Graffiti 2011

Graffiti

Manhattanville College’s Undergraduate Literary Magazine MANHATTANVILLE COLLEGE Purchase, New York Spring 2011

Graffiti

Manhattanville College’s Undergraduate Literary Magazine MANHATTANVILLE COLLEGE Purchase, New York Spring 2011 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Tiffany Ferentini FICTION EDITOR Johanna Grea POETRY EDITOR Travis Madison ART & PHOTOGRAPHY EDITORS Rachael Conrad Emma Gaedeke Antonia Joseph FACULTY ADVISOR Van Hartmann

Printed by The Sheridan Press 450 Fame Avenue Hanover, Pennsylvania 17331

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ON THE COVER

Ghosts Leigh Shane

Leigh Shane is currently a freshman at Manhattanville College with an undeclared major. She wishes to pursue a major in photography and a double minor in psychology and advertising. She has been studying the art of photography for over six years and has had her work displayed in various showings.

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CONTENTS On the Cover 5 From the Editor 9 SR. EILEEN O’GORMAN PRIZE FOR SHORT FICTION The Tuckerry, Lindsey Greene 13 ROBERT O’CLAIR PRIZE FOR POETRY Christmas in August, Emma Gaedeke 33 The Virus, Emma Gaedeke 34 Galway Bay in December, Emma Gaedeke 35 BSU NAKED POETRY COMPETITION WINNERS Love Letter, Monique Mitchell 39 Alex, Naajidah Aakifah Correll 42 Fucking Romance, Travis Madison 46 POETRY September, Amanda Zaloga 51 My Father’s Eyes, Johanna Grea 57 Every Night, Judian Romanello 59 The Balance, Erin McCarthy 66 End of the Night, Tiffany Ellington 68 A new, Ashley Dandrige 70 Blue Rose, Stephen Kostes 71 Goodnight, Aarushi Bhandari 86 Change, Amanda Zaloga 87 Donor of Seeds, Judiann Romanello 89 A Nuclear Threat, Michael Stracci 91 A Sea Star’s Scars, Sofie Santamarina 100 Eugene, Rachel Conrad 102 Incidental Disability, ADAPT 105 7

Moving In, Emma Gaedeke A Lesson in Geography, Janelle Little Where the Heart is, Keara Brown Hunter, Shawn Marshall

106 108 112 113

FICTION A Night at the Diner, Janelle Little Acts of Reparation, Lindsey Green As the Cherry Blossom Petals Flutter, Tiffany Ferentini Something About the Rulebook, Erin McCarthy The Reluctant Wedding Guest, Emma Gaedeke

53 62 72 81 94

ART Sunset of Realization, Antonia Maguire Untitled, Antonia Joseph Salt of the Earth, Janelle Little Untitled, Antonia Joseph Three Girls, Janelle Little Spring in Bloom, Antonia Maguire Down the Hallway, Michelle Ferlito At Sea, Rachel Conrad Are We There Yet, Rachel Conrad Elevated Boundaries, Michael Stracci Hind Shine, Martinez Haslam The Path of Infinite Possibilities, Antonia Maguire

52 61 65 69 80 88 93 104 107 110 111 114

Contributors 117

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FROM THE EDITOR Dear Reader, I feel that the following quote from Heinrich Heine, one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century, perfectly reflects all the pieces includes in this year’s issue of Graffiti: “There is no Sixth Commandment in art. The poet is entitled to lay his hands on whatever material he finds necessary for his work.”

For all forms of art - whether they be expressed in writing, drawings, or photography - there are no set rules. A novelist, poet, and artist are entitled to take whatever inspiration that comes before them and use it to express their individuality through their pieces of their craft. This can be said for every poem, every piece of short fiction, and every piece of art which you are about to explore as you flip the pages of this issue. All of these writers and artists were able to take the tiniest spark, and turn it into a finished, unique piece of art that reflects themselves. I have been the Editor-in-Chief for two years, and never before have I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing such original and inspiring fiction, poetry, and art. So for everyone who has work featured in this issue: Thank you. For the past two years I have worked to build Graffiti back from scratch from the bottom up, but never before has Graffiti produced a finished product as innovative and imaginative as this.

I would also like to extend my thanks to a number of other people who, without their help, this issue would not have been possible. A special thanks to the Graffiti staff, for their constant hard work and dedication; Professor Van Hartmann, our faculty advisor, for providing us with encourage9

ment and guidance; Karen Sirabian, director of Manhattanville’s Master of Arts in Writing Program, for being a second mentor to us and steering us in the direction of a new printing company; Gail Simmons, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, and the Manhattanville English Department, for their constant support; and finally Kelly Freeburger and Michelle Lee of The Sheridan Press, who were able to make the production process a smooth and enjoyable one.

To each and every one of you, I cannot express my thanks and gratitude enough.

Last but not least I would like to thank you for picking up this issue. Without further ado, I invite you to turn the page and enjoy the plethora of heartfelt fiction and poetry that lies within this issue of Graffiti.

Warmest Regards,

Tiffany Tiffany Ferentini Editor-In-Chief

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Sr. Eileen O’Gorman Prize for Short Fiction

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THE TUCKERRY Lindsey Greene

Maybe it’s armor for Lorraine, or a uniqueness that she’s desperate to convey. Maybe. But her bracelets jingle every time she brushes her hair out of her face or pulls her keys out of her pocket. She’s essentially defined by her obsession with jewelry—a giant ring on her right ring finger, two chunky bangles on each wrist and long, dangling earrings brushing her shoulders. And yet she is surprised and excited when someone points out her accessories and asks “you like jewelry, don’t you?” Somewhere deep down—and sometimes not so deep—she loves the recognition. She feels naked and incomplete without all of it. She doesn’t feel like herself. She doesn’t feel noticeable. She says she’s just easily distracted by shiny objects, and that’s why her dresser is loaded with several packed jewelry boxes, a bogged-down earring tree and baskets of bracelets. She tells him only this part from across the table, omitting the rest.

David tells her that what he wants most in the world is a working typewriter. He says his grandfather once owned one that was later sold at the estate sale. He told his mother afterwards that he would have wanted it, and she just shrugged and said she’d had no idea. “Typewriters are obsolete now, anyway,” Lorraine tells him.

What a pair, the two of them. What a sorry collection of wasted attempts and reasonless neurosis. At least, that’s what the waiter would have thought had he overheard their conversation, which he’d likely describe as lacking in substance (and that would be putting it kindly). No one comes to the Tuckurry for the conversation, though. They don’t really come for the food, either. They come because they know that everyone else has come for the same desperate, obvious reason and that once they manage to find someone to share a drink with, they’re pretty much guaranteed at least fifteen 13

minutes later that night. Jewelry and typewriters are irrelevant. Lorraine and David have deemed each other good enough, and now they’re trying to figure out how long they’ll have upstairs. It isn’t meant to last beyond one evening. Only minutes, really. Sometimes longer, depending on how out of practice one is and the patience of the other.

By the looks of it, they both guess about twenty minutes. Had David been maybe twenty pounds thinner, Lorraine thinks, it could have been extended to thirty, maybe even forty-five. That might have been nice, she thinks, but the twenty will do. She estimates him at just shy of two hundred and fifty pounds, and she doesn’t really care how short it will turn out to be. Just as long as she leaves this place satisfied enough, she doesn’t care. As it is, he’s trying too hard to look intrigued by his Jack on the rocks to notice her calculations. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t seem to actually like the drink. He’ll take a sip, hold it on his tongue for just a second, swallow quickly, allow a small reactionary twitch from his jaw and wait a long time before his next sip. Each taste looks more like a desperate attempt to enjoy the drink, and each swallow is a relief. She doesn’t really peg him for the whiskey type, anyway, so his attempts are somewhat laughable. He would have been better off ordering a beer. Or a soda.

The waiter would find them unremarkable. There have been enough people acting out variations on this exchange in here to render this one average. They all run together after awhile, and when these two are gone the waiter will forget about them entirely. What makes them at least a little bit unique in this moment is the fact that neither of them has ever been here before. Most of the people here are regulars; most of them know everyone else here, have spent the twenty minutes talking and the fifteen upstairs, allowed the evening to run its course and went their separate ways.

And every time they come back here, they focus only on 14

who’s sitting in front of them. They never acknowledge each other again. It’s as if they’d never met. It could be that they’re embarrassed, or upset that the other felt no connection (or that they themselves felt no connection). The truth is that they never meant for any relationship other than that initial meeting. That’s the sort of place the Tuckurry is. Everyone sits in the scuffed chairs that are loose at the joins and squeak, trying to ignore the smell of mothballs in the room and sour liquor on someone else’s breath.

Lorraine finds herself eyeing the clock, tapping her feet impatiently, wishing he would get it together and ask her upstairs already. Because it’s bad enough that she’s here, sitting across from an only slightly attractive man who doesn’t even have the nerve to order a drink he actually likes and instead orders one he thinks would be impressive. Wincing at each sip isn’t impressive. All of that is bad enough. She doesn’t need to stoop even lower by being the one to ask him upstairs. This is his move, she thinks. She won’t be forced into taking the initiative.

The more she looks at this man across the table, the angrier she gets. She finds herself thinking that it isn’t supposed to be this way. She shouldn’t be sitting in a darkened, tawdry bar disguised as a restaurant, attempting small talk with a man who doesn’t seem to care if she is herself, Lorraine, or any other random desperate in the room. The people who come here aren’t out for love—or they are, but they don’t expect to find it here. She would have liked it, though.

It’s what everyone’s always told to look for, after all: look for love, a relationship. Nothing meaningless or momentary, that’s not real. Love is real. Marriage and children and houses and normalcy, that’s what’s real. Sitting in a tactless bar with the sole purpose of finding a sufficient partner for barely an hour of demeaning sex? Sitting across from each other long enough to finish one drink and establish the other’s level of sanity and likelihood of venereal disease? None of that is real.

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The peeling wallpaper and ripped upholstery in the bar, the stale, unwashed smell of the rooms upstairs? None of it. It might as well be a roadside truck stop for the amount of class and turnaround here. And she is disgusted with herself. But she sits there and watches him feign his way through his pitiful Jack on the rocks, resolving to not make the first move towards the stairs. No, she thinks. It has to be him. I won’t stoop that low.

She realizes that he’s still talking about typewriters and she hasn’t heard a word of it. She’s put in the perfunctory twenty minutes and, amazingly, he is almost done with his drink. Two more sips, one if has the gall to take it all at once. It might actually be an encouraging sign, she thinks, something even remotely redeemable. She stares at his fingers curling around the glass, willing him to just lift it to his lips and finish off the drink. One big sip and they could go upstairs and get on with the inevitable. She’s losing patience.

But he keeps on talking about typewriters and how he is sure they’re destined to make a comeback. His fingers twitch slightly on the glass—she perks up a bit. He raises the glass, glances at it and gives it a shake. He finishes the last of it in that one big sip she’d been hoping for and gives the glass another shake. He looks around the room—for the stairs? she wonders. She reaches for her purse. When she turns back to him he is flagging down the waiter, asking for another drink.

She agrees to another herself, wondering how it is that she’s gotten to this point. She knows she could have something better than this, something real and desired rather than expected. But just by her entrance into this place she agrees to participate in this dance they do every night, or as long as it takes for the people of the Tuckurry to get tired of the implications of their patronage (even then it will probably still go on. The Tuckurry has been open for decades, and it will likely stay that way no matter how many people come). None of these people have families, or ones they care too much 16

about. A few of the men in the darkest corners have wives, some even have children, but for whatever reason they don’t get there what they get here. But what do they get here, really? They spend six dollars on a single drink, likely another six for whatever she’s drinking. And they’ve bought so many drinks here that they can normally guess what she’ll be drinking before she orders it. The blondes in too-tight dresses tend to go for gin martinis, usually with fruity flavoring. The sadlooking brunettes opt for vodka with an olive. Occasionally there will be a divorcée who orders whatever he orders, then switches to red wine at the second round (or after the first few sips). At this point he’s reserved a room upstairs and offers her his arm to escort her, as if pretending that they’re staying at the Algonquin and have just dined with Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley. Occasionally she’ll play along with his attempt at class, but more frequently she picks up her purse and heads for the stairs with a sigh. Once a woman actually hung her purse from his elbow and was halfway up the stairs before he trotted along behind her, red-faced and pouting.

