Zenith Issue 4

Swan Song

(n). Swan Song: a metaphor for a last
performance, act, or gesture. It originates from
the ancient Greek belief that swans remain
silent up until their death, and from their first
and final cry, a beautiful song is born.

Our lives ebb and flow like ripples in the pond.
Though our creations are rooted in the present,
they remain a culmination of our past selves:
a mosaic of experiences, connections, and
yearnings. And yet—there are always changes.
Destruction ignites creation and ends become
beginnings. “Swan Song” seeks to explore
these dualities and examine the ways in which
the past iterations of ourselves all explode into
performance. It is a cathartic celebration of
existence. Let it pool around us and carry us
through our eternal swan song.

4Zenith

Copyright © 2022 by Zenith Literary Magazine

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or used in any manner without written
permission of the copy- right owner except for the use of

quotations in a book review.

For more information, email: [email protected]

First edition 2022

Book/cover design by Zenith Literary Magazine

ISBN:
978-1-387-90346-7

zenithuiowa.wixsite.com/zenith

Table of Contents

6 Letter From the Editors
8 Masthead
10 A Feather’s Fall
12 to move past the passenger pigeon
13 Esophageal Varices¹
14 Rearview
16 fish hooks
23 taxidermy and other sleepy lies
24 Scattered
26 A Raspberry Toaster Strudel Flavored Death
27 02/24/22 [POEM ONE]
28 forevermore
31 Growing Pains
32 Impressions
33 Light and Spark
36 Between
38 the only difference between narcolepsy and sloth is 300mg

of provigil
40 Beaver Moon
43 Goldhurst Terrace, London. 1975.
44 Entangled Life
45 The Monster You Leave Behind
50 Jörmungandr’s Embrace
51 Growth and Guilt
52 Birdsong
53 Reform
54 Komorebi
55 Painted Feathers
56 Contributors

5

Letter From the Editors

Beloved reader,

When thinking about how to begin this letter, we found our
minds drifting to our visits to the Sistine Chapel and the
fleeting moments where we were allowed to gaze up towards
Michaelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” — a work of art that
has echoed throughout time. Though we stood in that room
at different times, before having met each other, and have no
photos to prove our visit, we recall its vastness and can imagine
the tenderness with which it was created. In the audience of
tourists, and under the sharp gaze of the security guards, we
were only able to observe it for a moment before being ushered
out. Yet, the image exists, deeply fixed in our memories. In
revisiting our experiences with Michaelangelo’s creation, now
shared between us, new meaning transforms the old — vivid
and reverent.

Does something have to be fleeting in order to be beau-
tiful? We cannot claim to know what constructs our under-
standing of beauty, but we can say that we have encountered it
in this issue of Zenith. However momentary “Swan Song” may
be, it has ignited a gleaming performance that ties memory
to the self in progress, and to an ever-expanding web of con-
nection. We end, begin, and reach for more in an enchanting
cycle of being. It has taught us that the best way we can honor a
goodbye is by moving forward. This issue is a song grasping for
the next beginning while celebrating what’s being left behind.

The irony is not lost on us that “Swan Song” is our last issue.
This is the last letter the two of us will address to you, reader.
After four challenging issues, our most difficult task is saying
goodbye to you, our contributors, staff, and each other. Having
been at the core of Zenith’s creation, we have tried and failed to
see a clear ending. Where a thread is cut, another is stitched in
— we must remember that a swan song, while entrancing and
cinematic, is a myth. It is rare to find endings that tie them-
selves up in a bow, never tempting you to reopen them.

6

It is our biggest hope that this magazine has encouraged all
of you to continue creating. It is enough for us to know that even
in the smallest way, we have given someone the strength to reach
for the next thread. It is enough to know that every member of
our staff will transform, bringing the capabilities and dedica-
tion we have witnessed to the next tile of their mosaic. And most
certainly, it is enough for us to have had the honor of bringing
such marvelous writing and art to each issue as a team. We have
fueled this publication with our time, passion, and greatest aspi-
rations. We will miss it dearly, as well as everyone who has sup-
ported our endeavors along the way. Above all else, it is enough
to have found all of you. If Zenith is the stone dropped into the
pond, what it encompasses — its entirety — will ripple out for
many years to come.

With everything we have, we would like to offer our grati-
tude to our staff. Thank you for sharing your lives with us. You
are the best people we have had the privilege of knowing and we
will always root for you. To the Exec team — Kaitlin, Sophia, and
Hayden — you have redefined what it means to be a team. We will
tuck every moment, everything we have learned from you, in our
back pockets. We cannot thank you enough for bringing the best
of yourselves to this magazine. To our contributors, thank you for
entrusting us with fragments of you, and offering us a chance to
exhibit your work. We would not be here without you. Finally, to
you, dear reader, thank you for being here, right now, in Zenith’s
final act. What started over Zoom in a class of strangers is ending
in an interlaced, indivisible community. The first issue of Zenith,
and its name, originated from the definition: the time at which
something is the most powerful or successful. After almost two
years, we can tell you with utmost certainty that there is not one
zenith, but many. Let us celebrate the next one to come — it will
be a thing of tremendous beauty.

Until we meet again,
C & M.

Catalina Irigoyen | Senior Editor.
Mikey Waller | Senior Editor.

7

Masthead

Senior Editors
Catalina Irigoyen
Mikey Waller

Managing Editor/
Asst. Senior Editor
Kaitlin Channell

Managing Editor
Sophia Kilburg

Creative Director
Hayden Williams

Designers
Holli Farnum
Chloe Tharp

Web Designer
Jacqueline Wahl

PR Director/
Treasurer
Morgan Ungs

PR Coordinators
Caitlin Bissen
Marissa Schooley

8

Copy Editors
Maeve Greising
Rebekah Hallman
Maya Penning
Alana Scherer

Art Editors
Ellie Chouinard
Cassidy Pekarek
Mason Witsman

Fiction Editors
Emma Greco
Evalyn Harper
Sara Siepker

Nonfiction Editors
Nicole Adams
Della Gritsch
Jeff Piekarz

Poetry Editors
Julia Fout
Sarah Licht
Maya Moon Torrez
Courtney Stearns
Jillian Zeron

9

template

A Feather’s Fall

Kate Bradley

I remain
entirely unremarkable,
No spark able
To escape
from the heavy soil
I stand in

I am
incapable
Of reminding you,
That there are galaxies beyond you
Beyond me, this thick
Atmosphere

This heavy mass here,
Sticks,
Like leather car seats
to fleshy thighs
In July

Sorry I,
Muddle burning you
With turning you
Towards me.
At least your rippled skin
Couldn’t forget me or mine

My need to fly,
Hot wax boils us both
And the sharpness makes me laugh.

