SandScript 2021
Art & Literature Magazine
Art & Literature Magazine
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Sand Script<br />
ART & LITERATURE <strong>2021</strong><br />
1
Ashley Carmichael<br />
Magnolia Blooms<br />
Painting, Watercolor<br />
ARTIST’S NOTE ON<br />
THE COVER<br />
This piece is very special to me because<br />
it represents my home. My mother has an<br />
old magnolia tree in her backyard and we<br />
used to sit under it and drink iced tea. One<br />
day I grabbed my sketchbook and started<br />
drawing the beautiful spring flowers. I hope<br />
that when you look this painting, you can<br />
feel the warm energy of the sunreflecting<br />
off the leaves. It reminds me of time spent<br />
chatting with my family and the joyful<br />
feeling of a nice day.<br />
2
ABOUT SANDSCRIPT<br />
The <strong>SandScript</strong> staff wants to offer our<br />
condolences to everyone at Pima<br />
Community College for the losses and<br />
challenges that you have endured during<br />
the global pandemic. We are honored to<br />
present this assemblage of Pima students’<br />
creative work as a reminder that our<br />
hearts and minds are still flexible and<br />
vibrant, and that together we will build the<br />
next version of the world.<br />
<strong>SandScript</strong> is the art and literary magazine<br />
of Pima Community College, Tucson, AZ<br />
and is published annually at the end of<br />
the spring semester. All works of prose,<br />
poetry, and visual art that appear in<br />
<strong>SandScript</strong> are created by students<br />
attending Pima Community College.<br />
Students interested in participating on the<br />
editorial staff of <strong>SandScript</strong> take Literary<br />
Magazine Workshop (WRT 162) in the<br />
spring semester and apply for the various<br />
roles on the staff. This course is limited to<br />
twelve students. A student design editor is<br />
hired for the design work. Student editors,<br />
all of whom have interests in writing or art,<br />
learn through engaging in the editorial<br />
process with their peers.<br />
<strong>SandScript</strong> received the first place award<br />
in the national contest for collegiate<br />
magazines held by the Community<br />
College Humanities Association in<br />
2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.<br />
(The Community College Humanities<br />
Association canceled the literary<br />
magazine competition for 2020.)<br />
In <strong>2021</strong>, the <strong>SandScript</strong> staff faced all<br />
new challenges. In an entirely virtual<br />
environment, we had to get the word out<br />
to potential submitters without classroom<br />
visits, campus posters, and word-of-mouth.<br />
Added to these limitations was the deep<br />
distress of a student body entering the<br />
second year of a pandemic. Regardless,<br />
we got the work done, and additionally,<br />
we are proud to announce a new digital<br />
archive of previous <strong>SandScript</strong> editions in a<br />
Pima LibGuide.<br />
For the second time in the history of<br />
<strong>SandScript</strong> Art and Literary Journal, our<br />
magazine was forced into the digital<br />
sphere by pandemic realities. Under<br />
tremendous pressure, <strong>SandScript</strong>’s <strong>2021</strong><br />
student staff has exhibited integrity,<br />
determination, humor, and generous care<br />
for the artistic submissions of their peers.<br />
As our work neared completion, it was<br />
clear that every one of us, and frankly,<br />
almost everyone we know, is exhausted<br />
on a cellular level, but we are inspired and<br />
enlightened by the writing and art we are<br />
presenting here. We hope that it will offer<br />
some necessary hope for you, too.<br />
—Faculty Advisor, Frankie Rollins<br />
3
Rick Spriggs<br />
Alive<br />
Ceramic 8”H x 8”L x 6”W<br />
4
EDITORIAL BOARD<br />
Editor-in-Chief & Managing Editor<br />
Raiden Lopez<br />
Assistant Editor & Visual Art Editor<br />
Stephany Rocha<br />
Assistant Editor<br />
Jesse Shinn<br />
Social Media Manager, Director of Achives & Poetry Editor<br />
Maria Servellon<br />
Industry Outreach Coordinator & Prose Editor<br />
Madison Copic<br />
Prose Editor<br />
Iris Hill<br />
Poetry Editor<br />
Ocean Washington<br />
Visual Art Editor<br />
Mariah Gastelum<br />
Graphic Design Editor<br />
Cynthia Drumond<br />
Faculty Advisor<br />
Frankie Rollins<br />
Consider supporting student artists by making a donation to <strong>SandScript</strong>.<br />
For information about making a donation to <strong>SandScript</strong>, please send us an email at<br />
sandscript@pima.edu.<br />
All donations will go towards student awards and are not used for production or printing.<br />
Donations can be tax-deductible.<br />
5
Reed Coffey<br />
Symphoricarpos<br />
Painting, Oil on Canvas 24”x36”<br />
6
SPECIAL THANKS<br />
Lee Lambert, Chancellor<br />
Dr. Dolores Durán-Cerda, Provost and Executive Vice-Chancellor<br />
David Dore, President of Campuses and Executive Vice-Chancellor<br />
Kenneth Chavez, Dean of Communications Division<br />
Pima Community College Foundation<br />
Pima Community College Board of Governors:<br />
Catherine Ripley, Demion Clinco, Maria D. Garcia, Dr. Meredith Hay, Luis L. Gonzalez<br />
Maggie Golston, West Campus Department Head<br />
Dina L. Doolen, Marketing and Communications<br />
Paul Schwalbach, Director, Marketing & Communications<br />
Angela Moreno, Communications at Downtown Campus<br />
Rachel Araiza, Human Resources Specialist<br />
Zulma Tapia, Pima Community College Foundation<br />
Pima Post Josh Manis, Business Manager,<br />
Michelle Mire, Advanced Program Manager, Access and Disability Resources<br />
ASL Interpreters and CART for the Zoom Release Party<br />
Pima Community College Faculty and Staff<br />
We are on social media!<br />
Please like, follow, and share.<br />
pccsandscript<br />
7
EDITOR’S<br />
LETTER<br />
We are extremely proud to share this<br />
year’s <strong>SandScript</strong> <strong>2021</strong> Art and Literary<br />
Magazine with everyone. I am honored<br />
to have been the editor-in-chief and<br />
to work with such an amazing group of<br />
people. Each person brought their own<br />
wisdom, talent, personality, and passion<br />
in breathing life into this publication. It has<br />
been my absolute pleasure to be a part of<br />
this journey with each of them.<br />
<strong>2021</strong> is year two of the Coronavirus<br />
(COVID-19) pandemic, so everyone is<br />
still living with challenges and life-altering<br />
events we had never faced before.<br />
Our staff is no different, we have had to<br />
overcome social isolation from friends<br />
and loved ones, illnesses, and deaths. We<br />
have gone through hardships that really<br />
tested our resilience like custody battles,<br />
losing our homes, and having to start all<br />
over in new jobs after losing previous ones.<br />
Living during the COVID-19 pandemic<br />
8
has taught me that life is precious and<br />
can change drastically in an instant. Do<br />
not take your loved ones for granted and<br />
cherish the time spent, because there was<br />
a time that we were forced to be closed<br />
off from everyone. I lost my grandfather<br />
during the second year of the pandemic<br />
(<strong>2021</strong>), but I was blessed to have seen him<br />
one last time, not everyone was as lucky<br />
to get to say goodbye to loved ones.<br />
Some of these afflictions may have<br />
seemed impossible in the moment but<br />
human beings are more malleable than<br />
even we give ourselves credit for. From<br />
that perseverance we created something<br />
beautiful and transcendent despite<br />
the misfortunes of the world today. The<br />
<strong>SandScript</strong> team had a vision for what<br />
we could bestow on the world as a part<br />
of history and with brilliant skill and eye<br />
for detail, our design editor, Cynthia<br />
Drumond, made that vision come true.<br />
Thank you to all our artists and authors for<br />
entrusting us with your work, you are all<br />
extremely talented and brave to share<br />
your creativity with the world. As a single<br />
mother raising a young son, I know how<br />
difficult it is to be a student in these times.<br />
We congratulate everyone who finished<br />
this semester, it is an incredible feat.<br />
I hope you all stay well and that you take<br />
time to enjoy those you care about most,<br />
because tomorrow is not always promised.<br />
—Editor-in-Chief, Raiden Lopez<br />
9
CONTENTS<br />
About <strong>SandScript</strong> 3<br />
Artist’s Note On The Cover 2<br />
Award Winners 14<br />
Editor’s Letter 8-9<br />
Editorial Board 5<br />
Meet Our Artists 174-185<br />
Meet Our Team 186-191<br />
Special Thanks 7<br />
Visual Art<br />
Abigale Robles Sunflowers 21<br />
Abigale Robles A Friday Night Downtown 124<br />
Abigale Robles Masks in COVID-19 132<br />
Abigale Robles A Snake in Chaos 169<br />
Ashley Carmichael Magnolia Blooms 2<br />
Ashley Carmichael Spring Flowers 30-31<br />
Ashley Carmichael The Quiet Observer 32<br />
Ashley Carmichael Desert Blooms 54-55<br />
Avery Goldberg Coming up Pink Poppies 44<br />
Avery Goldberg A Shamble of a Band 87<br />
Brianna Stevens Garden Spirit 131<br />
Clarissa Holguin Whimsical Waves 96<br />
Claudia Nazario Selena 104<br />
Claudia Nazario Franny 112<br />
Cynthia Drumond It is Me 29<br />
Dani Gailbraith-Ritchie Beating.Still 74<br />
Dani Gailbraith-Ritchie Chula Chapala 90-91<br />
Dani Gailbraith-Ritchie Tepalo 103<br />
Danielle Bond V Day A series: 6 120<br />
David Parsons George Floyd- SAY HIS NAME 66<br />
Desert Ehrhart Portrait 135<br />
Desiree Garcia Raven’s Skull 152<br />
George Key Esperanza 172<br />
Grace Johnson Red Eastern Screech Owl 116<br />
Grace Johnson Taurus 127<br />
10
Javier Dosamantes For She Had Eyes 143<br />
Jennifer Prybylla Time 56<br />
Kimberly Calles Solitude 115<br />
Kimberly Calles Metamorphosis 51<br />
Kimberly Griffen No Parking 80<br />
Luisa Espinoza Las Dos Fernandas 52<br />
Luisa Espinoza Los Tiempos Se Van Volando 77<br />
Luisa Espinoza Tentacle Tessellation 100<br />
Micheal Christopherson You Can’t Hide Forever 99<br />
Miyeon Kim It’s Addicted Me 62-63<br />
Miyeon Kim Survival 170<br />
Monica Nelson My Dads Favorite Teapot 147<br />
Mya Palacios Emotional Growth 139<br />
Nathan Coffey Columbia 88<br />
Nathan Coffey Cactus Car 15<br />
Nathan Coffey Huddle 49<br />
Portia Cooper Rocket 59<br />
Portia Cooper Rodent 160<br />
Rebecca Farris Inner Feelings 39<br />
Reed Coffey Symphoricarpos 6<br />
Rhea Stanley Scorned 151<br />
Rhea Stanley Tonight 163<br />
Rick Spriggs Alive 4<br />
Rick Spriggs Life 16-17<br />
Rick Spriggs Red Top 155<br />
Sarah Bryg Light Travels From A Dead Star 72-73<br />
Shelby Quiroz And... Doubt 41<br />
Sivanes Ananda Dutch Windmill at Golden Gate Park 84<br />
Sofia Fetsis Falling Magic 164<br />
Thomas Webster Trichocereus 107<br />
Thurwin Lane John and Rena 65<br />
Thurwin Lane Saving The Heart 140<br />
Ulises Ramos F.E.L.T. 95<br />
Ulises Ramos Dejen Al Musico Dormir 119<br />
Weston Lane Scaredy Cat 20<br />
11
Weston Lane Dotted Cat 128<br />
Weston Lane Feminine Masculinity 159<br />
Yanna Aiken Am I Worth Love 148<br />
Yanna Aiken Am I Worth Life 156<br />
Zevi Bloomfield The Virus 23<br />
Zevi Bloomfield Siren 83<br />
Prose<br />
Chretien Martinez Stygian 67<br />
Courtney Armstrong Fading into the Watercolor 28-35<br />
Courtney Armstrong I Closed My Eyes 38-48<br />
Josie Lugo Adder’s Binds 16-25<br />
Mora Hedayati Mommy Comes Back 62-65<br />
Nadia Celaya-Alcala Mexican American without the American 53-55<br />
Raymond Butler The Little Wind 70-79<br />
Poetry<br />
A.Z. Martinez The Song to Come 86<br />
Alexa Lewis Who’s Counting 57<br />
Arial Autumn 27 58<br />
Carol Korhonen Missing Already 60-61<br />
Chacara Thomas Good and Evil 89<br />
Christopher Valenzuela Documented Thoughts 90-92<br />
Christopher Valenzuela Smoke Signals 97<br />
Courtney Armstrong I Smashed a Fishbowl 101<br />
Courtney Armstrong Hope 105<br />
Courtney Armstrong Drunken Lunacy 98<br />
Courtney Armstrong Oh, Antigua 102<br />
Desert Ehrhart She Was Near 165<br />
Diego Tobin Something Playing in …Reality Is a Flower 106-109<br />
Elena Acuna The Mesquites Keep ...Know Your Sins 162<br />
Elena Acuna Siren Call 171<br />
Esmeralda Garcia It’s A Dream 113<br />
George Key Look Too See 114<br />
Iris Hill Anaerobic 81<br />
12
Jazmin Garcia Two Daises 85<br />
Jazmin Garcia The Blue Carpet and the Cherry Pie 82<br />
Jazmin Garcia Waves 94<br />
Kentaro Herder Water 136-137<br />
Kentaro Herder Strange Weather 117<br />
Luke Cottrell Carousel 118<br />
Luke Eriksson Overkill 122-123<br />
Luke Eriksson More Than Anything 121<br />
M.J. Copic Strength 129<br />
M.J. Copic A Return 125<br />
M.J. Copic Dragons Can Be Killed 126<br />
Mara Durán Time Blurred/Tiempo Difuminado 130<br />
Mark Anthony Ferguson Ripped and Scattered 161<br />
Mauricia Manuel A Body of ... Principles: We the People 68-69<br />
Mauricia Manuel Quarantined 133<br />
Mauricia Manuel Repudiation 134<br />
Michele Worthington Ice Cannot Be Unnmelted 141<br />
Michele Worthington Unshrouded 138<br />
Raiden Lopez Where I Am From 142-143<br />
Salina Riggs-Molina Enrobe Yourself In Velvet 173<br />
Salina Riggs-Molina Groundhog Day 144-145<br />
Salina Riggs-Molina When No One’s Looking 146<br />
Salina Riggs-Molina Options 168<br />
Samantha Barrera The Book of Life 166-167<br />
Sierra Vigil Falling Stars 149<br />
Sierra Vigil A Love Letter From the Sea to the Olive Tree 50<br />
Sierra Vigil A Love Letter From the Olive Tree to the Sea 36-37<br />
Solace Bergman Prettier If You Smiled 150<br />
T. Gullett Lemons and Oranges 110-111<br />
T. Gullett A Consideration of Love and Teeth 26-27<br />
Travis Cooper CA Conrad’s Squirrel 153<br />
Veronica Martinez Pleads to the Virgin Mary 154<br />
Yareli Sanchez Dying 157<br />
Zoe Galmarini Dreamers 158<br />
13
AWARD WINNERS<br />
Visual Art<br />
First Place<br />
Second Place<br />
Third Place<br />
The Quiet Observer<br />
Ashley Carmichael<br />
Time<br />
Jennifer Prybylla<br />
Tentacle Tessellation<br />
Luisa Espinoza<br />
Prose<br />
First Place<br />
Second Place<br />
Third Place<br />
Fading Into the Watercolor<br />
Courtney Armstrong<br />
Stygian<br />
Chretien Martinez<br />
Mommy Comes Back<br />
Mora Hedayati<br />
Poetry<br />
First Place<br />
Second Place<br />
Third Place<br />
Water<br />
Kentaro Herder<br />
Unshrouded<br />
Michele Worthington<br />
Options<br />
Salina Molina<br />
—Awards funded by Pima Foundation<br />
14
Nathan Coffey<br />
Cactus Car<br />
Photograph<br />
15
ADDER’S BINDS<br />
Josie Lugo<br />
Fiction<br />
The pain on her wings returns as<br />
Adder’s mother finishes tightening the<br />
metal binds to keep her wings bound. This<br />
time her mother uses two binds—since<br />
Adder broke the last one in only a week.<br />
Mother stands back to admire her work<br />
and asks Adder to try and move them to<br />
make sure that they are secure this time.<br />
Sirens have overly sensitive wings in order<br />
to detect changes in wind currents, but<br />
while bound she can only move them<br />
up and down slightly, and any chance<br />
of extending them past her shoulder is<br />
impossible.<br />
“Good.” Her mother claps her hands<br />
as if she’s proud with her work. “Now, this<br />
time, let’s try not to break the binds Adder.<br />
Regardless of what you may think, I don’t<br />
have an endless amount and they are<br />
expensive. But if you would simply let me<br />
cut them off like mine you wouldn’t have<br />
to endure this anymore. I know it can’t be<br />
comfortable for you.”<br />
Adder gives her mother a noncommittal<br />
groan and leaves her to put<br />
away the extra bindings and tightening<br />
tools. Just looking at the metal binds sends<br />
a shiver down her spine, so she gives her<br />
mother space to hide them back under<br />
her bed. Having two binds instead of one<br />
is worse than she could imagine. Adder’s<br />
wings are sensitive enough to detect<br />
16<br />
even the slightest of currents in the wind<br />
and the metal rubbing against them as<br />
she walks, or even breathes, makes her<br />
back feel as if it’s on fire. Over time, she<br />
had gotten used to one band—not that it<br />
ever became comfortable—but it wasn’t<br />
as excruciating as this new banding, set<br />
just below the original one, both rubbing<br />
against the sensitive feathers of her<br />
wings.<br />
Even though she would like to,<br />
Adder doesn’t blame her mother for the<br />
bindings. Well, she doesn’t only blame her.<br />
Eons ago, Sirens made up the brute force<br />
of the King’s armies and since then they<br />
Rick Spriggs<br />
Life<br />
Ceramic 4”Hx7”L
have been given a merciless reputation<br />
for killing. Stories after stories of the torture<br />
and destruction caused by her ancestors<br />
has made beings of all shapes and sizes<br />
fear them in groups. Her mother long<br />
ago cut off her own wings—a horrible<br />
procedure that has left her back scarred<br />
and destroyed—to appease the nearby<br />
villagers, but she has never understood<br />
why Adder hasn’t done the same.<br />
The wind is quiet today, like it knows<br />
not to tempt her. Once a year, for the<br />
last twenty-two years, Adder’s mother<br />
removes the binds and allows her to fly<br />
free. Not around the house, or in the<br />
village, in case someone was to see. But<br />
that one day, she wakes up before the<br />
sun shows her face on the horizon, and<br />
travels four nights to reach the Valaryian<br />
Mountains, and stares up at the highest<br />
snow-covered peak from the ground<br />
before flying to touch it. The mountains<br />
are in a constant whirl of snowstorms—<br />
usually more than one on a single peak—<br />
and it takes all the strength of her wings<br />
to fight the black clouds holding cold,<br />
wind, and sleet. Each trip from the ground<br />
to the peak takes a couple minutes and<br />
by midday, Adder finds herself jumping<br />
off the highest points and enjoying the<br />
free-fall until she thrusts her wings out and<br />
glides on a breeze that was only created<br />
from her fall against the side of the rocks.<br />
Then, after a beautiful day of freedom,<br />
Adder is forced to return home and allow<br />
her mother to bind her wings until the next<br />
year.<br />
She hasn’t visited the mountains yet<br />
for her twenty-third year, but with two<br />
binds, she might be inclined to visit soon<br />
for a break from the searing pain. Maybe<br />
this time she will stay there. Maybe this<br />
time, her mother’s guilt won’t convince<br />
her to lower herself back to the ground<br />
and allow her to be bound again.<br />
Maybe—but she doubts it.<br />
Coming out of the house, Mother<br />
hands Adder the basket of vegetables<br />
and goods she plans to sell at the market.<br />
“What does that look on your face mean,<br />
Adder?”<br />
“I was thinking I’ll take my trip to<br />
Valaryian soon.”<br />
Her mother raises an eyebrow, lips<br />
pursed, but doesn’t say anything else for<br />
17
the rest of the walk. It’s a warm summer<br />
morning and without Adder’s wings being<br />
free to provide her with shade, she sweats<br />
instantly as they make the three mile walk<br />
to the inner village market.<br />
Already, the market is crowded<br />
with probably near two hundred beasts<br />
already shopping. Decorations splay on<br />
top of temporary stands and along lights<br />
that straddle the walkways. It takes the<br />
whisper of a nearby lycanthrope scolding<br />
her daughter for Adder to notice the<br />
excessive decorations and creatures<br />
crowding the path. Green and gold<br />
thrown everywhere as if those are the only<br />
two colors that exist. The King’s colors.<br />
Wolves, sabers, and fae of all different<br />
ages crowd the paths to the little stands,<br />
bustling about as if they are at risk of the<br />
sun lowering in the next few moments and<br />
the market closing.<br />
The impending closure is not the<br />
cause of the solar cycle, but for an arriving<br />
guest to the village. The King himself will be<br />
stopping by—that’s what the lycanthrope<br />
mother growled to her daughter who tried<br />
to change back to her human form. All<br />
beasts must maintain the form they were<br />
born in—if they have multiple forms—for<br />
the King. Any other form would be a<br />
threat, like hiding in the shadows, instead<br />
of exposing their true self. How the King<br />
would know—Adder wasn’t sure—but she<br />
was willing to risk the words that fell from<br />
her lips next:<br />
“Mom, do you think you should<br />
unbind my wings?”<br />
“Of course not.” Her mother stopped<br />
walking and stared at Adder as if she<br />
has slapped her in the face and then<br />
demanded she breathe underwater. The<br />
look of annoyance on her mother’s face is<br />
one Adder is familiar with.<br />
“But look how the lycanthropes and<br />
pixies and sabers wander around in their<br />
born-flesh. The binds are not a natural part<br />
of my form.”<br />
“Don’t be so ridiculous. Would you<br />
have me strip naked since that was the<br />
form I was born in?”<br />
The look on Adder’s face must have<br />
been answer enough because her mother<br />
simply exhaled sharply through her nose,<br />
tipped her chin up towards the sky, and<br />
walked away knowing that Adder would<br />
follow. And she did.<br />
When they finally came upon the<br />
empty stand that was left alone for them,<br />
her mother went quickly to work, taking<br />
out every item and elegantly displaying<br />
them for everyone to see. Time seemed<br />
to continue on slowly as words that Adder<br />
would never dare say out loud whipped<br />
and whirled in her mind, begging for<br />
release. It was a useless effort to think that<br />
she could so easily convince her mother<br />
to let her wings go free but she couldn’t<br />
deny that she did indeed have some<br />
hope or the words would never have<br />
made it to her mother’s ear.<br />
Plenty of marketgoers came by to<br />
gently examine the layout and enquire<br />
about prices. Some walk away with<br />
her mother’s goods and others simply<br />
keep their sneers at her high prices to<br />
themselves. Adder’s job of maintaining<br />
guard of the stand is easily accomplished<br />
simply with her presence. As the only<br />
two Sirens in the village, Adder and her<br />
mother are constantly encountering<br />
18
lycanthrope, fae, as well as other shapeshifting<br />
beasts that all sneer that her kind<br />
is no longer revered as warriors but market<br />
attendees.<br />
As more and more villagers fill in the<br />
marketplace, and the sun hits the apex<br />
of the sky, her mother dismisses Adder<br />
for a break. The real reason is because<br />
Adder will scare off potential buyers as<br />
more swarm the stand, but at least her<br />
mother has the decency to lie and tell<br />
her that she should go see about getting<br />
something nice for the house. Just the few<br />
hours she spent at the market this morning<br />
will spread word of mouth and protect<br />
her mother’s work from thieving hands.<br />
A couple of silver pieces are shoved into<br />
her hand and then she is off, wandering<br />
around as if she doesn’t know the exact<br />
location of the supplier she has in mind.<br />
The only bright side of being feared<br />
in her village is the wide berth everyone<br />
gives her as she walks—effectively<br />
protecting her wings from unnecessary<br />
friction of bumping into other creatures.<br />
A quick flutter of her wings and<br />
Adder stops walking. There’s a shift in the<br />
air that she can’t identify—something<br />
not too distant from a warning call that<br />
has her wings moving on instinct without<br />
her permission. She lifts her head to look<br />
around, forcing several others to almost<br />
walk into her, and mumble apologies.<br />
Not listening, she feels another tug at<br />
her wings, the pain of the binds scraping<br />
against them, but there’s nothing. No new<br />
threat.<br />
She can feel it pulling on her like she<br />
is being tugged on the end of a rope;<br />
something deep inside her body that<br />
she can’t identify as either pain or joy.<br />
Vaguely, she is aware that eyes have<br />
started watching her as she frantically<br />
looks for the source calling to her. In her<br />
bones, in her veins, she can feel the call as<br />
if her own soul was receiving the summons<br />
and her wings are frantically trying to<br />
greet it.<br />
Around her an obnoxious loud sound<br />
ripples from every direction. An explosion?<br />
No—clapping. Shouts and cheers and<br />
something in the air with colors of gold<br />
and green and again her wings try to<br />
spread and she can’t control the whimper<br />
that escapes her lips. Adder drops to her<br />
knees, ignoring the miniscule pain that<br />
shoots through her thighs to her hips, as all<br />
her focus is drawn to the metal scraping<br />
against each feather of her wings.<br />
“Look up.” It’s a voice, old and<br />
young, strong and soft, beautiful and<br />
shaky that she’s never heard before.<br />
“Look over there. Find him. Find the mirror<br />
of your soul.”<br />
She does.<br />
The King is nearby—kneeling beside<br />
a mossy troll—a crown of black adamant<br />
atop his head like it weighs nothing. But<br />
that’s not what catches Adder’s attention.<br />
It’s his back that keeps her eyes from<br />
looking away and momentarily dulls her<br />
pain. His wings. Solid white just like her<br />
own, tucked in gently, but free to spread<br />
of his own will.<br />
The scream that leaves her lips<br />
sounds distant even to Adder’s own ears.<br />
She covers her ears, trying to hide from<br />
the sound only to realize that it’s coming<br />
from her. From her own throat as her wings<br />
struggle uselessly against the bindings.<br />
19
Weston Lane<br />
Scaredy Cat<br />
Drawing, Color Pencil 10”x13”<br />
Behind her she can hear her name<br />
being called from a feminine voice, but<br />
the sound only makes her wings more<br />
frantic, wanting to escape before the<br />
