Green Blotter 2014 by Lebanon Valley College

Green Blotter 2014

Green Blotter is produced by the Green Blotter Literary Society of Lebanon Valley College, Annville, Pennsylvania. Submissions are accepted from October through February. Green Blotter is published yearly in a print magazine and is archived on the following website. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit: www.lvc.edu/greenblotter

GREEN BLOTTER Staff

Editors-in-Chief Kammi Trout ‘15 Nikki Wilhelm ‘15 Art Editor Molly Gertenbach ‘16 Fiction Editor Sara Urner ‘16 Assistant Fiction Editor Ryan Jones ‘16 Poetry Editor Mike Cripps ‘14 Assistant Poetry Editor Erika Fisher ‘17 Design Team Zane Brown ‘16 Molly Gertenbach ‘16 Ryan Jones ‘16 Advisor Sally Clark

CONTENTS Read This Marquis Bey 1 Charlie Ab Fingers Cara Marshall 3 Fiddler Emily Blair 4 Untitled Billy Gartrell 5 Observing Silence at the Baha’i House of Worship, Wilmette, IL Crystal Stone 6 Pine Tree Jackson Sabbagh 7 Untitled Dylan Rigg 8 Staring at the Sun Bianca Flores 9 When “Just is Enough” Carolyn Case 11 Untitled Caden Myers 13 Neighbors Lindsay Zwally 14 Untitled Billy Gartrell 15 To Mara, My Sea of Bitterness Daniel Kimmel 16 The Rustic Family Amélie Vallières 17 Richard the Third with a Gas Mask McKenna Sickels 19 Grandfather’s Cactus Crystal Stone 20 Untitled Dylan Rigg 21 Playing it Safe John DiCocco 22 Smoke Sy Rossi 23 Peel Claire Stebbins 24 Self Portrait Emily Kline 25 Two Months Along Emily Blair 26 Untitled Billy Gartrell 27 Bluebells Alyssa Nissley 28 Sunflower in the Arkansas Garden Camille Guillot 29 I Emily Kline 30 The Meaning of Words Marquis Bey 31 iii

Blue Rag Jackson Sabbagh 41 Boyfriends Are Nothing But Cephalopods Yarisbel Fleites 42 Vendor John DiCocco 44 Taxi Stand John DiCocco 45 Cranes Marissa Ingeno 46 Murder of Crows Daniel Kimmel 47 What Combustion Sounds Like Carolyn Case 48 Untitled Caden Myers 50 Mirage II Marissa Ingeno 51 Eva Bender Kaitie McCardle 52 Cover Art Dylan Rigg

Dear Reader, “If you’re committed enough, you can make any story work. I once told a woman I was Kevin Costner, and it worked because I believed it.” These words of wisdom from Breaking Bad’s criminal lawyer, Saul Goodman, gave us our inspiration to get through this year. Every year has its own set of challenges and this one involved starting over with a whole new group of editors. We had to come together over pizza and brownies to make this thing happen once again. Although he’s not the greatest role model, Saul knows a thing or two about life. And as we all know, art reflects life. We know how important art and literature are to our contributors and readers, which is why we put so much effort into creating an undergrad publication. We’d just like to take a moment to thank our fellow editors and assistant editors for taking the time to read through the submissions and offer helpful suggestions. Also, to our design team, without whom we would have spent countless days trying to figure out how to even open InDesign. The biggest shout out goes to our advisor, Sally Clark, who helped us create the best edition of Green Blotter yet. She nourished us with raspberry lemonade and put up with our chronic procrastination. We appreciate everything you’ve done, Sally! Green Blotter wouldn’t be what it is today without you. We hope you enjoy this issue of Green Blotter and take the time to fully appreciate all of the work within it. Sincerely, The Editors-in-Chief Kammi Trout ‘15 Nikki Wilhelm ‘15

Read This I am an invisible man.

Marquis Bey

I know your struggle, your pain, your leave-me-the-hell-alone. I know. Someone asked you “what mood arouses this feeling of wanting to be left alone to read?” You respond that it’s become a mood in itself. Your leave-me-alone-’cause-I-wanna-read mood. I know. The words on the pages encapsulated by two covers that no one’s supposed to judge. And yet they do. They judge you. That book—Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Slavery by Another Name, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Song of Solomon, This Bridge Called My Back, Going to Meet the Man—knows you. People don’t. Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. And you sit, you lay, you get lost. It’s your way of telling them to do the same. That gem cradling in your tired hands, hands that are tired of proverbially strangling the people out there, in that false world. You retreat to truth, to life, to words. A world of words created by you. You create the world of words that has created you. You are a god. And their eyes are watching you. The North Carolina Mutual life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o’clock. It’s not a retreat—it’s flight. You fly to new word worlds away from this fallacious realm of imperfect forms. The words are perfect. You are perfect in these words. Open the story and its vessel acts as your wings, propelling you away, away. Far, far away. And they

wonder why you leave so much. Because they don’t see—they can’t fly. You can only talk to soundless sounds bound by black ink, yet they’re the only things you want to hear. They are fully present, as are you. Only here can you listen with your eyes. Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? When I leave, I always come back, and we reunite in a hearty embrace of mental solidarity. You’ve been my savior, my messianic salvation. That’s why they try to crucify you. And at times I believed them. But you’ve risen again. You’ve come back—for me. My faith is renewed. My faith in you, no other. There is only you, and I am your messenger. I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy word and thy bind they comfort me.

