issue v

campo review ‘17

campo review FEBRUARY 2017

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campo review ‘17

THE CAMPO REVIEW FEB. 17 2

campo review ‘17

the ____ issue love liebe amor elsker aejeong

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letter from the editor Blue means blueberries and the ceiling at Grand Central and the color of the fat-leafed plants with candy-wafer petals on the Cape, but last week it also meant calm and a little bottle for forty-nine dollars at Macy’s. It’s been a hectic winter, a hectic fall, a time of anger and movement and a militant feeling of having to be on edge or prepared for combat, a feeling which was simultaneously a solidarity and a burden.

But the winter, the fall, was also a time of chaos, the way a war zone is, a place for combat and debate, for fighting and shouting, where one is expected to stand straight and at order and where pleasure comes in little cardboard and twine-tied rations. It was a time in which you felt guilty to put on mascara or use a Chapstick besides the plain honeycomb Burt’s Bees tube you kept in your backpack pocket and which you’d deemed relatively Spartan. The overpriced cologne was the perfect resistance against that combativeness, that state of unrest, and there was an invigorating feeling in inserting my card in the chip-reader which seemed robbed of a more dangerous exchange—the parking lot trade of cash for airplane sized liquor bottles my classmates transported in Nike Elite socks, or the twenties doled out for ID’s with grainy images and the word CONNECTICUT in green letters a shade too light to be credible.

I thought as I made the purchase that it was the kind of invigoration people lived off of, endured average stretches of life to jump between; it was the feeling I remembered having when I’d sat the chocolate and mocha and umber sewn flippers of a sea-lion stuffed animal on the counter of a tourist trap at Fisherman’s Wharf though my mother had condemned, the feeling of purchasing a black bra with an intricacy of oil-black lace for which I had no use.

Those forty-nine dollars, I understood, for the 50 mL of liquid they bought me, also represented the things I could have but hadn’t spent them on: a donation to Planned Parenthood, a shirt from the ACLU, and in that they also accomplished what I’d been waiting for throughout the course of the winter and fall: permission for release. However selfish and indelible a purchase it was, it carried that permission with it, as might first jean jackets or second place ribbons or keychains with the names of cities to which we’ve been, as do objects which wear their value in their attached meaning instead of their fabric.

Later we ate chocolate chip cookies for cheap and complained to each other. Outside at the table in the dark is struck me how beautiful she was, how beautiful she had always been, 4

campo review ‘17 since the day I’d met her on the plane and had hated that her face was composed of the kind of features with which to monopolize attention. Her eyes are the color of truffles and her stomach the kind of slant people pay triple square footage to have their houses set above. She picks nervously at soft spot of her hair, a gesture I recognize as one of my own. I think of the day I’d cried in her arms at Kenyon camp, how thin her torso had felt, and how life had felt so fragile then, coming into focus, and how it hadn’t stopped feeling that way the whole next fall and winter, until just then. I thought how she was a new old friend, because I hadn’t known her six months, but that sometimes you could attribute common years to people, the way you could shave off matching college sweatshirts or boyhood apple sauce lakes or the way you had had your picture taken, Catholic school slacks and cobblestone smiles, in front of the red gloss of a hometown firetruck with Swiss Army knife statements or barroom blows to the nose.

The next week blue meant an SAT prepbook and the tiling on the lobster tank at a market on Shattuck and the fleece jackets of men walking the opposite direction up College, but it also meant quiet and the smell, reassuring like the silver knit of a family watch, on my wrists. When I went to a coffee shop to see my friend again there was visible a string of Buddhist prayer flags through the window of a Mission house and a dead-ringer for Margot Robbie tending to the water bowl of a honey colored golden retriever and a pair of grad school-age friends who conceded that the stationhouses in Russia are beautiful—“They were built in the thirties, you know, and that’s what you can do with all that money, give the finger to democracy”—even if you can’t get off the trains and watched my laptop while I went inside to order.

The fights of the winter and fall seemed far away and I was glad to have derived the image of the watchband knit from the plastic knit of the chairs. I was glad that I had actually slept the night before, that I had listened to the sounds of the February wind and cars on the road through the windows instead of poured over articles or statistics or read political graphs as I had in that state of combat. The fights of the winter and fall seemed far away, and though to the sales-lady the bottle was a kid’s recklessness, though to my friend it was a handsome waste, I was grateful for its masculine cologne scent, deep and musky, which that week had manifested itself over the ridge of my collarbone and along the plateaus of my wrists as relief.

The same relief I found in my purchase of an overpriced and masculine cologne is one I’ve seen echoed not only in the campo review editorial staff at our meetings, but also one translated to the works they, along with our other contributing artists, produced for this issue.

While Adam Frost-Venrick’s “An Old Lover’s Ghost,” Tanya Zhong’s “Qualification” and Elena Koshkin’s “For the Love of a Parrot,” all capture hardship, they each do so with a delicance, a patience, and a tranquility which could not be found in their works produced in the height of and the aftermath of November’s political turmoil. Similarly, while Brigitte Jia’s “Broken” and Athya Uthayakumar’s “October” both give the reader an intimate look at high school stress, neither of these works deal in the kind of fathomless fear the fall and early winter’s pieces did. Sierra Warshawsky’s “Bay,” Jelina Liu’s “Photographing Bubblegum Sky,” and Zoe Del Rosario’s “Beyoncé,” all capture this same feeling of relief through the depiction of images—bodies of water, light refraction contained sunsets, celebrities—not only whose beauty but whose presence we become blinded to altogether in the face of nightly news vigilance and wary mornings spent listening to NPR. Perhaps Hannah Eberhardt’s “Cultivation,” in which a helmet of greenery depicts, like those sprigs of elementary school science fair fame, the ability to thrive despite darkness, affirming that this winter has, as Paul Threoux said, indeed been “a season of recovery and preparation.”

Alexandra Reinecke, EI 5

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from the issue “I used to think you could tell a person’s character based on their ability to endure a cold shower.”

“I got a soldier to fight for me but he only fights against me.”

“I love how you insist on telling it. / I’ll / Tell you, that’s not fair.”

“Dried leaf containers, these round and with folded tops like tan pillbox hats.”

“I can’t tell the difference between expensive and cheap. Same with beer. Same with any kind of booze, or something that people are supposed to have a refined palette for.”

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“Ernest Hemingway dies. As does JFK. Communism looms over the Western world . . . America fights an enemy in the jungles.”

“What a shame, she thought, that this dress was stuck with someone who loathed wearing it.”

“It's late / I don't know what I'm going to do with my life / Phone light full of religions / I don't think I believe in.”

“But convenience / Almost like you pick a sour— / Off a tree and declare the whole tree / Invalid.” “valentine’s day two articles to write fourteen emails to send / 02 14 but there’s no hearts no blood only caffeine.”

