LITERARY AND ARTS MAGAZINE Volume 4 Fall 2015
LITERARY AND ARTS MAGAZINE Volume 4 Fall 2015 A Production of the Hofstra English Society
HOFSTRA ENGLISH SOCIETY 203 Student Center Hofstra University Hempstead, NY 11549 hofenglishsociety@gmail.com facebook.com/hofstraenglishsociety twitter.com/hofengsoc issuu.com/hofstraenglishsociety Cover art: “In a World of My Own” Robin Deering
STAFF MANAGING EDITOR Kirby Sandmeyer
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Nick Rizzuti
ART EDITOR
DESIGN EDITOR Alexis Willey
TEXT EDITOR
Amanda Palomino
Brianna Ciniglio
COPYEDITORS Emanuela Ambrosio Amelia Beckerman Courtney Zanosky Bryanna Zerella
GENERAL STAFF Dana Aprigliano Madison Cho Cristina Cortez Hannah Dolan Toby Jaffe Emily Levine
Melanie Rainone Kirsten Rickershauser Sarah Robbins Erinn Slanina Lilly Smith Regina Volpe
SPECIAL THANKS
Eric Brogger Craig Rustici Scott Harshbarger Denise DeGennaro Hofstra University English Department Vicki Dwyer
CONTENTS Elements Catch and Release Roots Final Days 1998 Reverse Commuter Dreans & Desires I’ve Caught the Starry Night St. Mark’s, Venice Want Nymphomania Untitled Big Ben A Song for 2 A.M. From A Distance Silence Wingdings Happy Birthday To the Boy in the Black Fedora 23 [-32x5/9] The Prince of Music Breakfast Home Movies Friends and Family Plan Izer Flowers Madison’s Guide to Matriarchal... Open Shutters Stars
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Victoria Snak Madison Cho-Richmond Dan Willis Emily Rosa Dan Willis Toby Jaffe Aaron Burger Batson Xiang Li Ameila Beckerman Elly Belle Brian Stieglitz Matt Tanzosh Amanda Palomino Robin Deering Mika Hawley Erinn Slanina Ameila Beckerman Rachel Gurevivh Sam Storms Madison Cho-Richmond Mika Hawley David Marks Ryan WIlliams Ryan Williams Kurtis von Krueger Allison Wolf David Marks Madison Cho-Richmond Raymond A. Tuco Elissa Salamy
Ehlayna M. Napolitano Ehlayna M. Napolitano Ehlayna M. Napolitano Ehlayna M. Napolitano Carson Lombardi Hannah Dolan Sharon Chudnow Solange Luftman Nick Rizzuti Amanda Palomino Robin Deering Regina Volpe Stephanie Kostopoulos Zachary Johnson Lacia Japp Sarah Robbins Allison Wolf Hannah Dolan Josh Wilson Amanda Palomino Jacqueline Hsu Hebah Uddin Kirsten Rickershauser Aaron Burger Amelia Beckerman Eric Crocombe Elly Belle
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Self-Made Museum Lopsided Verse 8:09 Stellar Pears Roll Call A Positive Learning Environment Questions Thanks Ma This is a Poem Where I Overreact... Anything Cat Eyes Songs For No One Another Nightmare Time is Still Time Awoke For Me Big Bang (Boston) The Laureate Being as a Shark Short Walk from the Highway Paris Nights Lumière Leave Here to Heaven A Poet Coast to Coast Kurt Vonnegut’s Rocking Chair Reminder Future Talk
CONTENTS
ELEMENTS Victoria Snak
The human body can last one week without water. Every survival story I’ve heard of man against element ends with thirst, ends with desert, arctic, jungle, dust. Our bodies wilt, scatter like dandelion bones. How delicate we are. My best friend once went one week without speaking. He inhaled words, held them as they slept inside his lungs and after seven days he woke them up and put them onto a page. Not everything that can harm you will kill you in a week. Not every beautiful thought will immortalize you, either. I need to drink more water.
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CATCH AND RELEASE Madison Cho-Richmond
It used to be that when a hunter found himself lost in the snow, he would slice open the belly of his catch and crawl inside for warmth. He would fold himself into this raw blanket of mucus and blood until storm passed and the sky became clear enough to read the stars again. A different you came to me as a triptych of broken framework rising to the surface like a waterlogged body, up towards blooming flowers and up towards shorter nights and it was then that we exchanged bullets for breath and I learned how to catch your bent arrows. We clung like soldiers in a poppy field desperate, relentless, each hoping to stretch open the skin of the other. I pulled you close and carried your heartbeat inside. Listened as it flowed like a harbor rushing against our anatomical topography knit from flesh-upon-flesh and thought about Galileo, how he gazed at stars for too long, how he, in his later years, became blind. FALL 2015
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ROOTS
Dan Willis Here I stand, my roots firmly in place where I sprouted. Once, when I was younger, there was a storm that threatened to drown me. Now, I pray for the rain.
“Final Days” Emily Rosa 10
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Who would have thought I’d pray for what once was killing me? Could I leave, I could seek the rain, feel the mud beneath me; but Here I stand, my roots firmly in place where I sprouted.
