october 2020
antonym
unease & unwind
Letter from the Editors 5 Emma Maras, Johanna Monson Geerts, Madeline Wallace Minimum Wage 6 Tianna Anderson Dog Concept Realized 8 Christopher Barrett Under Water 9 Kaela Renee something not quite so funny when it's happening to you 10 ethan pickett Oxford, England 12 Anna Barrett Hearts and Minds 13 Kent Philip Baker Ghastly Pumpkin Patch 14 Abigail Anderson summer 2020 15 Selena Faith The Crows' Gift 16 Melia Lenkner That's Right 27 Christopher Barrett An Unmemory 28 Tianna Anderson Oct starting, not Ober 29 Ambyunderock Paris, France 30 Anna Barrett Contributors 32
table of contents
cover | “play time" by Selena Faith antonym logo | Micaela Levesque digital design software | Lucidpress october editors | Emma Maras, Johanna Monson Geerts, & Madeline Wallace october contest judge | Jackson Wright
Dear Readers, We’re so excited to share our October issue of antonym, the installment that officially marks six months of publication. We can hardly believe that we’ve already completed our first half year—time has flown! We hope that you’ve enjoyed perusing the pages of this little lit mag as much as we’ve enjoyed stitching them together every month. Our past few letters have been full of new and exciting changes to antonym, and October is no different. We recently completed our first apparel fundraiser; we plan to use these funds for continued efforts to promote the magazine and to cover entry fees for submitting to various contests. In fact, our first application has already gone out! Although it may be a long shot, we’re incredibly proud of the work we’ve done and the community we’ve built. Without you, it would simply not be possible. In addition, we held our second contest, this time in search of creepy prose for our October issue (which, coincidentally, comes out the day before Halloween). Special thanks to Jackson Wright, horror movie columnist extraordinaire (check out Jackson’s weekly column on the antonym blog!), who graciously agreed to judge contest entries. The winning author is Melia Lenkner; be sure to read Melia’s story, “A Crow’s Gift,” in this issue. Finally, we have established a system for judging monthly submissions anonymously. This has been a longtime goal of ours, and we’re proud to say that when you now submit to antonym, your piece(s) will be read blind. This month’s issue is filled with work that reflects the season—pieces that offer glimpses into the uncanny, unfathomable, and unsettling. However, the first word we landed on was another un- that describes the feeling these works conjure: unease. The flipside of antonym is, of course, that all of the works in our pages deal in duality. We wondered: what lives on the other side of unease? This feeling can be so hard to shake, particularly in today’s world. That’s how we landed on unwind; with each moment of discomfort these pieces elicit, there’s still something relieving—a kind of breath, or release. Thank you all for your continued support. And it bears saying that we are only four days away from the election, so don’t mind if we do: please VOTE, VOTE, VOTE. Wishing you well, Emma Maras, Johanna Monson Geerts, & Madeline Wallace october editors | antonym
Blog | Submit | Instagram | Facebook | Donations https://antonymlit.com
letter from the editors
Forgive me, Father, for I have fallen in love and my secret tumbled from my lips when I wasn’t looking shattered on the floor I scoop the shards up with my bare hands and pretend the glass isn’t broken and I’m not bleeding ohmygodI’msosorryletmegetthisoutofyourway like a waitress like a prayer I am on my knees eating glass and pouring oil on your feet I hope I’m not a bother I know you’re busy but do you have time to take this survey? You love me You love me not You prefer not to answer this question remember, there’s no wrong answer! And maybe I lied earlier when I said I wasn’t looking and this was all a mistake and I let it slip deliberately because at least the shame is something I can hold on to when you leave and I thought we might be a match but you don’t smoke anymore.
