Vanderbilt Review 2015 by allysonpatterson

The Vanderbilt Review Volume XXIX

The Vanderbilt Review 2014-2015 Editorial Board: Editor-in-Chief: Allyson Patterson

Managing Editor: Kathryn Williams Layout Editor: Christine Ellenburg Poetry Editor: Lisa Muloma Prose Editor: Kaila Gilbert Art Editor: Vibhu Krishna Marketing Chair: Katy Cesarotti Website Chair: Selina Chen

General Staff: Bryan Byrdlong Arman Chowdhury Marissa Davis Caitlyn Le Judy Li Taylor Linn Sydney Pedigo Veronica Sanchez Linzy Scott Susie Shin Bhaavya Srivastava Orit Yeret Lydia Yousief

Art

Table of Contents

Tree Ring Emily Neal p. 8 Chandelier Lights Reflection David Brandon p. 11 Seeing Double: Train Wreck Celeste Jones p. 12 Infinite Kiss

Taylor Linn

p. 14

Shadows David Brandon p. 18 Mancala Alisha Newton p. 21 Mouth Breather III Chelsea Velaga p. 23 The Peculiar Tale of Theodore Gladbury

Sam Boyette

p. 24

The Perfect Murder

Hilary Good

p. 26

#racehurts Jordan Jenson p. 29 Graden of Earthly Delights

Chelsea Velaga

p. 33

The Lost of Time

Xiyu Deng

p. 36

Symphony Sam Boyette p. 38 Jelly Spirits

Allyson Patterson

p. 41

Meduse Allyson Patterson p. 45 Endanagered Vibhu Krishna p. 46 Cultural Consumption II

Xiyu Deng

p. 48

Pollen Jerry Phillips p. 50 Hitchcock Lili Valcarenghi p. 54 Untitled Vibhu Krishna p. 56 Air Julia Ordog p. 59 Cover Art: The Revolution by Lili Valcarenghi, watercolor

Backround spreads for poetry pieces are photographed by: David Brandon, Allyson Patterson, and Kathy Yuan

T a bl e of Cont e nt s Prose Every 9 Minutes Katy Cesarotti p. 10 Fever In Paris Kathryn Williams p. 19 Frank James A. Mentz p. 25 men of rock Rani Banjarian p. 32 Playing Owen Akeley p. 40 From Mumbai, with Love

Paul Snider

p. 44

Turned Over Luke Hilliard p. 47 To the 238 Nigerian School Girls

Lydia Youseif

p. 57

Moral Prehistory

Lisa Muloma

p. 9

your arms are too short to box with god

Bryan Byrdlong

p. 15

Elegy Caitlyn Le

p. 16

Backpacking in an Ice Storm

p. 22

Poetry

Julia Grabowski

Siren Says Olatunde Osinaike p. 28 Cockroaches and Cattails

Will McCollum

p. 30

Oratorio Caitlyn Le p. 39 Car Cash Lee Schmidt p. 42 Underwater Will McCollum p. 51 Words to a Futrue Lover

Joshua Lopez

p. 52

Villa Guadalupe, Nicaragua

Lauren Pak

p. 55

Under a Sky Which Looks Like Rain

Caroline Saunders

p. 58

Already Seen Marissa Davis p. 60

The Vanderbilt Review 2015 Award Winners Poetry Award

“Villa Guadalupe, Nicaragua” by Lauren Pak Juror: Anders Carlson-Wee MFA Candidate

Prose Award

“Frank” by James Mentz Juror: Professor Elizabeth Covington Senior Lecturer in English

Art Award

“Symphony” by Sam Boyette Juror: Farrar Hood Cusomato Associate Professor of Studio Art

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief I have had the privilege of serving as this year’s Editor-in-Chief for The Vanderbilt Review, and I could not be more exuberant to share this year’s publication with you. It is an honor to provide a showcase for the captivating and creative works of the Vanderbilt community: a group whose vibrant musings are well worth your time. Guided by the theme that emerged from this year’s best submissions, this edition is founded in the diverse perspectives of “our stories” as illuminated through the words and images of our authors and artists. Each voice speaks to its own tune, but the pieces blend quite well into a holistic oeuvre. The creative heartbeat of Vanderbilt is expressed thorough the following pages, as “artists are living seismographs… with a special sensitivity to the human condition. They record our conflicts and hopes, and their immediate and direct response to the… world helps us to establish an entente with the living present.”1 I would like to thank Vanderbilt Student Communications for its support, and I appreciate the guidance of our Advisor Paige Clancy, Chris Carroll, and Jeff Breaux. Thank you to my dedicated staff, and especially Kathryn Williams, whose magnitude and force create an energy that emits beyond numbers calculated from F=MA. Finally, I am grateful for the many members of the Vanderbilt community who submitted a remnant of yourselves giving life to this publication.

Cheers!

Allyson Patterson Kepes, Gyorgy. Introduction. Education of Vision. New York: George Brazillier, 1965. ii. Print. Vision+Value Series.

Tree Ring Emily Neal

Water color, India Ink 8

Moral Prehistory Lisa Muloma

While Terry Schiavo was in-between gone and mostly gone we carved a valley right down the middle of our fourth grade classroom. Set up our desks to face one another head on, built the space between ourselves. I sat squarely among the pro-lifers, leaning forward in my chair as I realized that most of my friends were playground playmates were actually demons. And I watched them argue that maybe Terryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s husband was right, that she wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want this stillness this, drooping of the face incidental twitching of the fingers, never any shoes on. Mom and dad loving her so so much. I cried as we lined up for gym class. Joel looked at me funny.

Every 9 Minutes Katy Cesarotti

The train outside their apartment came every nine minutes, without fail. Mattie swore she could feel the vibrations in her bones. Every nine minutes, the windowpanes would shiver in their frames and small objects would jitter to life. At 7:51 AM, one of the commuter trains lumbered past their window towards the city, and coffee droplets (decaffeinated) splattered out of her mug. Mattie sighed, and thumbed at the brown spots on her sleeve. Luke crossed from the bedroom to the living room/kitchen in two long steps— his boyish, lanky frame resisted age and weight gain. Mattie felt a panicked burst of love gush suddenly in her heart, like one of her aortas had collapsed. She still sometimes forgot her new identity—Mrs. Luke Goldman, no longer Mattie Green. A wife. A soon-to-be mother. A homeowner. An apartment renter, really. But still. “Is there coffee?” Luke was attempting to read the news and fix his shirt at the same time—he had buttoned the front unevenly. “Yes.” “Pour me a mug?” he struggled to undo the nacreous buttons. Mattie caught a glimpse of his matted chest hair, poking out from the collar. “What’s the magic word?” “What?” 10

“The magic word. You know, basic manners. One word? Rhymes with fleas?” Luke gave up on the shirt, came up behind her and slid his hands flat along her slight belly. “Striptease?” he mumbled in her ear. He played with the ties of her robe, loosening the already sagging V of the floral cotton. She elbowed him off, a little harder than she intended. Mattie hated displays of affection; throughout her entire childhood, she could only remember her father kissing her mother once, at their twentieth anniversary party. Luke snickered to himself. “With cream, please. And one Splenda.” He crossed the kitchen in one and a quarter steps. Luke opened the pantry, and Mattie had to squirm out of the way to make room in the narrow space. “Did you get any more Life cereal?” he asked. “We ran out last week, remember?” Mattie had to stretch on her tiptoes, losing traction in her thin socks, to reach the back of the mugs/wineglasses/ plastic cups cabinet for Luke. Luke always wanted the same one, some subconscious gravitational pull—a white one with a Fu Manchu moustache. The mug was stained beige now from years of use. “You’re the only one who eats Life,” she reminded her husband.

