Handmade Art by Ian Maxwell
City of San Antonio” Airplane
By Sophia Woytowitz
I had been without sleep for almost two days, at that point. I found myself scheduled to fly again almost immediately. I didn’t think I was physically able to go another thirty or forty hours without sleep. But there was no time to think about it.
We were going — Period!
The crew and I grabbed about seven hours of sleep while the ground crew prepared the airplane, “City of San Antonio.” It was named this because our captain was from San Antonio, Texas. We took off again that evening for a night strike against what most of us considered our roughest target, Tokyo.
Suddenly, I felt the rumbling of the flak explode. I heard the shrapnel raining off the airplane. I dropped the first sets of bombs on the city of Tokyo.
“Bombs away!”
As the plane turned away from the scene, I could see the city of Tokyo burning to ashes.
After the bomb doors closed, the plane banked to the right and we started our long and treacherous journey home. The pilot said, “Everybody check-in.”
“Jack, here”
“Bob, ok”
“John, here”
“Peter, here
“Jourdan, ok”
“David, ok”
“Mike, here”
“Tim, ok”
“Nathen, here”
The calls paused. Silence.
“Is Bill ok?” the captain asked firmly.
There was a long wait…
Bill’s position was all the way at the back of the plane, in the tail gunner seat.
No answer.
My friend from the first day at Fort Dix was now presumed dead.
“Well, I ain’t cleaning that mess out of that chair,” Tim said jokingly.
Everyone in the plane chuckled at the not-so-amusing joke.
However, the danger wasn’t over.
The trip back took more than 7-hours and was over open ocean. If the plane were to have a mechanical failure, there would be no place to land and no one could rescue us. We would surely crash into the ocean and we would all drown.
As we stumbled out of the plane; our legs were shaky from sitting too long. We got out and faced each other, knowing that someone had to clean up after Bill. Until, suddenly, the door form Bill’s compartment swung open. Two feet jumped out from the plane to the ground. It was Bill! We all ran to rejoice with him and asked him what happened.
“Why did you not answer my calls?” the pilot questioned.
“After the flak exploded near our plane, the connection seemed to vanish. I could hear your discussions.” He shoved Tim in a jokingly manner. “But I guess you guys couldn’t hear me.”
“We’re glad you’re ok,” I said.
“Yeah, I was gettin’ worried that we would have to clean yer guts, man.” He laughed as Bill leaned on the mental plane.
Crash
By Charlotte Knauth
A left hand loose on the steering wheel,
shiny silver band on the fourth finger.
A deep grey stretch of asphalt ahead,
and an expanse of dark sky above.
The passenger seat was empty,
the backseat home to only
a backpack, keys,
a bright red electric guitar,
and a stack of love letters
addressed to Michigan
from California.
His eyes trailed back and forth
across the open shadowed space before him:
empty
empty
empty
as the clock ticked
from pm to am.
The driver wore a smile
plastered wide across his face,
as he looked to the picture
scotch taped to his dashboard:
the brown hair and the
green eyes and the black jeans,
The Little Horse
By Isabella Briggs
“Trotta trotta cavallino.”
Three words I still think about. They do not have any particular importance. They do not mean anything special.
When I first heard these words, I was young. My grandmother sat in an old rocking chair, holding me on her lap. I cannot quite remember the couch’s pattern or who sat there, but that is of little importance.
I focused intently on my grandmother’s words. I could tell they were not English, but that did not matter.
An infant does not require the meaning of words, only the entertainment they provide. I sat there in pure bliss, giggling along as Ninna chanted the phrase, moving her knees up and down to the rhythm.
“Trotta trotta cavallino. Galoppa, galoppa, galoppa, galoppa.”
Ninna’s voice sounded natural this way. Her heavy Italian accent for these words. She pronounced them correctly, unlike when she spoke to me in English.
My young mind did not know why she sounded different. I did not know Italian was her first language. I did not know she grew up in Italy during a war. I did not know she never completed her schooling in America and therefore never mastered the English language.
All that mattered as I sat there happily was her voice as she repeated those words, just to make me smile. Because that was all I needed.
I would learn the rest later.
Riot
Katherine Butler
Is love bigger?
Because now when the
men in charge
lock up my right
to love and live,
when companies only
acknowledge me to
make a profit off of my identity
just to forget I exist
as soon as the month ends,
when I get criticized
and called broken
for not giving men what they
want,
when I get told to
“pick a side”
because it’s greedy to have both,
I think that love may be bigger,
but hate is louder.
