LITERARY AND ARTS MAGAZINE Volume 10 Fall 2018
LITERARY AND ARTS MAGAZINE Volume 10 Fall 2018 A Production of the Hofstra English Society
CONTENT WARNING:
Some pieces featured in Font may be upsetting for certain audiences.
HOFSTRA ENGLISH SOCIETY 203 Student Center Hofstra University Hempstead, NY 11549 hofenglishsociety@gmail.com facebook.com/hofstraenglishsociety twitter.com/hofengsoc instagram.com/hofenglishsociety issuu.com/hofstraenglishsociety Cover art: “Chipped Away,” Katie O’Keefe
STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
MANAGING EDITOR
DESIGN EDITOR
Amelia Beckerman
Erinn Slanina
HEAD COPY EDITOR
Regina Volpe
ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR
Hannah Aronowitz
Kira Turetzky
COPY EDITORS Olivia DeFiore
Claire Feasey
Hannah Matuszak
Sam Whitman
Melanie Yunes
GENERAL STAFF Jessica Bajorek
Sabrina Josephson
Amarys Roden
Alysia Boodram
Rebecca Kaiser
Lauren Sager
Victoria Carrubba
Grete Kraus
Madeleine Skelly
Julia Coyle
Kira Kusakavitch
Caitlyn Snell
Emily Ewing
Ryan Malloy
Brooke Sokoloski
Rachel Farina
Aly Minkoff
Imola Toth
Praise Flowers
Catie Pfeiffer
Olivia Wisse
Cecilia Gray
Emily Provost
Rachel Wright
Isabelle Jensen
Sarah Robbins
Shawna Zeisner
SPECIAL THANKS
Craig Rustici Melanie Rainone Denise Campos Hofstra University English Department
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF There’s a lot to be said about how important literature, poetry, and art are in today’s social and political environment, but I’m not really here to say it. If you picked up this magazine, I assume that there’s a part of you that cares about words, that wants to see them arranged in a new and interesting and possibly meaningful way. These words belong to you now. I hope you read them, carry them in your jacket pocket, whisper them to your pets, share them with your stepmom, incorporate them into your R.E.M. cycle, and, most of all, enjoy them. Every semester, I’m completely dumbfounded by the amazing work that comes out of young people on this campus. We have so much to say and sometimes nowhere to say it. If Font can be a platform for just one student to share something they would not have otherwise, I think we’re succeeding. I want to thank every student that submitted to the magazine and I urge you to continue to submit throughout your time at Hofstra. Your words matter and we want to hear them. I also want to thank everyone who worked on the magazine, especially our editorial and design team who poured a lot of time and effort into creating something we can all be proud of. To my entire Hofstra English Society family, I love you so much. I am so incomprehensibly sad to be leaving. You took me in three years ago, built me a home, and told me I had something to say, maybe even a beautiful way to say it, and that if I moved that one comma it really would make more sense. Amelia Beckerman, Editor-in-Chief, Font
CONTENTS venn diagram punnett squares Airheads Cesaria An Ode to Karl Best Market Parking Lot A Road Trip Its Name Is Yakhibahba Dancing Bones Night Parade Wind Star Spell No. 73 The Stag Wisp Pete Cloudy I Understand If You Don’t Alphabet Soup r.e.m. cycle Still Life While Reading Had Stomach Ache Tea Time Come to Be If We Bite Roxie We Slept Together RE:Why Did You Fuck Everything Up Let My People Go (to the bathroom) You Know Who You Are Dylan More Meat Buddy Cianci Is Dead Ouch Shells
10 11 12 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 18 19 19 20 22 22 23 24 26 28 29 30 31 31 32 33 33 34 35 36 37 38 42 43 44
Hannah Aronowitz Regina Volpe Audra Nemirow Riley Katie Krahulik Hannah Aronowitz Caleb Frank Kira Turetzky Robin Deering Praise Flowers Riley Riley Robin Deering Jessica Bajorek Helen Porskova Hannah Aronowitz Hannah Matuszak Joseph Sammartano Olivia DeFiore R. Carlin Victoria Jenkins Peter Soucy Claire Helena Feasey Katie O’Keefe Jordie Lynn Everett Gabrielle Fallon Kat Anderson Sarah Robbins Laurence Plonsky Ellia Prusko Robin Deering Kira Turetzky Sarah Robbins Victoria Jenkins Amelia Beckerman
Katie O’Keefe Regina Volpe Shawna Zeisner Kira Turetzky daniel avery Olivia DeFiore Victoria Jenkins Martha Morton Caleb Frank Katie O’Keefe Sharon Rus Samantha Storms Peter Soucy Katie O’Keefe Hannah Matuszak Isabelle Jenson Rachel C. Farina Sharon Rus Kat Anderson Robin Deering Claire Helena Feasey Kira Turetzky A.R Sheppard Amelia Beckerman Peter Soucy Hannah Matuszak Hannah Matuszak R. Carlin Amelia Beckerman Sarah Robbins Hannah Matuszak Rachel C. Farina Hannah Aronowitz Donovan Harvey Peter Soucy Olivia DeFiore
47 47 48 49 50 50 51 51 52 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 62 64 65 65 66 67 67 68 69 70 71 72 72 73 74 74 75 75 76 77
Ephemeral dead bugs Drowning Re-design a ritual for self-love Fantastical Tree Square I Keep Needing to Write About Those Candles Dear God, I think I Got A Faulty Body... Independence Day Love in the Middle East? Honey Golden-Manteled Ground Squirrel Prayer of a Lasped Catholoic Sagrada When you give a Lesbian a Look For Love Rose of Sharon Girls Like You Sunflower Girl Road Trip #12 Emergency Exit In Case of Emergency What My Body Tells Me Idaho Is On Fire Lakeshore in a Jar Sentinel gaea The Sun Elegy for Yiddish Blocks First World Problems The Costume Montage from Spider-Man (2002) Bicyclist at Sunrise Fruit Gateway
CONTENTS
VENN DIAGRAM
Hannah Aronowitz okay it’s just one circle and then another circle no no they have to overlap no they have to overlap in the middle ok okay two circles make them make them overlap what are you doing no no that’s not right they aren’t they aren’t overlapping
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PUNNETT SQUARES
Regina Volpe
mr. friedlin told me that my curly hair is recessive, the same with how i can do taco tongue and how my earlobes curve up to meet my cheeks instead of melt into them. my mom calls them “her ears,” and tells me i’m lucky i got them in the gene split. same with my “dad’s skin” that doesn’t blister and redden in the sun like my siblings’. i think the gene in charge of that got lost and ended up with my curls— it’s dark during meiosis after all. i don’t know where else the red tint in the summertime could come from. if mysticism is an inheritable trait i got it from my mother, when she showed me all three of our natal charts, etched with ballpoint pen on tattered yellow legal paper that she crafted between dazed diaper changes; marked by coffee or baby spittle or gerber’s mushed peas. she keeps them in the fireproof just-in-case suitcase under her bed along with our birth certificates and the paper-bound books we made in library class. i have to remind my father of his star sign. i have my mother’s face but my father’s horoscope. she told me once, you’re a leo just like daddy i just hope you haven’t inherited his pride. i don’t know if the law of dominance works with the stars, but i do know that i have a stubborn streak in me and have a tendency to let my problems fester which is normal for leo and aquarius alike. maybe those are recessive too, mr. friedlin didn’t tell me that in the seventh grade.
FALL 2018 11
AIRHEADS
Audra Nemirow Most men are full of air. Gruesome balloons! Their hot heads conduct electricity; Somehow they stick, but they bore Me to a crisp; My mind is frazzled. Listen to them wheezing, shrinking Into flat rubbers, little sacks of nothing.
“Cesaria,” Riley 12 FONT MAGAZINE
AN ODE TO KARL Katie Krahulik
Covered in wires and I’m plugged in. Tie my shoes tight to keep me grounded and I’m surrounded by Beards in a Marx conference. They grin. Say we cannot trust the system and to just trust him. Talk me out of talking points. We’re no better than the capital. No better than the noise, boys. Fires in the bellies of the beast, Circus ring of profit freaks. We’re all set to watch them flip their coins. Being here is killing me. How the fuck can I claim what I breed. It’s a middle-class trap, no crawling off the map. Next day’s near and the best day’s gone. Fight the fire with just one arm. You live above it and I live below. We all die to know. A bit of nothing will set me free. I’m not looking for reasons to owe, Just reasons to go. Find my head in a cloud of these. I won’t let my heart compete. Is there value in a world that’s a little let gold and a little less mean?
FALL 2018 13
BEST MARKET PARKING LOT Hannah Aronowitz
I am beginning to panic on Hempstead Turnpike. My breaths come and go abruptly. In a cassette player endlessly skipping and pausing and rewinding and stopping and going and skipping. Buttons tug-of-warring the rope of my filmy guts. Ira Glass discussing the lasting psychological impact of going blind in adulthood through a single auxiliary cable because cars don’t have cassette mouths anymore and because they don’t put Ira Glass on tape, I don’t think. Through the devil machine, Ira tells me to calmly and carefully and cautiously pull over or into a place with less commotion. I do this. Put the car in park. Turn the low beams off. Rest your head against the steering wheel and look at those grocery carts. I do this too. Ira soon returns to the matter at hand.
