Parentheticals

Rebecca Knight

In the supermarket midmorning checkout

In a hoodie that read COOS BAY

A thick purple crescent crater-

Impossible not to catch-

Seemed so fresh under her left eye.

She couldn’t have been five years old.

Her untrimmed cherubim hair was falling in her face.

How easily it carved a hole in my chest.

It seemed an agricultural violence

The first time I saw it.

(The pumpkin cannon at Smith Rock Ranch.)

It gave the pitch, the uneasiness of seeing a real-live gun for the first time.

I must have been about that girl’s age.

Under October

The sky hung in the mesosphere

Dappled,

Or merle.

They grew alfalfa and fed it to their animals, and it was all you could smell.

Parked out in a razed cornfield

Was a junker Suburban- green.

(For years in the early aughts my parents drove a used forest green Chevy Suburban that smelled like cigarettes if it ever rained.)

You paid tokens

To sit up high

And shoot the pumpkins they grew

Out of a behemoth army gray cannon.

(I imagine it’s a bespoke instrument for the purpose.)

You hoped to smash out a window

Or even hit the thing.

The pumpkin rose like a smoke-orange sun,

And sailed in slow motion in its inevitable parabola.

The fruit in an instant torn apart,

Dashing seeds and strings across the open ground,

To be the feast of the ravens and coyotes

When evening crept its way down the canyon.

Holly Smith

Biography: I’m currently a third year fine arts student, focusing on drawing and painting. I’m a local to the area – less so Corvallis and more so the valley and hills surrounding. I grew up playing in the Willamette, running through Starker forest, and rolling in the sand dunes of the coast. My sense of home is deeply connected to the landscapes and people surrounding me, and that sense of home provides the main themes of my work.

Artist Statement: This piece is meant to convey the feeling of walking on the coast of Oregon. Growing up, visits to the coast always meant time to connect both with family and with the vast natural landscape. I often end up walking apart from my family, watching their interactions with the landscape and each other from a distance. This is one of those moments, as my mom and older sister walk ahead of me toward the ocean.

Rebecca Knight

Biography: I am a third-year Oceanography student, originally from Bend, Oregon.

Artist Statement: This was an attempt at something lighter. Smith Rock Ranch is definitely a part of my ‘roots’.