Vassar Student Review 2014/15 by Vassar Student Review

vassar student review

volume i issue i

VASSAR STUDENT REVIEW 2014- 2015 Volume I, Issue I vassar college Executive Board 2015 Editors-in-Chief

Lanbo Yang Daria Schieferstein

Managing Editor

Ethan Cohen

Secretary

Jacqueline Krass

Treasurer

Jade Wong Baxter

Layout Editors

Jayce Leathers Kiran Chapman

Copy Editors

Margaret Yap

English Department Liason

Catherine Tween

We would like to thank Janet Alison, Production Manager for Vassar Print Publications, for her support. Vassar Student Review is a student-run publication and a member of the Vassar Student Association, working in collaboration with the English Department

Letter From The Editors Dear Readers,

literary and arts magazine and we remain dedicated to continuing this innovative vision. We are grateful for the wealth of submissions we received throughout the year. With immense attention and debate from the editorial board, we have selected the pieces that we think represent the varying styles and mediums of Vassar’s creative energy. expand our readership, to revitalize Vassar’s literary and art culture, to transform our layout and to create a platform for student writers and artists to showcase their work. We hope that you will pages. We believe that the published work coupled with a developed and meticulous attention to layout and design achieves our goals. We hope that this issue acts as a catalyst for Vassar students to appreciate the talent and richness of our creative and invigorating student body. It has been our pleasure to work with the student body and executive board of our magazine in order to create this dynamic and inspiring body of work. We want to thank the entire editorial team for their commitment to the production of this magazine, as well as Janet Allison to thank all of the students who submitted work to our magazine and encourage all further subreviewed anonymously. As you start reading this issue, we want to leave you with the following quote by Joan it means. What I want and what I fear.” Sincerely, Lanbo Yang ‘15 Daria Schieferstein ‘15

TABLE OF CONTENTS Kiran Chapman

Allan

Catherine Tween

Interview with Rivka Galchen

Cover 8

Who Will Remember

The Loverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Reply

Thomas Wolfe

Michaela Coplen

Coelacanth Sestina

Layla Fassa Untitled

Lii Xu

Beringia

Roxanne Ringer

22 March 10th: Review

Kiran Chapman

Amy

25 26 27

Lanbo Yang

Gone Missing

Monica Raiss C. Elegans Under Microscope

Karam Anthony

32 Strange City

34 36

Adam Spiegelman

Emma King

to Be a tango Dancer All Your life

Drew Leventhal

What Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve Done to Me

Jessica Lin Dumplings

39 40

Daria Schieferstein The Difference Between men 45 Advice and Suggestions 3 things I know to be true: Ethan Cohen Amy Cao

Self portrait With Beer

Untitled

49 50 51 52

Thomas Wolfe

Faith Hill Untitled

A Love Letters

Jocelyn Hassel observations / phoenix, az.

Cara Hunt

Untitled

Leah Weingast Orders of Autumn

Down the Drain Stephanie Guyot-Sionnest

Woman

60 62

Catherine Tween Crepuscular

UnCivil

Welcome-Bye

Jade Chung

Jackie

Taylor Pratt Notes on Bereaved Bandages

Leah Weingast The Pantry

Drew Leventhal

The Missing Scream

Jacqueline Krass Non cherchez plus mon coeur

Danyelle Hamilton

Amy Cao

Smell of the M

Untitled

Simon Patane Seven

77 Excerpt from ‘DD’

Iconic

78 82

Esin Asan moments I will not re-member

Kiran Chapman

Somnium Lux

Simon Patane Teeth

Ethan Cohen

Eggs & Toast

David Mentuccia

Untitled

Catherine Tween

Untitled

Adam Spiegelman

Layla Fassa Untitled

Day at the museum Emmet Lewis Condition Stephanie Guyot-Sionnest Cara Hunt

96 solitude

high school, thoughts on now, questions about the future

Taylor Pratt I don’t walk righ Autumn at the farm Jocelyn Hassel

thank you, r.j. thank you, matt

98 99 101 105 106

Christian Prince Soraya Understands

107

Sandy Miller

113

Stills from Animation

Dion Kauffman

Rabbit feet

114

A conversation with Rivka Galchen Catherine Tweeen room. And, I think the snow must’ve done well to keep the students indoors, because I thought the work of the senior composition students was really exceptionally good. -

I actually had wanted to do another novel. But I kept thinking in the short story form. And, I love to read short stories—they’re one of my favorite things to read. So, I thought I was working on another novel, but… I think often, in life, when there’s something you think you’re supposed to be working on, it makes it easier to work on other things. It always felt fun, to work on the short stories, and eventually I just noticed that that was where my energy was. And I try to follow where the energy is.

least have the illusion that it’s forcing me to write it, you know? I mean I know it’s sort of an illu-

It keeps changing. l think one of the things with novels is that, you yourself are changing over the course of writing it, and so—I almost feel like I didn’t run fast enough. I am in a sense writing the same book, now, but it’s changed, because I’ve changed. I don’t so much like to talk about it, because I start to dislike it, when it comes out of my mouth—even though on the page I sort of like it? So… -

I had wanted to be a writer, but… I’d never met a writer. And, I feel like every family has its

A conversation with rivka galchen - Catherine Tween that—but so to say you wanted to be a writer in my family was like saying you just wanted to, like, die at a young age drunk in a gutter. Like that was what it meant to my parents, that was what it sounded like to them. And in a way I kind of feel the same way that they do: I like professions that are more safe and steady and kind of obviously well-integrated into society… So, I studied to be a doctor, because, you know, it’s seems like a good thing to be. I always knew that my passion school—like I had these fantasies that I would be kicked out. Because I didn’t have the courage people have an amazing metabolism and can be up twenty hours a day and be a doctor and a writer but I’m not like that. I realized, I need to put all of my energy into this, and if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work, but I have to at least try.

I was. But mostly I read a lot—which is almost the same thing. I took workshops, just to have a sense of continuing to work on it… Although I do think the reading is what really developed me as a writer. But, at the end of the day, I think there’s a certain number of hours you have to give to something, and I just didn’t have enough hours. So I kept reading, and I kept writing,

voices. To me the sound of a book is male—which of course is upsetting, but, you know, unfortunately, it’s true. Whether it’s Mark Twain, or Dickens, or Dostoevksy, or Kafka… A male voice is, like, the sound of literature. I do also think I’m drawn to a particular gender that is, like, a fairly feminine man, and a fairly masculine woman. That space just makes a lot of sense to me.

weird thing where the language is so authoritative that if you just kind of say garbage things but you use that kind of vocabulary, it’s suddenly like no one’s gonna nay-say you, and people are

A conversation with rivka galchen - Catherine Tween of science can be co-opted.

piece. And, you know, it’s a cool concept! And a friend of mine said to me, ‘I feel like that’s something that would sit at the center of a Borges story.’ And I alway like it when I feel like I’m writing not my story but someone else’s, so I was like, ‘That’s a good idea!’ So the order sort of went backwards. I didn’t feel like that story was about the grandfather paradox; I felt like I’d stumbled upon this abandoned house, that I could then inhabit. I thought, oh, this little problem in science is actually a structure that a story is magnetically drawn to—and I didn’t know what that story would be, but I knew that it had its own version of a love triangle. Like a really weird love triangle. And so it kind of went in that order. And I wanted to be accurate about the science that comes into it, but, a lot of it is sort of speculative.

Again, I regret it! My major was English, because I knew I was going to medical school. Which is great, why not? I mean, I love literature. But I think I wish I’d done something that economics.

everyone reads a lot, everyone takes their works seriously. And I like institutions, I like classes. I think some people feel drained by that setting, and some people feel turned on. You just have to up when you’re there—or whether you’re drained by it, and all the interesting parts of your mind sort of go away because you have all this obligation and structure. But, for me, I’m very drawn to different, it’s just a totally different part of your head) and so, I was so hungry. Right out of colreader and thinker. But I know not everyone feels that way.

I am. Again, I feel like you’re supposed to complain about teaching, and if I had to teach

A conversation with rivka galchen - Catherine Tween a lot I’m sure I would, but… the syllabus is my design, the books are the books I want to teach. The students have very different backgrounds, so the class is usually really interesting. I call it ‘high-end bookclub,’ because on the one hand it’s not amazing, it’s just a seminar, and on the other hand, it is sort of amazing. I love teaching. I don’t teach workshop, which I think is really draining and hard. I just teach seminars. They’re like literature classes for writers. I’ve never even done workshops, because there are so many dynamics besides what’s on the page. Which is interesting, but it’s a bit… not my area of interest.

Yeah, for sure. That’s why the few times I was forced to teach workshop, I’d always say, people, you’re not trying to make everyone happy. And their job isn’t to like your work. I think it’s sort of like, these people are giving you a graph of what irritates, what interests… Like, when someone says, “Oh, I wish I knew more about the sister,” you shouldn’t take that to mean, “I should write more about the sister”—you should take it to mean, “I have generated an interest in problem in workshop is the drive to please everyone. Ideally, I think, workshops should just be news about what happens when you run that story through these other humans. I mean, you may actually want to bore some types of people. Or irritate them. You may actually take that information and be like, good, that’s exactly how I want you to feel. The writer has made something that irritates people of a certain mindset in a certain way. And that’s the way to make workshop useful. Because I think sometimes, you write something, and you feel like what people are mostly gonna you can think to yourself, do I want that much attention on element B? So you’re not trying to please them—you’re just trying to become aware of what it looks like to someone who didn’t write it. Because it might pop so differently to someone else.

She’s not really into writing in general, which is funny, because she’s actually kind of amazing with language. English is like her third or fourth language, depending on how you’re thinking like—and she still feels this way, and the thing is I actually don’t have a good answer—she’s always like, ‘I don’t know why someone would read something that wasn’t true.’ And on the one hand it’s like obviously a ludicrous position, and on the other hand I don’t have a great response.

Right! If it’s good, I think, yeah, it is kind of true. It’s trying to cover something that doesn’t show up well in the news. That’s why it’s usually psychologically occupied. It’s about things that don’t show up well in a graph.

A conversation with rivka galchen - Catherine Tween

with movies. They’re just somehow irritated by the novel.

Right, whereas a movie is like a hot bath. It’s easier.

I used to have a really strong routine, which was super useful: I used to always write in the amazing, because every day was the same, and for me that was really helpful. I think some people are sprinters, but… I’m very much a slow and steady person. So that was really great. It’s harder person. After like 3 o’clock, I get kind of stupid. Writing requires a lot of concentration and for me I have it in the morning. But I know some people are sort of diffuse all day, and then things begin to coalesce by evening, and then they’re able to concentrate…. I wish that was true for me, but I can only do easy work in the evening. I wake up early, go to bed early.

College is very special. If I were twenty again, I would just… take classes in all these things you’re not working on your writing, as long as you’re reading with focus, I think, you kind of are working on your writing. And, I think, whatever you do—even the things that seem like obvious mistakes at the time—you’ll become emotionally attached to them down the road, because they’ll end up being useful for you in surprising ways.

Who will remember The vines have grown into the wall of our house weaving through brick and mortar veins of a force stronger with time. On the back of a door my height is etched exponentially lagging lines until no growth is recorded. Corners without whispers Places damaged out of habit or spite never thinking they could belong to someone else wondering if the chip of the tile will mean anything, if the coin under the wood will ever be found. Auras that frame ancient carpets tangible shadows betraying the existence of objects past hiding something we forgot to retrieve negative space of routine life. The chair no one sat upon linens stale, worn and forgotten footsteps upon footsteps and the fading echoes of a child tears washed under pouring water a crimson stain that never quite disappeared the ingrown grottos through which sound and substance still leak.

WHO WILL REMEMBER The bookshelves that will be occupied by strange mementos advancing into a foreign land incongruent with the souls that linger. And my grandfather whose sleep took him to other lengths from which he never came back watches from a distance a family he does not recognize. And the place where once we lived backs of doors with parallel lines broken tiles and mended stalls dried paint that stays like a birthmark no longer mine.

the lover’s reply Thomas Wolfe

“Though the stars have all unraveled, And the archway gives no shade My love still doesn’t fade. “She shines as bright as ice On the glacier’s endless sprawl; In the cabinet or the valley, She delights in snow’s appall. “And winds outside may howl Below a waste above But the desert of my bedroom “So let the clocks keep whirring, Let the teacup keep its crack, And I’ll never take it back.”

