The Gallery Fall 2018

the gallery

fall 2018

G

the

allery

Volume 33, Issue 1 Fall 2018

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Editors Co-Editors-in-Chief Maxwell Cloe Olivia Vande Woude Copy Editors Robert Metaxatos Sophie Rizzieri Art Editors Jarvis Hua Hannah London Poetry Editor Noah Dowe Prose Editor Julia Wicks Publicity Editors Emma Eubank Julia Savoca Gibson Danielle Greene Staff Editors Kae Eleuterio Meghan Gates Eli Gnesin Kate Hansen Kyle Kauffman

Madeline Myers Sarah Petras Lindsay Pugh Kathryn Willoughby

Cover Art

Lovers

Graham Ferguson

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Contents

Magpie Aubade the where A Sunday Hymn I mean I am afraid of a lot of things fish hooks and guitar picks Apocalypse #9 There is an Ocean Inside Your Skull Atomic Caresse Crosby Chicory narcissus and echo Sunrise Morning in Cambridge the bowl aloft response the statue of the hunter behind the old gas station but we burned the christmas cookies Backwash Atlas Cried moon man in limbo or the frequent dreams of the kings son Gardens Fool’s Gold Golden Gates Catholic Valentina Self-Portrait Imaginary Sunshine Reflection Lost at Sea Rain Dance Balloon Day at Heavenly Bodies City in the Sky Nature is a Whore Two Kinds of People Let Them Eat Cake Blue Ridge The Gutter and the Stars Homecoming Self-Portrait Microcosm

Poetry 4 6 7 8 9 10-11 16 16 17 17 19 19 30 31 35 35

Alison Gerhard Ryan Onders Ryan Onders Meghan Gates Sydney DeBoer David Lefkowitz Jessie Urgo Finley Roles Kate Hansen Jessie Urgo Maxwell Cloe Ethan Villavicencio Julia Savoca Gibson Sadie Williams Sadie Williams Maxwell Cloe

36 37 39 41

Sydney DeBoer Kyle Kauffman Finley Roles Maxwell Cloe

43

Julia Savoca Gibson

Prose 14-15 32-34 45-47

Art

5 12 13 18 20 21 22 23 24-25 26 27 28 29 38 40 42 44

Daniel Tyler Abby Comey Kate Hansen Graham Ferguson Bullock Befriending Bard Graham Ferguson James Card Norah Peterson Nitya Labh Cody Hammack Rebecca Shkreyov Graham Ferguson Rebecca Shkeyrov Ellie Grace Norah Peterson Cody Hammack Kae Eleuterio Norah Peterson Rebecca Shkeyrov Kae Eleuterio

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Fall 2018 Poetry Staff Favorite

Magpie Aubade I hear the wings beat like stray knocks at the door- like when your eyelids find themselves staccato in stray sunrises split from cracked plastic blinds.

Dawn does not come politely to our door.

We trust four gentle phases of the moon and turn our backs to suns that seem to hang at noon like crooked paintings, brave in the face of incandescent lighting and chipped paint. The birds will knock politer still, ask us to dream of trees. You roll over, nest in me. — Alison Gerhard

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Graham Ferguson

Valentina

Photography

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the where this ground bleeds when it rains these leaves of grass scream force fed rainblood screamgurgling (why the revsions) force fled this ground bleeds I kneel to it a spook in a suit pushes me aside he kneels to

a puddle

plunges a test tube

bureaucratic lips lap native blood sustains this ground bleeds (why the revisions) this ground bleeds and leaves of grass scream

to Me why. (tell the truth)you drink it too)

— Ryan Onders

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(and so do You)

A Sunday Hymn Pete the petal peddler pedals buysicle to sell suckle and sweets swap Sam for a peach and pedal on home from the farmers market where even the local prison has a display slave made tables and benches standing next to sitting Syd the cigarette salesman says cigs make friends findable follow scent of smoke to they who say no I wouldn’t mind not living long but I would mind not living so spark up a light and strike up a song!

(Pete plucks strings and sings) there was a Time my Mind had Wings!

my bahhdee climbed and climbed!

up trech’ress slopes gripping hopes! of finding my Flying Mind!

— Ryan Onders

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I mean I’m afraid of a lot of things I mean I’m afraid of a lot of things but one of the big ones the many big ones I mean I said I’m afraid of a lot of things is that despite any good I do in this world if I spent every goddamn second of my life helping the homeless rescuing animals building schools I mean every goddamn second of my life but despite that none of it would ever be enough every goddamn second of my goddamn life would never actually do anything never actually change anything and I mean I’m afraid of a lot of things but this this is a big one

— Meghan Gates

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fish hooks and guitar picks i wish you would throw me flat on my back. i want to look up at you and know it’s you doing this to me i want to hold your attention. i want to be the only thing you see. i want you to knock me down if that means i’m allowed to pull your face close enough you can’t look at anything else. the old familiar song, the old familiar ache in my chest. the burn in my cheeks. turn off the record player, the vinyl skips and pops. i play the guitar. well. kind of; i fret the chords with clumsy fingers. i play a love song. i play it badly. i rub my thumb over my fingertips and think of dragging my new calluses over your thigh. think of asking if you can feel them. think of ruining everything, just everything. you’ve got me, and i’m yours, and even if you try to get the hook out of my mouth without ripping off my lips, i won’t let you, i bite down harder, and you never even baited it in the first place, did you?