Lorraine has no desire to play along with any sort of charade tonight, but when her second drink arrives and David resumes his pathetic ritual of sipping the Jack, she finds herself wishing she were sitting with one of those fanciful men who frequents the Tuckurry and knows exactly when to make his move. David knows no such thing. Despite his size he is undeniably weak, probably well-educated but lacks the confidence or cockiness to demonstrate it. He slouches quite noticeably and often brushes his goatee with his fingers. She figures it’s a nervous habit. She drinks her Sangria nearly in gulps, hoping that he gets the hint. He continues simply sitting there with his fingers wrapped around the glass, content to hold it without drinking any. Her impatience is turning into annoyance. She doesn’t understand why he would come to this place where the foreseeable events of the evening are 17

already understood and agreed upon, proceed to talk with her for nearly half an hour (which is ten more than the unwritten maximum), and yet make no indication of any intention of going upstairs with her. Maybe he doesn’t actually have a room, she wonders. Maybe he’s just here for drinks and she’s wasting her time. The idea horrifies her, but it starts to look more and more possible. His unrelenting chatter about typewriters and now the difficulties of finding suitable paper (since paper now is made thinner for computer printers) is just rambling enough that it seems like certain stalling. He opted for the second round of drinks rather than to ask her to his room, which would have been a sure thing. She’s sure of it now. He has no idea what sort of place he’s in, and he’s attempting to turn this already miserable evening into even more of a debasing exercise than it already had to be. Oh god, she thinks, how did I end up with this one?

It is certainly bad enough that neither of them has ever been here before, but to be the only woman in the room whose date has no plan, not even a possibility waiting for them? It’s mortifying as much as it is insulting. And he’s wasting her time. If she were to get up right now and leave him yammering on about paper thickness by himself, it would be entirely warranted and deserved. And a part of her wants to do it so badly, even throw her drink in his face as she did it.

Maybe the wine-soaked chunks of fruit would get him in the eye. How satisfying.

But she’s here for a reason. And no matter how badly she wants to throw his naïveté in his face, he is still her only option. And yet again she finds herself wondering how she got to this point, this very moment, in this exact, depressing, fowl-smelling and reputation-crushing place. If anyone were to ever find out what she is about to do, she is certain her life would be permanently tainted.

Then again, she wonders, at this point, what has she got to lose?

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“How’s your drink?” she asks him. She decides to move this along.

He seems taken aback. “Oh, fine. It’s fine.” He pauses. “How’s yours?”

“No complaints. What are your plans for the rest of the evening?” She hates herself for saying this.

“This evening? Oh, well, I don’t really have any.” He pauses again. “Do you?”

She wonders if he’s nervous or just exceedingly dull.

“Well, I had planned on spending most of it here. That is, if I found someone worth spending it with.” Her desperation is so apparent that she is sure every waiter in the room is listening in, laughing at her. She can almost smell it, and it nauseates her.

David’s confusion is so consuming that she wonders how it is possible that he could even get himself to this place without getting lost or losing his nerve and going home. He fumbles with his drink, attempting a sip but missing entirely and spilling most of it down his shirt. Lorraine stares in amazement, wondering what person over the age of ten could spill an entire drink on himself. He looks in that moment like a humiliated child preparing himself for a time-out.

His cheeks have turned pink and he refuses to look up at her.

She resists the urge to sigh with complete disappointment.

He snatches a napkin from the table and furiously blots at the stain, moving quickly to rubbing it with so much fervor that Lorraine figures he wishes to rip the stain right off. When it becomes clear that he’s done all that he can do for the shirt, he throws the napkin at the table with a loud and somewhat obnoxious sigh.

“Dammit!” he nearly shouts.

Lorraine is surprised. So much intensity coming from this man who up until this point was so engrossed in his opinions on typewriters that he seemed incapable of passion for any other subject. But in that moment, Lorraine con19

siders the chance that there could be something to this bumbling, inconsequential person with whom she had been so impatient. Sure, it is laughable and somewhat sad that he is the type to spill his drink down his shirt when presented with something even remotely surprising. And it is even stranger that he is the type to get so completely upset by that act to the point of scraping away a layer of the fabric in his attempts to clean the stain, but is a reaction. Lorraine considers this for a moment, decides that it is redeeming enough, and gives her efforts another try.

“Is the shirt ok?” She sounds a bit friendlier now, her tone less forced and droning. He looks up at her, blushing and disappointed.

“I hate when that happens. It was a new shirt and all.

Sorry.” He takes one more look at the faint brown patch on his shirt and sighs again.

Lorraine finds herself smiling. “I have no plans for the rest of the night. Did you plan on staying here?” She realizes that she is still shamelessly propositioning this man despite the pathetic display that has been their entire evening, but whether from desperation or a renewed hope in him, she continues.

He looks up at her, the corners of his mouth turning up and his eyes brightening a bit. He again looks childish to her, but this time in a more endearing way. He in fact seems tremendously grateful, and because of this she cannot decide between contentment or a certain sense of guilt. Regardless, the evening finally seems to be heading in the direction that she’d intended all along, and she is not about to question that.

He speaks slowly.

“Well, I’m here for a conference, staying just tonight.

So, uh, yes.” He ends his sentence with a slight upward inflection, as if unsure if his is the right answer.

When she nods, he smiles and gets up rather quickly, muttering about going to the bathroom. As he heads off to 20

speak to someone about the room, she pulls out a mirror from her purse and examines herself. The hair that she had spent so much time trying to perfect is starting to lose its hold, but her makeup seems fine. She closes the mirror, reminding herself that, especially now, these things don’t matter. She figures that it will take David quite awhile to secure them a room, given his less-than-assertive nature, so she finishes her drink in one quick sip and looks around the room.

The Tuckurry is the sort of place that likely used to be quite charming and well-kept. The wallpaper is a faded shade of brownish-pink that must have once been burgundy, and the scuffed wooden trim looks to be genuine mahogany. At one time, someone had taken quite a bit of pride in this place and built it with great care towards the décor. Everything from the creaking chairs to the torn upholstery is original to the place, and the rings on the tables from years of neglecting coasters are probably remnants of the bar’s first days. It’s not a terribly historical place, not listed in tour guides of the city or featured in the old photographs hanging in the downtown library. In fact, despite its age, the Tuckurry is not a very wellknown place at all.

It is first and foremost a bar—a singles bar, by habit, and notorious by reputation. It is the sort of place where people usually come for a drink and often end up in a room upstairs with whomever they meet in the bar. At least, those are the rumors she’s heard. What she’s heard consists of conversations among co-workers, often the unmarried ones though occasionally one married with children. Those are the more furtive stories, and those people tend to be the ones sitting in the darker corners of the Tuckurry with their dates for the evening. Everything she knows about this place is based in stories and rumors. She would never have considered herself the type to visit this place, but with the circumstances as they are, she’s here. And she’s here for the most candid of the rumors she’s heard—to meet someone down here, talk for a bit, 21

then move the whole thing upstairs. She’s heard it’s often that easy, given the particular crowd that frequents the place, and she could use a little easy tonight. She’d never been the sordid type before, and after a lifetime of feeling like a let-down to various partners, she wanted just once to feel like she didn’t have to try so hard. No one will know about this night after it is over, and she’ll never see David again. He doesn’t know anything more than her first name, so there is nothing he could do to make her regret this evening. Her only concern is whether or not it will all have been worth it, but that is up to David at this point. She sees him heading back now with a key, so this is it. If it isn’t going to be worth it, at least I’ll figure it out now, she thinks. He stands in front of her, smiling with excitement that he isn’t even trying to conceal. So much for subtlety.

“Ready to go?” he asks.

She picks up her purse and nods. For a moment she worries that he’ll give her his arm to escort her, but he changes his mind and puts his hands in his jacket pockets. Here we go, she thinks.

The stairs are as worn as the rest of the place, the carpet wearing so thin that the wood beneath is almost visible. The staircase is considerably steep, given that the second floor is not that high up and there are only about 9 steps in the whole flight. It is yet another mark of desperation in the Tuckurry, another attempt to appear more impressive than it is. David clutches the railing as if afraid that he’ll trip, staring intently at every step. When they reach the top, he lifts his foot as if expecting another step and stumbles slightly.

He looks at Lorraine and shrugs almost apologetically. She wonders if he knows how uncoordinated and strange he is.

After all, he’s come to the Tuckurry for company, and one could barely spend ten minutes there without realizing that they don’t need to exert too much effort in securing company. So he must be aware of the fact that he’s hardly someone’s 22

first pick. She feels somewhat guilty thinking something so rude about him, in part because he seems like a perfectly nice man, but more because one could likely say the same thing about her. She may have spent the last half hour wishing that she had found someone else to spend the evening with, but at the end of the night she would still be someone who, just like David, found a random person at the Tuckurry. So as much as she would like to consider herself above all of this and certainly better than David, they were exactly the same. It’s a sad thought for her, and certainly doesn’t make this situation feel any better, but after all of her failed relationships and wasted efforts, it feels like the only truth that she can believe in. So she allows herself to ignore David’s falter and stares at the thinning carpets, choosing instead to focus on the fading patterns beneath her feet that surely were once impressively ornate. With all of the dilapidation in this place, she wonders how it all could possibly have been new once. There must have been someone who took pride in this place, who maintained it, dusted it, fixed the broken chairs. While it isn’t the sort of place that most people know about, it does have historical relevancy in the city. At least, that’s what the sign on the wall tells them. “Hotel Wing Opened 1894” is written on a metal plaque in desperate need of polishing. Underneath is the tiny inscription “United States President Grover Cleveland stayed in this room between his first and second terms as president.” Lorraine wonders if this is even remotely true, but David finds it fascinating.

“Cleveland! Lucky that we get his room, isn’t it? Did you know that he was the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms?” Lorraine stifles laughter at his excitement. Apparently he’s a history fan as well as a typewriter enthusiast.

“No,” she answers. “I didn’t know that. This is our room?” She gestures towards the door, room 103. Nothing about it surprises her. The wood looks to be original, the 23

same door that Grover Cleveland allegedly touched—faded, cracked and delicate despite its thickness. There are scuffs at the bottom from years of abuse, which she understands when David turns the key in the lock and the door refuses to move. He tries turning the knob, finally realizing that the hinges have rusted and years of oil have clogged them. He sighs and kicks the bottom of the door, popping it loose and letting them into the room.

The smell is a mix of air freshener, dust and general age—the sort of smell that lives in antique stores and old, rarely-visited castles. In fact, the attempt at a lemon scent coming from a plug-in freshener in the corner seems out of place. The curtains are a thick, almost tapestry fabric in the same paisley print as the wallpaper in the hallway. They started fraying at the edges decades ago and now look like they were intended to have tassels. David fumbles for a light switch, finally realizes that there isn’t one, and switches on a bedside lamp. As the room grows brighter, Lorraine is just thankful that the sheets look clean. A part of her had truly been expecting large, obvious stains, and she is relieved that she doesn’t have to pretend not to notice. Well, she thinks, it could be worse. There could be bugs or lipstick stains on the pillowcases. It really does confuse her, though. Everything about this place screams historical, as if something incredibly important happened here once. From the once-fancy carpeting to the plaque announcing Grover Cleveland, to the disproportionately heavy curtains that seem better suited for a mansion or castle chamber than a squalid hotel. It looks like a place that must have been important, or had tried to look important for a very particular reason. She doesn’t understand how it descended into this state, reduced itself to this purpose. It almost seems ike the disrepair was as intentional as the originally elaborate creation. Nothing could be that magnificent and simply fade away unnoticed. David seems to like history, she thinks. Maybe he knows something.

