IN THE END David P. Sterner How will they live once they’ve all returned with tales of the dead and villages burned? Will they proudly speak of how bravely they fought or now live in shame and wish they had not? Will they think that a favor they’ve done for our world that on mothers and babes tons of bombs they have hurled? Or will they then see the evil in this deed they have done and fear that from God their souls will be shunned? How will they live once they’ve all returned with those shiny cold metals that so proudly, they’ve earned? David Sterner I was born in the small town of Grants Pass, Oregon. I have attended 22 different schools in Oregon, Montana, and Northern California—including PCC—which all exposed me to various cultures. My passions are art and science. I express my inner feelings by drawing, painting, sculpting, and writing. I study science to understand life and emotions, which I find very intriguing. Some of my achievements include winning blue ribbons for my artworks, being the lead singer of the Dave Everest Band, and receiving U.S. Patent #4,572,622 for a photographic lens. I have also authored a book titled DOR: The Missing Geometric Link . My hobbies include rock and fossil hunting, and I am proud to own the largest carnelian agate ever to be discovered in the Vernonia, Oregon region: it weighs a whopping 65 lbs.

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 .

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.

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.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT We would like to acknowledge that the home of The Bellwether Review , Portland Community College’s Rock Creek campus, is located on the land of the Atfalati-Kalapuya tribes (also known as Tualatin Kalapuya), who were among the First People living in what we currently call Washington County. In 1855, the Atfalati tribes were forced to sign a treaty relinquishing ownership of their land . Today, the Kalapuya people are members of the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde, located southwest of Washington County. We also want to acknowledge and thank the original stewards of the land throughout the area which PCC serves today, including the Molalla; the Multnomah, Kathlamet, and Clackamas bands of the Chinook; as well as the many other Tribes who have made their homes along the Columbia River. We, the editors, have chosen to include this land acknowledgment as an active commitment to supporting contemporary Indigenous sovereignty by promoting awareness and fostering dialogue as a contribution toward decolonizing the oppression which has resulted from systemic policies of colonization—including genocide, relocation, broken treaties, and assimilation. The Bellwether Review seeks to highlight the diversity of linguistic and artistic expression of student voices on the Rock Creek campus and throughout the PCC community; with this in mind, we want to acknowledge the absence of voices that might otherwise have been thriving today, if it were not for the practices of forced cultural assimilation that leads to the loss of fluency in local Indigenous languages. The last known fluent speaker of Tualatin Northern Kalapuya, Louis Kenoyer ( baxawádas ), died in 1937. Kenoyer’s memoir, My Life: Reminiscences of a Grande Ronde Reservation Childhood , translated into English from Tualatin Northern Kalapuya, is available at the PCC Rock Creek Library. We encourage readers of The Bellwether Review to honor the journal’s connection to the history of the land upon which it is produced by supporting and promoting organizations that are working to cultivate and honor contemporary Indigenous cultures in a variety of ways, such as PCC’s Native Nations Club , Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde , Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians , The NAYA Family Center , Salmon Nation , and the First Nations’ Native Language Immersion Initiative . Learn more about the Kalapuya people by exploring Kalapuyan Tribal History , Pacific University’s Indigenous History of Oregon , and the Five Oaks Museum’s online exhibition, This IS Kalapuyan Land . The Bellwether Review editorial team would like to thank PCC Native Nations Club Coordinator Karry Kelley (Yahooskin/Modoc) and Dr. Blake Hausman (Cherokee Nation), PCC faculty in English and Native American Studies, for advising us on crafting this acknowledgment.

MISSION STATEMENT The Bellwether Review is Portland Community College Rock Creek’s literary magazine. Our mission is to showcase the original writing and art from both students and artistically inclined folks from the greater community. We aim to publish diverse bodies of work from a variety of voices. All submissions go through a fair and democratic process, which ensures the highest quality of work is selected. The Bellwether Review commemorates the hard work and dedication of all those involved in its creation.

