Fall 2016

Vantage Point Volume 2 | Issue 2 Article 1 2017 Fall 2016 Vantage Point Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/vantagepoint Part of the Art and Design Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Point, Vantage (2017) "Fall 2016," Vantage Point: Vol. 2 : Iss. 2 , Article 1. Available at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/vantagepoint/vol2/iss2/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts and Sciences at ScholarWorks @ UVM. It has been accepted for inclusion in Vantage Point by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ UVM. For more information, please contact . Point: Fall 2016 Published by ScholarWorks @ UVM, 2017 1 Vantage Point, Vol. 2 [2017], Iss. 2, Art. 1 Vantage Point Volume XVIII Fall 2016 Caroline Shea, Ali Wood Journal Directors Caroline Shea, Ali Wood Copy Editors Eli Karren Layout Stephen Cramer Faculty Advisor Emily Johnston Cover Artist “to collect” Submit to Vantage Point! Facebook! facebook.com/vantagepointuvm https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/vantagepoint/vol2/iss2/1 2 Point: Fall 2016 Letter From the Editors Like the first light of spring, Vantage Point is a place to melt into, to absorb between harsh climates. From front to back, encounter the defiant, the vulnerable, the experimental, the soft hands of healing, the hard, and the precise capture of small beauties. Let it open you. -The Editors Published by ScholarWorks @ UVM, 2017 3 Vantage Point, Vol. 2 [2017], Iss. 2, Art. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Tetons, Eli Karren page 5 I Leave the Door Unlocked, Ali Wood page 6-7 how to be internal, anonymous page 8 u, anonymous page 9 Cover Cropping, Addy Campbell page 10 Moonrise, Eli Karren page 11 The Things I Have Learned on Monday, or What I Know About Being a Woman, Addy Campell page 12 Alive, Christian Collen page 13-14 Break, Stroll, Dori Sharp page 15 PE47, Conviction, David Noyes page 16 When Shawn Chriastian Relies on a Familiar Palette, Addy Campbell page 17 Tropics, anonymous page 19 When I Have Stopped Checking For Bedbugs at TwoStar Hotels, Addy Campbell page 20 , Eli Karren page 21 Chiaroscuro, Margaret May page 22 Waiting Game, Annie Hayes page 23 Illness, Seth Wade page 24-26 Moon Goddess, Wolf, Emily Johnson page 27 Pearl, Casual, Dori Sharp page 28 Thought Textures, Emily Johnson page 29 Making Shepherd’s Pie, Jean McBride page 30 Aubade, Jack Wheaton page 31 A Posthumous Note, David Noyes page 32 The Valedictorian’s Younger Sister Makes Lists of Things She is Good At, Addy Campbell page 33 Crystalline, Eli Karren page 34 https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/vantagepoint/vol2/iss2/1 4 Point: Fall 2016 Nude in the Morning, Michael Green page 35 Weezer on a Train, Jake Mooney page 36-37 Eating Starlight , Eli Karren page 38 Catechism for a First Communion, Caroline Shea page 39-40 The Pouty Sunflower, Emily Johnson page 41 Uncommon Compassion, Emily Johnson page 42 Interlaced, The Canvas Out There, Margaret May page 43 Published by ScholarWorks @ UVM, 2017 5 Vantage Point, Vol. 2 [2017], Iss. 2, Art. 1 Tetons Eli Karren The Tetons taste tart this time of season, as a hummingbird sheds its coat of colors and chooses to be pencil lines, a silhouette undefined, a conglomeration of charcoal and moonlight pooling at the edge of a bed, where the sheets have slipped off ever so slightly, but not like ski slopes; more like ghosts aching to leave their skeletons. I dream that somewhere in the Ozarks, those colors are reappearing, as hikers happen across Technicolor foliage, a river the color of blackberry blood, and set up camp in a valley of glow sticks. Under Adirondack shadows, I am still ripping carpet up and finding peacock feathers like unused movie tickets and loose change. I will write poems along them and send them back to you when I know what they mean, astrologically centered and oblivious to the heightened postal rates. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/vantagepoint/vol2/iss2/1 6 Point: Fall 2016 I Leave the Door Unlocked Ali Wood The first time a boy saw me naked: during a game of truth or dare when I lifted my shirt, not yet old enough to wear a bra. I watched his face intently, blood in my ears like a swollen conch, but his eyes would not meet mine or my chest. They stared into the corner where I kept my plastic horses. I could hear something else in his laughter at the same time he pulled down his pants, something like slicing open a chrysalis with a swiss army knife and prying out the shriveled stillborn, how unbearable it is to wait. Ten years later, wearing a mini skirt and over-the-knee socks as we cross the parking lot, I played the confident woman: the kind that is skin-tight and leaves first. Un-showered, I scrubbed my skin with pomegranate lotion, afraid he would smell it on me – the desperation of unlocked doors. Every moment stretched wide into the shadow of a human body crouched over and hovering, his mouth a whalebone arc carving into me like a starved hunter. The silent obituary of a dying girl pretending she liked it. Back in my own bed, I nurse the welts with a stick of vaseline where I peel his fingers off, one by one, like fat leeches. The first time I thought of hurting someone: as a kid my mom cooked pancakes in the shape of my favorite animals. Published by ScholarWorks @ UVM, 2017 7 Vantage Point, Vol. 2 [2017], Iss. 2, Art. 1 Wolves, grizzlies, owls, always predators. My brother swallowed them whole, but I tore off the arms and legs, making each miserable creature last. I am trying to tell you something. I think I have always been this way. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/vantagepoint/vol2/iss2/1 8 Point: Fall 2016 how to be internal anonymous sometimes i have to force the blood from my veins, and filter the words that my fingers scratch into the dirt beneath the lonely branches of the didactic trees, and sometimes i have to push the pin into my temple, to slowly leak the thoughts into a pillow, drained into a vile, just in case I lose my mind (though perhaps in my paranoia, it was stolen) sometimes i have to wring the words from my lips (and leave them so sere I can’t speak for months) and drag the body of my word-wrought martyr through the street, just so the world could see that I’m enervated, and not have to say a word. Published by ScholarWorks @ UVM, 2017 9 Vantage Point, Vol. 2 [2017], Iss. 2, Art. 1 u. Alexander Ellis There is nothing sadder than I love you becoming I loved you. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/vantagepoint/vol2/iss2/1 10 Point: Fall 2016 Cover Cropping Addy Campbell On my desk there is a jar of soil watching me with a million dead eyes. Two times now I have driven to Winooski to have lunch with two different men, one of whom did not exist. Yesterday it was Sunday so I got drunk and remember (...truncated)