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A ROAD TRIP Caleb Frank
do you remember the morning you came down the stairs on new year’s day where you had set up two futons and we were curled up in only one do you remember the immediate shove apart when you coughed from the staircase on opposite sides of the futon like two magnets of the same polarity do you remember the sound of her voice suddenly sharp and pitchy trying to explain the it’s cold the other futon is less comfortable we wanted to share blankets we were half asleep i didn’t even realize do you remember nodding your head glassy eyed as if you never even saw us at all and calling “be ready for church” on your way up the stairs even now i wonder if your wife or the twins or if maybe even you ever spotted us parked in your driveway until 4am or kissing on your couch before we had even opened netflix or brushing our pinkies for a moment too long in your kitchen or when i was pressing kisses to her neck by the christmas tree calmly almost quietly while your whole family was praying at the dinner table i’ve heard you tell the whole town i’m sent from hell and you might be right but if i came from hell your daughter drove me out in her own honda civic FALL 2018 15
ITS NAME IS YAKHIBAHBA Kira Turetzky
An Eldritch monster lives in your kitchen sink disposal. This was a discovery made after dropping your ring down the sink while doing dishes. With as much determination as one can muster when about to touch damp, soggy food, you ventured into the dark depths of the disposal with searching fingers. You gag but brave the waste, hoping that your fingers can find the ring somewhere in the drain. It is not until you are up to your elbow in the disposal that you are aware of the depths to which you are probing. You frown and reach further into the drain, hoping that the ring is lying just out of reach. You’re nearly halfway to your shoulder before your finger touches something smooth and hard. But it isn’t the ring. It is far too long, sharp, and curved to be your ring. With a feeling of both horror and dread you realize that what you are touching is a tooth, and that you have unceremoniously stuck your whole arm into someone’s–or something’s–mouth. You attempt to pull your arm free from the drain, but one tooth suddenly becomes many and you can feel them scraping along your skin, threatening to bite. You pause hoping that if you remain still you will be allowed to leave with your life and your arm. The teeth press harder against your arm and you give a shout of surprise. “I’m terribly sorry,” you apologize and brace your free arm against the rim of the sink. “Really, awfully sorry. If I may please have my arm back––” The sink grumbles, or perhaps it growls (you’ve never heard a sink make noises quite like this before) and it relents, if only a little. Your arm is still very definitely trapped in the maw of whatever beast lays within the pipes, but it is no longer biting you. There is a moment of quiet, as if the thing is pondering. I will bargain with you. The voice simultaneously sounds as if it is being spoken aloud and in your head; the resulting sensation makes you nauseous. Your ring, I will keep. Your arm, you will keep. It doesn’t sound much like a bargain, but you’d rather your arm than the ring. “Yes, okay, you can keep the ring.” Your words rush out of your mouth as fast as they come into your head and soon you’re pulling your arm free of the sink drain. You fear that you will never do dishes again. After thoroughly toweling off your arm, you peer into the disposal, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever beast has taken up residence there. “How did you get in there?”
I have been here for many years. “This house was built in the 20s.”
Longer than that.
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You frown, but it seems better to take it as truth. The alternative is rather armless. “Do you have a name?” It seems rude not to ask a guest their name–or are you the guest in the residence of this old being? The thing says something in a tongue that you have never heard nor that you can comprehend. The familiar feeling of sickness washes over you and you lean against the counter for a moment. Holding a hand to your head you look warily at the disposal. “I beg your pardon?” It contemplates again. Perhaps you cannot understand this ancient language. In your tongue, I suppose the equivalent would be….Yakhibahba. The name sends shivers down your spine. And your name? You offer your name to Yakhibahba and the thing rumbles in response. “Should I refer to you by anything else?” you ask. You may call me Yakhibahba. “Well, I mean, would you prefer ‘he’ or ‘she’ or…?”
Yakhibahba will suffice.
“Dancing Bones,” Robin Deering FALL 2018 17
NIGHT PARADE Praise Flowers
The midnight sky created a canopy over me. The warm moonlight glow illuminating my face. I treaded the path meticulously, my breathing syncing to the symphony of the night critters. I waved to the last of the fireflies flashing their goodbyes as they dance into the camouflage of tomorrow’s morning light. I lowered myself to the forest’s evergreen carpet; the smell of stale pine circling around me. My body sways with the salsa of delicate branches as they shuffle to the beat of the cricket chirps. The wind bellowed encores sending thrills up my spine. I laughed, allowing my fears to be carried away on a passing breeze.
“Wind,” Riley 18 FONT MAGAZINE
“Star,” Riley
SPELL NO. 73 Robin Deering
Slice of moon and sprig of night Give me power to curse this flight Show him the evil in his eyes And give me solace before I die Pinch of stardust from above To rid me of this silly love Please shake the men who try to touch And free me from the devil’s clutch
FALL 2018 19
THE STAG
Jessica Bajorek Hope is a stag I thought I’d shot dead long ago I met him first by the broad-trunked oak A flash of bright bottle green Jagged enough to cut my working fingers As I carved out my worship Marring brown-barked skin My feet trod deeper through the browning pine needles And the fallen leaves slick with the memory of rainfall The branches here were full enough to block my vision from the sun Casting their tall shadows across my muddied boots There’s some quiet solitude in the dark of the forest I felt its hands on me Slippery fingers tugging at checkered blue and black flannel Struggling but never quite gaining purchase against my skin This is where he lives in his shallow cave Feeling unusually brave I padded to the threshold between gnarled roots Planting my palms facedown on the damp earth I lowered myself until my thighs were level with the ground And peered into the black pit I felt his timid eyes tracing over me And when he tilted his head I extended a gentle hand Coaxing him to the calm of the circle clearing He tested his legs and ducked his head So his antlers would not catch on the thick vines Finally steadied, I saw him for what he was Tall and brilliant and unwavering He would not run from me
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And I almost felt it This silver flash of guilt Lancing a slow abrasion over my left atrium As my right hand reached behind my shoulder Feeling the polished wood against callused fingertips Was familiar Was it comfort or cowardice That guided the first shaft to its carefully whittled notch? The whistle of sandpaper wind Found its destination in the tuft of moonlight pelt That kissed the intersection of fierce legs and barreling torso I tried to forget the pulsating whimpers that escaped between clenched teeth I’ve tried to bury the way his amber eyes denounced me In the hands that covered my face Unable to regard the destruction of innocence in my wake Blood drawing out in scrying ponds darker than the caked dirt I never returned to where the light bled from the woods He drags his once-graceful body from the shelter of the trees Employing a heaving effort and strained breathing I see the mark Now a faint red puncture Where I had turned reverence into malice His eyes lift to mine I see him now for what he is As I pass by the upturned Lips of a stranger FALL 2018 21
WISP
Helen Porskova The lights flashing from the ceiling, casting long, slender fingers across the wallpaper that reach out to caress me. I have always been fond of ghosts. They have always been indifferent towards me. I spend my childhood trying to catch a wisp, staying up late with a flashlight concealed beneath my pillow. There is something so beautiful in being six years old and seeing the world clothed in darkness.
PETE
Hannah Aronowitz
Balance on the high glass wall, and all the colors will pass through below. They come out the other side in squiggles and polka dots and zigzags, but they are too bright, too loud. Don’t look at them. The path is clear ahead. This is a careful teeter-totter— Get too close and the yellow strings will wrap around your safety goggles and pull you down through the stabbing vivid clouds. The green sun’s glow may be gentle and faint, but inside are a million glittering diamonds, reflecting and sending the rays to bounce against the lobes of your brain. Up here the air is soft and pale. It never changes. These console buttons are transparent, revealing the machinery beneath. Every wire connects; each line meets its vertex.
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“Cloudy,” Hannah Matuszak
FALL 2018 23
I UNDERSTAND IF YOU DON’T Joseph Sammartano
This is a sensational poem. I take specific words and order them in a specific way And you feel things Because you are touched By the words. This is a poem because it is not a book. It is not clear what it is about. You have to think about it, and then it is fun when you figure it out. Poems are fun. This may be considered amateur poetry Because there are no allusions to Greek mythology Or to books that other people wrote. If I use those things in my poem, I am a better writer Because I spend more time reading And less creating. Did you see that? I used the word “allusion.” I am educated. If you are educated you know what that word means. But you don’t know which word I’m talking about. Do you? This is a poem that is not very clear. This is something I’ve already said. But I repeat things because I am a good writer.
