Search The Bellwether Review 2024

I KNOW ANGER WELL Alli Tschirhart He comes over often, arms overflowing with gifts I don’t want I offer him tea, which he always declines He instead prefers whiskey and a cigarette hanging from his lips I’ve told him no smoking in my house, I’m renting He scoffs and lights up Most times he arrives with unwanted guests: depression, rejection, anxiety All setting their hot cups on my furniture Please, use a coaster The rings set in the wood, not something I can easily clean My lover doesn’t appreciate anger, just finds him rude and difficult I try to tell him I am working on it, He just needs a place to stay every once in a while The truth is I worry I worry he has my secrets Secrets I don’t want anyone knowing, holding against me So, I let him walk all over me My friend, anger. Alli Tschirhart Alli Tschirhart is an aspiring writer and poet. From Texas, she enjoys being outdoors and reading, as well as her three cats. Her work has previously been published in The Bellwether Review and Free Verse Revolution . She is continuing her passion for reading and writing at PSU this fall. Instagram ~ @allitschirhart

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.

A TALE OF EVERY NIGHT Shamik Banerjee By midnight, once his bottle’s downed and trashed, They sprawl out on the couch and talk of stuff Still unresolved: which tutor for their son Can make his Latin-fearing brain more tough, Some loan-related duty yet undone, Or which investments need to be encashed. Amidst such things, if something unrequired Sprouts like a weed upon a verdant yard— Some past discordance or unfounded blame— It makes the husband seize her, all off-guard, Distressing her with words that sear like flame. No sense of fault can douse his evil fire. And she, the lesser, stands there like a wall, Mute to his waistbelt’s whips. Perhaps, such wild Savagery even beasts would seldom use. She finds a little corner, and their child Has ample proof before him to deduce The weak’s meant to be trampled after all. Shamik Banerjee Shamik Banerjee is a formalist poet from Assam, India, where he resides with his parents. His poems have been published by The Society of Classical Poets, Sparks of Calliope , The Hypertexts , Snakeskin , Ekstasis , Ink Sweat & Tears , and Autumn Sky Daily , among others.

FETAL POSITION Alli Tschirhart This house holds no heat Chill clings to everything: the plywood floors, the furniture—me The small metal heaters do nothing only burning our fingertips as we press against them, the water pop-popping inside The naked mattress stays cool I shiver beneath my flimsy throw, my feet have turned to stone So many children in the house that when it comes to bedding, the oldest gets overlooked. Sleeping is easiest with my knees knocking against my chin, arms hugging them close Morning comes, bones creak and muscles ache It’s better than being cold. Alli Tschirhart Alli Tschirhart is an aspiring writer and poet. From Texas, she enjoys being outdoors and reading, as well as her three cats. Her work has previously been published in The Bellwether Review and Free Verse Revolution . She is continuing her passion for reading and writing at PSU this fall. Instagram ~ @allitschirhart

Poetry Lavender Wedding Shane Allison Paying for that Free Cup of Coffee Dean Wilson In the End David P. Sterner Sea and Stone Dean Wilson Shamik Banerjee A Meeting No Relief David P. Sterner Small Town, America Alli Tschirhart Masjid Roaf Shamik Banerjee The Soul Jumps with Joy Slava Konoval Aunt Bobbie Is My Favorite on My Dad's Side Shane Allison Dear Creator Mercedes Shafer Sonnet Shamik Banerjee Patriarchy Sean P. Hotchkiss Street Glitter Gigi Giangiobbe-Rodriguez How Much Is 'Mass'? Randall Camden Stemple Litany for Jaret Keene Shane Allison Shamik Banerjee A Tale of Every Night Mechanical Pencil Sean P. Hotchkiss I Know Anger Well Alli Tschirhart Backstab in French Ambassador Slava Konoval Bully Shane Allison Fetal Position Alli Tschirhart Promise Rings Bailey Moore Fat Boy Shane Allison

PAYING FOR THAT FREE CUP OF COFFEE Dean Wilson Eking out this road trip Scrimping, saving, surviving Somewhere between a frugal gourmet And a dumpster diver. Not quite changing from A can of House Red to A bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Not quite ready, not quite yet. I chose cafés that Honored senior citizens 55 and older while pondering Unaccepted offers from AARP. Free refills are a blessing in disguise, Like the toss of a coin: Never knowing the outcome Until it’s too late. Driving faster to pay For time spent drinking That needed extra cup of caffeine; My drug of choice. “No Services Next 90 Miles” The sign revealed. I had plenty of fuel to go That extra mile. The next corner revealed a line Of 10 MPH, of bumper to bumper. That extra cup doesn’t seem Like a good deal after all. 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