Spring 2021 | Illumination: The Undergraduate Journal of Humanities

illumination The Undergraduate Journal of Humanities

Mission Statement The mission of Illumination is to provide the undergraduate student body of the University of Wiscosin-Madison a chance to publish work in the fields of humanities and to display some of the school’s best talent. As an approachable portal for creative writing, art, and scholarly essays, the diverse content in the journal will be a valuable addition to the intellectual community of the university and all the people it affects.

Letter From The Editor Dear Reader,

e bmissions from th su h ug ro th ok lo y , or r editors diligentl te poem, painting ri vo fa w ne r Every semester, ou ou nd fi munity, hoping to e for undergraduar e w l fu te ra g UW-Madison com ow sh e do). I can’t expres able positions and er ln vu in es lv se story (and often w t them this issue and to so often have to pu in o h ed w , ud rs cl to in ea e cr os e at . To th artists on the line as ty ti en id r ei th you are brilliant! put at th w no k to u want yo those that aren’t, I act of “putting e th h it w ed at ci asso is so much anxiety our private uniof t ou s ea id al on I know that there , pers work ” Taking precious e. er th t ou no small feat. Our lf is se s ur er yo ng ra st of id them in the care , and when all is sa ss cu is d ly re verse and placing ra e w r personhood that d. reveals slices of ou ave to be understoo cr e w s ng ei b an and done, as hum to better undert an w e w e b ay m , or our quest to be t to be understood ar in e k ak or w m t e w an e rt b po ay M t is im er case, making ar th ei In s. er h ot d stan I think it’s true. t bu , dy ea h y er V . more connected Love you! sen

Madeline Rasmus

Editor-in-Chief

COVER

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Photography SPACES: Macy Snikka

Art Jawbone Flower Petals Madison E Lecher

Art Poetry A Machine so Hot Your Face Gladiouse Melts Asher Courtmanche Madeline Rasmussen

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Poem DNA - an ode to Counting Descent Clint Smith

Art Your Helment Doesn’t Fit My Head Medeline Rasmaussen

Art Odette Everyday Rebecca Turk

Poetry Reformation of a Door Set Ablaze Brianna Boeker

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Art Untitled Chris Zac

Art After Hours Matt Weinberger

Prose I Have a Bone to Pick with Miriam Webster Molly Davis

Art Untitled Luba Laska

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Prose All Thing Holy Maggie Jay

Profile Story Macey’s Rebellion Sophia Abrams

Art Untitled Erin Coron

Art Frequent Blowback Rebecca Turk

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Art/Poetry Spring Elizabeth Parker

Poetry Intertwined Olivia Kersten

Art Self Portrait Ryan Prehara

Poetry Camino Del Diamente Arden He

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Zine Digital Salad Ellie Braun

Art Untitled Luba Laska

Art Something for Everyone Ryan Prehara

Art Monday Morning Dogfight Rebecca Turk

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Art Untitled Chris Zac

Art Nowhere To Go Emma Plitzner

49 Poetry Fumigation Tyler Moore

50 Poetry A Love Letter From an Ending Mariana Orozco

51 Poetry Aliens Exist Asher Courtemanche

52 Art Have Fun Lexie Olson

53 Art Interrogating Result Ryan Prehara

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DNA - an ode to Counting Descent

By Clint Smith

My dad is three decades older than I am and four times as wise. He met my mom when they were the same age as I am now and were each other’s first, 24/7, and forever.

They waited for 4 years in a small house while dreaming of a bigger home: one with tiny footsteps and bins of Legos and a trampoline.

In 2001 a woman was attacked out of hate, yet I was born in the month of love. My mom says the man upstairs brought me to them, yet after 18 years at the same brick building with 4 crosses on the walls I still don’t quite know who He is.

After what my mom calls “the next miracle” my brother was born with fair skin and blue eyes.

My sister was born the same which most days doesn’t matter because colors are just colors until you point them out and ask the prying questions that sometimes make me feel foreign in my own skin, in my own home.

Grace means gift from God but some days I wonder if my name was misplaced on the wrong being like a pair of shoes 3 sizes too big, meant for someone with a bit more faith than I. Mom said my skepticism was a gift because I want to study the workings of the mind and who better to do that than someone who questions everything that goes on within it? She also hoped this skepticism might be ephemeral but that was 2013 and it’s 2020 and the questions are still here, maybe even louder than before.

My siblings and I are a total of 6 years apart with 3 years of breathing room in between.

My brother is 14 years of video games with a little bit of science and art mixed beneath and my sister is 11 years of liking sports and telling people that she despises the color pink.

I am the oldest of 3 but maybe the most naive, I still believe we can build this world into something new, a place where kids only need to grow up despising the color pink and not their own genes, a place where I no longer have to answer “Why don’t you just take a DNA test?” because maybe I would rather live knowing my birth was in the month of love and that the blood that runs through my veins is nothing but a second chance to create something beautiful out of something atrocious.

Untitiled Chris Zak

Spring 2021/38

All Things Holy

By Maggie Jay

T

he boy had just turned twenty-six when he decided to leave. It was Christmas time in the city. Soft snow sprinkled across the sky-scrapers, ice covering the window panes of his one-bedroom. There was a four-foot tree, littered with tinsel and half-dead, sitting in the corner. The air was thick with cedar and disillusionment.