10

At least,
As breaths cease,
And rib cages fold in,
I’ll no longer wander
Where we could have been.

11

to move pastthe passenger pigeon

Cassidy Pekarek

12

Esophageal Varices¹

Cheyenne Mann

Defn (Medical Terminology)

(Noun.)
[Abnormally enlarged veins at the base of the throat,

due to blockage of blood flow from liver damage.]

(Example:)
An almost-rotting fish corpse sleeps opened-eyed on the sidewalk.
Lidless optic nerves all

Opalescent and dull. He slows the atomic movement of his
organic matter.
The carbon of him breaking down, even though the skin does
not. He looks nearly the same dead

As he did alive. He says to me, “Death is like
Wintergreen toothpaste. Like all the windows in my skin have
become unlatched.

How did it feel to love?” And I say back,
“Like someone shot me in the throat and the wound grew teeth
and lips and a tongue and

Hasn’t stopped screaming since.”

¹Can be fatal in up to 50% of patients.

13

Rearview

Kelli Lage

When you looked into your rearview window
did you imagine me waving?
Did this town lay thread barren in your heart,
tattering a little more with the touch of each winter?
Did you unravel at the sight of my wedding dress?
Have you stopped skirting around the pulses in your lover’s
fingertips?

In another lifetime, we take a walk in our old age
meeting in the crisp chill that flushes out fall with winter,
reminiscing days of a flame pinched out.
We can argue about whose touch brought midnight.
My hands always meant to intertwine with another
but at one time, our palms were the same sickly shade of

flowering parsnips
so we thought that meant they fit.
Even though my skin has restored to its natural olives and pinks
I still remember you, not afraid to touch venomous veins.
This letter is non-toxic, but I wouldn’t recommend swishing it

around in your mouth.
Yesteryears taste bitter when downed in the wrong type of sunlight.

In this life, when that chill slithers around your neck
remember that I walked away with bloodied hands.
It took me years to wash them. Yet, they still recall
holding the box your grandmother gave you, seasick at how it

brimmed over with demons,
the swing set chains nipping at my skin, pretending we were the
only ones made up of 2 a.m.,
and the shades of brown within laced-up leather; bracelets we

wore like comfort blankets.

14

So, when I step into the shower too soon,
the flood touched by ice reminds me of a ghost of myself, who

saw love in your bones.
They seem like a folktale to me now, their story carried away by

the summer winds of 2014.
No matter where they landed, I’m thankful they had each other

to claw through the mud with.

15

Content Warning: suicidal ideation, death of a family
member

fish hooks

Meg Mechelke

she remembers how to gut a fish. she remembers jiggling the
knife around to spike the brain. she remembers that this is the
most humane way to kill a fish. she remembers the salt and the
smoke and the jagged crosshatching on her dad’s hands where
barbed hooks went in sharp and came out bloody. she remem-
bers sliding her knife into the fish’s belly and slicing in 1.3 cm
intervals up to the mouth and peeling apart skin and pinching at
organs and running her thumb along smooth white-pink flesh.

that’s what she looks like, she thinks. pink and white and
raw and exposed in the blue polyblend swimsuit she bought on
sale at Walmart, and her skin is peaked with goose pimples, like
she is growing feathers but not scales. the locker room light
is low and gray, and the fluorescent tube overhead is buzzing
buzzing buzzing.

her skin is dry. not wet. she didn’t get in the pool. she can’t
swim. she didn’t get in the pool. she can’t get in the pool. she
can’t swim. she can’t get in the pool. she doesn’t remember how.

“I used to be a swimmer,” she tells the woman next to her.
the woman is wearing a velour tracksuit. she is humming. “a
good one. the best. I was a mermaid.”

the woman does not respond. she has headphones in. she’s
listening to music. she is humming along. she is humming and
the light is buzzing. the room is sharp with chlorine. it stings.

“in Little Springs. at the pier. you know the one? with the
Ferris wheel? they had mermaids, too. behind the tilt-a-whirl.
and I was one of them. in high school.”

the woman takes out one earbud. “I’m sorry. did you say
something?”

she doesn’t answer. she pulls on sweatpants and crunches
her keys between her fingers and leaves.

it is cold outside, cool September, and she likes the smell of

16

cigarette smoke curling away from the man sauntering across
the parking lot. she likes the feel of the dry, cracked leather
under her bare shoulders, and she likes the way her swimsuit
sticks to the seat. it reminds her of summer, and taking her
sister for ice cream, and driving herself home from the pier in
her dad’s oranged out pickup truck, and losing her virginity.

she clicks her seatbelt into place and checks her phone. she
has two missed calls. she ignores them. she turns her key in the
ignition.

on the highway, everything blurs and a man on the radio
wins free tickets to see a Mick Jagger impersonator at a casino
upstate. she changes the station. a tinny harmonica filters
through the speakers and Tom Petty sings about summer. it’s
what her dad would have called a bluefish sky, white and white
and gray and a hint of blue you can only catch out of the corner
of your eye if you look quickly and don’t blink. on those days,
bluefish days, her dad sat on the dock and smoked and rubbed
the tin-plated copper ferrules of his favorite fish pole with
paraffin wax and stared out at the ocean. he never said anything,
but it was always understood that she was meant to take his
keys out of the wooden dish by the door and drive her sister
for ice cream, even though she didn’t really want ice cream and
also she had homework to do. by the time they came back, he
would be in the kitchen whistling and smiling and making pan-
fried mackerel and anadama bread, and they would all pretend
it hadn’t happened, her sister dizzy with sugar and herself with
the memory of the boy behind the counter with the soft brown
curls who’d recognized her from her job at the pier where she
worked as a mermaid.