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editorial staff EDITOR-IN-CHIEF alexandra reinecke MANAGING EDITOR elena koshkin SUBMISSIONS MANAGER brigitte jia SUBMISSIONS TEAM fiona deane-grundman (poetry) katie nunn (fiction) betsy alter (art) isabel owens (photo) WEBSITE DESIGN tanya zhong SPREAD PHOTOGRAPHER sierra warshawksky PUBLICTY MANAGER fiona deane-grundman ADVISORY COUNCIL lindsay webb-peploe sarah morgan emmanuel williams 8

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contributors alexandra reinecke (’18) elena koshkin (’18) brigitte jia (’18) katie nunn (’17) isabel owens (’17) tanya zhong (’18) muppy gragg (’18) hannah eberhardt (’18)

fiona deane-grundman (’18) sierra warshawsky (’18) maya jenn (’18) zoe del-rosario (’18) adam frost-venrick (’17)

models sarah mcclain (’18) chia chronin (’18)

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winter is a season of recovery and preparation.

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food for thought from the campo review editorial staff

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silver spikes by jelina liu

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teeth by brigitte jia What’s got teeth but no mouth?

No-Not that boring riddle. Too old.

Hey. I’m attempting to break the ice.

You Should learn new riddles, man Are You kidding? This riddle’s great My Suggestion: New riddle. C’mon.

Love How against this riddle you are.

And I love how you insist on telling it.

I’ll Tell you, that’s not fair to a riddle Be Serious, that riddle’s so common There Isn’t a reason for you to dislike it.

For Me, it’s so common, I’ve heard it.

You Really know the riddles, dearest.

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cultivation by hannah eberhardt

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dew by isabel owens

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a modest proposal on folk music by adam frost-venrick This is a dark moment in American history, and indeed, the history of the world. There are shadowy dangers facing us from all corners of the globe, from the drug cartels to the terrorist attacks, to the nuclear arms race, to worrying about whether our favorite characters will survive the next season of Stranger Things. But of all the problems facing us, there is one that reigns supreme. No, not ISIS. I speak of an enemy as deadly as it is melodic. That’s right, brothers and sisters. I speak of course, of Folk Music.

Consider this, Greenwich Village, New York. The 1960s. A decade best left forgot and unmentioned. Ernest Hemingway dies. As does JFK. Communism looms over the Western world like the shadow of death. America fights an enemy in the jungles of Vietnam. And at the heart of it all: Folk Rock.

In my extensive studies of all things bad and furthermore, not good, for America, I’ve come upon these reasons not to trust Folk Rock:  Cannabis consumption at folk festivals.  Hippies.  A message of peace, which makes our country look foolish.  So many trains. Trains, people. Are we de-evolving?  A culture which satirizes religion even in the songs that celebrate it. Will we teach our children to become Godless commies?  Greenwich Village is pronounced Grenitch? How does that happen?  Spiritual harmony. Some of our best wars have been caused by spiritual disharmony. It’s a proud tradition.  Rejection of blindly authoritarian politicians.  Communes. (As in communism.)  The rich and the middle class empathizing with the poor. Call me crazy, but we have a war on the poor for a reason.  Elites. The dirtiest of dirty words.  Free love. STDs are on the rise, people.  Rockabilly. It’s not rock, folk or country. What is it?

Yes, folk music does create a dangerous amount of unity in America, and for this reason, I believe owning, distributing, performing or listening to it should be a Class A felony punishable by execution.

It’s what’s best.

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bay by sierra warshawsky

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the straw by alexandra reinecke Kirsten Sibley stood before her skin, in the middle of the afternoon, with a telephone receiver balanced between the crook of her neck and shoulder. It was a large, porcelain sink— those farm sinks everyone had a fit about that year—and it’d taken four and a half months for her to convince Mr. Sibley that they ought to put it in.

She was attractive, but plain. Maybe it was her plainness that made her attractive. She had brown eyes and brown hair and a nose that could afford no more of a nod than the comment that it was plain. Her face was clean and pleasant and the plainness of it made her familiar to everyone she met. Strangers always remarked that they knew her. Hadn’t you gone to Vassar in fifty-two, they said. No? Well weren’t you at Miriam Baker’s graduation par—no? I could’ve sworn.

At present she was speaking over the phone to her mother. “It’s me,” she was saying into the receiver, “I’m calling about Craig.” She pulled apart two plastic cups that’d been coupled in the sink, “Mary’s in bed and she can’t hear me from down the hall but she’ll be up in an hour for her water or whatnot—” “Kirsten! Kirsten honey,” a sixty-something, husky voice said, “You hear me? Can you hear me through the—” “I can hear you, Mother.”

“Honey,” said the voice, “you alright, honey? Craig called me Monday—did I tell you that?—called and said you had an absolute—how’d he say it?—real as God, that’s it. A real-asGod plan to kill the dry cleaner for bleaching your—” “The crewneck? All I said was that the dry cleaner should know what’s bleach and what’s starch and that—” “Honey, you don’t need to get worked up. I mean, that’s why Craig—” “Why Craig what?”

The sixty-something voice sighed through the receiver. “Why he wanted you to see someone.”

Kirsten ran the water over two bowls. They were white with faceted sides and had evidence of strawberry ice cream in their bottoms.

“A therapist or someone.”

“I didn’t call you to talk about that. I wanted to talk about Friday.”

Kirsten recognized the crisp, silver click of a cigarette lighter.

“Honey,” the voice came through, breathy. “Are we really still talking about this?”

“Whatta you mean, still talking about this? We never talked about it in the first place.”

She closed the dishwasher. Walked to the counter corner, where the windows looked out on the 18

campo review ‘17 back yard, and climbed up. Tucking her feet under her she arranged her limbs into a rather oddlooking crisscross sit. She wore gold espadrille sandals.

“So Craig’s been coaching that team, you know, Mark’s team, with all those boys from school. Been coaching them for what—how long’s it been?—five months maybe? Four? Been coaching and for all the four months that Sheppard girl’s been sitting about the field for the games and the practices and all. Been sitting there watching them and all this time I thought she—” “That gangly one?” the voice said.

“And I thought she liked that Bauer kid, that’s why she was hanging out there. She’s been sitting on that bench for something like four months. Sitting there every Saturday at the games and the Thursday practices and—” “Just sitting there?”

“Well sitting and playing with her legs.”

Another click of the cigarette lighter. “Playing with them?”

“Crossing and un-crossing them, you know, stretching them, crossing them, just moving her stupid, gangly little limbs around like some sort of—” “Honey,” the voice said, “the volume.”

“Wouldja let me finish the damn story?”

“Honey, don’t get like that,” the voice said, “They could hear you in Canada, that’s all.

You know I like you much as anyone, they could just hear you—” “Mother.” Kirsten climbed down off the counter, said through the phone that she’d be back in one minute, if she could hold on just one damn second, and went to the fridge. She got out the milk and the ice tray and a bright green, plastic cup from the cabinet. The cup was a child’s cup—it was Mary’s—and had a Dalmatian perched, all happy-go-lucky-like, with one ear up, on the front.

“Mother?” she said into the phone.

The voice made a half-spitting, half-blowing noise that Kirsten recognized as her Mother exhaling cigarette smoke. A succinct cough ensued, followed by a brief apology.

“So the Sheppard kid. Thought she was just into the Bauer kid, wanted to watch him hit and see him in baseball pants or whatever. Kid stuff. She sat there a lot, on that bench next to the dugout, and I thought a lot about how it was kind of cute that she brought him peppermints and that she had a rather large mouth and—” “What was that?”

