Font Literary and Arts Magazine Fall 2020

LITERARY AND ARTS MAGAZINE Volume 15 Fall 2020

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: “blooming,” Dickinson-Frevola

STAFF MANAGING EDITOR

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

DESIGN EDITOR

Alyssa Minkoff

Claire Helena

Bridey Morris

HEAD COPY EDITOR

ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR

Manasvi Vietla

Sam Whitman

COPY EDITORS Olivia DeFiore

DickinsonFrevola

Julianna Grossman

Brooke Sokoloski

Andrew Cardell

GENERAL STAFF Debbie A Lauren Ballinger Lex Besecker Alysia Boodram Victoria Carrubba Madison Donnelly Emily Ewing

Rachel Farina Reginna Francois Cecilia Gray Isabelle Jensen Annie Kellogg T Kosek Kira Kusakavitch

Jessica Mannhaupt Aissatou Ndiour Yashu Pericherla Ambrose Rajendran Lauren Sager Samantha Slootmaker Caitlyn “Cat” Snell

SPECIAL THANKS Karyn Valerius Stan Cherian Erik Brogger Hofstra University English Department

FALL 2020 4

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Dearest reader, It is 7:41pm on Thursday, November 26th, 2020, as I write this letter to you. We have all experienced a challenging year that is slowly coming to an end.

We have seen unforgettable things—a global pandemic, a civil rights movement, a historic election—and the lives of millions have been affected. But, despite the loss and the heartbreak, there has also been art and love and kindness and creativity sparked from the embers of a charred, damaged place. With every poem, every short story, every painting or photograph or art piece, we breathe life into the flames of rebirth and reconstruction. We are building a new normal, and it takes time and dedication. We are building and rebuilding and we are doing it as a family, as a collection of people who can come together and share our experiences and vulnerabilities with one another. This is how we make our world a better place.

This year, what can we say to our loyal readers, contributors, and staff members other than thank you? Even when our worlds were flipped upside down, when we had to redefine what learning and connecting with others meant, we produced amazing things. We are still producing amazing things.

This issue of Font is dedicated to you, reader. While we lost so much, we also gained so much, and without you, there would be no “we” to speak of.

To the members of Hofstra English Society and my Font staff, my family away from my family, I am forever grateful. You have made these three and a half years so much better than I could have imagined. I love you all dearly.

Claire Helena Editor-in-Chief, Font

CONTENTS

temporarily abled The Picture Window 11357 jigsaw Checkered Witch The Weight Anger, Old Dog cicada body A Party for Laika ghost whisperings There is an Abandoned Church in my Chest It's the Little Things No Growing Up dad Illusory Dreamland spoiled milk carton boy The Moral Dilemma of Wishing on Stars the L word Peaches? ice cream bliss how nice Marie Duplessis is the Devil 10:24 a note for me planted body posi Within (Part 1) Within (Part 2) Living Art

6 7 8 9 9 10 11 13 13 14 18 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 24 25 25 26 27 28 29 29 30 31 32

T Kosek Audra Nemirow Samantha Slootmaker Andrew Cardell Alysia Boodram Lex Besecker Caitlyn "Cat" Snell Claire Helena Dickinson-Frevola Sam Whitman Olivia DeFiore Caitlyn "Cat" Snell James Wegeng Audra Nemirow T Kosek Olivia DeFiore Claire Helena Olivia DeFiore Caitlyn "Cat" Snell Claire Helena Katie Fenton Alyssa Minkoff Sophia Fox Audra Nemirow TD Claire Helena T Kosek Samantha Slootmaker Samantha Slootmaker Debbie A

Isabelle Jensen Olivia DeFiore Isabelle Jensen T Kosek T Kosek Andrew Cardell Arianna Rose Wentworth Yashu Pericherla Jessica Mannhaupt Gabrielle Pascal Sophia Fox Debbie A Isabelle Jensen Cenna Khatib Arianna Rose Wentworth Isabelle Jensen Madeline Armstrong TD Lex Besecker Katie Fenton Annie Kellogg Dickinson-Frevola Jessica Mannhaupt Dickinson-Frevola Debbie A Claire Helena Alicia C. Renda Alicia C. Renda Arianna Rose Wentworth

32 33 34 35 37 37 38 40 41 42 45 45 46 47 47 48 49 50 50 51 52 53 54 54 55 56 56 57 58

The Diagnosis and I A Cloudy Day at Anne's An Effort to Float Going on a Date in a Pandemic brain jelly potency: a dialogue Visceral The Architect eye of the sun Syèl La conversations Elusive The God and The Fish Astronomer Lantern Send Me into Orbit The Bright Place on the lesbian experience I Found a God Priestess of Apollo Color me in self portrait red blossom everglades Rooted glacial In the Vineyard Where Sand Ends Can I Be a Piece of the Sky

CONTENTS

“temporarily abled,” T Kosek

FALL 2020 8

THE PICTURE WINDOW Audra Nemirow

She is addicted to her picture window. The world this window possesses is simple: green field, red windmill, vaguely cloudy sky. It is a place so placid as to be mysterious. Of course it rains and storms in that world, but silently and without really altering the grey light.

It calms her to know that the picture window is there, always within her sight.

She has no desire to leave her square room, not even to wash her hair. That would mean leaving her poor picture window all on its own.

When she can do nothing but decode the dregs of her morning coffee, her heart twitching like a bug in a puddle, she remembers her living painting, and she is lulled into peaceful lethargy. She then stumbles into her easy chair and wastes whole days in contemplation of the landscape flattened against the glass.

Sometimes she wants to throw a penny out the window, to see how long it would take before she hears the penny strike the grass, but picture windows do not open. Not to mention she has no pennies to throw.

She is always alone, thank goodness. Not even the birds interfere with the purity of her silence, so she has forgotten about such things as birds.

It is only on those rare sunny days when the light moves about her room with the glittering persistence of a police dog that she doubts her solitude, that she suspects there is someone else, watching her from beyond the picture window.

9 FONT MAGAZINE

11357

Samantha Slootmaker Mom said he had chronic otitis media as a toddler maybe that’s why he can hear, but not listen.

If he would s l o w e v e r y t h i n g d o w n then maybe he would understand where i come from.

Some call him an ‘airhead,’ but i think he is filled with fluid.

He rushes like water: downhill, quick, and relentlessly; words flow to the edge then tumble out.

The whites of his eyes water when i talk about that night in Queens; Emotions flooding, a typhoon with high powered winds.

Before i could attempt your rescue, i was thrown back by the waves i tried to swim out, but i couldn’t fight the rip current.

They called for clear skies, but it poured till dawn.

Sometimes the devil’s advocate needs an advocate of his own, a soul that might understand what stirs through his mind. i thought that could be me, but now… i am not so sure.

What if he simply craves me like caffeine, a quick fix for an addiction?

He always loved the softness in my mocha eyes, insisting he could simply drown in them.

FALL 2020 10

JIGSAW

Andrew Cardell we were all misshapen with long edges and rounded limbs not a place to fit in for years we sat alone at the bottom of a box as the other pieces were put together where they found their fit at some point we were thrown into a box together each of us just as grotesque still, nothing could make us fit but fitting didn’t seem to matter anymore this box was for all the pieces like us we felt safe there difference became likeness

we were left out in the rain our cardboard warped some of us lost our sharp edges to become like the pieces we had envied but some edges only sharpened, growing more irregular than before you changed to fit in where you always wanted to are those memories still there in between your layers of cardboard is it okay to not fit together or was everything meant to be temporary until you found a new home and now we will never be in the same box again

“Checkered Witch,” Alysia Boodram

11 FONT MAGAZINE

THE WEIGHT

Lex Besecker

in·ev·i·ta·bil·i·ty /iˌnev d ˈbil de/ noun e

e e

1. The weight of generational failure that rests on your shoulders; it permeates throughout the house, on your clothes, and follows you to school, to work, like a shadow 2. Certain to happen; unavoidable 3. Waiting with bated breath for the worst to happen; not from your own doing, but from something greater than yourself 4. After all, that is what you’ve been told since the day you were born ex·pec·ta·tions /ˌekspekˈtaSH( )n/ noun e

1. A plan for the future that you know will never happen 2. You wonder what’s the point of having them when there’s nothing to live for; you’re going to die in this town anyways hope /hop/ noun 1. Her eyes swallow you whole and for the first time you feel something in your chest that terrifies you in the best way possible 2. Something you never expected to feel free·dom /ˈfred m/ noun e

1. You’ve been eighteen for ten days when you toss your bags in the bed of your truck; the engine revs and her long hair streams out the window as Elvis spills from the speakers 2. You never look in the rearview mirror

FALL 2020 12

ANGER, OLD DOG

Caitlyn “Cat” Snell

You pause in the middle of brushing your hair. You brush your hair brutally, angrily. It is the only thing you do angrily anymore. You pause, fingers curling and uncurling through a knot, and you wonder where your fight went.