“you’re the one with the red tail,” he said, and she smiled
because that was true and because she liked the way his mouth
curved when he talked. and then her sister cried because her
shoe was untied or her ice cream was melting and the moment
was gone.

a light flashes to life on her dashboard. she doesn’t know
what it means. she ignores it. the radio sizzles. take me as I

17

come ‘cause I can’t stay long. the light starts to blink. she pulls
over. she takes out her phone. three more missed calls. she
puts the phone away and climbs out of the car even though she
doesn’t even know how to pop the hood of her four-door hatch-
back, much less how to do anything useful. she leans against the
metal slats of the traffic barrier and takes a deep breath. she can
taste the water, the ocean, the waves crashing against the shore
less than a mile from the road. she knows this place, this stretch
of coast. it’s a place she associates with bonfires and discarded
beer cans and condom wrappers buried in the sand. it’s a place
she associates with sirens.

she gets back in the car and turns her key in the ignition.
nothing happens. she turns it again. the engine turns over with
a dry squeal and gray smoke hisses out from under the hood.

“fuck.”
she digs her old triple-A card out of the glovebox and dials.
there’s a pile-up on the interstate outside of the city, so there
are no trucks available. they say they’ll send someone her way
as soon as they can. she gets out of the car again and kicks
the front tire. the headlights glare at her. she wishes she knew
how cars worked. she doesn’t. she does, however, know how
mermaids work.
it’s a hose, built into the side of the tank, run back to an air
compressor. the technology was developed by an ex-navy SEAL
in 1946. every day, when she arrived at the pier, she climbed
down to the staff locker room and changed into neoprene com-
pression shorts and an iridescent bikini top with hard under-
wire and thick padding. she dusted her legs with baby powder
and lined her lips with expensive waterproof gel she had to buy
herself. her hair stayed loose. she pulled her tail, the red one, out
of its locker and carried it up to the edge of the tank, where she
rolled it over her feet and up to her hips, grabbed the end of the
163-foot hose, and slid into the water. she could hold her breath
for three straight minutes on a good day, sometimes more. once,
the boy from the ice cream shop, the one with the soft lips and
curls, came to her show and pressed his hands up against the

18

tank as she swam. his breath condensed on the window and
in the fog, he wrote call me?, and he left a scrap of notebook
paper with his number with a friend of hers who sold popcorn
across the way. her sister liked to come to the shows too, eyes
wide, sticky fingers clinging to the tank as though she actually
believed in magic.

her phone rings. she hopes it’s triple-A. it’s not. she sends
it to voicemail. then she deletes the voicemail without listen-
ing. she takes her phone and her keys and climbs over the traffic
barrier and walks toward the beach. after a while, she takes off
her shoes and lets the shale crunch between her toes. she finds
three cigarette butts, an empty Powerade bottle, and a handful
of bottlecaps from a local IPA. her phone rings. it’s an unknown
number.

“hello?”
“hi, this is Angie with Elk Valley Specialty Care Center. we’ve
been trying to reach you regarding—”
she hangs up. she sets her cellphone and her shoes and her
keys on a swell of rock and picks her way towards the water.
somewhere, a gull cries, and the briny air burns her eyes. there’s
a dark smear on the horizon; a ship, maybe, or a whale. the
water nips at her bare toes and she remembers what it feels like
to swim. she remembers the last time she swam. she remembers
the glow of her white t-shirt abandoned on the rocks and the
feel of the boy’s wet curls twisted in her fingers. she picks up a
rock and hurls it as hard as she can, as far as she can. it crashes
into the water, and it sinks. the jagged stones of the beach have
made a hundred tiny cuts on the soles of her feet, and the salt-
water stings as it licks them clean.
she called the boy back as soon as she got home. they talked
the whole night long. they talked about school and sisters and
chores and the water and stars, and she found herself taking
her sister to the ice cream shop even on easy days when the
skies were bright and clear. but it was a bluefish day, slowly
fading into a gray-black night, when he handed her the change
for her sister’s cotton candy ice cream cone and told her that

19

his friends were having a bonfire on the beach and that he’d
pick her up at eight. when she got home, her dad was not in the
kitchen, and there was a note on counter saying that he’d be
back late, that there were leftovers in the fridge, and that she
should make sure her sister got to bed on time. she set her sister
up in front of the TV with a Tupperware of lukewarm lasagna
and went upstairs to brush her teeth. her sister wanted to go
swimming. her sister wanted to play dolls. her sister threatened
to tell dad. but when she heard the boy’s car rattle into the drive,
she felt a newly familiar blush spread through her thighs as she
slammed the screen door behind her. she felt no regrets. he held
her hand over the gearshift and circled his thumb over and over
her knuckles until they got to the spot where he pulled over
and drew her out of the car and onto the rocks. his friends had
cancelled but neither of them cared. when he kissed her, she
burned and said she’d race him to the water, and they both ran
and laughed and left a breadcrumb trail of t-shirts and cutoff
denim behind them.

she’s slept with several men since then. some women too.
but something about that moment was different. it hurt, at first,
and then it didn’t. she’ll never forget it. she’s tried.

she hears a police car scream past her in a red-blue rush that
she can’t see but knows is there. she wonders where it’s going.
she thinks about the pile-up on the interstate. she thinks about
her dad’s oranged out pickup truck smashed and steaming
into the traffic barrier along the highway less than a mile from
the beach. she thinks about lying on the shale in just a t-shirt,
holding a boy’s hand and staring at the stars, and hearing the
sirens doppler closer and closer and wondering if anyone was
hurt and learning that someone was dead.

she’s up to her knees now. she doesn’t remember taking off
her sweatpants, but there they are crumpled up along the shore,
and the waves scratch at her skin. they said her dad was drunk.
they said her dad was looking for her.

she’s up to her waist, the water clawing through her belly
and deeper. she knows she ought to return to shore. she knows

20

she ought to wait for the tow truck. she knows she ought to call
the care center back, but she doesn’t know if she can. she thinks
about standing on the beach at her first high school party and
tapping the side of the beer can with her shoe so it would crush
down flat. she thinks about the pickup truck and the gaping hole
smashed through the front window and the fact that her dad
never wore his seatbelt. she thinks about the long-term care
facility. She thinks about what her dad was coming to tell her.

the thing about the water is that it’s unpredictable. incon-
sistent. you can’t tame it. you have to learn it. study it. deter-
mine which places are safe and which places will kill you. for
example, the water off the shale beach stayed warm and calm all
summer long. the water on the other side of the bay, off the dock
by her dad’s house, that water was different—all bitter cold and
tangled up undertow.