“Peppermints. She brought him peppermints.”

“I’m afraid the line’s quite bad.”

“So here I am thinking how cute the Sheppard girl is, right?” Kirsten adjusted the phone, “thought she’s there for the Bauer kid and, wasn’t that just the cutest? That’s all I could think about it—that it was cute, I mean. Then Thursday—it must’ve been Thursday—she came to practice wearing a swimming suit.”

“A swimming suit?”

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campo review ‘17 “An honest to God swimming suit. Shows up wearing it—a blue little thing—waves at the team and sits down, first row in the bleachers. Sits down and starts up again with that stupid leg-crossing busin—” “At the practice?”

Kirsten shifted the phone.

“And not just any swimming suit, Mother. A baby blue thing, a two piece thing, like something out of a movie, and starting up—” “What’d Craig say about it?”

“And Craig doesn’t even mention it at dinner afterward. She sat there for two hours swinging her legs and—I mean, she didn’t even need the top half of it, Mother, wouldn’t even need the top half in ten whole years, she’s such a kid. Such a kid and sitting there with that legkicking and no one said anything. Craig didn’t and Mark didn’t. I was tucking Mary into bed and after she finished her water she looks up at me and says, with her lips wet and water spilled on her shirt. Says it all serious like, you know how she—” “With her brow all knit?”

“Yeah, she says, ‘aren’t those for swimming pools?’ Honest to God—with her brow knit and everything.”

The voice exhaled, then coughed.

“And I don’t think I’ve ever felt so bad as I did at dinner, talking over cold chicken— that’s what we had that night, chicken—asking if he wouldn’t pass the ketchup. He didn’t pass it.

He’s always like that.”

“Don’t be rash,” the voice said, “He probably didn’t—” “He heard me.”

A cough.

“Sometimes I think I should’ve married Alex Whittaker. He would’ve passed the ketchup. He would’ve passed the ketchup had I asked ten thousand times a day. And the butter and the salt and any goddam thing I asked for.”

Kirsten heard the lighter click.

“You’ve gotta stop that. Craig isn’t half bad. You used to cry every time Alex didn’t call for twelve hours, you remember? You were a soggy mess, throwing yourself on the carpet when you thought he was cheating with—” “We’re not talking about Marian Tanner.”

“Craig’s just in a bad fit, dear. That’s all. He’s in a bad fit worried over—he called me, you know. Three in the morning, Monday. You should’ve hurt it, Kirsten, the distress in his voice, like blood running over itself in a fountain—” “I wasn’t gonna kill anyone. I wasn’t even gonna hurt anyone.”

“Said when you were getting ready for the Morrow’s dinner he brought the bag into you and you were in the washroom getting ready. Standing there in your underwear, putting on your face stuff, and that he took the crewneck out because he knew you’d want to wear it. And that when you saw the bleach stain on the collar you whimpered and threw down the—” 20

campo review ‘17 “I didn’t throw anything!”

“You threw it, you didn’t throw it, immaterial. If you just could’ve heard his voice, like blood gargling, sounding sick saying how he loved you and that he wanted better for you, to do better—” Kirsten looked at herself in the black of the kitchen window. Her small head and the thinness of her calves in the jeans. “He used to be a good, didn’t he?” she said. “I used to be crazy about him, right? Tell me that. Tell me that he was a good man and that I loved him— please,” begging now, “Tell me about the time I cried over the burnt biscuits and when he took us all to the tennis matches in that cute little coupe and that he used to buy me those stupid evergreen candles from the home section at Target even in the summer—” “Oh, honey.” The voice sounded amused.

“I used to think you could tell a person’s character based on their ability to endure a cold shower. Remember that? When I said anyone who was good could take a cold shower for five minutes? And Craig couldn’t even do that, Mother. He failed when I tried him at it but he called my chest a chest and that’s why I liked him. That’s how I got involved—no, married—that’s how I got married, Mother. That’s how this running business started, running to the day when my husband started a row about the—” “Craig’s not starting a row.”

“He’s starting a row. He’s starting a row and it’s not the first one, either. He’s always starting one, haven’t you seen that? That’s how much of a soldier he is—” “A shoulder?”

“A soldier. Starting wars and never finishing them.”

Mrs. Johnson pulled another cigarette from the case. “You always liked him for being a soldier,” she said.

“God, yeah.” Kirsten laughed. A brutish laugh. Opened the dishwasher, which was just done running. She opened it and it steamed out. The dishes were hot and she pulled out the upper shelf to cool them. “Just about died over that flask he had with his rank on it. That stupid silver flask with the twist-off cap. Remember that?”

“With the numbers across the—” “Yeah, across the middle. A silver flask from Tiffany’s. Said ‘Private Craig E. Sibley, United States Army, Corp. 76890.’ I thought a Private was a high title; thought it was like being a commander. It’s nothing. It’s how arrogant people say ‘soldier.’”

“Craig’s not arrogant. He’s just—” “What? Conceited? Self-important? Proud? No, I’ve got it. Troubled? Are you gonna say that? That he’s troubled? I can hear your voice getting like that. You always use to get like that with him. Making excuses. Poor Craig. Poor Craig. So arrogant he can’t even look at himself without smirking. That’s how goddam arrogant he is. He’s more than half in love with himself.

He’s three fourths in love with his own face. Three fourths in love with—” Laughing now, again. Brutishly. “That flask cost a fortune, you know. Did I ever tell you about that? Doris wanted one for Parker, one just like Craig’s. Guess how much it cost.”

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campo review ‘17 “How much? Three hundred?” said Mrs. Johnson.

“Higher.”

“Four? It couldn’t have cost more than—” “Nine, mother. A flask for nine-hundred dollars.”

“It wasn’t nine hundred.”

Kirsten laughed. “Yes,” she said, “Nine hundred goddam dollars.”

“Listen,” said Mrs. Johnson, “I don’t want you to hate him. You don’t hate him, do you?

I really wouldn’t want that, for you to feel like you—” “I don’t feel like anything. I hate him.”

“You can’t hate your husband, Kirsten. You can’t get a divorce over a ketchup bottle.”

“It’s not about the ketchup.” Kirsten had climbed back onto the counter. Had her goldespadrilled feet tucked under her. Caught the absurdity of her own image in the kitchen window.

The tick of the sprinklers had gone on, wetting the pane. Laughed another brutish laugh, this one at herself.

“Mother.”

“What, dear?”

“I’m sitting next to a sink, Mother. I’m sitting practically inside a sink. The one it took a year to convince Craig to buy me. Remember? And I’ll I’ve wanted to do since I got it is to live in it. Live in a sink, that’s all I wanted, to live in a sink. God,” Kirsten tucked her hair behind her ears, “I’m a mess. Who wants to live in—” “You’re not a mess. You’re just worked up.”

“My life is nothing. I wanted a little girl and I got her. That didn’t fix me. I got a soldier to fight for me but he only fights against me. He can’t even be combative enough as to ask a kid in a swimming suit to leave a baseball game. Not even that. My life is nothing, it’s one absolute joke right after another—” The voice coughed another cigarette cough. It wasn’t as loud as its predecessors. It was a little tired and a little sad. “What? What is it honey?” she said.

