DigitalCommons@C.O.D.

The Prairie Light Review 
Volume 42 Number 2 Article 71 
Spring 5-1-2020 
Colophon 
Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.cod.edu/plr 
Recommended Citation 
(2020) "Colophon," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 42 : No. 2 , Article 71. 
Available at: https://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol42/iss2/71 
This Back Matter is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. 
It has been accepted for inclusion in The Prairie Light Review by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@COD. For 
more information, please contact orenick@cod.edu. 
Gratitude
The team at Prairie Light Review is grateful for the support of Dr. Brian Caputo, 
Dr. Mark Curtis-Chavez, Dr. Kirk Overstreet, Dr. Diana Del Rosario, Dean Sandra 
Martins, and Dean Chuck Boone. The finished product of this journal would have 
been impossible if not for the unwavering support of our faculty, who encourage 
students to revise and submit their submissions! Much thanks to Chuck Steele, 
Shannon Hernandez, Jelymar Mejia, Nicole Plumtree, Sandra Gonzalez, and the 
Office of Student Life for their support and assistance with publicity as well as 
Jennifer Duda. Additional gratitude is due to Karen Kuhn, Ellen Farrow, Cathie 
Walker, Paula Burns, the Budilovsky family, Melville Dewey, and Joshua Johnson. 
We are so grateful to the talented in dividuals at Alpha Graphics in Lisle, and 
especially to Doug Wade, without whom this would be impossible.
Colophon
Twice a year, College of DuPage invites all COD students, faculty and staff, as 
well as the entiriety of District 502 to submit original literature and artwork for 
publication in the community liberal arts journal, The Prairie Light Review. This 
year The Prairie Light Review accepted works of original fiction, nonfiction, essays, 
drama, poetry, graphic essays, photography, and 2D or 3D artwork of any medium 
to be considered for publication. Students enrolled in English 2210 worked as 
student editors to read and evaluate all submissions through a fair and anonymous 
system of evaluation. The class was guided by our faculty advisor, Adam Fotos, 
who oversees class proceedings, leads hiring decisions of class officers, and advises 
on creative and technical decisions of all varieties. Throughout the semester, our 
officers-Editor in Chief, Production Editor, and Marketing Editor- serve pertinent 
roles in ensuring the quality of our publication. Our Marketing Editor manages all 
of our social media and communiy connections, ensuring that the public is aware 
of the opportunities available to them, and the details of upcoming events. The 
Production Editor creates the overall design of the journal, deciding formatting, 
color scheme, piece placement, and other technical decisions. The Editor in Chief 
supervises all operations of the team, makes executive decisions on submissions, 
and advises Assistant Editors in their work. Final edits are approved by our entire 
team before the finished publication is sent to the printers.
Cover: 80 Pound Matte Paperstock.
Design: Adobe Photoshop CC 2020.15.02.1, Adobe InDesign cs6, Adobe Illustrator 
cs6. Composed on a custom Apple Workstation.
Finance and Operation: the publication is funded through College of DuPage’s Stu-
dent Life.
Publishing: AlphaGraphics, Lisle, Illinois.
Paperstock: 70 pound Matte Paperstock.
Photography: All photography in this magazine is provided by residents of District 
502.
Typography: Toppan Bunkyu Gothic, Helvetica Neue, Minion Pro, Futura. All Fonts 
are open source and free to use, or paid for by Student Life.
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et al.: Colophon
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English

Colophon

Trestrail, Susan

The Prairie Light Review 
Volume 42 Number 2 Article 72 
Spring 5-1-2020 
an Excerpt from The Land Screams 
Susan Trestrail 
College of DuPage 
Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.cod.edu/plr 
Recommended Citation 
Trestrail, Susan (2020) "an Excerpt from The Land Screams," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 42 : No. 2 , 
Article 72. 
Available at: https://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol42/iss2/72 
This Back Matter is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. 
It has been accepted for inclusion in The Prairie Light Review by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@COD. For 
more information, please contact orenick@cod.edu. 
1Trestrail: an Excerpt from The Land Screams
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an Excerpt from The Land Screams

