Search The Bellwether Review, 2025

< Back Amir Nisha Shamik Banerjee Congested footpaths slowed us down that day. The sun, imperious, laughed during noon And mocked our plodding as we made our way To your most-stopped-by marketplace that June. Our bottles had run out of fluid, and though Your lips became deserts, you acted nice To prove “no thirst” (and thought I wouldn’t know). But then, a glass of cane juice helped your lips Like rainfall helps a dry farm, and your eyes Said, “You’ve relieved me” as you took those sips. We reached there. Oh, the bee-like crowd! Its buzz! We muscled through it, feeling every shove. Your right hand was latched to my left. It was Just like a journey through some shrubby grove. Alluring marts and outlets cast their shine Upon your heart whose throbs of boundless glee United with the joyfulness of mine. Taking me to some common trinket store, You browsed through every earring, while in me, The bliss of buying some for you grew more. Located nearby was a small boutique With fair abayas, but your modesty Held your desires. I used that old technique Of drawing your stiff body tenderly Towards the shop (your white cheeks made their change into light claret red). Your action of Examining a cloth, its colours’ range, The fabric’s quality, designs, and prints Appeared as if some craftswoman of love Was painting me with golden-yellow tints. At five, precisely, being too fatigued, We found a seat within the public square. Iced cane juice (once again!); we were relieved! The sky’s expanding ochre touched your hair. Thievishly, as I tried to hold your hand, You hawed and said, “What would the public think?” A pause, and then I said, “I understand.” Your manners! Oh, so Indian and plain That all I did was watch your eyes unblink- ingly, then turn aside and watch again. Sundown. It was your maghrib time. We found A mosque. I stayed outside—my faith did not Permit me in. You entered, sat upon the ground, Postured yourself, and gently checked the knot Of your hijab. Outside the gate, I prayed Too (to your God, but with a different name), “O’ Lord, will You not grace our souls and aid Our clashing fates? Remove religion’s pall?” Then you arrived. “Did she, too, pray the same?” I wondered, but your long hug answered all. Word Meanings Amir Nisha: A marketplace in the region of Aligarh (a place in North India). Maghrib: The sunset Islamic prayer. Abaya: A loose-fitting full-length robe worn by some Muslim women. Hijab: A traditional headscarf covering the hair and neck worn by Muslim women. Author Bio Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India. Some of his recent publications include Spelt , Ink Sweat and Tears , St. Austin Review , Modern Reformation , San Antonio Review , The Society of Classical Poets , Third Wednesday , and Amethyst Review , among others. He secured second position in the Southern Shakespeare Company Sonnet Contest, 2024.

< Back Used Book Review Dean Wilson This book of poetry is not new the pages are flagged and yellowed two colors of pens and a pencil point out what is important. This nameplate is not mine. Who were you, Allison Farver? This book was given to you “With love—Christmas ’47.” Thirty-nine years ago. Allison Farver, the mystery of you is more enticing than this book of yours. I wonder, in thirty-nine years will someone read this book with a new bookplate and wonder, I wonder… Author Bio Dean Wilson is a multidisciplinary artist based in Canby, Oregon, whose creative work spans both photography and the written word. His photograph "Quiet Time" was featured in Fifty Years, Fifty Artists: A Celebration of the West , and his work has been exhibited at Northview Gallery and Blue Sky: Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts. His images have also appeared in Uncommon , a publication by the Portland Photographers Forum, as well as The Bellwether Review . Dean’s poetry and prose have been published in the Lewis and Clark Review , Alchemy Magazine , and The Bellwether Review . Driven by a lifelong need to create, he approaches his art with a spirit of exploration—often blending visual storytelling with reflective narrative. Refusing to be confined by style or subject, Dean embraces both photography and writing as open-ended conversations with the world around him.