familiar voice can appear with its tools<br />
to keep them in place. She throws all<br />
her muscles into the force of breaking<br />
the binds, but the searing pain turns the<br />
edges of her vision black and she’s quickly<br />
gasping, trying to pull air into her lungs.<br />
A figure in green appears in front of her,<br />
yelling something, but she can’t focus on<br />
making out the words. All of her attention<br />
is being pulled to her wings and then<br />
someone touches them.<br />
And the world stops.<br />
White wings that don’t belong to<br />
her are splayed out, stretching wide, and<br />
she can feel the need inside of her to<br />
match—to copy those wings. In the back<br />
of her mind, a primal part of her existence<br />
is telling her to match up her wings to his<br />
and claim him as her mirror: her mate. The<br />
figure comes into focus only a couple of<br />
inches from her face and she takes in the<br />
dark halo around his head, the tanned<br />
skin of someone who spends his time<br />
under the sun, the beautiful green fabric<br />
of his coat, dipping in a low cut to expose<br />
his bare chest.<br />
“Get. Them. Off,” her mirror says, not<br />
to her, but someone behind her she can’t<br />
see.<br />
Despite the tears, her eyes are<br />
locked on his, and she can see the fury<br />
behind them. His hands are cupping her<br />
cheeks and wiping away at the droplets<br />
that escape her eyes and his fingers are<br />
nothing but gentle as he holds her and<br />
tells whoever is behind her to cut the binds<br />
off.<br />
She stops screaming, trying to catch<br />
her breath through her silent sobs, and<br />
hide herself from the looks she knows she<br />
must be receiving. Her mirror mate simply<br />
holds her face in his hands and stares<br />
relentlessly in her eyes. Then the pain<br />
finally subsides. The burning feeling against<br />
her wings breaks away in one spot and<br />
then another. Both wings fly open with a<br />
force that would kill anyone who might be<br />
too close as they copy the male in front of<br />
her.<br />
Her mating ritual complete and the<br />
male in front of her claimed as hers.<br />
Finally, she can breathe with ease.<br />
Air returns to her lungs and her tears dry<br />
on her face. The hands holding her don’t<br />
20
let go but continue to rub small circles<br />
over her cheekbones, trying to soothe her.<br />
She reaches out a finger and touches the<br />
white feathers in front of her. The male<br />
sucks in his breath but doesn’t tell her to<br />
stop, so she continues, running her finger<br />
over his muscles that let him fly. When<br />
he gently flexes the muscles in his left<br />
wing, she feels her right wing mirror him,<br />
matching his movements.<br />
“Adder,” she says. Her voice is hoarse<br />
but it’s the only thing she can think to say<br />
right now. “My name is Adder.”<br />
His lips tug upwards on the side as he<br />
says, “Lorcan.”<br />
“Thank you, Lorcan.”<br />
“Anything for my mirror mate.”<br />
***<br />
Almost two years have come and<br />
gone between Lorcan and Adder since<br />
the mating bond had been discovered<br />
in Adder’s home village marketplace.<br />
Lorcan and Adder spend their mornings<br />
together, flying to near impossible heights<br />
and banking around trees and homes in<br />
the nearby city. Young children come out<br />
in the streets in the morning and scream<br />
with laughter as the King and his mirror<br />
mate fly by with enough speed for the<br />
wind to knock them on the ground.<br />
This morning, a rare winter morning<br />
with the sun melting the snow that had<br />
fallen from a previous night, finds Adder<br />
waking up alone in the bed. A note on the<br />
small table has her name on it written in<br />
the elegant handwriting she recognizes as<br />
Lorcan’s. She quickly sits up, and pushing<br />
through her yawn and groggy eyes, plucks<br />
the note up to read it:<br />
Abigale Robles<br />
Sunflowers<br />
Drawing, Bristol Paper and Micron Pens<br />
My dearest Adder. Despite my<br />
complaints, Lord Breham has demanded<br />
my presence early this morning. I’m sorry<br />
to cancel our flight but I will make it up to<br />
you tomorrow. I will sneak away to see you<br />
as soon as I can.<br />
Adder smiles at the words and<br />
places the letter in the drawer with the<br />
other notes of cancellation, tallying the<br />
missed flights up to eleven since their<br />
time together. Normally she finds herself<br />
going to an early breakfast on days when<br />
Lorcan can’t join her, but her flights this<br />
past week had left frost on the tips of her<br />
wings and today is too beautiful to pass<br />
up. She quickly gets ready and opens the<br />
door to their balcony at the highest level<br />
of the palace and jumps off.<br />
21
There is little wind today which forces<br />
Adder to use more strength for creating<br />
currents, but she doesn’t mind. Any<br />
chance she gets to fly overfills her heart<br />
with joy to the point where she wonders<br />
if this much happiness can kill her. Lorcan<br />
prefers to fly around the palace and<br />
the neighboring city, but Adder prefers<br />
the mountains. They aren’t as tall or as<br />
demanding as the Valaryian Mountains,<br />
and they rarely see any snow, but it’s<br />
better than the straight path Lorcan<br />
desires.<br />
Up and up she flies until she lands on<br />
a cliff overlooking her home. Four large<br />
stone pillars make up the edge of the<br />
palace grounds, and anywhere within<br />
the grey stone she is free to roam. Several<br />
miles south, in the opposite direction of<br />
the nearby mountains, is a small city that<br />
Lorcan enjoys flying through. Between the<br />
two locations lays a dense forest but going<br />
either direction east or west of the palace<br />
greets any traveler with jagged rocks<br />
four times as large and hundreds of times<br />
heavier than they appear.<br />
The small part of Adder that once<br />
existed that missed her mother has now<br />
disappeared completely since being<br />
allowed to fly so freely with Lorcan. Each<br />
flap is a reminder of the binds that once<br />
controlled and limited her.<br />
Leaning backwards, she lets her<br />
body fall, tucking her wings in tight to<br />
increase her speed. Even after all this<br />
time her stomach still tightens at the free<br />
fall until she thrusts her wings outward,<br />
leveling off and forgetting all her painful<br />
memories.<br />
Joy.<br />
Joy is what coats her skin and keeps<br />
her smile permanently placed on her<br />
lips.<br />
She flies longer than usual today, the<br />
good weather pushing her to fly higher<br />
with no clouds as her limit. Maneuvering<br />
around trees that are naked from the sun<br />
melting the snow filled nights, Adder holds<br />
herself in place and watches the city<br />
awaken. She sits on the highest cliff she<br />
can find and curls her wings around herself<br />
simply because she can.<br />
When her stomach finally grumbles<br />
loud enough to bother her, she returns to<br />
the balcony. Lorcan is there, his meeting<br />
with the Lord over, sitting on the bed with<br />
his head tucked into his hands.<br />
“Lorcan, what’s wrong?” Adder lands<br />
soundlessly, her words the only sound of<br />
her approach as she hurries to Lorcan’s<br />
side.<br />
His head snaps up as he quickly<br />
meets her halfway, his hands touching<br />
her face, her arms, her stomach, as his<br />
eyes scan over her body and wings. After<br />
deciding she has no injuries, he lets out a<br />
breath and says, “Where have you been,<br />
Adder?”<br />
Lorcan’s fingers curl around her chin,<br />
forcing her attention on him. There’s an<br />
emotion swirling in his eyes she’s never<br />
seen before so she speaks slowly, not<br />
knowing why she feels nervous. “I went<br />
out flying. I’m sorry I stayed out later than<br />
usual, but the day is lovely and…”<br />
“I flew around the entire village<br />
and palace. Twice. Where were you,<br />
Adder?”<br />
“I went to the mountains.” Heat<br />
floods her cheeks, but his grip on her chin<br />
22
doesn’t allow her to look anywhere but<br />
directly at him.<br />
He drops her face like the contact<br />
suddenly burns him. The seconds seem to<br />
stretch into minutes as she waits for him to<br />
say something. Anything.<br />
“Why?” Lorcan asks, his voice harsh<br />
and unlike anything Adder has heard from<br />
him before.<br />
She opens her mouth to explain, but<br />
he cuts her off saying, “And I don’t want to<br />
hear that it is a lovely day. I want to know<br />
why you risked your life to fly around some<br />
damned mountains. The wind current that<br />
high is difficult to fly against and you could<br />
have tired yourself out and fallen without<br />
anyone knowing where the hell you were.<br />
Or you could have been slammed into<br />
one of the ledges and broken your wings,<br />
is that what you want?”<br />
A small gasp escapes her lips as<br />
Adder tries and fails to come up with an<br />
explanation to soothe him. She tries to<br />
push away any retort of him not thinking<br />
she’s strong or fast enough because she<br />
knows that his worry won’t allow for those<br />
reasons to mean anything. Lorcan knows<br />
her stories about her trips to Valaryian and<br />
even when they fly together, she is always<br />
faster, flying higher than even he dares.<br />
“I’m sorry I worried you. Please don’t<br />
bind me, I couldn’t take it,” Adder pleads.<br />
Zevi Bloomfield<br />
The Virus<br />
Painting, Acrylic 24”x16”<br />
23
Unable to maintain eye contact because<br />
of her growing guilt at being caught,<br />
Adder looks down at her feet, and tries to<br />
blink back the frustrated tears. She wants<br />
to demand why he’s acting this way when<br />
she’s obviously safe now, but she bites her<br />
tongue, not wanting to risk an argument.<br />
Inhaling sharply through his nose,<br />
Lorcan says, “I was worried about you<br />
Adder. You can’t pull a disappearing<br />
act like this. I figured after being here<br />
for a couple of years you would finally<br />
understand what you mean to me. I can’t<br />
lose you.”<br />
Not having any words, she hugs<br />
him—her mirror mate and king—and<br />
whispers into his neck that she is sorry and<br />
won’t fly to the mountains alone again. He<br />
embraces her back, taking in her scent,<br />
and murmuring how he loves her and only<br />
wants to keep her safe.<br />
For two years, she kept that<br />
promise.<br />
For two years she kept by the King’s<br />
side in flights and never took flight by<br />
herself. She even stopped flying off past<br />
the clouds when she was with him so that<br />
her mate wouldn’t worry. They continued<br />
to fly in the mornings but after a while,<br />
every path seemed to have been flown.<br />
Those who lived in the village continued to<br />
wave as they flew by, but no one shrieked<br />
anymore or laughed at the speed in<br />
which Adder passed. Their morning flights<br />
continue but only last a few minutes<br />
now.<br />
As Lorcan and Adder sit for breakfast,<br />
her appetite much smaller than it had<br />
been those first four years due to flying<br />
less now, Lorcan carefully clears his throat,<br />
grabbing her attention. “Adder, my love,<br />
I know you said last night that you didn’t<br />
want to speak of the topic anymore, but<br />
I’m afraid I have to bring it up again. I can<br />
see how lonely you get when I am forced<br />
to entertain Lords all day and I think<br />
having someone to take care of will be<br />
good for you. For us.”<br />
The piece of fruit Adder had just<br />
swallowed gets caught in her throat,<br />
forcing her to cough repeatedly and<br />
take a drink of her water. Once her initial<br />
reaction settles, her jaw involuntarily<br />
tightens as the memory of their<br />
conversation last night runs through her<br />
mind. It isn’t the first time Lorcan has<br />
brought up wanting children, although it<br />
was the first time he claimed it would be<br />
for her benefit. Over the last two years<br />
she has continuously told him no, that all<br />
she wants is to live her life with Lorcan,<br />
but lately the topic has been brought up<br />
again and again.<br />
A child.<br />
Children.<br />
As if they should have more than<br />
one.<br />
Could she truly do it? There’s no<br />
doubt that she loves Lorcan. All the love<br />
Adder can spare in her heart has gone to<br />
him. But she also knows that she has been<br />
bound to this palace in the same manner<br />
her mother used to bind her wings and the<br />
thought of limiting the flight of her child<br />
breaks her heart.<br />
“I told you Lorcan, I’m not interested<br />
in being a mother,” Adder says as calmly<br />
as she can before returning her attention<br />
to her food.<br />
“Adder, do you think I don’t notice<br />
24
you wasting away? You’re bored and<br />
what you need is something to occupy<br />
your time. You’ve tried knitting and sewing<br />
and dancing and even kitchen duty but<br />
nothing has held your attention longer<br />
than a few months.”<br />
This time, Adder has to bite the inside<br />
of her cheek until she tastes blood to keep<br />
back her retort. She wants to roll her eyes<br />
and tell him that of course he doesn’t see<br />
the problem because he caused it. She is<br />
in a nice, comfy, and safe palace, what<br />
more could she ask for. What more could<br />
she possibly long for, he wants to know.<br />
But that is her best kept secret. For<br />
two years she has kept herself inside<br />
the palace and away from windows<br />
with winds that seem to call her name.<br />
Because she knows. She knows that<br />
two years ago she chose Lorcan over<br />
her wings and every day her resolve to<br />
choose him again seems to be fading<br />
away. The more he doesn’t catch on to<br />
her unhappiness the more she begins to<br />
resent him. Adder wants to scream from<br />
above the clouds and demand how<br />
he could notice her suffering and not<br />
guess why. While it slowly eats away at<br />
her, Adder keeps her thoughts to herself,<br />
knowing that if she forces Lorcan to<br />
choose between herself and her freedom,<br />
he’d chose her. And that would surely kill<br />
her.<br />
“Just consider it. I think a child will<br />
be good for us Adder, and I’m not giving<br />
up trying to convince you.” Lorcan gets<br />
up from the table, and after a quick kiss<br />
goodbye, he leaves to begin his daily<br />
meetings.<br />
The rest of the food on Adder’s<br />
plate goes untouched after Lorcan’s<br />
declaration and immediate dismissal.<br />
All the energy feels sucked from Adder<br />
as if her bones have gained weight and<br />
her muscles can no longer support her.<br />
Instead of trying to find some way to pass<br />
the time, she simply returns to her room<br />
and sits on the edge of her bed.<br />
How could she let it get this bad?<br />
For most of her life she had allowed her<br />
mother to bind her wings and then she<br />
allowed Lorcan to limit her, all for Adder’s<br />
perceived safety. She had loved her<br />
mom. And she loves her mirror mate. But<br />
neither has ever tried to answer the call of<br />
the wind like Adder loves to, so how could<br />
she expect them to understand?<br />
A cold breeze slams into her room,<br />
swinging her balcony doors open and<br />
carrying silent words into her bedroom.<br />
She recognizes the voice from that day<br />
at the market four years ago, the one<br />
that brought Lorcan into her life. A voice<br />
with no age, nor species, but somehow<br />
trustworthy.<br />
So, when it tells her to fly away, she<br />
doesn’t hesitate.<br />
25
A CONSIDERATION OF LOVE<br />
AND TEETH<br />
T. Gullett<br />
Consider the sharp smell of pine,<br />
and the soft give of mud underneath your feet.<br />
Consider the sound of bark dragged against a denim jacket,<br />
and how the creek soaks into the hem of your jeans.<br />
Consider your heart in your ears,<br />
pounding away in your throat with something<br />
so heavy you could choke around it,<br />
you’ve always known love would choke you.<br />
You knew it would hit you like a stone, Danny Vance,<br />
you’ve always bitten off more that you can chew.<br />
Always wanted that overwhelming love that dragged you<br />
underneath the waves, the downpour,<br />
down into the hollows and the creek.<br />
You always wanted the love with teeth,<br />
something with bite, weight to it.<br />
Your heart between their jaws, their jagged teeth,<br />
the kind of thing to make you shake and howl,<br />
fulfill the craving in your teeth.<br />
26
So here it is now, the hounds of love<br />
descending from the trees.<br />
Lunging and leaping and gnawing and catching,<br />
swallowing up the man you once were,<br />
leaving something new behind.<br />
You knew, Danny Vance,<br />
knew as well as your own name, own hands,<br />
that you wanted this. Wanted this transformation,<br />
rebirth, what have you, whatever fit right, made<br />
your skin finally fit better than a cheap Halloween mask.<br />
You knew the second the moon changed,<br />
the first time you saw his grin, heard his laugh,<br />
that your heart would fit nice between his teeth.<br />
It’d look good there, better than wrapped around your<br />
mother’s finger or locked away to be forgotten.<br />
So you stay in place for once, why not?<br />
Find the right clearing, the right place, and sink into it,<br />
into him, into the arm around your waist and<br />
the gentle hand in yours. The smell of pine lingers<br />
on his jacket, a solid line of warmth against your back.<br />
27
FADING INTO THE<br />
WATERCOLOR<br />
Courtney Armstrong<br />
Fiction<br />
A small square of paper floated<br />
in his eye, what looked like a miniature<br />
postage stamp hovering in the white void<br />
of sclera where nothing is ever supposed<br />
to be. LSD. He put it there to get a better,<br />
faster high, he said. As if ingesting the<br />
hallucinogenic drug were not enough, the<br />
course of travel from mouth to stomach<br />
too far, too diluted. He feared he couldn’t<br />
escape the pain soon enough. The fear.<br />
Of someday being just like his mother.<br />
Or worse, his father. He always asked<br />
me, which was less forgivable — to be<br />
beaten by someone crazy or by someone<br />
perfectly sane?<br />
***<br />
I remember the first time I saw<br />
him. We were in the fourth grade, I was<br />
nine. Benjamin was tall for his age, a<br />
bundle of twigs always wrapped much<br />
too tightly in a twine of dirty clothes that<br />
were much too small, mismatched socks,<br />
toes poking out the front of his shoes.<br />
Everyone knew that his family didn’t have<br />
money. Not because his father worked<br />
at the mines in San Manuel. Not because<br />
there were eight children. But because<br />
poverty sometimes oozes out of a person’s<br />
essence like the milk in a sickly eye, thick,<br />
oily, so horrible that you can’t not see it, so<br />
mesmerizing that you can’t look away. I<br />
knew this because it was the same thing I<br />
saw in every mirror I’d ever looked into.<br />
But on this day, Benjamin was not in<br />
clothes, but rather, naked, all except for a<br />
diaper. An infant-sized, disposable diaper<br />
whose adhesive tabs had failed to meet<br />
at the sides, where crude duct tape had<br />
been torn off into lashings of long strips<br />
and placed on top as if it were a logical<br />
solution. He sat on a buff of sunburnt,<br />
umber grass where it met the curb of the<br />
street, his pink skin beetling over the top<br />
of the plastic waistband, not fat, but rolls<br />
of pure flesh that had nowhere else to go.<br />
A handwritten sign was attached to his<br />
chest, again fastened with that horrible<br />
grey of tape. Upon it, there were four little<br />
words scrawled roughly in red ink.<br />
I AM A BABY.<br />
It was how Benjamin’s father chose<br />
to discipline him for wetting the bed.<br />
Beneath the damp down of his<br />
straw-colored lashes, the little no-see-ems<br />
swirling at the corner of his mouth, the<br />
sweat pulling at his platinum curls, I saw<br />
something I had never seen before. It<br />
was something so foreign that I couldn’t<br />
28
Cynthia Drumond<br />
It is Me<br />
Painting, Watercolor<br />
29
even call it by name. Something that the<br />
mothers in the neighborhood whispered<br />
about at the bus stop. What the fathers<br />
watched from the corner of their eyes<br />
while mowing the lawns. Nobody looked<br />
at it straight on. No one addressed it. And<br />
I didn’t even know it was a thing. Child<br />
abuse.<br />
I lived across the street from<br />
Benjamin, and I watched, hiding myself<br />
behind the vinyl vertical blinds of my<br />
empty living room. I always felt like the<br />
outcast at school, living in a subsidized<br />
apartment, my mother long-gone, my<br />
father never home. I prayed often that I<br />
was adopted, that my real parents would<br />
show up and rescue me. From my life. But<br />
looking at Benjamin, the ratcheting grip of<br />
the diaper that squeezed and licked his<br />
purple limbs, the shame that flogged his<br />
posture, I knew that what I had was a life<br />
of absolute privilege.<br />
The titian sun set, its russet blood<br />
spread along the splash of the Arizona sky<br />
where it met the horizon, what seemed<br />
like the edge of the world, that long streak<br />
of sapphire ink where I thought everything<br />
stopped, like the outline of a boundary on<br />
a map. I wanted to run to it and jump off,<br />
to be covered in the watercolor, to drift<br />
into the stipple of a calm that I thought<br />
could only be brought by oblivion. I<br />
looked out the glass and knew that if<br />
anyone could relate, it was Benjamin.<br />
***<br />
The next year, he showed up to<br />
school wearing a dress. This time, it was<br />
a punishment from his mother. For what,<br />
I still don’t know. I was eating my lunch<br />
in the bathroom, alone, hiding from the<br />
30<br />
other kids when I snuck out to drink from<br />
the water fountain. I heard a sound from<br />
the boys’ room.<br />
I looked over and saw Benjamin<br />
hiding behind the half-open door, the<br />
weight of its industrial size heavier than<br />
he could handle. The door slipped every<br />
second or two, whispering peesh, peesh,<br />
as the rubber strip at its base swept the<br />
ground, and I pictured his undernourished<br />
arms on the other side struggling to keep<br />
himself hidden.<br />
“Jenny, right?”<br />
I nodded.<br />
He opened the door a bit wider<br />
and waved for me to go inside. I looked<br />
behind me to the empty corridor. I had
31<br />
Ashley Carmichael<br />
Spring Flowers<br />
Painting, Watercolor and Ink 12”x18”<br />
never been inside a boys’ bathroom.<br />
I tried not to laugh when I saw<br />
those funny little urinals. I had only seen<br />
them in the movies before. Benjamin<br />
locked the deadbolt behind me and that<br />
was when I turned around and saw him in<br />
the dress. A frilly, pink, baby doll dress, the<br />
bodice too narrow to contain the expanse<br />
of his torso, pearls of buttons unable to<br />
join, his chest exposed in an upside-down<br />
triangle of flush skin. He didn’t look me in<br />
the eye.<br />
“Can we swap clothes?” he asked<br />
the floor.<br />
I looked down at my corduroys<br />
and t-shirt. The pants would be too short<br />
for him, but Benjamin had worn far worsefitting<br />
clothes before. He finally looked me<br />
in the eye. I saw in them that unnamed<br />
rawness, desperation, torturous grief that<br />
stained him. I knew I had no choice but to<br />
wear his clothes and let him wear mine. It<br />
was as if I were lending him my own skin,<br />
even if only for just a few hours.<br />
***<br />
In return, it was as if Benjamin gave<br />
me everything of himself. And with his<br />
friendship came a perennial light. The<br />
white lips of the school’s walls were no<br />
longer the only things to speak to me,<br />
being ignored no longer my only solace.<br />
For, when one is different from the pack,<br />
singularity is torture — on my own, I was<br />
vulnerable. But with Benjamin as an ally,<br />
we became not just two misfits, but a<br />
possible threat. Never again was I the<br />
target in dodgeball. People stopped<br />
tripping me in the hallways. I wasn’t worth<br />
the effort, and that I could handle. I was<br />
used to that at home.<br />
We met at the abandoned<br />
treehouse every chance we got. I had<br />
more chances than he, and often sat<br />
waiting in the silence of the wood, alone.<br />
I loved the sound of the wind whipping<br />
past its shell, the whispers of breath that<br />
snuck through the mismatched slats far<br />
better than the dead air that lingered<br />
between me and other people, that<br />
starched, stagnant void when I was with<br />
my father, one that told me, shouted to<br />
me, that I was meaningless.<br />
Benjamin brought us a broken<br />
broom one day, the handle splintered, but<br />
the flax of the straw still mostly together.<br />
He told me that his father broke it against<br />
his back. Because he had left a wet towel
Ashley Carmichael<br />
The Quiet Observer<br />
Painting, Watercolor and Ink 18”x24”<br />
32
on the floor.<br />
We swept at the dirt leading up to<br />
the treehouse. We lined a pathway with<br />
river rock and ate kumquats, spongey skin<br />
and all. It was a paradise of imagination.<br />
Of freedom. But at the end of every day,<br />
the sun draped down into folds, while stiff<br />
cuffs of darkness called for Benjamin to<br />
go home. Each time he walked off into<br />
the black expanse of night, I feared it was<br />
the last time I would see him. I knew it<br />
would be the last I would see of him, as is,<br />
for each time he returned, so did a new<br />
set of bruises and wales, puffy scratches,<br />
cigarette burns, a gimping arm, a limping<br />
leg, bandages hanging onto screaming<br />
skin. I don’t think that one single part of<br />
Benjamin’s body had escaped some sort<br />