LAVENDER WEDDING Shane Allison I’m convinced that I’ll get married in the gym of my old high school. The ceremony will take place on a beautiful spring afternoon on Saturday ’cause Saturdays are for weddings. My suit will be “virgin” white with a shirt of lavender and ruffles at the collar. The shoes will be platformed. I’ll reek of Brut and Afro-sheen. My husband-to-be will look stunning in his lavender Christian Dior wedding dress imported from Paris. I’ll mow the hair from my legs like newly cut grass with a Lady Bic, pluck my chest hairs like feathers from a chicken, paint these lips with apple red lipstick. I want all my closest friends to come ornamented in those dresses like they wore in Footloose . The lesbians will come as Wall Street tycoons constantly reminding me how expensive all this shit is and how much it’s going to set me back no matter how many times I tell them that money is no object. I want my daddy to give me away if he promises to keep his hands off Aunt Tillie. My mama will be the bearer of rice and punch spiked with whiskey. The priest will be a Michael Jackson impersonator. The reception will be held at the house of Chicken and Waffles where Debbie, employee of the month, will catch the bouquet. Wally, the four-hundred-pound, stubble-faced cook, who smokes stink cigars, where the ashes occasionally fall in the blueberry pancake mix, will have the pleasure of pulling the garter belt from my husband’s thigh with his teeth. There will be no limousines ’cause if a Pinto was good enough for my sister and her husband, Then it’s good enough for me and mine. 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.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES ARTWORKS Mehdi Gassi: Using different mediums such as painting, graphic design, and 3D media I strive towards depicting the world we live in and the chaos that fills our time, as I aim to dive deep into the subject matter and create a sense of universality that resonates with all. My practice often involves creating a series of work using different mediums, allowing me to explore and experiment with techniques that are visually compelling and never been done before. I take great pleasure in discovering new ways to layer my paints to create a sense of depth and originality. As an artist, I am deeply passionate about exploring sentimental matters and pardoxes that we come across as humans, and do so using symbolic figurative style. I look forward to continuing to push the boundaries of what is possible with my creativity and bringing new perspectives to the subjects that I am passionate about. 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. Bailey Moore: I live in a small Halloween-loving town with my family, including two cats and a dog. I love reading, writing, and playing games. I’ve worked with a lot of different mediums, but I have enjoyed working with oils the most. I plan to transfer to a university and pursue my degree in fine arts. Xiomara Mueller is a PCC student whose artwork, Orange Is the Loneliest Color , is published in the 2024 issue of The Bellwether Review. J acky Sanchez Lozoya is a PCC student whose artwork, El Alcatraz , is published in the 2024 issue of The Bellwether Review. Laila Sheikh: Hailing from Lake Oswego, Oregon, my paintings reflect my love of cheerful, vivid colors inspired by my world travels. I am inspired by art masters, a global perspective, and my training in Feng Shui and Ikebana to create unique oil and acrylic paintings that intersect the abstract and the modern. I hope to fill your space with happy colors. https://lailaduttastudio.wixsite.com/lailaduttastudio Instagram ~ @lailaduttastudio lailaduttastudio@gmail.com Eddie Vassilenko: I’m a fella who likes to make things. My work centers around my life being queer, body image, and the people around me. I often focus on the human form. When I’m not making art, I’m probably playing Guitar Hero 3. Kelley Wezner is a recent retiree who has returned to school to study art. She is in her first year at PCC. She particularly enjoys drawing and painting the nature she sees on walks. When she’s not in school, she enjoys reading, hiking, and time with friends and family. Dean Wilson: Born in Oregon, our family moved around a lot. I used my first camera, a 126-roll film from the 1960s, very infrequently. Progressing through the Instamatic days of the 1970s, I bought my first SLT in 1976. This eventually led to a DSLR in 2015 and mirrorless from 2019. Photography is a passion for me that allows me to capture a feeling, mood, or a moment in time that tells a story. I capture landscapes with a creative eye of a place that may have existed for thousands of years or in the blink of an eye, which may suddenly disappear tomorrow. Facebook ~ Dean Wilson Photography Instagram ~ @DeanWilsonCanby

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 .

DEAR CREATOR Mercedes Shafer I do not know myself. I do not know my worth. I do not know why I am here. But it must be for your paycheck. I do not know why you need me. I do not know why it is a must. I do not know your point of reasoning. But it is simple, I am just not enough. I do not know what I am meant to do. I do not know why you use me. I do not know if I am of any help. But it’s is easy to see, I am nothing much. I do not know my identity. I do not know your tests. I do not know where I belong. But what I do know, Is that I do not know you. Mercedes Shafer Mercedes Shafer: I am 18 years old and have always used poetry as a way to express how I feel. I took the Writing 242 poetry workshop at PCC and found that poetry helped me with my feelings a lot more than I thought. When creating “Dear Creator” I did not originally have a specific person that I was thinking about, but after some fixing up, I began to have a person in mind. I left it as “Dear Creator” to give the readers some room on how they want to interpret it.

