Font Literary and Arts Magazine Spring 2020

LITERARY AND ARTS MAGAZINE Volume 14 Spring 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: “looking,� Sophia Fox

STAFF MANAGING EDITOR Isabelle Jensen

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

DESIGN EDITOR

Sabrina Josephson

Cecilia Gray

HEAD COPY EDITOR

ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITORS

Alyssa Minkoff

Irini Tsounakas Bridey Morris

COPY EDITORS Andrew Cardell

Kirstin Kochie

Jules DickinsonFrevola

Hannah Matuszak

Jessica Zagacki

GENERAL STAFF Maddie A. Brittany Antonacci Debbie Aspromonti Jessica Bajorek Victoria Carrubba Nicole Dykeman Madison Donnely Emily Duffy Emily Ewing Rachel Farina Kristina Fortunato Sophia Fox

Julianna Grossman Jessica Hansen Claire Helena Annie Kellogg T Kosek Kira Kusakavitch Ryan Malloy Jessica Mannhaupt

Theresa Pham Lauren Sager Samantha Slootmaker Caitlyn (Cat) Snell Brooke Sokoloski Kira Turetzky Manasvi Vietla Emily Weber Ryan West Sam Whitman Olivia Wisse Rachel Wright

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

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

This has been a hectic semester, to say the least. The majority of us have returned home far too early and far too quickly than anyone was prepared for.

While I know that Font is in the back of most of our minds as we are met with empty grocery stores and stay-at-home orders for a virus that very suddenly took hold of our lives, the editorial staff of Font hasn’t forgotten that even in stressful times, we need a form of light. For that, I offer this magazine and hope that you can find that light, and if not, a piece of art, prose, or poetry that connects you to the outside world. A piece that you will read over and over because you never thought someone could understand you the way those words on these pages do.

Each piece included within this magazine has been chosen because it spoke to our staff, because we saw the power and the hope in the words and in the art without fully knowing why we would need it. Now I know why we need these pieces. I may not know where all of us will be in a few months or how the world will progress in the next few days, but everything here will outlast that. I’m sure of it. So take these words, read a new piece everyday, take in the art until you know where each piece is, and find hope. We all need it, and we all deserve it, whether we are going to admit it or not.

To those who submitted, thank you and keep sharing what you write with us; there would be no Font without you. To the staff, thank you so much for reading each submitted piece and please keep being a part of the Font family. To my editorial staff, thank you for dedicating your time to this magazine. I am so grateful to have had all of you on my team, and I wouldn’t trade you for the world.

Finally, to the people reading this, thank you for wanting to read our words and wanting to support us each and every year.

Here’s to hope.

Sabrina Josephson Editor-in-Chief, Font

CONTENTS grapes Start Getting Busy 2020 bonsai Reaching nurture plants epitaph The Storyteller Pathway Matilda pompeii Layers Karelian Girl eyesore Eye Issues lip drip Hauser 109 An Analysis on Birds Chaotic deluge Handle with Care pomegranate Too (of a) Kind Urban Treasures The Process the façade of wicked good books Jumping into a Whirlpool Chances the pier your horoscope says you’re a bitch honest to god truth a cruel form of self-love profiles My Great Feminine Responsibility Field Goddess Skin Care Stretch One Begins to See (Niagara Falls) serious conversation between two cats unspoken Orange Flower

6 6 7 8 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 15 16 18 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 29 30 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 36 37 37 38 38 39 39

Arianna Rose Wentworth Alyssa Minkoff Debbie Aspromonti Sophia Fox Hannah Matuszak R. Carlin Alyssa Minkoff Claire Helena Kirstin Kochie Hannah Matuszak Audra Nemirow Isabelle Jensen Irini Tsounakas Ryan Malloy Sophia Fox Khiya Sophia Fox Olivia DeFiore Ryan Malloy Kristina Fortunato Andrew Cardell Isabelle Jensen Claire Helena Kristina Fortunato Jessica Mannhaupt Cenna Khatib Kira Turetzky Isabelle Jensen Khiya Kira Turetzky Alyssa Minkoff Sabrina Josephson Sabrina Josephson Claire Helena Maggie Hurley Olivia DeFiore Julianna Grossman Olivia DeFiore James Wegeng Alyssa Minkoff Jules Dickinson-Frevola Jessica Mannhaupt

Kira Turetzky Sabrina Josephson Brittany Antonacci Kristina Fortunato Sam Whitman Jessica Mannhaupt Andrew Cardell Alyssa Minkoff Maddie A. Kristina Fortunato Hannah Matuszak James Wegeng Sophia Fox Sabrina Josephson Kristina Fortunato Claire Helena Andrew Cardell Sophia Fox Claire Helena James Wegeng Olivia DeFiore Irini Tsounakas Ryan Malloy Irini Tsounakas Jules Dickinson-Frevola Nicole Nolasco Irini Tsounakas T Kosek Madison Spence-Moore Khiya Sophia Fox Hannah Matuszak Madison Spence-Moore Tori Bogacki Kristina Fortunato Isabelle Jensen Sophia Fox James Wegeng Hannah Matuszak Irini Tsounakas Nicole Nolasco Alyssa Minkoff

40 41 41 42 43 44 45 45 46 46 47 49 49 50 51 52 53 53 54 54 55 55 56 59 60 61 61 62 63 64 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 75 76

TOUCH ME g o d d a m i t tear me apart No title You Goat Yoga Happy Cow stones, gall the product of boredom in class Not the Rain Willowbrook Deus Ex Machina Rain-Soaked and Chilled to the Bone teeth wits end Body, Mind, Soul, and Me cookie cutter a vascectomy moment strawberries well roosted Manifesto Watch the Gap Drunk To Teach a Starling to Swim Tea for Two survival From New York to Paris Cityscape The Kitchen Counter master’s degree Dear Big portrait of a woman Someone’s Daughter bedroom fears moon face child shadowbox She and I vacancy 333 The Signal This Haiku For Love or Rivers Luv my friendship with the bees

CONTENTS

GRAPES

Arianna Rose Wentworth sweetly serendipity has never meant so much to me— i have always courted tragedy and slept ‘longside anxiety crept kisses down the crypt of all the dreams, salty sank ship that left me stranded where i wept (most of them left crimson on my lip) i may impart, with part, a plea my heart can’t start, she cannot ease for now, underground is where i’ll be and there, i fear, eternity for though i have stretched with the wandering sea never has sweet found much use for me

START GETTING BUSY

Alyssa Minkoff

My calendar tells me it’s time to Start Getting Busy I am awakened by a phone notification: Hey Dumbass Big Day Today You Must Get Out Of Bed I naturally press snooze, roll over, And bury myself deeper under the covers of my bed Wishing I could fall through the center of my mattress, Through a portal That could send me straight to __________ (insert somewhere better than where I currently am literally anywhere) I drag ‘Start Getting Busy’ to tomorrow in my calendar.

Today, I will sleep.

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2020

Debbie Aspromonti That’s the tricky thing about time, though It sifts through your hands like sand Always less than you had the year, month, day, hour, second before Tick-tick-ticking down until the next wired explosion It doesn’t care about the crayon-drawn plans that still hang in your bedroom back home It doesn’t care that at fifteen, you wrote a more serious plan on loose-leaf in response to a teacher’s question It’s unaware that your flight got canceled or that second chances don’t come around every day or that you really did love him Time is deceiving You look back and realize that the house is blue now, the kids have grown up, the everyday occurrences were little miracles Beginnings and ends like ribbons being cut and rethread Over and over again Time is running out, you say I don’t have time, I complain We don’t have enough— Time stays constant, it marches on while everything else grinds to a sudden halt.

So it can be comforting in a way That’s the tricky thing about time, though It didn’t give a damn about you and me

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FALL 2019 7

BONSAI

Sophia Fox

I am a bonsai tree in a dull office job delicate picky disposable.

I need attention, reassurance to regrow the bark I lost, someone to shoo away those tiny ants that crawl up my trunk to find an open wound to have a snack at my expense.

I need attention, but from the right people.

I like your desk mate Kathy, but I miss you.

You chose me.

You plucked me off the shelf, one in a row of identical plants you said the crooks in my trunk gave me “character.”

“Reaching,” Hannah Matuszak

SPRING 2020 8

You keep taking long weekends, and I’ve begun to shrivel.

Kathy is an okay gardener but I did not choose her.

I want you to tend to me care for me clean me up just be there in more than words.

I’m reaching out the only way I know how.

I don’t make a fuss.

I just tell you I miss you.

And when you don’t tend to my moss, I start to lose leaves.

You can’t put them back on but you can help me bloom again.

I miss you, and Kathy is going crazy trying to glue my leaves back on.

NURTURE

R. Carlin

nothing can nurture me like malformed memories speaking so candidly of a past that has grown wildly and dishonestly beyond its true roots.

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“plants,” Alyssa Minkoff

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EPITAPH

Claire Helena i.

I can remember the first time I felt honey on my fingers: Stuck together, sweet-smelling, and golden.

