TL Winter 2025 final : simplebooklet.com

Editor’s Note “Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” - Stella Adler Dear Reader,We are so excited to bring the rst issue of our nascent literary journal into the world. e work we have put into considering and organizing this issue over the past months has been a bit of a refuge, and we hope you feel a sense of restoration and catharsis here too. Tethered Literary was birthed out of the zoom writing sessions our group of ve has held since grad-uating from the Oregon State University–Cascades MFA program. By the time serious discussions began of creating a literary journal, we had all faced enough rejection to know we wanted to be a part of creating more space for more stories and to do so with care. is has been a true passion project, and one that has further energized our dedication to literature and art beyond our individual aspirations. In this issue, you will nd a mix of prose and poetry selected from twelve contributing writers that explore origins, relations, queerness, stories of women, fat joy, aging, and endings. Our editors’ pieces “To Tend” and “Look At Me” speak to some of these themes as well. Also included is visual art from six contributors that we felt further amplied the words. is publication marks a milestone in the Tethered journey, and we are not done growing. In future is-sues and through our blog, we plan to check back in on our contributors to see where their words have taken them. We also want to further our reach into literary and art communities so we can broaden the diversity of backgrounds and experiences. e submission window for our second issue will be open from March 15th-May 31st. Spin your webs strong, your stories thick. Send your words out from their corners into the world and watch: they pull us along. ank you for reading,Ari Blatt, Elizabeth Higgins, Amelia Salzman, Keisha ierry, and Imke Wernicke Berger 6

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Words on Womenere’s a dream I had when I was young, and if I could, I’d have that dream again.In it, my mother is a girlbird, and she’s moving upward through the sky, a feathered streak of silver, and the sky is sun-dipped clouds in all directions, and she’s moving toward me, always toward me, and I can hear her singing.Every time I open up my mouth to join her song, all my makeshi fathers leave a feather in my throat.How radical a world in which our voices are our voices.*ere’s a writing contest in my hometown, “New Words on Women.” If I win, I get to read my work at a staged performance in June. However, I’ll need to come up with something to write, rst, and then hopefully, maybe, win.I’m a woman. I’ll write about that, easy. Except, it’s not easy. It’s the opposite of easy. I don’t know what it means to be a woman. In this age of undulant unknowing, I wonder about knowing much of anything, ever. I know I like my water with no ice and a lemon at the restaurant. I know how to spell “prestidigitation” from watching Akeelah and the B on repeat in the h grade. I know the taste of rejection, that handsome brine. I know the entirety of “Harry Potter in 99 Seconds.” I know I have never seen my mother cry.*e more woman I become, the more disgusted I am with the world. If I were to ever meet god, the rst question I’d ask is, What did we ever do to you? And don’t give me that Eve shit.I imagine she would answer with something along the lines of, Woman can handle it. If I gave men the same problems women have, your species would be long gone.To which I would answer, Well, yes, I could see that.*ere is a slight hiccup in submitting to this “New Words on Women” contest: the sponsoring theater is the West Side Show Room, the theater where I saw Eurydice with R—. e R— who bought me eucalyptusKATHRYN ELIZABETH CHILDSlotion at a Bath and Body Works while we waited for his turn at Verizon; who called me late one night from Huai’an to show me his tofu options at a corner market; who kissed me in his parents’ garage aer watching Parts Unknown on the loveseat of his basement apartment; who brought me cubed watermelon in a Ziploc bag the day I quit my job; who held me under the waterlogged awning of a bookstore in Minneapolis while we waited for an Uber. e R— who told me there was no one else he’d rather be with.e R— who changed his mind in an evening coated crimson, lowlight metallic.*In my high school health class, our teacher told us to pass around an unwrapped Nutter Butter and do whatever we wanted to it: breathe on it, lick it, bite it. When the bar had gone around the whole room and returned to her, she held it up and asked, Now, who wants to eat this? Nobody raised their hand. She asked, Why? Someone said, It has everyone’s germs on it. She said, Precisely.*Maybe being a woman is like the icker in a ame. Not the ame itself, but the near-invisible airspace between one side of the wick and the other, breathing and changing even when a room is perfectly still.*My mother raised my sister and me alone. She was my mother and my father. She taught me how to change the oil in my car, put in a tampon, balance a checkbook, do laundry, start a lawn mower, cook dinner, shoot a layup, apply mascara.In an Ulta the other day, she gave the employee a hard time for not being able to return a bottle of lotion be-cause the seal had been broken. She used that tone I hated growing up — the one she used with an employee at ToysRUs that made me attach to a stranger; the one she used in a car lot when the salesman asked if there was a husband he could speak to; the one she used with the insurance agent on a phone call about a recent billing that should have been covered. e tone I know makes people bristle.But I have come to love it. Because it is her way of saying: “I am here.” In a space where she is not.I sometimes recognize this tone in myself. And it tastes of skybound tang.*“New Words on Women.” How ironic. Cages don’t come with a key for the inside.KATHRYN ELIZABETH CHILDS1314

