Mistake House 2022
Issue 8, May 2022
Benjamin Garcia
Averting the Gaze mom didn’t know I was gay because she chose not to see like the maidens of Pompeii that were instead two boys we’d now call gay we found in a last embrace his head on his chest we might change our minds about who can hug who and girls might be boys …
Current Staff
Ethan Capp, Editor in Chief Ethan Capp (He/Him) is a senior English major and Philosophy minor at Principia College. In his free time, Ethan reads, writes, paints, and plays video games, board games, and card games with his friends. Ethan is an avid reader of both poetry and fiction. T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is …
From the Editor’s Desk
This year’s edition of Mistake House Magazine asks the reader, during a time when society attempts, somewhat forcefully, to return to “normal,” to take a moment to experience the world around them and consider what can be changed. With one of the largest poetry collections in the magazine’s history, a range of subjects and approaches …
Benjamin Garcia
I don’t believe in muses, yet I believe in setting the table for your muse. That is, creating the right conditions for creativity. For me this tends to consist of four things: (1) consuming materials, (2) writing notes down, (3) setting aside time to write, (4) connecting with my poetry communities. Consuming materials for me …
Benjamin Garcia
Mistake House: In this world of busyness and hustle culture it has become more and more difficult to make space for writing. How do you protect your writing time, and do you have any rules for yourself to keep your writing process on track? Benjamin Garcia: Any amount of writing is considerably more than no …
Samira Yamin
My work aims to cultivate a critical and dynamic relationship to photographs of war, a practice of viewership with an eye toward the global, political contexts and ramifications of representation, while nurturing an affective, loving gaze toward the individual lives represented and at stake. I engage with appropriated materials to make sense of how political …
Samira Yamin
Mistake House: In this world of busyness and hustle culture making a space for creative work has become increasingly difficult. How do you protect your studio time, and do you have any rules for yourself to keep your generative process on track? Samira Yamin: I struggle very much in this area myself. I tend to …
Samira Yamin
Photography
In our second annual photography section, we’re pleased to include the work of seven student photographers.
Samira Yamin
Samira Yamin is a visual artist based in Los Angeles, CA. She is best known for her media constructions of a nebulous Middle East as a place of perpetual war, critique of representation and photojournalism, with an emphasis on the relationship between ethical care and viewership. Yamin received a B.A. in Studio Art and a …
Benjamin Garcia
Benjamin Garcia’s first collection, THROWN IN THE THROAT, won the National Poetry Series and the Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize, in addition to being a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He works as a sexual health and harm reduction educator in New York’s Finger Lakes region, where he received the Jill Gonzalez Health …
11 Hr Protection
Issue 8 Editor’s Prize for Photography Photography, 30” x 40”, March 10, 2021, Miami, Florida
Memories from a Summer Past
Digitized Color Film, 4”x6”, April 13, 2021, Ridgewood, New Jersey
Memories from a Hometown
Digitized Color Film, 4”x6”, April 13, 2021, Ridgewood, New Jersey
The Radiator
Digital Photography, 300 dpi, March 17,2022, Eliestoun, Principia College
Blue Mesa Topography
Digital Photography Print on Matte Photograph Paper, 16”x9”, November 2019 , Petrified Forest Nation Park, Arizona
Honeyed
Issue 8 Editor’s Prize for Poetry I told my therapist about On the Road and how you remind me of a young Kerouac with softer eyes. I told her how I went stargazing in May and as I lay there in a dark blanket of cold grass, I wanted to reach up and cup the …
Meanwhile, Anahata
You sip Kombucha from a wine glass and turn the tap with the tip of your toe. I watch you sink into this 3 a.m. bubble bath with no more than a sigh. You, who whispers shaky affirmations to our reflection in the rearview: My body is strong. My body is beautiful. …
Portrait of a Broken Wing
On a mid-June afternoon, a broken butterfly landed on my shoulder. She tumbled down from a towering oak, weary from flying against the dense, summer air. One of her wings had been shredded by the spring-loaded jaws of a terrier, or perhaps a particularly violent rainfall shattered her stained-glass wing at the joints where the …
be/d/side you’
d rumble and rustle [tuck myself in under this] love & make myself right. here ! (is the warmth here is breath & goodness, sink into grace) never else- w/here is the dearest night.