liver failure. that’s what the people from the care center told
her. an ironic diagnosis for the half dead daughter of a full-dead
alcoholic. might be fatal. might not. hard to say at this point.
they’d have to run some tests. either way it was only a matter
of time. it always had been. that was last week. that was when
she stopped answering her phone. that was when she went to
Walmart to buy herself a swimsuit. this swimsuit. the water is
up to her shoulders.

while she and the boy from the ice cream shop were holding
hands and singing to the radio, her sister was creeping out the
backdoor. her sister was slipping into the water. her sister had
wanted to go swimming. her dad arrived home twenty minutes
later, breath curdled with beer, and found his youngest child
bobbing face down in the algae along the shore. the paramedics
said they’d do their best, but she wasn’t breathing. she’d been
in the water so long. she’d drowned. her dad got in the car. he
needed to find her. he needed her.

the water on that side of the bay was dangerous and capri-
cious but it was also cold, colder than water on the shale beach
or in the mermaid tanks or off the coast of the pier. the cold
helps. it slows the body down. it saves oxygen. her sister was

21

resuscitated 45 minutes after she drowned. after that, she was
in a coma for 16 days. after that, she was transferred to a long
term care facility. after that, she was never the same. hypoxic
brain injury, they said, and all sorts of concurrent diagnoses and
complications and tests and long-term care and liver failure and
for a while their aunt came down from upstate to help handle it
all but eventually the aunt left to start a family of her own and
to forget about the sad one she was leaving behind.

the water kisses her lower lip, and she stretches up to her toes
to keep the salt water from flooding her mouth and lungs. she
imagines what it would be like to stay here, to never go back, to
never pick up the phone, to never have to look at her sister again,
to never have to remember. she imagines pulling her sweatpants
back on, one leg after another, and filling the pockets with rocks
from the beach and walking and walking and walking until her
legs melted red together and her throat split into fleshy, gashed-
open gills, and she was finally, finally free.

she does not do this.
instead, she closes her eyes. she returns to shore. she tugs
her sweatpants over her dripping, goose-flesh legs and she
collects her phone and her shoes and her keys. she walks back
to the road and climbs over the traffic barrier and checks her
phone. the gravel of the shoulder crumbles between her toes.
she unlocks the car. she gets inside. she sits and inhales and
feels the leather hug her shoulders tight. she exhales. she waits
for the tow truck. she checks her phone.

22

taxidermy and other sleepy lies

Cheyenne Mann

23

Scattered

Kate Bradley

I’m sat outside a cafe,
Inside the rain,
And a lady
A table away
Is wearing the same red raincoat that you wore

Lipstick stains the inner ring of her lips
Bleeding a little as she supps on a frothy coffee,
I can see that it’s the same pinkish magenta
As the only one you would ever wear

I miss you.

That’s what grief boils down to,
On its back burner hob,
Whistling like a baby exhausted with its own wailing,
Only occasionally nowadays,

Missing someone,
So deep in your bones
In your gut,
In all the places you can’t quite point to,
The places you don’t know
How to show
To a doctor,

That you see them
In a red raincoat
In sickly pink lipstick

24

And it’s strange that we seek to let go
When you are there,
A table across from me,
Telling me
I should be wearing a coat
in this kind of weather

25

A Raspberry Toaster Strudel
Flavored Death

Cheyenne Mann

The moment Cherry Morris died, she was thinking about
raspberry toaster strudel. There was a box of them in her freezer,
torn open at the wrong end, crinkled polyethylene scrunched up
at the bottom, half empty. She loved those delicious things, all
fake chemicals and flakey crunch. Imaginary tang coated the
roof of her mouth as her breathing stilled, a saturated scarlet
with sullen tiny seeds, slicing the hell out of her soft palate.

Sweet. Frozen. Gone.
The snow melted her calcium bones. Liquified them into
fruity pink sugar sludge and white frosting. She could feel the
heat of it needling its way under her fingernails, felt the warmth
evaporating the blood that had congealed around her. Her eye-
lashes fluttered, discarding bits of broken snowflakes into the
pale moonquartz of her eyes. She wished she could say she died
looking at the stars. She wished she could say she traced the
seams of the galaxy with her last movements. That she sketched
the heavens with one last point of her metacarpals. That she had
prophesized herself into a future luminary. But the sky was too
swollen with rough altostratus clouds, sloughing off each other
like the flesh on Cherry’s ribs sloughed off the bone.
She wished she could have mourned those stars. She wished
she could have rhapsodized about the ethics of light pollution
and winter soaked suburban Michigan and hit and runs, but her
thoughts were fuzzy like mold growing swiftly over raspberries.
Sweet. Frozen. Gone.
That’s what she was. Just another raspberry toaster strudel.
She puffed out one last swirling stream of icy life and her eyes
glazed over as frost crystallized, almost like stars, on her breath.

26

02/24/22 [POEM ONE]

B.A. O’Connell

The rot must be revealed before
the new can be put in—

the sickness must ravage the
body before a transformation—

I must recognize that I am ill;

If I am to recover,

rebuild,

I must know

that I need to

rebuild

—if not

I am reconstructing

a sandcastle

on the shore

before a tsunami

blind to the death to come.

27

Content Warning: gun violence, death

forevermore

Josephine Geiger-Lee

It enters his body with the same ease as a paintbrush dusting its
bristles in its palette.

The painter dips into him and withdraws, and, across
the sky, it streaks red through the stars. It starts as a bright
crimson and dulls as it continues, retreating into the darkness
surrounding them.

In an elegy, one would claim the streak as a perfect arch,
a gateway opening only to collapse in on itself with the weight
of gravity.

In reality, the bullet paints with reckless abandon, explod-
ing it outwards, and it dots her face once, twice, thrice.

Once, a fingerprint between her eyes, slipping into her left
iris and blinding her.

Twice, a swipe across her cheek, a blurred dash trying to
race away from her.

Thrice, a smudge in her lipstick, a red enfolding itself into
her breath.

The canvas—he—will take a step towards her, every muscle
primed to keep moving, to keep walking. He will take a step
towards the sanctuary of her eyes, the brown of the melted
chocolate chips of their youth; and towards the sanctum of her
lips, the pink of the rattle of their youth reproduced.