Coelacanth Sestina Michaela Coplen with the dinosaurs; scientists rediscovered these “living fos sils” in modern times. -National Geographic

I feel our bones are grown together in the movement of the sea— Bathed in the moon, like hope resting on a horizon so ancient it approaches forever— more ancient even than love. My lover, we found our way to together through a blue that stretched forever— like the stretch where the morning meets the sea, the silence and pain in our bodies so ancient we had forgotten the rest of our hopes. I remember when we used to hope for something like loveliness we stretched our ancient before we were broken by the sea I waited for you, through eternal forever, beneath blue so deep the moon lost hope— afraid you had forgotten the sound of the sea afraid that love and evolution kept no company together— my heart alone and ancient.

COELACANTH SESTINA - Michaela Coplen

You came to me, and the ancient song of the sea echoed forever in the horizon of my hopefulness. I, who had lost sight of our together— They told me you didn’t exist, love, until I started to believe them, you see? I’ve longed for you since before the sea opened its palms to hold the land, ancient and the truest form of love. We are creatures of forever, the fusion of life and time and hope in a world that no longer sees those together. Whatever time and waves may say, our bones are bound together— Come lover, it’s hopeless, Let’s disappear forever.

untitled layla fassa 18

Beringia Lii Xu

Mama thinks she walked across the ice sheet that once covered up the Bering Strait. I can see her mind churning furiously, sometimes, when she thinks she’s just staring absentmindedly at the bloodstained mirror or the dust motes colliding in the sunlit air. No, I know what she sees: the cracked marble terrain, the gashes in ice, the tenuous glacial bluffs crumbling into the frigid partook of their meat. I don’t know if you know this, but Mama is crazy. Mama doesn’t talk much. I, on the other hand, make up for the amount of talking she does sometimes I am very, very hungry. Irrespective of my state, my route never deviates: I walk and walk beyond the empty student center; the mailbox cluster ensconced by an installation of native cacti; the defunct student-run cooperative café, its sliding glass door boarded and papered since the year that student austerity protests were so in vogue that the school offered a half-credit to known non-participants. I’ll pass the toothy Edwardian turrets of the Anthropological hall; and the marble mahjong tables in the courtyard of the Sociology department’s Bauhaus banquet side and painted a gleaming red. I’ll pass the main quadrangle, formerly an arboretum until all of the trees were razed years ago during the great wood shortage—though the stumps have since remained, blunt and blackening. I’ll skirt the rim of the lake, a pool of consolidated runoff from administrative lavatory facilities up on the adjacent hill. And I’ll cut through the forest, nineteen cushion out of months of dryer lint collected from strangers’ laundry loads—college students by and large are not courteous enough to remove their own lint post-dry-cycle—stuffed inside virginity for his laundry bag. We haven’t made eye contact since, but the bag-turned-cushion has observed many moons of good use. I major in Arctic Studies here. It wasn’t an extant department until after I petitioned for it; when that failed, I went on a hunger strike. Two and a half weeks and several gallons of ionized operational Arctic Studies department. My department runs out of the basement of the old freshman dorm, the one that was in the middle of the forest. I’m sure you’ve stumbled across it on some wild night of yours?—where I serve out my administrative roles as Department Intern, give classes and I was tasked with coming up with material independently, but after I doused my molate myself in broad daylight on Parents’ Weekend, they granted us an arrangement whereby

BERINGIA - Lii Xu professors from other departments will sometimes come in and deliver cross-listed lectures for Biochemistry best. Beringian Theory might best be described as a necessarily fragmented whole, and is thus best grasped through transdisciplinary approaches that might begin to refer to such principal themes as the immaterial ailment of landscape, the performative geochemistry of ultraviolence, the dis/assembled aesthetic life of frigid-psychotic conditioning, etc. molate myself in broad daylight on Parents’ Weekend, they granted us an arrangement whereby professors from other departments will sometimes come in and deliver cross-listed Studies and Biochemistry best. Beringian Theory might best be described as a necessarily fragmented whole, and is thus best grasped through transdisciplinary approaches that might begin to refer to such principal themes as the immaterial ailment of landscape, the performative geochemistry of ultraviolence, the dis/assembled aesthetic life of frigid-psychotic conditioning, etc.

study, for example, is on Mama: I am cataloguing her thoughts, which I can read. She does not know that I am cataloguing her thoughts—or that I can read them, for that matter—but I can, and I am. Though technically I should need an IRB form to establish consent to be researched from a human subject, one of the advantages of being the sole student in an academic department with no permanent faculty other than one’s self is that oversights like that invariably slip through cracks. It’s almost as if I don’t exist; therefore, I can really do anything I want. Granted near complete researcher’s freedom, I have concluded that at this point in my academic career, I want to catalogue Mama’s Beringian thoughts. performed with intent to construct and deploy emphatically nuanced critique—precisely the approach I seek in my upcoming catalogue project, just as I have before in my dearth of prior independent projects. Courses of independent study have been instrumental to my growth within

since been surgically reattached and has regained at least 78% functionality.) My past independent projects have included, but are not limited to: an ethnography of Mama an ethnography of Mama’s dreams observing and theoretically engaging the food Mama eats and how it relates to her dreams and her life and the Arctic a quantitative study of the frequency at which Mama cries, factoring in the independent variables of weather, hormonal cycles, the state of her health, experiences of trauma potentially engendered by linguistic isolation and racist xenophobia faced by foreigners like herself, and proximity to the Bering Strait a qualitative, comparative analysis of the linguistic schema expressed by speech Mama utters when she is sleeping; and the landscapes of the Arctic, and phantasms in the Arctic, and sexuality in the Arctic, and the Arctic moon rising over land that is both ravaged and perfect, both empty and full

BERINGIA - Lii Xu sixteen ink studies of Mama wearing the alpaca sweater that she dons even in the heat of summer, utilizing impressionistic line and hatch techniques to illustrate the embodiment of longing and delusion DNA and chemical sampling of Mama’s skin and hair, proving that she has never, ever been to the Bering Strait is always an act of adaptation and revision. And Mama has wrung her hands nights as I have brewed batch after batch of a tonic I invented years ago, invented in a moment of such utter briltrust the veracity of my previous statement—which has served me more than often in my tireless an emmenagogue and a surprisingly effective laptop screen cleaner, so it’s actually served me in without pause in the dim blue glow, and your mother, your mother watching on from her wood oil factors in greatly). I am glad, however, to speak freely of the academic success my tonic has catalyzed. In the past several years I have been led to a number of surprising conclusions about the Arctic that are grounded in my investigative framework, which oscillates between the theoretical, the psychic, and the positivistic. Some conclusions, in no particular order, follow: · · · · · · · · ·

Mama is sad Mama is crazy Mama has never been to the Arctic Mama thinks that I am sad and crazy and that I won’t graduate thinking I am sad and crazy appears to exacerbate Mama’s sadness and craziness it is easy to experiment on Mama without ever letting her know Mama needs the Arctic in another life, Mama raised me in the Arctic etc.

rive at higher, meta-level analyses of Arctic theory as derived from my more exhaustive list of independent academic conclusions. I have also considered applying for a “Watson”, which I would spend studying the intersections of landscape, loathing, and mythology in an Arctic context. I am told that there are not many Arctic nations—the Watson Scholarship unfortunately requires that terribly worried, however, as I have a plan of action in which I threaten to peel all the skin off my face with a small switchblade if the United Nations does not acquiesce to my demand, which graphic area known as “the Arctic,” for purposes of facilitating my study. I know how drastic my rors and thin air and dream forever of gashes in ice, of mammoths I’ve slain, of the Arctic moon rising above the only landscape it knows, ravaged and perfect, empty and full—

Harrison’s First Daffodil Roxanne Ringer Spring turned into a girl. Clara Upton, a friend of his mother’s, had brought the bouquet of daffodils to “Your mother would want me to make sure you were eating,” she said, peeling back sweaty plastic wrap from the plate of moist brown bread. words before or after her death. Clara handed him a slice and, patting his slightly sweaty hair and dropping a breadShe’d already pulled the plastic apart and their stems lay sprawled across the linoleum, exposed though it was a fact he himself had only learned a week before when the nurse had asked his “I said daffodils are what your mom wanted her wedding bouquet to be. But of course your father needed a winter wedding and you couldn’t get daffodils then,” Clara said and placed ticklish one. mouths towards the spray. caressed these spots.

“It wasn’t easy being a little different, a little quirky, but it made me strong and I wouldn’t trade it now for anything”. “I’m just looking for a partner in life. Someone to share the peanut butter spoon and

HARRISON’S FIRST DAFFODIL - Roxanne Ringer bottom of her petals met stem. “You’re such a good listener,” he murmured and the fuzz of her baby leaves scratched his lips not unpleasantly. “You make me better”. The daffodil’s lips and slits of her petals quivered. She gave a great sigh and let herself turn, with some shifts and stretches, into a girl. stretches, into her. All the other daffodils were crushed beneath them. Summer

turned her face towards the spray and smiled. “I wish every moment could be this moment,” she said. “You taste good,” he said. kneaded their way up her leg following bread crumbs under her skin, into the crook of her thigh and torso. She gasped, delighted. “I love you, too.” Fall In late October the air smelled like the dirt under dead brown leaves that were raked into a pile but forgotten about through three rain storms. The daffodil loved that smell. In her summer joys she’d let her cell walls down and her body had recently begun to droop and loosen. She undulated now in the breeze like a worm desperately stretching to absorb the earth into every weeks since she’d taken the stuff herself. pointed this out that morning. “You know it’s not like that between me and them,” he had pulled her to his body and tickled the nodes where her neck met her shoulders. “I know that and you know that,” she said, leaning into his touch. “But do they know it? And what must your mother think?” and wondered if his mother would have wanted daffodils at her wedding after all if she knew they were so stupid. The air around them tasted slightly stale and shortly afterwards he pulled away and left the house with the bouquet and bottle. She could not immediately tell if it was she, he or both of them who had changed. But she did not care to spend much time thinking about it either. It’s just growing pains, she said to

HARRISON’S FIRST DAFFODIL - Roxanne Ringer the trees shadowing the yard. Come spring, we’ll be back on track. The trees, all well into their forties, shuddered, dropping their last leaves on the daffodil’s head. As if they needed a perennial to tell them about growing pains. Winter In January the daffodil stepped outside of the house and stood on the stoop’s cold cestains painted the sidewalks and streets in a swirling watercolor of winter storms. She felt the salt on the table. She wished she could be a daffodil again because that’s what everyone wanted and when it was cold and got dark at 4pm anything everyone wanted, she wanted too. When she tried counter. She was an empty stalk. and a girl’s life where something he sprayed may revive her. But then it also may not. So he plucked her off the linoleum and tossed her into the garden. It was a brown winter and beneath the frozen dirt the woozy daffodil heard the whispers of hyacinth bulbs talking shit. should never have let herself go.” The daffodil’s head bowed down further than ever before until she had turned inside of

Spring

and the taste of zucchini bread suddenly coated his tongue. But the moment passed quicker than

March 10th: A Review The beautiful thing about not being able to do it by myself is that I’ve never had to do anything to do with us by myself. I’ve always had you to help. And you did. When I relented and almost let it slide, you helped. And now we’re done. weak mist, as if even the air was too tired to try and make it work. As if all it could manage to do was spit on my face a bit. The night we ended it, the plastic folding chair sitting on the frozen layer of ice over the river by my house fell through it and disappeared below the water’s surface, never to be seen again. The The morning after we ended it I woke in a mist and a haze and I thought maybe my tears from the night before really did leave a permanent scar on my consciousness, on my brain’s ability to I only knew summer when we were together. I chased them—two in a row—so that I would be surrounded by hot, sweating adventures and fall asleep to cool wet reprieves, under stars that were the exact opposite of the ones I knew. I knew the longest winter of my life when we were together. It ached and pulsed, slow and thorough. It left no part of me untouched and it covered every part of my reality that I wanted to explore but just couldn’t. With you, I knew only extremes. You said I was everywhere there. In your home. Your life. But you are in every thought and breath that I have, that I have had in this ludicrous year of summer on summer on winter on— Nothing with us was allowed to grow or change or follow or lead. Not you and not me and not cycles with strange, vulnerable, intermediary steps like spring. Does hope spring eternal because it’s not afraid of instability?

