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2022 Theme Meet the 2022 Editors Fiction Nonfiction Poetry Scripts Art Bellwether Review 2022 A Search for Meaning This year, we discovered that many of our submissions related to a search for meaning throughout year two of the pandemic. This search manifested in a cycle of experiences, as shown below. Experiencing Loss and Injustice Finding Strength and Surviving Discovering and Creating Finding Strength and Surviving A Cycle Feeling Trapped and Imprisoned Finding Strength and Surviving Finding Strength and Surviving Finding Strength and Surviving Works Browse our wide array of stories, poetry, and art. View all

SEA AND STONE Dean Wilson Endless drifting sand carving the stone and shore, ever-changing meandering line as an invisible border between sea and stone. The sand does not stay, does not stop for a portrait to be painted like the words in a book of poetry. The sea does not hold back as it cuts and grinds stone into sand, casting about to destroy or create art. I stand between the sea and stone. Watching timeless lines shift beneath my feet. 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. Instagram ~ @DeanWilsonCanby Facebook ~ Dean Wilson Photography

HISTORY OF THE BELLWETHER REVIEW The Bellwether Review had its conception in 1996, originally dubbed The Rock Creek Review , staffed by PCC Rock Creek faculty members. The Rock Creek Review was renamed The Bellwether Review in 2011, with the inception of the Advanced Creative Writing, Editing & Publishing course. The Bellwether Review was chosen to symbolize the artistic drive of writers and artists, by drawing on the significance of a “bellwether” being the leader in a flock of sheep, who wears a bell to signal the best direction for the entire herd. Today, the term “bellwether” more commonly refers to any person who takes initiative and sets trends, as those whose work is published in The Bellwether Review do in leading the way for artistic expression.

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.

The Bellwether Review A Student-Led Literary and Arts Journal 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 MEET THE 2023 EDITORS 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.

Fiction The Fool Gigi Giangiobbe-Rodriguez The Red's Death Matt Smith

MEET THE EDITORS A high-adrenaline enthusiast with an endless supply of energy, Claire Batchelder has been writing for as long as she can remember, and these days she writes a solid mix of poetry and fiction. She has been rock climbing for eight years and scuba diving for five, and her inspiration draws heavily from the natural world she’s encountered—and the disturbing changes she’s witnessed. Claire has submitted an assortment of poems and a piece of nonfiction for publication in several journals, and she’s currently revising a fiction story. When she’s not writing or adventuring in the outdoors, she’s cuddling with her husky, Artemis. Jonathan Bennett is a 21-year-old writer from Oregon currently attending Portland Community College. Jonathan works as both a Poetry and Fiction editor for this journal. They have been writing on and off since their junior year at Mountainside High School, taking a gap year to find another but ultimately going back to writing. They plan on transferring to Portland State University for a Creative Writing degree, and they hope to someday write lore for a good indie game. They mainly want to pursue fiction writing, but that’s currently taken a backseat to their newly found passion for poetry. Outside of writing, they enjoy hiking, listening to Midwest emo music, playing games a bit too competitively, and hanging out with their amazing partner. “O Time thy pyramids.” —Jorge Luis Borges Hunter Bordwell-Gray is a lifelong Portland resident and half-a-lifelong writer. What was first a dead set passion on becoming a novelist in the third grade has since warped and evolved into a much broader love of writing. His inspirations draw from a roulette wheel of nature, analog horror podcasts, and music to create . . . whatever the intersection of those three things creates. Mostly poetry, but who knows what it may be tomorrow! Quinn Brown is a trans and indigenous Portland writer and poet. Since writing from a very young age, Quinn found herself pursuing a passion for writing in all different forms, from varying genres of fiction to poetry. Her key inspirations for most of her writing comes from a place exploring identity, culture, and where those ideas overlap. Sean P. Hotchkiss is one of the Typesetting Editors, as well as our Art Editor and Web Editor. Proud father of three, grateful partner of one, and widower. Sean is in his last term towards earning an A.A.S. Business: Marketing degree at Portland Community College (PCC) with plans to pursue a Masters degree in clinical mental health. He rediscovered his love of writing after returning to college after three gap-decades. In addition to owning a small marketing support firm, he is a reading and writing tutor at the PCC Sylvania Campus. In addition to being a second time contributing editor and author in The Bellwether Review, Sean was also a presenting author at the 2023 PCC Groundswell: a Conference of Student Writing. “I am the puppet master! You’re a puppet in a play, and I hold all the strings! And cards, still got the cards. I’ve got the cards in one hand, and the strings in the other hand, and I’m making you dance around, like a puppet, playing cards.” —Wheatley, Portal 2 . Who’s that fine lookin’ fellow with the sexy hair, the one whose opinions on style choices were like black sheep? Why, that’s Adam Idris , baby! His very first year of college and he’s already dabbling in the art of publications, maybe he’s hoping to get his own stories published. What kinda stories, you may ask? Just your typical fiction, filled to the brim with laughs, action, witty one-liners and loveable characters. What a guy, am I right? “Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can.” —Naya Rivera Bo Leo , one of our Typesetting Editors and Proofing Editors, is an aspiring author who resides in the Pacific Northwest. Their deep appreciation for animals and nature is evident in their writing, which typically focuses on themes of identity and trauma. When they’re away from their desk, you can find them reading, painting, daydreaming, spending time with their pets, or enraptured by the music of one Alessia Cara. Megan McGrory is an avid consumer of media who’s lived in Washington, Alaska, and finally Oregon. She has been writing since before she could technically write, getting her mother to write down her stories for her. Her greatest passion is prose, particularly fantasy and science fiction. Aside from writing, Megan loves to read, watch movies and tv, perform on stage, and analyze media through a feminist lens. One of her greatest passions is napping with her cat, Spooky. You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” —Jodi Picoult Randall Camden Stemple is a PCC student who enjoys spending most of his free time reading, writing, and watching whatever slop YouTube recommends. This of course, in-between bouts of struggling to format his dialogue and working as the Correspondence Editor. If at any point you received an email from The Bellwether Review , it was most likely from him, and if you at any point noticed the inconsistent manner in which he formatted each email, please keep it to yourself.

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.

WANT TO SEE YOUR WORK PUBLISHED IN THE BELLWETHER REVIEW? The Bellwether Review primarily seeks to promote the work of Portland Community College students, but we also consider a limited number of submissions from the general public. Any individual can submit up to 5 poems, 2 short stories, 2 scripts, 2 creative nonfiction essays, and/or 4 pieces of visual artwork. We generally do not publish research essays or works over 5,000 words. All works submitted will be reviewed and taken into consideration by our editorial team! Submit your work(s) via e-mail to bellwetherreview@gmail.com . Written works should be submitted as a .docx file, and visual artwork as a print quality .jpeg or .png file. All submissions must be titled. Include your name, list of titles submitted, and phone number in the submission email, which should be sent from your PCC email address, if you have one. Submission files should not have your name or identifying information within the file itself. All contributors will receive a copy of The Bellwether Review . Send your work to bellwetherreview@gmail.com by April 6, 2025 to be considered for our next edition.

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