— Sydney DeBoer

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Apocalypse #9 I was walking back my footsteps On the Southern Border Wall When a bolt of lightning struck me down For standing up too tall While the tears of eyes unopened Cut canyons in the dust And every man & woman now Shall say the things they must As the sky cuts itself open And the scarlet snowflakes fall I was tracing back my footsteps On the Southern Border Wall So the shadows of the saintly Cast in stone, return to sand And the cards cry out with their own names Clutched tight within my hand Now the Jack of Hearts and King of Spades Have turned each other in For living together blamelessly But living so in sin As the mangy dogs of progress Start to howl about it all I was tracing back my footsteps On the Southern Border Wall Then the waters started rising ‘Till they came up past my ears And the things I’d wished to see before I could now see twice as clear Like the hurling, swirling maelstroms That can swallow sirens whole Like the cities of the underworld Lit up in fires so cold Like the crumbling of an empire What is dust once stood so tall I was tracing back my footsteps On the Southern Border Wall

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Then the church bell cracked So it looked like Liberty And it rang all that much louder Or at least it seems to me Though it only rings on Sundays And it echoes through my dreams It warns us not to speak a word It warns us not to scream ‘Cause the books have took to burning up Just for the fun of it all I was tracing back my footsteps On the Southern Border Wall Then the courthouse came to rubble And the forests all burned down All the farmers bit the bullet Pulled their horses into town While the clouds of lovely bluebirds Started strangling out the sky And they’ll tear the flesh off to the bone Of any who dares try Just to step back for a moment And to make sense of it all I was tracing back my footsteps On the Southern Border Wall

Now the Sheriff ’s bloody noses And the Gov’nor’s missing wife Tied together with a ribbon Both take turns to take my life While the princes & the prophets All draw straws & pray for rain As the desert floor is cracking more And crying out in pain I made friends with the destroyers All the Vandals, Goths, and Gauls As they tore down all my footsteps On the Southern Border Wall

Then I had a flash of vision Or of madness, who’s to tell?

Of a smoking, broken Judas As he dragged himself from Hell And like every hard to swallow pill The good must follow bad So someday we’ll return to all The goodness that we had It was there within the chaos I saw hope, however small I was tracing back my footsteps On the Southern Border Wall

So the priests have gone to bed now But they must confess they’ll miss All the heaven they were hiding In the stone sarcophagus That was laying in the alley Sitting beaten, bruised, and cracked So you’d never guess what lay inside Was one day coming back And the Devil lay in waiting In the details, oh so small I was tracing back my footsteps On the Southern Border Wall

— David Lefkowitz

Now the Golden Goose has laid her eggs To be cracked upon the floor We have put our days of glory, now Behind us more & more But even Nero had to play a song While Rome behind him burned So I implore you, begging please, This much I must have earned: The Answer that reveals it, The Question of it all I was tracing back my footsteps On the Southern Border Wall

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Bullock Befriending Bard

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Self-Portrait

Ink on Paper

Graham Ferguson

Imaginary Sunshine

Photography

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Fool’s Gold

by Daniel Tyler

“I messed up my tooth so bad, the dentist took all of them out with huge pliers,” I yelled to the small crowd of my nine-year-old peers that had formed that day on the playground. They were fascinated in that unique way that only elementary schoolers are with the grotesque. With a grin of pride, I continued, “They had to make me a whole set of fake teeth.” I bared my teeth to the crowd and pointed to my mouth. “See?” A chorus erupted from my inquisitive classmates.

“Did it hurt?”

“Did you get to keep your old teeth?”

“How come your new teeth look exactly the same?”

“Can you take them out? Like old people teeth?”

Head spinning from the thrill of sudden celebrity, I beamed to the press conference of my peers. Like all children, I was prone to embellishment. Of course I didn’t have an entire set of fake teeth. That would be absurd – though clearly just absurd enough for other third-graders to believe it, and for me to think they would.

The truth was this: last Friday Cara Sullivan chipped my tooth. Just the one.

With a rock.

Cara and I were next-door neighbors. At age seven, I took a mason jar from the far reaches of the top of my kitchen cabinet – or rather, my mom did, since I was much too short to reach it – and planned to start a business selling the nectar from honeysuckles in the thickets behind our development. Cara tagged along. We juiced the dainty blooms for what seemed like hours. The two of us examined our handiwork: roughly half an inch of liquid in the bottom of the glass jar.

We sat on Cara’s family’s deck in the late summer sun afterwards, eating Uncrustables and feeling proud of ourselves. “My dad said nobody will buy this stuff.

But my mom said she’d give us five dollars each for it,” said Cara. “But since—ohmygod look - dragonfly!” An enormous, iridescent green dragonfly had landed on the planks next to us. With a predatory glint in her eye, she grabbed the nearest weapon she could find – the jar – and swung it down at the insect. Missing the dragonfly entirely – it was long gone – her swing still collided with the wood, shattering the mason jar and leaking honeysuckle nectar everywhere. I cried, of course.

Some kids have imaginary friends. If Cara ever had an imaginary friend, I bet she killed it. She was shorter than average, had blonde pigtails, and was sadistic as hell. One time we found a fiddler crab in the ditch behind our houses. She, of course, delighted in listening to the crunch of its tough exoskeleton as she crushed it. You can imagine the rest – catepillars, worms, even a baby bird.