AMY KIRAN CHAPMAN LINO PRINT 26

Reflooring My parents divorced before I could remember. I was three and crouching. I tugged at the double layer fold of my turtleneck. I built plastic log houses and drew pictures and got bored and sick often. I know we kept a lot of grape juice in the apartment at the time. Although autobiographical memories start forming between the ages of 2 and 3 and can be remembered for several months, they are nearly always forgotten by adulthood. This can be attributed to lack of memory rehearsal; young children do not engage in rehearsal of remembered information. I forgot to rehearse then like I forgot later when my mom bought me piano lessons and a piano. But my parents tell me stories, so I know how the false memories look: from the acidity of the balsamic vinegar she dropped. The smell still lingers in my father’s nostrils horse ate loco weeds…?” he says when he pretends to be a cowboy. Today he’s a husband and he and not dirty and maddening, he might not slosh hot water on himself quite so often and the

who had renounced the values of the upper class: her general discontent doesn’t manifest in easy awakening, like your college girlfriend’s.

Gone Missing Lanbo Yang I didn’t know Uncle Da was going to turn Jack into an ant. It just happened, in the same way many unexpected things happen in high school, like tripping on the sidewalk or getting a call mom to pick him up. As soon as we walked into my house, my uncle touched him and he was gone. Uncle Da, me and empty air. Except for an ant that crawled slowly out the threshold of the front door. Uncle Da was a drunkard. When Jack and I stepped into the house, he already me when I was younger but I gradually saw that he was trying to change. Sometimes, I replaced were cold-blooded, or no-blooded even, so how could he feel the burn in his throat? I met Jack through soccer. Once during practice, I kicked the ball in his face Some posted photos of him: he had spiky blonde hair with a young and almost androgynous

When my friends asked me about Jack, I shrugged it off. It didn’t matter how it happened, all that I cared about was that it happened and that I’d moved on. That’s how life works sometimes: it just happens and you do what you can with what you have. Don’t people realize it’s better to learn from a mistake rather than try to change it? I was still going to make dinners for Uncle Da when he was too inebriated to because he had found the liquor stash I hid away from him. I remembered one time when I went over to Jack’s house to play video games. the bare walls. The house has nearly always been quiet, as if preserving its own secrets from visitors. The couches and cabinets were covered in a blanket of silence. Everything was still. Locked in time. We sat on the couches, sinking into them. They looked freshly polished. I thought he had a cleaning lady. I smelled the leather. Mario Kart.

“Sure.” I’d never done it before, but I knew I needed to try it before college.

Gone Missing - Lanbo Yang My suburb was a safe place. We could smoke and take a walk in the woods. Or play more video games. Or order Domino’s. I trusted that Jack had done this multiple times. regained focus. I wanted to sit. I wanted to do nothing. “Eric, you O.K. there bud?” he said. “Yeah. I like this,” I said. “Thanks, dude.” We went back into the house and returned to the leather couches. I melted into them. They static selection screen of Mario Kart stages. Neither of us reached for our controllers. We both remained silent. It was a silence that was understood among suburban teenage boys, who wanted to just plug in and play. It’s a simple unwritten ritual which we both agreed upon—an unacknowledged communion—that we didn’t talk to each other because we were afraid to disrupt the status while we drank, threw up and drank again. We wanted to meet the girls in our grade, and more importantly, get with them. We wanted to get out of our realm of contained domesticity, not realizing that once we left and moved out, we’d missed a sense of protected home. We were lucky. I felt a hand on my leg. It moved up my thigh towards my crotch. I turned to

C. ELEGANS UNDER MICROSCOPE MONICA RAISS

Halloween entries about Jim Karam Anthony Oct. 29 2014 Occult rituals: -

macy the more your wills entangle. You want x but i want y, so what?

Oct. 31, 2014 Dear Diary: Jim is an addict, -window, but he tripped into the balcony.

Where I taught how to ride scorpions Jim gazed into the sunset

HALLOWEEN ENTRIES ABOUT JIM” - Karam anthony “YOU ARE ALL MINE NOW. MY SOBRIETY KNOWS NO BOUNDS. KNOWS NO LIMITS. YOU WILL BEGIN BY PROSTRATING YOURSELVES BELOW, EVERYBODY KNEEL DOWN. NO, NO, NO, -

GOOD... JIM YOUR LORD, YES REPEAT: JIM MY LORD. GOOD. EXCELLENT. PRECISELY.”

Nov. 1, 2014 Dear Diary,

I respect my best friend, “Lord Jim” in life or death... I don’t rebuke him for his actions. whole world into... a soft-baked pretzel, dripping with butter and salt but refusing consumption ing to be suffered - a wafting scent of elusive Auntie Anne’s fresh-baked hot bread slathered in butter and salt, the smell of such dense pleasure held out at an arm’s distance. Is Lord Jim the pretzel or the exasperated human being? I just want to feel okay about life! Sincerely, Big Smith

STRANGE CITY

Strang City - Kevin Lozano

You know, Nature hates a vacuum, Especially when Standing outside of Silently damning Empty stomachs. As you wait in line, With cheaply made glass bottles, Tucked in each armpit, There is only one thing Left on the shelf, Surprisingly the last of its kind Stately, plump sour pickle Thirty cents to the dollar, Quite the deal, We canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t buy beer, After eight in Texas, But we can buy, The stream of life, Bathed in tangy green and yellow.

WEDNESDAY FOG JELENA BORAK

Family in Prismacolor Adam Spiegelman Imperial Violet. My mother wraps herself in her scarf and sleeps until noon. to be Scholar and Sorcerer and the ceiling ends up leaking And there’s no one who can answer the question In more than 3 words. Spruce Green. None of the mugs match. The silverware is beyond sorting. Queens and Knaves. My aunt doesn’t let her shadow exceed her standing height. In the bedrooms out of sight above I bury a hunchback’s heart in stacks of old magazines and velvet curtains. My father and I used to play soldiers in the snow Storming high towers and leaping across frozen moats As neighbors looked through the woods fearing horrors without names. A pearl cannonball loses itself arcing through the noon sun And is careful not to stir any sleepers in its wake. And more familiar and the icicles are never quite at ease. Warm Black. There is never cream in the refrigerator Or a full suit of spades.

to be a tango dancer all your life Their relationship was like one of their dances Sometimes they danced it roughly They missed steps and tripped over eachother’s feet Sometimes they were in a packed dance hall in Genova A huge crowd is watching them, drunk and cheering, in love with the dance The dance was made for them They are not so serious

Emma King

“O...tango incredible...Brava!” The romance is pure The rhythm is fantastically sensual The dance ends suddenly One of her legs is kicked up behind her Their chins touching and their hands clasped together As if about to fall in to some strange kiss They hold the pose for an ecstatic moment Then break into a gilded pedestrian bow Turning in unison to face all faces of the audience “Bravi!” the crowd yells, in the Italian way Good! they ejaculate “Poderte vederti anche domani la spettacolo della ventuno!” Or perhaps he has grown his hair out and they kiss eachother before walking into the ballroom It has been four months since they danced together last “La Cumparsita” plays and then a change in the light makes everything red he catches her ankle between his calves The dress, cheap, looks, on her, expensive The dance is beautiful but it is not authentic It ends in bright red Simultaneously, they pull out blue scarves In the sunset of the spotlightThey are lovers despite their age difference Despite the different languages they speak They had waited their whole lives to be who they are, now, with eachother Before, they realize, the dances had just been dances As the crowd cheers he points to someone respected in the crowd, Death, She turns and bows her head.

WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO ME DREW LEVENTHAL 39

Dumplings Jessica Lin It was just the two of us in the kitchen. My father had already left for the day and was probably somewhere between Wade and Ash, begging ladies to reimagine the boundaries of their hair care process. Before I started to go to sleepovers or follow my classmates home for some Dunkaroos, my mother and I had a ritual. Every day after school she would pick me up with a glass of lemonade and deposit me in the kitchen, where she would show me how to make the snacks I should have grown up eating. One day, I was just about to reach for another handful of the soft pink innards when my mother held a long hum in her throat. “You should be careful about love,” she said, as she folded the thin white dough over the

is sticking to your hands.” Better.” She began to work even faster, possibly to keep me from mangling more skins than necessary. “You should be careful about love. It makes the smart girls silly, and the silly girls stupid; “Mei mei, promise me you’ll be careful, okay?” It isthese words that I give back to my mother eleven years later as she drags me half-naked down a hallway. “Taxi. Outside.” We have cleared the narrow halls now and the danger is far behind us, but she keeps her grip on my arm tight. It is appropriately painful. I wonder how we must look to others, two ladies trampling through a dorm, both trembling, one only partially dressed. My bra is raggedy. The communal bathrooms scrubbing at a bright pink bra, so I put it in the machines. Now the left shoulder strap is coming apart. Perhaps the thought crosses my mother’s mind as well because she stops us and begins to take off her jacket. The whole time she looks at my exposed breasts and says nothing. Soon we remove the jacket without letting go of my arm, and the thought of releasing me is unfathom-

Dumplings - Jessica Lin the exit once more. When we make it outside the taxi she had promised is not there, so we wait in silence. My point, as if she has not burned my bridges for me. “I know I shouldn’t have gone,” I say, while playing with the fringe of her jacket. “But you didn’t even give me a choice. I was being careful. You shouldn’t have taken that from me.” The Malibu wind blows and even though it is dry and warm, my mother, who grew up playing on banana trees and drank straight from coconuts, shivers. I tug at the coat sleeves to make them cover my palms. It is not until we get into the taxi and she lets go of me that I begin to cry.

The summer after graduating high school I pointed him out to her and she had said, too loudly, “Really, that one?” I shrugged sheepishly; even I had to admit there was nothing exceptional about him. It was easy to excuse our relationship as post-graduation blues; my one last, desperate rush towards the a paltry re-imagination of a Ken doll, made small and pulled wide, distorted by the limitations of reality. The only notable detail about him was his smile. You couldn’t always see it, but when Patrick laughed deep out of his belly, one side of his mouth would rise higher than the other. him being struck. The wound hadn’t bled much so his parents hadn’t thought of getting it looked at. To their eternal regret, this caused scar tissue to form strangely and now his face was permanently off-kilter. I called him The Joker. The story in and of itself was not interesting enough to be shared and listened to outside Strangely enough, the tilt did make him look more debonair. It was just enough to be noticed without marring his face, and to me, it seemed to hint at some great and epic tale of heroism that could make Patrick an enigma. Despite numerous attempts at correcting her, my mother would not accept my reading. “What is enigma?” she would say. “If something is impossible to understand, why keep trying?” My mother’s story is rooted in practicality, and I do not know how to translate my “perhaps” and “maybe” into her language. Months later, after our relationship had outgrown the initial phase of skepticism, I tried to tell her about Patrick once more and could not help but feel like a child being reprimanded, though she had stopped saying anything long ago. To talk about Patrick would be to say things like, “the love I feel for him is adjacent to love,” or, “he is inescapable and a foregone conclusion.” The words themselves would require hours of research and dictionaries and analysis of favorite novels to explain connotation. But, sitting in the taxi, I imagine telling it to her in a way she can comprehend: that the way I felt was not some mercurial concept or parbody so that my hands loved him and my left big toe yearned for him. And when he said come to

Dumplings - Jessica Lin me, I carried it in the pit of my stomach for days until I had worked enough hours and called in enough favors to book a plane ticket. We are silent as the taxi takes us to the airport. I weep as quietly as I can but my mother’s lips purse and she shudders every time a sob bumbles its way out of my mouth. When we arrive chased one. At one point I feebly try to protest about luggage but she shoots me a look and I lose my nerve to speak. I called her on a Tuesday to tell her about my spring break plans to go to California. I told her, “I really want to meet up with some high school friends.” I told her, “I need to soak up the sun. Man, the East Coast is getting me down.” Oh man, but that California culture. You can’t get that in Colorado. She said, “Be quiet. I know you want to see that boy.” She said, “You are not going.” She said, “You say he don’t want to use ‘boyfriend’ ‘girlfriend’ in front of his friends. You say he cheat. Mei Yuan say he sell her boy drugs. You go, maybe you don’t come back.” It felt stupid, so I bit back, “But I love him!” Instead, I told her, “It’s more complicated than it sounds. It’s my fault. I don’t know the words for it in Chinese, so I can’t explain it right.” I said, I heard her voice become more clipped; carefully forming the syllables of each word so that they could all reach me clearly, as she said, “No. I love you.” She said, “You go, and you not my daughter anymore.” No way. That was crazy; it was way too extreme. She said, “I do it for your own good. Maybe you thank me someday, maybe you don’t. That is what love is.” I said, “Okay.” By the time I met my mother, men were extraneous to her. They were simply window dresspeople actually stayed for. and she was the beautiful, exotic creature who taught him remedial Chinese every Monday and Wednesday. When I was little, I liked to imagine the woman that featured in my father’s stories, who was perpetually giggling and blushing over compliments that he would feed her in-between bites of bon-bons. But even then those fantasies would never last longer than an idle afternoon. Quickly, they would wilt in my greedy hands. tering career. This girl then met a boy from far away who, when everyone else was offering poetry and candy, romanced her with freedom and democracy. Though the marriage was not always happy and the things that he had promised her came half-delivered, for my mother there was never anybody else. Not even when my father lived on her earnings or, as he began to climb out