“It’s the only kind of cereal I like.” “How do you know?” “How do I know if I like it?” Luke sniffed at a can of oats experimentally and made a gagging face. “Have you ever even tried anything else?” “I don’t want to. I don’t like other things.” He closed the cabinets with a sigh. “Whatever. I’ll just have coffee for breakfast.” “Breakfast,” Mattie said primly, “is the most important meal of the day.” “Maybe you should remember my cereal then, next time.” Mattie handed him his mug. Sometimes, at his most demanding, Luke reminded Mattie of her father. But only for a moment—Luke could never remain still enough; he lacked the stoicism, the cold clockwork movement. Outside, another train rattled by. Mattie squeezed her cup in her hands. The first week after she and Luke moved in here, her mother’s Spode serving tray had tumbled off the mantelpiece where she displayed it, over their fake fireplace. It broke into five even pieces. Mattie had sat in the residue for a while, rubbing the fine powder of broken porcelain between her fingers. She left the

Chandelier Lightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Reflection David Brandon Photograph Dyptic

Seeing Double: Train Wreck Celeste Jones Photograph

rest of her mother’s Christmas china in storage, and made sure each plate was carefully wrapped in a dishtowel. Later, she had thought, we can have a real Christmas later, when we have a real house. Later. Luke checked his watch. He liked to check it with a dramatic flourish, hiking up the sleeves of his blazer to dramatically reveal the time. “Have to run.” He set his mustachioed mug down and pressed a wet kiss against Mattie’s forehead. “See you later, alligator.” Mattie’s shoulders tightened. The mug was only mostly empty. A rime of coffee stain lapped up the walls, and a ring was already forming on the Formica. “Are you forgetting something?” Luke patted his pockets. “Cell phone. Keys. Wallet? Nope, got it.” “The mug.” “Oh, I don’t want to take it with me, I’m okay.” Mattie gritted her teeth. In her day planner, with little penciled dots, she had kept track of the days when Luke left his dishes for her to clean. By her estimates, 12 out of the last 20. She had promised herself that at 50%, they

would sit down and have a civil, adult discussion of boundaries in their new shared home. She straightened her posture and drew on the store of words from years of therapy and counseling. “Luke, when you don’t help with the dishes, it makes me feel unappreciated.” He checked his watch again, another flamboyant flap of his arm, and moved the cup into the sink. The room was so small he didn’t even have to shift his feet. “Better?” “I really think we need to have an honest, open dialogue about this.” “I have to go, honey, okay? In like two seconds. ” “That statement makes me feel disrespected,” she said slowly, through a cottoned mouth, “because I feel like you don’t think my time is valuable.” “That would definitely take more than two seconds. And I’m already running late.” “I would like us to have an open dialogue,” she said. “Five seconds already. At least.” “To communicate our feelings in an understanding and compassionate setting.”

“It’s just a mug,” he said sharply. “Do you have anything else to do today, even?” Luke slapped his open hand on the counter; the surface was barely wide enough to accommodate his whole hand. Mattie’s throat itched. Growing up in her household, anything louder than polite conversation was considered an outside voice. She remembered the night she first met Luke’s family, how his father and brothers had shouted at the football game on TV and wrestled over the last tortilla chips. She had a chilling fear about the child inside her. The fetus, now androgynous and fishlike, would one day come out into the world, blinking and bewildered. What if it was a boy? What if it was a girl? What would they do? “I’m leaving,” Luke said finally. “I’m sorry. Let’s forget about it.” He pressed several more wet kisses along her shoulder, like a puppy, and left the apartment. A train rumbled by the house, and everything shook.

In finite Kiss Taylor Linn Oil on Canvas

your arms are too short to box with god Bryan Byrdlong

Brother, you were always a hook man, always three salves, painted across the whisk shaped cuts, you left on my cheeks. standing a head, and half a hemisphere over me, i chipped away at your ribs, fanning air, waiting for your blue fire to baptize, your fist to separate me from tube socks/ my teeth click horizontally, I bite dust, rolling to catch the sound you pirouette and your heels catch me/ three strikes and I am down, bending on a knee/ you smile and tell me my that my guard is low red trickling down your arm from where my uncut nails streaked, slowly, slow I pick myself up--

you were always a liquid jab/diagonally across your chest like diamond, fencing a fixed point. I would charge your waist trying to evade your blows brown and barreling down out of, you catch my ears and turn me left lightly, iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d tumble into the suede couch, my white tee fluttering in the zephyr. you sit down and eat with me, afterward, telling me that I did good, in making you bleed, in taking pain like a (wo)man, black coils patted, crumbs snatched from mouth, the pink eel of gum shown as a smile. silently sitting/we turn the Television on to bask in its diabetic light.

Elegy

Caitlyn Le

You play me, an old guitar the frets, my freckles the strings, my hairâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; curled around sharp fingers, swept away from the neck that I bared for you.

Shadows

David Brandon Photograph

Fever in Paris Kathryn Williams

1. Amy and I wander the dark streets of Montmartre in the same clothes we’ll wear all weekend. Metal doors shut on street vendors, tipsy men leaning against dirty thresholds, cigarettes in their hands. Christmas lights snake through the trees. They comfort us. We missed dinner and never did find the Sacre Coeur. It’s okay, the lights say, you’ll eat tomorrow. This is Paris, isn’t it? 2. In the hostel I charge my cell phone. Try the Wi-Fi password again. Cannot connect, it says. Maybe, if I cannot connect, you’ll finally miss me. 3. I sit at a table in the shared kitchen space. Travelers talk about the weather. “Why do Americans use Fahrenheit?” says the Eastern European. “It makes no sense.” “Shhh,” whispers the Canadian, “There are Americans… right. there.” 4. My face is hot, my stomach empty. I still cannot connect. 98.6 must seem like a very large number to Canadians, I think. But it seems so small to me right now. I speak loudly of my hunger. A young Australian serves me some of the cauliflower soup that

he made for himself. I devour it. I thank him. We have the same last name. I wonder if we’re related. Products of the same unruly Welsh family of parents who raised criminals. Children in exile. 5. There is something freeing about not speaking the language. It is permission to people-watch and never say a word to anyone. Permission to look too long at yellow leaves. Permission to live in my own world. When a woman points to a map and asks a question on the airport shuttle, I say: “Je ne sais pas.” Always je ne sais pas. Non. Rien? My thoughts are locked in English. I watch concrete blur past the widows. My cell phone sits on my lap, illuminated but ineffective. Cannot connect, it says. Sometimes, it’s better this way. 6. Walk with me along the Seine. Pretend like you don’t know me while I take twenty photos of the Eiffel tower. Afterwards, get to know me all over again. Pretend that you don’t love it here because you’d hate your love to be cliché. Eat cheap. Rejoice in the sunlight. Get lost with me. Get on the metro, get off the metro. Hold my hand. I have not been held enough lately. Everyone I love is

Very

speak.

Far

Away. We do not need words to

7. I lie awake on a top bunk at the hostel. There is a quiet middleaged man of origin unknown below me. Amy is snoring. I creep down the metal ladder into the little bathroom we all share. The walls are bright and bare. I blow my nose. I wonder if I blow enough, will all the sickness come out? I’ve been sick once a month since I left home. The first week of every month. Clockwork dysfunction. Cars pass. Even the sirens have a foreign tongue. 8. We laugh at paintings in the Louvre, trace ornate ceilings with eager eyes. We are two girls giddy with history. I spy an aristocrat here, a crucified Jesus there. Mona Lisa is in on the joke. If she isn’t, then why would she smile so smugly? Hoards of international tourists crowd in front of her. They take selfies— proof of their sophistication. They are here for her, and she is so small. The past gives her power. We are always reaching back, trying to connect to 19

it, trying to learn from it. I went to Britain and stared at the stones there, and I went to Paris and gazed at golden ceilings. I saw myself in none of it. 9. If out of sight means out of mind, and absence makes the heart grow fonder, then can we ever trust what our mothers tell us? And, I wonder, which kind of absent am I? 10. A week from now, through the fuzz of a foreign cell phone, I will hear the words: “I don’t remember why I love you.” 11. At le Pont de l’Archevêché we stop and take more photos. Slate gray Seine below, the plank bridge stretches out, chain-link fence twinkling in the winter sun. Lovers from around the world have locked their affections to this fence, now a metallic rainbow of dedication. I wonder how many of these couples will die together. Very few, I assume. And how many, when their love fades or implodes or shatters, will return to this bridge and remove their locks? Perhaps, all this romance is just assurance, an act to say: “Don’t worry. I love you right now.” 14. And yet, as Amy and I point out certain locks, certain etchings of “in love” to be our favorites, we must admit that the whole scene is very charming. 20

