Mistake House 2016
Issue 2, May 2016
Amy Pleasant
Photo by Jason Wallis Photography Amy Pleasant earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from the Tyler School of Art. She currently works from Birmingham, Alabama. Pleasant’s work has been widely exhibited and reviewed, including solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery in NY, whitespace gallery in Atlanta, …
A.D. Carson
A.D. Carson earned his BA in Education and Creative Writing at Millikin University and his MA in English from the University of Illinois, Springfield. He went on to work as a high school teacher while serving as the Writer-In-Residence for Benedictine University. Currently, he is completing his PhD in Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design from …
Amy Pleasant
Mistake House: Your work incorporates many media, including drawing, painting, sculpture and cutouts. How does the variation in media correlate to your creative vision? Amy Pleasant: Exploring the work through different materials helps me to understand the work in a more expansive way. I recently started working with clay. I like giving myself a new …
Hurricane Ivan
In the eye, children run outside to study the fallen branches like old seers gasping over their prophetic throw of bones. Parents squint at their roofs – scowl over missing shingles – while the cul-de-sac’s oldest boy shouts I found a bird’s nest! Every other child rushes the nest, and all go silent when the …
From the Editor’s Desk
Welcome to Mistake House, a publication of Principia College’s English Department and a home for diverse student voices, with special features devoted to the work of professional writers and artists. Our 2015 premiere issue was met with positive reception and reader engagement, and the editors are grateful for the continuing support of our readership. For …
Ruth said…
parting the orange-sherbet hair from the paste of make-up and sweat that lined her face, smiling with the apple red lips that cocooned her Snow White teeth, picking at the retro jumpsuit whose buttons had slipped undone during the evening, with words promising to tickle your tongue with her broad southern Irish accent, “Your blonde …
Rabbit Summer
Sun licked dew from five acres of waist-high grass—illegal height in Tennessee. Matthew drove the lawn-mower down the ramp backward. Half & half. That’s what we decided when he hopped off. I went first, gear locked on three and steady—machine and myself at a good hum. I didn’t feel the bump, only saw grass quiver. …
Flesh Borders
That night we all had our dreams. Border of weeds Border of two-bit rocks and thistle Border of pigeons with their thick necks bobbing as if they could point out where our feet should stumble next Border of concrete wall, angled high under the overpass Border of tangy smog, a musty shirt pressed against my …
Critters and Mamma
The barn mamma built on the hill above the pasture years ago brought to life the big, stubborn, black-maned mare, who trotted the haul up the hillside pasture when mamma came home each night, to the little house below, by the little garden grove. The big black barn that was crammed with hay, brought play …
The Matters of Mondamin Street
In the latter half of 2001 I made several trips to my father’s home, where, for a week and sometimes two, I took care of him while he convalesced. Neighbors he had known for years, who he himself had helped in times of trouble, could not manage the task, nor could nurses, whose job it …
Five Fights
When Lewis was six, he got into his first fight. It was a school holiday and his mum was working, so his dad, who didn’t have a gig till the nighttime, took Lewis to St. James’ Park to look at the birds. Lewis really liked birds. His dad would play old jazz records by a …
We Need a Verb
What if there were no birds on earth, no waterbirds or cranes, no cardinals nor the robins flighty in the trees and no creamy seagulls or pelicans squawking at the beach, no eagles screaming, no fish hawks diving, no fowls or owls hooting and looting mice in the woods, and no mosquitoes or butterflies to …
Feed
Her temper was like a lit cigarette. Buck had already seen her burn hot and mean before crumbling and fizzling out. She made a phone call at the payphone just outside the gas station and slammed the phone down into the cradle. She lifted the receiver and slammed it down two times, three times, and …
A.D. Carson
