CONC RET E L I T E R A RY M AG A Z I N E
2021 ISSUE 39
CO NCR E T E L I T E R A RY M AG A Z I N E
Concrete Literary Magazine is an annual print journal produced in downtown Boston, amid blue-tinted high rises and blackened train tracks, at the tables of crowded cafes and at the mercy of flickering wireless internet. Established in 1982, Concrete, like Boston, or New York, or London, or Shanghai, is continuously evolving to match its urban population. Within the journal’s pages can be found a collection of prose and poetry that represents the dynamic nature of city life. All of the work found within the pages of Concrete is original work published by undergraduates of Emerson College under the Student Government Association and the Writing, Literature, and Publishing department. All rights revert to the authors and artists upon publication, and permission to republish must be gained directly through the contributors.
Submissions: Concrete accepts unsolicited submissions from registered students of Emerson College, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry and screenplays. Submissions should be delivered electronically via Submittable at concreteliterarymagazine.com/submit. Please also include a cover sheet that includes your name, Emerson ID, email address, phone number, and title and genre of the work submitted. Do not include your name within the document of the piece.
Emerson College 120 Boylston Street Boston, MA 02116
Copyright © 2021 Concrete All rights reserved.
FALL STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Allison Sambucini
MANAGING EDITOR
Clarah Grossman
POETRY EDITOR
Brittany Adames
ASSISTANT POETRY EDITOR
Kayla Randolph
PROSE EDITOR
Mackenzie Denofio
ASSISTANT PROSE EDITOR Cecilia Ysabel Tan
HEAD COPYEDITOR
Claire Christensen
ASSISTANT COPYEDITORS
Athena Singh Maggie Lu
HEAD OF MARKETING Lauren Licona
DESIGNER
John Coredor
POETRY READERS Michael Gross Theo Wolf Aricka Croxton Megan Grosfeld Sara Fergang Erik Melendez
PROSE READERS Julia Rouillard Isabella Rodrigues Hannah Braden Molly Weinrib Taylor McGowan Melanie Valencia
SPRING STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ASSISTANT COPYEDITOR Clarah Grossman
MANAGING EDITOR
Isabella Rodrigues
POETRY EDITOR
Kayla Randolph
Hancine Mok
HEAD OF MARKETING Lauren Licona
DESIGNER
John Coredor
ASSISTANT POETRY EDITOR POETRY READERS Theo Wolf
PROSE EDITOR
Mackenzie Denofio
ASSISTANT PROSE EDITOR Cecilia Ysabel Tan
HEAD COPYEDITOR
Athena Singh
COPYEDITORS
Maggie Lu Genevieve Cook
Aricka Croxton Megan Grosfeld Sara Fergang Erik Melendez
PROSE READERS Hannah Braden Molly Weinrib Taylor McGowan Melanie Valencia Isabella Rodrigues
3 Witchcraft Abigail Langmead
5 Sometimes Samson Malmoli
7 “bodies are made to hold other bodies” Jay Townsend
9 A Hold On The Wheel Sisel Gelman
23 Home Eulogy Samson Malmoli
CONTENTS
Sisel Gelman
TABLE OF
1 The Immigrant’s Cliché
25 moving Erik Melendez
27 Leave Sisel Gelman
34 One Way James Ammirato
35 Artifacts From A Childhood In Rural Kansas Emma Kaster
45 Remembrance Based On “Used” Samson Malmoli
47 Bubbles and Clay Isabella Rodrigues
52 I Only Ate Your Cat Because I was Angry and It Seemed So Well Adjusted Jay Townsend
53 Jokes About Nonbinary Naming Conventions Jay Townsend
The Immigrant’s Cliché Sisel Gelman
They say a Mexican standoff, But I don’t think they know what it means. My American professors don’t know How my brain rejects Both English and Spanish An identity neither here nor there. Every word I say Every time I speak, My undistinguishable voice Displaced from “home” Wishes it were Both here and there. My American friends don’t see My grandfather, late at night, Watching reruns Of the golden age of Mexican cinema To learn the new language of his freedom After years of persecution. Neither here nor there, Migration is the only story He grounds himself in.
1
A Mexican standoff— A conflict with no prospect of victory. I can’t articulate to Americans How accurate their cliché is When my identities Argue against each other; My culture, My childhood, Fueling the dislocation Of assimilation. Migration is each generation’s Identity—neither here nor there. Children after children, Together, here and there. No sleep, no peace, no home. A single leather suitcase, Leaden with the familial Struggle of diaspora, Is imbued in my Heritage.
2
Witchcraft Abigail Langmead
Bridget’s hands were crossed behind her back With ropes coiled around them, like the snakes The villagers whispered she spoke to in the night. There was a hand wrapped across Anita’s shoulder With nails digging into her skin, feeling like iron. And they called her a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Thrust forward down cobbled streets Joan closed her eyes as she approached. Everyone shouted, blurring into nonsense words Primal roaring, and burning rage. Alexandria shuttered, hiding in history’s halls Believing her work would be ending and beginning, Because she wasn’t alone, even if she felt it As the wolfpack tried to pull her apart. Those are the woman we were born from, The names are a reminder of our coven’s name. Those are the women we remember in every moment; We are ungrateful for our newfound gifts. They expected magic to be the devil’s work When to me, embracing myself feels like bliss. 3
They expected magic to be a transformation to something else entirely When instead, we have transformed the world around us into Something else. Because we do not cast spells on ourselves, Although some may claim otherwise, Saying that we brush our wands across our faces. We cast spells on this whole fucking world, And we remind ourselves of who we were Every day before. The risks of our witchcraft, And the power behind it. The women they scorned— And the women we’ll become. Since every ancient story calls us witches for being Strong, and perhaps a bit wicked. We may as well take the title.