The boy had left home when he was freshly eighteen, not knowing that nearly a decade would pass before he set foot in his front parlor again. Before he embraced his mother again. She had smelled of perfume and spices when she hugged him that day, drawing him close and telling him that of all the things that are holy and sacred in this life, only one thing is eternal. The boy had rolled his eyes, pecked his mother on the cheek, and drove off, her unending love a speck in his rearview mirror.

He had graduated University with top grades and glowing recommendations from professors and employers alike. Shiny hair and an all-American smile, the boy was on the fast track to do great things. His fraternity brothers thought so, his mother thought so, and he was sure that his father would have thought so too, if his father’s heart had sustained him long enough to see his son grow up.

The boy had risen quickly through the ranks at his new company. Intern today, top salesman tomorrow.

At first, he had turned down all the privileges and opportunities his family name presented to him. But door after door opened for him, and eventually the boy forgot that he had promised himself long ago to carve his own path in this world.

After his first year of on-the-floor sales (charming business owners into investing in high quality fiberglass, raking in corporate profit by the handful) the boy had ascended his entry-level salary by three-fold.

He bought a loft with a view of the lakes. He met a pretty girl from the apartment next door. He got on well with the sandy-haired boy named Jay in the cubicle next to him. Life came easily to him. Drinks and glamor and privilege without challenge.

After the second year, they had given the boy his own

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office. The second room of his with a view. He spent the weekends at pubs with Jay and their group of handsome, ambitious twenty-somethings. The boy would often purchase drinks for the whole bar, buying camaraderie with a side of gin and tonic. He worked hard not to notice the emptiness that lingered in the peripheries of his soul after nights like these. After all, this was everything the boy had ever wanted.

Wasn’t it.

The boy met a different pretty girl that spring. She was uniquely beautiful, and he enjoyed the way they looked in the full-length mirror of his front hall.

She would wear red sequins and far too much gloss.

Sometimes the gleam in her eyes would make him feel sick. They danced and drank, and he was never sure if he loved her or not.

During his third year, the boy was managing sales branches in three states. He had a shiny boat, a small cabin in the quiet solace of the north woods, and a persistent restlessness of spirit that he could not shake, no matter what he drank or sold or wore. The boy was armed with thirty-two dazzling teeth and the illusion of all-American joy. Sometimes, when the boy drifted off to sleep at night besides the beautiful girl whom he did not love, he thought of what his mother said to him the day he left. He thought of things that are holy and eternal and he knew that he had neither.

When cold gusts blew through the city that year and the last yellow leaves fell from dead branches the he and the girl bought a tree. They sprinkled it with silver and bathed it in a warm golden glow, breathing in the smell of cedar and the sharp note of bourbon wafting from the glasses in their hands. The boy was not happy.

The girl left two days later. Christmas in the cold city alone. ** The boy slid his letter of resignation under his boss’s door on the morning of his twenty-sixth birthday.

He smiled at the receptionist on the way out, feeling,

for the first time in three years that it reached his teal blue eyes.

By New Years, he had sold nearly everything he owned, packed his life into a brown hiking pack, and boarded a plane to elsewhere. Ronald Reagan would be inaugurated for his second term in just a few weeks. Hale had voted for Mondale, though he didn’t think for a moment that Mondale would win. ** The boy didn’t return for nearly two years. He stepped off his Delta Airlines flight in the crowded streets of Amsterdam, and spent the following months traversing the cities and landscapes of Western Europe. London, Paris, Galway, Berlin, Madrid.

He stayed in hostels, ate cheap food, and walked just about everywhere.

He stood in the heart of Leningrad. In Finland, he fished in the icy waves of the Baltic sea. In Greece, he gaped at the crumbling marble of Athena’s temple, thinking that this was once holy ground.

The boy was never a big fan of Europe. He felt that for everything it had, it lacked the unknown. The mystery. The vast expanse. So when he grew tired of Europe’s out-of-budget espresso and the way that French waiters looked at his dirt-stained clothes, he went elsewhere.

The boy found he much preferred the mountains, the open air, the fresh scent of high altitude and the soft blue tones of an endless sky.

He became a diving instructor in Fiji, ate homecooked Sambal in Indonesia, and fell so desperately in love with New Zealand’s emerald forests and rocky shore lines that he stayed there six months.

In Malaysia he met an expatriate from London named Steve Clark. He had a contagious laugh and a disdain for corporate profit. The two travelers hiked to the base of Everest together, and everywhere else after that.

The boy fell in love with this vast unknown in ways that he had never fallen in love before. He relished in the clean air, the overwhelming chatter of languages he could not yet understand, and the many dozens of colors that bled out of the sun as it set behind a sea of salty waves. The boy felt that this, this newness, this color, was a certain kind of home. ** Approximately four weeks after the boy’s twenty-eighth birthday, he found himself wandering through the dusty, crowded streets of downtown Bangkok. Steve Clark was wondering amongst the many dozens of market stands propped up like islands in a sea of humanity. Sunlight trickled down through an array of multicolored tents. Tangled wire

spanned the gap between buildings overhead. He breathed in the sickly sweet combination of sweat, spice and gasoline.

