MURP
HYSQ
UARE
ISSUE 43 | 2018
VisualArt
&Literary
Magazine
MURPHY SQUARE
with special thanks to
cary waterman, faculty advisor emeritus
augsburg university student government
augsburg university english department
augsburg university art department
bookmobile
the echo
2
ISSUE 43
edit... Show more
MURP
HYSQ
UARE
ISSUE 43 | 2018
VisualArt
&Literary
Magazine
MURPHY SQUARE
with special thanks to
cary waterman, faculty advisor emeritus
augsburg university student government
augsburg university english department
augsburg university art department
bookmobile
the echo
2
ISSUE 43
editorial board
ABIGAIL TETZLAFF, editor-in-chief
GABRIEL BENSON, editor-in-chief
MEGAN JOHNSON, layout editor
DOUG GREEN, faculty advisor
3
MURPHY SQUARE
art editors
CASSIE DONG
OLIVIA FITCH
KRISTEN HOLMBERG
SONJA MISCHKE
MADELEINE OSWOOD
4
ISSUE 43
poetry editors
JENNIFER KOCHAVER
SONJA MISCHKE
RYAN MOORE
ASHLEY MURRAY
EVE TAFT
5
MURPHY SQUARE
prose editors
NINA BERGLIN
JULIA CHARRON
DEREK HEUER
SOPHIA KEEFE
JENNIFER KOCHAVER
RYAN MOORE
6
ISSUE 43
artwork
ALLISON USELMAN dixon street
CAMERON YANG capital hill balance
STEPHANIE FREY celebration #12
STEPHANIE FREY celebration #17
GABRIEL BERGSTROM beach day
AVA FOJTIK flower boy
AVA FOJTIK illuminated
AVA FOJTIK cat’s cradle
AVA FOJTIK pit party
ALLISON USELMAN elizabeth, 1972
MADELEINE OSWOOD untitled
ASH M. KAUN a stable relationship
CAMERON YANG prayer
ALLISON USELMAN forest
STEPHANIE FREY celebration #1
MADELEINE OSWOOD special agent dale cooper
ABIGAIL TETZLAFF basilica
MADELEINE OSWOOD untitled
MADELEINE OSWOOD untitled
STEPHANIE FREY celebration #5
CAM YANG she-wolf
GABRIEL BERGSTROM flower girl flower girl
MADELEINE OSWOOD untitled
ABIGAIL TETZLAFF light rail
GABRIEL BERGSTROM the spin
7
11
15
20
21
24
30
31
32
33
35
41
43
50
54
56
58
60
62
63
72
76
79
80
82
84
MURPHY SQUARE
poetry
22 MATT PECKMAN constitution
23 RACHEL BROWN the country road that takes you home
25 D. E. GREEN a palpable hit
34 KELTON HOLSEN a closed library (an elegy to terry pratchett)
36 MARISA MOSQUEDA loneliness
42 MATT PECKHAM the icon
49 RACHEL BROWN old hands
51 HALLE CHAMBERS metal rings
53 SAM penitence
55 D. E. GREEN green and orange: a pantoum
57 ALICE LIDDELL CHESHIRE WOLFF firebird
59 L. B. DOGOOD 12 west
61 ASHLEY MURRAY miikawaadendan (think it beautiful)
73 L. B. DOGOOD 52 hz
74 ALICE LIDDELL CHESHIRE WOLFF roadkill
77 ALEXIS KIMSEY the eyes are the window to the soul
81 RACHEL BROWN galaxies
83 EVE TAFT sonas
8
ISSUE 43
prose
AMANDA YATCKOSKE rules
AMANDA YATCHOSKE fear
ASH M. KAUN 3:21
KELTON HOLSEN died 2016
ALLISON USELMAN tomatoes
SOPHIE KEEFE ode to leonardo
JACQUELINE DOCKA rhapsody on laurel
ALLISON USELMAN the wreck
DEREK L. H. infinite
GABRIEL BENSON the bridges
9
10
12
13
16
26
37
39
44
64
85
MURPHY SQUARE
rules
AMANDA YATCKOSKE
I t i s no t t hat ha rd. I t is ju s t wo r ds. W e ta ug
ht y o u t h is. Y ou j u st ne e d t o me m or ize t he
w o rds. Re m em be r t h e so und AT. A t, b a t, c
a t, s a t.
B ut, w h er e I s AT o n th e al p h ab et ?
I s n ’t t h at tw o s ou n ds? Wh a t ar e t he ru l e s?
I b ef o re E e xc ept a f te r C e x c ep t f o
r a ll o f t h e e x c ep t io n. Y ou m us t a lw a ys s
top a t a s top li gh t. E x ce p t w hen t he l ig h t is
gr e e n. H ow m an y w a y s i s t he re t o sp e ll l o
ngA?
A. R a in. E igh t. S ur v e y. At e. Ve in. P
r a y. B r e a k.
Y o u k n o w E ng li sh r ul e s? S u re. W
h ich o n e s r ig h t?
b. B r a in.
c. P ra
d. B re ig h n.
e. P re y.
f. Br ein.
g. Pra y.
h. B re an.
i. All. So, shut it.nostra, per inceptos himenae
a. B ra n e.
10
ISSUE 43
dixon street
ALLISON USELMAN
relief print
11
MURPHY SQUARE
fear
AMANDA YATCHOSKE
Ordering fast food because the text keeps getting
smaller.
Getting lost because white letters don’t
make since on green.
The teacher saying, “Why don’t you read?”
The what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-you look when I say,
“No.” Saying, “Yes,” and then my brain betrays me.
The jolt of correcting impatience as I attempted to
decipher.
Knowing that it has four legs, a tail, plays
fetch, and has sweat glands in its paws, but not that
the word is dog.
The double circles on the letter g. The
letter bdqp.
The explanation between right and left,
“your left hand makes a L.” I put a L to my forehead,
“Is this right?”
The phrase, “Read this,” followed by two
seconds of a blurry cellphone screen.
Being asked to read what is on the projector
in class.
Beaing correkted on a spelling mistaik.
The rased ibrow when I proove that it was English
that was the mistaek, not me.
Being given a book because I am a writer.
The list of authors that I should know because I am
a writer. “You are an author, so you started written
at an early age.” “My best advice to give to you as a
writer is read.”
Teachers’ saying, “In the really world, they
don’t give special accommodations.”
Running into my elementary teacher who
said, “There’s no such thing as dyslexia.”
Being given five minutes to reading five
pages. Only reading half a page. Everyone else is
done at three minutes.
Able to repeat our entire conversation
back to you word for word, but still get an upturned
nosed because I can’t remember the nonsense word
that is your name.
Asking a classmate to look at my writing.
Their only response: “Spelling mistakes.”
12
ISSUE 43
3:21 p.m.
ASH M. KAUN
It’s four minutes past 3:02 p.m., and he still hasn’t
rounded the corner. Jaime always has a sauntering
stride that brings him swooping around the corner
of Elton Street onto Jefferson around 3:02 p.m.
every Tuesday on his way to this café. Jaime and his
usual pair of red chucks are refusing to step onto
the chalked concrete that details this very corner.
Or maybe it’s not refusal. Maybe it’s just a delay.
Something is probably holding him at home. His
mother is making him take out the trash as we speak
and that can be the explanation behind Jaime’s
absence. Or, maybe it’s fear. I knew talking to him
was a bad idea. I knew I would say something stupid.
Last Friday, when he was tucked away in the
back room of Molly’s Tea Bar, I felt the inclination
in my heart. My chest urged me to stand up, take the
nine steps toward his table, sit down, and open my
mouth. The only problem was his eyes. Those eyes
liked to wander over everything. They darted to the
shop’s windows every time some stranger walked by,
but only to assess the person for a second and then
dart back to his book. His eyes never attempted to
crawl all over my body like that. I’ve found that my
focus almost never seemed to leave his body.
I hit my leg on the way up from my booth,
cursing under my breath. My leg muscles quivered
slightly as I walked up to the table and sat down.
Jaime’s face raised, and I could finally feel his
almond eyes searching every pore of my exposed
skin. His shoulders were hunched over, hiding most
of his thick neck from my view. I would pay any
amount of money to caress that gorgeous neck. The
breath that moved his lungs in and out of his chest
was calm, unlike the unsteady deep breaths of mine.
“Hi. I know this is weird, but I just wanted
to compliment your tattoo,” I said.
He shifted, set his book down, and cleared
his throat. “Thank you. It’s hardly anything, but
thank you.”
“It’s a cupcake, right? What’s it for?”
“My grandmother used to bake the most
delicious cupcakes and muffins and—”
“A delicious tattoo for a delicious person.”
Jaime had let out a breathy laugh, and
asked where I went to school. When I told him I
didn’t go to school, he offered to get me a tea. I
mentioned my mother was expecting me at home.
13
MURPHY SQUARE
I lied. My mother died when I was twelve years
old. He took my number with, what I thought to
be, hardly any intention to use it. Little did I know,
9:03 a.m. on Tuesday morning, I would feel a buzz
on my asscheek with a deep voice ringing through
my phone’s speaker asking to get coffee with me.
And now, I’m waiting like the idiot I
am. I know he isn’t staying at the gym this long.
His routine is exactly 48 minutes every Tuesday,
Thursday, and Saturday, and it ends promptly
around 2:35 p.m. each day. The time in between
the gym and the library is probably for a shower and
a quick slice of pizza or toast. It never takes him
longer than twenty minutes before he walks out the
front door, locks the iron gate, and makes his way
past the Weltons’, the Hannigans’, and the Jensens’.
It’s 3:08 p.m.. I look up from the newspaper
in my hand and glance, again, at the rusted sign
presenting the names Elton and Jefferson. Nothing.
I return the newspaper to its natural fold and scoot
the chair back with a push. The loud screech almost
made me jump as much as looking up and seeing
Jaime. He locks eyes with mine, and he smiles. His
perfectly sized hand reaches into the air and waves
at me. Blood surges into my cheeks. Jaime strolls
across the tar and stops two feet from where I’m
standing. I sit back down, and he proceeds to take
the seat across from me.
The bright sun could never compare to the
amount of heat radiating from my body. I can’t tell
if I’m nervous or excited. Probably excited.
“So what’s the plan?” he asks
.
“Going back to my place to watch my
favorite movie?” I say.
“Is it a good movie?”
“You need to have a rare and particular
taste for this movie, but it’s short and painless. I
promise.”
“Alright. Sounds like a plan.”
The corners of my mouth rise. His face
mirrors mine. Jaime hooks his arm with my arm,
and I lead him the opposite way from which he
came. I check my watch. 3:11 p.m. It’s a ten-minute
walk to my place. It’s difficult to settle the little
child jumping around inside my brain. It’s taking
every ounce of control I contain not to shove my
hand into my bag at this exact moment and pull
out the needle. That green serum is just begging to
be injected somewhere. Maybe his beautiful neck.