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In Shakespeare’s era, if a husband thought his wife to be too full of words, he could lock her in an iron helmet with a rod stuck in her mouth and parade her around town. He too could lock her in a chastity belt to contain her corrupt esh.How deep these women’s trenches must run.*About a month ago I hung out with a guy I’d met through a mutual friend. We watched Punch- Drunk Love on a translucent wall projection. His roommate was showering to Lil Peep in the adjacent bathroom. He compli-mented the music in the lm. I said, I agree, I said, I sing. He said, Do you wanna be on my album (I have 31 followers on SoundCloud and counting)? I said, Um, of course.We started making out. It was kind of okay. Nothing like R—. But nothing was okay was like R—.When he asked for a blowjob I said I was uncomfortable. He called me a prude. I said that was oensive. He said I had led him on. I said that wasn’t true. He said why are you so weird about sex. I said I’ve been branded by rulers held to skirts held to knees. He said you are making all of this about yourself.I tried to say, No I’m not; I tried to say, Your expectations are misogynistic; I tried to say, I deserve to have my boundaries respected; I tried to say, this is only the second time we’re hanging out you fucking asshole; but in-stead I said, I’m sorry. And then I le. Rage trapped throat-ward in coats of melted iron.*Fabric unravels at an alarming rate if it isn’t hemmed. Shreds of a whole hang there phantom-like in separatist ight. Maybe this is what it is to be a woman.*Many indigenous societies were traditionally matrilineal. Decisions were made by women. Clans were deter-mined by women. Men spent most days out hunting, so it carried that women would be in charge of tribal matters.is set-up seems to have worked fairly well. Aer all, Native peoples managed to survive on their own for thou-sands of years as it were. Aer all, it wasn’t until the arrival of Anglo-European Christian-stamped patriarchy that colonialism and alcohol and pillaging began to leave footprints the size of cemeteries. Aer all, it wasn’t until the white man showed up that Indigenous women started disappearing le and right, no blink, stories stopped mid-ight.*I have this burning, lunging drive to write. But not only to write. To write well. To write to be read. To write to be read by others who need the words they are reading to touch them in an impossible way.KATHRYN ELIZABETH CHILDSis comes mostly from an artistic sensibility I’ve had since childhood. But it comes also from watching my mother hold back tears while trying and failing to set mouse traps in the basement; from rubbing sleep from my eyes to her words of “It’s Daddy” and two years later “It’s Grandma”; from her leaf-raking admission to missing a balance of parental authority in the house; from saying goodbye to my sister, our pH 7, when she went away to college; from a rain-soaked horseback ride across family farmland in western Kansas; from our screaming ghts in the kitchen about dishes or dustings or attitude or absolutely nothing, nothing at all. From her undying belief in my art, my dream, my geometric spirit. From weak coee stains on slippers padding always and forever forward.Let me gi you words, poetic and preserved, for all of this and more.*Today I saw R—’s sister at a hotel coee shop downtown. I was sitting at a window-side table trying to write a piece for the contest. So far I had written, “New Words on Women Submission_K.Childs.” It was not going super well.I didn’t see her until she sat at a table diagonal from mine. A swig of my sugar cookie latte made a tiny clot some-where in my intestines. I scanned the interior to see if he was there. He wasn’t. I waved to her. I wrote: “woman = cordial”*Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in her essay “About Anger”: “One view of clinical depression explains it as sourced in suppressed anger. Anger turned, perhaps, against the self, because fear — fear of being harmed, and fear of doing harm — prevents the anger from turning against the people or circumstances causing it. If so, no wonder a lot of people are depressed, and no wonder so many of them are women. ey are living with an unexploded bomb.”My bomb is made of gossip regarding my grandmother’s character at the church ladies’ luncheon.Of complaints about my mother’s basketball coaching aer a signicant loss.Of soap on my tongue aer expressing my truth.Of the Cheese-Ball Chic’s chapel message about the evils of body.Of being told “You’re a wonderful woman” in the same breath as “I’m not interested.”Of “is it your time of the month”Of “why are you so angry”Of “loosen up”Of —When a people is told over and over that they are worthless, this lie becomes a belief set deeper than the iron folds of dress, of brow wet with the sweat of expectancy. is shame is my grandmother’s, is my mother’s,WORDS ON WOMEN1516

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is my mine.No wonder I nd it impossible to go a day without apologizing for existing.*Iron is a metal. It is also a component of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen from our lungs to all parts of the body. It is also an adjective meaning “inexible.”So that which cages is releasing is caged.Like those snakes who smell the odor of their prey on their own bodies and start eating themselves.*Punch-Drunk Love guy texted me recently. He said, im tryna see u. I said, I’m not interested in seeing you. He said, do u still wanna be on my album tho? I said, I don’t think so.I don’t know why I said that. What I really meant was No. What I really meant was You hurt me. He didn’t re-spond, and I deleted his number. en I cried.e tears were because of him, but they also had nothing to do with him. ey came from a four- square rug-burn scar in the shape of folded hands, the Lord’s Prayer etched faintly, like a ubiquitous birthmark, beneath ngernails on re.*I saw a cardinal this morning outside my kitchen window. He was perched on a tree limb straddling two bushes. His head was jerking around the way they do. I wondered what he was looking for. I thought maybe he was lost. I thought maybe he was looking for his family. I thought maybe they used to live there, in that tree, and his wife had had to move while he was away, she and the kids had to move because of an unexpected snowstorm, and they moved to a more heavily covered tree for shelter, and their new home was just around the corner, and she had le a trail of their trek so that when he returned he would be able to nd them, but the snow had turned the trail to ruins, and here he was now, back from a week of work, and his family was gone, and he couldn’t nd them anywhere, and he never did, and they forever thought he had abandoned them for some younger, prettier cardinal he met during his travels, and he was forever trapped in the tacet of their song.*Maybe womanhood is night snowfall under a streetlamp: beheld only in the faint aerglow ofanother.