dislocation & identity
antonym
july 2020
table of contents
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letter from the editors Anna Barrett, Johanna Monson Geerts, Madeline Wallace Barred & Forgotten Allaire Tetrault Study in Pink Kate Goodpaster The Other Night, On a Run, I Saw a Dying Natalie Beisner Current Patterns: Uncertain Times I Amby Underock C.O.F. When the Words Don't Come to Me Sonia Charales Queer Love Jules Park Somewhere in Nice Anna Barrett onto the next Erin Laine Velveteen Tears Madeline Wallace 11:32 pm Kate Goodpaster How To Be a 3rd Generation Korean Kid Jules Park 19 Erin Laine Woman Home Natalie Beisner Somewhere in Paris Anna Barrett Feeling 22 in 2020 Caroline Wolfe-Merritt Contributors
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letter from the editors
cover "Dementors at MoMa II" | Kate Goodpaster editing software | Lucidpress. digital design | Anna Barrett, Johanna Monson Geerts, Madeline Wallace editing & layout | Anna Barrett, Johanna Monson Geerts, Madeline Wallace https://antonymlit.com
Dear Readers, Writers, Artists, and Dreamers, How surreal it is to be on our third issue of antonym, especially as time continues to be strange and formless. Fortunately, we have this magazine to remind us—and you—exactly what month it is. Again, we're humbled by your support for antonym, whether that means you've subscribed, shared it with family and friends, followed our social medias (Facebook and Instagram!) or submitted your work for consideration. We don't take any of this lightly; antonym is a gift to produce every month, and you have made it extra special. As our July submissions began to trickle in, we quickly noticed a theme, one you'll find reflected on this month's cover: dislocation & identity. As the world continues to grapple with uncertainty, we find ourselves looking into an even hazier distance, one so opaque we can never be sure what awaits us. Many pieces in these pages ponder what it means to be part of this pandemic-dominated world. What happens to our lives when everything suddenly stops? How do we deal with our uncertainty, our fear, our collective disarray? Where do we go from here? While we have plenty of submissions that ask the big questions, we take comfort in the fact that there is almost always an undercurrent of hope; although tomorrow is unknown, our contributors routinely recognize the potential for good. Change is an opportunity for growth, and right now we're in the midst of one of the biggest periods of change in collective memory at multiple levels: the societal, the personal, the cultural, and the communal, to name a few. We're also delighted to share works that depict the normalcy of life, ones exploring love, reminiscence, joy, family, and friendship. We hope these pieces will invite curiosity, summon good memories, prompt reflection, and instill your hope in the future. We're in this together. Sending you well wishes, Anna Barrett, Johanna Monson Geerts, and Madeline Wallace
Barred & Forgotten
Study in Pink
As soon as I got home, they said I couldn’t see her “It’s not safe” “They won’t let you” And I accepted that as true I moved on So many things to do To not think of the things, we must Not dwell For dwelling reminds us of all the things we’ve lost The promises broken, forgotten Or the ones they had no intention of keeping “She’s forgetting us” My sister said. The virus spread among the residents And nurses Everyone she knows inside has died Or left in fear of dying next And now she’s sick. “Wait by the window” Maybe she’ll walk by, Maybe she’ll recognize you Maybe they won’t call the police For trying to see your loved one.