The zip ties will not be far behind, as they yearn for
the tension of his muscles against their industrial
strength. Jaime has no idea the taste I acquired
long ago, and he could never appreciate the simply
genius idea of adding one cup of blood to a batch of
cupcakes.
14
ISSUE 43
capitol hill balance
CAMERON YANG
digital photograph
15
MURPHY SQUARE
died 2016
KELTON HOLSEN
Engman Prize winner
In 2016, my grandparents’ dog died. He was an old
dog, covered with warts, and they had to put him
down due to his misery. Some time later, their other
dog died, presumably of grief.
In 2016, Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin
died. He was getting his mail when his car rolled
down his driveway and crushed him against his
security fence. The coroners say he most likely died
within a minute or so.
In 2016, Josef Stalin had been dead for 64
years. During his reign, roughly 100 million people
died, largely due to stupidity. Historians consider
Stalin to be guilty of roughly one million murders.
Stalin might or might not have said the
following: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The
death of millions is a statistic.”
In 2016, I graduated from high school.
In 2016, the singer, musician, and celebrity
known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince
(full legal name: Prince Rogers Nelson), died in an
elevator after overdosing on the opioid fentanyl.
After his death, five books were written about him,
his ashes were put on display in a custom glass urn
in Paisley Park, and on the one-year anniversary of
his death, a four-day tribute was put on in his honor.
My former high school robotics captain
shared an article on Facebook describing three
women that were caught with luggage containing
three million dollars’ worth of heroin and opium. He
wrote: “Good. Don’t waste your life on a worthless
drug.”
Later in 2016, he committed suicide.
One million, seven hundred thousand
people died of tuberculosis. One million people
died of HIV or AIDS. Four hundred and twenty-nine
thousand died of malaria. Most of those people lived
in Africa.
Carrie Fisher died of sleep apnea, four
days after a near-fatal heart attack that turned out to
be fatal after all. One day later, her mother, Debbie
Reynolds, died as well. Fisher later appeared in
the movie Rogue One, much younger, through the
magic of CGI.
In 2016, most of us thought that Donald
Trump’s campaign would die before the end of the
primaries. Many of us thought Donald Trump’s
campaign would die before the end of the election.
In 2016, some of us thought democracy had died.
16
ISSUE 43
We might have been right.
In 2016, I marched with a few hundred
(or was it thousand) of my close friends, who I
hardly knew, through the neighborhoods of CedarRiverside and Seward. A little bird told my parents
that I had marched in the protest. The only thing
they cared about was whether I had been on the
highway (I hadn’t).
In 2016, three thousand, eight hundred
refugees drowned while trying to cross the
Mediterranean Sea, fleeing war and human rights
violations back home. Their odds were still likely
better than in Syria, where the death toll from the
civil war had reached three hundred and twenty
thousand.
In 2016, six hundred and fifty-two children
died in Syria. Two hundred and fifty-two of them
died near a school.
In 2016, Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court, died unexpectedly at his
ranch. The absence of Antonin Scalia proved more
politically powerful than the presence of Antonin
Scalia, as politicians fought and lobbied over who
would get to fill his empty chair. During that time,
his empty chair cast many a vote. A popular slogan
at the time among the ironic internet sort: “Antonin
Scalia. Pro-life, died anyways.”
By the end of 2016, most of us had noticed
how many great people had died throughout the
year. Antonin Scalia was not included in many of
those conversations.
Nine hundred and sixty three people were
shot by police officers in the United States. Many
of them were African-American. Many of them
were mentally ill. In protest, activists marched on
highways. Many of them were arrested. Many of
them were criticized, threatened, and degraded for
making people late to work.
In 2016, several thousand (hundred?) of
my close friends made people late to work.
In 2016, David Bowie died. I don’t
remember how. It was after his death that I got to
know his music. This is because my dad put a David
Bowie CD in the car.
In 2016, I went to college. I started
growing out my hair and becoming a socialist. I met
a lot of people who had faith in the system. That
died in 2016 too.
In 2016, Fidel Castro died. It was said that
he had outlived his greatest enemy: America.
Fidel Castro’s country, Cuba, is still the
subject of a US embargo. It also is the country
that recently developed a vaccine for lung cancer.
The Lung Cancer Foundation estimated that one
hundred fifty-eight thousand and eighty people in
the US would die of lung cancer in 2016.
In 2016, six hundred thirty-three thousand,
eight hundred forty-two people died of heart disease
in the United States. The Mayo Clinic says that heart
disease is often “caused by correctable problems,
such as an unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, being
overweight and smoking”.
17
MURPHY SQUARE
In 2016, the fast food industry made
$206.3 billion dollars.
Alan Rickman, Harry Potter’s Snape, died
of pancreatic cancer. He had kept it a secret from
all but his closest friends. His good friend Sir Ian
McKellan had this to say: “I so wish he’d played
King Lear and a few other classical challenges but
that’s to be greedy. He leaves a multitude of fans and
friends, grateful and bereft.”
In 2016, I got into an argument with my
cousin on Facebook over a post that talked about
how the gun and the Bible, which ostensibly started
this country, were the things “liberals” wanted
to take away. This was before I learned the other
meaning of “liberal.” My tongue-in-cheek response
that “guns don’t found countries, Founding Fathers
found countries” turned into a useless slog of an
argument. My aunt ended up intervening to ask us
to debate on-topic.
Over thirty-eight thousand people were fatally shot
and killed in the United States. The Onion once
again ran their headline: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’
Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
In 2016, thirty-nine people died because
they jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge
is the site of the most suicides by fall in the United
States.
One man, Ken Baldwin, had survived
jumping off the bridge in 1985 and was still alive
in 2016. He related his thought process on the way
down in an interview: “I instantly realized that
everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable
was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”
In 2016, nobody was killed by a clown.
However, were you to ask people what the scariest
thing happening was, many would tell you that it
was the phenomenon of “scary clown” sightings
across the country.
In 2016, one such sighting happened at
Augsburg. It was later determined that the figure in
the “photographic evidence” was just a maintenance
worker standing in a shadow.
According to Business Insider, nine
hundred and fifty-one people died of “contact with
powered lawnmower.” One thousand, one hundred
thirty nine people died of “fall[s] involving iceskates, skis, roller-skates or skateboards.” Ten
thousand, two hundred and six died of “accidental
suffocation and strangulation in bed.” Another ten
thousand, three hundred eighty-six died of “fall[s]
involving bed.”
In 2016, the bedloft company left their
screwdriver in my room after coming by with some
extra screws for the bed’s assembly. My dad warned
me to periodically make sure all the bolts were tight
so the bed didn’t collapse under me while I slept.
The bed also featured a metal guardrail to prevent a
fall. Due to these two things, I did not join those ten
thousand, three hundred eighty-six.
In 2016, American astronaut John Glenn
died of unknown causes at 95 years old. He was
remembered for being the first American to orbit
18
ISSUE 43
the earth, as well as his work in the US Senate.
In 2016, the world had seven billion, six
hundred million people living in it. By December
of 2016, fifty eight million, six hundred eighty
thousand people had died, with about twentyone people dying every ten seconds. They died
of violence, of disease, of hunger, of preventable
causes, of cancer, of accidents, of old age, of
nothing at all. About one hundred and forty million
new people were born in 2016, ready to embark on
a new life’s journey.
Kurt Vonnegut had this to say to babies:
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the
summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet
and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a
hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know
of, babies— ”God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
19
MURPHY SQUARE
celebration #12
STEPHANIE FREY
found images and gouache paint
20
ISSUE 43
celebration #17
STEPHANIE FREY
found images and gouache paint
21
MURPHY SQUARE
A progressive discussion on equality,
government, bodily functions, UFOs
constitution
MATT PECKMAN
and who to call for
a good time is enumerated
Engman Prize winner
and signed on bathroom stall walls
by delegates opposing orders
from management: a decree taped
to the door typed Thank You
For Not Vandalizing
22
ISSUE 43
I hope they wind their way
to the silhouettes of mountains
faded like clouds of blue smoke
against easy skies.
I hope the chartreuse pines older than time
tower like brothers and shade your tired eyes.
the country roads that take
you home
RACHEL BROWN
Engman Prize winner
For Gary
Inspired by “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver
I hope, for once, the traek is easy.
You won’t need a pack this time,
that 50 pounds on your shoulders
to lug uphill the whole way.
No, just the clothes on your back are good.
I hope that the ancient rivers that have sung
since before anyone ever listened,
guide your steps across slick gray stones
and you look down to see
the scales of darting fish
flashing like memories against a sun
that never sinks.
I hope a warm breeze passes by on your way
carrying the thick scent of pine sap
to lay heavy on your tongue,
and I hope it tastes like home.
And when you rest your aching feet at the summit
I know the clouds will wrap around you
the way the red fox wraps her tail around her tiny
kits,
the way an old friend gently squeezes your shoulder
when he tells you how good it is to see you again,
because it’s been so long.
23
MURPHY SQUARE
beach day
GABRIEL BERGSTROM
35mm film camera
24
ISSUE 43
Nicked it—the deer
in early autumn darkness
on a long drive home. Damage
minor: Dented hood. Fear
sprayed along the driver’s side
of the white Focus.
Your relief at my safety
trumped the deer’s fate—
no longer second fiddle
to squirrels and red-throated
blackbirds that swoop at the car
between late-summer cornfields.
That deer—the white rump
in the light moving too slowly
even as I brake, veer toward
the ditch. The deer dies
or I do. Kill or be killed.
It hits me: This world
we live—and die—in.
I see it now: the fact
of nature, our nature,
visible—a Confederate
monument in a town
square, Mount Rushmore
on sacred ground.
It’s always been
this way—sudden death
looming on a highway
in unaccustomed
autumn dark,
so near home
and you.
a palpable hit
D. E. GREEN
25
MURPHY SQUARE
tomatoes
ALLISON USELMAN
Harry Cosgrove used to throw tomatoes out of his 5th
story apartment in The Village. He told me that he
did it because The Gaslight always made him take
home the uneaten tomatoes at the end of the night,
and he didn’t like to just throw food in the garbage,
but I never believed him. He always seemed to have
altogether too much fun speedballing the tomatoes
down to the sidewalk, especially late on Friday nights
when the club wouldn’t let him play.
He would call on Friday nights at least once
a month, and my roommate would throw up her
hands and groan and say, “Honestly, he has nothing
better to do?” But I always kind of liked the tomatoes.
Harry liked to spend his paychecks on gin and
wine, so there was a good chance that throwing the
tomatoes would turn into a game after a few hours.
