Issue 43 - Fall 2010 by Cathy Lee

Journal of the Arts Brown + RISD Fall 2010 Volume 43

STAFF Management

Marketing

Momoko Ishiguro • Editor Emma Janaskie • Junior Editor Tabitha Yong • RISD Editor

Kathy Do • Editor Allan Sakaue • Junior Editor

Prose Diane Cai • Editor Adam Davis Kate Holguin Sam Martin Michelle Meyers Ethan Reed Jordan Taylor Tabitha Yong

Design Evan Brooks • Editor Isabella Giancarlo Jingtao Huang Elizabeth Lund Cynthia Poon Judy Park Allan Sakaue Tabitha Yong

Poetry Christi Zaleski • Editor Elexis Trinity Williams • Junior Editor Vera Carothers Kevin Casto Jenny Frary Amanda Lucek Kate Van Brocklin

Art Morgan Ritter-Armour • Editor Lukas Bentel Genevieve Busby Isabella Giancarlo Robert Gordon-Fogelson Olivia Linden Amanda Lucek Elizabeth Lund Connor McManus Jian Shen Tan Elexis Trinity Williams Kah Yangni

CONTENTS ¶ PROSE 7

The Devil and Robert Johnson: A Blues Essay in E

¶ POETRY

Mark Dee, Brown

Why Marie Antoinette May or May Not Have Said, “LetThem Eat Cake” On the Road, Again Colette Garrigues, Brown

In the City of Seven Hills

Victor

Corina Chase, Brown

Michelle Meyers, Brown

Rebekah Bergman, Brown

Lauren Allegrezza, RISD

The Regimen of Remembering

30 Untitled

Tele-

Of Lad and Lass

Anna Riley, RISD

Thirii Myint, Brown

Michael Goodman, Brown

Directing the Birds Maria Anderson, Brown

Divorce Poem

James Schaffroth, RISD

Untitled Emily Gogolak, Brown

Untitled

Before Video Games

an/esthetic

Ethan Reed, Brown

Zachary Ballard, Brown

Rebekah Bergman, Brown

Âś ART 8 17 20

Turtle

Mother of

Arcadian

Maddy, Mother of our House

Chair on Bed Todd Strong, Brown

Untitled

David Whittaker, RISD

Robert Gordon-Fogelson, Brown

Kah Yangni, Brown

Kayla Smith, Brown

Genevieve Busby, Brown

Anna

Separation of Ego

Jian Shan Tan, RISD/Brown

Angelica (Seung Ah) Kim, RISD

Santa Cruz

Isabella Giancarlo, Brown

Flightless David Bryant, RISD

The Devil and Robert Johnson: A Blues Essay in E

by Mark Dee

Early this mornin’ When you knock upon my door Early this mornin’, ooh When you knocked upon my door I say, “Hello, Satan, I believe its time to go”… Papa Legba waits at crossroads. He waits there to translate man for the Loa, voodoo spirits. He watches closely because he knows that in the middle of the crossroads you are nowhere at all, so the Loa can’t be far away. Unless they want to meet you, he will urge you down a road. If they want to

meet you, you don’t take any road. Papa Legba waits at crossroads. He speaks every language. He speaks languages you don’t know. He speaks languages you know. He prefers the languages you don’t know but still understand. Papa Legba is always polite. He is bent and old and polite. He is always with his dog. Papa Legba waits at crossroads. ••••• The Flattened 5th. Aliases: Tritone; Sharpened 4th; Diminished 5th; Diabolus In Musica. That sound that hangs out between fa and so, the one that whispers its burning pitch into their ears, the one that pits them against each other 7

Turtle

David Whittaker, RISD / balsa and bass wood, Sculpey, acrylic paint, plastic bag

then laughs as they sadden and struggle to work things out again. It loiters between the Es and on the edges of alleyways; it waits, where horizontal streets meet vertical avenues to form crossroads and corners, it waits for you to walk by. Then it grabs you, picks you up and leaves you lost on some strange and dusty road not sure whether to turn back and look for the clef or to press forward to that warm light waiting at the double bar. Just hanging there three lines up listening until you hear it spark down the ledger lines, jumping intervals like rogue electrons and echoing through the vacant spaces its too-low laughter. Bb. ••••• Picture #1. Taken: Hook Bros. Studio; Memphis, TN; 19__. Professional photograph, black and white with deep saturation, minimal grain. Figure with guitar sits on a stool covered by a tapestry. He wears a dark pinstriped suit with angular creases that black leather shoes, shined. Points of white light bounce off the toes and through the open lens when the flashbulb fires. A Fedora chosen to match his suit slants over his right ear. His guitar rests on right thigh and points left parallel to the hat. A broad stripped tie clipped two buttons down disappears into the folds of his suit. His right eye is awake, circular. His left eye is sleepy, and its lid almost lets it rest. His smile is plastic and even. His right thumb is fitted with metal thumb pick. It waits above D string. The

four arched fingers of left hand fret an ambiguous chord, bragging. (Flash, Click) Picture#2. Taken: dime store photo booth; location unknown; 19__. Postage-stamp sized photograph, soft black and white, pronounced horizontal grain. Figure left of center. Close-cropped hair with part shaved central into front. His cigarette points down, hanging loose and perilous in easy lips. His right eye is still awake. His left eye is still sleepy but no longer closing. The eyes are no longer mismatched. Now complementary they form a new composure. His guitar divides frame diagonally from bottom left, capo on the 1st fret. His left hand rises from dark in the right corner. Fingers form an A chord shape, but the capo makes the chord higher. B or B flat. The grain of photograph hides root note. (Flash, Click) This is the same man. These are not the same men. There is no third photo. ••••• Robert Johnson sold his soul down in Rosedale, down where Highway 61 runs over the 49 chasin’ the River to the Delta. Devil and his dog waitin’ by the side of the road. Was darker than the dark he was standin’ in, maybe just as big too, and when he smiled it just floated there on the heavy 9