I almost want to scribble our names on a hunk of metal and leave it nestled in between the locks of lovers, just to say that we were here. And we were human. And we needed tangible things. 16. A tourist stands in front the Notre Dame Cathedral, hands outstretched. He is surrounded by pigeons. They perch on his arms, sit on his shoulders, and take flight from his head. This writhing puddle of feathers and beaks swallows up the concrete around him. His wife takes photos of him and laughs. Amy and I walk behind him on our way to a beautiful, solemn place. We wonder when the man will notice the white droppings running down his back. 17. A week and an hour from now, I will hear the words: “I didn’t mean it.” 18. I stand in front of a rack of postcards. I consider buying one with my remaining Euros, but I know now that the act of sending postcards often leads to the expectation of receiving them. Josephine Baker and Le Chat Noir watch as Amy and I say goodbye. She asks if I can navigate the metro alone, and, though I am doubtful, I tell her that I can. We are not friends who linger. Standing alone underground, surrounded by apa-

thetic wool coats and thick infinity scarves, all of the lines finally make sense. Yes. Go here. Get off here. Charles de Gaulle ici. Had navigation always been so simple? Remove all the details—all the garden fences, homeless men, dog-walkers, trashcans, lovers holding hands at bus stops—and every path becomes a thick, black line with color-coordinated points of entry. 19. Airplane runways all look the same. I have become accustomed to moving around, strapping my waist into stiff seats, falling asleep and waking to find myself somewhere exactly the same but entirely different. My stomach knots during take-off. All the sickness I’d denied myself forces itself upon me. My head aches and burns. I do not want to go back to Britain because it is strange for a weekend vacation to end with anything but home. I stare out the window into the blackness and think of my mother. She folds a cool, wet paper towel and places it on my forehead. She sings in a Southern accent that she lost long before I was born: The other night, dear, while I lay sleeping, I dreamt I held you in my arms 20. In the double-decker airport shuttle from Edinburgh International, my cell phone buzzes to life on my lap. The few

text messages I’d been sent that weekend arrive in my inbox at once. A selfish part of me tells the ones who care most that I am sick. At least, if they are worrying about me, they are thinking about me. 21. I stumble on cobble stones and collapse into the springs of my university-issued mattress. They squeal and prod at my shoulder blades. Not even these springs can keep me awake tonight. I dream of everyone I know. And as I dream, time passes. 22. One month from now, the customs officer who stamps my passport will not say a kind word to me. No welcome home. No happy holidays. New York City will be seventy degrees in December— Fahrenheit, of course. 23. Two months from now, I will lay in bed with my lover and say: “One day, let’s go to Paris.”

Mancala

Alisha Newton Photograph

Mouth Breather III Chelsea Velaga Ink and Marker 22

Backpacking in an Ice Storm Julia Grabowski

The thunder ripped me awake my sister and I tripped from our tent and walked hard, pushing against ice which burnt our purple hands and split limbs loose like running soldiers cut down. It could have been Valley Forge, we could have been barefoot revolutionaries. We could have been any souls stumbling through any storm. Frozen ghosts welled within me and begged loudly for fire, coffee, my mother. All people live at once when itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cold. As blood crept up each finger thumping louder they fled from us, out of the wind, warm in our dreams, alone.

The Peculiar Tale of Theodore Gladbury Sam Boyette

(Still of Video*) vimeo.com/113992217

Frank

James A. Mentz “What are these little fellas?” asked the boy’s father. The boy answered excitedly, from under the covers of his bed, that they were monsters. The boy would draw pictures of them and look through a zoology encyclopedia to give them appropriate Latin names before arranging them on a pin board. The boy’s father pointed at the Komodoensis pygmaea. “What’s this one do?” “The pigmy komodo is a tiny lizard, the size of an ant. He can crawl into a person’s ear and eat up all their memories.” “You’ve got quite an imagination.” The boy’s father smiled. He browsed the remainder of the drawings, inquiring about the more interesting looking creatures as the boy sat up to explain each one. Among them was the Ossea caputus, a species of little people that are so ugly, they find another animal’s skull to wear around like a helmet, the Cetus tripodea, a legged shark that can climb onto a boat and eat everyone, and the Dentae carnivourus, a bird that had rows of teeth in its beak to chew up all the eggs left in other birds’ nests. “Aw. What is this one? It looks like his arms are trying to get you! It just says ‘Frank.’” “That’s because Frank is not a type of monster. He is special. If I had to classify

him, though, I would call him a Sapiosanguis manducus. He used to be a vampire, but he accidently bit a rock and broke off his fangs, so none of the other vampires like him anymore. That’s why he came to me, because he wants to be friends with humans. His arms reaching for a hug in that picture.” “Did you imagine all these guys by yourself?” The boy’s father asked. The boy answered that all the creatures were real, especially Frank. The boy’s father, smiling to himself, asked if he could ever meet Frank. “You can meet Frank if you want. I think he would want a hug from you, though.” “As long as he doesn’t bite me.” Answered the boy’s father. The boy made his father turn off the light, since Frank would die if he ever went into the light (being a vampire and all). Frank lived under the boy’s bed and came out at night to sleep in bed with him. “What is going on in that silly mind of yours?” Asked the boy’s father, making room for himself in the boy’s bed. The boy did not answer. “Is he here?” Asked the boy’s father in the too-dark-tosee room. “No, he won’t come out ‘cause you’re in his spot.” The boy’s father laughed and made a little room between him and his son. “Frank? Why don’t

you come on out?” “He doesn’t want to come out because you’re here.” Said the boy. The boy’s father slid off the bed and peeked under the bed, again, calling for Frank while he chuckled to himself. “Dad, you have to stay away.” “Frank! Please come give me a hug! I just want to meet you, Frank!” “Dad, tonight Frank wants to stay under the bed.” “Frank! If you don’t come out I’m gonna flip this bed over!” The boy’s father laughed and clutched the underside of the bed frame. He began laughing and teasing Frank, lifting the bed up and down a couple of inches. “Frank! Come on out! Don’t hide.” “Dad, stop!” It took the boy’s father a moment to realize the boy had started to cry. “Hey, hey. It’s all right, I was just joking. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I’m so sorry.” The boy’s father said, meaning it. “You just scared Frank.” “I’m so sorry, son. I was only trying to have fun.” The boy wiped the tears from his little cheeks. “Is it alright if I get back in bed with you?” The boy said it would be okay, but he had to apologize to Frank and leave him plenty of 25

The Perfect Murder Hillary Good

(Still of Video*) vimeo.com/92687745

room. The two of them laid in the dark bed while the boy’s father thought to himself. The boy’s father apologized to Frank and meant it. Neither the boy, nor Frank responded. The boy’s father kept his eyes open, although it was too dark to see. “So, what do you do if a pygmy komodo is eating up all your memories?” the boy’s father asked. “The pygmy komodos are really nasty.” The boy said, facing his father. “They will only leave if they have a new brain to crawl into and eat up.” He turned his head the other way and waited a moment, as if listening to something. “Frank says you should scoot your head right here.”

The boy’s father scooted his head and awaited further instruction. “Frank says you need to close your eyes and plug your nose, like you’re in a swimming pool.” The boy’s father did as Frank said. “Now tilt your head this way, and blow all the air out of your ears!” The boy’s father clenched his eyes and puffed his cheeks and blew all the air out his ears as hard as he could. He waited a moment before opening his eyes. “What just happened?” The boy’s father asked. “It worked.” The boy answered. “The pygmy komodo left your brain.” The boy’s father felt sleepy all of

the sudden. “But where did the pygmy komodo go? Doesn’t it need a brain to eat?” “Frank is right next to you. You scooted your head right next to his and blew the pigmy komodo into his ear. He told me he only has bad memories, and it would be okay if they all got eaten up.” The boy’s father shut his eyes and turned toward the empty spot and the bed. He reached his arms out for a hug. “Thank you, Frank.”

Siren Says Olatunde Osinaike

when a cop greets you, freeze. Siren says extend your arms away from your pockets and don’t do it until he says so. Drop them when you’re ready. Siren says he owns your change. Siren says fix your mouth into a hollow hallelujah, crescendo your prayer and hope they reach your dreams fast enough. Siren says realize how to get away with murder is only a TV show. Siren says remember Miranda left to go play duck, duck, noose. Siren says look up at how your hands are crying now. Siren says locate the training manual on the tip of his trigger and find scared, afraid, confused as synonyms of guilty. Siren says accept how his car’s tires have more rights to revolution than you do. Drop them when you’re ready.

Siren says he owns your change. Siren says prepare your body to be collected like a book. Read all of the red in his hand and figure you will win. Hope. Siren says forget what you think you know. Siren says know that the altar is calling. Siren says do not run down the aisle. Walk. Siren says know that he will. Siren says know that he will not need your parents’ blessing. Siren says he now pronounces you black body and casket, you may now kiss the ground. Siren says when a cop greets you, freeze. Understand he will not after you do.

