The Gallery Fall 2014

LLER A G E Y 2 0 H L T FAL 14

G

the

allery

Volume 29, Issue 1 Fall 2014

Editors Co-Editors-in-Chief Jenny Lee Dana Wood Copy Editor Emma Stefansky Art Editor Lizzi Alarcon Poetry Editor Allie Nelson Prose Editor Libby Addison Scott O’Neil Staff Sora Edwards-Thro Anne Fuller Lily Gu Heather Lawrence Emily Lowman Molly Norrbom Chris Wolfe Cover Art

Stars

Mackenzie Neal , Digital Art See the complete work on page 30

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Poetry

Table of Contents

Oświęcim, Poland Dana Lotito L Rachel Brown MLK defies LBJ Danny Zere Jailhouse Rock Kayley Blackwell Fly to Paradise Lydia Brown The High Road to Sinai Chris Wolfe CTA Rachel Brown Routine Anne Fuller Roscoe Mary-Grace Rusnak The Last Hurrahs of Padraig Pearse Michael Monaco A Fisherman’s Plea to the Moon Anne Fuller Ranthambore Aaron Eilbott Footbridge, Near Glasgow Lydia Brown

4 9 10 11 13 14 34 36 39 40 42 44 45

Prose And the evergreens sway.

A Fish out of Tequila Milk and Eggs The Care and Keeping of Your Cactus

Art

Union Station Angles of the Colosseum Reach Snowy Egret Abandoned Sunset Trail Leading to Paradise Slumber Fugue To Be Like Them Stars The Old Man and the Sea Gondole The Betrayal Night Sky Above the Church Sea of Coral

Caroline Nutter Sarah Schnorrenberg Clive LePage Sarah Schnorrenberg

6 16 38 47

Priya Brito Allison Shomaker Anne Fuller Blair Stuhlmuller Priya Brito Blair Stuhlmuller Rachel Plummer Paige Stuhlmuller Vail Prior Mackenzie Neal Mackenzie Neal Paige Stuhlmuller Rachel Plummer Vail Prior Rico Xi Aine Cain

5 12 16 22 23 24 25 26 28 29 30 31 32 33 43 46

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Fall 2014 Poetry Staff Favorite

Oświęcim,Poland; 2000

In the end, Szymon Kluger dies the only Jew in town, with normal things one needs, I suppose, and thirty-seven spoons to his name.

He is no Prufrock, he need not dare.

He saw the moon in camp, a shining pearl push-pin in coal-black cushion, and thought, any animal can claw or rip or chew but only a spoon can dip, (soft, slow, don’t spill), and raise out that glow, still whole.

All he needs are thirty-seven spoons to remind him.

They are a signal, a muted click, on nights when the moon is shrouded and he shivers under the quilt, (still whole) thirty-seven precious spoons exquisitely solid, silver, rounded, cool on his cracked lips, (still whole).

— Dana Lotito

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Union Station Priya Brito, Acrylic

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And the

evergreens

by Caroline Nutter

A

pickup speeds down the middle of a two-way road that is overwhelmed on either side by tall evergreens. The sky is overcast. It is early in the morning, and it has just begun to rain. The plump droplets begin making small bursts of water across the windshield with dull plunks, and the driver curses quietly.

There are no wipers.

The truck pulls up in front of a bar, skidding on the gravel and finally resting at an angle across two parking spaces.

The driver forces the door open, slams it shut and ambles quickly to the door, barely discernable against white vertical vinyl siding of the building. He pushes it open and stands at the threshold.

“She’s been found, in the forest. She’s dead.”

The bartender looks up lazily and raises his eyebrows, then returns to the task he had been occupied with before.

He is refilling the taps.

The man at the doorway looked around. “I thought more of them’d be here.”

“No one’s really that worked up,” the bartender says, distracted.

“How’s that, Gideon? How’s that?”

The man had come in now and was sitting on a bar stool with his cheek squished under a fist. The bartender

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sway.

grunts and shrugs. “You never knew with that one. Something to that affect was bound to happen someday or another. You think she was killed?”

The man looks up, eyelids heavy but brows knitted.

“I just don’t know. Looks like suicide, type for suicide, I guess. But Eli’s convinced of homicide and it’s rare he’s wrong.”

The bartender raised his eyebrows again. “Be mighty strange if it turns out to be true.”

“Mighty strange,” he repeats, muttering now, looking at his hands as they wipe clean the inside of a glass, firmly pressing a towel around and around the smudgy sides.

The man on the stool had begun to smoke, and his exhales were spreading through the small room slowly, and evenly. The air inside of the bar was turning hazy.

“You got a light?” The bartender pats his apron pockets, “Must’ve left mine in the back.”

The man’s hands tremble as he passes a yellow Bic across the counter.

“Jacob, Jacob – you alright? Look how much your hands are shaking – you want a beer or something?”

The man nods and closes his eyes. He crosses his arms on the countertop and

cradles his head in them. The bartender holds the lighter to the end of the cigarette. He inhales. It catches and he hands the lighter back, which the man receives without lifting his head.

“Why is no one here?” His voice is muffled. “ A young girl – younger than your own kids, Gideon! – goes missing for almost a whole forty-eight hours… no one cares! No one cares, Gideon!

Why does no one care? Younger than most of our children, Gideon!” The man’s face twists. He looks as if he is about to cry.

“She wasn’t that young. Sure, she was younger than Bobby but Bobby’s almost eighteen… you know, Bobby is going to be the quarterback this year, Jacob. How about that?”

“Anyways,” he continues “she wasn’t that young, Jacob. What did you expect us to do?”

The man stands up too suddenly, almost falling off the stool. His eyes are wide now, leering.

“What did I expect you to do? What did I expect you to do?” He demands, spittle spraying from his quaking lips and eyebrows arching madly.

“Jacob, calm down! Calm down, you’re acting crazy! You’re talking crazy!

What’s gotten into you, Jacob? What’s got you? Let me get you something.”

The man deflates and folds back across the gluey counter. In a small voice, he murmurs. “She was a human, too, you know. A human girl, young, too young.”