a spider can’t understand
her hands weave music / strand by strand with ease beyond trying / she glides her way center / prays for what she doesn’t know / is lovely / wisdom to preserve; make / the most of her string symphony and me humming along
Rousseau’s Gypsy Speaks
Under muskmelon moon and pewter sky, shepherd stars alight in a night tasting of ice’s carbon, frozen earth. Beyond slate smooth mountains, planes of wasteland dust, I lie. My body: dark side of a bright moon. My body: black oil against a silver night. A lion preys or protects. I lean close to music; music …
Rose-Hip Season
When the light frost settles we go out picking. Down the morning veil of the hill we go down to rows of shrubs, red-bulbed, neon in the slow autumn crawl. We pluck peduncles of each hip, and fill our baskets. They, like angels with sepal wings, lie limp. But still something is alive in their …
Finding the Branch
The whip wasn’t always visible in their hands, it was up in the boughs of the fir or the beech, waiting, like a prized harvest to be imagined. They made it so, invented the game of pick your punishment — find a branch suitable for your own mischief. I’d measure a thick, fresh one, burly, …
Ankyloglossia
I. raindrops ripple potholes, neon rain- boots splash, but she splits chapped lips to sip monsoons; her liquid tongue becomes catacombic, crypt- ic; a limestone tooth lined language tomb. Her sun-bleached bones stow silent marrow; decay: a water-logged language corpse; decay: growing up knowing bones. Evaporation fractures …
Mrs. John Wayne Gacy
Instead, I stayed. An odd choice, maybe, because of the smells that clawed their way from the crawl space, mice screeching to heavens for air. The boys’ wallets that littered the floor of his car like dead leaves tracked in on boots. I learned about monsters who climb into marriage beds at my mother’s dining …
The Well-Practiced Art of Overthinking
In restaurants, my fingers worry the paper napkins into a small pile of nesting material, something you might line a den with to keep it warm in the winter. I weave the straw wrapper into rings, my fingertips like restless animals waiting for the signal to run. A snapped branch under the hunter’s foot. A …
Peonies
Every year, the petals begin to unravel, soft and pink as sun-touched cheeks, during the week leading up to my birthday. They reach their height the day of. Once, I convinced myself they bloomed for me. Imagined the turn of my year to be a herald of approaching summer, these unfolding petals my trumpets. We …
Tender, Tender
When I asked Olena, in Kyiv, she said she was a barman. I slipped her a smile like I’d slip a waitress a tip at the end of the night. Where I live, we say bartender. Tender? she asked, looking at the blue-black bruise on my arm. Tender, I repeated, looking not into her hazel …
Halls of Snow and Sleep
James Joyce wrote, “Shut your eyes and see.” I wake from sleep, from being in that room with you. What I remember: my deep sigh of relief. Outside the modern concert hall banked by walls of windows, the snow shuddered, susurrous, melting against warm windows. Snow builds. Snow falls. Snow fell, while we sat close …
Little Black Cat
Little black cat, you are a witch’s shadow. Your green eyes pierce dark corners. You peer at the shadows in the human soul. You lap at pagan blood and are condemned. You have no sacred nights, and yet you find yourself in strange homes before October ends. Little black cat, you have known a shelter …
litany
this I will remember too to ask for return how unkind when being broken into to object …
Waiting
During the interview I felt as though I were speaking to a friend and panicked how will he know me if I don’t tell him explicitly in our one, thin hour We discussed why some doctors scorn addicts so much left behind in training like how asphalt takes from ten-year-old legs …
Dad to Father
I see from your eyes, Dad, my childhood taking place within arms outstretched and spinning. You think I’ll never let go, I’ll hold on as long as she wants. I’ll swing my daughter off her feet, round and round, just to hear that little giggle. My bones might pop and clack, but to see her …
The Last Dance
“The Dancer’s body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul. “ — Isadora Duncan, 1877 – 1927 he will come knocking on your window, pointe shoes in hand, waiting for you to cross the floor. the spotlight, once your sun, now burns hot rays into your skin as you release the bar and step …