1998
Dan Willis In a hundred years, we won’t be here. Sometimes that freaks me out. It used to freak me out a lot. Right now, I’m good. I used to be catholic. I went to church maybe once a month, but I prayed. I used to be an atheist. No matter what I believed, I had frequent existential crises. In a hundred years, Where would I be? I mean, I know I’d more than likely be dead. I’m talking more about my soul, I guess. Maybe I mean what I would want to do with my body. I’ve read about a few small companies that do cool things with ashes. I could get my ashes planted with a tree, or pressed into a bootleg copy of a record I like. I don’t know if I want to be cremated though— maybe a traditional catholic burial? My grandfather served in World War II. He defused bombs. In February nineteen-fortysomething One of the bombs exploded. He died in February 1998. FALL 2015
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REVERSE COMMUTER Toby Jaffee
9/11 is the view. Every day is 9/11. Every day is 9-1-1. Every day is the ferry, recently departed from the dock in Hoboken, where the hotdog venders sell Coke that slices the stomach, that single, holy burp in a state of flux, hours away. Every day is the ferry, where summer half-sleeps and dreams, listening to Adore by the Smashing Pumpkins, watching the middle manager who works in 225 straddling the metallic outer bar, which separates him and everyone else from impending drowning in Henry Hudson’s sea of filth and mutations. Every day is the ferry, where the reverse commuter reads his letters, ponders his rabid collections. He is invisible in the mind of the onlooker, as well as waking life. Every day is the hundreds of flat steps, now on the other side of things, through the mass of humanity, through the urbanized picnic benches, through the circular green excuse of a park with its deaf dog walkers and porcupined runners. The faux-marina and low-flying seagulls say goodbye, loud enough for reverberations throughout the neighborhood. Every day is the lobby in 200 Liberty Street. The gut rests as you sit on the escalator, facing down. Familiarity hurts the toes, dressed like fleshy Easter Bunnies, out of season, out of time; floats at the wrong parade. Every day is the Elevator, beyond the security turnstile, where silence is a placebo, smells are sex and the news is readable. Every day is the 16th Floor, where one rides the reception carousel, listens to funky skiffle, plays with the whisks that mix the cooling water. Every day is the Reverse Commuter, back again, sitting tight, holding a Vietnamese pork belly sandwich, a scribbled notepad under his bruised forearms. He towers over the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan, drowns out the perpetual construction. Yet, no one really looks or listens. Every day is the Ferry, sun setting, the reverse commuter condemned to read his letters and ponder his collections some more, alone.
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DREAMS & DESIRES Aaron Burger
I don’t know what I’m doing in your dreams, but I certainly have no business there, where I sit in the clouds; even so, I hope they’re soft with magenta, with mist clinging to your sleeves until you wake up in a sweat. I can’t say who I am there, with feathered vapor for my bed. The clouds above my head slip from red to orange, yet they say it’s impossible to rouse oneself; and I can’t help but laugh. Countless nights I pry back my eyelids— and I can’t say who you are— but we’re all clams when the peripheral sea of our minds begin to seep too deep. I don’t know if you seek the same pearls, but I can only hope; and I can’t help but wonder: what eyelids hide behind my eyes?
FALL 2015
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I’VE CAUGHT THE STARRY NIGHT Batson Xiang Li
Once I’m pulled into the whirlpool I can never escape. It spins me deeper And deeper into its center, Along with those blessed souls That rise to sky In those nighttime stories, Who suddenly start blinking And begin to play hide and seek with me. Yet I can never reach the other side Of the sky, for my eyes have clung To a magnificent dull cypress tree. Suspended by my struggle I become a bird Looking down at the nightly town Whose houses scatter Across vast empty land Like a mirror to The cosmos above. I could die here, in the mist Of balanced forces and greenish Dreams, with comfort, At the perfect peace, Until that is no more As I’m bumped by swarms Of eager tourists And cynical critics. “How dare you!” I think As I turn to them, But I freeze In that fraction of a second. As their faces blink Out of my mind, I see The night again. 14
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“Saint Mark’s, Venice” Amelia Beckerman
FALL 2015
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WANT
Elly Belle want: a (verb) I don’t want you in the way wanting means I want to maybe witness your existence but you want gripped hands like slipping off a cliff I am not your ledge not grasping or clinging trust me I want to feel your fingers in mine but not because I need to hold you or suck the saltwater from your tongue find your sweat dug underneath my fingernails I love you like an archaeologist kneeling by a thousand year old riverbed,
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what is its story, how long can I touch it before I am a part of its history too? you love me like a hunter loves the leopard skin on his wall or an artist likes to look at the mess of colors on his palette, almost a masterpiece itself proud of what you can do with your hands, hang up, keen to take credit for the life of a thing not keen to let it live its own. I want you in the way I want to watch a sunset unfold I can love you without ever touching you let you come and go, and if you love me I am water through your fingers, I am nothing that can be kept for long.
FALL 2015
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NYMPHOMANIA Brian Stieglitz
“I can make you feel the most beautiful thing,” said the stranger I starred stars into his sinewy heart As my body collapsed into my mind Like the tumult of the Atlantic after Albatross “You notice me?” I say He flutters into the wind streaks And suddenly I’m on Saturn for a day The somber planet that neither pines nor prays “But I’ll always be there,” stranger reminds me His eyes flash the colors of an Eskimo skyline My tongue drips like candy paste And his lips cascade like the zephyrs of Zion “I need someone to make me whole again,” I tell stranger He jabs heart spears into my ribs And weaves fish hooks into my skin And every time stranger leaves the metal sinks in “Get out of my life!” I shriek at stranger I step back and look at the terror-stricken faces Each with their own strangers, and heart spears and hooks Each just as insane as my mother says I’m not “But I need him!” I tell the doctors They send out invisible serpents They draw slits through my veins As I writhe and scream and beg for forgiveness I walk out into a hot, sticky day In a business suit, tie tucked just right Then he passes me and I give not a second thought But walk up to stranger and say, “You make me feel nothing at all.” 18
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UNTITLED
Matt Tanzosh I am boiling cotton for pieces of you I am an addict And now that you’re gone I am forced to tap dead veins Scanning the track marks you left on my brain For memories that have yet to collapse
“Big Ben” Amanda Palomino
FALL 2015
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A SONG FOR 2 A.M. Robin Deering
Twinkled lights dimmed out stars rabbit’s steps are going far. Softened hues of yellows and blues outline a home for the cold coming nights.
“From A Distance” Mika Hawley
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SILENCE
Erinn Slanina Silence is what I expected when I shut everything off. I speak to myself in poems. Words. Pauses, Breaks. It doesn’t make sense. The napkin from dinner is covered in sketches of the monsters from my mind: terrible cartoon characters. My pen scratches at the page staining the wood underneath. My creatures now look up at me from my desk. Oh god. Eyes bulging, ears drooping, teeth laughing at me. “Write?” “You want to write?” Slice. Scratch. I am mesmerized, caught by their smiles. I created them. Each word destroys me and my monsters fill the silence, screaming, making themselves known. It is not silent. It is never silent. FALL 2015
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WINGDINGS
Amelia Beckerman If I was a font, all the letters would be uppercase and it would look like my handwriting when I leave my mother a note in the morning as I’m running out the door and am still half asleep. It would be a lot of letters dragging into other letters and a lot of question marks where question marks don’t belong. My font would only be used for emails sent to ex-lovers in the middle of the night or for unofficial last wills and testaments. It would be the kind of font teachers ask students specifically not to use for essays, but then maybe second semester seniors use anyway, just for a laugh. I would use my font to write a book and then self publish it on Amazon and there would only be one review and it would say, “I was going to read this book but then I saw the font it was written in and threw up.” And then, after my career tanked because I had written all of my work presentations in my own font, I would type up a note to my mother and leave it on her nightstand, meaning for her to come after me but she wouldn’t take it seriously on account of all the question marks.