Charlie Ab Fingers Cara Marshall

A Fiddler Emily Blair When I was a child in patched overalls, I knew a man who could make cat-gut strings sing in the tune of God, Angels perched on each shoulder to wipe his rolling brow— I think I saw them once when the crowd was hot, yowling and stomping, The women holding their wrists behind strong backs as they kicked and jumped— The man with the widest hat whistled the loudest, every time— The kids on the edges smiled their crooked smiles, their only smiles, dark hair sweat-matted against burnt necks— And no one there had ever been too good to dance a cat-gut jig.

Untitled Billy Gartrell

Observing Silence at the Baha’i House of Worship, Wilmette, IL Crystal Stone I come at night. In the star’s gentle glow, even the crickets in the grass are hushed. From the garden, wind carries the scent of small flowers and the sounds of steadfast fountains. Only half-drawn, the moon hangs over trees, ornamental like the perennial flowers and ringed shrubs. From the steps’ base, the pillars seem woven with lace. I read a sign by the door: No photography. Observe silence. I stand in the back of the temple. In the seats before me, two women sit. Heads down, they make no sound. The temple is quiet as it had been in Frankfurt. I remember arriving there too early for the Feast of ‘Izzat. I remember the bee sting, the swollen hope of spiritual touch, but the temple had been empty—under construction. Strangers prayed in German outside. Wheat waved good-bye. In Illinois now, the temple falls over me like Táhirih’s veil. In my red velvet seat, I begin searching for a prayer, but the only section for women ends with one man. A signature— Bahà’ullàh. Closing the book, I wonder: Did they ever notice? I start to speak, but the women are gone. And now, from my seat in the temple, behind stiff curtains and lace, so is the veil-sheer moon.

Pine Tree Jackson Sabbagh the wind sifted through branches. needles broke off, scattered, and glided to granite and spread out in their puddle. like a person they stayed in death, they took time to accept the earth that held them there.

Untitled Dylan Rigg

Staring at the Sun Bianca Flores When I see you, I am staring at the sun. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s painful to watch, but intolerable to cease. The blinding amber blaze of you is boiling, blistering so hot that there is a flare from your presence, the flare that fastens me immobile because I see the back of a stranger two blocks down who carries your shoulders on the sides of his neck. Your shoulders: the hanger that props you up. The same hanger that stands the skin of a skeleton in my closet. Every town I travel is teeming with fragments of you. At times in the Marrakesh crowd you were the Moroccan men with still eyes and slow smiles. (Stare at the sun too long and it leaves traces wherever the eyes root themselves.) The guy in the black fitted jeans wears your walk. In a bookstore, another young man is 9

curving over each page of his novel, flowing your riverlike fingers across the words. In the afternoon, I see your disposition on a man in the hospitals waiting room, holding your calm like a rubber band, always seconds from a snap. He snatches sight of me and over his cheekbones your expression is raw, raw like soilsoil with seedsseeds unbloomingunblooming but encasing the inevitability of the nights where you lay me down on the Earth’s skin to sleep. “Shh, calm now,” starts my soliloquy. I will blink away the blending of bodies I see. I will blink away the sunfires that burst beneath my ribcage. You see, you are what staring at the sun feels like. The sunrise takes away the lonesome dark, but with it too goes the calm night.

When “Just is Enough” Carolyn Case Cherokee tunes are Just chants of the ancients; I know this because my great-grandfather was one of them.

Grapes are Just ovals of liquid, squished and squeezed through the teeth of the hungry.

I am hungry.

Mint is the Just the style nowadays; it’s Palm Beach and pomp and perfect. Navy is Just the song of Strauss. Or it’s the hue of the tie you wore the day you

left.

A pen is Just a stick with ink. But when you press it to paper, you make life.

Lift me up, out from the deep, beyond these shelves of sea, into the horizon. Raise me up to the heavenly places.

For, if I remember correctly, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Just the place where we left off.

Untitled Caden Myers

Neighbors Lindsay Zwally The driveway never looked longer than it did tonight. I hoisted the trash bag over my shoulder, creeping in and out of the tall shadow laid by the street lights passing through the trees. A shiver ran down my spine as an odd fog swirled at the bottom of the slight dip at the end of my driveway, adding to the gloom that hung over our part of the neighborhood. I thought of the black bag hanging over my shoulder. I wasn’t prepared when I lifted it from the gravel and stumbled backward before regaining my footing. The bag’s looming mass pressed down and caused me to lean forward against the dead weight. I looked around searching the darkness. I was never afraid of the dark but tonight I had an uneasy feeling that I was being watched. Something, somewhere hidden from my sight, lurked just watching and waiting. Maybe I was a little paranoid. We hardly spoke to the neighbors. I doubt they even knew someone lived in our old house. Angie and I were the quiet type – not really into all that social hype. We kept to ourselves mostly, except for the occasional dinner out at Park’s Diner, but even that we rarely did anymore. In fact, the last two days we hadn’t even spoken. I made my own coffee, packed my lunch, and she just sat there watching. Her blank eyes never moving, fixed in place. The dumpster was much closer now. Angie was always asking me to take out the trash. I guess I never really got around to it before. I lifted the lid and threw the bag in with whatever muscle I could muster. There. Now she couldn’t complain any more. The night air still held the day’s heat. I looked down at my hands and brushed them together. Why was I wearing gloves? Oh, that’s right because I…. Suddenly, police flooded the driveway pushing me to the ground. “Vince Palermo, you are under arrest for the murder of your wife, Angela Palermo.” My face brushed against the pavement littered with gravel and pieces of garbage, and that’s when I saw here – the old lady that always said, “Good Morning,” as I got in my car to leave for work. She stood on her back porch watching closely with the green light of her phone piecing through the darkness.