*KATHRYN ELIZABETH CHILDSI wonder if I have such a hard time dening womanhood because I do not have a consistent representationof its comparison.It’s like trying to sew a hem with only one side of the fabric. No matter how many times you go in with theneedle, the thread will come out on the other side untethered.*R—: You’re a square hole, and I’m a round peg.Me: at doesn’t make any sense.R—: We aren’t going to work.Me: But we have an amazing connection.R—: Maybe that connection is supposed to be just that, and nothing more.Me: What?R—: Maybe we are supposed to simply see one another and have that be enough.Me: But our mutual sight is nearly impossible to nd.R—: Why can’t you be grateful for what we’ve had thus far and accept detachment?Me [thinking]: You’re psychotic. Also [still thinking], I love you.*Last night I dreamt I was standing on a sidewalk, in a fury from being ignored and misheard by those around me. I was trying to speak but my words came out muted and dull and everyone continued to talk over me, at me. No matter how hard I tried to scream, all that came forth were the remnants of mothers falling heavy like molten feathers. Airspace in my throat forever catching.*It’s spring break now, and I’m at my mom’s for the week. In past years I’ve taken the opportunity to travel, but lately the only traveling I’m inclined to do is from the couch to the toilet and back.I’ve spent maybe ten minutes out of the total 72 hours of break thus far working on what I need to, that is, the “New Words on Women” submission. So far, I’ve written more in this non-diary about how I don’t know what to write than actually writing anything. I’m beginning to think maybe I will never nish the submission. ere is a part of me that is ne with that. But there is also a part of me that is not, in any sense, ne with that. My mom and I spent this aernoon watching Lanuna: A Yak in the Classroom, a Bhutanese lm about a young teacher from the city who is sent to teach in the most remote village in the world. He gets to the village and im-mediately wants to leave. en over time he grows to love the people and land as home.Becoming a woman is like this. In the beginning it is inconvenient and isolating and infuriating— the growing awareness of eyes upon your body, the duality of loose or uptight, the constant repeating of words to be heard — but in time we learn to appreciate its ruggedness. And its landscape begins to look like home.WORDS ON WOMEN1718

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Pink Bikinie rst time I saw Mr. Miller I was nine years old. I remember him standing on his porch next door with a little chocolate-colored bulldog I would soon learn was named Gus. He watched as the moving truck rolled up and started unloading my family’s belongings into what would be our new home, looking like some hall monitor who wanted to make sure the movers never set foot on his perfectly manicured lawn of grass. Never smiling, just a slight frown that made me think, who’s the grouchy old man?My parents met him soon aer. I wasn’t there for the occasion. Too busy o at dance practice or playing with my friends I suppose. But I remember the voices. My parents made easy conversation with him oen, until soon they became not just neighbors, but friends. He was a tall man. Taller than my father, and he was in his mid-ies at the time, recently divorced, a round belly covered up in muted-colored shirts I gured he must have bought in packs at Old Navy or some cheap online store.Our street was a short one, about four or ve houses on either side, which meant most of us knew each other. ere were the Kenshaws, a young couple who didn’t like kids; Rose and her husband Dick who always kept to themselves; and Carly who was a single parent to two little girls I sometimes babysat for once I was old enough. We all knew one another, and we all had our place in the little suburban world in which we lived.In the summer, my brother and I would play outside, basketball, kick the can, badminton. Our friends would come over and join us until the sun started to change into a milky pink or bright orange and our moth-er called us in for dinner. Sometimes Mr. Miller would sit on his porch and watch us as he sipped from a cold can of Miller Light, Gus sitting beside him panting in the heat of a west coast summer. If we looked over, maybe he would wave, or if my mother came out, she would say hello. But he always kept his distance, watching, and at the time, I never thought much of it.e summer I turned thirteen I was a hormonal, pimply teenager who had recently developed breasts that felt too big for my body and I would have done anything to make them disappear. Oversized sweaters and t-shirts became a regular rotation in my wardrobe, but even then I couldn’t quite escape the way people had started to look at me. At the school, in the mall, like there was a sign on my forehead that said “I’m a woman.” It felt like I was walking around in a body that didn’t belong to me anymore.One particular humid Saturday in July, I woke up craving freezies. e light was streaming in through my bed-room window and as I peered into our backyard I eyed the perfect patch of grass for laying out. I had the house all to myself. My mother and father had le for the day, out running errands or taking my brother to soccer. Aer stung down a bowl full of cereal, I slipped into my favorite pink bikini and grabbed my towel and the book I was reading, some teenage romance novel. en I took a cherry freezie from the fridge and headed to the backyard.CALISSA KIRILENKOLike I said, it was a bubble, our neighborhood, and while there were hedges around all sides of the house, if you really wanted to, you could peek around the corner and see into our little stretch of grass where I oen sat. ere were times where my mother and Mr. Miller would chat from each of their sides of the fence. ey were oen forced encounters. When all the privacy you’re allowed in suburbia is a little wooden fence, you’re usually invad-ed by nosey neighbors and polite, obligatory chitchat. Sometimes we would all ignore one another, pretend we didn’t see the other person in the backyard watering the lawn or mowing the grass. But that day, when I laid out on the stretch of lawn, I saw Mr. Miller, and he saw me.At rst I didn’t think much of it. I was reading my book, covered in a sheer mix of sweat and sunscreen. e thin straps of my pink bikini stretched across my