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“What do you know about this place?” she asks, not sure of what to expect.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just… I don’t understand any of it. No one’s been taking care of it, everything is either falling apart, torn or disgusting, and the only people in here on a regular basis are the bartenders. But look at the curtains. They’re beautiful, or they used to be. And what was that about Cleveland outside?

I just don’t get it. What was this place?” She realizes that this is the most she has said to him all evening, and she feels suddenly bad about that. Here they are with the intention of making use of a hotel room and the understanding that getting to know each other is irrelevant, but she hasn’t even bothered to really talk to him? She’s not even sure what it is about him that makes her think that he knows anything about history, only a passing comment about a former president. Maybe that fact is common knowledge. She has no idea. And maybe she would have an idea if she’d bothered to ask him anything real before. She came to the Tuckurry under the impression that there would be no need for real talk, no demand for compatibility or even much of a fondness for each other. Twenty minutes, one drink and a room. That’s it.

That’s why she’s here. But in this moment, looking around the room in complete confusion and asking this complete stranger if he knows anything about it, she has no idea why that concept seemed appealing to her before. David tries to venture guesses about the original uses of this place— Maybe the bar was a prohibition era site for illegal gambling, which is why the windows downstairs are so long (easy for everyone to escape out of if police raided the place). The hotel could have been added later to make it more believable. Or profitable. As she listens to his theories, which she must admit are fascinating and maybe even plausible, she watches his face grow more and more excited with every new idea. She cuts him off.

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“You like history, don’t you?”

For the first time, he doesn’t appear confused or taken aback by her questions. “I’m a history professor at a university, so I suppose you could say I do.”

She’s surprised by this. Up until this moment, she’d considered him a rather bumbling and sad man. The image of him in a classroom doesn’t quite fit with that. “Professor?

Really? I had no idea.” She feels guilty all over again, this time tinged with disgust in herself. Maybe he isn’t the pathetic one of the two of them.

“For about twenty years now. Mostly American history, some European. I teach a class on secrets of the U.S. presidency. Did you know that Franklin Pierce ran over a person with his carriage?”

She laughs here. It’s the first time either of them has smiled all night. He starts laughing with her. “What’s wrong?

He couldn’t come up with a new law or something? Poor guy,” she says, still laughing. “I’ve never heard much about him. Did he do anything interesting?”

“Well, he’s pretty much the reason we have Kansas and Nebraska,” he tells her. The laughing seems to have relaxed him. She notices that he isn’t stuttering much anymore.

“I said interesting,” she says sarcastically. She finds that she wants to keep him laughing. “Is there anything interesting about Kansas and Nebraska? Aside from Dorothy and a few cornfields.”

He smiles at her. “My great aunt lives out there,” he says. When she starts to apologize, he stop her. “No, I meant that you’re right. There’s really nothing interesting about it.”

He winks at her.

She’s surprised. A wink? A wink from the guy who spills his drink down his shirt and trips up the stairs? A joke from him, no less? She never would have expected this after the evening they’ve had. She’d spent it wondering how long this man could go on about typewriters, why he would waste 26

the effort trying to look important with a drink that he obviously hated, when all this time he actually had a personality.

She’s shocked, certainly, but all of a sudden relieved. Maybe he isn’t as pathetic as she’d thought. Maybe she isn’t, either.

She decides to take it a step further.

“Can I ask you something?” She could have been blunt about it, just ask the question with no introduction and test his reflexes. She decides against it.

“Is it about other presidents with potentially homicidal tendencies?”

Again with the wit. Interesting, she thinks. “No, something more topical.”

A conversation. They’re actually having a conversation, she thinks. Remarkable.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Why are you here?” Of course she’s been wondering it all evening, just as she’s been wondering it of herself. But he actually seems capable of an answer now, and she actually finds herself caring about the answer.

“What do you mean?”

“This place. I mean, it has a connotation. And a reputation. Everyone knows why they come. So why did you?”

When the evening started, she hadn’t expected to have a serious conversation with anyone she would meet tonight at the Tuckurry. She’d expected brevity and anonymity, and had resigned herself to just that. Her dress had been chosen based on comfort and ease of dressing; appearance was last on the list. She’d made herself look presentable without worrying too much about looking pretty. So in this moment, asking an honest question of a man she’d met not even an hour before, in a dusty hotel room used a hundred years ago by a president, she find herself wondering if her hair looks alright, if her dress is attractive, if he would answer her openly and if she would have the nerve to return the honesty.

“Why does anyone come, really?”

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She shakes her head. “No, I really want to know,” she tells him.

He tries again. “Change. Just like everyone else. Seeing if you’re even capable of changing if you wanted to.”

Her agitation is starting to show, but it is an agitation born of consideration rather than anger. She takes off her bracelets and tosses them to the bed. The earrings follow shortly. David smiles and eggs her on.

“What about the rings?”

She pulls off the large one from her right hand and tosses it to the pile, but leaves the small one on her left hand.

“This one means something.” She pauses, touching that ring and spinning it around her finger. “This was made for me.”

“Who made it?” he asks.

“My grandfather. Before he died.” She smiles. “Well, obviously before he died. He couldn’t have made it after he died.” He smiles, too. “So what are we doing up here?” she asks.

He reaches for his collar and tugs at the top button. It comes open and he takes a deep breath.

“Well. We could do what everyone else does when they come up here. We could turn the lights off and put very little care into what we do. It could be only a few minutes if we wanted it to be.” He pauses, and she raises her eyebrows in discontent. “Yea, that’s pretty much how I feel about it,” he says.

“So what are we doing up here?” she asks again.

“I guess we’re deciding that for ourselves,” he answers.

She takes a seat on the edge of the bed and stares at her pile of jewelry. He sits next to her and picks up one of the bracelets.

“Any significance behind this one?” he asks.

She laughs a little. “Not really. I think I got it at a flea market or something. Most of them have either come from 28

flea markets or chain stores in the mall. Those are the ones that break after I wear them only once or twice.”

“Can you glue them back together?”

“By the time they break, I don’t really feel the need to fix them.” She smiles at this and shrugs.

The truth, as much as there can be truth in a place like the Tuckurry, is that they sleep. And in the morning they go their separate ways, grateful for the company.

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30

Robert O’Clair Prize for Poetry

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32

CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST Emma Gaedeke A man is selling Christmas trees at Astor place, and I can’t help but lose myself in the honesty that early mornings elicit, with the help of a little caffeine, and the monotony of a little routine.

I watch scattered flurries float, fixed in the grey sky, like memories unable to fall.

It’s in these mornings of sad understanding where I see how my time has become defined by when we still had hope and when we had given up, and that everything in between that still exists in perfectly languid, colorful stasis.

How could it be Christmas, if I never left August?

How, if there’s still a part of me dancing in the heat of hope, and swaying to the song of dying crickets?

33

THE VIRUS Emma Gaedeke The virus, your reason found your bones with muscle and marrow to fill ‘It is time,’ the virus said.

Destroying the cells and organelles, that recognized mine to be an utterly perfect match against the batch of others that once skimmed the surface of love’s cytoplasm.

Because nature knows that nurture is a quiet and reluctant searcher And that cures come as rarely as the hope that lies just barely against your skin.

The virus said, ‘Well it depends’ And love knows no sacrifice, And so the virus swept through you and swallowed you whole.

34

GALWAY BAY IN DECEMBER Emma Gaedeke A half mile out from town, I find myself wandering the outskirts of Galway bay aimlessly.

The orange sky is burning away like a wick in the Sunday afternoon dusk, and I turn back on my course, away from the sea, and into the vibrant city lights.

Northward from County Sligo, There is a storm rolling in, of that I am sure Yet there is no other place I would rather be, than here at the edge of Galway Bay in December, amidst the calls of seagulls, and in the company of distant brogues that echo over still water like skipped stones.

I am alone here, waiting for what I am not sure: For an ultimate conclusion, for oncoming darkness, or for a sudden movement in the group of swans that have been wading in the water all day I wonder when they know their time has come; like me, under forces of great unexplainable magnetism?

Or always here awaiting those futuristic reminders, those instinctual cues that indicate that it is time for them too, to leap out of the Corrib, 35

over the ocean bay, and disappear into the clouds.

36

BSU Naked Poetry Competition Winners

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38

LOVE LETTER Monique Mitchell You buried rainbows in your backyard because you didn’t believe in promises anymore.

Dead bolted your heart and vowed that no one would ever hurt you again.

And as a sit here trying to convince you of how beautiful you are, I have a feeling you already know.

Cause people come from all over just to get a taste of your soul.

I mean, I bought a round-trip ticket to your heart and back just to tell my friends how it lit up at night time.

Square So take those dead bolts off Let your heart house me for a while.

And when the clock strikes 12 we won’t wake up from this dream Cause me and you never sleep anyway My granny called me crazy for leaving my angel for someone like you.

I almost believed her I mean, those wings have always protected me.

Those wings were all I’ve known, were always home.

They say a girl like me shouldn’t deal with your type.

They say you’re shallow.

Say you’re empty.

I say you’ve got culture.

Let’s dance the Renaissance back in your life.

I’ll sing the rainbows back in your sky.

Just promise me spring time.

Cause lately, you’ve turned the bit of a cold shoulder.

39

Show me that fire you once had.

And when the clock strikes 12 we won’t wake up from this dream Cause me and you never sleep anyway Took the S-train to catch the subway to your soul.

Looking at the remnants of everyone who has riden you and left.

I wonder Did they see how beautiful you are?

Maybe they were too caught up in themselves to notice, but I see you.

These graffiti’d walls of your heart are strangely beautiful.

You are the Strange Fruit Billie sung about.

An apple, hung from a tree of vanity but you still survive and everyone wants a bite of you.

And when the clock strikes 12 we won’t wake up from this dream Cause me and you never sleep anyway Listen, I can’t promise that I will never leave like the others.

But I bought a shirt just to tell the world I love you.

How’s that for dedication.

And you know what? To me, You are hip-hop.

Sweeter than the Sugarhill Gang, and Iller than Nas’ first album.

Yeah, it’s safe to say I’ve fallen.

I’m all in I just wish I was the first to write you a song.

But I’m not the only one you’ve made feel brand new, your big lights have others inspired too.

Would have been nice if you were only mine, But lately, everyone’s got an Empire State of Mind.

40

I can see you coming back to life.

Your broken heart break dancing to the beat of it’s old song, but you’re a new you, New York.

And when the clock strikes 1–––2 we won’t wake up from this dream Cause me and you?

We never sleep anyway Love, your LA girl

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ALEX Naajidah Aakifah Correll Dear, Alex If your name is in this poem Chances are.... you have fucked me over like the rest of them.

Since the last ignored moon, Black sky, pre-winter breeze, eggshell carpet, tiptoe invite, beside butchery I’ve learned that planes and temples don’t coexist they collide.

Not even if you are more than enough woman.

Enough of enough to know how to undress, Your insecurities before love making Double the sass and satisfaction Regardless you crumble At entry From the ribcage Down, You 9/11 Collapse into yourself Like a knee holding catastrophe That is rocking.

Rocking backwards & forwards Like pray backwards & forwards like tears Back 42

Wards And ForWards And Back Wards And ForWards like a lover’s Rhythm Backwards and forwards In a sandbox of your own skin… that resembles a deflating globe…

I am drowning in the agendas you made for me.

If I live this life 100 more times, 98 more times, I’d shatter more chaotically “The bigger the downfall the better the build,” I always believed.

I’d overlap my body twice like pray head kissing my knees and palms, raised heavenward as I disintegrate Into the reincarnation 43

of a better woman.

Alex, you … are a platypus swimming in my torso Ejaculating venom into my spine.

What if my back bends Like submission and arrival, Will you love me?