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY Rachel Gurevich
The shower drain collects maggots, parasites that creep into the veins of children before they realize that their shoelace is untied. Toothpaste residue stains the mirror, reflecting the marble pedestal that was once too tall to reach without a stepstool. The VCR unravels the Disney tape and replaces it with overgrown ivy. Teddy bears grow heavy with obsidian hearts, their googly eyes in need of restitching. The tire swing sways over sand dunes: the corridor between heaven and Earth. Paper planes feed the wood chipper to yield life-sized wooden crates.
FALL 2015
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TO THE BOY IN THE BLACK FEDORA Sam Storms Hi. We’ve only ever met about thirty times, but I felt the need to introduce myself again. My name is Overly-Emotional and yes, I have a hell of a time heading my papers. And I know you like pale skin but somehow I had the audacity to swallow the sun before I came here. There’s a tattoo on the back of my neck and I’ve never seen it before but it feels like your smile and no matter how many fingerprints I pile onto the skin I know it will never fade away. I’ve been around the sun more than sixteen times but I’m a hundred years old and correct me if my math is wrong but that makes 36,500 nights worth of dreams, 106,580,000 hours worth of your face etched into the insides of my eyelids. I’ve started wearing black more often and I don’t know if it’s because I’m sad 24
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or because it’s your favorite color. And I’ve never drawn a day in my life but if it had turned out good, it would have been a portrait of you. And I’ve been meaning to ask you if you’d teach me about shading and curved lines so I could capture your beauty onto a piece of paper. I might be attempting the impossible, but I think I’ll try anyway. I really couldn’t believe it when you didn’t say you loved me, but I apologize if my metaphors aren’t as complex or as deep or as articulate or as disgustingly heart wrenching as you probably expect them to be. But I swear, I would have ripped my world from my own shoulders and poured it into the palms of your hands. I would have dipped my fingers into the depths of the ocean and made you the King of the Sea. I would have stolen you flowers from Heaven’s garden and kissed each petal into your skin.
“23” Madison Cho
I would have given you all I had. You taught me what it was like to swallow my pride and bite my lips until it manifested itself within my bloodstream. I understand that love really isn’t your forte but it’s mine, and I would appreciate it if you’d give my skin a chance to sing and my lips a chance to resurrect themselves into every exhale you made. To the boy in the black Fedora, I know you’re married to the art
for better or for worse. I know you dream in black and white and have violin strings for fingers. Hi. We’ve only ever met about thirty-one times but I felt the need to introduce myself again. My name is In-Love-With-You and yes, I have a hell of a time getting to sleep at night. FALL 2015
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[-32x5/9]
Mika Hawley I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I suppose it’s time to put it to words. We are different, you and I; separated somehow by the boundaries of space, the limitations of time, the fact that you read the mercury in the thermometer one way, and I another. This all made sense in the shower, so let me go for a minute and I’ll get into the water and think about it all again. What a fucking bummer it is that paper and water don’t mix— it feels like every time I have a thought worth writing down, I can’t. I’m back now and I think everything is clearer. Here’s how it is: I feel a fundamental separation from you. I’m a dumb Brit and you’re a clever Yank, and we share a process of telling the temperature. [I’m actually a pretty smart Brit, feel free to discount the previous statement.] But every time I think 32 degrees is a toasty, midsummers day, you put on a sweater and a scarf and a down jacket. And when you tell me that it hit the mid 80’s today, I feel my skin scald and blister. But there’s this moment where we shy away from each other. It’s hard to put my head on your shoulder when you say your resting temperature is 98.6. It’s hard to justify touching you at all, even if I want to, because my head is screaming all the while for me to stay away from you. I wouldn’t willingly touch a boiling kettle, so why should I willingly want to touch you? [I’m not sure which one of us is the kettle, but maybe if we carry on for a bit longer, we’ll find out.] That second of hesitation is all that we need to feel distant from each other. I don’t know how to reconcile this. Do I do a kind of Eternal Sunshine on this, forget every moment of my relationship with Celsius and relearn it all with Fahrenheit in its place, just so that I can have a closer connection to you? Do I carve [-32 x 5/9] into my forearm with a razor blade and start carrying a calculator around with me? Tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it, without hesitation. But wait. Would you forget all you learned about Fahrenheit for me? Would you bloody your arm with [-32 x 5/9] for me? [Well, you’d probably want to carve [x 9/5+32] instead. A personal version of a scientific truth.] Would you burden yourself with a constant calculating companion, just for me? You probably would, I dunno, I’ve never asked you to. Wouldn’t the world just be infinitely easier if we universalized one fucking way of telling temperature?
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THE PRINCE OF MUSIC David Marks
it was a hot day though that was a given in Florida summers we had a house to ourselves we young men there were the staples the beer the Jack the rum the vodka the weed the chips the pretzels the mangoes the apples and peanut butter and the mushrooms those were new to me, at least my friends were much more well versed in debauchery than I was but I took them in my mouth like a new lover and I waited in the pool sunset or darkness? jazz or classical? there are some details lost to the chasm of summer sorrow and the middle class melancholia
the colors though were there and my body thrummed with god he was the Prince of Music and he came to me out of the jazz or classical? he kissed me in a way I thought only a woman could I felt no desire when he put his lips to mine other than to sing the words were nonsense I’m sure and the melody was pool water but the essence was a wisp of something a ghost of memories yet to come I woke with a feeling of peace on my lips and spent the rest of the evening sipping a whiskey neat and sharing songs with the other princes newly crowned
FALL 2015
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BREAKFAST Ryan Williams
Sour in my truest state, I’m something like a dark green. I push a man-made breakfast down my pump-action neck and wake myself from death. The trees are orange instead of gray. The sky’s a sweet pink serenade, beat up, laughing, dancing, crafting balloons like a birthday clown. My body does not drag my feet and humans fly around me. The circus is in citrus grass and pop rocks in the concrete. I’ve never known myself too well but I’ve known myself to be someone who sees in colors darker than the fellows on the public bus. And now I see through lenses that Maximize fakery, turning all the rundown Citgo’s into Barcelona bakeries. The truth is invisible until I take the glasses off and I come to meet again all the things that I forgot. Skipping breakfast is the worst thing you can do. Early food is fuel for a much better you.