Untitled Billy Gartrell

To Mara, My Sea of Bitterness Daniel Kimmel You are what made the West beautiful – Now, an entire portion of the world sheds its veil of splendor As a thunderous voice proclaims “I saw Beauty fall like lightning.” The rugged nakedness of that familiar shore beckons me to come And add my voice to its dolorous swell. The grey waves gluttonously mix my grief With a thousand others that they have swallowed before Yet remain unabated – They shall swallow a thousand more. There is no Moses armed with a blessed stick and God’s favor To sweeten these waters you have prepared for me, This briny, stinging, bitter cup you have raised for me. No bronze serpent raised in the wilderness To leech the venom from a wound that you have repeatedly opened With fickle fangs wrought of confusion. Christ asked, “Can you drink my cup?” Knowing well that His was not a cup of sweet wine At a wedding feast in the rolling hills, To be enjoyed in the light of High Summer’s sun. It was the waters of Mara that He drank, The waters of the Western shore, And the waters of every grief and sorrow that tear asunder What God has put together – His first sip was betrayal; Mine, too. 16

THE RUSTIC FAMILY Amélie Vallières Young was my life. Living on the third floor, I remember. Number 642, my mother wrote on my hand the first week. The televisions were roaring It was four o’clock. The soap opera was beginning. Comfortable time, The family united. Friends with employees, child of those prehistoric people. I had three hundred grandmas. “Grandpas flow first” they say. On the way to the kitchen A parking of steal walker little knit baskets attached to the front Filled with bingo cards and lottery tickets.

Pots and pans dancing, Dish washer propelling steam Boiling plates under the warmer Waiting for my service. Brown gravy is fixed Over mashed potatoes Like a memory in time. Older than my life, This place saw weddings as a hotel, but died as a retirement home. My father built it up, My mother cared for it. My brother maintained it. I cooked in it. I learned everything I needed to. I learn about life and surely death. I was born in a retirement home.

Richard The Third with a Gas Mask McKenna Sickels

Grandfather’s Cactus Crystal Stone I will survive on my own. Go ahead: Say you disagree. Say I need your care, but I’ve spent weeks without water. And when strangers came, don’t you remember how my spines stuck into every hand that shook mine? It took years, but I flower now: an open white mouth you refuse to hear. You dream around me, painting pictures of deserts I have never seen, of brothers and sisters I’ve longed to meet— but I am stuck on your windowsill looking after your grandchildren. Look at them now, as they play on their swings in your garden. Look at your granddaughter, how high she goes, eyes shut. Watch her now as she tries to jump above the barren red-brown of yard, but drops head-first into a shallow box of sand.

Untitled Dylan Rigg

Playing it Safe John DiCocco

Smoke Sy Rossi

Peel Claire Stebbins His hands are long and boney skeleton fingers with bulbs of bone on swollen joints. Holding smoldering gasps of smoke from a crumpling cigarette. He takes a wheeze and coughs—mucus puts out the last of embers. His face seems old, but he’s still so young. Eyes stare blankly at the damaged ceiling mismatched. Dyed hair covered the diseased back—swollen roundish flowers of smallpox. I ask him what he’s thinking. He has the scars, but he’s alive. A little crusty shell of the man previous. “Will the embers spark you?” Dull eyes pierce mine and I recoil. He coughs again and smoke pours from the chipped lips. “I want to peel, my little doll, and be born again.”

Self Portrait Emily Kline

Two Months Along Emily Blair Here she comes! Lace melting down arms, Gauze glazing eyes ringed coal black— She trails crushed petals of red and pink, Blood smeared down the church aisle. If you scraped a fingernail down her cheek, that perfect face would crumble— All that holds her together today is harsh rouge and flaking powder, and the stern stare of her mother burned into her spine. A smile! She breaks the seal of red lipstick, vodka huddling within her hollow cheeks— So thin! They mutter, those old women whispering behind fans with a different Bible verse hidden within each fold. So pretty! Isn’t he lucky? Isn’t he lucky? He must feel like the luckiest man in the world.

Untitled Billy Gartrell

Bluebells Alyssa Nissley When I was young the bluebells chimed for me. They grew in abundance in our meadow And they were beautiful. They were the first flowers I brought my mother And the vase she put them in was green glass. They sat on the kitchen window sill To catch the late sunâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rays. But eventually, Like my childish wonder, They died. I ceased to bring my mother flowers, The vase was broken, And I could no longer hear the The bluebells chime.

Sunflower in the Arkansas Garden Camille Guillot A radial luminary in the court of the flowers; a cluster of princes and in the center, Louis Quatorze. He throws out his many arms to dance. The butterflies waltz with him. A sole dark eye with starry lashes. Astronomical bloomâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; a fleet of meteors. A quasar blazing in the garden. Little Andromeda, a golden galaxy with a black hole to it. A radiant loom that Eos weaves summer on. A cup of white wine. A comet, a flower, a little prince. A bankâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worth of gold budding in the backyard. The garden orbits him.

