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CAROLINA MUSEVolume III • No. III • October 2023LITERARY & ARTS MAGAZINE

Carolina Museliterary & arts magazineVOLUME III • NO. III • OCTOBER 2023Editor-in-ChiefMadison FosterGraphic DesignerAshley PrattDance EditorRush JohnstonMusic EditorJake ShoresPoetry EditorAmanda ConoverShort Story EditorAidan MelinsonCarolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine is published seasonally online at carolina-muse.com. Access to the magazine is free online. It is set in Baskerville 12-point font with titles in DM Serif Display. All content, design, images, and videos are ©Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine. 2023 and cannot be republished without written consent from both the creator and editor. Multimedia art forms may hold exceptions to this. Email carolinamuse.arts@gmail.com with questions or comments.

From the EditorAs we conclude volume III of Carolina Muse, I look back on this year of growth with gratitude. We held our rst in-person event, launched our refreshed website, welcomed new team members, and leaned into our multimedia roots. I’m proud of where these updates have taken the magazine and its expanded community. However, with these accomplishments came some sacrices. We’ve stopped printing (for now) and have lowered our publishing frequency to three times per year. Our team is also meeting just once per month. I used to think that in order to grow, you had to constantly put in hard work to get there—an endless cycle of higher & higher expectations that lead to physical & mental exhaustion. I didn’t want to sacrice anything, only to pile it on and keep climbing. However, I’ve slowly been coming to the realization that growth is steady and happens when you lead with daily intention & care. Trimming back is essential to make room for new growth.A few weeks ago, I sat outside and repotted some plants, contemplating these same ideas as applied to both the magazine and my own life. Some of the plants I was working on I have had for almost eight years, and they look completely dierent than they looked back then. They were only able to ourish because I replaced their depleted soil with nutrient-dense soil. Because I removed their dead leaves to create space for new ones to thrive. Because I listened to their unique needs of water & sunlight and supported them as they slowly adjusted. Everything slowly, not too much of anything, and always open to trimming back and making space. In this issue, you’ll see many stories of loss & trauma. There is so much hurt in the world that often manifests in our art. But, you will also see how this grief shapes us, encourages us to grow, and connects us to one another. You’ll learn about the importance of community & vulnerability in nding support & hope. My wish is that you’ll leave this issue having left something behind, whether it be a xation or a grievance, and that you’ll take a seed of inspiration with you. It’s time to shed our dead leaves and make room for a new season.Madison

Table of ConTenTsThrough the Looking Glass · Sky DaiCharleston’s Price of Beauty · Sarah Jane KeiserInto the void · Jessica BravoAs Above, So Below? · Adrienne MixonBird’s-Eye Pew · Lacey BrownGross Anatomy · Sarah Jane KeiserColor you · Aaliyah VazquezRadiance in Darkness · Sarah Jane KeiserNew Perspective · Abbi ShenguletteFalling of the face · Nicole WilliamsFinding Harmony in Balance (Water Carrier) · Rakia JacksonTwilight Showers · Miguel Gonzalez-HernandezCairngorm Croft · Lilliana CameronPaint Me From My Good Side · Melissa BorlandThings We Take For Granted · Melissa BorlandSummer Sage · Ernest KroiSmoke Break · Lacey BrownAlison’s Garden · Melissa Borland7810141619202324262931323738424649Art & PhotographyTo What Comes Next · Grace ChastainIn A Sense · KoloraWax & Wane · Raeanna “Rae” GreyGive Me Water · Grace McNallyThings Held Dear · Anna LeeThey Got Nothing On You · Destiny StoneDance & Music172136414748

Sisters · Sophia Velasquez Martinezwhite mother · X. Ramos LaraSilver Spots · Meg Curranfireheart · Kelsey MillettOversaturation · Ashley RoncaglioneTreading · Yuna KangMs. Miller · Alex Gilbertfirst home · Sophia Velasquez MartinezRemember · Brendan OwensSolstice · Emily BanniganWatching Bluebirds Become Breath · Isabelle WeiHappiness is very fleeting · Morgan NeeringPolaris · Mary-Bryant Charlesa sweater green with envy · Marissa Elizabeth Garrowcupid · Kelsey MillettKnitting · Emily Bannigansorry I wasn’t listening I was thinking about Mark Ruffalo · Mary-Bryant CharlesSilent Disco · Paul JulianThis Song · Paul Julian691018-19202125262728303739434445474849PoetryPray for Rain · Joshua Trent BrownМОЇ ЖІНКИ / MY WOMEN · Yuliia Iliukha (translated to English by Hanna LelivTime Machinin’ · Manuel A. MelendezMy Neighbor’s Creek · Wesley BrittShort Stories11-172232-3640-41Front Cover · artwork by Sky Dai & Sarah Jane KeiserMastheadLetter from the EditorMeet Our CreatorsCreditsBack Cover · artwork by Sky Dai & Sarah Jane Keiser12350-56 5758Other Acknowledgements

6Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine SistersSophia Velasquez MartinezYou’re getting older.I can see it nowlying in your bed, myreection warped ina makeshift drinkingglass. I can’t know howmany nights you’vecocooned in thesecovers while my namesputtered acrossyour phone screen.Despite your cleanoors I worry I ruinedyou, created somekind of elongatedsin you’re still breathingin, damaged you downto your cellswith learned traumakicking andscreamingin the passenger seat.I haven’t livedalone in so long I’dforgotten whatit’s like:small bodybelly of the whalemore wine beforethe thunderstorm.PoetryListen to Sophia read “Sisters”

Volume III • No. III • October 20237Visual ArtThrough the Looking GlassSky Dai

8Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine Visual ArtCharleston’s Price of BeautySarah Jane Keiser

Volume III • No. III • October 20239Poetrywhite motherX. Ramos Laramy white mother never fed me the emotions she had for her homelandshe cries! madre mía ave maría durante días te pido diosito que protejas a mis hijos my white mother never fed me orange rice slightly watery sazonada con el amor que tiene por el jitomate rojo you’ll nd love in romemy white mother would never cross the border if she only knew to give birth to an eldest gay son who would tattoo himself with the visual histories of a homeland he only sees a memorialized fantasy my white mother never fed me on stolen white pages a son! she would deny he’s a woman como yo te amo en mis brazos hecho de corazones cuatro en un cuarto my white mother never fed me por todo(s) lados me ven los hombres extraños con la chocha abierta dos veces los otros dos una cortada por el estómago siempre te siento pidiéndome perdón pero no me hables así porque siempre te amarémy white mother never fed me

10Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine Into the voidJessica BravoSilver spotsMeg CurranThere’s always a dead person in these things. Or an alive person who wants to be dead, or a dead person we pretend is still alive. A mention of the stench of grief, of despair, of the someone dead’s cologne. We grieve your dead grandmother. You despair with a force that leaves you permanently o-kilter. Something is wrong, of course. Always is. Grief clouds the world, plots dark spots on the silver mirror you use to watch the world from a distance. You like the invertedness, how much stranger everything appears.Poetry / Visual Art

Volume III • No. III • October 202311In apartment 2B, Jack watched his father amble outside in his underwear. The old man, his hair gray from worry, knelt and began praying for rain. Jack’s mom has asked him to put pants on or even just a shirt. But, cold or warm, he was there in the courtyard of their complex, on his knees, asking God for water to fall from the sky. For whatever reason, maybe a sick joke from the Man himself, it hadn’t rained in weeks. His pale skin only got paler on this frigid November morning. Jack drank cheap coee from a local diner mug, one of many his mom put in her purse on the way out, and stared out the window at his dad’s bare back. “Was he always like this?” “Yes,” she said, exasperated already. “Let’s just go with yes.” “You always say that.” “And you always ask. Your father is a product of his raising, honey.” He stared at her curiously while she plopped two scrambled eggs onto a plate and handed them to him along with the salt & pepper shakers that look like cats. Their little hats were once red & blue, but the paint had mostly chipped away. While Jack waited for her to nish cooking the rest, he heard the front door open and close. His dad strolled in, shivering, and sat down at the table quietly. He looked out the window as if he’d come to join them in their watching of himself. Jack stared down at his food and waited for his mom to cut the tension with more eggs. It was the nal piece of their morning routine. “How has the writing class been going?” His dad asked. Somehow, his rst words were always a question. Jack surmised it’s because it closes the door for any questions that might turn back on him. “It’s ne.” “What does that mean?” “It means it’s ne.” “Hm, ok. What have you been writing about?” Jack looked up from his eggs for the rst time and gave his mom a look of please, get me out of this. “Nothing, I haven’t written anything,” he said. He got up from the table, threw his food in the trash, Pray for RainJoshua Trent Browngrabbed his bag, and headed for the university library. His parents stared at each other until his mom got up to clean the kitchen.. . . Wallace stood in the bush by the road, or as inside of it as he could get without the risk of a spider crawling on him, and he pissed into the leaves. It was a nervous stream. He hated having to do this outside, but it was the only option available. Still, what if a cop drove by and saw? Or, what if an ornery lady, having a bad day, saw him and decided to call the cops? He wished he could hurry up. The stream continued trickling nervously and extended the seconds that felt like minutes. “You done over there?” Cherry yelled. “Will you just be quiet?” He shouted back, embarrassed while he zipped up his pants. When he met her back at the road, she was frowning at her phone. “It’s dead,” she said, realizing he’d walked back up. “Alright. At least we know how to get home.” “Yeah, but I pinned the location of the car on my phone. So, we’ll have to charge it before we try to go back and get it. And how are we going to go back to get it, exactly? This was a long ass walk.” “I don’t know. I can probably just go get it myself.” “Ok.” They walked in silence for a few minutes, the city revolving around them as they neared their apartment. “Why is it again that you didn’t have triple A?” “You know why,” Wallace replied. “Yeah,” she said, her face downcast. “I know why.” They turned the last corner and found themselves back at Crystalwood apartments, home of their home, 2C. The couple strolled through the front door, catching a glare from the oce lady, Malinda, and headed into the courtyard to take the stairs. There was no elevator. He wondered how they got by with that and how their neighbor, Fernando, got to his apartment on the third oor in his wheelchair. As they entered the courtyard, they saw the man again. Naked, except for a gray pair of boxers, on his knees in the nearly dead grass. His head was bowed and his hands in the air. “What the fuck,” Cherry whispered. “Every time. I don’t even think any of them are religious. Go do this shit at a church or something.” Wallace gave a small snort and smile to hide the fact Short Stories

12Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine that he was curious about why his neighbor had been doing this nude and pious routine every morning for weeks. It seemed admirable, in its own mysterious way. Regardless of their thoughts toward the old man, they hushed and went up the stairs quietly, as to not disturb whatever heavenly act might be taking place. Wallace unlocked the door and let Cherry in rst, craning his neck to get one last look at the man, still in a vertical fetal position.. . .I don’t know why Daddy makes me do this. It hasn’t rained in so long and I know it hurts him but my friends at school told me their daddies don’t make them do it. First it was just him and we would watch from the window while Mama made us breakfast. He’d just go out there in whatever he was wearing and be on his hands and knees like Miss Cassandra was last week at the end of church service. But then he decided that me and Julie needed to join him and he doesn’t even give us any time to get dressed. He just pulls us out there in the dirt. Mama complained the rst couple times. She didn’t like that he was making us do it. Then she didn’t like that it was getting our pajamas dirty. Now she don’t say anything at all. I wish she would. Maybe he would have stopped making us do it by now. . . . Jack had learned to understand that doctors rarely wanted to talk out of the blue if it wasn’t bad news. This afternoon was no exception. The oncologist was a middle-aged white woman who couldn’t have been much older than his mom. She had kind, sad eyes that didn’t make him envious of the position she must be in daily. “Mrs. Moore, thanks for coming to your appointment early today so we could meet,” she said. His mom just nodded back. The oncologist’s oce had light blue walls and dark wood shelves surrounding a desk made from what looked like the same wood. She sat very straight in her desk chair, hands clasped in front of her. “As you’re well aware, we’ve been doing this for three months now, and last week we took some scans to see how the treatment has been working.” She went on to say words that he wouldn’t remember later. He only knew that they were bad. That they meant the treatment wasn’t working. Or it might work in the future, so they had to keep doing it? Either way, his mom was not in remission. She was still in the throes of it. His mom took it on the chin. She didn’t look any dierent from the update because there was no more sadness or energy to be pulled out of her. It was all the same. “I’m sorry for storming out earlier,” Jack said. “It’s okay, honey,” she said, sitting in a blue hospital chair with an IV in her arm, pumping her full of a slurry of chemicals. Jack tried not to look at her. The way she slumped in the chair. The way her eyes hung lower than they used to. It just lled him with sadness. He didn’t feel like he could look at either of his parents anymore and often found himself staring at the oor. She read a magazine, or at least acted the part. It had a woman on the front in the latest athleisure brand, frozen mid-jumping jack. They laughed together at how ridiculous it was when she picked it up. From a glance, he could tell the page she was on touched on important topics like the newest fad diet and an interview with some actress who swears by it now. “You’ve got to just let him be,” she said, still looking at the pages. “How? Why?” “Everyone copes with problems in the same ways.” Her eyes closed as she spoke. Jack could only imagine what she was feeling, and he didn’t enjoy imagining it. “But, it’s embarrassing.” “Embarrassing to who, Jack? You think anyone cares about his little thing? It’s just you, honey. It’s just our world we’re in. No one pays attention to your father.” Jack grunted. “I just miss the mornings without it,” he said. “I’m sure he does too.” “Do you really think no one pays attention to a naked man praying in the courtyard?” “I’ve made a career out of not paying attention to your father’s antics. It’s not that hard.” They laughed together until she wheezed in pain and an older lady gave them a glare from across the room, and they remembered where they were.. . .Today Daddy told us what to say. That was the rst time he’d done that. He told us “Say to God please Lord, give us some rain and end our suering. We repent for the sinning that caused this Short Stories

Volume III • No. III • October 202313and we ask that you use your mighty hand to wet the earth.” Then he told us to repeat it. But I felt silly after I said it once.So he gave me a wallop upside my head and it really hurt. I didn’t cry though because Julie still had her eyes closed and she was still saying it and I could tell if I disturbed her then both of us would get in even more trouble. So I started repeating it just like he asked. I wish it would just go ahead and rain. . . . The next morning, Wallace sipped a cup of shitty coee out of his favorite mug—the one with some chips and crackers that Cherry tried to throw away multiple times, but he refused—and watched the old man begin his morning prayer routine again. He wondered what he was praying for. And did he have to do it nearly naked in the courtyard? And why had it only started just recently? They had been neighbors for years, although never once speaking to each other or learning their names. Wallace wasn’t certain he hadn’t done anything like this before. And yet, with all the questions, Wallace couldn’t help but be intrigued. He felt a pull to throw o his PJs, run outside and join the man. “What are you looking at?” Cherry said from behind him. He startled, reentering the world from his universe of questions. When he turned around and his eyes adjusted back to the dark apartment, he saw her staring at him with a face of confusion. “Uh, you okay?” “Nothing,” he said, exasperated. “I mean, yes, I’m okay. Just looking at the window.” He tried to use his head and body to block the window so she couldn’t see past him. There was no chance of the man disappearing before she saw, the prayer sometimes took 20 minutes. His blocking was useless and she saw, then looked back down at him in more confusion. “What, are you gay now?” She said, only half joking. “Staring at that old man, almost as naked as a damn jaybird.” “No, I’m not gay.” “Alright, alright. Sorry. But, why were you looking?” “I don’t know. Just curious what he might be praying about.” “Hm,” she said. “Whatever it is, maybe we could ask him to pray for us too. Might be helpful.” They were now both looking out the window at the man in repose. “Speaking of that,” she continued, “what do you think about getting another job? Or maybe I get another job. We just have to do something.” He turned back to her. “We’re already worked to death. We need better jobs, not more of them.” “Well, here you are looking out the window all morning. Maybe go online and see what jobs are open? We can’t keep this up, Wally. What are we going to do with the car? We can’t leave it forever. And bills are next week.” Wallace did the thing he always did, putting his head down and looking depressed. She knew it was real, but it was so often these days that she couldn’t help but question the legitimacy of it. He was so damn angsty. “I know this is a lot. I know you’re trying. But one of us has to do more, or both of us. Or we’ll lose this place and the car, and after that we’ll have nothing.” “Okay,” he said. “I’ll look now.” Before he got up, he glanced back out the window and watched the old man get o his knees to go back inside. Wallace wasn’t sure, as it was too far away to be certain, but he thought he saw tears running down his face. . . .I overheard today Mama and Daddy talking and they said if it doesn’t rain pretty soon then the crops will just die o and we won’t have any way to eat. I thought why does Daddy care? He don’t eat anymore anyways. He just drinks at night and watches us while we eat the beans and potatoes that Mama makes. On the nights that we get ham or chicken he stares so hard that I get scared and it makes it hard to swallow. But now the praying ain’t so bad. I know the lines by heart and it’s kinda like acting in a movie. I wish I could go see another movie soon. I bet I could be pretty good at it since I remember these lines so well. Daddy even told us one time that he was proud of Short StoriesHe wondered what he was praying for. And did he have to do it nearly naked in the courtyard?

14Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine us for getting them right and repeating them so much. But now he don’t say anything afterwards. We just keep repeating until he says we’re done and then we can go inside and wash up. Mama doesn’t make breakfast no more on account of what the teacher called a food shortage. One time I opened my eyes for a second and saw her watching us from the door. It looked like she was crying so I closed my eyes real quick. I hate when Mama cries. . . . The old man concentrated on his prayers, repeating it over and over again. “... and we ask that you use your mighty hand to wet the earth.” Normally, it was so quiet during the prayer time that nothing disturbed him, and he felt like he was back on the farm in the dirt with Julie. The only sounds breaking the silence might be a pigeon or the neighborhood bluejay, close enough to the old chickens. He cherished this silence now. This was all he had to keep him alive, and he needed to stay alive, especially if there was a chance that she wouldn’t. He felt the concrete of the apartment complex patio on his knees. It hurt, but he’d grown used to it. A necessary pain. Just then, the old man heard footsteps. He kept his eyes closed and continued repeating the prayer. Maybe it was just another tenant heading out for their job early. Maybe a new tenant who hadn’t seen his routine yet and wasn’t afraid of his naked piety. As he continued, the footsteps drew closer and closer until eventually they were right on top of him. He opened his eyes, the morning sun blinding him for a few moments, and looked up. It was the young man from a few apartments down, the one with unkempt hair, ratty clothes, and a girlfriend with a fruit name. Walden, the old man thought. No that can’t be it. Wallace? Yes. Wallace and Cherry. Wallace just stared down at him, frozen. The old man looked back and tried to make his face as endearing as possible. As harmless as a half-naked older gentleman on his knees at an apartment complex can be. Wallace gave a half nod and knelt down beside him. The young man closed his eyes and assumed the prayer pose. The old man stared at him for a while longer until he realized the kid wasn’t leaving. So he began again, starting the prayer over because he couldn’t remember where he’d stopped. The boy was silent beside him as he went on. “Please Lord, give us some rain and end our suering,” he said. “I repent for the sinning that caused this, and I ask that you use your mighty hand to wet the earth.” “Please Lord, give us some rain and end our suering,” he continued. “I repent for the sinning that caused this, and I ask that you use your mighty hand to wet the earth.” Then he heard it, faintly to his left. “Please God, give us some rain and end our suering,” Wallace said, stumbling through the sentence slowly. The old man stopped and opened his eyes again. The young man stopped too and stared back at him. His eyes were a sad & broken blue that the old man couldn’t look away from. They beckoned for an act of kindness. The old man nodded and closed his eyes again. He said it slowly this time. “Please Lord, give us some rain and end our suering,” he continued. “I, we, repent for the sinning that caused this, and we ask that you use your mighty hand to wet the earth.” The second time through, Wallace joined him. They continued on for three more minutes, until the old man was nished. He got up and went back inside 2B. Wallace Short Stories / Visual ArtAs Above, So Below?Adrienne Mixon