4
Sometimes Samson Malmoli
We need to go the other way to get to the right place Sometimes I was feeling like I wasn’t doing enough Or that I wasn’t there Keep taking down the bricks Keep on yelling at me I need to see the robots and the bandages Attached to her head, sprouting My mother was/is alien, foreign, unborn, unknown In this bed in a solitary white sectional area This is the eulogy of a rose garden This is the past tense of my stress Water shoved down my throat Like the shrieking voice that kept me up and kept shaking me I was haunted by all that I couldn’t do enough of And I tried to keep my message straight and so I found that all I was doing the whole time was keeping And I kept everything in a big pile on my hand like the lawn I could have been thrown out of the house on In the structure of the waiting-room-dome, it felt church-like At this age when you try to abuse yourself for personal depth I was acting a myth and I was Icarus And the ceiling blocked my approach of the sun So it had to try to take someone else in my place
5
Like a healthy heart ripped right out from under her skin Maybe the stress I caused Maybe it was really a façade of health I blamed it all on me Every operation, surgery, suffering A prayer or a tear didn’t make it otherwise It was a child’s first balloon Its rubber red shine The string tells the kid that they have a possession So enamored by the flight of it in their hand They don’t realize the balloon can go higher It can float away But I never even had a nice string to hold The string in my fist was drenched with sweat and torn by heat A hand-me-down like me So I never had the chance to make a mistake The string was set to slip away before I could let go And in the paintings of the ceiling A street life blowing on Me thinking of last words Something she won’t remember Something I could find that won’t let me just keep anymore
6
Jay Townsend
“bodies are made to hold other bodies”
7
[through laughter] Sure! Take it! Take me! I’m worthless. Cut me up and Eat me— I want to be of use. At least you Seem to feel you’re a part of this world. Don’t worry, I’ll give myself freely. This is what I’m for, isn’t it? Consumption?
8
A Hold On The Wheel Sisel Gelman
It started off with a mint-colored Cadillac.
As much as I would’ve liked to say I knew it was a 1956 model, I couldn’t. I was a car enthusiast, but I wasn’t as well versed in older cars as I would’ve liked to be. This particular Cadillac caught my eye when it stopped at my toll booth because it had been restored to its original glory. It was beautiful. The fresh wax shone like the sun and the engine purred softly. It knew it was loved by its owner.
Who wouldn’t have remembered that car or the man sitting in it?
The man inside was in his late twenties, with a defined, straight nose; well-groomed, wavy brown hair; a set of perfect, pearly white teeth framed behind a wide smile. Although he had sunglasses on, and I couldn’t see his eyes, I could tell he knew I wanted his car and I wanted to be him— everybody did. Even forty years ago, when I was his age, I didn’t look like that or drove such a car. He gave me six dollars and blew a big bubble with the gum in his mouth. It popped loudly. “Keep the change,” he said with that memorable smile of his.
I dreamed of Mr. Mint’s Cadillac that night. …
9
I didn’t think of Mr. Mint for a full week after our first encounter. I went to work every morning as usual, sat at my toll booth in the heat, and at the end of my shift, had lunch with Rory at the side of the road. Looking back, Mr. Mint did spark in my subconscious a sort of hyper-awareness about my age and my empty bank account... but I wasn’t thinking of him. Instead, I found myself comparing my saggy skin to Rory’s smooth, dark complexion, or Rory’s visible strength to my weakening bones. Rory, my co-worker, had recently been fired as a warehouse loader when the company he worked for downsized. His broad shoulders were being wasted at the toll booth. It wasn’t until next Sunday that Mr. Mint rolled around again, but this time, in a red Maserati Grand Turismo. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses, but I knew it was him. He looked relaxed with his hand resting on the wheel and his lips turned up at the edges. “Sir, you have excellent taste in cars,” I said as I counted his change. “Both this one and the Caddy are beauts.”
He furrowed his brow. His smile lost its curve. “What Cadillac?”
I blinked. “The one you… The mint-colored…”
Mr. Mint didn’t react. Not a single muscle moved in his face.
“I’m sorry, I must’ve confused you with—”
10
“Someone else?”
“Someone else,” I repeated. We both stared at each other as I nodded in embarrassment, and after a pause, a burst of laughter broke from his mouth.
“Keep the change,” he said and drove off with a smile.
Despite this conversation, I knew what I knew. It was him in both cars. I kept my eyes open for Mr. Mint the next day. The highway had five booths, and I usually worked at the one on the far right. It was hard to glance at the cars outside of my lane, but I made the effort and I managed. Sometime around eleven in the morning, I scanned the highway, and I saw Mr. Mint lined up at the next toll booth in a blue BMW M3.
It was him, all right.
Then two days passed without a trace of Mr. Mint.
On Thursday, right after my shift ended, I was waiting by the side of the highway for Rory’s replacement to take over when Mr. Mint sped past me in a yellow Chevrolet Camaro. I was stretching when I saw him pull out of the farthest booth. I stood in shock with my cracked lips parted until Rory walked over with a brown paper bag in his hand.
11
“Rory, have you noticed a man who drives through here every day in a different car?” I asked. I couldn’t take my eyes off the road. It felt as if Mr. Mint could appear at any moment. “A different car? Nah, that’s crazy,” he sat down at our usual picnic table. Everyone else always chose to sit at the other table. “I swear it’s him,” I sat across from Rory. “Today he used the farthest booth from mine. Something’s fishy. I think he’s avoiding me.”
“How do you know it’s him?”
“I never forget a face. It’s him.”
“I don’t know,” Rory took a bite out of his sandwich, “Why would anyone change cars every day?”
I shrugged. I really didn’t know.
I took the bus back to my one-person apartment, slugged up the three flights of stairs to the door, and stared out the window the entire evening. I wasn’t hungry enough for dinner; I was curious. Why would a man change cars every day and then pretend he didn’t? I went to bed in my underwear and stared at the creaking ceiling fan for hours.
Where did all the cars come from? Where was he going?
12
The next morning was my day off. I had a cup of instant noodles for breakfast and then sat again by the broken window. The cool breeze kept me from melting into the summer heat, and it helped keep my imagination alive. The phone rang every hour or so. The bank wanted to get a hold of me again. I knew it was them because no one else ever called—I didn’t have any friends, I didn’t know my neighbors, and my daughter hated me. I didn’t pay much attention to the phone. By the end of the day, I had a list of theories. Content with myself, I splashed my face with cold water, laid down over the covers, and slept soundly all night long. … As the weeks went by, I became an expert on Mr. Mint’s behavior. I tracked the times he crossed the toll booth; I wrote down which booth he used; I remembered his cars.