October night. Robert Johnson comes to the junction. Devil says Robert Johnson you late and Johnson flattens his lips says Hmm. Maybe not so late. Johnson tells Devil he wants women and whiskey and Devil keeps smiling. Devil’s not listenin’, just walks up takes that guitar off Johnson’s back and the dog howls and holds a single note. Long as his breath lets him. Note’s a little off but the night loves it, picks it up and throws it around ‘til the air is nothin’ but sound and Johnson can’t breathe. Devil takes up the L-1, wraps that tangled hand ‘round the neck. Drops his first finger one fret down the A string. Devil plays. Sound bounces through the sound box and echoes with the hound ‘til Johnson cant stand no more, he drops to his knees in the middle of crossroads and he’s pantin’ towards the dirt like a man prayin’ to some new faith. Devil laughs out the bottom of his throat and says You want them women and that whiskey then you gotta have the blues – Now go on down to Rosedale Robert Johnson you the king of them Delta Blues. And Robert Johnson stood up and went down to Rosedale and was the King of the Delta Blues. ••••• …Me and the Devil, Was walkin’ side by side Me and the Devil, ooh, We was walkin’ side by side 10

And I’m gonna beat my woman ‘Til I get satisfied… The E blues scale is seven notes from E to E. E-G-A-Bb-BD-E. It is the E major scale with the 3rd and 7th notes lowered one half step (flattened) to replace the original 2nd and 6th. To complete the scale, add the flat 5th note – Bb – to the middle. The inclusion of these three notes adds a dissonance not heard in major scales. The three flattened notes are the “Blue” ones. The name is a truncated version of the “blue devils”, an archaic phrase referring either to a state of melancholy or the vision’s seen during an alcoholic’s delirium tremens. It was shortened and first copyrighted with Hart Ward’s “Dallas Blues” in 1912. Wand was a German-American fiddle player from Kansas. The term, however, was used in reference to African American work songs prior to Mr. Wand’s fiddle piece. The Delta Blues is one of the earliest examples of blues music, growing out the region between the Mississippi in Yazoo Rivers in the northwest Mississippi. Although evidence suggests was played prior to the turn of the century, Delta-style blues were not recorded until the late 20s to capitalize on a growing demand for “race records” across the American South. •••••

In this key the Flat 3rd is G and its not that bad. Light blue if anything, robin’s-egg. It’s the first step into a gray morning, a walking lead off first. You can make it back, you know the way. Maybe its that crow in front of the Sun cutting its big soft form of a shadow into your path. But you see it and it’s a small bird – O.K. as omens go – you can turn back if you want. But no – it’s no threat. It’s just a G. And the Flat 7th, it’s that last step and a half before the octave. Right foot’s already airborne, and once that’s down you’re only a left away. It’s a D and so close to that resolution and you’re so close to breathing again because its so close – Ahh – to that E. The Flat 7th is moisture that heavies the air, it makes it hard to breath but look how it splits the light – ROYGBIV – look how it puts a pot of gold at the end of that scale. It’s just a D. But the Flat 5th just loiters there in the middle. It doesn’t want to go forward, it doesn’t want to go back it wants to be alone with its questionable intentions. It’s there, where you might go forward or back but it blocks you so you’re nowhere. No good road to take. The flat 5th is no crow and it hates rainbows, especially that B in the middle of it. It wants to show you some real blue. Bb.

••••• Papa Legba still waits at crossroads, but he doesn’t translate for the Loa anymore. He translates the Delta for everybody else and waits for them to translate him back. Papa Legba still waits at crossroads but he’s not old and bent and polite anymore. He is large and black and his smile floats. He is still with a dog, but this one howls tragedy, someone else’s blues. Papa Legba still waits at the crossroads but he only speaks the language you know. He makes sure you know them. He knows in the middle of the crossroads you’re still nowhere, but he now knows that the roads out are different than they once were. They go to different places. They lead to different people, to people who speak new languages he had to learn. But he knows some people still want to stay, and some people still want to talk to the Loa, so Papa Legba still waits at crossroads. There are one hundred-fourteen crossroads on a Gibson L-1 guitar. ••••• Session #1: Gunter Hotel, San Antonio, Texas; November 27, 1936; Cross Road Blues, Take 2. A man on stool faces corner of hotel room. There is a group behind him, the next act. His back is to audience, obscuring his features. He picks up the 11

neck of guitar in left hand, but you can’t see his fingers. A producer drops the cutter, waiting to carve the sounds into song on a fresh 78. Hands move, sound bounces off the walls and is angled through the microphone and down the chord and into the lacquer. The record spins, the song is made. Session #2: 508 Park Avenue, Dallas, Texas; June 19, 1937; Me and the Devil Blues, Take 1. A man sits down with his back to the room, hits a high note and lets it ring. The note is too high to be dark, no it’s not death. But it’s a vulture hanging between him and the sun. Then the next note comes and the next one. The notes fly separate off the walls but stick together in the microphone. By the time they reach the cutter these notes are telling a story about a man and the devil, walking. The record spins, the song is made. Robert Johnson recorded for six days in two sessions, eight months apart. He recorded forty-one tracks, include eight alternate takes. He never played facing the room. ••••• So Robert Johnson gets hisself in touch with Don Law and Don Law’s gonna pay him 10 dollars a 78. Maybe 15, dependin’. All Johnson gotta do is get down to San Antonio for November. So Johnson gets down to San Antonio. And Law’s a-waitin’ for him at that Gunter Hotel, San Antonio 12