skin comfortably and I felt at ease. ere was no reason to concern yourself with the way your body contorted on a towel when it was in the comfort of your backyard. At the water park or the pool I thought long and hard about my wardrobe, but here in the backyard, I could be free.As the hours passed by, I began to feel a little dizzy. Too much sun gives you skin cancer. I remembered my moth-er told me that one day aer I’d laid out for a while. ere was a sprinkler sitting in the yard, the one my mother used to water the plants, and occasionally, on really hot days, my brother and I would run through it. As I turned over the page in my book to a new chapter, I folded the corner down on the imsy paper before closing it and sitting upright. I took the last sip of juice from my freezie, now warm from sitting in the sun, and as I turned to throw it back on the grass, I saw him. Out of the corner of my eye, Mr. Miller was standing in the little opening between our house and his.His mouth remained in a thin line. Now that I think about it, I don’t know if I’d ever really seen him smile, and not wanting to engage, I ipped back onto my stomach. I opened back up my book and continued reading, or at least, I tried. But as my eyes oated down the page, I could feel another pair grazing the back of my body.I ipped over quickly, and the moment I did, our eyes met again, caged in a trance that felt unbreakable. He was staring at me in a way I’d never experienced before. ere was something dierent about this time, from all the others. Something about the fence that separated us, that gave him a safe distance to watch. at made me feel more naked, and more trapped behind a voyeur I couldn’t escape.It built slowly, the discomfort. e rst moments were a mix of confusion and naivete. And as my headache start-ed to build, I decided I would turn on the sprinkler and ignore Mr. Miller. Just like we did all the times before. So I turned on the sprinkler and sauntered around in the water, letting dribbles of water soak my skin. I ran back and forth across the yard. It became such a game, me running, the water falling, him watching, that sometimes I forgot we were playing at all.Aer I tired out, I looked back over the fence to see he was still there. We locked eyes with one another and it was then that I could see the slow movements of his arms going up and down, like he was petting his dog Gus, only Gus was nowhere near. I thought, say something, say something, say anything at all. We’re neighbors aer all. But my mouth had been zipped shut and instead, I screamed words inside my head.I thought about the story my best friend Nancy had told me. When she was on the train with her mother one night, a man had stuck out his penis and started touching himself right in front of them. She told the storyCALISSA KIRILENKO2526

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at recess and all the girls gathered around listening to every word. I knew Nancy really well, so I also knew she’d probably made it up. At least the part about his penis being a weird purply-blue color, like it had been bruised. Her mother ushered her away aer.As I looked at Mr. Miller, his face started to turn from the weird smile that had been plastered there and instead became sort of pained. Like I was hurting him, standing there under the sprinkler. My body seemed to take over then, like it knew more than I did. I ran to grab my oversized t-shirt, quickly pulling it over my pink bikini and wrapping myself up in my towel right then and there. I grabbed my belongings and rushed to the back door. I didn’t need to turn back to see if Mr. Miller was still there.As I tracked water across the kitchen oor, still wet from the sprinkler, I thought, my mother is going to be so pissed. en I thought, where was she right now. Shouldn’t she be here? Shouldn’t she protect me, from what I wasn’t sure. Maybe the picket fences and the inevitability of men who make strange faces or even my own body with its rolls of fat that hang loose and unkept. I felt like crying but I didn’t understand why.I stormed into my room and shut the blinds, throwing the wet bathing suit onto the oor that if le there would leave a stain and I thought to myself, good, leave a mark, this should be remembered. Even if deep down I knew I would never tell another soul. What was there to tell anyhow?Aer I changed into the biggest pair of sweatpants and sweater I owned, I went down into our basement and turned o all the lights. Picking up the remote, I chose a movie I’d seen many times before and pressed play. At some point I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up to my father shaking my shoulder awake. He asked what I was doing downstairs on such a beautiful day and did I forget to turn the sprinkler o ? ere’s a drought and we can’t waste water. I apologized and said I’d forgotten. I think my father could tell that I wasn’t myself, because he didn’t press further and instead reminded me that we were having dinner soon.For dinner that night, we sat outside. I begged my mother not to, but she ignored my pleas, saying it was a gor-geous day and there was no reason why we shouldn’t. So the four of us sat around the table eating juicy burgers and salad and corn on the cob, as I looked over Mr. Miller’s fence, waiting for him to appear, but of course, he never did. e next day I was leaving for summer camp and I tried to focus on the two weeks away. At the lake with friends, the campres roasting marshmallows at night, and nowhere near my little street.When I came home from camp I didn’t see Mr. Miller for a while, and soon I went back to school. Every once in a while I would see him sitting on his front porch or in the backyard, but I ignored him every time. Eventually I became such an expert at ignoring Mr. Miller that I didn’t even have to try.When I turned eighteen I went o to college in a dierent state. If I came home for Christmas, maybe I would see Mr. Miller at my parents annual holiday party, or sometimes at the grocery store. But he became a secret I locked away inside my head, one I forgot existed as time went on. My neighbors, playing outside in the summer, and our little stretch of grass all became a distant memory. Instead I went to parties and studied art history and dated a nice boy who came from a dierent town and had a whole new set of friends.It was summer when my mother called with the news. Mr. Miller died, she said to me over the phone, our connection staticky. Of