#racehurts Jordan Jenson Photograph

Cockroaches and Cattails Will McCollum

A hoard of roaches roves out from under the pale yellow refrigerator and I cock my head. Not about to admit, but nonetheless willingly, I welcome their company, animate and ugly. The color of light that day when we were bare on the cracked mud shore of that swimming hole, in the cooing shadows of parched cattails and the watercheery and warm, like the supplications of a faithful few earlier that morning, seated in the pews like staggered rows of fresh fruit

at the weekend market. You pull me up and toward the water and fall with me into the muddy shallows. I spread silt on your skin like a balm, praying that its moisture might restore the glistening film that once enveloped your limbs and folded me into its luster. I towel-dry your goose bumps and pick the head off a cattail, pretending itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a cockroach. I place it on your bellybutton and we rest in the light the color of malt-liquor.

men of rock Rani Banjarian

Something about an MK bomber overhead. High enough to prowl, concealed, within the billowing blanket of black clouds and generator smog. Low enough to be distinctly heard, like a pesky mosquito always a little farther away than arm’s reach, piercing the steady hum of generators and traffic and the silence in the bedroom and in our hearts. Something about that is exquisitely disturbing.

Teta’s house is too old and doesn’t have a generator installed. We spend the nights when the power is out sprawled on the balcony, our bodies bathed in the sweat of toohot summer nights.

We bask in the fluorescence of false normalcy from the buildings around ours. Kitchens and bedrooms and balconies are alive with hushed whispers. Collective understanding. Across the parking lot, a foreign worker peeks down at us from the window of her employer’s fifth floor apartment. We understand her. She probably isn’t fluent in Arabic but she understands us too.

Some nights she leans against the windowsill, her form silhouetted against the white glare of kitchen light behind her. Some nights she waves at us. She doesn’t belong

here. Some nights we wave back. She belongs with her family in Ethiopia or Sri Lanka or the Philippines and not in a pinprick of land ravaged by a war that is not hers.

The fear is loud and rich. It settles at the bases of our stomachs and the backs of our throats. It silences our thoughts and makes swallowing difficult. Later at night, we lie, the five of us, on the old double bed, our limbs bent at impossible angles, wondering if we would die.

It’s hard to imagine that Mama and Baba slept on this very bed some thirteen years ago, just married despite the looming odds against them. Mama’s brother had threatened to kill her because she was marrying a Christian man. But he was not strong enough and his faith was not far-reaching enough and his handgun was not powerful enough to stop a civil marriage in the Soviet Union. Islam could topple the world but it would not topple her love for Baba. This was the bed they slept together on some thirteen years ago. When mama, cold and alone, hugged the pillows close to her heart in the sterile chill of the Beirut night. Baba at the emergency room. In this vast white-walled chamber mama wept into the pillow. How could she practice medicine when she had a baby to take care of? How

could she live independently if she and baba were forced to establish a household at Teta’s apartment? How could she maintain independence and womanhood if her motherin-law, herself spearheading the women’s rights movement in the country, thought nothing more of her than a maid in her own house? “The pillows can tell the stories of my tears,” Mama recalls.

If the pillows could tell stories they would now tell the story of raw love and harsh fear and an impeccable understanding of death.

During nights when we have power, we huddle on the bed in front of the outdated TV set watching live footage from elsewhere far and near. They bomb. First to go are commercial airstrips (you will stay here).

Next are the power plants that dot our Mediterranean shoreline (you will be submerged in darkness). These are followed by militant bases, targeted and struck down (you will not defend yourself). Now finally it is time for workers and teachers and doctors and lawyers and their sons and daughters and mothers-in-law (you will not live, this is not your war and this is not your fault, but you are here now and you cannot live).

Garden of Earthly Delights Chelsea Velaga Graphite

As Teta’s apartment degenerates into our stale cocoon, the television becomes our umbilical cord to the outside world. In the day it spits out reports of massacres interspersed with reports of United Nations Security Council meetings. The outside world seems so bright and alien, a whole new world, and before our eyes are the carcasses of cities and human parts and redstained gravel and stone. How many stories cut short. Choked. How many childhood dreams and adult aspirations, how much emotion and drive and passion and faith and love and beauty and love and greatness and love and love and innocence and love beheaded in an infinitesimal instant of massive, searing hate.

We sit in the borrowed light of the buildings around us, the generators, a numbing wall of sound.

The air is heavy and still and sticks to our skin like an extra layer, as though the entire universe is an extra layer of skin and it moves when we move and is harmonious with us. But I look up at the ugly canopy of clouds and I realize that we are not harmonious with the universe because someone up there is staring down at us, and we are alien and green and grey in his infrared vision, specks on a screen, the entire city a speck on a feed inside a fighter jet. Does he have a son or a younger brother or an older brother? Do they play person-animal-thing out on the balcony, as we do now? 34

“Rani, you can start.” My baby sister, hardly a decade old, is making amends for fighting with me over crayons we had gotten from the neighbor’s kids who were now on a military ship to Cyprus because they had canadian nationalities and could escape. The crayons are gorgeous Crayolas that twist up from their plastic casing like lipstick, so that you can keep them fresh and safe during travel. “’Eteene!” Loulou had screamed across the empty brown living room, shrill and obnoxious. “Give me! I want to color my Bratz!” “I’m not finished coloring my cars ya ba’ra, you cow!” I want to color my sketches of the cars I will design when I work at Mazda and ford and Mitsubishi, but she has a collection of Bratz coloring books and her Rock Angelz and Fashion Pixiez are more important than my dashboards and front grilles and beautiful futuristic headlights. Outside they are fighting and inside we are fighting. I shake my head and choke back tears. I don’t want to fight with my sister, especially if mama and baba are serious and they want to send me to Canada for school in the fall if the war persists. Even though my aunts and cousins there would care for me and send me to a good school and make sure I grow up healthy and strong, I don’t want to go to Canada and leave my family behind. Why am I

so special? Will I even be allowed to leave if the Canadian embassy is closed and there is a naval blockade and the airport is nonfunctional?

I slump to the bedroom through the large green gates that yawn onto the balcony. Outside they start playing person-animal-thing loudly. Even Teta joins in the fun, her voice and chuckle as frail as her frame. Their laughter is genuine, as though the delight of being together is deeper than the fear of death, and for a moment they sound like they have completely forgotten about the man in the machine circling us with unsleeping eyes.

In bed, my eyes begin to droop and their laughter fades as I see myself walking to my first day of class in a school somewhere in Quebec. What would I look like if I were Canadian? I would have shiny, blond hair that would be gelled up in spikes every day. I would be athletic and play on the basketball team and have a six-pack and all the girls would like me. I would learn how to kiss girls on their mouths and take them out to movies and they would like that a lot, because I can speak another language and I’m good at kissing and they would think that’s impressive.

Going out with girls would be nice but going out with boys would be nicer. They too would have spiky hair and six-packs, and I think that’s a lot nicer than girls with long blond

hair and big breasts. All girls look like Bratz and I don’t think Bratz are very pretty, and boys are a whole lot prettier.

During the day Baba goes to the hospital to care for the injured. He spends most of his time at a nonprofit volunteer organization which supplements the Red Cross and Red Crescent, providing emergency medical assistance. Every day mama begs baba not to go. “You have done enough volunteering, ya habibe,” she pleads. “You never know what might happen.”

On an evening just like any other, we sit around the battery-powered radio outside on the balcony, listening to Nasrallah speak to our people and their people and anyone in the world who cares to listen. The tiny red on/off light near the antenna glints in the blackness that consumes us, and baba nervously cups his hand around it, putting it out. “There’s a difference,” he explains, noticing my quizzical expression, “between a regular light in a house or apartment, and a tiny strange light like this one. They’ll think we’re sending them signals.”

Nasrallah’s rhetoric is plush and empowering. He weaves the tapestry of south lebanon. A hellish battlefield. Trenches and tunnels. Fighters “pillowed in the grass and blanketed by the clouds.”

Again and again he calls on the Lebanese people to stand as one in the face of the enemy. There can only be one victor and we are not the oppressors. Put your faith in god and the armed forces.

They will do everything to defend the sovereignty of our Lubnan.

Another night, we lie on the bed and watch NewTV and the sound fills the large cluttered room.

One of the reporters visits the homes and families of these guerilla fighters. Most of them are under twenty-five. All of them are willing to give their lives for Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah. And their country.

“God be with the leader Nasrallah. Redemption be in his cause,” says one mother, her mouth close to the microphone, her voice stable and impassioned, her eyes dry. “I’m not scared for my son because if he dies, he dies in the name of god and for the leader Nasrallah. I will be a proud mother.”

There is a strange, timeless comfort in waking up before everyone else with Mama and Teta. The air is still fresh and the generators have died down. We can hear the pigeons and the hesitant shuffling of a city coming to life. One of the great green shutters is open and light floods

The Lost of Time Xiyu Deng Photograph 36

through, eviscerating the black chill. The sky outside is roiling, but it is indigo now and melts to blue and grey. In the adjoining we watch live coverage of bombs being dropped onto the suburbs of south Beirut. The sight is bizarrely mundane. From across the hill the reporter narrates in an exhausted monotone as tiny balls of fire plummet.

