Hopelessness & Other Regenerations

By Hayley Hammerstrom

Featured art: Mother and Child by Helen Hyde

Was anything ever new

in these hills?

in these valleys

of meth-rot homes and

creeks of pebbles

and car tires

and tire irons

and snuff tins

and aborted dreams

and scrapped chicken feet.

Even the profusion of trees

seems like an endless swath

stitched with long threads to

an epoch without time –

They fan up

like a massive green clam shell

around a foam-delivered Venus,

behind the broken

supermarkets and dark-eyed children

who are hungry

who are livid

who are scrappers

who never have been children

who never will be children.

And the poor never have had nothing,

and they never will have nothing.

A mother boils state-rationed beans

on a hotplate in her rusted trailer home.

There’s a boy at her feet.

He tugs at her ashen skirt.

She thinks he feels heavy.

He thinks she looks like Venus.

A train carrying petroleum

rushes by, as if to avoid

acknowledging the proximity of

the trailer –

so as not to feel how its

monumental force makes the

mother’s brittle teeth clatter

like a jarred insect in the hands

of a dancing child.

Her child doesn’t dance.

There’s only time to eat,

feel the train, and

watch the roads dead-end in the trees.

There are no bridges.

And the mother is tired of

trying to swim.

The creek’s too full of

Dreams aborted

And children accumulated.

The child came from her cleaved-off flesh.

He will grow arms and legs and

an asthmatic heart –

All in imitation of her.

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Hayley Hammerstrom (she/her) is an Ohio University alumna with a B.S. in Journalism from the Scripps School. In the spring of 2019, while a senior at Ohio University, Hayley had two poems, titled "Miasma" and "Suburbia Noir," published in the literary publication Sphere Magazine. Publication of these poems is her self-proclaimed proudest achievement, as creative writing and storytelling have been the foundation of all her academic pursuits since childhood.

After graduating from Ohio University, Hayley proceeded to attend The Ohio State University to study at the Moritz College of Law in Fall 2019. She is now in her second (i.e., 2L) year at Moritz. During her 1L year, Hayley received a fellowship stipend from the OSU chapter of the Public Interest Law Foundation. This stipend allowed her to spend summer of 2020 in Athens where she served as a legal intern at the Athens County Prosecutor's Office, an agency for which she worked as an undergraduate student in a secretarial capacity. As a legal intern in 2020, Hayley had the opportunity to help prosecutors draft pretrial motions, collaborate with BCI specialists for evidence presentations anticipated for use at trial, and even engage in field work with Diversion Program participants. Hayley has always had a special place in her heart for the Athens community, and hopes to one day return as a practicing lawyer to the community to continue the progressive prosecution efforts of the Athens County Prosecutor's Office so citizens involved in the system are treated fairly and with compassion.

Hayley is a proponent for the arts as a critical tool in the practice of law and has written a number of essays and poems exploring the nexus between creative expression and legal interpretation. Her current project involves a surrealist legal argument, written in free verse, investigating concepts of psychoanalysis, natural law, and human agency in relation to drug regulation. She credits her art-driven legal perspective chiefly to her instructors and peers at Ohio University. She is excited to contribute to this project and is honored to be involved with the overwhelming literary talent that Ohio University has and continues to produce.