If I let you keep my phalanx bone as a keepsake Of this slaughter would you remember me?

If I s p r e a d…

My… Wings…

Like horizon and white flags, Until the center of my back Splits Like my parents Or Alabama clouds in a lightning storm Leaving a exit, would you please be so kind As to take your dagger on the way out…

Diving into bush like bedspread In a makeshift Eden but I am no Eve and your no Adam.

Alex, If your name is in this poem…

I have understood, I am the miracle, that I am and You are no magic…

Just magician who likes to perform 44

With the lights off Yes‌Hold my hand in the nightfall I need someone who can love me less Like a separating act And more like water You are just whispers Of past fire hydrant relationships trickle sized commitment, sliding down cracked pavement and I am on, fire.

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FUCKING ROMANCE Travis Madison I Romance is dead every body just wants to Fuck Fuck! and Fuck! and suck no trust and FUCK! some more.

So go ahead and shoot , make sure you miss my heart it’s is virgin.

Do not load sensitive bullshit on to it for its a simple organ and not made for FUCKING. fuck and suck up all your sorries shove them where the sun don’t shine.

I promise it’s a perfect fit small and flaccid like the lips put on yesterday after licking them in frigid days the wait was not worth the taste of putrid flesh and fluid lining the walls of my mouth throat and belly FUCK! FUCK! and FUCK! For the endless screams that wouldn’t cease in midnights unawake You for all the vacancy me you could never see edging 46

closing to oblivion, staring over the side of your body taking in every scene, etching your lines in to absolute previously forbidden territory.

Cause I was just as twisted so I matched my body Until everything broke Now were to distorted to pick up and put back.

II So fuck my unabashed way of expressing my emotion. I overload and pop waves heavier than ocean but you loaded the bullets bit so hard you pulled the trigger.

I tried to dodge but got infected interior no longer protected threw out all the tests and feel a steady beating.

So I beat back left bruises mine were mental moved like snakes, yours like roots deeply imbedding skin my soil stirred and defiled sucked dry.

Like african desserts.

The white man came again and again and again and again and again stripped me down whooped my ass then put me on 47

display.

I belted battle cries and rose souls like begonias under Carolina gold but my flowers weren’t pretty enough so they went un-kept withered before the first blow of jacks cold drawn breathe.

I swelled for months and finally rose again stems like stone bones diamonds ruffed in the tumble of this everlastingbullsit I’m forever lasting bullshit swallowing my holy tongue Holy shit I’m tired of FUCKING! swallowing.

III So why don’t we get a room somewhere off a dark highway roll around and lace our bodies with another’s love. juice of eros filler up maybe you’ll catch a hint learn how hold a heart without squeezing so hard its bursts and squirts everywhere.

All over my face sits shame you put it there yours I licked clean stripping my tongue of subtle sensitivity 48

the kind a fuck like you could never muster too afraid to be a man or not man or something in-between hiding your musk’s smelly secrecy synonymous with sissy no matter how hard you try I will still smell it.

So fuck your closet Heres’ your key put it in the tiny hole full of shit im tired of smelling, bellowing like cows a funk louder than the moaning you make as we fucked love lost down the dark pipe I pulled out cause I could not hide mine anymore.

IV I climbed your mountains seeking lover of eros cut my flesh too deep to heal bled for days you stayed still steal heart like iron rusted in N.Y weather trafficking my head 49

running rampant ruining my roads Creating cracks invading cracks leaving holes unfilled violated, trespassing, its just asking as you exited unexplained. a vacant pain bared within the body of a first timer.

You’d never know it was my first time first time we kissed, wasn’t’ sure, the second time you persuaded after the third I had no choice gears moved and fuck doors locked socks, and cocks rocked out. My untouchable innocence stripped to bare the bindings of our bodies in unholy matrimony. I laid out you did what you wanted what you thought you had its now gone, too soon a silent reminder of what went wrong

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SEPTEMBER Amanda Zaloga The few details of my childhood dream wedding still linger: a late September date, when the earth is still warm from summer’s gaze and the air is cool from winter’s outstretched arms, when the leaves who’ve led a lifetime of modest rustling decide not to fade but blush during these last moments, when the sun’s honey hue outlines each brightly colored leaf as a tribute to the collective flash of life.

I want to hold their afterglow on my skin until I am ready to bare the essence of my life in my eyes and on my fingertips .

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Sunset of Realization Antonia Maguire

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A NIGHT AT THE DINER Janelle Little

He stared nervously at her fading red hair and thought of how much better it looked blonde, her natural color. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen it that shade, a pale gold with pearly streaks, except in the tiny sprouts attempting to escape at her roots, suffocated by the transient rainbow of chemical-induced camouflage. Steadily, he gazed at the multitude of piercings adorning her pristine, porcelain skin. The only thing she had left unchanged about her appearance was her eyes, but how could she mask them - a penetrating, icy Atlantic blue - the first feature everyone noticed, instantly remarking on their beauty.

She retracted her gaze and calmly thumbed the handle of her coffee mug, clinking the side of her vintage turquoise and sterling silver ring on a chip near the bottom. Sparse mauve remnants from her lip-glossed sip, embraced the edge of the mug with easy intimacy, existing in perfect equilibrium with the porcelain veneer of this late-night trademark, witness to every twenty-four-hour-diner conversation. “I hope the food is better than the service,” he said with a nervous chuckle, instantly regretting his inability to say something more meaningful. Her only response was a slow head nod in agreement, coolly displaying her desire to end the banality of his anxious chatter, casting her glance towards the kitchen, as if her placid stare alone could summon their inattentive waitress.

As his daughter, he believed he knew her intimately, but in their current state, he could only guess at what was going on in her mind. Their communication had faltered in the past few years; he couldn’t remember exactly how many, but knew it had declined steadily since the beginning of high school.

Over her right shoulder, he saw the exasperated waitress approaching them, thick ringlets of frazzled blonde hair 53

covering her right eye, as she hastily slid their food in front of them, before quickly vanishing into the kitchen. Without the coffee refill he desperately craved to occupy his lips, he sought refuge in the indiscernible lumps of food covering his plate. A steaming pile of mashed potatoes with a heaping pat of butter, and thick chunks of stringy meat with congealed gravy, a failed attempt at pot roast that had claimed to be “better than your mother’s.” His stomach lurched at the prospect of eating this food, or had it been feeling uneasy since he slid into the torn, red vinyl booth?

He returned his gaze to his daughter, whose face was slightly obscured by the steam rising from her chicken noodle soup. Transfixed by the rising smoke, he thought he saw her lips moving behind this hazy veil, when his reverie was shattered by the reverberating clink of her spoon hitting the plate the bowl was resting upon, a sharp sound which seemed to echo in the far caverns of his body. “Dad,” she paused, “I’m moving out,” and the sound of the spoon kept ringing in his ears, so that her words got tangled up in its metallic hum.

She wasn’t even eighteen, he thought, and yet, she was making a decision with such finality. In earlier years, he never missed a school function, and he always chauffeured her and a gaggle of giggling friends to the mall and the movies. Amidst all of these good times, he must have done something wrong. The recollections of his treachery spun though his mind like the whirling images on a casino slot machine until it locked on the jackpot, the memory he most clearly associated with the fissure that had developed between them.

It was Christmas morning, she was ten. The annual Christmas Eve party he and his wife hosted had raged the night before, and he had found himself on the maroon leather sofa the next morning, his head still spinning with Bourbon, and his black wool sweater nearly suffocating him.

He remembered seeing the Christmas tree twinkling dimly behind his blurry vision, sheltering immaculately-wrapped 54

presents waiting patiently for the eager hands of his daughter. At the time, he and his wife had been arguing incessantly and divorce loomed over their crumbling marriage. He had always enjoyed a social drink or two, but a habit consumed his life during those years of deep unhappiness.

He carried his lead body to the kitchen, grabbing what was left of the Bourbon, before locking himself in the bathroom with the bottle and a small crystal glass. He sat backwards on the toilet seat to make catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror impossible, and drank himself into early morning oblivion. By the time his wife had come down the stairs in her faded lilac bathrobe, he was already planning an escape. He slammed the backdoor to her barrage of threats, driving recklessly into the grey fog to disappear with all the other pathetic drunks who get plastered on Christmas morning.

In a damp, cavernous, nearly-deserted bar, he thought about his angelic child, slowly brushing the hair of her new doll, the plastic pink comb cradled in her small hand, as she guided it serenely through the golden, sparkling strands. It appeared to him amidst the innocent beauty of this scene, that he had destroyed something irrevocably. He could never forgive himself, but he hoped she had forgiven him. Maybe she didn’t even know; he had never questioned his wife about the story she concocted to explain his absence. He had completed a twelve-step program, rectified his marriage, and the computer business he had struggled to maintain increased its successes annually; hadn’t he redeemed himself in her eyes?

It was clear from her gaze, those absent eyes that looked beyond him, that this was a vagrant wish, orphaned by his mistakes.

“I’m moving in with James.” James, a scruffy-bearded, wrinkly-shirted loser, sheltering his precious daughter – the thought alone made him shudder with disgust and fear that he was losing her forever to the cold, lifeless embrace of hun55

gry boys who only wanted to devour her.

Another memory flashed through his mind. He saw her in the Christmas pageant, an earlier Christmas, dressed as the star leading the way for the Three Wisemen. The pale yellow tips he helped to cut and sew were tilting slightly to the left, an imperfection he distinctly recalled chastising himself for creating. The intense glare from the stage lights was glinting off her golden hair, casting a halo around her pointed crown. She sang high-pitched and off-key, twirling around the stage, oblivious to the unforgettable beauty now preserved in his memory. He suddenly felt overwhelmed by a desire to apologize for the crooked tips of her crown.

Her pronounced sigh brought him back to the diner, to the torn, red vinyl booth, to the bad food, to his daughter’s decision. He felt as though everything inside of him was unraveling, and he was clumsily attempting to grasp the frayed ends of distant memories. He wanted to clutch his daughter’s hand, receding through a dizzying kaleidoscope of time.

“John?” He did not recognize this as his name when pronounced by lips that had always called him “Dad.” “You are not even listening. Why do I bother? It’s not like you have been paying attention for the last four years.”

He wanted to tell her this wasn’t true, he had always paid attention. He could recall every detail; he just didn’t know how to cross the threshold separating the past from the present, how to move forward by forgiving himself. He wanted her to know this, but the words were lost in their journey to his lips.

She grabbed the brown, leather purse, resting lifelessly by her side, slid out of the booth, and walked calmly toward the exit, leaving behind their plates of food, cold and untouched.

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MY FATHER’S EYES Johanna Grea This is my father across the table, the same white hair, creased smile, and bad ankles.

But he is a child in a room of grown-ups, stating his presence with a smile, a nod, an occasional giggle.

And later, between bites of melon and prosciutto, he asks me: ‘So who’s your father again?’ with eyes so earnest, so soft, they almost seem to grin.

At his side, my mother folds and refolds the napkin on her lap, but I know she listens.

“You’re my dad. Don’t you recognize me?”

I catch the hesitation in his eyes, his head cocked to the side, and for an instant I could swear he remembers.

But then he is gone, smiling like a baby, 57

his eyes drifting back to the veranda, passively wandering to my mother’s pink and white hortensias.

- R.I.P. Jacques GREA, February 2011

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EVERY NIGHT Judiann Romanello Every night as I lie in bed, I could hear her heavy footsteps on the wooden floor boards retreating to the attic.

In the attic she paints.

How any warm blooded human being could stay up there for more than a few minutes is a mystery to me.

Even the mice find their way down stairs to escape the chill.

In that sad excuse of a studio she works for hours at a time.

Every morning she hands me my orange juice with a shaky hand wearing the same clothes from the day before.

Once she told me with each stroke of her boar bristle brush the voices fade from her mind.

Sometimes when a face appears in the blobs of paint, I hear her scream.