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Thank you, Doctor, please suggest more anecdotes for a Healthy Happy Life. Please add another 20 to the mg on my property right. I push fake bullets down my throat so I never have to wonder what a real shotgun looks like in my truest true life. Water’s bluer than black. And my heart beats something like the slaughter turned pink slime that grows up into a Big Mac. I know how to swallow so I know how to live inside a body that runs on an every morning pill. So the floors are finely waxed and the sun’s a camera flash and until the midnight ends I will own my body back.
HOME MOVIES Ryan Williams
He grew up in a circle of suburban Sweet’N Low with a moth wing foot shaking inner city soot. His mind was a dirt bike buzzing off-road round air too cold and bodies too old. Home movies spun slower than his snack bucket sank. He thanks the eighteenth take for the changes that his body made. His friends all left him but his carpenter ego built planks of cedar soul to stack above the sticky holes. Every cut, every frame— it’s a rewound piece without the beats that permitted the dull parts to breathe.
He’s on DVD in the new big city but the burbs don’t watch films doomed to red casing. So find him off the beaten path beating back some bottled tears. Find him finding blame in faces he’s not seen in twenty years. Find him grabbing at the rails, tripping backwards down the stairs. Find his mother watching stars hoping he’s not fallen far. He grew up in a hive of suburban honey where bees stung branders of forever on his breast. His skin still shivers underneath the sugared blood pinwheeling down his picket fence chest.
FALL 2015
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FRIENDS AND FAMILY PLAN Kurtis von Krueger
My grandfather survived the Depression. I survived the newest iPhone launch And an on-demand stream of take-out lunch. Lossless compression doesn’t work on emotion. I’m connected and linked in without connection Or human experience; swipe right for fun. We are islands of a community estranged. Does Wi-Fi work in the middle of the ocean? My Pappi died while I was on my phone. I kissed his cold forehead under LED lights And buried him for a selfie and a like So I can be happy with this emptiness I own. Two cables in a wood but where’s the road? Six feet under the retirement home.
“Izer” Allison Wolf 30
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FLOWERS
David Marks I moved through the store with flowers for you and I was commanded to halt by an old woman. “What did you do, young man?� she said thinking she knew everything about me because I was young and she was old. I wanted to tell her the truth: I thought they were pretty and that you would like them. But I told her with my hairy tongue the lies that she wanted to hear: I was a bad man a bad lover a worthless male begging for another chance. She scolded me for a while before she continued on her way with her grapes and hand cream. Preserving her arrogance was a kindness the flowers are simply fact.
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MADISON’S GUIDE TO MATRIARCHAL COMEBACKS Madison Cho-Richmond
Tested and proven to work 95% of the time. Carry pepper spray and brass knuckles for the remaining 5%. What to say when: A) A man-figure in a car is yelling out the window— I hope you get into a crash and die. Simple, straightforward, and makes you appear heartless. B) A man-figure passes you on the street and you’re walking with a member of your own sex— Boy, do you have a sister? My girlfriend and I like funky threesomes. C) A man-figure is refusing your denial either at school, in class, or otherwise— Play the lesbian card. Guaranteed to make him feel uncomfortable while retaining an atmosphere appropriate for the educational environment. D) A man-figure is a motel guest— Don’t say anything. Just spit all over his pillow when he’s gone E) A man-figure is in none of the hypothetical situations above yet still needs a classic telling off—Fuck off, asshole. Then cue the banshee scream. Additional tip: Never be afraid to speak the truth.
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“Open Shutters� Raymond Alexander Turco
Stars
Elissa Salamy She whispers stories of late night oceans, and dark benches out of sight of yellow street lamps. The pull of her lips into a smile does not fit the words that slip quietly between her teeth. Dear, I see you. You are letting men pull your body into darkened bedrooms, because you see the expectation in their cold pupils as they are kissing your neck and whispering words that sound like love into your ear. You know the truth. I can hear it in your voice. You have to learn on your own: handsome men with soft hands will make you feel like sunrise, will promise stars. Do not follow them into the night praying for beauty, and do not trust them. FALL 2015
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SELF-MADE MUSEUM Ehlayna M. Napolitano
unsent text number 47, i miss the way your room captured sunlight and rearranged it on your hair. it looked nice that way. unsent text number 68, sometimes i check the weather in your city just to feel like there is some part of you burrowed in my chest that i can clandestinely sympathize with. unsent text number 19, i’m drunk at this party and i’m thinking of how my anxiety turns to runny egg yolks when you touch my face. don’t worry, you say, and my body responds. that never happens. but you are mine. unsent text number 69, make sure you bring a raincoat. unsent text number 32, my skin feels like sullen little embers after everyone has gone to bed. unsent text number 53, i miss you. unsent text number 2, i miss you. unsent text number 28, i miss you.
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LOPSIDED VERSE 08:09
Ehlayna M. Napolitano
and so it ends where it began, a perfect circle, illuminated at the edges by a fingernail moon. in waiting rooms and in the drawers of bedside tables, strangers leave alms of broken little pieces and bidden time. meticulous little counted days on their fingers, toes and rosary beads. i never found god in a hospital but the pigeons outside sing familiar heavy hymns and the world is an altar for the sermons of taxicab drivers and late-night waitresses who provide for those they keep.
STELLAR
Ehlayna M. Napolitano in quixotic little harmonies, the universe expands outward, inward, and on and in empty space between its infinite centers stands the loneliness of concept and of passing time, which of course, is only concept and perhaps, the loneliest of all, but each of us reaches out and touches only where time resides and time can do nothing but fold in on itself, for where is it? but nowhere, nowhen. i stand on a rock in a raging stream and think about the universe and its infinitudes which touch nothing, and perhaps a day, a month, a melodic year in near-death scrapes with infinity is just a fleeting second before our next big Bang and you and i will burst forth in galaxies of light and color and the wisdom of time’s ethical loneliness, and we shall build a home upon its doorstep.