Texas. No studio at the Gunter, just rooms for sleepin’. But Law sits Robert Johnson down, sits him facin’ the corner and says Welcome to the studio. What are you gonna play? And Johnson sits and faces the wall. And it bein the first day of some days Johnson plays the pop stuff, the radio stuff. Good stuff but stuff for Law. When that session’s done Johnson stands up Law says Good start. What are you gonna play tomorrow? Johnson’s been thinking ‘bout it says to Law Whatever you wanna hear. And Law’s just lookin’ for some blues, Law’s a city type and he don’t know what he’s lookin’ for so he just says Blues. So Robert Johnson goes on away. But he don’t come back tomorrow. Don’t come back the next day. Don’t come back til Law goes down to the jailhouse and brings him back. Johnson been picked up on vagrancy and roughed up some. Spent some nights in the Bexar County Jail. And when Law sees him he says Where’ve you been? And Johnson smiles a little bit, smiles cause he know the blues ain’t in the hearin but the telling so he can’t tell Law what he wants to hear. Johnson smiles and says Went down to the Crossroads. And poor Bob’s a-sinkin’ down. ••••• …She says she don’t see why You will dog me ‘round She says she don’t see why, ooh You will dog me ‘round

Says must be that ol’ evil spirit, So deep down in the ground… Listen to enough B flats and you’ll stop hearing them. It’ll hurt for a while, while it happens like getting a flu shot or shot by a BB gun. After that its over, you’ll tune it out. But it’s no exorcism, because it’s the company that’s been making B flat the devil’s note. Those sun-kissed scaled notes that send their shadow back down onto the Flat Fifth until it’s tinged blue by the shade. No wonder its always plotting, setting traps and snatching blindly up out of that dark. But don’t blame B flat, it’s not B flat’s fault, not all the time. Only in E. Drop into E flat and it’s makes the perfect fifth, that even tempered interval that makes little stars twinkle and needles little von Trapp children into song, pulling them along despite all they’ve been through. But no. You can’t just tune out the blues. A Gibson L-1 has six strings and nineteen frets. Wherever they meet a devil’s waiting. ••••• Grave #1: Mt Zion Church; Morgan City, MS. Marker donated by Columbia Recording Company; April 20,1991. A one-ton granite obelisk. One side lists the titles of Johnson’s complete songbook. The other an epitaph:

… The Recording career and brief transit of Robert Johnson left an enormous legacy to American Music preserved for the ages by Columbia Recording Company… Columbia re-released the Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson as a box set on August 28, 1990. The album has since gone platinum. There is no evidence to suggest Robert Johnson is buried on this site. Grave #2: Payne Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, Quito, MS. Two miles north of Grave #1. Marker donated by Atlanta based band “The Tombstones”; Late 1991. A small gray rectangle. Once raised above ground, the plaque is now flush to it. Creeping wires of Bermuda encroach its still-sharp edges, pulling it deeper down. It is covered with guitar picks of a style he never used. Between them sharp etchings read Robert Johnson –May 8, 1911 – Aug 16, 1938 – Resting in the Blues. The marker is placed in the center of Richard J. Johnson’s family plot. Richard J. Johnson sought probate over Robert L. Johnson’s estate follow the Columbia release. In 1992, a judge ruled Claude Johnson to be Robert’s sole heir. There is no evidence to suggest Robert Johnson is buried on this site. 13

Grave #3: Little Zion Missionary Church: Greenwood, MS. Marker donated by producer and historian Stephen C. LaVere, then of Memphis, TN; January 2002. A pentagon of white granite sits centered on a flat stone base. It replaces the black granite headstone that once marked the spot where he might have been buried. The stone is underneath a pecan tree. This site is substantiated by Rosie Eskridge, who claims to have brought her husband water while he dug a bluesman’s grave sixty-four years earlier. The pecan tree is an approximation based on Eskridge’s account. LaVere, who purchased half the rights to Johnson’s recordings in the early seventies, sought out Eskridge’s testimony. He has since opened the Greenwood Blues Museum, which specializes in the career of Robert Johnson. Robert Johnson’s Death Certificate states his final resting place to be Mt. Zion Church. Which or where is not specified. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Robert Johnson is buried at a dirt intersection outside the Baptist Town neighborhood of Greenwood, MS. Such sources also suggest that there is no body there to find. ••••• So Robert Johnson heads on up to Greenwood. Gonna play Three Forks Juke Joint, one night only. That on a 14

Saturday, 1938. August ’38. Three Forks up there where 82 meets Highway 49, right there on the corner. So Johnson heads on up there, plays his show. And people start dancin’, it bein’ a Saturday. People start dancin’ and people start drinkin’. Then Johnson starts up dancin’ and drinkin’ with the owner’s wife. Open bottle show up on Johnson’s table. On the house. Friend says to Johnson Don’t drink that off that table but Johnson grabs it up says Don’t ever take good whiskey outta my hand. On the house. So Johnson drinks it down, tastes a little bitter but it works O.K. and Johnson keeps dancin’, keeps talkin’ to the owner’s wife. ‘Nother bottle show up on the table. Same thing – no, no – yes, Yes – and Johnson drinks it down. But now Robert Johnson’s not dancin’. Now Johnson drops to his knees then falls to his hands. Starts shakin’, heavy shakes. Head down he’s starin’ through the ground and he starts barkin’. Barkin’ and howlin’ like a hound. And we know what sound he’s makin’. Oh yes we know that sound. Robert Johnson died of pneumonia. Robert Johnson died of strychnine poisoning. Robert Johnson died of complications stemming from syphilis. Robert Johnson died of an aortic dissection brought on by undiagnosed Marfan syndrome. The Devil killed Robert Johnson. The Devil is keeping him alive.