“It’s not about the ketchup.”

“Of course not.”

“But it is. It’s just not all about the ketchup. That’s just the last straw. That’s just the millionth thing with Craig. He’s been piling things all these things onto me and it’s not my back.

The straw didn’t break the camel’s back. It broke the camel’s conscience. If the camel didn’t know about the straw it wouldn’t have been broken by it. If I hadn’t asked for the ketchup there wouldn’t have recognized it. The shit my life is. The shit the life we’ve made together is. That it’s worth nothing, the whole of it, every part of it put together—” “Your life isn’t nothing, honey.” She paused a minute. Made a sound with the cigarette case that might have been a well-placed use of time because she hadn’t smoked the other one long enough to have finished it. “Tennis,” she said, grappling for something to which her daughter might cling, or had clung in adequacy to, “You were so good at that when you played at the club. Remember when you used to play with Liz? You had hear beat every time.”

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campo review ‘17 “I’m not crazy, am I?” Kirsten said.

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Well Liz’s in that place for schizophrenia and you know what they say—how does it go?—like blood like family. I couldn’t sleep last night thinking that, about having the same blood in my chest as she—” “You’re not crazy, Kirsten.”

“And thinking last night that I bought shoes too small last week. That they didn’t have my size but I’d really liked them because they look like something the Kennedys would wear and that navy dress I bought for half the price of a swimming pool for the same reason because I thought that could fix me too, like all the rest of the things: looking like a Kennedy.”

Mrs. Johnson set down her silver cigarette case, which she’d been turning over in her hands for the past half hour. It made a light clink noise when she set it on the coffee table next to the crystal ashtray. “I’ve gotta get doing, dear. You’re alright, aren’t you? I can drive out tomorrow, just not now. You know how your father gets about driving in the—” “Yeah. I’m alright.”

“Just forget about it. Take an Aspiring or something. Can you take an Aspirin?”

“Alright.”

“Goodbye, dear.” The phone clicked out.

Kirsten returned it to the base. As she was climbing down off the counter she heard on the beams of the hallway floor the unmistakable small moans of pink-socked footfalls. Mary Sibley, outfitted in tight, bubblegum pink pajamas, walked timidly into the kitchen. She climbed atop the counter. Drooped her head on Kirsten’s lap. “Can I have some soup, Mommy?” she said in a small voice, “Some of the noodly kind?”

“You sure can,” Kirsten said.

Mary snuffled. She smelled like cough drops and had snot dried around her little nose.

She was rather plain looking, as well.

“Hey, why don’t you sit down until the soup’s ready, duckling? Can you go sit in your bed for a little—” “Carry me, carry me.”

Kirsten picked Mary up and carried her down the hallway. She was four and hardly weighed more than a milk gallon. She tucked Mary under the coverlet in her bed, a pink one with flowers knit into it, and looked around the room. The bedside table was crowded with Amoxicillin, tissue packs and cough syrup. Used tissues sat like wilted roses across the carpet.

“Try and nap until I bring the noodles, okay?”

“Will you bring the doggie cup?”

“Okay, duck,” she said. Kirsten returned to the kitchen. The water was boiling for the soup so she opened the packet. She ripped the corner and pulled on the side. The packet fell out of her hands and landed, spilling uncooked noodles across the floor. Against the hardwood the yellow seasoning smelled of imitation saffron. “Damn it.”

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campo review ‘17 The sliver of light from the end of the hallways widened, Mary walked into the kitchen, holding wrapped around one of her fingers the amber-brown silk of a singular curl. She snuffled.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“At your Uncle Scott’s house,” said Kirsten, pushing up the noodles into her hands.

“Are you and Daddy fighting?”

“No, duck.”

The uncooked noodles looked like straws strewn across the floor. They made a pollenlike residue on Kirsten’s hands, and down the white walls of the porcelain farmhouse sink even after she’d run the tap.

warped by isabel owens

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february portrait by sierra warshawsky

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an old lover’s ghost by adam frost-venrick Irene told me point blank that I couldn’t stay the night, after the lovemaking was finished. I asked her why not.

“I don’t let young men stay the night in my house,” she said. “It’s not safe.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Why’s that?” I asked her, laughing a little.

“Jack,” she said, “you know I was married once.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know that. But why does that matter? Do you sit and wax sentimental about hubby?”

“You watch your mouth, kid.” She said. “Or it’s going to get you in trouble one of these days.”

I told her that it already had gotten me in trouble, a couple different times, why else would I be sleeping with her just to make sure that I kept a job I didn’t even like in the first place. She looked at me, and gestured to the door. I stood up and started to get dressed.

She looked at me with her hazel eyes, and sighed. “You know I like you,” she said. “You’re a good employee, and…” she gestured to the bed. “I like you, kid. You deserve better than slutting it up for old ladies.”

I told her that maybe she wasn’t so right about that.

I remembered for a second, the first time that she’d offered me our little arrangement. It had been after a fight with a coworker. She’d offered me one way to keep my job. And it sounded a hell of a lot better than no job.

And the next day, Gary -that was the coworker’s name -was out on his ass. I didn’t feel the least bit bad about it.

She’d called me over, and we’d had expensive wine. I tried to love it the way she did, but I can’t tell the difference between expensive and cheap. Same with beer. Same with any kind of booze, or something that people are supposed to have a refined pallet for.

She’d called me over, and Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” had been playing on repeat. It was almost sad.

It was almost funny.

I offered her my hand up, but she didn’t take it. “Just drive home safely,” she said.

“Wait,” I said. “Why don’t you want me to stay?”

“Because it’s not safe.” She said.

“Why’s that?” I asked. “Does your husband come back from the dead at the stroke of midnight, and drag any and all paramours down to hell?”

“You’re like a child.” She said.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Just tell me what you’re so afraid of. Look, Jack… it was after Martin’s funeral, I started hearing footsteps in the hall at night. So one night, I decided to go back into the hall and see what was going on.”

“And what was going on?”

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campo review ‘17 Nothing,” she said. “At least not at first. At first there was no one there. It happened a couple of times. And then one night, I went out. And he was standing there.”

“Your husband?” I asked, and let out a little laugh. “Jesus, Irene, that is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Will you be respectful, Jack? I’m trying to tell you about the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. It wasn’t Martin. As I got closer, I got a good look at him. It was like something had clawed off his skin, climbed inside, and sewed him back up around it.”

“That’s very poetic,” I said.

“There was a seam, Jack.” She said. “I’m not just being poetic. There was a seam running down my husband’s arm. And his eyes weren’t eyes anymore. Whatever had climbed inside of him had very blue eyes. Just piercing. And they didn’t line up. It was like a Halloween mask. His mouth didn’t move when he spoke, either.”

“And what did your mystery man say?” I asked.

“He said that he would kill anyone who stayed here after ten PM. He said that if he saw someone in the hallway, he’d do the same to them. And you know what happened next, Jack?”

“You danced naked around a fire?” She looked about ready to slap me, so I wiped the smile off my face. “What happened next?”