All around him, peddlers called out to pedestrians, clutching beads and vibrant satin in their hands. The boy felt that the city was very much alive, breathing in tandem with its millions of residents, keeping time to the beat of their hearts.

He made his way slowly through the steady current of chatter and free exchange, paying a short statured woman for a silk headscarf. When he was young, his mother would wear scarves like these in a delicate knot around her neck. His money had started to run low, but the boy didn’t want to return home empty-handed.

The boy walked slowly, noting the dampness spreading through his tattered sock. His shoes and clothes, once new and durable, were almost all torn in at least one place. After nearly two years abroad, the boy was beginning to long for a different kind of adventure.

At the end of the market’s unending row of sheltered storefronts, the boy turned on his heels. A short, elderly man called out to him from a yellow booth to his right.

Sapphires! Sapphires!

Hale hesitated briefly, recalling the savvy businessman he once was. Sapphires? The uncut gems on strewn across the man’s wood table were certainly the right color. A deep blue-ish black. A night dive he had once been on. Twilight over Everest. His mother’s favorite earrings, engulfed in gold. He weighed the stone in his palm, thinking of all things sacred and holy in this life. He thought of his father and his brothers drafted for military service when he was young. He thought of his sister Anne and the girl who had left him many years prior. He thought of his old salary and his friend Jay and the fact that Steve Clark was most certainly lost in the city. He thought of returning home for the second time that day, of perfume and spices, and as he did the boy pulled out the remaining wad of cash from his front pocket.

He would take them all. ** The boy was covered in mud and two weeks sick with Giardia when he opened his mother’s front door that June. She held his gaze for a long moment, a white silk scarf tied neatly around her throat. And then she hugged and kissed him. The prodigal son. At last at last. ** The boy returned to the cold city the following autumn, clean shaven and showered. He took back his old job to pay the bills, biding his time. He moved

Spring 2021/38

into a room without a view. He placed the uncut sapphires on his bedside hutch, a deep blue reminder of his transient home.

The boy met up with Jay and the rest of them from time to time. They were still friends to him, though it was different now. They asked him about his travels and they laughed and sang together like old times. The boy had long since stopped drinking with them, but he found in this a new kind of camaraderie.

By the spring, the boy had started his own sports company in the heart of the city. Twenty-somethings from around the state came to play on baseball teams, broomball leagues and volleyball courts. Jay joined. So did all their friends. And when Steve Clark came to visit from London he covered center field as if he had been there all along. By the summer of 1990, the boy was praised by local news stations and city government for his progress in community building.

The boy networked his entrepreneurial feat from one end of the city to the other, partnering with anyone and everyone. He scouted out the Director of Alumni Relations from the local University while she was riding her bike to discuss a potential partnership. He held out his hand to her and told her that his name was Hale. She cracked a wide smile. Sam. Hale marveled at the blue-black specks in her ocean eyes. ** He waited nearly two years before he kissed Sam for the first time just outside the doors of Jay and Anne Marie’s wedding reception. He waited another three months before he proposed to her, and she waited just seven seconds before accepting.

They were married in the Basilica on Thanksgiving day shortly before Hale’s thirty-sixth birthday. The church was bathed in a warm golden glow and Sam wore short white satin. Her blonde hair fell loosely over her shoulders and his mother’s wedding ring glinted brilliantly on her finger. Their friends and family cried and threw fistfuls of rice and Hale was quite sure that no girl had been worth loving before her and that no girl would be worth loving after.

In the years after their marriage, many things were different. Hale sold his company and Sam cut her hair and they moved to a new home in a new part of the city. They bought an RV and watched the sun bleed out over the Atlantic. They argued and wept and sang and celebrated and found in one another a new home.

At night, Hale would watch the moon gleam over the water outside their window, counting the uncut sapphires he had laid out in front of it. Sometimes they would be covered in ice when he woke. Sometimes they would catch rays of sun, throwing beams of

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deep blue across the walls.

They found out that Sam was pregnant the day after Hale turned forty. He spent nearly all nine months trying to build a crib for their daughter. Sam stayed with him, late into the night, hand on her stomach, marveling at the beauty of what they did not yet know.

She went into labor early one September morning, as the leaves of the city were changing from green to gold to brown. Hale paced the sterile halls of the hospital for thirty-six hours, heating and re-heating a half-full cup of watered down espresso.

The first time he held their daughter, Hale thought once again of all the things that are holy in this life.

He thought his beloved wife and their uptown home.

He thought of the smell of sweat and spice and gasoline. He thought of his mother. He thought of twilight over the mountain ranges. He thought of God and now, as tears rimmed the lids of his eyes, he thought of the second girl he had ever truly loved.

Her teal eyes. Her small nose and the whisps of blonde that fell lightly on her sweet head.

Hale held his daughter’s vivid gaze until she drifted off to sleep and then he turned to his wife, whispering, ever so softly, “I have something for her.” ** Eighteen years and six hours later, Hale opened the jeweler’s door and waved to the portly man behind the counter. The man smiled. Hale had been a loyal customer for more than two decades now. He was good business. He was even better company.

