Sunspot Literary Journal
Volume 1 Issue #5 © 2019 Sun Dogs Creations

Saturday in the Park / Melanie Martinez

Changing the World
Through Words and Art

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Table of Contents
Refraction / Heikki Huotari / 1
My Treat 2 / Heikki Huotari / 2
Micheline Boy (With Rabbit Ears) / Gabriel Embeha / 3
The Letters / Victoria Shannon / 4
Gaslighting / Johnson Bowles / 10
Promises / Dave Malone / 11
The Heated Mission / Laurence Williams / 12
Equal, Opposite / Jerome Berglund / 20
The Trees / Mitchell Nobis / 21
Drop / Tonissa Saul / 23
Sierra Leone Poem / Renee Elton / 24
Color Burn / Hayley Patterson / 29
Inception Contest Winner & Finalists
The Lungs Are the Seat of Grief / Elizabeth MarianCharles / 30
Citrus Sinensis / Cynthia Belmont / 31
Magnets / Barb Reynolds / 32
Cheonjimun / Kat Lewis / 33
The Mad Scientist’s Husband / Eric Roe / 34
Before and After / J Brooke / 35
Maddie Wants a Man / Kim Diaz / 36
Young Authors & Artists
Trailing Childhood / Sidney Muntean / 37
Untitled / Weatherall Crump-Kean / 41
The Haunted Asylum / Robert Fitzgerald Beavers Jr. / 42
Contributors / 43
Cover: Saturday in the Park / Melanie Martinez

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Refraction
Heikki Huotari
Jacob, seeing Rachel, husbanded his
mother's brother's sheep. I knew the minute I
ran into it it was a wall and not a well.
Disturbances of atmospheres restricted me tohallowed ground. Penultimate? Is that yourfinal interjection? An objection asked andanswered interfaces in a cloud. Exceptions
may be made for seven or more chickens ora road is long and winding or a typeis strong and silent so with Gertrude Stein I
beg to differ. Father Nature loved a vacuum, aparade. I called the one who stayed a lazybones, the one who took the special breakfast
lightly and the one who wanted to be left
alone. I shall continue contemplating peer
review or quantum blue until I have a quorumor
I’m slowing photons and remotely
diagnose the alien with schizophrenia, advise
the alien to be in limbo only with thenonjudgmental alcoholics or the outermeasure of the apparition may be smaller andthe inner larger but by god that apparition isno plaything. Contraindicating popular
opinion, you may have your thorns andthistles without bells and whistles, your goatsneither fainting nor in trees. It is when
midnight light breaks into prison thatrefraction happens.

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My Treat 2
Heikki Huotari
Give me a sidewalk to sit on
and I’ll connect the dots or equally
improbably be written off. This cubic
corner is a cubic corner spiders might
belie. It’s only an electric eye, it’s not
an outrage what Bob Dylan’s done,
that’s not Bob Dylan’s name andthose with real names, those whoseneeds to eat and sleep are in
remission, seek to simultaneously
eschew and consume. The humanform is taken–do you, unborn, have a
backup plan?
We called it beauty rest andin the colors of a second sunset wewere two thirds of a person and one
third of us would storm a barricade
if there were further innocence tolose and in my ice age I’ll grow into
your opinion, your solution, even as aworker ant, when given insulin,
becomes a queen.
You wonder where thatphantom hand has been, in what
repose. Your marching orders include
humans left and right. The scissors
put their teeth in and the scissors
sing. The branches meet above yourstreet, the roots below. It’s out andback and there’s a hairpin turn.
Because your name is on a list no one
will talk to you but if you tell me what
your optics are, I’ll see what I can do.
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Michelin Boy (With Rabbit Ears) / Gabriel Embeha

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The Letters
Victoria Shannon
Sheila sent me back all my old letters, the ones I wrote from my college
to hers, back when we were each learning about tequila shots and how
cool we looked under party lights. The letters came to my office last
week in a big manila envelope. I didn’t know what to do with them.
We had become friends in high school, validating the maxim that
opposites attract. Her auburn curls, flowing saris, and boho style all
reeked to me of antiestablishment intellectual. A radical and free
thinker: That’s what I wanted to be. But I also wanted to be a horse
trainer, a playwright, a passenger on a houseboat floating throughEurope, a folk singer, a habitué of the West Village, and a helicopter
pilot. I wanted to be anyone but myself, whoever that was.
Sheila and I were both sixteen going on twenty-five like the wind. We
were trapped in 1990s suburbia, salivating for the day we could leave
home and get on with our lives. But Sheila always seemed older, moresophisticated, more knowing. She would wax on about Susan Sontag,
Naomi French, and Mother Jones, lecturing me on the perils ofcapitalism and patriarchy. I was caught up in Salinger, and suddenly
embarrassed by it.
“Religion, property, and government enslave us,” she’d wag at me as
we sat by the creek in the woods behind her house. “It’s obvious thispolitical system doesn’t work, but our parents are blind to it. We needa revolution.”
Sheila had her nose straightened that year. I had never noticed
anything wrong with it. Before the operation and after, I stared andstared. It was a nose, for crying out loud, and it looked fine, even on
her slender frame. “Just because,” she smiled at me. “I just wanted to,you silly. It’ll make a difference later on.”
She talked me into cutting class one afternoon, promising a surprise.
We ended up in my parents’ basement, and she pulled out a plastic bagof white powder and a ten-dollar bill. I’d never seen cocaine before.

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Volume 1, Issue 5“Oh my God! You brought this to my house? Sheila! How could you?”
I was panic-stricken. I was sure my brothers would come home andfind us.
“Oh, Peaches, don’t agitate. Just go find us a mirror,” she laughed.
My heart thudded in my chest even before the first snort. Still, I
managed not to breathe too much of it away. Afterward, I felt like anadult, smug and experienced. But the power trip and the paranoia
canceled each other out, leaving me too scared to ever try it again.
Her parents were divorced, a novelty for me. I met her dad one
weekend, and he seemed like a perfectly fine father specimen: balding,glasses, sociable, professional. “What’s it like?” I asked her later. “Nothaving your father around?”“Like all men,” she said, fixing her scarf into a chic double knot in frontof her dresser mirror, “my father is an oppressor. He’s an embarrassingrole model. Darling, I’m not missing anything without him.” I’d neverheard a father so reviled. It made me rethink my entire, normal
relationship with my own.
I was a bit crushed when I found out Sheila was a good student, a hard
worker, and aiming to graduate from high school early so she could
start accumulating college credits. Her manifest-destiny mindset mademe wonder why she wanted to hang with me – me with all my loose
ends and hers tighter than a drum. I didn’t know what drove her, but
I wanted some of it.
Toward the end of our senior year, I saw her less often; she had
graduated that winter and was taking classes at the community
college. But we were both still in a hurry. I couldn’t wait to stand in
the middle of a sidewalk, any sidewalk, anywhere, and scream, “I’mhere!” She was racing toward something, too, but I couldn’t fathom
what it was.
“We are going places, girl!” she crowed as we sat on her front steps afew days before the senior prom.
“Yeah,” I said. “You sure are.”5

