I was rounding up the details of what you did
Calling shots and asking questions
With a pair of jacks in my hand
You tool me to a statue
A garden
A haunted house
And finally you
For years you were by my side
Connected by lasso
I tug and tug
And all I get is silence
Now I walk around a wanted man
Now your bounty hangs over my head
Now I am here and you are gone
Lost to the concept of eternity
A revolver that only fires blanks
At your grave I see a hare I hold my gun aimed
Now I hold it by its tail
I think of it’s mother
It’s father
It’s brother
Now it rests in a bed of irises
I return to my journey
A new town
A new name
A new found life
Time passes Days
Months
And now a year
Your stone hasn’t weathered one bit
Below me you lay as the sun paints the sky pink
Below me I stand in the tracks of what was once you I stand on the remnants of death
The charred trees and shattered walls in its wake
In my hands I hold the remnants of you Desert sand slipping through my fingers It wasn’t for me.
On the trail you once walked In the rooms of the home you once played
I take off my boots Hung up my hat And laid down on a bed of sweetpeas
April 11th was the day I ceased being a cowboy
Now I walk the paths we once walked I write the words we once shared I share the memories newfound
Now the smoke dissipates from my pistol In the world without you
The wild Lonesome
Randa Rising
Ode to the destroyer
Curled into an unholy womb
Tabernacle of a profane promise
Nursling from the death and rot
A chrysalis embedded beneath the rock
Heartbeat lullaby soothing the unborn
Cracks in the foundation
Mountains shudder, and cliffs shake
Creatures flee in instinctive terror
The world fears the unholy birth
For its existence promises destruction.
Forced from warmth, dropped into cruel existence
The ground flinches from its fall
Abandoned in its sacred holding place
Baptized in amnio and christened with bottomless unfulfilled hunger
For blood of the world yet to be tasted
Foundling destruction sprawled onto stone
A cradle of newborn calamity
Soft skin stretched over awkward limbs scrambling for purchase in its birthplace
Unconcerned of its own size,
Pressing against the walls of its own genesis
Shattering the walls of the womb
Clawing breath into new lungs,
Crying for no mother
For what mother could live with such a child?
Stretching wet rubber wings,
Reaching for the sun with claws outstretched
Rage boiling red from its very conception
Oh, Woe to the world!
For its destruction is at hand!
Created by its own womb, rejected by its progeny!
Hope lost in the cries of the newborn calamity
A death rattle for the world!
Caroline May
Casey Kendle
Pin Feathers
In the 17th century, pigeons used to be birds of royalty. Domesticated for a life of pleasure filled with riches and gifts, they used to be birds of reverence and power— shown off to kings and kept in the finest of cages, groomed with the most delicate of tools.
Soon though, we abandoned them— let them fly free when they no longer interested us, as if they were nothing more than broken toys and we convinced ourselves that we were doing the right thing.
When I was a kid, I used to tell people I was the daughter of an empress. A lost chinese princess, who was just waiting in America for her prince to rescue her. I spun tales out of red silk and stories about how I lived in a real castle, with my real mom, and my real dad. A perfect, real, fantasy that I clung onto with every fiber of my being because I knew deep, deep down that I wasn’t a princess. There was no fairytale reunion for me.
I have a soft spot for pigeons. Even now, they’re docile creatures— they can’t help but find solace in those who left them, following behind like a lost dog and
I wonder if they know that they were abandoned, or if they’re simply waiting for the day they can return home, to their castles.
princess Madison Bui
Samah
A Wasted Meal
Watch the juice seep out of me as you leave, I become soft, loud, and beautifully plated. When you come back, My fruits dry. Left to rot and wither away.
Mold on bread, I’m friends with the critters that lay upon me. They pass in and out of the grains that are slowly dying, As I reminisce for the person I used to be
Let me stay in the back of the fridge, And wait for you to pass. An endless meal, one that’ll last for months, I continue to let you deprive me, Of the sweetness, And its satisfaction.
Maybe you’ll never leave me, I do not wish for such a thing to be true. For I want to relish in my flavor, To gift it to someone else, And to myself.
shattered
Camden Walker
Pirate themed fridge poetry
drink up matey bury yer fortune like buried treasure drown each rogue ship in’ blue scurvy green like a bottle or a ghost yer lily-livered chest be Davey Jones locker thirsty for an island to escape off to
Circus Smash Cassidy Davis
Apollo Hurley
Moths mean I love you
For most people moths symbolize old and forgotten, but not for me. Not with you.