Rory grew concerned with every passing day.
“Let it go, man,” he said. “Just forget it. Don’t go crazy.”
I trained myself to count money so fast that, with only a glance, I knew how much was in my hand. This way, I maximized the time I could scan the road for Mr. Mint between customers.
13
I couldn’t get enough. Every new visit from Mr. Mint brought new information, and I had to abandon some theories through a process of elimination: -Mr. Mint could have had a doppelgänger, but that was an unlikely theory. Out of chance, they would have coincided at the toll booth by now, and I had never seen two Mr. Mints at the same time. -Mr. Mint could have been some sort of specialty driver for people who wanted to know what it felt like to sit in the back of those fancy cars. Nevertheless, he always drove alone. -Mr. Mint could have had a job somewhere on that barren highway, but the issue with this one was that he didn’t seem to have a schedule or pattern. Mr. Mint crossed the toll booth whenever Mr. Mint felt it was time to cross into the desert… -Mr. Mint… -Mr. Mint… -Mr.— One day, Mr. Mint drove through my toll booth in a cream-colored Mercedes S Class Sedan. It had been happening more often now that he had forgotten about me. Maybe he thought I was a different person. Maybe he thought I had forgotten him. I didn’t even try to start a conversation;
14
I did not want to reveal myself again after time had cloaked my intentions so well. Instead, I did my best to record inside my head everything I could about the way Mr. Mint was dressed and what the inside of his car looked like.
I saw nothing out of the ordinary.
When he drove off, I peeked my head out of the booth and saw a muted red smudge on the trunk of the car by the right brake light. It wasn’t too big, but it might have been about the size of my hand. The next car in line honked their horn. The supervisor probably noticed I was distracted, but I didn’t mind. I was busy doing more important work. I didn’t wait for Rory at our picnic table at the end of my shift. I took the first bus home and ran up the stairs to my apartment. Was this smudge the missing link to the mystery? I couldn’t lie down or sit by the window all night. I paced back and forth on the creaky floorboards for hours. After the third hour, my downstairs neighbors used a broomstick to loudly jab at their ceiling to get me to stop. I jumped up and down loudly in revenge. By the fifth hour, another neighbor knocked on my door. She had pink sponge hair-rollers wrapped into her hair and told me her husband was furious at all my pacing.
15
I realized then that I didn’t know her name, what apartment she lived in, or how long she had been my neighbor. I took a step back and slammed the door in her face as payback for disrupting my line of thought.
Her husband knocked a minute later with a gun in his hand.
“How dare you do that to my wife?” he yelled.
“Good morning,” I edged him on. “Do you want to come in for a drink?” His jaw dropped. The man began a screaming match with his gun pointed at my unkempt gray hair. It woke up the entire building.
“What’s going on?” the superintendent ran up the stairs.
“He won’t shut up!” my neighbor yelled. All the other people living in the building were there, peeking out of their doors or perched on the top stairs. Some stared in silence, while some encouraged the other man with whistles and claps. I couldn’t stay and yell for too long in the hall—I was on the brink of solving the mystery! “Crazy bastard, I should’ve kicked you out a long time ago!” the superintendent belted.
16
I spit in his face and stormed out.
“I don’t need you! I don’t need this apartment!” I said. I ran down the stairs two steps at a time. I needed answers. I could walk around the neighborhood and think until morning. When the sun came out, I was sitting at a public bench by a mental hospital, but most importantly, I had cracked the mystery: Mr. Mint was clearly a hitman of some sort. He was dumping the bodies in the desert… or at least, he was the one transporting those bodies into the desert for someone else. He hid in plain sight. That was his secret! The flashy cars were an inside joke with his ego; it was a brilliant display of his ability to remain unknown even in those eye-catching cars.
I went back to work at the toll booth without taking a nap.
I remained sharp the entire morning. The adrenaline helped. I kept my gaze on the road, even when there were cars lined up at my booth. I counted the money by how it felt in my hand to avoid glancing away from the road even for a second. I knew I gave the wrong change to my customers over and over again.
I saw him everywhere.
Every car was Mr. Mint’s Cadillac; every man was Mr. Mint.
17
I knew they weren’t in my heart, but my eyes kept building these beautiful mirages of Mr. Mint driving into my toll booth. A wood-trimmed, white PT Cruiser stopped at my booth. The man, who was in his early forties and had a receding hairline, asked me how much the toll cost.
“Five-twenty,” I scanned the road.
“How much?” he asked again.
“Five dollars and twenty cents, sir.”
He nodded and pulled out his wallet. I sighed as my skin ticked in anticipation. I narrowed my sight over the road to see better in the sun.
I gasped.
In the distance, Mr. Mint’s black Audi A8 approached fast. I licked my lips in excitement. I knew it was him. I couldn’t be wrong. The customer handed me his sticky money. Mr. Mint knew I was watching. He could feel my gaze laid on the hood of his precious car.
I gave back the man’s change. The man took it and counted it.
Mr. Mint knew I knew… he knew I knew he knew. It was clear this was true because Mr. Mint chose to line up at the toll booth second farthest from me. He was trying to avoid me.
18
It was proof of his guilt.
I jumped out of the booth with my arms flailing in the air, “Wait!”
The man in the ‘PT Loser’ finished putting his change away and didn’t see me step out on the highway. He pressed down on the gas pedal and sped past me. I felt the car’s speed as a breeze on my face and sleeves. “Stop! Stop! I know what you did!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. I ran across the line of booths and cars like a frog—two steps front, pause, sprint, pause again, three steps more. I never took my eyes off my criminal, “Don’t let him get—” A beige Toyota Sienna zoomed towards me and then pressed down on the brakes. I felt their bumper graze my thigh. The blonde woman’s mouth formed an ‘O’ as big as her wide eyes on the other side of the glass. I let out a howl and slammed my hands hard on the car, “Watch it! Don’t let him get away! Don’t—” I limped towards my prey, “Don’t let him-” I pointed at the black Audi and tried hobbling faster, “He’s a criminal!”