I Emily Kline

The Meaning of Words Marquis Bey 1. “You gon’ turn into a book you keep readin’ like that.” That’s what I know my grandma would say if she saw how much I read. I want to know everything. Or maybe I should say, I want to know everything I can. I remember reading my favorite book for the first time freshman year. Song of Solomon. Toni Morrison is the greatest author ever in the history of authors. I never liked reading all that much before college. Now I’m trying to think about what that must have felt like. I’m trying to remember how the story goes. There’s so much stuff in it that’s just so… Morrison. There’s even a peacock. A white one. With shit weighing it down. Of course, I could just read it again. But it wouldn’t be the same—it never is. That’s not a bad thing, though. It’d be like living through history again, just a little differently, on the black hand side. 2. I know it’s impossible to know everything. So, why even bother trying? I mean, what’s

the point if you know you’re going to fail? But it’s fun. I’m not stupid, I’m very Socratic; all I know is that I know nothing. I just wanna know a lot of nothing. How I see it is that I can read twenty-two thousand eight hundred twelve books in my lifetime. I’d skim a little of course. I don’t know how I’d do it, but I can do it. I want to do it because my grandma says eventually I’ll turn into a book. 3. Before Toni Morrison was Toni Morrison, she was Chloe Wofford. This was back in the 30s. She grew up in Lorrain, Ohio, one of four children. Her dad told her folktales, which she later incorporated into her novels, and in 1993 the Nobel Prize she received said she was one “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” She became Catholic back in the early 40s and received the baptismal name “Anthony,” which is how she came to be known as “Toni.” I imagine her saying fuck this Chloe Wofford shit, and starting her first masterpiece under her new surname. That was a while ago. Now she’s 82. Morrison is my absolute favorite author ever because she writes what she wants. And she writes how she wants, too. The things that woman says have so much tenacity. Sample: Yes, I can write about white people. White People can write about black people.

Having to do it or having to prove that I can do it is what’s embarrassing, and what’s insulting. It’s interesting to hear her say that, because I got the same kind of question. After hearing this, that’s all I’m going to write about. 4. Sometimes I think I was destined to be a voracious reader. My dad, who didn’t finish high school until he was 21, has a weird vocab. I say weird for a couple of reasons (only one that really matters), but he’s just not the brightest man in the world. I was on the phone with him not too long ago and he said I was very perspicacious, I had a perspicacious mind. Perspicacious. I didn’t even know he could form that combination of letters and sounds with his mouth. He kept rambling before I could make a big deal of it. Next thing I knew he was back to screwing up my girlfriend’s name. Alyssa, not Alyse. Every time he drops a GRE word on me I have to make sure he’s still my dad when I call him again. He still doesn’t know how surprised I get. Because big words don’t fit him. I asked him if he liked words. He said yes, but I think he just employs them to sound smart sometimes. I didn’t say that to him. Another thing: when I sent him an article I wrote, he called me and asked when I started using big words.

And another: I should have asked him the same question. 5. I’m trying to read more. More means everything I haven’t read yet. Like, everything. Toni Morrison must have read everything. I wonder if she’d let me hug her. Even though I’ve read all of her books, I feel like I’d forget them all once I’m in her presence, or forget her name, maybe call her “Chloe.” I wish I was born in Lorrain, Ohio. Then when I go to hug her we could talk about our common hometown, her novels and their racial components, themes, all while eating cookies: oatmeal, sugar, chocolate chip. Yeah, she’s definitely a chocolate chip kind of person. We’ll probably never have that opportunity. She might die, she is pretty old. I might get cold feet once I see her in person. Anything could happen. And she might not even like cookies. 6. I want to talk to, to be, Toni Morrison, but that can’t happen. We’ll probably never have a conversation so I can try something else. I’m trying to think of an alternative that falls short of stalking. After I read Song of Solomon, I wanted to read everything else by Morrison. I had just gotten my feet wet so now I wanted to dive in. From Ellison’s Invisible Man to Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God to Reed’s

Mumbo Jumbo. I wanted to read the entire African American literary canon in a week, a feat that was impossible (because a few centuries worth of literature would take just as long to complete) and stupid (see previous parenthetical). Typical ways of a freshman. Reading one of Toni Morrison’s books, say, Paradise involves the following: saying ‘Oh shit’ after the first sentence; furrowing your brow (pun intended) in confusion halfway through; asking ‘why’ just over fifty-seven times by the end; hating Morrison for writing Paradise, then loving her for writing Paradise; and when you finish, asking yourself who the white girl was, then in class asking who the white girl was, then Googling who the white girl was, then never getting an answer. You would need Morrison herself to tell you who the white girl was, and she doesn’t even know (that’s the point) because she made it that way. It’s like that with every Morrison text, and that’s why I love her works. That frustration, that revelation, that ‘what the hell just happened’ makes the novel worth it for me. Like are they actually flying at the end of Song of Solomon, or who was Pecola talking to at the end of The Bluest Eye, or what the hell does she mean by Lickety-split at the end of Tar Baby. And I’m sure she asks herself the same questions. And this just makes me think she definitely isn’t a hug or a cookie-eating person. 7. The question was posed as if it was a desirable thing to do: to write about white people. To write not about race, that’s what that means. And that it was a difficult thing to do, a higher level of artistic endeavor, or that it was more important, that I was still writing about marginal people, and why don’t I come into the mainstream. [White Male Interviewer: I think you’re putting too much into the question…brief

