Category: Uncategorized

Enoch Jacobus

Caroline Lewis

I have long ago learned to fear
that when everything is sunny,
and I feel an unnatural calm,
a storm is brewing somewhere in the center,
so far away and so enormous
that I will not see it until it is upon me.
I have learned to walk in the rain for hours,
until the downpour forces me to flee
into the nearest house.

I have long ago learned
that the only safe house is mine.
That the only place that I truly know in those times is my mind.
That even when it is dark, I know the way around,
and I can feel the furniture,
and when the wind blows in,
at least the cracks in the walls are familiar.

But you—you contradict what I have learned,
when I thought I could not have
the beauty of the sea without the storm,
the fire of the sunset without the dark soon following.
You are like a warm day with sun and sky and breeze,
and true peace, for I know you will not
bring a storm, I know that we will not
create a tempest.
I know you are the fine line that I have been searching for,
wondering about, for years,
hope versus history.
I fear no storm brewing on the horizon,
and when I think of the unexpected squalls that will arise one day,
I know that we together
can walk, nay, dance through the rain.

And I know because you, everything with you, feels like a house I know well—
a home.
A house I have never set foot in,
yet when the lights are out,
I know my way in the dark,
and when the wind blows in, the cracks don’t matter—
you are here.

Jesse Lee

The plaque read “Viking Age Female, Ninth Century A.D.”. She lay in state, surrounded by her trinkets and a miasma of climate-controlled air. The tinny voice of the audio tour told me that she was estimated to have died of an illness around the age of twenty-five to thirty. She was of Scandinavian origins, buried in in English soil, possibly a settler in the Danelaw. I paused the recorded monologue.
Her clothes were varying shades of rotted brown, fading into the dry parchment color of her bones. Small locks of tinder grass hair clung to her shrunken scalp; her hands gently folded over exposed ribs. A glance at the display above her resting place revealed an artist’s loving rendition of what this woman might have looked like in life. The recreation had a stern face surrounded by elaborate blond braids. She wore a grey shift under a woad blue apron dress with amber beads strung about her throat. I wondered if it was accurate.
I twirled my own braids between my fingers. Did she fight to make her plaits neat, as I had fought this morning, even with the aid of modern hair tools? Did she choose the amber beads to draw the eye of a young man in her village? What kinds of jokes made that stern expression crack into a laugh? Her last meal, examined during an archaeological autopsy, contained berries. I licked my lips, tasting the remnants of the blueberry jam from my bagel. I wondered if blue was her favorite color. It’s mine.
Centuries of time and inches of glass separate us, but we tell the same stories, fractures in our bones, tears, smiles, and whispered wishes. I look at the hammer pendant resting in the hollow of her throat and reach up to touch the runestone necklace resting in my own. We have shaped the same names with our lips. Thor, Tyr, Freya, Odin. Fireside tales and historical research, reaching hands across the gap of centuries and cultures. We heard stories of the same heroes. We have watched the same stars.

Andrea Locke

Enoch Jacobus

Bailey Lane

The way I feel Your presence.
Those moments when joy is irresistible.
A smile shined upon my face,
the radiance of Your glory on display.
The sunlight upon my skin,
the beauty of creation.
Your breath gives life to all things.
In awe I stand,
that Someone so magnificent
could love someone so insignificant.
Yet to You I am worth everything.
Being loved by You gives my life meaning.

Tayla Vannelli

Humanity once obeyed sunshine. 
Gods were made to worship the powerful orb; 
days lived only as long as the sun. 

Outside was a necessity, an ignored factor. 
No one realized the gift of feeling 
raindrops, a tree against your back, wind. 

Today, gray paint absorbs my soul. 
A painting of nature taunts my desire; 
my lock screen reminds me where I am not. 

I never knew the blessing of a window 
until I spent eight hours longing for truth: 
night equal to the day, rain and sun unknown. 

The monotony of fluorescent lights demands 
retreat. With laptop in hand, I fly to that 
table among the wind, trees, and sun. 

An hour spent above, knowing the sky, but 
phone calls and a dying battery urge me back: 
to sit, once again, in the office without windows.

Seth Stringer

I take a blade to my chest, carving 
And peeling it open. Worms engrave around my 
Lungs, shaping their catacomb in the 

Crevice, and feasting on the vital organs 
I need to breathe. 
Maggots live there, welcoming all 

entertainment. Eating bare bones, ingesting 
The intestines. 
There they eat away my jaundice hued 

Flesh, sucking black blood and green bile.
How they make haste! breeding and 
Eating as I try to pick them out. 

How pure I am.