Volume III • No. III • October 202315waited to hear their door shut before he opened his eyes, returned to his feet and did the same. When he got inside, he began to sob. . . .Daddy wasn’t here this morning and Mama wouldn’t come out of the bedroom. But me and Julie still went out and did it. I hope Daddys alright. He still hasn’t come home and it’s night time now. Julie asked if we should keep doing it. She said she was too afraid to ask Mama. I said we might as well. In case Daddy comes home tomorrow morning and sees us. It might make him happy.. . . “Weeks?” Jack screamed in the courtyard at his father and the young man kneeling beside him. It was a windy day and his voice echoed o the apartment walls around him. “You’ve been doing this for weeks? What the fuck?” “Son, calm down,” the old man said. “No, I won’t calm down. What are you, some kind of cult leader now?” “He just joined me, Jack. I didn’t ask him to.” “Why the hell does that matter? This is insane.”Wallace understood that his presence was unwanted and only caused the argument to accelerate more. He stood up, his knees creaking in pain from the sti ground, and went to walk away. “No, don’t just walk away,” Jack said. Wallace turned around. “I’m just going back to my apartment, man,” Wallace replied. “Why are you out here doing this? Enabling him. And in your underwear? My dad isn’t normal, dude. This isn’t a normal thing to do.” Wallace stood there, the wind owing over his bare shoulders. He fumbled around with his hands and stared at the angry college student, still in his PJs, his face as bright red as his annel pants. He felt unbelievably embarrassed. He thought by doing this only when Cherry was at work, he could avoid the shame of partaking in the prayers. He thought he could give it a shot. Just for once something could be that way. He could just do something. “You gonna fucking answer me?” Jack shouted, nearly foaming at the mouth. Wallace squinted his eyes in frustration that he couldn’t make up any good sounding reasoning for why he was out here reciting the prayers of a clearly insane person. He was desperate. But to say that would mean the shame he’d been avoiding would have a front row seat to the party. He turned in defeat and walked back to his apartment. He sat in silence and tried to think about nothing.Far enough out of earshot now, Jack continued airing his frustrations with the old man in the 2B kitchen, ailing his arms about as his father drank coee at the table in his work clothes. “Can you just stop doing it?” He asked. “My routine hurts no one.” “It hurts us, dad. It hurts Mom.” “Has she told you that? Have you asked her?” “No,” Jack said, averting his eyes to the oor. “I haven’t.” “Don’t assume how your mother feels, Jack. I’ve taken care of you your entire life. I’ve asked you ‘why?’ a million times when you’ve done things that baed me. I only ask the same from you. You are not yelling at me because you care. You are yelling at me because I embarrass you. And I do not care about embarrassing you.” Jack continued to stare at the kitchen tiles. He nodded silently before grabbing his backpack and leaving for class early. . . .This is my rst time writing in here in a while. That’s cause today it rained. Real hard. And the ground was so dry that it ooded the yard and Mama cried. I think it’s on the account that Daddy hasn’t come home. But me and Julie kept it up, praying that God would wet the earth with His mighty hand. And he did it. So me and Julie had a little dance party while Mama cooked and then the water got so tall in the yard that we had to take the chickens inside and put them in the washroom. They’re so loud in there still that I can hardly fall asleep. But I’ll try now I guess. . . . Wallace continued joining the old man for another month. He heard the son leave every morning just before the ritual began and it made Wallace feel better, in a shameful way. Cherry found a full-time job at the hospital, and now she left for work early every morning. She had stopped kissing him goodnight, or even talking to him very much. He thought she might leave soon. While the month of praying carried on, he began Short Stories

16Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine actively searching for jobs and got a few interviews. He’d scheduled them for mid-morning to give him enough time for prayers and a shower. The rst was the next day. He felt as if this silly thing was working, somehow. But this morning, he didn’t hear the door on 2B open & close. The boy hadn’t left yet. Wallace began to worry but he talked himself o the hill. Maybe the boy had overslept, everyone did that sometimes. Twenty minutes rolled by slowly. Wallace sipped his coee and his hands trembled. The old man would be coming outside soon. He had to. But then he didn’t. It was now ve minutes past their regular time. Wallace couldn’t stand it anymore, so he put on his sweatpants and went over to their apartment. He stood there, mustering up the courage to knock on the door. Suddenly, a shout erupted from the apartment. It sounded like the mom, who he’d only seen a couple of times. She wore a hat recently, he noticed, and looked very frail. He gured she had cancer, but he and the old man never actually talked, so he never asked. He could barely make out their voices, so he quietly moved over to the window and peered in through a slit in their blinds. When his eyes adjusted, they were all hugging & crying. The mom was holding the phone to her ear still. “It’s gone? Completely?” He heard the old man ask. “She said completely. Oh my god. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She sat the phone down. Wallace watched as the family jumped around and hugged and kissed and sobbed. He couldn’t help but feel as a part of their unit while he watched, like he was inside the apartment with them and everything was okay for once. But then, he remembered who he was and where he was. He was outside. He was jobless. He was Wallace. He ran back inside the apartment, hiding his face. He tried to call Cherry twice, in between his tears and sucking for air, but she wouldn’t pick up. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. It’s over. It worked for them, and it’s over,” Wallace whispered to himself, rocking back and forth. Jack heard the footsteps outside their door and threw it open to see who it was, barely catching Wallace’s legs re-entering his apartment. When he turned around, the old man was looking out the door behind him. . . .I think tomorrow morning I’m gonna suggest to Julie that we start praying for Daddy and him to come home. I’ve already been doing Short Stories / PhotographyBird’s-Eye PewLacey Brown

Volume III • No. III • October 202317it quietly during our rain prayer time but I don’t know if she has. But she probably has. Maybe we can just do this one inside. I’ll ask Mama if she wants to join.. . . The next morning, the old man knelt in the courtyard again. He did not speak until, eventually, he heard the usual footsteps clodding toward him. He patiently kept his eyes to the ground until Wallace was beside him before speaking. He took a deep breath and spoke the prayer softly. They carried on for a few minutes, until the old man felt a gentle touch on his shoulder. “Honey, you can come in now,” she said. Both he and Wallace paused. The old man got up and started to walk back with her before turning back around. He grabbed the young man by the shoulders and gently encouraged him to stand. Then, he wrapped Wallace in a bear hug. They stayed this way for a few seconds while Wallace gently cried into his shoulder. The old man patted him on the back and slowly walked back to the apartment with his wife on his arm. Jack watched from the window as Wallace wiped o his eyes and went back inside. He decided to stay home from class that day. He talked to his father all morning, about work and classes and sports and childhood. They laughed together until Jack fell asleep on the couch. The old man let him sleep, he knew how exhausting it had all been. After somewhere between ve minutes and a lifetime, Jack woke to his father lightly shaking his arm. “Let’s go for a walk, Jack.” He nodded yes, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. It was still daylight outside, but the sun had begun its descent. It slowly waned at the end of the road ahead of them, before a cloud, heavy & gray, appeared to hide its nal light. His father produced a small notebook from his back jean pocket. It was made of dry, worn-down leather. “It’s OK to question why people do things,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with it.” Jack opened the old book and read the scribblings of his father, from when he was a child. He read about the torturous prayers and the disappearance of his grandfather. Then, Jack heard it. In front of them, as they stood still on the sidewalk, rain droplets began pitter pattering, moving quickly upon them. His father started walking straight into it. Jack joined him as he veered into the road. “Do you see that?” The old man said in a reverent whisper. He started to speed up. “Hey, woah, we’ve got to go, Dad,” Jack said, chasing him down. It was too late by then, anyways. They were consumed in it, both with no jacket, umbrella, or hat. His father turned back and looked at him, dropping to his knees in the middle of the empty road. Jack joined him on the wet asphalt. He tried to protect the notebook under his shirt. His father smiled at him. They didn’t say anything. Short Stories / Dance

18Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine I am nostalgic for my most miserable self –A sticky six year old, wailing for the wiltingremains of a soft serve cone,so full of unbridled rage.Cardinal cheeks and tipped ears glowing.An authenticity unrivaled in that tiny heart,bursting, bursting, bursting. I am ill with longing.Pining for crisp dawns by the sea,open windows and chilly morning sex.Halcyon evenings spent inhaling wood smoke from ignited driftwood piles,spitting the rst sip of beer into the amesour eyes alight with unrivaled cognizance of our eeting youthspinning and spinning in the re light. I want for so much I worry I may die of wanting.I desire love letters and imperfect perfect moments,mental photographs captured and suspendedwhen the shutter speed was the ashlightblinking through the tree line in ourmidnight games of hide and seek,unable to transpose undeveloped lm slidesto another living being.Snapshots of presence,intimacy no one can put their nger on,no one can identify.reheartKelsey MillettPoetry

Volume III • No. III • October 202319Poetry / ArtworkGross AnatomySarah Jane Keiser I ache with guilt.I burn with the culpability for the actions of my child self.Surely I cannot be the only personbrimming with unshared experiences,suocating with grief for all the lives I could have lived,holding my breath in line at the coee shop,hiccuping the lingering remnants of swisher sweet cigars. If you and I whisper to the same blade of grass,it will tell us separate stories of wasps and ants.If we all stare together unblinking into a solar eclipse,we will be blinded in dierent ways.If the world shares an intake of breath,it will always be someone’s last.I’ve stopped trying to name this feeling. When we die,how many words will be written for usthat we will never read?

20Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine to feel to learn to taste to yearn to see to breathe to trust to burn to behold this beauty to reach to touch to exist with pain it’s all too muchOversaturationAshley RoncaglioneColor youAaliyah VazquezPoetry / Visual Art

Volume III • No. III • October 202321Winding down old hollowsinto the duskish morn, I hearviolets and crocuses and daodils frolicAcross the yawning meadow, opening praisesfrom bluebirds and storks punctuate the morning air. Fairies of green and blue gilt rise from the lips of buttercups, confused, rising above the morning fog. The colors of sunriseare pink and yellow and in the clashing purple light,bodies oat red down a blushing stream. TreadingYuna KangListen to Yuna read “Treading”Music / Poetry

22Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine A woman who fed abandoned cats was left alone in her nine-story apartment building. She shared her apartment with ve cats: four female cats–black, white, ginger, and tri-color–and a striped, timid male cat she had picked up on the street before the war. That one had not yet become accustomed to female company that often pushed him back from the bowl with their authority. The woman was glad that she had as many as ve cats. At night they snuggled up to her and warmed her, since there was no heating in her apartment. She tried not to think about what would happen in the winter–she had nowhere to go anyway. Not only the heating but also the electricity and water were often cut o. For such situations, the woman always kept ve ten-liter bottles lled to the brim and a battery of scented candles from her former life. She poured cold water over the buckwheat, and as soon as it swelled, she lit a candle and opened a can. After dinner, she wrapped herself in a blanket and slipped into bed, where the cats, who had been given dry food for dinner, warmed her. She got the cat food from volunteers. Every morning when she stepped out of the apartment building, twenty hungry cat mouths met her. They cried out from hunger, cold, pain, and loneliness–they cried out to her because there was no one else who could have heard them. The woman knew the stories of almost all of them. A gray British shorthair cat had lived on the eighth oor in a family with two children. They had left right away, locking the cat in the apartment. They handed over the key only after the cat had roared with hunger for a month. They both cried when the woman freed her from this prison. In the next apartment lived a uy black cat. He’d become an orphan when his owner had gone outside to get bread and came under re. Her legs had been torn o, and she’d died in the hospital. Her son had let the cat out into the street. He’d just waved his hand when he had seen the woman’s silent question and walked away. A spotted cat had been thrown out of a car right in front of her. He’d pressed down on the ground, frightened & confused, and the woman had grabbed him and taken him to the basement, where he at least had a chance to survive. More than anything in the world, the woman wanted to take home all the abandoned cats, but she did not know how she herself would survive that brutal winter.МОЇ ЖІНКИ / MY WOMENYuliia IliukhaTranslated to English by Hanna Leliv.Short StoriesShe tried not to think about what would happen in the winter–she had nowhere to go anyway.Radiance in DarknessSarah Jane Keiser

Volume III • No. III • October 202323Visual Art

24Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine New Perspective Abbi ShenguletteVisual Art

Volume III • No. III • October 202325Ms. Miller Alex GilbertIs it true, Ms. Miller, that as we speakyou’re having a house built downtownto the tune of 1.2 million? Or am I just as gullible as I look, with my wrinkled sleeves, my frantic eyes, and my serving tray? They told me you were 92, but you don’t look it to me today. From this side of history, from this plane, I see you glamorous and gossip-fueled, all silver screen and silver brooch: a slight turn of the neck and parted lips. They said you have no family; more tragic scenes than wedding rings, your shawl around your shoulders like jewels and smoke, a true native of the chaise lounge and the rose garden: a siren under articial candlelight. They chattered that you cried one day; a hurry in the dining room, your gaze torn from the back window in a tabloid urry of attention that must have been familiar to you as you left behind the charcuterie. If I saw you on a magazine cover in the uorescent light where you don’t go, would you be beauty marked like Marilyn, your hands to your face in mock surprise? Or scatterbrained, yelling into the tape recorder somewhere over the rainbow? The bustling guests with their champagneand their small talk and their birthdayswill never understand your halfway smileor the heavy curtain that hangs behind your eyes.Looking out at the quiet square, you jump a bitwhen I reach across to take your plate.Poetry

26Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine rst homeSophia Velasquez Martinezjust me in that endless house wanderingthrough cold hallways up wide wooden stepsthere were ghosts in the back bedroomsoft purple painted wallsthrough cold hallways up wide wooden stepselbows deep in thesoft purple painted wallscabinets of lipstick tubes and plastic buttonselbows deep in theBarbie DreamHousecabinets of lipstick tubes and plastic buttonsI still see it allBarbie DreamHousewhite trim and French doorsI still see it allpools of lonely sunlight on the oorwhite trim and French doorsand my therapist’s voice, fteen years laterpools of lonely sunlight on the oor“where was your mother?”just me in that endless house wanderingPoetry / Visual ArtListen to Sophia read “rst home”

Volume III • No. III • October 202327Falling of the faceNicole WilliamsPoetrycan the kindling of the crimson bones heat this rug of sand we are swarming?these were formative things:cinder — places wherecavemen huddled togetherto ward o danger.but we are careless in collected comfort;refuse ample llings & poke at the lively charred limbs of the centerpiece.parked carsclothed feetwe show no skinwhere harsh winds mightbe prickling — the tips of the pitchforkssticking up in the sand are used to stab uy sugar cubes turned mushyfrom being set aame in the royal thing burning gloriously without any thought or eort initially.my eyes dart now, followingthe potent pixies zipping up from their spawnhazel eyesto meet the sky of stars above —Orion is only partly visible tonight;Aries over thereis not as brightas the close glare of Venus;I have to look past your shoulders & over your hair —to see the maiden Moon as she aids the ocean’s movement nearer.how stellar that silver shimmerlike a laser over the dark ripples & bleeding out from the part RememberBrendan OwensListen to Brendan read “Remember”

28Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine Much like the blackberrieswith their voluptuous juicesnearly purring to be pluckedfrom the branch and savoredlike the scent of fresh-cut oak and cedar spitting in the bonre,much like the dark pocketsof night above us beggingfor starlight’s touch andyour splintered hand so close to the ame it nurtured fromthe wood, changed nowfrom chill hardness to summer ash,I, too, am composedof the same carbon and desirefor this briefest night to burn, so much like love,whatever in us lives and ends.SolsticeEmily BanniganPoetry

Volume III • No. III • October 202329Finding Harmony in Balance(Water Carrier)Rakia JacksonVisual Art

30Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine Watching Bluebirds Become BreathIsabelle Wei& I write about the motions of a fallingpersimmon, its heavy body falling in autumn. Late morning & the arching honey-suckles open against a vine:viridescent. The plumed orioles & sunbirds, these brush-tipped honey-eaters humming, suckling nectar. I watch a walkway of blue-toned bluebirds nest in the hollow of a persimmon tree, maroon-breasts dipping in & out of the tongue. A tone so blue they become shades of breath. Gently falling persimmon: smudge of orange, this moment solo &pocketed between all other moments. We hold the skin & its esh, keep a wedgedcrescent suspended, slowly,carefully, from the bough. I look down at its shadow sloping at my feet, behindmy feet, behind the vowels in o-range. Moments later I watch a birdnudging the bodyof this ripe persimmon.Poetry

Volume III • No. III • October 202331PhotographyTwilight ShowersMiguel Gonzalez-Hernandez

32Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine Time Machinin’Manuel A. MelendezDriving to the Meadow is an easy ride. It’s getting out of the truck that takes a specic willpower Joe McCord must summon every time. Joe ddles with the keys to his truck, an ’87 Chevy Silverado he saved up for while working the local carnival three summers in a row—enough funnel cake stands and frizzy-haired pre-teens asking for an extra ride on the Ferris wheel, plus an oering from his mom last Christmas, and the truck was his. It hadn’t been his idea, but his brother Frank’s, an advance on a shared brotherly inheritance—something to work on together, bro.. . . I’m packing his stu by tonight, Joe. Please check and make sure we haven’t missed anything. His mother’s words echo in the truck, a distant present Joe can’t truly focus on right now. He rests his head on the wheel and stares out the dashboard window. It is not the rst day of autumn, near as Joe can tell, but the maple trees that line the houses around the Meadow are prickling with the need to shed their leaves, already a few shades of orange more burnt than the week before. The color is a blight on Joe’s retinas, an uncalloused reminder that there is no arboreal signal to tell him when enough is enough, to comfort him as he realizes he doesn’t remember how he drove here today. Trees have a life all their own—Joe doesn’t even gure into their day. Wait until the yellow and red show up on those leaves, little man, it’s nuts, now get to steppin’ ‘cause I’ve got errands to run. Joe closes his eyes. To leave the truck, he has to walk back the last night he ever saw Frank, guawing with all his heart at Joe’s dumb unicorn joke, seeing Visual Art / Short Stories

Volume III • No. III • October 202333Frank’s shoulders rise and fall with each new laugh or exclamation of goofball or dork-sided, sliding his own palm against Frank’s as they hugged, like they always did, before Joe dropped o Frank at his apartment after their shift at the local Blockbuster. Joe walks the entire memory back, rewinds it, until the tape destroys itself in his head, a mess of lm, a cluttered pile of half-formed vignettes. It’s not until that happens, every time, that he dares to fast forward to the morning after. No. To that very night, a night where Joe gets out of the truck and follows Frank into his apartment, impromptu sleepover, big bro, get over it, and they watch Bloodsport or Timecop and eat a large Papa John’s with green peppers and tomatoes and tease each other over who’ll make it to their pillow rst. Joe presses his ngers into his closed eyelids then, and lets the make-believe dissipate into phosphenes, carefully opening his eyes as his ngers move back down, letting the truck, then the rest of the world, fall back into the real. He nally unlocks the door to the truck, whipping it open as he shrugs his denim jacket on and heaves his tattered backpack, monikered Ol’ Reliable at Frank’s insistence, over his right shoulder, and steps out.. . . The Meadow had been Joe’s nd. The fall of his seventh-grade year, when his mother’s divorce nalized, like his very own Room of Requirement, this unclaimed lot opened between his home and Frank’s apartment. He sat there, surrounded by too-tall grass, until Frank, ustered, found him, and scolded him for taking o without letting their mother know. Use that noggin, dumbass, we’re all in this together. Frank never stayed mad at Joe very long, but that time the words sunk in a little more because Joe could hear real fear in Frank’s voice—a sense that the earth had shifted unfavorably, almost imperceptibly, almost—and that frightened Joe.As always, Frank sensed he had unnerved his younger brother, so he slapped Joe on the back, crossed his legs, and invented a new game for them to play. This is where Joe’s mind sits as he lies on the grass, mowed by him every week, the lot vacant for ve going on six years now. He rolls the rst memory through his forehead, lets it punch through the worry-lines there, Frank’s voice in stereo, beckoning him back to that rst day of their new game, a game they played so many times since, a game Joe did not think he could ever play alone. If you ever want to see that thing, or that place, or that person again, you know what to do now. Come here, bro. It’ll all be right here. Promise me. Promise me you’ll come back here. Joe stretches his arm out on the eld and feels for his backpack. Once he nds it, he brings it to his chest, eyes still looking up, noting the clouds clustering right above his head, and opens it up. His ngers don’t ddle very long inside before they grab onto something: a red cap.Joe dismisses the backpack and brings the red cap to his face. The Meadow, of course, takes care of him instantly. The brownstone townhouses that envelop it fade in a vapor, leaving only the vastness of the lot in its emerald splendor. Joe doesn’t mind that his lot, their lot, is ravaged by the detritus of an apathetic neighborhood, the cans and plastic bags and stray chips or butts, after all, just the trinkets & talismans of Joe’s and Frank’s voyages. There is a certain fulllment, too, knowing that all this time the Meadow has been theirs to name and claim, no one has put up so much as a fence or a For Sale sign. Pity about the dandelions, though, huh, Joe. Joe never cared for the yellow weed, at rst opting to get rid of each one growing from the otherwise pristine eld. He lies down on the grass, a bed of endless dandelions caressing his shoulders, keeping the red cap on his face all the while, inhaling, his lips curling up to smile down at Frank’s face, on that very rst day they returned to the Meadow, where Joe found him rolling on top of the dandelions, letting them stain his polo and his jean shorts and even his never-again white Cortezes. That was the day Joe appreciated how to let a thing lie when it is a thing of beauty. A joy for ever, you dummy, jeez. Despite his weekly mowing, Joe is always careful to never disrupt the dandelions. Joe hears thunder roaring in the near distance, the distinct smell of ozone coating his visions as he breathes the red cap in.. . .Short StoriesCairngorm CroftLilliana Cameron

34Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine “Of course I’d nd you here.” Joe sits up at once to see his mother standing, a little out of breath, in that way mothers are when they can’t quite make up their minds about how upset they want to be. Joe always had a way of ustering his mother that Frank never had. Even now, his inner voice smiles with pride. “Mom, it’s not seven o’clock yet, okay. Please.” “It’s not seven o’clock, you’re right about that. It’s almost nine. Your dinner’s sitting in the kitchen, laughing at this conversation we’re having. Joe, are you even listening to me?” Joe blinks slowly at her a few times then looks around the Meadow itself. Twilight has almost passed completely, only the horizon suused with a faint, purple glimmer. Even the dandelions have tucked themselves in for the night. Did I really go forward in time? Really? Three hours have passed, and I haven’t noticed. Did it work? The sky rumbles with thunder so loud it cracks Joe’s eardrums. His mother jumps at the sound in the instant a cloud of rain unleashes itself on the Meadow and the surrounding streets. She screams in surprise, half in joy and half in frustration, her plaid shirt and jeans soaked in seconds. Joe bends down, trying to shield the cap from the rainfall, his back splashing with the cold drops. Just like our street showers, baby bro, woo! “Joe! Let’s go home, please! We’re going to get sick if we stay under this too long!” “No, I’m not leaving! I can’t leave yet!” Joe’s mom kneels in front of him and tries to unfold his body from the cap in his hands. “Joe? Joe—is that—is that your brother’s cap?” Joe does not respond and clinches his eyes tight, the pellets of rain on his back a numbing dance. He can feel the water trickle into his black socks even from inside his Nikes. Your secret weapon, bro, those bastards stink worse than anything in these locker rooms, golly… “Joe—Joe, please, come on, honey, you told me you were ready, you promised me—” Joe unclenches his body and opens his eyes terribly wide at his mother. “I promised him too, Mom! I promised him too that I’d be back here! Every time I wanted to see him, I’d come back, I’d—I—I—” Joe’s voice stutters, catching him o guard, the same surprise in his mother’s eyes, who hasn’t seen him this way since elementary. He looks down, ashamed, only to realize in his outburst the cap has been exposed to the rain. “No, no, no, no, no—no!” “Joe, what’s wrong?! Just say it, honey, talk to me!” Joe’s mom shakes him as he shakes his head then lets the shakes subside then just sits back on his heels, deating all at once, the cap limply dripping in his hands. He lets it drop to his knees as he tugs on the wet grass in front of him. The rain falls for a while before Joe opens his mouth to speak. “How will I see him again now, Mom? I broke our time machine.” Joe’s mother hears his words, but in a muted part of her mind, where she does not venture into too often. She takes the words in, though, knowing full well whatever comes out of her mouth next might very well decide the rest of their lives as mother and son. “Do you think there’s a limit to what a mother can know about her children, Joe?” Joe knows if he turns to face his mom, the knot squeezing his vocal cords will choke his resolve, so he stays facing the wet leaves of grass in his hands, the patter of the raindrops matching his mother’s sighs in their rhythm. “Sometimes I know things before you can even think of them. That’s how much I love you both, how much I dream in the subjunctive for you—for you. Did you think I didn’t know about this place? That I haven’t cataloged every snippet of conversation I overheard between you and your brother? That you named it the Meadow because you miss your grandpa’s farm? That you came here when I nally divorced your dad—did you think Frank would never share these things with me? Joe, I’m your mother. Of course I knew. I knew before you nally worked the nerve to tell me about you coming here with him. But mothers are not magic, Joe. And neither is this place. It’s just a lot—it’s, it’s a lot—and we’re sitting here, and it’s raining like the dickens, and I’ll sit here all my life, Joe, if that’s what you decide to do with yours.” The crickets chirping, at last, are what dissolve Joe’s stubbornness as he turns to face her, her face incandescent, evenly laced with tears in the rain. She watches him, desperate to speak aloud an intangible impetus to heal, to make it all Hallmark better. His mother has always been a sentimental creature. Joe inherited that from her, but then so had Frank. Short Stories

Volume III • No. III • October 202335He was the one who shushed Joe’s night terrors every night for a year after Joe started middle school. He’d open the window in the bedroom they shared and hold Joe’s hand, hushing him with Just listen for the chirping, Joe, just listen for the chirping. The crickets would suddenly amass, called to the window by Frank, until Joe’s breathing slowed down, and Frank could start letting go of his little bro’s hand, one nger at a time. When their pinkies were the last digits left, Frank would chuckle to himself, then wink at Joe. Pinky promise, bro. He was such a cornball. He never cared if others knew. Joe thought that was the bravest thing anyone could ever feel. Maybe we’re not magic, Joe thought, but Frank sure was. “What do you want me to do, Mom?” Joe’s mom sits next to Joe and crosses her legs. She hasn’t done that in a long time, Joe thinks.“Will you tell me how your time machine works?” Joe turns to his mom. “What?” There is a slivering smile on his mother’s lips as she meets his eyes. “Will you tell me how your time machine works?” Joe turns his eyes back to his brother’s red cap, drenched by the rain. He brings it to his face very slowly and inhales. Frank’s laughter rings in his ear, the sourness of his sweat still mixing with the unforgettable perfume of Curve, both permeating around the rim of the cap and within the curves of its washed-out interior. Joe is wrong—the rainwater only brings out Frank more. Nothing has broken. “Well y—you—y—you have to take an object from the past, fro—from the person you want to see again, a—a—a—and it has to be something w—w—w—with their scent on it still, and, well—then you t-t-t-take a deep breath of it.” Boom. You’re time-machinin’ now, bro. Joe’s embarrassment at sning his dead brother’s cap is lessened by his mother’s hand on his shoulder, her warm paw grip reassuring in the same way it always was when Joe stuttered his way through every word in rst and second grade. She always made sure it was never a big thing then, and it never was. Magic. Joe brings the cap down from his nose and sees his Short Storiesmother smiling at him, the same smile she’d give him and Frank every time they had to leave home without her, every time they had to go anywhere with their father for vacation. The smile of the subjunctive, of what possibilities no longer lie ahead, of what possibilities are left. “Oh, sweetheart.” Joe can’t breathe anymore. Every lungful is full of Frank, but Frank is nowhere, every lungful is mired in the impossibility of what’s next, but Joe knows there’s nowhere else left to go. “Does it work?” His mother’s question, so tiny under the loudness of the downpour, loosens the last reel for Joe, the lm he did not want to view—the one where he returned to his room, content, smiling at his new truck, his big bro’s enthusiasm for the new adventures they’d have—the reel where he admitted he did not know why Frank decided to take a bathroom cabinet full of pills instead, where he decided his adventures would no longer include Joe, where he would simply be gone. Does it work? Joe turns to his mother and clutches her chest, his sobs mighty crescendos against the cadence of his mother’s own. She grasps Joe tight against her ribs, her words vibrating against him as she speaks again. “We are not magic, baby. Sometimes we just don’t know why, why, why. But that does not make it our fault. It never will. Never, Joe.” Joe looks at his mother, eyes puy from the cries still bubbling in his throat. “I don’t know what to do, Mom.” Joe feels the helplessness acutely, sopping wet on the grass, his hands gripping the hem of his mother’s shirt. His mother takes a deep breath and blows the air out, shaking her head before drawing it close to her son’s. She waits until their eyes meet to speak again. “Love him, Joe. Just keep loving him.” Joe nds the simplicity of her response unsatisfying at rst, but then his mother shrugs at him, and it’s such an innocent gesture, so full of childish grace, Joe lets his hands fall back to Frank’s red cap, stuck between their There is a slivering smile on his mother’s lips as she meets his eyes.“Will you tell me how your time machine works?”

36Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazinerising, sob-hiccupping  chests.  His  chuckle  is  halfwaybetween a wail and a sco as he takes the cap and placesit on his head, understanding a thing he is certain hewill never get right in his life again. With  eyes  closed,  Joe  pictures  the  window  of   hisbedroom once more, the only one he ever shared withFrank, and gazes out  to where  the moonlight  enfoldsthe crickets and their unwavering chirping. Joe places his head on his mother’s chest and sheholds him, her face against the brim of the cap. Joe letshimself  see his own pinky unlatch itself  from Frank’s,their hands suspended in air for the briefest of  momentsas they catch the moon’s eye and burst into light. Neither Joe nor his mother stir from their timemachine for a long time. Not until the rain gives way tothe pink brim of  dawn somewhere beyond the Meadow.Short Stories / DancePaint Me From My Good Side Melissa BorlandListen to Manuel read “Time Machinin’”

Volume III • No. III • October 202337Happiness is very fragile Morgan NeeringPoetry / Visual ArtPaint Me From My Good Side Melissa Borlandand I fear it’s gone farther away, so maybe I’ll go home to Carolina and read my poetryto the Eastern bluebirds.In my hometown,come way down.I-40 south takes you where I thought it’d be. Front porch ags line the path home illuminated by lights left onsummer sprinklers in the yardgirls gossip ‘round the table my mother, weeping softlyas the coee brews.They’ve put out a plastic picnic table under the maple in the yardlined with vinyl tablecloths honey and strawberriessun tea and shortcakesweet and soft and simple.So maybe I’ll go home to Carolinaread my poetry to the birdsbecause cotton clothes lines hang and coee brews. My sisters dance under dogwoodsbirds chirp somewhere softlyin the distance and the gentle September breeze promises to hold us lovingly in its embrace.

38Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine Things We Take for GrantedMelissa BorlandVisual Art

Volume III • No. III • October 202339i hope we never nd a way to prove there aren’t innite universesbecause it means there’s also no way to prove that we aren’t out theresomewhere, the cosmos cracked open in front us, a kind of scattered you can follow like a breadcrumb trail back to those nights in your room, before entropy, before anything, where innity stayed conned to blue carpet bers and unopened bottles of malibu, when movies started at the end and bedtime stories blossomed from tired tears and any talk could only be of all the light years to come. or maybe to a wae house, twenty years from yesterday, jukebox blaring a coldplay album that’s gonna come out during the greatest autumn of our lives. to when we’ve stopped trying to chisel away the cliches that cling to our ribs, started leaving them there to hang, to keep us warm when each new slew of crystalline presences fade away, as most shining things do. but not us. we’ll remain, twin constellations drifting xed in a matrix of days and decisions, constant. i want to see you see it all. to forever be where possibilities cling to the tips of our toes like charleston sand, drifting out and back again with each shrug of the sea. PolarisMary-Bryant CharlesPoetry

40Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine I remember the summer my mother took me to the creek behind our neighbor’s house. We couldn’t aord a pool membership that year, so we had to be creative, sneaking past our neighbor's yard, Mom’s hand gently pressed against my mouth. July’s heat stuck to my skin, dripping down my bare arms like sugary syrup running down the edge of the bottle. I detested the feeling, sweat collecting on my brow, slipping behind my ears and down my neck. I didn’t have peach fuzz yet, so the moisture desperately hung to my upper lip before joining the small waterfall cascading to my clothes. Summer was eating me alive, its saliva falling down on me, darkening every inch of my gray shirt black. But, I refused to take the cotton o. I waded among the crawdads & salamanders, gently swishing the murky water in my mouth before Mom would yell at me to spit it out. I adored swimming. It’s the only time where gravity seems to lose its grip on you, letting you eortlessly oat in the middle—mimicking the sensation of ying. It must have been less than four feet deep, but when you can’t feel the bottom or surface, you can imagine it as deep as desired. And that’s what I did. When I pinched my eyes shut, I was no longer trespassing in my neighbor’s property, I was swimming in the Atlantic, past the shore where the waves were small, would lull you. And then I’d have to take a breath, and I’d be back in reality—streams of light pouring through the cracks in leaves, polka-dotting the creek with little pockets of bright orange. I’d lean against the bank and imagine the sparrows’ caws as an exotic new species solely I was privy to. When I let my eyelids utter open, I’d see Mom—my foil. Sprawled out on a at rock we deemed her throne with a rolled towel underneath her neck. Arms extended past her head like a cat stuck in a neverending stretch. An innity of glistening skin and arched limbs. I tried to mirror her, tried to soak up the sun with my chin pointed high and my hair slung back, but I could never quite capture what came natural to her. The lines her body eortlessly created were lumps & circles on me, a jumbled mess of skin stretched past limits and blueish-green veins peeking under pale dough.The sun bounced o me, but it absorbed in her bronze, made her tanner while it gave me a burn. I cried the rst time she sliced an arm o her aloe plant. Two ngers dug inside, dolloped its guts on my nose like it was Cool Whip. When I started to cry, she told me in her soothing twang that plants couldn’t feel pain, and the clear gel mixed with my salty tears, further irritating my skin. But I deserved it; if I would have reapplied the sunscreen, then the plant wouldn’t be down an arm. So, I let her spread it across my legs & arms without so much as a whimper. I laughed to her later about how she made me feel like the charred toast we used to slather butter on when snow trapped us inside. I didn’t tell her about how I snuck into her bathroom that night to apologize to the plant, not whining when I pricked my nger on one of its points. Blood bubbled on the skin near the top of my nail into small beads, and my tongue let it sit there until all I could taste was iron. Ever since I lost my rst tooth (swallowed while gnawing on ice), I had a fear of growing up. I hated how My Neighbor’s CreekWesley BrittShort Stories

Volume III • No. III • October 202341maturing equated to loss, how we had to seemingly shed layers to be allowed entry into the cocoon. I watched my neighbor across the street pose for graduation pictures in front of his magnolia tree, its white owers ceremonious to the occasion. But, I couldn’t imagine getting to that point, getting to twelfth grade, which was more like thirteenth grade when you think about it; I was always superstitious about the number thirteen. So, when I overturned rocks to nab unsuspecting lizards that could swim, when I hopped from stone to stone to catch a crawdad the size of my hand, maybe I was really looking for a way to stop time. Hoping to stumble across the coveted potion we always see in movies. I was looking for a way to freeze Mom in her throne, to only eat raisins and peanut butter on celery, to breathe the air I resented the water lizards for taking in so easily. That whole summer I looked for a way to stop the sun from setting earlier, to stop the heat from slipping o my skin, to stop the creek from cooling to its autumn temperature. My eorts were in vain. Elementary school started back up, and I moved to middle, then high school, and after four years I graduated, and just like my neighbor, I posed in front of that magnolia tree. The last I heard, the creek had run dry, and my mother ditched her stone for tanning lotion. It’s been almost a decade since I’ve swam in our makeshift Atlantic, since I’ve discovered an alien species of bird. I’d shed layers to go back that sticky summer day – drag skin from bone until feathers took its place. Short Stories / Music

42Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine Visual ArtSummer Sage Ernest Kroi

Volume III • No. III • October 202343Poetrya sweater green with envyMarissa Elizabeth GarrowIn the winterit felt like a warm huglike your arms were still wrapped around meand not 250 miles north of the Mason-Dixonmaking someone else feel special. It fought them oavalanches of feelings that would collapse around meat the faintest echo of your name. It was like a camouageamong the evergreenskeeping others from seeing the broken heartunraveling underneath. Everyone cries at Christmas, right?For the ones that they’ve lostso I didn’t feel so out of placeeyes glisteningfor someone who left. It isn’t weird to throw on just any sweaterwhen it is ve below zeroso I wasn’t self-conscious donning it once more, but winters always end and the time comeswhen it is stranger to have it onand I have to put it away again. I don’t mind switching it for another type of greenthat doesn’t feel quite so suocatingthat doesn’t swallow me whole. It has been one too many years though,and I know winter will come againso I must decide that it’s timeto try another color. Listen to Marissa read “a sweater green with envy”

44Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine PoetrycupidKelsey Millettmy rib cage is a candelabra,curves of bones carrying ever-ickering tea lightsfor everyone who has ever kissed my browor left me the last bite of blackberry cobbler. I am an avian catacomb of lovers past,every one a bird of prey,my aection the buckshotthat felled them from the sky,pierced the wingsbut did not kill. when another found the woundedand nursed life and warmth back to their cheeks,I was thanked for the injurymy cruelty became their introduction found at long last,true love. the tiny silver pellet remainslodged between two ngersunder the webbed skin.do you feel me still when you turn a doorknob?when you cup her breasts?is the story a show-and-tell for drunken dive bar companions? again,again,again,there is always another circling hawkand I never run out of bullets.

Volume III • No. III • October 202345PoetryKnittingEmily BanniganBurgundy and olive green:two of my favorite colors. Chunky wool in knits and pearls. The needles, bamboo. With every stitch I smiledand sighed, longing for touch. The soft folds of his body wrapped snug around my throat. In desire, we adorn each other. Fresh gilding warms the lust. The scarf says Wear me. The body: Wear me out.

46Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine PhotographySmoke BreakLacey Brown

Volume III • No. III • October 202347sorry I wasn’t listening I was thinking about Mark RualoMary-Bryant Charlesand sour watermelon candies paired with a cherry coke fresh from the vending machine by the laundry room.what else can you expect when 75 degrees fahrenheit shows its face in the middle of february, how can you think of anything but the best thingsbut also and unfortunately the way the ozone must be zzing away along with used bookstores, with truth,with water lilies in the Amazon, spaces to sit in the park, and Betty White, too, probably. Poetry / Music

48Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine Silent DiscoPaul JulianThe spasmodic sea of bodies quietly shuingOn the cool cement of a ringed-o dance hall,And atop the noiseless madness bob waves of Day-Glo:Red headsets, blue earmus, green sliders,Three stations, three separate lives bound by sound.Domes of violence or bliss or some mixture of neither,The observer only tells which by how they whip the air:Many frenzied, some serene, others motionless in rapture.All this from the quiet beyond the perimeter –Jumbled bodies, the pitter-patter of awkward feet,Isolated shrieks, the communal possession of it –Cannot help but seem absurd, even pathological,And there is the sudden feeling, as if staring too longAt an empty pool or over the ledge of a high building,That she still on solid ground must run away or jump,Either return to the well-mapped land behind her,Or dive headrst into the dancing depths and sense,For a moment, what it is to be lost at the bottomOf a black ocean, to feel the charged brush of blindCreatures oating to and from, from and to.Poetry / Music

Volume III • No. III • October 202349I imagine you listeningTo it for the rst time.In the shotgun seat,Or on a beach towel,You reach to press play.I warn you it’s strange,That you won’t like it,But you smile and clickThe button anyway.Your touch turns intoTune and I could dance,Shimmying from carWindow to sandcastle,The drift of sweet notesSo suddenly unfamiliar.And you wouldn’t knowIf I’m a dancer or if myDancing is something Unusual. Nor could you Tell the secrets I share,Only that the singerShares them for me.And though you’re not there,Though you could be anyone,I hear alone the chorusPerfectly through your ears,Discovering afreshMy own mystery,As a new friendLost in the song,As the song is lost to me.This SongPaul JulianAlison’s GardenMelissa BorlandVisual Art / Poetry

50Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine Meet thecreatorsSarah Jane Keiser is an oil painter based in Door County, WI and Charleston, SC. Inspired by nature, she hopes her art encourages curiosity and inspires joy & appreciation for our natural world. She rst lived in Charleston for a year in 1999 (she ran the Cooper River Bridge run pre-Ravenel bridge!) and was able to move back in 2016. She is drawn to the complex history & beauty of South Carolina; golden light shining through Spanish moss is close to magic. Sarah is a member of the Seabrook Island Art Guild and an associate member of the Oil Painters of America. She won Plein Air Salon Best in Beginner Category December 2022, Second Place at North Charleston Arts Fest 2023 along with the City Purchase Award, and Best in Show at Animal North Charleston Arts Fest 2022. You can follow her painting adventures on Instagram @sjkoilpaints or purchase her art at www.sjkoilpaints.com.Sky Dai is a disabled, queer, emerging artist living in Asheville, NC. Their gurative oil paintings explore imagery from memories, relationships, medicine ceremonies, and the astral realm. Last year, Sky Dai received the Emerging Young Artists Award of Excellence from The Kennedy Center, and they were own out to Washington D.C. to attend receptions on Capitol Hill. They received a BFA in ne arts and creative writing at Columbus College of Art and Design. When they’re not making art, they’re probably reading tarot cards under the moon, searching for a swimming hole, or doing contact improvisational dance.Meet the CreatorsSophia Velasquez Martinez is a poet & ction writer from the Texas Panhandle living in Columbia, SC. Apart from a smattering of Texas hometowns, she’s lived in Austin, London, and the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii. She received her BA in writing and rhetoric with a focus in creative writing from St. Edward’s University. Her poetry is featured in The Sorin Oak Review and Hawaii Pacic Review. She has editorial work in Austin Monthly Magazine and HAWAI’I Magazine. Currently, she’s writing her rst young adult horror novel which she hopes to publish in the near future.X. Ramos-Lara (she/her) is a doctoral student in English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research lies at the intersection of illness narratives, queer performance studies, non-white identity formation, and AIDS histories. In her spare time she likes reading Lacan, performing in drag, and writing poetry about her Xicana queerness.Meg Curran is a Georgia-born writer currently based in Norway. She spent her high school years in South Carolina before attending Woord College, where she received her degree in French and intercultural studies. Most of her research & writing focuses on culture, heritage, belonging, and food. Her poetry appears in or is forthcoming from In Parentheses, Talk Vomit, Overheard, and BULLSHIT, among others. You can nd her at meg-curran.com.North Carolina-based, self-taught artist, Jessica Bravo, has been honing her skills in realism & abstract art for the past several years. Originally from Florida, Jessica blended her skills of abstract art in acrylic with realism

Volume III • No. III • October 202351in oil, a perfect marriage of her two passions. Jessica’s evolution into realism allowed her to introduce another element to this union and extend the range of her talent even further. Her use of her personal life experiences, overcoming mental health, and struggles of self-discovery allow Jessica to challenge the boundaries of the viewers, utilizing intensive brushstrokes to tell stories and providing a reection to the viewers soul.Joshua Trent Brown is a short ction writer from a farm in a very small southeastern NC town you’ve most certainly never heard of who now resides in Raleigh, NC. He has previously been published in JAKE, God’s Cruel Joke and The Holon Project, and has work forthcoming in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and Transients Magazine. He is currently writing a novella, and you can nd him on Twitter, too often there and not writing, @TrentBWrites.Adrienne Mixon has been in creative pursuit throughout her life; however, living in Italy as a knowledge-hungry 10-year-old, immersed in renaissance art & architecture, can be pinpointed as the seed of her artist’s path. Her professional journey began while attending Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts. After graduating with a BFA, she pursued her career in the fashion industry as a handbag, shoe, and accessories designer for over a decade in New York City. Adrienne has since left the corporate fashion world, kicking o her freelance career in pursuit of the artist’s way in mixed media analog collage. Although a piece of her psyche remains in NYC, moving to Charleston, SC has greatly enriched her artist’s practice. In addition to cultivating an in-home studio, it is the closer connection to the natural world that has become a necessary asset to her development as an artist and serves in repairing the mind-body connection that she lost in metropolitan life. The beauty of living in coastal South Carolina has become a source of healing & recovery for Adrienne. Fine Prints of her piece “As Above, So Below?” are available on her Saatchi website: www.saatchiart.com/adriennemixon.Meet the CreatorsLacey Brown is a native North Carolinian with over ve years of experience as a semi-professional photographer. She has lived in all three sections of the state; she was born & raised in the piedmont, attended college in the mountains where she stayed for several years, and now lives on the coast. The state’s diverse oerings & rich history are a constant source of inspiration for her. She approaches her photography as a means to capture those unrepeatable moments that make up the fabric of life. With a camera in her hand, she feels tapped into the ow of the world and is often drawn to its “unremarkable” and easily overlooked details. Photography has taken Lacey to major cities, small towns, island swamps, and nearly everywhere in between.Grace Chastain is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer whose work is largely based in North Carolina. She received the bulk of her dance training from Triple Threat Performing Arts Academy (TTPAA) in Sylva, NC under the direction of Valerie Tissue. Following her time as a TTPAA student, she began exploring dance in new ways as a choreographer and teacher at the studio. Her featured piece, “To What Comes Next” (danced by former TTPAA students Mary Cooper, Reese Williamson, and Caroline “Weezie” Spilliards), is an ode to moving toward new & beautiful things while loving so deeply what you’re leaving behind. Grace is honored to have her work featured in this issue of Carolina Muse!Kelsey Millett hails from Wingate, NC and was raised on a hobby farm with her three siblings. Her poetry heavily features the nostalgia and imagery of growing up with bare feet, dirty hands, and a wild child type of innocence. After losing her best friend at a young age, she turned to poetry as a means to cope then discovered a lifelong love of vocabulary & emotions penned to paper. Despite now

52Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine residing in California with her two hairless cats (Casper & Creature)—Carolina is always calling her home.Meet the CreatorsAshley Roncaglione is a registered nurse living in Durham, NC. She was born in Wiesbaden, Germany and has lived in many of the South Atlantic states. She is a beekeeper, multimedia artist, poet, and animal lover. Themes on mental health, trauma, and the human experience are sources of inspiration for her writing. Her rst collection of poetry, Vestiges, is being published in January 2024.Aaliyah Vazquez is a young, up-and-coming artist who has lived all her life in the midlands of South Carolina. She is working to raise the artistic awareness and appreciation of those around her. She is established with several local artistic outlets and has grown from canvas work to now creating many home decor options, such as coasters, clothing, and prints. She looks forward to making her mark among many others in the Carolinas who wish to share their life perspective through art.Kolora teeters on a thin line amid hard rock & grunge, with a twist of simplicity & melody. Vocal harmonies of expressive lyrics follow the guitar-driven focus to form a hook-line foundation to their modern take on 90’s rock. Circa 2014, Kris Mear and brother Kolby Mear sought an end to a ve-year hiatus from their previous ten years of band life. The addition of Adam Haas completed the circle, and Kolora was born. The band has released two studio albums so far, The Covid Session (2020) and To What End (2022). They are currently recording a third album to be released by fall of 2023. Our drummer, Adam Haas, was raised in Greenville, SC. He has many fond memories of going to Clemson football games, vacations at Myrtle Beach & Hilton Head Island, and playing his rst drum set for all the neighbors to hear. He later served in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, NC, which is not far from home. During his service, Adam briey played in the 82nd Marching Band, but later joined the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment as a S.A.W. gunner and spent 26 months (two dierent tours) in Iraq looking for those dastardly “Weapons of Mass Destruction” that Bush and Obama used as an excuse to ravage the Iraqi people. He now has ve dead brothers-in-arms as a result (two of which were his best friends in the army, three were suicides) which the song “In A Sense” is loosely based upon.Yuna Kang knows the Carolinas primarily through the stories of their loved ones: the heat, the color, the inextricable melodies of love. She has passed through there in her youth, and like a cycle, people from Carolinas continue to appear in her life as friends, family, and warm acquaintances. She has been published in journals such as Strange Horizons, Sinister Wisdom, and more. They were also nominated for the 2022 Dwarf Stars Award. Their website is https://kangyunak.wixsite.com/.Yuliia Iliukha is a poet, prose writer, journalist and columnist born 1982 in Kharkivska oblast, Ukraine. She is the author of several books for adults and children. Her poems and prose stories have been translated into English, German, Italian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Catalan, Polish, Swedish. Her works have appeared in magazines and newspapers of Ukraine, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain, UK, Sweden, USА, Italy. Iliukha has received a number of awards, including the Oles Honchar International Ukrainian-German Literary Prize, International Literary Contest «Word Coronation 2018» Prize, and Smoloskyp Prize.Born & raised in Apex, NC, Abbi Shengulette recently graduated from UNC Greensboro. Although art wasn’t their major, they made a point of taking at least one art class a semester, and in doing so, rediscovered

