Contents
Naked and Fallen
Jenna Citrus
Through Process
Emily Plummer
Tearing at Sores
Regis Louis
The Birth of Our Names
Tesneem Madani
Untitled No. 4
Sarah Kronz
Our Condition
Troy Neptune
On the Fundamentals of Art and the Soul
Ayla Maisey
In the Foreground
Aree Rachel Coltharp
Freedom
Winafret Casto
The Seventeen Seconds of Odette
Rachel Lietzow
Hidden in Sight
Jenna Citrus
Barrio
Casandra Robledo
The Passage
Liam Trumble
Resentment as a Kind of Relief
Eric Kubacki
Beauty Standards
Sarah Kronz
Over the Kanawha
Claire Shanholtzer
Faith
Anne Livingston
For Empty Spaces
Regis Louis
Entropy
Liam Trumble
Culled from the Flock
Deborah Rocheleau
Searching for Divinity
Madeleine Richey
From Pillars to Dust
Madeleine Richey
As Best I Could Do
Hoda Fakhari
In Your Absence
Emma Croushore
Contemplations
Sarah Kronz
The Shadow of Paris
Anika Maiberger
Memories of Home
Audrey Lee
The Beauty in Fracturing
Taylor Woosley
Butcher Paper
Casandra Robledo
Human Scavenger
Devin Prasatek
Babel Was a Second Eden
Luke McCusker
The Painting in Gallery 26
Sydney Crago
Transposing
Ayla Maisey
Rind
The small orange and me,
meticulous in my peeling,
we have an agreement:
I will take her apart with delicate fingers
and she will open to me
the bitterness of adoration.
Her pith will settle in my palms
and her oil will flavor my wrists.
We will measure our love
by the circumference of my bite,
by the pulp etched like a hard memory
between my teeth.
But I will only practice
on the shoulder blades of others;
I will leave one half
on the table unspent.
Because we both know how long
the heart will wait for a familiar taste,
how much pressure
is required to break the skin,
how quickly the juice bursts.
About The Author
Jackie Vega is a senior writing major and French and English minor at Grand Valley State University. She is the editor in chief of Fishladder, Grand Valley’s undergraduate literature and arts journal, and she also works in the university’s library as a research consultant. After graduation, she plans to pursue an MLS as well as an MFA in poetry.