Mr. Mint pulled up to the front of the line.
“Wait! Wait!” I clutched at the pain in my leg.
I was only a toll booth away when I felt a pair of strong arms wrap around me and picked me up. I tried scratching my way out of their grasp. I shook my head and kicked.
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“Stop it, Jacob. Let it go,” Rory said. He pulled at me and began to retrace my steps back to my booth. I breathed heavily. I saw Mr. Mint hand over his money.
The booth operator counted it, and then let him go.
Mr. Mint rolled up his window and drove away.
But—
Right before he left, Mr. Mint glanced in my direction and winked.
I swear he did.
Mr. Mint smiled at me, at our shared secret, and then drove away.
I couldn’t breathe. I let my limbs go limp, “Did you see that, Rory?”
“Let it go.”
“Did you see that?” I yelled.
“See what?”
“He winked at me! I saw it. I saw the wink,” I started crying, “He’s guilty! I know he’s guilty!” “Shhhh, let it go. Just let it go,” Rory cooed at me as if I were a baby. I kept crying. I let myself melt into his warm embrace as tears ran down my cheeks. My leg throbbed. The vibration from my trailing ankle made the pain worse.
20
I lost consciousness before we made it to my booth.
The supervisor called an ambulance and they rushed me to the hospital. I was admitted into surgery right away. Later that day I woke up to the ‘good’ news that a mystery donor had paid for my surgery and would pay for all my hospital bills in full.
It had to be Mr. Mint, who else?
The pain in my leg turned out to be an incomplete fracture of the femur in the middle third of my thigh. The surgeon said he was surprised by the amount of internal bleeding I had endured. I also got a call from my supervisor saying I had lost my job. He found my ‘paranoid’ behavior unprofessional. I was let go without a single co-worker disagreeing that I was unfit to work.
Not even Rory.
I eventually forgave him for it.
It took me four months until I could walk again. I stayed at the hospital for the duration of my rehabilitation process. Mr. Mint paid for it all. Every day I asked the hospital for my donor’s name, and they’d respond by saying that the donor had specifically requested to remain anonymous. There was nothing I could do to find more information about him.
21
The first day I felt well enough to walk on my own, I asked to be discharged from the hospital. I wobbled back to my old booth and sat on the side of the highway—that was the only place I knew I’d find Mr. Mint. The supervisor immediately tried to get me off the road and keep away from the toll booths, but he couldn’t because roads were public property. Finding Mr. Mint was my truth, and these toll booths were his calling. So I sat and waited. I did the same thing the next day, and the next, and the next. I never went back to the apartment. I lived off of dumpster diving, dimes, and Rory’s spare leftovers. I knew I had to be there the next time Mr. Mint drove through in his shiny parade of cars.
I knew the truth. I saw that wink.
I waited an entire lifetime for him, but Mr. Mint never came back.
22
Home Eulogy Samson Malmoli
The next time I see you With moss on your ivy bearded vagina Sweltering clothesline construction faggots of precision Finally racing away from me as I to reading, drug use, over bridges I walk down the parks of your lowly street lights I miss you, I love you I may hardly recognize you the next time I come in your foliage Though the chance may be brief, or to my never return I might just smile and relax, in old ways Still caressing similarities, I’m sure I’ll find you in another gutter Picking the dirt off like me and old newspapers Like the old freedom I had in a dresser like yours But I hadn’t met you yet, grassy skyline of peach I love your grey and green Especially your tanned focus I’d still love to be in you But I missed my chance of rosebud suburbs And I missed wholesome cock love The dark punk girls slithering into a new home A youth of foraging You owe me and I still love you with the weight of my emotion My secret devotion to my family
23
All the adult you gave me I’ll miss you with old shoes The lustful sensitivity of your backgrounds All the hope you gave me The tunneling burden of my submarine-level feelings The next time I see you I may just be better Than you Or bleed in my sad of abandoning you Or the tarot card painstaking mothers of air and sadness I hope I will be like you or return to you If I need you I’ll usually just call
24
25
moving Erik Melendez
nothing with wings lives in me. only things that drag their bodies across the floor, caked in shame. & in the cavern of my chest, something is ablaze. different words crowd the fire, tongues of light licking their tired edges: sever. distance. root. hope.
26
Leave Sisel Gelman
The door calls for me day and night.
The door haunts me day and night.
It’s the first thing I see when I wake up, and the last thing on my mind when I go to bed. To my mother, my bedroom door seems like any other—plain and wooden with a round metal door handle on the left side—but to me, well… I’ve seen its soul. It began on the first day of sixth grade when the door turned bright green. I was too afraid to start middle school the next day: I feared teachers who could give me bad grades and bullies who could laugh at my hair. I feared those unknown unknowns. I spent the entire night intermittently crying until, sometime around two in the morning, the door took on an eerie glow. The door frame pulsated a soft pine-green light that quickly grew into a blinding emerald hue. There was nothing I could do but lay in bed, petrified and in awe at the scene unfolding privately to me in the dark. I knew, wrapped under my sheets with dilated pupils, that the door was a sign I would be safe at school. I just knew it. I told my mother, and she told me I was making things up. I told her I wasn’t. My mother then picked up her keys and told me she was late for her job. That was my cue to shut up and keep this new knowledge to myself.
27
I saw my mom walk out the front door, and soon after, I did the same thing to walk to the bus stop. I couldn’t blame her for reacting that way; my mom’s job as a cashier at a convenience store kept her perpetually tired. But it paid the bills. That night, she came back home after two shifts and collapsed on the couch. My mom was asleep before her head even hit the pillow. I put away the pasta I had cooked for us and imagined myself telling her about my day. It had gone well, just like the door had said. I went into my room and found myself worrying in the dark. Would my mother have a better job someday? The door glowed green again and I felt a warmth run through my body. I trusted the door immediately.
The door and I had daily conversations about a myriad of topics.