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Volume 1, Issue 5“Oh, come on, Peaches.” Her big, rust-colored eyes flashed withexcitement. “Big stuff coming. You’ll be there for me, yes? We’ll takeon the world. We’ll show them how it’s done.”
I nodded obediently. What was she seeing in our future, and why was
I so deprived of vision? Baby, we were born to ruuuuunnn! shescrawled across the inside cover of my yearbook.
At Sheila’s graduation party, I marveled at her ability to acquire
people; I didn’t know a soul there except her and our history teacher.
But I met a guy. At eighteen, Cary was super serious and way aboveme. He was practically a political consultant already, working on
campaigns and planning his next steps up through the ranks. Still, hethought I was “interesting,” and we played at dating for the summer.
Sheila outdid me, as usual. Her boyfriend was older, a teachingassistant at the community college with a receding hairline and his
own apartment, where he lit incense and let us drink beer. He nodded
a lot and spoke philosophically, warning us often that “life is short andtime is swift.” I felt like we were actors on a set.
And then, in a flash, high school was history. Sheila went off toBerkeley, and I went to a land-grant college in the Midwest, thefarthest place from home that would accept my rotten grades. We
charged ahead like racehorses without a bit, heading toward a finish
line hidden in mist.
That’s when we started writing letters. Hers made fun of what she
called Moo U., and mine sagged with jealousy over Berkeley and tried
to make my life interesting.
It wasn’t, no matter how much I yearned for it to be. I went with theflow, did what my roomies did, tried to follow the classwork, foundlittle that engaged me. What had I expected from college, from life on
my own? Romance, stimulation, and adventure, for starters. I looked
for them under a few rocks and came up with nothing but dirt.
Sheila met a guy, a native of California, an egghead getting his PhD intransportation engineering. I spun through Mark, then Jimmy, thenJoel, then a guy whose name I can’t remember, and I think there was6Sunspot Literary Journal

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another Mark. My letters must have burbled about boyfriends andtequila, while hers interpreted Rothko and Emma Goldman.
Something changed when I fell into an intro-to-architecture class. I
sat up straight. Even the tools of the trade turned me on. Vellum andMayline straightedges. Pen plotters and 3-D software. Rules thatmust be followed, yes, but creativity, too. Oh, my. I could do this. And
I did, obsessively. I became fixated on Gehry. I felt purposeful.
Sheila dropped a bombshell one day, by telephone. She would begetting married to her egghead as soon as she got her degree, and she
wanted me to be her maid of honor.
I hung up the phone in a stupor. It was bad enough that she couldn’t
come up with someone better than me, among her wide and eclectic
group, to stand by her side. No, what kept me awake that night was
the idea that Sheila, my radical sophisticate, my free-thinking Sheila,
was getting married at all. Marriage was what our parents did. A
wedding belonged in the pages of a fashion magazine. It was as if
Marco Polo had opted out of that trip to China; he’d rather stay homeand mind the books, thank you very much. Is Sontag married? I
wondered. Our furious charge into the unknown was faltering. The
mist had cleared, and…it was this?
I went along with it, like I always did. I have some adorable photos
from the reception: me in a lavender floor-length country dress mockpunching her groom; an arty shot of Sheila reaching out to stop mefrom spilling a glass of champagne; the bride and myself, with the cutebest man between us, dancing our version of the hora. Her husband
was sane, even ordinary, she was blissful, and I never asked her what
the hell she was doing. When I come across the photos from time totime, I shake my head. Who were these people? What were they
thinking?
Getting a degree took me a couple of semesters longer than planned.
Outside of drawing classes, I never became much of a student.
Afterward, I took design jobs on the East Coast, first Boston, then
New York, then Washington. Sheila stayed West, doing some Silicon
Valley marketing thing, got her master’s. We still wrote letters, but
my heart wasn’t in it. It dwindled into Christmas cards, clipped and7Sunspot Literary Journal

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routine. “Chica! How’s the Left Coast?” I wrote. “Miss you! Talk soon!”
Every one was a lie, and I hated doing it.
Then I stopped even that. I still got postcards from her trips toEurope, her son’s birth announcement, then one for her company’s
I.P.O. I read them, threw them out, felt terrible, and went off to mypen plotter. My latest prophet was the Irish landscaper Mary
Reynolds, and I was percolating new ideas for melding stone buildings
with earthen berms. I had clients who saw value in my vision, and I
had a budding reputation.
When we were in our thirties, Sheila finally quit writing. I was
relieved, more relieved than I thought possible. For almost twenty
years, I had been supportive and agreeable. I shared secrets andSpringsteen and first-time everythings. But my heart sank with theweight of the truth. It was never real. We were never really friends. I
was just a groupie, a parasite.
Last week, that fat package postmarked California appeared on mydesk with Sheila’s return address scrawled in a familiar handwriting.
Our letters. Scores of them. All wrapped in youth, energy, desire, andanarchy. How naïve and pathetic and hollow they must sound. It had
been years since Sheila had even crossed my mind. I circled around theenvelope on the kitchen table, wondering what to do with it.
On a whim, I made an excuse to visit a prospective client in San
Francisco. Yesterday, after my meeting, I rented a car and drove to
Walnut Creek. My curiosity was vague, not malevolent, neither bold
nor fearful.
Her neighborhood was on the grand side, with sprawling acreages,
double garages, a backyard pool visible here and there. Number 225
was on a large corner lot, not far from an office complex. I parked in
the shade across the street and rolled down my window. A leaf-blower
droned in the distance. Her yard was a mess of bright orange dirt,
obviously under repair, with the outline of something like a rockgarden taking shape in the middle. A Subaru with mud on its flanks
was in the driveway.

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Another SUV pulled in next to it as I sat there. Sheila emerged in atight black skirt. Standing for a moment with her hands on her hips,
she surveyed the yard work. She’d straightened and streaked her hair,
but I easily recognized the languorous pose and spare proportions of
two decades ago. She turned halfway in my direction, shielding hereyes against the sun. I didn’t duck or flinch, but neither did I consider
approaching her. Maybe the letters were her way of sealing the past,closing the circle on something that had never ended agreeably. My
need was visual: to see her, to absorb the aura of her life, to prove tomyself that she had lost her way. Or maybe that I had found mine.
She turned back to the yard, kicked the dirt, and headed inside, nodoubt to open the mail and peel the carrots. The door clicked shut. I
started up the rental car and headed to the airport.
When I got home today, her manila envelope was gleaming on thetable, caught in a ray of the mid-morning sun. I tossed it in the trash
without a second look. There was nothing more I needed or wanted
from Sheila. I have a trip to Dubai coming up, a big project at work,and my partner’s birthday to plan.

