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STREET GLITTER Gigi Giangiobbe-Rodriguez Can you watch my section for five? we ask our coworker, one we may or may not have slept with, so we can slip outside apron still affixed and smoke a cigarette or just stand under the glow of street lamps, looking at the remains of a Tesla’s window in pieces on the sidewalk— street glitter — watching a rat scuttle across the pavement to dart behind a patch of grass, taking a moment of relative silence and fresh air. We are misfits degenerates hard workers sweethearts. We are gravely misunderstood. We smell like hops, yeast, oil, grilled meat, bread, fish. We make 500 on a good night if we’re front of-house, and we make 90 on a bad night. After our shift is over and we clock out, we drink three to six beers, depending. Sometimes, during the really long days, the really thankless nights, the nights where we cut the tip of our finger off, or have to clean up vomit, or piss, or a drunk guy pinches our ass, or some dude tells us we should smile more, we start drinking before clocking out. 86 TRIPLE SEC we yell at each and every server while we tend bar, pouring pint after pint of beer. 4 COUNT SWEET POTATO FRIES we yell as we pop out from our prep kitchen cave, to tell the spoiled front-of-house staff. BEHIND! ¡ATRÁS! we shout as we dart from kitchen to the line, back of house to the floor front bar to back bar walk-in back to the bar kitchen to the restroom restroom to the lockers storage closet back to the line prep kitchen to the dumpsters. WHERE IS TABLE SIX’S BURGER we demand of our line cooks, not daring to talk to the chef that way. STOP SEATING ME we frantically mouth to the host, after they have sat us a fifth consecutive four-top in ten minutes. Fuck. Table six stiffed me. On to the next. WHERE’S JESS? We, the almighty bartenders yell into the void. Our most loyal server finds her, tells her we have a question. Jess saunters up, already rolling her eyes— You didn’t ring this drink up right. Here’s how you do it. We hear ourselves and are annoyed. We’re nitpicking ingredient discrepancies with the servers for what, inventory? To save money? For who? So the owner can get a bit richer while we hustle our ass all night? What’s the new IPA taste like? A customer asks us, after they have already sampled three beers. “It tastes like fucking beer,” we wish we could say. “It’s really good. It’s hoppy but not too bitter. Super fresh,” we say instead. THREE BONELESS WINGS ALL DAY; FIRE ON TABLE NINE we yell from our little slice of hell stationed in front of the deep fryers, dodging hot oil, wielding knives and squirt bottles, tossing plating garnishing wiping repeat. Two hours left. Fuck I need a drink. I need five drinks. I need a new fucking job. And then we show up hungover the next day and do it all again. We don’t have much of a choice. No one’s holding our hands. We are a band of degenerates— these misfits, these sweethearts, these druggies, these assholes, these perfect human beings. We are a dysfunctional family just barely hanging on. Gigi Giangiobbe-Rodriguez Gigi Giangiobbe-Rodriguez is a writer based in Portland, Oregon but was raised in Oakland, California. She’s never met a tree she didn’t like and has what some would call an acute addiction to tea. When Gigi is not amassing books faster than she can read them, she’s writing, snacking, or scream-singing karaoke at a dive bar with her husband and their friends. Her current works include her chapbook: I’m Okay, I Promise . Gigi writes personal essays, memoir, prose poetry, poetry, fiction, and occasionally takes a stab at other genres. Her research essay on Indigenous voter disenfranchisement was showcased at PCC’s 2023 Groundswell Conference. Gigi is on the President’s List at PCC and is an All-Oregon Academic Team scholar. She is an editor for the literary magazine The Pointed Circle .