of pain. Injustice. And his mind certainly<br />
hadn’t escaped, either.<br />
***<br />
It was a year or more before<br />
Benjamin told me about his mother. The<br />
woman who birthed him was, at times,<br />
someone younger than he. At other<br />
times, someone of a different gender.<br />
Someone who got into trouble with him.<br />
Someone who punished him. He called<br />
it “multiple personality disorder.” I didn’t<br />
understand it. When he talked about<br />
her, it was as if she were a child, innocent<br />
and ineffectual as a colorless sash that lay<br />
slack on the floor. But the stories he told<br />
gave horrible life to that piece of fabric,<br />
turning it into a belt, a noose, a sword,<br />
something capable of slaughtering much<br />
more than just one’s spirit.<br />
“And she has a new game,” he told<br />
me.<br />
“Oh.” I knew his mother had a few<br />
personalities that were close to his age.<br />
But I had a feeling this wasn’t a good<br />
game. “What kind?”<br />
“She makes me sit in a chair. She<br />
lights matches and flicks them at me. If I<br />
don’t flinch, I win.”<br />
“What happens if you lose, Benji?”<br />
“I always lose.”<br />
***<br />
Out of the eight children, Benjamin<br />
was the second-oldest, his older sister<br />
institutionalized before he was out of<br />
diapers. From that day, he was at the<br />
top of the line, silently entrusted with the<br />
role of scapegoat. For some reason, as<br />
long as Benjamin took the abuse, the<br />
others were spared. With it came an<br />
entire identity. Benjamin was a literal,<br />
human shield for the younger siblings. His<br />
pain was their salvation. And as he grew<br />
into a teenager, the spankings turned to<br />
punches, the paddling to pummeling. But<br />
as long as the younger ones were safe, he<br />
told himself he could take it.<br />
I only heard Benjamin refer to<br />
his mother by name. Not Mom. Never<br />
Mother. Only Velma. The same went for<br />
his father. Not Dad. Never Father. Only<br />
Jerry. But the words for his father were<br />
tattooed with a venom, a guttural sound<br />
that I originally thought was fear. But I<br />
learned it was a visceral, primal hatred.<br />
Because what his mother did to him,<br />
Benjamin almost denied, defended. What<br />
his father did, an otherwise normal, sane<br />
man, were things that Benjamin could<br />
never understand, horrors that he certainly<br />
could never forgive.<br />
***<br />
I can’t remember when the<br />
33
McAllisters moved onto the block. A nice,<br />
unsuspecting couple with a baby. They<br />
hadn’t heard the gossip about what went<br />
on inside Benjamin’s house. And when the<br />
cherubic, blonde woman at the grocery<br />
store offered to babysit their sweet little<br />
Finn, they thanked the heavens for<br />
sending them an angel.<br />
That angel was Benjamin’s<br />
mother.<br />
***<br />
I spent more and more time at<br />
the treehouse by myself, my teenage<br />
body developing among the raw<br />
bark, often sleeping nights there rather<br />
than be strapped by the loneliness of<br />
my own home. Benjamin showed up<br />
sometimes, late after I’d fallen asleep,<br />
smelling like Boone’s Farm and Newport<br />
cigarettes. Then the other drugs crept<br />
in, pleating a haze over his eyes, a film<br />
over his existence. Jittery paranoia from<br />
cocaine. Swinging from the boughs of<br />
the treehouse after taking multiple hits of<br />
acid. Fits of rage followed by fists of tears<br />
when he was sober. It was as if he could<br />
no longer just be.<br />
***<br />
A baby bird tapped at the<br />
window while I slept. A Gambel’s quail,<br />
a Mourning dove, perhaps a Common<br />
starling. Whatever it was, it drummed the<br />
glass in feathery beats to the rhythm of<br />
“Little pig, little pig, let me in.”<br />
I woke and saw not a trio of birds,<br />
but Benjamin, on the outside of the<br />
encasement, his eyes wet with sleep,<br />
crescents of tears at the corners of his eyes<br />
like hands folded in prayer. It couldn’t<br />
have been any later than six am, the sun’s<br />
shadow a half-cocked rifle leaning in the<br />
corner of the yard.<br />
I crept past my father’s bedroom<br />
and saw the empty bed. The plate of<br />
dinner I’d made him on the kitchen<br />
counter, uneaten. I went to the front door<br />
and called Benjamin inside. He didn’t<br />
come. I called again. I went outside and<br />
turned the corner. Benjamin was covered<br />
in blood.<br />
I rushed to him and as I got just<br />
before him, he fell to the ground. I put my<br />
arms under his and got him to his feet. He<br />
yelled in pain as I touched his arm.<br />
“He broke it.”<br />
“Who broke it, Benji? Your dad?”<br />
“He was wearing steel-toed boots.”<br />
His right forearm was already swollen,<br />
discolored and bent, an arrowhead<br />
without a shaft. He tried to hold it with his<br />
left hand, to keep it stable, like someone<br />
trying to keep from spilling the contents of<br />
a cup, from trying not to make a mess.<br />
We walked inside. I had never let<br />
him in there before. He looked around,<br />
at the Playboy centerfolds scotch-taped<br />
to the walls, the cracked, plastic patio<br />
chairs that bit and smacked my bottom<br />
every time I thought I was about to get<br />
comfortable. The dirt everywhere.<br />
I hurried him into my room. It<br />
was where I pretended that things were<br />
normal. Where I dreamt of another world.<br />
One pink silk scarf, the only thing I had of<br />
my mother’s, of my mother, hung over the<br />
top of the lamp sitting on a cardboard<br />
box, my baby blanket folded neatly on<br />
the floor where I slept.<br />
“He told me I’m a liar,” Benjamin<br />
said.<br />
34
“Your father? About what?”<br />
“He said she didn’t do it.”<br />
“Do what? Where did all of the<br />
blood come from, Benji?”<br />
“I don’t know.”<br />
“Benji, you have to know.” I lifted<br />
his shirt to look for the source of blood.<br />
There were so many wounds, slices and<br />
scars, thick, pink, angry lines betraying the<br />
secrets of Benjamin’s life. But there was<br />
nothing new. Fear paddled my insides.<br />
“Benji, did you hurt someone?”<br />
“No, but she did.”<br />
“Who, Benji? Your mom?”<br />
“Velma. She killed the baby.”<br />
I didn’t understand. I knew his<br />
youngest sister was five. There were no<br />
babies left.<br />
“What baby?”<br />
“Baby Finn. He kept crying and<br />
crying. So she put him in the hamper to<br />
make him stop. Or so that she didn’t have<br />
to hear him anymore.”<br />
I took a breath. But there was not<br />
a drop of air left in all the world to draw<br />
from.<br />
***<br />
Benjamin always asked me, which<br />
was less forgivable — to be beaten by<br />
someone crazy or by someone perfectly<br />
sane?<br />
I could never comprehend that.<br />
How was either forgivable? How was<br />
one better? But to Benjamin, it was a<br />
rhetorical question. He had already<br />
charged, sentenced and convicted<br />
the guilty — his father. No matter what<br />
Benjamin’s mother did to him, she was not<br />
responsible. His father, on the other hand,<br />
was a monster with a brain and a will, able<br />
to spoon out punishments far worse than<br />
anything physical — incessant, calculated<br />
beatings that butchered Benjamin’s<br />
being.<br />
His mother had charged,<br />
sentenced and convicted herself. After<br />
realizing what she had done to baby<br />
Finn that day, she locked herself in the<br />
bathroom. Benjamin broke in the door,<br />
only to find his mother lifeless, lying in a<br />
demise of razors to wrists.<br />
***<br />
I see him on the streets at times,<br />
a resident to the concrete and abyss,<br />
homeless and incoherent, often talking<br />
to the silhouette of himself, an erasure of<br />
existence that everyone else walks right<br />
by. For all the years Benjamin endured<br />
horrid, severe scrutiny and attention as a<br />
child, he was paid back with invisibility in<br />
adulthood.<br />
“Hi Benji,” I stop him and try to<br />
remind him who I am, of our friendship,<br />
but his eyes are always void of any<br />
recognition of me. Of us. Of him.<br />
“You have to do the laundry,” he<br />
says to me the first time I see him. He<br />
says it again, the second time, the third. I<br />
wonder if maybe he does recognize me.<br />
If I remind him of that day we switched<br />
clothes. Or the day he told me of baby<br />
Finn.<br />
I give him some money and offer a<br />
hug. He always accepts the former, never<br />
the latter. I wave good-bye and turn<br />
away from my friend, that young boy who<br />
had no fault in life except to be born, who<br />
suffered far too much, whose then only<br />
choice was to fade into the watercolor of<br />
oblivion.<br />
35
A LOVE LETTER FROM THE<br />
OLIVE TREE TO THE SEA<br />
Sierra Vigil<br />
We live literally a world apart.<br />
My roots will never touch your salty lips,<br />
for if they should<br />
I would shrivel up and surely die.<br />
This fact makes it all the more romantic to me<br />
so, I<br />
turn to face the wind<br />
and<br />
sigh.<br />
The wind,<br />
she tickles me sweet, loves me tender,<br />
leaves me breathless all the while,<br />
but she is not you, that much is true.<br />
My dear<br />
Though, she can make me smile.<br />
Me and the wind<br />
we have been made<br />
for each other since<br />
The beginning<br />
of<br />
time.<br />
36
She caresses my branches<br />
and scatters my blooms<br />
dries my wet tears<br />
all my forms she assumes<br />
too.<br />
But even on the breeziest of days<br />
I swear i can see your face<br />
and still daydream of your playful waves.<br />
Because how I do yearn<br />
for your waves to turn<br />
and find their way to me.<br />
For I stand alone<br />
on this hill I call my home<br />
admiring you from out of my reach.<br />
While you roam free<br />
in Your wild beauty<br />
the loneliest olive tree and his perfect fantasy<br />
called the sea.<br />
37
I CLOSED MY EYES<br />
Courtney Armstrong<br />
Fiction<br />
I stood<br />
at the side of my mother’s bed while she slept<br />
not only staring at her naked body<br />
but at the man who lay on top of her<br />
I imagined how incredibly uncomfortable this must have been for her<br />
squeezed flat against the sheet under the weight of the man’s bovine white skin<br />
her face hidden somewhere underneath the furrows of his neck<br />
I wondered how she could possibly breathe<br />
I wondered who the man was<br />
I stood<br />
within the breath of her bedroom<br />
like a mere patron in a gallery<br />
the backdrop of her art painted on the large wall behind me<br />
only she would color a rainbow with neutrals<br />
splendor reduced to mushroom and taupe<br />
its curves undulated<br />
sighs and whimpers and spankings<br />
I waited<br />
for someone to wake<br />
I waited<br />
for someone to see me<br />
I watched<br />
38
Rebecca Farris<br />
Inner Feelings<br />
Digital Media<br />
39
the heaving of the sleeping man’s torso as he breathed<br />
something more like a cough a sputter a struggle<br />
anxiety tapped my shoulder<br />
each time he exhaled<br />
his weight crushed my mother<br />
I could swear I heard the splintering of a bone<br />
I gripped<br />
the paw of the stuffed bunny I was holding<br />
and rubbed my forefinger among the velvet puffs of pad<br />
I stood<br />
I waited<br />
I watched<br />
a bit of the cotton sheet<br />
was crammed in the cleft of the man’s ass<br />
I had to think that my mother was as disgusted by him as I was<br />
I hoped that her lying underneath him<br />
silent<br />
was not in pleasure but in contempt<br />
I feared it was because she had no other option<br />
the smell of alcohol cocked hard in the air<br />
an overlapping of dried sweat and heat<br />
buckling beneath its weight<br />
his weight<br />
salt<br />
bitter onions<br />
mildew<br />
I tried to squeeze shut my nostrils with just the sheer force of my mind<br />
I tried to shut my eyes<br />
I tried I tried I tried<br />
40
Shelby Quiroz<br />
And... Doubt<br />
Blue Rollerball Pen on Paper 9”x12”<br />
41
***<br />
After the divorce, my mother and<br />
I moved into an apartment. I had my<br />
very own room at the top of the stairs.<br />
My place. It even had a lock on the<br />
door. Inside my room was an over-sized<br />
closet. That had a lock on the door. It<br />
was large enough for my small table and<br />
chairs. Each seat held one of my friends.<br />
The kitten with paws of satin. The puppy<br />
with paws of velour. And of course, the<br />
rabbit with paws of velvet. Which left<br />
one free chair, the only place I was ever<br />
guaranteed to have a seat saved for<br />
me.<br />
“Tennyson,” my mother called from<br />
downstairs. I barely heard it, the walls of<br />
my closet a protector, the words only able<br />
to travel up through the air conditioning<br />
vents.<br />
I put down the book I was reading<br />
and got up from the table.<br />
“Tennyson! Come down here<br />
now!”<br />
I unlocked the closet door.<br />
Unlocked the bedroom door.<br />
At the top of the stairs, I turned<br />
backwards, got on my stomach and slid,<br />
feet first, the rubbing of carpet on my<br />
belly, fuzzy, filtered friction over the entire<br />
front of my body. Pain. That felt so very<br />
good.<br />
“Yes, mother?” I went into her<br />
bedroom. It was empty.<br />
“Come in here. Now.” She was<br />
in the adjoining bathroom. I turned,<br />
walked over to the archway and stopped.<br />
Quickly. Directly inside the door was a<br />
small space with the toilet straight ahead.<br />
My mother was bent over the bowl, her<br />
backside facing me, scrubbing furiously.<br />
She wore only a top, one not nearly long<br />
enough to cover the unclothed bottom<br />
half of her body. I turned and left the<br />
bathroom so that I was standing outside<br />
the door.<br />
“What is it, mother?”<br />
I stood.<br />
“Get in here.”<br />
I waited.<br />
I did not want to go back in there.<br />
I wondered why she couldn’t talk to me<br />
from inside. Or put some clothes on. Or<br />
not be bent over.<br />
I took two steps to the edge of the<br />
doorframe and hovered just outside. I<br />
peeked in to see if she had changed<br />
position, but still, she hunched over,<br />
legs spread wide apart, scrubbing and<br />
scrubbing and scrubbing. I stepped back<br />
outside and cleared my throat, throwing<br />
its sound in her direction, hoping that she<br />
thought I was inside the room with her.<br />
“Get in here.”<br />
I went in.<br />
I closed my eyes.<br />
I stood.<br />
I waited.<br />
“Did you clean your room?” she<br />
asked, her voice bounding from the<br />
depths of the porcelain.<br />
“Yes, mom.”<br />
“Yes, mother,” she corrected me.<br />
“Yes, mother.”<br />
“Did you clean your bathroom?”<br />
“Yes, mother.”<br />
“Did you eat?”<br />
“Yes, mother.”<br />
“Do your dishes?”<br />
“Yes, mother?”<br />
42
“Were you reading, again?”<br />
I paused. I wanted to lie.<br />
“Yes, mother.”<br />
“Oh, come on, Tennyson. Go<br />
outside. It’s too nice of a day to have<br />
your nose in a book.”<br />
“But I don’t know anyone here,<br />
yet.”<br />
“I don’t know anyone here, yet,<br />
mother.”<br />
“Yes, mother.”<br />
“Go knock on doors and try to find<br />
a friend. Now.”<br />
I was six years old.<br />
“Yes, mother.”<br />
The apartment complex was<br />
vast, an exhaustive expanse of somber<br />
sidewalks and mansard roofs. I held my<br />
breath every time I raised my fist to a<br />
door. Doors and doors and doors. Never<br />
knowing what was behind them. Who<br />
was behind them.<br />
“Do you have any children my age<br />
I can play with?” I asked.<br />
A few of the adults looked stunned.<br />
Most were annoyed, waving me off with<br />
the back of a hand. I was hot, tired, and<br />
still alone, so very lonely. I decided to try<br />
one last apartment.<br />
A girl my age opened the door<br />
and I held my breath. Her beauty was<br />
peculiar. Exotic, I thought they called<br />
it. Her hair was black tinsel, a decorative<br />
frame of pixie around the whitest skin,<br />
pure as puffs of fresh cotton. Her eyes<br />
were not simply oval-shaped, but rather<br />
crescents of eggs that had been flattened<br />
by the ballast of her creamy lids and thick<br />
black lashes.<br />
I had seen her before at school,<br />
sitting on the edge of the playground,<br />
alone, separated by not only pillows of<br />
air but a palpable line of demarcation<br />
— she was a foreigner. Her inability to<br />
speak English was apparent not only in her<br />
speech, but in her body language. The<br />
way she looked at the ground. The way<br />
she wore shiny patent leather shoes and<br />
dresses when the rest of us wore Izods and<br />
deck shoes. Looking back, I see the irony,<br />
walking around in leather and rubber,<br />
as if in protection. But not her. She<br />
didn’t know the dangers of living in this<br />
neighborhood. In my world.<br />
We sat on the floor of her bedroom,<br />
both of us flush with the excitement of our<br />
new friendship.<br />
“Kyoto,” she said as she pointed to<br />
her chest.<br />
“Kyoto,” I repeated.<br />
She shook her head.<br />
She said her name again, but I<br />
didn’t notice any difference from the way<br />
I said it.<br />
I tried again and this time when<br />
she shook her head, she smiled. Her teeth<br />
were so very white, the pink rose of her lips<br />
blossomed as she stressed the area of her<br />
name that I mispronounced.<br />
“Kyoto.”<br />
I got it. The k and y were said<br />
as if they were one, their own special<br />
consonant, not a blend of two.<br />
She walked over to her dresser<br />
and grabbed a small, pink book with a<br />
colorful cat on the front. Hello Kitty. The<br />
Japanese character that was so popular<br />
in the late 70s. The doll I had asked Santa<br />
for Christmas. The character in the book<br />
I’d asked for my birthday. The feline on<br />
43
Avery Goldberg<br />
Coming up Pink Poppies<br />
Digital Painting<br />
the lunchbox I’d asked for the new school year.<br />
The gifts I’d never received.<br />
Kyoto brought the book to me on the<br />
floor, and we read through it together. I was<br />
mesmerized. The thick pages were cool and<br />
slippery, and I rushed to touch them. My fingers<br />
brushed Kyoto’s several times in my haste, until<br />
she finally let me do all of the turning.<br />
A woman’s voice called from another<br />
room. Kyoto left and I sat there with the book,<br />
the weight of its pages pressed down on my lap.<br />
I stroked the cherry red of the cat’s bow. I had<br />
an urge like I’d never had before.<br />
I wanted this book.<br />
I needed it.<br />
I pulled up my shirt and tucked the book<br />
into the waistband of my shorts.<br />
***<br />
44
It was a house of contradictions<br />
plaques and degrees<br />
rows of shiny metal squares that housed yellowed paper<br />
Harvard Stanford<br />
and an empty garage whose cars had been repossessed<br />
a bartop<br />
made from discarded bottle caps<br />
remnants of the hours upon hours upon hours of drinking<br />
lined up like dots of candy glazed in a sheen of glue<br />
an over-sized dictionary on a large wooden stand<br />
pages filled with red checkmarks<br />
from the times my father forced me<br />
to look up a word I mispronounced<br />
where I stood and pretended to lecture<br />
where I stood and pretended people listened<br />
supple leather<br />
lamps with tassels<br />
and in the bathroom cartoons copied from the Sunday funnies<br />
drawn in stiff sticky black acrylic<br />
entire comic strips that looked down at you while you sat on the toilet<br />
people<br />
whose names I didn’t know<br />
people<br />
who were there for days or weeks or months<br />
or only hours<br />
and then nothing<br />
I shuffled down the hallways bunny in hand<br />
nothing more than decoration<br />
like the paint on the wall<br />
a guest<br />
a visitor<br />
nothing<br />
nothing made sense<br />
and yet it was all I knew<br />
come here little thing he said to me<br />
it was the naked man with the sheet stuck in his ass<br />
45
I’d been told<br />
he was now my father<br />
I sat right next to him<br />
I didn’t know how much closer I could possibly be<br />
he patted<br />
his leg the meaty thigh that peeked out from his corduroy shorts<br />
I didn’t like the way the material felt against my bare leg<br />
his skin<br />
nubs and sand and spiny hair<br />
he tried to smile<br />
it was always an effort just that<br />
it was no smile I had ever seen before<br />
one I would never forget<br />
his handlebar mustache wrinkled and waved<br />
fingering me to come<br />
closer<br />
he smelled<br />
say hello to Mr. Bill he said<br />
Bill was his name<br />
and its name<br />
oh nooooo it’s Mr. Bill he said<br />
he drawled and dragged the vowel<br />
elongated it<br />
his eyes widened<br />
and his mouth formed an open hole<br />
he thought he was being funny<br />
I laughed the first time I saw the Mr. Bill skit on Saturday Night Live<br />
and now this man sitting beside me<br />
the man living inside my house and my life and my mind and my mother<br />
thought it was a way for us to bond<br />
Mr. Bill<br />
the clay figurine manipulated by a hand<br />
tortured<br />
the malleable creature that had bad things happen to it<br />
over and over and over and<br />
over<br />
***<br />
46
Another divorce. Something called an annulment. Another move. Another<br />
apartment. Back to the same complex as before, though, and even closer to Kyoto this<br />
time.<br />
Not all of our furniture had arrived yet and I lay on just a mattress with my mother,<br />
the full morning sun flashing across my closed eyes, urging me to wake for the day. That<br />
and the sound of humming from my mother’s vibrator.<br />
I closed my eyes, hoping to fall back asleep. I shifted my weight, to alert her. To<br />
stop her.<br />
I pressed my ear into the bed. To mute the buzzing. To block the thoughts. The<br />
pillows hadn’t even arrived, yet. But the vibrator had.<br />
I lay.<br />
I waited.<br />
I fondled the pages of the Hello Kitty book inside my pajama pocket. I carried it<br />
with me no matter where I went, the cover no longer pristine, its pages bent and mounted<br />
by dirt. I dreamt of living between the pages, erect in its world, any world other than my<br />
own. The sharp edges of paper tickled my fingertips as I flicked them into rhythm, a silent<br />
feathering of the pages that went Prrrup, Prrrup, against my skin.<br />
Finally, silence. Finally, I was dismissed.<br />
I walked to Kyoto’s. I was eager to be in the warmth of her home. The kitchen that<br />
always bubbled with pots of food. Faces that were always happy to see me. No words<br />
were ever exchanged, just many nods and smiles. But it was acceptance, the only kind I<br />
had.<br />
I pulled my fist up and knocked on the door. A man opened it. I had never seen<br />
him before.<br />
“Kyoto?” I asked.<br />
He looked down at me and nodded, caressing his hand along the air between us,<br />
coaxing me in. The look in his eyes scared me. I wanted to turn and leave. Immediately.<br />
But I needed to see Kyoto. When I was with her, I could pretend I was like her. Happy.<br />
Simple. Normal. I thrust my hand into my pocket to touch the cover of the book.<br />
Kyoto came from around the corner.<br />
Today she didn’t look happy. It seemed like I had interrupted something. Like she<br />
didn’t want me there.<br />
Today she wasn’t simple. She was wearing lipstick, the color of fire and candied<br />
apples, shocking against the innocence of her snow white skin.<br />
Today nothing about her was normal. She was wearing very short shorts. A lace<br />
halter top that showed the white of her stomach.<br />
She kept pulling at the hem of the short shorts. But they didn’t move.<br />
47
She motioned me inside and nodded her head at the man.<br />
“Father,” she explained to me in stilted English. I had only met her mother all the<br />
times I’d been there before.<br />
He grunted at me, and through the parting of his lips, I smelled a foulness.<br />
She grabbed me by the hand and walked me back to her bedroom. I tried not to<br />
look back over my shoulder at him. I tried. I tried. I tried.<br />
The warmth of her room was what I had missed. She closed the door behind us.<br />
I stood.<br />
I looked at the door knob, wishing for a lock.<br />
I wanted a lock.<br />
I needed a lock.<br />
I waited.<br />
The doorknob began to turn.<br />
Her father came into the room.<br />
he looked at Kyoto<br />
I noticed the lipstick on her teeth<br />
the strap of her top falling down her shoulder<br />
he looked at me<br />
he smiled<br />
I knew that smile<br />
it was one I had seen before<br />
one I would never forget<br />
I stood<br />
I waited<br />
I closed my eyes<br />
over and over and over and<br />
over<br />
again<br />
48
Nathan Coffey<br />
Huddle<br />
Photograph<br />
49
A LOVE LETTER FROM THE SEA<br />
TO THE OLIVE TREE<br />
Sierra Vigil<br />
I am the salty sea<br />
rough and tempest too,<br />
and you are an olive tree<br />
in strong arms you hold the baby doves’ coo.<br />
I’ll lap and I’ll rap at the soft earth that cradles your roots<br />
my gentle knock<br />
a friendly knock<br />
a lover’s game of pursuit,<br />
and you will wave your branches in the same breath,<br />
I’ll see their shadow on the horizon<br />
when the ball falls and the sky turns red.<br />
I can feel your being<br />
though we are apart;<br />
but it’s not something that needs to be seenthe<br />
gentle waves inside our hearts.<br />
So here we are<br />
counting stars<br />
among other pointless things<br />
and I love just being with you -<br />
thank God we’re in the same galaxy.<br />
50
Kimberly Calles<br />
Metamorphosis<br />
Drawing, Pen and Pencil 14”x17”<br />
51
Luisa Espinoza<br />
Las Dos Fernandas<br />
Painting, Acrylic on Bristol 11”x14”<br />
52
MEXICAN AMERICAN<br />
WITHOUT THE<br />
AMERICAN<br />
Nadia Celaya-Alcala<br />
Non-fiction<br />
Spanish was my first language. Coming<br />
from two Mexican immigrant parents, it<br />
was all I knew. It was all I needed to know. I<br />