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Gaslighting / Johnson Bowles

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PromisesDave Malone

You made me promises promises
You knew you’d never keep.
Naked Eyes

Your red hair thick as bisquesmelled of bourbon and smokein our hangover mornings,
the breeze through the Indiana cornsnuggled your bedroom window
at dawn. We held each otherladled in cream sheets, burning low.
Once, we pinkie-promised to shave our heads
as the wind picked up and tossed your curtains,
radish and arugula onto the chopping blockof your nightstand. The cold front
slipped into the barber’s chair beside you
later that morning. While I, I kept a silencein my palm. And curls to my shoulders.

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The Heated Mission
Laurence Williams
Before Alexa Plowden threw the covers off, she knew the heat had
stopped pumping. Her six-year-old Jonathan stood at her bedroom
door shivering and her baby Isabella whimpered in her crib. Son of abitch landlord, she muttered. She seized her son’s hand, scooped thebaby up, brought them to the kitchen, handed Jonathan his coat, hat
and gloves, and wrapped Isabella in a blanket. She pressed her hand to
the radiator and yanked it away. The boy coughed, the baby cried. The
heat had been off all night, third time this winter, and that bastard was
gonna pay.
She made hot chocolate, plopped Jonathan down in front of the TV,
threw on her sweats and her hoodie, stuck her feet in her boots, hoisted
Isabella onto her shoulder, stuck a pacifier in her mouth and down thesteps she went.
The super, Ivan Milovic, had an apartment on the first floor and hestood in the hallway with some of the other tenants, his arms splayed
apart in a hapless gesture, his woolen hat pulled tight over his head,his shared predicament evident from the way he kept blowing into his
hands. He mumbled that he called the landlord who said he would takecare of it.
Yeah, right, just like he did the last two times, Alexa said.
She hiked back up to her apartment and dialed 311. They placed her
on hold for fifteen minutes. She registered her complaint and they
promised to follow up. But unless they sent an oil truck over to makea delivery, the heat would stay off. Bastards, all of them, her deadbeat
ex, the landlord, the mayor, the city, they didn’t give a shit about
anybody.
She ran up the stairs to check on her neighbor. Mrs. Simpson had justturned ninety last week, and was homebound in a deteriorating
condition. What a way to start a decade. If someone didn’t dosomething soon, she would freeze to death. Alexa knocked and letherself in with the key Mrs. Simpson had given her. The old lady hadturned on the oven and all the burners and sat in her wheelchair by
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the stove warming her hands, and invited Alexa to join her. Alexa blew
cold steam into the air. She’ll blow the whole damn building up, andthere’s probably twenty other tenants doing the same thing. They’dall be toasty then.
Alexa turned the oven off, bundled Mrs. Simpson up in a coat and someblankets, ran back downstairs, checked on her son, and with the baby
still on her shoulder ran back into the hall and banged on doors,
raising hell, urging everyone to call 311.
Thirty-six families resided in the six-story building and most of themon some sort of public assistance, in a section of the Bronx everyone
liked to forget about, which meant they were at the ass end of thepriority scale. Didn’t mean the landlord and the biggest city in theworld could treat them like this, and Alexa would be damned if she letthem. If the super couldn’t get the oil here, then she wanted thenumber to call.
One of the tenants informed her Milovic sought refuge at the corner
bodega. Back up to her apartment, zipped the baby up in a coat andhood, grabbed her son and still in her sweats and hoodie, the fire inher belly keeping her warm, Alexa marched down to the bodega withher kids in tow where Milovic cowered behind some boxes of Captain
Crunch in the back of the store, a cup of steaming, hot coffee in his
hand.
She demanded the name and number of the oil company, and hestammered in his broken English, which broke more and more as hespoke, that tomorrow was a scheduled delivery. What the hell werethirty-six families supposed to do tonight, light bonfires in theirapartments, Alexa screamed? If Milovic could have climbed into oneof the cereal boxes, he would have. He sputtered something
unintelligible, and Alexa assured him that she didn’t blame him. It
wasn’t his fault; it was the scumbag who sat by his fireplace somewhereout east on Long Island that wouldn’t pay for the oil and dozens ofother repairs that needed to be done. She wanted that number. She
stepped toward him and he fished in his overstuffed wallet and handed
her a card.
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Back in her apartment, she dialed the emergency number and told thedispatcher that she was the landlord’s representative and he had
authorized an emergency delivery today. The dispatcher got hold of amanager on duty who informed her that not only would there not be
a delivery today, but there would not be one tomorrow because thescumbag landlord, (Alexa’s words) had not paid the bill for theprevious delivery. Alexa demanded the oil and said she was the newsuper and had a check from the landlord for payment. She hung up,
doubting that an oil truck would rumble onto their block any timesoon.
Once again, she strode through the hallways, banged on doors, herhair matted to her head, her hood flying out like a superhero’s cape,dragging her boy, and toting the baby. She gathered the tenants in thelobby. She inquired who in the building had cars, or knew a neighbor
who had a car. About fifteen tenants raised their hands. She also told
them that what she had in mind would most certainly get themarrested but it would get these bastards’ attention.
A young couple, Robert and Precious, who shared an apartment andeach other, stood there with their hands at their sides. Alexa knew they
had a car because they had given her a lift a couple of times. She glaredat them. Robert glared right back and told her she was loco and that
her hair needed brushing. Precious held out her keys and Robertsnatched them out of her hand. Alexa let go of her son’s hand, grabbed
hold of Robert’s arm and escorted him down the hallway andwhispered in his ear, asking if Precious knew anything about Robert’s
little visits to Apartment 5F.
The baby whimpered and Robert cursed her, creating a disharmonious
chorus. Precious, in a trembling voice, informed Alexa she was scaring
the baby. She shook her head, continuing her hold on Robert’s arm
while the rest of the tenants stood there stamping their feet, too cold
to worry about one of their neighbors losing her shit. Alexa told
Precious it was her hair that freaked the baby out. Robert handed thekeys to Precious. Alexa ordered everybody that had a car to get ready.
By this time, the news of the building with no heat had spread throughthe neighborhood, and like the old game of telephone, by the time it14

