Prayer for the Quarantine Blues

after Shira Erlichman

Can’t stop thinking about survival lately, the slick
& the flutter of endurance. I swear I’ll eat the next person
who says we’re in unprecedented times. Jeff Bezos got $600 billion
richer in 2020, & all I got is Mitch McConnell waiting

nine months to decide that I don’t need $600.
All I got is Google reassuring me that I only
have anxiety, not COVID, so let’s drain
the liquor cabinets. The first night of lockdown, I prayed

I could weaponize this body, only to fear I’ll accidentally
kill my mother if I forget to bleach the groceries.
I spend so long pondering Zoom funeral etiquette
that I forget what I wanted

to fight in the first place. Does that sound familiar?
Fuck the coping mechanisms, God. Don’t tell me
to bake sourdough & buy vibrators. I’m not interested
in fortitude. I’m watching the birds

from my childhood bedroom window, their wings
always the last to stop moving. Even in death,
it seems, the insistence to bend towards the blurring
light continues, to latch on with the fraying edges

of our teeth. God, I know better than to ask you
for our collective triumph. Most days, I have to remind
myself to claw, desperate & bird-like. I just don’t know
when you’ll finally grant me release.

Christina Wang is a junior at Bates, double majoring in English & Politics, and minoring in Education. She’s a cancer sun, libra moon, & gemini rising. This piece was originally published in perhappened mag.

Someone Told Me It’s All Happening At The Zoo

Despite his surname, Eneko Green did not have a green thumb. Possibly out of boredom or curiosity, but more likely loneliness, Eneko had bought a small sapling off the internet and decided that he would get into bonsai. After perusing dozens of sites and researching tree species, he had ordered a ficus bonsai starter. It arrived 3-5 business days later, as promised by the seller, in a stiff cardboard box carefully packed to protect the delicate branches and leaves. Lifting the tree from the box, so as to not bend any of the branches, Eneko was initially disappointed. The rectangular blue pot that he had picked out of his many options was closer to a dull grey. Nothing to fret about, thought Eneko; he could order a new pot tomorrow from a website with better reviews. Eneko placed the pot with the plastic wrapped mini-tree on the kitchen table where he had prepared his newly acquired tools: stainless steel bonsai shears, a spool of copper wire, a pair of wire cutters, and a small watering can with a long delicate spout already filled with room temperature filtered water. Unlike the pot, the tools looked the same as they had in the pictures. Eneko sat down in his wooden chair that was old enough that he wouldn’t have been able to order it online, ready to shape a beautiful little tree.

Eneko slowly removed the white mesh bag that had protected the tree during cross country transport and placed it to the side. The anticipation of seeing his bonsai had almost made his sleep impossible the previous night. Unlike the disappointing pot and the gleaming tools, the condition and shape of the Ficus retusa he had ordered remained a mystery up to this point. Although he knew that what he had ordered was not much more than a seedling, his anticipation had aggrandized the tree, and he had conjured an image of a tree with a thick gnarled trunk, roots protruding from the soil, and a green cloudlike canopy. However, the little shrub he found himself face to face with was truly a sapling. The light brown trunk was no thicker than his pinky finger and came straight out of the soil like one of those razor clams burrowing into the sand that he had watched his father catch every spring. About two inches from the base of the trunk, the ficus split into two limbs, making an almost perfect V-shape that extended nearly a foot high. The oval emerald leaves created a chaotic verdant canopy. Leaves protruded from every branch, twig, fork, and even the trunk. It was an ugly bush and the scraggliness of it made Eneko uneasy. Looking up from his station towards the window, he made eye contact with his fat orange tabby, Puddles, who knowingly said: “You’ve got some work to do.” Determined, Eneko began his examination of the wily tree…(excerpted)

Max Friedenwald-Fishman is a writer from Portland, OR and a senior at Bates College. His short stories tackle life’s small moments by embracing the surreal. Max is also incredibly good looking, which cannot be understated.

A Crow’s Croon

I hear the rows as I wake
pitched it song high enough to be missed
by the chaos of bodies below
Then the wind to carry the soft melody

Gather the air that is going premium
collect yourself as there is more to know about you
than what is posted across your timeline

Kept birds are as free as we want them to be but are we--
The hunter or hunted
The keeper or the kept

Between the skin and mask
My throat has long been blocked

How much did you sing for your freedom?

Crows have gathered at your window frame.

Deandra Hyman (she/her) is a senior in the Asian Studies
department as a Chinese major.

Nayt Delgado is a poet and a big fan of video games and hip-hop music (though his taste becomes more antiquated each passing year). This poem was written as a first assignment for a course, so it is both whatever you want it to be and also an introduction to himself.

Horses with Stripes

I, the Lord your God, shall smite the human race by means of Zebras, God told Cyrus the prophet.

“Why?” asked Cyrus.

Why else would I have created Zebras? They’re just horses with stripes. 

“ZEBRAS!” shouted Cyrus. He ran through the city shouting to the skyscrapers and pedestrians. “Listen, people,” Cyrus screamed. “God just spoke to me and said that he is going to destroy us all with Zebras!”