spoke Spanish because I am Mexican and<br />
I loved it because I felt connected to my<br />
parents and culture. However, that love<br />
for being Mexican turned into a confusion<br />
of who I am and who I was supposed to<br />
be, being Mexican, but being born in the<br />
United States.<br />
I began speaking English when I was<br />
around 4 years old. I began preschool and<br />
I had to learn or drown. Like many children<br />
learning a new language, it came easily.<br />
Soon, it became all I spoke. Spanish faded<br />
into the background of my mother’s orders<br />
and my father’s conversations with my<br />
Nana and Tata, who were also Mexican<br />
immigrants.<br />
Like the fading of my mother<br />
tongue, my heritage began to fade into<br />
the background at school, and school<br />
being where I spent most of my time, it<br />
affected me. One day, I was celebrating<br />
the 4th of July and the next Dia de La<br />
Independencia de Mexico. My culture<br />
felt like it was on the back burner, but I<br />
felt it had to be okay. I lived in the U.S. I<br />
knew I was Mexican. I could love Mexico<br />
and be grateful to live in this amazing<br />
country. However, in the coming years I<br />
would soon learn this “amazing” country<br />
was against me for something I could not<br />
control.<br />
Though I embraced the American<br />
life, it was never enough. My brown hair,<br />
skin, and eyes set me apart from those<br />
in my predominantly white school. I was<br />
ridiculed from a young age for having<br />
full eyebrows and hair on my arm. I soon<br />
began to realize that this country was not<br />
as amazing as I thought it was. I did not<br />
feel welcome.<br />
My first eye-opening experience with<br />
racism was when I was merely 9 years old,<br />
while shopping at ROSS in the perfume<br />
section. The cart was in the aisle of sorts<br />
and my mom was bent over looking at<br />
the perfume selections. She was speaking<br />
to my sisters and me in Spanish. My sister<br />
and I heard a woman rudely say, “Excuse<br />
me.” As she continued to repeat herself<br />
more loudly and aggressively each time,<br />
my sister and I got my mother’s attention,<br />
as it was loud in the store and my mother<br />
could not hear the woman. As we<br />
signaled to my mother, the woman lets<br />
53
out one more, “EXCUSE ME!” in a rude<br />
condescending voice. My family and<br />
I moved out of her way looking at her<br />
like the crazy woman she was. She and<br />
her blonde, white children finally passed<br />
by us. As these movements occurred,<br />
we hear this woman yell one last phrase<br />
directed at my mother, “Ugh, wetback!”<br />
as her children, specifically the oldest one<br />
appearing about 14 years of age, began<br />
laughing and pointing at my family and<br />
me. We were shocked because though<br />
we were young children, we knew the<br />
gravity and intentions behind that word.<br />
My mother raised her voice at her telling<br />
her to shut her uneducated mouth up.<br />
I felt lost on how a person could be so<br />
cruel.<br />
As I grew older, I realized more and<br />
more that the U.S. was not the country I<br />
had presumed it to be. It was full of hate,<br />
racism, and bigotry against my people<br />
and me. I did not want to be a part of<br />
that society. Though throughout my<br />
whole life I hated being called Mexican<br />
American as opposed to Mexican, after<br />
these experiences of racism, I began to<br />
emphasize this hatred to be classified as<br />
“American” even more. I was not and<br />
did not want to be an American. I did not<br />
want to be a part of a country that did<br />
not even want me.<br />
I realized where I belonged. I began<br />
to love my culture more than ever<br />
54
efore. I felt home speaking Spanish and<br />
surrounded by those who understood me.<br />
I did not enjoy the celebration of America<br />
like I once did. I appreciated my parents’<br />
sacrifices for me to live in a country with<br />
more opportunities, but that was the<br />
extent of my love for America. How could I<br />
love a country that hated me?<br />
As a child, I jumped from school<br />
to school, most being private schools<br />
populated by white wealthy families. The<br />
experiences at these schools made it that<br />
much more special when I found where<br />
I felt I belonged, being able to compare<br />
this feeling of community to the opposite<br />
feeling I had felt throughout my time in<br />
private school.<br />
In October of 6th grade, I moved to<br />
the first public school I had ever attended,<br />
Rivera Elementary School. It was filled with<br />
Mexican Spanish speaking people. It felt<br />
loving, nurturing, and it felt like family. Here<br />
was when I felt most utterly and uniquely…<br />
ME.<br />
Though the journey of appreciation<br />
and acceptance of myself and my culture<br />
has been filled with difficult experiences,<br />
I could not be prouder of my culture. I<br />
learned that being born in the U.S. did not<br />
have make me American, nor did I have<br />
to fit into society’s idea of how Mexican I<br />
could really be if I was not born there. My<br />
family is Mexican, my culture is Mexican,<br />
and so am I!<br />
Ashley Carmichael<br />
Desert Blooms<br />
Painting, Watercolor and Ink 18”x24”<br />
55
Jennifer Prybylla<br />
Time<br />
Painting, Oil on Canvas 16”x 20”<br />
56
WHO’S COUNTING?<br />
Alexa Lewis<br />
Statistics show one in three women will have become victims of sexual violence at some<br />
point in their lifetime.<br />
I think of how unlucky I must be to have been sexually victimized three separate times<br />
before the age of twenty-one.<br />
I think about how unfortunate it is to have a friend group of six<br />
And out of us six,<br />
four of us were victims of sexual assault/abuse before we were even eighteen years old.<br />
I was only thirteen the first time,<br />
And nineteen the second time.<br />
Twenty the third time,<br />
And how scary to think that I cannot guarantee it will be the last time.<br />
The numbers just don’t add up,<br />
And it’s only visible if you’re counting.<br />
57
27<br />
Arial Autumn<br />
Twice before and now again<br />
we find ourselves at beginning’s end.<br />
Wars are lost as we have grown,<br />
and humanity is unwittingly dethroned.<br />
Wolves and vampires wait in darkness,<br />
in realms unknown and deepest slumber.<br />
The worlds gone quiet and now we awake,<br />
anew and free with a world to take.<br />
Our cold forests and empty cities,<br />
in hallowed dusks and quiet mornings.<br />
Born to love, lust, and hunt<br />
we preserve what humanity has lost.<br />
Mankind is not on top anymore.<br />
The food chains corrected,<br />
and nature rejoices.<br />
58
Portia Cooper<br />
Rocket<br />
India Ink on Bristol Paper<br />
59
MISSING ALREADY<br />
Carol Korhonen<br />
Those under 21s living at my house<br />
(there are three of them)<br />
have determined and decreed<br />
the proper place for damp towels is<br />
on the bathroom or their bedroom floor<br />
wadded strategically to insure<br />
maximum mildew growth.<br />
Those under 21s living at my house<br />
(there are three of them)<br />
all go to school close by.<br />
The two girls go to U of A<br />
four blocks away, but they drive<br />
or are chauffeured by me.<br />
The 14-year-old boy, a high school freshman,<br />
always needs a ride.<br />
Those under 21s living at my house<br />
(there are three of them)<br />
all dearly love our two big dogs<br />
who shed black and white fur<br />
in copious amounts,<br />
but they never walk the dogs<br />
and never bathe them, or<br />
(god forbid)<br />
clean up the dog run.<br />
60
Those under 21s living at my house<br />
(there are three of them)<br />
Don’t like to vacuum up the dog hair<br />
Except 14-year-old Josiah.<br />
Jo - “I vacuumed almost the whole house,”<br />
me - “Wonderful, good job,”<br />
Jo - “I just kept going ‘til the vacuum sort of stopped working,”<br />
me - “Ah.”<br />
Those under 21s living at my house<br />
(there are three of them)<br />
all love my husband who is forever willing<br />
to help them out, give them money,<br />
complaining bitterly to me later, in private.<br />
Now he complains, “Why didn’t he change the bag?”<br />
as he helps me try to reassemble the vacuum cleaner,<br />
its innards choked with dust . . . and dog hair.<br />
Those under 21s living at my house<br />
(there are three of them)<br />
are all very busy with classes, band, clubs,<br />
and choir plus part time jobs.<br />
They’re hardly ever here.<br />
And when they’re not here,<br />
I miss them.<br />
61
MOMMY COMES<br />
BACK<br />
Mora Hedayati<br />
Non-fiction<br />
Yesterday as I sat eating my lunch,<br />
my four-year-old daughter began bringing<br />
me her stuffed animals one-by-one<br />
to “drop them off” at school. I sighed,<br />
resolved to dive, once again, into playing<br />
“mommy comes back.” The game has<br />
gotten more elaborate over the years<br />
--this particular version involved her roleplaying<br />
several different parents as she<br />
dropped them off with the teacher (me)<br />
and then came back to pick them up,<br />
one by one. Each time, the joy and relief<br />
of seeing her kid again after a long day at<br />
school was still so real it was palpable.<br />
We have been playing “mommy<br />
comes back” in some form or another<br />
since my daughter was 14 months old and<br />
I began dropping her off at the YMCA<br />
daycare for an hour or so each day as I<br />
went to exercise. Every parent knows the<br />
slight panic and heartbreak of dropping<br />
their child off with strangers for the first<br />
time, whether that child is six weeks old<br />
and the mother has no choice but to go<br />
back to work, or 3 years old and they’re<br />
heading to daycare to be cared for by<br />
someone outside of the family for the first<br />
time. For me, who had the privilege to<br />
choose to stay home with my baby for the<br />
first years of her life, it was a much needed<br />
62<br />
Miyeon Kim<br />
It’s Addicted Me<br />
Black Ink on Canvas 21”x26”
eak for my mental and physical health.<br />
And though worth it, it was always really<br />
difficult to hand my screaming toddler off<br />
to the very patient and loving caregivers<br />
in the “bumblebees” room at the Y.<br />
Even now, after a couple of solid<br />
years of preschool under her belt, my<br />
daughter’s trembling lip and brave tears<br />
at drop-off mess with my emotions in a<br />
way that nothing else does. I say, “Have<br />
so much fun today sweetie! I’ll be back!<br />
I love you,” and sometimes I have to<br />
hold back my own tears depending on<br />
my mental state of the day. I think about<br />
how for almost 3 years, we have been<br />
talking about, singing about, role-playing<br />
and processing this transition away from<br />
mom. I think about singing “Grownups<br />
Come Back,” one of the jingles on “Daniel<br />
Tiger’s Neighborhood” (a children’s<br />
show written by child psychologists who<br />
know the psychological toll saying “bye”<br />
to the grownups in their lives takes on<br />
kids) hundreds of times before putting<br />
my daughter to bed. I think about my<br />
chubby little toddler handing me a stuffed<br />
bunny and then waddling out of the<br />
room, pausing for a moment, and then<br />
waddling back to joyfully pick up her<br />
bunny, roleplaying the “mommy comes<br />
back” scene before she even had all of<br />
the words. I think of the cherished noodle<br />
video, that we adored and laughed<br />
at, and look back to watch often and<br />
fondly, which shows my barely two-yearold<br />
daughter sitting in her high-chair and<br />
reciting a whole story about daycare<br />
dropoff with her noodles. I think about my<br />
baby girl who has taken years to process,<br />
63
and who is still processing through play,<br />
the most difficult part of her day. I think<br />
about all the patience and love and time<br />
that has gone into assuring my daughter<br />
that grownups. always. come. back.<br />
And then I think about the children at<br />
the border.<br />
I think about how those ripping the<br />
screaming children from their pleading<br />
parents are not kind ladies in the<br />
“bumblebees” room. They are men and<br />
women who have been able to warp their<br />
minds into believing that these children<br />
are not human in the way “our” children<br />
are. They are trained military personnel,<br />
not child psychologists. They are people<br />
who have been able to fathom a level<br />
of cruelty beyond what anyone wants<br />
to see, and what we in fact often try to<br />
avoid, because it is too painful to know<br />
that this is happening under our watch.<br />
This country was founded on<br />
ripping children from their parents (see<br />
Washington Post’s America’s Cruel<br />
History of Separating Children from Their<br />
Parents). It is something we have always<br />
done and continue to do. We separate<br />
families when we incarcerate parents at<br />
a rate at least five times higher than any<br />
other country. Over 5 million American<br />
children have been affected by parental<br />
incarceration, with black and brown<br />
families being affected most severely. We<br />
separate black and brown babies from<br />
their mothers when these mothers die<br />
in childbirth or from pregnancy-related<br />
causes at a rate 2.5 times higher than<br />
white women. We shackle imprisoned<br />
women to hospital beds while giving<br />
birth, without informing their families,<br />
and then make them turn the babies<br />
over less than a week after birth to be<br />
taken back to prison. This separation of<br />
families is something our current state of<br />
politics still emboldens many people to<br />
do, and encourages the greater masses<br />
to be too numb to care about. To this<br />
day, at least 600 parents of children<br />
who were separated under the previous<br />
administration’s “zero tolerance” policy<br />
have still not been found, and we are<br />
faced with the horrifying reality that<br />
they may never be reunited. “Grown<br />
Ups Come Back” won’t be true for all<br />
children, and this will have lasting effects<br />
for generations, as it has for generations<br />
before us.<br />
My daughter was born by c-section<br />
one week before the 2016 election.<br />
The first thing I remember is her squeaky<br />
cry and her dimpled chin. I remember<br />
laughing so hard (and wincing in pain<br />
because the laughing hurt my incision)<br />
with my husband as she bobbed her tiny<br />
face against my breast like a little blind<br />
kitten looking for milk. She was so fragile.<br />
As we start moving through her fourth<br />
year, I’m amazed at how much she’s<br />
grown, the interesting questions she asks,<br />
and most of all, her brilliant imagination.<br />
But her tininess still amazes me too, and<br />
her dependency. She’s still a little kitten<br />
learning her place in the world. She still<br />
depends on me and her dad for her food,<br />
her shelter, her physical and emotional<br />
comfort. I can hardly imagine her being<br />
64
Thurwin Lane<br />
John and Rena<br />
Painting, Acrylic on Bristol Paper 8.5”x14”<br />
forced from my arms by an unknown<br />
militiaman. But I think this is what we all<br />
have to do-- to use our imaginations to<br />
understand--just like my daughter has<br />
done for years. Because it is not just in our<br />
imaginations; it is real. Sadly this nightmare<br />
is not new, and it is not over just because<br />
there are new people in power.<br />
At the end of the noodle video my<br />
daughter dictates for the mommy noodle:<br />
“I was out exercisin’ -- now I picked you<br />
up!!!” and her chubby cheeks form a<br />
huge grin. Then she imitates a noodle hug<br />
before saying proudly, “The end….of my<br />
noodles.” I want to live in a world where all<br />
stories have happy endings like this one.<br />
To donate to Arizona Justice for Our<br />
Neighbors, a local Tucson organization<br />
helping provide legal services to<br />
immigrants, please visit azjfon.org<br />
Sources:<br />
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2018.<br />
html<br />
https://www.cdc.gov/media/<br />
releases/2019/p0905-racial-ethnicdisparities-pregnancy-deaths.html<br />
https://www.theguardian.com/usnews/2020/jan/24/shackled-pregnantwomen-prisoners-birth<br />
https://www.aecf.org/resources/a-sharedsentence/<br />
65
David Parsons<br />
George Floyd- SAY HIS NAME<br />
Digital Media 81/2“x11”<br />
66
STYGIAN<br />
Chretien Martinez<br />
Non-fiction<br />
The damage that has been done<br />
to the minds of young black men may be<br />
irreversible. We stand as these beasts of<br />
burden, told that we may carry our weight<br />
freely, but is it truly freedom that has been<br />
given to us? Too often we meet men who<br />
wish to block our paths, spit in our faces,<br />
dishevel our spirits, and drive us to an<br />
everlasting anguish - a White Death.<br />
Our color, black. It is synonymous<br />
with evil; the black plague, the black<br />
devil, the black expanse of space - airless,<br />
breathless, a backdrop for the glorious<br />
white stars which grab the eye’s wonder<br />
and the mind’s affection. We are but the<br />
void - nothing, vacuous. Our minds do not<br />
contemplate, nor do they ponder upon<br />
philosophies, or meanings, or emotion.<br />
What is the gloaming without its gloom?<br />
We drag our knuckles not from<br />
stupidity, but from the overbearing eye<br />
of he who has placed such heavy weight<br />
on our shoulders. Could those veiled eyes<br />
beam gossamer then, and touch my<br />
rejected flesh?<br />
This existence isn’t pure. This life we<br />
live is not one of lascivious reverie. Our<br />
very hearts have been ripped from our<br />
chests and compared to those who deem<br />
themselves of the highest form - what<br />
conclusions did they draw? They drew<br />
the ones which allowed them to treat us<br />
as ogres - not human enough to respect,<br />
but close enough to fill with disease. Do<br />
I even value myself? For the Son of the<br />
Father now has blonde hair and blue eyes<br />
for that mythical Aryan to kiss his feet and<br />
feel emboldened. For this image does<br />
the intellectual racist serenade his flock<br />
with scientific riddles, filled with the jargon<br />
of imperial justification - oh, if they only<br />
knew how much we could love them, our<br />
brothers! If only they knew how strongly<br />
we yearn for an eternal embrace.<br />
67
A BODY OF FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES:<br />
WE THE PEOPLE<br />
Mauricia Manuel<br />
Part 1<br />
“We the people, living between litter filled oceans,<br />
Selected citizens born on land<br />
but floating on an endless stream of judgment.”<br />
I worry about the clothes I put on, too much thigh, too much chest?<br />
Too much sunless skin, covered in moles and birthmark, nothing like the rest.<br />
“We are practicing to be perfect, entirely without fault,<br />
Satisfying all requirements of being a standard American with all obstacles included,<br />
while the world conspires against generations of imposed poverty.”<br />
I search for the big yellow clearance sign for clothes, for food, no tag goes unturned.<br />
Always skimming through coupons, hand me downs and day-old dinners without concern.<br />
“We have become crabs trapped in a barrel,<br />
yanking on each other, in fear of someone making it out first.<br />
Programmed to believe that there can only be one winner.”<br />
I thank the creator for scratcher wins, close calls, and found pocket dollars.<br />
For making it home at night, through parking lots, around every corner without a hollar.<br />
“We the people. Are expected to be more than we are in flesh, in mind.<br />
Encouraged to be tranquil during a period of violent efforts. Told that we are liberated<br />
While still enslaved by screens and job demands, leaving our families without us.”<br />
I have been trapped in a loveless marriage, before the rivers dried up, while roads were paved<br />
Been screwed over by broken treaties and gentrification, following too quickly to be saved.<br />
“We, whose soles beat the concrete. We are not in union, but we still create a connective<br />
rhythm.”<br />
68
Part 2<br />
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice,<br />
insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and<br />
secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this<br />
Constitution for the United States of America.<br />
Part 3<br />
We the people, that have broken and rebuilt this land under death and dreams<br />
People of an accepted ignorance proclaim a fresh start to create more,<br />
A perfect union, hidden under generations of repressed change.<br />
In thought of our future children, saving them from all forms of hatred. We<br />
establish justice for protection and not for power, one that will not crumble under greed.<br />
Justice for the silent mouths and twisted bodies of past and current wars, deserving of<br />
a domestic tranquility. A stillness to the current flow of madness that digs graves and regrets.<br />
Peace is our common defense to an unsavory foundation, to grow in essence and in intelligence.<br />
General welfare is for those bedless and hungry. We strive to be compassionate and courteous,<br />
Blessings without debit. The Liberty, the power to choose another day, another path.<br />
Our children are free to be. We are the change, the justice, the serenity in this world.<br />
We the people embody these morals for the growth of a harmonious county.<br />
69
THE LITTLE WIND<br />
Raymond Butler<br />
Creative Non-fiction<br />
I’m tired of running to stay fit. I still<br />
run, not because I want to, but because<br />
I have to; I don’t have a choice. I was<br />
diagnosed with hypertension when I<br />
was 25 years old and I’ve had to take<br />
medication just to control it. My doctor<br />
said this condition recognizes no class of<br />
people and that exercise is better than<br />
any medicine he could give me. I have<br />
been running ever since. I run because<br />
hypertension runs in the male side my<br />
family. I feel like I race hypertension every<br />
day and I run to save my life.<br />
I am Navajo, a survivor, and running<br />
is an important part of my culture. I remind<br />
myself that running is a reverent prayer<br />
spoken with one’s body. It is a spiritual<br />
exercise as well as a physical one. When<br />
man and woman were created, the<br />
gods discussed who would take care of<br />
their creation. The Little Wind spoke up<br />
and claimed this as an honor. The Little<br />
Wind blew into the man and woman so<br />
now each of us breathe and if we hold<br />
our hand near our mouth, we can feel<br />
the Little Wind as we exhale. We can see<br />
the Little Wind’s tracks on our finger tips’<br />
whorls and arches. With every breath,<br />
I am reminded of the Little Wind, more<br />
so when I run. That is how my father and<br />
grandfather taught me.<br />
This afternoon, I change into a t-shirt<br />
and shorts, to once again shoulder the<br />
burden of my genetics. The entire time<br />
I hear my complacency’s seductive<br />
voice in my head, and I see myself on a<br />
comfortable recliner, nibbling on a light<br />
snack, and sipping an iced beverage. I<br />
add a pair of socks and shoes. Before I<br />
change my mind, I walk to the front yard<br />
for my stretches. I can feel my pride swell<br />
from overcoming complacency. My<br />
grandfather’s image floats across my mind<br />
and I see him nodding. My grandfather’s<br />
teaching is that I am what I choose to be,<br />
but only with my own effort. My father,<br />
echoing my grandfather, told me that<br />
I could be and do anything I wished if I<br />
was willing to work for it. I touch my toes<br />
to stretch and warm up the back of my<br />
legs, feeling the tightness ease away. I feel<br />
the muscles in my lower back resisting the<br />
stretch but gradually giving way. I grab<br />
my instep and stretch my thighs, creating<br />
the familiar sensation of almost pain but<br />
not. I push against the wall of my house to<br />
awaken my calves. I jog in place followed<br />
by some jumping jacks and my heart<br />
rate climbs. It takes me about 15 minutes<br />
to limber up and now a five mile run is in<br />
70
order, as usual.<br />
I can hear complacency purring<br />
sweet nothings in my head. “You know<br />
it doesn’t have to be such a long run.<br />
You’ve already exercised for 15 minutes<br />
and that’s better than most people get.”<br />
“If you listen to that, you’ll end up<br />
being a can of Crisco with legs.” My pride<br />
strokes my self-image. My masculinity<br />
barks like an alpha. I ponder when I let a<br />
part of myself become so militant.<br />
I begin my run toward the west. I<br />
know my grandfather always required<br />
that I run toward the east before the<br />
sun rose to greet Dawn Boy and Dawn<br />
Girl as I ran. White Body comes from the<br />
east and we hail White Body by shouting<br />
as we start our run. White Body showed<br />
patience and understanding when he<br />
explained to The People how to cleanse<br />
their bodies in preparation for prayer.<br />
White Body translated the Holy People’s<br />
speech so The People could understand.<br />
I pray for forgiveness for starting my run so<br />
late in the day and going in the opposite<br />
direction. I shout, trying to keep within my<br />
grandfather’s teaching and I talk myself<br />
into believing that since my neighbors<br />
live east of me, the holy people will<br />
understand.<br />
The sky is cloudy and the<br />
temperature is very nice, hovering<br />
between 70 F and 75 F in the afternoon.<br />
I run in loose dirt and sparse high desert<br />
vegetation. I see only one saltbush. They<br />
are few and far between, although<br />
they used to proliferate along my route.<br />
I run past sand sagebrush, also fewer in<br />
number, but it is a hardy plant that has<br />
some spiritual qualities. Its smoke carries<br />