The Jeweler placed a rectangular black box on the counter in front of Hale. This project had taken the jeweler almost three weeks to finish. He had told Hale, rather forcefully, that this particular sapphire could be sold for quite a sum of money. Hale had chuckled.

The Jeweler had reluctantly taken on the project anyways, sawing and cutting the rock down to a smooth, sharp pebble. He laid it in a bed of gold and strung it on a weighty chain. The necklace was classic. Timeless. He hated to pass up the opportunity to display such a piece in his glass case. Never the less, he slid the box into Hale’s waiting hand. Is everything to your liking, sir?

Hale opened the velvet case. Yes. Everything always had been. ** At dinner that night, at a vegan Thai restaurant in the North Loop, (his daughter, with a will of raw iron, had been protesting animal cruelty) Hale raised his glass. She looked up at him, a soft tangle of dirty blonde framing her face. Hale opened his mouth and,

like he had many times before, told his daughter every little thing.

He told her of his family name and the job he held after graduation.

He told her of triple digit tabs at the bar and the girl who wore terrible red sequins.

He told her of his corporate position and his room with a view.

He told her of the store fronts on Main Street and the way that, way back before she was born, the city was nothing but cold to him.

He told her of the pure blue waters in Fiji. Of swimming with sharks. Of the way he cried when he left the rocky shores of New Zealand behind. He told her of Steve Clark, of the bitter European espresso, of the rude French waiters.

He told her of how he had found a home in the great expanse of the world, a purpose in the newness, and a sense of belonging on foreign streets amidst chatter he couldn’t understand.

He told her how he returned to start a new adventure. To find newness and color in the familiar streets and people he left behind. To grow from the boy he had been into the man he wanted to be.

He told her, his free hand entangled in Sam’s, how he had only ever loved one woman, and how, after she was born, he had only ever loved two.

And though the girl had grown up hearing these stories, she listened with vivid intensity, her teal eyes smiling in tandem with his. She had always loved the way her father spoke of worlds unknown to her, of people and places she had yet to meet. Her father.

Her father the traveler. She knew all these stories by heart, but the girl would never tire of hearing him tell them.

But tonight, Hale told the girl a story she did not know. He told her of the crowded streets of Bangkok, of the market, with its many colored fabrics and spices of all kinds. He told her of the scarf he had bought for her grandmother. He told her how, when the girl was three, her grandmother had been buried in it. He told her of the way the sun dripped through the canvas and onto the roads. Of the sweat and the spice and the gasoline.

And finally, after eighteen years, Hale told his daughter of the sapphires. Raw and uncut, strewn across the table like capsules of all the beautiful things that Hale had ever seen. Capsules of twilight and deep water. Capsules of cold mountains and vast, untouched skies. And now, in the latter half of Hale’s life, capsules of his undying love, laid to rest at the base of his daughter’s throat. A promise of all things holy. A promise of the one thing that is eternal.

kiss and every shed tear. Through every school dance and all three of her graduations. Through every triumph and every failure. The capsule of her father’s affection adorned the girl’s throat the day she boarded her own plane for elsewhere, the day she was married on the sandy beaches of Auckland, the day she published her first novel.

And there the necklace gleamed, like a drop of dark midnight, the day she buried her father. A sheath of gold, a coat of armor, a testament to the only man she had ever loved. ** Years later, as Maddie lay in a clean white bed clutching a delicate bundle to her chest, she marveled at the brilliant vivacity of her son’s new eyes. Teal, with speckles of sapphire scattered across them like the stars over Everest.

She leaned over to her wife and whispered, ever so softly, “I have something for him.”

** And there the promise rested. Through every first

Spring 2021/38

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Look at this seed.

Spr

By E

liz

ab

I found it in my family’s garden.

eth

ing Pa r

“What do I do with it?” I asked my dad.

“You need water,” he told me.

“Water because it’s thirsty.”

ker

It rained the next day, yet still just a seed.

“What do I do with it?” I asked my mom.

“You need light,” she told me.

“Light because it’s cold.”

The sun rose, but it’s not enough.

“What do I do with it?” I asked my brothers.

“You need fresh air,” they told me.

“Fresh air because it’s suffocating.”

The wind picked up and almost blew the seed out of my hand.

Look at this seed.

It’s quenched, warm, and oxygenated.

“What do I do with you?” I asked the seed.

“You need to plant me,” it told me.

“Plant me because I’m lonely.”

So, I found a field and began to dig.

Spring 2021/38

DIGITAL SALAD

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ELLIE BRAUN

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DIGITAL SALAD

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ELLIE BRAUN

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DIGITAL SALAD

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ELLIE BRAUN

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DIGITAL SALAD

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ELLIE BRAUN

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DIGITAL SALAD

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ELLIE BRAUN

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ELLIE BRAUN

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Jawbone Flower Petals (Left) Madison E Lecher

Your Helmet Doesn’t Fit My Head (Below)

By Madeline Rasmussen

Spring 2021/38

AFTER

27 MATT WEINBERGER

HOURS

MATT WEINBERGER

Macy’s Rebellion: How an unexpected New York transplant finds her niche in New York City

O

n Macy Rajacich’s third day in New York City, she walked to Central Park and asked strangers if she could draw them.