When we first started dating I had butterflies in my stomach, nervous and fluttering every time I thought of you, tickling my veins and tying my intestines in knots. Over time, they began to fly away, and in their place came moths. They flutter when the light you bring shines in front of me, when I imagine getting to just hold your hand; but their wing beats are heavier and filled with intention. Their bodies soft and warm sliding through arteries as they dance to the sound of your voice, I am filled with a peace the butterflies never brought. Make no mistake, I am as madly in love with you as I was a year ago. You’re the sun in the sky and the stars at night, lighting the way for the moths in my head inching closer to home. Only now, there are no knots in my stomach when I get to kiss you. There’s a deep sigh of returning, of knowing my safety, a release of the anxiety I have always held until I met you. The moths slow my heartbeat, pushing against the walls of my chest as they try to get closer to you when you hold me. Skin on skin is not enough, I need you to crawl inside and see the terrarium where the moths thrive. They will kiss your face and give you a place to sleep, a place to cry, a place to keep shining.
You’re etched into my soul, the scales of moth wings outlining my heart. Moths are kind and calm, magic and loving. Moths mean I made you dinner, text me when you get home safe, I’m keeping a space warm for you in our bed.
Paige Dudley
the \switch\
My Mind-Me
/ flipped / the \ switch \ then reality and contemplations DISCONNECTED
My Mind-Me
/ flipped / the \ switch \ and suddenly i was a selfish person with no sense of self. i was a short statement with no content but with obvious punctuation. i was a murderer with no victims. i was a pair of eyes with nothing behind them but lies. i was wading in a still-watered mind and i was drowning in a wave of weight and shape and worth and words and blades and fate
Street Ellie Rushing
Camden Walker
Ladybug
Ladybug on the tenth floor of the building
She will probably never go outside again for the rest of her life Die in a vacuum cleaner I reach a finger out to her “I can save you”
“No thanks”
Watcher Semyaza Tori Chapel
Bria Sledjeski
At the Mountains of Madness
Poppy Friske
Joanie’s Dollhouse
My grandma hides things under her kitchen tiles and has never been on an airplane. I don’t call her “grandma,” actually — she’s just Joanie to me. “Grandma” conjures up a plump, white-haired piece of taffy, ruddy and dizzyingly sweet. Joanie gave me my first cigarette and laughed when I choked. “You smoke like a little girl, Lissa. Be a woman, let it fill your lungs.”
She claims to have never been a girl, always one day past the expiration date of ripe vulnerability. Maybe that’s why her flowers are always dead — she doesn’t know how to nurture life when it’s still fresh. The kitchen window wears a crown of wilted iris, the soft petals rimmed with brittle age.
I think she was just an ugly little thing, and denying childhood’s existence soothes its nagging burn. When I was six I found some old photos in her junk closet (that’s what she calls it, even though all she has in the house is junk) of a tangle of snaggle-toothed smiles and skinny arms. All of the kids looked a bit worn, leftovers from a house bursting at the seams. I stared at it forever but could never figure out which one was my Joanie.
That closet was my refuge in the yawning stretch between December and March: canning season. Joanie’s walnut bungalow is eight miles from town, and she doesn’t have a car. When the wind bears its teeth and the sky spits icy pearls, her pantry is our supermarket. My knees tucked under my ribs, I spent countless hours in that dusty alcove, spooning mouthfuls from a jar of salted cannellinis and devouring page after page of The Secret Garden.
The memories that stick to my skull like honey are always from the warmer months. As long as I live, I’ll never forget National Cherry Day, a soupy summer evening before I wore a bra. Joanie insisted on celebrating miscellaneous holidays, but never the big ones. Until high school, I thought Santa Claus was just a movie character.
The kitchen hummed with the clatter of pans and Joanie’s rhythmic cursing. I watched her from the card table, barefoot and blustery, like a maple tree in a windstorm.
“Can I help, Joanie?”
Distracted by the bubbling pot of slurried cherry-pie filling erupting from the stove, she lit another cigarette and flicked the ash into the sink, peppering her glazed ham with cinders. “Pass me that spoon, wouldja?” she asked gruffly, somewhere between a bark and a gravelly purr. I handed her the wooden ladle, its worn handle dressed in the grooves of her calloused fingers.