On that Friday afternoon when I chipped my tooth, Cara asked: “Hey dingus, I have an idea. Have you ever seen someone with a gold tooth?” By the age of nine, for some reason I had neither stopped spending time with her nor grown wise to her shenanigans. Naïveté coming out of my mouth like drool, I took the bait.

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Cara told me that if you lost your tooth before it was supposed to come out, the tooth that grows to replace it is a gold one. She offered me five dollars to test out her theory with a rock. I agreed.

I got on my hands and knees. We were in Cara’s parents garden. She had procured a rock the size of a robin’s egg from inside the garden shed, from the supply used to line the bottoms of potted plants. I opened my mouth and Cara peered inside.

“Hmm, I wonder which tooth would be the best to knock out. Do you have a least favorite tooth?” Cara asked. I shook my head. She ran her finger along my teeth, poking them to select a target. She rested her finger on one of my upper molars, right behind my incisor. “That one.”

“Do you think this is going to hurt?” I asked Cara.

“Probably not. Robbie Parsons in my class at school lost his tooth last week and he said it didn’t hurt a bit,” she answered.

“Okay” I said, tensing myself as she readied the rock.

“

“Only years later would I identify that glint as what it was - bloodthirst.”

”

“I’m gonna count to three, and on three, I’m gonna knock it clean out” Cara declared.

“One.” There was something other than childish curiosity in Cara’s eyes.

Did she really believe I would grow a gold tooth?

“Two.” Only years later would I identify that glint as what it was – bloodthirst. Cara didn’t care about what happened after she knocked my tooth. She just wanted to see me bleed.

“Three.” Cara slammed the rock into my tooth, immediately followed by a loud, ugly, noise – the sound of my tooth chipping. I screamed. Mouth bleeding profusely, I clutched my hand to my face.

“That really hurt!” I cried.

“You moved, stupid!” Cara declared, shifting the blame from herself effortlessly. “It’s not my fault – and you messed the experiment up! Anyways, stop being such a baby!”

“I hate you, Cara,” I harrumphed, glaring at her. Cara ended up convincing me not to tell my mom the truth. I told my mom I had fallen and chipped it – which basically became the truth in my mind, with its easily created fictions.

Cara and I still spent time together. Nothing changed, and we never spoke of the incident afterwards. If we had talked about it, I probably would have thanked her for making me popular for about five minutes on the playground with my fake teeth. G

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There is an Ocean Inside Your Skull There is an ocean inside your skull full of algae and glass and at night you drown in it, you suffocate among the bottles and bags the plastic shrouds swallowing copepods and cigarette butts and dried kelp that tastes like lithium.

You choke on bitter salt and the shells of dead things while those nightmares of yours are crawling down your throat.

Run your tongue around your teeth.

Are they not broken like the bones of a long-dead cetacean?

— Jessie Urgo

Atomic They pull at their cameras, but the time has already passed-the moment has already changed.

It cannot be captured, it cannot be contained, for it doesn’t truly exist.

Only when it is lived in does it become real.

Time is fleeting, He waits for none, the passing of the sun cannot endure his gaze for many days shall come to pass but none shall win for he is last…

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— Finley Roles

Caresse Crosby To live on high, the key is to be

A queen Of the green snakes that slither into your palm and coil there, Silent and cold with the flickering-like

tongues of fire that burn nothing but years.

To live on high, the key is

In the way your heels raise you towards the morning;

In the way you’ve forgotten your children in a yellow-lighted brownstone in Paris;

In the way everything is red poppies;

In the way the Black Sun waits for you down the city street;

In the way you show him the alley shortcut to Madame Cowley’s And convince him sweetly To contemplate the cobblestones up very close and then You leave him there leaking his poppies out his nose And that is enough to postpone the end Til tomorrow.

— Kate Hansen

Chicory In the slanted late afternoon light, your blue petals are almost purple. They are tattered, like flags, and splayed out in a circle like a child’s drawing of sun rays. Without seeing, you watch the mountains.

I know you’ve done a lot of waiting on roadsides, a lot of waiting for people who never come, and tonight you are remembering. I know that you want to be alone, you want to be quiet and let the shadows blur the edges of your pain.

So we wait. On the horizon the mountains become lavender and the sky turns yellow above them.

There is not enough silence for the remembering.

— Jessie Urgo

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narcissus and echo i walked tomorrow to the sunken river to look at myself like i always will the water forgets this face and the single finger which rippled and prods the gentle groove i will return in a cloudswell like the evening rain to stain the running glass but yesterday i look in and will see a boot so like every night i instead think of you — Maxwell Cloe

Sunrise Pink glow traces familiar tracks across the Street outside of the liquor store.

Morning fog cleared by searing heat, Hazy morning for a hazy morning.

Morning fog cleared by searing liquid, Broken glass shamefully for Gotten hurts my feet tramping away.

I’ve got a pocket full of lint, and a Hand full of dreams deferred — Ethan Villavicencio

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James Card

Reflection

Photography

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Fall 2018 Art Staff Favorite

Norah Peterson

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Lost at Sea

Oil on Canvas

Nitya Labh

Rain Dance

Photography

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Cody Hammack

Balloon

Photography

Rebecca Shkeyrov

Day at Heavenly Bodies

Pen on Paper

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Graham Ferguson

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City in the Sky

Photography

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Rebecca Shkreyov

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Nature is a Whore Marker, Plastic, Snails

Ellie Grace

Two Kinds of People

Digital Collage

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Norah Peterson

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Let Them Eat Cake

Oil on Cardboard

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Cody Hammack

Blue Ridge

Photography

Morning in Cambridge Dawn creeps in late here, And I am up early.