…You may bury my body, Down by the highway side You may bury my body, ooh, Down by the highway side So my ol’ evil spirit, Can catch a Greyhound bus and ride —Robert Johnson, Me and the Devil Blues

The Regimen of Remembering by Rebekah Bergman

in yiddish nonsense while my grandfather whispers spoon from the sugar bowl every morning she hides the silver like they came to steal her past (not cashmere or anything a new pink sweater) just in case they try to steal her present to lock the front door

* When my grandfather turned eighty-one he managed to forget everything but my grandmother who turns eighty-five today remembers

Chair on Bed Todd Strong, Brown

/ oil on canvas

Untitled by Anna Riley

She wants windows for light A mind with the malleable ability to be both pragmatic and poetic still uses light to look, but sometimes she sees photosynthesis and sometimes she feels a sunset. And sometimes she gets caught up with the word “honest” If she investigates with her whole heart, or is it with her brain if she cuts, glues, tears, bends anything she can only to make windows and she would revisit each one every hour and she would measure light intensity and chart and record and produce graphs that likely won’t mean to anyone else what they mean to her. If she builds her own camera obscura in a room where the clouds float on the floor and the cars cross the ceiling maybe she would understand what it’s like for space to be manipulated; and if she wants further distortion she could replace her own anatomical lenses with ones not meant for her retinae 18

If she paints only with oils then the light can penetrate each layer and she will feel like she made a decision that is important. If she always questions, panics what makes a work worthy of wall space If sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been told ever since she can remember that there is only your work ethic and nothing else. If she writes it down exactly as it isis she then being honest? She still hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t convinced herself. But she keeps doing things the same hoping that someone else will see it, and maybe that will assure her.

Untitled Robert Gordon-Fogelson, Brown

/ oil on canvas

Tele-

by Thirii Myint

she returned midnights to me and said it was lovely. i said something about lovers in a church; whoever loves looks at life through a fretted telescope. but i got it wrong: it’s the night that’s fretted and the telescope’s fine. a man removed from his friends decides to build a telephone and i murder him for it. lying in bed the other night, i tell him we’re in a split screen, cinematically, he and i, we lie side by side, saying goodnight, goodnight, in the past tense, goodnight, i whisper, do you hear the grapes come loose? in midnights there are many deaths but no murders i’m not counting the stones in her pocket or the note that said: depart paul, departed in red letters on the timetable, we run down the stairs anyway: there was no train, there was no paul, only night come early in the tunnel, and no stars in the fretted sky. 21

Why Marie Antoinette May or May Not Have Said, “Let Them Eat Cake” by Lauren Allegrezza

Marie Antoinette had 206 bones. She sneered all day at her ladies-in-waiting, all day on an embroidered chaise with the same 206 bones, each shaped as if from porcelain, each more haughty than the last. Her corset clung and constricted more than her svelte waist and pelvis; it constrained the rest of her, each kidney, intestines, liver, scarcely letting her lungs expand for breath. No wonder she looked so smug if she had such awful, mixed-up insides. Her heart was weighed down by the diamonds and sapphires and gold, resting too heavily on her right chamber, her scapulas strained to hold up her head, crowned in towering yards of pomaded white-blonde. All she really wanted was a pirate ship tattoo on her ribs, a tiny stud in her nose, to stay up too late at a loud rock

concert. None of the draperies and trappings, just the warm grass and her favorite dog. To be able to breathe, to allow each lung its proper space; to give her heart the lightness to beat, her hair the opportunity to fall around bare shoulders and clavicles. That is why she sat on the chaise, looking out the window, smug in her layers of creamy lace and rose silk. Because she knew she would not be any lonelier out in the field in the warm grass with her dog than she was there inside alone with messed-up insides all topsy-turvy and makeup so heavy she cannot cry to let anyone know her stomach is out of place and she is nothing but 206 bones.

Of Lad and Lass by Michael Goodman

The plasma of palm produces psalms of love and loss, Of lad and lass- of spasm and calm, of stoma closing And aorta opening for symphonic pulse of tempo and Beat, for bread and supper, for dinner and wash For bangers and mash and the mince of the morning grind For the mind’s groaning and miasmic moaning for gloaming And soap for lather and gristle, for visceral grabs and blisters On pinky, the lute absolving the solvent of valve, for ventricle Sweating and diaphragm’s damned—for miniscule moments Of pull and release, for tugs of the tongue and sera’s seraph For celestial choir and thyroid’s hum, for some platinum slumber To sear the raw umber unto thumbs of canvas and jib, To rouse the dull-hearted and dam the tears Too frail in travails of the Wabash’s weir To even soak centimeter of paper bleating— In blotted ink my snarls are summoned, my ogles and leers My glaring and baring bemoaned To spare tired wheels of petroleum pace And dander America’s Cimarron 24

For flag bearing braggarts and bunions en role, They, too, however can contain their souls in the Nooks of their boots beating freshly for We all Together want love at any cost, For double dime and coin-toss, From weathered dales of leather saddle and addled ducat For oil and smooch, for armchair and scotch And we will defy our watches to obtain it— And what is time? What is destination? Is it a point on an atlas upholding terra? Are we firm in fermata? Or a wavering staccato of flawed Euphony? Do I want love, or am I a whispered ticktock? Do you want love, or are you a clock unhinged, Circadian broken, unspoken but baled? Hey! Let me stay in your stare For a second too long to be deliberatedFor it was deliberate, and it was music, Of love and loss, of lad and lass.