a heart attack, alone in his home. It took a few weeks for anyone to nd him. OnePINK BIKINIof our neighbors, as it turned out, was meant to watch Gus one day and grew concerned when no oneanswered. Since the funeral was over summer break and I would be home, my mother insisted that we all go. I marked the date in my calendar and tried to forget about it.I wore black to the funeral. I sat in the back with my family and looked around at the people in the church. Most of them were older, around Mr. Miller’s age. ey were people I’d never met. Some were from the neighborhood and the parties my parents had hosted, and we all made small talk at Mr. Miller’s sister’s house aer. She was the one hosting the wake. I sipped from a coee cup and stood near the food table with my brother, waiting for my parents to tell us we could go home. I kept pulling at the sides of my dress, like if I could just get it to sit right, everything would feel better.Aer I’d drunk two cups of coee and eaten three brownies, I eventually wandered out to the backyard and sat on the steps, bored and waiting. ere were a few girls from my high-school out there smoking, younger than me, but I remembered their faces. I was sure their parents must have been inside as well. ey stood in a circle chatting a few feet away and I quietly listened in on their conversation.“I can’t believe my mother dragged me here.”“Same, I barely even knew the guy.”“He was so weird. Always walking around the neighborhood with that dog and never smiling.”“Totally, he creeped me out.”“My sister told me that one time she was changing and her window was open and she caught him staring in.”“I believe it. Apparently his ex-wife le him because she found all these creepy photos of young girls hidden under the bed one night.”“at’s so gross.”“I’m happy he’s dead.”“You really shouldn’t say things like that.”“Why not? He was a creep.”“Still.”When their cigarettes nished and they all had nothing le to say, they wandered toward the back patio door. at’s when they saw me for the rst time. Some looked shocked as they walked past me on the steps, a look of concern on their faces, eyeing me like they were trying to gure out, was she the type of girl to tell? I smiled meekly back at them, a little nauseous from too much coee or the stories they’d told. I didn’t really smoke, but I desperately wanted a cigarette at that moment.As the last girl walked up the steps, Katie I think her name was, I asked for a cigarette, and she paused to look through her pockets while the rest wandered inside. She handed me the pack and a light with it, not saying a word as she did. She was the one who’d stayed quiet mostly, while the other girls talked, and I wondered if that meant she didn’t have a story to share, or if hers was one of those you didn’t want to say aloud.“Did you know Mr. Miller?” I asked.She nodded her head.We sat outside smoking together for the rest of the wake, not talking, but then again, what was there to say?CALISSA KIRILENKO2728

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KEISHA THIERRYLook at Me: Tribute to My Indigenous HeritageBrown is a link to my African Heritage. A heritage I clasp so tightly;I have to, the power of its bronze tone scares them. e potential, if le unattended willblossom into a beautiful Jacarandas in Cullinan, or the Rainbow Eucalyptus.Who could destroy something so resilient to make pulpwood? e trees have a story.How many we kill in one day as a society?e loss-too deep.Look at Me, you can see the indigenous. You can tell by the rise in my cheekbones thatthe mountain’s crossings made them pay a generational toll.e ground soened from us trying to survive. Who do you think started the trails? e ones you use that built Yellowstone. e real story, not the white man’s version.Demolished,Reparations for a casino tax-free, that you end up owning. A total annihilation, and it’sthe Black man we are conditioned to be afraid of ?Look at Me, you can see the white. You can see the pure whites of my eyes. I know thatsomewhere in my past, an abomination laid skeletal in bones behind a cemented door.I have been attacked from both sides,“too white for the Black kids, too Black for the white ones.”Where did I t?Look at Me, you can see Ethiopian. My hair ripples like sand in storm. Brown skinturned dark meat beneath sun. A vision of beauty in the eyes of our Lord. A paintedlandscape not seen anywhere else in the world.Look at Me, you can see the kindness. e pain from having all this packaged inside.You can see the struggle of day-to-day, a single-mother of four-nishing anotherDegree, working full-time for the First, Black Female Judge in our County.Allowing the sacrice to provide them an amazing life, one better than mine.Look at Me, and really see Me.KEISHA THIERRY2930

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Light Sound, 2024, acrylic on vintage scrapbook paper, and inkKATYE LEGGET Post-Stroke CasseroleIt isn’t the moment of impact that throws me, that thing that happens in a corner of my brain, the rupture that chews distinct layers and folds of my cortex into chyme. No, it is the days following, confusing days home alone. Days ignoring papers that need grading, papers my brain cannot digest. Days spent rummaging for answers, for chores I can cross o my list between spasms and naps. Folding laundry. Cleaning the catbox. Taking out trash. e simple act of cooking dinner.Not a stew, heated from the bottom by open ame. Not a braise, that trifecta of time, heat, and moisture that melts the toughest cuts. It is a casserole that breaks me: ground beef, green beans, mashed potatoes, onions, and cheese layered in a clear glass dish. Neat repeating rows surrounded on all sides by the circulating forces of radiant heat. Dinner on display, culinary transparency, cross-section intersection of pasture, garden, and barn.It is a sturdy Nebraska recipe written years ago in a farm kitchen, miles south of a village settled by German im-migrant farmers. A simple one-dish meal written in blue sloping script, the ingredients classic, the instructions clear, an ace-up-your-sleeve solution for all things that threaten a timely country supper. A city one, too, I have since learned, my faith in casserole steadfast long aer I shed the butcher paper beef, milking buckets, mason jars, ceramic cellar crocks.Not a cassoulet or moussaka. Not a ragout. Not hotpot, tajin, or savory cake. Casserole: early 18th century: from French, diminutive of casse. Little sister of the Middle French word meaning pan. A word meaning both vessel and the thing it contains.I stand in a city kitchen with my index card, lost in the layers, unable to follow the recipe. No neat repeating rows of cursive, but words rising like steam to the line above, buttery letters melting, the scaold of meaning a soué, collapsed. e hot glass of working memory cracks in the cold water of a stroke. I am shards.Resilience is an impulse, a compulsion to grab pen. I draw in the margins, trace index card lines, box ve of them in, a set of rectangles one upon the next. I ll them in with bite-sized symbols my brain can chew: tiny pebbles for ground beef, dashes for green beans, waves for potatoes, quarter moons for onions, and x’s for cheese. I tape the card to the range hood.I cook dinner.K ANAND GALL3536