“Zebras?” someone asked. “Why would God choose Zebras to destroy humanity?”

“What else did you think Zebras were for?” Cyrus answered. “They are coming in swarms to kill us!”

For a few days, no one worried about Cyrus’s warnings, but after a few days, they had enough. Cyrus was a prophet, sure, but he didn’t know everything. 

“He’s just trying to cause a racket,” one person said. Cyrus still continued to whine and croak about the incoming attack. Quickly, he went from being a common nuisance to a nuisance that had to be stopped. 

“Think about what wide-spread Zebraphobia would do to the zoo industry!” 

“Let alone the Animal Print industry!”

Cyrus was causing more trouble than he was worth, at least in the eyes of the zookeepers and animal print makers, so the public had him shot. And that was the end of the Zebra scare for a while. 

“Well shit,” said the poor guy who first saw the Zebras running across the ocean. He sat at the top of a lighthouse, looking into a telescope over the sea. Just as Cyrus had predicted, swarms of Zebras were on their way. The peculiarity of Zebras running full speed to destroy humanity outshined the peculiarity of the fact the Zebras were running on water. In the grand scheme of things, this anomaly was little more than a footnote, and not entirely off-brand for one of God’s creations.

“Zebras are coming!” shouted the lighthouse keeper in the city. 

His words were not well received in the community, and even less well received by the zoo and animal print corporations. The lighthouse keeper was shot. 

Soon though, the truth became inescapable—Zebras were on their way. NASA released images of the Zebras taken from space, and despite their best efforts (approximately half of NASA’s staff was shot) Big Zoo and Big Animal Prints could not conceal the truth forever. People began to prepare for the oncoming invasion of Zebras. Sales of guns, bombs, and bombs disguised seductively as attractive lady Zebras skyrocketed. In a brilliant marketing decision, Zoos rebranded themselves as training facilities for Zebra hunting. Animal Print companies sold Zebra prints as camouflage for the oncoming invasion, which became the look of the season. 

Sam Poulous is a junior at Bates, majoring in English with a Creative Writing Concentration, and Minoring in Ancient Greek.

Dragonfly Mask

I have been walking around the nearby lake every day. When I do, I always see the woman in the dragonfly mask. As she approaches, our eyes meet and hers crinkle at the corners, implying a smile unseen. Few eyes crinkle like that nowadays.

Flowers bloom from the fabric; leaves cling tightly to the seams. So unmaskculine a scene – so unlike the blue, disposable ones I have seen. In the center, there grows a rose. Deep ruby wings stretch across her covered nose. Rusty orange dives towards her chin. Surrounded by a lily and its kin. Forest green buzzes across her apocalips.

Should I tell her she cannot smell the flowers rubbing her nose? 
Or that those wings are only cotton?
That a mask in flight will not allow her to fly away. 
Maybe she has forgotten,

Even a mask full of life 
Will not revive the dead. 

I have been walking around the nearby lake every day,
breathing in flowers and dragonflies

Sarah King (she/her), a graduating member of the class of 2021, hopes you enjoy her first and last submission to snaggletooth. You may know her from her previous piece “Sodas” published in her elementary school’s 2009 issue of A+ Magazine. Sarah is excited to continue to write for fun even in post-pandemic times.

I Talk About Cheese So Much In This

I want to enter a different dimension in the fourth room above our garage,     a mouse frequents here. mouse contemplates universe while pausing where a bed might go one day       with nice thread count sheets MOMWILLWASHTHEM once a week,

mother cuts environmental losses while elbow deep in recycled egg cartons,             nail polish chipping,         chipped eggshells, chipper birds and eggy sunshine ! ,            walk on eggshells so as to not crack them, do not mention the tuna fish and egg casserole mother positively still weeps over it, 

water hemorrhaging out of our machines       mom washes over everything in the house, household waterfalls, too much water but New Yorker assures me that we aren’t the problem, 

glub glub goes the fish I don’t have but wish I had right now.      would name Viago if had.         my dog ignores me again and licks his butthole right on my lap rude? does he experience pleasure, Google, I’m asking Google now, can dogs experience pleasure, and my government agent writes bestiality on my file but my god I could never          I like to imagine my government agent is named Carl and eats cherry pecan scones     and often … (excerpted)

Anna Mangum is a senior at Bates studying creative writing. This piece is an example of her experimentation with voice and words in the beginning of quarantine back in April 2020.

Sugar Rush

Wake up! We slept too long!
The sun is home! Winking in the clouds!
And yes! I can see you! Just across the street!
Basking in a lion’s mane of light.

I am nose-diving through a pile of charred lungs to reach
you: a sip of amber ale settling on a smoldering tongue.
Let’s have a barbecue! Invite the friends we used to know!
We can take a pair of scissors to your overgrown hair.

Finally! You are only a fingertip away. But 

now I think it may be best to keep you at this length,
in case I mistakenly dreamed you into a sequel. Maybe
you are just a hologram, and I am just sunburned.

I practiced remembrance sweetly. I simmered you to syrup,
willfully forgetting the headache that follows the sugar rush.