Anna Jian Shan Tan, RISD+Brown

/ oil on canvas

Directing the birds by Maria Anderson

Bandied legs, buckling wide a-waltz. Kohl eyes, hand over back. Fingers splayed, thumb and forefinger together with bit of cloth between ears, long, agape like two eyes a rabbit’s mask, two fingers clutched, hand over back necktie scented with musk, shadow behind his ear Kohl eyes, chin on shoulder, man hand strong just below waist sweat, his, on temple. Ritual headvoid remnants, fallen temple, fallen oath Kohl rimmings, golden backwaters parting for stupa, wat pure land pagoda inklings, sweat drops rain piddling temple roof pagoda upbringings mental lines divining walls, boundaries rabbit’s ear mask between two temple upbringings, uprisings, House of Guru House of Ballroom visage

Delusion, that essence of thought trundled through Latter Day Saint laundry phallic cleansings, the Mormonic Plague, heady tserkov and catholicon mentionings Kohl thighs Hand on back Sweat from temple on collar bone Bone-dry Hand on back, rabbit’s eye mask crushed beneath Woman on top temple He rummages through bones and walls rain on bamboo locks

Augur with closed eyes eyes locked against taint and weir Festooned mask, desultory delusion void between walls walls masked with agape eyes and sweat windows fondled through with kohl and shadow golden stupa, wen on cheek, augur wat. Hammy hands sacrum sweat on rabbit’s back. Rites render god’s will known. Augur, “directing the birds” Prospero’s fingers find themselves, between mask, ears, and himself.

Divorce Poem by James Schaffroth I tread softly for this path and my shoes and my socks and my skin are lined with your teeth.

Separation of Ego Angelica (Seung Ah) Kim, RISD

/ clay, glass and mixed media

Untitled by Emily Gogolak

darkness has a way of looking indigo in the middle of long nights lavender if i blink really fast stop thinking she blinks sits by the window (blinks) at the night staring contests with faces ones that keeps her company where it's a fortress of papers, and sandcastles are old plastic bags, sealed envelopes and scotch tape dĂŠchets to placate minds (they blink) restless asphyxiated demons twisting metaphysics where walls speak and blinds can sing and you feel tiny tremors crawl under your soles when the carpet (it has a heart) beats operettas are disordered tones synaesthesias she can taste 30

in breathlessness reluctant from respirators, blood pumps to a void, a corpse, around the corner sidesteps again again across floorboards trembling (it has a heart) but widowhood already tastes stale now wandering ephemera of thens across plains cropped light, oblique tones that smell like Kansas and whisky across to the face of a boy moments won't scathe and miles make brighter in night i'm lost in daguerrotypes stale i breathe until the dark disintegrates me

Mother of Kah Yangni, Brown

/ ink and marker

On the Road, Again by Colette Garrigues Dear Mailman,

GO STRAIGHT

I’m sorry I did not answer when you rang, but I was busy hijacking the day. Mostly I lay in bed with a man with a soft beard who reads me his poems. Today there was poem that went Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

On second thought, we’ll have to avoid all the tolls.

I’ve never left home before but I think it’ll do me good to get over those mountains. If you see a yellow car with Jersey plates please give a wave. Take Care, Candle −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− I taped directions to my dashboard. They say

−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− Things To Bring toaster piggy bank one book bottle for milk the orchid chewing pencils −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− Today I went and got a collar made for the cat. It used to say

feather duster tippy cup Encyclopedias G – Q box spring the fireplace

HAIRBALL 42 JOHN ST. Now it says FEED ME −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− The woman at the bank was undernourished. I told her I wanted to close my accounts and she offered me a free two-week trial membership at the gym across the street. The other teller wore orange lipstick which she reapplied between each customer. There was an elderly gentleman with a growth on his ear in line behind me who made a scene. He threw the basket of sugarless lollies and had to be escorted away. After that it wasn’t much trouble to retrieve the envelope.

tandem bicycle butter churn underwater walky-talky footage of outer space Allen Ginsberg

−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− I donated the pantry since there will be fruit stands along the way. If that fails we can always dig up a turnip or milk the stray cow. −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−

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The man with the soft beard has eyebrows that are going grey. I can’t remember a morning he wasn’t there. In the afternoons we light a fire and sip Robitussin out of big-bellied glasses. Then he weaves my hair tight to keep in the good dreams and we go to sleep. Tomorrow we will attend one of the big benefits

My garage sale operates on the barter system.

PANCAKES FOR POVERTY

this

that

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banjo strings WWII love letters

I came back from the carwash to an unpleasant surprise: Someone unscrewed all the knobs from the doors, and

for

spice rack all the spoons 34

there was no way to get inside. The culprit left a note with a flower that was too late. It was a book of baby names.

Sincerely, Candle

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Walter Linda Robert Minnie Larry Florence Donald Bertha Gary Judy Willie Grace Edward Nellie Harold Donna Jerry Debbie

coffee beans (whole) big shoes feather pen umbilical chord goose down disposable video camera Build A Bridge kit

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I forgot to get quarters from the bank so we will have to do without laundry. There will be rivers.

To Whom It May Concern: If I were to have a child its name would be Olive. The chances that I am infertile are now quite high. Here is a tape of baroque music I think you will enjoy. Did you know that barroco (Portuguese) means “misshapen pear”?

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−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− Soft Beard is growing skeptical. He poses all the big questions, like “What happens when we get there?” Maybe he thinks we are going to see the sites 35

Great Lakes, Grand Canyon. I inform him that Mount Rushmore is an abomination. He agrees, silently. −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− Today I found a poem in the teapot. It said

Soft Beard provoked a nasty argument this evening. All I said was “We should get the vaccines.” “I don’t know, last time the flu shot gave me the flu.” “There could be rusty nails. Oh! rabid dogs--“

Ker-ou-ac Does jump-ing jacks

“Unlikely!”

