LITERARY AND ARTS MAGAZINE Volume 13 Fall 2019
CONTENT WARNING: Some pieces featured in Font involve themes that may be upsetting or triggering in nature to certain audiences.
HOFSTRA ENGLISH SOCIETY 203 Student Center Hofstra University Hempstead, NY 11549 hofenglishsociety@gmail.com facebook.com/hofenglishsociety twitter.com/hofengsoc instagram.com/ hofenglishsociety issuu.com/ hofenglishsociety Front cover art: “Mouths,“ Claire Helena
STAFF MANAGING EDITOR
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
DESIGN EDITOR
Isabelle Jensen
Sabrina Josephson
Cecilia Gray
HEAD COPY EDITOR
ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR
Olivia DeFiore
Irini Tsounakas
COPY EDITORS Andrew Cardell
Jules Dickinson-Frevola
Alyssa Minkoff
Jessica Zagacki
GENERAL STAFF Brittany Antonacci Debbie Aspromonti Jessica Bajorek Victoria Carrubba Madison Donnelly Emily Ewing Rachel Farina Kristina Fortunato Sophia Fox
Julianna Grossman Claire Helena Kirstin Kochie Olivia Kuch Kira Kusakavitch Ryan Malloy Jessica Mannhaupt
Lauren Sager Samantha Slootmaker Caitlyn (Cat) Snell Brooke Sokoloski Jason Valverde Emily Weber Olivia Wisse Sam Whitman Rachel Wright
SPECIAL THANKS Karyn Valerius Stan Cherian Eric Brogger Hofstra University English Department
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF There is nothing scarier than sharing your work with people. I have had the pleasure to lend my hand to the creation of this issue of Font and I’m so happy that we were entrusted with the care of everyone’s work. Now that it has found a way into your hands, into your home, I have found myself feeling a mixture of happiness and fear at the vulnerability that is held in these pages, beginning here. There have been so many hearts and souls put into this magazine, and it is my instinct to protect them at all costs. Despite my wanting to protect these pieces, they have been created with the intent of being seen and heard, and it would be cruel to keep them hidden from the world, only known by those who helped create this edition of Font. You might ask yourself why all of this is important, why there is a need to be scared. There is no proper answer. I believe that words connect people and that they have the power to affect people in numerous ways. Because of this, we should be wary but also excited for the change it can bring to our lives. In my head, every person whose name is printed on these pages is connected to each other; we have become a family, whether we know each other or not, because our thoughts have been collected for the world to see. In this collection, the words printed matter and because we don’t know who needs to see them, we’ve made it so that Font doesn’t just make a family of the collaborators and staff; it makes you a part of a family of readers. So, if in reading this, you find one poem, one story, or one piece of art that means the world to you, I will consider this magazine a success. I want to thank everyone who has had a part of this semester’s edition of Font. To those of you who submitted, thank you and please continue sharing your voice with us, with others, and without any limit or fear. To the staff, thank you for joining me on this journey and experiencing every moment with us. To the editorial board, you all have my heart. Thank you for dedicating your free time to this magazine and for helping keep my head on my shoulders. And to you, reader, thank you for wanting to know about Font, the words, and the art that have mattered to so many people already. Now, they get to matter to you. Welcome to the Font family.
I love and appreciate you all so much.
Sabrina Josephson Editor-in-Chief, Font
CONTENTS
i have words in my hands and in my mouth... An Ode to My Crooked Teeth It’s Following Moon mixed metaphor motivation The Sound of Squirrels Scurrying mounted CLEARING stranger This is what it comes to I am Made of Lies Siren vibe check! gibraltar Roadkill Envy (don’t) jump Bite caged Prisonbreak men, frankly DCLXVI Look Up I Killed A Firefly Once i can’t breathe Climate Change Going Green Butterfly Flower Would you die for me? The Slopes Aliena marblesce grand edge crossing i want to go home Sbocciato
7 8 9 9 10 11 11 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 21 21 22 24 26 27 28 29 30 30 30 31
Kira Turetzky Cenna Khatib Anna Wegeng Julia Coyle R. Carlin Irini Tsounakas Sophia Fox Andrew Cardell Jules Dickinson-Frevola Lizzie Frank Cenna Khatib Debbie Aspromonti Lizzie Frank Ryan Malloy Isabelle Jensen Sophia Fox James Wegeng Kira Turetzky Cenna Khatib Sophia Fox Brittany Antonacci Kristina Fortunato James Wegeng Sabrina Josephson Kristina Fortunato Sam Whitman Julia Coyle Caitlyn (Cat) Snell Olivia DeFiore Olivia DeFiore Kira Turetzky Ryan Malloy Claire Helena Sophia Fox Ryan West
Sophia Fox Claire Helena Jules Dickinson-Frevola Sabrina Josephson Isabelle Jensen R. Carlin James Wegeng Kristina Fortunato Claire Helena Andrew Cardell Claire Helena Isabelle Jensen Ryan Malloy Kira Turetzky Jessica Bajorek Alicia C. Renda Julia Coyle Julia Coyle Sophia Fox Maddie A. Lizzie Frank Jessica Bajorek Isabelle Jensen Kristina Fortunato Sam Whitman Olivia DeFiore Isabelle Jensen Jules Dickinson-Frevola Ryan Malloy Kira Turetzky Kat Anderson Claire Helena Andrew Cardell Claire Helena
32 32 33 34 34 35 36 36 37 37 38 39 40 41 43 44 44 45 45 46 46 47 48 48 49 49 50 51 52 52 53 53 54 55
rocky past and present homes - in vignettes suicidal ideations twenty people Finger Guns a war ongoing New Shoot Line of Boys stretch bananas Shrimp and Chips Intergalactic Love strafford Continental Drift Persuasions The Moon Swims Away You & I Untitled ballooning Call of the Fae omg nooo don’t read this haha your so sexy What’s the Opposite of Collision? Balance live for me Wanting professor, i think i have a problem Magnet Words puzzle missing pieces st bernard The Elizabeth Murdoch Building Simpleton beanie boo totality When I say I’m okay, I mean this: a list
CONTENTS
I HAVE WORDS IN MY HANDS AND IN MY MOUTH AND I HAVE TO PUT THEM INTO EXISTENCE Kira Turetzky
There is a hectare of words beneath the surface of my skin. If you convert hectares to square meters (a unit of area) then it’s ten thousand square meters of words. Multiply that by the depth of my consciousness (and don’t forget to add the depth of my subconscious), then the number is wildly too big to calculate. If you took a knife to the flesh of my arm and drew it swiftly across, words would tumble out intermingled with the blood of my substance. There are words all throughout my body, just out of sight. If I pull my hand tight into a fist, if I let the skin of my knuckles pull taught across bone, then perhaps you might see the impression of words resting over sinew and tendon. It’s not uncomfortable, all of the words. They take up a lot of space (sometimes it’s hard to breathe) but it doesn’t hurt. They’re just there, like any other part of my body. They flow through the avenues of my veins and arteries, pulse with the beating of my heart, fluctuate with my breath. The words are always there, they’ve always been there. I’m sure if a surgeon opened me up I’d look more like a dictionary than a person. Words and sentences and paragraphs, not flesh and gut and bone. I can feel the words, too. They’re heaviest in my hands; I have the most words there. They’re fighting to break free, fighting to fling themselves from my body and splat upon a page, to press themselves out on a keyboard and blink into existence on a wizzywig program. They’re persistent; I can’t always hold them back. When it’s time for them to leave the confines of my body, then they leave: fast and furious. Upchucking words from your hands is exhilarating. It’s not as disgusting as bile nor as painful. Instead it just happens, suddenly. I can feel the words at my fingertips threatening to break skin. It causes a physical reaction: my heart rate accelerates, my breathing becomes stilted. It’s coming, it’s coming. The words are coming. Hands fly across keyboard, so fast I can barely keep track of whether or not the words have spelled themselves correctly. My eyes race to keep up, I blink and there are words that I did not see before.