“C’mon, I want to make pie,” I whined, my voice shrill and years below me. She arched a feathery
brow in my direction and smirked.
“Naw, I can’t have you cooking now. You’re just a baby girl. Go start a fire, break something.”
Joanie was always telling me to stay away from traditional ‘girl things.’ No dresses, no dolls, no baking tiny cakes and licking frosting off my pinky. You’re a girl and you’re in the kitchen, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue. Joanie likes when I talk back but only if she can still win.
I perched in her grubby little yard while she cooked, strands of sticky cherry tang tickling my nose. Crouched in the wrinkly clover, I crafted tiny fairy houses with twigs and fern. Gingerly, I placed strips of bark on wooden legs, a cluster of mushroom seats marching alongside. On each table sat a neat row of acorn bowls, filled to the brim with bitter wild blueberries.
“Lissa, cherries!” Joanie spat, a syrupy grin peering out from the kitchen window. I stomped my houses to dust and ran inside.
On the flimsy card table lay our feast for two: thick slabs of ham dressed in a maroon glaze, suspiciously pink egg salad on white bread, and the glorious cherry pie, golden-crusted and steaming, its bloody insides drizzled sloppy along on the edges of the dish. I slid into my seat eagerly, my fingers twitching with hunger and greed. Joanie doesn’t pray or wait for anyone; we dug in like there was no tomorrow.
On my second plate, I excused myself to the bathroom, where I found an angry red spot glaring at me from my underpants. Cherry juice? I thought wistfully. Something inside me curled up and died. Shuffling back to the table, a sweater tied around my denim shorts, I felt like a fool. “Joanie, I’m bleeding. In my pants.” She looked up, a thick finger dug halfway into her bloated crimson pastry. With a sigh, she sucked the juice from her knuckle and smacked her lips. Her eyes crinkled, the sapphire pulse behind them suddenly gray. Never once did it occur to me that she felt sorry. “Now you’re a woman. Tomorrow I’ll teach ya how to bake a pie.”
Lemon Pig Grayson Gayvert
Red Camden Walker
I think red might be your color
Like a 50’s stratocaster in the attic
Or a Yamaha bike in my grandpa’s basement
A candy apple, or a regular one
Like a brand new Firebird in the garage
Like your lips on a cold walk through the city
The rose petal I pulled out of my mouth in my dream last night
The color you wore
Sitting across from me, just below an exit sign
The Soul Katie Albin
Gabe Carlson
Protector
There are whispers of a lost town.
Crumbling and decrepit, overgrown and desolate, its name long since forgotten by all except those who fled from it.
Roads leading in and out are cracked and rough, covered with vines that never seem to end. The trees surrounding the town are thick and dense, sunlight barely peeking through their leaves, almost as dark as the night.
Those curious enough, brave enough, stupid enough to force their way in all say the same thing: that the town is not as empty as it seems.
Despite being frozen in time, homes abandoned, belongings left, despite the evidence of a battle lost, deep gouges in the earth, wounds unhealed by years gone past, there is someone, something, still that watches over its ruins.
Some speak of a hulking figure, intimidating and imposing, trailing a great blade. A tangled mess of long black hair, skin littered with scars and bandages alike. Unusually soft footfalls, as if there were little weight to them.
A flickering image of a woman, glanced at in between buildings and down streets. Nearly transparent to some, as real as life itself to others.
She patrols, circling again and again, protecting what lies beyond her, a loyal sentry even in death.
Her paths all lead back to the fortress at the edge of town. A decaying structure, little more than a series of walls and chunks blown about. Burnt wooden supports and charred stones evidence of more assault than it could handle.
Very few of those who make it into town make it further into the fortress. Even less have witnessed what
lies inside. But those who have, curiously or bravely or stupidly, all speak of the same man.
A knight in worn, aged armor, deep slashes and puncture wounds, vines creeping across his body seemingly holding him together. He stalks the halls of the fortress, calling names, calling for people who can no longer answer him, calling for people long gone.
Those unfortunate enough to have caught the knight’s eye never leave unscathed, his face twistied in anger and fear, bright agate eyes wide and dazed, blade quick to slice and stab. They aren’t who he’s searching for. They aren’t welcome.