Under my nails, rolling down my knuckles.

The primal response is to wash the honey away, but I held my hand up to the light, watched the shifting of its reflection travel across my skin.

Like glass, I thought it would shatter if I moved, so I held my breath and stayed very still.

I have only felt this way one other time, only felt like I couldn’t move without breaking apart something so golden, coated in sweet honey...

I stayed still. ii.

I can remember staring out over water, Watching the waves ripple and slap Against the stones.

And when I turned to face her, I wanted to dive in headfirst, get caught in the current.

I was too afraid I would drown. iii.

Last night I watched her from the other side of a forest of chairs, tall and rooted into the concrete floor Like an evergreen.

I wanted to reach out, disrupt the needles.

It is so much easier to leave trees where you have found them.

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THE STORYTELLER

Kirstin Kochie

There is a cottage in the forest that is sometimes there and sometimes not. When it is there, it has a garden in the front, vibrant with plants you think you recognize.

The cottage itself is unassuming. It looks cozy, and charming, if slightly fuzzy around the edges if you look too quickly. The wind chimes on the porch sway in the breeze, a sound you can’t quite compare to any instrument you’ve heard, but are drawn to nonetheless. The Storyteller lives there.

That is what the people in town call her anyway. She trades her plants as herbal remedies and spices, gives small handmade trinkets to children and visitors, and occasionally gives almost-free advice. She accepts no money, asking people to tell her stories instead.

She tells stories in return. You think she does so only to entertain the people who are brave enough to visit her cottage (when it’s there). Yet she speaks of swashbuckling adventurers, knights in shining armor, brave and charming princes, and villainous pirates with such a serious tone that you sometimes wonder how much of it is truly an act. Sometimes. She sings of sirens with a note of warning, with a smile on her youthful face and knowing in her ancient eyes. Her smile is just slightly unsettling if you look too long; it must be because she smiles so brightly, so genuinely.

You hear whispers, sometimes, that The Storyteller is not human like you.

People say she’s a witch, or a siren, or something else unnatural. You never get the chance to ask the people who whisper about it. You suddenly never run into them around town anymore, and you wonder if they moved to get away. The cottage in the woods goes missing for a week. The Storyteller says she visited her home for a few days, and it was lovely to be back.

She laughs so beautifully it puts her musical wind chimes to shame. She sings in a language you swear you’ve heard before but cannot place the origin of. She speaks in riddles and rhyme sometimes, and she dances as she tends her garden.

She’s perfectly charming (when she’s there) even if she smiles with just a few too many teeth.

There is a cottage in the forest that is sometimes there, and sometimes not.

The wind chimes on the porch are made from bones.

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“Pathway,” Hannah Matuszak

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MATILDA

Audra Nemirow Matilda, my pinwheel, cannot pine for the world beyond the windowpane.

Her back opposes it as she poses upon my windowsill.

She balances on one plastic leg, and bathes in her vase, vain as a flower, resplendent with aluminum beauty.

Matilda only knows her own sun-shaped shadow, which whirs upon the wall.

So she soaks daily, soaks and twirls above the vent, like an illogical clock whose minutes depend on the whims of the wind.

Her life is static yet busy, dizzy and cyclical, and she beguiles with a gilded gleam.

But some days she can’t catch the wind.

Or refract the light’s magic.

Ashen-faced, she shakes and sways because sounds beckon at her back: the crash and skid of cars on concrete streets linking Long Island to Los Angeles!

But Matilda only hears airy convulsions, variations on the vent’s white noise.

The unseeable knowledge of a whole world mocks her; this plastic narcissus misses what she will never know.

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POMPEII

Isabelle Jensen Before you, romantic love always looked like Pompeii. I thought every relationship was full of ruptures and fire; volcanic. Maybe I still do. But now I let myself forget. I still look for the magma; Make sure our mountain has no smoke. But eruption is often sudden and startling. I fear that when I notice it will be too late. The ash will already be upon us.

“Layers,� Irini Tsounakas 15 FONT MAGAZINE

KARELIAN GIRL

Ryan Malloy

After hours of black, the horizon swells with the promise of dawn. It sputters to life like flames in an old coal stove, blue then orange then an explosion of gold, a color like the crust of freshly baked bread. Suvi watches with unblinking eyes. The trees begin to form, then the faraway buildings, the shapes of everything before dawn fills in their color. The forest bed glitters with newborn snow.

Papa rises in the adjacent room. Suvi can hear him inhale and groan.

How long had it been since he kissed her forehead, plucked the lamp beside her, and whispered goodnight? She had been staring at the room’s dark doorway just hours before, a barrier of opaque night that once seemed impenetrable. A silence had hung just the same.

Now the night is soft and melting, and a train shrieks downtown, and Emmi’s bedsprings yelp, and the grosbeaks twitter just above the window. Her sister’s feet shuffle across the hardwood floor and stop. Suvi keeps her eyes trained to the outdoors.

“Have you been there all night?” Emmi asks. Her voice is heavy with the promise of tears.

Suvi nods. As if relieved from a watch, she closes her eyes, and only there does blackness still persist.

They dress. They move out like a procession. The door that clicks behind them feels final, a casket lid closing, but Suvi knows she’ll only return in a few hours. It isn’t her casket.

At the train station, they stand among other families. Suvi watches red light cross the massive square, breathes an intense fog, and recoils her arms to the bitter winter cold. Men kiss their wives and file into a line, pull packs onto their slouched shoulders, anchor their eyes to the ground. There must be thousands, all the men they could pull from Viipuri. A flagstaff pierces the dawn sun over the station building, the Blue Cross of Finland flapping silently in its grasp.

Papa holds paperwork in his hands. His fingers crease and smooth the edges.

He slicks back his hair and rubs his eyes; he would be handsome if he wasn’t so sleepless.

Emmi holds a paper of her own. White-blond needles of fuzzy hair fall in clumps across her face. Mama stands beside her in a black dress, her gray eyes steely against the harsh winds. She doesn’t cry. So many little things have catalyzed her emotions over the years, but now her face hardly twitches.

Suvi doesn’t know when they’ll say goodbye, or how it will happen. They stand together until the sun rises just a little further, until the whole of its body lifts over the square and leaves blue spots in her vision. Papa stirs and sighs. He turns to Mama and they embrace tightly.

“Come back.” It’s all Suvi can hear in their whispers, the tangle of words as they fall into each other, of arms and bodies and promises. “I’ll be back.”

Emmi hugs him before he even looks at her. She throws her arms around his neck

SPRING 2020 16

and cries as he lifts her up. It’s a haunting sound, like months have already passed and they now stand at his wake. She lays kisses on his face and he sets her down and her fingers uncoil from his sleeves, white then a deep red.

She hands him her sheet of paper. He folds it carefully and puts it in his coat pocket.

“It’s a poem,” Emmi says, looking down.

“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” Papa responds.

He turns to Suvi. Behind him, men with huge beige coats and golden emblems on their breasts shout orders to those in line. None of that permeates now; the world grows silent as Papa smiles. She feels like she is floating. Their breath moves out and up between them.

“Take care of them, okay?” Papa says. Suvi nods wordlessly.

“You know where the rifle is if you hear bears.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“If the Russians come, don’t use it.” Papa runs a hand over Suvi’s hair, mats of snow-colored curls. “I’m serious. Don’t.”

He gives her a look, a familiar glare he often reserves for important lessons. Don’t be afraid to fall, it’s just snow. Don’t approach unless you know it’s dead.

Don’t shoot the Russians, Suvi.

They come together and for the first time Suvi cries. She digs her nose into his collar. He smells of pine and charcoal, like wood after it’s burned in the fireplace.

They part and he’s gone. He enters the line and hands over his paperwork. The train wails, the howl of a beast disappearing into the Karelian wilderness.

Papa is among the last to board. He turns with tired eyes, his cap firm in his hands. Somehow, he locates them in the crowd and flashes an unconvincing smile. Then he turns and disappears. ~~

Suvi is only a dozen meters from a hare as it crosses the snow. It disturbs a fallen twig and startles itself; black, glinting eyes search but still don’t find her.

She studies it, the way its whiskers twitch and the puffs of breath that chug from its nose. She raises an invisible rifle, winks one eye closed and exhales. Aim for the smallest bit you can see, she hears Papa say. A speck of fur, anything to pinpoint your target.

“Bang!” she shouts. Jays explode from the trees, and ice peppers the ground like artillery.

The hare takes off. Suvi lowers her arms, inspects the scene with both her eyes. The forest is heavy with snow. The brush, once alive with rodents in the summertime, is now still.

“Suvi!” A voice bounces off the pines. Suvi turns and squints through the

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trees, towards the brightred roof of her family’s cottage. Emmi trudges through the snow, exhausted by the time she arrives.

“What are you doing out here?” Suvi asks. It’s more abrasive than she intends.

“Mama says dinner is ready.” Emmi looks around and seems uncharmed. “What are you doing out here?”

“I’m killing rabbits.”

Emmi’s eyes go wide. Suvi grins and brushes past. Her steps are lofty as she tries to run in the deep snow.

