Lux | Spring 2014

lux spring 2014

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lux literary magazine a biannual publication of student art, poetry, fiction, and prose within the Bard College community. By creating an open venue for student work, the magazine aims to promote expression, exchange, and collaboration amongst student writers and artists.

Executive Editors Josh Corner John Ohrenberger

Associate Editors Art Lauren Barnes

Art Editor Nicole Maron

Poetry Nelle Anderson Linda Dayan Kassandra Thatcher

Poetry Editor Collin Leitch Prose Editor Josh Corner Copy Editors Cypress Marrs Justin Tobey

Prose Nelle Anderson Cypress Marrs Ian McElfresh Alexa Runsdorf Justin Tobey Melissa Van Fleteren

from the editors In this issue of Lux Literary Magazine, we discover new voices, and watch old voices grow. We begin with a question: What is a poem? An artist’s five dreams offer some answers. A pensive urban landscape serves as a poem of the night. And then, another poet’s voice, and a reimagining of Grease. Pause for a moment and look at the grayscale beauty that follows.

Continuing, a reflection on the relationship between youth and knowledge. Three sisters come in and shake things up. A blue house precedes a memory of family. Memories of travel are complemented by an image of a sleek car amidst the commercial environment.

Again, we pause with grayscale. A photograph, a drawing -- both experimental, but in vastly different ways.

The complicated “self ” is explored. One artist offers a portrait of confinement and expression. A poet considers restraint and freedom in a very queer way. And then, two explorations of color: an installation and a memory.

But this is all to say -- we are living in the 21st century. It requires new media, like one artist offers in his digital explorations. Two pieces emphasize the relationship between the personal and the political. And then, a glance towards formal innovation by way of ink and color. Surgery is complicated by childhood wonderment. As we reach the end, a photograph becomes fractured and torn. It is no longer whole, but parts remain.

We end with the work of a writer from outside of Bard. Paying attention is key here, as this poet crosses the gap between specificity and meditative experience.

It is our pleasure to publish the diverse and constantly innovative student work produced here. We can’t wait to see what else you’ll send our way. all the best, the Editors

contents David Sater Hannah LeClair Sam Rosenblatt Tessa Menatian Emma Horwitz Scott Vander Veen Richard Max Gavrich Sophia Schwab Maya Osborne Paloma Dooley Troy Simon Richard Max Gavrich Tamas Panitz Robbie Branigan Ivia Yavelow Kira Buckel Allie Shyer Rae Anna Hample Will Anderson Sam Rosenblatt Rae Anna Hample Orit Yeret Miles Berson Marty Schneider Ben Sernau Maya Osborne Max Taylor-Milner Max Taylor-Milner Emma Horwitz Anna Daniszewski Brennan Burnside Brennan Burnside Brennan Burnside

what is a poem? five dreams untitled, 2014 a short history of tirades the missing scene from grease untitled untitled, 2014 common knowledge the sisters liberty, new york static untitled california journals untitled stage three caustic confinement might be gay installation considering the selves untitled, 2014 karolina 21st century pink blue real life untitled i know kung fu rope song untitled three states i got my liver removed june 7, 1954 world trade center study room world trade center break room phillip seymour hoffman’s bedroom

7 9 11 12 13 15 16 17 19 20 21 24 25 30 31 32 33 34 35 40 41 42 43 44 45 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 58

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what is a poem?

David Sater

I should begin by quoting my father. “The poem” is an externalized document of

“the mind’s conversation with itself, which we are allowed for a time to overhear”. I believe the text of a poem is an artifact. All poetic leavings are as tracings. They are ruins – a synecdoche. They imply a history that moves both ways— as Janus— one that looks both backwards and forwards through time. A poem’s symbols connotate the aftermath of a mental event— that which occurs in the mind of the poet and leaves these markings as its footprints or suggestive shadows. This event consists of the revelations and unfoldings in the mind of the given possessed creator. It is this course of events that allows these symbols their particular instantiation on the page. However, in terms of the future, these symbols imply a hydra with many more heads. These are the many and varied afterlives of the text in the minds of its readers. These are its various interpretive incarnations. Every reading is an interpretation.

Every creation is a process of translation.

Once it exists, it is the work of a reader to animate a text. The extent of a text’s imag-

inativeness, expansiveness, the depth of its originality, and the poignancy of its vitality are as profound as the reader allows them to be.1 This of course has variability according to the suggestiveness and magnitude of the poet’s articulacy and depth. The words of a poem serve as droplets of paint which are released into the reader’s waters of thought. Through this, the text unfurls its shades and manifold limbs— exploring the depth and variety of its eccentricities. It tests and fulfills the permutations of its fate, through these varied incarnations and invocations.

Each mind will extend or animate a word differently. What is the “black milk of

daybreak”, “a mermaid”, or even for that matter “a nightingale”? Each recipient will fulfill these uniquely, and entertain them to different degrees. As water flowing down the path for a stream will find/fulfill every possible nook and cranny it can flow down, so the temporal constellation of readers will fulfill the possible interpretive permutations of a text— allowing its plumage to bloom and shudder. As we have it in the American saying, “If you build it, they will come.”

1

Here I would also like to point out two qualities I believe poetry has in common Often we forget this, or do not realize our liberties.

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with the art of cave painting and the telling of myth. These qualities I would title the documentative and the imaginative. As a mark on the cave wall implies a hand, so too the expressions in a line of poetry imply a mind, a self. And in the particulars of these lines we, as linguistically capable beings, may leave traces or expressions of what it is like to be a body of the waking. We may express the dignity and beauty of human sadness and joy. We may attempt at rivet tracings of the mortal mind and the coursings of its daily life.

This is the documentative. But as the documentative is the handprint mark on the

cave’s walls, the imaginative serves to elaborate their depths. With the imaginative mind we expand the bestiary of experience. After all, where do we find a chimera or a phantom outside of the minds of men? Or even for that matter our “mortal fruit” or the “west wind”?

These are children of thought, talk, and literature. Words have a profound transformative power.2 With a mere few words one may turn a flight of geese into a co-mongrelated diaspora of ambulances3 or vice versa. One can turn a man’s head bentwards or bowed under the weight of an inhuman lethargy – or perhaps merely relieve him of indigestion. One can unsky the moon, or travel down to the river of the dead. One can turn the stars to eyes. I think it is important to remember that the root of the word communication (in Latin communicare) means to share— to consider communication, and the creative act, as a form of gift-giving.

2 3

This we might suppose is dependent on the mind’s capability for metaphor.

Perhaps these are like mechanical red siren dogs.

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five dreams Hannah LeClair

1. On slipping into wakefulness again sleep starts to look more and more like a rare and dense material, something hard to come by. Substance or tincture. Distillation or suspension. The interval becomes thin or immaterial. Like slipping into cold water and resurfacing.

Street-lights blanch night clouds. You go away and you come back again under the sign of a full moon in the sulfurous sky. Moonlight or lamplight gold-on-gold resolves into a yellow disc behind my yes even when they are shut. The sea’s cold is a tethered banner that snaps in the wind or heaves like a body held uneasily at bay. Horizon rears to meet you from all sides.