“These things happen,” the bartender drawls as he pulls the lever on the tap down. “It’s none of your concern now, Jacob. Wash those hands of it.”

He sets the foamless beer in front of the crumpled figure.

“Why do you care so much, anyway?”

“I care because I… aw, hell – I’m wondering why you don’t. I’m wondering why no one does.”

At this point the man’s voice breaks.

The bartender leans in to pat him on the back with narrowed brows. He then turns and begins to walk in the direction of a closed door on which a sign hangs, lopsided: STAFF ONLY. “Excuse me, Jacob. I have to make a telephone call.”

The man lifts his head to see the bartender slip through the door. He looks into his glass and traces the plastic rim. He takes a sip. He takes another. He rests his head in the folded-arm cradle again, and shuts his eyes.

There is a crash, and when the bartender slips around the door, he cannot see the man because he has fallen off his stool.

The bartender hurries around the bar, searching confusedly, and finds the man sprawled across the linoleum. The bartender looks around the empty bar.

He goes to the back room again, where there is a black telephone. He dials for the ambulance. He waits.

As he waits he goes back to cleaning the glasses. Occasionally he leans on raised heels over the bar to glance at the man lying on the ground.

The paramedic arrives with a stretcher and tips his white cap in the bartender’s direction. “Morning, Gideon.”

“Earl,” the bartender nods.

“Sure is raining hard out there,” the paramedic comments.

“Sure is,” the bartender agrees.

The paramedic struggles to heave the man’s body onto the stretcher and the bartender leaves his place behind

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the counter to help him. The paramedic leaves with another tip of his hat.

The bartender returns again, to behind the sticky counter with the grubby glasses and the drained taps. He hums a directionless tune. After a while, he is quiet. He sees a yellow lighter lying on the ground where the man had fallen.

He walks around the counter and picks it up. He walks back and lights another cigarette and leans against the sink. The smoke slowly thins into a curly fog.

The door opens and torrents of rain

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can be heard pounding onto the gravel and asphalt and aluminium car roofs outside.

A man walks through the door.

When the door shuts again the sounds of the storm turn soft, as if the empty bar was underwater. “Can I help you, sir?�

A gunshot echoes.

Birds, squawking, take to the skies.

The wind picks up as the rain rains harder.

The evergreens sway. G

L They call it the Green Line, but it’s Mostly brown. They call It the Brown Line, but It’s mostly white. And Herein lies the tragic Irony of the city.

— Rachel Brown

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MLK

defiesLBJ

Dan Rather: Mother, when you pray, what do you say?

Mother Theresa: Nothing, I listen.

Dan Rather: Well, what does God say to you?

Mother Theresa: Nothing, he listens.

The room grew silent, the message having been delivered.

Stony faces betrayed a sudden gust of silent panic.

In their eyes all was dread and indecision; they were ready to follow but fervently hoping that they would not have to.

Finally: He is the President of the United States, Reverend, and he’s a friend. Listen to him this time.

My heart was with the flock, but my conscience was not. I too wanted to go home, but I heard myself say, “I’ll pray on it.”

I turned to my room, heard the door close behind me I walked to my bedside and knelt into silence

Renewed, I rose.

A turn of the knob hushed the murmurs.

I heard myself say, “We march.”

A gust of protests, a wave of objections glares of disbelief, of outrage even, passed over me.

The cacophony, spent and weak, died.

I heard myself say, “We march.”

— Danny Zere

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Jailhouse Rock Misty eyed barracudas are saddened by grumbles of a bass guitar, As it smirks in the icy air.

Mid-winter, and the smell of sulfur, attack every jailbird The man in the shadows carves a peace sign on his cell wall.

Three neon lime green patrol jackets float in the halls Midnight cuts like a knife, As the criminal dreams of rhododendrons. — Kayley Blackwell

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Angles of the Colosseum Allison Shomaker, Photography

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Fly to

Paradise

Dishes, unarranged, burn to be touched Like the cabinet door, wrongfully opened and closed And opened again, while the pen Threatens to tremble even in my unwilling hands: Small, screaming rituals are flags in a maze Frantically sought and captured before sleep.

I don’t have wings, even in the dream— Thrown from a motorbike, I lay sprawled on the asphalt Round and smooth as a mannequin, Unbroken and still in heavy, shining plastic.

Gravity waits, encased In the shell of a chair pushed at the wrong angle Or an empty glass humming to be moved.

Paradise does not demand my touch And in a memory, I’d soar to it Like a scarf made of rising birds, As swift and precious as a handkerchief Pulled from a magician’s sleeve.

— Lydia Brown

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the

High Road to

Sinai

I step out into cracked pavement, worn through with roots into loose gravel, wet grass and southern summer onto the highway, past the desolation of barns overgrown with vines in abandoned fields slowly liberated by nature among sleeping towns and quiet streets rows of houses painted blue and red into mother’s kitchen and, finding no shelter, fleeing back out again away through the desert across the cursed ground burning sand lined with manna

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to bright-lit nights on broad avenues among all the jagged temples man built to itself the billboards all proclaim Unto Dust Shalt Thou Return as I sink to my knees, I ask: return to where? for you are the Fruit from the forbidden tree and yet that which damns me is the only piece of Eden that I have left. — Christopher Wolfe

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Reach

Anne Fuller, Photography

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A

Fish

out of

Tequila

by Sarah Schnorrenberg

T

he first time Pete woke up on a beer pong table that morning, he was hugging a tequila bottle. It was your normal Tuesday morning, except that the bottle had a fish in it.

“Mom!” he hollered hoarsely slamming his eyes shut against the fluorescent light of the hanging lamp.

“Why is there a fish?”

The door at the top of the basement steps opened, and a head full of pink rollers poked through. “I don’t know about any fish. Do you want waffles for breakfast or eggs?”