“Hello, Mama!” She explodes through the cottage’s back door moments later, past Papa’s askew chair, lets the wind whip in around her. Emmi is on her heels.

“eyesore,” Sophia Fox

SPRING 2020 18

“Did you really kill a rabbit?” asks her sister.

“What?” Mama asks. Her eyes go back and forth between them.

“Yeah,” Suvi says. She sits, takes her fork in her hand and thrusts it into the air. “I used Papa’s knife and gouged its eyes out. One by one.”

“Witch!” Emmi shouts.

“Enough!” Mama hisses.

Suvi bites her tongue, and her chin juts beneath a poorly contained smile. Emmi takes her chair and scoots it farther from her sister’s, closer to Papa’s.

“Eat!” Veins bulge in Mama’s neck. Suvi’s face falls. They eat in silence, as they had the previous night. Papa’s chair watches, eyes in the ornate loops of its back post, lungs in the groans of the house and the occasional hammering of a woodpecker outside. A staccato hum like a death rattle.

After dinner, Mama camps by the radio, knocking the receiver every few minutes. She rocks in her old chair that wails like a violin beneath sheets of static. The newscaster dips in and out of focus. As Suvi prepares for bed, Mama announces that they’ve bombed Helsinki.

“Is the city okay?” Suvi asks. She bristles when Mama turns and cries.

“Is any of this okay?”

They rise the next morning to the sounds of footsteps, a thousand in unison. Suvi is still groggy as she makes her way to the front window. Soldiers march down their road, two or three platoons at a time, as they had the previous day. Suvi always expects more. When will she rise to see a tank rumble past?

When will she hear the dishes chatter and see White Army bombers tear through the sky? These are just boys. Sometimes she expects to see the Red Army pass instead.

Only Emmi is moved by their arrival. She runs out in her bare feet and watches them from the fence, says hello and good luck and waves to each one.

Few look, fewer acknowledge her with a smile. When the line reaches its end, Emmi hands out a folded piece of paper, a poem. To Suvi’s shock, someone takes it.

Suvi goes into the forest again that afternoon, before the light begins to wane. It’s most beautiful then, when the sun dips and reflects in all the right places. The snow is crunchy now, icier after last night’s freeze, and she can almost make out each flake, the facets beaming in the burgeoning sunset.

She thinks it’s a bear at first, the low roar. A black speck crosses the open, unconquerable sky. She squints and raises a flat hand to her brow, tries to focus her eyes. It’s moving towards Helsinki. Its sound almost follows it, a highpitched whine singular in the cloudless frontier.

Suvi raises her invisible rifle. She points it to the speck, follows the green paint up its fuselage to the red and gold star on its tail. The smallest bit she can see.

“Bang!”

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EYE ISSUES

Khiya

I take my glasses off so maybe my memory of you will be a little less clear. Stomp the glass and hope that blind me won’t be blinded by love again, dump out contact solution because there was no right answer that could have given us clarity, and throw out my contacts the same way we should have deleted each other’s.

I wish I could say when I close my eyes I don’t see you anymore, don’t feel your hands on my skin anymore, don’t smell you on my clothes anymore— I want to take your name off my poetry and blacklist it from the backlog of bad pieces I still have to write. And I keep thinking I might. I bite my pen the same way people bite their tongues, I’m avoiding the words I’m not ready to write to you.

But with glasses still intact and contacts still as clear as day I can see that’s not going anywhere. I want to be the person who doesn’t care about you anymore. I envision a future without any piece of you spared, and to me it feels like it should be simple.

But just like my eyes I guess this vision’s impaired

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“lip drip,” Sophia Fox

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HAUSER 109

Olivia DeFiore

I have always hated spiders.

So when I see one, big and brown and hairy, scuttle across the tile floor, I shrink into the fabric of my chair. The spider freezes as I do, as though it can sense my fear with its twitching pincers. An octet of inky black eyes meets my own.

The spider proceeds to mount the scuffed boots of my neighbor. I nearly notify him of the vermin’s presence in a whisper, for he does not seem to notice, but some unseen force prevents me, as though my lips have been sewn shut with thick strands of twine.

I compel my eyes to remain locked on the professor at the front of the room, hope for my mind to grasp even a handful of her words, but I soon become distracted by a tickling sensation along my leg.

The spider has taken to my bare calf and remains unphased even as I jerk back in alarm. In no time it has succeeded in scaling my leg and continues its journey along the cotton of my shirt. The sour taste of fear coats my tongue, my gums, my teeth, as I attempt to brush it from my chest. But it’s as though my hand passes directly through its bulging body.

The students around me, as well as my professor, fail to notice the spider traveling along the dips and rises of my sweat-covered neck, the choked whimper I release as it parts my lips.

Inside my mouth, the spider dances across my taste buds, catapults down my throat and into my lungs, where it nestles amongst the collection of spongy tissue. It succeeds in perfectly clogging my airway with its bulbous form so that I am unable to speak, to scream, to breathe. To think.

My professor continues teaching, the students continue listening, and the spider only burrows deeper into my flesh.

I have always hated spiders.

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AN ANALYSIS ON BIRDS

Ryan Malloy

A crow looked at me.

I was eleven at the time.

They were not uncommon here, mingling in hospital rafters and winter parks, dirt tracks and Wawa convenience stores and byberry, where branches made greedy hands, punching holes into dusty, yellow blinders and reciting the words they learned from all those before him, macgyvering nests from thrown-out hymnal cards.

A cardinal looked at me.

It was sometime later or before or during or never.

Behind it rose red dawn like a strawberry field, Rising rising rising, Like an unhealed wound rising rising Like one plastic frill on some galactic pinwheel rising, Rising and rising and still, I could no longer tell day from night.

I wrote a book under sunlight, laid it to dust when evening fell.

I joined a club under sunlight, pulled a web-clad chord from my dusty engine each time the moon rose.

Sometimes it never started.

Most of the time it started too late.

A bluebird looked at me.

It didn’t find me; I found it.

If the sun that hangs in its wings is powered by Ikea LED string lights, Do I welcome it?

If its beauty is not of sapphire or Pacific spring water, but of craft store throw pillow fodder, Do I gasp at it?

A bluebird looked at me, And in the naive wonder of its gaze I requited.

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“Chaotic,” Kristina Fortunato

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DELUGE

Andrew Cardell i am enveloped closed in a package tissue paper fills the spaces between my limbs a big red bow holds me together how sweet, as the cardboard soaks i feel it soften like leather water rushes through the seams of tape it fills the bottom of my little home

once he brought me to a field touched me in the tall grass

he said i was his inundation

but that word wound itself into me instead

rain began to fall

the water ran between us it was time to leave

he wrapped his shirt around me and carried me back

my eyes wander now my knees at my chest my hands at my back my mouth around a gag he said he loved me last night that he had a surprise i feel the floor underneath give way i open my fingers i roll my eyes back i think of last night

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HANDLE WITH CARE Isabelle Jensen

On days like today moving through the world feels more like moving through styrofoam The noise is loud It hurts My arms are tired of making room for myself My lungs work to avoid being contaminated The energy that usually fuels my brain has been outsourced I become a pretty package One that looks functional The urge to sleep is overwhelming The urge to lie down is overwhelming But people need me I figure if I am tied with a big enough ribbon no one will notice the failings of this brain I say things that sound like me but I am only half in control I bump into things at Target My foot stops pressing the brake I only say things quietly I am more transparent than I like to think When did I become glass trying to see through bubble wrap I drift in and out of comprehension I take a dip in far off dreams Drifting from place to place I leave parts of me with the packing peanuts

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POMEGRANATE

Claire Helena

You tell me that the best time to find seashells is the dead of winter.

When the beach has frozen over and our fingers are numb and bright red.

I say Jones Beach is the best beach in the world, and that I love seashells, but the thought of hunting for conch together lingers in the air, untouched, unoffered.

You say the meaning of life is self-awareness, the ability to recognize the scars on your psyche and constantly tend to them, trimming and pruning like Japanese bonsai.

I tell you that I am an Epicurean.

That we are just flesh and bone hurtling through space with no purpose, no destination. So how can there be a meaning to life if we mean nothing?

If the gods or higher powers are there but don’t care, do we even matter?

You tell me it’s okay if I don’t know the answers to impossible questions.

And I don’t.

But I do know that you are wrong.

If the meaning of life is self-awareness, then why haven’t you kept your promises?

Why are you an entirely different person around everyone else?

A thunderstorm in a crowded theater but a whisper when we drink coffee alone.

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“Too (of a) Kind,” Kristina Fortunato

You say you are a pomegranate, and now I see it: Break your hard exterior open to reveal seeds I have to chew through to actually know you.

And my jaw hurts.

And I’m tired of having to crack you open every time.

And if you’re a pomegranate, then I’m a black-cap.

I grow wild in your neighbor’s backyard among the garter snakes and the grass, and I’m waiting for you to pick me.

I want you to pick me.

But the cold is setting in.