Disc of the sun, receding: bright distant oculus. You, adrift: homunculus bathed in thin clerestory light, dancing under the chapel’s eye.

2. An oceanic sleep, sleep that engulfs, sleep proper to the dark vault of an airless room. This dream (dream for which she has waited so long) lifts a dozen drowning men from the deep.

They emerge as if shackled, each leading the other, heaving each other up, clutching each other’s shoulders and wrists. But she sleeps and sleeps, aware and unaware of their presence, unable to move, pursuing depths of sleep like a blind worm, turning this way and that, burrowing into its depths or sinking, plunging against the weight of it even as its weight enfolds each limb like water, its current cold, obliviating.

3. This dream: like a flat plane slowly filling up with objects. My attitude towards things has nothing to do with suspicion. It’s more like a careful attunement to their awareness of me.

Before them, I lower my eyes and smile fleetingly to myself, as one does on a narrow path, when one has to pass a stranger whose approach has been anticipated from afar. The longer the path; the greater the distance between the two walkers, the more fraught the actual moment of meeting becomes. By the time you reach each other, you might as well have become lovers. To meet this person’s gaze becomes unthinkable. Instead, you dodge, shrink, rub a mote from your eye, become interested in a dog-toothed violet by the wayside, address the other’s left ear with a nod. With objects, it’s the same: This polite sense of retirement on my part, a kind of modesty in the face of their unwavering attention. I am approaching them from a distance but they are waiting, always, for me. What goes out of them drifts towards me, but this little reserve on my part ensures a manageable distance between us.

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4. Proliferating? It seemed to be: dividing into more and more pieces, veinously, unstoppably. They curled into fractals. Starfish arms or snowflakes or chain-mail spiral of the scales of pinecones. Leaves of frost on window panes at night. Blue flames, starlight. Their ubiquity was starting to make me anxious. Now I had too many things to do at once to do any of them at all. Branchings, estuaries, runoff, mazy silver lines rain draws in the fields. Green scum rising in muddy puddles. Sliver of moon rising against a black disc until clouds, like an enormous fist, clutched it and swallowed it up. All night sleep was like peering into a vortex.

Curled at its very lip, nestled in some kind of fold at the edge of a space, supported by invisible nets of what—breathing?

5. Pieces—snatches of the conversation—hung, dense and fluctuous, like a membrane or something iridescing faintly in half-light. Their conformation was variable. Whenever we spoke, it shifted and reconglomerated. Not like an old song worming through the mind but like words on a page one reads over and over again without taking anything in. Nobody believes how quickly I can read when I say I don’t look at the words but at the way they’re shaped in eddies or drifts on the page. Blank traces in a dense page are rivers: streams of water, fingers of words lapping at the very edge of—what? I can read—more like listening to a shell or hearing the wind across the lip of a bottle with a long neck. I’m not pretending or making this up. Writing is not very different. For instance, last night I must have made at least three poems during different stages of sleep and waking that I can’t remember. Did I make them? They appeared to me and I read them. I told myself three times I would forget, in secret hope that this might make me remember.

Names matter least in the early morning. We wake tangled in breath, have to untwine ourselves from the flat light and the starlings’ upstart racket after a broken night’s sleep, its immense downpouring of rain, its train whistles. We went for a walk. You were lagging behind.

Or, I was lagging behind. Neither of us was speaking. We dropped stones through the grating of a storm drain to hear the echo in its chambered bowels. We crouched on the roots of a shattered elm. We stood at the river mouth where water lipped at flat shards of slate, where the rocky shingle gives way to mudflats. We waded into its gray current.

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untitled, 2014 Sam Rosenblatt

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a short history of tirades Tessa Menatian

three men play cards alongside a river. the guards trace their hands on pieces of cardstock. no one knows how to set up the tent. by morning the ground is littered with orange peels. a mail carrier tries to unfold the present tense. Canada implements a one-dog policy. an art museum/air machine timeline from a moving train. every first grade class labels head, thorax, and abdomen. the sign reads autobioraphers only.

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the missing scene from grease: rizzo, exposed Emma Horwitz

Betty Rizzo comes back to school after a long summer working at the snack stand at a local pool, where she is characteristically apathetic enough to ignore the incessant thievery of the younger children, blaming the disappearance of boxes of lollies on the owner himself, as he must have misplaced the sweets in a moment of stupidity. “Working”, or eating ice pops to relieve the beating heat of Rydell’s August humidity, either or, the job is fine, and Rizzo is in no mood to complain about money if she has a steady paycheck.

She’s on break smoking a cigarette (or three) during her last shift when she meets this girl, whose name will remain anonymous for reasons of maintaining some of the musical’s rhyming integrity. This girl walks up to the snack cart and requests a hot dog.

“We don’t have any of those,” Rizzo says, her eyes directed only to her matchbox.

“That’s alright, I’ll look elsewhere.”

As Rizzo lifts her head she sees this girl, standing in her bathing suit, having arisen from the pool like it was not contaminated with chlorine and dyes, but the natural salts from an ocean far away in another, happier town. Rizzo asks her where she’s from.

“Here, I’m from Rydell.”

“How come I never see you around?”

“You’ve got your face planted to Kenickie’s, last I heard at least, or was it Danny? I can’t keep track. And I love your jacket, the pink one, real cool, huh, real cool. Have a good day, Betty.”

No one had called her Betty since grade school.

“It’s Rizzo.”

As the girl walks away, Rizzo sings to herself, holding an ice cream scoop in her hands.

There are better things I could do, Than go with a boy or two.

Even though the neighborhood thinks I’m trashy, And no good, I don’t think it’s true, Cause there are other things I want to do.

I could flirt with all the girls

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Smile at them and dance in twirls.

Press against them when we dance Make them think about the chance Then have them see it through.

That’s a thing I could wanna do.

I could stay home every night, Wait around for Mrs. Right.

Or I’ll take cold showers every day, And throw my life away, On a dream that won’t come true.

I could hurt someone like me, Out of spite or jealousy.

I don’t steal and I don’t lie, But I can feel and I can cry.

A fact I’ll bet you never knew.

But to admit in front of you, That’s the worse thing I could do.

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untitled Scott Vander Veen

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untitled, 2014 Richard Max Gavrich

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common knowledge Sophia Schwab

When we were sixteen, the most perplexing thing about Marie was that I could nev-

er tell where she had learned anything.

Not the things you learn in school, obviously—the quadratic equation, how to read,

how the sun turns into light. Everyone knows those things. And the things she knew how to do weren’t the types of things your parents teach you, like riding a bike, frying an egg in a cast-iron skillet, or being honest.

It was like this third category of skills and concepts that was either sort of random

but maybe practical, or intellectual. How to fix a flat tire (neither of us knew how to drive).