AUNT BOBBIE IS MY FAVORITE ON MY DAD'S SIDE Shane Allison Aunt Bobbie put in 16 years at Extended Care. She gossips with her friend Elenore on picnic benches during lunch breaks. They say she’s doing crack again. She sells television sets and wholesale outfits to gold tooth drug dealers. She takes care of babies of girls who party all night with golden boyfriends. Aunt Bobbie doesn’t want to be found. She doesn’t want anybody to see her this way. Her sisters have given up, thrown their hands up like white flags. Her brothers have had enough. Shawn, her only son, is ashamed and doesn’t want her for a roommate. Aunt Earline, who creates magic in the kitchen, who makes the best jelly cake, doesn’t want Aunt Bobbie in the house. She gave her clothes, soap to wash herself and three square meals on the good plates from her china cabinet. Aunt Alice didn’t have room in her heart for a drug addict grown up. Bodies pack in every crack and crevice of a three-bedroom house. Aunt Norris doesn’t trust her. She could run off with my jewelry and sell it for drugs. Anyway, my son is coming home from the army and she can’t be here. “If only you knew how hard she worked,” Mama said. Aunt Bobbie is my favorite on my dad’s side. Third cousins talk about her like a legend. She used to laugh loudly at family reunions. She used to be pretty. Will someone help her? Help her like Uncle Howard, like Uncle Weed falling down drunk on the living room floor. Shane Allison Shane Allison was bit by the writing bug at the age of fourteen. He spent a majority of his high school life shying away in the library behind desk cubicles writing bad love poems about boys he had crushes on. He has since gone on to publish several chapbooks of poetry, Black Fag , Ceiling of Mirrors , Cock and Balls , I Want to Fuck a Redneck , Remembered Men , and Live Nude Guys , as well as four full-length poetry collections, I Remember (Future Tense), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori), Sweet Sweat (Hysterical), and I Want to Eat Chinese Food off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica and has written two novels, You’re the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon & Schuster). Allison’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo , Unlikely Stories , Pnpplzine.com , Palavar Arts Magazine , Southeast Review , and a plethora of others. He is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.

NOT THE WORST DAY Sean P. Hotchkiss 1 2 3 Fig. 1 Funeral by Robert Hotchkiss Stop for a moment and look at the photograph before you proceed. Okay, that should be long enough. It is an overcast day, a gray day, but still light. There is a red and gray kilt-clad bagpiper standing on a field of grass in the bottom left corner with his back to us. His stance gives the impression he is playing. The grass is well groomed with hues of yellow and green mixed in. There is a blue canopy in the center of the photo, sheltering a closed silver-trimmed gray casket that lies upon what looks like a bronze-hued pedestal. The pedestal is actually the bottom of a grave box designed to protect it from water damage, but the casual observer would not know this. A couple lines of grave markers are set into the earth in the foreground that may not be immediately visible. There is an astroturf-covered mound behind the casket, presumably covering the dirt that has been displaced by the digging of the grave. Lying flat on the grass are several plywood panels. A large bouquet of beautiful red roses lies atop the casket and a green University of Oregon bucket with white and yellow roses sits beside it. Also nearby is a small vase of red and white flowers. In the background there are a mix of large evergreen and deciduous trees with a line of cars parked in front of them. The deciduous trees are leafless, adding to the starkness of the image. Two distinct groups of people stand in a rough semi-circle around and behind the canopy, with a few lone people standing apart. Most are wearing black, but there is a splash of pink, green, brown, or blue here and there. Everyone is wearing a mask to protect themselves and others from Covid-19. Upon closer inspection you see four people seated close to the casket with a space in between them. Two, a man and a young woman, are on one side, and two more, a young woman and a young man, are on the other. It appears that the people are either listening to the piper, lost in silent contemplation, gazing at the casket, or all three as no one seems to be speaking. Most appear to be looking in the same direction. What did you think of when you first saw the image? How did you feel? Did any memories or images from your past surface? Were there any imaginings of what the future may have in store for you or your family? Even without the casket being so prominent, it is easy to tell that the photograph has captured a funeral in progress. The somber gray sky, the grass, and the mix of evergreens and deciduous trees are classic signs that this photo was taken in the Pacific Northwest. The canopy, seeming out of place with its bright blue color, is unaware that it is pulling focus away from the other details in the picture. It is only there to fulfill its purpose of protecting what is underneath from potential rain. The lack of leaves on the trees tells us it must be winter. The University of Oregon bucket leads to the conclusion that at least one person in attendance is a Ducks fan and may narrow down where the photo was taken, Oregon. All the masked faces show that the funeral is taking