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Volume 1, Issue 5reached the Laundromat two blocks away, the story was the landlord
had evicted people into the freezing cold. That got everybody seeing
red. Alexa ran up and down the block, her hood flapping against thewind, asking anyone with a car to help her get the heat back on,
warning them of the likely consequences. When she had another ten
rebellious volunteers, she told everybody to meet in front of thebuilding.
Alexa made the first call to 911. Fire on the sixth floor. Seven othertenants followed at one-minute intervals. Alexa ordered her coconspirators with a car to assume their positions. The fire chief’s SUV
followed by an engine and ladder roared onto the block, their tires
screeching and sirens and horns blaring. Another fire truck stopped at
the top of the street blocking traffic. The firemen jumped from thetruck, got their equipment and hustled toward the building. Alexastood in their path, baby squirming on her shoulder, her boy twistingin her hand, her hair stuck in her mouth, and her hoodie zippered up
against it all.
She told them there was no fire. She didn’t know if they were shocked
more at her statement or her appearance. The chief spoke into his radio
and the truck up the street pulled away. The men got out of their gearand the chief turned to Alexa and demanded to know what the hell wasgoing on. Alexa told him the building had no heat and that’s why she
called the fire in. His face turned red, and then purple as he radioed forthe police, and informed her she wouldn’t have to worry about heat
where she was going.
At this time, ten or so cars rolled into place on each end of the block,four and five deep, blocking both ends of the street. One of thefirefighters on the rig called out to the chief, and his face turned all
kinds of colors now. Alexa told him again, we need oil and you’re goingto help us get it.
The first patrol car showed up and the officers were none too happy
they had to get out of their car at the end of the block in this frigid
weather. They screamed at the drivers blocking the street, banging on
their windows with their sticks. Everybody on the sidewalks had their15

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phones out recording the scene, and the cops stepped away and called
for backup.
That’s when the news crews showed up, trudging down the street with
their cameras and microphones. The chief screamed at Alexa pointing
his crooked finger in her face, when one of the firefighters came overand draped his coat around her shoulders. The chief approachedseizure status now and wanted to know what the hell this firefighter
was doing. He walked the chief back to his truck, as the news reporters
held microphones in front of Alexa’s face. She cocked her head to theside, told them how nice of them to come down, and the building
needed oil. Alexa repeated the address three times nice and slow.
Then the news people ran up and down the block filming the policeand firemen and doing sound bites for the six o’clock news. The
firefighter who had given Alexa his coat came over, took off his helmet,
wiped the sweat from his brow and his nice eyes, and smiled at her.
What’s your name, he asked.
Alexa Plowden.
He told her his was John Driscoll, told her they needed to leave so they
can save lives. Alexa smiled at him, told him that’s exactly what he
was doing right now.
The street teemed with reporters from all the major stations, and theminor ones too, sticking microphones in the faces of Alexa and the fire
chief, but walking right by the nobodies with plenty of stories that
nobody wanted to hear. A man in a shabby gray overcoat, a rumpled
blue suit, with a lavender shirt, and a pink tie flicked a card from his
hand into Alexa’s like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of his hat.
We can sue, he said.
We need oil, she said.
You need a defense attorney, the chief said.
There were other lawyers now mingled among the crowd, distributing
cards to prospective clients.

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Driscoll, let’s go, the chief ordered, and then turned to Alexa. See what
you’ve done, lady. You’re so concerned about these people, they’re all
going to be arrested.
A reporter stood behind him and asked for a comment, and the chief
scurried away. Driscoll pleaded with Alexa to end the madness before
another call came in, otherwise she’d be in serious trouble, and he told
her the chief would ram those cars like they were tissue paper anyway.
The reporter begged for a statement. Alexa told her there was aninety-year old ailing woman in Apartment 6F freezing to death, while
the Interstate Development Company, a/k/a Devlin Brown, sat in his
palatial estate on Long Island. He knew how to collect the rent but heforgot how to pay for the oil and the broken pipes and the exterminatorand the roof repairs. Why don’t you run out there and ask him about
it. The reporter moved away, having gotten her thirty second blip for
tonight’s news.
Driscoll offered to let Jonathan sit in the rig to keep warm, and thenDriscoll and the chief got into an animated discussion; Driscoll withhis kind eyes, the chief with his colorful face, and then the police
captain trudged down the block and brought his red face into theconversation. The brass got on their phones while two police officers
ordered Alexa to follow them.
Don’t you see I have a freezing baby in my arms, she said whilecameras and cell phones captured the moment.
The cops looked at each other. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to drag a
woman in a firefighter’s coat and sweat pants, with matted hair, and ababy on her shoulder away in cuffs, one whispered to the other.
Driscoll asked the officers to give him a sec. Alexa said she had to go
check on Mrs. Simpson, make sure she didn’t blow up the building.
Driscoll told her no worries, that he sent some men up with some hotsoup and blankets to look after her. We’re working on getting an oil
truck here. Can you ask them to move the cars now?
She blew the hair from her eyes. You giving me your word, she asked.
He nodded. I am, he said.
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She had told the drivers when she gave the signal to drive away andkeep driving. The cars pulled off and the police drove down the street.
Anything you can do for those people, Alexa asked. I scared the shitout of all of them. Driscoll laughed. I bet you did. I have someconnections. I’ll see what I can do.
There were now dozens of people running back and forth, and ahelicopter hovered overhead. A loud honking drew everyone’s
attention to the corner, as an oil truck made the turn and thundereddown the block
The street grew quiet and everybody watched with their mouths hungopen as it pulled up behind the fire truck. The people parted like thered sea for the oil man who approached Alexa, her hood fluttering out
from the huge fireman’s coat draped over her shoulders. Even the chief
gaped at the scene, Alexa standing over the oil man, like Emperor
Augustus greeting one of his generals after a great victory.
You the lady who needs the oil, the delivery man said.
No, the whole damn building needs the oil, she said.
The oil man nodded, and he unleashed the hose from his truck like a
giant snake, and the flow of black gold poured into the building. A
cheer went up from the crowd.
A limousine flanked front and back by cop cars paraded down thestreet and pulled up behind the oil truck. The driver ran around andopened the door, and the mayor stepped out. All the media people ran
to him, as he pontificated on how he came to the rescue of his
constituents, and would hold the landlord accountable, and send amessage to anyone that would dare do harm to his great city.
What a guy, Driscoll said.
Alexa tilted her head and smirked. “Really?” and they both laughed.
Driscoll shuffled his feet, looked around and down and then up into
Alexa’s eyes.
Do you have someone to take care of the children for a little while, he
asked.
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Yeah, I already asked my neighbor, Carmen. Time for me to go, I
guess, she said.
You should be out in a couple of hours. Like I said, I have connections.
Here’s my number. He handed her a card and she handed him back his
coat.
The police allowed her to go upstairs and get dressed, and then put
her into the back of the patrol car. It pulled away and she turned tolook out the rear window at Driscoll tipping his helmet to her, at the
mayor shaking hands, at Robert flipping her the finger, at the chiefscreaming at no one in particular, at the people dispersing, their lives
not important to the news outlets, at the oil man, the lone player withno allegiance to anything but his hose, at her children, who at least
tonight would be warm.