< Back Home Economics Shane Allison I’d like to think that Mrs. President, My ninth-grade home Economics teacher, Is in heaven showing teenage angels how to make spaghetti and bake a chocolate cake. I imagine her selling blow pops out of a pencil box that lies hidden in one of her desk drawers. I think of her scolding some kid With his jeans hanging past his butt And saying, “Boy, pull up yo’ britches.” 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 Far Away in a Place Nearby Sarah Myton Where the owl hoots in the morning And the birds sing at night. Fire ravages through cities Leaving them clean and bright. Water is like crystals Falling from the sky, You’ll never feel lost or lonely, But you won’t really know why. The harder you try The more you’ll find, “Lost” is not a state of being, It is a state of mind. How frustrating it was Being happy all the time. It was as if there were a hill You were never allowed to climb. The wind never had A path straight to your heart, Until you dug a hole there, Your sullen piece of art. “If only I could make it To the other side of the world” “There things would be different Nothing would get old” The pain of a small cut, While making lemonade Would not exist there, You would never be afraid. Vanilla would taste Exactly how it smells, And markers would never dry, Never hearing the sound of knells. The ice that forms there Is not so bad, At least it could numb All the pain you’ve had. Author Bio Sarah Myton : I am a first-year student at PCC, working on discovering the career path that I want to pursue. This is my first time being published in a journal, but I have really enjoyed writing for a couple of years now. The poems written by me were created during the WR 242 poetry class taught by Dr. Embry. I hope to continue being creative in my future career and to be a light in the world.

ART ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES Dame Christa Fowles Oil on board 12 x 12 in cover on print edition Farsighted Adam Idris Photograph Everyone Mark Strehlow Ink on paper 16 x 10 in Old Town Portland Early Morning Blake L. Johnson Photograph 20 x 15 in Intrusion Dean Wilson Photograph The Procession Mark Strehlow Ink, charcoal, and pencil on paper 18 x 24 in Kitchen in Blue Christa Fowles Oil on board 24 x 30 in Crickets Mark Strehlow Charcoal and white charcoal on paper 11 x 8 in Grouch LW Woods Stricklin Digital photograph The Dinner Guest Dean Wilson Photograph Eternal Life Addie Berry Screenprint 14 x 11 in Big Step on the Big Stepping Stone Adam Idris Digital photograph Growth Grows from my Fingertips Carter Kohler Digital illustration 11 x 16 in Leaving Home LW Woods Stricklin Digital photograph Hug Dean Wilson Linoleum print on drawing paper 1 x 2 in Gene's Christa Fowles Oil on board 18 x 24 in moonglade Eleanor Song Stickers on paper 6.5 x 8.5 in Brooke Benefits Shane Allison Mixed media collage 9 x 12 in Force Field Shane Allison Magazine page & mixed media 9 x 12 in The Garden Mark Strehlow Ink and oil pastel on paper 20 x 10 in Goose Witch Hannah Lavender Gouache on paper 9.5 x 7.5 in Aerial at City Hall Adam Idris Digital photograph