place during the Covid-19 pandemic. Perhaps this death was another casualty of the virus. Seen are friends and family paying their last respects to a loved one. Presumably grieving would be a unifying catalyst, but cliquish groups, reminiscent of a poorly-themed high school dance, have formed. It’s unclear if these groups were formed because of a rift, a coincidence, or social distancing. While it is expected to see black formal wear at a funeral, reality leaks into this photograph contrasting what is seen in a movie or television show. If this were a staged ceremony, everyone would be in almost-matching black suits and dresses. The splashes of color or the blue jeans would be absent. This must be a real event—with people present having different stories. This must be a real event—someone is in the casket. This must be a real event—someone is in pain. The four seated people are likely to be the closest friends or family of the deceased. Who else would rate such an unwelcome honor? Who are they? Who did they lose? Who was this person being honored by this group willing to risk their health by gathering? How this photo affected you, if it did, might depend upon your own personal experiences. It may be easy to make some assumptions about aspects of this image based on where we live and what is currently going on in our lives right now. Perhaps your observations and conclusions were similar to what has been described so far. Perhaps they were different. Often, I think our reactions to and interpretations of photos are impacted by our level of separation from what is depicted. This photograph of a funeral could be interpreted differently by those who have or have not attended one. Differently still if the funeral was for someone you were close to. And even differently still if someone you love is very old or infirm. To what extent did your own memories and experiences shape what you saw and how you felt? Our interpretations might not reflect the reality of the photograph, or the timeline of events to the left and right of it. The truth behind the photograph is that it was taken by my brother at my wife’s funeral—freezing, forever in time, a single frame of the terrestrial end of a wonderful story. She passed away and was laid to rest in January of 2021 after bravely and tenaciously battling cancer for almost a year. The image was captured as the Piper played “Amazing Grace” to a grieving and tearful audience towards the end of the service. The four people seated under the canopy are me and our children. We had just finished honoring my wife with our words and stories of love and loss and hope. As I write this, it occurs to me that the closeness of the relationship each person had with my wife can be gauged by their distance from the casket. The two groups that formed are primarily segregated by my wife’s people, who we call the “Out-laws,” on the right, and “my people” on the left. We named them the Out-laws because they are the family of my wife’s brother-in-law, so not “in-laws” themselves; therefore, “Out-laws.” The man in the suit closest to the pavement is the minister and the other two lone mourners are friends of my kids. My wife and I had ended up staying closer to my people, so the distance between the groups may reflect that. My wife is a Ducks fan and the bucket was her constant gardening companion. To some, it may seem just as out of place as the blue canopy, but not to me. So now that you’ve read an interpretation of the photograph and have heard some of its story, how much have your thoughts and feelings changed? Are your perceptions and perspectives different now that we are at a different point in time? You may wonder, how could this not be someone’s worst day? This picture cannot convey the emotion I and the others attending are feeling; that can only be left to the imagination, informed by interpretation and context, of the viewer. For me, examining this photograph so closely has been deeply interesting, frequently tearful and painful, and hopefully a little healing. There are things that I noticed for the first time, some of it pointed out by others. Such as the unanticipated segregation of the crowd, the ashen sky, and how the artificial blue of the canopy seems unfit for the occasion. This photograph is of one of the worst days of my life, but what it does not show, can’t show, is that the day after was worse. The thirty years prior to the snapping of this photo had been spent getting to know, marrying, loving, and being loved by my wife. The year prior had been spent caring for her, helping her fight the cancer that would take her from me. The days prior were spent making preparations for her memorial and funeral. The day after, there was nothing more I could do, or needed to do for her—except tell her story. Sean P. Hotchkiss Sean P. Hotchkiss was born and raised in the Portland Metro area of Oregon. He is a proud father of three, grateful partner of one, and widower. He recently rediscovered his love of writing after returning to college after three gap-decades. Sean is in his last term towards earning an A.A.S. in Business Marketing at Portland Community College (PCC) with plans to pursue a Master’s degree in clinical mental health. In addition to his “day job” as a digital marketer, he is also a reading and writing tutor at PCC. He believes he does his best work where thought meets inspiration, and seeks out those things and people that stimulate both. You can engage with Sean on Instagram @sphotch_the_writer or on his website at https://www.sphotch.com .

