Search The Bellwether Review, 2025

< Back Kids Shane Allison In my dream we are two best friends lying on our bellies reading comic books strewn across your bedroom floor. The sugar rush from the wad of Big League gum we’re chewing is assurance that we’ll be up all night reading The Fantastic Four , Captain America , and Superman back when they were seventy-five cents. We hang loose at your parent’s house because my mother is afraid we’ll break something, that we’ll track in dirt from playing outside. She offers us Cheetos and Capri Suns to stay away. Our friendship is impenetrable like a GI Joe tank. Nothing can break us after the pinky swears and blood oaths we take using the pocket knife stolen from my dad’s glove box. We go around collecting worms in jelly jars, burning ants under a magnifying glass. When the black neighborhood kids ask, Why are you always hanging out with that white boy? I tell them to shut up and hold them in headlocks until they say sorry. I am the biggest kid in school like The Thing from The Fantastic Four . Mother would never let him in the house. I had this dream where we were kids with superpowers, who could fly over buildings, shoot red beams out of our eyes and bend crowbars like licorice ropes. I wish I had grown up with you in Tallahassee or Kettering, Ohio. I could have used a friend like you. Author Bio Shane Allison was bit by the writing bug at the age of fourteen. He spent a majority of his high school life shying away in the library behind desk cubicles writing bad love poems about boys he had crushes on. He has since gone on to publish many chapbooks of poetry—Black Fag , Ceiling of Mirrors , Cock and Balls , I Want to Fuck a Redneck , Remembered Men and Live Nude Guys —as well as four full-length poetry collections: I Remember (Future Tense Books), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori Press), Sweet Sweat (Hysterical Books), and, most recently, I Want to Eat Chinese Food Off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire Press). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica and has written two novels, You’re the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon and Schuster Publishing). Allison’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo , Unlikely Stories , Pnpplzine.com, Palavar Arts Magazine , The Southeast Review , South Broadway Review , Postscript Magazine , and a plethora of others. Allison is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.

< Back Why I Write Megan McGrory I always say that I’ve been writing before I could write. As a young girl, I dictated stories to my mother so she could write them for me. When an older but still young girl, I hand-wrote in journals with my own stick figures as illustrations. Now I type my stories, even though canyons could be formed in the time it takes me to finish. Throughout it all, my most frequent listener was myself. From little girl to young woman, I have entertained myself with stories in my head. They were my escape from a world that I didn’t understand. My very own form of expression to myself. I live to tell my stories. I am fire, and it my kindling. I see a story in every fallen leaf, behind every closed door. I look up at the sky and see words written in the stars. My head is filled with stories, with a world of possibilities. Even when the page is blank, my mind is full of life. Most of all, writing is my exploration. Of emotions too big to contain, New worlds that beg an explorer, Wonders that need to be shared, A past that must be processed. I have always written, always told stories. It seems that I always will. Because I can’t imagine a universe where my soul would ever be so silent. Author Bio Megan McGrory is an avid consumer of media who’s lived in Washington, Alaska, and finally Oregon. She has been writing since before she could technically write, getting her mother to write down her stories for her. Her greatest passion is prose, particularly fantasy and science fiction, though she’s started to dabble in poetry. Aside from writing, Megan loves to read, watch movies and TV, perform on stage, and analyze media through a feminist lens. One of her greatest passions is napping with her cat, Spooky.

< Back An Ode to the Unsung Heroes of My Home Shamik Banerjee Music is anodyne, but what compares to our rice steamer’s ‘hissing’? Oh! that sound flies to each corner, even down the stairs, and makes our home a curry-cooker’s ground (evoking lunchtime dishes in one’s mind). Glory be to our geyser. Though a thing, it is no less than Gaia, great and kind, who shares with everyone her thermal spring, defrosting them in Winter’s glacial chill. Tell me how I should hail our ceiling fan, whose hypnic air transports me to some hill where zephyrs blow through Junipers that span upon its vertex. And these whitish walls imitate laminar white waterfalls. Now laud for windows: they amp up the dawn’s, the dusk’s, and the eve’s beauty ten times more, those voile-made curtains, like two lovely swans, float in the wafting light breeze from the door. Our living room’s a newsstand, or at best, a kiosk full of magazines and snacks. And oh, the English Roll-Arm is where rest comes pouring on us when we lean our backs upon its cushions with our eyes all glued to the TV, and if God has a kingdom, some glimpses of that place I’ve surely viewed in this home where I’ve learned a lifetime’s wisdom and felt comforted by these ‘things’ I prize— true paragons of firmness to my eyes. Author Bio Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India. Some of his recent publications include Spelt , Ink Sweat and Tears , St. Austin Review , Modern Reformation , San Antonio Review , The Society of Classical Poets , Third Wednesday , and Amethyst Review , among others. He secured second position in the Southern Shakespeare Company Sonnet Contest, 2024.