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“Still.”

There are a number of overdue books that I must return. They are

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Angel in Top Hat The Raw Shark Textbook Memories of a Musical Life Polar Bears Past Bedtime Baseball: When the Grass Was Real A librarian once told me she only reads books that are like watching television. −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− 36

Dear Doctor, I am going on a trip, but I can’t leave without the baby. Please give it back. You can leave a basket on the doorstep if you are ashamed. Best Wishes, Candle −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−

Arcadian Kayla Smith, Brown

/ photography

The merry-go-round of goodbyes:

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Adieu! Adieu! Adieu! Adieu!

Howl

To You! and You! and You! and You!

−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−

−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− bag of tricks Tobasco sauce radio voice ear plugs old sock cordless telephone −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− Dear Candle, They’ve revoked my driver’s license, so I can’t be coming with you. I put a poem in the glove compartment. Love, Beowulf

Some time later, wary of turnips, I took breakfast in a diner. To my left were two plump women: “I’m putting my foot down this Christmas: no knitting.” “Do you always knit for everyone?” “Ev-ry-one. Because when I start to knit for one person the next someone says WHERE’S MY SOCK! WHERE’S MY SOCK!” “True.” “I’m knitting for myself this season. We’ll see how that goes.” “I feel similarly.”

Maddy, Mother of our House Genevieve Busby, Brown

/ oil on canvas

î?ťIn the City of Seven Hills

by Corina Chase

Here, in Kampala, it is never dark. Even at night, the city smolders. The streetlights hover amidst the smog, the cinders of the garbage fires still breathe. As if deep below the waste and the dirt, something is rising, rumbling. In the city, there is a girl. She has long, long hair and is not afraid of much. She has always existed. She comes from away, or perhaps she does not. It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t matter. She has been here as long as the city has been here, and they are in love. For a long time, though, the city didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know she was there. She wandered in and out of the houses like the monkeys stealing from windowed kitchens. She lay down in the ditches and rotted with the rats. At last she started listening on top of the hills.

1. Outside, the monkey taunts wild dogs from his tree perch. The beetles crawl up and down the windowsill, glossy in the city lights. Inside, the girl sleeps in a large bed under a mosquito net. For a moment, she lies still. Then she sits up, pulls aside the netting and walks to the sink in the corner of the room. There, she runs the water for a few moments before returning to sit on the edge of the bed. She can hear crickets buzzing in the thick air, the stirring of their wings stirring this room. She reaches for a glass of water on the bedside table, lifts

it to her mouth, and takes a sip. She holds the glass in her hands for a while. The air is denser here, she thinks, heavier, as if some hulking thing had settled upon this place, taken a seat on it, pressing down. More than humidity, more than hot, wet air. In the morning she had gone to Lake Victoria, had watched a motorboat struggle through the water. She walked by a little beach, the sand burned bright by the sun. She had been warned not to go in the lake so she stayed far away from the lapping water. Something about snails, microscopic snails slipping inside your skin, the bota-bota driver said. Something about snails. Bilharzia, the girl thinks, that was the word. She rearranges the mosquito netting around her and finally lies back against the pillow, hands folded across her body. She thinks that the air must be swollen by snails. That she is breathing in flesh, not oxygen. That it tastes of bodies. It is only fire sparks. She knows this. For beyond the monkey in his tree, people are burning trash, whole barrels of it, and the ashes and smoke hang over the city, joining in clouds. Troubled and roiling. That’s what it is, those thick cinder-clouds, pressing down on this city of seven hills. There are no snails here, she knows this. The girl sits up and begins to cough.

On the outskirts of the city, a tree falls. One of those great, ancient trees, the last of its kind. Men come with chainsaws to cut it up. The wood is hard and gnarled and dry. It pushes back against the men, unwilling. It spits out the metal teeth of the machines. The girl – perhaps the same girl, perhaps not, it doesn’t matter (for they are all the same in the end) – listens. Listens to this buzzing, the creaks and moans of the tree, the hissing saws. She cannot sleep, and lies without a mosquito net in the quiet dark of her house in the time before day. She is waiting for sleep, who refuses to lie down beside her. She turns and is quiet again, breathing. The chainsaws dwindle. The noises of the men, too. This time, she thinks, how long must I wait this time? How long must I wait with my hands full of fear? How long must I wait in quiet, in restraint? Her husband will not return in the morning. Nor the next morning, nor the next. If he returns, it will be with hunger and the yellow, yellow eyes of the addicts in the streets of Nairobi. If he returns, it will be for the money to keep his eyes the color of dying lemons. She does not like to wait for this return.

From the tree, there is no sound. But the air, the humming, heavy air gets only louder.

Up above, watching from a minaret atop a hill, the girl sees storks come flying by. The air is heavy with filth and dust and sweat. And the storks are giant and grotesque, the feathers burnt off their heads, their beaks melted, deformed from eating out of piles of fire-stricken waste. Somewhere below, someone is singing a song in a language garbled by the heat. The girl listens hard, but the sound turns into a sigh and then returns to the folds of the city. She is thinking of water, of the dark, stagnant water in the ditches below, trickling, trickling. If she were to follow that water, she thinks, she would at last arrive at a great mass of it, stinking and opaque. And if she were to walk in, the hands of the water would wrap her up and hold her in darkness. Like thin vines, like hair, like great reaching arms. Then her eyes wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to be burned by the sun. Below her, the children wander in and out of tin can houses, the roofs like sieves, and they like mongrel dogs. From where the girl stands, it is easy to forget the small

deaths below, of a child or a dog. They grow big and then they die, in season with the bananas. From the minaret, she thinks, it is easy to forget you belong amidst the dust. She listens for a voice, a voice as low as the sewers and as long as the highway roads, a voice she knows will call for her sooner or later. And then the city saw her. For a long time, though, the city refused to love her. It let her study at the university and read long books written by other people. It let her ride in cars with men she sometimes knew. At last she sat down to rest and found she could not get up again.

