Chips Writing and Art Contests

October Contest: Terror

Writing Winner:  “Dichotomy,” Ashton Dodge

TRIGGER WARNING: ABUSE

Dear Dad,

A parent’s love may know no bounds, but I think my affections outnumber yours. You are the picture of stability; a happy life, a happy home, a happy family. You are a game of catch, fishing, smiling, laughing, dancing. A parent should be many things and you are all of them.

I stand on your feet and you pick them up effortlessly. I’m getting big, but you cast me into the air, far far away. You like to swim laps at the county pool, but I miss you, so I grab onto your back like a pilot fish to a vicious shark. Arms in great arches, splitting the water. I can’t hold on -- you’re slippery with sunscreen -- and am left behind snorting water and giggling. My head slips below the water. You came back for me because that’s what a parent should do.

At night, I bathe with my twin. There is a red plastic boat riding the soapy waves, and it catches both our young eyes. We scuffle in the tub and an accidentally well-placed blow bursts red rivers from my nose. It’s metallic and warm and the tub turns pink like the picturesque hydrangeas along the house. You pick me up, stuff tissues into my hands, caressing and comforting. Only appropriately, because that’s what a parent should do.

I play in the basement. The black and white tiles freeze my bare feet, and they dare not stray near the dark unfinished portion of the basement. There are loud clangs from there, “only the heater, buddy,” so I cook wooden meals for American Girl dolls under fluorescent light. You’re back from your trip overseas, loom down the grand oak stairs to play with me. I don’t like the game we play, because that’s what a parent could do.

Your Son

Art Winner: “Darkness,” Lena Erenfreicht

November: Myth

Writing Winner: “The Myth of Cassandra,” Iris Ghorbani

to be seen and not heard

till you’re heard but not seen

not even a teen

but no one believed

it’s

Don't spoil our fun

Don’t ruin its future

Don’t show me your pain

Don’t rat my abuser

Go cover your scars and

In cinch laugh along,

Be polite and have grace

(But not too in-your-face

Lest it be misconstrued)

And well in that case

Then that is on you

For leading its chase 

And don’t come to me when you didn’t say no

When you didn’t fight back

When it took you too slow

To get

What happened to you was so low

And we’ll 

Always believe till you’re too young to know

Till they’re in honor roll

Till it’s simply a gag

And you just do not get it

Ignored all the flags

My god

Oh s***

Why didn’t you tell me

When loose lips sink ships

And the enemy’s listening

Cause words are just words

And action’s a crime

If it ticks off those boxes you should be just fine

We’ll guarantee justice but there is a fine

For using your words just a smidge out of line

cause when I scream in my head

 and bleed from my eyes

and fail to forget

cassandra is mine

and me and i’m her 

and she’s roaring a warning

but they cover their ears

and troy is past burning

i’m learning

that maybe the man that I see

when I gaze in the mirror

who's staring at me

  it’s closing the door behind it at gym

it’s making me think of how I repay him

it’s feeding me poison to do what it wants

it’s calling me names waiting for a response

i stop

i breathe and wonder why

it is “believe women” but there’s always a fine

print and 

“women” must be trustworthy

they must speak with grandeur can’t be too dirty

these “women” must talk with a perfect rendition

must cry and must march and must write those petitions

cause “women,” you see, well they need a case

you can’t just go ‘round, reputations erased

cassandra was born 1250BC

before inkwells and cameras and male guilty pleas

she lived in an era of morphing to stone

of slithering locks and not saying no

yet she lingers today, mute as she’s been

within all of us, her story common

to abolish her curse we must stoop to their level

do her like they’ve done before

to raze her hex, to vanquish the devil

we turn off the lights, shut the door

we inch closer to her, and draw our blades tight

promising her it’s alright

and truly against our ideal prefer

We take a deep breath

And we kill her.

Art Winner: “Untitled,” by Elliot Wagner-Smith

December: Change

Writing Winner:  “An Evening in Greece,” Tate Flicker

I sit next to my brother, who sits next to the girl 

who is like my cousin or my sister, or my friend, 

and she sits next to my mother, 

who is surrounded by my father, 

my almost-uncle, my close-enough-to-aunt, 

and my might-as-well-be-cousins. 

The boy across from me points to his watch, 

a grin on his lips along with the taste of moussaka. 

“C’est quoi, là?” he asks, his gaze darting between me and my brother. Comment est-ce qu’on le dit? How could I have forgotten ce mot? “Mm...mo…” the word is trapped behind my teeth, 

I glance down at my half-eaten plate of chicken souvlaki, racking my brain for any remnant of the high school French vocabulary that I had believed to be useless. 

For why would I need to know the word for “watch” 

when I know the words for family, memory, and ocean? 

At the other end of the table, 

past the bottles of sparkling water and rosé 

and the candles whose flames move 

like the ripples of the Mediterranean Sea, 

The adults wonder how they could have grown up so fast, how they now have kids who are almost grown.

They reminisce about their own high school days in Belgium, about the first time they encountered my mother, 

the American exchange student 

who did not speak a word of French. 

How is it that they now celebrate fifty years of life, 

more than three decades of knowing each other, 

almost ten years of watching their kids grow up alongside one another? 

Their kids became friends without having to speak a word and now, years later, they hold a conversation that 

dances between English and French. 

The next generation, aged fourteen through twenty, 

sits at this restaurant on this tranquil island 

as the time approaches midnight, 

helping each other brush up on the second languages 

that their parents were so eager to teach them. 

C’est pour ça que je suis ici, à ce moment, 

trying to remember the word for a watch. 

But as I turn my gaze away from the scene 

at the other end of the table, 

the boy who is no longer seven years old 

reminds my brother and me, who are no longer six years old, that though we may know the words, famille et souvenir et océane, 

the word for a watch 

is une montre.

Art Winner: “Fill the Fence,” Artist