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I wrote this poem and never crossed out a single word Because I think this poem is perfect just the way it is. I am not going to change a single word. I am a very, very, very bad writer. Can such a bad, bad, bad writer write a good poem? I think this is a good poem. If you think this is a good poem, I appreciate your opinion. If you think this is a bad poem, I appreciate your opinion Because I can disagree with your opinion and also appreciate it. This poem is an emotional roller-coaster. Or it is not. I think it’s more like the teacup ride. I don’t like the teacup ride. It makes me dizzy But it didn’t need to come that far off the ground To make me dizzy. The teacup ride is a sensational ride. It is built in a specific shape and moves in a specific way And you feel dizzy Because you are unaccustomed To the motion. FALL 2018 25
ALPHABET SOUP Olivia DeFiore
The thump of the bowl as it hits the dining table’s scratched wooden surface reverberates through the kitchen, slicing through the silence like a knife through butter. I stare into the familiar red liquid before me, the clusters of noodle letters. Puffs of steam billow up into my face, hot against my skin, yet goose bumps race down my arms in search of warmth. Heart hammering, I push back from the table. My legs wobble as if the floor were shifting beneath my feet while I trudge through the kitchen. Although I keep my head down, I can’t help noticing the all-too-familiar can beside the sink. The red and white can with the smiling cartoon vegetables that I’ve known for so long. Their grins seem sinister, now, almost too happy to be true. My mind floods with images of days spent searching through letters amongst the same vegetables, bowl after bowl, in hopes of forming as many words as possible. I would first find my name, then whatever I had learned about in school that day, then as many Arthur characters as I could think of. I’d keep score on a napkin with my favorite orange crayon, always desperate to surpass my personal best. Mom would have to give me a pat on the shoulder with a soft, “Luke, honey, eat it before it gets cold.” Moments once so comforting now send a sharp pain through my chest. I struggle to swallow through the thick lump in my throat. “Where are you going?” I freeze. My voice is surprisingly cold between my lips as I respond, “I’m going to wash my hands.” What I don’t say is that I haven’t the slightest idea of the bathroom’s location in this foreign place. I nearly ask, mouth opening slightly, before pursing my lips. If he notices, he offers no hints. My throat tightens as I silently assure myself that I don’t need his help. I find the bathroom past the eerily vacant living room that seems to be for anything but living. Lock the door behind me with unsteady fingers. Pump soap into my hands, lather, and rinse. Pump soap into my hands, lather, and rinse. Pump soap into my hands, lather, and rinse. But I can wash my hands only so many times before he senses that I’m stalling. As I resume my seat at the table, I lock eyes with my father through the plume of steam rising from my abandoned bowl. I can tell from the way his lips part, from the crease between his brows that he wants to say something. Before he has the chance, I turn my attention back to the soup. My eyes narrow as they scan the ocean of letters, hoping to find some comfort in the familiar task of forming words. But the same words swirl through my head, ringing like the seemingly endless screech of a car alarm. Want, care, love. Such small words. And yet I can’t seem to find them. “You’d better eat it before it gets cold,” he says through a mouthful of soup. Pauses. “This is the one you like, isn’t it?” The scrape of my spoon as it circles the rim of the bowl is my only reply. The soup has been cold for a long time. I can feel his eyes burrowing into me, but I don’t dare look up. 26 FONT MAGAZINE
With a sigh, he sets down his spoon. “You know, I am trying.” An unexpected wave of rage surges through me in a bout of vertigo. My vision blurs at the edges. I dig my nails into the palm of my hand beneath the table as I say, “I know.” I let out a soft sigh and the tension is released from my body. Perhaps, he is trying. Perhaps, I should try, too. Slowly, I raise a spoonful of soup to my lips. Once so full of flavor, the letters feel rubbery across my tongue and the tomatoes have gone sour. Squeezing my eyes shut, I swallow and drop the spoon back into the bowl. “Luke…” The fragment of composure I was able to find is sucked from me once more with a single word. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from shouting. As if the old nickname will make his feeble words mean anything more. As if he knows anything about me. Finally, I look away from the soup, force myself to hold his gaze. His dark eyes—the eyes that for so long have been absent—are unreadable. My chest aches for my mother’s warm brown gaze, her delicate smile. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” He shakes his head. “If you don’t want to eat, then bring your bowl to the sink.” Immediately, I stand, the bowl hot between my fingers. But, halfway to the sink, I pause as guilt bubbles in my stomach. My iron grip on the bowl loosens by a fraction. He took the time to seek out the red and white can, to make what once was such a special meal. For me. There must be something there, something more behind those onyx eyes than the swirling void of apathy. But as I start back to the table, the bowl slips from my fingers. As though in slow motion, I watch it fall to the floor. In a crash that makes my heart skip a beat, it smashes in a splash of red. Before I’m able to clean it, before I’m able to even open my mouth to apologize, the shouts begin. “God dammit, Lucas!” With trembling hands, I scramble to gather the shattered ceramic pieces as his words echo in my ears. God dammit, Lucas, the smattering of noodles spells back. God dammit, God dammit, Lucas. The jagged edges of the bowl’s remains burrow into my palms. Biting my lip, I watch as droplets of blood fall to the dirt-speckled tile where they mingle with the stain of artificial tomato sauce. Eyes burning, I discard the few pieces I’ve managed to gather. “Lucas…Lucas, I’m sorry.” God dammit, Lucas. Without a word, I abandon the mess and retreat to my room, ignoring hunger as it wraps its bony fingers around my stomach. I don’t dare return to the kitchen until late the following morning. He stands at the sink, as if he knew exactly when I’d decide to come. A deceivingly gentle smile tugs on the corners of his mouth, as if the events of the previous night never occurred. “You must be hungry.” He holds up a red and white can. “Soup?” Pushing past him, I secure another can from the pantry before he can go anywhere near it. “I’ll make it myself.” FALL 2018 27
R.E.M. CYCLE R. Carlin
i haven’t been twitching and kicking in my sleep (i know because i have an app that alerts me of any suspicious sleep activity) so you could say i’m a walking atrophy i am motionless desperately complacent like people who watch medical TV shows but can’t stand the sight of blood and guts so they look away and miss 78% of each storyline; they don’t seem to care but i do i consulted the app so frequently that it keeps crashing as if the universe no longer cares to bargain because the art of negotiating one’s life has died and no one seems to care, but i do i poke around for any nefarious illness or mental disparity, scanned my bones with hypochondriac X-rays and tried to shut up, generally (as you can see it didn’t work) urgency once overpowered any desire to relax i was impatiently prolific agonizing sociopathic at times and hyper pathic at others unbalanced, but
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“Still Life,” Victoria Jenkins i cared and i trembled in sleep twisted and fought and anticipated morning swam toward sunrise with my whole body reaching but that was some time ago when i didn’t need an app to monitor my sleep patterns because i barely slept and it didn’t matter to me anyway if i was healthy or human or other adjectives, i just knew i was and i had to and i was going to be now i am not and i wake up peacefully and i’ve shut up so much i doubt i even snore FALL 2018 29
WHILE READING HAD STOMACH ACHE Peter Soucy
We need a good meth lab in northern Rhode Island. I went to the northern Rhode Island chamber of commerce dinner tonight. Both shakers were filled with pepper. I just kept peppering. Y’all have any friends here? Beacon is parking Saucedog Watson’s car. That isn’t the electrician who goes to USB, right? The one who looks like a potato salad fork? No, this man just used his potato salad fork to grab an ice cube from his wife’s ice water and put it in his red wine. Send some beef my way. Also what is “someday”? Someday is a man with a metal stick poking at trash on the sidewalk. I have a hell of a bluebird. It squeaks a warbling out a rusty throat, sits on a low perch and scans for worms or berries it can gulp down like a broken fax machine. You with the sploosh at the end of the video, I will view it tonight, I promise. It’s a draft of the Sun, lotta energy lotta focus. I will take your word for it, Father Pat! and so do my mom and dad, I think. By think I mean I know. You were walking? Yeah, surveying the masses. Minus the covers, do it again without pants on, use my rig. I can’t. I’m bored until tomorrow. Large or small diaphragm, the bluebird’s song will take the caution out of a wet floor. They want my bird, need that brick. Miss you, bird, leave a tip.
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TEA TIME
Claire Helena Feasey This tea house promises more than it can deliver, so while you bring the barely-caffeinated leaf water to our small table in the corner, I daydream about one day having this tea in a house we share. I don’t like green tea, but we’ve made a pact to stop drinking coffee. I don’t know why, it was your idea. I miss cold-brew, but I gladly give it up to spend time with you in this ethereal netherworld. When I agreed to cut coffee out of my life, I didn’t think about the caffeine headaches or twitching toes. I swear I’m not shaking because of you, but I’m not shaking because of a lack of energy either. I’m shaking because in the back of my mind, I’m always shaking, always worried about the possibility of losing things: my keys, my wallet, my sense of self. So, we sit on velvet floor pillows, legs crossed and fingers wrapped around warm mugs. Who knew that dim lighting and low-fi hip-hop could make my eyes water? No one talks in this herb-scented, fabric-covered room, so we speak in breathy tones, keeping the volume of our conversation hushed. I hope you mistake the quiver in my words for strained whispering, for a lost voice. You ask me how I’ve been dealing with withdrawal. I offer you a smile that hides everything behind my lips and crooked teeth. I tell you it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I lie to your face, in the middle of a tea house that I don’t want to be in, surrounded by a forest of draped curtains and strangers. I lie to you, and as you genuinely smile back, the daydream of our house fades. Green tea under-steeped Whispers and fading dreams Honeysuckle-colored.
“Come to Be,” Katie O’Keefe
FALL 2018 31
IF WE BITE
Jordie Lynn Everett We could stay forever Winding down these paths Holding a picture Of our hands. The scale nearly broken, The breeze full of sand. Where landing Would sink our teeth, We hover complacent With no blood drawn. We talk without looking And wonder if we’ve stared too long. My bound chest beats, Rhythmic, Longing to leap again. My head says slow down. As knuckles knock And red spreads thick You watch me dance past your periphery. We ask the same questions And get no answers. If we bite We tear through fear, Ripping jagged lines In what’s known. If we bite We lose safety. We are open To all in the air that might wish To hurt. We could scream at the pain From the canines and silver, Bleed until we run cold, Sing a song of sorry lies. Hold tight at the blood red strings And draw together As the path narrows ahead. We could dream As we knot off the damage, Never to harm again 32 FONT MAGAZINE
As we work to see suns rise. The picture burns With the warmth of our fingers And the footpath lights up In pink. If we bite We win clarity, Answers To what’s left unasked And all that’s left to say. If we bite we taste silver, Or we taste roses.