< Back An Ode to My Cat Megan McGrory When I collapse on the couch ready to rest, my cat comes with his tail held high. A cloud of black fur with a squeaky meow and loud purr. He settles by my side, unaware of the joy and comfort he brings. I wrap my arms around his round middle and bury my face in soft fur while he makes biscuits out of the side of the brown, weathered couch. Like a stuffed animal that can love you back. A friend who will never leave. A weighted blanket that chooses to be there. Each purr calms the storm inside me. He lays his head on my arm, and the sun itself cannot compete with the warmth I feel. When he has had his fill, he goes on his way, never knowing the cold hole he leaves between my arms and my heart. My cat is a coward, I will not deny it, and does not seem to have ever been capable of hunting. He eats grass like a cow and his dinner like a pig, but why should that matter? My cat is the best snuggler this anxiety-ridden girl could ask for. Every day, he is excited when I come home. His joyous meows ring through the house and his tail waves a flag to celebrate the return of his human. My spirits rise in turn as I see my fluffy bannerman, excited to begin our daily cuddle session. For many years, he has been my stalwart companion. I would not replace him with another. My knight in cuddly armor. Author Bio Megan McGrory is an avid consumer of media who’s lived in Washington, Alaska, and finally Oregon. She has been writing since before she could technically write, getting her mother to write down her stories for her. Her greatest passion is prose, particularly fantasy and science fiction, though she’s started to dabble in poetry. Aside from writing, Megan loves to read, watch movies and TV, perform on stage, and analyze media through a feminist lens. One of her greatest passions is napping with her cat, Spooky.

< Back Used Book Review Dean Wilson This book of poetry is not new the pages are flagged and yellowed two colors of pens and a pencil point out what is important. This nameplate is not mine. Who were you, Allison Farver? This book was given to you “With love—Christmas ’47.” Thirty-nine years ago. Allison Farver, the mystery of you is more enticing than this book of yours. I wonder, in thirty-nine years will someone read this book with a new bookplate and wonder, I wonder… Author Bio Dean Wilson is a multidisciplinary artist based in Canby, Oregon, whose creative work spans both photography and the written word. His photograph "Quiet Time" was featured in Fifty Years, Fifty Artists: A Celebration of the West , and his work has been exhibited at Northview Gallery and Blue Sky: Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts. His images have also appeared in Uncommon , a publication by the Portland Photographers Forum, as well as The Bellwether Review . Dean’s poetry and prose have been published in the Lewis and Clark Review , Alchemy Magazine , and The Bellwether Review . Driven by a lifelong need to create, he approaches his art with a spirit of exploration—often blending visual storytelling with reflective narrative. Refusing to be confined by style or subject, Dean embraces both photography and writing as open-ended conversations with the world around him.

< Back A Foreign Being Aster Aliaj It’s a division of the heart, sir If I could, I would make myself whole I would Your laws bar my way My will keeps being tread on There is no door to escape this alienation You try to quell dissent And yeah, sometimes, it works But dontcha worry tired limbs and sore throats Still move Still sound It’s not go back where you came from It’s my mother’s womb is gone It’s my home is concrete Philly streets and corner stores And the sunshine speckled olive trees of my parent’s arid land It is a cleaving of identity If I could go back, I would I would Do you understand now? But your ancestors laid waste to themselves, didn’t they? Cut away, buried, and conformed And finally assimilated a generation or two down And now parts of yourself are missing You don’t even know which ones But you feel it Like I do But I take this ache And, and ask, can you feel a split heart? What about a break in self? Did you ever have to force a being? Author Bio Aster Aliaj is a writer, aspiring musician and environmentalist whose current writing focuses on her experience as an immigrant within the United States. The up and downs, othering and the joy of growing up in America and all the intersectionalities that come with it.