Career Service Specialists Pierre Michiels, CRC, and Melissa Schertz, CRC, discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the job market and what you can do to remain a viable job candidate during the COVID-19 crisis

Michiels, Pierre

Schertz, Melissa

diLiberti, Julia

Episode 21: COVID-19\u27s Impact on the Job Market: Making it Work

Maureen Heffern Ponicki, Assistant Professor of Political Science, discusses the intersections of political science and COVID-19, touching on topics from healthcare, different government responses to COVID-19, and mail-in ballots

Ponicki, Maureen Heffern

Episode 23:  Clear and Present: The Inevitable Intersection of Political Science and COVID-19

Julia diLiberti interviews Professor of Biology Kathleen Finan, MD, and Interim Dean of Nursing and Health Sciences Dilyss Gallyot, RN, and gets their perspective on the pandemic, what’s being done, what can we do, and why testing and treatments are still being worked out

Finan, Kathleen

Gallyot, Dilyss

Episode 1: Testing and Treatments

Julia interviews Shannon Brown, Associate Professor of Education and Teacher Preparation, and Dr. Karen Ferreira-Meyers, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Linguistics and Modern Languages at University of Eswatini, to discuss the effects of COVID-19 on education in their respective countries: the U.S. and Eswatini

Brown, Shannon

Ferreira-Meyers, Karen

Episode 6: An Educational Conversation about the US and Eswatini

The Prairie Light Review 
Volume 42 Number 2 Article 3 
Spring 5-1-2020 
About 
Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.cod.edu/plr 
Recommended Citation 
(2020) "About," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 42 : No. 2 , Article 3. 
Available at: https://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol42/iss2/3 
This Prefatory Note is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at 
DigitalCommons@COD. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Prairie Light Review by an authorized editor of 
DigitalCommons@COD. For more information, please contact orenick@cod.edu. 
About
Prairie Light Review is the liberal arts journal of the College of 
DuPage. This biannual journal seeks to showcase the diverse 
work produced by creative individuals surrounding us. Our 
publication exists entirely because of our loyal community, 
as we only accept submissions from District 502 and rely 
on our team of student editors to edit, format, and produce 
the literary journal. Each piece submitted is evaluated 
anonymously in order to ensure objectivity. 
Join
To join our Editorial team, enroll in English 2210 for the 
upcoming semester! 
Direct additional inquiries to: 
Adam Fotos, Faculty Advisor 
fotosa@cod.edu
630-942-3167
Rolling Submissions
The Prairie Light Review accepts submissions the entire 
academic year. We accept submissions of any of the following 
categories: original fiction, nonfiction, essays, drama, poetry, 
graphic essays, black and white and color photography, and 2D and 
3D artwork of any medium.
If you are interested, please submit all work to:
 prairielightreviewsubmissions@gmail.com
Scholarship Info
The Budilovsky Literary Scholarship is pleased to offer 
one $500 award per semester in conjunction with being 
published in the College of DuPage’s Prairie Light Review. 
To be considered for this award the entrant must remain a 
student at COD the following semester and have written a 
quality piece of any type (i.e. essay, poem, short story, etc). 
Preference will be made to pieces that are autobiographical 
in nature.
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et al.: About
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About