You know you had anger issues as a kid, undiagnosed. You were so angry, so much of the time. You remember how things would light you up, blazing, and how you would seethe and bite and the whole world would smell of gasoline, and you would wake up, later, to a trail of destruction, charred pieces of life, gently smoldering.

You curl your fingers through a knot and you swivel your neck from side to side.

There is a crick in it, from studying and reading and working. A crick caused by a number of things and all of them responsibilities. You think idly about how Anger lies just outside your bedroom door, an old dog that you do not let sleep in your bed any longer.

There was something cleansing in anger. When you were a child and you were so angry, there was a polish of righteousness to it. It was anger wielded against a teacher who was acting unfairly, towards a grade misguided, a peer misfiring, your parents. You were not always right, but you were righteous and you clung to Anger’s back, fingers curled in its fur, and eyes mirror-clear.

Anger is not used to being shut out of doors. It is old now, and does not bark. It sleeps outside your bedroom door and you within. Nights are lonely for you both, and oftentimes, you can hear it stir. Anger stretching out its old dog limbs and padding through the empty rooms, its weight still disturbing the floorboards, and the house, almost quiet, stirs with it.

Your face does not run red with anger anymore. Bite is not barely concealed behind crowned teeth.

Anger likes to growl at shadows, but it has learned not to bark. You get up in the morning and trip over Anger in the doorway, finally asleep after a night full of tossing. Anger huffs at the disturbance but does no more. It clings to its uneasy dreams.

13 FONT MAGAZINE

Anger once did not know “house,” or “morning,” or “loans.” Anger smelled like the pine needles; it shook off mustard seeds like dust. Anger slept in night air, and it woke with the sun. Anger liked to run, and it ran through worlds in a night and a day. Running until it stopped, when you, exhausted, fell away from its mass, and it curled up asleep beside your body, thrown.

Now, you go about your day. Anger sleeps beneath your chair while you have not-coffee with a friend. It curls up a lip at a particularly loud laugh, from you, from her. It exhales at the bad joke you regret for only a moment. It doesn’t even raise its head to share such opinions. It lies quiet beneath your chair. You do not notice its protest.

Anger used to wait for you to wake up, and growled and yapped and cried when you did not get on its back that first time. It did not take no for an answer and waited until you were flush with uncertain emotions and then it picked you up in its jaws, still sharp then, and ran and ran and ran, your body little more than ragdoll.

You are used to the house now. It is neat and clean, and not empty, though sometimes familiarity makes it seem so. It is made from boards, and stones, and paint chips, that you cobbled together.

Anger barked for days when you found the first brick. It howled and yowled and barked when you placed it in the ground. It ran itself ragged while you collected and cobbled. It tamed itself as you built the bedroom and the door it would sleep before.

Even still, comfortable and warm, you sometimes miss its weight beside you; still, you keep the bedroom door closed at night. Still, you brush your hair; brutally, angrily.

FALL 2020 14

CICADA

Claire Helena I am leaving my body on your doorstep. Not my exoskeleton, not like the last molting season. But this time I’ll make sure you get every part of me, even the inside bits.

I am not nearly as fragile as the shell I dropped off in your mailbox the time before. It was brittle like the dried sage in your spice cupboard, and made the same crackling sound when you held it too tightly. Before, you placed it in your palm, examined the remains closely like an anthropologist examining stone tools.

I asked if you liked it by singing, but you never answered, too busy looking at my desecrated armor to notice. Imagine singing for someone, only for the gesture to be returned with the closing rattle of a screen door.

So this time, I’ve made your welcome mat my final resting place. Laid myself out to dry. Perhaps I wasn’t forward enough last time, only giving you a small piece. Perhaps you require my face, legs, stomach. Not just my skin. Until you pick me up and look at me the way you look at the other artifacts of our past, I’m going to wait here.

“body,” Dickinson-Frevola

15 FONT MAGAZINE

A PARTY FOR LAIKA

Sam Whitman

On November 3, 1957, a Moscow street mutt named Laika became the first living being to enter orbit around the Earth. Hours later, she became the first to die there, overheated and alone in the cramped cabin of Sputnik 2. The night before her departure, Dr. Vladimir Yazdovsky brought her home to play with his children. Years later, he would write, “I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live.” 1 When Dr. Yazdovsky announced he was taking the dog home, the other scientists laughed in his face. “Going soft, Vladimir?” “If your children want a pet, there’s plenty more where she came from.” But Yazdovsky was not to be deterred, and in the end, he was allowed to set the mutt in the back seat of his car and drive off into the frigid desert night without further questions.

Leninsk was deceptively quiet that evening. The cranes tasked with assembling the city from scratch, steel beam by steel beam, stretched their necks toward the fat yellow moon. Below them, trucks slumbered like grizzlies in pitted fields.

As Yazdovsky passed, the local Kazakh laborers turned to watch him go, their faces blank.

Laika barked distrustfully at every phantom reflection in the window—months of preparation yet she still yapped like a stray—and then, when the shadows made no response, she climbed the console, bent to give Yazdovsky’s knuckle a cursory lick, and settled herself in the passenger seat.

“You’re going to make a horrible cosmonaut,” he told her. He reached over to pat her head, which fit in his broad hand like an apple.

The Yazdovskys lived among some of the other scientists and their families in a hastily constructed apartment building a few kilometers out from the cosmodrome, the first of many in Leninsk. The dog, who had weighed only 5.6 kilograms at her last checkup, fit under his arm like a briefcase.

Yazdovsky knocked instead of letting himself in. His wife, thinking perhaps he was a neighbor asking to borrow a spot of cream, met him at the door. When she saw the dog, Anna lunged into the hallway before the children could see, slamming the door behind her. “What is this, then?”

Yazdovsky, meeting the cold steel of her eyes, could not find words, except, “Laika.”

Anna wrapped her arms over her chest for warmth, as the hall was unheated.

The anger remained in her eyes, but now there was also an unmistakable undercurrent of fear.

1 Isachenkov, Vladimir. “Space dog monument opens in Russia.” NBC News, 11 April 2008. My depiction of Yazdovsky, who died in 1999 and about whom scant information exists online, is entirely fictional. To the best of my knowledge, none of the other characters—save Laika—actually existed, and any similarities to real people are entirely coincidental. I have also taken a great deal of artistic liberty in depicting the Soviet space program and the closed city (once Leninsk, now Baikonur) which sprung up around it.

FALL 2020 16

“I had permission,” Yazdovsky rushed to explain. “I thought she might enjoy a night playing with the children before…”

“Before you send her off to die? How will you explain that to them? What is wrong with you?”

Yazdovsky was silent. He looked again at the little dog squirming under his arm, then back at his wife. He admired her ability to sigh with her whole body, which she did now. Then she nodded back to the door and led him inside.

When Laika saw the children, she writhed with such intensity, it was all Yazdovsky could do not to throw her across the room. She skittered across the linoleum and slammed into Peter with the force of her entire body. Peter, who was only four, allowed himself to be knocked back and the little dog to stand on his chest and lap at his face with her soft pink tongue.

Maria, seven, stood further back. She asked, as though she dared not hope, “A puppy?”

“Not to keep,” Anna said, her voice even-keeled and indecipherable. Her words were punctuated by the precise staccato of her knife hitting the cutting board as she chopped carrots for dinner. “Do you remember your father’s colleague, Boris? The one you met in Moscow, who brought you the chocolates you liked so much?”

Maria nodded. A smart girl like her mother—Yazdovsky had no doubt she really did remember Boris.

“It’s his dog,” Anna decided. “He is working here in Leninsk, just like father, and has asked us to watch Laika for the night while he is off visiting his mother.”

She turned and shot a glance at Yazdovsky that said, you can thank me later.

There were faint tear tracks on her cheeks.

A feeling overcame Yazdovsky that he had grown accustomed to in the weeks leading up to the launch date. He wanted suddenly to run from the warm apartment, from his wife and children, into the dry-packed desert wilderness beyond Leninsk. He tried to swallow it down. “Yes, that’s right.”

Peter, of whom Laika was still completing her inspection, made no indication of having heard. Anna would have to repeat herself later. Behind Maria’s eyes, though, Yazdovsky could see the gears of her mind at work.

“Perhaps,” she said, working her bottom lip with her teeth, “Perhaps if we do a really good job of taking care of her, we might be able to get one of our own?

When we get back to Moscow?”

The sick feeling wormed its way down Yazdovsky’s throat and into his limbs.

When he spoke, his mouth was gummy with saliva. “Perhaps.”

