COURTESY OF MEREDITH SUMMERS/THE OBSERVER
12
The Creative Writing Awards
April 30, 2015 THE OBSERVER
www.fordhamobserver.com
By ANNA MARIE ANASTASI
penpal I knew someone that went to prison He was just an acquaintance But I had a picture of him in my mind Crying and turning red Hysterical While saying some words At a dead friend’s memorial When he went to prison I wrote him a letter Because I felt bad Because I remembered seeing him Crying and red Soft and transparent Like rice paper and milk Crumpling and curdling in front of me Hysterical His letters were so positive He wanted to be a welder And have a garden One day, he innocently gave my address to another inmate Who claimed he knew me And wrote me a letter That sent out feelers and whispered through my hair As I shuddered in the quiet empty Of my once private room Crying and red My penpal could tell And after that He stopped writing to me I think because he knew Because he could tell Something pent up was cutting through me And into him
voicemail I didn’t check my voicemail for six years Everyone would tell me that I need to empty my mailbox They want to leave messages Yep, I’ll get to it For six years But the truth is I was afraid Of hearing a message a dead friend left For six years I was afraid I would hear it In between messages from my mom And bill collectors Or worse I would accidentally erase it
glass buildings When I walk by glass buildings I always glance at my reflection I can’t help it Others have noticed before And it is embarrassing but I can’t help it When I catch a glimpse of myself It’s like seeing a ghost And I can’t help But look And look Hoping that I will See myself That I will look The same as myself One day
COURTESY OF SAMANTHA NORMAN
By WALLIS MONDAY
September April When I see the rain coming I wear the nice dress, dab a little perfume at my wrists, pull a roast out of the oven.
This is what is to be a dying coyote on the side of the road, I think, catching glimpses of the rabbit I won’t catch, letting my opaque breaths spill onto the gravel. There must be something to this sky but I don’t know a thing about it, never will.
We kiss, me and the rain, and I light candles for our dinner. I always have so much to say, but I always am careful. I fuck it up every time, spilling wine on my nice dress, trying to bring out those old photos, stumbling to the bedroom. And always I’m left on the porch dirt building back up on my face, yelling at the rain to go ahead and stay gone.
August
September I think I must be a crooked steel spine auger pulling the ground up where it is too soft to stay open. Some of the things I pull from the earth straighten me out a bit— glass bottles, old coins. On my porch watching the machines I rock back and forth, admiring my motions, proud of the dusts I raise that land on my apple and my teeth. I don’t mind at all, it’s just the taste of forgetfulness and perpetual motion.
I keep one eye to the ground when I walk, always barefoot, even in this scorpion country. But rather than hear the sound of my own heels I keep one eye to the ground when I walk.
YUANXI LIU/THE OBSERVER
www.fordhamobserver.com
THE OBSERVER April 30, 2015
The Creative Writing Awards
13
Almost Three By THOMAS LAYMAN
The tires, somewhat deflated, spun a moment on the pine needles—honey colored and coating completely (almost completely) the Adirondack floor—before catching and all at once jerking the freshly painted truck, painted white, shining star like between oak, between pine, between prickled shrub and moss and yes, all those honey colored needles, jerking it onto the cabin’s property, the property on which stood the thin man, on which walked the rabid dog. Interspersed between coughs of exhaust from the tall pipe, the dog—not with the thin man but locked in the bathroom, pacing on the newly laid ceramic titles, her nails making sounds like that of a tap dancer’s shoe—barked and growled and snarled: the noises following in unison, one upon the other, an angry march, a monstrous melody, a sickly sarabande. The truck stopped; the engine was cut, the fat man behind the wheel plopped onto the cushy woodland floor, going now to meet the thin man and the dog, to take from both their burden. They walked together, through the cabin, a nice summer place, decorated as a fifties home would be, the thin man offering the fat man a drink (“We have Diet Coke or root beer, or even a beer if you want.”) and the fat man politely rejecting the promised beverage (“No, I got some water in the truck, thanks though.”). The bathroom held the dog, and when fat and thin came to the locked wood door, the animal behind ceased her barking and growling and snarling, leaving the cabin quiet. The fat man—old to this profession—knew she knew, knew she smelled, knew she sensed, her opposition on the far side of lock and key. Becoming quiet himself, the thin man sat on a round, pink cushioned stool, watching closely the leather of his loafers. Before the door was opened and the dog was killed, this is what she thought. “The world is red. The forest is red. The village is red. The mountains, high to the sky, are red and pollute the air so that whiffs of breath, ancient and color blind, blow through the trees, not knowing they have changed, not knowing they have been corrupted. And this man I sense with my nose is redder than red, redder than campfire or burning coals, redder than sunlight or dead leaves, redder than raw meat or cut skin. And when he comes for me; I’ll take him; I’ll take the red out of him.” “When first young and gone from the litter, I would walk the lake road with the thin man, myself too fat and slow to yet chase the squirrels squirreling up bark or the snake snaking between ferns. But as the fat burnt away, my body stretched, my legs lengthened, and I could run the race against squirrel, snake, chipmunk or possum, catching creatures with my teeth, toothsome creatures, very tasty, yes, but it was not the snack for which I ran. The hair is the hardest to chase, but when I bring one in, when I fell the floppy eared oddities, and present the dead to the thin man to evidence my skill, my speed, the length of my leg, I know not only my value, but the innards, the red that is common to me, to the rabbit, and to the thin