This usually causes her to drop her tools and I awake to the sound of her painful shriek.

I imagine her grasping her wrist with her steady hand and somehow returning back to where she was, only to become lost in her work again.

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I can picture the sweat dripping down her face causing the paint to run and the colors to bleed.

Biting her lip to a blister she continues to paint.

I often wonder why her inner arms are black and blue And why she leaves thick rubber bands on the dusty floor I found syringes in the sink next to my cereal bowl.

I don’t think my mom’s a diabetic.

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Untitled Antonia Joseph

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ACTS OF REPARATION Lindsey Greene

He nearly prayed yesterday. In fact, he came dangerously close. And for someone who hadn’t been to church since his parents stopped forcing him, who had never truly prayed—and meant anything by it—it was a strange moment. He didn’t quite understand the pull he felt towards the chapel doors, but he followed it through them. He stalled for a moment behind the last pew and stared up at the figure of a Jesus he’d never understood. How could something so grotesque, so hopeless, be inspiring? It had never been a comfort to him. He considered for a moment ignoring the crucifix, bowing his head and praying without the looming presence of death and torture. But no, he realized, that was an inseparable point of this place. Regret, repentance, guilt… he didn’t want to feel guilty anymore, and a place so centered on that very feeling couldn’t possibly rid him of it. Weakness, he thought. That’s what drew him into this place. He was weak enough to think that he could bring his mistakes to someone else to fix. Someone like Jesus? Someone hanging before him in pain and perfect disappointment and despair? Or God. Yes, he thought, could God do anything for me now? When God is supposed to be this almighty, this all knowing…What is he, really? A force? A person? Designed to fix every mistake and unhappiness that walks through those doors. No, he thought, there’s no fixing to be done here. None of these saints with their outstretched arms can actually hug me. And Jesus is just up there dying. Permanently, eternally dying. How could something immortalized in such a state of hopelessness fix me?

It’s quiet in here, he thought. I could think in here.

But not about anything holy. Nothing of importance. He sighed, and just for a moment he thought he heard it resonate through the pews. The room was lit only by three distant chandeliers, designed to look like candles, though a 62

bright halogen bulb was lit in each one. There were glaring red “EXIT” signs over each door, and the confessionals were locked. Probably used for storage now, he thought. What a waste. But then, he wouldn’t have used them anyway. It just would have been nice to have the option. But if there was a priest in there to confess to, what would he say? “Bless me father, for I have sinned?” Not really all that fitting, since he wasn’t seeking blessings. No, it would be best to just start talking.

“I loved her, father.” Here “father” may have felt unnatural, but he’d probably overlook it. “That’s all I ever did.”

He wouldn’t say her name, either on the off-chance that the priest had known her, or because the memory was too painful. He blinked, and for a moment he saw her there, her colorless skin, her pleading eyes… “I could never hurt her, father. I know she was in pain, but I just couldn’t do it. Hell, who actually could?” He might excuse himself for language, but he’d continue on. “When she first got sick, it didn’t feel real. It was simple things, really. In the middle of dinner she’d have trouble swallowing, but I just thought she’d taken too large of a bite. She was only 55 when it started, how could I know what it was?” He would blink again, seeing another flash of her green, sunken eyes. “I never thought I would have to take care of my mother so soon. They diagnosed the Amyo… Amyotropic… God, I still can’t even pronounce it!

And at first she thought it was funny! She was a huge Yankees fan and thought she had some bond with Lou Gehrig. But she knew all along what would happen, and from the beginning she told me that she didn’t want to live with it. She told me flat out that when it got too bad, she wanted me to fix it.”

He would have felt the tears welling up much earlier, but they would fall freely now. No one could see him, so he’d let them run down his face. “Father, I swear, I hated seeing her like that. Every time she tried to take a sip of water and choked, when she tripped over words, when she fell, it was just too 63

hard. And she shrank to nothing, father.” He would let his head fall into his hands. “But I couldn’t do it. She could barely speak anymore, and I saw the pleading in her eyes. But I just couldn’t do it. How could I help my own mother die?” He wouldn’t be able to tell if he wanted an answer of not, but in asking the question he would know the answer. “It’s what she wanted. And I let her waste away there, tortured.” He would see her eyes again, next to the hanging Jesus, pleading to be set free. “I’m sorry, mom.” He would try to stop the tears, but fail. “I’m sorry.”

Rain started to fall outside, and it pattered against the stained glass. He blinked and looked away from the confessionals. No, he thought, and took a step back from the pews.

There’s nothing for me here. He turned and walked out of the chapel, pausing for a moment at the wooden doors, and pushed them as hard as he could. They were already rainspattered on the outside.

64

Salt of the Earth Janelle Little

65

THE BALANCE Erin McCarthy I have this image of you in my mind— standing one leg up on a boulder with a rake in hand, a smudgy white baseball cap darkened with sweat, but poised like an army general, so in command of your world.

You challenged me to races and I squealed in terror when you closed the gap between us every time, my legs clenching like fists in preparation for the happy tackle.

One time you chased me to the centipedey sidewalk and I stopped inches short of a little hollow in the sod filled with newborn rabbits, piled on top of each other like a jar of jellybeans.

I asked you if I could keep one or all, and you gently explained to me the balance of nature and asked me how my mother would feel if somebody took me away.

I understood this then and vowed to check on the balance every day after school.

Later I would proudly prance to the front yard to do my job but when I arrive there are no rabbits, save for one little rigid lump of fur near 66

the Florida cherry bush. My heart drains and I run inside to crumble in your arms, where you hold me in your favorite leather recliner in the room for the adults until I can breathe again.

I hadn’t thought about my image of you in a while, until today when you rose from the loveseat by the fireplace and walked with the help of an old rake with the teeth removed to the garage with me, to instruct me on how to do a job that used to be yours. You limped along beside me and I couldn’t help but think that you looked like an army general, so in command of your world.

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END OF THE NIGHT Tiffany L. Ellington Tears of tequila and rum dampen my face as I blurt “youur alls I have.”

Lying on the cold artistically cut green grass Under the darkness of night.

I force open the Drumstick ice cream cone, We walked four blocks to get, at three in the morning.

Too tired to walk back— I lay in mid-sentence.

My words piggyback on top of each other, While trying to translate my thoughts.

Vodka chauffeur’s my voice, And whiskey sits on my heart.

She lies there, Klondike bar in hand, Eyes focused on the stars listening.

I stop speaking and she gives a simple nod, She picks up my wrapper, Offers a hand, And helps me up.

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Untitled Antonia Joseph

69

A NEW Ashley Dandridge The need for drama of tomorrow’s yesterday.

May it fuel our inner us, Ignite the very fire of pride that simmers within The peaceful, ever so jubilant rage.

May it bring a benevolent spark of life.

Then with humble acceptance Let it scorch our vibrant spirit to ashes, And create anew.

For my me, and your you

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BLUE ROSE Stephen Kostes I am a contradiction An irony unto myself A unique equation That hides in itself I am a child of history A student of war For me the siren calls of cannons And the staccato barks of gunfire Are as enticing as gourmet meal But in this sea of violence and time There exists a single point of stability The one piece that is unmoved by time’s relentless march A single Blue Rose Whose colors change as life shifts A fragile delicate point of beauty That thrives in the sea of violence that is me But violence does not love peace Roses do not exist with guns And yet they do within me They are opposites Balancing each other So I shall continue to study war And revel in the blood of history But the rose remains A single immovable point of peace That is my contradiction My self-professed irony A lover of war Who relies on a fragile peace

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AS THE CHERRY BLOSSOM PETALS FLUTTER Tiffany Ferentini

“I think we are all going to forget about this place someday.”

The orchestra of sounds coming from outside glazes over her voice. The school bell is ringing for the last time, at least to our ears, louder and more melancholy than ever before. Girls with high-pitched voices squeal and giggle, sounding like old ladies as they recount memories of the past four years. Choruses of cameras are being clicked. Sobs and tears make their way through the cracks. The rushing wind sweeps across the sky, sending an ocean of cherry blossom petals with it.

We are sitting in our old art classroom, propped up on our old table, our feet up against what used to be our seats.

I lean over ever so slightly, pretending to look at my feet but in actuality I am looking at her. Nothing has changed – her espresso colored hair is still kept in the same style, bangs laid across her forehead, the rest falling just past her ears. With her blouse un-tucked, dripping past her grey, crookedly buttoned blazer, her tie loose as always, and the various assortments of small buttons aligning her skirt like a Purple Heart, she still has that rebel look to her. When placed together her fingers form a rainbow, each nail painted a different color.

Her hand is only a few inches away from mine. Resisting the urge to place mine atop hers, I tighten my grip on the edge of the table.

“What do you mean?”

“Like after a year, or five years, or maybe even ten years, I wonder how we’re going to look at this place,” she explains. Yuko gets like this every now and then. She may have average grades, but she has her moments where she gets all worldly and philosophical. Out of all my classmates, I find 72

myself having the deepest of conversations with her.

I let out a little chuckle, unable to stop my lips from curling up into a smile. “Hmm… I have no idea.”

“I wonder if we’ll remember everything in the same way we do now.” She continues on, staring out the window and concentrating on the cherry blossom tree that is crying pink petals. “Like exact details of stuff. We might remember at first, but it’ll probably turn into ‘Oh, that was so sad!’, or maybe even “Mmm… I guess that was kind of sad’.”

I turn my head towards her so fast I give myself whip lash. “I won’t forget. Ever.”

I’ll remember everything, everyone. Especially you. But I keep that last part to myself and let it dangle on the edge of my tongue, pressing it up against my teeth so it won’t move.

Disregarding the seriousness of my statement Yuko just tilts her head back and laughs.

“There’s no way we can remember everything.” She reiterates, so sure of herself. “I mean, take that cherry blossom petal.” She points to the tree that we have both been staring at. Out of the thousands of tiny petals one stands alone, apart from the rest. As its brothers and sisters are harshly ripped off the tree and flutter down to the ground in the wind’s embrace, that one petal hangs on to its branch for dear life. “It’s trying so hard to stay on the branch,” Yuko continues. “But eventually it’s going to fall off.”

Unable to think of a retort I bite my lower lip and allow the blood and a gust of wind to fill in the silence between us. Even if I could think of something to say Yuko would just spit out another metaphor and shoot me down. When she formed an opinion about something she stuck to it, and it would be easier to go to hell and back than to change her mind.

The sound of girls socializing outside grows louder. I pick out a few “good-byes” floating amongst the sea of conversations, giggles, and footsteps hitting against the payment.

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“Oh no…” Yuko’s voice drops as she slides off the table and glides towards the windowsill. The air where she was sitting immediately grows cold. I follow suit and join her.

“They’re leaving already? It’s too early.” She continues, her voice sounding full of remorse. As we watch the hordes of girls who used to be our classmates leave in bunches of twos and threes and fives, she takes a deep breath in and sighs.

“I wish we could stay like this forever.” I say, turning my head and looking at Yuko.

What in reality only lasts a few seconds seems to last a lifetime for me. She just looks at me for a moment, blinking twice, trying to comprehend the meaning of my words.

Her chocolate brown eyes grow big with curiosity and she tilts her head slightly, which makes her look awfully like a confused rabbit. She opens her mouth as if she is going to say something, but then closes it again. I can’t read her expression and I hate it. God knows what she is thinking - my heart breaks trying to figure it out. It doesn’t want to know the thoughts swirling through her mind, the words dripping towards the edge of her tongue.

I break my gaze away from her and look at my lap, avoiding confrontation. I pretend to be very interested in buttoning and unbuttoning my blazer, gluing my eyes to my fingers weaving in and out of the polyester fabric.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. I scold myself. I never should have said anything.

Yuko lightens up the mood with a little chuckle, casting the entire awkward affair away. Once again she doesn’t sense just how serious I am being.

“So, shall we start saying goodbye now?”

My heart skips a beat. “To who?”