Last Friday he called around eleven and
told me that the club had given him more tomatoes
than he could handle on his own and asked me to
come over. I took a single look at my roommate, who
sat on the cramped balcony in her bathrobe and night
cream, and told him that I would be over soon. She
didn’t ask where I was going when I knocked on the
glass to tell her goodbye, and she only rolled her eyes
and shifted in her chair.
The walk to Harry’s place was never all that
bad in the summer. The air would be cool enough
that you would have to wear a jacket, but never as
icy or biting as it was in the winter. During those
months I tried to take a taxi over, if only to save my
toes rather than my wallet. But no matter what the
season, no matter what the weather, a jacket was
always necessary in that 5th story apartment in The
Village.
Harry’s place was constantly drafty and
there was nothing that he could do about it, or so he
claimed. Knowing Harry, though, I always assumed
that he forgot to shut a window somewhere and just
didn’t want to admit to it. He was forgetful sometimes,
especially around the anniversary of his sister’s death.
The night that he called me, we sat in the kitchen,
both of us with a blanket around our shoulders trying
to keep warm even though it was late May. I was on
the kitchen counter, right next to the sink and the
empty cardboard box with the red sun painted on
the side that had once been filled with almost rotten
tomatoes. Harry stood by the table, leaning back on
the top, his palms flat against the water-stained wood.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Suzanne.
It’s been three years since she died, you know.”
His hair was growing long and was starting
to curl. When he looked down at his sock feet, his
26
ISSUE 43
hair bunched up at the top of his head and flopped
down in front of his face. His eyes seemed to not only
have sunken farther down than usual on his face, but
so had his cheek bones. Looking at them make me
want to poke his face, if only to made sure that all the
bones were still there.
I slid off of the counter and walked over to
the kitchen table. I had nothing to say, so I leaned
back on to the table with Harry and kicked off my
shoes, so we would match. He didn’t seem to notice
that I was even there next to him, though; he just
continued to look at his own feet, his blanket sagging
off of his shoulders and pooling at his elbows like
a shawl. I half expected him to look up and start
talking to the empty space next to the sink and the
abandoned cardboard box, not even noticing that I
was no longer there.
“Do you think she’s happy?”
“I sure hope so.”
I straightened his collar and brushed a
piece of lint off of his sleeve.
“Thank you.” He sounded tired. “That was
bothering me, but I was afraid that if I tried to fix it I
would fall over.”
I glanced down at his hands and noticed
that they were not just resting on the table, but rather
gripping the edge of it. His knuckles had turned
white, and his knees were shaking.
“Do you want to sit down? You don’t look so
good.”
I hadn’t meant for it to sound like an insult,
but at that moment I thought I saw the insides of his
eyebrows curl up into a whimper. He was too sensitive
sometimes.
“I feel fine. I really do, I just wish I had
more tomatoes, you know?”
Yes, I told him. Yes, I think that everyone
wishes they had more tomatoes, if only because that
meant they had everything else. I don’t think he heard
the last part of what I said. The confirmation that he
was not the only one in search of more tomatoes was
enough. Still, his hands gripped the edge of the table,
and so I reached out and pried them off. I didn’t like
the way that they looked, drained of all blood.
“Come on, why don’t you sit down.”
Harry moved his head up and down in a way
that might have been mistaken for a nod by someone
who didn’t know him well enough to know that that
was just the way he breathed; his head wobbling back
and forth as his lungs compressed and decompressed.
Sometimes I wanted to tap the back of his
head, just to see how long it would wobble back and
forth. I even had a stopwatch that I could have used.
Harry had given it to me, and was originally meant to
be used as a way for me to monitor the length of his
act when he played at The Gaslight. I usually forgot to
start it, which didn’t really matter because by the end
of the night Harry would be too busy fighting with
the club’s owner, to get his fair share of the basket, to
care about how long his gig had lasted.
I walked over to the bookshelf, that never
had any books on it, but that was instead the home
of a fine Victrola record player, the only thing Harry
valued more than his guitar. I lifted the needle up and
moved it over the top of the 45 that was already in
place on the turntable. The table started to spin, and
27
MURPHY SQUARE
a song with a tinny sounding guitar filled the room.
A woman began singing in French, her voice low and
the words slurred.
“Harry, you can’t listen to this type of music
when you feel this terrible. It’ll just make it worse.”
He only shrugged and made his way over to
the couch. The cushions pulled him in as if they had
been waiting for him a very long time. I hated to see
him so low, but I knew that there was nothing I could
say to make it better. The first year after Suzanne
died, someone had made the mistake of telling
him that her death was all part of God’s plan and
everything would one day make sense to him. Harry
had taken his drink and thrown it at the man, and
since then he has been banned from ever drinking
at The Gaslight. He’s only allowed to play there once
a month now. So I knew that saying anything at all
would equate to me telling Harry to take a flying leap
out of his apartment window, along with his almost
rotten tomatoes. I pulled the 45 off the turntable and
slid it back into its sleeve.
“Is there a window open somewhere?” I
shuddered and pulled the blanket tighter around my
shoulders. Harry wasn’t responsive, he only slightly
moved his eyes to look up at me and search for the
music that had stopped so suddenly. I thought about
putting something else on, but after glancing through
his melancholy record collection I thought better of
it. There was no use feeding into his sullen mood.
The only thing I could do then, was sit
down on the couch next to him and wait for it to pass.
Because it did. It always passed in the end, and the
next weekend he would be playing at The Gaslight,
telling jokes to the crowd between songs and basking
in the floodlights.
...
“I don’t know why I even bother to wear
this thing.” Harry hooks his fingers around the knot
of his tie and loosens it. “It’s not like anyone here
cares how I look.”
He moves his arm in a sweeping motion,
gesturing to the café and the ragged groups of people
sitting at the tables. I watch as Harry sits up and
reaches for the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table.
He shakes out a single cigarette and places it between
his teeth. He sighs and pulls his hair back out of his
face, exposing his forehead, which is covered in a thin
layer of sweat. He shrugs and turns to face the dimly
lit stage, the unlit cigarette wobbling in his mouth.
The woman on the stage wears a chunky green
sweater and a pair of blue jeans, and Harry taps his
foot along to the beat of the song that she sings. All
the tables near the stage are full, and the faces of the
people sitting at them are washed in the glow of the
floodlights.
The woman leans into the microphone as
she sings, her hands moving quickly up and down the
frets of her guitar.
“She’s pretty good, huh?”
I shrug and throw a pack of matches over
to Harry. He catches them midair. “She looks a little
like Suzanne, don’t you think?” I immediately regret
saying anything, but it’s too late now.
“Yeah I guess she does.” Harry brushes off
28
ISSUE 43
my comment, and doesn’t look at me while he speaks.
Instead he watches the woman on the stage sing.
“If I’m gonna have to split the basket, it
might as well be with someone who has some talent.”
He puts the unlit cigarette back into his mouth,
letting it perch between his teeth, resting on his
bottom lip. He shifts in his seat, readjusting his jeans,
and bobs his head along to the rhythmic strumming
of the green sweater-clad woman. I imagine that there
is a blanket on his shoulders again, sliding down to
his elbows and almost falling off as he bobs to the
music, but the air is too thick for blankets. There are
no windows here. Harry’s eyes jump from customer
to customer in the front of the club, and I can tell
he is assessing the crowd, attempting to get a grip
on what kind of music they want to hear tonight. My
stomach rumbles audibly, and he turns back to me
and laughs.
“You want something to eat? Why don’t you
eat while I play, and then we can see what Jean is
doing later?” I ask him who Jean is, and he motions
to the woman on the stage. I just nod, and I walk over
to the bar. When I look back at Harry, I notice that he
has finally lit his cigarette.
“Chicken sandwich,” I say, telling the
bartender my order, and turn to face the stage again.
The woman in the green sweater dips her head down
as the crowd claps, and the expression on her face is
passive as she exits the stage and passes Harry, who is
waiting at the steps.
“You want everything on it? Tomatoes too?”
I turn around to look at the man behind the bar. He
is raising his eyebrows at me, and for some reason
that I can’t explain, I don’t have an answer for him. I
glance back at the stage that Harry now occupies. He
is settling into his seat on the stool, hunched over his
guitar. But unlike the woman in the sweater, I can
see that below the curly hair that covers the top of his
face like a mop, he is smiling.
“No. No tomatoes.” The man behind the
bar writes my response on a small blue pad of paper
and nods. He walks away quietly, leaving me alone
to listen to the soft guitar sounds coming from the
stage, and my own beating heart.
29
MURPHY SQUARE
flower boy
AVA FOJTIK
digital photograph
30
ISSUE 43
illuminated
AVA FOJTIK
digital photograph
31
MURPHY SQUARE
32
ISSUE 43
cat’s cradle
AVA FOJTIK
digital photograph
pity party
AVA FOJTIK
digital photograph
33
MURPHY SQUARE
the library is closed now, and
dark
looking through its endless aisles
stretching nearly into infinity
one can barely make out where a great ape,
majestic, would swing between the
shelves
a closed library
KELTON HOLSEN
Engman Prize winner
(an elegy for terry pratchett)
once, this place was full of life,
and people came and went and words came and went
and the shelves really did stretch out to
infinity
but now i turn the corner
and encounter for the first time
a blank wall
the books are sparser here, tamer
less skittering metaphors, and the satire has less
bite
(when you get old they take away your teeth
or you forget them)
my hands brush the spines
slowly,
as the pages begin to unbind themselves, to settle
upon the floor;
a sea of lilac blossoms in the month of may.
i tuck one behind my ear; how do they rise up.
34
ISSUE 43
elizabeth, 1972
ALLISON USELMAN
charcoal and pencil
35
MURPHY SQUARE
Loneliness
Eats away at you until
there is nothing left but
Loneliness
loneliness
MARISA MOSQUEDA
36
ISSUE 43
ode to leonardo
SOPHIE KEEFE
There are some conversations that can only be held
late at night. During car rides through streets that
are so familiar you can navigate them with your eyes
closed, the rise and fall of the landscape and bumps
in the asphalt marking the strip mall with the Dollar
Tree and Chinese take-out chain, or the winding
parkway that loops around the lakes in a lazy curlicue.
When a dark, velvety blanket covers the world and
softens its edges. Something about the darkness
makes the apprehensions that live somewhere deep
within that twisted knot of uncertainty in the pit
of your stomach a bit easier to bring out through
your skin and into the open air. Or, at least into the
confined air of a moving vehicle. When my brother
is home from college for the summer, we go on these
car rides a lot. Everyone else in the house has settled
down to sleep, and for some reason our restlessness
seems synchronized. He’ll walk into my room, or I’ll
wander into his and within minutes the two of us are
padding across the back deck towards the garage,
a cool breeze gently diluting the day’s humidity.