“Roxie,” Gabrielle Fallon
WE SLEPT TOGETHER Kat Anderson
He stripped down to his insecurities Leaving stains of “I love you’s” on my bed Lay there and watched me strip Down to my fears Tossing my excuses in the wash And my guard on the floor We slept with no covers on the whole night And we haven’t stayed dressed since
FALL 2018 33
RE: WHY DID YOU FUCK EVERYTHING UP From: sadintern@temporaryemail.com To: yoursuperior@permanentemail.org
To whom it may concern: I understand that when you offered me a beer during happy hour you thought you were being personable, presumably, but it put me in the position of having to explain why I said no, and that’s fucking uncomfortable, and I respect that you meant well, but a lot of people in the past have meant well and for example, I used to tell my sister to just stop being anxious in an attempt to disguise my fear that I had given her my illness, but sometimes when people mean well, they are kind of shitty. The thing is when you told me to go outside the office to dig my own grave, between the cracks of the sidewalk you didn’t give me a shovel and I got very nervous on account of I didn’t want to ask where I could find a shovel but I didn’t know where to find it, I went downstairs to look and instead I ran my fingers over the t-shirts in the boxes thinking that maybe I could slip one under my sweater, thinking I earned this fucking t-shirt and then I went upstairs and emailed you that I have other projects and I’ll have to get to the grave thing another day. I know you asked me to dig the grave that day because the grave digging is very time sensitive on account of we are going to die soon on account of the president, or the Nazis, or the Nazi president but it seemed like an asinine task. Now if you had told me that the reason you needed a grave dug in between the sidewalk cracks was so that we could pour the beer into the hole and chant ritualistically to summon Melville’s ghost who would hold our hands and dance with us and tell us secrets on how to have better workflow in the office and how to grow back all my eyelashes and how to understand that my stretch marks look fine, then maybe I would have done it sooner if I had only understood why. Thanks for understanding, Sarah Rabinowitz
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“Let My People Go (to the bathroom),” Laurence Plonsky
FALL 2018 35
YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE Ellia Prusko
Last night, I had a dream where you left things at my window. Small things. Dumb things that you thought I’d like. Blue and purple presents that had little chocolates and bicycle wheels and little toy soldiers. My mother knew what you meant to me and what you did to my mind, so in fits of anger, she’d throw the gifts into the lake by the house. A peach pit, a raspberry, and green apple Blow Pops. You could never be driven home without one in your mouth. You were high when I first kissed you, and I couldn’t help but laugh at how much you were shaking and all the questions you were asking. In the dream, your hair was way too long, and your teeth were barely brushed. But when you threw a water bottle my way, I caught it with ease and you were so proud of me that, once I saw that smile, I had to run full speed into your arms. Crying and smelling your neck. Absolutely too good to be true. You told me you were diagnosed as bipolar and didn’t know how to write good meaningful letters. You told me you were trying. That I was something so beautiful, I stung your eyes. Remember the day you lost your virginity? The hyperactive removal of all your clothes and your heart racing in your chest while I was oddly tranquil even while naked. I felt like I was slipping into sleep because, even though I shared ribbon pieces of your excitement, this was something so wonderfully routine for me that I closed my eyes just so I could picture ocean waves. My hands on your hips guiding you. Blowing air into your mouth whenever I kissed you so, that way, you wouldn’t forget to breathe. I’ll open my legs for anyone who loves to read and, when I saw those books on your desk crumpled from love, I instinctively arched my back. You were my favorite book. The biggest blueberry. The most dizzying pull from a joint. I can’t smoke anymore because of you. It reminds me too much of that night you held my hair and told me the trees were just trees before wrapping me in a hoodie and letting me use your toothbrush. Even though we had only been fucking for a week, we were a married couple that day when we made pasta naked in your kitchen, and you told me that you had never gone on talking for this long. I told you it’s always the quiet ones who deserve to speak the most. 36 FONT MAGAZINE
“Dylan,” Robin Deering
Now I wonder what you like more: talking or snorting Adderall. If you can still watch Alfred Hitchcock movies without reaching over to hold a knee or pull a piece of hair or be spoon fed a bite of ice cream. If you still can smoke a cigarette without picturing my nose scrunching up, but still leaning in with a willingness to kiss you despite your breath. If you can thrust into a girl without looking into my eyes like you did that very first time. You were the first boy that ever kissed me underwater. The first who ever cried at the thought of losing me. Because back then I was your blueberry and, whenever you pulled from a joint, you would breathe me in as well. I know you can’t forget that. That’s why you hide your eyes and shield your face. I’ve become too bright even while far away for you to be brave enough to reach for me. Cowards promise many candies of potential. They’ll even show you what wrapper they’re going to use. And I fell so hard for the beauty of that shiny red wrapped We’ll See Each Other Again Soon. FALL 2018 37
MORE MEAT
Kira Turetzky “We have evolved to have more meat,” your professor says. You’re sitting in your Intro to Geology class, notebook diligently placed on the desk before you. Your pen hovers over the lined paper. You swallow hard and wait for your professor to continue her lecture. She is quiet for a moment, looking at several of the students in the class in turn. She takes a breath and continues speaking. “The Precambrian Fuse is the event leading up to the development of more meat. Many geologists and paleontologists cite the Cambrian Explosion as the start of life and meat. However, there is a great deal of time leading up to the Cambrian period, during which meat was developing.” The classroom is eerily quiet, and you can hear one of your peers bouncing his foot on the linoleum floor. The sound unsettles you; he isn’t tapping in rhythm.
Tap-taptap-taptaptap-tap-tap. You look down at your notebook; you still haven’t written anything. Your eyes drag across the room to the clock on the wall. 10:54am. Strange. Your Intro to Geology class is scheduled to meet at 2:15pm. “During the Ediacaran period, approximately 482 million years ago, strange fossils that represent pre-life appear. Geologists are uncertain what these fossils represent: the start of life, or the end of life? Given that there is no phylum of extant life today that resembles Ediacaran species, geologists 38 FONT MAGAZINE
believe that this is an extinct phylum. Speculation says that their lack of meat caused them to go extinct.” Your professor licks her lips and smiles serenely. You flinch. She has a strange smile. One of your peers raises her hand. “If there are no remnants of Ediacaran life left today, what survived? What evolved?” Though her question is interesting, there is no inflection to her voice. You look from her to your professor. You’re worried about what the answer will be. “There are indications of early fossils with meat. Some Ediacaran fossils resemble brachiopods, something like mollusks or clams. These species may have evolved into more complex organisms over millions of years. We see remnants of mollusca and brachiopoda throughout the Ediacaran and Cambrian periods.” She clicks the remote to move her lecture to the next slide. There are no lecture slides. Your classroom doesn’t even have a projector.
Taptaptap-tap-taptap-tap-taptaptaptaptap-taptap. Your peer continues to bounce his foot up and down, up and down. The noise is deafening in the quiet room. When your professor stops talking, it’s as if the space becomes a vacuum. Your eyes flick back to the clock on the wall. 10:54am. You frown. It feels like it’s been an hour, maybe two. The clock must be broken, you decide. You watch the clock closely, and you can
see the second hands tick-tick-ticking around and around. Odd. Clocks are supposed to have one second hand, not four. “If we examine the descendants of Ediacaran fossils, we can see that they have developed more meat. This is an evolutionary advantage; more meat is more beneficial. The more meat, the bigger the organism.” Your professor focuses on one of the students in your class: a thin girl, and short. You remember her saying something about being part of a dance club on campus. “Smaller organisms have less meat.” Your professor looks away from the girl, focusing on a vacant point at the back of the classroom. You turn in your seat to find what she’s looking at. The classroom extends for a dozen miles, maybe more. You face forward and resolve not to turn around again. Someone’s phone goes off. Its ringing is incessant and electronic, an inorganic component of the lecture. Your professor reminds the class to silence cell phones before the lecture. The ringing stops. You peer into your backpack; did you remember to turn your cell phone off? The inside of your backpack is dark. You can’t see anything in it. You zip your backpack shut and turn back to your professor and her lecture. “Now, there are some interesting fossils preserved in shale that allude to prehistoric animals made entirely
of meat.” The way she says “interesting” makes your skin crawl. It’s the same way someone would say “delicious” when hearing a waiter recite the restaurant’s specials. “Now, there are no actual remnants of the animal itself—they are all soft and fleshy, no hard parts. Hard parts fossilize well, soft and fleshy do not. But,” her eyes brighten like a predator seeing wounded prey, “in the shale of southern Australia, there are impressions of fleshy animals.”