Another chuckle. “To the school.”

“Oh…” I try to mask my relief. “It’s all right,” I say, continuing to unbutton and re-button my blazer in an attempt to avoid eye contact with her. “I’m going to stay here 74

for a little while longer.”

“Oh, ok. I’ll see you a little later then.” She gives me a small wave before heading out.

The moment she is out the door and out of my sight my stomach unties itself from the knots it had been in and my heart, high up in my throat, sinks down back to its proper place in my chest. I exhale and avert my eyes back towards the window. I prop myself on the windowsill and lean against the cool glass.

Another strong wind blows and sends more cherry blossom petals off the tree’s branches. As they flood the front path leading to the gates of the school so do my memories of Yuko.

No matter how certain Yuko is about her theory that we are eventually going to forget everything about high school, I know I can never forget the day I met her. It was our sophomore year and I had just transferred to Youryuu Female Academy High School. Brisk November air ripped through my pea coat and jumped over my scarf, chilling me to the bone as I waited for the train. I can’t remember if it was because the ground was icy, I was standing too close to the edge of the platform, or if subconsciously I was curious to know what would really happen if I slipped and fell on the tracks (Perhaps it was a combination of the three.). Either way, some unforeseen circumstance caused me to lose my balance and slip off the platform and onto the train tracks.

I cut my knee and felt the warm blood trickle down my leg.

The ground beneath me began to tremble as the train approached my way. I looked up – the platform was much too high for my five foot one body to reach, and even if I could there was no way I could have climbed up the flat, smooth edge without any further support.

This is it, I told myself as my body began to shake with the train tracks. There was nothing I could do. Just as I 75

was about to accept the fact that in seconds I was going to be no longer a girl but a fly about to get squashed by a speeding train, I heard her voice.

“Hey, grab my hand!”

I looked up and saw an extended hand belonging to a girl with multicolored fingernails, chocolate brown eyes, and short hair brushed across her forehead. I was suddenly not so keen on the fact that I was moments away from getting hit by a train. I took her hand and was pulled up to safety. The train zipped past us and the breeze it sent blew under my skirt and danced across the skin of my thighs, reminding me I was alive.

“Oh my God, are you all right?!” My savior asked, “Oh shit, your leg is bleeding…”

As she was about to reach into her bag I held up my hand and reached into my own. “It’s ok, I got it.” I assured her, pulling out a pack of tissues and some tape. I used a few tissues to clean the blood off my leg and then used a clean one and some tape to make a temporary bandage. As I did so I explained how my slipping off the platform was a complete accident.

“Good thing I decided to take the train home today,” she said with a smile, showing her slightly misaligned teeth.

“Or else you would have been toast.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” I said, smiling a little myself.

“Thank you… um…”

The girl then extended her hand towards me for the second time that day. It was then I got a good look at her and noticed we were wearing the same school uniform.

“Yuko.”

Yuko. I repeated her name in my head and liked how it sounded, how it felt. I placed my hand in hers and we shook hands.

“I’m Atsuko.”

It wasn’t until the next day that I realized that we were 76

in the same homeroom and art class.

I open my eyes and peel myself off the warm window, the side of my face dripping with sweat. Jumping off the windowsill I decide to walk around my old classroom for one last time. I slide my hand across the windowsill which also doubles as a bookcase. Its shelves are aligned with sketchbooks containing oil pastels, still life drawings, watercolors, and fashion designs. In an all girls’ school it was only natural that we were taught to become proper young ladies, and becoming familiar with almost every single art form was no exception.

I come across my old sketchbook and pull on a piece of paper that is sticking out of it. It’s a drawing I did of Yuko second semester of our junior year – our assignment was to pair up and sketch our partner. Naturally, Yuko and I chose each other. And naturally, being teenage girls who were just taking the class not because of a love for art, but rather to fulfill our four year art requirement, we could have cared less about the assignment. I drew Yuko like some girly, shoujo anime character with super big eyes; out of spite she decided to recreate me in a style similar to that of Picasso. When she turned her drawing around to show me she hid behind her easel and stuck her tongue out at me. Recalling the ordeal brings a smile to my face as I slide the drawing back into its rightful spot in my sketchbook.

I turn away from the wall of sketchbooks and study the rest of the room. Wooden easels are lined up against the opposite wall and in the back of the classroom as if they were British guards. A clothesline zigzags across the ceiling and from it dangles some of the best students’ artwork.

Drops and lines of paint, marker marks, and bits of dried clay decorate the sides and edges of the tables like confetti.

Even though I have come into this room for an hour every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the past three years, it 77

is only now I just noticed how many plaster models and full body sculptures there are in this room.

The white busts of dead people adorn the art tables like tiny piles of snow. Some busts even have the honor of being displayed on their own pedestals. I walk in between and around the tables and stands, as if I were leading myself through a maze, carefully trying not to accidently hit or tap against the models in fear of breaking them. Before I realize it I am standing in front of a particular bust. I can’t recall if the person depicted in the sculpture was famous during his lifetime, let alone his name, but even so this particular bust stands apart from the rest. As I run my fingers down the model’s carefully crafted wavy hair, the sounds of girls cheering and laughing echo through my ears.

“Is she really going to do it?”

“I think she is!”

“C’mon Yuko, go for it!”

“Yuko! Yuko! Yuko!”

The childish, high school uproar occurred when our teacher had stepped out of the room for a minute. My classmates – being the bored girls they were – had half-dared, half-volunteered Yuko to kiss the lips of the chalky, male European bust perched in the center of the room. Yuko, being the daredevil that she was, could never resist a challenge and eagerly accepted.

All eyes were on her as she stood a few feet away from the pedestal. Her cheeks turned a rosy pink color as she giggled and placed her fingers over her lips, pretending to be a nervous schoolgirl moments away from receiving her first kiss. She glanced back at her audience one last time before leaning forwards and puckering her lips, finally delivering a kiss upon the bust. The cheers erupted like wildfire, even louder than before.

When class was dismissed and the other girls floated 78

out of the room, I couldn’t help but ask.

“What did it feel like?”

“Not too bad,” she joked, touching her lips. “But it tasted like chalk, and his lips were cold. “

I take a step back in order to see what Yuko saw that day. It was just an art bust of some man, probably from the Renaissance or something, with colorless almond shaped eyes, a long nose, and flowing hair that went past his ears.

Leaning forward slowly I close my eyes and place my lips against the bust’s. His lips indeed taste like chalk, but I can feel a slight hint of warmth.

My legs have a mind of their own. As I exit the building they immediately lead me to the cherry blossom tree that Yuko and I were so philosophically observing from the art room. Another swarm of petals is sent tumbling down to the ground thanks to the June wind.

Perhaps Yuko is right. Perhaps we are, little by little, going to forget everything that happened during our teenage years at Youryuu Female Academy High School. I tilt my head back and gaze up at the lone petal. It looks like it is going to stay strong and never waver, but one final gust of wind blows and the pale petal succumbs to its might and accepts its fate. It gently flutters downward and lands in my palm. I can’t help but look at it lovingly and smile, knowing that it chose my hand as its final resting place. Placing my thumb over the petal so it doesn’t get swept away, I hold it with both hands and caress it close to my chest, as if it were a child.

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Three Girls Janelle Little

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SOMETHING ABOUT THE RULEBOOK Erin McCarthy

I bet you’re probably wondering why my hand is in this cast. Well, it’s a pretty good story, I guess, but one you got to do justice, you know? I can’t just tell you I punched some kid into next Tuesday, without giving you the background, ‘cause then I’d look violent and I never considered myself a violent sort of guy. I’m really quite a gentle guy, normally.

See, last week was a real big week in Jacksonville, for me anyway. The thing you should probably know about me is that I’m a bit of a genius when it comes down to it. So last week, there was this math competition, statewide. Now usually I don’t like to make any sort of show of myself. I like things quiet. But sometimes when somebody flatters you a little, you forget about being quiet and not making a show of yourself. I got myself into the contest in the first place because my Calculus teacher, Mr. Varez, told me I had a real logical streak and that he’d never seen someone solve a tangential proof as quick as I could. I don’t know if I’m as good as he says, but like I told you, I felt very proud of hearing those nice things about me. Also, I like to do math a lot. I like it because you can work at something, from start to finish, and get an answer, just from thinking things through.

My life isn’t like that. Sometimes I pretend to make formulas out of the people in this town, making them As and Bs and Xs, and figure out why things are the way they are, try to get an answer ‘bout them. It don’t ever work, though. Too many variables.

But in math, you can always figure things out. If you do something wrong in an equation, you just got to go back, find the place where you got off track, and fix it. Simple as that. I think that’s why I like math so much. Anyways, Mr. Varez entered me into this statewide math competition for high school seniors in Tallahassee, like I told you, and I said 81

okay because I didn’t think I had much else to do. So last Saturday, my mom and my dad and my sister Molly who’s in the ninth grade, we all got very dressed up and drove up to Tallahassee, all together. We also brought Molly’s boyfriend Red, who’s this big intimidating sort of guy with about a thousand tattoos. He even has some on his neck. Red is an okay guy, I guess, but I don’t like that he dates my sister, on account of his being nineteen years old. He’s technically a junior in high school, but he got held back a bunch of times, which is why he’s older than me. Molly is only fifteen, but she says that she loves Red and I guess that’s good enough for me.

I enjoyed the car ride very much. My family is pretty funny when everybody’s together, because nobody can ever agree on anything. My parents always listen to these old Lake Wobegon tapes on any road trip we take, even though most trips are only about thirty minutes. This trip was two and a half hours, so my mom brought a whole bucket full of them. I really like listening to the stories, especially because the town seems like Jacksonville a little bit, only nicer. At the beginning of each new story, they say this nice little phrase about the people living there. I think it’s something like “Lake Wobegon is the place where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” I think that’s a real nice way to describe a town. I wish I lived there.

So my parents were listening to their tapes and saying things when they thought it was especially funny. Like this particular one we had on today, there was this woman who was getting her hair done at The Curl Up and Dye salon. She started this rumor about one of them women in town, and it just grew bigger and bigger and crazier and crazier the more people spread it. It was really very interesting, despite being about a bunch of women, and I wanted to hear how Keillor wrapped it up perfectly, the way he always managed to. But after about thirty minutes, Red asked my mom if she would 82

please shut that shit off because it gives him a headache. My mom turned it off, but I wish that she didn’t or that Red didn’t say that to her, because she was very happy listening to it, and she isn’t always very happy. I think she wishes she could get her hair done with the women at The Curl Up and Dye, too.

But besides that and Molly needing my dad to stop the car four times so she could go to the bathroom, I had a nice time watching the trees speed by the window and just thinking.

In all honesty, the competition itself was really very boring. When the problems started getting pretty complicated, most kids dropped out like flies on a cow’s behind on account of the rule that you couldn’t bring a calculator into the auditorium. It didn’t bother me, though, ‘cause I’ve been doing math in my head forever. I never even owned a calculator. So it got down to the final two kids—me and this pretty chubby girl from Daytona—after about twelve hours, and our last question was this very simple logarithm. I knew the answer straight away but I just kept watching her forehead crinkle and uncrinkle, trying to work it through. I really sort of did want her to win, because she looked like she was trying very hard.

Eventually, though, I hit the buzzer and gave them the right answer. Everyone in the audience went wild, jumping up out of their seats, trying to come shake my hand, like I was famous or something. I don’t like the attention at all, but I smiled some and pretended to be just as excited as everybody else. I was surprised, though, when the judges came over to me to officially announce that I was the new state champion, and take pictures for the papers. They had one of those very big cardboard checks with my name on it, made out for fifteen thousand big ones. The taller of the two judges leaned down to shout in my ear that it was scholarship money to the University of Florida. I think I would have liked to hear that better if it hadn’t’ve been for his moustache drooping all over the side of my head. It was one of those handlebar 83

moustaches, and he let the sides grow out so long that whenever he leaned or turned too fast, the long part would swish around and sort of smack whoever was closest.