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pant suits and jewel-toned, A-line dresses that hit just below the knees, black and white button-up blouses that strained across my breasts, and several formal dresses designed to hug my hourglass shape when it was a more acceptable size.I don’t remember when we stopped the Jones New York pilgrimage. Maybe there was mention of one of the big sale events and an invitation extended that I declined. Maybe I’d started talking to my mom about how I had a right to both exist and love my body as it was and therefore wasn’t going to be weighing myself any more or buy-ing clothes that didn’t t. Maybe as I rmly told my family that there would be no more comments or questions about my body, my eating choices, or exercise habits, my mom realized that that included Jones New York too.*I moved into my dream apartment close to the beach in Toronto in my mid-thirties aer having moved ten times in the previous een years. e two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment signaled a new sense of fredom, both from a marriage that hadn’t worked and from internalized Fatphobia. And yet, lurking in a corner of the bedroom that would become my oce were eight, thirty-gallon Rubbermaid storage bins stued with clothing from sizes twelve to twenty. As I popped the lids and spilled out the clothes, I found myself sitting between piles of tailored pants, so sweaters, gure-attering fancy dresses, leather and wool jackets, and enough athleisure wear to start my own store.Most items had been worn only a few times, and many still had price tags attached. ese clothes represented a mother’s sadness and a daughter’s longing. And I knew it was time to release it all.*Sitting in the second bedroom snacking on charcuterie, I watched as a group of my girlfriends shopped my for-mer aspirational clothes. Organized by size and style, I had artfully arranged the pieces on top of the eight storage bins. e room was lled with chatter and laughter as they tried on clothes, choosing what t them, and putting back what didn’t. No money was exchanged because each item they put in their bag healed an old wound in my heart.When they le, I gathered the remnants, packed them into a bin for donation to the Salvation Army the next day, hopeful that more people could also choose clothes that t them exactly as they are.SOPHIA APOSTOL Aspirational ClothingWhen we were little girls, my sister and I got matching dresses. Blue, green, and purple, the small plaid squares owed down from the teal frilly collar and ended just above our knees. ere was a crinoline skirt to poof out the patterned top-layer, and we wore the dress with little white socks with a lace ribbon around the top and black Mary Jane shoes.For a year, we wore these dresses to every baptism, wedding, and church service. To us, not only did these dresses make us feel like princesses, but we discovered that when we twirled, the dresses shot out away from our bodies and oated around us in a dizzying kaleidoscope of plaid. We began calling them our “up dresses.”is is the rst piece of clothing I remember loving.*I don’t remember the rst piece of clothing my mom bought me that was too small. Maybe there was a comment about how losing ve pounds would have it t perfectly. Maybe the purchase of something beautiful was framed as a reward for dropping a size. Maybe it was several sizes too small and meant to be worn six months from the purchase date to a specic event like a Greek dance or family gathering. Draped on hangers and hung right at the front of my closet, these too-small clothes became shining beacons of possibility and acceptance.I never questioned my mom when we began our aspirational shopping tips. My body changed in my twenties, I was binge eating, and I hated how I looked, so it felt supportive and hopeful to have her cheering on my weight loss eorts.One of our most frequented stores was the Jones New York Factory Outlet when they had their Blowout sales days with everything marked down 50% and then another 40%. My mom ran her own physiotherapy clinic, so the charcoal wool slacks, pastel cashmere cardigans, and neutral silk blouses matched her aesthetic of profession-al business owner meets physio grappling with people’s body parts.I, on the other hand, had no idea what my aesthetic was. I knew I loved colour and funky jewelry. Now, I might say that I’m maximalist meets cottage casual, but since my twenties and the rst half of my thirties consisted of bouncing one hundred pounds up and down the scale each year, my shopping options were inconsistent and confusing.Sometimes, I could buy clothing in straight-sized stores, and sometimes I couldn’t. Fat people oen buy clothes that t, not clothes they love. So, on these Jones New York excursions, I deferred to my mom’s tastes and to her expectations of my body size. My closet began to ll up with too-tight navy and charcoal pin-stripedSOPHIA APOSTOL3738