“Pancakes,” Pete said and his mother left. He frowned at the fish. It was purple, and the size of the tabs of the beer cans littering the floor. Kind of like those fish in the aquarium that were just there to fill up space and swim in the background, while you looked at the fish that were in Finding Nemo. The bottle was mostly empty, but the fish kept chugging through the tequila in the same small circle. If you took proportions into account, the fish was beating Pete’s own tequila-chugging record. Pete didn’t take proportions into account.

The tequila bottle sat on the usually empty chair between Pete and his mother for breakfast. The fish was circling the corner of pancake Pete had stuffed into the bottle.

“Are you going to keep it?” Pete’s mother asked, refastening a roller with syrupy fingers. The syrup dribbled down her mousy brown hair and onto the robe Pete’s father had bought her thirty-one Christmases ago.

Pete shrugged and poured more syrup into the tequila bottle to make the fish’ breakfast more edible.

“Maybe one of your friends lost it?

You know we still have Phil Stillman’s coat from your junior year of high school.”

“Mom, I know,” said Pete, dropping his fork onto the plate. He picked up the tequila bottle and retreated to his basement for his morning nap. His mother got up from her own barely touched pancakes to place his plate in the sink and clear his unused napkin.

When Pete woke up for the beer pong table the second time that morning, he began planning the largest party of them all, in honor of the

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homeless fish.

Mike was the first to show up to the party. He was wearing his old Quizbowl jacket. Number 7. Pete was Number 8.

“Dude!” Pete cried as his old friend stomped down the stairs. “Who died in 1937, after writing a 1904 play turned into a bestselling children’s book in 1911?”

“J.M. Barrie,” said Mike, pulling the beer out of Pete’s hand. “Was that supposed to be a hard one, Pete? You’re not going easy on me, are you?”

Pete was going easy on Mike. Back in their college years, Mike had froze when asked to name the first female prime minister of the U.K., and said Hillary Clinton, resulting in a humiliating defeat.

Now, nine years later, Pete still held a grudge. But Pete didn’t have to tell Mike that.

Before they could begin their traditional game of Answer or Alcohol, Pete brought out the tequila bottle, to the initial excitement of the only Quizbowler who still came around.

Then Mike saw the fish.

“Wait, is that a fish?” asked Mike, staring at it.

“Yep,” Pete said, shrugging his shoulders.

“I’ll drink it anyways,” said Mike to his almost empty beer.

“Is he yours?” Pete asked, glancing at the bottle. Even though the fish hadn’t touched the now-disintegrating pancake it was now so big enough that its eyes poked above the surface of the tequila as it scooted around the bottle’s bottom.

“Why would he be mine?” Mike said as he grabbed his second beer. “And why does it matter? Who cares about a stupid little fish?”

Mike snorted and gulped down his

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beer.

With a small laugh, Pete put the tequila bottle back on its shelf.

Soon you couldn’t even see the tequila in the bottle and the fish had a new brown hint to it. The fish didn’t have enough room to keep circling the bottle when Pete showed it to his colleagues, though colleagues might not have been the best name for them.

He had only worked with John for two and a half months at the 7-11 down the street and it had been several years since Darlene was his fellow barista.

Pete considered them some of his best friends; they showed up to all of his parties, even if all they ever did was drink the free alcohol.

Before they could disappear among the strangers who filled his basement, Pete asked them if the fish was theirs.

John stared at the bottle, a glazed look in his eye, and asked if it was cannibalism for a fish to eat a Swedish fish.

“Not mine,” Darlene shrugged. “You should give it a name.”

She pushed past the homeless man Pete had met earlier that day in search of the keg.

John pulled a deformed Swedish fish out of his pocket, stuffed it in the bottle of tequila, and stumbled off to relieve himself in Pete’s mother’s favorite vase.

“George,” Pete said, looking at the fish. “You look like a George.”

Earlier that day, Pete had driven down to the old Quizbowl team house, as he did every Tuesday. He was like an older brother to these guys and girls, tutoring them, helping them through relationship crises, and occasionally providing a few

bottles of vodka.

He walked into on that Tuesday to hear a girl declaring that Professor Oakes was by far the worst professor she had ever had.

“Are you sure?” asked Pete, placing the liquor onto the counter. “Professor Oakes was my favorite. She got me through Econ 101.”

“He teaches anthropology and is a sociopath,” the girl said, staring at Pete.

“Who are you?”

The boy next to her rolled his eyes.

“Jane, that’s the dude who brings us alcohol.”

“It’s Pete,” Pete said, clutching the vodka bottles. “I’m a Quizbowl champion.”

“Right… well, you delivered the alcohol,” the girl said, talking as if Pete were a toddler in a man’s body.

“Thanks!”

Later Pete was asked to give back his key, but informed he was still more than welcome to make them alcoholic donations.

Only one of his buddies from his old Alcoholics Anonymous group showed up to the party.

Gary Longwood stared at George’s bottle. “I’d heard tequila bottles had worms in them, but I didn’t realize they were that large,” he said with a small sigh, looking into the eyes of the fish that squished up against the glass, slightly pulsating.

Gary watched silently by the beer pong table for three games before leaving.

Pete almost killed Wendell on his way back from the Quizbowl house. The man had fallen asleep on the side of a

small road near Pete’s mother’s house.

Pete didn’t realize his slightly molding coat was not a pile of roadside debris until he was close enough to see fingers.

After slamming on the brakes and leaping out of the car, Pete found his bumper had only missed the man by a few inches.

“Are you okay?”

Wendell wiped his eyes and yawned like his mother had just woken him up for school.

Pete bit his lip, and helped pull the man to his feet.

“Do you have anywhere to go?”

“I have everywhere to go.” Wendell moved to lean a hand on the hood of the car, but stumbled and fell to lean entirely on the hood of the car. Pete had done the same countless times—though often collapsing onto less sturdy objects like curtains—and he saw a younger version of himself in this much older man.

“You can come back with me,” Pete said as he started to herd Wendell into the passenger seat.

Pete carefully buckled the man in and returned to the wheel. He glued his eyes to the pavement stretching out in front of him, only letting himself glimpse back to the seat next to him to make sure Wendell hadn’t disappeared. The man watched the scenery pass them by.