Maybe these conversations also need to be had with
someone whose familiarity surpasses the surface
level knowledge of a childhood neighborhood. An
individual who knows your strengths and secrets and
holds them to be as sacred as their own. Sometimes,
I feel bad for people who don’t have a twin. The
entire time I’ve been on this earth (granted that time
has been relatively short), there’s existed someone
whose been figuring out life at exactly the same
pace. Someone to compare notes with, so to speak.
That isn’t to say the two of us are alike. Beyond
our profiles and shape of our noses, we’re about as
different as two people can be. He knows every word
to the musical Wicked’s soundtrack not by choice,
but because when we were ten I sang it around the
house every day for a year. When we were in sixth
grade, he forced me to play the board game Risk with
him, and halfway through I stormed out in tears,
frustrated that the tactics were too complicated for
me to understand, but he mastered immediately. In
another dimension, if we hadn’t shared a womb, who
knows if we even would have been friends? That’s
something I think about a lot; the universe granting
me a companion, tied by blood. Indirectly, he’s
always teaching me something about what it means
to be human. A reminder that even when it feels like
life is a series of benchmarks that we all check off
37
MURPHY SQUARE
until we eventually die; the spaces between those
benchmarks are filled with complexities. Triumphs
and mistakes, rash decisions and arguments, family
picnics, meals, jokes, lovers, tears, and joys that are
all unique to you; tailored by your personality, your
likes and dislikes, your heritage, your home. I share
most of the essentials with Leo. The smaller stuff is
perfectly, and beautifully his. I’m just the lucky one
who gets to go on the late-night car rides.
38
ISSUE 43
rhapsody on laurel
JACQUELINE DOCKA
Engman Prize winner
Laurel. Lauraceae. Laurus nobilis. Symbols of
victory. A symbol of status. Who’s the victor here?
Apollo’s pursuit, transfigured to a tree. Trapped
within an organic being, living on Laurel while
pursuing baccalaureate.
Lived near a church once. Never thought
she’d mind the bells. They say the building used to
house the nuns and priests. Condemned now. She
drives past and parks in the garage. Bong, bong,
bong. The bells sound in the background ringing
clearly. She thinks of the time she spent there and
how unhappy they were.
Hearing people screaming in the street.
The thrum of the city. A string pulled taut. Twang,
someone being shot. Ring ring ring goes the phone.
A tinny voice says, what’s your emergency. She’s
afraid there’s someone dying in their street. No cops
come. She bought them pepper spray the day after
the first night. Wondered if it would be enough,
hoped it would be enough.
The bells, the constantly ringingbooonnngg, booonnngg, booonnngg. Amazing she
could hear them over the traffic of the city. She could
be miles from home and still hear the clanging. Fear,
fear, constant fear. Waking up in the middle of the
night, heart pounding, wondering if someone’s gotten
into the apartment. Grabbing a metal nightstand
ready to bludgeon someone. No one there. Lay back
down. Try to sleep.
Someone wrote Hell in spray paint outside
the building. Trying to tell the world what this building
was—as if the residents weren’t aware. A home for
nuns and priests. Where only the condemned live
now. Home is where the heart is. Heart of the city.
Sacred heart, binded heart, wounded heart. Blood,
too much, blood. Don’t know if they survived that
night.
Show me someone who says they got no
baggage, I’ll show you somebody who’s got no story,
nothing gory means no glory, but baby please don’t
bore me.
Time creates distance. She still wakes up
feeling itchy. Thought it was a weird rash. Allergic to
something? They come out of the walls at night. Big
fat things feast on your blood. Caught them, put them
in a jar to show inspectors. They explain, she could
have gotten them anywhere. She wonders are they in
his pocket?
39
MURPHY SQUARE
They coped. Started a Death Count for
all the mice they killed—53. Shower turns off in
the middle. Covered with soap and no water. Kayla
rinsing her hair with the cold water from the fridge.
Happier now? Than then?
Moments of happiness even then. Photos
taken. Snap, click, shutter. Kayla standing in front
of the window holding Honey. Her favorite photo of
them. Hearing bands play at the Block Party coming
through their windows. Cuddling together on the
couch with every blanket they owned because the
heater randomly turned off. No working stove for
nine months, so much ramen, whistling locomotive
radiators when they did work. No, focusing on the
good there. So close to school, so close to work, so
close to everything. Their only option.
Perfect time to escape. She didn’t sleep
anyways. Kayla into movies and shows. Her into
books. All the reading she did in that house. Lying
awake reading. Hyper-vigilance. Might as well be
productive. Coming home to their door kicked in.
Had to go inside, every sense telling her to run. No
one there, they’d left. Cops only took two hours to
show. At least they showed. Trusted man helped nail
the door back together.
Oh girl, this boat is sinking, there’s no sea
left for me, and how the sky gets heavy, when you are
underneath it! Oh. I want to sail away from here. And
god, He came down, and said nothing.
As much as they could they lived at the
library, at school, at work. Spent as little time in
their home as possible. Running up and down those
breathless stairs. Them walking down Hennepin.
Whoooooshhh. A burst of wind. There goes the 4, 6,
12, on and on and on. They made it to air conditioned/
heated safety. Much nicer here. So quiet, no screams,
bathrooms that work.
Someone at the window of her car.
Booonnngg, booonnngg, taptaptap, booonnngg,
booonnngg.
-Are you okay?
-I’m fine, yes, fine. Thank you she says.
Back to the present, still staring at the building.
Everything is boarded up. Wonder if undesirables still
board there behind the boards. Looking at the top
floor, less boards, a sheet flutters behind a window. A
roof better shelter than the street.
In the end, they had to leave so much
behind. Pieces of their lives thrown away like trash. Her
grandmother’s rocking chair. Everything else in bags for
two years. Effugium, paululum effugiunt, fugit.
40
ISSUE 43
untitled
MADELEINE OSWOOD
pencil
41
MURPHY SQUARE
I consider myself
an environmentalist So
when the black bear
knocked I motioned
him in to the couch
tossed him a beer
In a Transatlantic accent
the leaded TV spoke charged
young names I asked him
his thoughts on mass
incarceration. He glugged
his beer An outside child
screamed over sidewalk
chalk I asked the bear
how to fix the school
system He growled facing D.C.
My stomach stormed
campaign rallies I stood
Have you come to figurehead a proletariat upheaval
of the bourgeois
class, who are profiteering off the land of bear and
human family alike?
The bear tilted to its side, pressing
his head into the couch arm.
I shouted What do you mean!
…in all this The bear shrugged
the icon
MATT PECKMAN
Engman Prize winner
42
ISSUE 43
a stable relationship
ASH M. KAUN
digital photograph
43
MURPHY SQUARE
the wreck
ALLISON USELMAN
Mick woke up drenched in sweat. His eyes were
squeezed shut, and he was afraid. Afraid that when
he opened them it would hurt, and afraid of what
he would see. He lay there for a moment in his bed
before he reached up and covered the top half of his
face with his hands. He then slowly opened his eyes.
He was wrong to be afraid; it didn’t hurt
and there was nothing to see. He rolled to his side
and looked to see his wife, Margo, sleeping. She was
facing away from his and he could not see her face.
Her left arm was draped casually over the side of the
bed, and all of a sudden Mick was overcome with the
urge to pull her arm back, to tuck it against her and
hide it under the covers. He leaned back against his
pillow and refrained, too afraid that he would wake
her. Instead he reached his hand delicately toward
her face. He brushed her cheek with his thumb,
hardly touching her skin at all, and felt how smooth
and dry it was. As he leaned back and touched his
hands to his own face, he noticed the dampness of his
skin. His hands shook as he removed them, scared of
the heat coming out of his own body.
I must have dreamt something, he thought,
something awful.
He got out of bed and moved to the
bathroom where he gingerly shut the door and
turned on the light only after it was closed. The bulb
above his head buzzed, struggling to light up the
small room. It would take a few minutes, but soon it
would be bright as the sun, and it would hurt to look
at. Mick pulled the faucet handle up halfway, and
dipped his hands under the cool running water. He
washed his face and dried it, laying the towel on the
countertop.
He was just about to leave with hopes of
returning to bed when he caught his own eye in
the mirror. For a moment he was unrecognizable.
His eyes were so cold. His hair was growing long,
longer than usual, and already curls were beginning
to form. His face looked worn and rough, like it had
been out in the sun a long time, but it was his mouth
that looked the strangest. His lips were parted and he
could see into his mouth, if only slightly. His teeth sat
just behind his lips, white and small. He had always
had straight teeth, not one out of place, but there
were three tiny gaps between his front teeth that were
only visible when he laughed a real honest laugh.
Most people didn’t notice, but Margo did. She would
44
ISSUE 43
sit with her legs crossed and her finger on his lip,
rubbing it back and forth ever so gently. And then
she would sigh. She would study his mouth and sigh.
He never could tell what the sigh meant, only that she
did it and probably didn’t even notice.
He ran his hand over his mouth, as if
wiping away a nonexistent stray piece of food. The
light bulb in the bathroom was burning, harsh
against the encompassing night outside, just before
he shut it off and walked back to the bedroom. He
couldn’t bring himself to lay down on the bed again,
the silk sheets were slippery and he hated them. He
hated the way he always felt as if he were going to
slip out of bed and fall to the floor, leaving him with
no choice but to remain there until morning when
Margo arose for work. So there he stood, hands at
his sides in the doorway. He took a look around the
room, scanning; the green comforter on the floor;
the water glasses cluttering his nightstand; the blue
gray haze that seemed to cover the room all the time,
even in daylight. His eyes fell onto Margo sleeping,
her arm was still draped over the side of the bed.
Mick shivered once before he turned on his heels and
walked out to the kitchen.
Outside the sky was still dark and the only
light that shone was from the neighbor’s garage
door. He could always see the light through the front
window, and it bothered him. The curtains weren’t
thick enough to hide the light completely, and they
instead turned it into a dull yellow glow. It made
him nervous the way that the light shone all night
long, with no real purpose. Sometimes he looked at
it and was filled with the deepest sense of loneliness,
a feeling he would never admit to anyone. Oh, I don’t
know, he imagined himself saying when asked about
it, it’s just, who would think to leave that light on all
night? Who are they leaving it on for? He walked past
the light and sat down at the table in the kitchen.
He blinked, and for that fraction of a second when
his eyes were closed, he remembered. He didn’t let
himself think of it often, but sometimes on nights
when he couldn’t sleep, he would allow the memory
to come to him. If only in hopes that sleep might
come.
It was almost a year ago, the end of summer,
and everything was hot. The air, the ground, the
inside of your throat. The air was thick and hot and
humid, and all too common for the end of August. It
was hard to breathe sometimes. He remembered that
he could barely get himself to breathe in the thick,
thick air.
It happened when he was driving home
along the highway, and he was all alone. For what
seemed like an eternity, there was a stretch of
road completely desolate, save for Mick’s own car.