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Equal, Opposite / Jerome Berglund20

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The Trees
Mitchell Nobis
America,
I’ve been trying to write a poem
about trees for three days, but
America, you keep shooting
people. I want my boys toappreciate the trees too, but
how am I supposed to teachthem about the trees when I
don’t even know how to keep
my boys alive?
I do my part.
I feed them. Hug them.
Teach them how to treat
others with love.
I play basketball with them. Snuggle them.
Teach them the difference between rightand wrong. And America, you make thatlast one hard. I want my boys to know the
woods, to know some rivers, to have somefavorite books, but America, it’s awfully
distracting that you keep shooting people.
I’ve been trying to write a poem abouttrees for three days, but I can’t, America,
when you shoot up another school &show a Black man getting shot live
online by an officer but let his killer
go free— both of those in just thisweek.
Someone said “what is it when adeath is ruled a homicide but noone is responsible for it” andAmerica, that’s a helluva good21

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Volume 1, Issue 5question. How do I teach my boys
about trees when we don’t have ananswer for that.
I want my boys to know
right from wrong, andmost of us have a good
grasp on what that is, but
America, why don’t you? I
want my boys to know thatthey matter. I want myboys to enjoy this life too.
And that’s easy right now when
everyone thinks they’re cute, butwhat happens when they’retaller than you, America, andneed deodorant and their skinbecomes a weapon and their hair
becomes a threat to you. I want
my boys to solve problems withthinking and words. I want myboys to love you.
America, I’ve been trying to write apoem about trees for three days, but
you keep shooting people. America,
you keep letting people shoot people.
I want my boys, America.
Leave me my boys
I want my boys
I want my boys

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Drop / Tonissa Saul

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Sierra Leone Poem
Renee Elton
The Village of Waiting

Kpekelei a vala ngi gowui-huvei ma lo,
a kpangui lalewe________________________________________________________
1. White Light
No bird as beautiful as its song, no woman singing
Early in the harmattan, November morning
A memory of music, raining
Showers of silence on rice fields, dancing
Slowly arms bent to skim the ground first
With one hand then the other, swaying
Bodies sway. Perhaps it was the chief who gave
The signal, I did not see. We sat on mats, drinking
Palm wine and eating salted mangoes.

Ngi pimbili gaa, ngi pambala gaa, ngi tea fee, ngi gbahanga…
We sat for hours, until Sentu took my hand
And led me toward the river.
In the water you are formless, weighted
Only by feathers of hair.

The casualties are not only those who are dead. Gutters
Of grief flow through the village, sewage washed
From a common wound. The clamor of flies in torn
Flesh, we cannot hear each other speak. The fleeing soldiers burn
Forty homes, killing fifty people, raping girls between
The ages of fifteen and twenty. I will show you fear
In the eyes of this child, stripped from her mother’s breast.
I will show you fear in a handful of rice.
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Ngewo calls us
Amma calls us
Soko calls us
Nyame calls us
And we do not hear.
Are you looking into the same dim, green
forest light, are you looking for me?
I waited by the road-block, the menace of brightDay clear as the blade of a knife piercing brilliance.
You did not come.
Grown old without wisdom, generations of dire disconnection.
Sacrificial yam in villages of night-singing and night dancing,
Who creates the symmetries here? What beast
Devours the children? Bintu dances in the red dust, reads
The night sky. “It is all the same,” she tells me, “the world
Is not good for anybody.”
Preponderance of acacias
Hart’s-tongue fern on oil palm
All sorts of lovely things whose
Motions of fluency speak
Through tongues of claret
Orchid, voices of river grass,
Lively young crocodiles playing like kittens,
Words seep from the color of things,
And we wait for just the right dim shade of twilight,
To strip off dusty lappas, and pour
The murky brown river water over our heads.
Chrysalis of vermin my sweet malarial nightmare lioness of palms
Sande woman Bundu woman your dancing initiates white with kaolin
Bleed in imitation of climax onto the soapstone fertility heads of the
dead

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II. Black Mask
“Lie down!” cracks the order, and the uniformed
Arms descend. Dove gray walls, dove gray days,
Broken slate that gravels the floor, prisoners’
Soles dripping red strands, uncoiling from a skein
Of terror.
The snake was wrong.
The chameleon was wrong.
The spider was wrong.
Kerosene smiles, Kofi is not properly dead, the dog’s
Teeth still embedded in his neck, saliva of confident
Dogs. White Master.
The thigh should be round,A bit fleshy;
The calf should be long, drawn out, and shapely.
It is the duty of the mother to ensure that her child’s legs are
straight.
A major concern about a female’s legs is their position—
They should be as close together as possible,
With no space between the thighs.
Little Mende girls go about nearly naked, so they must learn
To protect their modesty by keeping their thighs closed.
Village of memory, murmur of mothers’
Songs—“buy you one cup sugar, buy you
One cup ginger, make you ginger beer sweet,
So town boy go buy em.”
Lead me to the river, Bintu, lead me
To the water, daughter of the river,Your watery tongues welcome my legs,
My arms, my outstretched hands.
Twin mask of the Sowo
Carved of bombax
Shiny black spirit
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There is no woman here
Who does not love your cut neckTo have such a neckRinged in flesh, when all
Your charms have faded,
Tell them to look at the backOf your neck, old woman,
Tell them you danced the Sowo
Mouth of silence
Eye sleeping in the head, dulled
Eye and mouth of the blind,
Bird and snake,
Melody and poison, birds
Are speaking, calling us
To the river, Sowo is a woman
Black as cooking pots
Wet jet to the eye
Bintu, the village dead are calling us
Bintu, Nyame calls us to the river
Bintu, Soko calls us to the river
Bintu, Amma calls us to the river
Bintu, Ngewo calls us
Calls us
And we do not hear.
Notes
Epigraph. “Man-of-the -town, you must be very sure of the strengthof your legs before you knock at the door of a Sande shrine.” Sandesaying.
Line 10. “I have danced far and wide, I have danced round andround, I have leapt into the air, I have sunk onto the ground—I giveup. I have done my best but failed.” Mende proverb of Gonde.
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Ngewo/Amma/Soko/Nyame. African deities.
Bintu. Woman’s name in West Africa.
Mende. Ethnic group in Sierra Leone.
Sande/Bundu. Female secret societies in West Africa.
Sowo. Spirit of Sande-female God.

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Color Burn / Hayley Patterson

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Inception: Best Opening Contest
Winner and Finalists
The Lungs are the Seat of Grief
Winner, Inception Contest
Novel by Elizabeth Marian
When she thinks back to that night much later, she will wonder if it
was the hinge upon which her life turned, and if she could havechanged things, how much else might have turned out differently. And
then she will make herself another vodka martini and light a Salem
because that’s useless now, all the imagining, and she has always
prided herself on being a practical person.
But no, that isn’t true—she has always been eminently a dreamer, headin the ether. Or now am I thinking of myself?
Her name is Joann Frakes, and in December 1949 she is the publicity
director at the Camelback Inn when the Shah of Iran, Mohammed
Reza Pahlavi, comes to visit the United States for the first time. Thisis the story the newspapers will print: The Shah sees Joann across theroom, red rose in her blonde hair, and sends an aide to ask her todinner. They eat and dance into the night, and then she goes to bed,
pretty head abuzz with the events of the evening. He stays for threedays, playing tennis, swimming, riding horses, attending receptions,and then he is gone. A royal encounter, over as swiftly as it began.