Everything about this action was new for her.

Rajacich had never been to New York City, and displaying this level of vulnerability by herself was nerve-wracking. Every time she approached someone, they thought she wanted money. She didn’t want their money and wasn’t asking them for money. Instead, she genuinely wanted to draw them.

This, Rajacich explained to me over Zoom, was the moment she realized she could get out of her shell to explore the depths of the city and establish herself as a professional artist. That day at Central Park, she drew 15 strangers. “I was like, ‘I can do this. I can be here by myself. It’s no big deal.

People do it all the time.’” she said from her Queen’s apartment.

Since Rajacich moved to New York City from Minneapolis two and a half years ago, she’s absorbed the ethos of the city with a tenacity and dedication akin to few. She takes in the echelons of culture and seizes opportunities. She’s worked her way up from being a teaching artist to a Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA). She’s currently interning at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum.

Now a senior at Hunter College studying Studio Arts and Africana Studies, Rajacich is figuring out her post-graduation life.

“I see myself staying in New York for a while. I feel a sort of comfort here. And I feel drawn to it,” Rajacich said, a testament to her commitment and growth in the city since she asked to draw strangers

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in the park.

Sitting across from Rajacich, she evokes a confidence and charisma destined for someone named after Macy Gray. She encapsulates the breadth of culture easily accessible and well-versed to Gen Z. She sports a Zoe Kravitz-inspired haircut.

Wearing a green ‘70s silk shirt, she pops against her minimalistic white background. She cites Simone Leigh, Kara Walker and Lorna Simpson as a few of her artistic muses. In the corner of her room, a canvas displays blank patches and shows the innerworkings of Rajacich’s artistic vision coming to fruition through intentional paint strokes.

“I consider myself a gentrifier, so I want to try my best to be supporting old and smaller family-run spaces. But inspiration stems from everywhere,” Rajacich exclaimed.

Looking at Rajacich’s artwork, an amalgamation of color and themes entices the viewer. The aforementioned artists and the influence of Henry Matisse and Francisco Goya reverberate through her paintings. Yet originality is integral to her work. She excites one with the unexpected. Colors speak to the viewer through surrealist faces.

She welcomes abstraction. In Rajacich’s artistic universe, punk rock zines coexist with Afro-centric features and marry the influences of the past to produce Rajacich’s distinctive style.

Unlike the magnetic pull of New York that lured Greta Gerwig’s character Lady Bird to do everything in her power to stake out New York as hers, Rajacich never envisioned herself a part of the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple. “I just never even saw myself there. So I didn’t even think about all the museums that were there. I didn’t really know that much about it other than [from] movies

Snikka’s “SPACES: Macy.” Rajacich works on her painting, “And Release.”

Spring 2021/38

Snikka’s “SPACES: Macy.” Center photograph features Rajacich’s painting, “Truth Seeker.” (Above)

and TV,” Rajacich remarked.

Rajacich transferred to Hunter College as a second-year student after her initial plan of completing general education courses at community college and transferring to the School of the Art Institute in Chicago became financially unavailable.

Fellow transfer student and friend Lily Kenyi met Rajacich at a transfer student event. They serve as soundboards for each other to bounce off ideas. Rajacich’s often featured in Kenyi’s videos.

In a pre-pandemic world, they went to movies and fashion events together. Now they frequent galleries and have occasional dinner dates together.

“If there’s no one around to go out and do something with, we can call each other up, and we know that we’ll always have each other. I really love that quality about her, that she’s always down to do anything.” Kenyi said.

While Rajacich’s open-minded outlook serves as an impetus for her to dive into the city’s artistic abyss, she, like many Black artists, finds herself tethered to the century-old debate of if she must make inherently Black work whose meaning is derived upon art serving a mode of Black uplift. “I have an enormous pressure when it comes to creating work that is very Afro-centric,” Rajacich confidently said.

Central to Rajacich’s work is the interrogation of identity and

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Snikka’s “SPACES: Macy.Bottom photographs feature Rajacich’s painting, “And Release.” (Right)

Blackness. “Coming into New York, I wanted to know more about my Blackness. Back in Minneapolis, my Blackness was not at the forefront. I was taking from a white-centric community, which is just how I grew up, but then being here and putting my Blackness at the forefront, there is then the small part of me, and I think this happens with a lot of mixed people, [that thinks:] are you pushing aside your other side of your family? Because I’m no longer talking about my whiteness at all, because I consider myself to be Black,” Rajacich remarked.

Now she primarily works from memories. “There’s a tangibility to them that I can hold on to. There’s so many questions around race because race is a construct. So that’s always harder to pull from. But when it comes to art, it’s something I can take from memories and solidify it into a piece,” Rajacich said.

Gearing up to apply to Hunter’s BFA program and extend her schooling for another year, Rajacich is leaning toward the notion of Black memory for her BFA theme. The dichotomy of pain and joy in Black memories excites Rajacich. “[Black memory] is something that I want to showcase in my art. It’s everything from hurtful memories to joyful ones,” Rajacich stated.