“It pointed a finger at me, and the skin around his finger just split open. Another one popped out from underneath it.”

She looked about ready to cry, and I bent down to comfort her. She pushed me away. “Don’t touch me! Just get out of here, Jack. Just leave.”

So I left. There was only one thing said, and that was me asking if I still had a job. She nodded yes, and then pointed to the door.

As I walked out to my car, I looked back and saw someone standing at the window waving to me. I went back a little to wave at Irene, but by the time I got there, whoever it was was had gone.

So I went around back just to make sure that Irene had gotten back into bed alright.

She was still sitting there, in bed, crying.

I thought it was weird, and frankly, I wasn’t sure that Irene could move that fast. I went back out front, without a sound, and saw whoever it was back in place. Still waving at me.

I waved back.

They mouthed something to me, but I’m not sure what.

Then, the skin around their hand came unsewn, and hung limply around the wrist, as a black, skeletal hand replaced it.

I didn’t scream.

Not even in the car.

Not even when I went home.

I just dead bolted the locks.

That didn’t help though. When I woke up the next morning, the place was trashed. Paint had been peeled from my apartment walls so that the white space formed the words: LOVE and HATE. *** 27

campo review ‘17 So that day, I went into Irene’s office to say hello. She was quiet, and didn’t really look up at me.

That was how she was from that day on, up until I quit my job.

On the day I handed in my resignation, she looked up at me. Her eyes seemed dead inside, and hollow.

Almost like a Halloween mask.

She reached up and shook my hand.

I’ll never forget that grasp. It was hard and cold as steel.

But even more than that, I’ll never forget the seam on her wrist.

for the love of a parrot by elena koshkin I’ve never known deeper silence than the day I was left alone.

Not one living soul but me In the house that was made for more than three.

The time had never been louder than when I heard it from the clock that told me How much time I’d spent bereaved.

Abandoned in a world of noise, Quarantined in stillness...

I must’ve known this was to happen, Foreseen it, dreamed it. Knew it was coming.

Woke up screaming in the fog-No longer a blanket, no longer solace, It suffocates with its desolation and gloom.

A tsunami hit me and I drowned.

Some images you’ll see forever And some feelings are seared into your heart Some wounds--engraved into your body Some scars will sting for years to come And you will always remember How it felt that day, in the dark.

How it felt when you had no one.

And how none of that matters now because...

Today I knew it was coming.

I knew it but I didn’t want to know.

Now there’s no one left to listen No one’s coming back.

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quantified by tanya zhong The phone vibrated on the marble countertop, and the muffled shock resonated against the bathroom walls. The girl’s eyes flicked down to the device, drawing in a sharp breath as if that fateful vibration had sucked all the oxygen from the confines of the chilled tile. She knew the contents of the message, but opened it anyways with a tap from her quick, tremored fingertip.

YOUR MANDATORY APPOINTMENT WITH THE ARRANGEMENT IS AT 3:00 p.m.

She stared at the screen until it turned black, then brought her gaze from the device to the reflection in the mirror. This face did not seem like her face. Closing her eyes, she dissolved the image from her mind. The stiff fabric of the dress she wore smothered her. It was a nice one meant to be cherished and saved for only the most special occasion, yet she had lost count of how many times it had been part of her mundane arrangement routine. What a shame, she thought, that this dress was stuck with someone who loathed wearing it.

Inside the Arrangement building, a receptionist behind a glass desk greeted her. She had a tight ponytail and an even tighter smile.

“What’s your code, sweetheart?”

“A624100.”

The receptionist entered something into her monitor before responding, “There is someone available for you in room 1204.”

Without another word, the girl turned away. This will all be over soon, she hoped.

Room 12o4 contained the usual sight: two large armchairs facing a huge screen mounted on the wall, and a delicate wallpaper framing the entire room. Scanning around the room, it only took her a moment to spot the tiny camera fixed into the wall, the size of a button, camouflaged by the intricate floral pattern. And of course, a boy. She ignored the flash of light as her profile appeared on the screen, joining the one already projected there. J280017, age 19. A624100, age 19. Above the profiles, a line of green lettering lights up: Compatibility Detector Ready.

The boy sitting next to her was dressed nicely too, and a nervous smile decorated his face. His stark white button down hurt her eyes. The two sat down, sinking into silence. They were stiff, like fragile porcelain figurines on display. She did not meet his gaze, instead opting to study a particularly interesting leaf design on the wall in front of her, shuffling her shoes against the opulent rug. He cleared his throat slightly.

“I’m J280017, by the way,” he said, as if his name was not projected in huge letters within plain sight. His eyes were wide and animated, full of nervous excitement and pure curiosity; the eyes of a child. For a moment, she envied his genuine enthusiasm. That’s how it used to be, when the flashy displays of letters and the thrill of mysterious strangers made the arrangement amusing. Each time, she had attempted to voice her concerns to the boy. “How strange it is, that they measure love with a machine,” she would say, but they never understood.

She had stopped trying long since then, and instead resorted to counting down each agonizing second, telling herself that it would all be over with soon.

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campo review ‘17 “We should make this quick.”

For a moment he was taken aback at her bluntness, but then he nodded.

She recited her silent mantra continuously in her head. It will all be over with soon, it will all be over with soon. When he leaned in to kiss her, she did not close her eyes. His lips had barely even ghosted against hers when a shrill alarm went off. Startled, she separated from him like a repelling magnet. She furrowed her brow. Something was wrong. Someone made a mistake. Red flashing letters on the screen blurred her vision, and she squinted to read them.

COMPATIBILITY DETECTED. Immediately a man in a long labcoat burst in. “Congratulations!” he exclaimed at the two before leaping forward to shake their hands, “You, my friends, have just been arranged.”

He excitedly pushed some buttons on a remote control, causing a series of complex charts and graphs to pop up on the screen.

“Amazing technology isn’t it? We possess the ability to measure compatibility between two individuals with only a single kiss. All that’s left to do is wait for the system to finalize the results and then you're free to spend together rest of your lives together!” he turned away from the screen to face them again. “How does it feel?”

It felt as if she had fallen off a cliff. She had always expected to just check in, kiss the boy, and never see him again. Nowhere along the way had she to considered the possibility of actually getting matched and having to marry a stranger, and now her foolish assumptions of her own invincibility had crumbled at her feet. A small voice to her side brought her back to reality, “Are you alright?”

She realized she had unknowingly buried her face in her palms. When she looked up, her eyes were vacant, but her voice was steady.

“It will all be over with soon.”

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stripes by muppy gragg

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october by athya uthayakumar It's late I don't know what I'm going to do with my life Phone light full of religions I don't think I believe in Late night College Prep scholar tells me “spike” And here I am Writing poetry And all my APs are STEM. And I all my Self Is not achievement I blurred the line between A and Education I think maybe get caught up in analyzing our emotions That the real ones disappear; I believe things on a simple level, a level in action, not in mental justification of passivity and desire for A Achievement.