Kate Goodpaster
Allaire Tetrault
—raccoon and thought of you, how you lay in the hospital bed, breathing so heavy, hooked up to that machine, and the raccoon breathed the same way, if I closed my eyes I would’ve thought it was human, I would’ve thought it was you, and I didn’t know what to do, because it was late on a saturday in the middle of a pandemic, and animal control was closed, so I called sanitation, where a voice matter-of-factly informed me the animal had to be dead before they could do anything. The animal had to be dead. I thought about killing it, but I don’t know about killing things, I only know about watching them die, so I sat on the side of the road and watched, because I didn’t know what else to do, and I thought of you, how I bought you that christmas card and underlined all the important words, just like you taught me, just like you always used to do for me, and you never got to read it, although I think I read it to you, but it wouldn’t have been the same, because my voice would have cracked, and I wouldn’t have been able to emphasize the underlined words, the ones I needed you to hear, and we weren’t sure if you were able to hear at all, or how much you were able to process, I mean, and anyway I don’t remember now, but I remember you lying there, looking at me, and it felt like you wanted to say something, but you couldn’t talk because of the machine, and I remember your eyes, which said, I think, I’m afraid, and my voice was no good, so I tried to make my eyes say loving things back, but I think they just said so am I, because you were my best friend, and I remember you called out sometimes that you wanted to go home, which is something you would never do, but we didn’t know that yet, we still had hope, and other times when you called for water, mom would reverently dip a little pink hydration sucker into a styrofoam cup of water and then into your mouth, and I remember the sucker looked liked candy, which made me think of you as a child, and I always hate when I think of people as children, especially you, because I worry the kids they used to be would be sad or scared or disappointed in everything that ends up happening to them, and sometimes I think about all those kids, about my mother and my father when they were kids, long before I met them, and I agonize over whether they’re happy, like right now I wonder are you out there somewhere, is the little girl that was you out there somewhere, is she happy, did you end up happy? That’s all I want to know. That, and I wish I could introduce you to all the important people in my life, because every once in a while I meet someone and think this one is really special, and then my next thought is I wish she were here to meet them, I wish you were here to meet them, because I don’t know how I can love two people so much and have them never meet, it’s like having just the outline of a puzzle when the pieces in between are missing, but I guess that would make me the pieces in between, that connect you to all the important people in my world, except I don’t know how to do that, because I’m sitting here by the side of the road beside a dying raccoon who reminds me of you, and I mean that in the nicest way, and what I mean is I miss you so much. Sometimes I have to remind myself that in this lifetime I will never ever see you again, sometimes it feels like maybe you’ve gone away for a long while, but you’re coming back, and then I have to think she is dead she is never coming back just to jolt myself back to reality, which takes my breath away, because I thought you were phenomenal, but I know you lived a life before I met you, and I’ve heard maybe you weren’t as phenomenal once, which is hard for me to imagine, but I worry that maybe that’s the part of your life you feel the most, because it’s the heaviest, which I hope not, but I guess I’ll never know, just like I didn’t know what you were saying at the end, because of the machine, or if you had anything to say at all, but I’ll bet you did, and I certainly still have so much, like life is too hard without you, and I’m glad (for your sake) you’re not on earth right now, but I wish (for my sake) I could be off wherever you are, but I remember you telling me to hang on, sloopy, except I thought for the longest time it was snoopy, and that’s what I’m trying to do—hang on, I mean—but I don’t have very many important people in my life anymore, people I wish I could introduce you to, which is good because they’re not missing out on you, but I guess technically they still are, they’re just missing out on me too, but that’s the way they must’ve wanted it, I guess, or they wouldn’t have left, and sometimes that hurts more—when people choose to leave I never have to remind myself that they’re gone for good, not like I have to do sometimes with you, and the little girl you were, who I bet was phenomenal, but I can’t know, and whatever she was, I hope she’s happy with how everything turned out, even the part at the end, but maybe she doesn’t know anything about it, maybe she’s already gone, she’s gone, I thought as I dialed sanitation again.
Natalie Beisner
The Other Night, on a Run, I Saw a Dying
Current Patterns: Uncertain Times 1
Amby Underock C. O. F.
Sonia Charales
As I try to speak My tongue stumbles over syllables It fell onto my native language Refusing to let go The letters of new words bump into each other As if they were lost in an unfamiliar land How do I get to the right place, When all the words do is haunt me? Like the monster under my bed I hide under the covers and don’t look As I try to read The letters swim around the page The page reminds me of alphabet soup I keep stirring it around to make new words My mouth craved for words of comfort Words that reminded me of my home No matter how hard I try, I can never seem to find the right letters For the new words I desire to speak As I try to write The pencil in my hand Starts to shiver along with me My mind freezes every time I look at the blank page My heart beats against my chest All I ever wanted was to Learn like the other kids Is it such a crime To not know the right words? As I try to listen The distorted syllables Slide in slow motion As if the words were Not words at all My tongue twisted and turned To mimic the new sounds I could never fit in With what the other kids say As I try to speak again My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth As if it was a child hiding behind her mother Let them think I’m shy and sweet When the words don’t come to me