Minimum Wage
Tianna Anderson
Dog Concept Realized
Under Water
Kaela Renee
Christopher Barrett
ethan pickett
something not quite so funny when it's happening to you
I’m convinced I don’t have a stomach because every morning I’ll stand at the counter to drink my coffee (I do this because I love to burn my tongue enough so that it goes numb for at least an hour) and I can feel it slide down my throat, nice and familiar and easy, and when it hits my midsection (where my stomach should be), it will begin to spread all over and ignore any bounds that are supposed to confine it. Gravity pulls it down further, and I keep drinking more, until I can feel it all settle as close to the earth as possible, sloshing around in my toes with nowhere else to go. The pressure is immense, but I am used to it at this point. If I have anywhere to go (which is mostly nowhere) or anyone to see (which is mostly no one) or anything to do (which is mostly nothing), I typically find myself at a park within a few hours. I can’t specify further because it’s always changing, but there’s sometimes water and sometimes a nice rock or log to sit on and almost always at least a bit of shade so I can preserve my delicate skin. I’ll fight off heavy eyelids even though I’ve only just woken up, secure them behind bombastic heart-shaped rims and reflective lenses. If I’m feeling particularly adventurous, I will stretch out on my back in the grass, even though most of the time it scrapes my skin like tiny claws or course sand or hundreds of horns mounted on the foreheads of shiny beetles (which I’ve never seen in real life and can’t be convinced actually exist until I do). And then He will come. Walking slow and arrhythmically, He will begin to place His things far enough away from me that I could be convinced He doesn’t think this is strange, but close enough to surely be in my space. I will know He is there and I will hesitate to leave or say something. There’s no telling whether He knows I am there until He growls half-coherently something about academic integrity and intellectual property. I’ll say what’s up? in attempt to get Him to repeat Himself (He will not). When I start to move, to get as far away as possible, His eyes will swirl up and around until they land me directly—right in the eye—for the first time since He’s been here. He is scared and desperate and strangely familiar, like a friend in trouble who you haven’t seen for years but who needs your (and only your) help. There is nothing I can think to do. I’ll keep a safe distance away as I walk around Him to get back on the road to go home. I will wonder about Him and know that if I take a glance over my shoulder, I will see Him sprawled on His back in pain, convulsing, belly raised to the sky, skin angry and stretching to its limit until it bursts. Enormous, veiny, pink, fleshy, segmented legs will stretch up into the sky, revealing they end in a point which will have punctured His midsection. The legs will be reaching up out of Him, bending downward to find solid ground, leaving his body dangling underneath this nexus of horrible limbs. The whole time he will have not made a noise other than his breath quickening and becoming as heavy and irregular as his footsteps (I don’t know what happens after that because I will have always given up watching by that point). At this point, I will have always quickened my pace to get home as fast as possible, terrified to look back and find it following. I will let myself into my apartment and wipe my sweat, drink some water, and sit down. I decide that I will not say a word to anyone until I am able to count to one million in my head while staring at the ceiling fan spinning round and round in rhythm. When I finally do speak, I will not mention what I have just seen.
Oxford, England
Kent Philip Baker
Anna Barrett
It’s never expected and rarely controlled, Mind and heart speak different tongues. Matters of love don’t act as they’re told, They whisper, not shout, with their lungs. Without the control we exert in our minds, We’re never set free from its drift. The heart speaks a language both gentle and kind; Delivers to many its gift. Pretending to proffer a bit of control, Each of us fails when we choose. Treading a path that we steer to our goal, Hearts win, and minds always lose. We’re better off letting love take its own course, When hearts find each other in time, Not letting our minds or our intellect force; It lasts, long, and true, and sublime.