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ELIZA SCHIFFRINYear’s Ende Christmas tree stand is dirty from the lotwhere it was purchased under the freeway Not enough ornaments and too many lightsYou’re gone in much the same wayNothing spectacular polaroids have lost their stick stains on the rug the clock hands stuck back before daylight savings time, always an hour closer to the end than the rest of usYou kept asking, “What time is it?” as though time still applied to you A pink velour jacket with a hole in the sleeve that two of us wrestle upon your stiening body e botched nature of nal wishes It won’t ever be anything more than thisNowhere did anyone countthe number of times you told meI didn’t love you or that my love saved you, again and againNo nal tally, but they are over now and there is a number, even if I don’t know it Number of times we walked to the grocery store, picked our lunches, ate together, while you asked me to tell you something intimate about my life, as though your life depended on it On Our 30th Wedding Anniversaryfor PamMost mornings my back aches as I bendto look for the jigsaw puzzle piecesfallen under your chair. I might ndfragments of blue birds or their nests.One piece I remember well: a shardof Wedgewood that I pocketed at yourapartment before we were married.For weeks that winter you had piecedtogether exquisite museum china,your ngers sorting the edges,chestnut brown hair hanging over the table.One night you showed me how yousolved the puzzle except for one piece.You’d looked everywhere. It was gone.You were upset. You didn’t believe mewhen I said together we could do anything.TIM SKEEN4142

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CONTRIBUTORSSOPHIA APOSTOL is a creative writing coach and facilitator at Firey Creative Writing. She’s also the creator and host of the podcast, Fat Joy with Sophia Apostol, where she and over 100 guests talk candidly about what it’s like to live in the world as a fat person. Sophia likes to write about the things we’re scared to talk about, and does so on fatjoy.substack.com. You may also see her IRL lurking with her laptop in the local coee shops of George-town, Ontario where she lives with her husband, 2 step-kids (teenagers!), and goldendoodle named Beatrice.ARI BLATT lives on the Oregon Coast and works as a Fisheries Biologist. Her writing can be found in Cirque, SHARK REEF, and forthcoming in THimble. She has previously written for the independent newsweekly eCorvallis Advocate. She is a 2022 TomJay Memorial Scholar and Blue River Writer. Ari received a MFA in Creative Writing from Oregon State University- Cascades.EMILY BORNHOP is a writer, photographer, singer, and mariner from Nashville, Tennessee who roams near bodies of water on the West Coast. Previous publications included sPARKLE + bLINK and Fuck Isolation: A Tribute to the COVID-19 Experience. She writes satire, picture books, and poetry. ERIC BRAMAN (they/them) is a poet, theatre maker, and visual artist based in Springeld, Oregon. eir collection of poetry, Bury Me in Cherry Blossoms (Cirque Press), was published in 2024. Eric was an honorarium recipient for the 2022 Oregon Fringe Festival and is the 2024/25 Writer in Residence with Fishtrap. eir work has been published by High Shelf Press, Moon Tide Press, Qu Literary Magazine, e Coachella Review, and more. Learn more at www.ericbraman.com.NELLIE BRIDGE is a poet and teacher who recently returned to her hometown of Sequim, Washington. Her poems explore porousness. A short chapbook, Poemas Sueltos, was translated into Spanish in 2019 by Rodrigo Rojas for the International Poetry Festival in Santiago, Chile. Poems have appeared in Pleiades, Volume, Vaga-bond, Press Pause Press, and elsewhere. Several poems set in Soa, Bulgaria appeared in translation in Bulgarian in Literaturen Vestnik in 2024.AUDRA BURWELLis a dedicated writer, poet, and communications professional with a passion for creative expression and community engagement. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno, and is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing with a specialization in poetry. In her professional role as Communication Coordinator at College Bridge, a nonprot organization committed to increasing college access and success for underrepresented students, Audra combines her love for storytelling with her commitment to making higher education more accessible.Audra’s work has been featured in over thirty journals and magazines, including New Note Poetry, Palaver Journal, Flora Fiction, Deep Overstock, and Snapdragon Journal, among others. Her poetry has also been highlighted on the Do Fiction Podcast. A member of the Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society, Audra has contributed to the literary world through her leadership in workshops at the Young Writers Conference and her editorial roles with Spectrum Journal, e Normal School, and the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry.KATHRYN ELIZABETH CHILDS is a writer from northern Illinois. Her stories, essays, articles, and-poems have appeared or are forthcoming in e Muse, Northwest uarterly, Hoard’s Dairyman, Headfone, and e Rockford Anthology. Kathryn studied creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and is a practitioner of cross-genre, experimental work.RYAN CLARK is a documentary poet who writes his poems using a unique method of homophonic trans-lation. He is the author of Arizona SB 1070: An Act (Downstate Legacies) and How I Pitched the First Curve (Lit Fest Press), as well as the forthcoming chapbook Suppose / a Presence (Action, Spectacle). His poetry has appeared in such journals as DIAGRAM, Interim, SRPR, and e Ong. A Texas native and former military brat, he now lives in North Carolina with his partner and cats.DAIJA ESSIEN is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of identity and belonging within the African diaspora. She earned her bachelor’s degree in 2023 from the University of Louisiana Monroe, where she specialized in painting, and is currently pursuing her master’s degree at Louisiana Tech University School of Design. Essien’s practice combines painting and textile work, linking cultural connections into her compositions. Her work has been displayed in various galleries across North Louisiana and has also reached galleries as far as Brooklyn, New York. Essien navigates dual identities by exploring the themes of identity, representation, and cultural pride through mixed media and portraiture. Her work is about aspiring to be-long to multiple worlds. By incorporating African textiles, bold patterns, and subtle symbols, she weaves together personal and collective narratives that honor the beauty and complexity of the Black identity. A. R. FRITZ is an east coast artist who grew up in the DMV. She started painting regularly in 2020 follow-ing Bob Ross videos and has not stopped. Inspiration is drawn from travel, surreal imaginings of pets and other animals, and the crazy wirings of brains. She prefers palette knife painting in oil and is an aspiring cow photographer.K ANAND GALL (she/they) continues to cook casseroles for their family and is once again able to follow the written