Then, he will start to fall, and she will not move forward, she
cannot move forward, she can move only inward.

Her heart will move inward, peeking out between her ribs
like a child staring between their fingers. She will press her
arms over her chest, trying to add one more layer of armor, one
more metallic way to keep herself safe, and she will crumble.

In a requiem, one would claim she shrieked, a sound so ravaged
by devastation all creation ceases to be if only for a second.

In reality, she will squeak, a weak and wet sound, some-

28

where caught between a cry of a child and a sob of a widow, both
and neither all at once.

He will hit the ground, face-first, and she will hit the ground,
knees-first. His breathing will hitch, only once. Her squeak will
turn into a shudder into a sob into a pure sound, too long to be a
scream but too short to be a prayer.

His eyes will turn vacant, glassy, undefined.
He will try to say her name.
He will be gone.
(He will be gone forevermore.)
The paint will spread around him, starting first with a quick
dip in the cache of color unfolding over his heart. The tip of the
brush will be delicate at first. The trembling of the hairs will
produce the delicate rose petals, but the petals will want more,
they always want more, and then the red will splash outwards
with reckless abandon, destroying the garden from whence it
came. The paint will dry into something harder, less fragile, and
when she folds her hands over the rose to breathe life back in,
she will pull them away blackened.
Now, the paint will stretch around his torso, the light
strokes of feathers. The wings will grow and grow, the length of
a butterfly transformed into a bird transformed into something
humanoid and inhumane all at once. The substance of the paint
will be too runny, but she will not be able to stop it.
In the coming minutes, the night sky will collapse around
her, the black swallowed up by that insistent shade of red, and
a new color will be forced to the canvas, a whirling blue of a
siren. The faceless men—men with their hats pulled low and lips
twisted into false sympathy and skin marred with the falsities
of their words—will pull her away from him to coax her into
action once more.
“I’m sorry,” they will say.
“Time heals all wounds,” they will say.
Time will regain its relentless pace.
She will trade her rose-stained clothes to take the black;
she will wear the dress like a suit of armor and her golden ring

29

as a shield. At the funeral, she will allow them only the vacant,
glassy, undefined look in her eyes.

In a tragedy, she will never paint again. She will swear off
the brushes and the palettes and the canvases.

In reality, time will trudge on, and it will do so with an arm
laid across her shoulders like an old friend, for time can be as
kind as it is cruel.

Her armor will wear thin around the middle, a tight embrace
against her skin, and a second heartbeat will begin to rattle the
metal. She will laugh, her giggle barely more than a squeak, and
she will cry and cry and cry.

She will wish time stops for only a moment.
Then, she will trade her armor for an apron and get to work.
In the nursery, she will paint flowers clustered close to
the ground, and she will tangle their childhoods—stuttering,
awkward first dates; spilled coffee; the first time she met the
disappointment in his mother’s eyes with a silent challenge—
amongst its roots.
(She will not paint roses. She will never look upon roses again.)
In the nursery, she will paint birds perched into the trees,
ready to take flight for the first time with their outstretched
wings, and she will weave their hopes—the time he fell to one
knee to offer a promise to her; the time he reached for her and
shared her breathing; the time he loved her—into the feathers.
In the nursery, she will paint the night sky, its stars mournful
and celebratory all at once.
She will love again as she stares into eyes the same brown
as melted chocolate chips and little fingers wrapped around a
pink rattle.
Right now, she will not love.
Right now, there is only her and her triangle of bloodied
freckles splattered across her face as he stumbles towards her.
There is a masterpiece of red unspooling in time with the
unspooling of her love.

30

Growing Pains

Abby Blamowski

No love is quite like a mother’s, [I scrape my knee, the tears
whole and flood the floor.]
powerful and
blazing.




I remember the last time
her hand grazed my cheek,
or the last time her hug
dissolved into
me.

[Burning fever of 102 degrees,

A cold washcloth.]



I wish I knew what getting older meant.

One final forehead kiss,

one last song to be hummed

underneath the moon.

[Sticky grape runs down my throat,

I grimace.]

How do you tell a child [A band-aid heals all wounds,]
in their mother’s arms,
that eventually
the river runs dry?



but maybe not this one.

31

Impressions

Alexandria Wyckoff

His small fist reaches mine;
he’s chosen my tight grip over
the other weathered hands.

His hand, like putty,
folds into the pocket of my palm,
a newborn butterfly seeking shelter

before it spreads fragile wings. I grasp
his small fingers, walk forward—
a human tether between

us. He follows,
looks around at the world,
while I focus on the cars driving.

Visions of unyielding
bumpers, cracking windshields, spinning
tires plague my mind—

all the ways a child can get hurt.
His touch, still damp from
the waters of Lake Tahoe, where

the small boy dug into coarse sand,
splashed in shimmering water.
Once we reach the car,

I unlock his hand and
he bounds forward to climb
into the van while the ghost

of his fingers still lingers against
my deserted skin.

32

Light and Spark

Precious McKenzie

Before the sun rose, we’d sit in Alice’s dining room, sipping
coffee, waiting for the rest of the house to wake up. The grand-
father clock by the front door marking time. Everything seemed
so normal, so routine during that summer visit. Sure, Alice
would repeat stories a few times—she was in her 60s after all.
Her house looked a touch worse for the wear. Chipped paint,
tattered carpet, a sagging front porch step. Plastic tarp covered
a hole in one window. The house had been in the family for near
a hundred years. Bound to happen. We told ourselves.

Buckeye trees framed the house and their roots tore through
the cement sidewalks. From her front porch, Alice still sipped
her dark coffee and took drags on her Virginia Slims as she
watched the neighbors go by. Her laughter sounded like a mis-
chievous Irish sprite as she chatted about her newest boyfriend.
She always had a new boyfriend. I looked toward my cousin to
confirm this story was true. She nodded, not in approval but
in confirmation.

“He lives over in Mansfield. We take turns driving over for
our dates,” Alice smiled, a satisfied housecat. She whispered a
detail about her love life in my ear. “Dynamite comes in small
packages.” She winked at me and purred, “Don’t let anyone tell
you different.”

Later, after Alice went to bed, my cousin updated us on the
situation. “She’s forgetting to eat. Forgetting to pay her utility
bills. She almost had her gas turned off.”