After dinner, which the dog spent perched at the children’s feet to catch scraps, the four of them plus Laika retired to the living room. The children gathered around the radiator as they had often gathered around the fireplace in the house outside Moscow. And they will gather there again, Yazdovsky reminded himself. Once this Sputnik business was concluded, they would return to the city for good. The children would return to school, Anna to her friends, and yes, damn it, maybe there would even be a pet dog who wasn’t doomed to die.

17 FONT MAGAZINE

If Anna noticed the force with which her husband gripped the arms of his chair or how his eyes bored into the wallpaper, she said nothing. She seemed wholly consumed with her knitting, and if she stopped occasionally to watch the children and dog with sad eyes, it was only when Yazdovsky was not looking at her.

The dog had been well-fed, to Yazdovsky’s dismay. After tidying up in the kitchen, Anna had returned with a plate of chicken scraps for Laika, which the children fed her in exchange for simple commands. Yazdovsky, who had had a hand in her training, felt suddenly ashamed he hadn’t taught her more exciting tricks—to roll over or shake hands—but of course she had been taught only what was practical for a cosmonaut. More to the point, he had been made aware that the dog was not to be fed prior to launch, and he knew exactly whose head it would be on if the dog vomited in orbit.

“I am not sure if Boris,” he began pointedly, “Would want her to have all that.”

Anna glared at him. “She is our guest.” So it was decided.

Now, the children had gone to the closet, found a length of rope, and, with their father’s permission, cut and knotted it into a suitable toy. One minute they would throw it for Laika to fetch, and the next they’d be engaged in a tug-of-war match. For a dog who had spent months subjected to brutal training, with weeks at a time spent in confined spaces to simulate the satellite chamber, Laika was remarkably good-natured. She never once snapped at Peter, not even when he grabbed at her tail or put his fingers too near her eyes.

She reminded Yazdovsky of his father’s old hunting dog—no, better not to think of that. Better not to think of himself at fourteen, far too old for squeamishness, burying his head under his bed pillows when the first shot sounded and the old, ailing beast howled in anguish until the second shotgun shell put him to rest. Better not.

Laika was no old and ailing thing. At least she wouldn’t suffer long before they….

Yazdovsky staggered to his feet. “I’m going out for a cigarette.” His voice was too loud, unsteady. It startled the children, who looked up at him with eyes like river stones.

Anna looked at him over her knitting. “Can it wait? The children will go to bed soon. Peter would like it if you read him a story.” If she was sympathetic to him, she kept those sympathies to herself.

“I… of course.” He sat down hard and looked at the clock. One extra half hour to play with the dog, and then the children would go to bed. It was what they had agreed upon. Now, it seemed unfathomably cruel. Who was he to decide Laika’s playtime was up? She, who would never play again.

Yazdovsky sighed. For whatever good it would do her, the dog would need her rest. They all would.

He was glad when Anna told the children it was time for bed that it had not been his call in the end. He was glad when he was assigned to put Peter to sleep,

FALL 2020 18

and Laika followed the older child to bed instead. And when he heard Maria ask her mother, “Do you think Boris will let us see Laika again?” he thanked God he was not the one who had to answer.

Yazdovsky finally went out for his cigarette around ten. Anna hated the smell, and so Yazdovsky was relegated to smoking outdoors even in the frigid winter nights that had followed him from Moscow to Leninsk. His breath hung heavy in the air like rocket exhaust, intermingling with the smoke.

That vision came over him again, of walking off into the desert. It was not far from here to the checkpoint that allowed access in and out of the closed city. If he tried to leave on foot in the middle of the night, surely they would not let him go, thinking him crazy or, somehow, a traitor. But if he took the car and claimed he was on emergency business, why, they wouldn’t risk denying him, official authorization be damned—not the night before a launch, and him a scientist. Then all he’d have to do is pull off the side of the road out of sight somewhere and leave the car. He’d take off his boots and socks, then, to feel the crunching dirt between his toes, and he’d walk away into the night.

But Yazdovsky, thinking again of his little children, did not leave the courtyard of the apartment building. He stayed until his cigarette had burnt down, stomped it out in the grass, and returned to his wife’s side.

Early the next morning, Yazdovsky would once again take the little dog into his arms and carry her out to his car. Numb, he would drive her back to the cosmodrome where the rest of the team would be waiting to bundle her inside the satellite. Terrified and horribly alone, Laika’s heart rate would accelerate to three times its usual speed as the capsule accelerated skyward.

Ever so fleetingly—before the temperature control system would fail, before Yazdovsky would watch the data readouts with a vice clenched around his heart, before the agency would claim it had euthanized her with poisoned food to avoid the truth of her slow and agonizing death—Laika would exist where no living being had existed before. Before losing consciousness, she would turn toward the bulkhead window and gaze upon a view like no other.

But for now, tonight, nested in a hand-knitted blanket at the foot of Maria’s bed and warmed by the furnace of the little girl’s body, Laika was content. Legs twitching in anticipation, she dreamed of open fields.

19 FONT MAGAZINE

“ghost whisperings,” Olivia DeFiore

FALL 2020 20

THERE IS AN ABANDONED CHURCH IN MY CHEST

Caitlyn “Cat” Snell

There is an abandoned church in my chest. The walls are made from ribs, grown from Adam’s single loss. The steeple is a throat scarred with hymns. There is no heart. I can scratch at skin until red marks run, but Jesus was a carpenter before he was a god, and his structures are built to last.

There is an abandoned church in my chest and its congregation was lost in between high school and hypocrites, when English classes gave me reading comprehension and my campus minister gave me an answer that felt like an out. The congregation was lost between the pages of Job, of the Catechism, of the history textbooks that outlined the crusades, and spoke confidently of the infallible Warrior Pope, as if words didn’t mean anything anymore.

There is an abandoned church in my chest and the lights don’t turn on anymore.

There is no flaming tongue of fire that fills the room with speech. I am monolingual, and the altar is unfriendly. Dust coats the cross like the guilt of neglect, and I’ve learned that water clears the throat, but it never tastes like wine and it certainly is no place to stand your ground. You only get your feet wet.

There is an abandoned church in my chest and I try to forget about it. Emotions are heavy on the shoulders, and Jesus feels like an imaginary friend, and God an indecipherable thing. I miss the warmth of certainty, of having the whole world figured out, but growing up peels the wool from those mountains to reveal molehills, and teaches you that candles have heat like forest fires but you cannot conflate the two.

There is an abandoned church in my chest and I don’t know which of us haunts the other. If it haunts me in ink and metaphor and guilt, or if I still wander those empty halls, small inside the structures I can’t unlearn.

21 FONT MAGAZINE

IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS

James Wegeng

Milk and cookies make a mighty pair like needle and thread but less threatening less useful less but tremendously tastier.

NO GROWING UP

Audra Nemirow

The western wall is waxy as my childhood doll, the one I sucked my thumb with and could not sleep without.

Totems coated with stains, caressed until the original roughness is lost, giving way to a glassy luster, diamond-like and more sacred by the second.

There is no growing up, no growing out of the impulsive thumb-suck, of the much needed good-luck stroke.

Mortar is mortal and stitches fray, but I believe in the Velveteen Rabbit, in whispered wishes breathing life into what should have shriveled, what should have been dust long ago.

FALL 2020 22

DAD

T Kosek I know words cannot tell, Feelings cannot share, And memories cannot live.

They cannot live up to you, The stable pillar I, like a vine grew on The hearty soil I, like a tree grabbed a hold of They cannot share the times I had with you The jokes we’ve told, Ideas we’ve shared, Movies we’ve made traditions.

They cannot live the life you’ve given me, They cannot feel the butterflies I got knowing you’d see me perform They cannot quell the tears I shed when a hug would.

They cannot know you the way I grew with you.

“Illusory Dreamland,” Olivia DeFiore

23 FONT MAGAZINE

“spoiled,” Claire Helena

MILK CARTON BOY Olivia DeFiore

I thought I saw you on the back of a milk carton As slivers of silvery moonlight stretched through the blinds I chewed my cereal, begged the crunch to outscream my thoughts But the milk curdled on my tongue and settled beside my gums I thought I saw you on the evening news Heard your voice among the fizzle and snap of television static They say you are a danger and should be approached with caution But my brain and my skin cannot agree on a truth I thought I found your bones beneath my bed Huddled against the uprooted floorboards Tucked between the cobwebs and my shriveled dignity But when I reached for you my fingers met only whispers of dust I thought I understood But in the end your fascination with missing persons Only began to make sense When the you I knew disappeared

FALL 2020 24

THE MORAL DILEMMA OF WISHING ON STARS Caitlyn “Cat” Snell

I wish I could wish on stars like I was a kid again. I wish the wishes that I wished came easy and quick and every night. I wish that I could stand at my window and remember the stars instead of the ominousness of the streetlight and the strange car.