Game theory. How to make falafel. The categorical imperative. I didn’t know what those things were, or how to do them, and I couldn’t imagine how she did. I like to think that I had known her pretty well—we had been friends since childhood, surviving middle school dances and the like—but occasionally it seemed like there was something I was missing.

We lived in a suburb entirely absent of forests or woods (there were strip malls for miles), and for all the thirteen years I had known her, she had never gone to summer camp or anything like that, but one day when we were sixteen or seventeen we found a few sticks that my dog had left in the backyard, and she started rubbing two together until they sparked, and suddenly she had made a fire.

“How do you know how to do that?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” she said, holding the two sticks apart and looking back and

forth between them.

“Where did you learn to make fire? Who taught you?”

“I don’t know. I just know how.” She looked away.

“Were you in Girl Scouts or something?”

“No.”

The flames were eating each stick down to where her fingers were clasped around

them, so we both stood up, and she threw them onto the ground, and as she stomped the flames down I ran and got the green hose that was wound into a circle at the side of the house. I ran back to the fire and quickly sprayed out the last of the flames, getting Marie’s feet wet in the process.

“Hey!” she said, smiling quickly.

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Snatching the hose from me, she turned it around, and I ran around the yard as she

sprayed my legs with water. A few minutes later we went upstairs to dry off, and on the way inside I picked up the burnt sticks and put them in the trashcan at the side of the house, next to the hose.

There was a small patch of grass that was left slightly burned. A few days later, I no-

ticed that it had fallen out of the dirt like hair from someone’s head, and I picked it up and threw it out with the burned sticks. After that there was always a bare circle of dirt there. My father got very annoyed when it came time to mow the lawn—he liked things to be even— and he ended up planting a rose bush there to cover it up.

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the sisters Maya Osborne

are gathered on the frozen pond’s pebbled edge in the backyard of the old barn house. the eldest: a cracked tea cup a refusal to fall apart. dismantled beauty. she stands in a swarm of blackwinged birds a whirlwind woman. the middle: a broken bridge a repair job. she squats to better inspect the bottom feeders, breaks apart the ice layer telling herself it’ll be better for the hidden creatures living inside. the youngest: her own shadow. unformed a disembodied nervous system loves in a language foreign to herself she hovers at the backs of her sisters her body sits a few paces from the bank she is wanting but not ready to step into herself. at the mention of the man in the red house at the top of the hill they all three quiver not in the way women are meant to, but like the flags of countries in times of civil war.

untitled Paloma Dooley

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static Troy Simon

You drink water. The colors on the TV make a static sound. Your mother calls it

white noise. The remote is broken. So you can’t change the channel, but you watch anyway.

It reminds you of home. Some woman walks in with almond colored eyes, round arms, tight waist. She laughs, then talks. Her body sways like a skiff. You watch, but listen to the sound of your mother’s voice. You are eight years old and observant. Your mother is proud of this, though she doesn’t like it. She says, You are too nosy.

She is bent over the sofa now, reaching for Leo, her dog. He’s a tzitzu, brown and

pastel white. Her hair is disheveled and shoulder length. A man comes into the dining room on a phone; he has an ocher complexion, broad hooked nose, wide flat lips, and a bird chest.

He asks the woman a question. She is standing, talking to someone. Your mother perhaps?

The woman answers him and smiles convulsively. Their lips touch, making a wet sound. You don’t know them, but they know you. That’s your Auntie Yallie and her boyfriend Chris.

They are visiting from Oakland, California.

When Chris turns on his heels to your mom, she pops up with her dog. It barks and

squalls. He says something.

“Your husband is drunk outside.”

You are not surprised.

Your mother scowls at him, puts down her dog, and runs through the kitchen and

onto the porch. Chris and Yallie follow. You too. A ruddy polished car is parked out front. It belongs to your father. He is talking to a fairy. Something he has imagined on the steps. He asks it a question:

“Are you lost, little man?”

He then waits for an answer, for some reply, but he receives silence. Your mom

smacks him and asks for the rent: four hundred and eighty-six dollars. He laughs loudly and begins to hum their wedding song: Canon In D by Pachelbel. Chris laughs behind them.

Yallie wags her head.

“You are sick,” your mother says to your father.

She shoves him off the steps. He falls onto the grass. Your mother’s dog licks his face

incessantly. Your father is drowsy when he gets up. He salaams and says something. His voice is raspy, and you watch him stumble over the hose. The neighbors are watching from their

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porch now. Pedestrians stop to make out the scene.

Your mom stands over him: “Why are you drunk again?”

Your father replies, “I wanted to celebrate our wedding anniversary, baby.”

He touches her legs and rubs, smiling. She runs onto the porch, jerks you by your

arm, and pulls you back to the living room. She screams again, then walks in small circles.

The rent bill is due today. The lights will be off soon. She looks to the ceiling; the room is bright. It makes her forehead wide, a muddy gold. The TV is still on. You are standing near it, eyeing the screen, and watching how black and white static form gray.

Your cousin walks in. Her name is Summer. You grew up with her in New Orleans.

She has a cast on her leg. You wonder why but do not ask. She touches your mom and holds her face as your mother cries. They both are crying now. They stop to wipe their tears and snort mucus up their noses. Your mom tells you pack your things because you are leaving with her. You stare, eating an old beignet left over from last night’s dinner.

“Get dressed,” she yells.

You three are in the car. Your mother drives. Sunglasses cover her eyes. Water slips

from beneath her shades. You are buckled in the back seat. Everyone is silent except the dog in your mother’s lap.

You ask a question: “Where are we going?”

No one answers, and you are rueful that you said anything. Your cousin’s phone

rings and she talks. She cranes her neck and tells you Bonny says hello. Bonny is your grandmother. You haven’t seen her in months. She’s an octogenarian. Your grandfather is as well.

Summer resumes her conversation about your father’s drinking. Her golden hair fans across the headrest. You look out the window to City Park, trying to peer through a knot of people.

They are like dots from the TV, some white, some black, but they move at a slower pace.

Your people are different. They match the speed and confusion of the screen.

The car stops. Your mother is making a noise. Her hands and face are on the steer-

ing wheel. The horn honks loudly. Summer pats her back, and she steps out of the car to switch seats. Now Summer drives with one foot.

You pull up to Bonny’s. The house sits like a shotgun, long and tall with miniature

palm trees that hedge in its facade. Your mom tweaks your ear and speaks. Then she points up the corkscrew stairs. You listen and go to the guestroom.

In the room, the fan whirs above your head. You stare at it, watching it turn, follow-

ing one blade, then another. Someone touches you. You jump and turn. It’s Summer, holding your mother’s tzitzu. She tells you Bonny wants to see you in the kitchen.

Your grandmother is sitting at the table. The table is clean, the plastic cloth smooth.

Her feet are in a warm bowl of water, resting. She looks robust and small. Her stomach set over her lap. You watch as she reads James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain. You stand there at the threshold of the doorway barefoot. You are afraid. She looks to you and smiles.

Her ears are large, skin coarse and loose. She calls you over. You look into her bulging green eyes; they sit like the sun, high and still. She asks you how you are doing, and you stumble

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over your words.

