I am of this place Moonrose Doherty Funny thing about salal berries. Each one is different. Their ripening completely independent. Maybe that’s why I like them so much. The surprise Sweet? Tart? an opening to possibility stained fingers I am estuarine water Shore pine Brackish water Crawdads I am sword ferns and red alder I am cold fog and crabs burying themselves in the surf Melting sun and madrone blossoms I am the scent of baking fir needles I am open to possibility Moonrose is a Queer, Non-binary/Genderfluid Poet, Farmer, Plant lover and Knowledge-Sharer who loves dancing with other humans or alone on the edge of a bay while talking with seagulls. Their friends say they're an artist and a creative who spreads inspiration and love of life. Moonrose sees themself as a constantly changing being that feels most at home when expressing and embodying for change. Moonrose Doherty

He Lived up on the Bluff Hunter Bordwell-Gray The bass on the wall croaked a twee song to electric perfection: Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Sheet metal cowboys swayed so sweet, languid in that summer heat, a kindly sight on June’s dreary eyes. And no ocean deigned to count itself so vast as the sagebrush flats on which they danced, innumerable, incalculable as nature is. Yet grander still was Grandfather’s study, filled to the brim with little toy tractors. His leather-bag laugh bound clear to the walls and back. Such sanguine warmth not made to be contained, like a desert wind. Hunter Bordwell-Gray I am a lifelong Portland resident and a first-year Creative Writing/Poetry student at PCC. I started my journey in elementary school, intricately crafting my first novel on a rundown laptop…as far as a 10 year old could stay entertained before chasing the next shiny idea. Since then, I have delved into the realms of poetry, tabletop campaign writing, and multimedia production. For me, writing is the only medium that allows me to clearly convey my ideas and experiences to other people where otherwise I sometimes struggle to express myself. I take much of my inspiration from a hodgepodge of nature, analog horror podcasts, and the roulette wheel that is my taste in music.

Sad Vacation Josiah Webster F ive thousand Hellobucks. That’s almost enough to buy a rocketship. You can pick up a few if you watch a 30 second ad, or if you complete the Daily Slog. But the real source is cold hard cash. Ħ100 for $2, Ħ300 for $5, Ħ1000 for $12. At the $50-$100 range you get loads of Hellobucks for free, but I can’t afford that right now, so I just buy them a few hundred at a time, slowly saving up to get that rocketship. I’m going to name it Glenda. Isn’t that pretty? But it’s only a game. I play it at night when I’m trying to sleep. When I’m too exhausted to move. When I am filled with the dread of sleeping because I know that it will pass too quickly. There are ads–they come in little batches of twos and threes, always at random, always too loud. They are always the same ads. For $10 you can turn them off. But if you turn them off, you won’t get any Hellobucks for free. I’m playing more these nights. When the light is off and I am lying in bed, so sapped, and stomach growling from noodles again. The screen is a pulsating spotlight, binding my head in its glow like a tractor beam. Blue beam. Reflecting off eyegloss, noseshine, and the matte white of my pillow. My eyes have been stinging, vessels distending. The sclera is red by morning. And there is seemingly endless game to be played. The numbers get bigger at each new stage. I was at one point grinding for a covered wagon–now look! Now the numbers are bigger. With glitzy cheesy sound effects through tinny-speakered phone, the vaguely wood- sounding tap of the fingers on plastic. Expert quick tapping. The screen with its slight pliability. The cachet of rewards, of boxes that glow when they open, momentously opening. Of course, you could beat the game without buying anything at all. It just takes time. These false currencies are used to buy skins and trinkets and great beauties like Glenda that would take so, so much longer to earn the old-fashioned way. The game is not designed to be satisfying that way. But if you grease it, it almost can be. You just don’t have the time to be that unsatisfied for that long, not when you’ve rent due and work in the morning and nothing in brain but the strained sub-emotion, the half-thought; the need for a moment to breathe or to wander outside yourself, empty with lightness and hope for a piece of the— peace of the mind. There is no time. No energy left. There is just enough to keep the eyes pried and play the game. Plugged into the wall all night as you play, because it drains your battery, because your battery’s never full. Because you’re too tired to get out of bed except when you have to in mornings on too little sleep after the long night up getting nowhere in particular except for maybe somewhere on a budget far, far from here that doesn’t exist. When I get my Glenda, she sits on the virtual property, unable to move. It isn’t programmed like that. I tap on her, furiously tapping, and numbers come out. They’re bigger than ever. Weighted to my mattress, I wonder where I would fly, if I could. Josiah Webster Josiah Webster's favorite place to dwell is the uncanny gulch between the real and the perceived. He also dwells in SE Portland. His recent publications can be found at Ergot Press and Figwort Literary Journal . You can also find him via @byzantine_dream on Instagram and Twitter.

