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< Back Kids Shane Allison In my dream we are two best friends lying on our bellies reading comic books strewn across your bedroom floor. The sugar rush from the wad of Big League gum we’re chewing is assurance that we’ll be up all night reading The Fantastic Four , Captain America , and Superman back when they were seventy-five cents. We hang loose at your parent’s house because my mother is afraid we’ll break something, that we’ll track in dirt from playing outside. She offers us Cheetos and Capri Suns to stay away. Our friendship is impenetrable like a GI Joe tank. Nothing can break us after the pinky swears and blood oaths we take using the pocket knife stolen from my dad’s glove box. We go around collecting worms in jelly jars, burning ants under a magnifying glass. When the black neighborhood kids ask, Why are you always hanging out with that white boy? I tell them to shut up and hold them in headlocks until they say sorry. I am the biggest kid in school like The Thing from The Fantastic Four . Mother would never let him in the house. I had this dream where we were kids with superpowers, who could fly over buildings, shoot red beams out of our eyes and bend crowbars like licorice ropes. I wish I had grown up with you in Tallahassee or Kettering, Ohio. I could have used a friend like you. Author Bio 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 many 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 Books), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori Press), Sweet Sweat (Hysterical Books), and, most recently, I Want to Eat Chinese Food Off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire Press). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica and has written two novels, You’re the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon and Schuster Publishing). Allison’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo , Unlikely Stories , Pnpplzine.com, Palavar Arts Magazine , The Southeast Review , South Broadway Review , Postscript Magazine , and a plethora of others. Allison is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.

< Back Memento Mori Katherine Bryant Joy can be contagious. When you see a broad and toothy smile, eyes squinted and creased at the corners, you can’t help but feel joy yourself. We often find ourselves smiling back at our photographs, feeling overcome with nostalgia, remembering that day fondly, or missing the people or time we are observing. It means even more to catch that momentary laughter, when the subject hasn’t had many reasons to smile. And just as quickly as it comes, the joy will abandon you when you remember that he is dead. In the photo above, we will meet my dad. I say we because I, too, do not know him. He’s pictured here on a sticky, humid day in Houston, Texas. The year is 1989, and he has just become a father—my father. He is in the courtyard of his apartment, a run-down, low-income complex occupied mostly by immigrants. You can see the faded siding, a result of the blazing Texas sun, which is contrasted by nicely manicured landscaping. He has a huge smile, an authentic one that can be seen in every feature of his face. He may even be in mid-laugh. He is shirtless, exposing four tattoos. The one on his shoulder looks like a grave, but it is hard to tell what it actually is. It is in a sketchy prison style and all black. The one on his bicep is the profile of a woman with a spider web. She is my mother. On his bare chest you can see a tank top tan line and two more tattoos. There is a thick and dark scorpion tattoo, and another tattoo he received during one of his many incarcerations. He has dress pants on and a belt to keep them from falling off his small, yet muscular frame. He always insisted on wearing dress pants, even in the intolerable heat and humidity. It was his way of presenting himself as someone to be respected. The unfortunate reality was, as a Vietnamese immigrant he was treated as second class in Texas. His proclivities tended to be unsavory at best, and illegal at worst. With few options as a teenage refugee, no knowledge of the English language, no family, and not enough money to survive, he quit his low-paying, abusive jobs and opted to chase money the easier way—with guns. Along with the dress pants, he was always quite particular about his hair. Here it is thick and dark. It’s nicely styled with an unmistakable ’80s volume. It is impressive for someone with stick-straight, Southeast Asian hair texture. My mom is behind the camera. Perhaps she said or did something humorous to elicit this giant grin. What you cannot see here is the reality of living in poverty and crime. You cannot see the police sirens, the gunshots, the cockroaches, and yelling from the neighbors’ apartment. You can not see his prison record, the thefts he’s committed, his murder trial, the guns, the cocaine, or the violence. Still, with this secondhand knowledge of the tumultuous life led by the man in the photo, to me, at first impression, this photograph is pure joy. It is a priceless moment in time of the person I never got to know. I see a man in love and happy, radiating his pride in being sober, out of jail, and having a new baby girl. You can, in some ways, still see the little boy inside of him. There is a glimpse of the person before the forced family separation, boats, and refugee camps. When we express pure happiness and excitement, it is the closest, as adults, we will get to our younger selves, before trauma, before pain, and before the worries and pressures of the world. In this moment he looks content, and he has nothing but promise and potential ahead of him. He is twenty-four and starting to plan out the life he wants and the life he will create for his family. He is trying to find a way to survive that does not involve crime and gang activity. This photo is now a cherished reminder of the parts of him that were good, and the parts of him that showed love. As writer Susan Lee Sontag muses, “Like a wood fire in a room, photographs—especially those of people … of the vanished past—are incitements to reverie” (16). This is how I choose to see him even after knowing the fate he will meet just after I turn two years old. The truth is, he was not able to fulfill the hopes he had in this snapshot, and his promise was snuffed out prematurely. He was gunned down in broad daylight, a victim of homicidal violence. It was an almost ironically karmic ending to his much too short life. Because he is gone and left me before I had the opportunity to make memories of him, this photo also shows all things lost and things he and we will never become. I see experiences ripped away from me. I see hair that will never turn gray, smile lines that won’t become permanent fixtures of his face and eyes that will never shed a tear at my wedding. Earlier in her writing Sontag states “A beautiful subject can be the object of rueful feelings, because it has aged or decayed or no longer exists. All photographs are memento mori” (15). This sentiment beautifully depicts the pull of negative emotions I experience today, holding his picture in my hands. In some ways, every single photograph we take will become a weapon to inflict pain on those that loved us once we are gone. To see someone on a piece of glossy paper that you will never get to hug, to smell, to hear and know their voice, is its own form of torture. I do not know the sound of the laugh that he’s making in this image. I sometimes can not bring myself to look at it because when I do, suddenly the hole in my heart rips wide open and the feelings of joy I caught by staring at that smile are replaced with tears and a feeling of profound deprivation. The bias I have in glamorizing someone important to me that has passed is not the rule when observing this image. My mother looks upon it and is filled with memories, both beautiful and horrific. The man here to her, is much different than the one I daydream him to be within my imagination. He is the man that abandoned her, that put her in harm’s way, that cheated and lied to her, and disappeared for weeks at a time. He is also the man that loved her the most. He is the man that made her a mother and gave her the gift that saved her life and gave her purpose. She has a familiar but vastly different conflict when the memories of the photograph come flooding back to her. He left her just as much as he left me, but she is both punished and gifted with the shared experiences with him that I do not have. My father used to refer to himself as “fey,” which means doomed or fated to die. He mentioned with frequency he would not be here long, as if to predict the future he knew he would not have. Perhaps this photo was for me, too little to remember the man shown here when it was taken. This photograph is an intentional donation of a laugh I will never hear. He is forever twenty-four, smiling into the sun, my mom making him grin ear to ear. The joy of that humid Texas day in 1989 will live forever through this image, but a photograph is only a moment in time, and eventually, we all must die. Author Bio Katherine Bryant is a full time PCC student in pursuit of an undergraduate in Social Work and then a degree in Law. She greatly enjoys reading and writing, particularly emotionally driven nonfiction. When she’s not studying or writing, she’s running her business in downtown Portland or spending time with her partner and four dogs.