The sentry watches from a distance, an unreadable expression on her face. She does not reach out to the knight, does not call his name, does not attempt to interfere.
Instead, she will sometimes join the knight in his own patrol, hovering close behind, silent as she keeps her eyes trained on him. He continues on unbothered, as if he can’t tell she’s there, completely transparent to him.
Despite this, for a fleeting moment, they almost fall back into place, the knight leading his comrade once again. Accompanied by someone he could put his trust in, someone he could depend on.
A friend.
Someone no longer there.
The knight continues to patrol, tirelessly, relentlessly, haunting the halls, sword and shield in hand.
Protecting his home.
Mourning those he could not save.
Piazza San Pietro
Ellie Rushing
Okezie Onwuegbu
The Russian
It was a child’s dream, dear reader. The kind of dream which is born in the margins of notebooks as you feign engagement.
The child in question was Nick, and this dream began to materialize upon one fateful trip to Barnes and Noble.
How could The 19th Century Portable Russian Reader have led him here? Dear reader, how do we arrive anywhere? Was his initial journey that had led him to the West any less bizarre than this? Was a relocation based on hope more comprehensible than one based in blind passionate delusion?
Nick’s American Dream died with his discovery that renowned Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was Ethiopian. This fact had lodged itself in his mind, and there was no turning back. “He was Ethiopian,” he thought.There would be no white picket fence, no three kids, no dog. There would certainly be no pledge of allegiance as he thanked God for the opportunity to live in the richest country on the planet. All because Pushkin was African!
That day, as he stared into The 19th Century Portable Russian Reader’s short biography of Pushkin, it became clear that his dream was not ridiculous. It had been done before! A foreigner’s lineage had been able to assist in the production of Russia’s greatest poet!
“The 21st century is due for a Great Soviet Author.” He thought to himself.
But Nick could never realize this dream on his own; he was less Snoopy posing as Fido Dogstoevsky and more Charlie Brown eternally struggling to nish reading War and Peace.
This is where our story’s love interest would come in.
Masha Sergeevna Popova was the platonic ideal of a Soviet woman. The first time that Nick saw her he knew that she would eventually grow into the type of mother who breastfed with one hand and downed vodka with the other. As if her dark blond hair, light eyes, fair skin, and bulbous nose had not been enough of an indicator, that day she wore a canvas tote bag with a painting of that most famous St. Petersburg Chapel, the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.
Theirs had been a meeting made of that stuff with which dreams are crafted. They had both reached for the button to his apartment’s one working elevator at the same time, and subsequently fate had granted him the opportunity for those immortal first words.
“What floor?”
As far as Nick was concerned the devil himself might’ve been in that elevator, as without responding to him, Masha would reach over his hovering hand and select the button for the seventh floor, three below our hero on the tenth.
He had to act fast, there were only a few seconds remaining before she would get of, sentencing him to never seeing her again.
“I like your bag.” he muttered.
“Sorry what?”
“Your bag,” Nick repeated.
“It’s a really nice painting. I’ve always wanted to visit Russia and that’s one of the biggest sights.”
“Oh thank you,” she glanced at the bag, as if seeing it for the first time.
“I got it from a gift shop last time I was over although I didn’t actually see the chapel.”
“Her voice sings like a Tchaikovsky opera!” our Russophile thought to himself.
The elevator threatened to bring their brief encounter to an end, as it ticked past the eighth and ninth floors.
“I’m Nick by the way!” he said, putting on what he thought was a charming smile.
“Oh, I’m Masha.” she said, as the doors opened. “Have a good day Nick.”
What wonder! How can your heart remain hard when scenes like this occur every day reader? An unfeeling protagonist might’ve disregarded this encounter, ling it away as a momentary pleasant interaction with a stranger. But here we had Nick! The last of the true romantics. God had smiled on him today, presenting him with the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, one with ties to the land of his dreams. He returned to his apartment, thinking of the next time he would see Masha, even allowing himself to dream, as all romantics do.
“Nikolai!” the imagined Masha would christen him. “My sweet Nikolai!”
He had to act quickly. There was no way that a woman like her would remain without a suitor for long. How could he possibly woo her? What would Eugene Onegin do? How would a man go about seducing Anna Karenina?
The next day, he returned to the elevator, and his dreams came true! On that blessed seventh floor, the doors opened, and in walked Masha.