Art ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES Wrapping Freedom Mehdi Gassi Oil on canvas 16 x 12 in cover on print edition* Growing Out of Bounds Dean Wilson Photograph A Tasty Thank You Shane Allison Décollage 14 x 11 in 5 Off Your Order Shane Allison Décollage 14 x 11 in Abandoned Homestead Dean Wilson Photograph Amanita Kelley Wezner Watercolor on paper 4.5 x 6 in Astoria at Blue Hour Dean Wilson Photograph Bok Choy Kelley Wezner Watercolor on paper 12 x 9 in Death and Life Bailey Moore Diptych in charcoal on paper 24 x 36 in Drawing of Jessie Ed Vassilenko Chalk pastels on paper 24 x 18 in Duality Ed Vassilenko Chalk pastels on paper 24 x 18 in El Alcatraz Jacky Sanchez Lozoya Linocut on bristol 17 x 14 in First Impression Mehdi Gassi Digitalized drawing Farm House Laila Sheikh Oil on canvas 36 x 29 in Ice and Rocks Dean Wilson Photograph Mad Scientist Kelley Wezner Watercolor on paper 4.5 x 6 in Misty Voyage Laila Sheikh Oil on canvas 36 x 29 in Orange is the Loneliest Color Xiomara Mueller Self Portrait of Self Discomfort Ed Vassilenko Mixed media on cardboard 24 x 18in Sentinel Kelley Wezner Watercolor on paper 4.5 x 6 in The Thinking Mehdi Gassi Screen print and gold leaf on paper 12 x 12 in Untitled Mehdi Gassi Oil on canvas 16 x 12 in

BULLY Shane Allison The last time I saw my cousin, Darrin Was at the burial of my Aunt Lurine. It wasn’t a sad funeral. I didn’t cry when they lowered her into Southside Earth. Instead of wrapping me with a hug, he shook my hand As if I was simply a friend of the family. He didn’t show me the same kind of love as those My kin folks give on my father’s side. Maybe it had something to do with my being queer. If so, I don’t want to know. Growing up he was never much of a cousin. Maybe because he was older than us and was never around. Too cool to spend time with a bunch of babies. He was worse than any bully I ignored in school because he was family. Teasing and picking until I had no choice but to fall into a fight Which I always lost because Darrin was the oldest, the strongest. He knew how tender the skin of a shy boy was. My mother asked if I remember chasing him with a knife in my grandmother’s backyard. All that anger I would have cut him for sure. I don’t know why my aunt left him the most out of her money. He never wrote her letters or sent her poems. I imagine with all the trouble that has plagued our brood, He will either see me at my funeral, Or I’ll see him at his. Shane Allison Shane Allison was bit by the writing bug at the age of fourteen. He spent a majority of his high school life shying away in the library behind desk cubicles writing bad love poems about boys he had crushes on. He has since gone on to publish several chapbooks of poetry, Black Fag , Ceiling of Mirrors , Cock and Balls , I Want to Fuck a Redneck , Remembered Men , and Live Nude Guys , as well as four full-length poetry collections, I Remember (Future Tense), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori), Sweet Sweat (Hysterical), and I Want to Eat Chinese Food off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica and has written two novels, You’re the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon & Schuster). Allison’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo , Unlikely Stories , Pnpplzine.com , Palavar Arts Magazine , Southeast Review , and a plethora of others. He is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.

WHAT IF I GOT THOSE CUPCAKES? Keith Kunze Wes picked me up after I was done with class at Clackamas Community College. I didn’t want him to pick me up from home because I didn’t want my family to see me with him. I also knew a lot of people in the area, so I wanted our first date to be a bit more out of town. I had never been on a date with anyone before. We had been chatting for months on a dating site and it was a big deal for me to meet anybody. I was still in the closet and ended any communication from a group called Exodus International whose slogan was “Change is possible.” At some point prior to meeting in person I told him about “ex-gay ministries,” which he seemed interested in. Exodus International formed in 1976 and claimed to have helped many men live a life where they can be a family man and have a happy marriage. What they didn’t advertise was the incredibly low success rates and the fact that you can’t change your sexuality. I made sure to emphasize this with him in an effort to prevent him from looking into it. He only realized he might be gay after he saw two men kissing for the first time. He’d recently moved to Oregon from Texas where he’d never met a gay person before. We both grew up Christian Evangelical and we shared similar beliefs. Every day I woke up to a “Good Morning” text from him except once—to which I reached out saying, “Excuse me, where’s my good morning text?” in hopes he’d find it funny (he did). Boundaries were set and we agreed this meetup was a platonic date. I was waiting for him anxiously and kept looking around to make sure nobody saw me hopping in the car. His orange Fiat was small and felt appropriate as he was wearing orange-smelling cologne. Wes wore a white button down underneath a gray sweater vest. On his face he had thick-rimmed glasses, probably because I told him I had a weakness for them. He also had a small gift bag with a paper rose on top. I remember being embarrassed and a little nervous because I didn’t want anyone to ask me where I got the rose from. Inside the bag was a book called, The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm, which I loved! We chose to go to the theater at Clackamas Town Center because they had a cupcake kiosk right next to the theater. My nickname among friends was “cupcake,” due to my love towards them