PEARS
Ehlayna M. Napolitano jimmy mathers knows me best– he looked me up and down and said, “sadness stems from your lungs and slips into every heaving breath.” jimmy mathers talks like a poet and reminds me of a father figure the stars say I have trouble with. I looked up at the sky and called it desire, and jimmy held me in his arms by the fire and asked me about heaven. losing belief is easy to do, but my chest creaks open without a crutch– sometimes. jimmy mathers knows me best and he wonders where we’re going when we take long drives at night. I tell him to trust me, and he does. FALL 2015
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ROLL CALL
Carson Lombardi “Anderson, Jenna.” I sat in the third seat from the front, in the second row on the right as my professor began to call roll on the first day of class for the semester. Okay, still on A’s, I thought to myself. It was still early in the alphabet. I let my mind wander. Interesting outfit choice, I thought. My professor was a small woman, probably in her late-forties. Probably a bit too old to be wearing what she was—this excessively maroon getup with a pair of leather boots. When I say that she was wearing maroon, I mean it. That woman was maroon. Maroon skinny jeans, a silky maroon blouse that was just on the edge of inappropriately transparent, and a maroon ring and bracelet combo. She even had a muddy maroon gloss slicked on her small but surprisingly plump lips. She was a maroon Jelly Bean. You know which Jelly Bean I’m talking about. The weird reddish brown one that they claim tastes like root beer but you’re ninety nine percent sure is actually just sweetened cyanide. “Brown, Joseph.” Ten letters to go. My focus shifted to the syllabus thrown haphazardly on top of my books and various writing utensils. Why are these always so long? I scanned the first few paragraphs before the letters melded together on the page and my eyes lost their will to see. My mind went numb. I stared with empty eyes in the general direction of my desk and the calming nothingness of the contents of my brain brought me outside of the fluorescent-lighted, cinder block walled room. The muffled sound of another name being ticked off on the roster brought me back to the room. “Coleman, Thomas.” Nine to go now. I began to rehearse the way I’d say “here” when Professor Jelly Bean inevitably reached my name on her roster. I could just come right out and say it. Here! But then you risk completely underestimating your diaphragm and you could accidentally end up shouting at your new professor. Not a great first impression. Or you could underestimate the size of the classroom and not speak loudly enough for your voice to carry and she could mark you absent. Or you could forget how to use pitch and come out with a squeaky, overly girly affirmation of your existence. Or there could be a freak accident in speech and you could sound strangely baritone. No, I won’t just come out and say it, then. But what were my other options? “Dickinson, Christina.” My name was getting closer. I began to sweat. Maybe I could raise my hand along with my greeting. Yeah, that could definitely work. That way if my voice was too soft she’d still know that I was in class and I wouldn’t be marked absent and I wouldn’t be dropped from the class and I wouldn’t fail out of college. But the hand-raising option was a big risk, too. If my voice came out too loud or too booming I’d look overeager. A teacher’s pet. And what professors actually like a teacher’s pet? No, raising my hand wouldn’t do. There had to be another direction I could go in. 36
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“Eckhart, Daniel.” My ears burned red. Oh God. How is she already on the E’s? I guess I could say “present” instead of “here.” But Jesus, that seems pretentious. You can always tell who the know-it-alls of the class are going to be when they say “present” during roll call on the first day of class. “Fitzpatrick, Colleen.” The names were coming faster now. Jelly Bean had found her stride. The redness in my ears spread to my cheeks. I felt feverish. “Goldberg, Samuel.” There had to be some perfect solution to this seemingly unsolvable problem. There just had to be. I filed through my memory bank searching for how I’d said “here” in the past. I was coming up empty. I must’ve said it before! How could I possibly have gotten through twelve years of primary and secondary school and three years of college without saying “here” during roll call? Was I mute and I had simply forgotten? Did all of my teachers and professors have me wear a nametag? How could I have done this before and not remembered? “Hanson, Rebecca.” I listened to how Hanson, Rebecca said it. She sounded fine! Like a functional, human adult. She had clearly said “here” during roll call hundreds of times before. There was no other explanation. She was a fucking natural. “Jackson, Melissa.” My heart pounded. J?! We were just on Hanson! Where had the “I” last names gone? Not one single person whose last name began with an “I” wanted to take this damn literature class? I was furious with every person I’d ever met whose last name began with an “I.” “Kessler, John.” I was next. I was sure I was going to make a fool of myself. Poor Professor Jelly Bean. I’d been so hard on her maroon outfit. I was sure she’d put a lot of effort into her first day of school outfit and I’d torn her apart just like this class was about to tear me apart for freezing when she called my name. I prepared for the inevitable death by embarrassment. “Lombardi, Carson.” My time had come. “Here!” I said, in a miraculously normal pitched, normal volume voice, to which Professor Jelly Bean responded, “Wow, what a cool name! I thought you were going to be a boy.” I hadn’t even thought of that scenario.
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A POSITIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT Hannah Dolan
The walls are so fucking beige. Not white, or eggshell, or whatever. I think beige may be the color of depression. So let’s go to Michael’s after school, and get the brightest colors we can find. (The kind used in rooms for kids with race car beds.) You pile the cans high in your arms, and we stumble back to the fluorescent room with those goddamn beige walls. We plunk our hands into the open paint cans and fingerpaint our distorted thoughts on the wall. You and I spend time together quite a bit, but even the things we didn’t know about each other are spread across the wall, bigger than we are, brighter than our eyes. The clarity of our disposition is blinding. I am looking at the wall and you are looking at me. Our shoes are off, and our thoughts are still painted on our hands.
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QUESTIONS
Sharon Chudnow If we take our own pictures, are we stealing our own souls? Were there dinosaurs on Noah’s ark? What does space (not Space) look like when its surrounding objects aren’t there to define it? Did toxic plants have complicated childhoods? Do clouds display their shapes like a cumulous talent show? Does the best cloud win a prize? Do the walls yearn to answer when we ask rhetorical questions? Do some people have more hearts to give than others? Does crossing the international date line count as time travel? Does the sun get tired of his job? And will the moon take over if he did? Can a hummingbird still its wings? Will there ever be more answers than questions?