“Доброе утро (good morning)” said Nick.
“Sorry?”
“Good morning,” he repeated. “It’s Nick. From yesterday?”
“Oh hello,”
The elevator was gripped by silence. Could she be as anxious as he was?
“So where are you off to then?” he enquired. What could she reveal about herself in this short time together.
“Oh, just errands.” she said.
“Ah alright then. Would you like some company?” He felt he had to assert himself, how else was he to maximize his time with her?
“Oh, I’m alright thanks.” said Masha, as they reached the lobby.
She left the building and turned the corner, unaware of her lovesick shadow.
“I wonder where she could be heading,” Nick thought to himself.
He would follow her for 2 blocks, before she would disappear into a cafe. Could this be where she was working? What a horrible fit! Here was the kind of woman monuments should be built to! And yet, modernity had reduced her to slaving away making hot beverages.
“When we live together, she won’t need to do this.”
Owing to a sudden burst of bravery, our hero ventured into the cafe.
He prepared to approach her, wondering what kind of drink would make him seem most alluring, when another specimen entered. A large man with slick blond hair and disconcerting blue eyes swaggered his way in, and he made a beeline to the register, Masha smiling as he did so.
“Hey!” she greeted him.
“Hello!” he beamed. “Just thought I’d see you here on my way to work.”
And at this moment – oh the horror! – our villain planted a kiss on fair Masha’s face, before leaving the shop.
Curses! Our hero had been foiled, and in that moment he could feel all four thousand six hundred and sixty-six miles of distance between himself and Russia.
Dark Roast Sam Raposo
Katherine Rice
Baptized in Thought
Where is the palpability in my prayer
Eating the words, digesting their underlying meanings
Watching others do the talking for me
Making things easy despite myself
What’s the purpose of picking apart syllables
Something you didn’t even mean to say
My pastor said it would get better eleven years ago
Going for those long walks makes it good for a while
Talk into an empty can on a string
Hoping an old friend will pick up the other end to ease the pain for a while Soothe it over with a deep breath and a phone call
A little vulnerability never hurt anybody
Running circles around myself can only last for so long
What am I chasing, and why does it come after me too
Get something else on my plate and start the cycle over again And so it goes, over again
Even the I nanimate Craves Companionship
Kylie Grunsfeld
Tilden Culver
To Be A Star
I had spent much of my childhood in these woods. Camping, hiking, climbing trees and pretending to be kings; my ability to think was born here. My imagination, my sense of self. That’s why I chose it to be the place I’d die.
The sky had set a few hours ago, filling in the gaps in the treetops with the color of livid dead. There was just enough of a clearing above me to make out the moon and most of Orion, which looked from where I sat like a pointless spattering of stars. On the cold, damp grass I could feel myself melding to the earth, an obtrusion no more significant than any of the roots jutting out like tumors. It was a relieving thing, to be pointless.
I ripped the cap off of a beer and drank it. It was like I was a kid again, gone out to play just before curfew despite the dangers the night posed and how my mother—had she known where I was off to, what I was doing—would’ve protested. The thoughts of anyone’s insistence against my plans brought the giddiness to a new high. They couldn’t argue with me. They couldn’t tell me they were laying me off, or that I owed fifty more dollars than last month, or that I was behind on my rent and if it happened again I’d be homeless. I opened another beer. I didn’t want to think about it.
The shotgun in my lap wasn’t too heavy, a long thing that glittered under the stars like it’d somehow trapped them inside. I had been practicing how to hold it right, how to shoot it. I’d heard that it was hard to get a good angle. Looking death head-on—literally, in my case, staring down the barrel of a gun—put a strange and refreshing perspective on the world, where trees became joints that bowed to me from the shadows and the sky became something with meaning. Orion’s shoulders were broad, confident, like he knew exactly what he was doing up there and where he wanted to go. I thought I might envy him if I had the mind to.
“Child.”
The sky or the trees or the stars in Orion—something had spoken. It was a sudden voice, a toneless one, like the crickets had all banded together to release one dying croak. But the woods were thick; I could see no caller through them, nothing beyond heavy shadows and silhouettes I didn’t quite understand.
“Turn around and look at me.”