Still, Rajacich doesn’t see her work as an inherent form of

activism. “I don’t create work with a message in mind to shout to the rooftops. Sometimes my work could potentially invoke some sort of political idea if that’s with the policing of bodies, or the way that people see other people through different lenses, whether that’s racial or not,” Rajacich explained.

In October 2019, Rajacich and MoCADA employees Audrey Lyall and Nikita “Snikka” Freyermuth were commissioned to create a mural at the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn. Having helped restore a mural from Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, Rajacich felt ready to push herself with this mural commission. In 10 days, they planned and created the uplifting mural, “Take It Easy.”

“It was day after day, sunup to sundown, just painting on the street. That had to be the most rewarding during this process.

We would see children [and] they’d be like, ‘Oh my gosh, are you guys artists?’ Not only were we three young women working on

this mural, but three women of color. It was amazing to all these children of color, and they’re just like, ‘Oh my gosh, you have my hair’ or like, ‘I want to be an artist too,’” Rajacich enthusiastically said.

Recently, Snikka, a creative Rajacich poses after getting a Zoe Kravitz-inspired director and photographer, haircut from Crops For Girls Salon. embarked on a project entitled Photo courtesy of Macy Rajacich.

“SPACES” and featured Rajacich’s bedroom turned daytime studio. Exploring how New York-based artists utilize tiny spaces through photography, she photographed Rajacich’s studio this past summer after Rajacich moved to Queens from Harlem. She took note of the balance Rajacich created in her room. When I asked her about what stuck out about Rajacich’s painting process, she told me, “The organization. I think it’s all in her head. She’s very intentional about how she does anything in the world.”

While the exactness presented in Rajacich’s work juxtaposes her uncertainty surrounding her identity in her work, her peers remain moved by her work.

“A lot of her pieces do get me thinking and inspire me to want to play around with certain aspects more, like the abstractness or surrealist.

I don’t think she knows how much she influences me or like other artists,” Kenyi said when reflecting on Rajacich’s work.

Scrolling through Rajacich’s Instagram, the viewer is met with a timestamped tableau of her art and inspiration. Tiles of memory give one an essence of who she is. Pictures of family exist alongside portraits of her work.

Her bio reads: “Play ‘Sunny Side of Heaven’ by Fleetwood Mac in the background while you’re scrolling through my page.” Rajacich knows that what she does is unexpected, and in that, she finds her work to be a rebellion of sorts.

A rebellion she confidently knows she’s capable of achieving since her first rebellious outing at Central Park.

“I believe [my work’s] more of a rebellion.

I’m against these ideas of what other people might think, of me as, especially someone who’s mixed. Looking into stereotypes, [there’s] this whole idea of how I don’t fit into anybody’s box, and I think there’s a rebellion behind my work, because I’m just creating work for me to share with people, and once I share it with others, it no longer becomes mine, it becomes theirs. And the rebellion lies within, not caring what people think.”

Spring 2021/38

Intertwined

By Olivia Kersten Lay with me over mountains and valleys Made of threaded rivers and cotton clouds So we can re-braid fraying friendship bracelets.

Let’s strip our faces of dulling powders Revealing overwhelming minuscule flaws That only the other can love.

Conduct the raucous symphony of your laugh And listen to the words I’ve left unsaid Letting them be held between intertwined arms.

Because no lover’s arms Can compare to those of the one Who loves you most.

Filling eardrums with bygone songs From the ancient ruins of your iPod Touch Celebrates us with a kaleidoscope of sounds.

Drawing shapes in the dust Blindfolding my bedroom mirror Reveals rounded faces and gap teeth.

Wrapping your heart in amethyst string, I braid it like you taught me to.

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Luba Laska

Spring 2021/38

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A Machine So Hot Your Face Melts Madeline Rasmusenn

Odette Everyday Rebecca Turk

Spring 2021/38

By Molly Davis house… or two.

There is something about standing outside your house with your pajama shorts on backwards at 7:00 AM on a balmy July morning that is a bit funny. Call me morbid, but I’d still say it’s a bit funny after you factor in the black smoke rising from the basement and climbing up the walls of bedrooms where we lay sleeping just moments before.

What was not so funny was waking up to the sound of distant fire alarms and my mother’s voice telling me to GET UP NOW. But, funny still, after the important component of relative safety was achieved for myself and all the members of my family: standing outside in our pajamas.

10 fire trucks, lights flashing, pulled into our circular driveway, firemen in suits shooting the shit around our little yellow house, now extinguished: funny.

My mother, her blonde hair in a messy ponytail, picking her cuticles as she does when she’s nervous, watching the scene unfold: not-so-funny.

In the hours that followed we learned a lot about what happens to a family after their house is rendered unlivable due to a heavy cloak of black soot and charred basement walls. We learned we are extremely lucky. Lucky to have woken up to the sound of fire alarms and smell of smoke. Lucky that we still had floors, walls, windows and doors. Basement fires are some of the most dangerous on account of the flame’s sneaky ability to creep up behind the walls and through the air ducts, engulfing an entire house within minutes.

We learned that we would probably live in a hotel for a couple weeks. We learned that it would actually be a bit longer than that. Maybe two or three months. Maybe a few hotels. A rental

37

In the eight months that followed I learned a lot about what the word home means. I learned that when a family is uprooted, people tend to pass around blame like a hot potato. The event was not the fault of anyone or anything except for a defective appliance plugged into the wall; the same significance as a single ocean wave, but with catastrophic consequences. Sometimes it feels better to shove blame somewhere, hoping it will stick.