Pete turned to Wendell as they pulled up into Pete’s mother’s driveway. “Do you like pancakes?”

It was midnight, nearly everyone had gone home, and George had still not been claimed. He was gasping in the tequila bottle, his sticky flesh sucking the clear glass, his body crammed into the glass trapezoid. There was a wide span

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of empty floor around the bottle, and Pete stopped there for a second after shoving his way through what must have been six times the number of people he had invited. Pete couldn’t imagine George outside of the bottle.

But the gasping sound of air regurgitated against glass was growing louder. A few people began pushing their way towards the steps. Pete cradled the tequila bottle to his chest for one last second and then knocked it into the beer pong table, barely scraping the glass. Pete knocked it harder. Nothing.

He thrust it, slammed it, battered it into the table. Nothing, nothing, nothing. He went to lift the bottle to his chest again, but his shaking hands slipped from the neck of the bottle, and down it went.

It shattered, the glass breaking into thousands of unrecognizable pieces.

George slugged out of the remains of the tequila bottle and he swayed as he scooted forward on his wriggling belly, collecting the shards of glass left in its wake and leaving behind a syrupy trail.

George snuggled up next to Pete’s feet.

“You named it after your father?”

Phil Stillman asked, looking at Pete like he had grown three heads.

“George is a he, not an it,” said Pete.

“Pete. You woke up to a fish in a bottle of tequila, the fish got so big you had to break it out of the bottle, and you named it after your deadbeat father.

Do you need to talk to someone?”

“I’ve talked to plenty of people today,” Pete said, nodding towards the crowd around them and reaching to scratch George behind where George’s earholes might have been.

“Yeah, and how many of them do you know?” Phil Stillman said.

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“That’s Wendell in the corner,” Pete said. “I met him today. We’re friends.”

“Really?”

Pete nodded.

Phil sighed. He had never sighed like that back in high school. It was the same sigh his mother made when Pete spilled Coors all over his freshly laundered pants, or when he invited twenty-seven of his closest friends to dinner.

“Look, Pete, I need to go home.

Work tomorrow and all. Have a good night; I wish you luck with…the fish.

Happy 30th.”

Phil waved solemnly as he retreated, a stiff smile plastering his face.

“Thanks,” Pete said, patting George on the head.

Pete invited his father, but his father didn’t show up that night. It wasn’t a surprise.

The last time Pete ever saw Wendell was that night. Everyone had left, except Wendell. Wendell sat next to Pete on the couch. Together they watched as George ate a wine cork and a solo cup in slow succession.

“Where are you going to go?” Pete said, fiddling with the cuff on his Quizbowl jacket.

Wendell shrugged. “I dunno, dude.”

“Gonna go home?”

“Nah. I hate roots. I live everywhere.

Wherever I can get to.”

Wherever Wendell could get to was about a two-mile radius centered on the liquor store that let him pay in coins.

“Hm,” said Pete.

“I just don’t wanna get trapped, right?”

Pete nodded and pretended to be thoughtful.

George finished the solo cup and moved onto Wendell’s shoe. He bit off a toe, but Wendell was asleep by that point, and Pete followed soon after.

By morning Wendell would be gone.

Pete’s mother woke him up on his 30th birthday on top of a beer pong table, with a giant fish underneath him, snuggling in his shoes.

“Happy birthday,” she said, adjusting her son’s hair. “I made you pancakes.”

She turned to go up the stairs, but did not make it up them before George had caught up to her and taken a bite out of her ankle. By the time Pete had removed himself from the beer pong

table, all that was left of his mother was a few hair rollers and a thirty-one year old robe.

Pete stood at the pile of robes and rollers, as George made his way up the stairs and towards the pancakes. He was alone.

G

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Snowy Egret Blair Stuhlmuller, Oil

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Fall 2014 Art Staff Favorite

Abandoned

Priya Brito, Acrylic

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24 The Gallery

Blair Stuhlmuller, Oil

Sunset Trail

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Rachel Plummer, Photograpphy

Leading to Paradise

Slumber

Paige Stuhlmuller, Oil

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Fugue

Vail Prior, Oil

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To Be Like Them Mackenzie Neal, Digital Art

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Stars

Mackenzie Neal , Digital Art

30 The Gallery

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Paige Stuhlmuller, Oil Paint

The Old Man and the Sea

Gondole

Rachel Plummer, Photography

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The Betrayal

Vail Prior, Coffee and Colored Pencil

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CTA Want a seat but you’d have to Sit next to a person so you stand.

No need for intimacy.

See a person leave her seat and you rush for it.

No need to stand when you can sit.

Take the seat on the outside so people will be less likely to sit next to you.

No need to touch other people.

Put your earphones in and crank up your songs.

No need to hear other people.

Close your eyes so you can Visually shut out the world.

No need to see other people.

Hold your backpack close to your chest Because people will take your valuables.

34 The Gallery

No need for pickpockets.

Feel someone brush your Knees and step on your toes.

No need to slide by you.

Open your eyes and turn your head to see who’s sitting next to you.

No need to say hello.

Watch the woman’s mouth curl into a Smile as she tells you good morning.

No need to smile back. But you do.

The smile speedily spreads across your lips before you can stop it.

No need to be alone on a bus.

— Rachel Brown

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Routine I pull back the curtain, a rustle of plastic, And crank the metal knob towards me.

A sudden release, the nozzle gushes, And sizzling water rewards me.

A thin fog engulfs me, a muddle of heat, And implores my troubles to cease.

I melt in this world, boiling and blank, And find myself at peace.

I reach for the soap, a petal of pink, And succumb to the daily grind.

I crave diversion, my mind dunked in gray, And choose a song to help me unwind.