“Does he like me?” I asked. The door shone pink. I squealed in excitement. “Should I worry about being cast in the play?” I asked. The door beamed a calming blue. I exhaled in relief. We kept each other company when the silence was too much to bear. Most of the time, it happened when my mom was away. Middle school flew by with the door by my side, comforting me whenever I needed it, but once high school hit, things began to go wrong
28
and the door got angry. “Will this failed test wreck my grade?” I asked. The door mourned with a dark purple. I anxiously bit my lip. “Should I have a second slice of pizza?” I asked. The door warned me not to with a bright orange. I put my plate aside. During my sophomore year, my mother found herself a boyfriend and a better job as a restaurant manager. Things got easier with her, but I slowly retreated into my room to avoid everything else that could go wrong. My room was safe. My room would’ve remained safe if the door hadn’t begun burning bright red every night. My mother doesn’t sense the door’s anger. She’s happy for herself and happy that I got into a nearby community college… despite my bad grades. “It’ll be good for you to make friends,” she says, “You spend all day, every day, in your room.” “I like it in there,” I lie. I don’t ever talk about the door with her. I used to bring up its colors and how they made me feel, but she never believed me, so I stopped speaking up. “Aren’t you excited for this new chapter in your life?” She reaches out to hold my hand across the dinner table. wwwwI wonder if the reason she now insists we have dinner together every school night is to compensate for
29
all the meals she wasn’t there for growing up. Is that how guilt works? The door overhears us and burns a brighter crimson red than usual that night. It’s never tried to hurt me, but ungodly things like these always find a way to. The door frightens me whenever it’s just the two of us— which is often. I sometimes feel a magnetic pull towards its colors, like an unusual kind of excitement in my bones that begs me to stay in the room with it—but it’s that type of optical illusion that only looks good from far away. I tried to touch the colors once, but I found out that the closer I got to the door in its burning state, the sicker I felt. I can’t take more than a couple of steps towards it without my stomach churning. Staying on my bed next to the window is often my best bet when the door calls for me. But more and more each day, I find myself daydreaming about what must exist on the other side; past the hallway, past the kitchen, past the living room, past the front door. I hear my mother’s wine-drunk laugh down the hall and her new fiancé chiming in alongside, and I think about how things have changed for her. What new world could await if I choose to stand up and just open the door? Could I be happy? I decide to try. The door senses the change in me and lowers the temperature in the room. It makes the hairs on my arm stand up.
30
“Can I please leave?” I ask. The door turns red. I got to my feet tentatively. The door slams itself shut before I can even tiptoe to it. My jaw hangs. I climb back into bed and stare at it. It stares back at me, angry. The door burns so brightly; crimson has turned to wine, to maroon, to black.
I’ve never seen the door turn black.
Despite this color, the entire room is engulfed in white light.
“But I’m curious to know what’s out there,” I say.
The door claws at the walls in rage as a response to that comment. It threatens to pull my childhood paintings right off their hooks on the wall and topple my bookshelves. It craves to preserve us all for itself so violently. I can even hear a windlike whistle emanating from the dark hole in my room.
I have to try again for the sake of my future.
I jump out of bed. I leave the safety of its warm covers for good.
If I don’t get out now, I never will.
The door tugs at my soul inside my body. I take my first step.
The door senses me coming towards it—the thing it has always feared—and starts to suck the air around me with more force to get me to stop. I take a second heavy step.
31
My stomach clenches. I push through with a third step, although it feels as if my bare feet were stuck to the cold wooden floor. An invisible concrete wall keeps me from going any further, but I rest my entire body weight on it and fall through. Only a couple of steps more. I fling myself over and over again towards the door with the last amount of energy I’ve got. With each movement, I brace myself for the scolding pain I’ll feel on my hands when I finally touch the light.
“I can’t stay!” I yell. “I can’t stay here forever and feed off of your fear.”
The whistle becomes a scream. The door is so dark I can see myself as a sixth-grader nested inside.
“Stay,” I hear her say. “The world is a bad place. It’s easier inside.”
“I don’t want to believe that,” I shake my head and take my last step. I put my hands out with a preemptive whimper at what the door will feel like once we finally merge.
The door is cool to the touch.
Loose strands of hair whisp around my face in response to the strong wind, but they do not bother me. I stand up straight and close my eyes as I feel the door lose all its power over me. My jaw relaxes. My stomach unclenches. My breathing becomes deeper. I glide my hand down to the doorknob and open the door with ease.
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One Way James Ammirato
the vision house does not help you see— the bus does not clear your dishes— and the woman’s stroller has no baby, yet she pushes it onto the train. none of that house’s bricks can be used to throw through a window— no one has ever died at the arlington T stop (by musket at least) — please is a request, a nicety, a piece of proper etiquette— until it’s written in all caps, bolded, and red— the fools, they might as well have erased it— to an eye: lock = touch = make ///////////////////////////// close an eye— lock a window— cut a bolt— make for the door.
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Artifacts From a Childhood in Emma Kaster
The highlight and backbone of any small town in Kansas is the Dollar General. Its yellow and black sign is a beacon for kids who are bored half to death with piggy bank money to spend on a toy they’d break on the same day. I was no different from the other small town hooligans, and I frequented the DG as often as my mom would allow. One such shopping spree resulted in me walking home with a bug catching kit. I wasn’t so fond of bugs, but the kit came with a magnifying glass and I thought that was pretty cool. My dad showed me how to kill ants with the magnifying glass and I thought that was pretty cool too. My mom did not think it was very cool that I spent the afternoon sitting in the gravel driveway, lighting mini fires to exterminate the ants, which I found so offensive. The DG was also the spot to buy birthday gifts before online shopping became a thing and stayed around long enough for people in rural Kansas to catch on. It takes at least five years for most trends or societal developments to make their way from the coasts all the way inward to the sunflower state. Family members had to communicate and make sure they didn’t buy the exact same coloring book, jigsaw puzzle, or birthday card for so-and-so’s cousin’s birthday party at the bowling alley—which was the only place to have a birthday party in Stockton, Kansas.