one’s prayers and its ashes can act as a<br />
form of protection. It is also a medicinal<br />
plant when used appropriately. There is an<br />
occasional plant called Mormon tea, with<br />
its green, straw-like foliage, which makes<br />
a tea that tastes similar to orange pekoe. I<br />
see Navajo tea with its yellow flowers and<br />
remember sipping it while my dad would<br />
drink his morning coffee. Navajo tea is<br />
quite similar to Oolong tea; the color and<br />
flavor are the same. I remember adding<br />
honey to my tea and sitting like my father,<br />
sipping my tea whenever he sipped his<br />
coffee. I pass yucca, displaying its wide,<br />
knife-like bladed leaves, which makes a<br />
great soap if you know how to use it. My<br />
grandparents taught me about these<br />
plants so I notice them.<br />
Melancholy swells within me at the<br />
scarcity of vegetation, yet it is a very nice<br />
afternoon for a run. My complacency<br />
places an image of a warm blanket and<br />
a nice fire in my mind offering up comfort<br />
while it softly breathes, “That hot tea<br />
sounds heavenly. It isn’t like you follow<br />
your belly through a door.”<br />
My knuckle dragging masculinity<br />
chuckles at the notion. “I can hear you<br />
71
laughing, you know,” I tell myself. My<br />
pride, my masculinity, my complacency,<br />
and my self-image begin arguing, posting<br />
images of me across my mind’s eye. I tell<br />
myself to ignore them, even though they<br />
are me.<br />
This area where I am running is an<br />
array of sand dunes and the dunes will<br />
become bigger in the future if the winds<br />
continue as they have been. The drought<br />
has caused the deterioration of plant life<br />
and I think about what used to be. The air<br />
I’m breathing is a dry echo to the lack of<br />
precipitation.<br />
The sand grabs my shoe and forces<br />
me to expend more effort with each step.<br />
I imagine it sucking me into the beauty of<br />
these dunes. The gentle slopes roll along<br />
but at their own pace. I note that they<br />
are multi-faceted. Parts are covered in<br />
ripples and other parts are so smooth I feel<br />
like reaching out to touch them. Particles<br />
of sand reflect the sunlight and seem to<br />
twinkle while other parts gleam a steady<br />
reflection of the sun. The dunes curve,<br />
sculpted by the winds, and casts shadows<br />
in the sunlight that highlight the sparkles,<br />
winking with my every step. It is almost<br />
like gazing at the night sky with its stars<br />
twinkling, but in full daylight. I marvel at<br />
the artistry around me. Whenever Mother<br />
Earth, Father Sky, The Sun Bearer, and The<br />
Little Wind combine their work, creating<br />
such astounding visions, I am reminded<br />
72
Sarah Bryg<br />
Light Travels From A Dead Star<br />
Drawing, Pen and Ink 10”x14”<br />
that I run with beauty all around me. The<br />
Little Wind whirls, picking up sand and<br />
carrying it in a column, as it continues<br />
to sculpt the sands. The Little Wind has<br />
decided to run with me.<br />
It isn’t long before I am breathing<br />
hard, my core temperature rises, and<br />
I begin to sweat. My body, a bipedal<br />
mobile canteen, provides moisture to the<br />
thirsty desert. It wicks away my sweat,<br />
leaving me feeling cooler. I feel the<br />
fatigue in my lower leg muscles and my<br />
hip muscles start to strain. I push myself<br />
since I know I will get to the end of the<br />
sands soon.<br />
I struggle up the face of one dune<br />
and peek down at my feet half buried in<br />
sand with each step. I see another facet<br />
of these dunes. Each step causes the<br />
sand to flow downhill, carrying me down<br />
with it. I have to step faster, to continue<br />
my upward climb, further straining my<br />
muscles.<br />
“You know, you’ll get the same<br />
work out if you walk these dunes,” says<br />
my common sense. “Walking? You can<br />
double time or you can double chin,” says<br />
my knuckle dragger side. An image of<br />
rippled abs flow across my mind but it only<br />
reminds me of the ripples in the dunes.<br />
The undulations of the terrain, like<br />
tan waves frozen in place, sap my will to<br />
soldier on, but fortunately I can see the<br />
edge of the dunes. It’s not endless. It only<br />
73
Dani Gailbraith-Ritchie<br />
Beating.Still<br />
Ink on paper, 4”x4”<br />
feels that way. I’m a mile from home; just<br />
one mile.<br />
“Was it really worth it?” I hear in<br />
my mind. Gulping air, I’m not sure which<br />
part of me had spoken. An image of my<br />
grandfather riding his horse at dawn pops<br />
to my mind. I remember him waking me<br />
at dawn to make me run. He would follow<br />
me on horseback to make sure I didn’t<br />
stop. I became adept at running and<br />
forced his horse to work for its oats. I hear<br />
parts of me chuckling and I join them.<br />
Together we remember that time I saw<br />
grandpa’s horse covered in sweat after<br />
my run. My grandpa smiles and nods to<br />
me as he began wiping down his horse.<br />
These fond memories move to the front of<br />
my mind and I smile to myself, although it<br />
wasn’t fun at the time.<br />
Now I’m on hard packed clay<br />
and running is easier. I can get into the<br />
groove and allow my body to run as it was<br />
designed; for long distance two-legged<br />
travel. My arms, my legs, my breath, and<br />
my heart are now in rhythm. I feel peace<br />
and tranquility ease into place. I am in<br />
harmony and I can run as far as I can<br />
see.<br />
My ancestors walked from place to<br />
place, traveling great distances. Running<br />
grew in importance to honor the Holy<br />
People and to maintain communication<br />
between far-flung communities. I imagine<br />
myself to be one of these runners.<br />
74
To my right is a tall cottonwood<br />
tree, majestic among the low desert<br />
vegetation. It started in a small wash<br />
where it received what little runoff was<br />
available. I salute this solitary denizen of<br />
the desert as I run by. To my left is a stand<br />
of tamarisk trees, native to Africa and the<br />
Middle East, crowding together against a<br />
water retention dike. These trees bloom a<br />
delicate pink, almost tan, flower against<br />
its dark green foliage, almost like the<br />
ground, an Army pink hue, migrated into<br />
the trees. I see birds flitting about among<br />
the branches, their song adding to my<br />
heartbeat and foot falls. The pond is dry<br />
like the surrounding beige landscape. The<br />
pond basin is cracked dirt forming odd<br />
shapes as it dried and curled up after<br />
baking in the sun. I see the mesa still a<br />
mile away, a strange dark outcropping<br />
in the tan of the desert. My legs are twin<br />
pendulums swinging back and forth as the<br />
miles tick by.<br />
The Little Wind moves its hand<br />
across my face. The azure of Father Sky<br />
is overhead extending from horizon to<br />
horizon of Mother Earth. I exist between<br />
their embrace. I begin to understand why<br />
Mother Earth bedecks herself in turquoise<br />
and warm colors. I try to ignore the Sun<br />
Bearer glaring down at me; he who is<br />
the father of the Hero Twins. I move on,<br />
knowing I run with the Holy People.<br />
I reach the base of the mesa where<br />
I intend to run to the top and then some.<br />
I lean forward into the upward slope. My<br />
toes bear the brunt of my weight. I notice<br />
bits of igneous rock and realize the mesa<br />
top is one big slab of the stuff. I wonder<br />
how this could be since every other hill is<br />
the sandstone the southwest is known for.<br />
My mind wanders as I labor up the slope.<br />
It’s not a good thing to lose myself in<br />
thought as the danger of a slip and injury<br />
rises as I climb higher.<br />
I feel the effort of running uphill first in<br />
my thighs, and then my big muscles begin<br />
to feel the burn. The mental struggle to<br />
stay motivated becomes as real as the<br />
struggle of my muscles. I step on bits of<br />
igneous rock, pebble sized, along this trail.<br />
Larger pieces are more treacherous so I<br />
avoid them. I watch the ground in front<br />
of me but the slope is steep and I could<br />
reach out and touch the ground.<br />
Complacency nuzzles my ear.<br />
“You’re running as fast as you could walk<br />
this. It’s better to just walk uphill.”<br />
“Quit now and the hill wins, right, fat<br />
boy?” My pride and self-image combine<br />
forces.<br />
My brain cries for more oxygen, but<br />
my lungs blanch at the extra effort. I peek<br />
up and see I’m halfway to the top. From<br />
the depths of my memory I recall The<br />
Dichotomy, one of Zeno’s paradoxes. It<br />
is a theory of infinite halfway points. No<br />
matter how close you get, there is always<br />
75
a half way point and you never arrive. I<br />
wonder if this is what hypoxia feels like.<br />
“Since you’re always halfway, you’ll<br />
never reach the top. It makes more<br />
sense to turn around and go down.”<br />
Complacency is making sense. I hear a<br />
cacophony of objections from other parts<br />
of me.<br />
Images from the objectors vie for<br />
attention until my eyes sting from the<br />
sweat that flows freely off my forehead.<br />
Almost to the top, I decide I’ll walk when<br />
I reach the top. I can sense the smugness<br />
of my pride and self-image. All that’s<br />
missing is their ability to chest bump. As I<br />
think it, they do it in my mind.<br />
I reach the crest and see<br />
thunderstorm clouds headed my way.<br />
I walk to recover and consider my<br />
options: go home or continue. The<br />
storm is still a ways off so I keep walking;<br />
I can always turn around if the storm<br />
gets too close. I look back at my route.<br />
Walking backwards, I can see, in the<br />
distance, Castle Rock, a massive block of<br />
sandstone. Its four parapets make it easily<br />
distinguishable from the other sandstone<br />
ridges. Slide Rock is near the castle but I’m<br />
too far to see it. Other mesas are clearly<br />
visible miles away, all formed by a slab of<br />
igneous rock and looking very similar to<br />
the one I walk upon.<br />
I turn and see Dook’o’oosliid, the<br />
sacred western mountain of the Navajo,<br />
a hundred miles to the southwest. The air<br />
is clear and I can see the tree line near<br />
the peak. Closer, I see a dark line across<br />
the desert. I recall that this is a fault line<br />
where igneous rock and lava rock rise<br />
to the surface. This fault line is aligned<br />
with the mesa I stand on and I question<br />
whether I am on a volcano. I see Shadow<br />
Mountain further west; a monumental pile<br />
of volcanic cinders forming a dark mound<br />
against the tans and greens. I look the<br />
other way, to the north, and see a dark<br />
peak far in the distance. This peak is very<br />
much like a volcanic peak and I realize<br />
the fault line extends for many miles.<br />
The sacred mountain’s name could be<br />
translated as fire-belted mountain, which<br />
seems to fit with the fault line and other<br />
hints of a volcano which has been hidden<br />
in the past.<br />
The top of the mesa where I walk is<br />
flat and barren except for sparse, shin-high<br />
vegetation. The air is somehow different<br />
and it is refreshing. I see an air navigation<br />
building near the center of the mesa and<br />
jog closer to it. I can see that it’s fenced<br />
in and the gate is locked. I walk around<br />
the entire building looking for an opening<br />
but there is no passage through the fence.<br />
There’s a brick enclosure a short distance<br />
from the building. I move to the enclosure<br />
wall and jump up to peek into it. There is<br />
something blue behind the wall. I grab<br />
the top of the brick wall and hoist myself<br />
76
Luisa Espinoza<br />
Los Tiempos Se Van Volando<br />
Painting, Acrylic on Bristol 11”x14”<br />
77
up, and see a blue propane tank hidden<br />
inside the brick fence. Looking down on<br />
the tank, I wonder if there is a propane<br />
device inside the air navigation building.<br />
There is a bright flash of light and<br />
a crash of thunder, so close it vibrates<br />
through my body. It startles me back into<br />
the moment. The storm I was supposed to<br />
watch has snuck up on me. The hair on<br />
my arm and my head reach skyward. The<br />
wind whips dust into my eyes and the sky<br />
dumps rain on me.<br />
I scamper to the lee side of the<br />
brick enclosure where I cringe, partially<br />
protected from the wind and rain. The<br />
clouds seem close enough to touch, and<br />
lightning plays among them. I imagine<br />
myself struck and my epitaph: Here lies<br />
what used to be a dumb human male.<br />
The thunder is so loud it reverberates<br />
through the brick wall and seems to<br />
rattle my brain. The ravenous Thunderbird<br />
craves the flesh of a buffoon, namely me. I<br />
look up and see lightning running its fingers<br />
through the whirling clouds. In stark terror,<br />
my mind ponders how Monster Slayer, one<br />
of the Hero Twins, could do battle with<br />
the Thunderbird, while my body tries to<br />
disappear.<br />
I crouch down as low as I can<br />
get, hugging my knees in a vertical<br />
fetal position, and imagine myself an<br />
imbecilic electrical conductor. I imagine<br />
the Thunderbird screeches and lightning<br />
flashes across the sky. Each wing flap<br />
creates a roar that shakes me to my core.<br />
I understand why my ancestors believed<br />
in the Thunderbird because I feel tiny<br />
and insignificant, not even a toy to the<br />
Brobdingnagian Thunderbird. I don’t have<br />
the courage to stand up in defiance of<br />
the Thunderbird. My primitive mind tells me<br />
to freeze or run; my cognitive mind asks<br />
where that word came from.<br />
Indecision sits with me and simply<br />
waits while I cower in my poor shelter.<br />
My choices are to stay and get struck by<br />
lightning or run for my life and get struck<br />
by lightning.<br />
“Since you’re going to get struck<br />
anyway, flip the bird the bird. Be a<br />
man.” My pride has more courage<br />
than common sense, I chide myself. My<br />
cognitive side, trying to be helpful, says<br />
I’m having a fight or flight response. I can’t<br />
fight so it is hide from the storm or run.<br />
I bolt from my cover; my feet barely<br />
feel the ground, which is now mud and<br />
rock. All I have to do to survive is outrun<br />
lightning. No problem. The mesa edge<br />
stretches farther away. I marvel at how<br />
my muscles are no longer fatigued. I<br />
imagine myself a live lightning rod as I<br />
pound through the rain; my legs no longer<br />
pendulums but twin pistons driving my<br />
flight. With every step, a life time passes,<br />
each heart beat takes an eternity to lubdub.<br />
I run in defiance, for I will not simply<br />
78
wait for my end. The Thunderbird will have<br />
to work for this meal.<br />
Maybe I got lucky, I’ll never know,<br />
but I’m at the edge and I begin the<br />
descent. I resolve to curb my curiosity<br />
and to stay alert to my surroundings. It<br />
is strange how my curiosity nudged me<br />
out of harmony and I didn’t even realize<br />
it. That is until the Big Wind brought the<br />
Thunderbird and the male rain. Now, I<br />
run pell-mell down the trail I struggled<br />
up a short time ago. I can see clearly<br />
the treacherous rocks and I adroitly<br />
avoid stepping on them. I glimpse how<br />
a mountain goat does it, but only for a<br />
moment. I reach the bottom, and at the<br />
base of the mesa, the Thunderbird seems<br />
far away. The Big Wind doesn’t trouble<br />
to follow me as the male rain bashes the<br />
mesa top. The hair on my arms and head<br />
have relaxed and returned to normal. I<br />
notice I am gulping air and my legs are<br />
quivering. I begin a slow wobble toward<br />
home.<br />
I’m soaked and my clothes cling to<br />
my body. I notice the breeze and realize<br />
the Little Wind is with me again. “I never<br />
left you,” it whispers. I am emboldened by<br />
that but at the same time I’m chagrined<br />
that I was caught with my pants down.<br />
My legs, once pendulums turned pistons,<br />
are simply the things that keep me from<br />
falling. I am back by the cottonwood tree<br />
before my legs recover.<br />
I run on; the way my ancestors have<br />
for generations. This seems to be a natural<br />
part of who I am. Taught to me by my<br />
fathers before me, encouraged by my<br />
mothers, I am a part of my people and<br />
I exist among the Holy People. I, once<br />
again, notice the beauty all around me. A<br />
deeper thought occurs to me. We all walk<br />
in beauty, whether we see it or not.<br />
With my clothes still damp and<br />
clinging to me, I continue toward home,<br />
grateful to still be alive, running with a<br />
greater appreciation for life, a deeper<br />
understanding of my ancestors, and a<br />
new perspective of who I am. I am a more<br />
humble man, still needing to run, but now<br />
it is not such a great burden. The Holy<br />
People have reminded me that running is<br />
truly a celebration of life and I recognize<br />
that they are a part of me. I run to live. I<br />
run to honor the Little Wind.<br />
79
Kimberly Griffen<br />
No Parking<br />
Photograph<br />
80
ANAEROBIC<br />
Iris Hill<br />
I will come over and repot your plants<br />
delicately around the edges<br />
eventually under your roots.<br />
My knuckles will bleed into the new soil<br />
And I will recoil<br />
into the<br />
runoff.<br />
This is the closest I’ll ever get to flourishing,<br />
like a coffee plant in Arizona.<br />
I will grow and bloom,<br />
But I can never provide you with what you want.<br />
81
THE BLUE CARPET<br />
AND THE CHERRY PIE<br />
Jazmin Garcia<br />
The cozy cozy room<br />
paintings on the wall<br />
black and white photos<br />
that familiar blue carpet<br />
gone.<br />
A vibrant blue<br />
existing in the shadow of maggots<br />
numerous and thriving<br />
the blue had ceased to live,<br />
but no one knows when.<br />
Death’s foul room<br />
feeding off sorrow<br />
stealing the blue off the carpet<br />
damaging everything<br />
except -<br />
-the cherry pie in the kitchen<br />
untouched, undisturbed, eternal<br />
so picturesque<br />
even if touched by death’s breath<br />
unchanging, even as the blue decayed.<br />
A glimmer of hope<br />
or dark reminder<br />
so, it joined the blue carpet<br />
similar fates<br />
never to be seen again.<br />
82
Zevi Bloomfield<br />
Siren<br />
Graphite With Colored Pencil and Collage 16”x16”<br />
83
Sivanes Ananda<br />
Dutch Windmill at Golden Gate Park<br />
Painting, Oil on Canvas 20”X16”<br />
84
TWO DAISIES<br />
Jazmin Garcia<br />
Two daisies in a field<br />
growing together<br />
almost identical<br />
away from the rest.<br />
Always together<br />
rain or sunshine<br />
wind or drought<br />
side by side.<br />
The lonely daisy<br />
Outstretched its leaves<br />
Looking for a friend again<br />
Until her arms ached<br />
A pesky weed sprouted<br />
too close to one daisy,<br />
it grew and took hold<br />
pulling them apart.<br />
Now the rain drowned<br />
the sun dried<br />
the wind bent<br />
and the drought parched.<br />
One in the clutches of weeds<br />
the other stood alone<br />
a single daisy in the field<br />
away from the rest.<br />
The single daisy<br />
tired, alone, beat<br />
withered alone<br />
away from the rest.<br />
85
THE SONG TO COME<br />
A.Z. Martinez<br />
Sweet land of “liberty”;<br />
My country, ‘tis of thee––<br />
America;<br />
Land of the Free<br />
I raise up my glass––<br />
toast, and drink<br />
To thee<br />
Raise a glass(!) to (freedom)<br />
Something they can<br />
never(?)<br />
take away<br />
(we pray)<br />
Land of the Pilgrim’s pride<br />
Land where (my) fathers died:<br />
We sing from day to day;<br />
With each added weep<br />
Another joins the fray––<br />
For?<br />
A somber, bitter tale<br />
Told in vitriol and gore<br />
From sea to shining shore<br />
Revolution<br />
Cry the masses<br />
Their drunken delusions rein––<br />
they bring us to; again down they swing<br />
Hear the call:<br />
Raise a glass to freedom<br />
Something<br />
you will never see (again)<br />
O’ say does that star-spangled banner<br />
… yet wave?<br />
86
Avery Goldberg<br />
A Shamble of a Band<br />
Digital Painting<br />
87
Nathan Coffey<br />
Columbia<br />
Photograph<br />
88
GOOD AND EVIL<br />
Chacara Thomas<br />
A response to The Judment Day by Aaron Douglas<br />
They’ve told false tales to tarnish my character<br />
Stripped me of my livelihood<br />
Drained me of my sanity<br />
I don’t blame them<br />
I blame their parents<br />
And their parents<br />
Matter of fact, I blame Cain<br />
For allowing hatred, envy, and jealousy to run through his flesh<br />
Causing a domino effect for generations to come<br />
Hearts are truly made of stone<br />
They may laugh or celebrate the pain they’ve caused<br />
They may even get away with their evil doings here on this earth<br />
For their justice system isn’t for all mankind<br />
Specifically my kind<br />
Still I must warn them<br />
It will come a time<br />
their power will fade-away<br />
Sound the alarm!<br />
Here lies a judge with all powers<br />
Fair and true<br />
I shall drop to my knees and rejoice<br />
Judgement is here to swipe the nations<br />
Dividing the evil from good<br />
For their time is long over due<br />
Work Cited<br />
Douglas, Aaron. The Judgement Day. 1939, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.<br />
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.166490.html<br />
89
DOCUMENTED<br />
THOUGHTS<br />
Christopher Valenzuela<br />
Who am I<br />
to call myself Chicano<br />
when for so long I thought<br />
Mexican<br />
was a dirty word<br />
when I thought that el barrio<br />
was a place you escaped from<br />
like a prisoner<br />
those people who<br />
had shackles on them<br />
that looked like flannels<br />
with one button<br />
and when I thought that chunti<br />
meant ugly<br />
Who am I<br />
to look in the mirror<br />
and whisper softly<br />
te amo<br />
te quiero<br />
90
to speak in the same tongue<br />
as people who seem to never waver<br />
in their pride<br />
for la raza<br />
to ask La Virgen de Guadalupe<br />
if she can hear my prayers<br />
when I stumble<br />
through ñ and rr<br />
because I never took the same time<br />
learning Spanish<br />
as I did English<br />
learning how to write poetry<br />
craft story<br />
understanding the ladders that make up<br />
grammar<br />
Who am I<br />
to wear nothing but band tees<br />
and get embarrassed<br />
when banda starts to play on the radio<br />
hoping none of my friends<br />
might see me<br />
at my tio’s house<br />
celebrating life<br />
with my family<br />
Who am I<br />
Dani Gailbraith-Ritchie<br />
Chula Chapala<br />
Painting, Acrylic on Canvas 14”x14”<br />
91
I am raped by white culture<br />
and grow up thinking<br />
that I am La Malinche<br />
not the mother<br />
who helped birth our people<br />
but the traitor<br />
who thinks her own culture<br />
not worthy<br />
of being studied<br />
made to feel like it is my own fault<br />
I take French lessons because Spanish<br />
reminds me of summers<br />
in Nogales<br />
and how small I felt<br />
inside my father’s big house<br />
on top of a hill<br />
with a thousand stairs to reach it<br />
from up there I am reminded<br />
that I belong to<br />
the other side<br />
of the border<br />
I am white (passing)<br />
until I exist<br />
in white spaces<br />
then<br />
I am other<br />
beaner<br />
brown<br />
ese<br />
I am called wetback<br />
because so many who look like me<br />
float across a river<br />
searching for the dreams<br />
that white men sold them<br />
for pesos by the hour<br />
and while their backs are wet<br />
with water<br />
that brings life<br />
the men here have hands<br />
that are soaked<br />
in blood<br />
blood of the past<br />
blood of the present<br />
blood of the future<br />
the same border that is only<br />
200 years old<br />
and cuts deep into the histories<br />
of ancestors that I don’t know of<br />
because it is like an open wound<br />
festering and bleeding<br />
over soils that are not even tended<br />
by the hands that claimed it<br />
as their own<br />
For my ancestors<br />
this is the promised land<br />
Aztlán<br />
but all we are given are<br />
broken promises<br />
from conquistadors<br />
that say we are<br />
illegal<br />
alien<br />
on land that they claim<br />
to have discovered<br />
92
No trespassing<br />
they tell us<br />
trespassers will be shot<br />
(and raped, and maimed, and beaten,<br />
and dehumanized)<br />
Who am I<br />
to question the systems<br />
that shaped me<br />
and gave me these gifts<br />
of anxiety<br />
and depression<br />
and self-hatred<br />
to break cycles<br />
when I keep thinking that progress<br />
is linear<br />
to not remember that<br />
internalized<br />
is another word for buried<br />
and the unearthing<br />
of trauma<br />
that I inherited<br />
feels destructive<br />
because I am<br />
used to seeing myself as the serpent<br />
but maybe I am the eagle too<br />
93
WAVES<br />
Jazmin Garcia<br />
I was standing on the beach<br />
toes buried in the toasty sand<br />
smelling the salty air as the clouds chased the sun.<br />
You shouted my name under skies of peach and cherry<br />
as the waves were crashing.<br />
A love song drifted from the pier,<br />
I looked up while the breeze hugged me lightly<br />
you took me by the hand<br />
and led me to the water’s icy lullaby<br />
as the waves were crashing<br />
I stepped into the foaming sea<br />
and I froze as the water slowly became obscured.<br />
Darkness was approaching and I felt hesitant,<br />
but you said stay with me<br />
as the waves were crashing.<br />
I saw the fading seafoam green<br />
reflecting with brilliance in your eyes.<br />
The chorus of the seagulls filled my head<br />
never letting go while we lost our balance<br />
as the waves were crashing.<br />
You and I were standing under the moonlight.<br />
The water and the delicate wind grew chilly,<br />