There, I did it, I smiled at my cleverness And I wonder why I make these poems this way Too dramatic, straightforward means Maybe I don't make art and too vague means something else and Here I am Judging myself Because these thoughts go unnoticed Like this common theme That runs in these fragments Well, here's my bitterness but maybe you care enough to wonder if I have love? I think I do. I believe in it, do I? I do, even though I question if. Phone light, late night? Yes, question everything. I relearn progress. There is cynicism in this poem, no? I send love, I know that it's likely more needed. I suspect, however, that this cynicism or bitterness, is needed too– To express my suppressed thought Validate me.

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window by isabel owens

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smoky love by katie nunn I was so proud of the apartment that I bought by myself. 25, living on my own, first real job out of college, and I had finally saved enough money to buy myself a beautiful apartment in New York City.

During this time I was working as a lawyer in a start up firm. I was working long hours at an office, enjoying seeing my savings account slowly increase. I would have moments of remembering what interest rates were, and that all the adulting I was doing at 25 was hopefully going to pay off. I had felt the nights of coffee and exhaustion slumped over a computer were finally paying off. While all my college friends wandered around the City hopping from job to job, I had settled down, without even going to graduate school.

I was proud of myself.

The apartment, I made sure, reflected this. It was impeccably clean, with modern furniture. The furnishings were a mix of classy and tasteful, yet quirky. I made sure that my apartment was, needless to say, a reflection of me. A reflection of my work, my pride. For the first time in my life I was proud of myself.

When Jonathan stepped into my apartment the first time he laughed and told me it was “pretentious” but also “completely and utterly reflective of me”. I laughed, thinking it was a joke, and when he didn’t laugh back I got angry, telling him how I had invited him to my home, how dare he tell me that it ‘pretentious?’ It was cultured! I told him. I was not pretentious, I was proud of myself. And after all, if you're not a little pretentious, then you won’t be successful.

Self-interest is a catalyst for success. Passion and love for the self.

I met Jonathan through a friend at a party I had unwillingly gone to. My old college friend, who, when I was a freshman I smoked a lot of weed with, threw a spring party. She ran into me at a Starbucks, and practically forced me to come. I hadn’t seen her in years. Somehow I found myself there that Friday night, surrounded by what looked and smelled like cocaine, however, I wasn’t sure, and when I asked the girl who’s it seemed to be looked at me and laughed. I wanted to get the fuck out of there. I suddenly had a feeling of panic rush over me, as if the couch I had been sitting on was contaminated.

I rushed out onto the balcony and lit a cigarette. That’s the only way I’m still not really grown up. I’m addicted to smoking. I started when I was 11 and it continued on, off and on. I’ve tried getting help with it but I can’t seem to stop.

A man came out and sat with me on the balcony. He looked like he had just come from fishing. He had a chiseled jaw, blue eyes, and stubble. He had on only a flannel and khaki shorts, in a cold winter New York City night. I looked down at his legs, which seemed fine. He didn’t look at me while we sat out, watching the wind whip us. I thought he didn’t see me. I was just about to go home when he offered me his cigarette.

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campo review ‘17 “Oh thanks”. I lit it and leaned against the terrace of my old friend’s brownstone, looking at him not meeting my gaze. “How do you know Celeste?” I asked.

“I don’t. I know Ray, who is friends with Celeste.”

“Oh.” We said nothing for awhile, and my hands were turning to icicles. I was about to walk to the closest subway and catch a ride home, longing for the feel of heat, socks and a bed, when the man who offered me a cigarette grabbed my arm and said: “Do you want to get coffee?”

“Sure”. I quickly said. I was freezing, and something hot was all I wanted.

“My name’s Greta” I introduced myself.

“Jonathan”.

“What do you do, Greta?” He asked, emphasizing my name as if to remember it.

“I’m a lawyer”.

“What do you practice?”

“Environmental law” “An environmental lawyer that smokes, that’s so interesting” he said jokingly. I looked at him strangely, and wondered why he wanted to go out with me. If it was a ploy to date rape me.

The night passed in a blur. He had come to New York City looking to go to graduate school at Columbia, but halfway through his sophomore year he realized he couldn’t swing the tuition. He dropped out and started to work for a technology company that seemed incredibly boring. He seemed disinterested in what he did. He ran every day, which surprised me because he also smoke.

He got me drunk. I didn’t realize it until the morning after, but it was the first time I had been drunk since college. I hated the feeling. I was hungover.

That night we went back to my apartment. We talked until early in the morning, and then had rough sex in the kitchen. I told him I hadn’t had sex in a long time, and a lot of other embarrassing things about me. He told me it was okay.

We started dating. We dated for three years.

I’m 30 now and I’m sitting in a similar bar, at the other side of the City, staring through the smoke of my cigarette. I’m sure my lungs are black not only with smoke but with the disappointment and rage that comes along with missed opportunities.

He lived in my apartment. A place I was proud. He munched off my salary. He was inside of me. He was inside of her.

I had found him having sex with another woman in my bed, in my apartment, the one I pay for. I wondered what it felt like, his dick inside her tight canal. The guilt he must of felt. The knowledge he was married to one of the most successful millennials yet it wasn’t enough. He had to have more.

I left him. I left the person I spent every waking moment with. The hardest working person I had known did something that was harder. Loved herself. The bartender had a figure like his, stout, chiseled, impossible not to love. The place even looks like him.

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southwest by maya jenn

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sticky rice shoulders by alexandra reinecke There was the issue of the wool coats. Both girls wore them and they’d come off the corner with them heavy on their ballerina bodies. One was olive-skinned, tall for her age and with green eyes often mistaken for brown. The other was a half-Asian girl, with a thinness of torso common to the South coast of Japan, and the dark brown hair reserved to Maine, United States. The former made a deal of arranging her scarf over the triangle of her chair back.

“Is this okay?” asked the first girl to the second.

“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” said the second girl to her water glass. A pause arose and the second girl took her fork from her paper napkin, and took, one at a time with the silver tip, four ice cubes onto her bread plate.

“I don’t know.” Sabine pushed her fork at the ice. “Would you rather we went to Corby’s?”

“I don’t know,” said the first girl, Elizabeth. Elizabeth for the queen and Beth for short, though she looked French and was not cold enough, in feature or speech, for the quarter English blood that turned white, that minute, when she pressed her finger pads on the wood grain of the table. “I don’t know if I’d wanted Corby’s. I always think it’s too boring, too farm-like, what with their yogurt with the cream layer and the calf picture, the black and white one, hung beside the row of seltzer bottles at the bar—” “But you wish we’d gone there,” said Sabine.

“No,” said Beth.

“Yeah you do. Anytime we go anywhere else you wish we’d gone there.”

A container, light brown and made of folded leaves, was brought to the table. It was set, with some difficulty, between the towers of the two water glasses and Beth’s wallet.

Sabine adjusted her coat on her chair back. It was a camel colored coat and the only type not looked down upon in the football stands. Hers had a few uncooked popcorn kernels in the seam of the right hand pocket and three pink licorice tablets, should anyone question her attendance.

Beth, too, adjusted her coat, hers gray, and moved the cashmere scarf from the right triangle of the chair back to the left. “Should we order?”

“Let me look a minute at the menu.”

“Can’t we both get the chicken again?”