The leaves have turned brown and the frost has swallowed me down into the dark soil.

Maybe our season has passed.

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“Urban Treasures,” Jessica Mannhaupt

THE PROCESS

Cenna Khatib

I want to write She says to the empty stars To the lights once taken to hold wishes Lights that now only let dreams drop to the ocean She wants to write and her body aches with every word she’s never known how to say because every pencil she’s ever held has broken beneath the weight of her silence She has to write She begs her brain to work the way it used to She allows internal screams to rip through her anything to unscatter this messy mind and pull apart these sentences tangled in her web, to just try to create something meaningful out of the numbness that has burned all comprehension from her thoughts She needs to write she whispers to her dark bedroom where only the silent walls and sobbing pillowcases can hear the words drenched in this fear that she has forgotten how to do the only thing she loves

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“the façade of wicked good books,” Kira Turetzky

She loves to write and so she scribbles into the tattered notebook she got all those years ago, pages crinkled from spilled sadness and pen marks smudged from excited carelessness Flipping through memories, her pen stretches across pages and she uses these letters to piece shards of lost passion back together Here in this notebook, she finds herself again

SPRING 2020 30

JUMPING INTO A WHIRLPOOL MINUTE BY MINUTE

Isabelle Jensen

First

you will begin to feel your feet being pulled by the current Second

your body will play follow the leader feet legs torso Third

as the water creeps up your neck

there will be the chilling feeling of having your body

pulled by the tide Fourth

your head will dip below the surface

water whips at your eyelashes

it brushes against your lips begging for an invitation Fifth

as your body spins around the vortex

your face may briefly touch the surface

that moment of relief

will be a fleeting memory Sixth

sinking to the bottom

you will see your mistake

jumping is not the same as landing Seventh

the surface is far now

lips wired shut

legs still kicking Eighth

slowly the fight will leak out of you

it will go up with the last oxygen bubbles

the insistent urge to rise will subside Ninth

feel your body let go

you become one with the water

tune out the scream of your lungs Tenth

thoughts stop existing

your body fills like a glass of wine

leave this world intoxicated

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CHANCES

Khiya

There’s something about chances. About a second, and a third, fourth, too many to count, amount of chances. I know what they’re saying. Promise I’m not overlooking their advice, it’s just… nice to see you. It’s nice to still get a text. I keep telling myself next time is the chance she’ll actually take, that’s the one where she’ll fall in love. Because when it comes to me? I believe in an infinity of chances. I believe that if I gave you one million chances and gave up, I’d never know if a million and one was our lucky number. And to me, for some reason, you’re worth the infinity. I can’t explain the ways I’m falling in love with rejection, there’s no way to justify why I think I still want you. I am admittedly someone who has almost failed almost every math class I have ever taken, but a mathematician once told me there are certain probabilities that increase chances the more you play them. So here I am, still playing. I am hoping my chances increase.

“The Pier,” Kira Turetzky

SPRING 2020 32

YOUR HOROSCOPE SAYS YOU’RE A BITCH

Alyssa Minkoff

you tried to set me on fire and i let you i said you act this way simply because you’re a gemini; it’s just who you are i’ve since realized that the stars and the moon don’t actually mean anything and really, you’re just a bitch

THE HONEST TO GOD TRUTH

Sabrina Josephson

what can one say when everything feels okay and nothing hurts i’m doing fine, thank you for asking. i appreciate it. for the first time in awhile

my existence doesn’t feel interrupted

my existence isn’t in a constant state of panic

my existence doesn’t feel shaken to its core

i’m finally happy

stressed

that’s what i say because what i want to say

could hurt if i say the reason i’m happy is

you’re not around

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FALL 2019 33

A CRUEL FORM OF SELF-LOVE Sabrina Josephson

“Profiles,” Claire Helena

I’m learning to take a step back and realize that my moments will happen when they happen if I don’t learn then the air I breathe will turn bitter with each passing second and I can’t live like that I’m learning to separate myself from those around me so that I see a window rather than a reflection of everything I’m not so that I can celebrate what I see and safely know that it’s ok not to be them it’s a cruel form of self-love to pull away when all I want is to be there but it’s working and the smoke is clearing and breathing is becoming easier all I’ve ever wanted to do is breathe easy

SPRING 2020 34

MY GREAT FEMININE RESPONSIBILITY

Maggie Hurley

I stand in the shower and stare down at the pink razor clutched in my left hand. The first time my mother entrusted me with this great, feminine responsibility, I was ten.

I was ten, only in the fifth grade.

I was ten, and horrified by the dark hair on my legs.

To this day, ten years later, I have a scar wrapped around my ankle from a slip of my first razor.

That razor was pink too.

I stand in the shower and stare down at the pink razor that cost me sixteen useless dollars.

“That’s the price of beauty.”

The other day, I walked by a six-bladed men’s razor in the store. That one was only nine dollars.

My pink razor—my adult razor—comes equipped with five blunt blades and a trimmer for the bikini line.

This razor is supposed to be “perfect for the everyday woman” because the company supposedly knows that women are humans and not “hairless goddesses.”

But if it’s so perfect for normal women, why do I have scars and still-healing cuts from the inadequacy of the blades?

I was ten, watching the water turn red

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and stain the white porcelain, and the attempt to hold back my tears stung more than the wound ever could.

I’m nineteen now, almost twenty, and I no longer bat an eye when my razor slips, and the porcelain turns red, and the shaving cream burns the tender gap in my skin.

It’s all a part of the so-called great, feminine responsibility.

Back then, it was only my legs.

Now, it’s my armpits, my upper lip, my eyebrows, my bikini line.

The only place I’m allowed to have hair is the top of my head.

Hair anywhere else means I’m unclean, unladylike, unprofessional.

A decade has passed since the first time I brought a razor to my skin and peeled the hair away. Now, I don’t shave so much, and my pink razor collects dust during the winter months, and my mother asks me, “Maggie, is this a lesbian thing or a feminist thing?” I tell her it’s neither.

“Field Goddess,” Olivia DeFiore

SPRING 2020 36

SKIN CARE

Julianna Grossman You keep a tub of moisturizer in your bag and spearmint chapsticks in your pockets, Yet your lips peel like old wallpaper and thick flakes of dead skin mottle your cheeks.

The oil-slick red splotches glisten and sickly yellows and whites crown swollen hills clogged with pus.

But like weeds, they will starve, and your face is falling off.

It’s falling off, slabs of wet flesh sliding down your nose, your cheekbones, your chin.

Then you look in the mirror

I cannot love myself as I am and smile at your new face.

“Stretch,” Olivia DeFiore

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ONE BEGINS TO SEE (NIAGARA FALLS)

James Wegeng

Niagara Falls is interesting for all of fifteen minutes. That is the length of time it takes to notice the waterfall, assess the waterfall, comprehend the waterfall, and walk up and down the sides of the gorge (from scenic overlook to scenic overlook) in an attempt to find the best place from which to photograph the waterfall. After the waterfall has been photographed, it continues to be impressive, but it ceases to be interesting, mainly because it has already been seen, and now it is time to see something else.

One begins to see seagulls wheeling about in the sky, present less for the fishing and more for the French fries.

One begins to see the gift shops, the restaurants, the gift-shop-restaurants, and the ruins of the old power station that fell into the river decades ago and is now eroding rubble.

One begins to see the people with their Niagara Falls t-shirts, cheap sunglasses, and empty fanny packs that they brought along just in case they might need them.

One begins to see them milling about aimlessly on the asphalt and concrete that reaches all the way up to the cliff, maybe looking out at the waterfall.

One begins to see Niagara Falls is like a corpse, decked out in the refuse of greed and shoved in a barrel to ride over the edge and smash to bits on the rocks below, to have its grave marked with a vapid plaque, like an exhibit at the zoo.

“serious conversation between two cats,� Alyssa Minkoff

SPRING 2020 38

UNSPOKEN

Jules Dickinson-Frevola

-do you have dreams? (i see you. i see sunlight through open windows and smell lilacs on the breeze. i see your dark eyes furrowed and grinning and wide and closed. The air sounds like a song and i feel weightless. i see clear skies and the world is calm, i recognize my reflection and despite its bustling the world is still, broken only by the domesticity of our routine.)

-i used to want to be a vet.

-what are you afraid of? (there’s a stillness in the wrong way. time stops and the weight of the universe crashes on me, as i drown under the mass of a million trillion stars. i see her eyes, normally bright. the air is thick and oppressive, rank with suddenness. awareness of cracking apart, a hole opening in my chest as the rugged is pulled from me.)

-needles, you?

-heights.

-what’s your favorite color? (her lips. his favorite shirt. their eyes. these pieces of people i carry along with me, hoping to keep them alive long afterwards. the emptiness of the air. those afternoons when the crickets chirped in the flowers and the cicadas sang in the trees. the feeling of entering cool water. i see the whole of eternity and wonder what i’ll never know.)

-red. what’s yours?

-ha, blue.