it was euphoria: just you, me, and the sea,<br />
you whispered it will be alright<br />
as the waves were crashing<br />
94
Ulises Ramos<br />
F.E.L.T.<br />
Digital Drawing 12”x12”<br />
95
Clarissa Holguin<br />
Whimsical Waves<br />
Painting, Acrylic on Canvas 8”x10”<br />
96
SMOKE SIGNALS<br />
Christopher Valenzuela<br />
I don’t need to fly into the Sun<br />
to catch myself on fire<br />
because falling from so high<br />
is easy<br />
when you’ve practiced a thousand times<br />
I don’t need to light a match<br />
to scritch that scratch<br />
as my own flame strikes hot<br />
only to be tossed aside<br />
when they’re all used up<br />
You see I am good<br />
all on my own<br />
at burning myself<br />
from both ends<br />
hoping that I can meet<br />
somewhere in the middle<br />
But I have to wonder<br />
if you’d be able to see<br />
the stress inside my signals<br />
as I burn<br />
on my own<br />
little island<br />
out at sea<br />
97
DRUNKEN LUNACY<br />
Courtney Armstrong<br />
I envied the dead who lay in release<br />
pillows of silence beneath satin skin<br />
But mostly, I wanted death’s sweat and sweet<br />
quiet to kiss my own black poisoned lips<br />
To drink the pink of my stalled heartbeat<br />
stroke me with fumbles of glass fingertips<br />
Was it a mirage of serenity<br />
where bloodshed struggles sleep without chagrin<br />
If it were delusion I would not plead<br />
show me the moon bit by obsidian<br />
Sated thirst with hunger to end life’s lease<br />
drowned by puce liquor of rue’s sedative<br />
Please give me paradise in a syringe<br />
one last smack of hope for lunatic fringe<br />
98
Micheal Christopherson<br />
You Can’t Hide Forever<br />
Visual Art<br />
99
Luisa Espinoza<br />
Tentacle Tessellation<br />
Drawing, Graphite on Bristol 11”x11”<br />
100
I SMASHED A FISHBOWL<br />
Courtney Armstrong<br />
against the soft of my head<br />
we fish do not swim<br />
here, dry and empty<br />
gasping, nitrite poisoning<br />
steel nautical chain<br />
void of lust — your pet —<br />
you laugh while I worm and ache<br />
for the phantom limb<br />
of you, our past love<br />
covered in mandarin shell<br />
now my flayed skin rains<br />
cold luminescence<br />
please, please, for once just see me<br />
scales and gills and fin<br />
I pick at the shards<br />
but I can never fish out<br />
all the bits of shame<br />
101
OH, ANTIGUA<br />
Courtney Armstrong<br />
The air smelled like lemons. The scent so powerful it was as if strips and spools of yellow<br />
rind twirled in the clouds above. Lemongrass. The natives had to burn it or else it would<br />
devastate the landscape, the way absinthe swirls into an oily stain on artisan glass. Puffs<br />
of smoke dotted the mountainside all the way down to Monserrat. Leaves the size and<br />
shape of elephant ears fell from the dome of dense trees and lay on the ground, discarded<br />
trophies lucky enough to be missed by the spreading fires, only to be scooped up by<br />
happy tourists and smuggled into Chanel backpacks when the guides weren’t looking.<br />
Black pineapple, the gold of Antigua, cut up into the smallest of cubes before the long<br />
hike back down to the bottom. Sticky juice stippled their chins, smoke stung their eyes, and<br />
they looked up at the sky as it squeezed citrus rain upon the mountain for the very first time.<br />
The air is quilted with smoke. It burns our eyes and stains our clothes, two-ply anger<br />
that penetrates our souls. Stupid lemongrass. Brought in by tourists who sneered at our<br />
handsome terrain, unable to see the bronze rivers of cursive that flowed through the sand.<br />
So now we must burn our land, scorch our hands and singe the hair on our arms to keep<br />
the grass from smothering it, from suffocating us. The old trees discard their leaves, futile<br />
and furious effort to hide the soil before the enraged blades devour more. And the tourists<br />
scoop up that fallen foliage to take back to their homes, trophies that they don’t deserve.<br />
They guttle our fruit and smack their lips. They do not notice the beauty, the spirit, the<br />
music of our Antigua. And they certainly do not notice the rain that falls from our very souls.<br />
102
Dani Gailbraith-Ritchie<br />
Tepalo<br />
Pyrography on Wood 12”x12”<br />
103
Claudia Nazario<br />
Selena<br />
Painting, Oil on Canvas Board 11”x14”<br />
104
HOPE<br />
Courtney Armstrong<br />
Damp, cherry-blonde curls clung to her forehead<br />
while her unquestioning freckled fingers plucked the puzzle<br />
pieces<br />
her busy thoughts pacified by the sound of the sleepy raw<br />
wood<br />
that plinked and tinked upon return to their splintered slots<br />
the smell of mold and pinecones repulsive and delightful<br />
dead and yet, somehow alive<br />
she loved the weight of the timbered pieces<br />
the way the acrylic oozed into motley outlines<br />
of green brawny zeal and robust brawn —<br />
the cowboy, the fireman, the doctor and the astronaut —<br />
rosy destinies painted pointedly on the blocks<br />
that promised eternal rainbows of freedom<br />
the women on the puzzle —<br />
the nurse, the ballerina, the mother —<br />
were allowed only simple short hyphens of coal<br />
dashes of smiles that disguised<br />
muzzled mouths and straitjacketed souls<br />
harnessed angels in weathered, tawny leather of doubt<br />
she scooped up the ballerina by the buttery, yellow knob<br />
crudely jammed into its pink satin abdomen<br />
she willed away its corseted pain<br />
and chucked it across the room<br />
and at the same time released herself<br />
because all such beautiful things deserve to be free<br />
105
SOMETHING PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND<br />
ON THE BALCONY, LOOKING AT THE<br />
MOUNTAINS…REALITY IS A FLOWER<br />
Diego Tobin<br />
Standing there bobbing your head<br />
all your organs in a suitcase- skin a big disguise<br />
somewhere that internal voice<br />
in hysterics, is suddenly vacating<br />
the soul’s bordelloit<br />
says drunken things to you, things like this:<br />
You’re sitting in the water, half-dead<br />
acting cruel in a cruel body<br />
taking breaks in between to maintain stamina, the flowers slouch in the vase<br />
and the voice continues like God:<br />
Are these drive-by television ads? Can you hear the radio loud enough? Talking over the<br />
radio- are you in tune?<br />
Are you thinking of a clean getaway?<br />
Are the years hidden in your pockets, weighing you down?<br />
106
Thomas Webster<br />
Trichocereus<br />
Archival Digital Print on Canson Baryta 13”x20”<br />
107
Is your mother bitter?<br />
Have you ended up like father?<br />
Have the roses swallowed you up, when you look too close? Have the creeps and the<br />
shudders torn your pages in two? Has your internal voice coughed up something black?<br />
In other words,<br />
the cloth swaddling the world<br />
becomes undone.<br />
And regarding history and fleshmy<br />
thought bubble<br />
now in a plume of gun smoke, as somewhere in the distance, below<br />
shouts<br />
A woman in the street to her sister, in the desert air<br />
something is playing in the background, while I sit on the balcony watching the mountains.<br />
Suddenly, the voice<br />
whispers of unease in the world opium den,<br />
while everyone in the room begins to jeer<br />
mid-laughter the clock strikes 12<br />
the room can hear everything<br />
and the revisit is cut short, by some suited, cruel-looking men.<br />
The pulsing yesterdayand<br />
yesterday’s decor, yellowed from fire in the sky<br />
sitting outside while metropolitan muzak joins the sobbing trafficmy<br />
true love’s voice disappears down the roadbecomes<br />
the horizon<br />
and its vacuum eyes.<br />
and its vacuum eyes.<br />
108
Sometimes, the voice grabs ahold of another<br />
outstretched hand<br />
and there’s a blossoming Goddess<br />
with her wilted facewho<br />
says sweet nothings about your own history, unrefined.<br />
Sweet nothings and<br />
its petals of reality that have escaped you<br />
SOMETHING PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND on the balcony, looking at the mountains,<br />
Growing, outstretched<br />
Overgrown,<br />
Reality is a flower...<br />
...Are the stars a perpetual audience?<br />
Do they look at you kindly from their banisters?<br />
Does this poem<br />
sound like a<br />
rose hitting the stage floor?<br />
109
LEMONS AND ORANGES<br />
T. Gullett<br />
Hello darling, how are you?<br />
I’ve been busy, if you couldn’t tell<br />
by the ink in the table grooves and the<br />
acrylic on my shirt and the graphite on<br />
my hands staining the curve of my palms.<br />
I’ve been trying to keep myself focused,<br />
busy while you’re away, and I just-<br />
Well to speak plainly, my love,<br />
I feel half-faint from the fixatives, and<br />
half-drunk on paint water and the sight of your face.<br />
I keep trying to work on my lessons,<br />
the poster for that theater, the landscape for<br />
that exhibit, the open-form for that show, but<br />
I keep returning to the curl of your smile,<br />
the dip of your shoulders and the slope of your back.<br />
The camera might wash you out, leach all the color,<br />
but I see the color of your tie in my paint,<br />
your eyes in the bottom of my morning cup,<br />
your hair in the graphite I lay on the page.<br />
No classical muse, maybe, but mine anyways.<br />
Yes, I’m using your mug right now,<br />
Lemons because I’m so bitter.<br />
But, my love, you sweeten just like them<br />
with a bit of sugar and care, a tender touch,<br />
and, honey, it’s far lonelier without you.<br />
110
It may be warmer here, but that means<br />
no place for my sweaters, the scarf you bought<br />
me in ’99, no excuse to slide my hand into your<br />
coat pocket, your grumble about the chill even as<br />
you’d kiss them warm when we got back.<br />
Yes, alright, sue me, I’m nostalgic for our city,<br />
where I ran as a young man and where we got all<br />
tangled up together. Nostalgic for the cold and the cat<br />
on the fire escape and the horrible coffee in the cafeteria<br />
of that place you worked and still work at, but most of all-<br />
I just miss you, plain and simple. Miss your cologne<br />
on my jacket and dinner on your breaks, the taste of honey<br />
custard on your mouth. I miss your shirts next to mine, and<br />
the sound of your laugh underneath the yellowed lights.<br />
Is our Greek place still open? I’ve been dreaming about it.<br />
They haven’t extended my contract yet, no, but there’s been<br />
murmurs. I think I’ll try to come back for the summer though,<br />
work on my plans while draped over you. No, you won’t be a<br />
distraction, well, not much, of one, but… It’s all about balance,<br />
and I think we’re good at that by now, aren’t we?<br />
If you want to visit instead, I found another Greek place. Their<br />
custard doesn’t taste the same, too sweet, but maybe you’d<br />
balance it out, my bitter darling. You could steal your mug back,<br />
even, if you really wanted to, and give mine back. Oranges are<br />
a dime-a-dozen here, so it wouldn’t be that out of place.<br />
111
Claudia Nazario<br />
Franny<br />
Painting, Oil on Canvas 16”x20”<br />
112
IT’S A DREAM<br />
Esmeralda Garcia<br />
TThose brown eyes you wish you could stare into<br />
The unique pools of honey, a different type of hue<br />
It’s a dream<br />
The soft skin you wish to touch<br />
Person whom you love so very much<br />
It’s a dream<br />
The slightest smirk will make you blush<br />
Your heart and mind, it feels like a rush<br />
It’s a dream<br />
Cheek being so softly caressed<br />
Absence of this feeling distressed<br />
It’s a dream<br />
Walking hand in hand<br />
Toes in the sand<br />
It’s a dream<br />
Avoiding to look into the eyes<br />
It’s time to say your goodbyes<br />
It’s a dream.<br />
113
LOOK TOO SEE<br />
George Key<br />
When we open one eye, we clearly see<br />
cousins in search for another church. They<br />
hope to have tickets on the gray dog north.<br />
Perhaps a shower, new clothes, a bar of soap?<br />
When we open one eye, we clearly see<br />
signs mark failed crossings of lower life<br />
of silhouetted fleeing families snuffed,<br />
by those drunken sailors who plead no sight.<br />
When we open one eye, we clearly see<br />
flags marking blue barrels of Christian deeds<br />
quite carefully placed with love beneath a tree<br />
moisten the lips of survivors that flee.<br />
When we open one eye, we clearly see<br />
brothers and sister’s bleed. They, them there, those people<br />
delight in our pain, be it by whip or chain.<br />
All pain be done burnt, strung up, and tree hung.<br />
When we open one eye, we clearly see<br />
Orangutan Towers sitting high looking down<br />
upon those running from death yet to be free<br />
self-proclaimed elector, insurrectionary.<br />
When we open our eyes, we clearly see<br />
the bigot’s motto spewing Langston’s words.<br />
there is no we, they, us, nor team, rather,<br />
me, mine, my fallaciously inflated self.<br />
114
Kimberly Calles<br />
Solitude<br />
Digital Photograph 8”x10”<br />
115
Grace Johnson<br />
Red Eastern Screech Owl<br />
Traditionally Illustrated, Changed to Digital 8”x10” - 8”x91/2”<br />
116
STRANGE WEATHER<br />
Kentaro Herder<br />
for every bird chirping,<br />
there is a brown boy crying<br />
for Coca-Cola<br />
for milk.<br />
if bright brown had to be one name,<br />
I would call it monsoon<br />
where and when a wet dog<br />
turns into mud.<br />
a black shirt drowns in explosion,<br />
bleach is used to tie dye,<br />
a grandfather is still<br />
in war, sun rays abort on beaches.<br />
a jet soars above,<br />
one rock tumbles down a canyon side,<br />
a grandma turns the faucet<br />
of a church sink.<br />
a sheep is hung, and a throat is slit<br />
blood drips into Tupperware,<br />
there is strange weather<br />
in my lungs.<br />
117
CAROUSEL<br />
Luke Cottrell<br />
Carousel winding and troubled children<br />
whine for Mama and Dada.<br />
Carousel winding and exhausted parents<br />
say “you’ll understand when you’re older.”<br />
Carousel winding and jaded teenagers<br />
dream of independence at eighteen<br />
Carousel winding and struggling people<br />
sell their energy and time to keep alive.<br />
Carousel winding and retired wrinkles<br />
form where the grind wore its grooves.<br />
Carousel winding and senile patients<br />
are left to make sense of the traces of memory.<br />
Carousel winding and struggling people<br />
pay another fee to bury their dead.<br />
Carousel winding although<br />
it’s running out of oil.<br />
Carousel winding and the cynical ones<br />
shake their fists at the clinking gears.<br />
Carousel winding and nobody knows<br />
what they would do if the carousel stopped.<br />
118
Ulises Ramos<br />
Dejen Al Musico Dormir<br />
Digital Drawing 6”x 9”<br />
119
Danielle Bond<br />
V Day a Series: 6<br />
Photograph 8”x10”<br />
120
MORE THAN ANYTHING<br />
Luke Eriksson<br />
You and me<br />
naked in a double bed with a plush blanket<br />
and there is a small dog there licking our faces.<br />
We might be on shrooms or molly, but it is an equally intimate experience, sober -<br />
and it is peaking.<br />
The experience<br />
and the dog is barking at us because it does not really know what sex looks like<br />
and we both come and lie back down -<br />
and pass a joint or a cigarette or a nothing between us as you rest your head on my chest<br />
and tell me you can hear my heartbeat,<br />
and every part of my body is holding you -<br />
and we are both still except for the gentle movement of fingertips on skin.<br />
If you let me<br />
I would be whatever you wanted me to -<br />
your gay best friend<br />
your dominator,<br />
the recipient of your redirected self-hatred (you are not the first) -<br />
your shoulder to cry on -<br />
the crying person who makes your shoulder feel needed,<br />
the bearer of your most fucked-up secrets.<br />
The only thing I really just can’t be for you<br />
is someone who has moved on,<br />
and someone who does not see your face in every new person I meet.<br />
121
OVERKILL<br />
Luke Eriksson<br />
Content Warning: Queerphobia, Addiction<br />
They let you up and shove you back down again maybe a dozen times.<br />
The football helmet does not protect your nine-year-old head from the hard ground.<br />
That ugly, ugly word<br />
being chanted with a laugh (with a sick, sadistic fucking laugh)<br />
The world is bad, you think to yourself – It must be<br />
Either you are fundamentally bad or the world is, and you refuse to accept the former<br />
when you’re only nine.<br />
You come to discover that the world was built by and for people unlike yourself and that<br />
you would do well to say no to it.<br />
Participate along with billions of other outcasts in the grand, grand refusal of all that this<br />
world deems good and holy.<br />
It is really a beautiful freedom.<br />
The free fall into the void provides a more thrilling rush than any rollercoaster or<br />
horror flick.<br />
Who is to say if it is wrong that tonight you will ride the train -<br />
The hard drugs and alcohol train of course<br />
right up until the edge of the cliff<br />
looking down into the void<br />
Death, sublime oblivion, nirvana, escape at all costs<br />
Your intellect does not protect your seventeen-year-old head from the excruciating<br />
122
hangover -<br />
As you have countless times before, last night you came so close to never seeing another<br />
tomorrow -<br />
not that you even really wanted to see tomorrow all that much,<br />
you think and rationalize and tell your family members circled around you during the<br />
intervention.<br />
That they don’t, they couldn’t understand. They might as well be villains for trying to<br />
change you<br />
Leave and drink<br />
The voice says, and you oblige -<br />
you keep obliging until the worse possible outcome, the unthinkable loss of the single<br />
human being you loved the most -<br />
and through the burning hell of that most intolerable depression you abandon<br />
everything in search of a new way of being.<br />
You scream “God help me” in the manner of a man falling off the Golden Gate<br />
Bridge.<br />
Now you are twenty and in rehab and six months sober and, even without sex or drugs,<br />
happy -<br />
and you wonder what all that kicking and screaming, and self-destruction was really for,<br />
and that now that you have finally crossed over and seen the other side of pain.<br />
What message could I possibly have given that scared, angry little boy?<br />
You aren’t as alone as you think you are<br />
don’t give up or lose hope,<br />
the strength to love yourself has always been within you.<br />
Trite and cliché I know – probably so much so that he would not listen,<br />
but it is okay,<br />
because I am listening now.<br />
123
Abigale Robles<br />
A Friday Night Downtown<br />
Drawing, Bristol Paper and Micron Pens<br />
124
A RETURN<br />
M.J. Copic<br />
Set out on the open road<br />
Clear blue skies above<br />
Flat desert dirt below<br />
The occasional saguaro<br />
Standing tall and proud<br />
Or not<br />
Fluffy white clouds gather<br />
The words OSTRICH FARM<br />
In bold letters by the road<br />
The Peak rising high<br />
Breaking up the skyline<br />
Tearing it apart<br />
Miles and miles pass in a blur<br />
With nothing to do but<br />
Turn up the radio<br />
And look for dust devils<br />
More cars now, too many<br />
Fast fast fast and we blow<br />
Past the casino, the outlets<br />
Pass by my old high school and<br />
The parks I spent tipsy nights at<br />
Keep going, further still<br />
Merge here, right by the big<br />
Shamrock Farms and ugly<br />
Bridge, the mismatched one,<br />
And finally whip past the roller<br />
Coaster park by the freeway<br />
Turn left, fly by the old liquor<br />
Store that my mom bought<br />
Beer from underage, past her parent’s<br />
Pink house and just one more<br />
Right turn and everything is finally<br />
Orange trees<br />
125
DRAGONS CAN BE<br />
KILLED<br />
M.J. Copic<br />
Do not stray, my child,<br />
This house, it is not safe.<br />
Floorboards creak and shift<br />
And shudder as you pace.<br />
These dark walls are so thin<br />
And, my child, I do not know<br />
What kinds of toothy monsters<br />
May be listening from below.<br />
Shadows creep, so hungry,<br />
Crawling all around the floor<br />
Please, my child, leave me<br />
And run, run, for the door.<br />
If you will not leave me here<br />
Then we must stand and fight.<br />
Chin up, my child, have some faith<br />
Tomorrow we see the light.<br />
126
Grace Johnson<br />
Taurus<br />
Traditionally Illustrated, Changed to Digital 8”x10”- 8”x 91/2”<br />
127
Weston Lane<br />
Dotted Cat<br />
Graphite Drawing 91/2”x111/2”<br />
128
STRENGTH<br />
M.J. Copic<br />
Follow bloody footprints<br />
Ignore the whispered warnings<br />
March up to the lion’s cage<br />
And aid them in their mourning<br />
The lion keepers smile wide<br />
Teeth sharper than their charges<br />
As they point to all the joy they bring<br />
They don’t mention how this started<br />
Look into the lion’s eyes<br />
And see the lies writ plain<br />
These creatures are not happy here<br />
The cages are their pain<br />
Their keepers are not keepers kind<br />
Nor help the way they claim<br />
They rule with fear and iron fists<br />
In their attempts to tame<br />
So push the cage doors open wide<br />
And throw away the key<br />
Run with the lions, don’t look back<br />
Finally you are free<br />
129
TIME BLURRED/<br />
TIEMPO<br />
DIFUMINADO<br />
Mara Durán<br />
Dreams<br />
that<br />
fade<br />
and<br />
give<br />
shape<br />
a<br />
small<br />
illusions<br />
painted<br />
of<br />
colors<br />
Sueños<br />
que<br />
desvanecen<br />
y<br />
dan<br />
forma<br />
a<br />
pequeñas<br />
ilusiones<br />
pintadas<br />
de<br />
colores<br />
130
Brianna Stevens<br />
Garden Spirit<br />
Illustration, Digital, Photoshop 8”x11”<br />
131
Abigale Robles<br />
Masks in COVID-19<br />
Drawing, Bristol Paper and Micron Pens<br />
132
QUARANTINED<br />
Mauricia Manuel<br />
Confined to this house<br />
concealed inside,<br />
missing rain and shine,<br />
whether employed or a child.<br />
Attempting abnormal rituals of sanitizer spritz,<br />
rubber hands, and hidden smiles<br />
expressionless eyes exposed.<br />
Crow’s feet are rare, but warmly welcomed<br />
knowing we are all still reaching out.<br />
Confined to this draining mindset<br />
cornered by fear,<br />
what-ifs and false facts,<br />
eliminating playgrounds from molding minds.<br />
Stuck on exhausted screens<br />
poor connection, virtually distant chats,<br />
searching for new hobbies to counteract the deterioration<br />
in order to defeat covid confusion.<br />
133
REPUDIATION<br />
Mauricia Manuel<br />
How do I present myself to the world, to my family?<br />
Show who I am when I’ve barely had enough time to figure it out.<br />
I’ve been up against the ropes, bound by sealed lips for too long,<br />
shushed and dismissed when my views are too different.<br />
I become a know-it-all when showing passion for facts, “too eager to show off.”<br />
But keeping quiet implies “I’m too good to fit in.”<br />
Sometimes I hold my tongue,<br />
but my temper tends to slip passed gritted teeth.<br />
I’ll kick and curse only to still go unheard,<br />
labeled less of a lady by the ears my venom reached.<br />
Always encouraged by pinched finger tips sliding across lips<br />
silencing my opinions, my plea to be me.<br />
I can smile politely and wait my turn to speak, maybe go unnoticed<br />
or I can be the child my mother forged from observation.<br />
Loud and demanding of attention,<br />
hated by all, but standing with strength.<br />
Cutting others with the sharpness of her tongue,<br />
rolling eyes and snapping fingers until she feels she’s won.<br />
Believing such a hard shell is always necessary loses your courtesy,<br />
the softness gone from your face and mind, becoming an obtuse persona.<br />
I’m only wanting to speak how I feel, say what I want, to be who I am,<br />
without being accused of being my mother’s daughter.<br />
134
Desert Ehrhart<br />
Portrait<br />
Painting, Oil on Canvas<br />
135
WATER<br />
Kentaro Herder<br />
your mother carried you through new moon<br />
and full moon<br />
creating craters<br />
here you are out of your mother’s<br />
cratered womb<br />
your mother birthed you<br />
along a stream<br />
creating a river<br />
here you are raging and choking in your mother’s<br />
quivering rain<br />
your mother shed tears six generations<br />
deep, you seven<br />
creating pain<br />
soiled tears<br />
here you are drinking recycled rain from your mother’s<br />
136
your mother suffered the loss of<br />
blood, fed by the river<br />
creating a sea<br />
thick blood<br />
here you are drowning in a flood of your mother’s<br />
your mother drank from the nearby pond,<br />
birthed by the Earth<br />
creating you<br />
black oil<br />
here you are bathing in<br />
your mother buried by the Earth,<br />
now shallow with no ocean<br />
here you are,<br />
no sea,<br />
no pond,<br />
no tears<br />
creating,<br />
nothing.<br />
137
UNSHROUDED<br />
Michele Worthington<br />
They brought their dogs<br />
as they were told<br />
and all of their belongings, worn<br />
or folded into small bundles,<br />
set upon the station platform<br />
waiting in sepia.<br />
The command to separate shouted<br />
and punctuated by bayonets<br />
pushed the last ones down the tracks<br />
bare and shorn of history<br />
vacant, baskets and blankets left untaken.<br />
Abandoned,<br />
the pack tried to follow<br />
loping faster as the wheels gained speed until<br />
the train was no longer in sight<br />
just puffs of white<br />
and a mechanical scent<br />
of loss<br />
in the desert.<br />
Howls faded into the air<br />
echoes of when<br />
they had fellowed with them over the Bering<br />
and down into the continent<br />
incanting Athabaskan, panting<br />
sheltering together under bellowing clouds<br />
pulling pole sleds covered with cook pots<br />
and cloth dolls and ghost-borne stories<br />
helping hunt the giant sloths and mastodon.<br />
And now the only remnant<br />
of the Pleistocene<br />