Heat Poem Cat Terrell Cat Terrell My name is Cat Terrell, I am 21 years old, and I'm a poet, musician, mathematician, you get the idea. I like writing poetry that evokes very specific images, and I especially like it when the words I happen to choose have a lot of assonance between them. The poems published here are my first ever published anywhere, and most of them revolve around an incidental theme: growing up. When I'm not writing poetry I am spending time with friends, or going on a walk in nature, or reading. I am so grateful for the three poetry courses I took at PCC that expanded my poetry knowledge and subsequent worldview, so thank you to Van Wheeler, Mia Caruso, and Chrys Tobey for being excellent instructors.

A Recipe for Disaster Amy Smith A RECIPE FOR DISASTER Makes one absolute catastrophe Ingredients Alcohol —6-7 hours’ worth of tequila shots, in a dark strip-club, to be exact One Birthday Party – the use of the word “party” is a stretch An Ex-Boyfriend – the one you invited in an attempt to be the “bigger person” 1 One Bicycle – the blue-and-white Fuji that everyone calls a fixed-gear, but is really just a single-speed. She has a free-wheel & both of her brakes Rain – the Pacific-Northwest-in-March kind of rain 2 3 Preparation Weeks Prior: Before leaving for Peru, mom calls to say, “I already told this to your brother, but neither of you are allowed to injure yourselves while I’m out of the country.” Set this tidbit aside for later. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Despite what we’ve been taught by fables and proverbs, being “the bigger person” isn’t always beneficial, karma’s not always a bitch, the golden rule doesn’t apply to everyone, and sometimes selfishness serves you better than the alternative. Two brake s won’t save you in this situation, but a helmet would sure help. The kind of rain that soaks the edge of the street in gravel and miscellaneous debris and makes it treacherous to ride a bike, hike, drive, or exist outside in any capacity. Next: Run into the ex-boyfriend at the local dive bar; the bar you still frequent when you want to risk seeing him. Be sure you’ve had enough to drink, so that his advances are well-received, rather than met with your usual, bitter sarcasm. Once you’ve drunkenly spent the night and he’s insincerely said he loves you, invite him to the friend’s birthday. The friend the two of you once joked was your son, because despite being a grown man, usually behaved like a stoned teenager. The friend who tried to remain neutral after the breakup, but skewed towards you, and may have recently developed something resembling an Oedipus complex. Step One: Because cooking with fuel is so efficient, it's time to add alcohol and a strip club to this already zesty mix. Alcohol is a great emulsifier when you need to combine two things that no longer blend well. Round of shots. You’ve orchestrated this event, and you’ll be in control—until you’re not anymore. Round of shots. Once the boys are at the rack, you’ll get to watch the ex toss dollar bills at naked women. Women with long, lean muscles, capable of acrobatics, and who possess a level of confidence that you can’t even buy with liquor. Round of shots. Anger. Jealousy. Once you’ve brought all of your ingredients to a rolling boil, turn the heat down and let things simmer. Go outside and smoke a cigarette. Throw yourself at a stranger. Anything to play it cool. Step Two: Vignettes. Between the alcohol and the head injury, all you will have from the next few hours are fuzzy vignettes, gently folded into everyone else’s account of what happened. As far as you will remember, it's still light out when you unlock the sleek little bike that is your daily commuter. But that can’t be right, because it will be cold, and dark, and wet, when half an hour later you slide face-down along the unforgiving pavement. How will this happen, you may ask? You will break away from the ex and the birthday boy, as if you’re in a bicycle race, a fiery rage sizzling within you. You’ll take that soggy corner a lot too fast, and in your inebriated state, you’ll be unable to recover. Step Three: Do you remember anything? Or will you hear the story so many times that your brain has to fabricate something to make sense of it all? You will have no real recollection of the impact, but you’ll have the scar to prove it happened. The ex’s backyard—the house you