man, the red that is common to all the world, connecting all particulars, flora and fauna, mammal and snake, shrub and pine and oak, in a web of crimson. This other on the far side of the door believes he is not red, believes he is beyond the vision of interchange, above the unity in which he flounders. But when he opens the door, I will show him the proof; the proof is in the guts.” Before taking the dog to be killed, the fat man, holding the metal rod in both hands, the metal rod from which hung the rope, thought these thoughts. “When I was young, my shoulders sagged and shook in the cold. My bones pressed against the skin; there was little stuff between the skeleton rock and the fleshy bag. I was a man of little substance. I was a man of little…I was a man of… “And by the furnace, behind the wood walls, behind the sheetrock, behind the pink insulation, my little family, boney and frail as I, ate their little food, shaking their little bodies, those bodies clothed in grey or black or green dyed wool sweaters, those skinny bodies peering up over little plates, those sickly bodies drinking from little mugs, those seedy bodies coughing and sneezing little whiffs of air. After sixteen years of rattling bones, I left, to work. First, the job was unloading trucks, for businesses along the Lake George shoreline, but in this I moved without rest, growing thinner from week to week. Second, the job was to drive the truck, starting in Albany, but traveling as far north as Montreal and as far south as Richmond. A very few times I traveled past Montreal, through landscapes tattooed white, scars of animal tracks tearing through the frozen fabric: hoots of eagles deafening the winter. A very few times I traveled below Richmond, to the flat friendly, dust country, the Carolinas, or the Keys of Florida, or the wilderness of Alabama. And in each venture, I was alone with the truck; I was the experience. The food, sometimes wonderful, sometimes tasteless, I ate. I ate and drove, ate and drove, ate and drove. “I expanded. The morning light rose on me eating donuts, an omelet, breakfast cereal served in a too large diner bowl, a turkey sausage sandwich (scraped onto a bagel), sugary, creamy coffee: one, two, three cups: until, in the car, munching nuts and candy bars, I found the lot, picked up the truck and the route, and went rolling along, speeding ahead, zipping through noon, eating buttered bread and then, of course, lunch, a hamburger—half a pound, topped with ketchup, with mayonnaise—a side of fries— topped with Monterrey jack, with ranch—and perhaps, to top off the topped off food, deep fried shrimp prawns complete with breading and liquid butter; and back to the truck again, driving through Adirondack afternoons into Canadian dusks (nibbling on this or that, candy bars and raisinettes dropped deep, but not too deep, into the glove compartment) stopping over the border for an appetizer of greasy bacon (so greasy it throws off light falling from the naked overhead bulb) and an entrée: the twenty-two oz. porterhouse steak with a baked potato side—stuffed
to the gills with honey butter, sour cream, cheese (cheddar), bacon bits, and chives—and a healthy medley of vegetables (also covered in butter), swallowed fast before the presented plate of pie—cherry, with a puff of whipped cream, the whipped cream sprinkled with chocolate shavings—went from the waiter’s hand onto the table and tumbled down my gullet in one, two, three bites, all digested, all absorbed before the late night snack—a peanut butter covered rice cake, lightly toasted—swallowed before bed, before dreams of seared salmon and crab tilapia, of chicken bits and fettuccini, of cream cannoli and Oreo crumble cake, all of it imagined on plates floating in the ocean, swirling in the eddy of a liquid café, and me, an oarsman, the only oarsman, rowing through the sea, seeing and taking and eating, always to travel, always to eat, always to grow. Oh yes, I expanded. “Do you see, dog, the girth of me, the size, and the weight. We are not connected, dog; we are not bound. I am more than you. I am growing. And when the needle sticks your skin, punctures the artery, and the poison makes its rounds, from you will you go, will go the flesh and blood of you: the rot will begin.” The thin man, through it all, thought nothing. He was sad and paralyzed by the sadness. The fight pending between the fat man and the dog would not involve him. For him there was no energy, there was no battle, there was no thought sharp and clear. The door opened. She leapt. The dart hit. The rope at the end of the metal rod tightened. The ba-boom beat of her heart fell to a gentle waltz. Into the cage he forced her, but he hadn’t, by this point, much to force. The tires spun for a moment before catching and jerking the freshly painted truck off of the property. The thin man stood alone watching the sky, scanning the tree line, deciding whether or not to walk the length of the lake. Winds blew from the east, sweeping over the cold water’s surface. The trees twisted and bent, more needles, the color of wheat beer and yellow tail tuna, fell and fell. With her absence the sounds stopped save for the friction of wind. And when the wind past, crawling westward towards Syracuse, Buffalo and beyond, all was at rest. The thin man closed his eyes; in his thoughts, it is summer and he is young. His friends and he run down to the lake, swimming across the milfoil weeds to the far shore, hoping to meet girls from the music camp, young girls, girls in bikinis, tanning on the sand between rehearsals, before recitals. As they swim, a chorus unseen in the forest above sings Palestrina, echoing off the mountains and crashing, like broken winged birds, onto the surface of the lake. The pine needles fall, fall like the music falls, to the water, collecting in the boys’ hair, covering the lake, the beach, and soon, all the pretty girls. The needles float upward, dancing in the air, blocking the dome of the sky. All the world is honey colored, is amber, is gold like a snow globe filled with sap. When he opens his eyes, he is old; when he opens his eyes, the song silences.