and I wanted to see if they had Christmas flavors. Naturally, the theater was decorated for Christmas and the cupcake kiosk was in the food court, just across from the entrance of the movie theater. We checked the time and agreed we should wait on the cupcakes because the movie had already started. While we both weren’t big fans of using guns, we enjoyed movies with guns. The movie we chose was the remake of Red Dawn. I’d always loved action movies and the original was a classic, so it was an easy choice for us to make. To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t know how that movie ended. *** In 1999, two teens killed 13 others at Columbine High School. There were seven victims in 2005 during the shooting in the Living Church of God, located in Wisconsin. Thirty-two dead at Virginia Tech in 2007. In a movie theater in Aurora, there were 12 killed and over 70 injured in 2012, and that wasn’t even the deadliest one that year. “Everyone should have a gun on them so if there is a shooter, you can just shoot them first,” is an ideology I subscribed to for a long time. About 430 deaths happen per year in the U.S. due to accidental firearm usage. I was required to take gun safety classes as a kid and I’m not sure if that could prevent accidental deaths if everybody took those classes. Before 2012, there had been many conversations about mass shootings and gun control. We as a country have also experienced two of our deadliest ones since 2012: one at Pulse Nightclub in 2016, where forty-nine died and fifty-three were injured, and the biggest one where sixty-one people died and over four hundred were wounded during a concert on the Las Vegas Strip. Continued conversations about gun control happen often and little has been done to prevent mass shootings. *** I had knowledge of these incidents before 2012. Of course, I wasn’t thinking about them when we entered the movies. Just a few minutes into the movie, an employee of the theater came in. She sat right behind us looking petrified. After a few seconds, she leaned forward and calmly said, “There’s somebody right outside shooting a bunch of people. It’s really bad.” Then she leaned back into her seat. We looked at each other. I wondered if she was crazy but also remembered the face of the man who killed all those people in Colorado just a few months prior. The movie was the latest Batman film and apparently some audience members thought the gunshots were from the movie itself. I couldn’t help but wonder if I had heard real gunshots and assumed it was from Red Dawn. The employee left and after a few minutes, everything seemed fine. Suddenly, the movie stopped playing and she came back in. “Attention!” she announced to the audience, “there is a man shooting people in the mall. You are to remain in here until police escort you out of the theater.” Her posture was rigid. I remember she wore a navy-blue dress that looked very formal. She had no emotion in her voice, but you could tell she was in shock. Maybe the lack of emotion in her voice was her way of processing what was happening. Did she see it happen? It seemed like hours had passed before we were finally able to leave the theater. My mind and body felt numb; whenever someone tried to talk to me, I sank out of reality momentarily. The officers maintained a calm composure as they led us out of the theater through an exit I hadn’t noticed before. They gave firm directions and led us outside on the sidewalk near the entrance of the mall and theater where we were instructed to continue waiting. “Oh my God, there’s bodies,” said a bystander. I caught a glimpse of paramedics transporting motionless figures in wrappings. I saw that the cloth absorbed crimson blotches and quickly looked away, avoiding being exposed to their faces; I didn’t want to see them. Neither Wes nor I had much to say in the remaining moments. Eventually news reporters came and one started asking us questions about what happened and what we experienced. We told her everything and she asked if we could say it on camera. Both of us in unison firmly said, “No thanks.” She looked very surprised but thanked us for our words. It felt like a firework of reality hitting me in the face. This was my first date and it was with a man. Both of us were trying to be as discreet as possible. The dread of being seen on TV with a man my family didn’t know made my skeleton jump out of its own skin. The past hour I was only processing what was going on. I forgot about everything else in the world. I hadn’t realized it was extremely cold and a lot of people were shivering. It’s hard to explain but just being asked if I could “say it on camera” snapped me back into my reality outside of these moments. If people knew, would they say this happened because I was on a date with a man? Did I believe this? My church friends might say that. I’d finally cut off all ties to gay conversion therapy and this happens. Is there some tragedy everyone experiences when they come out? Is it bad that this is what I’m now focused on? How many more mass shootings are going to happen? Will this be the only one I experience? Keith Kunze Growing up in a rural small town in Oregon made being in the closet quite an intense experience. Journaling is something that I found beneficial and was a huge process in accepting myself as a gay man. Besides non-fiction storytelling, I enjoy a variety of other genres, but especially enjoy stories that are a “slice of life” with scifi/fantasy components. Playing video games, watching shows, and researching miscellaneous topics that might not be relevant to anything of importance are things you are likely to catch me doing at home. Currently, I am studying to become an elementary teacher, after taking a hiatus from college.