BELLWETHER REVIEW Poetry Check out our prestigiously chosen works from the students of PCC. Here you'll find some of our beautifully written short stories Our Flash Non-Fiction pieces are sure to capture your attention. Our Spring Collection Fiction Nonfiction Art See our new pieces of photography and art that were phenomenally crafted. About Welcome Editors 2021 Contributors 2021 A Literary Magazine like no other. Cover Art by: Jessica Graber

< Back Moon Gardening on a Funeral Pyre Moonrose Doherty This offering subsumed fires that burn on water Aries suns ravage my riverine pulse You, funeral pyre burning to burn a mars inflicted boredom I, forever pining spruce sap licking to tuck the heart is to swim with the current To go where the moon goes remembrance in birthing water-bear cave dwelling moss sucking flood fall emergence when skin can stay moist when eyes can open gently a damp cradling moon gardens constellated by alder cones ripe hearts tadpole pools I’ve always been two-hearted, a knower for death feeds living, and a composted heart is precious is food hearts burnt up in falling leaves pulse bloom in the time of black poplar gathering before squeaky fresh leaf tips emerge before lilacs burst grief-scent before rifting the silky black rot dirt the time of planting moonbeams in surviving hearts the time of moonwatering creamy tendrils birthed in a composted heart Author Bio Moon Doherty is a non-binary human that started writing poetry as a teenager and was encouraged by an amazing teacher at Jefferson High School, which led to getting poems published in Rites of Passage , the school’s literary magazine. They’ve been writing ever since and love to write poetry about nature, feelings, change, water, relationships and connection. The art of singing and painting through words (poetry in their perception) is a deeply personal creating that helps them understand their own body, mind, and soul in ways that they’re joyous has become a realized possibility. They’re grateful for the opportunity to share in community. Moon is deeply intertwined with plants and energies and the astral world and you’ll often find them under stars, in a river or sitting with their rooted, rain-drinking friends.

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.

The Bellwether Review promotes original art and writing cultivated by authors and artists attending PCC. We value showcasing work that expresses a diversity of voice and thought. We encourage a passion for meaningful creation, and provide a platform for students to appreciate art. 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 Portland Community College Rock Creek but also throughout the broader global community of writers and artists. 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 in a future issue. Email us at bellwetherreview@gmail.com with any questions. 2025 LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Dear Reader, Welcome to the 2025 edition of The Bellwether Review. Thank you for taking the time of day (or night) to come with us on this jour- ney. From the 140 submissions we received, the editors selected 59 works by 28 individuals to feature in this year’s publication. We are proud to present some of the best of what the PCC Rock Creek community has to offer. While we wish that all submitted work could have a chance to be seen in print, only so many can be accepted. Thank you to all who submitted—without you we would not be here. In this political climate, many organizations dedicated to the arts are losing their federal funding. The fact that this journal exists right now is a privilege. Enjoy the arts, for they are the words and images of the many. And with that, let the journey begin. —2025 Editorial Team Copyright © 2025 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.