And when those men in charge
decide to scream their hatred
at us, then I think it’s time
to remind them that
the first Pride was a riot.
Goodbye
Handmade Art by Natasha Mohmand
Ian Maxwell
Untitled
By Wynter Cox
I conclude this whole life
is one of those miracles
that never seem to matter
until the minute streams burn
and turn to steam
and I begin to dream
of purple moss and
inescapable meetings.
At night, the cicadas recite
stories about how the Earth
was born and will someday die.
One by one, the moths throw
themselves into the sun
and flit between beacons
of fading starlight
in modest white dress
despite certain death.
They speak with such grace,
such warmth beneath a
stark linen canvas.
In a realized subconscious,
I translate Morse code from
beating wings, hold my breath
where the air is water.
I take notice of the trees’ stillness
and runes carved into branches—
the woodpecker’s inscription.
To awaken is to be
reborn into a world restricted.
I listen for the metal breath
of fingers against bars, magnified
only to my ears.
The woodpecker pulls the
raw flesh of the cherry tree
out from inside itself, as if
it knows how to pinpoint
the sensitive topics
for rabid consumption.
Engravings on river stones
prophesied that I would finally
stray into the lesser miracle
of reality, condemning the
wonders of the night to
be extinguished by the
flame of day.
The Room in the Attic
Charlotte Knauth
She kept ticket stubs and pieces of pottery in a jar under her nightstand, fake forget-me-not flowers in an old chipped glass on top. Bars of soap sat in each drawer so all her shirts smelled of honeysuckle, her socks (she never folded them so it was nearly impossible to find a matching pair) like pumpkin pie, and her jeans like fresh cut lilac. Her furniture was deep brown and decorated with things she couldn’t bear to part with. It was all a part of an old matching set from the sixties, clean cut in a nostalgic way.
Her ceiling took in the curvatures and edges of the roof, as she resided in the attic her parents never used. It had remained empty for quite some time, nothing but a small cardboard box of old blurred photographs and neat brown clay squirrels that she center of the room.
A small window with an old metal frame stared at a walnut tree, tall and looming, outside the house. Its branches brushed against the siding when it rained and she could hear it in her sleep, like a giant running its hands against the walls. Seven small pot plants lined the ledge beneath the window frame, four dead, three alive, and an old Windex bottle filled with water sat on the laminate floor.
A record player rested in the corner of the room, the case a fading pale aqua blue. Brand new records ran across a low shelf extending along the length of the wall. Most of them had never been opened.
There was a bookshelf cut into the wall across from her bed, shelving carved out so novels and poems were nestled inside the foundation of the house, sitting vertically, horizontally, diagonally, and even scattered across the floor, until there was no more empty space to be seen.
The room always smelled like rain, sounded like rain, and left petrichor soaked air on her tongue. The ceiling, a deep fading grayish blue, was doused in hundreds of glow in the dark stars, placed meticulously to accurately map winter’s view of a constellation filled sky.
A mountain of blankets hid her bean bag like a cloak of invisibility. It sat in the corner between her book-filled wall and the closed closet doors that look eerily similar to those from Poltergeist.
But now there are only boxes. Now there’s just her, kicking her feet out from under the blankets in the middle of the night, one last time.
Tomorrow there will be her, taking trips back and forth between the moving van her father rented with boxes stacked up in her hands to fit under her chin. Then there will be empty space in her room in the attic, the attic nobody wanted but her, because it always smelled like rain.
Dream A Little Dream For Me
Charlie
Daydream with me for a moment…
You’re outside.
Mid-morning sunlight shines on the trees, casting shadows in the grass beside you.
You’re sitting by a brick wall.
Dry grass clippings from last week’s mowing tickle your legs.
A solitary star leaf rests on the grass tips,
Its crumpled and crunched neighbors buried beneath it.
Sea urchin tree seeds poke up from the ground.
Trees.
A maple with wide leaves and porcupine seeds.
One dry, empty branch
Surrounded by green life.
A weeping birch.
Leaves cascade down in waterfalls from upcurving branches.
“La paz es una necesidad.”
Peace is a necessity,
Says a tall wooden pole beaten into the ground.
The bottom is worn from years of rain and weed whacking.
Circular designs wrap around the cube cylinder top.
The looping characters of Arabic and other languages
Carve down the other sides.
Wind rustles leaves.
Grass crunches under classmates’ feet.
Birds twitter from between feathered tree leaves along the brick wall.
Sun warms your arms
As the wall cools your back…
Take a photo of this moment
‘Cause tomorrow’s not promised, and here…
Here
Is beautiful.