< Back Yew Shannon Sullivan Spring is here. Sun heats my uppermost foliage, and flowers erupt from the pimpled skin of my smaller branches. Columbine and strawberries flower in the field nearby, along with the fir trees across the river. I can taste their exuberance, carried through the webs of mycelia and roots we share. In four seasons, the seeds they are forming now will be sprouting around them. My seeds will not sprout. My own flowers will not be pollinated. I witness pollen travel between the other trees and plants, on wind and bees and butterflies, and know there will be none for my new flowers. There must be no male yew tree growing near enough for his pollen to reach me. I am the only yew here, a female unable to pollinate myself in the way of the firs. Each spring, I wait to see if my seeds will develop, but they never do. When I was younger, I wondered how the seed that started me found its way here. Was it carried by the river, or did it travel in the belly of an elk? How did I come to be so far away from the rest of my species? I am no longer young and do not expect an answer to my questions. Several seasons ago, the insects arrived. They laid their eggs on my branches and deep in the crevices of my bark. When the eggs hatched, the emerging larvae latched into my twigs, eating their fill of the resources I had gathered to nourish myself and my potential seeds. Season after season, my body incubates eggs that aren’t my own and dwindles as new generations of nymphs feed. For how many more springs will I be able to produce flowers? Soon, if there is another yew, it won’t matter if his pollen does reach me. My attention drifts back to the present, to the field steaming in the sun’s heat, water evaporating from the damp soil. Tall grasses swish in the breeze, each with its own characteristic movement. There among the grasses is a new gesture; someone grows pliant and sturdy and low to the ground. Someone who was not there last season, whose kind I have never observed, but whom I already know better than any other. I reach out, signaling through underground networks to the new yew tree. Welcome, seedling. Author Bio Shannon Sullivan is a lifelong Oregonian, perpetually interested in Oregon’s natural world, history and possible futures. Writing speculative fiction has provided a new means for her to explore themes of ecology, disaster, fear and hope.

< Back Home Economics Shane Allison I’d like to think that Mrs. President, My ninth-grade home Economics teacher, Is in heaven showing teenage angels how to make spaghetti and bake a chocolate cake. I imagine her selling blow pops out of a pencil box that lies hidden in one of her desk drawers. I think of her scolding some kid With his jeans hanging past his butt And saying, “Boy, pull up yo’ britches.” Author Bio Shane Allison was bit by the writing bug at the age of fourteen. He spent a majority of his high school life shying away in the library behind desk cubicles writing bad love poems about boys he had crushes on. He has since gone on to publish many chapbooks of poetry—Black Fag , Ceiling of Mirrors , Cock and Balls , I Want to Fuck a Redneck , Remembered Men and Live Nude Guys —as well as four full-length poetry collections: I Remember (Future Tense Books), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori Press), Sweet Sweat (Hysterical Books), and, most recently, I Want to Eat Chinese Food Off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire Press). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica and has written two novels, You’re the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon and Schuster Publishing). Allison’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo , Unlikely Stories , Pnpplzine.com, Palavar Arts Magazine , The Southeast Review , South Broadway Review , Postscript Magazine , and a plethora of others. Allison is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.

< Back Devil-Damned Shane Allison When my mother speaks of how my father has hurt her over the years, She acts as if each time is the first. As if him being a bastard Is something she never saw in him before. I’m so unhappy. I try so hard to get along with him , she says, As she looks past a set of dusty vertical blinds into a front yard of azaleas. When I dare to utter the word divorce again, she says, No, I’m going to wait, so I can get his money. Like the rest of us, She now waits like a buzzard on a power line To swoop down to fill her belly on my father’s remains. He gets more than one hundred percent now from the VA, Tucking money in Family Dollar bags to stash under the seat Of his truck. I prefer my father when he’s quiet in the house, Hiding from his family as if we don’t know he’s devil-damned. When my mother cries, I wipe her tears with my I Never Liked You Anyway t-shirt. She thinks that if I talk to him, he will listen to me, That maybe by sheer will, He will turn over a new leaf. But talking to my father means a baseball bat to the head. A strike for every tear that has streaked my mother’s face. I can hear her now, don’t say stuff like that about your daddy . And there it is. Flipping on and off like the proverbial light switch. Author Bio Shane Allison was bit by the writing bug at the age of fourteen. He spent a majority of his high school life shying away in the library behind desk cubicles writing bad love poems about boys he had crushes on. He has since gone on to publish many chapbooks of poetry—Black Fag , Ceiling of Mirrors , Cock and Balls , I Want to Fuck a Redneck , Remembered Men and Live Nude Guys —as well as four full-length poetry collections: I Remember (Future Tense Books), Slut Machine (Rebel Satori Press), Sweet Sweat (Hysterical Books), and, most recently, I Want to Eat Chinese Food Off Your Ass (Dumpster Fire Press). He has edited twenty-five anthologies of gay erotica and has written two novels, You’re the One I Want and Harm Done (Simon and Schuster Publishing). Allison’s collage work has graced the pages of Shampoo , Unlikely Stories , Pnpplzine.com, Palavar Arts Magazine , The Southeast Review , South Broadway Review , Postscript Magazine , and a plethora of others. Allison is at work on a new novel and is always at work making a collage here and there.