When the Words Don't Come to Me
Queer Love
Jules Park
The month turned to June. And when it did, I began to think all about queer love. Complete with the fuzzy, cozy, rainbow-filled granola vibes it always brings me. My instinct is to say that my first queer love came in the form of a woman A woman who I still love dearly. Our love is still queer, even though our lips no longer touch. Because queer love comes in different forms. I have felt it radiate beyond just my first lesbian relationship. I felt queer love from an early age, even if I did not know it yet. I felt it at the all-Korean church that my father grew up going to. My 8 year old self looked up wide-eyed at the girl named Rebecca from the praise band. She was 17 and my whole world. I felt queer love even in the dark ages of middle school. At the summer sleepover with 4 of my closest friends. Our hair was soaked through with chlorine, our mouths stained red with the sweet tang of adolescent independence. I sat on the white carpet, wearing only my thin fabric T-shirt and cloth shorts. These were no match against the harsh reality of a wet, skinny 12 year old and air conditioning. Before I knew it, I was wrapped in my friend Mackenzie’s sweatshirt. The sweatshirt that she insisted on giving me. I’ll never forget the smell that put the sweetness of Rita’s Italian Ice to shame. The softness and warmth that enveloped my skin. I could have stayed in that sweatshirt forever. If this had been Megan’s sweatshirt, I would not be remembering the smell or the softness so many years later. Because Mackenzie was the girl who I made all of my friends pray for at lunch, when I knew she was going in for surgery. Mackenzie was the only girl whose attention I fought for everyday. Mackenzie’s white sweatshirt should have been my gay awakening. Flash forward past the misery of high school, To the night before my freshman year of college. I sat on the grass, under the Indiana night sky, With a group of strangers that I had learned to trust. “Say your name, pronouns, sexual orientation……” An icebreaker that I did not know I was ready for. “Hi I’m Julia. She/her. I think I like girls, I don’t know, I’m still figuring it out…..” I felt queer love that night. Encouragement and validation that I didn't know existed, Radiated from every person in that circle. It is a moment of vulnerability that I will never forget. I felt queer love in the tent that night, after being told I was brave. This courage carried me into the utmost display of queer love, When I shared this queerness with the two people who raised me. Tears and tender words were shared over FaceTime, since my impatient ass refused to wait until Parents’ Weekend. There were expressions of unconditional love, which I recognize my privilege and luck in being able to recall. These two acts of vulnerability tenderly introduced me to a whole new side of love. The kind of love that did not require me to fight for attention, Or express a lack of knowledge and confidence around loving women, Or hide behind any facades. Since I came out, I have felt levels of queer love that my 17 year old self dreamed of every night before bed. She dreamed about kissing a girl for the first time, yes. But I know that she also dreamed about the power of queer friendship and community. The power of a shared, yet diverse experience among people. I can hardly wait for her to feel this type of power. The power of texting your friend at 12:30am, just to say that you feel waves of queerness overtaking you. There need not be any explanation. They always understand. The power of helping your friend pick out the best button down to wear for their first date. The power of baking a fresh batch of cookies for the girl who buzzed your hair in the bathroom of the LGBT house. The power of being able to confidently call your first girlfriend one of your best friends. The power of taking pictures in the mirror before a night out; pink wine in your system and confidence in your heart. She has yet to feel the power of asking your professor to call you by your preferred non-binary name, in front of the girl you have a crush on. She has yet to feel the power of King Princess, of Ivy Sole, of Janelle Monae. She has yet to find the lyrics and words that make her soul stir, and settle. She lies awake listening to One Direction, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift - trying desperately to find where she fits in. I can recall her fear, that perhaps, no one will love her. I want to reach out for her hand in the dark, and look into her sad eyes. I want to tell her that one day, you will feel the overwhelming strength of queer love. It will come to you in time. Then one day you will look back at yourself now, And wish to tell her this exact same thing. Keep loving your queerness kid, Because someday soon it will all love you right back. <3
Somewhere in Nice
Anna Barrett
Erin Laine
onto the next
“The next love is always greater than the last,” he said as we sipped red wine, the cheapest glass. He had just asked me about my soon-to-be ex; a line of questioning I objected to in light of my recent realization that the man across the table might be someone I could love. When he looked at me he pulled me in, large deep brown warm into his vortex and I was swelling and bursting open, stumbling and falling, like every cliché I had read in the YA novels of my youth but didn’t believe. I had come to think love was quiet, dull, committed, a choice. But here I was, unfurling, turning myself inside out before him, wanting to know and be known. “That mantra might sound like a reason to just keep looking,” he continued, shrugging his shoulders. We laughed, but I should have known then that I was just another stop along his journey to enlightenment. He kissed me later, a shock to my system, an awakening, then ended it in a month. But the love he cut short with me he found weeks later with another. She is small, wiry, buoyant, and I wonder if he ever remembers what I felt like in his hands, warm and alive, soul spread wide, ready to fall.