Everything was melting into everything else, and the
heat wavered like ponds of water in front of him on
the road. It was hard for him to see clearly, and he
remembered rubbing at his eyes in hopes of focusing
them, but it was no use. The heat was just too much,
45
MURPHY SQUARE
and so he gave in and let them wander from one
melted tree to another as he drove.
He remembered the feeling of heaviness
that filled his limbs as he crossed through the back
roads of the town. It took most of his energy to
straighten out the wheel as it shifted and moved with
the bumps of the road. Margo never liked for him
to drive when he was tired, but she never offered to
drive him to or from work. He would have refused
if she had anyway, the desolate road calmed him.
Sometimes he liked to believe he was the only human
being left on the planet, and that there was nowhere
to go and nothing to do. It did not matter if he came
home immediately after punching out at work, or
if he meandered around the country side, looking
at old farm houses and pastures of cows that never
seemed to move. He felt finite, and it sobered him to
think of how disconnected he was to the rest of the
universe. It was only the thought of Margo that could
force him to turn right at the corner of Fair Oaks and
Maple, drive the truck all the way home, and park it
in the driveway.
But along with the heavy weight of reality,
he remembered feeling the instant moment of
lightness when he saw the man lying on the side of
the road. He couldn’t tell how old he was; he couldn’t
even see his face. But he could see his body and his
car and he could see that there was no one around
for miles and miles. He felt as if he were made of air,
as if he had become nothing. He didn’t exist in that
moment; in that summer heat he wasn’t real. There
he sat, in his car, clutching the steering wheel. He
held it so tightly that eventually his nails cut into his
palms. He blinked once at the pain and felt heavy
again.
He had not wanted to get out of the car,
even after he pulled over to the side of the road. He
did not want to open that car door and let in the air
of death and injury and pain. He did open the door
though, and walked across the road. Under his feet,
he could hear shards of glass crunching under all his
weight, under the pressure of his work boots. The
boy lying in the ditch was still, his limbs all calmly
in their places. He would have looked like he was
sleeping except for his right arm. It was stretched out
so that it was touching the edge of the pavement, his
fingers grasping at asphalt, and it was because of the
innocence of his position on the ground that Mick
decided he could not be more than seventeen years
old. His head was turned away from the main road,
resting in the grass and dirt of the highway ditch.
The corn fields behind him seemed to stretch off into
infinity, as if to say, this is where you are and this
is what has happened. The boy’s clothing was dirty
and frayed at the knees, a piece of material from his
shirt was torn away, nowhere to be seen. Shards of
glass from a car’s front window lay scattered in the
grass; they anointed the surrounding area with light,
refracted floating beams.
Mick had felt a small shard jab into his knee
46
ISSUE 43
as he knelt down. He remembered coming home that
night and the shard coming loose from where it had
become lodged on the knee of his pants, and Margo
picking it up off the floor asking, “What is this?”
He had snatched it away from her and pocketed it,
shaking his head and casting his eyes downward. He
told her he didn’t know, and that it was probably from
one of the cars down at the garage, “You know how
much of a mess that place is.”
Suddenly he was overcome with a wave of
panic as he realized he was the only one there. He
scanned the deserted stretch of highway, desperate to
see another living soul, but all he saw was the battered
shell of what once was a car and the blindingly
reflective glass scattered in the grass. No one else was
there to see what he was seeing and he felt completely
alone. He would have stayed frozen in his panic if
not for the boy turning his head slightly and uttering
the words “Mister, would you help me?” His cheeks
were still slightly padded with baby fat and his eyes
were soft. Round and naive. Even his shoes looked
like the shoes of a youth, the laces thick and easy to
tie. The afternoon sun washed gold over the scene,
and it made the boy beautiful.
It hurt to look at him, and Mick had to
turn away. He did not want to look at the young boy’s
glowing face; it hurt his eyes to look at him lying in
the grass with such a gruesome backdrop of a scene
behind him.
Mick stood up and walked back to his truck,
he felt as if his knees were made of jelly and his feet
of lead. Each step was a struggle between balance
and movement. He fumbled his hands around
underneath the steering wheel for a minute as he
struggled to find the ignition. When he finally got it
started, the truck sputtered as he keeled away from
the highway shoulder. If he had looked behind him,
or even glanced in the rear view mirror, he would
have seen the cloud of dust that had formed, like a
bomb, behind him.
He drove back into town in a trance to call
for an ambulance from a pay phone. He remembered
how cold the phone was against his skin, and how
the cord repeatedly hit his arm as he hit the switchhook over and over, not sure if he had hit it ten times
or not. When he thought back to this moment he
couldn’t even recall the sound of his own voice when
he asked for the operator, though he must have said
something as he remembered the voice of a woman
speaking to him through the receiver, asking him
where she should send the ambulance. Once he had
finished with the phone he steadied himself on the
booth’s walls. The receiver hung down off of the
hook, its cord almost reaching clear down to the floor,
and Mick just watched as it bobbed there.
When he stood up straight and left the
booth, he glanced back at where he had leaned
against it. There was a mark of condensation on the
glass, and as he lifted up his hands to look at them,
he noticed for the first time how sweaty they were.
Trying not to think about it, he walked back to the
truck and drove back the way he had come. Mick was
47
MURPHY SQUARE
there when the ambulance came and took the boy
away. He came upon the scene as he was on his way
home again. He slowed down and pulled to the side
of the road, just a few feet away from where he had
parked only a half hour ago. He saw the boy close his
eyes as they pushed him into the back of the vehicle.
He imagined that being the last time that he closed
his eyes, and imagined that he was the last person to
look at them, the soft naive eyes of a child.
Mick had no way of knowing what happened
to the boy afterward, but he did know that the whole
time he was driving he was thinking about the boy’s
fingers. There they had been, just splayed against
the road. The nails slightly dirty, the tips clawing at
the pavement. He imagined what would happen if
someone had driven by and run them over, crushing
them, leaving nothing but a red stain.
across the carpeting, from the curtain hanging on the
window.
When he reached the bedroom door he
stood there leaning against the frame. Margo was
sound asleep, and everything was still. He could
make out the shape of her legs underneath the
blanket; they were curled like a baby’s, and her arm
was tucked up to her chin, squishing her cheek a bit.
Her other arm was still carelessly flung over the side
of the bed. Mick’s heart jumped a little at the sight of
it, and he was sure he would wake her with his jumpy
heart. She didn’t stir a bit as he slid back into his
spot on the bed, his pillow slightly damp under his
head. She didn’t even stir as he reached and pulled
her arm back towards her body, and tucked it in with
the covers.
Now, he sat up from his hunched position
on the kitchen chair. His legs had red marks from
where his elbows rested, and he felt a pain in his neck
as he straightened himself. But he also felt relief. The
tense, shaky feeling he had awoken with was now
gone, almost no trace left behind. He stood up and
shuffled back through the living room, passing the
front window and the light that never seemed to quit
burning. The street looked lonely in the darkened
night, the street lamp was not lit, and the only light
continued to come from the garage across the street.
Mick averted his eyes as he passed by the window, but
on the floor he could still see beams of light, refracted
48
ISSUE 43
The potted green plant
on the steps
that lead to my front door
had sunk into itself
slumped as if a grieved
old woman
having seen
too much.
old hands
RACHEL BROWN
Engman Prize winner
Its leaves
squeezed
together
into blotchy purple fists
collapsed
fell
scratched softly
against the dry concrete.
49
MURPHY SQUARE
prayer
CAMERON YANG
digital photograph
50
ISSUE 43
The metal rings wrapped around their clenched
hands
And they gave each other a promise of eternity.
They stared at one another, playing chicken as to who
would look away first,
A passion too potent to be done justice with language
alone
Sparking and exploding almost unstably in their eyes,
Like a fork in the microwave.
metal rings
HALLE CHAMBERS
Engman Prize honorable mention
A flipper’s house, soon to be their home,
Fragrantly fresh with the fumes from cleaning
chemicals.
A flower plot out front with the potential to be a
prizewinner.
Crickets and cicadas serenading them with a late
summer love song.
The porch light flickering along with its celestial
siblings
As the bridegroom bore his newlywed better half
through the doorframe.
They started their lives together as couples their age
do:
With lazy kisses across the kitchen island at Sunday
morning breakfast,
And shaking bedsprings and screaming on late Friday
nights,
And the air noise congested with the never-ending,
“I Love You”s
But as all such sugar sweet things do,
It melted with heat and time.
51
MURPHY SQUARE
They started their fights together as couples their age
do:
With passive aggressive subtleties across the kitchen
island at Sunday morning breakfast,
And shaking walls and screaming on late Friday
nights,
And the air tense and silent with the never spoken,
“I Hate You”s
But as all such souring bitter things do,
It only fermented further with time.
They tramped through the neglected front yard
foliage, its aroma
Easily overpowered by the spoiled stench spewing
from the now deserted dwelling.
The celestial spotlights couldn’t be seen
Past the scarlet and cerulean strobe lights.
The droning ditch crickets and summer cicadas
Were drowned out by the blaring sirens
And the shrieking
From the swearing ex-sweethearts,
Who only went silent when they were crammed into
the cruiser,
Squashed into the sticky back bench seats,
Each separated from the other offender and the
officers
By a solid, yet see-through safety screen.
She wanted to go to therapy,
But he didn’t.
He wanted to divorce,
But she didn’t.
They thought a baby would fix the rift,
But it didn’t.
The cops came one night, called on a noise complaint
To the house, not a home at all, in shambles.
Baby screeching in the bassinet,
Starving in a soiled diaper.
Parents screeching in the bedroom,
Too preoccupied with themselves to notice.
They stared at one another, playing chicken as to who
would look away first,
A passion too potent to be done justice with language
alone
Sparking and exploding almost unstably in their eyes,
Like a fork in the microwave.
And they hated each other for a promise of eternity,
The metal rings wrapped around their clenched
hands.
It ended in a newspaper tragedy:
Baby taken by foster care
To find its first stable home.
Parents arrested for disturbing the peace and child
neglect,
Neither caring enough to think past the loathing
burning like acid through their brains,
Still cussing and fussing all the way to the squad car.
52
ISSUE 43
penitence
SAM
Lust
I lie on the floor and pound my head
Against all the shame I find in my bed
Greed
I got a little bit, then a little bit more
Nothing will stop this material whore
Pride
Pride can be a hard pill to swallow
If not you’ll be left empty and hollow
Envy
What you have will soon be mine
Killing with kindness takes a little time
Gluttony
You can see it is evident
All you want is decadent
53
Wrath
Bright red boiling blood
Intensely like a familiar flood
Sloth
I am entitled, I’ll show you how
Just not right now
MURPHY SQUARE
forest
ALLISON USELMAN
copper plate etching
54
ISSUE 43
In the green light of this summer afternoon
the orange demon seems so far away.
The breeze raises and ruffles the leaves.