instructions. K’s work is forthcoming in Gutter and has appeared recently in e Linden Review, Apple in the Dark, MUTHA, Glassworks, oidspace, in Air Magazine, e Journal, and Rooted 2: e Best New Arboreal Nonction. ey are the 2023 Academy of American Poets Betty Jane Abrahams Memorial Poetry Prize winner. When they are not writing, they facilitate guided nature hikes for chickens. It’s a thing. Find them on the socials @kanandgall or at kanandgall.com.MEHDI HEIDARI is an astrophotographer from Iran whose work has been published online by NASA, ESO, and the International Dark-Sky Association. He has been photographing since 2012 and earned a bachelor’s degree in photography in 2022. Currently, he is an MFA candidate in photography at Louisiana Tech University’s School of Design. e panorama photograph “Nearby Earth Inhabitant” is his wish to share the beauty of the stars that many people overlook in their daily routines. He focused on a rare, long-pe-riod comet to encourage people to look up more oen and nd the wonder in the cosmos. Humans’ connec-tion to the universe is special. He wants to remind everyone these moments of cosmic magic can bring people closer to each other and to planet earth.KHALILAH KERSEY is an artist, illustrator, and designer from southern Louisiana living in north-ern Louisiana. In 2018, she graduated with her B.F.A. in Graphic Design. Currently, she is pursuing her M.F.A. in Graphic Design while working as the International Student and Immigration Advisor at Louisiana Tech University. She owns her own business, studioKMAK, to encourage connection between people throughCONTRIBUTORS4546

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intentionality, honesty, and empathy through prints, stickers, zines, and paintings. Her work has been featured in Bayou Life Magazine and has had pieces exhibited in juried shows at the FJ Taylor Visual Arts Center Gallery. Her prints, zines, and paintings utilize earth tones and serene color palettes with animals and nature being the focus.Her work has always been about two things: nding her voice and connecting with something outside of herself, whether that be with nature, animals, or humans. She uses digital programs to create her illustrations. Her goal is to encourage connection between people through intentionality, honesty, and empathy. She aims to make work that calms the viewer; that invites them over for coee (or tea) and asks them to rest for a while. She wants to make work that actively listens and responds with compassion and wisdom. Her business, studio-KMAK, exists to remind us of our place in the natural world. To remind that it’s possible to coexist without domination, but instead with appreciation and respect for all things. She draws inspiration from animals, plants, and predominantly mountains, and enjoys exploring new compositions and styles.CALISSA KIRILENKO is a Canadian writer and current graduate student in the MFA program at e New School, concentrating in Fiction. She is also a freelance journalist whose writing has appeared in publications such as e Everygirl, Betches, Young Hollywood, Frenshe, and Her Campus. She currently lives in New York City.KATYE LEGGET’s work, Light Sound, is part of a series exploring the experience of neurodivergent individ-uals using headphones to manage sensory overload. Oen misunderstood, sensory overwhelm can transform everyday situations into anxiety-inducing environments, while tools like noise-canceling headphones provide relief and focus. e piece captures a still, centered gure set against a dynamic, textured background of bold patterns and colors. is contrast reects the clarity that noise-canceling or music can bring amidst chaos. Lay-ers of acrylic, vintage scrapbook paper, and ink evoke the complexity of sensory experiences, balancing intensity with a moment calm. is work seeks to highlight the importance of small accommodations and foster a deeper understanding of the neurodivergent experience, emphasizing the value of creating spaces where everyone can feel safe, comfortable, and supported.PEICHAO MI is a forty-one-year-old poet from China. She is a PhD student majoring in engineering. is is the rst time she has ever published her poetry.JENNIFER SALZMAN has been a professional artist for the past thirty years working in traditional lm photography. Originally from Wisconsin, she has lived in Oregon for the past twenty years. As an active artist, Jennifer has a successful career exhibiting regionally, nationally, and internationally, with exhibitions recently in England and France. Her newest body of work involves combining photography and textiles. She creates imag-ery using 35mm photographic lm printed onto alternative textile surfaces, most currently silks and organza. She then uses silk thread embroidery to stitch and enhance certain parts of the imagery over the top of the pho-tograph. e stitching that she employs is created to relate to the ‘red thread of fate’. ough this folklore is one of marriage and destined loves, her work uses it to expand on the destiny of life and the roles of strength, control, understanding and love that compel a person to move forward. Along with being successful as a mixed media photographer, she works as the Director of the Cra Center at the University of Oregon. Jennifer is married to Andreas Salzman, who is also an artist working in ceramics and sculpture.ELIZA SCHIFFRIN wakes in Oakland, California each morning to a hungry dog. On a good day, aerper-forming her primary duty as feeder of dog, Eliza writes poetry and creative nonction. TIM SKEEN recently retired from the English Department at Fresno State. He writes and grows oranges and lemons.KEISHA THIERRY, born and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, has worked most of her career as an Ad-dictions Counselor in a maximum-security juvenile detention facility. She currently works in developing programs that focus on substance use intervention, domestic violence awareness, and helping to reduce the stigma that mental health carries. Another of her passions is writing, which has earned her the oer of the Leila Abu-Saba Award for Prose Writing from Mills College, and the Low Residency Travel Scholarship from Oregon State University where she has earned her MFA in Creative Writing. Her writing can be found in BLAC Magazine, and Spire Light: A Journal of Creative Expression. CONTRIBUTORS4748CONTRIBUTORS

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