Buildings are ancient, Roads cobbled.

The breeze blows softly Through arches, witness to seven centuries.

I arrive at a desolate chapel.

Steps too loud in a room too quiet, Girl too skeptical in a place too holy, Looking to the dim stained glass above, A minute passes in silence As images begin to glow.

The Church is suffused with shafts of light As sunrise illuminates.

Bathed in beams of the windows’ crimson, gold, azure, Alone in Albion, I am a visitor

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— Julia Savoca Gibson

the bowl there’s fruit in the bowl, fleshy, juice-dripping sweet or sour, all down to a coin toss there’s seeds in the bowl, miniscule nuisances hidden among the other matter until they get stuck in the teeth there’s teeth in the bowl, calcified, inert with sharp edges holding no weight behind them there’s skin in the bowl, paperlike, fragile easy to prick and paint on but dissolves in the mouth

— Sadie Williams

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Fall 2018 Prose Staff Favorite

Golden Gates

by Abby Comey

When I was young, we visited my grandfather’s house once a year on Veteran’s Day. It was the only time he tolerated us. Really, he just needed an audience for his war stories. He would just have gladly invited the Vietcong into his living room, so long as they kept their hands in their laps and didn’t interrupt. Papa gave us war reenactments more than war stories, though. Accompanied by imaginary weaponry, spitting sound effects, and the squeaking army boots Papa wore once a year, I could hardly look away. After stories and ham sandwiches, we all sat on the porch and watched Papa shoot cans with a beebee gun: tomato bisque, chicken noodle, clam chowder, minestrone, broccoli cheddar. Papa ate a lot of soup. He also shot a lot of guns. I never saw him miss a can, not even when he had to start shooting with his cane propped under his elbow.

Mom loved Papa, her dad. She said so all the time. She said it when she got off the phone with his cleaning lady after Papa called her a name that rhymes with Quidditch. She said it when we had to watch his dog for the afternoon and Troop threw up on Mom’s Packers jersey. She even said it after Papa slapped her for “giving him lip,” the red shadow of his fingers still fresh on her cheek. And she always said it when we pulled through Papa’s grand gates on Veteran’s Day and when we rolled back out again, two tired parents and a wide-eyed kid in a booster seat.

It all started when Mom married an artist. Papa didn’t like artists, and he certainly didn’t like my Dad. Dad let his hair grow long and wore sandals with his ripped jeans. He drove a beat-up van with a sunset painted on the side. He hung pictures of nothing on his walls and didn’t vote for Ronald Reagan. He talked about global warming and taught Mom words like “surrealism” and “aesthetic.” On top of all that, he wasn’t Catholic.

Despite the grownup tensions going on around me when I entered those golden gates, I was too in awe of Papa to notice anything out of the ordinary at the time. One Veteran’s Day, Mom and Dad had to pick me up and drive to Papa’s straight from Boy Scouts. Papa looked straight to me when we walked into the living room.

“You look sharp, kid,” he grunted. “There’s nothing tougher than a man in a uniform.” That was the first time I remember him speaking just to me. From then on, I wore my scouts uniform every Veteran’s Day. I was wearing it the last time we visited Papa.

“You don’t have to wear that, you know.” My mom looked at me in the rearview mirror. “You don’t have to please him.” At thirteen, nothing ruffled my raging hormones quite like my mother telling me what to do.

“It’s not for him,” I lied. “I just like wearing it.” I moved closer to the window and my seatbelt dug sharply into my collarbone.

“Wear what you want,” my dad chimed in during the instrumental interlude in the Piña Colada Song. “Now’s the time to figure out who you want to be in the world.”

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“You think he should be a professional Boy Scout?” Mom asked, but the final verse cut in and Dad was gone. She shook her head, but then she smiled and sang along. It was gross how much they loved each other.

We could see Papa’s grand gates in the distance as the last chorus faded into quiet. Papa lived in a wildly ordinary home. It had one story and an oak tree in the front yard.

It was white with square windows and crooked shutters. There were cracks in the front walk and weeds in the flower boxes. The yard was littered with wounded soup cans. It was a home utterly unworthy of its entrance. Stretched across the lip of Papa’s driveway were the Pearly Gates to Heaven, or at least they looked that way. There used to be a mansion on that lot. When the giant home was torn down during the Great Depression, they left the gates. The foreman decided he liked the vineyard patter that wrapped around its posts, so they stayed. For a while, they guarded an empty field where teenagers smoked cigarettes and bucks hid from hunters in tall grasses. Eventually, they guarded the small, sad home of a war veteran and his screwed up family. They watched my mom and her sisters skin their knees and kiss boys on the front porch. Now they watched Papa shoot soup cans and rot away in his wheelchair.

“

He tried to lift the axe again, but collapsed onto the grass.

”

Pulling up, we knew pretty quickly that something was wrong with the gates. They were angled slightly downward, as though they were bowing to pray.

Mom noticed Papa first and told Dad to stop the car. She cut him off mid-swing.

“Dad, what the hell are you doing?” He paused for a moment to catch his breath.

“I’m getting rid of this damn gate,” he said finally. He tried to lift the axe again, but collapsed onto the grass. Dad and I had to carry him inside despite his protesting.

“What the hell were you thinking?” said Mom. Papa was lying on the couch staring up at the ceiling.