Volume III • No. III • October 202353Meet the Creatorstheir love for creating art. Their preferred mediums are acrylic paint and B&W photography, which they develop themselves. Abbi likes to create representational art and wants to continue to be inspired by the unknown and the unpredictable. Their work deals with subjects like isolation & self-exploration. Follow their art progress on Instagram @Ac3s_H1gh.Alex Gilbert is a writer & actor in Charleston, SC and a recent College of Charleston graduate. His work in poetry & ction is inspired by queer authors of the 60s & 70s, his theatrical background, and a lifelong fascination with the glamorous, the tragic, and the incomprehensible. Nicole Williams is an abstract & gurative painter in Charleston, SC. As an emerging artist, her practice focuses on the perception of self in connection to the natural world. Originally from the Arizona Sonoran desert, her new body of work in South Carolina explores the inuence of new environments on self empowerment.Brendan Owens is a recent California Polytechnic State University business graduate who grew up in Southern California. He wrote his rst poem for a class assignment in 7th grade and has been writing poetry sporadically ever since. He took a minor in English literature during college and hopes to eventually pursue an MFA. The Inland Empire’s centralized location exposed him to diverse mountaintops, warm beaches, dry desert climates, and beautiful poppy-lled grasslands all within an hour’s drive away. He has family on the East Coast and his mother has considered retiring close to Charleston.Born & raised in Winston Salem, NC, Emily Bannigan is a writer & English teacher. She is a graduate of both Salem Academy and Williams College. Though North Carolina will always be her home, Emily currently lives a bit farther aeld in South Korea. Her work can be found in The Dawn Review.Rakia Jackson is a visual artist based in Greenville, NC. She earned a BFA in graphic design from Eastern Carolina University but essentially embodies the title of a painter. She primarily works with acrylic, gouache, and digital painting from an iPad. Her goal with her art is to create, be vulnerable, and share it in as many spaces as possible because she believes that kind of artistic movement can garnish more genuine connections and strengthen diverse communities. As a multifaceted visual artist, Rakia explores shared reections of self-awareness and present-moment awareness that we have all experienced. She practices daily selfcare in several forms, including meditation to reect, self-heal, and connect as well as conversation with other like-minded people & creatives. These practices show through her personal work when it comes to its concepts and her approach in creating new pieces. Visually, her pieces are organically composed through intuitive decision-making and creating new earthly or ethereal environments, often featuring black gures in these spaces.Isabelle Wei is a writer, journalist, and poet. She is the recipient of the 2023 Yamabuki Prize and has been recognized by the Poetry Society of the UK and the John Locke Institute. Recent & forthcoming publications include Tabula Rasa Review, The Expressionist, and Live Canon, among others. Her connection to the Carolinas includes wonderful memories with both friends & family. As the editor-in-chief of Reverie, she enjoys browsing through stories that reect her love for the natural world. She has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

54Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine Grey’s artistry. These ingredients, while simple, have been homegrown, aged, and rened for 24 years, directly resulting in her essence as an independent black woman and movement artist. Rae’s roots originate from a seedling that sprouts forth in Staord, VA, expanding its branches into the Shenandoah Valley and as far as the Carolinas, all the while unfurling its leaves into Washington, D.C. While serene in her demeanor, Rae’s mind remains resilient at work, a roiling & ready entity to be reckoned with.Meet the CreatorsOriginally born & raised in Hempstead, NY; Miguel Gonzalez-Hernandez and his family moved to North Carolina the year after graduating from high school. After attending college in Massachusetts and traveling up & down the east coast in search of work, he settled in Bladen County, NC and began the process of putting down roots. These days, he can often be found honing his photography skills along the various trails and backwoods of this beautiful state, when he isn’t helping out on his family homestead during the spring & summer months.Lilliana Cameron is a visual artist who has lived all over the Carolinas and is now residing in Greenville, SC. She is an alumni of the College of Charleston, where she studied studio art and arts management. Working in a variety of mediums, she uses art as a way to communicate with and understand the world around her. She nds inspiration in the small moments and magic in the mundane. More of her work can be found on her website at lillianacameron.com.Manuel A. Melendez was born and partially raised in Camagüey, Cuba. He is a second-year poetry MFA student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The rst time he went to the Carolinas was seventeen years ago on a ski trip with a dear friend. He has returned (almost) every year since, minus the skiing. What he truly fell in love with was the breakfasts of North Carolina, still the best in the world. He dreams to one day live in a timeline where poetics can take permanent physical shape in the world, but he settles for a erce latte, vibrant verses, and trouble in the water.Three cups of passion, two sticks of unwavering perseverance, one tablespoon of optimism, half an ounce of selessness, and a dash of courage are the fundamental ingredients behind Raeanna “Rae” Born & raised in North Carolina, Morgan Neering is a writer & poet living in France. She is currently working on her debut photo-poetry collection, focusing on the exploration of nostalgia & self-discovery.Melissa Borland is an emerging artist based out of the beautiful Charleston, SC. She started her business, Melissa Borland Artwork, during the pandemic because she says, “I realized that life’s just too short not to go for it!” She has a background in French and teaching elementary students and English to non-native speakers. This profession has allowed her to live in three dierent continents which has greatly aected her worldview and her art. She’s a painter of landscapes, wildlife, and orals. She loves to use acrylics and can’t resist the brilliance of oil pastels. She’s extremely inspired by nature and the beauty of the wild outdoors. Specically, her paintings remind one of the fragility of creation and its purpose to serve humankind. Her art draws connections between nature and the patterns & meaningfulness of life itself. When she’s not creating, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two boisterous boys. You can nd her in her garden, studying native wildlife, learning about other cultures & languages, and reading memoirs.

Volume III • No. III • October 202355Meet the CreatorsMary-Bryant Charles is a writer and communications professional based in Greenville, SC. She grew up all over the Carolinas and graduated from the University of South Carolina’s Honors College while writing, copyediting, and editor-in-chieng for the university’s award-winning magazine, Garnet & Black. She now holds the record for longest job title at her other alma mater, the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities, serving as the Assistant to the Oce of Communications and Visual Arts Department. She enjoys bookstores, video games, and wondering what historical gures would have been like if they’d had Twitter accounts. For Wesley Britt, the Carolinas have been home since birth. Born in Asheboro, NC, Wesley moved three times — each house within a mile of each other. When deciding on colleges, all seven he picked were located in the state. Wesley nds something new to love about the Carolinas each year that passes, and he is nishing his fourth year at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. As he transitions into a more signicant stage of adulthood, he cannot picture himself residing anywhere else besides the Carolinas.Grace McNally has studied classical guitar since age ve and graduated with a BA in classical guitar performance from the College of Charleston under Grammy-nominated guitarist Marc Regnier. She has performed everywhere from the streets of Rio de Janeiro to hospice homes and venues across the United States. Grace believes in the innate healing power of music and hopes to inspire healing, unity, and peace through her music & compositions. Her debut album, Full Circle came out in May 2023 and explores the musical continuities between the Carolina low country, West Africa and South America. She is currently station manager for Ohm Radio 96.3FM in Charleston South Carolina and produces a radio show and podcast called Travel Notes which uses music as a medium to explore ways in which we are all connected.Born in Asheville, NC, Ernest Kroi was raised in the lush scenery of the Blue Ridge Mountains and was deeply inspired by the artistic downtown scene. He has recently graduated from the University of North Carolina of Greensboro with a Bachelor’s in Arts for art and media studies. Ernest’s artistic inuences include high saturation, stylized realism, and depicting the mundane with subtle unnatural, juxtaposing, or comedic features. His work has also been featured in previous editions of Carolina Muse as well as UNCG’s Coraddi magazine.Marissa Elizabeth Garrow is a poet and a dreamer who has spent her life exploring what the world has to show and oer her. Born & raised in Lexington, NC, she has strong roots in the country, but she received her BFA and BS from the breezy, coastal town of Wilmington, NC. She is currently residing in Grenada for veterinary school with her cat, Tempesta, but has not let that quell her passion & commitment to her writing. Marissa can often be found pondering the connections of nature, the ambiguity of loss, and her place in this ever-expanding world. You can also nd her work in Second Story Journal.Anna Lee is a Korean/Taiwanese-American multimedia artist based in Cary, NC. Her work combines digital & physical media, experimental animation, songwriting, and whatever else she’s into at any given moment. Filmmaking has become one of her most favored processes, as it allows for the integration of her passion for both visual art & music. She believes in art as a necessary, sustaining human practice that should be accessible to all who wish to create and consume it without barriers

56Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine Meet the Creatorsor judgment. You can see what she’s up to at pewlter.com or on Instagram @pewlter.Paul Julian is a poet & attorney from Carrboro, NC. He fell in love with poetry while attending the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Though Paul now lives in Southern Colorado, where he maintains a legal practice focused on business litigation & government aairs, his heart has never truly left the South, and his writing often takes inspiration from his childhood & young adult experiences in the beautiful piedmont of North Carolina. His poems have appeared in several literary publications.Destiny Stone blends gospel, blues, and jazz to create lyrics and soulful melodies that leave her audience inspired. Destiny has most notably performed at The Fillmore in Charlotte, NC; performed an original song for John Oates of Grammy-winning duo, Hall and Oates; and performed as a part of the U.S. National Trust for Historic Preservation’s National Treasure dedication celebration for the renowned Nina Simone. Most recently, Destiny opened up for The Shindellas, a rising, Nashville-based girl-group, and for Grammy-nominated trio The Tones, formerly known as The Hamiltones. Born in the state capital, Jackson, and raised in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Destiny moved to North Carolina to pursue a degree in popular music where she graduated from Catawba College in 2018. Destiny currently lives in Salisbury, NC and is also a music educator, worship leader, wife, and mom.

Volume III • No. III • October 202357creditsCarolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine is a multimedia arts magazine showcasing primarily young adult creators in the Carolinas. Our mission is to provide a multi-sensory, immersive platform for young adult creatives that reveals the way various art forms can work together to tell the true stories of our human experience. We publish short stories & scripts, poetry, art & photography, music, dance in a digital multimedia format on a tri-annual basis. Whether you submit a document, image le, audio le, or video le, our team loves to see creators test the boundaries of their art form to bring their passions, interpretations, experiences, and messages to life.Want to add your voice to the arts community of the Carolinas? Submit your creative work to carolinamuse.arts@gmail.com within one of our three open submission windows to be considered. The subject line of your email should read: Your Art Form- “Your Title” by Your Name. Please view the specic requirements for your art form at www.carolina-muse.com/submit. Once you submit your work, one of our editors will be in contact with you in the following weeks regarding your submissions’ status and possible next steps. Carolina Muse is proud to have a collaborative editorial process in which exchanges between creator & editor may be needed to get your piece to its highest potential. We do accept simultaneous submissions; however, we ask that if your work is accepted elsewhere, communication remains transparent & timely. We reserve the right to edit short stories for grammar, mechanics, clarity, and consistency with the magazine’s style. We also reserve the right to edit video submissions for style consistency.Credits

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