TESSA VAN BERGEN/THE OBSERVER
14
The Creative Writing Awards
April 30, 2015 THE OBSERVER
www.fordhamobserver.com
The Parts I Don’t Believe By RACHEL FEDERMAN
The only part I half believed was the part about the talking doll. The rest sounded like complete malarkey as far as I could ever figure. First there was the cousin whose wife Melody drowned in a Jordan River baptism while drinking Seagram’s Extra Dry Gin. Melody had been baptized as a child in a makeshift church in Sweet Water, Alabama (population 849) but was hoping for rebirth with an impromptu second-honeymoon to the Promised Land. Then there was the nextdoor neighbor who made paintings based on the ultrasound photos of embryos whose hearts had stopped beating before they left the womb. And I can’t leave out the Brazilian boyfriend whose life dream was to start an ostrich farm until he was eaten alive by an ostrich. All of these were somehow excuses for Marina not following her life dream of becoming an actress. Most days I was pretty convinced she became one after all. The kids at End of the Rainbow loved Marina though, the dolls she made, and most of all her stories. The dolls were a little too lifelike for my taste. At least for these kids. Just by the point of fact that they were orphans I was pretty sure they’d had already had more than their share of reality. Enough of parents lying in bed with the blinds drawn on sunny days, enough of being told “you’re a big boy now” on their fourth birthdays, enough of singing songs about how a brighter day would come. Maybe what they needed were stuffed pink monkeys and songs about lollipops. And of course it wasn’t the dolls themselves but Marina’s stories that pissed me off the most. “Kids don’t need fairy tales,” she defended herself on that last evening before the apparition. “Well they don’t need the truth either,” I told her, sweeping up after the last group of kids padded off to the showers after dinner. “They
know more about it than we do.” The wood panels on the mess hall floor were wide and warped far apart from each other so by the time I was done sweeping there was very little to pick up. Most of the crumbs just fell right in between. “Speak for yourself,” Marina said, patting that weird bun she always had her hair done up in, like a 19th-century governess. “What do you mean by that?” I looked at her direct, not even blinking. “You never know what someone’s been through,” she glared back. In a not-blinking contest with Marina, no one will ever win. “Just what is it…” I looked up at the clock. Not even seven. “Just what is it you’ve been through exactly?” I don’t know why the night seemed to loom ahead shapeless and dark in front of me. The fire was just about to suffocate. “You’d never believe it if I told you.” “Tell me.” I didn’t mean it as a challenge, but I felt myself straighten up as I looked at her, pushing my shoulders back. “I used to be a doll,” she said, and a little smile started to seep up the edges of her mouth. “Oh God,” I went back to sweeping. Marina pulled her little knitted afghan closer around her shoulders. She was the only person outside the pages of a storybook I’d seen actually wear one of those. I turned my back to her and started toward the fireplace. “Told you,” she said. I could feel her whispery voice following behind me. But she was wrong about that part. It was
pretty much the only thing I did believe. “Ibro?” Another little voice, this one from a child. “Ibro,” he said again, this time not as a question. I caught sight of him by the door to the kitchen. It was Tyler. He had red paint splattered on his face and his pants were ripped open in both the knees. “Hey little guy.” I stuffed my flask into my pocket and gestured for him to come over. “Read you bedtime story?” He gently took my hand. For Tyler “you” still meant “me”. There was something almost philosophical about it that I loved. “Oh,” I said, relieved, too loud with relief. “What?” Tyler let go of my hand and took a step backward. “No, nothing.” I turned around but Marina had left the room in that creepy silent way of hers. “I wasn’t sure if you overheard what I was saying—“ Tyler tilted his head, uncertain. I closed my eyes, waiting for the light-headed feeling to pass. “Marina,” I turned around, gesturing at the air. Tyler smiled, “Maybe she playing hide and seek.” He started to scurry around the room. “Where are you? Marina!” He looped around the support beam then bent down to peer under the table. “No, I mean—” but I stopped myself. I put the broom away and crouched down with him. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” Tyler turned to me and smiled, a smile I couldn’t put my finger on. Then he stood up and called out again for Marina, running
across the room then turning to me suddenly, at the edge by the fireplace, waiting. “Where is that crazy ostrich?” I said, making my voice higher in the way I’d heard the others at the center do. Before I came here, I never knew you were supposed to do that when you spoke to children. I never knew even that basic stuff about them. “Ostrich?” Tyler twisted up his face at me. The bells rang—it was seven, finally. “Go on, Tyler.” I gestured toward the stairs. “They’ll be looking for you.” He blew a kiss in my direction and scampered back up the stairs. “I can’t find her anyway,” I said to the air around me, taking out my flask, wincing at the taste. Pine trees. If I think back really hard, I can remember miles and miles of them. I can remember falling asleep in the afternoons and waking up in the dark. For seven years I didn’t question it. I can remember vegetable soup and grape leaves stuffed with rice. I can remember hearing that she would have been named Sanya, if she had lived. But this was all so many years ago, way before I started to stop believing in things. How can I say at that tender age what is or isn’t real? What I do or don’t believe in? God, the angels, the man who will save us, the talking bunnies, the devil whose name sounds like “Serbia”? Even now, I can’t not believe Marina’s awful, high-pitched corkscrew voice had simply said “Told you” before the mouth returned to the eerie red smile, the gaze far away, as I’m told mine always is. But I’m alive; aren’t I? Which is more than I can say for most of the people I knew who couldn’t breathe underwater. For all the people who had the bad luck to be born—or almost born—in Banja Luka.