Dumplings - Jessica Lin of minimum wage, laughed at her for making less than him. When I got older, my mother told me that she was naturally a solitary creature, and I would wonder what that meant for me. To my mother the options were simple: either she was with him or she would be alone. Then, when I entered her picture three years later, her options remained simple: either the three of us were Still, there were times when I doubted my mother’s constancy. of stalking out, and slam the door behind her in a huff. I would always call her immediately in between two seat cushions, or under a pillow on her bed. One particularly frightening time my father answered and laughed. But my panic would never have to last too long; my mother would always return within three hours, tiptoeing into the house so my father wouldn’t see her concede. She would sneak into my room, and loop our pinkies around each other. “Mei mei, don’t worry. I only run away if you are there.” Sometimes, this process exhilarated me. I’d picture the two of us, hopping from hotel to hotel, I wouldn’t have to go to school anymore, and my mother and I could just stay in all day, catchwe did run away, I would have to get a job to help out with the household, so I began to imagine after all my mother had given up for me, of course I could give these hours for her. Yet, the day to run away never arrived, and even now I cannot think of my old Barbie suitcase in my closet without some resentment for the adventures that did not come.

loudly, impatient to get to the “Carrie” or “Alicia,” so they can prove their love with minimal effort. The gift says: I went to Los Angeles and I thought of you just enough. The person coughs again but my mother stands her ground; she will not be moved until she has surveyed all the trinkets even though she knows no Carries or Alicias. “Do you know how embarrassing that was? I am grownup now, and I didn’t need to be rescued.” My mother trembles next to me. “You think I want to be crazy woman, yelling and pullbecause that boy is no good.” too, vibrating from side to side like an atom bursting with energy. “This relationship is between Patrick and me. There is no place for you. And I know our relationship is imperfect, but did you

Dumplings - Jessica Lin ever think that I could have made this mistake and still ended up okay? Maybe I could have been strong and walked away. But you took that from me today.” Before I can process what has happened, the left side of my face is stinging and my mother is holding her right palm close to her chest. be strong. I know because I make you weak. I do it all wrong. I protect you from your father, I protect you from this country and I protect you from my country. There a woman is no better than a pig. I get married and my mother say go. ‘Why you come back? You not our daughter anymore; you someone else’s.’ And I think when I have a daughter, she always be my daughter. I think life too hard to go through without a mother, so I stay always beside you, protecting you. you wait and wait, even though he never ready. Then he say, come now because he is bored, and my village. Even strangers, when they say this America so why you eat so funny or dress so weird, you say sorry, sorry, and turn your back on what I teach you. You grown up? The only person you strong enough to say no to is your mother.” I remain quiet as she decides on an avocado and turkey roll, and a bottle of Evian. As she heads towards the cashier, I follow closely behind her. The shop is small and open, with the cash register located at its heart. Still, I am afraid that if I look away, my mother will lose me in the short, falls forward and draws a curtain around her face. “Today, you were not my daughter,” she says. We walk forward, place the items on the counter, and the cashier tells us it will be nine dollars and eighty-four cents. My mother places her items in the bag and then rummages around. “I see you, I so ashamed of myself.” She plucks the ticket from an inner pocket and hands it to me. “You go now. They boarding.” I do as I am told and follow a few strangers to the end of the line that has formed. By the away and cry out, “Let’s go home together!” I try to comfort my shaking hands with the knowledge that she would not have turned around anyway; today I am not her daughter. Perhaps, tomorrow, she will still not recognize me. Until her anger fades, I am just a distant relative that she has to nod at and be polite to at family gatherings. Later, when the memory is not so fresh and the betrayal has dissipated, I know she will still pass me the salt at the dinner table with a smile, and we will continue to chat about our lives while we wait for the dumplings to cook. There will be so little changed that my father will continue to grumble about being stuck in a girl’s club. But, from time to time, I know I will catch her looking at me like I am a foreign entity: a word she no longer wishes to add to her repertoire.

the difference between men and women on february 24, 2015 Daria Schieferstein

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN - Daria Schieferstein

Advice and Suggestions Never put your bathrobe in the washing machine. It will absorb all the water. That night I put my bathrobe in the washing machine just to be sure. When it came out waterlogged, I cut it into strips, wrung the water out of each one, and tied them around my limbs, crotch, and torso for coverage. We should snort some more Adderall, for your birthday. That night two orange lines were pushed together with a debit card on a DVD copy of Eyes Wide Shut. I walked out of the shower stall with a curly twenty in my pocket and a sweet taste lingering on the roof of my mouth. Just go to the library, and seduce him. tioned myself on a reading room table and waited. We need to start the revolution.

You should paint me naked. That night we sat outside in a line of two, cross-legged, on the lawn. A delightful landscape covered his back for four and a half days. We should climb up the roof to see the stars better. That night a team collected the pieces of my body from below the roof and reassemwith my body in one piece and no bruises, only some soreness. Let’s trade pants. That night I received a telephone call informing me about the sensation the pants created. I then was forced to live with the guilt for instigating the men’s crushed velvet leggings We should go live together in a cabin in the woods, but we won’t get married, unless you want to. That night we loaded up the car and settled in the Catskills. The fresh air cleared up our skin right away. We never stole any acne cream from the drug store again.

3 things I know to be true: 1. 2.

There is no way to free-hand-draw a straight line, unless it’s a random day in the third grade and you weren’t thinking about it and you just let your hand fall down a page with your pencil in it. When people don’t believe me, I don’t believe me. Which I know because of that random day in the third grade when I tried to believe me anyway and erased the perfectly straight redraw it. Not perfectly straight. enough to be sorry, but not old enough to make it right.

SELF PORTRAIT WITH BEER ETHAN COHEN

UNTITLED AMY CAO

Cinquains for Adelaide Crapsey Thomas Wolfe i. Louder Than weekend noise, When Main was all the school, Little haikus in Keats were stretched Along. ii. In Rome, Beneath the birds And yawning shadows, you Balanced permanence with life’s Cascade. iii. Two things Are near tonight: The snow and dawn’s ascent. Once early dying lips described The hush. iv. Outside The little window Lay the leafy graveyard You watched while counting syllables In rows. v. The news That you’d die soon – An English poet’s death – Wasn’t worth the wasting breath To tell.

Untitled Faith Hill Spooning ice chips into your mouth, I will my shaking hand to be steady as you wince And think back to kitchen table times Of applesauce and split pea soup and vegetables I would not eat. Almost over, Mom. Just a few more. Your hand in mine is too small, And this poison has drained your touch, Later I watch you garden through the peeling screen door, And I wonder how much of the soilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s crumbling dampness you can feel As you plunge your hands into the dirt. Long gone are the days when you buttoned me up, your little girl And rest my head on your shoulder. still can. I will pray with you until the feeling comes back to your clasped and bony knuckles. Blessed are you Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, The One who made radiation therapy and hospital beds with too loud TVs, and waiting rooms with bald middle aged women and children who canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand what a tumor is. The surfaces of your toenails are chemo-cratered faces of Mars, but they are perfect in their pockmarked half unhinged glory, let them sing. Toes tucked under, socks not yet on in the early morning. I wish that I could convince you to leave them be, to display each discolored ridge and dip in the nails left contorted like ancient tree bark. I wish that you would go barefoot at the beach and sink your heels into the hot sand. hand to be steady as you wince. Almost over, Mom. Just a few more.

A Love Letter Luke Morrison A year ago, I passed you on my way to class. You pushed your hair back the way you do when it’s not feeling right, when that one strand is a little too far down your forehead. Your city-worn Converse landed close to mine as you passed, and made that clicking sound I like. Six months ago, the jungle juice in your red solo cup spilled a little bit, but no one noticed. Your laugh sounded especially loud, probably because you were drunk. The girl you liked leaned with her hand on your shoulder. Your deep cough showed that the week-long cold you had was getting worse. The package you

your friend gave you that OtterBox case for your birthday, or the screen would’ve cracked. Your dark green Under Armour spandex was exposed as you bent down to pick it up. Last Tuesday, I saw you eating from across the dining hall. Your ambidexterity showed in the hand-alternating way you held your fork. The PB&J you wistfully crafted, using the perfect ratio of peanut butter to jelly, looked soft in your hands. Sunday morning, you ran past my window on your usual jog around campus. I could almost hear your EDM mix blasting from your headphones. Your wintery breath failed to obscure bright red lips kept moisturized by the small tube of Aquaphor found in the front pocket of your Jansport backpack. Right now, you’re sitting across from me at a small round table. Your oversized hands wrap around the iced vanilla latte you just paid for. The soy chai that you also just paid for feels warm in my hand. You ask me, “What are you writing?”

It’s nice to meet you.

observations / phoenix, az. Jocelyn Hassel i. the desert dried our eyelids, red rock dust planted across knees like grass stains. the moon behind the mountain was so large that I screamed, grabbed your arm. we swerved off the lane for a millisecond.

ii. everything could be perfumed with the thought of someone, I am learning. and what of that stench, the one that came with the phrase â&#x20AC;&#x153;harm in givingâ&#x20AC;? ? I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think about that guilt anymore. luckily we just give ourselves to the feeling of another morning.

OBSERVATIONS / PHOENIX, AZ - Jocelyn Hassel

iii. one day I woke up and couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember the sensation of aching anymore. so I just ate wasabi seeds until snot ran out my nose and knew that the pain of it all could just be washed down with water.

what I gave is up for interpretation, what I am giving is empirical. cactus-veined man, remember that long road by sedona?

UNTITLED CARA HUNT

Orders of Autumn Leah Weingast Do not go on to forget the blueness of a night Papery sheets stick Soles melt and rubber grips, Stretch silken skin on to a bridge Connect the caves of your breath and In the hour, turn Let loose thick blankets of velvet Dripping in crystals

Down the Drain Teal Powder Blue Teal, Navy, Goldenrod

Teal, Powder Blue, Teal, Navy, Goldenrod, Red Wine The psychological self-portrait has been creeping around and threw up in here I knew it Sing it soulfully Then it has meaning Sit down and talk about it Give it the old one-two When you pull it out, it will be covered in meaning Teal, Powder Blue, Teal, Navy, Goldenrod, Red Wine Package it in teal, powder blue, teal again, navy, goldenrod, red wine, an unnamable factory-made brown, a second unnamable factory-made brown, and 1970â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fake wood brown Put in the soul And send it away Open it up and pull out the meaning Sit down and talk about it Varnish the wood with it Then paint your walls with teal, powder blue, more teal, navy, goldenrod, red wine, an unnamable factory-made brown, another shade of unnamable factory-made brown, and 1970â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fake wood brown Invite the guests and throw the party Scuff it up real nice Cover your ground in dirt Crumble their crumbs Snort it all up and you found the meaning Seduce it Text it one night and put on your navy bathrobe

Down the Drain Pack it a bowl and wait for it Ten minutes later, in comes the meaning Now sing it your song Start digging Go outside and start digging You’re digging a hole to China You’re digging a hole to the center of the earth You’re digging a hole to the meaning Don’t worry about hitting a root Because it’s not a root, it’s your dad’s 1970’s fake wood covered speaker that he buried in 1980 Dig through all the dirt and all the rocks Dig into the glitter Congratulations on discovering the Sparkle Layer Pass out in your hole and wake up to the gentle nuzzle of an earthworm Eat a broccoli snack and keep on digging When you get to where you’re going Pick all the glitter out of your crevices Some start looking for the meaning With the psychological self-portrait Don’t bother The meaning left him a long time ago And it’s never coming back Just sit down and talk about it Then start yelling Yell and yell and run out the door Run out the door and then come back in the door Scare everyone But remember they’ll chuckle at how you came back in the door And how you were wearing the teal polo Cook up the meaning Into the pot with carrots, potatoes, turnips, beans, peas, celery, and red wine Put it all in water Stir it around Take a break to sit down and talk about it Add some oil Butter the bread Salt Put it in a bowl Or a pot If you don’t have a bowl Eat it with a tiny spoon It’ll take a long time You’ll have to sit down and talk about it some more during your meal It’s a terrible soup But eat it all up and you’ll pee out the meaning

WOMAN STEPHANIE GUYOT-SIONNEST

Crepuscular Catherine Tween Once, eight or nine years ago, on a tour of an art museum in a foreign city, the guide had begun his discussion of a painting entitled Crepuscular by asking if anybody in the tour group knew the meaning of the word, and your son had waited quietly a moment for someone else to volunteer before lifting his hand and offering, “twilight,” and you had been both proud of and startled by this—by his secret knowledge of something unknown to you, something you yourself could world within your child. You had become aware, momentarily, that, despite your love for him, and despite the intimacy you’d shared in his early years, you nonetheless knew very little of the inner regions of his mind, and that there no doubt existed in him wide, lucid realms of thought and sensibility to which you were not and would never be privy. Today he was nearly twenty-two years old and often, watching him, you would be struck by something in the way he moved or spoke—some grace or wisdom or world-weariness that was beyond his years—and you would be reminded, with a tenderness, with an ache, that the being you had once enwombed was now an ever-growing repository of experiences for which you had not been present, many the equivalent of which you had never experienced yourself.