“That’s the second time you’ve said hell today,” he said. At that, Mom groaned and stormed into the kitchen. Dad and I weren’t very close with Papa.

Neither of knew how to fill the silence, which was fine with me. Unfortunately, silence made Dad’s skin crawl, so he spoke up.

“Did you catch the Packers game last night?” Papa didn’t answer. I hoped with all my might that Dad would just let the quiet continue to stew.

“Rodgers played alright, but you could tell his knee was bothering him,” said Dad.

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This time, Papa spoke in what may or may not have been a reply.

“My boots don’t fit anymore,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“I tried them on this morning. My feet are too swollen.”

It was at that moment that Mom came out of the kitchen with a tray of Twinkies still in their wrappers.

“Lunch,” she said, and dropped the tray on the coffee table. When no one reached for one, she sat down as the silence settled around her.

“We need ham sandwiches,” said Dad.

“Forget the ham sandwiches. My boots don’t fit and that ridiculous gate won’t come down and I’m not hungry.”

“No,” said Dad. “It’s Veteran’s Day and we’re all here together and one of us has gotta put some ham on some bread.”

The sandwiches were unsettlingly warm. Papa had set the cold cuts out before trying on his boots, so the ham had been baking above a heating vent for a few hours. Plus, Dad cut them into squares instead of triangles. None of us said anything, though. Not even Papa. I thought they tasted like war stories. Mom must have agreed.

“Tell us the stories, Dad.”

“No, no stories this year. I’m too-”

“Cut the crap, Dad. Tell us a story.” And that was all it took. Papa put down his sandwich and wiped the crumbs from his flannel pants. He rolled up the sleeves of his frayed bathrobe to ease his gesticulations. For a moment, I thought I even saw him smile. Then, he began.

“The temperature was into three digits Fahrenheit and I’d been shitting my guts out for a week …”

It was the last story we ever heard him tell.

They told us Papa died in his sleep. They told us it was peaceful and painless. They told us we needed to make funeral arrangements and that a cherry oak coffin would look nice this time of year.

Papa hadn’t left any instructions for a funeral, so Mom gave him a simple one. A few of Papa’s Vietnam buddies showed up in transition lenses and veteran caps. We sang his favorite Catholic hymn. I didn’t know Papa liked music. Mom wore the same dress she wore to my first communion and Dad wore his one suit even though it was brown and not black. I wore my scouts uniform, even though Mom begged me not to. I hardly even went to meetings anymore. I still think Papa would’ve appreciated it.

A few weeks later, the city tore down those big gates, but they left Papa’s little house. The foreman decided he liked the crooked shutters, so it stayed. G

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aloft response i did not ask to be made a shelter of when i welcomed you to warm at my hearth all i wanted was a makeweight to palliate my voids and empty places, feel my form effectuated. but if this is what it means to be a body, then unmake me, unflesh me unstitch me unskin me unsin me til i am a breath on the wind, high above the honey bees all the fruit-bearing trees and the snake in the garden slithering, far from the garbling chatter of humanity and the wobbling of the earth beneath my feet. i am here, in this glass casecan anyone see? hands outstretched through the walls like air, hungry for another being’s reach

— Sadie Williams

the statue of the hunter behind the old gas station birds live in his big brass hat a squirrel chatters atop the barrel of his shot gun

— Maxwell Cloe

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but we burned the christmas cookies this is how i want to be remembered, how i want you to remember me. young, twenty-one, or twenty-two, maybe, it’s hard to tell, on the swingset, summer twilight; or a party, someone’s hand wrapped around mine wrapped around a drink; or the middle of that sunflower field, thunderclouds and blue sky behind me; or the passenger seat of a car, windows down, hair whipping everywhere, japanese countryside flying by mouth open. laughing. grinning. caught in a burst of effervescent joy, full of life, never to die, snapshot, vignette, forever. but you, you specifically. i want you to remember these too. tucking a daisy at your ear by the lakeside, eyes soft behind your back; the feel of my cheek brushing yours, arms around your neck upon my knees at your kitchen counter, christmas morning; yelling across the table, mouth and hands smeared with persimmon jam, pointing an accusatory finger at your betrayal—you’re laughing so hard you’re crying; handing you four-leaf clover after five-leaf clover, trying to win your approval, you

teasing me with it just out of reach; you pulling me close, tying my scarf into a fashionable bow-- me asking you to tie it again and again because i couldn’t remember how (a lie. i just wanted you to pull me close again); kicking your leg under the table, asking if you’ll miss me, goading you on, (acting like i am) ignoring the tears in your eyes. i want everyone else to remember me bright, you know, sunny and glowing but you, i want you to remember me deeply. all the ways i was with you, just you.

— Sydney DeBoer

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Backwash Sugar, spice, and everything nice— back when you were stuck between my teeth, I smiled wide for all to see.

That old gap was fixed last week, yet still you squeeze in and cling to my belongings like spilled milk gone rotten: a smell I’m in no mood to scrub out.

How about that airplane food?

And that’s all long distance was as far as the eye could see.

(Minus the money for tickets to visit, but who was counting cash or miles while I could live across the country and still keep you happily ever after in the land of milk and honey?)

Then I stopped by and saw that other guy eating my sugar as a kid would a booger, smushing my flour like a rolling pin on top of the kitchen counter.

It gave me brain freeze— Ben and Jerry’s.