laughter.] But what else could it mean? What, what does that mean? What does that mean? You tell me. [White Male Interviewer: I don’t think the question had to do with the marginalized…] It only works if I can go to…somebody major and white and say as a journalist when are you going to write about black people….if I can say when are you going to write about black people to a white writer, if that’s a legitimate question to a white writer, then it is a legitimate question to me. 8. Before I read Toni Morrison I saw books as just books. By books I mean lifeless. Dead. Books did not do anything, but people read books. Books and people literally touched each other, but nothing more. After Morrison, books speak and move structures and mountains. Books are words. And words can start wars. 9. Toni Morrison loves words, like me. Who else would take all the shit she’s seen in her life and put them into words on a page to be bound by covers? I can see it now, her life being processed through her mind and converging into linguistic palatial tomes. Part of me thinks she’s a god. Part of me knows she is.

I wonder how long it took her to write Song of Solomon. I bet she didn’t think it’d win the Nobel Prize for literature, or be some black kid from Philly’s favorite book. If one of my books ever wins the Nobel Prize, I’m going to make sure I tell everyone about Toni Morrison. Some people have never even heard of her, and that should be a sin. I’d bring each of her books to my speech and let everyone see what a real writer’s books look like. Some people might think they know what her books are about, but they don’t really know. I’d look at them all. Then I’d go through each and every one of them: The Bluest Eye Sula Song of Solomon Jazz Paradise Beloved Tar Baby A Mercy

Love Home When I see them all sitting there, majestic and full of poignant passages, products of years of sedulous toil, secreting visionary messages, aching to be read by everyone, I know that words can start wars. Just ask the Ohio schools about The Bluest Eye. 10. Maybe I’m responding because I have had reviews in the past that have accused me of not writing about white people. I remember with Sula, a reviewer said ‘This is all well and good, but one day she,’ meaning me, ‘will have to face up to real responsibilities and get mature, and write about the real confrontation for black people,’ which is white people. And so our lives have no meaning, no depth, without the white gaze. And I have spent my entire writing career trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one. 11. What is it about Morrison’s works that has this vice-like grip on me? That I feel like she’s speaking directly to me, warning me at every instant about the White Gaze? That I can be about to walk outside, minding my own business, and she’d tiptoe into my mind whispering, “White Gaze”?

Rapping lyrics to a hip hop song and hearing “White Gaze”? I look up White Gaze on Google and discover that there’s an article that Professor Bongiovanni just sent to me titled “Walking While Black in the ‘White Gaze’.” It was written on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington in response to the enduring racism since that fateful period. And I can listen to King’s speech on Youtube, the black and white 17 minute clip, and wonder exactly how free are we. 12. Everything I see now is informed. Like when I listen to a conversation between two white people. When I read articles or watch movies, I see who looks like me and who looks like everyone else who doesn’t need to look for themselves. And I imagine what I’d look like to an African newborn. That I’d look a little too light, just right, or will they not even notice that I’m a race. How I don’t look like anything because I look like her. Just another person. Not a black person, just a person. And how the only way that African baby would know I don’t belong is by my license plate. And how even though to the African infant my race would be invisible, I can feel it on my skin. I can feel it, it’s there, and I didn’t put it there. I’ve always thought that black is beautiful because my mom told me so. When you’re a kid raised by a black woman, everything she says is true because she said so, and that makes it truer than anything else. And yet even though I believe that, my culture says that I’m wrong, that they’re right and I’m different. That I am deficient. But I must remember the words of Chara Sanjo: “It’s beautiful to be black.”

It is the color of strength and pride. I will say it out loud. I don’t have to hide. I love me, and the color that I represent.  Look at me, there is nothing like it.  What you see is not an illusion.  It’s a gift from God, don’t ever confuse it.

And it’s kind of funny, right, because black people repeat it and repeat it in order to convince themselves. But I guess it’s not so funny when it doesn’t seem to have worked, and I often wonder why. I truly do not know. So maybe that’s it, why I love words and reading and Toni Morrison—because if I read enough books I’ll turn into one, and then I can be whatever I want to write.

Blue Rag Jackson Sabbagh It hangs limp on the hook, water dragon shot and tossed. Spreads its cloth wingwise over hot stone. Teardrop, bless this room dripping long hours, inspid brokenness. Mimic Job running to God. The leaks, the cracks, open & worship your silk body, love your wholeness.

Boyfriends Are Nothing But Cephalopods Yarisbel Fleites Inside the oceanic world lies another kaleidoscope World of rocky reefs, home to not just prey. Relationships are orange red reefs in this ocean World, yet even in the shy crevices benign predators Hide. A procession of fish glide and swish tails side To side, while on land slim waists give way to Unsuspecting thighs. Neither weary of what could be lurking, the next Feeding frenzy could be around the next corner. Deep in the dark recesses the reef reaper patiently Leers, an octopus furls and unfurls its arms in wait. Boys eagerly observe hungrily preparing suction cups That click and unstuck when tentacles crawl. In a water stricken whirl the fish dangerously dangles Above a jagged beak. There is no escaping wise head foot, that clever cephalopod. Watch him laugh at girls who glide shaking their tails not so Innocently by, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you know heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quick on his feet? 42

His sweet words are as potent as ink. The black cloud veils all sight, Predator versus prey, Fight or flight. Shakespeare wrote about the octopus who ate the fish, He called it the beast of two backsides.