The Shah of Iran’s first American date, Time magazine will say, awillowy blonde from Oak Park, Illinois.

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Citrus Sinensis
First Runner-up, Inception Contest
Essay by Cynthia Belmont
Down in the wash, in the chalky railroad bed at the bottom of thecanyon, we laid pennies on the tracks. No trains rolled the slick blackrails. Smashed eucalyptus leaves cracked in the dust everywhere. We
were small but we knew how to get back, by the path through thesudden oranges like fruit trees in a tapestry, to where the yucca started
at the foot of Nanna’s hill. Glowing Valencias clustered around us,
walking together up the quiet dirt rows, don’t eat, don’t touch,
watching for snakes.
Our mother lived in the San Bernardino foothills above these Redlands
orchards in the 1940s, and she was a ringleted blonde, a single child,
she was never allowed down here alone. She told us the farmers used
to fumigate the orange trees and tent them to keep the mist in. One
time some children lifted a tent like a skirt to see underneath, and they
were asphyxiated. The end....

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Magnets
Finalist, Inception Contest
Poem by Barb Reynolds
Your coat is dustedwith magnets, aphrodisiacs
sewn into your hems.

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Cheonjimun
Finalist, Inception Contest
Novel by Kat Lewis
천지문 | Cheonjimun
In Korea, they call me Jeoseung Saja. They say that I appear in black
hanbok and a wide-brim gat hat, that I hunt down ghosts and send
them onto the next place. In the west, there is no traditional clothing,no hat with a brim as wide as a crow’s wing. There is only a scytheand the bleached bone hand wrapped around it. In some corner of yourinternet, there is a comic about how Life gives gifts to Death—herlover—and Death keeps them forever. None of these interpretationsof who I am are completely wrong, but neither are they right.
Now, I can’t tell you everything that happens when you die, but I cantell you this: you will meet me in the last place you lay, and what I will
look like depends entirely on you. Sometimes, I am your mother, yourfather. Sometimes, I am the childhood dog you still dream about atnight. Other times, I am a swing set, a park bench, the door to yourchildhood bedroom. No matter who or what I am, you will know what
you have to do: take my hand, take a seat, take a step through thedoorway to pass on, and in your passing, your thoughts become mythoughts, your memories my memories, your fears, hopes, and dreams
all mine. But it won’t feel like a betrayal or a violation. It will feel likeyour gift to me, the final gesture to a friend before leaving.

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The Mad Scientist’s Husband
Finalist, Inception Contest
Novel by Eric Roe
His name was Charlie Rabin. He was a photographer for KBHI News
Portland, but his lazy-afternoon dream was to make an epic featurefilm of St. George and the Dragon. He believed that the lush forests of
the Tualatin Mountains, near where he and his wife lived, could serve
as a surrogate for the woods of England (he’d never been to England),and on solitary hikes he imagined the dragon crashing through theold-growth trees in its furious attempt to devour St. George and hiswhite horse, who were impeding the dragon’s intended meal of the
lovely Princess Sabra. But Charlie Rabin would be remembered forsomething else entirely: He was the husband of Catherine C. Rabin,
MD, PhD; he at first collaborated with her on the project that would
make her infamous and then, after he changed his mind, tried and failed
to stop her.
They met courtesy of a paper mill mechanic whose arm was caught ina machine and turned into a gory horror movie prop. Charlie’s news
team covered the story when the accident occurred, and they cameback for a miracle-of-modern-medicine follow-up. “First doctor
wanted to amputate, all the way up at the shoulder,” the mechanic said.
“I wasn’t having that. They finally sent me over to Marquam. Theybring in Dr. Rabin, and I tell her, Look, I need my arm for work. I can’t
lose my arm. She just gives it a once-over and says, Okay.”34

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Before and After
Finalist, Inception Contest
Prose by J. Brooke
If I did in fact utter those words she swears I did, it would haveoccurred just after my father died, just after I ended that dreadfulrelationship I never mention, just after she told me she was divorcing
the depressed man who no longer slept in her bed. This was before wetravelled to Paris and never left the hotel room. It was before we gave
a real estate broker fake names to disguise our identities. It was before
the wedding in another country. It was before some of the children fell
apart and before we glued them back together. It was before we madea lot of money and spent a lot of money. It was before her middle
daughter stopped speaking to us. It was before we wrote checks to 12
therapists and 5 lawyers. It was before the "Happy Hanukkahs" andthe strained Thanksgivings. It was before I started getting published.
It was before we started fighting and before we stopped fighting. It
was before 3 kids went to six boarding schools. It was before we wereinterviewed sometimes and misquoted always. It was before we
started using moisturizer on our necks. It was before I stopped andstarted and stopped and started and stopped and started drinking. It
was before we installed the alarm system. It was before we went to theBronx zoo -- just last Summer -- and saw the gorillas in their habitat
napping tenderly endlessly effortlessly intertwined…and I burst intotears.

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Maddie Wants a Man
Finalist, Inception Contest
Prose by Kim Diaz
Maddie wants a man. He has to be tall, good-looking—no weak chins,
bad teeth, or thinning hair. In good shape, muscular, and he’s got tohave some smarts. He doesn’t need a college degree if he’s a self-mademan. He should be worldly, well-traveled and well-heeled. He needs
to be the same political party but she says it’s not polite to talk about
politics on the first date. I’m thinking when the Amazon andpresident’s pants are on fire what else is there to talk about?
Maddie keeps changing her profile username and photos. Right now
it’s BrainyLady and the picture is from her college graduation. WhenI asked her why the old photo, she said, “I still look pretty much thesame.” Thirty years and thirty pounds seems pretty different to me.
In Maddie’s profile she says it’s important to her that the man “shareher faith”—which happens to be a very old, well-established religion
that’s been getting a fair amount of bad press lately. I’m more aboutthe Law of Attraction but Maddie dismisses it, calls it “MagicalThinking” while her religion relies on an intermediary and a busloadof saints.
She wants a man but needs a reality check. She’s an unemployedteacher with anger management issues and three cats. I know, because
she talks nonstop about herself. Mostly about how unfair it was thatshe got fired after saying, “For God’s sakes, just shoot me,” andwalking out during a faculty meeting.