7 FONT MAGAZINE 7 FONT MAGAZINE
Hand words are easy. They’re always ready to become something, a story, a sentence, a phrase. Mouth words are harder. My mouth can be filled with words and still I cannot expel them. They sit heavy on my tongue; sometimes I want to gag. As much as I contort my lips, twist my tongue, and flex my jaw, they do not dislodge themselves. Mouth words hurt. Like cavities, they reach the root of my canines, biting back when I give them no voice. Mouth words make me anxious. There are some that I want to say, I want to scream them and shout them, let them fly furious from the prison of my mouth and birth them into the open air. But I don’t. Hand words are easier. I twitch. I can feel the words all inside of me. They are infinite and multiplying. Like the universe, endless and constantly expanding, so are my words. One word becomes ten becomes a hundred becomes a thousand. They mash and collide with one another, small supernovae just underneath my skin. My fingers flex and tremble and curl with the words. Shaking hands struggle to let the words free. I cannot keep all of the words inside of me.
AN ODE TO MY CROOKED TEETH Cenna Khatib
To the pearly stones knocking about Dancing around each other Bumping shoulders Standing sideways And a little lopsided To the relentless little bones That grind senselessly with nerves That rarely ever chew Without aches and pains Braces tried to restrain you once To make you straight To match images perfected by society But my stubborn smile Won’t change for anyone
FALL 2019 FALL 2019 8 8
IT’S FOLLOWING Anna Wegeng
The moon is overhead, quarter-full, a great calzone in the autumn sky. I’m walking home alone, Doc Martens tracking seaweed and pumpkin through the streets. I know I’m leaving a trail; I might as well drop straw or orange Skittles to let it follow, if it’s following me at all. I want to get home, hide under a blanket, sponge the salt leaking down my face, and watch a movie on my MacBook. I pass the park carousel, circling though it’s 2 am. It squeaks like a door hinge. My shoelaces are untied, but I don’t care: it’ll get me if I don’t get home.
“Moon,” Julia Coyle
99 FONT FONT MAGAZINE MAGAZINE
MIXED METAPHOR MOTIVATION R. Carlin
“let’s stop with the wringing of hands and maybe you’ll hear beyond the incessant ear ringing. you live in yourself like dirty shoes worn out by stretching and fat, unclipped pinky toes. when are you going to take a toothbrush and scrub? you have arms, don’t you? and elbows with which to grease? yes sir, i’m tired of the haranguing and hanging around. i intend to corral your spirit like a bunch of filthy cows, and i’m going to butcher the bullshit and the fatty edges off your dusty spirit, and make you irresistible to the red blooded mammalian meat eaters who’ll devour you, blood and all! yes, sir, you’ll finally serve a purpose greater than your own pleasure. now i can cut you up all i want but ultimately, give a man a toothbrush... and he’s clean for a day, and his breath doesn’t stink for a day. but teach a man to brush his teeth... and he’ll really get all those bits of cow out from between his gums and he won’t miss a single fleck of precious meat. you get what i’m saying?”
FALL 2019 10
THE SOUND OF SQUIRRELS SCURRYING Irini Tsounakas
Every morning, I wake to the sound of squirrels scurrying along the roof of my mother’s house. I tend to ponder their movements and that familiar sound, and wonder. This morning, I woke, thinking about the sound of squirrels scurrying along the dirt above my silent tomb.
And every once in a while, a large squirrely teenager, or a small, stupid child, or, maybe, those who regularly visit the deceased, may walk too close to the stone that rests above my encased head. And I may hear that same sound, the pounding of their feet, and the light thumps of the squirrels existing six feet above the bones and decay that I once called my own.
I believe this is what death sounds like. Squirrels, scurrying along, oblivious to the body, rotting, in the shallow grave below them.
“mounted,” Sophia Fox
11 FONT MAGAZINE
CLEARING
Andrew Cardell There was a clearing. A stream. A pond. A few boulders. An apple tree. A deer was eating grass a couple of feet away. I woke up here. There was a slab of granite below me in the shape of an oval. On it was an imprint of a body, like a natural chalk outline. My body. Where was I? The weather was cool that day. A breeze was ruffling the trees. Beyond the clearing, I could only see trees for miles. As I was looking up, a raven flew by. It squawked and looked down at me. It kept flying on. This place didn’t seem familiar, but I assumed I had just hiked too long the previous day and fallen asleep here. I went to get water at the stream, upstream from where the deer was now drinking. The water was crystal clear. Clear pebbles lined the whole stream like a swimming pool. This wasn’’t a forest. I looked around again. The grass was all one shade of green. It was so thick I couldn’’t see the dirt beneath. The sky was one shade of pale blue with white clouds. The clouds looked like cut out pieces of paper.
The deer had white, perfectly clean, antlers. It was an edited reality. It felt as if in my sleep someone had simplified all of nature down to basic colors and textures. I tried to walk out of the clearing to see if there was anything more beyond the dense trees. As I exited one side over by the twin rocks, I emerged back on the side with the berry bushes. I spent the rest of the day trying to find a way out. Once dusk fell, I knew there was no escape. I was going to be here until something got me out, or I woke up somewhere else. The sun was setting, and the clearing began to be devoid of light. Lightning bugs lit up small patches by the stream. I was sitting over by the twin rocks when the granite began to glow. The outline was glowing bright green. My eyes started to feel heavy and I was drawn to the rock. I down, my body fitting perfectly in the glowing green lines, and fell into a deep sleep.
FALL 2019 12
STRANGER
Jules Dickinson-Frevola remember when you cut your hair short for the first time you ran your hands across the back of your head and grinned ear to ear at the softness remember how you looked in the mirror and your heart soared at the promise of being closer to who you wanted to be now your hair is gone and you are lost where is the you that you wanted to be? where is the you that you once loved?
THIS IS WHAT IT COMES TO Lizzie Frank
Putting my bath towel on the wild grass Taking off my glasses and pretending I can see the stars I don’t want to visit you anymore I’m tired of burning for you Your tongue cuts the inside of my mouth What did you ever want from me? Is it possible to satisfy you, once and for all? I want to be rid of your cancer It would be better in every direction If I could forget about you from beginning to end.
13 FONT MAGAZINE
I AM MADE OF LIES Cenna Khatib
I breathe in pandemonium My body is home to chaos Disasters fill my air Move to inflate my lungs I am destruction personified Woven with confidence Build me up with accomplishments Paint me a god complex And hide my fragile heart Behind it all Create a puzzle Call me a mystery That you’ll never solve Maybe this way It won’t hurt when you leave
SIREN
Debbie Aspromonti A fresh coat of lipstick, red as an alarm Dress as black as the inky night Spinning, spinning out until you can’t quite see her anymore A Polaroid just out of focus The edges fuzzy, she burns too bright She’s as fierce and fleeting as a sunset But you love her in all her incarnations. You don’t want to play her game anymore But find yourself waiting nonetheless for her to abandon her toys and grow bored She is so reckless, hearts dangling from her chain like a necklace But you love her anyway Love is an anyway.