PATRIARCHY Sean P. Hotchkiss Father's daughter, husband's bride. The choice taken from her, and she accepts it–for now. Passive, subservient, obedient is how she has learned to be. But this is not really her, although she does not know it yet. Husband found and courtship orchestrated, she is wed with, perhaps, a skewed sense of what love is. Love is submission and obedience, it is not mutual respect or equality. Time passes; days, months, years, and still matrimony does not feel like love. More submission, more obedience must be the answer. But it is not. Freedom is the answer. Not the answer that will heal the marriage, but the answer that will heal herself. Not heal so much as reveal her strength, hidden within. Unveiling the person she has always been. The rebellion in her heart–thought of as weakness or failing–is strength and truth. Honest now, she breaks the bonds that have kept her from being herself. Smiles are natural, her face shines, doubts diminish–mostly. She is herself now–unmarried, unfettered, and free. 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 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 .

THE RED'S DEATH Matt Smith It sat in a little jar on a shelf, her death. She had captured it many years before, snatched it from her soul and pinned it to the wall. She had poked it and she had prodded it, watched it squirm with all the fascination of a child pulling the wings from a butterfly. She cataloged its struggles and made note of its pleading writhes. Eventually it had stopped fighting, and she had stopped caring, and so in the jar and on the shelf it went. There it sat for centuries, a wispy reminder of mortality, gathering dust on high. In that time she had lived and she had loved and she had learned. One world had forgotten her, a bad memory best left up on a shelf, away from the prying eye. Another had embraced her, hailed her as a genius, catered and pandered to her every whim. It amused her, the lengths to which they had gone not to ask her secret. They gave her riches, knowledge, resources, all without breathing a word of recompense. They bid her sign her name in the Book, and from then on addressed her only by the title it had assigned. They allowed her a place in society, in their colleges, gave her young minds to mold and twist as she saw fit. It became a badge of honor, to have once been a student of the Red. When finally they felt confident in her comfort, when they believed her to be integrated and ingratiated into their world, they found the courage to ask. They came to her, hat in hand, and lavished her with compliments. They praised her achievements, large and small, before bridging the topic that had until then been taboo. They asked her how she had done it, asked what she had done with her death. She had smiled demurely, given an exasperated little shrug and said that she had forgotten. Despite the disbelief the answer was always met with, it was in actuality the truth—if perhaps a sideways version of it. She forgot her little death on most days, forgot its little jar and how it got there. For her death did not concern her any longer, as it had no bearing on her life. She had experiments to run and notes to take and students to teach and torment. Every day was new and exciting, too much to see and too much to hear and too much to do to concern herself with such passé matters as death. If only she truly could forget. It was almost disappointing in its mundanity, death. The questions of why and how it stalked all that lived, how it could never be evaded, only delayed; questions that seemed so impossibly important. Some sought answers in the sciences, in explanations at scales ever smaller, citing failures of systems but never quite explaining why it all began to fall apart. Others philosophized and claimed it to be the next step in some great, cosmic journey, a stone on the path of enlightenment. Still others turned to faith, claiming mortality to be the punishment for the first committed sin, an evil so great that it stained every man and woman who came after it. She had found the truth to be far less fantastic. Death was simply a parasite, a twin of the soul that clung to it like a limpet. It fed upon the light of life, more and more until eventually snuffing the flame. She had found the truth to be so boring as to be offensive, and so from the moment she had understood her death she had resolved studiously to ignore it. Perhaps that dismissal was insulting. She found herself musing over it from time to time, lost in thoughts and could-have-beens. Not over death, no. Death in all its lack of grandiosity had earned her scorn. The insult was to the knowledge itself, to the process, to the effort that had gone into acquiring it. To the lives that had been ruined in its pursuit. None understood her methods, she knew. Already, separated only by paltry centuries, had she become legend. A monster told of in hushed whispers around midnight fires, a shadow checked for beneath the bed. She knew well the stories that were told of her deeds. How grief had driven her to madness, to desperation. How her punishments grew cruel and wicked as her sanity declined. How a drop of blood that had chanced to fall upon her skin had been the first of a deluge, a flood howled for by the slavering beast she became. How she tortured and tormented those girls, those poor innocent girls, before snuffing their lives and swimming in their fluids. Crazed ramblings of bored, ignorant peasants. She never bathed in anyone’s blood, virginal or otherwise, just as she never truly regretted that they had to die for her success. None understood