I wish I remembered that the chance to wish comes nightly. I wish my wishes floated to the top of my brain and the tip of my tongue like the foam that crowns waves. I wish that they would drop before my eyes like they used to, and I would imagine, as I squeezed my eyes tightly into a wish, that I could see the unicorn that the wish would grant me meet.

It would be inevitable if only I had the courage to sneak down into the backyard at midnight, for that was when magical creatures roamed unnoticed. I never had the courage to sneak down into the backyard at midnight, but I wished one day I would. Even as I grew, wishes came easy, because giving up on roll-die magic seemed stupid, because even if it never works, what if one day it might, who would look stupid then?

So lonely not-child wished for a boyfriend, lonely teen amended “or girlfriend,” and lonely some-something thought not. On a walk the older, less-lonely, lesssure, some-something, looked up, head cocked at the stars, and was faced with the wish.

Their eyes remember the steps, and found, easily, the star that shone the brightest, and the older some-something hesitated. The rhyme was queued on their lips, but they looked at the pinprick brightness and thought of their upcoming assignment, and thought of their hopeful “A,” they thought of the workday on the horizon and with it came the hope that it would be good. Came with that was the hope for the year, it would be nice if it were good also. It would be nice if they saw their friends often. It would be nice if their friends had a nice year. If that one friend whose life was awash with issues that they only shared briefly—it would be nice if that friend felt loved, better yet if the issues could be resolved, or if the issues got resolved.

What about the some-something’s mother, she was so tired, so unhappy, and it would be nice if their mother were not tired, not unhappy. But wishes shouldn’t have double negatives; that was against the rules. So maybe it would be better to wish that their mother was happy, or that her work was less tiresome—but not necessarily less work, because what if star-wishes work like genie-wishes, certainly that would be a bind.

25 FONT MAGAZINE

Still though, does one spend the wish on one’s mother, or the friend that needs it, and what about the sister? The walk is almost over and the wish has gone unwished. So, rhyme quickly mumbled, the wisher wishes one wish, trying to make the most of that roll-die magic, trying to stretch it over problems plural.

They choose simple words and wish for resolutions for one problem that night, hoping to remember that with the next night comes another wish. They’ve always been forgetful though. They resolve to do the dishes for their mother when they get home. They resolve to give that friend a call.

THE L WORD

Claire Helena

I am not looking for you.

I have not stood on soapboxes to call your name, have not posted inquiries in the newspapers or tacked up wanted posters around town.

Instead I have sucked on salted skin, fucked in the woods, stood under scalding water to wash away the fingerprints, the saliva.

Have choked, been choked, choked on.

Distracting myself with body warmth— with fingers in my hair and on my jaw— snuffs you out, your smoke dissipates.

I have not lost you, perhaps because I have never known you, or only thought I did.

But you are not sharp tongues, or the flap of wings against the lining of my stomach or fingertips on my thighs, my hips.

I do not need to find you.

I do not want to find you.

I am not looking for you.

FALL 2020 26

PEACHES?

Katie Fenton

Tightly sealed beneath glossy plastic Tattooed with a distant expiration date Little cubes of daylight and sugar— I think they’re peaches.

A vacuum-sealed koi pond in my hand, the tiny shapes collide in the juice like some fourth-grade science experiment or flowers on a Hawaiian shirt.

I want to dive into the sunshine-covered waters Taste the jarring sweetness of a popsicle in every juicy, half-natural bite.

ICE CREAM BLISS

Alyssa Minkoff

tuesday lunch with you we sit in our usual booth you tell me about your day and i tell you about mine we share dessert, like always decide on a classic ice cream sandwich, i wait patiently as you carefully break it in half we play two truths and a lie try to trick each other into guessing wrong, but you know me too well and win anyway you tease me; i laugh; and you ask if we should split another ice cream i feel happy? lunch with you is a moment frozen in time; somehow, amidst all this chaos, you are always calm and it is contagious i feel happy

27 FONT MAGAZINE

“how nice,” Sophia Fox

FALL 2020 28

MARIE DUPLESSIS IS THE DEVIL Audra Nemirow

Innocence is a privilege, a precarious ledge.

Eyes wide, I fall, for below is my beloved double life.

Marie Duplessis, je vous salue!

You are a field of white camellias, a print of falling petals.

You are Garbo in my heart, invisible to all.

Your cough must be spun sugar, clouds of cotton candy.

Why should one consider synthetic love a sin?

Dear virgin-whore, dear paradox, dear saint of tainted pleasure, your secret, is it stained?

Camellias redden like setting suns!

I have never seen an angel bleed: so my dear, you’ve been lying, leading me on.

I sleep upon your fragrant grave, a camouflaged camellia.

The splendid demimonde sings in my muffled mind.

In sleep, in sleep I sink so low, so low I wake up down below beside a corpse, a relic, who smiles eyelessly.

Oh Marie!

Now I see through you, my heart sears.

There is no beauty in this duplicity.

Let me go, let me go, oh half-life.

29 FONT MAGAZINE

10:24 A NOTE FOR ME TD

you, drunk and coming down from being high, stumble into the bathroom. you realize you can no longer feel every nerve ending singing or your head spinning or your skin on fire. every hurt feeling doesn’t feel like a knife in your chest and the lack of flat chest doesn’t feel like you’re dying anymore. you’re numb. numb and aware of the absence. you never thought you’d miss the shivers down your spine and the burning but now you do. it is in this moment you decide that it is better to feel everything rather than nothing. better to know your body’s there because it’s screaming and raw and broken and bleeding than not being able to reconnect your head to your torso. better than drifting off in space, too exhausted to grab hold of something to ground you. it’s better to remember his hands on me and their kiss on my neck and feel the raw cry in your throat than to be adrift, unable to feel your own touch, much less those of everyone who’s ever touched you all at once. it all comes at once. because when your nerve endings are all exposed and burning bright, you’ll only hurt yourself. to match the vibrations of the strings in your bones like you’re a harp being plucked, a blade on your arms stings like the rest of you does. but the numbness. the numbness won’t even let you lift your hand. the numbness is dangerous, like cold water seeping into your clothes and chilling you before you realize, slowing your movement and making you lethargic with the absence of feeling, the numbness is draining. so when it hits, you won’t scream and gulp desperately for air, thinking you’re dying and all the while ripping at your skin to convince yourself that god fucking dammit you’re alive and you feel pain. the numbness sneaks in. like cold air through windows and under doors, chilling your feet and working its way down to your bones. it settles in like a fog. it won’t let you move. it won’t let you speak. you know the way to end it, but you don’t understand all the fuss. it suits it. the suddenness. the fullness. the absoluteness of the end, hand in hand with numbness.

FALL 2020 30

PLANTED

Claire Helena I am pushing up daisies and pulling up weeds I hope you find somebody better than me Cuz’ you’re the smell of going places and gasoline The sound of tires and tsunamis And there is nowhere there is nowhere there is nowhere That your face does not sprout up in my mind.

A dandelion between sidewalk squares, Wisteria vines creeping up the stairs, Towards the back door; come in if you’re there And I will wait for you almost anywhere.

“body posi,” T Kosek

31 FONT MAGAZINE

It encases every fiber of my being.

Constantly tingling all of my senses Never resting Never giving me a second to breathe Always moving at incomprehensible speeds

WITHIN (PART 1)

Samantha Slootmaker

It resides mainly in my gut Sitting stagnant for hours on end Stealing any hope I have for hunger Suckling at the few stomach contents Then It decides to move upwards Snaking Its thick twilight tentacles up up up Binding my throat Restricting my breath my words my emotions You would think that it’s enough damage afflicted on me But It has other ideas Each tentacle has a mind of its own Prowling towards other areas of my body Ready to torment at all corners It snakes down my arms Overstimulating my senses Nerve-endings firing at every turn I try to move but I am fastened in place Stationary to the numbness I try to speak but the tentacle is still there Tightening Its grip ever so slightly with every word I struggle to utter until nothing

FALL 2020 32

WITHIN (PART 2)

Samantha Slootmaker

I encase every fiber of her being.

Oh, I know it’s a bit cliché, but every once in a while, I simply have to bring out the dramatics. It only makes the job more fun, adding some life to her dull interior.

What is my job, you ask? Only to make her life a living nightmare, taking control of most aspects, leaving her powerless.

Who is this ‘her,’ you ask? Ohhh, her, nothing of your concern, just a vessel in which I take my refuge in, my...place of business, so to say.

Who am I, you ask? Well, well, well. Looks like you will have to wait and see about that one. Have to leave my subjects wanting more. Anticipation is key.

Why do I do this, you ask? I mean, what fun would life be without at least a little bit of dread? I thrive off of her anguish, I am enthralled by the thought of taking away her bliss. It simply brings me so much joy!