Taptaptaptaptaptaptap. You look over to your classmate, the one bouncing his foot. He’s sitting still in his seat, eyes straight forward. You frown. It must be someone else with the jitters. You look to the clock—just once more, you tell yourself—and furrow your brow. 10:55am. The second hands are spinning around the clock face faster than second hands have a right to. There’s another clock next to the first. You don’t remember the classroom having two clocks. This second clock is blank. There are no numbers or tick marks, not even an hour or a minute hand. Is it even a clock? You look from the clocks back to your professor and realize she has been continuing her lecture while you were observing the clocks. She has moved from the Ediacaran period to the late Cambrian. She says something about trilobites. She mentions trilobites in every class. “In the late Cambrian, we see the emergence of meat with exoskeletons. Fleshy parts are useful, FALL 2018 39
but the exoskeleton was designed to protect the meat.” You still haven’t written anything in your notebook. You take this as a bad sign, as you tend to take very thorough lecture notes. You worry your professor can see your lack of notes. You scribble something down and look back at her. She’s not so much looking at you as through you. You bite your lip; should you say something? “Professor...” Your voice dies in your throat. You’ve forgotten her name. She continues her lecture, and even though she’s turned to the whiteboard, it feels like she’s still looking at you. “As we move forward from the Cambrian, things get bigger. When things get bigger, they develop more meat.” You can feel her eyes boring holes through you as if her gaze has followed you through the back of her head. You feel warm. You tug at the collar of your collegiate sweater. In a fleeting moment of panic, you look to the clocks on the wall for reassurance. There are no clocks on the wall. There is no way to quantify your time in the classroom. You glance to the windows to your left; perhaps you can gauge the time based on the view outside. The sun is shining. There are a few wispy clouds snaking across the impossibly blue canvas of sky. You look to the windows on your right. It is dark. The moon is bright, brighter than the sun. The moon is so bright you can’t see any stars in the fabric of night. It is also horrifically close. You can see craters and valleys like ugly pockmarks on its surface. 40 FONT MAGAZINE
You can even see the man in the moon. He is thin and frail-looking. His eyes are sunken craters, his mouth a dark gash beneath gaunt cheeks. He looks hungry. So hungry. Saliva drips from the wound of his mouth and his hands are grasping at his throat, at his shoulders. He licks his lips, tongue a bloodred worm emerging from a damp cavern. He’s looking at you. You look away. You prefer the scene to your left. “The age of dinosaurs, beginning in the Mesozoic era and ending in the Cretaceous, was a time of extraordinary development. Mammals, warm-blooded creatures, came afterward. Both of these eras, the time of dinosaurs and the age of mammals, were a great time for meat.” When your professor says “blood,” it’s the only word you hear. It echoes in the cold space of the classroom. You grip your pencil and resolve to drop Intro to Geology when you next go to the registrar. “Even today is the age of mammals.” She said mammals, right? Or did she say meat? You can’t quite tell. Sound is distorted and the walls are closing in. “Mammals are made of meat. Reptiles are made of meat. You are made of meat.” “You are made of meat,” your classmates echo. The sound fills the room like water, suffocating and drowning you. “You are made of meat.” The sound of chairs scraping on tile adds to the growing din. Your peers are standing, pens dropping from hands and notebooks falling onto the floor. “You are made of meat.”
They’re walking toward you. Those whose paths are blocked by desks push them out of the way without breaking eye contact. You try to stand but find that you cannot move. A hand touches your neck and you swat it away. Another hand grasps at your ankle and you kick at it desperately. The walls are closing in, the floor is sinking, and your peers are getting closer and closer. They look hungry. So hungry. Their hands are grasping toward you, reaching for you. Their mouths are gaping, cavernous. “You are made of meat.” The girl, the dancer, she’s holding on to your arm. She looks starved. “You are made of meat,” she says to you. Her hands tighten around your arm and you yelp. Her nails are digging small crescents into your skin. An impossible number of hands have grabbed on to you. Your peers are reaching and grabbing at you, pulling at your clothes, your arms, your legs. Their breathing is stilted, erratic. “We have evolved to have more meat,” your professor says. She is standing behind the horde of students, a hungry look in her eyes. Has she always looked that way? “Evolution has led to the development of more meat.” Fear and panic are crowding against the front of your skull, an aggressive piston bulging against your temple. You look down at your notes. You’ve only written one thing.
More meat. FALL 2018 41
BUDDY CIANCI IS DEAD Sarah Robbins
I’ve been thinking about the depth of forgiveness we allow powerful men to receive and how all the men I know hold power. To forgive and forget is proper; to forgive and remember is justice; to withhold forgiveness entirely? what a bitter, cruel person you will become. So I’ve been giving out my forgiveness to any man I see. Peeling off my skin and handing it out, saying “If you dip this in kosher wine to soften it, and taste the salt of my being, you will be whole again.” I’ve been pouring my blood into a jug and sprinkling it on the ground, a red trail you can trace to my holiest temple. I tried to forgive Buddy. I tried to hear the women who cried, “He was my best friend, and he did so much for me.” “He was a gentleman, so smart, so kind.” I tried to understand why they would lie or if they don’t realize they’re lying. I tried to see if they had any skin left. Gaze upon the destruction of my body. I do not want to be angry but I am. It is the fault of men that I have no eyelashes left to keep the dust out of my eyes, no fingernails growing so I can claw my way out. I am tired of having no forgiveness left for myself, no voice in the dark telling me this is not my fault, no whisper that says, “Someday you won’t think of him, someday you will not remember him.”
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“Ouch,” Victoria Jenkins
FALL 2018 43
SHELLS
Amelia Beckerman On the last day of seventh grade, I rode the bus home and the winter chill still lingered in the May air and every time someone opened the back emergency exit to complete the annual last-day-of-school tradition of causing unnecessary mayhem, I shivered as the wind ripped through the bus. When mine and Mattie’s turn came, I grabbed her hand and we ran out the back without stopping to moon the driver as many of the others had done. Instead, we ran from the corner to the end of our cul-de-sac where she entered her house to wait for her younger sisters to get off the grade school bus and I entered my house two doors down where I waited patiently in front of the T.V. for my mother to come home from work. Armed with my report card, which cited As in everything except pre-algebra and keyboarding, I begged her to take me to the mall to get a bathing suit that wasn’t one of the one-piece sports suits I’d been wearing since second grade. Thirteen days later, the heat rises twenty-six degrees and the whole world starts buzzing and Mattie and I lay sprawled out next to the pool, her in my discarded dark blue Speedo suit and me in a seafoam green compromise, a two-piece suit that includes a piece of fabric hanging over my stomach, which I ingeniously tuck under my bikini top when my mother isn’t paying attention. “It’s so hot I can hear it,” Mattie says, stretching her feet out so that her toesdangle over the water. “Hear what?” I ask. 44 FONT MAGAZINE
Mattie flips onto her back. “The sun.” I know I’m not supposed to but I look straight up and there are squiggly lines surrounding the sun and I close my eyes and the image is still there and I realize she is right: I can hear the heat buzzing in my ears. “How long do you think it’ll take until we’re as tan as Michaela Benson?” she asks me after a while. I flip onto my stomach so my eyes will stop drifting towards the sun. I consider the question for a moment. “Half an hour.” She nods and reaches for the bag of Bugles that she found in Ross’s room earlier and I watch her for a while, running my fingers up my leg and over my bathing suit, which is hot and damp from sweat. My stomach gurgles a little and I push down on my belly button. “What if our stomachs had ringtones?” Mattie asks. “Ring ring bitch, it’s me, your stomach. You’re hungry.” She laughs and throws a bugle at me, which I bat away. After Jeopardy that night, I sit with Ross and my parents out on the deck with a jug of my mom’s homemade Sangria and, when they’re not looking, Ross and I pick out the red-stained fruit. My dad looks around the back yard. “The whole goddamn world sounds like a lawn mower.”
“Genie says that they’re going to be out any day now,” my mom tells us, taking a long sip of her wine.
“Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it,” my mom says, “Genie says it’s just like eating shrimp.”
“What’s gonna be out?” Ross asks.
“I’ve never had shrimp,” Mattie says.
“The cicadas.”
“Well I just know you’re going to love this,” she says confidently, before heading back in through the sliding glass door.
Sure enough, the next morning there are black bugs the size of erasers zooming around the yard and my mother sends me outside with cheese paper to cover the sapling we had planted last year after my grandma passed. Within days, the bugs have taken over the whole town. The news begins to call it the “cicapocalypse.” Mattie and I spend hours every afternoon skimming cicada shells out of the pool, while Ross sweeps them off of the front porch. My parents pay us each a dollar an hour for these chores, which Ross and Mattie spend right away when the Mister Softee truck comes around at three. I save my earnings in the toe of my winter boot. One evening, my mom comes home as Mattie and I are setting up a cicada-free zone on the back deck, which involves the fairy canopy that used to hang above my bed and several broom and mop handles. “Look at this, girls,” she says, brandishing a thick orange book at us. “One of the women at the library told Genie about this and said she’s been eating them for every meal. It’s saving her hundreds at the supermarket.” In yellow letters on the front cover, it says “The Cicada Cookbook.” I lean over the edge of the railing and make loud gagging noises. Behind me, Mattie giggles.
