NAME Magazine by emilybdesign

NAME

NAME MAGAZINE 2014 NAME Magazine seeks to encourage and support the creative writing community at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

MASTHEAD Editor in Chief: Jamie Gugino Graphic Designer: Emily Butler Design Team Coordinator: Audrey Foppes Design Team: Isaac Berger, Emma Fusco, Heather Cook, Victoria Louison, Kendall Spaulding, Brian Windshitl Editorial Team: Woogee Bae, Isaac Berger, Heather Cook, Chesley Coye, Emma Fusco, Cheryl Johnson, Anne Mulrooney Graduate Student Consultants Joseph Hall Veronica Wong Faculty Advisor Christina Milletti

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The editors would like to thank the UB Department of English, in particular Department Chair Graham Hammill, for supporting NAME as weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve grown and expanded. We would not be in publication at all without the support, guidance, and inspiration of the creative writing faculty: Dimitri Anastasopoulous, Judith Goldman, Myung Mi Kim, Karen Mac Cormack, and Christina Milletti. The editors also acknowledge and thank Jessica Smith, Matt Chambers, Rebecca Stigge, and Chris Fritton, who founded NAME in 1998. Contact us at name@buffalo.edu

Contents

06 ATHIRA UNNI Fallujuah 08 AMIÉ ROMAN Falling from Grace 09 CHERYL JOHNSON Commodity(Fetishism) Essentialism 10 DAMIAN PANTON The Heart of a Living Thing 10 LISA GAGNON Nothing to Lose 11 SUSHMITA GELDA Sleepwalking 11 LEXI KATZ Discovey 12 JAMIE GUGINO Homage to Magritte 13 TARYN RUTKA City Serenity 14 DAMIAN PANTON Therapy 16 ADAM JOHNSON Paris 18 HEATHER COOK That’s All We Knew 19 An Expatriate Babe 20 OLIVIA PATICK Pieces of Life 21 EMMA FUSCO Samguise Wamgee 22 GEORGE MITCHELL Missed Connection 23 Bank of America 24 ARIC ZAIR Soul of Winter 24 AMANDA LEE JOWSEY Inflated Ilusions 25 LUKE HEUSKIN Visions

25 DANA HAVAS Untitled 26 ANNE MULROONEY The Day I Fell in Love with My Pocket 27 The Eyelash Cottage 28 SCOTT HERMAN Border 29 MICHELLE GASKIN Tiptoe Through the Tulips Sunflowers Applause 30 HENRY BROWN The Slab 38 JAMIE GUGINO Continuing the Divide 39 AMY GORSKI Anxiety 40 ANNA DAVIDSON The Light Unknown 43 MELISSA CHEN Unspoken- A Spoken Poem 46 KELLY SCHUCKER Negative 49 KENDALL SPAULDING 27 Heaven 50 CHASE CONATSER A Conservationist’s Guide to Wiping Your Ass 50 CALEB LAYTON A Moth at the Window 51 ISAAC BERGER Outreach Stalemate 52 ALEX THAYER The Lot 61 RACHEL PANEPINTO Honest Goodbyes 62 CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES

FALLUJAH ATHIRA UNNI “America knows me as a number” 1 lined asphalt streets. the striped clown grins. smell of nuggets. cashew-shaped brain cells, torturing my peace. what am I? am I just a number? Fallujah still bleeds. feet tattooed with her name, vestiges of hope nested in Iraqi feet, the little girl’s feet scattered ink with blood, torn tattoos and hopes 2 “will we reach home?” her brother had been grim. their feet would. her abaya 3 had just been a cloth, before the world went deaf. “terrible, terrible!”, beacon of freedom, world’s hope, guardian-angel, Western might, the great God-complex chains of shops, chains of hotels, chains of debts binding this nation like a giant snake green, you think it is. Karmic, maybe? You think not. Fallujah still bleeds. whirring helicopters 4 , hovering low enough to make the houses tremble with hate, to unsettle bodies and minds and make the land permanently dizzy, to give a puppet the crown, to settle ‘democracy’.

Sara Davy, private conversation, Red Jacket terrace, September, 2013. part that is most likely to survive a bomb blast is human feet. Courtesy: “The Long Walk- A Story of War and the Life that follows” by Brian Castner. People in this poem tattoo their feet with their name and address in order to be recognized if found dead. 3 abaya= Muslim veil. 4 “Collateral Murder” – a Wikileaks video of American air raids against Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0). 1

2 The

the 19-year old soldier’s eyes are blue 5 . he looks like he’d never smile. “I killed forty two.” flicker of a question. shadow of doubt. am I the puppet? trembling hands, an imaginary rifle in his hands. he bleeds daily like Fallujah. Fallujah remembers. bombs were baubles of an unreconciled war, a ‘noble’ cause, fought in fear of hate, of religion of everything unknown misunderstood and left ignored all that remains are the bullet holes on the clay walls, unfilled, left alone, in a forgotten city, a ghost town, dead. Long dead. merry people, merry customs, lost in ignorance. high on Hollywood, a mind-number. exported sitcoms, imported brains; accused immigrants? why love my neighbor? why care, “the price is worth it” 6 it’s freedom, people, don’t you see? it’s democracy established! it’s peace for us and silence for the rest. deadly silence. Remember Fallujah! remember when screens spit venom and children die when guns become rights and minds become numb remember the eyes of the Iraqi girl with tattooed feet who wanted to get back home… and how her feet was all that remained. Kiss her feet. Remember, remember Fallujah.

5 “Permission

to Engage”- a video with former U.S. soldier Ethan McCord and the families of the Baghdad air raid victims. (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=YnF5X7xF8zc). 6 Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State, when asked about the deaths of half a million Arab children.

FALLING FROM GRACE AMIÉ ROMAN

Tap Tap Tapping And Slapping Of Paper-Mache Pointe-Shoes On The Softly Squeaking Black Marley T Deep Breath, Focus E E Back Straightens T A Hips Centered N C Left Leg, Toe Pointed I H Ready To Lift All O E Of My Weight P R’ Onto Those 5 Toes N S INSTRUCTIONS: PIQUÉ TURN E Listen Intently, Counting As The Classical Music Crackles, The Soft Chatter Of The Other Dancers Restlessly Shifting In Black Chiffon Skirts, Waiting, Waiting, Then Comes The: “5-6-7-8” Left leg Sings Out Grabs Body’s Weight Right Leg Bends Inward Toe Pointed And At Knee Perfect, Pivoting, Turning Whooshing, But, Wait, Ankle Turning Wrong Twisting, Contorting Top of foot Lying On The Floor Body Directionally Wrong For Ankle Pain, Pain, Pain Why? So Simple, Just Spin! But Now On Floor Lying On Marley, Ankle C O N T O R T ED Tripped En Pointe

COMMODITY(FETISHISM) CHERYL JOHNSON

ESSENTIALISM CHERYL JOHNSON Essentialism Mental am I? Senile & mean Nameless you would be without me Time eliminates Assumption, you say. An ass out of me? But I attend Mass Essential is the Utopian! I spit & spat at you Mate-less I am An alien

THE HEART OF A LIVING THING DAMIAN PANTON The heart of a living thing is a savagely reduced Decalogue that beats loud and clear then faint but always intermittent as if voices overheard on a windy street. Blood seems an extraterrestrial vitamin deflecting the crushingly filthy noise of whispers through steel veins animated with an insatiable rush, engorged with a beguiling anguish. A game of pleasure and desire with rewards of humiliation and shame: to recognize immediately the mockery and self-deception then understand the dignity we have all struggled for.

NOTHING TO LOSE LISA GAGNON Why? whispered fixings flip tipsy verses sad cats extrapolate fascinating pastoral fallacies feelings kneel before fearing tears who play with brains not refraining from pain, caught carrying caring calculating criminals luminescence illuminates gloomy noodles neurotransmitters necessitate palpitating hate insinuating tidbits tiptoe to epithets To help or to harm, is it that hard to choose? talk knots, pop not taught for naught broad fraud Freud flash flood pail flailing receive neat feet teeming with meatballs conditioning of classical catastrophes ego must have something to prove or nothing to lose Why?

SLEEPWALKING SUSHMITA GELDA Today we walk under sodium skies, and listen to the evening’s fading cries. we watch as lamplight floods the river, cold and wild, it mesmerizes the eyes of our inner child— and all at once we see the city, a glimmering shawl and feel the heat of life’s withdrawal—

DISCOVERY LEXI KATZ Dancing with eternal duality Shaded frequency of wonder Spiral whorl of celestial cosmos In rhythmic vibration Twists of umber Luminary light Roll through space Our souls in endless bliss Glowing stars of shared eye Boundless this tree Beaming embrace When barriers break We are harmoniously Nothing No thing At all

HOMAGE TO MAGRITTE JAMIE GUGINO *Winner of the Axelrod Memorial Award Horizontal biomorphs a treecloud-wordpicture. Perfect precise image angled through frames of speech in the lost world. Ghost or faceless being? The invention of life land. That person lost their woman’s memory in the shade. Spewing bubbles of written characters. Those six elements of psychoanalogy. Inchoate impasto shadows. Quasi.... Masked. I see you from behind your different. I can make you disappear, a symmetrical trick. Facade de ciel. Diptych dipsticks disguised delightfully I dentically. The burning Poe vanished in silence. The horse painted me fowl in the forét. Word is a picture. Interpretative phantom of familiarity. The joke was a proposition, verbally connected to the pipe. This is not Art. This is a piece of cheese, a pipe, a key, a leaf, and a wine glass with tea. The mysterious proof is inside papiers collés. Underneath the egg, but you can only crack it with a hammer heated by a candle in a glass while dressed like a man wearing high heels. Colouring a leafy landscape then printing, with numbers inserted by the finger balancing balls and ringing horse bells. The pipe is an apple of rainbow paint inscribed beautifully with the words “art of conversation”, under the moonlight the cut-out spelling is a parody, a surreal revolution. A ham-fisted, lost world of syllogism, dressed in a tribly hat- untitled. Le sens propre is man-made. The tree of mirrors is in the sky.

