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LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT We would like to acknowledge that the home of The Bellwether Review , Portland Community College’s Rock Creek campus, is located on the land of the Atfalati-Kalapuya tribes (also known as Tualatin Kalapuya), who were among the First People living in what we currently call Washington County. In 1855, the Atfalati tribes were forced to sign a treaty relinquishing ownership of their land . Today, the Kalapuya people are members of the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde, located southwest of Washington County. We also want to acknowledge and thank the original stewards of the land throughout the area which PCC serves today, including the Molalla; the Multnomah, Kathlamet, and Clackamas bands of the Chinook; as well as the many other Tribes who have made their homes along the Columbia River. We, the editors, have chosen to include this land acknowledgment as an active commitment to supporting contemporary Indigenous sovereignty by promoting awareness and fostering dialogue as a contribution toward decolonizing the oppression which has resulted from systemic policies of colonization—including genocide, relocation, broken treaties, and assimilation. The Bellwether Review seeks to highlight the diversity of linguistic and artistic expression of student voices on the Rock Creek campus and throughout the PCC community; with this in mind, we want to acknowledge the absence of voices that might otherwise have been thriving today, if it were not for the practices of forced cultural assimilation that leads to the loss of fluency in local Indigenous languages. The last known fluent speaker of Tualatin Northern Kalapuya, Louis Kenoyer ( baxawádas ), died in 1937. Kenoyer’s memoir, My Life: Reminiscences of a Grande Ronde Reservation Childhood , translated into English from Tualatin Northern Kalapuya, is available at the PCC Rock Creek Library. We encourage readers of The Bellwether Review to honor the journal’s connection to the history of the land upon which it is produced by supporting and promoting organizations that are working to cultivate and honor contemporary Indigenous cultures in a variety of ways, such as PCC’s Native Nations Club , Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde , Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians , The NAYA Family Center , Salmon Nation , and the First Nations’ Native Language Immersion Initiative . Learn more about the Kalapuya people by exploring Kalapuyan Tribal History , Pacific University’s Indigenous History of Oregon , and the Five Oaks Museum’s online exhibition, This IS Kalapuyan Land . The Bellwether Review editorial team would like to thank PCC Native Nations Club Coordinator Karry Kelley (Yahooskin/Modoc) and Dr. Blake Hausman (Cherokee Nation), PCC faculty in English and Native American Studies, for advising us on crafting this acknowledgment.

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

< Back Fucking rip, I kinda liked you Moriendi Lenore Brown doe eyes stare at a ‘Wolf’ in disbelief, she wonders what she did wrong— Panicked fight, blade makes a mess. A lamb watches, ‘Fucking rip, I guess’ ‘Fucking rip, this is a mess to clean.’ She chose the painful way out. Faded red dye, brown eyes adore us both. She doesn’t mind the mess. Devoted brown eyes gaze at a ‘Wolf’, understanding c’est la vie in the cabin. Quick slash, she didn’t suffer. A lamb sighs, ‘Fucking rip, I kinda liked you’ Badges, sirens, my eyes meet a quick slash. A sacrificial Lamb— ‘Fucking rip me’—time passes, scars fade, knowledge gained, tarot read. The cards are flipped, why am I here—tarot read—she sees without knowing how close to the truth she is. ‘Fucking rip, you fascinate me.’ Friends with a badge hidden in plain sight, the truth in our mothers’ graves. A bond I don’t want to shake. ‘Fucking rip, why are you a magnet for death.’ Tricked by a ‘Wolf’, blades meet. His cold grin of proudness ends our bond. Safe, together, two lambs—one with teeth. ‘Fucking rip, I kinda care about you.’ Author Bio Moriendi Lenore is a Southern California native who moved to Oregon in 2008. They are finishing up their second year at PCC and plan to pursue a degree in Creative Writing and Film Studies. Their writing tends to focus around all things that go bump in the night; along with variations of folklore and mythology. When not at home with their cat, Schrödinger, working on projects or playing TTRPGs with friends, they are with their dog, Chopper, and can be found hiking around Oregon.

< 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 Intrusion Dean Wilson Calm, serene, peaceful in your private world and way, you disturb my peace. 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.