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THANKS MA
Solange Luftman Look in the mirror. Show me those teeth. Smile. That’s the first thing people notice, you know. Comb that Tarzan hair. If you just try harder everyone will invite you into their clubhouses. Remember to wipe the oil off your forehead or they’ll think you’re a slob. Why haven’t you come to church in a while? Is it because your dresses are too tight? If you slimmed down boys would look at you. Why don’t you have a cigarette? They help to curb appetite. Stop crying and splash some water on your face. Honey, I only say these things because I care.
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THIS IS A POEM WHERE I OVERREACT TO LAUNDRY ETIQUETTE Nick Rizzuti
Six hollow astronaut faces in a perfect row stare blankly at the opposite wall. I stew in their impotent dreams of leaving the atmosphere, and in the smell of dryer sheets for maybe five or six minutes, but the tensile strength of my courtesy is only so high and in the end, I remove several sodden pairs of jeans from machine #5 and place them on top of machine #3 in a clammy heap, thus securing my place in hell. When my roommates turn on the fluorescent lights, my eyes vomit and my bones shift out of place. It’s almost imperceptible; just some sense of atmosphere changing; Imagine being parmesan if the sky were a cheese grater (which I’m not convinced it isn’t). In hell, all there is to do is chant dramatically in fake Latin, on the off chance someone in a Disney movie somewhere is rising to power. I rise to power in the sense that now I can walk from point A to point B and only rarely get seized by mind warping terror. Did you know there are ghosts mere millimeters away from your skin at all times, but they cannot quite enter your body? I do not know what the source is of the scraping noise that plagues the kitchen. All I know is that in 7 minutes I will go downstairs to find my clothes in a clammy heap on top of machine #3 and, as the Ferris wheel continues to spin, you are locked in next to me whether you realize it or not.
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ANYTHING
Amanda Palomino I break the wicks off of candles as an excuse to force you near– a frozen, leather bound book, a roadmap through the caverns of your past. I guess it’s because you try walking through window screens, puddles of blood filling your galoshes– a tell tale sign of all the hearts you’ve ripped from corpses. I leave on the kitchen lights, begging you to come home, a parrot saying, “I can fix you. I can fix you. I can fix you.” Let me fix you– a surgeon to set your bones, a manifesto that promises forever, and the Nile to wash away your fears.
“Cat Eyes” Robin Deering 42
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SONGS FOR NO ONE Regina Volpe
I’ve always made playlists for no reason in particular. Compilations of songs that I was feeling that day, no thought or rhyme or reason; just songs. Then you came along. The girl who never sang in the car or the shower or alone in her bedroom in the middle of the night. One time I asked if you were a robot, so you told me to give you something to sing about. Now I was determined (and maybe a bit in love). I needed to cultivate the most perfect mix of songs known to man. Which song says, “I’d like to hold your hand sometimes” best? Is “Skinny Love” too obvious? Will including One Direction make me lose my cool, hip exterior? I spent hours slaving over a hot laptop; and when that final mix popped out of my disk drive, hot from various songs being burned into the memory, I slipped it into the homemade sleeve (which I also put too much time into) and tried to not remake it for the fifth time. I gave you the mixtape for your birthday, slipped into a DVD case that you let me borrow, while we sat in front of our lockers. I was screaming inside when you opened it, but still managed to maintain my hip exterior. I was definitely in love when you tucked the tracklist back inside and said, “I want it to be a surprise.” A couple months later, I think we went on a date. When you picked me up, you held my hand and sang along to the CD I made you the whole trip.
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ANOTHER NIGHTMARE
Stephanie Kostopoulos I was among them in the streets.
We were splashed with color, marching triumphantly. Some of us shook and cried. Some of us bowed our heads. I stood still. But we all looked up when we saw the man. He was our man. He got us here. He will get us back. We looked to him for the way home. He pulled out his gun. “Rape, kill, conquer, pillage! Shoot this car. Bomb this village!” Some of us shook and cried. Some of us bowed our heads. I stood still. Many of us raised our hands. He raised his gun. I stood still. We did not move until he shot us down. I walked home over the dead and felt ashamed. I’m still here.
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TIME IS STILL Zachary Johnson
Soft glow, dancing light Twirling mask of smoke and light, held, short Like a baton Night air is cool, night air is soft Flashing lights like distant memories Setting suns like the beginning of time Here and now Time is still We’re not made to live forever She says Not knowing, not possibly knowing What that means Curtains drawn to fuller possibilities Using cloth to block the thought of the rising sun The night air is soft and cool and his name echoes through my head Reminding me that memories are so much stronger when they are forgotten And life is best when time is still Here and now Cooling breeze that parts the eavesdropping trees I live under orange streetlamps I live under cloudless skies I live in plumes of smoke and conversation With bated breath to catch another sigh Car rides late at night, in the backseat Car rides later at night, in the front seat Midnight cigarettes and talks Talks about the boys Talks about the stars Talks about the future, looming and distant like the calm before the storm, Like a weather forecast not yet fully certain Like the one blue streetlamp among the sea of many orange waves Life is not a metaphor But if I try hard enough, it can be And that makes all the difference
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TIME AWOKE FOR ME Lacia Japp
At the beginning of the beginning I slept well. We slept together, Time and I. We slept together doing nothing, nothing secretive, or perverse. Everything was clean in the days that came before days, and nothing disturbed our sleep. I lounged in comfort, and curled up tightly. I encompassed Time and let him engulf me as we merged along every dimension and our limbs tangled interchangeably. Time and I were one heart, one mind, one being. It was impossible to be lonely immersed in Time’s embrace, not talking but just enjoying each other’s company. We were too wrapped up in each other for anything else to exist; nothing mattered. Time and I slept as one. I may have slept with my eyes open, or I might have slept with them closed. Whichever the case may have been, I’m simply trying to say that I was blind to everything except the joy that was our proximity, and sleep. If I had opened my eyes in my younger days I couldn’t have seen past my Time. If Time had opened his eyes he certainly wouldn’t have been able to look beyond the Space he had claimed. There was nothing else to see but each other. Time and I shared one perspective back then, and we both agreed there was nothing to see. It was dark. Not a lamp post, nor a flaming torch, nor a
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flitting firefly disturbed the blackness we slept swaddled in. That’s why he can’t remember, and neither can I if we snored with eyes open or closed. The other details, I am afraid, have been distorted. Time and I’d perspectives vary on how the tale unfolded, and how everything that was, and is now, came spilling out. I think the original story has gotten somewhat muddled over Time’s constant retelling. He wrote that in the beginning there was the Word, but he forgets much, so I endlessly need to fill in where the gaps open up. Despite prior claims the first word was not the Word. It was two words. They were not the best or brightest words, but they were a they. I said them actually, so I should know. “I’m cold.” I whispered into the ear that rested just on my lips. I will admit that this was a petty complaint to be the first words in existence, but Time didn’t judge me because this was the first time I had voiced my feelings. This was the first time I had voiced anything. It was cold though. We’d both neglected to notice before. There were no blistering suns, no roaring woodstoves, no sputtery hairdryers: nothing to provide heat that I could imagine. Up until this point Time’s embrace had shielded me from freezing, but
for some reason, he’d chosen that very second to start stretching. His straying exposed my big toe to the icy vacuum of our surroundings. Once Time decided to move, comfort was forgotten, a past idea I only hoped to be able to fathom again. His remorse came through though, with his disruption of our sanctuary. He chivalrously offered, “Poor Space. Let me see if I can find a blanket for my girl.” Time shifted again, pulling further away from our comfortable huddle, his movements gliding with more and more ease. He changed position and my choice was none but to unfold from the tiny knot we had condensed ourselves into. I was smaller back then, but I still suffer with the same issue of an ever expanding waistline. Once we began unspooling he probable realized there were a lot more curves to me. Time was a lot taller than I had previously thought. He stretched all the way to the fourth dimension, while I only reached the third. That gap between us grew colder the more distance that we allowed to come between us. The cold that encompassed me drew me to beg for Time’s embrace again, but he was not to condense again, he was not to be stopped.