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Young Authors
Creative Work from People Under Eighteen
Trailing Childhood
Sidney Muntean
I popped out dead. When I was born, I died, or at least, I tried to.
Perhaps I could already sense the downsides of life: grief, isolation,
people who wear socks with sandals.... Or maybe it just overwhelmedme, all of that life at once, the sharp birdsong outside the hospitalroom, the doctor’s look of distaste at me, my mother’s sigh of relief
after the delivery; it all left me literally breathless.
Whatever the case, my arrival into this world prompted how I would
navigate the rest of my life: emotional and constantly learning lessons.
As a baby, I didn’t do much, but my parents still kept me around.
Because at the time, coils of hair rested atop my head, courtesy of mydad. I became known among my family and their friends for my darkcurls. But my father grew jealous. He too had world-renowned curls
that, with time, withered away until nothing was left except for a
naked head.
On my first birthday, my father snatched me from my bed to thebathroom. There, the monstrosity occurred. A gentle buzz sounded,and I saw a razor gleaming in my father’s hands. I tried to cry for
help—a scream, a whine!—but it was useless. It was over for me fromthe moment I saw that sinister smile stretched across his lips.
That day, my own father had shaved off all of my hair so that I looked
like a mini him, bald head and all. Once my mother got home andscolded him, he made up something about reading an article and how
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better. That was the day when I learned to be careful about where I
place my trust.
Two years later, I found myself getting into a stranger’s car andtelling them where I lived. It was summer. A light breeze shimmied
between the trees and the sun stroked the earth with just enough heatto comfortably warm it. It was the perfect day to walk to the library.
I grew up going to the library three to four times a week, either in astroller or on my two feet. The walk was short. All I had to do wasexit my neighborhood and walk up a hill. I found comfort among thetowering bookshelves or between a stack of books to read.
That day, my parents were at work, and my grandma wouldn’t takeme. I begged, pleaded, threw a tantrum, all in vain. She still said no.
Stubborn even then, I set my mind to go to the library myself. It would
be the first time running away from home and rebelling against
authority (but certainly not my last). As I stepped out of my house, I
felt liberated. Even at three years old, I knew that it was unusual forsomeone so young to venture out on their own, and I felt proud.
Walking along, I started to notice. It was my first time noticing—I
hadn’t done so before.
I noticed the bees dipping into the flowers beside me and the muffledsounds of children giggling from the park. I noticed the grass blades
quivering in the wind and the smell of dog poop drifting in mydirection. I felt like I had gathered power through my observations,like I had an edge on life that I didn’t have before. Like I knew myself
better, knew the world better.
I was interrupted by a car that pulled up beside me. I heard a growl
saying, “Hey kid, come over here! Where do you live?”
I peered into the window to see a woman. “I dunno.” I pointed towards
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The woman frowned and said, “Get in. It’ll be fun.”The woman opened the passenger door and I hopped in. The front seat
was forbidden at my age, so naturally, I was delighted. As the woman
approached my home, I hummed a Katy Perry song. Right before my
cul-de-sac, I sang, “This one!”Once she pulled up to my driveway, I ran to the front door to ring thedoorbell.
My grandmother opened the door and cried tears of joy. She had been
looking for me for the past fifteen minutes. The woman smiled at my
grandma.
“Hi! I saw her walking alone on the street and I was really concernedand she kind of looked like Alex! And I knew that his mom waspregnant a few years ago, and his sister would be around that age, andI figured that she was related to him because they look so alike!” Sheseemed to speak a mile a minute.
My grandma blinked and said, “No speak English,”
They settled in broken English, with my occasional attempt totranslate my grandma’s Romanian the best I could.
That day, I didn’t learn the danger of talking to strangers, or how
dangerous it is to walk alone. However, I found the magic of spendingtime with myself. I started to learn who I was as a person and how I
could interact with the world when alone. It was the first time I had
gotten to know myself and became a project I focus on even to thisday.
Now, I’ve been trying to teach myself the art of appreciation. It’s tooeasy to live in negativity. Stress latches to my life and never seems to
let go. But I don’t mind. I just do the same as I did when I was threeI observe. I observe how the sun waves between the tree branches tosay hello, welcome, you’ll be okay. I observe how some people hold39

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the door open for others who have their hands full, how people are still
capable of being considerate and thoughtful and good. It is only
through appreciation that I can muster the courage to get throughthe day.

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Untitled
Weatherall Crump-Keani knew it
the moment i saw
those sincere gentle brown eyes

coup de foudre

i would be in love with you until my death41

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The Haunted Asylum
Robert Fitzgerald Beavers, Jr.
It’s been decades since this lonely haunted asylum had been filled withthe emotional sounds of laughing or crying. The mackerel sky is the
only light source for miles along with the shocking lightning thatflashes and strikes every waking second. It’s possible to fill the lifelesssuffering of the rejected and the forgotten with even more horror fromtheir daily lives. They can’t even imagine life without hearing thenever-ending crying and pain of the mental patients as they try to findan escape from the house of torture. Their reality is the everexpanding darkness all around them as they are forced to swallow andinject medicines into their bodies. They are forced to live inwheelchairs while viewing hallways with blood, spit, and doctor coats.
They enjoy the comforts of padded rooms while smells of rotting
corpses with flies, bacteria, and decay cover all over the dead bodies.
The torture tools used with the insane people are covered in blood andhave a history of entering inside the patients or, in other words,
unsuspecting victims. This place is the unfortunate resting place ofmany unlucky victims that didn’t know what was going to happen tothem. The outside of this madhouse is deceiving because it is filled withtrees and mountains. The front door is huge with granite steps leading
up to it. The moon stands guard on top of the Asylum watchinganybody who dares to enter this haunted placed. The ground crumbles
and breaks apart with the lack of water, overdose of waste, and theblistering heat. The grass that barely exists around the asylum sweeps
and weeps the ground as sudden low winds hit the area giving a chill
to anyone that even sets foot on the ground. Stairs bust and crack aswinds enter through the broken windows and hits the stairs thatscream every time someone sets foot on the broken wood.

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Contributors
Robert Fitzgerald Beavers, Jr. is a rising junior at a private school in
Fairburn, Georgia. He is also a sports enthusiast, scholar, and one who
dabbles in writing to amuse himself.
Cynthia Belmont is a professor of English and writing at Northland College,an environmental liberal arts school on the South Shore of Lake Superior, in
Ashland, Wisconsin. Her creative work has been published in diverse journals
including Poetry, The Cream City Review, Terrain.org, Natural Bridge, Oyez
Review, and Sky Island.
Jerome Berglund graduated summa cum laude from the cinema-television
production program at the University of Southern California, and has spentmuch of his career working in television and photography. He has had
photographs published and awarded in local papers. A recently staged
exhibition in the Twin Cities area included an extensive residency at a local
community center.
K. Johnson Bowles has exhibited in more than eighty solo and groupexhibitions nationally. Feature articles, essays, and reviews of her work haveappeared in forty publications including SPOT (Houston Center for
Photography), Sculpture, Fiberarts, and the Houston Post. She is therecipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship and a
Houston Center for Photography Fellowship. Recently, she served as an
artist in residence at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. She
received her MFA in photography and painting from Ohio University and a
BFA in painting from Boston University.
A published poet and essayist, J Brooke is the previous nonfiction editor of
the Stonecoast Review. With an MFA degree in Creative Writing from the
University of Southern Maine, publications include Harvard Review, TSR-

The Southampton Review, The East Hampton Star, RFD Magazine,
Hartskill Review, Rubbertop Review, and Mom Egg Review. Brooke’s film
work includes The Bed, a short documentary, and two features cocreated withpartner in film and life, Beatrice Alda.