her methods, least of all those she had performed them upon. It was no fault of her own that they could not comprehend the necessity of her research. How could you explain to someone that they were diseased, that all of humankind, every beast of the field, every bird of the sky and fish of the sea were afflicted and the only way to work out a cure was to watch the way it killed them? She had no ur-example, no recorded ancestor that might have held the first and purest of clues, and so had to make due with scores of lesser beings. Perhaps if she had access to the great Behemoth, she would not have needed to experiment on cattle. Perhaps if she held the Simurgh in a cage she could have studied it and not pigeons nor parakeets. Perhaps if she could have watched the death throes of Leviathan churn the sea she would not have needed schools of herring. Perhaps if she could have watched the passing of God she would not have needed to turn her eye to His children. It was not torture she subjected them to, but precise methodology. She had tried, at first, to allay their pains and fears. To give them some modicum of the question that she sought the answer to, as though it might have calmed them. The screams, the cries, the thrashings, they never changed. Eventually she had lost the will to offer even that token comfort. She understood, she supposed, in some small way. Whatever the reasons she gave them, it did not change that they would have to die. For death was the question. What was it, why was it, how did it chomp at the heels of men throughout all of recorded history, by what method did it strangle the air from their lungs? How did it know the moment to take them, be it the last beat of an aging heart or the sudden violence of a bludgeon to the head? From where did death come, and to where did it go when its work was ended? She found answers in pieces. Clues spread out across a dozen corpses, a hundred. Death had to be unique, she knew. Very rarely were any two endings the same. She had, of course, engineered such similarities. The spirit of her research demanded no stone be left unturned. It sent her upon a tangent, one ultimately without meaning but not effort she felt wasted. Was there a particular death for those who died of exsanguination? One for crushing, for burning, for closing your eyes to sleep? It would have been a fascinating discovery, and so of course it was not meant to be. Death had to be unique, she knew, and she proved it so. She found it in the light that faded from the eyes of her subjects. She found it in the last whisper of breath that parted their lips. She found it in the sudden emptiness of the fleshy shell. What a pathetic thing death had been to her eyes. A wisp of smoke, a roiling shadow that gnawed at the radiant essence that was life. Death glutted itself on the vitality of its host, grew fat and sick until finally it crushed the spark beneath it. She found it in the elderly. She found it in the young and hale. She found it in babes. Yet further experiments proved that it was not an invasive force. It was not being birthed that infected a soul with death, it did not force its way inside on the first drawn breath. From the moment the light of soul ignited within, it cast that pathetic shadow. The only thing she could not mock the wretched parasite for, the only thing she never could explain, was the timing. No matter the cause, no matter the day, not a care for the hour, death’s feeding finished when its host passed away. It made no difference if the subject died naturally or met their demise at the end of a rope, death fed upon them at such a precise rate as to always, always take its last bite as their fate was sealed. That mild intrigue was not enough for her to respect the sanctity of her death. She used the knowledge she had gained, fueled herself with the truth of the answer she had found, and with skillful hand she wrenched herself open. She teased her spirit from her form, and she found that wretched shade clung to it like some spectral tick. She pulled it until the light was taught, and she snipped it free of her soul. She threw her death into a little jar, only to come down when she felt she had more to learn from it, until she had carved every last secret from its gaseous hide and put it up upon a shelf, never to think of it again. Until the day that her death began to die. If asked why she had kept it all that time instead of banishing it as any other seeker of eternal life might do, she would answer that it was merely for oddity’s sake. After all, who else could say they had bottled their own death? Really though, it was kept in case she ever decided to release it. Eternity was such a very long time, and in truth the idea of it terrified her. She had much too much to do to live one measly little life, but forever? Forever was for gods, and despite all her bluster she was still as tiny and human as everyone else. That was why her death had come down from its dusty shelf and out of its little jar. It had been a passing glance that caught her notice, her mind registering what should have been there and seeing instead what was not. Her death—vibrant and black and pulsing with her end—her death was small and lifeless. She watched it in its jar, panicked and scared beyond anything she had ever experienced. Was this mortal terror, she wondered? Perhaps this was how the girls had felt? Did her eyes mirror theirs, wide and glassy and devoid of all hope and light? Who would be there to reassure her that the horror she experienced was for a good cause? She brushed aside those thoughts and poured her death from its