< Back Sun Grace Saunders Before the chaos of this universe existed, there was chaos upon other and different and more chaotic chaos. Our chaos is organized. Everything has moved in the same way, every day, since its creation millions of years ago. Ever since the universe was clothed in light, filling the dark void with the golden string of life, things have had rhythm and reason. The barren, dangerous actuality of the universe did not change overnight, as there was no night, but it transformed into something habitable. Something where things can grow and survive. When space dust formed something greater than itself, and stars and stones smashed together with force and time larger than we can imagine, I was created. And with me, light. Hope. Life. An entire system revolving around me. That in itself is more spectacular than anything else, all but for how life grows in this system. Over the past few millennia, worlds have grown and been torn violently apart. Lifeforms have evolved and decayed, over and over again. And while I still exist, while I have lived longer than anything else orbiting me, I can admire the never-ending persistence of survival that comes from being brought into a place with so much chaos. I was never supposed to be kind. Or thoughtful, or giving, or anything more than a mass of heat so powerful, deadly to anything that got too close. I was made to destroy, not build. Maybe it’s the distance that makes the heart grow fonder. They were an accident. Pure coincidence, the dust of my dust, almost inconsequential. Almost. They were never supposed to exist, but, because they do, I’ve been transformed. They love me. They look up and see not a violent force brought to life from millions and billions of years of harsh collision, but a gracious force, who gave them life, who is nothing but good to them. They love me. And after all this time, I think I finally understand. I understand how they can look at the sky and see only warmth. After the cold night, it must be a blessing. I understand why they worship me; I make their crops grow. I give them food, and without me, life would be frozen, and nothing would function. So I sit, stuck in the center of my universe, having brought it to life and watched it exist for infinity times infinity years before learning what love was, watching it live as I never could, watching it fall in love in a million different ways, and learning to love in return. Each little life has a heart that is a cosmos of its own, and we are the same, and we love it. I wait for the eon when my demise will come, as has happened to my siblings light-years away, trapped in the chaos of their own creations, but until then, I watch, I grow, and I love. Author Bio Grace Saunders is a wannabe historian and literary scholar who is enamoured with the way humans have always sought ways to connect with each other and the universe they came from. Nursing a life-long interest in writing, Grace has explored many different mediums including poetry and short stories, which she finds portrays human connection best. “Sun” is the first piece in an ongoing collection of a mix of poetry and prose, which she hopes adds layers of personality and character to each celestial body in our solar system to which we are related.

< Back grandfather clock Eleanor Song on the plane ride home i wondered what it must be like to mourn your life as you live it; you sat there with me, almost, the ghost of a downturned hand tapping slow and steady on your knee. i watched my sister poke at airplane food as you recounted the famines etched in your gut, the ghost of your river mush mixture sloshing around in her emesis bag. on the plane ride home i wondered what it must be like to mourn your life as you live it; grasping at the passing years, the white of your knuckles bleeding into your hair. you wear clothes washed by a machine decades old, break bread out of an aluminum bowl, watch time run dry on a year-old desk calendar. you’d drawn on the right month in red marker the next time i saw it; i wonder if putting numbers on time matters more or less when you know you’re running out. on the plane ride home i wondered what it must be like to mourn your life as you live it; to watch skyscrapers burst from the land you love and old customs turn to impersonal plastic. half the grave you used to frequent sits empty and unlabeled, waiting for you year by year. did it hurt to face your own impermanence as you lit incense at the proof of hers? i let a life engulf me as your daughter watched from the shore, but you stood on another side of the ocean. it’d take so long to know you the way i’d like; years of dinner table conversations and turtle-paced walks that we just don’t have the time for. sometimes i wonder if i watch you so closely because i know more sharply that i won’t be able to for long. you take your lunches slow and sugarless, place your life in a box, assemble your bedsheets like a puzzle. i piece you together as you rearrange the blankets, craft stories and fading photos into a mind and a heart; you build yourself a place to lie down as i build a boat out of your histories. when it is strong enough, i’ll sail across our ocean again Author Bio Native Portlander Eleanor Song is a second-year PCC student majoring in political science. She is a former National Student Poets Program semifinalist and has been published by Stepping Stone Publishing (but most of her work exists in a single notes app file, not backed up). Outside of writing, Eleanor is a photographer, legislative staffer, and proud cat mom. You can find her talking to strangers on the blue line, getting lost on hiking trails, and lighting candles that smell like sugar.