I didn’t see Alice every day. I lived two thousand miles away.
Alice was aging, of course. What was “normal” when one aged?
I wavered. Knowing that my voice could sentence my aunt to a
nursing home. A home—for god’s sake, not this woman. She who
had been fiery like dynamite personified. The grandfather clock
struck midnight.

My cousin broke the silence, “I’m taking her to the Cleveland
Clinic. They’re going to test her for Alzheimer’s. Dementia.”

33

I think I sighed. I knew where the family’s talks had been
leading. I’d known it for months. “Let me know what they find.”

A week later, I said goodbye, boarded a plane, and flew home.
I knew what the next phone call would bring.
“I’m packing her things. Val’s taking the old photographs—
the ones that used to be Grandpa’s.”
I heard my cousin inhale. She’s smoking again, I noted.
Who wouldn’t?
“I’ve got to sell her car and the furniture. Shit, she racked up
overdue bills. She won’t need any of that stuff in the
home anyways.”
Our last summer visit happened in the nursing home. A
single room, a single bed, a few framed photos. Sterile. Alice
in a house dress. Without makeup. She called me by name. We
hugged and I couldn’t let her go.
But then she let go and her memories, all jumbled together,
drained her. She sat down on the bed. She grew agitated. Light
and spark flashed in her eyes, but she fumbled for words. We
said goodbye.
Alice’s house on York Street had sold—my cousin had to
do it, to pay off bills and to cover the nursing home expenses.
Instead of driving to Alice’s home, I drove to a shabby hotel
north of town. For thirty years, I had stayed at Alice’s place. But
not tonight. It was not our family’s anymore.
Ohio summers are the most picturesque portraits of Ameri-
cana. Tidy farmhouses, orderly cornfields, train whistles, gentle
breezes, picnic tables, dandelions. I sat outside the hotel that
evening, watching fireflies illuminate the darkness. A flicker
here. A spark there. A random dance of warmth and recogni-
tion. Scientists have a word for it: Bioluminescence.
I smiled, remembering those summer nights as a child at
Alice’s house, chasing fireflies and capturing them in glass
jars. The grass soft and cool under our bare feet. We’d giggle as
they flickered and then we’d release them. Be free, we’d shout
into the night.
Days spent coloring her sidewalk with pastel chalk under
buckeye trees. Playing Rummy 500 with her in the dining room.

34

She’d slip me a dollar bill and let me walk to the carry-out to get
a blue raspberry slushie or king-size candy bar. “Don’t tell your
mom,” she’d wink.

I was sitting on a quiet beach in St. Augustine when I knew
she died. Premonition? Visitation? Scientists will deny the pos-
sibility. But the science does not matter. The waves, the sand,
the open space. When she visited us, in Florida, she loved to sit
on the sand and watch the waves roll in. And have a smoke. I
felt her exhale the day she died. The waves cresting, the foam
on the sand.

The phone call came later and I packed my bags to go back
to Ohio for her funeral.

Today is her birthday. She’s been gone for more than twenty
years. Today I walked in a sunny park in Ireland, thinking of
her laughter and her mischievous eyes. Tonight I’m going to
a pub and I will smile at all the men. And think of her. And
flicker and glow.

Alice, light and spark and fire. In rural Ohio, Alice crackled
with sass. Alice was like a movie star, a Jane Russell. Set hair,
deep red Avon lipstick and jet-black eyeliner. Cat eyes. Ciga-
rettes and smoke and coffee. She was everything I hoped to be.

She’d let me play in her make-up and spritz on her perfume.
I’d paint on lipstick and she would talk to me like I was not a
child but her co-conspirator. We’d cruise the town in her Buick
Regal. She’d wave to folks and wink at the men. She’d laugh. My
God would she laugh. Bioluminescence.

35

Between

Alexandria Wyckoff

The fluorescent orange
signals the importance of
preservation. The wine in

the bottle protected from vicious
bacteria that dart through the air
around burgundy liquid it desperately wants.

Though apart from its glass bottle,
the stopper looks like
stacked traffic cones,

stoic against the elements to
preserve the precious humans that fly
down the barren blacktop.

If you’re driving at night, sometimes
the only thing that keeps you from
tumbling into the woods is the

reflective marigold and white, and
the statues lined up, watching.
For a moment, I am lost in the black void.

Ten yards ahead, the curb
has been eaten away. Suddenly,
a fluorescent flash calls to me, pulls

me out of the bleak monotony,
steers me away from unseen dangers.
My eyes drag across the ravine’s

36

sharp stones, to broken limbs lying in its depths;
the gorge waiting for the moment where
carelessness wins the battle between life
and death. Death would have won,
if not for the orange gatekeeper, the protector
against unseen danger.

37

the only difference between narcolepsy
and sloth is 300mg of provigil

Cheyenne Mann

// the lurch of death lulls in the fluff

of my stuffed bunny doll

//

she is a

pink so faded in shades of church

carpet // soaked in years of soft wine

//

she is

the jaded breath of me at fourteen

// so

full of reeking fervor

// i am twenty one and

have given up searching for the sloughing flesh

of Christ in me

// inri

// i clutch my sweet bunny

as they roll a dull stone over the carved

exit of the tomb

// a narcoleptic cadaver will

sleep for three days to bare my sloth

// a boy named Lazarus

once woke from the dead

// he drank in

the fine glitter glint of consciousness

// knife sharp //

the difference between us is that

he is biblical and i am lazy

//

a swallow perches outside my window

38

// she surges in sound waves

// a feathered

drone

// but i am so good at hitting

snooze and a bird only lives for three years.

39

Beaver Moon

Noelle Franzone

We grew up in golden Autumn, in the salty-sweaty-greasy
smell of the city. If there was ever a time we thought this is
living, this is peace, it was then- on a golf course at midnight.
The ice below our feet was thin and cracking and we laughed
at it, yelled our defiance up towards the moon.
Autumn stayed the same; the oceans only rose, but we
changed. Change is human nature, but not like this. Maybe
it was never supposed to happen to the five of us. Maybe we
were never supposed to change. Maybe the ice was supposed
to crack beneath our feet and plunge us all into freezing water
so we’d be suspended in time forever.
The ice didn’t break. We were forced to say, half-laughing, as
if we found dead flowers and missed opportunities funny,
I Am Busy.
How are you?
I Am Busy.
We could be Busy. Grocery trips, cleaning, and coffee dates
like right now fill up our time. College looms before us,
faceless and heavy. Time becomes harder and harder to find,
and meetings harder to arrange.
I Am Busy.
Because it’s easier to say I Am Busy than to say I am so
overwhelmed, I miss you like a sibling, I miss you like a part
of me, I have not felt my heart beating in so long.
It is easier to say I Am Busy than to say I’m not sure I love you.
I think, for a moment, about all the moments I Am Busy
leaves behind. I wish I could have known that I Am Busy
would erase the good memories, the ones we made together.
Of the things I give up, there is one memory that is most
precious. There is one that is hardest to lose.