There’s the distant beep of a truck backing up.
green and orange:
a pantoum
D. E. GREEN
The orange demon seems so far away,
though I know he’s lurking in the living room.
The distant beeping of a truck backing up—
it makes me wish that accidents would happen
to the evil lurking in our minds and living rooms,
occupying all our screens and our consciousness.
It makes me wish that accidents would happen
to the one crafting all the plans to do us in.
Forget the myriad screens and false consciousness.
Feel the breeze raising and ruffling the leaves.
Forget the orange demon crafting plans to do us in.
Absorb the green light of this summer afternoon.
55
MURPHY SQUARE
celebration #1
STEPHANIE FREY
found images and gouache paint
56
ISSUE 43
You are ember-hot, reflecting wishes and
A pictured anomaly, protecting visions and
A single moment, mental kisses and
You’re set on course, the steering wheel is locked and
I’m flagging you down by the ditch’s water
and
There’s something pretty about the laughter and
Your wings are red and slowly fading and
I know that hope is overrated and
A memory is not a painting and
When shooting stars burn in the sky
It paints a picture of us both
And if there’s anything I know
It’s that this is not the end
firebird
ALICE LIDDELL CHESHIRE WOLFF
57
MURPHY SQUARE
special agent dale cooper
MADELEINE OSWOOD
digital painting
58
ISSUE 43
stretched out for days, you’re a yellow brick road
a mirage-like shimmer, for dreamers bestowed
on towards the upwards and outwards unknown
drawn to your allure we always will go
12 west
L. B. DOGOOD
with you, i’m always a few steps behind,
full of adventure, with nothing but time
turning your corners, we’ll start to unwind
and where we end up is always inside
we’ve been in swamps (water pumped over feet)
we’ve found small bones (broken down and petite)
we’ve tripped galactic (fear of cosmic defeat)
and we’ve explored houses (then, rapid retreat)
we’ve climbed up bridges (the worst path, the best)
we’ve discovered artifacts (deep in my chest)
we’ve scaled mountains (high up where birds nest)
and we’ve walked on water (messiah’s old test)
and then in the end when we’re left with our tale,
some photos, a heartbeat and dirt under nail
i’ll still speak these words because you never fail
for you, 12 west, are a life changing trail
59
MURPHY SQUARE
basilica
ABIGAIL TETZLAFF
35mm film camera
60
ISSUE 43
miikawaadendan
(think it beautiful)
ASHLEY MURRAY
Engman Prize honorable mention
Deep green, mitig is swaying around niin
Inwewin I want gikendan. bizindan.
Nisidotan. Understand who is speaking.
A voice, baswewe off canyon walls.
Vibrating the air around me.
engulfed in the jiibay
(a tree)/(me)
(a language)/(know it)/(listen to it)
(understand it)
(it echoes)
(spirit/ghost)
Know what they know.
Feel what they feel.
Speak how they speak
Miikawaadendan
(Think it Beautiful)
61
MURPHY SQUARE
untitled
MADELEINE OSWOOD
pencil
62
ISSUE 43
untitled
MADELEINE OSWOOD
pencil
63
MURPHY SQUARE
infinite
DEREK L.H.
Tomorrow is my last day. I wish I could fall asleep, but
my heart can’t stop pounding. However, my analytics
tell me that this is a common phenomenon for people
undergoing the digitization procedure…Eesh. It’s
hard to believe that I’m already getting used to saying
stuff that way.
Digitization, or the Infinity procedure as
some people refer to it, has become more common
over the last ten years or so. A few years before the
Infinity procedure existed, there was a discovery
that there wasn’t an afterlife. No heaven, no hell,
no God, just nothing. I wasn’t raised religious, so I
wasn’t personally impacted that much, but this was a
huge deal to a lot of people at the time. Most religious
people were in total denial, and many disregarded the
science behind the discovery merely on the grounds
of their religious beliefs. So, since there wasn’t an
afterlife, humanity decided to make its own. That’s
when the Infinity procedures became a thing.
People became digitized before their deaths — they
became AIs that both represented the life they lived
as a person, as well as functioning as an AI to serve
society in a way that they couldn’t as a human.
I’ve done some research on what it’s like to become an
AI, and it seems lovely. It’s painless, and you instantly
become more knowledgeable about so much. You
gain access to way more information than a human
could cram into their brain. Becoming an AI seems
like becoming perfection to me. I can’t wait to become
one. Originally, they only digitized people that had
terminal illnesses. Cancer and stuff like that. After
a few years, though, they had made it so that more
and more medical conditions could allow a person to
become digitized. And then mandatory digitization
replaced the death penalty the year after. And then
just about any adult could sign up to undergo the
procedure. It makes sense if you think about it. After
you transition into an AI, sure, your human body’s
dead, but you’re still a member of society — just in a
different way. Well, it makes enough sense to me, and
that’s all that really matters.
I’ve been staring at the ceiling of my
bedroom for a while now, hoping to the non-existent
heavens that my heart will slow and I can actually
fucking think about something else. I’ve just been
lying atop my bed, snuggling in the warm, hand-knit
blankets I made when I was a kid, staring at space for
I don’t know how long. Well. Actually, I do. Twenty-
64
ISSUE 43
nine minutes and seven point two seconds, but who’s
counting, really?
I turn my head to the table across from
my bed. My phone lit up, as it usually does once it’s
fully charged. There’s some other notifications on it.
While I was able to assess what it was before even
getting up, I think the old me, however much of the
human me was left, still wanted to check it. Besides,
it’s not like I’ll have many more chances to check a
personal device like this, so a fallacy in my logic via
emotional override is excusable in this instance. Gah.
There I go again.
I quickly walk over to my phone. The
notifications on it read:
“Charge complete.”
“Missed Call: Mom (20), Dad (11), Andrea (6)…
“23 New Messages: Andrea, Dad, Mom, Lea…”
Perhaps in a momentary splurge of
unnecessary emotionality, I unlocked the phone and
looked at the newest message. It was from Andrea,
reading “Why the fuck are you doing this?? Call
me, Mom, or someone NOW, Ellie! You know you
shouldn’t do this.”
What emotional language. It’s quite elementary in its
efficiency and effectivity in persuasion. Andrea was
never an eloquent individual, so perhaps I should
use lower parameters for expectations on persuasion
for her, specifically. However, this message is simply
ineffective and clearly should have undergone
significant revision.
…And there I go, once more. My head’s
starting to ache. I should sit down. Anyway. These
changes in my thought and speech patterns used to
only happen one or two times a day if I got lucky, and
now it just happens without me thinking about it.
But yeah, Andrea was never good at voicing
how she felt. In many ways, she was the model
older sister when growing up. Got good grades, was
crazy pretty, athletic, had tons of friends, lived a
satisfactory, if unremarkable, life. I certainly looked
up to her when I was a kid, but everyone in my family
knew she was poor at being logical about things. She
always let emotions be the deciding factor on just
about every decision she made, big or small. I was still
in high school when she dropped out of college. She
was living in an apartment with her boyfriend at the
time. They were both cheating on each other. When
they both found out the other was cheating, they got
into a big fight. She didn’t get hit or anything like
that, as far as I know. Though, they ended up saying
hurtful things to each other. Again, as far as I know.
Andrea didn’t really know what to do with
herself afterward. This was her first breakup, so I guess
she didn’t really know how to cope. Well, yeah. Clearly,
she didn’t. She started drinking, had one-night stands
pretty regularly for a while and experimented with
taking different kinds of drugs. Which kinds, I don’t
know. And really, I don’t care. Yeah, I understand
some may consider it to be a blasphemous position
for a younger sister to take, but…I just thought it was
dumb. She did anything that could help make her feel
better. Eventually, she dropped out of college, moved
65
MURPHY SQUARE
back in with my parents, and went into rehab a few
weeks after. Even though that was all a few years ago,
she’s still considered emotionally unstable. Having
so much of your life get fucked up because of how
you feel sounds…so tragic to me. So many people go
about their lives, trying to make themselves feel good
through whatever means, even if it ends up hurting
other people. I don’t know, something about that
really sickens me. My sister and people like her sicken
me. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve decided to get
digitized. I don’t want to be a slave of emotion. I don’t
want to be like my sister.
Emotions are just an obstacle for people,
as far as I can tell. Ever since I had started taking
Infinticilia two months ago,—that’s the drug that
preps my brain for becoming an AI—this became
only clearer. I had noticed more and more that many
people were objectively poor at communicating how
they felt to others. My family was specifically belowaverage at it. Their phone calls and messages to
me over the last two months have all been poorly
constructed, only using rather melodramatic and/or
anecdotal rationales in arguments as to why I should
terminate both my use of Infinticilia and my Infinity
procedure. Perhaps more intelligently constructed
and presented rationales could have influenced my
decision. But alas, it is too late for them now. They
had their chance to persuade me to stay alive as a
person, and they failed to do so.
After sitting for a while, I grabbed my
phone and set it back onto the table. My headache
had only gotten worse. Fuck. I had gotten used to
the migraines, the most common side-effect of the
Infinticilia, over the last few months, but I haven’t
gotten any in a few weeks now. I certainly didn’t want
to deal with a migraine tomorrow. Best to deal with it
tonight.
I walked into the bathroom across the hall.
Perhaps walking was an ill-calculated decision. I
quickly took one of the few supplements left for this
kind of instance. It will make me somewhat revert
back to my more human self to alleviate the migraine.
After a while, I should go back to being fully prepared
to make the transition tomorrow morning.
I could feel my thoughts beginning to revert
back to those that were common for my previous self.
I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to get some fresh air.
I quickly slid open the door in my kitchen, out onto
the porch of my apartment.
It was certainly a November night in Also.
The brisk, cool wind stroked my warm skin as I
stepped outside. Also is a small town in upstate New
York that I moved to about a year ago now. The town
has a population of only a few hundred people. Living
in Also was the closest I ever got to enjoying where I
was in life. I grew up in Buffalo, where my parents
and Andrea still live, and I hated every second of
living there. When you see hundreds of people on a
daily basis, you’re bound to come across people that
you can’t fucking stand. I guess I was always that kid.
The one who didn’t want to be part of anything. The
one that quietly judged everyone else.
66
ISSUE 43
I’ve always assumed that people think
of me as an uninteresting person. I have no tragic
backstory that would make anyone sympathize with
me. Nothing very significant has happened in my
twenty-six years of life that would make people get
attached to me, and that’s fine. Not everyone is meant
to be interesting, and I just happen to be one of those
people. Life has just always sort of happened around
me. I was never bullied or harassed or anything. Just
ignored. And in this day and age, no one really cares
if you’re ignored. And again, that’s fine. To me, it
just…got tiring after a while.