“Let’s have dinner at your house,” I tell Mattie. “I already told my Mom I was eating here, she won’t have enough for us.” Three hours later, we’re all seated at the kitchen table as my mom proudly carries in a large circular dish. Mattie grins at me from across the table. “Portabella and cicada quiche,” she carefully pronounces every syllable, lowering the dish in front of my father, who narrows his eyes at her and then each of us suspiciously. He reaches out for the serving knife and cuts a thin piece. “Don’t ever say I never try anything new.” We all hold our breaths as he portions off a small bite and raises the fork to his mouth. “Well, I’ll be damned. This isn’t half bad.” My mother practically squeals in delight and begins to cut pieces for the rest of us. I make a game of cutting my slice into smaller and smaller pieces. During a particularly lively discussion about FALL 2018 45
Ross’ chances of getting onto the junior varsity wrestling team (Dad says he will, Mom says it’s okay if he doesn’t because there’s always next year), I push the piles of mushroom and egg and cheese and cicada onto the napkin in my lap. Mattie sees what I’m doing and kicks me under the table. After dinner, we go outside to lie in our cicada-free fort. My ears have gotten so used to the constant hum that I barely notice it anymore. “Where do they go for seventeen years?” Mattie asks me. She’s lying on her back and I’m watching her chest rise and fall and I miss her question. “What?” “Your mom said that the cicadas only come out every seventeen years. So where are they that whole time?” “Maybe they’re hibernating. Like bears.” “Next time they come out we’ll be thirty.” I try and imagine myself with my hair cut short like my mom’s. “I don’t ever want to be thirty.” “It won’t be so bad,” she says. “We’ll have our own money and houses with big porches and husbands who can skim the cicadas out of the pool.” “Oh, who are you going to marry?” “Ryan Cannon,” she says, grinning at me. “What about you?” A cicada runs into the netting of our canopy, falls onto the wood deck, and stops moving. “Maybe I won’t get married.” 46 FONT MAGAZINE
Mattie pushes up on her forearms and looks at me. “How come?” “Maybe I don’t want to.” “Don’t you think you’ll ever find a guy you’ll want to marry?” I reach out and flick the cicada, which springs back to life and flies away. I think about all the bugs that sat underground for seventeen long years and finally emerged just to be made into a quiche and I think about how Mattie wakes up early every morning to make sure that her little sisters have clothes laid out for them because sometimes her mom forgets and I think about how I can I see her bedroom window from mine and sometimes she’ll call me late at night because she can see that my light is on except now the cicada shells have piled up on the sill and I have to stand on the step stool that I used to use to brush my teeth to see anything. I look at her carefully. “Maybe not a man.” We hear the crunching of shells behind us and I turn around to see my mom coming out with a plate of watermelon for us and Mattie looks at me and her face is a little red and I thank my mom and we eat with only the hum of the cicadas. A week and a half later they’re gone and suddenly everything feels more quiet than it was before and Ross and I brush their shells off of the roof and deck and clean them out of the pool filter and in another week it’s like they were never here at all.
“Ephemeral,” Katie O’Keefe
DEAD BUGS
Regina Volpe i’ve been trying to write a poem about how lately i’ve been feeling a lot like a stink bug, floating in a homemade trap of dish soap and vinegar left to the harshness of my kitchen table; but there’s no poetic way to say i’m belly-up. with wings stuck to my back, and all six legs kicking to stay afloat. something about the pale blue soup drew me in i just don’t know how much more water i can tread. FALL 2018 47
DROWNING
Shawna Zeisner From the bottom of a pool the entire world looks like it’s melting. Beyond the thin cellophane of water, rippling with waves, it’s all falling apart broken by the heat of the fire and the people that start it. You release all the air from your lungs so you can lie at the bottom of the pool and stop floating— the trick your childhood best friend taught you back when living next door meant you had to be friends and it was easy. Easier. Everything is different now, the world was set on fire and melted all around you. You watch it drip like used up candle wax, sway like dead leaves in the wind, dissolve and become unrecognizable. And when your lungs begin to melt the same way, and your brain is just a reflection of the distortion that you see, you kick to the surface. Shatter the cellophane. You suck air into your lungs to extinguish the fire that has eaten away at your chest and head, melted your insides and left you blackened. You open your eyes, for a moment, everything is clear.
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“Re-design,” Kira Turetzky
FALL 2018 49
A RITUAL FOR SELF-LOVE daniel avery
under a cloudy lavender sky, we bury our hands in soil and bones, sacrificing our deadnames up to the old gods in a whisper too low for the other to hear. we sacrifice to the gods our dysphoria, our blood, our tears, our trauma. they answer our prayers with rain and love and gender euphoria. in the woods we are but men, true to our hearts and minds and bodies. in the woods we pray to gods who understood no gender binary, gods who know us for who we are. in the woods we love with a love like Wilde, like Baldwin, like Whitman: unapologetically achillean. dirty fingers cling to matted hair and bottles of moonwater. in the starlight your eyes glow like aventurine. we light incense and sage, bowls of chamomile. we thank the universe for bringing us together, and we pray to the gods whose names we don’t know, intentions falling past our lips in a string of whispers:
my past does not haunt me. my dysphoria does not get the better of me. i am surrounded by love.
“Fantastical Tree,” Olivia DeFiore 50 FONT MAGAZINE
“Square,” Victoria Jenkins
I KEEP NEEDING TO WRITE ABOUT THOSE CANDLES Martha Morton
I keep needing to write about those candles. White and never, never trimmed, still burning, they make me think of those white dogs who pretend to be mops without knowing it. Never, never trimmed, so how old is the oldest wax? Like rock or tree layers, could we examine the chemical make-up? Learn the atmospheres of history? No, we could not because then the candles would be left bare, naked, shorn and fragile, unprotected from the pub by years of experience, weak like Samson. Not perfect, angelic white, but white like a sheep, white enough, hiding in each corner of the mantlepiece, hiding behind their own wax, still burning, shining the tiny flame they’ve always shone, but we would notice if the flames went out. FALL 2018 51
DEAR GOD, I THINK I GOT A FAULTY BODY, I WOULDLIKE TO RETURN THIS ONE PLEASE Caleb Frank
When I was a boy Each time my parents turned their backs I would pull the kitchen scissors off the counter with the most miraculous clang! And race into the bathroom Kick the door behind me and push the lock And then I would stare in the mirror and cut my hair to the scalp An older time, when I was younger and sharper and less wry When I did not wear my body like it was rented from a costume shop When I was one thousand bees living inside the body of a boy Buzzing and aching and waking early to explore I closed my eyes and something happened that I did not see I think people can be like the auto update on a cell phone No one wants the uninstallable Amazon sports calendar taking up more space Once my body was nothing and I could dance and move and feel Something updated without permission and now The processing speeds are too slow I tried to delete other programs to make space to function, But the shitty app keeps auto updating And growing bigger and bigger and filling me up @ God where is settings? How do I turn off auto update? Can I switch to a newer model? I wish I was Max from Wizards of Waverly Place because I would like to be stupider than I am now. Max didn’t know how to spell his name and neither do I. Max was a girl and then he was a boy again. I want to waltz in and out of life the same way. I don’t want anyone to expect anything of me. Nothing was expected of Max. When I tell my mother I’ve been wearing kippahs for fifteen years, she cries “Don’t make any decisions you can’t undo” As if anything is actually reversible. Ha ha. If I could reverse anything, I would reverse install the stupid app taking up all my space Sometimes, when the dark is early and I’m wrapped up in sweaters that were never meant to belong to me Smoking one hitters out the window I feel there is a minty chill in the air Like when you spot your ghost from fifty feet away Someone is looking for me And I don’t know his name yet 52 FONT MAGAZINE
It starts with stealing the kitchen scissors to cut off my hair in the sink Maybe it starts before that When my fingers clung to the kippahs before every Shabbat service And I would sneak them home and wear them in the bathroom mirror I close my eyes to see clearly and I taste mint When I got lice (probably from stealing all those kippahs) I don’t think I’ve ever been happier Than when my mom pulled scissors out of the kitchen drawer clang! – a miracle Snipping away everything she wanted me to be When she was done I took her into my room And showed her the drawer Where all my stolen kippahs were wrapped in a reversible Lion King pillowcase She brought them all back to synagogue the next Saturday I don’t think she knew what I was trying to tell her It starts with the scissors It starts with the kippahs It starts with wrapping myself in sweaters and smoking one hitters out the window. It starts and it starts and it starts. It begins again. It begins again. It begins again. Sometimes it ends. Rarely, it ends. But it never stops beginning. In Wizards of Waverly Place There was a whole season Where Max became a girl And one day I turned on the TV and he was a boy again I missed that episode I think I need to go back and watch it. I want to see how they fixed him. Fix me, too. When I walk, I am something gentle and unpredictable I want to feel that something exists in the space between my cap and the bottoms of my shoes I sense the beginnings of something there It ends on February 1st When I resume construction on what I always believed would stay half finished I can’t return this dumb stupid body that should have been Max from Wizards of Waverly Place because I don’t have the receipt And I don’t work for Disney Channel FALL 2018 53
And neither does God. But I am installing an upgrade I’m setting this shit back to factory settings Don’t you want to hold me close? I’m about to become something new.