TYLER MARTINS/THE OBSERVER
www.fordhamobserver.com
THE OBSERVER April 30, 2015
The Creative Writing Awards
15
His Eyes Won’t Be Blue By MARY KATE CRENNY
Jess sat across the table from an old friend of her husband’s. He wore a white polo shirt and a black turban. Beads of sweat clung to the thick black beard of a proper Sikh. He drank from a cup of black coffee and she swirled sips of masala tea around in her mouth, searching for the names of the spices she tasted: cinnamon, ginger, maybe fennel. A month earlier, Jess had told her husband Mohinder that she would be going to London for work, and he had suggested she meet Gurdas for a cup of tea. Jess began rattling off the conference itinerary, but Mohinder cut her off, “Southall is on your way from Heathrow. I just want to show you off my wife.” He kissed her and she agreed. She hoped this man was easier to understand than Mohinder’s father. The first time she met her father-in-law she could only understand every other word he spoke, so she simply smiled and nodded. Later, she learned that she had grinned through the entire story of his wife’s illness and death. Jess met Gurdas at the restaurant he owned. When she walked through the door, the buzz of Punjabi chatter abruptly stopped. Jess’s own Punjabi was limited, but she worried that Gurdas would assume otherwise. Mohinder had never asked her to learn his first language. She only occasionally heard him speak Punjabi while on the phone with his family To her relief, Gurdas introduced himself in English. They took a seat and Gurdas started offering her samosas and pakoras with chutneys and yoghurt, which she declined. “Thank you, but I’m feeling a bit nauseous,” she confessed, adding, “I’m pregnant,” which reminded her that she had forgotten to take her vitamins. She looked down for a moment to find the jar in her bag and was surprised when she felt Gurdas’ arms around her. He was hugging her. She put an arm around his shoulder and gave a squeeze. He returned to his seat. Jess smiled and swallowed a vitamin with her tea. They talked about Mohinder. Jess mostly asked questions she already knew the answers to, but she enjoyed hearing these stories from Gurdas rather than her husband. They laughed and conversation flowed easily. Gurdas was probably only a year or two older than Jess, but he had been married for nearly ten years, and had three kids. Jess learned that they attended the same Sikh school as Mohinder’s nephew. Jess liked Gurdas, but she found something unsettling about him. She saw in him the man Mohinder might have been had he never met her. Jess wondered if Mohinder would want to move back to Southall if they returned to England. They had never discussed it. After finishing a second cup of tea, Jess looked at her phone for the time. “It’s twenty of. I should probably start heading to my hotel.” On the bus, Jess looked out the window. She had been to London before, but never to Southall. She saw vendors selling sweet corn and jalebis. Piles of red, purple and gold cloth were piled as high as the ceiling in shop windows, and green and blue
scarves hung in the windows. The bus passed a Gurdwara, and for a moment Jess considered getting off at the next stop. She had read about Sikhism and asked Mohinder questions whenever she was curious, but she had never been inside a Sikh place of worship. Yet when the bus stopped, she stayed put. When Jess transferred to the tube, the neighborhood no longer looked like India. She sat across from a woman wearing a button that read “Baby on board!” with London Underground symbol. Jess said, “Cute button, where’d you get it?” “Most underground stations give them out.” “I’ll have to get one. I’m four months along. How about you?” “Six.” “Is this your first?” “No, I have a three year old girl. Is it yours? “Yeah, it’s terrifying. I’m living in Norway now, so I’m having the baby there. I haven’t even seen an OB/GYN. Everything is done by midwives, not doctors. When I first called a midwife, she told me not to come until I was at least 15 weeks. I haven’t even had an ultrasound yet. When I finally saw the midwife, she used this long wooden horn to listen to the baby. She pushed it against my belly and put her ear to the other end and listened. It kind of freaked me out.” The woman made a noncommittal grunt, and Jess understood. She took out her phone. She would never complain to her parents back in the states about Norway’s socialized health care or about socialism in general. Not only did they disagree on political issues, but they also desperately wanted Jess to have the baby in the U.S. Every time Jess talked to her father he reminded her that her unborn baby would never be able to become the President of the United States. Jess liked London, which was good because she’d probably live there one day. Mohinder worked for the British foreign service, and they did not know where he would be sent next. They only knew for certain that Norway was only temporary. At the hotel, Jess napped. When she woke up, she had five missed calls from Mohinder. She picked up the phone and dialed. “Nina is being difficult. She heard that you’re staying at a hotel instead of with her and called to tell me how insulted she is.” “Are you fucking kidding me? Your sister hates me!” “Relax. I don’t want you to freak out about this.” “What do you want? Do you want me to go stay with her?” “No, Jess. I just wanted to let you know that she called and was upset. Maybe you could get dinner with her?” “Did she invite me over for dinner?” “Not exactly.” “If she wants to see me, she can invite me over. She’s just using this as an excuse to be mad at you. It has nothing to do
with me.” Jess knew this was a lie. “Okay, Jess. Please calm down. I didn’t want to upset you.” “Well, I’m upset.” “Just forget I said anything, okay? I’ll deal with Nina. I’ll tell her you’re busy or something. Don’t let this bother you. You’re right. It’s not about you.” “Okay, I’m sorry.” “It’s alright. I love you.” “Love you too, bye.” All the anxiety stirred up by Mohinder’s phone call left Jess’s stomach a mess. She went into the bathroom and knelt in front of the toilet. The day before her wedding, Nina had entered Jess’s room and said “I need to ask you to please not marry my brother.” Nina sat down and said, “He loves you more than you love him. It’s not right. I don’t think you’re a bad person, Jess, but you’re not right for him. Don’t you think you’re a bit too selfish for marriage?” Jess had not argued with Nina, but she did marry Mohinder the next day. When Jess had talked to Mohinder about what Nina said, he had told her that she was just scared of losing him. Jess did not really believe him, but she wasn’t sure if he was lying to make her feel better or for his own sake. Jess washed her face with cold water. She looked at her freckles, blue eyes and reddish blonde hair in the mirror. She would never say it out loud, but she really hoped her baby looked like her. She secretly feared having a child with dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes, who spoke a language she did not understand. She put a hand over her belly. Now, the child was a part of her, but she feared he could so easily become a stranger. Mohinder and she were bringing their baby into a Scandinavian culture neither of them had any connection to. Jess did not have a culture of her own to give her child. She did not have a native tongue. She did not sing folk songs. Her grandmother had never taught her family recipes. Her grandmother had stood in breadlines and ate ketchup and butter sandwiches during the Depression. Jess was a wonderful cook, but she had learned everything she knew from the internet. Jess went for a walk about an hour later and found a Catholic church. Jess entered the church. She unthinkingly dipped two fingers into the holy water and blessed herself before taking a seat. It was bigger and prettier than the one she had grown up with, but it had the right smell. She found a seat in a pew and knelled. A discomfort set into her joints. It was familiar, and, because of that, she could find a little comfort in it. When the mass started Jess remembered that a few years ago the Vatican had changed the translation of the mass. She realized she no longer knew the words.