Your mom walks in and announces that she’s still upset and doesn’t want to be both-

ered. You turn to see her, but she has already left the room. Always moving. Her silhouette diminishes on the wall as she makes her way down the corridor. Your grandfather comes in.

He looks like your grandmother Bonny, but a bit burly and short. His nose is aquiline. His body is as incandescent as the moon at dusk. He calls you by name: “Thomas?” You don’t answer. He laughs and walks to the sink, making a clucking noise of wry humor.

He doesn’t know your name.

Suddenly everything stops. You cry and close your eyes, making a tinkling noise in

your pants. Your mom walks in. She notices your tears and pulls you in the hallway to the side to talk. You stare at her, but take in nothing.

“You hear me?” she says.

The bell rings and your mother saunters to the door. It’s your father. He acts as if he’s

sober, but he’s not. Chris and Yallie are standing behind him. Your mom starts to talk and slams the door in his face. Someone opens it. Yallie’s face is like a rock. Chris comes in and your father too. Your grandmother grabs her book, says she has a headache, and heads to the back. Your grandfather follows.

Your mother dials numbers on her phone as your father dances through the house.

You stand near her and look at the TV. Your father touches her. He is on the floor now, on his knees, begging. He implores that she forgive him. He has spent the money.

“Get away from me,” your mother pulls herself from his grasp: “I already called the

cops. Get out.”

Chris and Yallie try to pick him up. Somehow he’s anchored to the floor. They

managed to extract him from the room onto the porch. You wander outside asking for your father. Your mother tries to pull you back, but you wrench away, running. You want to see your father; the cops are there, standing on the banquette out front. Your father begins to cry.

One of the officers asks a question.

“So what seems to be the problem, sir?”

No one answers. Your mother and grandfather are standing on the threshold. They

tell the cops that your father has to go. Another cop car pulls up. Who else called? Your grandmother?

You watch a cop handcuff your father, jerk him toward the car and slam him on the

hood. One of them yells, telling your father to keep still. But your father refuses and lifts his head up. The cop smashes it back down. You hate them. You scream. Your mother grabs you by your arm.

“Stop!” Your mother yells. “You’re hurting my baby’s daddy.” One, two, three more

smacks and they throw your father into the back seat of the car.

You run into the house and sit on the couch, sequester. The TV is on, but no picture

is showing—only a small box with an X through it. Mute. You place the heel of your hand on your chin and stare at the empty screen.

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untitled, 2013 Richard Max Gavrich

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california journals Tamas Panitz

1. a water pattern made by a breeze off the coast as you cruise down the highway, and maybe flicking your cigarette onto the shoulder it would be no worse than reenacting the revolutionary war burning this place you know, were it spontaneous, something necessary in the way we’re given to express–– that is the world tells us what to say is our script (on a good day) demanding to be set on fire to start over, as it does, but we–– we have to elope, any way we can–– or the restorials are ignored, and we won’t start over, wont slip ourselves in where the old offers room–– as you near and say something about the price of meat not thinking of your body, its dirty ideas––

and I throw my

cigarette out the window

on a black horse

maiastra

coming to kiss you.

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2.

Land shaped clouds you impress me

press into me.

I am a simple man,

Carl

Sandburg was right, The people know what the land knows.

Clouds know what land knows, ridged–– and water

what does water know?

What people want–– that people want.

I don’t know what only that clouds lift from sea and

form across land

the way an answer forms.

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3.

By the palm trees, it wasn’t Florida you said but the place you go after. Palm trees in the snow deeper than thought. We were in ‘California,’ in June, mosquitos in the snow; this is someone’s real memory you said–– turning the snow over in the air.

Mosquitos.

We’re always expecting Jesus, that’s neither here nor there, but the memory, the ‘present’ and he between them, just for the pleasure of talking about him, like a peach in motion he moves. Is the pleasure talking itself is: pleasure itself, sort of disgusting

to the instincts.

Coming down from the peaks of California

to tell the people

there is a place

for what isn’t thought

from the introduction to Plotinus, something about the highest point in the realm of intelligence.

They don’t understand.

And he comes before them like a house built from the roof down come from the paradise that is just beyond sight.

Still wearing those meanings

we don’t know how to read.

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4.

Redwood, the gulls the road sweeping low among boulders: culch––

meticulous as his own mechanism

Beethoven on the tape–deck the weather we weather

a metaphor in which one

lives forever

her thousand pieces

in the setting sun

glint,

and cruising down the highway like Dionysus, delicate in her,

red heifer of the valley

open the image slaughter the bull(k).

Slaughter the bull (the gendered gateway) the blades of the 5th violin sonata that let us into her the very image of an image

the bull

weeping

with wild hair

(we seek a referent the bull

in the rock– but in California

there are no Zodiacs, only Books from the sky. This.

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5.

In the sun the conquistador on the hill the city gleam; the sun in its armor.

And a bluebird. Poets have stolen everything, bluebirds make points. The conquistador Montezuma saw and thought God–– and wishing bluebirds were free I think with Ben over lunch he says well why not say everything is Intelligent if emergence (of Mind) is not provable fuck it (he sweeps his arm).

There is always some unbiased reality you haven’t thought of yet is why not I say lash together a thousand bluebirds you might learn something about California.

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left: untitled Robbie Branigan

above: stage three Ivia Yavelow

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caustic confinement Kira Buckel

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california journals Allie Shyer

might be gay might not be a bird might not be gay might be a bird.

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moon shadows (installation view) Rae Anna Hample

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considering the selves Will Anderson

It was a Saturday in March when we all got into the car. My father drove. Henry sat

in front. My mother sat in back between Sam and me. The ceremony was at 11 a.m.; we were only a little late.

During the car ride over, I remember her repeatedly assuring herself that a speech

would not be required. I remember sharing her dread when it was announced that she was wrong. I remember her feet pacing and her voice trembling as she spoke to the audience. I remember the speech ending when she thanked her children, and not realizing that I was one of them. And I remember driving home. She had completed her doctorate in Clinical Psychology

Some things changed. She added an abbreviated title to her business card (although

she left her voicemail message the same). She spent less time typing in the living room, and filed away the once-sprawling notes and papers into a drawer. And the dissertation, which she had seemingly worked on for years on end, fell from the conversation and onto some shelf in some archive at some school to sit and stay.

I have always known about my role in the dissertation. I watched her write it. She

referenced it now and then. I’d come across a copy from time to time. But when she finished it, and for years after, it escaped any response from me beyond basic acknowledgement. I wasn’t even curious enough to read its cover.

In fact, I considered it with with the same disinterest as the fact that I had a twin

brother in the first place.

For most of my life, I have been subject to two repeating scenarios. The first occurs

in classrooms — although it can carry over elsewhere (e.g. airport security lines, liquor stores, or the DMV). It is prompted whenever someone has to read my name.