On my ninth birthday, we host girls with high-pitched squeals and round faces and saturated eyes. Invitations are extended on the basis of proximity and friendship (because friendship, at that point, is usually a consequence of proximity): the daughter of my parents’ former classmate; my best friend since preschool; the blonde who lives six houses down the hill and is never really very nice to me. We play and chatter and eat pizza. Then Agatha Hamilton shows up. I prepared my friends for Agatha, shared with fanfare—usually reserved, in those days, for new toys and cartoon episodes—that she was coming. She arrives with a tote bag slung over her shoulder and stands sentry, an elegant queen with grey-bobbed hair, as she pulls out my gift with ceremony: The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams. As she perches on the edge of our couch, opening to the first glossy page, we clamor around. As she begins to read, her voice warbles, delicate as pastry. Within moments, the suggestion of tears becomes reality as her eyes flood and spill over. She seems not to notice, or at least not to care, pressing on through the tale of the Velveteen Rabbit made Real by the boy who loves him. When the boy gets sick—sick with scarlet fever—the rabbit remains by his side. After the boy recovers, the contaminated rabbit is thrown aside to be burned; fortunately, a fairy swoops in to make him real, and he spends the rest of his days in the forest with other bunnies. Pressing through the words, Agatha Hamilton sits there and cries, cries openly, and a brick settles in my stomach. My ninth birthday comes with an uncomfortable realization: tears are not reserved for children, for scraped knees, the unfairness of a stingy sibling, early bedtime. — Every summer, when the heat beats down, I stir a frozen, syrupy canister of lemonade concentrate into a plastic pitcher of water, add ice, and stand at the end of our sidewalk with plastic cups and a homemade sign. These are lucrative days; once, I even make eight dollars. The summer before I turn nine, Agatha Hamilton drives past in her red van when she catches sight of me with my blunt bangs and broad smile, minus two front teeth. She slows, turned the wheel, pulls flush against the curb. My conversationalist mother is quickly entrenched in a dialogue with Agatha that extends far beyond pleasantries; she buys our lemonade and receives our friendship. She likes to say she stopped because you were the cutest thing I had ever seen. — Agatha lives on the outskirts of town, and we visit her white-brick house a handful of times. After Christmas, I bring my newest doll to show off. I'm sure Agatha will be delighted by her navy skirt and owl-eye glasses and prim braids, but she barely pays her any mind. Instead, she fills my mother in on the latest with her husband, who descends into senility in a nursing home. She talks in big, rambling gushes that are populated with grievances. She talks in pasts and presents—stories from childhood, stories from yesterday, stories grounded in her misfortune. — Over time, our communication with Agatha slowly trickles off. There are a lot of reasons, many of them barely clear to me, fuzzy at their edges; I recognize the heaviness that accompanies her, but cannot put a name to it. Then, the summer before I start college, she reconnects with my mother—could we meet at a local coffee shop? I prepare to waltz through that door, a grown girl, no longer the cutest thing she'd ever seen. I'm also ready for the inevitable questions about what I’ve been doing: Well, I'll begin humbly— But I barely speak. We find three chairs at a high-top, and her words pour out in a steady stream, among them the news that her husband passed away, that she has cancer. At our steering, she dives back into childhood. She recounts the fraught tale of nearly losing her life to scarlet fever at age six. It's a story I distant remember, the details sanded away with time. When I was young, none of the pieces connected with her tears on my couch. After a couple of hours, we stand and hug and say goodbye. I thought she would be floored to see me, mystified by the passage of time, by growth. All she really wanted was someone to listen. — One day, as my mother clicks through the local newspaper’s digital obituaries, there it is: Agatha Hamilton. In my mind’s eye, time and distance and age and our brief reunion have dulled her shine. I see her, I think, clearly: a woman who needed, who doled out anecdotes with negativity, who disconnected from reality, who stretched the threads of conversation until you had no choice but to let them snap. — When the pandemic hits, I busy myself with virtual work. One of these jobs involves reading a book to kids, and the title has to be in the public domain, so I turn to the familiar tale of The Velveteen Rabbit. For the first time in years, I think of Agatha Hamilton: the cloying, cool sweetness of lemonade, her red van, my inconsequential American Girl Doll and—for some reason—a clock that hung on one of her walls. I watched that clock on a visit once, tracking the minutes as she droned about matters uninteresting to my nine-year-old brain. Holding that book now, I feel the fabric of the green sweatshirt she wore when I last hugged her, hear the echo of her words about a fever that should have killed her—isolation, incubation, a six-year-old staring her mortality in the face. In a drawer, I happen upon the hand-illustrated card she made to accompany the book, pencil marks precise and practiced. Inside, she has written, with lovely penmanship: For Madeline, a REAL person, on the occasion of her ninth birthday, with great love and deep affection, from Agatha Hamilton, who will love her little very kind and gentle friend always and forevermore.