“Orange Flower,” Jessica Mannhaupt

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TOUCH ME G O D D A M I T

Kira Turetzky

put your hands on me learn me like you would a map run your fingers over my valleys and canyons acquaint yourself with my peaks and crests i am geologically and geographically accurate i insist on being reaffirmed terra firma pronounce my physicality gorge yourself on it rocks filling a glacial trough glacial infill body substance and substrate map me discover me lay claim unmapped unmarked unknown territory if a body blooms in a canyon does the echo carry your voice your touch your breath sing me into existence with your hands grab me grip me ground me soil between fingers and teeth substantiate me subsist of me submit to me surround me

embolden me embrace me cartography is a learned science study me just the same by hand by mind by mouth rivers have mouths make me a delta

whispers in caverns cavernous cave collapse like breath now gone lungs sunken and shrunken rubble and rumble now silent concertinaed inwards concerto grotto what does it take to write a symphony exhume me from depths laminated layers shallowing upwards cycles cyclical remnants of tidal flats coral reefs exposed then buried then shallow evidence of drowning bury me in sediment preserved

SPRING 2020 40

TEAR ME APART

Sabrina Josephson

tear me apart take my fingers my bones my veins keep them in your wallet your pocket your shoes your memories as i disintegrate into ash into a million pieces into something you cannot control. oh. do you not want these? odd, considering you took everything what my fingers made what my energy became what belongs to my heart at least you tried but this is mine my words my pages my heart tear me apart i will live on here.

NO TITLE

Brittany Antonacci I’m starting to fall in love with life again, and it’s fucking amazing.

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YOU

Kristina Fortunato Your skin is dry, and your hands are frozen. The hot water of a shower will make your skin worse, but you think you need the warmth right now.

You strip, outerwear then underwear.

You turn the shower handle to high heat. You step in and close the curtain behind you.

This isn’t even the kind of heat you actually need. You crave physical warmth from another. A Tinder date would be more useful than this shower.

But you also know that the only other alternative is to remain on the numbing tile floor of the bathroom, shivering.

You pat yourself on the back for being productive, even though this is the only thing you’ve done all day.

The water skims your toes; it’s already starting to cool down. You don’t know long you have been in the stall.

You sink down into a crouch. Your entire body might as well feel the frost. The trouble is this is the only place you feel safe enough to think.

Your mind races and your heart pounds and soon your mind is wandering over every overwhelming thought that you’ve been avoiding all day and there’s no stopping the avalanche now that you’ve started. Your legs cramp up and the temperature of the water soon matches that of the squiggly tips of your fingers.

You should have taken your skin off before you stepped into the shower.

SPRING 2020 42

GOAT YOGA

Sam Whitman

So what happened was this: You were standing by the lookout next to the payby-the-quarter binoculars, scrolling through your emails, when you said to me, “Have you ever tried goat yoga?”

I shook my head. Out over the bay, great billowing clouds of downy gray surged such that we could hardly see the water. “No,” I said, “no, I’ve never done it,” and it didn’t seem like a good idea what with my propensity for breaking bones. I had broken twenty-six of them and none of the doctors could figure out why, because when they put me through the scanners my bones looked as normal as anyone’s. Only they kept snapping.

The lighthouse beam cut through the fog like a skipping rope. You looked startled when it hit your face. “I got a coupon. That’s all.” Your windbreaker cracks in the wind like an echo.

Coupon-pon-pon.

We get back in the truck, and when the doors shut the wind out the silence makes my ears hurt. I feel bad and cradle my sling-bound arm against my stomach. “Well.” I hesitate, then forge ahead. “Well, maybe we could try it after my arm heals.”

You seem like you might be happy about that. The ignition groans to life and I guide us out of the parking lot, one-armed.

You have the best bones. They are fine specimens, long and slender and immaculate, like the cords they use to climb mountains. You said when you got mugged in the park, after the knife had made a pocket of your bicep and wiggled the muscles out of the way, you felt the blade glance off your humerus like a pebble against a cliff face and knew that you were probably going to be okay.

I don’t think I’d be okay if I ever got stabbed, even in the arm. I think if something from the outside touched my bones, they would all shatter on the spot, like a crystal goblet under assault by a soprano’s high C. But you and I have always been different.

So we go to goat yoga when I’m all better. We sign waivers to say we won’t sue the place if the goats bite us. The ink hasn’t dried on the page before we’re ushered into a corral with fourteen other students and nine small goats who pay us no mind. I unroll my mat and think about all the things I’m squishing beneath it: clovers, ants, goat shit.

The instructor has us lying on our backs to start. I can feel the lumpy dirt beneath my scapulae, only the mat between the worms and me. I think about the way my spine arcs between where my butt and upper back make contact with the mat, how I would plot it on a graph, a sort of squished parabola from A to B. A vertebra might crack under the pressure, I think.

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The heat of you from the next mat over makes me blush. I could reach a hand out to touch yours, but I don’t.

I go slow through the motions. A little brown goat comes over and licks my big toe while I’m in Downward Dog. His Lilliputian body radiates warmth against my stomach and legs. A few minutes later he loops around to you and tries to bite your ear, and these are the only goat interactions either of us has, which seems like a rip-off, even with the coupon. You catch an affection for the one who visited us, even though he tried to bite you, and you ask the farm people whether we can take him home with us. “No,” they tell you, alarmed, “no, you cannot. Do you know what it takes to care for a goat? No, no,” and they usher us back out into the field where we parked.

It seems goat yoga wasn’t for us. “We’ll find something else,” you tell me on the ride home in the pickup truck. The heater coughs dusty air in our faces. I’m not so sure that we will, but you’re already checking your email for more coupons.

“How do you feel about kickboxing?”

I feel like I want to spend the rest of my life bound in pillows in a dark, soundproof room. I’m going to tell you so when I wrench my hand the wrong way on the wheel and hear my pinky finger crunch.

“Happy Cow,” Jessica Mannhaupt

SPRING 2020 44

STONES, GALL

Andrew Cardell

the emergency room is a room of emergency and my stones they are not precious although the ones under my bed are I was scanned like a piece of paper through a printer although I had a bit more space than a paper would there were no planets or anything the other space you know yes I had been eating a lot of fat thank you my mother made me drink a lot of milk growing up whole milk said I would be a big strong boy she was right partly I could develop my calves a bit more no not cows the leg ones

“The Product of Boredom in Class,� Alyssa Minkoff

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NOT THE RAIN

Maddie A.

It’s not the rain, it’s being wet Dripping clothes stuck to skin while AC blasts It’s not the meds, it’s the fear of dependence Of who I might be when they run out It’s not the wind, it’s the chill That stings cheeks and eyes and makes me walk backward It’s not the pen, it’s the ink Not the body, but the mind Not the pain, but the ache when the bruise is old It’s not the notebook, but what I write inside The tear-stained, ink-stained pages It’s not the love, but the rejection It’s not the prompt, it’s the poem

“Willowbrook,” Kristina Fortunato

SPRING 2020 46

DEUS EX MACHINA

Hannah Matuszak

Ensa dresses carefully on the morning of her first Telling. She doesn’t have to help in the fields weeding the grain-crops, not on an important day like this, so she puts on her best dress, the one her grandmama sewed out of the skirts Natka outgrew, and takes a long time combing the tangles out of her hair. Then she clasps the necklace with the symbol all the god-speakers wear around her neck— it glitters in the light coming through the window, a perfect circle with short square nubs sticking out around its edges.

She’s concentrating so hard on remembering all of the prayers to Wodin she’s memorized and commandments she’s learned to follow during her schooling that she only gets down a few bites of breakfast even though Da made her favorite, eggs fried in a nest of fresh bread. No one blames her though.

Grandmama rests a hand on Ensa’s shoulder before she stands up from her seat, saying, “I’m so proud of you, girlie. Keeping the old ways alive, you are.”

Ensa hugs her quickly, and then she’s out the door, going through their village to Teller Sorisay’s house at a fast walk, because god-speakers are dignified and don’t run. It’s just past dawn, and two of the moons still hang in the lightening sky above the rooftops.

Teller Sorisay lives a little away from the rest of the village, out where some of the ruins from the Storm Years still stand like crooked teeth. Her house is pre-Storm, too, but she’s fixed it up, covering the metal with thick canvas at the broken places.

Inside, it’s all warm light and noise, candles illuminating every corner of the big room where the other god-speakers gather. Like they always do, Ensa’s eyes go to the altar where the piece of oldtek sits. It just looks like a little metal box, now, but when one of the older women wakes it up, it’s full of pictures and words. Ensa’s spent so many evenings sitting in front of it, learning how to tend their god.

When Teller Sorisay notices Ensa, the tall woman claps her hands for everyone’s attention. “Welcome, Ensa, new-made daughter of Wodin,” she says in the loud, stern voice she uses for important speeches. “Now we are all gathered here, we may proceed to where He rests and hear His voice.”

They move out into the morning again, a line of straight-backed god-speakers with Ensa at the very end, winding its way to the canyon entrance outside the village. The small, prickly shrubs and sunrise-colored rock out here are strange to her—no one is allowed to go to the canyon, not unless they go for a Telling. As they go down the path, she keeps her neck craned back to watch the sky get smaller between huge walls of stone.