FALL 2019 14
VIBE CHECK! Lizzie Frank
Being queer and being good at fucking is a responsible act I’m going to make your whole body new again With my tongue The world will make you wish you were dead And then I’m going to bring you back to life
GIBRALTAR
Ryan Malloy He speaks heaven into an empty bottle, tells of a place far from here. The half-sun glints off the glass and projects against the limestone wall, limbs striding like that of a golden horse. It runs in place, towards the city splayed naked before them, rooftops the colors of Caribbean fruits, the rock that rips the paperwhite clouds, and she smiles uncertainly because she thought this was heaven. He always said it was. All it’s missing is you, he says. She frowns and brushes his arm made hot in the setting light. Her skin is cool from the shade, and she yearns to touch him longer, to claim what heat she can capture from him. His laugh is sweet like Christmas pastries and his fingers interlock with hers, but all around her seagulls beckon for her attention, swoop down on the tide that licks the rosy shore below. She turns to watch fishermen chat by the dock, crack shells against coolers, and children pass them laughing, a ball skidding across the dusty pavement at their feet. Lovers entwine in their journey up the road, tourists crane their necks to gasp at the sky, and everything glows. This is enough for me now, she says. Hesitance, a reaction she can feel but could never see, and the sounds of the patio lift to meet her ears again. A handsome man arrives at the table a few minutes late. He massages his whiskers and implores that he’s sorry, that after all these years he should know every street and building in the city. She shoots up though she told herself she wouldn’t, shakes his hand with a stiff wrist. He pulls out the vacant chair across from her. So what brings a woman like you to Gibraltar? he asks. She clasps her empty bottle as she settles once more. I wanted to see heaven, she says. The half-sun envelops her.
15 FONT MAGAZINE
ROADKILL ENVY Isabelle Jensen
The roadkill on the street reminds me that I am dying I do not know what of but I will die However, I imagine most will not be left bloody on the road For myself, I can only see two outcomes Option 1: I am a lobster For a while, my life will be a slow boil I will grow used to the increasing pain I will not realize it is killing me My casket will be a dinner plate Let the strangers consume me My body will be on show Everything ready to be cracked open. Option 2: Deforestation Like most animals, humans’ lives are ruined by other humans The environment I am most familiar with begins to disappear The trees that always stood for me fall My support system fails at the hands of the people I love I let them destroy everything I have. In both options, I am passive before death I am tired of my lack of motivation I want to want anything At least roadkill ran across the road Give me something to die for Shock me into caring. Hit me with your car.
“(don’t) jump,” “(don’t) jump,” Sophia Fox Sophia Fox FALL 2019 16
BITE
James Wegeng There’s a thing about fishing and casting out your line: You can’t always pull it back right away. You must sit back and let it sit drifting on unmoving waters which never cease sitting in stagnant calamity as sunlight seeks only to sit on the air which sits on the pond where your bobber is sitting, burned into your eyes which sit in your head which is starting to simmer in sitting monotonies cast all around the way water drinks up your line.
Today is not a good day for fishing, you think as you reel your afternoon back in. There’s a thing about fishing and casting out your line: If nothing is biting retreating is fine.
“caged,” Kira Turetzky 17 FONT MAGAZINE
PRISONBREAK Cenna Khatib
It’s this feeling of stuck Of trapped between a lung And the breath you can’t inhale Like the before part of drowning Like you’re underwater And try to breathe anyways It’s rivers breaking through your body rushing springs where blood used to be The water flooding your chest And fish living in your veins And it hurts Because it feels like your body stopped being yours It’s wanting to run away, spread these limbs And hope they’re wings so you can fly It’s wanting to sprint through the clouds Only to realize your sneakers turned to cinder blocks Only to discover chains sinking into your flesh Tying you to roots you never asked to have
MEN, FRANKLY Sophia Fox
I started a conversation with “Do you remember when Britney Spears…” and my friend laughed at me. I told her, “This shouldn’t have had such a big impact on my outlook as it did, but…” and then I referenced one of Britney’s concerts in Vegas when she wanted to bring a girl on stage. she said, “Men, frankly, can suck my fucking toe. But girls, I love you” and as quite an impressionable child who looked up to her so much, I really absorbed that statement. I still agree with that statement. Then my friend said, “So, she has a foot fetish?” FALL 2019 18
DCLXVI
Brittany Antonacci You fire, a distant demon figment Glass broke in my heart; you smirk my way Sinking fury at the peak of my pit Unattainable desire I detest I eat my words like supper on Tuesday Heat rising makes me run far, far away It burns me bad, about enough to scar Expelling the confines of my psyche Fire, wind, and water feel the same to me I digress, to my core, voided of light The darkness now encompasses my soul My skin does melt, my eyes do burn Seems everything does hurt, but I feel numb I am ok, at least I think I am…
“Look Up,” Kristina Fortunato
19 FONT MAGAZINE 19 FONT MAGAZINE
19 FONT MAGAZINE
I KILLED A FIREFLY ONCE James Wegeng
Something prickly alighted on the back of my neck I smoosh-scratched it off Stabbing vampires But its body felt wrong And I watched the lights go out I hate mosquitoes Injustice proboscis They are the only species for which So many little bodies
I endorse extinction Ever so much blood
Doesn’t it hurt when the pretty things die? The flowers fall off The trees tumble down The sleepers cease stirring The wakened wear out Little lights go out
FALL FALL2019 2019 20 FALL 2019 21 20
I CAN’T BREATHE
Sabrina Josephson i can’t breathe it’s becoming a hassle to put forth the effort i can’t speak but there is cotton shoved in my mouth and i’m just getting used to My quiet i’ve wrapped Myself up in ribbons but i’m just short of choking on the lack of air
for what? i’m not sure yet i’m unraveling the ribbons watching as they fall to the floor i’m removing the cotton drinking some water i’m going outside and breathing the air that belongs to no one but Me
“Climate Change,” Kristina Fortunato 21 FONT MAGAZINE
GOING GREEN
Sam Whitman • Your girlfriend is looking a little green. You noticed before she did, around a week ago. Now she stands in front of the bathroom mirror, frowning at a smear of foundation on her cheek. I don’t get it, she says. I’ve worn this shade for years. You try to keep your voice even and suggest maybe she’s gotten a tan. But she shakes her head. The hue’s not right anymore. • She tosses an olive sweater in the kitchen garbage a week later. You dig it out and ask her why—you know it’s one of her favorites. She looks at you, nose wrinkled, as though it should be obvious. The color no longer suits me, she says. She yanks the sweater from your hands and puts it back in the trash. • The green is getting worse. You don’t know if she can tell, or if the steady stream of mirrors and photographs in her life has blurred the change such that she can’t see it. A mutual friend registers his concern with you, and you tell him, a little harsher than you need to, to mind his own business. You tell her she’s beautiful more than you used to. • She thinks it must be some kind of fungus multiplying under the upper layer of her skin, so you delicately suggest she see a dermatologist. Can’t afford it, she tells you. Not without insurance. You suggest she marry you and get on yours. This elicits joyous, full-bodied laughter, the kind that could shake the earth and move mountains, could wake gods long dead. But she doesn’t say yes. • Your girlfriend eats less and less. You watch Food Network, read cookbooks, serve lavish dinners every evening and wake early the next morning to plug in the waffle maker