NELANIE CHAMBERLAIN/THE OBSERVER
18
The Creative Writing Awards
April 30, 2015 THE OBSERVER
A Soldier’s First Moments Home in Arizona while on Mid-Tour Leave from Iraq in 2006
www.fordhamobserver.com
TRAIN BIRDS
By PATRICK SKEA-REID
He sprinkled the sand that kept clinging to his pocket onto the sand of his childhood backyard. Something was wrong in the color. The grains blended, but didn’t quite match. His wife yelled through the screen door until his son led him onto the couch by his index finger. They had divorced a month earlier. The rice was burnt. He was only mildly unhappy. Attn: Company Commanders: Intelligence reports indicate that current hostile elements constitute insurgent force. Effective methods of identification currently being devised. Assume universal hostility within population Centers. Attn: Company Commanders: As per previous memorandum order, do not Disregard. All native contractors and Day laborers will continue to be allowed And utilized on base. They are a vital asset
Standing Orders To the country’s reconstruction and Will be treated will full respect of Culture. Monitor closely under Armed escort while Continuing initiative to win Hearts and minds. Attn: Company Commanders: Frequent visits to all towns And villages in CQ vicinity will Be conducted in furtherance of Hearts and minds initiative. We Are visitors to their country; positive Productive relations must be cultivated. Issue SOP orders of non-
engagement without Complete certainty of hostile intentions. Attn: Company Commanders: As per previous memorandum order, do not Disregard. Verification of hostile intention Mandatory for engagement. Sit-rep indicates Mortal danger as certainty; issue written orders not to fail to engage if necessary. Verbally Re-issue correlative orders to, categorically, not engage if unnecessary. Mission failure imminent if these clear objectives Are not followed. Attn: Company Commanders:
Issue company wide Article 15 proceedings In instances of non-compliance. Attn: Company Commanders: Intelligence required as per failure of Adherence to ROE. Gather and respond ASAP.
It was Metuchen and me and the crowd were swathed in tee shirts and jeans and beer and flasks early on Saint Patrick’s Day morning. He was in an off-the-rack black suit with brown shoes, a high and tight, and his name was James. You goin’ to the parade like that, man? Parade?..oh; no, I wish. Name’s Thomas… James... (there was a single pump handshake) Swig? Cant. Work? Hope so. Interview. For? Marketing job, entry level…probably get the mailroom. You look older than… I’m 33.
Kids? Two. Girls. Me too. Ex took mine though. Deployment? Yeah. Marines? Army; Eighty Second. Fallujah? Ramadi…detached to the First…Fallujah? Yeah…. The train whistle sounded out 500 yards away. The crowd stood and moved two steps forward as a body. Good luck, James. Thanks. Goodbye Thomas. As we mounted deliberately separate cars an undersized peregrine falcon shook an acorn loose from his oak branch as he lofted northward. The train shrieked another knowing whistle. An E flat.
Singing After the rain had stopped falling the world shrank to the size of a heartbeat. The breeze pushed orange maple leaves against the glass in syncopation. James was propped awkwardly on the living room couch underneath the bay window. He was humming in basso, intoning the melodies of two southern spirituals over and over again. He was certain that one was about death, the other an angel band, but couldn’t recall the lyrics or which was which. He had been sitting in the same position for 2 hours. His infant niece was pressed against his chest clutching his shirt in her sleep, left ear tight on his ribcage. She moved if he shifted, would wake if he moved. James kept humming. The wind picked up, and the leaves hit harder against the house. He would have to give her back too, soon. Once she was gone he would have no children again. He would have no children. His humming turned to singing instead. “You’re innocent when you dream.” He kept on singing until first she, then he, were asleep. Maria, blowing the steam away from the rim of the teacup, stepped over his shins and into the couch next to them. She put her hand on her niece’s left thigh. She sipped, put the teacup onto the end table and put her head into her niece’s lap. They slept in that position for hours, unmoving.
Warm Front She knew I knew she was colorblind and still said, Look at the crimson in those clouds, they could practically be bleeding. The wind gusted and some strong unspoken feeling had me wrap my peacoat around her shoulders just before my arms. We walked into Macy’s and bought a canary yellow tie that looked like a maternity dress. As we ventured back out towards the car the storm quietly past. It had not rained.
KIRSTIN BUNKLEY/THE OBSERVER
www.fordhamobserver.com
THE OBSERVER April 30, 2015
The Creative Writing Awards
19
By SAMANTHA NORMAN
8.5”x11” no. iii my roommate dreams in mandarin whereas i do so in navel. she tends to sleep talk in her native tongue. i’ve been told that i roll slurring lullabies off of mine when i slumber but i sleep now alone. an empty bed omits no echo; the silence crescendoes. pages are yellow and spattered with the music notes of burnt civility. my room stays bright all night when one of us won’t sleep. the others don’t mind for outside our window are legions of insomniacs. i can see their windows through my windows, and therefore, i think, according to the phrase, my eyes and their souls can see their eyes and our souls. directly west and slightly elevated their souls are folded tripartite vertically and once into what should be thirds from the bottom (architects, never simple, the ptolemaic pricks). below in the dark i see a lamp and the office.four floors up just shut off the television set. halfway up the building a floor is lit across on the horizon of a crucifix. a corner unit six above is my north star. when i blur my eyes i can count the seconds the crosswalk has left my vision might move to mourn the walking man’s death. his ghost reappears in southbound headlights i see like a deer from a different plane. asteroids land at laguardia’s porch every eight minutes kicked from the kennedys’ lawn. by daybreak it becomes clear that the fireflies were just fleas. they are ghosts, though, they float. a ghost is something that floats. that is how i know my ghost, and thus i hold him near. he floats. he floats like those yellow beacons upon their toothpicks on
street corners like the windows illuminated on floor 19 or newark’s lit crust on the hudson or the bed of a truck as it floats upon its stream. my roommate, she was gone for a while. how long? beijing time. how much, really? thirteen time zones. it was a couple months’ disappearance that felt like thirteen eternities falling like sands of time when she grinds her teeth and cries in her dreams debris clogs the particulate flow but weather will wash away all, unify the size, because any grain, once made small enough, will disappear. any building, once deluminated, will cease. only the red brick glows in the moonlight against acid pink skies. i have two roommates. one roommate dreams the other sleeps like a corpse because she is comfortable. her plot is lain between her parents’ southwest and her sister’s to the east and her brother’s to the north. she is happy, so, awake, she moves; asleep she does not need to. the empress is a ghost and the founding matriarch a monument and what am i but not yet born and not yet dead. in between: it is why i eat seeds but not meat, to contradict possibility. to situate. to self-situate. i am a means they are the aglets. i am the lace they are the ends. we meet but do not meld; we are separate. when they split apart i stay or fall. i type as they sleep now, each upon their plush chubby pillow, the kind that spoons only at the waistline my pillows are just quadrilateral. they do not reach they do not pine they do not yearn they are flat. my pillows are planar and they are alright with sitting up with me as I type to fill spacetime
and sleep to empty my memories thereof. these flatbeds are sunk under the weight of a body in anticipation and in function, like a blank page awaits stain. nothing white abstains if it has intention otherwise. if it will be so it may as well be now; that what will be is. predicate: everything about a thing except what it is, really. predicate: shading in a page in graphite and carving the language with an eraser. predicate: my retainer. predicate: the dreams themselves and not the act of dreaming. i spent much of my last few years not dreaming. i was not emergent and i wasn’t sure if that meant i did not exist, but vaporized with my lack of epiphenomena. i dreamt in september that my apartment was a jungle. i had one dream after horror that didn’t scare me deep. suspense and thrill, like the flash of a bright white before floor thirteen’s television disappeared. other than that, the dreams must not come, or otherwise, i would know, no? perhaps the dreams were like guests in the attic who nap under laundry, those who you thought went home hours ago because their sleep talks turned to whispers and then to silent prayer and then to heaven. my roommate went to dinner with her sister and her brother it’s five hours to breakfast. the page’s margarines like her are pale and small compared to all stuffed into its muscle lining. when i wake up i may regret waiting. i’m still awake and i know i won’t dream tonight. directly north: one white window composed of three bulbs. actually postsquint, i see two.