“No. You wanted a blanket and I intend to find one. But it’s too dark to see anything. Let there please be a light around here somewhere?” I said the first words, but the famous ones are a paraphrasing of Time’s. Then he discovered the switch. Sudden brightness made us flinch! Time stumbled onto another switch, then another. Dirt shot up beneath our feet. What a joy creation was. High school teachers came, then sliced bread, then all those other things with which we acknowledge as existing alongside our own existence. Time began to rush around, exploring everything like a toddler on Christmas. I still wanted him to come back and sleep, but after that moment he wouldn’t settle down. We still lay together occasionally in the blanket that he finally found, made of fabric of his own creation. I still love him, but the universe provides constant distraction. I don’t sleep as well as when we were entangled in each other, no evidence of separation. I don’t sleep as well as I used to, the ache of his absence a pang in my side. I used to sleep better, at the beginning of the beginning, when it was just Time and I.
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THE BIG BANG (BOSTON) Sarah Robbins
Sometimes people tend to die and nobody can quite say why. The scientists say that it’s their time, and the Catholics say that God is divine. The medical lists go on and on, but the Jews aren’t amused by the noxious fumes, and some say it’s the people not the guns. Some fear that the terrorists have won, and some don’t know what to do. Some, who are like me and you just kind of float along until the universe is standing still, and just kind of wait to fall apart, so we can go back to the start.
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“The Laureate” Allison Wolf
BEING AS A SHARK Hannah Dolan
Few things make me feel more helpless than unpacking. Dressers close, bookshelves fill, a new bed is made, and I am stuck. There’s a hole in my bedroom floor that grows deeper the longer I stay. Gradually the floor starts to cave and the feet of my bed sink in, as I lay on top of it, being unable to stop the sinking. I pretend that the walls don’t remind me of drowning. Through the window I can see the building across the street. I can see the rows of rooms just like mine. White, thick walls are covered with posters and paper— anything to block out their indifferent blankness. I see people lounging on their beds just like me, oblivious to the deep holes they have made for themselves there. I worry that if I stay too long I will fall into this hole of my own, so I get in my car and drive, my mind filling with directions and stop lights, with the strain of remaining still occupying only the dusty corners. FALL 2015
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SHORT WALK FROM THE HIGHWAY Josh Wilson
Supernovae line the mystery that blankets the night sky. They are small electric bursts, shooting from poles. The roar of 1:46 AM is unlike any other, faint sounds of spinning wheels, quiet bustle of generators, light chirps, easy breezes, much louder than the silent screams that surround you during the day. They are desperate cries for intelligence masked behind the idea of self. But I see through them and they do not distract. The promise of death, the love that night brings, is loud enough to draw me from my path to the highway.
“Paris Nights� Amanda Palomino
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LUMIÈRE
Jacqueline Hsu I’ll keep you in the corner of my memory. The sound of your wild laughter, the softness of your hands, and your voice in my head as I cried to the sea of the way the wind tussled your untamed hair. The shore breeze, breathing you in. Your arpeggios filling, the hollowness, the quiet space pulling me in, to your melody. Your tenderness as you placed your fingertips on the edges of her charcoal drawing, drawing in the sails to your light, to your safety. Your smile remains casually sweet. So I’ll keep you, tucked, in the back of my memory FALL 2015
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LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (FOR OPHELIA) Hebah Uddin
her family has a penchant for eavesdropping heavy tapestries are best (dark dim dusty unicorns resting in unsullied laps he had asked to rest his head on her knee just the once she still wondered if should she press back his golden forelock there’d be a stub of a shaved horn if unicorns lost their magic and perfect princes lost their minds because of that artless theft) the water does not give the way cloth does the petals are musty and wilting and dull against her cheeks but underneath the ripples voices join in with her song and their secrets are richer and sweeter than those that ultimately killed fathers and dethroned kings
“A Poet” Kirsten Rickershauser
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COAST TO COAST
Aaron Burger
Does time fly? First class or coach? Or maybe in the cargo hold, where it tries its hardest not to freeze? Or, maybe, does it nap or drink coffee in the cockpit, on autopilot, no thoughts? Why even think (while we sit in the cabin and count the clouds) while it just warms its wires? How much water makes one cloud? Time would make a much better sailor, soaking up spray with me by its side. Then I needn’t blame myself as it sails on by.