I station myself mostly in her stomach. It is the only place that has anything good to eat. Plus, I am in control of the menu here, confiscating whatever my little heart desires. I don’t do much when I am here, only weigh down her gut for hours on end and consume what little contents I allow to pass through.

Sometimes, I venture out of the abdomen, explore other ways in which I can torment her. One of my personal favorite places is her throat.

I climb up her ribs, taking one meticulous step at a time and position myself, getting cozy between her vocal cords, stealing the one thing that gives her power—the little bit she has left. Her words. Her ability to plead her thoughts and emotions to others. Rendering her helpless to speak her mind and find solace in others.

I stretch my tentacle-like appendages out and around to grab whatever words and thoughts come around here, constricting her communication with each word I pluck away.

What would a world be without expressions?

Torture. Just the way I like it.

33 FONT MAGAZINE

LIVING ART

Debbie A

The water breaks over the rocks In tiny little rivulets that leave me speechless “This,” I said, “is why they invented poetry.”

The laughter floats across the open field And I bottle it away for later Knowing this is why they invented music Time stopped When you leaned against the fence, In a blue shirt And smiled I never told you But this is why they invented art

THE DIAGNOSIS AND I

Isabelle Jensen

It said treatable It said chronic It said medication may help: Tizanidine Clonidine Amitriptyline Escitalopram Sertraline Klonopin It never said curable what lives inside me cannot be snaked out or evaporated the meds might help or they might not it turns out that your issues aren’t issues when you have to sleep all day medically tired is sleeping on a park bench at noon It is waking up on the floor trying to figure out how I got here It is nap time no matter where I am

FALL 2020 34

the doctors avoid blanket statements they do not know what side effects I will have they do not know if it will help but they are trying on a good day so am I the problem is good days are in short supply and I refuse to bring a pity party into every room but I still need help I need to ask for things while still being a person I am disabled and diagnosed and tired I am still here I take the pills and shower and get dressed I listen to my doctors I still laugh—that one is important and I still cry and I am me me with extra parts me with more struggle me with more strength the strength to say I am enough to say I am doing my best to say this is not my fault this may be chronic and it will not be easy but I am worth the fight

“A Cloudy Day at Anne’s,” Olivia DeFiore

35 FONT MAGAZINE

AN EFFORT TO FLOAT Isabelle Jensen

The water shimmers above my head I grab a fistful of my shirt in an effort to lift myself to the surface I am trying to trust this costume I put on as if it is a life vest I put my faith in my t-shirt, in my facade of confidence, in my fragile mind In truth I am not drowning, I am merely swimming poorly However, catastrophizing is my best stroke So, this must be a tsunami The waves tower over me like my goals and my next full breath I remember there is still air in my lungs That air is a success story This nitrogen and oxygen have been through so much, and right now they are mine I will keep them in my lungs if it takes everything I have Moving forward may be the hardest thing you or I do today But we will—just as we have every day so far The wave is coming but you are no sinking ship You have weathered every storm and this water is no different

FALL 2020 36

GOING ON A DATE IN A PANDEMIC T Kosek

I never really think that anything good will come out of being back home.

When I do the journey back to my hometown, once or twice a year, it is never pretty. Leaving New York, I pack away the truest me into a box, and it may not see sunlight spare a few moments for months.

I figured this would be the absolute same. I came from Richmond, where I spent two nearly idyllic weeks, then packed up my room in a whirlwind and went back to Anaheim. It wasn’t for a few days that I realized I was well and truly out of luck. All the people who offered to be there for me forgot about me and turned their backs. I was stuck realizing that I called CPS, and now I have to hide that secret even better. I was realizing that writing is exponentially harder when I can’t think about my traumas, or rather I can’t not think about them. Being back in the house that I grew up in, my mother grew up in, my grandmother and her mother died in. I was haunted by the change and lack of change it has undergone. But everything is now a pinch eerier than it was just a month or two ago. The memories of my grandma, constantly rubbing her hands with hand sanitizer, her frail form, the once constant hum of the oxygen machine in the hall.

The hospice bed in the living room.

Being back here hurts. In so many ways. Being back for the first time since I learned that my childhood trauma could be characterized as “neglect.” Realizing that I have no healthy coping mechanisms. I can’t just run away anymore. I turn to two things, spending hours in the bathtub, hoping that the warm water will simply drown the bees buzzing in my body, and drinking it all away.

I can’t forget about the trauma and go see my siblings. I can’t just hang out and color with Kaitlin and Eddie. I can’t go out whenever. I’m back to where I was in high school, stuck in these four walls, only now, the touches of my grandma have faded even more, and I have to confront the even harsher reality of being out at school and social media and forced back into the closet once I hit the lock screen.

I think one of the few decent things is that in my free time, I was on a dating app more, and I met an amazingly beautiful, bubbly girl. I want to call her my girlfriend, but two socially distanced dates and daily FaceTimes aren’t the same as going to dinner and a movie, staring into each other’s eyes and sealing it with a kiss.

We talk about “when,” when the pandemic ends, when we can see each other again, when things go back to “normal,” and it’s hard to really see that when. I want to just be able to calm her panic attacks, hold her in my arms now. I want to be able to just sit and cuddle with her instead of fumbling through texts and emails trying to get our Netflixes to sync and ask what the fuck we are.

I don’t want people to ask what our first date was and have to say that we stood 6’ away in a Carl’s Jr parking lot one Monday evening as it began sprinkling and we just talked. That’s sad. I don’t want whatever we have to be sad. I want it to be happy and filled with color like both of us. I want it to be healing and not something we need to heal from. I want it to be something, not just this blip.

37 FONT MAGAZINE

Do you know how sad it is to go on a date and not even be able to hold hands? It’s really fucking sad. I don’t want to accidentally break before we have the chance to go on a real date, spend the day by the beach, then watch the sunset with s’mores on the bonfire. I want to do all the fun things her ex wouldn’t let her do, but in a way, I know my body’s a ticking time bomb, I know I need to figure out what the fuck my body is doing, and if it’s getting as bad as I think it is.

If the increasingly common hyperextensions and rolls and sprains and subluxes and random weakness and pain in my hand is my new normal, or if I can save it. But I don’t want to sacrifice not being able to see her. I don’t want PT to become my new “going out.” I don’t want tests and doctor’s visits to take over my life.

I want to be able to sit with her and feel her energy, not just sit on FaceTime and indulge in the awkward silences, I want her to feel when I’m flustered because she’s just so darn cute, and I want to be there for her.

I want to be able to see her again, to be able to sit and dig our toes in the sand without worrying about the hundreds of protesters at the beach. I want to be able to not feel bad when sharing that my mental health is rapidly declining. I want to be able to do the cute romantic relationship things I didn’t have because I was surviving trauma.

I don’t want to have to break whatever we have off because I can’t survive my situation. Because even though I endured eighteen years of trauma, and learned my conditions, all of that went out the window when I came back.

I want to not have to deal with what’s best for my sister before I think about what’s healthiest for me.

I don’t want my trauma to become hers.

I don’t want trauma to be the only thing linking us, as siblings. I don’t want her to look back at her teenage years and regret taking my side, fleeing with me for hours to calm down and avoid a worse mental breakdown.

I don’t want her coping mechanisms to be the unhealthy ones I came up with. I don’t want her to settle for granola bars for meals, and hours in a dirty bathtub to pretend the emptiness of depression isn’t consuming her. I don’t want her to feel the bees, them waking up and buzzing until all she can do is hide under a comforter in 80 degree heat. I don’t want her to become me. I don’t want her to fear everything, everyone. I don’t want her to constantly feel sorry.

I don’t want her to look at this pandemic and feel as though these were the last days of her childhood.

I want to survive this—these months of trauma. I want to become a better person, but I can’t when I can’t function enough to pick up a phone. When I can’t be adult enough to call to adjust my anti-depressants. When I can’t articulate that I don’t feel as though I’m worth much most of the time.

I want to be able to survive this, but I know that I will be a different person leaving California compared to leaving New York. I know that I might not survive this pandemic, not because of the virus, but because of myself. Because I am currently sabotaging myself to hope to feel something—or not feel something.

I have turned the corner and learned—relearned that this—this place—this house, this situation is toxic beyond belief. I grew up in a cesspool of vitriol, hate, and degradation, and becoming an adult is not a shield to that.

FALL 2020 38

Now, six months on, the girl I went on a date with in the middle of a pandemic has kept me sane. I don’t like depending on others, but waking up and knowing that at one point or another we will text, Snapchat, FaceTime, think about each other. It still doesn’t feel like it’s been six months. We’re each busy, her in her senior year of her English degree, me trying to finish up my drama degree, with three crazy minors. I love how we get each other, on a deep level, we both understand what it’s like to deal with things, with truly tough things, to be both too young and too wise, having to take on more than we can really chew or cope with. It’s nice to have her understand how coping with trauma can be real ups and downs. How even through a day, we can have tough things, and really feel free to go to each other and vent.