So when the line of god-speakers halts, she nearly runs into the girl in front of her, a weaver’s daughter just a few years older than Ensa. She stops in time though, and stares at the impossible thing in front of them.

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Where the canyon’s sides curve to form a deep bowl, there’s a man made of metal. Only his upper torso and head are visible, since the rest are buried in a jumble of fallen rock, but even those are taller than three of the village’s houses stacked on top of each other. She knows from her oldtek learning that this is the body of Wodin, but the pictures didn’t prepare her for the real thing.

It’s strange to see that his eyes are closed, as if he’s sleeping.

While Ensa stares, the other women go to work, beginning a chant that echoes through the canyon as they each move to their own task. Ensa chants in time as she’s been taught, naming the things they have to do to wake the god— move an enormous switch set into the stone, and press places on a panel beside His slumbering head, and hook up strange silvery cables in an arcane pattern.

Underneath their voices, a grinding noise starts, and Ensa sees metal circles in the ground around Wodin begin to move. They look like the symbol on her necklace.

And then the god’s eyes open, shining gold, and everything goes quiet.

They wait to hear what He will say and puzzle out the meaning of his prophecy so they can keep their people safe and stop something like the Storm Years from ever happening again—that’s what Ensa’s been taught. She remembers to kneel as Wodin’s mouth begins to move.

“Terraforming Unit 2, Earth Colony 347, powering on,” His voice, louder than any thunder Ensa’s ever heard, intones. The rising sun is starting to shine into the canyon, and she notices markings on one of His arms that don’t glitter like the rest of His body in the light. W0D1N-28, the letters read.

“Main system power is at 16%,” Wodin continues. “Conditions in this quadrant are suboptimal for agriculture and habitation. Initiating deep geological scan to coordinate solutions.”

Sunshine falls across Ensa’s face, and she praises her god.

SPRING 2020 48

RAIN-SOAKED AND CHILLED TO THE BONE

James Wegeng

i see the bugs out in the rain and

it is a struggle soaking spiders like raindrop daddy long-legs in the splish-splash-plop of a descending torrent i see the bugs out in the rain and

they can’t keep from dancing all-around turn-around dropped-out all-about grasshoppers in the aquarium fireflies in the faucet butterflies eat the stomach and

water fills the brain

“Teeth,” Sophia Fox

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WITS END

Sabrina Josephson i want to be kissed i don’t need it but there is something within me that is pushing me forward to the edge of my wits and telling me that what i need is the sensation of skin on mine hands pulling me closer because in that moment all they want is my touch i want someone to see me how i wish i could see myself with all the love i wish i had for myself i want to be kissed and i’m afraid of what i might do to be kissed

SPRING 2020 50

BODY, MIND, SOUL, AND ME Kristina Fortunato Body is screaming at me. She tried to be subtle, starting with the occasional pimple and mild bloating, headaches from drinking nothing but coffee. But once she realized that wasn’t working, Body upped her game.

Now, Body gives me blinding migraines and skin that flakes off in messy red chucks. She punishes me with joints that snap and pop in lightning sharp pains. I’m curled up in bed for days at a time, trying to recover from the abuse she inflicts on me. She wants me to come to my senses, to treat her as she deserves. But still, once I’m able to climb out of bed on my shaky legs, I change nothing, partially from helplessness, partially from stupidity.

But Body doesn’t know what Mind does to me, what causes me to act this way.

Mind cripples with low blows in quiet, demeaning tones, slowly killing me from the inside out. Mind keeps me at home, heart racing, breath short, worried about illogical and improbable situations. My ideas become scattered and unfocused. My emotions turn hostile. In trying to defend myself from Mind’s blows, I become a different person, someone I no longer recognize when I look in the mirror.

But I always seem to find her in my darkest moments. She is the reason I keep on.

Soul holds me tight, whispering that she loves me, in a comforting tone that I almost believe in. Soul meditates peacefully, waiting for the quiet resolution in the war between Body and Mind. We both hope that day comes quickly.

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“cookie cutter,” Claire Helena

SPRING 2020 52

A VASECTOMY MOMENT

Andrew Cardell

I am tired of having seeds if watermelons can be seedless why can’t I I will be on top of a porsche SUV at 2:34 AM next wednesday I will see you there if you happen to be my doctor but if you are not my surgeon, please stay home you need the sleep

STRAWBERRIES

Sophia Fox

i don’t like the texture of strawberries it’s too rough in my mouth, the seeds play games with my tongue and the tiny hairs scratch up my gums. i usually avoid them, but if a bowl of fresh berries is placed in front of me i can’t help but grab a handful for myself and return when my hands are empty stained pink and soggy with enjoyment i don’t know why i consume what hurts me i’m torn up from the inside out but i always repair myself and come back for more

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WELL ROOSTED

Claire Helena

she goes home to roost leaves the pigeons in new york and heads for chicken country up in the western mountains there she finds the coop she’s been missing settles into the hay and picks at her feathers until they are free of subway grime and dust styled neatly on wing and breast the fence is safe there are no foxes stalking round the perimeter prowling for holes or loose posts the coop is wood insulated and dry mud stays outside in the yard and so does the cold she goes home to roost and when the city calls her back to hustle and bustle she takes stray straw to remind her

MANIFESTO

that every time she has to leave she goes back well roosted.

James Wegeng

Here’s what my friend said When I said he could write a poem: “No.” I said,

“Tell me about this chair.”

He said, “Chair.”

He thinks he’s not a poet.

He doesn’t know.

SPRING 2020 54

“Watch the Gap,” Olivia DeFiore

DRUNK

Irini Tsounakas My mom just asked me if I was drunk and I said “no” while dancing around the bathroom of a Mexican restaurant singing along to whatever song was playing Now we’re both laughing our asses off.

God bless happy hour.

Anyway, here’s this poem.

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TO TEACH A STARLING TO SWIM Ryan Malloy

Each time we unpacked, Mum unfolded sheets as she had folded them, one side at a time like she was undoing an origami. Dad threw them into the air, let the fabric shoot out and explode and flutter down like fireworks. I watched them work and shifted on my feet, moved across my little corner of the room to keep my restless body occupied. I found a chair at the desk and spun until I felt dizzy and nauseous, pushing myself all the way to the balcony curtain. I could only wait for so long, take so much of the same exchange: “Do you need my help?” “No, I’ve got it, Ramona, thank you!” I lifted myself to my feet and fought against the world still spinning around me.

The balcony curtain was gossamer, and sunlight caught in its fabric, the shadows of colossal, rolling clouds. It danced in the breeze, a vertical ocean of rippling silk, and when I took it in my fingers it was soft like water. I slowly slid it away. The light that met me was garish and it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust, but soon enough I left my breath at the sliding door. The world unfurled. The wind caught my hair and spun auburn locks around my eyes.

For all my years there, I never got tired of that view. I leaned my bare arms on the warm metal banister and let myself melt into the hills before me, valleys going all the way down, little copses and clusters of flowers and clouds shaped like whales diving

over distant lakes. There were people in the distance, farmhouses that from afar looked to peek over the diagonal arches of the hills. Miles of green spread before me, creeks and meadows and quaint little towns, but I felt alone, hollow, like it was all there to mock me. Life in the hotel was temporary.

Each room cycled through dozens of guests as the summers drew on, and most children my age came with small suitcases, a few sets of clothes, passing through only for the weekend.

When I pushed back inside, a sheet of cool air met me. It was stagnant and smelled like plastic. My parents dug through suitcases, unpacking our modest English life in this brightly-painted room, one we could never afford in different circumstances.

I gave a last look over the kitchen, the living room space, the television thin as a window. Everything was visible from my place by the balcony, and I found myself missing my room in Sunderland, that narrow, maze-like apartment in a place where it always rained.

“Where are you going, Ramona?” I heard Mum’s question before I realized where my feet were taking me, what my hand was reaching for. The doorknob clicked beneath my fingers and I turned back.

“I’m gonna explore,” I said.

“Weren’t you tired?” Mum pointed to the now-prepared bed. Samson, a lion plush that I had claimed since I was two, looked up at me with his dangling button eyes.

“I just needed some air, I guess.”

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I swayed on the balls of my feet and Mum looked at me with a sideways smile.

“You’re a fickle little thing,” she said, swiping aside her sweat-drenched bangs. “Go on, moppet. Stay on the hotel property.”

“Don’t make me come running after you,” added Dad, who had already found the television remote.

I stepped out into the hallway.

Along each wall were paintings and photos from around France, and each door was marked with a spotless golden placard. Each was also closed, all the way to the far window where I got another glimpse of the beautiful French countryside. Was anyone in the hotel?

The clamber downstairs answered my question enthusiastically, loud voices and plates clattering and bells ringing, and outside I could hear splashing, the thrum of motors, a meep sounding from the parking lot, the first note in a crescendo of car horns.