All of a sudden Mama’s head darts back into the large, lonely living room. She rushes back in a flurry of tears and incoherence, flinging her body onto the open shutter and forcing it shut, tears streaming down her face. “They’ll see us…” she moans, collapsing in a heap, as Teta runs to the kitchen to fetch her some water. “I can’t take this anymore! I can’t take this anymore!”

One afternoon near the end of the 33-day war of 2006, standing in the kitchen with Teta, I hear

Loulou from the living room and, with a two-second lag, from the radio. She has called in to a political radio show and introduces herself as a nine-year-old girl with a message for the world.

Through the tinny speakers my sister’s voice quavers. She takes a deep breath and stutters before beginning: “All my life I have thought of love and peace. But what is happening now, is that what we do for love, and what we want for peace?” I walk into the next room and see Mama in silent tears, hovering over Loulou who is clutching the phone. “Who are these people?” My nine-year-old sister asks the host and the listenership and the world and no one but herself. “Do they have hearts? They are men not of humanity. They are men of rock.”

Even after the war is over and I go to the seventh grade and draw cars and have my last crush on a girl, and Loulou goes to the third grade and learns how to put makeup on and smuggles Mama’s favorite lipstick into her room, and my brother Jad gets a haircut and loses his golden mane because his school supervisor said so, and Mama and Baba continue to struggle in their jobs because they are communists and studied in the USSR and have no political or religious party backing them, the radio station replays a recording of her speech three times a day.

“Go ahead,” prompts the host, a renowned activist and communist. Her voice is composed, her speech measured. “The air is yours.”

Symphony Sam Boyette

(Still of Video*) vimeo.com/106083835

Oratorio Caitlyn Le I. Requiem Some stark and sleeping thing pecked at that morning— lone carrion bird to grapefruit flesh—the hum of treble strings buzzing, metallic warning that crooned of gasoline and missing thumbs a mother’s murmurs pressed into the reed: slow, jarring waltz and clashing sonatine, staccato choke, throat lined with bismuth beads a quivering chord, washed down with kerosene in one diminished interval, a phone was ringing: loaded gun, a fist of brass that echoed like a question, something thrown from stairtop, down, a rain of shattered glass our father’s word, the gutting of a hymn too low to hear, eight broken ivory limbs.

those metered kisses wrought once in a ring elusive dreams that I always forget a fractured faith, a desecrated prayer blew every shredded testament to rot wild beating at the door, a broken chair a metronomic pulse slurred with blood knots unwanted daughter, fist raised in the wind For all have sinned, my god, for all have sinned. III. Lullaby A siren song, a chant, cantabile caress of silken hands that cradled me my mother’s voice: elastic, far away she found my skeleton in the dead sea

II. Canticle

a disavowing father now repents: the broken son, now ghost, atones too late in smelling death and following the scent the birds all gather, crowding on the slate

Cadenza slows: the body is the bread and all that wine, the blood from father’s stab and yet, in three days he would still be dead like slaughtered silence bowed before the slab

I lost my fingers, broke them on the wall while dancing on the fury of some god a useless little unstrung porcelain doll still purring psalms of carnage, sweet ballade

our father, ghost—misshapen, wraithlike thing warned last night’s gin would bring today’s regrets

two wicker faces, daughters feigning sleep. you reap what things you sow, sow what you reap.

Playing

Owen Akeley In the car, you always wanted to play games. No drive was too serious, no traffic too boring, no silence too holy. Your favorite was I Spy. You spied something green and lumpy, I said the bush next to that white mailbox. I spied something brown that was taller than Mom but shorter than the roof of our house, you said that was too complicated and I had to pick a new one that was easier. When you got bored with that you played a game with license plates. Missouri. Kentucky. Arkansas. North Dakota. You’d never seen a North Dakota before. In fact, you’d never seen either of the Dakotas before. Why were there even two Dakotas if only one person was from there, you asked. I said plenty of people were probably from there, but maybe they just didn’t go out driving too often. Then you said that you’d seen a couple different Hawaii’s before,

and if people from Hawaii could find a way to go out driving on the mainland, all those Dakotans had no excuse. Time for a new game, I said. I spied something white and brown and ugly. You pointed out exactly the right cow before reminding me that we’d already played that game. You wanted a new new game. Always with the games. The day you got hit, it might have been a game. Maybe you were running in the street, chasing imaginary robbers in an imaginary cop car. Or maybe you were flying in crazy, imaginary patterns like one of those airplanes with the flame decals that we’d seen at the airshow Dad had taken us to in August. Or maybe you were just chasing a ball that had bounced a little too far off the house and out of the driveway. Whatever it was, that was your last game. You didn’t spy the red

Chevy, and the red Chevy didn’t spy you. Now the car is quiet. Dad is keeping his eyes on the road. Mom is just sort of staring out with her eyes watery and fixed on nothing at all. I start looking at license plates. Tennessee. Alabama. Kansas. South Dakota. You never got to see a South Dakota, yet there’s one right here. Thinking about you makes this game too complicated and I decide to pick a new one that is easier. I spy a McDonald’s. I spy an old barn that looks like it’s from a spooky movie. I spy a set of looming, black gates with a dirt road. I spy a crowd of people who look like our relatives standing near the side of that road. I spy near them a pile of freshly turned dirt next to a hole in the ground. Your hole, I realize. Dad tells me to get out of the car, the final whistle. Now the games are over for good.

Jelly Spirits Allyson Patterson Watercolor

Car Crash Lee Schmidt

Everyone I’ve ever loved, I’ve loved them at high speeds. My brakes are broken, sure, the lines snipped neatly at birth, but that doesn’t bother me. I don’t miss what I’ve never had. The exterior might be chipped, maybe grimy, but it’s what’s on the inside that counts, they say. And anyway, the rest of me runs just fine. My chest houses a noisy engine. I always feel the instant the gas pedal flattens down into my stomach, shocking me upright, yanking me forward into oncoming traffic. Into one person at a time. We tangle, bones jarring and teeth clenched to brace for impact. An instant of light, maybe less, even, and every single time I close my eyes. Hold my breath. It’s hard work, making gods out of ordinary people. They always struggle out of the driver’s seat, hands held palms out, panicked faces smeared with oil. They tell me, “I can’t be what you need right now.” Sometimes they even apologize, look me in the eyes, and the airbag deploys, a gentle reminder that I should wake up, strip off the twisted metal,and drive on. 43

From Mumbai, with Love Paul Snider

A cockroach is crawling in a dark alley, looking for the night’s meal. He crawls over the human waste and rubbish, produced by the high concentration of over 12 million people in the city of Mumbai. It’s paradise for a pest like him. You couldn’t see him, but you might see the enemy that is about to strike. A metallic, blue-green speck, glinting softly in the yellow light coming out of the dirty glass of the apartments on either side. It’s a small, solitary wasp. This wasp doesn’t build nests to raise its larvae in. It doesn’t work together with other wasps. And it definitely answers to no queen. The wasp isn’t looking for nectar tonight. She’s far from any flowers and has egg-laying on her tiny wasp brain. She is a jewel wasp. Jewel wasps are parasites that sting a cockroach and lay their eggs on a soft part of the roach’s leg so they can emerge and enter the roach’s body. But the craziest part of the whole murder mystery is that the roach remains alive after being stung and even after the larva hatches and begins to eat it from the inside out. This is not a horror film from a parallel universe of sentient cockroaches that have nightmares of emerald enemies. You can find the jewel wasp in South Asia, tropical Africa and the Pacific Islands. It delivers two separate stings to the cockroach when it attacks. One penetrates the

roach between its front legs and paralyzes it temporarily. This makes it stop struggling and allows the wasp to perform the next, more delicate procedure. The second sting goes directly into the brain of the roach. The wasp actually has special mechanoreceptors on its stinger that sense when it is touching the soft tissue in the brain, helping the wasp’s accuracy and preventing it from misfiring somewhere else within the roach’s head. The venom from the sting puts the roach into a zombie-like state. It will walk and even swim when given the stimuli of being pulled or being placed in water, but it won’t move anywhere of its own accord. The wasp goes and finds a burrow to safely keep its roach minion and then pulls it by the antennae like a small child leading a well-trained Great Dane through the park on a leash. The jewel wasp is a special type of parasite, called a parasitoid. This means its offspring develop in a host, which is killed in the process. And parasitism is symbiosis. These species are so intimately connected. You can’t have two separate species live much closer together than beginning life inside one another. But it is definitely one-sided in benefits. It’s a closeness that definitely goes beyond clingy. The jewel wasp needs the roach to survive. All the roach gets is

an oblivious zombie-like state followed by being completely eaten from within. So how has evolution not provided cockroaches with a better defense against these wasps than just kicking and squirming? Why don’t they run away upon first sight of a jewel wasp? This is in part explained by something called the rare predator effect. The rare predator effect is any advantage given to a predator based solely on the fact that it is not a huge threat to a population as a whole. Individual roaches are very susceptible to the jewel wasp. But there aren’t enough jewel wasps to make the cockroach’s ability to survive a concern of evolution. There isn’t the selective pressure there that would make it adapt to try and overcome the wasp. Roaches are so good at what they do, and humans are so good at making life easy for them, that it really isn’t a concern of the greater cockroach species whether a few of their kin become baby wasp nurseries. Humans take advantage of the rare predator effect all the time, although maybe not in such a gruesome fashion. One interesting and relatively unknown habit is called worm grunting. You get a thick wooden stake, beat it into the ground with a flat iron rod. Then you grate the rod back and forth across the top of the stake to send loud vibrations into the