Hearts and Minds
Selena Faith
Ghastly Pumpkin Patch
Abigail Anderson
summer 2020
Moira, Jenn, and Lucille stood at the edge of the property, where a line of young evergreens marked the start of the ravine. Lucille held a brown paper bag of stale breadcrumbs and bits of beef jerky in one hand, and, with the other, she scattered them across the weed-choked grass for the small murder of crows. Jenn, who had just turned six, was watching her with wide eyes and two fistfuls of breadcrumbs. Moira kept a few paces back, hands in the pockets of her windbreaker. “Miss Patty just tosses the bread at the end of the day.” Lucille chattered on. When she wasn’t scattering crumbs, she was twisting her rings about her fingers—one of many nervous habits Moira had grown used to. If she hadn’t been too busy talking, she’d probably have been playing with her tongue piercing. Moira wasn’t sure which she preferred: Lucille’s chatter or the incessant clicking of metal against teeth; she supposed that friendship was the act of putting up with both. “Every day! It’s such a waste. And I said to her, yesterday, I said, ‘Why don’t we just take it down to The Good Shepherd for the folks in need once we’re done with it?’ and I swear to God, Moira.” Moira half-listened, eyes fixed on the crows. She had never liked birds: their jerky, rapid movements, so much like stop-motion, had always unnerved her. “She made this face like a strangled toad and started sputtering something about how she doesn’t believe in handouts and how if she wasn’t careful, The Good Shepherd would run her right outta business, and I just had to nod along and take the bread out with the trash like she asked.” Lucille scattered another handful, and the corvids chattered appreciatively. “I set the bag on top of the dumpster and grabbed it on my way out, when Will came and picked me up,” she said. Jenn looked up at Lucille, then down at the crows. She relinquished one of her handfuls, timid, and the birds fluttered toward her to gather the crumbs. She shrieked, part surprise and part delight, and a few of the more timid birds retreated. “You need to be quiet, or they’ll spook!” Lucille explained. She knelt down to show Jenn the best way to scatter crumbs and offered the girl another handful. Jenn, disregarding Lucille’s advice, bounced over to Moira and dumped the whole pile of crumbs on the grass in front of her sister. “Jenny!” she admonished. In a flurry of black, the entire murder had gathered at her feet. “They like you!” Jenn insisted. One of the crows nipped at Moira’s shoe. She let out a bark of disbelieving laughter and shook the bird off with an awkward one-legged dance. A collective rustling of feathers shuddered through the murder as they returned to Lucille, and the two girls chirped their amusement. “Unbelievable! What a bold little bastard,” Moira said. The offending crow hopped just out of kicking reach, cocking its sleek, black head as though it was sizing her up. It let out a rusty caw, and Lucille mimicked the cry, then dug around in the bag for a moment. “He prefers meat to bread, so I always pack a bit of something. He’s just making sure I didn’t forget about him. Aren’t you, buddy?” She produced a chunk of sausage from a napkin in her pocket and tossed it to the crow. It caught the scrap in its beak and fluttered away to eat. “You reward this kind of behavior? Whose side are you on?” Moira cried in mock outrage. Lucille laughed, and Moira offered her a tight smile, but her eyes didn’t leave the crow. It tore at the meat, tossed back its head, and paused a second to fix its bright, beady eyes on hers. She swore it looked her in the eyes—not at her face, or hands, like so many wild animals are inclined to do, but dead in her eyes. It almost looked amused, even pleased with itself; Moira found herself glaring back. “Oh! Look at that!” Lucille exclaimed, and Moira broke her staring contest to look at Lucille. One of the crows was hopping in the grass before her, something small and shiny in its beak. “Careful, Jenny, don’t scare her off!” she reminded Jenn, who was vocalizing her excitement a little too loudly. The crow dropped the item onto the grass at Lucille’s feet, and she stooped to pick it up. She raised it gingerly between two fingers to examine it, and bit her tongue thoughtfully, the piercing glinting between her teeth. Jenn crowded in close to see what she’d found. “What is it? What is it? Another locket?” Lucille stood, holding it safely out of Jenn’s reach. “Looks like a fishing lure. Not safe for you. Sorry, Jenn,” she said. She held it up for Moira to see, grinning. A reflective lead minnow glinted in the late summer light. Two hooks dangled from its tiny silver body. “Another gift for the collection!” she chirped. “What are you up to?” A new voice came from behind them, too loud, and scattered the crows. Moira’s heart leapt to her