Blame is easier than asking yourself over and over, “Why do things like this happen?”

I learned that through the storm, through the chop and the fog, my mother was at the helm all along. I learned that she held all the frustration, all the blame in her arms when no one—nothing else could. She wrapped herself around the anger and confusion until it melted into grief. I learned that she is the reason each place we live is built up, safe and aglow, a home. Our house was scattered in pieces, each item needing meticulous cleaning. The interior was gutted, furniture sent off for repair. The organizing force, the glue that held us together was my mother.

I learned I want to reclaim the word “homemaker.” If I could, I would snatch it from misogynistic lips, wrap it up with a bow.

Erase it from the collective hive mind that associates the term with 1950’s housewives or trophy wives or whatever it is called when moms go to hot yoga and host book club (not that moms don’t deserve to spend time on these things. They just don’t deserve to be labeled as useless and wasteful).

If I could do all this, I would box up the word and present it to my mother. I would tell her, “This is for you. It means whatever you want now. It means what I want it to mean.”

My mother, who packs up the home. Who makes it and makes

it over. Who picks out the linens and picks up her children from school. My mother, who beat back literal fires and kept things afloat in what seemed then like a hurricane.

takeout food. She moved me into my college dorm and my first apartment. She made shelter out of wooden shells, warmth out of ashes. She arranged a certain type of comfort that indescribably amounts to more than the sum of its parts.

My mom called the shots when she and my dad bought the first house I grew up in. I know this for certain, although I was not yet born for the first year they set down roots. She, who painted the walls and picked out the living room furniture (first a beigetoned buffalo plaid pattern set of loveseats which were then reupholstered to a more fashionable mint green), went about the slow and silent labor of making a house into a home.

Herself, her home, her work isn’t perfect by any means. I struggle with the fact that I’m not sure even she really knows the impact of her imperfectly perfect home-making. I struggle with the fact that she doesn’t see things the way I do, and I fear I won’t be able to explain it to her in the right way. I’m proud of myself for trying anyway.

Once more she went about this process when we moved to the second house, the yellow house. She did more than just tell movers where to set down the dining table and decide which paintings would be hung in the stairwell. She coordinated the alignment of universes in that house. She woke us up to catch the school bus every morning. She made magic happen on Sunday mornings with nothing but coffee and chocolate chip pancakes.

I’m proud to say I know what my mother is capable of. I know that she is capable of much more than homemaking, but I also know that this word can’t possibly encapsulate what it takes to make a home, over and over. I learned that a home isn’t the arrangement of furniture and family portraits, but that it comes down to my mother’s capacity to enfold the world into a small, warm and safe place. My mother, my first home and the reason I woke up on that balmy July morning.

She performed this routine repeatedly, for years. She created homes out of hotel rooms, tiny rental homes, and cheap

Untitled Erin Coron

Spring 2021/38

Self Portrait

By Ryan Prehara

39

Something for Everyone

By Ryan Prehara

Spring 2021/38

By Asher Courtemanche

GLADIOUS

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a drop . is all it . takes ripples . to reverb . erate a ceas . eless flow ( we are . all we can un . derstand and kn . ow) pound . a glass surfac . e fill lungs with air do . anything to fill t . he quiet—stare down t . he pews get to . know (the (empty . altar) the psalms, creed . s, and holy father . the creak of the . wood, staine . d glass panels the sic . kly sweet wine a . nd the lighting of can . dles

i’ve go . t used to the rosary . (wrapped ‘round my ne . ck) under my pillow . and inside my head n . ext to the mem’r . ies of her at rest th . e funeral proces . sion (without a tear . shed) casket . s and crypts adorni . ng the walls my ey . es cast down . ward a guilt i recall . ed the moment my fa . mily silently left no goo . dbyes to hear . no farewells were w . ept pizza . was ordered beer w . as on tap celebr . ations were . made but i felt a . s though all of t . hese things weren’ . t just illusio . ns of grievin . g children but rat . her to mask t . he relief of a bu . rden remov . ed from our sh . oulders and sent u . p to heave . n

GLADIOUS

i kept . a flower from h . er display think a . bout the collaps . e of person . to clay, a hand . ful of object . s to repres . ent her: yellow . bell-flowers, tinsel- . gray hair, a small . celtic cross and a . worn book o . f prayers, a hosp . ital visit that ne . ver happened, a chris . tmas-eve call long o . verdue of her fin . ally passing but so . mehow inside

i alrea . dy knew the he . itant glance at ever . y church passe . d , a reminder of a lif . e, knowingly left—it . ’s all weaved togeth . er in sinews, synap . ses, muscles and bones . and maybe ashes . and — were w . e created from h . is own likeness? am i d . eliberately chosen like th . e books of her bi . ble; does heaven exist, . am i just idle? what . can i know withou . t a bite of eve’s a . pple? am i th . inking too mu . ch, are we only m . eant to be sad so . uls waxing in sunda . y mass—pleading after fi . ve years for a s . mall lapse to some c . larity rather . than judgements to just . stay in bed forget . religion, read plato i . nstead ‘cause why s . hould i care about . afterlife when . i can live in . the moment, focus . on sacrifices of-day . -to-day strugg . les and big-pic . ture problems; now af . fects now and w . e affects we and all . these problems center . on me—

a brea . th and ba . ck here the lea . ther-bound bible a . nd one silent t . ear in the . name of the fat . her, the son and mothe . r mary above protec . ting the one who n . eeded my lov . e (who needs i . t still); and w . hile thinking in chill . y, whisp . ering days, won’t . give me answe . rs, it may just give m . e a reason . for a secon . d chance, one th . at i’m hopeful and on . e that can last.