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Rural Kansas: A Short Memoir While I don’t have any of the DG birthday gifts or cards I received during my childhood, I do still have the magnifying glass. I don’t use it to kill ants anymore because I realize that is cruel, so now it sits in my desk drawer along with dried out markers and broken pencils where it has been for over a decade. I keep the magnifying glass for no reason other than it reminds me of where it came from, where I came from. It is proof that I used to shop at the Dollar General, before a kid in my relatively wealthy, Nebraska elementary school told me it was a store for “white trash poor people.” It makes me think about our tiny rental on the corner, where my mom frantically swung a broom and killed a bat that landed on the couch with a soft thud—and the pool towel, which covered the spot on the couch for months thereafter. It is evidence that I lived in Stockton, a town run by police who sleep with the meth dealers. It reminds me that I used to kill ants for fun and my dad was okay with that. The magnifying glass implores me to reflect on moments when I was oblivious to concepts like rich and poor, right and wrong, and even that the town I lived in was very small in a world that is very, very big. … For every person in Kansas, there are two cows. My grandpa and his dad and probably his dad all had cows, pastures full of them. I’ve never had a single one. Though I did at one point have a chicken.
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I got my pet chicken when I was probably three years old, when we lived a few miles outside of Hays, a big small town. I don’t remember if it was a he or a she, I just always called it “B,” which seemed like a good name for a chicken to have. My chicken lived in our garage, in a tote filled with sawdust, food, water, and one of those lamps my dad used when working on a tractor. As one might predict, B did not stay the fuzzy, yellow chick in the tote for long. Before I was ready, B grew up and needed a bigger place to live. We took B to great grandma Eileen’s where she had an outdoor pen for chickens. The day we left B at the chicken pen was the last time I ever saw my beloved pet. The next time I visited great grandma Eileen and inquired about B, she told me that my chicken flew away. I am embarrassed to admit this, but I truly believed B flew out of the pen until I was fourteen. It was later revealed that a fox got into the pen and ate the chickens, but great grandma didn’t want to have to tell me that B met such a violent end. To help lessen the blow of B’s “departure,” great grandma Eileen gifted me a ceramic chicken from her very own collection to forever remind me of my pet. I’ve dropped the thing and broken it a handful of times, but my dad always found a way to superglue it back together. I sometimes forget that I had a pet chicken, and I often forget that a chicken is a rather unusual pet to have. Whenever it comes up in conversation, people laugh and think I’m joking, or ask if I grew up on a
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farm. I never quite know how to answer that question. Did I live on a farm growing up? No, not really. Did I spend a lot of my childhood on a farm? Certainly. Am I a farmer? Definitely not. Does my family own a farm? Technically, yes. To the actual farmers in Kansas, I am a city kid through and through. To a classmate in Boston, I am a country bumpkin. It’s a rather minor identity crisis to have, but an identity crisis nonetheless. I don’t feel as though I fit quite right into either, the city or the farm. Whenever I imagine my family in Kansas visiting me in Boston, I can’t help but laugh at how out of place they would look walking through Prudential in their worn-out, boot-cut jeans and NASCAR t-shirts. None of them have ever been on a plane, and trying to get them to take the subway would be a whole other ordeal. Alternatively, when I picture my friends from college sitting on the porch swing of my grandpa’s farmhouse in the middle of absolutely nowhere, I cringe at how strange it would be for them, how uncomfortable they would be if they walked in the house, up the stairs, and saw the hundreds of dead ladybugs scattered there as they are every summer. Although I feel somewhat out of place, I have the privilege of experiencing two extreme and opposite walks of life. I’ve lived a past full of rainbow sherbet Kansas sunsets, and now I’m living a present spent wandering weathered sidewalks in Boston. And I have a future to look forward to, somewhere in a place I don’t yet know. …
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As a little kid on grandpa’s farm, I often went around outside with an ice cream bucket and picked up pig noses. Think of pig noses as similar to acorns, except they come from black walnut trees and look like a pig’s nose. My cousin and I would race to see who could fill up their bucket the fastest. The winner didn’t get a prize and after we collected the useless pig noses we tossed them into the creek, but it was still something to do. Sometimes, we would put the sprinkler under the ancient trampoline and jump and jump and jump through the water until the sun went down behind the hills. The trampoline was so old that it rubbed off on our bodies, leaving charcoal-colored patches wherever we connected with the material. The sprinkler didn’t do much to combat the charcoal stains, so when my cousin and I did this, we had to jump in nothing but our underwear (which was from the DG no doubt) so that we didn’t ruin our clothes. Why we never thought to bring swimsuits, I have no idea. We were no older than five, so being mostly naked in front of each other and whoever drove past the farm wasn’t such a huge deal to us or anyone else. I miss being that carefree—the feeling of running around barefoot, completely covered in dirt, hunting down pig noses, laughing with my cousin as we both slipped on the drenched trampoline. I miss exploring grandpa’s shop filled with car parts, wandering down to the creek, driving the four-wheeler back through the junkyard and into the pasture filled with wild grasses, cows, and oil wells. I miss drinking sun tea at supper, sleeping on the floor of the farmhouse living room with the quilted denim blanket. I
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miss riding to town in the bed of grandpa’s pick-up, and trying to make gum from the wheat in the field next to the house. For a long time, after moving to the suburbs of West Omaha, I did all I could to forget that part of myself. I didn’t want to be seen as “white trash” or any other name people in affluent suburbs like to use when referring to people like my family in Kansas. I envied my friends who had normal family members, who didn’t wear cowboy boots and jeans stained with oil, who spoke clearly without any accent, who were always politically correct, who didn’t live in the middle of nowhere Kansas. I didn’t want to associate myself with people who much of society views as uneducated and backwards. I wanted so badly to be different from them, to be better than them. But I think the worst part is that I understand them. While I am now vastly different from my family in Kansas and I know that there’s a whole world outside of America’s breadbasket, I understand them, and I can’t condemn them for being who they are. I can’t condemn great grandma Eileen for her devotion to God, or my grandpa for having a thick accent and being a farmer who also profited off the oil industry, or even the town of Stockton for being full of meth addicts. That wouldn’t be fair. I can’t even be embarrassed of them, of where I came from—that wouldn’t be fair either. I am as much a product of that place as they are. We are the same, in that regard.