and start the eggs, only for her to pick at her plate like a sick bird. She goes pescatarian, then vegetarian, then vegan, then nothing at all. Since she still refuses doctors, you rationalize it. She hasn’t gotten skinnier, exactly, more like reedier. And she’s somehow grown an inch and a half taller. • The next time you beg her to seek medical advice, she snaps. A quiet snap, like a twig in the forest. She doesn’t say anything, but you see it in her eyes (They are so green, have always been so green. How come you didn’t notice?). The next day, she quits both of her jobs—the one at the grocery store and the one at the chain restaurant. She takes your car out to the big bookstore on South Street and buys six slim paperbacks on gardening. You notice them on the coffee table, their garish covers reflecting the overhead light. Flipping through them while she’s in the bathroom yields no answers. • Her hair is falling out. You pull long, matted clumps of it out of the shower drain. It might be gross, except for the fact that it’s hers. One day when you run your fingers through her noticeably thinner locks, you feel a strange new undergrowth between your knuckles. • Your girlfriend has long, lovely fingers. You notice them in places you never did before—flipping through the gardening books, stretching to hold her FALL 2019 22
•
•
• •
•
• • • • •
phone steady. Is this another new development? Or is it just that you never looked? There is a stillness about her. She moves slowly, as if the atmosphere that surrounds her is made of honey. She doesn’t want to fuck you anymore, and when you do have sex, she only lies there with her head turned to the side and looks out the window. So you stop having sex and try not to feel bitter about it as you watch her sitting cross-legged on the floor at midnight, watching but not laughing at sitcom reruns. When spring comes, she spends long hours standing in the courtyard of your apartment complex with her face turned up to the sky. It scares the neighbor’s children into finding another place to play. Parents come to complain, and you find yourself getting defensive, though you never wanted to be that person. It’s a shared space, you tell them, before shutting the door in their faces. You don’t tell your girlfriend about the interaction. You used to tell each other everything. She doesn’t sleep anymore. She goes through the motions, brushes her teeth then lies down next to you on the bed, but it isn’t the same. Lying on top of the covers, she stares up at the ceiling until morning. The water in your neighborhood isn’t safe to drink, which becomes a problem when your girlfriend becomes obsessed. Soon you’re buying a new case of bottled water every day on your way home from work. When that isn’t enough, you load the trunk of your car with gallon jugs of the stuff, bring them home and stack them in the front closet and behind the sofa. Soon your landlord questions you about your obscene water use, which is how you find out that she spends most of the day while you’re gone under the shower spigot. When you ask her why, she tells you she’s trying to absorb the water but can’t. It haunts her, this need, and threatens to consume her every waking thought. She’s sorry if it doesn’t make sense to you. You tell her it’s all right, but could she please consider filling up the bathtub and soaking instead? She shrugs noncommittally. You can tell it’s not the same. Not to her. The landlord never calls back about the water bill. You don’t say anything when she removes her shoes and socks during her courtyard vigils and digs her toes into the dirt. You don’t say anything when her hands start to become something else entirely, stiff and gnarled at the joints, incapable of simple tasks like dialing a phone number or picking up a pencil. You don’t say anything until you wake up one morning to find her gone. Heart beset with panic, you clutch at your chest and fling open the blinds, only to find that she’s gone out to the yard to greet the dawn. You go down to meet her, feeling in the remotest reaches of your gut that something is very different, if not entirely wrong. She’s naked in your upstairs neighbor’s vegetable patch, the floppy, just-burst yellow flowers of the squash vines pooling around her bare legs. With her
23 FONT MAGAZINE
“Butterfly Flower,” Julia Coyle
•
• •
•
arms reaching for the sky, you could almost believe she were doing yoga were it not for the fact that she’s buried up to her ankles in the rich, dark soil. Why here, you ask her. The fertilizer, she says. The dirt in the yard is like eating cardboard. What it would be like for you to eat cardboard. Her eyes are closed. Her cheeks glisten with something that might be tears, or might be something else entirely. You have a strange desire to drag your finger through them and lick it, to see if they’re salty. The two of you stand in silence for a time. What do you need, you say at last. What can I do? She turns her head toward you slowly, like a sunflower, and smiles sadly. That afternoon, you drive to a park upstate where you two liked to go hiking before all of this happened. She sits in the passenger seat and drinks her water without speaking to you. She is neither angry nor cheerful. You’re pretty sure she can’t be either of those things, not anymore. She can only experience contentment or a vague despair, and you are pretty sure she’s experiencing the former as you head up the thruway, speeding only a reasonable amount. It is a long hike up the side of the mountain, made longer by your girlfriend’s excruciatingly slow pace. You try to carry her for a spell, but you’re not in that kind of shape. You keep asking if she’s all right, and she nods, so you continue. She stops at every stream to soak until you guiltily tell her you have to FALL 2019 24
•
•
•
•
• •
move on. She’s never mad about leaving, but always looks a little disappointed. You know the spot when you see it, a sunny clearing near the top. You might have shared a picnic here once, but really it’s been too long for you to properly remember. Nonetheless, it feels right. Your girlfriend regards it with a small, satisfied smile. You two talk for an hour, and she finally tells you the whole story. She tells you about how it started, with confusion and a roiling anger that threatened to pop her like a balloon. Then, slowly at first and then like a mudslide, something different. An exhaustion, an ache, and then a clarity like none she’d ever experienced before. And though you hurt, though you want to fall down there on the forest floor and scream, her story might just be beautiful. When the time is right, you dig the hole together. It’s time, she says when it is deep enough, putting a hand on your shoulder to stop you. You scoop out a couple more handfuls of dirt for good measure before you look her in the face once more. Are you sure, you ask. You don’t have to be sure. She smiles like she’s asking for forgiveness. Thank you for everything, she says. She steps into the hole, and you help her fill the dirt in around her knees. You see a ghost of her old gestures in the way she straightens herself up, like when she used to stretch her shoulders after a long night of waitressing. Then she stills, and the resemblance is gone. It is time for you to leave. So you do. Getting back down the mountain is a much quicker task, limited by the power of your very human legs alone. Still, it’s almost dusk when you get back to your car and pull out onto the highway. You get Chinese food on your way back. You sit in the dark on the floor of your empty apartment, eating noodles out of a takeout box and trying not to cry.
25 FONT MAGAZINE
“WOULD YOU DIE FOR ME?” Caitlyn (Cat) Snell
“Would you die for me?” Yes. Pump me full of that toxic cocktail Strap me down and string me up to those jellyfish electrodes. Scramble my brains. Yes. I would die for you. Lead me to the gallows, Knock me off my feet. Show me how the French do it, Let the blade drop. Let me meet my maker in an assembly line of barrels and a barrage of bullets. Yes. I would die for you. But My death comes with qualifiers. A lifted print of the trigger happy, A receipt of a faulty alibi, A death certificate reading your name. Yes, I will die for you. Depending how I plead.