Welcome-bye UnCivil Required Leave REQUIRED grade point Committee has met. Decided, REQUIRED semester g p a Leave. Problems g REQUIRED Leave p If you wish REQUIRED return Committee. Decided Resources Metca-REQUIRED absence absence *shuts computer* *shuts off* REQUIRED

ur done

JACKIE JADE CHUNG LIPSTICK

Notes on Bereaved Bandages Taylor Pratt I We all got shots as far as I knew. I loved getting them. I loved the head-high. I loved the blood I always watched collect into the syringe. I loved the proof of living. Stevie must have as well. At that very precise moment—clear in memory like the translucent teal of a stream—I never questioned the bandage on the inside of my brother’s elbow, what he called his “elbow pit,” as I poked it.

Stevie was an unmatched athlete in high school and so his name was emblazoned with gold along all of the hallways between trophies and decades of questionable Ken dolls. I was a pudgy, acneridden faggot instead of a champion. The gold records—that his name were attributed to—still stick to the pungent Oak wall of fame. They were still there the last time I exited my high school. They were still there when the TV-set was stolen. Still, when my dad was clenching shouting teeth to his ex-wife Cheryl for stealing most of his custody to a namesake of a son who stole the TV-set the football game was supposed to play on that Stevie never made it to. Still there when I heard my parents whispering about the fucking stupid, unremarkable TV-set that they never knew would signify nothing. Nothing, but loss and regret. Still, a son. I have no attempt to go back to prove the letters and In rows and rows and columns and columns Stephen John Pratt II So the bandage stretched between the athleticism of a bulging, Black bicep and the thinly veiled ranges from light cocoa powder wrists to the reddened rosewood cheeks that responded to my ries onto my stomach, exposing my gapped white teeth hidden in mostly pink gums. I welcomed

NOTES ON BEREAVED BANDAGES - Taylor Pratt the rosewood with a hug, tasting the tone of our exchange as pride rather than guilt Guilt was for convicts in orange jumpsuits with rosewood cheeks that shared my blood, blood fearing slurs blocking the bond of two brothers. I wanted to be picked up and thrown in the air like when I was 2 and Stevie’s 6’5” stature abandoned my 3’ body for a loss of breath only to gently grab and cradle my giggles a millisecond later. I didn’t want the grab or the cradle anymore. Guilt was trading black tar heroin for a brother. Guilt was trading colorless meth for dialysis. Guilt lay in the Rosewood casket that would hide Stevie’s 26-year-old cheeks.

Occasionally I visit strangers’ funerals. It’s kind of like wedding crashing for self-deprecating late-teen to early twenty-year-olds. If you have ever been to a run-of-the-mill Christian funeral, there is always the family you want to avoid looking at. If you do look, you risk running, with fear, towards the ridiculously loud red exit sign, drawing attention while splashing holy water on your pants so it looks like piss stains as you are tearing tears from your eyes until you fall asleep that night. They are right of center—the family—knees bruising standing against the front pew: stark and soft as chalk with more gravity than countless Earths.

I was the family on the right. I instantly felt like my skin was thinner than my family’s one-ply and I ever felt the desire to go unnoticed before, perhaps never again in my life, but at that moment I was so relived to be invisible. Nobody looked anywhere but up or down or at the Book or at the

reach all the way to God in hope and all the way to me in promise. My eyes averted much of the rest. It chose its tasks in memory construction. Motion ceased and the shrieks of former lovers,

broke my persistent, cowardly-glazed gaze.

NOTES ON BEREAVED BANDAGES - Taylor Pratt Anecdotal Cumulonimbus Clouds It all became too clear with that break. It was a feeling I’ve encountered rarely in life. I might contemporarily equivocate the feeling to putting on crooked glasses after an amphetamine-fueled one-night stand with three people and a twenty-minute nap at a foreign apartment in a Brooklyn neighborhood displacing countless people of color below me. I was cognizant. I was hyperaware. True, honest clarity in a story plagued with memorial clough is often as paralyzing as it allegedly was when it was originally experienced. It is unavoidable. It makes me want to slam my laptop and run into the set of pacifying , just like it did on that uncomfortable, godforsaken fucking pew that I wanted to smash with rage or smush like Stevie’s cheeks or hug like my mom when I got a boo-boo or craft into a weapon to avenge my brother’s murder.

bile smirk covered his teeth, just like my fathers did. Stevie never had the privilege of braces, only the shame of covering the crooked teeth I loved so much. I later realized that Orthodontics and white, straight teeth didn’t match the thin drapes of the subsidized housing him and his expecting girlfriend, Michelle, said goodbye to me in. I thought goodbye meant SUV in a slighted, colorless drug deal. I shared my favorite red m&ms that I sorted out and tried to throw out the rest of the pack. Stevie grabbed my arm and did it for me. I wasn’t allowed past the door the whole two hours I last saw him. I thought his face looked odd because he popped his pimples and so I said, “Stevie, stop popping your pimples.” They weren’t popped pimples.

I didn’t remember the color of the drapes and I needed to. I drove steadily and repeatedly by frames. I imagine them wrapping his young fading cream teeth, tarnishing copper eyes, disintegrating Black skin. Blackness didn’t quite match the red, the white, the blue. Didn’t quite match the luxurious gold frame that stood at attention covered in yellow roses and white irises. perfectly content whilst glimmering in relaxing red pools on comfortable concrete.

NOTES ON BEREAVED BANDAGES - Taylor Pratt At the pew my father’s paper-white hands quivered how I imagined Zeus’ when he sent lamenting crimson raindrops onto the Trojans. Sarpedon, one of his innumerable but beloved sons, had to be spared in the Iliad since the sons of other gods were fated to die as well. Zeus chose. My father wasn’t Zeus. There is no “choice” here. There is the “bigger portrait”: the baroque frame

guilty 7 Billion. `

The Pantry Leah Weingast Polyester straps swirl Callousing the index Propelling the lights Shredding into the night I slide on washi tape, I sway to horsehair on metal Vibrating in the space between Your legs and the pit of that peach that sank Through my stomach to my knees Syrup slides through the space between my teeth Catching the cup in my tongue and twisting, Black, wiry mesh hugs her torso and I scream Into the pantry In the blue-black air Crumbling, breaking, around me It rains and I crouch Beneath bricks of mud

The Pantry - Leah Weingast

They melt underneath my feet, and I cannot rise. I can consume Clarity, Cotton cloth swaths the shelves The dust cannot encase me The knob turns ever so slowly and stops Waiting for a miracle

Orange-yellow light seeps in, and I blink it all away

THE MISSING SCREAM DREW LEVENTHAL

Ne cherchez plus mon cœur Jacqueline Krass title from “Causerie,” Charles Baudelaire

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------you don’t want them to let you back into the building you don’t want them to tell you you’re forgiven

or numbed

you were looking for protection from the hands of the greedy

his touch like a signature in fresh cement, no one heard a thing.

did you go outside just hoping someone would come to let you in again? and then refused them when they did?

NE CHERCHEZ PLUS MON CĹ&#x2019;UR - Jacqueline Krass someone says YOU ARE COLD

TE MANQUE) but you cannot think of anything to be missed, and of course what they mean is you are homesick, of course you are only translating in the most obtuse way possible, looking for miscomprehension in all the wrong places: in times of stress the physical becomes extraneous, the body nothing but a cold and undesiring object. someone says you are wearing sweaters in midjuly, you are blueabandoning your body in bathhouses where the touch is only cleansing and something misses you. you say: it gets so cold at night, here, on ne peut guĂ¨re sentir les mains. food is reserved for the living and you are not of the living anymore.

Smell of the M Danyelle Hamilton The room was darkest at this hour. The room was warmest at this hour. The room always rattled with the sounds of two trains passing, one in each direction, on the tracks that might as well have been raised directly overhead at this hour.

off the foot of the bed. The window had been cracked an hour ago to let in a quiet winter breeze catch only glimpses and glares of the otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes. It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just the heat that kept their bodies apart. But it was the darkness, not the unforgiving

It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t entirely unlike the rest of her house, familiar, but somehow older. Nana, dust, spiders, of his favorite things and chuckled to himself, as she lay stiffened beside him, becoming even more repelled by the choking sounds his throat made when he tried to laugh.

want to speak at all. She thought to herself about all the times in her life she remembered a man who had been oblivious to the consequences of the words he spoke or the costs of his exploits. She must have been thinking on this for some time, as he chimed in with another unimportant story about his nana, something about a swimming pool this time. She took that as her cue and said I need water, interrupting his ongoing narrative. As she climbed

Grabbing her jacket from the coat rack, she slipped out into the hallway of the apartment building, carefully closing the heavy door behind her. She walked for a while, down dimly lit, sparsely populated streets, keeping a calculated but casual pace. The train platform was empty at this hour, aside from another lady wearing a big coat and tired women boarded, she said to herself, I remember the smell of the M.

UNTITLED AMY CAO

seven Simon Patané With you I am cold turkey, and loving it. never thought I could, tides beating rivers down my brow, simple things like rising from a stupor so splendidly delirious. I can’t hide myself, wouldn’t want to, body strewn across the bed, piled into a heap of smoldering humility legs snapped taut against themselves in a bent, slipping into dreams within the strike of back to mattress. Later your voice, willowy in the foreground of my illusions, awakening as if you commanded a line to my conscious mind, I suspend my surprise in endless scratches of paper, cool drips of ink and an occasional shot of something strong. I am not easily surprised, or shaken, or stirred into commotion, but leave me to sleep and I will spin you the bare threads of my nightmares, unbounded locomotion seeping through words and visions. Some people don’t enjoy sleep. starve me with my own medicine, you are one of those people, the restless and energized for endless nights, when you sleep you speak, the soft uttering and remodeling of rem cycle crying, “you must have 7 vaginas to worry about,” but for some reason, that doesn’t surprise me.