I did. The stars were dancing around now that I could see them again, converging and splitting in the sky in some otherworldly dance. Even as I steadied my eyes they continued; there was some form of purpose in their movement, though to me it wasn’t clear. They sped up when they spoke—it must have been them who spoke, after all, loud as it was and as alone as I found myself. What was once Orion became a spattering of lights that opened and closed like a maw. “I have been watching you,” it said. I did not answer.
“And I have been listening. You ask the sky for meaning.” It paused for a moment, only long enough
to let me realize the crickets had stopped chirping. “Do you still want meaning, child?”
My shotgun was cradled up close against me. “Are you God?” I asked.
“I am beyond titles. I am meaning.” Its sound was simmering, and alongside it the air had taken on the quality of lukewarm stew. “Do you want meaning?” it asked again. Now the shotgun felt even lighter than it had before. If I hadn’t been staring down at it, I would have forgotten it was there. “I…would like meaning.”
And then one of the stars descended. It came down as a sphere no bigger than my head, but brighter than what man-made light could replicate. It pulsed, but gave off no heat. I made no effort to stand in spite of the reverence a sight like this might command, and commanded it did; I was upright before I could process how it happened. I wasn’t truly eye-level with it until it did in fact spawn an eye—two eyes, right where they’d be for a human. Their irises were without color, milky but not blind; they pierced me.
“You are hurting because you are empty,” it said. “I will fill you, and you will be complete.”
What little control I still had over my body I exerted just then. I stepped back. “Fill me?” It followed my movements, its gliding smooth compared to how shakily I used my legs. The corona of its glow touched me, cold like a blast of air or some ethereal, intangible silk. “Do not be afraid. I will help you. You will help me.”
“Help you with what?” I asked.
“You will give me your body,” it said. It said it with a flat tone—I didn’t think it was capable of inflections or emotions of any sort. “Have you not come here to die? To waste your body with death?”
My hold on the gun got looser.
“You could have everything you want. Everything you have ever dreamed of having: meaning, peace, understanding. You will fill that void inside of yourself that eats at you so violently. You will be whole,” it said, “and I will have humanity.” It crept closer, and I got colder. It seeped into my skin. It didn’t feel like anything at first but coldness, an inhuman, unearthly chill that contemporary language—at least to the extent that I spoke it—could not put into words. And in the coldness came feelings of a different kind, not so much physical as it was visceral, neural, something just beyond the scope of understanding. I saw things in the cold, too, in the thing’s white-lavender glow, images of explosions and auroras and particles accelerating into dust. They were flashing and flying all around like a View Master from my childhood, though that memory now was lost among all the jumbled imagery of creation. Of destruction? Of many things, whatever the words for them were. I felt higher than I had from any needle, brain gone so icy that, as far as I was concerned, it no longer existed. I was hungry, hungry, starving; the hunger was all I knew. But it wasn’t in my gut. It was everywhere else, in the stars, the distant cosmos that I could almost stick my hand out—I still had hands, right?—and reach. I was a god.
And then the feeling left. I could see the trees again. The light had not receded, but was brighter than before, cold flames licking me and pulsing in rhythm with the base of my skull. “That is meaning,” it said.
“Do you like meaning?” Its voice sounded like it came from inside my head. Inside my head, however, was staticky, teetering on what I conceived as the total dissolvement of myself.
“I don’t think I was supposed to see that.”
It forced out a sound that was almost akin to laughter, but not quite, grotesque and uncanny and reminiscent of a crash between two cars. “Brains like yours were not meant to be enlightened.” It seemed to ponder something, if something like it could even ponder. Regardless it paused, and let the night bring me back down. “But there are no rules in paradise. What I am offering you is unlike any mortal dealing you’ve heard.” It paused again. “What do you have to lose?”
I looked at the shotgun beside me, and the empty bottles littering the grass in place of crickets. I had come to an answer before words with which to speak it, but the thing needed nothing so formal; it flew straight into my head.
It is difficult to explain how it feels to not exist. To live in your body but to be in space, light years and galaxies above everything you’ve ever known. To be part of Orion. Stars look different up close, but it feels even stranger to be one, somewhere between hot and cold and dark and light. Between real and not. I saw many things, themselves lost in the space bordering sense, things that even stars couldn’t explain because they had no purpose for human tongues. Time reduced to a flat plain that only seemed flat because I could not describe something in four dimensions. Light bending in on itself in ways that eyes, human eyes, could not pick up. But my eyes were not human anymore—they weren’t even eyes. All of this, everything, I could see all at once like it was me who was bending and twisting in the cosmos. I was everything. And I felt empty.