is the shadow of the condor<br />
sweeping the periphery<br />
of the hollow west.<br />
138
Mya Palacios<br />
Emotional Growth<br />
Color Pencil and Acrylic 13”x16”<br />
139
Thurwin Lane<br />
Saving The Heart<br />
Conte Sticks on Steel Gray Tone Paper 191/2”x201/2”<br />
140
ICE CANNOT BE<br />
UNMELTED<br />
Michele Worthington<br />
At first, we tinkered<br />
and diverted the flow<br />
of the Tigris<br />
to irrigate rice<br />
Just rearrange the stones<br />
and it is undone<br />
back to the beginning<br />
But slight footprints in mud<br />
can be traced, millennia later<br />
and microbial stowaways<br />
in bilges of ships<br />
can undo the drift<br />
of tectonic plates<br />
in a day and a night<br />
A small campfire<br />
compared to a volcano<br />
is inconsequential<br />
but the conversation around it<br />
builds temples to goddesses<br />
and eventually<br />
a hydroelectric dam<br />
across the Nile<br />
Digging for coal by shovel<br />
has no earthquake Richter<br />
and diatoms ignited<br />
are measured in magnitudes<br />
of parts per million<br />
but inevitably<br />
the heat exceeds<br />
in Fahrenheit degrees<br />
what can be weighted<br />
One mammal alone<br />
from the cut forest<br />
is not missed by the tigress<br />
but its tiny internal biome<br />
finds a preordained<br />
eternal home<br />
all around the globe<br />
Our disaster is not so bad<br />
compared to that asteroid<br />
but history cannot be undrowned<br />
and nothing can be put back<br />
by moving stones<br />
141
WHERE I AM FROM<br />
Raiden Lopez<br />
I am from José & Hollyanna,<br />
Virginia & Donald,<br />
Adalberto & Ana.<br />
From the great mountain ranges and Ranches of Cucurpe Mexico and Barcelona Spain.<br />
I am from decedents of Mexican royalty and Spaniard Warriors<br />
From writers,<br />
singers,<br />
musicians,<br />
artists<br />
and architects.<br />
I am from those who envisioned more from their life than those of their parents.<br />
From horseback riders,<br />
cattle herders,<br />
river swimmers,<br />
and dancers in the rain.<br />
I am from sitting around the fire every night,<br />
telling stories,<br />
making music lovers.<br />
From women who believed hard work goes into every marriage and there is no such thing<br />
as divorce.<br />
I am from women who work all day and still came home to take care of their family.<br />
From mothers who taught their daughters and sons it is alright to love a partner but also to<br />
love yourself.<br />
142
Javier Dosamantes<br />
For She Had Eyes<br />
Graphite and Digital 81/2”x11”<br />
I am from strong, valiant men and women who protected their country.<br />
From men who respect their women and treat them like queens because they are<br />
cherished above all others.<br />
I am from Gentlemen and Ladies who wanted their values passed on.<br />
These values have shaped my life and<br />
from the spirit I inherited from those before me<br />
I created my own rhythm I dance to.<br />
143
GROUNDHOG DAY<br />
Salina Molina<br />
On the day I found my first gray hair<br />
Three and a half legs on a coyote<br />
Wandered through my parking lot<br />
In search of a restful place to lay<br />
My face cringed with the uneven saunter<br />
My heart broke at the pack animal’s loneliness<br />
My soul wept for the anxious smile on its face<br />
A dying coyote, always my February omen<br />
On the day I found my first gray hair<br />
Two pieces of first quarter moon<br />
Hung in the air from a bright red string<br />
Like a Raytheon-branded stress ball<br />
Glowing fluorescent neon and needlessly<br />
Forcing me back into a Spencer’s Gifts<br />
So I can pay my formal respects<br />
To versions of myself that never came to be<br />
On the day I found my first gray hair<br />
Sixteen-year-old me ditched class<br />
In the body of a twenty-six-year-old<br />
And felt like an asshole about it, but still<br />
Insisted on grabbing anxiety’s hand, excuses’ leg<br />
So I could run far, far away into an abyss with them<br />
Where we swapped recipes and clicked pens<br />
Sitting in a semicircle to feel less alone<br />
144
On the day I found my first gray hair<br />
A queer friendly show about bondage<br />
Freed me ten episodes in, self-imposed<br />
Restraints lifted by appreciative laughter<br />
Now vacant to use as anchors to dream reality<br />
A reality where the feeling of being seen by myself<br />
Is a given rather than an earned privilege<br />
And I never wake up from the dream<br />
On the day I found my first gray hair<br />
One strand of silk began to glow from the top of my head<br />
I learned to treasure the Easter grass I was sprouting<br />
My mind’s pores revealed to me a diamond tether<br />
I discovered a piece of rainbow tinsel growing<br />
Out of my skull, so bright, so shiny, so youthful,<br />
So vibrant, my mirror’s new best friend, wisdom<br />
Fostered by trauma and funneled through a follicle<br />
145
WHEN NO ONE’S LOOKING<br />
Salina Molina<br />
Were you the excited dog in the car next to me,<br />
body happily contorted to maximize the wind on your face<br />
as you barked frantically at all the other cars around you<br />
on a highway so far away, you’d never be able to envision it?<br />
For all I know,<br />
You go for car rides down strange highways everyday<br />
and lick yourself when no one’s looking,<br />
but only if your owner’s car has come to a complete stop.<br />
Were you the baby being pushed in the stroller,<br />
skin red and feet excitedly kicking at the morning sun<br />
like you just couldn’t wait to get at life and all it has<br />
in store for you, on a Main avenue that looks like any other?<br />
For all I know,<br />
you’ll grow up to be happy, successful, and well-adjusted,<br />
your baby feet kicking until the day you die<br />
and filling in all the gaps to make your life whole.<br />
Were you the old man in that window today,<br />
staring, bored, from an unhappy building<br />
trim: red but faded like the Golden Gate Bridge<br />
on a corner near a bus stop 2,000 miles away?<br />
For all I know,<br />
you’ve lived there since the late seventies<br />
and only stay because of the carpet in the living room:<br />
it’s brighter than the rest of the apartment<br />
glowing with the memory of your children’s first steps<br />
and the idea of losing that small piece of magic<br />
that life so graciously blessed you with<br />
once upon a time, is absolutely unfathomable to you.<br />
146
Monica Nelson<br />
My Dads Favorite Teapot<br />
Stippling 8”x16”<br />
147
Yanna Aiken<br />
Am I Worth Love<br />
Colored Pencil<br />
148
FALLING STARS<br />
Sierra Vigil<br />
To: Earth<br />
The crickets sing their melody<br />
stars dive into the sea<br />
simple beauty shrouded in sheer mystery,<br />
divine.<br />
Interstellar pilgrimage to earth<br />
a race to see who can kiss her first.<br />
“We have travelled lifetimes<br />
(just to hold you)<br />
and to lay upon your rocky face<br />
Weathered with reverent age<br />
We have fallen intensely<br />
for your craters.”<br />
Deeper than the ocean<br />
Eternal love unbroken<br />
atmospheric kisses<br />
Set<br />
them<br />
ablaze<br />
“Unpack all our clutter<br />
as we explode<br />
right under<br />
your watchful bright eye,<br />
the prettiest yellow gaze.<br />
We are torn asunder<br />
as we explode with wonder<br />
everything we dreamed of<br />
no more floating restless days”<br />
Yours truly,<br />
Falling Stars<br />
149
PRETTIER IF YOU SMILED<br />
Solace Bergman<br />
A response to to Lucille Clifton’s homage to my hips.<br />
these teeth are crooked teeth,<br />
they are chipped perfection,<br />
partitioning tongue and cheek.<br />
they do not stand<br />
in straight lines at attention.<br />
these teeth are sovereign teeth,<br />
they refuse to be bound by metal bars.<br />
they lean and jut like teenage hips<br />
cradled by loving lips. these teeth will<br />
cut through kisses like a knife.<br />
these teeth are biting teeth,<br />
I have known them to<br />
chew a man up and<br />
spit him out like gristle on a steak!<br />
150
Rhea Stanley<br />
Scorned<br />
Oil Painting, 16”x20”<br />
151
Desiree Garcia<br />
Raven’s Skull<br />
Drawing Paper, Ink, Ballpoint Pen, Spray Paint, Wax 28”x 34”<br />
152
CA CONRAD’S SQUIRREL<br />
Travis Cooper<br />
I accidentally kicked a wooden squirrel.<br />
Shmoo said the squirrel cursed me<br />
so I burned it in the firepit,<br />
its chirpy face smiled at me as it blackened.<br />
That night I dreamt of the burnt squirrel,<br />
it took my giant nut—<br />
the one I was saving to pay rent.<br />
It darted to the top of my bookcase<br />
and spoke in a high-pitched helium voice,<br />
“You can have your nut, if you sign the Devil’s book”<br />
Nuts are so expensive these days.<br />
I woke up hungry<br />
Shmoo made blueberry pancakes<br />
She asked where her heirloom squirrel was<br />
I said I didn’t know.<br />
153
PLEADS TO THE VIRGIN MARY<br />
Veronica Martinez<br />
I slam my tender wrists onto the cold tile, hoping for the chipped ceramic to<br />
stab through my palms, for crimson to stream down the powder blue counter onto<br />
the floor of the empty bathroom, pooling around my bare feet as I stare wide-eyed<br />
into the reflection of a stranger. The purple marks under my jaw scream and echo<br />
through my conscience and my mother’s voice rattles my eardrums. Hail Mary, full of<br />
grace, the Lord is with thee…His chapped lips hungry against my thin neck have left<br />
a consequence for my actions, the lust churning at the bottom of my stomach now<br />
replaced with guilt. He doesn’t love me. He never will. My lips merely an outlet for his<br />
desire, my body merely an object for his disposal. Blessed art thou among women,<br />
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus… I pray over the water rushing out of the<br />
rusted faucet. Faith and rigidity ingrained onto my shoulders. Religion, a sharp pain<br />
piercing my side at the thought of his hand gripping my hip and his bottom lip on my<br />
collar bone. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners. Now, and at the hour of<br />
our death…I pray that my body will still be a temple. I pray that God will never tell<br />
them. I pray for forgiveness. Amen.<br />
154
Rick Spriggs<br />
Red Top<br />
Ceramic 11”H x9”D<br />
155
Yanna Aiken<br />
Am I Worth Life<br />
Colored Pencil<br />
156
DYING<br />
Yareli Sanchez<br />
How am I drowning when breathing air?<br />
Trying to breathe<br />
trying to think<br />
something so simple seems so impossible now.<br />
What comes first<br />
breathing to think or to think to breathe?<br />
Something so simple seems so impossible now.<br />
What is there for me to do when I am counting my last breath?<br />
Countless questions<br />
where are my answers?<br />
Trying to breathe, trying to think<br />
think...breathe...think<br />
breathe...think...breathe<br />
think<br />
breathe<br />
...<br />
157
DREAMERS<br />
Zoe Galmarini<br />
We are dreamers.<br />
We want things we can’t have and<br />
people who do not care.<br />
We say things to get us by,<br />
but never stay long enough to hear.<br />
158
Weston Lane<br />
Feminine Masculinity<br />
Digital Painting 8”x10”<br />
159
Portia Cooper<br />
Rodent<br />
India Ink, Fineliner Pen, and White Pen on Bristol Paper, 41/2”x3”<br />
160
RIPPED AND SCATTERED<br />
Mark Anthony Ferguson<br />
When your soulmate leaves you,<br />
it’s like leaving the dentist after having your wisdom teeth removed.<br />
You wake up feeling nothing and no senses seem to work properly.<br />
You feel nothing for quite a while until the pain hits you like a wall.<br />
And when it hits, you find the pain is merciless.<br />
You take old memories like meds to try to soothe yourself,<br />
only to find out that meds don’t work on pain like this.<br />
When your soulmate leaves you,<br />
It’s like leaving the dentist after having your wisdom teeth removed,<br />
A part of you has been ripped out.<br />
When your soulmate leaves you,<br />
It’s like you lose all your leaves, like the trees in autumn after a long, fruitful summer.<br />
Each moment of investment flutters to the ground.<br />
They are raked up, played with, then disposed of.<br />
When winter hits, you try to hide in your new clothes; frozen, stripped, colorless.<br />
Your skeleton feels like a pile of ridiculous sticks in snow,<br />
With the potential to become a snowman, but no such thing is made.<br />
When your soulmate leaves you,<br />
It’s like you lose all your leaves like the trees in autumn after a long, fruitful summer.<br />
Little bits of you lie scattered on the ground.<br />
When your soulmate leaves you,<br />
You feel numb and empty.<br />
Your memories haunt you, perhaps forever.<br />
The worst is when your soulmate tells you they love you while en route to another person’s heart.<br />
You gave all your love like an addict who spent all they have on coke.<br />
You feel lower than the dirt, no, like you’re frozen in outer space,<br />
When your soulmate marries someone else.<br />
When your soulmate leaves you,<br />
You wish the best for whoever they are with.<br />
A part of you is ripped out and scattered on the ground.<br />
161
THE MESQUITES KEEP YOUR<br />
SECRETS, BUT THE SAGUAROS<br />
KNOW YOUR SINS<br />
Elena Acuna<br />
The desert is unforgiving<br />
Abuelita leaves out clay bowls to collect rainwater<br />
Lets the javelinas and the coyotes drink it all up<br />
Watches the sky paint the red clay dark<br />
I try to tell her that she has done her part<br />
She can rest now<br />
“The desert is unforgiving,” she tells me<br />
“Los mezquites guardan tus secretos pero los saguaros conocen tus<br />
pecados, Mija.”<br />
I want to tell her what I’ve done<br />
Ask her if she thinks the prickly pears will still bloom for me in the springtime<br />
Welcome me with open palms<br />
How many secrets will those mesquites really keep<br />
When you are caught beneath the moon<br />
Does she tell the coyotes<br />
will I hear it in their howls<br />
The desert is unforgiving<br />
I want to ask her if she thinks it will find a woman worth forgiving in me.<br />
162
Rhea Stanley<br />
Tonight<br />
Charcoal 14”x17”<br />
163
Sofia Fetsis<br />
Falling Magic<br />
Photograph 8”x10”<br />
164
SHE WAS NEAR<br />
Desert Ehrhart<br />
She was near.<br />
I could tell as the air was thickened and moist<br />
and electric, stimulating my senses.<br />
I was once caught on the wrong side, at the wrong time,<br />
wandering the wrong arroyo,<br />
taken down, washed away in a flood<br />
with the rest of the unsuspecting debris.<br />
When she came in, the sky was fierce and pouring, lightning cracking.<br />
The streets already flooding.<br />
With the long drawn out heat of summer,<br />
thoroughly penetrating, beat into everything,<br />
heavy, pressing me further<br />
into the depths of my mattress, sheets strewn far from me.<br />
I was ready for the release.<br />
And as quickly as her presence and the floods poured in,<br />
the sky became clear<br />
and the sun again upon me.<br />
My only memory of her found through the following weeks<br />
in the lush growth and bloom of the desert.<br />
Monsoon season.<br />
165
THE BOOK OF LIFE<br />
Samantha Barrera<br />
There comes a time within one’s life, when you start to reminisce.<br />
Was every hope that came before this moment all for this?<br />
At what point do we reach the chapter when we finally come of age,<br />
where life, it finally all makes sense; where can we find that page?<br />
We spend our childhood years, dreaming of the very day,<br />
that we step into our adult self; oh, how we wish our youth away.<br />
Yet when we peel away the layers of growth and wisdom gained,<br />
it seems within every one of us, our core remains the same.<br />
There long yearns an inner child seeking happiness and love.<br />
Now tell me, in which chapter of life can I find such things thereof?<br />
Although it’s hard to stop and pause in the continuity of life’s book,<br />
I encourage you to find the time to take another look.<br />
166
Does love pour from the pursuit of the ultimate career?<br />
Or is happiness defined by the quest of an academic frontier?<br />
Are we fulfilled by our relationships built with family and flames?<br />
Or can these be met with times of friction, turbulence, and strain?<br />
The truth is, life is fragile, and no single source alone,<br />
can be cited to reference all the joy that we long for in our bones.<br />
Life is constant and it is ruthless, we cannot predict the times of plight,<br />
but we can take charge of how the story unfolds, with the words we choose to write.<br />
For you are not a character in someone else’s fiction.<br />
Let your wildest dreams unfold; there is no limit or restriction.<br />
Don’t let life turn the page and simply wait for come what may.<br />
Put pen to paper and write your story, for your future starts today.<br />
167
OPTIONS<br />
Salina Molina<br />
a. Order a fresh limbic system<br />
new on Amazon for $229.50<br />
in a shrink-wrapped,<br />
temperature-controlled box<br />
with all the manuals<br />
and step-by-step instructions<br />
to install it yourself,<br />
or used for $137.74 plus $14.99 shipping<br />
if you’re feeling lucky.<br />
b. Sever all the synapses<br />
that allow information<br />
to zig-zag around your brain<br />
with something heavy and final<br />
like a small pick-axe or some bleach<br />
so the neurons that torture you<br />
each and every day<br />
can feel just as stranded and helpless<br />
as you do at their eternal movements.<br />
c. Immerse yourself in the static of art and music,<br />
poetry and film, hot tea and<br />
blankets that were knit with love,<br />
and enrich your broken life<br />
with neglect, with too many dabs<br />
with gallons of wine, until your brain<br />
is so numb to itself<br />
that you only have to confront<br />
the absolute disarray of your amygdala<br />
in dreams.<br />
168
Abigale Robles<br />
A Snake in Chaos<br />
Drawing, Bristol Paper and Micron Pens<br />
169
Miyeon Kim<br />
Survival<br />
Acrylic, 13”x17”<br />
170
SIREN CALL<br />
Elena Acuna<br />
She ducks in from the cold<br />
Red clinging to her cheeks like it’s never known<br />
Roses<br />
Or blood<br />
Or fire<br />
You assume everyone in the room feels the way you do<br />
Captivated<br />
Awestruck<br />
You wonder what her voice sounds like<br />
The kind that draws fishermen from their vessels to the bottom of the sea<br />
The way her eyes scan the room<br />
How softly she rests her chin against her palm<br />
She is washing over you and it’s easy to imagine the way it feels to drown at the hands<br />
Of a woman like this<br />
She goes as quickly as she came<br />
Takes all of the air out of the room with her as she does<br />
If I existed the way she did<br />
Swallowed up the room as I walked into it<br />
Would it be enough?<br />
A man choosing between a savior and a siren is never wise enough to stay ashore<br />
171
George Key<br />
Esperanza<br />
Photograph<br />
172
ENROBE YOURSELF IN<br />
VELVET<br />
Salina Molina<br />
Surround your mirrors with candles<br />
of various sizes and shapes<br />
and light them as you pass by<br />
so the height of each flame<br />
can illuminate a different part of yourself<br />
you no longer wish to see.<br />
Cloak your eyes in a haze of smoke:<br />
incense, cigarettes, old journal pages,<br />
and good old-fashioned weed by-products,<br />
to further obscure the image you have of yourself<br />
and worsen that astigmatism<br />
that you’ve been cultivating<br />
to keep your vision good and blurry.<br />
Foil your nails with gold leaf<br />
and pretend that your muse<br />
is worthy of being your muse<br />
instead of just someone<br />
you’ve known for years now<br />
who’s only slightly better<br />
at being a person than you are.<br />
Live under a set of standards<br />
revolving around distraction,<br />
“self-soothing,” deep denial,<br />
more distraction, making it to<br />
enrobing yourself in crisp green velvet.<br />
Visually stunning<br />
and aesthetically compelling,<br />
cheap to the touch<br />
enough to make you dislike your face<br />
when you look in a mirror.<br />
173
MEET OUR ARTISTS<br />
Visual Art<br />
Abigale Robles – My name is Abigale<br />
Robles. I was born and raised in Southern<br />
California. I have been in Tucson for 3<br />
years now and I absolutely love it here. I<br />
am currently a Business major at Pima. Last<br />
semester I took ART100 with Mr. Marquis.<br />
He helped me find my artistic style and<br />
progress in my artistic abilities. Art has<br />
always been an outlet for me. My family is<br />
filled with amazing Artists. It took a lot for<br />
me to submit my drawings and was out of<br />
my comfort zone. I am so happy I decided<br />
to submit and that I am of the chosen<br />
Artists to be featured in the <strong>SandScript</strong>.<br />
Ashley Carmichael – Tucson based artist<br />
Ashley Carmichael creates intricate ink<br />
and watercolor art inspired by nature. Her<br />
work focuses on the tranquility of being<br />
in the natural world and the cyclical<br />
stories of growth and decay. Ashley<br />
obtained a Minor in Fine Art from Indiana<br />
University and has participated in shows<br />
by the Southern Arizona Watercolor<br />
Guild. She now works out of her home<br />
studio in eastern Tucson. Instagram: @<br />
ashleycarmichaelart<br />
Avery Goldberg – Attends Pima<br />
Community College<br />
Brianna Stevens – Hello, My name is<br />
Brianna Stevens, also known as Bebe Tea<br />
on social media. After recently graduating<br />
from GCU, I’m currently going to Pima to<br />
continue my character design studies. The<br />
piece “Garden Spirit” was created using<br />
mood boards and my love for the Asian<br />
culture. I wanted to express my interest in<br />
the mythical and fantasy elements. The<br />
main goal was to convey serenity and<br />
calmness. Creating this piece was very<br />
interesting and different for me. This was<br />
my second piece using Photoshop for just<br />
drawing purposes.<br />
Clarissa Holguin – My name is Clarissa, I<br />
love the desert, animals, art and music. I<br />
love bright colors, detail and representing<br />
my Mexican culture with my art. I focus on<br />
making pieces that make me feel happy<br />
or send a message. Overall, I try to enjoy<br />
the journey I took to get to the art piece.<br />
Claudia Nazario – Claudia Nazario is a<br />
California native that took up painting<br />
as a creative and stress-free outlet to<br />
balance her doctoral research and<br />
teaching responsibilities at the University<br />
of Arizona. Very quickly she realized art<br />
was more than a hobby and storytelling<br />
medium. Now, Claudia seeks a way to<br />
marry her academic interests with her art.<br />
174
Cynthia Drumond – Drawing and painting<br />
were my favorites hobbies when I was<br />
young. Life brought me discoveries, new<br />
interests and sent me on different paths.<br />
When I went back to college to pursue<br />
a new career as a Graphic Designer,<br />
Art resurfaced, challenging my world<br />
perception. I can not say I am an artist but<br />
a curious explorer!<br />
Dani Galbraith-Ritchie (She/Her) –<br />
Galbraith-Ritchie is a self-taught artist,<br />
goldsmith and small business owner with<br />
a passion for the natural world. Galbraith-<br />
Ritchie is pursuing her Associate Degree<br />
in Business Administration from PCC. She<br />
has further goals to attend Eller College of<br />
Management in pursuance of a Bachelor<br />
of Science in Business Administration with<br />
a double major in Business Management<br />
and Marketing. Galbraith-Ritchie is a<br />
Mexican-Canadian immigrant, raised in<br />
Sedona, Arizona but has lived in Tucson for<br />
almost 10 years.<br />
David Parsons – Attends Pima Community<br />
College<br />
Desert Ehrhart (1) – Desert Ehrhart has had<br />
a deep interest in visual art their entire<br />
life. Their adult work, spanning many<br />
mediums, has been deeply influenced<br />
and embedded in their love of ecology<br />
and plant medicine. In more recent years<br />
this love of artistic expression has taken<br />
them to exploring poetry and other forms<br />
or writing. Currently Desert is weaving their<br />
passions together, working as an herbalist,<br />
a tattoo artist and on a path towards<br />
becoming an acupuncturist. (1) Also on<br />
Poetry<br />
Desiree Gracia – Desiree Gracia was<br />
born and raised in Tucson, her creative<br />
works are influenced by her interest in<br />
psychology and life experiences. She<br />
enjoys experimenting with different<br />
mediums but mostly works with ink or<br />
pencil.<br />
Danielle Bond – Danni B is a Tucson based<br />
photographer who specializes in creative<br />
portraits. Being a young artist herself, she<br />
strives to uplift other artists and push young<br />
adults to pursue their creative passions.<br />
You can learn more about Danni B and<br />
other pieces of her work on Instagram @<br />
dannib_photography.<br />
George Key (2) – Key’s image, Esperanza,<br />
(Hope), reflects upon tragedies survived<br />
and God’s daily bread gift of appreciated<br />
beauty. This consecutive fourth year<br />
of being chosen for publication in the<br />
Sandscript was an honor received in<br />
both poetry and photography. The<br />
challenges of the pandemic, due to a<br />
175
Spring 2020 lengthy battle, were answered<br />
with his composition and delivery of the<br />
Keynote address to the graduating class<br />
(YouTube,2020), several degrees and<br />
certificates in Social Services/ Social Work,<br />
and necessary completion of intercultural<br />
perspective in the Fall 2020 Semester. (2)<br />
Also on Poetry<br />
Grace Johnson – My name is Grace M<br />
Johnson and I am a mostly self taught<br />
artist, with a few classes along the way!<br />
I’ve been drawing for as long as I can<br />
remember and being an artist has<br />
become a part of me forever. My art<br />
style usually consists of highly detailed<br />
pieces of mostly birds, dragons, and<br />
robots that I have named Mechnicians.<br />
My artwork tends to exaggerate a bit<br />
too, with very vibrant colors and out of<br />