“Independence Day,” Katie O’Keefe
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LOVE IN THE MIDDLE EAST? Sharon Rus
I float in the Dead Sea and my hangnails don’t burn or at least I don’t notice if they do because you’re tracing hearts on the back of my hand and my scratchy knees are resting on top of your chest. You are my life vest. I wade under the waterfall and wrap my legs around you while the Molotovs rain down like shooting stars and the soldiers run past our hiding place in the side of the mountains. It doesn’t mean I can’t die; I can die. I’m just less likely to realize because I’m riding the waves in the sea of your shimmering eyes. The mud you’ve covered me in is a bad shield, but when it washes off, it’ll leave my skin so good ‘n smooth you’ll have to lather me in lotion to protect me from the sun (or at least that’ll be your excuse). What I’m saying is this land is full of ghosts swimming here with us. There is a deep memory that rains down like bullets on our naked shoulders, and if we promise to meet again but never do, we’ll live on in the Dead Sea. FALL 2018 55
HONEY
Samantha Storms Laid out on some poor old lady’s rose bush, she said my name. Whispered it, the syllables a symphony of slurred sounds – a proper result of the Heineken she downed this morning despite all four of my objections. Angelic. Otherworldly. Mine. You reminded me of some beautiful hybrid of my favorite pop stars, your golden mop of hair a messy halo decorating your boyish frame. You looked so perfect, an androgynous devil come to wreak havoc on my heart and on my mind, confusing me day after blissful day. You blurred every possible line between sexuality and attraction, between love and lust. Our souls touched – I didn’t know any other way to describe how you made me feel. I didn’t know what to do, how to tell everyone. I didn’t think I knew how to love you, but I did. I watched you reach up to pick a leaf that stuck to the corner of your small plump lip, the alcohol no doubt numbing the pain of the thorns that sliced at your arms. The gloss you stole from my purse Tuesday night smeared your freckled cheek, a tiny glob of color on your too white face. I moved to pull you out of the angry red flowers, watching you watching me. I’ve never loved a girl like this, to love her enough to stand in that D.C. street amidst the traffic while she struggled to sit up from a damned bush, the thorns and the blood they drew bright red reminders of our sinful rendezvous. “Let’s go home, honey.” I slid my forearms beneath your armpits, letting you rest your weight on me as you tried to untangle your dirty sneakers from the roots of the unrelenting foliage. The shitty beer made your body heavy. You still didn’t notice the blood that was starting to smear the arms of your white T-Shirt, the red edges of the Hilfiger logo blending into the stains. I’m sure we both looked a mess. “Honey’s so sweet,” you mumbled, your head bobbing like an anxious ship in the sea of bodies that flowed past us. “You can’t get it wrong, babe.” You tried to touch my face with your free arm, dabbing the corner of my lip with a ghost of blood and dirt. I never flinched away from you, never. If I could shrink myself down into some microscopic version of myself and live inside you, navigating your bloodstream and atria, I would. You knew that I would. You knew that there was nothing in this world or the next that I wouldn’t do for that luscious body, that boyish grin. 56 FONT MAGAZINE
You said you loved me nine times on the way back to your dad’s house, one for every block we made it past without you stopping to puke into one of the green trash cans by the street benches. It was noon, for God’s sake. I remember thinking this morning that I wish I could throw a bottle back as easily as you. I’d think that you’d regret filling your little stomach with that much toxic liquid, but you never did. You took each hangover in stride. No regrets. No shame. I scanned the street for a sign of Pete, my mother, the lady from next door. what would they think what would they say what would we do where would she go “I think God must look like you,” you said, lifting your head from the rim of the trash can and wrapping your dirty hand around a street pole to prop yourself up. Your face was stretched wide into a happy, sloppy smile that showed all of your pretty white teeth. Something moved inside me. The whole wide world suddenly felt like a home. “We’re like honey, babe. We couldn’t have gotten this wrong.”
“Golden-Manteled Ground Squirrel,” Peter Soucy
FALL 2018 57
PRAYER OF A LAPSED CATHOLIC Katie O’Keefe
Father, forgive my tongue that strikes like a serpent. my jagged edges, and the empty place in my sternum before my rib cage begins. It’s been six years since my last confession, and I have gone astray. Lord, I am afraid of being stagnant, I am afraid you no longer hear me (or worse, that you never did.) I fear there has been a miscommunication somewhere along the way, your words translated by the throats and pens of fallible men— that I never really got your message in the first place. I’m not sure that this counts as a prayer, but I need something more concrete, something I can hold in my hands and it has been so long since I’ve made something good. I fear I’ve lost my touch, I fear that my flame has gone out, leaving a bed of long cold ashes in its wake. I’m more scared than I care to admit (and I’ve admitted too much already.) I bought a new bible on Amazon last year, but the fake leather binding felt too inauthentic to hold the word of God so it sits on my bookshelf, relegated to being an uncomfortable reminder that I’ve never been able to do faith correctly (and maybe I never will.) 58 FONT MAGAZINE
“Sagrada,” Hannah Matuszak FALL 2018 59
WHEN YOU GIVE A LESBIAN A LOOK Isabelle Jensen
When you give a lesbian a look • that doesn’t seem like much • But she will think it’s more than it is. And when you give a lesbian this look she will talk to you more. And when you serenade a lesbian • in biology class • with the song “She Will Be Loved” by Maroon 5 She will become a hopeless romantic She will be entranced by your words or movements You are unlike anyone that she has ever known And when you serenade a lesbian, she will interpret any touch or conversation as confirmation that the feelings are reciprocated But she is young • and unsure • a high school freshman • only has a few toes out of the closet • so she will never act on it And when you tell a lesbian about the great sex you had with some guy this weekend She won’t be surprised but she’s not excited She knows you’re bi and that you live a crazy different life than she does but this does not always matter And when you walk with a lesbian to class every day she will think she is special When you tell a lesbian about your life she will think she is special Maybe she just likes to feel special After that year you two didn’t talk a lot When you text a lesbian and have a deep conversation every couple months She will feel like she’s got the inside scoop on the mystery that is your life Eventually her feelings will fade and she’ll just find it interesting when you share your stories She will support you and your new girlfriend She will be sad when you break up She will wish there were more queer girls at her school She will hear rumors about you and ask point-blank if they are true You will have an open-book kind of relationship The kind that you can read through over text But still holds secrets You said she could ask you anything So years after the crush • After the confidence gained • After locking the closet behind her She asks you if you were flirting with her freshman year 60 FONT MAGAZINE
So when you tell a lesbian that you led her on just to see if she was gay She will feel like the things you used to poke at in biology class She will feel like the dependent variable of your experiment She will feel like the pig heart you held in your hand She will wonder if you Really needed to figure out if you were right that badly If the hypothesis was that important If her feelings were just collateral damage She will feel a small bit of relief in that she wasn’t making it up You will apologize • Say you’re sorry • Say that it was an unfair thing to do • And you will be right And she can’t be mad at you because it was years ago • Because you are sorry •Because you were just freshmen • Because you’ve both changed But she still wonders some days if you actually liked her She wonders if it was really all just for science She wonders why being your experiment still makes her feel special Everyone is talking about you but you are talking to her And something about that feels unreal • Feels like a stupid high school romance • Feels like pining after someone in a higher social ranking • Feels like what the movies have told you you should want But this movie doesn’t end with us together and it shouldn’t Not because of the social ranking Not even because of the leading on But because we are different people Because we lead different lives Because you cared more about my sexuality than me Because we don’t really understand each other We just listen Me just trying to solve your mystery You just wanting someone to read your story • To tell you how interesting you are • How cool your life seems • How I wish I could be as adventurous as you Me making you look like the hero But this isn’t a movie We will probably never talk again Because I solved your mystery a while ago Your adventures don’t mean anything without someone to read them Which is to say When you give a Lesbian a Look I will look away. FALL 2018 61
FOR LOVE
Rachel C. Farina You pace like an innocent prisoner. Revolving my bed where I lay, Apprehension deteriorates your soul, Soon you will feel nothing at all. The Belle flashes through your mind, She who captivated you, The woman who imprisoned your heart, your mind,
your body,
your devotions
Detained by the conflicts of love, Your memory fortifies itself, By throwing itself into the depths of your god. Recollected marriage vows are in rendition. In your interpretation, believably appeasable by God, You seem to be excused for your sins. There is no contrition or regret. Rather, you hope for empathy, for mercy, for sympathy,
The heart devotes itself to one, but longs for another. I thought in ending her life, your longing would be over. Unlike you, I regret my sin, but not its result. I did mine out of love for you. Yet, you grieve not for me. Your heart still aches for her, The woman of your desires, now six feet below ground. Towards me, only resentment for giving you empathy, mercy
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sympathy
your prayers
for intimacy,
intimacy,
and your spirit.
for love.
and love through the affair.
FALL 2018 63
ROSE OF SHARON Sharon Rus
The Rose of Sharon is not a rose at all, and as a matter of fact, neither am I. I am not a Rose, but I do have flowers rooted in the stems of my hair. I did not ask for them to grow there, but there they cling to me, refusing to bloom. I realize each bud is born with a sense of doom; they know winter gloom will each bud some day consume, so is that why they refuse to open? That’s stupid. Just because they will die does not mean they don’t have to live. To live means to consume life, to be glutted on life, to suck the marrow from each bone. “Open up!” I scream, but the tulips just pucker their lips and twist away to retreat back into an open pore. The lily by my ear pretends it can’t hear. I sigh and wonder: surely if the moment comes...they will open, right? Right, there’s nothing wrong. They’re all right… I’m all right… 64 FONT MAGAZINE
Right? I gather up the flowers wilted necks, and I kiss their lips. Maybe if I love them, they will someday feel safe enough to open. Maybe. All I know for certain is the Rose of Sharon is not a rose at all; biblical analysts don’t know what type of flower it is, but it’s right there in the Songs of Solomon. How perfect my name would become an expression meaning confusion.