once shared. Flashing blue and red lights and the obtrusive wail of a siren. Despite marinating in tequila all day, you’ll still have the wherewithal to tell the paramedics you can’t afford an ambulance ride because capitalism has ruined healthcare, and you’d rather take a cab. They’ll convince you to go with them only by threatening a DUI, which will seem like a stretch, but you’ll be in no condition to argue. Or maybe you are, being so full of liquid courage. ----------------------------------------------------------------- You can get a DUI on a bike in Oregon. The paramedics would have had to call the police to issue that DUI, and sober-you thinks they may have been bluffing. The paramedics will insist on strapping you to a backboard despite your obvious mobility; it’s protocol for a potential head/neck injury. Because you’re strapped down, the hospital will cut off your clothes, your pathetic protests falling on deaf-ears. This will include your favorite black skinny-jeans and a new, expensive bra–quickly reducing any residual dignity to despair, dredged in shame. A faceless doctor will pick finely-chopped-asphalt out of the ground flesh that was once your forehead, and close the gaping wound with a combination of sutures and glue, because neither would have been sufficient on its own. When the nurse wheeling you from the ER to a recovery room asks what you were doing when this happened, you’ll dryly reply, “Probably going to my ex’s house, to make poor decisions.” At least your sense of humor is intact. Although she’ll try to suppress her laughter, a chuckle will echo through the deafening silence of the otherwise empty elevator. You'll flirt shamelessly with the other nurse, in a desperate attempt at validation, but he’ll awkwardly mention his wife enough times for you to get the not-so-subtle hint. Step Four: Everything will hurt. The styrofoam donut, used to keep your neck immobile while reviewing the spinal x-rays, will feel like a torture device, and you will have never been so stiff in your entire life. Your left shoulder will scream at you with a searing pain emanating from the depths of the muscles, and the attached arm will be cradled in a soft, black sling, against your battered body. The ex will spend the night curled like spaghetti into a chair that is impossibly small for his six-foot frame. His presence will bring you little in the way of comfort though, at least until you realize your phone is dead and you’re reliant on him. As morning rolls around, a new nurse will bring a stiff pair of thin scrubs as compensation for the clothing the others destroyed. She’ll also hand you some individually packaged saltines, so the pain pills have something to tear through other than your stomach lining. When you try to choke down the soft, dry cracker, you’ll also bite down on something hard. It will take a moment for you to comprehend what’s happening, but once you realize it’s a piece of broken molar, you’ll be inconsolable. The uncontrollable sobbing will probably occur because both your serotonin and dopamine have bottomed out with the metabolization of the booze, but the tooth won’t help matters. Step Five: The ex will call a car, on account of your phone being dead. You’ll wait thirty minutes shivering in the wafer-thin scrubs before he’ll lose patience and try again. You’ll be humiliated, exhausted, freezing, and all around miserable. But wait. There’s more! After forty-five minutes you’ll finally climb into a warm, idling cab, only to discover you know the driver. He’s a regular at your bar and friends with your boss. Wonderful. You’ll look like a monster, with yesterday’s makeup smudged across a face that is swollen almost beyond recognition. Almost, but not quite, because he’ll know it's you! The small talk over the next fifteen minutes will be more painful than any muscle, tendon, or bone in your body. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Years from now you’ll find yourself in the apartment of that same bar-regular-cab-driver for a one-night stand that he wants to be more, and when he reminds you of the day he picked you up from the hospital, all of the shame and embarrassment will come flooding back. The ex will see you to your door before walking the fifteen blocks back to the house you once shared. You’ll ask him to bring you food from the barbeque restaurant where he works, but he’ll tell you that he has tickets to a concert, and needs to clean up before meeting his friend. Your friend, actually. The friend that you’ve known for more than a decade, who you introduced to the ex, and who tried to remain neutral after the breakup, but skewed towards the ex, because time doesn’t necessarily equal loyalty. You’ll be more ashamed of your appearance than you are hungry, and so instead of trying to find an alternative food source, you’ll head straight to bed. Somehow you’ll manage to make it through the common area and into your room without alerting the roommates. This will be a relief, given that you won’t yet be prepared to explain why it looks like someone took a meat tenderizer to your face. You’ll collapse into the surprisingly comfortable, oversized air mattress. It will have been five months since the breakup, but you’ve taken zero steps towards a more permanent sleeping arrangement. You will be out cold for god knows how long, but wake up in the same nightmare you fell asleep in. To make matters worse, you’ll have a text from your sister-in-law, informing you that your brother is in the ICU. Not because he’s a reckless idiot like you though; because he lost the genetic lottery, at least as far as his guts are concerned. He will be suffering from a dangerous flare up of his rare stomach condition. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Your older brother suffers from something called Meckel's diverticulum, a congenital intestinal abnormality that was originally misdiagnosed as appendicitis, before an emergency appendectomy turned into an exploratory surgery, and led to the discovery. It has been the cause of multiple bowel obstructions that have required numerous hospitalizations, spanning decades. The new girlfriend, who everyone seems to have really liked, is short-lived. He quickly trades her in for his 21-year-old-coworker, someone eight years his junior. As far as you know, they’re currently engaged. Step Six: According to Instagram, the ex will have a new girlfriend in a matter of days. The dental receptionist, the motherly, middle-aged one named Midge, will burst into tears at the mere sight of you. You’ll be reminded of a Chuck Palahniuk quote from Invisible Monsters, one of your personal favorites: “...if I can’t be beautiful, I want to be invisible...” Although the swelling will recede relatively quickly, your face will remain hideous, as the rich dark blues and purples of bruising fade to a sickly chartreuse. You’ll still want desperately to be invisible. Finally, you’ll be left with a scar that looks like an angrier version of Harry Potter’s lightning bolt. At some point, one of the men who own the bar you work at will assure you that incredible things can be done with plastic surgery nowadays, and that there are plenty of treatments to diminish horrific scarring. Not only is plastic surgery a financially unviable option for you, but this advice will come completely unsolicited, from someone who you barely know, and with whom you have an entirely transactional relationship. Fantastic! You will quickly come to appreciate the scar as an intimidating facade you can hide behind, but the shoulder will be the real issue. You won’t be able to manage the time off, so you’ll be back to work before you can lift the mangled arm that remains cradled in the sling. Luckily it’ll be slow season, and the lack of business means you can afford the speed you lose by bartending with only one arm. The sympathy tips won’t hurt either. After another surgery and a brief stay in the hospital, your brother will be fine, but you will both have the gnarled white scars, as a reminder of the time the two of you did exactly what mom asked you not to. 1 2 3 Amy Smith Amy Smith is a thirty six year old woman, originally from Utah, but has lived in Portland for about fifteen years. Amy has been a hair stylist, a bartender, and is currently deciding what she wants to do next. Her time at PCC has really helped her rediscover how much she enjoys writing, as well as build confidence in her own work. Most of what Amy has written is personal narrative, but she really likes being able to combine research and experience, and playing with creative structures. A Recipe for Disaster was a way for her to write about something that was both traumatic and embarrassing, in a way that was fun and a little more light-hearted. Instagram handle: @boozy_baby