POTENCY: A DIALOGUE

“brain jelly,” T Kosek

Andrew Cardell

A and B enter stage left.

A: Is he? You know.

B: No, I don’t know.

A: Potent? As it were.

B: Oh, yes. He has produced two little...what’s the word?

A: Overdeveloped zygotes.

B: Yes, correct. Two of those.

A: How recent was the production?

B: Around three to four years ago.

A: I see. Well, any reason the potency has worn off?

B: I haven’t tested a sample yet.

A: Get back to me.

B: Will do.

B exits stage right. A sits down and looks directly at the audience.

39 FONT MAGAZINE

VISCERAL

Arianna Rose Wentworth There are three apple cores soldiering across my windowsill— They have dried into husks now but before I feared they would rot to death.

I don’t know what fruit looks like when it rots But I imagine it is soft And wet And gives in so easily, Caves, With the lightest touch of fingers, The lightest push.

It smells strong and acrid And bitter Like static electricity whispering over a thick and murky swamp.

I recline back on my bed and the barest hint of scents touch my shoulder, my cheekbone— not so clear as brown and not so rank as green— Something old, primal, primordial, bestial.

FALL 2020 40

I piece through my sheets and find blood there, a bed of blood, of rust, of red drops that once housed beneath my skin but are now laid out, the sweet remnants of pacifist butchery, of lunar cutlery.

I can’t help but notice that in this tower my hair has grown and I am groan, toddering fingers playing nice with their neighbors.

My salty eyes see locks and tendrils and ropes I long to run through and pull, unlock that deep bell, that round cavern sound, pull down all the doves and sleepers and bats in the belfry— I see hair, overgrown gardens, weeds that shush and shade and share— There are more smells in the small of your wrist and the cup of your neck Then there are stars in our fainting sky. Oh let me, let me, let me— Run wild in you.

41 FONT MAGAZINE

THE ARCHITECT

Yashu Pericherla

He built his own prison.

He created ever-changing walls—passageways that wouldn’t reveal the way out.

His mind, so intricate, so warped, created a prison for those who did not deserve one.

He created a prison, and his ideas made him a prisoner.

Forced to live in the Hell he created for others’ torture; he never lost hope.

Navigating through the unnavigable halls of his mind for an escape, son in tow, he wasted away.

His son, his light, the only thing he held onto. He wanted escape for this bright soul.

And he succeeded.

He forged their means of escape.

A pair of destructible wings—only fastened for a great escape.

He created them for the purpose of release; he didn’t expect them to even get away.

Cautions were dealt, and promptly ignored.

Daedalus flew first, paving the way to freedom.

Icarus followed.

Drunk on freedom and open skies, Icarus decided to deviate from his father’s route.

The bright, young boy flew where he was not to go.

He carved his own way, far beyond freedom.

He pushed the boundaries of all he knew, all he was taught.

And for a moment, euphoria was all he knew.

But it was only for a moment.

For the next feeling was of falling and the dropping of his stomach.

Icarus felt the winds hit him, his wings no longer catching them for flight.

Daedalus, already having reached the shore, watched his son frisk too close to the sun.

Daedalus, already knowing what he would witness, cried out for the light of his life.

Icarus fell in slow motion.

He grazed the tip of the sun, and cherished its burn—for he knew the repercussions.

He knew of the icy waters waiting to swallow his burnt glory.

Icarus watched the waves part for him and create an eternal home for his corpse.

What he didn’t see was his father’s soul chasing him as Daedalus’ body stayed at bay.

That day the Underworld gained two souls.

The Ocean cradled a new corpse.

And a dead shell of a mortal walked the ends of the Earth aimlessly.

FALL 2020 42

Daedalus watched his son be his happiest, and die drunk on it.

All in the span of a breath of freedom.

He watched as the body disappeared into the folds of the ocean.

He began to wish for captivity, for his son would be with him then.

He did not like freedom, for it had killed his son.

Icarus, who never knew freedom, overdosed on its weightlessness.

Daedalus, who never believed in freedom, wished he never knew the weight of unshackled wrists.

“eye of the sun,” Jessica Mannhaupt

43 FONT MAGAZINE

SYÈL LA

Gabrielle Pascal When our loved ones take their final breath, we send their ashes to the river Syèl La. It is believed that its waters are the bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead. Our ancestors knew they were close when the ashes they carried began to glow. To send the souls of the dead to the Creator of the stars, they scattered it into the soil and gave their final goodbyes. But the river Syèl La is a myth now. Only a few believe it to be real. My Lafwe was one of them. His faith in the Creator and His angels stood steadfast, even if we stood alone because of it. Even if mine was never as strong as his. Still, in the end, his faith didn’t save him. Neither could I. Yet, at the least, I can give him this. I walk through the dark forest, searching for the waters of the river Syèl La. I carry Lafwe’s ashes in a golden locket he wrapped around my neck when he first told me he loved me. It was said that the path to the river Syèl La was long and winding, but I am willing to take it. No matter what may come for me here, I am going to send my love to the stars.

Nighttime has fallen now, and I feel my body losing its strength. I have searched for so long, but all I see is darkness. I cling on to my locket and look up to the moon for courage. Carefully, I step over branches and weeds. Just faith guides me now. When the ancestors would lose their path here, they would whisper a song to renew their spirits:

Mwen pral jwenn Syèl La, konfyans mwen pral menmen m ‘la.

Mwen pral menmen ou lakay ou, zanj ki nan Syèl La tou pre.

A cold breeze dances through the leaves on the trees and onto the hairs on my skin. I wrap my arms around myself. I must keep going. I must bring him to rest. To our home, Lafwe was simply another zealot. A fanatic absorbed in the lies of the ancestors. When we walked together, I could feel eyes judging us.

My Lafwe, beautiful and strong, suffered more than he ever smiled. Yet he still prayed to the stars every night. He’d ask me to sit alongside him, but I refused each time. Not because I didn’t believe in the Creator, but because I doubted He ever listened. I was not sure I could bring myself to fully trust in what I could not see. I’d watch him kneel in front of a window, whispering his prayers.

I remembered what he said to me once. We were laying in our bed and he was holding me. He said, “I don’t care what the others may think about me. About us.

I just have to believe there is something more than all of this. I have to, Doutye.

Just stay with me, my love. I know you’ll see it, too.”

Lafwe was a man who held a deep sadness in his heart. He would smile at me with the hope that I wouldn’t see it, but I saw past the white masquerade. I saw the tears fall down his face when all eyes turned from us. When he’d come home to me bruised, I knew why. I felt his loneliness when his faith would be met with disdain.

FALL 2020 44

The cold breeze has shifted into strong winds. Rain is pouring from the clouds. Thunder screams from the heavens. The wind pushes and pulls my body in whatever direction it desires. I stumble on rocks and I trip on the roots of trees.

The ground of this forest stains my skin with the dirt and its weeds. Branches rip my clothes and hair and my stomach aches with emptiness. My vision is hazed from fatigue. I bring my fingers to my locket; I feel a small crack right through its middle. Lafwe. Through it all, I wished I could have just taken his sadness and carried it on my own, but wishing for things I cannot change is a useless task. I know that all I have is what I can do for him now.

Slowly, I begin to regain my footing and stand strong against the winds. I walk against them, my eyes are barely open. As I carry onward, twigs break on my arms and face. I cannot fight this storm forever; I must find shelter soon. In the distance, I see a cave. Vines of ivy wrap around its entrance and rain pounds against the stone. It seems far, but I will try to make it. I continue my charge against the wind and rain and thunder. Finally, I make it to shelter.

I push away the vines and stagger inside. Once I make it to where it is dry, I fall to the stone ground. It is cold and hard, but here, I am safe from the storm.

Here, it is quiet. My breath is heavy, and I feel my strength fading. I do not want to give up, but I do not think I can get up again. I am lost here. The storm outside gets stronger as each minute passes by. I had thought my faith could guide me, but it is too weak. Lafwe was more of a believer than I ever was. Ever could be. As I lay here on the floor, my eyes close in the silence.

When Lafwe became ill and weak, he couldn’t leave our bed anymore. I would leave him in the mornings and search for medicines and herbs, but they all did nothing. No one would help. Nothing I did was enough. I couldn’t stop him from fading away. Near his end, he asked me to stop leaving. So I laid next to him. I told Lafwe that I loved him and that I would stay as long as I had him.

And no matter what they said about us, he would always have me. He smiled and kissed my lips gently. I held him close until I felt his heart stop beating.