“Yeah.” Beth moved her calfskin wallet to her lap and put her hand up, as one would wave a train, at the restaurant isle. There were a dozen total sum tables in the room, spread like separate islands as though to exaggerate its size. The room was very blue and small and might be called low-end for the worn places in the corners where ceiling met wall and wall met floor, but 37

campo review ‘17 there was a gold mirror outside the bathroom and pleasant prints on the walls of elephants and everyone inside was happy.

The chicken was ordered with sticky rice and Thai iced coffee and cucumber salad and Sabine confused the girl with asking for more rice cakes.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Beth was saying.

“Yes it was,” replied said Sabine.

“How’s a box of salted caramels bad, Bean?”

Sabine leaned forward in her chair. “It’s not the caramels, it’s Mark standing by the passenger side of my car in the lot and with a lawn of peonies bundled in his arms. That’s bad.”

“Not bad as the Apple Incident,” said Beth, pressing her English finger pads back into the table, thinking, with little to no nostalgia, of the three crates of apples Mark had put in Sabine’s car trunk after that day at Stuart Farm, and the Washington apple tart which had made crumbs of the passenger side floor.

“Fine. Maybe it wasn’t. But I don’t even like salted caramels.” Sabine broke a shrimp chip in two over her plate. “I don’t even like Mark for that matter.”

“Yeah you do.”

“Like a dog, yes. I like him as a dog. I’ve decided it like that. That he’s some sort of wellmeaning Golden Retriever.” Sabine broke off another bit of her shrimp chip. “But don’t you think he’s too nice?” she prompted, “Don’t you think he’s too much like a dog?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do know. You do know. Didn’t I tell you last week about the incident?”

“Not that I remember,” said Beth. She knew all such mentioned incidents to center on Sabine’s supposed awkwardness, a trait she found, for two years of late afternoon ballet class and two years of early dinner and seltzer at Corby’s, unapparent in her friend.

“Well there was this airplane over the football field,” Sabine said, holding her third shrimp chip over her plate to demonstrate the plane’s position, “just hanging, I don’t know, maybe a hundred feet up? Not even a hundred. Hanging low as the geese fly over the field. You know what I mean, don’t you? With the V-arrangement of theirs over the goal posts or the forty yard line or wherever they decide to—” “Only a hundred feet?” asked Beth.

“A hundred. Two hundred. Anyway, I’m pointing at the airplane, just trying to point it out so everyone’d see it. My hair all pulled back and messed from running you know and in my exercise clothes with my arm extended something like a mile—” “You want more water?”

“So my arm’s out a mile and everyone’s looking at me from the track and the plane’s gone by the time everyone’s finished the run. There’s white through the sky where it’d flown, and it had been there, gray and sure, but no one’d seen it. They’d only seen my arm out a mile and the word airplane from my mouth and—” “So you don’t—”

38

campo review ‘17 “They’ll bring coffee.” She takes another chip. “Well a skein of geese come just then, of course, so everyone thinks I mistook one of them for an airplane and Matt Whittaker’s asking me if I’d bring him a peanut pack next time I migrate to Vermont—” “Just one water,” said Beth.

The waiter filled Beth’s glass and set down before them two large, bowl-like glasses of Thai iced coffee. The coffee was dark, almost black, at the bottom, and grew gradually in hue from very dark brown until the top of the glass, where a layer of white, cream-heavy milk sat unstirred.

“Sorry. Whittaker said what?”

Sabine set aside her bread plate and pulled her bowl-sized Thai iced coffee toward the lip of the table. “Never mind what Whittaker said. Mark’s standing there, muttering ‘Alis grave nil, Bean, alis grave nil.’”

Beth took her straw and, with little to no deference, stirred the milk white top of her coffee into the dark bottom. “What’s that one?”

“Nothing’s heavy with wings,” said Sabine, copying Beth’s action with the coffee straw.

“And this in his Yale sweatshirt and his Latin—” “I’m starving,” said Beth.

“Were you not just listening at all?” said Sabine.

“Yes, Bean.”

“Don’t pull that ‘yes, Bean’ thing.” Sabine looked into the bowl of her Thai iced coffee.

“What’d I just say?”

“Something about Canada geese and Whittaker and Mark being the New Haven version of Julius Caesar.”

“Fine,” said Sabine.

“Fine what?”

“Just fine.”

First came the chicken skewers, a color between tan and orange, thin and with definite black lines from grilling, and the peanut sauce in little containers, these containers not dried leaf like the shrimp chip container but green, young banana leaf. Then was the cucumber salad, fresh and translucent and the sticky rice, again in dried leaf containers, these round and with folded tops like tan pillbox hats.

“You start,” Beth took four of the seven chicken skewers from the plate and set them before Sabine.

“Thanks.” Sabine took a bite of her sticky rice from the folded, dried leaf container and then, with an iced coffee sip to follow, stretched her arms out over the table. She wore a long sleeved, tan colored leotard, a shade darker than her skin. “So,” she said, her words marbled with rice, “You gonna tell me what happened Thursday?”

“Fine,” said Beth in a voice seeming to recognize, for the first time, the exhaustion of its body. There had been three hours of chaseé and plié and Russian pas de chat with an instructor who expected muscle, which often feels more marble than flesh, to fold like clay.

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campo review ‘17 Around the room were various plants: fronds and ferns and other dark green things which they’d put in the restaurant to implant the exoticism of Babylon and Phuket into the small Massachusetts room.

“If you want to know about Nick you could’ve just asked about him.”

“I didn’t think you’d—” “So Whittaker told you.”

“No,” said Sabine, putting the tan top back on her container of sticky rice, “I saw you.

Weren’t you in your car Thursday? The dark green car, worn, with the tan leather seats and your coat over the—” “Whittaker told you.”

“No he didn’t.”

“We weren’t even in my car.”

Sabine drank the rest of her iced coffee. “Fine. Whittaker told me because Nick told him.

You’re not supposed to know Nick told Whittaker, though, or that he told me so you can’t—” “I know. It’s fine.”

“Well, how was it?”

“Fine.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means it was fine.”

Sabine looked across the table at Beth’s pink cashmere arm, the left one, where the very small apple cider stain spotted the sleeve. Beth instinctively put it down.

“What’s with your arm?” asked Sabine.

“Nothing’s with my arm.”

Sabine ate the remaining two chicken skewers on her plate, the container of sticky rice and the cucumber salad with peanut sauce. She checked her watch, a small wristwatch with a thin leather band, then put her scarf, white and knit, over her coat. “I have to be at house before six-thirty with John’s cough drops and—” “Okay, okay, Bean. It was the backseat of his car, with his wool coat on the seat and mine over so no one’d see and— Beth paused to tuck her hair behind her ears.

“And afterward he bought us that apple cider they sell in the glass jars—you know the ones with all the cuts in them?—and we went to Whittaker’s to borrow the stove and heat it in a pan. And Whittaker only had cheap Styrofoam cups so we brought them out the car and had the cider and talked a while and—” A preemptive twist of her pearl stud earring.