FAT BOY Shane Allison I’m barely awake checking emails And social media messages When my mother asks me If I want anything from the store. She does this sometimes, As if she’s some kind of space Martian From Mars who is new to planet Earth And doesn’t know her way around a supermarket. With sleep seeds still in my eyes, I tell her to get yogurt, Turkey cold cuts, and chicken pot pies. I tell her to throw waffles in the cart, Plums and green grapes without the seeds. I know she’ll forget most of what I ask For, like kiwi and dragon fruit. Raisin bread instead of Cherry plums. I don’t want to clutter the corners of her mind With things like blackberries and almond milk. Needed ingredients for smoothies To lower my blood pressure. She will come home armed With an arsenal of bags Filled with turkey wings, Ham hocks, Neck bones and frozen okra. Finger cookies for dad And canned vegetables pickled in some soupy, Salty concoction. She’ll come with chocolate milk, Sugar Pops and Frosted Flakes, Zero sugar root beer for Dad’s bad blood And her kidney disease, which was News she broke to me in the lobby at the cancer center Minutes before her CAT scan. The calories I burn at Planet Fitness Will only be regained under her reign Where everything must be cooked With butter, bacon, or grease. She doesn’t know that it takes more than push‑ups To flatten a belly like this. A thousand thigh crunches to keep them from rubbing together. My friend Chuck lost 90 pounds on Noom. I would give both my nuts To shed 90 pounds of fried food flesh, Suck out the midnight cravings with a vacuum hose. My mother doesn’t know what it’s like to look down And not be able to see your dick without having To hold your belly in. “You look fat sitting on the sofa,” she told me once. “Are you still going to the gym?” she asked when she Saw me coming out of the bathroom with my shirt off. Tonight I’ll write out a grocery list on the back of this poem: Pork loin Salmon Beet and pomegranate juice Almond milk, Yogurt, Blackberries and whiskey, A little something extra for the smoothies. Shane Allison Shane Allison was bit by the writing bug at the age of fourteen. He spent a majority of his high school life shying away in the library behind desk cubicles writing bad love poems about boys he had crushes on. He has since gone on to publish several chapbooks of poetry, Black Fag , Ceiling of Mirrors , Cock and Balls , I Want to Fuck a Redneck , Remembered Men , and Live Nude Guys , as well as four full-length poetry collections, I Remember (Future Tense), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori), Sweet Sweat (Hysterical), and I Want to Eat Chinese Food off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica and has written two novels, You’re the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon & Schuster). Allison’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo , Unlikely Stories , Pnpplzine.com , Palavar Arts Magazine , Southeast Review , and a plethora of others. He is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.

Spring 2023 art poetry fiction Nonfiction Thank you for visiting our website. The Bellwether Review is a literary journal that hopes to promote and inspire creativity amongst those not only at PCC Rock Creek, but throughout the community. We hope you take the time to review these great pieces that were sent in to us and selected for publication by our editorial team. Visit our Submissions page if you are interested in having your work considered for publication. Email us at bellwetherreview@gmail.com with any questions. Letter from the Editors Dear Reader, This edition of The Bellwether Review is special in two ways from previous editions. It is the first print edition to be published after the Covid-19 restrictions were lifted, and will be the first edition to be published alongside its online companion at bellwetherreview.com . Our editing team is honored and privileged to have witnessed the amazing levels of beauty, creativity, bravery, thought, and emotion infused by the Contributors into all of their submissions. Each piece was reviewed, discussed, and carefully selected by us with you, and a profound respect for the act of artistic creation, in mind. The Bellwether Review is created by the students of Portland Community College for the purpose of being enjoyed by all it can reach, and the editorial team would like to thank you for exploring and enjoying the contributions of our fellow students contained within these pages. With gratitude, The 2023 Editorial Team Copyright © 2023 Portland Community College Portland Community College reserves all rights to the material contained herein for the contributors’ protection. On publication, all rights revert to the respective authors and artists.