Vendor John DiCocco

Taxi Stand John DiCocco

Cranes Marissa Ingeno

Murder of Crows Daniel Kimmel Thirsty Corvus caws, throned in dry branches clawing the sky – yellow leaves attend the Prince of Autumn. Iridescence concealed in the blackness of darkness, beating pinions that leave a chill wake. Counting: one, two three… twelve in all like sable disciples of Christ roosting in the joists and junctures of trees or steeple crosses signifiying something unscryable. (W)hol(l)y hieroglyphs scrawled upon fluttering feathers of night, harbingers of the dawn, the unknown – feared. 47

WHAT COMBUSTION SOUNDS LIKE

Carolyn Case

Watch the fire, see the electricity that it births.

smell the awful smoke and allow poisonous fumes to penetrate pure lungs.

feel wooden scraps and grainy sand beneath bare feet.

memorize the oranges and yellows, how they flicker and fade, flicker and fade, then are aroused once again by windâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s caress.

watch the mad drunken men hoot and holler

as women twirl around, like gypsies, expecting honor but getting none. itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a twisting of such lonely dreams.

how can oxygen and timber mix together so perfectly? to create life and death in the same phenomenon.

now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s my turn.

I glance at you-then watch-watch as you study her.

these are the flames of tonight.

Untitled Caden Myers

Mirage II Marissa Ingeno

Eva Bender Kaitie McCardle She lies in bed at night waiting for him to call, thinking about how stupid it is that she waits up for that “ba-ba-baba-ba” ringtone to echo through the mauve box that she lives in. I think it’s called cuisine, the ringtone, which is kind of funny because it doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever eaten and it isn’t even the sound I associate with eating, but nevertheless, she waits. Her feet are cold so she curls her toes under to protect them, but it doesn’t work. She thinks about gardens, and when he calls he asks about her garden and she giggles a little. Succulent red tomatoes blend with green and banana peppers. Red red red red red, the color of passion and lust and love and hate and anger and blood and a whore’s nail polish and my hair. At last she scoots under the quilt to sandwich herself between a galaxy sheet and last year’s Christmas present from Bubbie. Today I saw a woman in a lime green tank top and camo pants and I don’t know her but in some sense I do. I know her because I used to go to the market across the street from her house before it got shut down, and because I’ve seen her mow her grass before. I see her more often than I know, and wonder if she’s ever seen me, and what her name is, and where she came from. Now I’m waiting in a parking lot for someone who will be here in fifteen minutes and I wish I could go back and watch her but she’s probably inside again. She rakes leaves the same way my brother does, and I tell my boyfriend that I want to go away, go somewhere where I don’t know anyone and no one knows me, and I secretly hope that I can be someone’s lady in the lime green shirt and camo pants. But then I think that I can never go anywhere where I don’t know anyone because there’s always going to be someone who rakes leaves like my brother and I’ll know that person, maybe not really, but on some strange intrinsic level, I will. And I think 52

that maybe I don’t want to blend in, to be anonymous, because I might lose my voice, but my roommate closed her mouth and spoke to me in a thousand silent ways and I wonder if I can do that. If I can be silent. So anyway, I’m sitting in this parking lot waiting for fifteen minutes writing on the backs of receipts and I start thinking about this conversation I had about hope. It’s much too long, and happened at probably 1 am, so I can’t say I remember enough of it to quote the whole thing but I realize that I didn’t really say what I meant during that conversation. I had said that I’ve been fighting forever and I didn’t mean that I have been fighting for a long time; I mean I am literally fighting the concept of forever. Fighting against hope. “Think about now, what the hell are we doing right now?” I ask my brother. “I’m living? What are you even talking about I’m just doing my homework, what do you want me to say… uhh I’m alive?” and with that I realize that I’m not. I’m without. I have hope. The hopeless are the ones who have no future, who don’t think about it and don’t give a damn about the past, they aren’t going anywhere and don’t care if they do. They have now, and that’s all they have, and that’s all they need. That’s all anyone needs. I realize that I didn’t say this the right way before because I wasn’t feeling it the right way before. I want to be hopeless but I’m not, I can’t be. I hope I get married, and that I get into graduate school, I hope my father walks me down the aisle and that my grandparents watch me graduate, that I have children, and that I’m happy. I hope for everything for everyone and with everyone and from everyone. “You know? That’s a dangerous thing, to get caught up in shit like that,” she tells him, “that’s scary, and it could screw things up for people like you and me.” “I guess so,” her brother mutters, “but sometimes I hope for things that I know won’t come true.” “Like what?” “I don’t know, like being the best at something, and flying saucers and castles made out of cheese,” he says with a sly grin, “normal stuff.” They swat hands at one another laughing at the corner of the dining room table 53