And since I was the bad egg all along, sunny-side up I booked a flight and moved on.

Your doughy excuse was cooked without yeast: I was good while I lasted, at least, though long distance was a recipe for disaster.

Come to think of it, we mixed like hell.

Come to the brink of it, tears begin to swell— I, the drink as tasteless as water, adulterated by adultery, those little swirling bits of you.

In case that endeavor never ends, I’ll kick this ice cube under the fridge: Do I still love you?

Not even a smidge.

So why do I cry over spilled milk if it’s water under the bridge?

— Kyle Kauffman

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Kae Eleuterio

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The Gutter and the Stars

Photography

Atlas Cries Dark crimson caves in molten lands, glass slaves with rotting wooden hands.

A gust of wind upon the trees, a sound that puts you ill at ease.

The quaking of the crooked pine, her fading beauty all divine.

The sifting of the sacred sands, beyond the crystal moonlit lands.

The dying reigns of monarchs old, frail bodies crushed by wings of gold.

And in the clouds a lapis moon, beneath the green and trem’ring dune.

An obelisk sits perched on high, it reaches to the swirling sky.

And to her there the crowds are drawn, to watch the coming of the dawn.

— Finley Roles

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Norah Peterson

40 The Gallery

Homecoming

Oil on Cardboard

moon man in limbo or the frequent dreams of the kings son

teeter totter she wonder wanders through mountain tipped moon tops back aching arcing barks filling dips and tripping filings order jumbled odrer mumbled rerod humbled rerod rerod re-rod [waking up in a frantic numbness, valley prince of moonbeams dustmotes and whispers reaches around through his boxers and feels nothing] him she hums longing songs from a cradle cratered in some backslashed cabaret broken notes float so lonesome out the backdoor rising raising rising razing her brazen bellows flying himward (scream this part) she is he and he is she is he are she is he and she she are he is he is she is he and she is he and she he and she she and he [understanding this to be a result of his numbness, he resigns the matter for the morning and goes back to sleep] — Maxwell Cloe

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Rebecca Shkeyrov

42 The Gallery

Self-Portrait

Woodcut

Gardens Her first garden is for victory.

Her young palms smooth, hesitantly planting, Shy sprouts emerge Slowly, softly, Before dancing in her garden.

Her second garden is for herself.

Her hands are steady, sure, Blooming flowers flourish, The garden grows wilder With each passing year.

Her third garden is for her daughters.

She witnesses buds, then beautiful blossoms, Carefully cultivates each bulb Until they thrive, Then watches the petals blow away.

Her fourth garden is for me.

I watch her lined hands plant, Flowers rushing to join her jungle.

She gives me seeds, a spade For my own flowers come spring.

My first garden is for my grandmother. — Julia Savoca Gibson

The Gallery 43

Kae Eleuterio

44 The Gallery

Microcosm

Photography

Catholic

by Kate Hansen

She wasn’t supposed to be Catholic. It was a truth that she knew, that every student at Paxton Academy knew. She was supposed to be atheist like the Hipsters her classmates were, pray to the god of Science, flax seed, and mason jars. That was the way of the youth now; God was the myth of old people and Republicans. But vintage was never vintage enough for her; she believed in something ancient, older than the stone beneath her feet.

In the dark of night she could hear the distant murmurings of a world beyond, a world that was neither here nor there. When she lit the candles for Sunday dinner she opened her eyes to the flames and saw a light brighter than the sun, brighter than the brightest star in all the universe.

She kept it private, a shameful secret. If her friends knew she would have no friends. So she pretended, living a double life. In school, she laughed with her peers at the absurdity of water turning to wine; at Mass, she knelt on the ground instead of the padded knee rests, felt the floor grinding her skin to the bone. During the week, the resulting bruises reminded her of her disgrace, of her denial.

Her classmates never suspected. They knew she was sweeter, purer than the rest of them. They teased her for being a prude, a virgin. But there were other prudes, other virgins. So they never knew, and that was the way it had to be.

In class one day, the History teacher tried to talk about God. The teacher claimed to be a Buddhist, though he had been a Catholic once, a long time ago. Only she knew of this, because she had seen him at Mass, years before, younger then, with a smooth face.

He sat at the far back of the church; even then he had one foot out the door. He knew she knew. It was in her eyes when she looked at him, that knowing, that recognition of a past someone that lurked, even now, like a shadow at the tail of the person he was in the present.

She could have told her classmates, but she didn’t think he would appreciate it.

And then there was also that fact that he had a secret of hers, too, because he knew. He knew, somehow, that she cared. That when she complained about her parents dragging her to Sunday Mass, she didn’t mean it. That when she laughed at the gratuitous waste of the papacy, the incompetence of the church hierarchy, she was perhaps denouncing her church, but she wasn’t denouncing her God, never denouncing her God. He saw this, and grasped at it, held to it fast, and used it to subdue her, to silence her.

He would test her by saying things:

“The Catholic church is a cult.”

“Well, we all know Communion is mildly cannibalistic.”

“Church doctrine is a long list of rules on how to live an unfulfilling life.”

Then he would look at her, and that look was a dare to say something, anything.

She looked back, and said nothing.

So, one day he decided to talk about God. To denounce him. He could do this because Paxton Academy was a private school, and private schools do not have to abide by the same rules that public schools do.

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They were studying the Spanish Inquisition, and he said, “And all this effort for a God who didn’t exist. How stupid they would have felt if they’d known.”