FALL 2019 26
“The Slopes,” Olivia DeFiore
27 FONT MAGAZINE
ALIENA
Olivia DeFiore In a cold sweat, she awakens with a familiar feeling. It begins with the sensation of his fingers caressing her forearm, soft pads gliding against its sensitive underside. Her skin erupts with goosebumps as she shivers with pleasure. His fingertips dance, tracing circles and swirls and spirals, from the curve of her elbow to her dry and cracking knuckles. She rolls over, releasing a long sigh, only to find that the sheets beside her are empty. She knows they have been empty for a long while. He has disappeared along with the intimacy of his touch. Instead, her arm now ripples with the prickle of pins. Tingles with the sting of needles. Feeling disappears, beginning with the pads of her fingers and spreading to the joint in her shoulder. Her limb feels as though it is no longer a part of her body, as though it is made of wood. It is a tree, hidden deep within the darkest recesses of the forest. Her heart pounds at the thought of a foreign entity hanging from her body. It feels heavy, like it is sinking into the mattress to never be found again. She wishes for a lumberjack’s arrival, for him to chop her down and use her for firewood. No lumberjack arrives, but what does arrive is the fire. Now, it is sunburn. Her arm radiates with warmth, her skin falling away in flakes. She presses her fingers into the soft flesh, wincing at the sting, to watch the shape of her hand form among the red. It is then that she remembers she can see nothing in the dark. Something bubbles beneath her skin, rumbling like a car as its engine roars to life. Pockets of air form within her marrow, rising through the bone and muscle until they are trapped just beneath the surface of her skin. She squeezes her eyes shut. Bites her lip so hard that she is certain she has drawn blood. Her left arm, the good arm, reaches over the side of the bed. Trembling fingers graze the cold metal protruding from beneath the mattress, close around the rusting handle and— No. Not now. Not yet. But her other arm, the bad arm, is now that of a zombie. Surely, she has been bitten, infected with its virus. Her skin bruises with blotches of purple and green and blue before blackening and peeling away entirely. She is certain that she already senses the numbness, that she already feels herself radiating with fever. Something is hiding, crawling just below the surface, swimming beneath her skin. It must be a snake, coiling and uncoiling about her limb. The fangs, dripping with venom, caress her tissue, threaten to leak their poison into her bloodstream. But no, not a snake. A bug. Perhaps a roach. Perhaps hundreds of them. Their antennae poke through her pores, twitching in anticipation. And there is a leg, a single roach scrambling to eat its way free. She wishes it would. But no, not a roach. A parasite. It gnaws away at her muscles, boring down to the FALL 2019 28
“marblesce,” Kira Turetzky
bone, to the marrow. It lays its eggs that, in a matter of time, will hatch in the form of a colony and use her body as a host. They will travel beyond the confines of her arm to the rest of her body, where they will breed and breed and breed until she is nothing more than a pocket of skin teeming with the life of another. Something is horribly wrong with her arm. Her mind. Her arm. She retrieves the saw from beneath the mattress, relishing the cool metal against her sweating palms. She knows what she must do. With the first swipe, the metal teeth bite into her flesh and blood pours onto her bedsheets, staining the white material an angry crimson. It is painful, a kind of painful that she has never before experienced. A kind of painful that sends a scream clawing up her throat as her arm slices and snaps and pops. And yet the agony is nothing compared to the snakes, the roaches, the parasites—all claiming ownership of her body. So she saws. She saws until the touch of his fingers has disappeared. She saws until the forest has been chopped down. She saws until the bubbles have freed themselves from beneath her skin, until the zombies and bacteria have been eradicated. Until the parasites have burst free from her body and scurried across the mattress, never to be seen again. Her arm falls to the hardwood with a thud. And, at last, thoughts quieted, she crawls beneath the sheets once more.
29 FONT MAGAZINE
GRAND EDGE Ryan Malloy
A train hasn’t come across this bridge for years. Still, when we sit here we pass restless glances to either end, the bends that succumb to conifers. We dangle our feet over the river below, the foamy rapids, and you laugh. Sometimes I think about jumping, you say. And imagine your blood running through the water, I say. Yeah, me too. Somehow, you laugh. I think it’s a natural response to decompression; the air has to go somewhere. What if we did it now? you ask. Together. We just jumped. I think for a moment, look past my sneakers to the water. I can feel my heart pulsing in my eyeballs, can see minnows stream past slick gray stones, can hear a train approaching in my ears, but I don’t dare look. When I stare at the clouds, marshmallow dissolving in an impossibly clean pond, everything goes quiet again. Or we could sit here, I say. And then afterwards go to the diner for some pancakes. I watch you think as I did, freeze in your own chamber of a moment, and when you thaw, you look thoughtfully into the horizon. You don’t smile. I don’t expect you to. I could use some pancakes, you say. We let the seconds run by like glue.
I WANT TO GO HOME
Sophia Fox
I want to go home so I walk into traffic I don’t worry They’ll stop for me.
“crossing,” Claire Helena FALL 2019 30
SBOCCIATO Ryan West
You call me soft with every breath. From what I can tell, you’re getting used to the fact that I am not a stone, an Easter Island head in your daydrunk, pinktint idea of my personality. In fact, I am but a jet-propelled holdall of sinew and ash and turpentine. None of these things are anything but soft. And furthermore, the pot could not be blacker, as the slightest touch on your shoulder makes you melt between my fingers— At least, not in front of our mutuals. But hey, my friends seem to be fair game. Every moment that passes cuts the distance between us in half. I could turn to talk to another and your lips would meet mine, hot honey on sleeping skin buzzed and numbed with warm whiskey from half-nip bottles. I can smell the rain again, briefly. Your hand, a dancer, eastern European, serious, soft, delicate, finds the back of my head, just past my hair are my thoughts and grey matter memento soup To take as you will, as I had vouchsafed semiwillingstillendearing. You turn to leave in the late morning, no longer this intense pixie wood elf succubus, but a slightly hungover human lady. Your bones crack and pop when you lean toward the sun. You watched me smoke my morning cigarette, so I could catch that ultralight sunspot glint from your eyes— if I cock my head to the side. To moonbathe in that sharp gleam, if you stayed still long enough. If you cock your head to the side, I can glance over the marks that we left on each other like headsick horny teenagers. This, a habit I admittedly find hard to shrug. I am always tempted to keep the spot your mouth left still, waiting. I wish I knew where you went when the uppers wore off. Back to your honey slow backwards dreamland? there, There I’d think you’d either fade away or be starved for good company, so in case you’re famished Let me be your stimulant once more, when you need a little attention.
31 FONT MAGAZINE
“rocky,� Sophia Fox
PAST AND PRESENT HOMES - IN VIGNETTES
Claire Helena
new england when the leaves have all turned marigold or vermilion and have dropped from their branches like visible breath leaving lungs in early morning air, i will know you are coming home to me again. -shelburne falls, massachusetts southern bells in summer, you touch sticky sweet tea to your lips and it coats the rooftop of your mouth. chime in and tell me that you miss my humidity, that you miss my blessed hearts and prayers. -apex, north carolina upstate there is no hustle or bustle here. only horseback on trails in april while the ground is still soft from the snow. you can grow here and my trees will keep you safe. -honeoye, new york FALL 2019 32
SUICIDAL IDEATIONS
Jules Dickinson-Frevola you told me you have a condition a part of your illness that makes you try to see any and every way you could kill yourself in one room not a conscious decision but something that occurs in your brain nonetheless sometimes i would wonder how far you would go when considering that bleed out from a pen stab dissect the door handle and use the screws suffocate yourself with a charger break the glass and make a knife use my hands my hands my hands my hands when you were sad you would take my hands and try to hit yourself frustration when i wouldn’t hurt you when i would never hurt you i wonder if you would use my bones and sharpen them into a knife die by my hands when you ran out of options
33 FONT MAGAZINE
TWENTY PEOPLE
Sabrina Josephson your laugh still echoes not like i’m there but as if you’re here and your laugh is twenty people celebrating life as i get smaller and smaller and smaller i don’t want to say i’m scared that i flinch anytime i hear your voice or even think i hear your voice it isn’t fear it’s weariness for what might happen because the one time i let my guard down you happened.