throat; she straightened her spine, bit her cheek to fend off the stupid, instinctive grin that tugged at the corners of her mouth. She swallowed down a chirpy ‘Hello, Will!’ before it could leave her mouth; its aftertaste was sickly sweet. Lucille looked over Moira’s shoulder. “Will! Come on! They were so friendly till you showed up,” she complained. Will’s touch, a simple greeting, registered as a shock on Moira’s arm, and she turned sharply to face him. “Jeez,” he exclaimed, withdrawing his hand and moving to stand beside his girlfriend. “Was Moira friendly till I showed up, too?” he quipped, and Moira felt her face go hot. Lucille laughed, the sort of laugh that crinkled her button nose. “Give her a break. One of the crows got a bit too friendly. I think she’s still recovering,” Lucille teased. She stuck out her tongue at Moira, and the metal of her piercing caught in the sunlight. “Friendly? It almost took a chunk out of me!” Moira protested. She meant it, but Will laughed, and so she laughed, too. Will put his arm around Lucille’s shoulders, and Moira stopped laughing. A few yards away, Jenn was emptying the brown paper bag into a heap on the ground, trying to coax the crows back to her. Only one seemed brave enough to take the offer. * * * Moira and Lucille sat cross-legged on Lucille’s bed; the beige light of Sunday morning was beginning to creep up the walls of her bedroom. “Anyway, I don’t want to go anywhere too far from home,” Moira said, her voice raspy from the marathon heart-to-heart they’d been having. It was a familiar feeling: they’d been friends for as long as either could remember, and neighbors for longer, and she’d spent more sleepless nights than she could count at Lucille’s place. “I’ll probably just wind up studying English at Foothill. Replace Mrs. Hartwell when she finally retires.” “If she finally retires,” Lucille replied, with about half the punch of one of her usual quips. Moira paused to look at her. Her eyebrows were knit together, and she was twisting her rings around her fingers like she was trying to pick a bike lock. Her piercing clicked against her front teeth. “You alright, Lucy?” Moira asked. Lucille nodded, but her twisting of the rings only hastened. “Yeah,” she mumbled, still playing with the piercing. It seemed to be a compulsion: she pressed her tongue against her lower teeth, and the little bit of metal popped up and out of place; then, she closed her mouth, working it back into place. Moira tried not to shudder at the sound. “Yeah. I mean, kind of.” “Kind of?” To Moira’s relief, Lucille stopped fussing with the piercing and spoke. “I’m the opposite of you, I think. I was thinking about packing up my guitar and heading to the city,” she confessed. “Like I did for that week in July, but for longer, this time. I just don’t know if there’s enough to keep me here. No offense,” she added, hasty. “I just don’t wanna keep waiting around for stuff—school and work and all that—when I could be out there doing stuff I actually want to do. You know?” Moira nodded. Lucille’s attention shifted from her rings to her locket, and she tugged at it, running it up and down the chain. The metal bit into her neck, leaving the skin a bright red, and Moira winced. “Yeah. That sounds… that sounds like it would be good for you. To get out of here for a while,” she said. The question rose unbidden to her lips, and she was so tired that by the time she thought to hold her tongue, she had already spoken: “What about Will?” The tension slipped from Lucille’s shoulders, and she eased the necklace back down to rest on her chest. “Will,” she said, suddenly looking as though all the sleepless hours were catching up to her at once. “I mean… I don’t know about Will. I don’t want to get stuck waiting around for him, either.” Moira felt a rush of relief at her words and tried not to sound too eager with her reply, “Yeah. I mean, you should live a life outside of here before you settle down anyway, right?” Lucille frowned. “I guess you’re right,” she said. A tapping on the window behind Lucille cut off Moira’s hasty agreement, and they both jumped at the sound. Running on nothing but conversation and bad coffee, Moira’s nerves were shot, and her whole body shuddered as the sound came again. Neither spoke, and, for a moment, the silence was broken only by the anxious clink of teeth on metal. The tapping came again, obscenely loud now that it was the only sound in the room, and Moira could feel it this time, rapping at her tired skull. Lucille let out the breath she’d been holding and laughed. “My God.” “What…?” Moira began, but the tapping picked up—louder this time. Lucille leaned across the bed, threw open her bedside table, and withdrew a bag of jerky. She took a small piece and turned around, unlatching the window. The early morning air swept in, dewy and cool, raising gooseflesh on Moira’s