jar. She poked it and she prodded it, stuck her head in its smoke and breathed deep. Her eyes watered. She sneezed. She lived. Her death swirled and settled and dimmed just a little bit more. Despite her age, her mind was still sure and her hands still steady. She remembered every note, every procedure. With keen blade and skillful hand she wrenched herself open. She teased her spirit from her form and found the scar in her inner light, the dim remnant of where her death had once rested. She took up the wisp and held it to her soul like a nursing babe, but it would not latch. She tried to sew her death back onto herself, but needle and thread refused to pass through. She tried again with implements made of blood and bone, thread made from the sinew of dragons and hairs plucked from a unicorn’s mane. Each pass through her death seemed to claim that much more life from it, with more and more fizzling away. Again and again she tried to reclaim her death. She swallowed it whole, only for it to drip greasily from her pores. She tried to burn it back into herself, as though it were a metal to be forged. She tried to bind it with the sound of cat’s footsteps and the roots of mountains. She tried and she tried and she tried until she could try no more. Not that she ran out of ideas, no. Her mind raced fast enough to send her thoughts spinning, beat an aching gallop through her skull, but as her death died with each and every failure she was soon met with the inevitable. She was forced to watch, heart racing and chest heaving, as her death dissolved before her eyes. She did not mourn its passing. She did not lose herself in her panic. She prided herself on her knowledge, on her acumen both scientific and mystical. The loss of her death was a setback—one that filled her with a primal, dreadful fear—but only that. Hers was not the only death in the world. There were thousands—millions, all of creation playing host to the craven smoke. She would simply have to take one of them for herself. Unfortunately even that simple thought proved to be a long and arduous endeavor. It was no simple thing to choose a subject to sever from death, not from any stance of morality but for practicality’s sake. It would not do to flood the world with deathless creatures in her efforts to restore her own mortality, nor deathless men. Few were those she would trust with the responsibility of endlessness. Those she did not, she would simply drop into the ocean with stones tied to their feet. No death would await them in the depths, but it would be a kind of oblivion nonetheless. She stole the death of beasts great and small. She plucked the death from women and men, children and elderly. She stuck them to her soul with pins, she took them into her lungs, she swirled together their smoke until she had great, gaseous clouds of entropy and bathed in them, bid them to envelope the light of her life. No matter what she tried, no matter how many avenues she pursued, her spirit remained pristine and bright. What infuriated her was not her failure—no, failure frightened her more than anything. What infuriated her were her successes. Those whose deaths were returned to them after excising. Those whose deaths embraced their light like old friends, like lovers, twining naturally around and through them, permeating and perforating their souls without hesitance. Those whose deaths took easily to needle and thread, let themselves be sewn together as readily as mending a seam. With each success her fear grew. She tried new and outlandish methods, those that ought not to work—had proven not to work for her, but in each and every case soul and death were reunited. She retrieved subjects she had cast aside, pulled them from prisons and graves and ocean depths. Those whose deaths had been gone from them for months and years. With every one she hoped for failure, and with every one she was denied that satisfaction. When she could no longer deny proof that death could be reintroduced, she again moved to attempts to bind foreign deaths to souls not their own. Again her fears were stoked. She could pull death from a newborn and attempt to grant a lifetime to a man on his deathbed, but death refused to take. She snipped the deaths from dogs and cats and they scorned their opposite souls as famously as the creatures did. No matter, no matter, no matter, attempt after desperate attempt, she was met with failure and formless smoke. She proved only what she already knew. That death was a personal affliction, one special and specific to every living thing. She spent years and years in her experimenting. She plucked apart the lives of countless numbers. More even than had been needed to find death in the first. She isolated herself from the community that had welcomed her, ignored obligations, allowed apprentices to languish without her guidance. Once more she became a figure of myth, one of hushed whispers and speculations. When rarely she made appearances, it was not to teach or collaborate or unveil some new spectacle. She arrived in flurries of demands, for potions, for spells, for objects of power. The respect and reverence that had once preceded her became replaced by fear and trepidation, as each and every snapped order was lethal. From alchemists and potioneers she took poisons and venoms and bottled explosions. From incanters she learned words that could choke the air from lungs, rituals that would steal her soul for fuel. From enchanters she took cursed creations that caused death with a touch. Perhaps if she had ever spared any thought to reputation, to the frightened bleating of lesser creatures, she could