I take in a breath, slowly and deeply, And a sweet note slips through my lips

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And suddenly music has Burst through me So quickly and powerfully, its pulse Matches my racing heart and The tune swings up higher Than I’ve ever been before And plunges to the Deepest realms of the earth

I expel warm tones and Bright, shimmering color That has a life of its own, a life that Matches my glowing eyes and My throat pulsates with palpable Yearning that gives my song So much passion, so much ardor That it can’t be stifled by secular constraints I push the music further and the tile Cracks, the curtain tears, the Glass of the light bulbs shatter, it Matches my exploding mirror and The walls around me come Crashing down, I’m breaking through the cold Wind and I’m soaring through The air, The clouds, The stars, I’m unstoppable and I’m unbridled and I Hiccup.

The world yanks me back, a slap to the senses, And a white wall is all I see.

A smile appears, sparkling and clean, For it is due to Singing

That I feel Free.

—Anne Fuller

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Milkand Eggs W

ith the dairy aisle in sight, young Aaron Frenulie dauntlessly ventured towards that fragile corridor of white.

His steps were careless, with interludes of choreography whenever he saw fit.

The ground was a hard tile floor, but the shuffling of the other shoppers was enough to muffle the sound of his stomping. At last, he arrived on the threshold of the dairy aisle, beholding its splendor. His mission, assigned to him by his mother, was to retrieve the milk with the green cap and the extralarge eggs.

The dairy aisle was barren, apart from an old woman, who was taking her time reading all of the expiration dates of all of the egg cartons. She looked at him, and Aaron casually entered the aisle, now that he had been silently acknowledged by the old woman. He could see the eggs on his left, where the old woman continued to scrutinize expiration dates, and the milk on his right, a bit further down. He did not want to disturb the old woman, so he went to the milk first.

There was a lot of milk. Young Aaron Frenulie had not expected this much milk. Aaron Frenulie did not even know there was this much milk in the whole world. There were different kinds of milk: soy milk, 2% milk, low-fat milk, even chocolate milk. Aaron liked chocolate milk. However, the chocolate milk had a brown cap, not a green cap,

38 The Gallery

by Clive LePage

and his mother had told him to get the milk with the green cap. He saw his target and reached up for the greencapped milk. Lifting it from the shelf, he gave a little groan due to the weight of the jug, which the old woman heard.

As she looked up from her egg cartons, she saw the struggling young boy and gave a little smile, remembering her youth. Aaron calmly placed his heavy jug of milk on the ground, and the old woman put her eggs in her basket, and left. Aaron waited for her to be gone before he tried to lift the milk again, because he didn’t want her to think he was too weak to carry milk.

There were a lot of eggs. His mother had wanted the extra-large eggs, and he began his search. He remembered his mother saying she was going to make omelets with the eggs, so she needed extra-large eggs for extra-large omelets, which Aaron liked. He expertly found the lair of the extra-large eggs, right next to the regularly-large eggs. He was reaching up to the extra-large eggs when he had a magnificent realization.

Perhaps through defiance, or perhaps through deviance, young Aaron Frenulie took the regularly-large eggs from the shelf. He looked from the eggs in his hands to the extra-large eggs on the shelf, completely aware of his decision.

He departed.

Aaron Frenulie brought his mother the milk with the green cap, and large eggs.G

Roscoe From round window of hand-winnowed hemlock hideout, brother's blue eyes drift down Daffodil Hill to Crow Meadow.

A Walker hound, hugs high ground around soft moss.

Tough tail trailing, curving lips biting bulging red throat of toad.

He won't linger long. Leathery paws prance past wheat, waving sweetly in freezing breeze.

Fall fills the dell. — Grace Rusnak

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The

Last Hurrahs of

Padraig Pearse Come shoot, tyrants!

I know you’ll shoot fair straight.

Fourteen brave lads die with me And fourteen ghosts will haunt you And so will I. Hail Mary, Full of Grace

This year we die in your son’s place.

When I stood on the steps of the General Post And proclaimed

IN THE NAME OF GOD

AND OF THE DEAD GENERATIONS...

Did you quake and tremble?

Did you know fear

As the Irish nation reared its head

And roared, roared through me?

Roared like Cuchullain, at the end of his last battle.

He became a beast,

Most fearsome and terrible,

Even as he fell dead.

What makes you think the rest of us Irishmen

Are any different?

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We speak in tongues you’ll never know

And sing with hearts you’ll never have So shoot! and shoot true, Pierce my side with your bayonets

To see if I’m really gone Send me back to mother when I’m dead,

Send me in my best suit,

And send brother Willie, too –

Buck up, Will!

God smiles on his children, on Sebastian and the Son,

And so will mother smile.

READY! – you are, brave soldiers, and now comes the AIM! This can only end in FIRE! Shoot, tyrants, shoot!

Christ and Ireland rose together

this bloody red Eastertide Free in the beginning,

and free now,

and free we ever shall be,

world without end.

Come shoot, tyrants!

COME SHOOT -------— Michael Monaco

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A

Fisherman’s Plea to the

Moon

My celestial wife, without you, the tides would never pull the crabs through the shallow sound, and the shrimp would all drown in a current, nowhere-bound.

Guide of my life, without you, the people would starve living off a dead sea; the sand would have no ocean visitors, no friends or sweethearts, to keep it company.

My sole companion, without you, the children would lie by the water, idle, drinking the cold salt.

With raw throats, they would cry to an empty sky, “This world has come to naught.”

— Anne Fuller

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Night Sky Above the Church

Rico Xi, Photography

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Ranthambore I have seen you lurking at dusk— framed by four steely corners trapped, motionless in the center of an unnatural scene where shadows fall harshly and light bends and distorts.

Your life, too, is distorted. Broken-legged sambars and tire tracks, the roar of engine and chatter, birds exploding into the sky, then, silence.

With bated breath they hunt— searching for a flash of prison-jumpsuit-orange, clicking ragged claws aching to drag you, lifeless, back with them.

They exchange stories and lies and nail your soul up on the wall, but they have not seen a tiger.

I will not see a tiger.

Tigers cannot exist in a place like this.

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— Aaron Eilbott

Footbridge, Near

Glasgow

“There is no oblivion,” I read, And earlier, I could not have known otherwise— Red-rusted railing wearing my palms as I climbed And climbed, bare feet hinging on worn iron Which burned, which swayed, Which offered me an oblivion I couldn’t name.