bare arms. Her eyes adjusted best they could to the dim morning light, revealing a dark and grainy world outside the window. A crow was perched in the neglected flowerbox, pacing, its head tilted at a sharp, inhuman angle. It peered over Lucille’s shoulder, and Moira thought she saw amusement in its beady black eyes. “This guy just doesn’t know the meaning of ‘boundaries,’ huh?” Lucille said, grinning as the crow took the jerky from her fingers. It swallowed the piece of meat, hopped up onto the flowerbox sill, and flew off. “Only after one thing. How shameless.” She paused, squinted into the darkness. “He left another gift.” She reached down into the dirt and scrawny maple saplings of the flowerbox and retrieved a single vertebrae—white and smooth in the dawn light as a sun-bleached skull. * * * Moira should have known that something was up the instant Lucille asked her to drive the two of them up to the park so they could go on a walk in the woods. The trees were pretty that time of year, sure, but they hadn’t gone walking in the woods like that since they were children. “I want to go somewhere where it’s just us,” Lucille had insisted. “Somewhere Jenn won’t want to tag along. Like the old fort.” The “fort” was, in reality, just a little clearing of trees, where Moira and Lucille had once liked to set up camp. They’d dragged countless stuffed animals to playtime among the stumps there, held countless stuffed animal weddings, forgotten countless beloved friends in the briars and weeds. There was an air of nostalgia and comfort about the place, and Lucille seemed to be feeling nostalgic. Once Moira and Lucille were both seated on a log and stump respectively, Lucille had drawn the little velvet black box from her pocket with trembling hands. Moira’s mouth went dry; blood rushed so quickly to her cheeks that they began to buzz with numb paresthesia, as though they’d fallen asleep. Lucille had ceased all movement: she wasn’t clicking the tongue ring against her teeth, or twirling a coin between thumb and forefinger, or buttoning and unbuttoning her pockets—instead, her hand was resting on her thigh. She’d pulled all of the costume jewelry from her hands, scattered the cheap copper and steel on the stump beside her to make room for the modest diamond ring. “I didn’t know if I would say yes. I even told him so,” she confessed. “Seeing as we’re so young and all, but I think I will. And I wanted you to be the first person I told.” Moira’s desperation was electric beneath her skin; it hummed and spat like a live wire, energy with no outlet, and the scarf began to feel hot and restrictive around her neck. She tugged it off, shuddered as the autumn air chilled the sweat on her collarbones, but she didn’t find it any easier to breathe. “I was really planning to skip town this weekend, Moira. Really was. Skip town and head into the city for a job. I was gonna do that anyway once school was out, you know that, but I figured I don’t have any use for a diploma anyway, singing and all, just like I talked about this summer. I even got my paycheck Saturday morning, but I waited to quit ‘till she yelled at me again, when I spilled coffee on the counter, and she chewed me out and I quit right there on the spot—you should’ve seen Miss Patty’s face, Moira, I swear her brain started to boil. Couldn’t tell if the steam was coming from the coffee or her ears, ‘cause she started to sputter like a kettle, so I just snatched off my apron and was out the door before she could get another word in. I looked back when I got to the crosswalk, and she was still just standing there, all red-faced with her mouth hanging open.” “Like a strangled toad,” croaked Moira. She tried in vain to swallow the lump in her throat. Lucille laughed. “Like a strangled toad,” she agreed. “Of course, I would’ve liked to put in my two weeks, but I don’t think I owed it to her. And besides.” She shifted her hand ever so slightly; the metal caught in what dull light still filtered through the clouds. “This is better, I think. Putting my paycheck in my savings and staying in town,” she said. “Will and I can finish school out proper and have a June wedding in that pavilion by the river just like my parents did way back when, and he can take that job at the mechanic’s, and—oh!” The wind, in a sudden act of violence, wrenched the scarf from Moira’s stiff fingers. It fluttered against Lucille’s shoulder, then past her in a flash of crimson, where it caught on the jagged branch of a felled tree. Lucille’s distraction was fleeting; her focus snapped right back to the ring, and she didn’t seem to notice as Moira rose to her feet. She began to chatter again, but Moira wasn’t listening anymore; she could hardly hear over the sound of her heartbeat in her ears. Moira’s legs carried her past Lucille, toward the tree, toward the scarf, which thrashed and danced before