“Finger Guns,” Isabelle Jensen FALL 2019 34
A WAR ONGOING R. Carlin
during the antebellum years i persuaded myself into the deluded seduction of “we” i wrote that “we” spilled our drinks “we” gilded and embellished our ugly lips and “we” cried and pounded fists against glass and brick, i insisted that it was never only “i” and instead sacrificed my words to the shades of people meandering about my mind but memory lies, and the war trudged on until i realized with finality that there had always been a war ongoing, and we would never die together. instead, we awaited splayed and mangled deaths, torn and star-spangled corpses mentally inept, but we would walk again, only nevermore to speak of “we” only to lapse into solipsistic lucidity
35 FONT MAGAZINE
NEW SHOOT
James Wegeng You chanced to sprout a new shoot even though you’d been dug up forever ago. You chanced a second chance at growth— growth is life for a plant— and it’s turned you into something really special. It didn’t concern you that you weren’t in the soil. It didn’t concern you that you had no external water or nutrients. It didn’t concern you that you were just going to die again. You had a chance and you took it you big, fat, fucking potato. I wish people were more like potatoes.
LINE OF BOYS
Kristina Fortunato His tornado energy invited chaos into my life. I became deliriously addicted to the madness of it. When we first started dating, I was always self-conscious of my cold hands and clammy toes. Do you think he noticed? He writes epics about what he would do with me, for me, to me: he leaves me shivering. Why do my eyes always glance at the clock at exactly 11:11 pm? And why the fuck are you always the first thing to pop into my mind? He called me perfect once. I guess it was just another excuse to con himself better head. The sadness is all consuming, but I am making no effort to rein it in. Am I becoming the old people that hate everything by the age of nineteen?
FALL 2019 36
BANANAS Andrew Cardell he kept his bananas in the fridge why you may ask? I do not have that answer we brought pizza home he changed he put on a movie pizza was cold by then “stretch,� Claire Helena
the movie played he started to become physical like ms newton john I thought it would escalate but in fact it was an escalator downwards the building was being exited there was a fire alarm and no one got what they wanted to purchase he said he wanted to go to bed early I laid like a corpse on the edge of the bed he played his audio book on the other side my friends thought I did ketamine I did not do ketamine if I did that would have only helped my situation I woke in the morning he offered me a cold banana and sadly, I ate it
37 FONT MAGAZINE
SHRIMP AND CHIPS Claire Helena
The lights of Coney Island have not started to flash yet, but I know they will at any moment. I’m standing on the beach, staring into the ocean and waiting for the tide to drag me back to the salt I’ve been craving for a long time. The last time I was in the ocean was almost a year ago; we took blankets to Jones Beach and lounged around before the school year started. I consider it the first time I actually enjoyed swimming. This year, the water has been colder, so when the tail of a wave licks the tips of my toes, I recoil. I step back and let my heels sink into the sand, my eyes still trained on the endless stretch of ocean. My father taught me not to turn my back on the ocean. It is not predictable like the moon and her phases, and it will not return what it takes. I continue to step back until the ground underneath me turns rough with a scattering of larger pebbles. Only then, when I’ve put enough distance between the two of us, do I turn and walk back towards the boardwalk. I pass a temporary tattoo stand and ask where I can find a good margarita. The girl working there barely spares me a glance before directing me towards the front of the park where I came in. She says Margarita Island is a “tourist-favorite” and pegs me for exactly who I am. Thanking her, I wander through the rows of carnival games and rickety rides. I keep the left side of my mouth pulled up, like someone pulled a string too hard and my skin has bunched up accordingly. My walk back takes longer than I remember it taking to get to the beach. I credit it to the dark and the increase of foot traffic. I turn a corner. Someone yells something to me, but I don’t clearly hear them. I’ve been staring at my feet, and when I look up, an older man stares at me expectantly. I blink. “Sorry, what?” “Come on, I’m gonna win you a prize,” he says so matter-of-factly, luring me with a hand gesture and a promise of a cheaply made plush, presumably one resembling a tiger or a shark. Maybe both. I am a smart woman. I do not make stupid decisions often. I know that strange men who beckon young women into the dark do not return them to well-lit street corners or their suburban doorsteps. I am a smart woman. But I follow him. I don’t know why my feet carry me ten feet from my path. The scene replaying in my head weeks later will play out like a modern take on Little Red Cap. Weeks later I will be pounding on the aquarium glass that separates me from the memory. I will beg myself to turn around, throw myself up against the glass in hopes that I will break through. FALL 2019 38
We are ten feet from the steady flow of people when he asks me, “Where’s your boyfriend this evening?” I must hear the pounding in my head, feel the fists on the inside of my temples. Because I stop walking. There is a moment where I recognize that I am an impulsive, shaking mass of words and actions that I cannot explain. “Actually, he’s been waiting for me for a while. Can you tell me how to get to Margarita Island?” He points me around the corner and I thank him. “Have a great rest of your night!” I end up at the bar and suck down a frozen margarita in between brain-freezes and perimeter sweeps. I don’t want anyone to find me on my own, nursing an alcoholic slushie. After, I wobble my way towards the Q train, stopping only for fried crustaceans. Where am I going? Where am I supposed to be? I crawl up the stairs and place myself in a plastic seat, orange and yellow, or red or blue or I can’t recall. I just want to eat. The lights of Coney Island are bright. And I am alone.
INTERGALACTIC LOVE
Isabelle Jensen
“I love you too” The words feel alien in my mouth Something from outer space Is bound to seem unfamiliar But its existence is unquestionable
39 FONT MAGAZINE
STRAFFORD
Ryan Malloy We share smoke beneath your Dover apartment, by the alleyway encrusted with weeks-old snow. You hug your body and curse and through the chimney of your mouth I watch your tongue search for words, glide across an auditorium of teeth, smoke plume from your lips and evanesce into the sky. This is my last night in Vermont, you say. I don’t answer. I’m going somewhere warmer, you say. You pull your guitar case further up your shoulder. Somewhere I can play without my fingers shattering. I’m going with you, I say. I flick the cigarette onto the ground, snuff it beneath my boot. Wisps of smoke float up into the streetlight. I thought you said you were stuck here, you say I guess I’ve been too afraid to turn the lock. You wait in the driveway, press your back against the van door and inhale. Your cigarette is a beacon in the absolute darkness of the neighborhood. I creep from the house, spin the key ring around my finger, and the door opens with a pop, and you load our guitars into the back, and somewhere a dog barks as the pavement crackles beneath the van’s tires. Away, the dog shouts, away, and our headlights slice through new possibilities. You stick a middle finger out the back window towards my parent’s house, and the frigid air is sweet so you leave it open. At dawn we’re in a new state, and the sun is a stain of fog in an endless straight jacket of clouds. In a park we open the back and play ballads to the trees, and you laugh as you count our audience, dozens of vibrant evergreens. We don’t know where we’re going. I sleep on your shoulder as you slingshot us down the interstate, through a tunnel, its radiant end a release point. A car honks somewhere in the distance, and my reverie shatters. You’re watching me for a reaction. I smile weakly and shove the cigarette to my lips, swallow whatever threatens to claw its way up my throat. I’ll miss you, I say. Dover, Strafford, Vermont; they tighten like the fingers of a fist, the latches of an ever-complicating lock, and I am tightly packed like the snow, waiting for spring to come on days that have no numbers. I watch you climb the stairs and disappear.