poem on salt (pretzels) columbus Columbus The further down you walk the deeper sink the heavy dense scents of bread and tobacco down your throat Both warm, but the kind of warm that strokes you upward from a subway grate and, although it’s dirty, feels kind of nice when it’s cold and you’re alone The bread, porous in a way to air your stomach The smoke, thick in a way to pump your lungs, But while either soothes the senses, it does so with diluted substance and strings along a line of lies that bait the heart. One artery north One ventricle south One artery east One ventricle west
Or maybe not, I haven’t gotten too far into anatomy yet I’m still working with sonnets of admiration Or “nice eyes” or “cool hair” to strangers in elevators Notes launched from an iris bounce off a turned cheek and ricochet into some great abyss only to be caught by someone’s father in left field. Like something quick hit to metal a sharp tang! and the cold between a left temple and a right temple wrinkle the nerves from ear to ear That’s what it’s like to feel cold again And you wonder Walking down columbus avenue If cristobal was ever 18 and felt like he wanted to get married because he hated walking alone to get
Indian food If his home life sucked and that took him to Ferdinand and Isabella like rich relatives with cash and laundry If he tripped throughout the ship ride that kept motion more constant than the counterfeit truths he saw peddled at corner kiosks The cheap ones at which marvel mom and sis Maybe the men on the corner playing checkers for marbles took bets on your success, but either way, those marbles will live longer than you if you don’t let them slip into the gutter Maybe Columbus felt as bored as you do now But he was lucky Because there aren’t any continents left for you to discover
she was an ocean inside the moment her pores began to purse her skin pregnantly awaiting to exude salt, she cracked. where do the tides come from? she asked and a silent moon giggled in shadow like a crusta-
cean ensnared in an armor of shell she just hoped the claws & cunning crystals wouldn’t erode their vessel from within, while the water sat contemptuously back, searching for some good to come if the roles reverse
sonnet I don’t want love if love wants hierarchy. Exclusion, selection, maybe, but not The kind of pyramidal stuff that Kings and queens reap their blood harvest with. I want your love like his and hers in Hall of mirrors harrowing, hallowed, Saintly androgynous, empty-eyed and a
Heart for a face sees me first and beats black-red Behind my eyes. I want to give like one Waits for a phone call. Haunt me in reverie, Burrow in my eardrum, though not so that Your silence is sacrificed as a distant part. I may be a drop of blood that poisons its host: Cancerous hypocrite. Can I stain you gold?
a one-way trail of footprints in the snow white rooftops where we hide our secrets, nestled above the tops of heads like unseeable dandruffs. rooftops are where dreams land rooftops the snow banks where tellers are naught and the powder is pristine because trans actions will never be made
above the doors and floors, ceilings and television sets connected to the cloud white ceilings we paint with nostalgia between the ventilation system and the stratosphere is the name of the thing at the tip of my tongue
pain and confusion deja vu confusion and pain rooftops covered in lacquer like brains covered by skulls will I ever know why this helmet has no buckle, why the toils of so much thought seems so evidently simple in the after math things we can’t reach:
our neighbors’ rooftops, even though when I reach out I can pinch one with my thumb and index finger objects in 3-D movies interviews the underbellies of nightmares snooze buttons a second time around the bottom of a cloud, orthetopofasky conclusion MEREDITH SUMMERS/THE OBSERVER
20
The Creative Writing Awards
April 30, 2015 THE OBSERVER
www.fordhamobserver.com
Exponential Growth, The Edge of the Asymptote By MICHAEL GRUND
I was sitting in my room all alone. I wasn’t doing anything serious, just sitting on the computer, browsing the Internet. I was also admittedly intoxicated as one is wont to do while browsing online. Reddit, the front page of the internet, provided me with a wide variety of glib and ironic takes on the full range of social-pop-cultural events of the day and I was contented to spend my entire day switching amongst the some twenty five browser windows that I still tend to perpetually cycle through when in that state. My room was a dim lit shady place, light shown through the blinds in bands catching the green smoke. I was only mildly enjoying myself, in a kind of tepid trance. Very little had moved me for a long time. I had awoken around ten in the morning and proceeded to drink coffee until noon. At this point I felt sufficiently prepared to spend the rest of my day casually relaxing in my dim and sterile room. There was really nothing to be done about my distaste and apathy (enraptured) towards the realities of this new and grand epoch. The age of the thinking machine and all the attached baggage exposed the crust and grit, and it’s all very serine and human, bumbling like the noble idiot of an Old Russian folktale. But I can’t say that I was unhappy, bored maybe, but with a satisfaction that comes only with understanding that you sit on top of the great pyramid of man (or maybe a better analogy, in the membrane of the great gibbering amoeba). I have the luxury and leisure to actually choose what I want to do rather than simply being thrust into some cruel fate and still I sit. I sat there crossed legged in the bed with the computer in front of me, an ashtray to my left, my shoulders hunched with one finger listlessly doting the touch pad. With the world at my disposal, on the edge of a vast frontier, a bottle of Jim Beam sat on the desk next to me. I looked at it thinking about taking a drink and suddenly Modest Mussorgsky appeared in front of me. He stumbled in a stupefied way, fat and round with messy hair, like the classic portrait of him by Ilya Repin. I blinked and he did not disappear. As I fancy myself a rather jaded millennial dilettante having never fully committed in any way to a particular religion or metaphysics, the sight of the incredibly late Russian composer didn’t quite stir me. This is not to say that I wasn’t surprised by the sudden appearance of what to many would be a profound existential conundrum. But like any person raised with experience in the