Downstairs, waiters and bellhops and guests crossed the lobby, all with places to go. I stopped to watch and pry stories from each face, nationalities, personalities. The only children I saw were too young or too old or appeared annoying, their hands tugging on mothers’ or staff pockets and sleeves. One amber-haired girl crossed my gaze and offered me a smile, but she whispered to her mother in a lullaby of Spanish or Portuguese and was away with one final, goodbye glance. I frowned.

Minutes passed without another look in my direction, and the only people who noticed me were hotel staff. “It’s

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nice to see you again, Miss Ramona!” came a gentle, French voice, and I watched a waiter move by with a tray of drinks. Moments later, the desk-manager passed with a notepad in hand and tsked at me. “Watch for people passing, Miss Ramona!”

I stumbled my way to safety when the traffic became too heavy, all the way to where the lobby converged into the café. Things were calm here.

Only a few men resided amid its dark wooden tables, reading newspapers and playing cards and grumbling at nothing in particular. The waitress didn’t pay me anything more than a smile; she was young and tall and many of the dirtier-looking men made a point to watch her disappear into the small kitchen.

“Fille, que recherchez-vous?” A light, feathery voice called to me. I met the dark eyes of an older man, whose dress suggested he would prefer the term gentleman; he had a thin and curved mustache and wore a despondent, solemn frown. He was dark against the citrus-colored wallpaper, the printed-out paintings of sunsets that hung above him.

“Excusez moi?” I asked in a low, unconfident voice.

“Oh.” He had a movie villain smile. “You must be that British girl.

Monsieur Bousset’s granddaughter.”

British girl. I tightened my jaw.

I was always between two identities, British in one season and French in another, and anyone who pegged me the wrong one never failed to get a rise out of me.

“Don’t call me that,” I said.

“And don’t call a duck a duck?”

The man asked with an eyebrow high.

I swallowed hard. The man withdrew a cigarette from his suit jacket.

“You’re my neighbor, I suppose,” he said, lighting it. “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other this summer.”

I took a few steps forward. The man saw this, and with expectant eyes gestured to the seat across from him. “I won’t stay here all day. Especially for a child,” he said. I trudged over, pulled the chair in such a way that a heavy shriek came out from the floorboards.

The man grimaced and shook his head and cursed in potent French beneath his breath, a word I could not pinpoint.

I sat, tried my best to keep my posture straight and tall.

“I’ve never liked kids,” the man said. “But you seem silent enough.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Forward, aren’t you?” The man laughed. “I have an inkling that you wish to report me to your grandfather.”

He continued to smile as I glared up at him. When he could see that I wasn’t charmed, he nodded and flicked some burnt tobacco into the ashtray on the table.

“You can call me Monsieur Ambroise,” he said.

“You can call me Ramona.”

“I really struck a nerve, didn’t I?” He puffed a few times on his cigarette

and smoke billowed over us. I tried not to cough. “Very well. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ramona,” he said. He contemplated something and nodded to himself. “What a lovely, British name. We don’t get many Ramonas in France.”

If I opened my mouth too quickly, I felt like a growl would rise. “What even brings someone like you here?”

I asked.

“Why is anyone here?” Monsieur Ambroise shrugged.

“Are you rich? Do you have a job?”

“Nosy little girl, aren’t you?” He reached over to a small table by the café entrance, and managed to snatch a newspaper in his long fingers. He snapped it open and withdrew eyeglasses from his breast pocket. “It doesn’t concern you.”

“You know about me,” I said.

“Why can’t I learn about you?”

“Because everyone knows about you. You’re the owner’s kin,” Monsieur Ambroise replied. “It’s what you pay for being in a place you wouldn’t normally be able to afford.” He peeked over the newspaper to grin at me. “Don’t worry, child. I do well for myself.”

I wanted to rip the newspaper down. I wanted to storm away, find someone worth giving my time to. But I stayed. There was something about him I wanted to unravel, perhaps out of spite. I watched him read, cradled my cheek in my palm. I could feel my

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exhaustion returning. He made no sound except to turn the page, and I thought after a long time that he had forgotten I was there, until he suddenly spoke.

“If you must know, I’m a professor,” he said. “Philosophy.”

I perked up, raised my face from the soft of my hand. I felt accomplishment for waiting out that fact. It was like turning one of Pépé’s old puzzle boxes and hearing it click.

“Teach me something,” I said.

Monsieur Ambroise chuckled.

“And teach a starling to swim?” he said.

“Starling?”

“The bird. You are quite alike.”

Monsieur Ambroise clapped the newspaper closed, so hard that tiny rips appeared in its edges. “You’re small and shrill and insist on perching nearby me.”

I grinned for once at one of his remarks. His bitterness was like coffee, something I had to accustom myself to.

Something about my joy surprised him, and his eyes flared. He raised his paper again, flipped the page violently, and immediately lowered it once more, taking care to fold it and place it between us. He dug his cigarette into the ashtray and removed his glasses, rubbing over the lenses with a handkerchief.

“Do you know what ethics are?” he sighed.

“Tea for Two,” Irini Tsounakas

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SURVIVAL

Jules Dickinson-Frevola “i like that word: inebriated” i say, glass clutched in tired hand, head resting upon your shoulder, and your nice shirt “me too,” you grin, “it’s in all of my poems,” and i smile softly into your sleeve. i don’t tell you about late nights drowned in wine late afternoons that tasted of rum. i don’t tell you about the numbness, the tears, the blankness where there should be memories. i don’t tell you of succumbing to silence, of pain and complacence and submissiveness. but i let you read my poems and you’re quiet, and you hug me, maybe in the hopes that you can take away the fear and the loss that hangs stagnant in the air.

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FROM NEW YORK TO PARIS Nicole Nolasco

You ask, “How is New York?” I tell you they are gentrifying Broadway Junction, and kids don’t play hopscotch in the street like they used to.

You laugh. You say fifty-five text messages in a row is the same as a postage stamp nowadays.

I know you long for a letter. I won’t say what I long for. We reminisce about the time we listened to Kiwi in your mom’s silver Honda, windows foggy with our secret. “I eat chives now”, you say to break the awkwardness. And I can finally see it, you on the slick Parisian trompe-l’oeil-painted cobblestones, making a home for yourself without me. In this nanosecond I understand why you left.

“Cityscape,” Irini Tsounakas

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THE KITCHEN COUNTER T Kosek

My home base— my save point, breakfast, and dinner at the kitchen counter.

The kitchen counter— where I’d start the day with sweet Chocolate Cream of Wheat and end with potato soup and Ritz.

That kitchen counter— where after I grew, grammy and I would make dozens of snickerdoodles.

That kitchen counter— where even after we’d moved out, I could sit with grammy and cherish those cotton candy memories.

That kitchen counter— as I grew, became more than just a long slab of Formica.

I hid there, I used the computer there, I did my projects there; I mourned my grammy there.

That kitchen counter— sat that forgotten black mug, still smelling of hundreds of cups of her daily black coffee.

That kitchen counter— the ticking of the clock we’d time our whisking on ticks and tocks on.

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MASTER’S DEGREE Madison Spence-Moore

your selfish ways put your children in a haze most days you do nothing and still expect praise you scuttle and mumble all about the house while constantly angry as hell i refuse to be near for i fear i’ll shatter an eggshell when you’re left all alone you sit quietly on your phone you seem content but it’s hard to tell to the kids it isn’t fair, because when they ask you to braid their hair, you say “i didn’t get a master’s degree to braid hair.” oh. you don’t say yes of course, my mistake how dare i ask you to be a father how silly of me to forget your duties in the home do not go past your job yes of course, obviously because it seems you didn’t get a master’s degree in folding laundry either or washing dishes or vacuuming or changing diapers or making dinner or setting the table or decorating for the holidays or buying groceries so you must have earned one on watching football and drinking wine because when it comes to these, you’re doing just fine

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DEAR BIG

Khiya

Dear Big, Not a lot of poems get written to you.

Maybe it’s because the amount of frat boys turned love poet is less than the number of Nazis turned women’s rights advocates, but—here I am. I am here, and all I can think about is soon you will not be here, and the moment you leave I will have to write to you so now is the time to practice.

This is me. I promise I’m practicing.

Dear Big, You would never actually say the thing you wanted to do. You would say “I think I’ll watch Friends from the start again” or “You know maybe I’ll go to the MET alone today.” You’d never talk about it. Suicide is a scary word, and it’s okay to cover it with inside jokes. You’d talk about it like it wasn’t a big deal, but it was… it is. I think it is. I think about how “watching Friends from the beginning” could somehow be the start to an end and I— Dear Big, Everybody always says I’m just like you. They say we must be twins or dating because we’re just too close to only be friends, and yet we look alike, so if it’s not a relationship perhaps it’s a… relation?

It scares me when they say I’m like you. You’re so smart, and you’re pretty, and you’re the kind of person who will set everything aside for someone you love.

But you constantly slack, you can be cruel in a way that’s meant to burn, and you aren’t afraid to cut people out.

Sometimes I want to be you. Sometimes I’m afraid I already am you.