McLysaght, Erin

The Prairie Light Review 
Volume 42 Number 2 Article 13 
Spring 5-1-2020 
From the Ground Up 
Erin McLysaght 
Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.cod.edu/plr 
Recommended Citation 
McLysaght, Erin (2020) "From the Ground Up," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 42 : No. 2 , Article 13. 
Available at: https://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol42/iss2/13 
This Selection is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. It 
has been accepted for inclusion in The Prairie Light Review by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@COD. For 
more information, please contact orenick@cod.edu. 
From the Ground Up                               Erin McLysaght
this is what it feels like
to dig fingernails into my brain:
oil slick and heavy as tar, 
every groove dragged through to create a melody,
creation’s music box,
sulfurous fog and hollow bones to chew on,
dug up and consumed,
ice down to the marrow 
backwards and forwards,
nothing is familiar but you remember
everything.
I want to pull the damn thing apart;
rearrange my matter until
even I don’t know
which way is up.
I want to shatter my own atoms like glass 
blown-out windows in a fire,
this factory for blood clutching and seizing
tearing at the walls.
I press my face to the prison bars
hold them close and
dig in my nails.
I pry them apart.
I am overpopulated 
with silence.
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McLysaght: From the Ground Up
Published by DigitalCommons@COD, 2020


From the Ground Up

Troncoso, Lucas

The Prairie Light Review 
Volume 42 Number 2 Article 15 
Spring 5-1-2020 
The Bridge 
Lucas Troncoso 
College of DuPage 
Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.cod.edu/plr 
Recommended Citation 
Troncoso, Lucas (2020) "The Bridge," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 42 : No. 2 , Article 15. 
Available at: https://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol42/iss2/15 
This Selection is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. It 
has been accepted for inclusion in The Prairie Light Review by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@COD. For 
more information, please contact orenick@cod.edu. 
The Bridge                                                 Lucas Troncoso
*Content Warning: Suicide
I walked one day through this old, narrow path that I 
used to run on with my mother. I was six at the time. She always 
told me that I never tired of running, always skipping ahead 
with my little feet in that pale pink dress my grandmother 
made for me before I was born. But the last day I ever saw my 
mom, I was running down this same path in fear, running, 
running, running as if that was all there was in life. I sort of 
remember that night, but there really isn’t much to remember 
anyhow. I woke up freezing under a bridge and hitched a ride 
with some truck driver the next morning. I’m eighteen now. 
I decided to go on a trip for a few days with just my 
bike, my old backpack, some food and water, and came to 
that path that has stayed in my mind ever since; so, locking 
my bike to a tree by the roadside, I started down this memory 
lane. The path is, frankly, only a path now because it has 
less underbrush and more gravel than the rest of the green 
growth around it, and it goes on for miles, a true masterpiece 
you think would come from some artist’s metric, yet free 
imagination; it narrows down the farther it goes, perfectly, 
but naturally. All I hear is the faint chime of birds in the light, 
misty trees that line either side of the path, and the sound of 
my own feet crunching gently on the rugged earth below. A 
chilly grey sky seems to elaborate on that silence, like white 
noise. It is the most peaceful walk I’ve made since I first set 
foot on the gravel. 
A grasshopper jumps up from a patch of damp pebbles, 
skipping along through blades of grass toward the shallow 
puddles to my side, still steaming with morning dew. When 
I witness this microscopic event, it is like the whole world 
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Troncoso: The Bridge
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has grown seven sizes larger, that all the childhood magic 
that surrounded this place has returned from the ashes of 
my present life, that this once narrow path now opened to 
reveal again its secret beauty, if only you look on the small 
things. And the sun, for a brief moment, shines through the 
clouds upon this haven, so that all the brush and gravel come 
to life, and the puddles glimmer with yellow, leaving only the 
shadows of a concrete bridge that runs over the path just 
ahead of me. The bridge beckons to me from some trench of 
the past, though it puzzles me still, like a friend you see for the 
first time in years and need a minute to recognize. I continue 
down to greet this warmingly chilly place, laden with mud 
at the floor, with cracked concrete slopes that reach up to 
rusty beams  that used to vibrate with the flow of traffic. Yet 
across the mud, in the corner of my eye, I catch a strange sort 
of ghost, for its wrinkled plastic, resting against the concrete 
slope, achieves some unearthly presence amid the litter that 
otherwise accompanies the bridge. It is a large oven bag tied 
with the elastic string of a sweatshirt; a strand of tape runs 
across its folded edge with a hole cut in the fold. 
I had only heard of suicide bags in my life up until 
now, and this first-hand encounter sent me spinning inside 
so that I had to grab a pillar to steady myself. Whether it was 
curiosity, conviction, or both which finally compelled me to 
cross the mud and look closer, I will never know. 
Inside the bag is a yellow note that reads, in an artfully 
crude font, “I’m sorry.” But  there is  no gas tank,  no body, 
no sign of use otherwise. I look around for some clue in 
this derelict place, to the brush around the bridge, and up 
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The Prairie Light Review, Vol. 42, No. 2 [2020], Art. 15
https://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol42/iss2/15
and down the path, yet nothing seems to explain this lonely 
sight. Eventually, though burning with questions, I cross 
underneath and move on.
The one time I ever saw my grandmother, who was 
dying of cancer, I was seven, and I asked her to explain why 
she had to have this cancer. She replied, “Sometimes, the 
things we can’t seem to explain aren’t meant to be explained.” 
So, instead of trying to explain things, I’ve learned always to 
ask questions, even if I don’t get an answer. And even as I may 
never know the story of the person who said goodbye on that 
bridge, I ask myself what it would have been for me if I were 
in their place, for many times I have faced my own reflection 
in the coaxing steel of a knife, or in the hollow barrel of a gun. 
I often think to myself how choice of a place this person had 
found to leave the earth, if they ever did - or, should I say, to 
return to it. But I need not explain it to myself.
We are all accountable to the same air we breathe, to 
the same dust from which we come, and to the same earth 
which embraces us when our time comes. Knowing this, 
no question left unanswered now causes me pain, for all 
questions are accountable to time, as are we. Moreover, I 
think I have become this very unanswered question, which 
answers only to the soil that spoke it. I am soil, I am air, I am 
life, I am renewal to the questions which must follow me. 
I am a single leaf sprouted on a grand, eternal tree.
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Troncoso: The Bridge
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The Bridge