He looked at her, his eyes a steady-burning fire, shadows slipping and shifting through the heat. The students laughed, and she felt nothing. She went home and took a long shower, letting the hot water run over her hands until her veins showed through her wrists, a cold blue against white skin. She traced their paths and wondered what made her heart beat, whether it was red-hot blood or brittle bones or soft brain matter that harbored her soul. Material things, carrying something eternal, something that could not be burned by fire. Could God burn her soul? She wished she knew.

She thought of her History teacher. Church doctrine is a long list of rules on how to live an unfulfilling life.

For the first time, she wished there were no rules. She wished there was no God.

The following night, she was slightly drunk at a party. She wasn’t supposed to be drunk at a party, slightly or otherwise. She was disobeying her mother and father, and that was a sin, but nevertheless there she was. Her frayed jean shorts skimmed the tops of her thighs and her neckline dipped to show her breasts, and as the night wore on she could feel Jonah Patterson’s eyes on her chest from all the way across the room. She sat down on a chair and took out her phone, but his eyes did not move. She shifted and her shirt slipped lower. She didn’t pull it up. He kept staring. Eventually, he caught her gaze. She looked away.

He crossed the room and knelt in front of her, his face upturned to meet her eyes. He was not supposed to be meeting her eyes like this, and that was a truth they both knew. Jonah belonged to Jessica, to Phoebe, to the sweet and smart and lithe girls who were supple and willing and could care less about pesky social constructions such as commitment. She had no right to him; she was the virgin, the prude, the pure one.

“Caroline,” he said.

“Jonah,” she said.

His eyes fell again to her breasts, and to the small gold cross that rested between them, just visible above her swooping neckline.

He cocked his head. “Is that ironic, or an heirloom?”

She could have lied. She usually did about these things. But tonight, she was not interested in lying. She raised her chin and stared down at him, expressionless except for her eyes, which glittered coldly in the white glow cast by her phone in the darkened room.

“Neither,” she said.

“Okay.” He touched the back of her wrist, and she felt the way it feels stepping out into the sweet cold wind that comes after a fall rain—all fresh and new and in trembling wonder of the world.

“Is that a problem?”

“No,” he said. He stared at her collarbones in marvel.

“Good.”

“Want to go down to the beach?” He placed a hand on her knee and looked at her, his eyes the way the shallows looked in his ocean photography—worsted silver and turquoise, caught still in rushing eddies, and the minnows, bright flashes against cold stone.

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She trembled. This was what she had wanted, and yet as the situation faced her, the conviction she had held earlier this evening wavered.

She had watched Jonah in class, fascinated by the small freckle at the edge of his lip. She had wondered how his mouth would feel on hers. Why was it so bad, she asked herself, to want someone the way she wanted him? They were animals, weren’t they? Her science teacher had said so. Hadn’t God realized what he was doing when he set them all loose upon this Earth?

She took a deep breath. “Okay.”

She had known him since kindergarten. All Paxton Academy kids had known each other since kindergarten. It was a small school.

She would have preferred someone different for this time, for this cold experiment, someone she didn’t know. Someone dark and tall with a sinful smile, someone to drive the God out of her. But Jonah, with his white hair and freckled nose and familiar smile, would have to do. There was no one else.

Afterwards, she lay entrapped in his golden arms, watching the sky and feeling the fire of sand burns on her back. She raised an arm and methodically traced the blue veins with her eyes. They were the same as before. Everything was the same as before.

The gold cross seared coldly into her breastbone. She closed her eyes. The waves rushed in, and the waves rushed out.

In that moment her soul belonged to God, but her body belonged to the Earth, to the silken heat of the September night, to the spinning of the stars, to the sighing of the wind.

“I don’t regret it,” she whispered. “I don’t regret it at all. Are you putting me in Hell now?”

There was no answer.

In church the next morning, the Father was a caricature of himself. Everything he said was all wrong; his gestures were grotesquely comical. She looked into the candle flames on the alter and saw only fire, a fire that burned against her eyelids when they closed.

“Caroline?” Her mother tapped her shoulder. “You look sick. Do you need some water?”

She nodded dazedly and got up. Once she had reached the atrium, she felt nauseous. She ran to the bathroom and dashed into an open stall. She knelt over the toilet and held her face in her hands and breathed through her fingers.

She cried. It lasted for maybe a minute, maybe five. When she was done, she went to the sink and washed her raw face. Then she looked in the mirror. Her eyes were red. She looked away from herself. Her eyes fell on the paper towel dispenser. It was broken, as it had been for the past year. She wondered when someone would come to fix it.

She closed her eyes. The lights hummed faintly overhead. All was calm.

She left the bathroom.

As she walked back down the aisle, she looked up to the ceiling, to the heavy dark beams holding back the sky. She wondered if the trees that birthed the beams cried when they were killed, if God or a sparrow or the wind had heard their screams. G

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Contributors’ James Card- I am an International Relations major and I do amateur photography as an outlet for artistic expression. I seek to capture the messages I find through interpretation of nature’s imagery. The following piece iterates the following: let not your deserved confidence blind you from the necessity of reflection.

Abby Comey- is a freshman from McLean, Virginia. She plans to major in English.

Maxwell Cloe- spends his free time wandering around Richmond Road where he finds his poems in the grass-filled sidewalk cracks. He’s glad to hear y’all like them.