40

It was New Year’s Eve. We were in a basement, all of us
laughing on couches and floors and chairs. They were
watching something creepy. Something to do with the end of
the world and don’t look.
I’ve always been a scaredy-cat. I slipped from our little circle
to hide behind the couch, my skin crawling.
One friend followed after me. They pulled up music videos on
their phone, and we watched them together, loud enough to
drown out the chilling music in the background.
I remember thinking that no one had ever done this for me
before. I remember feeling seen and special and loved.
Now, I can only remember. They stopped talking to me,
driving a rift right through us. There were no more golf
courses after that.
It was my fault, probably. A lot of things were. I have so many
regrets that I whisper to the moon.
I regret I Am Busy, I say to her pale face. I imagine what she
says back. Sometimes she is cruel. Sometimes she is kind.
Either way, I know that my regrets, as always, come too late.
We used to be inseparable. We used to eat lunch together, in
some kind of compressed oval, and we used to laugh harder
than I thought anyone could.
Me and her, we were like that too. We could play games the
whole day, laugh until our stomachs hurt, and find peace
together. Once, in a moment of cold clarity, drunk on moon-
light, I thought I could marry her.
I always wonder why I gave that up. If I had known that giving
us up meant giving up midnight music videos would I have
done it? If I had known that golf course was our last?
The thing about Autumn is that it passes quickly. Septem-
ber is beautiful, golden and red and apple-sweet, and then
November comes in gray and damp.
We Autumn children, we were doomed to end quickly. We
were doomed to end with tears. November overtook us with
cold shoulders and averted eyes, silence where there once was

41

laughter. Gold leaves were crushed beneath heavy hearts.
We traded golf courses for computer screens. We left the city
behind, moving to places we had never been, far enough to
lessen the sting. There was no more need for I Am Busy; there
was no need for words at all.

42

Goldhurst Terrace, London.

1975.

Charlie Pettigrew
Memories melt, like snow upon the sea,
yet in our dreams we can retrieve, the shades
who walked Goldhurst Terrace beneath the trees—
Bev, Wee Mac and Skylla, and all who made
a place for us at their table, and glass
in hand, we’d hear their embroidered tales
of bohemian Dublin’s gilded past—
where, against all odds, art would tip the scales.
We had escaped a darker history—
bombings, murders, random brutality.
Goldhurst Terrace became our sanctuary—
a place of lightness, laughter, comity.
Though brazen fate would scatter us like leaves,
we had our time, walking beneath the trees.

43

Entangled Life

Tess Kamradt

44

Content Warning: death, blood

The Monster You Leave Behind

Signe Nettum

The first blood spilled within the woods came from a buck. He
fell to the long grass with a low bellow, wet and thick. Red foam
bubbled from his mouth. Yellow and white feathers poked out
from his left flank; the arrow lodged itself into his abdomen.
His dying cries chased away any nearby creatures that observed
their fallen neighbor. One, two, three strained breaths—his flank
collapsed and did not rise again. Strained muscles slumped
against the now darkened grass below him.

Uneven hoofbeats stamped through the undergrowth
near the fallen deer. A final warning to anyone near the dead
creature, lest they met the same fate. The new creature emerged
from the undergrowth.

A human—they were not hoofbeats but footsteps. He looked
sickly: bony arms, a sunken face with watery eyes, his lungs
rattled much like the buck’s. He knelt by the carcass and cut near
the arrow wound, so it did not break when he pulled it off. He dug
into his hip pouch and got to work tying up the buck for transport.

The human returned a few days later. The skull of the buck
hung at his hip. He dug a small indent in the ground at the base
of a tree. He nestled the buck’s grinning skull in the dirt, secured
it, and left the woods once more.

He may have been the first hunter in the woods, but he
certainly was not the last.

Traps littered parts of the woods, each designed to fool young
animals into patches of unsuspecting leaves. Limbs strung up
by rope or snapped between metal jaws — they met the same
fate as the buck ages before. Some hunters took every part of
the animal with them instead of giving pieces back to the forest.

Yes, death happened in the woods long before the humans
arrived. But it was out of survival—meat immediately trans-
formed into energy once gobbled down by hungry mouths. Now,

45

as more and more humans came into the woods who gutted the
fish, stripped the herbs, and toppled trees, their hunger outgrew
their stomachs. They were gluttonous for something they could
not have, something that the woods would not give them.

The one-sided battle between the woods and the humans
waxed and waned as time went on. Hunting parties diminished,
and life started to bounce back. But then the trees started falling.
First, the ones who died but would not fall came crashing down.
A helping hand at first. Then trees that still had time to grow
and learn, met their fate on the ground too early. The humans
uprooted the brush at their feet and trampled the earth for their
animals. Never mind the ones that lived within the wood’s ter-
ritory; the humans needed room for the cattle, the pigs, and
the sheep. Some could survive without humans’ care, but they
traded livelihoods for shelter and gave their resources to those
who gave them food in their belly until it was time for human
greed to eat them as well.

Some humans discovered how to use all parts of the animals,
down to the bones. But others did not care and disposed of the
stray pieces. Skulls missing lower jaws hung on fence posts. Ribs
and hooves prized by hunting dogs found solace in the earth of
the forest when the dog came to hide their toy.

Soon, the bodies of the humans started to wither and pass
as well. Same as the animal carcasses, human remains had a
random chance of ending up near the forest. Some bodies were
buried at the base of a tree or near a patch of flowers. Ashes
fell into rivers and dirt, and were soon swallowed by the fauna
who lived within.