< Back An Ode to the Unsung Heroes of My Home Shamik Banerjee Music is anodyne, but what compares to our rice steamer’s ‘hissing’? Oh! that sound flies to each corner, even down the stairs, and makes our home a curry-cooker’s ground (evoking lunchtime dishes in one’s mind). Glory be to our geyser. Though a thing, it is no less than Gaia, great and kind, who shares with everyone her thermal spring, defrosting them in Winter’s glacial chill. Tell me how I should hail our ceiling fan, whose hypnic air transports me to some hill where zephyrs blow through Junipers that span upon its vertex. And these whitish walls imitate laminar white waterfalls. Now laud for windows: they amp up the dawn’s, the dusk’s, and the eve’s beauty ten times more, those voile-made curtains, like two lovely swans, float in the wafting light breeze from the door. Our living room’s a newsstand, or at best, a kiosk full of magazines and snacks. And oh, the English Roll-Arm is where rest comes pouring on us when we lean our backs upon its cushions with our eyes all glued to the TV, and if God has a kingdom, some glimpses of that place I’ve surely viewed in this home where I’ve learned a lifetime’s wisdom and felt comforted by these ‘things’ I prize— true paragons of firmness to my eyes. Author Bio Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India. Some of his recent publications include Spelt , Ink Sweat and Tears , St. Austin Review , Modern Reformation , San Antonio Review , The Society of Classical Poets , Third Wednesday , and Amethyst Review , among others. He secured second position in the Southern Shakespeare Company Sonnet Contest, 2024.

< Back dyspraxic J. Artemis Mackay limbs find unsteady rest, weak upon the earth stirring from the bird-song dawn gelatin legs of the fawn crowbarred in traumatic birth sired unready dys praxic ; Greek for “difficult activity.” page seven five, DSM five, prior name “clumsy child syndrome” precious pathology how can a jigsaw piece make fingers feel weak yet heavy as structural steel feel fall; clatter how my brainpan laden with ready-mix concrete feel in ten thousand places besides I fall onto sand castles unto circles counted nine into journey a journey a special sunrise, javelin rays turn every wall to doors ajar time did not heal my muscles yet waited on the fever-bed a sculpture is not broken no matter how many swings of the sledgehammer; my ulcers dry, crumble into rice heaved skyward at the wedding my body fails but it does not betray I’ve honed being a faggot in a way sports and dance never stuck working out masculine—disability perhaps if not a ballerina, my body does a riveting performance of homosexual conduct the manual labor persists libido explains hand tremors and inexpert affection— [a jigsaw is difficult activity joy-breathed in its completion] Author Bio Artemis Mackay (they/them) is a queer, trans writer living near a bridge in Portland. They hold a Master’s Degree in Comparative Social Change from University College Dublin and several DSM-V diagnoses.

< Back Yew Shannon Sullivan Spring is here. Sun heats my uppermost foliage, and flowers erupt from the pimpled skin of my smaller branches. Columbine and strawberries flower in the field nearby, along with the fir trees across the river. I can taste their exuberance, carried through the webs of mycelia and roots we share. In four seasons, the seeds they are forming now will be sprouting around them. My seeds will not sprout. My own flowers will not be pollinated. I witness pollen travel between the other trees and plants, on wind and bees and butterflies, and know there will be none for my new flowers. There must be no male yew tree growing near enough for his pollen to reach me. I am the only yew here, a female unable to pollinate myself in the way of the firs. Each spring, I wait to see if my seeds will develop, but they never do. When I was younger, I wondered how the seed that started me found its way here. Was it carried by the river, or did it travel in the belly of an elk? How did I come to be so far away from the rest of my species? I am no longer young and do not expect an answer to my questions. Several seasons ago, the insects arrived. They laid their eggs on my branches and deep in the crevices of my bark. When the eggs hatched, the emerging larvae latched into my twigs, eating their fill of the resources I had gathered to nourish myself and my potential seeds. Season after season, my body incubates eggs that aren’t my own and dwindles as new generations of nymphs feed. For how many more springs will I be able to produce flowers? Soon, if there is another yew, it won’t matter if his pollen does reach me. My attention drifts back to the present, to the field steaming in the sun’s heat, water evaporating from the damp soil. Tall grasses swish in the breeze, each with its own characteristic movement. There among the grasses is a new gesture; someone grows pliant and sturdy and low to the ground. Someone who was not there last season, whose kind I have never observed, but whom I already know better than any other. I reach out, signaling through underground networks to the new yew tree. Welcome, seedling. Author Bio Shannon Sullivan is a lifelong Oregonian, perpetually interested in Oregon’s natural world, history and possible futures. Writing speculative fiction has provided a new means for her to explore themes of ecology, disaster, fear and hope.