In those lonely nights, Lafwe told me when he was young, there was no food or water. His home was empty alleyways and buildings left abandoned. For so long, there was an emptiness, a longing, inside him. As the years passed on, it took root in his soul until he thought it was all he ever was. One night, in an alley, he found a book of our ancestors and what they wrote of the Creator. They called him Father. They wrote about a paradise beyond the stars where there is no more suffering. Its pages held drawings of angels guiding souls through the river Syèl La. Since then, he dreamt of that place. He started praying to the Creator, and when he did, he heard his voice. For the first time, Lafwe found a happiness he thought could never exist. He told me that the Creator spoke to him in the silence. When he would lose himself in the noise of anger and sadness, He would be the still voice in his violent storm. So, even in his weakness, Lafwe wasn’t afraid. He wanted me to know that. The angels of paradise were calling him home. And someday, paradise was where we would find each other again.

In this dark cave, I feel a warmth on my neck. There is something lifting me from the ground. I open my eyes and see a golden light shining right through the

45 FONT MAGAZINE

crack in my locket. I bring my feet to the ground and I unwrap it from my neck.

I bring it close to my heart and whisper my love’s name. Outside, the storm is howling with torrents of rain and wind. But the golden light shines right through the darkness here. I will follow it, wherever it may lead.

It takes me deeper into the cave. Step by step, I see the walls brighten with the writings of the ancestors. I feel the stone and brush my hands along the paintings. Angels with white wings and golden stars. The stone ground is turning to grass and dirt as I follow the light. The locket stops in front of a gathering of ivy, dandelions, and roses. It falls into my hands.

I walk through the flowers and the ivy and hear the rush of water ahead. I feel strength rising in me. Though, I am not sure where it came from. Finally, I push away the final branches of ivy and what stands before me is a beautiful sight. I fall to my knees and I laugh. For the first time, my tears are that of joy.

My Lafwe has been gone for a year now. It has taken me so long, but finally, I believe I have found what I was searching for.

The river Syèl La. A waterfall empties itself into glistening blue waters. Golden grass runs through my feet and dances through my fingers. A wind—calm and tender— brushes my face. Above me is a sky of endless stars, the brightest I have ever seen.

I stand up again and walk towards the water. It sparkles like diamonds. I take a drink from it. I watch with surprise as the blood and scratches on my skin fade as if they had never been there before.

I look at what surrounds me and wonder if this is what Lafwe saw in his dreams. I bring my locket to the soil right by the river Syèl La and open it. The ash is still inside, glowing. I hang my open locket above the soil and watch the last of my Lafwe fall. I whisper to the stars above and kiss my empty locket.

“Goodbye, my love.”

The wind sings with the chorus of angels. Their music lifts me from the ground. I hold my locket tighter as the water begins to shine a white light. It shines from the river to all throughout this place, but it is not blinding. It feels warm. It feels like Lafwe.

When I look up to the night sky, I know that is where I will find him. I know that he suffers no longer. My Lafwe sings with the angels in a paradise beyond the stars. One day, I will join him there, too.

FALL 2020 46

"conversations," Sophia Fox

ELUSIVE

Debbie A

She’s elusive, that one Sewn up with her favorite story lines All to unravel at a word Unable to be a fictional character, You’ll shout to be heard She’ll never remember your coffee order And she never even tries She is too busy committing to paper The exact color of your eyes

47 FONT MAGAZINE

THE GOD AND THE FISH Isabelle Jensen

You never believe in a supreme being until things get bad Not in the way where you are begging to be saved You simply do not think mass destruction can be random I think I am going in circles in the same tank I am being watched as I forget who I am I must keep swimming even when I lose myself Perhaps our superior being only intervenes to discipline us The Puritans thought one sin would lead to collective punishment If so, this is the Apocalypse we deserve, prepare for horsemen Life outside this fish bowl would be better But all I know is this sink or swim world What if that big ocean swallows me whole If a god can see all human action and thought How can they bare to not destroy us How can they keep from generalizing when so much is evil The tank keeps me safe, I must remind myself Keeps my thoughts contained for control I am controlled and it is better this way The god demands praise and sacrifice Perhaps giving it neither is leading to our demise But how can we give when all we know is to survive I swim I eat I do it again The fish cannot consider the god Survival mode is selfish The god created survival and expected more How naive to think that the tank has room for worship

FALL 2020 48

ASTRONOMER

Cenna Khatib

“We are all made of star stuff” Because we are all teetering On this verge of glowing— And burning A glittering twinkle twisted in hope Or an impending explosion Carrying the potential of wishful serenity In the exterior of sparkling danger Holding a wistful beauty all the same If it makes us good—t Or bad— Depends on the day Stars were never so easy to explore And humans are near impossible to see And in the end it’s always our fallen remains That shoot across the sky for someone else To wish upon

LANTERN

Arianna Rose Wentworth In this willow cabin conducted of stars and rudimentary things we can sit and glide and try our best to get out of these traditional Victorian Era garments.

I don’t know what your heart is made of but mine is somewhere between crushed velvet and raspberry jam.

Kiss me if you’d like, I’m unbearably nervous but I love you so I know I will not shatter.

49 FONT MAGAZINE

SEND ME INTO ORBIT Isabelle Jensen

Send me into orbit Floating around the earth as if it is important Out there I will see that nothing matters Out there in space planets are destroyed as if they are glass Out there I will see the truth of this universe Suns of other galaxies explode even when no one is watching Give me the weightlessness to not care if anyone is watching I want to be light-years away I want no one to witness me Even when they do I will just be history Instead of laughing, they will watch in wonder NASA will be amazed by my ability to cry in space I want to know how small I am I want to land on Pluto Show it how large it is Even the meteors will see that they are important This planet is too crowded I need room for all these emotions I need an abandoned planet I will go be the life on Mars Only the rovers will be there to comfort me When I die I will float through the emptiness They will call me space junk They will be right but I won’t exist anymore I will just be something caught between comets

FALL 2020 50

THE BRIGHT PLACE

Engulfs anything Too Close.

Running, Still running, Pass the bridge.

Hey. What gives?

I’m still here, I was spared, Lucky, lucky, Me.

Madeline Armstrong

Please earth, Swallow me.

Is there such thing As a perfect day?

The world breaks Everyone, Said Hemingway.

I think.

Freak.

What did you call me?

Freak.

Oh yes, That’s right.

A momentary pause, Fiddlers have lifted Their bows.

‘Come,’ you say, ‘Come.’

‘Stay,’ I say, ‘Stay.’

Please.

A treehouse, A pile of rocks.

Lovely.

A finch, Broken.

Please.

A flower, Wilted.

We were Gold.

We were Ultraviolet.

A too-broad smile, A car, A bad dream.

But, The finch can’t really Be fixed.

A stitch in my chest.

Do you think they saw?

A lake, A prayer.

Not so Lovely.

A finch, Mended.

A flower, Watered.

I feel Gold.

I feel Ultraviolet.

Then.

A black hole In my galaxy,

51 FONT MAGAZINE

A finch, Finally free.

A flower, Eventually strong.

I thought they were all Gone.

But somehow, A bright place Found me.

ON THE LESBIAN EXPERIENCE

TD

my gender is leaves on the breeze . it’s the rumbling of train tracks and the wind pulling at your hair , carpet on cold feet after walking on cold floors . my gender is soft hands and crooked smiles , sunlight filtering through the frizz on curly hair . my gender is your hand on the small of my back , looping around my waste as i lean into you . it’s the groan of my voice in the morning and late , late at night stretching lazily over your skin to settle you in my lap to unwind like a fern on the forest floor . my gender is the warm taste of butter filling your mouth with the knowledge that you are alive and you are a person and you are in love with the human experience . it is a star , hot and cold with the burn of eons of dying lights . it is the cool rush of water as you jump in , submerging you in a familiar embrace . it’s my hair buzzed short and my hair grown long entangled with yours , our roots entangling with the earth . my gender is soft kisses and the falling feeling in your stomach from driving over hills . fruit juices rushing down your chin as you fill your mouth with that tantalizingly sweet substance .

I FOUND A GOD

Lex Besecker

Hands and lips and prayers are laid against my body Fingers dancing on my skin Candlelight flickering against the walls I don’t know how a god found her way between my thighs But I cry out her name in holy reverence As her tongue writes poetry against my dripping flesh Soon soft lips devour mine with vigor And the taste of myself floods my senses “You know what it’s like to come undone by a god?”

I shiver and gasp, nipples aching with need Her green-grey eyes lock on mine and I know That tonight there will be no mercy

FALL 2020 52

PRIESTESS OF APOLLO Katie Fenton

Life’s a drag when you know it too well— From daybreak to night’s end, from nativity to eternity, from zero to ten.

When your truth is out of the question to everyone, everywhere— Family, friends, enemies Kings, priests, slaves— No word has meaning and no warning has energy.