It goes like this: I’ll hand whoever my driver’s license, or they will come across my

name on a roster. Their eyes will scan my information as they would with anyone else’s. Then they pause. Likely, they’re going back and forth on the idea that has just appeared; they consider to proceed, and they almost always choose to do so. They begin by looking up at me.

At this point, they’re in full-character — their brow is furrowed and their expression is blank.

And then they deliver, in a long a dramatic draw, the line (drum roll, please) I’d been expect-

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ing: “Miiiissstter Andersonnnnnnn.”

Since I’ve never seen the Matrix, I’m never sure if there’s a specific way I’m supposed

to respond. I’ll generally end up putting my hands in my pockets.

The second scenario occurs when someone discovers I have a twin brother. Based on

the nature of these reactions, this might be the most interesting fact about me. When people find out I study writing, or that I have two dogs, or have another brother that is five years older, I get little response — often, none.

But when someone finds out about Sam, a genuine swell of excitement emerges in

their eyes, like when two people discover they grew up in the same town. Suddenly, there is something to talk about.

I can sort of understand why: twins are odd. They’re both common and uncommon;

they have the power to invoke both curiosity and discomfort. For example, twin babies who are dressed alike conjure something splendid and adorable. Full-grown twins who dress alike invoke something uneasy and unsettling — a serial killer vibe that makes you wonder things you probably shouldn’t. Twins skirt a line between ordinary and abnormal.

This interest usually manifests through questions. These questions are specific, not

necessarily in the form, but at least in sentiment. They relate to closeness: I’m asked if we’re best friends, what’s the longest stretch of time we’ve been apart, if I can sense he’s in danger, or if we tell each other everything. It’s our relationship that people focus on — a relationship that seems to extend, in a spectacular sort of way, to the limits of their imagination.

There are certain things I don’t mind about having a twin. I don’t mind when people

call me by the wrong name. I don’t really care if people associate us as one person. It doesn’t bother me if a friend gets us confused in their memory. I don’t even care about questions, necessarily. I’m just not very good at answering them.

My understanding of our relationship is hard to figure out to deliver in a call and

response setting. It is even difficult for me to really think about. In some ways, it feels like I’m trying to understand my relationship to myself. It seems hopeless to try and untangle my internal thoughts about my life from the outward feelings I have towards him. My insecurities or doubts or deprecations often get poured in his direction, turning him into an three dimensional replica of my deepest resentments.

It feels like when you hear a recording of your voice; it never sounds the way you

think it should. Most people, including myself, even hate the way it sounds.

It is also likely that the largest impact that we have had on one another is by what

we have forced the other to miss out on. I’ve never had a first day of school without someone familiar right beside me. When I got into college, or my first summer job, I couldn’t feel relieved until I knew he had done the same. For the first twenty years of my life, I never met someone on my own, or continued that relationship, without my brother somehow present.

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But understanding this effect would be as difficult as knowing how my life would be different if I had grown up in Toronto.

To be fair, my parents did their best to lessen the effect we had on one another. They

wanted us to live as individuals. So when we were little, for instance, my mother dressed me in blue and Sam in red. Every birthday since I can remember, there were always two cakes (one with his name and one with mine). In elementary school, we were placed in separate classes. When it couldn’t be decided how relatives would attend both of our undergraduate commencements (in different states at different times), my mother made the unilateral decision to have no one attend either. Justice served.

In this sense, I can understand why my mother wrote her dissertation about twins

— I can understand why our relationship was on her mind from the very moment we were born. As someone who studied early development, she was aware of the impact that environments have on the individual. If something goes wrong, your child can suddenly grow up with a mother-fixation, latent psychopathy or, worst of all, a foot fetish.

And, unlike other environmental impacts (e.g. household income, geographic

region, or the number of times a child is read to) twins affect each other in a conscious and animate sort of way. The outcome of this impact (fundamentally engrained in the identity of both children) could go in a couple of directions: it could lead to companionship, camaraderie, and a love beyond. Or it could lead to something else: A dependency on one another, feelings of incompleteness, or the idea that something is missing. A lot is at stake, so I understand why my mother tried to mold our circumstances towards an ideal shape. She did it because she wanted her children to be happy. She did it because she loved us.

It reminds me of the time around fourth grade when my family celebrated Hanuk-

kah. It’s like any other holiday memory: in the kitchen, my mother pat and fried Latkes, following a recipe found in the New York Times. We all sat around the table and did our best to follow protocols. Before we ate, each of my brothers got to light the menorah — the candles stayed lit through the entire dinner, just like they were supposed to.

What made the night strange is that my family’s closest relation to Judaism is that we

once lived in Hancock Park. If you added up all my relative’s first, last, and maiden names, you’d probably have a collection of nomenclature that looks similar to a Jamestown census.

We had to ask a family friend to borrow their menorah. I hope they had two.

That night, we were not honoring our heritage. We were honoring the fact that,

earlier that week, my brother and I discovered that some kids in our class had a holiday which we did not. So we went home and told our parents. They did their best to make us feel better.

A few weeks later, we celebrated Christmas. By the following year, my brother and I

grew out of our religious envy, and let that brief stint with a 2,000 year old tradition pass by

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unnoticed.

——

We each bare the scars of our environmental. So much so that it seems unnecessary

to even think of them as scars — the impact of our circumstance is as important as genetics — at least, according to some scientists. And much like our genes, we have little control over what the impact looks like: as children, we cannot control our religious heritage, or socioeconomic status, or even the makeup of our families. These contribute to experience — an experience we must accept; an experience we can reckon with.

But what happened when parents are also conscious of this experience? What hap-

pens when they try to shape it into something that it’s not? What happens they try to change it? I’d imagine that most do. They try and create an environment that supports growth and development — that supports the child. Thus, experience is trimmed and polished (its cons suppressed and problems hidden). But something else must replace it. It is difficult to understand what this this replacement looks like exactly.

Even if I briefly abandoned my Episcopal roots that night around the menorah, I

was leaving something behind that never held much weight to begin with. I have only been to church one, and it was (long story short) by accident.

It’s not that I have another religion which I’ve chosen instead. I don’t think I’ve given the idea enough thought to even go with agnosticism, which (based on my three seconds of research) seems to simply mean one isn’t in any position to make a decision — a decision I’m not quite informed enough to make.

It is sort of funny to think I was once envious of my Jewish classmates. Maybe it

was simply because they had something that I did not: jealously in a primal sense. Or maybe it was the songs. I used to go to a neighbor’s house for Shabbat dinners — they had a child around my age who I’d grown up with. I saw their weekly dinners as strange. The effort that went into the cooking, the tedious preparations, and the concrete hold it had on their schedules all seemed oppressive. But I went because the food was good — the type I was only used to on the few holidays that dotted my family’s calendar. Also, there was something I liked about the prayers.

I never knew the words or rhythm or tune. But before and after we ate, the family

(extended members and all) would sit around the table and sing — holding hands, at thrilling volume, every word recalled from memory. All together. Like they had done the previous week. And like they would the next. It was a pattern they could each hold on to. There was something nice about it — something that made me want to sing with them.