I remember the night I decided to undergo
the Infinity procedure. It was three months ago. I was
stopping by my parents’ house to grab some mail that
was still getting delivered to their house for whatever
reason, and they invited me to dinner. I really didn’t
want to stay, but Dad made lasagna, and I’d have felt
bad if I turned down his cooking. He’d have taken it
personally if I had.
He is a music instructor, and the only real
interesting parts of his life were his anecdotes about
the students of his private lesson classes. Well, at least
they would be interesting if he ever shut up about
them.
“So I was giving a lesson this afternoon
with a student I’ve had for a few years now, right” he
started, “And he starts telling me about how he’s not
going to take lessons anymore because he plans on
doing that digitization thing. How sad is that? I can’t
believe so many people throw away their life like that.
I always thought he was better than that, too.”
We were all sitting around the dinner table,
eating slightly undercooked lasagna as he said this. I
stopped eating for a moment. “Isn’t that a bit harsh?”
I asked. “I mean, did he tell you about why he was
doing it?”
Dad exhaled loudly, glaring at me before he
said anything. “Uh, well, no, he didn’t. It’s just the
concept of someone turning themselves into an AI
that’s so sad to me. I mean, people just end their lives
to do it, and—”
“Technically, your life doesn’t really end
when you get digitized,” I said. “Your life just becomes
different. Instead of being a person only capable of
finite things, being an AI gives you the ability to do
an infinite number of things. Isn’t that right?”
“Well, I don’t know what happens to people
after they undergo the procedure. I know they
supposedly become sources of information and get
programmed into databases and all that. But what if
that’s bullshit? What if that’s just a lie?”
“What if it’s just the surface? What if there’s
so much more to being an AI?”
Mom butted into the conversation. At least,
she tried to. “Ellie, James, can we please save this
discussion for later—”
“Ellie, it, uh, sounds to me like you’re
defending people who become AI…”
“Well…it’s starting to make more sense to
me is all…”
The tinkling of silverware hitting dinner
67
MURPHY SQUARE
plates was the only sound for a moment. “Well, if you
ask me, the people that get digitized are just quitters.
People that are too scared to deal with reality.”
Mom started to ask, “James, don’t you think—”
“Think what?” He yelled. “That I’m being too
harsh or some shit? Why doesn’t anyone here try to
understand where I’m coming from?”
“I-I-I-I’m sorry, James,” Mom anxiously
stuttered. “Uh, anyone want more lasagna?”
No one answered. The tinkles of silverware
turned into clanks.
I had grown tired of the topic of digitization
that night. The rest of dinner was quiet and awkward.
As I drove back to my apartment later that night, I
found myself so frustrated. Dad was doing that thing
I hate where he keeps interrupting Mom from getting
her word in. And he always thinks his opinion is
more valid than others, and gets all defensive when
people disagree with him. Dad is too rigid, and Mom
is too delicate. She has always been too polite for her
own good. She tries so hard to be so respectful to
everyone’s feelings that she keeps a lot of things to
herself.
It was moments like then that made me glad
that I had moved out of that house long ago. Mom,
Dad, and Andrea were all people that managed their
feelings in a way that always frustrated me. They
always brought their emotions into conversations
where they weren’t needed. I eventually just got sick
of it all.
That’s the thing: emotions—they just cripple
you. They cripple and destroy you like hot coffee
seeping through paper. Emotions impact how you
decide on things, or how you interact with others,
or even who you interact with. They take control of
you and become you. That night, I realized that I no
longer wanted to live a life where emotions hijacked
everything. I just wanted to be free of it all. And that
was when I realized that the only way to be free of
emotions once and for all was to undergo the Infinity
procedure.
Looking up at the night sky reminds me
of how small this life was. People are so tiny if you
think about it. After I enter my new life as an AI,
maybe I’ll serve a bigger role. Or maybe I won’t. All
I know is that I’m ready to begin my new life as an
AI tomorrow. The late autumn wind made my skin
hollow, so I walked back inside my apartment, sliding
the door shut.
The migraine had mostly faded at this
point. I could feel the supplement starting to wear
off. My appointment was in the morning, and I was
still anxious about it. Even to the end, I guess I’m
still no exception to being controlled by emotions
sometimes. Despite the anxiety and nervousness, I
tried to get some sleep.
I opened my eyes, and looked at the alarm
beside my bed. 8:00 A.M. Satisfactory. I stood up and
quickly calculated what I needed to do before heading
out. It would be unnecessary to prepare myself
aesthetically, given the circumstances. Therefore, I
deduced a quick checklist of necessary requirements
68
ISSUE 43
before retiring from my apartment.
This checklist mainly consisted of
preparing the apartment to be in near-mint condition.
Naturally, I had set up many things in relation to
the procedure in advance. Among them included
writing a will to allocate all my existing assets after
I become digitized. The agent that I corresponded
with to prepare for the procedure assisted me with
the logistics of digitization. Everything was set. All
that awaited was heading out to the hospital to check
in and undergo the procedure. However, as I began
preparing to leave, I heard knocks at the front door. I
opened it.
It was Mom, Dad, and Andrea. Their eyes
glimmered of desperation. They appeared to be
teeming with toxic emotion, typical as ever of them.
They exemplified signs of looking distressed due to
the wrinkles on their faces.
Andrea stepped forward, tears coming from
her eyes. “I can’t believe you’re doing this! What the
hell is wrong with you?”
Dad also stepped towards me. “Ellie, you
can’t do this. I…I can’t let you go.”
I scoffed. “Your concern is understandable
given the circumstances, but I’m afraid that your
attempt at preserving my human self will end
unsatisfactorily for you. My decision is set in stone.
It’s been two months. If you were capable of coercing
me out of undergoing the Infinity procedure, you
would already have succeeded in doing so.”
Silence for a moment. Andrea still had tears
in her eyes. “Who…who are you? Whoever you are,
you’re not my sister anymore.”
Andrea’s use of melodramatic language
was as ineffective as ever. “Andrea, Mom, Dad…I’m
becoming digitized. This life is no longer optimal for
me. It really never has been optimal.”
Mom, who had been notably quiet and
reserved, finally spoke up. “Is that you saying that?
Or the drugs that they put you on?”
“It’s likely both, Mom,” I said. “This is what
I want. I’ll still live. Just…in a different way than you.
It’s always been like that, if you think about it.”
Their eyes of emotion remained lucid. They
appeared frustrated, disappointed, maybe even in
denial. But their refusal of my resolve was practically
insulting.
Andrea looked down to her small feet. “Can
we at least…go with you?”
...
The Digitization Department was
surprisingly small at the hospital I went to. At least,
it surprised me the first time I went. Digitization
was becoming more and more common every year.
Most hospitals and even some clinics offer Infinity
procedures. Regardless, everything was set and
ready to begin at 10:30 A.M. It was clear that my
family didn’t want to be there. Their emotional eyes
remained ever-present on their faces.
We were all sitting in a waiting room
69
MURPHY SQUARE
designated for people undergoing the Infinity
procedure. There were two other families in there
with us. I couldn’t hear their words, but the tones
of their voices were also full of emotion. It’s quite
inadequate that the experience of having emotions
isn’t a unique one. Ultimately, how anyone feels right
now has been felt by someone somewhere sometime
before. I’ve heard of people finding beauty in that—
that it’s amazing how we can find other people that
have felt the same as we have. But beauty is just an
emotional construct. Beauty doesn’t actually exist.
People just convince themselves that it does. It’s just
another example of emotions blinding people.
However, while thinking upon this subject,
my mind briefly reverted to memories between
Andrea and myself. Growing up, Andrea would often
talk to me about societal perceptions of beauty. She
was always fascinated by that kind of stuff—history,
how people relate to each other, all that junk. She
talked about it with me for hours so many times when
we were growing up. She loved talking about anything
that had to do with how people treated each other
throughout history. Dad would never shy at jumping
into the conversations between Andrea and I, always
adding theories, facts, and statistics that may or may
not have been relevant to what we were talking about.
Mom would always listen in on our conversations
and ask questions, always fascinated by what we were
discussing. I’m really going to miss them.
...
I mean. Um. It’s 10:30. I should go.
Dr. Carlisle, the doctor that I had talked
before about the Infinity procedure walked into the
waiting room. “Elizabeth Hensley…are you ready?”
I stand up and nod. Dr. Carlisle continued.
“I’m sorry, we can’t have family go into the
Digitization Room. I’ll…give you a second to make
your goodbyes. Come on in once you’re ready.” She
stood by the door. I turned around to face my family.
They all looked at me quietly. Unlike before,
their eyes weren’t filled with emotion. They were…
empty. Hopeless. I didn’t really know what to say to
them. I turned towards the door, facing away from
them.
“Um…thanks for coming. It…means a lot.”
Without looking back, I walked towards the door.
...
There it is. The Infinity: the machine
that digitizes people into AI. It looked like an MRI
scanner. The room was entirely white and lifeless. No
one except myself and Dr. Carlisle were in the room.
The next few moments were a blur. I got
into the Infinity. This is what the last two months
have been leading up to. It almost didn’t feel real.
Like I was dreaming. Like all of this was fantasy. But
I laid there, on the machine that would digitize my
body, birthing me into my new life as an AI.
Soon enough, the machine began moving
into the Infinity very slowly. Maybe only a few
70
ISSUE 43
centimeters per second. But this was it. I had seen
everything and everyone I would ever see outside of
this room for the last time. It…didn’t really hit me
until then. The memories I had with everyone…with
my family… All of those memories were moments
from evaporating. They would be gone forever. Or
maybe I’d still remember them after I became an AI,
or…I don’t know.
I…I just don’t know. I wanted so hard to
be free of emotion. It’s why I wanted to go through
with this. And yet, I find myself leaving this world
feeling unlike how I’ve ever felt before. I was filled
with emotion. Filled with fear. Most of my body was
now inside the Infinity. Seconds of life as I knew it
were left.
Was this a mistake? Was this a good idea
after all? Am I doing this for the right reasons? What
are the right reasons? What are the wrong reasons?
What have I done? What have I done? What have I
done?
The last of my body entered into the
Infinity, at last. Tears began trickling down my face.
For the first time in I don’t know how long, I cried.
I cried.
The machine made a loud noise and my
legs began to feel weightless. Everything began to feel
weightless. The last sound I would make as a human
was a laugh. A laugh at the thought of me leaving my
human life just as I entered it: crying, powerless, and
teeming with emotion.
71
MURPHY SQUARE
celebration #5
STEPHANIE FREY
found images and gouache paint
72
ISSUE 43
words like radiation
ringing out, observed by those
not worth speaking to;
52 hz
L. B. DOGOOD
i wish
you
could hear me
smooth like the ocean
ridges of mollusks and sand
for your skin
for your skin,
they’ll never understand why
we rot away into filaments
they call it fur and a mystery
but only we know that we’re fibrous
creatures made of sinew and bones
but you can’t
even
hear
me
even you,
ones with bodies bigger than earth
lives longer than time
sing too low
sing too low for
a connection,
i hear you calling out and i can’t understand
why my words don’t reach you,
‘is there anybody like me?
is there anybody like me?
is there anybody like me?’