her, a bold red flag amongst the drab grays and browns of a forest in late fall. She seized it, ceased its thrashing. The wind caught Lucille’s words, carried them: “I’m just so happy I could cry.” From a tree branch high above them, a small murder of crows took flight in a flurry of wings and anxious chatter. Moira turned to look at Lucille’s back; she wound the scarf absently around her hands. * * * She returned the little black box to Will the next morning, before the first-period bell. When he thanked her, he squeezed her hand between two of his and requested that she keep the matter between the two of them; she thought about the two of them for the rest of the day. When she got home that evening, she buried a handful of cheap jewelry under a thorn bush in the ravine, wrapped in a scarf so red she worried it would be hard to conceal. A few crows watched her work, perched on the branches of an evergreen tree. Jenn was the first one with questions, and Moira fielded them with ease: “Lucille told me she was planning to take a bus into the city yesterday. I’m not sure when she’s coming home.” * * * The winter was harsh and long for human and corvid alike. The crows fled south; Good riddance thought Moira. She kept warm, for the most part, although the winter chill on her neck made her mourn her favorite scarf. The day the snow began to melt was, by coincidence or fate, the day that Will asked her on their first movie date. When he took her back home that afternoon and kissed her goodbye at the door, she felt, at last, like all was right in her world. She closed the door behind her, humming to herself, and moved to hang her coat back up on the post by the door. Seemingly bent on ruining her day, as her siblings often seemed to be, Jenn came careening around the corner, breathless, brandishing a plastic bag of bread and collided with her legs. “Moira, Moira, Moira!” Jenn wrapped her arms tight around her sister, shrill as a banshee. “They’re back!” Moira tried to pry the girl from her legs to no avail. “Who’s back?” she cried. Jenn beamed up at her. “The crows!” And so Moira spent a half-hour at the edge of the ravine, watching from a safe distance as Jenn scattered the bread about the gathering of timid, travel-worn crows. Moira kept her coat drawn tight across her frame, and, despite the steady improvement of the weather, felt the cold like icy fingers brushing across her neck. She supervised her sister with the usual disinterest, at first, but, without even realizing it, she began to watch the crows. They danced around Jenn, just out of grabbing reach, took her offerings of bread, and retreated a few yards back to eat them before returning for more. Moira had never noticed how clever the birds were, but they were playing Jenn like a fiddle: one would dart in closer to her, hesitate, and cock its head like it was conflicted about whether or not it should eat from her insistent, grabby hand. Another danced around her, one eye always on its partner in crime, careful to avoid her clumsy feet. Moira watched in amazement as it stole a crust from Jenn’s open bag. A pressure on her foot caused Moira to look down, and there was that crow. The one from Lucille’s window, the one who ate the sausage, and the jerky—he was nipping at her boots again. She had no reason to be sure that it was the same crow, but she was: its beady black eyes still glowed with intelligence that didn’t belong in a bird. She felt a sudden wave of revulsion and made to kick it, but it was sharper than her and had flown off before she could even follow through on the kick. In its wake gleamed a bit of metal, rusty and patched with green, laying on the damp grass. She stooped to pick it up. It was a copper ring, cheaply made and cold as ice. She dropped it to the ground as though it had burned her, then wiped her hand on her coat until the skin was near raw. * * * The crows began to venture closer to the house, so Jenn no longer required supervision when she went out to feed them. Moira watched from the living room window sometimes, the pretense of a book open in her lap, nausea churning in her gut. The calls from Will, once so exciting to her, went unanswered. Jenn returned one evening with a locket clenched tight in her fist, chattering on and on about the gifts from the crows; Moira feigned illness to avoid school but didn’t need to act: her stomach was turning with such violence that she feared she might really be ill. That evening, Lucille’s mother made a visit. Moira hid in her room, but the hushed, anxious tones of conversation between the two mothers crept its way up the pipes and vents, seeping through the floorboards and into her room. There was crying, at one point, choked and harsh and nearly animal, and Moira tried to block out the sound with her pillows. Still, the words reached her. She has, before, came the confirmation, and