But there are benefits to the way I do things; I’m fairly sure the pros outweigh the

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cons. I know friends who have to drive home for holidays at least a couple times a year, or sit through Mass on Christmas eve. It seems difficult, even boring, to sit in a place like that for so long, to be tied down, to do something just because you have to.

I’m free to move as I please. And when someone asks me if I’m Christian, or religious, or anything, I get to pause. I suppose it would be easier if I could just say Yes or just say No. But when something becomes so void of anything at all, you almost have to reinvent your answer each time. Like you’re starting from scratch. Like everything that came before doesn’t really matter.

Perhaps that is what happens when circumstance is dismissed: its consequences are

replaced with ambiguity, where you have both everything in the world and nothing at all.

Despite my parents’ effort to normalize Sam & I’s causal impact, a fact remained: he

was there, and so was I. He’s always been there. This is what I think about whenever anyone asks about our relationship or bond. And I know that if I were to answer these sorts of questions honestly, it wouldn’t be the answer they’re looking for.

I don’t mean to say that he’s been there to talk to, or as a resource, or as support. My

brother and I do not talk about how we feel. We do not talk about sex. We do not say the things we may deeply wish to tell someone who would understand. No. He’s been there — as literally as that sounds: down the hall, across the table, in the car. But there, nonetheless.

And there are moments, hours, days, even weeks, when he (this is hard to write)

when he doesn’t cross my mind — when he vanishes from it entirely.

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untitled, 2014 Sam Rosenblatt

41

karolina Rae Anna Hample

42

twenty first century Orit Yeret

they say a person is a vast space struggling to live in the moment fighting emotions to find a path in the world as words sink deep into everyday praxis misread misused ignored deleted shortened and edited to spare time I always search for meaning I collect words and glue them together sometime without making sense I read too much into them and project my imagination until nothing is no longer what it seems I used to know I used to differentiate when success and classroom and hello meant just that but now they say a person is a vast space maybe I did not get the memo because it seems as though I am shrinking containing myself on paper with words I fill in in the shape of a box as if someone placed a lock on my heart spaces

stop

being

vast

when

left: pink blue real life Miles Berson

they

begin

to

push

us

apart

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untitled Marty Abbe-Scheider

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i know kung fu Ben Sernau

Columbia Presbyterian Hospital is a fancy joint on the Upper West Side. It has valet

parking. Mom unfolds the dinky manual wheelchair, and I take a seat without question.

Walking’s probably not worth anything at this point. Even under typical circumstances, pride and exercise can’t hold merit until at least eight o’clock in the morning. The day I began to use this old thing was the day I began to understand the rewarding exhaustion of being human. When one sits in a manual wheelchair, one forfeits humanity. The sitter holds about as much importance as an object. People only want to hear from the pusher. What’s his name?

Can he walk? Does he have a respirator? He’s 17? My pusher always responds. All I need to do is sit and watch. It’s just like recess in elementary school. Sometimes, Mom scolds me for looking sullen.

Workers in airports and amusement parks shepherd sitters from point A to point B

to point C to point D. The sitter is the Jew entering a camp. The Jew is stripped of belongings and clothes, the Nazi showers the Jew with scalding water, and the other Nazi provides the Jew with a number. As inhumane as this ordeal might seem, the nakedness makes sense with regard to disability. I once went to a summer camp for disabled people. The counselors put our naked asses in a large bathroom, and we’d all shower together like the pigs that we were.

The elevator has poetry or art or something inside of it. Mom likes this hospital

because the décor evokes a supportive environment for kids with cancer.

I smile. She has a point. It is nice. The doors open, and we enter another waiting

room that flaunts more corny art. I put on wristband number two, stuff my clothes in a locker, and get into the green dress. The next waiting area is a hall with rooms lining one side.

The air is cold as shit. The doctors tell us to go in one of the luxury boxes that are also cold as shit. Maybe this temperature serves a scientific purpose. We meaty humans and our body parts mustn’t rot.

A young guy greets us. He is my anesthesiologist whom I haven’t yet met. He cracks

a joke about being humane and putting me to sleep. We laugh. The bone specialist walks in.

The muscle specialist trails behind him. The anesthesiologist says that I’m nervous because the blood vessels in my hand are well-defined. Whatever, man. I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t care how my body feels. It’s going to the lab.

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I’ve never been under anesthesia in my life. The numbing cream on my arm takes

effect. The needle goes in. The anesthesiologist tells me that I’m going to start to feel a little woozy. My personal volume drops. My mind stops pleading to turn back. A heavy shadow drags me through time.

The roof of my mouth burns. My eyes squint open. I run my tongue over a throb-

bing lump that plagues my upper lip. They had some kind of tube down my throat. A vein on my left hand bulges. That’s from the needle. My right leg is already in a cast. The test of sanity begins.

Forty-three minutes sit between the hospital bed and my bed. During this blur, I

hear Mom say something about anesthesia rendering one a kitten. The weather turns out to be pretty shitty, coating everything with a gray aura. At least gift cards and candy from pitying relatives await me. Christmas Break allows me to disregard my agency and existence with vicarious ways of living. Thanks to the gift cards and Amazon’s digital download capability, my laptop’s hard drive becomes clogged by 30-gigabyte fantasies in which I inundate myself.

Headshots become satisfaction. Death disintegrates into slapstick. This screen is my world.

The cast stays on for three weeks.

Burke Rehabilitation Center is 15 minutes from my house. The old people and fur-

tive stares remind me that my situation is more significant than lazing around. Indifference turns my face to stone as Mom puts me next to a counter and talks to the receptionist. They plan my schedule for the next few months. Hydrotherapy will be on Mondays and Wednesdays from 3:45 to 4:30. Regular therapy will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:00 to 5:00. Regular therapy will also be on Fridays from 3:30 to 4:15 and Sundays from 10:45 to 11:30. They’re closed on Saturday. Mom asks if this works for me, as if anyone reads the terms and conditions before checking the box.

The humid hydrotherapy gym reeks of chlorine. Blue curtains close off dressing ar-

eas, but I’m already wearing a bathing suit. Mom brings me to the pool and asks the therapist if she’s Cynthia. She is. I use the armrests to push myself off of the wheelchair. Cynthia puts a net beneath me and gets the crane. My throat tightens as my limp excuse for a body hovers in the air. Mom and Cynthia smile at me, so I focus on a tile. This contraption enchants Mom. I hit the piss-warm water, and my deep breaths shorten into a normal pattern.

Cynthia wonders how I’m feeling today. She speaks very, very clearly.

Her assistant catches my eye, approaching my wheelchair with two towels and some

sort of diaper-changing sheet. Cynthia ties weights to my feet and tells me that the weights are weights. I kick my leg out from under the waterproof chair on which I sit. She counts to ten for me, then I switch sides. Sets of ten continue until 4:20. During the last few minutes, I limp laps in the deep end.

Cynthia says that, one day, I’ll be able to walk in the shallow end! The smile that

47

comes across my face doesn’t wrinkle my eyes. I return to the waterproof chair and wait for the crane. Leaving the pool requires more hang-time because water needs to drip out of my bathing suit.