Well I started to get very nervous with all those people around looking at me, so I sort of ducked underneath everyone while they were yelling congratulations into the air and hoping I would hear them. I ran out of the auditorium into this dark deserted hallway, looking for a water fountain.

I started wandering around a little bit, looking at student artwork and framed photographs of graduated students who entered the army, or who were now CEOs, stuff that schools would be proud of, when I heard voices. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but when hallways are very empty like that, noises travel. Then I realized it was my sister Molly’s voice, and Red’s too. I froze.

“You’ve got to give up the baby, Molly. I read something somewhere sayin’ that if you wait too long, the baby knows you’re killin’ it when you’re killin’ it.”

“Red, I just don’t think I can. This little baby is a miracle, not a mistake. God don’t make mistakes like that.”

“Molly, you can’t do this to me. I’m too young to be a daddy. If you don’t get rid of that thing soon, I’m packin’ up my things and leavin’ and you won’t see me again.”

I don’t really remember too much about what happened then, except for running as fast as I could straight at Red and swinging my arm as hard as I could. I wish I had hit his head or something but I don’t know how to fight and I ended up hitting his shoulder. But I hit it real hard and I guess my knuckles shattered as soon as I hit. Now I’m not necessarily a wimp but I did tell you Red is a pretty big guy.

Unfortunately I didn’t do any damage at all to Red, because after my first hit he grabbed me and slammed me down on the linoleum. Like I said, I can’t remember too much on account of my head hitting the floor but Red told me in the hospital that I kept trying to fight him even when he had 84

me pinned. I was screaming pretty loud, he said, ‘cause the judges and everybody ran out and saw me going a little bit insane on the ground.

My mom explained to me at the hospital that the judges had to revoke my winnings, something about the rulebook not tolerating a violent champion. I was pretty torn up at first about it, ‘cause it would have been nice to get out of Jacksonville for a few years and learn some new things. But then I realized that my sister Molly was going to have a baby, and she’d need me around to help raise it up into a good person. Even though Red said he wasn’t serious about leaving, I’m not going anywhere, just in case.

The judges gave the title of champion to the girl who got second place, which I thought was pretty nice, because she certainly tried hard.

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GOODNIGHT Aarushi Bhandari The strangest thing about the dark, it’s just light without the light yet it compels us, to die for the night.

It provides courage to those who wear the mask of light and confine themselves, till the sun goes down.

Who they are thereafter, changes from night to night from people to people, places to places.

It renders the choice, to close the eyes and imagine the world has vanished until it’s up again.

Between the time, we live countless lives each night, we’re somewhere else someone new.

The strangest thing about the dark, it’s just light without the light yet we hide, and we hide until we rise.

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CHANGE Amanda Zaloga The leaves fell more today than ever and are almost bare, I regret the joy I felt from bathing in the shower of golds and reds I would glue each leaf back onto its branch if they’d stay it always surprises me when trees become limbs and the grass turns the color of straw it’s a truth of life— change and yet I forget how it takes root in the seasons and within me because I can’t see change on my fingertips the swirls of lines seem to drift in the same pattern my eyes are still as blue as my father’s blue with a center rim of yellow and green change hides in my thoughts and reminds me that this life, this tree, will never be the same as it stands now I forget because I hope to live in this moment with you together in this poem while the leaves stay glued.

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Spring in Bloom Antonia Maguire

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DONOR OF SEEDS Judiann Romanello That night at dinner, When you told us you were leaving, Mom came into my room, crying, asking me to break open my piggy bank to buy a carton of milk for breakfast the next morning.

And I remember waking up, feeling anxious as hell, like on Christmas morning.

But this morning the only gift I would get was a pain in my chest. When you left you took whatever masculinity I had.

You were much more to me than a crumpled photo, You are the reason for my cleft chin, unruly curls, and dark skin. You left me with your looks and insecurities.

I blame you for draining my bank account, to support your pathetic boyfriend, for standing me up on those Sundays, when I waited at the door bundled up, And Mom stood behind me cursing your Existence, calling you “a fucking bastard.�

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But, I’m the fucking bastard child.

You are the reason why I cannot trust men.

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A NUCLEAR THREAT Michael Stracci Sitting in their one bedroom apartment feet reclined backs in the couch reassuring one another things will be okay.

The nuclear son happens to stray to the screened window looking down on the yard all of the town of other nuclear families When in the sky like a second sun flame bursts and plumes clouds aside some war time hellish hairdo made of super enriched elements and fueled by raging revenge.

The nuclear son is unaware of the four million people being incinerated, one square mile around the blast now hotter than the surface of the sun The nuclear family now with cocked heads rushed to the nuclear son’s side his eyes watering blinded from the blast Then every single window like a million pieces of hope falling shatters in a instant of blast and boom.

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Winds that break sound barrier are carried into the room.

After being thrown against the wall like a flimsy toy doll, the nuclear mother comes to.

See’s her family blackened and bleeding Nuclear father dead a glass shard through his head the nuclear house gone up in flames gas stove spewing out red crackling blaze.

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Down the Hallway Michelle Ferlito

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THE RELUCTANT WEDDING GUEST Emma Gaedeke

The plush carpet cushions the sharp edge of my heel as I step into the room.

I find my designated seat at table five, uncomfortably stationed in the front next to the French-door entrance, and I am soon surrounded by six empty-faced guests who know just as little about the bride and groom as I do. We casually introduce ourselves as we pass around the plate of h’orderves, a cheap ensemble of cheese and crackers.

A month ago it didn’t take much begging for Brian, the best man at this shindig, to convince me to be his date.

As coworkers and good acquaintances, I figured that the wedding of Brian’s best friend would be entertaining, and I fully valued the fact that dates of the wedding party received the best treatment, and so I assumed I would be along for the free food, drinks, and five-star hotel stay that generally accompanied the title. Weddings were my forte, although I myself would probably never marry, and perhaps that was why I enjoyed the celebration of other cheerful couples so much. But three days before the wedding Brian informed me regretfully, that the wedding reception would be cashbar, haphazardly thrown together by the groom’s parents, and that most of the wedding guests were religious family members over the age of 40 who would probably not make it to the dance floor. No heartfelt apology would be able to excuse me from the event, and I knew that jilting the best man of a hot date just days before the wedding would not only be embarrassing for him, but probably a fine way to torch our good-natured friendship, eventually making our work environment an awkward game of hide and seek. So I thoughtfully conceded, dry-cleaned a sexy black dress I found hanging in my closet, and met Brian outside the office on Friday, prepared for the two-hour drive north.

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The reception hall is called the Terrace Room, a small, classy venue dressed with expensive looking carpet, and a small shiny dance floor, and I walk around casually surveying the scene. When the thrill of new exploration wears off, I meander to the bar area. The bartender looks ridiculous in her vested uniform, and I shoot her a friendly smile to try and break her cold demeanor. She doesn’t budge, and so I pay seven dollars for a rum and coke, scrounging for the only bill in my wallet, a lonesome ten. God, I think. Someone is going to have to start buying me drinks.

I take a sip and wince, stirring the ice in the glass with my finger. Brian is the only person I know at the party, and naturally, he is required to sit next to the groom, what feels to be a mile across the room. I am seated next to a dateless Dennis, a friend of the groom’s, and young woman named Tiff. Dennis has a short goatee and blonde shaggy hair that covers his forehead. He hadn’t smiled once since the ceremony, hadn’t touched his glass of water, and barely acknowledged my handshake earlier.

“Is everything alright?” I ask him. His small, blue eyes stare back at mine and he shrugs. He gestures to Nicole, the bride, who I catch walking across the dance floor, bunching up her long dress at the waist, and I figure there is a story there that I am better off avoiding.

“She’s not even cute,” I offer, and the corners of his lips loosen slightly, as he restrains a smile. My gaze returns to the center of the room and my eyes meet Brian’s, who is beginning to look uncomfortable in his black tux. He loosens his teal blue tie, and I see beads of sweat forming on his forehead under the light of the chandelier hanging in the center of the room.

“Having fun?” He mouths to me, and I nod eagerly.

The last thing he needs is to be worrying about me.

I sit with my legs crossed, absorbing the photographer snapping flagrantly, the smiling family members, and 95

the soft jazz mixing with the noise of soft chatter. I can’t help but feel as though I am here by mistake, but there is something more satisfying than lonesome about my voyeuristic circumstance.

I keep looking at Nicole, measuring my jealous envy against the self-righteousness of my own beauty. Nicole is chubby and uninteresting, but pretty with white, perfect teeth. Her hair is fake-blonde, and her makeup resembles a mask that when taken off, would reveal a woman that few people had probably ever seen, Steve included. Steve, her new husband, is much cuter. Remembering the brief character synopsis that Brian gave me on the ride up, I recall that Steve was Brian’s hockey bud from high school and his broad shoulders, thick hands, and square jaw remind me of that.

He has a pair of dimples that show even when he’s barely smiling, and his eyes are soft and curious. We met yesterday at the rehearsal dinner, for the first time, and I found him to be easy and interesting, but intriguing. He is, I concur, the best looking man in the room.

The mingling subsides and several high school-aged waiters and waitresses bring out dinners on plates trimmed decoratively with tiny, teal sea shells. A young woman places a roasted lamb dish in front of me, and I poke at it with my fork. It’s cold and unappetizing. I take a sip of the last of my rum and coke, which now tastes like watered down soda. An older waiter approaches my table, and opens a bottle of wine.

He places it down and pleasantly suggests that we help ourselves. I am the first at the table to grab the bottle, and I pour myself a glass.

“Don’t be shy everyone,” I joke, as the rest of the table watches me. A few other guests at the table, including Dennis, pour themselves a glass, but I expect they will only drink with dinner. My eyes dart from table to table, counting each liter of wine next to the floral centerpiece on the table.

I count quickly under my breath, ten tables, nine unopened 96

bottles, and the aggravation I stored for the cash-bar dissipates, as I realize I’ll be drinking for free the rest of the night.

I can feel a buzz seeping into my body, as my tongue grows careless and my mouth becomes arid from the bitterness of the merlot. When I notice that my table is distracted by the emcee speaking, I reach for the bottle again. I pour a generous amount into my glass and guzzle unsuspectingly. Brian delivers his best man speech, stumbling over every word, and I remind myself that I will never date him, no matter how desperate my dating circumstance becomes.

By the time the reception ceremonies are over, I am entirely drunk. The youngest party goers shyly approach the dance floor, and Brian finally meets up with me. He is sweating profusely, and in desperate need of a drink. The wine bottle at our table is empty, so I find a full one at the table nearby, swiping it before anyone can notice. I hand him a glass.

“Oh, no,” he says politely. “I hate wine.” I roll my eyes and drink his glass.

The DJ is playing what feels like every horrible song on the radio, but I lose myself in the music anyway. Brian steps on my feet multiple times, but I can’t feel it. My body sways loosely, as I am drunkenly underwater, and the music continues to sound further away. I wonder how many glasses I have consumed, but I cannot remember, the concept of numbers is far out of my reach.

“You’re a riot!” Brian shouts to me over the music, and I find myself pulling off dance maneuvers I didn’t realize I knew. Soon enough, the couples have swapped and traded dancing dates, and I find myself with my arms around Steve’s neck, the respective wedding guests clapping and singing around us. We make clouded eye-contact, and suddenly I cannot help myself.

I grab both sides of his tuxedo vest, and pull him aggressively toward my face, kissing him on the lips, open mouthed. Before I can pull away, I am swallowing the sur97

face water of right and wrong and I immediately understand the consequence of my survival. I look to see Brian’s face, mortified, as jerks me away from Steve, his newly married best friend. The dance floor slowly disperses, women gasp, and everyone is looking at me with the same blank expression I received when sitting down at my dinner table earlier.

I have easily become the prettiest wedding guest, the drunkest, and by far the worst.