< Back The Lost Voice Fran Kohler I am on my way to meet my wannabe lover north of Seattle. I am a businessman and it has been a hard, successful day. The night rain is cold and ugly on the interstate and my need to piss pulls the car into the northbound roadside rest. There is a small dark form sitting upright against the wet restroom wall that somehow makes me feel safe, sitting here in my heated car. A tiny, tiny ragged form in a ragged old sleeping bag. I cannot see a face, there are shadows everywhere and, honestly, I don’t really care anyway. A ghost hand lifts a beggar’s cup in my direction. I drop some change in it and turn away. I don’t normally do that, drop change. Looking in the metal mirror bolted to the restroom wall I pause considering the man looking back. “Damn” I think. Outside the wind has picked up and the rain is frighteningly horizontal. Almost loud enough to drown out a hauntingly beautiful song coming from the beggar. The shaking coins in the tin cup are a big band rhythm section. An amazing, wondrous, Billy Holiday voice, overwhelming my senses. It is everywhere in my head. The hard rain is smashing into the beggar, making the sleeping bag heavy with cold. This voice does not belong here in this wasteland. I become afraid and run back to the safety of my heated, car. Driving north again the rhythm of the wipers sound like my coins in the beggar’s tin cup, louder with every swipe. The injustice of the beggar makes me lash out at the radio, what I know to be the truth. I want to blame Trump’s social fruit but that is just a cop-out. I am headed crazy to my wannabe lover and that is a cop-out too. I feel weak. I do not want to cry but I cannot help myself. I cannot get that voice out of my head. I know what I have to do as the car turns south, almost frantically, the wind blowing me sideways, now desperate for an off-ramp to McDonalds. My god, the salvation of McDonalds! There. Over there. Minutes later I am back; the beggar has become smaller—like the storm has been blowing beggar parts away. I grab my umbrella, open it and walk. I see the little vertical pools of water forming where the sleeping bag touches the wall, then down onto the sidewalk. Propping the umbrella as best I can against the rain I carefully set the box of hot food and hot coffee in front of the beggar. Like offerings in front of an altar. But why? Then—BAM!! A single bolt of lightning hits the pavement, causing the asphalt to burst into flames, right in front of me, in front of my car, cleaning the air. But why? I go deaf for a moment. I panic, thinking that I will not hear that voice again. I cannot live without it. Then… There it is again. Singing in the cold rain. I cannot look at this beggar. I dare not but I can… not help myself. The bright overhead light casts a face back at me—a beautiful scarecrow smile of broken teeth and whip-etched skin. She is singing to me, singing for her dinner and I am taken away somewhere far south of here. South of the Mason-Dixon line. It is long ago and I am peaceful. The falling rain is now warm, turning into springtime orange blossoms, dripping from my sleeves. The big, graceful old plantation has a giant old porch filled with happy people eating watermelon and homemade ice cream. A grand piano is there, rolled out of the house for the occasion. Teddy Roosevelt is presenting a Belle to the Ball. Living Blackamores open Duisenberg and Marmon coach doors, offering gloved hands to the Masters of a passing age. Then, that voice! Beautiful like God enraptured with creation fills the early evening magnolia trees. **************** A truck light illuminated the old woman. I saw she was reading a book by Faulkner. As she turned the cold wet page it tore in half. I ran. **************** Standing at the Edge. Soon I would arrive at the palace of my wannabe lover. A smaller palace to be sure, but quite expensive and built in a hurry—located at the very end of an insanely beautiful, manicured spit of land jutting out into Fidalgo Bay with its own drawbridge and moat. It was 2 a.m. dark outside as I pulled up. I waited in the cold rain, at the foot of the condo stairs. I wanted to be critical of the wealth surrounding me, of the yachts, the fine motorcars, the perfection. But I could not. I was weak with age and gravity. I felt trapped by the beauty and complexity of the bizarre feeling coming from my wannabe lover as she eased dramatically past the door, standing radiant and lonely in the driving rain. “Image is everything” I thought to myself as I stepped out of the car and into her arms. I could feel the money demon’s eyes upon me, inviting me to plug into any outlet. I