The girl is walking in the red dirt and doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t look around her. Even standing, even walking as fast as she is, the girl is curled round herself, huddled up. As she walks, she passes an African man teaching two white children how to play tennis. This, she does not see. She crosses the street, passes a university student in western clothes and then a woman with oranges in her hands. A man cutting grass with a

scythe. This, she does not notice. The girl isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t carrying anything. This she knows. Though she sometimes forgets and has to look down to see if anything is in her hands or laced between her fingers. And she is not really walking, not like the people around her walk, with quiet steps or fast steps or broken steps. She is walking against the will of the city. She is walking through deep sand, and her legs are getting harder and harder to lift. She wishes she could leave them behind. When night comes, she will rest somewhere in shadows. She will lie still, still. Then no one will touch her but leave her with her face in the dirt until she can walk again. For the city refuses to grant her an easy passage.

The girl, sitting in the coffee shop, thinks about the Sahara. She thinks of sand and wind and skin so dried it bleeds to feed itself. She thinks of covering her eyes against the flying dust. She likes the coffee shop, its dim quiet, its floor of longtrodden dirt. And the men who come and go and watch women like beggars before a throne of gold. The girl who

sits in the coffee shop learned long ago how to be alone, and never forgot. She isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t afraid of much but the weight on her chest, the weight of the throbbing air. Sometimes her lungs canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t breathe it in and she coughs and coughs and coughs until there is blood on her fingers. But even then she is thinking of sand, sand pouring out from her palms. She imagines she is not coughing up blood but coughing up sand, smooth, fine sand that cleans out her throat even as she chokes. The boy with black arms and white, white palms brings another cup of tea. She thanks him, sits back, and watches the street. The mutatus move fast, the metal sides stuffed full with passengers. Cars stop here, sometimes, and then go again, leaving stacks of teacups and faint brown stains of coffee on the tabletops. They drink fast, the people who stop. As if they have somewhere to be and every sip is a delay. If one of them lingers, the others tap their feet or their watches and look out on the road. The girl sits here. She sits here and she drinks a thousand cups of tea, drinks and drinks and drinks and stays thirsty, for the tea turns to sand inside her. At the end of a long time, she falls sick and her skin rots from her body until the sand pours out on the floor.

And then the city gave in to itself. For a long time, though, the city hated that it loved her. It tried to drown her in the resort beyond the westernmost hill. It tried to feed her to the storks. At last her breath got stuck in her chest, weighed down by the night.

6. Along the highway, the girl sits in a ditch behind the guardrail. She listens to children playing on the pavement with sticks and tires. In the fields before her, goats and chickens wander, group together, and then scatter for no reason she can see. When the girl hears the buzzing of the highway cars, she prays theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll drive slow. The taxi drivers go too fast, and their passengers tell them to go faster and faster. Slow, slow, she thinks. There is no one waiting for you in the city. There is no one waiting for you anywhere. Slow, slow. But the cars come by like floodwater. No one goes slow enough. Sometimes the playing children, the laughing, the

murmuring children stop all those things. During the day, it is not so bad. The children grab each other with strong little hands and run to the side of the road. They shout and yell, but they stand by the side of the black path and wait. The nights, though, are not like the days. The children do not always see the cars coming. They forget which way to run. They push their friends into headlights. They howl for each other and then there is nothing but dull thumps and the sound of something wet against the pavement. And the girl finds them in the morning, the child-heaps, pressed hard against the highway. Slow, slow, she thinks. There is no one waiting for you. In the ditch, she holds her knees close to her chest and covers her mouth with a scarf. The dust along the road is the worst, unsettled and suffocating, blown wild by the speeding cars. It is getting harder and harder for her to breathe. And then the city understood.

In this place, there is a girl. The omuwala omulungi, and she is as beautiful as blood.

She is as the crickets are, humming, buzzing, moving. The hills belong to her, to her alone. For she will pick the snails from the cool water and return sleep to his proper bed. She will keep the stork claws away from you or let them hold you tight. She will finish the last cups of tea and wash the dishes afterwards while you sit still. And she has already dug holes for the dead children. She knew beforehand that she would need too many graves to make at once. She will find a way to stir this city, even if no one else can. She will find a way to raise the creature from its slumber under miles of cinders, and take it away to a place of sand and water. And she will love it like rain on a land tormented by sun.

Untitled by Ethan Reed

I offer you survivors to set the darkness echoing. Even caught beneath the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reflection its hungry cave-glow I remember the swallowing sky-ink beyond. That bulge of cloud-color shaded flesh is not without wormholes. When youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve nothing more to see stare along the tree-line. Here against that glow the hard limbs deepen in flat blackness. There

Such quick spawn abide like a closeted pistol. Such fleetness haunts just outside the road behind black windows. It sprints to our bedside and breathes. It lunges to the reach of my headlights and hovers. It waits in our driveways to stay and startle us show us its eyes in hard flashes pupils flat and black portals to set the mind echoing.

a portal opens its eye into the dark beholder of primal blindness keeper of swift sightless monsters. Between is terror and recognition peripheral movement. 47

Before Video Games by Zachary Ballard

Today I saw a fortress engineered from two lawn chairs and a broken umbrella, And out galloped a team of cowboys and Indians waving light sabers and pirate swords. I asked the sheriff what was going on. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Shh! Keep quiet! Today we are spies,â&#x20AC;? he torpedoed. Then they all herded themselves into a circle and howled like canine was a language learned from crawling on hands and knees. Unplugged, They danced until dinner time. They danced as if their crops were dying, As if imagination was a welcomed disease.