With flimsy protection made from dead trees, roots broke
through coffins in the earth and surrounded the corpses. Once
the mighty oak stripped the last bits of flesh, roots soon defiled
the bone remains. Weak openings at the base of necks snapped
with a simple push, and roots fed on what was finally theirs;
what had ruined their livelihood became their meal.

The human abodes nearby grew with the rising population,
nearly bursting at the seams. More trees fell, and the forest
watched as houses made of fallen trees grew skyward by human

46

hands. They churned the earth and forced chaos into dedicated
rows. Gardens and fields filled with vegetables, fruits, and grains.
Taunting the forest from which they drew their resources.

The forest shrugged at human advances and waited. All
living things had to reach their end, and humans would be the
same. Their power would rise and fall, the forest would grow
back, and another would take the humans’ place. A never-end-
ing loop of life and death in a consistent, timely manner.

Or at least, that was what the forest believed. The humans
thought differently.

The town bordering the forest soon grew into their space
and knew how much they could harvest without damaging
the land. They found a balance after years of testing. But
they were a particular group, unlike the pack of humans that
advanced along roads, armed and armored to the teeth. Some
stood high above their kin on horses, those who wished to
conquer all they met.

And did they conquer.
Screams resounded in the woods as the army ransacked the
tiny village. Human politics or whatnot, someone stepped on
another one’s toes, and there was a price to pay. Many fell to the
army’s weapons in their homes, others to arrows in the back as
they made their escape. Splotches of dark red littered the earth
as more and more died at the hands of others.
A few managed to escape into the woods, seeking protec-
tion from the trees when all they did was take. Feet trampled
undergrowth, and the bushes rewarded the humans with thorns
slashing against arms, a small wound compared to the sword.
The woods did not help or hinder those in the escape. It sat.
A bystander to the violence around it. Humans slumped to the
ground, red blood once again staining the grass.
Where the earth thirsted, it drank what the humans left
after death.
But the screams continued. They bounced against thick
trunks and traveled into canopies where the leaves swallowed
the sound once in for all. It, too, continued in a cycle. Screams of
fear while running away; of pain at the cut of a sword; of anguish

47

at the sight of fallen kin. The sound of the buck screaming at the
arrow in his flank. A warning, a plea, for someone, someone,
please, help us! My baby! Oh no, not Amelia. Why? Why us?
Please, just let us go! Please—

The earth exploded as tree roots ripped themselves out
of the ground. Scattering dirt and broken undergrowth, they
burrowed once more into the soil, searching. The dead who
departed long ago left their remains. And it was time for the
forest to take something from the humans.

The forest grew a guardian from the remains of all who
had called the woods their final resting place. Multiple heads
fused on one spine. Mismatching legs made of bones from
various creatures. What would be wings on a bird were now
bony appendages stretching from the spine that stabbed into
the earth for extra mobility. A ribcage with enough space inside
to fit a stable instead of organs. A thick, long tail that clubbed
whatever came near. An amalgamation of cracked bones fused
with the protective ligaments of various tree roots. Strong oak
in the ribs and spine, flexible elm in feet that contained mis-
matched sets of hooves, paws, and talons. The Prometheus of
Nature stood at the boundary path between the woods and the
village. A crossroads between the unknown of the woods and
the order of the town. Those who paused as the earth shook by
an unknown source stared at the towering beast.

The beast had three heads: a cow with the final wound
still on the forehead as a perfect circle; a ten-pointed buck
with half a lower jaw; a human skull with part of the back left
missing. She breathed without lungs and staggered on uneven
legs. Femurs from all types of animals reached toward patellas
lined like teeth to create a smooth hinge. Dirt, flowers, and
leaves from the earth clung to the bones to emulate some sense
of skin or pelt.

The monster opened her mouths and roared. An ear-split-
ting scream came from a nonexistent throat; the beast cried in
anguish for those who perished within the trees. The humans
cut down by their kin, the animals hunted by humans, animals
hunted by other animals. She howled for every natural and

48

premature death in a voice laced with animal shrieks and
human screams. The humans still standing scattered at the
sight of the monster.

With heaving breaths, the monster darted toward the first
armor-clad human she saw. Even with no carnivorous teeth—
save for the small ones in the human’s jaw—the human died
with a bitter crunch. The monster flung the carcass behind her
into a patch of soiled grass and continued her hunt.

Once she started, the monster did not rest until every
human from the army met their end. They were her enemy. The
village sustained too much damage, and the villagers who lived
there fled toward other sanctuaries. She did not have venom for
them. The ones who slaughtered in the name of someone else or
for resources they had a surplus of deserved their death by the
teeth of the Prometheus of Nature.

Blood splattered and exhausted, the monster dragged the
final body out of the forest. She stared at their corpses with
mismatched eye sockets. They could not rot here. One by one,
she transported the bodies deeper into the town and tossed
them into various fires that ravaged houses and farms. Flecks
of ash fluttered into the sky and carried on the wind to rest
somewhere else.

As the village burned—with the smell of cooking flesh
filling the air as a warning for those who dared trifle with the
earth—the monster staggered her way back into the forest.
Each step into the blood-stained grass thumped and sank into
the soft dirt.

Deeming the task completed, the tree roots relinquished
their hold on the remains. Sections of ribs, legs, and the gaudy
appendages thumped to the ground. The undergrowth of the
woods would grow over them one day. The beast’s legs collapsed
under her, and she slumped to the ground. The roots dislodged
from her heads, and they tumbled across the clearing.

The buck’s head still grinned, teeth stained with blood. The
cycle of man ruling nature and succumbing to their end by their
own hand would continue once more.

49

JÖrmungandr’s Embrace

Antionette Rose Goodrich
There is something endlessly lonely about grieving
someone who never existed in the first place
except the impenetrable tower of one’s mind
where they could be kept safe, wrapped in champagne
clouds and cherry-kissed smiles. But gone is gone— in a
wisp of rotting sweetness. Two paths exist: The known
and unknown. Tyr’s arm was a phantom limb
far before he decided to offer it to Fenrir, freckled
and scarred with future sacrifice in the name
of blind, unproven prophecy. The end
of the world was written at the beginning.
Ragnarök roaring across a blood smeared sky,
the end of something but not everything;
a new world was Reborn.
(The end is never truly the End.
Like the whisper of someone saying I miss you
as if they are saying I love you. As if they mean it)

50