Spring 2021/38

By Asher Courtemanche

plucked from the ashes of a farmhouse carved and intricate like cracks on her palm white paint peeling the color of innocence, weak adhesion. repurposed

refinished

redone

planted in the bedroom of a girl twiggy, grimy fingers tearing away strips of paint, letting them fall to the speckled carpet. charred wood beneath, unveiled history of a door, surface gazing towards new purpose. old becomes new becomes old thinks the girl who has now sprouted tall tree turned to door then reborn, shadow stretching over her life, she wonders had it noticed the transformation?

reformation of a door set ablaze

By Brianna Boeker

saw slicing through its trunk morphing itself into a door catching on fire and waiting to be moved to the room where it could watch the girl grow and leave and return her green irises, hawk-like in nature, opened from the sight of foreign skies, distant lands offering, abundant nutrients. flesh no longer rooted in a room, once containing an entire world in the palm of her hand. remember

release

lengthy fingers tracing splintered wood, leaning tender lips against the damage.

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surface-level kiss on innocence now faded, girl sealed to door, recognizing her flourish.

revitalize

Luba Laska

Spring 2021/38

Frequent Blowback Rebecca Turk

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del nte

ma

dia

//

ino

Second by second, the wind whips me thinner and sharper. One day I will be a blade fit for cutting

Cam

I did not scream at the sky as a means of catharsis. Someone far away had been asking me a question for hundreds of years which I had just begun receiving. I had wrung a new opening.

A piece of me that looked a lot like you, a dime-sized hole, had fallen out and for the first time I could feel the wind blasting through me. Diamond dust, pollen. On the topic of space, catharsis can still be useful. I learned power since I cried. In Santiago de Compostela, when you me, I was prying time open with my soft hands. I raised a small country in the period waiting for you to graze past again. Excuse the gestures of vastness, it’s not that I wanted my longing to fill great canyons. Just enough air carved out to not see anyone for miles and miles. A place to stand in the air. Where heaving things can come running off. Soda ash, silica, limestone. My old bodies discarded on the side of the road, oblations left to be shot with light.

O holy gorge, take I the blessed sword.

Receive the nothing I made for you.

By e

en H Ard Spring 2021/38

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Monday Morning Dogfight Rebecca Turk

Untitled Chris Zak

M

N

By Tyler

A

U I I F MG TO oo

re

A thousand invisible parasites living inside.

Must pluck them out with a fingernail. Fuzzy words like honey trap. One note dissolves them.

Sucking on sugar; silver sweet memories.

Bite through. Bleed to change the scent. Attack.

Break in. Handle the sharp claws. Make the devil screech.

Be still. The apple: The seeds.

Just give in. The taste so tart.

Cut inside with the sharp scissors.

Choking the whip so soft, so soft.

One grain.

One bug.

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A (Love) L

ete rf

rom

an

E ing nd

By Marina Orozco you only ever meet in fever dreams anymore. it’s the only time your memory does him justice and captures all the shades of oxidizing copper in his eyes. you don’t quite remember the sound of his voice anymore, but it still exists as echoes pounding in the back of your mind, in scattered whispers like the downpour of rain over California. you don’t hold on to his gifts or possessions he forgot anymore, but you still go around the space those things once took up, out of respect for the ghosts of what were and could have been. you don’t let yourself think about how it all ended anymore, but you’re still Atlas shouldering the weight of the heavens, replaying the reasons why in an act between pride and suffering. you are not a hollow reflection of him anymore, but he still carries weight over all that you do, and your shadow never seems any less like him.

Spring 2021/38

Aliens Exist Aliens Exist a ufo was spotted last night up state and i saw it there and it dropped him off and i did not know him but i felt him— the future convalescence he’d need to endure from all his injuries the blacks and blues splotched on his face and speckled on his chest the red and white scars up and down his legs, his arms like some shitty abstract painting in the name of old-fashioned nationalist ideals of nuclear families capitalistic benders other goddamn reasons mothers show sons fathers show daughters ‘tough love’ like the cigarette burns in the arm of the couch scars from unfair battles the toxic scents of peppermint rumple minze and blackberry brandy the fumes always seeping out of her mouth like domestic chemical warfare the fear of one wrong word turning into a fight that your age won’t let you win

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the pastor meetings

Have Fun Lexie Olson

Spring 2021/38

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Interrogating Results (Above) Ryan Prehara

NoWhere To Go (Right) Emma Plitzner

Nowhere TO GO

Spring 2021/38