CITY SERENITY TARYN RUTKA

THERAPY DAMIAN PANTON Ascension (Part I) A factitious shriek from the fluorescent red box roused you from sleep. Adverse to the dawn, no stimulant could stifle contempt felt for those comfortably emotive before noon. An arm and a watch, seasoned cosmopolitans, voyaged through an ocean of denizens harmonious in a way that introverted everything else. A mass of tatters quivered as you walked past, God bless you and may he forgive you of your sins. Suspended, momentarily, in anticipation of the words that never came, you wished he hadn’t said anything. Reclamation (Part II) Recollection stretched from childhood to adulthood; infectious memories spread back to the beginning of your life. You tried to tell me, as well as one could, what it was like being you. Described a feeling you held of being misplaced, standing to the side of yourself, watching while wondering if this was how everyone felt. Disassociation, I supplied. For a moment you felt fine, and then your head began pounding with the voices of revelation. You should take the train home. Disassociation (Part III) A female face formless but featured. Partially hooded, verdant eyes angelic and alluring. Heavy lines divined her beauty marred by hues of blue and pink. Above: “Beauty. Over. Time.

BASTION COSMETICS”

No one solves crime on the silver-tipped wings of thinly veiled eroticism. Scopophilia: Hermaphroditic women all-repelling with their attraction flung out over an immensity; brooding over their dark power. In harmony with: Justice (is societal): Knowledge as piercing divine light. In conflict with: Crime: Knowledge as the black of immoral streets.

In contact with: Revenge (is personal): Knowledge as intimate, deformed power. For all the deep nights punctuated by restless inquiry, these things have become nostalgic. Lonely saxophone riffs and the sparkle of sex and violence to mask a clash of: Epistemes: Knowledge as systems from different moral orders. Detectives donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do what we think they do.

AND PARIS WAS EMPTY ADAM JOHNSON And so, I awoke and Paris was empty, which was interesting because I had never been to Paris before (I had once been to Lisbon but that city is in a poorer country and Kanyé West has never written a song about it, so attention is really quite fleeting about that pleasant decaying city) and I wondered why it was that Paris was empty and why it was I was alone in a Parisian hotel room when the night before I had laid my head on a pillow in Boston or was it Tacoma, maybe Seattle but that really doesn’t matter because America is one in the mind and that one is so full of oneness that sometimes I vomit from overconsumption. And so, I awoke and Paris was empty, the streets as vacant as the Dead Sea and the café doors’ ajar in the morning’s pleasant autumn breeze and the smell of lavender and cattle drifting through my shattered windows with a directness one doesn’t often experience in ancient Europa and I sat in the blueberry stained armchair and watched the emptiness of Paris consume the vacancy of Bruges and the nothingness of Rome. And so, I awoke and Paris was empty and the bed smelled like Atlanta which is to say I couldn’t place the smell exactly, and the television was on to an American news station with its colors and spectacle and barking dogs, which meant that perhaps I was home, but no I was in the Parisian snow and the bodies of the Gauls that Caesar had killed so many centuries ago were playing rummy in the corner of the Frankish hotel room on the Rue d’Aboukir which I couldn’t pronounce and really this is all about me. And so, I awoke and Paris was empty and the narrative was collapsing under my narcissism and America’s girth and the night was over and the day was gone too which left Paris in a perpetual fog of uncertainty, the streets populated with the whispers of Parisian Jews whose bodies were far away in the forests of East Germany and Poland, and the fog hung until the sun returned from its vacation and brought with it the daylight of European radiance to reveal Paris in all its grimy glory, a colossus sprawled out along the silent Seine. And so, I awoke and Paris was empty and London was empty and Rome was empty and Berlin was empty and Madrid was empty and St.

Petersburg was empty and Stockholm was empty, but New York was full and Tokyo was overcrowded and Mumbai pulsed with its neurosis and Sao Paolo lit the night, all leading me to conclude that I was in Europe and not the perverted results of Europe and its oh so European ways and the chairs were in a circle around a map of Liberia which scared me because I was in a Parisian hotel and I could have sworn the race to Africa was finished years ago under the Saharan sun and among the Rhineland’s healthy trees and down beneath London’s rubble. And so, I awoke and Paris was empty, except for me and the billions of history’s dead, milling in raucous cafes and silent theatres, all telling their stories but no one taking the time to listen- but I tried to listen, to the dirty Gaul and the burnt Huguenot and little Napoleon, and to the incoming whispers on the breeze from lonely Belgium and distant Latvia and I heard the distant shouts of my American brethren across the ocean busy playing war among themselves, salting the earth with their fake blood and soupy pesticides all in the name of liberty’s brother obliviousness, who if I were to describe him would be a morbidly obese pheasant waiting for his turn to run off the pretty cliff. And so, I awoke and Paris was empty, but I wasn’t empty, I was full: full of the stories and the lives and the experiences of a gone Europe and a gone Asia and a gone Africa (but not a gone Australia) and the melodramas of history seeping from my body like excess bacon grease and I called out in the empty streets of dead Paris, called out my poetry and prose, all for nothing, for no gain, for no point or goal or profit or motivation except that I could, and I did, and I wanted to and I wanted to walk the streets of Dante’s Europe in solitude, away from squealing America and cruel China and obtuse Russia and contemplate the past, present and future all at once, all together in the fading spring morning and so what if America reigns supreme?, it lays supreme in the spectacle and the spectacle doesn’t exist and America doesn’t exist and the terrorist doesn’t exist because he lives in the spectacle and now as my thoughts disintegrate, I can hear the gates of Hades open and release all my friends back onto the battle-scarred landmass…

THAT’S ALL WE KNEW HEATHER COOK “Here’s ten dollars, buy a pizza,” Ma said. A night of bingo dabbers and lucky charms Spiraled from days to weeks to months Stained yellow--from seasons in the bingo hall Rubbing the Buddha and rabbit paws Cocaine is a masked thief Now we’re eating Baked beans and cold raviolis Scavengers Dividing moth-ridden sweaters Forgotten like the law “Daddy’s in the war,” I said “Smile back at the moon” Memories murdered Declaration dancing behind eight beady eyes Can he hear our pleas? Alteration Eldest daughter to the new caretaker As quiet as bruises come Idle in darkness against the wall The enemy pitter-patters A flickering light becomes bait To stomp on fast-moving cockroaches The only game we knew

AN EXPATRIATE BABE HEATHER COOK the clever storm, the creeping shadows, the churning smog that smothers the peasant skinned guards of the Queen’s castle barely treading River Thames: this is the mist, the black smog that will put Daisy in a scandalous maze. this is the thickest part of the phase. the “jovial,” the redcoats, the Big Ben that grinds his gears to look away in attempts of regurgitating swallowed time. clicks he cannot unwind and clicks he does not want to unwind to watch it all again. he needs to forget the pink lipstick upon a pound of dirty flesh. this is the thickest part of the phase. the way she struts down Oxford Street, American patriotism in her stride; the way her polished bags sway; the way her legs glisten under her umbrella beneath the sunny rainfall: this is the reason why: justified deception. this is the redcoat atop her tiny frame in the maze, that is the thickest part of the phase. stained glass windows reflect and shed light on the silent bruises of the restless girl stuttering her prayers; Westminster Abbey chimes every time she cries, and worship caresses her as smooth as a mother wrapped in silk waiting to wipe away the thickest part of the phase. “listen to the chime, for the thinning of the thickest part of the phase”

PIECES OF LIFE OLIVIA PATICK Friendships spoil quicker than humid milk Rancid bites send me estranged in parking lots bittersweet liberty The empty echoes keep me sane Fast forward moments sunlight illuminates our dead days breathing my languages into unmalleable ears twenty pages behind my own book deviled eyes innocent playing rips me to the core stubborn and defeated she sits clasping white whine money hungry licked fingers pull bills pursed lips cast yellow phlegm waltzing smoke in lungs

SAMGUISE WAMGEE EMMA FUSCO Samwise Gamgee watched the Beetles tribute on CSB Samguise Wamgee listened to the Beetles play the Beatles The Beatles played for their fiftieth anniversary The other Beetles play for the Beatles sithtith anniversary A plentiful handful of fulfilled pessimists started camaraderie in a pristine Starwarsbucks in Liverpool The pretentious teens turned to tweetle about the beetle that was playing the Beatles, ready to live their Cambria life instead of Times New Roman. “JAI GU RU DAE VA”, John said. “CHAI GOOD MOOD LATTE YA”, they heard. OMMMM John Lennon wept, not for the bastardization of his lyrics, but for Yoko’s horrifying fashion sense.