Velveteen Tears
Madeline Wallace
How To Be a 3rd Generation Korean Kid
11:32 pm
1. Grow up going to an all-Korean church, the one that your father grew up going to. Befriend the other 3rd gen girl named Julia, because you can only understand each other. 2. Grow up hating Korean school, then joke with your white friends about how you know a lot more Spanish, but always feel that secret of regret hiding behind your laugh. 3. Try to be exactly like your white friends, and not realize it until 21 when it’s too late. 4. You don’t realize it until you’re 21 and it is too late. One of your white friends has already given you a sticker of the guy who sang Gangnam Style, and you have already told your mom in the kitchen that you need more Asian friends. 5. It is already too late, when you see your 80-year-old grandparents and realize that you may not be able to ask them every question about what it means to be Korean in America. 6. It is too late when your mom tells you in your whitewashed bedroom that she wants you and Ethan to meet her aunt in Korea before she dies. 7. Realize that perhaps it is not too late. 8. Vow to yourself that you will seek out a resource or two, after you graduate from your private liberal arts school, to find more people who have eyes like you. 9. Know that your Korean identity never goes away, no matter how many times you have unconsciously covered it up with people who you thought were just like you. 10. Know that your Korean identity never goes away, and it is never too late to reclaim it.
19
Note: This piece first appeared in the 2020 Feb issue of ArtAscent
I want to carry her body. Be her legs and her hands. I want to step inside her and feel around, ultra-alert to all her aches and pains and what they might mean. Like a parent toward a child who is growing too damn fast, I want to freeze her in time, just as she is now. Or rather, I would like to turn back the clock. Back to when her hair was more black than grey. Back to when her fingers—untouched by arthritis—grasped firmly. Back to when she walked freely, without a swollen ankle and a limp. Oh, to be young with my mother this way forever. Or, if I had to make a choice, I would take her place. I would give her a do-over, an extra thirty years. As the tenuous glue that holds together the pieces of my immediate family, my mother is strong but stretched thin from years of people pulling apart and pulling away. She is the bond that ensures we’re all in the same place—geographically, at least—on major holidays, graduation days, birthdays, as often as possible, though less and less over the years. But I know that without her, this won’t happen at all. I’ve never been close to my siblings. My hands weren’t made for reaching out, gathering people together. I lie awake nights worrying for no particular reason that my mother is dead. She’s not sick from any one thing, but she’s not well either, and I don’t believe she takes care of herself, and anyway, she doesn’t have the money to properly take care of herself—nor do I, which is certainly my one great failure as a daughter. The thought that my mother could stop being alive from one moment to the next, that—one unspecified day or night—she will stop being alive from one moment to the next, fills me with empty in a way I cannot express. All the words I have aren’t big enough, and still, they catch in my throat, lodging themselves in the hollow of my chest. For I will have lost my mother. I will have lost the body that was once my own. The body that was once my home. I will have lost her safe hands and her tired smile. Her rich voice and her knowing eyes. I will have lost the only person who texts me just to make sure I made it home. I was late to my birth. A joke made throughout my childhood. But it always made sense to me: I simply wanted to stay with my mother a little while longer. Maybe I understood even then that, in birth, I would begin the slow, irreversible process of losing her. Doubtless she lost me in many ways, as I was growing up—ways I’ll never understand unless I myself become a mother. The final loss, however, will be mine. She will do the last pulling away, and I will always carry the loss. One day I will know a life without her. I will do all the practical things that a good daughter does, but what I will want to do is crawl back inside my mother’s dead womb and bury myself within her. I will want to make her my home again, filling her body once more with my life, reawakening her cold, tired limbs with my own. Perhaps I am selfish. I don’t want to strap her in, as I did recently on a car trip, twisting around from the driver’s seat, when her arthritis played tricks with the buckle and the snap. I’m not strong enough to feed her or clean her or remind her who I am or who she was to me. I only want to step out of my skin and wrap her in it—lovingly, carefully—like a cloak. I want to cut off my right hand and give it to her. Cut off my left. Cut off all my black hair and crown her with it. I will gather her twisted fingers and her swollen leg. I will claim them as my own, if it means we can go on walking together, a little while longer.