Mistake House: You’re equally involved in music/performance and writing. What would you say are some of the biggest differences between writing for the page and writing music? In what ways are these artistic processes similar? Do you utilize each medium toward a different goal? What informs your choice? A.D. Carson: Each piece dictates its own …
Forsythia
I’m old enough, now, to sit in the front seat. It makes rolling down the window and the spring wind whipping through my hair an unfamiliar thrill. Dad’s in the driver’s seat. It’s unusual running errands with him but I want to prove to him that I’m a good companion—I’ll be helpful and I’ll learn. …
A.D. Carson
Familiar Producer: Preme Additional vocals: N/A BPM: 60 [1] This one for the niggas, the ones that was called that descriptor when they was delivered out there in Virginia, the ones ever since who have taken the care to defend the people surrendered from coast to the coast to the cold and the whip of …
Amy Pleasant
Current Staff
Editor-in-Chief Brandon O’Neil is currently double majoring in Education and English (literary studies track). His work has been featured in The Christian Science Sentinel, Wilde Magazine, and People’s World. For his capstone in English, Brandon is exploring the presence of Jungian archetypes within Walt Whitman’s 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. He has served as an …
Pan
It was Eli’s idea to go gold panning. Not hers. But while it usually bothered Ruby to go mindlessly along with someone else’s plans, for Eli she could make an exception; even if it meant sitting all day in the hot sun with her legs and ass falling asleep on the rocks. When Eli pulled …
Silence
I auditioned for the play. The cast list was posted: I didn’t get the part. I had to get out of the lobby. I slipped down the dark hallway out the door glowing red under the “EXIT” sign. What now? I had to get out of the lobby. I slipped down the dark hallway— someone …
The Persistence of Memory
It comes knocking. And when you don’t answer, it throws pebbles at the window. And when you don’t slide open the screen to let in last summer, it rams in the back door of your mind, splintering wood and equations from eighth grade geometry class. You’d let that go, except it’s headed upstairs towards the …
Barbed Wire
Eight years old, and I always knew when to duck, bend my knees just enough to slip under that invisible line of barbed wire. But I forgot, I forgot one day what I was looking for and that twisted wire, that one thorn tore up my cheek, over my nose, and my head whipped backwards. …
Trifolium repens
Japan. Countryside. May 2009. Shigeo Obara finds the secret. They occur in large clusters, which is 40.6 degrees from the terminal leaves of any deciduous tree. Scent is somewhere between onion and spice, dog-breath and brown sugar. I smell it in my clothes after running my fingers along the ground. Obara holds the world record …
Destinations
Musts composes this poetry in his native Latvian, then translates into English. His poem, “Destination,” appears here in both languages. A līdz B No punkta A līdz punktam B, Esmu atkal mājās, Vidzemē! Kur gaisa vētras putni kliedz Un pagastu pagalmos bērni zviedz. Kur vīri dāmām ar acīm miedz un pēcāk sārtu rozi sniedz. Silts …
Harbor
You were sixteen when you put that needle in your arm. You walked out the door and you gave up. On us. On everything. It hurt. Digging your fingers into your skin, pulling out each individual vein. You unraveled, like a stuffed bear, Your textile torn, your dangling ears, Your eyes hanging from a thread. …
doubting Gödel’s incompleteness theorems
in order to understand you must first have the sense of what systems are they whole or complete do they exist in your mind or outside do they invoke in your imagination in your mind’s eye four walls eight windows or the opposite it is a question of projection not of the numbers but of …
Woof
I can think of at least a handful of times where I thought about stopping, but the most recent was when I made Laney cry. While it wasn’t first time I had ever made anyone cry, I will say that it’s the only time I have ever made someone cry tears that burned my brain like …
Artmaking, Unconditional
Perhaps she tumbled from doorframe to ground, fabric and limbs crumpled on hexagonal tiles – perhaps landed leaf-like – the crunch of a moment snatched in spite of time enough to loosen fingers from wood, dust and cobweb, crucifix figure of the gone-moment sealed in gelatin silver. A good photograph in monochrome can make one …