while Toby’s tail slaps away particles and makes a faint whiffing noise. I used to eat black olives out of the can, eat every one until they were gone or I was sick, I still like them I guess, maybe not as much as I used to but I like them alright. You know what I think about sometimes, Ginsberg and Burroughs, I think about them a lot actually. Ginsberg said there was no beat generation; just a bunch of guys trying to get published, and I hope that isn’t true. I like to think of New York as some far off land where writers like Kerouac live. I like to think I could live there too, if I wanted, and I do, at least for a little while but I don’t know if I really could. Who knows I guess, it’s probably just another town. Anyway, what I really wonder is if people like Ginsberg ever ate black olives right out of the jar or if they ever liked the movie Jaws, or if maybe I’m just a little bit different. I wonder if people like them ever got scared or if they just didn’t worry very much about things like that. I’ve switched to trying to turn ticks into tocks and tocks into ticks and tick tock combos into double ticks and tocks. I think tick tock clocks are nice, mostly because I like patterns and balance and peace and maybe, possibly I’m schizophrenic but who knows. Tick tock clocks are nice because you can hear the time passing and are fully aware of the time that you’re wasting, edging along seconds like a child stuck on the center of a ball pit trying to swim to the side, like each tick is diving to the bottom of a hill where it meets a trampoline and ricochets back up to become a tock. Electronic clocks are no fun. Whenever I see one I try to count the seconds between minutes and I’m usually pretty close to being right but that’s never enough, I want to hear it, I want to feel the time. Evidently time is a man-made thing, which comes as news to me because I’m pretty sure that I’m on a planet that revolves around the sun (at least that’s what they tell us) and with every rotation of my planet I am different, I am older, I am 20 and six days instead of 20 and five. That is time, evolution is time, everything, is time. Of course, the word itself, time, is man-made, but so are all other words so I don’t see the sense in making a big deal out of my favorite thing. Time. It’s funny how sound works like that, how you can see fireworks before you 54

hear them, how you see people cry before they gasp for air, how people die before they ever say goodbye. Silent notes written on the kitchen table three times, I walked away, tried, came back and crumpled it. Not this time. I’m sorry. Lay down and think about it, scratch a little more and then complain because there isn’t any soft skin left. Not now. Then. But not now. I lived down the hall from a girl woman for a year, and then shared a room with her for another. I never understood her, not really I don’t think, until now. I spent a year watching her cry over her computer as she attempted her physics homework, curled into her bed and read poems, leaned against the wall and watched people walk through the quad, laughing and talking unaware of her. I could tell you what kind of deodorant she uses, what size her shoes are, what annoys her, how her parents celebrate their anniversary (periodic table, woo!), what she wears when she’s sad, and probably what she’ll pick to eat in the dining hall for dinner … but I don’t think I understood her, I loved her more than anything, but I didn’t feel the gravity of her existence until she looked at me with the softest sepia eyes and told me about evil. She showed me what pain really was, what it really felt like. Aanie has a silent impenetrable resolve that says “I cannot be broken.” Hushed shifting eyes that often meet the floor only to bounce back up to another’s eyes and fall to the ground again. Long blonde hair that sometimes the wind catches and throws to the side to reveal the moles on her face that she hates, and that I think are perfect. I can’t really say that I know how to explain her, but I know that she changed the way I thought about things, about myself. Her silence, what she simultaneously loves and hates, spoke to me in ways that I cannot explain. When I laid in my bed and cried, she was on the top bunk, silent, and I never knew if she could hear me or if she was sleeping, but she was there. She was always there. There’s a sort of awareness in her silence that I can never have, I have frightened eyes, and one hand that shakes when I’m scared. I have cracked lips and broken bones and terror screaming and clawing in every moment that I’m alive and those are things that I hope she never feels. 55

But now she’s seen her darkest hour. She’s felt the kind of pain that I had hoped she never would, and I’m afraid that she’ll never trust another person for as long as she lives… which is probably true. Aanie, I think, is the single most beautiful person that I have ever encountered and I hope that I can someday, maybe, have half of the cosmic energy that she does. There’s that hope thing again. Walking uptown in vagabond shoes to see an unshaved Poe in Lincoln Center. Burning like angels on a disappointing impulse for intoxication and Frank Sinatra. I’ll tell you though, through hallucinating eyes and migraines, loneliness and terror. There’s still snow on the street where we both fell, laughing and pointing towards the city. I’ve always said that humans have no business occupying this planet, let alone Wall Street. We, as a race (what a funny word for it) have done nothing but ruin things around here, consumer driven sephadex, 100 grams of happiness coming my way. Come with me my Huckleberry friend, come along with me to the moon, to the sun, and everywhere. Oh, vortex genie of the event horizon come, come to me in green waste and seaweed. Come in spinning and screaming and silent. Red page corners, red for adultery and lust and love and hate and anger and blood and a whore’s nail polish and my hair. Howl to the moon while you’re reading Lolita, howl while you’re fucking your friends, howl while you’re crying, while you’re eating a fudgecicle on a warm summer night in the grass by the old boiler building, howl while you’re on the roof of the old boiler building. I’m street wise, I can improvise. Except not really. I’m invisible in a small town and would be swallowed or spit out like a dissolving piece of juicy fruit in New York. Supplies, sup, supple, plies, lies, lie, pie, pies, pup, less, plus. LCGCMS— take me in! Pull out the wicked parts and leave behind the rest. Porcelain contrasts with rust and burnt chemicals and that place smells like ammonia. But fifteen minutes have passed, and I’m still in the same parking spot, watching clouds drip by overhead, I’ve exhausted my jumping thoughts, skipping from one subject to another with every passing beat, and no one is here and my car smells 56

like ink and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m tired and alone and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had these contacts in for a few days and my dark bags are darker, deeper, hair shorter, neck stiffer. Oh, never mind, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s here.