Weatherall Crump-Kean is a sophomore currently attending the Universityof Texas at Austin High School. Her first book, artificial affection, wasrecently published and she is looking for more opportunities to be heard.
Kimberly Diaz studied creative writing at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg,
Florida. Her work has appeared in Montana Mouthful, Eckerd Review, and43

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Fleas on the Dog, and is forthcoming in Ariel Gore's newest anthology. She
is currently working on a collection of creative nonfiction.

Renee Elton is a poet and teacher currently working on a poetry manuscript
about Japanese design in response to nature and ritual. She earned her MFA
in Creative Writing from George Mason University and has a biology degreefrom Kent State. Her recent poetry and art have appeared in Every Writer’s
Resource, Every Day Poems, Snapping Twig, and Literary Mama.
Through a continual mixed-media interweaving of acrylic, graphite, digital
imagery, performance, film, and writing, Gabriel Embeha engages a diverse
range of persons, places, things and ideas involved in different forms of
disability and violence. His process involves an ongoing series of interrelated
sacrificial acts and quasi-ethnographic confrontations with scientificrepresentation, the state, conscience, and futility. He lives and works in
Berlin.
In a past century, Heikki Huotari attended a one-room school and spentsummers on a forest fire lookout tower. They are a retired math professor,
have won two poetry chapbook prizes and published two collections. Anothercollection is at press.
Kat Lewis is the author of the short story collection In and Of Blood. Lewis
graduated from Johns Hopkins University where she held the Saul Zaentz
Innovation Fund Fellowship. In 2018, she received a Fulbright Creative Arts
grant in South Korea. She is currently an MFA student at the University ofSouth Florida.
Dave Malone is the author of nine books, including You Know the Ones
(Golden Antelope Press, 2017). His work has appeared in journals such as San
Pedro River Review, Plainsongs, and The Cape Rock. His poem “Spring
Dress” was featured on Michel Martin's NPR program Tell Me More. Davelives in the Missouri Ozarks and hosts the weekly Friday Poems series at his
website, davemalone.net.
Elizabeth Marian Charles is a recent graduate of the Arizona State
University’s MFA program. Her work has appeared in Bird’s Thumb andFiction Southeast, and is forthcoming in Minnesota Review and Running
Wild Anthology of Stories, Vol. 4. She lives and writes in Texas.
Melanie Martinez is a BFA student at Texas State University in San
Marcos. She lives in Austin and grew up in the Army town of Killeen. Her
early life led her through many worlds from journalism to horticulture, thenmusic and historic preservation. Now she focuses on interior design and44

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painting. An interest in society and American Studies led her to examine theways we live in the world today. Her style evokes the attractive, illustrative
yet disturbing style of Rene Magritte while the subject matter places her inthe world of contemporary social realist painters.
Sidney Muntean is a high school student in the creative writing program at
Orange County School of the Arts. Her work has been recognized with second
place in the Freedom to Read Art & Poetry Contest, and has been publishedin The Phoenix and The Loud Journal. When she’s not writing, she’s
probably dancing up a storm. She firmly believes she was a ballet dancer in apast life because the routines she’ll come up with in the rain feel like a distant
dream.
Mitchell Nobis is a writer, teacher, and adoptive dad in Metro Detroit where
he lives with his family. His poetry has appeared in Exposition Review,
Hobart, The Wayne Literary Review, English Journal, and others. His poetry
manuscript was a runner-up for the 2019 Hopper Poetry Prize, and hecoauthored the teaching book Real Writing: Modernizing the Old School
Essay. Find him at @MitchNobis or mitchnobis.com.
Hayley Patterson is a New York artist with a portfolio that displays
achievements in both analog and digital media. Hayley’s knowledge of art
history as well as current trends is reflected across all animated andillustrative work. In the coming year, other illustrations will be published by
Flying Ketchup Press and Meat for Tea: The Valley Review. A recent college
graduate who finished summa cum laude, Hayley spends most of her time
doodling and working and doodling some more, looking for the nextchallenge.
Barb Reynolds spent twenty-two years as a child abuse investigator. Her
chapbook Boxing Without Gloves was published by Finishing Line Press.
Her poems have been published widely, and she founded & curate the Second
Sunday Poetry Series in Berkeley, CA.
Eric Roe has won Chautauqua’s 2018 Editors Prize and The Bellingham
Review’s 2015 Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. Work has also appeared in
TulipTree’s Stories That Need to Be Told anthology, the Best American
Fantasy anthology, Petrichor (forthcoming), The Tishman Review, South 85,
december, Redivider, Barrelhouse, and other literary journals. Eric lives in
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and serves as the editorial assistant at UNC's
Marsico Lung Institute.

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Volume 1 Issue 2

Tonissa Saul is a writer and photographer from Arizona. She is the managing
editor for Bodega Magazine and an editor for Rinky Dink Press. Her work
has appeared or is forthcoming in Write On, Downtown, The Comstock
Review, and the anthology Miles to Go, Promises to Keep Volume II.
Additionally, her artwork has appeared on the covers of Rinky Dink Press.
Victoria Shannon has worked as a journalist in New York City, Washington,
DC, and Paris, France, and now lives in the Hudson River Valley of New YorkState.
Laurence Williams writes, plays bass guitar and worked in the courts of theBronx. He has been published in Middle Church Literary Journal, First Line
Literary Journal, and Read650.

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Volume 1 Issue 2

Writing a New World
Sunspot Literary Journal believes in the power of words and art. In its firstyear, Sunspot showcased voices from multinational communities worldwide.
New works were published in their original language alongside English
translations. Extremely long pieces are always accepted, a rarity in publishing
today.

To enhance access, digital editions feature English translations alongsidepieces in their original languages. In 2019, this included French, Italian, andLuo, the language spoken by the Acholi people of Northern Uganda.

Support Sunspot Lit
Today more than ever, literary journals are forces of change in the world.
Sunspot Lit is funded entirely through private means. Every donation makesa difference. Take a moment to drop a few bucks into the Sunspot magnetic
field flux. Your donation helps ensure that this phenomenon lifts every voice
into the stratosphere.
A PayPal link on the website makes it easy to send a tip, donate
enough to publish the next digital edition, or go supernova and fund the next
print edition. Please visit https://sunspotlit.com/support for details.

Advertise in Sunspot
Classified ads are available in quarterly digital editions and special editions.
Spread the word about your writing and arts contests, residency programs,
awards, workshops, and more. All classified ads are also posted on thewebsite's classified page. Ad rate: $150 for up to 25 words; $5 for each
additional word.
Color display ads are available for digital editions, and black-andwhite print ads are available for annual editions. A full page is $850, a half
page is $450, and a quarter page is $295. Buy two ads of the same size for thesame issue or for two sequential issues to receive a 10% discount. Set up threeor more ads and receive a 15% discount.
Sunspot's graphic designer can set up your ad to your specifications.
Flat rate of $325, and the design is yours to use elsewhere.

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