THE WHISPER OF THE RAIN Brooklyn Shepard It was a stark and unforgiving mid-winter’s evening in western Oregon. This was my second time in Corvallis in a week. The light from the Shari’s sign reflected off our faces, casting a morbid glow on the pavement. Sitting on the ground of a rain-soaked parking lot, I held Jason’s uncalloused hand as he bled to death. The dark rivulets spreading out from his body were growing into a puddle, somehow avoiding the place where I sat, as if they too blamed me for their presence. “I . . . I think I got shot,” Jason spoke quietly. Three days prior, my daughter had called me, hysterical on the phone, blubbering out, “He hit me.” I already wasn’t fond of Jason Williams. While my daughter, Cha’uri, felt he was a mature and distinguished older guy, I just saw him as the nearly thirty-year-old who was dating my barely legal daughter. I may have been able to get past that, but he had been accused of molesting his much-younger sister when she was a baby, and he was all too often around my infant granddaughters. When my youngest granddaughter was born to Cha’uri and Jason, the Department of Health and Human Services stepped in and refused to let Nova go home with him. They called me early on the second morning of my daughter’s hospital stay and asked if I would take the girls until Jason completed a psychosexual parameters test. We didn’t expect that he would refuse, but he did. At the time of the incident, I was living in Forest Grove, a tiny agricultural town two hours north of Corvallis. It was a harshly beautiful night. There was no moon out, and the stars glinted hard like chips of quartz freshly dug out of their earth. The highway was lonely, and headlights spit their beams through my windshield in stark bursts breaking up long periods of darkness. During my frantic drive south, Cha’uri and Jason had the ill grace to make up, and she sent me a text right before I left the interstate telling me to turn around. She tried to assure me that she was fine; it was all a big misunderstanding. But once a plate is broken, no amount of glue can put it back exactly the same as it was before. I convinced her to meet up with me, and we talked, but she decided not to go home with me, to stay instead with Jason. No amount of my considerable persuasion could change her mind. She was definitely my daughter. Stubborn as a mule. I couldn’t let it go. My boyfriend of the time, an ex-Army grunt, pitched one solution that would remove Jason from ever being a problem again. If the United States Armed Forces is good at anything, it’s at training its recruits that killing another person is a solution to most problems. The next day, I offered to meet up with Cha’uri and Jason for dinner, saying I had something to talk to Jason about. I never intended to have a conversation with him. Upon arriving at the Shari’s Saturday evening, I expressed a desire to smoke, and predictably, as smokers will do, my daughter and Jason followed outside, bumming smokes off me as we huddled under the bicycle rack out of the rain. I stepped away to drop my filter in the receptacle, and the first shot ricocheted off the bike rack and hit me in the knee. No plan survives the first attempt, and my plan was already going awry. The shots came from across the parking lot, in the wooded area near the cars, and the pops from the gunfire were so loud and so close together that they sounded like fireworks going off in the space between us. I fell to the ground, and saw my daughter, still standing, staring agape at Jason, who lay on the ground behind me. I screamed at Cha’uri to get down, honestly afraid for the first time. What would I do if she got hurt? She dropped and scrambled over to me on hands and knees. I checked her quickly, desperately making sure she wasn’t injured, then shoved her inside the glass-walled entrance to the diner. The door chimed, an incongruous welcoming noise. I crawled over to Jason. He lay on his back, several small red marks scattered across his body, like he had been dotted with a red Sharpie. I could see that none were immediately fatal, but it wouldn’t be long. Suddenly, this wasn’t what I wanted at all. Death, right in front of you, goes from being a distant, sterile concept, to being a real and present event. “I . . . I think I got shot,” Jason whispered to me. I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “You’re going to be fine,” I lied. There was no reason to frighten him. It would be pointlessly cruel. Both of our lives were fading away like the last light from the sky. While he would never hit my daughter again, I hadn’t saved her. I had cost her both her own free will in her relationship choices, and her time with her mother. As I watched her through the plate glass window, safe within the restaurant, I realized I would spend most of the foreseeable future unable to hold her when she needed me or be by her side as she celebrated life. Our lives would be as they were in this moment: me on the outside, watching her, and all too often