Again, Mom expresses her amazement. Cynthia lowers me onto my wheelchair.

Mom takes me to one of the changing areas and closes the curtain. A few seconds later, my bathing suit rests on the floor. My clothes and I sit on a table. Mom’s hand is on the curtain.

She’s about to offer me assistance. I remember how little my humanity matters.

“Uh, no,” I say. “No, thank you. Thank you very much.”

Mom protests. She and Cynthia are just trying to help me!

Brittany’s the regular therapist. She rolls me to a mat at the edge of the room so that

other therapists may deal with an old woman’s dementia episode.

Like Cynthia, she wonders how I’m feeling today. I lie on the mat, and she begins to

stretch my hamstrings. My only task is small talk.

No it’s not. Thirty minutes later, I’m doing three types of sit ups. More sets of ten

create a mild, funny-looking workout. Brittany says that, for now, staying in shape will be difficult. This is just to get me moving until I can walk because my leg is going to get better.

I come up for air on Saturday, and I hear Mom cry into the phone a few rooms

away. Regarding my homeschool curriculum, she has secured a teacher for every subject except Spanish because the school district can’t get a hold of one. It’s too busy building a new gym.

Mom interrupts my YouTube browsing. Apparently, I’m in a pit of despair. She’s

been taking happy pills. She hasn’t even told anyone about it. I could do the same thing. She would get them for me.

Of all the weekends, this one is mine. Its only redeeming factor is the tomato soup

that Mom has brought me. Since inane videos don’t stimulate me with enough shallow, fleeting laughs to render me emotionless, I click on the Google search bar and type, “Cripple.”

This is how I meet the Blogger.

My eyes dry against the screen as his first article addresses phrases I’ve never heard.

Ableism is discrimination against disabled people. That makes sense, though this Ashley Treatment business necessitates a visit to Wikipedia. She’s from Seattle. Nice place. She underwent a hysterectomy, a appendectomy, and estrogen therapy. This barrage of surgeries made sure that she’d never grow up. By perpetually living as a child, she’d be easier to lug around, and she’d never have to live a real life. This happened ten years ago. People lauded these illegal actions because she was disabled.

A fog clears, and at the end of the waning blankness lies the mountaintop monastery

of disability rights. The townspeople in Random Tibetan Village tell me that the journey is arduous, but I don’t listen. I grab one of the nearby field’s poppies. It shall be my tribute to

48

the Blogger. With this flower and the clothes on my back, I scale the wintery behemoth. Fog attempts to return. The elements send cumbersome snowflakes and heart-stopping winds into my face. An inner voice lashes against these obstacles. I must understand disability without taking advice from presumptuous people who feign knowledge. I must understand that my worthlessness and sadness are not inherent to my life. These notions haven’t been coming from my mind. They’ve been coming from everywhere except my mind. The Blogger and I are ready for each other because I’m going to listen to everything he has to say in the face of this unforgiving world, and he’ll finally have a student who’ll serve as his conduit for justice.

We disagree with humanity, and it can’t sway our passion. Even when a firing squad lines up with its riot shields, and red dots dance across one’s chest, one does the right thing. The majority isn’t an excuse. One must always be goodness. My struggling walk blasts into a run.

A fellow teenager may say that 10:00 is a little early for bed, but I have enough

thinking material for two hours. If I keep watching SNL sketches, I’ll toss and turn until daylight. That’s what shiny, glowing screens do to people. I have therapy tomorrow, so I need to wake eventually. I should probably leave enough time to give myself plenty of water.

Tomorrow’s workout will feel good.

The cloudless sky yields a lot of wind chill. Mom says that it’s actually warmer when

it’s cloudy. This has something to do with moisture. I smile upon our entrance to Burke. I meet pitying eyes with cold stares, for these eyes can’t hide. They may only turn away. Brittany moves toward me, and my glare ultimately settles on the bamboo doors of the monastery.

I blunder into a candlelit room, and incense taints my panting. Blood returns to my

face. The Fu-Manchu-Stached Blogger sits cross-legged on a mat. “Would you like tea?” he asks. I know this game.

“Yes, please. Thank you,” I say, holding a little, green mug under a teapot. He pours

and pours. He won’t stop. When the tea burns me, I’m supposed to storm away and say that the Blogger is crazy. Instead, I maintain my smirk and move my hand. “Why did you do that?” I ask.

“Because you’re not ready to learn until you’re ready to ask questions,” the Blogger

says, “cheater.”

“Whatever works.”

No initiation process separates me from my education. This isn’t school. This is life.

I throw on the orange robe, grab a staff, and fire through a ridiculous obstacle course. Fuck yeah.

By the time Mom picks me up, dizziness-inducing breaths have given my voice a

rasp. She hands me lunch. It’s my favorite deli’s signature sandwich with turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. Okay. I admit that I’m thankful.

My next lesson regards assisted suicide legislation. In some states, people are allowed

49

to “die with dignity” via euthanasia. Though this only applies to pulling the plug on veggies, much confusion surrounds the issue. When an able-bodied person expresses suicidal thoughts, Prozac and counseling abound. When a cripple expresses suicidal thoughts, it’s time for the cripple to die.

“Aren’t you sad about your life?” the Blogger asks, bringing the tea to his lips.

“No,” I say.

“You’re in denial. Who in his right mind would want to live with a disability?” He

pours me a cup.

“First of all, you mean denial of the truth. I deny your lie. Secondly, I appreciate my

life, and you shall accept that.”

“Very good. Now, what does the theoretical, able-bodied shmuck say?”

“Verbatim? I don’t know. No one’s ever asked me these questions—”

“Well, people don’t think you’re happy, do they? You never know when the theoreti-

cal shmuck becomes the actual shmuck. Try.”

“Uh, that I don’t have to ‘live like this.’ I can die if I want.”

“And what is our final rebuttal?”

“I’ll live because the only ones who think that I should, uh, die are completely obliv-

ious to my situation.”

“Good. Lastly, how do we address our anger as we argue with the theoretical,

able-bodied shmuck?”

“Well, for starters, we can stop saying, ‘theoretical, able-bodied shmuck.’”

“Yes, that’s certainly a good place to start,” he chuckles.

“Also, if we’re too blunt, people get offended and scared and they don’t listen to us.”

“Correct. It’s very important to talk to them rather than at them, no matter how

angry we may become. Always remember that our anger doesn’t seem warranted. You need to explain yourself. You need a clear head.”

“Right.”

“You can’t be too attached to your anger, either. It’s just your motivation. That’s it.

Otherwise, things get all mucked up. Needless to say, articulating one’s thoughts to thousands of frowning faces is enough of a nerve-wracking task—”

“Then why’d you say it?”

“You little smartass.”