Bridge, suspended; I, in the palm of its hand, For despite my bareness, none wore it so well As I did, swallowing the space beneath me, Convinced that in the green of the river Was something to be learned, and so I thought: There is no oblivion.

But something escaped once when I rolled the windows down As he and I drove later, past the bridge, Through smeared radio static and blurred April branches Edging towards a blank space, stop and start, with a stick shift And into it I peer when I write, then back away slowly Where I have footing.

I listened to those words, over and over, Spoken by a man who walked over a city on a wire: “On one side, the life I know, On the other, a space so full of clouds we believe it empty,” And they strung themselves over a chasm, from one end to the other, Like the beam I toed, and, as it bowed, I felt oblivion went just like this: A cruel fraternity joke, for when they told me to dance, I couldn’t And when he offered me the second fork, a token of certainty, I left it As I left the side of his arm when he drove me home: untouched.

But in each instance spread beneath me like a narrow ledge, I step blindly towards nothing, thinking for a second it could be as simple As it was years ago: a step over the edge of a crossbeam, Down through a May void, plummeting into green, blue, then up Out of the water gasping like something new.

— Lydia Brown

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Sea of Coral Ă ine Cain, Ink

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Fall 2014 Prose Staff Favorite

The

Care and Keeping of

A

Your

Cactus

by Sarah Schnorrenberg

t breakfast, Chloe announced that our room needed a plant. I said fine, and returned to my bowl of Apple Jacks, but Mother decided I wanted to go with Chloe. Mother likes to spend the time she’s not working fretting over Chloe and forgetting that I have a life. Thus I found myself following Chloe through the violets in the nursery, the sickly sweet fragrance of the flowers tickling the back of my throat.

In the corner of the nursery there was a short, squat cactus with prickles longer than the actual cactus, except for the bald patch on one side. Boils spurted out all over the cactus and some had grown so big that they had their own boils. It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen. Chloe would hate it. I had to have it.

And thus, our room increased by an orchid and a cactus.

If you follow this guide and give your cactus the proper care and attention it needs, it can live up to fifteen years!

Our room: small. The real estate agent told Mother it was 10’ by 12’. She lied.

Inventory: •One bed. Two bunks. I get top bunk because Chloe can’t climb up.

•One desk. Half of it is mine and half of it is Chloe’s. ¾ of it is currently covered in Chloe’s experiments with foundation and bronzer.

•One bookshelf. On it there are several magazines informing Chloe how to “Fit in for $100 or Less!”. There are also the games I don’t play anymore, like Jungle Wars: Dawn of the Zombie Grizzlies and Heinous Battle of the Dead. There are no books.

•One window. It overlooks concrete and a pool the color of Listerine.

•One orchid that looks like it’s going to fall over.

•One cactus. He sits on top of Astral Farm Conflict: It’s Harvesting Time.

Having the blinds open makes Aquarium Tycoon II a lot harder to see. I know the cactus needs the light and all, but it really sucks when you’re trying to focus on the optimal arrangement of your shark tanks and you can’t see the floor plan past the light glaring onto your laptop screen. But I’m willing to make that sacrifice if that is what it takes to make my cactus live longer than Chloe’s orchid. I’ll probably win.

What the hell. I open my eyes to a blinding white light coming from the desk. Ugh.

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“Chloe. It’s not even 6. Turn off the light.”

“I’m going to school today.”

I press the pillow into my eyes. “It doesn’t start for another two hours.”

“Not everyone can get ready in twenty minutes. It takes me time to look normal.”

I squint down at her. “You look normal to me.”

“I wish.” Chloe sniffs, and turns back to the mirror she has propped up on the desk. At least four different types of foundation lie in front of her, and all are far too warm for her complexion, which looks like the budding green of her orchid in the light of the desk lamp.

“It doesn’t matter what other people think, Chloe. Now would you please turn off the light?”

She doesn’t.

I consider throwing the cactus at her head and the lamp, but decided killing the cactus wasn’t worth it.

in the game, but if enough computergenerated visitors to your aquarium like the starfish enough to steal them, your fish will live forever. And that’s nice, because starfish take too long to grow.

I was raising my starfish that night. It takes about an hour for them to mature completely, so I was multitasking.

Researching, to be precise. There’s always another cheat to be found on the Internet, and if I could help my fish live and grow into the best fish ever, I was going to do so.

I heard Chloe enter the room, but didn’t say anything. She would have laughed at me. She thinks video games are stupid.

She tells me that every day.

Why live online when you can live for real? Well, living for real sucks, Chloe. You should know that.

But, whatever. Apparently when you feed your starfish, you have to use precisely the right amount of food.

They needed a fresh clam every morning and no more, or would end up in an early grave. But before I could try this, I heard him.

“A wig? Fuck, are you…?”

I peeked over the edge of my bunk.

He was… they were… Oh. I hadn’t realized Chloe had brought Eric in.

“Shhhhh,” Chloe said, reaching for her wig as she tried to hold her chest.

“My family will hear.”

He looked at her with the same look that Chloe gave me when she found me spending all day in bed.

“Please. I just wanted to... I didn’t think you would want to…you know… if you knew.”

“ ” Well, living for real sucks, Chloe.

You should know that.

Things Mother likes to say to me: •Chloe is fragile. She needs your help.

•I can’t talk right now. I have to go to work.

•We’ll do that after Chloe… in a few years. For now, Chloe gets what she wants.

Things Chloe likes to say to me: •Weirdo.

•My wig doesn’t look stupid.

•Get a life.

The most important part of Aquarium Tycoon II is getting enough people to steal your starfish. It’s a weird glitch

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I started counting the blinds in our shade.

“I dunno, Chloe. It’s just… it’s too weird for me.”

Eric stood up and moved towards the door. I quickly flattened myself to the bunk.

“It’s not weird. I’m just like any other girl,” Chloe said, but the door slammed shut anyway.

52 blinds.

I heard Chloe crying that night. I never told her; I was too busy feeding my starfish.