Woman Home
I am familiar with the buzz the thrill the hand gripping thigh I will regret this tomorrow I let him with no reaction I like the warmth eyelids low I would I’m like a shell I just get places the bass in his truck vibrates my brain away the night is alive I think what time is it
Somewhere in Paris
Feeling 22 in 2020
“I think I’m a cynical optimist. It’s strange, those words together an oxymoron” she muses. Can you even be that? Cynical. disbelieving, critical, naysaying, disillusioned. Yet, optimistic? Believing, hopeful, sure that something will work out. She’s not sure at all. She assumes a position of ambiguity. She has everything to be cynical of. “Well, I think that’s a little depressing.” “You’re 22. You have the world ahead of you!” “This depresses me, because surely it’s true of your whole generation.” She’s not sure about that, sure everyone’s depressed. Isn’t that just the way of it? Lots are disappointed, but many of her peers have been sworn into the system already. They stand tall, proclaiming glory, patriotism, and wealth above love, history, and science. The older man speaks in grief, and — removed as he is from society — in weary helplessness. His truth now irrelevant. His observations apt, if unorthodox. Cynicism is what comes when she’s watched every. single. adult. Every productive member of society… Fail. Progressively worse, every time. Dig themselves — and her generation — into rising seas, stronger storms, hatred and division, pandemic, extinction, crippling ignorance, arrogance. Cynicism is what comes when good-intentioned mentors urge her to uplift, educate, and convince “society’s weakest links” that they must do better, when she knows the power balance is completely screwed. When their “betterment” changes nothing. Cynicism is what came when she realized sometimes the weakest links had it right. They understood the cogs of the machine better than she, who had worked in and for it, all her life. Making other people rich, at a — now visible — expense. Cynicism is what comes when the world is falling apart and no one in power seems to be doing anything to stop it. When, in fact, the only words of reason come from people pouring into the street. Optimism is something else. Something she’s not quite sure she defines the same way as the rest of the world. Optimism is when she wakes up at dawn, singing aloud with a chorus of songbirds. Optimism is hope: Knowledge that good people have made small changes, that small changes heal big hearts. Hope that big hearts will break but won’t shrink, despondent. She embodies the anatomy of this dichotomy. Her brow is creased in thought, like skin much older than 22. Her soft face, kind smile, are of one who will proffer a hug and a cup of cinnamon tea — (isn’t that, in itself optimistic? Empathy hasn’t all gone down the drain, surely) — She’s seen it all and she implores herself not to stop caring. But sometimes, she does. Angry. Broken-hearted at the state of the world. Cynicism leaks out when people say it will be easy, say: “you can do anything.” Hope leaks out too, because maybe she can.
Caroline Wolfe-Merritt
anna barrett just graduated from Earlham College. She takes photos and writes, but she's still figuring out what to do with her life. natalie beisner is a Los Angeles-based writer and storyteller. Her work has been featured in ARTASCENT and recognized by WOW! WOMEN ON WRITING and KALEIDOSCOPE: A REFLECTION ON WOMEN'S JOURNEYS. You can read more on her blog www.thisisnotalie.com and follow @nataliejeanbeisner. sonia charales studies science and literature as a university student. In her free time, she enjoys writing poetry about her experiences and perspective of the world around her. Have a lovely day! kate goodpaster is a member of the Earlham College Class of 2023. Goodpaster is new to the world of digital illustration, and only began experimenting with the medium 3 months ago when she was forced to quarantine away from her studio space. erin laine Law student, caffeine enthusiast, cat mom jules park is a Korean-American non-binary kid who grew up in Maryland, near DC. They love and low key depend on expressing themselves through writing and poetry, and have found great solace in the ability to put their complicated mind into words. Jules hopes that you love their work! :) allaire tetrault is a recent college grad trying to make sense of her new reality. Writing is her passion and is a great distraction in between applying to jobs, going to protests, and finding new quarantine projects. amby underock c. o. f. Hello I'm Amby from Florida. I'm excited to share some of my pieces, mainly poetry and drawings. madeline wallace is a recent grad, bookworm, Gilmore Girls enthusiast, and aspiring publishing professional for whom daily tea and dessert are necessary. caroline wolfe-merrit In these times of isolation and distance, I'm remembering why I used to write poetry, and spurred to start again. Hopefully some of it resonates with you, too.
contributors
anna barrett natalie beisner sonia charales kate goodpaster erin laine jules park allaire tetrault amby underock c.o.f. madeline wallace caroline wolfe-merritt