MISSED CONNECTION GEORGE MITCHELL * Honorable Mention: Cook, Hammond, Logan Prize CL > buffalo >personals > missed connections Just a stranger being nice and thinking about someone else . I have kept trying to reach out to you and then feeling it is futile yet I go and try again and again. You were at Mercy Hospital today in the waiting room on the 3rd floor. you were texting, but had this winery smile dripping from your face. I really wanted to say hi, but got speechless. Sometimes i dream that you’ll see me and you’ll agree that we can be, i dont know what we’d be. I was just wishing that I could have made you smile, or cheered you up today, or everyday for that matter. Meeting someone decent is so hard now. I wish you would have let me worship those feet of yours. I’m not sure if your in to golden showers or just publicly peeing but email me! Posting ID: 4062019877 Posted: 2013-10-5, 1:10AM EDT

BANK OF AMERICA GEORGE MITCHELL *Honorable Mention: Cook, Hammond, Logan Prize Banking products are provided by Bank of America, which is divided Into a number of affiliated banks, which are then divided into a number of ranks All under the name of the Bank of America corporation, here in the U.S. nation. Investing in securities involves risks, it’s easy to lose your money (tsk). You should review any planned financial transactions before you take any action. Merrill Lynch is the marketing name for Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, and they just might be able to help you plan for your retirement. Merrill Edge can you help you invest, and they also offer advice to businessmen who wear vests. Securities products are provided by MLPF&S. (As an aside, we don’t condone insider trading, but if you do, don’t leave any evidence.) Insurance Products are offered through Merrill Lynch Life Agency Inc., which can be handy if you find yourself on the brink. Bank of America, N.A. Member FDIC. (As you can see.) ©2013 Bank of America Corporation. All rights reserved. All reserves are right.

SOUL OF WINTER ARIC ZAIR Soul of Winter Among the ague of the ice and snow Here in this arctic territory, I find not darkness or sorrow, instead I find peace within the calming snowfall Watch it drift softly to the ground. The sun still shines, yet far from this algor This is my home I seek not warmth, for the refined chill soothes It quiets the mind and soul There is no need for grass of green, skies of blue, botany spreading across the terrain Let them linger elsewhere I profoundly enjoy it here among the ague of the ice and snow

INFLATED ILLUSIONS AMANDA LEE JOWSEY Let the red balloons go, the tokens of hope, inflated by illusion popped by the pull of our familiar atmospheres. The shells deflated, their content settled and dispersed, the breath knocked from our chests, holding nothing more than a fist-full of disenchantment and remorse.

VISIONS LUKE HEUSKIN I have seen the winter blowing in on the factories and on the beaches, death-bespeckled in fluorescent plastics beneath the skyway on the fringe of decay, where human squalor plants its kiss on Earth, and she shudders. What is this feel, this sense? Can I shake from my nostrils this heavy scent? It twists my gut, and the gray wind pining with cold needles blears my vision. The gulls wheel for escape but they, like we, cannot leave. The dome of the sky is high and like unyielding granite. It traps us here and here we feel the stale air of a coming storm grow stale around us like the weight of a choking, leaden palm that will soon melt away the winter, and come summer leave us cold again.

UNTITLED DANA HAVAS These hands, which speak of seasons that never came and of months that have passed all in the same two syllables, (hands that chopped the wood that struck the match that lit the fire that raised the bread, that these hands feed now to each other) take a moment to recall the sum of one and one.

THE DAY I FELL IN LOVE WITH MY POCKET ANNE MULROONEY He fluffs and sometimes ruffles, softly swaying when I sway. Crinkling, sometimes tinkling, with my nickels for the day. He jingles and he jangles, sounding cheerful and quite merry. My quiet friend, my loyal friend, filled with all that he can carry. One day I didn’t give him any change or stuff to hold, I was walking down the street when all at once, lo and behold! My friend, he started talking! There I heard him say, “Hello!” ‘Twas a whisper, just a whisper, but it set my heart aglow. His voice was raw, but soft and gentle; kinda friendly, rough and tough. I giggled and I wriggled and found my brain was full of fluff! But I went ahead and asked him, “Should I have left my purse at home? Perhaps you’re feeling empty, would you like my keys, my phone?” “No! I’m just here for conversation,” he huskily replied. So huskily, so muskily, his voice touched me deep inside. “My pocket’s talking! This is shocking!” I was thinking at this time. His handsome ‘hello’ was heavenly – a taste of the sublime! So I found myself at ease and I began to chat nonstop, Blabbering ‘bout my books and sister and my favorite coffee shop. “How ‘bout you? What’s your life like? What’s your real name?” I ask at last. He had only laughed and listened while I was spilling out my past. He chortles and I blush. He says, “I don’t remember much; I only know for certain I came alive at your first touch.” I get so swoony and so moony and heaven knows I’m so in love. His voice is deep, I’m swept off my feet, but there’s a problem here… sort of. He’s so gentle, and sentimental, but he’s the stitching on my hip! How’s a girl supposed to kiss a guy with threads instead of lips? Pondering this loathsome problem, I stopped and listened to a sound: The pocket on my hip began to beat; began to pound. Steady, strong, I heard it pumping; starry eyed, I looked to see My own true love and pocket had a heart, undoubtedly! “Oh love of mine!” I cried aloud, “Let’s ride away together, Into this summer sunset, and we’ll stay attached forever.”

THE EYELASH COTTAGE ANNE MULROONEY Spinning in a circle, incapable of numbers, and all the milk-stars mean more than language. Lungs are sprouting fingers, tickling the rib cage till its drunk, till itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bleeding scraps of poetry.

Stories by the light of seven rosy candles. Kisses you on the nose, writes a poem and dresses up like princesses from Egypt, China, India. Sings a lullaby for you and all your freckles, braids your hair out the attic window.

That stair there, this stair here, lead up and down and back around again right into my armchair. I made it from a curtain. I made it from a blanket. I made it from my nightgown. I made it from my skin.

Furnished this house with wood and lace and water. Leafy vines and tiny sparrows. Brick walkways and whistling gardeners. Straw hats that protect you from the sun. Old books, dusty pages, this is for you.

BORDER SCOTT HERMAN B

We all agree on

R E

�

e R

‫ﻝلﺍا‬

D Does it exist?

‫כֵּן‬

‫"א‬

нет Nein

o ‫ﻥنﻉعﻡم‬

�

B Should it exist?

Index: � – North (Korean) � – South (Korean) ‫ – "א‬No (Hebrew)

ет – No (Russian) ‫ – ﻥنﻉعﻡم‬Yes (Arabic) ‫ ﻝلﺍا‬- No (Arabic) ‫ – כֵּן‬Yes (Hebrew)

TIPTOE THROUGH THE TULIPS MICHELLE GASKIN

SUNFLOWERS APPLAUSE MICHELLE GASKIN

THE SLAB HENRY BROWN I am awake, but I cannot see. I’m not sure how I realize that I have crossed the line from the void of nothingness to my stark, pitch-black reality, but it must be the cold. You never truly notice the cold when you’re sleeping, even if you dream of dead splintered forests in the heart of winter or crushing darkness at the bottom of the sea; for your brain cannot properly recreate, or even contemplate, true and utter cold. It is an element purely of the body, devoid of the underhanded shell games of the mind. I think I am awake, but I cannot see, nor can I move an inch. I try to breathe and my nostrils fill with powdery snow. I almost suffocate right then and there. I blow as much back out as I can, but the rest clings to my gums and the insides of my cheeks and down my throat like an adhesive. I open my mouth as wide as possible and begin to twist my tongue around in every direction I can reach, guiding tuft after tuft of snow into my mouth. Each mouthful takes a few moments to melt, and with every passing second my panic grows: that primal reaction that seizes your body when your lungs reach for air and find only water. I know I don’t have long before I suffocate completely, but I am aware of myself, of my situation, and I know that my own sense and reason are the only barriers separating me from this horrid place becoming my frost-tomb. But a pocket appears, the slightest bubble of oxygen, a shard of precious life. I inhale lightly, knowing I have been blessed with only so much air. It feels like I am breathing for the first time. It burns like dry ice, filling my lungs like cement. I need to create a larger pocket. I need to free a hand. I try to move my fingers but the snow has utterly compacted them, wrapped around them in a tight embrace. I think that my right hand is up close to my head, but it only feels that way. For all I know, I’m upside down. I am trapped, suspended in a frozen sea of my own design, unable to rise to the surface or sink to the bottom. I feel a shift somewhere around my right arm. I try to move, and some snow begins to give way around my fingers. I continue to twist them in circular motions, and soon I have created a second pocket, although my hand is not completely free. I flex my fingers to the side, trying to discover the source the disturbance. I brush against something, a canvas-like fabric. It is either an abandoned pack or one of the others. I continue to brush against the fabric, clearing away as much snow as I can. If it is a pack, perhaps it has an extra beacon. If it is one of the others, perhaps they too are still alive. My heart leaps when the thing I have found begins to react to my touch. I twitch my fingers even faster, slowly uncovering more and more. It occurs to me

that I am feeling a disembodied elbow. Its owner is churning it slowly in slightly circular motions, timidly creating space, and I help as much as I can. We dig for a long time, his elbow and my fingers working together to free each other. I suppose that it’s a small miracle that we landed right beside each other, close enough to make contact. Of all the ways we could have ended up, such positioning could mean our liberation, our salvation. My friend’s elbow, having created enough space for itself, begins a series of beating motions, trying to pound away at the last remaining snow that keeps him from reaching out and grabbing my hand. It is still utterly dark, and the cold has truly begun its assault. I can feel it sinking through my clothes, slowly extinguishing any scant trace of warmth that still remained. Some more compact snow collapses near my face, and even though I can’t see, I know that the air bubbles that hold my hand and my head have connected, for I can hear my friend moving his elbow more clearly. The width of the hole he’s creating grows beyond my reach. He has freed his elbow even more, but not enough to pull his hand through the hole between our air pockets. I rub my fingers against him and can feel him still digging, attempting to free his face. I yearn to help my friend, but there is nothing I can do but wait. I continue to brush my fingers against his elbow, to let him know that he’s not alone. I wonder who it is. Through the utterly embracing and dominating cold I sense the slightest glimpse of warmth in his touch. I cling to it feebly like an infant runt to its mother. It is practically nonexistent, but it is still there, a solitary beacon shimmering across the black and icy gulf. There is a gasp and a cough. My friend has finally freed his mouth and he sputters and chokes away the snow, just as I did. He breathes quickly and deeply, sucking in mouthful after mouthful of our precious air. “Try to breathe lightly,” I say, “there’s only so much air in here.” “Jack, is that you?” It’s Charlie, the youngest of our four-man group. “Yea, it’s me. Are you OK, Charlie?” I say. He continues to cough. Even if we did have some light, I wouldn’t be able to see him. I still can’t move my head. But his head is only about two feet from mine. I can hear him though. His spastic wheezing masks the panic in his voice. “Yea, I think I’m all right. Ugh. My legs are numb,” the two of us can only speak through rasped whispers. I try to feel my legs and realize I can’t. The cold has already evolved into complete numbness around my knees. “Me too,” I say. “Jack,” Charlie says, “do you have a beacon?” “No, your brother has it. I don’t even know if my pack is still on my back. How much can you move, Charlie?” “Barely, just my elbow. My hand’s still caught and I can’t fucking free it.”