Meduse

Allyson Patterson (Stills of Video*) vimeo.com/114312552

ground. Shortly after, if you do it in moist, fertile soil during the cool morning before dawn, hundreds of earthworms come wriggling out of the soil and onto the surface. So are they sensitive to the sound coming through the soil? Does it hurt their little wormy ears? Not quite. Researchers have discovered that this response will also occur when a mole is on their trail. The mole is a natural predator of worms and they have developed this escape route whenever they think they hear one

Endangered Vibhu Krishna Charcoal 46

digging through the soil nearby. The mole tracks them by scent and wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t follow their scent up to the surface. So 9 times out of 10, due to the high number of moles trying to eat worms, fleeing to the surface would be a great move. But that 1 time it is a human doing a weird worm grunting thing, the worm is going to die on the end of a fish hook, inside some troutâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mouth. Symbiosis is so interesting in its complexities. With the rare predator effect we see how the interactions of two species

are not only dependent upon those two species, but on the entire community. The actions of a cockroach-murderer in the alleys of Mumbai depend on the broader community of 12 million humans and who-knows-how-many successful roaches. The wormgrunter getting fish bait by the bucket in the boondocks depends on the success of the mole that has been hunting worms for many, many millennia.

Turned Over Luke Hilliard

As you lazily jog along your assigned route, making not effort to break free from the cornerback covering you, you remember seeing something on the news this morning about rain. Makes sense: the sky has been clouded throughout practice, and the wind has started picking up. You hope it rains – Coach’ll end practice early if it does. Your mind returns to football when the cornerback suddenly eases up, stops carefully matching your movements. The play must be over. Incomplete, you assume: you didn’t turn back to look, but the sound of smashing bodies has ended without the final climatic crunch of a tackle. Back to the huddle now, though you aren’t sure why you bother. Ben, the quarterback, is mad at you about something you said, or did, maybe, you don’t even know, so he has decided not to throw you the ball, which makes the constant running really monotonous. You don’t hear the playcall, but why does it matter? Just jog somewhere. You would be angry if he did this on Friday during the game when the whole town was watching, but you don’t care about practice. Ben’s unwittingly doing you a favor right now, you realize, since no passes toward you means that no one hits you. While everyone is else is sore tomorrow, forced to take those horrible ice baths, you’ll feel great; by the end of the week, when Ben stops pouting, you’ll be able to taunt him about this

One crash rises above the others, and then everything goes quiet – a tackle this time. To the huddle. You are walking back – why even jog – when you see one of the guys on defense awkwardly tumble to the ground – you snicker. You don’t know him well, only that he’s a freshman. He seems awfully shy; you don’t think you’ve ever heard him speak. Tim, that’s his name. Poor kid probably tripped – this practice field is bumpy, and there are even some rocks scattered around that’ll scrape up your knees to pieces. It’ll probably do Tim some good, looking stupid like that; once the guys start ragging on someone, that means he’s part of the team. Some guys promptly yell out at the kid, and the laughter gets louder – everyone, so bored a moment ago, is enlivened now. Ben even looks at you and smiles. Tim still hasn’t moved, though, so you bend down beside him and roll him on his back. Oh shit, he’s out cold, you realize. More laughter emerges from the crowd, but it is now laced with apprehension. The athletic trainer sees you all standing around a motionless Tim, so he rushes out. He takes off Tim’s helmet and checks his pulse. The trainer’s expression immediately morphs from concern to panic, and he presses two fingers harder against Tim’s neck. Everyone had gone completely silent. The trainer turns quickly to find anyone, and his eyes meet yours. “Go call 911.”

It’s such a small town that word of Tim’s death on the way to the hospital spreads quickly. At first nobody knows who he is, but, after a few days, everyone has found or invented a connection: they met his grandmother at the civic center once, or they cut his cousin’s hair. The football season is dedicated to him – you all wear his jersey number stitched onto the shoulders of our uniforms, his parents lead a prayer at one of the games, and a portion of ticket sales are sent to a charity researching his heart condition. A petition to change the name of the stadium gets passed around until it is popular enough that the principal actually follows through: Timothy G. Roberts stadium. Somehow, you get swept to the forefront of it all. Tim’s parents ask you to be a pallbearer at the funeral, and you accept, even though you aren’t quite sure why they asked. Once you realize that you were the only football player asked to do it, the rest all being family, you realize that Tim’s parents must think you were closer to him, and you think about telling them, but you decide against it. Better to just let them just do it – you’ve never minded some attention. By two weeks after his death, though, the story of your actions on the day of his death has grown remarkably – you hear of how performed CPR on him yourself, how you had been with him until the end, how he had 47

Cultural Consumption II Xiyu Deng Photograph

expired right by your side. You didn’t know how your actions so escalated, but you don’t correct anyone – you don’t really mind. Suddenly, you start getting invited to speak at dinner fundraisers hosted by the Rotary Club, the Free Masons, everybody. They all want you to speak about your acts of heroism, and enough time has passed now that the participants don’t feel guilty for having a good time while talking about a dead boy. You’re a celebrity at these things, consistently being told how proud your parents must be, and how you’re such a handsome young boy, and how you’ll do great things in your life. At first, you don’t know how to respond, standing there dumbstruck, but you become a pretty good actor after a while, figuring out the proper mix of humility and pride to display. Two months after that day, you’re even asked to appear on local radio station, as part of some “20 under 20.” The other kids there are brilliant mathematicians, or state bowling champions, or accomplished jazz musicians, but everyone wants to meet you – the kid whose friend died in his arms. The radio reporter even says they should make a movie about you, and that God has chosen you to be his instrument, and you think that all sounds great. You always worry that someone on the football team will start getting jealous, especially Steve, since his girlfriend cheated on him with you in a pantry during that party sophomore year, but nobody says anything, even though you can tell they wish the

trainer had looked at them instead. At graduation, you’re asked to give a special address instead of the valedictorian, and you stand in front of that crowd listening to the rapturous applause, knowing that you are loved. After graduation, you leave for the old state school that you were only accepted into because one of the Masons you had met had a building named for him on campus. However, once you get there, even though it’s only a couple towns over, that building name is the only reminder of home. No one here knows Timothy G. Roberts, or they’ve only heard a news story about him right after he died, and they certainly do not care that you held him as he expired. You figure out that you can’t pass college classes, so you have to repeat your freshman year, and then the school realizes you can’t pass college classes, so they kick you out. You bounce around town for a couple more years, getting jobs at gas stations and bars. You pick up a girlfriend and a drinking problem, although all the guys you work with are dependent on worse. Eventually, you get tired of your small-town junkie friends, and, when your mom gets really sick, you use it as an excuse to move back home. You return fifty pounds heavier than you left, and you bring your girlfriend with you, although she’s gone in a couple months. Everyone you run into want to talk about where you’ve been, but you just tell the last couple years quickly so that you can get around to reminiscing about high school.