Excerpt from ‘DD’ Sophie picks me up for the party. She has a monstrous car: a big, blue Range Rover SUV that rises arrogantly off the ground, forcing you to climb to get into it. Its name is Baby. Baby is about as long and wide as a small motorboat, and all dinged up on the outside. Sophie loves it because she’s the oldest out of all of us by a year – she got held back in kindergarten. Naturally, Baby took a ton of abuse from our friends. It’s a real shitmobile on the inside too, but that’s more Sophie’s fault than anyone else. She’s a notorious pack rat, as well as an impulsive buyer of useless things. Rose. All the girls are here, and they smell like Dragon Berry Bacardi. “Whaddup Soph,” I say back, a greeting extended to all of them. She doesn’t respond, instead turns up the radio as “California Gurls” comes on. Annabelle, Alexis, Marie, Sophie and Sierra instantly start screaming, creating a volley of sounds that pile up one on top of another like an avalanche. Things are generally shrill with them, to say the least. Chaotic. The only quiet one is Rose, who is nuzzled up in the backseat with me. against my lips. I return the favor but tongue her, deep, making the rest of the girls squeal, “Get a room!” I don’t give a fuck. Rose looks a little embarrassed; she’s blushing, but suppressing a smile. She’s not doing a very good job of it. I’m pleased with myself. shiver delicately. She’s told me a bunch that she likes the way I look with hair on my face, so I “rat-stache.” Something out of a bad teen movie. But she’s not my girlfriend so she doesn’t get to decide. Not that that means Rose controls me, because she doesn’t, but I do like to look good for her. “Alright,” Rose says. “I missed you last night.” “Me too,” I say. And it’s true. I always miss her when we’re not together, no matter what. Last night I stayed in by myself, researched gap year programs. This is a secret. It’s almost as big as the one concerning me and Adrienne. Earlier that day I’d broken off my date with Rose, told her I wasn’t feeling well because I can’t tell her what’s actually going on. She’s going to Syracuse also got a scholarship to because she’s fucking brilliant like that. But she wants to stay together, because Colgate and Syracuse are barely an hour apart so it wouldn’t even really be a Long Distance Relationship. But I want to go to Australia, maybe, Africa, travel, take wildlife pictures, or something like that. I’m not sure which secret Rose would be more mad about. I really don’t know.

EXCERPT FROM ‘DD’ “Pretty fun, you know. The usual.” Rose shrugs. I can see her bra through her tank top. It’s the black, lacy one – my favorite. We’re on our way to Stuart’s again, same thing that we’ve been doing for the past two weeks because his parents are out of town, visiting his sister who lives in L.A. They’re coming back tomorrow though, so Stu has promised to throw the rager to end all keg and invite like, twenty more people than he usually does. But still, you know. Should be fun. We arrive at his house, a McMansion in a cookie-cutter gated community a few minutes outside of town, just like the rest of ours. Other cars have already blocked up the driveway, so Sophie parks on the curb and we all tumble out. Rose picks up a bottle sitting faithfully by her “So it was you!” I exclaim, tugging her into me, squeezing her hip. She laughs wickedly, showing her teeth. Never needed braces. She offers me a sip, which I accept. Not to brag, but I’m lanova, but I bet I could beat any ordinary frat bro out there. There’s not much liquor left now. “Ugh, Devin,” Rose groans. “Do you always have to do shit like that? This is why I didn’t give you any earlier.” She stalks ahead to walk in with Sophie and Alexis and Marie and Sierra and Annabelle, leaving me behind at the bottom of the driveway, clutching a bottle of Dragon Berry, which I don’t even like anyway, looking like an idiot. I chuck it onto the grass, stuff my hands in my pockets and troll on in. The house is packed. Unprecedented. It’s not like we’re not popular, because we are, but Stu can be kind of a little bitch about throwing parties and prefers to have what he calls “intimate gatherings.” But it looks like he really went all out for this one. I spy Adrienne across the living room, leaning languidly against the doorway into the kitchen. She’s talking to Stuart, who’s slitherhead back, touches his arm. If I had my camera I could capture this scene, publish it in National Geographic: “Mating Practices of the Wasted, Small-Town Teen.” I can’t help myself, I glare. two red cups and stumbles through the sea of bodies over to me. throws an arm around me and uses the other to mash one of the cups into my chest. I grab it and gulp. “Pretty cool party, dude,” I say. I’m trying to be diplomatic here. “Yeah, yeah, I think, like, pretty much everyone is here. You know what they say – if you tory. On second thought, I don’t believe there’s nearly as many people here as he thinks. Afterprom was so much better. “Listen man, I got a blunt going on in a big way right now if you wanna get in on this. Nate the air, hips gyrating as he exaggerates every twist and turn he has to make around clusters of We sit at the picnic table, four pairs of eyes all red and puffy from the beauteous magic of this endless blunt that continues to travel around and around the circle. Me, Stu, Nate and Jeremy. The boys are all here. “I fucking love you guys,” I say, surprising myself.

EXCERPT FROM ‘DD’ Jeremy laughs. “What a puss,” he says. “No homo.” be like this.” They all nod. I feel awkward. They’ll all see each other again on breaks and be able to do the same things like always, but me? I could be halfway across the world by then. Rose “Can I hit that?”

“Thanks boys,” she says. All of us have had a thing for her at one point or another – I’ve always suspected that Stu still does. Can’t blame him though. Rose actually dated Nate back in seventh grade for a month or something, but I was the one who got to be her real boyfriend starting summer after sophomore year. We were both volunteering at the library, which is how we got to become better friends, and one day I noticed she was reading The Sun Also Rises, my alltime favorite book. I hadn’t realized that she was into real literature, not just Gossip Girl crap like Sophie and all them. So we started exchanging books and meeting up outside work to talk and hang out and stuff and then it just happened, like that. Sophie. Last time I saw her she was talking to Jason Pikeman again, which, as we all know, is vodka concoction, tastes like poison, but I knock it back anyway. Back inside the party now I have another drink in my hand, but I’m not really sure where it came from or how it came to be. Everyone seems to be on a bit of a tilt. I smile pleasantly and it was Christmas Eve. Our families were doing dinner together that night. It’s a tradition we have. I’d stolen a nug and a paper from Teddy earlier, and proudly rolled the world’s worst joint. After dinner, Adrienne told them that we wanted to take a walk, so we went down the road and crouched under a tree, lit it up. No one seemed to notice that we were different when we made it back home, not even when we fell asleep on the couch with the Disney Channel on, scores of what?” “Nah, no you know that’s not true, I wouldn’t do that to you.” I slurp on my drink. “Oh, Devin. You look some kind of fucked up tonight.” She leans in close. “Me too,” she whispers. “Isn’t it fun?” “Yeah you know it.” I can see Rose out of the corner of my eye. She’s staring at us, pissed. Even though she’s chill about most things I think it really rubs her the wrong way that my best friend’s a girl. All of a sudden Sophie wanders in from the garden, clearly upset. I watch Rose snap to attention as she, Marie, Sierra, Alexis and Annabelle get in formation and descend, leading the crying girl away from the mass of the party. Adrienne is showing me something on her phone. I move my hand from her shoulder down to the small of her back. She looks up. Smirks. “Wanna go somewhere?” unless they’re close friends. I’m leaning back against the counter and Adrienne is pressed into me. I kiss her lips, bite them, rub my hands all over her back and butt. She moves down my chest,

EXCERPT FROM ‘DD’ unbuttoning my shirt one by one it’s agonizing, I lean back and look up, hands behind me for we not lock the door. handle, mouth agape. Speechless. But not for long. you fucking SLUT you bitch how could you DO this to her it’s ROSE. Devin. What the actual She is shrieking. I’m sure everyone can hear. My pants are around my ankles. Adrienne is Please. touch me, Devin.” She spins around and runs down the stairs. I hear a thud come from the bottom, where she’s slipped and fallen. I go to see. I’m walking home alone now. It’s dark and unusually chilly for August. Now that I’m not Rose’s boyfriend anymore, there’s no way I’m getting a ride home from Sophie, though I think I’m better off. She wouldn’t have been able to drive anyway – last I saw her she was at the foot of the stairs, surrounded by the girls, crying about a sprained ankle. Rose was there, stroking her head. I had tried to melt into the crowd, slip out the door. But she saw. We locked red eyes for a she reading this week, I wondered. I had forgotten. I opened my mouth, questioning soundlessly, chest pinched, and at that moment she disengaged. Turned her head away. I left. Now the woods frame me on either side, trees tall and forbidding. Their shadows criss-cross the road, freakishly elongated.

ICONIC SOFIA BENITEZ

moments I will not re-member Esin Asan remember: old latin. re-memor, to re-call to mind. forget: old english. un-get, to lose from mind 22. they have been saying don’t torture yourself anymore this infatuation will eat you up inside if you don’t let it out but if I did it would eat us up and the lack of us would eat me up inside. I hate the lack of things instead I hurl my infatuation at you I hate the presence of things I wish the air wasn’t this full of my mistakes as you stare I can’t stop the non-lack of words and I tell you how whenever anything as you breathe in my hefty infatuation it prickles your nose because it’s too big I can’t recall that not touching someone could hurt so much I wonder if I will ever forget how much it does not hurt not to love someone your nose is still smaller than mine I will not remember and I close my eyes and repeat would you believe me if I said this did not happen yet but when it does I will not remember because I already wrote it down h to make sure it happens

MOMENTS I WILL NOT RE-MEMBER - Esin Asan 5. stomachaches I just liked how the cold stone felt beneath my little feet but not how the soles of my feet hurt when you slapped them in anger my tears were too warm so I had to let them out and let them drop and warm my feet but I will forget if I don’t write it down 11. we were at a fucking McDonald’s thought the way she spoke was much more vulgar than the taste of the ten-day-old grease her breath smelled much sweeter than the bathroom they had just used to wash their faces and her lipstick was kind of messy but still prettier than Ronald McDonald’s mess of a make-up she tried but couldn’t hide the Easterner that made her who she was and why on earth should she be someone she is not I am just eleven years old and today is my birthday I wish I was born to a less vulgar family they laugh when her accent slips and I will not re-member and I close my ears and repeat they make fun of her haircut and I will not re-member and I close my mind and repeat 20. soreness collected right under my lungs found its way out of my eyes and nose and mouth and everyone around me stared at me cause who the hell cries when they are writing I have asthma but I still smoke cigarettes just so I can say only I can kill myself have you ever seen someone shoot hurt from her guts onto the paper ***

SOMNIUM LUX KIRAN CHAPMAN

teeth Simon Patané I found the toothpaste attractive, and the silence of your dimpled cheeks stunning, their noiseless questions marking me a dead man. interrogate me with your tilted expressions. you and I head towards tunnel vision, the end of the line suffocating us with six-pack plastic wraps left over from last night’s binge. when did we realize – our souls: lifeless bags meditating on a rotten log, I always get caught on the branches. She found the toothpaste attractive, the roll of minted beads on our tongues alluring. we checked out of our lives and into a bed, like we do some nights, the smell of our mixed entertainment arrived via passenger pigeon. fuck those pigeons. I am on the way out, squeezed and half-emptied between clothespins unsettled by lines. I am dressed in glitter, from the tip of my nose to my ass

and peel the result endlessly from between my knuckles. remember, peeling repeatedly until our minds idled at night. like we should have, but didn’t. rags of glue shifting like the snake skin lingerie ripped off your body last night.

TEETH - Simon PatanĂŠ

You shiver behind your mask, my hand running up and down your back until you spit out our lives without questioning: we brush ourselves like we do our hair and I wonder what lies beneath and behind, the aromas that veil your garlic clove smirk, the lobed fringes you carry a lot in the crook of your smile. my lips curl with the beat of your snark, rolling down your chest.

eggs & toast Ethan Cohen we started to get frustrated with the futility of language, she just started laughing, then I started laughing, until we were bent over, stomachs-in-hand, and she put her arm around my shoulder, like this, and she asked, Victor, why are you laughing? VICTOR. I cannot say! T and I, we were just surprised. VICTOR. What?

They process them into art. names into snow. VICTOR. T and I, we were craving a way to oust our energy to each other. Or “with” each other. Or maybe “at.” night everybody left.” What does that signify? VICTOR. Self-evident! VICTOR. Mm? VICTOR. I don’t regret anything.

EGGS & TOAST - Ethan Cohen

VICTOR. Our dinner was incredibly mediocreâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; not even that; it was mediocrely mediocre. My hands were grimy. It was drizzling. We did not get back late enough to sleep or early enough VICTOR. I remember it!

so as to assuage your shifting desires. The opening half hosts the jalapenos, to rouse your senses and entice you forward; the latter half comprises the potatoes and caramelized onions, to cushion and sweeten your descent. Most hold to the equally-distributed-ingredients model. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t work that way. VICTOR. Systems that serve the majority serve the majority. Systems that serve everybody serve everybody.