Plastic Sandcastle Hunter Bordwell-Gray If you could trace the outline of a mirage, there Las Vegas would be. An approximate paradise served on the rocks. All magic, no tricks. No substance, just sin. Sin is just the luster of a land with no tomorrow. Where sorrows drown like flies in a pesticide of gin and rum. You can barely hear those sirens past the siren song of vice, only to covet life like diamonds from the stomach of an ambulance. Hunter Bordwell-Gray I am a lifelong Portland resident and a first-year Creative Writing/Poetry student at PCC. I started my journey in elementary school, intricately crafting my first novel on a rundown laptop…as far as a 10 year old could stay entertained before chasing the next shiny idea. Since then, I have delved into the realms of poetry, tabletop campaign writing, and multimedia production. For me, writing is the only medium that allows me to clearly convey my ideas and experiences to other people where otherwise I sometimes struggle to express myself. I take much of my inspiration from a hodgepodge of nature, analog horror podcasts, and the roulette wheel that is my taste in music.

Tell Your Goldfish You Love Him Charlie Divine My betta fish swims to the front of her tank and surfs the glass eagerly. Behind the blades of my ribs a fist of warmth opens and its heat radiates through my chest. “Hi baby, I love you.” Dilly is called a ‘galaxy koi’ plakat and looks like Claude Monet’s best rendering of a pink nebula. She has the short, agile fins of wild-variety bettas, but they are striped in various shades of fuchsia and red. Her shark-like body is sleek and dappled with white scales that iridesce blue under the aquarium lights. One of her eyes protrudes bulbously from her head, swollen almost to the point of bursting. It is disturbing, but does not have to be fatal. Unilateral Pop-Eye is a treatable condition caused by a bacterial infection following traumatic injury to the eye. I cried the first time I administered what’s called a salt bath treatment. With only the counsel of aquarium hobbyist forums to guide me, I siphoned a gallon of water from her tank into a clean bucket and mixed in one tablespoon of aquarium salt. I offered a prayer to what fish gods may be listening to a middling aquarist like me and lowered her into it, a knot of panic and horror twisting at the base of my throat as I watched her thrash and attempt to jump out of the solution. “I know, I know. I’m so sorry.” I moaned wretchedly. Previously, Dilly and I had not gotten along. The Demon Queen had killed the rest of her sorority in a ruthless conquest to claim the entire twenty gallons as her territory. The tank’s substrate is a smooth gravel that’s an attractive mix of rustic reds, slate blues, and tans. An enormous piece of driftwood populated with Java ferns is situated at an angle on the left side of the tank to block the current of the aquarium filter, and the opposite side of the tank is planted with tall, broad-leafed Amazon swords. In the calm water of the aquarium’s protected center is an assortment of smaller plants and driftwoods, and an enormous hand-thrown mug with a blue and green glaze, laid on its side so that white sand spills from its mouth. Despite numerous hiding places and an abundance of live plants to break up line of sight (this was sufficient enough, the forums had assured me, female bettas are social creatures and will surely thrive when kept in groups), Dilly hunted her tank mates doggedly. Marrow had died first, ganged up on because she was the weakest. But once the older fish was felled, Dilly was quick to turn on Dally. By the time I brought home the mesh partition that would divide the tank into two unimpeachable territories, it was too late. Dally clung to life for a few horrible weeks. Her pink scales blanched white until she was almost unrecognizable and her flesh wasted away until I could see the ridges of her skull underneath her scales. She spent her time hiding in a shaded cave at the bottom of the tank, only emerging to surface for air or to stare at the high-protein, slow-sinking pellets that I sprinkled into her side of the tank. I would watch her intently, begging her to eat, to recover her will to live. She didn’t. The thing about fishkeeping is that it’s highly scientific–most people don’t understand this. They dump “quickstart” bacteria cultures into their brand new tank and introduce their