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KURT VONNEGUT’S ROCKING CHAIR Amelia Beckerman
You’re not sure when you first met her, but she tells you it was at the used bookstore on Main Street. She says that she was reading Kurt Vonnegut in a wing-back chair and you walked over and offered to buy her the book if she wanted to read it someplace more comfortable. You’re pretty sure you’ve never been to any used bookstore, especially not one so far away from your house, but she insists. You think you first met her at the liquor store on Route 1, but you never say it. Sometimes, when you’re at parties and she tells the story of how after your first fight you threw rocks at her window and played her favorite Beatles song on your guitar, you want to remind her that you were born tone deaf. Instead, you add the part about how her neighbor opened his window and told you to “bring Woodstock somewhere else.” For your 17 month anniversary, you take her out yard sale hunting for the new apartment she bought for the both of you. You don’t tell her, but you’re really hoping to find an antique ring that already has love worn into it. She finds a dresser at a flea market that she says will go well in the guest bedroom even though none of your guests are young enough to want a blue dresser with clouds painted on. While looking for a chair for the living room, she finds a green wing-back rocker and launches into the story of how you first met until the owner of the chair offers to lower the price because you’re such a perfect couple. At one estate sale, she picks out a cradle that she insists she needs to get for her friend Debby’s 54
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baby shower. You can’t remember a Debby. When you say this, she looks at you a little guiltily and asks if you remember the time you two talked about having three children and naming them after Saints even though neither of you are particularly religious. You say that you do. She beams and throws her arms around your neck and she reminds you of that scene in her favorite movie where all the characters are at prom and the right people end up dancing with each other and even the teachers get paired off and no one gets left out. You tell her you’ve never been this happy, even though you’re pretty sure you were this happy when you made the basketball team in the ninth grade but you don’t say that because that’s just not the kind of thing you’re supposed to say when your girlfriend of 17 months tells you that she’s carrying your unborn child. To celebrate, she makes reservations at the only okay restaurant in town for you, her, her parents, your parents, and a group of her closest friends. When you get home from shopping, she looks very tired so you tuck her into bed like your mom did when you were sick and you tell her how much you love her and you promise to wake her up in time for the festivities. While she’s asleep, you carry the dresser and rocking chair and cradle from the car to the extra room. Then you get a beer from the fridge and sit on the floor and try to list all the Saints you know the names of. Half an hour before you have to leave
for the okay restaurant, you knock on the bedroom door, but she doesn’t answer so you turn the knob and look inside. You don’t see her head on her pillow but you walk up to the bed anyway and pull back the covers on her side and instead of her all you see is a blob of red on your blue sheets. You knock on the bathroom door and ask if she’s okay and she says that she’s just curling her hair. Her voice reminds you of that time when your mom asked you if you liked visiting your grandparents’ house and you said that it was your favorite place in the whole world and then she started sending you there more. You find the extra set of sheets in the coat closet and you replace the blue and red with a dull grey and you carry the dresser and rocker and cradle down the stairs and leave them by the dumpster at the back of your new apartment complex. When you come back upstairs, she’s dressed in the same purple dress she was wearing when you took her to meet your parents for the first time and her hair is perfectly curled and you tell her she looks beautiful even though she doesn’t. When you get to the only okay restaurant in town her best friend asks her how far along she is and she says six weeks and lets her friends and her parents and your parents put their hands on her empty stomach and her dad asks if you’re going to teach your kid how to play the guitar and you say you will and then you say that your kid is going to bring Woodstock back and everyone laughs.
“Reminder” Eric Crocombe FALL 2015
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FUTURE TALK Elly Belle
So by now I’m getting good at making small talk and brushing the stupid deep questions into the sleeping bag of myself where the heavy boots and burning buildings full of midnight thoughts can be laid to rest. So by now when I talk to a boy who thinks me maybe funny who sees me maybe light laugh and easy breathing, I don’t want to disappoint the wardrobe of my best disguises. So I keep quiet even though I know I do not like the way I measure myself by how much of myself I can keep hidden, but don’t we all sometimes? So the boy breaks the silence I was swimming so comfortably in, while I try to focus on the way the moon has undressed itself for my benefit, to let me know I am not the only vulnerable thing. And this boy says when he gets high he thinks of how terrifying the future is, that one day, everything will be robots and rubbish– we won’t have use for mouths that have told stories for so long. Or hands that make bricks and firewood and bind books. That mend and destroy. The machines will do it for us. And we will watch as the world burns bright with the flames we thought would keep us warm but now use us for fuel and entertainment. And I don’t know what he means. Because I am terrified of the future too, but when I say this, I am talking about the past. Because someone once told me the things we fear most have already happened to us.
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And honestly I’ve never been fucked over by a robot. But I have been broken by people. And I have loved myself dry, poemed the life out of these palms for those who don’t give a damn, have already been the green light for too many Gatsby’s who never knew me as anything but a Daisy daydream, have given up too many parts of myself simply because I do not like puzzles and I don’t know if the pieces I have make a very good picture in the first place. So when I tell this boy I am terrified of the future I don’t mean I’m scared my hands might someday be useless because of metal that might mold something better than me. I am terrified simply of the things I have already done to myself, the people I have been and do not want to be again. And maybe I know what skinned knees and a mouth full of gravel feel like more often than you and have begun to think this is what love tastes like so in the future when I detect blood and a swollen tongue, again I will think it is supposed to be like this, I know life is a circle I tell him, so yeah, I’m terrified of the future, which is to say I am terrified I will always try to ride the two wheeler before I’ve mastered the safety wheels. Which is to say I may always be the person I’ve been, which is to say I may never get to hold hands with the girl on the Brooklyn bridge in front of everyone, which is to say I may never get the shards of you out of every old phrase we overused, which is to say someday I do not want to measure myself by what I can keep hidden, someday— if the future has more right to be terrified of me than I of it, I will not keep any of this hidden. Someday, the future will no longer be what we thought it was. FALL 2015
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Disclaimer Font exclusively features the work of Hofstra University students. No personal preferences were taken into account in the selection of material for publication in this magazine. Each staff member reviewed and ranked submissions individually using a scale system of one to five (1-5). Submissions with the highest average group rating were chosen as space allowed.
Font Literary and Arts Magazine. Volume 3, Spring 2015. Hofstra University. Copyright 2015 Font Literature and Art. All artwork and literature contained in this publication are copyright 2015 to their respective creators. The ideas and opinions expressed within belong to the respective authors and artists and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors, Hofstra University administrators, or the Hofstra community. Any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. None of the contents of this publication may be reprinted without the permission of the individual authors or artists. PRINTED IN USA
A PRODUCTION OF THE HOFSTRA ENGLISH SOCIETY