Issue 9.1 Fall 2013

9.1 cover image

 

Artist Statement:

Words have coursed through my veins ever since I was five and found my mother’s Apple II. With the first clacking of the keys, I realized I could shape the world with a word. 

I try to illuminate the darkest corners of the world: the uneasy monsters that hide under our beds. I want to be a voice that shouts, “ I see what you see. I feel what you feel. You are not alone.”

I am an essayist, playwright, visual artist and poet who lives and works in Central Illinois.

Please follow my artistic journey.

 

The flip side of a copy

 

Rachael Stanford

 

 

Time moves slowly when you’re a glorified copy wench. As the pale glow of replication illuminates the growing wrinkles adorning my face, the realization slowly sinks in. A train monkey could take my place, not a NASA rocketeering monkey either but a sleep-most-of-the-day in between poo-flinging one.
As the minutes tick to the void, my eyes scan the room. I want to rip down the OSHA poster, burn it to the ground, screaming to my coworkers, “six years, two degrees, honors societies and publications have to amount to more than paper cuts. And sleepless nights slaved away with library crammed house should amount to more than a no-benefits, crap-dollar an hour pay.”  I want to start anew.  
A battled scared vet returning to a reformed nation, I find myself longing to be lost in The Wasteland, strung out and strung up in a hotel full of beatniks and hippies hell bent on filling the worlds with flowers.  But the best minds of my generation are wasting away in cheaply pressed suits, long retail hour eyes wearied, as their back breaks with the loans on which their future was built/destroyed.  And my rent is due in a week.  
The copy machine spits out my order. As my hands shake, I pick up each warm piece, permeating my skins. But my bones shake as I turn out the light and slowly walk away, each step echoing down the hallway.

 

 

<< Back

Euphemism Campus Box 4240 Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-4240