then the qualifier: But never for so long—started to worry. Something mumbled, hesitant, and then more clearly her guitar, and under her bed. Clearer still: Miss Patty and uncashed checks, and would Moira know anything about her plans? The phone rang, shrill and high. Moira knew it was Will, and she curled in on herself, scrabbling and scratching at her skin to ease the apprehension that was bubbling within her. She scratched like Lucille had, desperate, teeth bared and fingernails digging and digging and digging into the skin of Moira’s arms and hands, clawing her way toward air that wouldn’t come. Like Lucille, Moira fell still after a while, and there was a moment of quiet, but, even then, there was no peace. There was a question in the quiet, a grim anticipation, a promise of sound to come. And the tapping began. Tapping like the click of metal on bone, the tick tick tick of a stud being dragged against a smile, or a grimace, or against teeth clenched tight in pure, animal terror—a subtle, deafening click, just outside Moira’s bedroom window. With her eyes closed, she was left with any visual her mind felt it should supply—in this case, Lucille. Lucille’s teasing grin; Lucille’s engagement ring; Lucille’s mottled, purple-gray cheek resting on a bed of leaves. With the clicking so loud, so ever-present, her mind settled on one image: Lucille’s tongue, back and forth against her grin, click, click, click. Moira’s eyes flew open. There was no Lucille, no grin, no metal on teeth—but there was still a clicking from the window. When she saw the little black shadow on her windowsill, a vague impression in the darkening landscape, Moira realized that the sound was a beak on glass, and revulsion swept through her in a full-body shiver. She was electric as she threw off the blankets, trembling, fumbling with the window latch in blind pursuit of closure: she just wanted it to be done, over with. There was no bird on her windowsill. Instead, something foul and blackened lay there in the moonlight; in the center of it glinted a silver tongue ring.
Melia Lenkner
The Crows' Gift
That's Right
Oct starting, not Ober
Ambyunderock
An Unmemory
The work of unremembering is faithful an altar to kneel before every day. Hear my prayer: Bless me, Father, for I know not what they say. Words so sharp I bore holes in my character to remove them disregarding the gaping wounds. Sorry about all the blood on your sofa! I remember not the former things, nor do I consider the things of old. A far-flung newness of life in the plush static of aloneness. Sorry for being so loud! Receding into the inner fortress of my own making, I have forgotten myself days without number. Floating in the emptiness above my body is a kind of unremembrance too. Sorry for taking up so much space! But, here! Have my body! A living sacrifice. Alzheimer’s runs in my family. The unremembering is coming with or without my permission. You don’t need to ask a bleeding, screaming, abandoned body for permission. Sorry, what was that? Sure, no problem! And when they have eviscerated me my silence their knife have mercy on my inequities for I remember them no more.
Paris, France
contributors
abigail anderson is an awkward individual who loves to create. She’s always loved art so, that's what she’s doing. tianna anderson is an Austin College alumna, Fulbright alumna, avid reader, and cat person. Her work contemplates the intersection of religion, politics, and existence in the 21st century. kent philip baker MSgt (ret.) is a former hornist with The United States Air Force Band, DC. His music and poetry have been published for three decades. He lives in Northern Virginia, where the traffic is terrible. anna barrett recently graduated from Earlham College. She likes to take photos and write and we'll see where that takes her in life. christopher barrett I’m Chris and I really want you to look at my art, please. selena faith is a student at Earlham College in Richmond, IN, but she calls North Carolina home. She is finishing her last year towards a degree in Sociology and Anthropology, as well as Studio Art with a focus in Photography. Her passion is in analog photography, but she works in digital as well. Melia Lenkner is an emerging writer from rural Pennsylvania. Her work has been published in pacificREVIEW and Persephone's Daughters and is forthcoming in Peculiar Journal. When she isn’t working towards her bachelor's, she likes to spend her time with her two dogs. ethan pickett hopes you're well. kaela renee It's all your perspective, I may be who I am... but from your perspective I might not be? But who's to say who I actually am? Confused yet? I am. Ambyunderock Just a poet artist working towards being a Dali Seuss.
abigail anderson tianna anderson kent philip baker anna barrett christopher barrett selena faith Melia Lenkner ethan pickett kaela renee ambyunderock