My forecasts are heard, in fact— Screams, wails, howls, rather— But the kind ones treat them as an infant’s aimless babblings And the others grimace at my voice, my yawning, bloodshot eyes, my face contorting to hold back my shrieks.

I know how I look I know what they think I know the worst of what’s to come So I curse Him with every breath as I tell the world the things they cannot understand.

The ending is always the same But the burden of what’s ahead is something I’ll always try to share.

Only a madwoman could do it alone.

53 FONT MAGAZINE

COLOR ME IN Annie Kellogg

You know that feeling in your chest As if it’s caving in And splitting apart The one that makes you feel hollowed out, Scooped clean Until only the emptiness remains?

You mended that.

As you filled in all those empty blank spaces With a bright colored crayon You had the perfect tone Always achieving the most beautiful shade Unlike others You never caused fractures or snaps.

You made me believe That maybe I was worth it That maybe I deserved it That maybe I could be loved Despite the tears and snaps— Despite my lack of interest Our lack of interest It didn’t matter that we were paperless Because when surrounded by warmth We melted the same.

You made me believe that maybe our colors could blend Then you erased that warmth; Blotted it out Leaving only smudged blotches behind Leeching the color from our seams With one text, One sentence, Four words— Four little words.

That my brain scribbled Into four new ones Different but similar

FALL 2020 54

Now I’m snapping again Torn up Fractured My canvas Screams for you Aches for you Begs for you Please Come back I need you to color in the space again.

"self portrait," Dickinson-Frevola

55 FONT MAGAZINE

"red blossom," Jessica Mannhaupt

EVERGLADES

Dickinson-Frevola

my grandparents used to live in chokoloskee but i was too busy falling in love with the moss and studying lizards to notice the stars. i don’t remember a lot from then though, just the patio being sticky from bubbles and hiding shells in the trees like gifts, the gray moss drifting lazily in the breeze. the heat and the lizards and the music channel always playing. the ocean-themed bathroom and the flamingo-themed kitchen, the screen door that opened out into the yard where the neighbors had their banana trees. i remember fingers sticky from grapefruit halves covered in sugar, and the way the snook would come apart in my mouth at dinner. i remember the armchairs, sudoku and crosswords on the coffee table with the computer. i remember the little ice cream shop that froze me solid while we waited for our cones, the post office, the long dirt roads that rippled with the heat and the dust everywhere. i remember hours of go fish and being fascinated by binoculars and seeing everything close up, long lenses making the infinitely big world bigger in my small eyes. i remember the sun beating down on the boat and the gentle hum of the motor as we weaved through the mangroves. the absolute silence and soft ripples broken by the soaring of a plug and a splash, the bulbous forms of undersea creatures poking encrusted and cowlike from beneath the waves. baseball hats and chex mix and making a fort out of her button-up and a blanket to sit in the shade, a sail flapping above me on that little motorboat as i pretended i’d lived my whole life on the water.

FALL 2020 56

ROOTED

Debbie A

I checked—it’s the same time zone, except for the Panhandle So why does it feel like a whole other planet?

I’m used to trees of oak and pine A pace of life that scoffs at the speed limit Eye contact with strangers only optional.

Therefore, I’m not sure if I can adjust to a new climate When I’m not native to this swamp Falling prey to alligators gone rogue Sadist mosquitoes And the part of me that maybe, just maybe, would miss being right where I am Because I suppose it’s all I’ve ever known, and I’m not one to take a risk Without first knowing if it’s worth it The sunshine lures me in, but it’s a trap I know I would slowly melt into a Disney character Yes, rides down the highway would feel more like a cruise than a high-speed chase But lately I’ve been thinking about those who throw it all away And for what?

Who keep their eyes on the palm trees, missing their roots all along Changing state lines won’t fix what’s broken Changing state lines won’t make you happy Send me your location, Khalid sings I cannot, I write back. I’m stuck in a sinkhole

57 FONT MAGAZINE

GLACIAL

Claire Helena i am a continent covered in ice. inhabited by flightless things that cannot leave, that do not dare to swim away. instead they cling to my skin, to the bridge of my nose. they slide down my back and huddle in between my toes for warmth. but I erode over time. the fingernails they used as diving platforms have been chewed down, leaving no ledge to jump from. the melting ice caps of my eyes push the flightless things from my face. there are no more dry places to rest. and as it melts, as the bones of this land are revealed through the thinning ice and snow, the flightless things congregate, discuss the inevitable disappearance of me, then disperse to find new wintery homes.

IN THE VINEYARD

Alicia C. Renda

There’s a mist rising over the grapes, sweetened by the summer rain, clumsy footsteps mixing in the mud, soil soaking in the clouds’ heavy fingertips.

We run, hidden in the storm as thunder covers our laughter.

We count. One Mississippi, two—lightning turns into a laugh.

Through the field, we run, wet vines slapping our shins like raindrops, bellies fat with grapes too ripe to eat, leftover juices coating our fingers.

When you were born, your body was like a baby bird, hands smaller than the tips of my fingers.

Though I may try, I will never know how to say thank you for the laughter, but I feel the sentiment is echoed in the rain.

Tonight, we shall reign, hidden in the clouds’ fingers, sister queens ruling a kingdom of laughter.

FALL 2020 58

WHERE SAND ENDS Alicia C. Renda

The sand sneaks under my toenail, the way sand always manages to do. My foot resurfaces from its burrowing, a small pool rushes in to replace it. Over to my left the sand is breathing, small bubbles emerging from the quartz grains. My foot arches and extends, a ballerina’s pointe, a sharp strike and I am dancing. My hunt ends when I feel the smooth ridges of its shell beneath my toes.

I toss the clam in my bucket, a cymbal that dulls as the day goes on, pile growing. I know, by the time I am walking home, half-lopsided under the weight of my prize, that I will be burnt. The sting, like sweat, a satisfying pat on the back, a performance greeted not by uproarious applause but stunned gasps.

I wish I could stay in the bay forever. There’s a grace to the ocean, the way she pulls and crashes, a crescendo. The ocean is a soloist, but the bay is an orchestra. There’s a calm that only the bay holds, it is only here, where the reeds can be heard in full, the wind her conductor.

The door closes with a click and the silence of the house erupts around me. I bring a pot to boil, the clams splashing down. I am sure they are rejoicing, thinking they have found their way back home, only to find the bubbling depths of the pot a shallow imitation. The heat starts to seep into their shells, and they come to realize the mistake they have made. Then I pull their corpses from that watery grave, put a knife between their bones and look for a meal.

Another empty shell finds its sister in the trash. I am sure that our trashcan is the most beautiful in the world, a mixture of shells and glass. If the light were to hit it right it would implode in a world of color and memories of a life buried in sand. It’s in those memories that one starts to lose sight of the edges until everything is sand.

He stumbles down the stairs, lips made loose by liquor, the anger worse without it. Another bottle tossed in our kaleidoscope trashcan. He grabs a clam from my hand. A slurp, and another corpse is lost to the swallow of your throat. I wish for my orchestra, but you are the ocean. You crash and the sand must hold you up.

I remember the first time I fell in love. My foot arched and extended, a ballerina’s pointe. I remember the way everyone else seemed to move on. Like this burn in my calves, lungs, heart just wasn’t enough, like that wasn’t love. I looked at your eyes and I saw the way they would dance when the light hit them just right and I thought that would be good enough. Your lips a push and pull against mine.

For a minute, I thought we were both waves.

I remember your hand in mine and my mother’s eyes fixated on the rock jammed between my fingers. We held a funeral that night, just mother and daughter. She drove me down to the bay and we danced all night. An ode to the witches burned, the lovers drowned, the dreamers dead.

And when the sun rose, we let the clams return to their homes. After all, we were not there to kill. We were only there as a reminder of where the sand ends and they begin.

59 FONT MAGAZINE

CAN I BE A PIECE OF THE SKY? Arianna Rose Wentworth

I just want to make up the silhouettes and skylines Make my arms dark tree branches, and my hair the blue hour, lace-footed with gold Make my fingers the air, my toes the leaves, my hips the dark slant of a roof Unfold me, let me loose and let me out Make me cool and dreamy twilight where bats may flit and nature walk Pin me up in the curtains that veil our shattered glass stars, and make me everything

FALL 2020 60

61 FONT MAGAZINE

FALL 2020 62

Disclaimer Font exclusively features the work of Hofstra University students. Each staff member reviewed and ranked submissions blindly.

Font Literary and Arts Magazine. Volume 15, Fall 2020. Hofstra University.

Copyright 2020 Font Literature and Art. All artwork and literature contained in this publication are copyright 2020 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

63 FONT MAGAZINE

A PRODUCTION OF THE HOFSTRA ENGLISH SOCIETY

FALL 2020 64