Maggie Hoppel is an undergraduate student from Indianapolis, Indiana. She loves quilting, junk journaling, and her dog. She studied in Dublin for a semester in 2025 and still misses the cinnamon rolls at It’s A Trap.

 

~

 

i don’t know how my clothes hold their shape because 

 

there’s just deep space under there,

and a tiny-tiny plastic-baby me 

floating naked in the cold—

driving the plane, fight-flight-freezing

the vehicle, watching out for asteroids. 

wondering, maybe, how to contort itself 

to dodge one in zero-gravity, wondering 

if a well-timed sneeze would be adequate propulsion. 

theorizing that if i so deigned to speak

(before a cretaceous-reminiscent eradication) 

would the sound waves bounce back 

from the surface, or would they fizzle out first, 

tamped by the absence of atmosphere? 

if i managed to part my synthetic lips 

what would even be in there? 

probably nothing. probably so much nothing

that the vacuum would suck the cosmos inside out

and it will sound like whrrrr and then shooop 

and then maybe crying. a brave, overstimulated wail. 

because (1) it’s a baby, and (2) it can feel something alive 

inside it, and (3) that’s the biggest breath she’s taken yet.

 

 

if i wrote fairytales

 

there would be a princess

(wicked) cursed to have cars

fall from her lips when she

speaks—drivers side doors

when she cries (deserved)

because she called the wrong 

enchantress a hag in stop-and-

go horsetraffic. fun fact, 

her jaw unhinges to adjust. 

fun fact, her frame stretches

(rubbery) in sections—gut first

then throat, snug and translucent

around an ‘03 chevy malibu 

revving its way (cocoonlike) 

(motherlike) from her body. 

true love’s kiss will take teeth. 

you will hear from her insurance

(liability) (state farm) if you try.

 

 

doomscroll ‘21

 

tireder than day / betterer than most 

we sink down the wall like twin titanics 

and submit to the anglerfish / sleepyheads 

in a rice cooker / your temple, my shoulder /

your nonreflection, my everything / algorithms 

spinning like straw / a hitch in your unblinking

body / clueing me in / hating everyone 

on the school bus / what if we forgot

our names / failed algebra two / birthed

a thicket to lean on / planted migraine tears 

sideways on dinosaur print sheets / what if we 

forgot everything / but the warmth of dormant 

silhouettes / nuclei in thick clothes / what if we 

became nothing but lobotomized / what if 

losing ourselves / is how we become one soul