I hear him give a tug and he lets out a dog-like yelp. “Oh God,” he whimpers, “I think my other shoulder is dislocated or something.” “Just try to relax,” I say, “Panicking won’t get us out of here.” “I’m not panicking, I’m in fucking pain,” he says between a grunt and a sob. I feel sorry for him. He’s only 22. This was supposed to be his first big adventure. “It’s gonna be OK, man. Can you move your head? Can you see anything?” There is a moment of silence, although it feels way longer. “No, nothing. I’m sorry, Jack.” “It’s alright, Charlie. Listen, if you can, I need you to try and free my hand,” I wiggle my fingers as I say this, “I’m wearing a watch…It has a light.” “OK, I’ll try.” I begin to feel his elbow rotating again, pressing downward against my fingers. Slowly but surely, I start to feel the deeply compacted snow smooth and clear away. I can wiggle my palm a little bit along with my fingers. I begin to rotate my wrist as Charlie uncovers me inch by inch. It feels like I am rediscovering my hand after years of paralysis. I can feel my icy blood rushing and filling the newly freed muscles and flesh, pins and icicles piercing every remaining, functioning nerve within. Before long I can rotate my whole hand, but cannot fully bend it. I feel my watch rub along my wrist as it rises above the newly formed powder. The light emanating from my watch is green and very dim, but it is enough. Crystals sparkle and reflect all around us. For a moment I imagine with the remnant of a childhood fantasy that we have ventured deep into some forgotten mine and struck gold, or more accurately diamonds; but these diamonds are cut and polished, their jagged forms reflecting the gloomy beams of the nearly nonexistent light source with artisanal beauty. In the faint light I notice for the first time the frost gathering around my eyelids. They nearly blind me. I blink spastically and they clear away. I crane my head to the right and see Charlie’s elbow resting by my hand. His arrhythmic pants mingle with soft sobs, his head bowed and shadowed through the foot wide hole between us. “I’m sorry, Jack,” he says, “I can’t dig anymore right now. My shoulder’s…giving out.” “That’s alright,” I reply, “You’ve done enough. Just try to control your breathing for the time being.” “Jack,” my heart sinks as I hear in his voice the same primal fear that I feel, “is help coming?” “Shut up, Charlie…Obviously it’s coming,” but honestly I have no idea. Charlie’s older brother, and my good friend, Joe, has the only beacon between the four of us and he could be anywhere else on the mountain at this point. I can

only hope him and Tyler were able to make it out. At least then someone would definitely be looking for us. “Jack…” “Yea.” “Where did you go?” I pause. “What do you mean?” Charlie sighs. “Well, you were behind me, and we were going up. But then I turned around to make sure you were still there…and you weren’t. Then it all started happening. Where did you go?” I don’t really know what to say. I can’t tell him completely. I don’t think I can even say it to myself. “I went the wrong way.” “Oh…” “I know. Charlie, I…” I know what to say, but struggle with the words, my own deluded pride still trying to survive in the glimmering cement-like snow, “I’m so sorry.” “It’s OK Jack…it’s…it’s not your fault,” Charlie manages to choke out. Not my fault… The silence is as oppressive and chilling as our current predicament. Regardless, I remind myself that time is of the essence. If we can’t make more air quickly then we are going to run out very soon. I shine my watch towards the ceiling only inches above my head. It looks different in color from the rest of the snow around us, a deep ethereal blue. Perhaps it can be broken. “Charlie,” I say. “Yea?” “I don’t mean to sound pushy,” I speak to him very calmly, “and I know this is a very bad situation but we need to concentrate and work together if we want to get out of this as quickly as possible.” I say “as quickly as possible” even though I mean “at all.” “Ok,” he replies. “Can you reach above you, Charlie? I need you to try and dig up with your elbow and see if you can scrape away at the ceiling.” “I don’t know if I can, Jack.” Blood shoots into my head in a spike of rage and panic, which ironically sends shivers down my spine. But I force myself to remain calm. If I lose it, then he will lose it, then we will die. “Think about it, Charlie,” I say, trying to remain calm with him, “We could be two inches away from the surface, but we won’t know unless you do something. C’mon, man. I know you can do this,” I reassure him, try to comfort him, but in reality I’m silently begging. “Alright, Jack. I have…to try, right?” he chuckles through the pain and the cold. He groans as he raises his elbow up once again. I watch as he brushes it

against the pillowed ceiling, slowly scraping away the looser snow. I realize with a twitch in my cheek that this place is beautiful. What the fuck am I thinking? I feel lightheaded, floating. Perhaps the hypothermia has already commenced my descent. Suddenly there is a deafening crack and a crunch, and ceiling shifts above us. The whole thing actually drops a few inches towards us before coming to a halt as abrupt as its fall. I feel the pressure of the air multiply, pressing in around my exposed cheeks. Charlie shouts. I can hear the shock and horror in his feeble voice. I feel totally paralyzed again. More loose snow drops down and covers us, but we shake it off. Darting the frost from our eyes, we gaze up at the massive slab of ice suspended only a few inches above our heads. “Oh my God,” Charlie mutters, “It’s going to crush us.” He starts to hyperventilate. “No it’s not,” I say, “We just need…to stay still.” “How are they going to find us, though? We’re trapped under this thing. It’s…it’s trapped us in!” his panic is contagious. “Charlie, please…calm down,” I can only manage a whisper. I begin to feel lightheaded as the pressure closes in more and more around us. It seems as though with every hyperventilated gasp Charlie takes, he is stealing more air from my own lungs, and each breath becomes shorter than the one before it. Panic clashes with delirium, and I can hardly hear myself speaking. “Charlie,” I say, every word I speak is its own trial, “you have to…relax… control… your breathing…you’re…using up…all…our air,” but Charlie does not respond. I can hear him struggling more and more for breath, and he collapses into a series of coughing and choking. I try to speak, but nothing comes out. Through his suffocating pain I think I make out two words, or perhaps it’s my own conscience trying to speak to me, “your…fault…” I can feel myself drifting, and as everything turns cloudy all I can do is look up at the icy blue slab hanging over my head. I truly can’t believe what I am seeing. Of all the places where we could have ended up, we land beneath this, our veritable tombstone. Its blue is blotched in places by an engrossing black. I stare into the darkest patch, which sits directly above me, like a black hole pulling me closer and closer. It would love nothing more than to devour me. I guess I deserve it. I stare into the slab, and the slab stares back. It is our downfall, the instrument of our disaster, floating above us, mocking us, mocking me, threatening at any moment to make the final plunge and destroy us, just as it ravaged the mountainside. As I drift even further from Charlie, the slab, and myself, I reflect on how we came to be trapped there. It really was my fault, despite Charlie’s words. I remember each of

Joe, Tyler, Charlie, and myself stepping out one by one and grabbing our skis, which were leaning next to the wall of my cabin. I looked up through the dead and gently swaying trees to the snow-topped peaks of Mount Nemesis, Montana, and as I did, I felt my barriers of caution melting away into pure untempered excitement. It was for Charlie’s sake that we went on this trip, for it was always his dream to challenge the slopes of a mountain of such extreme caliber. Of course, we were all more than happy to oblige him, and I arranged the whole trip. I urged us up to the mountain this morning, despite the high-level avalanche warnings. They were careful, and I was not. I remember when we reached midway up the slope where the trees began to scatter and diminish, replaced by layers upon layers of rocky cliffs that varied in size as we went farther up. We rose higher and higher, and soon came upon a massive slope that left us speechless. It was marvelous, beautiful, simply breathtaking. For hundreds of meters up and around the snow lay perfect and pristine, shining in the sunlight, perfect and seemingly virginal to the corrosive presence of man. The four of us looked to each other and we silently agreed that this is what we had come all this way for, as if the mountain had created it for us and us only. I remember when we worked our way to the top. Joe suggested leading our band off to the right, while I suggested the left. The left looked like more of a challenge. If we came all the way up here, why would we not take the greatest challenge this mountain has to offer? I believe those were my exact words. Joe looked down at my suggested route and replied, “Because it doesn’t look safe.” He was keeping Charlie in mind, and I respected that. It still felt like a waste, though. We took Joe’s lead, and Tyler followed behind him, who was followed by Charlie, and I took the end of the line. Joe led us down carefully enough, but my own thrill seeking made me restless, waiting at the back for Charlie to keep up with the others. I knew I had to stay behind him. It was my duty to watch out for him. But as we gently glided down the slope, I looked off to the left. Farther down I could see a crest in the snow that rose upwards and then dropped about twenty feet, creating a perfect ramp. It was like it was made for me, waiting all this time. It was just too perfect. I knew I had a duty to watch over Charlie and the others, to make sure we all stayed together and were safe. Nevertheless, my own desire overpowered me, and I threw caution to the wind. I veered away from my friends and made for the ramp, and challenged the mountain’s wrath. I understand now why I felt that ramp was made for me. It was a trap. I felt the blue ice shift as I passed over it. There was a slight initial give before it cracked under my feet, and suddenly the silent white slope that we had gazed upon with reverence just moments before burst into a frenzy of chaotic life. The dislodged slab of ice, the feeble stick holding up this colossal force of nature,