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For as much as my high school self resented the fact I grew up a stereotypical hillbilly, and for as much as I tried to erase that, the version of myself writing this still gets excited whenever I see a pig nose stuck in the dirt. … My earliest memories took place within the Ellis and Rooks county lines—two tiny blocks in the patchwork quilt that is Kansas. From an aerial view, the state resembles a quilt, with its acres and acres of farmland divided up nicely into even squares. Dirt and limestone roads outline those squares, separating the fields and pastures. Miles upon miles of wire fences rest between the roads and the farmland, stitching the whole thing together to make up the so-called sunflower state. Maybe the sunflowers don’t grow between Ellis and Rooks, but I’ve never seen a single one growing of its own accord in nature. I think “Kansas: The Quilted State” would be a more fitting nickname. When I think about growing up in Kansas, my mind clings to quilts, but for an entirely different reason. Great grandma Eileen, whether she liked to admit it or not, was an artist. She was a quilting magician and stitched love into everything she made with nimble hands which seemed to never tire for the ninety-three years she lived. While I think she had magical sewing powers, being the good Christian woman she was, she would probably laugh, shake her head, and attribute her gifts to God.
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There was a sign in her bathroom which read: “A day hemmed with prayer rarely unravels.” I have no doubt she believed this to be true. At great grandma Eileen’s we prayed before every meal, or rather listened to her speak to God from the head of the table while the rest of us resisted the urge to dig into the mashed potatoes and sweet corn. Great grandma Eileen had another sign, which sat on the windowsill above the kitchen sink: “Old quilters never die, they just go to pieces.” I like to think this one is true. She passed away a couple Christmases ago, but since she spent her whole life hand-stitching her love into the quilts she made for her family, I’m led to believe her spirit lives in the fibers of her works of art. She made one for each of her kids, grandkids, great grandkids, and great great grandkids. She gave me mine for Christmas one year in high school, a brown quilt with blocks of sheet music and autumn leaf patterned fabric. “I usually wait until graduation to give you all your quilts, but I probably won’t be around then,” she told me with a calmness one wouldn’t expect from such a bleak statement. At the time, I thought she was being a bit dramatic, uncharacteristically pessimistic. She was older than the queen of England, and in my opinion, far more important. She had little to no health problems, so it didn’t make sense that she would pass away in the near future. And it didn’t make
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sense that she seemed to have an idea of when that would be. But somehow she did. Great grandma Eileen passed away peacefully in her sleep precisely five months before I graduated high school. The quilt she made me is folded neatly under my bed and I can’t bring myself to use it like how I know she intended for me to do. Before she passed, I slept with it every night. But now, it feels like something that should be preserved. The quilt feels important, as if things like it won’t exist when I am old. Her quilts are relics from a time when things were handmade because there was no other choice. Her quilts are proof that she existed, that I am a descendant of such a strong, kindhearted woman. I believe she made our quilts to remind us that her love lives on, and that we might choose to lead a life where we too can leave our love behind.
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And in leading this life where I left Kansas behind, its love remains
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Remembrance Based Samson Malmoli
I once would be happy that you hadn’t gone somewhere that I loved to go so I could be there on your first and show you why I always wanted to be there it was even more special that there are so many places there are so many places that we could have gone together and figured out why we loved to be there I was laughing at the bustle of SoHo and you were a pigeon on the flagpole peering down at my hot cheap easy pork dumplings that was when I was eating meat I would have fed them to you otherwise it would have been much more enjoyable to just watch I used to stand on the corner of the metallic sun in New York twilight and I could pass by the newspaper stands outside of a deli look at the ads and think today would be a nice walk with you in the country meaning Roosevelt Island or Central Park it’s easy enough to get lost in the meld of leaves and your hair as if it was displacing the movement of the trees around it like impressionistic or high but so in love and not full of pressure not the kind of dangerous party I was used to in that very museum as I recall the splatters and slow walks
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on “Used” much of it dance steps around tourists or drunken dream sequences like this new place gave an extra layer to your eyes to make me hide and play tricks on you grew one rose out of your arm and snapped me off with it and I used to be content with a vase but it becomes an aquarium and I got homesick which is all a product of what I used to
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Bubbles and Clay Isabella Rodrigues
I was born near the Ocean. On the Ocean? To the Ocean? By? From? I like to think: My father was a fisherman, dangling his rubber legs off the side of a boat, blowing smoke out of a dusty pipe. My mom was the Sea, slippery and rageful. I feel wrong, split in two. Down the middle. I am a human woman, with all the normal functions. A heart, brain, lungs, etc. Quite boring. Like my mother—my feet are not made for shoes. Like my father—my eyes are forever hungry. I am made of clay and bubbles. Every tide fills me up, but only ever halfway. One leg stands in the mud while my mouth bellows out delicious sea foam. Perhaps I am a fish. I gape open-mouthed at the full moon and feel a concerning tug to... lay eggs? Something strange like that. Sometimes, I sweat vegetable seeds and oak acorns, and other times, I disintegrate into tiny wisps of salt and blow into the north wind. When I am in the transient in-between place, I stink like chopped up bass on bloody pink ice. I have roots underneath my heels. They like water, but not the smelly pond kind. But I think sea water kills them too. I don’t know what is good for them. I find myself licking salt. My tongue itches for it and then my humanness screams and scolds me for this. DRINK WATER! It yells. It’s quite boring.
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One day I’m sure the mud in my veins will dry up and I’ll turn into bubbles. I do not think I will turn back into the Sea, for that is my mother. Maybe I’ll go to the moon. The human heart has blood and oxygen in it. I have those. But, a creature lives there too. It hunches grumpily with a crooked face and laps up anything I give it. Fast and greedily. As if I haven’t fed it for weeks. It sits and makes sure I don’t swim out too far into the brine and seaweed. It keeps me churning. Churn, churn. Too much churn, never enough release. I never crash, just boil. Oh, how I want to smash hard and stupid against a wall. Shake the trees and scare the people. I wish to collide violently on the shore and say HELLO! But scary. Like a horrifying, but friendly, monster. And then a person curious enough would wade in and take a peek at me and maybe I would drag them down to the dark where my human eyes couldn’t see, but my non-humanness spirit could feel this person. Maybe the creature inside my heart wouldn’t eat them up so quickly. That is bubble talk. Clay would remind me to pull up grass and crush beetles into my eyes. To pick dirt off my knees. A pumpkin person does not like salt. But I adore salt. I eat it out of the box. I take handfuls of the stuff and shove it down my human throat, trying to return myself.