have predicted the foremost outcome of her seclusion. Where before the Red was a figure of veneration, in her desperate search to return herself to death’s clutches she had regained her bloodied legend. To those of the community who had not known the dawn of her age within the World, who saw only the sallow and dark thing she had become, hissing demands for murderous implements, there was no saintess to be found. She was reduced to yet another sinner, locked away within her towers, plotting doom for all. When she had recovered, abandoned within the ruin of her home, she felt only embarrassment in her setback. After, of course, the panic had receded. They had come not as before, with priests and pitchforks. Instead the mob wielded wands and staves, swords blessed to slay the wicked and bows enchanted never to miss. They came to put an end to her hidden deviance, to put an end to her before she could turn their knowledge and creations against them. There was no explaining truth to them, as there never was. They would not hear her words, frightened of some bewitchment passing her lips, just as they would not have comprehended them if they had. She could not recollect if a spell had stolen her voice or a blade had severed the strings of her speech. They came upon her prepared, struck quick and true and left her no recourse but to suffer beneath their ignorance as they tore through limb and stone and paper, put her life’s work to the torch. She did not know how long it had been between her murder and the moment she awoke amongst the ashes, only that the first pull of blackened air into her lungs was the sweetest in memory. Then the next breath choked as she came to realize the horrific miracle of her survival. Not a blemish remained on her skin, not a hair shorn from her scalp, not a bone in need of mending or a joint out of place. It was not simply that her death had gone, but her life had grown in its absence. Such precious time was lost in rebuilding. In humoring the placations and platitudes of old John as he attempted to make right the assault on her person. She demanded from him no less than all that had been taken from her, and no more than she deserved. All the while the light within her grew ever more brilliant as she schemed of ways to snuff it out. She turned first to poisons, and could not recall the days she had lost to sickness. Could not quantify the pain of noxious concoctions ravaging her body, the way her own organs seemed to reject her. She could not count the burns and breaks that accompanied every alchemic bomb. No matter the torment she underwent, no matter the suffering she put herself through, it was never enough. No physical force could rend away her light. No amount of illness could wither her spirit. After each bout of bottle-borne disease she arose clean and new. Incantations, too, were useless. Any harm wrought by spellwork did not reach deep enough to touch the soul, only succeeded in causing her pain. Words of power that severed her nerves, filled her lungs with water, replaced her lifesblood with acid and venom. Each one left her stranded upon death’s door, and just as before her vitality would refuse her the opportunity to knock and restore her to a pristine state. Objects imbued with cruelty and malice were the next to be tested, wicked things that had been created—by accident or for cruel purpose—to destroy those who possessed them. Dolls into which she had to sew her own hair, misshapen statues that hurt the eyes to gaze upon, rings and lockets that decayed the flesh they rested upon. Each and every one a failure, inert baubles in her hands, little better than paperweights and bookends. Those rituals that were meant only to be theory, that would pull on her very essence to complete, were worse than useless. She could feel the tug as she chanted, but nothing more. Only once did she experience anything of significance, a strange double sensation where her soul slipped away from the shell of her flesh and she became two instances of herself. She hung and shone as light, while before her stood herself, still moving, still living. She cut the ritual, slammed back into herself, and spent the rest of the evening sobbing on the floor. Her life—endless, infinite—was already too much. To then be two, to double her torture, would have broken her completely. To feel the hopelessness of life unending multiplied, to be reduced to wailing madness as she was then forced to devise a method to kill the unkillable twice. She found no words to express her despair, only some deep, primal howl that had ripped and torn its way from her lungs and mixed red blood in with her tears. That night, for the first time in her long life, Elizabeth prayed for death to claim her. She received no answer, for death had come for God and men and death itself, but never again for her. Matt Smith “The Red’s Death” is a product of a few passions, namely somewhat obscure history and spiteful takes on fantasy tropes. I’ve spent my life reading more than is arguably healthy, and in that time I’ve developed my own fascinations and irritations when it comes to written works. This story came about by asking myself how I would deal with the classic immortal sorcerer, and near immediately I knew that I wanted it to be a cautionary tale. From there came the concept of death as a physical force, something I felt unique and that worked well with the story I wished to tell. The idea bled into a sort of magical scientist, one whose legend blurred together with that of a real world mythical figure, and thus the tragic origin of Elizabeth the Red, true immortal, came together.