Pio pachý apó to Neró / Thicker than Water
“Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.“ — Sophocles, Antigone. Your heart is filthy like your feet and your tongue is sharp like your teeth but I will not cower in fear nor kneel at the sight of you, for you know of my wishes, dear uncle. I will not rest until the undead bodies …
God, I Wish I Were A Mango
Mangos don’t have to think about love. Mangos don’t have a god that hates them. Mangos don’t cry when they touch a girl for the first time. Mangos are cut into and sensually devoured. Sweetness slips through rosy lips and elicits delighted moans of content. Mangos are loved for their ripeness and brightness. Juice runs …
Francisca Seycora
Famous Viennese sex-worker, died of meningitis in General Hospital at age 19. Her skull is currently on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, PA. I. Frontal Bone I am: shaken awake — all stiff-necked, stifled, all pock-marked sockets, wrung-out wrists. I’ll smash my gnashed teeth at the morning. Click my tongue at all …
Veronica Huber
Executed for the murder of her child in Salzburg at age 18. Her skull is currently on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, PA. …
Marietta Grinaldi
Embroiderer of silk, died of tuberculosis in Ravenna, Italy at age 20. Her skull is currently on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, PA. I. Frontal Bone if it’s all the same to you: let’s link pinkies and haunt each other always, only as mosaics, only as chiffon puckered/punctured with needles. let’s be ladies, …
Forgive me for I have winned
Spoken like a true champion of all things toddler. The tonguing of gums; sharpened with the edges of newly acquired toofs. The boundless playground of your imagination reminds me of a time when I could get away with yelling and running around in circles; conquering the world one recess at a time. I miss having …
Under the Tulip Tree
We were too young to cherish how the shade lulled us to sleep when we were wrapped in a blanket of summertime heat. “Home base” was under the tulip tree, where the kaleidoscope of greens nourished us more than any lunch lady ever could. We would spin round and round until we all fell down, …
Before My Uncle Came to the U.S.
He worked at an orange plantation in Veracruz for 29 cents an hour. A business card was his American Dream, but there were 40 million lives more important than his. For 29 cents an hour, his nine-year-old son sweat beside him. There were 40 million lives more important than his. The heat dried Felipe’s tears …
Sight
“My name is Fanya Kaplan. Today I shot at Lenin. I did it on my own… I will give no details.” – Fanny Kaplan to police upon her arrest Once, I’m quite sure, I could see clearly. I’m completely absorbed in your shadow, in the many things you’ve done and said and taken. The shiny …
Seep
I am surprised to see that I’ve put down roots – I broke cement foundation, I’ve sprouted leaves. This place is mine. This place is mine. I grow tall; spiting the odds I’ve bent to fit – I am the ghost of before I’d forgotten. This place. This place. This place. I am suddenly hard. …
Sagwa
We met when I was nineteen, she twelve— old enough to be my grandmother. Three paws dappled with vitiligo, eyes crossed blue. The curious thump thump of a tripawd companion. Nights on my chest, days in my arms. Sunbathing and waiting in the window. Fighting opioid pills and an ailing soul, I got better. She …
Weight
Grip the bar as hard as you can and pull until your hands are torn. Clutch it like the hem of your mother’s coat when you followed her through crowds as a child. If you drop it, you’re a failure and you better stack callous on callous untilyou can lift it. You are a man. …
Joint Purr-fection Cat Glucosamine
I need to remind Mom and Dad to order more supplements for GK. He’ll be out soon, and he’s been walking less stiffly since he started taking them. I hope he’s eating—I always ask when I call home. I was shocked when I saw him a couple visits ago. His coat was soft as ever …
Goodwill Hunting
It was in the racks of old musty clothes where we seemed to have the most in common Sliding through plastic hangers and confederate tees, this is where we were okay, where we could move through mountains of cotton, no words spoken, except for the excitement of a ‘good find.’ Where we stood, here in …
Death becomes her