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I think my mother slit her throat to get her gills back. For what may the pained and angry Sea do when dried in soil? I will bleed out if I follow her. My human organs will shit themselves. And the creature in my heart will consume me out of starvation. I try to keep it at bay with dreams and wishes. It is getting harder to bargain with. If I am bubbles, someone will pop me, expand me, or blow me to the sky and I’ll unwillingly scream and probably miss home. If I am clay, someone will wash me off their hands, down the sink and spend the rest of the day picking me out from under their nails. So I am here with low tide. In and out and neither. Stuck in the horrible in-between. Dipping strawberries into salt. Pouring syrup on seaweed. The thing in my heart remains. Wanting.
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Jay Townsend
I Only Ate Your Cat Because I Was Angry and It Seemed So Well-Adjusted
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I feel like a wild animal but not the kind that kills and howls, free and feral or whatever the fuck. I feel more like a half-starved coyote running scared through suburbia; the neighborhoods all lights and sounds and too many eyes that follow me everywhere I turn and please stop looking at me please please please— I just wanted to chase rabbits. Why am I here? Why did I wander through that gap in the chain link fence, was I— Was I chasing something? I don’t remember it’s too bright and there’s too many people And my instincts scream keep track of everything, there’s danger here But I can’t keep track of anything because the light’s in my eyes, I Please stop looking at me it’s overwhelming.
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Jokes About NonBinary Jay Townsend
Hi my name is “I love you” and I was pressing flowers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when I found a caterpillar so I went outside, even though it took me an hour and a half to get out of bed, and placed it in a potted plant because I wanted it to live and be happy, if that’s a thing a caterpillar can do. Hi my name is “leave me alone” and I haven’t left my room in twenty-four hours because I can’t stand the feeling of knowing I’m being perceived, and I tried to hide in the closet but the bitch in the mirror on the inside of the door was watching me. Hi my name is “I’m sorry that happened” and I love you very much, just so you know, I love you a lot and I hate when I can’t fix things. Hi my name is “take my jacket” and I know that there are a lot of problems with chivalry and stuff but I’m enchanted with the idea of being like a modern knight, of being someone who protects, someone who helps.
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Naming Conventions Hi my name is “inherent bias” and you shouldn’t trust me because I’m very good at twisting words to make myself seem like a good person and I’m not. I will hurt you. Hi my name is “I deserved it” and like I’m pretty sure I didn’t—and I know it was complicated and also mostly my fault, actually almost entirely my fault and you know what, I change my mind I think I did deserve it. Hi my name is “I’ll do it myself ” and I wish people would stop fucking acting like I can’t handle myself, fucking hell, it’s easy for me, it’s easy, stop being so worried. Hi my name is “I miss the ocean, I miss home” and— Actually, I don’t have any more to say about this one. Let’s move on. Hi my name is “I guess I forgot” and I think? I might have ADHD but it feels insensitive to self-diagnose and anyways I had a really cool stanza in my head three minutes ago
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but it’s gone now because I got distracted. Hi my name is “check this shit out” and I want to write, draw, animate, direct, act. Not necessarily in that order. Hi my name is “I don’t know” and you have to understand I just like having names, okay, I just like having lots of them, and you can honestly use whichever one you like— and I wish I could stop hesitating when people ask “how would you like to be credited?” But you can’t have everything.
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CONTRIBUTORS: James Ammirato is a Senior Writing, Literature, and Publishing major at Emerson College. He is a poet, fiction writer, singer/songwriter, and guitarist, and plays with his band Snoozer around the Boston area. Jay Townsend is a nonbinary writer, illustrator and animator from Florida. They’re a Junior in the Creative Writing program. They hope you’re having a good day right now. Samson Malmoli is from Brooklyn, NY, and currently working towards a Creative Writing BFA. He has been writing poetry since his early teenage years, though he has written about his experiences for the whole of his memory. His work delves into the intricacies of living, and the true difficulties that come with a critically personal look. He tries to experiment with vision and placement within the poems to give a unique perspective on this. Samson’s hope is that his poetry connects with others and sparks something for people to continue thinking about long after reading it. Isabella Rodrigues is a senior Writing, Literature, and Publishing major from the south coast of Massachusetts. Her work focuses on the strange and natural magic of the world, usually depicting dreams or fantasies. Her novella, The Destruction of One, Penelope Evans, will be published in April by Wilde Press. You can find her usually reading a book or haunting a movie theater. Emma Kaster is a Publishing major in the 4+1 program at Emerson. She writes fiction, nonfiction, and will read just about anything.
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Abigail Langmead is a Freshman Creative Writing major from Stoughton, Massachusetts. Her work has previously been published in SPINE, APIARY Magazine, and Boston Book Festival’s At Home Boston campaign Sisel Gelman was born and raised in Mexico City. She moved to Alaska after high school and wrote her first novel. Her work has been published, or is forthcoming, in The Emerson Review, Raíz Magazine, Wack Magazine, Fettucine Zine, Repentino Literary Magazine, and The PieFace Column. She attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference during the summer of 2019. Sisel is currently studying at Emerson College in Boston, where she is majoring in Creative Writing and minoring in Philosophy while in the Honors Program. Her work can be found at medium.com/@siselgelman. Erik Gael Melendez is currently a first-year undergraduate at Emerson College, majoring in Writing, Literature, and Publishing. His first poem was published in Concrete Literary Magazine this year. He hails from South Texas and considers Margaret Atwood, Sam Sax, Anne Sexton, Alex G, & Mary Jane as some of his greatest influences.
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