The next few weeks are an invigorating battle. The Blogger’s lessons swarm into an

indivisible whole. Explaining them in pieces would be like making an entire movie out of a montage scene. Dealing with each shitty homeschool teacher is maintaining a stance in the monastery’s courtyard for an hour because I can’t falter until the wind quits nursing the stick of incense that rests in my hand. Large amounts of homework from my real teachers

50

are nights I spend away from the monastery during which throat singing serves as my only source of warmth. Every trip to Burke is another dash through an obstacle course, as I must love my body and treat it with respect. Whether my leg gets better or not, exercise is a source of self-love and good health.

On a Saturday in the middle of February, I take a step. I take another step. These

are tiny steps, but my leg doesn’t buckle. I walk to the bathroom and back. I show Mom. With that, Burke only happens on Mondays and Wednesdays. I prepare to return to school.

Though my foot may never fully recover, I’m reclaiming my life, anyway.

“Don’t lose sight of the real stakes,” the Blogger says. “This ability doesn’t exonerate

you from your duty as a disabled citizen of the world.”

“Of course,” I say. “But I’ll take the convenience.”

“And this convenience only exists because our society makes things work for the

able-bodied. Understand that a walking existence isn’t inherently better than a sitting existence—”

“Oh, yeah. I’d never go back to that. It’s all thanks to you.”

He smiles.

“Corrupted my young mind,” I say. “Plus, I’m gonna get an actual, motorized wheel-

chair soon. That logistical stuff is gonna get all figured out, and then, ah, college. I don’t know. I’ll take it from there.”

“Excellent.”

On my first day back at school, one of the special-ed teachers meets me at the en-

trance. Before I started my freshman year, they bought a Walmart scooter under the assumption that I wouldn’t be able to walk from class to class. People were so fascinated by it that I stopped using it. The convenience wasn’t worth the emotional tumult. Freshmen are timid creatures, and I may have been the biggest bitch of them all.

I thank the teacher and hop in. Fear can’t keep me from using this. With the Blogger

at my side, I’m ready to face ignorance and idiots in a calm, responsible manner. I know how to tune out bullshit. Also, my classmates are welcoming me back. They must have eventually acknowledged my disappearance. Combined with the absence of show-stopping, dramatic reactions to my return, smiles offer an easy transition.

Now that I have school, Burke kind of throws monkey wrenches into my days. I

drive straight to therapy instead of starting my homework. Yes. I drive. Mom doesn’t come.

My leg’s well enough to carry me inside the building, too. I’ll stomach this for a little while longer. Bolting through the 30 mile-an-hour zone while rapping loudly makes the trips palatable.

Thankfully, homework isn’t too involved. My school can’t care less about seniors. I

take my last final in April and spend the rest of the school year as a teacher’s assistant in one

51

of the elementary schools. I show up in the Walmart scooter, so one of the little shits asks me if I have leg cancer. Another little shit asks me if I have face cancer, and he thinks that he’s especially funny. I laugh with them and tell them the truth in its simplest terms. I’m recovering from surgery on my leg.

While I work with these little shits, the doctors and therapists hilariously give up on

me. After my progress stagnates at around 50 percent of my leg’s former strength, they tell me that I’m better. Conveniently, in spite of my countless exercise sessions, any remaining, minor problems with my leg are my fault. Mom and the doctors warned me that, if I didn’t do my exercises, I wouldn’t be able to walk at graduation. The blame rests on my shoulders.

How cute. I receive my diploma from the principal. The Blogger hands me a diploma, too, and I become my own Blogger.

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rope song Maya Osborne

Lupita Lupita a lek lek wek wek we been black been beautiful black been beautiful so so Lupita Lupita better keep your crown at home.

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untitled Max Taylor-Milner

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three states Max Taylor-Milner

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i got my liver removed Emma Horwitz

I got my liver removed. I hated it, so I had them take out the organ.

I got my lips removed. I hated them, so I hade them take them out, too.

I married the person I wanted.

I needed lips.

I consulted with a doctor who told me I needed to have a liver in order to have lips.

I decided I didn’t want both back (liver just for a sexy marriage? no thanks), and spent my money on new eyeglasses.

I tripped on a sidewalk, and impaled myself on my new eyewear. A shard of plastic stuck into my blue iris.

My wife saw me fall, and divorce papers appeared up on my bedside table the next morning.

I asked a doctor to remove the sharpness from my face, but she said I needed money to do so, and I had already spent smine on fashion, and the removal of my liver, lips and didn’t I remember last spring when I got all of my toenails sharpened?

I walked across the border of New Hampshire and Vermont in a daze. I sat on a compost pile until a nor Easter hit. I had already, while sitting, decimated my nutritional frame, so that when the wind and water thrashed against my chest, the hand of a cloud arranged my neck towards the sky as if to say: We are this, look. I toppled easily.

The court date for my divorce is pending. I am beyond a compost pile, at its feet, without the legs to stand on in order to return to my state. Vacation is not supposed to be difficult, but I’m finding that less of my body is not necessary for a healthy marriage.

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june 7, 1954 Anna Daniszewski

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Editor’s Note: I am pleased to introduce to you the work of Brennan Burnside. His poems mark the first time Lux has featured a writer from outside the Bard community. His Room Studies demonstrate incredible restraint, producing calculated anxiety as the reader stares into these rooms frozen in time. We hope to feature voices beyond Bard in future issues of Lux. - Collin Leitch

Brennan Burnside

world trade center study room Four 14’x20’ sandy beige papered walls, 8’x6’x2’ bookshelf on east side, top shelf vinyl records of bird sounds, second shelf seven pink quartz crystals, third shelf thirteen Earth Wind and Fire cassettes, bottom shelf eight two-pound photography books of Ndebele tribal customs and two neon green Bibles, smell of leather, north side 1920s-vintage desk freshly waxed, four narrow legs, brass study lamp, green tinted shade, open bottle of Johnny Walker Green Label scotch, small crack in bottom of glass, growing puddle, 5”x10” window covered by thin maroon curtain, red and black Oriental rug, south side eight-paneled cherry wood door, marble doorknob, brown and black retro alarm clock radio, 9:02 am, screaming behind east side wall, quartz crystals explode.

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Brennan Burnside

world trade center study room Rectangular white room, two 10’x4’ walls, two 10’x12’ walls, 1953 Philco V Handle refrigerator, off-white, no freezer, door open, three shelves, top shelf bottle of water half-empty, lime colored linoleum floor, stovetop, three burners, small oven, one rack, 21” Sanford farmhouse kitchen sink, off-white, paint peeling on inside, three cabinets, off-white, metal handles, brown leather Holy Bible, iPhone, neon green casing, 9:01 am, thin stream of water running from faucet, sound of footsteps in the next room.

Brennan Burnside

philip seymour hoffman’s bedroom Wooden door with no panels, crash bar, locked, window, off-white plastic blinds closed, no bed five walls 20’x20’ 10’x20’ 18’x20’ 18’x20’ 2’x20’, forty cardboard boxes, 400 green Bibles, 400 red Bibles, 400 blue Bibles, phonograph playing “Howl”

by Allen Ginsberg, cigarette smoke, fire alarm screaming.