proportion proportions! I hope you enjoy<br />
the art pieces that I have made with<br />
immeasurable care!<br />
Javier Dosamantes – Javier Dosamantes<br />
is a creative born in Tucson and raised in<br />
Cananea, Sonora, Mexico. As an adult, he<br />
returned to Tucson for school, and now it is<br />
his second home.<br />
Jennifer Prybylla – Attends Pima<br />
Community College<br />
Kimberly Calles – Kimberly Calles is an<br />
art major student at Pima Community<br />
College. Currently studying to get<br />
an Associates degree in Fine Arts<br />
concentration in photography. Her<br />
work consists of mixed media such as<br />
photography, painting, and drawing.<br />
Kimberly Griffin – Kimberly Griffin is a<br />
native Arizonan. She has always been<br />
told that she has a unique way of<br />
looking at the world. Photo was taken<br />
while in photography class at Pima.<br />
Experimentation and happy accidents<br />
result in art pieces like this one. She hopes<br />
that one day, she can make a living<br />
stumbling around in the art world.<br />
Luisa Espinoza – Attends Pima Community<br />
College<br />
Micheal Christopherson – Greetings! I’m<br />
Micheal Christopherson, I’m a student at<br />
Pima Community College and my major<br />
is fine arts. My works consist of a mix of<br />
cartoons, digital edits, and horror. I have<br />
not explored the horror genre in my art<br />
until the start of <strong>2021</strong>, and the results have<br />
been outstanding. I am always working<br />
to make artwork that stands out and<br />
makes an impression. If you’re interested<br />
in following more off my work, I post my art<br />
on my Instagram “MikeR0b0.” I also make<br />
176
video content on my YouTube, named<br />
“MikeR0b0.”<br />
Miyeon Kim – I got an art award in middle<br />
school and stopped painting after high<br />
school in South Korea. Six years later, I<br />
came to the United States and went to<br />
college in Texas for a few months, but<br />
I had to stop. I started to go to college<br />
again after 10 years at Pima Community<br />
College. It is meaningful to receive an art<br />
award at this college. I’m so glad I didn’t<br />
give up on my dream. This is a great start<br />
to my dream as an artist. I draw myself in<br />
“Addicted”. My friend took a photo of me<br />
using a cellphone on the couch while I’m<br />
laying down. I never used a cell phone this<br />
much before. I admit that I am addicted<br />
to smartphones.<br />
Monica Nelson – Monica Nelson is a<br />
retired educator with over 44 years of<br />
service. She has enrolled in several art<br />
classes at PCC over the past two years<br />
as a “life-long” learner Art has become<br />
a whole new experience for her and has<br />
been especially important during the<br />
pandemic!<br />
This piece “ Emotional Growth” is mostly<br />
colored pencil except I used paint for the<br />
somewhat abstract background.<br />
Nathan Coffey – Nathan Coffey is a<br />
hobbyist photographer living in Tucson, AZ.<br />
He is pursuing digital game development<br />
at Pima with a focus on programming.<br />
Portia Cooper (She/Her) – Portia is a dualenrollment<br />
student studying computer<br />
science and mathematics. She works in<br />
many art mediums, but prefers pen and<br />
ink. Her work is often inspired by folktales<br />
and myths.<br />
Rebecca Farris – Rebecca is an aspiring<br />
graphic artist. Her dream is to one day<br />
make a career out of publishing graphic<br />
novels, and is going to school for her<br />
art degree. She was born in Arizona but<br />
moved to Colorado at the age of 10 with<br />
her family. After some family loss, she<br />
returned to Arizona and moved to Tucson<br />
to finish college.<br />
Reed Coffey – Attends Pima Community<br />
College<br />
Mya Palacios – Hello everyone! I go by<br />
Myabella. Art has always been a big part<br />
of my life and I have my mom to thank for<br />
that. She taught me how to be creative.<br />
Rhea Stanley – I started at pima in 2018<br />
with no drawing under my belt. This May,<br />
I’ve got my associates in fine arts and a<br />
passion for drawing. I’ve lived in Tucson<br />
177
my whole life and have a family full of<br />
artists that inspire me every day. I’m<br />
transferring to the University of Arizona this<br />
fall to pursue Studio Art. I’m excited to see<br />
where art can take me.<br />
Rick Spriggs – Rick Spriggs has been doing<br />
art for most of his life. Recently his focus<br />
is making 3D art. Ceramics comprises the<br />
bulk of his current artworks.<br />
Sarah Bryg – Attends Pima Community<br />
College<br />
Shelby Quiroz – Attends Pima Community<br />
College<br />
Sivanes Ananda – I am a Tucson based<br />
artist, avid gardener and enjoy nature and<br />
travel. In my art, I use a variety of media,<br />
oil being my preferred medium. Most of<br />
my paintings are based on photos taken<br />
during my travels and inspired by the<br />
natural beauty and amazing architecture<br />
of places I visited.<br />
Sofia Fetsis – Sofia Fetsis has grown up<br />
in Arizona her whole life, as one of six<br />
siblings. She competitively played tennis<br />
and volleyball throughout high school,<br />
winning several state titles in tennis. In<br />
her free time she enjoys hiking, playing<br />
beach volleyball, working out, cooking,<br />
and artistic pursuits such as sketching and<br />
photography. She loves the warm weather<br />
and sunshine in Tucson, but enjoys cloudy,<br />
rainy days when they come. Sofia will<br />
be joining the nursing program at The<br />
University of Arizona this fall to start her<br />
junior year, and looks forward to pursuing<br />
a career as a NICU nurse.<br />
Thomas Webster – I retired from the<br />
practice of anesthesiology in 2007.<br />
Enrolled at Pima Community College and<br />
received my Associates of Arts Degree<br />
in 2010. Since then I have worked as a<br />
volunteer in the Digital Photography lab at<br />
PCC and taking continuing courses at the<br />
college.<br />
Thurwin Lane – Born on August 1, 1992<br />
at Phoenix Memorial Hospital, Jeanita<br />
Johnson gave birth to her fourth child,<br />
Thurwin Tisbahe Lane. Thurwin has early<br />
memories of living in Phoenix, but he was<br />
raised mostly on the Navajo Reservation<br />
with his seven other siblings. Living on the<br />
reservation made Thurwin strong, allowing<br />
him to excel while serving in the United<br />
States Army as an airborne infantryman.<br />
Growing up on a reservation and serving<br />
in the armed forces left wounds on<br />
Thurwin’s mental health enticing him to<br />
pursue a profession in art. With art Thurwin<br />
was able to understand the experienced<br />
178
trauma aiding him in becoming a good<br />
person for his wife and son. Art created by<br />
Thurwin can be tied to being raised on a<br />
reservation, military service, and his family.<br />
Zevi Bloomfield – Hopes to major in<br />
psychology and become an art therapist<br />
Prose<br />
Ulises Ramos – Ulises I as a young artist<br />
from Mexican descent, I don’t only<br />
represent my cultural background but also<br />
a long tradition of printmaking. That is my<br />
goal in life, to preserve and develop such<br />
a traditional method important for me and<br />
the art world.<br />
Weston Lane – Weston Lane is a proud<br />
Native American student who is pursuing a<br />
Visual Art degree and Film Arts / Animation<br />
degree. He makes digital art, traditional<br />
art, and short 2d animations. He aims<br />
to evoke deep feelings within his work.<br />
He loves to make art and will continue<br />
to do so. His goal is to take part in the<br />
production of an animated project (e.g.,<br />
music video, advertisement, or movie/tv).<br />
Yanna Aiken – Hello, I am a 19 year<br />
old that has been doing art since I can<br />
remember, and seeing it progress and<br />
my art forming it into something, not only<br />
something other people are proud of, but<br />
I am proud of it just the same. So I thank<br />
you dearly for the support through the life<br />
I have lived so far, and the life I will live in<br />
the future.<br />
Chretien Martinez – Attends Pima<br />
Community College<br />
Courtney Armstrong (3) – Courtney Hayes<br />
Armstrong is the recipient of the Fall<br />
<strong>2021</strong> Margaret Sterling Award for poetry<br />
at the University of Arizona, where she<br />
is completing her bachelor’s degree in<br />
English and Creative Writing. Her poetry<br />
and fiction were published in the 2020<br />
edition of <strong>SandScript</strong>. She was a finalist in<br />
this year’s <strong>2021</strong> Tucson Festival of Books<br />
Literary Awards Competition for fiction,<br />
poetry, and creative nonfiction. Her love<br />
for writing comes second only to her love<br />
for her two sons, Hayes and Blaze. (3) Also<br />
on Poetry<br />
Josie Lugo (She/Her) – At 21 years old, Josie<br />
has poured all her courage and trust into<br />
a single goal: create stories about strong<br />
females and prove that they are powerful,<br />
beautiful, and capable of anything and<br />
everything. This story was her first to be<br />
published but she firmly believes that it will<br />
not be her last. As time goes on, she hopes<br />
you will continue to come across her<br />
name and enjoy her work.”<br />
179
Mora Hedayati – Mora is a mom, a doula,<br />
and an artist. She is currently taking<br />
courses at Pima Community College to<br />
fulfill her eventual goal of becoming a<br />
nurse midwife. She hopes to continue<br />
expressing her thoughts in writing and<br />
would love to write/illustrate a children’s<br />
book one day.<br />
Nadia Celaya-Alcalá – My name is Nadia<br />
Celaya-Alcalá. I am 15 years old and am<br />
currently studying general education at<br />
Pima. I plan to transfer to The University<br />
of Arizona in the fall to study Dance and<br />
Political Science. Some of my favorite<br />
pastimes are dancing, cooking, and<br />
writing.<br />
Raymond Butler – A Navajo from Arizona<br />
who grew up on the reservation. Retired<br />
from a law enforcement career. Began<br />
taking classes at PCC.<br />
Poetry<br />
A.Z. Martinez – Martinez is a young tutor<br />
with aspirations of professional writing.<br />
Creatively oriented, with a drive for<br />
creativity and telling stories.<br />
Alexa Lewis – Attends Pima Community<br />
College<br />
Arial Autumn – Writing is only one of Arial<br />
Autumn’s many creative pursuits. She also<br />
enjoys painting Gundam Models, film and<br />
photography, and sword play. She is a<br />
world traveler who published her first book<br />
of poetry in 2015. She is currently attending<br />
Pima Community College, while living in<br />
Arizona with her partner and daughter<br />
. She considers all of her poetry a single<br />
anthology, thus she titles her poems with<br />
numbers.<br />
Carol Korhonen – Carol Spitler Korhonen<br />
came to Tucson from Michigan in 1978<br />
after one too many encounters with icy<br />
highways. After ten years of teaching<br />
school and twenty years of practicing law,<br />
she retired and tried her hand at writing.<br />
Some kindly writer friends suggested she<br />
could use some help and suggested a<br />
class at Pima and she has been taking<br />
writing classes ever since. Carol thanks<br />
her husband, children and grandchildren<br />
for their unwavering support and<br />
encouragement.<br />
Chacara Thomas – Chacara Thomas was<br />
born in Milwaukee, WI, in 1996. Growing<br />
up, she developed a love for music,<br />
which transformed into a passion for<br />
creative writing, music production, and<br />
performing arts. As a hip-hop/performing<br />
artist, Chacara uses her voice and lyrics to<br />
180
uplift communities, peers, and even herself<br />
at times. She has been a part of several<br />
benefit shows, raising funds for important<br />
causes in her hometown Milwaukee.<br />
She is proud to have performed in Black<br />
Renaissance here in Tucson, AZ, 2019,<br />
contributing to the small community of<br />
local African American creators.<br />
Christopher Valenzuela (They/Them) – is<br />
a Tucson born writer and poet. Their<br />
work focuses on their relationship with<br />
substance abuse and understanding/<br />
deconstructing their intersecting identities<br />
as a non-binary, Chicanx, queer artist.<br />
Diogo Tobin – Attends Pima Community<br />
College<br />
Spring 2020 lengthy battle, were answered<br />
with his composition and delivery of the<br />
Keynote address to the graduating class<br />
(YouTube,2020), several degrees and<br />
certificates in Social Services/ Social Work,<br />
and necessary completion of intercultural<br />
perspective in the Fall 2020 Semester.<br />
Iris Hill (They/Them) – Iris Hill is currently an<br />
English major at Pima Community College.<br />
They plan to transfer to the University<br />
of Arizona to continue their education<br />
in hopes of becoming a middle school<br />
English teacher. They are currently working<br />
on their first book of poetry aimed to be<br />
released come Leo season. They currently<br />
reside in Tucson, Arizona with their partner<br />
and cat, Gaston.<br />
Elena Acuna – Attends Pima Community<br />
College<br />
Esmeralda Garcia – Attends Pima<br />
Community College<br />
George Key – Key’s image, Esperanza,<br />
(Hope), reflects upon tragedies survived<br />
and God’s daily bread gift of appreciated<br />
beauty. This consecutive fourth year<br />
of being chosen for publication in the<br />
Sandscript was an honor received in<br />
both poetry and photography. The<br />
challenges of the pandemic, due to a<br />
Jazmin Garcia – I was born in Tucson and<br />
moved to California when I was 11 years<br />
old. After 10 years of hardship, I moved<br />
back to Tucson. The 3 poems were all<br />
inspired by important events in my life;<br />
falling in love, growing up and naturally<br />
parting ways with my sister, and losing a<br />
loved one. I speak English and Spanish<br />
and come from Mexican descent. I<br />
like art, reading, writing, and watching<br />
movies.<br />
Kentaro Herder (He/Him) – Language was<br />
a barrier between my grandmother and<br />
181
me. She and I would sit with a pen and<br />
paper. I’d write the ABC’s while she drew<br />
spirals and asked what design should<br />
be on her next rug. We’d communicate<br />
with nods. This is how I met poetry. I grew<br />
up in Kayenta, Arizona on the Navajo<br />
Nation. I am honored to present my love<br />
for language to you. I am thankful for<br />
the <strong>SandScript</strong> staff and for the amazing<br />
professors that tug on my words like little<br />
me tugging the frays of my grandma’s<br />
rugs.<br />
Luke Cottrell – Luke Cottrell is a singersongwriter<br />
and visual artist from<br />
Oceanside, CA. He moved to Tucson, AZ<br />
in 2019. Find his music by searching Luke<br />
Cottrell on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, Apple<br />
Music, etc. Instagram: lukecottrell<br />
Luke Eriksson – Luke Eriksson is a writer<br />
from Lexington Massachusetts, a student<br />
at both New York University and Pima<br />
Community College, and currently lives<br />
in Tucson, Arizona. He enjoys writing<br />
about topics such as longing, addiction/<br />
sobriety, and the passage of time. He can<br />
be reached by email at eriksson.Luke.b@<br />
gmail.com, on instagram at Luke_Eriksson,<br />
or on twitter at ErikssonLuke.<br />
M. J. Copic – M. J. Copic is a writer of<br />
speculative fiction living in Tucson, Arizona.<br />
This is her first publication.<br />
Mara Durán – A wife and a mother is the<br />
one who ensures dreams take their shape.<br />
A psychotherapist by profession. Master in<br />
Brief Therapy, lecturer, workshop leader,<br />
inspirational speaker, passionate learner,<br />
and lifelong lover of letters and literature.<br />
As she writes, she finds worlds that do not<br />
have the words to be described. These<br />
are metaphors, stories, and poems that<br />
encourage us to self-reflect. She seeks to<br />
break down barriers that impede growth<br />
and promote emotional strength in human<br />
beings. She is a collector of memories.<br />
She bathes in doses of reality that splashes<br />
with fantasy while she navigates the<br />
uncertainty provoked by verses, endless<br />
verses, one and a hundred, that awaken<br />
dreams.<br />
Mark Anthony Ferguson – Attends Pima<br />
Community College<br />
Mauricia Manuel – Mauricia Manuel is<br />
a mother of four and has been working<br />
towards her goal of becoming an author.<br />
She is a member of the Tohono O’odham<br />
Nation. Her love for words and history<br />
inspires her writing and hopes for it to be a<br />
positive influence within the community.<br />
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Michele Worthington – Attends Pima<br />
Community College<br />
Raiden Lopez – Raiden is a proud single<br />
mom, a writer, a singer, an editor, and an<br />
honors student at PCC until she transfers<br />
to the U of A fall of 2022, who is working<br />
towards being a book editor and publicist<br />
as her chosen career. “I want to help<br />
others bring their stories to life and be<br />
the absolute best they could possibly be.<br />
That is why I always dreamed of being an<br />
editor, my dream is already coming true<br />
and I’m loving every minute of it.”<br />
Salina Riggs-Molina (She/Her) – Salina is a<br />
native Tucsonan, a self-proclaimed data<br />
nerd, and a nonprofit professional. Poetry<br />
is her voice, her vice, and her means<br />
of creative expression. She’ll never truly<br />
understand the complexities of being,<br />
but she loves the process of trying to<br />
understand.<br />
Samantha Barrera – Samantha Barrera<br />
is a British-born and raised mother of<br />
two. Samantha came to America under<br />
troubled circumstances, but she has not<br />
let adversity stop her from achieving her<br />
dreams. Presently, Samantha is pursuing<br />
her Forensic Psychology degree at Pima<br />
Community College and is eager to<br />
become accepted at James E. Rogers<br />
College of Law thereafter. Samantha<br />
appreciates that we live in a world where<br />
it is easy to lose sight of our purpose<br />
and sense of happiness. Thus, she wrote<br />
The Book of Life to inspire others to take<br />
control of their life, and to encourage<br />
those who are facing their own adversity<br />
or hardship to never cease their efforts in<br />
overcoming.<br />
Sierra Vigil – Attends Pima Community<br />
College<br />
Solace Bergman – Attends Pima<br />
Community College<br />
T. Gullett (He/Him) – T. Gullett is a writer,<br />
artist, and trans creator interested<br />
in sharing stories of queer happiness<br />
combined with genre fiction. Through<br />
his written work, he explores his own<br />
experiences of identity and yearning. He’s<br />
not 100% sure where his time at Pima will<br />
take him, but he’s excited for the journey.<br />
He would like to thank his friends and<br />
family who have supported his creative<br />
endeavors, as well as the teachers who<br />
have played a part in him getting here.<br />
This is his first time being published.<br />
Travis Cooper (He/Him) – Travis is a preengineering<br />
student who has lived in<br />
Tucson all his life. He writes poetry and<br />
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short stories that include paranormal and<br />
macabre elements.<br />
Veronica Martinez – Veronica Martinez<br />
is a 20 year old from Tucson that has<br />
been writing fiction stories since she was<br />
a child, but did not begin to write poetry<br />
until taking an introductory poetry writing<br />
course at Pima Community College in<br />
the Fall of 2020. Since then, Veronica has<br />
found interest and inspiration to write<br />
poetry from daily life and the historical<br />
events that young people are currently<br />
living through. Veronica is now studying<br />
Creative Writing at the University of<br />
Arizona and plans to continue to write<br />
poetry throughout her life, along with<br />
writing horror and fantasy fiction.<br />
Zoe is a Pima <strong>2021</strong> graduate on her way<br />
towards a career in graphic design.<br />
However, you can always find her with a<br />
pen in her hand and a poem on her mind.<br />
Yareli Sanchez – The percentage of<br />
young Americans experiencing certain<br />
types of mental health disorders has<br />
risen significantly over the past decade.<br />
Yareli Sanchez (24), focuses her writing on<br />
depression and anxiety. Yareli wrote Dying<br />
to let the reader know a brief description<br />
of what a person goes through when<br />
having an anxiety attack. Sandscript<br />
published another piece of hers and you<br />
can read it in the 2020 magazine.<br />
Zoë Galmarini – With a strong passion for<br />
the arts and an eye for all things creative,<br />
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MEET OUR TEAM<br />
Editor-in-Chief & Managing Editor<br />
Assistant Editor & Visual Art Editor<br />
Raiden Lopez (She/Her) is an English<br />
Literature major at Pima College, with<br />
plans to pursue Creative Writing at the<br />
University of Arizona to become a book<br />
editor. She is a proud single mother to<br />
an amazing son, who enjoys all types of<br />
music and loves to sing. Reading and<br />
writing are her passions and hopes to do<br />
them happily for the rest of her life.<br />
Stephany Rocha (She/Her) is a Liberal<br />
Arts major at Pima Community College<br />
who plans to study journalism and minor<br />
in marketing and p.r. at the University<br />
of Arizona. She plans to use her degree<br />
to become a media editor or book<br />
editor. Writing is her passion and loves<br />
to read a great book to de-stress. When<br />
she is not writing or reading, she can be<br />
found at work, petting her two dogs or<br />
embroidering a new shirt!<br />
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Assistant Editor<br />
Social Media Manager, Director of<br />
Achives & Poetry Editor<br />
Jesse Shinn (He/Him) can be found<br />
working on his novel, spending time<br />
with his cats, or playing with his friends<br />
online. He’s a liberal arts major with his<br />
sights on an English degree to aid him<br />
in venturing into the world of literary<br />
publishing.<br />
Maria Servellon (They/Them) is pursuing<br />
an Associates in Science and is planning<br />
on transferring to a four-year university<br />
to pursue their studies in Cell and<br />
Developmental Biology. Maria considers<br />
themselves a patron of the arts, and<br />
firmly believes that art speaks for those<br />
who cannot. In their spare time, Maria<br />
does cancer research, watches entire<br />
seasons of animated TV shows, and<br />
orders Thai food through DoorDash.<br />
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Industry Outreach Coordinator & Prose<br />
Editor<br />
Prose Editor<br />
Madison Copic (She/Her) is an English<br />
major at Pima who plans to study<br />
Creative Writing at the University of<br />
Arizona in the fall of <strong>2021</strong>. Writing is<br />
her passion, and she particularly loves<br />
fantasy and horror. When she’s not<br />
editing, writing, or reading, you can find<br />
her roller skating at the park, playing<br />
Dungeons and Dragons, or pampering<br />
her cat.<br />
Iris Gonzalez-Hill (They/Them) is currently<br />
an English major at Pima Community<br />
College. They plan to transfer to the<br />
University of Arizona to continue their<br />
education in hopes of becoming a<br />
middle school English teacher. They are<br />
currently working on their first book of<br />
poetry aimed to be released come Leo<br />
season. They currently reside in Tucson,<br />
Arizona with their partner and cat,<br />
Gaston.<br />
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Poetry Editor<br />
Visual Art Editor<br />
Ocean Washington is a young father,<br />
a 3.9-4.0 GPA student, an aspiring<br />
ethnographer regarding human<br />
behavior, a BMX’er, and lover of people<br />
interaction. Ocean’s core competency<br />
revolves around storytelling. His goal<br />
is to enter the film industry after he<br />
completes a contract with one of the<br />
United States academies for military<br />
officers.<br />
Mariah Gastelum (She/Her) is a student<br />
at Pima Community College who is<br />
currently finishing an Associates in<br />
English with plans to transfer to the<br />
University of Arizona and major in<br />
creative writing. “I was really glad to<br />
be apart of the <strong>SandScript</strong> team and<br />
to have a magazine this year, things<br />
have been out of the norm with this<br />
pandemic. Covid-19 has taught me<br />
how fast it can take a persons life and<br />
how distance gives us more reasons to<br />
love harder.”<br />
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Graphic Design Editor<br />
Faculty Advisor<br />
Cynthia Drumond is a business<br />
administrator, and she is pursuing a<br />
second career as a graphic designer.<br />
During the college years, she worked<br />
as a volunteer managing social<br />
media content, did an internship, and<br />
freelanced developing brand identities,<br />
marketing strategies, and websites.<br />
She won six student awards given by<br />
AAF - American Advertising Federation<br />
in categories such as logo design,<br />
rebranding, poster design, and video<br />
advertising campaign.<br />
Frankie Rollins relishes the alchemy<br />
of working with the intelligent, artistic,<br />
and progressive students in English<br />
and Honors at Pima Community<br />
College. Along with teaching, Frankie<br />
is fiercely devoted to writing and<br />
publishing her own prose, publishing<br />
a flash fiction novella, The Grief<br />
Manuscript (Finishing Line Press, May<br />
2020), releasing a collaborative<br />
video, The Grief Manuscript Video<br />
on Youtube (https://www.youtube.<br />
com/watch?v=j71Y4cEnaqQ) and a<br />
collection of short fiction, The Sin Eater &<br />
Other Stories (Queen’s Ferry Press, 2013).<br />
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