did. It is hard now to recall those first impressions—the private elevator, the perfectly groomed and psychotic dog. Grandma County Kitchen décor in every room with Captain Nemo floor-to-ceiling bay views— screaming at me—run away! Run away quick before I did something crazy. “It’s ok” I said inside my head, “I mean, the whole idea of this meeting is to fall in love, or at least to seal the deal. ” I was too tired to surrender to my morals so I fell into the bed of a very inappropriate stranger. There was a delicious glass of never-ending fine red wine in my hand as I fell victim to my senses. “Fuck it.” I said under my breath. “Just fucking own it .” Days passed. Extreme, possibly undeserved days of leisure fueled with half-truths and gritted teeth. I could see Naked Sirens just off the shore looking back at me through my wannabe lover’s bedroom windows. Magnificent, nubile creatures who came into the house—seducing me with their trident of perpetual world news, expensive takeout food and engaging sex toys of all types. A massive TV in every room, all on the same news channel, 24/7. I found that it was hard to sleep with the lights always on, but my wannabe lover could not sleep with them off. It was not fair of me. My wannabe lover’s face was youthful for the most part and looked like almost the best that money can buy. There was a fear that if the lights went off then things would be different when they came back on. Like turning off the lights was like turning on the night gravity monster. “Touch Ups, love.” I started looking at my face with the power of money transforming it. Not dishonesty, in fact, honesty was a shield for cosmetic indulgence and I could not blame my wannabe lover for seeking the perpetual comfort of physical, mentally therapeutic pampering. After all, she could afford it. But, there was a ghost hole in the kitchen that set alarms off in my head. I was becoming comfortably numb after only 3 days (Or was it a month?) in this illusion. I did not want it to make sense to me. I did not know if I gave a shit or not. I went outside in the cold rain and saw old men and women with their wet dogs and I was beginning to look just like them. Warm bed to warm car, go for a drive, warm restaurant, see the town. In the big Lexus I could not feel the gears change, I could not feel the outside world moving by, I could only feel like I was losing the feel of things, everything. The wide, crack-free street sterility of the town came blasting through the dark and insanely cold, ripping rain all around us…Still…It was a warm fantasy town filled with warm fantasy citizens living in the strange reality of expensive designer drugs. Twinkling eyes and absent faces. The warm smile of my wannabe lover assured me that everything was alright with permanent porcelain masks floating gracelessly upon hidden necklines. And from this perspective, she was right. Even so, something was wrong and it was the wrong of no one under 30 years old living in this town. Not one young person to be seen. Not really because it is too fucking expensive—it is, and that is part of its comforting, disturbingly orderly appeal—but really because the youth of today have no interest in watching stiff walking ghosts become more translucent. I wanted to run like a freezing animal. “Will I be rich?” I ask myself. “Damn right I will.” “Ask me what I would do with it…. Isn’t that really what I am doing up here?” I comforted myself with comforting platitudes—“I’m guilty and I hate myself for it, I loathe myself for it.” I feared becoming a comfortable little ceramic actor on my wannabe lover’s fireplace mantle. I was afraid that I would enjoy fucking myself. When I arrived, my thoughts were about a mysterious broken-toothed beggar singing in the rain. I started freaking myself out when, on drunken day number four of this “indulgence,” I began to forget what the beautiful beggar looked like and how lovely her voice was. What it meant to me. It was becoming a lost voice and I did not want to lose it. In the middle of the night, I fled. It was expected. It was not right and we both knew it was not right. It had to happen and we both knew it but it still hurt and it still does. **************** The bitter salvation of reprise. It is raining really hard on the freeway as I leave Seattle for Portland. It is late at night and I feel safe in my businessman’s car. Hell, it is a Pontiac and they don’t make them like that anymore . I want to hide as I drive by the beggar’s roadside rest. “It’ll be safe to stop here” I think, “after all, this stop is on the southbound side of the road .” I carefully look, there are no beggars in