73
MURPHY SQUARE
When I’m driving on the highway, the destination
doesn’t matter, I’m usually in the passenger seat
because piloting tons of crashing metal makes my
throat close up, so I can look out the window as we
drive and watch the road going by, and
roadkill
ALICE LIDDELL CHESHIRE WOLFF
Sometimes I see the dead animals, birds or raccoons
or squirrels or sometimes deer, and sometimes their
bodies are intact and they’re lying off to the side and
I think why don’t they just get back up? They look
perfectly fine to me, but their eyes are being eaten by
ants and it’s only from a distance that they look more
alive than I feel, but other times
They’re crushed and smeared into the pavement by
endless tires, fur and feathers and life turned into a
bright red stain, a gore bouquet that seems scattered
everywhere, and I wonder how all that meat fit inside
their fragile little bodies, running and jumping and
sniffing their way through life until they’re pulverized
by people on their way to work, and
It makes my stomach churn but I always look as the
car drives past and if I were walking I might stop
and study the remains for any clues, wondering who
they were and why this happened, wondering what it
felt like, can they still feel, their nervous system still
ticking out information across their bodies, spread
like jam on concrete, or maybe their spirits still
linger, breathing in the exhaust fumes as they howl
silently as a warning to stay away, and
They enter my dreams, messiahs covered with flies,
74
ISSUE 43
fearless crows poking stigmata into their stomachs,
looking at me with lustful eyes and directing me into
the forest, where there are no cars and humans are
just a memory and the evergreens loom all around
like a silent jury surrounded by tears and
The wave drowns animals and trees alike, until all is
washed away and the ground is meat, and the meat
is concrete, and the remnants of the living are baked
into a gray shell that stretches on for miles and miles
and miles and I’m back in the car, we’ve arrived, and
I look over my shoulder as I step out onto the stone
floor of the city, wondering where my body ends and
the roadside bodies begin.
I walk down a path and mice scuttle out of the woods
with legs like spinning wheels, crawling up my boots
and under my shirt, surrounding me with the mass
of their bodies like a second skin before pulling back,
a wave of life breaking against me and churning out
whispers into the forest, letting the world know that I
do not belong here, and the woods
Part before me, and looking through the tree line I see
animals gathered on the shore of a lake, a parade of
silent stares, eyes glinting in the bloody horizon glare,
rabbits emptied from their warrens and raccoons
crawled back from city suburbs, opossums with nail
teeth and fawns without mothers, a bear grown stick
thin and desperate from too many winters, its bones
strained to the breaking point as it opens its mouth to
show a gummed expanse of night, and as it stretches
out a rasping tongue into the rippling air
I see the lake rise up in a tidal wave, becoming the
sky as it crests, drowning the world with shadow, and
in the fading light I see it is not water, it is an ocean
of meat that plunges down, crushing and mauling the
forest and I can feel my body as it is pulled apart,
popped like an old balloon, and as my guts slide down
and mix with the soil my soul remains, and I am
aware, I watch as
75
MURPHY SQUARE
she-wolf
CAMERON YANG
digital photograph
76
ISSUE 43
You have his eyes.
All your life you have never been yourself, never been
your own.
You are your father’s eyes in your mother’s face, and
your name
is a cinderblock they chained around your ankles and
called a gift.
The day you are told what he did, you will not react
at all.
You will sit in your chair and listen to your sister,
a supportive stone statue,
and when it hits you seven months later, when it
sinks in and becomes real, you will be useless for four
days.
You will stand in the bathroom before class
and look in the mirror and wonder if they can see it
in your eyes.
Your father’s eyes.
You wonder if it’s obvious you have the eyes of a killer.
You’ve known for months but it wasn’t real until right
now,
Looking in this mirror and thinking about how
nothing is quite the same once you know your father
is a killer.
The finding out is easier than the knowing.
The finding out is ice water down your back. A shock.
The knowing is heavy, and once you pick it up, you
always have to carry it
with you everywhere.
You will never be able to put it down.
Know this because you have to, but know something
else as well.
Carrying this with you is going to feel like there is a
coffin
the eyes are the window to
the soul
ALEXIS KIMSEY
77
MURPHY SQUARE
strapped to your back, like there is a scarlet letter
pinned to your chest with a blade sharpened by
inheritance, like
you never understood sin until your sister
tied your father’s around your neck and
you’re never going to want to tell anyone.
You’ll look at your friends and feel it almost bursting
out
of your mouth,
How are you today,
My father is a killer, I’m a murderer’s daughter,
it’s so heavy, it’s pulling me down, take it away,
please, please, G-d, someone, help me.
You’ll almost say it over and over but you won’t want
to.
You won’t want to tell them, not now not ever they
can never know.
When you tell them anyway, it will feel like pulling
a piece
of that coffin down from your aching shoulders and
nailing it between theirs.
When you do this, remember that they told you that
you could.
Remember how they handed you the hammer.
Remember when you turned around and offered
them your spine,
the spaces where they’ve taken parts of your coffin
from you
making room for the pieces of theirs that they’re too
tired to carry alone.
Remember that we all have coffins. That we are all a
cemetery,
but we do not have to let that
bury us.
78
ISSUE 43
flower girl flower girl
GABRIEL BERGSTROM
35mm film photograph
79
MURPHY SQUARE
untitled
MADELEINE OSWOOD
digital painting
80
ISSUE 43
I stepped in a puddle today
after a rain that had lasted
for probably 4 days and 4 nights.
I felt it
the water
sucking my toes and soaking
my white socks brown
swallowing me slowly
like a snake stretching wide his jaw
with that little extra bone he has
so he can fit a city rat
twice the size of his head
down his slick
pink throat.
I thought about him
about a snake big enough to eat
yappy yorkie dogs and deer fawns
until the water lapped at my armpits
and licked my eyelids closed
and the world dissolved
in wet-like blues and greens.
Galaxies swirled like ribbons
silky between my finger crevices
as if rainforest and ocean
curled up and melted together
the way two spilled cans of paint
sometimes do.
galaxies
RACHEL BROWN
Engman Prize winner
81
MURPHY SQUARE
light rail
ABIGAIL TETZLAFF
digital photograph
82
ISSUE 43
happiness is the light between the trees in autumn
travelling miles upon miles through space
to make mosaics on the forest floor
and caress faces one last time before winter
sonas
EVE TAFT
touching all things, light ignores broken bones
wends its way through thunderstorms
finds ships on the tousled sea
insensitive, it dries tears early and blinds
happiness is the light between the trees in autumn
golden warm, more steadfast than summer
more compassionate than winter
happiness steals in through branches
gently, gently, gently
83
MURPHY SQUARE
the spin
GABRIEL BERGSTROM
35mm film photograph
84
ISSUE 43
the bridges
GABRIEL BENSON
I’ve been driving for two hours, making my regular
trek from one home to the other. My back is sweaty as
it often gets on these long drives. In an attempt to aid
this, I sit slightly forward and turn the air conditioner
on full blast. This effect leaves my fingers icy, but the
sun still beats down on my thighs, my own personal
greenhouse. By now, I really need to pee, and the
empty coffee cup from this morning is beginning
to look more and more tempting as a release for my
bladder.
The ride from Willmar to Minneapolis on
Highway 12 has only a few landmarks peppered in
that I find to be worth noting on the drive. Once I
left one home, I knew I was destined to nomadism
for the following two hours. Like a turtle, I would
own only what I carried with me in the silver Pontiac
Bonneville. My suitcase, backpack, and a box of
books all pile in the backseat.
In Montrose, Minnesota, I pass the small
side-of-the-road memorial to my old dear friend killed
on his motorcycle in 2014, killed by a car that hit
him head-on. It’s a knee-high cross, a picture of him
placed in the center. It never gets easier to look at this
cross, but it does get harder to see. It can be hidden in
the winter by snow, and it was once carried away by a
well-meaning plow.
But I know there are no spirits here.
On these roves from Home A to Home B,
Minnesota Public Radio is my companion. Today, it’s
an in-depth story on the music history of Simon &
Garfunkel, a duo I know little about—a couple songs,
something about herbs and the fair, perhaps. The
piece itself is intermittently sprinkled with their
songs and interviews with musicians and other
members of the industry. As I enter Minneapolis,
the skyline on the horizon, “Bridge Over Troubled
Water” comes on. It’s familiar to me, like a song from
an old movie.
When you’re down and out / When you’re on the
street / When evening falls so hard / I will comfort
you.
As usual, I follow the traffic into the
underground I-94 tunnel. What was once bright
sunlight is transformed, and I am plunged into
darkness, the white rays replaced by the ambered
lightbulbs that line up above me. When entering, the
tunnel seems endless, stretching ahead indefinitely
before me.
85
MURPHY SQUARE
Now, there is a strict ritual for these tunnels,
and I have been practicing since I was a child, just
like my mother taught me.
light. Are the cars in front of me, behind me, beside
me, fixed in the same trance?
they shine
When darkness comes / And pain is all around
As I run down the grocery list of my wishes,
my lungs start to ache. The sunlight begins to peek in
front of the many cars ahead of me. The last wish in
my head is always the same, vague, but it is perhaps
the most important.
Please have all of this be okay, I pray.
The floodlights of the day’s sun rush back
into the vehicle. I exhale, my lungs receiving sweet
air, my hand falls back down onto the steering wheel,
and the radio plays as usual. The song is almost done.
I will ease your mind.
As my eyes adjust to the new light, I suck
my breath in, the air that stops coming into my lungs
matches the now crackling radio waves that barely
filter through the speakers. One hand on the steering
wheel, the other hand flopped up to lay my palm flat
against the carpeted roof of the car. Several yards into
the tunnel, the radio has been reduced to static, only
a word or two from any number of radio stations is
translatable.
It’s in these moments—dark tunnel, amber
light, breath held, hand on roof—that I truly pray. I
grew up believing that these tunnels held a mystical
property, that it was here where wishes could be
granted, prayers answered. With air tight in my
lungs, these messages to someone are thought loudly
in my mind, for if they were spoken, my pact of not
breathing would be broken, creating the possibility
of these requests not being listened to, not being
transmitted to whomever receives them.
And it does, almost always.
I smile at the stretch of city before me, and
I feel a sense of relief. Whether or not this all ends up
okay, it’s out of my hands now.
But inside, I think it will be.
Sail on
I pray, thanking the tunnel for my safe
drive. For the sun. For things going well.
I pray, asking the tunnel for good health for
myself and those I love.
Row by row, I pass amber light after amber
86
MURP
HYSQ
UARE
ISSUE 43 | 2018
Show less