new fish the next day, then shrug their shoulders a week later when they flush their goldfish down the toilet (after all, it’s just a fish). Maybe they will try again with some other beginner-friendly species, like swordtails or guppies. If they are lucky, if the fish gods smile, these new fish will survive the ammonia and nitrogen spikes as their tank cycles and establishes a biofilter, but they don’t understand what those words mean or that it drastically shortens the lifespans of their new pets. Often this will not impact them emotionally because, after all, they are just fish. But maybe, if the fish gods tire of this cycle of slow death, the would-be aquarist will give up and list their equipment for $20 on Facebook Marketplace. Fishkeeping involves many variables–pH, GH, ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, tannins, temperature, substrate (are you bored yet?)–that fluctuate constantly and can quickly become fatal if even one tips out of balance. The unfortunate truth is, no matter how much time you spend studying, once you get beyond the basics you have to start wading through the opinions of strangers online (all of whom are passionately convinced their opinion is right) and try to decide for yourself what sounds like sane advice. For example, professionals and hobbyists alike may tell you female bettas can be kept in sororities of three to five, given adequate space and proper aquascape, but my personal belief (and yes, my opinion is right) is that they are best housed in the requisite conditions for groups of ten to fifteen. Ironically, the blow that nearly spelled The Demon Queen Dilly’s demise was delivered by an algae-eater. Stupid-Bitch-I-Hate-You (full name) is the other homicidal fish that menaces the tank due to an ignorant mistake. Flying Foxes, sometimes called False Siamese Algae Eaters, are an aggressive species of algae-eater that does best in large schools. I had purchased the offending fish under the assumption that he and his sibling would fill out the ranks of my school of three Dwarf Siamese Algae Eaters. He killed his fellow Fox first, then spent a few months picking off the school of three gentle suckerfish, and now harasses Dilly and the resident school of Rasboras (who are only guilty of being a little empty-headed). Where I had previously been inclined to subject the Demon Queen to my human sense of morality (jail for the murderess!), my affection for the pink betta fish bloomed when she took ill. I dutifully nursed her back to health, obsessively scouring the annals of the internet for more of the same information I’d already consumed, and fretting after her through work shifts and social engagements. It is, admittedly, absurd to love a fish (I know, I know, it’s just a fish). They are so unlike us, so unlike a cat or dog or bird or rabbit, it may seem strange to feel kinship with them. They live inside a world of glass and water. You can’t communicate with them, can’t understand their intelligence or their feelings, if they even have them (they do, I think–another aquarist’s staunch conviction). They will not jump into your lap when you are upset or sneak into your bed to snuggle. Neither are they easy to keep–even goldfish deserve diligent maintenance and continual study–and the learning curve is steep and sometimes financially devastating. I think you should love them anyway. It’s an important measure of character to give a damn about things we can’t understand– to give a damn. I even give a damn about Stupid-Bitch-I-Hate-You, in a furious sort of way. The second day of salt baths I switched from aquarium salt to epsom and Dilly tolerated it better. She swam tranquilly around in the net and humored me patiently, only testing her confines occasionally. By day three, the Demon Queen greeted me cheerfully and ate her frozen bloodworms greedily. Pop-Eye can take months to resolve and her red, angry eye perturbed my guests. When the swelling reduced after four days of treatments, I thought the worst was over. Surprise! I was wrong. I noticed swelling in her face three days after discontinuing the baths: around the side of her mouth and over the bridge of her nose. I canceled my plans to spend the day with my partner and bailed out on an already-rescheduled Dungeons & Dragons game (for a fish? you’re thinking). It was back to the forums. Wading through advice, discarding some based on gut feeling