McInerney, Michael

The Prairie Light Review 
Volume 42 Number 2 Article 31 
Spring 5-1-2020 
Automatic King Kong 
Michael McInerney 
College of DuPage 
Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.cod.edu/plr 
Recommended Citation 
McInerney, Michael (2020) "Automatic King Kong," The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 42 : No. 2 , Article 31. 
Available at: https://dc.cod.edu/plr/vol42/iss2/31 
This Selection is brought to you for free and open access by the College Publications at DigitalCommons@COD. It 
has been accepted for inclusion in The Prairie Light Review by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@COD. For 
more information, please contact orenick@cod.edu. 
Automatic King Kong                       Michael McInerney
King Kong wasn’t the world’s first monkey man
And he sure as hell won’t be the last.
Who’s to say we’re not all just like him?
Chained and bound to the pedestal of our ambition,
We’re all searching for something.
What are you looking for?
A way out? A way in? 
A way around or through? 
You better watch out, baby, that ol’ ape is comin’ after you!
A bipedal primate’s the thing to be 
Nowadays.
Positively all the rage.
Absolutely front page.
Set the stage 
And find a promoter to get you on the right track.
Maybe then you’ll realize
When you look into the gaping eyes of the crowd you stand 
before
You’re just a painted whore who’s giving Babylon a second 
chance
To soar...
Too soon...
What else is there to look for aside from some higher state 
of being?
Doin’ the exhibitionist rag!
King Kong wasn’t the world’s first monkey man
And he sure as hell won’t be the last.
Who’s to say we’re not all just like him?
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McInerney: Automatic King Kong
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Colophon

an Excerpt from The Land Screams

Episode 21: COVID-19\u27s Impact on the Job Market: Making it Work

Episode 23: Clear and Present: The Inevitable Intersection of Political Science and COVID-19

Episode 1: Testing and Treatments

Episode 6: An Educational Conversation about the US and Eswatini

About

From the Ground Up

The Bridge

Automatic King Kong

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