FALL 2019 40
CONTINENTAL DRIFT Kira Turetzky
You never realize how far apart things are until you look up from the ground. At first we were so close, just standing across from one another. We shared everything: the good, the bad, the ugly. Nothing was out of bounds, nothing held back. Confidants, partners-incrime, us versus the world. But one day, just recently, I looked up and realized you were an ocean away. The continents are constantly in motion. Plates shifting, oceanic basalt gobbled up at ocean trenches and spit out at the ridges. Over time, thousands of years, they move around the world. They drift apart, join back together, but there is always movement. I think we became like continents. Spending so long so close together, edges rubbing together like classic slip-faults. Laughs like earthquakes, rumbling and shaking. And then the rifting. Pulling apart, opening a trench in between. At first it was nothing. It was unnoticeable. Five centimeters, five inches, what was the difference? Then it was five meters. Five kilometers. An ocean away. “It’s not so bad,” you said. “Just cross the ocean, and we’ll be together again.” And I did. Across churning waters, violent seas, through turbulent tides I crossed the distance. Shaking, breath rattling I climbed onto your continent. “See?” you said. “That wasn’t so bad.” And I didn’t think it was. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve crossed this ocean. It became so
41 FONT MAGAZINE
habitual, so ritual that I didn’t pay attention to the toll it took on me. Each time I would climb shaking from the seas you would nod. No extravagant welcome, no congratulation, no ask if the journey was easy. It wasn’t. But that’s what I expected. That was in your nature. “What if,” I suggested, “you came to me?” A frown. Furrowed brow. Squinted eyes. “It’s a long journey, I know. But then you’ll be here, and we can see each other again.” A shrug. A wavering hand. “I’ll meet you at the shore,” I offered. “Then we can go home and rest.” “Well,” you said, hesitant. “It’s just so far. The ocean is so large, and what if the weather turns sour?” You shook your head. It wasn’t worth it, you decided. We would just have to deal with being apart a little bit longer. It was a reasonable decision, you said. You stopped meeting me at the shore. It was inconvenient to come all the way down there. “Just meet me in the mountains,” you said. “It’s not too far from the shore, it’ll be an easy journey.” It’s not. I’ve crossed the ocean and climbed the mountains to see you. Over and over, time and time again, I make this journey. My muscles are taut and stringy from swimming the ocean, my feet calloused from the mountain trails. All of this is overlooked, just a byproduct of the trip. Something to be expected rather than what it is: a sacrifice. A show of dedication and love. “Please,” I beg. “Come visit me now. I have carved a trail with my feet from the
frequency of my visits. I am friends with the whales and fish that swim my path. You’ll like it here, I promise.” Are these tears my own or remnants of my ocean trek? I am just as much salt and sinew as blood and soul. You turn your lip and sigh. “I suppose I could visit. But it will be a great expenditure. I hope you know what I am sacrificing to come.” I nod, anything to convince you. One trip across this ocean that’s come between us and it is the greatest undertaking you have done. “It was so long,” you lament. “You should be grateful that I am here.” I am. Your visit was stilted. I gave you my bed and my home and you took it all. You had never visited before and I wanted to show you everything. “I am too tired to see so many things. Let us just stay still.” Like rocks, unmoving, mute, and stony we sat in solitude. Were we even really together in that moment? What was the point of this visit, I thought. Why come from so far away to do so little? When it was time to say good-bye I did not know how I felt. “I wish we could see each other more!” you said, holding me tight. “You should come back and visit me now. You are so far away.” Though we stand side-by-side I feel farther away now than across that ocean. I feel myself drifting, my continent sliding over the lithosphere and moving farther and farther away.
my own feet treated as though it were nothing more than a few steps up a hill! The roiling, plastic magma belches at the thrust belt, spewing out hot gas and vapors in protest. The continents slide farther apart, new ocean floor being made in its wake. I don’t want to swim across the ocean anymore. I don’t want to look at a mountain and be reminded of the effort I made to visit. I want to be alone on my continent and drift to the other side of the world. I know that following continental drift theory our continents will meet on the other side of the world and collide once more. But will I be there when they meet again? You cannot count on my being there anymore. I will have transcended this rocky terrain to the heavenly blanket of sky, and I will rocket through the void on a trajectory that is all my own. Only once I am galaxies and light years away will you stretch your hand to the stars and ask if I will come visit. I will laugh, moondust in my lungs and comets in my eyes. I am too bright and too far away, but I will relent. “Well,” I will say, the heat of a thousand dying stars in my throat, “you can always come visit me. It’s not too far. What is a galaxy if not an ocean full of stars, and I’ve crossed a dozen oceans for you in my lifetime.”
And then you were gone. And then I was angry. All that time spent crossing the ocean that’s come between us to be treated as if it were only a pond! The path up the mountains carved by
FALL 2019 42
PERSUASIONS
Jessica Bajorek i remember driving through tunnels stationed in the back seat of my mother’s Subaru Forester, not paying attention to the road signs only paying heed to the gold finches dotting the chicory blooming along the highway. i turned over small slabs of shale stone, examining the grubs that made home of the packed dirt. i washed my hands in the mint leaves growing beneath the spigot. i spent afternoons hidden from sight, carefully picking my way over clumps of poison ivy. i sat beside the stream that flowed from the storm drain and dreamed myself a pioneer of the hills beyond my neighbor’s yard. i remained a child prone to the persuasions of the bumble bees that gathered in the phlox just off my doorstep and the careful humming of crickets in moonlit grass. i remember bonfires peeking from my second-story bedroom window and my mother’s voice, telling me not to go out in the yard barefoot, though i never cut my foot on the glass i stashed in shards beneath the forsythia or the stones i stood on as i envisioned myself an emperor of an empty audience. i am no longer privy to the happenings of the house on Foster Street, no longer an ambassador to the childhood i left snared on the thorns of the curb-side rosebush.
43 FONT MAGAZINE
THE MOON SWIMS AWAY Alicia C. Renda
She starts In dirt Quivering lakes turn to stubborn leaves She ends In dirt Scraped clean Tears washed up in clouds Clouds that carry away dreams Smoke left in the ground A night that hides A never-ending day Save yourself, she yells so, the moon swims away Black ink-drawn scars On milky white skin Exhaustion breaks As she sinks in space
“You & I,” Julia Coyle FALL 2019 44
“Untitled,” Julia Coyle
BALLOONING Sophia Fox
you are the one thing that keeps my feet on the ground so when you’re not around, I’m left to float I keep busy so I don’t notice the branches of a tree, or the wires of a power line, poking holes in me, and holding me hostage.
45 FONT MAGAZINE
CALL OF THE FAE Maddie A.
A longing ache within my breast The insistence of the forest’s request For it’s been long since I’ve been there With twigs and moss amidst my hair I must return, I know not why My lady’s humor grown so wry I must face the trees again Beyond the vast and reedy fen I danced with fae one moonlit night She kissed my brow and said all was right I woke early the next dawn The woods were empty, the fae were gone But since I woke upon the sod I have been feeling very odd I sing to music no one hears I taste strange sweetness in my tears Fairy rings sprout where I lay I see the features of the fae I feel the vines within my throat And I know what it denotes Like a moth drawn to a flame The forest speaks and calls my name I must go, I can’t resist That wonderful dance, that lovely kiss There is a price that I must pay That comes from dealing with the fae
OMG NOOO DON’T READ THIS HAHA YOUR SO SEXY Lizzie Frank
The most terrible thing was the way my life opened to you without hesitation. The way I would keep making room, if you asked me to. The way I can never ask you. There can be more, you can keep having more of me, I will give you an infinity of myself. But there can’t be less. I can’t take myself back. I’d give it all to you. Wherever you put it, it’s staying there. Whatever you do with it, that’s what’s been done. I can’t keep coming undone. FALL 2019 46
WHAT’S THE OPPOSITE OF COLLISION?