alone and re-evaluating others. Strike epsom salt, it’s best for impacted bowels. Back to the aquarium salt, one to five tablespoons depending on the condition of your fish. Still eating and swimming around some? Good signs, sick fish will feign health for as long as they can, but once your fish stops eating they’re good as dead already. You can administer up to two, 30-minute salt baths daily (one aquarist recommends keeping your fish in the bath until the salinity causes it to go belly up—fuck that guy). I opt for one and a half tablespoons of aquarium salt in a one gallon bucket, then I transfer 25% of the saline solution into a second bucket and add 75% aquarium water. I dip Dilly into the first bucket in her net and watch her for fifteen minutes, then transfer her to the second bucket for an additional five. I do this once a day, every day. Several hobbyists warn against using store-bought, broad spectrum antibiotics, but on day three of the new treatment I transition her into my nursery aquarium and start dosing it with antibiotics anyway. On day seven, the swelling in her face goes away and she starts hunting the guppy fry that share the tank (but you judge the salt-bath guy, you’re thinking). At the front of the tank Dilly follows my finger along the glass. She is likely just searching for food, but I like to think that when she recognizes my figure across the room and swims to the front of her habitat, she is saying ‘Hello, God! Manna from heaven, please!’ I do not know if a fish feels an approximation of love, but loving her is enough for me. My partner, having received daily updates for weeks, was understanding. Our friends perhaps less so, but they didn’t give me grief (for one reason or another, we still haven’t gotten around to that session of D&D). In what I suspect is an antibiotic-resistant resurgence, white discs now cloud Dilly’s eyes (Cloudy Eye, it’s called, inventively). Though she still has a voracious appetite and a good attitude, I have isolated her in the nursery tank and taken to salting it directly. But I’m not hopeful. While I often find myself praying to the fish gods these last months, it’s perhaps more like praying to myself. Asking for what power is within reach. I am the master of this wet world I have created. The stakes are high, the consequences real. Maybe they are only fish, but they are alive and engaged and that matters. “Hi Dill’, I love you.” I say every day, because it is a gift and a burden to be responsible for these tiny fishy lives. It is a gift and a burden to give a damn. I hope you will give a damn. I hope you tell your goldfish you love him. Charlie Divine Charlie Divine (he/they) is a poet-essayist born and raised in the shrub-steppe of rural Oregon. His work explores themes of fragmentation, restoration, and growing up queer in small-town America. In addition to writing, Charlie has a passion for roller skating and the cultivation of living things. They live with their 32 houseplants and beloved betta fish in the Columbia Gorge and look forward to starting a new chapter at PSU's creative writing program this fall. Instagram: @saturnseyepoetry

Water Cat Terrell When the water would swallow me, tickle my earlobes & soak my hair, I'd hop up to keep it from my lips, and pant with each extra kick it took to keep me breathing, keep my head on top of the warm blue lilts of the pool. Four feet deep used to mean all these things: that I'd have to count on my toes to get from one stretch of pool to the next. Now, feet flat on the pool ground, my head towers a foot and a half above the surface of that splashing sea. Four feet isn't so deep, no chlorine clogs my nose, and a head of wet hair is up to me. Cat Terrell My name is Cat Terrell, I am 21 years old, and I'm a poet, musician, mathematician, you get the idea. I like writing poetry that evokes very specific images, and I especially like it when the words I happen to choose have a lot of assonance between them. The poems published here are my first ever published anywhere, and most of them revolve around an incidental theme: growing up. When I'm not writing poetry I am spending time with friends, or going on a walk in nature, or reading. I am so grateful for the three poetry courses I took at PCC that expanded my poetry knowledge and subsequent worldview, so thank you to Van Wheeler, Mia Caruso, and Chrys Tobey for being excellent instructors.