You manage to find a decent job at the high school guidance office from somebody who used to be a member at the Rotary Club. You’re working behind a desk for the first time, entering student data from handwritten forms onto a computer all day. You get settled in, and you mostly stop drinking. Your life develops a rhythm. You can live like this, surrounded by people who remember you. “Is this the guidance office,” ask a couple of student standing in front of your desk one morning, after you’ve been there a couple months. “Yes,” you reply. “If you’re here for registration, wait over by those filing cabinets while I get all of your forms together.” You’re out of the parental waiver forms, so you buzz the office to send you some copies. You tell the kids it’ll be a minute, but they don’t seem to mind. “Do you even know why it’s named that?” says one of the boys. “I heard some football player got murdered or something,” replied the other. “Wasn’t he quarterback when we won the state championship, too?” “Yeah, think so.” You are stunned. On your ancient desktop computer, you return to your game of Minesweeper. Click. 2. Click. 4. Click. 3.

Pollen

Jerry Phillips Blue Pencil

Underwater Will McCollum

We lie in bed and you ask me what makes me feel alive and I say something about being lost in the French Quarter, Ash Wednesday morning. Daiquiri headache Exacerbated by baby mannequins strapped to overturned shopping carts in weedy lots, beads adorning wrought iron balconies of the once flooded, then gutted T&J’s Food Store. (Augustine wrote of a Oneness for which we yearn. Does not this longing imply prior acquaintance with Graceone fractured to fit these filthy vessels? [Monica sobs and her saint-child shudders.

They peer out the window at the garden: particles of light strike the greenery unevenly.]) Goodnight, I say. In the Lower Ninth Ward, I wake to cock-a-doodle-doo dripping from beaks of champion cocks’ descendents. Eight years after the storm and these feral chickens move in the shadows of sloppily fixed levees-tripping in unfilled potholes the shape of breasts laid bare to the guffawing Show your tits of frat boys and New Orleans Police Department pimps. I’m sorry, I say.

Words to a Future Lover Joshua Lopez

Consume me cover to cover. Make me the only book you read. Ignore the librarian’s scorn— Dog-ear my pages, press hard against my spine so the bindings and signatures tear apart. Understand every allusion. See the symbolism exactly “as the author intended.” Anticipate the plot twists, the moments of climax. Know that when you read the words I love you they are not a form of sarcasm. Highlight the important parts. Revisit them. Let any white space be your canvas. Leave your mark. Engrave it in ink. Don’t bother with an eraser. Write in so many notes that if you were ever to leave me I would be ruined for anyone else.

Hitchcock

Lili Valcarenghi Colored Pencil 54

Vil a Guadalupe, Nicaragua Lauren Pak

Dios, look at your sons The color he wears is the color he bleeds and when boy who has 8 years callused on hands, dedo to dedo, says he knows rojo, understands rojo, lives rojo, he does. Te conozco, te conozco He knows to expect nothing, He doesn’t hope for much Instead he holds fast, this is A strong grip, a sturdy grip, A hand dealt by the man in the sky because Chico, You understand the power of prayer These same fingers know how to count his numbers and then sum, cradle cousins, sing the stars in the stillness of a simple breath, He whispers but does not exhale just in case, perhaps, mujer She who is lost will need your luz tonight So you stay up waiting, the window is Open in this world Me Conoce, me conoce You lose some, little bird, the air under your wings You can’t hold onto good things forever no matter how hard you try How else does one hear the strength of your soul? Vein to heart that travels only in la verdad This you can see in his ojos, cuerpo Pulsing rojo, boy bleeding rojo Abierto, You gave fully knowing the cost, Two worlds bridged to touch strangers, your skin to my skin, promising solamente Paz through the

narrow streets, palm out My tears can only trail the scars that map where the fire had burned long ago and stole from you through the smoke These are things they tell you to forget but how do you forgive what settled and set Because this is not about survival, This is about living and This sun of yours Knows these shadows too well When to fold, to hide the scrapes and bruises that brought this mother to her knees, You are free in a burning city. Each meeting is cupped with Two hands to keep you from spilling over Each parting trembles, part of myself is always yours How can I leave you, friend how do I let you go? You smile and say This is me for Giving, you are letting go Adios is final but is never quite the end And a mi dios, he always seems to know what is needed, the needy, what I need This time, I bleed, And now that my rojo is your rojo, I will never lose you again Open your windows tonight, child The road is long but the soul has wings that can fly to you in my sleep Pájaro, I will meet you across the river of dreams where you washed my palms of all I will meet you past the sky

Incarnate

Vibhu Krishna 56

Charcoal

To the 238 Nigerian School Girls Lydia Youseif

I drew the letter across the sand. I was not satisfied. I redrew the letter; this time more distinct with character, as if it would always stay on Nigerian soil to rest. As if when I was gone, it would be—to remember, never to forget Me. The bells rang and I knew the teacher was calling us from the yard. I grabbed my pencil and ran after the others whose ragged backpacks were the pride of their mothers. Their calloused tiny hands touched the surroundings without much regret and only much remark; they were always curious. And they were many, and they all wanted the same. If I could dissect each of us, I would find the following (some would be according to science, which I have learned, and some according to my general female knowledge): A ripe brain. With so many lines that one could not begin to count, and if one did, one would find the number of stars of the sky embedded in us. Weaved with hope do these lines interlace, and squishy it would be, for we are fragile. More than you would think because down here, life isn’t ketchup and cars—it’s soil and sky devastated and moving on from us. We are the undesirables, but we strive anyway; some false hope, they say, keeps a man going.

But that’s what you would find in a Nigerian schoolgirl: fragile hope, ripe for the tearing. A coordinated-beating heart. We know how to feel: sad when someone dies and happy when someone marries. Happy when the sun is out and light shines on my black skin, and sad when darkness comes to mute the sun and match my skin. I match darkness, but I am not to like darkness. I am to like men who work. I am to not like women. But I also choose my heart’s beat, like the small dog in the market who begs with the—homo sapiens. I like jumping rope, the Niger Delta when it’s not the color of my skin, peace, and my family. I love rusted buildings and my schoolteacher and my classmates, and I pity their lives, for I am human (that is how I know). And we all love school. Away from the pale factory’s banging smoke that hangs before our town, away from Mama who scavenges and Baba who hates our neighbor. I open my heart here, in school, practicing letters with a Hausa-Fulani and wandering to delay returning home with an Ibo boy. He wants to go to America. I want to learn—we want to learn. Two bulging eyes covered. Eyes need two things: eyelashes to help us see, and eyelids to shun the image. One to remember, and one

to forget. A contradiction; a human. **** She does not even begin when they come with guns staring at us. They shout indescribable words—I cannot decipher what they say, and I am sad that all my education could not help me to understand them. They gesture, and I then understand, moving towards them with the others. The HausaFulani girl, my neighbor, begins to cry, cowering in a corner; she does not like guns, I suppose, so I go back despite the increase of shouts from the non-understandables and hug her. They come for us, and I try to fight them away from our union, but they dismember us and drag us out into the sunlight and we are all blinded. I am to feel happy, for my bulging eyes see light conquering darkness, but instead I quiver in the back of the truck, for all eyes have chosen to shun our images— to forget, to displace, to continue without us. “Allah-u-akbar,” the girl next to me slurs. “That is what they say, and that is what we too believe.” “A contradiction,” I respond, and we hold hands in the lukewarm darkness, comforted that God does not have a brain to tear away nor a heart to confine, but an eye to remember.

Under a Sky which Looks Like Rain Caroline Saunders

Looking out upon the sky which looks like rain I think of New Hampshire the damp the bone-chill the metal bell ringing breakfast on the hill the wet woods the threat of bear the crackling fire in the morning air and thinking if I must ever die let it be under a sky which looks like rain heavy with the muted music of coming song

Air

Julia Ordog Photography

Already Seen Marissa Davis

I looked in the mirror once today, and at first I scared myself; all that knotted cotton hair black like early summer storm clouds against the nape of my neck, no longer long and loose and lightly shaded as it was at the mean height of summer and quite a number of years before then. I have a friend living far from here - she says to me at least three times a year that October is the month for nostalgia. One sees twisted leaves turn gold in drying, dying like dancers one after another in crisp pirouettes and watching this one thinks of all the moments past that were also golden, now also dead. But I say that this is the month for dĂŠjĂ vu. The endless summer ends, as all things called endless do and the cycle climbs like stars and sun the circle laps itself and I see the green elm through the window turn silken yellow as it was before and before and before. I see myself in the mirror as before, without being so. Funny how it is. In other creatures life falls dead but death lives, too. Unrooted, my years move parallel like cloud and sky, near without touching, striking pale motifs in a dance divinely themeless.

Contributers

Owen Akeley is a Junior in the Creative Writing program at Vanderbilt, with a focus in fiction. Born and raised just outside of Boston, MA, Akeley has found his style taking form and evolving over the years to incorporate his New England roots, his new Nashville home, and a number of other travels, including a semester abroad in Dublin, Ireland in the Spring of 2015.