the stick that I broke, slid beneath my feet and flung me forward. I miraculously landed on my skis and I just kept going. The mountain roared behind me, inciting a primal fear that I have never felt before. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t dare look back. There was no doubt my friends were already swallowed by the avalanche raging above me. I knew fleeing was ultimately pointless, and I stayed ahead for only a few moments before I was overrun. Clouds of snow burst forth like an atomic explosion, racing past and around me at a seemingly unnatural speed, frozen hordes of the deepest circle of hell, cascading back to their kingdom of damnation from their failure to claim the heavens. There was a moment before the great and final deafening plunge when I was lifted up over the snow and I rode atop the demons, unable to control the ceaseless cascade from collapsing upon itself at the bottom of the mountain. As trees reappeared and flew by me like wisps of rain across a windshield, the avalanche sucked me down again, and I was rolling, twisting and turning through never-ending oblivion. Then there was darkness, silence, and nothing. I must have passed out, possibly from the change in pressure and lack of air. I can hardly breathe anymore. I look at my watch and realize that in my initial panic I foolishly forgot to check the time, so I have no idea how long I was unconscious, but it has been hours since we first started up the mountain. Somewhere above us, it will be growing dark soon. I cannot completely clear my vision. The frost has once again congregated around my eyes like lead to a magnet. I try to call out to Charlie, but not even air escapes me. There is no air, or it is virtually gone, and I am slowly choking. I can only see blue through the blur. As my vision slightly returns I realize that the slab is less than a mere two inches from my face. It has closed in silently, like a sea-beast hidden beneath the waves, circling its injured, helpless game. I turn my head as much as I can and see Charlieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s elbow and the shadow of his head, bent and crooked, motionless. The slab of ice has bent down at an angle in his direction. It is pressing down on his head. Was he calling for me? Was he screaming for help as the slab came down on him? Was it a quick drop or was it a slow and torturous descent? I brush my hand against his elbow, trying to provoke him, to let him know I am still alive. I search desperately for the warmth I felt from him before, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gone. My only company is the cold now, and this godforsaken slab. I look up. As my vision diminishes and I cling to my final traces of consciousness, it appears as though the black blotches in the blue form together to make a ghastly, jagged face, grinning malevolently down at me. I submit. I give up. The conquerors have been conquered, so to speak. Just as my will fades, the cold falls away, and like me, becomes nothing; and with nothing left to do, I fall into its embrace. It takes me in gladly, like a parent joyously accepting the return

of their lost runaway child. There is no such thing as cold now. It’s relaxing actually, peaceful, even warm. The slab shifts slightly, pressing us deeper into its hold. I don’t look at it with loathing or guilt anymore, only with vicarious curiosity. I think I can see my face within it, inching closer and closer. I had attempted to overpower its brutal nature, but now it has pinned me down for the final count. It shifts again. Maybe there are people walking on it above me. Maybe Joe and Tyler are up there, having somehow located us. Maybe they are trying to break through the ice, and in moments I will be saved; or perhaps it is just another shift in the snow, another victorious jest of our captor. There’s no one up there, and even if there was, it would take more than a few moments to break through the slab and reach me, and moments are all I have left now. In fact, I think I’m already gone.

CONTINUING THE DIVIDE JAMIE GUGINO

ANXIETY AMY GORSKI I tell myself to breathe. Just.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hot enough I think my brain will explode. I worry I might die. I worry, that this is the only way to make the madness end.

Breathe. I count the numbers, over and over thinking that I can will my throat to open. For air to rush in and not taste like acid on my lungs I inhale. And choke on the tightness in my throat. I want to calm down I want to think straight. Exhale. The rocks are piling up in the small dark room. First the floor then my back. Covering me. Crushing me with their responsibilities. My body gives out like clockwork every time.

My hands try to hold myself together. But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too late, I am already falling apart. Melting. My heart beats like an angry drum. My ears are pounding. My skin is turning red. I take a breath. My body strangles the air refusing every molecule of oxygen. My shivering is the only reminder that I am alive. Existing. With these red blurry eyes and raw, scratched skin, and sealed tight throat. Telling myself over and over, to just Breathe.

I can tell myself it will be okay. It will be okay. It will be okay. It will. Be. Okay. You can handle this. But it seems (Inhale) too (Inhale) hard. (Exhale) I can hear the blood beneath my skin.

THE LIGHT UNKNOWN ANNA DAVIDSON (A cut-up poem of Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus with Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley’s last words) oh, dear please put out the light unknown. to the infernal darkness never know the end space and time without depth deserted, silent empire the price that must be paid for the passions stronger than his rock. melancholy arises in man’s heart because its hero is

conscious

that is he is a face that toils so close to stones is long effort the a b s u r d hero enough to fill a man’s heart. superior to his fate his tragedy begins write a manual of happiness

he knows liberated Death

crushing truths perish he stole their secrets

ceaselessly rolling a rock happiness becomes too insistent

too tightly to memory already stone itself condemned grief is too heavy to bear torment

the rock is still rolling from being acknowledged the sorrow was in the beginning images of earth cling measured by skyless nights of Gethsemane. the wild and limited universe of man the hour of consciousness the lairs of the gods suddenly restored to its silence settled among men. inevitable and despicable master of his days the rock is still rolling myth is tragic performed in sorrow When the when the call of, it happens: surmounted by scorn. absurd springs from happiness the rock is still rolling from the moment fate that can not be The boundless two sons of the same earth

echoes in Inseparable makes of fate a human matter futile suffering this is the rock itself the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up

this is the victory, Happiness and the absurd drives out of this world a god struggle itself toward the heights

which must be the universe

please put out the light unknown. oh, dear the rock is still rolling one always finds oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s burden again. Sealed by his death he will never know the end

UNSPOKEN-A SPOKEN POEM MELISSA CHEN Allow me to tell you about desolate pathways that I’ve drifted over since birth it feels like, about all the staples I found strewn in an abandoned vineyard from people trying to put themselves back together as if we were rotting pieces of flesh hanging like winged hammocks from our rib cages clasped too tightly around the motherboard of our still beating hearts; And I’ll tell you about people who have long forgotten that we aren’t paper-thin and that’s why staples, no matter how big or how small or how strong that industrial-sized stapler is that it can’t pin this – and by this I mean me – back together into original or mint condition even if I had a lifetime supply of them. I’ll tell you that to tell you of history is so difficult because sometimes it’s easy to forget that our lives can’t be contained by words – and that every letter burned into my retinas while I was reading glossaries and dictionaries written by obscure dead white men from decades and centuries ago are from directories that are never going to be enough to describe emotions that I’ve always been too afraid to admit to having or that I often have dreams that could never come into true existence even if I poured asphalt on them to make them concrete enough to be tattooed across my skin so that God’s eyes would graze upon them if ever He were to be bored and looking down on Earth one day. Remember: that Shakespeare was so unsatisfied with the plethora of linguistic accessories that was already available to him in the vernacular that he invented more words and more terms nonchalantly, and though I am no craftsman, I believe that every human being has the innate ability to create from sequencing these aching lines that squiggle and swim and begged to be used across blank pages. and that when I first really envisioned them in my mind, it was because I needed them so desperately that night when I was homesick for the womb and so I cradled myself in a fetal position while lying in bed because they never tell you that it’s a scary world out there until it’s too late and you have to constantly force a smile on your face because you’re so socialized to internalize that you’re never fragmented enough not to project a semblance of being whole.

They also never tell you, though I think it can’t be taught – that words, no matter how delicate or beautiful or strong or bold or where you find or discover them, can’t grasp the lack of syllables in nuances and poignancies that stir humankind so vigorously that we have moments where we can do nothing but howl so sharply from our rooftops such that the sound waves travel and cut into the foundations of cliffs bordering faraway seas, and that eventually the structure crumbles much like the cookie. And there are nameless words stuck inside my head that can’t be pronounced by any tongue of maneuverable aptitude even if I brought Shakespeare himself back to life, that can’t be smushed or collected unto sheets, condensed into pages – words that can only be spelled out with air circulating and encompassing us, but able to seen by none. Life, I learned unknowingly, or perhaps it was already part of an almanac coded into my DNA long before I was ever conceived – is a series of experiences and the condolences that arrive afterwards: the I’m sorry that you’re bearing so much weight across your back, but hold me now as I hold you because I guess I am being wedged open and breaking from burden too. and that life is comprised of these almost lyrical compositions of little moments that no matter how solid or vibrantly vivid that they are or that you think they are – are always always fleeting. and I’ve transcribed into post-it scribbles many, many times, and never in the same way twice, because I guess the suffering of being alive is all too artistic to ever stay constant, that: Life is a trajectory, a sad conjecture of inability and missed opportunities being thrown out of splintered windows that broke on a stormy Sunday when I announced that I was in love way past the due date. and people always get over things, as if things were mountains that were to be climbed, or valleys to be crossed and I guess I am always acclimating and inuring myself to new things and old things,

but I can never quite adapt to anything because I haven’t lived fully enough to die yet after passing on my genetics in a frenzy of procreation with deviled eggs, so that the next generation born will have these lessons that have been branded unto me before I was ever truly ready. And allow me to tell you about the roses that I left lying on a grave that doesn’t exist, to honor the genesis of nostalgias and memories I bought and the watch I never wore on my wrist to remind myself that nothing really is except that time is always always lost and losing, and thus never returned. It’s just that how fast or how slow that it seeps out of our hands depends on who you are, I guess. so I’ve stopped counting the individual grains in this hourglass hoping I’ll know when there’ll be nothing left to calculate, because all I’ve ever done is waste time by biding it.