Marquis Bey is a class of ‘14 English, American Studies, and Philosophy triple major at Lebanon Valley College. He will be attending graduate school for his Ph.D. in African American Literature and graduate minor in Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. As a writer, he finds his inspiration in the works of authors like Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison, and...Toni Morrison. Through writing, he hones his use of language, the medium through which his world—our world—is constituted. As Ludwig Wittgenstein says, “The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.” Emily Blair is a junior at Virginia Tech majoring in Creative Writing and Literature. As a native of rural southwestern Virginia, she enjoys displaying the beauty and tradition of the region in her poetry. Caroline Case is a junior studying Communications and Creative Writing at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Florida. This is her first publication. After graduating she hopes to write for a magazine or work for a nonprofit. Caroline loves art, literature, Oxford flats, and a big cup of black coffee. John DiCocco is a junior BA Music major. He has been into photography for about three years. His main subjects and compositions are portraits, abandoned buildings, and street photography. Recently he travelled to Hong Kong and captured some candid portraits walking through the streets. Although music is his main art form, he spends most of his free time taking pictures. Yarisbel Fleites is as weirdly unique as her name entails. She is a graduating English major with a minor in Music from the University of Palm Beach Atlantic, who is a perfectly content slave of reading and writing. Just to name a few of her influences,they include Lemony Snicket, J.K. Rowling, Tolkien, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Donne,and Poe. Reading them for inspiration helps her writing, but she also looks to drawing for ideas. She has always been a Disney fanatic, and 58

used to dream about being an animator for them. So when she finds herself in search for a character, the back cover of any of her VHS tapes provide a creative escape. Her passion for the arts in general, because she sings too, are the pieces that have made her who she is. Growing up with movie and literary characters has enabled her to even do impressions. She can imitate a trumpet, a fly, Stitch, a parrot, a crow, and a chicken. She is grateful to the people who have inspired her, and hopes that one day she could do the same for someone else. Bianca Flores wrote her first novel when she was fifteen but is now focusing on the dynamics of poetry and short-story writing as a 20-year-old. She is currently studying English Literature and Writing as a junior at Hawaii Pacific University where she has had the pleasure to work with novelist Tyler McMahon and poet Adele NeJame. In addition, she has been an editor and four time published author in the Literary Magazine Wanderlust. This is Billy Gartrellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second year being included in the Green Blotter and he is honored to be included once again. He is currently a junior Digital Communications major at Lebanon Valley College. He thoroughly enjoys anything dealing with visual design: photography, graphic design, web design, and videography, as well as music. To Billy, creation, in all of its forms, is one of the most important, thought provoking, and influential facets of life. Camille Guillot is a poet from New Orleans. She has been published in LEVELER, The Light Ekphrastic, and Lyre Lyre. Marissa Ingeno is a senior Physical Therapy and Art/Art History major at Lebanon Valley College. Daniel Kimmel is a senior at Lebanon Valley College. He is an English Literature and Philosophy of Religion double major, with a minor in the World 59

Classics. He is a Specialist in the US Army Signal Corps. Emily Kline is a freshman Early Childhood and Special Education double major at Lebanon Valley College. She has been in several art classes and hopes to keep pursuing artistic endeavors. Cara Marshall is a Digital Communications major, Design Concentration with a minor in Art History. Born in Maryland, she enjoys taking nontraditional photographs and traveling. Cara is currently working as a graphic design intern at the Community Action Commission in Harrisburg, PA. Kaitie McCardle, though often misspelled Katie, is a junior ACS Chemistry major at Lebanon Valley College. She has not been published before, but is very excited to have her work in this edition of the Green Blotter. Kaitie loves everything bagels, game shows, science, the girl with three first names and Matt Baczewski. Alyssa Nissley is a junior Religion and English double major at Lebanon Valley College. The inspiration for her poem comes from a love of nature that was cultivated through her childhood experiences growing up on a farm. For her, writing is an outlet for creativity, emotion, and reflection as it creates a space for escape into the greatest unknown, the self. Jackson Sabbagh is from Ipswich, Massachusetts, where sunsets are pink and Iceeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s are blue. He likes men, dressing up like women, and writing (mostly bios). McKenna Sickels is a sophomore English Literature major with a Studio Art minor; she participates in the outdoor color guard and Alpha Sigma Tau; her brother has and continues to inspire and teach her how to draw. 60

Caden Myers is a sophomore Music Business major at Lebanon Valley College. He hails from Spring Grove, Pennsylvania. Sy Rossi is a junior from Maryland and studies Music Recording Technology. Claire Stebbins is a junior at Indiana University Bloomington majoring in Theatre with a concentration in playwriting. She draws inspiration from the bizarre and the misunderstood. Crystal Stone is a junior at Allegheny College. Last summer, she was the Editorial Assistant for Film Criticism. Her work is forthcoming in The Rectangle and Badlands Literary Journal. Her work has previously shown up in Dylan Days. This coming year, she will serve as the Student Representative for the Eastern Region of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society. Amélie Vallières is majoring in English with minors in Spanish and Education at Palm Beach Atlantic University, Florida. Originally from Quebec, Canada, Amelie immigrated to United-States in 2010 and had put French aside, her native language, to explore the beauty of the English language. Lindsay Zwally is currently an English/Creative Writing major at Lebanon Valley College. After graduation, she hopes to write professionally in a multimedia venue or as a screen writer. This is her first time being published for a fiction piece, and she is honored to be a part of the publication.