Rani Banjarian loves music, memoir, and meeting people. His forever favorite book is 2001:

A Space Odyssey, and he likes to say that the film adaptation is his forever favorite film, which is a lie because his heart of hearts will always have a place for Exorcist II: the Heretic. Rani’s writing tends towards nonfiction or at least draws on themes from his life - family, displacement, cultural transition, nostalgia - and is mopey at worst and cathartic at best. He is grateful for his American friends’ boundless personal and emotional and cultural hospitality, and hopes that his current state of cultural suspension will influence his writing in some long-lasting, significant way.

David Brandon is a junior Studio Art and HOD double major, He’s from Memphis but now lives in Seaside, FL/Nashville. He is an ATO and loves photography and being active.

Same Boyette is a junior Film student from Chattanooga, TN. He’s been interested in video

production since elementary school and makes videos for various groups and individuals all over campus and eastern TN. He hopes to work as a cinematographer or freelance filmmaker after graduation. He loves to make trip videos as well as short films and is in the process of writing, filming, and editing a short film all semester with an independent study.

Bryan Byrdlong is from Chicago, Illinois. In high school he spent time competing in Chicago’s

Louder Than a Bomb poetry slam competition. He made it to the individual finals with my poem “Pops” that was recorded for the WBEZ Chicago Branch of NPR (National Public Radio). Later, he had the honor of performing my poems “Pops” and “Marriage” on stage at the Victory Gardens: English Class Heretics Show. He’s also had poems published in the Vanderbilt Review. He believes his classical knowledge gained in lecture combined with his nontraditional experiences with the radical medium of spoken word combine to form a mellow yet potent voice.

Katy Cesarotti is a senior working towards a major in English and minors in Italian Studies,

History of Art, and Corporate Strategy. When she was younger, she tried to read and walk at the same time because she never wanted to put her books down. She fell a lot.

Contributers

Marissa Davis is a sophomore from Paducah, Kentucky. She majors in English Literary Studies and minors in French.

Xiyu Deng is from China. She is a Junior math major and art minor and will apply for design

school after graduation. She loves photography because each photo tells a story and taking photos is one of her ways of thinking.

Hillary Good, a junior pursuing a double major in HOD and Cinema & Media Arts, hails from

the foggy San Francisco Bay. She can often be found doing claymation projects in weird parts of campus. In her not-so-free time Hillary enjoys competitive dog grooming, managing mischief, and napping.

Julia Grabowski is a sophomore from Raleigh, NC studying Earth & Environmental Sciences and Spanish. In her spare time, she enjoys recycling, gardening, hiking, and veganism.

Jordan Jensen is a 21 year-old photographer and creative based out of Kansas City, Missouri with a passion for storytelling, social justice, and Sunday afternoons. His passion for his art stems from his desire to capture beauty in its most natural form and to bring light to darkness, worth to the “worthless,” and hope to the hopeless.

Taylor Linn is a junior from Scottsdale, AZ, double majoring in History of Art and Cinema and Media Arts. She is obsessed with meerkats, succulents, and anything mint.

Joshua Lopez is a sophomore majoring in Human & Organizational Development and

minoring in Corporate Strategy, He hopes to work somewhere dealing with education policy after graduation. He realized his love for poetry after reading TS Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Other hobbies of his include camping, hiking, biking, or just anything outdoorsy.

Will McCollum is a senior in the College of Arts and Science. He had surgery a couple days ago and is currently pumping painkillers through his body with the push of a button, making it difficult for him to remember much of his past and even more difficult for him to construct a coherent bio.

Contributers

James Mentz is an MHS major focusing on creative writing and studio art. Science and biology

often find their way into his work as a means of connecting the worlds of physical life and the soul.

Lisa Muloma is a sophomore English major from Carmel, Indiana. She is Facebook friends with poet Anis Mojgani.

Emily Neal is a senior in the College of Arts and Science. She is a Communication Studies and Studio Art double major. Emily enjoys working in a variety of mediums, specifically with mixed media. She is interested in the concept of time and its portrayal through natural elements.

Alisha Newton is a sophomore from North Carolina. She is majoring in Cognitive Studies and

Communication of Science & Technology. Her passion is telling stories that matter, and her hobby is making homemade kombucha.

Julia Ordog is a junior in the college of arts and science. She designed her own major called

“Media Culture and Communications” combining photography, film, music, sociology, and communications, although she’s not yet sure where this will take her in the future. She believes art, travel, and self-love are the keys to a happy soul. She’s driven by passion and views the world through the lens of her camera.

Olatunde Osinaike is a senior majoring in Engineering Science and minoring in Corporate

Strategy and Engineering Management. Hailing from the West Side of Chicago, his interest in poetry originated from his friends’ involvement in local creative spaces like Wordplay, YOUmedia, or Louder Than a Bomb where he first got to see them share and celebrate their experiences.

Jerry Philips is the Building Manager and Studio-Gallery Assistant for the Department of Art. He joined Vanderbilt in 2012. He holds a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree from Murray State University (‘07) and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Bradley University (‘10).

Lauren Pak is a sophomore studying Human and Organizational Development and Political

Science. Last summer, she spent her time as a sponge in Nicaragua, and she’s excited to share what she has soaked with her poem. She hopes to enter the field of international economic development in the college “beyond”.

Contributers

Allyson Patterson is from Memphis, TN and is a senior double majoring in Studio Art and

Human and Organizational Development. She works primarily with watercolor, video, and animation to explore organic fluid forms, color as subject, and the performativity of projection.

Caroline Saunders says “Hi from Hadigaun, Kathmandu!” She is a junior in the College of Arts

and Sciences, double-majoring in Creative Writing and Environmental Studies. This semester she’s in Nepal studying Development and Social Change through the School of International Training. For the next four months she is researching the pros and cons of ecotourism on the in-progress Great Himalayan Trail, and while in Kathmandu she’s living with a Nepali family who speaks no English (uniharu anghrejhi bholnudainan)! She loves Nepal, but her favorite place in the world is still New Hampshire, USA, where her poem is set. Namaste mero saathiharu!

Lee Schmidt is a first-year psychology and neuroscience double-major from Jackson, Mississippi. She plans on using a medical degree to support her poetry habit. When she’s not writing, Lee enjoys running, singing as part of the Vanderbilt Swingin’ Dores a capella group, and spilling her guts about her personal life in Vandy Spoken Word or to her sisters in Kappa Delta. Her favorite subjects to write about are the Deep South, her family, and her relationship foibles (see: her poem in this journal).

Paul Snider, a junior, is a Biology & English double major, who fell in love with nature while

growing up in rural Jamaica. He’s interested in pursuing Science Journalism to communicate to the masses our ever growing understanding of the amazing world around us.

Lisa Valcarenghi grew up in the suburbs of the Chicago, but that doesn’t mean she likes the

cold.She’s been drawing since she can remember, and senior year of high school is when she decided to build her life around it. She is currently majoring in both Studio Art and Art History with a minor in French. She doodles constantly, which is something she’s sure her professors don’t appreciate, but something that keeps her focused. She likes making art that means many things, to herself and to others, and she likes making art that shows what is ugly in a beautiful way.

Chelsea Velaga is a Nashville-based artist working primarily in video and printmaking/drawing techniques. She is currently a senior at Vanderbilt, and will pursue an MFA in graphic design after her undergraduate career. She has shown at various exhibition spaces, including Fort Houston and Seed Space. Thematically, her work explores sexual repression, apathy, and anti-intimacy in a manufactured landscape.

Contributers Kathryn Williams is a senior from New Orleans, LA majoring in creative writing. She has been pulished in The Arkansas Review and has successfully kept her dorm plant alive since freshman year.

Lydia Yousief, born to Egyptian immigrants, urges her audience to explore different aspects of the human

experience--mostly those experiences which are seemingly impossible for us to feel as Americans. As a child, she was fed stories--stories of the Bible, of the Middle East, of her lineage. As a student, she was fed stories of European conquerors and monarchs, of Luther and the Church, of the American Revolution. This dichotomy brought her to the conclusion that there are silent stories or silenced stories in need of a host, and that more than anything the world needed a savior from its self-righteousness, and that savior would be the pen. Her â&#x20AC;&#x153;To the 238 Nigerian School Girlsâ&#x20AC;? illuminates those voices which were forgotten, yet live, and she hopes that her pen has given Nigerian women a platform to shout, to proclaim, to speak.

The Vanderbilt Review is Vanderbiltâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s official undergraduate-run literary and arts publication featuring prose, poetry, and fine art by members of the Vanderbilt community.

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