Sydney DeBoer- likes denim jackets, writing about girls, and the finer points of early 2000s emo music. SWWWhe enjoys long walks on the beach and impassioned debates about fall out boy lyrics.

Kae Eleuterio- spends her time talking to cool people about stuff, imagining she’s a fictional character, and lusting after crunchy peanut butter. She dedicates these photos to a somber little owl, who taught her to find poignant meaning in the moments we all ignore.

Graham Ferguson- I’m just having fun experimenting with different styles of photography.

Meghan E. Gates- is a freshman at the college. She loves cats and Christmas; poem writing and collage making; napping and Almond Joys.

Julia Savoca Gibson- is a freshman from Richmond who loves words. She hopes you find her words enjoyable.

Ellie Grace- My work focuses on whimsy in domestic life. I like to apply bold colors and textures to mundane objects in order to give them personality.

Bullock Befriending Bard- For me, art is something that allows me to escape from the asylum of the reality.

Nitya Labh- The beauty of art, I think, is its ability to capture the human experience; more so I think a huge part of that experience is our individual and collective search for identity within our emotions. Recently, my work has been more experimental in terms of what techniques I use to create a kind of organic intensity to color. More than a switch to working with watercolor and ink, I have begun using rain and snow as media to which I can add pigment, like in this piece.

The way that rain falls, and the way that snow melts takes on its own natural characteristics on paper. By allowing the paint to move the water and be moved by it, I am able to reserve areas of pure pigment. I am drawn to the way the variation of watercolor mirrors rain falling and creates a vibrant and explosive visual experience. I think this intensity adds a very tactile feeling to my work because it imitates what we see on sidewalks and on windows. By experimenting with rain, snow, and color, I feel I am able to reflect the intimate emotional experience that accompanies rainy weather which, for myself, tend to be feelings of despair or longing, but also of hope and renewal.

In this sense, it is up to the viewer to decide how they feel and what they see in this painting.

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Notes David Lefkowitz- This poem serves, for me, as a testament to the power of caffeine. I had come home from a particularly exhausting shift at work with the evening news rattling around in the back of my mind and Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” stuck in my head. I was so tired that, to ensure that I made it back safe, I had to pull over and grab a cup of coffee. Now, safely at home but with no chance of sleep, I reached for a pen and let go. Ideas came quickly and in high volume, and at the end of a trance-like hour I had written 10 stanzas and a non-sequitur of a title, “Apockalypse #9”. The next morning I decided to add one final stanza - this one a bit more optimistic. Since then I’ve actually edited it very little, though I did end up spellchecking the title!

Norah Peterson- In “Let Them Eat Cake” and “Homecoming” I seek to highlight social issues that are not taken seriouWsly enough within our society. The toys, which are associated with childhood and happiness, are meant to illuminate the costs of war and homelessness. For “Lost at Sea,” I wanted to depict peaceful release.

Rebecca Shkeyrov- I am a junior, double majoring in Psychology and 2-D Studio Art. I primarily create paintings, prints, and drawings. Although my body of work is eclectic, it is united by an interest in people, colors, and/or the realism-abstraction spectrum. If you would like to see more of my artwork, please check out my Instagram @theboldstylo!

Daniel Tyler- is a junior, an English major, and an Art and Art History minor. He thanks you for reading his piece.

Jessie Urgo- is a fan of poetry and botany and marine biology. Or, well, science of any kind.

Sadie Williams- is a junior from Richmond, VA. She likes eating teeth for breakfast.

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Dear Reader,

Editors’ Note

We are thrilled to present you with the first issue of The Gallery for which we have served as Editors-in-Chief. It’s been a fun semester working through the ins and outs of leading a literary magazine. Starting later in the year and having a week off for Hurricane Florence left us a little worried about our submission rate but, like always, the creative minds of the College pulled through and made this a remarkable season. From being blown away by the fantastic submissions we have received at weekly meetings (usually featuring candy) to our fun Super Sunday meeting in Tucker Hall, this fall was an exciting one for The Gallery. While we miss our former editors Dominic DeAngio and Heather Lawrence, as well as our senior editors who have graduated, we have been astounded by the commitment of our steadfast staff members, without whom this publication would not be possible. We are glad to both welcome back old faces this fall and to bring aboard new section editors and staff to carry The Gallery into its exciting next chapter.

In this issue, you will find the exceptional poems, prose, and art by our talented students at the College of William and Mary.

Going forward, we are excited to announce our new initiatives. We have begun digitizing our previous issues on the Issu platform and plan to do so for all future issues. These efforts, led by our digitization chair, will make The Gallery more accessible to students and those beyond the brick walls of the College. We have also set out to increase our social media presence, electing social media chairs to maintain our website, Facebook page, and Instagram. Heading into our 40th anniversary, we have more exciting publications planned for the spring semester which will engage with the surprisingly rich and dramatic history of our magazine. We sincerely hope you all enjoy exploring this magazine as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together.

-Maxwell Cloe and Olivia Vande Woude

Colophon

The Gallery Volume 33 Issue 1 was produced by the student staff at the College of William & Mary and published by Western Newspaper Publishing Co. in Indianapolis, Indiana. Submissions are accepted anonymously through a staff vote. The magazine was designed using Adobe Indesign CS5 and Adobe Photoshop CS5. The magazine’s 52, 6x9 pages are set in Garamond. The cover font and the titles of all the pieces are Derivia.

The Spring 2012 issue of The Gallery was a CSPA Gold Medalist with All-Columbian honors in content.

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