NEGATIVE KELLY SCHUCKER

“You’re so small! Do you even eat?” they say, a chorus of voices: men, women, all ages, races, of all relations to me. I do not respond but for the requisite smile, all politeness and dimples. Boys are people measured in skill, strength, intelligence, potential. Girls are shadows measured by how greatly we are filled by nothingness. By the space that we don’t take up. We exist in the negative.

It is meant to be a compliment. When they say things like, “You’re such a little thing.” It is a compliment. The men say this with a semi-mesmerized tone, measuring me sexually in comparison to themselves. The women speak with reverence, worry, jealousy simultaneously. I am absence. Outlines. Hollowness. The tracing of a girl. A mere silhouette. Women are observed. We are a complicated math equation. Add jewelry, hair colors and face paint. And subtract from the body. Make the physical presence as slight as possible. Learn the art of invisibility.

Before all and above all, I am a body. More importantly, this body has been made as small as possible. As disregardable as possible. You can nearly see right through me. All hipbones and eyes. They direct for us to be delicate like flower petals in spring or like snowflakes on eyelashes. They call us hun and darling. We curtsy, lips pressed into a straight line.

Use small words: divide your vocabulary until everything is monosyllabic and only speak in half statements when spoken to. Begin every statement with “sorry.” use only lowercase. you have not been privileged to use caps lock. keep your voice low. don’t articulate radical and unfounded opinions like equal rights and privilege and feminism.

this is a process of silencing. we live as static, abstract shadows in a world of color. “the inferiority of women is man-made” but shhhhh don’t speak too loudly.

subject.

object. when we speak all you hear is small tongues on soft lips. we are shadows.

we live in whispers.

this is the speed of suicide.

27 HEAVEN KENDALL SPAULDING I got high, with you last night. (in my fantasies) It was nineteen sixty nine and I was yours in the sky. And if you’re lonely, we could get down, we could die. //Shock me with your Electric Lady Heat// while he keeps time with our heartbeats. I think she’s into me, I said I think she’s into me. I could sing for infinity: “Don’t break my heart, before this revolution starts.” Because all that you’ve given – I can open my eyes to this Paradise. Imaginary love, somewhere in the crowd, I keep you in my dreams. When we were rock gods, in the club of Kings and Queens.

A CONSERVATIONIST’S GUIDE TO WIPING YOUR ASS CHASE CONATSER *Winner of the Cook, Hammond, Logan Prize (excerpt) The inner cloister, The place where two bare freshman might still feel awkward Not having shared these visions or sounds or touches with another, Is sacred ground. Maybe the last Where private lies so easily in the folds of its bearer. Now sing from the vale a song so pure, That could rise the depths. That would wash through the halls. Would bring what’s holy, the oppressed to light. And over doormats of our neighbors, Would pile the lost hymns of lovers.

A MOTH AT THE WINDOW CALEB LAYTON A moth bounced on the window pane Pushing like the dead toward the light And on the other side we bounced about And wasted away the night Later, I invited the moth in And we philosophized together He said, “Dear lord this life is wonderful!” I said “Dear lord it could be better.”

OUTREACH ISAAC BERGER Closed eyes comfort brittle bones Better off alone In bed below broken windows Tears stain sheets Call the police Please leave

STALEMATE ISAAC BERGER I could bear no load Climbing the road Motor engines crushed my bones Still I went on I saw the eagleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s windswept wings flown The purple sunset shone Imagining I saw past the dawn I swore to keep my oath At the pinnacle she posed Above dirty hands laboring rote I asked her for a song She spoke not a note

THE LOT ALEX THAYER *Winner of the Joyce Carol Oates Prize for Fiction At what seemed like well past midnight, rain began to clatter away at the wavering tin roof above my head. In the parking lot, stuck dead in the middle of an ocean of uninhabited cars, my purpose was simple: take the ticket, take the money, watch for intruders. I was a vehicular mason, building a grid like structure of cars that stretched from the center of the lot to the grass at the curb. Now I realize that I wasn’t building anything at all. The lot was simply a concrete garden of ghosts. One that I didn’t know how to leave. I was living with my mother at the time, eating once a day at some old burger joint down the street. Neither of us had any money, but the lot changed of all that. I came to enjoy this kind of struggle, never knowing if the lights would be on when I got back home. It was a game that we would somehow always win. Years later the burger shack would burn down, leaving a pile of greasy soot for the rats to play in. I still can’t walk by it without wanting a soggy bite of meat. My mother had blonde hair and sang at church. When I was a boy she would stand up with the rest of the group and bellow out hymns like it was the last thing she fully understood how to do. I used to sit and watch her. Sit right on by while she gave everything to something that I couldn’t believe in. I learned how to pretend there, in that maze of wooden benches. ”Where is your mother?” people used to ask me while she waited in line for communion. ”Why aren’t you with her?” In the lot you’d have no choice but to pretend. Nothing around you had ever lived. My father had left years earlier when I was boy, dragging a pile of irreconcilable memories in a suitcase at his side. I pictured them falling from every leathery crevice, leaving noiseless impacts in the concrete as he moved down the sidewalk and onto a bus to someplace else. The day before he went away he had told me that it felt good to be dismissed like he was. He made it seem like my mother and I were the ones putting him out, relieving him from his only duty as a man, a father, my father. “I’m leaving because of you, son,” he said. To this day, I still can’t say whether he was lying or not. The lights were so bright in the lot that you couldn’t sleep, not even during the dead of night. It was like swimming through moss. I wrote my mother nearly every

day while I sat—countless letters that she would never read. She was months into her stay at the hospital by then. Visiting her was nearly impossible. She was barely conscious half of the time, swaddled like a child in the baby blue spots of her hospital gown, spots that embroidered an insignia of failing health across her chest. I had to leave the room when she ate. It disgusted me in a way, how the nurse would come in and change that viscous sack of food that dangled above my mother’s bedside, never speaking a word. She knew that there was nothing left to say, that it was only a matter of time. Eventually, there was no need for me to check in at the hospital anymore. She was gone. As my mother gradually died in front of me, she had come to take a more perfect form of herself. I began to remember the little things that she had done—the trips to the movies, the birthday parties, the dinners that she slaved over while my father brooded on the living room sofa. Unlike her, he became a caricature of himself as I got older, a joke that I couldn’t force myself to laugh at. He turned into someone that I didn’t know, leaving only the falsest of imprints on my childhood memories. I made the unconscious decision that he wasn’t mine, that he couldn’t be mine. I remember my mother whispering loudly at him from the living room one night, as if she were scratching something out of the back of her throat. She would poke and prod his psyche, test his will in a way that only she could. And suddenly, he couldn’t pass her tests anymore. There were nights when he would leave and not come back until the next evening, and others when he would leave and be gone for days. He inched himself further and further out of the door, and its frame seemed to shrink each and every time. It must have been that one day the door was just too small. It was March—the very beginning of spring—and the rats were out. They came in droves some days. Dormant in the sewers, dead on the streets. Either way, they loved the lot. A critic in my own personal gallery, I focused on the color gradients that their fluids would form above the asphalt. The gallery of guts. I imagined spectators lined down the sidewalk for blocks, heads gazing at shoes in utter disbelief, utter provocation, utter emersion. And every day was a different show. Of course, I saw cars crush live rats. I distinctly remember a big old truck smashing one once, separating its pieces into a sinister, liquid puzzle. And the owner got out of his car yelling at me like it was my fault. “Aw, coffee breath!” he kept going on, pulling punches on curse words like he had kids to teach. “Whatcha doin’ just standin’ there!? Get off yer ants and do somethin’!” I ignored him at the time, just like I would have ignored anybody else. “Another piece for the gallery,” I said, but the

man didn’t hear me. Later on I learned that the yelling man did have a child to teach—a boy. I remember the man’s son wandering over to my hut one evening. His father was busy at the pawnshop across the road, negotiating a new purchase, I assumed. The boy reminded me of myself. The self that I would mold from the sooty remains of my now defunct family. The biggest rat I’ve ever seen wandered through the lot not soon before that incident. Right down the middle of it, right by my little shack. He lurched across the lot like he owned the place. King Rat was what I called him, and quite a king he was. Looking at this beast was like looking at a massive building for the first time. His big orange eyes shrieked through the night air, and he had a scar about the size of a quarter above his left leg. I assumed that King Rat had been shot at one point in the distant past—shot and survived. He was such a vile and disgusting rat that I would often see him crushing the heads of ordinary rats and devouring them in two massive bites, his oversized jaws sneering in a fierce display of pleasure. Eventually it almost seemed that the rat population was selecting members of its kind to sacrifice to King Rat. Keep the King fed and he’ll leave us all alone. That’s how we’ll survive. In the lot, King Rat was a car born in a rat’s body. A poor old woman once thought King Rat was a cat. I tried to tell her that he wasn’t at all, but she just walked right up to him like she was going to pick him up and hold him in her arms—take him home like a regular old pet. You can’t domesticate a rat though. They eat everything. Shit everywhere. All they do is eat and shit until there’s nothing left. And when they die there’s always more to take their place. King Rat was different though. There wouldn’t be a rat to take his place. When the woman got close enough to see him all I heard were screams. One thing about King Rat, though, was that he wasn’t invincible to cars. He ran away from them like all the others. Sunk into a large crevice in the black or darted off beneath a sea of dormant engines. Many of the lot’s patrons had stopped parking there because of him, not knowing that he would avoid them entirely if their vehicles moved even so much as an inch. They were afraid that he would gnaw away at the rubber on their wheels, or sever their brake lines in a fit of midday hunger. They had no idea that King Rat was a wonder, the one and only thing that made the lot different from any other. The yelling man, the owner of the pawnshop with the boy, however, never stopped coming back. When the yelling man brought his son to the pawnshop the boy would somehow always find himself wandering over to me from across the road. We