sight. Uneasy I drop the seat and drift off to sleep. Then; then, I hear it again—that voice of warm, easy, honey-filled days. I desire that. Rolling down my window to hear it better the fierce rain and wind bring me back to coldness as the warmth of my car leaves. I want to stay here and wait until she comes back to rest next to me in her rags, in my dry warm car. I will wait here for her until I look like her—ancient and fragile. What is she reading? My very life depends upon knowing. I sit here watching pale figures get out of, and then after a few minutes, back into their warm cars. Some sleep, some drive away. When I woke up, wake up it was and is still raining and I saw her—see her clearly, my beautiful, sensual beggar, there, standing in front of my car. Brilliant. She stood tall, standing elegant in a long, perfectly tailored white raincoat and gloves. A kind of druid hoodie that covered covers her golden brown plantation hair. She stood back, now standing in the street light as it caught her face, sorta catching it like clear water in your hands. The light was bright, shining now on her missing teeth and whip-scarred face—far more lovely than ever before. She smiled a smile at me and I died dying. I wanted to want her love, to give her my car, shelter her from the storm, anything, if only she would sing something for me. The windshield fogged over and she was gone. Author Bio “You’re only given a little spark of madness, and if you lose that—you’re nothing.” - –Robin Williams Francis E. L. Kohler : I returned to PCC when I was in my middle ’60s because I was inspired by my children to start over in life. Honestly, I was clueless but I soon found a direction in the liberal arts thanks to some amazing instructors and brilliant fellow students who saw something in me that I had nearly forgotten I had—a creative imagination. Zackel/rust/stiffler/truax/sairanen/knight/fujita/buswell/hilt/johnson/tangredi/andsomany more with a special shout out to dr.s mitra and postma of pacific u—but mostly to my wonderful, really wonderful children! I intend to audit classes and write as long as I can think. Now, about my little story, “The Lost Voice,” it is a true story filled with real phantoms and demons.

< Back grandfather clock Eleanor Song on the plane ride home i wondered what it must be like to mourn your life as you live it; you sat there with me, almost, the ghost of a downturned hand tapping slow and steady on your knee. i watched my sister poke at airplane food as you recounted the famines etched in your gut, the ghost of your river mush mixture sloshing around in her emesis bag. on the plane ride home i wondered what it must be like to mourn your life as you live it; grasping at the passing years, the white of your knuckles bleeding into your hair. you wear clothes washed by a machine decades old, break bread out of an aluminum bowl, watch time run dry on a year-old desk calendar. you’d drawn on the right month in red marker the next time i saw it; i wonder if putting numbers on time matters more or less when you know you’re running out. on the plane ride home i wondered what it must be like to mourn your life as you live it; to watch skyscrapers burst from the land you love and old customs turn to impersonal plastic. half the grave you used to frequent sits empty and unlabeled, waiting for you year by year. did it hurt to face your own impermanence as you lit incense at the proof of hers? i let a life engulf me as your daughter watched from the shore, but you stood on another side of the ocean. it’d take so long to know you the way i’d like; years of dinner table conversations and turtle-paced walks that we just don’t have the time for. sometimes i wonder if i watch you so closely because i know more sharply that i won’t be able to for long. you take your lunches slow and sugarless, place your life in a box, assemble your bedsheets like a puzzle. i piece you together as you rearrange the blankets, craft stories and fading photos into a mind and a heart; you build yourself a place to lie down as i build a boat out of your histories. when it is strong enough, i’ll sail across our ocean again Author Bio Native Portlander Eleanor Song is a second-year PCC student majoring in political science. She is a former National Student Poets Program semifinalist and has been published by Stepping Stone Publishing (but most of her work exists in a single notes app file, not backed up). Outside of writing, Eleanor is a photographer, legislative staffer, and proud cat mom. You can find her talking to strangers on the blue line, getting lost on hiking trails, and lighting candles that smell like sugar.