Chloe doesn’t cry. She only ever wears the same formulated smile, carefully calculated to conceal any emotion she doesn’t want. The only thing that ever changed about her face was her lipgloss.

I heard Chloe cry twice and I only saw it once.

It is late on a Sunday afternoon and I am mourning the weekend and its imminent end. It is one of those afternoons in which I don’t want to do anything. Even Aquarium Tycoon II can’t tempt me. Chloe clearly feels the same way, as she is lying on the floor, her head nestled in her arm, staring at magazines.

Green catches my eye. One of the models was wearing what I can only assume is a poor artistic rendering of a crocodile. I decide to investigate, and plop myself next to her without a word.

I don’t know how long we lie there with only the noise of the glossy pages slickly sliding against one another.

Then we get to “15 Things to Do Before You Turn 20” which tells us that in order to be true teenagers we all have to go skinny-dipping or pull an allnighter. But while I scoff at the notion of going electronics-free for a day,

Chloe stops when she gets to number 12.

“Oh my god.”

I look up from the ad for the new wedge Birkenstocks that apparently everyone has to have.

Chloe’s teeth grind into her heavy coat of “Popular in Pink” gloss.

“Are you going to turn the page?” I point at the page I just finished.

“I’ll never see the stars,” Chloe says, her mouth barely moving.

“Okay.” I reach for the corner of the page telling me I had to sleep under the stars.

“I mean, you can’t see the stars here.

Not with all the lights at night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the stars.”

I start to pull the page back, but her grip on the magazine tightens and the page starts to rip. I let go, but I don’t think she notices anyway.

“I’ll never see the stars.”

I am going to tell her that she already said that, but as I open my mouth I see her eyes watering. I stare back at the corner of the page for another minute and try to pretend I can’t hear her choking back sobs.

“Stars aren’t that cool,” I say as Chloe wipes uselessly at her face.

She swallows, and I continue to flip the pages for her.

Most people think that cacti are easy plants to care for and you don’t have to pay any attention to them, but that is simply untrue. The key to cacti is moderation: give your plant water and light, but not too much. You’ll have to pay attention to your cactus to properly care for it.

Things people at school know about me: •I’m fifteen.

•I have an identical twin sister.

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•I like video games.

Things Mom and Chloe know about me: •I’m fifteen.

•I have an identical twin sister.

•I like video games.

A little bit about me: •I’m fifteen.

•I have an identical twin sister.

•Sometimes I think I play video games only because people expect me to.

Eventually Chloe will be too exhausted to get out of bed. She will spend all her time in bed. Mother will tell me to make sure she eats and I will bring her vegetables up every morning—the vegetables that she is told to eat in “Tame Your Flab!”

The vegetables will slowly decay next to the cactus.

Cacti are some of Mother Nature’s toughest creations, but even they have their problems.

Sometimes you will have to let your cactus go.

I know the hospital pretty well by now. Chloe never wants me in the room, but Mother keeps bringing me for the weekly visits anyway. So, I’ve seen a lot that goes on under those sterile lights.

But it’s not that much, really. It’s nothing like those shows that Chloe watched sometimes, where doctors make children in between delivering them. I barely see doctors—they’re always working, always visiting someone.

Walking through the hallways of the hospital you can’t see any drama, just the small moments in between. There are the nurses in their lavender scrubs taking a break to softly gossip by the coffee, or the family waiting for the news, holding hands, reading, sleeping. Everything is happening, and nothing is happening at

50 The Gallery

the same time.

You can never escape the lights in the hospital. They sear into your eyes and your skin in a crude imitation of the sun, but bring none of the warmth.

Once someone told me that you can get cancer from constantly working in the light, something about melanonin or melatonin, that nurses get cancer just because they want to help people.

Maybe the nurses looking after Chloe right now, the ones who see her cry, clean her vomit, shave her prized hair, will end up in that same bed.

Maybe the same thing will happen to me, maybe I’ll be under these lights too long. Maybe I will be forced to the bed hundreds have been in before me. But for now, I sit in the corner, across from a family waiting for a new daughter and next to a big plastic ficus, shining in the light.

Not long after we moved into the apartment, I went swimming with Chloe.

Eric lived on the floor below us, and when he met her he told Chloe to sneak into the pool with him. Chloe decided to go because his eyes “were like the sea,” whatever that means. I didn’t know any better, so when Chloe put on her bikini I did the same.

At night the pool glowed like the light from my computer screen. It was the same color as the beaches they show in the photos, but instead of sinking our feet into warm sand, we bounced from foot to foot on the frozen concrete.

We shouldn’t have gone that night.

I had known Chloe wasn’t feeling well that day—she had been too tired to get out of bed earlier—but I didn’t say no.

Chloe wanted to see Eric. He was there, in the deep end, with several other guys

and a bottle of whiskey, which Chloe quickly coughed down a sip of at his offer.

I should have seen it faster. I was on the other side, hugging my arms to stay warm and bobbing along with Eric’s friends as they argued whether the zombie grizzlies in Jungle Wars were infected by UV radiation or a bite from human zombies (even though everyone knows it was from a fungal moss). I didn’t see her until one of those idiots started laughing at her.

My sister’s head was barely above the surface and Eric bobbed drunkenly without noticing.

The water felt even colder as I thrashed across its irradiated depths.

Water splashed through my nose and into the back of my throat, and the chlorine stung my eyes, but it only felt like the distance from my sister was growing.

When I pulled her out of the pool, she sputtered, eyes rolling back. I called for Eric to get an ambulance, but they scattered. I pounded at her chest, as salty tears mixed with chlorine.

Later that night Chloe informed me I had ruined the party.

I turn back to the cactus. It has a brown scar in the middle of its shaft now. A daily reminder that I could have paid more attention to it.

“Another personality quiz?” I ask, squeezing the spritzer especially hard at the scar.

She doesn’t say anything. She’s been lying in bed all morning doing them.

So far, she’s determined that she’s a Gryffindor, is best suited to being a nurse, and would be a strawberry daiquiri if she were an alcoholic beverage.