exchanged very little words. All he did was stand there, adjusting the bright blue baseball cap that he always wore. It seemed, over time, that the boy had many of these habits. When the snow began to fall he would lob a tightly packed ball of white against the side of my shack to let me know that he was coming. When it rained he would stare up at the sky to examine the clouds, hoping that they would part so he could admire the sun. I never asked the boy for his name, although I regret this now. I must have figured I didn’t need it, in the same way that my father thought he didn’t need me. Above all, we shared a unique synergy—the boy and myself. I could see his life unfolding before me, the ways in which it might end up mimicking my own. At the time I guessed that he had known this all along. That the yelling man’s shouts had been enough to pound an eventual collapse into his adolescent skull. I envied the boy’s present, which is now my past. Without the boy there wasn’t a thing that could keep my thoughts from pouring out of some vacant cavity in my head and onto the asphalt. Being there could transform my intellect into some gross abstraction of itself, in the worst of times. I waded waste deep in the boy’s juvenile innocence. He didn’t see the lot as a tract of land for cars. He saw it as a sheer forest, or gurgling spring. One that he could wander to his imagination’s content with no consequence but his own. When the boy saw King Rat for the first time, he wasn’t frightened. He simply twiddled at the brim of his hat, wondering what exactly it was that he was seeing. It seemed that the boy had found it strange that this creature thrived here, completely unharmed. After his hands left his hat they slunk down towards his sides and into his pockets. I wondered if the boy had wanted to go up and pet King Rat, but as I looked over at him he began to walk away, further into the lot. I started after the boy with urgency, and as I caught up with him, finally grasping at his shoulder, he glanced up at me. “You should build him a house.” I didn’t take the boy seriously at first, but steadily his concern for King Rat’s life became my own. I decided I would build King Rat a shelter—or rather, a palace. At the end of the day I went to the lumberyard and came back with a stack of two by fours. I threw them next to my shed when I got in to work the next morning. That same morning, I remember the lot being exceptionally cold. It was mid November. The place must have had ice running through its yellow veins. King Rat was nowhere to be found, so I set myself to work. My first order of business was picking the palace’s location. It couldn’t be too close to my shack, drawing the

attention of patrons, but rather nearer to the center of the lot. King Rat would need equal access to all of its parts if it were to be ruled justly. I looked for some kind of slope to build on, one that would plateau above the rest of King Rat’s kingdom. King Rat, of course, would want an elevated view of his kind. I didn’t find a thing of this sort. King Rat would have to be a rat amongst other rats, crushing their heads and eating them as he saw fit. I assumed that he wouldn’t have a problem with that. After walking the perimeter of the lot I decided on a small patch of dirt close to the tip of its northwestern most corner. The lights hung low here. King Rat would be able to stew in the darkness of this position—make himself at home. It was a pitiless place. Felt like I could stick a sign into the mud that read HERE DWELLS KING RAT, RULER OF RATS. The future palace grounds held the same sense of desolation and longing as any other patch of dirt or gravel on the lot. This crater-like homestead, however, was special. It was King Rat’s personal parking space. The lot is a sea of infertility. Nothing that grows stays for long. Weeds shrivel and die. Rats peer through cracks and dissolve—piles of naked, disjointed matter. Life just vanishes in the lot, like it has learned to willingly drown itself—a perfectly docile natural disaster. If you stand still long enough in the lot you’ll disappear. Just like any other line or signpost. Fall right into the spectacle: a place where nothing can matter—where nothing does matter. One hundred square yards of everything hiding in plain sight. I started cutting the wood to shape King Rat’s fortress with the hacksaw that my father had left at our old house. Early on I remember overhearing my mother ask him to build a doghouse. I never got a dog, but I still have the saw. The patch of dirt was about a yard across in both directions. I used one of the two by fours to mark even lines in its face. This would be my basic blueprint for what was to come. After cutting and nailing together several pieces of wood I had a rough frame for the palace. I began to build upward from this frame, erecting vertical beams that stemmed from its corners. In another hour the full frame was built, from bottom to top. All that I had left were the walls and roof, which I built by nailing beams horizontally from one corner of the frame to the other. I looked down at my work. King Rat’s castle looked more like a rustic pioneer’s shack, its edges slightly askew. It was a sad palace, one that the boy would not approve of, but a palace nonetheless. I tore a chunk of bread off of the sandwich that I had made for lunch and threw it into the shack, hoping that it would draw King Rat during the night. I would make improvements the next day. The following morning I returned to the shelter, but when I arrived all that

remained was a pile of splintered wood. I walked further toward it, my eyes only half open. I wanted to turn around and get sucked away like a spec of dust through a vacuum. I rummaged through its shattered frame, throwing pieces in every direction, expecting to find a pile of splattered guts, but all that I found was the piece of sandwich that I had left before. Relief engulfed me. King Rat was alive. I should’ve known that he wasn’t there. Rats remember everything. Every footstep, every curve and dip in the asphalt. Their survival depends upon it. They are programmed to always choose life over death, to wander for a while and finally get crushed, blown in half, have themselves sprayed across the only thing they ever knew. The rats choose life with the same readiness that death chooses them. Their entire existence can be characterized by one sound: one singular, beautiful crunch. Some people liked to stand in the lot. Just stand right there in place looking up at the neon signs in the windows of the strip mall across the road. Sink right into them until they could forget about themselves. And all the while the rats are gnawing away on used apple cores. Sucking water from rocks. Scraping scum from the sides of dumpsters. Fluorescent white light eats them whole. They get into their cars and leave. You could lose consciousness in the lot and not realize it. People would make small talk with me as I took their tickets. “Don’t you get bored here?” they asked. They didn’t know the real truth behind my position, however. I had to curate the gallery, make sure each piece was properly framed. I learned to operate algorithmically. Plot the rats. Plot the cars. Press play and watch them intersect like galaxies colliding through the aimed lens of a telescope. Later in the evening I sat in my chair and thought about how I had almost killed King Rat that day. Figured I would give up on his palace, let him roam the lot like he was meant to. The boy was nowhere to be found, but I was sure that he would understand. King Rat didn’t need a residence in the lot. The lot was his residence. He would continue to live, continue to eat other rats and terrorize patrons freely as he was meant to. Rats can’t be governed like men. They have their own rules, their own system. This space we built for them—this lot—was like one of those huge trash compactors in the world of rats. It sucked them in like metal and then closed itself, pushing the air from their lungs until they popped. Was the boy ignorant of this reality? I felt alone once again. Could I have imagined this boy as a totem for myself, something other than the troubled youth that he was? The lot has its ways of beating its own invincibility into a person’s head. King Rat was one of those devices.

He wasn’t going anywhere. The lot was his caretaker, or it is. King Rat could not be removed by force, only by fate. For a while it felt like there would always be eyes floating over me in fits of interrupted sleep. Eyes that wouldn’t stop looking, not until I quit, not until I died. Severed corneas would roll up to my booted toes, looking at me, never knowing that there weren’t any faces to complete them. I thought about getting on a plane. Leaving and never coming back. But King Rat was always there, watching me, telling me that I needed to stay. I stayed. I determined that I had to find King Rat. I did a walk around the perimeter of the lot and slowly worked inward, scanning each and every crack for his long, wretched face. I looked under every car, kicked gravel into every pothole, but he didn’t turn up. King Rat was a master at not being found. He could’ve been anywhere. I walked back toward my shed around midnight. When I sat down my body felt like putty, like it could have sank into the earth without a trace. I welcomed this feeling, a body of clay that had sprung from the ground in some freak accident. It had been one week since I last saw King Rat. The boy came and went with the yelling man each day, but he wouldn’t chance conversation or even a simple nod of his head. I had convinced myself that I was the sculptor of a piece that I couldn’t control, that my art was failing. I’d look at the asphalt in a mental silence and works would appear: a deep red, neon green, or vibrant purple. All pieces of a puzzle that I could never solve. Moonlight engulfed me as I paced through the lot, hoping that he would surface. There were moments when it felt like King Rat’s shadow was the black surface I stood upon. That he was looming over it all, thousands of feet in the sky. I whispered into this silence hoping that it would understand my desperation, my will to forget that King Rat had ever existed in the first place. But forgetfulness became the enemy. I drifted into places that could not be remembered—the sheer cliff fully realized by splattered guts at its base. These guts though, they were not King Rat’s. Fifteen days into my search, I spotted King Rat underneath the yelling man’s truck. In my mind it couldn’t have been true, but I decided to investigate. Slowly, I walked over to the truck and King Rat, who was burrowing a hole into the darkness. Festering there, his eyes were unmistakable. They were spotlights, spitting insects into the air. I continued toward him, moving as gently as I knew how. It seemed almost impossible that fortune was on my side, but King Rat didn’t move a muscle. When I was closer to the truck, I peered under its chassis. King Rat seemed