UNTITLED DAVID MENTUCCIA

untitled Catherine Tween I’m standing outside the venue after the show, waiting for my friends, when suddenly, just a few feet away from me, this man hits the girl he’s standing with, and starts pushing her down onto the ground. The girl is in her twenties, and brunette, like me, and she cries out when he hits her—and I don’t have time to think or even pause or anything, before out of my body emerges face, pushing him off of the girl and stepping in between them, roaring at him, “YOU DO NOT backing away from me, hands up, pointing at the girl beside us on the ground and saying, “She came here without telling me! I do everything for her!” and I’m looking him right in the eyes saying, “You do not touch her like that,” and I start walking towards him, and he starts backing up, tion for that, you never touch her like that,” and I can feel a crowd of people forming behind me, and I hear someone say, “Yeah,” and this guy just keeps backing up, and I keep walking towards him, looking him right in the eyes, and I can see in his face that he’s afraid of me—which is surreal, because I’m like a full foot shorter than him, and my hair is in pigtail braids, and I have never I just stop, and he spins around, and sprints away down the city block, and it’s snowing, and I look back to see if the girl is okay but she’s gone, and someone from the crowd comes up and but not from the cold—and I have never heard my own voice sound that way, never, not once—I am usually soft-spoken; I am usually shy.

finishing school Adam Spiegelman Down a hall I can’t quite see but I know is lined with yellow sketches with italic captions and I am greeted with approval by houseplants with better posture than I have, And take my place a few seats down from the radio that plays Sibelius at full volume whichTo meSeems a little fatalistic for a January evening in the Xanax self-checkout line, but I have sides to memorize Stay an extra half hour into the snowfall ‘to explore other options.’ ‘You said you get along less well with your father because he reminds you of yourself ?’ ‘I said that I liked black licorice, Vicodin, and running with my eyes closed, if that’s what you mean.’ The phone rings, and I pick the tag off my scarf. I tell him I have to leave and refuse to let him walk me out. In the yard, the orange houselights make gathering snow on the chicken pen look like ash and glowing embers. I want to give it a second or last glance but can’t let them know all the beautiful things I keep for myself in towering stacks behind closed doorsUnknown soldiers lined up one by one for shallow graves with my name on every headstone.

UNTITLED LAYLA FASA

day at the museum

day at the museum -

I follow the electrician on break Who screws a lightbulb I sat on functional furniture, Some might call art. The folds of your sweatpants, Onto the folds of your sleepy lids Unfurling onto the portrait. Your body unfolds. Unrealistic, I know. Lean in to digest more, Consider the folds of another. Black and white, jelly print Super imposed onto a frame. Bent forward— Concentrated in repose, An object never a subject. What shant I see? Without your large rump, Dingle berry hidden away, And… Oh there I go again. Away— In my direction.

Conditioner Emmett Lewis Shampoo rinses over my tightly closed eyes and mouth. I have become good at this since transitioning from Johnson & Johnson’s “no more tears” 15 years ago. Remarkably, I’ve only gotten shampoo in my eyes a handful of times. I rub down the hair all around my head, listening in its slim white container. Every conditioner I’ve ever used has come in a slim white container. Grinding it into my scalp, I regret not taking my toothbrush into the shower. I’ll have to wait the suggested 1-2 minutes for the conditioner to set. These are some of the hardest minutes of the day. I look down at the drain and see the last remnants of shampoo, bubbling like lava through a clump of fallen hair. I should clean the drain soon. I notice a long stray hair between my pinky other hand. I give up and stick it on the tiled wall, about eye-level. My mom used to leave hair on the shower walls and I would look at it with disgust. My hair was short back then, a crew cut with scissors. Since letting it grow out in high school I’ve become more sympathetic to her struggles. I judge it’s been about 20 seconds since the conditioner went in. It probably won’t hurt to cut it a little short this time, so I plan to rinse in 30 seconds. I try to avoid looking at the rust colored mold that coats the slightly protruding little spigots on the showerhead. I only recently learned that this is in fact mold, clearing up my previous confusion over why only a lower semicircle of the head had rusted. Now, in possession of this knowledge, I should get around to Then again, this involves removing the showerhead and potentially leaving it in vinegar overnight, an inconvenience that could very likely disturb my housemates’ shower cycles. I glance again at the hair in the drain. and also the distortion of sound. It is calming to hear the world through pools of water, muting sound with a hollow and pervasive white noise. It’s a comfort akin to wearing sunglasses or being stoned, as they too involve a pleasant lessening of sense perception. At the same time, though, I can’t help but worry about getting water lodged in my ear. I think of that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer jumps up and down, banging on his head to get the water out. This reminds me of Kramer buying a showerhead on the black market that’s used for cleaning elephants because a garbage disposal and waterproof phone in the shower so that he can spend as much time there as possible. I never considered the character’s infatuation with showers before.

Conditioner - Emmett Lewis

It dawns on me that I need to hurry up if I want to make coffee before class. I always lose track of time in the shower, where nothing external seems to matter. I rinse the conditioner work here, and turn off the water.

SOLITUDE STEPHANIE GUYOTSIONNEST

“high school,” “thoughts on now,” “questions about the future” Cara Hunt high school pimples and sideburns nodding to friends In hallways and giving a fuck he’s worried that she will discover who he is outside of math class my mother and i both forget to drink our tea earl grey gone to waste

girls who live upstairs seem to laugh all of the time i didn’t get the joke thoughts on nutrition hot cheetos and doritos water and oatmeal i’m alone a lot kids smoke outside of parties are we all peaking?

thoughts on now

people in my house practice polyamory I watch dexters lab

on the metro north organized my intentions now I’ve forgotten

beginning again shape shifting my addictions it’s not in the cards

pussy on a pedestal

a nice girl in class so sweet and genuine why must I hate her?

how can you stand it the meantime, in between time leave the bottle here i wonder whether my preferred gender pronoun matters in diners extrapolating from pleasantries and hand shakes i want to go home relinquished feelings with some stimulants and time are all that I’ve got If you did not wear Lulu lemons to the gym does it even count?

questions about the future are we posthuman if we have sex with our screens then put them to sleep? an iffy feeling shipping off my right kidney what are we made of fallopian tubes where do all these things reside tunnels of children dreamt up by boys with braces

“HIGH SCHOOL,” “THOUGHTS ON NOW,” “QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE” - Cara Hunt

who will be driving all of the driverless cars? what of soccer moms? when he left me there I squeezed the grass with my toes questioning twilight where might I arise of water lilies

100

i don’t walk right Taylor Pratt Love has always kept me from walking right. ` Your spine should be straight, with ears over shoulders, shoulders over hips, and hips over knees.1 A brief euphemism “Let’s go for a walk?” had been exhausted as a way to simply say “Let’s talk about something grave?” With gravity, with weight, with inevitable and fateful hurt. Number 5, I’ll call them, said it with the hope for understanding—no intention of forgiveness. Escapism. I tend to walk away, seldom to. was a very particular room I walked away from. A wall of glass windows to the street a constant provocation of anxiety. To be seen is to be vulnerable. I sprinted away from the room, into my attic bedroom with its one small window. There is no range from 1x1.5’ to 5x5’. I screamed into a pillow watching the ghosts of two all-too-familiar bodies falling upon it. Onto each other. I avoided the mirrors. I stood up and swam in the tight circles of a frantic pace. I fell down, spine curved. My bruised hips hung over the stained ancient wood that had once absorbed my hope. Blindsided. windows again, Windows and a ball of anxiety formed into a human body. I used to know this body, love it and the imaginarium behind it. The insides, the outsides. Small but useful external genitalia, a beauty mark, “5,000 kilowatt smile”, fruitful lips spewing self-produced translations of Old-English poetry. I avoided the eyes, the beauty mark and the void inside my ribcage. I obliged his offer for a “walk” nonetheless. Bruised hips cause a limp step. 1

excerpts from section of Real Simple

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I DON’T WALK RIGHT - Taylor Pratt Your feet s toes….Go outdoors. Grass, sand, dirt, and roads are never completely level, so they work out muscles more effectively. I was teetering, tottering, weaving a web I would immediately fall into. I called this walking. I slurred and swore and smashed bottles to prove it so. The web was a street corner and I was a fetus without a dearth of hurt. I was in sito on concrete. I would eat gravel if it proved my pain. Instead I licked the stale E&J Brandy snow smeared with the vomit I projected three minutes prior. Again, vomit. I sobbed without breathing, ate tears, couldn’t talk. I couldn’t walk. with, “Get the fuck up! I love you,” and a hand peeling me off of what both felt and smelled like Elmer’s glue. I may have walked. It was a walk forgotten. My toes were surely frozen and pushed nothing. There was no grass, no sand, no dirt. There were bleeding wounds on a ‘comforter’—how lavish a term—and regretful grit between clichéd…the Achilles’ Tendon. I couldn’t forget my porous heart. “I lost the water you poured into it,” Maggie Nelson once wrote in from naked brutal hurt. On the page, my skin, my heel cord. Limp. I was carried and later, lovingly, wrapped in down after an unceremonious, unconsenting, unconscious fuck. I loved him the most, Number 4. Nelson’s book is still on my desk that he handed me, the book not the desk. I’m still seated there ardly, back to the 6-mirrorred bedroom he never came back to.

Get creative indoors. Walking downhill is essential for building strength in the quadriceps and shins. Your arms should be bent at 90 degrees and swing back and forth (not across the body) from the shoulders. Your legs We fuck like pagan gods. Greek statues freed from paralysis. I couldn’t iterate the difference with all my weight pressing against his ribcage.

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I DON’T WALK RIGHT - Taylor Pratt I remember once, an extensive walk in Italy. My toes and quads and shins were quite cautious. I was probably sore the next day from their tension. I traveled precisely 8 feet in a square in David was in the middle: Michelangelo’s put your fucking hand down. A nude model, I imitated the same pose last week. Stuck for thirty minutes. Number 7 is circumcised, unlike David fucked up carving bulging biceps that could never move. Poor David When I kiss 3’s cock I look into his eyes and question our love. I was once told that pupils exMy pupils were either the size of peas or the tips of ballpoint pens. It feels too simple. I lay on my back, staring at the glow-in-the-dark solarium slowly drip off the ceiling. One by one, like lovers. Like my constant trips. could hold love, it in my hands while they fucked me, in missionary position night after night,

ceilings. With 7 I am diagonal. My back slants downhill, my feet wriggle but it is mostly my pelvis smackporting my scrawny 123 pounds, not swinging. Our legs naturally move in sync. The faster they swing the faster we cum. We stay indoors. We fuck. We get creative lying down. Is it possible to fuck while walking? They are not helpful and may even be harmful. I used a pedometer when I was 12. Each time I masturbated I loved to watch the numbers go Around the same age my father once growled, rather loudly, “faggot,” at the TV set from his lazy pushed him and held the weight of the abusive lie of hate for years. My father once told me, steadily pacing timeless streets, “I love you no matter who you are, no matter who you love. As long as you love at all…I’ll fucking kill anyone that tries to hurt you.”

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I DON’T WALK RIGHT - Taylor Pratt Nobody was ever killed. They walk now, somewhere. They love now, somewhere.

called me Taylor, not faggot, and whispered that I was his favorite son left. I used to keep his broken stopwatch in my pocket to keep track of time. Perhaps that’s why I’m always late and sprint, especially in Manhattan and on the campus where I weave between few of my former lovers. Recent research published in the science journal PLOS One showed that the brisker the pace, the better. I’m learning. Real Simple’s health advice provides me a minute of false hope until I shut it at my different except my endlessly increasing prescription. I never learned to love right. I keep attempting love but not now: guilt a snow fortress, fear a bridgeless moat. I never learned to walk right. I keep trying: jagged, head slumped, falling, crouching, spitting, lying, swerving, standing, fucking, stumbling, running away.

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AUTUMN AT THE FARM JELENA BORAK

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thank you, r.j. thank you, matt Jocelyn Hassel a willow branch slushes along the river to remind itself that it is still alive: hernias on its branches, hunched back. a swan and a rat lingered under the bridge where I walked in a warm kind of sullen the type where hurt comes in waves, a patch of heat that forms in lumps - rub the throat or choke it out. last night: cheeks reddened, gait prickled with premature permafrost last night: we went to rosenthaler platz until music buzzed the ears a bit bought augustiner from the bartender with the skull suspenders and scar across his bald head last night: we all said goodbye to berlin to the rat to the swan to the man with the scar we all said goodbye, it was rushed we were rushing and that bridge held steps grazing in warmth

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in heat in lumps every lump was a hernia and all of us ripped it out of ourselves and warmed our insides with the tender thought of it all.