decadence of post-modernity, I knew that the first step in these kinds of situations is acceptance of reality (the only fear being half-commitment). I decided to play it cool. I grabbed the bottle, unscrewed its cap, and tilted the bottom towards Mussorgsky in offering. Taking a break from his incoherent (to me) speech, he looked at the bottle, picked it up, smelled it, and with a look of resignation, took a drink. He then looked back at the label incredulously and scowled before taking another drink. I looked on in disbelief. He turned to me and began to babble in Russian again. “D’yavol!” He repeated several times. Stressing the “aH” sound, he hiccupped mid-word “ol”. He looked around the room, sniffed and wiped his nose. His cheeks were red, his beard unkempt, his eyes, sunken, wrinkled and surrounded by dark circles. He blinked repeatedly and looked out the window at the city, and then he looked at me again. He stumbled back reaching behind himself, his hand found the top of my chair, which he slumped into. He looked at me defeated, seeming to know more about the situation than I did. I decided that it was probably most appropriate to act now rather than react to what events may unfold (You may recognize this as being one of the very tenets of modern self-help teleology). So instead of pondering the logical consistency of the implications of this new phenomena I dove whole-heartedly down the path set forth. The future soon began to coalesce into a point with both velocity and spin. Thinking quickly I plugged my computer into my speakers. The sound of the speaker connection alone made him jump. His head jerked towards the noise. Music seemed like a good way to break the ice. I began slowly with Hella, a band made up of one guitarist and one drummer each furiously smashing through polyrhythms in irregular time signatures. It’s a cacophony. His arms spread wide and he yelled out what I could only imagine were Russian curses. I laughed, as this was the exact reaction I would have expected from him. He grabbed the armrests and looked at me with intense eyes, his teeth gritted tight. He reached and took a long pull of the whiskey, coughing slightly. He then turned his head toward the speaker, listening with intensity. I could see him begin to recognize that the blasts he was hearing were intended as music. As he recognized a pattern, he looked back towards me side longed and suspicious, questioning the logic. He shook his head and blinked and mumbled to himself. The
song ended. I followed it with The Swans. It’s hard even for me to enjoy the Swans. It is more an experience for an intended effect. The music is so sharp and pounding, plodding, slow and powerful but raw and bitter and nearly without rhythm. He cocked his head further. I turned the volume up. He looked at me and then at the ground I watched him nod his head to the pounding symbols. I then played some Electronica, some spacey fast paced dance DJ named Lazerhawk. This he enjoyed, closing his eyes and nodding back and forth. He flourished his hand about to the time. Having fully satisfied my hipster fantasy I followed that with some jazz and blues, Thelonius Monk and Robert Johnson. As the songs played I gradually began to realize the absurdity of the situation. The left side of my brain grasped desperately for comprehension but there was none to be found. I could nearly feel the rise in temperature with the increased flow of electricity in the synapses of my mind. But it became apparent that this was not going to be “thought out.” The only hope now was to ride the wave of profound animal intuition to its end. This is often the most appropriate response to uncertainty. The whole time he listened, occasionally nodding, waving his hands around, and drinking. He looked at me a number of times in confusion as I played through everything I could think of in every modern genre. We began to pass the whiskey back and forth and occasionally he would slap me on the back and babble a few more words. During some songs he would sit and look down between his shoes, or off into the corner somewhere. I even played him some pop, N-sync, after looking at me for a time his eyes glazed over and he yawned loudly. Eventually we finished the bottle. I looked at him, I had turned my iTunes to shuffle and it began to play his original piano version of Pictures at an Exhibition. He stood and looked at me with tears in his eyes. He said something in Russian and wrapped his arms around me. He kissed my cheek and shook my hand. He smiled and exhaled a breath of pure whiskey. Then he laughed, grabbed my lamp and put it between his legs before slapping his ass and flying out the window on it. After sitting for a moment in silence I began to laugh as well. I listened till the end of the piece and lazily grazed the Internet some more before passing out till nightfall.
VICTORIA VON ANCKEN/THE OBSERVER
www.fordhamobserver.com
The Creative Writing Awards
THE OBSERVER April 30, 2015
21
By FRANK SIVILLI
Landscape of a Farm
Bones In a small place made of plastic, four women descend wrought iron stairs. They are painted silver, or used to be. Small faces have rusted out holes where the paint is chipped. The women pass their hands along the rail and feel these iron mouths closed shut. My Nonna remembers where the box is. The women follow her between rows of shelves
In moments recollected around yellowed walls hidden in the dark, a man is lost inside this cave, eyes removed. He makes no sound, but weeps blood. Two thin and rusty rivers, gone almost, this blood provides me passage. I move faster now, running to catch the man. It is his blood and it is mine. And then I am hungry, ravening for dirt that tastes of cool fennel, and for olives. Dark, green. I pick them from trees outside the house. They are one hundred thousand tiny green olives with branches departing from limbs attached with tiny arrowed leaves pointing in every direction and toward the earth. They are moving, mad now, and they say to me ‘look, go, breathe, come.’ I do.