Forego Natalie Alsdorf In the backseat of someone’s car. Winding between the Dobe’s– amber like honey, pieces of sand, blowing in the breeze like brown sugar. Someone said something, my sister, or the radio, but my mind fixated on the garnet fire that smothered the atmosphere and silhouetted the curves– sinking and rising. Urgency in my chest told me to seize such a scene, but the request to stop stuck on my tongue, and the priceless painting sank, leaving a bitter taste behind. Natalie Alsdorf I am currently 19 years old and have spent most of my life in western Colorado. Besides my time in Oregon the past year and a half (for which I am so grateful), I consider myself a Coloradan at heart and felt called to move back to the colorful, sunny state. Most of my inspiration for my work is derived from nature, my faith, and the human experience. I enjoy sunrise runs, cat snuggles, writing (and re-writing) late at night, and listening to audiobooks and music. I hope to become a published fiction author in the future and am taking my goal one day, and one word, at a time. @nataliealsdorf (Instagram)

submit your work Any Portland Community College student may submit up to 5 poems, 2 short stories, 2 scripts, 2 creative nonfiction essays, 4 pieces of visual artwork. Bilingual/multilingual work will be considered. We will also consider limited submissions of non-student work, but we are committed to publishing primarily the work of PCC student writers and artists. All work is carefully reviewed for consideration by our editorial team! Submit your work(s) via email 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, PCC email, and phone number in the submission email, but 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 5, 2024 to be considered.

Family Elegy Cat Terrell Clouds get bigger above, and this altitude smells of old books and their worn out pages. Short trees speckle the mountains here, but mostly bushes that are skeleton-like populate the dry earth, reaching upwards with their singed knuckles and cracking fingertips. The ground waits for rain: rocks with millions of husks within them, fossils known to be there yet never unburied even still. There is tension and anger and hurt but not from the dead marine life that haunts these hills. Rather, these stabbing feelings come from an odd family of four, human-like creatures in their flawed demeanors yet persisting together-ness: ones who have tried to love each other, but can't find their way out of Predetermined Essences. Those traits God gives and refuses to take away. The traits are as follows: a father with cynicism, a daughter with her father’s judgment, a son who stows emotion, and another daughter, with her father's cynicism. They walk in the crevice of two ancient rocks, two rocks that hold plenty of dead marine life. The daughter with her father's judgment peers at and picks up every blushing stone she sees. The son picks up large rocks he will splinter to look for fossils. The father points out lizards and kicks clinging ticks off arms and legs. The other daughter walks briskly ahead and asks first to turn around and go back, to leave the crevice. The rock picking sister of hers overpromises and her stoic brother underpromises. Promises don't come easy to her. It is normal, the lizards scurry with each new pair of eyes on them, the fossils remain dead, the conversation only veers as much the path allows. No peak, no river, no loop is reached, but the odd family finds a buried burlap sack heading home. The misfitted and frail gather: looking, leaning, hoping. They all find nothing, as softer earth turns to stone 3 inches deep. The sack rips and is ripped by the father and the son. The main path is once again resumed. And then to home. Cat Terrell My name is Cat Terrell, I am 21 years old, and I'm a poet, musician, mathematician, you get the idea. I like writing poetry that evokes very specific images, and I especially like it when the words I happen to choose have a lot of assonance between them. The poems published here are my first ever published anywhere, and most of them revolve around an incidental theme: growing up. When I'm not writing poetry I am spending time with friends, or going on a walk in nature, or reading. I am so grateful for the three poetry courses I took at PCC that expanded my poetry knowledge and subsequent worldview, so thank you to Van Wheeler, Mia Caruso, and Chrys Tobey for being excellent instructors.

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-Kalapuyan tribes (also known as Tualatin Kalapuyan), 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 Kalapuyan 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 acknowledg ment 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 Kalapuyan, Louis Kenoyer (baxawádas), died in 1937. Kenoyer’s memoir, My Life: Reminiscences of a Grande Ronde Reservation Childhood , translated into English from Tualatin Northern Kalapuyan, 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 Kalapuyan people by exploring Kalapuyan Tribal History , Pacific University’s Indigenous History of Oregon , and the Five Oaks Museum’s online exhibition, Th is 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.