Maddy Clark graduated in 2020 with degrees in Sociology and English, concentrating in Creative Writing. She has been writing various forms of prose, narrative, and music for as long as she can remember. Under the guidance of Professor Myronn Hardy last year, Maddy began writing poetry for the first time and found a unique sense of catharsis and emotional expression in her experimentation.

phantom touch: a study in four parts, Ellie Friends

Coming from a background of ballet and modern dance techniques, Ellie is a dancer excited to be using video as a means of communicating pedestrian and choreographic movement. Ellie looks forward to someday being reincarnated as an octopus.

Retrospectively

with lines from ​Levee​ by Paul Otremba and ​Honeyfish​ Lauren K. Alleyn

All this had happened before. So, I knew:
beneath us, no current was pulling us back.

I remember sitting at a crossroads.
You cannot ask a pond to be an ocean --
there isn’t enough water. But
the need: too intense, too ignored.

I told myself: “Save this, you’ll need it.”
To return. To be in love here. But yesterday:
the reckoning of a woman.
As he fucked me, wild with his lone passion, 

memory crooned.

Bodies that looked like yours,
which I tried to read like the lines in my palm.

It is difficult enough to believe
an ocean opened within you.
Which is to say:
I am always burning.

I moved towards it - my red heart
of flesh, melting
like wax and milk poured,

poured,

while you set sail and never looked back.

- Maddy Clark

A Field Trip to Heaven

“Well I’ve never been to Heaven,
But I’ve been to Oklahoma”
- Three Dog Night

Having gone to Heaven on a field trip the only thing I wanted to do when coming back to earth was chain smoke. Not sure how many cigarettes exactly, but if I were to give a rough estimate, it would be about a million billion. A million billion Marlboros and Parliaments and Camels and Juul Pods and Puff Bars and Plus Bars and Hey Man Can I Hit Thats. A million billion inhales and exhales and ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I was on the top of a mountain, and as high as I was on it I still felt no closer to Heaven. The people around me with skis and snowboards and hats and gloves and masks were just as low as I. Each stood erect like a cigarette. I wanted to smoke them all, each and every one of the million billions. “Come here,” said the prophet. “Take a hit of this.” And so the first eucharist was inhaled and exhaled, and there behind the lockers my hands felt the tingle. Juul. Such an ugly, ugly word. Hemingway never hit a juul. Shakespeare never took a rip. Our addiction has become technologized. Alone in a bionicle spiral of dopamine. Only in the mornings, does it feel good. Only in the morning, when I tug down the shade quickly so it furls up and the light comes through do I see heaven. Only for that second, when the light comes in, and it is blinding, and my head gets light, and my hands get tingly. The coil gets hot in the mornings. My coil gets hot in the morning. It’s only easy in the morning when I tug quickly. In the back of the bus: “Hold it in, so the driver doesn’t see.” At first it was just my hands, then my head, and finally my heart, that visited heaven, the beautiful, puffy, adulterous clouds that we inhaled and kept inside so the bus driver couldn’t see. The mountain, the snow, the clouds, the air, the vapor, the exhale and inhale, our heads and hands and hearts and the beginning and end, the alpha and omega, the best and the worst and the memory to forget and the freedom from memory itself all inside our own two lungs. You can’t unsee heaven. No matter how hard you try. No matter how many fidget toys you have, no matter how many apps you download, no matter how many packs of gum or patches you buy, you can’t unsee Heaven, the place you go when you die. 

- Sam Poulos

Where Were You When Mac Miller Died

Instead of fucking her to pieces, why don’t you
call shotgun in my Chevy. We’ll whip around the rainy city
and I’ll let you pick the music.
What’s new? The talking heads on CNN say
it’s gonna be a long winter. I say the winter never ends
and they don’t know what it looks like.
Me, I’m spending the season holed up
in my childhood bedroom. Every night the temperature drops
and planets shift like plates across the sky.
Me, I’m waiting for Frank Ocean to return. Me, I’m
thinking of you, you jerk, never not
thinking of you and your not-new girlfriend,
your not-new girlfriend with blunt bangs
and blue hair, the vanilla genderfuck of queer love
between white kids in Chicago. 
We have a lot to catch up on. Where were you
when Mac Miller died?
Has your mother given up?
Are you a real boy now? These are things I think of
when I’m not thinking of the virus. It’s been years
and still your face is a ceramic plate
set at the table of my terror. After the rape I bled
like Mary. Like Eagle Creek I burned
and burned. And still when I got home
I pulled back the curtain to find you, in the shower,
wearing my clothes.

Maria Gray is a sophomore and creative writing major at Bates, originally from Portland, Oregon. Her work is published in The Foundationalist, Perhappened Magazine, Hominum Journal, Counterclock Journal, and others. In 2019, her poem “Do This in Memory of Me” was nominated for Best of the Net by Counterclock Journal. She is an alum of the Adroit Journal’s summer mentorship program, where she studied poetry with Gabrielle Bates, and the Counterclock Arts Collective, where she served as a writing fellow. Hit her up at mariagray.carrd.co.

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