“What are the other options?” I say, setting down the spritzer.

“Well, there’s robbing a bank, doing your homework, though I don’t know why anyone would pick that, and killing yourself before it kills you.”

I scale the ladder up to the top bunk and nestle myself back in my cocoon.

“There’s also crying all day, but you don’t cry,” said Chloe.

“I cry.”

There is silence for a second, and then she laughs. “Really? When?”

I curl into my covers and pull my laptop close to my chest, but I don’t open it. I turn my head to the side, as if I could look through the bed down to Chloe. “Yesterday. In the hospital.”

“Oh.” “I’ll miss you, Chloe.”

Nothing more was said and I watched over my laptop as the sun set and the shadows from my cactus and Chloe’s drooping orchid stretched across the floor. G

“ ” A daily reminder that I could have paid more attention to it.

P.S. It’s okay to talk to your plants!

I am spritzing my cactus when Chloe asks me what I would do if I knew I would die tomorrow.

“What?”

“You’d either plan your own funeral or go skydiving, but I’m not really sure.

So, what which one?”

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Contributor’sNotes Priya Brito has always had a passion for art, and so as a sophomore here at the College she plans to pursue an Art minor. She enjoys working in charcoal and acrylic and oil paints while focusing on the depiction of realistic photographs and landscapes.

Lydia Brown is a sophomore at the College of William & Mary. She is currently pursuing English and Education with a minor in Music.

Rachel Brown enjoys eating fried chicken. She also enjoys eating other foods, but fried chicken tops the list because it reminds her of home. Áine Cain is a history major and a junior at the College of William and Mary from Bronxville, New York. Her work was inspired by her love for the color purple and the film Yellow Submarine.

Aaron Eilbott visited Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan, India, and all he wanted to see was a real live tiger. Instead, the only things he saw were sad, fanny-packed tourists and sad photographs of caged tigers.

Anne Fuller is a freshman at the College and an intended Neuroscience major. Her favorite hobbies include photography and creative writing, both poetry and prose.

Clive LePage is an intended Theatre major in the class of 2018 from West Richland, WA. He aspires to become a playwright—however, writing accomplishes nothing unless there’s somebody willing to read.

Dana Lotito is a senior at the College and an English major. She loves writing, Paris, Bernese Mountain Dog puppies, and eating a lot of pizza. She is pursuing becoming an English teacher. Her poem “Oświęcim, Poland” is based on a true story.

Michael Monaco is a senior majoring in Linguistics. He writes mostly poetry and fantasy fiction. His plan for the future: winning the lottery. His poem “The Last Hurrahs of Padraig Pearse” is about Padraig Pearse, the Irish revolutionary.

52 The Gallery

Caroline Nutter wrote “And the evergreens sway.” during a summer creative writing program between her junior and senior year of high school. It is heavily inspired by the television show Twin Peaks.

Rachel Plummer is a freshman from Rhode Island. She loves to communicate her perceptions through photography. “Leading to Paradise” was taken at Indian Lake, and “Gondole” was taken in San Marco, Venice, Italy.

Vail Prior is a freshman who enjoys being covered in paint. Life is colorful and sublime, and she loves looking at it with a curious eye.

Allison Shomaker is a junior at the College and spends most of her free time exploring with her trusty Nikon camera.

Sarah Schnorrenberg is a junior and History major from Chevy Chase, Maryland. She was inspired to write “The Care and Keeping of Your Cactus” by both her love of low maintenance plants and her less dysfunctional relationships with her sisters. “A Fish out of Tequila” was based on a true story.

Blair Stuhlmuller is a junior majoring in Geology and Environmental Science. She appreciates nature’s beauty and tries to capture it in her art. Blair especially loves painting landscapes and animals—particularly birds.

Paige Stuhlmuller is passionate about painting, reading, and cheese. If she isn’t trudging down one of Lake Matoaka’s extensive forest paths, she has a pencil in one hand and scrap of doodle paper in the other. A self-proclaimed queen of multi-tasking, Paige is excited for her work to be printed once again in the magnificent Gallery.

Christopher Wolfe is a senior International Relations major from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. When not writing, Chris enjoys travel, cooking, and political engagement/leftist agitation. Chris’s favorite writers include Kurt Vonnegut, Graham Greene, and Jorge Luis Borges.

Danny Zere is inspired by Martin Luther King and other inspirational leaders like him not simply because of their accomplishments and their anti-violence posture, but by how they thought and acted, particularly when confronted with very difficult and often controversial decisions.

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Editors’ Note Dear Reader, We always select our pieces to stand alone. We review them anonymously and accept them by staff consensus. We evaluate the images, the language, the structure, and the story in every one, but our only criteria is how deeply the piece moves, provokes, or charms us.

Yet somehow, almost inevitably, we find ourselves presenting a theme or an idea. The process is wholly organic—we often do not realize how our submissions work together until we have placed all the art, all the prose, and all the poetry, into the magazine as a true collection.

This semester’s Gallery features pieces exploring the individual, the drama of a single life or character, laid side by side with the personality and importance of history and place. Sometimes they mix, the moment of a person in a particular space and time, but the experiences of each or all are not the same; we have heroes and survivors, explorers and visitors, places for dreams and tragedies or places just to be. Each is powerful alone, and together they give us a sense of wide, different, and changing our world can be.

We hope you enjoy the hard work and beauty produced by our campus’s talented poets, authors, and artists.

—Dana Wood & Jenny Lee

Colophon The Gallery Volume 29 issue 1 was produced by the student staff at the College of William and Mary and published by Western Newspaper Publishing Co. in Indianapolis, Indiana. Submissions are accepted anonymously and through a staff consensus. The magazine was designed using Adobe Indesign CS5 and Adobe Photoshop CS5. The magazine’s 54, 6x9 pages are set in Garamond. The cover font, along with the titles of all pieces, is “advent.” The Spring 2012 issue of the Gallery was a CSPA Gold Medalist with All-Columbian honors in content.

Check out the Gallery online www.wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/gallery www.facebook.com/wmgallery @wmgallery

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