Dear Big, I call you Mom, but in some ways, you are the closest friend I have made here and that’s not something any parent could be. I come to you with every problem.

Every exciting event. Bad day, best day, better than I could have thought a boring bitter Tuesday could be—you get all of that. You get my fears and meet them with reassurance. When the world slows down, and it feels like I’m underwater, you remind me to stop holding my breath. You remind me if the world turns too slow it just means I have superhuman speed and “goddamnit I better not waste a superpower.”

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Dear Big, I do not know who I will become.

I do not know who you will become.

I do not know what we will become.

But you always seem pretty okay without that knowledge.

Dear Big, I always feel stupid writing poetry. And while I’m not sure if this counts, I think of who I would read it to, and if they would know it was you that I’ve spoken of.

Dear Big, I keep writing these letters without intent to send them. But I speak the words into the open air and wonder if the wind will carry them to your ears, so you know I still care about you.

Dear Big, I think this is the last letter I will write to you. I cannot be sure, but with everything outside the universe herself, there is an end. I don’t think there are enough letters written to you, but I am not the one to keep holding this pen.

There is a piece of art not currently on display at the MET called “From the Back Window.” It’s from 1915, a piece of shiny film in a plain frame. It is in black and white, and when I look at it, I think of the way it sounds after the first time it snows and you wake up to a tangible silence. When I look at it, my chest pushes into my heart in the same gentle way as when I finish reading Goodnight Moon. I think it’s my favorite piece, and I hope you will one day see it.

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“portrait of a woman,” Sophia Fox

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SOMEONE’S DAUGHTER Hannah Matuszak

I wrap her things in tissue paper And light the match.

Cobwebbed wedding veil woven from voices Threaded across the big beech dinner table, Troubling the potatoes and salad greens.

Family pictures from ten years hence, All the spaces carefully left For the husband and little children, the hollows under her eyes.

I gathered carefully the dainty yellow scraps of sundress fabric— It never fit her broad shoulders.

Somewhere sleeping in the crisp white folds lies a rosary: Blood-and-pomegranate red.

A wilted stalk of corn, The house she never inhabited in miniature, All its windows open to let out the ghost.

Her father wrote a letter to her loose-limbed childhood self, once, Telling her his pride.

Now it is creased paper and ink letters watching in perfect rows.

There is a small silence big enough to fill a life Packaged in a neatly wrapped keepsake box.

And when the smoke begins to curl, everywhere The scent of burning hair.

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BEDROOM FEARS Madison Spence-Moore

the midnight air is solemn and sweet wrinkled sheets tangle at my feet the rustling of leaves through the window outside off down the hall, a young babe has cried footsteps pitter patter as i sit up in my bed my sister breaks down my door, wearing a look of dread she’s out of breath, dragging her blanket behind her then she exclaims to me, eyes wide and completely sure—

“sister dearest, i’m afraid of the dark!

the ghost in my room has taken my heart!

floating in the corner, making my mind a mess,

waiting patiently only to stare as i undress!

i shouted and screamed, ‘i am too young!’

i tried my best but no air made it to my lung!

the horrid memory filling my head!

i cannot bear to sleep in my own bed.” i look on in shock and disbelief i don’t ask questions, and make space in the sheets

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MOON FACE CHILD

Tori Bogacki

It’s so good to talk to you; we haven’t spoken in a while, have we? I could say that I’ve been busy lately, but that’s no excuse.

I think some days I talk to everyone else to avoid facing you, and that’s unfair.

I avoid the conversations I don’t want to have because it takes less energy some days to go off running than stand and stare at you. You frighten me.

Remember when we first met? Miracle baby, that’s what they called you. Miracle baby. You preferred moon face.

Mom called you that. Moon face.

It made you feel like you had it in you to light up the sky—it reminded you that you could. It still makes you feel whole to see the stars and think of them as your companions.

You owe it to yourself to look at the moon more. See yourself in her. See the way she reigns the night with her calm strength, gentle, glowing, guiding, full of hope that the sun will rise come morning...

Remember when you’d run through the fields and scream? I do—how your feet would feel trampling over dew stained grass, and how the rain would beat against your skin like a drum, every inch of you alive as you’d just keep running.

You were running for the night to come and give you rest, I think. You were running to spite the sun and play tag against it and running to feel that rain before the quiet stars would tuck you in.

You were running because you loved the way the night soaked in when the day was done and done complete, exhausted in every instant by adventure.

You were a wild thing, never tiring and always alert, eyes like the tides you bid to ebb and flow, come and go for you.

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Why don’t you tell them you’re wild?

Why have you gotten so good at hiding it?

I’m glad to see it pouring out, in spite of yourself—in spontaneous decisions and what some might call poor planning, I hear the howling of my moon face child, her feet pounding down with the rain. I feel her gentle smile when I hear laughing with the fading sun, flowing into friendships that crown chaos without chastising it as I did for so long.

Moon face child—I’m sorry I couldn’t stand and say it sooner, but I LOVE your wildness. I love the willowy way of you, how you grace the moonlight and grab the day with determination—how you howl out “I will live, every instant I will live.”

I want your abandon to run through the rain, and the peace that comes of your dreaming. I want to hear the rain make a drum of your skin as you run, and I want to know what it is to have adventure in every moment, moonlight crowning every morning and every midday. I love life with you, and I want you—all of you, back and here with me.

Please, come back to me.

“shadowbox,” Kristina Fortunato

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SHE AND I

Isabelle Jensen

I did not summon her Never held a seance And yet here she is She might have always been there In the small ways she added more worry to worry But now she guides me Explains that tear-stained pillows are more comfortable These liquid lullabies will lull you to sleep She teaches me that this fear and stress is necessary Do you see those kids that never do their work?

It is because they are not haunted Not guided by her She is productive despite her bad habits She laughs at all my jokes and then points out that no one else does I no longer know how to live without her I do not remember the last time I was alone The last time the lights stopped flickering Her voice is now my own saying what if what if what if what if what if what if And my response is always I don’t know I always assume that I will fail despite the lack of evidence After all, if I expect failure I can only impress She reminds me of all the things coming and all the things I cannot change She asks me about the future She wants certainty I can never give it to her Something in me is relieved she is here There is comfort in this dependency I need her to get things done I worry that I am sacrificing my mental health for productivity That maybe she is worse than I want to believe But I am no exorcist And she is no longer a ghost She is part of me now I think I might need her to survive What if no one can help me because I want her to stay?

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VACANCY

Sophia Fox

you find yourself lonely in the cold of your sheets you find yourself lost in the space of your heart wandering the corridors and arteries you emptied a chamber for him put in a cozy bed a new rug you spent so much energy decorating the room you spent hours creating art to adorn the walls you invited him in he sat on the bed admired the art sunk his toes into the shag carpet the room was made for him but he left after a week’s stay such a courteous guest he only messed the sheets a bit he took his belongings on the way out left you with a memory as a parting gift but the biggest thing he left you was the newly empty chamber the space you made for him in that big beating heart of yours you’ve spent the time since then trying to fill in the space maybe you wouldn’t notice his absence if someone else was there but you’ve yet to find a new resident you find yourself forgetting that your heart is not a hotel

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333

Nicole Nolasco You’re telling me come over here with those eyes covered in the syrupy sunshine of summer and I melt into you.

You are looking at me and even my knees are blushing.

I write sonnets about your tongue the way it unravels me the way it tears me to pieces when I so desperately want to be scattered.

Your tongue carries lies, it’s loose too, falls out of your mouth and into another.

You talk in your sleep.

You talk about someone else with red hair and a chipped tooth and I pretend not to hear.

I watch synchronicities on the clock until my eyes bleed.

I watch the shadows on the wall until they start to look like you— until they start to talk too.

I wait for you to call.

I listen to the dial tone until it rings in my ear.

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THE SIGNAL

Hannah Matuszak 40.739 73.531 - 38.907 77.037 Sing the songs you must sing: Catch radio waves that passed the moon years ago But shimmer still in your throat, Ring yesterday and this flashing second, And the future, always toward the future— The next year flickering across now in oncoming headlights, And the next, the next, And all the traveling songs you’ll need to cross between.

This blurred street sign double-sight, The digital clock readout built into your chest, It’s not always the transmission glitch; Some heartbeats, it drives you.

Shooting star chained to gas pedal, Electric organ choir lungs, Box of noise shivering down bands of light— Go. Broadcast a tune in a language with the tenses snarled up.

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THIS HAIKU FOR LOVE OR RIVERS

James Wegeng

your tranquility and current sweep me up and carry me away

“Luv,” Irini Tsounakas

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MY FRIENDSHIP WITH THE BEES Alyssa Minkoff

last spring, the bees and i would hang out pals hanging out they’d buzz in my ear and i’d hum back some real good conversation, i swear now when the bees come by we exchange what i think are genuine smiles but then two bees swarm me from each side fly in through my ears and mouth and sting each of my organs i swell up and explode i thought the bees and i were buddies; i was sadly mistaken.

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

Font Literary and Arts Magazine. Volume 14, 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.

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