That hunger I had tasted earlier—it was gone. That sense of godliness was nowhere, and thinking about it now only made it harder to recall. Had it ever existed? Had I ever felt? Felt anything at all? If there was such a thing as feeling, I could not quite grasp it. In the vast stretch of eternity I took up there was not so much as a meteor that could pierce me, no quasar able to burn my flesh because I had none, because there was no such thing as me beyond an intangible sense of something. The broadness was all-encompassing of the physical and the cosmic, but those fronts were stale. Being the cosmos made seeing them unbearable.
Except one thing, one small speck in the corner of everywhere, in a place I used to know but couldn’t fully recall. It was a man that looked like me, but wasn’t. Not anymore. There was a light to him—proverbial, but it might as well have been real—and as I watched him it seemed to shoot out and cover everything that he touched. He was not in the woods with a shotgun; sometimes he was at bars sharing drinks with strangers, sometimes he was kicked back on a pier with those same strangers he now called friends. The more I watched the more my emptiness began to fill. It was jealousy, watching him fall in love and get a job that paid well but only took up thirty hours of his week. He smiled often. When a star smiles, it’s hard not to notice.
He sometimes went back to the wooded clearing where we’d met, though he didn’t bring a gun. I would watch intently on these nights as if the universe did not exist, not outside of him or that glow on his face. It was
a respectful glow, nothing sad, like he was breathing in the trees and grass and letting them breathe him back out. On one of those nights my envy grew so loud I couldn’t hold it; I packed myself into a ball of flame and spoke:
“You played me.” My voice wasn’t human anymore.
But his voice was; it was a voice that used to be mine. “I didn’t. I was quite clear with my intentions.”
“You said you’d give me meaning. There’s nothing meaningful up here.”
“I don’t believe that’s my fault,” he said. “Meaning is subjective. Whether you find it in humanity or in the stars is reliant on you.”
“But you gave up being a star so easily. If you could find meaning there, why would you ever want to be human?”
“Because I find meaning in the mundane. There is no thrill up there for me. Omnipotence leaves much to be desired: mystery, ignorance, bliss. Even pain. When you are everything—as I’m sure you’ve noticed by now—there is nothing that can surprise you. Humans live on surprises. My heartbeat is a surprise to me when I hear it. Yet the cosmos have no pulse.”
I had forgotten the chitter of bats and bugs in the trees, how the air hung loose with the smell of coming rain. He noticed it, too, the thing in my body, an inebriated look on his face from how it all came together.
“What’s it like?” I asked. “To be…content?”
The world looked small. He looked small. He smiled like there was something to smile about. “I did not know until recently,” he said, “but it feels good. It feels, in a way, like I was never meant to be a star.”
“But you are a star,” I said. “You were—that’s my life you’re living.”
“To take a life; isn’t that what defines being human? You are given eighty years to breathe and you squander it, let it slip between your fingers because your shortcomings shout and crave too loudly. I’d like to think I’m more resourceful. More appreciative. I enjoy the moments in between, the small talk and the smiles flashed by strangers. If it takes being a star to be grateful, then there is no wonder why you held a gun to your head.”
He began to walk off. I did not have legs anymore and could not follow, but I did my best to yell. “And as for me?” I cried. “I’m no star.”
He didn’t answer.
Vaughn Darnell
How to Make Tea
Good morning. And congratulations. I am delighted that you chose me (this teapot) to live in your kitchen, and I’m eager to pour your choice cup of tea. Getting here wasn’t easy, you know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.
To begin with, it’s a miracle that you and I exist at all. Assuming you’re a human born from a long line of likewise wayward organisms, there’s an altogether 0% chance that you could be standing where you are. As for me— a ceramic vessel made of eons worth of eroded minerals left to wallow in a bacterial soup until a great ape like yourself shaped and scorched me— I hardly could be here either. It’s a wonder that we’ve arrived at this moment, much less together.