Santa Cruz Isabella Giancarlo, Brown

/ photography

Victor by Michelle Meyers

I wake up in the middle of the night to dusky shadows sliding from the closet, stars bursting in aching white pinpoints, and a silhouette, a silhouette crouched and curled in my yard. The clock by the bed ticks at irregular intervals—tick-tock-tck-tck-ttttt—stops. His footsteps are like an orchestra half a beat off. I snatch for a robe that is lost, slippers that are lost, glasses that are lost in knee-deep piles of The New York Times before ’94, running into the hallway through spider webs and clumps of dust, stacks of moldy dishes and a VCR forever paused, photographs ruined by the oil from my fingertips. I smell like laundry left too long in the dryer, laundry that has been in the dryer for fifteen years, as I shiver with anticipation, a taste like red wine in my mouth that’s already started to turn. Finally, the night air. The fog seeps into my nostrils. There is a sensation like euthanasia, both giddy and terrifying, as I reveal myself to my assailant, my dues ex machina descended from the mist, and I’m thinking Take me! Take me! Just take me away!, the words caught, clogged in my throat. But it’s only Victor. He stands next to the oak tree, fingers 50

caressing the roots that strangle the grass and dandelions. The bark is like the leather sole of a shoe worn through, and the leaves curl over as if they were listening to his silence. The darkness crumples against me. “Let’s go inside,” I sigh. “It’s late.” He signs the word for “see,” points at the oak tree. He then signs the word for “woman.” “Inside, Victor. I told you to go inside.” He shakes his head, speaks again without words, the melody of his breath slowing until it synchronizes with mine. He places his hands against the sides of my head until I can see the oak tree folding into the crevices of his mind, transforming, mutating. The leaves become strands of black hair weaving across my vision. Two emerald eyes embed themselves in the trunk. The images bloom through Victor’s ears and into a tangle of synaptic branches, and it is a feeling as if raindrops have started falling from the ground, as if the roses have begun chanting Shakespearean verse, as if all that is known has been subverted, past, present, and future congealing into a single moment as I see her again. Grinning after an elementary

school picnic bathed in honey suckle and wild oats. Reading Blake and Wordsworth aloud to each another with a flashlight under the covers, nature never did betray the heart that loved her, not without hope we suffer and we mourn. Sliding her hands onto my shoulders at the Homecoming Dance junior year, her hair curled into a cornucopia of ringlets. Moaning, our bodies fusing as one in front of the fireplace with mugs of steaming hot cocoa by the caftan rug. Laughing as I force a wedge of strawberry wedding cake into her mouth. Cooing as she rocks the plump newborn back and forth in her arms. The night sky intensifies and disintegrates around me in sticky, rancid chunks of coagulated darkness. Victor’s fingers run up and down the trunk as an hourglass shatters into thousands of shards, corroding the fortress of memories into a gritty dust. I grimace as I see her moments later clutching the baby in her arms, black blood running in hot, steaming rivulets down the insides of her thighs, blood pooling dark

red around her ankles. The baby cries, shrieking as Natalie’s eyes roll like dice into the back of her head, collapsing, her flesh deepening to the color of purple cabbage. Her cheeks slacken, her lips melt, her skin hardens. The baby hits the floor. And suddenly his world is silent. And with him, I am forever to live in a past that I cannot escape. Victor removes the hands that have been clasped over my temples. The tree is just a tree. I reach out to touch her again, but I draw my fingers back, let them linger in the wet morning dew. Victor looks to me for a reaction, for me to hold him in my arms and show him that everything is all right, but I can only frown as the wind picks up around us, sifting through the leaves. It whispers the secrets of the universe in a language that I cannot understand. I turn away from Victor, drying the wetness around my eyes that I know he can see, and when I turn back, Victor is frowning too. “Come on, Victor, let’s go inside,” I say, and I lead him back into his bedroom, turning out the lights.

Flightless David Bryant, RISD

/ ink, dye, and charcoal

an/esthetic

by Rebekah Bergman

conversations are thinning to silent treatments applied topically, whole bodies of philosophy prunedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;like how eyesight peaks in the early teens and tastebuds begin losing their sensationsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; we still rub each other in all the most wrong ways sticking to surfaces, you look older than i would have wanted the strangest thing how your eyebrows are thinning i guess you've started plucking out the grays.

Mission Statement Clerestory Journal of the Arts strives to enrich the arts on College Hill through the publication of exemplary student art, prose, and poetry. The magazine draws submissions from undergraduates at both Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, ultimately selecting a diverse body of work that highlights creative talents from both schools. By offering students an opportunity for publication, Clerestory hopes to inspire young artists to continue their creative pursuits, help maintain a high bar of quality for the arts at both campuses, stimulate conversation about student work throughout each school and beyond, and foster engagement between student artists and the wider community. The editorial boards of Clerestory select pieces to be published through a blind democratic process over a period of several weeks each semester. In addition, they narrow the gap between the student bodies of Brown and RISD by providing a meeting place for students from both schools.

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Join the staff We are always looking for energetic, dedicated staff members. Look for us at the beginning of each year at Brown's Activity Fair and RISD's Block Party to sign up, or e-mail us at clerestoryart@gmail.com to find out more! Clerestory is printed by Brown Graphic Services.