GIRLS LIKE YOU Kat Anderson
Girls like you are the reason we piece Sappho’s poetry together And the reason it is so broken up in the first place You walk the earth with diamonds on your ears And don’t even realize You are the prettiest gem The way your lips curve like sea glass The way you collect hardships and make them pretty Girls like you are what the world needs I feel the atmosphere change when you open your mouth Like the earth silences to hear you
“Sunflower Girl,” Robin Deering FALL 2018 65
ROAD TRIP #12
Claire Helena Feasey By now, you should have figured out that I like falling asleep in moving vehicles. It should not surprise you that after we pick up iced tea to-go for the ten-hour journey home, I push the passenger seat back and get comfortable. Parisian jazz—the kind with accordion—flows through the speakers, and I lose the ability to keep my eyes open. This is why you drive. Recently, I’ve been dreaming about warmer weather and your Aegean eyes, the color of a flower I can’t remember the name of. It’ll come to me later. Your eyes make me think about the French language, about cobblestone streets, about reading Hemingway and Austen next to a large window on a sunny day. I feel effervescent when I’m around you, like San Pellegrino or some other fancy sparkling water. I’ve been feeling homesick, so as we drive back up towards apple orchards and farther from tobacco fields, I dream of Upstate New York. And warmer weather. And your eyes. I won’t share any specifics, but it’s a damn good dream. When you wake me up, you poke my face with one finger, as if you’ve never seen an unconscious body before. You tell me in soft tones, “We’ve stopped for gas.” I sit up and pretend like I was just resting my eyes, like I hadn’t completely lost my mental faculties to sleep. You don’t buy it. That’s fine, I expected as much. I’m not very good at lying. I reach over to the cup-holder, lift my tea to my lips, and take a long sip. It’s cold and too weak for my liking. Oh well. “I’m going to stretch my legs and find potato chips in this dusty Kangaroo.” I crawl out of the Honda Civic we bought for $300 on the side of the road and head towards muscle relief and Lays. Glancing back at you and catching your gaze on me, I’ve remembered the name of that flower. Love-in-a-mist.
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“Emergency Exit,” Kira Turetzky
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY A.R. Sheppard
In case of emergency Break glass Or break the walls Or dig a hole and start tunneling In case of emergency Strike a match and Burn it down and Make a mural out of the ashes In case of emergency Sink your teeth into it Tear off a chunk the size of Manhattan Swallow it whole Whatever you do Don’t let it hold you back
FALL 2018 67
WHAT MY BODY TELLS ME Amelia Beckerman
I hide photos from “the fat years” underneath my bathroom sink and behind cookbooks on dusty shelves (these are jokes I tell myself). My dad tells me I look healthy—that I look nice in this dress. My mom tells me I look thin. She’s starting a diet this week. My grandmother used to tell me a story. It was about a girl who saved her sandwich crusts to feed the geese by the lake except one day she ran out of bread and the geese were still hungry so they ate her too. One way to interpret this story is people will take even when you have no more left to give. Another is that everything is hungry. I tell the first boy I ever love that I used to be heavier. I am embarrassed by this which is why I have hidden all the photos inside my sandbox body; which is why I spent years trying to dig a hole during recess only to come back the next day and find the teachers have filled it back in. “Someone will trip in that,” they tell me. The first boy who ever tells me I am beautiful also tells me that he watches “thicc girl porn.” I skip breakfast that week. The first time my mom took me to Weight Watchers, I was in the seventh grade. They weighed me when I walked through the door every Sunday morning. There was no communion at this church—the wafers had too many calories. That year I bring romaine hearts to school in gallon Ziploc bags. I lose eighteen pounds and then I see an ice cream cake at a friend’s birthday party. This hole has a habit of filling itself in. My grandmother used to tell me a story. In it, I thought I was the little girl. It turned out I was the geese. My mom tells she’s worried about me. She finds a skirt on sale—it’s ballerina pink and four sizes too small. We buy it anyway. She tells me there’s a specialist I can go to. He tells me it’s normal for your stomach to growl for the first couple of weeks. He tells me that if I’m hungry I can eat a pickle. I weigh myself naked every morning when my roommate is still asleep. The flashing blue light of the scale is the only prayer I’ve ever known. I walk around the city on my lunch hour so no one notices I’m not eating. That Christmas, my roommate wraps a package of pretzel Goldfish for me. She knows I like them. I tell her I can’t accept that gift. 68 FONT MAGAZINE
I tell myself that there is a blue light at the end of the tunnel. It looks strangely like a number or maybe the outline of a boy. I tell myself no one could ever love this water balloon body. The year I replace dinner with a half hour on the elliptical, I learn that dizziness means it’s working and when I’m too dizzy to tell him I don’t want to; when I think maybe this is all I’ll ever get, all I deserve; when the world goes black and then somehow full color again and his fingers are down the size eight jeans I spent two years squeezing myself into and his tongue is on mine which hasn’t tasted bread in four months; which doesn’t know the feeling anymore of anything other than the roof of my own mouth. My body only has two settings: it’s eat or be eaten. The next morning I wake up and find myself in my own apartment. There is an empty bottle of gummy vitamins on my nightstand. I must have come home and realized it was the only food I had. A year later, I hide the photos inside my too-wide bellybutton and between the heavy folds of my thighs. My mom tells me I’m maintaining well. My boyfriend tells me he loves my body. My body tells me it’s hungry.
“Idaho is on Fire,” Peter Soucy FALL 2018 69
LAKESHORE IN A JAR Hannah Matuszak
Can I tell you that day And not leave anything out? Would that make it more or less true? Look: Quick fish-shimmer, gray suggestion of swan Tangled cedar limbs reaching to shake your hand, Grasping from clear lake-bottom, living and drowned. The story we write on the shoreline, Scribbling footprints on the wet sand that kisses our shoes. And what was once a cat Curled across our path like a comma, Bone-colored fur speckled with black-fly periods. (I show you this because otherwise, could you really see The ellipses of calling geese soaring overhead?) The blueberry bushes still grow around my tongue: Piercing turquoise, a color you can taste but not believe. Rain flashing on water, laughing silver sparks, Drops that barely stroke our hair beneath the trees. Anyway, you know the dusking car ride home. (I save some memories for leaner times, Stored like honey in dusty mason jars When the beehives have all gone empty.)
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“Sentinel,” Hannah Matuszak
FALL 2018 71
GAEA
R. Carlin these primordial urges are dying in each of us as the last bits of earth fall into the hands of misusers and tramplers to be crated and sucked dry of the irreplaceable essences— no one seems worried save for the last idiots the last descendants of Adam who remember, faintly, that there was once a garden in Eden
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“The Sun,” Amelia Beckerman
ELEGY FOR YIDDISH Sarah Robbins
They wanted us to die. More than that, they wanted everything we are to die too. A young woman sails to a new country and she does not know her age and she cannot write or read and she speaks Yiddish and no other language. Later, her grandchildren dub her speech “Yinglish” She says “I speak Jewish.” I have always been a proponent of moving on and moving forward of keeping up with the times. I have always been a proponent of saying goodbye to the dead. The issue is that I am the dead. And that the dead is not a person, nor an idea but an entire people but an entire nation but an entire heritage it exists in my blood and I cannot access it there is something underneath my skin that I cannot touch, something in my bone marrow I cannot touch, something in the nerves of my fingertips that I do not know. They want me to be the same. So they tell me that I cannot be anything without them. They starved us and starved us and starved us until our ribs took up our torsos and our eyes consumed our heads and they cooked up this narrative of victimhood, said you can never be more than a victim, your whole history is pain. And we, so hungry, swallowed it. There is a future to this. We sew the scraps together and make a new tapestry to the best of our ability. My ancestry is sunlight. I grow. FALL 2018 73
FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS Rachel C. Farina
I will make a subtle claim, That the world is unstable. Life can be draining, But at least we have cable. 74 FONT MAGAZINE
“Blocks,” Hannah Matuszak
THE COSTUME MONTAGE FROM SPIDER-MAN (2002) Hannah Aronowitz
I worry that I’ll think about the wrong moment right before I die. Like, the light will be fading, and I’ll panic and think about the costume montage from Spider-Man (2002) and then I’ll die and the last thing I’ll have thought of will be the costume montage from Spider-Man (2002). I hope this poem makes all of you think about the costume montage from Spider-Man (2002) right before you die.
“Bicyclist at Sunrise,” Donovan Harvey FALL 2018 75
FRUIT
Peter Soucy Fruit is costly at this carpeted grocery, four dollars for a bunch of blue bananas. The bunches in groups of thirty of forty, half of them will end up in a bread. My friends target cans off shelves and roll them to checkout the girl smiling at lane seven. It’s my turn to be scanned and she asks about fruit and why I bought none. She laughs at my can of brown beans, writes something down on my receipt: “thank you for buying everything canned, you were less obnoxious than your friends.” We walk to our car, but my friends forgot fruit. I sprint back, but the store has already collapsed.
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“Gateway,” Olivia DeFiore
FALL 2018 77
Disclaimer Font exclusively features the work of Hofstra University students. Each staff member reviewed and ranked submissions blindly.
Font Literary and Arts Magazine. Volume 10, Fall 2018. Hofstra University. Copyright 2018 Font Literature and Art. All artwork and literature contained in this publication are copyright 2018 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