doing so through glass. The police and ambulance arrived in minutes. It didn’t take the detectives long to arrest my boyfriend and me. I was treated at the Corvallis hospital for a superficial gunshot wound to the knee, and released into the custody of a detective of the Corvallis Police Department. After spending eight months in the county’s ancient and derelict jail, my co-defendant and I were each sentenced to prison time for our roles in Jason’s death. I received eighteen years, and he got twenty-five to life. It could have been worse. I’ve been at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility for a little over eight years. The time has passed quickly, but I’ve missed so much of my life outside of these walls. My granddaughters are now nine and eight years old. Like them, I’ve learned and grown. Most importantly perhaps, I have learned that no one has the right to take life from someone else. It is possibly the only thing we own that is ours alone. The ending of a life is a lot like strong perfume. It’s impossible to put it on someone else without getting a little on yourself. My freedom died with Jason that night in the parking lot, our funeral dirge the whisper of the rain. Brooklyn Shepard Brooklyn Shepard, who also goes by Crescent Holiday, is a resident at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville. She takes college courses offered by both Portland Community College and Portland State University, where she majors in English. She is the mother of a number of children including Soriyah, Britain, Iliyana, Indigo, Sterling, and Cha’uri—and she has a husband who is the love of her life. She can be reached by mail for comments and discussion: Brooklyn Shepard/Crescent Holiday CCF #15721242 24499 SW Grahams Ferry Rd. Wilsonville, OR 97070

NOTICE Nancy McKinley Wagner Hey, you . . . did you perhaps notice something as you passed this way? Did something wonderful try to sneak into the corner of your eye? Did you resist? Did you notice the lovely little sparrow singing its song? Did you hear the hopefulness in its shrill? Did it make you feel alive and connected to the whole wide world? Or did you simply pass by? Allow me to let you in on a secret; there is an innate knowledge that’s been washed away by a good scrubbing and an infantile belief that the world must be conquered in the name of progress. We live in a world of concrete, of chemicals and of hard steel and flimsy plastics. It is a place of indifference and of a strange superiority that dares to look down on the soil of the good earth like it’s something dirty. The sound of traffic is amplified by the tall fences that skirt the sides of the wide boulevard. People enveloped by cars speed by. Every one of them wears a crumpled forehead of practiced concentration accompanied by an intense and slightly sorrowful scowl. There is not one smile among them, not one. The striped song sparrow tries to get your attention. It is in a bush near the entrance of your building. It sings its lovely song. Its little throat vibrates with every note. The roar of traffic almost drowns it out but if you listen—if you stop and take a moment to notice this tiny life right there in front of you, singing its heart out, you may be able to receive its message. You may then realize, if you haven’t already, that you, all-powerful human, and this small, seemingly insignificant creature are kin. If we don’t notice something, we don’t notice when it’s gone. Humankind’s expansive growth has left our precious wildlife with nowhere to go. And we are losing our precious birds. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, habitat loss poses by far the greatest threat to birds, both directly and indirectly, more so than any other cause ("Threats to Birds "). It is essential to conserve what we have and rewild and restore what places we can that will make the most impact. Our natural world is our home as well as it is home to the sparrow and all the other creatures. All life on this Earth is connected. It is up to us all to do our part. Desmond Tutu, the Nobel prize winning Archbishop, once said, “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” I believe that wholeheartedly. We have inherited this good Earth from our ancestors, just as others have before them, but never has the Earth needed us as it does now. It goes beyond recycling and reusing, it entails a rethinking of what it means to be human and live on this planet. Coexisting in harmony and working with nature instead of against her. This is a way of thinking we must teach our children who will ultimately inherit it all from us. The little sparrow is a canary in a coal mine, singing a warning and a plea. My hope is that we listen. Nancy McKinley Wagner Nancy McKinley Wagner is a business major with a love for nature and writing. Writer of nonfiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry centered on the natural world and its wondrous and beautiful connection to the human spirit, she lives with her family in Beaverton, Oregon.