A Time to Sew The field was fast with chicory flowers, so blue they seemed false among the other weeds less graced. It moved for sometime east and sometime west until encroached on both sides by hill and scattered tree, from where the girl arrived. She took from her sack a sickle, and began to hack at the chicory, right to left, until she’d
Dog Training
taken it all. She left soon after, and at her home in the woods sat at her table of mottled, beaten oak, stringing the weed into thread and stringing the thread into cloth, the shade and touch of daytime blue, that filled her house and spilled from the windows, covering the field in chicory again.
Spring Water I thought that once, when the mountains were made, a great fish had gotten trapped below them. He raged and thrashed, and hit his face upon the rock. His fish-wife heard these cries, and took to the mountains, searching for him. It was then she grew feet and hands and a red mouth with which to breath. It was then I took a stick and plunged it deep into the side of the mountain. Water poured and the great fish emerged, swimming now in a granite basin, drinking spring water. His fish wife moaned from her mouth of red as I speared the fish’s side and bit him.
Mal’Ombra A ghost in the yard between the bedrooms and the fields is just now visible through the boards on the windows, standing still among upright pieces of metal and trash. In the shed behind it there is a beehive, growling and moving ignorant of the night, walking on its hundred legs. The ghost moves forward, through the wall and into the room with the three metal beds. Each mattress gone in the way of shredded paper, only a frame of iron coils left behind. Somewhere the roof leaks, and the ghost goes to it, feeling for dampness, and waiting at the foot of a bed for the children to return to sleep.
consorting among the dead without need of ferry or gold piece. When they reach Maria Pia, she is upon the highest shelf and only my Nonna can reach her: a tiny metal box, not red, but green. The contents shift quietly, as one mass, and the bones begin to count the days since they’ve left the dirt; divorced of the ground, but beneath it nonetheless.
Pappa said he hated the dog because it ate our dinner. It slept in my bed and wore my shoes, and I taught it to shout when it stepped on a snake. I would pretend to be the dog, and every time he moved, I did it the same, until Pappa said he hated me too. He took us both down from the house into town. The buildings had gone, but there was a train, a neverending train on the old track beside the beach. I looked at Pappa to see if he liked it, and saw him throw the dog beneath the cars, gone; he said to me “Is this what you like?” Soundless to my traindeaf ears.
Il Moto During the day they would go down to play by the road where the carts and cars came. Outsight of their mother, they would dare each other to lay down on the ground and to count: “One two three four,” eyes shut tight. More, “Five,” and then fear, and they’d rise. Pia walked onto the road made of dirt, drawn, though it hurt her bare feet to step on the ground colored brown, hard, shaped with two long-stretching lines, out of sight. They were going to count, but then yelled instead. Pia turned and she saw the man’s bike. When mother came down, she ran screaming to town. The others count now without sound.
Lunchbox Outside some children play with rocks, mistaken for bread by the youngest. She bites hard into one and doesn’t mind the broken teeth, they grow again in new and polished rows, and the little girl smiles. Somewhere, away from them, a rattling noise draws attention to the man carrying with him a metal lunchbox in his hands. It is large, and the man is large, and when the children see him they ask his name. He does not say, but instead, opens his box and puts on his face a mask made of concrete. Again he reaches, and this time he pulls a piece of bread for the mouth of the girl with the shiny new teeth.
Speaking with Chickens I once sat next to a woman who could speak with the chickens and hear them speak back. Shoo-kuroo-koo, she would call to them. I sat on a rock and watched the woman grow feathers upon her face. Great black
plumage, shiny and green, from behind her ears, and all she said was Shoo-kuroo-koo. The henhouse proved a nicer bed than her own, and to stop the arthritis in her knuckles and neck, she would sleep on the hay
with the chickens. Saying Shoo-ku-roo-koo, and looking at me. Her eyes, red, and making motions toward a tree. an old one growing persimmons, orange like leather. I tore one in half and gave her the seed.
Uncle Guitar Inside, it is warmer, without the moon and the field on all sides because a guitar is in the fireplace burning. Chords sound unintentionally beneath the hand of some faceless person named Michele. He speaks, but sounds muffled, and everyone laughs because his head is in the chimney. The wood is splitting, laughing too in response to Mike’s folly. Or else warning that the stone they use to bake bread is shifting, about to fall from the ledge of the mantle onto Mike’s legs. These songing shouts carry to the road just west of the tiny white house. The ground outside is colored red by the burning man, still holding his guitar now looking out the window at the moon and the field.
Three Swallowing the Nail I laid out my things on the ground before my sisters’ and found that we had each dug up a nail. Thin like Pappa’s cigarettes, I said, and I took one to my mouth and began to pretend that it was. I walked around all day like this,
and hunched my back like he did, carrying an empty brown sack because I could not find enough to fill it. When I swallowed the nail, I did not taste the dirt or the metal tang, but felt it play with the back
of my tongue as if trying to speak for me. I said, Pappa, look, guess what’s in me, before he hit my back and reached a hand and I started to gag and cry. He took the nail away and I couldn’t eat again.
The three of us walk along the beach. The mythic sand, that dirt made gritty and yellow and hot by the sun is absent, and beneath our feet are rocks fallen from the cliff not far from here; we see it if we close our eyes. The caves are ahead, birthed of the ocean and forgotten. This one is filled by a boulder, dark and dry despite the tide pool at its base. One of us touches its face and stays behind. In another hour we feel our skin turn red, and one of us says he sees the entrance to another cave low to the ground; the air is sweet, and we look at each other, and without a word one of us goes and the other stays. TYLER MARTINS/THE OBSERVER
COURTESY OF MEREDITH SUMMERS/THE OBSERVER