A barefooted Nicole storms to my side, pushing Steve in the process. I watch her face contort while everything has become slow motion, her words inaudible over the thumping bass. Her hand is behind her head, and I’m convinced she’s going to hit me, bitch-slap me across the face even. Her face is close to my face, merely inches away, and I put a hand up in the air to block whatever attack she has coming. But the jerking movement of my body sends a rollercoaster drop to my stomach and I know exactly what is coming next. I barf on Nicole.

Nicole’s wedding dress is now stained with a blotch of magenta puke and there is a repulsive sour wine odor circulating the room. Brian looks as if he’s about to cry, Steve stares in open-mouthed disbelief, and Dennis laughs hysterically from the other side of the dance floor, clapping his hands together and hooting. The DJ gestures frantically to the mother of the Bride, and he is unsure whether he should stop the music. Nicole bursts into a mascara-smudging torrent of tears, and Steve awkwardly consoles her. I look desperately for another bottle, a chance to nullify reality even more. But the time has passed, and I stumble to my seat at the table in the back, hoping for an easy escape.

As the wedding winds down, Nicole is taken off by a few of the bride’s maids who coo apologetically to her. Brian refuses to look in my direction, and the rest of the party scowls at my existence. Perhaps it is my drunkenness or my relentless deluded perception on life, but I’m almost positive 98

that when he was sure no one was watching, Steve smiled.

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A SEA STAR’S SCARS Sofia Santamarina She spins across The ocean floor Her five triangular sides Wiggling to and fro The Sea Star Holds on To the ones She loves They dance Together The rhythm Ocean waves Later Crashing Against the shore A loud applause Erupting From the whitecaps Charging The Sea Stars Toward Sand There is One Sea star Among The group Different From the rest She has Received Intricate 100

Scars Underneath Beyond Her Smooth Upper Exterior Due to The Ocean’s Beatings After Dancing With family All Five Cuts Lead To The Center Her Heart Although…..

She lets herself Be beaten So she won’t break She won’t Give up The joy Spinning Through the turquoise brilliance A performance Well worth Fighting for

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EUGENE Rachael Conrad They called him Eugene Gene, born in the belly of the Bayou On a hot, orange Sunday afternoon With a shock of squid ink hair And hurricane eyes And the scent of the swamp Dark and earthy, clinging To his skin.

They called him Cher, Sweet boy, while he ran barefoot Catching lighting Bugs and sticky skinned Toads. Raised by a Ageless woman with the power to heal in The folds of her leathery hands.

Alligator claws hung about her neck Like pearls.

They called him faith healer, Medicine man, never Doctor as if the word tasted sour in Their mouths. He spent days With his eyes closed, head back, legs Crossed, an old soul trapped in a young Man’s body.

They called him, Medic, Full grown men with brittle voices, Chapped lips, aching feet. Some were Calls he couldn’t answer, his arms Elbow deep in And angry, irreparable wounds.

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He called her Renee, A young woman with soft eyes Rough hands and mousy hair.

She spoke in a familiar tongue With smile that wasn’t easily Coaxed out. Still, he Keeps the blue bandanna that held Loose locks out of her face in his breast Pocket and he can smell the Cigarette smoke and, distantly, the Perfume that clung to her Skin.

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At Sea Rachael Conrad

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INCIDENTAL DISABILITY ADAPT Does anyone deserve the indignity To be seen sub-human but through human eyes Life’s always too long to be victimized Could you condescend to “cure” me Or not care less about me I’m not waiting But every morning when I wake I remember there’s too much for granted to take It’s not worth it for me to have a chip on my shoulder Or for me to grow spiteful and colder In a day the people around us can be just another face But when all is said and done You’re my fellow

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MOVING IN Emma Gaedeke These walls are speaking in empty whispers to remind us that we are not alone, that we have not come first, that former tenants have left histories of themselves everywhere.

Yet I take over as an owner, possessing the door, wall, outletall of the things you will never see, never touch and I am reminded of you through the room’s completeness of the complete mess, distance destroyed.

Funny how absence can fill a room with what could have been, or what was to be Because I still feel you, in future form a ghost outside the window, in the warm autumn breeze that lingers into new space still waiting to be lived in

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Are We There Yet Rachael Conrad

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A LESSON IN GEOGRAPHY Janelle Little Unfolded under the sun I stretch toward the sky and catch The fingers of my mother Waving before me Unfurling like the feathers of a peacock Your hand A physical map Depicting ivory plains and cobalt ranges Emerging from thin skin that hides a certain thickness I tighten my grip around your palm and bringing it to my chest Count the knuckles arranged like stepping stones to my heart While your fingers grasp me gently, as they always have And I feel all you’ve held Things you can never let go The geography of pain and pleasure Mapped out across your tender hands Lost in thought I barely notice Your touch retreat to meet the pages of a dog-eared novel Thumbing through someone else’s story 108

Not realizing your own Atlas, Carrying the world on your shoulders Molding lives with your hands Which are Capable of anything but Feeling their own strength So I laugh Remembering when you claimed Your hands held no talent Unable to write, paint, or play an instrumentPlacing your book on the grass You walk towards the pool and I follow Just in time to grab your hand Before gravity can bring us down

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Elevated Boundaries Michael Stracci

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Hind Shine Martinez Haslam

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WHERE THE HEART IS Keara Brown I have traveled on and off to get here, a placed called San Antonio, Texas.

A placed where people say “Howdy,” and have a cold “brewski” at the end of the day.

The sky, painted the palette of an Indian’s paint box, burns a fiery red-orange then changes to a cool purple.

A place where civilization ends and free spirit begins, the sky showers upon the earth twinkling stars.

The stillness in itself is captivating, the sound of your own breathing.

To some people it’s the middle of nowhere, but to me, this is my somewhere.

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HUNTER Shawn Marshall There he sits, five paces away, and here I sit staring competition in the face.

We share something most do not, our refuge in anger and a rage that rots.

It burns inside like an acid dripping on minds; aching for a simple instigation that seems to find the tempered fuse that lights our kind.

My mind goes black and I can’t even think as our fist rush past what’s called the brink; the safety we discover in breaking to break skin, is a faith uncovered from deep within.

Bounds must be broken, and rules must be set; no words can be spoken for the things we never said.

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The Path of Infinite Possibilities Antonia Maguire

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CONTRIBUTORS Aarushi Bhandari is a sophomore double majoring in English with a concentration in Creative and Professional Writing and Sociology.

ADAPT, short for the American Disability Association Promoting Tolerance, was founded by Megan Kelly and helps educate the Manhattanville community about various disabilities in today’s society. The current President is Vincent Cirilli and the Vice President is Paul Vigil.

Rachael Conrad is a sophomore at Manhattanville. She is majoring in English (with a concentration in creative and professional writing) and Minoring in studio art. This was her first year as one of the art Editors for Graffiti Magazine.

Some of her favorite authors include –But are definitely not limited to - Edgar Allan Poe, Ross Sutherland, J.K Rowling and Anthony Bourdain.

Naajidah Aakifah Correll is a nineteen and a freshman at Manhattanville. She grew up in Harlem and was raised in Yonkers, New York. She has been writing and performing since the 1oth grade, and her favorite writer is June Jordan.

She believes that poetry is not only an art form, but a chance to be a social activist and catalyst for change. Naajidah has served on theYouth Board for Urban Word NYC in 2010 and has received the Sarah Lawrence College 2009 Young Writer’s Award. She was a semifinalist for Knicks Poetry Slam 2010, made the White Plains Slam Poetry Team in 2010, was a finalist in the Urban Word NYC 3rd Annually Slam Finalist for 2011, and is currently competing for a spot on the Urban 117

Word NYC Slam team.

Ashley Dandridge is a senior at Manhattanville. “Most people could describe her as humorous and quite sarcastic, but in a good way...if there is such a way to be witty and nice about it.” When she is not studying, she enjoys watching and playing baseball and football. You could also find her on her radio show on WMVL Radio. “I work with the most extraordinary radio board one ever did see!”

Tiffany L. Ellington is currently a senior from Yonkers, NY majoring in Psychology with a minor in creative writing at Manhattanville College. She has enjoyed reading and writing poetry for many years and has participated and attended many poetry events. Her poetry is often inspired in writing workshops, music and everyday life.

Tiffany Ferentini is a New Yorker and a junior at Manhattanville College, majoring in English with a Concentration in Creative and Professional Writing and minoring in Italian and Asian Studies. She has interned for Inkwell, the literary journal of Manhattanville College’s Master of Arts in Writing Program, and is a graduate of the Longridge Writers Group Institute for Children’s Literature. Although her main interest lies in writing fiction, she has also had her poetry featured in Twilight Musings, a publication of Poetry.com. Her goal in life is to become a novelist, although she would also love to pursue a career that would include her interests in Italian or Japanese languages. In addition to writing, Tiffany also enjoys Japanese anime and manga, reading, travelling, cooking, and sewing. Her favorite authors are Laurie Halse Anderson, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Jami Alden. This is her second year serving as the Editor-in-Chief of Graffiti.

Emma Gaedeke is a senior at Manhattanville College. She is 118

an English major and a Political Science minor, and has been an editor for Graffiti Magazine during her final semester. She is passionate about literature, music, and travel, and aspires to write creatively and professionally in her future.

Johanna Grea is a junior at Manhattanville College, studying Creative & Professional Writing. She was born in Toulouse (Southern France) and raised on the sunny Caribbean island of St. Martin. Before being an editor for Graffiti Magazine, Johanna interned at Inkwell Journal. After her studies, she aspires to teach creative writing, travel, and continue to write fiction and poetry.

Lindsey Greene is a senior English major with a focus in writing. She spent two years at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn as a writing major before transferring to Manhattanville. She guesses that her love of writing began at the age of two when she managed to escape from the highchair and write on the wall with a hotdog. It’s hopefully all been uphill from there.

Lindsey will be joining the University of New Hampshire’s MFA in fiction program in the fall.

Martinez J. Haslam is a senior at Manhattanville College majoring in Art. She currently lives and works in New York City.

Antonia Joseph is a freshman from Oxford, England. She has been interested in photography for five years. She has done black and white manual work to digital work. She hopes to continue working on her digital photography as much as possible in her spare time.

Stephen Kostes is a junior at Manhattanville College who is majoring in European History with a minor in Creative Writing. A native of Connecticut, he prefers to write stories, 119

but will write poems when inspiration strikes. The poems featured here are his favorite works, though he often criticizes himself as not being a good writer.

Janelle Little is a senior at Manhattanville from Katy, Texas.

She loves traveling, writing, dancing and being outdoors.

Antonia Maguire is a senior at Manhattanville College and will be graduating this May. Antonia is majoring in English Literature with a concentration in Film Studies and minoring in Sociology. She is originally from a small town in New Jersey and up until recently has never left the country. Fortunately, last Spring she was given the opportunity to go study abroad in one of the most vibrant cities in the world, London. During Antonia’s time in London she developed a passion for photography and captured as much of her travels as she could.

Sofie Santamarina is a second semester freshman, majoring in Early Childhood Education. She has been writing poetry since she was 11 years old. Although she is American, she has been living in Argentina for the past four years – her father is Argentine. She speaks Spanish fluently. Her hobbies include, swimming in the ocean, writing poetry, watching movies with friends, trying new and delicious foods, and reading books that cannot be put down.

Leigh Shane is currently a freshman at Manhattanville College with an undeclared major. She wishes to pursue a major in photography and a double minor in psychology and advertising. She has been studying the art of photography for over six years and has had her work displayed in various showings.

Michael Stracci is an urban version of Lewis and Clark and 120

will come to your hood no matter how many homicides they report. He is originally from the Bronx, NY. Amanda Zaloga is a Junior from Southampton, New York.

She double majors in English: Creative & Professional Writing and Psychology. She minors in Philosophy. Poetry is her main writing interest, and she has been writing since she knew how. Her favorite poet is Billy Collins.

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