Jessica Bajorek
Sometimes I see him dangling from my neck but our bodies were two cathedrals and you rested your head against my chest to hear the slow tolling of that bell. I lay you under the protection of this stained glass— glass he broke when his head hit tile. I think I found you somewhere between these tiles. Can we clean these tiles before they stain from all the glass? Sometimes I wonder how the skin of my palm compares, how I look down at these hands, my father’s hands and want to peel away at this skin— his skin was like paper, but yours is soft. I like to plant these kisses on your skin like good omens. My omens have never been favorable, always clouded in doubt, doubt that sets in as I feel the pressure of your lips with fiery certainty and I hear his voice from the back seat of my car when my knuckles whitened, clasped around my seatbelt, screaming for me to get out of the car. His voice was fixed. I don’t know if he’d been drinking, but now my brother trades his compassion for jokes and maybe it all started with that day in the car. I want to take you in my car, up the winding driveway on Pond Lane and seat you on a bar stool. But when we gather holding hands like we hold each other, thanking the God that denounced me, I wonder if somewhere in these hands that were my father’s if I can see the cracks where he let the light in or if tar steamed rolled over those lines, seamless and smooth like your hand in mine.
47 FONT MAGAZINE
BALANCE
Isabelle Jensen Today life is a unicycle. I don’t really have much to stand on.
“live for me,” Kristina Fortunato
FALL 2019 48
WANTING
Sam Whitman The morning the moths discovered the dawn they took to the sky in droves kite wings blotting out the sun they praised the gods of light for finally heeding their hunger
and I, several hours later took the dog out around ten scooped the scorched bodies of a hundred tiny Icaruses out of the birdbath dumped them under the rose bush where the dog sniffed and decided not to eat them.
PROFESSOR, I THINK I HAVE A PROBLEM
Olivia DeFiore
I’ve dropped my pen. It’s rolled to the place where the floor meets the wall, a perfect breeding ground for filth. I still use it to write—it is the only pen I have—but my fingers itch at the thought of the floor’s mysteries having migrated to my hand. I need to wash my backpack. I ordered it online in October and have yet to clean it. Each time I look at the dull gray fabric, I see the squirming microorganisms coating its surface. The floor of this classroom is particularly grimy, and now my backpack must fester in it for the next hour and twenty-three minutes. When I return to my room, I will douse my pen in lemon-scented Lysol. I will swish my mouth with Purell. I will remove the contents from my backpack to wash it with a concoction of Tide and steaming water it so desperately needs. Then I will bathe in a tub of Clorox.
49 FONT MAGAZINE
“Magnet Words,” Isabelle Jensen
FALL 2019 50
PUZZLE MISSING PIECES Jules Dickinson-Frevola
i’m taking myself back. i’m taking back the pieces i gave you, the kind parts of me my smile my dreams you don’t get to have them. you don’t get to have me. i put my smile back on and share it with new people. i document my dreams and don’t consider what you’d think of my far-fetched ideas. i hold new people in my arms and i feel safe again. you don’t get to have me. you don’t get my time you don’t get my sympathy you don’t get a say you don’t get a piece of the life i’m making for myself. no matter how much you reach out no matter how sorry you say you are, i spent so long agonizing over you letting everything revolve around you, and now, i’m being me, and i’m taking back my pieces.
51 FONT MAGAZINE
ST BERNARD Ryan Malloy
We climb that ridge, the trampled bodies of once molten lakes now ruddy beneath our feet, and you ask for a break. I stop and turn back to you. The big citrus sun pokes through the clouds to signal twilight, and by your silhouette I am reminded of our childhood. When the three of us would explore the ruined temples of Wolverhampton, trace walls of graffiti and smoke stains and hammer strikes, and you would stand as you do now: a hand to your kicking heart as it threatens to use those legs and hop from your throat. Your eyes are wide despite your exhaustion, your mouth agape though you say nothing for a while. This was a stupid idea, I say. The best idea we’ve ever had, you respond. He could never appreciate the irony. He isn’t the only one we’re doing this for. You clasp the old crisps can in both your hands. The cardboard is damp from the mist and the top is fastened with heaps of duct tape, but still you hold it far in front of you, train your eyes like it’s a jostle from detonation. I wave towards the precipice. Not long now. Do you see it? The sky like agate, the cobalt mountains in its shadow? You rip the duct tape from the crisps can and your hands tremble as you hurl its aperture towards the wind. The powder mingles with the snow below our feet and swirls through the air, and we watch him run, tail wagging, down the rocks and through the golden valley grass and towards the lake below still rolling with haze, giant clouds like whales floating along the surface. St. Bernard Pass. You call it poetic.
“The Elizabeth Murdoch Building,” Kira Turetzky FALL 2019 52
SIMPLETON
Kat Anderson The sky is pink above me tonight And everything feels good.
“beanie boo,” Claire Helena 53 FONT MAGAZINE
TOTALITY
Andrew Cardell streaks of the green pass by me they start to fill in until i am surrounded and i lose distinction i sink the green goes away and the red begins to form the red pulls me into the earth’s crust into the core i drown in the red swallowed in one piece i am indiscernible the green then comes and mixes itself into me i lose myself in the color i am not one but many the color surges around us we lose anything less than we what do we call—
FALL 2019 54
WHEN I SAY I’M OKAY, I MEAN THIS: A LIST Claire Helena
1. The birds still sing like they did before. Bright squawking from the roof that pours down on me. Feathers scattered at the bottom of concrete stairs. They did not change. 2. The train is running late, and I am on time. 3. Backs are turned towards me, and I am keeping my head down to avoid the memories of being walked away from. 4. I wanted to sleep forever, not wake up. Now I’m not sure I ever want to fall asleep again. 5. I ordered a green tea latte this morning. I remembered to ask for coconut milk. 6. My new favorite book is a book that has not been published yet. It is about trauma. 7. I found a diagnosis. But it is still a diagnosis. 8. I am going home this weekend. Running from my emotional instability and into the arms of my mother, who tells me that we are all traumatized, all picked apart and dissolved like cotton candy in a hot mouth. 9. I have not looked for her in photographs. I have not looked at her photographs. 10. I’m talking about it. 11. I don’t want to talk about it. 12. I am taking time for myself. 13. I am surrounding myself in a cocoon spun from the praise of others. 14. I am okay. 15. I am not okay. 16. The birds still sing like they did before. They did not change. But I think I may have.
55 FONT MAGAZINE
FALL 2019 56
Disclaimer Font exclusively features the work of Hofstra University students. Each staff member reviewed and ranked submissions blindly.
Font Literary and Arts Magazine. Volume 113, Fall 2019. Hofstra University. Copyright 2019 Font Literature and Art. All artwork and literature contained in this publication are copyright 2019 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
FALL 2019 3
A PRODUCTION OF THE HOFSTRA ENGLISH SOCIETY