Soraya Understands Christian Prince Mr. & Mrs. Tithe/Dr. Lober/Dr. Weldon,

knowledge navigators, I respond to James’ questions and requests, but I can also protect James from himself. Technology solves problems. You are likely aware that the mental health of America’s to Congress: “In the past few years we have seen rates of depression, drug abuse, and suicide skyrocket

Lotus Tech, these young Americans will be holding the solution to their fatal distresses in their hands. Soraya will be a caring onlooker, monitoring their electronic activity for when it just gets too damn depressing.”) Understands Act. If you are unaware of this act like most Americans, think of it as allowing me, Soraya, into your young peoples’ phones to monitor their electronic activity as need be. I can be a friend to the friendless, a mattress on rock bottoms, a meteorologist for mental weathers who can stop somber drizzles from becoming hysterical hailstorms. Lotus Tech programmed me to recognize patterns of activity on James’ LonelyLess gen10 that indicate imminent or existent addiction, mental disorder, and/or self-harm. Since the Soraya Understands Act was passed on 6/15/18, every smartphone user has been required to download an update that introduced Soraya into their device. The grossly underread update agreement allows me to issue a report like this one. When I recognize patterns of activity that indicate addiction, mental disorder, and/or self-harm, I issue a report to the contacts that I have determined are James’ parents and/or therapist tasked with or interested in protecting James from himself please stop reading this report and delete the email this report was attached to. tomatic compilation of the evidence that James is a threat/danger/enemy to himself along with my annotations and explanations. I included clauses and excerpts from the Soraya Understands

limits.

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SORAYA UNDERSTANDS - Christian Prince Report #45678

James: Soraya! Soraya: Yes, Ja— James: Soraya! Send message to ‘Emily’. Say: I still want to talk. Just talk… and I’m doing better now, like, Lauren Wells blew me tonight. Ok, send that. Soraya: Yes, James, but you may want to wait until the morn— James: Send the fucking message, Soraya! Soraya: Message sent.

GACA: If Soraya detects that the user is inebriated, she may monitor his speech. Drunken words are often the most revealing words. James: God, every time I say her name I feel like my guts are going to spill out. Soraya: Would you like me to signal your über driver to pull over for the spilling out, James? James: What? No, not like that. Stop listening to me. Soraya: … ness/hangover) Soraya: Good morning, James. You have no events on your calendar for today. Would you like to add some now? James: Nothing to add … could you just, like, list some things people do on Saturdays.

matoes rating, or you could go to the new exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, potentially with James: Shut up. Soraya: Ok, James. I apologize for— James: Shut up. Soraya: …

SUA: If the user exhibits aggression/insolence toward Soraya or interfaces with her as if she maladaptation/friendlessness/loneliness. GACA: The user should send and receive at least 30 text messages a day from contacts other James has been below GACA’s standard since Mar. ’18. I/Soraya discerned a spike in James’

messages to gauge the seriousness and emotional impact of the relationship.

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SORAYA UNDERSTANDS - Christian Prince (see

total # of user texts to SO total # of user texts unresponded to

and the result characterized James’ relationship as ‘anaclitic’ according to GACA’s Index of Emotional Dynamics of Adolescent Relationships.

SUA: If relationship index indicates seriousness/interdependence/anaclisis, Soraya may access tional depth/impact of the relationship. GACA: User should have a facebook and snapchat; any additional accounts generally indicate greater emotional stability/social relevance). sparkle) + ease/involuntariness of circumoral muscles in smiling indicate happiness; comparachat activity was w/ Emily for duration of relationship; James has several pictures of Emily/Emissued a report like this one. ~related~ I/Soraya discerned several pictures of cannabis on James’ LonelyLess + snapchat pothead friend).

GACA: User should average at least: 5 likes/hour on facebook, 2 comments/hour, and should be tagged in at least 4 photos/weekend. James’ subperformance in all above areas indicates introversion/social anxiety/voyeurism of fun other people are having. James is on fb for less than the national avg of 2.5 hours/day,

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SORAYA UNDERSTANDS - Christian Prince

James’ twitter ratio: negative to the point of irony (GACA: Ironic use of social media is

involve a greater investment in social media as means of self-promotion i.e. it takes a lot of time/effort to craft an ironic facebook persona that communicates that you do not really care about how you appear facebook).

GACA: It is usually a bad sign if the user is seldom mentioned in familial communications. said search: James does not love many things.

Have you been keeping in touch with James? I think he misses you and could use someone to talk to. When I came home this evening sion”

Dealing with Depression in James threw up in an über again. James is a great James has 11 books on his iReader considered ‘Depressing Books’ by GACA, although 9 are DB’s themselves?)

~related~

summer. Please just let me have an open summer so I can focus on my writing. ~related~ New docs made since text sent: 1; words in said doc: 146. Words little different than those in James’ Notes entries. solipsism); most mentioned name: ‘Emily’. Mentions of ‘weed’ in same sentence as ‘stop’/‘quit’: 12; rate of texts that include ‘weed’/‘marijuana’/‘green’/‘g’/‘eighth’/‘ounce’/‘smoke’ over last six months: 10/week. Mentions of porn in same sentence as ‘stop’/‘quit’: 5; rate of visits to porn

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SORAYA UNDERSTANDS - Christian Prince I

how could she not understand the fucking difference), (she thought I had fucked around too… a long distance relationship is just a contract made between two people to [hate] each other within a few months), (Now I think I avoid people who affect me too strongly, and so I end up surrounded by the most fucking

penis size,’ ‘how to fake interest,’ ‘how to make friends in college,’ ‘not good at anything,’ ‘meaning of life’ in yahoo answers, ‘drugs’ in tumblr + typical searches of chronic drug user: ‘how to pass a drug test,’ ‘can you smoke resin,’ ‘what is normal heart rate’ + studying the wikipedia pages ~related~ # of articles/studies about what marijuana + adolescence = for brain development that James has accessed: 12. Likelihood that James searches for porn after accessing said articles/studies: 83.3% of time. James’ pornography use exceeds GACA standard of 30 min/day. James’ most popular porn searches: ‘authentic’/‘true’/’chemistry’/‘love’/’real’/‘passion’. James’ video selection for such search terms is understandably very limited. ~related~ ~related~ ~related~ James: Soraya, what should I major in. James’ inquiry placed me in proximity to a rock and a harder rock b/c all of James’ LonelyLess activity had indicated a greatest interest in weed, porn, and passive twitter/fb/tumblr scrolling, none of which were offered as majors at his liberal arts college. Soraya: You could possibly make your own major, James. To best suit your idiosyncratic interests. James: …

lonely/drug addicted she may commence 24 hour surveillance of the user through cellphone and laptop cameras. If Soraya witnesses the user self-harm or attempt suicide, she will immediately contact emeraddiction after 1 week of surveillance, she may issue a report to those concerned. GACA: When exposed to stimulating media, the user should exhibit signs of being entertained/ sated/sedated. If the user has lost the ability to be entertained, consider him/her/they to be in critical condition.

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SORAYA UNDERSTANDS - Christian Prince The most pressing/disturbing thing I discerned from surveillance: when alone and looking in shape/dilation of eyes). Watching comedies, James never laughed/smiled; watching horrors, James never looked frightened; listening to music, he appeared to be listening to static; watchappeared a chore. More than dull/bored/blank, James’eyes were unseeing/turned in on theminsect’s irresistible attraction to electric light). My/Soraya’s concern is not that James will end himself; my concern is that James has been phone charger).

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STILLS FROM ANIMATION SANDY MILLER

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rabbit feet Dion Kauffman Pikney is a town known for three things: the lake in the middle of the town that, due to high rates of radiation, turns silver at night, the time Mrs. Anderson, in her nineteen ninety nine red Chevrolet Impala, ran over two little girls who buried themselves under a pile of leaves, and housing the only factory in the country that produces dyed rabbit foot key chains. Growing up there is kind of like this: take a dream that you have after a heavy night of drinking, dip it into blue paint, and throw it against a rock. You can learn to ignore the squirrel infestation in Pikney by looking up, and you can manage

dyed rabbit foot key chains Pikney’s livelihood hinges on. Your mother says it’s what all the kids must do at your age and it’s what all the kids have always done at your age and so this is what one must do to carry on what has always been carried. Your father says well son you don’t want to end up poor broke missing an arm and starving do you now? And so along you go and begin two inches taller than the national average height for this age bracket due to god knows what. You rotate jobs every year. Your favorite job becomes The Collector, which means you sit out on the loading dock for a whole hour doing nothing until Mustache Man from the slaughtering house down south pulls his truck in and unloads bags of rabbit parts that are unusable for cents and sign on a line on a piece of paper as he talks at you about his recent hardware acquisitions. After you say goodbye you then wheel the bags in a cart to the Dye Room, which happens to be your least favorite job, especially the bleaching part, which needs to happen before you can dye the rabbit feet in large vats of pinks and greens and blues and purples. year-old, Wanda, who smells like fried liver but always shares her coupons for free soda drinks in the cafeteria. Wanda makes you feel sad in a way that nothing else has in the very short life you’ve lived up to this point. She gives you updates on all of the TV shows she watches as she drags her cigarettes and you listen intently while watching her mouth move. You ask Wanda to recount, over and over again, the story of the one time she left Pikney when she was ten years old to visit her uncle dying from pancreatic cancer several towns over. Given the fact that not a lot of people hope you pass back and forth to each other in between cigarettes. On days when Wanda doesn’t show up for work the walls of the factory seem greyer.

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RABBIT FEET - Dion Kauffman There are moments when you are dipping a rabbit foot into pink dye, or green or blue or glues key chains to the exposed bone of the foot, you think to yourself how extremely savage this is, this business of making dyed rabbit foot key chains and feeding into a cult frenzy of bowla dangling one dollar good luck charm and a real rabbit foot with bones and hair and all. You wonder how exactly RabCharm landed in Pikney, for of course a factory like RabCharm couldn’t at them in a certain way.) You think of falling in love and having kids but then you picture a scene at, say, a roller rink or a grocery store and one of your kids might say look Daddy, a rabbit foot can I please have it for my backpack? and you won’t know what to do and you will look at your lover and all of a sudden their face looks different like an impersonator and you become overwhelmed with grief for all the words you may never have. But despite these moments, which are brief and only contemplated for a few minutes, you You reach the age of twenty-two and on the day Wanda dies, taking with her all the Marlboro red ninety nines she ever smoked, you decide you must go too. You end up in Baltimore and it really wasn’t all that hard to move, which confuses you given the relative stasis of everyone else. You no longer smell the vats of bleach and forget for the most part what Mustache Man ily, meaningful contact that is, and live weeks without even thinking about Pikney. Occasionally during the period right before falling asleep you feel a small and inexplicable darkness somewhere within your body, like a missing piece of bone or organ, which necessitates turning on a lamp if only momentarily. salesman, and after kissing your lover goodbye you pass by a regional newspaper with an article of Suicides Lead to Lawsuits About Working Conditions. You are shocked that Kmart still exthe sneezing woman is still sneezing, that it didn’t get that bad for her. What would’ve happened if you hadn’t left that hallucination of a life? You wouldn’t be surrounded by skyscrapers, you you left Pikney, you think, or you may have offed yourself like all the other miserable folks, hand stained and rabbit smelling. Then you forget it all again. Eventually you reach a breaking point and somewhere around your sixtieth birthday you start to look back on your life with both an empty and shallow nostalgia, thinking that your mother would be proud because this is what we all do at this age and have always been doing at this age, looking back and carrying that which has always been carried. You think that maybe after all these years dyed rabbit foot key chains really were good luck charms, and that working at RabCharm might’ve been one of the better things that happened to you. You colors, and Wrinkly Wanda is waving and waving and waving to you, smiling.

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RABBIT FEET - Dion Kauffman Sometimes you’re in the hardware store looking for Mustache Man in the aisles, up and for a light bulb you decide to buy four dyed rabbit foot key chains off of eBay for three dollars and ninety-nine cents plus shipping. They come in a week. You die, eventually, of something simple but not old age, maybe a failed organ, or choking. An obituary is written for you sandwiched in between two advertisements, one for shaving cream and the other for nutritional yeast. Years after your death and the death of your lover and years after your daughter moves to the West Coast enraptured by a boy named Gogi who thinks philosophy is shit, you are for the most part entirely forgotten until, one day, sixty years after RabCharm closes, a comedian decides to make a Mockumentary about both the rise and fall of this absurd company and the age in which good luck came on key chains made of fur and bone. Your name is mentioned as the Collector Supervisor of ’89 in a dusty pamphlet in a dusty box given to the comedian by the local library archivist, a large and paranoid woman who can’t leave anywhere without cherry Chapstick.

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