Dancing between the cotton sheers of a crimson night light shining through, tinting my skin tenacious in its touch most brilliant in hue. a technicolor, bull-teasing red in a black and white salt and pepper forgotten time immemorial dance on the fire of the burning books laughing at the powerlessness of the hateful. Evaporated wisdom …
Things I Now Realize
in the style of Nazim Hikmeti I didn’t know I loved limestone dust hovering in the air like a mild white fog I didn’t know I loved dancing up and down the levels of an ancient Roman amphitheater I didn’t know I loved women in colorful hijabs chatting on paths, books in their hands, walking …
Lyric Limitations
Today is the equinox. The sun shines from my right, my ear warming and my eye seeing little strands of gold, the sun at work. The sun being or growing or perfectly consistent. The bad the same amount as the un-bad, and both – well neither have color. Perception has color. It’s a noun, I …
i’d sing a love song if i could carry a tune
there’s something supernatural in those hands, or maybe it’s the deep streets carved into the palms & steering me toward your paranormally old soul. either way, i didn’t mean to offend my intuition when i half-claimed, my heart wasn’t manufactured for romantic lovin’, when, the truth is, it knew that i wanted to make fossils …
Figuratively Speaking
Her assigned idiom had been “to kick the bucket,” So, she put waxen crayon to white computer paper And drew a stubby foot kicking a rusty, holey pail. Strange how her biggest fear was never the after, Or arachnids, or appendicitis, but owning a bigger life, And her biggest desire was one she didn’t actually …
Moving out and moving on (moments in a Florida boy’s life)
Raised on good southern manners, on frozen dinners and neon lights, on guns in the bed of high-schooler’s trucks. I saw death when I was 6, 12, 18. Videos of 9/11 in elementary school, videos of friends in high school, both dead now but I miss them- the ones that I knew by name. Interesting, …
Read More Moving out and moving on (moments in a Florida boy’s life)
Oh MISSION
….to catch—not operate a stolen starship…. interplanetary defection obliterates the mission: model a future ahead …
Everything I’ll Need When Everything Ends
When it’s time to say our goodbyes to all the things I’ll run to see the sun on the sea may take my eyes & When the last rag has been wrung of dirty suds that justify a fight my buds can drop right off my tongue & When the ones I love decompose can …
You always liked my curves.
When I first learned to dance (with a woman) I forgot how to walk (with a man) I have too-tight …
To Flowers and Fellows: The Carnival of Human Fragility
At the end of the day if fish were bears and we prayed to a pear, what difference would it make? To whom should I pray? To the god of rot, an estuary between the living and the dead? I wish for ecstasy to creep into …
Read More To Flowers and Fellows: The Carnival of Human Fragility
Museum
Nikonz6 Architecture Photography, 16.0MP, 4905*3261, May 17, 2021, Modern Art Museum Fort Worth
Alton Selects
Digital Photography, 11 X 18, December 2, 2021, Alton, Illinois
Still Life
Digital Photography, 2.8 MB (5784 x 3854 pixels), March 5, 2018, Los Angeles, CA
Tunnel Vision
Digital Photography, 6.2 MB (5320 x 3822 pixels), December 25, 2016, Angkor Wat (Siem Reap. Cambodia)
Dubrovnik at Dusk
Digital Photography, 17MB (5818 x 3878 pixels), August 5, 2021, Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Thunder and Silence
Issue 8 Editor’s Prize for Fiction I stood atop Goðafoss, a place of power and history, when I heard thunder for the first time in Iceland. The sky was painted grey, the color of a storm above a murky sea. I hadn’t bothered to check the forecast before I left. The trip had been impromptu. …
1.989 * 10 ^ 30
A single plane flies across a pink-orange sky on a Thursday evening and can be seen darting in and out through the clouds before making a gentle landing on the surface of a lake in the middle of a forest. Unnoticed by anyone of importance, the plane sinks slowly till it is half submerged …
Tic Tac
The worst part about recovering from a week in the psychiatric hospital was the acne. The nurses hadn’t let me keep my facial cleanser because I didn’t have a prescription for it. They didn’t seem to realize it was the kind you bought over the counter at Wal-Mart—three dollars for a four-ounce tube of grainy …