“And he wanted to take my sweater off again but I told him to leave it so we just sat a while there with our wool coats on the tan leather. He tried again and I told him I’d rather talk or I’d go home, if he’d drive me, so then he stopped it, and he told me it was only that he liked my shoulders. He liked the way they slope back from my collarbone, he said, they look like the creases in the bottom of those bay scallop shells—” 40

campo review ‘17 “And I said they didn’t but he insisted and told me a haiku he’d heard somewhere: Collar wool and tan/ shoulders born of Providence/ ridged cashmere shell. And we sat a while more in the car with the wool coats and the apple cider and mine getting cold the whole time because I had it in the holder and he kept telling me over and over how he liked my shoulders.”

Sabine checked her watch. “That’s nice.”

“It’s not nice, Bean. I asked him whether he liked me and he said he liked my shoulders and my coat and how soft my sweater was. How I kept that plastic snow remover stick in the glove compartment with the first aid kit. Talked about the idea of not loving things and told me—holding my shoulders the whole time—this inane story about how he loved his tennis racket press but that he’d had to let it go because you couldn’t love a thing you keep hanging in the garage. He said he liked the idea of not loving things, Bean—” “Not loving them?”

“Right. Not loving them. He said it diminished the object in question, loving it. That it took away from its pure beauty he said, Bean. But you know he really meant that loving me would have ruined the beauty of my shoulders, I knew it as he told the stupid tennis racket story, and as I sipped my cold cider there on the tan leather seat.”

“And I tried not to cry then. I tried to think of making my face marble but I tasted salt in my mouth before I could stop it and I put my wet face it in the crook of his wool coat, at his stupid, wide collegiate shoulder. And he told me to drink my cider and not to cry and another innate story, about his tennis instructor.”

Sabine again checked her watch.

“But I cried and we didn’t talk the whole while he drove me home and when he let me out he leaned across me with his stupid wool shoulder and some of the cider spilled on my arm.”

Sabine stood from the table.

Beth took her new calfskin wallet from it. She took out money for the week, because they went to an early dinner every week, and switched off who paid. She put four bills on the table and some change and took a last sip of her Thai iced coffee.

On the corner they could see Corby’s across the street, and both girls thought how it wasn’t boring or too farm-like, what with the cream layer yogurt and layer and the calf picture, the black and white one, hung beside the row of seltzer bottles at the bar. The Thai restaurant hadn’t been like Corby’s. Next time, they thought, they’d meet again at Corby’s under the picture neither one would admit to the other they liked.

“Corby’s would’ve been nice,” said Beth.

“Yes,” said Sabine.

“I wish I hadn’t stained it,” Beth said, after they’d been standing, looking across the street, where late afternoon rocked like dirtied gray dishwasher between the buildings, in the wind, a while. Looking at her sleeve, the apple cider stain.

Sabine smiled tightly. “It’s okay. You have lots of nice sweaters. And scarves. Oh, that lovely white scarf of yours with the knit like sticky rice at your shoulders, so beautiful—” She stepped into her car. Closed the door without slamming it, careful not to make anything but a 41

campo review ‘17 meek sound in that time so fragile, so raw, for she knew—for two years of ballet class and two years of early dinner and seltzer at Corby’s—what Beth had really meant in her small voice and for it she felt in her stomach a sharp pain, like the skip of a razor, like a gash maroon, or plum, telling her to feel sorry.

february 1, 2017 by athya uthayakumar Wouldn’t you want to be the object of an old man’s Innocent delusion? Innocent meaning you Catch a hold of a shape That is not truth In the mind But convenience Almost like you pick a sour— Off a tree and declare the whole tree Invalid.

Little delusions Like appreciating one Like you like the way it fits in your mouth When others are around the see it Hear it But whatever reality is— Coalition of perspectives?— Disagrees.

Is it so?

I don’t know my honest answer to either Question.

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nylon jacket, royal blue by sierra warshawsky

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a micro-play by fiona deane-grundman JUNE, a high school girl, walks alone through an abandoned house. It is late Halloween night. She is disoriented and tipsy.

JUNE January, Is death like- like one big Halloween? (laughs) We used to come here today. I was too scared but you said to hold your hand and if anything bad happened to close my eyes and squeeze it tight and it would all be ok. Nothing bad ever happened when I was holding your hand.

A rustling sound. JUNE starts.

JUNE Who’s there?

Some asshole in a costume. Are you trying to scare me? Leave me the fuck alone.

JANUARY Thought I’d get a warmer welcome.

JANUARY, the realistic looking ghost of June’s dead best friend, steps out of the shadows.

JUNE This isn’t/ JANUARY This is happening.

JUNE Happening/you aren’t real.

JANUARY If I’m not real then why are you talking to me?

JUNE I talk to you all the time. That doesn’t mean you’re real.

JUNE waits for JANUARY to hopefully disappear, a figment of her drunken imagination.

Why won’t you go?

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JANUARY Fine. But first, touch me.

JUNE No. JANUARY Please. I swear I’ll go. Just touch me.

If I’m not real, it doesn’t matter. If you’re imagining meJUNE If I “touch you” will you leave me alone?

JANUARY When you talk to me, don’t you wish I talked back? Don’t you wish I could be with you, and hold your hand? You never have to be scared anymore, because I’m back.

I don’t want you to come with me. I want to go with you. Let me in, June. This is what you’ve always wanted.

JUNE reaches slowly out to touch JANUARY. She pulls her hand back upon contact.

JUNE No. I can’t. You’ll ruin me.

JANUARY Please let me stay.

JUNE Stay dead.

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campo review ‘17

photographing bubblegum sky by jelina liu

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campo review ‘17

tango by brigitte jia Love is a dangerous game, they say And the spider knows it best. He Crawls past limp carcasses, those like him who were daring Who dared to profess their Love. Their legs Frozen forever; they crossed the line which is not to be crossed She spies him and he steps into her space. She takes a running jump--Leap---and he falls away onto the leaf below, pulling his appendages Dancing to save his life. She starts once more, intent On halting him in his tracks, but he is nimble and he falls, falls once more In the peril of his courting dance The female strikes. Misses, concedes momentary defeat, Yields to his advances and allows him his passion Halting dance, hesitant breath, a pause--A continuance, an ending as she Snatches, and ends the dance. Another carcass

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campo review ‘17

beyoncé by zoe del rosario

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campo review ‘17

broken by brigitte jia humans are supposed to feel things but all there is is work and more work no time to feel things or think things no energy for sweet or considerate no humanness. dead inside? tired and hungry i’m so tired and hungry eye bags deeper than the grand canyon and just as wide backache headache eyeache heartache breathe but there’s no air to fill lungs, flirt but there’s only jitters no butterflies to cause them, just coffee and lack of sleep valentines day two articles to write fourteen emails to send 02 14 but there’s no hearts no blood only caffeine and tylenol, running on fumes and loathing too fat too dumb too tired too hyper too sad eat for joy, sleep to avoid confronting lack of feelings eat less to be attractive to boys but give up prep books don’t care what you look like wonder about meaning to life? none? math problems? boys don’t like you? neither does the ivy league can’t have both so pick one, get none pick a major any major but not that major or pick that major, dammit, but plan on a burger-flipping career program your way into a man’s heart and an employer’s budget humans are not supposed to feel things, not at this age anyway don’t become broken don’t become broken

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