docile there, like he was tired. Like he had just needed a rest. I found a candy bar after rummaging through my coat pockets and tore it open, hoping that it would help lure him out of his hole. The air was cold; the wrapper’s plastic slipped through my fingertips before it finally gave way. I ripped a piece of chocolate from the end and laid it on the ground. I did this several times, in fact, laying fragments of the bar in a hemisphere around the side of the truck that I was on. I waited several minutes, minutes that seemed to pass like hours. I was alone—in a trance. King Rat appeared to be locked in this state as well, pondering his options. I moved closer. The moonlight reflected from King Rat’s greasy coat as if it were a shattered mirror. He didn’t move. For the first time in several days, the boy had seen me, and he was soon tugging at the left sleeve of my coat. He must have walked up behind me during my negotiations with King Rat. I ignored him at first, thinking that he had simply wanted my attention. He kept on pulling at my jacket, however, almost to the point at which he had separated the sleeve from my arm. At his urging, reality’s haze settled back upon me. I stepped away to see what he wanted. “Dad wants to leave,” he said. “That’s it?” I asked, taking the boy gently by his shoulders. “Where’s your dad?” The boy softly motioned toward the truck with his head. He hadn’t worn his hat today. Looking backwards toward the truck, the moment seemed to strangle the breath from my lungs. The air was moist with something that I couldn’t describe, clouds engulfing an orange moon. I felt that I had made some horrible mistake in befriending the boy as I heard the truck start, his father now sitting firmly in its driver’s seat. The boy had seen King Rat there, stewing beneath the yelling man. He knew he could not subdue the impatience in his father’s gestures. The yelling man had simply had a bad day at work, or hadn’t met his daily sales quota. King Rat was of no importance to him, or maybe the boy’s father just hadn’t known that it was the rat of all rats that lay there beneath his front left tire. If the boy had known a more hopeless look I would have seen it in his eyes. He grabbed at his hat in a half-panic, forgetting that it wasn’t there that day. I looked back at him before the engine started, needing an answer that the boy couldn’t give. All he could do was stand there just like he always had, listening for the sharp squeal of rubber on pavement, and then the crunch. King Rat was dead.

In my mind the rats were extinct, buried under years of steadily crystalizing pavement. The link between them and myself had passed from a spiritual one to one that is visceral—a never ending anxiety attack. I would sit in darkness and hear their teeth clinking against brushed aluminum, each rattle louder than the previous. It reminded me of the days that I thought nothing existed. That everything was wound tightly into a perfect, incoherent mass. The universe’s ultimate ego trip. I never saw the boy again after King Rat’s death. I later heard that his father had gotten into financial trouble, and the pawnshop was soon under new ownership. I lost eighteen pounds working in the lot. It had ground me down, pummeled my body into a stringy pulp. The lot had been both my life and home. It never learned to share itself with anyone like it had for me. Now, I was the only attraction remaining. I was a sculpture. The lot’s finest work. The November leaves began to fall like stones—broken and complete, immersed in hibernation. They would land on the asphalt and blow away without a rustle. Death consumed everything except the lot’s revenue stream. That remained perfectly intact. The ground was white, my pockets green. The rats, however, were only muscle and bone. They melted into the lot’s pavement in the dead of winter, a feat that I had thought impossible. In December I stopped seeing them completely. Rats are like nails. You pound them into the ground and they always stick. Just like it’s their job. Sink into it and grow there for a while. Sprout cracks in the pavement that reach for miles. King Rat will always exist there, his blood dripping through the lot’s endless curves, pooling in its pot holes. The rats won’t change. They can’t change. They’ll continue to live trivially and die fast: the simple analysis of an impossible problem.

HONEST GOODBYES RACHEL PANEPINTO i hope you’ve got the world under foot, and you’re on page one of your new favorite book. i hope you took a little time to reflect, hope you get to look;-- see the signs that connect: i hope you appreciate, give some life to the dead. i hope you find the time to see what’s written, in the palm of your hand. i hope you get to bend down peacefully, and make markings in the sand. i hope you know i got to cross you;-like a rosary, and how our bodies turn, like never ending stories.

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES ISAAC BERGER Isaac Berger is a Senior Majoring in Philosophy and English. He practices living lyrically. HENRY BROWN My name is Henry Brown, I am a junior at UB, and I am an English major. Many of my stories and inspirations draw from the power of nature and mankind’s never-ending, yet often feeble, attempt to overcome and control it. MELISSA CHEN Melissa Chen is an aspiring writer from Brooklyn who has been in love with art since the third-grade. She is a third-year English and International Studies double major. CHASE CONATSER Chase Conatser wishes the song Buffalo Solider had a more iconic relationship with Buffalo, New York. Chase is from Mobile, Alabama. He studies Communication Design and English at the University at Buffalo. Chase graduates Spring 2014. HEATHER COOK Heather Cook is a senior at University at Buffalo studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing. She was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. When she is not writing, she enjoys photographing the architecture scattered throughout the lovely rust belt. She wishes she could have a cup of tea (or two) with James Joyce.

ANNA DAVIDSON My name is Anna Davidson. I’m a third year student from Clarence, NY, double majoring in English and Linguistics. EMMA FUSCO Emma Fusco is from Buffalo, New York and a Junior at SUNY Buffalo. Though she finds many works in her major to be very serious and deep, she enjoys composing works with satire, wit, and comedic value.

transferred from Canisius College this past fall. She is a commuter from her hometown, West Seneca, and aspires to be both a psychologist and young adult novelist in the future. JAMIE GUGINO Jamie Gugino is a Junior at UB. She writes every day, enjoys hugging trees, talking to animals, wearing masks, and loves Super Heroes. Art is Life.

LISA GAGNON Lisa Gagnon is a first-year English major and Music Performance minor at UB. She enjoys traveling, Bananagrams, and playing cello, guitar, piano or any instrument within reach.

DANA HAVAS Dana Michele Havas, a Sophomore in the Chemical Engineering Department currently residing in Buffalo, NY, remembers fondly the dog-eared pages of Carl Sandburg by her childhood bedside.

MICHELLE GASKIN My name is Michelle Gaskin. This is the second time I’ve had the privilege of being published in Name. I am originally from Trinidad and Tobago but consider my self a Western New Yorker and Bills Fan for the past twenty- two years now. I am a junior here at UB where I am a double major in English and Art.

SCOTT HERMAN My name is Scott Herman and I’m from Searingtown, New York. I’m graduating in May with a BA in English (Creative Writing Certificate) and my passion for writing songs is a constant reminder to my poems “for the page” that all words expressed in essay, music or some type of art form are still considered poetry.

SUSHMITA GELDA Sushmita Gelda is a freshman sociology major from Syracuse, NY. She enjoys reading, writing, spending time with kids, and going for nature walks.

LUKE HEUSKIN My name is Luke Heuskin and I am an English and Psychology double major from the town of Sound Beach on the North Shore of Long Island. I write poetry and fiction, and I draw special inspiration from my passions for philosophy, religion, imaginative literature, and

AMY GORSKI Amy Gorski is a sophomore Psychology major who

music. ADAM JOHNSON Adam Johnson is a senior at UB, studying English and Political Science. He shares a name with a much more talented novelist, meaning he may have to come up with a pen name in the future. CHERYL JOHNSON Cheryl Johnson is a 22-yearold senior English major at UB. This is her second year working on the NAME literary magazine and is excited to have her work published. In her free time she enjoys appearing on the stage as a lyrical/ballet dancer, watching films with her friends, baking desserts, listening alternative-indie/ folk/rock music, and reading realistic fiction. AMANDA JOWSEY I am Amanda Jowsey, senior undergrad from Tonawanda, New York. I will graduate this year with a Bachelor’s degree in English as well as a certificate in Journalism. Some of my articles have appeared in Niagara County Community College’s newspaper The Spirit, and my poems have been published in UB’s Generation Magazine. LEXI KATZ My name is Lexi Katz and I have called Buffalo home for all my years on this Earth. I am a senior majoring in English while focusing in Creative Writing. I believe my passion and love for life has always come into the sacred rhythm of poetry. CALEB LAYTON My name is Caleb Layton. I’m

an English and philosophy major, who only knows how to play tennis if there is a net. GEORGE MITCHELL George Mitchell, from Cathedral City, California. Sophomore English major. ANNE MULROONEY Anne Mulrooney is a junior English major from Rochester, NY. She enjoys lemon poppy seed muffins, Studio Ghibli films, and poetry. RACHEL PANEPINTO Rachel Panepinto is currently a senior here at UB and will be graduating this spring with a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature. She enjoys reading, writing, nature, playing flute, and traveling. DAMIAN PANTON Damian Panton is a senior at the University at Buffalo, where he majors in Film studies and minors in English. His post-graduation plans remain hazy, but he is deciding between pursuing an M.A. in Critical Film Studies or an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Either way he’s going to end up writing. OLIVIA PATICK Olivia Patick, 19, New York native unrealistic, yet ambitious, English major at UB. AMIÉ ROMAN Amié Roman is a senior double major in English and History from Addison, NY. She currently has no clue what to do with her future but loves telling long stories about nothing in particular to

anyone within hearing. KELLY SCHUCKER My name is Kelly Schucker, I’m a senior at UB, majoring in English and Psychology. I am passionate about writing, coffee, and cats preferably simultaneously. KENDALL SPAULDING Kendall is a sophomore at the University at Buffalo with a major in English. He’s from Yonkers, New York which isn’t too far from New York City. An avid watcher of film, one of Kendall’s favorite movies is The Dreamers. ALEX THAYER Alex Thayer is a writer from Buffalo, New York. He’s currently living in Madrid, Spain, working on more short fiction. ATHIRA UNNI A Junior English and Sociology double major. I write because it makes me lie and say the truth at the same time. I’m from India that has now moved on from being the land of exotic snake-charmers to the hub of bright IT nerds. Logically, I fall somewhere in between. ARIC ZAIR A current resident and native of Amherst, New York, Aric Zair is a junior Music and English double major at UB. He has previously published a short story entitled “Riding” in Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing’s Kurt Vonnegut tribute anthology, So It Goes, which is currently available for purchase on Amazon.com. A recording of him reading his piece has also been published to Youtube.

NAME Magazine Spring 2014