MEET THE EDITORS Destiny Abbott is a Las Vegas native turned Portland transplant as of 2023. Traditionally, she is an illustrator, but she has been interested in creative writing since high school. She is working on an Associate’s Degree in Art and intends to pursue a Master’s in Art Practice. Destiny aspires to be a graphic novelist, so she is pursuing editing to further develop her writing practice. The Bellwether Review is her first experience with professional editing. While she isn’t active on social media, you can follow her on Instagram @deliri_arts. Elijah Acosta is an aspiring poet and writer currently pursuing an Associate of Science degree. Growing up in East Los Angeles in Southern California, he has always strived to be a positive role model. He has also been actively involved in his community, being elected as the president of his high school’s GSA, as well as studying environmental sciences and anthropology in India and Nepal with the student travel organization Carpe Mundi. Finding the goodness in things while daydreaming, stargazing, and living is something he always enjoys. He lives in Portland on a little street called Joy Avenue, where he continues his educational goals. You can see more about him or contact him through Instagram @ell.eaell. Paul Buchholz is a poet born and raised in Beaverton, with a lifelong passion for music, comedy, and writing. This edition of The Bellwether Review is his first foray into editing, and he’s grateful to be a part of letting the artistic voices of the PCC Rock Creek community be heard, especially at a time when art and connection are more important than ever. Katie Friend is a student at PCC with a growing interest in the literary world, especially in poetry and scriptwriting. New to editing teams, Katie joined to explore the behind-the-scenes process of content creation and editing. Katie was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. In her free time, she enjoys nothing more than lying down with her cat and reading a book to unwind after a long day. “Listen, three-eyes. Don’t you try to out-weird me. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.” —Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Restaurant at the end of the Universe Look at him go, back for round two! Once again typesetter and special pages editor, but this time he took his shot and submitted his own stuff. He didn’t know photography was right up his alley, but when Adam Idris picked up that camera, he knew it was right for him. With a passion for photography and love of Gunpla, he combined the two, inspired by the likes of Mitchel Wu and Kim DM Simmons. Karah Kemmerly has been working on journals since she started a creative writing club at her high school in 2009, but this is her first year as the faculty adviser for The Bellwether Review . In addition to teaching writing at PCC, she also makes zines with Conjunction Press, works on fiber arts projects, and watches a lot of Robert Pattinson movies. She lives in Northwest Portland with her partner and two orange cats. Everest Looney is an artist and poet living in a tight-knit neighborhood in northwest Oregon. Growing up in southern, sunny California, Everest found his love for the outdoors. As a trans student at PCC, he works his life into his art and writing. The Bellwether Review is his first experience in the world of published editing, with all past experiences being in the writing classes he’s taken at Rock Creek. Megan McGrory is an avid consumer of media who’s lived in Washington, Alaska, and finally Oregon. She has been writing since before she could technically write, getting her mother to write down her stories for her. Her greatest passion is prose, particularly fantasy and science fiction, though she’s started to dabble in poetry. Aside from writing, Megan loves to read, watch movies and TV, perform on stage, and analyze media through a feminist lens. One of her greatest passions is napping with her cat, Spooky. Marie Rubio is an editor for The Bellwether Review. For a full bio, see Moriendi Lenore's author bio . A lifelong love of reading in magic and self-discovery, Kaitlyn Thursam is now finding a new passion hidden deep within her: writing poetry. Her writing is inspired by climate action and political topics and is written through a feminist lens. She hopes that her work inspires others but also allows people to reflect on the interconnectedness of complex issues. Although this is her last year at PCC, she will be transferring to PSU to major in English and pursue her career in helping others publish and edit their work. Izzi Veeiriia (real name Gloria Isabella Pagui Vaire) is a layout and prose editor. Friends describe her as “eccentric,” which is a fun way to say “completely out of pocket.” Pictured is not her, but rather her (and her best friend’s) husband working and residing at the Tillamook Cheese Factory: Jason. Izzi has many hobbies, such as intentionally misspelling her last name, writing, having existential crises, retail therapy, and wasting hours dressing up only to stay inside all day. Her favorite question is “what is the color of day?” Other fun facts? Her favorite color has been lavender since she was 13. She has another fiancé aside from her husband: Diego from JoJo Part 7 . She is going to be bitten by a vampire in her ’30s and will go on to fulfill every career option possible over multiple millennia.