As you hold my glassy hull in your hands, you might be thinking to yourself, “How can this little thing make something as big as TEA?” Few ideas have steeped this Earth in its omnipresence like tea has, but I implore you to not be overwhelmed. It has been invented on separate occasions in geographically alien regions around the world dozens if not hundreds of times: rooibos in south Africa, tsa in China, yaupon among the southeastern woodlands tribes of North america–– the list doesn’t end. But tea’s ubiquity shouldn’t daunt you, it should show you that tea is really a relatively simple concept. In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t invented tea yourself yet. But since you apparently haven’t, I don’t mind teaching you.
First, you begin by boiling water. Awaken its potential.
Second, open my lid. You will find an aluminum sieve. It’s ok, you’re allowed to look.
Third, open your bag of choice tea leaves and transfer two tablespoons into the sieve.
Fourth, pour in the boiling water so that the teapot (me) is full.
Fifth, let me sit alone with this inner turmoil for about 8 minutes
Sixth, pour yourself a cup of tea and let it cool before you drink.
Now you know.
It’s worth mentioning that someone as naive as yourself would be uncertain about which tea to buy. I could include instructions here, but after some careful deliberation I decided that that is not my place. Finding your tea is a journey only you can go on. One that I will go on with you, but one where I can’t help you. You will waste money. You will make shit tea. Some will taste artificial, some will taste like grass. Your cabinets will overflow with dead leaves in boxes and some truly will be nothing more than that. But if you persist, you will find the reward all of humanity strives to obtain. Something as big as tea.
Winged Victory Soars
The
Audrey Morgan
Finch Benton
Where They Stood
When I hold the slides up to the light, I can see my grandparents when they were young.
Grandpa Walter in a brown suit and thin tie, hands on the shoulders of his nephews, in front of his house, next to his car Grammy in a gray sweater and dress, hands on the shoulders of her nephews, in front of her house, next to her car
One without the boys, just Walt by himself, casually leaning against the Ford. He smiles.
Gwen takes his place, casually leaning against the Ford. She smiles.
At the beach, Walt laughs, hands on his knees, dog tags around his neck. Their plaid picnic basket next to him on the blanket. At the beach, Gwen laughs, writing a note, red straps of her bathing suit hanging at her sides. Their plaid picnic basket next to her on the blanket.
Camden Walker
New Moon
The moon:
Coming and going once more.
It’s only natural,
Like a mothers love,
Teaching me to feel my way through the dark; And it must be hard for her, too
To shine on me night after night… I understand why she turns her back on me.
Even if its hard to accept.
Because i know shes never really gone, And if she were,
Well then a whole tapestry of stars would come loose, too… And down they’d sink to the depths of the sea, Leaving no navigation for wandering barks.
She’d make a flat puddle out of the ocean
Even the I nanimate
Craves Companionship
Kylie Grunsfeld
Sahana Henson
In the Dive Bar Bathroom
This is the rare occasion I feel pity for a man: when I remember they will never experience solace in a communal bathroom.
Brace yourself upon entry. The club is dark, your eyes need to adjust and adapt to the fluorescent glare of the light fixtures.
The door is heavy. Not because you are unwelcome— you are!
Its weight compensates for its cloak of congeniality.
Your nose is greeted by its sundry smells: Body Spray, Perfume, Lotion, Confidence, Sexuality, Drunkenness, Piss, Pads, and Period Blood...
It’s decorated with women, just like you! Their bodies draped in their finest finery, inspired by stranger women who shimmied weekends prior right outside these walls.
We wait in line, sandwiched between those equally eager to empty their bladders, bursting with spirits.
It’s so easy to talk to them; why is that? Maybe the cocktails— they seem to revive the flutter of my social butterfly’s wings.
That foreign insect crawls out of its cocoon on nights like this.
A bevy of beauties occupy both stalls, unphased. The stalls divide us, but the sound of prolonged snorts of vacuumed powder and crying floats above the partition.
After you do your business—puking or peeing— you wait in line again to rinse your hands.
Waiting for the pretty ladies to finish drawing their lips with liner and avoiding the mirror pictures, snapped by those eager to capture
Their beauty.
You fixate on the affirmations written in lipstick on the mirror when a stranger woman verbalizes them to you: “You’re soooo pretty!”
Returning the compliment, you can’t help but indulge in existentialism:
What troubles her?
What’s the reason behind why she is drinking tonight?
Does she have a boyfriend? A girlfriend?
Is she sad, looking to fill the abyss in her heart— just like me?
